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Episode 95: OCD, Jealousy, Over-working, and advice for a naturopath
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good evening everybody it's Nate G along with dr. Doug Lyall here with the beat your genes podcast dr. Lyle how's it going today good all as well excellent and all right we're just going to go through these questions we want to get to as many as we can so we're just start right away dear dr. Lyle my brother's been diagnosed as OCD obsessive compulsive disorder he's my best friend were super close it comes as no surprise he's not necessarily a neat freak germaphobe hyper achiever but he always had a tendency to hang on to thoughts and guilt for far too long recently an incident that occurred has extreme as caused extreme feelings of guilt that are totally unwarranted but of let him down into a dark spiral of thinking he's recovered but now of uses OCD has such a limiting disease perhaps I'm wrong but it seems that based on your perspective you would see OCD more as a personality type and can be harnessed towards the good if the it was the person in the tribe who was constantly on guard about the worst case scenario essentially so how would you go about communicating that OCD might be beneficial if hammered properly rather than a lifelong crippling disease state good good thinking good question and in an interesting problem so this is a a type of OCD in this case that at least with the specific instance had to do with a bunch of rumination about doing something that was outside the group norms there or could have been viewed that way and therefore caused in principle possibly rejection from the group and therefore this uh this individual overestimating that worst case scenario has spent essentially had their guilt chip sound off and what that guilt chip is is simply a signaling device to tell the individual that they may be at a threat for being kicked out of group for being essentially too self-centered with respect to conflicts of interest between self and group and so in this particular instance the OCD is manifesting there who knows it could manifest in similar types of things you know with this individual as time passes now to think of this as a disease is kind of a weird way I I really that that that doesn't that's really not the right label for something like this and a lifelong crippling disease I think of it I think of it more as a an error tendency for this individual so it's a it's a characteristic error that they're likely to make they're susceptible to making this mistake it's not a crippling disease now hmm so can we do something about it of course we can we have to sort of go at OCD in a way that the OCD is likely to calm down and yield a bit to the to the evidence so what OCD just so that people know what this is it's obsessive compulsive disorder and what's interesting about it is when we back up for a moment we have to realize that behavior is the derivative of thinking so the compulsive part of this any behaviors that are man up the manifest that you observe are nothing other than a manifestation of thinking so obsessive compulsive disorder is actually really just about bizarre thinking the fact that there are behaviors attached just means that there is additional there's there's really a couple of things that can be taking place the person is is ruminating and cycling over and over again about a potential threat that's the obsessive part now that obsession may have a behavior that is why related to reducing the anxiety of the implied threat so for example if they're thinking about germs they may wash their hands now what takes place here is interesting that the the root of all of this is is what we're going to call the obsession which is a distorted view of the threat the the obsession is usually not my friends in cognitive therapy would call it irrational I would say actually it's totally rational it's just simply miscalibrated so the the I don't see bizarre of thinking on the OCD people I see completely rational thinking except that it's as if they they can't tell the difference between ten and a thousand in other words they're they're doing addition but they but they're making mistakes the nervous system is simply over rating the possibility of some threat interestingly enough they don't over ate the possibility of great success they simply over ate the possibility of a disaster and you can see that actually all human beings over estimate the possibility of disaster that's the whole point to having a warning device like anxiety that tells you if you're starting to walk down an alley in San Francisco to cut off cut off the trip around the block to get your car and you hear a little trash can lid rattle you immediately assume the worst in or have a lot of anxiety so now what are the odds that you know a rabid skunk is about to race up your leg and bite you and kill you well virtually zero but it's just enough that that possibility that something like that could be happening is enough to cause you to have quite considerable anxiety so the is that is that a distortion of the threat of course it is but it's a is it useful and adaptive from an evolutionary point of view absolutely so the OCD person is really no different it's just degree so with that in mind we look at this and we see something else that will take place so the OCD person will take action to try to do things to try to reduce the anxiety now the actions that they take are very often completely rational or excuse me logically related to the threat but they might not be so the person might actually be doing some goofy little thing like touching their elbow three times after they shook somebody's hand to make sure that you know somehow somehow that is makes them safe from the from the germ threat what's going on there is operant conditioning in my in my