Unlearn Negative Thoughts & Behaviors Patterns | Dr. Alok Kanojia (Healthy Gamer)

0:00 Everyone's focused on changing behavior. Everyone's focused on increasing willpower to overcome this tendency. And it's like, why not just change the tendency? That sounds so simple, but that's literally what we do in psychotherapy every day when we come in and someone has a narcissistic personality disorder. This is personality. This is who they are. And we can psychotherapize them to be someone else for their natural thoughts to change, for the way that they see the world to change, for their behaviors to change on its own. It doesn't require willpower is necessary when you are trying to not be narcissistic. It is not necessary when you are no longer narcissistic. So we've done it in psychotherapy. We know that if your self-esteem changes, if your sense of being changes, treatment, refractory depression will change. Trauma, PTSD will change.

0:51 Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Alok Kanogia, also known as Dr. K. Dr. K is a psychiatrist and online mental health educator. He has a very unique background, having trained and earned his medical degree in the United States, but also having studied as a monk for seven years. Today, we discuss powerful tools for increasing your self-understanding and mental health, and for rewiring your nervous system, specifically how you can unlearn unhealthy thought patterns and behaviors and replace them with ones that truly serve you and those around you. Much of today's discussion centers around

1:39 differences between Eastern and Western concepts of things like the ego and what makes up our self-concept. That portion of the conversation will no doubt have you rethinking why you do what you do in virtually everything. And he provides a roadmap for clearly defining your best goals and for increasing things like your energy and drive, not through hacks, but by tapping into deep intrinsic motivation. In fact, throughout today's episode, Dr. K explains specific practices that you can use to help rewire your nervous system, resolve traumas, and come to a much clearer understanding of how best to apply your efforts in work, school, and relationships. We also discuss social media, dating and relationships, addiction and pornography. So there are a lot of topics covered. And I have to say,

2:24 this is a conversation unlike any other that I've had on or off the podcast. Dr. K offers a completely new perspective on how to resolve common struggles that we all face. And in doing so, he offers a lot of practical tools. So this should be a very valuable conversation for anyone wishing to better understand themselves at the theoretical and psychological level, but also who wishes to implement specific tools to improve some or all aspects of their life. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Alok Kanogia. Dr. K, welcome.

3:10 Andrew Huberman, thank you for having me. So interested in you and the knowledge you hold. Today we're gonna talk about a number of things. I mean, Ayurveda and East-West medicine, motivation and dopamine, but I wanna start with the internet. You had an interesting upbringing, so very different than mine, not just because of our age difference, but you grew up on the internet. And so you really have an empathy for people on the internet, on social media. Now everyone's on the internet. What was it that drew you to screens and that interface with such a degree of magnetism. I was like a gifted kid growing up.

3:56 And I think that one of the things that we don't really appreciate is how school moves at the pace of the slowest kid. So school was incredibly boring for me. And then I was also young, so I was a year ahead. And so I was like early on when I was a five-year-old in first grade and I was competing against seven-year-olds like, on the playground or in gym class. I sucked at sports. So the one thing that I really got addicted to was this idea of like a computer game where like when you beat level one, like level two is there, you know? And then if you beat level two, like level three is there. If you fail at level three, you get to try level three again. So it was the only activity that was like cognitively to my pacing. And so

4:44 that really drew me in. And I didn't realize that until years later. You know, my parents were big fans of putting us into school like young, and if you can skip grades, like that's great, right? Because life is a race, and the faster you finish, the better things are. But I didn't realize how developmentally challenging it is to be like a five-year-old or a six-year-old in school with like seven-year-olds or eight-year-olds. So I think that's what originally drew me in. If you don't mind me asking, so you were... first generation immigrant parents from India. I mean, I grew up in the South Bay and Palo Alto, so I'm familiar with intense academic environments. Increasingly so in the last 10, 20 years, but even when I was there, it was intense. Did you feel that as pressure? Absolutely. I mean, my

5:32 earliest memories are of my grandmother telling me I'm gonna make a great doctor one day. And when I was like 15 years old, people would ask me, like I'd go to like a party, right, with my parents and their friends, and people would ask me, what do you wanna be when you grow up? And so I was like, I'm gonna be a doctor. And everyone's like, wow, impressive. So my 15-year-old brain was like looking at this amazing idea of what a doctor was, and both my parents are doctors. My dad was an amazing doctor. I suppose my mom is too, but my dad was one of the seminal researchers in graft versus host disease. It's how he landed his job at MD Anderson. So he came from India and was an oncologist. And so I also remember he used to... Back then, HIPAA wasn't... I think there wasn't even a HIPAA law. So he would

6:20 have patients over to our house and stuff like that. He would throw a Thanksgiving party every year where he would invite all of his patients, all cancer survivors and things like that. And so my dad was really like a mythical figure, incredibly charismatic. And so I was like, oh yeah, I'm gonna be that. And so it became a huge part of my ego. And then it turns out that ego is not a great way to motivate, well, it can be a great way to motivate yourself. But then I ran into trouble when I hit college because I had never learned how to study. So either I like absorbed everything and did well on the test. So I went straight from like A's to F's. and then got addicted to video games, failed out of college. But your original question was, was I into

7:06 computers and why? And that probably has something to do with it. Well, it sounds like you were so into computers, you eventually went over the cliff of computers with this addiction. I want to talk about the addiction, but I think this is a perfect frame, and maybe we'll jump back and forth as we move forward. This is a perfect frame for what I... heard and wonder about a lot, which is, you know, I'm Gen X, okay? You're a millennial. Yeah. And I'm told that the generations right behind Gen X perhaps had more love and encouragement to feel their feelings, notions of what trauma and addiction were, but maybe...

