Jordyn Feingold || Choose Growth

with me of the new book Choose Growth. Jordan graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with her BA and Master of Applied Positive Psychology or MAP for short. At present, she is a psychiatry resident at the Icon School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Jordan is deeply involved in research, curriculum, development, and advocacy work pertaining to clinician well being, vocally, nationally,

and globally. She's also my co author on the new book Choose Growth, a workbook for transcending trauma, fear and self doubt, which is out now. In this episode, I talked to Jordan about positive medicine and the importance of choosing growth as a physician and positive psychology practitioner. Jordan is on a mission to shift the focus of medicine from treatment to well being. As much as our physical health can influence our mental health, the reverse is also true.

She talks about the impact and practical applications of positive psychology and healthcare. We also touch on the topics of resilience, relationships, communication, growth, and transcendence. Jordan and I are super excited to share our new book with you all, and we hope this conversation inspires you to choose growth in your daily lives. It was a real delight working with Jordan on this book, and I love the work she is doing in positive medicine.

I remember when Jordan was an undergraduate in my positive psychology class at PEN She was one of my best students ever. I'm so proud of her. She has come a long way since then, but she's always been awesome. So without further ado, I'll bring you Jordan Fine Gold. How you doing, doctor fine Gold, Hi, doctor Kaufman, I'm doing well. How are you. I'm so glad to hear that I'm doing very well. I am so proud of you and all the amazing things that you've accomplished in

the past. Couple of years and becoming a doctor. How long have you known that you wanted to go into the field of medicine. I've known that since high school biology class. That as soon as I learned the digestive tract and heard my bio teacher, Miss Provost, I will never forget sitting in her class talk about how she digested her morning bagel. I was so compelled by the narrative she used to talk about all of the enzymes that digested the bagel at various parts of the digestive tract.

And that, combined with my love of human beings and always helping friends and being a pseudotherapist in my family, I figured medicine would be a pretty good gig for me. Yeah. And when you got to University of Pennsylvania, you were pre med track, Is that right? Was? I was pre med from day one, and I majored in Health and Society. So I did take psych one oh one, but positive psychology was the second psychology class I ever took, and as you know, because you were the professor, it would

not be the last psychology class I would take. I was hooked. That's right, that's true. I was your professor and you were my best student of all time when you announced that when I guess lecture for your Columbia students now and you say, this is Jordan Bible, she was my best student of all time, and I'm like, that was fifteen. It's important to raise the vibration and have them something you know, to look, to look up to and and to aspire to be true. It's a

true honor. I guess I'll say you were my best college professor. You don't have to say that. You don't have to say that truth, do you know, Scott? I originally was hesitant to take positive psychology with you because I don't know if you know this. The year for the three years before you came to pen, Angela Duckworth taught positive psychology and I was so excited to take Angela's class. I missed the boat. I didn't sign up, and then the Scott Barry Kaufman guy was teaching it,

and I had no idea what to expect. And I walk in and You're like this young cool guy sitting at the front of the class in a leather jacket and just cracking jokes and also teaching so beautifully and hearing the story of unngifted and you were amazing and after the first class, I felt so lucky to be there. Ah, that means so much to me. Thank you, Jordan. It's been really wonderful to watch your journey and how you've been able to integrate your interest in positive psychology with

medicine and that you've started a field called positive me. Yeah, so how did that come about, the idea for positive medicine and what is the field? I remember you asked me when I decided I wanted to become a doctor. Back then in high school and early in college, I thought that being a doctor meant helping patients be healthy and helping people develop habits and practices that enhance their

well being. And it wasn't actually until I discovered what positive psychology was that I realized medicine is actually first and foremost, or the way at least that it's practiced in our country and most places in the world, is about getting rid of what's wrong with people and curing

disease and getting rid of the bad stuff. So once I was in college and discovered this whole field of well being, that was when I realized, wait, this is actually more of what I want to do, but I want to help people be healthy in their bodies as well, not just psychologically but as a whole person. And so when I was in your class, I remember it was

the second semester of my senior year. I deviated. I was going to go right to medical school and I decided, Hey, I need to do this MAP program and actually study positive psychology. And I remember you were You really encouraged me, and I came to your office to get some advice, and you said, this is positive medicine. You're gonna found the field of positive medicine. Do you remember did I say those? If it wasn't those exact words, that was what I took away from it. And I remember leaving

your office and calling my mom. I was like, I'm doing positive medicine, and that's that's what I did this. When I graduated, I worked full time as a research coordinator running three randomized control trials at U Penn at the med School, and those were all about behavioral economics and financial incentives for different behavior aspects of behavioral change,

which was fascinating. And simultaneously I was doing the MAP program and getting to really study the science, the theory, the philosophy of well being, and through the process of writing my master's capstone and really thinking about you know, there are so many potential applications of positive psychology and medicine.

