177 Dr. Cortney Warren - Honest Liars: The Psychology of Self-Deception

I always think that the world gives you information about yourself, no matter what the situation is. And we all, as humans will live through some very painful life experiences. It's going to happen. Bad things happen to great people. Your reality is this. This external tragedy happened. This catastrophic event happened. Now who. Who do I want to be? How am I going to respond to this? In a way that leaves me feeling good about who I am and the life that I'm going to live? Because there are many times where we can't change external circumstances or people. Until you can come to a place where you say, this is the reality today, how am I going to embrace this reality today in a way where I feel good about myself? That's the question you need to focus on.

That's Dr. Courtney Warren, and this is episode 177 of Wellness Force Radio. What's up, my friend? It's your host, Josh Trent. And welcome back to another episode for your weekly access to global experts in all things wellness as we discover the physical and emotional intelligence we need to live life.

Well, in this podcast, we're talking about.

A really dirty word.

Everybody does it. No one likes to talk about it.

And it's lies, white lies, big lies, untruths, and sometimes just straight up bullshit. Yes, the research is showing us that human beings actually start lying around the age of two. And much of that similar research points to 60% of all spoken words throughout the day by adults are actually lies. Now, we don't have to freak out about this, but we do get to talk about this. How lying and self deception has a direct impact on our emotional intelligence, stress, interpersonal relationships, and essentially our energy levels and body composition. This clear connection of our thoughts, feelings and actions to the way that we eat, move and sleep could not be more clear in 2018. And we're diving deep into the psychology of self deception with Dr. Courtney Warren. Dr. Warren has been studying self deception for many years, and her groundbreaking TEDx talk, Honest the Psychology of Self Deception, was actually the reason she's on the show today. Now, the opposite of a lie is the truth. And the truth is that in any moment, if you can choose to take a breath, you can choose how to respond instead of react to the multitudes of stress that's thrown at you, most likely every day. And that moment of truth comes to you by breathing. So this is your breath break. Take a deep breath. You're right on time. Today is the best time to focus on your breathing and your eating and how they relate to your energy. So check this out Organifi, our show sponsor. They partnered with Wellness force back in 2017 and in 2018. This month we're doing another free giveaway. You can get 60 days of green juice delivered to your house. All you have to do is leave a review for the Wellness Force podcast.

By tapping on your show artwork right.

Now on your phone or heading over to wellness. And if you don't win, don't worry, you still get your big discount. 20% off over@organifishop.com just use code wellnessforce to save 20% off your entire cart of the green juice. And so much more over@organifishop.com now what's most interesting about this conversation coming up is that lying isn't really a new concept. But with Dr. Warren's work in clinical psychology, we're growing our intelligence around unhealthy eating behaviors, negative body image, the monkey mind, and how, how we can do the real work of letting go of these beliefs and self deception that we've learned that's actually holding us back. In the end, the truth is always undefeated. It might not come out today or even tomorrow or even this year, but eventually there's no hiding from it. Because when we lay down at night with our head on the pillow, we know what's true and what's a lie. This conversation is for anyone interested in becoming more honest. And as Dr. Courtney says, there's no escaping yourself. Wherever you go, there you are. Everything in life is an opportunity for you to understand yourself. Stop pointing the finger at other people and look in the mirror. That's life. That's how we evolve. Let's step into this compelling and honest conversation with Dr. Courtney Warren.

This is Josh Trent. We are live with Dr. Courtney Warren. Courtney, thank you so much for having us at your home here in Santa Barbara.

Yes, thank you for joining me.

You know, it's funny, I have taken a lot of inventories. We talk on the podcast a lot about emotional inventory, emotional intelligence, what it is to truly be intelligent. But when I came across your TEDx talk, honest the Psychology of Self Deception, it was actually from our co host, Ms. Ali Waddell. So we're gonna give thanks to her for you. And I actually sitting here just finding this talk, it hit me on so many different levels. I love that a lot of people know you from this TED Talk. So many views, so much attention about this, but just tell people in a few sentences kind of who you are and what you're all about.

Yeah, well, I'm a clinical psychologist, so that means I specialize in mental health and mental illness. And there has been a lot of conversation about self deception and lying in the media recently because of political events, because of ongoings, and because as human beings, I think it's one of the fundamental realities that we struggle with. All of us lie to ourselves. And what I mean by that is you either can't admit something that's true because it's too painful, or you completely believe something that's false. And when you live in a reality where you can't acknowledge the truth, you're going to play out the dysfunction of your lies everywhere you go. And so that is a lot of what I talk about.

Yes. And the honest liars, it's a bit of a dichotomy, these words. It's like honest liars. What do you mean by that? I know it's at the end of your TEDx talk, but I want you to tell us what that actually means in your mind, after it's been, you know, a year or so after the talk has been completed or more.

