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Episode 188: Couchsurfing as a woman, Resilience vs coddling, Jealousy after a breakup
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never criticize nobody what's the is it an Italian mobster that said that or was my friend larry gatlin basically an Italian mobster a Jewish Italian mobster the yeah Larry's attitude was that there's really really no CB and criticism it was a very very interesting insight particularly from somebody who's very critical but but it's actually an interesting insight and particularly I have a young lady who's just starting a new job she's very bright and she's also got a serious disagreeable streak and she knows it so with her high intelligence and high conscientiousness she's she's recognizing she has to be disciplined because the the natural disagreeable wants to criticize and so she's doing a really good job here in her second week holding it together recognizing this she's beating her jeans knowing full well that you know once she gets better establish socially and they understand her competence which they're already seeing then she's gonna have more latitude and she doesn't have to be in any rush if there's a need to criticize something she can do that six months from now so yeah just in general criticism is a my criticism is in general a dangerous activity unless I'm doing it which point is fully justified all right let's go on Nathan let's see what we got all right fantastic well we we've got a few questions here and we're gonna actually this first question dr. Lyle I'd like you to answer it first and then we'll well then we'll take dr. Hawks take on it so this is called couchsurfing as a woman dear dr. Lyle dr. Hawk my niece and I have been debating whether it's safe for attractive young solo female travelers to couch surf she believes that a careful reading of a hosts couchsurfing profile enables her to spot would-be predators what are your thoughts on this dr. Lyle and dr. Hawk well you know that's a Gen Hawk question that I'm just gonna completely punt there's really no reason for me to be in this question so Jen you go right ahead well I suspect we might disagree on it which is interesting because I we have very different we didn't have very different levels of openness I don't think we disagree in the mentals of it so the yeah this is this is a question near and dear to my heart I was one of probably the very first members of couchsurfing.com when it went live way back in like the late 90s you know as though there's a miraculous thing that came about I couldn't believe that such a thing would exist for a 90th percentile open person and so I use couchsurfing.com and a lot of sites like it all these you know different farm farm work trades and work exchanges and all kinds of different ways of traveling all around the world for free for for many many years and I you know got myself into some pretty hairy situations there's definitely some some negative experiences that came out of it but nothing nothing too terrible and I think overall it's totally it's totally worth the trade as long as you keep your eyes open then you're you're paying attention then you're using your judgment and I think these things have come so far where now you can really you know I would never couch therefore I would never make make some kind of work exchange with anyone who hadn't been verified by the site and had some reviews you know kind of just use discretion and discernment just like you would with an air B&B or buying something on Amazon or anything else there's a lot of information available for what kind of experience you're getting yourself into and I think overall if you're going to someone who's well established on one of these sites who posted a lot of people and has positive reviews and photos and all of that it's almost certainly going to be a positive experience the the other thing I would add to that is to have you know what one of the things I do regret from all of my crazy adventuring around the world is I never had a very good backup plan I would get myself into the worst situations that I was in were bad in part in large part because I was sort of stuck with there were places I would have really liked to get out of but I didn't have enough money on a credit card to go get a hotel for example if things really hit the fan so I would just advise her to be you know be a little smarter than I was and have a good plan B and go have the adventure but if it turned sour have a good backup plan let people know where you are and save the money and have the experiences where you can but as a principle for an open person who wants adventure go for it I would totally agree with all that right down to reiterating that you want to be in a position of power and you don't want to be walking in any situation where anybody can sniff vulnerability on you and so that that's a critical issue and so the first sign of trouble don't don't be making a cost/benefit on on 80 bucks you know if there's first sign of trouble you just get out immediately and so that that's that would be the one mistake that somebody might make would be to be hemming and hawing and shuffling one foot to another after somebody's already showed their hand that they've got you know problem problematic personality so first sign of trouble if just leave and you're done see you later and if we leave quickly the escalation won't be that great that's that's the idea definitely situations where I was managing really disagreeable really unstable people because I just didn't have a choice there was nowhere else that I could go I had to wait it out until my flight in two days or whatever it was when way better to go take care of