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Dr Rangan ChatterjeeDr Rangan Chatterjee

Heal Trauma & Chaos: How To Declutter Every Part Of Your Life Starting Today! | Dr. Ramani

Whether it’s the inability to stick to our health goals, leave a toxic relationship, or get that promotion, we often seem to be our own worst enemies.

Dr. Rangan ChatterjeehostDr. Ramaniguest
Feb 1, 20231h 52mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

  1. 0:00 – 5:10

    Why Good Intentions Fail: The Many Faces of Self-Sabotage

    1. RC

      I thought a really nice place to start would be around self-sabotage.

    2. RA

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    3. RC

      Number one, it's not something I've really spoken about much before on my show.

    4. RA

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    5. RC

      But I think the second point is that I see this in practice. Many people want to make changes in their life. They know what-

    6. RA

      Mm

    7. RC

      ... they should be doing. You know, I, I wanna get up earlier to meditate. I want to eat better.

    8. RA

      Yeah, yeah.

    9. RC

      I wanna find time to exercise.

    10. RA

      Mm-hmm.

    11. RC

      Yet despite the best intentions-

    12. RA

      Mm

    13. RC

      ... they don't actually manage to follow through.

    14. RA

      Yeah.

    15. RC

      Is this something you've seen, and maybe you could talk about, you know, what's going on here, basically?

    16. RA

      Absolutely, all the time. And I think that what ends up happening is that people will, like you said, especially s- in, and we're talking, it's the beginning of the year, they set a lot of... They'll set goals. They don't see the goals through, and that almost results in more distress. And so getting to the core of self-sabotage is so essential, and the challenge with self-sabotage is it's so multifaceted, right? I mean, it has... It's, it, like all, like any issue relevant to mental health, it sits on a spectrum, right? It's not an, it's not like you're a self-sabotager and I'm not. It's not an either/or. It's not a black or white. You know, at some level, w- self-sabotage is something we definitely see as part of m- mental health issues, like depression, that a person, for example, who's depressed will have the thought of, uh, "I'm never gonna amount to anything," or, "I have no hope in the future." And so in a way, that belief can drive behavior. So that's one sort of compartment of self-sabotage. Another way self-sabotage shows up is not... A- again, we don't wanna simplify it. It's not like somebody says, wakes up one morning and says, "I'm gonna ruin everything I did today." It's very subtle. And so what we sort of classically see in the self-sabotage universe is stuff like procrastination, social comparison, um, taking on too much. Um, i- it's, it's behaviors that almost set a person up to not be able to succeed. So it would be a person... Uh, I'll give an example, 'cause I was a university professor for a very long time. I would see students who were working full time, and then they would sign up for six classes. And I'd say, "This is not possible." You know, they'd say, "I wanna graduate early." And I'll say, "Everything's going to implode. You'll feel like a failure as a student. You're gonna feel like a failure as an employee." Many of them had other responsibilities too. And yet the big goal of I wanna finish school in the allotted amount of time or, you know, they... It was, it was this, uh, almost a sort of a self-sabotaging level of grandiosity. And so we'd have to bring them down and say, "It's okay to take five or six years to graduate from college, but if you're gonna work full time, let's set this up differently." So there's sort of different issues around self-sabotage, which is sort of what is the core of it, what might be driving it. Then there are the sort of foreshadowing behaviors like procrastination, social comparison. Um, a great example would be going on social media. It's, that, that actually is a form of self-sabotage. A person will... Give you an example, Rangan. A person will, it's, will wanna lose weight, okay? And they'll go on social media ostensibly for inspiration, and look at these people who have these dramatic weight loss stories, even their friends who are getting up every morning and doing some CrossFit, and then they're showing their smoothie they made for breakfast. And then this person simply isn't able to do that, for whatever their reasons are. They may be very real, practical reasons. But as they see their friends' success on social media at weight loss, or even parenting is another great example.

    17. RC

      Mm.

    18. RA

      A person might be a parent of young children and feel like, "I'm failing at this every day," and yet they see their friend with their perfectly coiffed children and saying-

    19. RC

      Yeah

    20. RA

      ... "I'm a failure." And so w- looking at that will make a person say, "I don't even know why I should try." That's another example of self-sabotage. So and then there's obviously the self-sabotage behaviors of not doing, procrastinating, because a person feels too overwhelmed.

    21. RC

      Yeah.

    22. RA

      So it's a complicated behavior.

    23. RC

      Yeah, it, it's really interesting. Um, I think that example around weight loss and-

    24. RA

      Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

    25. RC

      ... as you say, going on for, in inverted commas, inspiration, but without realizing it actually is probably making that goal a lot harder to achieve because of how one is going to feel or one potentially could feel afterwards. Let's go-

    26. RA

      Right

    27. RC

      ... through some of these in a bit of detail. You mentioned procrastination, okay?

    28. RA

      Mm, mm-hmm.

    29. RC

      This is something I think everyone, I think, on some- [laughs]

    30. RA

      Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely

  2. 5:10 – 12:17

    Procrastination as Pain Avoidance and How to Chop Tasks Down

    1. RA

      So procrastination's a big one, right? 'Cause it links very much to anxiety, okay? It links to another self-sabotaging pattern of perfectionism, which is a huge self-sabotage issue, right? And it is also, again, the taking on of too much. So when a person procrastinates, what you have to remember is we as human beings rarely do something unless it's rewarding. That's how people are. We are, we are ultimately really, really smart and angsty rats in a maze. You know, we, we do things that feel good or feel right or feel better. And to that end, human beings, like all, pretty much like all life forms, avoid pain. So procrastination is a form of avoiding pain. Now, you might say, what pain is someone avoiding by putting something off? Because that task- That task may, uh, bring up feelings of inferiority. That task may bring up feelings of incompetence, of, um, insecurity, of having to face down an uncomfortable truth, any number of things that that task, that thing that needs to get done, represents. So what better way to avoid the pain than to not engage in the task? Okay? So now the task isn't getting done. For the moment, you're relieved, right? I'm gonna give you the tiniest, simplest example, 'cause it happened to me an hour ago. I set my alarm for 5:45 this morning so I'd be able to get up, take a shower, put my face on, be in front of you. But I had worked late last night, and when I woke up, and it's still dark, right? So I was like, "Oh, I want to get out of bed." So I procrastinate 15 minutes, 15 minutes more. Now it's 6:25, reading, reading the news, reading a book. Anything to get out. It's very cold for LA here. So I get out of bed at 6:25. Now, I have 20 minutes to get ready, right? Scrambling into the shower, throwing on a face. My bathroom's a mess. The cat's food is everywhere, right? D- and- and I was like, "Oh, I wanna be really prepared for this." And ultimately, yes, I was at 6:59 setting up my Zoom, but that's not how I wanted to show up. Now, that's a small example, but why didn't I get out of bed? Not because I wanted to ruin talking to you today, but because it felt good to stay in that bed.

    2. RC

      Yeah.

    3. RA

      It was warm. It was co- do you see what I'm saying? I was avoiding the pain. That's simple. Now take that to anything else, studying, cooking, meal prep, um, exercising. So I always will tell people that the most important thing to do is take a task and chop it up. Chop it up into manageable chunks. One way to do that is time. I'll tell people, set an alarm. You have to do whatever this thing is for 15 minutes. In 15 minutes, that alarm's gonna go off, and you can stop doing the task. In a majority of cases, a person's like, "Okay, 15 minutes, I can do it." I would say probably 60-70% of people will keep going. They're like, "Okay, well, I'm doing it now."

    4. RC

      Yeah.

    5. RA

      And they'll turn off the alarm, and they'll keep going. There is a subset that'll say, "Okay, the 15's done. I'm out of this task." But most people will see it through further. It can also be taking it and breaking it into component pieces. I'm just gonna chop the carrots first, and then I'm gonna take a break. Whatever it may be. I'm not gonna start, I'm not gonna go and run 5K the first day I work out. The first day, I might do 10 minutes on a treadmill. What we're doing is trying to create habit versus doing, taking on these enormous tasks.

    6. RC

      Yeah.

    7. RA

      And I think the enormity of the task is also part of the issue, is that, okay, a person's saying, "I have to study for the exam." Well, what does that mean? You know, does that mean you have to read this chapter, make an outline, um, uh, take a sample test? Break down the big amorphous goal or task into its component processes. But that's practical.

    8. RC

      Yeah.

