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Episode 145: Eating healthy while socializing during the holidays, live caller
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today's theme is we are getting into the winter holiday season and many of the listeners and friends have been asking me well how do you impatience here at the fasting escape I'd been asking well how do you get through the holidays because not only do we have to socialize with friends and family that maybe we haven't seen all year long but we also have to put up with some of the cross-examination that comes with being slightly different when it comes to our diet and our lifestyle and if that's not enough we've got politics to deal with and all the you know conversations around the dinner table that tend to stress some people out so today's show we're going to be talking about how we kind of manage that in with regards to healthy eating so dr. Lau do you I mean when you get together Thanksgiving for the holidays do you you know you have like the stereotypical people at your dinner table once we'll talk politics and making a program yeah yeah there's a key to a good life you build them a perfect solution right there there we go podcast is over now we now we know that do oh let's let's move on go to questions all right dear dr. Lyle this one is about how to just live healthy in general dr. Lyle I'm 65 I'm on mild cholesterol and blood pressure pills but I feel very tired a lot I'm overweight I follow a plant-based diet as much as I possibly can but when I'm with my friends and family no one really supports this they joke about me living on leaves and such so I'd love to hear any suggestions on how to deal with this situation I've lost quite a bit of weight due to your teachings and so they're logical and they make total sense but any advice on losing more and how to deal with my friends and family would be much appreciated well let's see now I mean this is sort of the omnipresent problem facing people it sounds like they've the person has done some you know it's done a pretty good job and it's on a mild amount of medications even a mild amount of those medications can can try it can drag your life down so sounds like the persons on cholesterol and blood pressure medications depending upon what those are those can have non-trivial side effects in terms of your how vital you feel I would say that in most cases those medications are not indicated so I'm not I'm not here to get cross crosswise with the AMA and have somebody hang me for giving advice so I don't know who the specific person is I'm not giving them specific advice but I would certainly say that it's worth possibly seeking out a challenging second opinion on whether or not these medications are appropriate the for example I think that there's been a dispute or a disagreement in the europeans versus the americans with respect to when you start medicating high blood pressure a number of years ago in England the British Medical Council did determined by looking at the evidence that it was not worth medicating until the person was at 160 over a hundred or above in the United States they'll diagnose you at 140 over 90 and they'll start medicating you at that level there's a reason and they pushed it down to start to warn people and start to give them medication even at 135 the reason for this isn't to save anybody because there's no there's no support for that scientifically the whole reason is is that there's huge numbers of people that will throw a 138 systolic blood pressure when they're in the doctor's office you should also know that you shouldn't be diagnosed with blood pressure blood pressure unless you have three consecutive readings over time that that indicate that your blood pressure is high usually when people take the blood pressure on a doctor's office it's quite a bit higher than it really is that it would be if they were taking it on their own at home that's that's just because people get adrenalin at a doctor's office and typically the amount the increase the amount of points is something between 10 and 20 points it's just a pretty big so typically they'll diagnose you with hypertension off a single reading which is not the appropriate way to do it and they'll do it you know in the doctor's office maybe you have a 1:45 so it's already 10 to 20 points high and it's been done done once this is how people wind up on high blood pressure pills for their life and they have negative consequences in terms of their vitality and they're not helping them at all in terms of their mortality statistics now so that's just the blood pressure story now I don't know the reason is I'm suspecting this is that the person said well I'm mild cholesterol and blood pressure so I have no idea what their situation is but I'm going to suspect that typically they're probably being overmedicated meaning medicated at all the cholesterol medications are pretty well also a loser the there's strong evidence that that this has been way way distorted in the reports of any utility of the stuff so obviously everybody's situation is different but I'm not hearing about a person with a cardiovascular threat of significance they're not reporting that 65 years old moderately overweight they're being medicated as are people are typically being medicated for zero or incredibly small benefits that would be dwarfed by diet and lifestyle changes that are possible for the person to do themselves so this person has already done some diet lifestyle changes hasn't had some effects you know there's all kinds of ways to attack the problem of taking the next step they say they're doing a pretty good job on a on a healthy diet so you could always do a better job on a healthy diet I would I would be looking to try to get a consultation with a physician who's a little wiser than the average bear you might need to get a phone consult with someone who is who would be holding a challenging second opinion about whether they ought to be medicated given the situation that the red if there you know if it's close inconvenient and you can afford it come to fasting escape for goodness sakes get get a fast get yourself your palate a little bit cleaner a little bit sharper drop some of the extra weight that you're frustrated with get rid of the medications you know this is what we see I can't tell you this this is absolutely routine at the mcdougal program which is you know a whole diet lifestyle you know what you call it whole educational experience so it's an expensive thing but we we do this routinely we'll have 40 people coming in there you know somewhat overweight on hypertensive meds on cholesterol medications