So what I mean by that is that self deception literally means you are lying to yourself. And because of that, you think you're being honest, you think you're telling yourself the truth, but it's all a lie. And so it isn't the same as bold face lying where you're saying something that you know is untrue and you're spreading those lies. This is a situation where you actually believe you're being honest and it's all bs.

This is why I'm excited to talk with you about this today. And I actually want to tee us off here on your website. There is a quote from Sigmund Freud. Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.

Yes.

Why did you put that on your website?

Well, I love Sigmund Freud, actually. Even though I'm a cognitive behavioral person in general, the way that I do psychotherapy, Freud revolutionized the way that we see human nature in an essence. Psychology is the study of human nature. It's the study of who we are, what makes us uniquely human. And the reality is that if you don't deal with who you are and look in the mirror, truly look in the mirror at who you are, how you act, how you feel, it's going to manifest all over your life in very, very dysfunctional ways. And so that quote by Freud just exemplifies that for me.

I almost heard something, an echo of this from Jacqueline where he talked about you know, your body and your health is a bank account. If you don't deal with it, it's going to come back later with interest. And I feel like it's the same thing with emotions. You know, I spend the first 10 years of my life experiencing and learning what I think reality is, and then I spend the rest of my adult life actually learning what reality is. What are your thoughts about that paradigm?

I think that life is a journey and the learning never ends. And what we strive for as humans is to be as honest with ourselves given the information that we have today. And that as you go through your life, when that information changes, you shift your reality. And that that's really as good as it's going to get. The times when I worry most about people, or the times when you will end up in my office and we will have those really painful, you're in a fetal position moments, those times in your life where you feel like you're drowning and you're in a black hole. Oftentimes it's because you have lived your life and come to a place where you see how you lied to yourself and it's now full frontal in your face and you're confronted with a choice. Are you going to stay the same because it costs a lot to change, or are you going to do something differently? And the biggest predictor of change is misery. So when do I know someone's most likely to change? When they can't stand living their life the way it is today. And that is when people will say, you're right, I have to live my life differently because this is not fulfilling.

It's this deep, dark contrast that, you know, happens for us. This is this mindset of like, oh, my gosh, these things happen to us. This moment for some people where they have a loved one that they lose or they get in a major car crash or an injury or whatever it is. It can be a phase of teetering and tottering and figuring out what the hell is going on. When these events happen for us, a lot of times it's how people respond to these cataclysmic events. How do you describe the mindset when somebody's going through a crazy threshold, like losing someone they love? How does that relate to how they see the world after that? What's a healthy way that someone can rebound and actually tell themselves the truth, that that event was neutral and it happened for them to learn something and that they don't have to be a victim?

I always think that the world gives you information about yourself. No matter what the situation is. And we all, as humans will live through some very painful life experiences. It's going to happen. Bad things happen to great people regularly. So your reality is this. This external tragedy happened, this catastrophic event happened. Now who do I want to be? How am I going to respond to this? In a way that leaves me feeling good about who I am and the life that I'm going to live? Because there are many times where we can't change external circumstances or people. I see people try to do it all the time. Oh, I'm going to change. I'll be happier if my spouse is this way. I'll be happier when I make $10,000.

A year more when my body looks.

A certain way, when I'm five pounds lighter than my will be perfect. And that is a lie. All of those are lies. Until you can come to a place where you say, this is the reality today. How am I going to embrace this reality today in a way where I feel good about myself? That's the question you need to focus on as a person.

This is a learning curve, and you've sharpened this awareness over decades. So your parents were college professors themselves?

Yes.

How did that shape the way that you can approach this emotional intelligence, this really radical emotional intelligence that the world gets to have right now, this deeper inventory? What was that like for you as a young lady growing up in that environment?

I think having academic parents helped me formulate critical thinking about realities that people accepted as fact probably more than anything else. Because as university professors or when you're in an academic environment, the reality is that it encourages thinking, critical thinking, which is a brilliant need that we have seriously diminished in our culture. People accept fact that they hear wherever without analyzing it as where. Where are the data. Why do you believe that's true? Think about it before you accept it as truth. Please think about it, please, and analyze it for yourself. So my parents very much fostered that in me, and that helps me to analyze not only myself, but everyone around me.

It's interesting too, because I think about my upbringing where my environment was not necessarily conducive to having the highest level of psychological tools, you know, details about diet and nutrition for people that maybe didn't have. I know where someone's going right now, listening or watching. I didn't have parents that taught me the right way. How do they course correct there? Do they have to go to talk therapy? What is it really about course correction? And re seeing that from. I'm not actually that person back then. I'm Me, now, in this moment.

Well, I always think therapy is a gift. I believe that therapy is indicative of you being brave and you being willing to look at yourself on a deeper, more internal level. And that takes a tremendous amount of courage because it's much easier to try to avoid it. Much easier. So if anyone listening is interested in understanding themselves more deeply, please find a great psychotherapist. It's a gift for you, for yourself. It's the only relationship you're ever gonna have that exists just for you, period.

