#947 - Scott Barry Kaufman - How To Not Let Your Past Define You

28:26And wow, in an internet filled with people that are being performative and not showing their true selves, look at this person. That's real vulnerability. That's authentic. That's relatable. I see me in them. And as soon as you create this dynamic, where people are incentivized to help, and you stand out by having some degree of what appears to be authenticity, authenticity very easily. I think a good way to talk about authenticity would be, or to signal it, is to say a thing that typically would be costly to say otherwise. Sam Harris, I think, is authentic. You don't need to agree with him or disagree with him, but he pays a high price for a lot of the opinions that he holds.

29:07So you have to assume that he believes them, because if he didn't believe them, why the fuck would he still hold them? Like, why would he talk about them? You would just say something that was easier than that, and you would just look And he gets a lot of shit for it. And he says, he says the only way he ever finds out about it is when I forward them to him. He loves keep doing that. That's very important. But yeah, what do you think about that? What do you think about this sort of, yeah, investment advice, authenticity, relatability, dynamic? Is that contributing? I want to think this through.

29:38Is it contributing to the, to what? I mean, I think Sam is... Scentivizing victim, ho, that large. Ah, so you see like Sam is such an oddball, you know, in the human species. He's willing to say what he believes would be true regardless of the time. I understand. Sam wasn't the example that I was using, the point being that typically people see a degree of vulnerability as being authentic. But the problem is if you can bypass the authenticity and just be vulnerable, that gives all of the benefits of authenticity whilst not having to do it, which is where performative vulnerability comes from, if you film yourself crying on camera, people think, wow, they're really sad.

30:19I don't know if you were sad or not. Like, maybe you're just good at crying. Maybe you convinced yourself that you were sad. Maybe you over -reged your degree of victimhood in order to be able to show this online because you're going to be positively reinforced to do it because people are going to care. I think there's a really great insight there. I do talk about the difference in performance. I call TikTok vulnerability versus authentic vulnerability. I see this kind of TikTok vulnerability on steroids and it does get rewarded. I think that there is genuine sympathy involved there. There are people, you know, it's like there are people who, when they see the signal, they generally want to help.

30:58They generally have the empathy and want to help. And so that kind of, that kind of TikTok vulnerability, they know that they are going to get some reward. It's like when you're a child you exaggerate a little bit that you're sick because you want to stay home from school You know and you get rewarded by your mother showing you a lot of care and concern. It does feel good to have that attention It does feel good, you know like even Eucharist With mr. Novik to mindset. I'm sure if you're not feeling well Whatever like there might there's a human tendency to want to like broadcast to others that you're not feeling that well to kind of get that sympathy.

31:40Okay, our genes, our destiny, surely they're the most immutable parts of us, so how can people not identify with their genes? Did I address your prior point though? Because I thought it was a really interesting. Yeah, so genes, okay, so G is like a dirty word, right? in a lot of circles. I think people think of genes as something that is immutable, that we can't change, but I would much rather live in a world where nature and nurture contribute than either living in a genetic deterministic world or an environmentally deterministic world. So I'm actually happy with the way that evolution has given us Jeans that are highly sensitive to the environment but are not completely determined by the environment So I like that.

32:35So do you want to do you want to cover attachment theory? Is that Whatever you think is whatever you think is most salient from the gene side Let's let's dive into attachment theory This episode is brought to you by Shopify look you're not going into business to learn how to code or build a website or do back -end inventory management. Shopify takes all of that off your hands and allows you to focus on the job that you came here to do, which is designing and selling an awesome product. Shopify powers 10 % of all e -commerce companies in the US. They are the driving force behind Gymshark and Skims and Allo and Utonic and that is why I've partnered with them because when it comes to converting browsers into buyers their best in class, their checkout is 36 % better on average compared with other leading commerce platforms and with Shop Pay you can boost your conversions by up to 50%.

33:23You can upgrade your business and get the same check out that we use at Newtonic with Shopify by going to the link in the description below and signing up for a $1 per month trial period or by heading to Shopify .com slash modern wisdom or lowercase that Shopify .com slash modern wisdom to upgrade your selling today. Because there is there are so many misconceptions about what attachment theory is and there's so many ideas that it's all the fault. I think a lot of people have a victim mindset about attachment theory. They say, well, I have an insecure attachment because of the way I was raised.