not feeling that good and what happens in in ten days we turn it around and so this is so this person not feeling that good probably over medicated and the ship isn't quite tight enough what I would tell you to do is if you can come out to one of these programs great if you can't then you can do it yourself you're but it would behoove you to get some assistance or at least agreement with if you don't want to face the idea of getting another consult with another doctor talk to your doctor about the notion of running an experiment and weaning you down off the medications as you tighten up your diet lifestyle for the next few weeks and let's just see what happens to the numbers and let's just see whether or not there's quote any pressing need for those medications and let's see how you feel you're probably a few weeks away from dropping some weight feeling much better and not being on those medications so anyway that's what I'm thinking and that's probably the way to go fantastic and if if you are thinking of the fasting scape just go to fasting escape com McDougal program is over in Santa Rosa so that's dr. MacDougall's health and medical centers it's a great program when I was at true north we should go there and watch some of the talks there was really really fascinating so my question yeah you know what I really love though is watching you and Geoff Nova kind of battle it out with with your introductions but very but you bet alright what else we got alright so our next question is about struggling with the ego trap and healthy eating and body image dr. Lisle I'm a 29 year old woman over the years I've been into fitness and Whole Foods vegan living I've managed to get the body that I've always wanted six-pack lean etc but this has led me straight into the ego trap as people have seen me like that online and in person now I'm scared to be seen around when I'm not in peak condition like I am at the moment I feel that that is what is expect to me and I'm failing and so I withdraw and it's gotten to the point where I can't even look at my own body when I'm alone and I find it difficult to shower and change clothes as I feel exposed I wear baggy clothing it gets in the way of my relationship and I've also began overeating I eat an SOS free diet but I began I'd begun over consuming bananas dates nuts and oat balls things like that and it's just a loop of me saying to myself you're failing you're fat you're failing you're fat over and over in my own head it's becoming quite intrusive into my life which I also beat myself up about so my question is as an adult how can I get myself out of this ego trap fabulous question go to fasting escape I did it all right the UH let's see now what I would say would be the following that what we have is a it's interesting who that I have no idea of course who this person is but it sounds to me like they they may have a following online for goodness sakes so they they they're they have some degree of some non-trivial degree at least in their own their own internal experience of where their existences is that they have a substantial amount of pseudo esteem so people people know of them and they they don't know they'd actually don't know our person but they they think they know them and they they admire them for their whole foods vegan lean body etc okay so what we've got here is a panic about the the dynamics between pseudo esteem versus self esteem the what we want to do the way we get out of the ego trap is we we actually back up and attempt to attack the fundamentals of what it is that we're really trying to accomplish so sometimes this is a little bit unclear so if the person is trying to look as good as they possibly can on social media so that they can get followers and and I don't know sell a book or something that that's a problem and so we and when I say it's a problem it what I mean is is that what we need to do when we're in trouble is we need to we need to figure out what end it is that we are seeking what is the most important end that we're seeking and if it's you know seeking a celebrity then that's one thing if it's actually being healthy and living a healthy lifestyle and then anything that follows from that that follows from it or font is fine but but this is the the most important component of this process then that's what we focus on and what we're going to do is we're going to focus on that that healthy living is or healthful situation and essentially the aesthetics that result from being healthy are going to be the result of executing fundamentals so our job is to back up and and essentially get a list together a relatively short list of the fundamentals that are required to execute in this this person is pretty driven so if we want to put the put a goal at excellent health then that's fine so we put a list together of the fundamentals that are required for excellent health and then what it is that we're going to do is we're going to have essentially a daily checklist that we can make on a computer or we can you know Xerox little forms if you're like me and from the 19th century that we're going to what we're going to do is we're going to have a essentially a plan that we're going to execute on now the plan is not going to be to be to be perfect plan is going to be to be good and it's going to be good enough it's going to require some degree of relatively impressive vigilant diligence and what we're what we're going to be doing here is we're actually trying to learn a very important lesson when the most important lessons that a person can ever learn in life and that is that what we're going to be making the priority in this thing is going to be self-esteem not esteem the so we're going to be learning about the self-esteem mechanism and the way the self-esteem mechanism works is you have an internal audience that's watching your performances from day to day and at this point what's happening is our person is in the ego trap and therefore she's actually reacting against the pressures of the ego trap she's kicking over the table she's not going all the way to french fries and hamburgers but what she's doing is she's just essentially feeling the pressure that the bar is just too high and the expectations are too high and so she's kicking over the table and willfully effectively self-destructing that's exactly what people in the ego trap do you're so frustrated and you're feeling too much pressure and you you relieve the pressure in effect by demonstrating both in this case to the internal audience and to anybody else who's watching that you are really not trying so you cannot be judged on what the outcome is it's a brutal trap it's like a vise on a person's