In the beginning, it didn't seem like a big deal to kind of keep some things to myself. But gradually when you start justifying keeping something to yourself, especially when you're truly curious and you don't understand or that are quite obvious contradictions. We say we want progress, but it's interesting that we're using extremely intolerant tactics, including not asking any questions, right, having a list of people that are
so called problematic that you can't listen to. So I'm not allowed to listen to Jordan Peterson, not allowed to listen to Joe Rogan, not allowed to listen to anyone that is on the right, you know. And I didn't question any of these things, which is what also started to ring alarms for me in twenty twenty.
I'm safe though. You can listen to Scott beryc Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Today we have Africa Brook on the show. Africa is a London based consultant, credentialed coach, strategist and international speaker who tackles self sabotage and self censorship. Her first book, which was recently released, it's called The Third Perspective, Brave Expression in the Age of Intolerance. In this provocative discussion. We discussed the importance of diversity of thought and how
to increase your own brave expression. I found this chat very inspiring and I really enjoyed Africa's positive energy. So let's get into it. We have the good Africa, brook Thank you so much for coming on the Psychology Podcast live in studio in Brooklyn.
Thank you. You have just the most magnetic energy. And I mean that hat. Can I honor you for this just because.
The hat I'm wearing that I have what I have that energy without the hat.
You have it without it, but even more so with it. Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you so much for being here. And some ground rules. If any point you need a chill pill, just ask me and I will give you my chill pill. Okay, this is a safe space. Thank you. Yes, you're welcome.
Oh I love that so much.
Thanks. Yes, so gratulations on your new book. Is it your first book?
It's the first, your new and first book, new and first. And I never ever thought I've always been a writer since I was ten years old, but I never thought the book that I would write would be this one, which is why I think it's probably one of the most important and bravest things I've ever done.
So, like, let's say five years ago, if this version of you said to that African book, you're going to write a book called the Third Perspective, Brave Expression in the Age of Intolerance, what would that book of what that African book said, or even ten years.
I would have.
I think intellectually I could have seen that it might be possible for me to write a book about courageous expression, about bravery, because five years ago I was already starting to put myself out in the public as someone that
was willing to have hard conversations. However, the content of what I write about in this book, which is a psychological study of what we call cancel culture, and there's a reason why I'm saying what we call and I'm sure we'll come back to that, a psychological study of the level of intolerance that we've sort of created culturally, and me saying we need to push back against this, and we need to do that compassionately but very family.
I don't think I would have thought that would have been the book because I was in so many ways in the clutches of my own self centering. So I would have been terrified to call out some of the things that I'm calling out terrified.
Well, you're not terrified anymore? No, No, I feel you're almost the opposite. Now, You're like, you're like, give me the microphone, you know what.
I'm no longer terrified, but I still experience discomfort when I need to call out certain things. And I think that's fine. I actually think that's useful.
Maybe that's human.
Yeah, yeah, it's absolutely human.
And I think I want to keep that part of myself alive of where I feel stretched by my own actions, where I'm like, oh, this is a growth edge? Am I really going to do this? And then I do it. I don't want to sort of create my own internal bubble because I think then it can be easy to expect everyone else to behave in the same way, you know what I mean?
Yeah, I love Did you say growth edge? Yeah? Did you just come up with that phrase?
No? No, No, it's a it's a term in terms of well edge is already a time kind of pushing yourself to an edge, and I think of it as my growth edge because it's exactly that.
I don't know that.
There's any other way for me to experience true expansion if there isn't some level of discomfort.
Right, that's a theme across your whole book. Yeah, it's a theme you talk about. You talk about being a rebel, and you talk about a lot of things. But I think that's an interesting I think that's a thread that runs through the whole book. Is the growth edge. I love that phrase. I love I'm going to be using that phrase, please do.
And I feel like, not even feel like I know that. The reason I resonate with you and your work and what it is you do is because you invite people to do that in your work, even the how you explore self actualization, that's that's exactly.
What it is. You're constantly stretching yourself. Right.
Yes, yes, I do pilates as well.
Oh yes, so can we do a session while I'm in new that's a yes, thank you.
I'll think about that. I don't know for ready for that? Okay, should we move on? What do you say?
Shall we move on to Yeah?
I'll talk about that later. So you you were born in Zimbabwe? Right? Yeah?
Yes?
Wow? Okay, and how many years did you live? I want to know all about you? Okay, So how many years did you live in Zimbabwe.
I so, I'm thirty one years old now. I was born and raised in Zimbabwe. Left when I was nine years old. But it's so interesting how when you hear the age nine, it's young, right, But those years were so significant and they truly truly shaped who I am, and I remember my young life so vividly. I remember
my upbringing in Zimbabwe. I remember walking to school for about forty minutes it took to walk to school, which seemed like a very short journey at the time because walking is just a normal part of, you know, my culture. I remember climbing trees, I remember playing every single day outside. I remember the exact journey from Harada, which is the city, to Gueru, which is the country. I speak my mother tongue. It's still my first language now. When someone says where
are you from, I say Zimbabwe. I'm a Londoner. I don't even say I'm British, which is interesting enough. I feel like I'm British by passport, and I really honor that and value it, and I think it's one of the biggest privileges, actually, passport privilege. I don't know that we talk about that enough, but culturally and intrinsically in terms of who I am as a person.
