The Peter Attia Drive - #119 - Terry Real： Breaking the cycle of shame, anger, and depression

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, welcome to the drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. This podcast,

00:00:15.480 my website and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity

00:00:19.800 into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health

00:00:24.600 and wellness full stop. And we've assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen.

00:00:28.880 If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more

00:00:33.280 in-depth content. If you want to take your knowledge of this space to the next level,

00:00:36.820 at the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are. Or if you want to learn more

00:00:41.320 now, head over to peteratiyahmd.com forward slash subscribe. Now, without further delay,

00:00:47.760 here's today's episode. My guest this week is author, speaker, and family therapist,

00:00:54.520 Terry Real. As a family therapist and teacher for more than 25 years, Terry's the bestselling author

00:01:00.440 of a number of books, including I Don't Want to Talk About It, Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male

00:01:05.300 Depression, How Can I Get Through to You, Reconnecting Men and Women, and I believe his most recent book is

00:01:10.960 The New Rules of Marriage, What You Need to Know to Make Love Work. Terry also founded the Relational

00:01:17.520 Love Institute, offering workshops for couples, individuals, and patients around the country,

00:01:22.660 along with a professional training program for clinicians. Now, if you've listened to this

00:01:28.540 podcast for a while, I think on at least three or four episodes, I have brought up Terry's name

00:01:35.260 and his book, I Don't Want to Talk About It, and I think I've even alluded to it as probably one of

00:01:40.060 the books I have gifted more than any other. I've wanted to interview Terry for quite some time now

00:01:46.300 because I just think that the way he thinks about the relationship between anger, depression,

00:01:52.740 and interrelational strife is so illuminating. And, you know, I sort of sheepishly worked up the

00:02:01.060 nerve to ask him at some point, hey, Terry, you know, would it be okay if I interviewed you? And I

00:02:05.620 was just delighted that he agreed to it, and he agreed to it on very short notice, like in a matter

00:02:09.500 of days. In this episode, we talk about Terry's background. He grew up with an abusive father,

00:02:15.000 and that has turned out to be, while an awful and unfortunate thing that happened to Terry,

00:02:20.360 probably the greatest gift that came to many of us who have been helped by Terry because it was that

00:02:25.780 relationship with his father that really forged his path to become a therapist and to better

00:02:30.280 understand male depression and anger. We talk about how trauma during a child's upbringing can shape

00:02:36.040 them later in life and how it can be passed on for generations over and over again. We talk about

00:02:41.360 why people sometimes need to be in painful situations to have breakthroughs, what it means to hit rock

00:02:46.720 bottom, how to live a relational life, and the importance of living with healthy, satisfying,

00:02:51.800 rich emotional connections. We talk a lot about narcissism and touch on David Foster Wallace and the idea of

00:02:58.040 how we don't truly know what someone is going through in life, this idea of being able to put yourself in

00:03:04.320 someone else's shoes. We talk about a lot of other things, but I think in the end, I hope you'll just

00:03:09.080 take my word for it that this is worth investing the time in listening to. I enjoyed this discussion

00:03:13.760 immensely, and I look forward to sharing it. So without further delay, please enjoy my discussion

00:03:18.400 with Terry Reel. Terry, thank you so much for making time to speak with me. It's been a long time that

00:03:28.840 I've wanted to, I don't know, turn the tables a little bit and ask you the questions.

00:03:32.560 Yeah, well, it's a great pleasure to be here, and I'm looking forward to an interesting conversation.

00:03:38.180 I think I just want to kind of jump into some stuff. Maybe for the listener, I'll tell a little

00:03:41.960 bit of a story about how we were connected, and then jump into you telling your story. So

00:03:47.320 about 18 months ago, a woman who I have yet to interview on the podcast, but certainly will,

00:03:52.280 Esther Perel, who I was working with at the time and still continue to work with, said,

00:03:57.460 Peter, you've got me and Lori as these two amazing therapists in your life, but you don't have a male

00:04:03.560 therapist and you need one. And I'd already worked with two or three guys, but I just didn't have that

00:04:09.740 connection. And she said, I want you to read a book. And next week when we meet, I want you to tell me

00:04:15.060 what you thought about the book and if the book resonated with you. And if it did, I will introduce

00:04:20.120 you to the author. And if it didn't, that's okay. We'll keep looking. And the book was,

00:04:24.980 I don't want to talk about it. And so I went home, bought the book, read the book and came back in

00:04:34.280 a week and said, even if not one other person has read that book, he wrote it for me and it was worth

00:04:42.060 the effort he put into it. And the rest is sort of history. So can you start with a little bit about

00:04:49.100 your background, how you grew up? Well, I mean, this is a little glib,

00:04:53.920 but people always ask me how I became a family therapist. And my stock answer is I started at

00:04:59.080 about four. I grew up at Poor in Camden, New Jersey, a little hanging on by your fingernails,

00:05:07.180 middle-class enclave in a town that was rapidly becoming a ghost town. My parents were under a lot

00:05:13.760 of stress. My father was a loving, smart, violent, emotionally brutal man. And I went to therapy

00:05:25.840 school. I'd already spent four years in a doctoral program in literature. And then I went to therapy

00:05:30.740 school after that. And I had to go to therapy school to get the skills I needed to talk to this

00:05:36.960 man, to get him to open up to me. And I needed to understand what the hell had happened to him.

00:05:45.880 I needed to make sense out of my father and his violence so that I would not repeat it. And I have.

00:05:54.100 Terry, you described him using three phrases. I might be paraphrasing a little bit, but I could

00:05:59.580 have sworn you said loving, smart, and brutally violent, or at least violent. Those people don't

00:06:06.380 think of those as going together. That seems like a contradiction in some way.

00:06:11.460 Yeah, it does to me too. Imagine what it felt like to a four-year-old. It's confusing, but real

00:06:17.020 life is confusing. There are many, many parents who are warm and nurturant when they're warm and

00:06:23.360 nurturant and they turn on you and they're brutal. That's not an uncommon pattern. And what that does

00:06:29.840 to a child is it's confusing. It's very confusing. And it breeds a great deal of mistrust because the

00:06:37.200 rug is always being pulled out from under you. When did that first occur to you that something

00:06:41.900 wasn't right? I mean, it sounds odd that a four-year-old could be even perceptive that anything

00:06:48.340 that they're experiencing is not the norm. We've glossed over this, but I do want to go back into it.

00:06:53.620 I mean, you weren't exactly the perfect child. You were kind of a bad kid growing up, if I recall,

00:06:57.780 right? Well, I became a bad kid. I didn't start off as a bad kid. I guess nobody does, right?

00:07:03.800 Yeah. I was invited to be a bad kid and I took the invitation and then I was punished for it. You

00:07:09.640 know, I was a scapegoat child, Peter. There are three, it is old 12-step, the hero child, the good

00:07:16.040 one, the achiever, the scapegoat child, the bad one, the rebel, and the lost child, the one that nobody

00:07:22.720 pays any attention to at all. And I was a scapegoat child. And scapegoat child, I'm really happy. I feel

00:07:29.180 it's a gift to have been the scapegoat child. The scapegoat child is the one that wants to bring up

00:07:35.740 to the surface all of the pathology and the truth that's being denied and suppressed. And they usually

00:07:43.220 do it through action rather than verbs, but they express the family dysfunction or pathology or

00:07:50.080 ill ease and then they get punished for it. Or they tell the truth. They literally tell the truth

00:07:54.740 about the family and the dad's an alcoholic. Only you would say that. So I was a scapegoat and I was

00:08:00.280 a truth teller and now I'm a professional truth teller and it's what I do for a living. And instead of

00:08:06.760 getting punished for it, I'm getting paid for it. So there we are.

00:08:11.500 So it's not a given that when you were sitting there in high school, you were going to quote

00:08:16.180 unquote make it. Tell me a little bit about that transition from high school into college.

00:08:20.580 There's a story in your book about, I think your dad even accompanied you off to college,

00:08:24.760 didn't he, that first trip?

00:08:26.280 Yeah, they did. First of all, oh my gosh, let me go back of my schooling. If the whole thing really

00:08:33.000 started in about second grade, I came home with bad report card. And you never know what my dad

00:08:39.260 was going to do. I was scared to death, but he looked at it and he threw it on the floor

00:08:43.740 and he laughed. And he said, it's just because those assholes are so stupid and you're so bright, 1.00

00:08:51.400 they don't know what to do with you. Okay. Now the technical term for my father was doing just then 1.00

00:08:56.400 is called false empowerment. He was pumping me up. It was no favor to a little boy. I didn't get

00:09:02.700 good grades in school until I got to college. I went through elementary, junior and high school.

00:09:09.340 I figured out that if I showed up every other week, that would be enough to get a D average.

00:09:17.260 And that's what I did. And then I went to the boardwalk in Atlantic City and I sat down at Woolworth

00:09:23.120 and I'd spend the whole day writing. And I would show up at school once every 10 days to two weeks.

00:09:29.180 I was going to go to Europe and be a writer, but I got a 1A in the draft, which is a whole other

00:09:35.920 story. I was scared to death. And I went to college to get out of the draft and I had no grades. So the

00:09:43.320 only college that would accept me was Atlantic Community College. And that's why I spent my first

00:09:48.240 year and I needed to get out. And I got all A's because I wanted to get out. And then I transferred

00:09:53.820 from there to Rutgers. My mother and my father came to visit me. They stood out like sore thumbs.

00:09:59.840 I was completely embarrassed by their blatantly blue collar out of placeness. The last word my

00:10:08.180 father said before he left me was, keep your nose to the grindstone and your pecker dry, which to this

00:10:16.480 day, I don't really quite know what the hell that was supposed to mean. And my mother, who was six foot and 1.00

00:10:22.220 obese, banged on the car that I was driving off in with friends, banged on the car. So the guy jammed

00:10:32.080 on his brakes and she gave me a little wave and I kissed goodbye.

00:10:36.920 Were you the oldest of your siblings?

00:10:39.300 No, no. And in true birth order, the older one is more the hero child usually. And the second one

00:10:45.500 is the scapegoat. Older one goes to father. Second one goes to mother if you have two boys. So the story

00:10:51.520 goes anyway. That's what happened to me. I have a fraternal twin brother. He's six minutes older

00:10:56.860 than I am. And he's every inch, the older brother. And I'm every inch, the younger brother.

00:11:03.520 How much did you know at the time of your father's pathology in his upbringing? What brought pain into

00:11:11.460 his life?

00:11:12.500 Oh, nothing. He wouldn't talk to me. He wouldn't talk to me about anything of consequence, let alone

00:11:18.100 his own life. And it wasn't until I was in my late twenties and I'd already become a therapist

00:11:23.960 that I finally had enough skill to persist and get through, be gentle enough to get through his

00:11:31.780 defenses. And finally at about 28, 29 years old, he told me his story, which is a pretty horrific

00:11:39.060 story in its own right.

00:11:40.320 Can you tell us some of that story?

00:11:43.000 Sure. My father's mother died when he was nine. It was during the depression in America.