It's interesting, conflict avoidance. I know for a lot of people, even allowing themselves to feel anger, feel sadness, it's just not allowed because their paradigm, when they were growing up, their parents never fought in front of them, or maybe their parents fought too much. And so the child then thinks, I will never be like them. So I will never allow myself to go to a space where I feel anger, where I feel sadness, where I feel these emotions. That can be extremely challenging as an adult because in order to be intimate relationship, those feelings must be felt. How do we approach this?

So the first area in which I would recommend people start looking at who they really are and how they got to be this way is early childhood learning. Because we are all so foundationally affected by our early childhood environment. Our parents, our siblings, our school, our country of origin, our language. And as an adult, when you recognize a pattern in yourself, an emotion in yourself that feels reactive, that feels like, oh, I'm having this feeling and I don't want to feel it. Or maybe I'm having this feeling, it's really huge. Like I'm having this argument with my partner and my reaction seems really over the top, given the current situation. I want you to pause, I want you to stop, I want you to take yourself out of that situation and say, what does this reaction say about me? And then go further and say, and where does this come from? What did I learn that is triggering this response in my behavior and my emotion? And that's how you will start to really see who you are at a much deeper level.

For the men watching, listening, they approach emotions a lot differently in my experience than the women. How do men approach feeling sadness, feeling anger? In your clinical experience compared to the women that you've worked with, what's a common thread that comes up for the men and how they approach feeling emotions compared to women?

It's certainly very diverse. It really depends. But culturally, it is so much more acceptable for women to express emotion in kind of erratic, chaotic ways. Right. So seeing kind of the Quote, unquote, crazy girlfriend who is, is out there and reacting and fighting and having these ridiculous mood swings seems somehow appropriate. Whereas for a man, that seems very inappropriate. And so we learn culturally, depending on where you grew up, what is appropriate and makes you valuable as a man or as a woman. And for a man in this cultural context, in mainstream US White culture, the ideal man is strong, non emotional, makes a lot of money and is academically rigorous, has a high iq. And so if that's true, then he shouldn't be really reactive or even really emotional. And certainly don't show emotion to your male friends, because that would seem very strange. Right? You're going to be accused of being homosexual or you're going to be accused of things that are actually completely false. So analyzing those cultural messages for yourself and saying, well, wait a minute, that's ridiculous. I am a human being who has emotions and needs to learn to express those emotions in respectful ways to myself and other people in my life. To actually develop intimacy means that I have to share how I feel, and it means that I have to acknowledge how I feel, and it means that I have to figure out what's appropriate and not appropriate about what I feel.

These feelings are so challenging sometimes though. And I know you have firsthand experience and look, we all do. There's going to be multiple things that we move through in life. The learning will always continue. Right. It's a continuum, up and down, peaks and valleys. You went through tenure, you were a professor, you had incredible knowledge, and then one day you're like, you know what? This isn't for me. Yeah, I don't want to lie to myself anymore. Tell us about that. Because most people would be like, courtney, you crazy? Why'd you leave that situation?

Yes. In fact, I think most professionals that I knew were shocked and said pretty much exactly like, what are you doing? What do you mean you're quitting? And I love academia and I love psychology, certainly. But I came to a point in my life, I had just had my first child and I was spending the large majority of my time writing grants, publishing peer reviewed empirical journal articles for other PhD MDs that would almost never actually reach the general public in my office. And I asked myself, well, if I'm doing this in 15 years, am I going to look back and be grateful? Is this the experience that I want to have in my life? And the answer was, no, I don't. I actually don't want to do this anymore at all. I enjoy teaching, I enjoy working with people, I enjoy speaking but so much of my time is spent doing things that really aren't in me anymore. And to be perfectly honest, a lot of it was to live up to an expectation that I had that I should be like my parents, as successful as they were. And because I was fed the message that that makes you the best in your field. You know who's the best psychologist in your field? The tenured faculty.

Yeah.

And when I realized that that was my motivation at some unconscious level that I can't say that I knew going into it, but at that point I could say, wow, something about that led me down this path. And now that I acknowledge it, I have to decide if those are good reasons to stay.

Why do they get stuck though? What made you take that inventory and say, you know what? I've developed the psychological strength to make the change. How do people grow the psychological strength to cross an incredible chasm between comfort and kind of like spiritual decay?

Huge.

Or facing the unknown and spiritual growth?

