https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=qN8fzqw1WAk
Is mental health genetic habit or personality and how can you improve or master it? Yeah, well it’s all of those things, you know, you might say well it’s unfair that it’s genetic well Look we all have different temperaments. Okay, there’s five dimensions of temperament extroversion that’s Sensitivity and threshold for positive emotion Neuroticism that’s sensitivity and threshold for negative emotion agreeableness. That’s Kind of maternal compassion and empathy versus a kind of tough more Individualized What would you call it decisiveness, yeah good Conscientiousness that’s dutifulness industriousness and orderliness openness That’s creativity and interest in ideas five dimensions. Okay Where you land on those dimensions is determined to a large degree by the genetic lottery And now there’s some movement on each dimension that can occur as a consequence of socialization But it’s bounded by the place you landed when the cards were dealt By the genetic code when you were born and you might say well, that’s unfair. It’s like well, it’s it’s not unfair Exactly. It’s it’s just there’s a randomness about it within a bounded world and It’s not unfair partly because every advantage comes with a disadvantage So if you’re extroverted you’re social and you’re positive but you’re impulsive and You can tilt towards hedonism and you can’t stand being alone if you’re high neuroticism well You suffer a lot of anxiety and pain but you’re pretty sensitive to threat and you might see danger before anyone else does and then you don’t die and so and maybe your children don’t either and if you’re agreeable Well, you’re compassionate and caring but you’re gonna not stand up for yourself very well and you’re gonna Your your temptation is going to be bitterness and resentment if you’re conscientious Well, you’re orderly and industrious, but you can get obsessive and if you’re creative well, then you end up with purple hair and nose rings and I Did a study at Harvard in like 1994 when piercing and tattooing started to first emerge on the cultural landscape because we were trying to find out if it was a marker for Psychopathology which wasn’t obvious at that point Well because it was a subcultural Practice before that it was circus people and prisoners and so forth that were tattooed and who were pierced and Then it spilled into the mainstream and we were curious as I was in the psychopathology and personality Sub-department in the Harvard Department of Psychology and I worked with a Colleague of mine chill Hoolie and we never published this study Many studies end up not published, but it was very interesting the best predictor of Tattooing and piercing was just creativity There’s no sign of a sorted assorted psychopathology except the psychopathology associated with creativity And you might say well, what’s that and it’s like well most creative ideas are stupid and wrong So, you know, why shouldn’t you have ideas? Well, cuz most your ideas aren’t any good. And how do you know that? Well, try starting a business The probability that you’re gonna fail is extremely high most people who end up with a successful business have failed multiple times Because it’s very hard to figure out what the market needs this moment It’s really hard and so you’ll flail around trying to hit that target and if you’re creative, you’re gonna come up with a lot of ideas, but That doesn’t mean they’re good and even if they are good doesn’t mean they’ll work and so most people because most people aren’t creative by the way, they’re not even a little bit creative and that’s because creativity is a high-risk high-return strategy and If you win you can win big but the probability that you lose is pretty damn high Hardly anybody makes any money from a book and it’s really hard to write a book and like how many books have you written? None and and how many successful books have you written and you know, like there’s a one in 100 chance maybe that you’ve written a book. I doubt if it’s that high like actually written and published a book It’s probably more like one in a thousand and then Ninety nine point nine percent of books sell less than 200 copies So you got a one in a million chance at best of writing a book that Is going to be successful, you know, and you might ask well, then why bother and the answer is what most people don’t That’s how they solve that problem. Just don’t do that and then you won’t fail And most of you probably haven’t written a symphony or even a song or a play and you probably haven’t you probably don’t dance But some of you do but I doubt if you’ve ever Generated a truly original dance except by accident and then generally people will just laugh about that. So We studied creative achievement across a wide range of people We had developed a 13 Domain scale with eight levels of competence in each domain. So on the musical front it would be you know I have no training or or Or interest in this area To you know, I’ve written original compositions that have been played internationally by by major musicians and You sum across all 13 domains and the median score, which is the most typical score is zero and 70% of people score zero and The next most common score is one and that’s like now you’ve got 80% of people. Okay. What’s my point? No matter where you land in the temperamental landscape You’re going to have your associated faults and temptations and you’re going to have