🧑‍🏫 Cultivating the Courage to ‘Feel Bad’ — Skilfully Navigating Depression with Nick Wignall PhD

Good morning, Good afternoon. Lovely to your faces. Hey Mark. Hey Adrian. Hey. Both Adrian's. Hey, Vincent. William, Jennifer. Hey, Nick. Hey. Hey Spencer. Okay, well as usual we'll start off at three minutes past the hour and in the meantime, if you'd like to share three feelings or three things that you're noticing in your internal state in this moment and three words on this wonderful post, Election day.

Apparently.

Jacob, Jenny and Trevor. Christina. He, Mary Louise, Steph, Katie.

It. Sam. Okay.

Good morning. Welcome everyone. And welcome Nick. It is. It's great to have you here.

Thanks Johnny. I'm excited to be back.

So for those people who are not familiar with you and your work, could you give a little bit brief intro as to your background and like how you came into doing the work that you're doing today?

Sure. I am a clinical psychologist by background in training. So I finished my PhD in around 2015 in clinical psychology and then I worked in private practice for about seven or eight years. I focused primarily on helping folks with anxiety disorders, insomnia, depression. Those are probably the three big ones. And then a few years ago I actually left my clinical practice to co found a consulting firm, a small consulting firm that does kind of leadership consulting for or teams. Leadership teams specifically within bigger organizations. So we work with teams on team effectiveness and well being culture, stuff like that. And then but throughout both of those I have been doing a lot of writing, blogging, podcasting around emotional health and resilience generally trying to take what I know and learn from the clinical and kind of corporate world where I do my work and trying to apply it and translate it into yeah. Everyday life for folks to kind of learn about emotional health and resilience. So that's. Yeah, that's a bit about what I do. I'm currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico where I'm calling in from getting our first snow of the season. So that's exciting.

Same. Same here. Yeah, we've got a fit of fresh powder this morning.

Yeah. So I think that sums up the background a little bit. Anything?

Yeah, no, that's perfect. Well, I'll just share that for. So we had you on last cohort and we kind of did a deep dive into anxiety which was I think a super valuable and fruitful conversation. And so as a jumping off point I thought for today it would be really interesting to explore the other side of the spectrum around kind of depression freeze response. And there's also a post that you. So I love your writing and we'll link to some of your blog posts during the conversation but you wrote a post on cultivating the courage to feel bad or something along those lines. And I think that's like a really, really juicy topic to dive into as well, particularly as we're rounding out the course. This is the fifth and final week of this particular cohort. So, yeah, maybe as like to kind of set context, like, how do you. This is a really hard question to answer, so I apologize. But how do you think about depression? Like, what's your. What's your frame for depression? And knowing that you worked with a lot of clients in the past who experienced clinical depression of various degrees.

Yeah. So I think I approach. There's kind of two principles that I always have in my mind whenever I'm thinking about depression or working with someone with depression, or talking about depression or writing about it. The first one is humility. I think depression is a. Compared to a lot of other issues in the world of emotional health, generally speaking, depression is just complicated and varied. And I don't think we have a very good overall, a very good kind of unifying theory of depression and how it works. And so I just. I try to approach it with a lot of humility. There's a lot of individual difference in terms of how people experience depression. I mean, if you just look at the, like, technically, if you look at kind of the symptoms that can go into qualifying, it's. It's. It's cr. I remember there's this research paper I saw recently that said, like, if you do, like, all the permutations and potential combinations that could lead someone to a depression diagnosis, it's like thousands of different variants of how depression could look. And so to me, that just says we. I mean, we do understand a lot about depression in some ways, and we have some pretty effective ways of helping people work through it. But there's just a lot we don't know, and there's just a lot of individual difference. And this word depression is probably just doing too much work. We're trying to make one term do way too much work. So anyway, so just a little bit of humility is part of how I try to approach depression. The other thing, the other kind of term or idea or principle that I think is really important when you're thinking about depression is trying to think about it functionally. And what I mean by that is in literally every case of depression, from very mild to very severe, that I've ever encountered and worked with someone to really try and understand and help them through depression, the depression has always been functional in some sense. That is it can be seen as it's your mind or your body trying to get you to do something, trying to deal with some issue. It may not be working especially well. That might not be, quote, unquote, the most effective way to respond to whatever the challenge or stressor is. But thinking about depression functionally is really important for a few reasons. You know, we. We can go into this, but for one thing, it's just. It's a much more compassionate way of thinking about it. A lot of people's depression gets way worse because they get super critical and judgmental of the fact that they're depressed.

Yeah.

And that just really.

The compound depression, I think you read.

Yeah, totally. Exactly right. But the other thing is, is that really depression is a response to something. And so if you want to work through your depression, you need to understand what is it a response to? And then how can I address that kind of core need? And so when I talk about thinking about depression functionally, that's that, like, on some level it makes sense. And working through it means trying to understand how it makes sense, and we can get more into that. But what that pushes back against is the view out there that depression is like. It's like catching a virus or something. Like you just get depressed and all of a sudden things are crappy and you need some sort of cure to get rid of it. I've never seen that be the case. It is always functional on some level. And so I'd say those are the two ways I tend to think about depression are sort of in terms of, first of all, humility. It's a complicated thing, and we definitely don't know everything there is to know about it. And I'm always learning things about depression and so staying open. But then also, yeah, function thinking about it functionally.

Yeah. I think so many great points you just made. Maybe like one. One thing I'm curious about is. And maybe these questions kind of tie in, but, like, what are some. You said the word depression, you know, means almost too many things. Like, what might you break that up into if you were to kind of split it up into two, three, four different things? And then could you give some specific examples of ways in which depression may be functional? And I think about this in the same way as other things like anxiety as being like a signpost into something that then gets to be explored, whether it's in the internal world or external world. Yeah.

So in terms of thinking about, you know, different kind of forms of depression, I think it's pretty clear that there are Some people whose depression is, it's essentially kind of a side effect of some sort of physiological illness. Right? So a lot of people have, you know, thyroid dysfunction. And some of the symptoms of thyroid dysfunction are they look and are frankly depressed by any kind of normal definition that we would use thoroughly. So I think that's actually a underrated way of starting to think about depression, especially if it's more kind of on the moderate to severe side, is really. And it's hard to do this because most doctors are not especially nuanced in how they think about depression. But there I would have bet in the future we get a lot more sophisticated at understanding a lot of people's depression being a part of some other sort of more physiological illness or dysfunction that we just don't understand. And so I think that's. Now it could be something really complex and complicated, some obscure disease you've never heard of, but it could also be something like I, you know, I used to see a lot in my practice a lot of people who had a lot of symptoms of depression that I think was almost entirely explained by kind of low level alcoholism. So they were frankly just drinking too much. Not to the point where they thought of themselves as alcoholics or that their life was in shambles or anything like that. But if you are chronically consuming too much alcohol, there's a lot of things that happen directly and indirectly as a result of that that lead to you looking and feeling kind of mild to moderately depressed. Everything from low energy levels, poor sleep, kind of a low level, like hopelessness or lack of optimism about the future. Guilt, another symptom of depression. So that's just an example, but I think, yeah, there's a lot of sort of physiological, kind of body based stuff that can result in what we think of as depression. And whether you want to call that or depression or not, I don't know. Do you want, do you want to have this big umbrella idea that everything that looks like what we think of depression should be called depression? Or do you want to say that's a separate thing than someone who, let's say, has been working in a job they hate, a meaningless job that they hate, where they get no fulfillment and they just sort of feel beat down, like over time, and they're experiencing symptoms of depression primarily as a function of that, should those be considered the same thing because they look the same, or should they be considered very different because the causal mechanisms that lead to them are very different?

Right. I mean, I'm in the latter camp of like, I Think it's very helpful to distinguish because they have very different solutions. Right. And I mean, what just came to mind for me was when I was in. I was like going through fairly intense grief. Someone pointed out that if I'd gone to see a doctor, like the symptoms that I was presenting, I could have been diagnosed with clinical depression.

Right.

But no, like, I was grieving. Like, it was a very normal response to the circumstances. And it didn't. I didn't get stuck there. Like, it didn't stick around forever, but it was like kind of normal phase. And so. So kind of with that, with the lens of the functional, or maybe asking the question of how is this functional? Could you give some examples of maybe things that you saw in which people were able to identify what the depression was maybe pointing to?