I think it's terrifying. I think change is hard for people in general. And I think making a huge, dramatic shift in your life is, is terrifying because it's so based in your identity. And that's probably the hardest part about making a change like that. Me retiring from, from my entire career and picking something else, or you quitting your job and trying something else. It's not just a job, it's who am I now? It's your identity, it's your identity. It's, well, now what, what does this mean for me? What am I going to do moving forward? How am I going to support myself? There are practical fears, there are identity based fears. So how do people come to. I think the hardest psychological experience that I see in patients that I treat to overcome is regret, truly. Because when you regret something in your past, you can't change it anymore. It's too late. You can move forward today and that's wonderful and that's all we have. So we start there. But if you've made choices in your past that had dramatically negative influences on your life or that leave you vapid and empty, I can't fix that for you. I can only help you deal with the grief now. And if you think you're going to be in that position where you're looking at yourself and you're looking at your life and you're going to say, I knew better, I did not want to do this, I was miserable. This was not the life I envisioned for myself. Then you have to change or you have to get comfortable with the fact that you're going to stay the same and don't come into my office and think you're gonna complain to me for a year about how much your life sucks.

I think about this when Gay Hendricks talked about the upper limits, you know, having an addiction almost to the pain, even if the identity is pushing us in that pain area. What are your thoughts around people that can actually become neurologically wired to pain? Is that a real thing on a clinical level? And how do you see that enveloping for healing? How do people heal from that?

I think it's tricky. I think most people who engage in self harm behaviors are dealing with much more painful emotional states. And the reason that they're inflicting harm is that to admit the actual pain they feel inside would be traumatizing. So, for example, in people who cut, or for people who are constantly trying to distract, you see that in many addictions it's an effort to avoid reality. Do I think people can kind of get addicted to pain? You know, that's an interesting question. Addictions are so neurally wired.

Right.

And behavioral addictions, meaning addictions that occur not because of a substance you're ingesting, but because of a behavior you're doing, could certainly be pain related. There's a range in terms of what people can tolerate and people like in pain. I mean, you see this in sexual behavior. You see this in lots of human.

Behavior, even in weightlifting or, you know, people that listen to the podcast that are in strength training.

Yeah.

So there is some kind of of a ripple of healthiness when it comes to delayed gratification and feeling somewhat of pain. But I think what you've touched on, especially in your TEDx talk, are people that are lying to themselves even when they know that it still hurts. And they perpetuate that kind of an experience for decades. And this can be a chasm that they never get out of.

Correct.

And I think for women and men that are listening that are on this path of emotional intelligence, there might be something practical they could do. Literally, like when they're done. Would it be meditation? Would it be breath? Or is it something easier than that? Is it something more pragmatic?

It's self awareness. The first step is always self awareness. You have to become an observer of yourself because remember, even the term honest liars, you believe yourself to be true. So this is a reality of cognitive realities of humans. Let's say you think you're right. Every human thinks their thoughts are fact, when in fact your thoughts are not fact. And oftentimes they're completely false. So if you get stuck in your own head, you're going to always think you're right, even though you're wrong. Many, much of the time, all of us are. So you actually have to step back from yourself and become an observer of yourself as if you were me, as if you were a therapist watching you, where you say, okay, let me just look at my behavior, let me look at my thoughts. Let me just start to train myself and to observe myself. And then without judgment, without negativity, without beating yourself up, start writing down what you see. That's the first sort of practical recommendation I would have.

Is this a daily thing?

I journal daily, yes. And I would recommend it for anyone because it will. There's a lot of research to suggest that writing things down is very helpful for emotional processing, for self awareness. And it will help you admit the truth. Because once you write it down, or once you tell another human being, it's really hard to lie about it again because you've already acknowledged it somewhere. This is something that happens. You could be deceptive constantly in your life, and then all of a sudden you get that glimmer of, oh my gosh, here's the reality over here. Now it's going to be really hard for you to turn off. Oh, there's that reality over here. Because now there's a little nagging part of you that's like, oh, that's not true. Oh, that's not true. Oh, that's true. Writing it down will help you do that.

The financial aspect of this is big too, because I think the number one thing that comes up is lack of purpose or stress about finances in regards to people's health habits. So, you know a mom who's like a busy person all day long and she doesn't want to go to the gym because all of her responsibilities are taken care of, or a student that's totally broke and they don't want to eat healthy foods because they have that financial strain in their life. But at the end of the day, how we feel is how we feel. So there's no escaping that, right?

There's no escaping yourself. Wherever you go, there you are.

There you are. It's so funny. Before I became a trainer, I used to be 280 pounds, okay? And so I let go of a bunch of weight in Hawaii, and I realized in retrospect, 10 years later, when I was giving a talk, I actually used that phrase. I was like, well, I lost all this weight and I used fitness as a catalyst. But I Still took myself with me. I still brought along my bags with all my stories and all my issues. And so I think that's the missing piece, too, when we look at this inventory, you know, you mentioned here, too, when you're unresolved or unsure about something, pause. The power of the pause. Obama was such a phenomenal speaker. He would keep people on the edge of their seat. And really great speakers do this. How do we speak to ourselves with the pause?

