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Chef AJ: How to Help Grieving Friends and more | QA with Dr Doug Lisle Dr Jen Howk
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regulars on this show they are so popular and when they come on we have so many questions that we'll never get to but you guys get to have consults with either of them and that's the greatest thing about the world we live in today their names are dr doug lyle and dr jen hawk you can find them at esteemeddynamics.com and you can even join up for their group they do special things like this just for the members it's like three dollars a month less than a starbucks and it's absolutely fantastic please welcome back to the show my two favorites i'll just say it dr jen hawk and dr doug lyle thanks for coming back great to see you yeah you guys are so positive i was saying right before the show that the reason i was a couple minutes late is because i was having a bad hair day and jen said no i'm having a good hack day see so look at she's gonna look how great she is she's just totally reframed it for me so we get so many questions we'll jump into them and i think you'll like today's questions because they're not all about weight loss and the pleasure trap these are kind of they seem like the questions that you often get on the beat your jeans podcast and we have everything from infidelity to flatulence so let's get started yeah the first question is from candace she says dear doctors is it possible for people to get stuck in grief and if so are there resources to help them bounce back i have three girlfriends who suffered significant losses a mother a spouse and a child these took place well over five years ago and they're still grieving they cry almost every day and seem to be unable to move on with their life when you talk to them it's as if the loss occurred yesterday is this normal and how do we help people that seem to be unable to move forward after a loss there's a there's a lot we could say about this so let me let me just give a few things and we'll see what jen wants to fill in um but uh there's huge individual differences in how people not only respond to grief generally but how they respond to a specific loss particularly so the um i've had uh i've had animals that uh when i lost them you know it was a it was a rough cup you know a rough few weeks i've got i've got one now but it's going to be a bad couple of years okay so that it matters a lot on you know what it is is lost uh also and then individual differences so you know alan if allen lost his favorite pet he might have three or four bad hours you know maybe not maybe not probably i think that's a record for how early we uh we get an insult in against alan like we're six minutes in and it's like throw allen under the bus that's right so individual differences individual situations um sometimes if things persist for a long period of time um there can be there could be multiple reasons one of them can be that the mind can't quite figure out it feels like a loss that might have been avoidable and so the mind basically uh remember thinking and sleeping are actually actions of the mind so for example when people go to sleep they don't just go to sleep and lose consciousness the brain is actually running a cost-benefit analysis on whether or not we should sleep so it's not a it's not a conscious choice it's an unconscious calculation if you get up in the middle of the night eight nights in a row and feed yourself a peanut butter sandwich you better believe that you'll wake up on the ninth night because you conditioned the organism to believe that it's worth waking up and it knows that when you're asleep okay so in the same way the organism runs a cost-benefit analysis on what it ruminates about so it's ruminating if it's ruminating about a loss it's ruminating about a loss because it's running a cost-benefit analysis that it's worth ruminating and uh and so that's why it's doing it so it's not like it's it's not like it's a choice that is mysteriously visited upon the creature it's in fact a cost-benefit analysis that has a rationale or the mind wouldn't be determined that it was worth doing it so that very often happens when there's something about this loss that feels like we don't like we don't understand something about it and we don't understand why it happened we don't like there might have understand something to avoid it etc okay so that's uh that's one reason why people will persist in grief uh is because the the mind thinks you know what you've got something to learn about this loss it was a major loss and therefore it's worth us spending a lot of time and energy thinking about it so that we don't have something similar happen in the future okay so uh if you that that's one reason why people persist in grief um there are there are other reasons uh they they can be avoiding the challenge of replacing what was lost for various and sundry reasons and they um and and therefore they're intimidated uh by by the challenges that could be uh involved there the et cetera so those are some things that come to mind for me and uh so that's why you know that's why you have counsel in the world for to sometimes tease those things out and see whether or not they can be brought to uh a resolution and the person can make enough peace that they that the mind quiets down its rumination okay uh jen uh thoughts on this yeah i i don't i don't have too much to add other than you know in some cases uh sort of these things can all interact so people can get in this sort of loop where they're um like like doug is just saying they're they're avoiding the challenge of replacing what was lost which means that that can be that can come from a place of feeling like um you're you're dishonoring the memory of the person or the animal or you're you're just it's it's some sort of insult to the person to move on so that's often where it starts but what can sometimes happen with certain personalities is they also they get a certain benefit from the social act of the grieving so there's a lot of positive feedback from the social community from friends and family that gives them some status that they didn't otherwise have and people can get a little hooked into that and they can perseverate on their grief because it gives them sort of a visibility and a status that they didn't have before so that's not certainly maybe we don't know what's happening in the case that you're talking about but that is um i have been in that position before uh with you know all i want to talk about is my terrible breakup you know because i get a lot of attention and a lot of positive feedback and oh my god that's so unfair and i can't believe that that happened to you and it's easy to get into those sorts of loops especially if you're um you're also avoiding moving on for for other reasons and and you kind of uh plaster the story on top of it so that's just that's the dark side of perpetual grieving that that aj you just saw why this is my colleague this is uh she's she's always covering ground that i don't think that and yeah and filling in the blanks fabulous jen thank you it's sort of like you're the hot fudge sundae and she's the cherry on top i'm a whole food plant-based food and now i have to look up the word per se whatever whatever that word was perseverance i have to look that up because i don't know what that means that's that's just that's that's not per words don't go about it basically