well-being and their progress in life towards anything and so the way we get out of it is we back it up and we say okay now wait a second what we're going to do is we're going to be changing the goal and it's a tricky little shift because the human nature is absolutely designed designed for outcomes it's not designed for process the outcomes it's designed for are the adulation or respect or love of other people or that's what it's after what we're going to need to do is we're going to subvert that and we're going to go instead for for admiration that comes from within we're coming we're aiming at self-esteem now the self-esteem process is is your internal audience that is watching you will have a natural psychological reaction and communication to you the self-esteem mechanism is not you it's effectively other people it might as well be other little tiny little people populating you inside your head and so what that self esteem mechanism does were that the internal audience what that does is it signals to you just as if real people were watching you it signal signals to you what they think of your performance now when you do one day of your checklist your internal audience is not going to applaud you they're not you you will not feel an immense relief of an increase of positive feedback from your internal audience to your esteem meter so a war to yourself in other words you're you will not be feeling some surge of internal well-being you might but you probably won't and the reason why is that what the what this mechanism is the self-esteem mechanism is a mechanism of repetition so effectively what that feeling is is the reputation that you have with yourself that is a that's almost an exact quote from Nathaniel Branden who who was a pioneer in thinking about self-esteem you know 40 years ago so the so let's think about this that if you if you have somebody that's consistently late for work and they tell the boss now I'm going to come in I'm going to start coming in on time this is completely unimpressive and the boss will not change their feelings about the person one bit if they come in the next day on time the boss will still not change their opinion substantially at all on one day's basis on two days basis it will still not change and on three days basis it will barely change at all but on 10 days basis it will change if a person who's been unreliable and suddenly for ten straight days they are there on time the boss cannot help but change his or her opinion of the individual now they don't say oh my god your reliable person what they say is ha I am respecting the performance that I've been seeing okay I feel more positively towards you that's precisely what the internal audience will feel towards the self so as the self starts to work diligently at the fundamentals the the first thing the internal audience may say is hmm you know you're kind of out of shape and you're not quite as fancy as you should be and one day's work didn't change anything I'm not been impressed with how it is that you look or anything that you're doing so don't expect there to be a transformation from the internal audience to the esteem meter in a day because it doesn't work that way now the bummer is that's just when you need it okay you need it most early but that isn't how it works just like you you know when you're in trouble at work and you really might get fired because you've got a bad reputation for being a flake and coming in late you know you would really like to get an increase in security by and a big positive feedback for showing up on time one day but they won't give it to you because they're not impressed but if you you ten days in a row suddenly they're starting to shift out is that they think about you and the same exact thing happens when we when there's any area of our life and it doesn't matter what it is it could be finances it could be a personal health and fitness it could be how orderly our home is it could be our credit it could be you know how we've treated members of our family it could be how we've treated a primary partner in a relationship if they're no matter what the situation is if we have been doing mediocre work now our self-esteem mechanism has been giving us feedback that we've been doing mediocre work and the way it will do that is it will have a feeling of disgust and disappointment and that that feeling of not being right with the world we haven't done very well that we've been disappointing or we've actually been disgusting whether that be whether that be in performance and abilities and execution or whether it's been a deeper and more bizarre moral type issue where we really haven't been that honest - haven't been honest enough and haven't been fair enough okay whatever the issues are the solution is to get to the fundamentals of whatever it is required with respect to these achievements and start to check those things off and we set very reasonable goals so we don't set the goal of well I'm going to go out and make you know a sale this week in real estate because I'm feeling down on myself because I haven't been successful and I went to a you know a sales seminar with Tony Robbins and he said to think big this is not going to do it the concept of self-talk is nonsense self-talk isn't something that you talk yourself into that's going to change anything self-talk it's actually the result of deep unconscious algorithms are reporting to you about what they think of your performance okay so people try to solve the problem of self-esteem crises like this down the notion is is that you need to speak differently to yourself and take it easy yourself and quit beating yourself up never going to happen what you're getting when you hear the self criticism translated in English in your own mind that is your internal audience reporting to you it's giving you a message about why it is that you're in trouble and how this entire performance is very very dicey now the reason you're doing it is because you have actually had the bar set too high by somebody and as a result you're in the ego trap which is this very bizarre motivational dilemma where we have more to lose than we have to gain by putting our best foot forward okay so what we're going to do the way we're going to get out of that ego trap is we're going to say listen what do we after what we're after is not the achievements that are going to WoW the audience were after the achievements that are going to impress the internal audience and those achievements are going to be diligence the internal audience will become very fair and actually readjust its expectations when it watches us make great efforts but not have necessarily great