TRIGGERnometry - March 28, 2022


Dr Steve Peters： How to Overcome Anxiety and Build Confidence

Topics
tribalism instincts psychological damage from psychopaths
Hosted by
Francis Foster Konstantin Kisin
Mentioned
Stew Peters Babbel Beautiful Noise Donnie O'Sullivan Sweet Caroline Desmond Morris Gary Malcolm Gladwell Vicky Pendleton Broadmoor Rampton Trigger Blink Ridge
Ex-Putin Advisor： ＂He Must Be Stopped＂ Are We Being Told the Truth About Drugs？ Dr Carl Hart

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 2 minutes

Words per minute

195.4

Word count

12,270

Sentence count

299

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

17

sentences flagged

Hate speech

53

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Dr. Steve Peters is a consultant psychiatrist and the author of a number of very influential books, including The Chimp Paradox and The Path Through the Jungle. He s worked with elite athletes, he's worked with psychopaths, and his latest book is called The Path through the Jungle, which is about the chimpanzee paradox.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:26.800 Get tickets at murbish.com.
00:00:30.000 What we're calling psychopathic, which is Disocial Personality Disorder, that's common, that's not unusual.
00:00:37.100 The estimate, when we look at this, is around 1 in 200 people.
00:00:41.460 That's why I'm saying it's common.
00:00:42.320 A lot of people.
00:00:43.300 Exactly.
00:00:50.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry.
00:00:52.620 I'm Francis Foster.
00:00:53.920 I'm Constantine Kitten.
00:00:54.960 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
00:01:00.800 Our brilliant guest today is a consultant psychiatrist and the author of a number of
00:01:04.600 very influential books, including The Chimp Paradox. He's worked with elite athletes,
00:01:08.720 he's worked with psychopaths. His latest book is called The Path Through the Jungle.
00:01:12.260 Dr. Steve Peters, welcome to Trigonometry.
00:01:14.040 Thank you for inviting me.
00:01:15.360 It's a real great pleasure to have you on. As I mentioned, some of the things that you've
00:01:19.220 written in the past have been incredibly influential in our culture, the way we think
00:01:22.620 about personal development, performance, anxiety, all sorts of other things. But before we get into
00:01:28.380 all of that, for anyone who doesn't know you, we have a very big international audience.
00:01:32.000 Who are you? How are you where you are? What has been the journey through life that leads you to
00:01:35.780 be sitting here talking to us? Okay, in a minute. Yes. It doesn't have to be a minute. Take your
00:01:40.500 time. Take your time. I'm a consultant psychiatrist, so I'm a doctor, a medical doctor, and I trained
00:01:47.120 in mental health having gone through the system and then eventually ended up doing work with
00:01:53.140 psychopaths as you would locally call them but before that I worked a long time in the NHS as a
00:01:57.980 consultant and I'll be working with people with anxieties depressions many of the common illnesses
00:02:03.080 that we recognize and I ended up in forensics on the back of that I sort of decided to explain to
00:02:10.440 people how their minds function because what I found a lot of people who came through the door
00:02:14.600 didn't need a doctor in my opinion they needed to understand themselves understand what was going
00:02:19.760 on in their head certainly didn't need medication and so that led me to working half the time with
00:02:26.540 medication half the time with a model the chimp model to try and get people to start managing 0.98
00:02:31.840 their minds emotions thinkings behaviors and it escalated so I teach at Sheffield University
00:02:37.400 I'm a professor there and the students loved the model they related to it so they're really behind
00:02:44.580 the chimp paradox they push me to say you've got to write this and put it in a book so so what is
00:02:49.780 the chimp paradox tell everybody if you look at the brain and try and simplify it because obviously 0.99
00:02:56.900 it's very complex i'm a neuroscientist and if you start doing this you could be all week trying to
00:03:01.340 just make you know something of parts of the brain so what i looked at if you look on scanners
00:03:06.060 functional mri scanners simplifying it you end up with three systems in the brain so in the fetus
00:03:12.980 Do you want all this science?
00:03:14.020 Yes.
00:03:14.280 In the fetus, what you find is within eight weeks,
00:03:17.760 the orbitofrontal cortex just above your eyes,
00:03:20.320 which is like a primitive defense system, a survival system,
00:03:23.980 starts to develop eight weeks into fetal life.
00:03:26.660 And in the center of the brain,
00:03:28.020 there are lots of areas which support the orbitofrontal cortex
00:03:31.240 in making quick decisions for survival.
00:03:33.960 But it does the thinking bit and the final decision making.
00:03:37.880 So you've got a leader and it calls on another team,
00:03:40.960 which is I called it the computer system
00:03:43.220 because that doesn't make decisions as such
00:03:44.960 it just feeds back information
00:03:47.260 to sort of influence a decision
00:03:49.200 so that was two systems
00:03:50.860 what we've got as a problem as human beings
00:03:53.360 is the third system
00:03:55.340 came in, usually it's there
00:03:57.360 but it's not developed around two year old
00:03:59.200 which is why we get infuriated
00:04:01.420 with young children who keep saying
00:04:03.120 why, everything's why
00:04:04.980 because that part of the brain has now started
00:04:07.080 to wake up and it's now questioning
00:04:09.320 So you've now got a separate system.
00:04:11.600 Now, the first system, the quick-fire one, impulsivity, really,
00:04:16.040 we share with chimpanzees.
00:04:17.880 We don't actually share the same system with orangutans, gorillas, and bonobos,
00:04:21.820 which are all under the hominid great ape group.
00:04:24.220 We don't.
00:04:24.940 So the chimp was peculiar.
00:04:27.100 And that's been published in 2018.
00:04:28.980 But I knew this, talking to hominid specialists back in the 90s.
00:04:32.400 They said, there's something really strange about us and the chimpanzee.
00:04:36.080 So I called it the inner chimp. 0.99
00:04:38.660 because the chimpanzee uses the same behaviors and attitudes and shares the same emotions
00:04:43.680 when we use that common system so that was where it came from but the the system that came in a bit
00:04:49.440 late to the party the chimpanzee has it but tends never to use it and in fairness without sounding
00:04:54.760 cruel a lot of people don't use it they just work with the chimp system so life is very impulsive 1.00
00:04:59.920 instant gratification no really consequence or planning but when we get to round two the other
00:05:05.700 system's got the chance to develop so if we promote that in two-year-olds three-year-olds
00:05:10.160 then we see that system starting to battle back so i called that the human system and that was it
00:05:16.820 that was the chimp model it was saying we have this inner chimp which is a machine which will
00:05:21.480 act and think for us but we actually have arrived we start around two-year-old and that's when we
00:05:27.820 start laying our memories down so we don't actually have memories until we're about four
00:05:31.220 because our system can't do it.
00:05:33.080 So we arrive as a human
00:05:34.240 and it's an alternative system to the chimp.
00:05:37.320 So you have two options.
00:05:38.400 You can either let nature run its course
00:05:40.080 and be impulsive and work with that
00:05:42.000 or you can actually choose to work with a different system
00:05:44.620 which works on rationality, logic,
00:05:47.180 forward planning, consequence,
00:05:48.840 very, very different approach to life.
00:05:51.500 And the computer's just neutral in the middle.
00:05:54.160 So making it simple,
00:05:55.560 chimp, human and a computer
00:05:57.460 that you can both access
00:05:58.580 that's neutral ground, program it.
00:06:01.220 But the chimp does have some benefits to it. 0.96
00:06:04.760 Like, I'm reading the book by Malcolm Gladwell called Blink,
00:06:07.640 and he's talking about the importance of instinct
00:06:09.960 and how a lot of the time your first instinct about something
00:06:13.440 or a situation can often be the correct one.
00:06:16.520 And that's where the chimp comes in. 0.53
00:06:18.500 Yeah, it's never negative, and that's the title,
00:06:20.760 The Chimp Paradox. 0.97
00:06:21.920 It's your best friend and worst enemy.
00:06:23.780 But if you start delving into it and trying to understand
00:06:26.180 what it's doing, it's always on side.
00:06:28.380 It's never negative.
00:06:29.340 it's just that we don't know how to manage it so a lot of the work the chimp is doing is trying to 0.96
00:06:35.520 say if we do this we'll we'll be okay whereas your job is to say well hang on there's an alternative
00:06:40.400 we're doing it so the chimp's never negative as such but if we allow it to run it's working on
00:06:45.960 jungle principles so the chimp will work with dominance behaviors it won't manage drives well 0.88
