Blaise Aguirre (on overcoming self-hatred)

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi. And I want to quickly say that our guest is Dr. Blaze Aguirre. Aguirre.

Blaze Aguirre. Aguirre. You say it. I'm going to own it. I'm having a very hard time pronouncing Blaze's last name because it's A-G-U-I-R-R-E. And Wabiwa was nice enough to write it out phonetically for me. Yes. Which is eh, E-H, gear, eh. Aguera. Aguera. Yeah. That's a hard one. That's a hard one. It's a hardy. Yeah.

But I'm not a baddie. No, you're not. Okay. Dr. Blaze is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and an assistant professor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is one of the world's foremost experts on borderline... personality disorder. We've been dying to get an expert on BPD in here and we finally have and it was incredibly interesting. So interesting. We do love a deep dive into a... personality trait yeah disorder I have

I've been trying my best to repeat everything he said. I told my entire family almost this whole interview. You did? Yeah, I found Blaze to be... Incredibly interesting. His primary focus and specialty is he has dealt with 5,000 suicidal patients. And... That is a very unique experience for a psychiatrist to have. And so if you want to talk to an expert on this topic, this is the guy. Yeah. And it was incredibly informative. And he has a book out. Again, I've already...

Given away that one copy I read and then I've ordered two more for people I love. I hate myself. Overcome self-loathing and realize why you're wrong about you. Yeah, this is an incredible topic. Hopefully it will help a lot of people. Yeah, I think so. He had another big, crazy endorsement for CBD and dialectical behavioral therapy. Yep. Which we've had, Jenny Tates we had on was also a DBT specialist. Yeah.

Pretty amazing stuff. Please enjoy Dr. Blaise Aguirre. Aguirre. Aguirre. Dr. Blaise Aguirre. Perfect. This episode is brought to you by audible. Wellness is in a face. It's a journey and essential self-care. So this year, invest in yourself. Rethink habits. Commit to lifestyle changes. Think of who you want to be and take that first step.

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Can I start with a question I'm so embarrassed to ask you? I've never seen your first name. Blaze, patron saint of throats. So I grew up Catholic. Are you Irish? Half Irish, half Iberian. Aguirre is actually Basque from northern Spain. My mother is actually Spanish. So Blaze is the patron saint of throats.

And it's interesting, her name is Isabel. And Blaise and Isabel are anagrams. Oh, wow. Oh, sure. And I was like this with my mom. Oh, that's so sweet. And where did you grow up? I grew up in South Africa. Oh, you did? Okay, that's why I came up. Oh, you've got a lot going on. Yeah, you're high in 57, my friend. Have you been to San Sebastian? Yes. So in 2011, some Spanish people found me and they said, oh, would you teach dialectical behavior therapy in Spain? I said, yeah, of course.

I will. But I spoke like an eight year old because I left Spain when I was eight. And I said, OK, I'm committed to learning fluent Spanish. So every year I go to Bilbao. Home of the Gary. Exactly. I've been there. You've been there. Yeah, we went. He was so worldly.

No. Okay, so you grew up till eight in Spain. I was born in Columbus, Indiana. I left when I was one. We moved to London. My brother was born there. And then from there, we moved to Spain. I had four siblings born there. Wow. And then we moved to South Africa. And two siblings were born there. So I'm the eldest of eight, born in four countries on three continents. I can't even begin to guess at what industry would have brought your parents to all those locations.

My grandfather, Antonio Garriguez, was the Spanish ambassador in the Kennedy White House. Oh, wow. And they actually grew very close to the Kennedys. So my mother had been the daughter of a diplomat. Her mom had died and she was the eldest girl. So she sort of took over hostess. Learned that trade. Exactly. And then my dad was in the U.S. Navy at the time. He was in the Pentagon. And then they met at some official function. And then he started an important export.

business. I guess those were all seaports. I could have put that together. So I could imagine this could do a real number on you identity wise. Yes and no. I had this mom who was such a profound loving mainstay. My dad was very conservative and I identified much more strongly with my mom. You were anchored and tethered to her. Exactly. And she was so grounded in her own sense of self. But I mean, I definitely have seen even living in the United States, if I'm in

Little towns where people haven't moved out of those little towns. Their identity is that. So having traveled, it's really been interesting. Yeah, do you think it at all gives you a healthy outsider's perspective that you're kind of observant of these places? I wanted to be a philosopher. But you know what they say, how do you get a philosopher? of your front porch.

Pay for the goddamn pizza. That's good. I haven't heard that. Pay for the pizza. That took me a second. Yeah. So not a highly employable skill set. Not a highly employable skill set. It did get me curious about the mind and then that... led me to psychology, which led me to psychiatry. So I went to medical school in South Africa. And then I became an expert in dialectical behavior therapy. So all I do is treat suicidal kids. And I've been doing that since 2007. But then teaching in Jerusalem.

was different from teaching in Riyadh was different than teaching in the UAE different than teaching in South Africa teaching in Spain and looking at identity and pathology through this cultural lens is just really interesting. Through all this travel, by the way, obviously you inherited your parents' wanderlust if you've been in all these places. Yeah, I'm actually going to India in two weeks and introducing DBT. We're seeing increased...

rates of suicide in Indian youth, and whatever we're doing isn't helping. So I'll be there in two weeks, and I'll be in Spain in four weeks. Okay, but throughout this whole time, you have held a position for 25 years at McLean Hospital? Yeah, I have. So we've had a great interest in borderline personality disorder. It comes up.

Occasionally. And we've yet to have an expert on. And you've written three or four books about borderline. We sometimes talk out of school on it. We have the thinnest understanding of what the predictable pattern of someone suffering from that is. And we could be.

completely wrong because we've fucked up OCD a couple times. We've stepped in it. Our colloquial understanding. Yeah, we try to fix those things by having someone who really knows in the room. I think we've had about 5,000 patients come through our programs since we opened them in 2000. And I'd say about 70% have had borderline personality disorders. So is there an enormous correlation between suicidal ideation or suicide and BPD? Yeah, very, very high. For the people who come to my unit...

I don't remember one that hasn't had suicidal ideation. So I say, oh, those 5,000, they've all had suicidal ideation. A very large percentage have made attempts. It's possible that the people who come to my unit are people with very severe forms of BPD. You know, it's like not everybody with asthma ends up in an intensive care unit. So it's a spectrum disorder. Exactly. And I think that there's mild to very severe forms. But I think that when you get to the severe form...

almost everybody has suicidal ideation and self-destructive behaviors. Okay, so first of all, what is the difference between a mood disorder and a personality disorder? So mood disorder, as we think a little bit about it, is you have... discrete episodes of mood states, typically either depressed or manic, that last for a certain period of time, 10 days, two weeks, and...

respond typically to treatment such as medication and cognitive behavioral therapy. When you're in that state, there's very little reactivity to that state. So when somebody is depressed, they stay in that state for some period of time. With personality disorders, there are traits about who you are, the way that you experience yourself in relationship to other people. Maybe you're emotionally very intense. Maybe you tend to be reactive to...

what people say and do. That those personality traits, when activated, interfere with your ability to function. So what's confusing is that say somebody has borderline personality disorder and everything's going fine. To the outside observer, they're just like doing fine. But they're on Instagram and they didn't get invited to a party. And they see all their friends at a party and now there's...

incredible rage, incredible anger, incredible jealousy, envy, and it spikes their emotional state. And in that state... They cannot function. Their relationships begin to be impacted. Maybe their work does. So that's already revelatory to me because I thought of it as like a status quo. You're in a state of this disorder. And this is what's interesting. Let's just say...

that somebody was drunk and they walked into the studio and we all walk in independently, we could see that the person is drunk. That state is permanent in that moment. But let's just say it's somebody with borderline personality disorder and you guys have a good relationship with that person. But I've really pissed them off. So then you come and you're chit-chatting and everything and I walk in and suddenly you see this spike of rage. From your perspective, that person seems to be doing fine.

But from my perspective, all of a sudden this person's angry and maybe they're... devaluing me or very, very upset and you guys are saying, what's going on? That state only manifests when there's something either interpersonal or intrapersonal inside their own head that gets triggered. Now, is narcissism in a state of flux as well? It's interesting that I don't know narcissism as well. And the reason why is because

People with narcissism don't tend to come in for therapy. Yeah, we had a narcissist expert and she said exactly that. One of the rarest cases to come seek treatment. Yeah, you can't diagnose it really because who's coming in. Understand it correctly from the expert we had on it. It's like you don't...

suffer from narcissism the way you suffer from some other. It's the scariest one because they're in it in such a way that they don't want to feel better. Maybe I could teach you a thing or two. Okay, give us some tips. What I'm saying is that's what the narcissist will say.

But the most common comorbidity with a personality disorder is another personality disorder. So you can have borderline personality disorder with some narcissistic traits. And one of the ways in which I have been able to work with a few cases of people with a narcissistic...

personality disorder is to say, here's the thing, no one actually likes you. And you also have to just call it out as the truth. Like, I know that you feel that people adore you and you're surrounded by people who you believe. are supported, they don't actually. And the thing about it is you can't even see it. So I'm going to teach you how to see the world differently, even if you don't feel that what I'm telling you is true. Because what's happening is that...

You're kind of lonely for a narcissist, like what's going on? Is it actually about everybody else or maybe it's about you? So mostly it's hard for me to answer that question only because I see so few people with NPD. Yeah, so what are the symptoms of borderline personality? Yeah.

talk a lot about it in the book because that's the group that i found with most self-hatred and self-loathing was the group of people with borderline personality disorder okay so if we go through the criteria the first criteria is frantic efforts to avoid real

or imagined abandonment. So what do I mean by that? Nobody wants to be abandoned, you know, and say like, okay, I'm going to go home. My kids and wife have disappeared. Yeah. I know I'm already scared. Every time we have someone on who's speaking about psychology, I think I have it. That's your OCD. What's so beautiful about this is we're all on the spectrum. Who wants to be abandoned? Go home. The people who love you aren't going to be there.

because they don't want to be there with you anymore. Well, that would be terrifying. But the person with borderline personality disorder fears it. whether it's real or whether it's not real. And sometimes it's like, boy, this relationship is so painful for me that I can't be with you anymore. And so then that's real abandonment. But then the other one is no one's ever liked me. No one's ever cared about me. I just worry that.

People are going to abandon me. And so then what they start to do, this is the first part of the criteria, frantic efforts to avoid the abandonment. It's constant texts, constant phone calls, constant seeking of reassurance. Then to the other person, it's like...

How many more times do I need to tell you I love you? And it becomes actually the kind of behavior that then creates the self-fulfilling prophecies. Because like, I can't do this anymore. Yes. Okay, that a little bit matches what my understanding was that you'll find... people with BPD will become very quickly infatuated with somebody. They'll get very quickly close and heightened. And then there will be some period where...

they've decided you're actually kind of out to get them and then they will flip to a kind of comparable level of hatred. Okay, so you've actually touched on two of the other criteria. So the second criterion is intense interpersonal relationships.

