SYSK Selects: How Dissociative Identity Disorder Works

Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Choke Bryant, and there's no is no one of my altars. No these his own. Dude, Okay, do you have walters? Okay? Do you no? Not that I know. I think we've each seen a bit of an altar in each other. But that's just called us being jerks every now and then. Bad mood. Yeah, that's a little different. I was on a forum about a forum for people with dissociative identity disorder and like the

from what I was reading, you sometimes you feel crowded. Um. Some people have like felt like they have had altars like their whole life, as long as they've been around interesting, Um, sometimes they don't. Like. One of the entries I saw was like, does your altar have to have a name, And it was like, I don't necessarily think of them as people, and another person responded and so that that's often like an early stage of the process, and then over time, as they become more pronounced, they end up

adopting names. Or it is uh, super moody or some other bad behavior that you say is disassociative identity disorder and you give it a name, Well you don't, your therapist does yeah, or you might yeah. So it's controversial and we'll get to that, but um, I guess we should start off by saying that another name for this a more popular name, even though it's been uh since d I D. The original name was multiple personality to

disorder the personality. When I was reading this at first, I was like, this sounds an awful lot like split personality.

It is. It is. They just renamed it and we'll see pretty soon why, which is kind of a good move because from what I can tell, it seems to be a real thing that underwent a period of intense exploitation and abuse, so much so that now there's a lot of people who doubt that it's a real thing, right, but that there are still people out there who do suffer from it enough so that psychiatry has said, we need to change the name and then we just focus on the people that really have this. Now. Did they

change it because it had a stigma? Really? That was the only reason? Yeah? Wow, Yeah, there's this excellent article um on I O nine actually about UM. I think it's called like the myth of dissociative identity disorder and um, the myth of multiple personality disorder. Thank you they went old school, yeah, um, and the lady who wrote it did a really good job of explaining the controversy around it and also like the renewal of it as well,

like how it became renewed. But yeah, it was because it was basically, um exploited and fictionalized by the psychiatric community a few notable people that we'll get to all that though. Yeah, so, I mean everybody has heard of multiple personality disorder thanks to that that period of exploitation from the fifties to the eighties. Um, so you have probably a pretty good idea of the concept behind it

of the disorder. To begin with, it's a single person has their normal, their original UM what's called their host personality, and sometimes especially under periods of acute psycho social stress, maybe confronted with stress or something they don't want to think about or talk about or whatever, another one of their personalities will emerge and they're generally tied to a trauma and early life that you may not even know about until you have therapy that out of your subconscious

right and UM they believe that for dissociative identity disorder, when it does come about from the result of a trauma, it comes about as a coping mechanism to protect the mind because the the host personality simply can't handle dealing with it. But there is some aspect of that person which is characterized through another personality that can handle it, and so that personality will come out to handle those

periods where UM the the person is confronted with those memories. Yeah, and it can express itself in different ways depending on UM how severe your disorder is. But generally, if you've ever seen United States of terra UM, you ever seen that No, I know of it, but I've never seen an episode. Emily was way into it. Um, we're talking about completely new people. But your behavior, your speech, you can be a different sex, you can have a different accent, um,

different species. Yeah, you could be like a dog technically. UM. I think that's a little more rare. I would imagine. Yeah. Um. And there is no timetable. That's um. It doesn't necessarily happen like right after a trauma. Can come out years later. Um. And it just there's not an awareness necessarily. Uh, that's a big one. Well, there's not an awareness of the host person doesn't have an awareness of the altars coming out. Sometimes they do sometimes, but the altars usually are aware

of the other altars and the host. And that was like it was in the United States of Tara. Yeah, sometimes the um the altars, which I don't know if we specifically said or not yet, but an altar is one of these non one of the other personalities within the host personality, and there's there's usually at least two others. There has to be to a host at least one other right, Um. But then it can go. People have reported up to a hundred or beyond UM, and they

can happen at the same time too. Yeah, that's another thing is they can switch between them um pretty quickly. And these periods where the altars emerge can take place over the course of days or weeks. Basically, if you if you if there's a period where the alls are really kind of coming out and fluidly changing, that's a period of severe stress that that person is undergoing. Yeah, maybe calling back that previous drama. Maybe not, It might

