The Hidden Reason You Feel Empty & Lost — And How To Finally Find Meaning | Alain de Botton

1. 0:00 – 1:24

   Status anxiety in the modern job-defined world

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

      Last night, I came across one of your TED Talks. This one was from, I think, fifteen years ago.

   2. ABAlain de Botton0:06

      Mm.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:07

      Um, and in it, you said, "It's easier now to make a good living, but harder than ever before to stay calm and be free from career anxiety."

   4. ABAlain de Botton0:18

      Mm.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:20

      I, I, I found that really an interesting phrase. You said that fifteen years ago on the TED stage.

   6. ABAlain de Botton0:27

      Mm.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:27

      Do you still stand by that today?

   8. ABAlain de Botton0:30

      I, I mean, perhaps even more so. You know, it's, it's... I mean, I, I was calling it in those days, I mean, I wrote a book on this called Status Anxiety, which is really an, an in... It's, it's a feature of what we call the modern world, which the modern world's existed for two hundred years in the West, you know. What we call the modern world, which is, you know, a world where people are defined primarily by their activities, uh, by their jobs, you know. Nowadays, if you meet somebody for the first time, y-y-you say to them, "What do you do?"

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:53

      Mm-hmm.

   10. ABAlain de Botton0:54

       And according to how you answer that question, um, people will either be really pleased to see you, or they'll kind of leave your side and think of you as, you know, that quintessential punitive modern word, a loser. And the thing about the modern world is that, um, it, it accords status according to a, a race, a professional race, which by definition, not everybody can win. I mean, that's the whole point. You know, it's, it's, it's a race, and there can only be a selective number of, of winners. This is an incredibly punitive

2. 1:24 – 3:10

   Meritocracy’s dark edge: from ‘unfortunate’ to ‘loser’

   1. ABAlain de Botton1:24

      system. Furthermore, we insist, uh, particularly find this in America, but really all over the world, um, on the idea that everybody has an equal chance-

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:34

      Mm

   3. ABAlain de Botton1:34

      ... to get to the top.

   4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:35

      Yeah.

   5. ABAlain de Botton1:36

      And you know, if you listen to politicians, right, left, all sides of the political spectrum, they're always trying to build a world which is meritocratic. In other words, where those who get to the top deserve their success. But there's a nasty sting in the tail of that argument, because if you really believe that those who are at the top g- deserve their success, you have to believe that those who are at the bottom deserve their failure. So in other words, the modern world adds to poverty and low status, a, a condemnation, an implicit condemnation that you have failed, uh, because of your own deficiencies rather than, you know, because of the system. I mean, you know, in, in the Middle Ages, let's say, in Britain, um, a, a poor person, the poorest were known as unfortunates, right?

   6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:21

      Mm.

   7. ABAlain de Botton2:21

      Now, that's a really fascinating word, unfortunate. You unpack that word unfortunate. It literally, there's the word fortune in there. In other words, these people have not been blessed by fortune. And, and Fortune was originally a Roman goddess.

   8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:32

      Mm.

   9. ABAlain de Botton2:32

      Um, and she was de- she was believed to determine people's careers. So if you ended up with a really high-flying position in the Roman world, at least y-you acknowledged that at least half of your success was down to fortune.

   10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:45

       Mm.

   11. ABAlain de Botton2:45

       Nowadays, it's a very odd concept. You know, if, if I said to you, "Oh, I've been doing really well lately, you know, great business," et cetera. But I said, "Oh, it's not, it's not me. It's just I've been blessed by fortune." You'd go, "That's odd, odd guy. Is it oddly modest? Is he, is he arrogantly modest?" It'd be odd. Similarly, if I said to you, "Well, things are really actually not going so well for me. I've been sacked and my, you know, my, my, my income's dropped," et cetera. "But it's not my fault. It's fortune turned against me." You'd think, "No, you're not. You're making an excuse here."

   12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:10

       Mm.

3. 3:10 – 4:18

   Modernity, lost communal buffers, and rising suicide risk

   1. ABAlain de Botton3:10

      We hold people incredibly tightly to their own biographies. Which is why, at its most tragic, and this is, you know, this is a feature of the modern world which we have a hard time with, rates of suicide increase as a society gets more modern. Um, as, as communal structures dissipate and as religious explanations for people's destinies fade, what you find is that people are held so responsible for what happens-

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:37

      Yeah

   3. ABAlain de Botton3:37

      ... to them that it becomes unbearable. You know, it, you know, we were talking about one of your patients a while ago. It is not Allah's will that I lost my job. It's my fault.

