How To Not Let Your Past Define You - Scott Barry Kaufman

Sooner or later, you have to give up all hope for a better past. What's that mean? Yes. Isn't that a great quote? It's it's probably my favorite quote out of all quotes in the history of the world. Um the uh psychotherapist Irving Yalum talked a lot about that um and the importance of taking that existential perspective with his with his patients. And I think for all of us, it's really important to recognize that um we shouldn't be prisoners of our past. Um, as much as we keep ruminating over and over again that we wish something was different, that's not going to change the thing. No matter how many times we ruminate about it, it's not going to change it. So, what I really want to do is help people practically um, and hopefully move forward with their lives. I mean, it's a great point that you if you're kind of railing against something that happened in your past, hoping that you can enact some kind of control over it or or alter what it was that occurred, you are fighting a losing battle. That's just not going to happen. Yeah, that's that's exactly right. And um I think for a lot of us we get stuck on a certain frequency. Um and and and and uh I think sometimes therapy is not helpful with that, you know, and that shouldn't be a controversial thing to say at all, you know. Um if if I had to choose, I would choose Irvm as my psychotherapist. Who? Because uh Irvm is the psychotherapist who has that quote, "Soner or later, you have to give up all hope for a better past." Yeah. Yeah. Talk to me about the intersection of psychotherapy and identifying with our pasts. Well, there are a lot of different orientations out there for psychotherapy. Um, there's an orientation called trauma-informed therapy that I criticize a little bit. Um, because a lot of therapy is going and talking about your past. And I think that it's possible that if you're viewed only through the lens of your trauma, you you can you can forget that you have other things that you can provide to the world, you forget that you you're allowed you're allowed to have a future, you know, you're allowed to have a great future. So, I mean, there's not all and not all trauma-informed therapy is bad. Of course, there's nuance here, but I think, you know, a big part of what I wanted to the message I want to give in this book is that if we only view you through the lens of your victimhood, um, your pain, you know, your potential takes a back a backseat to your pain. I have to say I I did twice weekly psychotherapy for about a year. Fascinating. I it taught me more about myself than 1500 to 2,000 sessions of meditation. Uh you know, it's like inviting somebody into a house you've lived in your entire life and then walking around and pointing out rooms that you didn't know existed and those rooms connecting to other rooms that you did know existed and you're going, "Holy fuck." Like, I wondered why the kid through the back of the kitchen and oh, that's that leads into that leads into the living room and that's how that thing's connected to that thing. and you the veils really do fall from your eyes, but it creates a [ __ ] ton of open loops. It's basically here is a thing that happened uh and maybe this is why and this is how it impacts you in the present. But if you're sort of actionoriented, if you're a bit of a ruminator, if you're a little bit sensitive, dude, the [ __ ] temptation to become a victim is so strong. And I saw this I' I'm still seeing this in myself. And that's why I was so excited to speak to you about your book largely so that you can uh you know detox me. I need to be exercised of uh of the the stuff that I'm fighting with. Do you know what orientation your the psychotherapy was that you underwent? Yeah, I could ask. Yeah. Was it like psychological? Uh a little bit. Yeah, it was a little Well, therapy obviously could be very helpful. I'm also a big fan of coaching and so that's why I've gone into the coaching space in the past 5 years because coaching is very future oriented and it's not about diagnosing you or trying to find what is the diagnosis. I think sometimes we get hung up too much on what is my diagnosis, you know, or what am I? Uh, and we get so hung up on that that it's like we're grasping for something to reduce ourselves to, to hang our to hang our identity on. And that could get in the way of us seeing our our full potential, but you know, seeing the depths of our being as well. What do you mean when you talk about a victimhood mindset? Let's set our terms. Oh, absolutely. So, having a victim mindset means you tend to blame all your problems on external circumstances. Whether it's that life dealt you a bad hand or that a person or even an entire group of people have it in for you and are holding you back. You believe you don't need to take responsibility for your actions or reactions uh because of your past trauma. So it's perfect okay to go around being an [ __ ] to people because you can blame that on your own past trauma. You can't stop ruminating about your past victimization. And this probably is the most important part of the definition. You may fixate on how to enact revenge and you rarely think about solutions or ways of moving forward with your life with hope and purpose. That tends to be a real big part of it. Everybody has bits of that though. So to say, you know, the entirety or you you explain all of your I think most people would go, well that's not me. I don't explain all of my even the most victimy victim doesn't explain all of their things. Everyone has a degree of agency, right? you know, I have control at least over this one bedside table. I have control at least over the color of socks I put in my feet or whatever it might be. Um, so dig into that for me a little bit because it I guess that most people are uh varying degrees of victim on different days based on how much sleep and their blood sugar and and you know, well, you nailed it. And this is this is what was tricky about the framing of this book and trying to come up with how are we framing this book? Because most of the self-help books that sell really well will tell you it's not you, right? It's it's either uh usually the two go-tos we blame are your ex-boyfriend and your mom. Those are the two big ones. And uh and most of the the corner of the market in the self-help world either blame the mom, you know, the narcissistic mo borderline mother or the ex-boyfriend. And so in discussing this with um and then also the Jews, we like blaming the Jews and everything as well. That's but that's another story. Um so I um was working with my publisher. First I wanted to pitch a book on vulnerable narcissism which is what is the topic I've been scientifically studying for the last 10 years and they're like well people weren't going to admit that they're vulnerable narcissists. Um so I was like okay but this is something that we all it's a dynamic mindset that we all can go in and out of. And I do think that you lose your agency and you lose your empowerment when you do outsource all your problems to others. When you blame all your problems on someone else, you are stripping yourself of your agency. And so I really wanted people to see that. And I also wanted to come from a clear place of caring and not diagnosis. And I go through great pains. You you'll you see in the book, right? Like every sentence there's a caveat. You know, I'm not here I'm not in the game of shaming anyone. Not in the game. Usually when you talk about narcissism, when you talk about a victim mindset, it's always like it's the liberals or it's the, you know, the liards or it's always about something else that that people bond together to like have the out group be the narcissist. And that's not the vibe of my book. I really wanted I call it honest love. You know, you really validate someone's real felt experience of suffering and you're honest with them that you believe in their higher potential. What I think is missing is that latter part in our society today where give me some examples of times where people might be acting like victims that they might not realize it. The person who you know moderately agentic upwardly mobile I do my thing but where does a victim mentality sneak in in ways that we might not notice? Yeah, it's a terrific question. All throughout the course of our day there's an opportunity to choose a victim mindset or to choose an empowering mindset. If we're waiting at Starbucks, there's a longass line. It's very easy for us to forget that there are other people in that line as well that are probably also not having a great day, you know, but it's very easy to fall prey to the notion, gosh, don't they know how bad my day is? I deserve to be at the front of this line, you know. It's like it's like this certain mentality that I think we all can kind of fall prey to and we forget that we're not the only ones that are suffering. Um, it it happens everywhere. A big a big uh cognitive distortion associated with a vective mindset is seeing malevolent intent in