Well, the word trauma is just now means everything every in so there is something in the in the zeitgeist. There's definitely something in the zeitgeist that is making us more conscious of trauma. And and and the body keeps the score is still on the New York Times bestseller list.
So one could argue, in a nuanced fashion, as we like to do, that that's not all, that's not entirely a bad thing, that that it's good that we are becoming more aware of the extent to which really challenging experiences in our lives can play a role in who we are today. Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today the table is turned and I am interviewed by my friend and colleague, doctor Jonathan White about my new book Rise Above Overcome a victim mindset, Empower yourself and
realize your full potential. Does life feel smaller than it used to? Does it seem that the people around you have taken a step back from doing hard things, preferring to stay in their comfort zone. In the era of Tiktakis therapy, it's tempting to see ourselves as damaged and powerless, defined by our past traumas our emotions and the struggles we face. But it's more important than ever to rise above the limiting beliefs and widespread anxiety that puts us
in boxes, lowers our expectations, and holds us back. In my new book, which was just released yesterday, April twenty second, I unpact the dangerous myths and misleading buzzwords swirling around the public imagination, revealing the truth about managing our emotions, the double edged sword of self esteem, the surprising gifts of sensitivity, and ultimately, the power each of us has to overcome challenges and to shape the course of our
own lives. In this episode, we discuss actionable solutions to own your life and reach your full potential. So, without further ado, bring you myself. Doctor Scott Barry Kaufman.
Okay, Scott Barry Kaufman, also known as Okay, how are you? And where are you?
I'm good, Jonathan, I'm good. I'm the last lap here in California, in Los Angeles. I'm moving to New York, going to be teaching full time.
Yes, how exciting. Let's hope Columbia is still there when you arrive.
That boy, your mouth to God's ears. Crazy times We're living in very crazy times, and I think the best we can do is show up according to our values.
You know, that's right, That's right. How are you dealing with it? Do you? What's your attitude towards all of the craziness and insanity hitting the country and higher ed.
You know, I think it is very much in line with what I just said about showing it. Just the best you can do is show up and like decide how do you want to show up in this world? You know, like get very clear on that. I like to lead with a term I use in my new book, Rise Above, which thank you for interviewing me today about. There's a term I use called honest love. I had felt as though two extremes have not really sit well with my own way of being and my own presence.
On the one end, you see a lot of coddling. I think you know you've written something about that as an understatement. Yeah, yeah, and in that and I don't the coddling way of dealing with the world doesn't seem to uh didn't resonate with me. But then the other extreme, that pull yourself up by the boots by the bootstraps mentality,
that ignores contact that ignores individual differences. That didn't really suit me either, So I propose a new term which just suits is what I feel like is resonates with the way I the tone I wanted to set for this book, and and also how I try to show up in the world. Honest love and honest has two parts. The love part is acknowledging the real felt experience of someone else, you know, acknowledging where they're at. But the that's the love part. But I don't want to stop there.
I need I need to be honest or how I go crazy. The honest part is talking honestly and openly about what is as a roote to what could be.
Well, Scott, I think that's beautiful the way you put that, because it's interesting you and I we come from sort of different perspectives, we come to a commonplace. A quote that I keep close by is from Joseph Campbell. He says, participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to
live in joy. The warriors approach is to say yes to life, yea to it all, And so a similar sort of attitude of you know, however, crazy things get, that's just the world, and we shouldn't go along with I shouldn't let it sweep us away. We should take control. We should have an empowered mindset. I say, what's they you Scott? Okay? And this turns us to your to
your book that Rise Above. So that's yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say I should have'b blazed it on my forehead, but then I would be able to do it backward. Yeah tattoo m Yeah. So okay. So let's so let's talk about your your your wonderful new book Rise Above. Overcome a victim mindset, empower yourself and realize your full potential.
So let's start at the beginning here. You and I first met when I think as you were post talk or you were were you were you were studying creativity and you were hosting YEA and you were hosting a session with like me and Marty Seligman a few others on like on creativity. This was like back, it's just like two thousand. I don't even remember when you don't.
Feel like lifego no, no, fifteen, It wasn't that long ago. Twenty sixteen, fifteen fourteen, maybe maybe fourteen fifteen, yeah.
Okay, twenty fifteen, fourteen, yeah, yeah, So how do you how do you get from just telling you know, just how do you get from being, you know, an expert on creativity and intelligence? You also writing intelligence? How do you get from that to the current book?
