The Art of Manliness - Truths Your Therapist Won't Tell You About How to Get Your Mind Right

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00:02:00.100 every style, every home. Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the AOM Podcast,

00:02:06.500 which since 2008 has featured conversations with the world's best authors, thinkers, and leaders

00:02:11.160 that glean their edifying, life-improving insights without the fluff and filler. The AOM Podcast is

00:02:16.520 just one part of the McKay mission to help individuals practice timeless virtues through

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00:02:32.020 strenuouslife.com. Now on to the show.

00:02:42.620 When people visit a therapist's office for help with their depression, they often don't find the

00:02:46.520 relief they're seeking. That's because much of the counsel that is traditionally given doesn't

00:02:50.540 offer the context people need to make sense of and preserve their mental well-being. Here to share

00:02:55.040 these missing pieces of perspective and strategy is Dr. Scott Eilers, a clinical psychologist and

00:02:59.360 the author of The Light Between the Leaves, Six Truths Your Therapist Won't Tell You About Healing

00:03:03.360 Depression and Trauma. Today on the show, Scott shares why the world of psychology doesn't always

00:03:07.820 offer the most useful explanations for why people can sometimes feel alienated from their own lives.

00:03:12.480 We then talk about insights Scott has gleaned from science, nature, and lived experience

00:03:16.340 as to the mindset shifts and habits

00:03:18.200 that can help you stay sharp, steady, and engaged in life,

00:03:21.300 whether you're struggling with chronic depression

00:03:22.880 or just adrift in a low-grade funk.

00:03:25.780 After the show's over,

00:03:26.600 check out our show notes at aom.is slash leaves.

00:03:28.980 all right scott eilers welcome to the show thanks so much for having me brett i am very excited to

00:03:50.900 be here i've been getting value out of listening to your podcast for a long time and i'm excited

00:03:55.600 to be able to hopefully give back a little bit.

00:03:57.600 Well, thanks for listening.

00:03:58.380 I appreciate it.

00:03:59.460 So you are a clinical psychologist

00:04:01.480 who specializes in helping people

00:04:03.420 with conditions like bipolar disorder

00:04:05.920 and severe depression, severe anxiety.

00:04:08.780 You got a new book out called

00:04:09.820 The Light Between the Leaves,

00:04:11.480 Six Truths Your Therapist Won't Tell You

00:04:13.380 About Healing Depression and Trauma.

00:04:15.520 I mean, basically you share insights from your career,

00:04:18.060 but also from your own life.

00:04:19.740 You talk about in the book,

00:04:20.800 you began your career as a psychologist

00:04:23.000 because you were trying to seek treatment for your own depression.

00:04:27.040 Can you walk us through your history with depression?

00:04:30.060 Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.

00:04:31.620 The first time I distinctly remember feeling a deep sense of depression was in seventh grade.

00:04:37.540 I think that probably wasn't actually the first time I experienced it,

00:04:40.120 but you know how childhood memories are.

00:04:41.680 They can be a little bit foggy.

00:04:43.400 I know I was never exactly what you would call a happy child,

00:04:45.980 but there was one distinct moment.

00:04:48.060 I will never forget it, and it just came out of absolutely nowhere.

00:04:51.080 it was in swimming class. So I'm in a, you know, swimming pool with my buddies in school. And all

00:04:57.360 of a sudden, I noticed I just didn't feel any happiness. And it wasn't even like I was bored

00:05:03.320 or disinterested. It was like it was gone. Like my ability to connect with anything resembling

00:05:10.060 a positive emotion was just shut down. And it came out of nowhere. And it didn't seem to be

00:05:15.860 about anything. I felt like someone I loved had just died, but nothing had happened. And I was

00:05:23.140 baffled and scared. And I remember I kind of like crawled out of the pool and just like sat on the

00:05:29.740 edge with my head in my hands. And I could hardly even talk. And my friends were like, what did

00:05:33.920 something happen? What's wrong? And I didn't even know how to answer them. And I remember I just

00:05:38.560 went home and just like laid in bed all day. And I had no idea what was happening at the time,

00:05:43.860 And only with the benefit of hindsight, am I able to say, oh, that was a depressive episode.

00:05:48.080 And that, you know, it didn't go away that day.

00:05:50.180 It lasted quite a while.

00:05:51.840 That first one lasted for weeks.

00:05:53.460 And then at some point, I don't necessarily remember exactly when or why it went away.

00:05:58.580 And I felt good again.

00:05:59.720 And I wanted to go to school and I wanted to see my friends.

00:06:02.100 I wanted to do sports and do stuff.

00:06:03.820 And I was like, OK, that was weird.

00:06:05.240 I'm glad that's over with.

00:06:06.780 Little did I know I was going to be experiencing those on and off for the next 30 years.

00:06:12.020 and that's kind of what's been going on since is is typically there's no rhyme or reason to it and

00:06:16.620 this is how it is for most people with uh with a cyclical mood disorder so like major depressive

00:06:20.800 disorder bipolar disorder it means we experience these things in in episodes or in waves and so

00:06:26.860 you'll have periods of time where your symptoms hit you very hard they don't have to be triggered

00:06:31.960 by anything that's a common misconception because people will say like what are you depressed about

00:06:36.280 and there's not always an answer to that question but as an individual who does deal with chronic

00:06:41.260 depression. There are simply periods of time in my life where I become pretty much unable to feel

00:06:47.360 good about anything. And for most of my life, I would be very non-functional during those periods,

00:06:53.380 disabled by them, basically, until I started to learn some tricks to stay functional and to

00:06:58.960 navigate them, basically. And yeah, as you mentioned in the intro, that's the main reason I

00:07:03.400 got interested in the field that I did. I thought, now that I know, okay, this is a mental illness, 0.55

00:07:08.360 I should probably study this. And if I can also do that for a living, hey, win-win, I can fix my

00:07:12.280 own problems and help other people. And every time I'd get started in undergrad, getting my bachelor's,

00:07:17.360 master's, doctorate, started working in the field. And I kept waiting for the moment when I was going

00:07:22.380 to start to hear stuff that would help me, because that's always been my barometer. Would this skill,

00:07:28.920 knowledge, piece of information, whatever it is, would this have helped me at my lowest?

00:07:33.840 and about 90% probably of what I learned in my professional education and my training

00:07:39.620 did not pass that litmus test. And then I was done. I was fully licensed. I was independent.