I'm zimbabwe in first yeah, yeah.
And what was it like, you know, growing up in Zambabwe, Like, did you grow up poor?
M h?
Do they grow up rich in Zimbabwe?
Some people do? Some people do.
But it's interesting how even though I would say my mother is the one that grew up in true poverty. When she was growing up, she had ten siblings and she lived in Guero, the countryside, So my mother's family is from there and my father's family. Our ancestral land is Tuesha, which is also in the rural countryside, but most of them migrated to Hadada, the city. But my
mother and father grew up in actual, true poverty. But it's interesting because when we were growing up working class in Zimbabwe, I realized now that we had very little.
We had.
We had what we had, We could survive, we could go to school, we had a lovely home, but we really didn't have much. But we were ever made to feel like victims. And I think this is really a really important part of my work. We were never made to feel like we didn't have anything. We were in a community with people that had much much less, and even those people were never victims in our eyes. Never, and it wasn't because we're not acknowledging the reality of
what is. It was a both and thing, right, We acknowledged the reality of our lives and we're not victims to this.
That's it right. Being able to hold both feel like people in our society today are capable of holding both those things.
Now, absolutely absolutely.
And the way that I grew up, I'm also grateful that I had siblings, two older sisters, one younger brother. So even though we grew up in a home where there was domestic violence. My dad was an alcoholic and he could be quite abusive, physically abusive when he was drunk, and eventually even when he wasn't drinking. It just became a part of how he was towards us. But in the name of holding those multiple truths, I always say this,
and I'll never stop saying it. I really learned to hold multiple truths about my father before I could even you know, intellectualize it in that way. Because he could be abusive. He could be very, very scary, and I mean very but he was also a very gentle man at the same time interesting, he was also really funny. He was also someone who could walk into a room and without needing to be loudly confident, you could just feel Matchull's confidence, you know. And because he was a
teacher from nineteen years old. He was a teacher, so he was obviously very compassionate and patient, which was a very stark difference to the man that I talk about when I'm speaking about the abuse. But I realized that me and my siblings and my mother grew up in an environment where we had to hold multiple truths, where there was so much certainty and times so much uncertainty because you never knew what mood this man was going
to be in sure, you know. But my upbringing, as much as it had so much darkness in it, it also had so much light. I'm so glad and I could really honor this now as an adult to be from a collectivist culture where you know your neighbors, not even just know them, you know them very well. They're your aunts, and they're your uncles, and they're your second mothers. And they will come and twist your ear if you're staying out too late in the same way that your
mother would. They love you, they will feed you they will give you everything they have. That's the culture that I'm from. So even though the abuse was contained in the home, outside of it, again, we were still not victims to it. And I know it can be a very difficult thing to understand through a Western lens, and I'd love to know what you think, but I realize now that it was never it was never as clear cut to say he's the abuse, You're the victim.
Right, you know? Yeah? Or I mean you're you're able to see multiple sides of a human yes, which is And also, wow, this sounds like you have a little bit of a capacity for forgiveness within you as well, which is incredible without excusing forgiveness without excusing Yeah, incredible. And so obviously all this made you who you are today. I mean, like discussing all of this, you know, it's uh, you know, it all led up to this triumphant book
release that you have. You know, in the themes of this book, it sounds like you had a major change a couple of years ago where you went from this kind of social justice warrior persona. I use the word persona intentionally because it sounded like you you really never felt really authentically connected to it if that correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I gather. And then you kind of had this transformation and then you wrote this viral article. Could you kind of talk a little
about this transformation you went through. Do you recommend this transformation for everyone? Or Yeah?
I think that historical context that I've just provided is very important because I'm leading with things like never grew up to be told that I'm a victim or even remotely believed that I was a victim. Came to the UK at nine years old, and this was the early two thousands, where there were no conversations about inclusivity at that time. Was just a very different time, which is also important because sometimes we have this tendency to look at the past through the lens of where we are
right now. But it's important for me to bring that up because we did face in many ways actual racism. I would say more so my mother, she was in her thirties at the time she went into the field of nursing because she was a geologist in Zimbabwe. But none of that, none of that meant anything by the time she came to the UK. The relationship with Zimbabwe and the U and the UK was very fractural. Towards the late nineties early two thousands, there were sanctions placed
on Zimbabwe. There were just harsher restrictions on zimbabwe zimbabwan citizens who wanted to come over to the UK. So a lot of her education, things that should worked so hard for coming from a poverty stricken background, it meant nothing, you know, it wasn't applicable here. So she became a nurse and depending on what industry you're in, you're just treated like absolute shit. And racism was a very big part of that. But again she was never a victim
to it. She didn't come to the family home and talk about even though it was very difficult to be a black woman at that time. These were not just things that became a part of her identity and then they became a part of how we viewed the world. There were just things she experienced and she didn't hide them from us. But we weren't to take this as proof that were less worthy. So I growing up, victimhood was not a part of my story in any way,
and I mentioned those things. But I did end up getting captured in many ways by Western ideology because I was that young but also young enough to still remember my historical context from Zimbabwe, but also young enough to assimilate very quickly and to adopt Western thinking very very quickly. So outside of the family home, I was being told that I should feel X y Z because of my race.