00:06:51.900 it'll just fulfill them and it may be insatiable so for example if food is probably the commonest
00:06:57.100 that I use because many people struggle with that we don't eat the right things we eat too much
00:07:01.720 generally so you can see that's an out of control drive and the chimp's not going to manage it it's 0.98
00:07:06.460 just saying we've got to eat to survive whereas our job is to say well actually we don't need this
00:07:10.960 much food to survive and manage the drive but the drive isn't bad there's nothing bad about the chimp 1.00
00:07:17.160 it just needs managing it can be destructive if we don't manage it and why is it that we're never
00:07:22.760 taught about this, Steve? Why is it that we're not sat down and having this explained to us?
00:07:27.860 Because I'm someone who struggles with food and in particular anxiety and the two are linked.
00:07:33.480 And it's only when I was reading The Chimp Paradox that a light bulb went off in my head
00:07:37.600 and your current book was like, oh, my anxiety is just the chimp that's being unleashed and I'm not 0.94
00:07:43.900 controlling it. And that's why I end up in the situations that I do or I behave the way I do,
00:07:50.020 which are ultimately destructive to leading a happy life.
00:07:53.380 Okay, quick therapy now.
00:07:55.340 Yes.
00:07:56.060 One really big thing you said there.
00:07:57.320 Shall I leave?
00:07:59.080 No, no, no.
00:08:00.220 You might need to support him.
00:08:01.760 One of the things you just said there is almost like a fatal error,
00:08:04.940 so I'm being a bit severe to try and drive the point home.
00:08:07.020 Of course.
00:08:07.320 You use the word control.
00:08:08.920 You can't control.
00:08:10.500 So if you keep saying, I can control my chimp, 0.97
00:08:13.040 there's an implication that you're failing in some way.
00:08:15.640 Once you use that word, I avoid that word like the plague,
00:08:18.580 and I keep pushing that in the new book to say you manage the chimp which is a skill so you're 1.00
00:08:23.900 never going to control your eating and you never control your anxiety I don't want you to I want
00:08:28.880 you to manage them but I think what you're implying immediately is that this battle going on
00:08:34.560 well actually doesn't have to be perceived that way it can be your the chimp's your best friend 0.73
00:08:39.740 and he's saying to you I'm getting anxious right you're not getting anxious it's being imposed
00:08:44.540 upon you but instead of saying right there's this anxiety you need to step back and say what is the
00:08:50.020 chimp trying to tell me because the chimp sees a jungle so therefore like with athletes I work 0.98
00:08:56.920 with if you said they're going out to compete you expect the chimp to panic that's pretty normal 1.00
00:09:01.820 and healthy because it doesn't realize it's just a competition as far as it's concerned you're going
00:09:06.700 into battle I could die out here so they'll get severe feelings of apprehension or anxiety which
00:09:12.880 the chimp will keep moving with and if we then model ourselves up with a machine and start saying 0.95
00:09:18.100 I'm an anxious person then we can't work with it we can't manage it because we're blaming ourselves
00:09:23.720 so it brings in lots of feelings of failure and guilt and instead of saying right we know who I
00:09:28.880 am we know the chimp is meant to be anxious it's meant to do that it's doing a great job and so 0.99
00:09:34.680 instead of being concerned or engaging the emotion we should be stopping saying thank you for the
00:09:39.540 emotion you've given me an emotion let me explain what's happening so you actually relate to that
00:09:44.680 part of the brain explain it's just sport you know and and then it depends on your beliefs now
00:09:50.440 as it gets complex and i think one of the key things i'd say is when people listen to this
00:09:55.580 the biggest thing i say to people is you're unique only you can work out what's going on your head
00:10:01.140 so the anxiety message from the chimp in sport for one sports person may be very different message
00:10:07.380 to another one so when i work with people i've got to work out what is it that their chimp is 0.93
00:10:12.940 trying to tell and what's their brain trying to say so as an example to try and bring it to life
00:10:18.360 you you two could be elite sports people both doing the same event let's say highly unlikely
00:10:23.000 we're using our imagination so if you were elite sports people say the 800 meters yeah and you
00:10:30.440 both said we're getting really too anxious before it and it's just terrible and that's making
00:10:35.020 decision making in the race poor which is what you'd expect because the chimp said i don't want 1.00
00:10:39.520 to be here so it could go anywhere but when you say why are you why is your chimp getting anxious 0.71
00:10:44.420 what's the message for you it could be that this defines you yeah and if you fail on this everybody 0.82
00:10:50.500 knows that you're actually a failure so your chimp i'm being extreme again to arrive the point 0.89
00:10:55.340 that's totally different to yours which may be i'm trying to please my coach my parents 0.97
00:11:01.020 and you start thinking well hang on that's very different reason the chimps are getting anxious
00:11:06.420 so I can't then give you right this is what we'll do I can't do that maybe other sports psychologists
00:11:12.400 or the specialists can what I have to do is try and delve into your mind and work with you and
00:11:17.480 say what's really going on and what are the underpinning beliefs here what's the agenda
00:11:21.640 that your chimp is bringing to the table so often you'll get sports people trying to prove to 0.99
00:11:27.120 themself where you may get another group trying to prove to others and that's very different again
00:11:32.960 so the work i'd do then would be well let's look at self-esteem in the former one and say why do
00:11:38.100 you need to use sport to do that and in the latter one you've got to start saying well why would you
00:11:43.540 want to prove your valuable abilities to other people why do you want to demonstrate it what's
00:11:49.680 going on so so you get different approaches and i can't work with a formula i have to work with
00:11:57.840 the individual broadway's smash hit the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise is coming to
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00:12:21.640 june 7th 2026 at the princess of wells theater get tickets at mirvish.com so steve we've got we're
00:12:31.400 talking about anxiety and we've got the chimp and the chimp is always anxious because it's there to 0.97
00:12:36.080 spot dangers to spot hang on i'll keep correcting you because yeah correct it's not always anxious
00:12:41.480 is it's getting anxious when it perceives
00:12:43.500 there's something not right.
00:12:44.860 Okay, right.
00:12:45.920 So it's perception is something's not right.
00:12:48.080 But that could be because you, as the human,
00:12:51.820 haven't done your job in tidying the computer up.
00:12:54.540 So there may be a belief that's prodding the chimp. 0.82
00:12:56.720 The chimp may be just sat back, relaxed, 1.00
00:12:59.100 and then suddenly, what I'm calling the gremlins,
00:13:01.020 the destructive beliefs it holds, prod it.
00:13:03.480 So, for example, let's say we go back to that,
00:13:05.300 which is common, someone has low self-esteem.
00:13:07.620 They don't feel as good as other people.
00:13:09.100 They're always feeling vulnerable.
00:13:10.360 right so that the chimp now puts in the computer you're not actually as good as others and you will 1.00
00:13:15.980 be found out so in business people i meet this every day and it'll be imposter syndrome you know
00:13:22.940 they wake up in the night often that's when the chimp said it's most active and the humans asleep 1.00
00:13:27.820 and then they feel this devastating emotional gut-wrenching feeling that i cannot do my job
00:13:32.740 they're going to find me out i'm going to make mistakes i'm fraudulent i'm an imposter
00:13:36.760 the chimp is doing its job when it does that what should be happening is when we wake up we have to 1.00
00:13:43.240 say right what are the beliefs in my computer here you know one of them can be that people
00:13:48.600 who do this job are perfect which is ridiculous and mistakes are things that can't be redeemed
00:13:54.820 you know and now i've got to tease out because it could be you've got a boss who says you make
00:13:59.560 a mistake you're sacked i'd probably say get another job but uh but but you can see why that
00:14:04.780 belief is in there but if the belief has come from you and the boss is saying look if you make
00:14:08.400 a mistake we make a mistake but until you turf that belief out the chimp's innocent it's not 1.00
00:14:15.080 getting anxious it's this little gremlin it's a belief that's needs turfing out so i like to tidy
00:14:20.600 computers up in people and i usually explain that if i worked here with one of you i would expect
00:14:25.620 to find a minimum of five quite serious gremlins that you're holding on to which are causing
00:14:30.620 problems so in your case if you're saying i struggle at times my chimp gets anxious and i
