Guy Winch on Emotional First Aid

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We hope you'll enjoy this episode with Guy Winch. When you have a physical injury, you have to tend it, you have to cover the cuts with a band aige it does and even register when we sustain psychological wounds that there is an action that we need to take. Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our

thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks

for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Guy Wench, a licensed psychologist, keynote and Ted Talk speaker, and an author whose books have been translated into twenty languages. His most recent book is Emotional First Aid, Healing, Rejection, Guilt, Failure, and Other Everyday Hurts. Hi, Guy, Welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having me. I'm happy to have you on. I first came across your work on

Paul gil Martin Show. Where you kind of came on and talked about some different approaches to handling emotional wounds. So I really enjoyed you there. I've read your book since, and I'm excited to dig into some of these things with you. So let's start like we normally do, with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of

us that are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like in this and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in

the work that you do. Well. To me, I mean, it's a it's a very good parable for what actually happens to us psychologically in the day to day, in the in the minute a minute of our existence. You know, we have different drives, we have different needs, we have different instincts and um. Some of them send us down the wrong path or down a very damaging pat and

some of them send us down a good part. Now, sometimes the ones that you know, the evil or the wolf that you know, is battling on the on the side of anger and jealousy and greed and resentment, that actually feels very true, that actually feels very compelling, that actually feels very very urgent. And so the good wolf in that sense, the one that would be about um, you know, humility or hope, um you know, or gratitude,

feels much more disconnected and much more distant and much weaker. UM. That's when that's when we have to literally assert one over the other. For example, you know the issue of rumination, when we tend to kind of chew over um, distressing and angering things that happened to us. By by replaying these kinds of events in our minds, we're actually getting ourselves more angry and more upset and more resentful and more bitter. But it feels extraordinarily compelling to kind of

replay those scenes over and over again. It's much harder to actually, you know, try and and assert acceptance and um and gratitude and perspective and the good things. Um So, I I do think that's the kind of battle that we take in the day to day. I think it has major imper paitions for our emotional health and for our general kind of sense and well being. Um but I think it's something that we all face on a

daily basis. Yeah, your book, most recent book is called Emotional First Aid Healing, Rejection, Guilt, Failure and other everyday hurts. And the basic idea behind it is that we all know how to do basic first aid on our bodies, you know, from a very young age, but very few of us know at all how to or certainly not teach our children how to do first aid on the emotional wounds that we all suffer in the course of

of going about our day to day lives. And yeah, I think it's actually even more it's I think it's even worse. I think it's worse because it's not just that we know to do one and we and we don't know how to do the other. We don't know that there's a possibility to do the other. We don't know that we should do the other. I mean, we're aware on the most basic level that when you have

a physical injury, you have to tend it. You have to evaluate whether it needs a you know, professional care, and if not, you have to do something to which you have to cover the cut with the band aide. You have to put an ice back on the sprain. You know, you have to you have to take some kind of action. It doesn't even register when we sustain emotional and psychological wounds that there's an action that we need to take, certainly, not that there's one that we

could take, and certainly not what that might be. One things you also talk about in the book that I like a lot is that if we tended to these small wounds when they are a small wound, we would probably have less exacerbation of these things into full blown mental illness type problems. And I think that's that's true

in many different ways. And in the first way, yes, things can in the same way that the physical wounds can become you know, infected quote unquote, um, there can be this ripple effect that happens even with small emotional wounds. Just you know, as an example, you know, somebody's on a on a dating website and they reached out to someone and that person, uh, you know, rejected them or rebuffed them, and their feelings got hurt, and they decided. And I hear this all the time. I'm not making

this example up. Well, you know, I'm going to stay off that dating website for you know, for a few weeks or maybe a couple of months, because you know, it's annoying quote unquote is what they will say to themselves, as opposed to saying, yeah, rejection hurts, UM. So I got rejected, let me think about what I should do about it. And so they stay off the dating website. But they also stay away from dating because they don't

want to get rejected again. And the more they do that, the less confident they are, and the more anxious they are about the next date they have, whenever that would be. And so they approach the next date, you know, full of dread and anxiety. They're not the best selves, and you know, and then they end up inviting the very rejection they were fearful of. And then now they're now

they're really not dating, and now years of passing. In other words, you can just see how how how things um you know, can can grow and can snowball um from the small psychological injury not that that happens every time,

but it has happened Number one and number two. There's a certain emotional resiliency that you can build by actually tackling these kinds of emotional wounds and addressing them, because it actually makes you feel better when you do, and then it makes you more confident about Okay, I might get rejected on the date, but I know how to handle that now, I know what steps I can take to make myself feel better. Or yes, I'll risk this endeavor. I'm afraid that I might fail that, but if I do,