    9. RA

      On the other side of this is the management of the anxiety, and that's a deeper dive. Now, ideally, if a person's in therapy, they could talk with a therapist about what they're actually anxious about. If a person's not in therapy, and this is not causing them significant distress, they can sit down and ask themselves a question. You're procrastinating. What are you afraid of? Okay? And that's the question of what... 'Cause that's what, what is the pain that's being brought out by this task? Because you're avoiding it.

    10. RC

      Yeah.

    11. RA

      And you're avoiding this because it's uncomfortable. And to really do a deep dive into what that discomfort is and to start to sort of take apart some of those beliefs, because in understanding that, the procrastination can lose some of its power.

    12. RC

      Yeah. It's, it's so beautiful the way you broke that down. So much for me there to reflect on. The first thing is that it kind of makes sense that we procrastinate, because we're trying to-

    13. RA

      Mm. Absolutely

    14. RC

      ... avoid discomfort or pain. As you say, you know, it may be inferiority, incompetence, uncomfortable truths. Whatever it might be, you know, we're human. Of course we have a bias to wanting to avoid that, so I guess we can-

    15. RA

      Right

    16. RC

      ... be compassionate to ourselves about that. Second thing was is that when you talked about breaking it down into manageable chunks, well, that's kind of what all the best behavioral change science shows us as well. If we wanna make a change, you gotta-

    17. RA

      Exactly

    18. RC

      ... you know, you gotta start really, really small.

    19. RA

      Mm.

    20. RC

      And one thing that came up for me as you were describing that is something I have spoken about on the show before is something my wife and I try and do every evening, which is what we call the five-minute tea ritual.

    21. RA

      Mm.

    22. RC

      And the goal is simply that, you know, people these days are so busy juggling work, childcare, elderly parents, whatever it might be. It's very easy to be in the same physical space but not actually spent meaningful time together. So we have this thing where once our children are in beds, we'll come to the kitchen, and it's five minutes. We say the, the requirement is for five minutes we sit down over a cup of mint tea or whatever it might be and catch up with each other.

    23. RA

      Mm-hmm.

    24. RC

      Now, when we do it regularly, our relationship is immeasurably better.

    25. RA

      Yeah.

    26. RC

      There's more connection, more intimacy. Everything is better. And when we think we're too busy to do it, little niggles and problems start to build up. And it's, what's incredible and what, what I think relates to what you just said is if you say, for example, "I need to spend more time with my partner," or my flatmate, whatever it might be, and you say it's gotta be an hour-

    27. RA

      Mm-hmm

    28. RC

      ... "Ah, I don't have time," but because it's five minutes, it's not as if at five minutes we go, "Hey, babe, you know, you're done now. You, you, uh, you've had your five minutes." No.

    29. RA

      Right.

    30. RC

      Some days when we're busy, it will just be five minutes.

  3. 12:17 – 15:56

    Avoidance, Habits and a Client Who Couldn't Reply to Messages

    1. RA

      Yeah, it, it is. I mean, there, w- a part of that, what you're also talking about is intention. And, you know, it, in, in, in pr- procrastination sits alongside avoidance and also sits alongside intention, right? Because it could very well be that you and your wife could say, "Okay, let's not do it tonight. Let's put it off tomorrow. We'll do 10 minutes tomorrow." And it doesn't work that way, right? Some things do need to be touchstones every single day. They need to be things we do every day. And we do... A- and everyone will say, "No, I'm not able to learn a habit." I say, "The hell you're not. You brush your teeth every day."

    2. RC

      Yeah.

    3. RA

      It's not like you say, "I'm gonna brush my teeth on Friday Five Times as long to make up for the other days." All of us get up in the morning, we do our thing, we brush our teeth. There's things we are... And that's not, it's not even, like, doing other things like drinking water. That is a bodily function we have to do. Brushing our teeth, if you wanna view it as it's an optional behavior, yet everyone managed to get that habit on board. And when we think of it, everything is like brushing teeth. The thing is we don't feel insecure about brushing our teeth.

    4. RC

      Yeah.

    5. RA

      We do feel insecure about other things. And so I think that that's why it's about drilling down. And what you're talking about too is if there ever was a point when you or your wife were saying, "Oh, I don't wanna do T tonight," that would speak to a larger issue. What are you afraid of? Maybe there was something you didn't wanna talk about with each other. Like, what were you avoiding?

    6. RC

      Mm.

    7. RA

      That avoidance piece, which is the core of anxiety, what are you trying to avoid? Because all of anxiety is about avoidance. Nobody wants to feel uncomfortable. Why aren't you making that phone call? Why aren't you answering that email? Why haven't you returned that text message? I was working with somebody recently who really struggles with social anxiety, and one of their biggest struggles was returning text messages and emails in a timely manner. And it was causing problems for this person, right? It was resulting in disrupted social events. It was leaving this person's social-- people in this person's social network were starting to sort of split away from them. They were screwing up job opportunities by not returning emails and even paying bills late. So there's a lot of things happening. And when we came to the core of it, what happened was this, this, this person then recognized, "I actually don't know what to say. I feel like I'm y- I'm-

    8. RC

      Mm-hmm

    9. RA

      ... hogging up people's time." It was, again, it was a very classically socially anxious sort of framework. And then in not answering these messages for so long, this person actually did, actually have a true mess on their hands now. Wasn't a mess two months before. It was a mess now when we were working on it. And so then it became that slow burn of once an hour returning a text. And then once the person started doing one, they returned others. It wasn't easy because some people said, "You know, we were hurt you didn't respond to our messages." But when this person understood and was able to see in some ways the kind of, the distortion-

    10. RC

      Yeah

    11. RA

      ... of their belief that, you know, that they were using up people's time, they reached out to you. Why wouldn't they wanna hear back from you? But that went to, again, a deeper core insecurity this person had, and that, that ended up becoming the work of therapy.

    12. RC

      Yeah. I, I really love this. It's really trying to dig into-

    13. RA

      Mm-hmm

    14. RC

      ... the root cause. What's really going on here? Let's not overly focus on the procrastination necessarily. It's like, what does that tell us?

    15. RA

      Right.

    16. RC

      What is that teaching us about-

    17. RA

      Exactly. It's teaching us

    18. RC

      ... what's really going on? So I think that's a, that's a really great example. Okay, so procrastination is one way in which people, uh, self-sabotage. I think the other one you've already mentioned is comparing ourselves to others.

    19. RA

      Comparing ourselves. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

  4. 15:56 – 19:58

    Social Comparison and Knowing What You Stand For

    1. RC

      Right? So I imagine comparing ourselves to others was also a problem 20 years ago pre-social media-

    2. RA

      Right

    3. RC

      ... but I suspect it's got [laughs] immeasurably worse.

    4. RA

      Oh, it, it's... I, I, I've had the tremendous privilege of training and practicing as a therapist before there was ever social media.

    5. RC

      Okay.

    6. RA

      And, and now, now I'm practicing with it. And I have to tell you, those of us who ha- have been in this game long enough to understand those bookends, it's like the difference between l- living in a life, then an asteroid hits the Earth, and then living in a new life. Like, it was... And it wasn't overnight, but when I think back to the sorts of, the ways we were grappling with some of these issues, you're absolutely right. Social comparison has always been an issue. Before it might've been a person compared themselves to their neighbor and the neighbor's new car, or a cousin and the cousin's new job, or a classmate or a friend. But now, though, the focus of comparison is everybody in the world that you might identify with. That's why I gave the example of mothers of small children. That even if a mother with a small child, you might live in Los Angeles, and the mother of that small child might live in Boston, you identify with them as being a mother of a small child, much like you would a friend-

    7. RC

      Mm

    8. RA

      ... with a small child. The difference is this is a very different person than you, and yet you're compares- comparing yourself to them on that one key similarity, right? And so what this has done is it has caused a tremendous distortion and a tremendous anxiety. But there is a little bit of good news, and there's some of this goes to this, some of this work on digital natives versus digital immigrants. And if you talk to adolescents-

    9. RC

      Mm-hmm

    10. RA

      ... and p- people who've pretty much grown up in the social media era, so it has, it's sort of been around since they were children, they're actually a bit more circumspect than you'd think. I'm the parent of two, an adolescent and a young adult, and I'm thinking, "Oh, my gosh, it's gonna be distorted." It's certainly distorted a little, but they are also saying, "Yeah, no, I get it. They're doing this. They're this. They..." They under-

    11. RC

      Yeah

    12. RA

      ... they're a little bit aware of some of the manipulations that happen on social media, which I actually think at a certain age group that didn't grow up with it, there's a greater vulnerability. But all of that said, whether the social comparison is happening in an online space, in your own peer group, in your family group, in your community- It re- what it does, it sets up sort of a you're y- you're now using the barometer as something outside of yourself. Human beings are a social species. We are going to use other people as sort of a touchstone. But when we over-rely on that, then what ends up happening is we start living in service to what we think the world wants us to look like, the world expects us to do, what we think the world is telling us, for example, good parenting is, instead of sort of saying, "Well, this is my family, these are my children-

    13. RC

      Mm

    14. RA

      ... this is what works for us," even if it may not be what works in the world. And I think that that, the ability to sort of separate one's self and identity from what the world is demanding from them, that's a really, that's a, a kind of a tall order, but when people try to do what they think the world wants, right? I have to take the vacation to this place and stay in this hotel and do this activity, because this is what looks good. I'm like, "Is that the vacation you really wanna take?" And then that's almost a self-sabotage of the, the precious amount of vacation time they have.