00:14:36.220 get this anxiety state imposed upon me that you'll guarantee that you've got probably at least five
00:14:41.600 or six very powerful beliefs which are really destroying you and and you're probably not aware
00:14:47.680 of them until they get pointed out and you're saying oh probably i'm thinking that and then
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00:16:16.280 So that being the case, what happens with a panic attack?
00:16:21.460 is that the anxiety becoming too much is that the chimp overriding everything and going into a sense 1.00
00:16:28.760 of meltdown well panic attacks uh have different causes but probably the commonest cause is um
00:16:35.720 something has happened an event has happened in your life which has not been addressed
00:16:39.180 and you haven't processed the event either um practically or mostly emotionally so i can give
00:16:47.460 you an example of a situation where you might get a panic attack and this is fairly common so I've
00:16:52.680 seen this many times you get we do get sudden deaths in people in the 40s very unexpected rather
00:16:58.800 tragic but if you've got a best friend who's in the 40s who dies suddenly and you've never really
00:17:03.400 thought about your own mortality suddenly it comes to your like front of your mind and if you don't
00:17:09.060 address that and just squash it down the mind now starts to kick so this is the mind saying well
00:17:15.140 you've not processed this so in reality the computer's behind most of this because it's
00:17:20.640 saying this is unprocessed material so it throws it back which then creates the chimp saying there's 0.97
00:17:26.240 something wrong here and and we have to look at you look at your own mortality look at put in
00:17:30.800 perspective what happened which is very rare for someone in the 40s to die suddenly um but if you
00:17:36.100 don't process that and your belief is i'm now very vulnerable and this could happen at any moment
00:17:40.700 and I've never really prepared myself,
00:17:43.840 then you can imagine that every so often
00:17:45.840 you get this sudden panic attack out of the blue.
00:17:48.800 And it's your mind trying to say you need to sort this out.
00:17:51.700 The problem we've got with panic attacks,
00:17:53.220 we get quite technical, is sometimes when you find it,
00:17:56.280 you often can't find what caused them.
00:17:58.600 You can settle the machine down
00:18:00.440 so the computing chip can be brought down again
00:18:03.180 just by simple techniques.
00:18:05.420 But ideally, if you find the problem,
00:18:07.380 the trouble with panic attacks is they have a ripple effect.
00:18:10.140 So even when we sort the problem out, say it were that that was a problem and we sort it out, then what you'll find is you still keep getting panic attacks.
00:18:17.820 So people say, I'm not cured. It's not worked. And you say, well, no, that the way that a panic attack works, it's like a learned behavior.
00:18:25.620 So it keeps on happening, but it gets less and less. And you just manage them as the brain presents it.
00:18:31.140 And you're trying to remind the brain, we have dealt with this.
00:18:34.120 So there's ways of disengaging panic attacks and putting them in perspective.
00:18:40.080 So panic attacks are a bit of a peculiar one.
00:18:42.300 They're different and they're different tracks in the brain to anxiety.
00:18:45.740 Anxiety and panic attacks use different pathways.
00:18:48.780 Steve, I spent most of my 20s and early 30s
00:18:51.280 kind of doing all sorts of different personal development stuff
00:18:54.280 and learning to get out of my own way.
00:18:57.000 And I found that very useful.
00:18:58.860 But I was going to ask you, how much of this is societal?
00:19:01.900 Because, for example, for me, I know that one of the things
00:19:04.480 that I had to get out of my way in relation to
00:19:07.140 was the feeling that I don't want to stand out.
00:19:12.220 I don't want to create a YouTube show
00:19:14.340 because then hundreds of thousands of people
00:19:16.060 are going to see it.
00:19:17.640 And I remember reading something by Desmond Morris
00:19:19.900 many, many, many years ago
00:19:21.080 in which he talks about how the fear of public speaking
00:19:24.240 is a very natural thing
00:19:25.660 because historically speaking,
00:19:27.580 if a bunch of your peers were staring at you in silence,
00:19:31.440 that was not usually a good position to be in.
00:19:34.280 And I think a lot of people feel some of those things.
00:19:37.640 So if you want to be successful,
00:19:39.960 if you think that you want to create something
00:19:41.860 that's going to make an impact on the world,
00:19:43.440 that's going to contribute to other people's lives
00:19:45.320 in a positive way,
00:19:46.580 how do you get out of your way
00:19:48.440 so that you don't constantly watch
00:19:51.620 what other people might think or say or do,
00:19:54.040 particularly in the social media world that we live in now?
00:19:56.200 I mean, everyone's unique.
00:19:58.260 So again, I can't give you a,
00:20:00.140 oh, this is the answer.
00:20:01.040 I don't want to do that.
00:20:02.540 And maybe other people can.
00:20:03.840 I can't do that.
00:20:04.700 So what I'd say is there are different forces coming in here in your brain.
00:20:08.100 So what you've got when I look at the computer system
00:20:10.660 is actually multiple areas offering opinions.
00:20:14.380 So, for example, intuition is a separate part of the brain
00:20:17.620 which reminds you of what you've experienced and recognises it.
00:20:20.620 That's very different to the reward pathway
00:20:23.260 which says that I'm anticipating this is going to be good news.
00:20:26.200 That's very different to your anxiety tracks
00:20:28.280 which is saying this could all go wrong.
00:20:29.800 so all of these previous experiences and beliefs and opinions and behaviors are all coming together
00:20:36.260 and depends which are the most powerful but the fundamentally you're mentioning which Desmond
00:20:41.300 Morris who was a zoologist in the past was looking and saying are we just the naked ape that was it
00:20:46.400 that was his stance and there's truth in that I'm saying the same thing it's not new we know that we
00:20:51.940 are part of the hominids the troop drive chimpanzees in the wild must belong to a troop they cannot be 1.00
00:20:58.720 alone if they're alone they're very vulnerable from attacks from other troops or leopards so
00:21:03.980 that's their main enemies so they're in trouble so they must stay in troops so what nature has
00:21:09.200 done is given us this drive to find and stay with the troop but if you were the alpha male in the
00:21:16.000 troop you have to assess whether we're worth keeping because if we're weak we're using up
00:21:22.120 useful resources for food you will exclude us so a weak male would be excluded that's a death 0.92
00:21:28.600 sense because another troop's unlike to take a male they might take females but they won't take 0.56
00:21:33.540 males so if you think about it there's this instinct that i've got to keep proving myself to
00:21:38.640 you otherwise if you reject me i die so it's extremely powerful so therefore our chimp brain 0.96
00:21:45.660 really wants approval from the people around it but we've gone further than that said our troops
00:21:51.060 the whole world so now we're feared of everybody and everything they say so i'll give a more
00:21:56.460 personal example when i used to teach the chimp paradox model and uh to students i was doing that
00:22:02.400 in the 90s i didn't bring it out till 2012 um and that was because i i feared in a sense my chimp
00:22:08.260 was saying well what the academic's going to say you invented a little chimp and a little you know
00:22:12.240 how ridiculous this noddy um but it got to the point where my human brain was sort of saying you
00:22:18.000 know really you can't not do this because i know how powerful it's been for a lot of people and 0.95
00:22:23.280 That humbles me a lot.
00:22:24.720 And I think I need to develop this.
00:22:26.480 And those who resonate, brilliant.
00:22:27.960 Those who don't, fine. 0.80
00:22:29.040 Just throw it out of the rubbish. 0.97
00:22:30.700 But when I brought it out, I had a chat with my chimp. 0.93
00:22:34.420 And I said, here's the deal.
00:22:36.300 So I'm now overriding the troop.
00:22:38.380 Because my chimp, I've told, not everyone's in your troop.
00:22:41.140 So don't worry about them.
00:22:42.540 So I select my troop.
00:22:44.200 That gives me a protection from the world.
00:22:46.060 So I don't see, with all respect, you two in my troop.
00:22:49.200 I don't know you.
00:22:50.140 So you're given a caution.
00:22:51.440 so your opinion sounds awful doesn't matter to me you can't affect me because that's what i've
00:22:56.380 learned as well it doesn't sound awful at all you can't live your life by worrying of what people
00:22:59.920 but most people do and that's why social media is very powerful but for me i said to my chimp
00:23:05.580 if 10 people write to say this book has changed my life i would be so happy i'd be so happy
00:23:11.460 um and so my chimp agreed so i got 10 people wrote uh it was like that's it i always go back
00:23:17.620 to that we knew that there will be people who criticize and like you're saying none of us want