7:54 that there wasn't this universally high standards set for all of them. That's the narrative that you see in the news right now. Oh, you know, this coddled generation, et cetera. You had high standards set for you. When you look out on your peers and you look out on the internet for millennials and younger, do you think that we can make it, a general statement about, oh yeah, you know, all this appreciation and understanding about what addiction and trauma and feelings are, you know, that just was foreign to my generation, frankly, that it helped or hurt to have this awareness of kind of self and what one needs and all of that. Do you think that it, yeah, do you think it helped or it hurt development? Well, so Andrew, I'm delighted to be speaking to a scientist because I think it helped and hurt.

8:41 So this is, as you know, things are multifactorial. It's rarely one thing or another thing. So I think a lot of people picked up ground with awareness of feelings. As a psychiatrist, I work with people who were unaware of the family dynamics going on in their life, in their household, unaware of their emotions, growing up with things like avoidant attachment and having difficulty forming connections. So I think it is always good to be more aware. I think actually awareness is probably the single factor that correlates the most with like success and happiness. The challenge, the really subtle thing is that talking about emotions isn't the same as actually being aware of them. So I think what started to happen is a lot

9:29 of this dialogue around trauma, a lot of this dialogue around feelings has actually been hijacked in very subtle ways by other parts of our mind, other parts like, for example, our ego. And so it's kind of like this therapy speak has like, and this happens, so you can look at any population. And if you have someone who's like sociopathic, or if you have someone who's histrionic or narcissistic, and everyone is talking feelings, they will do that too, but in a sociopathic way. Feelings have now started to be used as a form of manipulation, right? So people will use, like I see this all the time, speaking of the internet in its modern incarnation, we all talk about boundaries, but people have started to use boundaries as a form of control for other human beings. My boundary is that you don't text anyone after 8

10:18 p.m. My boundary is that every time I call you, you need to answer the phone. So it's really bizarre how like the basic like psychological stuff can hijack, like our psychological patterns can hijack like all this mental health speak. Another really good example of this is, so I remember I was seeing an assault victim in the emergency room at Mass General Hospital many years ago. And so the MIT chief of security was, campus security was there. And so I was talking to them a little bit about, you know, because there were other students with a student who had been assaulted and they were kind of talking to me about safety. And I remember something that the MIT chief told me that I've never forgotten. We were talking about safety and he's like, my job is not

11:05 to make people feel safe. My job is to make people safe. And there's actually a big difference. And so something interesting has happened. We have all become more narcissistic because that's what the internet does to us. And so now if I am hurt, That is no longer my responsibility. That is because you did something wrong. Does that make sense? Like fundamentally, if I feel hurt, that is oftentimes tied to you doing something wrong. So there's this tendency towards victimization where you'll see even people who are like playing the victim card, which doesn't mean that we shouldn't be believing victims. I think that's exactly what happens is we started to realize that we're not taking victims seriously, but then all the chameleons in our society were looking at this pattern and they were realizing, okay, the fastest way for me to get

11:55 ahead is to claim to be a victim. So there are all kinds of weird permutations that are happening right now with this sort of emphasis on feeling. One more evidence-based example of this is we're seeing The prevalence of mood disorders, anxiety disorders, addictions, body dysmorphia, basically everything is getting worse. And so one weird thing that started to happen is as we've talked more about feelings, there is something called a transdiagnostic factor, which we can get into. I don't know if you're familiar with these or not. So if you look at like all of the mental illnesses, there are certain attributes that are a risk factor for multiple mental illnesses. So a good example of transdiagnostic factors are perfectionism. and rumination. So rumination

12:43 doesn't make you depressed, doesn't necessarily make you anxious. But if you have a high index of rumination, you are more likely to have a major depressive disorder, you're more likely to have an anxiety disorder, does that kind of make sense? If you are perfectionistic, you are more likely to be depressed, you are more likely to be anxious. So there's one interesting transdiagnostic factor which has gotten way worse, which is something called distress tolerance. So human beings' capacity To sit with things and tolerate things that they do not find comfortable is starting to tank. And as that starts to tank, we're seeing just an explosion of mental illness. Glucose is a key player in how our body functions, not just in the long term, but in every moment of our lives. That's because it

13:31 is the major fuel for our cells, especially our brain cells. Glucose directly impacts our brain function, mood, and energy levels, and it may even affect our levels of tenacity and willpower. This is why I use the Continuous Glucose Monitor from Lingo. I absolutely love it, and I'm thrilled to have them as a sponsor of the podcast. Lingo helps me track my glucose in real time to see how the foods I eat and the actions I take impact my glucose. When glucose in your body spikes or crashes, your cognitive and physical performance do too. In fact, large glucose peaks and valleys lead to brain fog, fatigue, irritability, and hunger. What you eat, of course, plays a major role in your glucose. Some foods cause sharp spikes and big crashes, and others do not, but not everyone is the same in terms of how they respond to particular foods. Seeing your glucose in real time helps you build eating and other habits

14:18 that support metabolic health, mental clarity, and sustained energy. If you'd like to try Lingo, Lingo is offering Huberman Podcast listeners in the U.S. 10% off a four-week Lingo plan. Terms and conditions apply. Visit hellolingo.com slash Huberman for more information. The Lingo glucose system is for users 18 and older, not on insulin. It is not intended for the diagnosis of diseases, including diabetes. Individual responses may vary. Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve. Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology and our health. Now, in addition to sunlight, which I've talked about a lot on this podcast, red light, near

15:03 infrared and infrared light have been specifically shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health. These include faster muscle recovery, improve skin health, wound healing, improvements in acne, reduce pain and inflammation, improve mitochondrial function, and even improvements in vision. Nowadays, there are a lot of red light devices out there, but what sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning they use the specific wavelengths of red light, near infrared and infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times a week, usually for about 10 to 20 minutes per session. And I use the Juve handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you would like to try Juve,