I was being told that I need to work twice as hard, which might have some truth to it in some ways, but it's also not the absolute truth for everything that I will experience. I was being told that I am to refer to myself as a marginalized person. Again, we can acknowledge the truth of that, but does that mean that I need to walk through the world thinking that I am marginalized?
I am a victim.
That's the identity right.
To be your mean, So regardless of me not wanting to actually take those things on like deep in my bones, if you hear things enough times, you will soon buy into it. And if let's just be honest, if there's also social credits for who can be the most victimized, you will also start to find a benefit in identifying more, you know, with the sort of victim woodrol. So you starting to identify more as oh I am an immigrant again,
you are an immigrant that's the objective truth. But does that have to be worn as some kind of grievance, some sort of heavy thing, like I am an immigrant, so I deserve to be treated. It just became a little bit warped for me over time, and because of the work that I had been doing from the age of twenty four when I finally got sober, I was speaking out about my addiction and I quickly got labeled as sobriety advocate, which I was very greatful.
Let's start cross over this. So you you went, because we hadn't discussed this yet, that you went through a period where you were addicted to alcohol and drugs.
Fourteen up until twenty four, So for a decade so young, so so young. But it's I don't know what the culture is like here, but in British culture, that's normal, heavy drinking, it's just seen as normal. It's just seen as I live. Really there you go in my twenty years. It's the social glue for absolutely.
It really is. The club nightlife, is the pub night the pub life, everything. So it makes it easier to get addictive.
It does.
It does because again, like I was saying, I was young enough even from nine ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen fourteen when I discovered alcohol young enough to still remember my historical context. I had a father who was an addict, and it was bad news. Through and through I understood that. But also, it's still young enough to be curious about the new culture that you're in. To see the freedom
of young people. Oh my goodness, They're allowed to swear in front of their parents, They're allowed to drink, they're allowed to go out, They're allowed to so there was a sense of freedom. It was kind of my first exposure of freedom. But unfortunately alcohol was also a part of it, and I started to buy into another idea, which is that to access freedom, I need to drink. To access freedom, I need to change my state of mind. But also, you know, drinking at such a young age
made me forget about my differences. It made me forget that I was the only black person, you know, in my friendship group. It made me forget that I was an immigrant, It made me forget that I spoke a little bit differently. So all the insecurities kind of washed away. So I started to associate freedom and alcohol. You know, that I could only be free within myself if I was drinking.
Well, you went through You have a lot of things here that you admitted to. Can I just go through the world or the laundry list of pase? Okay, decade long struggle with alcohol and other drugs, fractured relationships so that you had a lot of maybe tumultuous relationships. Abolutely Yeah, compulsive sexual behavior.
A missing again and there that part is important because.
Alcohol.
Absolutely when I started drinking, sex was a part of it too, So I started to associate sexual freedom or expression with alcohol. So until I got sober ten years on, that association was always there, not being able to be sexual unless I was drinking.
Oh my god. So that's a condition, a condition upon I see, Yeah, I see.
Yeah.
Well, I mean not a lot of people don't admit a lot of these things. So that's the kind of bravery you're talking about as well. Yeah, and bring that in a non victimized way. I think maybe that's the bravery. Maybe that's what the braver is. So, yeah, you had a missing front tooth. I don't see it. I don't see it. Yeah, because they fixed it.
It was But again, do you agree they thank you. You would think that would shock someone into making a ship. But it wasn't enough. It wasn't even a big deal. It wasn't a it's so crazy. This was in twenty fourteen. It wasn't even a big deal. It was just like, okay, so this has happened. I can I can own it as a quirk, boid or kind of thinking, I this is even more insane. I can only laugh at it now. I was toothless for maybe three or four months, but
it became a party quirk. It became like just a little this little thing and a story that I now have. So again, in the book, I write a lot about denial, and I talk about it through the context first recognizing it in that phase of addiction. But it's an invitation for all of us to recognize, where is their proof that something needs to change here? But we take it
on as sort of like an identity piece. We kind of rework our lives and our value system so we can make peace with this and stay in that diner. I was walking around toothless in London for four months.
We had you get the tooth you're avoiding, you're avoiding, I hear you. How did you get to the point where you didn't have a tooth.