Well, your grief example is perfect, but I would just. For a lot of folks, I would expand. And people are aware of this, but some people aren't. That grief can be very. You can experience grief not just because of the loss of a person who's important to you, but grief is really should be better thought of as a. As kind of the natural result of and way to work through any kind of significant loss in your life. So a really big one is work or career. Like, if you lose a really important job, a lot of people don't think of that as the type of thing that prompts grief. And so what happens is you get someone who lost their job, and they come in, they say, I'm depressed because I lost my job, and I get where they're coming from. But I think the better way to conceptualize and start to work through that is that, no, you're grieving as a result of working through your job. And it looks a lot like depression. But to your point, if we want to work through these things, hopefully I think it matters what the cause or the mechanism. Even if the symptoms look the same, the way you tend to work through something is more dependent on what are the mechanisms leading to it. So anyway, grief would be. Would be one example, all sorts of different types of grief. Another one is relationship issues and conflict. I think something I used to see a lot is that people would be, with varying degrees of awareness, they would be in a really bad primary relationship and a really unhealthy relationship. And again, they often had varying levels of how aware they were of how unhealthy that relationship was. But their response to that situation, to feeling stuck in that situation was just to sort of. It's like that freeze response to just Sort of like conserve energy, like deflate, almost like that was how they were responding to. Like they had learned that trying to put more energy into it and trying to fix it and persuade the other person, like that backfired and got worse. But what they learned was, I just need to do the opposite. I need to sort of like. Like deflate, not push things, be super passive. And when you do that, you get. You get a lot of those symptoms of. Of depression. Right. Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, Just to speak to. I think that's a really important point. Could you speak to how that is in many ways like an adaptive response and is often the result, often in conflict. There's like, one side is often like the aggressor who kind of uses anger, and the other side is often or can be the victim, and their response is kind of emotional walls, kind of withdrawing, shutting down. And that has many overlaps with depressive symptoms. Right. But I think it's important to know that that is often present in a dynamic and that it is an adaptive response as well, in some ways, like a protection mechanism.

Yeah. So if you were in a relationship and you believe. And a lot of people have this belief that it is. They don't think it is, like, intellectually true, but functionally they believe I can't end the relationship. Maybe they're religious and they think that it would be a sort of moral failing to leave the relationship. Or maybe they just think my whole life is built up around this person, and it would just be like. It would be so complicated and expensive. Like they can't even comprehend the idea of leaving. So functionally like, that. That's off the table. Leaving's off the table. And then if they've tried changing things, doing things differently, trying to persuade the other person to do things differently, and that has just not worked and even been met with more resistance, more anger, more aggression, then there. There is a. If you think both of those options are off the table, leave or do something different, you're stuck. And you're. So really, the most functional thing you can do, if that is your worldview. Right. Is to conserve energy and just sort of like plain ice. And, you know, it's like the lesser of two evils. Right. So. And that. That is. That's an adaptive response, if that really is the case. Now, a lot of the work I would do with someone in a situation like that is to actually look at. Well, is that really the key? I get that it feels like that or it looks like that, but can we do some work to sort of think differently about the situation and where you are and what you're capable of and hopefully expand their sense of what's possible. But what's key to see is within the current, their current way of thinking. Right. If you take that for granted, then the depression is a perfectly adaptive or functional response to that situation.

Yeah, totally. Any other examples come to mind in the kind of functional category?

Yeah. So another really common one that I see a lot, especially with the type of person I do a lot of work with is this like someone who is like, fairly what I would call kind of high achieving. Generally, they're the type of person, they're probably a knowledge worker. Like, they, they, you know, they're well educated, they're very motivated, they're very smart, and they just work in a, they, they work in a situation where they're essentially just burnt out. They're. They're burnt out, but they're continuing to work and they're overwhelmed, burnt out. They're. They don't necessarily think of it this way, but the level of stress they're under on a regular basis is insane. Like just out of control levels of stress. And depression is a way of. If, if their, if their brain has been watching them under this insane amount of stress and they are not doing anything to change that, they're not willing to do anything to change that. Depression is like their brain, like pulling the E brake and just being like, we're done, like flipping the circuit breakers, like you have to rest and shut down. And so I think you see that pattern a lot where people will work, work, work, work, work, work themselves into a state of just intense overwhelm and burnout. And then because they don't know how to modulate their work, all they have is like this one year of work, super hard or not, they are forced periodically into this, again, their brain. Like pulling the E brake is the way to think about it. Right. And they just get depressed for a while. But then what often happens is they sort of muddle through the depression. But then the way they come out of it is they go right back into the same pattern of just work, work, work. And often they try to work their way out of depression by getting hyperactive and doing tons of stuff and reading all the books and taking all the programs and blah, blah, blah. But that just plays into that original dynamic that led them into it in the first place. And this is where you see like yo, yo depression, where they kind of go up and down and up and down and up and down in and out of depressive episodes. But it's functional in the sense that the. Their brain, not surprisingly, is like, this is unsustainable. This level of stress is unsustainable. You need to stop and rethink things. You can't carry on like this. It's not good for you. And your brain is like, nope, we're done here. We're gonna shut down. We're gonna conserve energy. We're gonna relax, we're gonna whatever. So I think that's. That's. That would be another example of depression being functional, at least on one level. Yep.

Yeah. I think you're describing a huge swath of the working population in that dynamic. And, I mean, that's typically what. It can also be looked at as nervous system dysregulation, where there's only kind of fifth gear available. Or then, like you say, the E brake, which is in polyvagal theory, like dorsal shutdown collapse, where it's like the brain, as you say, forcing that rest for a period of time. So this is great. There's so much here. So one thing that I'm curious about, and I imagine people on the call are also curious about is like, okay, given some of these scenarios, what are some experiments, strategies, ways of, I guess, identifying kind of which of these camps one might be in, and then how to go about addressing or exploring. And I have some thoughts that I want to share here too, but, like, what kind of comes to mind for you?

So almost always when I am working with someone with depression and they. If we kind of successfully get through it, and there's usually this phase of kind of looking back and processing on how it went. Like, 90% of the time, people say something like, you know, I kind of knew it was this, but I didn't want to admit it to myself. Like, I. On some level, I knew this relationship wasn't good. On some level, I knew this, like, way of working was unsustainable. On some level, I knew this, like, habit of, you know, drinking, you know, five glasses of wine every night wasn't good. But I was rationalizing to it to myself. I was. I just didn't want to face it. Right. So I think there's a. It's like a emotional psychological superpower to be able to look for points of resistance in your own life. Things you are. A psychologist would say you're defended against. It's some pain or problem in your life that you are rationalizing or obscuring or kind of. No, no, no. You know, like, trying to avoid looking so, and instead. And this is. This is tough, but learning to kind of switch from, oh, this thing is kind of painful and icky. So I'm gonna, like, go over there, right? To actually turn into that and say, not even, like, what do I need to do about this? But just starting with curiosity of, like, what's going on there? Like, this is this habit of drinking five glasses of wine every night. I didn't used to do that. And I've got all these reasons for why it's okay that I'm telling myself, but, like, I wonder what's going on there. Like, why. Why did I start doing this? Like, what's that about? So. And I like to think of this as, like, inhabiting sort of a mechanistic rather than a moral mindset instead of thinking of it as, like, oh, yeah, this is so bad. I'm drinking five glasses of wine every night. Like, I mean, maybe it is long term, but it's going to be more helpful if you think about it less in good or bad terms and more in terms of what's going on here. What is this doing for me? Again, trying to think functionally. This is doing a job. I don't think the net effect is a benefit. It's probably a cost to me, but. But I'm trying to get some need met by doing this. And so I think, in general, trying to help people be curious about things that are problematic, rather than labeling it as bad and then ignoring it or rationalizing it. So curiosity about pain points, I guess, is the first answer that comes to mind with that question.

Yeah, you're definitely speaking my language. I framed it as, like, courageous curiosity because I think it does take courage to ask some of those questions about patterns which may be serving us in a way and keeping us from feeling a certain emotional sensation which is. Was previously too much to feel or too much to go into. But, yeah, I love that that's been your approach, and that's where you took this. And, you know, in some way, like, I would imagine, I don't want to put words into your former client's mouth, but, like, how many of them would you say were grateful with the hindsight once they'd moved through the depression for that episode? If it got them to look at some of these patterns, behaviors, relationships, jobs that weren't serving them?