belief so what I believe is taking place is they have done something like that for some reason at some point maybe they touch their elbow once after they shook somebody's hand they were thinking about the the germs then they kind of picked at their elbow or touched their elbow and then what happened was the brain then over the next minute or so it underwent a relief that the shaking of the hands did not break out in a flesh-eating bacteria in the next five minutes and so they kind of settled down and they realized they survived it maybe they were in a position where they couldn't wash their hands at that point so but they had kind of touched they're all over some reason so a little tiny connection gets made between touch and the elbow and and the relief that takes place or maybe they touch their elbow after as their as their anxiety was naturally coming down because nothing terrible was happening the terrible thing that they had word fact anticipating and so in this way we can now get that to happen again because the brain makes a connection that maybe that's related to us being safe can be completely unconscious and then the person could actually even notice the unconscious processes that are taking place and now it becomes an active superstition and so what so what we're seeing is that the natural reduction of anxiety after a threat has actually reared its head and then it passes now can have some behavior that takes place afterwards that winds up accidentally becoming associated with the decay function of the anxiety and at that point you wind up with a compulsion so the the compulsion part can be essentially an accidental byproduct of the decay function of the of the anxiety starting to come down when the dire consequences don't actually happen now so then you get a funny looking thing where the person still has the underlying cognitive distortions that lead you know that are the obsessive part of this thing and then they have some funny little compulsion that takes place as well so now what can we do about this the compulsions themselves can be can be a pain in the neck so for example very often the compulsions are logically related to the underlying threats so it might be for example washing their hands what what the person has to do is they have to go through the process that any addict goes through because in fact it winds up being essentially an addictive process so the person is addicted to the decay of the anxiety that takes place post threat and during and after some compulsive activity that is involved like hand-washing so what they need to do is instead just like an addict has to put up with the anxious disturbing tension of not smoking if they want to get rid of a cigarette habit so does the OCD person have to brave the anxiety and disturbing alarm signals in the nervous system and they need to grit their teeth and not follow through on the compulsive behavior and did discover the they get the decay function and anxiety anyway now the problem is of course that once this is conditioned then they will go through an extinction burst as I've talked about elsewhere that the same thing that happens with a cigarette smoker if they stop smoking when they're getting the cravings their cravings will go up for a period of time that the nervous system will throw a tantrum as it essentially seeks the reward and works diligently to try to find that reward and so the same thing will take place with a an obsessive individual that has a compulsion attached to it that they will be they will be seeking that feeling of relief and they will be determined to take those actions because those actions can be an important part of the process of that decay function hustling itself along and they can get a lot of anxiety if they don't get to do that thing so the solution is to is to usually map it out with a therapist usually of the cognitive behavioral variety that map's these things out and grit your teeth and actually do and do exactly what the nervous system does not want to do this is precisely analogous to addiction the last thing the nervous system wants to do is give up drugs alcohol and cheesecake okay that's not what it wants to do it does not want to go against its anticipated pleasure relief etc the and it will resist it and fight it in the same way the OCD individual instead of fighting the pleasure hit of the chocolate bar and that anticipation they are fighting the anxiety and warning device that says no we really need to wash our hands we really need to wash our hands if we don't wash our hands something dire is going to happen on I can feel it okay I I'm having anxiety that is sending a warning warning warning warning we must do this and the anxiety can be unbelievably high and the person you know may not be able to tolerate cold turkey from the jump of doing this so a skilled OCD practitioner will map this thing out set these goals do the home you know send the person with homework and then they have to face it and if they do if they do their homework diligently and they are determined to fight this thing they can they can learn to brave their their instincts that are telling them differently and that anxiety can be whittled down to a fraction of where it is probably operating you know at any given time so that's that's how we do this and it's it's not life crippling it's just that it's more of a pain in the neck for most people some people what's pretty can get pretty severe but I doesn't have to be any disaster about half of my best friends and light Shep OCD I think I countered at one point that of the eleven people closest to me five of them have OCD so this is not this is it's quite clear that this is not any yeah pay for high conscientiousness who's very smiley no it looks like random accident bad luck quite frankly but all of these individuals are actually all very successful competent