World Leading Therapist: 3 Simple Steps To Remove Your Negative Thoughts: Marisa Peer
Guests: Marisa
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I’ve been a therapist for 35 years. I worked with millionaires and movie stars, and I realized they have the same problem: "I just don't feel enough."
Britain's number one hypnotherapist, the founder of Rapid Transformational Therapy, and bestselling author, Marissa Peer.
People who are depressed have a very interesting belief. One is, "There's no cure, you know, it's genetic. And even if there was, it wouldn't work for me." Can you change that belief very quickly? Yeah, but you have to take a look at where did this happen.
How does one go about identifying which of these stories are the root cause?
Well, I think the first thing is...
You must also face some pretty heartbreaking cases. Tell me about one that comes to mind when I say that.
I think my saddest case was a boy of 14 whose father was hitting him with a belt. Nobody needs that. It’s no one’s job to make you feel good; it’s your job. And if you give someone the job of making you feel good, then guess what? You’ve given them the job of making you feel bad. If you can give yourself the certainty you’re looking for instead of looking for it somewhere else, the shift isn’t subtle—it’s profound.
So, without further ado, I’m Steven Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO: USA Edition. I hope nobody’s listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.
Marissa, first and foremost, thank you for being here. As you will know, I’m a big fan of your work. I included something really pertinent that you had said in my book as well, and I think that’s how we kind of became connected. You spend so long helping other people and understanding them; I wanted to start today by understanding you a little bit.
I want to go right back. I did a little bit of childhood psychology as well, and this is why your work is particularly resonant with me. But take me back to your childhood. I read this quote you’d said, which I thought might be a good stage setter: "When I was growing up, I struggled with the belief that I wasn't enough. This belief followed me through my teens and right into my 20s." Who was that child?
Well, I had an interesting childhood. Later someone in therapy said, "My God, your childhood sounds absolutely crazy," but it wasn't crazy; it was interesting. I had a very beautiful mother who was deeply, deeply unfulfilled. Beauty meant nothing; it gave her nothing. She wasn't a woman who could stay at home and be a mother. I had a father who was deeply, deeply intellectual. He was a head teacher, and he loved his career.
It was interesting watching this. My father loved his career; he helped kids every day. My mother was totally unfulfilled, always ill, a little bit hysterical. I watched that, and I remember thinking, "You know what? You have to have a great job. You’ve got to get a job that’s compelling and engrossing because it protects you from the pain." It wasn't "if" there’s pain; it was "there’s going to be pain." My parents' relationship was a car crash. But if you’ve got an amazing career, then you’ll be okay.
So I always wanted something engrossing and fulfilling. But my father was very interested in other people's children because they were easier to work with than his own. So it was certainly an interesting life. But I don’t regret any of it because it gave me the ambition to think, "Wow, you can help people." My father used to always say helping people is what life is all about. Because it was for him. He wasn't very good at helping my poor mother, but that's okay.
There were lots of elements of my life that were strange. For instance, I felt different. I was the head teacher's daughter, and I went to his school. I realized later that is the bane of people's lives—to be different—because we're all hardwired from birth to find connection and avoid rejection. When you feel different, then that can be really, really strange. But it made me understand human psychology very early on: what it's like to be different, what it's like to not fit in, what it's like when it looks perfect on the outside but it's not really like that on the inside. So it stood me in very good stead. I think my childhood was the perfect background to be a therapist.
And where did you, in hindsight, pick up the belief that you weren't enough?
Yeah, I remember being in my father's school, and he actually was my history teacher. He wrote in my history book—I think I was 11, I remember it to this day—he said, "Oh, this is amazing work. I had no idea you were intelligent." I think he wrote that to please me, but I was not pleased. I remember thinking, "Wow, my father doesn't even know who I am."
So the "not enoughness" came from living with a father who was invested in other people's children, living with a mother who was always in the hospital, living with a brother who was very clever and went to private school—both my sister and brother went to private school and I didn't because I wasn't "the smart one." My sister was the cute little beautiful little baby, my brother was the firstborn smart boy, and I just felt like this thing, this kind of freak, if you like, in the middle. But now I'm glad about that because it gave me that understanding.
But I did have one thing. I had a grandmother who really believed in me, thought I was a genius. I remember thinking then, "That's actually all you need: one person." When I became a therapist, I'd work with a lot of what I always called the "lost boys," like 15-year-old kids who were so angry. They’d say, "No one believes in me." I’d say, "But that's not true. I believe in you, and you can believe in you. That's already two people." I've always believed that if you have one person to believe in you, your life can be amazing. So I always had my grandmother. She lived 300 miles away, but she really believed in me.
And at that age, what did you want to do with your life? Did you have a hypothesis or a vision?
So, I wanted to be an artist. I was very good at art. My daughter's now an amazing artist. But I wanted to be an artist and my parents were like, "No, no, no, you can't be an artist. You can't go to art school, that's just for druggies and dropouts." I still love illustrating, and I was always writing stories, which is quite funny now because I wrote stories and my mother kept them all. They were always about dysfunctional families and unhappy families. It's so interesting that I wrote that, and now, of course, I wrote that book—it's all about the stories of unhappy people.
I always thought I'd be an artist, and my father said, "You should be a teacher like me, that would be amazing for you." So I went to teacher training college thinking, "You know, I'd love to be a teacher." But then I realized that I didn't want to be a teacher after all. So I left that and went off to work for Jane Fonda here in LA, which was much more fun.
I loved that. I went fully into the diet, weight loss, and fitness industry. But even then, I realized how abusive that industry is, how cruel it is to people, how it tells them that your worth is entirely judged on the number on the scales or the number on the tape measure. I saw, working for Jane, that anorexia and bulimia are mental illnesses. Body dysmorphia is a mental illness. And they were trying to cure it with aerobics and living on protein shakes and diet soups.
And so then I came across this wonderful guy called Gil Boyne, who was a hypnotist. I trained with him and thought, "Well, this is amazing." I've got all these people I'm teaching aerobics to in the 80s—it was a huge thing every day—and my class is wall-to-wall with anorexics, bulimics, body dysmorphics, exercise compulsives, orthorexics (which are people who only eat clean organic food). I thought, "Wow, I don't even have to advertise for clients." And I didn't. And so then I had this amazing life teaching for Jane during the day, seeing clients in the evening. But then I got so busy I had to actually stop working for her because I just couldn't cope with the amount of clients that were coming through my door because I found something that really fixed eating disorders.