Where do I even begin. What I learned and talking to a lot of doctors and a lot of patients and just folks in the field is that doctors and healthcare workers themselves were really struggling with the lack of well being. And this question of if doctors are struggling, and they're supposed to be the ones promoting patients' health and treating disease, if they're struggling, how are we ever

going to get this to patients. So the focus of my work became working with clinicians and healthcare workers to embrace well being principles for themselves and then subsequently giving them a skill set to translate to patients. So that's where it all began. That's what I wrote my thesis on and the following year when I got to medical school, I started applying it right away. And you know, as a non it's really hard to create a field and

make change and make waves. So I really have had to do it from the ground up, working with medical students first, and then as a medical student starting to work with nurses and residents, and gradually as I built my clout and understanding of what the field has been, I've just been moving up as I go and broadening the populations that I've had the opportunity to work with. Well, I can say my instincts were correct, because I do

remember thinking to myself, this is a real leader. The characteristics you have, you can be a real leader of something. And so I'm good to see that I was right. It sounds so important for this field to exist and for doctors to be trained in something beyond medicine, beyond the body, beyond the body, right, I mean, tell me in your training in med school, how much did you learn about the brain? Well, you obviously you were in the psychiatry tracks, you probably learned a lot about the brain.

But how much did as like the standard curriculum, did you learn about the science of well being? That's my question.

There was one lecture in my orientation when I was a first year medical student that they mentioned positive psychology and well being and perma was mentioned and mindfulness, and I remember sitting at the edge of my seat and being like I'm at the right medical school, and I happened to be at I was at the Icon School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where our dean, Dennis Charney literally wrote a book on resilience, is a world renowned resilience expert. And so I landed in the right place

for me that was so open. During orientation, I emailed my capstone to the deans and they were like, welcome, we can't wait to have you join the wellness committee. So I was at a place that was already quite attuned to this. That is not the case everywhere, and it's changed a little bit over the last seven years or so. But in the standard medical curriculum, we learn almost nothing about well being, if I really think nothing about well being. We spend two weeks on psychiatry of

nine weeks on the brain. The rest is on neuroscience and neurotransmitters, and mostly the neurological the biological basis of the brain, and very little about the brain body interaction. I think there's one lecture on irritable Ballo syndrome, which is a quintessential disorder of gut brain interaction mediated by the vaguel nerve and disordered gut brain communication, and other than that, very little on anything functional that we don't

actually have pistologic pathologic tests to evaluate. It is a shame. You can see the real potential for really shaking things up, you know, like there's at least there's a lot of room for growth. There's so much room for growth, and I've been so pleasantly surprised by the amount of growth that I've seen since getting into the field of medicine. When I started in medical school, almost everyone was still talking about burnout and suicide and all of the badness

that mentally afflicts clinicians. The word well being was nearly absent from these conversations. Everyone was just talking about how do we get rid of everything that's bad, duty hours, all the structural changes, which is all so critical, And we know that the organization and the system is responsible for most of that which afflicts doctors, the burnout, all of the distress. Now people are talking about organizational well being, what interventions we can do to help promote the thriving

of doctors. And that was really absent when I started, or I wasn't seeing it anywhere. It's mind boggling. Yeah, you know, all that we know about the mind brain connection, embodied cognition is just mind boggling to me. What are your thoughts on the emerging field of embodied cognition? How have you brought it into your own work at all?

I can't even tell you the number of patients that I've seen throughout my first few years of training who come to the hospital thinking or they're brought in by their loved one with something debt totally wrong with their body. You know, I'm not eating, I can't hold down food. I've been weak for months, I can't move my leg.

What these people are experiencing are some sort of grief or conversion reaction where you know, of course we have to do tests and rule out organic pathology, make sure no one's having the person's not having a stroke, that they don't have an underlying infection. And once we rule that out, most doctors are trained to say, Okay, there's nothing wrong with you. You can go You know that you can go home. There's nothing wrong. It's in your head.