They're very rapid, very intense, characterized by extremes of... idealization and devaluation so in one moment I just met you Dax you're like the best person ever I'm going to marry you tomorrow and there's this glow and then all of a sudden hey listen I'm not making it for dinner tonight you're the worst person ever what did I

And then the ninth criteria, which you find, especially if there's been trauma, is paranoia. Clearly, you're plotting against me. Clearly, you must be seeing somebody else. Clearly, you never cared about me. And I'm very suspicious of that. Now, just imagine living that way.

And the thing is, people don't choose it. It's not a choice to live that way. I often say this even with pedophilia, which is like, no one went to the grocery store, looked at the fucking options on the shelf, and they're like, I'll take that. No one would pick that. Exactly. It's heartbreaking, and the compassion.

Passionate thing is just to remind yourself of it. Treating them has got to be one of the most precarious because naturally they would probably want to idolize you initially. They idolize me. And then when I, hey, by the way, I need to cancel this session because I'm going to go to L.A. to be on. Hang out with them.

movie stars and everything it's like if you where'd you get your degree you know you're terrible you're abandoning me and all of that and the thing about it is it's such a horrible way to live because that's how you're experiencing the world it feels so interpersonal

It is interpersonal, but it's a manifestation of pathology. It's not like I'm waking up in the morning and thinking, how am I going to mess up somebody else's life today? Right. It's not malicious. But what happens is that when somebody gets really activated, the most...

difficult of their pathology begins to show up. But that happens to all of us. And I've never met a person for whom this wouldn't be true. I could put you under so much stress, threaten the person you love most, that the worst of who you are, worst.

in quotation marks, whatever it is that you have to do to get through that moment would come out. And that when you're dysregulated, you can't think. Yeah, the part of your brain that is in charge of executive functions, not accessible, right? If you hear that your house is on fire right now, we're not continuing.

this interview. Wait a second, don't you want to hear about borderline personalities? I'm going to go and save my house. They're like living in survivors mode. In many cases, yeah. They feel also perfectly situated to be love addicts as well. Because this This is also a very kind of similar cycle of love addiction. Where it gets tricky is that, I mean, what a wonderful thing to feel loved. And you can't make anyone love you. When you feel it, there is no word for it.

Words do such a violence to our experience because we try to capture this concept in words. But I mean, what does a three-month-old say to its parent? I love you. No, it's not in the words. You sort of feel something. And if you felt threatened for such a long time and then you're in the context.

or somebody who elicits a warmth and expansiveness in who you are. It's such a beautiful feeling. And then you want more of that. But who wouldn't want more of that? And when you've been deprived for most of your life, you want to cling to it. The problem is that that clinging...

can have its own consequences. And that's where you start to see the fifth criteria, which is suicidal behavior, the sense of emptiness, and then the reactivity of mood. It's like, wait, why are you looking at me that way? I don't think anyone would be hearing this and not... be able to quickly think of someone in their head. I'm going to, yeah, a couple people that I've had this distinct feeling of. I can feel you.

creating a narrative about me that I'm out to get you. For me, on the other side, it's exhausting. It's a little demoralizing to the experience we've had. I've earned more than this, right? Now, it's a spectrum. So there'd probably be a different answer for wherever you're at on this continuum. But are all of their relationships going to follow that pattern or do some?

trigger it and others don't? Yeah. You know, the way I think about it, and a lot of my patients have really liked this, I think of a dartboard. And I think about there's that inner circle, the bullseye, and then that one around. The people... on that inner circle where there's the most intensity are going to both experience the best of who the person is, but also like the most difficult part. And as you go out in the spectrum, trivial relationships.

acquaintances aren't going to be able to experience it so if we were to think about the earlier example of somebody who is say drunk it wouldn't matter where you are on the dartboard you'd see the person as drunk but then often if people are more acquaintance level relationship

they're not going to see that behavior. It's not going to activate or trigger those strong emotions. But the closer you are to the person, the more you're going to see it, the more it's going to be triggered. If you think about the brain of somebody with BPD as being a supercharged Porsche. versus somebody who's driving a golf cart. The person who drives a golf cart, maybe that's their emotional range, up to 20 miles an hour. The person with BPD drives up to 200 miles an hour.

It's okay to be emotionally intense and have that fast car, but you have to know how to drive it. And so for people with BPD, they've got this emotionally intense brain, but they just don't know how to manage it. They don't have the skill set to do it. I'm a very emotionally intense person.

But for me, it brings me joy. But that's because I know how to drive this brain. Even still, every now and then I go a little too fast. Well, yeah, you're a human. I mean, even when you say the bullseye thing, in general, we have our best and worst selves with our most intimate people. I would imagine there's...

some also predictable fallout in their professional life and their relationships? Is there a pretty well-worn path that folks suffering from this find themselves on? The historical narrative was that this was... kind of untreatable and that what would happen is that the lies would ultimately be lies of despair, of...

incompleteness and I just refused to accept that that was true I said I'm going to teach you how to drive your car at 200 miles an hour because you don't have that skill set and when you're able to do that then you're able to function and so many of the people that I've worked with using treatments like

Do I understand this? This is an offshoot of CBT, yeah? Exactly. You have to be able to monitor those high states. But I think it's also monitoring the low states. And the best way to do that is through the practice of mindful awareness of that moment.

If I'm in a low state right now, it's like, I don't like the questions you're asking me. Why are you so annoying? Just leave me alone. I just want to go back to Boston and lie in bed. Or I'm celebrated. Yeah, I'm like, wow, you think I'm the best interview that you've ever had. Can we be here for three hours and we can... So when I'm filtering that, and then my mind...

runs away one way or another, it does a lot of damage. So it is paying attention to that and saying, okay, I'm heading that direction. I'm here. And you know what? I'm just going to do the very best that I can. I'm going to pay attention to that. I'm going to catch my mind going to, I'm going to be the...

most celebrated interviewee ever, or like they think I'm an idiot. They keep looking at their watches. It's catching that. That's the part that is the mindfulness piece. And then it's saying, what am I lacking in order to be able to manage it? And that's more of the CBT part, the skills.

piece. Okay, so what causes it? It's the same thing as the topic of self-hatred. I've not made a person that wasn't highly sensitive that developed borderline personality disorder. So first of all, the biological DNA condition. is that the person with BPD...

tends to be a highly sensitive person. Emotionally, or you know how some people are like, I'm an HSP and I can't wear these clothes. It's a really good question. And I think actually a lot of highly sensitive people do also have sensory issues, but it's more of an emotional. highly sensitive so what do they do they feel things quicker than other people to seemingly smaller provocation when they have reactions they're bigger than their peer group and then when they're feeling something

it takes longer for them to get down to baseline. Strong emotions are the super glue for labels. Let's just say that you call somebody, hey, you're kind of fat. Now, if they're not highly sensitive, they're going to brush it off. If they're highly sensitive and that was a label that was used in childhood, that label is going to stick.

powerfully to the person's experience. It's super glue. It's like those fly traps to those kinds of labels. And so you have this highly sensitive child who then experiences what DVT calls invalidation, saying what you're saying.

It doesn't matter so much. You're making a big deal of a thing. You're overreacting. And imagine somebody has a peanut allergy. And I give you some peanuts, and then you have a big reaction. I'm saying, Dex, you're overreacting. Which I am, by the way, to my cohort. Yeah, exactly. Most people don't.

Don't have anaphylactic shock from peanuts. Exactly. And here you are. That's the reaction that I get when I'm exposed to the prompt that I'm getting. And in this situation, that peanut is an expression of some sort of...

dissatisfaction. By the way, it doesn't have to be done with malice. It could just be, why aren't you like your older brother? Your older brother doesn't complain about things, gets up and goes to school. He doesn't care about those bullies in school. Like, come on, get up. It's okay. You're going to be okay. And you are okay if you are okay.

Like you say, today I'm going to be impacted by the cruel words that people say. And you are. It's because they don't have the ability to manage those things. It's a skills deficit problem. So when you map invalidation. Onto a highly sensitive person, they're very much at risk of developing borderline personality. And a highly sensitive person is a physiological, biochemical baseline you're born with? Yes. Is it observable in any part?

your body or is it a neurochemical thing we would have to measure? That's what the research shows. We wanted to see this kind of response that people were having. And so we created this experiment where we compared typical teens with BPD teens. What we did is we had a cursor on a screen and then you had the mouse. And if the cursor moved one way...

You had to just move the mouse to map it. Halfway through the experiment, we switch it so that if you move the mouse to the right, the opposite thing happens. And so what happens for typically developing teens, they get a bit annoyed, but then that's it. With people with BPD, it is... Really, really upsetting. You can see massive amygdala reactivity. I had a kid who was extremely bright and I said, how was the test? And she says, oh, it was okay.

I said, wait, what? Didn't it upset you that the cursor went the other way? She said, no, I turned the mouse around. Oh, my God, she outsmarted it. She outsmarted the whole experiment. Which would be a skill. That was something you would probably teach in CBT. Exactly. If we think about the... amygdala and you think about the hippocampal system and then you think about the prefrontal cortex as the brake you know again if you're driving that fast car having golf cart brakes

for the fast car isn't going to help you. So you either have to strengthen those brakes or learn how to drive that fast car a little bit slower. It also overlaps what we would think of trauma response. I'm thinking of, of course, the beginning of Body Keeps the Score. observing veterans deal with these pretty trivial...

challenges and have these very outsized reactions. And I myself really relate to that deeply. I don't think because of a BPD situation, but because of a trauma one where the slightest thing for me becomes life and death pretty quick. It's very similar. It's interesting how many ways there are to arrive at the same reaction. Totally. At least 50% of the kids who come to our unit have had trauma. with a capital T, but only about a third actually developed PTSD. And most people...

can have a traumatic event including things like rape and not develop PTSD. Interesting. Which is really interesting. Actually, the majority, about 70% of people who've had... those kinds of experiences don't go on to develop PTSD. And that's probably because either they had a lot of other protective factors or maybe they weren't that emotionally reactive.

So the case would be that you're probably a highly sensitive person. I am quite sensitive. And then impact of those peanuts on you is going to be much, much more than for your peers. Yeah, the combo. Exactly. For people who are... around that type of behavior who don't identify. Is it okay to abandon them? I'm thinking of one very specific person in my life, and I did do that. I have a lot of guilt because I do know, oh God, this is like...

the worst thing to do. It confirmed it, but I can't. Here's what I think the key thing to do is I think that there's integrity in letting the person know. And that is to say, When we get into the Porsche and you're driving at 200 miles an hour down Santa Monica Boulevard, I get scared. It's just too fast for me. And that when I'm with you, the kinds of emotional reactions and responses that you have.

or more than I can handle. And maybe I need to develop my own skill set, but it's too much for me. It's causing me a lot of pain. And what it does is it pushes me away from you. And I don't...

want to spend time with you and I think that that's really hurtful so I really hope that you can get some help or whatever it is I mean ideally if they were really in a much much better state whatever drew you to them in the first place those qualities are still there right it's just that there's a lot of other qualities

They're alienating. So maybe if you can get help, we could get back together. But this is too much for me to handle. I can't eat peanuts. Yeah, you're doing them a kindness and almost helping not confirm their own pattern, which is if you are to just ghost them and leave their life, you actually can.