yourself so yes but happy adventuring my job my openness is jealous yeah all good all right all right well our next question is about resilience and this is this is for both of you but mainly dr. Jen Hawke because of your work in trauma so deer deer deer doctors can you please talk about what resilience is with regards to personality in the big five a little background I recently attended a multi-day training for work which was focused on trauma-informed care and I find myself I found myself rolling my eyes throughout almost the entire thing seemed like the suggestions that the trainers would put forth for making an agency quote trauma-informed and quote were just really fancy ways of telling us that we should coddle people to death for example one trainer went into a five-minute dissertation about how a quote no-cell-phone sign in a courthouse lobby is not trauma-informed because the word know would trigger people I hope you agree that this suggestion is insane there also seemed to be an extreme overestimation of what experiences should be considered traumatic and I'm concerned that we are doing more damage by telling people that they have been traumatized by what are probably just moderately stressful life experiences so the question is do you think that it's possible to help people develop a trait of resilience or grit I'll let I'll let Jen talk and then we we talk a great deal about these issues between the two of us so I think we have very similar perspectives but go ahead Jen what wind out on this and let's give them give them a whatever you feel like giving them sure yeah I mean it's an enormous topic and we do we have been talking about this a lot and sort of all of its different permutations but the question seems to really be focusing on you know how do you is it possible to build resilience or where where does resilience come from which was actually that was that was the question that animated my whole grad from my graduate work my dissertation is about indigenous responses to climate change in the Arctic and I was very curious about what made certain communities more so-called resilient to that challenge than others and what kinds of institutions could be incorporated into those communities to build resilience and and what was a roadie and resilience etcetera that are in their huge literature's on this and it's very much part of the policy thinking in Alaska and elsewhere that you can create you can create systems that encourage resilience and protective factors and all of these things and you know as I as I got into that research and this is this is a much bigger topic probably even than we could get into if we devoted the whole show to it but as I as I got into it I really kind of had to confront the fact that resilience like anything else like any really anything that we would we would want to talk about would be its where personality meet some an individual cost-benefit analysis so we could describe different ways that resilience might might appear in the big five but I would be really hesitant to do that because I think people would get over invested in that and measure that their various personality aspects of the big five and determine whether they're resilient or not it's a dynamic situation with context dependent on the general situation and I think that the questioner has a really good intuition here where they're talking about them that there's more that there's more damage being done with these kinds of coddling things like know is a triggering word or whatever that this I totally wholeheartedly agree with this question that this is really out of control and has gotten pretty ridiculous and I think that the the cost of that and the damage that is being done there is that it is it's lowering the social cost of avoiding competition which is a process that is going to undermine self-esteem that's that's really what's going on is that the more you can kind of fall back into these these coddling type things in these these triggered environments and these safe spaces it's irritating the people who have sort of more conscientiousness more responsibility want more more more impulse for that self responsibility but the real problem is that it's at odds with the self-esteem process and so that's why we should really care about it and pay attention to it when we might be getting sucked into it ourselves oh you're going to hear the my dogs on this podcast my dogs are talking in the background so they're they're not in a safe space apparently so so lycra self-esteem is the whole game and anything like this that is that is really putting up barriers to that is is something that's worth paying attention to and so I think when we're talking about how to build resilience how do we encourage resilience and grit that's actually by participating fully in the competitive reality that's in front of us whatever that is confronting those fundamentals of the difficult tasks that we might prefer to avoid and discovering what your capacity for improvement in in those fundamentals and in in that competitive task is that's where that's where pride and self-esteem and ultimately what we would think of as resilience come from not by protecting people or by creating safe spaces for them or by you know making sure that we're not triggering anybody into kind of micro aggression or anything like that I think this is also profoundly misguided and so I'm in I'm in intellectual solidarity with a questioner here absolutely fabulous just right on target the from my from my perspective is she and I agree completely down the line on this this is a yet that there's just a few tiny little things that I would parse that out that have nothing to do other than with slight little