people with with good lives so they're quirky and they're a pain in the neck and they're and they're also funny so and love them all but this is but this is OCD it's nothing to be if it's really bad it's very severe oh then you definitely should seek help from a skilled practitioner here's what I would not recommend I would not recommend people be taking meds for it so it got out into the world in the last 15 or years or so that the SSRIs were a good treatment for OCD and that's apparently you know a a well respected treatment for OCD I wouldn't do it if anybody leaning on you and your OCD or where you've got a family member and somebody's leaning on them to to use SSRIs for their OCD I my vote is absolutely not and we we do not don't don't monkey with brain chemistry in any unnatural way I think that's a most always a loser I'm not going to say a hundred percent of the time but I'm going to say in my judgement 99% of the time ever monkeying with the neuro chemistry of a human is the wrong move you know unnatural monkeying with the neural chemistry so anyway that's the that's what I have to say about OCD and the there's plenty of possible help for this this young man's brother all right an excellent so I got a couple of questions for you yeah number one what is this so this what does this have to do with Tourette's syndrome where people I've had a few people who they go through what you've just described where they feel almost like you have to sneeze but they feel like they have to you know wiggle their shoulder up or or or strengthen their hand or clench their fists and it's just kind of the same thing is that a completely different thing or how is this related yeah I believe it is different in other words Tourette's is mm-hmm I think that's a it's a different level of neurological disturbance and you know I think some there's it's a different wiring problem than MCD malady characters right I mean yeah the OCD is is a funny little quirk and it's I believe it's the at the at the root for example of eating disorders typically or sometimes is I think that it I didn't think it is the essentially the fundamental root of anorexia nervosa and I think it's very often related obviously to bulimia and so I think that I believe that that that anyway so I think but no Tourette's it's his own creature hmm whole different thing okay then it's all rubbish my hat is second question I had regarding conscientiousness as I've heard you talk about in previous oats about whether or not someone is a decent human being and whether they're just a fundamentally good person the question I have is is that conscientiousness or can someone be a essentially a shitty person but just very conscientious yeah that's a very good question and the let me let's talk about this is useful to sort of dive a little bit deeper into what we mean by these personality characteristics the we use words to try to describe patterns of behavior and we're trying to encapsulate behaviors that are similar and to try to essentially be thinking of them as being derived from some characteristic nature of neural circuits that is giving rise to that behavior pattern so we say well that's flaky behavior that's responsible behavior that's heroic behavior etc so the we can sort of in a simple fashion we could say well if we use the big 5 or plus IQs we've got like half a dozen characteristics we could assign bell-curve scores percentile scores to each individual and have a pretty darn good sense of what that individuals like and what what the major processes of their life are probably likely to look like okay we'd be pretty good pretty darn good actually in many ways however when we try to use a word like okay what is conscientiousness and where does this all add up in this scheme of things let me start to describe things like what do we call a person who you know is a Jeffrey Dahmer but it's super meticulous about how it is that they set up their horrendous crimes what do we call that okay the what that is normally see Jeffrey Dahmer I don't think we would call him a sociopath he's actually I don't know don't forget about Dahmer for a second that that is a really bizarre human that that has something badly wrong with them now if we looked at a sociopath we could also look at a sociopath that that I would say sociopathy the best the best looking description for sociopathy would be low conscientiousness and disagreeable so I would see that as a combination and when when people have seen that combination together they didn't call it a combination because they weren't thinking of these elements they just called it a sociopath okay however you could in principle see that someone could be very disagreeable and and actually conscientious in the sense that they are that they are meticulous in their planning you're not going to find I mean yet you can't you will find people like that very disagreeable very conscientious and that could be an exceptionally good negotiator lawyer you know I mean some some some pain in the neck nitpicking rule person that that is just hard to get along with but is very fastidious etc so a classroom hall monitors when we were growing up print yeah right so that and that's certainly not low conscientiousness the but so where you see these these things start crossing over and what it is that you want to call it because low conscientiousness you could have someone who is for example high agreeable but low conscientiousness they'd be a friendly and warm but they're effectively big trouble because they say they're going to help you and you count on them and then they totally let you down and they so they could leave somebody bleeding in the street because you know because they they had their head turned by something else and they just felt like chatting up with some cute girl cute guy etc so you can see how that they don't wouldn't mean to be a