So you met Gil Boyne when you got to LA, isn't it?
Yeah, Gil Boyne.
And you talk about this individual being a really pivotal person. He was a hypnotherapist?
Yeah, he was.
And what was it about him and what he taught you that stayed with you?
You know, Gil was one of the people I loved the most. He broke all the rules. He swore like a trooper, he’d bang his fist on the table, but he was deeply, deeply religious, believed that God worked through him. He was just such a fascinating character because he was a street fighter from Philadelphia who worked with Sylvester Stallone and hypnotized him to write *Rocky*. He realized he was onto something and then developed this amazing school teaching hypnotherapists. He so believed in it that he would guarantee that if he trained you and somebody sued you, he would turn up in court and defend you and pay all the costs, which stands to phenomenal belief.
So I trained with him, and then I became a hypnotherapist and I loved it. And then over time—he did ask me once if I wanted to, as he got older and retired, run his business—but by then, I'd found my own method, my own technique. I always think that when you train to be a therapist, any kind of therapist, no matter how amazing your teacher is—and I now teach amazing therapists—but you have another teacher: every client you see will teach you something profound and amazing.
So then my own clients became my teachers and taught me so much. They'd come back and go, "You know that one thing you did? That changed my life. That one thing you said? Oh my God, that was a game changer." So I started to collate "the one thing," which is different, of course, for every client. They never all said the same thing. And in collating the one thing that gave them a stunning turnaround, I then created my own method, which I called Rapid Transformational Therapy.
People say, "But that's not right. The words 'therapy' and 'rapid' don't go together. Why?" "Well, it has to be long and painful." Who said that? If I turned up at the ER—and I did turn up at the ER once, I broke my arm—they didn't say, "Well, we've got to build a relationship of trust to heal you." I didn't go to my dentist and say, "You know, I've got an infection here," and they go, "Well, we need the trust, you see."
I always thought people in pain—emotional pain is no different to physical pain. If I've got a headache or a broken arm, or I’ve got irritable bowel, or blushing, or I can't find love, or I stutter... that's really painful. And I thought that therapy should be like going to the emergency room, that we should offer immediate help.
Much of the underlying thesis in your new book and behind your Rapid Transformational Therapy is this idea that there are stories that are within us that are from our childhood or whatever, and they are sometimes and often very stubborn stories. So I imagine, as you've said, the reason why people think it's hard for it to be rapid or quick is because those stories are so deeply ingrained and stubborn and etched into us.
And we make someone else's story our story. "My mom always wanted a boy; I was the fourth girl." "My dad wanted me to go into the family law firm, but I wasn't smart." And so I see two things a lot: someone else's story—my mom said, "Don't even trust your own shadow," but that's not your story, that's someone else's story. So the first problem is that we make somebody else's story—my teacher said I'd never amount to anything—our story. My teacher said that to me, but that wasn't my story.
But the second thing that's even more painful are the lies we tell ourselves. And the biggest lie is the "I'm not enough," "I'm not lovable," "I don't matter." What happens with small children is they come into the world and they don't actually have a lot of needs. They need to feel safe, loved, significant. They need to feel they matter. But when you're a small child, if your parents cannot meet those needs because they're alcoholics, they're mentally ill, they're doing three jobs, they're a single parent, they're stressed, or whatever it is, the child never stops loving them; they immediately stop loving themselves. "If only I was better, my mom wouldn't be crying. If only I was good, my dad wouldn't shout. If only I was something, my dad would see me at the weekends."
And once they buy into that, "Oh, it's my fault," that becomes a lifelong sentence. But it's very easy to unpick that by saying to yourself, "Look, you know, you're looking at this through the filter of a five-year-old." One of my clients told me that she was walking with her mother in Ireland, and her father's friend came up and he said, "It's a disgrace that you haven't given your husband a son. He'll never be a man, you know, because he doesn't have a son." What a strange thing for him to say. But this little girl heard that and thought, "Oh, I should have been a boy. I've caused both my parents this tremendous grief."
And then she became very masculine. She worked as a fire officer—in fact, she was head of a fire crew—and she wouldn't wear makeup, she wouldn't let her husband put up a shelf, she had very short hair. And that was okay, except she said, "I feel very conflicted because I just can't be the person I want to be. And I feel I've got to do everything perfectly, and my husband and I have so many arguments because I want to drive the car, I'll pack the car, I'll carry everything."
And just going back to remember that scene was a real "aha" moment. "Oh, I heard something at five: 'Your husband will never be a man because he hasn't got a son. That last child should have been a son.'" But you see, she interpreted it with the mind of a five-year-old. At 35, take a look again and maybe understand that you were meant to be a girl. Your father was thrilled to have a girl. And even if he wanted a boy, somebody wanted you to be a girl. So we see things with the filter of a child who's been on the planet for four years—what do they know? "I'm not good enough, I'm not lovable, I was a disappointment." So looking at it again as an adult, you get the chance to say, "Oh, I see. I believed something then that felt true, but it wasn't true."
Can that change in beliefs be rapid though? So say in that case...
Oh, yeah. Really rapid. Yeah. I don't know if you read the case about Ryan the alcoholic whose father rejected him because he was gay. And he always felt so sad; he attracted men that were abusive to him. And when I had him have an imaginary conversation with his dad who said, "I feel inadequate, and when I had a gay son, I just felt more inadequate. It's not you, it's me." He began to realize that he wasn't a broken person at all, but he'd had broken parenting.
And I think I said that to him: "Ryan, you're not broken, but your parenting was broken. You're not flawed, but you had flawed parenting." But there's a huge difference. You are not flawed, but your parents, who were young, and his mother got pregnant, they weren't suited—you had a flawed upbringing. But there's a huge difference. And then he was able to make his peace with that and stop drinking completely—has never had a drink since. So people think therapy is long; it can be like that. If you can look at a scene and reframe it and go, "Oh, I thought that but it wasn't even true," then it becomes a game changer. And it can take 21 days for the mind—it can take 21 seconds. If you can look at something and think, "Oh, I see. I thought that, but actually that was an incorrect thought, and I can go back and correct an incorrect thought."
