Skip to content
The Diary of a CEOThe Diary of a CEO

Dr. Martha Beck: Why anxiety lives in your left brain

Oprah's former life coach uses an orange to flip your brain off anxiety: sensory imagination, mirror tricks, and the curiosity that dissolves trauma.

Martha BeckguestSteven Bartletthost
Dec 19, 20242h 16mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 2:01

    Intro

    1. MB

      When we lie, our bodies get very weak. For example, stick your arm out and say, "I love fresh air."

    2. SB

      I love fresh air.

    3. MB

      (laughs) Now, I want you to do that while lying, and the lie I'd like you to say is, "I love to vomit." Say it.

    4. SB

      I love to vomit. That's so weird.

    5. MB

      Now say, "I love fresh air."

    6. SB

      I love fresh air.

    7. MB

      (laughs) Now say, "I love to vomit."

    8. SB

      I love to vomit. Why is that?

    9. MB

      It's because of the way the brain is structured, and there are many tricks. Do you wanna do some more?

    10. SB

      Sure, let's do that. Martha Beck, PhD, is a Harvard-trained sociologist and world-renowned life coach, whose notable clients include Oprah Winfrey. Her neurological-based techniques have helped individuals cope and adapt to an anxiety-addicted world.

    11. MB

      So our brains are biologically pre-programmed to be anxious, taught by innocently believing lies, by socialization or trauma. Socialization says, "You're not good enough. You should try harder. That was a bad choice," all kinds of things. And trauma tells you, "Oh, my God. Everything's dangerous all the time." And then it creates horror stories that haven't happened yet to make you safe. But the thing about anxiety is if you get stuck in the anxiety spiral, it just keeps getting worse. For example, I have memories and a lot of physical scarring from sexual abuse, which started at five years old, and then by the time I was 30, I had depression and anxiety and bedridden with autoimmune diseases, thinking I could just kill myself. But I can tell you with 100% certainty, it is possible to trick our brains and shut down anxiety.

    12. SB

      So if I'm feeling anxious, what would you recommend that I do?

    13. MB

      Here's one of my favorites.

    14. SB

      This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show, so could I ask you for a favor before we start? If you like this show and you like what we do here and you wanna support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback, we'll find the guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much.

  2. 2:01 – 4:57

    What Are You Aiming to Do With All Your Work?

    1. SB

      Dr. Martha Beck, within all your work, what is it that you're aiming to do? And I guess most importantly, equally importantly, who are you aiming to do it for?

    2. MB

      Hmm. I could give you the normal answer, which goes down easily with most people, or I could give you the truth, which sounds really weird.

    3. SB

      I'll take the truth.

    4. MB

      I was hoping you would say that. So, um, in all my work, and this means from the time I was little, um, I remember being dreadfully anxious about not having done enough toward it. On the night before my birthday one, one year, I was lying there thinking, "I am supposed... There's something I'm supposed to help with on the Earth, and I have not done enough, and I've gotta get moving here." And the next day, I turned four. (laughs) So ever since I was little, my whole intent has been based on this feeling that I was meant to help with a shift that would happen in the world during my lifetime, and I did not know what it was. So I would ask myself, "What, what is it?" I would spend hours thinking, "What is it?" And the only thing I got as an answer was this poet, this bit of poetry from T.S. Eliot, and it goes, "I said to my soul, 'Be still and wait without love, for it would be love of the wrong thing. And wait without hope, for it would be hope of the wrong thing. There is yet faith, but the love and the hope and the faith are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought. So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing." All right. (laughs) As I got older and studied more, I began to think, what I am m- meant to help with is a shift in the way human beings perceive and think, and that is why I couldn't know what it was because to explain to someone a fundamental shift in the way they think would have to be processed through the way they're thinking now, and so it would be fundamentally misunderstood. So now I'm old and I don't care what people think of me, so I just say this right out loud. I used to... It was a deep secret in my heart for decades, and now I just say I think there is going to be a shift in the way, in human consciousness, and I think it is gonna change the way humans relate to the planet, relate to each other, relate to themselves. And I could be wrong, but I don't care. I'm gonna keep trying for it till the day I die.

  3. 4:57 – 7:43

    What Is the Shift You're Predicting?

    1. MB

    2. SB

      And what is that shift in human consciousness that you're predicting?

    3. MB

      Wait without, (laughs) without thought, but actually no, I, I actually have a theory now. Um, my undergraduate degree was in East Asian studies. I lived in Asia and studied Chinese and Japanese, and they have a concept in Asia that is not well known in modern Western culture, and that is the concept of awakening, and it's awakening out of the dream of thought, which is... I mean, the whole thing is now, like, half of our listeners are at this point probably thinking, "Stephen has brought a lunatic to the program." (laughs)

    4. SB

      (laughs)

    5. MB

      "I will not listen to this episode." But I'm promising you, it gets really cool if you focus on it, because when you awaken, and it's a, it's a shift in the way... a fundamental perception. This is also very strong in India, Tibet, and the other Buddhist countries. It's a shift where you, you leave the aspects of your thinking that cause you internal suffering. You cease to suffer after you awaken.I think that's actually an epigenetic shift that is inherent in the brain of every individual and that many individuals throughout history have gone through it. The great teachers, uh, I think Nelson Mandela went through it in prison at Robben Island. So, all over the world in different cultures, in different parts of the world, throughout history, individuals have described this experience with very, very consistent terminology. You awaken, you realize that the life you've been living is real, but only in the way a dream is real, and that the reality of the awakened state is much more real. And in that state, there's no fear. There's no suffering. There is infinite compassion. There is the desire to serve. There is love for all beings, not just every human, but every being there is. And there is a kind of fundamental peace and bliss, the bliss of being they call it in Sanskrit, sac-cit-ananda. The bliss of being becomes your everyday state. I think if a critical number of people experience that at the same time, we could just fix the problems humans have been causing for the last few thousand years.

    6. SB

      How could you persuade anybody that that state of being is even possible?

    7. MB

      Well, I have a few tricks. (laughs) There's no persuading. Um, I could show you a few things, if you want, that I tend to do when I'm coaching people.

  4. 7:43 – 10:09

    Who Are You in Terms of Your Qualifications?

    1. MB

    2. SB

      So, well, let's get onto that then. Um, who are you in terms of your qualifications?

    3. MB

      I am a person who has experienced intense psychological and physical suffering for decades. Um, absolute wreck of a human being. Physically, th- I was, uh, by the time I was 30, I had been bedridden for 10 years with autoimmune diseases. Um, I had depression and anxiety in massive amounts from the time I was very small. And then, I actually had an experience during a surgery which was like a near-death experience, um, where I felt, like, I saw this light, and I felt connected to it, um, more than connected to it. (laughs) I felt radically shifted, and I came out of that surgery and changed. I stopped telling a single lie with any aspect of my speech, behavior. I would not lie after that. So, in the next year, that was a very exciting year. Um, I walked away from my family religion, which was very, very important in my home community. So, that meant I lost my family of origin, my community of origin, every friend I'd had s- before the age of 17, when I left for college. Um, I realized I was gay, so I left... that was the end of my marriage. Um, I had to leave my home. I had to leave my... I left academia. Basically threw everything into the bonfire. (laughs) And I would not recommend this to anyone listening out there. Don't do it. I did this so you would not have to. (laughs) I can tell you-

    4. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    5. MB

      ... there are easier ways. But through it all, through everything that I've studied with my mind, and through everything I've experienced with my body and my heart, I'm not saying I awakened, but I feel I know what awakening is. And for that reason, I feel very safe in the world and very joyful. All I can say is this is in you. Um, I'm, I may be able to help you find it.

    6. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    7. MB

      But, uh, I don't need to create it.

  5. 10:09 – 14:48

    Who Have You Worked With?

    1. SB

      Who have you worked with on a one-on-one basis? What are the different types of individuals that have asked for your help and support?