ambiguous stimuli. Very nerdy. I know you'll be able to parse that, but it's a very nerdy way of saying you let's say you're going down the street, you smile at someone, they don't smile back, and you take it personally. You get mad. You're like, "What the [ __ ] Why did that [ __ ] not smile back at me? I went out of my way to smile at them." It's like, okay, chances are they probably didn't even see your smile. They're not thinking about you. They don't care about you. Why should they care? Why should they care about you? They don't They don't know anything about you. Um, you know, um, most likely it was just am it was just ambiguous. It's it wasn't that aggressive. So, personalizing everything. Um, seeing malevolent intent in really just neutral stimuli. Um, a really good example of that is is comed it really that really bothers comedians, you know, because that's their job. But if they're like they see aggression in ambiguous facial expressions when they're performing on stage and that makes them really angry like why are you not laughing loudly at my jokes and uh and it doesn't and they in they interpret that as well the person hates them and hates their jokes. So, that's an extreme example, but if we go across, you know, our everyday life like that, you know, overpersonalizing things, um, you know, if someone doesn't text you back right away, um, you fall apart and, uh, think, oh gosh, they hate me, you know, all that stuff is really holding you back. Where does a victim mentality come from? Like, why? Yeah. Well, I think everything honestly comes from a mix of nature and nurture. all of our personality dispositions. It's definitely a personality dis disposition in the sense that some people we find in our studies over and over people some people score higher than others regularly on it. But I also think it's a dynamic mindset and a lot of it does come from uh I I'm I'm hesitant to use the word trauma but a challenging experience in our life um uh where we felt like we've been wronged. There's some really interesting research where they they wronged people in the laboratory intentionally and they look to see what that does in terms of whether or not they punish an innocent person in the in the experiment. Don't you love social psychologists? So they found that a very a very statistically significant effect that those who were um wronged in the study like they got the short end of the stick in one way were more likely to give a puff of white noise to annoy a completely innocent they suddenly became a sadistic psychopath. They suddenly normal everyday people became a sadistic psychopath. So, I think it is it is a a mindset that we all can be. It can trigger all of us. I really can't stand this constant you're a psychopath. I'm not. You know, we're living in a society right now where everyone is so quick to call everyone else the narcissist and and see themselves as the perfect angels. And I just don't think that's the accurate reality of the matter. So, is this retributive justice? Is that what you think these people are doing? No, I think we feel justified because the univer to balance things out a little bit to um to uh it's like a you know, it's interesting. A lot of people say they're really into justice, but what they're really into is selfjustice. What's the difference? just not justice for all but when there's injustice they see against their self then suddenly they hash my self matters but oh right okay so most most people's um selfjustice is a threat against one's own ego but also their campaigns publicly are usually motivated personally that I would guess something some something would tell me that most of the people. Well, actually, I was going to say this, but then this would kind of run against Rob Henderson's idea of luxury beliefs, right? Like, although I suppose that that's actually a hollow campaign. That's someone not really caring about defunding the police, not really caring about black people, not really caring about this. No, I think they really care. I think they really care. Um, but they care because it's a threat to something they see themselves a part of. And I think that um what really counter signal against I am not part of the bourgeoisi. I am not oppressing you. Yeah. Yeah. Um it's interesting that you link that to the luxury beliefs idea. Um I mean the idea of signaling is is everywhere once you start to Jeffrey Miller told me that once he said he said that it said once you start to study signaling you you can't see anything in this world that in any conversation that isn't some form of signaling signaling. So I always thought that was interesting. Um, but I think that um, what is really lacking is a real care for universal principles, universalism. If you say you care about justice against, you know, racial discrimination, you should care when a white person is discriminated against, right? Like, and that's just I mean, that's just an example, but it it should work all the way around. If you're a white person, if you're a white supremacist and you're like, I care about justice against white people, you should also care about black people, too. You know, like like we should care about universal principles, not just to the extent to which an injustice has occurred against something that correlates with yourself. Why is victimhood so seductive? Like what's the is so seduct? It is our default state. Here's something interesting. Um have you heard of warned helplessness? The theory of war helplessness. I have. That was you put dogs in a cage, you shock them. Yes, give us the full give us the full overview and explain how it's being debunked. You were you were halfway there. Um Martin Selman uh in the 70s and 80s did a whole series of studies starting with dogs and rats and then they eventually went to humans and and I'll get to humans in a second, but they found that in dogs um you continually shock a dog um and then you open up the cage. So you keep them locked in a cage and you this this is delightful, right? This this sounds like psychopathic behavior, doesn't it? um on the part of the experiment. But you continually shock a dog while they're locked inside a cage and then you look to see at what point um when you open up the cage, do they walk out? Because you you you let you give them the option to be free at some point and you look to see how many times do you shock them before they no longer walk out of that cage even though they can be free. And so they found that dogs pretty quickly were in helplessness. you know, it doesn't take that many shocks for a dog to give up uh and and not walk out when when the doors open. But what was interesting is when they got to humans, they found and they had to completely redo the theory. So they have a paper 50 years later and where they say they got it completely wrong. They completely opposite in humans. It seems like um learn helplessness is the default state in humans. There's something very primal about that where we default to learn helplessness and what we have to learn is hope. Hope is an intentional process that has to be learned. So you ask why is it so seductive? Well, there's something so primal about um the rewards we know we're going to get if we signal victimhood. It is something that just through the we're such a social species and we know that the person who's perceived as the victim throughout the course of human evolution got uh a lot of support and of course there are there are real victims and of course we need to say that it should almost have to not be said but we we obviously should make clear that we're two compassionate humans and of course there are real victims but there also are Um, so a victim mindset is independent of victimization. You can have real victimization and not harness a victim mindset about it. I have a a friend um uh who's really cool and he has like no arms or legs and he has two hooks um Tom Nash and he he's like I'm not a victim. He had uh he had menaccoal uh disease that that caused him uh to lose uh to become quadripollegic and he's like I'm not a victim. I actually I love these hooks. He like rolls up in style with them, you know. Um vice versa, you can not have been a victimized and have a victim mindset as well. And I talk about the dark triad in in the book. I have a whole section on uh dark triad activism. Yeah. just dig a little deeper for me. I think I I've heard you talk about this upending of learned helplessness to learned hopefulness just that kind of turns the gravity of a lot of the way that people see their efforts um their perspective on how successful they are. You know, the fact that I don't default to uh thinking positive some to being uh agentic. I find it hard to overcome difficulty. Um, a lot of the time I feel like things are outside of my control. I sometimes get this sense that my past is marionetting me in the future. Um, just like sink a little deeper because I I really think that's I think that's just such a [ __ ] powerful uh remover of guilt for people where they go, "Oh, I'm not I'm not broken. This this