If at the crux of our lives and our behavior exist these fundamental self-stories we've told ourselves about ourselves, about who we are and about where our significance is in the world, etc., how does one go about even identifying—unless they have a wonderful therapist—how do they go about identifying which of these stories are the root cause of the symptoms they're seeing in their lives, whether it's addiction, depression, anxiety, whatever it might be?
Well, I think the first thing is just start to observe your thoughts. Do you have those what I call limiting thoughts? "I'm not enough," "Who's going to want me?" "I'm not lovable," "No one cares about me." And think about the thoughts and then ask the self a question: "Where did this thought come from?" No baby is born going, "Don't look at me, I'm naked, I've got no teeth, I've got milk spots, I've got these triple knees here, and I'm not enough."
So what happened to that belief? Well, someone chipped away at it—a parent, a relative, a teacher, somebody. And because children are so suggestible, it's very easy to make them think they're not enough. But can you change that belief very quickly? Yeah, but you have to take a look at where did this happen. You know, I never say to people, "What's wrong with you?" I always say, "What happened to you?"
They go, "Well, I was a perfectly normal weight until I was 11." "And then what happened?" "Well, I went to school, I got bullied, people started to make really weird sexual comments about my body, and I just got fatter and fatter, and then they never did that again." So now we see, "Oh, so somehow what was happening had a role and a function." And every thought you think isn't a thought—it's a blueprint that your mind, body, and psyche work to make real.
I think if you take a thought... for me, I was always late as a kid for everything. I missed the bus to school every day. And as an adult, I was always late. If I had 10 hours to get somewhere, I'd be late. I missed planes, I missed appointments. And one day I suddenly realized that when I was a kid and I missed the bus to school, my father—I'd have to walk home, he'd be furious, he wouldn't even speak, but he'd get out the car and drive me in silence to my school, it's a three-mile drive. I never missed the bus coming home, by the way. But then I thought, "Oh, of course, I did that for attention." But my father is now deeply proud of me, and even if he wasn't, I don't need that attention of being late. And it just stopped like that, because I suddenly saw the role of it, the job, the function. And many times if you can just ask yourself, "If this headache or this blushing or this asthma or this feeling had a job or was trying to help me, what would it do?" And it's really amazing the answers that come up.
Is that why you say, when you think about the core principle of RTT, it says "Don't just treat the behavior, treat the purpose the behavior is serving"?
Always treat the purpose. You see, if someone...
What does that mean? How do I make...
Well, let's imagine that you binge on cakes, or you're the kind of person when something goes wrong, you eat pizza or cake or something. And most therapists will tell you what's wrong with that. But I’d say, "Hey, what's right with it? You're an alcoholic, tell me what's good about that." "What do you mean?" "Well, you keep going back to it." And they go, "Actually, now you mention it, it does give me comfort. I can always depend on drink. It takes away the pain. I get comfortably numb. I can come home and just block out, or I can come home and eat five donuts and then I just go into this kind of soporific place."
And so, I don't treat the symptom, which is "I'm eating cakes every day" or "drinking alcohol" or "binging on Netflix" or "I'm using drugs." I treat what lies beneath. "Why are you doing that? What does it give you? When did you start that? Why do you think it helps you?" I worked with someone who was a chronic alcoholic. And when I talked to him, he said, "You know, I never saw my dad at 16. He took me to the pub and he got me drunk and he went, 'You're a man now.' And he began to take me to the pub every weekend." And I thought, "Oh, this is great. My dad likes me because I'm a man." And they had a very bonding time over beer. And then the dad died, and he continued drinking beer because he believed that he was bonding with his father even though he was dead. And so what was right about drinking beer? It has a memory. "That's how my dad bonded with me in the pub with his mates getting drunk." And so when you see, "Oh, so the role of the drinking was to keep a memory going." Yeah, but you can remember your dad—he doesn't live in a pint of beer. You can think of all the things you did do together and you don't need to drink.
And so it's coming to the realization that something that we hate... if something you hate keeps coming back—"I keep dieting, I always gain the weight back," "I've been to rehab eight times, but I still keep drinking"—you've got to stop treating the drinking and treat the cause of the drinking, the role of the drinking, the benefit of the drinking, the purpose of the drinking. And when you do that and get it right, you can change it forever, like with Ryan who's never had a drink since he realized that he felt worthless because his father rejected him because he was gay.
And it starts with that awareness that you described. And which is, I think, is such a difficult thing for some people for many reasons. I think some people live in this kind of self-defense state where they deny—the awareness is too uncomfortable for them to even contemplate. You know, I'm sure you've seen this in your practice, but either people don't want to come, or when they're there, they don't want to go to certain places in terms of they don't want to reveal certain things. They'd rather just ignore opening that box and live in, I don't know, a state of bliss, naive bliss.
Ignorance is bliss. I mean, there's a story in there of a girl called Terry who lost two babies—one died at birth, one at a few weeks—and her two existing ones, one had a congenital heart defect. And the first thing she said was, "Don't take me back. I don't want to revisit that pain." And I said, "Okay, I won't. I promise I won't." So while my job is to take people back—I call it being a good detective—someone's turned up and said, "Well, I don't know why I keep sabotaging. I have no idea. I guess I'm just messed up because I sabotage every relationship, every job I get I procrastinate and I always get fired, and I don't know why."
So I've shut myself away and I don't even want to look at that. But you can still go back and find it out because, in fact, Terry had a very functional heart. All it knew how to do was keep repairing itself. And she had a massive breakthrough just in a half-hour conversation because she understood that being numb... it's like you can't not feel. But she was living in a world of not feeling, and it was exhausting.
So I always think what I do wears three different hats. The first hat is what I call being a good detective. You're an investigator. You never say "what's wrong," you say "what happened? Why do you feel like that? Why do you want to change? What would it look like to change?" I often say to people straight away, "Tell me about your family." "I've got three sisters, they're all great, it's just me," or they might go, "Oh, they're all messed up." And then you know straight away that something's gone very wrong with this parenting, or something's just gone wrong with this child.