I was drunk.
You don't have to answer any of.
Course, of course, please. I'm an open book. I would answer everything I was. It wasn't even anything remotely different from what I used to get into all the time. I was leaving a party after maybe a three day binge, so it was no longer even a party. It had become maybe even like a sort of crack dan environment. Always so thankful by the way, that I never, really, I never tried harder drugs. I'm always grateful for that. I still caution when it came to that, never did crack,
never did heroin. Oh yeah, no, no crackel without the crack that you're saying.
I never did more than a crack, Thank you, that's the.
No. I'm so grateful that I never ventured there. But I would go on these day long binges.
Okay, And did you get in a manic state? Did I go into se you in like a prolonged manic state during that time? Tell me what that would be felt like, God, or you felt like like you like you know, like you couldn't sleep, like oh, like your thoughts were racing.
For me, it was mainly just not wanting the party to end, just wanting to sort of create my own reality where we don't have to go home. I see, we don't have to see the sunlight, we don't have to go outside. We can just caught. We need more drugs. We can just bring them into this environment and let's not leave.
I see.
And even if you find the most kind of the people that are willing to stay for the party, at some point people have to go home. They have their real lives. But I had no thing outside of this bubble. So it was in one of those instances and I was just leaving the party.
And then I fell. It was like a basement.
And then I was walking up the stairs, still in a drugged state, and then I fell and then I smashed my face onto the concrete step. It could have ended really badly that fall. It could have ended really really badly. So I thank god that it was only a tooth. But again I had.
To I had somewhat justify what was happening.
So you just get up and you continue, you make fun of it, you make a joke of it, your toothless. For four months, everyone's like, are you okay? I'm fine, you know, no tooth. My family being like what is going on? I think I told my mom that I had fallen from my bed and fallen onto an adapter like a plug.
Yep, one of things.
I mean, whether she believed it or not. Because I was also in a home work that was very anti conflict, which I realized is now was because of the way conflict was handled with my father. My mom was never able to have direct conversations, so that ended up being a repeated pattern with me, which is so fascinating because she was still repeating that pattern of avoiding conflict, but I was the embodiment of conflict and repeating my father's pattern.
So it's almost like she had to experience her husband again but through her daughter. And I can't imagine. I speak to her now about it, so open, so beautiful, my mum. I speak to her about it often so that I can really understand her psychological experience at the time. So for me, that's the role alcohol played, and I ended up relapsing seven times, finally got sober in twenty sixteen, at twenty four, and then that's when I started sharing
about sobriety, et cetera. And so twenty sixteen, yes, so nearly nine years nine years this year, congratulations, thank.
You, thank you.
But that's how that's how I've been led to the work that I do, and I think that part of my journey is crucial because I never want people to think that I'm high and mighty speaking about how everyone should be braver in their expression and that it's just been overnight. There is that huge spark that was created by my open letter nearly four years ago now, which is mad, but there was so much leading up to it, and that story that I'm sharing now is a part
of it. Because when I started sharing in twenty sixteen, my work was labeled immediately as advocacy, and in a lot of ways it was. I was sharing my own story. But eventually I started to get curious about the alcohol industry as a whole. I wanted to understand how alcohol was being marketed to women in particular, that's interesting, and I wanted to understand how people of marginalized people and people of working class heritage have a different type of
relationship with alcohol. We view addiction differently when it's with someone that is working class versus someone that is middle to upper class. So my work became very objective quite quickly.
That's when I came across the term self sabotage, and then I realized, oh, there's this thing that happens where we pulled the plug on ourselves when we're actually doing very well, because it meant that I could understand my relapsing more so, a lot of the work that I do now pretty much started from there, but it was labeled active advocacy to begin with, and then activism shortly after that.
And I I really think.
That allowed for me to take my own work very seriously, which is where labels are useful, because people were recognizing it as important work. It was no longer just me sharing my personal story in a kind of sort of like an open journal, which is which it was in the beginning.
But then once you're.
Labeled an activist, you're expected to be an activist in other areas. Right. That's the sort of idea of intersectionality. And again I was okay with that at the time, but then there were expectations for me to talk about sobriety as a black woman, talk about sobriety as an immigrant, talk about sobriety as a left leader woman.
Because in the intersectional universe, you kind of win a prize r.
I have so many I have so many ribbons to wear. But then there's an expectation for you to no longer just speak about something in sort of one uh, sort of in sort of one format, if you will, of exploration. It has to be so many other things. And again this is from twenty sixteen. I was fine with that because I wanted to understand. I wanted to be curious about, Okay, what does addiction actually look like as a Black woman?
Is it different?
Right?
Is it different? Is it?
I think it can be. I think their cultural difference is full stop when it comes to everything. I don't know that it's just confined to as a Black woman because what black were talking about, because Nigerian, Somali, Kenyon very different.
It seems so so lumping together like all black people. Thank you, yes.