    15. RC

      Yeah.

    16. RA

      That now they've tried to go and do what they think someone else wants them to do, and they've lost a really important restorative recreational time. It can be, it can apply to anything, but the level of social comparison people are engaging in is really resulting in a lot of distress in, in all ways, instead of people saying, "What matters to me, it may not be the same as what sort of I'm being told matters-

    17. RC

      Yeah

    18. RA

      ... to the world at large."

    19. RC

      I mean,

  5. 19:58 – 36:42

    Chasing the Wrong Metrics of Success and Learning from Adversity

    1. RC

      firstly, I'm pleased to hear what you said about the digital natives. Um-

    2. RA

      Yeah. Mm-hmm

    3. RC

      ... you know, it's something I'm noticing as well. I-

    4. RA

      Mm

    5. RC

      ... my kids are 12 and 10 at the moment.

    6. RA

      Yeah, so they really are natives, yeah.

    7. RC

      But I, I wonder actually if [laughs] it's people in their 40s and 50s who might be the worst here. Like bec- 'cause-

    8. RA

      They are

    9. RC

      ... we didn't gr- we didn't grow up with it. And then I remember when Facebook came out in, I don't know, 2005, 2007, and it was just incredible what you could share with your friends and who you could stay in touch with. And then within two years, you've got like 2,000 friends. It's like, that's ridiculous. I don't know these 2,000 people. They're not real friends. Um-

    10. RA

      Right

    11. RC

      ... so I think, I think that's, that's really interesting. But you know, Dr. Ramani, what can people actually do? Because it's easy to say to people, "Don't compare."

    12. RA

      Right. Right.

    13. RC

      "It's not good for you." We all know when we compare-

    14. RA

      Right

    15. RC

      ... too much-

    16. RA

      Right. Yeah

    17. RC

      ... like, it doesn't feel good.

    18. RA

      No.

    19. RC

      Yet these platforms are so, I don't know, they're, they're so tempting for so many of us. What do you practically do with people who are falling into that trap?

    20. RA

      Yeah. It's, it's, it's a tough one, because I think that in some ways, when you're younger, you are more impressionable. I think that social pressures matter more when you're younger, which actually makes sense in terms of, because that's what a time when people are starting a career, choosing a partner, all of that. As you get older, I think that the, um, the kind of the stereotype of the older person is like, "Ah, I don't care what other people-

    21. RC

      Yeah

    22. RA

      ... think of me," there is some truth to that. And so I, I think that the place to begin is not to tell people to not socially compare, but to actually drill down into themselves and very intentionally, honestly, even once a day, to ask themselves the question, who am I? What do I stand for? What am I about? It, they seem like such simple questions. You can do them while you're sitting on a bus, on a subway, in the car, taking a walk. Look, who are you? Like, what, what, what is, what is your you? You know, what, what, what matters to you? And all of a sudden, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're trying to shoot for something extraordinary or ordinary or everything in the middle. When you do that, you may catch yourself in saying, "Ah, I was so..." It's really sort of the model of keeping up with the Joneses. I was so focused on keeping up with the Joneses that I actually, what I'm about as a person might say is, "I'm about family, and actually I don't really care that I have a big car if I have, if I'm able to get home by 4:30 and spend time with my children." Someone else will say, "I'm a teacher, and I'm really about teaching, and yeah, maybe I'm not doing this and this or whatever, but that's what I, that's what I've signed up to do," or whatever it is a person does. I'm a storyteller, whatever. Uh, you know, and it's funny, I, I, G- I can only give this from a personal example, but I was recently in a situation where I was being told, "You're not doing enough of this, Ramani. You're not doing enough of that, and you could be doing this, and you could be doing that," and actually was really anxious about it in the last few days. And when I woke up this morning [laughs] from my procrastinated rush, I did in the shower reflect on this idea of Ramani, what are you about? Like, what, what is it you set out to do? And when I did that, it became a recalibration of, yeah, actually you are doing what you set out to do. Perhaps if you did what these other people were doing, you'd make more money, you'd have more notoriety, but I'm like, do you need those things? I'm like-

    23. RC

      Yeah

    24. RA

      ... anyone wants a little more money, but yeah, more money, more headaches. I've, I'm able to pay my mortgage. I'm, I've got a car. I've got food in the house. And so I thought, before you get pulled in that direction, pay attention to whether you're living in alignment. And I actually don't think a lot of people have ever asked themselves that question of who are you and what are you about. Because the more of that you do, it does create a little distance between yourself and the social media, and you're able to say, "Ah, I see that this person is doing this, and that's great. I'm happy that they're doing X, Y, or Z. I'm doing what I want to do." And then all of a sudden you're able to actually occupy more of a co-located space of they're doing that, that's different than me. Sometimes we may even wonder if I had taken that path or what would this be like. But then also I, I, I, even with my own clients, I'll say, "Let's do a little bit of guided imagery work." W- work it as a mental experiment. Take it out in your mind if you had those other things. Like, if even if I'm saying, "Well, if I had more n- notoriety or more money, then how would that pull me off my original mission? What would my day-to-day life look like? Is that what I really want?"

    25. RC

      Yeah.

    26. RA

      You know, the old adage goes, "Be careful what you wish for, you might get it." And so I think that that kind of mental work on one's self, we are so focused on other, other, other, what do I look like to the world, that many people aren't asking themselves a simple exi- e- existential question of, what are you about?

    27. RC

      Yeah.

    28. RA

      And then once you start doing that and you become your reference point, even when you get pulled, and we all do, "Mm, like that person's got it together," or, "Whoa, that's a really nice house," or, "How do you have so much time to travel?" You then start seeing yourself within the context of your own life, what you stand for, what you are about. That, that I think is something that people aren't doing enough. And that instead... And then if you wanna look at social media, you'll be potentially looking-

    29. RC

      Yeah

    30. RA

      ... at it through new eyes.

  6. 36:42 – 45:38

    Toxic Relationships as the Ultimate Self-Sabotage

    1. RC

      So under the umbrella of self-sabotage, we've spoken about procrastination, we've spoken about comparing ourselves to others.

    2. RA

      Mm-hmm

    3. RC

      I think another way in which we often self-sabotage without realizing it is when we're surrounded by people in our lives, I guess you could call them toxic people or people who aren't necessarily supporting our goals and what we actually want. Is this something you've seen? Is this, would you say that this also fits under the umbrella of self-sabotage?