00:07:45.020 And I still felt like I wouldn't know how to help me if I walked, if, you know, 15 year old me

00:07:50.880 walked through my doors right now, I wouldn't know what to do with that guy. So I've sought out a lot

00:07:55.300 of other just information and strategies since that time, because I realized the field I work

00:08:01.200 in does not have the answers to my questions, not all of them anyway. And that's when I started

00:08:05.720 working on things like, you know, researching and writing and creating social media content,

00:08:10.200 because I figured maybe I'm not the only person who feels this way. And that's kind of the brief

00:08:15.320 summary of my journey with depression and how it relates to my career. Well, there's a lot to

00:08:20.380 unpack there. The first thing I want to unpack and point out is this idea that your depression

00:08:25.240 wasn't caused by something. Like you said, I think it's a common misconception people have

00:08:28.720 about depression. It's like, well, if you're depressed, did you lose your job or did you

00:08:33.520 have a traumatic childhood? And you talk about your childhood was pretty happy, like no abuse

00:08:39.860 or anything like that, but you nonetheless still had these depressive episodes. Do we know what

00:08:46.780 causes that? Why are some people prone to depression like you experienced? Yeah, that's a

00:08:52.720 fantastic question. And really quick, I want to mention what you said about people asking why

00:08:57.200 you're depressed. It's our terminology in, in psychology or in mental health, I honestly think

00:09:02.640 probably needs a revamp. The same thing happens with anxiety, by the way. So, you know, depression

00:09:07.860 and anxiety are diagnoses, right? Major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder. However,

00:09:14.740 they're also emotions and they're emotions that every human being is acquainted with. Everyone

00:09:20.620 knows what it feels like to be depressed or to be anxious. It's just that people who don't have

00:09:26.180 a chronic mood disorder or chronic anxiety disorder only experience those emotions when

00:09:30.100 they're triggered by an event or a stressor or a problem. And so I think what that results in is a

00:09:35.700 lot of people think they understand these things better than they do. Because yeah, they think

00:09:39.220 about like, man, yeah, I lost a job and I was horribly depressed for a while. And then I got

00:09:44.020 another job and it got better. And so then they conclude if depressed people would just get jobs,

00:09:49.560 they wouldn't be depressed anymore because that's what cured my depression. And I don't think there's

00:09:53.400 any malicious intent there. I think this is just a person not realizing that the same word is being

00:09:58.320 used to describe two very different things and thinking that what worked for them would also

00:10:02.940 work for someone who is chronically depressed. And unfortunately, while employment can be one of

00:10:07.780 many, many things that can help with depression, it is most certainly not a cure-all. But your

00:10:12.720 question then was like, basically, then what is this? Why does this happen to people? And that's

00:10:17.320 been one of my big disappointments in my field, honestly, is that we don't really know. We know

00:10:23.360 some of the cause some of the time. There definitely appears to be some, you know, chemical

00:10:29.500 or biological component to it. There are two neurotransmitters or brain chemicals that

00:10:36.320 facilitate communication between your neurons or your brain cells. Actually, three really that

00:10:41.400 seem to be implicated in many people's depression. And they are dopamine. And that's sort of like

00:10:47.020 your reward chemical. So dopamine is the neurotransmitter that is used to produce feelings

00:10:52.580 of like joy or achievement or accomplishment. So you build something or you get a good grade

00:10:59.600 on a test and you look at what you've done and you say, yeah, I did a good job at that. And you

00:11:03.360 get that good feeling, right? That's dopamine. Serotonin is usually a little bit more associated

00:11:09.560 with anxiety, but it has some implications with depression as well. And serotonin is a

00:11:13.300 neurotransmitter that makes you feel calm, relaxed, peaceful, at ease. It gives you that

00:11:17.100 kind of just, you know, life is good. I'm pretty content kind of feeling. And then norepinephrine

00:11:21.800 is more about regulating your physical functioning. So it helps you with energy. It helps you have an

00:11:26.060 appetite. It helps you fall asleep at night, wake up in the morning. And we do appear to see some

00:11:31.660 disruptions in the functioning of these neurotransmitters in many individuals with

00:11:36.580 depression. And that's where psychiatric medication often plays a role in managing

00:11:40.380 these conditions. But the exact functioning and makeup of those neurotransmitters seems to vary

00:11:46.820 a lot from person to person. And there seem to be some individuals with depression who don't

00:11:52.400 really respond well to any medication, which kind of makes people think, is it not chemical in this

00:11:58.040 person's case? So it's really, really difficult to pin down, unfortunately. And that's why we still

00:12:03.400 to this day don't have a foolproof, you know, like blueprint. We don't have a treatment protocol that

00:12:10.080 has, you know, like a 95% success rate the way a surgical procedure might have. Our most effective

00:12:16.640 treatments for depression, and I would say there's three, by the way, therapy, medication, and

00:12:21.500 physical activity, they're about equal in terms of efficacy. But all three of those, generally

00:12:27.200 speaking, have efficacy rates of about 60%. So there's a large number of people, a large proportion

00:12:34.980 of the treatment-seeking population that for one reason or another don't respond to one of those

00:12:39.560 treatments. And my theory, well, I have multiple theories on that. But what I think that means as

00:12:44.800 far as the causes of depression is I don't think there is one. I think that at the risk of

00:12:51.300 overcomplicating matters, what we currently call depression probably is more than one thing.

00:12:56.640 If we really fully understood it, I think we would see this as a cluster of similar

00:13:00.760 looking conditions that we've lumped together. But that's purely a theory. I have no data to

00:13:07.000 back that up. Yeah. So it sounds like there might be a genetic component to this. Essentially the

00:13:11.060 wiring you were born with makes you predisposed to that. Like in my life, I've had a couple of

00:13:17.060 those more traditional depressive episodes and they were precipitated by stressful events. But

00:13:22.980 sometimes I just get into these funks for no reason at all. And I think it's because I just

00:13:28.240 have this ingrained tendency to focus on the negative. And I've gotten a good handle on it

00:13:32.620 over the years. But I think I'll always have a disposition that's more melancholic than average.

00:13:38.640 And so I don't think of myself as someone who struggles with depression, but it's like I'm

00:13:41.420 part of that cluster of similar things. Well, and to your point there, you know,

00:13:45.340 another factor that a lot of people, including myself, think play a role is just simply a

00:13:49.320 person's personality. Some of us are just more prone to maybe bigger feelings in general. You

00:13:55.120 know, like we know that emotional intensity varies from person to person. Some people just feel all

00:13:59.980 feelings, you know, pleasant and unpleasant, more strongly than others. Some of us are obviously

00:14:05.400 more pessimistic and more cynical than others. And that's just kind of the way we're built or

00:14:10.000 the way we're wired. Some of us are more social than others. And while that's not inherently a

00:14:14.400 good or a bad thing, something else I see a lot, and I would very much say this has been a piece

00:14:18.980 of my story, is some of us are just our natural personality types that we're born with that don't

00:14:25.000 really change, at least at their core throughout our lives. Some of us are just a better fit for

00:14:30.100 the world than others. And I seem to have a personality type that just doesn't gel real well

00:14:36.300 with society, or at least most of mainstream society. And that's an experience I had a lot

00:14:41.660 growing up, especially when you know, you're you're with people your own age, the vast majority

00:14:46.340 of your day, if you're kind of an introverted, quiet, pessimistic, cynical, you know, naturally

00:14:53.980 kind of moody type person a lot of times people aren't real excited to be around you and you have

00:15:00.640 a hard time maybe you know especially in like k through 12 years maybe seeing the purpose of what

00:15:05.280 you're doing not necessarily seeing how the things you're spending the majority of your time on play

00:15:09.400 in with uh you know bigger picture life goals or just anything that feels good or fulfills you

00:15:13.620 you get pretty jaded and burnt out pretty fast and so that's that's i feel like another piece

00:15:18.920 of it for me it's like yeah as you said in the intro i would not lay claim to have had an unusually

00:15:23.560 difficult life. I think that would be dishonest for me to say that, at least in terms of events,

00:15:28.600 like things that have happened in my life. But I've just never really felt like I belonged here

00:15:35.040 in a super easy, natural way. And it frankly takes me a lot of mental effort to do things that I

00:15:43.540 think come naturally for most people. Things like going to school, holding down a job, keeping

00:15:48.460 friends. I have to work really, really hard at these things. And I have to reframe a lot of my

00:15:54.240 natural thoughts and reactions because they tend to skew very, very, very quickly towards nihilism,

00:16:00.380 honestly, like, why am I even doing any of this? What does any of this even matter? And I've learned

00:16:04.700 that if I don't keep those in check, I pretty quickly just stop doing stuff. And that gets

00:16:08.680 dark pretty quickly. So I think there very much is just a personality component to it as well.