Oh, I mean, everybody, on some level, whether they use that language or not. Like, that's. I think that's part of the transformation that comes from not, like, overcoming depression, but sort of working through depression, is that you, when you sort of come out the other side, so to speak, you realize that this, this was not some, like, virus that, like, hit me, that I needed to get rid of some curse that like, the gods bestowed upon me. This was my. This was my mind, my body understanding on, on some intuitive level, things are not going well. We need to do things differently. And I can't get your attention any other way or because of my particular. The way I'm wired, this is how I'm going to tend to do that. But, like, we need to stop and rethink things and do things differently. And in hindsight, that's a hard thing to appreciate in the moment, but in hindsight, if you get through it, people, yes, they look back and they say, like, this was my. My sort of depressed brain, was really my ally. They were trying to help. It goes back to that. That old metaphor of don't shoot the messenger. You know, you got the, like, bill collector comes knocking on your door and you're like, oh, God, the bill collector. You know, I don't know, you get angry at them or you ignore them. Like, I mean, really, it's not the bill collector's fault. Maybe it's. Maybe it's the billing company's fault. Maybe it's your fault for getting it done in the first place. It's definitely not the bill collector's fault. So the part of your brain that's sort of quote unquote, making you depressed, it's don't shoot the messenger. Like, it's. It's trying to help on some level, maybe that maybe being depressed isn't literally the most helpful thing for you to do or stay in that state of forever. But the point is, it's a message and it's trying to get you to sit up and pay attention. And so, yes, that is definitely a mindset that almost everybody in one way or another comes to inhabit afterwards, which I think is really power. And that, by the way. Sorry, one real quick thing, whether they do or not, that is highly predictive of the degree to which they have a recurrent depression or not. In other words, people who do inhabit that mindset, in my experience, are way less likely to have recurrent episodes of depression, whereas people who just sort of get through it, they're like, thank God I'm not depressed anymore. And they're just like, right, off to the races. But don't take. Haven't done the work to really think through what's going on here. They're much more fragile going forward and much more Vulnerable to that happening again. Not because they're catching depression like they would a virus or some kind of cold or something, but because they haven't learned the lesson, something's wrong, something needs to change. And it's only through that learning that you become resilient to that, to the depression going forward.

This is so great. I have a pet theory that I want to run by you, and I don't have any clinical studies to back this up. This is purely based on Breathwork clients that I've worked with and a bunch of anecdotal evidence. But I've seen that for the one on one, Breathwork clients I worked with presented with depression very often. They often had strong inner critics and they were very resistant to any form of expressing anger or setting boundaries. And what I noticed was that when we were able to kind of help them to not equate anger as an inherently bad thing or something that needed to be avoided or repressed or whatever it was, and once they kind of came into contact with that very intense sympathetic energy, that something about that helped them to honestly, fairly magically, depressions would lift after 1, 2, 3 seconds of moving through the anger. And also the kind of intense inner critic also tended to fade at the same time. And so I'm curious if a that was a pattern that you've observed at all. But I do sense that if someone is. Again, this is just my pet theory. If someone is comfortable feeling sadness, then they're more likely to kind of, in times of intense stress, move into the depressive zone versus if they're comfortable with anger, they're more likely to kind of go into the anxiety zone. But is that a pattern that you've observed at all? Have you seen any connection between ability to be with and feel and express anger versus depression?

Yes. So there's a few things in there. The correlation between depression and self criticism or rumination is just sky high. It's such a strong. It's extremely uncommon to find someone who's depressed who doesn't have a pretty intense self critic.

It's almost like I think of it like instead of the ang going out, it's like the anger is like turned around and directed inwards into their own self.

And that's what's counterintuitive is that they won't. If you ask people in their life, you know, is Johnny super angry? They'll be like, no. Johnny's like never angry. And even if you ask Johnny like, are you an angry person? I'm like, no, I'm not. An angry person, but they have this intense internal habit of, of essentially just beating the shit out of themselves and constantly going over mistakes and things that have gone wrong or regrets or things they could have done differently. This like, just intent, like rumination and self criticism are kind of like the two cognitive aspects of that. And I think in some situations that is maintained because to your point, people are not okay with anger. They get angry and they think it's not okay to be angry, it's bad to be angry, whatever. And then to their response to that is criticism, rumination, whatever, which then perpetuates the depression, which makes the depression more, more intense. You see this all the time, actually, in all sorts of other issues. Often the way people cope with anxiety is to worry. So it's interesting, worry leads to anxiety, but actually when people are feeling anxious, they worry because worry gives them a sense of like, control and they feel like they're solving a problem or something. And so in the very short term, yeah, totally, it feels good, but it's a vicious cycle. Long term, it makes you more anxious and then you have more of a need to worry, et cetera. So I think this thing with, with depression and anger and self criticism is very similar. You feel angry or upset about something. Right. You see what you see with sadness too. I think a lot of depression is basically an avoidance of sadness. People are unwilling to accept or tolerate sadness, but they use these cognitive mechanisms like self criticism or rumination because it feels like they're doing something productive.

Yeah. And it allows them to stay in the head and with the story and not drop into the feelings and sensations.

Yep. But then it just perpetuates both the depression and the anger and then you have more of a need for self criticism and rumination. And round and round we go. Another one of these vicious cycles.

Yeah.

So yeah, I think another way to, another way to look at this is I, I, I've never seen someone who's depressed who doesn't have a fundamentally kind of unhealthy relationship with some emotion. It's often anger, but it's also frequently sadness. They don't, they're unwilling to relate to those emotions. They're trying to get rid of them or avoid them somehow. And that dynamic is perpetuating the depression.

Yeah, I would totally agree with that. So maybe that's a nice segue to. I feel like we've fairly comprehensively kind of drawn the territory. Right. We've kind of created this map of depression. Let's say in some of those scenarios that you've painted what might be some experiments for people to run for themselves that might bring some of that curiosity towards and it sounds like maybe just exploring your relationship to anger and sadness is probably a very fruitful place to begin. What are some things that you might offer for people listening?

Yes, well first of all I like the way you phrase that as experiments, not hacks or things to do. But experimenting I think is a really nice way of looking at it both because it gets at this point, let's have some humility here and say like we have to try and figure out what's going on. We don't know for sure what's going on. Just because Nick and Johnny said depression is caused by this, that doesn't necessarily mean that's what's going on in my life. Right. So I'm responsible ultimately for being the scientist or the doctor in my own life and trying to diagnose and understand what's really going on. So I like it from that perspective. I also like it from the self compassion perspective. I'm not the judge or the priest or the like moralist. I'm an experimenter. I'm just trying to understand what's going on and I think that actually leads to a much more compassionate approach to depression. So anyway, kudos. I like, I like that metaphor a lot. So one, one way to think about experimenting is to look at your kind of inner voice and play with it. Be a little skeptical. A lot of us have an inner monologue that we kind of take for granted. So maybe it's self criticism like this voice has been so present for so long that you just assume it's sort of part of you and it couldn't be any other way. And so playing with what if I wasn't so self critical and in really tiny. A lot of people, for instance, a lot of high achieving types of they because they've been super self critical basically their whole lives and because they've achieved and been successful in a variety of levels their whole lives, they assume that those two things are causally related. Because I'm hard on myself, I am successful. When in reality like the first thing you learn in any stats class is like correlation does not equal causation. Right.

This has given me my edge, like I would be useless.

And so an experiment or a hypothesis to sort of test is maybe you are successful despite your self criticism, not because of it. So to really track to run an experiment, what would happen to my productivity if I tried not being as self critical or hard on myself and what would happen? Would things just tank? You know, and you can start small. You could do it in a little situation that's one little report I'm writing or this medium going on or whatever it is, and then gradually kind of build your way up. But what's crucial here is that you are experimenting with new behaviors, not just thinking more about stuff. I think that's really important. This is not an intellectual exercise. It's a behavioral one. Your brain needs to see like, oh, if I do things differently, the outcome might be different.