means obsess obsessing obsessing going over and over and over being stuck i mean i know you guys see patients for different reasons but if somebody is stuck in in this like is that something you've ever worked with people on if they wanted to have a consult absolutely sure nice good yeah well that's continually you know it's a it's a combination just to like really like it's usually all of these things you know there's a there's a genuine morning process you lost something very significant you're you're trying to make sure that that doesn't happen again you're trying to figure out what went wrong how do i prevent it and then you you just accidentally start to get some social processes and some interpersonal dynamics that change that move you in the direction of oh i like that that feels good and it's all these intersecting cost benefit analyses that the animal just always wants to do the the best thing for its survival and and being um you know receiving a lot of feedback from members of the community even for that that sort of reason can be a good a good signal of survival that is so that's so interesting because people don't really teach you how to grieve growing up you know no no it emerges from your personality in large part and saying to somebody get over it generally isn't helpful no even though alan's tried that many times yeah my father was a big fan of handle it just handle it i don't know oh my goodness wow all right okay great well oh this is a really interesting question because i've often wondered this myself this is from anonymous could you please explain to me why so many women stay with scumbag husbands who repeatedly cheat on them i have two girlfriends who [ __ ] husbands continually have affairs sometimes long-term ones with actual girlfriends sprinkled in with the occasional visit to paid prostitutes who are not being screened for sexual diseases one of the women is in her 50s and the other one is in her 60s and all they do is cry and [ __ ] and moan and complain about this to me and each other they say they are devastated and so unhappy so why do they stay do they really love these [ __ ] in one case there are no children involved in the other case the child has already left home is it simply because of resources and not wanting to go back to work is someone who has high self-esteem and self-respect would they put up with this coin flip go ahead jen yeah i can i can tackle some of that stuff um so the number one reason that they're they're likely to be sticking around is resources that they they again were everything you always start with the cost-benefit analysis as we talked about with the grieving example um and so if they are not if these women are not super financially secure or they're not they're not inferring that they could be completely secure independent of the husband um then they that's going to be the number one reason that people stay with with that we heard we heard scumbag [ __ ] and [ __ ] so we've got we got all the categories covered here um so even if they are financially secure you know they will stay for other reasons and you're giving a little clue in the answer that's uh you know we just talked about with the grieving question which they they're bitching and moaning to their girlfriends a lot so that's another example of like they're they're running a cost-benefit analysis where there's a big cost associated with filing for divorce and getting out of that relationship and moving out and finding a place and finding a new set of friends and doing i mean it's a big process if you're if you're in your 50s and 60s you're also running the cost-benefit analysis on the likelihood of finding another relationship which is sometimes not a very positive one so all things equal there's a there's greater benefit it's it's there's more energy conservation in just putting up with the crap sitting in the unpleasant relationship and sort of optimizing it as best as you can which includes getting a lot of social status from being the victim in this in this situation and getting the social feedback and the and the sort of false status that accompanies um that kind of social process if if the cost of leaving the relationship is high enough that you're very unlikely to act on it but you still want to get some status and you still want to sort of optimize your circumstances that's going to be an equilibrium that is pretty common to a lot of certain types of personalities are more likely to find themselves in that situation you know they're um more maybe a little more disagreeable uh you know there are a lot of things that could be going on but that's that's my dog is talking in the background there um so that those would be the main things that i would look at you just always want to always want to consider um that it's a lot harder to leave especially if there are kids involved and you've been you've been there for a really long time um and and people are running all kinds of analyses that you just can't see they may have other reasons for staying there that you you don't know um there you know there there could be all kinds of things going on and you just we never have as full a window into someone else's relationship is we think we do so that's those are all the things i would throw that question i'll see what doug has to add motown wanted to participate as well totally i think think of a person's mind as the united states in a presidential election year okay it's got 150 million con you know ideas both going different directions okay so and the bottom line is is that the decision incredibly you you got to go one of two ways and that that decision can be decided by an eyelash that's exact that's how that happens and so that's that literally it can be uh just by chance uh it can be just a tiny bit too expensive psychologically for and just enough votes say stay even though there's an incredible amount of other votes on the other side saying leave okay and so you're just like god i can't believe it you know this is decided by this much and it's like that's exactly how this works there can be um there can be a tremendous pressure on both sides of the decision the uh and and sometimes it can also be remarkably stable so that there can be huge pressure on both sides but if those pressures are equal the person stays right where they are what's interesting is what i what i do with folks is to for me to find out where those pressures are uh what i do is i do thought experiments and i say for example okay well suppose you're aunt millie okay uh you didn't know was rich turns out that she doesn't have any kids and she just uh she just died from in omaha and left you her heir to uh trust fund with his 250 000 a year tax free municipal bonds cash now do you stay in the relationship and when i've asked that question a significant percentage of women say i'd be out of there in five minutes okay so it's like okay now now i know where the pressure is and so that pressure uh as jen talks about can be for example it isn't that they're not competent it isn't that they don't have self-esteem it's that they that they uh they are uncertain that they could actually uh replace that financial security and usually you never can because the truth is is that that uh if you walk away from a spouse you know at 55 years old you could say well i've got it all set up and we've got this all it's all going to be okay yes but you you you know that your health may may deteriorate you could be