Literally, tell yourself, pause, pause. When you're in the midst of a strong emotional experience, it is the worst time for you to make any big decisions. The worst time, because even if the outcome, let's say you're in a relationship that isn't going well and you think, I am done. We're having this big argument. I am so fired up, I'm angry. I am done. I am leaving. This is over. Not only are you reacting in a way that is specific to the moment potentially, but you are leaving yourself without the opportunity to understand how you got here. And even if you end up leaving in a month, you will be better served for staying to ask yourself the question, what did I do to contribute to getting here? Because even if you're not the person I want to be with, I am probably going to be in a relationship in the future. And wherever I go, there I am. And this is part of who I am. And I don't want to repeat the same patterns with the next person that I might fall in love with. So don't make decisions in those moments. Pause, pause, pause, pause. Everything in life is an opportunity for you to understand yourself. Stop pointing the finger at other people and look in the mirror. That's the message of life, really. That's how we evolve.

Yeah. And it's interesting because technology, I think three or four years ago, if you look at Moore's Law, here's human evolution and here's technology. It's like a hockey stick coming up. So we have calendar notifications, our phones going off, all kinds of technology that distracts us. I've said this before on the podcast. Like Gay Hendricks literally says, it's weapons of mass distraction. So it's all these things that are pulling us away from the now, from the present moment. What do you think about technology? When we look at emotional health and really addictive swiping people that just can't be with themselves, how do we first identify if we're in that space and then work through that, transcend that?

I think it's such a good question. And I actually heard the Olympics is going on right now, and I heard that actually they have addiction centers for technology. Addiction.

What?

Yes, yes. Which makes a lot of sense because South Korea is one of the technology centers of the world.

Sure.

Anytime you are using a behavior or a mechanism to distract yourself from you, your feelings, your thoughts, your experiences, your goals, it's probably not serving you very well.

The same approach with technology where we're realizing, I've even done it myself, where I'll be like, on the plane or in a line, and I'll just put my phone away and take a deep breath. The breathing aspect of your work, how does breathing integrate into the way that you coach people, the way that you work with clientele? Have you studied any holotropic breathing or any breathing techniques that apply to your work?

More yoga breathing. So really, just from diaphragmatic breathing, very simple relaxation training is a very common part of most psych treatment. Because the more I or any good therapist encourages you to change, the more anxious, potentially sad you're going to feel, because it's going to bring up all of the reasons that you are where you are as you go through that experience. We want to give you coping strategies to help get you through the tough times without going back to the old strategies that were clearly not working for you. So I do a lot of progressive muscle relaxation where you would tighten certain large muscle groups, squeeze them as hard as you can, and then as you exhale, big diaphragmatic, and you let it all go.

What are you doing to the nervous system there?

You're calming everything down, really. You're trying to get your body centered and focused on the here and now with yourself.

So when someone goes there, it's practicing being there when they're in a space of being triggered. Right. And that's the real work. And I think that's what we're all trying to design, our environment so that we're not triggered as much. If somebody's in a deep state of work where they're overcoming a lot, maybe. Maybe it's abuse or maybe it's losing somebody. How do they design their environment so that they're not so triggered? Do you work with people in designing their home environment, their work environment?

Sure. Yes. And that's an interesting balance because there are different ways you can help yourself not be triggered. You could change antecedents, which is what you're describing, where you're trying to avoid or remove stimuli that generally, you know, trigger a response. So, for example, if you're an alcoholic, it's probably Not a good idea to go to the bar. That would be a stimulus for you to use. There are also times where we would want to do an exposure treatment, where actually we want you to be exposed to that triggering event, and then we want you to practice a different response, because the reality is that it's going to depend on your life circumstance. But there are many stimuli that are going to be triggering to you that you're not going to be able to avoid in your life. And so learning how to actually be empowered in any situation is really the ultimate goal. Because the ultimate goal for me is you feel centered and secure and empowered in who you are wherever you go.

Do you feel like there's some weight where people go to the environment that terrifies them the most? With a professional, an example might be. I was reading Jordan Peterson's work, and he talked about one of his clients. He took her to an elevator and he was with her. But all they did was just look at the elevator the first day, the next day they went inside, and then they got out. And it was this progression of, like, going through the fear threshold. And then eventually, over time, with the right guidance, anybody can get through almost anything. Do you believe that's true in your work as well?

That's called systematic desensitization, and it's very effective. It's a cognitive behavioral treatment, and it's very effective. Do I believe that everyone can change? My answer is going to be if.

They want to, what makes them want to?

They have to be willing to do whatever it takes to grow. And I say that even in the context of severe mental illness. So I work with a lot of people in inpatient units in my career who are very much struggling in the throes of a miserable diagnosis. And I wouldn't say to you, are they able to change fully at that moment? No, probably not. But I guarantee you there are things that even they can do in the moment that will either help them moving forward or hurt them moving forward. And that's still a choice. And we all are going to be confronted with choice. I think actually that's kind of the crux of human nature also, is that you are continually going to be confronted with yourself, and then you're going to have a choice. What are you going to do with this information? And your response to that choice is dramatically going to affect the way your life continues.