I know how to deal with failure. I know how to figure it out on how to you know, work around it and kind of tackle things with a renewed vigor the next time. So it builds emotional resiliency to kind of tend these wounds. And so I think it's helpful in in quite a variety of ways. Yes, So why don't we just jump into some of the wounds that you talk about, And I'd like to spend you know, really the remainder of the program talking about some of the basic things that people can do to treat some

of these these wounds. So why don't we just start with rejection. The interesting thing about all these wounds, UM, and I think it's an important component is before you can start treating it, you really need to have an understanding of in what were you're injured. You know, if you wipe out on a skateboard, um, and I can assure you it's been a while since I've been on a skateboard or wiped out on one, UM. But if you do, the first instinct you have is let me

check myself to see that I'm not hurt. Right, you're lying on the ground, you're let me let let me check this and flegs my legs and arms to make sure nothing's broken. So, you know, we have this instinct to let me see if something I'm hurt somewhere, and we have a tendency to know where to look for the injury that we might sustain. UM. When it comes to take to rejection, well what are you looking for? So, yes,

you have hurt feelings, that's a very universal thing. Your feelings are hurt, But ay, what does that really mean? And be where where are the actual injuries emotionally? You know, as it were, And so it's very important and and in in in my book actually divide every chapter into two parts. One art is discussing what the wounds are on the second part is what the treatments are for those wounds. And I think they're both very important. But

we're talking about rejection. So there's several things that happened to us when we get rejected. And the first thing is it hurts. And this expression hurt feelings is one that is existing almost every language I think that we know. In other words, when you describe feelings in different languages, they don't always translate. This thing about hurt feelings related to rejection is very very consistent. And why that is is because it actually does hurt. Um They did studies

with functional m R E. S um is. I'm just gonna mention more. IS's just I think it's really interesting. I hope that's okay. But they asked for volunteers, actually they paid them, but you know, they asked for for people to volunteer for the study and get paid for it, who had just experienced a recent heartbreak and then they had them lie in a functional fMRI machine and look at the picture. You know, that's the first thing I

looked up when I read that study. I quickly skipped to the methods is how much do these people get paid? Because this is what they had to do. They had to stare at the picture the person who broke their heart and relive the breakup while and if anyone's been in an m R I it's incredibly noisy bang bang bang while that's going on around you. So yes, the first thing I did is I really hope. And they paid them decently actually for an experiment. Actually that was

pretty that was pretty good. But but what they found and what was really compelling, was that when they looked at the at the slides of the slices of the brain and what's happening in the brain in that moment, they were indistinguishable for from what you see when people experience physical pain. In other words, rejection literally activates the same pathways in our brain as does physical pain. That's why we have that expression hurt feelings. We really hurt.

It actually be hurt. And and as a proof of concept, they did the follow up study, which is really more cute than anything else. I'm not suggesting this is actually remedy for people. But they put people, two groups of people through a rejection experiment and they gave half of them. One group they gave like sugar pills, and the other

group they gave thailan all pseudominicon um. And then they had them report on the emotional pain they experienced and the group and the group didn't know what they were getting, but the group who received the thailan all reported less emotional pain after the rejection. Yeah, that's real. I am not suggesting people go on dates packing tailan all um, because it's very pessimistic. Really, it's kind of hard on the liver. Maybe add though would be better. It's hard

on the liver, and it's a little pessimistic. I think it's the worst thing. You know, you're like just just say the world and also of the pills. Um. But um, it is an interesting proof of concept. And so this knowing that your feelings are hurting for a reason is very important and is an eximple thing about rejection. When they put people through the experiments in which they it's a fake rejection, but it's the people don't know it's fake.