15:51 they're offering up The moment you said that we're seeing a reduction in distress tolerance, I heard in my head voices on the internet saying, oh, so we're just supposed to push our feelings aside? Like we're just supposed to accept everything that happens to us? We're supposed to, you know, and of course, I don't actually believe that, but I can empathize a bit with that notion, right? Like there's, these things are always on a continuum. It's a push pull, right? I mean, I was gonna raise the same thing around the standards that were set for you. Some people who grew up with very high

16:40 standards set for them by parents, teachers, or coaches might internalize that as, oh, must mean I'm very capable. In fact, in one of my favorite books, The Last Lecture by Randy Posh, he talks about, he was a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon. He eventually died. He gave this last lecture, which is an incredible lecture. And he said, the moment that your parents, coaches, and teachers stop pushing you is the moment you should worry because they've given up on you. If you're pushed, people believe in you, that there's a chance you might actually accomplish something. They believe in you. But you could also internalize it as overwhelm. Yeah. And so I think, this notion of distress tolerance, like what are the standards? What are the standards for distress tolerance, for performance, for being a quote-unquote functional member of society while also quote-unquote honoring

17:29 one's feelings, about feeling one's feelings. There's no roadmap, I believe, to how to navigate that. What you said, there is no roadmap. That happens to be true and it happens to be wrong. So I know that's confusing, so let me explain. So here's the first thing to understand. the way that we collect information, this is why I love being a clinician. So like, you talked about the last lecture. So this person was saying, if people don't push you, that means that they don't care about you, they're not invested in you. The moment that you give up on someone is the moment that you stop pushing them, right? Makes perfect sense. And then there are also people who've been pushed to the point where they like crack under pressure. That's actually way more common. So generally speaking, pressure Just

18:14 like any other part of biology, if I exert pressure on some part – on some joint, on some part of soft tissue, we'll develop a callus. It will become tough. So this is where – the reason there's no roadmap is because people aren't the same. So we all have unique genetics. We all have unique experiences. We all have a unique internal dialogue. And so the whole point of personality, and we can define personality by the technical terms, which is it is the way that you interpret information, the way you perceive the world, your internal reactions, and the behaviors that you engage in. So you can take literally... two different human beings in the exact same situation. I've worked with a couple of survivors of like genocidal conflicts. And the really interesting thing about that is not everybody gets PTSD, which is like really

19:01 weird, right? Like if you think about, this is like a genocidal conflict. So we have tons of people who all experience the same thing, but their reactions to them are really different. That's what's fun about being a clinician. What I try to focus on and what I learned, I looked for a roadmap. And what I found is that there's not a roadmap. There are thousands of roadmaps. And those roadmaps come down to, and this is, I think, a huge problem in the information-based world we live in. So everyone has problems, right? And they're looking for solutions, which is great. The problem, the biggest mistake that I see people make, especially high performers, is a problem of misdiagnosis. So really good example of this, I had a patient come into my office, worked in finance, was at

19:50 a very, very successful firm, came in and was like, I have really bad anxiety. Like it's really starting, like I can't eat, like I can't sleep. My wife is really worried about me. So he's like, you know, I've got really bad anxiety. So we start talking about it and he's like, you know, I'm afraid I'm going to get fired. And we worked together for about 12 months. And then he realizes this environment is not where he's happy. And the reason he's gonna get fired is because he doesn't fit in and he decides to quit. So what's really interesting is if we had just solved that, if we'd made his anxiety go away, he would have perpetuated in an unhealthy system. And this is the thing that I think we forget when we're talking about our emotions. Like, Andrew, which part of the

20:36 brain does anxiety come from? It's a circuit-wide phenomenon. Sure. If we had, how is it taught? If you had to teach someone who's taking an undergraduate neuroscience class, and maybe you wouldn't teach it this way, but if you had to localize it to somewhere, where would you localize it to? To one structure? Yeah, one structure. Everyone would say amygdala. I teach neuroanatomy to medical students, so, or I did until very recently, so. I'm totally with the limbic system as a whole, right? But the amygdala. Sure. And the really interesting thing is like, crocodiles have amygdalas, right? So we sometimes forget that these negative emotions are actually really important for us. They're really healthy for us. One other really interesting example of this is, I work with a lot of gamers on the internet. So sometimes they'll try to engage in

21:25 mating behaviors and they'll creep people out. And one of the really interesting things that I realized is embarrassment is the best way to not creep someone out. So if I violate one of your boundaries and then I express embarrassment, that signals to you that I realize I did something wrong. So if I violate one of your boundaries and then I express embarrassment, that's a really important empathic signal. And now we have all of this content on the internet telling people to be relentlessly confident. And when they become relentlessly confident, they no longer express embarrassment. Embarrassment is a really important signal to send. In the example you gave, it's very clear that somebody violated somebody's boundary. They felt embarrassment. Showing that embarrassment shows that they... have some sort of

22:10 empathic attunement or awareness that makes them perhaps a little less creepy and a little bit safer. As opposed to if they just kept going forward, right? However, if it was a bit vague, like let's say that they did something of flirtation and it wasn't really clear what it was and the other person said, hey, like that doesn't feel good to me. And then they acted very embarrassed and the person who said it didn't feel good to them would, quite understandably think, oh, it must have been really bad, right? Oftentimes the dynamics are subtle where people don't really know how they should feel about something at the extremes we know. So I'm going to reverse Russian doll us because I was all over the place. So you asked about a roadmap. Then I gave the example of anxiety. Then I gave the example of embarrassment as