just be triggered by stress period. And you said also that some sometimes a lot of times the altars are aware of each other. There's also been plenty of documented

cases where the altars don't like each other. Sometimes they don't like the host um or they don't have much respect for the host uh, or like one of the other altars, they don't like how they deal with the host, or deal with life, or something like that, which is kind of neat because that that shows that these altars are aware that that the effects or the actions of the other altar or the host affects them. Yeah, like if they are somehow they understand that they're part of

the whole. Well, you can be uh, the host person that just the regular Josh is a non drinker and you could have an alcoholic altar. Well, yeah, it thinks the host is a square. And like, I can't wait to get my hands on a drink because Josh is like he's he won't go near the stuff. But now that I'm randy, I'm gonna buy that twelve pack of Maister Brow. Yeah, and very I don't think I've ever had a sip of Maister Brow. I had a very

long night with it about fifteen years ago. Okay, so you might have undergone something that's similar to UM dissociative disorder, we should say. Also when they renamed associative disorder, they also took all of these components that used to make up multiple personality disorder and split them. So now there's four associated disorders. UM. There is dissociative identity disorder, which is the most extreme, that's the one with altars and

different personalities coming out. And then there is UM dissociative amnesia, which is remember in our amnesia podcasts? Who brought this one about um? Where you just kind of forget a certain experience. Yeah, Like I had this terrible car crash. I don't even remember it all right, and it was dissociative amnesia. That that's that where it's like you don't remember the terrible thing that happened to you. Um. There's also a dissociative fugue, which is where you basically just

leave your life. You walk away from your life and maybe you seem like you're kind of out of it or whatever. Maybe you're under the influence of a different personality. Um, it's it's not just like I'm not gonna come home any longer. It's like you left your life and are a different person. You're leading a different life in the last days, weeks, months, um and then Chuck. The fourth one is deep personalization disorder, which is like you're you're

watching your life as if you're viewing a movie. You're detached. And I think that one. I think these can work to other because I know that if you have d I D, you definitely have moments of experiencing uh that one. Yeah, they they like even if you're just the host, you might feel like you're just watching yourself instead of being yourself. So dissociative identity disorder diagnosis is almost has like split

personalities fluid. It switches between the different disorders and the one thing that they all have in common is that they all appear to be coping mechanisms to protect the mind from a trauma. They're basically saying like I'm checking out of my life, or I'm detaching myself from my life, or I'm just not going to remember that part of my life, or I am I can't handle my life and this other personality can. Yeah, and it's not. It's not always just those things that you know. Some of

the side symptoms are can be hallucinations. A lot of times it leads to substance abuse or eating disorders, UM depression, anxiety and mood swings obviously OBVI and UH, memory disturbances either short or long term. Right, it's kind of one of the keys. Probably UM and you apparently a person suffering from the sociative identities sort of just kind of like you said, foggy is a really good descriptor of if not life, then their periods of UM this condition

flaring up. I guess. Yeah, just their sense of place and time is just completely disrupted. It sounds awful, Yeah, it is awful. Yeah, it is UM. Like I said, I haven't seen the United States of Terror, but apparently it's a lot of comic effect out of yeah, of course, but if you have the sociative identity disorder, you'd likely have a really hard struggle in life. Yeah, and it

shows some of that too. I mean it's obviously for TV, so there is some comedy with some of the althars, but it also shows the toll that it takes on the family and stuff like that. So, uh, it's this has been around for a little while. We've understood it its symptoms since at least the late eighteenth century. Yeah, and and some early scientists and researchers did a pretty good job considering how long ago it was nailing it. Um. Well,

it's a pretty like extravagant yeah case. Yeah, people come. Sure, doctors, especially in the eighteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds, were like pretty excited about it, you know. Um, so demonic possession and weird things like that. Back in the day, A lot of many of those cases may have been things like these disorders. Uh, we just didn't know about it back then, so we just said someone was a hysteric or a witch and they killed them or lock them up,