Yeah, I wonder if there's also a route of like experimenting with the way that you relate to the voice in the head as well. So one of the theories I think has some weight is that the voice in the head is almost like an internalized version of an over critical parent is often very common. And instead of, I love this phrase of like, don't believe everything you think, but you know, instead of kind of cowering to whatever the criticism is and being like, oh yeah, you're right, like I am not very good at this thing. You like, what if you were like, what if you laugh at it? Or what if you're like angry at it? Or what if you just like. I know there's a bunch of different ways that you could write it off. In the same way that if it was like a roommate saying stuff, you wouldn't just like blindly accept everything that this like dickish roommate says to you. You'd probably like have some other approaches or strategies. So yeah, I guess I just wanted to add that, like reframing your relationship to that voice as well as experimenting with specific behaviors is probably helpful.

Yes, I love that. I really dislike this phrase that's become super popular of silencing your inner critic because. Oh my God. But generally people have this very people on a initial kind of curve of sort of emotional growth or self improvement. They realize they've got this inner critic and on some level they realize it's not helping them. They need to do something about it. So the instinct is to get kind of combative with it and to like make it go away or try to get rid of it or point out how it's like wrong and irrational. And, and this comes from my field, like early CBT was very like, look for all the like distorted irrational thinking and then point out how, you know, inaccurate they are and how there's no evidence for it. And every once in a while that works for somebody. But mostly it's really unhelpful. And by far the more constructive approach is Actually to just sort of like let it be there. All right, thanks for your time. I get that this is just, you know, my, you know, mother's voice who was trying to push me. And even then she was just trying to help me out, even though it was really harsh and I didn't like it. But then let it be there and instead focus on what are the other voices that might be going on. There are other voices in there. It's been dominated by this one. This is like the loud, bombastic one that's been used to sort of being this center of attention all the time. But there are other voices in there. And if you want to be less affected by your inner critic, it's usually not about getting rid of or trying to tamp down the inner critic. And instead like going from dictatorship to democracy, you're raising up the other voices. So you're not replacing self criticism with say self compassion. You're just raising the status of the self compassion voice. And so I think that's another way to your point about you're changing your relationship with that. You're not trying to get rid of it, but you're sort of giving it less attention and authority by increasing the authority or attention given to other potential voices. And that's another experiment you can run is like, what happens if I introduce or allow in a new character? And you can literally just play with it. You can be kind of playful, like what are some other. And if you don't, if that sounds too abstract, just literally think about other people in your life. So if the self critical voice is like your overbearing mother from when you were in elementary school, think about your, you know, your best friend from college or your current spouse or your mentor at work or like whatever it is, like bring them into the room. Like how, what would that. If they were an inner voice, how would they sound? And so that's, that's a really, I think, helpful way to start. Yeah. Playing with that problem of the intense inner critic.

Yeah, that's, that's like, I really love that. I want to return to this idea that like underneath a lot of depression is in our theory, unfelt sadness or anger. What do you think about the approach of when, when you notice the inner critic being kind of very loud of like dropping into the body and finding a associated tension or contraction that is often kind of come like arises with that. And when I've done this for myself, there are often it feels like that tension is protecting the place where the anger or sadness is like living in My body. And to me, that feels like a more direct route because at least that's been my experience. Have you played with that in your own life or with clients much at all?

Well, to your credit, Johnny, this is something I was largely pretty ignorant of for a long time, but I'm becoming much more aware of and using more. I mean, with myself personally, but. But with my clients as well, is. Yeah. Tuning into the. Tuning into the body. And I'm still as sort of a scientist experimenter myself. I'm trying to work through what's the active ingredient there. Like why. Why is it helpful? I mean, there's a lot of reasons why it's potentially. Why it's potentially helpful. Like, for one, like a very. A lot of kind of somatic or body. Body work. Part of the reason why I think it's so helpful is it. It just literally disengages that overly intellectual moral approach where we're just kind of critiquing everything in our head. And it just. You just become more mindful and present moment focused. Right. By kind of tuning to the body and being present with what is right and doing that with your body is a very. It's a. It's a. Very. Often it's the most accessible way for people to start being mindful in the broadest sense of the term. Right. Because the body's there and we're used to kind of there. So anyway, I think it works on that level. Right. But then I think also it just works on a lot of what is contributing to depression, anxiety, all sorts of emotional struggles is, if not caused by, certainly exacerbated by stress in the body, tension in the body. And so if you can start to relax that and release some of that, not only is it gonna. I think it's gonna help with the depression or the anxiety or whatever it is, but I think it also opens you up to. To those emotions that. That your body is sort of. Probably because unintentionally we've taught at this. Your body's trying to shield you from these emotions like anger or like sadness. And so what we have to do. I think this is another way to look at sort of a lot of somatic work is you're sort of reprogramming or teaching your brain it's okay to feel these things. You don't have to defend against them. You don't need a stress response to anger. You don't need like the fight or flight system. You don't need that when you're feeling sad. You need it when you're being chased by a bear. But when you're feeling sad, as uncomfortable as that is, there's. Your survival isn't at stake, you know, and so you're. You're. Yeah. You're retraining your brain to learn something new about this sort of distinction between just because it feels bad doesn't mean it is bad. Which I just think is one of the core, like, across any emotional struggle, especially depression. Really getting your brain to learn that and believe that is a huge part of working through something like depression, say, which is that it's so often it's in large part the result of believing it's not okay to feel X. Like, I feel deeply sad about the state of my marriage, say, but for all sorts of reasons, I can't really admit that to myself or it feels too painful or the consequences seem too dire. So I'm going to kind of shield myself from that and scurry around focusing on other things. But working through that initially requires being open to and sort of listening to those emotions which, however painful, are never bad or dangerous.

Yeah. This is a point that I kind of. I find myself returning to over and over again in this course and in these conversations, is that it's actually not the emotion that feels bad, but it's our resistance that creates the suffering and creates the sense of, oh, this is something that I want to avoid. And underneath that, underneath the. Whether it's mental resistance or physical tension, like sadness itself, it feels often beautiful and raw and connecting and opening. And the same with anger as well. It feels powerful. There's a sense of clarity, determination, aliveness. And so I think with all of these, it's like moving through the initial layers using whatever approaches is most helpful, mental or somatic, or ideally both. And then for me, at least once, I connected to the kind of underlying emotion that I had thought was bad and realized, oh, this actually feels great. It was such a. It completely changed my story about what emotions were. And I started to have more curiosity about the resistance because I knew on the other side of that there was usually this sense of, like, oh, my God, this thing that I've actually been looking for was there all along.

Totally. I think it's been my experience that if you ask people about, like, what's. What's an especially painful or difficult emotion in your life, and if they've done some work and they understand, like, yeah, my relationship with sadness is tricky. Like, I really don't like sadness, or maybe it's anxiety. Like, I really don't like feeling anxious. I, I have been shocked to sort of realize there are so many people who I don't really think they know what just feeling sad is. Their entire experience of sadness is feeling guilty about feeling sad or feeling angry about feeling sad, or anxious about feeling sad because their mother was depressed when they grew up and they learned that if you get sad, then you end up getting depressed. And all sorts of terrible things happen when someone's depressed. So they've gone their whole life being hypervigilant to anything even approaching sadness, and as soon as it happens, they're immediately guilty about it or anxious about it or what. So their entire experience of an entire, a whole class of emotions like sadness is. They don't even know what just being sad feels like because it's always compounded with some other threat based emotion.

And to add to that, what I often notice is that their subconscious will appear to create the conditions in their life, to create environments where sadness should or will arise over and over again. Because it's almost like whether it's in relationships or work contexts, it's just a pattern that I notice. And so the intensity of the resistance against it or the avoidance increases until there are like significant challenges, let's say, whether it's depression or ways in which operating the way that they're operating in that moment is not sustainable.

Yes, I think that's spot on. And it just reinforces the idea of. On a really basic level, I think probably so much of what both you and I do in our work, coming at it in Italy from somewhat different angles is like. And it's hard not to sound like cliche or hokey when you talk, but it kind of all comes down to like being aware of and just being willing to feel whatever it is you're feeling without doing anything else, without thinking anything else, without categorizing any other way, without, without anything. Just have it and see what happens. It's hard, right? I don't, it's, it's simple, but it's not easy. Like it's not rocket science, but it is tremendously hard for a lot of people for all sorts of very valid reasons based on how they grew up or what their current situation is or whatever. But it's. Yeah. Like that's so central and core.

Totally. Yeah. I mean, I'm wondering if a bunch of people listening, like, like, fuck you guys. Like, it's not that easy. So, so maybe this is a good point to. Sorry. Yeah.