They're getting rejected in the scenario these participants um, and then they tell them, okay, so look here's the thing, um, those people who seemingly rejected you, that they were our research assistants, there actually was no rejection happening, and then they ask people, well, how are you feeling now? Will their feelings still hurt? In other words, the amazing thing about rejection is even once you found you find out

it's not real, it actually still hurts. So certainly, if it is real, and certainly if it's significant, it's going to hurt a lot. And that's important to know because when you don't know that and your feelings get hurt because someone who don't even care that much about rejected you, or someone who want that invested in, not alone someone you were, then your natural inclination is going to think, wow, I must be some kind of major loser, that this

is really bothering me this much? What's wrong with me? How How you know, desperate am I? That this is bothering me this much? It's bother you because your brain is wired for it to really really bother you, not because of any reflection on you or your emotional fortitude. You know, your constitution, your appealability, none of that. But if you don't know that, then you're gonna go down a very wrong path of the wrong wolf and go to feeling really bad and really angry and really resentful.

And if you do know that and you can steal yourself downe you know a better path. What would that better path for rejection look like? What are a couple of things that if you're feeling that sting, that pain, that you can do to treat it. So I'm going

to give you one example. Now, Unfortunately, with rejection, what happens is, you know, our self esteem gets damaged because it's just not you know, it's not good for anyone self esteem to be rejected, even you know in the fake rejection, you just your your feelings that hurt, and your self esteem takes a hit. Now, the thing about the self esteem taking a hit is that the rejection usually causes ten of the hit your self esteem takes.

What causes the rest of the eight is you. Because then we go into this very negative internal voice and start, you know, if it was in a romantic scenario, we look in the mirror and we start going through every single possible physical flow we have. Or you are not tall enough for are not rich enough for a London enough, or this isn't big enough for that too big, or this isn't wide and enough for that's too wide or

whatever it is. You know, we go through the litany um, you know, with the assumption of if we were only better than that wouldn't have happened. But in the in in in preparing the grounds for if we were only better, we actually go through every possible way in which we're not adequate. Whether we're adequate or not. Now, that's what does most of the damage to our self esteem. So we need to do two things. We need to shut off that voice, we need to shut down that wolf.

And then we need to actually do the reverse. We need to actually find ways to revive our self esteem. So I'm gonna give people one an example. You know that I suggest usual about rejection, and that is, if you want to revivee yourself esteem after rejection, the best way to do that is to remind yourself and very clearly what you actually do bring to the table, what you do have to offer in terms of the data relationship,

you know, a significant other, what have you? And that means, you know, make a list of qualities that you think you have that are meaningful, that are important. You might be you know, funny and emotionally available, loyal and supported, you might be graded at back grubs. You know, you might you might be you know, very entertaining, you might

be great within laws. Whatever it is that write down qualities that you think really matter in relationships that you know you have, and then choose one of them and write a brief essay, you know, a paragraph or two brief, but the paragraph or two about why that's important to people, how you've manifested it in the past, or or how you'll do that in the future, and why the person you'll be with will benefit from it. Now, it's important

to write. People often tell me, oh, I did it in my head, and um, it doesn't work that well in your head, you know, I said to people, Look like, you know, if you look in the fridge and you're hungry and you go, I'm gonna imagine eating all of that, you're still going to be hungry. You actually have to do, um the exercise, not do it in your head. Write

it down it. The writing actually co opts very different errors of your brain into the task and so it's a much more meaningful and deeper exercise when you write. So write those two paragraphs, um, and that will actually make you feel better because you're focusing and actually, these are all the things I do have to offer. The next person will be able to see these as the polk as the focusing on what you don't have. And so that's one exercise I really recommend people do um

if they sustain a rejection. What I like about that, and you talk about in a couple of different places in the book, is that a lot of people turn to positive affirmation in situations like that, whether you know, around rejection or failure or self esteem. And it's these things that are like, you know, I'm beautiful and I'm capable. And what you talk about is that that doesn't necessarily work in a lot of cases, and in some cases

can can make things worse. But what you're talking about is actually looking at the reality of let me find things about myself that I really do believe are good and let me put my attention on those instead of trying to convince myself I'm good in something that I don't think i'm good in. Right now, that that's exactly why the positive afformations don't work, because by positive aformation is usually I mean, I mean the general kind of statements of you know, I'm worthy or I'm going to

find success, So I'm going to find great love. You know, the kinds of things you'll see, um, you know in refrigerator magnets and daily cannadas. But why they don't work It is because reciting to yourself in the moment I'm beautiful and wonderful in the very norment you're feeling very

unbeautiful and unwonderful, is not compelling. In fact, it flies in the face of what your feelings are telling you, and in those moments, we are much more likely to reject that statement um consciously or unconsciously, and feel worse