00:23:22.000 to be hit by the media of any kind and and drag through the mud or attacked or belittled or
00:23:28.300 because that's something a chimp wouldn't want to do for the reasons i've given you because you're 0.99
00:23:32.940 vulnerable suddenly and you want to be in the trope and be loved but one of the things i've
00:23:37.020 pushed is this to the one in five rule you know we know that no matter who you are somebody won't
00:23:41.860 like you so you know once you work that out why are you worrying yeah it's true it's about four
00:23:47.700 and five for us but you're right steve let me ask you something else because you bring up what i
00:23:51.980 have to say one in five love you regardless yes people need to know and there's a lot of really
00:23:56.440 great people around i'm just kidding okay we have absolutely lovely fans so i'm very pleased with
00:24:00.900 what i was going to ask you is i think you you bring up a very profound thing about the world
00:24:06.340 that we live in today, which is the inevitability of tribalism. And we see it in politics. We see
00:24:13.400 it happening right now around the world with all the different conflicts that are kicking off and
00:24:17.340 all of that. We've seen it over the last five years in this country in terms of the political
00:24:22.480 landscape. We've seen it in America. We see it everywhere. That tribalism is a very powerful
00:24:28.880 instinct in human beings for the reasons that you've just explained. What can we do in the
00:24:34.680 modern world to to to de-tribalize ourselves can we do anything or do we just need to work with it
00:24:40.720 I mean I'm going back to what I said originally this is that the right at the beginning when it
00:24:44.380 was like a light bulb moment to me back in the early 90s where you're thinking oh wow these
00:24:48.840 functional scanners are showing me something here that tribal instinct is not within the human being
00:24:54.720 it's within the chimp and that's so important to distinguish we don't have that hence we have an
00:25:01.560 alternative that's why so right at the beginning when your brain develops nature's giving those
00:25:06.620 but whatever is an alternative and that's how we've got out the jungle we've decided to work
00:25:11.440 with our humans which don't have prejudice which do respect diversity which are peacemakers in
00:25:16.840 general you can have people who have unpleasant humans we'll talk about the chimps nice but in 0.98
00:25:22.540 general the rule is we have an option here so if i want to go with my chimp brain it's likely to be
00:25:28.560 divisive because it will form little groups and and curry favor that's what the chimp's meant to 1.00
00:25:33.420 do again not everybody's chimp does that you know so but most are built that way so we are yes we 0.99
00:25:40.500 talk about i come from this town or this city or football is a good example where you know this is
00:25:46.120 my club and it gets very passionate you know you've joined that um and i'm not saying that's
00:25:51.600 wrong i'm just saying like at the beginning with food the food drives amazingly good it keeps us
00:25:56.840 alive but it does need managing and the same with the joining football clubs or whatever as long as
00:26:02.960 you manage it and recognize it for what it is it's brilliant you know long may it continue but if you
00:26:08.920 get it out of hand then it becomes tribal and really unhealthy so my question is concerning
00:26:15.840 social media because we've touched on it at points steve what do you and look again debunk all the
00:26:21.740 nonsense that i'm speaking if it's nonsense but it seems to me social media appeals to the very
00:26:37.000 worst of the chimp it appeals to instant gratification you know a state of anxiety 0.95
00:26:44.760 constantly wanting to be accepted how do we live it in this world and keep our chimps calm
00:26:51.360 when we have access to something that is trying to cut out the human
00:26:56.040 and is always trying to activate the chimp in a negative manner.
00:26:59.720 Again, up to people what they want to do.
00:27:01.340 One is disengage.
00:27:02.240 I don't do social media, so I don't know what it says.
00:27:04.820 I'm happy without it, but I'm an old guy.
00:27:08.100 I think for young people it's tough,
00:27:09.960 but I think going back to what you said,
00:27:11.660 what do we really want to start instilling in young people?
00:27:14.880 And I think we're not doing this.
00:27:16.920 I'd love it to see it happen,
00:27:18.440 is emotional skills to start discerning.
00:27:20.880 well this is an opinion it's not a fact and and we will get facts apparently presented which are
00:27:27.300 inaccurate about us we'll also get comments made which are unkind because there are unkind people
00:27:33.000 around there's quite a lot of them so we're not going to change those people we've got to learn
00:27:37.140 how do i manage them so i'm thinking emotional skills to learn how to manage social media
00:27:42.820 really ought to be in you know and it doesn't seem we're doing anything and and that violence
00:27:48.800 it is a psychological violence on people can be life-threatening and as we know it it does people
00:27:55.460 can take their lives on the back of social media comments so we have to accept that many people
00:28:00.940 don't think it out they're just acting chimp at its worst and just attack people without thinking 1.00
00:28:06.460 what damage am I doing here but some people have to accept enjoy the damage some people enjoy
00:28:11.200 going for people and it's just what they do so not every human being is pleasant
00:28:16.580 so you've got to be selective
00:28:18.600 but I think it's going back to what you're saying
00:28:20.460 we have to learn that
00:28:22.160 surround yourself with a world that you can live in
00:28:25.320 don't try and live in the real world
00:28:27.220 because none of us really belong in it
00:28:29.440 because all you've got are roaming groups of chimps
00:28:32.200 and we're never all going to be on the same page
00:28:34.240 so take your world with you
00:28:36.140 create your world, create the people you want in it
00:28:38.620 and then enter the outside world
00:28:40.640 but don't engage the outside world
00:28:42.260 and think it's going to be kind to you
00:28:44.440 that doesn't mean roll over and knock
00:28:46.580 go into it I've done that I'm going out there but I will surround myself
00:28:49.780 so I'm almost in a bubble when I enter does that make sense that's a bit conceptual no that makes
00:28:57.440 a lot of sense it does make a lot of sense I think it's very important to have those people
00:29:01.480 around you and to create your world and to accept that when you step into the real world there's
00:29:06.420 going to be unpleasant people there's going to be people who try and hurt you there's going to be
00:29:09.840 because that's reality yeah now you used to work at Rampton now again correct me if I'm wrong there
00:29:16.400 are three high security prison hospitals in the UK I can't remember that but the other one is
00:29:22.540 Broadmoor which is the more famous one yeah what was that like when you were working with these
00:29:29.060 kinds of people are they like us by and large or are they very different with the way they see the
00:29:34.720 world the way they approach things and the way they behave and act we have to be careful because
00:29:40.260 a bit more education
00:29:43.080 if you look neuroscientifically
00:29:45.100 at what we're classing as someone who's psychopathic
00:29:47.400 and we're saying by that
00:29:48.660 they lack conscience
00:29:50.140 they write the rules for themselves
00:29:52.800 they have very little empathy at all
00:29:55.280 so they see people literally as objects
00:29:57.540 and they'll use people
00:29:59.140 that's common
00:30:01.180 that's not unusual
00:30:02.440 not all of them end up in Rampton 0.98
00:30:04.560 many of them are social psychopaths 0.86
00:30:06.660 and you will have met some 0.98
00:30:07.720 you definitely will
00:30:08.920 where they will use people and it doesn't bother them.
00:30:12.180 So they can be socially presenting well,
00:30:14.300 but they have no compassion and certainly no conscience.
00:30:17.160 So the estimate, when we look at this,
00:30:19.900 is around one in 200 people.
00:30:22.100 That's why I'm saying it's common.
00:30:22.880 A lot of people.
00:30:23.880 Exactly.
00:30:24.820 So you can expect quite a lot of destruction.
00:30:26.960 And we know this.
00:30:27.900 We know this.
00:30:29.420 So when we look scientifically, the big interest,
00:30:33.340 there's lots of areas of the brain which are different in their brains.
00:30:36.920 The biggest interest came years back when we looked at the connection, which is the chimp thinking brain, the orbitofrontal cortex, going into the amygdala. 0.87
00:30:45.420 Now, people have heard the amygdala is a very powerful battery of energy, which does our fight, flight, freeze.
00:30:51.420 And it has about 17 clusters of neurons and circuitry in there.
00:30:55.860 So it's very complex for a tiny little structure.
00:30:58.500 But one of the big important parts is it influences our chimp very heavily in giving suggestion what it should do.