But at the time, I think I just started to become more and more entrenched in social justice spaces because of the origins of my work. And I really want to make this clear. I was not forced into it. I wanted to do it. But around twenty eighteen I started to notice the shift.
Actually, in the.
Twenty sixteen it was already intense because of everything that was happening with Trump and the conversation, the kind of politicization of everything, everything. But twenty eighteen is when I started to notice that over the police of language, which was happening externally but also started to happen in my own mind. And I considered myself to be very open minded. I considered myself to be very brave and curious because
of what I'd already been doing. But I started to notice that there were areas that were kind of no go areas you just don't go stay here, but you just don't go there. You don't question anything, certain things to do with race, You don't question certain mantras around, be it silence as violence, or even just the idea that every white person is born racist and they have to go through this process of anti racism. And even just hearing that, to me it was a red flag
because there was something quite religious about it. It almost had this idea of the original sin. And I grew up in fundamentalist religion, not for a long time, but I'm from a Christian culture anyway, but my mother found herself in a sort of cult like so I was familiar with these with these kind of very coercive cult like patterns, the idea of the original sin that you're born as.
Sinner like, so you put you in the perfect position, oh my goodness, to say, wait, what's going on here?
But I couldn't ask that because for me to say, wait, actually, when we say white people, which white people are we talking about? Then it seems as if I'm questioning the movement, right. So again, I in the beginning, it didn't seem like a big deal to kind of keep some things to myself. But gradually, when you start justifying keeping something to yourself, especially when you're truly curious and you don't understand or
that are quite obvious contradictions. We say we want progress, but it's interesting that we're using extremely intolerant tactics, including not asking any questions, right, having a list of people that are so called problematic that you can't listen to. So I'm not allowed to listen to Jordan Peterson, not allowed to listen to Joe Rogan, not allowed to listen
to anyone that is on the right, you know. And I didn't question any of these things, which is what also started to ring alarms for me in twenty twenty, I'm.
Safe though you can listen to Scott baryc Can yeah yeah, yeah, yeah and chill.
And so for me twenty eighteen, I never want people to think that that open letter, which I encourage people to read, that it just happened in a burst in time.
It was very gradual me.
Starting to realize that there are things that I'm not allowed to question, but no one is even telling me explicitly externally. I'm starting to self police and overly self edit in a way that is very unnatural. And by the time twenty twenty came around, it all just took a different turn, and I couldn't unsee the things that I saw because I saw my own intolerance in a
way that was very shocking to the system. I saw my own fear as well, and I'll get I'll get very specific about what I mean, but especially with the conversations around race, all of the fallout after George Floyd's murder, I just realized that I was so afraid of seeing things in a different way because it felt like a betrayal to again, the black community. No specificity as to what black community we're talking about, but essentially every black
person that exists. If I don't quite agree with the.
Just very.
Harsh and intolerant approach that is being taken in terms of getting white people to understand what is happening.
If I push back on that.
That means I'm pushing back against the mission of black people, like a big pressure.
And then I realized that it wasn't just that moment in time.
I had felt this when it came to feminism, that I couldn't have compassion and empathy for men because it would mean that I'm a pick me, or it would mean that I am.
Pick me.
That is a term that is used for women that justify men's behavior because they want to be picked by men, so they side with misogyny. They side with all of these things because they want to be paid gosh. But it's so extreme that you don't even needing to be siding with misogyny. You can just say you have empathy and compassion for men, or that you love your husband, or that you want to cater to him, or that you don't mind being submissive to your partner. So for me,
he's got twenty twenty. And I'd love to know your experience of this, because being in the position that you are not only someone that is visible and very much out there in the world, which means a lot of people have access to you, a lot of people might have demands of you. But you're also a psychologist, which means people might have a certain expectation for you to
comment on things. It was such a I really don't think that we've truly processed the psychological damage that happened to most of us in twenty twenty, not just because of the racial tensions and the suspicion that we suddenly had off each other and this pushing for people to look at everything, everything through a very racialized lens where you're supposed to look for malicious intent in your interactions.
You just said, it's either different lenses on offer in the world, and that's a lens. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I bought into that very rigid, one dimensional way of viewing the world. And I never would have thought that I would buy into that, and I did. And it's important for people to understand that we have so many stories about what we will and will not do, how we will respond with external pressures and group think and what.
But you never know.
I was very humbled by my own intolerance and fear. I was very humbled by my response and demands for people to respond in a very specific way, and my inability to hold nuance. And at this point in time, I was already a developmental coach. I'd been studying self sabotage for a long time. I'd been a researcher for
a long time. So again, all of these titles would make you think you should know better, but I didn't, And that sort of broke me out of this trance and led me to write the letter Why I'm Leaving the Cult of Wakeness, where I essentially made a declaration and owned up to my own intolerance and just really invited us or to question what we're seeing around us.
It did very well, right, I mean it really did.
