Welcome to the huberman lab, guest Series, where I and an expert, guest discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman. And I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford school of medicine today, marks the third episode in our four episode series about mental health with dr. Paul Conti, today's episode deals with the topic of healthy relationships, how to define what a healthy relationship is and how to achieve healthy relationships of all kinds including romantic relationships.
Interpersonal relationships at work friendships with family. And of course, with oneself, this episode Builds on the framework of the psychology of self and mental health. That was established in the first and second episodes of this series. However, even if you didn't listen to the first or second episode in this series, today's episode will still contain a lot of information and protocols that you will find valuable for improving your relationships. That said, if you have the opportunity to listen to the first and second episodes in this series, I think you'll find those to be tremendously beneficial at any point during today's
episode dr. Conte discusses, what makes for a successful relationship of any kind, as well as tools to improve those relationships. He discusses various types of bonds, including healthy bonds and Trauma. Bonds, not just in the context of romantic relationship, but in the context of all types of relationships, we also discussed different challenges that people face in relationships, including abusive relationships, and we discussed the role of power dynamics anxiety, and boundaries in relationships, both from the perspective of unhealthy relationships, but more importantly, from the understand,
And protocols to cultivate healthy relationships. While there is an abundance of opinions and information out there on the internet. These days about relationships, both healthy and unhealthy, today's discussion approaches, the topic of relationships through an entirely different lens, which is the lens of the self in terms of one's conscious and subconscious mind, and how multiple conscious and subconscious Minds through different individuals. Interact with one another in ways that we can see, and ways that we can't see and all of that framed within the actionable steps.
That any of us can take to improve our relationship to our self. And to others before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme. I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is better help better help offers Professional Therapy with a licensed therapist carried out all online. I've been doing therapy for more than 30 years.
Years. Well, I confess that initially I was forced to do that therapy as a condition for being let back into high school over time. I learned that therapy is a tremendously valuable practice. In fact, I consider doing regular weekly therapy as just as important as doing regular physical exercise. In order to improve one's Health, the beauty of better help is that it makes it extremely easy to find a therapist that's excellent for you and we can define an excellent therapist to somebody who's going to give you a lot of support, but in an objective way as well.
As somebody with whom, you can have excellent Rapport and that can help you arrive at positively transformative insights that you wouldn't have otherwise had. And with better help they make it convenient, so that it's matched to your schedule and the other aspects of your life. If you'd like to try better help. Go to better help.com huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's better help, heelp.com. Hubermann. Today's episode is also brought To Us by waking up, waking up, is a meditation app that offers dozens of guided meditation sessions.
Training's, Yoga, Nidra sessions and more. By now, there is an abundance of data showing that even short daily meditations can greatly improve. Our mood reduce anxiety improve. Our ability to focus and can improve our memory. And while there are many different forms of meditation. Most people find it difficult to find and stick to a meditation practice in a way that is most beneficial for them. The waking up app, makes it extremely easy to learn, how to meditate and to carry out your daily meditation practice in a way that
It's going to be most effective and efficient for you. It includes a variety of different types of meditations of different duration, as well as things like Yoga Nidra, which place the brain and body into a sort of pseudo, sleep, that allows you to emerge feeling incredibly mentally refresh. In fact, the science around Yoga. Nidra is really impressive, showing that after a Yoga, Nidra session levels of dopamine, in certain areas of the brain, are enhanced by up to 60%, which places the brain and body into a state of enhanced Readiness for mental work. And for physical work, another
I really like about the waking up app is that it provides a 30-day introduction course. So for those of you that have not meditated before or getting back to a meditation practice, that's fantastic. Or if you're somebody who's already a skilled and regular, meditator waking up, has more advanced meditations in Yoga. Nidra sessions for you as well. If you'd like to try the waking up app, you can go to waking up.com huberman and access a free 30-day trial. Again, that's waking up.com hubermann. And now, for my discussion about Mental Health,
With dr. Paul, Conte dr. Conte, welcome back. Thank you. Happy to be here today. We're going to discuss relationships and that will often focus on romantic relationships, but also relationships between friends between family members and inevitably the relationship to self which is what we really focused on in episodes 1 and 2 of this series episode one, being all the things that go into a healthy self and how to understand what is unhealthy.
Healthy and all of us and make adjustments to the unhealthy aspects of our unconscious and conscious through really specific proactive, behaviors and patterns of thought. So really a roadmap to these ideals that we call mental health and understanding of the self. Today we want to talk about relationships from the perspective of of course how people relate. But I have a feeling it's going to have something to do with or perhaps almost everything to do with our relationship.
A ship to understanding ourselves first. Yes. So just to make sure that we're all on the same page regardless of whether or not people have seen episodes 1 and 2. And certainly people do not need to have seen or listen to episodes 1 and 2 of the series. In order to understand today's discussion, could you please tell us what is a healthy person? And how can we ask ourselves the sorts of questions that allow us to determine whether or not we are healthy and where to look in terms of making adjustments,
If we want to be healthier than we already are, which I have to believe almost everybody. If not, everybody certainly wants to be the healthiest and best expression of themselves so that they can do the most for themselves and for others in the
world. So the linchpin of it all, it is the agency and gratitude as verbs. That's the top of the mountain, right? There's a lot of climbing, we do to get to the top of the mountain, once her over the top of the mountain then things are in a better place and even though they're to
Words. Right agency is, of course, a word gratitude is a word, but it doesn't mean that there are separate Concepts approaching the world through the lens of agency and gratitude, thought of as one thing, because they come together and they come together as verbs. Like, that's what we're aiming for, right? Because that's the thing that we can work towards right. If you think about what comes underneath of that, right? It takes us back to the the two pillars and the 10 cupboards
And if we're looking in there enough, we're mining of what is in my unconscious mind. I might not be aware of, let me generate some curiosity about my defense mechanisms, and my character structure and think about what Salient inside of me. Like, if we're doing all of that, then what we're doing, we're building empowerment. We're building humility. And then ultimately, the expression of all of that is that agency and gratitude and it's something that we can't have enough of, like I said, what's the best amount of that the most that's
Able, right? Because we're going to engage in the world in the healthiest way because agency and gratitude doesn't mean like we're happy about everything, right? If there's something negative and we can change that, then we don't feel happy about that. We the sense of gratitude in me makes me more likely to feel that I can change that right or to take the chance of trying to change that and then the agency part of that concept can come more to the fore and I can make the change, so it's not about Bliss.
It's not about forgiving self and others for all sorts of things and not working to make better. It's about being in the world and being as aware as I can possibly be, including being aware. That there are things. I'm not aware of, right? So sort of having a healthy respect and an orientation to the world that values, truth and values, understanding and exploration. If we do all of that then we reach the top of the mountain through the agency in gratitude. And then what builds upon that or what comes from that?
That is the piece that contentment the Delight, the generative Drive being strengthened like that all comes together. And then the aggressive or we say aggressive, because that's the traditional term with the aggressive, or the assertive, right the assertiveness or assertion Drive. However, we whatever word you want to put to that that drive exist in us in a way that sub serves the generative Drive. The same thing with the pleasure Drive in us, it's exists in us but it's observing the generative drive and then all
Those good things come together and they come together to help us be as healthy as we can and to stay healthy, right? Including when tribulation or difficulties come our way so that we stay as best we can in the agency and gratitude as verbs. And again there's nothing theoretical about this like it's a way to live and and there were a lot of people who live some of their lives or parts of their lives through that, right? And we can aspire to it and we can work towards it and if we're the best,
That we can be then we're going to be in our relationships, the best. We can be the thing about it like you and I have a relationship, we know each other, we're working together. If I can bring my best self to you, two thinking about you to understanding you if I can bring the agency and the Gratitude then I'm going to do right by you. I'm going to mentalize this idea of thinking about what's going on inside of you. Like I'm going to bring the best of all of that and then because we have a relationship, there's also an us like there's a me, there's
You, there's something that happens between us. That's the relationship. That's the US. And I will also bring my best self to that thing. That is no longer just me or just you. But that is an us and that applies to all relationships. You can apply that to seeking Health in every single relationship in our lives. What you're saying, really speaks to the
importance of people, taking a real look at themselves, you know, which is not necessarily an inventory.
Story of Self in the typical sense that were used to hearing it. But rather through this lens or map of the self that was spelled out in episodes 1 and 2. And again, for those that are just joining the series. Now the map as we're referring to it is available as a downloadable PDF in the show. No captions. People want to get that, it's completely zero cost. You can just go there and access it or just view it on a screen, print it out whatever whatever you like you certainly don't need to do that because
Again, we're talking about the core elements of that map, which I understand correctly arrived, eventually at a set of verb states that were calling agency. And gratitude, those are not separate as you pointed out, they work together. You
described as it on top of the geyser, right? And I really like that, like there's a lot of things going on, but then it all up lifts to something, right? And if we're doing it in the right way and the in the diligent way, then it is like a geyser.
And what its lifting up on top of it is the agency in gratitude. I love you. Put those words to it and I think it captures it really profoundly.
Well, the stuff that geysers up, perhaps deserves a bit of our attention just for a few moments, you describe these two pillars that I described as geysering up into agency in gratitude in the, in the best circumstances. But the best circumstances we want to remind ourselves and everybody are attainable by looking.
At what's in those pillars? Those two pillars are the structure of self. So, really understanding something about the structure of self, so that includes some understanding of the unconscious mind. Some understanding of the conscious mind defense, mechanisms, character structure and self. That was all reviewed and described in episodes 1 and 2, as well as the functions of self, which more of the verb States, the expressions of the structure of self, self awareness, being the first of those,
Defense mechanisms in action and here I'd be remiss if I didn't tell myself and everybody else, again that defense, mechanisms are not always bad. There can be healthy defense mechanisms Italy, they can protect us in very valuable ways and then this notion of salience what we pay attention to. You know what sorts of scripts are going on in our head about ourselves and others, what are we paying attention to? How are we interpreting those in our head and two others? And in most importantly, perhaps to ourselves and then our actual behaviors of what are we doing? From the time we wake up?
Till the time we go to sleep at night and then our strivings our sense of hopefulness or perhaps lack of strivings and there I reminded also that nobody does all of these things perfectly all the time, we all have elements within us that perhaps are not serving to geyser up into agency and gratitude as well as they could. But that all of us have the capacity to look at these two pillars and these 10 things that were just listening.
Stood off as you described them as cupboards that we look into and examine and think about and that if we can do that with a skilled clinician like yourself or another psychiatrist or psychologist terrific. But even if we don't have access to that that we can examine within us what is and is not serving two guys are up into agency in
gratitude we can bring any issue of self to those two pillars and the 10 cupboards within them. Any issue of self. Why? Because that's
It is right in the sense that like it is, the US. What's inside of me? I have an unconscious mind, I have a conscious mind, I have a defensive
structure. I have a character structure. I have a
self, I like, that's what it is, right? And all the functions that you mentioned, they're all going on within that structure of self, they're manifesting themselves. Like that's what it is when we're being right in the active way of the verb being, that's what it is, which is why we can bring to it.
The issue of self even though of course there's tremendous complexity there, you know, the million things that go on in a second you know, underneath the surface in the unconscious mind and our defensive structures and how to see them. But we're human beings. We're complicated, right? Like that's okay because we have methods of understanding, we have methods of inquiry and we can use those methods to make things better, and that's how we make the, guys are as strong as it can be. We're like maybe some maybe some some of the waters.
In counter-current in the okay. Well, let's try and have things go all in the same direction, but we don't need things to be perfect for for the geyser to spring up and the agency and gratitude to then be uplifted upon it.
So everybody has one of these Maps as I understand it. And therefore, any time we're talking about relationships, romantic relationships, or otherwise, we're talking about the intersection, or overlap of those maps, in some way, maybe even the Synergy. And the
Outgrowth of those Maps becomes its own map. I think we'll get to this little bit later. Yes.
When I and most people hear the word relationships in particular romantic relationships, I make a couple of automatic assumptions. First of all, I have to assume that people are either in a relationship or out of a relationship. There's probably a third category out there of plurals and other things, but we'll keep it relatively simple.
And most people I assume when they search for or enter or entered a relationship, they thought about whether or not they had a resonance with the person whether or not, you know, there was a intellectual or mutual interest resonance or physical resonance, you know, maybe something about family, history, common goals, Etc. That's typically what people think about and then perhaps if people will have a
It more of a psychological understanding or they're reading some, you know, pop psychology books these days, you know, some of which are pretty good, they might understand something about themselves or the other person being a bit more anxious or a bit more relaxed. So you'll hear things like anxious attached to cure attach things of that of that sort. If we could just step back from all of that for a moment and examine it through the lens of the maps, as you're describing them which exists in all of us and that really are the map to being the best version of ourselves.
Ourselves.
If we look at relationships in terms of lists of, you know, where people went to school, if they went to school, the, you know, other parents, married your divorce, you know, do they have trauma that they're aware of are not aware of these kinds of things? I guess we could call those. And here, I'm borrowing language that you used earlier off camera. So I want to acknowledge that, you know, points of compatibility. Like I think that seems like a reasonable place to start, right? Do people want the same thing? So if you, if you could
Could could you talk a little bit about points of compatibility and relationship and how those show up for Better? Or For Worse? When you encounter people in the clinical setting? You know, when you see a relay somebody who's in a relationship that's really working for them and is healthy versus if they're in a relationship where it's really unhealthy, presumably there's some knowledge about points of compatibility, but I'm guessing, that's not always
intuitive. Mhm, I think the place we start there is acknowledging what we can know and what we can
No. So this idea that there are levels of emergence where where things at a lower level come together and create something that's new. We see this throughout science from subatomic particles all the way through to culture, right? So someone could know theoretically like lots and lots and lots about you and lots and lots and lots about me but they don't know about us, right? Like they don't know how we interact, they don't know if we have shared interest, what we talked about, right?
Right? They don't know that. No one knows that. Like, we don't know that about the combination of people. We can't know it in advance but we often believe that we can, which then leads to a lot of false metrics of trying to figure things out. So when we're looking for compatibility, the thought was very basic tangible things, like it Rome in Romance. For example if there's someone who absolutely wants to have a family and there's someone who absolutely does not want to have a family.
Okay, that would be a reason for those two people to not choose one another, right? So there are, there are these factors but the factors are all in a sense, very evident and very concrete, right? If we go, if we go beyond that, we say, okay, we can see the obvious, right. Then what we're looking for is really a compatibility of generative drives, right? And then that it tells you can these people then get along. Look, you know, maybe one of them is from one side of the world and the others from the other side of the world, or
Or one's an accountant and the other is a musician and you know, it doesn't mean that outlet they're built not to get along or that if they're doing the same thing they're built to get along or if they're they went to college in the same place or they went to college versus not going to college, right? There's so much there that we try to build a story on. And then what we do is we miss the forest for the trees, right? And the trees, I think are the factors that don't matter. So get. Let's think about the factors that do
Plus ones have a family of the person doesn't that's relevant but the the trees that mislead us might be, do they have the same level of education? Do they have the same family structure growing up? Our parents still together? What do they enjoy? Our they creative or scientific or whatever? We're creatively scientific. Right. We could look at all of that, but I think then we're making a bunch of trees that mislead us. If you say look, do these people come at the world through, how much agency and gratitude,
It is their guiding them. How, you know, how high is the top of that geyser? How high is it uplifting that how strong is the generative drive? If we match people upon that then we co those people got along in those people didn't. And then the other all the other factors like pheromones, right? And things that we can't understand or like reflexive first impression. So so like, we get let things develop honoring the truth of what. We can't know that when you put two people together, you get something that's different than the sum of both people.
Right? It's not an overlap of maps. Right. It's a new map, right? And the map is informed by things that are that are on each individual's map, but what we're looking for are maps. That don't have very significant differences around just clear concrete things, right? But once we get beyond that, the maps can synergize in all sorts of beautiful and unpredictable ways. And if both are coming from
the perspective of a generative drive that is at the Forefront. Great. You put those Maps together and see what happens, maybe nothing happens. Okay, those people don't go out on a second date, you know, maybe something happens but it doesn't develop in certain ways. OK. Those people dated than stop dating. Like this happens all the time, right? But we set the odds in our favor that the generative Drive in each that is at the Forefront means that their Maps can synergize in ways that can then be beautiful and ways that can maybe bring to both people that
Which which they want. And I think there's a Simplicity to that that I think if we honor, it can be very, very helpful, whether it's romance is friendships of looking at what the truth of it is, instead of the factors that we try and gain a false sense of security if we're using them to select upon you mentioned several
times, the generative Drive definitely would like to learn more about that and spend some time there in the context of relationships.