because of it. So the research actually says that people who use positive affirmations when their self esteem is low are more likely to feel worse as a result, and that the irony is that these positive affirmations are most useful for people who already feel great about themselves, which is when you don't need them. Um. The other thing that I'm suggesting is more of a self affirmation, because you're not affirming some general, generic positive quality. You're affirming specific,

knowable things about yourself that you know are true. So they don't rub the wrong way against your belief system. They jibe with your belief system. You don't reject them, you can accept them. And therein lie is a very critical difference. And it's just a matter of you can used to look at the things that you do well and you're good at, or the positive qualities you have, or focus only on the ones that you perceive to be negative. And this is just sort of a shifting

of that focus in those moments. Now, I don't want to say one thing because it's back to the parable for me, because that's why I really like the parable is because the more compelling urge, by far is to focus on all the shortcomings by far. So I'm not suggesting that, oh, just do the other thing instead, and that's easy. I'm suggesting to do the other thing instead. It's actually difficult, but it's really worthwhile. And I'll tell

you something. When you put ointment on a cut that stings too, so it's not easy to do that either, Or when you rip a bandit off a hairy hand, you know, on whatever. I'm just saying, um, but but it's it's compel. It feels compelling to go down the dark path. Um, it's gonna just gonna make you feel much much worse. It's difficult to go down the down

the correct path. But once you know it is the correct path, once you know that will actually make you feel better, people feel more able to you know, get themselves down that part because they and especially once you've done it a few times and you know, I do feel better, then it becomes easier to do excellent. Well, let's now talk about one of my former best friends who I try and stay on a less good relationship

with these days, which is rumination. Hi. Um, So, first of all, what it is is when something upsetting or distressing, um happens. You know, your your your bus yells at you in the meeting, or you know a friend you know jokes makes a joke at your expense, and then the friends and everyone loves and you just can't get it out of your mind. Or it's a breakup sometimes conversation and you just keep replaying it in your head

over and over again and again. Natural tendency, you know, we are natural inclination is to want to understand our experience, is to want to have you know, like like order what happens to us in our heads so that we have a clear understanding of it. So it has this illusion by replaying it, Um, that we're trying to figure it out. But there's a very critical difference between trying

to figure something out and replaying it. And when you're trying to figure something out, you're literally trying to figure it out. You're not just replaying it. You're trying to see it from different perspectives. You're trying to understand, well, why did the friend make a joke at my expense

for no reason? Maybe I had done something to them, or maybe the boss yielded at me in the meeting because I actually disagreed with him the meeting before, and therefore I can conclude I shouldn't disagree with the boss, or you know, maybe that you know, I'm replaying the breakup because I just can't believe that that happened. But I can't believe it because my perceptions of the person are idealized and I need to adjust to who that

person actually is. And then little seem that we rather believable. Um, that's when you're trying to figure it out. And the thing that happens when you try and figure it out, as you you gain insight, you have conclusions, You see things from a different perspective. You you start understanding things. There's a things fall into place. Um, when you're just replaying, there's nothing falling into place. You're just getting you know,

annoyed and upset, you know, all over again. So the idea is to use self reflection in a way that's adaptive and useful and avoid it when it's not. But when it's not. And that's what rumination is. The world comes from what how cows chew? Cows considered. You know, it's ruminating when cows it because they chew over and over and over again and then they regurgitate from their stomachs and it's disgusting, and then they chew again. Um. And that's what we do, you know, like we we

think about the bad things that happened. We we swallow it and we regurgitate it and we think about it some more. I mean, if you think about it in physical times, it's nauseating. But we do it and all the time. So, Um, the problem with it is that that can easily become a habit because the more you're chewing over that incident, the more you're deepening the groove

and the more the needle. Using analogies of the nineteen seventies, but still, the more the needle is likely to go into that groove, and and it's gonna appear in your head more often, you're going to think about it more often. The urge to think about it is going to be more compelling, and again you're gonna think about it in just the same repetitive way without any new insight. And what that does is it every time you go there,

you're increasing the stress hormones in your body. You are putting your body in a in a state of fight or flight um. And when that becomes habit, and you spend days doing this, and people spend days and weeks and months doing this, then over time you are literally people with a tendency to ruminate have a significantly elevated likelihood of cardiovascular disease UM than people who do not.