your associated proclivity to your particular form of mental illness So now that might visit you if you’re particularly unlucky or you might fall into that if you’re incautious but you Generally don’t get an advantage without an attendant disadvantage So that’s on the genetic front and then there’s environmental variability for sure you can take a neurotic child The studies have already been done in this so some children by Let’s say two although you can actually measure this by six months So imagine you have a child in a room lab and his or her mother is there And the mother is sitting and the child’s here and then a little wheeled robot is is remote controlled In by the experimenter well some kids will just run right over and engage with the robot and other kids will hide behind their mother and then sort of peek out and The ones who hide or hire in negative emotion and then if it’s a baby eating robot, they’re not dead So that’s their strategy. Where is the? You know, hey your kids are gonna go play with a strange dog at the at the playground You know or not and sometimes that’s real fun and sometimes it’s no fun at all and Sometimes it’s the you know kid who’s hiding behind his mother’s legs that doesn’t have his face torn off by the pit bull so There’s variability for a reason, you know, and then the more Neurosis prone the more kids more prone to negative emotion They’re gonna suffer from a high risk of having a negative emotion Kids more prone to negative emotion They’re gonna suffer from a higher proclivity for depression and anxiety later in their life and that’s the price they pay for their threat sensitivity but um If you take those kids and you really encourage them to explore voluntarily instead of facilitating Their proclivity to hide themselves you can tilt them up into the normal range for negative emotion And those studies have already been done And so you’re never gonna take a kid who’s really high in trait neuroticism and make them as Low in trait neuroticism as someone, you know at the ninety nine point ninth percentile genetically. You just can’t and Maybe you could do it if you did nothing else then train that child Like 12 hours a day for ten years, but you can shift people a fair bit and if you’re introverted you can you can learn extroverted skills and if you’re agreeable you can learn to stand up for yourself and If you’re unconscious you can learn to discipline yourself, although that’s a tricky one Because you usually don’t have the discipline to discipline yourself if you’re unconscious. So so And then in terms of habit Well, you become what you practice and So if you’re high in neuroticism, it’s gonna take a lot of practice to get you all calm down but that’s what you do in psychotherapy with people all the time because large number of people who are in therapy have higher than average levels of negative emotion and you make them you help them become stronger and the way you do that is by Strategizing with them and encouraging them to confront the things that they’re afraid of and avoid and avoiding and they become More able and more courageous as a consequence of doing so and you can shift people quite a lot doing that and that’s what you Do when you learn and that’s how you teach kids and it’s the universal mechanism of adaptation and you try to speed that up in Psychotherapy and you can do that for yourself, you know, like this is a really useful What would you call ritual routine so Look, you’ve got a goal and you’ll see that as you progress towards the goal There’ll be obstacles that emerge and some of them you don’t want to confront you’re gonna shy away from them So maybe I’m I have a client and they’re being tyrannized at work and they need to get another job and to do that They have put the CV in order and they’re embarrassed about their CV and they don’t even want to open the file on their computer That contains their CV which they haven’t looked at for 10 years and which contains nothing but a record of their Dismal failures in the past as far as they’re concerned and that’s a box that’s locked That’s Pandora’s box with a dragon in it and they don’t want to go anywhere near it and no wonder, you know But if they’re gonna get another job Well, unless they get the resume together They’re stuck under the thumb of their local tyrant and that’s not a good deal and so often what you do with someone like that is you say Just print your resume Don’t even look at the bloody thing. Just print it turn it upside down Put it in an envelope and bring it to the session the next week and then the person will come back and say You know that task that we agreed on because you have to agree on these things. I didn’t do it I couldn’t even I couldn’t even sit at the computer and so then you say well Do you think this week you could just sit at the computer and think about opening your resume and they might say Yes, and then they come back the next week and said, you know, I didn’t even sit at the computer and think about my resume So then you say okay, we’ll do it right now. Okay, close your eyes Okay now Imagine your computer bring it to mind as as vividly as you can right now Imagine you’re walking into your room and now the goal is to sit at your computer So now why don’t you tell me what happened? So imagine your office Okay. Now you’re walking in now. Tell me what happens. You’re gonna walk towards your computer. Just describe it My first I sit down. Okay, and how are you feeling? Relaxed