results and so it's an extremely fair mechanism if we give it a chance so the solution to this young woman's dilemma is to have a checklist of things that she needs to do every day that are that are very good does not have to be perfect but they're us to be a list of things this is what you're going to do okay and you're going to do these things and you're going to do them over and over and over for many days in a row and what you are watching for is not the one and a half or two pounds that you're going to lose yeah you might watch for that but I don't care and that's not the keys to the prison door okay the keys to the prison door is you watching very carefully your internal audience you need to watch how it works this is the key to the prison door for the rest of your life okay feelings of malaise ego trap overwhelm you know cell destructive feelings etc this is what you need to learn you need to learn that the nature of the mechanics the psychological mechanics of the internal audience and the self-esteem mechanism once you do this if you do this you you trust me ok take a leap of faith because you know we got nothing else to do nothing else is going to work don't go to the hypnotist don't go to the fancy seminar no need to do it ok what you need to do is make your checklist and don't make it low make it that you would be reasonably impressed with it ok reasonably impressed with the performance but it's doable then you do it every day ok you do that thing every day and even the most punitive nasty you know way to high-pressure eyes personality that has a very you know rough and difficult to impress internal audience trust me in two weeks that thing starts to be impressed and when it is and when you feel the internal audience starting to shift and give you a feeling there's an unmistakable feeling that comes and the feeling is pride ok that you can't help but know what that feeling feels like you feel proud ok there's only one thing that does that creates that feeling and that's a internal audience saying well done you've done a good job I'm important you know I'm impressed with your efforts not necessarily impressed with any outcome that I've seen but I'm impressed with the effort that's what we're looking for ok when you see that happen you you will discover that this is a huge lever and a major percentage of the variance that is determining your happiness so your happiness is significantly and non trivially dependent on what other people think of you that is true but the most central feature that will determine your happiness is going to be what your internal audience thinks of you and we have indirect 100 percent control over how that mechanism work we would love to have direct control over how it works but it would be absurd evolutionarily in other words the evolutionary system would never devise such a mechanism that you could stare in the mirror and tell yourself great things and then feel good that would be ridiculous okay devolution would penalize any such creature that would say to how great they were and would believe it without any performance that would actually translate into any increased competitiveness that would lead to more more in better situations with respect to mating friendship and trade it would have to be the case that good feelings had better only becoming when they are actually queues or associated or correlates with what will actually translate to superior performances that will result in statistical increases in genes survival likelihood that's what the self-esteem mechanism is for that's why when you do the work and you get yourself you pull in your horns and quit looking out and see what the audience is saying about you and it said you get inside and you look about what you are going to say about you and you do that work what will happen and the beautiful important secret here is to find out that your moods of how does that you feel about yourself are highly dynamic they will change very quickly it will not require that you rule the universe pick up ten fifteen thousand followers you know make a bunch of money selling your view of how it is to get healthy and thin and fit beautiful ah those are ancillary achievements and they be important for other reasons but they're not the central focus of what needs to happen to turn your life around what needs to happen to turn your life around is you need to be impressed with you or respectful of you it would be a better way to put it ok and that means do your due diligence do what it is that you need to do do it daily and within 10 days the vast majority of people feel very differently about themselves they wake up in the morning with an eagerness to attack the list ok to do it again to have that feeling of moral rightness with themselves again okay and then of course the way this works is if you are doing the fundamentals properly in the right way and you are learning and growing and improving then what happens as a result what happens as a result is eventually the marketplace can see it fine wonderful as far as I'm concerned that's an ancillary byproduct of what happens from doing the right things so the job in life is to do the right things to earn the most important esteem that there is to earn which is your self esteem okay and if it turns out the world doesn't like what it is that you have to sell okay we can look at that later if your abs aren't tight enough if you are you know they don't think you're quite cute enough they don't buy what it is that you're selling okay fair enough okay but your job is to do what you believe are the right things and if you do those things we let the rest take care of itself absolutely fascinating Wow Wow hmm yeah I really like this yeah we first we thought we were talking about diet and lifestyle and it turns into this whole talk about esteem dynamics and self-esteem this is great doctor I love it black instead esteem dynamics because that's what I meant to try to say thank God let me like just a 30-second recap the the something that has frustrated me as a psychologist for you know someone interested in psychology for on almost 40 years now it is 40 years good gods 40 years since I picked up 40 years ago I picked up the psychology of self-esteem by Nathaniel Brennan that's what stoked my interest in becoming a clinical psychologist and now 40 years later what frustrates me is that the field generally does not understand that esteem processes are dynamic they the notion is is that how does that you feel about yourself is extremely stuck in the muck of childhood processes etc okay how your parents treated you things that happen to you at cetera instead what is what is missed is that the