So I've always been and it's a very fair and good question. I've always been interested in human potential more broadly, you know, what does it take to to reach your goals in life? What does it take to self actualize? To to you, I've always been a big daydreamer and and and so that's been a thread running through my whole life, even as a kid when the school system didn't really have high expectations of me because I had some warning disabilities that I have overcome at this point.
But I always just really pondered these kinds of questions. Was it take to kind of overcome our circumstances? And a lot of ways, I feel like everything led up to this book. So I'll explain that this book is like I felt like it was fate fates, you know, when I was in as my I tell my personal story in this book. But long story short, there was
this moment. I was kept in special education till ninth grade to high school, and there was this moment where this teacher took me aside, who had never seen me before, this special ed teacher, and she said, you know, what are you What are you still doing here? And I realized, is that that's just that one question. It just empowered me to I thought of my head, Yeah, what am I doing here? And it just really a surge went
through me. And I also had this realization in that moment, and it became so crystal clear to me that no one is coming to save me, you know that that if I want to demonstrate my potential to the school system, to the world, you know, I had to do it myself. And I took myself out of special education, and I became the first kid in my school system for the special ed kid himself took himself out, and I said, I want to I want to see what I'm capable of.
And so a lot of the roots were there, Jonathan, you know, and I thought when I started my career, I thought that the way to study human intentional was through studying intelligence and changing the way that we measure intelligence in our school system, and that only took me so far, you know.
Oh how interesting In other words, in other words, sort of over focus on or narrow conceptualization of intelligence was part of what was holding you back. And then in the current book, you're going beyond that. You're looking at a certain mindset, a certain way of thinking about the world is what's holding a lot of people back, and you're trying to help people break out.
You nailed it. And then there was the creativity phase of my life too. I thought that was the thing to unlock human potential, was the human imagination. I still think it's a big I still think all these things are important, you know, how we measure intelligence, how we
use our imagination to think of a better future. But there was some research I was conducting over the past ten years that just kept I kept being striking data and I just I didn't think that it was the main part of my research, but it got so so much data on it that I just couldn't ignore it anymore. And that's the research I did on vulnerable narcissism. And yeah, so that's the link into all this. That's the link into all this.
Okay, that's the missing link here.
Yeah, that's the missing bunch, just explain.
I mean, I guess you know a lot of listeners. I'm sure I've heard you talk about it, But just give us the thumbnail sketch of the vulnerable narcissism. What is it? And can they really be cured? How do people overcome that?
There's different forms of narcissism that are associated with different forms of entitlement. Entitlement is a thread that runs through all forms of narcissism. That's psychologists trying to converge them. That's the thing that's central to all forms. But when you have grandiose narcissism, you have this grandiose based entitlement, which is, I'm entitled to special privileges because I'm inherently superior to others. I was born this way, I was
born better than others. But with vulnerable narcissism, and I find it very fascinating. This different form of entitlement, called vulnerable based entitlement kept cropping up, which is, I'm entitled to special privileges because I've suffered or I'm fragile, so therefore, you know I deserve these special privileges in a generalized way. We're not talking about a single instance We're not talking about real victimization, where you are rightly should be speaking
up and saying something was unjust or unfair. We're talking about a personality trait. We're talking about it, or even a generalized mindset that applies to almost everything in your life. From waiting in Starbucks. You know, I deserve you know this was a long line, but I deserve my drink first because I bet I have a longer day than everyone else in this line. You know that, you know that kind of thinking, and and it kept cropping up over and over again that this was the biggest inhibitor
to self actualization. More than anything else I had studied in my career, more than IQ, more than more than creativity intelligence. I found this way of thinking about your life and the world was the biggest thing holding you back in your life for reaching your goals and dreams.
Okay, so so when but when it's called vulnerable narcissism? So narcissism is a personality disorder, right? Or is it just like a trait on which some people try low?
Oh yeah, we published a paper, A personality Perspective on narcissism.
Yeah, okay, so okay, so let's go into the themes of the book then because ish, well, okay, let's go into the themes of the book. So the book starts part one, don't be a victim, and you go through don't be a victim to your past, your emotions, your cogniti distortion, self esteem. So just situate us here, what is the what is the problem that you're seeing out in the world, What is the you know what? Who are the people who you think are limiting themselves by
embracing this victimhood? And then let's talk about the different kinds of victimhood.