00:16:14.140 And in particular, how does that personality interact with the world and with the way society

00:16:18.900 is built? Because I think I think most of us probably see that some people just have a

00:16:22.860 personality that's naturally a better fit for sort of the norms of society and the expectations that

00:16:27.680 get placed upon you. And for some of us, it just takes a lot more mental and sometimes physical

00:16:33.400 effort to achieve those same outcomes. So you mentioned you spent 10 years getting

00:16:38.600 in education. I mean, you got your master's, your doctorate in psychology, and then you didn't find

00:16:44.380 the answers that you were hoping you'd find. What do you think is going on? Is it the way that

00:16:49.240 traditional psychotherapy approaches treating people with depression that's causing the problem?

00:16:54.660 Or is it just like what you talked about? Depression is caused by a whole bunch of

00:16:57.860 different stuff, so no one really knows, and you're just kind of like throwing spaghetti on the wall?

00:17:01.820 Yeah, I think there's a lot. I'll give you kind of a broad overview here because I have a few

00:17:06.280 different theories. One is definitely what you just said. And this is not unique to depression,

00:17:10.220 by the way. I think this is many mental health conditions, but I think they're far more varied

00:17:13.940 and complicated than we currently recognize them to be. You know, we see these clusters of symptoms

00:17:19.440 and we say these people have really similar symptoms, so they probably have the same thing.

00:17:22.740 I'm just not convinced that that's the case. What I describe as depression, you know, I've done real

00:17:27.900 deep dives on like my YouTube channel, for example, explaining all my symptoms. And there'll be people

00:17:31.880 that are like, I also have depression, but this doesn't sound like me. So then is that even really

00:17:35.520 the same thing? Are we calling some relatively similar things the same thing? And if so,

00:17:39.960 treating them the same and possibly doing people a disservice. So that's one is I don't think we

00:17:43.540 fully understand what we're dealing with. I think probably the biggest issue, though,

00:17:48.420 is professional mental health is kind of at an odd crossroads where, you know, we're a young

00:17:52.700 field, right? I mean, really 100 years old, that's nothing for a scientific discipline.

00:17:57.320 And we're at this odd place where we're trying to respect the work of people,

00:18:02.120 pioneers in the field, people like Sigmund Freud, Carl Rogers. And then we're also trying

00:18:07.260 to become a more hard science through empirical research and double blind studies. And our history

00:18:13.880 and our data, I don't think they sync up real well. So to give you an example, a really, really

00:18:19.540 popular form of therapy or like therapeutic orientation is what's called person-centered

00:18:24.260 or humanistic therapy. And there's going to be people who are mad at me when I explain it this

00:18:27.560 way. This is a super, super quick overview. But a large part of a person-centered therapy practice

00:18:33.200 is the idea that the client, the person seeking therapy, basically knows what they need to do,

00:18:39.540 that they have the ability to kind of self-actualize and like basically solve their

00:18:44.020 own problems through having time and focus and support and reflection from the therapist to

00:18:51.320 essentially just enable them to kind of think out loud in the therapy session. That would never have

00:18:57.380 worked for me. I very much did not have the answers. No amount of me sharing how I felt

00:19:04.100 was going to accomplish anything. That's all I did. I spent 10 years basically wallowing and

00:19:09.520 ruminating and telling anyone who would listen how I felt. Obviously, they weren't trained

00:19:14.000 therapists, but I don't think that was the limiting factor. I needed help. I needed direction. I needed

00:19:21.320 strategy. I needed guidance. And these are things that we are somewhat discouraged from providing

00:19:29.100 as professional therapists. And there's a degree of wisdom in that. I don't know what job a person

00:19:35.660 should do. I don't know what house they should live in. I don't necessarily know which of these

00:19:38.840 people they're dating should they commit to. But there are things we know about mental health. And

00:19:43.900 I get very frustrated when therapists refuse to acknowledge that. We know roughly how a person

00:19:50.440 needs to sleep. More or less, there's a little bit of individual variation in that. But we know

00:19:54.680 on average, a person who's getting about eight hours of pretty high quality sleep at around the

00:19:59.940 same time every night is going to enjoy better mental health than a, you know, a comparative

00:20:04.440 person who isn't doing that. We know, we know, no, no, this is critical, that regular physical

00:20:11.840 activity is literally equivalent in reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety to regular

00:20:19.020 weekly therapy or psychiatric medication. Like top of the line treatments, exercise matches it

00:20:24.340 and in some areas beats it. And yet there are so few therapists who will even ask a depressed

00:20:30.580 person, what's your physical activity level like? And obviously, I know that's a little bit of a

00:20:35.380 chicken or the egg thing. It's hard to get anyone to work out regularly. It's really hard to get a

00:20:38.980 depressed person to work out regularly. I do understand that. But we're not even having those

00:20:42.660 conversations. We're not even planting those seeds. We're not even asking those questions.

00:20:46.540 it's this very client-led process in so many cases. And that fundamental idea that this client

00:20:54.320 has the ability to self-regulate and self-actualize and figure out their own answers,

00:21:00.020 I'm sure it is true for some people. I can tell you it wasn't true for me. And it's not true for

00:21:05.420 the majority of the people I serve. These are people who are on the bottom of life looking up

00:21:11.780 at everybody else. And they are lost and they are miserable and they are stuck and they don't know

00:21:16.480 what to do. And they need way, way more than a sounding board in order to help them move forward.

00:21:23.140 That's what I think is probably the biggest issue in my field.

00:21:27.920 One question I had for you, and I've had to grapple with this as well. So this idea of

00:21:32.520 depression might not necessarily be caused by something. You just have, you're predisposed to

00:21:36.400 it. I mean, understanding that I can see can help you. Okay, well, this is how I am. And now there's

00:21:41.560 things I have to do to manage it, mitigate that. And we're going to talk about some of those things

00:21:45.380 that, that people can do, um, like exercise. I want to dive deeper into that for sure.

00:21:49.940 But also I've experienced that when I think like, man, this is just who I am,

00:21:54.060 that even gets more depressing, you know, where you're just like, ah, you kind of go in this

00:21:59.480 desperate. I was like, why do I have to do all this stuff just to be functional? So how do you

00:22:05.340 avoid that? Do you think? That's a really good question. I, for me, a big part of it has been

00:22:12.240 prioritizing because really there's only two reasons a mammal does anything. They're engaging

00:22:18.440 in an activity because they're either trying to move towards a desired outcome or away from an

00:22:24.140 undesired outcome. That's motivation. That's all of human motivation can be boiled down into one

00:22:28.680 of those two categories. And I think this answer might expand a little bit even beyond mental

00:22:34.740 illness, but it has a lot of implications for chronic mental illness. If we accept that premise

00:22:39.300 and say, basically, everything worthwhile that I can do either makes me feel more good or less bad.