And what I found to be so meaningful and some of the best experiences that I've had are educating patient that what's going on in your body may be a manifestation of something that's happening in your life and going on in your mind, and it's really being processed through this physical symptom, and validating that you're not making this up,

you're not crazy. That sometimes this is how the body works, and it's complicated and it's mediated by mechanisms that we don't necessarily know a whole lot about, but there is a lot that we do know, and you're The great

news is you're not having a stroke. You're not going to die from this, and there are a lot of things you can do to heal and feel better, and some of those are as simple as connecting with loved ones more regularly, talking to a therapist, taking more walks, getting outside in nature, getting some fresh air, and really working with a patient to think, what is one thing that's within their capacity to do that they can make

a change as soon as they leave the hospital. What do you think should be part of the regular checkup if you could incorporate one into a physicians like yearly check up, for instance, because they do the wellness check and what they do is is they say a scale one to ten, how depressed are you? That's it, That's all I get in my yearly checkup? Do you think we can do better than that? I think we can do much better. One thing that I'm teaching my co residents right now is what I call the well being

review of systems. And theoretically every doctor at every primary care doctor, or even anyone you're sitting in a hospital every day, we should know what your review of systems are head to toe? Are you having any symptoms? Is anything wrong with you? Are you fainting? Are you having headaches? Are you coughing? Do you have a runny nose? Et cetera?

From head to toe? And what I have introduced is the well being or I call it the revamp review of systems, where I go through the revamped construct, which is the definition of well being that I put forth in my master's work and that I teach. So I ask every patient about relationships. How are there your relationships going? Who's someone you can call? In your life? Things are going wrong? Did anyone bring you here? Any plans this weekend?

With people? Engagement? What in life is keeping you going? What are you curious about? Vitality? Are you sleeping? How are you sleeping? Are you eat? What are you eating? Are you getting any physical activity. If so, how do we reconceptualize something that they're already doing as being physical activity that they're not encoding that way? What's going well lately? What gives you a sense of accomplishment? What are you part of that's larger than yourself? Your sense of meaning?

What makes you wake up out of bed in the morning and positive emotions? Tell me about some good stuff in your life. What are you laughing about? What are you curious about recently? When did you last feel calm? And I actually like starting the interview this way because when people then start to talk about everything that's going wrong and all of their distress, which is naturally the focus of a medical visit, you know, I'm here with

this problem. I can draw on what's going well in their life to help them either reorient or reconceptualize something that they are encoding as a problem that there may be a lot of potential to work with already. Wow wow, wow, Well that if you got on that much information out of them, you're learning so much more about them as a whole person. The trauma, loss, and uncertainty of our world have led many of us to ask life's biggest questions such as who are we, what is our highest purpose?

And how do we not only live through, but thrive in the wake of tragedy, division, and challenges to a fundamental way of living. To help us all address these questions, process what this unique time in human history has meant for us personally and collectively an emerge whole, I've collaborated with my colleague and dear friend, doctor Jordan Feingeld, MD to bring you our forthcoming book. It's called Choose Growth,

a workbook for transcending trauma, fear, and self doubt. It's a workbook design to guide you in a journey of committing to growth and the pursuit of self actualization every day. It's chock full of research from humanistic psychology, positive psychology,

developmental psychology, personality psychology, cognitive science, and neuropsychology. So lots of themes that you hear about on this podcast, and it's aimed to help us all integrate the many facets of ourselves and co crete our new normal with a renewed sense of strength, vitality, and hope. Whether you're healing from loss, adapting to the new normal, or simply looking ahead to life's next chapter. Choose Growth will help steer you there to deeper connection to your values, your life vision,

and ultimately your most authentic self. Choose Growth will officially hit the shelves September thirteenth, and you can border your copy or the audiobook in the US now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indie Bound, and all major retailers. If you're in the UK and Commonwealth, you can border now at bookshop dot org dot UK. We truly hope this book helps you grow and thrive and become your best self. Okay, now back to the show. Can you connect the dots from me? How do you connect as a physician? What

can you actually do with that information? What is actually within your power without becoming a psychiatrist if that's not your specialization. Yeah, well, in psychiatry, which is my job, that is my job. Of course I have to ask

about suicidal ideation and all that's wrong. But truly, if I can get there with my patients is the that is a very successful session for someone who is more focused on the physical body and manifestations of you know, let's say diabetes, right, So diabetes is a very common condition that affects many people in this country, and it is increasing with type two diabetes mediated by our very poor diets. If I can understand who is in a person's life, I can understand I can prescribe. Why don't

you go for a walk with your neighbor? I know you love you know you love your neighbor. What if the two of you started a walking program twice a week, or you know, I know it's really hard to motivate yourself to do this alone. But what if you took your friend to the grocery store and you could do this together, or cook with your child a new healthy recipe. Who loves to cook? What if you go on Zoom together I know they live across the country, and make

a healthy recipe for yourself. So it's like, if I know this person's social network, if I know what they enjoy doing, I can use those things as as actually possible plausible interventions in their life to help them towards their health. Amazing. I mean, that'd be such a game changer. Let's not understate how much a game changer that would be in even recognizing that our thought patterns and our cognitive distortions can influence things like diabetes. Like it's not