    4. RA

      Absolutely. I mean, again, my expertise is in working with people who are healing from what are called narcissistic and antagonistic relationships. I don't think, I, I think this goes well beyond somebody not supporting your goals. This is about people who are actually invalidating somebody else, right? Confusing them, devaluing them, t- you know, leaving them or saying to them that you are less than, chronically criticizing them. I think that that's actually probably the biggest self-sabotage of all, is continuing to stay in those relationships and not attempting to either see them clearly, or when it's possible, it's not always possible, to distance or get out of them. Because I think that for a lot of folks, they'll actually get, they'll understand why they're avoiding things, they'll understand why they're procrastinating. They will, they can even train themselves to avoid the social media. But if day in and day out, there's a voice in your head that is, that is invalidating you, that is leav- leaving you feeling less than, that is questioning you, that is questioning reality, you're constantly confused, you're filled with self-doubt, and you continue to maintain that relationship in the status quo and keep thinking, "Well, maybe I can change them. Maybe I can get them to notice me." That is the ultimate self-sabotage-

    5. RC

      Mm

    6. RA

      ... because you can give so much bandwidth to those toxic relationships, and just keep getting sucked deeper and deeper into another person's vortex. And like I said, I know that a lot of people can't distance from, uh, really unhealthy relationships. They may be in marriages. They, for cultural, traditional, religious or reasons of finances or children, they can't leave. Or they, they genuinely love the person and they say, "For all their toxicity, there's something that matters to me here." They're may be, may be their family, and they feel they can't step away. It could be a job that they need. So I'm not so arrogant as to sit here and say, "Well, the easy solution is to get out." But the kind of work I do with folks is to say, when something is toxic enough and it has been consistently for a long time, and nothing you're doing is changing it, and in fact often making it worse, that there really has to be some level of radical acceptance that this isn't going to shift, and realistic expectations for what you've got in front of you. I'm not saying it doesn't still sting or hurt, but what may come of that is you're less likely to blame yourself for what's happening. 'Cause if you're blaming yourself for what's happening, your entire conception of yourself is shifting to, "I'm a bad person." And so these relationships really do shift how people think about themselves. People do feel like, "I'm a bad person. I'm disloyal. I'm thinking all these bad thoughts about someone I'm not supposed to be thinking bad thoughts about." And I have to say probably of all the causes of self-sabotage I've ever worked with clinically or run into, this idea of maintaining toxic relationships and not seeing them clearly is probably one of the, if not the biggest contributor.

    7. RC

      So for people who are in relationships where they're having difficulties-

    8. RA

      Mm-hmm

    9. RC

      ... it sounds like there are a number of options, right?

    10. RA

      Mm-hmm.

    11. RC

      What advice do you have for people when they're not sure what to do? You know-

    12. RA

      Mm-hmm

    13. RC

      ... should I stay in this relationship? Should I try and work at it? Um-

    14. RA

      Mm-hmm

    15. RC

      ... should I leave this relationship? I know it's a very [laughs] difficult to give a black-and-white answer to that. What are some of the things you would encourage people to think about-

    16. RA

      Mm

    17. RC

      ... when considering what they should do-

    18. RA

      Mm

    19. RC

      ... with the state of their relationship?

    20. RA

      So again, I sit with yourself right off the bat, and especially if it's, again, this is not a judgment you can make after knowing someone for a week or two. Odds are that by the time a toxic relationship is sort of taking a toll on someone, they've been in it for a year or two, or even-

    21. RC

      Mm

    22. RA

      ... 50 or 60. But is to ask yourself the question, how will I proceed in this relationship if I know this person's not going to change and this circumstance is not going to change? Meaning the, the, the situation, the relationship. How am I gonna proceed? Because that's a very different question.

    23. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    24. RA

      Many people in these relationships are living on hope. It's gonna get better in a year. It's going to get better when they finish school. It's going to get better when the children move out. It's gonna get better when this happens, when we have more money, yada, da, da, da. I'm saying, "No. Today, I'm asking you, if I'm telling you this relationship is not likely to change, what would you do?" Listen, some people say, "If this is never gonna change, I don't wanna spend another minute doing this," and they may actually set on the path of, of ending it. Some people say, some people will be hit with a wave of grief saying, "What? This is not gonna change?" And then say, I say, "No, it's not." And then the next series of questions is then, what do you need in life? A person will say, "Well, I want someone to talk to. I want people to spend time with." And that might then lead people down paths of cultivating friendships in a deeper way, um, joining social clubs, becoming more involved in workplace, volunteering in their community, getting involved in their spiritual community. Learning what sort of, what the dance is in their relationship, recognizing that, th- this is gonna sound like a strange example. I always call it the good, the bad, and the indifferent, but if they're really in a toxic relationship, I'll say, "Listen, if something really good happened to you, can you please take that to a really supportive friend first? Like, you got the promotion? Tell your friend. Tell someone you know is gonna be so happy for you. Get that good energy- And then when you tell that person who traditionally invalidates you and they're like, "Ugh, did that promotion of yours come with more money?" Or something cynical like that, you've already gotten those good feelings. It's not, I'm not saying it's not gonna hurt, but at least it doesn't deflate your balloon right out the gate. The same thing with bad news. I'll often say to folks, like, this person who's very toxic, for whatever reason they are, may not be able to be there the way for you and show up the way you need them to if you're going through something hard. Same thing, let's say you find out, I don't know, you get a medical diagnosis or you get, uh, bad news on a loan. I don't know. So whatever is the bad news. You take it to someone else and say, "Ugh, I got this bad news today. Can I talk it out with you?" You'll talk it out with somebody you care about who cares about you. For some people, that might be therapy, actually.

    25. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    26. RA

      And then when they have to talk with the toxic person about the bad news, they've already sort of approached it from a place of empathy and, and were held, held for a minute. The problem may still be the problem. They may still need to figure it out with the narcissistic person, I don't know, with a, a toxic person. The refrigerator's broken. But at least there was some empathy, so what's left to talk about? Indifferent stuff.

    27. RC

      Yeah.

    28. RA

      The weather, the neighbor's new window.

    29. RC

      [laughs]

    30. RA

      Um, and people say, "Well, that's not really a relationship." I'm like, yeah, no, it wasn't before. The difference was you were trying to make it into one. And so some people may write this off as cynical. I don't think it's cynical for a person to try to protect themselves. Sometimes these are ex- these are family relationships. Like, it could be, could be a person's mother-

  7. 45:38 – 56:46

    Unrealistic Relationship Expectations and the Pandemic's Toll

    1. RC

      if you're stuck in a relationship of whatever sort and-

    2. RA

      Mm-hmm

    3. RC

      ... it, it's as you say, you're, you're hoping every time it's gonna be different-

    4. RA

      Mm

    5. RC

      ... and you're getting upset every time, you've given your power away to that other person. You know, you are like-

    6. RA

      Right

    7. RC

      ... a little puppet on a string. Like, on the-

    8. RA

      Mm-hmm

    9. RC

      ... off chance that they treat you well or they, they behave in a way that you want them to behave, okay, great, you may have a good day, but-

    10. RA

      Right

    11. RC

      ... you're not really in control of your life at that point. So w- what I hear as you give some really quite profound advice on relationships there is-

    12. RA

      Mm-hmm

    13. RC

      ... you know, you're really adding some nuance to it. You're, you're almost... You know, in some ways, you're actually... And there's an irony that you're in LA as we have this conversation. You're in some ways shattering the myth of the Hollywood romantic relationship, right?

    14. RA

      Heck yeah.

    15. RC

      Yeah.

    16. RA

      I call myself the fairy tale killer. I'm like, "No, no, no, no. [laughs] This is not happening."

    17. RC

      Yeah, but, but it's, it's true 'cause I think a l- you know, buying into that story-

    18. RA

      Mm-hmm

    19. RC

      ... like many of us do growing up, that we're gonna just meet the one and fall in love, get married, and then life is gonna be roses and, you know, whatever else every single day, that's not reality. That, that is just not how it goes down. But again, if you-

    20. RA

      No

    21. RC

      ... think it is, you keep thinking that you're failing 'cause you're not meeting this fictional reality. And-

    22. RA

      Correct

    23. RC

      ... and at this wider point, the... And I wonder where you think this fits in here. In the West at least, we're becoming more and more individualistic, aren't we? We're living in nuclear families. We're often away from friends, tribe, family.

    24. RA

      Mm-hmm.

    25. RC

      We've moved away for work. And it's really interesting in, in these kind of settings, we often put a huge amount of pressure on our partners to be everything, to be-

    26. RA

      Yes. Yes

    27. RC

      ... you know, the, the romance, the, the confidants, the, you know, the great parent, the friend, whatever it might be. And, and so yes, there can be some very abusive relationships, I understand that, where the best thing might be to leave, of course. But maybe you could comment on some of these themes that I've brought up and how that relates to what you've just been talking about.

    28. RA

      Right. So there's sort of two pieces to this, right? So there is, first of all, there is the unrealistic expectation of what a relationship can be in our life. 'Cause we can harm even a healthy relationship with those expectations. This kind of fantasy that a, a, an intimate partnership is all things to us, is our best friend, is our hiking partner, is our sex partner, is our everything partner, it's unrealistic.

    29. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    30. RA

      We've never run ourselves like that as human beings.