So when you put your investigator hat on—and you know a detective will lay out images and look at them and go, "Look at that scene, that scene, that scene, that scene"—and they work out what happened by looking at information. And a good RTT therapist is the same: we gather information. You have lots of "aha" moments, lots of ear-prick-up moments, lots of things that come up that you think, "Oh yeah, I'm going to go here, I'm going to go there."
And after you've done the investigating and found out, usually in minutes, why that person is the way they are, you then switch to almost being like a dentist: extracting all that toxic stuff, removing it. And finally, you become like a coder, it's like someone who's upgrading someone's software, and you code in and wire in and fire in totally different beliefs. But the skill is doing it all at the same time. Many people go to therapy and just talk about "what's wrong with me, what's wrong with me, I don't know, maybe I can find out." And others go and maybe just do suggestion therapy—"let's give you a different belief"—but in fact, you have to do all three seamlessly together because that's the perfect recipe for change. I understand, I can let that understanding go, and at the same time, I'm going to put in something completely different.
You know, with all these—a lot of the sort of mental health disorders, depression, anxiety, etc.—there's been a lot said about the recent and just apparent increase in the amount of people reporting to have these illnesses. Do you believe that there has been an increase, and if so, what do you think has been the cause?
I would say there's definitely been an increase in depression. And I've found in my experience—it's only my experience—that the major causes of depression are a couple of things. One: harsh, hurtful, critical words that we say to ourselves on a regular basis. That is guaranteed to make you depressed. The second is being disconnected. We have an epidemic of disconnection because everyone is on their phone and their screen. We worked from home in COVID, some of us are still doing that. We go to the store and we do a self-checkout, we go to the bank and we check out with a machine. So we are becoming disconnected. And human beings are wired for connection, not disconnection. And the other thing I find is a massive cause of depression is failing to follow your heart's desire—doing something because the family expect it, the pay is good, it's a solid job. So those three things, I think, are the massive cause of depression.
On that—on that first point about people telling themselves negative stories—we all know people that are very self-disparaging. Is that—and it's interesting because I don't know where that originates from, but I know so many people that are incredibly self-disparaging. The first thing they'll say to you is, "Oh, I'm sorry, I look bad today," or "I messed that up, I'm just a mess, I always fail." They look in the mirror and they go, "Oh my God, look at me," or they go, "I'm going to do this but it won't work." Where it comes from, funnily enough, is our tribal need.
You know, we're still inside tribal people, and we need to connect with a group. And so bragging—"I'm better than you, I'm smarter than you, I've got more than you"—is disconnecting. And so people learn to connect by not having that "tall poppy syndrome." We have to be the same. You know, children at school bond by being the same. And I found many clients say, "You know, my parents were rich or dirt poor, I was the only kid with glasses, and I felt different," like being the head teacher's daughter. So it comes from there.
So it's a strange thing that a few hundred years ago—a few hundred years ago and beyond—being negative actually saved your life. Looking for danger, looking for snakes, looking for lions, looking for weird people. You might... they do it because they believe it protects them from hurt and pain.
If they reject themselves first.
Yeah, if they reject themselves first. "No one's ever going to like me, see, I knew it. And now it doesn't hurt." But it really hurts. And so our job is to show people that no happiness is there. You might as well expect the best. You know, Muhammad Ali said, "I told myself I was the greatest before I even was." And then something amazing happened: I became the greatest. He could have said, "I'm not much good, me. I'm useless, really. It's all a fluke." But he said, "I am the greatest" long before he was. And that was so good for him because people think of him as undefeated, which isn't true, but that's the idea of him because he told himself a better lie. And if we could only all do that, our lives would be so much better. Mostly because the mind doesn't know or care if what you're telling it is true or false, or good or bad. It just lets it all in.
It's like our—as you said, you said our thoughts are actually blueprints. And I was thinking about them as like they are code going into a satnav.
Yeah, exactly.
So if I tell myself I am beautiful and I'm going to be successful and I'm going to get married, then my mind and my being will take me in that direction. Maybe even subconsciously, my actions will further me in that direction. I will say yes to things that are conducive with that outcome. And it really goes to show, doesn't it, the power of, as you say, the limiting beliefs we tell ourselves, because we all say them. I've gone through my lifetime telling myself that I'm really unorganized.
I know.
Because I grew up in a really unorganized home where my parents were never there, so everything was just a mess.
Yeah, and "I'm not wanted" or "I don't matter." You know, I was working with a kid a couple of years ago who was in the Chelsea junior team, Chelsea Football Club. And every day their coach said, "You've got a 2% chance of getting into the main team playing for Chelsea. Just 2%, so you've got to shape up." But you see, most kids when they hear that, think, "Oh, I've got a 98% chance of failing here. 2% is tiny." I said, "Listen, you've just got to say, 'I'm in the 2%.'"
Someone else told me that their doctor said, "You have a 20% chance of surviving cancer." "That's great, I'll go into... I'm in the 20%." "I'm in that 20%." You might think that's foolish. But when you set your mind to something and look at being in the percentage that makes it, actually your mind and body start to work at a level that make you stay in that percentage. Usually, the opposite: "Well, I'm in the percentage of failures." The same thing happens. Your mind and body work to make you stay in that percentage. Because the strongest force in humans is that we act in a way that totally matches how we define ourselves. So when you say, "I'm a loser, I'm a hot mess, I'm a train wreck, everything I touch doesn't work"... if only we knew how we are making those thoughts real and how our mind's job is to actually start making our thoughts real, we'd probably stop them.
But it's not—I guess it's not so easy just to make someone an optimist. Because if we think about the pessimists in our lives—and I've got friends that are pessimistic about... it just seems to be their default. And no matter... I mean, none of us in our friendship group are therapists, but the efforts we've gone to to try and make this individual not pessimistic in every situation have never ever worked. I'm thinking about a friend I have back home who always, and used to work for me, who always defaults to just pessimism and everything's going wrong and whatever. And I...
But then you have to ask them what's... if you said to them the same thing I say to alcoholics: "What's good about it?" They’d say, "I'm never disappointed."
"What's good about your pessimism?"
Yeah, "What's good about it?" If I said to my mother, "What's good about being a hypochondriac?" she'd say, "Well, I get lots of attention, I love being in hospital, everyone's so worried about me, people come to visit me." So you have to ask, "What's good about being a pessimist?" And he'll say, "I don't let people down. People don't expect anything of me." And so...