Yeah. Great, I think this is a book for everyone. So I make very clear that that all these traits and ways of thinking are in a continuum that are part of being human as well. Obviously from a trait perspective, there are some people that reliably, on average, tend to engage in these things more. But I want all of us to look within. And that was the biggest challenge of this book. Jonathan. You don't see many self help books. You don't see many self help books that say maybe
the problem is partly you. You don't see that, right, the ones that sell well, or the ones that say it's not you. You it's not you, it's your it's your ex husband's narcissistic ex husband's fault, or it's you're it's the Jews or whatever you like, whatever, who do we
want to blame? You know? Today? And and I really want us to change our cultural consciousness away from feeling the need to knee jerk blame a person or an entire group of people on all your problems, and shift our societal thinking to how are we showing up in the world, How are we uh living by our own purpose, our own values, and not be consumed by the need for resentment, for uh, for uh hostility, for uh, for this kind of victim mindset that I talk about.
Okay, and have you do you believe that this has been increasing? I mean, as of course this has always been there. There've always been people like this and doing this. But just just do you think that either American culture or Western culture, or just as a product of getting wealthier and you know, societies get wealthy and more comfort focused, just historically, do you think we're facing an increase in this or is this a sort of a steady state and you're trying to help people get over.
So the two most popular words most searched for words in the past couple of years have been trauma and narcissism.
What what do you mean? That's what Narcissism is one of the most searched for words.
Yes, usually in this the context of you know this other person, you know, why are there so many narcissists around me? You know? Not?
Not?
What can I do? What can I do about narcissists in my life? You know? And and the word trauma has has ballooned in importance and.
In I've been seeing that everywhere.
And the word you know, talk about concept creep, concept creep, well, the word well, the word trauma is just now means everything. Every So there is something in the in the zeitgeist. There's definitely something that's like I S that is making us more conscious of trauma. And the body keeps. The score is still on the New York Times bestseller list.
So one could argue, in a nuanced fashion, as we like to do, that that's not all, that's not entirely a bad thing, that that it's good that we are becoming more aware of the extent to which really challenging experiences in our lives can play a role in who we are today, and I'm a fan of certain forms of therapy, and I think that a lot of people, and I'm a fan of healing. So that's the one hand, But on the other hand, something is different about what
we reward in our culture and what we promote. I am desperately in this book trying to argue that we need to think about the importance of overcoming trauma, not just staying and talking about trauma your whole life. There's a really much more empowering way about go about this, I think.
Okay, so just just lay it atter us. I have not read The Body Keeps the Square. I don't know what that theory is, but I see references to it everywhere. And of course nowadays, you know, I'm always looking at how my book sales are doing and comparing it to others. But tell us, like, so, what is the what is the way that this this cultural movement, this new increase to focus on trauma, trauma informed education, trauma informed counseling,
trauma informed everything. What is the way that they're saying people should deal with bad things that have happened to them more with life in general, and then contrast yours with that.
This this gets to the crux crux of it. And you know, I don't want to denigrate those with trauma informed therapy or those went through that lens because they are a lot of them are very, very compassionate people that really truly want to help people who have gone through terrible things in their lives heal. But like for instance, Bessel vander Kock who wrote The Body keeps the Score, he has this way of outsourcing it all to trauma. So everything is, you know, it's stored in the body.
The things that the assaults of the of the world that have happened outside of us are stored in our body. And he posits a particular type of memory that is not in the brain but in the body, that remembers these traumas. And that's not how it works. That's not how it works. I mean, memories as we typically think of them in the cognitove science literature can only be in the brain. There are certainly, you know I talk
about survival. Stress is a real thing. Certainly, certain things can register in our nervous system and can cause us to be very uncomfortable and and painful, especially when similar things arise. However, the problem with it. And this is the question you asked me, is that it lacks a lot of nuance here. It lacks it for first of all,
it ignores pre existing individual differences. It ignores the role of genes almost completely, as though genes don't make us who we are at all today, as though genes don't color the way we see the world at all. Like, for instance, if you have the genes that code for the personality trait neuroticism, it's going to really fundamentally give you, give you a different view of your life experiences than
someone who is very, very emotionally stable. And and I say this in the spirit of honest love, you know, I say it's in the spirit of really peering as strongly as possible to the extent to which, yes, terrible things happen to us, But what are how what are our own mindsets and of reacting to the environment that may be holding us back and to just in my view, the body keeps the score is one big book of a victim mindset about your life experiences. It's it's all
the world's fault. It's stored in your body. And you just to heal, You just need to somehow make contact with that.