linguistic nitpicking and that is the notion is is I don't think we're doing damage by by this kind of trauma pandering I think and I don't think Jen would say so either what we're doing though is we are D railing people's cost-benefit to attempt to engage the world in a reasonably competitive fashion exactly as she sang so the but we are in agreement with with what the questioner is saying completely you know this is the whole trauma concept is ie had a name for 20 years ago I called it bruised banana theory and it's the idea that the human person is like a banana just you know try you're trying to get it right and every time that that someone like squeezes the banana picks it up in the store or at home Yury bruised it a little bit and so it can't be the banana that it was otherwise going to be and so the notion from both Freudian psychology and learning theory is the notion that harmful or hurtful little experiences in other words hurtful processes are seen as harmful processes that's the that's the notion this is a is it just profound mistake and it's also very seductive one and it's it essentially has led to Jen's analysis to this that people will be seeing in print and in other places in the future this has led to essentially a cultural wide phenomenon of that the payoff is to bitch and complain and whine and blame other people for our our competitive struggles and our competitive they basically aren't being intimidated by the competitive realities that we face and essentially wanting to cry foul and say that it's not fair and this this is gone you know hypertrophic to the point where we can't say no cellphones in a courthouse it's like oh you know any any possible advantage over anything that we could possibly bitch about now becomes a leverage of which to essentially carve out some kind of an advantage and get some kind of compensation of some kind it is it's absurd and all I can think of is you know it's this is the same species where nineteen year old boys got into boats and headed for the coast of Normandy under withering German fire it's the same species like how is that even possible that that's the same species and the answer is that we have a cultural phenomenon where bitching and whining and complaining and moaning and pointing fingers pays off and in a way that it is never paid off before and so that's that's why you get the absurdity that you've got and it's it's a total and utter fiasco and I was just simply personally disgusted with it and I and I believe that I was going to go to my grave shrugging my shoulders disgusted but because of dr. Hawk I will go to my grave disgusted but inform you know in education yeah it's a beautiful thing I've got a question to expand on this no of course agree with you you both in every single way but but from one perspective I can imagine that look for example you got a little soccer team of you know little kids and a coaches there and and this is where when I was kid nobody got trophies unless you unless you won and then when as you started getting older now there was a few people parents and coaches that were like oh well well if we don't give the kids everybody a participation trophy then then maybe they're not going to want to play anymore and then if they're not going to want to play anymore then how are they going to earn their self as their own esteem and work hard and so I guess from that perspective they might say well you know we coddle them so that there were careful so they can they can continue to compete and so to that you say that's incredible this is a understand that there yeah I don't know that I quite finished this but the notion that that pain and suffering and struggle are damaging to the organism is ridiculous the and so the children are going to lose many many many competitions in their life losing is part of the game it's the only way that the organism can calibrate its capabilities and therefore wind up targeting its efforts towards value propositions in competitive arenas that is appropriate for its abilities that's how you find out that you're out of your weight class okay so the this is yeah this is what information is it's critical information in order to calibrate you got to play and lose the way you learn how to walk is you try and then you fall that's the how it's done the way you learn how to talk is you try to imitate the sounds and fail and then by the failure feedback that comes through the system you correct and you learn and you grow so the notion that the best life that you could be live a happy life as a 35 year old adult by virtue of having had the least possible amount of upsetedness or inconvenience or unpleasantness or negative feedback the bat's sets you up for the best adult life in all the years post 35 by your banana not having been bruised by discomfort and defeat that is insane okay that that is an unbelievable vision of human nature that comes right through Freudian and learning theory literally the two giant theories of psychology of the 20th century are both utter failures in this regard and they engineer precisely what Jen is talking about that we don't want which is that we don't want to be essentially mollycoddle then and rewarded in any way for the bitching whining and complaining and etc etc but instead what we want is we want people to understand that there are three pillars of human life satisfaction those are self-esteem self-confidence and then finally the achievement of victories that's what they are so there's self-esteem is the internal audiences observation of your efforts it's effectively a moral compass inside your nervous system that feeds you a feeling of pride that comes with your excellent effort and if you do a lousy effort it tells