you know, in some room. Um. But the first symptoms of d i D came around in nineteen and sev it's a long time ago. Yeah, a guy named ever Heart Gamelon No, yeah, Gamelon, Yeah, I think it's g M E L I N. I would go silent g on that melon. Why don't they just spell it right, that's just a guess. Yeah. Well, he was the first one to describe the conditions. He had a patient who was a middle class German woman who had an altar who was a French aristocrat. So he hypnotized her, brought

out the French aristocrat, the animal magnetized her or mesmerism. Yeah, and we did an episode on hypnosis if you want to go check that out. Yeah, it's a very good one. Um. But up until the late eighteen hundreds, about eighteen eighty, they generally thought that what the deal was was that humans had a background consciousness and that was actually greater than our regular primary consciousness, and when that background consciousness got sick, then that's what brought out the cray right,

that that's what mental illness came from. Pretty much basically, it was another way of putting the conscious in the subconscious, because I mean, and it still today, people believe the subconscious exists and that it's the one that's really running the show, really is that's still the belief that it's greater as far as I know, certainly among Freudians. But yeah, that's true. I don't I don't think anyone's really discredited the idea of the subconscious. All right, who knows. I'm

sure we're going to find up here. They're about the same time as that was going on. Um, they started to tie it with childhood trauma, which is pretty spot on. And then a French patient named Louis Viev Viva viv. He was twenty two years old and he had this is in the late had six personalities. Doctors just went crazy over this guy. Um. They didn't overlap with their memories. They thought that they were just hypnotic variations of each other.

They didn't understand though, at the time, that they were actually completely separate personalities. They thought it was just all parts of Louis, which if you, if you really kind of follow the timeline of UM D I D like they were. We've come back to that understanding of it. Yeah,

I guess you're right. You know that it's not like just different personalities, it's just different aspects of a single personality that are are kind of given voice in a very literal like different voice in a literal way, right, you know, Yeah, that's a good point. And then after that are actually around the same time, Pierre Janette, another French researcher UM said, now these are different personalities and it comes from a trauma that they suffered, right, So

he was kind of hit it early on. Yeah, he I guess he laid the groundwork for the understanding for the next century or so to come. UM. And then uh, it wasn't until nineteen o five that somebody claimed to cure a person with UM dissociative identity disorder again back then known as multiple personality disorder UM, a guy named Morton Prince Morty Prince not Martin Prince, Morton Prince UM. He basically said that using hypnosis he was able to UM coax out the very easily coax out the altars.

Because this is something like very early on, dissociative identity disorder and hypnosis were basically just went hand in hand, and UM alienists believed that they could use hypnosis to very easily draw out the altars, which they could who am I talking to now exactly? Or I want to talk to you know, this personality and then start confronting those personalities and convincing them to integrate into the host personality.

And then once you had full successful integration, you had a reunited whole host person who was just one personality. But the the the key is is that they're using hypnosis, and hypnosis doesn't isn't real, right, So, like, we have a huge clue here to a mystery of what exactly is going on. But before anybody really kind of faces that and confronts it um and starts to really truly treat associative ideality disorder on its face or at its root,

it treated it on its face. Psychiatry took a really like it just went all in and doubled down on the most um, the sexiest, craziest versions that could come up with. So, Chuck, psychiatry is about to say, multiple multiple personality disorder is um exactly what it looks like. Some of these people are beyond looney. This guy over here as a hundred personalities and seven of them are dogs,

different dogs. Can you believe this? And uh, these these cases are going to start to grow by leaps and bounds and number and it all can be traced back to a single book, which is based on a single case history. Yeah, well, a couple of books. Yeah. But to start, it was all about Eve, that's right, The Three Faces of Eve. It was a book written in n seven by two psychiatrists, and it was about a woman whose real name was Chris Costner size More, who

may or may not be related to Kevin Costner. Neither I nor anybody on the Internet appears to know for sure. I looked, and nobody all there are questions. I can't believe I didn't think to look that up. Yeah Costner, Sure, there's like two of them, Kevin and who Chris? Okay, um, so she, uh, Chris Costner size More went um by the name of Eva White, or at least that's what they called her in the book, although funnily I didn't look up to see whether or not she's related to