Okay, let's work through the case, you know, work the case of someone whose parents were violent towards them and they had a terrible that some terrible things happen in their childhood. On the adverse child experienced scale, they've had
in a number of those events happen to them. How so, how what would they actually do if they come to see doctor Scott Barry Kaufman, or at least if they read if they read Rise Above, what exactly should they should they do to break out of that, to to change their thinking?
Okay, so my colleague a Columbia Georgia Banano, has has shown that people are a lot more resilient than we give them credit for, even under the worst kinds of circumstances. Most people are actually resilient. And then you of you sometimes actually dare I say, see post traumatic growth, which is something else I bring up in the book. So even just pointing that out changes the narrative, you know, to someone they you know, going from this mindset of
it's kind of hopeless. I can't even access it, you know, like there's not a lot cognitively I can do here. You know, it's stored in my body. I think is disempowering. So even just like educating people that you have a lot more resilient to within you than you realize. And then going through the various things that I go through in my book of don't be a victim to various things within your own self. That's the spin on this situation.
Part one. Are all the things that we don't have to be a victim to that are happening inside ourselves. Not blaming the outside world, but for instance, don't be a victim to your cognitive distortions. I know this is
one that both of us are very interested in. And what I mean by that is, you are a victim to your cognitive distortions when you take those things at face value, right at your catastrophizing you're black and white thinking your I talk about inferring malevolent intentions on neutral stimuli. That's a big one. That's a big one. Don't you're a victim to it if you take all of that seriously. And then I talk about don't be a victim to
your emotions. So we are a victim to our emotions when we don't realize that we don't have to act or believe everything that our emotions are telling us we are allowed to create, We're allowed to do some practices that create a bit of a distance between our emotions and our cognitive thoughts, so we can meditate on them. We can reflect on whether or not there is a lot there is value there. How do we want to reframe them? There is so much we can do to
not be a victim to ourselves. And that's the spin of this book, Jonathan. I hope that makes sense. That's the spin here because we often talk about and everyone's so focused on pointing the finger outside themselves to uh get rid of their uncomfortable emotions. But I think it's I actually think it's more empowering. This is the case I make in the book. I think that it's actually more empowering to realize there's so many things you can change with yourself. Let me read a Joan Rivers quote
that opens up the whole book. She says, Listen, I wish I could tell you it gets better, but it doesn't get better. You get better.
Hmm right, right. All of this reminds me, so I'm I think you know what humanistic psychology is for you, Stoic philosophy or stoic writings are are for me as sort of a perspective that we come back and they're very compatible. So as you were talking, I just looked up some of my favorite Stowe quotations. Here's Marcus Aurelius you don't have, and this is Marcus writing and meditations. He's writing this to himself. He's like doing cognitive therapy
on himself. He doesn't think anyone's ever going to read. This is just his notes to himself. He says, you don't have to turn this into something. It doesn't have to upset you. Things can't shape our decisions by themselves. And then in another book of meditations, he says, today I escape from anxiety or no, I discarded it because it was within me, in my own perceptions, not outside.
So I think what we're seeing here is is some of the greatest human wisdom that comes down to us from thousands of years ago, across multiple cultures, and that's now instantiated in CBT and cognitive behavioral therapy as a way to do this. So so, okay, so you've laid out what you need to escape from. Just be more specific, how do you actually do this? You can't, you know, in my first book, The Happiness Hypothesis, I put forth the metaphor the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict.
Like a small rider is conscious reasoning on top of a very large elephant, which is our intuitive, automatic emotional processes. And you can, you know, you can lecture the rider. The writer can say, oh, yeah, okay, I should not blame others, I should blame I should I should look with it. You know, you can say that, But that doesn't change the elephant. That doesn't change the automatic processes.
And C. B. T As I understand it is a way of practicing and catching yourself, and you correct yourself, and you go through a process hundreds and hundreds of times until it becomes automatic. Is that what you're advising people to do? Just be very specific, how if a person is plagued by this chronic victimhood mindset, chronically blaming others, what exactly do they do to break free? Yeah?