You got like millions of it exploded.
So it hit the mirror of what a lot of people maybe had been feeling at that point.
Especially the silent majority, especially those people that are very much an embodiment of that thad perspective that I talk about, the people that don't neatly fit into left or right, into into pro or anti into are you woke or anti woke? You know, the majority of people that are just like I am doing my best, but the goalpost keeps on moving. You know.
I'm glad you said that. And okay, if we just pause there a second, let me let me pick up the ball that you just threw at me. So because personally, I don't like these divisions in it, like I would never I'm not woke. I've written this before on Twitter. I'm not woke, but I'm also not anti WORLK. Yes, you know, like I would like the freedom to be able to pick and choose what I want to be
a free thinker. Yes, right, If you put yourself even in the anti woke camp, I feel like that's that limits your free thinking and then you get caught up in this thing where you're no longer allowed to agree with anyone who's so called woke. I mean, there are
some things that so called woke people say. I'm like totally, you know, like they're right, they've got a point, you know, like we should be more mindful and sensitive to some things, you know, like I don't want us to go in the company's obst direction where we become assholes, you know, and we have no sensitivity at all. But I see that sometimes there's like an exact opposite end where they're kind of like assholes. One I might allowed to say.
That thin one, and I think we need to say that more because something that I made. I made a very conscious decision about that in the beginning, when I started talking about a lot of what I talk about now, I knew that it could be so easy for this to end up being a case of I'm leaving the left and going to the right, you know, And I
was never someone that over identified with political leaning. I live by my values and for me actually, as an immigrant, it's not the norm for us to go to another country and tie ourselves with a new political identity because a lot of the time, and this was the case for me and my family, we're leaving environments that lack so much freedom, where you're truly punished for not taking a strong stance, where you don't get a chance to critique your leaders, where you don't get a chance to
being nuanced in your thinking, which is why you have a lot of immigrants, even people that have left the Soviet Union, which wasn't it even a long time ago, that are saying, hey, in the West, we need to stop politicizing the idea of freedom. We need to allow for people to externalize their ideas. We need to allow for people to disagree. You have people saying you don't know what you have, and I'm one of those people. But I was so intentional about not calling everything woke
and not blah blah blah. I use the term wokeness very intentionally my open letter because I needed it to be a trojan horse. I did. I did, And when you read the lesson, I think why it resonated with so many people, especially left leaning people, is that I
spoke about the value in the language of woke. I honored its origins and its beauty, and I also made it very clear that you have bad faith actors who didn't even realize that they're bad faith actors who have hijacked the movement and turned it into an ideological sort of cesspit, which is called wokeness, which I think is
a very different thing. You know, But you will notice in my words and in what I share, I never referred to the woke because I think that's a very self righteous, ineffective positions criticized, it's doing the exact same thing. So you end up that horseshoe theory, right, You end up holding on the exact same thing.
Yeah, you don't want to become the same thing on the other side.
And I see that a lot with the anti words. They're extremely intolerant. They used to humanize language, and they they love cancel culture. If it's happening to the person on the opposite side of the street, they absolutely love it, and they don't even realize it.
Well, they use it for themselves to get a bigger platform, money.
And become caricatures. It's so sad, how with people. There were some people in the beginning of my own awakening and really starting to break out of my own echo chambers who I really admired, who I really saw as people that were very important, But they quickly became caricatures of themselves. And I wouldn't even I wouldn't even be able to sit here now and mention a long list of people that I still admire who are on that side of the street. I can take what I need
and still honor their work. But I think it's people for me like Ayisha. It can be who's a good friend, and Salome who I know we both love, who are just in integrity and they've allowed their voices to truly evolve in a way that is authentic, and they don't play into the device of games. They know that they could, they could take the easy route or sort of again becoming anti woke caricatures and voices, but they decide not to do that because they actually care about unity and
bridging that gap, and they're genuinely curious. But I think it's such a shame when we leave one echo chamber and neatly walk right into another. So that's something that I'm always mindful about in my life.
So wonderful, wonderful. I mean, I see you as a humanistic sister of my world. I mean I stay away from the world again all that, that's just the whole. I don't even why do we need to be in that world like I want to. I'm a humanistic psychologist, as I'm on critic, I am unequivocally like applying universal values, and that's it. I mean, we don't need to put
a label on that other than humanistic. But I consider you, you know, now, I in the humanistic I don't use the word ally that frequently, but I view you as an ally in the humanistic psychology tradition.
Yeah, it's actually why I resonate again and just value and revere you and your work. And I'm so thankful that we get to sit together and talk about this because you get me excited about the work that I do, you know, because it's I can feel your heart and what you do. And I know you've been doing this for a very long time, but I love the Lord. You don't shype, don't look a day over.
A day a thirty one.
I think it's like, yeah, it just validates what we do, and you don't shy away from speaking about the things that are happening culturally, which I you can tell me what you think on this because you're more in that space.