Confirm everything they've been saying. 100%. Whereas if you say, I wanted to be a part of this and love you, the intensity for me is very scary. And I am always feeling like I'm going to do something wrong. It gives me a state of anxiety. I just can't handle that personally. I think that's of kindness. We treat people as fragile and it's the worst thing that we can do.

If you just told me I've had trauma and then I might have a reaction. And I now have to filter everything I say through the idea that might be triggering you. And then I say, you know what, sorry about the interview. I was walking on eggshells and I treated you as fragile. I'd rather just be able to...

to have a conversation with you. And I would hate it. You would hate it to be treated as fragile. There's nothing I hate worse than being pitied or... Pitied or be treated as fragile. And by the way, I'm robbing you of an opportunity to tell me, you know what, Blaise? That was kind of hurtful. And I'm saying, okay, well, now I know. But like, I'm thinking, should I say...

Peanut one more time? Well, yeah. This gets tricky, though, because if you know someone well, I mean, let's... Depersonalize it? No, I'm going to personalize it. Oh, okay, great. Wait a second. Did you guys invite me here because this is a session? We always do. You bring in the best experts in the world to try to navigate this partnership. Exactly. The reason I can do this is because I don't think you have this.

I do think for both of us, we know each other's triggers. So I'm going to try not to throw a bunch of peanuts in your face because I know that causes pain or that is going to cause a huge reaction. So I am avoiding it, but out of...

So there's two things about that. One thing is right now we don't have good treatments for peanut allergies and you just know nothing that we do at this point in time because we don't have a treatment for it. Let's just say that you know that there are things that are part of ordinary life.

that might be triggering. Then the responsibilities for the other person to say, do I need exposure therapy? Basil and I often talk about psychodrama sort of stuff, Bobby keeps the score, that kind of work, that it doesn't actually serve you to not have...

dealt with that because in this context you could say well we know each other very well and I'm not going to say things are going to be activating but you know you walk onto the street and somebody's going to say something and I would rather know that there's something wrong and then I make a choice about I'm going to deal with it or I'm not gonna deal with it. You don't intentionally wanna be upsetting someone. At the same time, you're not the world. The world is going to...

do upsetting things. You could be soft, kids gloving it, but you're one person. So what do you really, yeah. I think we could further articulate devaluing. It came from an old psychoanalytic concept. So more like Freud. Freudian kind of ideas. And I was trained in Freudian psychoanalysis. I then moved to behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy. So the idea is that I, as an individual, feel very flawed.

But that's unbearable for me to experience. So I project my lack of value onto you and then I devalue you when you're doing behaviors. that I don't like. Devaluing is like you're the worst person ever. Could we say if you notice who you hate, it generally will fall into two categories. They either exhibit a side of yourself you hate about yourself or they've achieved some...

success in this deficit you think you have. Yeah, I think that we see both of those sorts of things. But I think there's often an emotion that shows up before that. And that is sadness, maybe jealousy. But staying in that emotional state is very, very painful. It moves from that primary emotion, which is generally 10 to 30 seconds.

to a secondary emotion which includes a lot of cognitions and thoughts about what the other person is. Kind of creating the story to explain the feeling you initially had. Exactly right. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. This episode is brought to you by Audible. Wellness is more than a goal. It's a lifelong journey.

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Hello, I'm Matt Ford. And I'm Alice Levine. And we're the hosts of British Scandal, the wondery podcast that brings you the murkiest stories ever to take place on these odd little isles. And boy, oh boy, our next series is going to blow your mind. when a rebellious English woman of unimaginable means meets a handsome, moustachioed Irish nationalist.

I'm guessing it's a Molotov cocktail of scandal. You're always right, Matt. We're unravelling the wild story of Rose Dugdale, an upper class English heiress who chucked it all away. to join the ira this is the ira heiress we've got robberies hijacks bombings

and one of the most audacious art heists in British history. What drives a woman with the world at her feet to turn her back on it all and dedicate her life to ending British rule in Northern Ireland? Find out by following British Scandal wherever you listen to... podcasts, and binge entire seasons early and ad-free on Wondery+.

I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankopan. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we're talking about the singer and songwriter John Lennon. His band, The Beatles, smashed musical conventions. caused hysterical adulation and are still the biggest selling band of all time. But that adoration obscured a complex and combustible character. He might have been singing Give Peace a Chance, but his personal life was often far from peace.

So who was the man behind the round glasses? And how does his legacy hold up today? What about you, Aphrod? What's going to ring your bell about John Lennon? Is it the man, the music? There is something about the iconography of Lennon. He's got such mystique around. And I cannot wait to dig in and separate facts and fiction and find out who he really was. And of course, he started the Russian Revolution in 1917. Oh no, that's a different Lenin altogether.

Follow Legacy now from wherever you get your podcasts. And binge entire seasons early and ad-free on Wondery+. Okay, so the treatment for this, I mean, 5,000 patients, I would imagine I couldn't ask someone better about what the course of action is if someone does want to confront this. I've been trained in different modalities. As with everything, in the same way that no one antibiotic treats every infection and no one exercise is the exercise to make you fit, no one treatment.

is the treatment. There's MBT, mentalizing-based therapy. There's schema therapy. There's all sorts of therapies. What I like about dialectical behavior therapy, especially in the people that come to see me, is that DBT says, until we've addressed suicide, and suicidal thinking, none of the rest of therapy makes any sense. Sure. We have to first keep you alive. I often say, listen, I'm one of the best DVT therapists in the world.

I haven't been able to treat a dead person. So I have to keep you alive. There's a lot of irreverence in DVT. You've got to be a little bit careful. So I don't want to talk about your difficult relationships or your struggles with your sense of self until we have. An idea that when suicidal thoughts show up, which they're going to, that you're not then going to act on them. Often what happens, and this is where I think other therapies get this wrong, they start exploring.

what caused the pain without having the skill set to manage the strong emotions and suicidal thoughts that come up. We say, until you know how to drive that Porsche, we're not going to talk about going on a racetrack or anything else. Why you wanted a Porsche in the first place. Exactly.

You're right. You're already driving this fucking thing. Not very well, but... And it's painful to unearth all of this stuff, so it's going to just exacerbate the situation. So when you don't have the skill set...

To be able to manage those things, leading to those suicidal thoughts and behaviors and self-destructiveness, toxic relationships, devaluing relationships, we're not going to do that. And actually, for a lot of the young people who come to see me, if they're not in relationship... I say you can't be in a relationship until we're done with treatment because...

You're bringing the worst version of yourself into relationship and what you're going to attract because of your low energy state is people at the same low energy state and it's going to be negativity that drags you down rather than the higher version of who you could be. have to regulate before you can reflect. And the problem is that a lot of people with BPD are in a heightened state of dysregulation a lot of the time. Yeah, I will say I'm generally skeptical of all the modern child race

advice that comes over the transom every 36 hours, but one that I have recently heard that my wife's a big proponent of, which I can't help but agree with, and I think anyone who's got kids could relate to this, is like, the kid does something, they injure themselves, and you want to

Teach them a lesson in that moment. You go, that's why you don't play with scissors. Right. But part of their brain you want to access is not accessible until you've regulated. Exactly. Like the first order of business has to be, let's calm everyone down. Let's return to some kind of homeostasis where this lesson you're going to give them could even be heard. I've got four kids and my second has become a social worker. My third is in law school and the other one's doing AI.

And so very, very different kids. I recently went to Vegas with my son because we wanted to walk in the desert and hike and meditate. And I said, what is some of the most brilliant advice I ever gave you? And he says, I don't remember at all. Part of it was actual bullshit. But I remember how you made me feel. And it was very, very moving.

Because when we settled and we were connected, he felt safe. He doesn't remember what I said. Yeah. Is there any part of the treatment that is pharmacological? Not for core Borland personality disorder. And I think people have tried to use contemporary drugs.

and been part of doing some studies with experimental drugs that seem to tampen down amygdala response because it has to do with a perception of self in the context of relationship. And there's no medication that can do that. Now, parents have said, well,

isn't there something that can calm my child down? I said, yes, it's called anesthesia. I promise you, you anesthetize the child. They are not going to misbehave at all. Like you can dampen down the brain so much that a person cannot think, can't stay away. These are kind of the horror stories. Now, having said that...

BPD has a lot of comorbidity. So say a person has bipolar disorder, who has obsessive compulsive disorder or severe major depression. The biological intervention through medication is to treat the comorbidity, but not core BPD. Got you. How successful. is the treatment. What I was told when we opened the unit in 2007 is that for hospitalized people, the research showed 10% would die by suicide. God, really quick, take that in to know that...

One in 10 of your patients you'll have to watch die is a very gnarly endeavor. Right. So we've had 5,000 as far as we know because people respond fewer than 30. And by the way, every single one of those is tragic. So we've reduced. The number, any number, and this is where the thought of the book then starts to show up. Okay, so through the course of all this work and the 5,000 patients, it occurs to you at some point...

You're occasionally hearing something, but you're not really focused on it. It's not something that's listed in the DSM that should be addressed. And you basically are led by your patients. to start considering self-hatred and self-loathing as a condition that really needs

exploration, research, we need to really start considering that this is a component that needs addressing. How do you come to this? Right. When I thought about the people who'd taken their lives and whose parents I was really close to, and I looked back... on their records, the one thing that came up in the people who had tragically lost their lives to suicide was statements of self-hatred.

Now, if you've had therapy, so you go in for an initial psychiatric evaluation. What's your name? How old are you? What do you do professionally? How do you sleep? Do you have any nightmares? How's your eating? Energy level, obsessions, compulsions. Do you hear voices, suicidal thoughts, homicidal thoughts? Are you anxious? Anything else you want to talk about? How's your attention and concentration? Ruminations, compulsions.

whatever it is. No one ever asks about self-hatred. I've not been asked that. You've not been asked that in any psychiatric evaluation. So here was the numbers in terms of the people who tragically took their life. They were expressing self-hatred. And when I started... to speak to people who had persistent suicidal ideation and behaviors, I started to say, wait a second, if those former patients of mine acted on suicide and discussed self-hatred,

Let me ask these people about self-hatred. And I would say, what do you think about yourself? And said, no, I don't like myself very much. Well, how much do you not like yourself? Not very much at all. Is it ever self-hatred? And it would surprise them because that would be the first time. in tons and tons of therapy that somebody had actually asked, do you not like yourself to the point of self-hatred? And it'd be like, yeah, I do hate myself.