problem for somebody else but they are because of a big flaky streak they would be perfectly Pleasant and they'd actually be warm but they'd be a disaster okay so you can see how we in the extremes you can put together some weird-looking combinations in general when we think about conscientiousness it's going to turn out that so many things that we would be would be associated with those gins would also be associated with character strengths that we would call fair okay responsible organized responsible fair etc and so that they would people would follow rules that would be both moral and practical and everything else under the Sun now that doesn't mean that we can simply tell a person's conscientiousness by how neat their desk is the so Adolf Hitler probably had a very neat desk so but we can see that Adolf despite what is probably very high conscientiousness in that regard in that narrow way was also unbelievably disagreeable so when you get extraordinary dissagree ability in there now we start getting distorted outcomes that don't that don't start fit fit easy parameters you're disagreeable enough and you're not in you're conscientious you're you're not what I would call a sociopath you're something else that's a flaming narcissist okay that's a that's a if we take the lower conscientiousness out of the equation we we wind up with just what we would call a narcissist and that person can be more dangerous than a sociopath dependent upon who they are and what the circumstances are so very very good question and we wind up getting a little bit muddy in there because as we move things around like well what is when I think of conscientiousness I I'm not thinking of it and we use that word we're not just think of it narrowly as how well someone does a narrow task we're thinking a little bit more globally that one of the quote tasks in life is to be orderly and responsible in our relationships to other people not just our own toenails okay so that the mind that is concerned about quote doing things right isn't just concerned about doing things right with respect to their own toenails they're also concerned about doing things right with respect to their customer or with respect to their friends so but that so that yet it starts to broaden itself out but we can't we can't narrowly determine someone's conscientiousness by simply looking at how clean their closet is got it so yes I mean my immediate thinking is well if someone is extremely introverted would that mean that they they really don't care so much about their quote village as much as say so-and-so they're extreme narcissists and they're also very very introverted that that can be something that doesn't really lend itself to them thinking about anybody else as much or am I just hopefulness directly to do extreme narcissist right actually extreme narcissist and very introverted would be sort of an odd looking person because they they would be very quietly frustrated with the world that the world wasn't bowing down to them and and so they would be you would see you know anger out of them and you would see the amount of anger that you would see would be related to it would be related to how emotionally unstable they were so people can be very narcissistic highly conscientious and actually be quite functional because they may be quite emotionally stable so they may be angry quite a bit and they may be irritated and they may feel like suing people and they might even do it on and they may be angling politically for a lot more because they feel like they're being shortchanged and they may be bitter but they may be quite functional because they have enough emotional stability that there are true colours about just how distorted their vision is of what they've got coming to them are kept under reasonable wraps whereas a person that it's inherently more naturally volatile emotionally then their narcissism in this regard becomes much more observable they will they will have explosions of rage so a highly narcissistic person ie highly disagreeable individual will it will be more obvious to the world the more natural emotional instability that they have so that these are how all these you know there's six dials six major dials on this music board and it's that's why it's it takes a little bit of experience thinking about these things to understand how these combinations going to work so if you have for example someone who's very disagreeable but they are also very emotionally stable they might be relatively introverted very intelligent and very conscientious you might not really ever know what a bastard they are until you actually have to face them on a specific issue in your life and there's a dispute over what is fair and they've got some power and they're going to treat you very unfairly okay and and you cannot reason with them because they have an extraordinary distortion about what's fair and that's when you find out that you have a narcissistic sob you know standing in your way so you might not know it they may work in your company and and you're working side-by-side with them but if you never have a run-in with them and if you have superficial contact with them they may seem perfectly reasonable and not any not outside the bell curve relative to anybody else and tell you have a conflict with them and then you find out holy smokes there is no reasoning with that SOB so whereas if they were naturally more emotionally volatile they were say in the middle of the bell curve for emotional reactivity they would have frequent blow ups that and their reputation would be far and wide that they're that they're a problematic human all right excellent welcome next what else we got well all right this xx of jealousy dear dr. Lyle after observing various relationships including my own I've just jealousy especially when a partner is in a one-on-one setting with someone of the