esteem mechanisms are extremely dynamic the problem is is that they aren't so dynamic that literally then people would like to believe that you can stare in a mirror and say pleasant things to yourself or get a bunch of flattery from somebody and that's going to turn it around okay well it is dynamic enough that if someone does flatter you can make a difference about how you feel for about 15 minutes but the most important thing for us to understand is that legitimate lasting or tenacious esteem processes and how does that they work they are very dynamic but they're always processes that that if they if they make any sense and have any fiber to them they have to be earned okay and so the process of earning esteem either first from yourself and then from other people this is you know understanding that esteem processes are by nature dynamic processes understanding the nature of those dynamics this is very important when it comes to people understanding how to optimize their life experience and so that that's why we're having this podcast and that's why these are the things that that dominate my thinking whether we're talking about losing weight or we're talking about you know finding a partner for life or we're talking about getting connected with friends or we're talking about having success in business whatever it is it's all fundamentally that the fundamentals are the same figure out what you should be doing what the fundamentally correct way of approaching the problem is understand that that the competitive nature of whatever it is you're trying to achieve has certain fundamentals and there's nobody out there that has any secret sauce that's cheating those fundamentals and your job is to take whatever talent you know looks brains personality talent that you have and approach approach the goals that are reasonable for you by by addressing what the fundamentals are that you need to be working on and then your job is to work on those fundamentals and make sure that the most important thing you're focused on is earning self-esteem first that's what we do and then we let the esteem processes take care of themselves okay which they've largely will if we identify the right things but yes this is uh sorry recap went more than a couple seconds yesterday alright let's go ahead let's go on I love it I love it dr. Lyle alright well we got a caller on hold so callers down hold we're going to ask two quick questions from listeners because I put them up on the titles and then we'll get to the caller so callers just down hold just for a second okay dr. Lyle our next two questions dr. Lyle when family members do things that I'm strongly against I begin to resent them I mean I get extremely upset for example my when my dad was a smoker our relationship was very weak and I disliked him for it recently I found out my brother who is the person I've been closest with my entire life has been smoking weed and as a result I haven't spoken to him since I don't mean to overreact or be the party pooper but I can't control the resentment that I feel I'm a very health conscious individual so maybe I just hate to see family go down unhealthy paths my brother and I are both very disagreeable people so there's nothing I can do to change his mind on whether or not he will smoke but it's sad to see that he's choosing weed over his sister slash best friend is there an evolutionary root to why I get so upset seeing the people I love do things that I'm against and is there anything I could do to stop my brother well what a good question I think there's I see elements of this in a lot of people in the Whole Foods plant-based movement because they happen to be a bunch of you know on average a bunch of hyper conscientious nut cases you know who are outliers with respect to the bell curve and so they're they're trying to do things super healthily and I use that term with some affection but I also with a warning and that is that that this is this is an interesting interesting problem so let's step through this quickly because I know we've got a caller that we're going to want to get to that if you're angry you're angry because you think something is unfair we're trying to threaten somebody into making a concession we're trying to get them to feel guilty so that they'll fix it so in this case the anger is being directed at family members who are who are not pursuing healthful living and that's an interesting anger to have probably we'd have to look at some of the reasons why so I would ask the person to do a little introspection here as to try to figure out what you know what is it to them that the family member may be doing something that is causing some harm to themselves it could be that that are that are hyper conscientious in that case may feel like that they're going to have to take care of the person if they harm themselves and wind up in a wheelchair drooling etc and so as a result they feel that that essentially their time and life's energy is being put at unnecessary risk behind another person's self-indulgence because they're sort of predicting that they may have to step in and take care of them so that would be one inference and other inference would be that that they feel like they're their sort of coalition leading knowledge of how to live healthfully is being ignored and therefore and discounted and the value that they are bringing to the coalition that they expect to receive esteemed for for doing so is not happening so I'm not sure there might be other reasons for the person being angry that I can't see but I would assume that those are the two leading causes for people to be upset that their relatives aren't doing things properly and so and often those two in combination are what's driving us now let's let's so let's unpack this what we're going to try to do is we're trying to just make sure that the person is correctly analyzing the cost-benefit analysis of the situation and that they aren't don't have a distortion and what it is that they're thinking that could be causing a lot of the psychological stress that they're having first of all let's lift keep in mind that if a person smokes it's only going to cost them about 10 percent of the life expectancy so it's you know hey sort of oh well and if I had somebody in my family that smoked as long as I didn't have to just smell it myself my attitude would be hey you know good luck to you I think it's a bad bad deal as you obviously know you're not an idiot but you know when you get into trouble and if you get into trouble you know I just hope your hope you're ready to make some accommodations you know for take care of it ie I would be signaling that I'm not interested in