you you're doing a lousy effort if you do so so it gives you soso and if you work very hard and prepare very well and work hard at it it gives you excellent internal feedback so if confidence is entirely different but people confuse the two they confuse self-esteem with everything they confuse self-esteem with self-confidence and they confuse self-esteem with achievement so people believe that if you give people evidence of achievement of victory giving them a trophy somehow this causes the banana to somehow have a coating of shellac around it that protects it against all the bruises that might come from future defeats or inconveniences or negative feedback this is ridiculous this is not how any of this is engineered it does not improve confidence at all confidences are the result of your own internal system monitoring the results of your excellent efforts and watching to see if you've improved in your knowledge or abilities that's the the only place that confidence comes from is from your internal observation of your any improvement of your body or your mind that is the only place that confidence comes from it comes from nowhere else okay and finally the last part of it is achievement itself which has to take place in the arena of natural competitive processes when you win it's great when you lose it sucks that's how it is okay but the notion that if you lose that it damages your self-esteem is ridiculous that's a misunderstanding of the self-esteem mechanism it will reduce your confidence as it should see people forget that unhappiness and depression are every bit as important two signals to the human life and their ability of an organism to survive as is joy and excitement they are evolutionarily equal okay so of course what we want to do is encourage people to compete we do not want to be giving them a tricky little low-grade phony pass by by by trauma pandering which is what all this BS is so I'm disgusted Jen's enlightening me and we're getting better by the days what's happening a practical example of this is a couple of weeks ago at dr. Lisle you and I dr. Goldhamer and gentleman by the name of Toby were at chef AJ's conference in Las Vegas and we all went to go play basketball you know now for our listeners that don't know dr. vile dr. Goldhamer played bass while regularly they have for a while and I've barely I'd maybe played you know a total of 45 minutes in my entire life a basketball yeah and so so I went to play because I wanted to you know I wanted to get my ass kicked so I went and I made a few mistakes a lot of mistakes cost me and I'll play on the same team cost him couple points but and as I'm like blubbering over myself apologizing dr. Lyle you told me no worries you're brand new to this and all of a sudden a little switch hit in my head where I said oh that means I can try as hard as I want to because I'm brand new and there's only oh there's only one way to go which is up and so it's just a really fascinating you know set of words that you that you said to me and and I've taken that with a lot of other things it's if we're brand new to things we work how can we expect to be good at them absolutely that's what that's what the processes struggle is about is to learn and then as you get as you get better which you which you did in literally minutes you know as you started to understand it because you're a fine athlete and as soon as you started to understand some of the things that needed to happen you know we didn't have enough time but we were gonna beat those guys as you saw we were we were getting more effective by the minute but most importantly you're you're watching yourself improve the the process of watching yourself improve and that increased self-efficacy that that really is what the with resilience and self-esteem and self gets all of it is tied together because you you have now participated fully in this process without trying to duck out or slither around some sort of competitive and run and not actually participate so you're you're actually in there you're watching yourself improve your you're realizing that there's there's a delta there and that's the that's actually the secret sauce yes mm-hmm now one thing that that that we've talked about before is is this concept of results oriented thinking is that that I guess what you're saying dr. Lisle and dr. hawk is that if you put in your full effort even if you lose you've still got some self-esteem that question yes you so that's what yes yes the self-esteem is independent yes this is this is the you know this is some of the beauty of the of Eastern philosophy this is a big point of what the Buddhists are trying to yeah they're trying to send us a message here I think they in general you try to go too far in other words they'll try to say it's all process and no outcome and so the I think there's a tendency to want to try to sell it too far but I have to say that going at least halfway or three-quarters in other words really the notion is we have our eye on the goal and we would love victory and so we we want to win obviously but the biggest thing that we want to win is the self-respect that comes with having given an excellent effort that's the it really is not about winning and losing it's about how you play the game and so you know this is so that's from our standpoint that's the most critically misunderstood and underestimated control switch in human happiness that exists and the it's very difficult as a human yeah and you have total control go ahead Jen no that was I was just adding to that that it's the most important switch that exists and you have total control over it you can turn it on and off whenever you want you you were in charge so what you have is you have you