  8. 56:46 – 1:05:09

    Taming the Inner Critic: IFS, Self-Compassion and ACT

    1. RC

      Another way I think people self-sabotage is with the voice inside their heads-

    2. RA

      Absolutely

    3. RC

      ... the negative thoughts, the negative voice basically that's just-

    4. RA

      Mm-hmm

    5. RC

      ... saying what could go wrong, and all these sort of things-

    6. RA

      Mm-hmm

    7. RC

      ... that many people struggle with. How would you encourage people to think about that if that's what's keeping them-

    8. RA

      Mm-hmm

    9. RC

      ... stuck in their lives?

    10. RA

      Well, so there's some interesting work on this. You know, there's work in models like internal family systems therapies and, uh, a- and even self-compassion work that talk about the inner critic, right? And even trauma therapists talk about this idea of the inner critic. If you wanna view that inner critic as being responsible for a lot of these negative voices, you're never gonna be, uh, you're never gonna be able to make it, you're never gonna find another job. You're a loser, you, you know, you are never gonna be able to support your family. Those, you know, those kinds of negative thoughts, right? That's the inner critic. The inner critic is something that we almost wanna just sort of, you know, strangle like, shut up, why are you doing this to me? But one thing that has been suggested by people who do this work, for example, this internal family systems work, is some of this idea that this inner critic actually evolved to protect us.

    11. RC

      Mm.

    12. RA

      It protects us from, for example, our, um, our fear of failure, right? Well, if someone's like, "Why even bother trying? You're such a loser," it's a cruel way to say it, but what the inner critic may be trying to protect us from is this much larger catastrophic experience of failure, right? But that's not the right way to do it. But what the inner critic is is the internalized voices we've heard all our lives. And so they get transformed into this sort of, and sometimes they're trying to keep us safe, like, "Ugh, why would you try that new job? You're perfectly fine in this town."

    13. RC

      Hmm.

    14. RA

      It's that sense of keeping the person safe. When people have been through any kind of trauma, safety is everything, and our sympathetic nervous systems evolve to keep us safe, which means we tend to be a bit more vigilant even when things are safe. Because if you've been through trauma, you've been through tr- tremendous danger, you wanna stay safe. The inner critic is doing all of that. When you look at Dr. Kristen Neff and other people's work on self-compassion, it becomes a really interesting offset to that, because I think a lot of time is wasted in talking about self-love. Like, tell yourself how beautiful and wonderful you are. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm not there. I just want to not be mean to myself. And that's where self-compassion comes in, and it's con- it consists of things like being kinder to yourself, being more forgiving to yourself, no longer judging yourself as much, recognizing that you're not the only person who's going through this. There's lots of people who are in the same situation. You're not the one outlier that's so-

    15. RC

      Hmm

    16. RA

      ... strange. And also not getting over-identified with your feelings, like thinking like it's always gonna be this terrible versus like, okay, things aren't that good right now. I guess they could be better in the future. Like holding a pos- a curious possibility for the idea that things could change. It's just sort of being a little nicer to yourself-

    17. RC

      Yeah

    18. RA

      ... and almost like sort of creating an inner compassionate friend to sort of offset that inner critic. But it can help to think of your inner critic as like, oh, I see what you're doing, inner critic. You're trying to protect me from looking foolish. And then that higher level is to say, you know what? If I look foolish, it's not the end of the world. I'll be okay. But I think what happens is we, those inner critical voices, we take them in as truths.

    19. RC

      Yeah.

    20. RA

      But if we could view them as a form of protection, that I see what's happening. My psyche, my interpsychic apparatus is trying to protect me from a fall, almost like an overly solicitous, controlling mother is like, "Don't get on the slide. Don't get on the swing. You might hurt your knee." That's, in a way, what that inner critic is trying to do. To which you have to say, "I got this, and if I fall off the slide, I'll just bandage my knee. I'll be fine." And so we almost have to be the grown-up-

    21. RC

      Yeah

    22. RA

      ... in the face of this rather infantilizing inner voice.

    23. RC

      Yeah, it's, it's a bit like what you said about procrastination. It's telling us something.

    24. RA

      Mm-hmm.

    25. RC

      Right?

    26. RA

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    27. RC

      That inner voice is telling us something.

    28. RA

      Yeah. Yes.

    29. RC

      Like instead of getting caught up in it and going, "Oh, it's saying that again," you know, "I'm not gonna do this," it's like, well, where's that come from?

    30. RA

      Correct.

  9. 1:05:09 – 1:14:26

    Gaining Perspective: Whiteboarding, Therapy, Journaling and Meditation

    1. RC

      one of the things that seeing someone like you in clinic or seeing a therapist gives people is perspective. It helps them step outside of their life to actually look at what's going on.

    2. RA

      Mm-hmm.

    3. RC

      And I think I've heard you talk about a process called whiteboarding, is it? Is that what you use with clients sometimes?

    4. RA

      I have, yes. I mean, but I think with whiteboarding it's, it's probably giving it more of a technique-y name than it deserves. You can do it with a piece of paper. Which is really laying things out diagrammatically. Sometimes just seeing your stuff written out, you're like, oh, I see the train there. I see where this is coming from. It's not ... Because the more we make things identity, so in other words, if you make a failure your identity ... When I, failure is even a strong word. A mistake. If you make a mistake your identity, ugh, I'm the, I'm the disorganized foolish person who can't keep anything in the right place and is never gonna succeed versus, you know, where, what, what is that voice protecting you against? Where did that come from? You sort of snake through the origins of that, and then you start to recognize that that voice often isn't your own. Again, it's internalized from other places. It's serving to protect you. It's might even be helping you avoid something else. But too often we let all of that simply become our identity. And that this idea of sort of whiteboarding it and putting it outside of you and then showing that this is coming from here, is there a different kind of response you could have? That that allows people to just sort of lay it all out and then even erase things and say, "Okay, I could try it this way," or- I didn't even realize that this was, I was internalizing this from my father or something like that. That there is a way to sort of do this by laying it out. But you're absolutely right, therapy is a perspective-inducing place. And when done right, the therapist will, again, not only bring empathy and compassion and respect, but also... I, I, I don't practice psychoanalytically. I, I practice very humanistically, so I'm very much present with my own emotions in the room. So when a client shares with me that they've had some kind of particularly invalidating experience, you'll see it on my face. And I, I might say something like, "Ouch," like, "That, that must have hurt," or, "Did that hurt you?" And they'll say, "Oh, you know, it did hurt me. I thought I was just being too sensitive."

    5. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    6. RA

      And in that moment, when I'm saying I'm just hearing a story as a third person and I could feel that hurt, and they're now v- saying, "Oh, it was okay to be hurt," like, "I'm not weird for that," that now what's happening is they're having the opportunity to have validation for very real emotions that they're experiencing. Especially for people in really antagonistic, toxic relationships who have been told over and over again, "You're a drama. You're being ridiculous. You have no right to feel that way."

    7. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    8. RA

      And so when someone's saying, "Gosh, that was hurtful," they're saying, "Oh, my gosh, my emotions do have validity." You have no idea how powerful that is, because all of a sudden now a person's giving their feelings permission, something they were told to cut off a long time ago.

    9. RC

      Trying to get this heightened perspective on our life, of course, can be done in many different ways. We went to therapy, this technique called whiteboarding. What is your perspective on things like journaling or meditation?

    10. RA

      Mm-hmm, yeah.

    11. RC

      'Cause these things can be fantastic, can't they? Where people can do-

    12. RA

      Yeah

    13. RC

      ... these things for themselves, and maybe get some learnings and some insights-

    14. RA

      Mm-hmm

    15. RC

      ... about their life-

    16. RA

      Mm-hmm

    17. RC

      ... if they just take a pause-

    18. RA

      Mm-hmm

    19. RC

      ... take a bit of time to step outside so they can reflect back.

    20. RA

      Ab- absolutely. I'm a big fan of journaling. And whatever way people wanna journal, I think that the, the traditional conception of journaling is you have a book and a pen and you write in it. If that's, that's traditional and that's what a lot of people have argued is the best old-school way to do it, but some people say, "I like to type my journal." Some people say, "I like to speak my journal." I mean, great. However you're doing it, that's great. The, the advantage of writing it is you can see it and sometimes look for patterns. Um, I actually have a, a healing program for people who have been in antagonistic relationships and as part of that program, I, I give them three journal prompts a week for them to work on, to reflect on whatever theme we're working on in a given month. So I think that the beauty of journaling is, again, it, it, it continues the work of therapy. It keeps people... It's not like people should only be self-reflective for an hour a week or an hour a month or however of- often they go to therapy, but it pushes a person to do that, to be reflective, to recognize they have a private space to write down feelings that could be uncomfortable, that they're struggling with, to give themselves a different kind of perspective. So I actually think that journaling is a very powerful technique. I think meditation can be useful, too. I think the challenge with meditation is people feel overwhelmed by it.