isn't some personal curse. This is a inbuilt part of being a sensitive human. I'm really glad you said that. A lot of people, and this is really known, this is well known in the trauma literature. Um, a lot of people who have had a terrible thing happen to them, especially when they were young, they do implicitly unconsciously believe they deserved it. Um, it's a defense mechanism. It's not a it's not a healthy one. But, um, a lot of people will say in trying to be like, why why did this happen? I must have deserved it. and they start to develop a sense unconsciously often that they're broken inside. And a big, you know, a big mission that I'm on and and the whole second half of the book, that's the whole second half of the book is find the parts of you that are not broken. Find the light within yourself. And that is the biggest problem when you identify singly with your with your victimhood. And and what boggles my mind is there's a lot of people that are committed to that. They're committed to identifying with their victimhood completely. and it boggles my mind. Um, I guess for some people it is the only way they know. It's it's it's it's encouraged in their community in their certain inroup, you know, that that's like the way to be. Um, but there are entire communities where it's not. I mean, if you if you're part of like the athletic sports community, I feel like there's a a whole culture around overcoming a victim. You don't lose a game and the coach goes, "All right, team. Let's pack it up. let's blame the other team for all our problems. Let's give up. There's not going to be a next season. You know, did LeBron the Lakers, maybe I should bring up the Lakers, but I don't think he has a victim mindset over over that situation that happened this year. Um, so I I think there's certain cultures and communities that really encourage it and some that that don't. M so just go a little further back that you mentioned people who are struggling because humans are so pro-social will tend to be uh helped up they will be uh given assistance this is sort of ancestrally I guess have you thought any more about the EP approach the adaptive uh reason for sort of how victimhood works that dynamic what it means yeah I hint I hinted at that uh a little bit earlier But um we are such a social species and social value is such a important core part you know reputation and social value is such an important part and I think when if you go all the way back to you know like savannah desert we're a very tribal species and to be a and there's a constant I think there's a constant battle there's a constant victimhood Olympics going on going back to the start of humanity the dawn of humanity. We've been engaging in this victimhood Olympics where you have two sides um that are waring against each other and there's this notion that there can only be one victim and there can only be one oppressor. Um it it it it just that is what gets you the greatest rewards because if you claim that spot of being seen as the victim of the conflict, you get resources and support. But if it's the second that you're seen as the tribal group that is the oppressor, you are nothing you can do can be right. You know, like nothing you are you are pure evil no matter what happens. So I think there's something so primal about that war for that coveted seat and and as you see it's in my my last chapter I don't shy away from saying how it's playing out against in the Israeli Palestine conflict and how it plays out in almost every intractable conflict among humans. There's something so primal about it. Does that suggest then that modern culture isn't contributing to incentivizing victimhood? Because a lot of culture war conversations talk about how victimhood is now being pedestalized. It's allowing people to get completely uh like contributionfree status and and and manipulate the system. But you're saying this is vestigial and has gone back as long as humans have had social groups. So which one's right? Well, do you think our modern culture incentiviz does not incentivize victimhood? Oh, I would say it does. I would say it does. I think I'm trying I'm trying to work out is that a magnifying effect? Has it become a catalyst? What is it about modern culture that's caused that to happen? I think it's like asking why do humans still like fatty foods? I mean, I think that we're seeing remnants of an evolutionarily primal need that needs to be overcome. I mean, it's something that I think we see generation after generation after generation because it's so deeply seated into our DNA to to incentivize that. Um, it's very hard for people to because it's so deeply ingrained. It takes cognitive work to be able to perceive that there could be two victims at the same time. [Music] Very hard for people to wrap their head around that. And I think that's the only way forward. Is is there an additional level of incentivization or or contribution from the modern world? Is it social media? Is it a a desperate desperate need to try and upend inequality? Why is it that there's a little bit of a catalyst going on? Yes and yes. Yes. And yes. Um I just had a conversation with Jonathan height on my podcast about this. Um yes uh v um social media especially Tik Tok really incentivizes a victimhood identity among youth. So there really is a lot of peer pressure um for for you know it's no um no surprise that teenagers go through an identity crisis that's happened since the dawn of teenagerhood hoodom but now teenagers are hitching their identity as much as possible on some sort of marginalized identity because they know that's the way that's the only way they can belong. That's the only way they can feel like they're included. Why why would why would somebody be more included on the margins than in the middle? Well, this is the million-dollar question. We you get the Nobel Prize if you figured out exactly what was happening. But there seems to have been a cultural shift among youth where um and Gene Twangi has has done a great analysis of this in her book generations. prior generation. Um, high self-esteem and grandiose narcissism was the was the major form of entitlement, which is we're the best, you know, we're the best generation and and they're, you know, and they're proud and um happy about uh about uh being superior, but now the entitlement um you get special privileges for saying you've suffered. So it it has become a vulnerable form of entitlement that is being incentivized more than prior generations. Um it's an interesting question. I I think a social media must play some role in that. There's some sort of feedback mechanism where that seems to be what gets more attention and gets more likes. I mean, when we deal with the attention economy like we're doing with social media, you start to see certain things start to get magnified um and certain things start to compound um that maybe we didn't even uh that weren't as prominent in the past. But you just don't get as many um likes if you're not being polarizing and if you're not um talking about some sort of victimhood. I remember I think it's in the happiness hypothesis Jonathan Hyde says uh uh sympathy is investment advice and and that's really what he's talking about is the fact that if you see somebody who's really down on their luck and kind of desperate and in need of support that person will you basically get a multiplier for every unit of effort that you give them compared to somebody who doesn't really need the effort. Now, the person that doesn't really need the effort, you give them some berries and might be thankful for some berries. But someone who's starving, if you give them some berries, they really, really owe you. Now, there's lots of reasons why we have sympathy. We're a pro-social species. We don't want to see other people suffer, etc., etc. But, you know, deep down there is going to be a bit that says, "Hey, you support this person. They're really going to owe you. This is going to be great for you long term." Uh, and I wonder whether your opportunity to crowdsource that level of sympathy across the internet is a big motivating factor for people to do that because you have an unlimited size tribe of people who can think, "Wow, God, I really should help this person. I don't really know why, but they really seem to be struggling. And wow, in an internet filled with people that are being performative and not showing their true selves, look at this person. That's real vulnerability. That's authentic. That's relatable. I see me in them. And as soon as you create this dynamic where people are incentivized to help and you stand out by having uh some degree of what appears to be authenticity, authenticity very easily, I think a good way to talk about authenticity would be or to signal it is to say a thing that typically would be costly to say otherwise. Um you know Sam Harris I think is is authentic. You don't need to agree with him or disagree with him but he pays a high price for a lot of the opinions that he holds. So you have to assume that he believes them because