have a hundred percent indirect control over one of the most important foundations of your life experience the fact that that you have such control over this is not really well recognized it's vaguely recognized and it's come in hundreds of different messages from scholars and theologians and you know across across the centuries but we're now mapping this down into a conciliate argument that goes down deep into human evolution you're designed to try to compete those competitions if you opt out of those competitions then there is cheap currency that awaits you on the other side of a trauma complaint and the best currency that life has to offer is actually the self-esteem that comes from knowing you gave your very best shot to something and win or lose you know there's a beautiful phrase from a movie that I loved which is called hard times and the the phrase was like old mama says the next best thing to playing and winning is playing and losing and that's how that's how we want to look at life mm-hmm all right all right well our next set of questions are about relationships so this is we're gonna turn the ship a little bit dear dr. Lisle dear dr. hawk I dated a guy for about five years who would never commit and cheated on me several times though I did not learn of his indiscretions until after the relationship ended I recently found out that he married one of the women who he cheated on with me after dating her for only a brief time my initial reaction to this was to laugh because his new wife is quite a bit less attractive than I am she weighs probably about 25 to 30 pounds more than I do she has a bit of a gummy smile etc after the whole ain't gonna be wore off I realized after the hilarity wore off I realized that I felt a little bit annoyed that my ex-boyfriend would marry this gal after such a short time but wasted so many years giving me the runaround after our split was all said and done I definitely felt like I came out with the better end of the deal and luckily I'm now in a relationship that has major magic 10% potential but my question is why am I still so irritated about my loser exes quickie marriage yeah I got a few thoughts about this Jen but I just seen you two take a pass at it I'm always curious about what you were thinking yeah well I my first first a couple thoughts too but my first thought is if you've got if you're in a relationship that has magic 10% potential now you should really you know focus your energy on that and really do your best to let the loser loser go you're understandably irritated and you know you're irritated because you you've lost a prize there to some degree and you also have a little bit of an open loop because you're confused because you're looking at this when you feel objectively more attractive and this just is not fair and right in the universe and what went wrong here but the you know this happens all the time the qualification process for for a pair bonding is a very it's a mysterious process and you can't you can't predict you know from your perspective who would qualify for someone else even if even if you've been with them even if you know them very well this is not a left-brained process this is not a rational process this is a very mystical right-brained mysterious process so just because you're objectively more attractive and this person weighs more and has a gummy or smile or whatever it is that we're being we're being critical about you you have no idea like what she has that you don't have you you don't know what his different thresholds and specific ideals for personality and conversation and brains are what circuits she's hitting that you don't you don't know how she smells to him you don't know you don't know what that experiences are talking to each other there's there's so many different little little pieces of this that you could just never anticipate and so it's I I would just you know let let go and let God and this is what it is and he he found his magic 10% you've possibly found your magic 10% that's where you should be investing your time and energy and hoping for the best fair and doing everything you can to create your own happily ever after yeah that would be my sure I think that I think that what we're saying is that she feels insulted and the insulting is is she's confused and I think that again whenever we hear anger we know that there difference of unfairness and the unfairness is in this case I think I think it's I think it's winding around it's not just that that she lost this specific individual I think it's the fact that in a stone age village if this had happened there would be a pretty serious calculus social calculus threat that she would be facing that that in other words if she got dumped by this this guy for that female everybody says she should be in principle more valuable than that other female what is it about her that she's carrying a liability around that we don't know about so this this would this would actually be right so there's a village inference of what I would call her internal ugliness that that this is he's essentially saying there was something wrong with her that you guys don't know about and and I think that she's looking at herself thinking no that's not true there isn't anything weird about me and yet that's what it would look like to the village and so therefore this is a threat to my mate value and it's it's making me insecure it's it's essentially a social cost and I'm pissed off okay so you you can you can imagine the other direction you know that people live through where the next mate is fancier than you and and it's like okay well it's it's it's somewhat embarrassing that I got deep but it's fair enough okay and so that's that that's the other