00:22:45.020 Then it simply becomes a question of, you know, well, then what are my, what are my highest

00:22:50.360 conviction actions? What are the things I can do that are going to move the needle the most?

00:22:55.540 And I think it's really critical to think of that, not just in the present moment,

00:22:59.760 but as more of a, you know, a cumulative outcome throughout your life. What got me stuck for a long

00:23:06.480 time is, is I tried to cope with depression by doing things that felt good in the moment.

00:23:11.920 Some of those were, you know, blatantly unhealthy things like, uh, impulsive spending or, or

00:23:17.740 substance abuse. Some were things that don't necessarily appear unhealthy on the surface.

00:23:22.220 Like I used to play a lot of video games. I don't really believe there's any direct harm

00:23:26.580 in doing so. The problem is most of the things that feel best when you do them,

00:23:32.720 do nothing beyond that moment. They give you this big rush of acute pleasure and then they're over

00:23:39.640 and you're back to square one. And so for a long time, I was trying to, you know, treat air quotes,

00:23:45.320 my depression by just doing lots of things that felt good. And I was just felt like I was chasing

00:23:52.300 something I could never hold on to. And a big perspective shift for me was thinking of how I

00:23:59.420 allocate my time and my energy and my attention, not just what would feel best right now, but

00:24:05.760 trying to measure those things in terms of cumulative impact. So like this morning when I

00:24:10.980 woke up, well, I don't, I don't work out instantly when I wake up, but I work out in the mornings,

00:24:14.240 right? So, you know, I have a decision to make. I could spend 30 minutes playing a game on my phone

00:24:19.880 or 30 minutes exercising. Now I like exercise more than most people. And yet even I will not

00:24:27.000 make the claim that those 30 minutes of my life will feel better if I'm working out than if I'm

00:24:31.460 playing a video game. At least not from a like a mental or emotional stimulation perspective. No,

00:24:36.080 the game wins. But the exercise pays off again and again and again. I will feel good all day long

00:24:43.040 from getting a workout in the morning. I will not feel good all day long from playing a video game

00:24:47.700 for 30 minutes in the morning. In fact, I probably won't even remember that I did it. It's just a

00:24:50.800 it's just a downtime activity. And when I started thinking of my life in that way, when I started

00:24:55.860 thinking of cumulative impact, that completely changed my framework. And once I realized these

00:25:02.720 are high value activities, because they produce not only some amount of joy right now, but future

00:25:08.840 joy, I started to see everything in that realm, taking care of my nutrition, taking care of my

00:25:13.520 sleep, taking care of my of my physical health, investing in relationships that matter to me,

00:25:19.520 I really started to view all these things as almost like the equivalent of a financial investment. 0.94

00:25:23.560 And, you know, metaphorically, if I, if I somehow came into $5,000 today, the most pleasurable thing I can do with that $5,000 today is spend it, but I'd spend it on a bunch of stupid stuff I don't even need. Whereas if I invested it, I get money for the rest of my life from that, you know, from compound interest. And I think that the activities or the strategies that help manage a chronic mental illness, I think of those as the equivalent of investments.

00:25:48.560 investments. And once you realize that that thing you're doing isn't just going to make you feel

00:25:53.760 good right now, it's going to make you feel good over and over and over again, you start to

00:26:00.600 anticipate that reward. You start to anticipate that outcome and it actually becomes a more

00:26:06.740 pleasurable experience. It becomes more enjoyable because you see the value in it. And so at this

00:26:13.200 phase of my life where I'm at, my goal that the thing that feels best to me is basically to just

00:26:20.180 keep my system as close to 100% as possible, as close to 100% of the time as possible. And being

00:26:30.240 near that benchmark feels better to me than anything I can do just as an acute activity.

00:26:38.020 In other words, I find it more enjoyable to do things that make it feel good to be me than to do things that feel good.

00:26:48.200 Because, again, I'm inclined in that same direction you are.

00:26:51.200 I'm not the guy who opens his eyes and hears birds chirping and says, God, I'm happy to be alive.

00:26:57.220 I have to work for that.

00:26:58.480 It doesn't come naturally to me.

00:27:00.200 But I have found that I can get there if I take excellent care of myself and my mental health.

00:27:06.500 I can live that way.

00:27:08.020 And that does more for me than any hobby, any activity, any recreational thing could.

00:27:15.100 So once you start to see kind of the proof of that, that's when that, at least for me,

00:27:19.420 you know, I don't know if this is a thing that works for all people or if this is just

00:27:22.040 an idiosyncratic Scott thing.

00:27:23.600 But once I really saw that starting to work, that's when the switch flipped.

00:27:28.600 And I'm like, this is the top priority.

00:27:30.160 And I don't approach it as like a grudging, grueling, oh, I have to do all my mental health

00:27:36.920 stuff today.

00:27:37.540 it's like, this is what I need to do to feel my best. And that is my goal. And so there's really

00:27:42.200 not much else to think about once you get to that point. We're going to take a quick break

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00:30:17.120 And now back to the show. So in this book, The Light Between the Leaves, it's called that because

00:30:21.620 what you do to figure out strategies or philosophies to help you manage your depression is that you

00:30:28.180 look back at your life when you're the happiest. And a lot of the time, you're either at your

00:30:32.680 family's cabin in northern Minnesota or your grandparents' farm. And you started thinking

00:30:37.180 about those experiences and what they taught you, some metaphors that you observed from them that

00:30:42.320 gave you insight on life. In the first lesson you talk about, you got from your family's cabin in

00:30:47.800 Minnesota. What insight did you get from the isolation of your family's cabin about how the

00:30:53.260 mind works when we're depressed? Yeah, that's, that's interesting because so this cabin was on

00:30:59.140 a peninsula between two lakes. And so there's only one road in and out. And it ended a few

00:31:05.140 houses beyond ours. And being in very rural northern Minnesota, this is like a poorly

00:31:10.180 maintained is like a forest road, basically. And so there were there were quite a few times when

00:31:15.360 we were there that we were stuck because if there were, you know, snow, mud, a fallen tree,

00:31:21.000 like you can't get anywhere if this road is blocked. And every time that would happen,

00:31:26.240 like the whole vibe would just change because even a very, very pleasant and wonderful place

00:31:33.300 can feel like a prison if you're trapped inside of it, especially if you can't access anything

00:31:38.540 that you need. And I remember that those vibe shifts when we were like kind of stranded there

00:31:44.500 growing up. And I remember looking back on that first depressive episode that I mentioned earlier,

00:31:49.980 it had a very similar feeling where it's like, I felt trapped inside of my own mind. And I knew

00:31:56.180 that there were good things out there. Like I said, I was swimming, which I loved with my

00:32:00.560 friends who I really liked. Like there was good stuff right there in front of me, but it felt

00:32:05.100 like there was some kind of gap or barrier between me and all that stuff. And even though I knew it

00:32:10.340 still existed, I couldn't access it. And that was the exact same thing that would happen when that

00:32:16.380 road was blocked. Like the hospital still existed, the grocery store still existed, but we can't get

00:32:21.620 there. We can't access them. And I noticed that especially in my worst depressive episodes,

00:32:28.300 I would feel further and further away from the world. I could feel myself withdrawing inside of

00:32:36.100 myself, if that makes sense. And I don't always find that an unpleasant place to be. I like