    2. MB

      Everybody. I mean, I've worked with homeless heroin addicts on the streets of Phoenix because I truly believe that the experience I had in surgery with this light, this absolute homecoming and peace. I actually gravitated to addicts even though I've never been addicted to a substance because when they say they can't live without that first heroin hit, that's how I felt after coming out of that experience, that, that light. I was like, "I cannot live without that." And so, I would tell the heroin addicts, "I believe you're meant to have that feeling you long for so much, but I also think you, you get to keep your teeth, you know?"

    3. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    4. MB

      Like, there's another way. So, I've worked with people like that. I've had, had billionaires as clients. I have counseled people in prison because I'm a sociologist, and if I say something works for humanity, it has to work across cultures and in all situations, poverty, wealth, captivity, freedom. Um, any situation, it has to work before I'll say... I'll put my stamp on it and say, "Yeah, I think that works."

    5. SB

      And who, when you talk about, you know, helping billionaires, what do they come to you seeking? Or do they just express symptoms or something?

    6. MB

      You know what? Almost everyone has the same m- major problem, and it's not what you would think. They want to know their purpose. They want to know why the hell they're even here. Humans are the only animals, so far as we know, that live on a day-to-day basis with a consciousness of our mortality. We are going to die. So, why are we even here? What am I doing here? And it's the same, whether you're talking to someone on the street or someone with a billion dollars.

    7. SB

      Hmm.

    8. MB

      ... desperation to know why we're here, and I think it comes out of a culture that has fundamentally pulled us away from, from our inherent knowledge of what we're meant to be, and put us in a place where we are obsessed with productivity and consumption and production of material wealth, and has actually cut us off from our own sense of meaning. And that, that's actually in the brain, that you get stuck in a part of the left hemisphere that is obsessed with grabbing things and owning things and controlling things, and it's always afraid. It's always grasping, and it refuses to believe that anything but itself exists. But on the other side of the brain, there is the self that connects with meaning, purpose, relationship, connection. And living in a state of nature, as everyone did until a few hundred years ago, almost everyone, we would wake up... A human would wake up hearing wind and birdsong and other people's voices. They would rise and go to bed according to the sunlight and the temperature. They had intimate relationships with animals and with plants and with the Earth itself. All of our biology evolved to be in that situation. We, and one anthropologist called it the "WEIRD" societies, Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, we have a fundamentally different way of living. We get up surrounded by artificial light. We push ourselves all day to do things that we would never have done 300 years ago, spreadsheets, um, sitting next to people we barely know who are assigned to be there because we have similar tasks, which is a system based on factory labor, which is horrible for people. Not to solve real problems that matter to you, but to catch on to something that an adult already knows, who's gonna punish you or shame you, depending on whether you get the right answer or the wrong... It's a bizarre, very left hemisphere-dominated society. So Iain McGilchrist, my favorite philosopher and neurologist, or psychiatrist, says the whole culture functions like someone with a severe right hemisphere stroke. We live in a bizarre, crazy culture, and we do not know why we're here because we don't have access to our sense of meaning.

  6. 14:48 – 21:09

    Why Did You Decide to Write a Book About Anxiety?

    1. SB

      I just wanted to ask you, you know, of all the things you could've written about at this exact moment in time, you chose to write a book about anxiety. It's called Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose. Why did you choose that subject, and specifically this word "anxiety," above everything else you could have written about?

    2. MB

      So after I wrote The Way of Integrity, where I say, "Look, if you... Integrity, to me, means that you are whole and int- That's the, what the word means. It means intact. It doesn't mean, like, morally. It just means structurally, if all your meaning-making systems are in order, are, are telling the same story, body, heart, spirit, mind, if those are all in agreement, there is a kind of grounding in reality. And in that reality... What happens when you get into that reality is you begin to awaken. You begin to experience spontaneously the things that Eastern sages have described about the cessation of suffering. So I was... You know, I'd been studying toward this for years, and I thought, "This is the last self-help book I'm ever gonna write, because I really believe this is it." So people read the book, and then they would come to me and they'd say, "I have put my whole life in integrity, but I'm so scared all the time. I am so afraid." So I started looking into it and realized that anxiety is skyrocketing all over the world. It is by far the most common mental health challenge that people face. Something like, uh, 284 million people, last I checked, were clinically diagnosable with, with anxiety disorder. During the pandemic year, 2020, anxiety went up all over the world by a full 25%. And here's the thing about anxiety. It's like one of those tire rippers that you drive across and you can't drive back. Because of the way the brain is structured, when you get into anxiety, it just keeps going up and up and getting worse and worse and worse. And then, when you get a lot of people who are experiencing this intense anxiety and they can't get out of it, they create a culture that reflects anxiety and fosters anxiety without really meaning to. But that becomes... If you're, if you're stuck in this very mechanistic, grasping way of being, um, anxiety is inevitable and actually lauded. So I was amazed to find that Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, says in his quarterly reports, and loves to say, in many settings, that he tells all of the thousands of Amazon employees who work under him, he wants them all to wake up terrified every morning. And that's the word he uses, "terrified," and to stay terrified all day, because that makes them productive. But most of these people are just getting by financially. He wants them to be afraid all the time so that he and the stockholders can get more stuff, and they already have so much stuff. You know?Like, 1% of the world's people own something like 95... No, 50% of the total, um, wealth of the world is owned by the top 1%.

    3. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    4. MB

      It's insane. And so we're saying, "Yes, get up, be terrified, as long as you're productive." And you know what? When you get really productive and you earn a lot of stuff and that's still your only way of being, you still wake up terrified every morning, and you stay, s- stay anxious all day long. Fear, see, fear is like being shot from a cannon. If a bear came in here, we would both go, "Whoa!" And we'd get very clear instructions from our biology to either fight, flee, freeze, you know, hide under the table. I would feed you to the bear, probably. (laughs)

    5. SB

      You? Good luck with that. Good luck with that.

    6. MB

      (laughs)

    7. SB

      I'm, like, double your weight. (laughs)

    8. MB

      You could totally take that bear.

    9. SB

      I'm not gonna risk it.

    10. MB

      Yeah.

    11. SB

      I'd be out of here. (laughs)

    12. MB

      No, you would, you would win. Anyway, it would eat me, and then you would win.

    13. SB

      Yeah. (laughs) I'm just joking.

    14. MB

      Um, and then our fear, if we were like other animals, would subside.

    15. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    16. MB

      That's normal fear. Anx- uh, anxiety, instead of being like shot from a cannon, it's like being haunted. Something bad happens or we hear about something bad happening, and we get that jolt of fear, but instead of acting and then s- relaxing, we turn it into a verbal story. So, a group of psychologists, um, I think in the '90s, decided to try to figure out why humans, of all animals, are the only ones who commit suicide on a regular basis, and what they found out, the answer is language. We humans have the capacity to use language to create an abstract vision of the future that is more horrifying than the prospect of our own death. We choose death over the story of fear that we carry in our minds, and the spiral happens because there's a jolt of fear, then a story about the fear, and then there's a story about how we have to control the world so that we won't be in danger anymore, and we have to control our loved ones so they won't be in danger, and we have to control... We just have to control. But we, honest to God, really can't control very much. So then, we get worried, we get even more scared, and that feeds back in to these primitive brain structures that say, "Fear!" And then it creates a bigger story, and, uh, more control efforts, and it goes up and up and up, and it doesn't go down because that part of the brain has a very peculiar... I don't know how this evolved. It has this tendency to s- to truly believe that nothing but itself exists.

    17. SB

      So, you're gonna have to explain the brain to me in the context you're describing it for me to understand some

  7. 21:09 – 26:47

    What Do We Need to Know About the Brain to Understand This All?

    1. SB

      of these points.

    2. MB

      Yeah, a little bit.

    3. SB

      Um, tell me what I need to know about the brain.