00:11:52.580 He had a younger brother. He was 11. His younger brother was nine. His mother was dead. His father,

00:12:00.060 who he describes as a passive loser of a man, owned a little candy store and lost it. The family broke up

00:12:08.260 and lived in various people's houses. And one day in a fit of depression, my father's father tried to

00:12:16.760 kill him and his brother and himself. He tried to gas him in the garage with his car. My father

00:12:24.440 remembers his father craving him in his arms and saying, shh, shh, shh, go to sleep. And at 11,

00:12:32.520 my father knew there was something horribly wrong and he began to fight. So the story goes,

00:12:38.180 and he kicked the window out of the car and that woke his father up. He grabbed his little brother

00:12:44.140 and got out of the car. And according to my father, that was the last real authentic contact he had with

00:12:53.440 his father for the rest of his life.

00:12:54.960 So it's safe to probably assume that his father also inherited a legacy of pain that may have gone

00:13:03.440 beyond just the experiences he had in the loss of his wife.

00:13:08.320 Yes, I think that's right. I think depression runs up and down my family. I've struggled with

00:13:13.680 depression in my day. I am gratefully on antidepressants as we speak and happily so. I'm

00:13:20.920 sure that my grandfather was subject to depression and the circumstances were dire.

00:13:27.260 So when you talk about your dad, you said brutal, loving, smart, but you didn't say depressed. So

00:13:33.080 how does depression fit into what your father was experiencing and also lashing out?

00:13:41.200 Well, there's a saying in AA, they say, hurt people, hurt people. And as you know,

00:13:47.780 central to my work on masculinity is the translation of shame into grandiosity of feeling less than

00:13:56.400 inadequate, unlovable somehow to the one down of shame. And then you flip into the one up

00:14:03.420 of grandiosity, superiority, better than attack, avenging angel, righteous indignation.

00:14:10.900 And this, I believe, is the dynamic of abuse and most violence on this planet. And it's central to

00:14:19.740 masculinity and traditional manhood, the flip from the one down victim to the one up avenger.

00:14:28.400 Anyway, what's devilish about shifting from shame and the grandiosity from injury to attack

00:14:34.660 is that it works. It makes you feel better in the short run. It just creates havoc in your life. And

00:14:42.400 that's what happened with my father. My father despised vulnerability because he despised his own

00:14:47.940 father. He saw his father as weak, and he despised weakness ever since. And so when I was in his eyes

00:14:57.440 weak, precisely when I was vulnerable, is when he would attack. He was punishing his own father and

00:15:05.480 punishing his own vulnerability. It was a hyper-masculine response to trauma. Does that make

00:15:13.160 sense to you what I'm saying? It does. How prevalent do you think this is? I mean, it's possible, I think,

00:15:19.920 if I just consider the sampling of my own population of male patients, which maybe males make up two

00:15:27.000 thirds of my patients, 60% say. I wonder just how prevalent this is in the lives of people who

00:15:33.260 haven't been maybe so literally abused the way your father was. Yeah. Well, I wasn't, I mean, I was

00:15:42.700 actually, my father did get physical, but there are many. Look, one of my great mentors, a woman named

00:15:49.700 Pia Melody, defined trauma or injury as any significantly less than nurturant transaction

00:15:58.280 between parent and child. Any significantly less than nurturant transaction between parent and child

00:16:04.900 injures the child. Now, that's a whole range, of course, and we're all imperfect, and it's exactly

00:16:12.820 our parents' imperfections and how we adapt to them that shapes what most people would call our

00:16:19.160 character. I call it our adaptive child self. But at any rate, we're all shaped by injuries. The

00:16:26.300 question is, are they part of the imperfect dealings of being a human being with other human beings? Is

00:16:34.480 there repair? Is there accountability? Is there something beyond the rupture? Or is it just injury and

00:16:42.600 rupture? My model for relationships comes from Ed Tronick, who was the pioneer of infant observational

00:16:52.480 research. He actually stuck a camera in front of mothers and babies and saw what they did. And Ed

00:16:59.460 believes that the basic rhythm of all relationships is harmony, disharmony, and repair. Closeness,

00:17:05.800 disruption, and a return to closeness. And in my dysfunctional family and in all the dysfunctional

00:17:12.480 families I've treated over the years, there's little to no repair. The repair process has

00:17:18.560 gotten jammed up somehow. And so there's this injury, and then you live with it until the next

00:17:25.700 injury. So it's not the disharmony you're saying. It's not the harmony to disharmony that's the

00:17:31.540 problem. It's the inability to go from disharmony to repair? Right. At the upper levels, we all hurt our

00:17:37.820 kids. We're all imperfect. I told a story about putting Justin's hockey shoes on the wrong feet.

00:17:43.700 Why don't you tell that story, actually? I think it is a great illustration that any parent can relate

00:17:49.520 to. Yeah. Well, we were really rushed. Justin was a hockey player, which is sports in general is

00:17:56.440 completely not my domain. My kid is a total jock. He's been really disappointed in some ways that he

00:18:03.480 doesn't have a Boston sports dad, and I appreciate that. He says, I'm going to go to South Boston,

00:18:09.160 Irish, South Boston, and I'm going to find a beer-drinking, Trump-supporting real father

00:18:15.360 who does nothing but sports all day. That ain't me. Anyway, we were playing hockey. I was already

00:18:22.680 feeling a little overwhelmed because it's not my domain. We were late. He was whiny. I was putting his

00:18:29.000 shoes on. The parents were trying to talk to me. I was trying to get him out on the ice. He goes out

00:18:33.380 on the ice. Comes back. He must have been like, I don't know, eight or nine. Comes back. Ten minutes

00:18:38.500 later, says, my feet hurt. My boots are killing me. And they go, come on, Justin. Just go out there

00:18:45.700 and play. Oh, he's got his skates on right now, you're saying? Yeah, his skates. Yeah. And then,

00:18:51.180 and he does, obedient little boy, and he plays his little heart out. And when I'm taking his skates

00:18:57.620 off at the end of the game, to my horror, there are two red pre-blisters on his feet, I had put the 0.99

00:19:05.240 damn shoes on the wrong feet. Oh, God. But here's what I say when I tell this story. If it had been 0.99

00:19:13.520 Justina instead of Justin, would I have been so firm or would I have listened to my daughter? And I think

00:19:22.000 the honest answer is I would have listened more. This is masculinity. In that moment, I was the voice

00:19:29.860 of patriarchy inflicting itself on my son. You've spoken about this patriarchal model that is,

00:19:38.160 I mean, it's really everything you rail against, isn't it? You're not a fan of this. Can you vent a

00:19:42.800 little bit more about this? Because for many men, it's all we've known. I mean, it is, you describe,

00:19:49.200 we're going to get to what relational living means, which is, I mean, I think prior to meeting

00:19:54.220 you, I didn't, I just couldn't have fathomed what you were talking about. So if you pause for a

00:20:00.560 moment, that's a hell of a sentence that just came out of your mouth. Sure. That's a big sentence. And

00:20:05.960 you speak for an awful lot of men, most many, many, many of the men that I see simply don't know what

00:20:13.300 living in healthy, satisfying, rich, emotional connection feels like. They just don't know what

00:20:23.340 are you talking? It's Greek. Yeah. It is a little bit abstract and it's, if it hasn't been modeled

00:20:30.200 for you, which it's not generally, that's not a common model. I mean, that's the less common model,

00:20:35.920 I guess I would say. I don't, can't speak to prevalence again, but say a little bit more about

00:20:40.860 this. What is it that you're talking about as the norm? Let's start with what this sort of

00:20:45.100 traditional model is. Sure. Well, there are a number of ways of saying it. The simplest way

00:20:49.960 of saying it is when I mean patriarchy, I'm talking about traditional gender roles for men and women.

00:20:55.760 And I mean, traditional pre-feminism, but still very much with us. So the traditional role for women 1.00

00:21:02.420 is everybody's written about for the last 50 years is to be accommodating and resentful,

00:21:08.180 to lose their voice. Carol Gilligan wrote this back in the 80s in a different voice. And she wrote

00:21:15.420 about the women's loss of voice, loss of authentic connection about the edge of adolescence, 13, 14.

00:21:23.220 They fall prey to what Carol calls the tyranny of the nice and the kind. And they lose their voice.

00:21:30.000 They stop telling the truth. They start being, to be honest, manipulative. That's part of the

00:21:35.560 traditional female role. So traditionally, what you've got is an accommodating resentful woman. 1.00

00:21:43.340 And on the other side, you have a shutdown-driven, inwardly haunted, outwardly successful. One of

00:21:51.480 the things I say, Peter, maybe you'll be able to relate to this. One of the things I say is,

00:21:56.120 an inwardly shame-based, outwardly driven man, coupled with an inwardly resentful, outwardly

00:22:05.760 accommodating woman. That's America's power couple, man. They're a successful couple in the world.

00:22:13.500 Well, it's a dangerous combination because there's not enough inertia to question it or

00:22:20.000 challenge it internally. That probably doesn't make sense what I'm saying, but I think you know

00:22:23.500 what I mean? It doesn't have enough of a forcing mechanism to call into question, whereas at least

00:22:28.800 if one of those two phenotypes is different, there could be more tension that drives a change

00:22:34.500 potentially. And then feminism hit and there was tension that drove the change. And I'm going to 0.99

00:22:40.920 say something and maybe some of your listeners will push back on this, but I believe that in the

00:22:48.160 60s, 70s, and 80s, here's a question, Peter. What value is shared by mainstream patriarchal culture and

00:22:58.960 almost virtually all of the so-called counterculture personal growth movements? What value is shared

00:23:05.640 by mainstream and counterculture?

00:23:09.640 Hmm. Probably some semblance of independence or freedom.

00:23:15.040 Yeah, you're close. The individual, the sanctity of individualism. Personal growth is personal

00:23:22.140 growth, not relational growth. And so I summarize personal growth or personal empowerment as I was

00:23:32.320 weak, now I'm strong, go screw yourself. And it was big. I lived through that revolution in the 70s and 0.98

00:23:39.140 the 80s and women were mad at us guys. And I was weak, now I'm strong. I'm going to stand back and

00:23:45.800 say it any old way I want to and you best listen and like it. Okay, that's a step in the right

00:23:51.260 direction. But I think there's another step. And if I can be so bold as to be a male therapist, but I

00:23:56.820 have been doing feminist family therapy for 40 years. Look, the next step is loving voice. When women move 0.99

00:24:04.760 from voicelessness and resentment to finally, I call it stash and blow. I see it all the time in my office.

00:24:11.900 Finally, when women do speak, they often speak in ways that are so aggressive that nobody in their 1.00

00:24:18.680 mind can listen to them. So relational empowerment is the next step. Relational empowerment is I'm going to be

00:24:25.800 strong and loving at the same time in the same breath. You see, I believe that under the patriarchal

00:24:32.860 system, there's a little bit abstract, but let me say it. Under the patriarchal system, one can either be

00:24:39.720 connected or powerful, but you can't be both at the same time. Let me say that again. Under patriarchy,

00:24:48.400 which is the system we're all in, we're fish and patriarchy is the water. Under the system we're all in,

00:24:54.280 you can either be connected, that's affiliative feminine, or you can be powerful, that's independent

00:25:00.920 masculine, but you can't be both at the same time. When women do become powerful, and when they did as 0.95

00:25:07.220 a movement back in the 70s and 80s, it was a lot of the women in my office, I say to them, you, after 50 1.00

00:25:15.660 years of feminism, you have earned the right to be as obnoxious as men have always been. Congratulations. 1.00

00:25:22.040 The next step is loving voice. And that's true for both men and women. That's standing up for

00:25:28.460 yourself and cherishing the other person in the relationship in the same breath. Honey, I love you

00:25:33.660 to pieces. Could you please tone down the way you're speaking to me right now so I can hear you?