And again, certainly not easy, but, but also not there, there's this Thing in. In mental health and in psychology. This really, I think, insidious idea that has been perpetuated by my field that anything that's hard must be complex. You go into therapy and, like, you know, your therapist is going to give you all sorts of very convoluted, complex explanations for what. What could be going on. And while that's sometimes the case, there is this very common type of thing that is both very hard and. But that is also not tremendously complex. And so I think having space for that category in your brain is a very important precondition for working through a variety of emotional health struggles. But depression in particular, like, it doesn't have to be complex. It doesn't mean it's easy. Right. It could be very hard. But this mindset that it must also be complex is only making it harder than it needs to be, I think.

Yep, 100% agree. And I think that. I mean, I think that there is, like, a directly proportional relationship between the amount of embodied safety, like internal and external safety, and the capacity to just do that simple thing of feeling the feelings. So for me, I think the work is gradually building up that sense of safety and permission, like, externally and internally.

Totally. And that's partly. I'll just say that's why I'm so excited about a lot of the work you do. The somatic work and even breath work that you do is. I think that is a really interesting and effective way to get people to that point of kind of a core level of safety that they need in order to be able to do some of the more challenging kind of psychological or cognitive work that I so often do with people. It's not the only way, necessarily, but I think having that as a tool in my tool belt is going to be really important. And I didn't at all for a long time. So I think. Yeah, just to reinforce that point about kind of the core sort of sense of safety that you. I don't need necessarily, but it certainly is very helpful for going on to doing more work and working through things.

Totally. Well, this feels like a great time to open up to questions from you guys. If you'd like to raise your virtual hands and fire all manner of questions at. Nick, looks like Trevor has jumped in. What's up, Trevor?

Hey, Nick.

Hey, Trevor.

Hey. Oh, also, shout out to Albuquerque. That's where I grew up.

Yeah. Where are you now?

I'm in Northern Washington, like an hour and a half north of Seattle in Bellingham.

Awesome.

Yeah. So I'm going to ask two questions if you can answer both. Awesome. Or you could pick one.

One is.

So I've kind of had a primary relationship challenge for a couple of years that was very intense. And I've had this like physical symptom that I wonder if it's from this. And I'm wondering if you see this happen with kind of these types of states where I have felt a bit of dizziness. So that's one question. Does it sometimes manifest in physical ways? And then my other question is about like the inner critic. I find that I don't have any sort of inner critic, but I'm very judgmental. It's almost like my inner critic is turned outwards towards other people and very judgmental towards people. So I'm also curious about that if that can be kind of turned upwards.

Yeah, totally. So let me take them in reverse order. So on the. The inner critic being turned out, yes, super common. And actually I think the way to think about this is that there's just, there's just criticism. And for a variety of reasons, some of us sort of learn to turn that inward. And that's sort of our default that we do. I'm not saying people who are. Have inner critics never criticize other people, but that's kind of our mo. But then other people, again, I think of it through a lens of learning. They had learned that over time, whatever in childhood or that turning it outward does something for them. So like a really common one that we all do to some extent is that why do we criticize other people? Well, because when you're saying someone else is bad, you're implying I'm good. When you're saying someone else is dumb, you're implying I'm smart. So criticism is always an ego boost, right? On some level. So I think the way to look at that is not like, oh, I'm such a bad person because I criticize people so much. What's wrong with me that I'm such a critic? It's that again, taking this functional view of no, like my self esteem is a little lacking or I have some sort of I'm insecure about something or I'm worried about something. And there's this old habit I have that probably developed for good reason at some point, but like I feel a little bit better when I'm critical of someone else or something else. The need isn't bad, but there's probably a better way to get that need met. Now I don't have to rely on that old habit to get that same need met. So I Think. Yes, to answer your question, that is super common and that's a little bit about how I would at least start to think about that. If it's something you want to kind of work on.

Is it the same kind of part inside of me that like it. Is the inner critic just turned out or is it different? Just out of curiosity?

Yeah, I would say more often than not what I've seen is that it's. It's basically the same sort of part or character or however you want to describe it. But I've definitely seen people who have. Who seem to have kind of an intense inner critic, but also a kind of outer critic that comes up a lot. And it's helpful for them to think of them and conceptualize them as sort of different. If we're talking about kind of like parts work, ifs stuff, it's like different characters, I think that can be the case and helpful to think about them separately. But it's often basically the same one too.

So.

Sorry, it's not satisfying. Answer. And then the relationship challenge and then dizziness again. Yes, I've definitely seen things like that. So dizziness is a. First of all, I wouldn't want to assume that like, yes, that's a symptom of this relationship conflict. And it's like, I don't know, Dizziness is a super non specific symptom that can come with all sorts of things. Right. But it is a classic sort of symptom or effect of a stress response. Like when you go into fight or flight. Johnny probably knows more about this than I do. But basically your body is prioritizing oxygen blood flow to your extremities so you can fight or flee.

Right.

And it's slightly deprioritizing oxygen blood flow from your brain and your midsection. So that process of kind of resource allocation, blood and oxygen kind of leaving your head can lead to this sense of like lightheadedness or dizziness if you feel threatened. Like if you're in a state like high conflict, stressful state. And for whatever reason, that might just be the most prominent sort of symptom to you of a stress response and you're not. I used to use all the time with people who I worked with about anxiety is that people had like particular profiles of which symptoms of anxiety or stress response were most prominent. So for some people it was dizziness. For some people it was like tingling in their fingertips or toes, knots in your stomach. You know, there's all these kind of effects. I don't like to think of the symptoms necessarily, but they're like effects of your body shifting into sympathetic nervous system response or a fight or flight response. So it's definitely possible that you're experiencing this kind of dizziness because on some level you're having a, like a stress response, a fight or flight response to the perceived threat in the, in the relationship.

Thank you, Nick.

So yeah, yeah, of course. Is that Adrian?

Hello. Hello, Nick. Adrian, just quick question. Coming back to the, to the way you describe, to look at things mechanically and just being curious how it works. I think throughout the years I've noticed that my mechanism of exploring new things, new situations is like I need to force myself through anxiety because I feel like especially when I was a child, I was put in many stressful situations without proper guidance and explanation, just sort of throwing myself in and probably I had panic attacks. I couldn't name them, I didn't know better, but in hindsight I feel it was it. So my coping mechanism is to like force myself, push myself through, through the stress. I see new situations as more complicated than usually are and say my inner voice, sort of, I couldn't even pick a different voice because I don't have like a mental voice in my head because I was lacking that. So maybe a few, few words from, from your perspective, how to deal with that in a healthier way.

Yeah, so I think one of the, one of the things about me is I'm. One of my little pet peeves is I really dislike the idea that's common out there in emotional health of coping skills. So like you get anxious and you need to like open up your tool belt of coping skills and pull one out and like use your coping skills so you can feel less anxious. Part of the reason I don't like that is because it actually reinforces this threat mindset of like there's a problem and I need to like tense up and fix the problem with my coping skill. Even if that coping skill is ostensibly something that would relax you, like doing a deep breathing exercise or positive self talk or something. If you're using it in this tension fueled way as a way to get rid of or avoid something, you're actually just going to reinforce the problem. You're going to get more tense, you're going to get more anxious. So I think the mindset shift there is one of willingness and allowing something to be without feeling like you have to do anything about it. Now this is often very hard for people because like you said in your childhood, a lot of us are not, most of us are not trained how to do this. Right. But if you look at, for instance, people who are really like, like professional speakers or musicians or athletes, they're not really good at getting rid of anxiety. They're good at allowing anxiety to be there and performing anyway in the face of anxiety, they have learned how to do that. They don't get rid of it, they don't not experience it, but they sort of flow through it. They have this like relaxed intensity. Now we can all learn how to be more like that with moments of tension. Whether that's, maybe that's anxiety, maybe it's depression, but this idea of learning to allow it. The key though is you're probably picturing some particular intense situation where I get really anxious, where I have to give talks in front of people or whatever it is. You're thinking of the 8 out of 10 level anxiety situations. The key, like any skill in life, is to spark really small. So if you want to practice being more relaxed in the way you handle stress or anxiety, or you want to practice allowing a different character to come up in your self talk, the key is to find situations where it's relatively easy to do that. Practice small. So find you want to look. And this is, this is a little tricky because you want to find situations where the amount of anxiety is so small that you would probably just ignore it or not even have to deal with it. It's just like a minor blip. And you don't, you don't worry about it. The reframe is yes, technically I don't have to do anything because it's such a small amount of anxiety. But this is actually a really valuable practice opportunity for me to practice this skill of being willing to have anxiety, for instance, and just letting it hang out instead of doing anything about it. Or maybe allowing a more compassionate voice into my self talk. That's super hard if you're not good at it, to do it when you're in like a 9 out of 10 level of anxiety, it's borderline impossible. But if you can practice doing it in two out of 10 situations, you'll get both more competent and more confident so that you can practice doing it in four out of ten situations. And then you can work your way up to being able to allow that more kind of compassionate or willing character to pipe up in the really intense situations. And again, this is how we learn anything in life. And it applies just as much to these sort of emotional psychological skills as anything else. Sorry, that's a bit of a rant. Let me, let me Pause and ask it for is there. Does that make sense or questions clarifications on that?