opposite sex and Trust doesn't even seem like a factor in my jealousy for example my brother don't like when his friend and I have bread for goodness sakes and it's crunch none but finds the boil toward him another example is when Migrante hugged her little cousin who's a 10 year old girl and I got a bus that she wasn't on me which is completely ridiculous at last example could be when children become jealous or possessive over their ways being shared or given away Tom what else it seems that adults exist imil Airy havior when their lovers affections are being shared or given to anyone else Trust has very little correlation if none at all whether a partner gets jealous of examples what's going on is it at at natural tendency to covet all of our possessions including our lovers of attention is it hidden trust issues or is it our brains algorithms running the 1% change scenario 1% chance that we could lose what we worked so tiring to gain and keep very good thinking they nailed it they analyzed this correctly so you're all of your relationships are sitting under a competitive matrix and so if a relationship is valuable you are looking for cues that it could be under threat and jealousy is simply the cue that your nervous system comes up with to to to communicate to you too you know into some kind of executive function that that there is a threat that has been perceived and so in the issue of you know the this person saying it's my brother for God's sakes you know obviously I would sleep with his girlfriend bullshit it doesn't really matter what you would or wouldn't do what matters is over the course of human natural history did anybody's brother ever you know get take liberal liberties with his brother's girlfriend her wife all the time that would be a very high threat situation because essentially the by being close to the family that girl for example already has a feel for the quality the gene quality already feels like the genes have been vetted pretty well and now wants to see it well as long as I'm here let's see if I can do four percent better she's already swimming in about the right territory for she wouldn't be in a relationship with brother number one but now brother number one is you know down at Home Depot you know trying to get stuff to get the sprinklers working right and brother number two having a cup of coffee with this would be sister and lawn they're chatting it up so don't think that the would be sister-in-law isn't looking over this brother thinking trying to think through is he better or worse than the one that I'm with and maybe I can upgrade and don't think that the brother isn't thinking hmm not bad maybe I'll think about a little casual mating strategy or daunt downright poach this mate now the truth is is that obviously there would be fireworks and bloody noses potentially but still its opportunity and that proximity breeds opportunity so it would be absurd to think that in the natural history of humans that opportunity has not been exploited so it would be unwise for the organism to be asleep at the switch now when it comes to the little cousin or hugging one person as opposed to the other these have to do with little entrance that clearly sits inside of humans that I find kind of amusing and of course I have it myself so that makes it even more amusing and that is this notion of you know you meet some new people and they've got a dog and the dog comes over and sniffs your hand and licks it and it's like oh wow well Jodi doesn't like most people so she really likes you it's like yeah doesn't this jock have great judgment haha so the notion is is the little children and animals a quote have a sixth sense as to the quality of adult humans and therefore they're a litmus test for your gene quality and your worthiness to be in the coalition and so therefore if if you if one that the dog chooses grandmother number one over brand number two then grandmother number two is all bent out of shape because potentially you know she's losing status and so in the same way when little three-year-old niece hugs the the friend in the purple you know sweatshirt that looks pretty today rather than than her Auntie then this is all like trouble right because maybe auntie's not as fancy or attractive etc and maybe that the village needs to look at this and determine why it is that she's second-class citizen relative to a friend okay so everybody is on guard against those kinds of entrances and so the jealousy mechanism is telling you look out you're about to lose status so it may not be that you're concerned about the status with that three-year-old niece you're concerned about the inferences that other people will make in the village about the fact that the niece is picking your friend over you so yes the the person-sized is up at the end with the whatever they said that are we really on guard we have algorithms in there that are tracking very small percentage chances of threats and in activating essentially defense reactions against those yes that is precisely what's happening good question Exel excellent I okay so du/dr lyle how much abuse can our bodies take from working so much I'm a waiter at a restaurant seven that weekend a lab courier during the day I'm married have a 20 month old son and I'm in my late 20s I'm wondering if it's normal to work this much and whether or not there are any negative long-term effects from this I remember in one podcast you mentioned that our ancestors did a lot of long hard labor during the day which made them sleep well at night so have human bodies evolved to be able to work so much for a long time could people generally work hard into their 30s 40s and 50s without pushing it too much yeah they generally could they could work quite hard there's there's a lot to this question and it's probably worth were thinking some things through one problem is repetitive