Is that expectation management?
Yeah. And it's a little bit more than the thought, because if you imagine a stack—I have to use my fingers to explain it—that's the thought, and thought always comes first. And then you think a thought, and when you think a thought, you then feel a feeling, and then the feeling dictates how you act. So imagine you thought a thought, which is "I'm not enough." The biggest cause of issues in the Western world is this not-enoughness. If I thought I'm not enough and I went straight to the next ladder, the next stage, how would I feel if I thought I'm not enough? I'd feel sad, dejected, demoralized, maybe angry, maybe resentful, maybe bitter. So I've thought a thought, I've got some feelings that come with thinking the thought. But then what actions come from thinking that thought and feeling those feelings? Often no actions. I don't take risks, I don't ask people out, ask for promotion. I'm actually angry and defensive.
So now I've got actions and behaviors. I'm angry, I'm defensive, I'm reclusive, I'm a loser, I don't bother. And then we justify it by going back: "Because I'm not enough." But if you switch that to "I am enough" and just took out the "not" and go, "Okay, if I thought 'I am enough,' if I said it even if I didn't believe it but said it, said it, said it, what would I feel?" Well, I might feel optimistic, I might feel confident, I might feel reassured, I might feel hopeful, I might feel excited. And then what thought... actions would I have? Well, I would take some risks, I'd ask people out, I'd ask for that promotion, I'd follow my dreams, I'd behave differently. And I justify it again—it's like a loop: thought, feeling, action, behavior, thought.
So, although it sounds very Pollyanna—"Oh, you're just thinking great thoughts"—it's much more than that, because when you think a thought, you feel a feeling, and then you act on that thought and feeling and you behave in a way that's linked to that thought and feeling. And a lot of things say, "Let's change the behavior: stop drinking, stop smoking, stop sabotaging, stop procrastinating, stop acting out." But the behavior is the last thing to change. You have to go back and change the thought first, and then it's easy.
Does the thought or like the underlying belief come from some kind of subjective evidence or experience we've had in our life? I always think about all my beliefs, and I always think that they are all based on some, whether right or wrong, whether true or false, evidence. So, you know, I struggled with relationships—we've talked about that a lot in this podcast—but I struggled with relationships and that meant that I was avoidant even if I was attracted to someone, even if I'd pursued someone. The minute they asked to commit to me, I would dissuade them. I would tell them all the reasons why we should not be together. And I look back in my childhood and really the evidence that was at the center of my belief was watching my parents screaming at each other every day, really awfully, and this belief that my dad was in prison, that I always had. And I was always trying to bail him out of prison from my mom screaming at him.
So the way that I viewed it was, once I became aware of this faulty evidence I had in my life from my childhood—honestly from writing and doing this podcast—it finally dawned on me where I'd learned what love and... was, and how identical the feeling I felt about being in prison was similar to the seven or six-year-old Steve looking at his dad being screamed at. So for me, what I thought happened was I became aware, and then the awareness of it allowed me to not... the trigger, which would be someone asking me to be in a relationship with them, no longer held enough power over me, which allowed me to get into relationships to rewrite new evidence.
Yeah. Because really you stopped thinking the thought that a relationship is a prison. That's what it really goes back to. You began to understand that you weren't born with that thought; you acquired it. And anything you acquire, you can release. So you worked out, "Oh, I've been seeing this with the filter of a six-year-old." A six-year-old filter says a relationship is like prison, especially for a man. But then you realized you weren't six, and there's lots of other evidence that says that's not true, and you changed your thought. You see, when you question a belief, you don't believe it. That's why in religion you may not question the priest or the abbot or the imam—not allowed to do that because we understand when you question a belief, you begin to doubt it. It’s why people are deeply religious: never question it. "I know God exists." "How do you know?" "I just know."
But when you question a belief—like when you see your children, my little girl saying, "Mommy, but how does Father Christmas get down there? How do the reindeer get down the chimney? They're that big and the chimney's that big. And how can he get all around the world in one night?" You know they're beginning to doubt. Which is a great thing. So if you question a belief, you introduce doubt. And that's what a great therapist does: it says, "Really? Always? Are you always a failure? Were you really meant to be an accountant to please your dad? Is that why you're here on the planet? Do you really think that everything you touch fails? Do you really believe there's no one in the world that can love you?" So when you start getting people to question beliefs, you open up a little glimmer of, "Oh, right. Yeah. That doesn't have to be true. And it doesn't have to be true for me." And that's why it's important. Which you did so eloquently: you looked at the belief of a six-year-old and thought, "But that's not me." One of the things I talk about in the book a lot is having clients say, "That's not me" because... and they have to justify why that isn't them. "Oh, that kid that wore second-hand clothes and mom was never there—that isn't me. I've got a wardrobe full of clothes. I don't have to do that anymore." But you know, we play the only part we've ever known, and then we make that part our own, and we don't even know that there's many other parts we could take on if we wanted to.
Even those beliefs—that "imprisonment" belief that I had, that relationships were prison—I felt the power of that belief deteriorate over time. Good. But I still believe that it's there somewhere.
Mm-hmm.
And I that kind of makes me wonder if those very sort of deeply held childhood beliefs ever really completely vanish, or if they are still capable of being triggered. So for example, if I was in a relationship now and my girlfriend started, say, shouting at me in the same way my dad shouted at my mom, I could very well see myself just getting up and leaving—not shouting back, just getting up and leaving, trying to like flee, flee the jail. And I just wonder with these, you know, even with your... the clients that you have and the patients you see, whether they really ever fully overcome...
I think a lot of them do. I think it's a work in progress. It's about... you looked to that little boy who said relationships are prison, and you realized that was a statement that for you was a statement of truth. It wasn't a question, it was a statement. And then what you have to do is start making a different statement. The mind learns by repetition. "Relationships are wonderful." People say to me, "Marriage is such hard work." I'm like, "Well, I don't think so. I found it hard being single. I got the flu, I got to get out of bed, go to the pharmacist myself, make myself some soup." In a marriage, in a relationship, someone else says, "Hey, I'll get that, I'll do that, let me do that."