00:25:39.800 Versus, I don't like how you're talking to me. Two ways of saying the same thing.

00:25:43.920 Yeah, you've talked a lot about this idea of enlightened self-interest. This might be one

00:25:50.300 example of it. Yeah, because under the patriarchy, patriarchy is linear. And there are two aspects

00:25:57.600 of patriarchy for men. The essence of traditional masculinity is twofold. One is the denial of

00:26:04.560 vulnerability. The more invulnerable you are as a man, the more manly you are, the more vulnerable,

00:26:10.280 the more girly you are. It's like physics. It's just straightforward. It's misogyny. It's my dad.

00:26:16.920 It's despising the vulnerable. And then the second issue is the delusion of dominance.

00:26:24.400 God gives Adam dominion over the earth, which is really a bad idea. The Greeks knew better. The 1.00

00:26:31.640 Greeks spoke about hubris. Placing yourself above nature was the tragic flaw in every Greek tragic figure. 1.00

00:26:39.580 They knew better. They knew about humility. The delusion of dominance, feeling that you are over

00:26:46.200 nature, that you have the right, the entitlement, and even the responsibility to be above nature is a

00:26:54.340 core delusion that will kill us. If the nature that you're above is your wife or your kids or your body

00:27:03.260 or your own thinking, or it's the planet at large, mother nature, don't worry about it. We'll cook up

00:27:11.760 something in a lab and take care of it. We'll kill ourselves if we don't come out of this delusion. 0.93

00:27:17.540 That's the masculine part of the traditional gender role. Cut off and false empowerment. 1.00

00:27:24.780 You alluded to shame earlier. I want to go back to that because I think it sets the stage for some

00:27:30.720 of the other concepts that I want to explore. Can you explain the difference between shame and guilt?

00:27:37.260 Yeah. Well, this is Renee Brown. I used to say healthy shame and unhealthy shame, but

00:27:42.420 she kind of ruined that, made shame bad altogether. So for simplicity's sake,

00:27:48.040 healthy self-esteem. Let's start off with that.

00:27:50.560 That's one of those things that everybody talks about and who really defines it. What does it

00:27:55.620 really mean, healthy self-esteem? It means the capacity to cherish yourself, to esteem yourself,

00:28:02.700 healthy self-esteem, to esteem yourself in the face of your imperfections and screw-ups.

00:28:10.380 What you do, and I have to teach this to people in general, men in particular, what you do is just

00:28:17.520 what we want to do with our children when they screw up. You hold the person in warm regard.

00:28:24.200 You cast a very sober eye on the bad behavior. Feel bad about the bad behavior you've done,

00:28:30.620 but don't take yourself apart as a person. You're a good, flawed person who screwed up. You're fine. 0.96

00:28:38.220 Learn from it, make amends, and get on with it. Shame is I'm a bad person. Shame is I feel bad about

00:28:46.820 behavior. I feel bad about who I am as a person. And it eats you up a lot. It is, for many of us,

00:28:54.840 a constant companion for those of us who are unloved or ashamed of children. We contend with

00:29:00.760 that a lot. And shame is the feeling of unworthiness, impotence, helplessness, unlovability, defectiveness.

00:29:10.500 Why does it happen though, Terry? Is it something we are born? Is it the default setting that we're born with?

00:29:16.820 I don't believe so. I believe that we're shamed. We're shamed as children by either being neglected

00:29:23.520 and abandoned somehow and or by being mistreated and misaligned somehow. And we take on that shame

00:29:33.140 and we feel bad about ourselves usually. Now, guilt is feeling bad about the bad behavior. And one of the

00:29:41.620 things that I teach, particularly men, is when you go from some sort of acting out, some offensive

00:29:47.000 behavior, when you're in doing that offensive behavior, you're in a state of grandiosity.

00:29:51.640 You're entitled. You're better than. You deserve it. So you're in a state of grandiosity and you're

00:29:59.000 in a state of self-entitlement and self-preoccupation. When you go from that, when you go from inflation

00:30:04.920 to deflation from I deserve to I'm a big shit, what I tell my guys is you go from one form of 0.99

00:30:11.740 self-preoccupation to guess what? Another form of self-preoccupation. Just went from positive to 0.99

00:30:17.900 negative. You know what? Here's what I want you to do, Bill. I'm sitting with Bill and his wife and

00:30:23.120 Bill just screwed up. Here's what I want you to do. What I want you to do is what my kids tell me. I want

00:30:28.220 you to get over yourself. I want you to stop thinking about what a shit you are and start thinking 1.00

00:30:33.540 about how you hurt your wife. Pay attention to her. Feel bad for her. Make amends to her. Let 1.00

00:30:40.360 the energy go out to her. Now, shame's really hard to get over. I understand that. I'm going to give

00:30:45.680 you 60 seconds. Ready? Go. And they do. They come out of shame. But do they need your permission? I

00:30:53.840 mean, do you think that, and again, we could even use examples of patients. Is there a sense of

00:31:00.180 I feel guilty about what I've done? The right thing to do is to dwell on it for a very long

00:31:08.400 period of time and despise myself for it? Yeah, right. For all the good it does.

00:31:15.120 Well, notwithstanding the lack of productivity, but is that the underlying sort of emotional

00:31:21.600 logic behind shame, or at least in the example you gave of Bill?

00:31:25.980 Oh, no. It goes way beyond that. Look, most shame starts in childhood, and there are big

00:31:33.920 forces at play. First of all, I was an exception. Most children, if you mistreat them, if you're

00:31:42.140 harsh to them, if you don't meet their needs, they will blame themselves, and they will try

00:31:49.160 to contort themselves into whatever the parent needs in order to win that connection and love,

00:31:57.100 with love-seeking animals. And you blame yourself. You try and get that parent back into connection

00:32:04.940 with you. You start reading them. This is the gift of the drama of the gifted child. This is the gift.

00:32:11.440 You read them. You blame yourself. And you see, Peter, it's compassionate to blame yourself because

00:32:18.660 you're feeling bad for your... When my father would beat me, I would feel bad for him.

00:32:23.160 That's a measurement. I would feel sorry for him. He was pathetic to me.

00:32:27.780 At what age, Terry, does that... A four-year-old would experience that, or is that a 10-year-old's 0.99

00:32:33.440 experience? Five, six. The point being, for most children, it's safer to blame yourself than to

00:32:42.340 come to grips with a random, hostile universe. It makes a lot more sense that I brought this on

00:32:49.340 myself. That means that if I do something different, I might be able to control it,

00:32:54.300 versus the people who are supposed to protect me from the world are inflicting me with the

00:33:00.060 brutality of the world, and I'm completely in their care and helpless. That is a scary thought.

00:33:07.600 So people do shame to protect themselves. And people also do shame because this is complicated.

00:33:13.280 It's a multi-generational legacy. My father beat his depression into me with a strap. His father

00:33:24.320 beat the depression into my father with gas. We pass this on from generation to generation until

00:33:32.640 somebody does something about us. One of the most profound things I remember you've ever said to me,

00:33:38.360 and again, I think I don't... Maybe you were paraphrasing, but it's... I wrote it down and I see it

00:33:43.560 often in my journal, is every man is a bridge spanning two legacies, the one he inherits and the one he

00:33:51.600 passes on. Did I get that about right? You got that absolutely right. And let me give you another

00:33:56.000 one. They say it's the height of pretension to quote yourself, but I do it in this one.

00:34:01.240 I'll butcher it, but here it goes. Family pathology rolls from generation to generation

00:34:08.100 like a fire in the woods, taking down everything in its path until one person in one generation

00:34:16.580 has the courage to turn and face the flames. That person brings peace to his ancestors and

00:34:25.360 spares the children that follow. That's what I'm about. I'm about facilitating that.

00:34:31.860 What's the natural history of not doing anything about this? I mean, is this literally something

00:34:38.400 where you could say, look, shame will... The laws of entropy basically dictate shame will always

00:34:44.800 propagate unless there is deliberate and active attention brought to halt it?

00:34:50.580 Yes, because even the best of parents will injure, will neglect. Oh, honey, I'm sorry you skinned 1.00

00:34:58.580 your knee. Let me just... Doris, let me call you back. Okay. And you know what? You should have

00:35:05.780 hung up the phone and dealt with the knee on the spot. That's a little misalignment. That's a little

00:35:10.380 injury. That's normal. It's part of human development. It's okay. The child cries. Maybe in a

00:35:17.960 very safe house, the child says, mommy, why don't you just hang up the phone and... I'm sorry. I'm

00:35:23.480 sorry, honey. And there's repair. And this is the kind of traffic that is part of being human. That

00:35:29.880 part's fine. But when you start going lower down on the spectrum, then things get a lot less fine.

00:35:35.660 How does one differentiate between preventing the propagation of shame or trauma and the

00:35:44.220 over-coddling of kids? Because right now, the pendulum has really swung the other way in society

00:35:49.620 where there are books about this entire topic of how we've coddled an entire generation. And as a

00:35:55.820 result of that, there's an entitlement and a whole bunch of other things that are the result of it.

00:36:01.240 Internally, I have my own litmus test, but I don't know that it's worth much. I'm very curious.

00:36:05.660 As to how an expert thinks about this.

00:36:07.960 I don't know that I have a particular formula. I would say, trust your gut and civilize the little

00:36:12.140 creatures. The thing is that you have to understand self-esteem. Like the California, no offense,

00:36:19.260 the California drive for self-esteem was so misguided. It just made me pull my hair out.

00:36:24.740 What most people think of as self-esteem is confidence and mastery. Okay, that's fine. That's

00:36:29.740 what it is. But that ain't self-esteem. Self-esteem is spiritual. It's ontological. You have worth and

00:36:36.780 dignity as a human being because you're here on this planet. And your worth cannot be better or

00:36:43.240 worse than the guy to the left and the guy to the right of you, no matter what you say or do.

00:36:47.420 It can't be added to. It can't be subtracted from. It's a spiritual fact. You know this as a doctor,

00:36:52.740 Peter. This is part of the Hippocratic Oath. If one guy is pulled into the ER and he's a skid row 1.00

00:36:59.760 bum and the other one's a state senator, by the book, at any rate, it's triage based on need because

00:37:06.500 you don't triage based on status. That's grotesque. Every person is equal. We know this

00:37:13.400 in the abstract, but we don't live it unless you do some of the work that I invite you to do.