   4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:45

      Mm.

   5. ABAlain de Botton3:45

      And if it's only your fault, at some point, you know, people will, will break. And that's why we've moved from that term unfortunate now to that much more punitive term loser. You know, if, if, if you think somebody's failed or, you know, lo-lost in their jobs, you might call them, especially in America, a loser.

   6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:01

      Yeah.

   7. ABAlain de Botton4:01

      And why is that word particularly used in the United States? Because the United States is the most meritocratic society which believes that people's destinies are in their hands. Now-

   8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:09

      And there's upsides to that as well, though.

   9. ABAlain de Botton4:11

      Hundred percent, but there's also serious downsides.

   10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:13

       Like most things. [laughs]

   11. ABAlain de Botton4:14

       And so we need to keep a handle on those downsides.

   12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:17

       Yeah.

   13. ABAlain de Botton4:17

       Yeah.

4. 4:18 – 5:37

   Childhood as the hidden template for adult patterns

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:18

      You talk a lot, uh, about how our childhoods influence our adult lives.

   2. ABAlain de Botton4:24

      Mm.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:24

      How we show up in relationships, how we feel-

   4. ABAlain de Botton4:26

      Yeah

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:26

      ... about ourselves. And I think whether it's in terms of our mental well-being or our physical health, it's undeniable that childhoods are crucially important. And if you think about it on a, on a sort of more public health scale, I really feel culture more and more, and society more and more, really should be prioritizing those early years.

   6. ABAlain de Botton4:46

      Yes.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:46

      Whether it be in terms of taking stress off parents, they can be and, you know, and actually pay attention to their children. Um, the nutrition we give at that age. All these things, you know, what happens in those early years are so influential.

   8. ABAlain de Botton5:00

      And, and I mean, it's deeply insulting. I, I don't want to believe this. You know, we all have heavy incentives not to believe this story because who wants to show up age thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, and be told that their first ten years are determining their life? I mean, this is one of those awful stories-

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:14

      Yeah

   10. ABAlain de Botton5:15

       ... that we've discovered. Doesn't mean to say it's not true.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:17

       Yeah. [laughs]

   12. ABAlain de Botton5:17

       Unfortunately. You know, in the same way that, you know, you could hold a glass of water. For ages, people didn't understand that there could be enough bacteria in one glass of water to kill a city, you know. And, and microbiologists were saying, "No, no, it's possible. It happens." You know, there, there are, there are minute life forms that can destroy millions of people's lives. And it sounds implausible.

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:36

       Yeah.

   14. ABAlain de Botton5:36

       Doesn't mean to say it's not true.

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:37

       Yeah.

5. 5:37 – 7:32

   Why self-sabotage once made sense: dissociation as survival

   1. ABAlain de Botton5:37

      And you know, look, if you look at anybody, if you look at any adult who is doing strange stuff, um... By strange stuff, let's imagine someone who's sabotaging their life. Every time that they get near to success, oddly, they blow themselves up.

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:52

      Mm.

   3. ABAlain de Botton5:52

      Or every time a relationship is working well, they sabotage it in some way, you know, and they go relationship, relationship after relationship. Um, what's going on? Why are we doing this? Almost certainly, you've got to look backwards. You have to look backwards. And this is what psychotherapy teaches us. So, so-Let's take this slowly 'cause it's a little bit odd. Most things that adults are doing that is counterproductive, that is not in their interests and the interests of those around them, most of those things have a logic, a certain logic, a twisted logic you might say, that dates back to their early childhood where that behavior made a certain sort of sense-

   4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:29

      Yeah

   5. ABAlain de Botton6:29

      ... and they keep doing it because they're unaware that it once made sense, and they're also unaware that it now absolutely doesn't make sense. Let me give you an example. So let's imagine that you're a child growing up in a familial war zone. Mom and Dad don't get on, they're throwing things at each other, there's violence, et cetera. One of the things that you might do as a child is disassociate. You cut yourself off from your emotions. So you're in a, you're in a high-intensity emotional arena, and you just cut yourself off. You just go off and you, you fantasize, you, you disappear. This is brilliant. If you are five years old, you can't, you can't disappear. You can't get rid of your parents. You will ... Y- you come up with this fantastic way of dealing with it. You disassociate. Fantastic. Scroll forward 20 years and that person's in a relationship.

   6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:15

      Mm.

   7. ABAlain de Botton7:16

      And suddenly things are quite intense. And what, what's that person doing? Disassociating. This is maddening for everyone around. They don't know they're doing it. Their partner might not be able to explain it to them. They aren't quite under- They feel it, but they don't have the words, the vocabulary, et cetera. And, you know, you can go through four divorces before you work out-

6. 7:32 – 9:44

   Other inherited coping styles: humor, cheerfulness, and projection

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:32

      Mm

   2. ABAlain de Botton7:32

      ... I'm doing this thing that made sense. And so the lesson of psychotherapy is to say, thank you very much to that very clever five-year-old that worked out that in order to survive they had to disassociate. Thank you for this, but now it's enough. Now we're gonna move on because this is no longer helpful. And, you know, there are many versions of this. Take the person who can't stop making jokes. You know, we all know people who are a bit too lighthearted for their own good. They... It seems like they can't approach pain. They, they're all the time cracking jokes and there's a life of the party, but there's something plastic about their mood, we feel. If you scroll back, they're often, uh, people who've had to deal with depressed parents, where there couldn't, there couldn't be an acknowledgement of pain because the parent was sinking, so the child had to cheer up their parents.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:20

      Mm.

   4. ABAlain de Botton8:21

      No child should have to cheer up their parents, but it happens a lot.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:23

      Mm.

   6. ABAlain de Botton8:24

      Um, and that person then ends up being manically cheerful, quite contrary to their own interests. They can't touch their own pain because that would've been too hard when they were six, seven, and eight.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:34

      Mm-hmm.

   8. ABAlain de Botton8:35

      But they may now be 42. So super important to understand the pattern and correct it. And that's what, that's what we mean by psychotherapy.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:42

      Mm.

   10. ABAlain de Botton8:43

       Psychotherapy is a chance to observe your patterns. You know, people go, go through life projecting. You know that word projecting?

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:51

       Mm.

   12. ABAlain de Botton8:51

       In other words, they take an emotional response that would... that is based on a situation that they knew in their past, and they layer it on to a situation in the present which might not be warranted. So someone might think, um, "All men get very angry with me, and when I make a mistake, they can't forgive me, which is why I will try not to do anything in case I get it wrong." Now, that might be an implicit projection that you're layering on to your boss-

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:20

       Mm

   14. ABAlain de Botton9:20

       ... to your friends, to your child, to your spouse, et cetera. Terribly unhelpful. It probably has its origins in your relationship with your dad, let's imagine. But that was you and your dad, but you're carrying that story-

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:30

       Yeah

   16. ABAlain de Botton9:31

       ... into an arena where it really doesn't belong anymore. So a lot of what psychotherapy is is repatriating stories and making sure that we're not operating with patterns that don't belong in the situation we're, we're putting them into action in.

7. 9:44 – 12:01

   Self-knowledge as a life adventure (and why it’s rare)

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:44

      Yeah. I mean, your book is called A Therapeutic Journey. By, by going on that journey-

   2. ABAlain de Botton9:49

      Mm

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:50

      ... us as individuals can empower ourselves to change.

   4. ABAlain de Botton9:53

      Hugely. I mean, look, I think one of the great adventures that we can be on individually and collectively is, is self-knowledge. Again, come back to the ancient Greeks. They thought that knowing yourself was the imperative of, of every human. And, you know, therapy, self-exploration, reading, friendship, et cetera. Y- you know, one of the things that we're all... we should always be looking for is to understand ourselves better because, um, being ignorant of ourselves is behind so many of our problems.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee10:24

      Yeah.

   6. ABAlain de Botton10:24

      It's because we, we don't know who we are that we marry the wrong people, get into the wrong jobs, respond in inadequate ways to situations, et cetera. We, we're, we're not in command of our own minds. And one of the great insights of psychoanalysis, of Freud originally, is that the conscious mind is a tiny part of the mind as a whole. And we, we know this, you know, we, we know that our minds are, you know, planning how to walk and digest food and run various physiological processes without any, um, conscious, uh, inquiry or knowledge. Um, but that holds true also for the em- for our emotional lives, that most of our emotional life is unconscious. And, um, you know, I sometimes imagine it as like we're like a sort of person with a tiny flashlight in a vast sha- dark chamber-

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:10

      Mm

   8. ABAlain de Botton11:10

      ... and we can illuminate just a tiny portion of our lives. And most of us will, we will all die strangers to ourselves. We will all die with much of who we are still mired in darkness. We, we won't know who we have been.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:23

      Mm.

   10. ABAlain de Botton11:23

       I mean, this is one of the great sort of tragedies of existence. We, we, we inhabit a self which we only partially understand. But I think one of the greatest and most fun things to do is to expand the boundaries of, of knowledge.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:36

       Yeah.

   12. ABAlain de Botton11:36

       Now, it's quite a weird ambition. I mean, if you said to somebody, you know, if somebody said, you know, "What are you doing for your holidays?" And you go, "Well, I'm just furthering self-knowledge 'cause that's my great adventure." Uh, they'd look at you as though you're highly strange. You know, the moment when you understand a little bit better who you are, why you do the things you do-

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:51

       Mm

   14. ABAlain de Botton11:51

       ... why you respond, this is always a joyful day, and it makes you so much more of a safe person to be around because people who are able to flag up their behavior to others are a blessing.

8. 12:01 – 12:34

   Why advice fails: the unconscious mind overrides good intentions

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee12:01

      Yeah. When I think about what I said before to you about helping patients change their behaviors-The idea that knowledge is not enough. It, it's, it's the self-knowledge that we need, the, the deeper awareness, you know, the, um... Th-this is where I really feel we go wrong with our public health advice or, or it doesn't work as well as it could work

   2. ABAlain de Botton12:28

      It doesn't-- A psychoanalyst looking at it would go, "You guys have forgotten there's an unconscious. There's an unconscious mind."

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee12:33

      E-exactly.

9. 12:34 – 14:09

   The envious parent and guilt as a hidden ‘mental economy’

   1. ABAlain de Botton12:34

      And the unconscious mind does weird stuff. I mean, you know, we were talking about self-sabotage, right? Many of the things that go wrong in people's lives are not external. They are people behaving in ways that are contrary to their own interests for reasons that they don't really understand, but that often have, um, something to do with, with, with their past. I mean... So imagine somebody who every time they get close to success blows it up. Imagine that this person had an envious parent. It's gonna sound really weird. Who's got an envious parent? Well, many of us do.

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee13:04

      Mm.

   3. ABAlain de Botton13:05

      Parents, sad truth, can be envious of their own children. In other words, they can be threatened that by, by a child's talent, beauty, et cetera. And though on the one hand, they want their child to be happy, on the other hand, not any happier than they've been. This is, you know... And children pick up on this.

   4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee13:22

      Yeah.

   5. ABAlain de Botton13:22

      And so there can be a guilt sometimes to, to be able to bear, to have a better life than your parents is a real psychological achievement. It's not, it's not natural. I mean, it's not, it's not a given. Um, it may be something that you need to work at. So it's just an, uh, a small example of, um, you know, somebody may feel that in order to feel balanced, they have to feel guilty. That guilt is an important part of their-

   6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee13:48

      Mm

   7. ABAlain de Botton13:49

      ... sort of mental economy. And again, this may come back to a feeling from childhood that they were only safe if they felt that they'd done something wrong, and if they knew, if they'd been made-

   8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee13:59

      Mm

   9. ABAlain de Botton13:59

      ... to feel bad. So then the feeling of being bad accompanies them through life as a, as a protective mechanism.

   10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee14:05

       Yeah.

   11. ABAlain de Botton14:05

       Very unnecessary. Huge cost to themselves, but it can happen.

10. 14:09 – 17:14

    Insight isn’t enough: change needs corrective emotional experiences

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee14:09

       If there's someone who's listening to that-

    2. ABAlain de Botton14:12

       Mm

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee14:12

       ... Alain, someone, someone who just heard that-

    4. ABAlain de Botton14:14

       Mm

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee14:15

       ... and has just had the self-awareness that they may be an envious parent.

    6. ABAlain de Botton14:20

       Mm.

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee14:20

       Okay? 'Cause no one wants to be-

    8. ABAlain de Botton14:22

       Yeah

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee14:22

       ... that envious parent. The person who just had that insight doesn't want to be that person, but is again acting on their own [chuckles] childhood and their, their own experiences, right? What advice would you give to that person?

    10. ABAlain de Botton14:37

        So look, in the early days of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, the feeling was, if somebody knows this, they'll stop immediately. "Oh, I'm an envious parent. Great. I'll stop tomo- I'll stop tonight." Um, uh, similarly, you know, let's say in a relationship, somebody becomes aware that every time someone's nice to them, they hold it against them. They can only tolerate people who are nasty to them. And, and you, you point this out, "Oh my God, that's me." Um, and then it will stop. The truth is trickier. So what psychotherapy, what psychotherapy has realized is that insight is part of the solution, but you also need to have a corrective experience, and this is what therapists spend time doing. That when, when therapists are in a room with a client, um, they know that the client will probably play out with them patterns that they will also be playing out somewhere else.

    11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee15:27

        Mm.

    12. ABAlain de Botton15:27

        So the envious parent might start to say to the therapist, "Do those curtains cost a lot?" Or, "Is that your car outside?" Like, they'll, they'll probably be bringing their envy to the therapist.

    13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee15:37

        Mm.

    14. ABAlain de Botton15:37

        And that the best way to, to solve this is in that room with a therapist that, that you can explore that issue live in a relationship, in, in a relationship that's unfolding in the here and now, rather than simply bringing it in from the outside. And that if you correct it there, you'll have a good chance of correcting it in, in life more broadly. So the classic one in, in therapy is that the person, let's say, who's always worried about other people at their, at the expense of their own, um, well-being. This is something that happens course to, you know... If you've had a certain sort of childhood and you haven't been able to worry about yourself, but other people have been going off the rails, you'll... One tendency is that you'll grow up into somebody who's always worrying about other people, always putting other people first, et cetera, at, at your own detriment. Um, and this might play out with a therapist. You might say-

    15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee16:24

        Mm

    16. ABAlain de Botton16:24

        ... to the therapist something like, "Are you tired?" Um, or, um, "I'm, I'm so sorry for bothering you." And, you know, you might find this as a doctor. Some people who are, who are sort of worried that they're bothering you if I'm coming to see you. And you wanna go and, and, you know, the solution will be to say, "Well, why, why are you so worried about how much sleep I've had? Is this, is this right? Is the... You know? Um, you know, I notice that, I notice that every time you come and visit me, you, you're worried that, um, I might be inconvenienced by your presence. I'm not. Why do you think that is?" And so by holding a mirror up to somebody and tracking their behavior, not just once, but over time. Remember what we were saying about sort of the analogy with physical exercise. It's not gonna be just once. We're lifting up one weight one time isn't gonna solve-

    17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:06

        Mm

    18. ABAlain de Botton17:06

        ... your muscle problem. Similarly, emotionally, you might need to, you know, work at a dynamic within a relationship over time.

11. 17:14 – 18:41

    Do we all need therapy—and what makes therapy hard to get right?

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:14

       Mm. Do you think everyone needs therapy?

    2. ABAlain de Botton17:18

       Um, let me say one caveat, which could sound rather unpopular, maybe unpopular among some people. Um, there are many bad therapists out there. You know, therapy is, uh, an incredibly complicated calling. Um, medical training, as you know, produces doctors who, on the whole, are fairly... should be interchangeable. You know, that like m- most doctors should tell you roughly the same thing if you go and see them. But you'll know, sort of dark thought, um, that some doctors are better than others.

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:48

       Yeah.

    4. ABAlain de Botton17:49

       It's a horrible thought.

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:49

       No, it's, it, it's true.

    6. ABAlain de Botton17:51

       But it's very painful. Very painful. People are often less willing to... You know, if, if they go and see a therapist and the therapist is not good, um, they'll go, "I hate therapy."And so I, I guess I'm trying to give hope to people who maybe have had an experience with a therapist-

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee18:04

       Mm

    8. ABAlain de Botton18:05

       ... didn't go well. Um, and maybe it's to do with the therapist, not them. And so it just prepares you for thinking, okay, you might need to shop around. It's look, it's like books. You know that you can love books, but you go into the average bookshop, and you pick up a book, you're probably not gonna like it. Most books are quite lousy, but some books are great.

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee18:20

       Mm-hmm.

    10. ABAlain de Botton18:21

        And it might take you quite a while to find the great book, the, the book that's working for you. And I think the same, you know, therapy is much closer to an art than a science, and a good therapist is a balance of all sorts of forces. You can't mass manufacture this character, and that's why most people have quite a bad time in therapy. Many people, many people, many people.

    11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee18:40

        I, I have so many thoughts.

    12. ABAlain de Botton18:41

        Mm.

12. 18:41 – 21:28

    Medicine as art: listening for what patients can’t yet say

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee18:41

       Uh, therapy is more of an art than a science. It's interesting. I was at... I was speaking at a trauma conference in Oxford a couple of weeks ago, uh, the Masters Conference. I think you were there last year actually-

    2. ABAlain de Botton18:52

       Yeah

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee18:52

       ... from recollection. And I was on this panel discussion, and I can't remember what the question was, but at one point I ended up saying something I don't think I'd said before, which was, "I believe that my ability to help a patient, for most of the conditions I've seen throughout my career, is more art than science."

    4. ABAlain de Botton19:15

       Mm.

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee19:16

       I really do believe that because-

    6. ABAlain de Botton19:18

       What did you mean by that?

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee19:19

       What I mean by that is, um, I'm not talking about acute illness, which often presents to the hospital.

    8. ABAlain de Botton19:26

       Mm-hmm.

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee19:26

       You know, a heart attack-

    10. ABAlain de Botton19:28

        Yeah

    11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee19:28

        ... a, a broken bone, a... Something that... You know, acute problems, uh, generally respond very well to modern medicine.

    12. ABAlain de Botton19:35

        Mm.

    13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee19:36

        Where I think we struggle in medicine today is that most of our training is given to us through the acute problem model.

    14. ABAlain de Botton19:46

        Mm.

    15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee19:46

        So we try and apply that kind of thinking to complex multifactorial issues that are driven by our collective modern lifestyles, mental wellbeing being one of them. You know-

    16. ABAlain de Botton19:56

        Yeah

    17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee19:56

        ... where people are struggling, y- y- you, you, you can't just come and see the doctor for 10 minutes, have a quick chat. We run a series of tests. Yes, sir, you have depression.

    18. ABAlain de Botton20:03

        Mm.

    19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee20:03

        Uh, let me give you this. It'll be gone in two weeks.

    20. ABAlain de Botton20:06

        Mm.

    21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee20:06

        No, no, you can do that with a chest infection, right?

    22. ABAlain de Botton20:09

        Yeah.

    23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee20:09

        But you can't do that with something like depression because it's multifactorial.

    24. ABAlain de Botton20:14

        Mm.

    25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee20:14

        And so I believe that my ability to be a, uh, a good doctor relies on my ability to pay attention, to listen, to read the things that the patient is not saying.

    26. ABAlain de Botton20:33

        Mm.

    27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee20:33

        What is the body language?

    28. ABAlain de Botton20:34

        Mm.

    29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee20:35

        What are the... What is the message behind the words? I mean, it's very common.

    30. ABAlain de Botton20:38

        Mm.
13. 21:28 – 25:38

    Letting the mind speak: free association, journaling, and ‘allowed’ emotions

    1. ABAlain de Botton21:28

       Mm. So R- I think what we're talking about is trying to give space for the mysteries of the mind-

    2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee21:33

       Yeah

    3. ABAlain de Botton21:33

       ... for the, for the, the perplexities of the mind to emerge. Now, you know, if you think of early, early psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, um, Freud used to lie people down on a couch and ask them to free associate. Now, he called it the fundamental rule, and the fundamental rule is that you should say whatever comes into your mind at the moment it comes, uh, out, um, without any... trying not to restrain yourself. Just, just saying whatever it is on your mind, however silly, passing, et cetera. He compared it to like being in a railway carriage where you just sit, and you just tell the person in the railway carriage what you're seeing out the window, the win- window of consciousness. And his view was, if you allow people to do this for 50 minutes, they'll tend to come out with something interesting. You know, they'll start off going, "I want to talk about this, that, and the other." But if you just lie and say, just, just say whatever comes out of your, your mind, probably somewhere along the lines it will emerge. And you know, there are various... a lot of psychology and psychotherapy since has been all about trying to get the mind out of its standard operations-

    4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee22:32

       Mm

    5. ABAlain de Botton22:32

       ... where we tend to think in quite conventional ways, and the things that we can admit to are quite conventional. You know, we, we're very... all of us are quite frightened of how strange we are. And so when we present ourselves to ourselves and to others, we minimize our oddities. So people go, "How are you?" "I'm fine." We, we don't say that we've been sobbing on the bathroom floor all weekend or whatever-

    6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee22:52

       Mm

    7. ABAlain de Botton22:52

       ... because it just doesn't fit into our notion of normality. And we do this not just with strangers but with other people as well, uh, with ourselves as well, that we, we curtail our understanding of ourselves 'cause it, it threatens, you know... That, that we might both love someone and hate them, that we might both, um, try to be good but also have aggressive impulses, that we, we can't compute this, and so we, we shove it aside. But that can lead to those twin demons of the mind, anxiety and depression. You know, what is anxiety often other than a worry that we haven't been able to focus on? Possibly because that worry didn't fit our model of what we're allowed to be worried about.

    8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee23:31

       Mm.

    9. ABAlain de Botton23:31

       Or depression. What is depression other than often sadness, grief that hasn't been able to understand itself? Why? Because maybe it runs contrary to our model of what we're allowed-

    10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee23:43

        Mm. Mm

    11. ABAlain de Botton23:43

        ... to be sad about. You know, very often people are in mourning for things that they don't think that they're allowed to be in mourning about.

    12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee23:50

        Yeah.

    13. ABAlain de Botton23:50

        And it goes underground. You know, they, they might, they might say, "Actually, I'm in mourning 'cause I lost a friend five years ago." But that sounds so odd 'cause you're not supposed to mourn your friends very much, and five years is a long time. But it may be true. So we're a lot odder than we give ourselves credit for-

    14. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee24:05

        Yeah

    15. ABAlain de Botton24:05

        ... than we allow ourselves, and the task of the therapeutic often is to give ourselves a context in which our true complexity can emerge.

    16. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee24:14

        Emerge.

    17. ABAlain de Botton24:14

        So you know, there are exercises like journaling. You know, if, if you journal and you allow yourself to write whatever comes into your mind, just... You know, there's a technique of automatic writing-

    18. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee24:26

        Mm

    19. ABAlain de Botton24:26

        ... where you just say, for two minutes, I'm just gonna write. I'm gonna keep writing. I'm not gonna stop. I'm gonna take my pen off the paper. But I'm gonna keep writing. It doesn't matter if it's complete gibberish. But I'm just gonna see what is in my mind. I challenge your listeners. I mean, literally do, you know, do it. If you're listening to this and you're tempted by it, take two minutes, get a piece of paper and a pen, and write, and just force yourself to write for two minutes about whatever's on your mind.

    20. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee24:47

        Anything.

    21. ABAlain de Botton24:49

        Anything. And I would hazard, I would bet that probably at the end you will have learned something about yourself, um, that there will be something about what you've written that you weren't in conscious command of.

    22. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee25:00

        Yeah.

    23. ABAlain de Botton25:01

        It might be that you're much angrier about something than you've allowed for, or you're much more loving, you're much more tender, or you're more-

    24. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee25:09

        Mm

    25. ABAlain de Botton25:09

        ... full of regret or whatever it is, but something to the left or to the right of your standard vision of yourself. And you know, welcome to the unconscious workings of the mind. I mean, this is-

    26. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee25:20

        Yeah

    27. ABAlain de Botton25:20

        ... this is what we're talking about. The mind, we, we have a hard time understanding ourselves because we don't allow... we don't create mechanisms where we can unspool the tightly bound truths about who we are.

    28. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee25:31

        [upbeat music] If you enjoyed that short clip, I think you are really going to enjoy the full conversation, which you can check out here.

Episode duration: 25:52