in tough circumstances and two years from now you could come down with cancer and there's something extremely reassuring about being married and being sort of locked into a relationship where there's two people surviving so that's part of the in sickness and in health is in that is that sort of an indemnification against tragedy and so when you when you walk away from a marriage one of the things you feel is you're walking away from a a major insurance policy so even if the person is cheating on you and being in you know complete ass the truth of the matter is they're still married to you they haven't filed and there's a tremendous amount of social and and legal support for them to come to your aid if you're in serious trouble okay and even though you may not think about that consciously that's part of that big force that is keeping you in place right where you are is your sheer personal safety not to mention all the other things jen talks about i mean there's all there's a whole host so as we would argue we're never quick to judge the fact that from the outside from our perspective we say you're healthy you've got a lot of life ahead of you you're going to be fine financially what the hell are you doing and the truth of the matter is you can't judge what that personal mind uh all the way that they subjectively judge their whole existence there's no way that you can do it all you can hear is you can hear the cognitive dissonance okay just just like you can hear the cognitive dissonance in an election you got like the mind of the country is in tremendous dissonance well people's people's minds are in dissonance over these decisions and it can be uh puzzling why it is that they answer uh why their decision is the way it is but that's that's because there's great forces pushing both directions um another just just to kind of this this again touches on both the questions but yeah all of that is so true and part of why they are social they're they they're bitching and moaning about it to you all the time and it's very frustrating to you to be on the other side of that because you're giving them very good advice about you know you should leave you could stay with me you can sleep in my guest room i'll be there to support you there they are in part sometimes not necessarily but likely part of the obsession with with processing it with their social their social community could be that they are looking for that evidence to to tip the balance just slightly like if you were if you were their friend and you are enough of an alternative insurance policy that it suddenly makes it possible for them and this is they're not consciously aware that this is going on they're not like actively seeking they're not making the pro and con list and weighing it all out but there could be this sort of moment where you say something or you just give them enough unconditional feedback that shows them that you are supportive enough that they're willing to make the make the leap out of there um and that that can be a very frustrating process because again you're not you don't have a window into that you can't see that that's going on for them from your perspective they just they just loop around and around and around and they say the same thing and i've heard the story and i know the guy's an [ __ ] and why don't you leave um but that could be part of what's going on too yeah i have to say that sometimes so this is really uh entertaining because sometimes in in counseling over the last 25 years i've actually gone through this process with people and had the sentence that actually tipped the balance yeah right in front of me okay yeah and i've said things like well so worst case scenario do you have you know can you can you live with your mother it's like oh yes i could but like well what the hell yeah yeah i had to go home and live with my mother time or so what's the difference and just by having the attitude that that's no big status loss yeah that's no big deal that that status loss is transient and therefore not judged by by a solid member of the community is any big deal was enough to say fine then i can do it like suddenly the massive cost-benefit analysis winds up suddenly tipping 51.49 and now they can take action so this is uh i'm looking for those kinds of things i'm trying to find out where are they so unsure and where are they so disturbed over their calibration of to what the losses are going to be on one of the other side of the equation and uh and so i'm poking around trying to find out where those things are sometimes we can find it okay sometimes we can't sometimes it's so unconscious and complex that there is no one thread that is holding that is holding the uh the secret to that string so but sometimes there is and when you find it it's um it's it's marvelous to watch it it's like a bunch of dominoes all going one direction so uh that's that's how that works this is really interesting and i could really see how a session if somebody was in this predicament could help i just always wonder why do the guys want to stay i mean i just i just always feel bad for women in this situation because they seem so it really hurts them yeah it's uh well life's got some tough boxes aj sometimes they're just flat out tough well darn yeah i hate to break it to you okay that's what my mom always said growing up my mom used to say life is unfair and to that i would say well that in itself is unfair so okay so the next question's from a guy i love when guys write in because they're just not afraid to just tell it like it is so justin says my girlfriend and i have a pretty solid relationship the only thing we really fight about is my farting she says when i fart in front of her it's disrespectful and i should go into the other room i say she should think of it as a compliment that i feel comfortable to fart in front of her it would be very inconvenient for me to have to get up from the couch every time i have to fart i feel better god forbid that's settled that well it depends what you're watching i think he goes i feel this is a natural and normal bodily function and i don't understand what the big deal is that's really interesting now i i've never had such a question before and this so this is the first time that my mind is actually even started to look at it gen i mean uh uh the first thing that leaps to mind is your personality uh on this issue and then and then possibly socialization but yeah what are you thinking jen what what's going on yeah i i think that's exactly what it's it's primarily personality but but i my my uh lifetime of data collection on this question is that there is a major gender difference here and there is some socialization there is sort of a um the i i have never i i i well i don't want to say never but most women do not do not just let it rip while watching a movie or while hanging out they're gonna they're just gonna they're gonna absorb it they're gonna go in another room they're gonna they're not going to have this kind of interaction and most men are like what is the problem it's a normal bodily function and most women are bothered by it so this is this is totally there is a major gender divide here and i think a lot of it is um it is this is actually one of the rare things that comes down to a socialization process um that people grow up with that is modulated by personality so somebody who's much more agreeable uh even even being a male raised in this culture if you're super agreeable