Tom size More, just Kevin Costner. Yeah, did I say Eva White? I meant Eve White? Yeah, I might said Eve. Either way, it's Eve White. And she was referred because she had headaches amnesia, and she worked with these two psychiatrists and a couple of altars emerged and they wrote a book. Well, they supposedly cured her and reintegrated them back into one host person, but they wrote a book really quickly that exploded on the scene, super popular, made

them a ton of money. There was a big blockbuster movie. Um, it was just it took over, well not took over, but it made a huge splash and just people's consciousness about what this is like for the first time time. It was everyone you know, like you said, it's kind of super sexy and interesting and people were captivated by

this new disease. And this Eve woman who was really three women and one right there was Eve Peggy and I can't remember the other one, but um one was like a good girl, uh, the other one was like a bad girl or a tough girl. And then the host was just kind of a combination of the two. Yeah, and she's still alive, she still is well. She um

so that this doctor um was it Thigpen. Yeah, doctor thigpen Um who was treating her Corbett Thigpen and a colleague I believe his name is Henny Cleckly, seriously Cleckly and Thigpen so Um Thigpen was the one who wrote like really went off the deep end with the book and then sold the ladies life rights without her approval to Hollywood, and they made this story or this movie and like you said, it was the Century Fox. Yeah it was, and it was. It made a pretty big splash,

both the book and the movie. Um. And she came out and wrote a book called I'm Eve and said, Dude, this guy is a total fraud, Like, yes, I do have multiple personalities, but they didn't cure me. No, Like this guy kept insisting I was cured. It didn't work. He uh, he shot me up with sodium pentethal and like just used the power of suggestion. Um. And he's just a huckster, basically he was after the story. Um, but here I am left with my conditions still. Yeah.

And she had reportedly suffered, UM witnessed a bad accident and witnessed to deaths as a child and that's where hers was born. So UM that set the stage that for popular consciousness to um kind of come to understand multiple personality disorder, which again that's what it was called at the time. UM. And I mean it was all over the place, like people just people were just aware of it, whereas they hadn't been before. UM. And it

was kind of like a one two punch. You had all about Eve and the fifties, and then about fifteen years later you had Sybil. And Sybil was the one that blew this thing wide open. It just happened, I guess, to arrive at a time when UM America was really ready to um undergo or be party to psychological exploitation

like big time. Yeah. And in nine three is when Sybil the book came out, UM written by oh uh, let's see Flora Rita Schreiber about her treatment with psychiatrist Cornelia Wilbur and about the treatment of the real name was Shirley Mason, and they kept that a secret for many years Sybil, Yeah, to protect her her identity. Um, but eventually the name came out. Well, she died in the nineties. Yeah, she died ninety eight breast cancer. But um,

she had sixteen personalities. And like I said, Sally Field played her in the movie. It was a big hit. I remember my mom reading the book. It was all the rage in the seventies. Yeah, it was huge, huge, And um, she was actually an artist, a painter, and like taught painting too, I think. But they found a hundred and three paintings in her basement after she died, and she only signed the ones that she felt like she the host had painted, like she wouldn't sign the

ones that an Altar had painted. So many of them are unsigned. But it's when you look at it, it's really like they're all different, like some are like realist, some are abstract, some are impressionistic, really all over the map, and it's just I don't know, kind of a testament to like how real this can be? Is there a website that hosts all of them? Uh? I don't know. I think if you look just look up, you know,

hidden paintings of Sybil, you can probably buy them. And that would be what s I B y L is how they spelled that? No s y b I L Yeah, um so sybils a smash hit. It's based on the wave, the first wave that was brought about by all about Eve and the public is um just fully aware of multiple personality disorders like these two are like the cream

of the crop. There were tons of made for TV movies and um Donna Hue episodes and all sorts of just chatter about multiple personality disorder, and all of a sudden, the cases go from about two hundred in the medical literature to suddenly eight thousand after the movie Sybil comes out and it seems like every psychiatrist has a patient

with multiple personality disorder. And because of all this the since nationalism that went along with it, there are fortunately a caudra of serious psychiatrists and psychologists who said, wait a minute, what, like what what what's going on here? Like movies aren't supposed to trigger outbreaks of disorders. Some people explained it away by saying, well, there, these people may have didn't suffering like this. They didn't have a

name to associate with. The movie gave him the name so they could go to the doctor and speak to it and be treated right. Um, that is one explanation.