33:54But as I talk about in the book, the behavioral genetics research shows that there is a pretty substantial heritability of your attachment style. And I think that it relates to your personality. Like if you are, score very high in neuroticism, which is going to be influenced by your genes and your environment, but genes really matter in influencing the development of your neurotic traits, you're going to be more anxious in your relationships. You're going to be more self -doubting and it's going to show up in your relationships, but it's also going to show up everywhere and everywhere else in your life.

34:29So I think attachment theorists sometimes look a little too narrowly at the attachment relationship domain and I think they could use the zoom out a little bit and take a bit of a personality neuroscience, a genetics perspective a little bit more. Well, I mean, like jeans or everything, right? They are your height, they are your weight, they are your ability to gain muscle. I'm sure you've looked at in some parts of the sort of in -sell, black pill, ideology, a lot of that is, you know, genetic dead end, that's actually what they refer to themselves as. So it's difficult for a lot of people to, facial symmetry.

35:08Oh, you tell me I'm going to have to go. People go and get leg lengthening surgery. You know, all of the different ways, the compensatory mechanism, I've gone bald early in life, you know, whatever you're, and then you compensate, you fly to Turkey and get new teeth or get new airline or whatever. Jeans in many ways are our destiny and it's hard not to identify with them because they are immutable in many ways. Yes, but if I gave only that message then there'd be no point in writing the book rise above because we also have an agency as you said to compensate to do what we need to not, you know, what's it going to do to help you to say, oh, I have the genes for shortness, I'm just going to never talk to women ever again, you know, what is the use of that?

35:57What is the benefit of that? So no matter what circumstance you're in and no matter what hand God has dealt you, I think it's very much in our control to do what we can with what we have. So I think both are true and we can hold both in our mind at the same time. But you're right. I mean, it drives me crazy when people ignore the role of genes and I have a whole section of my book on that in terms of not just attachment theory, but also, well, it's a very controversial thing to say that trauma is heritable. That's probably one of the most con, if you want to not be a lot of people to like you at a cocktail party, tell them that heritability that trauma has a high heritability.

36:41Have a look, dig into the research around that for me. Okay, how do we cover this sensitively? Well,

36:53I think that in a lot of ways, trauma is the narrative that we tell ourselves about an experience that happened to us. This notion that trauma is stored in the body, I don't think is scientifically accurate. You know, the body keeps its scores like the number one that's been on the New York Times bestseller list. It's created a whole cold falling and has so much popularity. But I don't believe that's how the brain works. So our trauma story is stored in our brain. It's not stored in our body. What we have in our body for sure is survival stress. We have in our body lots of, we can obviously feel the stress involved with the salts with various things that happen to us.

37:36But the word trauma, that really is the narrative that we've cognitively and consciously put on a series of things. And it can change. You can see it change too. You can see situations where a person never thought they had trauma and then they go to therapy and then they get convinced by their therapist that that what happened was trauma something they changed their whole narrative so you can see how how fluid our notion of traumatic experiences are so when I say that trauma has a high heritability well it is interesting because there is research showing that people who have a genetic prickly towards the personality personality trait neuroticism do tend to see the world differently than people who are low in neuroticism they tend to see threat everywhere where people who score and Naradisand don't tend to see the threat everywhere.

38:21You could have twins. You could have, well, you could have siblings who are not twins. You could have siblings who don't share a lot of genes. Not identical twins. And they both could have experienced the same exact thing in their childhood from their parenting style. And one is like, I had a traumatizing childhood. And then you see this case. And then the other child is like, what are you talking about? We had such a great childhood. You know, it's like, what's the truth? In a lot of ways the truth is in the eye of the beholder and you also see that with attachment styles. So I talk about in the book, but the genes for neuroticism color the extent what you focus on in your relationship.

39:00And so it focuses your attention on various aspects of the relationship and it makes you ignore maybe some of the better, lovely aspects of relationship that you just can't see because you're so focused on, will they leave me, will they leave me, will they leave me? Does that make sense? And I hope that was somewhat sensitive. No, yeah, it does. It does. I mean, I remember you talk a bit about epigenetics. And I can't remember who it was I was speaking to. Might have been Roy Balmeister. And he was saying that if a mother goes into poverty during pregnancy, so if a mother who's pregnant loses her job, which is a pretty reliable way to go into poverty, you get epigenetic changes inside of the baby that is being carried inside of it.