side of this equation yeah see maybe it's the disagreeable side of me but if I got broken up with in this way I I would look at it and be like oh well she's probably more disagreeable than I am so she roped him in or if she's less attractive than I am then chances are he's just being lazy so it's a lot easier feedback and so you know there we go okay so this is this is like if they went for something other than me then they're just too lazy and they don't want to put up with the fact that my standards we've been too high you'll go far innate yeah okay so yeah I questioned was gonna my comment was gonna end with what is it about human nature I know that like just just from my my talking's with other people that my views on that is slightly unusual so I was gonna ask what is it about human nature that people are looking at how the village is gonna look at them versus what I just described yeah I think they go ahead what do you think of Jen yeah no I mean they're always they're always concerned about how the village is sizing up this situation and what their relative standing is and how they're gonna go forward competitively I mean I I have been in this situation and and sort of had these same inferences and the same same exact circumstances and you you know you spend a lot of time kind of computer checking with your girlfriend's trying to figure out like what you are missing and what is it about her and then you kind of land on these narratives like you're describing me where it's like well it must just be but you know she's more disagreeable and she tricked him or whatever it is that's the kind of information that you're looking to get back from the village to quiet that voice in your head that there there is the internal ugliness that dr. Lisle is talking about so this is a back-and-forth process of your own soul-searching and your computer checking with the village to make sure that you're still in a good position for the next potential mate that would come along yeah and yeah I would I would add to that or what's being inferred there is that you're not just computer checking you're also selling so you're trying to figure out the the best way to play this because this is game theory so you've got to figure out what's in your best interests do we say that that he's lazy shit that he doesn't really wanted you know to go to the effort of continuing to qualify for somebody as outstanding as me or do we say I don't know what's wrong with him he's got something wrong with him where do we say hey who the hell knows she's maybe she's really just really sweet you know and and you know hey good for him ie we take the high ground and and shrug our shoulders like there's a whole bunch of what you're looking at is some bunch of social instincts in here and there's a variety of options there's a menu of games to be played and every situation is going to be a little different that probably the dominant feature of the situation will be the individual's personality and so you know Alan will immediately go to hey that there you know what's wrong with them something wrong with them and I'm glad to be done with him like that's in two seconds that's what's coming back I mean that's what he really feels yeah but that's part of the game theory is if they're so if they're so terrible then what was I doing with them for two or three years you know how did I not see it maybe there is something wrong with me for not seeing it or for putting up with that and so yeah there's a lot of gamesmanship and a lot of going back to the earlier question about triggers and trauma and ways to avoid competition like sometimes it is the best the best out for you is to blame some external force for his his change in priorities and behavior Oh what he has intimacy issues you know he he couldn't really commit to me because he has this damage from his childhood he's a super bruised banana and and she just she doesn't ask that of him and she and so he's happier with him with her so so narratives like that are gonna come in that save face for you and you know keep your status intact in the village and allow you to to move forward with your other relationships yeah complicated that's me you bet right I've got to look at my own menu it's not your fault Nate you know you voted at Allen's knee when your work for him that's him that's it oh yeah you're a nice guy when you came there I thought I got Howard yes all right dear dr. Lyle dr. hawk I contracted herpes from a long-term boyfriend who was cheating on me about ten years ago now I find this so difficult to share this information with a new person that I'm dating I'm 50 years old and reasonably attractive that I haven't really been dating from shame regarding this condition your straight talk suggestions are very helpful in this podcast and I'm wondering if you can advise me on how to best frame my situation for myself my status and any potential mates in the future yeah a nice question let's say it's perfect for us to have in a couple a couple of different takes that might be slightly different so let's let's give them the nice persons version which is Jen's so now what yeah I would I would generally you know it's it's completely understandable that she feels this way and it's um but I wouldn't I wouldn't feel obligated to lead with it on dates you know you can kind of quiet this initially it's like people will sometimes have this idea that they've got this big piece of baggage and so they better just you know lay it all out on the table right away and I don't I don't think she needs to do that and and burden herself with that expectation she can she can get herself into the ten made ten paid dates process with somebody who looks like they might be a good