00:32:42.200 thinking. I often enjoy being, you know, in conversation with myself. Again, I'm a more

00:32:46.180 introverted person. So that's kind of my comfort zone, but not when I'm depressed. When I'm

00:32:50.200 depressed, it becomes a dark, abusive, scary place to be, but I can't get out. I find it hard to

00:32:56.560 engage with people. I find it hard to do things. And that I think was the biggest lesson there

00:33:01.940 is that if you can't access anything else, if you're trapped within yourself, you cannot fix

00:33:08.780 that problem by having good things outside of you. And that goes back to our earlier point,

00:33:13.100 like you don't fix depression by just having a really good life. And if you could, you know,

00:33:18.180 I don't think these aren't people I claim to know. So, you know, I'm kind of speaking out

00:33:21.600 of ignorance here, but you know, you see celebrities, you see famous people who would

00:33:25.960 appear, you know, at least to a naive observer like me on the outside looking in to have all of

00:33:32.140 the things in life that most people want. You know, they have respect and they have financial

00:33:36.720 security and they have time and freedom to chase their goals. And yet these people, some of them

00:33:41.740 struggle with depression and addiction and even suicide in some cases. And without knowing them,

00:33:48.340 I can only conclude, yeah, they had those things, but maybe they weren't really able to feel them.

00:33:53.880 Maybe they were trapped inside of their own minds, trapped inside of themselves and not able to access any of that goodness that they theoretically, you know, could touch in their own lives.

00:34:06.360 And maybe that's just me self-inserting into their story.

00:34:09.160 But I know that's how I felt during those episodes.

00:34:13.140 And that's why, I mean, this kind of goes basically that my proposed solution to that problem is what I just said before you asked this question, which is that self-care.

00:34:20.980 which I mentioned as being analogous to maintaining that road your ability to care for your own mind

00:34:27.880 that's the road connecting you to the rest of the world and if that road gets blocked if that road

00:34:32.740 falls into disrepair it doesn't matter who or what you have because if you can't feel any of it

00:34:39.520 it won't be able to touch your depression and you will be miserable and so yeah the things you can

00:34:44.820 do to maintain that road to the cabin of your mind like you said self-care stuff getting enough sleep

00:34:50.000 is a good one not too much sleep sometimes when you're depressed you want to do a sleep so

00:34:54.560 you know seven to eight hours of sleep eating right and then we talk about exercise i want to

00:35:00.120 talk about this because this is something you talk a lot about and you're a big proponent of

00:35:02.920 exercise as a we'll call it a treatment for depression what is it about exercise that makes

00:35:10.340 it such an effective way to alleviate or keep your depression in check yeah i i think it's so

00:35:16.560 effective because it is multifactorial. And, you know, that goes back to our conversation earlier

00:35:21.500 that depression in and of itself is likely multifactorial. And therefore, you know, just

00:35:26.460 any one thing is probably not going to be the answer for a person. But exercise really is more

00:35:32.920 than one thing if you break it down to its core elements. So we know that there are neurochemical

00:35:38.960 changes that occur when a person gets regular physical activity that are very, very similar

00:35:45.700 to the changes that occur when a person is taking like an antidepressant medication,

00:35:50.000 for example. So there very much is a chemical component with exercise. But there's also an

00:35:55.780 achievement component. We know that if a person sets goals and then achieves those goals or even

00:36:02.460 works toward those goals, that facilitates the release of dopamine. Now, sometimes depression

00:36:07.360 blocks that. But if you if you have tangible proof, that's one of the things I love about

00:36:12.000 exercises. You can track it. You can have data. You can have metrics because your depression can

00:36:16.400 make you say, well, am I really doing a good job? But if you can prove like, no, I am getting

00:36:20.020 stronger. I'm getting faster. My endurance is going up. My flexibility is going up. Whatever

00:36:23.440 your goals are. If you have data that says, no, I have demonstrable evidence that I am in fact

00:36:29.500 achieving my goals. It's pretty hard for your depression to argue against that. In many cases,

00:36:35.100 physical activity is often something we do with other people, right? You take a class,

00:36:38.980 you maybe play a sport or even just joining a gym even even if you don't talk to them like just

00:36:44.060 depression is so isolating and this is one thing i emphasize to people is even just being in a place

00:36:49.980 where people are can help with those feelings of isolation even if you don't talk to them just

00:36:55.060 doing something and then looking around your environment and seeing there are other people

00:36:59.540 here doing what i am doing gives you a little bit of a sense of connection to other people and to

00:37:04.720 the world in general, that depression can often take away from us. Many forms of physical activity

00:37:10.100 can become hobbies. And so they are inherently pleasurable activities in and of themselves. You

00:37:15.260 know, when I say exercise, I'm not saying you don't have to run or do weight training. Certainly

00:37:19.840 you can, those things count. You know, you could take up hunting, which might involve a lot of

00:37:24.420 walking or fly fishing in a stream where you have to walk a mile against a current. There's no reason

00:37:30.180 it has to be an isolated thing that isn't also fun or enjoyable. So I don't believe in any magic

00:37:37.700 bullets, but I would say if you ask me, what is the single most impactful thing you have ever done

00:37:44.760 for your own mental health? Easy answer. It is getting into regular physical activity, which I

00:37:49.580 really didn't start doing until I was in my early 20s. That was the single biggest shift I experienced

00:37:56.800 in my mental health. It did not fix everything. It was not the cure. But that was a huge turning

00:38:02.880 point for me where I did start to feel like I think I am actually turning the tide and winning

00:38:09.120 this battle and maybe feeling okay more often than I feel miserable. And so it would be my highest

00:38:16.260 conviction recommendation for anyone struggling with their mental health. It also one more thing

00:38:20.420 because I can't even there's so much good it does. It's hard to even remember it all.

00:38:23.920 It also improves cognitive performance. So if you think like executive functioning, focus, concentration, memory, organization, time management, it literally makes your brain work better because your brain uses blood and oxygen to do its job. And improving your cardiovascular fitness increases the amount of blood and oxygen that are available to your brain.

00:38:44.260 And we know that depression and many mental health conditions, you know, they kind of give you that brain fog. They make you feel slower, dumber. Frankly, you get more forgetful. You need to take breaks more often. So it can help you get some of your efficacy back, some of your edge back. It makes you more effective at work, at school, in social situations. 0.99

00:39:01.320 it's hard to even give a full overview of everything physical activity does for your

00:39:07.500 brain and your mood but it is it is one of if not the most powerful tools in our toolbox in my

00:39:13.320 opinion and so underutilized in therapy yeah i agree with you exercise has been a game changer

00:39:17.800 for me and with all these self-care things with the sleep the eating right exercising you talk

00:39:23.640 about this one of the things they do is they help your prefrontal cortex and your prefrontal cortex

00:39:28.100 i'm sure people have heard this sort of like the manager of your brain it's executive function

00:39:32.320 and one of the problems i notice whenever i get into my funks is my prefrontal cortex is basically

00:39:38.240 checked out and my brain does whatever it wants to do and so like i'll go down this you know sort

00:39:43.600 of negativity spiral but when i'm living right right i'm exercising getting enough sleep not

00:39:48.300 stressed out that prefrontal cortex is there whenever i notice myself slipping into like a

00:39:53.800 funk, it can kick in and be like, oh, hey, we're going to stop this now. We're not going down that