There's lots of excerpts of dialogue between you and patients. I don't know why, but I'm blown away with how intelligent some of the patients are and how articulate. And some of them are downright... confrontational with you which I think is so brave and cool there's something about the dynamic that makes that hard and one of your patients a young woman is like you're not listening to me exactly I'm not upset with myself in this moment I hate myself

across the board. You need to fucking listen to me and I'm impressed and grateful that someone would have that conviction to push back against you like that. I tell patients, I said, if I've gotten it wrong, you've got to just tell me I've gotten it wrong because otherwise I'm going to continue down this path.

Believing what I believe to be true. You too are also limited by your own experience. 100%. Yes, you've learned from the DSM all these other things and you know how to look for them. But because you yourself can't necessarily relate immediately to a constant state of self-hatred.

It's a little inconceivable until it's detailed for you. Yeah, what does it mean? Because I think a lot of people will go like, well, I hate myself often. Yeah, or I feel like a failure sometimes. I'm lazy. So let's just imagine a binary world. Do you identify as male? Yes. Female? Yes. Okay. Now, how certain are you of those states? 100%. Okay. What if I told you that you were wrong?

What if I told you that, you know what, I actually quickly snuck a DNA test and you're actually XY and you're actually XX. How easy would it be for me to convince you that you're female? It'd be impossible. Impossible. Male? I mean, I... I guess if you had proof. Okay, no, but not only that. This couldn't be proven to you? Even if I had like, okay, here's your DNA. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You'd go, that's fucked up. Exactly. So even if I said, okay, here's some proof.

Now you need to be convinced I would pull my dick out and go, great, you're holding that. I'm showing you this. Right, but here's what I want you to do. You're actually wrong about yourself. You are actually female. What would the relationship between me and you be if I kept insisting that you had to see yourself?

Well, you would be an adversary. You would be a threat. You would be someone that's living in certainly a different reality than I am. Exactly. Because there's nothing that I could do that would convince you that's the level of belief. Right, so I'm saying I'm worthless and I am...

Toxic, they use often this term toxic. Doesn't matter what proof you present to them. Right, it doesn't matter. There is no separation from the isness of self-hatred. Meaning they're as convicted about that as they would be about their biological.

Biological identity. And then if I say, okay, you know what? I want to start talking about self-hatred. It's as alienating as if it would be, I want you to start thinking of yourself as this other gender. So like, I know I've got kids. I know who I am. Like, you're not going to convince me out of this. We're wasting time. therapy because I don't want to talk about this. Yeah, so it's very hard to tackle it sounds like.

Well, that was the problem is that I thought, okay, so now what I need to do is tackle self-hatred. Why aren't any therapies tackling self-hatred? So I did what academics do, which is to go to the literature and say, Find me the 10,000 papers on self-hatred and three show up. That's all I could find. And what was the conclusion of those papers or the thesis of those? Yeah, self-hatred is very, very hard to tackle. Okay. Yeah. Each paper ended with we give.

up. Exactly, because I can't convince you that you're female. You should get me in the room. I'm easily convinced. Yeah, you're a great candidate. It'd be misleading, in fact. It's this construct that gets internalized as truth. If ever there is greater fake news, it is that. Because a child is not born hating itself. It has to learn to hate. And if it can learn to hate itself, it can learn to love itself. So Jewel wrote a foreword. Yeah.

And what we learn in that story is that she had an abusive father who was an addict. We've interviewed her. Yes, we have. And that at 15, she started... considering just moving out and she's starting to confront whether she'll feel better from that and recognizing that he's the bad guy in the story. But even when she's away from him, the bad guy is still there in this concept.

of internalizing your abuser, which is fascinating. I mean, she has this beautiful metaphor where she's peeling an orange and she starts to become open to the idea that... What she thinks of as herself is actually the peel of the orange. And that peel is there to protect this beautiful fruit inside from all the elements. And that perhaps the trauma...

It's just the peel, and she doesn't actually know who she is. The nurture is the peel, and the nature is this orange inside, and she becomes dedicated to finding the real her. It's so beautiful. Does that align nicely? So much, you know, I was thinking, okay, who am I going to get to write the forward? I was thinking all these famous people, sort of psychiatrists and other things like that. And when I met Jewel in 2019, I found a kindred spirit. I loved how she paid attention.

to who she was, to the impact of things, how she practiced meditation and skills building. It's almost as if she developed dialectical behavior therapy on her own because of the way that she paid attention. And so I found a kindredness in this. And I thought, because she's so kindred...

I want her to write. And ironically, my publisher had already decided that the cover was going to be orange. So they'd already determined. And you see the peeling piece. And she writes this independent of knowing the covers. That's so serendipitous. Do you have kind of your own DSM in your head where you would be able to delineate?

What is average disappointment in oneself versus something that needs this true attention and these tools? Because if you were to come into therapy and say like, I'm so dissatisfied, I'm really upset about something. I say, what's going on? And you say, I did this.

interview or I met this person or I tried to do something just didn't work out the way I wanted it to so what are you saying about yourself you know that I'm not very good under certain circumstances so okay let's just talk about that and then how can we work on that

So that kind of stuff is typically dealt with in cognitive and dialectical behavioral therapy, CBT, DBT. It's when I say, okay, let's just address the ways in which you're dissatisfied with yourself. And that's when you get the patient saying, you're not listening to me. This is not a flaw that can be fixed.

I'm a toxic entity. I am an entity that is not only toxic... Repellent. It could be repellent to people, but there's something called the interpersonal theory of suicide. What are the elements that lead people to make a determination that suicide's the answer? One of them... is loneliness, non-connectedness. It has a certain weight to acting and completing suicide. But another element to this which is much more powerful is burdensomeness. I am a burden.

to those around me and to the world, and I have nothing to contribute. The world would be better without me. The world would be better off without me. I wouldn't be a burden to my family. Yes, this young woman in your book, when kind of... Explaining to you why she's so worthless is it's kind of implicit. She's already had the suicide attempt. Yeah. Her mother is, she knows, worrying about her.

All day long. The weight of that, I'm causing this person, I love all this distress. And just one thing after another, that's I'm a burden and this place would be better without me. That is a weird self-fulfilling.

prophecy too, because of course you're not a burden, but people are worried about you when you're in that state. And by the way, and here's the other thing is I don't try to reassure people that they're not a burden. Some of that behavior is burdensome. It's not like they're going to say, okay, that isn't a burden. Maybe they'll try to reassure

hear you, but that's disingenuous. That's not honest. And so I'm saying some of that behavior is burdensome, but much of your behavior is you washing all the dishes before your mom comes home at night. Is that burdensome?

No, that's actually kind of helpful. What about taking your little sister to school? Is that burdensome? Well, no. There's all these things that they do that aren't burdensome, but that's not how they're filtering their experience. So what was your personal breakthrough in treating this? What were the things you started?

noticing could work. I started to think about conditions that had been highly stigmatized, whether it was HIV AIDS and I was in South Africa at the time and no one would talk about it, cancer and things like that. And the first thing you have to do is talk about it. We are going to bring it up because it is actually impacting your life in terms of your relationship choices, your academic choices, your employment choices.

your friendship choices. You can definitely see it as fuel for the BPD. A hundred percent. The second thing is I needed to drive a wedge between who you are and self-hatred. Now, are your parents English speakers? Yes. Yes. Okay. Why don't either of you speak, I don't know, Greek? Nobody taught me. From very early on, you weren't taught. If I had plucked you from your crib and put you into a Greek-speaking family, that's what you would have learned. So the idea is that you...

aren't born speaking English or Greek or anything. You're born blank slate in terms of language and you learn something because you're exposed to that thing. That you weren't born hating yourself. You learned how to hate yourself. Yeah, that's a big admission. That was the only way in which I was able to break through. They could hear that. They could hear that they learned. And so I would say, who were your teachers? So the other part of it is...

I wanted them to start writing. You weren't born hating yourself. When do you have a recollection of you starting to hate yourself? I want you to write that down. I want to know who your teachers of self-hatred were. The bullying school. the parent who expected perfectionism, the comparison with a more achieving sibling.

The teacher who abused you, all of these teachers said that you were not enough. There's even incidents where your conclusion could be that, right? Because this woman eventually writes you this letter, which is really inspiring. She's the reason that her parents got divorced. Neither of them need. to tell her that. That could have just been a conclusion she made. Exactly. So there's all this faulty conclusion and the more you're exposed to you being the fault of something.

the more every single time something goes wrong. It's like muscle memory. Exactly. It's like that must be the reason because I am this broken individual. And so that's what happens. And the other thing is we often determine... the righteousness or the wrongness of something we do based on the outcomes. If you are really hungry,

And I give you $10. That's all you have. And you go and you buy a sandwich. Well, that would make sense. But let's just say you go and buy a lottery ticket. And I say, what are you doing? Like you're hungry and you buy a lottery ticket. But then you win $100 million. You say, you see? It was still the wrong decision to make. I mean, you got lucky. But we determined that it was the right decision just because you won $100 million. The ends justified the means. If you were exhausted.

Right now, because you hadn't had a good night's sleep, this interview might go differently. And you might be critical about that and say, okay, next time I want to get better sleep. But it would make sense that it would be different if you were exhausted. And my nature would be to confirm a short...

coming I have and ignore the sleep. Exactly. You would say I'm not going to pay attention to any vulnerability factors that may have shown up. I have to be fully responsible. This is a failing. Exactly. It's almost self-aggranda. It's putting way too much. It's ego, really. So when the Dalai Lama was asked about self-hatred, he said it's a form of self-indulgence and self-absorption that is actually toxic. You know, I am...

the best worst person on the planet. There's certainly this faulty self-evaluation that's taking place. That's the thing in AA, which is the other side of the coin of self-aggrandizement is self-pity. That was very helpful for me to police self-pity.

which is like, it's just as egomaniacal to think the world is conspiring against you. You're not that important on either end. At all, at all. As I say, our common destiny is just stardust. In any case, we aren't that important. And then I think that when you tell somebody who doesn't... feel that good about themselves. Hey, look.

You're not that important. But nor am I. You don't have the power to make your parents get divorced. You don't have the power to keep them married. Exactly. You think that you're so impactful when you actually aren't. And it's liberating that the one thing that you have is to... recognize that you're having an experience and then make a decision about what you're going to do. One interesting thing that patients say, well, I have this tendency or I have this habit. I say, okay.

You can no longer say that. Once you recognize attendance, you're a habit. It's now a choice. That's tough medicine. The thing is, the glory that I have is when a patient leaves therapy. I don't want to keep them in therapy. That shouldn't be your primary relationship. You should be able to function on your own. It's always interesting to me when people have been in therapy for 10 or 15 years with the same therapist.