39:51So, you know, ancestral trauma, which is, I think, people talking about, I'm one 16th Native American, one like 120th Native American, and I can feel the sort of pain of the ancestral land. I think that starts to get us outside of the realm of science and into the realm of a little bit, but given the fact that if you have a daughter as a baby that's inside of you, that baby has every egg that she's ever going to carry for her entire life. So at one point, you were inside of your mother who was inside of your grandmother. Like that's the kind of position that you hold. I don't know how epigenetics works down to the level of egg cells inside of a developing baby, but I could see that you could quite easily create two generations of epigenetic change by having a really, really stressful event occur to the mother while she's pregnant.

40:51Yes. Yes. And people do make too much of intergenerational trauma effects because the data does show that beyond two generations, there's no indication in the blood of this. So I think that there is some partial truth to this, but I think the trauma Researchers make too much of it. They go way beyond what the evidence actually shows I mean I could literally show you papers I We minimize my use of the word literally. I want to work on that I'll reuse the word of literals and I would love to show you some papers that that really Cast doubt on the pervasive effects of intergenerational trauma beyond two generations So in terms of the Holocaust, for instance, there are terms of people's slavery.

41:37Black people say, intergenerational trauma, you know, from my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great mother is the reason why I am the way I am today. And evidence is actually slim on that idea. Hmm. One final element here to try and curveball you, epigenetic change, the increased activation or of particular genes, expression of genes within someone. Surely, let's say that you start off child of a slightly neurotic parent, you've probably got the genes for a bit of neuroticism, and then during childhood, you, or even during adulthood, you go through a really, really protracted period of chronic stress.

42:26And this epigenetic change that was primed, you had all of the materials, you had all of the ingredients for this very neurotic soup inside of you. And they get turned on. How do people not identify with the fact that maybe they can even remember a time before this when they weren't this way? And now this epigenetic change has occurred. It's very, as far as I am aware, it's easy to increase the expression of genes, but it's very hard to decrease the expression of genes once they've begun to be expressed. Yeah, great point. And if you want to discuss epigenetics within the development of an individual's lifespan, there is a lot of evidence for that for sure.

43:06And that's a different topic than the intergenerational trauma issue. Those are separate issues within an individual's lifespan. There seems to be genes that influence general sensitivity versus orchidandelion, you know, hypothesis. So there are genes that influence you to be the kind of person who's sensitive to everything for better and worse. And then there are some people who seem to have a combination of genes that cause them to not be so affected by anything. And for those who have the genes that make them really sensitive to everything, the environment, the epigenetics really, really matters for those folks.

43:48because there's some really cool studies with like summer camps that takes these kids who have a whore prone to a general sensitivity and may show neurotic like traits and cause them to to really face their fears and in a very supportive encouraging environment Rachel Gracio Plane and Colondi Young did a great study about this by the way and really support them and activate the curiosity element of this because sensitivity, it can go either way. It can cause you to avoid the world, but it can also, sensitivity doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing or a way of holding you back in life. If you're in a supportive environment where you learn early enough that you can take that feeling of fear and anxiety and still act, it actually gives you a sense of great resiliency and it gives you a great sense of curiosity.

44:47So they found that they had that those kids had the highest by the end of the summer camp. They had higher curiosity scores and openness to experience than anyone else in the camp. But unfortunately most people listening to this podcast are not going to be children. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of be hopeful. Realistic. We're being realistic and hopeful. Yeah, both both both. Yeah. It is true. The other way around is true as well. And it's a real shame. I mean, it matters a lot. What kind of partners you choose? Do you have sensitive, do you partner your sensitive to your triggers?

45:22Do you have partners who are going to gaslight you, abuse you, you know, especially, you know, if you have a genome that makes you super sensitive to that sort of thing. It is interesting though. There are some people the genes that make them just rock solid, like stoic regardless of like whatever's thrown at them, that's interesting. There's like a genetic precluded towards that as well. I don't know. Maybe David Goggins, that's those genes, or maybe he developed it. Maybe he was the other way and he developed it. Who knows? But it is interesting. So yes, so of course we should have compassion as well for all the different ways that we do next time, but I don't think it means that there's no hope.

46:02I mean, And like you said, it makes it harder, especially in childhood. I bring up childhood because in adulthood, you know, if these things happen, you're really influenced a lot by these sensitive periods in your life when your brain is still developing, when your prefrontal cortex is developing and you're coming up with cognitive strategies to overcome things and learn things. But I do think you can learn these strategies at any point in your life to a certain extent. Right. I'm like, okay, what's the research on highly sensitive people? I literally didn't even know that this was a thing. I thought it was just...