But just to drill a little bit further into what we've all heard so often and you touch upon a few of these themes around points of compatibility, but also where sometimes we can respond to the wrong things. When thinking about compatibility, again we're framing this mainly in the context of hypothetical romantic relationships, but certainly it pertains to other sorts of relationships, things like, you know, is one person educated with
Advanced degree in his in his the other person. Also, you know we tend to assume that people who are are somehow a better match than people who aren't sort of an implicit assumption that's often made not always or that, you know, two people really love music that they will enjoy music together and therefore you know the sum of the whole is greater than either of its parts you know and then
and I think those things are utterly
irrelevant interesting. And I want to hear more about this because I think that if you think about which I'm sure you don't.
But like dating apps for instance, like what's listed out there or the first or second dates which you know consists of like learning a little bit about somebody and what they're doing and maybe even a little bit about their history and and maybe an activity and certainly an attentional awareness to how the other person is behaving in the context of different things like, you know, a waiter or waitress and how they're treating people. And and you and and then you hear about things. Like, what are they? This is not something I'm familiar.
Right? The love languages. People were like, oh, what's their love language is? You know, it's like gifts or like acts of physical touch or you know, or acts of service or something. I met someone recently and she told me my love language is all of them,
you know, which
I think is the most honest answer, right? Because sure there's probably some waiting around what people value, more or less, and in the absence of the things they value, the most, it would probably feel a bit like deprivation in any relationship but
As I'm describing all this, I'm realizing more and more. Yes, all of that matters. Anxious attached securely attached. Love Languages, Etc. But it really doesn't get to the heart of the matter. It really doesn't get to this as you're describing it, this generative Drive-In individuals and whether or not those match up well along the points of compatibility with the other person's generative tribe and you know, I haven't run a controlled study for this but the best evidence I have is that there. Fortunately are many.
Out there who are in happy healthy relationships, but there are many, many, many people who are not either because they can't find them or they're in them and they're not healthy or they're not happy Etc. So, if you could elaborate a bit more on the generative drive, again, reminding us what the nature of that is we cover this a bit in episodes, 1 & 2 but what the nature of that is and and some different ways that that's expressed and how that shows up in
healthy relationship.
Yeah I think we really disprove the idea that that some of these these factors that I think are superficial in the context of whether people are going to be compatible. They're not superficial things but they're not germane. And so this a you think about music, right? And say two people are contemplating romance, right? And they both really like music. Well, that could go very very well. Let's say they both have a strong generative Drive.
Those pillars are pretty healthy and
the geyser of the
agency and gratitude is riding upon it, and they can find peace in them in themselves. They're strongly generative. Then, they could become interested in the music. The other person likes isn't, there's not going to be a complete overlap, right? Even if people generally like the same thing but they say they like different things. I just liking music or even liking the same music. There's still different, right? So the person has to go beyond himself.
Elves? Right and say, okay, I'm interested in like what you think even about the music? We both like, right? What factors? Do you like their places of of learning and of growth for both? And you could see how both liking music whether it's the same or different music, that sounds great, right? We could also see how that could not be great. Right. If the generative Drive is too low and the aggression Drive is too high. Then I'm going to think I like music. My music is better than yours or, you know it right or, you know, people then
They'll fragment and trade even though they have the same interest or if the pleasure Drive is too high, then they think I want to listen to my music. Not yours. I'm familiar with it. Instead of hey I'm interested in that music because because you're interested in it and I'm interested in you, right? Which leads us to the second part. Let's say of someone who really has no interest in music and someone who does. Well there can be an openness of saying if I'm interested in this person. And this person is really interested in music like well,
That I have some interest in it. Right? I want to learn something about. I want to experience some of it with the other person and let's say that person, then find say, that's not my thing, it's not the thing we connect on. Then why would that be the end of the world? Like 20 people, one person goes to concerts the other doesn't, right? So you know we try and find these points of commonality because I think we get over reductionist and then we think oh here's a bunch of factors that we will identify. And what they do is they obscure us from the primary.
Which is the generative Drive, which of course will then induce open-mindedness mentalization. If I don't like music and you do instead of saying, was he like music for, you know, I need a friendship with somebody likes music, you know you think hey like that's interesting like if I'm interested in you as a friend that I have respect for you and what you think, then why would I not have some interest in what you're interested in, you know? So so this idea of compatibility revolves around the health in each person, it doesn't revolve
around factors that are anything but the, the concrete logistical factors that would just keep two people apart.
I love the idea that healthy relationships center around the factors that really matter within the self, right, in particular, the generative drive. And I love the example of someone being able to be curious about somebody's interests about their partner's interests. Even though they might not share those from the standpoint of
In gratitude, because the agency component there is really key. I think that a lot of people feel as if they aren't really good at something or really knowledgeable about something, then it's not for them, right? Which is the opposite of having agency and gratitude because gratitude is closely tied to humility. You know how could we know everything, it can be good at certain things and not others. So the way you described it includes aspects of openness of humility. But also the agency side. The
But like, if I'm gonna learn more than perhaps, you know, we could enjoy more of that together. Perhaps, not, right. I think this is what I'm sensing. And I'm also sensing that the words like minded. You know, like minded people has so much more to do with their generative drives and how those match up as opposed to the activities that they prefer engaging in. And the sorts of foods. They like, or the movies, they like, and which makes sense at some level. But I think,
Is still counterintuitive for a lot of us who just kind of reflexively think. I like they like the same things, you know, or maybe the maybe even they met at work because they like the same type of work. They like to live in a certain area of the country and therefore by proximity. They met and this raises all sorts of interesting ideas. Perhaps about the statistics of what we see, right? Like two musicians. Together we therefore assume that musicians belong together or two scientists together. I know.
Loads of scientist, scientist couples or scientists physician cobbles. And, but, of course, the numbers are skewed because they were working in environments where it increase the probability, they would interact. So this is actually a vote for online dating and some sense because it breaks through all those sometimes, even geographical barriers, but certainly the traditional barriers of culture,
right? Right. And if you think about it, we're talking about relationship. So, I would like my relationships to last, as long as possible, right? That means now, we're talking.
About my lifespan and my health span, right? Like that's then becomes part of that discussion. Of course, we're very interested in life span and health span and we see people do much much better when they're interconnected in the world around them, when they're still learning new things. Like, we know that's true that people often will tail, the other sort of Trail off of what they're learning, whether it's music, it's literature, it's the world around us, you know, relatively early in our life span, but the person who's
Acted learning new things, right. Has a much greater probability of living longer and living healthier, right? So think, what's that about? It's about a generative drive, right? It's about, you know, what? I've learned a lot of things over the course of my life, and I'm 80 years old now and like, great that there's more to learn, right? And like, that's what you see. It makes me think of a woman is around 90 years old. And my practice who look, she's always learning new things like she's super interested in things, and I'm always struck.
Bad how like, she seems so much younger, right? And, and there, that's not just a selection bias. Like, oh, I just happened to see that in that person, like she has the factors that predispose to Aging in the way that's healthiest and happiest. So, it really comes down the root of all of it in ourselves in our relationships, in the quality of them over time. And how long we get to have them really arises from a generative drive. And that's the thing that makes us then on,
Ended right? And lets us find interest in things about other people that are different from the things in us which also comes about naturally. Like, I think it's interesting that we have this sort of bias like that musicians belong together or why they're familiar with the same things, right? I guess. They have the same interesting thing with Scientists, but then a lot of people like different foods, right? Like, I love different ethnic foods, like white because it's different, right? It's an appreciation of difference. I don't want to eat just like I did Growing Up.
And many, many, many people are like that. That's an appreciation of difference of diversity. So sometimes we'll kind of harness that and we'll look at it and we'll say, oh, like that's present in us. But for whatever reason we become very reductionist about relationships. And now we're trying to match based upon sameness, right? And like, sameness is not the point of it. I mean, they're even thoughts, right? About people then in some way seeking difference, right? And maybe pheromones are telling us. I like, I actually know very little
About that. But I certainly know that striving for sameness doesn't make good things happen in relationships. You know, I've been doing this for over 20 years and like, I don't see that the alleged factors of sameness matter again, unless they're so concrete. Like, if this person is absolutely going to live in North America and that person is absolutely going to live in South America. Let's not potentially put them together, but once we get away from almost that level of concreteness, let's look for something different and then like,
Think else it simplifies right? The higher we go up the ladder, the more simple things. Get if you're looking at the pillars structure of cell function of self, you're creating the agency and gratitude, then what are you looking for? When you're looking for a partner, a match in generative Drive. I want to be I want mine to be strong and I see that it's strong in this person they create in a way. You know what I do science. They grow a garden regenerative together, right? Like that could be super compatible because we're looking at
The one factor that really
matters, I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge one of our sponsors. A G1 H G1 is a vitamin mineral, probiotic drink that meets all of your foundational nutrition needs. I started taking a G1 way back in 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking a G1 and the reason I still take a G1 once or generally twice per day, is that? It's the easiest way for me to ensure that I'm getting all of the vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and fiber that I need in my diet. Now, of course, it's essential to get
Nutrition from Whole Foods. But most people including myself, find it hard to get enough servings of fruits and vegetables each day and especially to get enough prebiotics and probiotics to ensure gut health. As you may know, your gut contains trillions of little microbiota, the so-called gut microbiome, which establishes critical connections with other organs of your body to enhance brain health as well as to support your immune system and other aspects that relate to mental and physical health. One of the most common questions I get is if you were to take just one
One supplement, which supplement would that be? In my answer is always a G1 because by taking a G1, I'm able to ensure that I'm getting all of the vitamins, minerals and probiotics that I need to enhance my mental health, physical, health, and performance. If you'd like to try a G1 go to drink, AG one.com huberman, to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs and they'll give you a year supply of vitamin D3 K to again, that's drink. AG, one.com huberman, to claim the special offer realizing that
Most of what I and everyone else has heard about relationships, is complete nonsense. I really mean that. I mean, it has occurred to be before because I've experienced both that the phrase is absence makes the heart grow fonder and out of sight, out of mind are in direct contradiction with one another. So they're both true. Depends on the circumstances and you know who the hell knows why it could write. You also hear, Opposites Attract but they don't stay together, right? You hear similar.
Are you know, the important thing is to find someone similar to you that or that there's one person. Right. That's right. If you I mean, these are, if we really think about it, crazy, right? Notions, yes, but they drive a lot of what
people think about ali. I just right, they drive angst, right? They drive bad choices, they drive situations and then create a sense of guilt and shame and inadequacy like we mislead ourselves by not going to the basics of what is actually true. I can we look at my
Self make myself as healthy as I can be right, because if I'm healthy all recognize a lack of Health in the other, right? So it also protects us against bad relationships and then if I'm going to make myself healthy which we're describing how that looks wouldn't. I want someone who also wants to make themselves healthier, at least if we're going to alai, right? Let's let's alai around making both of ourselves
healthier.
Absolutely. And we're going to go deeper into how to look into the map of self and how that relates to relationship. Certainly more as we go. Along this discussion, you've mentioned several times, however about generative drive and that it really is the definition of like-minded. Some sense. And you also mentioned aggressive drives and pleasure drives themes that we touched on again and episodes, 1 & 2, but listening to those episodes is certainly not necessary.
Digest what we're talking about today, could you go a little bit deeper into the generative Drive? Flush out for us? What that is? I think generative, I think generator, I think energy, I hear aggression or aggressive Drive? I think, as I think most people do friction, maybe even conflict, may be physical conflict, may be verbal conflict, but I know it's some of that perhaps, but a whole lot more and then pleasure Drive
and pleasure. Some people think Bliss, some people think Delight, some people probably have all sorts of specific things, they think of, with respect to pleasure. So he just flesh those out for us a little bit more because I think those are going to serve as cornerstones of today's discussion.
Sure, so drives. And in this case, the generative Drive sort of exists within us. And what they do is, they're defining potential, right? So, so right now, one could argue if we just pause for a couple seconds,
Doing anything generative in those S, right? But then we resumed doing something that we believe is generative, right? So at the time we're pausing, that's when we can sort of look at that as a drive within us to to to make new learning right to understand things. We didn't understand before to spread a sense of goodness, right? So it resides in us in a way that is determined by a whole bunch of different factors like like everything else that's determined within us. There's an
Nature in a nurture component. So some aspect of it or what are the genetics that came down to us what our formative experiences, but we can go in and alter that. So, if we see the drive as a set of potentials, like in that moment, we pause, there's a set of potentials within us, like a potential of where we can take our thoughts. Our actions, our Reflections are decisions, that's the drive within us and it exists within us in a way that we
Localized. Now, like, if we think enough about, okay, how much of a generative Drive is there in a person? How much is that person looking to the to, to make a better life for themselves or better world around them? And how do they feel about themselves and their ability to do that? How generative are they? Or how shutdown, or demoralized or envious? So we can in a sense localized that and again, the localization has these genetic and nurture components to it, but we can then go and
that and that's the that's the importance. If the drive is a set of potentials, a set of possibilities, then that drive is one in the same pervaded with however, we want to to to to describe that with the agency and gratitude, because the agency and gratitude is sort of the operative form of that that's the verb, right? It's the drive actually driving something, right? So if you have a strong generative drive and agency and gratitude are leading the decisions. The reflections are coming through that the
Russian within us or again, that's the the, this the historical word but we can say aggression assertion proactive proactiveness, write all of this inside of us and our drive for pleasure. For gratification, that all is then is in us, but it's observing the generative Drive, meaning, the generative drive that set of potentials and possibilities is dominant, which of course, makes sense with agency and gratitude those active.
Herbs being what is most active, right? And then we're also going to feel at times and hopefully at a lot of times the that set of peacefulness that said it's of contentment the sense of delight, right? What you're describing when you're you know doing the podcast in your in and all these good things are happening to you, right. There's a strong generative Drive-In you that set of potentials are being actualized, through the verbs of agency and gratitude, like you're doing it. All right, then, and as you're doing,
You have a sense of peace and contentment, as you're in acting all of it and then that makes you healthier reinforces the generative drive, it protects you against the next sling or Arrow of Outrageous Fortune. That will come your way, right? You become more self knowledgeable, more you become stronger, I and and ultimately that's what we're looking for. Like that's the state of goodness and I believe that if you look historically what is it that we're seeking. We can put so many words to it and we're
We're choosing to put these words to it. I mean, I think that this is the structure because I think the science, the history, the clinical experience the phenomenology, I think it all tells us this we can put different words to it but what we're looking at when we're looking at truth and how to get to the happiness quote-unquote that that people have sought Through the Ages men. I think we know enough. Now we've learned enough that we can say, oh this is what it looks like and it fits the Arbiter of all truth.
Which is, as you get further up the hierarchy, it gets simpler. That's true about humans. What's going on in my own Consciousness is very, very complicated, right? But if that summing to, as we get higher up to like I'm approaching the world with a lot of agency and gratitude, right, that's a lot simpler. And that's what can be common among us. Which is why if my pillars are very different from your pillars and what we've struggled against each,
Is very different. And what we may still have to work against is very different. Well, we can be extremely compatible as friends because our we are, we working on ourselves, are we fostering the generative drive? So we're coming at the world in that way and agency and gratitude that's the similarity right between us that matters. And ultimately we're looking at the potential that every moment we're building the potential in us for what comes at the next moment, which is why we're describing the overlap. The point of
Mentality, that really matters. That that matters were putting a label to it, right? We're saying it's the generative drive but it is also that. Okay, we both come at the world through agency and gratitude know if two people are assessing compatibility but if we're looking at something to Nest that under and what seems most logical is the set of potentials within us that were building and altering each moment and then as I alter it in this moment, but it's altered and that affects my next moment, right? If I do something that's
It just kind of thoughtless to somebody, you know, because I'm in a I'm in a bad mood, right? Then what am I doing? I'm projecting out my aggression, I'm doing something that basically makes me less than right. And then I'm going to feel less in the next moment. Whether that moment is about me or is about someone else, the drives are the Potentials in us, but we are actively working on them. Determining them changing them. Each moment
I'm well on board the idea that the typical pairings
Let's call them, the idiosyncratic, pairings of, you know, musician with musician, in many cases. But you know, sometimes very verbal person with quieter person, you know, introvert with extrovert, or introvert with introvert. You that all of that takes a back seat or perhaps even back back seat, perhaps it even is out of the vehicle compared to the critical importance of generative drive, right?
When we think about generative drives an individual's, you beautifully described. What a generative Drive is, and how it shows up in individuals when thinking about generative drives in romantic relationships. However, because generative Drive, can be expressed to varying degrees. Does one often see that? Or do you think that a matching of sort of levels of generative drives is what Foster's the best?
Nation ships. In other words, let's say somebody has a pretty high pleasure drive but not a very strong aggressive. Also also called proactiveness drive and so maybe like they're they watch a lot of Netflix, like a lot of Netflix, but they're not even the sort of person that's like, really excited about the shows and telling you about them because there's a version of watching a lot of Netflix where the person is really interested in learning and in knowing maybe even their thinking about writing a writing something you know poetry
Your book or they're bringing some of that to their life, right? I mentioned that way because watching Netflix isn't bad per se, right? It's not anti
generative right an escape or is it generative is a person thinking about what they're going to do, they're going to write that book or are they just trying to numb out? And at the end of five hours in front of the television, they
don't know what those five hours were
right. There's no intrinsic value. Judgment based upon a lot of things that we make intrinsic value. We make value judgments about you have to look
Who is the person? What is the context are they being generative or
not? Yeah, some of the movies and shows that I've watched him relationships became the the points of connection around at least a me tremendously. Interesting discussions on Hikes that we took the next day and and Reflections on our own relationship and work in life. And so I'm so glad that you point out that there's nothing intrinsically valuable or or invaluable about something like Netflix or even intrinsically passive about.