Oh yeah, right. It's not just one direction where we get sick and then we get sad. Absolutely not. And there are so many medical conditions that are they're bi directional. So things like depression, which is pro inflammatory, can influence symptoms of another inflammatory disease in the body, such as inflammatory bowel disease which is a set of patients that

I work with, or autoimmune diseases. And I have a patient right now in a psychiatric setting who is very, very distressed by her physical symptoms such that she meets criteria for what we call a somatic symptom disorder. That she's so preoccupied with her physical health that it's really debilitating her and preventing her from really doing anything else

in her life other than focusing on her dysfunction. So creating a space to think with her about what is going well, where she can give herself credit for getting things done, what can she check off her list that she's been avoiding secondary to her physical symptoms, and just being there as a positive presence in her life to bounce off ideas, she's gotten so much less anxious and now she's actually doing things that she's spending less time

worrying about her physical ailments. Isn't that hypochondria, so hypochondriasis, but this is it's a very specific symptom that's bothering her, not symptoms in general. Gotcha, gotcha? Gotcha? Gotcha? Asking for our friend, Scott, Oh, let's talk about our book that we were able to work on together, which I thought you'd never asked. I think it really brought out our complimentary strengths. I agree so much. It has been such

an incredible joy working on this project with you. I think it's brought about every emotion in me and whatever it has been, positive, negative, good, bad, ugly. You've been there to give me the reaction that I've needed, and I hope vice versa. Yes, really, yes, quite so. And we wrote this book in maybe six months, which I

think is probably a record. I mean, it's incredible. So, just to give people a little context, Jordan and I really felt this urgency to get a workbook out there to help people with their growth during this time, this specific time in human history where it seems like there are things coming at us in every direction NonStop. You know, just when you think that one variant has gone, the

next variant comes in. And then when you think, you know, one political thing has maybe been resolved, it gets even worse than you even thought it was possible to get worse. So anyway, we rolled up our sleeves and we wrote this book together called Choose Growth, which took us only six months to write, and that is probably a record. It's definitely a record for me in writing books. But it flowed really well, and it seemed to for you. You know, it seems like these exercises that you came

up with just poured right out of you. Am I right? They did, yes, and they did because it was such a reaction to what I was experiencing, and I think so many people in my life were experiencing, like at the beginning of the pandemic. Before we wrote this book, I felt really probably the most depressed that I've ever felt in my life. In maybe let's say June twenty twenty, I felt the most helpless, the most isolated, the most sort of bleak that I think I've ever felt in

my life. I'm lucky to be kind of an outbloom optimist and I have a pretty high happiness at point. And you know, when I realized how low I was feeling as someone who studies mental health, has studied positive psychology. I got engaged during that time. I was still I had this revelation like, if I'm suffering the way I am, how the heck is anyone else functioning? And I think, right,

like you know, someone I objectively on the aside. No one who family died from this, And yet I was so overwhelmed by the unknown, by the fear of what was going to happen. It's just like what the future was going to be. Medicine was became really scary, Like I knew the next year I'd be in the hospital treating these COVID patients who were dying left and right. We didn't have enough vandilaters. I was experiencing this residual moral injuries. Anyway, it was a really dark time and

I felt what can I do? And once we decided to write this book, I think things had gotten a little bit better. But I had so many thoughts and just so many personal experiences of things that I felt would have helped me and did help me. So yeah, and with your book Transcend as our guide to this

work book, I mean it was just like bing bang boom. Yeah. Yeah, No, it definitely felt that way, absolutely where to begin in talking about it, summarizing for our listeners our book, because we also want this episode to really serve as a good, good summary of the book as well, and we want to inspire people to go out and buy it, you know,

one hundred percent. I think if you are a human being listening to this podcast and you love Scott, which obviously you do, great to meet you everyone, I think you need to buy this book or you need to give it to a friend. It's like, you know, we say very we're straight up in the introduction of the book that it is not a replacement for therapy. And I'm the first one to tell you that I believe