And I think it's also important answering that question to distinguish the majority of this book is not for trauma survivors. It's for people who didn't get a memo, didn't get the memo that uncomfortable emotions is part of the price of admission of being human. You know, we seem to live in a society now where we expect happiness is the default, and whenever that expectation is violated, we look for something to blame, or we don't we don't accept it.
So I wanted to start off there, and so I think that for most the majority of people who I am trying directing this book to, you know, I talk about the various things to refocus your attention on what's good within you? What is I have a whole chapter on find the parts of you that aren't broken. You know, so much of traumba and form therapy, you keep talking over and over again about how you're broken or what's broken inside you and your childhood, and you keep ruminating,
And I would argue that's not productive rumination. There's also it's possible to you know, just even take the free Character Strength Survey, find out what are your top character strengths. Try to see how you can try to deal with your your past in a way where you're bringing your strengths to bear. You're bringing your Maybe humor is your thing, you know, so you use your humor as a way to help you cope or your creativity and how can you put that into your work, so finding the light
within yourself. I also talk about creating a gratefulness orientation in your life. Really could to a grateful orientation towards everything in your life, not cursing all the bad things that happened to you, and having gratitude only for the good things. But in along the for the root of post traumatic growth, really being able to be grateful for everything that comes your way. What is it here that I'm going to learn from the situation? How do I
how could I grow from this? So that that's another thing. And then I do have very specific techniques for your emotions for for not being a victim to your emotions. That's a big part of our emotional life often. I mean, you're right, your theory is right, John, your theory is right. Our emotional life is usually controlling us. It's not like, yeah, you our reasoning and we don't. But it doesn't have to be that way. I think the research does show
that we can train our elephants a bit processes. Yeah, we can train it. It's not helpless. It's not helpless just because it's hidden. We can really read, you know, through habits of mind and habits of behaving. We cannot let it rule us. I have an example in my book, and I talk personally in this book because I am
not above any of this. I have gone through such a journey as a very highly anxious human being overcoming a lot of my fears, and I talk and share some of the techniques that have really transformed my life. You know, I used to be terribly, terribly scared of flying. It was a great fear of mine. And then when my book und Gifted came out and I had to go in the talk circuit and had to suddenly fly here and there and everywhere. You know, what was I
going to do? You know, be a victim to my fears and not grow and be the person who I want to be.
No.
I tried everything I possibly could to get to to really be able to deal with it. And I did an eight week MBSR course Mindfulness Stress Based Reduction course that John Cabins and teaches. I took it at Penn with Michael Beam, and it was really really valuable. I learned a lot of techniques to deal with with my anxieties and my over catastrophizing because I realized it was
mindful of that cognitivestortion. I'm a big fan of mindful cognitive behavioral therapy Seth Guilahean I would direct people to and a lot of his work on being mindful.
Seth is great. I studied with Aaron Becky, I signed I signed some of his work in my Flourishing classes part of Flourishing. Okay, So, Scott, you've told us a great story about about your own overcoming. Can you tell us any stories about people who who basically found these techniques, people really were able to break out of this mindset on their own. Yeah.
I was really inspired by brothers Ali and Ottmann Smith along with their colleague Andrea's Gonzalez. They wrote the book What Your Light Shine, How Mindfulness can empower children and rebuild communities. And I really like their approach. It really encapsulates a lot of what I talk about in my book because they go into really underserved communities. They go into a lot of communities where there really isn't a
lot of hope in these children. These children have maybe there's it's very gang laden or very poor neighborhoods, and they go in and they teach yoga and mindfulness, and they have a lot of stories as they told me, about how they see a shift in a victim mindset that these kids have to really having greater hope for their future and just having someone come in who just believes in them is also a really big deal to these kids because you can stay focused so much on
what you don't have, but being able to kind of get a focus on, you know, what you still can contribute to this world despite the really difficult situations. I think this was really really inspirational to me because I want to make it clear this book is not just for the quote privileged, right, this quote is for everyone. I really believe that. Of course people have different life
circumstances and people are coming from different places. But regardless of that, I think we as teachers, as coaches, as parents need to still be on the lookout for the higher, the higher potential of everyone.
M Right, as someone was well, actually yes, as someone was with you, as that teacher was with you your turning point, turning point in your life. Right. So let's I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about social media? What role do you think what role do you think? You know? Because you know Facebook. So modern social media comes out around two thousand and three with Facebook and MySpace and friends there, and at first it's all just like, you know, here's my page, here's your page. Here,
photos of my trip, here, photos of your trip. And then it changes once you get the newsfeed and you get the algorithms driving This all begins two thousand and nine to twenty eleven. If social media really changes becomes much more well, all the stuff that I that I write about in the Anxious Generation, it all begins the early twenty tens. So that's where I'm coming from on this question. What role does social media play in changing the way the way people think?