    4. MB

      Hmm.

    5. SB

      I'm gonna draw a little picture of it on my iPad here-

    6. MB

      Okey-dokey.

    7. SB

      ... so I can stay with you.

    8. MB

      All right, so you've got your brain, and it's, it's, uh, symmetrical, right?

    9. SB

      Yeah.

    10. MB

      Two mirror image, there's something in the middle called the corpus callosum that connects it. Uh, and I'm about to vastly oversimplify, and I'm not a neuroscientist, so neurologists, I, I beg you to forgive me. Uh, I know that the whole brain is working almost all the time and that left/right, uh, simplifications, uh, about the hemispheres of the brain are oversimplifications. Nevertheless, there are very dramatic differences between what happens, and so I'm gonna talk to those. So on the left side, you have this thing called the anxiety spiral, where there's a little tiny part of your brain called the amygdala, and it's very primitive. Every animal with a spine has one of these, um, or something very close to it, and its job is to make you safe by being alarmed when you see unfamiliar things. It feeds information to layers of the brain that are also ancient but not as old, and these g- on the left hemisphere make you immediately start thinking of ways to control a situation. And then when it gets to the outermost layer of the left hemisphere, which handles things like time and language, it starts to tell a story defending the feelings it's having. So, that's what the left hemisphere does in this one little compartment. On the right side, you also have an amygdala. You actually have two of all these structures. On the right side, the amygdala also goes, "Ah! Something unfamiliar!" A little burst of, "Ah!" Then, in the right side, it creates curiosity instead of aversion. Have you ever rubbernecked at an accident?

    11. SB

      Is that when you're like, "What's ... Look at what's behind you"?

    12. MB

      Yeah, everybody slows down, and you're like, "What? What happened?"

    13. SB

      "What happened?" Yeah, yeah, of course.

    14. MB

      And, and I always think, "Oh, I should look away. This is... P- I'm being, like, voyeuristic," but I still really wanna look.

    15. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    16. MB

      And the reason is that we evolved a tendency to move away from frightening things to b- stay safe, but toward them insofar as we can figure out what happened and avoid that happening to us. So, curiosity is intense around things we fear. That's why the av- the average American child, by the time they're ready for college, has witnessed on TV or, or online 16,000, or is it 60,000, murders?

    17. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    18. MB

      We're terrified of murder, so we're obsessed with it. You do not have mystery stories written about robbery. It's murder. Okay, so the right-side amyg- amygdala goes, "Curious."And then it starts to connect things. How can I figure this out? That's like that other thing, so this is what must've happened. It's a detective.

    19. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    20. MB

      And it starts to put together its own version of what happened. Doesn't use language, but it uses very vivid images and sensory details, and it can connect things in ways that are highly original and inventive, so you immediately start to get creative. What I found in, in the wonderful books I wrote... I read about anxiety, they always talked about how to get your anxiety to calm down, but for me, that wasn't enough, as an individual or just as a theoretician, 'cause that just gets you to the... you flatten your anxiety. But if you go into the right hemisphere of your brain and start to get creative, something really magical happens. Just as anxiety shuts off creativity, creativity can shut down anxiety. It's like these two parts of the brain toggle.

    21. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    22. MB

      And if you go to any traditional culture, you will find the wise people, the elders, the medicine people of that culture talking about the oneness of all things. It's not a new concept.

    23. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    24. MB

      What I realized is that if I deliberately chose to push my brain toward creativity and get the right side moving, my anxiety shut down, and then I started testing it on clients and on groups of people online. I'd, uh, design these, you know, experiments because I was trained as a sociologist, and consistently, I found that this is the way to get rid of this horrific scourge that is ruining so many people's lives, and what I always hear is people say, "Well, there are real problems. We really should be afraid." My answer to that is if you were in a horrible car accident, God forbid, and you had many injuries, would you want the surgeons working on you to be in a state of panic or calm creativity? The only way we're gonna fix the problems we've made with our fear-based behavior, the only way to solve problems this big is to access the incredible capacity of human creativity. I believe we can do that as individuals and as a species.

  8. 26:47 – 40:17

    How Would I Switch Away From My Anxiety State Into My Creative State?

    1. MB

    2. SB

      So, how would I go about switching into this right hemisphere? If I'm feeling anxious, what would you recommend that I do?

    3. MB

      It's so easy. It's so amazingly easy. Now, your brain naturally goes toward anxiety because of something called the negativity bias, and I always think of it as 15 puppies and a cobra. If I gave you a box and it had 15 puppies and a cobra in it, what would catch your attention? (laughs) The snake, and that's because, in evolutionary terms, paying attention to the sna-snake is a good idea.

    4. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    5. MB

      Yeah? But, um, it... we have such a strong negativity bias in our culture, and we have very little to pull us back into communion with oneness. We don't have nature around us anymore. So, we have to do that. We can trick our brains into doing that, and if you wanna play a little with this.

    6. SB

      Sure.

    7. MB

      Okay.

    8. SB

      Tell me what to do.

    9. MB

      First, I want you to think of something that makes you feel a bit anxious, maybe not panicky, but anxious. Uh, something you're willing to, like, tell us what it is.

    10. SB

      Okay. Um, something that makes me feel a little bit anxious.

    11. MB

      Yeah.

    12. SB

      Well, this is an interesting one. Um, sounds like a strange thing to say, but, um, when my partner is not happy and I know she's not happy but she's not telling me why, and I'm around her and I can tell from her vibe, her face she's not happy about something, and I have no idea what it is.

    13. MB

      Okay. I think there will be many people out there who know what this feels like 'cause-

    14. SB

      Yeah. (laughs)

    15. MB

      ... y- you are describing a domestic... a tiny domestic nightmare that many of us feel. So, think about that. Think about what that feels like and just notice what it does to your body and to your emotions.

    16. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    17. MB

      What's happening in your body if you're in that situation with your partner?

    18. SB

      Like, my breath is short.

    19. MB

      Uh-huh.

    20. SB

      Yeah.

    21. MB

      Right.

    22. SB

      I just feel tense and I, I become quite impatient-

    23. MB

      Yeah.

    24. SB

      ... because I just need the answer to, like, re- alleviate the anxiety.

    25. MB

      Yeah. So you've gone to a fight or flight nervous system arousal state. Okay. Uh, uh, something, something's wrong. Okay.

    26. SB

      I'm very focused, yeah.

    27. MB

      Yeah. I'm very focused and I'm very, like... I'm anxious, but I'm also a little bit snappish 'cause I'm, uh, I, I'm flo- fleeing on one side. I need to get out of this situation, but I'm fighting on the other side, like, "Tell me what's wrong."

    28. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    29. MB

      So, you've got a full fight or flight thing happening. So, you can get into that by imagining the situation. Now, I want you to imagine something else very vividly, um, and it would probably help if you close your eyes.

    30. SB

      Mm-hmm.

  9. 40:17 – 42:27

    A Three-Step Process to Alleviate Anxiety on a Daily Basis

    1. SB

      So d- what does this mean for me on a, like, day-to-day basis? If I understand the power of this, does this mean that I- I should draw my name a lot, or is there something that I- that we can all be doing to alleviate our anxiety and to get us into the right hemisphere of our brain?

    2. MB

      Well, there's- to me, there's a three-step process, and there are three sections in the book. The first one, I- I use it with the acronym CAT.