Oohing, write something like, sitting around or even reading books for that matter. There's a passive version of reading great books. Also, people forget that it's hard to read a great book and not learn something I guess, that's why they're called great books. But but there is a version of that. And I know many people who want to possess the book.
I read the book and I'm going to check it off. I don't know what was in it, like people do that. That is not generative. So should we consider
matching of level or expression of generative drives as perhaps the what we are all seeking?
He can relationship like that. And do you think that people tend to pair up naturally pair up with people that have a similar level of generative drive? Or if they don't, do you think it leads to problems?
Yeah, I think that by and large people, don't that it's not the thing that we're thinking about and looking for in ourselves or others. And I absolutely believe that it makes problems and let's take a look
to not look, it makes problems do not
look right, it makes sense. The way the fact that we're not
Basing it upon generative Drive does indeed. I think make many, many, many, many, many. And, in fact, helpless problems, and I would take as an example. I think about the idea of a trauma Bond, right? A trauma bond, is not a bad thing. That sounds like a strong statement because the way that I hear trauma Bond used is a bad thing, right? But it doesn't have to be so, so let's take a look at it. Imagine that you have what people call it trauma.
You know, you have two people who was just what would make up a situation right there, functioning in the world around them, but they each have had some very significant trauma that is creating issues in them. So let's say their avoidance issues person doesn't feel safe or comfortable in the world around them. They get invited to places that they like to go, but they don't go right? They want to go to the museum and see something really new and cool there but there might be a crowd, right? I mean this happens. Right? Let's say you have two people.
People who both have this in them, it could be because the trauma is similar, the trauma could be night and day, but they each have this in them. They could bond around that drama in a way that worsens, the trauma. That's why people think negatively of a trauma Bond, right? So if the case is that the trauma bond is not a good thing for these two people. Say why is that? It's not, because both of them have had trauma and both of them are
By trauma, and both of them are impacted by trauma in similar ways. It's not that it's that the drives are not in a healthy place and the gratification of the generative drive and the pleasure drives are not high enough. So let's imagine the generative Drive is could be relatively low in in each of these people in one or the other or they could have a naturally high drive that's being forwarded. Right? So so there's something that's out of
To balance, where the drive is the ability to express the drive, right? Is there enough agency, right? If there's not, like, let's say, one person is really, really shut down that person can't stand their job, right? Okay. Something is shutting that person down the generative Drive wishes greater expression. They go back and look at themselves. You can bring that into line, right? But something is out of balance at the time, the pleasure Drive may be low or it may be high, but it may not be gratified. It may be that that person loves.
Museums and wants to go to the museum, but can't find that gratification, right? That's a possibility, the aggression or assertion drive would be on the low end, right? But it could be higher, maybe that person felt safer, right? That drive within them has a lot of latitude in it and maybe you could move higher, right? But something is out of balance in the drives and in their expression, right? That's the problem. Because let's look at the other side where a trauma bond. Is a great thing, right?
So each of the people in the example as trauma and they recognize it in themselves and they understand how it makes things harder for them and and then that they're communicating about how it makes it hard in the other, right? So maybe there's a lot of overlap, right? In Social avoidance and sense of vulnerability, but maybe there are things that are different in one person versus the other. So then they can come together and say, look, the what's the goal of life? Like I would like to be
As healthy as I can be, I'm working on myself. You want to be as healthy as you can be. We want to be as healthy as we can be. And if we're healthy, we also help each of us be healthy. So maybe those two people, neither of which they would ever go to the museum on their own because the trauma inside of them is at a point, it hasn't been worked through or whether it's at a place where they just simply feel too vulnerable. But together they can go to the museum and then the bond around trauma.
Helps them be healthy. The drives are in a better place because they're able to recognize hater things going on in me that I like to be different and better. And you recognize that too and we can talk about it with one another, right? So they're in a healthier place and then from that healthier place, they build greater
health.
So much of what we hear about in terms of friction points in relationship centres around it seems communication or lack of communication and as you're describing the role of the generative Drive-In healthy relationship. It seems to me that it ties back in every way to agency and gratitude and agency being such a critical element of communication because wherever you've identified that okay, there's a potential problem here people with high generator Drive in these examples.
seem to be capable of like
Self inquiry asking the other person questions that bring bring them closer together and to a deeper understanding of the self. I raise this, because one thing that's often overheard or that I've overheard, I, of course, have siblings and friends or our and I'll place this in the way that I've most typically heard it, but I'm sure it exists. Other ways to. She is that the conversation, my head is one where a woman is saying, you know, like there was somebody
Or dating somebody. And like, he's so clueless. Like, I wish that he would just do this thing. Sometimes these are acts of chivalry like, maybe it's flowers or vacations, but more often than not, it's a request or a complaint about a lack of proactiveness. You know, this is also what ratchets up to these very pan statements that you hear like, oh there's no real men. These days are like there are no real men left or, you know, this kind of thing. You'll also hear it in the reverse right. You hear men, making pan statements about women.
And here we're doing this in the context of heterosexual pairings. But of course it could all work just as well in concert, right? It's exactly. Could all work in the context of homosexual parents too. So you hear those sorts of things and it sounds like a lack of communication, you know. Okay. Maybe one person needs to be better at asking for their needs to be met. Maybe the other person needs to develop more of an awareness of what the other person needs. Of course, we all seem to kind of intrinsically wish that things were just happen for us without the need to request them.
We asked for them, but I'm realizing again that all of that is distracting commotion because that's not really what's going on. What what's really going on? It seems is that the engine behind communication, the engine behind curiosity, a desire to learn and know and create something from that learning and knowing in the relationship the generative Drive is really what's the issue or the lack of generative.
I've in any of those conversations, it seems one could Circle back to that and okay, well, someone's not asking the right questions and therefore not doing the right things because they're, they don't either have a sense of agency or they don't have gratitude for the situation, they're in, including their own ability to do that, right? So when you hear, you know, people aren't showing up for the relationship. They're not showing up where you know, she's not showing up or again let's make the pain statement going the other direction that you know that
Somebody just wants a lot of attention, right? They just need an excess amount of attention, won't let me do my own thing but also wants me to work and be successful. You know, again these are stereotypes but all of that seems very distracting. However, all of it seems far simpler if we push it through this filter of generative drives and whether or not it's being expressed.
Yes, yes, I think maybe the best example of this because it's so highly. Charged is imagine that the pleasure Drive
Through the lens of sex and sexuality, right? So, imagine that people are in a pairing, they're in a relationship because of how they got there. Were taking people are in a relationship and one has a sex drive with which means an interest in sex and maybe proclivities for a diversity of sexual experience that. Say if we just for sake of this example, we put on a 1 to 10 scale that that person is a to okay. Now let's hit the other person in the ten,
being the greatest. Yeah, sorry,
sorry, sir.
Timmy, right? That person is a to. Now let's say the partner is 1/8. Okay, so there's a big mismatch there. You think, how does that normally go the to stays of to the eighth stays in eight and things? Don't go well, right? It creates friction in the relationship at a minimum. It blows the relationship apart at a maximum. The person who's a to feels inadequate often. I mean, it's not always right, but this is how this often goes person is a to feels inadequate because the person who's in eighth wants either more or
Different right? And the person is it was a to does it. Now that person feels bad and they me feel bad about themselves or resentful of the person with the higher sex drive the person on the higher level feels not resentful of the person of the lower level or maybe they feel like there's something wrong with them because their sex drives too high or they have an interest that that the other person doesn't have. And now they start labeling themselves like this happens all the time and it doesn't change most of the time and the problems are enormous, okay?
So, so let's see. How could that look? How would that look with really high generative drives and therefore, the ability to think about self to think about others and to think about the US of the situation, right? The two people together, right? So they be able to talk about it in ways that wouldn't be faulting of the other and would acknowledge what's inside of them. Like the person with the lower drive, it
So you know, just the things that doesn't strike me as more interesting. Don't think about it. What if they could talk about? All of that? The person who wishes more wishes different could talk about that to write and could talk about what they feel inside. If there's a frustration of that just like the person with the lower sex drive could talk about the how frustrating it feels to feel pressured, right? So what are they developing their mentalizing right there thinking about each other's emotional states and and they're coming at each other through agency and gratitude like I'm
Grateful for you. Remember City, where example is these people are partners and they're happy with their partnership. Like oh my God, I'm so grateful, I found you or they would each feel that way. I'm so grateful you're in my life like this happens to, right? And then from that lens, you know, the to isn't going to become an eighth, the eighth isn't going to become a to write, but in general, in situations like this, there can be somewhere in the middle, right? And let's say that you, you know, B says okay. You know what, I can get out of my comfort zone a little bit.
Why don't most people try that? Because they feel embarrassed. They feel self-conscious, you know, they don't want to try new things or try more, people get closed down because there's such shame around sexuality. Get you to take people on any spectrum of sexuality and you will find shame, you know, not in every person, but across whatever population, we're looking at, because it's so emotionally charged. So let's say in a loving caring relationship like that person feels the freedom inside. So you know what? Maybe I could enjoy sex, a little more, little more often, a little more.
That person thinks about like somebody who's a tattoo can then move that to a different place. So, you know, a little bit more or maybe even a lot more depending and then the person who's at the higher level, you know, the eight doesn't need another eight right in order to stay in the relationship. But, but something maybe more than a to, right? And then let's say they come into the middle and then the person who's in eighth realizes like, look, I love you. And you love me and you you out of your comfort zone, right? In order to do this and like and wow, and it's like more
Fun for both of us. So like, you know, it's okay, my higher sex drive, I'll deal with that, that maybe just making it up, like I would like to do it three times a week. We're doing it too. Okay, you know what? That's fine. Both sides can live with it but it is not fredbear. It's like, well, they can live with, it's like no number one, they can live with it. Number two, it's better. It's better, right? The to at one point was thinking, hey, anything more than a to is, so, I can't do that, right? Is shut down on the 8. Don't want anything less than a
Now they're in the middle and their relationship is closer. That's real that happens. What is it relying upon its relying upon the generative drive to have the openness ability to communicate? Maybe the person who's in eighth, say has a sexual proclivity, very embarrassed about that happens all the time too. But in the sense of acceptance of self and and the belief in the strength of the relationship and the acceptance of the other, you know, people can brooch things. Most people who feel like, oh, I could never brooch that. It's not something bizarre or dangers like
Like it's not something that in a relationship that's that's defined by the generative Drive. The other person is likely to reject. So let's define our relationships through the generative drive and let's cultivate in self and others the most generative drive. If somehow let's say person a and person B here because doesn't matter who's the eighth and who's the to has cultivated more of a generative Drive, they may be. That person could give more to the other before that person can give back to them.
No, we have these, I think is completely nonsensical ideas about mutuality, right? The idea that even in a situation that supposed to be defined by love, right ending. A friendship is a form of love, right? So friendship a collaborative Endeavor, right there like these they have, they have some affection in them, right friendship can have love and often does and let's say the love of romance that they're supposed to be some equality. Right? The idea that well if I'm going to give
If something I want you to give something to, it is not good. If one person is always doing the giving things are out of balance, but it is very healthy to be able to say, you know, if I can give something and you're not in a place to give something, let me just give something to you. People don't always or maybe don't often depend on how we want to look at it. Give to others with a sense of Freedom, like, and you don't owe me anything either. Right? Why? Because it comes from love, it comes from the abundance.
The excess of goodness in me coming through the the the agency that I feel the gratitude that I feel and then what's more likely you're much more likely the other person right to sort of feel like hey I can go a little more, you feel stronger? You feel empowered making someone feel worse or saying you know, I can give you something but you owe me something back, right? Even if that's tacit right, I'll give, you know, I can give you this now, but you kind of know that the other person can end up doing the laundry for two months or something like this. Not okay, why don't just give
Thing. Right, you're giving goodness. And then the other person actually gets the goodness and they're more likely to find it within themselves. Right. To 2, then come a little out of their comfort zone. Develop a move, their generative drive a little bit forward. So gifts, given to others, with no expectation of return are Gifts of abundance, their gifts that arise from the generative drive and they make us more generative. Think about the opposite, what often happens, each person makes the other feel guilty
Right, right. Oh, you just pressing 1 C1 so much and look, there you are again. Like, people feel terrible about that or, you know, there you don't want any sex or this or that the other person feels terrible like
That's why the to stays the 2 and the 8 stays the 8, right? But it doesn't have to be that way. And it's also not that if both end up in the middle, so you both are five that, that's some compromise position that implies less know. That's the compromise position. That makes more.
I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge our sponsor, eight sleep, eat sleep, make smart mattress, covers with cooling Heating and sleep, tracking capacity spoken many times before on this podcast and elsewhere about the fact that getting a quality night's sleep. On a regular basis is the foundation of Mental Health.
Physical health and performance when we're sleeping well everything goes better. When we are not sleeping well or enough everything. In terms of mental health, physical health and performance gets far worse, very quickly. One of the key things to getting a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, you need your core body temperature to drop by about 1 to 3 degrees. And in order to wake up, feeling refreshed, you need your core body temperature to increase by about one to three degrees, that all becomes very easy when using an eight Sleep mattress cover,
/ because it allows you to program the temperature of your sleeping environment at the beginning middle and towards the end of your night. When you wake up, I started sleeping on an eight sleep mattress. Cover over two years ago and it immediately and persistently improved, the quality and depth of my sleep. And as a consequence, I wake up feeling far. More refreshed I have enhanced mood focus and alertness throughout the day. If you'd like to try eight sleep, you can go to eight, sleep.com huberman to save up to $150 off their pot. 3 cover H sleep, currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK select,
He's in the EU and Australia. Again that's eight sleep.com hubermann based on my understanding of the generative Drive. The aggressive also we're calling it proactiveness drive in the pleasure drive and the importance of the generative Drive being greater than the aggressive or pleasure drives. I can also see the potential problem of having like 28 along the sexual desire scale or two nines or two.
Two tens. And actually have observed, a lot of examples of this. For instance, if there are, let's say two nines. They're both people 9 out of 10 on the, on the joy and sort of proclivity for sex, adventurous, sex, Etc, on the very high on the pleasure scale.
Perhaps even so much so that they don't pay attention to or one person doesn't pay attention to the critical need for points of compatibility to be met like the desire to someday have a family. I've known couples like this there together for a long time. They seem to really enjoy one another. I know nothing of their sex lives, but there just seems to be a very strong attachment around certain forms of pleasure that they both enjoy engaging in. So, this could be activities or travel, I mean here, we're saying you know, now,
I have ten on the sex scale, but in many of those cases, there's one person saying, you know, but I wanna have a family someday and they're just not into that or perhaps even like, but he won't leave his wife, right? You know, they're like involved in something that feels really good. They're matching along some sense, pleasure drive, but completely overlooking the larger goals of one or both people, right? And in it, you know, here I point you to an instance of infidelity that's its own
You know, issues with morals Etc, but you see this a lot like people really orienting towards what feels good and who feels good to be with. And that, of course, is healthy, but that's not the entire picture. So, would you say that what I'm describing is an example of where the pleasure drive has overcome the generative drive because in the case of somebody, wanting a family and the other person already having one and being unwilling to leave that one or the other person, not wanting a family.
That the the generative Drive of the person who, who wants a family is not being respected, it's or it's being undermined by this excess desire for pleasure like they're just drawn into the moment and the amazing weekends and there but this person is incredible in their charismatic and I can't tell you how many times I've had friends say that they are they admire the person they're with, but they know the relationship can't work because of all these other underlying issues, right? Right.
Right.
It's interesting. We both overestimate and underestimate. What say love can do, right people? So love can do anything. No, if I spill that glass loves not going to put the water back in it, right? If I must live in North America and my partner must live in South America, like, we're not going
to be okay,
right? So we say these things in a very Wishful. Way, love will overcome everything likes, doesn't overcome that, right?