00:31:06.620 The tract that joins them, technically called the incident fasciculus,
00:31:10.140 is just a white fiber tract.
00:31:11.540 So we don't know how this happens.
00:31:12.960 But if you look at the normal or typical person, I'll call them,
00:31:16.220 then it's quite a big cross-section area.
00:31:18.660 And when you go down, you see little connections.
00:31:21.660 And it appears to be those connections temper the message from the amygdala
00:31:25.820 and give us conscience, as well as other parts of the brain.
00:31:29.140 When you look at the psychopathic brain, the cross-section is tiny
00:31:33.020 and there's no interconnections.
00:31:34.840 so there's a structural difference we've found um but you can get individuals who have a normal
00:31:41.980 brain and still have psychopathic traits and they can sometimes be damaged people now i'm not making
00:31:47.880 excuses but it's very easy for those of us who've had supportive parents or reasonable childhoods
00:31:53.800 to say well what's wrong with them but i think obviously the world that i've entered i meet
00:31:59.320 people who've had really a rough time and i mean really rough time as young people and so the
00:32:04.740 circuitry gets damaged but they could actually present with what we would say is a normal
00:32:08.840 circuitry or typical and we can get that to to come around but there can be damage done in young
00:32:15.480 children we know that the first about five six years of your life are crucial to get the circuits
00:32:20.760 in a lot of areas functioning fully and if they don't you can't recover that so these people tend
00:32:26.640 to struggle with emotions struggle with impulsivity and it's structured in the brain so it's not an
00:32:32.320 excuse they just have to learn to do it but they're a disadvantage to the rest of us steve i'm
00:32:36.980 going to ask you you're making a lot of sense and i'm going to ask you a question that is
00:32:40.660 controversial okay but it seems obvious to me that the consequence of what you're saying is how we
00:32:47.760 deal with crime is going to be affected by that understanding if there are certain people who
00:32:53.000 commit certain types of genuine evil heinous crimes you're not going to educate them out of
00:32:59.660 that are you no you're not gonna explain it to them that this is not in their interest or this
00:33:05.300 is that's how their brain is wired yeah again i'm just simplifying to try and get the message
00:33:11.260 so when you mention rampton what you're looking for are um two people who come into rampton and
00:33:17.340 then you assess them and you say what i'm looking for is has this person got an a conscience that
00:33:22.020 we can wake up or empathy have they gone through a rough time in life that we can compensate for it
00:33:27.220 and what you do eventually you work with that person's empathy compassion um conscience that's
00:33:33.720 what you work with and you build that up and yeah you can do that and then you would move these guys
00:33:38.740 down uh so they're going to a less secure and maybe you can get back into society and don't
00:33:44.000 forget some people under the influence of drugs when they do these crimes so you've got it you
00:33:48.480 know as we mature people can move ground not everyone right not naive that's what i'm getting
00:33:54.020 at yeah but let's just stick with those people yeah right so what now we're saying we've removed
00:33:58.420 those who we can wait what about the ones who don't appear to have a conscience or empathy
00:34:01.660 and will repeat behaviors and they do then we work differently there's no point in doing a
00:34:06.260 compassionate type program because there's no empathy so they're not going to ever engage it
00:34:11.640 and the research shows this the more psychotherapeutic work you do with them the worse they
00:34:16.400 get really yeah there's no where at the moment they're trying to find it cognitive analytical
00:34:21.580 therapy got close but we found it doesn't do any good and the answer is well you're trying to teach
00:34:26.280 you know a dog to speak um probably a bad example but you're now cancelled but um what we're saying
00:34:34.560 and then you can work with them on a behavioral program because they won't do things detrimental
00:34:38.980 to themselves so if you say right if you do this the consequence is as follows then people will
00:34:45.220 work with consequences whether they're psychopathic or not uh whereas i hope that you know if removing
00:34:51.460 those who haven't got a conscience all the rest of us can work up our values our morals and and
00:34:56.720 actually improve them get them to come to the front of our minds but yeah that the um what we're
00:35:02.720 calling psychopathic which is disocial personality disorder um that individual from my opinion um
00:35:09.960 you're not going to do much because the circuitry is not there right so that's why i'm asking the
00:35:14.360 question because we talk on the show about societal issues, things that happen, things that
00:35:19.140 people talk about, things that happen in the news. And every time there's this terrible crime, for
00:35:24.160 example, a man tragically kills a woman or something like this, the narrative is always,
00:35:30.260 well, we must educate men or we must do this or we must do that. And I'm sure there's some value
00:35:33.960 to that for sure. But I just always feel like we're missing that one piece, which is there's
00:35:39.180 always going to be people who are going to commit these crimes. And what we need to do is make sure
00:35:43.040 that people are protected from them,
00:35:44.580 that they're not released from prison
00:35:45.980 because we're really compassionate and empathetic
00:35:48.480 and whatever, et cetera.
00:35:50.060 Like, what is your take on all of that conversation?
00:35:52.940 I think I'd agree that obviously
00:35:54.720 if somebody is repeat offending all the time,
00:35:56.940 then which is what we do,
00:35:58.200 we detain until we think they're safe.
00:36:00.580 And if it never gets safe, they stay.
00:36:02.700 So it's detention for life.
00:36:05.060 But you've got to demonstrate
00:36:06.180 that there's no change in this person.
00:36:08.020 And you obviously do try all the therapies you can.
00:36:10.700 You don't just decide this is somebody who's psychopathic
00:36:12.940 will give up uh you you do try but if you're thinking right it's not getting anywhere i mean
00:36:17.520 it's a long process with assessments but i think most forensic psychs and forensic psychologists
00:36:23.300 would agree that you know if you've got someone who appears to have a brain that just will not
00:36:28.040 function the way the rest of us do then it would be unwise to chat to them and do empathy and when
00:36:34.220 they don't possess that it's not a sensible thing to use your time doing where they will respond to
00:36:40.540 consequence but again it's a big field this and i think when you start delving into it you say
00:36:46.360 there's a man who's killed a woman you've got to really delve into this because um you know yeah
00:36:52.940 of course it's wrong and it's heinous that's no doubt but you have to start saying are they
00:36:57.640 mitigating circumstances again i'm not excusing that i'm not excusing but i'm saying i can
00:37:03.420 understand doesn't mean i can't understand it and again for a lot of these what do you mean steve
00:37:08.800 There'll be a lot of people listening to this going,
00:37:10.540 what the hell is you on about?
00:37:11.500 Well, if you've had a really bad childhood, 0.99
00:37:13.440 let's say your father beat you to a pulp every night
00:37:15.680 and continue this throughout your first 15 years,
00:37:19.740 you're not going to come away unscathed.
00:37:21.960 No.
00:37:22.400 It's exceptional if you come out there smiling
00:37:24.820 and saying, I can contribute to society.
00:37:26.400 You're permanently damaged.
00:37:27.960 So you may have anger issues
00:37:30.960 because you've been suppressed and suppressed.
00:37:33.420 And so you've got this anger against dad.
00:37:35.520 Now I'm giving it any very sort of black and white terms here.
00:37:38.800 But then you can see somebody else comes in like the boss
00:37:41.560 who starts representing your father and does it again to you
00:37:44.440 and humiliates you, demeans you.
00:37:47.060 You can see how the anger spills.
00:37:49.360 And then we do get a true emotional hijack.
00:37:51.580 And the person may even know what they're about to do,
00:37:53.640 but as soon as they've committed the act, fall apart
00:37:56.680 because they realize it wasn't the right thing to do.
00:38:00.620 You know, and I know people will say, well, that's just an excuse.
00:38:03.260 But I feel like saying, well, you know,
00:38:05.180 do we all act and behave appropriately every day of our lives?
00:38:08.720 because we all know when we're doing something wrong do we start punishing ourselves for that
00:38:14.620 you know it's an extreme I agree so I think I'm compassionate to begin with but I will draw a line
00:38:21.620 and say okay compassion only goes so far and it's really bad that maybe you get beaten to a pup by