if he didn't believe them, why the [ __ ] would he still hold them? Like why would he talk about them? Like you would just say something that was easier than that and you would and he gets a lot of [ __ ] for it and he gets tons of [ __ ] from it. He says he says the only way he ever finds out about it is when I forward them to him the emails. Keep keep doing that. That's very important. But yeah, what what do you think about that? What do you think about this uh sort of um yeah investment advice, authenticity, relatability dynamic? Is that contributing? I I want to think this through. Is it contributing to uh to the to what I mean? I think Sam incentivizing victimhood at large. Ah, see see like Sam is such an oddball, you know, in the human species. Um, he he's willing to say what he believes to be true regardless. I understand. Sam Sam wasn't the example that I was using. The point being that typically people see a degree of vulnerability as being authentic. But the problem is if you can bypass the authenticity and just be vulnerable, that gives all of the benefits of authenticity whilst not having to do it, which is where performative vulnerability comes from. If you film yourself crying on camera, people think, "Wow, they're really sad." They didn't know if you were sad or not. Like maybe you're just good at crying. Maybe you convinced yourself that you were sad. Maybe you overegged your degree of victimhood in order to be able to show this online because you're going to be positively reinforced to do it because people are going to care. I think there's a really great insight there. Um I do talk about the difference between performative I call Tik Tok vulnerability versus um authentic vulnerability. Um I see this kind of Tik Tok vulnerability on steroids and it does get rewarded. I think that there is genuine sympathy involved there. There are people you know it's like there are people who when they see the signal they they genuinely want to help. They generally have the empathy and want to help. And so that kind of um that kind of tick- tock vulnerability, they know that they they are going to get some reward. It's like when you're a child, you exaggerate a little bit that you're sick because you want to stay home from school, you know, and you get rewarded by your mother showing you uh a lot of care and concern. It does feel good to have that attention. It does feel good, you know, like even you, Chris, Mr. no victim mindset. I'm sure if you're not feeling well or whatever, like there might there's a human tendency to want to like broadcast to others that you're not feeling that well, um to kind of get um to get that sympathy. Okay. Are genes our destiny? Surely they're the most immutable parts of us. So, how can people not identify with their genes? Did Did I Did I address your prior point, though? Because I thought it was really Yeah, I thought it was really interesting. Um, yeah. So, uh, genes. Okay. So, G is like a dirty word, right? In in a lot of circles, I think people think of genes as something that is immutable that uh we can't change. But I would much rather live in a world where nature and nurture contributed than than either living in a genetic deterministic world or an environmentally deterministic world. So, I'm actually happy with the way that uh evolution has given us genes that are highly sensitive to the environment but are not completely determined by the environment. Um, so I like that. So, do you want to do you want to do you want to cover attachment theory? Is that it? Whatever you think is bested. Yeah. Whatever you think is most salient from the genes side. Let's let's dive into attachment theory because there is there are so many misconceptions about what attachment theory is and there's so many ideas that it's all the fault. I think a lot of people have a victim mindset about attachment theory. They say, "Well, I have an insecure attachment because of the way I was raised." But as I talk about in the book, the behavioral genetics research shows that there is a pretty substantial heritability of your attachment style. And I think that it relates to your personality. Like if you are score very high in neuroticism which is going to be influenced by your genes and your environment but genes really matter in in influencing uh the development of your neurotic traits. You're going to be more anxious in your relationships. You're going to be more uh self-doubting and it's going to show up in your relationships but it's also going to show up everywhere everywhere else in your life. So, I think attachment theorists sometimes look a little too narrowly um at the attachment relationship domain and I think they could use a zoom out a little bit and take a bit of a personality neuroscience/ genetics perspective a little bit more. Well, I mean, look, genes are everything, right? They are the your height, they're your weight, they're your ability to gain muscle. Uh I'm sure you've looked at in some parts the sort of incel black pill ideology a lot of that is you know genetic dead end that that's actually what they refer to themselves as. So it's difficult for a lot of people facial symmetry. Are you telling me I'm going to have to go? People go and get leg lengthening surgery, you know, all of the different ways the compensatory mechanism. I've gone bald early in life, you know, whatever your and then you compensate. You fly to Turkey and get new teeth or get a new hairline or whatever. Um, genes in many ways are our destiny and it's hard not to identify with them because they are immutable in many ways. Yes. But if if I gave only that message then there'd be no point in write writing the book rise above um because we also have an agency as you said to compensate to do what we need to not you know what what's it going to do to help you to say oh I have the genes for shortness I'm just going to never talk to women ever again you know what what's what what is what is the use of that what is the benefit of that so no matter what circumstance you're in and no matter what hand God has dealt you um I I think it's it's it's very much in our control to to do what we can with what we have. So I think both are true and we can hold both in our mind at the same time. But you're right. I mean it drives me crazy when people ignore the role of genes drive and I have a whole section of my book on that in terms of uh not just attachment theory but um but also um well it's a very controversial thing to say that trauma is heritable. that that's probably one of the most con if you want to not be a uh a lot of people to like you at a cocktail party, tell them that heritability that trauma has a high heritability. Have a look dig into the research around that for me. Okay. How do we how do we cover this sensitively? Well, um I think that in a lot of ways trauma is the narrative that we tell ourselves about an an experience that happened to us. Um this notion that trauma is stored in the body I don't think is scientifically accurate. You know, the body keeps the score is like the number one. It's been on the New York Times bestseller list. It's created a whole cold falling and has so much popularity. But I don't and I don't believe that's how the brain works. So it it our trauma story is stored in our brain. It's not stored in our body. What we have in our body for sure is survival stress. We have in our body um lots of um uh we we can obviously feel um the stress involved with assaults with with various things that happen to us. But the but the word trauma that really is the narrative that we've cognitively and consciously put on a series of things and and it can change. You see you can see a change too. You can see situations where a person never thought they had trauma and then they go to therapy and then they get convinced by their therapist that that what happened was trauma. So then they change their whole narrative. So you can see how how fluid our notion of traumatic experiences are. So when I say that trauma has a higher heritability. Well, it is interesting because there is research showing that people who have a genetic proclivity towards the personality personality trait neuroticism do tend to see the world differently than people who are low in neuroticism. They tend to see threat everywhere. Um whereas people who score low in neuroticism don't tend to see the threat everywhere. You could have twins um you could have well you could have siblings who are not twins. You have siblings who don't share a lot of genes. um not not identical twins and they both could have experienced the same exact thing in their childhood from their parenting style and one is like I had a traumatizing childhood and then you you see this case and then the other child is like what are you talking about we had such a great childhood you know and it's like what's the truth in a lot of ways the truth is in the eye of the beholder um and you also see that with attachment styles so I talk about in the book but the genes for neuroticism color the extent what you focus on in