I have a question. Some people might see it to be morbid, but it's just reality for a lot of people. How do you explain how have you worked through maybe in years of college or even in working with people. Now, the contrast, this deep, dark duality that exists that you're talking about, where there's always a light and dark, you know, people pass for no apparent reason. You know, bad things happen to amazing people, and there's not a clear reason that our logical mind can attach to and be like, ah, that's why that bad thing happened to that great person.

Yes.

How have you personally worked through that? As somebody who works in the clinical setting, you yourself.

Stop asking why. Stop asking why. You can't know. And you know what? You don't even necessarily need to know. What you need to know is that this is your reality today. So what are you going to do with it? You know, so many things happen in the world that aren't really explainable, and we desperately as humans want to understand them. We want them to be explained.

There has to be an answer.

Now, sometimes there is an answer, and if there is one, that's okay. But if there isn't, stop trying to figure it out. For example, I've certainly seen people who are struggling with a suicide, right? A loved one.

Why?

Why did it happen? What could I have done? On and on. It can absolutely destroy your life to focus on that question. All you need to know is it happened. We can do research. We can figure out what are some good protective factors against suicide. We can look at prevention programs. Those are all really useful for you personally. You have to stop asking yourself why this happened to you and your. Your kid.

This is so challenging because I'm a podcast host and I ask questions for a living. So, like, for me, when you say, stop asking why, I kind of felt a little bit triggered right now. I'm like, yeah, wait a minute. Why are you telling me not to know what's going on with our greater consciousness? And where do we go when we die? It's funny, I do a lot of men's work, and I'm not sure if you heard of David Dita. We've talked about him a lot on the podcast, and he talks about this space in between layers of purpose where somebody might be completing a purpose, and then there's this space where they have no idea what's going on. Well, maybe in that space, they're not supposed to know what's going on.

And sometimes you can't know. You can't. And that uncertainty drives people insane.

That's totally true.

It can. It really can. If there isn't going to be a clear answer, one of the really hard things Is that people will confabulate and make up a lie to explain it to make themselves feel better. I think that's a mistake. I would rather have you get comfortable with the fact that the only certainty in life is change and you can't always know the answer.

Do you feel like the space where it's unknown, there's that space between purposes where people just insert a lie because the not knowing is so incredibly uncomfortable?

Yes.

And they insert that lie, and then that's what actually is the cascade that takes their life in a totally different direction.

Yes.

How do we teach this skill set, then, to young men and women in high school, in college? Like, what kind of emotional intelligence training programs would you want to see for people that could avoid. I mean, no offense, like, could avoid going to your office and being in full breakdown over the course of 10 years from not being honest?

Gosh. A prevention program for honesty. Gosh, that's such a great.

Kind of flies in the face of a lot of news media and just narrative out there right now.

Yeah. You know, it would be really focused on personal development and empowerment. It would be really focused on understand where you're coming from, who are you? Who do you think you are? Now look at your behavior, your thoughts, your feelings. What does that actually tell you about who you are? And try to integrate that. And then talk to me about what your ideal self is and how we can get closer to that over time. It's this amazing dialectic, change. Always between trying to accept who you are today and changing. Right. Those seem like they're not compatible. It's like, well, change, but be really easy on yourself.

Right.

But they actually both are necessary. They're both necessary for you to survive and to feel good. And I don't think they're mutually exclusive. I think you can have them both. You strive to accept yourself as you are, while at the same time acknowledging areas in which you'd like to evolve further. And if we could do that with kids, especially adolescents, who are already in an identity crisis. Right. Developmentally, it's a time of exploring who you are and separating from your family and your parents and developing peer relationships and dating and puberty and body image issues are massive. Right. I mean, it's kind of the age of onset of most eating disorders, and it's. It's a time of a normative discontent with regard to how you feel about your physical appearance. Most adolescents in this country do not like the way that they look. So what are some of the lies they tell themselves? Let's Start there. What would be a lie that an adolescent would tell themselves about their appearance?

I look terrible in this dress.

I look terrible in this dress. Thank you. Anymore.

These jeans make my butt look huge. People are gonna laugh at me. Me, I can't believe how bad I look.

If only I looked like her, then my life would be perfect. If only I had bigger muscles, then I would be popular. All these people would like me. I would be the talk of the town. It will destroy your life because you will learn somehow that you've internalized this message that you are flawed. That's the message that we send most adolescents about their physical appearance. And the media is wonderful at this because marketing actually wants you to feel badly about yourself because that's how they get you to buy stuff.

That's how they make you spend money, right? Yes. And it works very well.

Yes. If I can convince you that you don't look good, you're going to spend all of your time, money, energy, identity formation, process focused on the external and you're going to buy all these products. And you know what? They're still not going to work. But I'm going to get you to keep trying. And that's just an example of you could work with people starting at that age to teach them media literacy. For example, nobody in the magazines looks the way that you think they do. Why? Because they're all photo edited and many of them are struggling with their own eating because they're trying to meet an ideal that's habitually 18, white with long hair and blue eyes.