22:56 another emotion that's helpful. And now you're asking a question. So we're going to do it in reverse order. Sure. But I want to get back to that roadmap because I think it's a beautiful question. I wrote it down. We haven't forgotten. Great. Let's talk about the ambiguous interactions. This is fascinating. So I saw a really cool study where when two people are flirting and that's taped and a neutral observer is watching it, they accurately detect flirting only about 30% of the time. Different studies show 24 to 42%. You're saying ambiguity is a problem. No, ambiguity is exactly what's supposed to happen. So if you think about what flirting is, flirting is a way to preserve plausible deniability. It's a way to make you feel safe, right? So if I am really, Andrew, I'm really interested in your body, bro. But if I say

23:44 that, it's, you know, unless you are matching that energy, it's not going to be safe. It's not going to be good. It'll ruin our relationship. So flirting by nature is supposed to be missed. So this is another thing where you're saying like, yes, there's ambiguity. It could be interpreted this way and it could be interpreted this way. That's not bad. That's good. That's how human beings actually interact. So Winnicott described this beautifully because flirting is a form of play. That's literally what it is. And play is about a potential space. When I'm playing like dolls with my daughter, it's not defined. And the whole point is for it to be not defined. So in that absence of definition, which now everyone is sort of like we're seeing a social skills atrophy. So, you know, the parts of our brain that interpret tone, body

24:30 language, things like that, like people are becoming like, you know, we're seeing a rise of like ADHD and everyone also feels subjectively like they're autistic. It's because they're losing some degree of social skills because we text back and forth. And our brains don't, our occipital cortex is not interpreting visual information of people's facial expressions. So that part of our brain like literally kind of shuts off. So people are having a lot of difficulty with ambiguity. People are saying like, oh, this person is sending mixed signals. That's the point. In a relationship, you are going to have mixed signals. In a friendship, you will have mixed signals. We all have ambivalence within us. I wanna eat a healthy lean protein during lunch, and I also wanna eat a fried protein during lunch. So ambiguity is actually not something to be avoided. The really interesting thing, another

25:20 transdiagnostic factor, really important one, the intolerance of uncertainty. So human beings who are capable of tolerating uncertainty better mental health outcomes, more resilient, improved quality of life. So everyone needs defined answers. So I'll pause there for a moment just to address your flirtation example, but you're spot on. We can tell what the signals are at either end. The point of human interaction is that way we can adapt to each other. If I put my arm around you, then how do you respond to that? Do you get up and go to the bathroom or do you lean in? So these are how human interactions actually happen. There's a lot of back and forth. Fascinating. A lot of younger

26:08 guys talk to me about their challenges in the dating scene. And one of the things that they seem very challenged with is the fact that they feel like whatever happens on a date is shared on the internet. And this is of course not related to assault or violence. or them acting highly inappropriate, or, you know, this is really like they're reported as a good or bad kisser. They're reported as a, they pay or they don't pay. And, you know, and so I think that the room to explore ambiguity to them, this is what I hear, feels very dangerous. It feels like a slippery slope where they have to perform perfectly on every measure. And I'm sure women feel the same way, right? I just hear from more,

26:56 Yeah, it's very tricky. So I think what we're seeing in the dating world, and I guess this is what we're talking about. Maybe it's top of mind for me because I just did a bunch of content on it. So what's interesting in the dating world is that now we're sort of adding the internet to the equation, right? Which you sort of talked about. So let's just understand a couple of things about the internet. So the first is what the internet, in my opinion, this is sort of like a clinician's perspective having read about 200 papers on various aspects of how the internet affects our brains and our psychology. First thing to understand is that the internet selects for emotional activation. It's not even dopamine, in my opinion. So if you look at like internet, right, so it's not just fun and games. Actually, the most engaging content is emotionally engaging. Arousal. Arousal,

27:46 absolutely. Adrenaline. And then the other interesting thing is that in order to maintain arousal, you need a dichotomy of emotions. So I need to scare you, and then I need to make you angry, and then I need to show you a cat video, and then I need to scare you again, and then I need to tell you how AI is gonna steal your job, and then I wanna show you this birthday party where this baby did the cutest thing. So this is literally how they maintain engagement. And so what's really interesting about this is as our limbic system is like hyperactive over and over and over again, that's one of the biggest cognitive drains that we have. So like I think the top three cognitive, the things that drain our willpower the most, suppressing emotion, repressing emotion, even just feeling

28:36 emotion is like very exhausting. The internet is selecting for the most emotionally activating things. So which tweets get engaged with the ones that are the most polarizing. So then what happens is people are dating and now you've got a problem because, and here's the real tragedy, is people will have a perception that if I don't say the right thing, this will get posted online. That is not what happens most of the time, right? But this is where we as human beings have certain cognitive biases where the extreme example Like we get trained in this in medical school is, you know, once you miss a cancer diagnosis once, it doesn't mean that every patient after that has cancer. But that's what the brain is designed to

29:23 do. Our brain is designed for survival, which means that if we get food poisoning from a restaurant even once, our brain doesn't look at that probabilistically. It takes the worst examples and that's what we have to base our behavior on, right? Like if I'm at work and I wanna, if I'm attracted to a coworker, Even though there's a 90% chance that if I express some romantic interest in them, I'm going to be fine, I can't make a strategy based on that. I have to base my strategy on the worst possible outcome. That's what we're seeing in data. You said that suppressing emotion is cognitively draining. Did I also understand correctly that being in constant arousal through different emotions is also cognitively draining. I don't know if I would use the word cognitive there, but it's absolutely draining, right? So periods of extended

30:11 arousal, and this is where like, when I mean cognitive draining, I'm referring to a paper that's looking at the anterior cingulate cortex. And that's where when the anterior cingulate cortex and your frontal lobes are suppressing your limbic system, that's very draining. But I think high levels of arousal, right, through the reticular activating formation and things like that, just being on emotionally, hyperactivation of your limbic system is absolutely exhausting is the word that I would use. You mentioned distress tolerance is a valuable skill to have. It feels appropriate to say, okay, distress tolerance, I totally agree. Great to be able to tolerate distress to a point, but that sounds like it's very cognitively and generally draining. So how would you