Or maybe it does in the right circumstances. So, think about if the generative Drive is very, very high in both people. So both people have say, a strong need to live in a certain place, they can find a compromise position, maybe they live half the year in North America and half in South America. But why? Because in that situation, the love between them the, which is the generative Drive in the relationship, right? So what does that
Name. The first person has to have a strong generative Drive be healthy. Understand that even though I need to live in North America, it doesn't does it actually mean that they really need to live in North America, right? I have to be able to see Beyond Myself and what does that mean to the person? I love who needs to live on the other side of the world? If the other person can do that too, then in the relationship right, which is a new entity, right? It emerges from one person and the other, you can know everything about one person, everything about the other
You don't know about the two of them together, right? So, the two of them together are and us and if that us has a strong generative Drive, which it can, if each person has a strong generative Drive, they can bring to the state of emergence of the US, the generative drive. And that's the we're talking about a relationship. So say the love between them and they can find a way through. So the idea that like love cures all things, which is finding what does that actually mean, right? It doesn't mean we,
A lot of pleasure together, right? Or we like a lot of the same things like that's not what that means and people can very very much love, one another but not be aware of the limitations inside of them, right? Because maybe there are other things going on in that likes a childhood trauma. They loved one another but they can't get out of their comfort zone enough, right? So the point is, if we make it ourselves as healthy, as we can be and then two cells come together, that are making themselves as healthy as they can be, then the US
Between them really can fit that definition of love and do anything. But we have to Define that in the right way, in a way that honors the truth which again is not a higher degree of complexity, it's actually more
simple. So, you gave an example of a romantic relationship where one person has a strong sex drive in the other a week or drive. And then, we talked about an example where both people have a essentially high sex drive and where that could potentially be beneficial.
Assuming that the generative Drive is also high in both of them. And we also explored a little bit of how it can be bad for relationship. If it exceeds the generative Drive, what about the aggressive proactiveness Drive? How does that show up in romantic parents? You know, if one person has a high proactiveness, AKA aggressive drive, and the other person does not. What does that look like in? And do you see that often in your clinical
practice? Sure. If this,
Makes sense. Maybe we look at that example of the person who's a to and the person who's an eight on the, on the sex drive scale, right? You'd say. Okay, the person who's a to, who's trying to raise that right? Has a strong generative Drive of? What does that mean? The person thinks, you know what? I think I can do this. I can set myself about this. I see, it will make my relationship better. Like, I'm going to give it a try, that's the generative Drive In Action, the pleasure Drive, the person may look at that and say look maybe this can be more fun for me, right? Like, has it been that fun for me? If I have a low
Pleasure Drive could I start enjoying this more and then maybe that moves up, right? Or maybe have a higher pleasure drive, but it's not been gratified because I haven't been able to be open and honest. Like, let me see if I can make that better. Then what's active, what the person is doing, is then going to the aggressive, or assertive, proactive right to that drive and going to the potential in that drive and Mining some of what's in it. Like yeah, how am I going to do that? I'm going to bring myself to Bear, right? And
Like that's not an easy thing, it's not like that person. Then all of a sudden decides to be more sexual, right? There has to be a lot of communication between the two people. A lot of discussion of what setting might be best for that, what helps the person feel understood and feel more comfortable. Like there's a lot then to do there and the person may even need to go back to the pillars, right? Because the person may feel like, whoa,
I don't think I can do that right in. Anyways, that's not good. I want to do that, right. What is it that? I can't do. There's a realization there and then maybe the person who's an 8 because they're so well-connected gets it, okay? You can't do that. Like, let me support you write in whatever way. What while you're figuring that out because they're both generative, they want to figure that out. Now,
the sorry to interrupt. When you say, go back to the pillars, you mean go back to exploring the structure of themselves and their function of themselves. Yes. Is that they can?
For instance, get some insight into what sorts of defense mechanisms might be in place, right? What they're paying attention to or their behaviors. Like maybe even health-related behaviors, that could be impacting their sex drive, but but maybe even things that resided a deeper level, the unconscious mind, you know, talking to somebody till they make it a connection around shame or or or some story that they've integrated into their thinking at a subconscious
level, right? Right. Just an example that I see a lot.
Is avoidance. We're okay, not always but let's say the person with who's the to on the sex drive scale who finds like I can't do it, right? Why like, I just can't bring myself to do it, right? And then they go back and they explore this happens. If this happens a lot where there's avoidance, and then we get curious about the avoidance likely because the person's like, I just do something adjust, I don't want to do that, right? Okay, so there's a void as we identify avoidance, we also identify that it's not healthy because the person doesn't
Does actually want to do that, because it's good for the relationship and it could be good for them too. And then maybe we start looking at unconscious mind, right? Or conscious mind, right? And maybe we don't find because it's easy. Now, if I said, oh there was a major trauma that the person hasn't processed sometimes it's that but a lot of times it's not that, you know, maybe that person just never learned to feel comfortable with sexuality or maybe the way that they experienced or are attracted to sexuality was disparage.
Denigrated right is there or do they had some bad feeling about it because the society and the culture told them that or maybe they had a couple bad experiences where they were treated in a certain way and then it's like, okay, that person comes by that honestly, there's not a major trauma there. In fact, unfortunately, there's a trauma that's almost predictable from the way our society, you know, has been structured. So person can go look at them, like, right. I never I never learned how to do this, how to be comfortable with this.
Or, you know, I learned that I'm not good at it or I learned that no one will enjoy it with me, I'll put but that's not true. Like these are these are situations not in the side of a loving relationship right now. That person is able to bring that knowledge to Bear, whether it came from, the unconscious mind or the conscious mind. And then that's how you work to start shifting, things like that was, then this is now, right? It is not. Then when say the person say, in high school had a sexuality that others didn't approve of and made them feel
Will guess what? It's not then and like that's unfortunate. It's wrong, it's unjust. We're going to honor and validate all that. That is. But we're also going to look at the That Was Then This is now and you get to behave differently. Now you're an adult now and it does get to choose their relationships and you chose a good relationship, right? So so this is the kind of thing that can that can get that person to the point where they can go back up through. Now, what happens at the end of it, the geyser is stronger, there's more agency. There's more of a sense of gratitude.
Right? Why? Because the person can attach themselves more to. I'm so lucky to have this person as opposed to damn it. I wish that person didn't have a higher sex drive, right? So the person who's and they feel better about themselves instead of what's wrong with me that I don't have a higher sex drive, right? The or I said the wish you other person at a lower sex drive a wish they had a higher sex drive. That's not grateful, like I'm grateful. I am who I am and that I have any sex drive at all and I'm grateful for this other person. Now through through that, like that change, right? They can go back.
And better access the assertion the, the proactive Drive, the aggressive drive, whatever we want to call it because they've taken away. They've gone and worked through the barrier to it. Then they're able to be a little more out of their comfort zone and the other person meets them their right and and they start having this this this healthy thing between them where the US that is them, the love between them gets better, right? And then where do they find themselves? That's how they get to the 5, which is not a compromise between a
And two that satisfies neither. It is a compromise between 8 and 2, that is way better for both and for the
relationship.
I'm curious about common pairings That You observe in the clinical setting and not to focus on the bad. But if there are common pairings that rarely lead to a good outcome, I think it's worth us learning about those simply because they're common and they lead to a bad outcome and discussion of this sort could potentially help people avoid such pairings or at least.
And recognize that they're in such pairings. And I realize, of course, because of the way that we're framing things during the series that anytime we talk about a pairing, we're really talking about two maps coming together, forming a new and somewhat independent map that represents the relationship. I have to assume that many people in the world have maps that are very very healthy and they're probably even those rare individuals that
Need to go into those cupboards that reside within structure of self and function of self and do any work, but I'm sort of schmuck for those of you who are just listening not watching this. I'm sort of smiling as I'm saying that because I don't actually believe any such person exists. I think all of us, even the healthiest among us could be even healthier and express more generative drive and more positivity for ourselves and for the world. Well we to do that work. So it's a lifelong and
point to that. That's beautiful. We can do that forever as long as we're
here.
And should yeah, I do believe right which is yes one of the reasons for having this discussion exactly.
Nonetheless, I have to imagine that there are also a lot of people out there, perhaps most people who still have a lot of work to do, and those words a lot perhaps are in boldface capital. Underlined highlighted letters, right? And as a consequence, we see relationships in the world that are not healthy. What are some of those common unhealthy pairings? I think it's worth spending at least a little bit of time on
this. Yeah, yeah, sure. As we talked about this, I think that we should make.
Sort of somewhat simplified, but hopefully helpful distinction, right? So, there are people who are coming at coupling from primarily Health, right? And again, this isn't to criticize people who aren't coming at it from primarily Health. What we all want to get to where we're coming at anything and everything from primarily health and they're a lot of the problems. Are those simple things like? Wow I can't believe it didn't work out. I play the trumpet and he plays the clarinet. It's like no that wasn't a real set of factors. That's why it didn't work out. Like it's
More in that realm. It's not always just happened, like, that kind of stuff is a big factor right when we look in the other realm, where, where there's a significantly problematic mental health issues, right? Which which people come by, honestly, but need to face if life is going to get better, there are two common paradigms there. Now, again, there are way more than two ways. This can happen, but I'm going to highlight
You that we see a lot and maybe more than anything else in the clinical setting. So the first gets called repetition compulsion, right? But don't be very, very clear. I do not believe
that there is any such thing as a
repetition compulsion. A compulsion is something that one cannot control what's going on. Inside the person is very, very complicated when they're making decisions that lead to repeating a cycle and those are things that can change, right? And do not have to be compulsive.
And so people are often struck by why a person is in the same bad relationship, seemingly that they have always been in. But with a different name on the other person, right? I mean, people will say this like it's that person's fourth abusive relationship in a row and it seems to be just the same person with a different name like that. People say that a lot. They say that about themselves. They say that about others and it's very, very baffling. I mean, you people have often been in my office very upset about that like realizing they're
And they don't know and it's frightening and, you know, you can get a lot of fear and vulnerability from that. But there's a way of understanding it that because our limbic system, right? The emotional parts of our minds, don't care about the clock in the calendar, right? So trauma impacts we can packs the whole brain but trauma. Impacts the limbic system, it creates strong negative emotion that then stays with us regardless of time,
I'm it doesn't care about time. So imagine now a person gets in a relationship and the relationship starts to become abusive, right? I mean, it's easy to say that and then move on to something else. What's that? Like for that person? What does that feel like when that person who they may have seen as a protector of friend, right? It is now cursing at them, denigrating them, pushing them hitting them mean, it's terrifying. It's horrible, right.
So it is a deep impact, the traumatic impact on the person, and a lot of the time, most of the time, like all trauma, it triggers shame. I so, trauma triggers. Shame on us. If the drama is strong enough, it changes us as we move forward in the world, and then we are different in a way that makes the past very immediate in the present. So what the person that is trying to do and there's been a lots of thought about this over the years.
And the fields trying to understand this and I think in many ways doing a good job of understanding this that the quote unquote repetition compulsion is the drive and I don't mean drive like we're saying to there's a push inside the person to try and make that right, right. With the idea that if that person can be in that situation again, right? And I don't mean the exact situation when someone raises a hand to them but they can navigate a relationship because like they thought it was a good idea the first time so the
Want to feel like that was a very bad idea. So I'm going to make it right and then I'm going to be okay and I'm going to be whole right? Because the person is driven by fear and vulnerability in The Shame of the trauma, right? So then they're trying to make it right because because the limbic system doesn't care about the clock or the calendar. If you can make it right now you make it right in the past, right? Because that system doesn't care about the passage driven by trauma till in the person's trying to figure out something that is different, the trying to choose that person behave in the relationship. They're
trying to make things different, but they've selected for a dramatically High pretest, probability of the same thing happening again. Which is why, you know, if I could count the number of times that someone has said to me, oh, you're not going to help me, especially at the beginning of therapy. There's no way you can help me. Write my last five relationships were totally terrible. Like, there's no way, there's no hope. Right? People have said that to me, someone has last three. The last five,
Nine, and I will say back, if you tell me seven different stories of relationships with seven pretty different people, several different relationships as they evolved and the same really bad outcome. All agree with you.
But you're not going to tell me that. And that's why there's hope.
And no one has ever
told me seven different stories, right? Feel like, wow, you just can't do it right now. And again, even if there were seven, I'm saying saying for exaggeration, right? But there are, but there aren't right is, what is it? It's the same thing, seven times. That's what it is because the person is repeating, and if they can understand the, what and the, why why are they selecting, how are they selecting someone? What's going on? Inside of them? We go back to the
Picture of self, the function itself we address. What is there then that absolutely can change and then what will we talk about? Is that person then goes out to find another relationship even if they said they never never never would again. Like now they're making the decision to go out is to say what relationship are you looking for your second in the first 17 times? No harm. No foul. But you can navigate the second because
They're in a different place, they're coming through agency and gratitude instead of denigrating themselves if you're what's wrong with me, what's wrong with everybody else I'm here right even though it's some bad things have happened to me. Look at what I can bring myself to bear. I can go out there and try and find someone I can see with Clear Vision. Now there's agency there's gratitude and then that person can go out and find relationship. Number two, that's a really good
one.
In the example you gave it's very powerful and also very extreme, you know, an abusive relationship where someone is sadly getting hit or you know, screamed at you often times. It seems people end up in repeated unsuccessful pairings meaning unhappy, pairings of someone who's very strongly assertive. Maybe we would say happens a strong aggressive Drive. Some people might even call them a narcissist that phrase has thrown around a lot these days.
Narcissist gaslighting like projection these phrases are throwing around all the time. I think with frankly very little understanding or of what they actually mean unless they're coming from a qualified clinician is it the case that you know somewhat passive or submissive people are drawn to narcissists are narcissist drawn to submissive people. I think these questions ringing a lot of people's minds if I could
clarify something that I think
Guy, maybe could have said in a clear way you pointed out. That the example I gave was, it was a very strong winter extreme one, right? So as a physician, I think I naturally gravitate to the extreme circumstances because they're the ones that bring the greatest risk, right? But we're we are talking to people in those settings, right? But but most people are not in those extreme settings, right? But that extreme serves as a model for how things that are less extreme can happen. So when I think right we're sitting
here talking to everyone across the Spectrum and most relationships that are not going well, thank goodness are not going to be that extreme with repeated patterns aren't going to be that extreme but it's just as important to pay attention to a pattern where one person
Really is sort of more deferential than they would like to be to the other than is comfortable to them. And they're seeking someone ultimately, who's just a little bit more assertive and, you know, that's not some disaster but it cannot go. Well over time where that person slowly gives up say more and more of themselves and and there can be that repeated pattern you heard people say. Yeah. It was a pretty good pretty equal at the beginning but then, you know, I just had like less and less of a say or every you or, you know, then more and more like
I just became the whole relationship, right? So it's no less important when it's less dramatic, right? Because the relationships will goes into wrong way. When it's more dramatic, there's more risk, of course, but most people are going to be in the less dramatic, but but, but super important category and I think it's important to to point that at to point that out to
how much of what we're talking about is nested on people's deep perhaps understandable, desire to
Make sure that the other person doesn't leave. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've heard about or observed relationships that from the outside. It seemed really unhealthy, but it also occurred to me that people are doing things on both sides of the relationship. That ensure that the other person doesn't leave. So I'm not talking about a physical trapping of someone in the environment. I'm actually talking about the opposite. I'm talking about somebody going against their better judgment, right? And doing things for the other person or against
Selves or both, perhaps even in the context of what looks like, healthy family, like doing an excessive amount of raising children, or excessive amount of work to support the family. Simply to ensure that the other person doesn't
leave, right right here. Again, we can look across the Spectrum, right? So, before this, you talked about relationships, that can be very unhealthy, like a narcissistic person, and how can
those relationships develop?
It's important that we
We touch on that in the context of this because that's sort of the extreme example. So people who are narcissistic meaning a narcissistic character structure. Now, we're getting into the realm of significant psychiatric problems, and people who are narcissistic are exploitive right there, a bottomless pit of need arising from vulnerability and yes, they can be helped and if someone out there thinks I'm narcissistic, then not trying to be negative or mean, like, you can get help when you can be better. That's the whole point of what you and I are talking about here. So
People can change, but but someone who's coming at the world through a narcissistic character structure is exploitive of the other and then can say survey a room and find that person who's at trauma, such as that person is going to be desperate, not to leave a relationship. And then they can exploit that person and often behave in awful ways in the other person won't leave. Now I'm giving an example is not the case that K that way every every single time, but that's the dominant, that's the dominant picture if you have a narcissistic person and who is that person more likely to
Pair with and then you sense the vulnerability, the desire for the other person not to leave. So and that person would have to have been significant problems in themselves, like a potentially up instead of a pathological level of narcissism a pathological level of dependence, for example, so we're in the realm then of real problems. And again, real problems can be treated and real problems can be improved. And that's why we have clinical care, but it can also serve as a model for seeing the ways that
Our that are less dramatic.
So so there are many people who through the desire for the other person not to leave and we could call that attachment and security, right? And and maybe if we leave away The Stereotype version of it, right. The person doesn't feel securely attached to the other person, right? And, and somewhere inside of them, they've learned that if they're more pleasing, right? If they give up little parts of themselves, that person won't leave, write it.