If you think of therapy as getting to a place of autonomy, dominion over self, self-agency, what's that about? I speak very bluntly. I challenge colleagues to really examine that. Now if somebody, say, has...

bipolar disorder and they need medication to be able to manage manic depressive episodes, that person is probably going to need somebody to continue to prescribe and to check in. We've pathologized so many typical... human experiences that all of a sudden you can't walk without being a pathological specimen.

Well, this is the great danger of the DSM that's implicit is inadvertently we're establishing what normal is. And now that there's normal, that's the objective. And then your belief about what normal is, which is not true. Yeah. It's all slippery. Well, that's the benefit of going to other cultures because— American pathology is different than other countries. It's not all the same thing. And so to know that we just defined it. Okay, so once you drive that wedge in there and you get them to...

except that they weren't born this way, which I can see on the surface is very powerful. How now do you start? nudging them towards, considering they could return to that. So the other thing that I've done with many of my patients, maybe they're in their late teens, early 20s, is I want them to bring me photos of their birthday, age one, age two.

age three, age four, age five until now. And I say, okay, do you hate that one-year-old? Do you hate that two-year-old? When does it start? And even if you say it starts when I'm six or seven in kindergarten, so do you really hate that little girl, that little boy? Do you hate that person? They said no, because they were abused. They were hurt. And just, what would you do if that little girl came into your life? You would hate her?

Because she learned. She was already so fucking flawed and busted that you would dispose of her. Absolutely. And that what the messaging was, she was a highly sensitive kid for whom rejection and criticism stuck. So powerfully and started to believe that about herself. She carried that burden until now. Now, let me ask you this. Does future you want to hate herself? They say no. So say, okay, but if your goal is to climb to the top of the mountain.

Sitting around playing video games isn't going to get you anywhere. You have to start doing squats, running, you've got to start doing some hiking, so that eventually future you will be grateful for present you if you start taking the steps necessary.

to hike to the top of the mountain. That's your goal. If future you doesn't want to hate herself, then you have to start taking the steps right now to recognize that it was learned, to start... recognizing any kind of life-affirming behaviors as acts of self-compassion and then not give the power to your toxic teachers to continue to define who you are as a human being. The narrative has to be no. No longer do I accept that I was broken, that I was flawed, that I was stupid.

Okay, I recognize I'm sensitive and I recognize that there's labels stuck. There's a moment, again, back to this young woman, where, boy, it feels like you take a huge swing. I can't imagine myself doing this, but the outcome was... really interesting, which is she had taken time to write you this kind of long letter.

And it was full of lots of kind things about you. And she clearly took a lot of time on it. You read it and she is not to a place yet where she has transcended self-hatred. And you said, this is lovely and I can see. You've taken a lot of time on it, but I'm afraid I have to reject this. You cannot give that which is not within you to give. You cannot experience that which is not within you to experience. We go back to this idea. I like the stolen money analogy you gave her.

You can't give someone $100 you stole. Exactly. It has to be within you. What's it like to have your menstrual period every month, Dex? That's rough. I'm so mean to my husband. How dare you? Exactly. It doesn't matter. There's no way. that you can experience it because you don't have that experience. When you experience love, when you experience kindness, it's happening inside of you. You are the source of it. There might be things in the environment that allow it to manifest more.

But if it's not within you already, it doesn't matter who shows up. or what shows up. And if it's within you, and if it's within you to give, it's within you to give to yourself as well. Yeah, you said to accept this, you hate yourself and you're toxic and you're devoid of love. So this letter is the opposite of that. And for me,

To accept it would be to accept a lie. There's a concept in DBT is going where angels fear to tread. I have to enter the experience of ultimate darkness with a patient and risk that what I'm saying... could potentially be very destabilizing. Yes, because that, particularly not knowing her diagnosis, but if she were BPD, this is ripe.

to fulfill the narrative that you're not what she thought, rejecting this thing I spent all this time on. Exactly. But it did penetrate. I guess you get great at knowing when the time is. That's exactly right. I have to know that the relationship is strong enough to be able to withstand.

I think her making that letter to you was a good flag for you. Well, what was happening with her that she did that? So what was happening is that she was one of these people who was uber talented and lots of things. Sadly, I think that this happens more with...

Women who are ultra intelligent, very talented, they're objectified in a certain kind of way, that they're only seen through this one lens of maybe attractiveness or whatever it is. Or good. Any of those sorts of things. And yet there's a multidimensionality. whether it's artistic, linguistic, cognitive, and other things that don't actually often get seen. And her experience of being hurt for such a long time led to this experience of self-hatred.

And she was also very self-destructive in terms of a lot of self-injury and a lot of suicide attempts. And we had really reduced... all of that to the point that her relationships with her family were better and everything. So she was grateful for that, but this core self-hatred still remained. And I was floundering at that time because I didn't know what to do. That was in the early days of my program.

And I just decided to go for it. I realized that there was a lot of risk, but I also had seen that she had been able to tolerate some very, very difficult moments. The one thing that I hadn't seen is whether she could tolerate a difficult moment with me. And I said, I have so much compassion.

for you and her argument was that's because you don't see me completely you see some of the things that I do you don't really know me if you did then you would also have the hatred for me she actually once showed up a few minutes late and people

for many reasons show up late and she said I think you should punch me in the face as punishment for this incredible transgression when I had so much loving compassion for somebody who made an effort showed up really worked hard and it was inconsistent with the way that she saw herself that was early on and later on we were able to do this and subsequently she began to see

In fact, there was a lot of worthiness. And when she started to do that, she started to exercise more. It becomes a virtuous cycle. It does. Yeah, it went the other way. What are some things you feel new in our culture that are compounding this? We market to self-hatred.

You're not tall enough. You're not skinny enough. Your boobs aren't big enough. You're not light-skinned enough. You're not intelligent enough. You don't have six packs enough. But by the way, if you buy my product, you'll be fabulous and everybody's going to love you. It's a very well-funded mechanism. out there we market to self-hatred so the thing is that people who are at risk are going to be dissatisfied with whatever that is within them and we sell an idea

of what virtue perfection is going to be if only you do this one thing. And so for those who are vulnerable, they chase that. I find myself frustrated with those folks and not as compassionate, and I should. Part of me wants to go like... This billboard of this person is not an assault to you. I do discount sometimes that there is varying levels of vulnerability. There's part of me that just wants to go like, yeah, there's also cars that are faster than yours. It's not an assault on you. 100%.

think that in an already very very vulnerable person that then spends a lot of time on social media TikTok Instagram watching these videos over and over it reinforces the idea of that. So I think that for the vast majority of us, you go by that billboard. Now, what I do with the kids on my unit, I say, okay, show me what your social media apps are. What I want you to do is I want you to open TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, whatever it is.

Tell me how you feel when you consume that social media. If you feel good about yourself, if you feel neutral, carry on. It's not a problem. If you're feeling terrible about yourself, it's like me eating gluten. You're allergic to it, but in the nanny state.

We take away not only personal responsibility, but we say dominion over self is not important. I want the person to make that determination that for you, TikTok's okay, but for this other person, it isn't. They are the ones who determine that. want to be the one who says I'm going to take away all social media. I can't eliminate all the triggers in the world to satisfy the most triggered.

among us it's very defeatist too right 100 isn't it better that either you've learned how to deal with it or that you've decided yeah i hate seeing my friends at parties all the time where i'm not invited okay well then you don't have to continue to consume that media if it's making you sick if you're allergic to it.

Okay, this is petty for me to bring up, but you would be the person that I could ask this to. I have said committed suicide on here several times, and I've heard in the comments people say, I'm not allowed to say that anymore. And you who specializes in suicide...

I feel like it's a little bit of pandering and pageantry, and I actually think it's just for the people who are advocates and not the people who have done it. I think it's like when people say, I can't say drunks and junkies, which is what we call ours. Right. Do you have a take on this? What's this move to not say committed suicide? Okay, so there's a couple things. First of all, let me just say that I used to say that all the time.

When people died, they died by cancer, by pneumonia, by whatever it is. The problem was that it assigned a certain degree of blame when you use that rather than saying they died by suicide, they died by cancer, they died by pneumonia, they died by whatever it is.

Like, I committed a crime. I walked into your house and I stole your money. Because you could say my dad committed cancer. He smoked, like, three packs a day. Well, you know, I suppose you could in a certain way. But you wouldn't. But you wouldn't. You wouldn't, right, right, right. And the other thing is, I have this concept of, do I want... committed suicide.

suicide then people are going to say what a jerk like you didn't understand and then you may have had 99% really great points that's not what they're going to remember that's a great rebuttal and that's generally the answer for all these things I know I'm going to keep saying drunks You can, but I want to push back on that too because you hate advocates. When I think they're protecting themselves and not actually the victim. They're often connected to a victim.

There's a reason that people become advocates. Normally, people don't just stand up and become an advocate for something for no reason. But my gut reason I hate it, there's an actual hatred of it, which is you're not owning your shame that someone you love did that. You actually don't want the shame for yourself and fuck you.

That's why I have a conviction about it. You're trying to protect your own shame, and you shouldn't be feeling shame about this. You're not doing your work. No, but if someone was talking about alcoholism and they were calling people a bunch of drunks and fuck-ups, I'd be like, no. that's not correct. And I don't feel shame that you're an addict. Right. I feel a responsibility as someone who knows more about it than the average person to say, actually, that's incorrect.

Here's the reality. Here's the dialectic. Both of you are right. There is so much ignorance in the world. And then what happens is we bite into our ignorance and then we spout our ignorance. Then you're just going to continue down that ignorant path. Now, I would be with you if I heard people talking about drunks and junkies and I just said, OK, I know one of those guys. and his life around and done an incredible service to the world. And that when you devalue and diminish somebody.

into a state that through your ignorance means that they're going to be on skid row for the rest of their life, you're doing a disservice. If I can have a discussion that's going to open somebody's eyes to another possibility, that's fine. But I think that what happens with a lot of it.

Ignorance is that people just have a degree of certainty about a perspective and then they're not willing to change it. They open their mouths before they open their hearts and their minds. Well, I'm going to declare right now. I'm happy to drop it.

I'll get with the program. You might win something, but at what cost? People get lost in that message and then you'll be labeled as this one-sided person. Okay, so I don't think I've been reading a book that I wanted to give to more people than this book. I immediately thought of some people that I just know are buried under this self-hatred.

People I love dearly. I don't know if it's triggering to receive this book as a kid, but I immediately thought of a couple people I really want to read it. Because it's heartbreaking when you love someone and you know they're walking around with this sense of defectiveness. And you can't penetrate.

But also I would say this book is a call to other psychologists. So maybe just love to wrap up with what your hopes are for the book. If we go back in time during the COVID pandemic, I wrote the book with a colleague, DBT for Dummies, and it hit. number one on Amazon. Not number one in psychology or in therapy, number one on Amazon for three days in a row. It was the number one. And we were on a lot of shows and stuff like that. And I thought it was a very, very important book.