    21. RC

      Yeah.

    22. RA

      They feel like, "I don't, I don't wanna sit for an hour and a half someplace in silence." And then again, it's almost like those successive approximations. I say, "You don't need to. Why don't you try five minutes?"

    23. RC

      Yeah.

    24. RA

      And, and even in those five minutes it can even be a mindful meditation. Well, I'll start small with clients. I'll say, "Let's just do a s- a sensory kind of meditation. Look around you. Just sort of pick out five things you see and maybe even, you know, think about the colors of those five things. And then four things you can hear and, you know, and three things, you know, something else you can touch or whatever. But, like, stay in sensation." And when people do that, they get, they can kind of get lost in that. I'll often say, also work with people on the fine art of description. So, like, to sit in front of something, anything, it could be... It could even be that they're, the smallest sliver of window, but to describe everything they're seeing in a room. And then to get lost in that, to pull them out of their minds. Because that can also snap out of, snap people out of those sort of thought and feeling loops.

    25. RC

      Yeah. I th- I think that's a really great example. Sorry to interrupt. If you are enjoying this content, there's loads more just like it on my channel, so please do take a moment to press Subscribe, hit the notification bell. And now back to the conversation. For someone who's skeptical, who's hearing that and going, "Okay, Dr. Ramani, um, I can sit there for a few minutes and I can tell you or tell myself or write down five things that I'm seeing and four things that I can touch," or whatever it might be, what's that really gonna do for me? How's that gonna help me in my life?

    26. RA

      Mm-hmm.

    27. RC

      What would you say to them?

    28. RA

      It's, it's, it's breaking you out of s- it's, it's taking you out of a, like, off of a treadmill-

    29. RC

      Yeah

    30. RA

      ... in a way. It is. It's, it's clearing out the mind in its essence. Like, I'd say to someone, "You have a trash can in your house. Why don't you just ne- why don't you just keep filling it and never take it out to the larger bin in the street? Just keep filling it up." And they'll be like, "That's gross. There'd be trash everywhere." I'll be like, "Yeah, that gets real messy, doesn't it? But you do take that trash out." I said, "This is taking the trash out." And once I put it like that I'm like, "It's just getting stuff out." They're like, "Okay, I can see that."

  10. 1:14:26 – 1:27:28

    Perfectionism and the Myth of People Who Have It All Together

    1. RA

      Yeah

    2. RC

      ... didn't have a voice, they didn't have a way to communicate, they didn't know what was going on until they saw some of your videos. So yeah, I, I think the content you're putting out is fantastic. Um, perfectionism, right?

    3. RA

      Mm.

    4. RC

      That's another way we self-sabotage, isn't it? I wonder if you could speak to that a little bit, please.

    5. RA

      Mm-hmm. Perfectionism is, is, is a pr- is a particularly nasty part of the self-sabotage cycle because it's a, it's setting a bar you will never reach. Nobody, nothing is perfect, right? So just by stan- setting a perfectionistic standard, you've already lost, right? So you'll never, you'll never get the, you'll never get the thesis written. You'll never get the dinner made properly. Nothing's ever going to be enough. And some people believe perfectionism is a defense, right? It can be a defense of allowing a person to live in sort of in, in an idealized state. Of if I'm, if I can say I'm gonna try to make it perfect, then in a way I'm aspiring to be perfect. So on an unhealthy side, it can be part of a grandiose defense of like, I'm trying to be perfect, which means it's possible to be perfect. But then on the other, the perfectionism means that people never get anything done. It can stop things from getting done. The perfectionism can also be part of what we're just now talking about, a p- a part of being in a very toxic, antagonistic, unhealthy relationship.

    6. RC

      Mm.

    7. RA

      Because the belief then becomes is, if I'm perfect, then this relationship would work out.

    8. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    9. RA

      If I could keep the house perfectly clean, and the dinner comes out perfectly, and I go to work perfectly and succeed and make money, then I will be lovable. So the perfectionism in a, in a sort of twisted way gets t- um, connected to love. I will be lovable if I do everything just right. Because it's impossible to be perfect, people who are high in perfectionism really do exhaust themselves because y- it can't be done. And in the case of more toxic people who attempt to be perfectionistic, they'll often rage at the world because they can't be perfect, and they'll blame other people for not being able to achieve that. So it's a really, really insidious kind of a dynamic. And I think, unfortunately, we're talking about social comparison. The way the world is set up these days, you could be a perfect parent and a perfect worker and a, have a perfect house, and your, your refrigerator can be perfectly organized, and you can have a perfect wardrobe and a perfect body. Like that, those are always being touted as possible standards.

    10. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    11. RA

      And so because it's like, well, I could have a better body, I could have a more organized refrigerator, I could have a, whatever, a cleaner house or a more successful career, people are always pushing themselves. Perfectionism, what it does is it pushes people out of the moment. You're never staying present in a moment 'cause there's always something else you could be doing-

    12. RC

      Mm

    13. RA

      ... because there's no way to achieve that state. You're mo- you're running after a constantly moving goalpost. You're never gonna reach it.

    14. RC

      Yeah, you know, the way I've seen it with patients is, I don't know, something as simple as, yeah, Doc, I, I wanna, I'm, I'm gonna start running. You know, I think that's gonna be really good for me.

    15. RA

      Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

    16. RC

      And two months later, they still haven't done anything because they're still researching the best shoe-

    17. RA

      Yes

    18. RC

      ... or the right running gear-

    19. RA

      Right, right

    20. RC

      ... or the correct type of workout to do-

    21. RA

      Mm-hmm

    22. RC

      ... when just going for a 10-minute run around the block is probably the best thing they could do to get started.

    23. RA

      Right, yeah.

    24. RC

      So I see this very much, you know, through the lens of health when people are trying to engage in health-

    25. RA

      Yeah

    26. RC

      ... promoting behaviors. I think they do self-sabotage with this perfectionist ideal, this unattainable ideal.

    27. RA

      Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

    28. RC

      What's the solution for that person, or what's... You know, it's not easy to just click your fingers and go, "Oh, I'm not gonna be a perfectionist anymore." I think it's often, it signifies something deeper underneath. But for someone who that resonates with, how can they start to go, how can they start to think about it? How can they start to try and change it?

    29. RA

      Well, part of it is the tolerance of the discomfort of not being perfect. Does that make sense?

    30. RC

      Mm.

  11. 1:27:28 – 1:37:56

    Over-Attachment to Outcomes and Pathologizing Your Needs

    1. RC

      two other things, Dr. Ramani, I've heard you talk about, um, relating to self-sabotage is when we're overly invested in a specific outcome and when we pathologize our own needs. I wonder if you could speak-

    2. RA

      Yeah, mm-hmm, mm-hmm

    3. RC

      ... to those two things and how they relate to self-sabotage.

    4. RA

      Yeah. So i- it's this idea of if I can get this, if I can just get into this university, my life is gonna be perfect. If I can just get that wedding venue, then everything in my life will be great. If I got that car, then I know-

    5. RC

      Right

    6. RA

      ... I'll always be fine, right? So a, a person attaches their sense of wellbeing to some form of an external outcome, achievement or something like that. That is a slippery slope. You go back to that idea of giving your power away. Now you're really literally hinging your entire wellbeing on something, A, that's not within your control, and B, is really fleeting. And what then ends up happening is the person does get into the university, maybe does get the place they want to have their party, and then it's done, and there's a real sense of, okay, now what, right? So now they might start chasing another carrot, or that thing doesn't happen, and a person falls into a depression of like, "Well, I didn't get this thing, so I'm never, ever gonna come back from this." And so I think that that getting too linked to a goal versus that, you know, these are, these are the, uh, these are very, various options. I work, um, I, a friend of mine, a guy named Matthew Hussey, who gives a lot of dating advice, he said something so beautiful to me the other day. He said, "You have to fall in love with your plan B." And I loved when he said that because I would argue that you not only have to fall in love with your plan B, you pretty much need to have a pretty good crush on your plan C and D and kind of like your plan E because I think what happens then is that we, we are opening ourselves up to option, right? The more rigid someone is, the less healthy they are, sort of a basic premise of personality, right? The more rigid the personality style, the less healthy the person is.