46:37Really? I thought it would just be like a colloquial term. Oh yeah, it's very sensitive. But highly sensitive people is a, I don't mean tell me what it is, explain it. Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. And we should also talk about the link between masculinity and being an HSP because I think a lot of men score high in this trait and feel ashamed of it Because they feel like societal expectations say that they're a sissy boy or something just because they score high on these traits But being a highly sensitive person is the combination of two traits neuroticism that we talked a little bit about which is being fearful Having a lot of anxiety, but also people who were highly says also score very high in openness to experience appreciation of beauty and excellence and What you often find is that they're so open to so many so much input in the world that they get overwhelmed quickly and then they need to retreat.

47:28So there's a constant push and pull between a full engagement in the world and all its splendor, and all its splendor and the end of avoidance because one becomes overwhelmed with all the input that's coming in. That's really all it means. Some people make more of it than it is. I saw an interview with Kanye West where he said he's very misunderstood.

47:55He's I made the argument. It's actually possible to be a highly sensitive asshole.

48:04There's no contradiction in that. In that.

48:12Right.

48:16Going to the highly sensitive people thing, because I get the sense that this sort of show is going to be very heavily trafficked by people who lie somewhere on that spectrum. They're introspective, they reflect, they do self -work, they consider whether or not this is the best use of their time, they want to be better, they're probably plagued with quite a lot of self -doubt, maybe they're dealing with a little bit of low self -esteem, they worry about what the people think of them, they care deeply about other people's opinions, probably too much. All of that stuff doesn't sound very good. What are the advantages?

48:49Like how can people transform high sensitivity into a strength? Yeah, I'm really glad you asked that question because I think a lot of people can view these things as negatives. But contextually speaking, it is very conducive to creativity, to be able to see the nuances and things, to be able to see, to have such an open mind, where you're able to make connections between things that most people aren't seeing. A big part of my PhD dissertation was investigating the trait reduced lane inhibition and its correlation with creative thinking. People who have a reduced lane inhibition actually do this research with Jordan Peterson, believe it or not, back before he was famous, we published papers on this.

49:30But a reduced lane inhibition means that your filter is down where you don't see things as necessarily irrelevant to the current goal that you have. So there are people who when they have a goal, they're so narrow -minded and single -focused about it that they ignore everything else around them that doesn't seem obviously relevant to their goal. But we found that really creative people, especially in the arts and actually the paper published Jordan looks at the difference between scientific creativity and artistic creativity. We found that people particularly in the arts have this reduced -leaning inhibition where they actually at an unconscious level let in a lot more information than that.

50:14For some reason, their salience brain network is not tagging this incoming input as irrelevant. So they're able to entertain it. And they also have the working memory capacity to entertain it. Shelley Carson also did some really great research showing that having a reduced lane inhibition plus an enhanced working memory capacity is kind of like the ideal state of being for creativity. You can handle this influx of information and sort out what's relevant and what isn't at the conscious level Where most people filter out at the subconscious level. I imagine if you get this wrong you get perilously close to attention deficit disorder as well And schizophrenia Yeah, in the most extreme versions.

50:55This is what you see in mental illness You know, we put people in minimal institutions for having to extreme version of this but for people who can have a moderate version of it, it seems to be the most conducive towards creative thinking. In other news, you might have heard me say that hold luggage is a siop meant to keep you poor and late. And while that's true, it turns out that when a brand puts hundreds of hours into design, an organization and durability, suddenly checking a bag doesn't feel quite so much like a trap, it actually feels like an upgrade, which is what nomatics done with their new method check -in luggage.

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52:04So you can buy your new luggage, try it out for a month, if you don't like it, but give your money back. Right now, you can get a 20 % discount, see everything I use and recommend by going to the link in the description below, or heading to nomatic .com slash modern wisdom. That's nomatic .com slash modern wisdom. Right, what are the advantages? I also think that social sensitivity, I think being able to be in a conversation and feel what another person is feeling or take in a lot of information, even nonverbal cues, not be blind to them can be very valuable. It can help you make you a more caring human in a lot of ways.

52:44So we have the creativity, we have the sort of social aspects. I think also just appreciating life. being able to see beauty where other people don't see beauty could be a big part of it as well. You do tend to find, they actually have separated, I talk about this study in some of my articles, but they separate the appreciation of beauty and excellence apart from the anxiety part, and they find that if you separate that part of the high sensitivity, it's actually correlated with much higher levels of happiness and well -being, whereas the anxiety part is with lower levels of anxiety and well -being.