The problem is the explanation that this was a real phenomenon and not like some sort of um what do they call, I guess outbreak of mass hysteria A little bit um And this is a no way to diminish anybody who's suffering mentally in any way, of course, But I'm talking about the specific moment in history in the seventies in the West where there was an outbreak of

multiple personality disorder cases. Um idea that it was a real thing was definitely undermined by the Cibil case itself, which, like contemporaneously some psychiatrists said, this isn't a peer reviewed case history. We think this is basically all just made up. Well, the lid was blown off, specifically by a single doctor in Sybil's case. Dr Herbert Spiegel apparently treated um Sybil. Well, it's not a real name, but we'll call her Sybil while the uh Wilbur was out of town, and he

was like, you know what, this doesn't add up. He said these case notes. Yeah, he said, it seems like she's really highly suggestible. Uh. It seems like you gave her sodian pentethal and she's addicted to that, and it seems like you might have not necessarily on purpose coached her into saying these things. Well, there's there was um at least one instance where that fill in doctor who's treating um uh Sybil, said that they were in a session and Sybil said, um, which which personality you want

me to be? Uh? Which is not something you say when you can't control your altars. Uh. And then secondly there was in the case notes there was a reference to a note or a statement by Sybil to her doctor Dr Wilbur that said, I do not even have a double. I am all of them. I've been lying in my pretense of them. And Dr Wilbur noted that she wrote this up to avoidance behavior, that Sybil was trying to avoid having to confront reintegrating her her personalities,

and that's why she was saying that she was lying. UM. So when all of this kind of came out and was added up and combined with this outbreak of um multiple personality disorder cases in the late seventies early eighties,

it was it was pretty damning. But then when it became obvious that satanic ritual abuse, yeah, that moral panic that happened was following right on the heels of this, I think the scientific community stepped back and said, Okay, America's is crazy, well and not in the mental health

problem kind of way, like just just crazy. Yeah. I think I think a lot of that came about because the it started to become a legal defense, uh, and people started explaining way very bad behaviors on altars and claiming in court like it wasn't me that killed my wife, it was Tony man. It sounds like we're talking about the Lifetime Movie network here. You know, this Lifetime Movie network is all over these stories. Yeah, I bet you there's quite a few of those movies out there. Right.

So all this is going on, it becomes very apparent that this isn't a real thing. Um, And fortunately for the people who actually do suffer from this disorder, psychiatry said, all right, let's get rid of the multiple personality disorder moniker, and we're gonna rename it dissociative identity disorder. We're gonna completely remove it from what just happened because that was pitiful,

and um, we're gonna get down to basics. We're gonna go back to the way of addressing this, of viewing this that um, the doctor who described Louis Vivey came up with all the way back in that it's just variations of the host personality, not truly separate personalities, and that if we treat the underlying cause or even just the co morbid symptoms drug addiction, alcoholism, depression, the hallucinations, the mood swings, anxiety, if we treat all this, most

likely the depression identity disorders also going to be treated in kind Yeah. I think another thing that lended itself to that too, where doctor started being sued in the nineties by people saying, wait a minute, you've got me on these drugs, you're hypnotizing me. You're saying, you're calling coercing me into calling out these altars, and so I'm gonna sue you. Yeah, I'm glad you said that, because it is worth revisiting. I don't think we really laid

this at the feet of psychiatrists enough. There were people who saw this movie who were feeling this way, who maybe felt like they they had more than one personality and went to and I think everyone feels that way a little bit sometimes, you know. But if you're a highly suggestible person and you see this movie and you start thinking like, wow, maybe that's what I have, and they inject you with sodian pentethal right, you go to

a medical professional. That medical professional isn't supposed to be like, yeah, yeah, you have that. And and this one's named Tim. Tim is very aggressive personality. I can see Tim coming out now. And then all of a sudden, the person's like Tim, Like yes, that person's life has been altered, probably for the negative, because of a UM, at the very least, a dubious medical expert um. And yes, so of course

they were sued, and they should have been sued. It was a really dark spot in the history of psychiatry, which has a lot of dark spots on its history. Frankly, you know this was this was one of them. But like I said, again, um, there were a group of psychiatrists who said, no, this is there's something real here. We've just been looking at it the wrong way. We allowed it to become sensationalized. We need to learn that lesson.