00:37:19.940 You don't live like that. You judge other people as better than or less than and you judge yourself

00:37:25.680 as better than or less than all day long. I have to tell you, I've been doing recovery work for

00:37:31.460 30, 40 years ever since I was a teenager. At 69, I don't do that anymore inside my head. I don't go up

00:37:41.960 and I don't go down. Not much. That's not my baseline. If I do nine out of 10 times,

00:37:47.800 I'll catch it. It's a lot better living like this than it was living like that. I help men and women

00:37:55.380 move from that to this all day long. That's what I do for a living.

00:38:00.000 Say more about the up and the down. You've alluded to it already with the one up, one down

00:38:06.740 cycle, but say a little bit more about that. I suspect that resonates for people when it's

00:38:13.420 described in some detail. Yeah. The field of psychotherapy and self-help and all that for 50

00:38:19.400 years has done a great job of figuring out how to hit people come up from the one down of shame.

00:38:26.240 Oprah Winfrey, all this stuff has been great in the trauma techniques and therapy. We've done a

00:38:33.040 terrible job of the other self-esteem disorder, helping people come down from the one up of

00:38:40.320 grandiosity. And they're flip sides of the same coin, one down, one up, inferiority, superiority.

00:38:46.900 And it's our grandiosity that gets us into so much trouble in our relationships. Shame is an

00:38:53.020 implosion. Grandiosity is acting out or some kind of explosion. The great secret that I run around

00:38:59.900 the country telling therapists is this. Shame feels bad. Grandiosity feels good. That's the

00:39:07.920 open secret. It feels good to get drunk. It feels good to get high. It feels good to make out with your

00:39:13.500 secretary. It feels good to tell your boss to shove his job. In the moment that you're being grandiose,

00:39:19.600 it's like an intoxicant. It feels good. So you have to think your way down from grandiosity.

00:39:26.200 It takes a smarter person. And you think your way down, you come down from grandiosity,

00:39:31.880 even though it feels good, because it's in your interest to come down from it.

00:39:39.100 Are men more susceptible to grandiosity than women? 0.91

00:39:42.240 Well, men's grandiosity in this culture tends to be more overt. Men tend to lead from the one up

00:39:49.840 grandiose position and have covert shame. Tend to. There are tons of exceptions. Whereas women tend to 1.00

00:39:57.300 lead more from the victim one down position and have covert issues of grandiosity. So we're compliments

00:40:04.480 for each other. Yeah. Let's go over that a little bit more because in the book, I don't want to talk

00:40:11.020 about it. You talk a lot about overt and covert depression. And it's the opposite of that. As

00:40:18.060 you said, on average, for what it's worth, men tend to be more covert in their depression,

00:40:24.780 women more overt. Explain that distinction. Well, when I first wrote, I don't want to talk 0.92

00:40:30.020 about it, depression was seen as a woman's disease. This was the first book that had ever been written

00:40:34.340 about male depression. Nobody said that phrase. What year was the first edition of that? Early 90s?

00:40:39.840 Late 90s, 97, 98. And the idea was that women were two to four times more prone to depression than men.

00:40:49.760 The subtitle of my book, I don't want to talk about it, is The Hidden Epidemic of Depression in Men.

00:40:55.200 And it's hidden for two reasons. The first is that men are ashamed of it. It's not unwomanly to be

00:41:02.160 depressed. It is unmanly to be overwhelmed by feelings and vulnerable. So women face the stigma

00:41:10.380 of a mental disorder, but men feel that very personally. It feels like they're unmanned by

00:41:17.220 this disorder and they're ashamed of it. And they hide it. And the people around them will often

00:41:22.260 collude with their hiding. Family physicians are the first line of defense in depression.

00:41:27.800 And 70% of them do not diagnose a patient with depression, the studies indicate. And I believe

00:41:36.240 it's because we're afraid to unmask that poor man and further shame him. Wives are like that. Kids 0.99

00:41:44.640 are like that. Everybody gets very protective. Some men do such a good job of hiding the depression

00:41:51.780 that they hide it from themselves. And this is what I call covert depression. And what you see is

00:41:57.620 not the depression so much, but the defenses the man has erected to defend against the depression.

00:42:04.400 And you see acting out. You see sexual acting out. You see porn addiction. You see self-medication.

00:42:11.720 You see anger. You see sudden isolation and withdrawal. I talk about the unholy triad of covert

00:42:18.820 depression. Radical isolation, anger, and acting out. Sexual acting out. And of course,

00:42:27.260 the self-medication includes drinking and drugging. If you look at women and men, look at what I now

00:42:34.060 call overt depression, it's like two to four times more women than men. If you add into the grid 1.00

00:42:41.260 domestic violence and alcoholism and drugs, it comes right back up to equal. And we know things

00:42:49.300 like, for example, in areas where men lose their job, there's a dramatic rise in domestic violence.

00:42:56.060 And the missing billiard ball in the middle between those two points is depression, low self-esteem.

00:43:03.320 And what happens to men with covert depression is what I've been talking about all evening,

00:43:08.360 which is the transliteration of shame into grandiosity, of helplessness into righteousness,

00:43:16.100 of victimhood into attack. And that translation of shame into grandiosity, helplessness into attack,

00:43:23.940 is a central motif of traditional American masculinity. Look at all the adventure movies. I wrote about this,

00:43:32.820 and I don't want to talk about it. Rambo. These guys are innocent guys who are pressed to the wall 0.87

00:43:39.000 by bad guys. And then finally, about halfway through the movie, they pick up an Uzi and start blowing

00:43:44.740 people away. And we cheer. We cheer. The move from shame to grandiosity feels like the swell of

00:43:52.060 empowerment. And we get drunk on it. But it's violent. It's emotionally violent. It's violent to the

00:44:00.080 person you're grandiose to. And it does violence to your own soul.

00:44:05.240 And this comes back to the sort of patriarchal society which places a value on that strength. I

00:44:10.300 mean, what do you think biologically or socially accounts for that distinction?

00:44:16.320 We could wrestle around this one for a long, long time. Most of the people in my field are not

00:44:22.820 saying, is it biological or is it cultural and social? That's not the question for almost anybody

00:44:29.680 anywhere. The question now is how do they interact? Because it's both. It's both. Of course it's

00:44:35.480 both. But just because something's biological doesn't necessarily mean that we should cede

00:44:40.480 to it. Aggression is biological. Freud said the first man to hurl an epithet instead of a rock

00:44:49.060 was the creator of civilization. We have all sorts of impulses that are biological, but that doesn't

00:44:55.220 necessarily mean we're supposed to go with them. The thing between our raw biological impulses and

00:45:01.020 our behavior is called civilization. Yeah. You've talked a little bit about this idea in the past

00:45:09.200 that you've written about it, that the steps to sort of fixing this. So if everything we've talked

00:45:15.400 about is recognizing this, how hard is that? How long does it take for you with a patient? I know you

00:45:23.600 work a lot with couples. Do you work individually with men and women equally or disproportionately with

00:45:29.920 one or the other? No, I work disproportionately with men. I'll see a woman now and again, but I do

00:45:35.500 mostly couples. You see, and I don't know, somebody may correct me on this, but what I do is I teach

00:45:42.480 people how to live relational lives, how to open their hearts, how to open their voices, how to listen,

00:45:49.660 how to respond without getting defensive and egotistical, how to do this, how to live relationally.

00:45:55.920 It's what we're born for. It's the only thing that really makes us happy. And I do believe

00:46:00.660 that the best way of teaching somebody how to live a relational life is to get their partner and maybe

00:46:06.280 their kids in and work on the relationship, but rather than do it abstractly on the side.

00:46:12.220 Do you find that most men need to be in crisis to hear what you're saying right now?

00:46:18.120 Yeah. Yeah. I had a guy, an older gentleman, very successful businessman. And we started talking

00:46:26.280 about men and grandiosity and he got very resonant with it. And he came to me and he said,

00:46:33.600 I have a young colleague that I just, I had brought on to our team and he's the most brilliant young man

00:46:40.540 I've ever met, but he's so narcissistic. It's impossible to work. What do I do? And I sadly

00:46:47.860 said to him, I think he's too young. I think that life hasn't roughed him up enough yet.

00:46:53.660 You have to start to get it that your old tricks are not working. And for some men, particularly if

00:47:00.420 they're successful and wealthy, they're shielded from those consequences, but it's not, it doesn't do

00:47:06.240 them good. Yes. You want a crisis. Look, the so-called midlife crisis in men is, this is my read

00:47:14.400 on it. The midlife crisis comes at whatever age when you've peaked, when you're at the top of your

00:47:21.060 game. And you either feel that the masculine agenda is something that you have failed. You have not

00:47:28.100 caught the brass ring. You're not rich enough. You're not smart enough. Or you feel that the agenda's

00:47:34.320 failed you. You have the brass ring. I deal a lot with high rollers. You have the brass ring. Guess

00:47:40.940 what? You're as miserable as you were before. So that's kind of a damned if you do, damned if 1.00

00:47:45.240 you don't realization that seems to suggest, as you've said, once you reach a point at which either 0.92

00:47:51.540 you've reached or achieved whatever success is supposed to be, if you deem it to be hollow, you're

00:47:57.320 hosed. And if you haven't achieved it, you're hosed because you're Willie Lohman or pick your

00:48:04.060 favorite example, right? Right. That's right. You fail or the agenda fails you. And that's a great

00:48:10.580 opportunity. I like crisis as a family therapist. The other crisis, of course, for men is their women 1.00

00:48:17.040 or if they're gay, their male partners. I like to say that most of the men I treat are what I call

00:48:22.860 wife mandated referrals. They've been sent or their marriage is in crisis or they've already

00:48:30.840 separated from their wife of 30 years and they're a wreck. But there's some sort of crisis in their

00:48:36.260 relationships that's driving them deeper. In your book, you certainly, most of the case studies fit

00:48:42.160 that description, right? I'm trying to remember, is there an example of a man in the book who just

00:48:47.520 showed up on his own doing sort of self-exploration and introspection?

00:48:53.360 Yeah, there are a few. There are a few and I love them dearly. There was a young fella, Kurt,

00:49:00.520 who came from the Midwest. He was a farmer's son. He came to me because he couldn't get girls. He

00:49:08.300 couldn't get past the first date. This is deconstructing patriarchy. So I said, well, what do you do?

00:49:13.820 Because he was a good looking guy and he was intelligent. He said, well, I just, I tell them

00:49:20.540 that I do this and I do that and I'm capable of this and I've won that award. And I said, wait a

00:49:26.620 minute, what are you doing? That's not a date, that's a resume. And he said to me, I just figure

00:49:33.380 I've only got one shot, so I better make it good. It's funny, but it's sad. Well, it's patriarchy.

00:49:41.040 Men are taught that just being who you are is not enough, that you have to earn connection to

00:49:48.480 achievement and turn your back on relationship. I call this the Icarus syndrome. You have to leave

00:49:54.400 hearth and home, go fly into the sun to be worthy of, guess what? Hearth and home. You're the one

00:50:01.140 that left to begin with. They're waiting for you. This happens all the time. Guys go off and work

00:50:06.680 a hundred hours a week to be worthy of the wife and kids who just want them to come home already. 1.00

00:50:12.660 Where does that come from? Where is that drive coming from? Where is this inferiority coming from? 0.97

00:50:18.340 Does it all stem from this shame that you've talked about, the seeds of which are sown in little boys?