53:21So I think they're good things we can take from being a highly sensitive person and we can try to manage the other parts. Great lead in there to if, actually, first off, how can you tell if you're one of these people? How can people, we don't wanna get self -fucking diagnosing, but you know what I mean? I don't know good on that rabbit hole, but how can people tell if they're highly sensitive? And then on top of that, if this is you, if this sounds like you, what are the challenges that people should be aware of? What are the areas that, if you can just get control of this and this and this? Your quality of life is likely, you're really able to unlock the advantages of being more highly sensitive.

54:00Do you think you might be a house answer person? I am. Yeah. Based on what I've read, given the fact that I've known about this concept for about two days, I would identify with a lot of those things. I had a huge genetic test done at the back end of last year and all of the alleles that came back that were interesting from a behavioral perspective would predispose me to to this stuff. Very dopamine, epinephrine, nor epinephrine. Sometimes struggles with serotonin, very gold -driven, may struggle to come back to emotional baseline after a perturbed man clears adrenaline slowly like it's dude it's fucking wild like when you look at yeah I think this is really important for people like you to admit that I was in a movie recently called sensitive men rising starting me and a lot of smart set and Luke Goss do you know who Luke Goss is the actor no Google him Luke GOSS he reminds me of you a little bit okay he's you know, he's he's a very buff, very good looking.

55:17He's bald. Yeah, well, testosterone is correlated baldness. But, but look, you know, he's he's a he's a he's a great actor, but he really talks in this movie about how he thinks he's a highly sensitive person, and how he feels like there should be there shouldn't be this stigma about manly looking men and saying they're highly sensitive people. And I really agree with that. I agree with that completely. And I think, you know, we need more people like you and Luke and me, I've been hitting the gym. I'm thinking, no, I'm being cheeky, but we really need to give more men the memo that it's not a negative, it doesn't make you a sissy, you know?

55:59We'll do, look at what is it that drives people to do the things that they do to their career or to their body, or to their mind, or to their net worth, or to their ability to communicate, or these things. Like, a lot of it is a need for control, safety, validation, desire for respect, a sense of something that was missing when you were a child. And yeah, certainly for me, I was pretty lonely, pretty bullied in school, pretty unpopular, and started to... I was small in school. I was late bloomer. I spoke differently. I don't have the accent of the place that I'm from even though I'm, you know, the same working class scum that everybody else was.

56:46The town I mean didn't appreciate the fact that I spoke differently that I used long words like my obsession with stupid vocabulary has kind of existed since I was like. Were you gifted? Were you gifted education? Yeah. You striked me. Also didn't help. I think from the school that I went to, maybe, I think my year group would have had 200 kids and 250. So it was a big school. And I think maybe one or two other people went to college. So six form continued into high school. Only maybe one or two other people. and of that maybe those one or two other people also went to university. So such a low rate of people going on a higher education.

57:36Maybe the college number was wrong, but the university number was almost definitely correct. I think I know one other person from 250 in the school I went to for five years that went on university. So anyway, and you know, I get to university and I start being able to lift weights. And I get this job that's kind of socially impactful running nightclubs, are helping to run nightclubs at that stage. And I realize, wow, if I become successful, then the world needs me in a way that it's never really needed me before. It seems like it respect me. I get validation. I get positive reinforcement. I've got friends.

58:08I've got people that seem like they've got my back. I don't even know what that feels like. And all the while, you're kind of building up this version of you outside of you, which is competent and successful and looking increasingly masculine as you're able to gain muscle and and go to the gym and you're diligent with these things and you go to uni and you do one degree and you do two degrees and then you finish and then you build this business. And you, you know, the classic insecure over -achiever mindset is someone who tries to fill an internal void with external accolades. And yeah, I mean, I know some of my favorite people are highly sensitive superchads.

58:48Chris Buntz said. Chris Buntz said is one of these guys, like regularly cries on camera, weeps on the floor of his bathroom because of the stress in the build up to his event, but is a six -time world champion in bodybuilding and maybe the greatest sort of bodybuilder of Arirah. Alex Hormozzi, another guy who is unbelievably introspective, but also jacked out of his mind, literally looks like a caveman. And these are the people that I resonate with a lot, because I think I see a lot of myself in them too. And, you know, there is kind of an inverse of pretty privilege for men. There's like masculine dis privilege in a way where if you present as somebody that's got it all together, well you look healthy and you're all right looking and you seem pretty muscular and people seem like they like you or whatever.