I think a lot of proff healthcare professionals are really terrified of this culture, but I think they are the people we really need to be talking about the intricacies of what it means to be a human being and the psychology of it, and why a lot of the sort of mantras and phrases and positions would take us so simplistic interesting.
You know, I would be careful for people if I if I could give advice to people too, I'd be careful to not have self fulfilling prophecies, and I am very mindful of creating spaces and situations where self fulfilling negative self fulfilling. I'm okay with positive self. But if you even if you even encounter like let's say, you know, someone is like quote woke, and then you're like terrified of them, you're already setting the tone for and they'll
pick up on it. Yes, they'll be like this, this person seems like they're terrified of me, and then they'll respond in kind, and then you'll be like, oh, they're acting like they're terrified of me. And then before you know it, to people are like not liking each other because of the expectations they brought into it. I really am an advocate of fresh eyes, you know, with everyone you meet, you know, just like a little kid, you know, just like wonder and all. I'm wonderful of everyone, like
everyone I meet. Everyone, Like you know, I try not to listen to things. You know, people gossip. They're like, oh, you should talk to the amoration. You know. There are there are people that I know became friends with people like oh, you shouldn't be friends with that person, And I'm like, but why I enjoy talking to them?
Yeah, I really love and appreciate that you say that, because I think it really brings it back to the self. Because sometimes when we speak about these big topics like censorship or cancel, culture, whatever, it can resonate in the moment because we all know intuitively what it looks like and feels like. But I think it feels so big, it's like, where do I even begin with this? But I love to bring it back to this self. And you'll see that I do that a lot in the book.
You do because I want it to feel so manageable.
It really is in a again, like the micro moments, the micro interactions, when you meet someone, instead of leading with filtering them through an identity, so this person is black, this person is this, so they probably can't handle that, you then drown in a world of assumptions and you treat people based on assumption, not even truth. So I think when you allow yourself to be like, huh, I wonder how this person will surprise me, or how will I surprise myself? That's that's what I like.
To contur me. Right, Yeah, but you just said it's also very interesting surprising yourself. What does that mean? Can you double cook on me? Give me a moment when you've surprised you. Yeah.
I even love that language because surprising myself is in moments where I I no longer assume what I can or cannot handle. Okay, I can handle discomfort? Am I able to surprise myself in this moment where someone says something and then I get what I call the initial ouch where I'm like, oh, well, I really don't agree with that. Okay, why would this person say this?
It's all this?
Then I'm I'm like, and then I lean just a little bit, just a little bit in and to be like, Okay, how can I be surprised by this person? Because maybe they're going to follow up with something, But then maybe I could say, ha, why do you think that instead of immediately attack it? Right. I surprise myself by listening to people that I have been told, especially in the earlier days. I've been told this person's evil, problematic, they're bad, they're a biggot. Okay, let me listen for myself. Let
me surprise myself. Can I resonate with even one thing? I can discard the rest. I don't have to agree with every single thing. What's one thing I can surprise myself. I can surprise myself in conversations where even though I feel terrified, I can respond in a way that's a tiny little bit more assertive than I would I don't have an opinion on this, instead of me blindly agreeing or being like scared, because we forget that we're animals, so we emit this smell and energy of I'm terrified.
What if I surprise myself and say, I don't know what I.
Think about that? Yeah, it's so gentle.
Well, I love that approach. I love that approach. You you talk about something in your book that I want to double click on. You talk about the fear of exploration, and I'm a big fan of overcoming that fear.
Yeah, yes, okay, okay, well if since you asked, Since you asked, I wrote a book called Choose Growth with Jordan fine Gold, and the whole book is about choosing exploration versus fear.
So I'm like all about that and uh and we have you know, workbook, exercise and things to help people get outside their comfort zone and do that. So when I saw that in your book, I was like, yes, sister, I call you a sister. That's not incorrect because maybe yeah, I said not. Uh, I didn't say this is the.
Do It's like that thing heavy.
So you're saying you're gonna self censor, You're gonna censor this conversation.
Well that was a joke saying we'll cut it, but we'll see. I love this idea. Fear of exploration. Yes, yes, Please tell me what you're thinking about. How can people overcome that fear? Why do people have that fear?
You know what I to me when I say that, I think it's I mainly want to think about it as don't be afraid to even explore that fear, because a lot of what we're talking about here is it's really uncomfortable. I want to honor the fact that, and I say this in the book, that I'm asking people to do something that is quite a natural introspection and self scrutiny and looking at your own ship, lifting up the carpet and seeing all of these sort of goals.
It's not it's not the norm, and I I want to acknowledge that it's so easy as human beings to externalize. We'll look at what everyone else is doing wrong. How can I stay safe because of what other people are doing or not doing, and that's normal. So I want us to look inward. And I know this is a big, big part of your work that you actually can't change much externally if you're not willing to see what's happening internally. And then to ask yourself, is this working for me or against me?