    3. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    4. MB

      Calm, art, and transcendence. This is how it works. The first third of the book is just how to calm your brain. It's been taught to be anxious. Um, it is biologically pre-programmed to be anxious. So, to calm it down, most people will say- they'll come in and tell me, "I wanna fight my anxiety. I wanna get it d- I wanna end it, I wanna bring it down, I want it gone." Because they think it's a broken machine, but it's not a broken machine. It's a frightened animal. And if- if you came in (laughs) and I said to you, "Okay, I wanna end you. I wanna bring you down. I'm gonna fight you till you're gone," would you be less afraid or more afraid? So, they're attacking the part of themself that's anxious, and it makes it more anxious. So- and that's what we're taught to do, end it, s- force it to calm down with chemicals. One of the most ghastly things that ever happened in the- in psychiatry was that they used to literally take people who had, you know, inexorable, uh, anxiety, and literally put a screwdriver through the eye socket and up into the brain and just mix it around. That's how mechanistic we are about our own minds. We can fix it with a screwdriver. That's a very left hemisphere way to think, and it's literally attacking ourselves. But we're all- we're all born with the intrinsic knowledge of how to calm a frightened animal. So, if you found a terrified puppy on your stoop one morning and you decided to try to help it, you would instinctively know the- how to do that. What- what would you do?

    5. SB

      Um,

  10. 42:27 – 47:08

    We Have to Be Gentle With Ourselves

    1. SB

      I would approach it slowly, or not approach it at all, and I would-

    2. MB

      Yep.

    3. SB

      ... get down.

    4. MB

      Yes.

    5. SB

      And I'd be very gentle and say, "Hello," and I'd ask it to come to me.

    6. MB

      Yeah. And if it didn't, you'd give it space, you'd give it time.

    7. SB

      Yeah.

    8. MB

      You'd sit there with it.

    9. SB

      Yeah.

    10. MB

      And just the way your energy just changed now, you get down, you began to smile in a very sweet way, and I could feel the tolerance and the gentleness and the space that you would give this creature. We've got to learn to be gentle to ourselves. We are taught to be violent to ourselves, viol- act that, make, you know, make yourself eat this and do that, and arrr-rrrr-rrrr. And instead, if we could just go to the anxious part, like, say you're with your partner and she's acting weird and you're feeling anxious, generally what we do is we try to control the situation. What can I do? Can I make her happy? I'll bring her flowers, I'll do whatever, right? Have an argument. Instead of trying to control her, the best approach is go inside, find the part of yourself that's afraid. So, if you're in that situation and she's nervous, and you just start to observe your own anxiety, like, okay, what does that feel like? Who is that in there? Who's- who's the anxious part of me? And just notice, I mean, try it right now, if you don't mind.

    11. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    12. MB

      She's upset, she's tense, she's not telling you the problem. Notice the anxiety. Where is it in your body exactly?

    13. SB

      It's like here in my chest.

    14. MB

      Okay. In your chest. So allow that and say to it, "I'm gonna give you space." I'm here. I'm gonna be here with you. Uh, I know she's scaring you, but I've got you. It's okay. I'm- she's not gonna hurt us. I can go in the other room with you if you need. And sit with it and say, "Let me know, what- what are you feeling? Tell me everything." You get to feel exactly the way you feel, and I'm here to listen to anything you want to tell me, and I will not hurt you, and I will not try to stifle you or make you go away. So how does that change anything?

    15. SB

      Yeah, for some reason it just, um, the volume went down.

    16. MB

      Yeah.

    17. SB

      That's how I would describe it. It's just like the volume is- went down. And it made me wonder if j- because just by you saying that, it made me wonder if- if in those moments I should be writing it out.

    18. MB

      That can be really helpful. There's a psychologist named James Pennebaker who found that if he just had students... He just did this experiment once as a graduate student. He had students write for 15 minutes about something that was upsetting to them, and many of them came out of the experiment in tears. It really upset them for an hour or two. He had other students just write what they did last summer or whatever. So there was this brief period where the ones who had stirred up some turmoil felt unsettled, but they... in the- in the weeks and even the years subsequent to that experiment, they had fewer doctor's visits, they had less anxiety, they had better relationships, they had better everything. So he, for his whole career, just did these writing exercises where we- he would have people just express themselves, not to show anyone, not even a reread, just to express.

    19. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    20. MB

      The parts of us that are frightened needs- need to be heard. The parts of society that are hurting need to be heard. I'm astonished by the, um, Truth and Reconciliation Councils held in South Africa after Nelson Mandela became president. These people who had been through absolute atrocities, and they were just heard. They were allowed to tell their stories to the people who had hurt them and other people who were on their side. And the telling of it avoided, you know, what everyone thought would be a bloodbath.

    21. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    22. MB

      And it- it, of course, didn't fix all the problems, but it unburdened, to a large extent, people who had been through things that I can't even imagine.

    23. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    24. MB

      So yes, write it. Write it down. So she's in the other room, she's acting weird. Something might come up about, like, how old is that anxious part? Maybe it's young, maybe it's not.

    25. SB

      You said something

  11. 47:08 – 53:36

    The Anxiety Spiral

    1. SB

      at the start, you said that, um, anxiety is like driving over a metal spike in those police, like, chases. That's what I was thinking about-

    2. MB

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... like the police chases where the- they throw out the metal spikes and the car falls over.

    4. MB

      Right.

    5. SB

      Why- why did you use that analogy? What are you- what are you saying there about the nature of anxiety?

    6. MB

      That's what it's like if you get stuck in what's called the anxiety spiral, uh, in the brain, the anxiety cycle, some people call it. Um, so what you have to do in that situation is, (laughs) to extend the metaphor, get out of the car, disarm the mechanism, get that mechanism out of the way, you know-

    7. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    8. MB

      ... the- the tire ripping thing, and then you can back out. But the stopping and getting out, that's the calming step of anxiety, and that's what you're doing here. As weird as it sounds, when you write your name backwards and you come into a state of physiological calm, you are getting rid of the tire rippers. You're building pathways that go into the calmer parts of the brain. So, um, the same thing when you were imagining eating an orange. You're calming yourself and it re- it allows you to reverse.

    9. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    10. MB

      It allows you to leave, finally. But our culture tends to not allow you to leave. It's always telling you horror stories.

    11. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    12. MB

      So then once you get really calm...And you've taken care of that part of yourself. I said the acronym is C-A-T, CAT. Once you get to calm, then very paradoxically, I, it blew me away when I realized this, then you need art. And I don't mean drawing, I mean making things. Making things in three dimensions, making events happen, making a podcast. Like, what was the fire in you that made you make things, and how did it feel when you were in the making?

    13. SB

      In the making, it usually feels great.

    14. MB

      Yeah.

    15. SB

      Like, in the process of making. Actually, me and my partner went and did, um, last weekend we went and made some art.

    16. MB

      Hmm.

    17. SB

      And I was, like, stressed and stuff, and so when we went and did this art, w- I'd, like, never painted in my life.

    18. MB

      Yeah.

    19. SB

      So we went to this, like, random loft, and there was this guy there and, uh, he had these massive two pieces of cardboard and, like, loads of spray cans and paint and stuff, and we just painted for maybe three hours or something.

    20. MB

      Yeah.

    21. SB

      And I was totally lost in it.

    22. MB

      Right.

    23. SB

      I mean, that's the way people describe it. They describe it as being lost in it, right?

    24. MB

      Yeah. And do you know that if people have been through a trauma and they're allowed to draw about it, even if they can't draw, uh, you know, professionally, they have an 80% lower chance of developing PTSD. There is something about creating stuff, and it could be a company or it could be a spray paint on a cardboard. Um, my partner, um, started making bead bracelets a while ago. She's very busy, she doesn't have time for this, but it makes her so, ah, content. And we were talking about how if you go into a tomb in Egypt from 5,000 years ago, what are you gonna find? Among other things, beaded bracelets. If you go to the Amazon rainforest and contact an uncontacted tribe, what might you find? Beaded bracelets. People are making beaded bracelets all the time, and they serve no function. They are precious, pointless things, she said, that we make, and all cultures make... We make music. I mean, I think about the cultures in Jamaica, one of the worst slavery colonies in the history of the world. It, it was just, it made what was happening on the mainland look gentle by comparison. And out of that, you get these incredible art forms, reggae, dance. I mean, uh, like, in the middle of being crushed, having literally everything taken from them, people were still making art.