59:38What the fuck are you whining about? Like why do you find things hard? Why have you got a problem with this? Like, you know, do you not see that person over there? Look at them, they're only five foot seven. Look at how many problems they've got in their life. And he's like, yeah, I get that dude. But he sees something bad happen and he doesn't even fucking notice it. Or is it he had friends throughout all of his upbringing. So you have this yeah, inverse pretty privilege where it's the same one whenever anybody goes to the doctors in the UK and he had my friends that I used to train with in the gym because it was a nationalized health service.

1:00:11If you walked in as a well person trying to get fit, the doctor looked at you and went, dude, does five people in the waiting room who are overweight, they've got angina, they've got heart palpitations, one of them's gonna lose a foot due to their diabetes. Like I don't care about the fact that you slightly tweaked your back doing crossfit, getting from well to fit is not my job, getting from sick to well is. And you kind of end up with this same situation that if you present to somebody that's got it all together, if you start complaining about the challenges that you face, or you start saying, you know, sometimes I get a bit of self doubt, or this thing's hard, or I can't get over this stuff from my past, blah, blah, blah.

1:00:46People go, oh, like, how day you, and it almost feels, I get a sense that there's a bit of an ink around that too, which is, look at how broken this man must be in order for him to not feel internally the way he presents externally, given that he presents externally in an elite manner, and his internal state does not comport with that. God, I hate that bias. Yes. You know, we really need to tell everyone that suffering is not a competition. And you really see it, all these hierarchies being created that like these groups are, you know, inherently suffering, these groups are not inherently suffering.

1:01:26I'm not woke. I mean, this might be a surprise to you. Oh, no. I'm not woke. I mean, I really, I'm not anti -woke either, but I really believe in humanism and treating everything, all people with dignity and respect and listening to everyone's story, regardless of how they present themselves. I do think in a big way, we need more people like you really saying that you're a highly sensitive person, so we don't stigmatize the trait high sensitivity because it really can be a beautiful, beautiful thing. And I'm sure it motivates you and is a big reason why you're good at what you do. You ask thoughtful questions.

1:02:05You're good at integrating lots of things that other people are not integrating. I've noticed that in this interview. So, you know, you're a good integrator. Well, it's definitely deep. It's definitely a high -resolution way to view the world. But it can cause you to move slowly because I don't make very rash decisions. I sort of things through things very carefully. I tend to move very conservatively. I have sort of massive loss of version, fucking huge loss of version, huge fear of regret. And this is why the question that kind of got us onto this was if you're someone who resonates with this highly sensitive person archetype, what are the things that you need to get under control to unlock wellbeing in your life as much as possible?

1:02:55Well, in my book, the biggest thing I say is don't be a victim of your HSP. don't create a victim mindset around being a highly sensitive person. You see a lot of people who are HSPs, they literally see it as the core of their victim identity. So they expect people to tip toe around them. Oh, I feel things are very deeply please be careful with me blah blah blah. And you see it. I mean you see it. It's always one person who's like, I'm triggered. Triggered is like, okay. Really take responsibility for your HS penis and don't expect everyone to cater to that one aspect of your being because I find that very disempowering.

1:03:41You empower your HS penis when you lead with it. I can't let you continue to say the sentence HS penis. Yes. I just literally said HS penis.

1:03:57Yeah. Highly sensitive personness. Yeah. Is this an outtake? It is one of these things. No, no, no. This is a key bentake. Yeah. Being a highly sensitive person, you know, it's like anything else. Any other aspect of your identity? Are you going to make it the core of your victim? identity or are you going to harness it in the service of growth and becoming a better person? And I think you can ask that about any aspect of your personality. No matter what it is, your extroversial, your interversion, your conscientiousness, you know, all these things can have trade -offs. People who are too conscientious, too conscientious, like too gritty, there's a dark side to grit, right?

1:04:42You know, if you're a workaholic, if you're, you know, That could be part of your victim identity is that you're too hard. You could make anything the core of your victim identity. And I don't want people to make anything the core of their victim identity. I want them to not see themselves as that's the thing that's holding them back from the rest of their personality structure, but as the thing that enables the rest of their personality structure. Okay, how do people become victims of their emotions? Yeah. Yeah, so when a lot of people think about becoming a victim, in general, they think about all the ways they're victim to the external world.