everyone should be in therapy. I understand there is not There are not enough therapists to control that that demand, to meet that demand. So while you're waiting for your therapist in between sessions, if you can only see someone once a month or once every two months, or you really have a friend who serves as your therapist, work on the practices in the in this book and bring your reflections to another human being. It's really not something that I think people benefit the most from from just

sitting down and doing it. Personally, I think this book is best done, read, processed, complete the exercises and then share them with someone in a book club and a group of people on a similar path of growth, because I've had I've had the best experiences, you know, obviously coming up with these practices or finding them and then

talking about them with other people, including my own therapist. Yeah, well, yeah, that would be a really wonderful thing if this book really a good guide for people while they're already in therapy or coaching or coaching, well especially coaching. You know, we're starting a new form of coaching called self actualization coaching, which we hope and hope to open up applications later this year for those who want to be certified in

this form of coaching. And so much of therapy is about kind of getting people from negative fifty to zero, you know, and and to be able to read this book and maybe educate your own therapist, you know, about like, hey, you know, maybe I'm capable of more than just not being anxious in our sessions and in acknowledging that mental illness.

You know, a lot of us suffer a lot of people suffer from depression and anxiety and even PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, and a slew of psychiatric conditions, and we can uplift and honor the wholeness of who we are and pursue well being even when we are suffering. And our book is so clear that it's not about suppressing our dark side or tucking away that which afflicts us, but really welcoming it to the table and saying, here

you are, you are part of me. How do I move forward acknowledging that you're here with me in this journey of my life? I love that all. I love that so much. In order to support the Psychology Podcast, we need the help of some great advertisers, and we want to make sure Tho's advertisers are ones you'll actually want to hear about. But we need to learn a

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Dash Psychology Dash Podcast. Thanks for your help. One of my favorite chapters in our book, it's like picking your favorite baby, But one of my favorite chapters is the

one Who's in Your Boat, which you wrote. I believe most of that chapter to give you credit for that, and it seems like it's a really important foundation for a lot of growth that's things going to happen afterwards, because we want to make clear that we're not talking about just shooting for the highest levels of growth, you know, based on no foundation at all. Can talk us a little bit about the foundation that's so important to be

able to explore from. I'm so grateful to have written this book with you, Scott, because it relies so deeply on the foundation that you developed and transcend and the sail boat metaphor is the basis of this whole book. So I'm quoting you, and please correct me if I'm if I say anything that's wrong, because this is your expertise. But the base of our boat, and the base of say, our security cycle is safety, having our physiologic needs, met

connection and self esteem. These three pillars that really comprise our fundamental ability to sort of be ourselves in the world before we can really open up our sales and and transcend. As you describe and connection as something distinct from love, which is you write about as a higher order need. And we have a chapter later in our book about love is really about taking stock of other

human beings, animals, people dead or alive. And I think this is critical because I've talked about this with my patients, and a lot of them had deep connections with people who are no longer living. And I would say that applies to you, Abraham Moslow, your best friend who you

never met. Yeah, that's right, that we can a deep connection with those who are no longer with us, who we may never have met, but connectedness to another human being and another feeling like we belong and that we are accepted, and that we have people or the other beings to turn to for support. And we have this question in our book. You know who is in your boat and we have a scale, and you know, I am so inundated with connections. I can't even I don't

even know where to start to. You know, I have some connections and they're not so high quality. I'm not sure who I would want to bring with me on this journey. And then the very real response which I hear from people often is I actually have no one, and there are too many people on this planet who genuinely experience the world alone. And it's an epidemic. It's

something of VIVEC. Murphy, our Surgeon General, wrote a whole book about right before it came out, as the pandemic was happening, and COVID was such an isolating time for people. And I think of all of the things we write about in our book, having other people, the presence of positive relationships is just the most important thing for well

being and living a meaningful existence. That if we can take anything away from this book, it's how can we deep in and enhance some of the connections that we already have or build ones with people who we don't yet have connections with. I love that. And one of the areas you specialize in within the need for connection is active constructive responding technique. You are the world's leading expert on this. Do you want to do it a little bit? I would love to do some active constructive responding.

This is a really important part part of a healthy what we call and what Jane Dudd and her colleagues call a high quality relationship. This is an important core part of a high quality relationship. So, Scott, any good news that you have going on recently that you Oh my god, I'm so excited. Jordan, I just got a book contract for a book I Choose Growth with my best student of all time. Her name's Jordan Finegeld, isn't I mean? Is that amazing? Choose Growth? What an incredible title?