your relationship. Um, and so you're it it it it focuses your attention on various aspects of the relationship and it makes you ignore maybe some of the better lovely aspects of relationship that you just can't see because you're so focused on will they leave me, will they leave me, will they leave me? Does that make sense? And I hope that was somewhat sensitive. No. Yeah, it does. It does. Um I mean I remember you talk a bit about epigenetics and I can't remember who it was I was speaking to um might have been uh Roy Bowmeister and he was saying that if a mother goes into poverty so during pregnancy so if a a mother who's pregnant loses her job which is pretty reliable way to go into poverty uh you get epigenetic changes inside of the uh baby that is is is being carried inside of us. So, you know, ancestral trauma, uh, which is I think people talking about I'm one 16th Native American, one one like 120th Native American and I can feel the sort of pain of the ancestral land. I think that starts to get us outside of the realm of science and into the realm of woo a little bit. Uh but given the fact that if you have a daughter as a a baby that's inside of you, uh that baby has every egg that she's ever going to carry for her entire life. So at one point you were inside of your mother who was inside of your grandmother. Like that's the kind of position that you hold. I don't know how epigenetics works down to the level of egg cells inside of a developing baby, but I could see that you could quite easily create two generations of epigenetic change by having a really really stressful event occur to the mother while she's pregnant. Yes. Yes. And um people do make too much of intergenerational trauma effects uh because the data does show that beyond two generations um there's no uh indication in the blood of the of of this. So I think that there is some partial truth to this but I think the trauma researchers make too much of it. They go way beyond what the evidence actually shows. I mean I could literally show you papers I could let me minimize my use of the word literally. I want to work on that. I overuse the word literal sometimes, but I would love to show you some papers um that that really cast doubt on the pervasive effects of intergenerational trauma uh beyond two generations. So, in terms of holocaust, for instance, or in terms of people's slavery, black sla, you know, people say intergenerational trauma, you know, from you know, my great great great grandmother is is the reason why I I am the way I am today. And the evidence is actually slim on that idea. M ju final element here to try and curveball you. Epigenetic change uh the uh increased activation or of particular genes in expression uh of genes uh within someone. Surely let's say that you uh start off child of a slightly neurotic parent. uh you've probably got the genes for a bit of neuroticism and then during childhood you or even during adulthood you go through a really really protracted period of chronic stress and this epigenetic change that was primed. You had all of the materials, you had all of the ingredients for this very neurotic soup inside of you uh and they get turned on. How do people not identify with the fact that maybe they can even remember a time before this when they weren't this way and now this epigenetic change has occurred? It's very, as far as I am aware, it's easy to increase the expression of genes, but it's very hard to decrease the expression of genes once they've begun to be expressed. Yeah, great point. And if you want to discuss epigenetics within the development of an individual's lifespan, there is a lot of evidence for that, for sure. Um and that's a different topic than the the intergenerational trauma issue. Those are separate issues within within an individual's lifespan. Um there seems to be genes that influence general sensitivity versus um orchid dandelion, you know, hypothesis. So there are genes that influence you to be the kind of person who's sensitive to everything for better and worse. And then there are some people who seem to have a combination of genes that cause them to not be so affected by anything. And for those who have the genes that make them uh really sensitive to everything, the environment, the epigenetics really really matters for those folks because there's some really cool studies with like summer camps um that uh takes these kids who have uh who are prone to a general sensitivity and may show neurotic like traits and cause them to um to really face their fears and um in a very supportive, encouraging environment. Um, Rachel Gracio Plane and Colin Young did a great study about this, by the way. Um, and really support them and and activate the curiosity uh element of this because sensitivity, it can go either way. It can cause you to avoid the world, but it can also sensitivity doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. it um or a way of holding you back in life. If you're in a supportive environment where you learn early enough that you can take that feeling of fear and anxiety and and and still act, it actually gives you a sense of great resiliency and it gives you a great sense of curiosity. So they found that they had the those kids had the highest by the end of the summer camp, they had higher curiosity scores and openness to experience than anyone else in the camp. But unfortunately, most people listening to this podcast are not going to be children. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Trying to be hopeful. [Laughter] Realistic. We're being realistic and hopeful. Yeah. Yeah. And both both. Yeah. Um it is true. The the other way around is true as well. And it's it's a real it's a real shame. I mean it it matters a lot what kind of partners you choose. Do you have sensitive do you have partners who are sensitive to your triggers? Do you have partners who are um going to gaslight you, abuse you? you know, um especially, you know, if you have a genome that makes you super sensitive to that sort of thing. It is interesting though, there are some people with these genes that that don't that make them just rock solid like stoic regardless of like whatever is thrown at them. Um that that's interesting. You know, there's like a genetic precity towards that as well. You know, I don't know. Maybe David Gins has those genes or maybe he developed it. Maybe he's maybe he was the other way and he developed it. Who knows? But um but it is interesting. Um, so yes. So of course we should have compassion as well for all the different ways epigenetics happen, but I don't think it means that there's no hope. I mean, like you said, it makes it harder, especially um in childhood. I I bring up childhood because it's in adulthood, you know, if these things happen, you're you're really influenced a lot by these sensitive periods in your life when your brain is still developing um when your prefrontal cortex is developing and you're coming up with cognitive strategies to overcome things and learn things. But I do think you can learn these strategies at any point in your life to a certain extent. Right. Okay. What's the research on highly sensitive people? I literally didn't even know that this was a thing. I thought it was just really I thought it would just be like a colloquial term. Oh yeah, he's very sensitive. But highly sensitive people is a I mean tell me what it is. Explain it. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. And we should also talk about the link between masculinity and being an HSP because I think a lot of men score high in this trait and feel ashamed of it because they feel like societal expectations say that they're a [ __ ] boy or something just because they score high in these traits. But being a highly sensitive person is the combination of two traits. Neuroticism that we talked a little bit about which is being fearful, having a lot of anxiety. But also people who are highly sens also score very high in openness to experience um appreciation of beauty and excellence. And what you often find is that they're so open to so many so much input in the world that they get overwhelmed quickly and then they need to retreat. So there's a constant push and pull between a full engagement, a full um engagement in the world and all of its splendor in all of its blender and and an avoidance because one becomes overwhelmed with all the input that's coming in. That's really all it means, you know. Um uh some people make more of it than it is. Um I saw a post an interview with Kanye West where he said he's very misunderstood. He's really just a highly sensitive introvert. Um, and then um I I I made the argument you it's actually possible to be a highly sensitive [ __ ] There's no contradiction in that in in in [Laughter] that Ryan. going to the highly sensitive people thing because I get the sense that this sort of show is going to be very heavily trafficked by people who lie somewhere on that spectrum. You know, they're introspective. They reflect. They do selfwork. They consider whether or not this is