And so when I proposed this book, because I'd written other books, They were willing to take a chance, but they said there's no comparison. No one's ever written about this sort of topic. And then they asked me the question, what do you hope from it? And I really wanted to speak to people with lived experience to say, you've learned this false... truth. And by the way, there's a lot of fake news in the world today.

a lot of false narrative that many of us believe, but this one is going to destroy your life and is very, very toxic. So I said to the publisher originally, you know, I want it to be for everybody, for therapists, for parents. You know, it can't be that. You have to pick.

One lane, you know, that's just the way it works. First of all, there's no other book on this. Secondly, pick a lane. Well, we need to know who to market it to. Exactly right. So I said, okay, so we're going to do it for people with lived experience because they're often at the bottom of the pecking order in terms of like who gets it. But what happened is that as I started to talk about it...

therapist started to say, would this be helpful to us? And I said, yeah, because A, you'll understand the condition a lot more. Secondly, what I want you to start doing is I want you to start asking the question in your inventory of questions include. a question about

self. If I say, do you have nightmares? And you say, no, I don't have nightmares. Are you addicted to drugs? No, I'm not addicted to drugs. I'm not going to continue down like, okay, we have to work on your nightmares and your drug use. I don't have a problem with those things. If there is no core self-hatred, then great. Let's just move on. There's kindred ideas like perfectionism.

people-pleasing behavior, self-criticism, self-judgment, they are on the way to self-hatred. Like all things, right? It's a spectrum. A hundred percent. And then I have a questionnaire that I ask all my patients, and I think the therapist could also take that questionnaire. When did it start?

How old were you when you first remembered? Who were the teachers? What were the circumstances in which you started to believe this about yourself? And the book is a bit of a workbook. You have provided space in the tools section to explore this on your own. Because I think that's the great...

sadness I have is that so few people have access to someone like you. I don't have access to someone like me sometimes. Again, I don't want something that could potentially be helpful to a lot of people to remain the exclusive domain of anyone who can just like afford best care you can work on some of these ideas yourself understand it a little bit better and then when you go to therapy maybe say i do want to explore this well i think it's an incredible book i'm so

glad you've written it and shined a light on it. And it's probably crazy to you how long you were missing it. Yeah. And not only me, but the world. Just want to say, on the other hand, is I think it takes courage. Also for you and other people who are interested in having this discussion to have me on, because it can also seem like this is so way out there that we can talk about OCD, even if you get it wrong. We can talk about depression and alcoholism, but there's this sort of degree.

of novelty that hasn't been well researched hasn't been well examined what happens if it turns out that this whole construct is wrong but you know what even if the book prompts more research, more thinking about it, but more than anything else, to think that somebody who is struggling with this feels that they're so burdensome that the only way is out.

You know, if one person can read the book and say, I can see myself differently, then we've done something important. And I appreciate you guys being part of this journey and helping. It's a great book. I hate myself, overcome self-loathing and realize why you're wrong.

about you. It's out now. I urge everyone to get it and I think a lot of people will relate deeply to the feelings that your patients have. Thank you so much, Blaze. First Blaze I've ever met and it was a home run. Was he the first Dax you ever met? He is. So hopefully we'll form stereotypes about Daxes and Blades that'll become self-fulfilling prophecies. All right, well, good luck with everything. Thanks for giving us so much time. Thank you so much for having me.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. I'm John Robbins and joining me on How Do You Cope this week is the actor Tuppence Middleton. I think with OCD you're so... You're so focused on keeping control of certain things because you have so little control over others that it's just about surrendering to knowing that you never really will have control and that that's okay. So that's How Do You Cope, with me, John Robbins. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.

My dive buddy just kind of started like whacking me underwater and then he didn't know how to tell me that there's a shark So he's trying to scream shock and then eventually he just went with singing the jaws theme tune Hello, I'm Hannah Stipfel and I host a podcast called Oceans Life Underwater. If you haven't listened before and you're interested in the fascinating world of turtles and whales, then we might just be your new favourite podcast.

To join us, just search for Oceans Life Underwater, wherever you're listening to this. I'm Indra Varma, and in the latest season of The Spy Who, we open the file on the spies who invaded suburbia. The illegals weren't just blending in. They were the embodiment of the American dream. Nine to five jobs, dropping the kids off at soccer practice, and just the right amount of charm to slide into the orbits of the powerful.

But behind closed doors, they were Russian operatives, meticulously crafting coded messages and feeding Moscow everything it needed to stay one step ahead of the US. When a powerful mole reveals the names and locations of the undercover spies, the FBI finds itself walking a tightrope, protect its most crucial informant, whilst avoiding a catastrophic diplomatic firestorm.

Follow the Spy Who on the Wondery app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or you can binge the full season of The Spies Who Invaded Suburbia early and ad-free with Wondery+. Stay tuned for the fact check. It's where the party's at. I just really shit the bed myself. On my time management. Oh, okay. I had got all my workout gear on. I was like, should I ride up my bike today? Sure. Always a big question. Big, big question. And I was like, I really need to change this rear end or tube.

The nozzle kind of popped off. It's still holding air, but I can't risk it. Okay. I'm going to need to repair it. And then just lift. We're going to lift. Got in my outfit. Then I went to, I thought, well, now I have a little extra time. I got to working on the bicycle. I did the tires, a little more challenging then. There's a lot of challenges. So when I finally got it all done, cleaned up the tools, let's go work out.

I looked at my watch, 1240. My entire workout had blown by. Yeah. Yeah. That'll happen. Got away from me. That'll happen. He's tinkering in the shop. You know, those guys get tinkering in the shop and the time just flies by. Blew right by. Oh, my Lord. This cookie boy likes to tinker. Yeah, cookie boys do like to tinker. They'll tinker. Your morning was good?

Did time get away from you? My internet was out at the beginning of the morning. Wow. Unacceptable. I know. And I got a text from AT&T saying so, but I thought it was spam. Sure. Or a trick. I thought it was a trick and a way for them to take all my money. So I didn't click it. Kristen just dealt with the exact same thing. She started getting tons and tons of emails and texts from Spectrum.

Oh. Like, we're going to shut your cable off. Okay. Shut off your internet. Sure. And she's like, I don't even think I signed up for the account. I don't think it's in my name or anything. Now there's a big... Mystery? There's a huge mystery. So very similar. But the whole time, she's like, this is all a ploy to get my credit card. Gotta be careful. I think they got it. They did? I think so. You're never supposed to click on it. Well...

She looked up the actual web address for Spectrum and it was the right web address. No, you don't click on it ever. So scary. So scary. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I didn't click on it and I was wrong. They were. That was real. That was real. Because my internet was out. But then it came back. Oh, wonderful. Then it came back. But I do this, right? I like plan. I plan my. morning or my getting ready to the minute, which is a problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I I'm a busy girl.

Yes, very busy, multiple jobs. And I have a lot to fit in there. But then the makeup, okay, that's going to take seven minutes. And then it takes seven and a half. And then you add a half minute to each of these line items and you're late. Line items. Yeah. Yeah. Business speak. You're P&L and you realize more losses than profits. And the ROI is low. It's not good. It's not a good ROI.

I hate all those terms. And then once I learn them, I realize they really are useful. I know. It's annoying. And then I'm the person I hate. You become the person you've always hated. It's almost my... full arc as a human is becoming fully the person I hated um I did a good prank last night oh my god tell me because I'm into pranks now okay so as you know my girlfriend Khaleesi's visiting yes your little baby friend she said

Kevin, Kenny's daughter. I told you about the hike. We had a great hike. We held hands the entire time. I'd love to show you some pictures. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And she calls Kristen. Your wife, Aunt Kristen. My wife, Aunt Kristen. Previously, Dax's mom. Dax's mom, which is really sad. But I did discover after we talked, she is calling my sister Delta's grandma. Which is great. She kept saying, has Delta gone with her grandma to the movies? When is she going to be done with her grandma at the movies?

So now TT is grandma, which is so fun. Oh, my God. I'm scared for her to give me a name. At least it's consistent. So, like. If Kristen's my mom and my sister is Delta's grandma, those are their peers, which they are. Of course. In this weird structure. What if she started calling me, Dax, what about your Indian friend? Oh, no, no, she's not going to do that. It's more of an age mix up. So anyways, Khaleesi Delta Lincoln.

Kristen, Kenny, and I went to Cafe 101 last night. We were in a big booth. Khaleesi's so excited. There's older girls. Yeah. Older girls have had enough. But I tell them, I try to tell them. You know, what if we went somewhere and there's two older girls, you know? It's really tough being a parent in these situations. I know. Because you're really kind of weighing a couple things. Yeah. I want to teach them to be kind and civil. And also, they're in their house.

Yeah. They have some boundaries. I also want them to have boundaries. I don't know. I know. I think I may have made a mistake on this front. Okay. Did you advise them to punch Khaleesi? I did. Okay. No, I told Delta. The other day I did a pop out. I pop out here. I walked by and I decided to go pop into my house. And as I was walking by your fence, I heard you grunt. I was unloading motorcycles and power washing them. And I heard your little. a voice coming from like the woods. It said, hi.

And you you kind of like jerked around. This is why I'm into pranks now, actually, because it was actually very funny because you got really spooked. Well, and you were obscured behind FICA's like a hedge, a row of hedges. So you got to watch me react. look stupid for a while. Yeah, it was really funny. Come on, God damn it! You said, Hussein!

Say hi. You got into that mode where you were scared. Protect my family, my property mode. It's Monica. I'm here. I'm over here by the fence. Monica, your Indian friend. I'm over here by the fence. Your grandma. So then, yeah, you came over and then Delta came over. And so we were chit-chatting a lot. And, yeah, she mentioned that there was going to be a young girl. And Khaleesi's so friendly. I know. She's so cute. She's cute and friendly. She really wants to get into it.

Was anticipating being, you know. A little overwhelmed. A little overwhelmed. But really her ire was towards Lincoln. Okay. She was like, Lincoln shuts the door and then I have to just play by myself. with. Her and also she looks at me and she says, please take care of it. And then I do. And I just I don't want to do that this time. And I said, well, that's good. That's boundaries. You can. So I taught her. But then if you saw little Khaleesi.

excited to play with them, you'd be like, girls, get over it. I agree. I can play with this cute little girl. I agree. So, yeah, Lincoln's largely spared because of the age gap. I think that was more interesting to see. Yeah. Anyways, all this to say, we're at dinner and...

I love talking to her because I'm just messing with her the whole time. Exactly how I talk to Lincoln and Delta is there because she's family. She's Kenny's. Of course. So she's Kenny says something she doesn't like. So she starts punching Kenny. She's like. Won't stop punching him. He's like, stop punching me. And I go, Khaleesi, I'm going to tell you right now, they throw people out in this restaurant. They have a zero tolerance policy on violence.