you know monitoring you in the nursing home behind this kind of self-destructive behavior I wouldn't be nasty about it but I probably send that signal not going to be a nurse or a purse for someone who does something that's self-destructive now your brother's smoking weed first of all this is not going to be 10% of life expectancy this is going to be 1 or 2% 1% of life expectancy so it's not in the same class with cigarette smoking for self-destructiveness the person's body now it may make them lazy and unmotivated and paranoid and everything else on the side and that's quite possible and it may make them not very motivated financially and kind of broke and you know doesn't have health insurance does have a place to live and sort of you know I don't know what else could what other stereotype can I throw at this but the point is is so it does okay so if you're the big sister or the little responsible sister this doesn't mean that you have to purchase their health insurance bail them out of their of their bad credit give them a place to live or anything else into the Sun okay so ie let the person live their own life and take the consequences that they're going to take and if it's going to be the case that that they're not quote respecting you for the knowledge in that you bring to the coalition to explain to them how how bad or pricey these these behaviors are it's like Oh well you know what's most important is your self-esteem and what we're not going to try to wear ourselves out trying to collect esteem from people who don't want to give it to us and in this case I would say that there there's a question on the table and that is are they are they worthy of being coalition members or not and if they are wonderful and with how it is that they are and if they're really not and they're just a big burden in a pan in the neck and we don't get any appropriate esteem from them then then we move out to the disagreeable distance with family members that wouldn't naturally qualify to be coalition now the but my attitude is that if there are substantial positives like my sister knows you know how it is that I lived she doesn't live that way she's not really in tagging istic but she's not you know when I go down and visit her I know she's struggling with her health I don't lord this over her and I'm not angry at her that she's not doing this and I'm not frustrated and I'm not tapping my foot saying hey what if you have a stroke and I got to take care of you it's like hey you know this is this is all about you know freedom and people get to choose to do what they what they want to do with their lives and sort of finding I would recommend for this person actually how I found freedom in an unfree world by Harry Brown to sort of grasp the notion that our job in this life is to figure out our own identity who it is that we are what are the circumstances that we like to live in and try to find those as best we can and the notion that we're going to try to shove our prescriptions about what we think is best for other people on to them that I don't know it's it is clearly part of human nature but it's a it's a part of human nature that it's worthy examining and seeing whether you can see your way to diffuse it and and in the case of your brother if you've been very close to your brother my attitude is you could you could have created with some of this anxious judgment a badass team dynamic where he is now not interested in signalling esteem to you for the things he normally would because he's feeling like you are looking down on him and being very negative towards him so the solution to curing an esteem dynamic that is in what we're going to call a vicious cycle is to reverse field okay reverse field and flood this guy with the esteem that he deserves for the reasons that he deserves it for the things that you value about him if there are such things and if you do the relief that will come in his nervous system of knowing that he is still esteemed by his sister will come with also esteem signals back to you as he will signal to you how much he cares about you this is the reversal of a vicious cycle vicious esteem dynamic and this is you know what I call flood the circuit or reversing the cycle this is how it is that we can make our lives so much better rather than locking ourselves into a cycle of anger and frustration because somehow we aren't getting the esteem from them that we deserve I don't think that somebody's brother who smoke and dope is a major liability for your life okay so if it is then you have to examine why that could be true but it's almost certainly not true so careful and let's let's think some of these things through alright fascinating alright we're going to go to the question about binging on broccoli next week and for now we're going to take the caller right now so caller thanks very much for your patience holding what's your name where you calling from my name can you hear me yes yes sir can okay my name is Sharon Adcock and I'm calling from John Jonesboro Arkansas very good and I'm Lutheran and I listen to Knight and dr. lies I listen to you all the time and I've been trying to I told my husband I've got to see what dr. Lyles how he can help me or get his take get your take on this matter and what it is my our 40 year old daughter I'll try to ask this crystal clear my 40 year old daughter who's a teacher we were we're both retired and we were keeping her two-year-old son and her 11 year old son for her part time while she teaches well she has an ex-husband that lives in Florida and comes back and forth to pick her 11 year old up for visitation and they they feud all the time but to make it short what's problem is hold on shoreline who feud who feud my daughter and her ex-husband right and she doesn't like for us to talk to him at all and so we don't just to keep things even but what happened was my 11 year old grandson had told her that his dad holding that we had talked to him on the phone and we hadn't told her about it yet for the reason that we thought she'd make a big deal well she's cut us totally out of her life just August and we've always been a close family not the first time she's been mad at me over different things but we would always get through it and talked about it in any way I don't we can't I can't flood the circuit because even with things that I honestly really do love about her because I think she's under a lot of stress but we can't she won't let us even in her house over there she don't live far from us but we're both under a lot of stress and hurt and we realized that we as grandparents that loved her and her sons that we didn't play some negative things to her and