Might be because that's why their mother didn't leave their father. When they think about it it might be that's why their father left their mother, because their mother wouldn't do that, right? Whatever it may be or maybe their own prior life experience or who knows something. They read but forgot. I mean, usually it's something more Salient. Not always. But they've internalized something that leads to a compromise of the self. Now again, all it, that's not what attachment insecurity is, Right. Attachment insecurity is just feeling some
About the attachment. So for example, I feel attachment insecurity about just about everything, right? I've had the experience of of sudden, very painful losses happening, right? So I have attachment in Security in the sense that I'm worried, right? I get edit anxious about people going away and and I can, you know, want to Over Control like I but I recognize this inside myself. I try and do my best to say, look, I don't want that to make me unhealthy, I want to recognize it. I
Want to find some happy medium where I honor that in me, but don't get carried away with it to the point where I try and over control and then I push my relationships away, right? So I say that because there's such a contrast between that kind of attachment insecurity which can involve Over Control, right? And the kind of attachment and security that can involve compromise of the self. So we want to be very, very careful. Like we want to be careful. Like what is a trauma Bond than what does it mean? We want to be careful. What is attachment insecurity and what does it mean a certain
Kind of attachment and security can lead a person to make Progressive compromises of self that are not good and healthy for them.
I'm curious about some of these unhealthy relationships from the other side, meaning from the side of the person who is, let's hope not. But in some cases exploited or who's being taken advantage of, or in this scenario of a narcissistic person or an abusive person, is the one who's taking the abuse,
Often it seems the victim in that scenario will be truly stuck in that situation. They can't leave for financial reasons or kids or their own internal workings. Their psychological Machinery. Has them locked into that in some way and it's that Locked In by psychological Machinery. That I'm interested in and I think a lot of people are interested in because from the outside, we just look at that and say you know, why doesn't the person leave? Why don't they just leave? But clearly there's
About that situation that quote unquote works for them and my works for them. I don't mean that it's adaptive clearly, it's maladaptive but that works for them. The possibility I raised earlier perhaps is relevant here. Maybe it works for them because they know that the narcissist get some sort of internal reward for engaging this kind of dynamic and therefore won't leave. And the other person not leaving is of more value to them than
feeling safe even.
Right?
So, it's a trading, one form of safety for another or perhaps the, the victim, as we're calling them in this scenario. Is somebody who, you know, feels a great sense of reward by serving somebody more powerful than them. This raises all sorts of interesting questions. Perhaps about power dynamics as well, which I certainly have questions about. But what are some examples of the internal workings of such a person that reside within those bins of structure of cell for function of self that?
Put someone into that sort of situation and lead them to stay in that kind of situation.
Yeah. Well any situation like that, if it's as you say working for a person which at times, you know, we see that from the outside because like things continue to go along if things continue to go forward. But it that only works for someone if they don't have the understanding the empowerment that we would wish for anyone and everyone to have. So what is
Going on inside leads, that person to feel a sense of inability to change. You know, whether they can't see their way out of it or they kind of could, but could never navigate to it. And there's, there's a problem there if that's working for someone, right? Because we're talking about something that's a exploitive, right? That's abusive, regardless of how its abusive and I think I believe that can only happen in the context of being demoralized.
Eight or the circumstances of being so disempowered, writing. If someone just can't go 10 feet from home, like their situations of outrageous amounts of Oppression, right? Of a person where where the person just cannot choose differently and their situations where we, as stewards of all of us where the government May intervene, for example, ideally, right. As someone would come in and help that person but barring, that kind of outlier, a person would only be in that situation in the context of being.
Being demoralized and that demoralization would come from too low a drive for assertion being proactive aggression, right? That that drive, its realization is too low and if we give people the understanding and we give them the help, the means they don't have to stay in abusive situations. Like we see this in situations where our society will intervene or someone helpful intervene.
Person or entity will intervene and help a person and help that person to understand.
What's going on inside of them, that leads them to feel that things can't be better. They can't do better, or they're not worth better or whatever that may be and help them to find the empowerment to then navigate themselves out of the situation. And and here again, I think it's not just agency but it's agency plus gratitude, right? Including gratitude, for having a self that could leave a situation when people are in situations like that.
No, we talked about people as beaten down, you know, it's a way to kind of capture like what I think that feels like and how much suffering there is in those situations to to be in that place and to not have the agency to get out of it. Then the person is not feeling a sense of gratitude for self, right? They feel so bad about self that. There's nothing to be grateful for, right? And there is so much to be grateful for writing. We could go through any person in a situation like that and we could list.
Teufel things about that person, adaptive things about that person. Kind things about that person, diligent things, there are things like that in every person, but if, the person can't see that they can attach to that, they can't have the agency and gratitude, then they stay in a situation that is really defined by the agency and gratitude and therefore that aggressive assertion proactive Drive being expressed at such a low level,
I can
See how a healthy relationship could exist in relative isolation. Not complete isolation, you know, and here again, I'm referring to her thinking about a romantic relationship. You can see how it a healthy romantic relationship could exist in relative isolation, you know, a few friends, some contact with family members or in great connectivity, with friends and family and neighbors, Etc, and still be a really great romantic relationship. Sure.
Also see how the sorts of relationships that we happen to be focusing on at this moment, which are this unhealthy Dynamics are made far worse by lack of connectivity to Outsiders. In fact, previous guests on this podcast was David boss who is a professor of evolutionary, psychology down the University of Texas, Austin. And he talked about some of his research into the dark Triad. These are narcissistic Machiavellian. Sometimes also sociopathic individuals and how that plays out in romantic relationships and it's a terrible.
Thing. But in an important thing to understand, given the unfortunate frequency that that occurs. But one of the things that I remember, so clearly from that discussion with David Buss, was that even when there isn't sociopathy or a strong desire to destroy the other that in these sorts of relationships, there's often an attempt to isolate the person, you know, first by isolating them from their family, also from friends and co-workers, but all with the goal of
Wincing that person that no one else would want them as a way to make them. Quote-unquote voluntarily. Stay in other words to undermine their their sense of safety to ramp up their sense of anxiety, except in the presence of that individual. And you know, I'm remembering that now because, you know, as we're talking about, why wouldn't somebody just leave? Why wouldn't they just tap into that agency in gratitude? It's clear that the the oppressor in this kind of relationship has a real interest.
Incentive to try to undermine agency and gratitude because of course with those, they would be revealed for what they are and the person would feel in able to leave taking us back once again to the critical need to cultivate agency and gratitude not just in unhealthy but certainly in healthy
relationships, right? And I think the, the principle here is that Darkness, always favors the oppressor so the oppressor wishes for Darkness. So you want to isolate
That person, right? Because when people see that things are better for someone else, they realize things can be better, right? When people are told by someone that they're worthwhile, or they're funny or they're pretty, you either smart or whatever. The case may be, they may take that inside, right? You know, they may take inside. Oh, maybe I am. No, I'm handsome and smart, maybe your they start thinking about that, they're very basic concepts that at that allow a person to entertain new ways to
look at themselves, right? So the person who's oppressing wants that person to live in darkness. They don't want them to see that there can be better, they don't want them to be directly told that they're better than how things are. And that same Darkness on the outside, say the lights are out around. The relationship is the goal of the oppressor on the inside. Again, the pressure may know this and be doing it consciously but often this gets played out an unconscious ways like the constant denigration of
One in person isn't saying inside gosh, I'm trying to reduce their agency either aggressive Drive really down to zero, right. But that's what they're doing somewhere inside. There's a knowing of that even if it's an unconscious knowing and then what the impact of that kind of abuse over time is a lower, and lower and lower ability to bring oneself to Bear less. Proactive aggressive assertive lower sense of agency and gratitude. Hey, that's really the definition.
Mission of being demoralized, right? And and that kind of abuse is always promoting demoralization because demoralization is the darkness on the inside, right? Just as Envy is to write. Demoralization is a form of Darkness on the inside. Envy is no less dark Envy. May be a lot more active, right? But in both cases, there's no knowledge. There's no growth. There's no wisdom, there's no learning, right? So there the states of darkness and, and what
Happen in a way that's really. So tragic to think about, as you often can have an abuser and oppressor, who is living in total darkness inside a living through the lens of envy and then you can have a person who is being oppressed who is being exploited, who is living in darkness, but they're living in the darkness of demoralization. And no, that's a very sad thing to say to imagine. And it's been a very, very sad thing to see.
See, right. Because if you do clinical Psychiatry view for long enough, you see a lot of this and it doesn't have to be this way. Now the even the people who were oppressing have it within them the majority of time to make things better. And we do see that I took care of a man, a long time ago who had been terribly abusive to his family and is was always unclear to me. It happened years before that that like, he just understood. And again, I never understood like what.
That that he got it and the man really made change. Like a god, I don't know what the circumstance was that made that motivation him, but he went back and looked at himself and he went back and looked at how his father oppressed and terrorized the family and how he just did it with automatically, right? Because what it was rooted in his own fear of vulnerability, and he's going to lose his family and not be a man anymore, unless he oppresses them, like she recognized all of it in him and he had changed it. So dramatically here,
removed himself from the family system. And when I got to know him, it was years later and he was reintegrating back in to the system because there had been such prolonged change and he had communicated to the family, his understanding of self. So so it's not impossible. Even someone who is abusing a pressing coming through a narcissistic character structure. There's no therapeutic nihilism here, right? Things can change and things can change in the oppressor which isn't excuse.
That right? That mean a person who's doing things is morally culpable. They often a criminally legally culpable. So, that is all true, just as the ability to change is true and then the person we think about more commonly in the situation, of course, is the person who's being oppressed and there can be changed there too. But a problem is how hard it can be that the impact of the isolation, right? And also the dearth of resources to really help people, it's an act
Actual true story of a woman who I believe with, all my heart could get out of the cyclic, abusive situation, she was in if she had a carburetor, it's a carburetor, right? Should car, the car didn't function. She had a place to go right that there are others wouldn't know that that she was there and the problem was just a few hundred dollars to change the carburetor, but it's like, there's no place to go. There's no resources a, we, as a society, don't help people in that maybe.
That someone help that woman and got her a carburetor and she drove away, right? That. It shows how we can bring ourselves to bear as a society to offer People Help, which sometimes is like the lifeline the person needs and you know maybe that person you know really needs a safe house or something very dramatic or they need a carburetor to get away from being terrorized but a lot of times it's just Community Support structures, right? Good structures around people in communities communities that can offer
Them support and situations, that may be less dramatic opportunities for interconnection, which sometimes people can find through social venues or through religiously Affiliated venues. But the idea that Community Support Systems on all levels, make a huge difference. That's how there's another level, right beyond the relationship, right? It's the society, it's the culture, right? And that's how we on that next level of emergence beyond the individual relationships. Can foster goodness can foster Health in each
Every one of us.
How does some of these same Dynamics play out in non-romantic relationships? So, for instance, in the workplace I was weaned in academic Laboratories. So what's most familiar to me? Our gosh, unfortunately numerous examples where people working in Laboratories, not the same as mine because I've been very fortunate to have amazing benevolent, mentors, quirky and outrageous at times, but benevolent nonetheless, but others around me. Have been in Laboratories where
And since the, the workload was just ridiculously high, like the demand far exceeded, what any person could do. And if somebody had God forbid, a cold or children, like it was near impossible to Impossible that they could meet the standard there or stress Dynamics, you know, a pressure cooker, dynamics, that made it. What anyone would call a toxic environment, you see this also in law firms, you see it in companies, you see it in families, you
you see it in Friendship circles, right? I mean, how many movies are about teens pressing one another through bullying and ridicule and and practical jokes that are anything but funny, right, that are downright destructive, okay? And on and on and so often the victims in these cases, if it's not a Hollywood movie feel, as if that's their only choice because to leave is to essentially have no other options.
Right. It's not that. That's the only option is to stay. It's that to leave is essentially to leave science because these people in positions of power have the louder voice, they have the megaphone, they write the letters of recommendation, the law firms people talk in. As I, you know, kind of spool this out in a long-form question. I'm realizing I can't think of a single exception. Like, as long as there are going to be people interacting and people talking about their interactions and people in positions of power.
This sort of dynamic is going to take
place, all right? Absolutely. Anytime you have a closed system without accountability. You just rolling the dice for that kind of Oppression. We need accountability. Think about, theoretically, what should have happened there right? There should be higher order accountability, right? Whether it's in a company or University or wherever it may be, there should be higher order accountability, that is reasonable and rational. So it's not then acting in a top-down way that
Be over controlling. Are you telling you exactly what you kind of can't say, or what you can and can't do and it sounds it's just there's too much rigidity. That can be enacted a top-down but the problem runs both ways. If there's no accountability from the bottom up then that person is just simply stuck, right? Why? Because the system we've put into place has failed, right? And this is where we're talking now, about not just individual relationship with two people relationships, but now we start talking about systems of
People and systems of people are another level of emergence with, with a personality. So, to speak an environment, all their own, you can know everything there is to know about each person in the system. You don't know about the system, but what you do know is that accountability is necessary. I mean probably if we added up all the examples in history, you know, we'd have to talk about them over a thousand years, right? I mean, how many examples do we have that closed systems without accountability? Are just rolling. The dice they breed.
Oppression. This is this is true and I've been at several different places so I'm not try to implicate his, any one place versus another but I was part of a medical treatment team. So this is a hierarchical medical treatment team of every seven people give or take one wedding upon the circumstances where there was physical abuse going on in the treatment team.
This is true and I'm not, I'm not saying this in some exaggerated manner where somebody brushed up to close to someone and they slipped no hurting someone on the treatment team right to different people who are being hurt by someone senior. So so this is use it as a major university in a clinical setting right? And it's not again that's not that it's not like that's the be all and end all. But you think about the alleged the sophistication of the people in the system, the alleged empowerment of the people in the situation.
In which did not put a stop to that. So we need to have accountability. The accountability has to be reasonable. It doesn't mean over control, but it doesn't mean under control either. And if that person is being overworked, as you described with no way of winning or harmed on a, you know, on a medical team, and there's no way that that person can change that the system has failed that person and fill them dramatically. And guess, who suffers everyone does, right?
Right, that person suffers right and the science that's being done or the medical care. That's being provided is important to all of us. Anyone could be the patient, who is being taken care of, by the team, where one person is hurting a couple of the others. You think that Medical Care is going to be optimized, right? Is the science going to be optimized that we're utilizing to try and make our lives better live longer, be in less pain. And what's happening? There is envy that person who's oppressing other people
Is driven by Envy, whether it's a narcissistic
character structure, that acts
almost exclusively through Envy or its envy. That is in this person's life in this way or not another way, is it matter, right? What's going on? There is envy and envy is nothing but destructive, very the generative Drive is nothing but productive. Envy is nothing but destructive, could
you remind for people that perhaps may not have heard episodes 1 & 2? Yet that Envy is
Perhaps not just a desire to be like somebody else that Envy in the context that we're discussing here is something quite possibly
different and there's a varying lexicon which is why it is important to Define it because I think people learn it in different ways. I've heard it talked about in different ways. So so to Define that there's a difference between jealousy and envy. And again we could choose different words, but this is the way I learned it. That's been most impactful where jealousy is benign, right? It's the idea that if I see that,
You have something that I don't then, I think, oh, well, maybe I could work harder and get that thing, right? Or if I can't have that thing, like, maybe it's a person is younger, right? Okay. I can't make myself younger and I think, okay, you know, through a lens of gratitude was, is that the only thing about me, right? I can't think of anything good about myself, right? Other than maybe I could be younger. I mean, if, if you come at that through the lens of Health, it's like, it's okay, right? It can serve to motivate people to like, try harder, work harder. Take a look at themselves and be
More accepting of who they are and what their circumstances in life and what kind of control they can enact in what kind they can't. It's okay. Right. Envy is different. I envy comes at that problem from the perspective that bringing down the other person, right? Is just as effective as bringing up the self, that's why Envy is destructive.
Someone who might see another person and they Envy them. Their youth, they Envy. They want that and they want to bring that person down, right? Because I can't make myself younger. But then they realize I can't make that person older either but they can do other things to them, right? They can sexually harass them. Maybe they can make terrible jokes that are really insulting in humiliating, maybe right there are all sorts of things that person.