31:00 encourage someone to develop healthy levels of distress tolerance? But if that involves constant suppression of an impulse to shout, to react, that sounds like it could get very unhealthy. So I realize we're sort of staying on this tangent, but I feel like what defines healthy distress tolerance if pushing back an emotional reaction or pushing down an emotional reaction is not good for us? So distress tolerance doesn't, only include emotional suppression, right? So what's really interesting about distress tolerance is a key feature of distress tolerance is not even suppressing, is the opposite, is accepting your emotions. It's actually moving in the opposite direction. Feeling your feelings. Feeling your feelings, right? Recognizing that you feel your feelings. What if somebody feels extremely angry

31:50 and they want to feel their feelings, what is a healthy way for them to do that? Three things, okay? So if you want to learn how to control your emotions, you wanna be tranquil in the face of your emotions is what I would say. Three things you can do. The first thing is putting words to your emotion. So the moment that – so right now if you – I don't know if this kind of makes sense. The more angry you are, right, the more your amygdala is like hyperactive, it is drowning out every other part of your brain. So the first thing that you have to do is put words to it. And when you put words to it, you can't put words to – There's no word there. So the moment that you try to put words to it, it has to calm down. In order for your linguistic centers, Broca's area, and all these, in order for them

32:37 to articulate it, you have to understand it. So Freud understood this over 100 years ago. And there's something powerful about processing emotions by putting them into words. In order to put words to it, we have to tone it down some. So that's the first thing. The problem is that people oftentimes think that that is sufficient. Right. So people will say journal, go see a therapist and talk about your feelings. Man, the number of times that I've had, like I had this patient who came in, if I can tell a story. Please. You know, and so like I was a third year resident. I'd done maybe like 100 hours, 200 hours of psychotherapy. So I had a guy come in. He'd been in the clinic for eight years, had depression, was a dude in his 40s. He came in and he would tell me about why he was sad every day. Like every week he'd come in, he's like, I got written up at work. People are complaining because I snapped at them. You know, one

33:26 of the patients is complaining because I didn't give them benzos. And so he'd come in every week. He'd talk about why he was depressed. I'd be like, why are you depressed, bro? And he'd like tell me some story about something bad that happened in his life. And then we did this for six months. And like, I didn't know because I'm like learning psychotherapy, right? So I'm like, I'm supposed to be supportive and I'm supposed to be like, okay, like that must be hard for you. How does that make you feel? That must be so hard for you. How does that make you feel? That must be so hard for you. We do this dance for like six months. Then one day he comes in and I'm kind of getting frustrated. I'm like, hey, is this helping? And he's like, what do you mean is it helping? I'm like, is it helping? Do you feel any better than when you came in six months ago? And he's like, I thought this is what we're supposed to do. I'm just supposed to come in every week. I tell you about how I'm sad. And then- You tell me it must be like, isn't that what psychotherapy is?

34:14 It was a huge light bulb moment for me because talking about your feelings, especially for men, is not enough much of the time. Fascinating neuroscience and endocrinology behind that. Putting words to it is just step one. Second thing, this is a really important skill, cultivating additional emotions. So if you look at people who are resilient, if you tunnel down into the internal dialogue of people who are resilient, you'll notice that they do some interesting things. So my patients who are very severely ill, right, and literally what I try to do with them over the course of weeks is this thing happened and I feel overwhelming shame. The moment that you start cultivating additional emotion, so I've been dumped by my boyfriend

35:02 or my girlfriend. I'm really, really depressed. I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life. They start to catastrophize. They have a lot of negative emotion. And it's really easy in that moment to forget that, okay, I had three years of wonderful experiences with this person before things went downhill. it's really easy to forget all of the positives. It's really easy to realize that three years of experience followed by, let's say, one year of a toxic relationship is gonna actually protect you from the next toxic relationship. So cultivating additional emotions is a huge fundamental part of EQ. And you don't just have to tolerate it or suppress it. These are the additional things that you can do. And this is really important. It's not just cultivating positive emotions when you're feeling negative emotions. It's the other way around

35:47 as well. I've seen more relationships ruined by falling in love than anything else. And you just fall in love with the wrong person. You're in a relationship and you fall in love with somebody else. So many people I've worked with, you know, I have this great business idea and I get so excited about it and like I'm going to start this AI company. That's the time that you actually want to cultivate negative emotion. Cultivate a little bit of anxiety. What could go wrong? Make sure you ask yourself that question. Like literally in addiction psychiatry, we have a cool technique that we use with people where it doesn't really work so much anymore, but we tell people to play the tape through to the end. You're really excited right now and you want to do this thing, but play the tape through the end. What are all of the negative things that could happen? So that cognitive flexibility, that emotional

36:36 flexibility is really important. we have to understand what emotions are. So a lot of times, this is going around on the internet where like feel your feelings, right? Like I'm just gonna authentically, I'm gonna be authentic with my feelings today, which means that you're an asshole, Andrew, and I'm just, this is my truth, right? So we've started like speaking our truths as excuses to being assholes. Like that's what's happening on the internet. It's what's happening in real relationships because people are watching social media and they're like, I should speak my truth, right? So the other thing that's really important is to understand that an emotion is not a behavior. An emotion is literally from an evolutionary perspective, and you may know this better than I do, is information and is motivation. That's what emotions are for. So when you feel

37:26 fear, when you're walking outside, walk into the outhouse in the middle of the night and you feel fear, That is, all this sensory input is being processed in parts of your brain that you have no conscious awareness of. The first thing that happens is that you feel emotion before you have any logical idea of what are you even scared of. That is your brain telling you something. The other thing is it's motivation, right? I feel like running away. And this is where unfortunately our brain evolved for a world that we don't live in anymore. So, you know, back when I used to feel fear because I was being hunted by a tiger, The natural impulses that our fear encourage us to do don't work when you've got to pay rent at the end of the month or you've got to pay your mortgage or you've got to do well on your performance review. So oftentimes what we