That and in the fitness industry, I would say the far majority, majority of people have dealt with some type of eating issue. Binge eating. You dove into this, this is a specialty of yours. Understanding this brain to stomach to heart to nervous system connection of eating and what food is. It's the most overused drug out there.

Yes.

People really aren't talking about it. We talk about it on Wellness Force quite a bit because a lot of the emails and messages we get are around specifically struggling moms who are so overwhelmed with their current situation that food becomes the only way to quell. It becomes this only way to just deal with the current experience. What do you see time and time again that's something people can take action on. Inspired action, not just frenetic action, but true inspired action on looking at this relationship with food.

Anytime someone steps into my office with binge eating behavior, so binges, as you know, eating a large amount of food in a short amount of time, feeling a loss of control or Inability to stop. We start with when does it happen the most? And this is where you really would look at antecedents and triggers of binge eating. Where you can start to understand, is this emotional? Do you tend to binge eat because you're feeling sad and depressed? You just put your two kids to bed and you don't have time to actually cook yourself a normal meal? Do you binge eat when you're anxious? Do you binge eat when there's just donuts at the office? What, what are those experiences for you? As you understand what those are, we start to make interventions that are very specifically focused on the reason that the person is eating or the stimulus that's causing the eating. Now, oftentimes as you start to change behavior, because usually in an eating issue we start by changing behavior, the emotions are going to rush.

This is when, like the monster peeks out from under the bed. Why are you taking away the chips?

Yes.

What about me? Rah.

Yes.

That's when things get nasty.

And as you know, most people who lose a lot of weight will tell you they feel exactly the same inside. They'll say, well, I've lost the weight, but I'm the same. I feel like the same overweight person that I was before. That's the opportunity to dig deeper again. This is where you go back to the psychology of eating and you look at what function did it serve for you? For example, if you are coming from an abuse background, being heavier may serve a very important protective function for you. Right. If you're coming from a situation where everyone in your family looked a certain way, let's say they were a little bit bigger, and you always told yourself, I'm not gonna be like them. You have turned into an under eater or a current restrictor. So you also probably see chronic dieters where they're stuck in this cycle of restrictive eating. Restrictive eating, restrictive eating. They're not eating anything until five and they've had seven cups of coffee at this, and they're starving. And then they'll binge because they're starving. But the motivation for that was based in some sort of. I don't, I can't tolerate being heavy, so I'll do whatever it takes. You'll start to uncover the meaning of it for yourself. And as you do that again, you get to make choices. Okay, I understand where this is coming from. I see my life today. What do I want to do with this information? Do I want to change or am I going to let myself stay the same?

This is at the Core of every health, wellness and fitness program. All roads lead to self love. Yes, they all lead there. No matter what PDF guide you purchase or what program or even what trainer. I think back to the majority of conversations I had when I was a personal trainer, and really what it was about was just creating a safe space where somebody could feel like they could express themselves to me. Oh, and by the way, we just happen to be working out. That's really what it's all about. It's about, can someone feel love for themselves? Can they feel seen and heard? How much does forgiveness play into this?

Massively.

Really understanding that forgiveness is a skill set. I mean, Tony Robbins talks about forgiveness as a radical tool. It's a tool not just for that person, but it's a tool for you. Because when we forgive other people, even ourselves, it can get us out of that shame spiral. It can get us not really caring if the monster comes out because we just kind of hug the monster and say, let's play.

Forgiving yourself, I think, is one of the hardest things that any human actually has to do. One thing I would also say for anybody who binge eats out there or who has eating issues is you have to start challenging the lies you tell yourself. You have to start challenging the cognitive processes that go through your mind every minute of every day around whatever it is that are not true that sustain your behavior. So, for example, one of the most, most common lies people tell themselves in eating is, well, I already ate this today. This was bad. I might as well keep going. I mean, every human on the planet can probably relate to that. I had a donut for breakfast. So you know what? Now I'm going to consume 10,000 calories for the rest of the day because clearly the donut ruined the rest of my diet, right? Anytime you can identify those thought patterns which actually are lies, like to help you see that, that is a lie. You do not ruin a day eating one quote, unquote, unhealthy food. And we have this huge culture of forbidden foods in this country where there are all these foods that we decide that we should never eat. And actually, it's a terrible thing for us to think.

Why is that so terrible?

Because immediately if you eat one of those foods, you're bad, bad, and your behavior was bad, and everything that's going to follow is going to be bad. As opposed to, these are foods that are healthy and unhealthy in different ways. You can choose to eat them or not in certain quantities. What would you like to do today if you if you couch it as this food, it doesn't really have any nutritional value. But it tastes great and I really enjoy it and I'm going to choose to eat this today. I really hope you do and I really hope that you don't have any negative psychological consequences from it. It. Right.