Well, it definitely does make sense because I realized while we're listening to you that although I'm trying to bring as much awareness to my life as possible, that reaction to new situations was so habitual and I, that was my instinct to see it as a problem to cope with that. I didn't even acknowledge that there is an option of admitting that it's okay to feel anxious, for example. I was just looking for a tool just to, you know, destroy it as soon as possible because I do have the stock to deliver. So.

Yes. Yeah. And that's the, that's the, really, that's the big problem with this, this thing that has kind of infected mental health and emotional health, which is the coping mindset. Because when you, when you stuff people full of coping skills, it trains people to think of any emotional experience as a problem. And the more you start thinking of your emotions as problems, the more they start to feel like problems and the more intense things get. So it's really a, it's a subtle but really important shift is to stop thinking of them as problems that need to be coped with or solved or avoided and instead of thinking them as messages, I have, I, I write a weekly newsletter and it's, the name of the newsletter is called the Friendly Mind, and I call it the Friendly Mind because my approach to all of emotional health is to start thinking of your emotions as friends who are giving you advice. And just like you might have a friend who's a super smart person and they're giving you advice about your relationship. Well, no matter how smart they are, they might not know a lot about relationships. And so you want to be able to hear that advice and either take it or leave it. But in either case, you're not going to get rid of your friend just because they gave you some advice that you didn't like. Right? They're just trying to help. Right? They're giving you advice, they're trying to help. And so whether the advice is helpful or not, or whether you like it or not, you still want to treat the advice giver with respect in a friendly kind of open way. So I think learning to practice doing that with our emotions, ideally practicing the small ones that are easier to deal with and then getting better at being able to do that in high stakes, intense situations.

Right? That's amazing. Now I realize that my automatic response when I was feeling that the emotion is common was no, not again. Amazing. Thank you.

Which is understandable because those emotions are hard, they hurt. And so it's very natural to want to get rid of them. Right. Or to fix them or whatever. So, again, simple. Definitely not easy. Which is why I really recommend the practicing in lower stakes situations before you expect yourself to be able to implement it in the really hard, high stakes ones.

Amazing. Thank you.

Yeah, you bet, Adrian. Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you, Adrian. Anyone else have any questions? I can. I can jump in as well, but I'm curious if anyone else has any curiosities based on some of what we've talked about. Ocean. Yeah.

Hello. Yeah, I think I'm representing quite a few people in the room with this question. And I've heard it both in the chat and from previous sessions that we've run. And it's a bit paradoxical from what the framing you had earlier around, like actually implementing these concepts into your life. And I really enjoy the framing of experimentation and kind of holding the intention to explore emotions in lower stakes environments, et cetera, et cetera. And I think there's also the other side of like, but how, what does that actually look like in practice? How can I start to move through some of these things? And we have so many amazing tools in nsm and I think it would just be helpful maybe to speak to that or brainstorm a little bit, maybe from Jonny's input as well, just to give people a few threads to pull on.

So here's my first take of this. Here's what I would do. First of all, I'd start with whatever the difficult emotion is that you want to start doing. You know, maybe it's anxiety, maybe it's sadness, whatever, or just kind of depression generally. Maybe there's just moments where you get sort of. And what I would do though is I would literally, I just pull out a piece of paper, like a notepad, and I would. I would draw a line and I would label it like 10 at the top and one all the way down. And I would spend some real time brainstorming situations in my life where I feel that emotion, but organizing it by intensity. So I get like sadness. I get overwhelming sadness when I'm in a fight with my partner and she criticizes me for, you know, my work or something. That's just like really triggering for me. That's the most kind of sadness I feel. I get really down, like when I. So that's a 10. And I think of like, what are some other tens? What are some nines? What are some eights, whatever. But then really importantly, what are Some ones, twos and threes. What are some moments in life where I feel just modest? And this is back to Adrian's question, but like little bits of sadness, the type of sadness that you almost don't even realize because it's so brief and you just ignore it and you just go on with your day. Which, which is fine. But those things again, can be considered as practice opportunities for acknowledging and just being with a difficult emotion. So Johnny and I say, oh yeah, just be, be more accepting and willing to have difficult emotions. And you're like, yeah, right. I'm feeling like intense waves of anger or guilt or like, how much would you be with that? Right. It's so overwhelming and intense. Absolutely. It's borderline impossible to do that if you have not trained for it at lower stakes situations. So this skill of really thinking through and being attuned to mild amounts of difficult emotion and using those as practice opportunities for, you know what, Again, whatever skill you want to practice when it comes to difficult emotions, maybe it's allowing a new kind of character in your self talk to pipe up like a more compassionate character rather than self criticism. So you feel a little blip of sadness when you. Or regret, say when you remember that you forgot to pick something up the grocery store. Right. Tiny. Like a 1 out of 10 on the scale of sadness or regret. Right. But you use it as an opportunity to practice and say, okay, like I'm feeling a little bit sad about that, that I forgot to do that. What character ideally would I like to sort of pop up in this situation? What would a kind of compassionate character say in a scenario like that? And it's because it's a 1 out of 10. You can do it. It's not that hard to practice doing that. Or maybe you want to practice just being willing to feel sad. Right. So you say, yes, I am sad. Right. It's okay. I don't like feeling this way, but it's okay. And I'm going to get on with my day despite feeling sad, not trying to get rid of it. So that would be something like emotional validation is a skill I practice a lot. Maybe it's a body approach like Johnny was talking about. I'm going to locate where the sadness feels in my body and try to be aware of any tension that might be present. That's going to be way easier to go through and do when you have a mild to moderate intensity emotion than if you have like a 10 out of 10. So whatever the skill you want to practice, you need to find and Cultivate appropriate practice opportunities for doing those instead of expecting that you should be able to do the 10 out of 10 ones right away. Because you heard this great talk in Johnny's course, right? Nothing in life works that way, including sort of these emotional skills. Like, you have to. You have to practice, and you have to build up slowly. So that's my. That's my take, Johnny. I want to hear what you. I want to hear your take on that one, too.

Yeah. I actually just had an idea for more remembering. So I did this about three years ago. And this is very. It's kind of like the exact same thread of, like, what are some ways to practice some of these, like, feelings, essentially? And I found that assigning yourself as the role of an actor who is tasked to play someone who is feeling sad or. Or who is feeling angry. And this. This can be very practical. Like, you can set a timer for, say, 15, 20 minutes. You can find a song or a playlist that is, like, evocative of that particular emotion. Doesn't you know, it could be any emotion, could be abandonment, could be jealousy. Like, whatever it is, play the music. And then in, let's say, your bedroom, you just begin to assume the role of someone who is feeling that emotion. And what's so great about this is often, I think where we get stuck is when it's like, it's our emotion, or there's a scenario in your life where you're angry at someone, and the fact that you're identifying with that makes it much harder to move through it. It increases the resistance and attention. And so, yeah, just spending 10, 15 minutes, and particularly, I find asking your body of what would be the posture of someone who is angry or who is sad. And just like some people even do this with dance and intuitive movement, but it can literally just be posture. And I find that if I'm in my room and if I curl into the fetal position and play a certain song, I'm gonna start feeling sad. Like, it's just. Like, it just happens. And it's amazing how you can almost, like, in some ways artificially generate some of these emotional responses through music, posture, and maybe even, like, an image in your mind. And what's so great about that is you are completely disconnected from the way in which your identity is tied up with that emotion, which is where a lot of people get hung up. So I would maybe encourage the brave among you to, you know, put 15, 20 minutes on your calendar. Pick an emotion or a feeling that has historically been challenging. Assign yourself the role as an actor, choose a song and then just, like, go into that role and see what comes through.