00:38:26.400 a dad it doesn't excuse you killing someone but it's a fine line I think you have to take individual
00:38:32.100 cases. And we tend to use the word psychopath and sociopath, and we use them and we interchange
00:38:41.680 them. What is actually the difference between the two? Generally speaking, what is understood is
00:38:48.040 when we started really looking at the mind, which is probably going 100 years now, and we started
00:38:53.060 looking at these individuals that were, say, aberrant, and we were recognising features they
00:38:57.600 all possess the big ones i've given you and that's the lack of conscience and lack of empathy
00:39:01.400 so you don't see remorse in them and repeat behaviors um and we initially the the feeling
00:39:08.060 was that society has created these monsters uh so there was this thing we've created it because
00:39:13.880 of like the background to this young managers describe so they would be known as social
00:39:18.020 problems so they were sociopaths so society was the behind it um as we started uh taking this on
00:39:25.160 us doctors with scanners and started seeing the brain and saying oh wow the neuroscience is
00:39:29.780 actually telling us these are predisposed not predetermined but predisposed to to acting in a
00:39:35.620 way which lacks compassion and empathy and conscience then we started terminate terminology
00:39:40.800 changed to psychopaths so the sociopath and psychopath is really about the etiology you know
00:39:46.380 what's the cause is it society that's created the monster or is it the monster was born and it's just
00:39:52.640 acting out and then to try and get neutral ground we classify them as disocial personality disorders
00:39:59.620 and that doesn't then give a an etiology just says this is what the behaviors are demonstrating
00:40:05.800 the cause we don't know and that comes back to what one of the functions of rampton was to
00:40:10.540 distinguish between the two and so if somebody is socially being built can we undo what society
00:40:16.220 has created you know can we take away the anger or whatever it is that they're going through
00:40:21.020 or is it that you know this appears to be genetic and born this way i just think you've got to be
00:40:26.480 very careful and not jump to conclusions or judgments and always assume you're going to
00:40:31.120 help someone and be compassionate until it's proved otherwise and think there's a point
00:40:35.140 where you've got just say you know it's well that's the important part once you get to that
00:40:39.420 point then you've got to lift the wall from your eyes if that's what's been there right
00:40:43.280 your question occurred to me as you were talking there uh evolutionarily speaking
00:40:48.780 What is the evolution rationale for the existence of psychopaths?
00:40:52.860 Is it that that other troop of chimps over there 1.00
00:40:55.760 is probably going to get a random mutation that creates a psychopath 0.78
00:40:58.600 and we need some of our own psychopaths to go and defend us against their psyche?
00:41:01.980 Is that some of the kind of evolutionary background to this?
00:41:05.020 Like, what is the point of psychopaths is what I'm asking.
00:41:08.140 Well, I'm outside my field here. I'm a doctor.
00:41:10.500 But I think nature doesn't have to have a function.
00:41:13.780 It's trying something else.
00:41:14.780 and remember that in past the psychopath
00:41:17.400 wouldn't survive
00:41:18.280 wouldn't they become the alpha male
00:41:21.280 no because they wouldn't be liked by their subordinates
00:41:23.480 so the psychopath won't survive
00:41:25.760 the troop will go for them
00:41:28.000 so how do we still
00:41:29.700 have psychopaths then
00:41:30.780 how is evolution
00:41:31.600 we almost cater now
00:41:34.040 we excuse a lot
00:41:35.320 sometimes we allow
00:41:37.340 and we know if it's genetic which appears
00:41:39.900 it's polygenic
00:41:41.080 a psychopath won't breed psychopaths
00:41:44.660 but there's genetic loading,
00:41:46.680 so any one of us will carry some of the genes.
00:41:48.800 It depends who you marry.
00:41:51.280 But obviously now they don't get eliminated,
00:41:54.160 which they would a thousand years ago.
00:41:56.620 People wouldn't tolerate them.
00:41:57.820 It was far more violent then.
00:41:59.540 We've eased off.
00:42:01.200 I'm not saying that's a bad thing, by the way,
00:42:03.020 but I'm saying that the problem of that
00:42:05.140 is that there is a bigger poo. 0.81
00:42:07.380 Because again, because they will be still sexually driven,
00:42:10.060 they often have three, four, five children randomly,
00:42:13.140 whereas the rest of society is moving towards like two children,
00:42:16.420 three children or less.
00:42:18.780 So the pool is genetically would be getting larger.
00:42:21.880 Right. The future is bright. The future is psychopath.
00:42:24.940 That's what's happening.
00:42:26.260 They're multiplying. Fantastic.
00:42:28.320 But Steve, and again, please debunk this.
00:42:32.260 I read about psychopaths that, you know,
00:42:35.080 they're more likely to be CEOs.
00:42:38.320 They're more likely to be successful, high achievers. 0.98
00:42:40.860 Well, this is the social psychopath.
00:42:42.320 because again it just because you haven't got a conscience and no empathy doesn't mean 0.78
00:42:47.060 that you don't work to certain society rules so i say most people won't be axe wielding maniacs
00:42:53.900 they're they're really rare they're exceptional but we do meet people who just don't seem to have
00:42:59.200 any empathy or compassion that doesn't mean that and they would be classed it under if if we looked
00:43:04.720 at this tract and say well there you go this is a psychopath but that doesn't mean that they
00:43:09.380 necessarily are damaging it just means they don't have compassion or empathy so they won't have a
00:43:14.180 problem sacking people and saying well that's they have to get on with their life you know they won't
00:43:19.500 have that but you can also get people who've got compassion and empathy and still have to sack
00:43:22.700 people and say yeah it's upsetting it's not pleasant but isn't it therefore helpful like
00:43:28.220 if you're a surgeon if you don't have empathy then you're not going to be you're not going to
00:43:32.520 be worried i'll just protect surgeons they're not psychopaths yeah but all but you know if you're in
00:43:38.340 a high pressure situation and you don't have empathy isn't it kind of a superpower in a way
00:43:43.980 well not really i mean i'm i hope i've got compassion and empathy but i still work
00:43:49.340 in which i do in settings which are highly emotionally charged i mean the world of a
00:43:55.040 psychiatrist is not a happy world clearly you know and you meet again with tragedies complete
00:44:00.180 tragedies and messed up lives and people struggling with mental health issues um and we're empathic
00:44:06.320 and compassionate people but we learn to manage that so you learn how to manage your emotions
00:44:12.100 rather than saying oh it's best i don't have any yeah i'm not sure that would work so i think you
00:44:18.980 use your empathy to say how is this man struggling or this woman struggling get i like to say when i
00:44:25.260 teach you get inside the head of the person you're dealing with because that's when you see the world
00:44:29.220 as they see it and it really changes your view once you see somebody's world then you come out
00:44:34.100 of it in order to be able to help them and give them insights or support so yeah i mean i was once
00:44:41.100 approached by a boxing coach who said can you deliver psychopaths because they weren't one of
00:44:47.500 the problems boxers have is they don't really want to hurt the opponent and they said that can
00:44:51.240 sometimes stop a good boxer in their tracks uh and i said well a psychopath wouldn't be a boxer
00:44:55.900 because uh they wouldn't comply they won't comply with the rules and they won't do the training and
00:45:01.580 And they want, so, you know, it's not like they can channel themselves in.
00:45:06.640 They're disruptive.
00:45:07.660 They'll work to their own agendas and rules. 0.90
00:45:09.400 So you won't do well with a psychopath.
00:45:12.460 They're not compliant.
00:45:14.200 That's really interesting.
00:45:14.840 So what do psychopaths tend to, like, what kind of things do they get into?
00:45:18.540 What kind of jobs do they do? 0.98
00:45:20.040 Well, there can be anything, like I say.
00:45:21.840 You may get doctors who are lacking in compassion and empathy.
00:45:26.560 And we've had this in the history of medicine, haven't we,
00:45:28.520 where, you know, clearly they've gone through the system.
00:45:31.580 and they're not caring and it's a career.
00:45:35.580 So you'll get them in any walk of life.
00:45:38.960 It's just a lack of compassion and empathy.
00:45:41.840 Great, they're everywhere and they're multiplying.
00:45:43.440 Fantastic.
00:45:45.580 On a good front, just as a positive note,
00:45:49.420 it is interesting to show that as society keeps progressing,
00:45:52.840 despite the fact that they may be a proportionate larger,
00:45:56.080 we're actually more passive and peaceful than we ever were.
00:46:00.040 and it's interesting at the moment it's a bit of an easy but this is the longest time in the