A big one. I think that the reward structure of social media has caused people to think they need to have a victim mindset in order to get likes, in order to be promoted. First all I want to say, I really appreciate your work on this, and it's extremely important, and your book was a bestseller for a reason. It's really it really strikes a nerve right among a lot of parents and people who want better for young people. In answering that question, I interviewed quite a lot of people,
and one person I thought. Who gave me some really insightful information on this was Susan David. It researched her studies emotions. She hasn't she gave She gave me a formula, and I want to see what you think of this. The reason why I think she a reason why she thinks social media is really bringing out the worst in us, especially a victim mindset, she said, pathologizing of normal human experience.
The rapidity with which we label things as quote trauma, plus the addictive qualities of social media plus co rumination plus social contagion equals disastrous effects.
Wow, that is a good list. I love it. I love it because right I've certainly I've written about co rumination back in the calling the American Mind, and then emotional contagion. Just when you hook people up sharing sharing emotional interpretations of things, we influence each other. So that
is that is a good list. So sort of like whatever whatever these problems were before the great we Wire in the period when everyone goes is online a lot run early twenty ten, saying whatever was the process before that is just sort of supercharged by those four or five different processes. Could just say the list again, let's just make sure we all get.
It absolutely pathologizing of normal human experience, and in parentheses that she's referring to the rapidity with which we label things that we're quick to label uncomfortable experiences as trauma. Plus the addictive qualities of social media plus co rumination plus social contagion equals disastrous effects. A big part of this as I see it, and I want to know what you think. I want to just have a conversation with you about this. You know, it's no shocker that
teenagers go through an identity crisis. This has happened since the dawn of teenagers, So it's not like this generation they having an identity crisis. Every generation, around age fourteen to seventeen, or maybe eleven to seventeen, you go through identity crisis. But it seems like social media is changing the way that people feel the need to create an identity, a victimhood identity. Now it feels like there's peer pressure among young people to create or to express a victimhood identity,
not to express I've overcome this, I've overcome that. Look at me, I've you know, I'm successful. It's almost like that's denigrated. What gets you the likes is you create whatever, Maybe it's the maybe it's some label that you say you have. And a lot of people legitimately already you know, have been diagnosed with these things, so I'm not saying that, but a lot haven't. Let's be honest, a lot haven't
been formally diagnosed. And they there's a peer pressure to belong by fitting in with a group, and so you desperately try to see what victimhood group can I fit in with amongst my peers. Do you agree or disagree with that?
Well? I do, but let me just put let me just reinterpret it just a little bit. So when I was writing The Answers Generation, I read there's a really great textbook on adolescence from Laurence Steinberg, a psychologist at Temple University, and Steinberg says that that adolescence is not
necessarily a difficult or what's the word. It's not necessarily, you know, a difficult or traumatic time, but it is a time when stress and difficult experiences will have a bigger impact on both your brain development because the neurons are sort of rewiring much more quickly during adolescence and your identity development. So so many people make it through adolescents without any identity crisis, without any of this, you know,
the whirlwind of emotions. I mean, it's a time of there's always more emotion, but it's not necessarily a difficult time, but it is a time when the sense of identity is forming. You don't have a story about yourself when you're seven or eight, but by the time you're eighteen or twenty, you often have some sort of implicit or intuitive stories. That's why I picked up from some some earlier work that I read long ago, and so now
let's look at the need for an identity. So I'm kind of a I sort of you know, read all the social sciences to try to put them all together to understand originally morality in now mental health, and identity in you know, an anthropology. It's a big concept in anthropology and sociology. Your identity is not something that you you make up or invent yourself. It's not up to you. So if you're you know, if you're in a traditional society, if you're born into the blacksmith guild or you know,
lineage that you become a blacksmith. If you are now you're going to be a mother, in some cultures, you know, or a career person, depending on the culture. So your identity is ascribed to you by your community, and that's the way people will treat you. And so it's kind of like saying, you know language, like you know, I make up my language, you make up your language. We each have to make up our own language. No, No, that's not the way it works. Identity is something that
is ascribed to you by others. So that's at least I think the more traditional way, that's the more common way in human history that identities are conferred by you know, your religion. It could be by your race, your gender, all these things will situate you somewhere. And what happened, I believe during the Great Rewiring, so this is twenty ten to twenty fifteen. What happened I think was before then. Teens used you know, they were on Facebook early on,
but it's and you're putting forward. You are beginning to put forward a vision if your fun loving, or you're sexy,
or you're serious or whatever it is. But once you get the sort of the super viral social media with people commenting on each other's posts and people spending a lot more time now as I see it, teenagers are pushed into into working full time as brand managers, and the brand that they're managing is their own brand, which is the terrible thing to do to a t well year own So so, so what I'm saying is I basically agree with you that there's been this big increase
in the degree to which young people have to do this job that they're not ready for. It's incompatible with the fun and joy and learning of childhood to be a brand manager where at any moment there could be a brand crisis. You know, you know, someone you know made a bad report about our product. There was a post on us social media criticizing me. You know, better have a team meeting and how do we defend the brand?