00:50:23.600 Yes. We're taught to supplement the lack of inside out healthy self-esteem with outside in false

00:50:35.920 self-esteem. And there's three. This is Pia. There's three. There's performance based esteem. I have

00:50:42.480 worth because of what I can do. And that's a big one for men. There's other based esteem. I have worth

00:50:48.320 because you think I do. And of course, push to extreme. That's love addiction. And that's big

00:50:53.860 for women. And then you have, I have worth because of what I have. I have big muscles. I have a beautiful

00:51:00.180 wife. I have in Boston, I have a kid at Harvard. That's the be all and end all. Attribute-based

00:51:06.160 esteem is what our culture runs on. If everybody woke up tomorrow with healthy self-esteem and full

00:51:11.640 recovery, our economy would collapse. The whole advertising industry is built on, use this deodorant,

00:51:18.320 and be a special person. What was the first one? The second one was other-based. The third one was

00:51:23.640 attribute-based. What was the first one? Interesting you forgot. Performance-based.

00:51:28.500 I have worked because of what I can do. Okay. Funny guy. It's ironic that I forget that.

00:51:35.940 Yeah, it kind of is. Not to be Freudian or anything. Well, while we're on the topic of deconstructing

00:51:44.260 people like me, let's talk about narcissism a little bit. You've already alluded to the Greek

00:51:49.320 gods. You write very eloquently about this. Yeah, thank you. Narcissism is largely misunderstood.

00:51:58.620 Narcissism is not a disorder of too much self-love, but too little. Narcissus is an addict. If you 0.77

00:52:07.740 remember the myth, he pisses off, I forget who, Juno, I think, doesn't fall for any of her nymphs,

00:52:15.440 and she curses him and says, you're going to fall in love with the first next thing you see, 0.95

00:52:20.200 wily curse. The next thing he sees as he bends over a well to get some water is the image of himself.

00:52:26.560 He is rooted from that moment to the well, bent over, endlessly sighing as he tries to grasp

00:52:35.800 the beautiful creature in the well, and every time he tries to touch it, it dissolves. The great

00:52:42.260 thing about Narcissus is if Narcissus had self-love, he could leave the well. He's rooted to the well

00:52:50.580 because he's addicted to his image, not the internal self, but the image, the constructed

00:52:58.680 self that comes when you have no internal self. That's what he's addicted to. And he dies. He dies

00:53:06.940 on that well. He starves to death. And echo, beautiful echo, is a place next to him. This is,

00:53:15.620 to me, the essence of heterosexual relationships traditionally. Narcissus has been over as well,

00:53:21.380 and echo has been over Narcissa. And Narcissus has no motility, and echo has no voice. And Narcissus

00:53:30.160 endlessly sighs at his own beautiful reflection. And Echo endlessly repeats those sighs as she sighs for him.

00:53:40.080 And there we are.

00:53:42.720 Is there any benefit in Narcissism? Is it always pathologic?

00:53:47.700 No, there's healthy. We talk about healthy Narcissism, healthy entitlement. That's good.

00:53:52.900 Does your healthy entitlement get strained through patriarchy? It goes back to what the great

00:53:59.320 anthropologist, Rianne Eisler, speaks of is the difference between power over and power with.

00:54:05.140 Is your narcissism about agency and assertiveness and power with? Fine. Is your narcissism about

00:54:15.140 superiority and contempt? Not so fine.

00:54:18.960 These concepts, they resonate. I think you and I, we've spoken about David Foster Wallace. I'm such a

00:54:24.840 fan of the commencement speech he delivered 2005 at Kenyon College. This is water. And so much of what

00:54:32.260 he's talking about is this sort of grandiosity one-upmanship that he describes as being the root

00:54:39.200 of so much misery. And that's the interesting side of it, isn't it, right? Which is in the short run,

00:54:45.440 that grandiosity is an amazing anesthetic, but it has a very bitter aftertaste.

00:54:52.540 Well, it's like drinking three martinis. It really would have been better with just one.

00:54:57.200 And that third one makes you feel better in the moment, but oh boy, do you pay for it?

00:55:01.140 This is how I describe it to my, usually my guys and to audiences. Bear with me, I'll meander a little

00:55:08.300 bit. So Boston, I'm convinced, and I think statistically has the worst drivers in the United

00:55:13.840 States. I come from New Jersey. I lived for 10 years in New York. In New York or Jersey, somebody will cut

00:55:21.160 you off because they're kind of a pig and they'll speed up and keep going. In Boston, somebody will cut 0.98

00:55:27.100 you off and then they'll drop down to 20 miles an hour because they're passive aggressive and 0.61

00:55:32.260 they'll just stick their fanny in your face and make you sit there. All right. So I got one of 0.72

00:55:37.180 these guys, pulls that move on me, pulls out ahead of me and then slows down. I'm looking through the

00:55:42.380 windscreen at that fat little head in front of me. And I'm doing that Star Wars laser beam thing.

00:55:48.860 You know, I'm like, I'm like exploding that fat little head. And I'm way into grandiosity. I mean, 0.86

00:55:54.860 this guy is a shit. This guy is a moron. This guy is whatever. They're barely deserves to breathe. 1.00

00:56:02.120 In a former day, I would have pulled up, rolled down my window and let him have it.

00:56:07.040 Now, as I'm looking at that fat little head through the windscreen, I start breathing myself

00:56:13.420 down from my anger, from my indignation, from my superiority, from my contempt. And I say to 0.84

00:56:22.280 myself, as I look at that head, this isn't for you. This is for me. You may deserve to have somebody

00:56:31.200 pull next to you and blow you away. But I deserve to not be that person. And here's what I say,

00:56:38.380 Peter. I grew up in a contempt-drenched family. I internalized that contempt and it became depression

00:56:46.680 I've wrestled with for 40 years. I played out that contempt and I did damage to a lot of nice

00:56:52.640 relationships that way. You know what, fat little head? Not today. Not today. I've had enough contempt 0.99

00:57:00.580 in my life. I can do without it. So that's an interesting take. That's the take that is

00:57:06.920 coming out in a very self-interested way, which is just from a pure self-preservation standpoint,

00:57:12.640 there is no upside to you being upset about this. And to just preserve your own sanity,

00:57:20.420 you're saying, look, assume the worst about this person, which is to say they've done this

00:57:24.720 deliberately, or they've somehow done this to spite me and it's all about me. Even if that were

00:57:30.020 true, I'm not going to give into it. Now, the flip side to that, the thing that is, you know,

00:57:34.700 I work on and I'm, I think I'm batting 50% at this now, or I'm batting 500 to use baseball terms,

00:57:40.980 which is a hell of a lot better than what I used to bat, which was zero, just straight up zero is 0.73

00:57:47.140 I go through that sort of Foster Wallace narrative of, I don't know the story of what's going on.

00:57:53.320 I don't know that maybe that person that's as fast as they're able to drive. Maybe there's

00:58:00.100 something else going on in that person's life. Maybe that person's wife just left them today,

00:58:05.180 or maybe that person lost their kid and they're so distracted. They can't driving around or something

00:58:10.580 as mundane as that is so trivial. And I actually want to share with you an interesting story because

00:58:14.420 I had a pretty interesting example of this a couple of months ago. I don't think I told you

00:58:18.600 this story, but we have this thing, it's a grocery delivery service. I'm blank on the name of it,

00:58:24.380 but it's like Instacart, something like that. It's awesome. You've literally on your phone,

00:58:28.900 pick up what the groceries are going to be in the grocery show up. This is a bit of an embarrassing

00:58:33.080 story. So bear with me. It's embarrassing in the sense that as I tell it, it highlights what a

00:58:37.800 sort of grandiose prick I can be. So it's four o'clock and I pull out the Instacart and it says,

00:58:45.540 it'll be here in 90 minutes. And I think that's perfect because it'll be here at 530. It's a

00:58:52.000 Saturday. I got to make dinner and it's got to be ready by six. So it's perfectly timed. And to

00:58:56.900 make a very long story short, at every step of the way, Terry, this thing just keeps dragging it

00:59:03.240 out. Sorry, it's going to be 15 minutes late. The store is crowded. Sorry, it's going to be another

00:59:08.340 20 minutes late. The store is really crowded. Sorry. And I'm too stupid to put

00:59:15.500 the phone down and go and do something else. And I'm not making this up. I wish I was making this 1.00

00:59:21.280 up. I actually pace around the kitchen for about an hour just waiting for the updates because now I

00:59:27.760 realize I've lost my window to go and work out, which was what I was planning to do or something

00:59:33.140 else. And so it's now seven o'clock. It's a full three hours late. So I've blown my window to make

00:59:42.600 dinner. I sort of feel like I screwed up and whatever, whatever. And if I get one more text

00:59:50.400 message from this thing, giving me one more dumb excuse, like I'm going to lose my mind.

00:59:56.300 And my wife, who is now sort of hovering around me, has a real practical concern, which is this 1.00

01:00:03.040 person is going to come to the door and get blasted by me being the idiot that I am. And sure enough, 1.00

01:00:11.080 the doorbell rings. And I beeline to the door with every intention of obliterating this person. 0.96

01:00:20.400 I have no idea what I'm actually going to say, by the way. It's not like I've rehearsed what I'm

01:00:23.700 going to say, but it's how does it take you? Yeah, I know what I'm capable of. Let's put it that way.

01:00:30.460 And Jill is on my heels, basically thinking to herself, how am I going to mitigate this damage?

01:00:37.140 Because this person, even though they're an hour and a half late, does not deserve what's about to

01:00:43.040 come. And I opened the door and it's this overweight woman who's sweating profusely. 1.00

01:00:54.020 And she's got the three, five, whatever bags of groceries on the ground.

01:00:58.620 And she says, I'm sorry, I'm late. It was really crowded. And I broke the eggs.

01:01:07.320 And I'm not kidding, Terry, I almost started crying. And I thought, my God, you asshole. 1.00

01:01:14.640 How could you have almost torn into this person? I don't know how to describe it. I just in that 1.00

01:01:20.980 moment, I couldn't get out of my own way. I invited her in. I said, Oh, don't worry about the eggs. I

01:01:26.980 think I ordered them by accident. I don't even want eggs. We don't eat eggs. I hate eggs. Come on

01:01:31.260 in. Would you like a drink? I mean, I practically invited her to stay for dinner in that moment,

01:01:36.000 because I felt so bad about how I had been thinking about her. Now, to this day, I don't

01:01:41.800 know what changed in me and how I got lucky in that moment. But I thought to myself, if I could

01:01:48.720 reproduce this at every moment of my life, I would be a happy man. I wouldn't be the piece of shit that I'm 1.00

01:01:56.740 probably hardwired to be, or at least softwired to be. 1.00

01:02:00.720 You're not a piece of shit. You're just like the rest of us. Listen, that's a beautiful story, 1.00

01:02:06.600 Peter. And what you had was a moment of empathy, of compassion, of humanity. That's like what I

01:02:13.700 teach sex addicts who stare at women to remind themselves, this is somebody's daughter. This is 0.98

01:02:20.760 somebody's mother. This is somebody's sister. This is not a porn queen or a blow-up doll. This is the

01:02:27.060 person. And that's what you did. You got past your entitled indignation. The thing about it is,

01:02:36.220 it's case in point of what I've been talking about. You felt helpless. You wanted the goddamn food,

01:02:43.100 and it was not going to get there until it was ready to get there, and you had nothing to say about it. 1.00

01:02:48.600 The more helpless you felt, the more angry you got. That's how it works. The helplessness is one

01:02:54.700 down in shame. The anger is grandiosity and righteousness. And like a lot of men,

01:03:00.600 the longer that food took, the more helpless you got, the more angry you got. That's the formula.