motion injuries so repetitive motion injuries would not have been consistent with a lot of hard work that people would have done in the Stone Age so that people can be literally typing and clicking a mouse and if they're doing that for hours and hours on end they can be doing some damage and even though it's not it's not quote particularly hard in terms of the intensity of muscular contractions the repetitive nature of that is an unnatural series of actions and those can cause injuries that can be really problematic now a waiter in a restaurant is probably going to be less susceptible to that those movements are going to be more consistent with human natural history they're not going to be a bunch of little micro movements happening over and over again at odd angles it's going to be much bigger muscular contractions and bigger sweeping motions not going to be as much of a problem now however there can be lifting and twisting and with substantial weights on things that you know you can you could wind up with injuries they could be problematic under that regard the I would say we also have inherent weaknesses and so you can wind up with injuries that can be pretty pretty difficult for you if you're going to be a physical laborer for a lot of your life and so anybody that is got some intelligence and has options I would say don't plan on doing this a long time it's one thing to wait tables at a nice restaurant for a few years because you're making you know $25 an hour so maybe you can make $50,000 a year doing this and squirrel some of the way behind tips and now government doesn't know what it is so you're effectively making what somebody else is making making sixty five thousand or sixty thousand dollars mine a desk somewhere still not a good idea okay so the it's a good idea that if you've got a brain use it and the the modern environment affords us the opportunity to learn saleable skills where we don't we don't have to be putting up with these physical burdens now there are people that love their physical work a lot of guys really like the feeling of accomplishment that comes with pounding a nail in the wall and you know doing constructing things and that sort of thing I understand that and and I'm not going to talk them out of it if that's what they love to do but I've seen a lot of those guys at 55 and potentially in trouble and a common back injury at that point can devastate a career and you really you really have nowhere to go and you better hope you've got some network behind you so the I would say in general this person's in their 20s or early 30s and you know you need to be you need to be doing something that you haven't done up to now which is think about investing in a in a skill that gives you the option to not do what is it that you're doing and and have a secure future should we wind up in a for goodness makes car accident and you wind up with a back or neck injury and your physical labor is no longer a possibility and so the it's probably better sooner than later to get yourself in a much more secure position in the modern economy use the brain if you've got one fantastic alright alright okay we've got time for one more question Lee a whole lot incidentally and an addendum to that it's not it's not necessarily easy to think through how one would think through what one would learn to do and it's easy to make mistakes here and I'd probably discuss this at other times the the concept that that what we love to do is very often sexual displays so women like fashion design and interior design and etc men want to be you know they want to get into sports and work for you ESPN or who knows what it is that they want to do they want to be a martial arts teacher okay so they they have a love for it or they want to play the guitar and want to perform and they want to have a band okay now listen these are sexual displays and therefore doing sexual displays for a living is the ultimate of double-dipping in other words you're taking care of both survival needs and reproduction needs at the same time the double-dipping that goes on here is going to be problematic because the supply and demand function of a free market tells you that there's going to be a hell of a lot of people that are going to want to do this double dipping so it means that the wages for something that is a double dipping grandstanding sexually attractive behavior pattern is are generally going to be lousy and there's going to be no security in it so this comes to my rule of thumb which is that sexual displays make lousy careers now they also make phenomenal careers so if you're LeBron James or Jerry West all the poor young people out there don't know Jerry Wesson what phenomenal human being J whether it is the ie Michael Jordan Joe Montana etc yeah or I don't know the Christie Brinkley so if you can pull it off yes they've been queuing everybody that is much younger than I am all right so the point is is that if you can pull it off or you think you can pull it off that this is this is what what I call behavior for your 20s there's nothing wrong with taking your 20s and taking a flyer at it if you think you've got the talent and the push to possibly make a sexually display into a career have at it but there needs to be a time where we face reality where we feel where we figure out that you know you're not going to be John Lennon and if you're not going to be John Lennon you may be pursuing a career behind the sexual display behind in thinking that this is some lofty grand thing that you're supposed to do with your life and not wasted well that's a really good way to be broke for the rest of your life and to be embittered and actually not be very scared so there's nothing at all that is that is how should I say it but is it any embarrassment or any fell out of life to try to figure out how you can make a really good comfortable living