    7. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    8. RA

      Because they lack that flexibility to kind of go when things don't work out. And so antagonistic personalities are interesting 'cause they're incredibly rigid and unyielding. That unyieldingness not only makes it unhealthy for the person who has it, it makes it unhealthy for other people. I always say it's like a tree. You know, like you'll see palm trees. They have these really elastic, um, kinds of trunks. And so in the wind they can go like this, but then you have like the mighty oak tree that with a big wind, the whole thing breaks 'cause it's a rather rigid kind of-

    9. RC

      Yeah

    10. RA

      ... tree trunk. And so that rigidity is not good. And so that idea of like not only falling in love with your plan B, but like I said, having a crush [laughs] on your plan C and D is a way of saying that, "Okay, I'd love it if I got into this. We're gonna have things we prefer. I'd love it if I got into this university, or I'd love it if I got this job, but I absolutely could see really enjoying also that job."

    11. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    12. RA

      Like, it's creating the openness of possibility, and I think that the, um, the all or nothing thinking is never good, and that's what that is. It's all or nothing thinking. So it's... I, I'll often do sort of, um, a guided imagery or envisioning work with clients where I'll say, "Okay, just close your eyes. Let's, let's play out plan B right now. Forget plan A we know you're gonna love, right? Let's talk about plan B." And then really closing your eyes and saying, "Okay, now I want you to imagine walking in the door there. I want you to imagine moving into there." And then the same thing with plan C, like envision those things, and help people sort of almost sort of pay attention to some of the feeling and things that would come, that would come of, of that. And so I do believe that it's sort of fostering that kind of flexibility, but that concept, like I said, Matthew's concept of falling in love with your plan B could really be, is, is a, um, is a very useful-

    13. RC

      Yeah

    14. RA

      ... kind of a tool.

    15. RC

      I think with re- with relation to health, let's say weight loss, for example-

    16. RA

      Mm-hmm

    17. RC

      ... something that many people are always, you know, struggling with, or there's many people who sort of dip in and out of trying to lose weight, and there's, there's often this thing that when I lose weight, when I lose this amount of weight- I'll be happy. And I think this really fits into what you're talking about. Do you know-

    18. RA

      Absolutely. Absolutely

    19. RC

      ... th- they, they'll only be happy when that outcome occurs.

    20. RA

      Yep. Yep.

    21. RC

      Which is, again, very rigid because what if you get 90% of the way there? What if you have brought into your life three or four beautiful practices that have given you more energy, more vitality, your relationships are better, but yet you didn't quite meet that goal that may have been unrealistic anyway-

    22. RA

      Right

    23. RC

      ... and everything starts to fall down? So, so I think this has so much-

    24. RA

      It does

    25. RC

      ... crossover for so many-

    26. RA

      It does

    27. RC

      ... different things.

    28. RA

      And it's even bigger than that, 'cause what you, as we know, the biggest predictor of, um, eating disorders is dieting. And when you think about that number, sometimes people will get so focused, I need to hit this weight number, right? That that actually people will get themselves into very disordered, sometimes even dangerous eating patterns. And I have worked with numerous clients who will say, "Once I lose 60 pounds, my life is going to change." Then they lose 60 pounds and nothing changes.

    29. RC

      Mm.

    30. RA

      Because they have done no inner work. It was always been about the food restriction, the excessive exercise-

  12. 1:37:56 – 1:42:33

    Good-Enough Parenting and Avoiding Overcorrection

    1. RC

      as we sort of head towards the end of our conversation, I wanted to ask you about raising children.

    2. RA

      Mm-hmm.

    3. RC

      You've been in practice for decades now, for many, many years.

    4. RA

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    5. RC

      And what I'm interested in is you've seen a lot of adults who are struggling with various aspects of their life, and a lot of those aspects that they're struggling with may in some way be related to their childhoods.

    6. RA

      Hmm.

    7. RC

      So given what you've seen, what have you learned is the most important thing, or some of the most important things that we can do as parents-

    8. RA

      Yeah

    9. RC

      ... for our kids to prevent them being those adults who show up needing help in the future?

    10. RA

      I think number one, going back to that perfectionism, is we may not make the mistakes our parents made. We're going to make new mistakes. And so that, you know, that if we look at Winnicott's work, you know, he was an object relations theorist. We look at Winnicott's work, he talked about the good enough parent, right? Good enough mother, but good enough parent. And the good enough parent makes just enough mistakes that the child has to figure some of this stuff out on their own. You don't wanna respond to the child's every need. The kid's gotta figure some stuff out on their own. It's a balancing act, right? You don't... You wanna be responsive enough that the child believes that they have a secure base, that they learn to regulate, that they feel safe in the world, but not so much that they feel hovered over and don't ever get to make a mistake on their own that they can solve and resolve and, and regulate-

    11. RC

      Mm-hmm

    12. RA

      ... and soothe themselves. You want the child to learn how to self-soothe. And so I think that what we need to understand is that all of us, all any of us can do is be that good enough parent. But in our terror of not wanting to repeat the patterns that our own parents committed, we may rather unseeingly walk into a whole new set of mistakes, and it's basically that there's a real risk of overcorrection. I can say very frankly, I did that. You know, my-

    13. RC

      [laughs]

    14. RA

      You know, it was very difficult for my parents. They were immigrants. They got a lot of stuff wrong. It harmed me. It's no two ways about it. Um, the fact... A- and, and, and I understand that. I'm able to see that in a very circumspect context. But in my zeal to avoid what they did wrong, I got to make a whole new series of mistakes.

    15. RC

      [laughs]

    16. RA

      And so I, I, I think that if I were to go backwards, I mean, I think in some ways the best way [laughs] to give parenting advice is to look back at what I didn't get right, and I understand some of it was circumstantial. I, I've been divorced-

    17. RC

      Yeah

    18. RA

      ... and I know that that took its own toll on my children, and I certainly can't sit here and say, "Well, I wish I had been better at, you know, choosing a, a more compatible partner with me," so I didn't do that. I did, and, and so it is. But I think that, um, that to be mindful and present with children to the degree you possibly can. I mean, listen, if dinner is burning and there's someone at the front door and all of that, we can't always be. But there are moments we can be.

    19. RC

      Yeah.

    20. RA

      You know, to really allow that child to feel heard and seen and recognized so that they go into adulthood believing that they're worthy of being heard and seen and recognized, right?

    21. RC

      Yeah.

    22. RA

      And so that that is something that I think is so crucial, and I also think another crucial thing is allowing children to experience disappointment. We are in an era of bubble wrapping children, so they never have to have anything bad happen.

    23. RC

      Mm.

    24. RA

      And they always need to be comfortable, and that's also a real mistake, too, because the incapacity to self-regulate is a real, is a real problem, and when people can't self-regulate, they're at risk for using drugs and alcohol, using food, and using things external to them to soothe. And w- it's to leave a child feeling that they're secure and safe enough in the world and can trust themselves enough to sort of regulate themselves, you know, in, in that moment. But, you know, like I said, I, I got, I... I'm willing to hazard that I, maybe I was about 50/50. I got as many things right as I did wrong. I'm n- I'm, I'm definitely not gonna give myself the more right than wrong. My children could answer that question better. Um, but like I said, we have to be... I- I think my biggest mistake was in my overcorrection. That's where I made a lot of my mistakes. I'm like, I'm absolutely not gonna do what my parents did.

    25. RC

      Yeah.

    26. RA

      But in doing that, I created new mistakes. It was almost like I put... When you get surgery on one leg, you put too much weight on the other leg, and then you screw up the other leg. That's what I did.

    27. RC

      Yeah. I think many of us fall into that overcorrection trap.

    28. RA

      Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    29. RC

      Uh,

  13. 1:42:33 – 1:48:32

    Rethinking Mental Illness as Disability

    1. RC

      one final thought I wanted to discuss with you is something that I heard you say once that I've been thinking a lot about over the past few days, and it's when you said that you really want us as a society to challenge the idea that mental illness is a disability.

    2. RA

      Mm-hmm.

    3. RC

      What exactly do you mean by that?