So I do think that identity is part of it here, and in some subcultures there would be it would be advantage just to claim more victimhood, and others it wouldn't. So I wouldn't say it's a universal thing that kids are pressured to be victims because of social media, but I think there are some some circles in which it would And so, yeah, so that's where we would especially find I believe higher levels of depression, anxiety, and insecurity.
We're definitely yeah, thank you so much for that. This is that's very exciting, Nuance. I love learning about that. We definitely see a trend on TikTok, for instance, for everyone to be neurodivergent. So, for instance, neudivergency has is so hot on TikTok and amongst young people. And for someone who's a big advocate of the nerd diversity movement, at first, I'm like, oh, that's great, you know, but then I started to look into it, and there's so
much misinformation. This is what really bothers me, John, so much misinformation about different forms of nerd vergency. Everyone's a scientist, now everyone knows here are the five traits of ADHD.
And a scientific analysis was done on TikTok of of these kinds of videos and they found that something like eighty percent had incorrect, erroneous information, and and so that really bothers me and and people feeling the need to pick something so that they're special, you know in some way, you know, as opposed to well, you know, what what do you bringing to the table that you know that to really you know, uh, to make the world a
better place. To uh, you know, what are your strengths, leading with your strengths, your character, you know, not not just the leading and feeling. The only way to be special is by by picking some sort of disability you have or something that's wrong in your environment.
Yeah, that's an important point about TikTok and social media that you know that at first you might think, well, this is great, like, of course they should. Everybody should be able to find support groups. Of course, people should feel you know, valued and not not ashamed of whatever whatever is going on with them, or certainly whatever mental traits or certain mental illnesses they have. And so and so I agree that it's a good thing that mental
illness in particularly has been destigmatized. When I was a kid in the seventies, late seventies, my mom sent me to a couple of different psychologists, and psychiatrists had a variety of like nervous ticks and habits, and so she thought this was you know, back in the age of like Freud. She grew up in that sort of predian not that she was around in the nineteen tens, but you know, I'm saying in the nineteen fifties sixties, it was a very Freudian age, and that was very shameful.
I mean I was really embarrassed to admit that to anybody else. And so there was a stigma on anything about mental health, mental illness, certainly in the seventies and eighties, and then it really begins to drop in the eighties and nineties and into the twenty first it really drops. And so agmatization is a good thing. And some people have argued against me that all those graphs I show of rising levels of depression anxiety, that's just decimatization. That's
just gen Z is perfectly comfortable talking about it. You know, social media's freed them up. They're not embarrassed about it. That's a good thing. Well, we want we don't want people to feel stigmatized, but we also don't want to valorize mental illness. We just have a post today on my substack after babbel dot com from Christina Laerman at USC on how social media pushes girls into eating disorders by valorizing being bone thin. I'm just horrible. Horrible images
are all you can find easily on Twitter. There's very little content moderation on Twitter, So if you just look for a thin spo or bone spo well, you know, bone thin inspiration, horrific videos praising and encouraging and giving girls confidence to go further, further, further into intererrect This is really really bad, especially for adolescent girls who are the most open, as it were, to sort of interpersonal influence. Girls a little more than boys. Girls a little more
emotionally open and receptive. Boys are a little bit more clueless, a little bit not as much affected by each other's emotions. So yes, I think we're on the same page here that social media in its once it became super viral, it put a lot of kids into communities that would then encourage this kind of victim mindset, valorizing of are what are considered to be mental illnesses, except that they
interfere with the ability to love and to work. So you know, that's so that's why I've been a big fan of raising the age of social media to sixteen and just recognizing social medisa just not appropriate for kids. So any any further thoughts from you on on social media, so I could talk all day about what it's doing to kids.