But at the same time, we need to identify the people who really are suffering from this and figure out how to help them. Okay, Chuck. So now we're at they've renamed multiple personality disorder and now it's UM dissociative identity disorder. So let's talk about how it's treated, how it manifests, what it is. So the I guess the modern understanding from what I can tell, seems to be that, UM, the associative identity disorder is a person who has well,

let's talk about personality. What identity is? Okay, okay, what if your identity is basically the a script that you've been equipped with, that's been developed and refined in nuance, but also very much brutalized and solidified over the years, so that when you are faced with any any anything in life, you're going to react in a prescribe predictable way. That's your identity. Now, what if your identity is such that, um, it doesn't handle stress very well, but you're still confronted

with stress. But that doesn't but handling stress isn't part of that script that makes up your identity. Well, in the case of a very very extreme case, it's possible that a person will subsume their normal personality and draw out some aspect that isn't predictable, that isn't prescribed, but it is still part of themselves and put that front and center to deal with that stress. And it might cuss out the person like a psychiatrist who's confronting them

with the stress. It may be very protective of that personality, but the point is it's still part of that single person. It's just a different aspect showing when you take it to its extreme conclusion, what you're looking at then are two different personalities, split personalities, or multiple personalities. That's apparently what dissociative identity disorder is So are you saying you don't believe that when someone comes out in a British accent and says my name is Rob, Like, that's not real.

I don't think the word real is a good word because I think that that person it's real, and that's reality right there, you know. I mean, like, if if a person is experiencing a different personality and it happens to be a British guy named Rob, that's the reality right then. I don't think these people who have dissociative identity disorder are faking. I don't think it's made up. I don't think they're necessarily playing along. I think that's

what happened in the eighties. Everybody was just kind of playing along. But I think if you actually have dissociative identity disorder, like this is your experience, this is reality to you, Like you do feel detached from your life, you do have missing time, like you do experience this, So yes, it's real for you. It's more how the psychiatric community or the mental health community has to view

dissociative identity disorder in order to treat it. That it isn't that they aren't separate personalities because you can basically, Um, that's tantamount to saying you're possessed by a demon that's a whole other person in there with you. And that's just not the case. And if you view it like that, you're not going to be able to treat it. Did you find anyone famous with it? No? Did you herschel Walker? No? Really? Yeah, you knew about that, right, Uh? No, famous former Georgia

Bulldog running back an NFL star, herschel Walker. He suffers from d I D and he wrote a book called Breaking Free. And he has no memory of winning the Heisman Trophy. Oh no, he has no memory of putting a gun to his wife's head something that's happened in his life. Uh, no memory of any of these things. And he says he has as many as twelve altars, and um, his his wife, I don't know if they're

still together, I don't think. But his wife many years thinks like it all makes sense now, Like when she finally he came out with this, and he just came out with a few years ago, she was like, well, this totally makes sense because I saw very different people through the course of our marriage. Out of nowhere. That made no sense and she was like it was not

a mood swing and um he uh. He's famous for not just being a football player, Like he was into ballet, he went to FBI school, he was an Olympic bobsltter. What he's he's done all these things he was. He's a mixed martial artist now and he thinks that these altars are you know, basically why he has so many like varying interest in life. Yeah, that is really fascinating. So what do you think about it? What's your take

on dissociated by Danny disorder? Well, I'm not sure i'd see the difference between Like that's what a disorder mental disorder is, is some believing something about themselves. Like I guess I don't see the difference between someone thinking they have these different personalities. Like a personality isn't a tangible thing anyway, Like you can't touch it. So if someone believes they have four different personalities, then they may as well have four different personalities. Like I get you what

you're saying. I guess it's all part of that person. But if it's a disorder, that means it's causing a problem, right, I think the fact that when I see cases of what looks like real d I d like herschel Walker, no memory of of certain things like it's it's certainly more powerful than you know. That's bad Chuck coming out because I don't deal with stress. Well, we'll call him Tony,