It literally impacts you that strongly. And the other thing that it does is when you're distressed, all your thinking capacities, allowed, your ability to focus, to concentrate the problem solved, to be creative, all are impaired. And you're doing that to yourself. And the other thing you're doing to yourself is you're really increasing the likeihood of becoming depressed because you're spending so much time focused on everything that's wrong, everything in way,

all the ways in which you're victimized or upset or marginalized. Um, that you're painting a world picture that's very inaccurate. That becomes your world. You just spend ten hours a day thinking of that incident, even though your world wasn't one of dark gloom and resentment and and rejection or people yelling at you in your head. It was. And so people have a tendency to become depressed much more easily

because they're they're ruminating so much. And again, we don't ruminate about the good stuff, unfortunately, you know, we we don't spend ten hours thinking about I remember I told that joke and that was so funny. We'll think about that once or twice. But the joke somebody told it are EXPENSI will think about two weeks UM. So it's a real parliament. And it also sets us up when you spend so much time, you know, stewing instead of doing UM, then we we start to become more passive.

And it was a piece of research I tend I think I used it in the book, but it's just very compelling to me is that when they looked at women who had a tendency to research, they founded an average women who had a tendency to research and found a lump in their breast waited on average two months longer to make an appointment with their doctor than women who found a lump in their breast and did not

have a tendency to ruminate. And that's really dramatic, and it just goes to show that and I'm sure those women who are not spending two months not calling the doctor, that was spending two months talking to everyone and worrying about and obsessing about it, but actually just not taking action. Because that's what rumination does. It makes you passive and a miserable tenser. So what are some ways to work

with rumination? You know, I've got a couple of my own favorites, but I'm interested in what you've got in the book. I actually get into some some more complex and detail things, because sometimes it's a real strong urge and you need some some deeper stuff to undo it, to dislodged. But here's a very simple one actually that

anyone can do. Rumination is vulnerable to distraction. It's a rain of thought, derail the train, and if you derail the train, usually the research shows for roughly around a couple of minutes um, it's enough for that train to actually not get back on the track necessarily. Now it might jump back on the track ten minutes fake it will pop into your head. You can you have to derail it again. But the more you derailed, the less

frequently that will happen. And to derail the train, it's it's not adequate to you know, close your eyes, squint and try not to think about it, because actually we know that has a rebound effect. When we try not to think about something, we're gonna you know, we're gonna start thinking about that even more so you can't. It's not about oh, don't think about that, don't think about that. It's literally get absorbed in something else, and what that

something else is is completely arbitrary. Whatever works for you, you know, if it's playing a game on your phone, go at it. If it's starting to look through photo albums and get absorbed by that, go at it. If it's lasting a song and you're singing along with it, not one that reminds you of the incident, but engage your mind and it might have to be engaged somewhere else, and even two minutes will reduce that urge to obsess about the thing that's not useful to h I'm a

recovering alcoholic can addict. It reminds me a little bit of dealing with cravings in the early day. Was you know, my approach was always just sort of change the channel completely and if you can, it'll pass. If you can distract yourself for five minutes or ten minutes, it it passes. Well, it's exactly the same, in fact, because I think most cravings are the same, you know, and with the craving can be for alcohol, the craving can be for you know,

other substances. The craving can be to indulge a negative and unuseful thought. It's a strong urge and um so, yeah, and with any kind of craving, a distraction is usually a good thing. And yeah, two, three or four minutes, but even two sometimes can do the trip. But you meant and you had a couple of favorites. I'm just curious about what one of those might be. Sure one of them is where you start with the letter A and you try and think of something you're grateful for.

Or that you appreciate and then you go to the letter B. Yeah, I mean the gratitude part is almost like the great it's the puzzle. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I do the same thing sometimes with songs, like all right, what's you know? I think of a song that I like that starts with the letter A, and then try and hear the melody in my head. Those are compelling enough that my brain remains occupied. Yes, that's a great

example of one. And it's actually and actually I really like the two fold because you're actually doing something really you know, that isn't a hundred eighty degree different track or I didn't think about everything I'm annoyed about. Here's something I'm grateful for. Is great. So I like that Game of Lot. Yeah, it's it's certainly has been a big help to me. As I said, Rumination and I used to be really close friends. Now we only know we only talk once in a while. Great, and look,

and it's and it's a habit. So like any habit, you can change, ye, and but you have to be mindful of the fact that it's important to change it. And it actually takes efforts change. Like any habit formation, it actually takes a period of intense you know, you know, you have to like really be on it for a while until you you know, actually change it completely. Um,

