Dr Steve Peters： How to Overcome Anxiety and Build Confidence
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 2 minutes
Words per minute
195.40498
Harmful content
Misogyny
3
sentences flagged
Toxicity
17
sentences flagged
Hate speech
53
sentences flagged
Summary
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
00:00:00.700
Broadway's smash hit, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.
00:00:06.520
The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love,
00:00:11.780
including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.
00:00:15.780
Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.
00:00:22.600
Now through June 7th, 2026 at the Princess of Wales Theatre.
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.
00:00:54.960
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.
00:01:15.360
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
00:03:14.280
In the fetus, what you find is within eight weeks,
00:03:20.320
which is like a primitive defense system, a survival system,
00:03:28.020
there are lots of areas which support the orbitofrontal cortex
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,
00:04:11.600
Now, the first system, the quick-fire one, impulsivity, really,
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.
00:04:28.980
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.
00:04:38.660
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
00:05:42.000
or you can actually choose to work with a different system
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
00:06:18.500
Yeah, it's never negative, and that's the title,
00:06:23.780
But if you start delving into it and trying to understand
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.
00:08:01.760
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.
00:08:10.500
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
00:12:04.400
toronto the true story of a kid from brooklyn destined for something more featuring all the
00:12:09.320
songs you love including america forever in blue jeans and sweet caroline like jersey boys and
00:12:15.560
beautiful the next musical mega hit is here the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise now through
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
00:12:51.820
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
00:12:59.100
and then suddenly, what I'm calling the gremlins,
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
00:14:52.120
we turn them over does that make sense that makes complete sense so i'm just gonna go guys
00:14:57.800
are you tired of using bulky old wallets giving you a bulge where you don't want it to be
00:15:05.800
my old wallet was massive so it brought all the ladies to the yard which was a huge distraction
1.00
00:15:11.980
and got in the way of my esteemed work on trigonometry ridge wallets have an incredible
00:15:17.800
solution for you this is mine sleek stylish and with an industrial look to it it can fit 12 cards
00:15:24.320
with cash on the back using a clip like this one or a strap we've got one for the whole team i've
00:15:30.240
got one francis has one even our producer anton has one but he's from liverpool so he flogged his
00:15:35.760
on the black market the great thing about ridge is that they give you a lifetime guarantee which
00:15:41.600
means if you want you can have only one wallet for the rest of your life ridge are so confident in
00:15:47.600
the quality of their product they will give you 45 days to test drive their wallets that means you
00:15:53.280
You can get the wallet, use it, and if you don't like it, you can return it within 45 days.
00:15:58.120
Because Ridge is such great guys, they're going to give you 10% off and free worldwide shipping and returns.
00:16:04.780
To take advantage of this incredible offer, go to ridge.com forward slash trigger.
00:16:12.120
And use our special code, which is, of course, trigger.
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
00:17:45.840
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.
00:17:53.220
we get quite technical, is sometimes when you find it,
00:18:00.440
so the computing chip can be brought down again
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.
00:18:42.300
They're different and they're different tracks in the brain to anxiety.
00:18:45.740
Anxiety and panic attacks use different pathways.
00:18:51.280
kind of doing all sorts of different personal development stuff
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
00:19:07.140
was the feeling that I don't want to stand out.
00:19:17.640
And I remember reading something by Desmond Morris
00:19:21.080
in which he talks about how the fear of public speaking
00:19:27.580
if a bunch of your peers were staring at you in silence,
00:19:34.280
And I think a lot of people feel some of those things.
00:19:43.440
that's going to contribute to other people's lives
00:19:54.040
particularly in the social media world that we live in now?
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
00:20:14.380
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.
00:20:23.260
which says that I'm anticipating this is going to be good news.
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
00:22:30.700
But when I brought it out, I had a chat with my chimp.
0.93
00:22:38.380
Because my chimp, I've told, not everyone's in your troop.
00:22:46.060
So I don't see, with all respect, you two in my troop.
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.
00:27:02.240
I don't do social media, so I don't know what it says.
00:27:11.660
what do we really want to start instilling in young people?
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
00:28:18.600
but I think it's going back to what you're saying
00:28:22.160
surround yourself with a world that you can live in
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
00:28:36.140
create your world, create the people you want in it
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
00:29:45.100
at what we're classing as someone who's psychopathic
00:30:08.920
where they will use people and it doesn't bother them.
00:30:14.300
but they have no compassion and certainly no conscience.
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,
00:31:12.960
But if you look at the normal or typical person, I'll call them,
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
00:31:34.840
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
00:35:45.980
because we're really compassionate and empathetic
00:35:50.060
Like, what is your take on all of that conversation?
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,
00:37:11.500
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,
00:37:35.520
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
00:37:51.580
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.
00:38:05.180
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.
00:41:10.500
But I think nature doesn't have to have a function.
00:41:21.280
no because they wouldn't be liked by their subordinates
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,
00:42:18.780
So the pool is genetically would be getting larger.
00:42:21.880
Right. The future is bright. The future is psychopath.
00:42:38.320
They're more likely to be successful, high achievers.
0.98
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.
00:45:07.660
They'll work to their own agendas and rules.
0.90
00:45:14.840
So what do psychopaths tend to, like, what kind of things do they get into?
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.
00:45:41.840
Great, they're everywhere and they're multiplying.
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
00:47:05.600
You can't go on holiday, mate, without knowing where the swimming pool is.
1.00
00:47:12.520
You can never be too far away from knowledge and sexually frustrated librarians.
00:47:19.180
For those of you who do want to learn a language and connect with another culture,
00:47:23.200
or maybe just brush up on your Spanish for the next holiday,
00:47:28.100
Babbel's 15-minute lessons make it the perfect way to learn a new language on the go.
00:47:33.940
Babbel designs their courses with practical, real-world conversations in mind.
00:47:39.080
Things you're going to use in everyday life, like finding out where the bibliotech is.
00:47:44.280
Babbel lessons were created by over 100 language experts, meaning real people.
00:47:49.100
So you learn useful vocabulary and not meaningless phrases like the ones Francis keeps uttering.
00:47:54.360
Babbel's teaching method has been scientifically proven to be effective across multiple studies.
00:47:59.780
With Babbel, you can choose from 14 different languages, including Spanish, French, Italians, and the other ones.
00:48:07.480
Babbel is available as an app or online, and your progress will be synced across all devices.
00:48:14.000
Babbel is offering our listeners six months free with the purchase of a six-month subscription with our promo code, which is Trigger.
00:48:20.980
Go to babbel.com forward slash play and use promo code TRIGGER for an extra six months for free.
00:48:26.900
We're even going to get Francis on it. You might learn English.
00:48:39.460
Yo puedo hablar español absolutamente perfecto.
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
01:00:15.420
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
01:00:26.320
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,
01:01:48.140
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
01:01:56.780
Dr. Steve Peters, thanks so much for coming on.
01:02:03.280
and I've heard Steve used to be in his dressing room