you know. But if I blacked out and didn't remember my actions for several days, and those actions included putting a gun to my wife's head, then that's a whole different thing. Yeah, you know, because I'm certainly moody. We all know bad Chuck. We all know Tony Tony nice. All right, Well, I guess that's it about dissociative identity disorder. If you want to learn more about it, type those words in the search part how stuff works dot Com and they'll bring up this article. And since I said

search parts, time for listener mail. Uh, I'm gonna call this real world advice for Tony. This is guy's name is Tony? Oh no, yeah, total accident. Hey, guys, I recently returned from to the States from living in the Republic of Korea, mostly teaching English there for the last four years. Returned home to get a job different from that, and now that I'm at home, I can't figure out

what to do. Uh. To give you context, I've been actively interviewing with all sorts of companies, organizations and firms positions and marketing, sales, business development, finance, consulting. Anyway, I find most of those roles to be too boring. I also feel pressured and burden because I studied engineering at Columbia University and feel a burden to be successful quote unquote, I am very much stuck in a rut looking for a job, uh, not excited by my prospects, and asking

what do I want to do. I don't really want to go back to school because I can't afford to pay for a master's degree, especially if I'm not certain or pretty certain that that advanced degree will improve my situation. So I'm emailing you guys because I'm an advoliser and I think we share similar perspectives on things, and you

have great careers that are thrilling and aspirable. So I'm not quite saying I want to be you guys, or I want your jobs, but I see both these people that are really interesting salt of the earth folk who can relate to my situation more so, than my investment management, consulting, law, youring, med school friends. So Tony h. De Frieda's wants to know what he should do. Man, that's a tough one. I've actually been thinking about this too email for a

couple of days now. Yeah yeah, okay, I mean like he's asking for help, sure, so give it to him. Well, my first bit of advice would be to narrow down your scope a little bit. If you studied engineering and you're looking at marketing, sales, business development, finance, consulting, I think you're casting your net a little too wide. Yeah, So my first bit of advice is to narrow that down. And my second bit of advice is to narrow it down based on often tell people like what do you what,

what do you love? And what would you love to do? Ideally what they call blue sky territory here in the corporate world. It sounds like also to me, you're asking a lot of people, but you're spending a lot of time like just keeping it at the forty foot level. Like maybe you sit for a little while with a legal pen a pen and like be quiet and gather your thoughts and then brainstorm after that, just even for

like a half hour twenty minutes something like that. If for your future that you're thinking about, you could probably come up with a half hour to dedicate just to that. But just turn everything off and like really focus inward and say what do you want to do, and then go for that, And don't feel obligated to use your degree. Most people can go to college, don't use the degree that they got. It's more like they went through college

to show they can go through college, you know. Yeah, and he didn't list engineer anywhere and what he was looking into, even though that's what his degrees in. Yeah. Here's the other thing too, there are very few um career choices or life paths that go that go absolutely nowhere. And you shouldn't be afraid to take steps that you

that aren't necessarily the prescribed way to go. Yeah, and don't be worried about locking yourself in for life necessarily, you know, like try something out that you love and it may bear fruit. Yeah, and if it doesn't work, you can always just go get like a guaranteed job or something afterward. Yeah. Yeah, And something that interests you now isn't necessarily going to interest you five years from now.

So yeah, I think you're worrying too much, Tony, or Tony if this was a very sly way of trying to get the word out with your resume, and you're out there and you want to Columbia University grad engineering degree, who's interested in sales and business development and finance? Let us know, interested in anything? See captain ing whatever? Uh So, spend some time, be quiet with your thoughts, trying to decide what you love and if you could make a career out of that. And uh, if we hear anything,

then we'll let you know. It sounds like you're up for adventure because you lived in Korea. We have them for garden seed. Yeah. We give him a lot of advice here. Yeah, this is plenty. Take some of that and do something with it, Tony. Let us know how it goes. Please. Uh. If you have made any kind of life choice or decision based on something Chuck and I had said, we want to know how that went. You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff

you should know. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, and as always, hang out with us at our home on the Web Stuff you Should Know dot com Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.