00:46:06.600 history of great britain that we've never had a war there has never been a generation that hasn't
00:46:11.460 suffered a major war never so that speaks for itself that society is becoming a better place
00:46:17.440 my concern is what you alluded to earlier is the psychological damage that's being done which we've
00:46:23.280 never had before so the physical may be going down but for me the psychological is rising and that's
00:46:29.180 a great concern and i think you've alluded to it the social media it's this sniping where we're not
00:46:35.740 really thinking about what we're doing so it's so easy to criticize someone when you're anonymous
00:46:41.180 or just add another thumbs down or make some really adverse remark that you think is quite
00:46:45.660 witty but actually could cut somebody in half so that's to me is the new danger it's the
00:46:52.060 psychological warfare that's going on hey francis would you like to learn another language no mike
00:46:58.940 Already know foreign languages perfectly.
00:47:02.080 Oi, Gary.
00:47:03.180 Ué, la biblioteca.
00:47:05.600 You can't go on holiday, mate, without knowing where the swimming pool is. 1.00
00:47:09.400 La biblioteca is the library, you idiot. 1.00
00:47:12.000 Exactly. 1.00
00:47:12.520 You can never be too far away from knowledge and sexually frustrated librarians.
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00:48:20.980 Go to babbel.com forward slash play and use promo code TRIGGER for an extra six months for free.
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00:48:36.520 I use Babbel and look at me now.
00:48:39.460 Yo puedo hablar español absolutamente perfecto.
00:48:43.380 No, I'm in Gary.
00:48:44.480 do you ever get worried steve the the way that we're talking about mental health in particular
00:48:51.860 the way that people use something like bipolar which is a very serious condition i mean you know
00:48:57.360 better than anyone but they almost use it as an identity or you know like a depressed being a
00:49:02.120 depressive becomes an identity that somehow it it makes you more interesting that you've got a badge
00:49:07.780 to me i find that a worrying symptom of society really i mean you're right if you look at the
00:49:15.080 spectrum obviously a depressive illness is absolutely devastating and people who get it
00:49:19.020 uh you know your heart's got to go out to them because it is crippling and and it's nothing
00:49:24.040 they're doing by the way again it's not attitudinal um but having said that yes you're right we're not
00:49:29.920 naive to the fact that somebody might present because it's got gains you know if i'm depressed
00:49:34.460 they can't work and they may not want to work and you know we're not fooled by that we're saying
00:49:38.760 obviously people will mimic like you said they have a label uh and then they may they may this
00:49:43.720 is a small number of people use it as an excuse and that makes it hard for the people who genuinely
00:49:47.980 suffer these illnesses you know and that that's you know but they're doing it for a reason
00:49:52.800 so again you got asked why would you want a label you know what what are the gains and and if it's
00:49:59.080 like you know someone wants to say i'm depressed because they're so vulnerable and they feel by
00:50:03.020 being ill people will not attack them because they feel like they're being under attack in
00:50:07.040 some way you can see that you could work with them to say well hang on there's different ways
00:50:10.460 of perceiving yourself and getting support than to make the illness model so people do use an
00:50:16.640 illness model you know but it's a small amount of people it's not big but they'll come to the
00:50:21.880 forefront because people see them as being well you're just using this as an excuse to avoid
00:50:27.740 something or gain something we've become quite negative in this conversation so let's finish
00:50:32.480 on a positive. You've worked with a lot of elite athletes, helping them to achieve better
00:50:37.040 performances, to get out of their own way. And that I think a lot of people, the question that
00:50:41.980 they'd be quite curious to know is, are these people who you are seeing on television, making
00:50:47.100 millions and millions of pounds playing in front of a hundred thousand people every week, whatever
00:50:51.340 that might be, are they mentally different? Are they, have they achieved some kind of higher level
00:50:56.820 of performance mentally? Or are they just people like us who just happen to physically be able to
00:51:02.340 do stuff that normal people can't do unbelievable people like us yeah they're making millions by
00:51:07.120 the way some might but most of the ones i work with don't make millions and i work with the
00:51:11.380 it's not very good advertising for you is it it's again my job is to get people in a good place
00:51:18.280 so to try and raise the conversation a bit into something lighter is um when i've done this work
00:51:24.040 what i've found is it's amazing how people once they start understanding themselves and actually
00:51:28.340 start managing uh their emotions the change in their life is fantastic so i can't count the
00:51:34.520 number of people and this is humbling that go through this work that i'm doing and say it's
00:51:39.680 transformational once you understand yourself and you can manage your emotions and your thinking
00:51:44.480 and your behaviors you just change into the person you really are and suddenly you're free of all
00:51:49.520 this so all the stuff we've talked about is almost secondary to what i do so when people come in
00:51:55.440 whatever's happening just put even the illness to one side and let's work on you as a person
00:51:59.700 and I've obviously had the privilege of working with a lot of people that are well known
00:52:04.160 I can't name names unless they've gone public because obviously I'm a doctor
00:52:07.860 but the two that did interviews early days with Ronnie O'Sullivan in snooker and Vicky Pendleton
00:52:14.620 on the bike both fantastic people and it was interesting they both did an interview of the
00:52:20.180 press at the same time without knowing they were doing it and both said the same thing when Steve
00:52:25.320 metas he didn't go to the snooker table or the track he came to us as people and said let's get
00:52:30.940 you in a good place and when i got them in a good place then i said what do you want to do with
00:52:34.820 yourself now then we'll go and have a look at cycling in a circle or we'll look at knocking
00:52:39.660 a ball around you know then i'll say okay let's apply what you've done now but let's start in a
00:52:44.660 good place and all of us all of us can get in a good place again to give you some healthy good
00:52:50.040 research every bit of research shows if you actually work on yourself emotionally you will
00:52:56.020 improve you will improve it's just getting something that resonates with you i've put out
00:53:00.960 the chimp model because it's what i find resonates with me and those who resonates with great but if 0.86
00:53:05.780 you've got people listening and think it doesn't resonate with me there's so many other alternatives
00:53:10.440 that are brilliant that you could resonate with and it's that thing of suddenly believing that
00:53:15.280 you can actually do this and get out there and maybe get someone to help you and support you
00:53:19.400 we can all improve so every bit of research shows emotional skills can be learned
00:53:25.120 and then your quality of life improves so again when i look at the people on the telly the answer
00:53:30.760 is no i haven't found this but i'm only one man you have to ask the people who normally do it for
00:53:36.680 life are the sports psychologists they're the experts and if you ask them they may come up
00:53:40.860 with something very different my experience has been the people i've worked with uh are just
00:53:45.520 everyday people who happen to be able to either run quickly or kick a ball or you know they just
00:53:50.440 have a special physical gift but mentally they're the same as we are and they struggle with the same
00:53:56.340 things we struggle with and that's really interesting yeah i haven't found the x factor
00:54:01.600 i haven't found that well this this fits nicely with what i've always believed since a pretty
00:54:06.780 young age which is it's really important to work on yourself on your mental game as well as all
00:54:12.400 sorts of other things that you do um and i have always i've always found that that is a process
00:54:17.560 that you get rewarded for yeah and i never thought that i'm necessarily destined for some kind of
00:54:23.220 special thing i just didn't want to live my life knowing that there's something in the way
00:54:26.920 that there's something holding me back i think that's something which is where we're going back
00:54:31.100 to the neuroscience which in the 90s i had this light bulb moment that i'm talking to these patients
00:54:36.060 thinking there's two people talking to me and it sort of dawned on me just you talk and then they
00:54:41.720 talk almost like emotional rubbish and you think and then suddenly I bring them out and they talk