1:05:19And the twist in my book is that part one are five ways that we're actually a victim to ourselves. It has nothing to do with the outside world. We can become a victim to our emotions when we take our emotions as facts. We don't just treat them as signposts, but we take them seriously, so seriously, that that we act immediately on whatever we're feeling, and we are quick to label, to find a label for whatever it is that we're feeling, as opposed to just checking in on the experience itself. So that's a big way that we become victim to our emotions. And what are the emotions that people typically fall victim to?

1:05:59Anxiety is a big one.

1:06:05Fear is a huge one. Fear holds us back from so many things in our life. And that's why in that chat, I talked about the act approach, which I'm a big fan of. Have you had Stephen Hayes on your podcast ever? No, who's that? He's the founder of the act approach, just likeotherapy, which is a really brilliant, form of psychotherapy that allows you to act in line with your values no matter how you're feeling about the situation in the moment. Maybe you don't feel like it. Maybe you wake up and like, I want to go to the, I want to lose weight, but I won't feel it going to the gym today. And you really are able to regulate your emotions in a way where you still end up in the gym, you know, really thinking more about what you want to get out in the long term as opposed to what may be holding you back in the short term.

1:06:51So I think the act approaches is a really a really great way forward. Right, okay. I just started the act journal. It's the guys from is it psychologists off the clock? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the two the two ladies. You do you do follow the psychology mean psychology podcast. I wrote this. I'm I'm in. I do. What do you think? Where do you think that I get any of the stuff that I talk about from? I'm not doing fucking original research. I'm going on to psychology today. I'm going on to the psychology podcast. I'm going to psychology soft o 'clock. I'm reading Rob Henderson's sub stack. I'm listening to Jonathan Hyte.

1:07:32And then I'm shamelessly repurposing it as my own ideas with minimal credit. It's pretty cool that you care about that and that you admit that you do that. But you also do, you are interested in synthesizing. So maybe you're not giving yourself enough credit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's my highly sensitive person that's coming up. Okay, so one of the things we've talked about a little bit, and I imagine that this is, this plays a big role when it comes to the emotions side of victimhoodness. The role of internally generated safety, self -regulation, you know, if we're not saying, if you're saying, hey, you can be tyrannized by your own internal state as well as you feel like you're being traumatized by your own external state.

1:08:14What's the role of safety internally generated self -regulation stuff like that? Well, first of all, I wanted to say you asked me where can people find out if they're on HSP and I just want to see HSperson .com, Lane Aaron has a scale that you can take some self tests. So I wanted to say that. Cool. This question you ask, I was wondering if you could ask it one more time so I can really fully process it. Safety, feeling a sense of internal safety, is that it? Yeah, what's the role of internally generated safety? I just get I get the sense that when it comes to emotions What people are struggling with is feeling out of control feeling unsafe?

1:08:54I don't I just like this feels like it's beyond me and I don't have I don't have the capacity to deal with whatever these emotions are which to me suggests you need self -regulation Yeah, well, I think that in general we have much deeper reservoirs of resiliency that we realize and we don't give ourselves the chance to test our resiliency muscles because we're too quick to constantly avoid things that we fear. So first of all, I do think that's very important. I also think that a lot of young people didn't get the memo that you don't have to feel happy all the time. A lot of young people the second they they feel unsafe, you know, they avoid at all costs, you know, what could happen.

1:09:39And of course we want to be safe, but don't always avoid the feeling of feeling unsafe. A lot of people feel unsafe around ideas, around words. You know, that's become a thing in the younger generation as Jonathan Heiden Gregolkiano have talked a lot about and coddling in the American mind. A lot of people feel unsafe with ideas with people that don't agree with them. They feel unsafe. And I don't think that's the way forward in life. You know, that's not the way you challenge yourself. That's not the way you go word and grow and and and and counter other perspectives Also Experiences that get you out of your comfort zone are sometimes the most profound Wonderful experiences in humanity.

1:10:21Imagine if every time you start a new relationship you you start to and you know You have one fight, you know with the person like and then you just give up, you know You're you're gonna have a long stream of on fulfilled relationships. Mm -hmm. How can people cultivate better psychological flexibility in moments of deep emotional pain, discomfort, stuff like that? That is the term, that is the psychological term that's used in the act. I know. That's because I'm reading the act journal, Scott. That's because I'm... That's so cool. Well, I'm impressed. I thought I was cause you read chapter four of my book.