01:03:07.100 When you describe it that way, it seems so obvious and so predictable. Does the knowledge of that in

01:03:12.700 any way help us? I think it does. I think it does. It's funny. Just before I started this, I would

01:03:21.460 spend all day with a couple, and she was about to leave him after 25 years of marriage, both in their

01:03:27.760 70s. And they have a wonderful time, except once or twice a day, he'll scream at her, or he'll yell

01:03:34.640 with utter annoyance and content. He was raised by two alcoholics. His father would talk to his

01:03:42.620 mother this way all day long. It was a terrible, terrible childhood growing up. And I told him

01:03:50.020 that he had an adult child of alcoholics stamped on his forehead, and that the issue when you grow up

01:03:55.460 with alcoholics is trust. Why would you trust what his intimacy ever done for you? And I know this

01:04:01.500 from my own dysfunctional family. And what happens to him is he described that he was waiting for her

01:04:06.920 and they were late to get to somewhere, and he got annoyed with her. And if she were responsible and

01:04:12.180 if she were competent, then, and if she loved him, then she wouldn't be dragging her feet like that.

01:04:18.140 Well, we get to the details of his alcoholic parents, and guess what? They're not responsible or

01:04:24.100 competent. But can I pause for a second and ask you a question, Terry? Yeah. When you're doing that type of

01:04:29.620 work with a couple in that situation, does he actually believe that? Or is that a subconscious

01:04:36.020 thing that you have to extract that is part of the template of his belief system? 0.88

01:04:41.400 Wait, does he actually believe that his wife is incompetent and irresponsible? 0.93

01:04:45.000 Yes. 0.98

01:04:45.900 Yes, he actually believes that. But he hired her because she is a little dizzy. We always marry her

01:04:52.080 unfinished business. So he gets triggered. That's not the issue. We all trigger each other. We all pick

01:04:57.760 people who will trigger us. That's all other conversation. I call that the mysticism of

01:05:02.460 marriage. That's not the point. The point is what happens then. And what happened then to him

01:05:07.760 is he would move into control. Now, listen, what I said is I'll bet every time you get angry

01:05:14.900 is a moment when you feel you're dependent on her and she's not coming through for you because you're

01:05:21.680 anti-dependent. And the more dependent on her and the more she doesn't come through for you,

01:05:27.940 the more helpless you feel and the angrier you feel, and then it all comes out.

01:05:34.020 And he got it. He got it. And he started to cry. And I said, listen, I have a way out.

01:05:41.100 Well, I have a move you can make. Next time you feel that rush of annoyance, you memorize. And he

01:05:51.080 is, he's going to repeat this 10 times a day to himself. When I'm annoyed, it means that I'm

01:05:57.040 dependent and I don't like it or trust it. That's what this means. I'm feeling helpless. And I want

01:06:03.720 you to go to your wife and say one word to her. Vulnerable. And honey, you're vulnerable. You stop

01:06:12.880 on a dime and you go give your husband a hug because he just did a good piece of work. And

01:06:18.280 she said, fine. And he said, fine. I honestly believe that after this day with me, he's not

01:06:24.520 going to yell at her anymore. And if he does, if he slips, she can touch him on the shoulder and

01:06:29.080 remind him. Vulnerable? Oh yeah. Vulnerable. That's leading a couple out of patriarchy. 0.99

01:06:36.300 We talked about relational living. You once explained to me something. You used Dickens

01:06:42.540 as a way to describe it, which is the sort of the ghost of Christmas future, the ghost of Christmas

01:06:49.240 past and the ghost of Christmas present. And you did it in that order. Do you remember this discussion?

01:06:53.980 Oh yeah. This is what I tell my therapist, my students, this is the best

01:06:58.940 rendition of the work that I've created. I call it relational life therapy for obvious

01:07:04.360 reasons, I guess. The essence of that rhythm. Well, let me just say it this way. Let me do

01:07:10.520 it straight first. Relational therapy, as I've created, it has three phases. The first is

01:07:16.460 loving confrontation. This is what you're doing, Peter, to blow your foot off. Take a look at

01:07:21.520 it and feel bad about it. You've been on cruise control. Wake up. The second phase is family

01:07:27.440 of origin work. Where did you learn this? Where did you learn this growing up? Who did

01:07:32.020 you see do it? Or who did it to you? Or who did you do it to and nobody stopped you and

01:07:37.040 corrected you? Where did this come from? And I'll do trauma work, deep family of origin,

01:07:43.860 inner child work in the presence of the other partner sitting there. That's the second phase.

01:07:49.500 And then the third phase is teaching. This is how you do it right. This is how you stand up

01:07:54.400 for yourself in a loving voice, not a large part. This is how you listen to your partner's

01:07:59.060 complaints and don't get defensive, but enter into their experience and be compassionate

01:08:04.000 like you did with that woman. These are skills. So the third phase is skills. So to go back

01:08:09.380 to Dickens, I said the best rendition of RLT, relational life therapy, is a Christmas story.

01:08:16.360 You've got Scrooge, who's anti-relational and self-medicating with attribute-based esteem.

01:08:23.140 The more money he has, the more self-esteem he feels he has. And he's visited by three ghosts.

01:08:29.120 I don't know Dickens' order, but I'll do it mine. The first is the ghost of Christmas future.

01:08:35.080 And he takes Scrooge to his own funeral and everybody's delighted that he's dead.

01:08:40.140 That's the negative consequence. That's the confrontation. Then he goes back into his past

01:08:46.280 and he had a miserable childhood, a miserable, sad childhood. That goes back to the family of origin

01:08:51.720 and where all this comes from. And then he goes to Bob Cratchit's house, Tiny Tim,

01:08:57.920 where he sees what a functional family looks like. And he learns what connection looks like.

01:09:03.760 Then he goes, buys a whole bunch of turkeys and he's a transformed human being.

01:09:08.260 What is the transformation? He's relational. He's in connection.

01:09:12.440 It seems that that order is necessary. It doesn't always occur in that order, but

01:09:18.140 it goes back to a question I asked you earlier, which was, how do you get somebody to do this

01:09:24.800 if they're not in crisis? And my own personal experience and that of the people that I've known

01:09:30.780 is everything you're talking about, Terry, is really hard. It's harder than anything I've ever

01:09:35.600 described or tried to do. If you said to me, Peter, just go run a marathon. I'd be like, okay,

01:09:42.240 I know how to do that. You put one foot in front of the other and you just keep doing it until you're

01:09:46.300 done and you'll get blisters and it won't matter. But at least for me, the type of work that you

01:09:52.320 describe is so challenging that the activation energy to get there, the barrier to overcome that,

01:10:00.420 you have to be in incredible pain. You have to be incredibly miserable, incredibly depressed,

01:10:06.020 incredibly angry, or see incredible pain in others that you've caused. I mean, it's some

01:10:11.340 combination of these things. And, and that's why I do like the way that that story, the way you tell

01:10:16.600 that story. But I mean, let me tell you another story, which I think illustrates the work. It's sort

01:10:24.080 of Dickens in the flesh. May I, can I tell you a story of Harry? Absolutely. So Harry comes to me,

01:10:32.760 his marriage is in crisis. You're absolutely right about that. His wife is about to leave him. I see

01:10:37.380 them as a couple. And it's a typical, he said, she said, a couple never presents with a presenting

01:10:45.040 problem. There are always two, his and hers, or his and his and hers and hers. Anyway, his problem

01:10:51.540 with her was that she was a ditz, quote unquote. Okay. And her problem with him was that he was 0.98

01:10:57.600 brutal, quote unquote. Okay. Harry, give me some examples of Shirley being a ditz. Well, she's often 1.00

01:11:05.900 10, 15, sometimes even 20 minutes late. She never apologizes. Send her to a store for five things.

01:11:11.660 She'll come back before. And she's just a ditz. Okay. Shirley, tell me about Harry's being a brute. 0.99

01:11:18.240 Well, in just the last two weeks, he called me the C word. He stood in the doorway and physically

01:11:26.080 barred me from leaving. And he spit on my windshield. This is an absolute true story. 0.98

01:11:31.200 I go to Harry. I say to him, I picked the most egregious one. I say, you spit on her windshield?

01:11:39.240 Oh, yeah. First of all, let me pause and say, in the work that I do, I take sides. We were taught

01:11:45.060 a couple of therapists to never take sides and always be even. Bullshit. This is Harry's problem. 1.00

01:11:51.160 This is not Shirley's problem. It's Harry. We name names and we tell it like it is in this work.

01:11:57.420 Anyway, Harry, you spit on her windshield? Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. But you should have heard

01:12:03.180 what she was saying. You don't expect me to take that kind of bullshit and just... So I look at him 1.00

01:12:08.280 for a little bit. Beat, beat, beat, beat. And I say to him, Harry, I don't know. I barely know you,

01:12:16.640 but it occurs to me. You don't know the difference between standing up for yourself and attacking

01:12:21.520 somebody. That stopped him a little bit. Now, listen, where did you get this from? Who was the

01:12:27.160 angry person in your family growing up? He said, my father. He said, tell me about it. He was horrible.

01:12:33.800 He would come home and, man, you scattered. You get in his way. You wish you had... In fact,

01:12:40.640 my mother was never around. She worked three jobs, so she was nobody to count on. I took care of my

01:12:46.060 little sister. And what did you do? I protected her. I kept her out of my father's way. I locked her 0.96

01:12:52.860 in the basement. He said, no, don't get me wrong. This is a finished basement with TVs and videos

01:12:58.800 and coloring books and all that. But I would lock the door so dad couldn't get her.

01:13:03.800 I said, how old was she? Three. How old were you? Five. True story. I said, I don't know,

01:13:14.360 Harry. I wasn't there, but pardon my French, but I imagine there was some five-year-old version of

01:13:20.460 looking at your father and saying to yourself something like, you lay a fucking hand on my 1.00

01:13:24.800 sister and I'll kill you. He said, yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly what it was. 1.00

01:13:30.460 I said, Harry, how did I know that? He said, okay, I'll bite. How did you know that? I said,

01:13:38.180 because you defend yourself like an angry five-year-old. Will you let me teach you how to do

01:13:45.720 this in a more civilized way? And he looked at me. This is not a sensitive new age guy. He looked at me

01:13:54.060 and he said, I think you better. And we did. That's how this works.