male particularly if you're under rewarded uh or you're over rewarded in the relationship so you're sort of feeling like you're on thin ice all the time and you don't want to offend the other person because you know you don't want to send them running away from you they're going to be more careful about that kind of thing so that that would be another part of that dynamic but um yeah this is this is i i have known many many friends who have struggled with this many men who don't understand i had a yeah i had a male friend say that his girlfriend must be paying someone in indonesia to do it for her [Laughter] my favorite my favorite was i uh i used to live in the in the like in the actual bay area in berkeley and i dated a lot of like buddhist guys you know this was in my buddhist period and so um there was one guy that i actually called at the time this was before i knew about behavioral genetics but i i called him the disagreeable russian because that's sort of that was who he was and he was very deep in his in his lineage and he did his you know his his 90-minute sadness every morning and we went camping once and you know farting next to you on the couch while watching movies one thing but doing it in a tent is quite another thing and he was just like just letting it go just and at some point i'm finally like could you please like just go outside and he's like oh well i'm really sorry if that offends you but that's just your reality your reality construction you're just you have figments that you're you're projecting into reality because we're all just energy and and this isn't really happening but your offense is is a part of your karma so that's that's one approach to it your reality is that you're leaving yeah that relationship did not last much longer if if you're gonna you're gonna do that to me in a very small two-person tent like you're not long for this world yeah i have actually a more general comment about this my internet may not be stable um so let me know but um and that is that that there's a there's a correct compromise and so let me explain to you what the correct compromise is on many things so if two people are are very um one of them's very neat and the other one's more of a slob the correct compromise is for the slob person to become neat it is not to be in the middle okay because the slob is literally noxious whether it's the slobbiness is noxious but being neat is not noxious to the slavic person it's just effort okay so that's that's the if one person is fastidious about and concerned about saving the other person to spend thrift then the right thing to do is to as much as possible by the finances but where there are joint decisions it's to be frugal because it's no no big problem for the uh for for uh you're better off frugal fundamentally so this is a uh the the way to compromise is the way in the in the manner of prudence and effort that's actually fair okay so you're if you are the person that is sitting on that side of the personality that and the same thing would be true with food okay so in other words the the the person that wants to eat crap can go eat crap somewhere else it's not a problem just it's nothing but hassle to you you want to go eat a a cheeseburger go have it but we're not having it here in this house okay we're not having the stuff that's gonna uh compromise my ability to do this well so the correct compromise here is get off the couch and don't don't irritate your partner for bad sex okay that's uh that that would be the reasonable the reasonable compromise is that direction not the other direction okay so uh so when we look at the solution to the conflict of interest is effort rather than noxiousness then the correct thing to do is for somebody to not be lazy and go to the effort to reduce the noxiousness so that's how that's how i look at what i call the correct compromise because people are confused about that why you know doesn't bother me any why shouldn't we just compromise somewhere in the middle because looking at your sloppy mess and having it all over my house is actually really disturbing to my mind when i clean it up beautifully you love it okay so therefore that's that's how that's what i call that that process uh jen thoughts on that that makes sense yeah that makes sense there's there's a point at which i mean this is where sort of this is the um the cb on the relationship can shift if you if you're insisting on that kind of that that sort of tilt because you might be dealing with a very distorted personality who is if you have a neat freak you know who is like sort of disproportionately bothered by a small mess then that's just that's what you're dealing with that's the nature of the relationship so if you if if the sort of the more disturbed person carries the day um if you adhere to that as the decision rule it may shift the cb on the entire relationship and i think a lot of people for various reasons the dynamics of the relationship they're not willing to do that and so the the more the sort of more disturbed person just lives with the simmering disturbedness um so that's that's very common the only other thing i would add to the flatulence question is um that i don't i don't think men appreciate how sexually unattractive it is so so that might that might tip your cb as well if you're if you're just you're you're sort of like oh what's the problem well there's there's a problem and that she she may not be as interested in activities that you might be interested in later on so keep that in mind so the female nervous system is a it's a delicate thing yes that makes perfect sense sure that's that's that is really that's very astute do you would you would your answer be the same if it was belching the same same thing i think it's maybe a little less um well i don't know that would be an individual personality personality basis thing but i think any sort of uh you know there's there's sort of a there's not there's a signal of low conscientiousness that accompanies it there's sort of a i think there's a little of the feeling that the female nervous system gets is a little sort of like um similar for both of those things yeah and also over um bodily problems yeah there's there's there's something about it that is like uh that conveys that for sure yeah a little conveyance of uh physiological and mental compromise even modestly okay it's it's uh it's it's almost evidence of some dysfunction yeah yeah i think there's a i saw a meme from the the great and powerful jordan peterson the other day that said a a good man is not a a well-behaved man a good man is a is a tortured man who has it under control so sort of this idea he's tapping into like i have a lot of quibbles with that interpretation but i do think there is something about masculinity that in its sort of um archetypal form that is like controlled aggression that's kind of like like i i have i have my animal nature sort of dialed in and i'm not i'm not like just it's i i have it channeled in an appropriate direction and there's there's something about the the letting loose of the bodily function that is is a little bit of slippage around that so that could be disturbing to a lot of them really good thinking that's great yeah yeah all right you know it's it's i wish it could just be okay for everybody to fart and belch because i'm hosting this gi health summit and so many people it's not on purpose you know they're not doing it to be mean or funny sometimes people with