This is a great nuance. This is a really great nuance because there is a one hand and on the other hand, here and I have a whole chapter in sensitivity which which talks about on the one hand, on the other hand, so for instance, we do want to celebrate some of the strengths of being a highly sensitive person. That's that's a phrase that you see a lot, and there is research on that. But you don't want to
have a victim mindset you. You don't want any of these traits to become the totality of who you are in a way that limits you from a full range of expression in your life. And that's a point I want to make here so that you can see that on social media, where you've come so consumed about this part of you that it's all all you are and you can't even see the world in a different way.
You know, I argue that, you know, I think I have a highly sensitive person temperament, but I have learned throughout my life the ways in which it holds me back. By saying I'm a highly sensitive person at all times, sometimes I don't want to be the highly sensitive person. Do we allow anyone the freedom anymore to have a flexible identity or a flexible dare I say ideology? Like we don't allow that in our society.
Mm. And this is helping me see that certain certain things that might be in DSM and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, like anorexia. I don't think there's any strength there. I think that's it's a dangerous disease. It's a mental illness. Nobody would want their child to have anorexia. And but there are but there are some things and I guess you're suggesting like being neurodivergent or being a sensitive person.
So ADHD is, for example, Yeah.
That's right, that's right. So tell me how you think about that, because I like I was going to say, well, it is a mental illness, but I think you're saying it might cause problems for in some ways, but it gives you strengths and and open things up. So tell me about how you think about ADHD.
Yes, I just wrote an article ADHD is not a trauma response because the predominant narrative from like ab or mate friends and says that ADHD is a result of your parents not hugging you enough when you were a kid, like ignoring the genetic component. I argue that ADHD it's best thought of just like any other personality source of variation, a mix of nature and nurture, and it's an extreme trait.
It's it's extreme constellation of heterogeneic heterogeneity. There's so much heterogeneity there, so you have maybe it's impulsivity, Maybe it could be cognitive control issues, maybe it could be risk taking. Just because you have one of these behaviors doesn't mean you're gonna have all the other behaviors. So that's a big mess with these kind of diagnoses. So I really
like this high top approach. I don't know if you've heard of the high top approach to psychopathology where they're arguing the DSM, we need to move away from the DSM that you either have the disorder or you don't have the disorder and think of all these things. There's traits that lie in a continuum in the general population and then a result of just like any other personality trait, a mix of nature and nurture. It's not all trauma. You can't blame it all in trauma. You can't blame
it all in your genes either. I mean, it's important to view these things with that level of care. And it can be a superpower in certain context, and it can be a disorder. It can absolutely be it can be a disorder, but it's not always a disorder, and it's not always a superpower.
You know.
It's almost like I'm the centrist of psychopathology talk, right, I'm just trying to be reasonable about this stuff. But everyone so talks about everything in such extreme terms these days, including disorders.
Right, once we moralize things, we lose the where it damage our ability to really understand what's going on. So for listeners who are considering the book, just tell them something that you think they'll get from the book, some way in which you think they'll enjoy or benefit from reading the book.
Thank you, John. So, this book is for anyone who's ready in their journey to rise above. You know, there there's a spirit in me that I've always had since I was that little kid of like like let's go, let's let's not be a passive victim to life. Let's take control of our lives and and wean into our own values and purpose. And for those that are ready in their their self actualization journey to do that, I think you'll really get a lot out of this book.
That's beautiful, all right. I will just end with here's the here's the blurb that I sent in a few months ago for the book. I don't know if it's a on the printed on the printed edition, but here's what I said. Okay, good. Scott Barry Kaufman has made so many contributions to research on creativity, positive psychology, and the science of flourishing and rise above. Kaufman draws on ancient wisdom and modern psychology to address some of the
disempowering ideas and mindsets circulating widely in recent decades. Kaufman shows us all how to stay, end up and walk through the many doors that are always available. So, Scott Barry Kaufman, while I've never really been a podcast interviewer, I've always been on the other side of the mic. But this is fine, you're talking to you. It's oh, thank you. It's a great book. I head listeners to check it out.
Thank you so much.
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