He's like, no, they won't. And I go, no, they'll throw you right out of here. And what is great is I've developed. Now, without this ever in sight, I've developed a really good relationship with the busboy. Oh, nice. Okay. I love the dude. You know, we have a great rapport. So I go, that's it. I'm going to get the manager. So I got up and then luckily he was just standing right around the corner and I go, oh, perfect. Will you tell that, ask that little girl, she's been punching people.

And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah. So we come back and now there's an employee of the restaurant. And he goes, have you been punching people? And she, she was. busted yeah she was so scared she was about to get thrown out oh no and then we all started laughing and then she started laughing it was great she laughed yeah but i came back with an employee and he got right into it that is funny oh it was it was

Oh, I just got mirror neurons, though. Like, I'm back to not liking pranks anymore. Because you're afraid of getting kicked out of the restaurant. Oh, my God. I would have cried. And then I would have felt bad that I was crying because I would know everyone else felt bad. Yeah, yeah. But I wouldn't be able to help myself. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot there. Pranks are tricky. But it did stop the punching. Well, that's good. Okay, so the other thing she and I have going is we were in the hot tub.

Two nights ago, and she's telling me all these different stories. And she tells me about how mean this gymnastics coach is. And he's real mean. And one girl is going to have her water. And he said, oh, you want some water? And he poured the water on her head. No. She's a liar. And I go, I'm going to be honest. I don't believe that story. And she's like, what? What do you mean you don't believe it? And I go, like, I.

I trust you and I love you, but at the same time, I just, I really can't. I don't think I'm able to believe that story. It began this whole thing about believing that story. And then later she told me, you know, your eyes turn color when you lie. My grandpa told me that. And I go, yeah, I love your Grandpa Joe. He's one of my buddies. But I'm afraid I can't believe that story.

And she fought me on that for a while. But then in the car on the way to Cafe 101, she was saying, yeah, my grandpa told me your eyes turn color when you lie. I don't think I believe it anymore. No, you made her turn on her grandpa. That's okay.

It's good to be skeptical. You can't believe in fairy tales. But the reason the grandpa said it is because she's a little liar and she's running around telling lies and the grandpa's basically saying, don't you do that. I'll just call her a liar. You don't need to make up a whole thing where her eyes.

You can tell kids exactly everything is my experience. You do, but not everyone does that. We are having a blast. Although, don't they say that about hazel? It's like sometimes you're green, sometimes you're blue. Because sometimes you're in light that makes them look that way. And sometimes you're in light that makes them look the other way. Light is very. Wishy-washy? Yeah. Transient? It's very ephemeral. It changes. It moves. It's amorphous. Yeah.

All to say your eyes don't turn a different color when you lie. Okay. This is back to me really wishing I had green eyes since I learned they're the rarest. Yeah. You already know they were the rarest. Did you need to learn that? We already talked about this. We already did this.

I guess I kind of knew in my heart of hearts. Haven't you just met the least amount of people with green eyes? I'll answer for you, yes. Well, no. Yes, you've met way more people with blue and brown eyes than green. Well, brown, yeah. Browns, a diamond dozen. Here we go around. Also, I love Browns. Don't listen to her. Daniel Ricciardo's brown eyes. I know. Like a Saddlewood. I know, but like.

It's just you always want the grass is always greener when your eyes are green. Yeah, no, I probably call your eyes brown blue. Wow. See, I don't know. That was a dangerous question. Why? Because people take it so personal if you don't know their eye color. Really? Oh, I hear this all the time. This is one of these, I think, trends about how to out guys for.

You know, another thing guys are terrible at is like guys don't know your eye color. This is a test for a guy. Oh, what's your mom's eye color? What's your. What's your wife's eye color? Oh, my God. Yeah. So it's real dangerous. People get very hurt if you don't know what color their eyes are. You know what color mine are? Blue. Yeah. I know that because we're talking about it. I think I sort of thought blue eyes were the rarest. Oh, wow. I don't know how you thought that. I...

I like blue eyes the most. Name three people with green eyes. Okay, Callie. She has green eyes. Are we playing it fast and loose? No. Okay. Let me text her. There's solid green. Let me text her. Well, what's solid green? Is there such a thing? Callie might be mad because now we're back to the thing. I said you have green eyes, right? She just goes, I'm so hurt. Lose my number. I think she has blue eyes. She doesn't. Okay. She either has green or hazel. Okay. My friend Gina, green or hazel.

Okay. You're asking me? No, I'm telling you. These are two people. Okay. So we're up to two. All right. And you're currently sitting with two people with blue eyes. So that's already neutralized. Okay, so evens. Even Stevens. With the immediate people in your vicinity and all the people in the world, you know, yes, it's even Stevens so far. What does Kristen have? Blue. Blue. And the kids have blue? Yeah.

See, I'm not paying much attention. You know, the kids have blue. They're so prototypical blonde blue. I know, but they're generic. I don't. I think I don't. You know, people think eyes are like the window to the soul. Yeah. And I guess I get like when I look like in your eyes, I get it. That's where the human is. Right. Yeah. But I guess I'm never looking. You can't see very well, though, in your defense. I don't know that you can even see most people's eyes. Your eyes.

are like... Shit blue? I don't say that when you know I have brown eyes. That's so insensitive. Yours are like... Grayish blue. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I would agree with that. Yeah, which is nice. Jess has said the nicest thing about my eyes as anyone has ever said. What did he say? He said there's icicles in them. Oh, it's very sweet. You know what color my brother's eyes are, right? What are his eyes? His eyes are probably green. No, they're red. That's his hair. He has brown eyes. Go ahead.

Test it. You're a bad boyfriend. I'm a much better boyfriend than you are. Color your eyes, question mark. He's just going to start crying. He'll get back to you in 30 minutes. Well, should I insult? Yeah, exactly. Should you tell him you don't? Tell me you don't care about me without telling me you don't care about me. Actually, all the girls in the pod, I'm really trying to think. Who's got what? I don't know. Yeah.

And the boys, I guess I hate eyes. Yeah, they're not your thing. Okay, we have a really important thing to do today. Oh, we're going to finally do the... It's a quiz. From the book. What book? The quasi. Oh, no. But we. OK. Do it next week. Tune in next week for. Us saying we'll do it the following week. For the green hat. So what quiz is this? Okay, this is highly sensitive person quiz. Oh, wonderful. Because this is for Blaze. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

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Now. Do you want me to read it? I always feel bad. You're always administering the quizzes and I'm happy to do it if you want. I'd like to do it. Okay. Okay. Now discover your personality. Choose your gender to start. Male. Okay. You find it easy to make new friends. Strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree. Strongly agree. You could spend days learning about random things that interest you. Oh, strongly agree.

You seem to have nothing to do with sensitivity. It's interesting. When others are upset, you feel upset too. Oh yeah, I hate it. Which one? Agree or strongly agree? Strongly agree. You aren't one for backup plans. Yeah, that's... I'm not going to go strongly. I'll go to the next one. Okay. You stay cool, calm, and collected even when under lots of stress. Yeah. Which one? Strongly agree. Right? Have you ever seen me losing my shit? Yeah. Oh. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Wow. Really? Yes. Oh, wow. OK. I just think when this shit's hitting the fan, I'm very calm. Is that not what the question is? You would agree with that. Yeah. My car's on fire and I'm like, OK, let's get the hood open. Let's like there's no I have no. Oh, no, there's no. Oh, no. I mean.

Right. When your car's on fire. Yeah. Okay. When out and about, you don't really introduce yourself to new people. You prefer to chat with people you already know. That's true. Even though I can make friends really easy. That's true. Okay. But not strongly. So regs? Let's go medium. Neutral or agree? Let's go neutral. Okay. Yeah, because part of your thing is that you like talking to strangers. It's really weird. I like to talk to either dead strangers.

Or people I know, it's periphery people that people I know know that make me nervous. I understand. Yeah. Can you understand? That's weird, isn't it, though? But like if I'm at a gas station, I talked like I'm I'm very. Yeah, you want to learn about them. Or the server or whatever. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to ask the Uber driver where they're from. Right.

Yeah. But if like the Uber driver, I kind of remember his friends with Callie, I'd be like, oh, fuck. Oh, no. Not her specifically. Callie's friend is so cool. But, you know, any friend of a friend. I know. It feels like. You have to be on in a little bit of a different way. Yeah, we're supposed to connect because we. Yeah, I get it. I'm like a no across the board. I don't want to talk to strangers and I don't want to talk to friends. Yeah.

Okay. You don't like to start a new project until the first one's finished. Agree. Okay. You're a sentimental type of person. Yeah, I strongly agree. Okay. You enjoy using lists or schedules. Neutral. Okay. Making a small mistake can make you question your knowledge on a subject. Medium. Neutral or agree? Medium agree. Is that four? Yeah, agree. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. You easily spark up a conversation with a stranger. Oh, five.

You love talking about and analyzing creative works. Four. You follow your heart more than your head. This is an interesting one. Boy, that's a hard one to be objective about. What do you think? I'm open to your... You follow your heart more than your head. I kind of think so. I do too. I do too. Yeah, so agree. Regular four. Right.

You tend to prefer following a daily routine as opposed to just doing whatever you want. Yeah, I love a daily routine. Strongly agree. When you meet new people, you worry about whether you made a great first impression. Five. Yeah. You prefer solo activities over group activities. Neutral. Okay. You love watching movies that let you interrupt. Oh. A little projection. No, not projection. Just interject.

Interrupt me. You put something. I wrote. What if I. Yeah. I started changing the quiz. Yeah. You love to interrupt. What do you think? Six. You love watching movies that let you interpret the ending yourself. That's a good question. Four. You get more happiness from achieving things yourself than you do from helping others. Yeah. Terrible quality, but yeah. Strong? Five. You aren't interested in very many things.

Oh, strongly disagree. You often worry about the worst possible scenario in any given situation. You love taking up leadership roles. Five. You are an artistic type of person. Four. The world would be better off if people made more decisions with their feelings. No.

It'd be worse. Strongly disagree. Yeah, strongly disagree. Well, you work with your heart. I know, but I'm allowed to and no one else is. Okay. You prefer to relax before getting into chores. That's weird. Relax before getting into chores. You don't. I don't. Yeah, so you're. I like to keep the motor floored or off. So that's a disagree. Okay. You don't mind when other people are having a heated argument in front of you. Oh, this is interesting. Yeah, I don't mind. I like, yeah, I like it. So.

Is horny an option? Strongly agree. Strongly agree. You like being the center of attention. Oh, 15. This is like how gross you are, quiz. Your mood is generally pretty stable. Yeah, I'd say four. You have plenty of patience for people that aren't as efficient as you. Zero. No. Strongly? Yeah, strongly disagree. You're spontaneous. Ooh, five. Neutral. Neutral. Neutral.