but very very worthwhile. Yeah, I think that's such an important thing to remember with a lot of this stuff that we were talking about what you just said there, which is that I think a lot of people and I, you know, I certainly have at times had a tendency to try something one time and when it doesn't have miraculous results, then just go, well that doesn't work, versus recognizing that these aren't magic pills. But there are things that have done consistently and over time and on a

regular basis can make a real difference. But they don't. You know, it takes multiple effort on a lot of these things. You know, that's a good point. Let's just make this point so people can be dire clear about it. So let's say you try to derail the train, and you try to distract yourself and you've got maybe through A and B of the of the alphabet gratitude game and then went right back to it. Um, So what do do you look at that as a fadure? Was

a success? So to me success because you're trying something new. You got through A and B terrific to me. The failure would be I should do the gratitude game. Now let me think more about how that person annoyed me. That would be a failure. So, um you know you really have to and and let's say you've got to e now for two weeks in a row, and now you slide back and only got to be once. That's our habits happen. You know, sometimes you slide, but there's

a general trend towards the new habits. So you know, be you know the ideas, be, be compassionate with yourself and you know, be encouraging, focus on your successes. Um It, it'll be too harsh on yourself if you're not changing all at once. No one does. Yeah, it's very much like meditation in that way. Right, my brain goes off of what that thing I'm back into ruminating and then I just go, oh, wait a minute, I was supposed

to be doing this, bring my brain back. And you know that that goes back and forth exactly with mindfulness meditation. You never judge the fact that you have to bring that's right back. You just do exactly. So in the book, you talk about self esteem, you know, wounds to our self esteem, and you say a few things in there that I thought were particularly interesting before we get into

more detail. One was you talked about how, you know, incredibly high self esteem is not necessarily the goal, right, that too much self esteem turns into narcissism, So there's a there's a healthy level. And then the other thing that I thought was interesting is that you talk about these wounds to self esteem, but you said that, you know, most programs to improve self esteem simply don't work. Yes,

well that's a very unfortunate thing, but it's kind of true. So, um, what what happens is that, um, when when people participate in you know, self esteem workshops or weekends or what have you, and they asked them to rate at the end of the workshop, well, you know, did this help? Most people will say yeah, I feel better. But but when they actually do research and they have people said that actual questionnaires before and after, it turns out you feel out the question are exactly the same way it

actually so it didn't help. But what you're distorting is you're remembering yourself as being in a much worse frame of mind before. So now I feel like there's I must have improved. Um. But here's why most self esteem programs don't work. They don't work because self esteem t two things need to happen. First of all, you know, a program that's a general thing is you know, in the same way with the positive deformations, the generalities don't

necessarily stick with you. You. The way to build self esteem is to become um you know two things, A more aware about what your actual uh you know, qualities and and and and good stuff is because it has to be specific. And on the flip side, UM, not demolishing your self esteem with an internal self denitive UM. You know, internal voice. The self talk that we do tends to be so negative on the balance, you know, in other words, you know, there's there's so few audibleis

going on in our heads. It's more like the whip and the stick and very little carrot um. And so to improve self esteem, you have to a cut out the whips and the sticks and and and and and increase the carrots um. And so you have to cut out the you know, the negative stuff that you have to build. And what I talked about in the book is self compassion. In other words, a very easy guideline for people, but it's an exercise you actually have to do.

Is what would you say to your friend in that scenario? And if a friend was upset about something, you would try and say things, and they were a friend and you were a decent person, you would try and be kind, encouraging and supportive. Now you wouldn't say to your unattractive friend, no, but you're beautiful, because your checktive friend would look at you like, I don't think I'm beautiful, and you wouldn't. It wouldn't fly. But what you would say to that

unattractive friend is you have a lot to offer. It's about finding the right person. It's like you know, or whatever. The encouraging, supportive thing is. Now, what you would say to a friend is really what you should say to yourself. There's absolutely no reason you shouldn't be as supportive of nothing and caring and understanding to yourself as you would

be to a friend. But we have a horrific double standard um in which we think, well, I can dish it out to myself and and really, you know, beat myself into a pub for some obscure reason. And by the way, I ask people all the time. You know, in my private practice, Well, why do you think it's useful to be so self critical? And they'll say, well, because you know it'll it'll give me the right expectation. And like, no, it'll demolish any expectation you had. It