oh well, you’re not much help in this Example no, you mean terrified out of your skull. Oh, you want me to be terrified. Yeah. Okay. Okay. You didn’t say that She’s not very high in neuroticism As you can tell because she’s married to me. So Okay, okay. I’m I’m some terrified. Okay. So what’s happening? Good. Good. So what’s happening with your breathing? Shallow. Okay. So so so so try to pay attention to your feet for a minute Okay, they’re twitching. They’re twitching. Yes. Okay. So just try to let them kind of sit heavily on the floor Okay. Now pay attention to your calves And let them relax and then you walk the person through the body and you say now pay attention to your breathing Just just relax now. You don’t have to do this with people, but it’s a good thing for them to learn Okay. Now, so how are you feeling? I’m feeling slightly better. Okay, good Good now Imagine that you just turn on your computer. Okay, so what happens when you just turn on your computer? I just shallow breathe. Yeah, okay. Okay. So now you get the point and then you walk the person through turning on their computer and then Opening up the dread folder and then reading the title of the horrible dragon resume and then maybe Opening it and then you say that’s good enough for this week and then maybe the person can go home and just open their damn resume and then Maybe they can print it out and bring it to you and then maybe you can go through the sub reptiles one by one, you know and Clean out the snakes. It’s like well, what were you doing between? 2011 and 2013 and that sir is that is the last thing that I want to discuss with anyone, right? So there’s a lacuna there’s a hole in the Account in the autobiographical account and chaos itself is looking through that with all that disorder and shame and malevolence lurking in the background and no one wants to look at that and think well you didn’t do a very good job between 2012 and 2013 and you’ve got a hole in your record and and We have right, right And we need to do something about that now and so, you know How do we address that so that you have a coherent account of yourself and look this could take a good while right to? Put that all back together. That’s your whole path to put that together in a manner that you could that you could Confidently bring forward to a new potential employer but it’s worth it if you escape from tyranny and you now have a coherent account of yourself and you’ve atoned for your past inadequacies, let’s say and you’re ready to move forward and partly what you do in therapy and partly what you should do with yourself is Is not hide all that in the fog you know, so you know where you are so you figure out where you’re going and Then practice doing that and then as you practice doing that then that’s what you become and that will lower your proclivity to negative Emotion definitely as you put your life together That’s why it’s useful to order your room Chaotic room makes you anxious why? Too many pathways man. What you walk into someone’s room and you think what the hell is going on here Maybe that’s your teenager’s bedroom and you’ve pretty much summed it up in the question It’s like yeah, it’s a little slice of hell in that room, you know, and so and how do you feel when you’re there? Like you’d rather be anywhere else and no wonder because everything in the room is broadcasting chaos and disorder at you So that’s another thing I used to do with my clients typical behavioral maneuver, which is if you’re anxious Organize your surroundings a bit, you know simplify declutter organize bit-by-bit order Habitable order the habitable order that is good all of that. It’s a recreation of the original Eden Metaphysically speaking and you can do that very practically and then you practice that and that’ll sort you out You know assuming you’re not physically ill and even then sometimes, you know to the degree you can get yourself. Yeah, right together Yeah, you know bit by bit you’ll even Push physical illness into a band’s not least because you decrease your stress response And that’s fight-or-flight and fight-or-flight stress responses inhibit your immune system And so if you’re always in the state of chaos, your immune system is suppressed and you’re far more likely to get it to become ill so you put order in place of accidental chaos and everything snaps into place and And there’s anything better you can do than that it’s it’s and there’s no limit to how much of that you can do You know you start locally Start with the things that right in front of you. There’s plenty of problems that are right within your grasp You know, they might seem trivial to you, but they’re not Because the things you do aren’t trivial and that’s just where you have to start and then you know once you got yourself kind of ordered locally And you know once you got yourself kind of ordered locally well then start Making your relationships harmonious and once you’re good at that then you go to a whole group of people around you that are Behind you and then you can expand outward from there There’s no way into that That’s the opportunity and responsibility and That’s the pathway to meaning and that’s the antidote to suffering so those are all good things to know And that’s a good place to stop so that’s where we’ll stop. Thank you very much everyone Thank you everyone very nice to see you all Thank you Good night everyone pleasure to be here. Thank you. Thank you Tim. Good night everyone