You love theoretical discussions and can engage in them for days on end. 15. You have a hard time empathizing with people who come from a very different lifestyle to your own. Hmm. Interesting. Oh, I feel like you have a... What would you give me on that? You have a hard time empathizing people who come from a very different... Also remember where I'm from. I know. Yeah. I love gay dudes. I'm going to say something ballsy right now. Yeah. I think that has more to do with your.

contrarianism than it does with your empathy. Wow. And I mean that positively. I think you always want to look at the other side and you don't like a status quo. And in Michigan, there was a status quo about people. And I think it was... Not empathy that drove you. But I have an outcast identity. Right. So I think I like it's easy for me to lock into. I don't know. I'm going to go with neutral. OK. I think I'm I think I'm more I think I'm more empathetic than the average dog from where I'm from.

Okay. But also, yeah, a lot of times, like I had to definitely become friends with you before I was able to truly understand how hurtful doing an accent would be. That's pretty shameful. No, I wouldn't. Let's use you. I actually mean more like I think currently you can't empathize with like a very hyper liberal person.

And that is from where they come from, too. Well, let me let's see, though. Is it that I can't empathize? I mean, I think I understand where they're coming from. I think it's going to end in defeat. Yeah. So I have like a real strong objection that I don't think we're ever going to get in power again unless people have a reckoning. So neutral. We'll go neutral. When there's a decision to be made, you want to make it right away. Yeah.

Four or five? Five. You tend to second guess the decisions you make. No, I disagree. Socializing quickly exhausts you. Socializing quickly? If you start socializing, are you quickly exhausted? Oh, no, I'm energized. Strongly disagree. You enjoy going to art museums. No. Oh, my God. I hate them. Okay. Oh, my God. I went to one recently, and it was lovely. I went by my cell. Oh, where? This one in Echo Park. Oh. And I went to see this.

Awesome artist. Her name is Sophie. I am already a fan of hers and she had an exhibit there. So I went and I got a coffee and I went by myself and I felt so cultured. And you really enjoyed looking at the paintings. Yeah. But there was only like. I was in and out pretty quick. Okay, well. I mean, I can remember the couple that I've loved. I've loved two. The old Picasso one in the alley in Barcelona and then the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

I like walking around the Getty, but it's like I look at the paintings and I feel like Larry David. Right. I'm like, I'm more annoyed that other people are getting some transcendent. experience that i might not be and i'm like why what is i see yeah uh this is a ding ding ding for my other fact which isn't a fact but is flower poopy the flower puppy

Outside the Guggenheim in Bilbao. Yeah. Frank Geary designed building. I went there. Yeah. Yeah. That came up in this episode. Oh, right. And I just. I went there with Callie and it was great. You loved it. I loved it. Yeah. And I'd like to go back. Yeah. Okay. You struggle to understand what others are feeling. No. I disagree. Disagree. Okay. You like to have a to-do list for each day. Where do I answer this? No, I don't. I don't. Regs don't. Regs disagree. You often feel insecure.

I mean, what year is this question being asked? Rarely. Disagree? Yeah, but regs. You prefer talking to people on the phone over texting or messaging them? I used to, but not anymore. Disagree. I'd go disagree, rags. When someone has a different perspective on a subject than you, you genuinely try to understand where they're coming from. I'd go rags agree. I think so. You find that telling the cold hard truth is more important than being tactful. Yeah. Five. He almost puked.

You're happy to go with the flow when your plans are interrupted. No, I'm not at all. That's a strong disagree. Mistakes you made in the past often haunt your mind. Five. You feel energized after spending time alone. Engaging in solitary activities like reading or reflecting. Not energized, no. Regs disagree. Okay. You prefer to rely on your instincts rather than sticking strictly to a set plan or schedule. Oh, five.

You often find yourself deeply contemplating the underlying meanings and implications of things rather than focusing solely on the surface details. Rags agree? I think. That's a neutral for me? No, I think you're... Strongly agree? Yeah. Okay. Okay, strongly. When making decisions, you prioritize logic and objective analysis over considering how it might impact others' feelings. I agree. I would have gone right, but okay.

I think we're there. You often find yourself worrying about potential future outcomes or what could go wrong in a given situation. You often find yourself drawn to new experiences and enjoy exploring unfamiliar places. Strongly agree. You tend to trust your gut feelings and intuition when faced with difficult decisions rather than relying solely on logical analysis.

Neutral. Okay. You feel a strong sense of empathy towards others and are often affected by their emotions, even if they don't directly involve you. Well, I'm affected by people's emotions, but you said I'm not empathetic. So I'm going to have to take that. Let's go regs agree. I didn't say that. Okay. You prefer to have a well-structured plan in place rather than leaving things up to chance or.

Regs disagree. Okay. You thrive in dynamic, fast-paced environments and feel invigorated by challenging situations that require quick thinking and adaptability. 55. When faced with a problem, you're more inclined to seek out practical solutions rather than dwelling on abstract theories or hypothetical scenarios. That's a hard one. That is. I would go neutral. Okay.

You enjoy engaging in deep, meaningful conversations with others. Yes, I agree. You often find yourself reflecting on past experiences and considering how they've shaped your beliefs and values. Too much so, yeah. You're inclined to take charge in group settings, assuming leadership roles and guiding others. You already asked that. There should be a question like, do you hate being asked the same question twice?

Or rather, it would say you hate being asked. Oh, my God. OK, you feel most comfortable when your environment is organized and structured and you may feel stressed or unsettled in chaotic or unpredictable situations. I agree with that, which seems.

I know. Like a contradiction. I know. But yes, I keep my room really clean on my side of the thing. You know, like I am. Yeah, I'm a little bit of a. You prefer spending time with a small group of close friends rather than attending large social gatherings. Yeah, yeah. Four or five? Five.

When presented with multiple options, you tend to follow your heart and make decisions based on what feels right in the moment. They're trying to confuse us. They keep asking the same question, but slightly different than you wonder. That's how all these are. And they're trying to catch you.

being inconsistent and they're about to catch me. One more time. When presented with multiple options, you tend to follow your heart and make decisions based on what feels right in the moment. Yeah, I agree with that. Okay. You enjoy exploring new ideas and concepts, often seeking out opportunities.

We're really trying to piss us off. What if at the end it said, did this piss you off? And that's the only question that matter because you're so sensitive. You find it easy to adapt to changes in plans or unexpected situations. Regs, no. Often seeing them as opportunities for growth and learning. No. Okay. I mean, I get there after a long, long time. When working on a project, do you value efficiency and strive to complete tasks quickly and effectively? Yeah, five.

Strongly agree. No. Rags disagree. You enjoy engaging in lively debates and discussions, sharing your... Yep. Fine. Okay. You have a strong desire for structure and order in your daily life, feeling most at ease when following a clear routine or schedule. This is crazy.

It's getting really crazy. You tend to be proactive in seeking out new experiences and opportunities. Embracing change is a natural part of life. I like new things, but I don't know that I embrace change all that well. So let's go neutral. Okay. Do you feel energized and excited? by social interactions, often seeking out opportunities to meet new people. Is it like, is there a glitch? No, but it is different. Often seeking out opportunities to meet new people. I do do that. Let's go regs. Okay.

When making decisions, you prioritize logical reasoning and objective analysis, considering the facts and evidence before reaching a conclusion. I'd say four. Oh, four. You tend to be highly self critical and introspective, frequently reflecting on your actions and decisions and striving for self improvement. Five.

You often find yourself empathizing with others emotions, even if you haven't experienced the same situation yourself and strive to offer support and understanding. I'm not good at that. Let's go. Regs. Regs disagree. Yeah. You prefer to have a clear plan and direction in life, setting specific goals and working diligently to achieve them. Regs agree. Okay. What is your current relationship status? Married.

Yeah, but five? What is that? No, now it's new. Oh, now we're, okay. Married. Married. How long is your current relationship six plus years? How many relationships have you been in? Oh, God. There's zero, one, two, three, four, four plus. Four plus. Four paws. Oh, wow. This is personal. How long is your penis? How satisfied are you with your current relationship? We have dissatisfied, somewhat satisfied, mostly satisfied, very satisfied. Very satisfied.

What's your age? Oh, God. 500. It's not even an option. Oh, my God. I'm too old to take this quiz. No, it's 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. And above. 60 plus. Oh, so I'm OK. But it's just weird to say 50s. Well, that's not even as concerning as I thought I was going to say 50 plus. Right, no. And then the rest of everyone. Okay, male submit. Is he going to ask you for $2.99? Yes! Uh-huh. Oh my. These bastards. What the fuck? I have to pay it. I know because we filmed a whole segment. Oh, my God.

What bastards. I am sensitive. Someone made this test up in their fucking basement. I mean, it is Blossom.co. Oh, that's not confidence inducing. But some of their questions were good and repetitive. Some of their questions were great. And then on the second time, they were good. And then sometimes on the third time, they were no good. You didn't love it.

How much do I owe you for this? Was it $2.99? It was $1.99. Are they going to give you unlimited tests? Oh, you can take more quizzes. Oh, good. Oh, that's fun. Okay. Well, let's find it. View my results. Show me. We'll tell you next week. Oh, fuck, another paywall? No, this just isn't about, this isn't. I don't have anything to do with sensitivity. You're an ENTJ. An ear, nose, and throat?

Oh, no, this wasn't even a highly sensitive person test. Oh, my God. What kind of test was this? It was like, you know, those it's called something and it's. It's a personality type. Someone's happy right now. Like someone has wanted us to take this test, but we don't know about it. No, it's like an Enneagram test. It is, but it's like a really common one. You're an EN or an INFG. But it won't tell you the name. I think it's. Myers-Briggs, maybe. Let's see.

ENTJ personality. Stanford Brisbane? It's Myers-Briggs. That's like the original one. So that's cool. Now you know. What am I, an ENT? You're an ENTJ. That's a confident leader. Okay. That tracks. 76% extroversion. Okay. I'd agree with that. Method of processing information, 81% intuition. ENTJs are intuitive thinkers fascinated by possibilities, patterns, and future outcomes. Interesting. Okay. 55% thinking. That feels like neutral. That's a push. Well, because it's either, so it's.

Introversion versus extroversion. That's the I and the E. Intuition versus sensing. Okay. That's your method of processing information, your intuition. Decision-making functioning is thinking or feeling. You're thinking, but at 55%. Yeah, I'm on the fence. And then management function is judging or perceiving, and you're 61% judging. Wow.

What a left turn. We still don't know if you're highly sensitive. You're right. We'll have to find that test and we'll do it when we do the. They tricked me. Briggs and Stratton test from your book. What was that called? Myers-Briggs. No, from your book. Oh, yeah. Green hats. Green hats. What a mess of a fact check this was. All right. All right. Goodbye. Oh, are there any facts? That was it. Oh, great. Love you. Love you.

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