will make you feel hopeless, and it'll sap. It will set your self esteem so you're much more nervous next time. But but you know, why not just have real expectations, you know, realistic. You don't need to sabotage, you know, to to be self critical to be realistic. Um. So the idea is if you're you know, if you have this negative self talk, this negative pun self you know of internal voice, um, that really needs to be abolished

and I mean literally abolished. Um. None of it is like a zero tolerance for it because it's not useful. Now you want to look over what mistakes you might have made, what were your wrong moves? You know, where did you screw up? By all means? But the mindset for that is detective mindset just affects. Yeah, I love that idea of talking to yourself like you would a good friend because I think it it touches on two things.

One is like you said, there's the kindness. Um, you know, a friend would be would be kind, and yet a good friend who is trying to support you would also tell you the truth. They might, you know, hold you to be accountable to certain things. It's it's the right balance. It's it's it's the right balance of being too hard on yourself and on the other end, some of us are often too indulgent with ourselves. And I feel like if you think of it through that that lens, it

gives the proper, proper balance of those things. You know. I agree that people who are like, oh, it's never me, it's not it's not good either. I mean, you want to give it a couple of passes to make sure what part you had in it and what you need

to do to address those parts. Again with the mindset of not I'm such an idiot for doing this or what kind of you know, terrible person night for doing that, but like, Okay, that was not cool or not good, and that's something I should address and be thought mindful about next time, or do whatever you need to do for the due diligence. But the mindset, I say, the detective mindset because detectives are theoretically at least emotionally uninvolved.

They're going through the crime scene just looking at evidence and collecting evidence and proof. They're not emotionally like could you imagine that broken piece of glass and the blood splatter, They're just they're just looking at it, you know. So it's that that same mindset. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good, good way to think of it. We're nearing the end of time. I'd like to end with one question, which is that you know, you obviously do a lot of

scientific research. You pull this stuff together. Um, I'm curious what research have you been learning about lately that sort of has you the most excited. Ah, well, I'm actually working on a new book, so that's that's absolutely top secret. I can't literally, um U talk about that yet, but I'll give you an example of one. Um There is this this field in psychology. It's a relatively new field.

It's called embodied cognition. And what that refers to is the ways in which our minds are picking up on sensory cues without our being aware, and that there's this much bigger connection between mind and body in in a in certain ways than we expected in some ways, but

but not in others. So for example, UM, the idea of you know, when people are lonely, for example, they feel rejected, right, so they feel excluded in the association, and the terminology we have for it is, oh, they left me out in the cold, right like as a as a as a holdover from our hunter gatherer days when we were the tribes around the heart from the

excluded person was left out in the cold. So they did experiments in which they measured the temperature at the finger of people who were put through a rejection experience, and there was a significant as small but a significant statistically dropped in temperature that happens when people experience rejection, we actually get a little bit colder. Interesting, Yeah, that ties a lot with that idea of it registering the same parts of the brain as physical pain. Right. And

they did you know, similar things. For example, I talk about guilt in one of the champters of the book. So they did a similar experiment, you know, with guilt that they had people, um recall uh the time in which they did something that made them feel guilty, and then they had them estimate the weight of certain things, and um, people who felt guilty tended to feel everything was heavier. So there's it's so so that's something that you know. I mean, that's research that's still going on

day and in many different ways. But it's um or. There's just to give you one one the last one, and this is the study directly started the steel um They unrelated to my work, but but they gave they bought people from experimented. Experiment was waiting in an elevator and handed them a cup of coffee while they clicked off their name on a on a on a on their checklist, and half the people got a hot cup of coffee. Half the people got a cold cup of coffee.

They held it for a moment. Then they went into an experiment and were given a paragraph about a person. Everyone got the same paragraph, and they were asked to describe that person. And people who held a hot cup of coffee describe that same person as being warmer, friendlier, kinder, and people who held a cold a cup of coffee described them as being called more distant, less emotional. Again

completely unconscious. And so to me that that field of of how our small physical sensations are impacting our behavior and our decisions and are thinking in all kinds of very unconscious but interesting ways. If it is really a fascinating area, you know what all is happening, the processing that we're doing that we're just not aware of. Well, guy, thanks so much for being on the show. It's been a pleasure talking with you. I really enjoy the book and I recommend it to people often, so thanks so

much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. Okay, you too. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community. With this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support now. We

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