00:54:46.240 sensibly you think it's a different person suddenly it's quite severe the difference and that's where
00:54:50.860 I started looking at the science thinking let's go with my experience and see is this born out
00:54:55.420 with neuroscience and there it was in front of me you've got these two parts of the brain almost in
00:55:00.660 a battle if you don't manage them and exactly what you're saying what you're really saying to me under
00:55:05.080 the neurosciences my computer needed tidying up because it's sabotaging with all these beliefs
00:55:10.220 that are not helping me and also that this active chimp brain is just jumping me around and it's got 0.99
00:55:16.560 its own agenda and ways of working which i don't actually agree with so i'm going to slow it down
00:55:21.640 and stop being impulsive so that's when you explain i'm getting in the way of myself that's
00:55:26.560 all i'm saying scientifically is if you start distancing yourself from the the chimp and 1.00
00:55:31.260 computer and learn who you really are because most people don't have a clue who they are and
00:55:36.700 then you say right what you're presenting to the world is you with an influence from the chimp and 0.99
00:55:41.780 computer or even a hijack when you get that then you would not say to me i am an anxious person
00:55:47.880 what you'd say is i'm actually a really peaceful easygoing very relaxed person because that's who
00:55:54.020 you'd want to be but when they bolt on this machine my machine's crazy and i need to learn
00:56:00.480 to understand and work with it and get it on board so it'll always present anxiety that's not going
00:56:06.780 to stop but what you'll learn to do is when you distance from it is learn what it's trying to tell
00:56:11.860 you what you need to do to sort your computer out and then you'll find that sometimes it just
00:56:17.000 doesn't happen because it happens so fast in the brain it's like less than a fifth of a second
00:56:21.860 that your computer will settle the chimp all you've got to do is input and see what resonates 0.98
00:56:27.760 it's with you and then you start saying i'm fine my chimp's anxious but you start seeing as a
00:56:33.980 positive that brings up a question for me i said we're going to end on a positive probably not now
00:56:39.020 which is what do you make of the increasing medicalization of some of these feelings that
00:56:46.520 we experience you've got anxiety here's a tablet you've got depression here's a tablet and we we
00:56:50.920 don't say you feel depressed we say you have this thing called depression what do you make of of
00:56:57.040 that because i found like you say there's sometimes anxiety is there for a reason anxiety is telling
00:57:03.380 you you're not ready for this you need to go in and train or prepare or learn or or not do this
00:57:09.640 because this is the wrong thing for you absolutely right but if if the answer we have as a society to
00:57:14.980 that is shove it down here's a tablet to make it all go away is that going to get in the way of us
00:57:20.720 growing as people i think so i think the problem you've got is you think about this i mean we're
00:57:26.700 overloaded in the world of mental health and psychs and so i think you talk to anyone who's
00:57:31.620 counseling a psychologist a psychiatrist we're overloaded therapists are overloaded because
00:57:36.740 all of us could do with this because it's like mental coaching you know it's getting us to
00:57:41.220 understand because nobody tells us this so we're not given a manual at birth that says this is what
00:57:46.280 you're going to have to manage so we find it and we don't know what to do with it so we we don't
00:57:51.000 then have healthy behaviors for coping strategies so it is the doctors gps are overloaded so they
00:57:57.780 can't sit down and say to you let's start analyzing what you're thinking let's see what
00:58:01.380 you believe seller they can't do that they've got seven minutes they've got exactly so therefore
00:58:05.680 it's much as they look take this tablet go for a walk go swimming do this because it's a quick
00:58:11.480 fix and they hope that'll just calm you down but it's a sticky plaster so you're right
00:58:15.560 we're complex beings and we have to put the effort in but we also need people who know what they're
00:58:20.040 doing to help us to to find out what's going on our heads and we don't have enough people to do
00:58:25.540 that hence i wrote the book to try and say you can work this out for yourself and there are things
00:58:30.320 you can do practically that will get you into a good place but i know where you're coming from
00:58:34.940 you're sort of like pushing me to say that we're labeling lots of things medical now you do agree
00:58:39.960 you know sometimes we're labeling teenagers when they're going through a normal hormonal change
00:58:45.280 which is going to send you emotions everywhere you're learning to do interpersonal skills and
00:58:49.500 you've got no experience and you've also got this troop drive saying you must be loved by everyone
00:58:54.320 and any comment can destroy you and so that is normal so to be a teenager is not a good place
00:59:00.160 for most teenagers but you know we have to be careful that the small subgroup that have a 0.99
00:59:05.560 depressive illness 100% don't get lost 100% but you're right we there is and we have concerns as
00:59:11.240 psychiatrists about this that we're medicalizing a bit too much and saying look this is not medical
00:59:16.180 it's normal what we need to learn which is why i said at the beginning my patients have come
00:59:20.920 through the door 50 probably do need medication 50 of referrals that i got from gps did not need
00:59:27.920 that they needed insights and learn how to manage and we know like for example anxiety
00:59:33.440 that you've mentioned that uh that doesn't respond to medication you can knock it down a bit but it
00:59:40.940 don't it won't be removed with medication it's removed by actually seeing what's causing anxiety
00:59:46.040 in what your beliefs are so it is a mind problem as opposed to physical illness so anxiety yeah
00:59:54.260 to me it's it's a lack of management and we need to look and say how can we help people to get that
01:00:01.140 management and then they'll come out of it so we do a lot of cognitive behavioral type work with
01:00:06.280 that rather than give tablets i do agree i do agree with you steve it's been an absolute pleasure
01:00:13.800 Thank you so much for coming on the show.
01:00:15.420 We're going to do a few quick questions for our locals' members.
01:00:18.900 Before we do that, we always have one final question,
01:00:21.420 which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about
01:00:23.900 that we really should be?
01:00:26.320 I think it alludes back to the children in schools.
01:00:29.220 I'm doing a lot of work at schools at the moment
01:00:31.040 and looking at building resilience and robustness in children
01:00:34.460 because we know the research is, do it at four-year-old.
01:00:37.940 There are ways we can actually improve resilience
01:00:40.260 in four to five-year-olds which pay dividends 10 years on and the research shows that that you can
01:00:46.060 get resilient teenagers which what we're after and resilient adults so for me the big thing is
01:00:51.480 what I'm doing and that's trying to get people to become psychologically minded and start
01:00:57.060 understanding themselves as a human being and having a better opinion of themselves build
01:01:02.480 themselves up and others that's where I think I'd like to see society grow and we need to be
01:01:07.260 talking much more about positive not you know using it as a safety net but saying how do we
01:01:12.880 get positive and proactive uh really get quality life in a good place that's what i feel we should
01:01:17.860 be talking about yeah i couldn't agree more i think we talk so much about mental health and
01:01:21.360 what we really talk about is mental ill health what we should be talking about so much more is
01:01:25.520 tuning your brain up to to be better to be more fulfilled to be more successful to be happier to
01:01:30.780 be psychological health yeah exactly and teach relationships communication dealing with emotion
01:01:36.040 This is the kind of stuff I'd like to see much earlier on in school.
01:01:40.360 Well, one of the great things about A Path Through the Jungle
01:01:43.220 and your other work, but particularly this one,
01:01:45.020 is you've kind of got very easy to read.
01:01:48.140 You've got graphs and all sorts of other things
01:01:50.280 that are visually engaging that makes it more digestible.
01:01:52.780 So I really recommend you guys check out The Chim Paradox 0.94
01:01:55.260 and A Path Through the Jungle.
01:01:56.780 Dr. Steve Peters, thanks so much for coming on.
01:01:58.120 Thank you so much. Thank you.
01:02:01.560 I'm a massive Ronnie O'Sullivan fan
01:02:03.280 and I've heard Steve used to be in his dressing room
01:02:05.780 at big tournaments.
01:02:07.080 What did he say to him in the middle of...
01:02:08.220 Used to be.
01:02:09.240 I'm going to remind him.
01:02:10.380 I spoke to him two days ago.
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