38:14 do is we think that feeling authentically means letting our emotion run the show. We don't want to do that. We want to ask ourselves, what is this emotion telling me? Why do I feel fear? What am I afraid of? And I don't even think what am I afraid of is the right question. It's way too like self-help. It's way too psychotherapy for me. It's what is my fear telling me? What is the information and motivation that it's signaling? Yeah, and then what is it telling me to do? Like your client who was feeling very anxious all the time, by exploring that emotion, eventually it sounds like came to the understanding that it wasn't the job for him. Perfect, right? that this is not the, and so he's trying so hard, right? So the anxiety is like clinging onto his job, but actually once you understand

39:03 the emotion, it's actually walking away. And so once you have mastery over your emotions in this way, and I think mastery is maybe a better word, it makes life like so much better, right? That's when we talk about distress tolerance, like that's what I'm talking about. It's not just suppression. Wonderful. I so appreciate your answer. The thoroughness of it, the clarity of it, the stress tolerances, putting words to emotion, adding additional language to it and exploring the reverse context as well, the negative aspects of positive emotions, the positive aspects. So it sounds like it's broadening the time domain, like thinking about this and going forward, what does this represent in the past, present and future? and then really thinking about what the emotion is signaling. What

39:48 a beautiful description of distress tolerance because it's also operational. People can put this to work. Thank you. That's fantastic. And if you're a regular listener of the Huberman Lab podcast, you've no doubt heard me talk about the vitamin mineral probiotic drink, AG1. And if you've been on the fence about it, now's an awesome time to give it a try. For the next few weeks, AG1 is giving away a full supplement package with your first subscription to AG1. They're giving away a free bottle of vitamin D3K2, a bottle of omega-3 fish oil capsules, and a sample pack of the new sleep formula, AGZ, which by the way, is now the only sleep supplement I take. It's fantastic. AGZ is out of this world good. AGZ is a drink, so it eliminates the need to take a lot of pills. It tastes great. And like I

40:35 said, it has me sleeping incredibly well, waking up more refreshed than ever. I absolutely love it. Again, this is a limited time offer, so make sure to go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get started today. The roadmap. If we could go back to the roadmap. Yeah. If you could spell out for us... What do you think of as the roadmap to navigate this very complex landscape that we exist in now? Okay. And this could be relationship with this person. It could be a doctor, go to an Ivy League school versus be an artist or, you know, any number of different examples where we have to make the distinction of what's wished for us and expected of us versus what is true to us on the

41:23 inside. That seems to be where, to me, where the friction of life exists. Absolutely. That to me is the most interesting question in life, frankly, you know? Let me just make sure I understand your question. The friction and joy of life is the rest of the world wants me to do all of these things. And sometimes this doesn't want to do those things. Sometimes it does want to do those things. When do I listen to this? And when do I listen to everything that? Yes. Right? Okay. Beautiful question. So this is where I'm going to lean into the Eastern stuff for a second. So I spent seven years studying to become a monk. And then I went to medical school and I became

42:09 a psychiatrist. And the really interesting, I had a really weird experience of training in psychiatry. Because everyone was teaching me how the mind works, okay? And this is like good teachers at like the Harvard Medical School. And they're like, here's how the mind works, and this is what the subconscious is, and like there's cognitive behavioral therapy, right? So like Aaron Beck taught us that there's like thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and all these things connect. And the really fascinating thing, my most instinctive response when people would tell me how it is, is no, it's not. So in the East, they have a completely different conception of mind. And here's the big problem with the Western conception of mind. You're a scientist, right? How do you learn about

42:55 something, Andrew? You have a question. Okay, good. You pose a hypothesis. Excellent. You design an experiment. Good. Where you isolate variables. Okay. And you either refute or you, in some context, Sense, support your hypothesis. Okay. And then you design another experiment. Great. It improves, right? And ask another question. You just keep going. And then you get tenure and then you start a podcast. Beautiful, right? Just kidding. No, no. So let me ask you this. How do you study the mind? Here's what's really interesting. I do not know. Right? So here's what's really fascinating. Like, do we have any scientific evidence of the existence of thought? We could define thoughts as some pattern of network activity. What I mean is like, if we

43:42 literally look at it, we have no instrument that can detect a thought. That's right. Right? So we have no proof. We cannot measure a thought. Like it is like literally impossible. We can measure blood flow to the brain. We can measure electrical activity in the brain. We can induce thoughts, right? We can do that. But we have no idea that a thought exists. So like psychiatry is weird because- Every other part of medicine and science, we can measure what we are studying. In psychiatry, we can't do that. So along came Freud and he made a fascinating discovery, which is when a human being speaks, we understand something about what's in their mind. And the whole thing reason we get trained and the reason that we can measure mental, we

44:28 can measure your mind, right? So we have validated scientific instruments using things like factor analysis and stuff like that, where we can use the Beck depression inventory, which will tell you how depressed you are. We have good ways to measure stuff. So there's a lot of science in psychiatry. The basic problem though, is that we have a fundamental problem. We cannot, we have no insight into what is in someone's, we have insight into someone's mind, but we can't detect the mind. That is a fundamental problem with science. Okay. Here's the cool thing. We have no scientific measurement of thought, but we as human beings have measurement of thoughts. Can I ever know what you were thinking using any instrument of science? You're the psychiatrist, so I'm tempted to say yes, but no. No. Right. Can you know what