contender and then we can think about how we're gonna bring this up with the sky and you know in the event that it seems like it's gonna be a relevant thing to bring up I I would just advise her to you know kind of take a very very matter-of-fact approach and you know I'm struggling with this it's a pretty pretty common thing I've got it well managed I just really feel like this is potentially going somewhere with you and I want to be upfront about it and but but to bring it up at the appropriate time in the establishment of that that little blossoming para bonds not to scare them away too early and then also not to sit on it forever and never mention it so it's a little bit of a little bit of an art and a science but yeah there's no there's no reason to be intimidated by this it's it's not that uncommon it can be well managed with medication and and just to kind of go at it with that matter-of-fact attitude did not make it a big deal would be my general take but I'm nicer than you are that's right right on target I would I would add this to to this problem and related similar problems and let's yeah other pieces of dirty laundry yeah the my brother-in-law who's now passed away was a superb litigator and so sometimes he was in position of defending clients as well as you know as well as prosecuting a position and so he he said that the best move that he found when you were when you had some vulnerability in a case was what he called confess and avoid which is that woods which is Jen is describing this which is being matter of in fact so it's not like we're gonna say well we got a light 14 candles now and I really got some big secret I gotta tell you I'm really embarrassed about it I've really got something to tell you yeah and don't do that the idea attitude is hey yeah you know if they're asking where were you on the night that you know you're your spouse was murdered you know you know it's like hey you know I was in a cabin in the woods by myself Oh nobody saw you go there you know what I gotta tell you I was out there all by myself and nope nobody saw me in other words we have this attitude of yeah I mean this is how it is I and I yeah so what okay yes I got it and that's so that's how I would approach anything like this like yes it's it's some baggage it's part of being an adult in the real world things happen it's not a catastrophe at all and yes but I did I want to be responsible and as Jen would say you know you share this in appropriate time all is good and that's uh and I think that I think you just I don't put it this way if you do this in this way and it's a big problem good because that individual just ruled themselves out yeah that's exactly how we look at that ie we play the game the right way and if however it turns out we were in peace with it and I believe now there are dating websites for people who have you know HIV herpes all the others other things so that you know you meet people who are that's already common common between you two herpes is so common it's like the this is like having had you know a bad string with your credit seven years ago it's like hey no problem okay it's like that this is something that people have to be in the dating world have to be completely prepared to deal with si is a very normal piece of baggage it's like finding out somebody's got a dog you know it's like hey I got a dog oh God god forbid or two dogs well we're gonna get emails about that that's for sure we're gonna eventually do a show with all the funny emails that I get out and just have a big laugh okay all right maybe we've got one more yeah we got one more but I was wondering we have a caller that's been on hold that that I've asked what the question is about and it seems like a pretty reasonable question so I think we can knock it out what what say you won't use this this week or next week we'll do it we'll do our caller right now and and I'll take the call and then Jen can help relate it Jen can piggyback in as it makes sense let's go ahead well we are going to welcome to the show Jennifer and Jennifer welcome to show thank you for calling thank you very much I'm gonna say good morning to all of you it's about almost 5:30 in the morning for me oh my goodness then up thank you for taking roll call um we that and thank you for everything you've done for me I've been following you for a long time and you've made a huge difference in my life dr. Lisle and I am eternally grateful so thank you thank you very much you've given me health and sanity which I particularly need now either I have two children 14 and 16 and my 16 year old was diagnosed with epilepsy in February and I sort of have two questions about it one is sort of my own stress level I am a hyper conscientious nutcase and my son was put on academic probation right through his school in this spring he's at an independent school and he has some learning difficulties but really he struggled a bit last year obviously because he was having a lot of seizures before it was more well controlled and I got stressed around that I'm worried they're going to ask him to leave the school and I did the other thing as I'm anxious about his health he had two seizures last week and it's one of those things where you know the boxes with the arrows and you run like what's the worst thing that could happen and you know at this point like the worst that could happen is you know he could have the seizure a seizure at the top of an escalator where it wasn't he's getting ready to go on the underground and you know he could die and so sure I yes I have a question about him but then as far as like managing my own stress if you have any suggestion for me well I have a few things to think about that and that is that