    25. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    26. MB

      This is a part of the human spirit that is just... It's indomitable, and our culture pushes it to the fringes. "Okay, Steven, you can do that on a weekend. That's nice. But did you really make any money?" You know?

    27. SB

      Get a real job.

    28. MB

      Yeah.

    29. SB

      How does this link, again, back to the brain? So if I'm creating, I'm making some art, I was doing that spray paint thing with the paint and the... I'll show you a picture of it afterwards, I actually think it's quite nice.

    30. MB

      Cool, I wanna see it. (laughs)

  12. 53:36 – 57:54

    What's Your View on the Suffering Between Men and Women?

    1. SB

      is a related but slightly unrelated, um, topic, but there's a lot of people in s- certain demographics suffering in different ways at the moment.

    2. MB

      Yes.

    3. SB

      There's, like, a conversation I hear a lot about men suffering-

    4. MB

      Yes.

    5. SB

      ... with meaning and purpose and those things, and I hear this other conversation about young women suffering-

    6. MB

      Yep.

    7. SB

      ... where, and depression-

    8. MB

      Absolutely.

    9. SB

      ... and anxiety being on the rise there. When you think about those two groups, so like, men and young women, what is it that you think is the cause- causal factor of their suffering? 'Cause their suffering is similar and different.

    10. MB

      Yeah. Well, it's, it's conditioned by the way the brain works. It works very differently in pubescent girls than it does in, say, adult men. Young adult men, their brains work very differently from elders. That's why in traditional societies, the young men would be herded together and sometimes, uh, for example, in some cultures, their faces would be obscured, they would leave their name behind, they would leave all of the possessions they had or burn them, and they would be taken into the wilderness by the elders, and the elders would proceed to scare the living daylights out of them, making strange noises in the brush, um, putting them s- th- through a kind of trial.And the result of this is it kind of disintegrates the ego, and you still see it in, like, if you see movies about th- the army and how the- the tough but heart of gold sergeant breaks down the young soldiers' egos so that they finally say, "Okay. (laughs) I am not the center of the universe. I need my brothers to exist, and I- I bow down in the face of nature, which is greater than I am." And then the elders say, "All right. Now you're ready to be a man. Go back to the village and tell people your new name, which you get to choose." Young girls at puberty go through the opposite experience in many cultures. They are isolated in places away from all humans because the primary psychological task, according to some theories, of males is that they're born sort of differentiated and very individual, and they l- need to learn to integrate with other people to be whole. Females tend to be born... or people identified as female are born very integrated, and, uh, the task of female maturation is to individuate.

    11. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    12. MB

      So young girls who haven't... they're just at the stage where they need to find out who they are as an individual, and instead, they're very integrated with networks of people who are psychologically attacking each other in ways that are extremely harmful to their psyche at that stage. In a traditional culture, they might be put in, say, a hut that was dark and given food every day, but you're in there by yourself t- until you learn, "I'm okay. I can actually go inside myself and find the truth of who I am." On the other hand, the boys are out, they're going, "Ah, I can give up thinking I am all that, and I can kneel in reverence at the oneness of it all." And then they come back together, and they've got a lot in common-

    13. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    14. MB

      ... at that point.

    15. SB

      Because the men now realize they need people, and the women now realize that they're in-

    16. MB

      Th- th-

    17. SB

      ... have an independence.

    18. MB

      Exactly. And so each can understand the other better. I mean, the wisdom of these cultural traditions is incredible, and we just don't have it. We don't have it. The- the internet, in particular, spins out the- the individuation of young men, makes them feel like, you know... They do have bands of brothers, but it's like, "We're under attack, man, and I really... I'm gonna try to... I have to achieve. I'm gonna try it this way, and I'm gonna try it that way." And there's a lot of battle games and stuff, but none of the humility that comes from the elders.

    19. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    20. MB

      And these young girls are just caught in whirlwinds of social toxicity when they might be taught to meditate. (laughs) And we can still do all those things. We can still access those things.

    21. SB

      You talked about suicidal ideation-

    22. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    23. SB

      ... earlier on being unique to humans. When we think about suicidal ideation, it's parti- particularly prominent in young men.

    24. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    25. SB

      I think in the UK, the stat is still the case that the single

  13. 57:54 – 1:02:14

    Why Are Young Men Killing Themselves at Alarming Rates?

    1. SB

      biggest killer of young men is themselves under the age of 45.

    2. MB

      Wow. Wow.

    3. SB

      Uh, so why, why is that? If w- you know, we talked about meaning and purpose and stuff earlier. Why are young men killing themselves at alarming rates?

    4. MB

      Uh, because it is easier in the mind to take arms against a sea of troubles. (laughs) Like, it- it's Hamlet speech. You know, "Why should I stay alive in a world where everyone dies and, uh, we're all assaulted by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?" He's just watched his father die, and he's like, "Why would I keep going? I could just kill myself." Because men are taught combat as a way of control. If you're afraid, every movie will tell you, "Get a gun." Like The Matrix where the guy learns he can control everything with his mind. Everything he's controlling with his mind. So what does he do? He says, "We're gonna need a lot of guns." You can control the universe with your mind. You don't need guns. Right? But there's just this obsession with weaponry, and that's kind of in the DNA, but when you get people in a spiral of fear, it becomes intense and military. All the genocides committed throughout history have relied on, like, really toxic leaders accessing vulnerable young men and militarizing them against other people, which is really easy. And if they're on their own, isolated, and there are no elders taking them in groups doing things, they turn that on themselves.

    5. SB

      So what is the, what is the solution, then, for young men?

    6. MB

      Uh, I would say look to our ancestors, you know? Let's take young men, um... The- the coach, Michael Trotter, that I used to go with to make fire in the woods, he originally worked with, and probably still does work with, groups of young men, and he used to wear a s- uh, he was, he was a disciple of, um, I think it was the Odawa tribe of Indigenous Americans, and he always wore this shirt that said, "Listen to Grandfather." And he would take these confused, hurting young men out, and he would put them through the trials that they would've had in a traditional society. And they would have to learn to make fire together, and they would have to learn to feed each other what they could find and, um, use their skills in hunting, building, all of that, for the community. And I just watched him heal boy after boy after boy. And it... That's not that hard to do.

    7. SB

      Why is it he- healing for them, doing that, using their skills, hunting, surviving?

    8. MB

      Because it's what we evolved to do. Like, th- the lives we're giving people now, the lives most of us are living are so alienating. It's such an abnormal... This here is not normal.Right? This is not a forest or a beach or a desert. This is all man-made. It's full of right angles, which don't even, v- very rarely exist in nature, only in crystals.

    9. SB

      For people that aren't watching video, she's pointing at the studio.

    10. MB

      Yeah, I'm pointing at the studio-

    11. SB

      Yeah.

    12. MB

      ... which is lovely, by the way. Absolutely state-of-the-art. But if you talk about human evolution and the incredible, sophisticated nervous systems we have, they evolved intimately for a totally different environment, and this is scary.

    13. SB

      So, what do we do about it? Because, you know, the more I listen to you, I think maybe I should run away. Like, maybe I should-

    14. MB

      (laughs)

    15. SB

      I, I have the funds to run away. I could, I could go forever.

    16. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    17. SB

      And I do wonder, I go, "Hmm, I'd probably be happier, maybe. Maybe." I'd start creating, though, and then I... This is what I said in... I did a solo episode on my podcast recently. I said, "If I ran away, then I'd start creating, and then, you know, I might start a podcast on a beach in Bali, and then-"

    18. MB

      You would.

    19. SB

      (laughs)

    20. MB

      You would create stuff. You can't help yourself, and that's why you are obviously, like, physically healthy. You seem incredibly balanced and wise. Like, you've been making stuff, so you're very much... Like, your... Sorry to use California language, but your energy is very calm but also very exuberant.