So you question the belief that you have, but then you have to also change it, and you have to keep repeating the change. You know, I worked with somebody once who said, "I have no coping skills. My mother was hypersensitive to light and noise. I couldn't open a packet of potato chips without her going mental. We never went to the cinema or the swimming pool or the beach. She didn't like light, she didn't like noise, she didn't like people." And then she said, "And I have no coping skills." And I made her say, "I want you to say 'I have phenomenal coping skills.'" And so she had to say that every day. She didn't believe it, but she said, "You know, it's amazing. I say that every day, and I've become this person who feels she can cope with anything."
So you have to look at your question, your statement, and just change it. "I don't matter," "I matter." "I'm insignificant," "I'm significant." "I'm not lovable," "I am lovable." "I'm not enough," "I've always been enough." And if every person in the world could wake up and just say, "I matter, I'm significant, I'm enough, and I'm lovable," that would change my... I know that to be true because I've got many anti-bullying programs in schools all over—they all say the same thing. All the kids say every day "I'm enough." They've made a little plaque for their desk. And bullying has almost disappeared in this school just from those simple statements because bullies don't feel enough. It isn't enough to work with the bullied child; you must work with the kid who's doing the bullying. What's going on with them? Nobody says, "Oh, my life is so great, so wonderful, who can I bully today? I'm having a great time, I think I'll go off and troll somebody."
So we know that the not-enoughness is at the core of so many of our beliefs. But since the mind doesn't know or care what you're saying, if you switch "I'm not enough" to "I am enough," the shift isn't subtle—it's profound.
Just the subtlety of words you seem to assert that it makes a tremendous difference. Just one word that we use. Because we go through our lives saying things. So we go through our lives... I’ll say like, "You know, I'm not organized," or I'll say, "I can't do that." You know, and a lot of the time the truth is I probably could, but I've just... we're in this culture of just the flippancy of words where we say, "Oh, I can't, that's not me, I'm not that person, I am this." These kind of like binary definitive statements. Are they dangerous?
Yeah. When you say to someone, "How are you?" they go, "Not bad," "I'm all right." "How was your weekend?" "Not bad." So they're—they're really minimizing anything that's good. And I think you have to turn it right up. But often the one word... many years ago, one of my clients said, "I wish you'd see my mother. She has a hell of a life with my dad. He hits her, he's aggressive, but she's very invested in, you know, the front of a marriage to this sweet little old lady." And she kept talking about her husband saying, "He's a good husband." I said, "But he's not a good husband, darling. He's a good provider. I want you to switch the word 'husband' to 'provider' because he hits you, he's abusive, he diminishes you. That's not a good husband. But he is a good provider. I know that's important—you've got a nice home, three kids who all left." So she began to say, "He's a good provider." She said, "You know, it's amazing. I went home and within three months I divorced him because I thought, 'Oh, well I don't need to be with a provider. I've already got this house, I've got my pension.'"
So for her, that one word—he's only been a good provider in my entire marriage and he's actually hurt me a lot. And do I need him to provide? I've got a pension, I've got a house, I've got friends, I've got my children. He can't provide anything I can't provide myself because he's not a good husband at all. And so for her, just taking off the blinkers and having someone tell her the truth: that's not love.
Isn't that crazy, just one word?
Love doesn't hurt like that. And people say, "Oh, my boyfriend loves me so much he hits me." That's not love. You may believe it's love, it's passion—it's not love. "My dad hits me because I don't behave." That's not love. And often you have to educate people in a very nice way and change one word: "I'm useless"—no, "You're smart." "I don't matter"—"You matter a great deal."
And going back again to all these teenage kids who say, "No one loves me, I don't matter," I go, "Look, if your life was a clock, you're talking about the first five minutes of the clock. The first five minutes is horrible, but you've got the whole rest of the clock to have an amazing life. You know, this is your life today, but it's not your life. Your life today is you're being bullied at school, your parents don't seem to care, and no one's there, and that's horrible for you. But and that is your life today, but it's not your life. Your life's going to be amazing." And then you have to help them stand up to bullies and believe they matter and not tolerate it.
But it all starts again... you know, there's a great song called *It Started with a Kiss*, but nothing starts... it starts with a thought about a kiss. Everything goes back to a thought. And if you can keep peeling back to the thought, like your thought "marriage as prison," then you think, "But I have the power to change that thought at any stage, no matter how long down the line it is." If you change the thought, you change everything because the law of control begins with thought. You can't control the weather or the traffic, you can't even control your body—you'd never get a cold. But you can always control your thoughts. And when you control your thoughts, it changes your whole life. And I know it sounds easy or simple, but that's because it *is* simple.
You know, I've been doing this five-day challenge in schools and it's called "The I Can't to I Can." And it's just five days where every day these children go from "I can't" to "I can." They have an imaginary cheerleader that does somersaults and bangs cymbals and cheers them on. And they've all said it's made such a difference because they realize they *can*. That when you say "I can't," "what if no one likes me," "what if I fail," "what if I get it wrong"... well, you might, but you also might get it right. And if you get it wrong, you've learned something. You know, you could—if you never make a mistake, you've never made anything, because the only way you can learn is often by getting it wrong.
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"Well, I tried that, I didn't like it. I never want to do that again."
Being a therapist and speaking to a wide variety of people, you must also face some pretty heartbreaking outcomes and cases. Tell me about one that comes to mind when I say that.
I think my saddest case was a boy of 14 whose father was very physical with him, but he lived with a mother and he didn't have any skills to handle that. So he became very violent at school and was being expelled. And when I saw him, I said, "Darling, your dad's not allowed to put his hands on you. You know that." He said, "But I can't... " I said, "But you can stop him. You have to... " So we practiced rehearsing a lot that he would say to his dad, "You may not put your hands on me."
And then I said, "I think you have to not see him for a little while." And then the mother said, "But he needs a dad." I said, "Well, not like that. That’s hitting him with a belt. Nobody needs that. And he does need a dad, but he needs a dad that respects him." So we had to all have this little family conversation that they were going to go home and ring him and say, "I can't see you until you get help."