1:11:06I was all about that. Because of both. It's been reinforced by you. That's so cool. I'm impressed. Yeah, I mean, there is no protocol for this. There's no like, you have to, first of all, check in with your own experience and try your best to not wable it, try your best to create a distance from what you're feeling and your higher values and where you want to move to. You know, let's say you know there's your starving and you know that there's something really sweet and fatty waiting for you in the fridge. All you have to do is open up the fridge and get it and move toward it. What you do is you check in with, well what actually, you know what check in with what are my feelings right now?

1:11:54You check in with, well what are my higher values? That's what you check in with your higher values. I want to lose weight. I want to not be the kind of person that immediately opens up that fridge every time I'm hungry and picks out the most unhealthy as thing I have in the fridge. Check in with all that first and let the emotions and the desires and those quick feelings subside. But be with them. Don't label them. I imagine there's a correlation or a relationship between self -esteem and victim health as well. Big one, a big one with low self -esteem. Well, actually, there's no such thing as low self -esteem.

1:12:37This is interesting. On psychological surveys, you very rarely will ever meet a human that says they have zero self -esteem. When you ask them to rate on a scale of 1 to 7, how much self -esteem do they have? It's usually a bi -modal distribution. So you usually see a lot of six and sevens, the people with the high self -esteem are clear. But then the second type of person is usually it's in the middle somewhere, so there's unclear. So it's an uncertain self -esteem. Usually what we call a low self -esteem is really an uncertain self -esteem. The person is constantly looking outward for, they don't know, they don't have a good inner compass of what they think they should be.

1:13:17And also from an evolutionary point of view, it's important to recognize there are different domains of self -esteem that evolved. They're very separate from each other. You can have a very high self -esteem for your work and have very low self -esteem for your mate value. They can be very different things. So I think there's don't domain -specific, we evolved self -esteem as well. There's some really great evolutionary psychology papers around that I cite in my book. Right. So the issue I imagine with low self -esteem is that your sort of robustness to being able to deal with insults both internally and externally generated, you're going to take them more personally.

1:14:05Like, you know, your base is less resilient in that way. Yeah, absolutely. really. Vultable narcissism, which I talked about earlier, is very strongly correlated with this uncertain sense of self. The more that you can have an internal sense of who you are and what you want and be clear on your values, the less your self -esteem is going to make a difference at all. You don't want to be obsessed with your self -esteem. You don't want to be constantly in pursuit of high self -esteem. You don't want that to be your primary goal either. So that's why it's really important to get right with your own inner compass of what you want out of this life and what your actual real felt interests are and listen to them.

1:14:56I think we're a lot in life we get values from our society, we get values from others and we want to belong. So we care so much about belonging to a certain group that we adopt all their values even if they doesn't really suit us individually. How do you come to think about acknowledging past hurts and hardships while not identifying with it? It seems like on one end of the spectrum you've got denial and on the other end of the spectrum you've got identification. Like this didn't happen to me, I'm going to completely ignore it and this is the most important thing in my entire life and totally chooses is my direction moving forward.

1:15:36How do you come to think about this tension?

1:15:42Like what's the optimal point? Yeah, like how do you acknowledge the fact that you've been through tough stuff while not identifying with it? Why not making it your entire sense itself? I think that's why we need to harness an empowerment mindset. We've talked so much on this podcasting about the victim mindset, but my call is for everyone to adopt an empowerment mindset where you play yes and you know I really love improv like yes and the game where you say yes I've had something terrible happen to me and I got this and it is a shame I see so much in our society of us just stopping with the so much has happened to me and I don't see the end part of that, which is, and I have the deep reservoirs of resiliency to move forward with my life with meaning and purpose.

1:16:31Both things can be true at the same time. We don't need to neglect or downplay terrible things that have happened to someone else or that have happened to ourselves. That's love is being able to acknowledge and validate. People just want to be validated. But they, well, no, they don't just want to be validated. People want to be validated, but they don't just want to be validated. They want to be validated for what they've been through, but they also want people to believe in them that they can rise above it. Scott, I appreciate the heck out of you, man. Let's not wait five years before we bring you back on.

1:17:05Where should people go? Don't want to keep up to date with all the stuff you're doing. Thank you. And likewise, by the way, I really respect the whole lot of you, man. Yeah, my website is ScotberaCoffman .com. I have lots of stuff on there. All right, you can buy a rise above and hopefully any bookstore or online bookstore and I have the psychology podcast. Yeah, that's right. I appreciate you, man. Until next time. Until next time.