So to me, fear.
Looking at especially looking at it in the eye, the fear of exploration is actually looking at the fear in and of itself. What am I afraid of? What do I think is going to happen if I speak? And what do I actually even want to say? Because when a lot of people say things like if I speak up, I will lose my job, my kids, my family, I'm.
Like, what do you want to what do you want to say? What are the things?
And then you ask someone and they realize, actually, maybe I don't even have a clear opinion. I just have this feeling that if I speak the truth, I'll be punished for.
It, exactly right. Yeah, I think a lot of people are afraid of shame. We live in a shame don't you think that's it? We live in such a shameby's culture where it's like you know, even you hear the protesters going around saying shame, shame, that's their tactic.
Yeah, and it's so ancient, isn't it, Because it feels like, again, yeah, I'm not even a religious person, but there's something so religious about it, the whole village chanting shame, shame, shame, being publicly stoned. But now we just do it in common sections, right, So I think for me, let's be okay with exploring, you know, the fear. Let's be okay with exploring the discomfort. Let's be okay with seeing where a conversation is going to go without trying to control
its outcome. You know, experience what it looks like to hear a joke that is kind of crude in some way, but a part if you finds it funny. What if you were to lean into that laugh, if it feels like you're you're in a safe space with someone that you know.
You did that today at multiple moments.
Exactly like lean into allow for yourself to be open to whatever feels intuitive.
You know, some of the things we've discussed today.
To me, that's all part of exploration.
What about you, what do you think about what you just said?
Well, generally, the idea or what exploration can look like in this culture that we find ourselves.
Oh, it would just change everything. It would be a game changer if people had social more social curiosity with each other, you know, and and kind of led lead with their social curiosity as opposed to leading with their ideology, leading with their I mean, but but I feel like the more I talk, the more I am kind of preaching to the choir over here, because I found myself nodding in vigorous agreement with so much of your book.
Let me see, I just want to read some quotes from maybe because we're running out of time, so let me read some of my favorite quotes from your book.
By the way that I can'tnot say this again?
That hat?
Can you? Right?
Old time?
Do you think it suits me?
Yes?
Okay, maybe this would be my new hat for the psychology podcast, I think so.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you know.
I tend to I like, I like, you know, being unique with each guest though as well, so that also may be the case, which is this hat might be unique to you.
Yeah, and select other sisters, not us, not as sisters, okay.
Sisters with a hot with a heart. Yes, yes, I feel like it's I can't say sisters, okay, so uh I do I do have people. One of the most common and things on the Psychotic podcast common section is my laugh is about my laugh? Yeah, I can't help it, it'sery.
I feel it in visceralc.
When you like, I'm gonna quote I'm going to quote Africa Brooklyn. When you go of the incessant need to cling on to a single story, you open doors to more interesting conversations, deeper understanding, and greater empathy. Yes, how can people not cling on to a single story so tightly? What does a single story bring them psychologically? Safety?
But it's exactly what we're talking about now that there are those sort of very temporary rewards, right yea of feeling safe, not having to go into the unknown, which again can then bring discomfort. But that single story doesn't allow for you to even see a second, third, fourth, fifth perspective, and it also doesn't allow for you to
meet yourself at a different level. Because if we're going back to that idea of surprising yourself, how can I surprise myself if I'm always clinging to a single story and I never wanted to change because a part of me will always feel like we've outgrown this. We don't really think this anymore. We don't agree with that, but you're suppressing it. I want you to pick when I said earlier about lifting the carpet, and there's sort of gauls looking up at you. They just want to be heard.
To me, that's a useful visual in how we take part of ourselves and we just shove them under the carpet. They just want to be heard. They don't expect you to agree with them all the time. They don't expect you to take them as part of your full time identity, but they want to be heard. Otherwise they become very resentful, they become very frustrated, and they become very lonely because they're discarded in there. So that's how I like to humanize myself. So a single story never actually serves me.
Sometimes it might feel like it does, and you might need it at points in time to create your own sense of safety.
But I don't know that for the.
Rest of your life, as you meet more people, as you have more conversations, as you get older, I don't know that it's useful. Oh, it takes more than it gives.
I love it. Look I enjoyed talking with you so much, and there's so much we could still discuss. You know how much we talked about the third perspective. This I want to end by making it clear to everyone, this whole frameworking out today is what you call the third perspective. We have to make sure we get that in and I'm going to title this episode probably something relating to
the third perspective. Thank you so much for being on the Psychology Podcast and for everything you're bringing to the world. To bring more, I'm co opting you into the humanistic psychology movement.
Please please take me.
I really could say part of part of the brother or sisterhood of humanistic psychology.
It's beautiful. One of my favorite conversations that I've had, and I'm not just saying it. I'm saying that because I feel I feel an expansion within me. I feel validated in my voice and my mission and what I'm doing, and you're someone that I deeply respect.
So thank you.
Thank you,