And the father was so childish, he smashed up his Xbox and dumped it in the garden. But he didn't see him, stood his ground. And then the father wanted to see him. And I said, "You know, every time you must say to him, 'You cannot put your hands on me.' If you do, I can't stop you. But when I leave, I will call the police because I've got to get you some help. You can't be like this."
And actually it was amazing. I did feel sorry for that kid because the father was so dismissive. But eventually, the father realized that the only way he could see him was to stop being violent. Because I had to give this little boy the power: "You're only 14, but you're smarter than your dad. You're more educated than your dad. You're more grown up than your dad. Your dad is a child, and you have to be the man here and say, 'I won't let you hit me because it's damaging for you as well as me.'"
And often with kids, it's giving them a voice, giving them the power to say no when someone is abusing them, molesting them, taking their lunch money. You know, and that's often the case—so many kids just don't have the power to say no because when they said "no," the parents said, "Don't you say no to me." When people say to me, "My kid's so annoying," I say, "That's how they learn." I mean, my kid argued with me all the time, and I'd always think, "I'm secretly rather pleased that she could stand up for herself and defend herself and wasn't a 'yes' person." And we forget: when we won't let our kids have a say, they go into the world and they don't know how to have a say, and that's a terrible injustice for them.
I was reading in your book about children and just more broadly about the... some of the mistakes parents make when they're raising children. And one of them, as you kind of cited earlier, was about telling them not to feel things. Right. So if they fall over, telling them "Don't cry, be a big boy, stop being a baby." That's definitely what I had planned to do with my kids. Tell me why I’m wrong.
Yeah, you know, I said to my little girl, "Don't... don't be a baby," and she goes, "Mommy, I am a baby." And I thought, "My God, she's so smart, she is a baby," because she was my teacher. And then I remembered to say to her when she hurt her leg, "Oh, that really hurt, didn't it? Ouch, that hurt." She goes, "Yes, Mommy, it hurt." But then she'd be okay. But when you said, "Don't cry, you're a big girl now, that didn't hurt, stop making a fuss," what you're saying is: don't feel your feelings. Swallow them, push them down, pretend you're okay, put on a happy face. And then people walk through the world and say, "Well, I can't tell anyone what I'm feeling," because we've trained them in the same way we train kids to finish everything on their plate.
One of the best gifts you can give your children is letting them feel. You know, that hurt. "You're a great kid, but today you're being really mean to your sister. What's going on?" And then they'll say, "You said she was my favorite." Years ago, I took my little daughter—we were lambing—and she pushed my nephew, just pushed him off a haystack. And my brother was very cross. I said, "Why did you do that?" And she said, "You said he was your favorite." I said, "No, I said he was my favorite nephew. You're my favorite. You'll always be my favorite. But he's my favorite nephew. And you cannot do that and you have to go and apologize." And she did.
But I was really quite pleased that I was able to say "What just happened there?" You can't always do that; sometimes you have to intervene. But good kids do bad things. Smart kids do stupid things. And rather than saying, "You're so annoying or naughty or bad," you say, "What's going on? What made... why did you just do that?" And they'll tell you something that you would never expect, and then they feel safe sharing what's going on. And children need you to be their safe place. They need to come to you and say, "Hey, my friend's taking drugs." My little girl came home, she goes, "Mom, my friend's brother, we went out and he's much bigger, and he was stealing all these baseball hats and he made me wear one, and I didn't want to wear one." I said, "Oh, that's your feelings telling you it's wrong. You must always listen to those feelings. And when that happens again, you must say, 'I don't feel I can wear that baseball hat.'"
And so I was very pleased that she could come and tell me stuff about drugs and sex and shoplifting. And some of the stuff they tell you, your eyes literally pop out on stalks. But you have to not judge your kids. It's very easy to say, not so easy to do. But you just have to take a deep breath, even if it's over the time, and ask them, "What's going on?"
There's something that I sort of garnered from all of that which I think is really applicable to business and generally like leadership and, I guess, friendship as well, which was: typically we come with answers and we come with statements. Whereas the approach you seem to take, even with your daughter there, is much more question-centric. It's asking questions and being kind of removed from having a bias or a presumption. And I was thinking about that from a leadership perspective. If you... when there's an issue in your business with an employee or something, instead of coming with statements and presumptions, it's probably wiser to come with a question at first.
Yeah, "What's going on?" I said that to my PA the other day. She said, "I just am overwhelmed by something in my personal life." So when you can say to someone, "You know, what's going on?" or... yeah, it's easier. You know, I was meeting my daughter in London recently. I hadn't seen her for ages. I was so excited. She turned up at this restaurant, she was in a really bad mood, and I said, "Do you want that?" "I don't like that." "Do you want a coffee?" "No, I hate that." And I felt like saying, "You know what? I'm just going to go home. I don't know why I've come here." But I just said, "Well, anything you..." "No, I don't like anything here." And then I said, "Well, let's order a coffee." And then she... and then she: "Mommy, I'm so glad that you understand me because it's not you. I've had a big fight with someone and I'm in such a bad temper and I was just being really defensive."
And I felt great too because I learned to not think, "Oh, how dare she talk to me like that. I might as well go home." I thought, "Oh, something is going on with her. Why don't I just sit here, drink my own coffee, and just wait for her to work it out?" So if you can sit with someone and not judge them and say—I mean everything, obviously she didn't want it, but I just left that—then usually they'll tell you what's wrong. But you can't interrogate people. And sometimes you just have to give them a little while to come around. But I think when you stop judging people—which isn't always easy—amazing... when you have a workforce that mess up or a super defensive, you try that... try a little tenderness because you get much better results.
You know, my husband and I have this great thing where I'll say, "Oh, what's the story you're telling yourself?" One day we were driving in the car, and I think I was driving and he was on his phone. I was talking, he wasn't listening. I talked again, I went, "Oh, I'm telling myself a story here that you're not interested in anything I have to say." And he went, "Oh, that's really funny because I'm telling myself a story that you're annoying me because I've just got a message from our accountant saying our account's been hacked and I'm feeling really panic-y and I'm looking at this message and you're 'yap yap yap'." So we both thought, "I'm telling myself a story that you're not allowing me space to read this very important message," and my story is "You're not listening." But I told that on a podcast and this girl said, "Well, he was wrong. He was definitely having an affair. Because banks don't write to say you’ve been hacked." In fact, it was our accountant that sent him a text saying, "You've been hacked." But that was so funny because there was a third story in there: someone else's story, which was, "Oh, he's definitely cheating on you because..." And so I thought that was so funny. That didn't upset me because we all tell ourselves the story: "You don't love me anymore," "You forgot my birthday," "You don't give me the attention you used to," "You're not interested in me."