Can do to bring down someone else. If he an action of Envy is destructive and and I truly believe this at people who come at the world very strongly through envied by and large and narcissistic character structure, this is a small percentage of the population, but that small percentage does most of the damage on Earth. It's a strong thing to say. But when I think about, you know, studying political science and thinking about,
History and learning medicine, and learning about Psychiatry and sociology. And really trying to look at the world and and thinking, what, what drives a person on a medical team, who's gotten to be a senior physician to physically hurt doctors, lower on the hierarchy, Envy? Right, that person feels terrible about themselves and then is being destructive to those people. Same thing. That's the same thing is that work in the lab? The same thing as at work when people start wars of Destruction that just simply
From other people. And we can see no other sense of it that from the individual setting all the way up to the world setting. We see the destruction of envy, and we also see it inside of us, because a person who's in acting Envy in the world around them is never had. There's no chance of happiness, that hence, the idea of a bottomless pit, right? Whatever you get, let's say, an envious person who wants more money. I want to have more money than anybody, right? I want everyone to have less money than me, right? So then,
They come at the world through the lens of greed, when they get more money, how long does that make them happy right? This isn't mean, money is bad, or having money is bad. It just means if you're coming at the world through the lens of Envy, right? In that lens is specifically focused on money, then you'll be a greedy person who is Never Satisfied even if you have 10 trillion dollars so it's never good. It takes away from that person, any possibility of happiness and if you see people work with people with their narcissistic,
Structure. There can be a sense of a very brief happiness in the moment. Like, I'm happy because I realize I have something someone else doesn't, I'm happy because I'm thinking of myself and even though I feel very insecure and vulnerable inside, I have a whole set of defense mechanisms that let me turn those tables around. And and then feel good about myself in a way that places Me Above others, whatever is going on in that person, it may bring some very brief gratification in the moment, but that's not happiness. Hence the need for the gratification
And over and over and over again. Narcissistic people are the least secure most diffident people on Earth. They just have a phenomenally healthy defensive structure that comes about in order to try and protect them. That leads them to go to the opposite. Some of what's called a reaction formation going to the very opposite, denial avoidance rationalization projection, very unhealthy defenses, that then leads to that person to protect themselves from any
Any help while they are frantically trying to gain some goodness. That makes them feel good for a split second and then disappears forever. Hence, the tremendous predilection for Destruction.
How do you, and how should we think about power, dynamics and relationships and perhaps, starting with romantic relationships? I've heard it said before that, there's always power dynamics in relationships of all kinds. I don't know if that's true or not, but I've heard that and I've also heard that that's
Particularly Salient in romantic relationships independent of whether or not. It's a homosexual or heterosexual relationship that there's always to some extent or another one leader, and one follower. This is a interesting, perhaps a controversial idea but I've heard it enough times that I want to know more about
it. Sure. So power dynamics, of course, very important but also something we tend to be so over reductionist about - idea think that there's always a lie
Sure. And there's always a follower, every single relationship. Right? That's true. On balance like we tend to be so reductionist. And then what we do is we miss the real power dynamics that are going on. Just like I said in a previous episode that I think my math minor has helped me the most for like all of life, right. I think a power dynamics course that I took as an undergraduate in political science has helped me the most as a psychiatrist took it long before medical school because that class taught me.
So much about power dynamics. I thought it was going to be about overpower who has power over whom and tells whom to do what, right? But what I learned is so much of power dynamics Arc over there under the surface. For example, the things that are not said something that was called at the time. At least the issue of the non-issue, right, where there's an issue between two, people like this person never takes out the garbage. That person always takes out the garbage. That person is resentful about it, both of them. No, but the person who always does it,
Can't say so because if they say so the first person will punish them in some other way. Right by not taking out the garbage. Then the place smells that person goes to work in the person who's at home has to take it out, right. That's one. Example of the issue of the non-issue other examples are where someone is looking and smiling and being really nice to someone who they know is going to physically harm them, if they bring to light, that they're actually not happy and don't feel good about that person, right? So from the dramatic to the non-dramatic.
Unstated power dynamics are going on all over the place and they're in every single relationship. I mean, less a person is in a relationship with someone else in there, both comatose and I guess only one of them has to be comatose. Right there. Power dynamics going on. But again, it does it mean that they're unhealthy, right? Because there are always power dynamics. So then what are we looking for? And again, there are a lot of things we could look for. But we could talk about really two primary things. One is look for the
Non-obvious and to is the give and take. So the first Even in our own relationships because it's interesting, how many people will say talk about the power dynamics in their relationship. They're not always saying you're the power dynamics in my relationship, but they're telling me about them and they're telling me about the things that are overt right now. Somewhere inside of them, they know that, you know, they can't really raise issue a b or c or will be some retribution. Whether it's small or large or they might even know,
Everything's okay and that person is happy but they know I'm not giving them room to say that they're not happy and that could just mean, you know, if they say they're not happy, then I'll come home, a couple hours late, the next day and that person will feel some attachment and security because of that. And, you know, there are all sorts of ways this can play out. But since so much of power dynamics
are are
unstated or covert, kind of like the iceberg of conscious and unconscious. There's an iceberg of power dynamics. So to think about including in one's own relationships, whether it's a
A neighbor, it's a friend, it's a work relationship or most charged. It's romance. What's really going on between us, right? What's really going on between us? I'm not looking to tell myself lies, right? I know that I may not be able to understand all of it but let me stop and think about it. And people if he asked people to stop and do that, they can say,
Yeah, this is really not okay or you know because sometimes they don't know that it's there or they don't want to know that it's there and and the therapy work is trying to guide them to there's an immense power disparity, maybe in the relationship when they're presenting, know everything is equal to a goose, a good supportive relationship, your that a lot. And, of course, it's not always at, there's something bad into the surface, but a lot of times there is and even something mildly, bad is not okay, and who calls problems? And sometimes there's something very bad. So, look for the non-obvious.
And then the second is that give and take is a very good sign of health is a very good sign of L. So if a person can kind of see that there is give and take and it might be about something as simple as like who chooses where we go to dinner. Okay, you know, sometimes one sometimes the other depends who has a stronger feeling or it may be that person always decides where we go to dinner, but the other person's okay with it. Right? And that person always decides what movie they want the other person, right? So the idea that there's given take and and then in periods of time,
Where one person may be in a more difficult Place, one person has a significant loss right or an injury or an illness, then you see that that shifts a little bit, one person is giving more, right. But then ultimately, the idea is that's from the outside, right? If one person is giving more to the other, there's a generosity of spirit in both the giving and the accepting right that leads them to then be stronger together. So even when people say, Well, they're imbalances in some way, if you just look at what's going on day-to-day, but
In a healthy relationship with high generative Drive the periods of imbalance. Strengthen the relationship where you see this with friends, where two people are pretty equal friendship and and then like one person is something difficult happens. I'm the other person is there for them. What's true on the other side of that? They're better friends right and it's also why we often want to be interconnected when we're healthy what if something bad happens to both of them, right? It's good to be interconnected and friends and family can be supportive to us. So so the idea that give and take
Healthy, I think is very Central. So just looking for evidence that's often if I don't understand like what's going on in the relationship? Maybe it's early in the therapy or it's just been kind of opaque or I can't figure it out. I'm looking for, is there a give and take, because I'm going to think, okay, more likely than not, things are healthy. If I see an imbalance, whether the person knows it or not, I'm thinking more likely than not. It's unhealthy. And then they're just Clues along the pathway of my efforts to understand
the non-obvious.
This piece is really intriguing as is the give-and-take, and I really appreciate that. You brought up the give and take because that's it a very concrete place that we can all look and ask ourselves, you know, even if people aren't romantic relationships, like, you know, what is the give and take in a given friendship? And, as you mentioned earlier, it doesn't have to be scripted 1411 for one, maybe a balances out over time or maybe it doesn't. I mean, I've had friendships that have lasted many decades even where
I can honestly say, I'm always the person to reach out to the other person, but when they connect, they connect with such a depth of attention that I don't feel any deprivation whatsoever. In fact, I don't think I've ever considered that. I'm the person that always reaches out until today and so it doesn't bother me whatsoever. I feel the infinitely rewarded in the relationship. Like it's generative, right? Feels generative,
right? It doesn't have to be equal. However, one wants to Define equal, but it has to be mutual like, you're getting, you know, you're feeling good.
From the relationship. So is the other person, okay, that's good at that's coming from that high generative place. And when we really, let's say, we push that concept forward to where we want to be living, not some
pie-in-the-sky, right? But agency and gratitude as verbs, the generative
Drive is very strongly expressed and the other drives are sub serving the generative drive, then we get to the place where we really see. It is true that it is better to give than to receive the
People, I see are the people who are giving. Now, of course, it feels great to receive but it feels better to give because there's a goodness in the self in the giving and I remember seeing this as a child and being too young to understand it, but I was a little kid, I liked getting things right and as a little kid I like getting things more than I like to giving. Like, that's okay when you're a little kid but what I did observe is that my maternal grandmother who is very sweet, and loving, and and caring. She loved giving
Right? You give her presents and we did and she liked, she really like getting presents. She loved giving right there was an excess of goodness and then as I got older and I learned more, like, who she had been in the community and how she had been to people and and I could see and now through the lens that there was such goodness in her, I think she's, you know, for me she's The Shining model of goodness that I internalized as I aspire to be better. So then I think I want to be like that, I am more generative is I try and think more about
Even receiving its, I'm not trying to say I'm some Noble person or I'm being ascetic. I'm think that's a good way for us all to feel right or someone a very, very successful person that I consult with is in my life, who's, who talked about how he always makes inside of himself, the best understanding of what's going on between him and another person, whether it's a very big Financial dire, it's about power or it's personal and then gives a little bit always where we
Get up. Let me give a little bit, right. And there's a person who's very, very successful, very very happy, right? But I would argue the goodness in him is why he's successful and happy. It's not that he's successful and therefore, he's happy, right? It's what's inside of him that Fosters both of those good things and he could be just as happy without the big success, maybe wouldn't maybe, he wasn't minded to do that and he grows a nice Garden like he could be equally happy but the point is the goodness in self.
To, to be able to do that right to feel good about doing that. I feel better about giving that than I would have receiving that. That's pretty Stark, write something given to the other that I would have gotten right now, and we're in maybe a negotiation to give it feels better than to have
it. I'm sure there are many people thinking about individuals who are highly successful, who are not givers, who are takers, I do think those examples of takers. As I'm calling them, grab a lot of
Attention, but I know at least within science and the other domains of life I've been in that. There are far more successful people who are also givers even to a great extent and of course, that doesn't mean that they're giving to the point of an inability to give further or to take care of themselves. The giving is part of taking care of themselves, but it's part of this generative cycle. It's not one thing. It's not a Tit for Tat. It's part of something that makes
Makes them feel good makes others feel good. It sort of anti transactional and as we're talking about the self and interrelations between selves in these different relationship context today. This word transactional keeps coming to mind. And what I'm so aware of as you're describing what healthy selves and healthy relationships, look like is that it runs counter to pretty much everything that I've heard in that we here in the world about
In about the relationship to self. Meaning, it's not transactional, it's really about a cycle and we're using this word generative over and over and in its specific context today. So I don't want to rob that word for for a different purpose but I'm imagining a sort of upward spiral in my mind or perhaps something is that's really like the circle of life that just keeps growing bigger and bigger and bigger. Maybe we could talk a little bit about this notion of relationships being
Anzac tional. I mean such a loaded word but I have a close friend who's married with more than a few children who, you know, told me the other day. You know, I realized that it's all kind of transactional. Like, they're extracting for me, and I'm extracting from them and it's benevolent because it's all good. And, and I thought, wow, this is really, this is really Dreadful, you know, like no one wants to think that the closest relationships in their lives are transactional, and he was coming to that conclusion.
I disagreed with them and I don't know where that all sets for him right now, but maybe we could talk about the, the transactional versus non-transactional aspects of relationship, because we all want things that's perfectly healthy. I believe we all experienced disappointment and pleasure and relief and sometimes major disappointment pleasure relief, etcetera. But what is the role of transaction in relationships and, you know, how does Psychiatry how do you and how should we think
about that?
We often get confused because there are transactions in every relationship but that does not mean that every relationship is transactional. So if we think about what transactions are, we can think of the kind of the stereotypical way. So it can also be like, here's the transaction. I'll do the dishes and you wash the
clothes, right? Or for instance, I'll make the money and the other person will raise the children, right,
right. So there are transactions, right?
But that does not mean that the be-all and end-all of it are sort of hard-hearted calculated transactions and transactions also occur in less obvious, but equally important ways, right? So another way that transactions occur is, so right now I'm putting something out there. Rex I'm saying something, right? And then at a point I stopped and I'm waiting for you to put something out there and then I take in what you said. And we're doing something that in that sense is transactional. I'm waiting for you to give me something I take
Take it in. I process it, I give something back out to you, but that's not the be-all and end-all of it. So, there are transactions, whether it's the you know who's going to wash your dishes, who's going to do the clothes or it's, what do I put out there that you take in and what do you put out there that I take in that there is something greater than something beyond the transactional? And there is some controversy to this. A thought that that there really are a historical thought in the field that there are just
Aggressive and pleasure drives in us and that everything is transactional. Now again, we don't really have a way of disproving that. I mean, it's not going to be some equation that disproves that, but I think it's entirely disproven by human experience. And there's so many and I could, we could, we could talk about an infant number of resources to consider this. But just imagine the writings of Viktor Frankl and the, and the writings, and the theories around human.
Actions. And and psychological theories that have come of it to think that everything is just transactional. It's a denial of the humanness in all of us that I think he just brought to the fore so strongly but again there could be nearly infinite infinite resources throughout human history that say hey we're not entirely transactional, it's not just aggression and pleasure but there's something more going on here. There's learning that feels good for the sake of learning. There's kindness that feels good for the
Take of kindness. There is giving that feels good because giving feels good, like this is going on in us. It's going on when we're like, loving children for example, or loving animals, there's something inside of us, that's not just transactional. And that's why like, I think what we're talking about is is if it's true that should all hang together, right? It must all hang together and this is why there's an us right over top of each individual, that's in a relationship.
Right. This is why you can know everything about me, you can know everything about you and you can know nothing about our friendship, right? Absolutely nothing. Right because it's something different, right? And if it were all just transactional there would be nothing different, right? And I think our experience as human beings, right? I know that to be true because I just know that I don't always feel selfish about things that right? Like maybe sometimes I do and I do something nice because it'll make me look good. Like okay we're all human, right? But I know that.
There's good feeling from others, towards me at times. It's just about the good feeling. I know that there's that from me towards others, so, that tells us. Yes, there is something other than just the eye. There is the, we of dyads, right? Of relationships, and no matter, whether their work family, friendship relationship. And then there are the levels beyond that that are larger wheeze, right? The we of groups
So if I understand correctly, it can be the case that one person makes the majority or all of the income for a family. The other person raised to the children takes care of the majority of the home. And of course, there is a transaction there, a set of transactions, but that it's in service to something larger that really isn't transactional. I'm just stealing your words here, but if I were to expand on that just to make sure I understand that the non-transactional thing that emerges,
From that is generative because it's a family, right? It's a family that everyone can extract growth and pleasure and meaning from, and just because the roles are divided as such, it doesn't necessarily mean that the relationship is defined as transactional in, in the sense that it's less than it could be
right, right? Right. If you think about what's really being transacted, so say one person is out in the world and is making an income. The other person is a taking care of the
Emily and taking care of the home. What's being transacted? Well, the person who's making the money is sharing the money, right? Is in that sense, transacting some of the money to the other person. Like, you get to have some of it to, you could have some of the benefit from it. And the person who is at home, who's taking care of the family, in the home saying, you get to have some of that too, right? You get to come. You're the children are taken care of, right? The home is taken care of. So, both are transacting something to the other, right? I mean, that's the truth of it, right? If you look at what's really going on there, when
And getting benefit of money, they didn't earn the other person's getting benefits. Have childcare, they didn't do or pay for, right? Sup paying for childcare, they're sharing resources, right? So yes, that's true. But is that it? I mean, are these two robots, right? One is the money making robot and the other is the childcare robot like that's not, what's going on, right? The way we want to Envision that if we have two healthy people with generative drives is they love one another, they're creating something better than they could create on their own.
In fact, they've created children, right? They've created a home together and they're nurturing that family together, that is generative, and because it's generative, it can also be flexible. So, let's say the person who's at home that I need to do some things outside of the house, right? Or let's say the person who's out working. Thanks so much. I feel overwhelmed, and I like to switch to a better job at that jobs halftime, but I want to be, I could be half in the house, right? Like, this is where people can come together, right? In the same way. We talked about the two and an eighth.
On the sex drive or sexuality scale where people then can find compromises, right? And if one really wants to stay out of the home all the time, but the person in the home wants to leave the home, well they find a way that that works, right? Because they're care for one another. That the generative spirit that is in them individually and as a couple let's them nurture that and one isn't interested in oppressing. The other I'm not going to leave my job. You stay at home or I'm staying at home. You stay out there. It's like okay let's think about things. Let's communicate right.
Is how the generative drive? Not only like makes that awesome right. Like, the five isn't the compromise position between the 8th and the 225 is awesome. Right here, the transaction will aspects are awesome because of the generative aspects of what comes of it, far more than either of those people could make on their own mean, one would say, it's not too obvious, maybe if one makes x amount of dollars, each could make half X. That's not what we're talking about. Neither of them can create that family on their
own.
It seems that so much of what we're talking about relies on, you know, the Hallmarks the that we always hear our makeup, good relationships of all kinds romantic and otherwise, like things, like, communication, listening generosity, okay. All the stuff that we all know that we should bring to relationship and hopefully are getting from relationships and that if we're not that we should probably request from others. In the, you know, polite
ways, can I say connect?