I think that I've dealt with this personally. I had a program two years ago where I was in the process of letting go of 7 pounds and I went to the UCSD Department of Physiology and we did a VO2 max test and we figured all these things out and I realized it was stress, it wasn't the calories I was eating, it had nothing to do with the energy I was putting out because quantifiably it should have worked, but yet there was an energetic component to letting go of old weight. This energetic component I think is tied into taking a breath, being in forgiveness and going back to. It's something that you and I talked about before we recorded this way of just seeing life as it was 10,000 years ago. Love, connection, sunlight, real conversation with people. These are the skill sets that are currently under siege in this society.

I think social connection is probably the strongest psychological predictor of health over time period. It's unbelievable how much connecting with other humans and feeling a part of a group, feeling a part of a community.

Who doesn't want to be in a tribe, Everyone wants tribe.

It's so important. It's so, so, so important.

And I think what's interesting too is as we kind of culminate all your knowledge over the past 20 plus years, which would be impossible in a 45 minute conversation. Is there something when we look at forgiveness, being a part of something and this relationship with self, you know, one thing that sparked me, you said it starts with self awareness.

Yes.

How do we do that? You know, somebody puts the phone down, somebody stops watching the video. Where do they go next? What's their step?

Sit. Put down the phone and sit in your chair by yourself with no stimulation. What does that feel like? Start to think of your life as a big experiment. Start to think of yourself as a scientist. Say, I'm going to try something different and I'm going to see what I learn about myself in the process. I'm not going to use my phone today. I'm going to sit here and I'm going to sit here for 10 minutes and I'm going to see what goes through my mind. I'm going to see how I physically feel. I'm going to see is this crazy uncomfortable for me or is this like the greatest thing ever? And I think, wow, I love this. Do I want to try to meditate? Do I have these thoughts bombarding about what I should do and what I shouldn't do and blah blah, blah, or am I pretty calm? Start to experiment with yourself, not with judgment, not with negativity, literally as a self awareness process and see what you can learn.

Looking back on your academia and your life, I'd love for you to share. You know, you have so much knowledge to give to others, but what's something like a lesson that you've learned about vulnerability and about letting go of an old part of yourself that wasn't serving you? Was there something that, that you dealt with in life that you gave the gift of goodbye to?

Yes. The hardest things to get over that you will re manifest in your adult life are the areas you're most insecure. If I could give you a recommendation for where to start to understand and heal yourself, it is, where do you have the most damage? Start there. Because that will infiltrate every area of your life. And the lies that you create to protect yourself from that insecurity, I guarantee you you'll find them very quickly will affect every adult relationship that you have, including your relationship with food, alcohol, gambling, any kind of addiction related behavior, and with other humans.

What was that relationship with your old self? The current version? Not being attached to that anymore.

More empowering, Fully empowering. You know, my biggest struggle was around romantic relationships, definitely without question. And I was raised in a very intellectual, very academic environment which served me very well. But what I internalized about it was that I had to be perfect. Because if I'm perfect, if I'm the best at all these things, then I'm going to be okay. But. But if there's any part of me that isn't perfect, guess what happened? Panic. Depression. Right. It was that ultimate like, oh my gosh, I'm not okay. And it led me to want to cover up imperfections. Everywhere I went. I couldn't acknowledge things about myself that were damaged because I thought internally, not consciously. Right. I had to learn that over time. But it, it came out in my behavior because anytime someone would say, you know, you're not really very good at this, or point something out, or I came in fourth in a race, I was a swimmer, fourth and not first. It was this tremendous panic. I mean, I started not even racing because I was so worried that I wasn't going to be in the first spot. Which is amazing because it's ridiculous, right? It's Based in lies. So as I aged, I started to see that my reactions in my romantic relationships were very much based on trying to promote this perfect ideal. And that as I got closer to somebody and more vulnerable with somebody, that was much, much scarier. Right. Because then they'd see them.

You learned the most about yourself in an intimate relationship by far.

Yes.

This relationship with ourselves, it's going to continue and it's what we always talk about on the show, this discovering of our greater physical and emotional intelligence. This has been so compelling and I feel like we scratched the tip of the iceberg here. Choose Honesty.com Choose Honesty is your website tell people where they can dive into your work.

Yeah, Come to my website. I write a free blog for Psychology Today which you can also download on my website. I wrote a long version of the TED Talk, which is a book that you can get on my website or on Amazon that is really a lecture on self deception. So taking what I said in the talk and making it a little bit deeper with more clinical examples. And I also do a lot of speaking and consulting. So you're welcome to send me an email, whatever might emerge in the future.

Perfect. So make sure that you ask Dr. Courtney questions here because we're gonna wrap this up for today. But the conversation continues. This is Josh and Dr. Courtney Warren saying goodbye from beautiful Santa Barbara.

What a beautiful place to be.

Amazing.

We'll talk to you guys very soon.

Thank you.

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