45:14 you're thinking? I would like to think so, but I'm guessing. Yes. I'm guessing. I mean, I can ask myself what's going on in there, but I don't necessarily have the ability to put language to it in a way that captures what I'm thinking. Fine, but you are capable of observing your thoughts. You are capable of, I'm not capable of observing your thoughts, but you can, whether you detect all of them, whether they're right or wrong, that question is separate. Just the fundamental idea of like, you can measure an axon, you can detect your thought, right? We all live in this way, right? So we can get to the edge cases later. So here's the cool thing. So when I went to India and I studied for seven years, the difference between the psychology that was developed from the contemplative traditions is its foundation is

46:00 internal observation. So yogis are capable. We're all, it's not like some special ability, but they based their theory of mind on what they could observe. Whereas in the West, that is not something we have access to. So their theory of mind is very different. So when I was training to become a psychiatrist, people were like, this is how the mind works. And I'm like, no, that's not true, right? There is a different way. So here's one example, getting to the roadmap. So the biggest thing that I think is different is the ego. So in the East, they have the concept of a part of our mind that is the ego. And in the West, we use the word ego, Freud defined it in some way. We all have this intuitive sense of identity, but in the same way that logic and

46:47 emotions interact in a very mechanistic and defined way, in the West, our model does not include this piece. And the roadmap that you're talking about has to do with that piece. So if the rest of the world, because things get complicated, right? That's why it's so exciting for you and so challenging. Things get complicated because everyone wants you to be something. And then we make a big mistake because we do this thing called internalize. And the moment that you internalize, now is it coming from the outside or is it coming from you? Is this something that I've been conditioned to want or is it something that I truly want? Which then begs the question, what the hell is truly want? Is there a difference between want from over here and want from over there? And the yogis will say that the answer is yes.

47:35 So once you understand the ego and the ego functions in a couple of ways. If I ask you, Andrew, who are you? what would you say? Andrew. Okay. Is that it? I mean, I have a list of roles that I occupy in life. Very good. Are those you? They're facets of me. Okay. Right. So anything that you can use to describe tenured professor at Stanford. Right. I wouldn't put that first, but that happens to be true. I'm a brother. Brother. I'm a boyfriend. Skater. Once a skater, always a skater. But yes, I'm a... Public educator. Great. I'm a son, a friend. All of that stuff is ego. Okay, so ego is anything.

48:20 When you say I am dot, dot, dot, anything that defines you after that is actually part of your ego. And the interesting thing is that it's not that the ego is bad. This is a common misconception. But like ego, we all need ego to function in the world. If you are okay not functioning in the world and you're moving towards enlightenment, then you no longer need ego. But generally speaking, we need ego. So, you know, if you're looking for a roadmap of what you truly want in life and what is healthy for you and not healthy for you, when you say you're Andrew, right, there's a lot of other people who can claim to be Andrew, but they're not you. You're talking about a fundamental internal experience of the self. And you were Andrew before you were a boyfriend. You

49:07 were Andrew, you've always been a son. But you actually, you were Andrew before you even knew you were a son, right? You were still Andrew. So there's a fundamental bundle of experience. That's really what you are. And I think that the best roadmap, if you're trying to figure out what to do in life, try to peel away the layers of your ego. And I know that's getting complicated. But if we sort of think about what is it that practically gets us jammed up in life is when I try to be something. I know this is gonna sound weird, I'm sure you have ambition, but I don't think you are where you are because of your ambition. I think you are where you are because you listen to this internal voice, not try to live up to external expectations. 100%. I can truly say that every

49:54 choice I've made to get into fish and animals when I was a kid, obsessed with birds and fish and then skateboarding and then biology and science and where I'm at now has been some sense of an internal passion and something pulling me from the outside. And it's just a, I just go. Those choices were always made because I knew in my heart's heart, there was no other option in the positive sense. I'm going, I'm pulled toward it and I'm driven toward it. So you are listening to a part of you, right? So it is an internal thing that the world then meets you halfway. So it makes it possible where there's a whole thing about that. For me, it's a physical energy. Fine. If I feel physical energy coming up in my body and I wanna move towards something, and for

50:41 some reason I feel it more in my left arm than anywhere else, this has always been true, I'll have a thought and I know, and that's when I go, oh my goodness, I'm gonna do this thing. I know I'm going to do it and there's no backing out because it has to happen. That's how it feels. Yeah, right? So any desire that you have that comes from the sense organs is probably, not this thing. So the sense organs can trigger something within you. But if we look at like, you know, social media, half the problem is that the hardest problem I have as a psychiatrist is convincing people that they don't really want the things that they say they want. It's like so crazy, right? Like we're being programmed, we're

51:27 being conditioned. And I realized this the other day when like, I was like, man, like I wish I talked to my agent about like like doing more talks. Like I want to go someplace and like get like paid speaking engagements. And I realized I actually hate that. I don't like that. It's just what I thought people like us do. And I've done a couple of them, which have been really fantastic. And I really enjoy that. But I like sitting with people, right? So we're trained and just think about it. Like anyone who's listening to this, think about all the shit that you've seen that you think you want, but you don't really want. You just like look at other people and you're like, yeah, I want that thing. It can be a particular kind of relationship. It can be a particular job. Like, you know, we all want like all this random stuff. It's all coming from our sense organs, right? This is why advertising is a thing. So stepping away from sense organs is

52:16 really important for that roadmap. Second thing is anything that you want that is a comparison. That is born of the ego. The ego is what defines you, right? So we can say tenured professor. We can say... associate part-time instructor. And so any comparison requires a definition. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah. Like, so all of the gold medalists, silver medalists, bronze medalists, that's a comparative thing. If I say I'm a silver medalist, then my desire for the gold medal can come out of the ego. Does that kind of make sense? Yes, it makes, the reason I'm sort of with my hand below my lip is because I'm so struck by this because I've had this feeling for a while now that most of the danger in life