00:39:58.380 path. I've noticed that as well. Yeah, it's exactly that. So one of the most important jobs

00:40:03.140 of your prefrontal cortex is emotion regulation. So your emotions are generated in your midbrain

00:40:09.360 and they're managed in your prefrontal cortex. So there's a little bit of a communication process

00:40:13.480 that happens there. So your brain makes a feeling, then tries to figure out what to do with the

00:40:17.940 feeling. And so your ability to regulate your own emotions, which is to, you know, put them into

00:40:23.040 context, figure out, you know, this feels like a catastrophe. Is it? Am I overreacting? What would

00:40:28.060 be a skillful response to this thing I'm feeling that will help me feel it less and not screw up

00:40:32.840 my life? These are all prefrontal cortex tasks. And when your prefrontal cortex is functioning

00:40:38.860 properly, sometimes you won't even notice that you're managing your emotions. I've made the

00:40:44.880 metaphor as a big former gamer. Anyone who's played any real-time strategies games will get

00:40:50.860 this. It's kind of like having like anti-air turrets in your base. Like it will defend you

00:40:56.280 from attacks that you don't even know you're under because it will just work and it will

00:41:00.720 take the edge off those big, scary feelings. Sometimes it'll make you, you know, irritated

00:41:05.920 instead of angry, stressed instead of anxious, moody instead of depressed. Like it takes some

00:41:11.480 of the edge off. It kind of repackages things into a more manageable, more palatable form.

00:41:16.580 And that's why taking care of that road, taking care of your brain is so important because

00:41:20.720 you will start to win some of your battles without even realizing you are fighting them.

00:41:26.000 Some of your problems will seem as if they have magically disappeared and you won't even know

00:41:30.820 where they've gone. And the truth is they haven't actually disappeared. Your brain is just finally

00:41:35.240 managing them the way it's able to when it is properly cared for. And then your emotions don't

00:41:40.960 require constant babysitting from you to deal with them, which is I think a place we'd all like to

00:41:44.920 get to. Yeah. And going back to exercise, like you said earlier, about as effective as psychotherapy

00:41:50.840 and medication, but it's not that expensive. You can go out and take a walk or jog. That's free.

00:41:58.380 And unlike with medication where there can be negative side effects like loss of libido,

00:42:02.800 the side effects of exercise are all positive. That's true. And there's two other areas where

00:42:07.720 exercise actually wins out over therapy and medication. One is the onset of relief. So if

00:42:14.880 you look at therapy and medication, average amount of time it takes to start feeling better

00:42:19.960 in either of those treatment conditions is four to six weeks. And so those first few weeks of

00:42:24.820 trying a new, you know, maybe get a placebo effect of like, oh, I'm feeling better because I'm in

00:42:29.460 therapy or because I'm on this medication, but they haven't actually really started to do anything

00:42:33.060 yet. Whereas with exercise, it's two to four weeks. And so you potentially feel better more

00:42:38.740 quickly with exercise than with therapy or medication. The other area where exercise wins

00:42:44.060 is lower symptom relapse rates. So now that might be a little bit misleading because that might

00:42:50.940 simply be because it's easier to maintain. But you know, if you get on an antidepressant medication,

00:42:56.380 and by the way, I'm just going to give a brief aside here, I'm in no way against medication.

00:42:59.680 This is not an anti-medication conversation, but this is just the truth.

00:43:03.480 If a person's on a medication and the medication makes them feel better, they basically have

00:43:07.520 two choices, get off the medication later and feel the way they used to feel or stay

00:43:12.520 on it forever.

00:43:13.380 And I don't know that either of those are super appealing.

00:43:15.860 Whereas like with physical activity, yeah, you should keep doing it forever because it's

00:43:20.560 good for you.

00:43:21.260 Like it's a beneficial thing to maintain.

00:43:23.940 And so we see lower symptom relapse rates with exercise than with therapy or medication, probably because people keep doing it. It's not like it's magically, I don't want to overstate my case, it's not like fixing your brain structure or anything. It's continuing to work because ideally, you're continuing to do it.

00:43:41.620 And it's most people don't want to be on medication for the rest of their life. Most people probably also don't want to be in therapy for the rest of their life. That's not necessarily feasible. But we can stay physically active for our entire lives. And in fact, we should. And there are other reasons. You know, I'm only approaching this from the mental health angle. Obviously, it goes without saying that there are tremendous physical health benefits for staying physically active as well.

00:44:03.960 But I'm saying even if you only looked at the mental health side of things, it's still

00:44:09.000 a pretty compelling argument.

00:44:10.440 And there is a strong case to be made that that is the most effective treatment, at least

00:44:14.620 for mood and anxiety disorders.

00:44:16.820 You know, if you look at other things, maybe not so much.

00:44:18.960 But for what we're talking about, you could make a pretty compelling case that it's the

00:44:22.420 gold standard.

00:44:23.640 All right, let's talk about another lesson that stood out to me.

00:44:25.420 And it's the idea that envy is ignorance.

00:44:28.280 And you got this lesson while you were fishing in the lake by your family's cabin.

00:44:32.280 and you and your sister had only caught little fish, but one day you caught this big monster

00:44:37.140 fish. And that got you thinking about what else might be lying in the dark depths that you couldn't

00:44:42.560 see at the bottom of the lake. And you compare that to how people, especially people with

00:44:47.060 depression, because they have that stronger than average negativity bias, they feel like they're 0.51

00:44:51.880 just, you know, they're more screwed up than everyone else. And they envy that other people 0.83

00:44:55.480 seem to have better lives. And that just puts them into more of a funk, but they can't see

00:44:59.880 to the bottom of other people's lives like you couldn't see to the bottom of the lake.

00:45:04.160 Yeah, that's kind of a metaphor I've used to understand other people's lives. Now,

00:45:08.300 especially as a therapist, I often obviously am privy to some of those deep, dark secrets. And

00:45:12.680 that's just reinforced the idea that everybody has them because many of the people I work with,

00:45:18.300 you would never think there's anything going on based on their family, their careers, their

00:45:23.640 attire, their appearance. And so it's just an important reminder for me that everybody's got

00:45:28.480 stuff. Everybody's got darkness you can't see. And you may not ever know what it is, but don't

00:45:34.280 ever let yourself think it's not there because that's going to draw you to some really problematic

00:45:40.160 conclusions about your own life. And this is not the most eloquent way to say it, but I said it

00:45:45.320 this way in the book. You know everything that sucks about being you, but you don't know what 0.98

00:45:49.500 sucks about being somebody else. But something does. I guarantee you something does. You just 0.98

00:45:53.680 don't know what it is. And you got to remember that there is something so that you don't end up

00:45:58.660 just feeling despair and hopelessness about your own life just because you know everything that 0.97

00:46:02.320 sucks about being you. And so, I mean, any tactics that you found? I mean, you talk about this idea 0.92

00:46:06.680 of identify, locate, and pursue to overcome this tendency. Can you walk through that?

00:46:12.560 Yeah. So that's about recognizing like, what do you have in your own life that is already good?

00:46:19.680 Because with that negativity bias, it is so easy for us to fixate on what we don't have and on what we see in other people's lives and identify, locate and pursue, which is kind of a kind of a blueprint I use to help us really see and appreciate what we do already have.

00:46:36.120 Like all of my therapy clients want something that another one of my therapy clients has

00:46:42.440 and isn't happy with.