what we what we want to be is we want to make sure that we are that we've done our homework to be as informed as we can and that we have consulted we've done a good job at consulting you know the best minds that we can afford to talk to to make sure that we've covered every base so this is an example of this is a sort of a deep game that we're playing with our self-esteem mechanism so what we're trying to do is make sure that no matter what happens even if even if you know God forbid we have a tragedy if we do we want to look back at whatever that tragedy is and know that we did an excellent job at at preparing as best we possibly could so that we do less second-guessing if things go wrong that's all we can do and so I would say that that I don't know obviously what your circumstances are in terms of and I don't know what experts there are in London I would certainly have consulted more than one about medications treatment as well as as what what things need to be prepared for what I would also probably look at the scientific literature the what what's your own personal education level Jennifer I yeah I have a master's degree so okay good for perfectly able to read science okay so I would be I would make sure that I had read quite a bit not quote on the internet but I had actually looked at scientific journals themselves and the if I didn't understand the stats I would pay $30 an hour to some stat whizz online to help me decipher and understand so that I could read the journals and I would make sure that I had read enough that I understood where for example the very biggest problems were with epilepsy where were the places where people got into serious trouble where where were they're preventable things so that you know this is a this is a very big threat you know I mean it's not huge people live you know I don't know what percentage of people die from seizures but it's not a small percentage but neither is it dominant okay so so but I would certainly if it was my child you can count on that I would probably put in you know 300 hours of research out of my life which is not some ridiculously high amount it's a couple of months of essentially full-time work over the course of the year that would be what seven six hours a week for a year so I would probably put in that kind of time not rushing through it be diligent essentially like a home personal homework assignment where I would be chipping away at becoming more and more knowledgeable not flailing around just grabbing onto it expert but actually becoming informed myself I'm actually aiming at a little issue here a book that I would read would be anatomy of an epidemic by Whittaker the reason why I'd read that book is that my reading of that book which was published in 2011 indicated the medications for seizures were not effective and that that long term people were not better off with those medications and that they had damaging effects on the brain just like everything else in psycho form so I can't tell you that that's true because I haven't investigated that literature personally but I if my child had a major seizure disorder I would be in my nose would be in mr. Whittaker's book I'd be looking at those citations and I would be following those up and make sure that I had enough understanding of the math which is not complicated but you might need some some assistance with it so that you can grasp and not be taking things from an expert opinion instead we're taking them directly from the scientific investigations themselves okay this is my my friend Colin Campbell had a cancer and his family that was extremely upsetting for him and he he had to roll up his shirtsleeves and do a fairly exhaustive analysis of that particular cancer was known what was known about the treatments etc as he went through the process with the family member he was discovering at every step of the way that he was much better informed than the people that were treating her okay and that they were going to make mistakes and and he would then confront them gently if you know Colin Campbell he's he's a consummate gentleman and the the the the response is back for medical professionals was very interesting mostly very hostile one lady began to cry because it turned out that she actually knew he was right and she had told him wrong but she had done it because it was the status quo so this was a very interesting process that he went through it turns out the family member now ten years later is doing totally well - fine they were very very conservative in their treatment they did not do the recommended treatments they were not indicated on the basis of the science but they were indicated on the basis of the standard treatment protocols which were not lining up with the science so this is all this is all by way of me telling you I do not know what the best way it is to proceed you know because I'm not a professional to notice anything about epilepsy but I am someone that knows about the self esteem mechanism and you've got enough IQ and you got plenty of time and we're not in a dire emergency right this second what we need to do is a steady methodical non-rush exhaustive and unbiased examination of the literature yourself to the point where you feel like you know that you're doing this job to the best of your ability does that make sense that makes perfect sense and I love homework so I'm all yeah yes if you run into trouble if you run into obstacles along the way and you and you need assistance to interpret literature please feel free to write to me or give me a call and we you know I will I will walk my way through it is best to my ability and if we need to seek other assistance we will
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