  14. 1:02:14 – 1:04:20

    Your Experiences Growing Up

    1. MB

    2. SB

      Your story is, um, is heartbreaking in many ways, but it's, it's so evidently shaped the person that sits in front of me today because you're... At a very young age, which you've not, we've not really spoken about much, you were part of the Mormon religion.

    3. MB

      Oh, yes, I was (laughs) .

    4. SB

      Take me into that before 10 years old, how that experience before the age of 10 has shaped the person you are.

    5. MB

      So, I was born not just into a Mormon, um, family, but a Mormon community where everyone shared the same beliefs. You didn't call people, um, Mr. and Mrs., it was brother and sister. Brother Smith, Sister Smith. Um, and I was told from very young... I mean, you're indoctrinated. At 18 months, you start religious training, and they tell you things like, um, you know, if men live well, and they're part of the Mormon church, then when they die, they get their own planet and all the women they want. And I was like, "All right." Like, you're three years old. What do you know, right? And Jesus is gonna come over the mountains, and all the graves are going to fly open, and all the bodies, the literal bodies of all the dead people are gonna rise up out and go join Jesus, which is why we don't cremate bodies. We bury them because they're gonna come back to life (laughs) . And, um, I would have nightmares of Jesus coming over the mountains, the graves flying open, all the people around me are rising up, and I would run. As a little kid, this happened over and over again, this dream where I was trying to jump high enough to go with the people who were being saved, and I couldn't do it. I was, I just kept coming back down. So I lived in absolute terror all the time, and I also didn't know what was real 'cause none of it... nothing felt real. So that was... It's very disconcerting, but because I'd never had any other experience, I just thought, "Well, this is life." So that was rough.

  15. 1:04:20 – 1:09:19

    Facing Abuse as a Child

    1. SB

      And at 28 years old, you realized that you'd been sexually assaulted as a child.

    2. MB

      Yeah, I think I had, I had hints of it. Actually, friends told me that I had told them about it in high school, and I don't remember telling them. So I had pretty much repressed it. My father was a very, very renowned, um, scholarly defender of Mormonism. His job was to take the claims of the doctrine and validate them, you know, academically, b- but in order to do that, I talked to many people who... Many of... He had five people working with him to help him translate various documents of different languages, and they said he would just make things up and put them as footnotes in different languages so no one was likely to check them. Um, and it was called lying for the Lord, which is so weird. I mean, it means you have a God who's fundamentally interested in helping people be like God by lying.

    3. SB

      Hmm.

    4. MB

      So, yeah, I was twisted in knots, um, when I was little, and then I think it twisted my father into knots as well. And I do have memories and a lot of physical scarring from sexual abuse that sort of blew up in my, into my consciousness. Right after I had that, um, l- the light experience that came to me in surgery, and, um, it actually told me during the surgery, "You're about to go through something very, very difficult, but I've always been with you, and I'll always be with you. Never forget that." And that's why I decided not to lie anymore, and that's why when I started having these memories, it didn't matter because, because connection with that light and never forgetting it was the realest, maybe the only absolutely true thing that had ever happened to me, and I was not leaving again.

    5. SB

      Abuse at the hands of your father?

    6. MB

      Yes, yeah.

    7. SB

      And you remembered that at 28 years old?

    8. MB

      Yeah.

    9. SB

      You recalled it at 28 years old?

    10. MB

      Mm-hmm. It, well, it, it sort of exploded into my mind, uh... They're called intrusive flashbacks. Um, I'd had a lot of, lot of symptoms of PTSD my whole life without knowing it, but my...... oldest child got to be the age I was when the abuse started occurring, five years old, and she looked just like me at that age. And it- every time I looked at her, I would just have these incredibly violent... it's not like a memory, it's like it's happening. It's like y- y- uh, you're completely overwhelmed by it, um, for a period of time, and it was- it was extraordinarily hard. I'm not gonna lie. It was bad. And I called my mother and she said, "Well, yes, that's what happened." And I was like, "What? You agree with me?" And she said, "Why shouldn't I? I know him better than you." And I said, "Okay, so, like, what do I" and she said, "Well, obviously you have to protect the church."

    11. SB

      You called your mother to tell her you'd been sexually abused and you realized and she said of- yes, she knows.

    12. MB

      Well, she called me and said, "What's going on? Why- why are you not visiting us?" And I said, "All right," I had taken a vow not to lie, so I told her the truth, expecting her to go into a rage or something, and she said, "Well, yeah, that's how it is." Um... (laughs)

    13. SB

      She said, "Well, yeah, that's how it is"?

    14. MB

      Y- y- yeah, "I believe you. That's, mm, that sounds right. That tracks."

    15. SB

      Well, how- how did it track? What did she know?

    16. MB

      She said, "I know him better than you do," and I said, I- I don't remember, this was 30 years ago, but I said, um, "He's really- he's not an honest man." And she said, "No, he's not honest." And then she said, "You better come and make him a cake," which is- is weird, frankly, to say, "Yes, I believe you were raped by your father at the age of five," and by the way, the surgery I was in when I had the light experience was surgery to correct some of the scar tissue left by the abuse. I was- it had ripped internally and I was bleeding internally and they just found all this scar tissue and, um, where it probably shouldn't have been. And so, for a mother to say, "Oh, yeah, I completely believe that's true and what I think you should do about it is to make your perpetrator a cake," kind of sums up the way I was raised. (laughs) And I just- I tried. I made the cake. I went down, I served the cake, and then I just couldn't go back. I just couldn't.

    17. SB

      Did you confront him?

  16. 1:09:19 – 1:15:01

    My Mum Knew He Was Abusing Me

    1. SB

    2. MB

      I did, yeah. Um, I confronted him at first, and then years later, 10 years later or so when he was 90, 91, h- I was born when he was 52, and, um, uh, I wanted to meet with him after I'd forgiven him to tell him that I'd forgiven him so that he would not have to carry that, because he was a very, very miserable, strange, disassociated human being, like really, really weird. Um, people- he was brilliant, but very, very broken and, um, I think he had to choose between his entire sense of reality and his religion and he chose the religion and he chose the job of talking other people into believing the religion, and I think it just completely broke him. And that, plus, um, he was in World War II and saw a lot of action there, and it was... I forgive him, you know? By the way, anyone listening to this, you do not have to forgive your perpetrator. Find a way to be in your own truth, in your own integrity. You will heal, you will be happier, then you will notice that there is no more anything to forgive. You're done.

    3. SB

      Did he acknowledge that he had done it?

    4. MB

      No. Um, he was very strange about it, though. He didn't say, "I never did that." He said, "Oh, but that was the evil one," meaning the devil, and that was my family story was that I'd been sexually assaulted by the devil as a child, and that that's why I had scars and so on. And so he said, "Yeah, that was the evil one," I think meaning the devil, but maybe he meant part of him that was evil. He never really talked to me. My whole life we never had, like, conversations. He would switch languages. He would literally physically run away from me. It was very, very strange. Yeah. Wasn't a normal childhood or adulthood. (laughs)

    5. SB

      And after that phone call with your mother where you confronted her about it-

    6. MB

      Yeah.

    7. SB

      ... and she said, "That sounds about right," um, I read that she then denied it after that.

    8. MB

      Oh, she totally retracted it. Yeah. I mean, she had to live with him, and she couldn't very well, like, agree with me in his presence, so, um, when I asked her, I- I met with both of them in my therapist's office, and I said, "Why did you tell me that you agreed with me and that it made sense to you?" And she said, "Oh, I just assumed you were joking," which was like, nah. That- no. Mm-mm. So...

    9. SB

      Did she ever admit that she had said that?

    10. MB

      No. She never did. I never saw her again. And- but actually, I have to say, if I had to- as a child, if I'd had to choose one of my parents to be around, it would have been my father, because my mother was just a big ball of misery and rage, and I never once remember feeling safe around her.