53:07 comes from the need, the feeling that we need to prove something to others or to ourselves. And yet I know it's healthy to prove things to myself. Like it's felt good to be able to accomplish certain things. You know, I did that, like I could do other difficult things, but the origin of all of that work, in my mind, it's only healthy, at least for me, if it's not by virtue of trying to prove something. It's like there's a difference between a genuine heart's desire, for lack of a better way to put it, and what you're calling a pursuit of trying to win at some game in one's head. It's like a video game that isn't real. Yeah. It's not that it's not real, right? So

53:53 I agree with you 100%, and I think there's a couple of important things. So, you know, proving yourself is not, Totally wrong. But understand that it is the ego. That's what it's going to gratify. Right? So if you have an ego of, I am a loser, by all means, so this is part of the process. I have people in my office who are losers, for lack of a better term. 29 years old, living at home, playing video games all day, watching pornography, no job, dropped out of college. And so what they want more than anything else is to be a winner. And so my work involves two steps. First, let's help you go from loser to winner. And then let's abandon the whole paradigm. Because I've also had

54:40 people in my office who are billionaires and finally get to retire at the age of 52 after having sold their amazing third company. And then after retirement, it's not enough. They want to make another billion. They want to do something else. So like, you know, that loser to winner, like your mind will continually move the goalposts. If you were hungry before you got it, the thing won't fulfill your hunger. It may for a little while. And then you have to take another step of like, okay, losing and winning is now done, right? And I think you've gone through that. I can hear it in your words. And people can probably hear it too. Like the way that probably at some point in your life, Being a 10-year professor, I don't know why. That's just the thing that, that is the

55:26 thing that people are the lustiest for, right, in the world that I think we come from. It felt good to get. Right. And I won't lie, it felt good to get at a place like Stanford. Yeah. Even though there are many fantastic and extremely challenging places to achieve that, it felt like the culmination of, you know, 20 years of very hard work that I enjoyed, but that You know, it represented an important milestone for me. But I knew, I'll just say, and of course, we're just, we're talking about this example, but hopefully people are thinking about examples in their own lives. But I knew, for instance, I never want to be a department chair. Yeah. Tons of work doing administrative stuff. I remember when they told me, you'll be vice chair. And I'm like, oh my goodness, what do I have to do to avoid that? I also knew that I didn't care about being

56:14 a member of the National Academy. A close childhood friend of mine was just elected to the National Academy of Sciences. We've been friends since we were seven and I was, I'm so happy for him because he's doing exactly what he loves, but I never aspired to be a member of the National Academy, ever. Why? Because what came after tenure in order to go there was a divergence from what I really wanted to do. Yeah. So I think this is the key thing about the roadmap, right? So like we get conditioned by our sense organs. So like just to keep it super practical, if you're trying to figure out what you should do, is this coming from my sense organs? If your sense organ triggers something that's always been within you, right? So if you see like a frog and like you really want to be interested, like you want to figure out how the frog works. But the interesting thing about the difference between the sense organ thing and an internal drive is your internal

57:04 drive will find multiple objects in the outside world, right? So first it was biology, then it was frogs. Now it's neuro-ophthalmology, now it's this. So I don't know if this kind of makes sense. The drive is always the same and it'll encounter different things in the world. Yes. What is that drive? We'll get to that in a second, okay? So first thing for practically is like, if you're trying to figure out what should I do, first, Ask yourself, how have you been conditioned by social media? Move away from that. Second thing is be careful about any comparisons you make. Any motivation that you have to, because of a comparison, it can lead to success. You can be successful, but you won't be happy. Because this is, it's so annoying, right? So when I want, like, I work with a lot of influencers and YouTubers and

57:50 stuff. And so it's like, oh, we want our first million. And if you're not careful, the moment that you get your first million, like you want a second million. And then you want a third million. And then it's even scarier, right? So like, oh, I got 3 million subscribers. That's awesome. But then you know what's really terrifying, Andrew? Is a guy who started after me is getting followers faster than I'm getting them, right? And so the ego is never going to be satisfied. The ego by its nature is comparative. And even if you're number one, people think the most anxious people I've ever worked with, not actually true, but- Among them. Yeah. is people who get to the top and you think that you're done. You're not done. Then you're looking behind you at all of the people who are younger, harder working, have the benefit of AI tools, have the benefit of the path that you have carved,

58:39 who are catching up on you and will overtake you soon enough. So one good example of why we compare is the more you are judged, the more your ego grows and the more you will compare. Right. So this is almost like we're taught how to when people judge us, we judge ourselves and we get judged based on ranking. And so, you know, this is what we see on the Internet as social media, as we start to get judged more and more and more, we become more and more narcissistic. This is the narcissistic defense that tries to protect us from judgment. And so it's happening to everybody and it's escalating. The rate at which it's happening, people are more egotistical than they've ever been. Do you think that's especially

59:25 true for people who have large followings on social media? Absolutely. I mean, so I work with influencers and was so curious about the work that I was doing that I tried to develop a program. So we now have like a creator coaching program where we're like collecting data about whether it's effective or not. And so the really interesting thing is I think it's a unique like effect on our psychology. The closest thing is like, you know, a lot of celebrities are like really messed up. And that's because they have so many eyes on them. And people don't realize just as a simple example, the brain just doesn't think probabilistically. So you can have a thousand people love the work that you do, but all it takes is one person who's really nasty. That is what your brain is going to focus on. It's gonna highlight, it's amazing. I can be looking at like chat

1:00:15 that is scrolling during live streaming. There are messages that are faster than I can read. But if someone says something that is dangerous, my mind will flag it. Wow. It's like a predator on the horizon. Absolutely. So we have these circuits which were designed to look at a jungle and see a single pair of tiger's eyes. And so the danger scanning mechanism makes it so that the bigger that you get and

…