using your brain doing something the market wants that still that is reasonably legitimate this is this is outstanding it's a we're so fortunate to not to have to go dig in the dirt or throw spears into wild animals to make a living we can instead take part of our lives and energy and work with hope you know find our find ourself in a place and get ourself in a position of power to put ourselves in places that we can choose to leave some company if it's a bunch of it's got a bad political situation that we can't stand and spend our lives working with pleasant people that we like doing something that is reasonable reasonably productive and feels perfectly fine doing in exchange for a good financial security and the financial support that comes with that that's called earning a living and earning a living isn't supposed to be a sexual display that we get to be Elvis a few people get to do that good for them if it's not you angle yourself towards something that looks like it's going to work in the economy that you find yourself in and and it helps to have what I call a license to steal so much of the world's behavior now is organized into little guilds where people are legally required to have some kind of educational or training process that makes them allowed to do something and the it can be very useful to angle yourself towards one of those guilds to put yourself in a position for a secure Pleasant life if you don't if you don't if you're not burning with some some desire to be you know katarina bit all right let's move on okay one question though who's kettering of it oh my god all right I'm sorry I said unbelievable bombshell in I think the 1980s that took the Olympics by storm is a two-time world champion women's figure skating champion out of each harmony okay okay cool we got time for one dr. Lyle all right one more okay here dr. Lyle I'm a 26 year old Gemini just kidding I'm a 26 year old female is that actually part of the email so did she does have a sense of humor I'm a 26 year old female and soon to be graduate from an alternative medical program naturopathic medicine I'm frequently told that to be successful in my career I will need to network with other professionals and quote put myself out there quote to attract patients but personality-wise I'm more of an introvert and I'm less open to new experience so this advice is a hard pill to swallow I know I can't change alright I know I can't expect to change my personality to enjoy these necessary for rays into the public eye so can you offer some advice that will motivate me to participate in them or make them less miserable how much public exposure do you think is necessary to have a fulfilling and successful career in medicine well we just got done talking about this problem this is an individual that sought out a sexual display for a career so naturopathic medicine is the smart chicks sexual display and this is not going to be easy for the very reasons that I just talked about so it's it's not the supply and demand function tells us that there's an awful lot more people out there that want to be naturopathic physicians then there are people that want to buy naturopathic you know advice so that's a problem now given that the person did this or is doing it or you know essentially going to complete this thing and is going to face this problem then what we're going to need to do is is to the marketing problem for your services is going to have to be solved by somebody now it may be solved by you or may be solved by an organization that you work for so the the problem is is that at this point in time I don't know that there's a that there's an organizational guild that is essentially got it set that if you're a naturopathic physician which represents a great deal of learning and a lot of a lot of personal sacrifice and a lot of debt on most people's parts to go through this they go through a similar process certainly as competitive and of time effort energy etc so the average average naturopathic physician this person not making a comment about them at all is that there's not a machine for them to walk into and start earning six figures in the way that the machine exists and medicine and so this is dangerous behavior and I'm always astonished when I see you know a class full of 80 young naturopathic doctors had a destruction it's like wow did you guys all think this through and pencil this out and this is you know this is a scary business and the the commitment that the person is making in the expense they're going to for this education is not not trivial so given that you are facing this and now sounds like she's facing this daunting challenge now and realizing that people are saying oh you just got to get out there it's like whoa how is that going to turn into the eighty thousand dollars a year or $120 dollars a year income flow that I need to pay for office space insurance my my student loan debt in my life okay and a secretary etc another words how am I actually going to make this happen not easy the first move that you could probably try to do is possibly work under somebody else that already has organized this thing and figured it out a lot of times you can't because nobody will hire you because they don't have enough business they haven't solved the marketing problem well enough to need another individual on their staff so this is uh this reminds me of life coaches so a lot of people want to be a life coach and they think well fine I'll be a life coach like well good luck to you because the the life coaches of the world that are part of the machine are called psychologists psychiatrists social workers and marriage and family therapists those people have licenses they're integrated into the health system by insurance and effectively if you have hold one of those licenses you are essentially protected from the competitive environment should