    11. SB

      Why?

    12. MB

      She- I- I- I had the distinct impression she hated me. (laughs)

    13. SB

      Really?

    14. MB

      Yeah, because Mormons believe that children choose to be born to specific parents, and so- and she had had five children and one stillbirth, and her body was over it, and she was done, and she was sick and depressed and miserable, and then she had three more children. I was seventh of the eight surviving children, and the last...... four of us. She was really angry that we had forced ourselves upon her. She did not want us, and she was angry because we had been born.

    15. SB

      And she was depressed. W- I r- I read, was reading through your story about how she spent a lot of time in bed upset, crying.

    16. MB

      Yeah, like all the time. I had a weird privilege of watching her funeral on, um, what do they call it? Closed-circuit TV during the pandemic or just after. Uh, one of my sisters had gotten back in touch with me over... after 30 years of no contact, and it was the strangest thing 'cause I was gonna go do something that day and then I thought, "No, I've gotta go lie down in bed," which I don't do, and then, "I've got to watch TV," which I never do during the day. And then, I got a text from my sister saying, "Our mom's funeral is on TV right now, uh, at- at this link." So, I sat there, and I watched it, and it was quite validating. (laughs) One of my brothers got up and s- started out by saying, "If you came here expecting to hear stories of motherly love, you are at the wrong funeral." (laughs)

    17. SB

      Really?

    18. MB

      Yeah, and- and, uh, uh, my siblings said things like, "It's not so much that she was depressed. It was kind of like depression is who she was." (laughs) It was... I feel tremendous sadness for my mother, tremendous compassion and empathy to the point... I mean, heartbroken about, uh, the life she lived and the lives that many other women live sort of in crazy systems, feeling they have no power. Um, it just destroyed me to f- to feel how much pain she was in. But, uh, yeah, she didn't like me.

  17. 1:15:01 – 1:15:52

    Did Anything Happen to Them?

    1. SB

      Did you ever figure out why your parents were the way that they were outside of the influence of the religion? Was there anything that happened to them?

    2. MB

      Oh, yeah. Tons of things, like, they were, um... My grandmother, my mother's mother, I think was a complete psychopath. She was pro-Nazi in World War II. She wa- I meant, what? Like, (laughs) who does that? She was Swedish, and she just thought that was the right thing to do. Um...

    3. SB

      Was there a suspicion that your dad was abused?

    4. MB

      Oh, he was definitely abused by his mother.

    5. SB

      He was sexually abused by his mother?

    6. MB

      Yes. Yes. And that was known. My mother had told me this before. Um, yeah. She would do horrible things. She would put... She would wound him and put bee venom on his genitals and, um, be very sexual toward him. I mean, it was a mess. It was horrible.

  18. 1:15:52 – 1:16:09

    Forgiveness

    1. MB

    2. SB

      The- the things that happened to you at that age, they left their fingerprints on you as you went through your teen years.

    3. MB

      Oh, yeah.

    4. SB

      I- I was listening to an interview you did where you were describing being, I think, 17, 18 years old-

    5. MB

      Yeah.

    6. SB

      ... and you were thinking about ending your own life.

    7. MB

      Oh, constantly.

  19. 1:16:09 – 1:17:46

    Always Wanted to End My Life

    1. SB

      Constantly?

    2. MB

      Yeah. Like, it was a daily struggle not to.

    3. SB

      Through- through what period of your life?

    4. MB

      Hmm. I would say about, oh, 16. Well, it started right around 13, but by the time I was 16 it was pretty constant. 17, 18, 19, it was all I could do to not commit suicide. And then, um, it kind of went on... It- it went to a level of, like, I can hang on during my 20s, but I think I was 32 the day I realized... It was the first day I remembered that I hadn't wanted (laughs) to kill myself. Yeah.

    5. SB

      Why? Why do you think that was so present in your life, those thoughts?

    6. MB

      Because I was in tremendous amounts of physical and psychological pain.

    7. SB

      And are the two linked?

    8. MB

      They were for me. Yeah. They were very much. Um, uh, psychogenic pain... Uh, you know, the body-mind interface is not... there's not much separation. And for me, one of the things I talked about in The Way of Integrity is that when we lie, our bodies get very weak. So, um, like, I could do a simple little hokey test with you where I could sh-

    9. SB

      Sure.

    10. MB

      Oh, you wanna do it?

    11. SB

      Of course.

    12. MB

      Okay. So, stick your arm out.

    13. SB

      Yeah.

    14. MB

      And hold it up. Don't let me push it down, okay?

    15. SB

      Don't let me push down.

    16. MB

      Yeah. Okay, got that. Now, I want you to do that while lying, and the lie I'd like you to say is, "I love to vomit."

    17. SB

      Okay. I love to vomit. (laughs)

    18. MB

      Okay, say it holding your arm up.

    19. SB

      Yeah.

    20. MB

      Say it.

  20. 1:17:46 – 1:23:20

    Lying Makes You Weak

    1. MB

    2. SB

      I love to vomit. Why? That's so weird.

    3. MB

      Now say, "I love fresh air."

    4. SB

      Um, I love fresh, I love fresh air.

    5. MB

      (sighs) Uh, I'm trying my very hardest. Say it again.

    6. SB

      I love fresh air. (laughs)

    7. MB

      Now say, "I love to vomit."

    8. SB

      I love to vomit. Why is that? That's so strange.

    9. MB

      This is why polygraph machines work on everybody but psychopaths.

    10. SB

      Just for people that couldn't h- see that because they were listening, when... I don't know if I've just been, like, messed with in some way, but-

    11. MB

      (laughs)

    12. SB

      ... when I said, "I love to vomit," I... she could push my hand down.

    13. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    14. SB

      But when I said, "I love fresh air," she couldn't push my hand down, and it... she was trying both times. She was pushing-

    15. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    16. SB

      ... hard both times, and I would think that I'd be able to resist the f-

    17. MB

      You would.

    18. SB

      ... both forces.

    19. MB

      Yeah.

    20. SB

      But when I said, "I love to vomit," it was like... The only way I can describe it was, I wasn't actually connected to my strength and my hand.

    21. MB

      Yeah, exactly.

    22. SB

      I wasn't in... It was like I was inside my head, so I couldn't also, at the same time, think about you- you're about to push me.

    23. MB

      Right.

    24. SB

      It was like there was two different systems.

    25. MB

      Yes. Because the body lives in reality. The body is honest. Only the mind and only the verbal mind can lie to us and tell us things, um, that we- that we can believe even though they're not true. So, "I love to vomit," is, uh, a statement that says it's okay to- for me to be... feel horrible.But a smaller version of this is, uh, I often speak to groups, and often they're in, like, hotel ballrooms or in auditoriums, and I'll stop right in the middle of the speech and say, apropos of nothing, "Is everyone comfortable?" And they'll say, "Yes." And, "No, really, truly, is everyone? Are you genuinely comfortable? Are you really comfortable?" And they say, "Yes, go on with your speech." And then I say, "So how many of you, if you were sitting at home alone, if you were at home alone right now, how many of you would be in exactly the position you're in at this moment?" And nobody raises a hand. And then I say, "Why not?" And they have to sit and think for a long time before someone finally says, "I'm not completely comfortable this way." And I would say, "Well, that's okay because humans can tolerate a lot of suffering, and this is mild. What concerns me and should concern you is that 30 seconds ago, you swore to me in broad daylight that you were absolutely comfortable while you're, you knew you weren't."