As I have one word for that kindergarten, right? Think about that. We learned that in kindergarten. What you're describing is so simple, right? That's why it's so high up on the this what the geyser is pushing up is high up from the two pillars, right? Because what you're talking about, is simple, generosity of spirit, giving, rather than taking, right? Being kind to others letting things go feeling good about yourself. Even if you fall down, we learned this in kindergarten. So we must somewhere inside of us really value it
Then we let it go. We make things overly complex and you know this this idea that in many ways we should go back to kindergarten, right? Because there's a purity there, right children and age where you know, they can learn and then we bring a nice kind of learning to them in a nurturing to them and we can bring it to ourselves to so that we simplify that which has become overly complex, right? We simplify because trauma makes complexity, having to just make one's way in the world is complicated.
Dated, right? So things get more and more complicated and we lose the simple roots of goodness or the goodness of Simplicity, right? And we can come back to that. So I couldn't resist, when he said, oh these like I simple these basic things, right? Like right. That's the point of it because that's where agency and gratitude of the generative drug. That's where they live in the Simplicity.
I'm glad you mentioned kindergarten it, brought me back to images of kindergarten where, yeah, as far as I can remember. Now they're all the critical.
Of a great generative environment. You know adults who really cared about us? Fortunately, there were snack time with oranges so nourishing food, right? It was nap time in the afternoon, like these things are all
things that I've exercised explore. They can take guinea pig, home on the
weekends, he had this guinea pig. I think they actually I think there were several guinea pigs but they kept trying to convince us. It was the same guinea pig because they would allow one family to take home the guinea pig each weekend and sometimes I think it didn't work out quite so well. But anyway the guinea pig was a pervasive.
Feature. So, you learn to take care of things and in all seriousness, now, thy step back from it, there's nothing more generative, it seems than a kindergarten classroom environment, or we should say a healthy kindergarten classroom environment, it's all about support of others. And if we go to the pillars, the structure of self and the function of self mean, surely there's a lot going on at home too. But think about like what Salient? It's learning messages of self. You know self-confidence like instilling those. It
Behaviors that are based on strivings and hopefulness that it's all the good things. Yes. All the good things. And so you know as I was thinking about communication and all these good things that clearly kindergarten is a wonderful template for in all seriousness, I think is amazing template. I'm thinking about what gets in the way, and of course, trauma can get in the way and we should talk about that more. But it seems to me that one of the things that gets in the way of
asking for what we want. Have hearing requests of us in the way that is going to bring about the most. Generative goodness is anxiety. It's like, you know, you're tired from a long day and someone mentions like, you know, we have to take the trash out, you know, like, like I was at work all day like, you know, that kind of thing or earlier talking about the issue of the non-issue terms of power dynamics, you know that? Well, let's just say I've had the experience before in relationship of
Like if I make a request or I have a quote, unquote complained about something that the other person is going to be so upset about the fact that they didn't do something. Well, that's going to be three days of just like diminished happiness for everybody. So I just assumed like, not deal with it, right? So when we hear the word anxiety, I think we often about the person like quaking about, you know, public speaking or like getting the circuits in the brain hijacked that were only designed for saber-toothed tigers, but you know,
Xiety seems to serve both a very important functional role in Modern Life that has nothing to do with physical threat. But it also seems to be the feature that if not kept in check, if we can't regulate our own anxiety. I'm realizing there's no way that we're going to be in a position to ask for what we need. And what we want to hear what's needed of us and what others want. In other words,
Anxiety seems like a major barrier to the generative
Drive. I think the place to start is if you show me a person who has no anxiety, I'll show you a mannequin, right? We all have anxiety in us. Remember, it's just a word, right? What do we what are we getting at? We're getting at a sense of tension, right? Or a sense of disquiet inside of us that we would like to solve. We would like to ease. If we could, it is not helpful or
Healthy. If we have very, very low levels of that, right? Because then our strivings are certainly going to suffer, right? There's not a lot of motivation, try to to go make change in the world change in our lives, right? So if we have too little of that tension, that doesn't go well and good that maps to a low assertiveness with aggression. Proactive Drive is there other ways that can show itself, but it Maps very clearly. I think to that, and
That's not good for us. On the other end of the spectrum, were much more concerned with the other end of the spectrum, because a lot of anxiety feels very, very bad. And it feels very bad right now, right? So are are high levels of anxiety. They narrow our cognitive spectrum. They narrow our ability to think about what's going on around us to think about ourselves. So, so the idea with anxiety is to recognize that we all have it, and we can call it anxiety, we can call it tension, called whatever we
Want to, but we want that to be in in a healthy place, right? Which which comes, of course, back to the self that if my levels of anxiety are very high and therefore it's causing problems in my relationship. Like, maybe I'm always asking my partner for okay, where that happens a lot. Like are we okay? Are you happy right now? Because there's a lot of anxiety and me like the first place to go is to look at myself. So we could say, oh I have attachment and security. That's just stating the obvious
This right? Or a sergeant Drew, but a very common. One nowadays I think is new in the course of human history. Is, you know, the the reaching, the tugging, the line phenomena, you text somebody that you're thinking about them. You don't hear back and then attention starts to mount. And then depending on the context, you may either be concerned about the person or even suspicious about what the person is up to. I mean here it's very contextual right? And it depends on the history of both individuals and that relationship but then the
Person will reach back eventually and it either will bring relief, or relief with some resent. Like, where were you, what happened? You know. This is very, very common. It's so much. So, in fact that I've come to learn and talking to others and this is the classic. You know, I have a friend who but really others who are in the landscape of looking for relationship. And there are people, I know well who go through a lot of effort to set an intermittent schedule of
Like to not give the other person in the sense that they always respond with short latency because indeed, sometimes they will be able to do that. And sometimes they won't what they're basically trying to do is make sure that the person doesn't they're actually trying to take care of the other person in addition to themselves because I think we come to expect a certain latency of response with certain individuals and if we don't hear back with that particular latency of response, our own anxiety starts to pick up and it can be quite damaging to a relationship in particular to the generative drives within us. Because in that time, that
we're stressed, we're not tending to other things, including things that we could do for the relationship that we're so worried
about famous scene in swingers, right? With a person leaves a message, and then now and lives the whole relationship in his own mind and breaks up with the person and they never actually spoke right. That there's the anxiety run wild, and of course, I remember. That was very, very popular in that came out. Why? Because it resonated, we know with the insecurities, we feel and now, with the ability to feel those insecurities in a much more, immediate way, that person didn't text me back, right? There's a lot more.
That inside of us, which really points to if you're able to identify that you're that, you're anxious to anxious for Comfort. Which again, if one looks inside or even listen to maybe to what others have said or reflected, like, there's a lot of data, especially introspection to be able to identify that, right? The next question is always y, right? Let's go. Look at that. Maybe that person has been anxious their whole life, right? Maybe they just have run tense all the time, you know what? Sometimes a little bit of medicine, the kind of just pulls
That down person can take that for 50 years. Life is better. There's no side effects like so sometimes like that might be the case, right? Sometimes the person is anxiety, kind of grew throughout childhood and maybe that's because there were difficult things or traumatic things that happen. Maybe there was nothing like that but maybe the person was very good at engaging in the world and then felt more and more pressures upon themselves, and no one ever did anything wrong and they only been rewarded, right? But regardless, look at the anxiety in yourself. Go back to those pillars, right? And one might discover, for example, maybe the
The anxiety. I'm feeling is attributable to the other person. Am I feeling anxious? Because I'm intimidated, right? Am I feeling anxious? Because I know that if I don't behave in a certain way, no the next time, there's a group meeting there will be some snarky joke made about me so anxiety, sometimes it's the self. Sometimes it still got a lot of biological component, sometimes got a lot of psychological components sometimes both, right? Sometimes it's the environment, sometimes it's the other, right? The other person. So look at, why? Because that's how we
We learn right? Like, what is going on inside of me? Where is that level of anxiety? How does it not feel comfortable? Like, what actually is it? How is it changing? How? I'm behaving, how might it be changing? How am I responding to it? So, what are we doing? We're going back to those, look in those 10 cabinets and figure out why, which we can do, right? The vast majority of times between ourselves and the use of others, either professionally or non professionally. We can go understand the anxiety, or the lack of anxiety. Why am I not
So motivated, right? I mean that's a case. With a lot of people who feel demoralized, they don't feel they can get anywhere in the world, right? The world is a bad place and, you know, and how you're going to make your way in the world and they start feeling nihilistic, or they feel like there's the 8 ball is against them even in a generational capacity, right? And now they feel demoralized and and the tension inside is soothed by things. So maybe that's the person who's over using the thing that Sue's, right? So they could go look at like I always kind of motivated and did well in sports or the well in this
It was interested in that. Right? What's going on? That's how a person could identify, for example, being demoralized. So that process of inquiry gives us the information that we can use in the service of change. And the change will not achieved 100% of the time. The change for the better is predictable. If it's arising from a place of understanding,
I'm very curious about frames of Mind in relationship in particular. How being in our own experience say anxious because
Hasn't responded to us and really paying attention to the anxiety and drilling into it and asking ourselves, you know, why am I anxious and do I deserve to be anxious? Is it about me or is it about them whether or not that's a valid pursuit or whether or not focusing on the other person and trying to imagine, you know like what's going on in their head that they might be doing this or that they seem to do something repeatedly. This of course relates to much more than just the scenario of waiting for a text message and feeling anxious.
I may I think so much of how we come into relationship of all kinds, you know, romantic certainly but family relationships are, you know, in and around the tendency to switch back and forth sometimes seemingly at random between our own experience and what am I feeling, what am I experiencing? And then thinking about the other, like, what is, what are they thinking? What are they experiencing? I mean, this is everything to do with human dynamics, right? I would think that it's near impossible for the typical person.
To just live life through their own frame and lens and never pay attention at all. To what others might be thinking. Even for instance, the most exploitive, extractive narcissist sociopath presumably is thinking about, you know, who in the room is going to be their Target because of how that person might be feeling. And, of course, on the benevolent side, people who want to do positive generative, things in the world are probably thinking about, you know, who do align with, who has a common goals that they might want to work.
Thor be with romantically that could help them and the other person generate. So what is this thing that we do? You know what is it called? And and how does it work to place ourselves in the mind of others and what roles does it? Serve and what goals does it undercut when we
do this. So, I think the first thing to say is that everything follows the same simple pattern, right? So I start with thinking about me, right, if I'm anxious,
Why am I anxious was going on inside of me? I think about you. Are you anxious to, or maybe? I'm not anxious, but I notice that you are, right? So, there's the thought about the eye, because I can't think in a clear-headed way about you unless I've thought about me, right? Because if I'm really, really anxious, then how am I supposed to understand and try and get an idea of where you are at, right? So then, where do we arrive? We arrive at the magic Bridge of the US. That's what connects us. Whether the US is a
Chip is a professional relationship, it's romance, right. There's the bridge of the US because it's not just how, or when am I anxious? However, when are you anxious? What are things like? When we're together, right? Maybe that. Maybe I'm anxious when we were together and what what's that tension about your actual work together? And you know, maybe that's for reasons we could talk about and make less. Maybe there's some insecurity in one of us who are maybe the other person is behaving in a certain way. That's not making the the second person feel good, right?
Right? We can then come together and see how does the US impact? The level of anxiety and how do we then take away from the US being stronger? So so think about, we talked about the trauma Bond. Trauma Bond, can be enacted in a negative way. It can be enacted in a positive way and those two people who can go to the museum together, who can't go to the Museum's separately right there. Living in the magic Bridge of the US, right? They're both at the Museum, but neither can go to the museum, right? Neither can go.
Museum. But both can go to the museum and then they take away stronger selves from that, right? That's that's a reinforcing experiences positive, right? It builds the generative drive it builds confidence, right? The person went they were assertive and that was gratified in a good way and they felt pleasure, right? So when we look at the US, it is about the US in the moment, right? But it is also about how two people are impacting one another and the rest of their lives. And this of course this is more important. The closer the relationship.
This is very important, for example, in close. Friendships are family relationships, and I think this is of extreme importance in relationships, right? These are the two people who presumably are the closest to one another on Earth. So a shared us that that promotes understanding and bolsters a sense of agency and gratitude and bolsters, the generative drive. Like that's great for both people. When they're not in the US. When one goes one way and one goes the other because that happens all the time in.
Chips to write it. Be go to work at different places or, you know, we bolster ourselves outside of relationships. If we see what the magic Bridge of the relationship can be. So we can look there for problems. Like why am I anxious? Why are you anxious? Why are we anxious? Why are you only anxious when where we and not? You know, we can look after all that and we should write but we can also even more powerfully look for the good there, right? How can our shared Bond, whatever it maybe be better for both of us and
what stronger incentive could there be than to do that in relationships, right? Romantic relationships are the ones that are closest to us. If they're not romantic, they could be friends. Just whatever, our closest relationships are there. The most important Vehicles, so, to speak, to better health and happiness, to getting to that place of peace and contentment and Delight, right. The US is very, very powerful. In fact, even more more powerful than the eye. And the
you, when thinking about the US
And trying to understand why somebody that we know and are in relationship with is behaving, the way they are or might be feeling or claiming they feel the way that they are, how useful do you think it is for us to put ourselves in their shoes? You know, I can think of all sorts of ways in which this could be beneficial. I can also think of all sorts of ways in which it would be focusing off the self and our own experience in ways that
Might be defensive avoidance, or, you know, or denial, right? Yeah. I'll come clean. I mean, they've been plenty of times in relationship where I get fixated on, why someone is the way they are behaved the way they did. And more often than not by taking a step back and thinking about, why my reaction to that is the way it is. I don't solve the quote unquote problem, but I get a lot further along in terms of quelling, my own anxiety, and finding a path forward.
Right. Right, right. Well mentalization right, which is the ability to discern feeling States, intention States in self and others. But now we're looking for others, right? So the ability to understand feeling States, what's going on inside of you intention? What are your intentions, right? That should only be good, right? Because because if we're seeing it through a clear lens, meaning a lens that's not biased by some problem like a defense mechanism of rationalization for
Example of projection, right? If we're seeing clearly, we're learning about the other eye and the learning is never bad, right? Knowledge. Truth is good. So if we learn about the other, by, in that sense, putting ourselves in their shoes, then we gain information, but it's the health in us, that, that is so crucial to what we do with that information, right? So one person could say, put put themselves in the other person's shoes and, and then say, okay, that person I can see the person is responding in a
It's a pretty calm, pretty calm about something, right? And maybe that's just a good thing. Maybe there's some contention going on in that person's maintaining their cool. And that person is going to be really helpful in navigating an argument or disagreement to like some, some, like really positive and point, right? So if a person sees clearly like, I see, I, okay, I see that your, I can see that you're calm, and I also see that you're trying to figure things out and you the things that you're saying or sort of positive you're disagreeing with me. But but you don't,
Him to me nil, right? Then I can see, you know what? I think you're calm is good, right? Because I'm getting a little bit upset and you're not so you so and I see that there's a benevolence in you. So maybe you'll guide us to the place that maybe I can't, right. But but think about if there's not a clear lens inside of me, right? If I have a defense system that leads me to externalize responsibility that leads me to project or at least me do all sorts of things that are not healthy. Now, I might think well, you're calm because
Cuz you use don't care about me, right? I mean something with the same exact thing right now. In the example, we're giving the person in your position is like, being really benign and benevolent, but it happens all the time where that is misconstrued. So it's not that it's not that the Insight that person is calm. I see that they're calm, is that there's a deficit in the mentalization. The person is not fully understanding their intention, right? But what's coming through then gets distorted, right? So we think about defense mechanisms, they
Beat, they can be clear, they can let light through in this beautiful way that has Fidelity, or they can be very distorting. So, the thought, if I'm Discerning that, you are benevolent and you seem to be trying to solve the problem for us, but I take in and you just don't care about me and you're trying to put one over on me if I assess it accurately but the, but it comes on the other end in a way, that's changed, right? That's because there's
A lack of clarity. There's a distortion inside of me, right? So so then if I'm really working on myself, I'm in the best place I can be I'm going to be better at mentalizing about you and me, right? Even if I say well we're having a disagreement, I know I tend to get a little defensive so I'm going to be a little biased to see what's in you and it kind of negative way, right? So, what am I seeing like? Okay, you're pretty calm, like, maybe you don't care like, you know, I can, I know, I can think that. Right. But like, come on. You're trying. You want to solve our problem like
When that goes on inside of a person, which sometimes goes on consciously, or goes on unconsciously, or some mixture, it's so powerful. Right? The person is aware of their own state, which helps them to be aware the state of the others of the other. And then, the information they're getting comes through with Fidelity. And now, all of a sudden, instead of maybe I'm going to blow things up. Now, I'm aligning with you, in solving our problem because I see clearly about you and me, and that's going on all the time. It might say, well, it's complicated. There's a lot of back and forth right. There are millions of things going on.