the best use of their time. They want to be better. They're probably plagued with quite a lot of self-doubt. Maybe they're dealing with a little bit of low self-esteem. They worry about what other people think of them. Uh they care deeply about other people's opinions probably too much. Yeah. All of that stuff doesn't sound very good. What are the advantages? Like how can people transform high sensitivity into a strength? Yeah, I'm really glad you asked that question because I think a lot of people can view these things as negatives. Um, but contextually speaking, uh, it is very conducive to creativity to be able to see the nuances in things to be able to see to have such an open mind where you're able to make connections between things that most people aren't seeing. Um, a big part of my PhD dissertation was investigating the trait uh reduced lane inhibition and its correlation with creative thinking. People who have a reduced lane inhibition actually did this research with Jordan Peterson, believe it or not, back before he was famous. We published papers on this, but a reduced late inhibition means that your filter is is down where you don't see things as as necessarily irrelevant to the current goal that you have. So there are people who when they have a goal, they're so narrow-minded and single focused about it that they ignore everything else around them that doesn't seem obviously relevant to their goal. But we found that really creative people, especially in the arts and uh actually the paper I published Jordan looks at the difference between scientific creativity and artistic creativity. We found that people particularly in the arts um have um this reduced latent inhibition where they actually at an unconscious level let in a lot more information um than that that uh they're for some reason their their their uh salience brain network is not tagging this incoming input as irrelevant. So they they're they're able to entertain it and they also have the working memory capacity to entertain it. Shelley Carson also did some really great research showing that having a reduced lane inhibition plus an enhanced working memory capacity is kind of like the ideal state of being for creativity. You can handle this influx of information and and and sort out what's relevant and what isn't at the conscious level whereas most people filter out at the subconscious level. I imagine I imagine if you get this wrong you get perilously close to attention deficit disorder as well and schizophrenia. Yeah. In the most extreme versions, this is what you see in mental illness. Um, you know, we put people in mental institutions for having too extreme version of this, but for people who can have a moderate version of it, it seems to be the most conducive towards creative thinking, right? What other advantages? I also think that social sensitivity, I think being able to be in a conversation and and feel what another person is feeling or take in a lot of information, even non-verbal cues, not be blind to them, um can be very valuable. Uh it can help you make you a more uh caring human in a lot of ways. Um so we have the creativity, we have the sort of social aspects. Um, I think also just appreciating life, being able to um see beauty where other people don't see beauty could be a big part of it as well. You do you do you do tend to find uh they actually have separated I I I talk about this study uh in some of my articles. Um but they they separate the appreciation of beauty and excellence part from the uh anxiety part. And they find that if you separate that part um of the high sensitivity, it's actually ced with much higher levels of happiness and well-being. whereas the anxiety part is correlated with lower levels of anxiety and well-being. So I think there are good things we can take from being a highly sensitive person and we can try to manage the other parts. Great lead in there to if actually first off how can you tell if you're one of these people? How can people I I we don't want to get self [ __ ] diagnosing but uh you know what I mean? I don't I don't want to go down that rabbit hole but how can people tell if they're highly sensitive? And then on top of that, if this is you, if this sounds like you, what are the challenges that people should be aware of? What are the areas that if you can just get control of this and this and this, your quality of life is likely you're really able to unlock the advantages of being more highly sensitive? Do you think you do you think you might be a highly sensitive person? I think I am. Uh yeah, I based on what I've read, given the fact that I've known about this concept for about 2 days, uh I would identify with a lot of those things. Um I had a huge genetic test done at this back end of last year and all of the alals that came back that were interesting from a behavioral perspective would predispose me to to this stuff. Very dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine. um sometimes struggles with uh serotonin, very goal driven, uh may struggle to come back to emotional baseline after a perturbment, clears adrenaline slowly, uh like it's dude, it's [ __ ] wild. Like when you look at Yeah, I I think this is really important for people like you to admit that. Um I was in a movie recently called Sensitive Men Rising, uh starring um me and Alanis Marsette and Luke Goss. Do you know who Luke O is the actor? No. Google him. Luke goss. He reminds me of you a little bit. Um Okay. He he's um you know, he's he's very uh buff, very goodlook. He's bald. Yeah. Well, testosterone is crow baldness, but Okay. All right. But but look, you know, he's he's a he's a he's a great actor, but he really talks in this movie about how he thinks he's a highly sensitive person and how he feels like there should be there shouldn't be this stigma about manly looking men saying that they're highly sensitive people. And I really agree with that. I agree with that completely. And I think, you know, we need more people like you and Luke and and me. I've been hitting the gym. um making no uh I'm being cheeky, but we really we really need to to give more men the memo that it's not it's not a negative. It doesn't make you a [ __ ] you know. Well, dude, look at what is it that drives people to do the things that they do to their career or to their body or to their mind or to their net worth or to their ability to communicate or these things. It's like a lot of it is a a need for control, safety, validation, uh desire for respect, uh a sense of something that was missing when you were a child. And yeah, certainly for me, I was pretty lonely, pretty bullied in school, uh pretty unpopular and started. Really, you were bullied? Yeah. From what? Yeah. Uh I was small in school. I was a late bloomer. Uh, I spoke differently. I don't have the accent of the place that I'm from, even though I'm, you know, the same working-class scum that everybody else was. Uh, the town that I'm in, uh, didn't appreciate the fact that, uh, I spoke differently, that I used long words. Like, my obsession with stupid vocabulary has kind of existed since I was like, were you were you were you gifted? Were you in gifted education? Yeah. You strike me as also didn't didn't uh help. I think from the school that I went to maybe I think my year group would have had 200 200 kids in 250 so it was a big school and I think maybe one or two other people went to college so six form continued into high school only maybe one or two other people and of that maybe those one or two other people also went to university so such a low uh rate of people going on to higher education Maybe the college number was wrong, but the university number was almost definitely correct. I think I know one other person from 250 in the school I went to for 5 years that went on to university. So anyway, and you know, I get to university and I start being able to lift weights and I get this job that's kind of socially impactful running nightclubs or helping to run nightclubs at that stage. And I realize, wow, if I become successful, then the world needs me in a way that it's never really needed me before. It seems like it respects me. I get validation. I get positive reinforcement. I've got friends. I've got people that seem like they've got my back. I don't even know what that that feels like. Uh, and all the while you're kind of building up this version of you outside of you, which is competent and successful and looking increasingly masculine as you're able to gain muscle and go to the gym and you're diligent with these things and you go to uni and you do one degree and you do two degrees and then you finish and then you build this business and you you know the classic insecure overachiever mindset is someone who tries to fill an internal void with external accolades. And yeah, I mean I I know what some of my favorite people are highly sensitive super cads. Chris Bunstead Chris Bunstead is one of these guys like regularly cries on camera, weeps on the floor of his bathroom because of the stress in the buildup to his