certain gi conditions they can't help it i wish we could just normalize these things yeah well of course if that's what you're dealing with and that's like that's that's a separate i i have seen i've seen both versions um where it's sort of there there's a there's a degree at which it becomes performative there's an exaggerated kind of like um like the the yeah there's a performative aspect to it that is different than somebody who is you know captive by a gi situation where they they need to express themselves so performative is almost as good of a word as possib perverse whatever that other word you said so i like it i like it that's great so jessica watching live said that farting is negative foreplay there you go yeah i think for a lot of women that's very true and i would assume for a lot of men too i would assume that you know i don't have the egocentric bias from the male perspective but i think a lot of women keep that sort of thing to themselves because they're perceiving that it would be sexually unattractive so whether or not that's true i think that is a gen i mean doug can can fill in but i think that that's going to be part of the dynamic a lot of the time well speaking of sexual unattractiveness you're going to love this question from cam dear doctors do you think it's wrong if pets stay on the bed during sex yes yeah i think that's a little i don't know for me it would be weird it'd be weird that's how i it's my first that's my first take but i'm sure this is individual differences obviously yeah maybe it depends what the pet is yeah yeah all right thanks so much just seems it just seems logistically more fraught with peril and um also yeah like why do you want an audience a great example of the correct compromise yes yes correct compromise is that if one of the two people says listen that i'm not comfortable with it then that's it the correct yeah go ahead no i was going to say i love this idea of the correct compromise and especially how you put it towards people that have you know struggle with food i think it's just i've never heard you phrase it like that and i think it's great so if somebody has two dogs the correct compromise would be just keeping one dog on the bed obviously all right what else we got okay so here we go from lynn there we go dear doctors i'm a health coach and i'm wondering if there is such a thing as a victim mentality it seems that most of the women i work with have this poor me pitiful pearl mentality where everything bad happens to them and they're constantly attracting bad people and situations into their lives can this cycle ever really be broken and how can i help them well you just wandered into uh uh the the genius of dr jenn hawk and her work for 10 years and so the uh it's the answer to that question is beyond the scope of this discussion right now it's uh certainly one that will be painted out here over the next year uh but if jen can give us a the tiniest of synopsis just to answer the question i think that's probably the the right thing to do for for now yeah i mean i i think i i have already touched on sort of some of the central components in in both the questions about grieving and and why people don't leave relationships the the the thinking here is that there's always people you've got to look at at people from the perspective of their individual difference so their personality their personality is going to drive a lot of how they see the world and the options that they perceive is available to them to deploy to get what they want in life so you've got to look at personality first and then you look at the strategies that are available to people to to optimize their lives and so when you have somebody who is sort of prone to um feeling a little disagreeable feeling a little victimized we all know people who kind of have just a little more of that in their personality than other people a lot of it just has to do with baseline optimism so we we talk a lot about optimism as being a function of agreeableness more than anything else um agreeableness and openness and so if you've got somebody who's not very optimistic they're kind of an eeyore in general that's their personality that's just genetically who they are and a lot of those people will fall into these dynamics that i was talking about earlier where they stumble across some social payoffs some interpersonal payoffs from from doing a lot more complaining and a lot more whining about their lives then then maybe they otherwise might if they were forced to kind of just suck it up so if they're if if they're around people who are you know giving them an audience and giving them some social status in response to their complaining that is going to become more incentivized over time just because they already have that they have that chip in their personality to begin with so it gets it gets a little exaggerated and they will find more opportunities to use it so i think it is fair to say that there are some people who are more prone to that than others i think everybody can get into sort of a a pessimistic complaining state i'm a very optimistic agreeable person i have been an eeyore in my life before for sure when things have been going badly or if i'm having a crappy day or i've got bad pms or whatever it is um but some people occupy that space more regularly than other people um and there's there's so much more to say on this question it's um it really is we're we're sort of a lot of this is in our book that's coming out next year um and my dissertation and my book after our book covers a lot of this ground but um it's definitely you always want to be looking at behavior as as sort of what what what problem are people trying to solve and how are they trying to solve that problem through their genetic personalities we've talked before about personality being very genetic uh it's not their fault that they're disagreeable and that they see the world a little more pessimistically than you do that's how people are wired um but there is this kind of strategic use of the environment to to get what they want more of the time right so from the standpoint of health coaching this is pretty tough stuff so the uh uh jan and i have a of a host of strategies uh that are aimed at this problem uh that doesn't mean they're magic and so if you are a uh therapist in this arena coach which is the same thing uh you can you can expect that this is gonna be frustrating and that that you're going to you're running up against a wall a bunch of times and so um so don't don't despair over this and uh it's sort of uh conventional therapy and therapeutic approaches are not likely to be effective at all uh we have some secret sauce uh that is uh that that can can be helpful uh it's not gonna be magic but uh but worry about this problem later when the when our book comes out you will see the detailed logic of this and how to approach it clinically because that's a big reason why we're writing this uh but but for now just suffice it to say that you're not doing anything wrong as a therapist if you feel like you're running into uh something that appears not solvable that that would not surprise me at all and uh don't despair over it and minimize your effort and angst about this because essentially that's a little that's like a storm uh down in the gulf that's swirling and it has a tremendous amount of momentum uh and it and it's going to it's going to keep swirling you know until essentially it hits hits a landfall