Every Split Second in our unconscious mind, that is throwing all this up to the conscious mind. It's doing things rapidly that's going on all the time in us, whether we want to acknowledge it or not and we choose not to acknowledge it at our own Peril, because then we're not going to those two pillars and their 10 cupboards or not going to the structure of self, the function of self and what comprises those two pillars to look for. Hey, what's going on, right? Let me understand better and even if things are going well, we can.
Ways, as you said not that long ago, we can understand ourselves better. The stronger. I am the more generative drive. There isn't me the less defensiveness the more, the agency in the Gratitude. The more armed for whatever difficult thing comes my way. So if there's a conflict with someone, whether there should be or there shouldn't be, maybe someone's being really aggressive and I got to kind of say some things and try and counter that, right? I'm going to be able to discern one from another, I'm going to be more effective in both, right? I just set myself up for success.
And if I'm setting me up for Success, then I'm also setting you up for Success. If you're someone I have a relationship with no matter what it is, and then, ultimately, I'm setting the we write the, the magical Bridge of us, I'm setting that up for success to and that's how you see and these levels of emergence that you know, if you understand everything about you and understand everything about me, and let's say a person understands we have a generative drive, you don't really know what our relationship is going to be like, you think I bet it's gonna be a good one, right? And
What would we then then contributes a to a broader culture? So a group of people, maybe there's 10 people, a bunch of friends getting together, we would contribute goodness at that next level which is then the culture of the
larger group. In hearing your description of mentalization, this ability for all of us to get into the mind of another and to try and imagine motivations and states that would explain their people shower, right? And self self and other. Yeah, that seems like a natural reflex that's that's healthy and it seems to
to surface, most often in as the consequence of negative interactions, right? You know, something didn't go, right? And so we kind of explore like, was it them? Was it me? Like, was it something that happened before? You know what else is going on with this person, as a way to try and arrive at some sort of, hopefully generative understanding, but it seems to me, there's also great value in mentalizing about others under conditions, in which things are going well. So that one can potentially make things or encourage things to go, even better in future.
Action
site. With the first thing I would say is I think the reflex is most often not mentalizing that the reflex is most often not mentalizing, right? Because the reflex is often come from a position of not feeling safe, right? There's some conflict. I don't, I don't, I don't feel good, right? There's some conflict people. We all can get very defensive very quickly whether we show it on the outside or we start partitioning inside and the problems come not
Not for mentalizing, but they come from not mentalizing, right? And not being aware of the difference because then I conclude I know what's going on in you. And I don't write because I don't know what's going on in me, right? And I think you're being aggressive, really, I'm feeling kind of defensive, I'm feeling vulnerable. And then I'm I'm getting aggressive, right? But, I can't handle that because I don't want to be aggressive. So, you're aggressive, right? So there's such a difference between say coming at a self other conflict, from the perspective of say not mentalizing, but thinking that,
Our versus mentalizing, there's a difference between. Is it me? I know it can't be, is it you? It must be right. And that's how a lot of that goes and then of course what's the data that's gathered, the data that's gathered supports that. And I think this is, there's Wars, I think of happened. You know, based upon this little and conflicts in friendships and relationships. The key about mentalizing is that's not what it is mentalizing. It goes like this is it me, is it you is it us?
How is figure that out? Let's figure it out together, right? It's not, it's not defensive, it's not aggressive, it's not projecting. Its it's really actually seeing and what if it's me I want to be aware of it and say yeah, like well I got up on the wrong side of the bed. Look, let me just say I'm sorry, right? Or if I might say look, I know that you're being aggressive and you normally wouldn't be the material. Can we just get away from sit? Let the person I care about calm down, come back later, you know, or if it's us is really something between us and let's sort it out like the
Asian that allows the healthy, right? The agency and gratitude decisions is always there for you mentalizing. The danger is when we're not mentalizing, but we think we
are got it in keeping with thinking about others and what's going on with them mentalizing that is and in thinking about what's going on with ourselves and the exploration of the cupboards under the pillars of structure of cell function of self, and our desire for all of that to geyser up into agency and gratitude.
One thing that we hear about so much these days and generally I think it's good that people are talking about them are boundaries, you know, you've crossed my boundary or I'm setting a boundary and I've certainly embedded the message in my head that in order for certain relationships to be at their most loving in my life, sometimes the boundaries require very little frequency of communication, but that doesn't mean the relationships aren't on going. So what are your thoughts on?
Boundaries and how should we think about boundaries for sake of healthy
relationships, healthy boundaries always start inside and then once we have them squared away inside, we can project them outward. I had the same as is everything works, right? It starts with the self and then it includes the other. So let's say, we took an example of a friend who's just a little too presumptuous, right? Like the kind of person, you'd rather knock on your door but who just opens the door and comes in like that.
At that kind of thing and you like the person a lot and there's a lot of residents and you want to lose the friendship and then. So, let's imagine what could happen here. It's not the only thing that can happen, but a thought experiment, right? So, the person may, then question themselves, like, is there something wrong with me? Like, because I don't really like this person coming in my front door. Like, is that just me? Am I being weird about that or other person kind of stop and think about that? And they can take stock of self and they can arrive at an answer right for themselves. Like, look, that person may conclude
Daddy know what people on his clothes to his person. Come in my front door. You know what? That's okay. Right. I don't, you know, I don't need to set a boundary there, right? That's possible. Right. More often what the person concludes is? No, I don't really want that. Like, I do actually want this person to knock on the door and that's okay. Now something wrong with me, it's not that I'm being a jerk is not going to being a bad friend, right? Because what are they saying? You might say, oh, they're preparing for the other person could say. No, they're countering what they're testing out to themselves.
Elves, doesn't mean I'm a bad friend know, right? That that kind of thing. So they know and then they understand and then they have and they have the right to set the boundary right? Like okay, it's my house. I try and be generous but I said want people coming in the door like you come to some conclusion that setting, the boundary is okay and your squared away with it inside. Then you communicate the boundary outward right and is that how do I want to communicate that like saying, hey man, don't come in the front door anymore, like, that's not so good right now. The Friendship is really only
Roxrite. But to say to someone something like yeah, like I care about you and I trust you and I know you feel the same way about me but you just makes me nervous you know people just come in the door like to do you mind because it okay like if you just please knock on the door. Now think about how that's been done. Like it's so accurate right to what's going on. Inside the person to how the person wants to communicate with the other, then you have the highest likelihood of Effectiveness, right?
Right? And the person also in that sense has sort of the clean conscience it so to speak that lets them take in information back. So let's say the other person, hopefully has a high generative drive and all the good things were talking about could say, oh, you know, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. I didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable. It kind of automatically do that or you know, I always do that at my brother's house and it's close by or whatever the person is saying, no worries. Okay, everything is fine, right but let's say that person does get mad right now. You
Like whoa, what's going on in this person, right? Because nothing that what you're doing is you're seeing signs of unhealth in the other person and it may be that. Whoa, that's not so healthy with the person. But I like other aspects of the friendship. And that seems like kind of a strange idiosyncrasy. Then you might decide. You know what, I want to keep this friendship, so I'll start locking the door and the person has to knock or you might think. Okay. Is this is that my seeing something here? That's about lack of consideration, right? It's about selfishness. And ultimately, maybe about
Gee, I'm going to walk into your house and ruin your privacy. You know? I'm gonna walk and you also make you feel anxious. I feel entitled to do that looks like kind of thing. This really coming through the lens of Envy. So when you start thinking about that and and maybe not always, of course, sometimes you find a friend who can do the right thing. Sometimes you find a friend who can't and you can still make the Friendship work, sometimes you find a person who's not a friend, right? And you see like, oh that's how everything is with this person. You guys like there's no us.
There's no ass I and and that's that's how people can leave relationships. That ultimately are exploited in one way or another, whether it's a friendship, it's a romance. The if a person really understands there's the me the you the magical Bridge of us and then wait, there's no magical Bridge of us.
I feel that there's a magical Bridge of us, but the other person doesn't there's immense power of understanding, and then of appropriate self-care and self protection
over and over again. Not just during today's episode. But in the previous two episodes, it seems that getting squared away with oneself or at least one's own internal processes to some degree, right? Gaining some insight as to where the - or even positive, emotion within us as arise.
And when we're in relationship to anyone or anything, it just seems so key. It's like the foundation of it, you know. You know you said, you know, like getting to the maximum amount of agency and gratitude is the goal, really. And that's done by cycling back through the cupboards that reside under structure of self and function of self and asking questions about oneself. And and really unless we are trained psychiatrist like you, none of us really should
Be doing that for the other person. It seems with this is really our each and all of our own responsibility to do for ourselves, but that it serves others in so many positive ways,
right? Right. So mentalization greases the progress of all things, good, right. Because it is about actual understanding feeling States intentions. But I have to first mentalize about me before. I mentalize about you a way of putting this would be if I'm thinking about you.
I'm thinking about me I'm on a Fool's errand, right? You have to start with the self and to try and attain Clarity of self or to realize that you can't write like that's it's a very important Nuance. If I know that say there's trauma in me about a certain thing and I know that I respond in ways, where sometimes my emotions get high and I can't quite yet. I can't quite think through it. All right, which can happen to me with, with references or something that's encompassing.
A certain kind of trauma. I want to be aware of that, right? So this is the idea of not only being aware of what, you know about yourself. But being aware, that there are things you don't know about yourself. So if I know enough to know that a certain kind of interaction about a certain kind of trauma, really sets me to a place where I'm not able to mentalize. I'd like, I normally would be right? I'm a, I'm sort of Flying Blind right then? Good for me to know that because I don't know what that's doing to me. So, it's the last time to make
Inclusion. So let's say I'm in that state. Let's say I'm in that state because of something that just happened, right? And now we have some sort of conflict, right? And for me to realize like what what's going on in me, I'm bringing to this lack of clarity because I'm I'm really activated right in essence, the anxiety. The tension in me has been raised to the negative emotion that reflexive, negative effect feeling emotion has been raised in me and then I realized, like, I don't know how it's going to go. If we interact about it now because I can't,
Rely on me. So like hey can we talk about this later? The same way if you recognize in the other, that person who's usually rationals, I was all worked up recognize that in the other, right? And made that person doesn't realize that they still want to interact. And you say, can we, let's look, let's revisit this. When I like we're both kind of calm, cool, and collected, right? So mentalization, greases, the wheels of all progress, but like, anything else has to be deployed in a way that works. And the way that works is I start with me and I go to you, and then I go to
I'm fully onboard. The start with me then to the other and then to us model. It makes total sense in fact so much so that I'm starting to build an image of my mind where first is a kind of a rule, which is, you know, it starts with self understanding and, you know, thoughtful structured inquiry along the lines of the map that was laid out in episodes 1 and 2 of this series. And that we've been alluding to numerous times today.
And then there's a second line or or rule that I've got you know written on this imaginary piece of paper in my mind where anytime I default to thinking about another without first going to my own map and exploring what's going on with me that my own map starts to become blurry like I'm losing access to it and it potentially could disappear. I'm just creating this in my own mind as a way to create a little bit of I think helped me anxiety. Like you know, like to really go there first, Paints the picture.
Yes. And you know the purpose in having such a, you know, an image in my mind that, you know, access to the self and understanding of self is potentially drifting away is because I think for me, there's a third line in this rule rule set that I'm imagining, which is that the less understanding we have of our own map and internal process. The more likely I am where we all are to just latch on to an unhealthy map.
ER, unhealthy map, I
have to even follow the directions of our own unhealthy map, right? Which leads us to someone else's unhealthy map and then we latch onto it. Like you said, yeah, absolutely. Yes, yeah,
that's right. Because it's still active even if it's blurry or if it's obscured from my awareness and drifting away
from trying to guide myself, with my broken Compass, I run into someone else with a broken Compass. Now, we're both wandering, right? So, be aware of the compass isn't working, the way we wanted to, and we go look at that and we can we make
The map healthy make the map accurate make the map guide us towards what we want because then we will find other people who've worked on their own maps, that way.
Absolutely at, you know, and so often, I hear about and frankly, I've experienced, you know, that this feeling like, oh, it's just a matter of finding. Somebody who is healthy, right? And then things will be much easier and much better. And surely that has to be the case. And surely there have to be instances where people, you know, have a interaction with somebody that leads.
To a relationship with somebody and the other person is much healthier and and whatever trauma we come to the relationship with is best supported or better supported than it would be if we were with somebody exploitive or who is a truly damaged, you know, in some way who basically had a map that was really almost a screwed up but that they had not explored any delatour's Arc. They need a lot of work but I don't see that very often. I definitely see people who at least from my outside read seem to have healthy Maps or are doing regular exploration of their Maps.
For healthy who knows? I don't know what they do with their, with their time in every domain a life. But once again, we come back to this importance of understanding. What's in those cupboards? What's in? Those pillars as a, not just important, but critical step in understanding and building ourselves in positive ways. And as I said, once or twice before in this series, but I'm going to say it again.
And I'm sure again and again before we conclude this series is that what's so attractive about this map? Is that it it sets it very clear and simple set of ideals, not necessarily simple to attain and as you said it takes time but agency onset and gratitude, you know empowerment humility leading up to peace, contentment and Delight. All has action States not as passive states to just Baskin and you know and disappear.
And this notion of the generative drive and, and by now, in this episode, I'm sure people are well on board. The understanding that the generative drive is not just about going out and doing things, it's about doing things in service to. And in a way that supports learning knowing creating not just of others and in the world. But in sauce, yes,
I love. I love the the map imagery because you can almost see the map changing, right as a person. I imagine person is busying away in the cupboards.
Right now, there's a lot to work on in this cupboard in their busying away and they're doing the work and we can see the map changing that path. It look like a really good path that actually goes through a swamp. You can see the swamp on the map. Now it appears on the map that other path that look like it's a little circuitous. That's a good path, right? Might be a harder path. It is a little circuitous but look where it leads right. The map becomes clear as we do the work on ourselves.
Yes. And also the understanding that you've laid out for us here, really helps.
Void a lot of the common pitfalls that are associated with, you know, sticky language and sticky for good reason. I mean, what stickier and more interesting for people that are interested in themselves and relationship than things like, you know, boundaries or or labels like anxious attach your secure at a chance, I'm not being disparaging of those labels but I'm realizing those are just labels, right? They they don't Define action items and specific lines of inquiry to get us back into our self understanding over and
over and not as a full-time job, right? We all have to live our lives, but as a way, actually, to be more leaned into life in the outside world
that those labels Define, people know, better than the numerical diagnosis. And the psychiatric taxonomy book that we glorify labels are not understanding. Numbers are not understanding. They can help. Taxonomy Czar, good, sometimes labels, let us categorize things. But labels are not a substitute for understanding numbers are not.
Substitute for understanding. If we look at ourselves, we get real understanding and that's what makes the difference, that's what, bolsters agency, gratitude, all those good things, clear mentalization, greasing the wheels of progress more, the generative Drive getting stronger. We really can find goodness and often do. And that's why I think everything we're talking about is very hopeful needed acknowledges, there's complexity there, pitfalls, right there, all sorts of things to it, that we need to be aware of and to be
Beware of, but that doesn't mean that ultimately, it isn't positive. That we're not speaking to hate whatever it is, that's ailing you. That thing can be
better.
I'm so grateful that you're sharing your knowledge and experience around all of this with us and that you've laid out such a clear and logical and deep. And tractable really actionable understanding of all this that we can engage in is tremendously
powerful. Thank you. I so appreciate it. Thank
you, thank you for joining me for today's discussion about how to improve your relationships with dr. Paul Conte. I'd also like to take a moment to remind you that the fourth episode in.
The series on Mental Health with Paul. Conte, will be out next week and that links to all the episodes can be found at huberman. Lab.com, if you're learning from and are enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific. Zero cost way to support us. In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify, and apple and on both Spotify and apple, you can leave us up to a five star review. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode, that's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions, for me, your comments about the podcast.
Or guess that you'd like me to consider hosting on the huberman Lab podcast. Please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments and if you're not already following me on social media, I am huberman lab on all platforms. So that's Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, threads, and Facebook, and on all those platforms, I discuss science and science related tools. Some of which overlap with the content of the huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content of the human Lab podcast. So, again, it's huberman. Lab on all social media channels, not on today's episode but on many previous
Dias episodes of The huberman Lab podcast. We discussed supplements while supplements are necessary for everybody many people derive tremendous benefit from them for things like enhancing sleep for hormone support and for Focus if you'd like to see the supplements discussed on the Hebron Lab podcast you can go to live momentous spell do u.s. so it's live momentous.com hubermann if you haven't already subscribe to our newsletter. It is a zero cost newsletter called the neural network newsletter and in the neural network newsletter you get free podcast summaries as well as toolkits the toolkits
Our brief PDFs that list off the specific science back, protocols for things like improving your sleep, improving focus on optimizing dopamine, deliberate cold exposure. We have a complete summary of our fitness series again. All available completely zero cost. You simply go to huberman lab.com. Go to the menu, scroll down a newsletter and provide your email to sign up. We do not share your email with anybody. Thank you. Once again for joining me, for today's discussion with dr. Paul conti, and last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