event, but is a six-time world champion in bodybuilding and maybe the the greatest sort of bodybuilder of of our era. Alex Hormosi, another guy who is unbelievably uh introspective uh but also jacked out of his mind, literally looks like a caveman. Uh and these are the people that I resonate with a lot because I think I see a lot of myself in them too. And you know, there is a there is kind of an inverse of pretty privilege for men. There's like masculine disprivilege in a way where if you present as somebody that's got it all together. Well, you look healthy and you're all right looking and you seem pretty muscular and people seem like they like you or whatever. What the [ __ ] are you whining about? Like why do you find things hard? Why have you got a problem with this? Like, you know, do you not see that person over there? Look at them. They're only 5'7. Look at how many problems they've got in their life. He's like, yeah, I get that, dude. but he sees something bad happen and he doesn't even [ __ ] notice it or is he he he had friends throughout all of his upbringing. So you have this yeah inverse pretty privilege where it's the same when whenever anybody goes to the doctors in the UK, any of my friends that I used to train with in the gym because it was a nationalized health service. If you walked in as a well person trying to get fit, the doctor looked at you and went, "Dude, there's five people in the waiting room who are overweight, they've got angina, they've got heart palpitations, one of them's going to lose a foot due to their diabetes. Like I don't care about the fact that you slightly tweaked your back doing CrossFit. Getting from well to fit is not my job. Getting from sick to well is. And you kind of end up with this same situation that if you present as somebody that's got it all together. If you start complaining about the challenges that you face or you start saying, you know, sometimes I get a bit of self-doubt or this this thing's hard or I can't get over this stuff from my past or blah blah blah. People go, "Oh, like how dare you?" And it almost feels I I get a sense that there's a bit of an ick around that too, which is look at how broken this man must be in order for him to not feel internally the way he presents externally given that he presents externally in an elite manner and his internal state does not comport with that. God, I hate that bias. Um, you know, we really needed to tell everyone that suffering is not a competition and you really see it. um all these hierarchies being created that like these groups are, you know, in inherently suffering. These groups are not inherently suffering. Um I'm not woke. I mean, maybe this might be a surprise to you. No, I'm not I'm not woke. I mean, I I really uh I'm not anti-woke either, but I I really believe in humanism and treating all people with dignity, respect, and listening to everyone's story regardless of how they present themselves. Um, I I do think that in a in a big way we need more people like you really saying that you're a highly sensitive person so we don't stigmatize the trait high sensitivity because it really can be a beautiful beautiful thing and I'm sure it motivates you and um and and it is a big reason why why you're good at what you do. You ask thoughtful questions. You're good at integrating lots of things that other people are not integrating. I've noticed that in this interview. Um, so you know, you're a good integrator. Well, I it's definitely deep. It's definitely a highresolution way to view the world. Um, but it can cause you to move slowly because you don't make rash I don't make very rash decisions. I sort of think through things very carefully. I tend to move very conservatively. Uh, I have sort of massive loss aversion. [ __ ] huge loss aversion, huge fear of regret. Um, and you know, this is why the question that kind of got us onto this was if you're someone who resonates with this highly sensitive person archetype, what are the things that you need to get under control to unlock well-being in your life as much as possible? Well, in my book, the biggest thing I say is don't be a victim of your HSP. Don't create a victim mindset around being a highly sensitive person. Um, you see a lot of people who are HSPs, they literally see it as the core of their victim identity. So, they expect people to tiptoe around them. Oh, I feel things so very deeply. Please be careful with me. Blah blah blah. And you you see it. I mean, you see it there's always one person there who's like, I'm triggered, triggered. And it's like, okay. um really take responsibility for your HSPs and don't expect everyone to cater to that one aspect of your being because I find that very disempowering. Um you empower your HS penis when you lead with it in a way. I can't Scott I can't let you continue to say the the sentence HS penis. I just literally said HS penis. Yeah. Highly sensitive personness. Yeah. This is is this an outtake? You know, is this one of these? No, no, no. This is a this is a keep intake. Yeah. Um being a highly sensitive person, you know, is like anything else, any other aspect of your identity? Are you going to make it the core of your victim identity or are you going to harness it in the service of growth and becoming a better person? And I think you can ask that about any aspect of your personality. No matter what it is, your extroversion, your introversion, your conscientiousness, you know, all these things can have trade-offs. People who are too conscientious, too conscientious, like too gritty, that there's a dark side to grit, right? You know, if like if you're a workaholic, if you're you know, that could be part of your victim identity is that you're too too you work too hard. You know, you could make anything, you know, the core of victim identity. And and I don't want people to make anything the core of their victim identity. I want them to not see themselves as that's that's the thing that's holding them back from the rest of their personality structure, but as the thing that enables the rest of their personality structure. Okay. How do people become victims of their emotions? Yeah. Yeah. So, when a lot of people think about becoming a victim in general, they think about all the ways they're a victim to the external world. And the twist in my book is that part uh one are five ways that we're actually a victim to ourselves. It has nothing to do with the outside world. We can become a victim to our emotions when we take our emotions as facts. We don't just treat them as signposts, but we we take them seriously, so seriously that we act immediately on whatever we're feeling. Um, and we are quick to label to find a label for whatever it is that we're feeling as opposed to just check in on in on the experience itself. So, that's a big way that we become victim to our emotions. And what are the emotions that people typically fall victim to? Anxiety is a big one. Um um fear. Fear is a huge one. Fear holds us back from so many things in our life. And that's why in that chapter I talk about the ACT approach, which I'm a big fan of. Um Stephen, have you had Stephen Hayes on your podcast ever? Uh no. Who's that? He's the founder of the ACT approach to psychotherapy, which is a really brilliant form of psychotherapy. Um that allows you to act in line with your values no matter how you're feeling about about the situation um in the moment. Maybe you don't feel like it. Maybe you wake up like I want to go to the I want to lose weight, but I don't feel it going to the gym today. And you really are able to regulate your emotions in a way where you still end up in the gym. you know, really thinking more about what you want to get out in the long term as opposed to what may be holding you back in the short term. So, I think the ACT approach is a is a really uh a really great way forward, right? Okay. I've just started the ACT journal. It's the guys from uh is it psychologists off the clock? Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's the the two the two ladies. You do you do you do follow the uh psych the main psychology podcast? I love this. I'm I'm in Where do you think Where do you think that I get any of the stuff that I talk about from? I'm not doing [ __ ] original research. I'm going on to Psychology Today. I'm going on to the Psychology podcast. I'm going to Psychologist off the clock. I'm reading Rob Henderson's Substack. I'm listening to Jonathan Height. And then I'm shamelessly repurposing it as my own ideas uh with with minimal credit. That's pretty cool that you do that you care about that and that you admit that you do that. But you also do you are interested in synthesizing so maybe you're not giving yourself enough credit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's my highly sensitive person that's coming up. Uh okay. So one of the things we've talked about a little bit and I imagine that this is this plays a big role when it comes to the emotions side of victimhoodness the role of internally generated safety self-regulation. Um, you know, if we're not saying, if you're say, hey, you can be tyrannized by your own internal state as well as you feel like you're being traumatized by your own external state, what's the role of safety, internally generated, self-regulation, stuff like that. Well, first of all, I wanted to say, you asked me where can people find out if they're an HSP, and I just want to see HSperson.com. Uh, Lane Aaron has a scale that you can take some self tests. So, I wanted to say that. Cool. Um this question you asked uh I was wondering if you could ask it one more time so I can really fully process it. Um safety in feeling a sense of internala safety. Is that it? Yeah. What's the role of internally generated safety? I just get I get the sense that when it comes to emotions what people are struggling with is feeling out of control, feeling unsafe. I don't I just like this feels like it's beyond me and I don't have I don't have the capacity to deal with whatever these emotions are which to me suggests you need self-regulation. Yeah. Well, I think that in general we have much deeper reservoirs of resiliency than we realize and we don't give ourselves the chance to test our resiliency muscles because we're too quick to constantly avoid things that we fear. So, first of all, I I do think that's very important. I also think that a lot of young people didn't get the memo that you don't have to feel happy all the time. Um, a lot of young people the second they they're they they feel feel unsafe, you know, they avoid at all costs, you know, what what what could happen. Um, and of course we we want to be we want to be safe, but don't always avoid the feeling of feeling unsafe. Um, a lot of people feel unsafe around ideas, around words, you know. Oh, uh, that's become a thing in the younger generation as as as Jonathan Height and Greg Luciano have talked a lot lot about in coddling of the American mind. Um, a lot of people feel unsafe with ideas with with people that don't agree with them. They feel unsafe and I don't think that's the way forward in life. You know, that's not the way you challenge yourself. That's not the way you word and grow um and and and and encounter other perspectives. Also, experiences that get get you out of your comfort zone are sometimes the most profound wonderful experiences in humanity. Imagine if every time you start a new relationship, you you start to, you know, you have one fight, you know, with the person like, and then you just give up, you know? Um, you're you're going to have a long stream of unfulfilled relationships. Mhm. How uh how can people cultivate better psychological flexibility in Yeah. moments moments of deep emotional pain, discomfort, stuff like that. That is the term that is the the psychological term that's used in the act. That's because I'm reading the ACT journal, Scott. That's because I'm That's so cool. Well, I'm impressed. I thought it was because you read chapter four of my book, which is all about because of both. It's been reinforced by you. Um, that's so cool. Um, I'm impressed. Um, yeah. I mean there is no protocol for this you know there's no like you have to first of all check in with your own experience and try your best to not label it. Try your best to um create a distance from what you're feeling and your higher values and where you want to move to. Um, you know, let's say you know there's you're starving. Um, and you know that there's something really sweet and fatty waiting for you in the fridge. All you have to do is open up the fridge and get it and move toward it. What you do is you check in with, well, what actually you don't check in with, what are my um feelings right now. You check in with, well, what are my higher values? That's what you check in with your higher values. I want to lose weight. I want to not be the kind of person that immediately opens up that fridge every time I'm hungry and picks out the most unhealthiest thing I have in the fridge. Check in with all that first. Um, and let the emotions and the desires and those quick feelings subside. Um, but be with them. Don't label them. I imagine there's a a correlation or a relationship between self-esteem and victimhood as well. Big one. A big one with low self-esteem. Well, actually, there's no such thing as low self-esteem. This is interesting. On psychological surveys, you you you very rare will ever meet a human that says they have zero self-esteem. When you when you ask them to rate on a scale 1 to 7, how much self-esteem do they have? It's usually a biodal distribution. So you usually see um a lot of six and sevens, the people with the high self-esteem are clear. But then the second type of person is usually it's uh in the middle somewhere. So that's unclear. So it's an uncertain self-esteem. Usually a low what we call a low self-esteem is really an uncertain self-esteem. The person is constantly looking outward for they don't know they don't have a good inner compass of what they think they should be. Um and and also from an evolutionary point of view, it's important to recognize there are different domains of self-esteem that evolved that are very separate from each other. You can have very high self-esteem for your work. You know, and have very low self-esteem for your mate value. Um they can be very different things. So I think there's do domain specifically evolved self-esteem as well. And there's some really great evolutionary psychology papers around that that I cite in my book. Right. So the issue I imagine with low self-esteem is that your sort of robustness to being able to deal with insults both internally and externally generated. You're going to take them more personally. like you know your your base is less uh uh resilient in that way. Yeah, absolutely. Um vulnerable narcissism which I I talked about earlier is very strongly correlated with this uncertain sense sense of self. The more that you can have an internal sense of who you are and what you want and be clear on your values, the less your self-esteem is going to make a difference at all. you know, um you don't want to be obsessed with your self-esteem. You don't want to be constantly in pursuit of high self-esteem. You don't want that to be your primary goal either. Um so that's why it's really important to get right with your own inner compass of what you want out of this life and and and what your actual real felt interests are and listen to them. I think a lot in life we get values from our society. We get values from others um and we want to belong. So we care so much about belonging to a certain group that we adopt all their values even if they doesn't really suit us individually. How do you come to think about acknowledging uh past hurts and hardships while not identifying with it? It seems like on one end of the spectrum you've got denial and on the other end of the spectrum you've got identification. Like this didn't happen to me. I'm going to completely ignore it and this is the most important thing in my entire life and totally uh chooses my direction moving forward. How how do you come to think about this this tension? Like what's the optimal point? Yeah. Like how do you acknowledge the fact that you've been through tough stuff while not while not identifying with it? Why not making it your entire sense of self? is I think that's why why we need to harness an an empowerment mindset. We've talked so much on this podcast today about the victim mindset. But my call is for everyone to adopt an empowerment mindset where you play yes and you know I really love improv like yes the game where you say yes I've had something terrible happen to me and I got this and it is a shame I see so much in our society of us just stopping with the so much has happened to me and I don't see the end part of that which is and I have the deep reservoirs of resiliency to move forward with my life with meaning and purpose. Both things can be true at the same time. We don't need to neglect or downplay terrible things that have happened to someone else or that have happened to ourselves. That's that's that's love is being able to acknowledge and validate. People just want to be validated, but they well, no, they don't just want to be validated. People want to be validated, but they don't just want to be validated. They want to be validated for what they've been through, but they also want people to believe in them that they can rise above it. Scott, I appreciate the heck out of you, man. Let's not wait five years before we bring you back on. Uh, where should people go? They want to keep up to date with all the stuff you're doing. Thank you. And and likewise, by the way, I really respect the hell out of you, man. Um, yeah, my website is um scottoffman.com. I have lots of stuff on there. I um you can buy Riseabove and hopefully any bookstore or online bookstore. And I have the Psychology Podcast. Yeah. Damn right. I appreciate you, man. Until next time. Until next time. Congratulations. You made it to the end of the episode. And if you want more, well, why don't you press right here? Come on.