we loved her new husband he been married a year they had the two-year-old her 11 year old is by the guns Florida and dr. miles what what can I do I mean I went to her school about two weeks after this happened and took her some flowers and candy and told her that I was really sorry and my husband and my other daughter said well mom why did you do that now she's going to think you are guilty and I said I told her that I loved her and that I felt sorry that all this happened because I'd never intentionally hurt her and I can't see my two we can't see our two-year-old and it's just putting us in like a prison it's okay I don't know what to do about it all right mama yeah Jess yeah let me let me talk this through let me let me ask you a few questions so okay help me explain what it is that you did that that upset her this much tell me again we we actually she thinks we collaborated with her ex-husband talked to him wait wait and a big difference between collaborating and talking so okay well what what is she what yeah just try to try to get inside her head for a minute and don't tell me what you did do tell me what she thinks you did she thinks that we're talking to her husband ex-husband uh maybe her ex-husband about her maybe and taking his side against I think it's more than just that there's a lot of details her her husband now my hood my husband told her we got in the argument and I told her the reason that I didn't tell her that her ex called us because I was afraid she'd make a big deal out of it and it had only been two weeks so I hadn't had a chance to tell her that I'm looking older well it slowed down for me so is this theoretically all about a single phone call no that it's so deep not that's not it more it's about the whole dynamics of the whole relationship that that we would talk to him without telling her okay slow down for me so she thinks that you're what chit-chatting with her ex-husband behind her back that's what she thinks right and my other daughter has close to her age took a picture of her son with his her ex his dad and she hasn't talked to her for five months so we cut them out of our life their food okay so so this all so let's uh let's back up how long has she been divorced from her ex for about this been going on for probably five years now she's been going to court in Florida however it all right so there's been but you so you've been doing a bunch of babysitting for the last how many years with this 11 year old son um well he goes to school so I mean I would go get him if she missed a day or was sick or whatever and I'd bring him over and keeping some and same way with the two-year-old we're both retired and so we didn't keep them full-time because the little one goes to nursery but now it does being the little one you're right yeah okay the two-year-old is not from the same man is that correct that's correct okay so it's really what's a dispute here is this 11 year old son and in she's believing that you are talking with her ex about her 11 year old son and is there is there been ongoing conflict between you and her over the last several years about this not really because I've supported her and I I even went to Florida the court with her because she didn't have anyone to go several times and I took care of her little one the last time she went while she went to court because her husband and her ex keeps texting her and she says that he he is he just harasses her all the time so let's go down for me hold on Sharon so let me get this straight so for the last several years you've been very supportive of her there's not a conflict between the two of you even though this man comes up what how does when when did he come up to get the Sun or just the Sun go on a bus and go down to visit him how does this work no he flies all the way from Florida to get Ethan and he'll some weekends he'll stay in our town and stay with him for three days and goes back to work that's why he had called us he wanted to know if we would keep eating for like three hours because he had to be back home he flies on his job he's a district manager for guest genes okay let's just hear let's uh let's try to get a little focused here so let me so we haven't had conflicts and then suddenly now this year we've got a conflict right with us she had conflict right I've had conflicts with him forever I understand this but with you this is the first time we've had a big conflict one this big that she would kick us out of her life me and her have argued over minor things things weren't yeah I'm good about being mad at me for three days but she's never been mad at me and her her dad specially she never knew better him okay to smoke out okay and so this happened here in the last few months and and the or so you've but this sound comment this was August and this is and this big blow up was as a result of a phone call that you had with her ex is that right right the day she came to get her kids her son her 11 year awful told her right in front of us yes the team that he knows how to trigger her and he told her about this that we had talked to her act to his dad how they how the heck and so you had talked to his dad did you is your daughter under the bizarre impression that that this man in Florida the father of this boy would not talk to you when there are logistical issues that would be appropriate for him to be talking to you about right because she says that he's narcissistic and okay we're 11 low down slow down for me alright do you understand that is is it ever case in your daughter's view that it would be appropriate for you to talk to her ex around logistic issues about where even goes when he's coming to town anything like this or is it always the case that you are not ever lately what's that absolutely what lately I'm not to talk to him unless she is around okay so you are not like if he were to call your phone yeah or email you and say I want to talk to you about when I'm going to pick up Ethan you can't do anything you have to forward that to your daughter get your daughter on the phone so that she can talk to him and not use that how this goes exactly he would never call us about able to like that okay he wouldn't call you all right so he drives you and he calls you and he was talking to you about Ethan about what about picking him up he actually just text us and said get it you or your daughter pick Ethan up for three hours and the fact that you communicated with him and then Ethan says that you communicated with him in front of your daughter your daughter blue sky high and now she gives you the death penalty cell right right the fact that we didn't tell her we hadn't told her yet that he had called no