    26. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    27. MB

      "Your body knew you weren't comfortable and your mind was doing this little, uh, this little trick where it goes very quickly through this, 'Okay, in order to listen to speeches,' we sit in uncomfortable positions, 'and that's okay because it's worth the benefit we get out of it. So given that, I am tolerably comfortable.'" But all you think is, "I'm comfortable," when you're not comfortable. So people come to me and they're in jobs where they're not comfortable, in relationships where they're, like, sometimes in intense suffering, in religions where they're not comfortable, in all kinds of places, and they're, they think they're comfortable, but they're getting sick. They're getting physically sick or they're getting addicted to a substance because they're trying to numb the discomfort they won't acknowledge. And so pretty much all I do is help people get in touch with a really, really benevolent friend called suffering. When you know what makes you suffer, you're getting accurate information from your entire neurological system about what's working for you and what isn't and what would be better, what would be more comfortable, just a little bit, and if you keep correcting, I call them one-degree turns, I would be a little more comfortable doing this. So I didn't, uh, like, run off a cliff method. Don't do my way. Do the one-degree turns. If you're in an airplane and it turns one degree north every half hour, over 10,000 miles you won't even notice you're turning but you'll be in a completely different place.

    28. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    29. MB

      And that's just noticing, "Oh, I'm, this isn't very comfortable for me. I would rather do this. You know, my girlfriend is anxious. I could break my back trying to figure out what's going on and getting her enough presents to make her happy, or I could go in the other room, sit down, be gentle with myself, maybe do a little writing about how I feel. That would be a little more comfortable."

    30. SB

      It almost feels like we've been trained not to listen to how we feel.

  21. 1:23:20 – 1:25:40

    How Do We Find Our Meaning and Purpose?

    1. SB

      Well, I think, um, I think, yeah, uh, one of the things, like, the reason I say that is 'cause I've been saying it on stage and I wanted to see if you thought it was true, this idea, 'cause people ask me all the time, they ask me about meaning and purpose and what decision they should make and should they quit their job or quit their relationship, and my response for the last, I'd say, 12 months has just been to try and impress upon them that they were born with this thing inside them-

    2. MB

      Yes. Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... which is how you feel.

    4. MB

      Yeah.

    5. SB

      And you- you- you've learnt not to listen to it because your mother's opinion of which university you go to-

    6. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    7. SB

      ... has, like, superseded it and Instagram has. But I know it's there because I know, like, evolutionarily you wouldn't be here-

    8. MB

      Yeah.

    9. SB

      ... if your body didn't have signals to tell you to run, to tell you to be scared, to tell you to move away from this person.

    10. MB

      Yeah.

    11. SB

      So I know it's there, but you've just probably tuned it out.

    12. MB

      Yeah.

    13. SB

      And, um, I say that to people and I've- I've almost never asked them if that resonated with them, but I just- just been saying it for a while.

    14. MB

      (laughs)

    15. SB

      So I don't even know if it's, like, true, but it's just how I experience life.

    16. MB

      (laughs) I suspect it does.

    17. SB

      'Cause my decision, like, the reason why I'm sat here now is because I've just, I quit a lot of stuff.

    18. MB

      Yes.

    19. SB

      So, like, and I quit. People go, "Oh, you're so young," yeah. It's, like, actually it's not that I made great decisions, it's just I think the skill of quitting was one that just came naturally to me. So, like, I don't like being at school. I stopped going. I don't like-

    20. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    21. SB

      ... university. I left after the first lecture.

    22. MB

      (laughs)

    23. SB

      I started a business, did it for two years, quit that business out the blue, started another business, did that one for six, seven years, quit that one out of the blue.

    24. MB

      I love it.

    25. SB

      And, um, it's al- it was all, like, the, I didn't need to have a place to go to.

    26. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    27. SB

      I didn't need to have, like, a better option. It was just-

    28. MB

      Right.

    29. SB

      ... this doesn't feel good.

    30. MB

      I love that.

  22. 1:25:40 – 1:27:49

    What If You Don't Want to Do Something but Feel Like You Have To?

    1. MB

    2. SB

      What if you don't wanna do it, but there's something telling you that you have to?

    3. MB

      Yeah.

    4. SB

      So, it c- could be, like, a horrible work meeting or that, that event you've been-

    5. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    6. SB

      ... invited to with that person which you don't particularly like anyway, that baby shower you didn't wanna go to.

    7. MB

      So, I like... Y- y- you have to get more and more attentive to what's going on inside, and I, uh, I think some form of meditation, whether it's expressive writing, or painting, or just sitting still is very helpful at noticing these fine details. And- and there's... I- I'm kind of joking when I say if you don't wanna do it, you don't have to do it, don't do it. But ultimately, that's true, and the way you decide there are things that you don't want to do but you actually do have to do them, not because people want you to, but because you have to do them. And the way I experienced that, um, I like to describe it with something the Buddha used to say a lot, and that was, "Wherever you find a body of water, you can know if it's the sea because the sea always tastes of salt. And wherever you find enlightenment, awakening, your own truth, your path, you can always recognize it no matter what form it takes, because enlightenment always tastes of freedom." He did not say happiness. He did not say benefit. He did not say, you know, mania, true love. He said freedom. And when you know... Like, I did not want to meet with my parents (laughs) , for example, in my therapist's office. I was terrified of both of them, um, and of the whole community. My therapist could've been run out of business in the town we lived in. Um, but if I had not done it, I would not have been as free. So, I had to do it. But that's a really different "I have to do it" than, "My mother really, really would be happier if I became a doctor."

    8. SB

      Hmm.

  23. 1:27:49 – 1:29:49

    What Is Freedom?

    1. SB

      Freedom.

    2. MB

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      What is freedom in that definition of the word?

    4. MB

      When I asked you what your body felt when you started paying attention to it and you said it relaxed, it's a sense of... I- I also mentioned flow, um, which is the sense of being completely... uh, almost a sense of self-disappearing and being in complete harmony with something that is moving through the world. Um, my undergraduate degree is in Chinese, and so I know... I found out about Taoism early in my life, and it's not really a religion the way we would think of it. It's the sense that there is an energy that flows through nature, and that if you don't fight it, you will... you will live the life you were meant to live. And the sense of letting go of everything else except letting that thing work with you and through you, that, to me, is freedom.

    5. SB

      When it comes to food, I trust my gut, and I trust ZOE, a business I'm an investor in and today's sponsor of this podcast. All the nutritionists I've spoken to have highlighted just how misleading information is out there when it comes to food. Take healthy halos. The claims you see on packaging that say things like low sugar and nothing artificial are often a sign of foods to avoid. Have you ever noticed a health claim on fresh fruit? You probably get my point. Understandably, there's loads of distrust out there. Who should you turn to for accurate information? I use ZOE, which is backed by one of the world's largest microbiome databases and most scientifically advanced at-home gut health tests. ZOE gives you proven science whenever you need it. As a ZOE member, you'll get an at-home test kit and personalized nutrition program to help you make smarter food choices that support your gut. To sign up, visit zoe.com and use my code STEPHEN10 for 10% off your membership. That's zoe.com, code STEPHEN10. Trust your gut. Trust ZOE.

  24. 1:29:49 – 1:35:54

    How Different Is the Martha at 32 to Now?

    1. SB

      From the person you were at, what, 32 years old, just before 32 years old you were saying-

    2. MB

      Uh-huh.

    3. SB

      ... or, well, throughout, throughout your teenage years, t- teenage years to the person you are now, how radical is the difference? So if I met that-

    4. MB

      (laughs)

    5. SB

      ... 18, 19-year-old teenager-

    6. MB

      Oh, my God.

    7. SB

      ... and she sat down here...

    8. MB

      I just went back for the first time in years. I- I had a gig in Boston, so I went back to Cambridge, which is next to it, and I went with my wife (laughs) , um, something that couldn't have happened when I was 17. I had the sense of tapping my younger self on the shoulder and saying, "I am, I am from your future, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that it is possible for you to live in a state of almost continuous joy and that you can get there without dying. You can get there. In fact, your job in this world is to find a way to live in a state of continuous joy without dying."

Episode duration: 2:16:46

Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript

Transcript of episode fajtQSCHfvE

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

Add to Chrome