01:14:00.780 So in that situation, I'm amazed by at least one element of that, which is maybe you just glossed

01:14:07.500 over it, but what was the pain point that got him to so easily be willing to put, I mean,

01:14:14.400 I'm going to come back to the language of wounded children and adaptive children and maladaptive 1.00

01:14:18.860 adults in a moment. But in that parlance, you very quickly got him to at least agree to

01:14:25.120 put the adaptive child in another chair. And we'll come back to that inner child stuff because I really

01:14:30.780 want to dig on it. But I mean, is that normal that in such a short period of time, you can get in

01:14:37.260 particular an angry man to accept the error of his ways? Yes. I call it waking up the client.

01:14:43.820 You know, wake him up. And is that in part just because you took sides, named names and didn't

01:14:51.880 mess around? Yes. In large part. I run around the country, Peter, telling a therapist that there are

01:14:58.780 some serious design flaws in therapy. And the biggest design flaw is that we're all taught to

01:15:05.200 be terminally nice to our clients and people don't tell the truth. I tell therapists what you tell each

01:15:13.000 other at the water cooler after the session. Oh, I can't believe what a bitch you up. I can't believe 1.00

01:15:18.400 what a milk dose that's guided. That's what you should be saying in the session. Find a responsible

01:15:23.500 way to say it there because that's the damn issue. But we therapists are taught to hold back. And I 0.99

01:15:29.420 think it's a great, great disservice to everyone. So let's go back to Harry. So you got a pretty quick

01:15:37.280 pass on the ghost of Christmas future. You talk straight to him. Some people, certainly me,

01:15:42.740 need a lot more than that. I needed to literally go to some funerals before I could get my head out

01:15:49.180 of my ass. And then you go back and you do the family of origin and the trauma work. You posed a 1.00

01:15:57.100 series of questions. Can you repeat them? Yeah. Who did this to you? Or who did you see do it?

01:16:04.160 Or who did you do it to? And no one stopped you. And basically, I mean, I've thought about this so

01:16:12.060 much, Terry. It's hard for me to come up with too many examples of behaviors that don't have

01:16:17.040 at least one of those three types of mirroring. This is how this stuff gets transmitted from one

01:16:23.440 generation to the next. This is exactly how it's done. So Harry was, I mean, that's just an awful

01:16:32.260 example of how wounded he was as a kid. Fortunately, most kids don't need to go through something that

01:16:37.800 extreme. How did Harry respond to that? How would you take, use this language now of what was his

01:16:45.160 adaptation to that? And then what's that little adaptation serving him today?

01:16:49.880 Well, I have a saying, adaptive then maladaptive now. I mean, I always teach my students to have

01:16:56.740 great respect for that adaptive child part of the person. The adaptive child part of you,

01:17:04.380 when people do trauma work, we always think of the young wounded child, the one that was on the

01:17:09.100 receiving end of the abuse or neglect. But between that child and the functional adult, there stands

01:17:15.520 an older child part of us, older children, but I conglomerate them. And that's how you adapted.

01:17:24.040 So for example, I have an intrusive mother, say, okay, my adaptation is I defend myself from her

01:17:31.820 intrusion by coming behind thick walls. I erect thick walls, interestingly, not all that unlike my

01:17:39.520 fathers. And when he deals with my mother, I marry a woman, who, of course, is highly emotional, just

01:17:47.620 like my mother. And when she gets highly emotional with me, guess what you think I do? I put up walls.

01:17:54.800 So she's my intrusive mother, I'm that little boy, and I'm using the same adaptation that I used when I

01:18:00.720 was four, now at 45. It was exactly what I needed to do at four. It's getting me into a world of trouble at 45.

01:18:11.340 When we do that inner child work, I think that what you just said is an important part of it that sometimes,

01:18:18.260 maybe if you're on the outside, you miss this distinction, which is sort of one of the first things you do

01:18:22.780 is you thank the adaptive child, right? 0.99

01:18:24.720 Yes, you saved my ass. I have an exercise, and your listeners can do this exercise if they want. 0.96

01:18:32.560 When I do a workshop, I do a two-day workshop for the general public on basic skills, and I give

01:18:38.580 people a homework assignment on the first day, and I'm giving away my secrets here, but this is what I

01:18:44.880 tell you to do. And everybody does it. I want you to take at least an hour on this. I want you to write

01:18:52.160 a letter to your adaptive child. Dear little Peter, dear Petey, or whatever you call him.

01:18:59.820 First, I want to thank you. You really saved my ass. You protected my autonomy. You preserved me from, 0.99

01:19:08.040 you taught me this. Okay, this is what you did for me. Thank you. This is what you gave to me.

01:19:14.840 You gave me drive. You gave me intelligence. You gave me discernment. You gave me ambition. You

01:19:22.580 gave me goals. This is what you cost me. You cost me me. You cost me connection. You cost me love.

01:19:33.660 You cost me being honest with myself. You cost me getting comfort from anybody else.

01:19:38.400 And then the last one, I'm here now, the adult, the inner adult, and I can take care of both of us.

01:19:49.460 And from now on, what that's going to look like is, and then you sign it. Love, Peter. That's the assignment.

01:19:57.880 Yeah. This type of work is very emotional. Yeah. Does one heal enough from sort of inflicted wounds

01:20:09.600 to ever, does the adaptive child ever vanish? No, it never vanishes. And we're always,

01:20:15.660 we often mistake our adaptive child for a functional adult. But let me just say the functional adult has

01:20:21.480 nuanced. The functional adult is forgiving. The functional adult is warm and supple. The adaptive

01:20:29.800 child is rigid and harsh and black and white. And it's a kid's version of a grownup. Anyway, no,

01:20:36.720 they're always with us. I don't believe, some trauma people say they're gone forever. But I think we

01:20:42.480 contend with these little parts of us. The difference is, as you move into deeper and deeper recovery,

01:20:49.080 recovery, the baseline is not this little boy. The baseline is my adult. And the little boy takes

01:20:57.420 over episodically. And as your recovery work deepens less frequently, and you catch it earlier,

01:21:04.880 and you bring yourself down from that one up, or up from that one down. So that the net net is you're

01:21:11.020 spending. It was that health was the island and peaks of grandiosity and shame, for example, were

01:21:17.140 the norm. And over time, as you tame those peaks, and spend more time in health, that becomes your

01:21:26.400 life. And up and down become episodes. So too with fighting in the couple. So too with any of it.

01:21:34.060 You start off all over the place. And then you know what it's like? It's like physical training. It's

01:21:40.080 like core work. This is core work. And the stronger your core, the more you spend your time in health.

01:21:49.840 And the more ill health becomes the exception. That's how it works.

01:21:55.720 I mean, this might be kind of a dumb question, but how long do you think it really takes to go from a

01:22:02.240 state of pathology? So you're a person who is really quite dysfunctional. You've really reached a 0.98

01:22:09.460 in terms of your misery and the misery you inflict on others. But you've gone through the first two

01:22:16.820 stages, meaning you've confronted what the world in your continued state is going to look like. And

01:22:24.060 you've gone back and looked at the family of origin. You've gone through the inner child work as 0.51

01:22:29.780 appropriate or as necessary. And you're now at the teaching skill development stage, which strikes me as

01:22:37.980 the most difficult stage and the one that takes the longest. Is this a journey of years?

01:22:43.940 Yes. But it doesn't mean you have to be in therapy for years. Look, it's like once we get to the skill

01:22:50.460 phase, it's mastering what I call a relational technology. It's a technology. And it's like any

01:22:56.600 adult mastering a new skill set. It's like learning to ski in your 40s or learning to play the piano

01:23:02.520 or learning how to speak French. And it takes about the same amount of time. If you're assiduous 0.99

01:23:07.400 at it, it takes about three to five years. You don't need to be in therapy all that time. But it

01:23:11.440 takes about three to five years of practice until you're really pretty fluent. I remember we had an

01:23:16.360 interview once and I said that relationality was my second language. My first language is selfishness,

01:23:22.860 which is true. That's how I was brave. But I feel pretty fluent in relationality. I've lived in the world

01:23:28.980 of relationality for decades and I speak it pretty well. Is it my native language? Deeply,

01:23:35.060 deeply, deeply. But in terms of what hits the surface, it's my second language, but it's the

01:23:39.880 country I'm in. That's actually a really great analogy because I think most people who have tried

01:23:45.640 to learn another language can appreciate that it's doable. It's not just something you can decide you

01:23:52.080 want to do without practicing it. It's one thing to say, oh, God, I'm going to Italy this summer. I can't

01:23:56.900 wait to learn Italian. Oh, great. Did you hire an Italian teacher? No. Oh, did you download one of

01:24:01.820 those Italian teaching apps? No. Did you buy a book about it? No. Well, exactly how do you hope to

01:24:08.060 learn Italian? I mean, there's truth by fire. You could just simply go to Italy, immerse yourself in

01:24:13.400 it and not allow yourself to speak English. And eventually, I suppose you'll learn Italian. But

01:24:17.980 for most people, a little bit of structure can help that. But you'll probably never speak it without

01:24:23.440 an accent. And that doesn't mean you're not functional. But yeah, I think that analogy is

01:24:28.320 a great one. So let me say it takes about three to five years before you're really pretty comfortable

01:24:35.400 speaking this new language of relationality. Having said that, this way of thinking ecologically instead

01:24:43.300 of linearly, you're in the system. You're not above the system. You want power with, not power over.

01:24:49.240 These ways of handling yourself are so different from the defaults that you were raised with in

01:24:55.720 the culture at large. And they work so much better that doing them poorly will transform your life and

01:25:02.980 your relationship. And you can start doing them poorly right away. That is probably, again, there's

01:25:09.440 probably an analogy there within language, which is if you even spent a couple of months practicing a

01:25:15.740 language. You could certainly get to the point where the people in the restaurants and the taxis

01:25:19.240 would appreciate your efforts and make every effort to help you.

01:25:23.880 Yeah, I think that's right. And you know what? In terms of how long it takes, it's really simple.

01:25:29.400 It depends on the sincerity of the person. I'm not blown away by diagnoses. I'm not blown away by

01:25:35.520 character disorders. Look, I had a couple. They would be called in a psychiatry,

01:25:42.360 borderline personality disorders, bad people, tough, tough people. I mean, yelling, screaming,

01:25:48.380 throwing things. He goes to the hotel. She goes after him. She's banging on the door. She's dragged

01:25:54.780 off by the police. This is true. This actually happened. But here's the thing. She got pregnant. 0.87

01:26:01.780 And she was determined that she was not going to do to her kid what was done to her. And he came on

01:26:08.900 board. And with my help, these people cleaned up in about six months. I've dealt with neurotics who

01:26:15.780 have attitude and I can't get to them for two years. These people were different people within

01:26:20.500 a matter of months. She went on and became a therapist and she studied. She's now a relational

01:26:26.560 life therapist and a good one. So I don't care how far back you are. I just want to know if you have

01:26:32.140 heart. Do you ever find in couples therapy that you have to recommend to the couple a separation

01:26:39.000 or just a divorce where you realize one person is really in this to change and the other is not?

01:26:44.760 Is that usually what a breaking point comes down to? Well, it depends on what change we're talking

01:26:49.760 about. I mean, if one person just wants to be neater and the other one doesn't, that's survivable.

01:26:56.480 If one person wants to be monogamous and the other one doesn't, that's more of a serious problem.