and uh that breaks it apart and that's uh kind of what jen was describing and that is that it will continue unless the circumstances change that force the individual to adopt a different strategy that they that uh that essentially by force that they actually have to abandon that strategy this is usually they don't have to abandon that strategy so hence 25 years of psychoanalysis if you've got enough money that therapist will keep we'll keep that storm swirling all the way down which which is actually that points to the important principle of the difference between you as a coach who's trying to solve a problem and move a person ahead rather than keeping them in the eye of the storm so those are two different jobs um and so a traditional psychotherapist who's like we'll come back next week and we'll continue talking about how bad the weather is that's different than you know we're we've got this problem we're trying to solve we're we're trying to move you forward in life and that can be very frustrating if you've got somebody who wants to stay in the storm and so in the in the coaching role and in in sort of results oriented psychotherapy which is not most psychotherapy but it is the kind of work that we do um you are going to run against the limitations of the personality uh sometimes and so that what doug is saying about not don't take that too personally don't think that there's something you know wrong with your recommendations or your program because you are going to run into people who are just not ready to make that action leap into changing their circumstances because the cost benefit is not there they want to they want to continue in the storm so learn to recognize that and not let it ruin your day there you go perfect nice uh melissa says dr hawk for president and karen says and you guys know melissa and scott and karen says can dr hawk help somebody who wants to become more optimistic i really want to work on being less negative and complaining less yeah i mean i we can't change your personality so your personality is absolutely genetically you know set in stone more or less but we can shift your perspective on things open you up to different possibilities in the world um like just kind of put sort of manufacture that uh field of possibilities that is usually what a com accompanies uh just inherent natural optimism so a lot of times people will feel very pessimistic because they just haven't seen they have they're just looking at a tiny little piece of the picture and they need somebody to illuminate other possibilities for them and that will naturally move their optimism um in pace with those possibilities so that that sort of thing we can definitely help with i can't i can't change you to be sort of more of a pollyanna just genetically though the thing about jen is she thinks what i'm thinking except that she says about it [Music] sometimes sometimes you say what i'm thinking much better so it's a no good reciprocity like i'm the composer like i i wrote that you know i wrote it that she could play it better richard dawkins wrote it yeah yeah all right nice well first i have to thank era vreed for the super chat donation very much appreciate it see when i'm gonna guest certain guests just bring out the the generosity of people so two questions do you want me to go to the one on self-esteem or the one on coven it's really up to you guys ah well it's god i don't know let's go to self-esteem okay all right this is from faith can you ask him what the best first steps are to help someone build self-esteem yeah uh let me explain there's a lot of confusion about what self-esteem is so let's make sure we understand what we're talking about um people are this is such a definitional problem that i go back and forth in my own life about what i'm going to do about it and so because i know that the world is completely confused about what self-esteem is even the feeling that i'm talking about the self-esteem is not the same thing as self-confidence self-confidence is an entirely different phenomenon than self-esteem the uh self-esteem is a feeling of moral rightness it is a feeling that arrives when your internal audience watches your efforts and signals to you that they are respectful of the efforts that you are putting in self-confidence is a feeling that takes place when you have evidence that you are going to be successful in competition those are completely completely two different things when they come together um it's ideal so for example a uh olympic olympic athlete that is working diligently every day and he can uh he or she can watch their times in the pool and they can see that they are they're struggling and sometimes they're going forward and going back and over this year they see that you know they the coaches look at their tapes and they see where there could be problems and they do a computer analysis of their technique and then they get a specialized coach to change part of the technique and then they work diligently to change the technique and then they look at uh the times uh and they see that the times are slightly improving now what is this process the process is the individual is working super diligently to do the very best they can through that process sometimes it looks like they're making improvements and sometimes it doesn't okay now at the end of the day when they arrive at the olympic stadium and they're going to compete they their confidence may not be high in other words they may feel like you know what from everything i can tell i'm looking at probably sixth place okay so that's probably where i'm at so they're not brimming with self-confidence at all however their self-esteem can be superb because they feel like i've done everything that i can do okay i have worked extremely hard they can have a tremendous feeling of pride that they have done an outstanding job and they've made the most of their native abilities okay when they swim they swim to the best of their ability and they they come in seven okay now are they disappointed there's some disappointment but they look at their time guess what it's the third best time they ever get in a pool and they're gonna have a great deal of pride pride is the natural derivative that is a that is a part of the feeling of self-esteem it's essentially the the most impactful feeling that you get out of self-esteem the other side of self-esteem is self-loathing and disgust that's when you didn't do the work that's when you chose to be self-indulgent and eat fried chicken and skip practice okay that's when yourself your self-esteem comes from essentially an internal audience that is watching your efforts and judging you as if other people are watching your efforts okay and so now you may be self-indulgent and your self-esteem really isn't that hard on you it's like eh okay it's mediocre your self-esteem doesn't necessitate that you do world-beating effort but it will uh if you have important competitive problems like for example you're trying to lose 50 pounds and it's important to you socially you you know that this would be a big deal to you you know that it's necessary for you to compete in whatever arenas that you that you're competing for so uh let's suppose that you're trying to be head counselor to weight loss clinic it would be pretty important for you to lose that 50 pounds and so as a result uh if you had started to gain 20 pounds we would expect that your self-esteem mechanism would be pretty disgusted with you and you would be giving you the internal feedback of what the hell is this you know why are we being self-indulgent here what what is your answer for why it is that you're doing this that is the self-esteem mechanism basically raising an alarm that you are you are on a bad competitive path we will also expect that your self-confidence is reduced because if you were trying to get that promotion and now you realize everybody can see that you have gone backwards that your self-confidence is also taking a hit now people confuse these two things as if they're the same thing they are not they're actually two completely independent feelings we actually uh in our language we say that they're saying the same thing okay it's like oh give them an award or you know you know the uh uh like oh i just got you know three job offers that's good for my self-esteem it actually has nothing to do with your self-esteem the three job offers have to do with your self-confidence that's completely different issue the self-esteem was what it took to you know what it took uh what process did you go through to get ready to apply for those jobs did you do an excellent job if you did a so-so job on everything and you got the job offers every anyway your self-confidence mechanism is like hey what the hell okay you're pretty happy but you are actually not full of pride pride is only going to come as a result of earning the self-esteem that's why on our website the quote is happiness comes from earning esteem in the right way from the people that matter the most important person that you get happiness from is earning self-esteem earning esteem from yourself is actually the most important audience that there is okay so what are the steps to earning self-esteem what is the secret there is no secret the the secret is that you you are the only person that you can earn self-esteem from there's no other way to do it other people may cheer you and give you a lot of feedback and that may feel good but that's not self-esteem that's esteem they may signal to you that they're going to hire you because they think you're wonderful because of something that you did or that they thought that you could do that's esteem that influences your confidence and that can feel very good but that's not the same thing as self-esteem okay self-esteem is the only source of happiness that we have any control over you don't have control over how confident you're going to be when you face competitive problems you have no control over that at all you have no control over whether or not you're going to get positive feedback from other people for whatever work you do or what you know your self presentation you have no control over that at all the only thing you have control over is your self-esteem and the control that you have over your self-esteem is entirely different than the control that modern psychology thinks you have it's actually completely opposite modern psychology thinks you have control over your self-esteem mechanism by talking back to your critical think thoughts inside your head in cognitive therapy they call it talking back to the internal critic okay uh it's also self-affirmation okay now that isn't how you influence the self-esteem mechanism self-esteem mechanism is not subject to propaganda the self-esteem mechanism arrives out of your own internal audience watching your diligent efforts or watching you do mediocre effort or watching you do minimal effort or doing medium decent effort your self-esteem mechanism is a grade as opposed to your appropriate diligence in search for improvement that's what it is if you if you earn a b it's giving you a b if you earn a d it's giving you a d if you earn a plus it's giving you an a plus it cannot help but give you an a plus it's an automated neurological device okay there is no other way to get an a plus you can't get an a plus through a mediocre effort even if you have spectacular results you can get self-confidence and you can get esteem and you can get a lot of wins in the world and that will give you happiness but you weren't control of that happiness other people's feedback was the controlling factor the only happiness mechanism that you have control over is the indirect control of the self-esteem mechanism you can't talk the self-esteem mechanism into giving up self-esteem to you all you can do is do diligent excellent effort if you do diligent excellent effort then the self-esteem mechanism has to give you self-esteem and it will okay so the beauty of this insight is to know that you have 100 percent indirect control over the most important source of your own happiness which is the self-esteem mechanism that's what you have okay it turns out that if you take advantage of that fact and diligently work as best you can at whatever whatever self-improvement or uh project that you are after what will also happen is your self-confidence mechanism will watch your improvements okay and the self-confidence mechanism will also be a source of increased satisfaction and excitement in the system but what i want people to do the only secret i know of this is to cons to understand and cleave in your own mind that there are two different sources of happiness and they're actually quite different one of them is the self-esteem mechanism the feeling of rightness that i have earned the pride that i've gotten pride because i earned it through my effort and my own internal system watched me earn it okay the other side is the self-confidence that comes with positive feedback that's wonderful everybody loves applause everybody loves to see improvement on their times okay in the pool that self-confidence mechanism says look look we're two seconds better and we can imagine now the girls going wild and having our picture on the cover of sports illustrated okay so that's the self-confidence mechanism is imagining or receiving positive feedback but that is an entirely different process that we're not in control of we hope to get self-confidence we hope to earn a scheme and we hope to be rewarded in personal relationships with other people as a result of success but i'm telling you you can't count on success the one thing that you can count on is self-esteem self-esteem will come if you earn it and that's the most important lesson that i've learned in my career okay that makes sense okay i hope uh i hope that distinction is clear as confusing as the as it is with our language i almost wish those those two words were radically different words that they didn't have self in front of them because they they wind up uh confusing people everybody understands they want their kids not to have self esteem they want their kids to have self-confidence because they want their kids to be successful because if they're successful then they're going to be independent and they're going to be successful in mating and successful and climbing dominance hierarchies and winning relationships so they want their kids to be self-confidence they love to see the self-confidence because those are indications of success they're not thinking about self-esteem okay self-esteem comes from the kid studying diligently and then burning whatever the hell it is that they get honestly self-confidence can come with with the fact that everybody's bragging about them you know what i mean because they got a good grade screw the grade what i care about is the self-esteem that came from their diligent excellent effort focus on that process and let's not