Tell me more? How did you come up with this idea? It's a Maslow Abraham Maslow has a quote you can either choose to go forward back. You can choose to go back towards safety and fear, or you can choose to move forward and choose growth. And we must choose growth again and again and overcome the fear response again and again. And it just seems like that word choose, that term choose growth would be great for a book. Oh wow, that is such an important and amazing quote.

And you wrote a book basically all about Abraham Maslow's life. This is so coherent. Well, you're not wrong. I love it. I love it. Congratulations with my friend, Thanks Jordan. So that would be falling the quadrant that would be positive? What would that be called? That would be active? Construct active, constructive responding it also? Dare I say what would fall under Carl rodgers notion of unconditional positive regard? Absolutely, I would say so too, I would say so do I

think Carl Rodgers would say so? So? Okay, let's do one more example and don't tell anyone what that's called yet, what what the response is called yet and what we'll label it later. But let's let's do this. I should demonstrate a different one more, a different style, so we can show the contrast, show the most maladaptive one, the one that's correlated with relationship dysfunction. Okay, I can do

that for those of you watching at home. My cell phone is out, okay, Okay, Oh my gosh, Jordans, I just got a book contract for a book called Choose Growth with my best ever Jordan by Gold. That's cool, Scott. I can tell you're very excited about this. I just got a really important email. Do you mind holding that thought for like, I don't know until tomorrow. We can stay this way. I'm so scary, I'm I'm just so busy. I'm so busy at work. I'm a doctor, Scott, I'm

getting patients emailing me. Ugh later, you know you're very busy. It's true. Yes, absolutely, we'll talk later. I'll go call my mom tell her yeah, yeah, Shu'll root for you. You You will. Oh that's so painful. I hate that. Now. What's that called, Jordan? So that one's actually called passive constructive. It's not like actively destructive, but it's passive versus active in the sense that I'm sitting on my phone I'm chilling. I'm like, oh, that's great, Like, let me let me.

I want to hear about this, but I can't right now because my stuff is just too important. Passive constructive, Okay, Well, this is really good to know. This is really good to know. And what are some other elements that make up a high quality relationship? So I love Jane Dunnan's concept of high quality connections. It's really been studied in the workplace, and we talk about this in really any working relationship. But I'm just going to pull up our chapter in the book so I don't misquote us or

Jane and her colleagues. I believe Emily Heathy is one of her co authors and really, there's four four qualities of the connection that she talks about. One is trusting, so really being in a relationship of being able to trust someone, and again this is really in the workplace. Respectful engagement is another one, so really operating in a way that sends a message of value. The third quality is task enabling, so helping to facilitate another person's successful performance.

And Scott, I think we task n able all the time. We like divide and conquer, and I do things that are really in my wheelhouse, and you do all the things that are in your wheelhouse. And then the fourth one, which I love and is the most fun, is playing, having a playful sometimes even doing games in a relationship, having a playful style of banter, and being able to

really let your guard down with one another. It seems like there may be a thread that runs through all of them, which is trust, right, It seems it does seem like that's a good one. Well, yeah, and trust really is a core feature of the high quality connection that they talk about. But I think you actually need a high level of trust to be able to feel playful and to know that you can task people because you do trust that the person will be able to fulfill.

It's really the connective tissue they talk about in this research that defines the quality of the relationship, the bond, the glue, and the connective tissue, which I love. What a suitable human body metaphor. And it's actually in the human body that it is because the connective tissue, the fascia in our body, holds a ton of inflammation. It's really manipulating the fascia, the tissue that connects the muscles, is critical for moving the immune system and getting blood,

optimizing blood flow to our organs. It's the basis of osteopathic manipulation, which I'm not personally trained in, but it's a huge area full of opportunity for helping people heal in a whole body way. So I love I love that metaphor. I do too. I also like the opposite. They say that a toxic relationship is like a black hole. Yeah, and we've talked about toxic relationships. I mean, they can detract from our well being more than positive relationships add

to our well beginning. That's so true. That's so true. I think it especially you know in cults as well, right, Like, that's that seems like toxic connection. Well, certainly, it's like the personality structure of someone who probably has narcissistic personality disorder and other cluster B traits sort of feeding on people with personalities who are more dependent and need that

organism to get their nutrients from. So it's this personality power structure that gets amplified and magnified to the you know, the narcissistic folks or questionable, sometimes more immoral aims. Wow, I've never heard of anyone quite put it that way. That's brilliant, It's really that was a really insightful way

of putting that dynamic. Wow. Well, we see it play out in tons of interpersonal relationships with you know, folks I meet who are in dysfunctional toxic relationships, and it really comes down to these complementary but not synergistic for anything good personality style. Yes, very well said, very well said your personality style. You were labeled the chief extrovert of the Imagination Institute at University of Pennsylvania. Didn't we have you on the website. I was definitely on the website.