way not kind of paranoid that we are taking his side and I think she's afraid that he's going to try to take Ethan away from her okay here's the deal okay your your daughter obviously is extremely disagreeable as a human she is walking okay now on the big five all right so it is what it is okay so the so as a result the you have a situation that you know this is what I call circuits or circuits okay you can change people's personalities you can manage disagreeable people as well as you can possibly manage them the disagreeable person like this she's feeling for some reason maybe in her new relationship maybe she feels a little bit more powerful maybe she's a little more powerful economically or just psychologically we have we have no idea what's happening here maybe she maybe she feels like you might be a little bit intrusive into her life in her new relationship and she just as soon find an excuse to push you 50 yards away you know psychologically I have no idea what's going on inside this girl's head I'm realizing our kids yeah well too bad okay gyro the truth is is you're out of luck okay so yeah ideally right out this is what the only solution the only solution that you realistically have is what I call Chinese water torture okay Chinese water torture and the whole country with the billion people in it while I'm at it okay 19th Water Torture is that you know in the old movies they would drop water down on your forehead till it drives you crazy okay something like that like it's not not hurting you it just drives you nuts so Chinese water torture is my solution for problems like this and what we do is we just we send them positive Pleasant messages okay so like once a month okay if your daughter isn't talking to you don't try it don't don't phoner then don't plead whether don't do anything of the kind just send her a letter okay send her a letter about once a month and and with a with you if you want a little you know 2500 or ticket to Applebee's or something so she and her husband can go or whatever all right and we just some token little gift not expensive and a little on little what he call it hallmark stationery a little short note that says something about her dad how he's doing how you're doing and hope she's doing well and and we miss you guys and and and you know police say hi you know whenever it makes sense okay my love mom okay then 30 days later we do it again 30 days later we do it again okay as as this is this edgy negative you know difficult human being keeps getting Chinese water torture okay sooner or later the Chinese water torture can wear her down in other words this hasn't precipitated some big fight that she would be perfectly happy with okay argument telling you what to do getting distance from him she wants justifying it by having a big blowup whatever okay this is a disagreeable human and and yes she's got her grandchildren hostage your grandchildren hostage and we don't know if she wants something from you for that hostage we don't know okay once you've already apologized and you've not not transgressed in anything in any meaningful way at all doesn't matter we've run afoul of an extremely disagreeable human right and so did her sister same thing okay took takes a picture and she's excommunicated all right no crowd yet okay the truth is this person frankly doesn't belong in your coalition if you don't treat people like this right but she's on your coalition cuz she's your daughter and worse yet she's the mother of your grandchild all right so you know recommend I go to the door and see my grandkids help should lay in I did that twice and got to play with him oh you got hope she let you in the door the first two times the month of August then after that her husband said I don't blame her for being mad at y'all and then after that she had a stand at the door with Beckham crying for his Nana oh forget it don't put up with that so in other words what you get to see is you get to see the kid through the little screen door and the kid gets to cry ridiculous no right that I need water no thanks I need water go back now you know what what you need to signal to this person is that you're going to be pleasant with them but you're also not going to be on your knees okay that's why what they deserve is five minutes a month of your time is you jot down a friendly little note wish them well put in a little $25 thing to Applebee's or Starbucks and call it a day okay well my husband said we would still get them on Christmas present so that is okay to keep doing that yeah I would do those things in Christmas I would get I don't overdo it okay mail it to him don't write don't bow down but no don't bow it down just just be a pleasant civil person yourself and maybe someday this nutcase will come back and join you halfway in the middle for a while okay right so that's all you can do so you know this is the fact that she's got your grandchild hostage too bad you know sorry you're going to have to find other things to do with your existence and then entertain yourself by watching this this little child grow for the next year it's like you know what there's going to be other years this kids going to grow and grow and grow there's going to be all kinds of opportunities so what we're not going to do is we're not going to panic now that we're missing some milestones forget about it something else go work on your golf game I've been listening to you guys and Alan Goldhamer so I'm working on my other problem with this pleasure trap so and I really do appreciate you guys because you really helped me with all your information good good all right well listen now you really helped me by that advice because now I've kind of got a hold on what I can do yes I got you so that's what you do keep it simple and keep it simple keep it Pleasant we're not on our knees to anybody ie we signal to her you know what I can live without you but we like you you know I mean we like you here's a little positive and we're going to drop it in the mail every month we'll draw Christmas presents in the mail that were going to be Pleasant we're not going to overdo it okay and that's that and otherwise you know just sort of check off probably 2019 you know she calls the the AXA narcissist boy that was a pair that was it that was a relationship match yeah caddy oh yeah well those they deserve each other narcissistic person if anyone let's hope she's not listen to beat your genes but in any rate this is what you do share and so we're get we're going to run along tonight because we're over time but thank you very much for calling a really fine call and good luck with that okay
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