    4. RA

      Well, I mean, I think that it's a... We're back to that issue of a continuum, right? That, um, I think that, I th- I, I struggle with even what the construct of mental illness is in the sense that what I use as a barometer is how a person is feeling in the world and how they're functioning in the world, and I don't mean functioning in terms of earning money and all of that. I mean, like, maintaining relationships and, and feeling purposeful and meaningful and all of that. Those are the things that I would look for in a person. In our zeal to give it a name, right, to call it bipolar disorder or depression and all of that- We kind of get lost in that labeling, and then we limit people, right? Um, he's depressed, so he may not be able to do as much. He's anxious. I mean, and, and we know this to not be true, that people with a wide range of mental illnesses a- and mental health issues are actually contributing in many ways. Now, when we get into the ear- area of severe psychotic mental illness, schizophrenia would be an example, there we do see impairments that would make it difficult for a person to function in the world. So that might fall m- more under a person being differently abled, right? There may be things that might be more challenging, but even there, I mean, I think the innovative work and people working with people with severe psychiatric illness, including psychotic illness, is still meeting a person from a compassionate place on how can we then, given some of the limitations of, of the symptomatology they're experiencing, still allow them to achieve as much potential as possible and help them be as safe in the world as possible? 'Cause for individuals who are living with psychotic illness, the world can feel like an incredibly unsafe place, especially if they're not getting adequate treatment. But I think that it's a, um... We don't accord, we don't accord people who are g- going through experiences of, of mental distress and anguish and despair, and the sorts of, at times, functional limitations that can come from that, and certainly the subjective distress that comes from that. We still view it very suspiciously, and we view these people as not being able to, again, like I said, function well.

    5. RC

      Mm-hmm.

    6. RA

      Which, uh, which is completely untrue.

    7. RC

      Yeah.

    8. RA

      Because if you look at the rates of what m- mental illness epidemiology is, somewhere anywhere between 10 to 20% of the population, depending on whose numbers you're looking at, that would mean if you work with five... if you work with 10 people, one to two of them is living with, uh, you know, significant mental health issues, right? And if they... if you're looking around saying, "Oh, everyone seems to be doing well," then I don't know who that is. You don't know-

    9. RC

      Yeah

    10. RA

      ... who that is. And so I, again, I, I even, I don't like the term disability. I, I, I really am focused on people who bring different abilities, and I mean, at, at the ri- risk of sounding too, I mean, sociopolitical, I really do get exhausted with people thinking that the measure of a person is how they can contribute to the economy, and that that's how we sometimes designate whether or not-

    11. RC

      Mm

    12. RA

      ... somebody has ability, and I don't think that that's what ability is. I think it is about being a, a, a good, compassionate, respectful human being who's sort of part of this ecosystem of the world and not just that they-

    13. RC

      Yeah

    14. RA

      ... can make money for people and make money to m- make other people money. So I think that that's sort of a, a bias I have in this space, but I, I... You know, I think that we are, um, we are working on models of diagnosis and mental illness that were conceived of by a very small group of people in a room. And, you know, if you look at how the DSM was originally written, these were very privileged white men who sat in a room in New York City, and s- and most of them were psychoanalysts, and they started drawing down what they thought were these sort of mental health conditions, and that became the core of what is still the DSM.

    15. RC

      Yeah.

    16. RA

      And while there is a little bit more research on biology and, and culture and all that, at the end of the day, this is what a group of privileged white men in the 1950s sat in an office in New York, the very office I've [laughs] laid eyes on, and came up with this stuff. And, and I think in that way, there is a very colonizing influence-

    17. RC

      Mm

    18. RA

      ... of how all of this works. We do not account for different perspectives. We do not account for different abilities, and I think that other industries like pharmaceuticals have really gotten their hands in there. So I think that there, th- we are getting to the point where there needs to be a real-

    19. RC

      Yeah

    20. RA

      ... I don't want to say revolution, but maybe renaissance [laughs] would be a nicer word, of, like, taking some of this apart. And I have to say, the ICD, the International Classification of Diseases from, from the World Health Organization, they're making changes that I actually think are a little bit more forward-thinking, but I still think we're stuck in a-

    21. RC

      Yeah

    22. RA

      ... framework that was dictated by a very narrow band-

    23. RC

      Yeah

    24. RA

      ... of human beings too long ago.

    25. RC

      Oh, so much there to unpick. I think-

    26. RA

      Oh, yeah

    27. RC

      ... we're gonna have to save that for our second conversation, which I-

    28. RA

      Great

    29. RC

      ... I truly hope we have at some point. Dr. Ramani-

    30. RA

      I hope so too

  14. 1:48:32 – 1:52:31

    Final Advice: Lift Your Eyes, Break It Down, Reward Yourself

    1. RC

      For anyone who's listening or watching who feels a little bit lost in their life, a little bit stuck, maybe it's a relationship that they're struggling with, maybe they're procrastinating and they can't seem to make any changes, have you got any final words of inspiration or wisdom for them?

    2. RA

      I'd say this, I think a lot of- 'cause so many of us work on computers, not all of us, but many of us do, lift your eyes. And that lift your eyes is a metaphor, not just even lifting your eyes off a computer, but lifting your eyes out of your life for a minute, right? Get a different view. Change things up. Step outside. Even if it's wintertime, sometimes that whoosh of cold air can sort of change your perspective. The other thing I'm gonna say is break things down. Really break them down. 'Cause I think the more you say, like, "I am never gonna get this house clean," I'll say start with a drawer. Just clean one drawer out. And if you k- want to keep going, keep going. But if not, you got one thing done. Whether you break things down by time, by task, um, I, I'll say people, to people, do the easiest thing first because that builds efficacy. Like, oh, okay.

    3. RC

      Mm.

    4. RA

      Look at that. I, I paid those three bills. Okay, let's go on to the next thing. Like, start with the easier thing, develop that sense of like, oh, I'm getting some things done, and go from there. Also, the other thing I'd suggest to people is, you know, there, there's, there was actually an interesting article in The New York Times about how messiness, like having a messy environment, is actually associated with mental health issues, and I think it's also associated with procrastination. Now, I understand some people say, "Well, I actually clean to procrastinate." I do get that, and that, that's a subset of folks. But there's something about a messy space that can make it hard to get going, and cleaning something up is often a little bit easier than some of the other things we need to do. So maybe take that on, say, "Okay-

    5. RC

      Yeah

    6. RA

      ... this is the area I'm gonna work in, so let me make this tidy so I can work in this space." That could be another thing that you do. And then have some clear rewards. Say, "If I work for two hours, one hour, three hours," whatever, 15 minutes, "at the end of that, I'm going to allow myself two," whatever that two is. "I'm gonna take a walk. I'm going to allow myself to play one game on my phone. I'm going to play with my dog. I'm gonna call a friend." Give yourself little meaningful rewards that actually feel good so that... Listen, again, like I said, we are existential rats in a maze. We always need some cheese to be hunting for, so figure out what your cheese is. Give yourself those rewards, because I think that that can also, again, feel like, "Okay, I did this, and now I'm doing this other thing, and this is my reward, and so I'm gonna keep going."

    7. RC

      Yeah.

    8. RA

      You associate accomplish- the task, task accomplishment or getting things a- do- thi- getting things done with a meaningful reward.

    9. RC

      Yeah. Love that. Fantastic advice. I know you've got two books out at the moment, Should I Stay or Should I Go?, Don't You Know Who I Am? We've mentioned your online membership-

    10. RA

      Mm-hmm

    11. RC

      ... community.

    12. RA

      Yeah.

    13. RC

      You've also got a quite wonderful YouTube channel. Uh-

    14. RA

      Thank you

    15. RC

      ... anywhere else you'd want people to, to go to to check out your work?

    16. RA

      Yeah, you can check... You know, we have... Uh, we're on all social media, Dr. Ramani, D-O-C-T-O-R, Ramani, R-A-M-A-N-I. Go to my website. That's probably where you find everything in one place. If you are trying to heal from a toxic relationship and just sort of want more information, you could join that healing program. You can go check out YouTube if you want basic info. And I have a new book coming out in February 2024, so I hope we talk right before that so I can remind everyone of that and let them know how that's, um, how that's shaping up. Yeah.

    17. RC

      100%. That's an open invitation. Look, that's-

    18. RA

      Thank you

    19. RC

      ... we'll get that in the diary. Thank you for coming on the show.

    20. RA

      I appreciate that. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

    21. RC

      If you enjoyed that conversation, I think you are really going to enjoy this one, all about addiction, trauma, and why so many of us feel lost.

    22. SP

      Addiction is the most human thing there is. All addictions, they're attempts to gain pain relief, emotional pain relief or something or another. Then this whole society is so expert at selling us stuff to fill those holes temporarily. This is the whole ethic of this culture.

Episode duration: 1:52:32

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