I remember sitting in your office and you were like, I really need your help with outreach and engaging with some of these experts we're going to bring in. You're a really chief extrovert. I think that's what we're going to call you. So, yes, Scott, you named me chief extrovert. And it is a title that I wore so proudly and continue to wear. I think it's on my LinkedIn profile. Are you serious? I think it is. Love it. I

love it. I love it well. You are a very get shit done kind of person, and you don't and you also don't suffer fools gladly as the expression. As the expression goes, I think that's the expression. Google that does that resonate? I have to admit I don't know what that expression means. We can google it. Let's google it. It says. Sufferfls gladly is a well known phrase first coined by Saint Paul. The full verses for yay sufferfuls gladly seeing yay, yourselves are wise? Okay, so what does

it actually mean? It means to be kind and patient with people who are annoying or bothersome You're very graceful in dealing with things, as well as a sort of thank you you Okay, So, Scott, I have to say just the act of you looking that up. You are so intensely curious. I love it so much. It is one of my favorite things about you. And you have helped me so much learn how to be assertive, which I love that. That's something we write about in our book,

but you've helped me actualize it. You've helped me fight my own imposterism. You have helped me advocate for myself, and you have been such a fierce cheerleader for me over these years. You know, telling me I was going to build positive medicine. You have sculpted, you have practiced the Michelangelo phenomenon with me, helping me realize my most ideal self. I'm very touched touched to hear that. I'm so happy to hear that, So thank you for saying that.

But yeah, I feel like your a nice combination. This is all what you already had within you, right. That's the whole thing about the Michelangelo is that you're not bringing out that, You're not making what am I trying to say, a turtle lot of a cow, I don't know whatever. You're not changing species here to be able to integrate assertiveness and healthy assertiveness with graciousness and kindness is it's a very hard sweet spot to get to. I really admire that about you. So thank you for

being and for the kind of words you said. Thank you. Thank yeah. First of all, I want to say, you've been demonstrating a lot today the principles of yes and and I think we should make explicit. We'd be remiss if we didn't make explicit why Jordan and I speak to each other like and we always speak to each other like this. Oh yeah, if you thieves dropped, if thieves dropped our phone calls, you'd hear a lot of yes and. So can explain to our listeners a little

bit why we're such big fans of this. Absolutely. So. I grew up doing a lot of theater, and part of a lot of my theater warmups was always this game yes And, which is integral and improv And I'm

so delighted. One of the many reasons that Scott and I work so well together is because we are both children of the theater of improv and we when I so Yes And was always something that I had practiced, this idea that you have to build a scene together and you can't just shut down whatever your scene partner says, if the scene partner says it's time to go to the grocery store, you have to say yes, and maybe on our way we can stop on Mars. Rather than saying no, I want to bring this scene to Mars.

You have to be very respectful of the fact that your scene partners set the stage. You're going to the grocery store, so instead of saying no, but we say yes, and so all of those things can be true. So the scene we're going to go to Mars, end at the grocery store and buy some chocolate milk to debrief our Martian experience. So wherever the scene goes, you go with it. And anything to add about that, Scott, that's

a very yes end of you. There is something I want to add to that, but I'd love for you to finish your thought first and then I'll yes end it. Yeah. So in my psychiatry training, when I learned about dialectical behavioral therapy, it's basically the mainstay of treatment for borderline personality disorder and it's really an incredibly effective form of psychotherapy. I was like, this is yes, and it's all about two ideas or multiple ideas being true. At the same

time embracing the dialectic. And then when I read the last chapter of transcend and read that one of Abraham Maslow's definition of transcendence is this idea of dichotomy transcendence, I was like, WHOA, mind blown. We have to synthesize this into a practice for the book, and so we did, and Scott and I have been yes ending each other ever since. It's true we really have, we really have. And that's what I was going to add, is that I wanted to link it to notions of transcendence because

this is not the connection you usually see. I want to give all credit to Ann Libera and Kelly Leonard for helping us with the yes and their legends in the improv world at Second City. But tying it to Maslow's notion of dichotomy transcendence, I think is something new and important because when we hear about transcendence a lot we hear it, we think about transcendence, we think more

vertical kind of foreign transcends like I'm above others. I'm like, I've transcended my ego and now you know, look at all these peons that don't have an ego or they still have their ego, you know, And our definition transcendence is very horizontal, right, It's very like connecting the world and with others, And yes end seems like a great vehicle to connecting with others, right, Like, one good way of alienating yourself from others is if you're the type