00:46:43.940 Like I'll have a client who, you know, has a big family, but, you know, has no time to

00:46:49.100 herself, no free time.

00:46:50.380 And she's like, I just wish I had time to think and could just, you know, go on a vacation

00:46:55.180 whenever I want and didn't have to arrange all these things.

00:46:58.840 And then I have a client who can't have kids and she has all of that. 1.00

00:47:02.880 She has the freedom and the time and the money, but she just wants more people to share it with.

00:47:07.860 And it's like so often I see that where I'll have two people thinking that the solution to all their problems is a thing that somebody else I know has and isn't happy with.

00:47:17.740 And what that has led me to believe is there's no certain configuration of life that's going to make you happy or not happy.

00:47:25.380 And the biggest dividing line is the extent to which people are able to appreciate what they do have and accept what they don't.

00:47:34.240 Because there's no way to put a life together where you get all the stuff.

00:47:37.900 You just don't.

00:47:38.640 Like kids versus time.

00:47:40.460 I know I made that example already, but it's hard to have a big family and a lot of free time.

00:47:45.320 You kind of got to go one or the other there.

00:47:47.360 Or time versus money is another one.

00:47:49.500 Some people, I guess, have careers where they can make a great amount of money not working a ton.

00:47:53.420 But for most of us, we either got to pick, do I want to, you know, be able to achieve my financial dreams by working more and or harder than most people?

00:48:02.240 Or do I want to appreciate the fact that while money is tight, I have more free time, I have more autonomy, I have more flexibility.

00:48:09.760 And so that I think is the biggest difference is not, you know, do you have all the stuff, but are you able to pull the joy out of what you do have and practice some acceptance of the fact that like the things you don't have,

00:48:21.960 if you were to pursue them, you'd lose some of what you do have. And ultimately,

00:48:26.180 once we get to adulthood, we're all busy. We all have limited resources. Almost every move you can

00:48:31.700 make is a lateral move. Very rarely can you do something that just makes every part of your life

00:48:37.280 better. And it's usually, I could trade a little bit of this for a little bit of that. And that

00:48:42.360 makes one thing better and one thing worse, which is actually better. And I see people just

00:48:46.860 constantly doing that, just trading and then being like, oh, I didn't like that. I should go back.

00:48:50.520 kind of reminds me of people. I know someone who kept moving back and forth from the city to the

00:48:54.580 country. They'd live out in the country and they'd be like, I love the space. I love the nature,

00:48:58.720 but I feel isolated. Then they move in the city and they're like, this is cool. You know,

00:49:02.360 I got people around me. This is vibrant. This is exciting, but I feel confined. I feel trapped.

00:49:06.540 My space is too small. And they just go back and forth for like decades. And it's like,

00:49:11.520 how do you not see what this is? Like, there's no perfect solution here. There's pros and cons

00:49:16.920 to each and you got to just pick one. And I think that's how most things in our life work to be

00:49:20.380 honest. And it's so easy to end up chasing something that just doesn't exist. Some perfect

00:49:24.500 idealized solution. This reminds me, we've had Rick Hansen on the podcast talk about this idea

00:49:29.820 of hardwiring happiness. And the big takeaway I got from him was when you do experience those

00:49:34.480 good things, first off, like recognize, be open to those good things in your life. And they can

00:49:38.620 be small things like time with your kids, a good morning, like just even you have a house, you're

00:49:44.200 alive and like really focus on that and soak it in and think, yeah, things are actually good.

00:49:49.980 they're not as bad as I think they are. I think that's a useful practice. It's basically counting

00:49:53.660 your blessings, essentially. And it sounds cliche, but it's cliche because it works if you do it.

00:49:59.660 So let's talk about another lesson. And this lesson that stood out to me was called Pull the

00:50:04.240 Weeds. And this is about an invasive species of plant and also some mussels that were in the lake

00:50:11.520 near your family's cabin that you got a lesson. I think we talked about this a little bit earlier

00:50:15.840 about how things that look pretty or good and may not be that bad can actually crowd out the things

00:50:24.640 that are better for you to manage your depression. Yeah, exactly. The mussels in particular is a

00:50:30.120 perfect example because, yeah, so they're an invasive species. They're not supposed to be

00:50:33.680 in that lake. This is the same lake we were talking about before. But what's interesting

00:50:36.820 about them is they have a filtering effect on the water. And so they actually make the water

00:50:41.020 more clear. And I loved how clear, I remember when I was a kid, there weren't mussels in there. And

00:50:45.420 I actually wished, I was like, I wish, I hope we get zebra mussels because then the water will be

00:50:48.620 even more clear. It'll look like the ocean. And my dad was a big environmentalist and he was always

00:50:53.200 like, no, you don't want invasive species. I never understood. Like I get it if they're like

00:50:56.860 poisonous or carnivorous, like if there's direct harm. Yeah, I get we don't want that. But if all

00:51:01.680 it does is make the water clearer, if it's a flower that grows in a field and looks beautiful,

00:51:05.540 like what's the harm in that? But what I eventually came to understand is there's direct

00:51:10.220 harm and there's indirect harm and and the reason that a lot of invasive species are are undesirable

00:51:16.280 even if they don't do anything even if they're not like killing other other you know native species

00:51:22.040 is they take up space they take up resources a flower that's not supposed to be in a certain

00:51:27.680 ecosystem still requires soil still requires water and it's taking that from something that

00:51:34.040 does need to be there and that flower while it may be beautiful doesn't necessarily provide any

00:51:38.160 value to that ecosystem because it's not part of the food chain there. The animals might not eat

00:51:42.580 it. It's just a pretty waste of space, basically. And I think there are so many things in our lives

00:51:50.120 that essentially function that way, that are invasive species and that are basically

00:51:54.120 pretty wastes of space. The biggest one for me personally was video games. I really enjoyed

00:52:01.140 video games and I think that they can be a great hobby for a lot of people. But what I noticed in

00:52:06.520 my own life is that I enjoyed video games so much that everything else in my life kind of came

00:52:13.260 second. And all these fundamental, you know, pro mental health behaviors that we're talking about

00:52:19.000 here today, those are things that I had to kind of try to grudgingly jam into my day because I

00:52:25.640 wanted to have several hours a day available for leisure time. Now, again, for me, that was gaming

00:52:30.180 for some people. That's going to be, you know, binge watching your favorite shows, doing whatever

00:52:33.620 on social media, you know, this could be anything. But I think it's really, really important for us

00:52:38.420 to all keep an eye out for what are the things in our lives that aren't actually providing value to

00:52:44.060 our ecosystem. They might be, you know, metaphorically beautiful, meaning this feels really

00:52:47.880 good when you do it. And that's fine. I'm not saying you shouldn't have those things. But you

00:52:53.200 want to be mindful of how much space they're taking up. Because as a therapist and a coach,

00:52:59.600 one of the biggest things I hear from people when I try to give them guidance is like,

00:53:04.280 I don't have time. And don't get me wrong. I know we're all busy. I know that this life requires a

00:53:09.640 lot out of us. If you really look at even just the amount of time most of us have to work to

00:53:13.880 make a living, it's a lot. And so I'm not trying to push back on that as in, you have 10 hours of

00:53:21.720 free time a day. But the people who tell me they don't have time to work out or to get eight hours

00:53:26.760 of sleep, when we really look at their day, there's usually several hours a day for most of

00:53:32.520 them where they're doing something that just produces acute pleasure. And again, it's okay

00:53:38.860 to have a little bit of that. But if that becomes a cornerstone of your routine, if that becomes a

00:53:45.020 thing you need, if that becomes a thing you prioritize over actual health necessary behaviors

00:53:52.480 and becomes a reason why you don't do them, then your ecosystem is out of balance and your life

00:53:59.300 has started to, or maybe has been taken over by an invasive species, by a thing that is growing

00:54:06.680 unchecked and uncontained, and that can eventually take over your life. Even if it's not something

00:54:12.760 with a physiological addictive element to it, like drugs, for example. I personally, I identify as a

00:54:21.320 video game addict. I believe that was an addiction to me. And even once I got to a point in life where

00:54:27.420 I had a career and a family, obviously I wasn't playing games eight hours a day. It wasn't

00:54:32.440 physically possible. But even when it was something that was only a couple hours, it was the only

00:54:37.720 thing I really looked forward to because it felt so much better to me than everything else I did.