you choose to be producted by that entire marketing machinery ie you have a license to steal because what my father used to call it we mean we call it license to steal because the free market operations have been suspended and people are essentially benefiting from wages that are above what would take place under free market conditions that's absolutely true of medicine so medicine is the is the most astounding guild that exists in the United States and the wages are very high relative to the benefits that are rendered the people and actually the amount of skill and knowledge that is typically being brought to bear on the problems that people face when they walk into a doctor's office and incidentally that is being realized by the free market by the rapid proliferation of nurse practitioners and physician assistants or physician associates as we start finding out that a lot less education it's perfectly adequate to solve the vast majority of many of these visits now as we go on so what does what do we do with this person's problem well they either find somebody else that has solved the marketing problem and therefore can can bring them an income flow or they're going to have to solve it themselves now the solution that you're going to quote just get out there and meet with the public and rub shoulders etc not probably likely to be the answer so the answer today in the today's day and age is probably going to be through the internet the Internet is by far the most successful marketing engine that you're probably going to be able to harness the good news is your competitors will not be thinking that intelligently about this this is a competitive problem yeah it's it's quite frankly to some degree to a modest degree it's you against your competitors and whatever area it is that you want to live and so you're going to want to be smart about this you need to be learning about internet internet marketing etc this is all about value proposition to a customer that that what it is on your website and your marketing campaign that can sell them to entice them to actually come in seeker services it's all about what we call channel factors in other words the literally how can we put them easily in a position to hear your message so obviously if you could afford a million dollars worth of television advertising on your local cable channel that I have no doubt that you would get quite a bit of business but would you get enough to pay for the bill no but the question is is there an average it's literally an advertising scheme this is a math problem every dollar of advertisement needs to draw in more than a dollar with the business so this is this is fundamentally not going to be an issue about you talking to little old ladies groups although it won't hurt to have one good stick where you introduce what you do and with that you know a place where you could meet any given group and give them 20 minutes on what you do and hand out your cards etc but that's not going to be the way this is going to go you're going to need to be directing a marketing campaign towards a wide enough catchment area I don't go live out in the woods somewhere you need to have a wide enough catchment area where it is that you can you can get your share of a market and have a marketing program the directs a sales funnel to you so this is a lot to land on some 26 year old sweet person that that didn't know that they were aiming at a sexual display that they honestly believe no I'm just a nice person it's altruistic and really wants to help people ie you do I understand this and that that I don't have any great faith in modern medicine perfectly wise to have that kind of attitude and I believe that there's the natural alternative way may have better options and I wanted to dedicate my life to learning that and ensuring that I understand so this is all honorable and sweet and and seemingly reasonable that you are you are flying directly in the face of the most sophisticated massive marketing engine that has gotten control of the legal system and the government and your competitor is called medical profession in the pharmaceutical industry and so you you are a pesky competitor and unless you figure out a way to to to solve this marketing problem it's going to be it's going to be difficult now it can be solved and these people do solve it so look at people that are successful at this and see what it is that they appear to be doing success leaves Clues and so we we can look at that I could have much more to say about this but I'm not that knowledgeable I've always thought that the way to sell alternative medicine was not generally in terms of general health and benefits and how we want to do things naturally etc but rather probably disease-specific so we would want to people people are listening to you find a cross benefit proposition about a specific thing that you can help them with so we need to tickle their ears and get their attention if their problem is diabetes if their problem is rheumatoid arthritis whatever their problem is we need to have something that we have confidence in that we think that we can give them and then we need to speak to them behind our approach our natural approach that would be useful for that specific condition that type of marketing strategy is I think likely to be the most effective way to go all right fantastic all right and that perhaps last way yes can you hear me yep oh good yeah that person please feel free to to write to me I my heart heart goes out to a young person like this that that is you know I worry about their career about their future not sure what to do police feel free to write to me at dr. Doug while at yahoo.com and I would be happy to chat with you a little bit more about some ideas that are not really relevant to be talking to a broad audience
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