of person or no matter what someone says, you're like no, but you know, like so the opposite of yes end, it doesn't seem very connective. So yeah, it seems quite a transcendent way of being absolutely so. Deeper into my psychotherapy training, I've realized that that butt as the therapist, when I hear the butt from my patients, is really a point of opportunity because it's recognizing resistance with them. I've lost my patient when whatever I'm suggesting or bringing

forward to them is met with that butt. It's also a classic hinderer of active constructive responding, and it brings about one of the other styles. Just to bring it back to that practice we talked about the active destructive response. But you're gonna write this book, aren't you already so busy? Don't you have such a full plate right now? It's often a well intentioned response to someone's good news and it totally undermines what they are trying to say. It does,

it really does. Yeah. Isn't it funny how we're connecting all these dots here that maybe don't even see all these dots before. Yeah. I think it's. Another beautiful thing about this workbook is that it takes the brilliant ideas and some new brilliant ideas. I will say that we're in so ideas from transcend and forces. I mean, you know, we highly encourage a willing reader and listener to actually

integrate the practice into their life. So whereas in transcend when I was reading all about dichotomy transcendence, I was like, WHOA, this is mind blowing and how do I operationalize it? And I think what our book does is it helps the reader actually go out and do the thing. And once you develop a practice of doing all the things,

it's hard not to see them. It's hard not to connect the dots, because of course they're all connected when you're existing on this plane where we're living so deliberately, we have mental capacity in space to make the connections, where when we're so caught in the nitty gritty and tunnel vision it's hard to see. I completely agree. I'm trying to think of some other topics we could discuss that to kind of wet people's appetite for our book.

Maybe a good one is like integrating your dark side. Now, the idea of dark side people are when they should know that the shadow doesn't mean it's necessarily bad or immoral dark side. All it means is that it's in the dark. It's not in the light of your consciousness, it's not fully accepted, and it's probably not integrated into the rest of your being. Now. Now, some of your dark sides certainly can be a moral don't get me wrong, But it doesn't necessarily mean the dark side is evil

or bad. I just wanted to preface that. So with that, with that, do you agree? Do you agreed to it? Totally? I think there's so much of ourselves that we keep in the dark. Some of it's probably incredibly powerful and capacities that we have that could be quite positive as well. On the other hand, that are not necessarily within our awareness or can be overwhelming to even consider. What's an exercise or well, listen, we don't want to give away, we don't want to give it all away, my friend.

But we shouldn't give it all away, I think. I think one of the things that we guide readers to do in this practice is just to even take stock of what some of their shadow sides, their dark sides, actually mean, because it's not it's not necessarily one whole side of us. Sometimes it's one thing we're grappling with, something we're trying to suppress, something that we're very deliberate in not showing others or the world, or feel we

can't share with others. And some of those things are so deeply buried that we don't let ourselves acknowledge them, and in a safe way, we want to shed some light on what some of those dark sides are. Of course, we're very clear we want everyone to take ownership of their psychological safety, and we don't want to unravel wounds that are so deep without you having the support of

a counselor or someone to process these wounds with. But there are a lot of things that we choose consciously or not to hide below the bed, and we want to begin to shine the flashlight under there and say get some of the dust off, and say that I am you are not all of me, and by bringing you into my life, acknowledging and engaging with you, I can gain more mastery. There might there might be a lesson here, I might be more at peace, I might sleep better at night if I actually bring you in.

I really like that change your relationship to it. I really like that a lot. Well, Jordan and I. You know, I don't want to give too much away here, but it has been so delightful having you on this on this podcast. And I want to tell our listeners that our book, Choose Growth is out this week this week, so you can listen to it on the audio which you can hear both of our adultit tones or doulcet tones, or you can read it kindle or physical copy. Look, folks,

I do this podcast every week. I've done every week for the past seven years, and I rarely on this podcast pitch my own book. So I'm owning it this week. I'm owning it. I'm saying check it out, because I every week I feature someone else's book. It was for seven years, and I'm gonna have a fully step into the space of saying I'm darn proud of this thing, and I'm darn proud of working with you, Jordan. It

is so mutual. Scott. I am so delighted that you are proud of this book and I think your listeners are going to love it. And I love it and it's helped me and I really hope it helps you me too. Thanks Jordan, see us soon. Thanks Scott, Thanks for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at thus psychologypodcast dot com. We're on our YouTube page, The Psychology Podcast.

We also put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.