I love that, Johnny. So there's two things that came up for me when you were talking about that. The first is there's this old but really influential theory in psychology from the 1800s. William James, maybe the most underrated psychologist in all history. Everyone thinks of Freud and Jung and, like, they're great. But William James, rock star, so much, when you read him, and you'll be like, this could have been written, like, five years ago. So good. Anyway, he had this thing with a collaborator called the James Lang Theory of Emotion, which was that we think of it as I feel happy and so I smile. But what they theorized was that you also. You also feel happy because you smile. So you smile, and then the emotion comes after the body response or the behavior. And that is such a powerful concept. So you can literally induce emotion depending on your sort of behavior, in your physical response. So I love that idea of, like, if you want to embrace sadness, right, Curling up in the field position, like putting on sad music, whatever it is, again sounds a little hokey and, like, awkward and strange. But really, if you are committed, if you want to practice and get better at relating to these difficult emotions, like, that's what you have to do. The other thing I want to point out that's really powerful about this recommendation that I love is that no matter what happens after, you do what Johnny just recommended, so you induce a state of whatever you're like, posturing, like you're super angry, or you're curled in the field position, like you're sad. No matter how that goes, whether you think it went well or not, this is still a really productive exercise, psychologically speaking, because what you're doing is you are approaching emotion deliberately instead of just running away from them. The vast majority of the time in life, we are avoiding emotion. So we get a little sad, we get a little anxious. We're like, don't have time for that. I'm, like, moving on to whatever I need to be focusing on. This is not great because we're essentially training our brains that our emotions are bad because we're always running away from them or avoiding them or trying to get rid of them. We're training them to think of them as threats. When you intentionally approach something, including an emotion, you're teaching your brain this thing, however uncomfortable, is safe. It's not a threat. It's not dangerous. So in the future, you are going to be more confident being with that emotion and you will feel less of a need to avoid it or try and get rid of it or cope with it or whatever. So I think what you suggest is really powerful psychologically on that level because it's an approach behavior rather than an avoidance behavior. Anyway, I just wanted to. I love that one.

Yeah. Beautiful ocean. I feel like we can maybe kind of create like an emotional dojo format where we just like cycle through maybe four or five different emotions. Because this feels like very like rich, rich territory. That's.

Yeah, let's keep plotting what I would say on that too, as like you guys are thinking about doing something with this or as people listening or thinking about implementing this. I just want to. And Johnny, I'm pretty sure you're aligned with this, but I would strongly recommend that when you do this, the point is not to induce these emotions so you can think more about them or understand them or analyze them or whatever. That's actually risky because your odds of falling into some sort of unhelpful mental pattern like rumination or worry or those go up. This should be. I think this is purely about experience and just being aware of and being with the emotions. It's not about analyzing them or trying to understand the content of them, or it's about the act of welcoming and being with emotions.

Yeah. Not welcoming, being with emotions.

Yeah.

Maybe Even like challenging yourself to like enjoy them as well. I think that's like. That's like the kind of outrageous, ridiculous, like, you know, you could say, like, how can I enjoy my abandonment? And I'm like, well, try it. Like just to see. Give it a shot.

Yeah. Yeah.

Awesome. This is. This is great. Spencer, what's up?

Awesome. Thanks, Nick. Thanks, Johnny. Question for both you guys. Like, we've talked a lot about the varied emotions and I think a big part of this NSM course been really helpful is kind of like the emotions we own. Understanding more complexity within emotions. But since this was a topic more so about depression, it almost feels to me like that lives on a different plane. Like, it's kind of like the tone or like the lens through which you view the world. And I don't have a ton of history with this, but in the past when I have felt more depressed, it's almost like the world's a little bit like gray and everything's darker and kind of like the lens through which I.

See the world is a little bit different.

And that doesn't necessarily fit on this emotional wheel. It almost fits in like a depression to optimism, like a separate scale, if you will. And I know at the beginning we talked like there are a lot of different causes of depression. There are a lot of reasons people get into depression. But I'm curious about like modulating on that scale and when you do notice or recognize that you're in depression, oftentimes you're like dysregulated or you're not in a state to like you're not the most rational typically, at least in my experience in those moments. What are some ways to modulate on that scale? Like the lens through which you view the world as opposed to that wheel of emotions and shifting from anger or anxiety to happiness that almost feels a little bit separate from depression to optimism.

Johnny, you want to take that or. I've got some thoughts.

Yeah, I'll take a crack at that. So I actually think that and this is again my kind of half baked theory based on what I've seen and based on my experience. But I view anxiety and depression as actually not being kind of foundational emotions, but more of like how we relate to our emotional experience. And I'll actually, I'll just share like a little a screen. Do a quick screen share. This is something that I'm like working on. I'd love your guys feedback on this. It's by no means refined portion of screen. Here we go. Okay, so basically like can you guys see the screen? Yeah. Okay, so I'm like imagine the scale. On one end there's constricted closed fist and the other is open palm. You can kind of. I'll skip these first two, but this is kind of the slide, which I think is the way that I view this. So we have kind of sympathetic activation on the Y axis and then on the X axis it's like, I'm like on the left hand side I'm very tense. The right hand side I'm very open. When we tense against our experience, I think we can either do that with sympathetic activation or with parasympathetic activation. If we do it with parasympathetic activation, this is in large part I think just based on the conditioning of how we were raised, then the protective reactive response is the kind of collapse, shutdown, lethargy and depression. If we do it with sympathetic activation, the tensing against creates panic, overwhelm, anxiety, frustration. And then on the other end of the spectrum, to the degree that we can fully welcome, accept and surrender into the full spectrum of our emotional experience, then we experience top right is rapture or bliss, love, joy. And then that low tension kind of high presence, relaxed accepting state. In the parasympathetic creates this sense of deep equanimity, contentment, the sense of nothing needs to be changed, everything is kind of perfect. And so that's kind of like the map that I have. But I do think that for me it's helpful to distinguish depression and anxiety as responses to underlying emotions as opposed to emotions themselves, which goes against a lot of mainstream emotional theory. I'm well aware. And I don't have a PhD, so I don't really have the right to say this kind of stuff, but that's just like the map that I have that I find helpful.

Yeah, I personally, I would not call depression an emotion either. Depression is definitely not an emotion. There's all sorts of emotions that go along with depression. Johnny, can you talk a little bit more about this? Like you're the presence dimension? I'm really intrigued. Just like, what do you mean exactly by what does like low versus high presence look like?

Totally. Totally. So what I see is, is when we are in one of those two reactive states, whether it's anxiety or depression, there's often a. We're not fully with our own experience and many people will, will say, you know, either fully disassociated or. Some people talk about having like. It's almost like there's like a, a plastic or like glass plane between themselves and their lives. And there's this kind of subtle sense of like, I'm not really in my life or fully in my body. And that applies often when someone's really angry or when someone is in like a sense of depression. And so I view that as being like another aspect of the way in which we're tensing against our experience. And I do think there was a little thread in the chat here around Mike Johnson's research that there is a correlation here and literal physical tension in the smooth muscle tissue stored as latches, which creates some of these experiences of I don't really feel like I'm in my experience. And then on the other side, when you feel fully open, surrendered and accepting of emotions, there's a sense of like, I'm so here, like I'm so present, I'm so with this. And life almost feels more real. It's like high definition to some degree.