00:54:44.500 And so work and taking care of myself and even family to a degree, they started to feel

00:54:49.680 obligatory. They started to feel like the things I had to get through to get to the part of my life

00:54:55.620 that I really wanted to get to. And I hated that. I found that to be a miserable and unacceptable

00:55:02.020 perspective. For me, it's like a full removal. I play games with my son and that's it.

00:55:08.040 It was something I had to really pull out by the weeds. And a short while after doing that,

00:55:13.980 I realized that I was starting to rediscover the joy that used to only come from games in the other parts of my life, in my work, in my family, in my relationships, even in things like working out and going to bed on time.

00:55:28.040 Those started to feel good to me because they weren't constantly being compared to this artificial source of stimulation and joy that provided me with, you know, this incredible audio visual experience that nothing consistent in a person's regular day to day life can really replicate.

00:55:41.860 and so it was basically addition by subtraction my life got better by taking away something that

00:55:48.100 i loved because it raised the average enjoyment of everything else that i did by comparison

00:55:53.460 all right this last lesson i want to talk about and it's keep the water flowing and you got this

00:55:57.900 lesson from some backwater what lesson did this backwater in the river teach you about depression

00:56:03.600 so that one yeah that one was a stream by my parents house and it was a pretty small stream

00:56:09.520 So there are places where there was no water flowing.

00:56:12.480 And it's interesting because like a stream that has water flowing usually is very beautiful.

00:56:16.660 It's this clean, clear, like pristine looking water.

00:56:20.740 But then you'll see these little pools where the water doesn't flow.

00:56:25.040 And it's completely different.

00:56:26.620 These, you know, like plant matter and even dead fish, they start to decay in there and

00:56:31.400 gases build up.

00:56:32.720 They smell horrible.

00:56:34.000 The water looks brown and disgusting.

00:56:36.120 And this is the same body of water.

00:56:37.360 So I look at these same two things.

00:56:39.520 that have very different properties. And the only difference between them that creates that

00:56:43.940 different outcome is that one moves and one doesn't move. And that is also something I have

00:56:48.800 noticed in my own life, is when there are periods of my life, when I'm stagnant, when I don't really

00:56:54.680 have a thing that I'm working on or moving towards, that gets dark quickly for me. That's

00:57:00.400 when I start to fall into those patterns of kind of hopelessness and nihilism and like,

00:57:04.220 why am I even here? What am I even doing any of this for? And when I have any goal to work towards,

00:57:10.500 even if it's not, I talk to people about like uppercase P and lowercase P purpose, you know,

00:57:14.980 uppercase P is like, why am I here as a human being? Lowercase P is like, it's not something

00:57:20.580 that like helps all of humanity, but it's something that's meaningful to you. And as long as I have

00:57:25.980 something that I am moving towards in life, that gives me the internal feeling of a flowing stream

00:57:33.600 of like things are getting cleared out and cleansed

00:57:37.200 and I feel like I'm moving in a good direction.

00:57:40.100 But when I hit those patches of life

00:57:41.860 where I can't find that and I lack that,

00:57:44.260 I just feel stuck.

00:57:45.700 I feel muddy, I feel gross.

00:57:48.620 And so the lesson for me in that

00:57:50.140 has been to try to always have something

00:57:52.120 to be moving towards.

00:57:53.600 It doesn't always have to be something grandiose.

00:57:55.500 It doesn't always have to be something

00:57:56.640 that benefits all of humanity,

00:57:58.660 but just something that's meaningful to you.

00:58:01.160 And when you achieve that,

00:58:02.300 move the goalpost again and find something else because i think we all need that that sense of

00:58:08.780 achievement or that sense of purpose to feel like our lives are meaningful or worth living and if

00:58:12.920 we don't have that things are going to get bad pretty quickly okay so yeah find a hobby basically

00:58:18.300 yeah yeah that's basically it and make sure the hobby doesn't become one of those uh invasive

00:58:23.060 species hobbies like video games exactly so i mean you have a nice list here like working out

00:58:27.540 can be a hobby in of itself like that's my big hobby of course reading my family likes to backpack

00:58:31.600 I enjoy that. So yeah, find stuff you like to do, stuff that helps you feel like you're moving

00:58:35.840 forward towards something and gives you some purpose, something to look forward to. Well,

00:58:40.600 Scott, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and

00:58:43.760 your work? Yeah, I got a few options there. So I'm pretty active on basically all social media

00:58:48.880 platforms. I have a YouTube channel and a podcast of my own, which is just the videos from my

00:58:52.740 YouTube channel with the audio extracted. I also post short content on Instagram, TikTok, and

00:58:58.100 Facebook. My personal website is drscotteilers.com. That's got both my books on there. I also offer

00:59:04.180 some personal one-on-one coaching. Those are the main areas to find me. Fantastic. Well,

00:59:08.900 Scott Eilers, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much, Brett. I really

00:59:11.900 appreciate it today. I hope people get good value out of this content. My guest today was Dr. Scott

00:59:17.220 Eilers. He's the author of the book, The Light Between the Leaves. It's available on amazon.com

00:59:20.820 and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at his website,

00:59:23.620 drscotteilers.com.

00:59:25.440 Also check out our show notes

00:59:26.300 at aom.is slash leaves

00:59:27.940 where you find links to resources

00:59:29.120 where you delve deeper

00:59:29.780 into this topic.

00:59:38.360 Well, that wraps up

00:59:39.400 another edition of the AOM podcast.

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00:59:41.800 I'd appreciate it

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00:59:51.400 As always,

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00:59:53.260 Until next time, this is Brett McKay, reminding you to not only listen to A1 Podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

01:00:17.580 Hey, before you go, here's one more episode to consider.

01:00:20.040 In episode number 716, we dig into a paradox.

01:00:23.260 How do you make your life easier without becoming passive?

01:00:26.080 It's all about clearing friction, choosing your battles wisely,

01:00:28.860 and crafting habits that help you move forward with less drag.

01:00:31.900 You can find it at aom.is slash effortless.

01:00:34.820 That's aom.is slash effortless.

01:00:36.900 A lot of great actionable insights in this episode.

01:00:38.780 Check it out today.

The Art of Manliness - April 14, 2026

Truths Your Therapist Won't Tell You About How to Get Your Mind Right

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