01:27:02.460 It depends on what's going on. But there are some deal breakers. I wrote a piece. You can get it off

01:27:07.180 my website, which I would love people to come and check out. Yeah, your website is your name.

01:27:13.880 Is it Terry or Terrence is the website? T-E-R-R-Y-R-E-A-L. Just Google me and it'll take you there.

01:27:21.340 You said you wrote an article. Oh yeah, called Rowing to Nowhere. You can get it off

01:27:26.400 my website. And it's about, it's for couples therapists, but it's about when to break somebody

01:27:32.280 up and what we put ourselves through when we do that. But they're deal breakers. If somebody has

01:27:37.860 a drinking or drug problem, they don't want to do anything about it. If somebody doesn't want to

01:27:41.640 be monogamous and the other one does, here's an interesting one, which I think is what you were

01:27:47.040 talking about. If there's a serious discrepancy in the level of maturity between the two people,

01:27:54.800 level of health, if one of them gets healthy and the other one doesn't, then eventually

01:28:00.680 the pathology of the unhealthy one is too hard for the other one to stomach and they leave.

01:28:07.300 So they're deal breakers. Obviously violence is a deal breaker. Not every couple is safe. And in

01:28:13.480 terms of, I often, always recommend a physical separation if there's yelling and screaming of

01:28:20.140 the house and their children in the house. I universally just tell the people about what's

01:28:25.840 called witness abuse. Children are boundaryless. They're wide open. If your child is listening to

01:28:32.640 you scream at your wife, it goes into them as if you were screaming at them. There's no difference. 0.60

01:28:39.480 And so since you're screaming and yelling at each other and your children are there, I give you 30 days

01:28:44.480 to clean up. I do this almost every time. If you're still yelling and screaming at each other 30 days

01:28:50.580 from now, one of you leaves, which one should it be? That's an interesting point you alluded to earlier,

01:28:56.160 which is up until a certain age, a child is incapable of differentiating between being screamed at

01:29:05.320 directly versus just being a bystander. How long does that effect persist?

01:29:10.300 Forever. It persists as long as if it's exactly the same as if you were standing there and your

01:29:17.000 parent was screaming at you. It persists until, frankly, until you do some trauma work and metabolize

01:29:24.080 it. How long are kids susceptible to that? What's the window in which, obviously I can see that being

01:29:30.240 the case for a five-year-old. Is that the case for a 12-year-old as well? Absolutely the case for a

01:29:35.720 12-year-old. That's really sobering, especially for someone like me, for whom anger is such an

01:29:41.500 easy default. Yeah, that's right. That's right. You can go to my website. I did a piece for 2020

01:29:49.560 with a raging woman and her passive-aggressive husband. I said to her, do you have pictures of 0.99

01:29:56.940 your kids? And she did. She had beautiful, golden-hued Latino kids. They were gorgeous. And I said,

01:30:05.480 this is what I want you to do. Before you raise your husband, I want you to take the pictures out of

01:30:09.980 your children. I want you to look in the eyes and I want you to say, I know that what I'm about to do

01:30:15.360 is going to cause you harm. But right now, my anger is more important to me than you are, so screw you. 0.99

01:30:22.040 And I said, shall we try that? This is on TV. You can see it. And I put my arm around her and hold up 0.99

01:30:27.820 the pictures. Right now, I'm thinking about, and she sobs, and she puts down the pictures, and she said,

01:30:34.820 I will never yell at my husband again. And that was about 17 years ago, and she has been true to her

01:30:44.760 word. They're divorced. She got rid of them, and whatever on that. But no more rage after that session.

01:30:52.580 People routinely, there's a thing about three to five years of learning. Let me do the other side.

01:30:58.600 People routinely sit on my couch, swear off behavior they've engaged in their entire lives,

01:31:05.200 get up, and it's gone. Permanently. Gone. That's what happened today with this man.

01:31:12.200 He realized every time he was, quote, unquote, annoyed with his wife, that the contempt coming out

01:31:18.180 of him was 10 times greater than what he experienced it being, because he grew up with so much contempt.

01:31:25.040 He thinks it's just a love tap, and she's flat on the floor. And when he got it, when he really got it,

01:31:33.280 he turned to her. This had just happened before we started our call. He turned to her with tears in

01:31:38.820 his eyes, and he said, you are the most delicate, precious thing in the world to me. Why in the

01:31:44.740 world have I been punching you? And he says, never again. Never again. Never again.

01:31:51.940 Terry, do you find that that type of transformation can also exist when there's an actual chemical

01:31:59.220 addiction involved as well? I mean, you've sort of very loosely, we sort of glossed over it quickly

01:32:03.820 about the substance addiction, sex addiction, process addiction, other sort of real numbing

01:32:10.080 medications out there. Is it just as easy to get somebody to stop gambling or stop a sex addiction

01:32:17.640 or an alcohol addiction? Absolutely not. They need treatment, and they need probably intensive

01:32:23.820 treatment. But why is anger different? I mean, anger strikes me as very similar. I mean, dopamine

01:32:30.540 producing, it has all of the same, you know, grandiosity, anger, shame. Doesn't that have all

01:32:37.260 of the same attributes as alcohol addiction? Yes. And you know, Peter, I don't know the answer to this

01:32:45.480 one, because you're right. There are many behaviors that will kick out endogenous chemicals that mimic

01:32:53.560 the substances that you ingest. And why didn't you have to go to a 12-step program for your anger? I do

01:33:00.140 send people to 12-step programs for their anger sometimes. I don't know the answer to that. What I

01:33:06.180 look for with substance abuse is you wake up and you say, okay, I'll go to rehab. You wake up and you go,

01:33:13.340 okay, I'll go to 12-step. I'll go to 90 days, 90 meetings. So you get committed to recovery.

01:33:20.300 And that's the transformation. But the recovery takes a long time and a lot of help. So does the

01:33:25.380 rest of it. Look, I'm recounting these marvelous one-session turnarounds. But let's be clear,

01:33:31.520 when I'm done with people, I send them back for ongoing therapy 99 out of 100 times. Yes,

01:33:38.020 you've made the turnaround. Now, in order to keep it, you're going to have to have ongoing support for

01:33:43.140 a while. The transformation needs to be digested and made real. Terry, you talked about at the

01:33:48.820 outset that the whole reason you turned your life around, got into therapy, was to fix yourself and

01:33:56.420 somehow reconcile your relationship with your dad. How did that end?

01:34:01.340 Sadly, and as well as can be expected, I'll tell you two little stories. My dad died of ALS,

01:34:09.800 which is a great metaphor. He lost his arms and then his legs and finally his lungs and he died.

01:34:19.500 When he had ALS before he died, he was paralyzed and my mom, who was a nurse, was taking care of him.

01:34:25.920 I asked for his blessing. And it was very funny because my mom was holding up the phone

01:34:31.800 and he was going to give me my blessing. And my mom dropped the phone and my dad started screaming

01:34:38.140 at her. Oh, Lee, I can't believe it. And then she starts yelling back and I, guys, guys, guys,

01:34:43.620 can you stop? Guys. Oh yeah. Sorry. Can I have my blessing now? Okay. Okay. That's my family. Anyway.

01:34:51.000 It's so sad and so funny, Terry. But my father gave me a beautiful blessing. He said, I remember

01:35:01.480 this. He said, may nothing I've said or done in your life prevent you in any way from achieving your

01:35:10.940 greatest potential. And may your work with men be blessed. And he was a stone atheist. May your work 0.52

01:35:19.240 with men be blessed. That's a nice blessing. And on his deathbed, as I wrote about, and I don't want

01:35:26.180 to talk about it, he looked at my brother and me and he said, listen, I'm really sorry. And he

01:35:34.080 apologized for the way he'd been with us. And he said, I got to tell you, when you're looking at this

01:35:40.380 the way I'm looking at this right now in this hospital bed, it's only about love. He said,

01:35:46.160 it's only about love. Everything else is just fucking bullshit. That's probably the last 1.00

01:35:51.940 conversation I had with him. I mean, I don't think you could say it any better. Could you?

01:35:57.780 No. No, that's the bottom line. Well, Terry, I promised you we'd wrap this up at a certain

01:36:04.480 time and we are to the minute at that time. So I want to thank you very much for making the time,

01:36:12.040 especially on a short notice. I've been wanting to have a discussion like this with you publicly,

01:36:17.860 almost from the day I read your book, which was even before we started working together.

01:36:22.820 I want to just thank you for everything personally and otherwise.

01:36:26.080 Thank you, Peter. I want to thank you for the service of this podcast that you do. I want to

01:36:31.860 acknowledge, if I may, that it's been very moving for me to watch you change in our work together.

01:36:39.000 And the changes, as I'm sure you speak about at times, have been truly transformational.

01:36:46.340 You are one of those people we've been talking about tonight, and I'm very, very proud of you,

01:36:50.920 if I can say that. Thank you very much.

01:36:54.820 Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Drive. If you're interested in diving deeper

01:36:59.020 into any topics we discuss, we've created a membership program that allows us to bring you

01:37:03.420 more in-depth exclusive content without relying on paid ads. It's our goal to ensure members get

01:37:08.920 back much more than the price of the subscription. Now, to that end, membership benefits include

01:37:14.000 a bunch of things. One, totally kick-ass comprehensive podcast show notes that detail

01:37:18.900 every topic, paper, person, thing we discuss on each episode. The word on the street is

01:37:23.760 nobody's show notes rival these. Monthly AMA episodes or Ask Me Anything episodes,

01:37:29.320 hearing these episodes completely. Access to our private podcast feed that allows you to

01:37:34.160 hear everything without having to listen to spiels like this. The Qualies, which are a super short

01:37:39.940 podcast, typically less than five minutes, that we release every Tuesday through Friday,

01:37:44.540 highlighting the best questions, topics, and tactics discussed on previous episodes of The Drive.

01:37:49.120 This is a great way to catch up on previous episodes without having to go back and necessarily

01:37:53.640 listen to everyone. Steep discounts on products that I believe in, but for which I'm not getting paid

01:37:59.560 to endorse, and a whole bunch of other benefits that we continue to trickle in as time goes on.

01:38:04.740 If you want to learn more and access these member-only benefits, you can head over to

01:38:08.120 peteratiamd.com forward slash subscribe. You can find me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook,

01:38:15.160 all with the ID peteratiamd. You can also leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast player

01:38:22.000 you listen on. This podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the

01:38:27.420 practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional healthcare services, including the giving of

01:38:32.720 medical advice. No doctor-patient relationship is formed. The use of this information and the

01:38:38.440 materials linked to this podcast is at the user's own risk. The content on this podcast is not intended

01:38:44.620 to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not

01:38:50.660 disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice from any medical condition they have, and they should

01:38:56.820 seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions. Finally, I take conflicts

01:39:02.780 of interest very seriously. For all of my disclosures and the companies I invest in or advise, please

01:39:08.840 visit peteratiamd.com forward slash about where I keep an up-to-date and active list of such companies.

01:39:26.820 Thank you.

The Peter Attia Drive - July 13, 2020

#119 - Terry Real： Breaking the cycle of shame, anger, and depression

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript