15 Harsh Psychology Truths - Adam Lane Smith | Modern Wisdom Podcast 310

Men would rather lift weights than go to therapy. Well, yeah, 'cause that makes them feel powerful. Uh, one of the number things when men are depressed that I, I encourage them to do is start lifting weights, 'cause you can see the physical changes in your body and you feel powerful again. You say, "I can make this change happen. Well, then I can go make that change happen."

(wind blowing) What makes you a voice of authority on harsh psychology truths?

Well, I've spent a lot of time around people who are messed up. Um, no, actually, I am a licensed psychotherapist here in the United States.

(laughs)

Nothing I'm gonna say is gonna be any healthcare advice, but I've been practicing for years and years. I've worked in correctional settings. I've worked with inmates in for the death penalty for severe crimes. I've worked in low-income, uh, clinics, treating families that no one else is going to treat. I got a lot of the most severe cases put on my plate. My specialty is post-traumatic stress disorder and attachment theory, and especially the way those two things intercede. So when I talk about psychology truths, that's what I'm speaking to, is my personal experience.

It just happens to be that lots of the truths you've learned are also harsh.

Unfortunately, yes. Yeah. The truth can be harsh when you hear it. It's good to use it, but it can be harsh to burst people's bubble.

You are going to use the word attachment a lot. So, uh, b- the way that this came about, you've posted a fantastic Twitter thread, which will be linked in the show notes below, and everyone can go and see 10 times the amount of harsh truths than we're gonna get through in this episode. Um, but one of the words that's gonna come up a lot is attachment. Can we define our terms before we get started? What is attachment?

Absolutely. That was a question I got a lot during that thread. Attachment is the way that two human beings securely connect to other, to each other. Um, it's the belief that someone will care for you, that someone will put up with you, that someone genuinely wants to help you, and that if you make a mistake, the other person's going to give you an opportunity to correct that mistake. It's the belief that your relationships are secure enough that they can't be just blown up by accident, and that other people aren't trying to exploit you. Healthy attachment is built on love, it's buil- built on mutual sharing, and it's built on understanding. So if I hurt you, you're gonna give me an opportunity to say, "Adam, that really hurt me. You know, I, this is what I need from you going forward so we can continue that relationship." Um, and we're not trying to exploit each other and get everything out of each other that we can, we're, we're trying to go forward so that both of us are benefiting mutually. Even if we over-give to the other person, it's fine, 'cause we trust they'll do the same for us. Someone with an attachment issue, the fundamental belief underlying that is that they are not worthy of love, that there is something deeply wrong with them deep down on the inside, and that everyone else can see it, but they have no idea what it is. So they can never let that out. They can never share anything inside of them with other people, and they're just going to be stuck in a series of trying to earn love from other people, earn approval from other people, and earn so much that that other person will read their mind, figure out what they need, and then do it out of gratitude, without ever learning who you really are on the inside. That's detachment. That's what I call detachment. Um, it's not something that's very well studied. There's very few experts doing it. I'm one of the few people in the United States really covering this topic. Another one is Dr. Robert Glover. He's a genius, surpassing my work. Um, but it's, it's, it's something that needs to be studied, because this attachment underlies so much of mental health. And we treat mental health from the disease model more than we do from a symptomatology model. So instead of looking at depression and saying, "This person has depression. That's a disease. We need to fix the disease," I would look at depression and say, "What, what is that growing out of? What purpose does that serve? And what's the underlying issue?" In my case, it's almost always attachment.