worry about in other words it's all about what we call process over outcome okay all right jen how was that for a rant no it was beautiful it was beautiful i love the there's really some really good little pearls of wisdom in there that i've never heard you say just that way before so that was great yeah as a parent if you're in the position where you're thinking you're going to go lobby the teacher you know you're the helicopter parrot and you're going to go lobby the teacher to improve your child's self-esteem you're actually undermining their self-esteem by by going and trying to to you know advocate on their behalf in that way and that's where that confusion of self-confidence and self-esteem is is getting confused and you are you are promoting the wrong direction and you're depriving your child of that experience of actually going through the process and building it up from the ground so yeah it was a great great set of examples and hopefully really clear to people nothing to add yeah people loved it you you're everything has to be listened to twice though that's my opinion when you guys speak so that's amazing well we can end it here or you could just briefly just the coveted question was just basically have you guys changed your position on that it's just a bad flu oh um i think we know um i think we know it's a it's it's a very bad flow the uh i also uh i think and of course this remains to be seen the uh i think that this by far is the worst year we're ever going to see it in other words i think i i believe that we're going to find that next year is a cakewalk compared to this year the uh i also believe that the evidence to me right now looks like it's in a pretty significant receding process as it has demonstrated itself to to do throughout europe for example so the italians and the french and the spanish and the english didn't suddenly become ingenious two months ago two months ago cove had basically worked its way through their population and they have essentially almost no deaths in the last 60 days so the same thing will happen to the united states uh we are not we are not caught forever in a terrible tragedy that we're never going to get out of it's amazing that the entire media seems to think so uh and some very brilliant people seem to think so i am personally astounded that that's what anybody's inferences are based on what it is that we see all over the world where where uh other places have watched the virus go through go through a population and then we then there's essentially a natural immunity level that takes place and a virus works its way down to zero or close so i think that cova is this is a a one-time major price that our species had to pay for a virus that it wasn't well prepared for uh again our position hasn't changed very much and that the the average age of the average victim is over 80 years old the more people have died over 80 and have died under 80. very few people that are under under 70 years old have died of the virus almost nobody in the world that is under 40 dies of the virus it's essentially zero probability and so the virus is essentially a an evolutionary stressor uh to a population in other words evolutionary stressors uh tip over the weakest people uh the weakest animals in a population uh this is not you know it's pretty it's a pretty big expensive thing but when you talk about the total amount of year years or days per life lost coveted in the population of human beings on earth the days of average individual losing life to covetous is almost none it's very very few days per per capita or being lost to this uh quite a bit days uh there will be less days of life lost uh for uh to covet then will be days of life lost to the flu probably this year okay so uh from that perspective as a mathematician and an actuary um it is it is no worse than a bad flu if we if we compute it from that mathematical perspective which is a very accurate scientific method of doing it i think we can see that it in terms of its widespread impact and how many how many people it bumped into the grave i think we can see that it was worse than than a bad flu this year but it's a one-time shot and that's how i believe this is all going to play out jen thoughts on that is that does that make sense no i would just point people if they're they're curious you did the full podcast not that long ago devoted to primarily covered discussion so um for even more in-depth you know walking through the numbers and everything people can go back maybe three podcasts ago maybe four um not within the last month or so i forgot about that yeah yeah and i would also like we we were never i i just my disagreeable hackles get up a little bit when i when people try to paint us as part of the the cove denier cabal like we've never denied that it is brutal and that it is a very very nasty nasty experience and you don't want to get covered um we are pro pro masking we're we're not we're not in the conspiratorial denier camp so i just want to make that clear to people before they lump us in with that so you're not only pro masking but your masks match your dog's scarf they do they do i have i have fabulous fabulous uh synchronized costuming going on over here cheryl who's watching live says it's podcast number 234 thank you cheryl oh thank you thank you and people want to know when they can expect the book and is the title is steam dynamics no we're still we're still deciding yeah yeah deep secret that uh we will uh we it's sometime next year we just don't know when if if if jen will just get something done i see i see that's the current narrative we we got uh somewhat derailed we were supposed to uh be writing this summer in in hawaii that was the whole point of moving to hawaii and were our move was delayed by several months because of kovid um and now of course doug is back on the mainland and so we are we're continuing to be bumped out from our intense writing time but uh yeah we're looking to be probably finishing the the bulk of the writing this this late fall and winter and then uh you know editing and making sure people can catch our grievous errors and and getting it out to the world next year yeah and if you guys sign up at esteemdynamics.com to be a member i think it's like 99 for a lifetime and you'll get a signed copy of the book so everybody head over to esteemeddynamics.com and sign up and if you have a want a private consultation because some of the questions guys i'm sorry but these are consults i can't ask questions that are like eight paragraphs it's just that's not fair so you guys do need to book a console and they're fabulous trust me i've had them they are so inspiring and enlightening guys thank you so much and guys they'll be back on the 15th of october so if you didn't get your questions answered you have another chance or join their community where they'll do a couple of live q and a's every month so thanks again dr lyle dr hawk we always love having you guys on the show it's great to see you good to see you thank you and guys thank you for watching another episode of chef aj live please come back tomorrow at 11 o'clock when i'll be having my teacher from culinary school chef elena love showing us how to make sauerkraut because at 2 p.m we have dr vanessa mendez a plant-based gastroenterologist is going to tell you why you need to eat these fermented foods take care everybody bye dr lyle dr hawk have a good night
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