Yes. So I, I really like it, Johnny, because it definitely jives with my experience of depression. Working with folks with depression, which is that it's. They so often there's. It's either intense rumination and self criticism and this like almost violent kind of self talk about how terrible I am or how awful the world is and all that kind of stuff. Or it's like numbness. It's the sense of just being totally detached. It's not even any there emotion there. It's not sadness, it's not joy, it's not even anger. It's just kind of blank numbness. I think the key is to realize both of those things functionally are doing the same thing. They're low presence. You're not connected with yourself or your life when you're in either of those states, when you're numbed out or when you're kind of like ruminating intensely now on the numbness one. I think though what's interesting about this is that often a tendency in depression is to sort of isolate or curl up, right? You kind of go within, you stop doing. A lot of the, you know, core symbol of depression is I don't enjoy the things I used to enjoy. Like things I normally enjoy. I just don't get any satisfaction. Or I actually think that's secondary to the behavioral tendency to withdraw from things you normally enjoy. Why don't you enjoy spending time with your friends as much? It's you, you withdraw from social connection and then end up feeling even more isolated and disconnected as a result of that. So, so often what's helpful with depression, especially this version or when you're in the state that's very kind of numbed, everything sort of murky and gray and numbed out, is regardless of how you feel, to find ways to reconnect whether it feels good or not. And in your language, Johnny, that might be to be more present. It could be with yourself and with your own body. It could be socially, it could be with friends. That's a big one. I used to see one of like getting people to re engage socially even though they didn't want to, even though it felt awful, they didn't want to burden people with their, you know, I'm like Eeyore, why should I go to a party or hang out with people or whatever. But, but this is part of relating well to your emotions. Part of relating well to your emotions. It's not just listening to your emotions all the time. A part of relating your emotions is having good boundaries with your emotions. There are plenty of times when your emotions are pushing you to one thing, like don't go out, don't do anything. You're super depressed, just like. And you need to listen to that advice and then not take it sometimes. There are plenty of times where you need to be able to say you know what emotion? I appreciate you. I know you just have my best interests at heart, but I actually don't think that's going to be helpful. And so I'm going to go do X instead. And what I found especially, and this is Spencer, sorry, back, back to your original point, but with this kind of numbness, lack of optimism, kind of disconnected thing. I think the key is to plug yourself into presence or experience. Even though it doesn't feel right. Your, your feelings are kind of pushing you towards constrict, isolate, shut off. Right. But finding ways very, in very small ways at first, but to plug back into activities that are, that connect you, that lead to presence, that are energy, giving and trust that the feeling will follow from the behavior.

Yeah, I think it's easy. I think that all makes sense. I think it's really easy though when you. And for me it's like very temporary and it's only happened a couple times in my life, but it's like brief and it'll be like a 45 minute, like I feel crushed and then I need to like get out and then like reconnect. But then there's this like looming fear afterwards of dipping back into it. And so I guess that's where I was wondering like. And I think you've both given some like great examples of like how to get back out of it. But it almost becomes associated with this fear of getting back to this like dark, sad, rejection of the world type place in the aftermath of having like reemerged from it. So I guess I was just curious like that modulation. But yeah, that was helpful. Thank you both.

Something, something I used to do with my depressed clients, especially clients who were kind of on the other side and were interested in maintenance and prevention is something I called scheduled sadness. Which is where. What I found is a lot of what made a lot of people vulnerable to recurrent depression was essentially they had like a depression phobia. They were like anxious about getting depressed again, which led to a lot of avoidance of anything they associated with depression, including and especially sadness. So they started avoiding anything that might lead to people that might make them sad, situations where they might fail and therefore experience regardless regret or sadness or whatever. So the, the idea is to, you need to inoculate yourself to that. You need to build the confidence that I can get sad, I can experience something difficult, regret, sadness, whatever it is. And that, that doesn't mean I'm going to fall into a spiral of depression. And so scheduled sadness is just this very simple exercise of making Time deliberately to think about sadness, things that are sad. You sit down with a piece of paper and you write about things that make you feel sad. This is kind of. It's like the cognitive version of Johnny's earlier exercise about like play acting. Different emotions. But. But the key ingredient here is that you are approaching sadness. And by doing that you're teaching your brain that it's safe, not dangerous, which is confidence building in the long run, which means you're going to be more resilient to it in the future. And then the more evidence you accumulate that I can be sad without falling into depression, the, the. The more that kind of phobia will fall away.

Yeah, that, that strikes home. That's awesome. Thank you.

Nice. I. Yeah, I just, I just add like, I love that as well. I think we're thinking on very similar lines. But like if you imagine that, you know the fear of going into that place that you were in before, like see that as like an abyss and be like, what if I was to just jump into that? What if you just dive head in, you're kind of diving into a swimming pool or something and see what happens. Because I agree with Nick that the way in which we're orienting towards it and if you're the one that's deliberately moving into completely changes the texture of the experience. And I think you'll be very surprised by what the actual experience is as opposed to what you'd projected it would be like being like sucked back into that.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Both sweet.

Thank you, Spencer.

Thank you. Nick. Do you have time for a brief question from Trevor or.

Yeah, yeah, I gotta hop in a few minutes, but I can. I could definitely take another one.

Yeah, super quick. It was actually for Spencer's benefit because it. I was lucky to be in the last NSM because I remembered you talking about scheduled sadness. And I thought the actual logistics of scheduled sadness were actually quite helpful and important because you had mentioned if you do it on a daily and then for a constrained period of time, could you kind of give us those logistics both as a reminder for me and for Spencer?

Yeah, so if you. It's actually based on this exercise called scheduled worry, which is for anxiety. And the idea is you deliberately approach worry, which is a driver of anxiety and you become less afraid of worrying anxiety. And so it tends to lower chronic anxiety long term. It's actually. It's the best. It's like my favorite exercise in all of emotional health. It's so. It just works so well. So anyway, if you want to Get a. It's basically taking that protocol or that exercise, but just applying it to sadness. Because the underlying mechanism, again is the same. It's about approach rather than avoidance. People. People worry about their anxiety and about their worry to try and avoid their worry and anxiety, which just makes them more anxious and worried. Right. Similarly, people often fall into depression because they're so avoidant of certain emotions like sadness. So if you schedule and you got. You all can get there. Scheduledworry.com is like a little mini site that I maintain that has the protocol for the version of anxiety, but it's literally exactly the same. You just do it with sadness. So in brief, it's. You find, you know, 10 minutes every day. It helps to have the same time every day. You set a timer on your phone, you get out a pad of paper, and you just start listing your. Your anything that makes you sad. Right. This is for scheduled sadness. Anything that's sad, it could be a memory from the past. It could be something that happened today. Whatever it is, you are not. It's not about the content of these things. You are just putting them on paper. You're transcribing moments of sadness onto your paper. Could be things you're worried about, feeling sad about anything. Get them out. And then once your timer on your phone goes off after 10 minutes, you stop, crumple the paper up and you throw it away. And then you come back to it to the next day, and you do that day after day. A couple weeks to 30 days is usually like that. That's the really effective dose. But again, the point is not to analyze your sadness or think about the content of your sadness. The point is to change your relationship to sadness. And this is one way to practice approaching sadness rather than avoiding it. And teaching your brain sadness is okay, even though it feels bad, which ultimately is what makes you much more confident and resilient to that in the future. Thanks, Nick. Yeah.

Yeah. Amazing. All right, well, Nick, dude, thank you so much. This was another just like banger of a session.

Thank you, John.

You guys listening? I've just posted Nick's YouTube and his newsletter in the chat. Both are phenomenal resources. I think you have some of the best writing online about emotional health and about some of this stuff. You make me want to write more. I feel like I'm lazy. From a kind of creation point of view, shipping these great essays and videos every week. But yeah, would highly recommend folks check out the YouTube and your newsletter and the articles. Any parting words or anything you'd like to share before we end here.

No, just, I. Yeah. Thanks to you, Johnny. Like, I alluded to earlier, like, I'm learning a ton for you, so I'm kind of. I'm excited for all your students who are getting to pick your brain and learn this approach. And, yeah, I think there are. I think culturally, we are much more aware of emotional health and the importance it plays in our lives, but as that awareness has grown, there's just a lot of not so helpful stuff out there that can be very. Like, I talked about the coping skills stuff.

Yeah.

So, anyway, it's just. It's nice to be around, like. And all of your students that I've interacted with have been very thoughtful, and so it's just. That's just encouraging. So I appreciate the opportunity to chat, and hopefully it's been helpful, and maybe I'll be back in another cohort.

Amazing. Yeah, I feel like maybe we should do a video or something together of, like, common things that we hear in the mainstream that we hope would die. Like, like, the coping skills. I have the same kind of, like, annoyance and frustration around a lot of just managing stuff, but, yeah, dude, thank you so much. It's been amazing. Good luck with the move. Enjoy the snow, and. Yeah, take care. All right, everyone.

Thanks, everyone.

Thank you.

Say thank you, Nick.

Thank you, Nick. You bet. Thank you all. All right, take care.