The significant shift there as well is responsibility. Because you’re—even in the car example, it sounds like a conversation I had with my girlfriend recently where I was trying to do something and she tries telling me something. I'm going through a crisis on my phone and I'm telling myself that she doesn't understand my world and she's telling herself that I never listen to her when she's talking about important things. Thankfully, because I'm in a slightly more mature phase of my life, we're able to have the conversation as you've described where I'd say, "This is how I felt and I was telling myself this."
But a lot of people don't do that. Blame feels much easier. And it takes a certain type of maturity in person to even be able to take responsibility in the first place. I tend to believe that people who are—who have... I don't know if this is accurate, it's just a belief I have—but that have like lower self-esteem are less capable of allowing themselves to look in the mirror and take responsibility for things. They are the most protective of...
Yeah, they're much more adept at blaming, refusing to budge, because they believe that if you're right, they're wrong. It is easy to be defensive and blaming and never admit you're wrong because we think being wrong means that we're weak. You know, it's why men will never say "I'm lost" because if you're a hunter, you were useless to the tribe if you say, "I'm lost, I don't even know how to find my way back." And so it's the—it's the fear of being wrong.
But how to get it around is to say, "Listen, here's the truth: you're flawed, I'm flawed. The best we can ever be in the world is two flawed people having a flawed relationship." I call it being "flawsome." So if you can decide, "Hey, I like being flawed." You know, I tell all my clients the unhappiest people I have ever worked with, without a shadow of a doubt, are the ones who try to be perfect. And they're always the loneliest too, because they can never say they're wrong. It's always your fault, you did it, you made them. But if you can't be wrong, you're going to be alone because the basis of all friendship is that we choose people who share our vulnerabilities. If you haven't got any, then you also won't have any friends.
So it is a defensive mechanism to never admit you're wrong, and it can be very hard to say, "You know, I was wrong." Better to say, "I made a mistake, I messed up, I didn't handle that very well." I saw my husband's daughter once say, "You know, I messed up today." I was so proud of her. She said, "I messed up today. I didn't handle myself well at all. Really sorry." But that... people... you go up in someone's estimation when you can do that. We all know when Bill Clinton apologized, people liked him more. They didn't... they’d like him less because he said, "I didn't do anything wrong."
So the fear of being wrong creates a lot of problems, especially in teenagers, until we can say, "Look, even in the Bible it says 'to err is human, to forgive is divine.' I always think 'to err is human, but it feels divine.'" So we have to not punish people for making mistakes, especially our own kids or partners. Say, "Look, yeah, you did mess up, but it's okay. I'm glad you recognize that and I felt like this when... " It all comes back again to "can you communicate" and "do you have healthy self-esteem," because people with healthy esteem will say, "I was wrong, I made a mistake, that was my error." People with low self-esteem say, "No, it was your fault, it was always your fault."
So true. And I think that point about how you go up in people's self-esteem when you take responsibility is so unbelievably true.
Yeah. Because that's what it means: "responsibility" means an "ability to respond." That's what it is; it's an ability to respond. And we want to have an ability to respond better.
It's incredibly trust-building as well, isn't it, when you know that someone is able to say, "Like, I'm responsible for that, or I made a mistake here." It kind of allows you to understand that they are self-analytical and that they can—they can be left to assess themselves.
Yeah. And also so many people just want to be heard. When they go to their mother and say, "You know, you really hurt me," they go, "Well, what about my life? You know, you had a..." And then they don't feel heard. So when your kid or your husband or your wife comes in or your friend and says, "You really hurt me when you forgot my birthday or forgot how important that was or canceled at the last minute," you have to say, "Oh yeah, I hear that. I'm really sorry I hurt... even if you think they're being ridiculous, you still have to: 'I hear that that hurt you and I'm sorry that hurt you.'" Because being heard is so important to us. When we feel heard, we feel valuable and we feel significant. You know, again, our needs are to feel significant and worthy and enough. So if you can hear someone, you make them feel significant and worthy and enough. And if you don't hear them: "Oh, you're just being over-dramatic, you're overreacting, not that again, why don't you just get over yourself?" Then you don't feel significant, you don't feel worthy, and you don't feel heard. So we all want to have higher self-esteem, and if you can tell people, "Oh yeah, I can hear how upset you are, I really feel bad about that," you're growing their significance. And then when you can feel heard, you feel more significant too. So it's such a gift to give someone, just hearing them, and even if it doesn't make sense to you, still saying, "Yeah, I get it that you feel like that, I'm really sorry."
In your book, when you're going through the case study of Joe, I believe it was, you talk a lot about food and diet and how we all have the belief—and even I do—and I work out every day, pretty much every day, about six days a week, and even I know who I want to be in terms of my diet. I know that I want to lose fat, I know that I want to not eat the Pringles. I'm very clear on this. I think about it a lot. But I still eat the Pringles, and I still have the chocolate, and I still don't seem to be able to live in accordance with what I know, or at least what I say I want to do. And also, as you've articulated, we all know what good food and bad food is. But we still continue to make the wrong choices.
But from an evolutionary point of view, sugar is a good food. You know, if you were living thousands of years ago and you're out on the prairie, if you found honey or fruit, it was probably going to be very safe and had a lot of fructose and it would keep you going. If you found some lettuce, that wouldn't be the same, and bitter stuff was more likely to poison you. So we actually are hardwired to prefer sugar because it gives us a lot of nutrition—a lot of calories, a lot of energy for something small, whereas something else wouldn't do that. And our primitive brain still believes that we'll run out of sugar, which is why no one says, "I've got that lettuce in the fridge calling my name," but "That Ben & Jerry's, that cake, those cookies—I keep going back for more."
And so it's very hard to fight your primitive wiring. You are hardwired to remember where sugar is and finish it. You're hardwired to eat food when you see it because if the hunters came home with some fish and you said, "I don't really fancy fish," two days later you would be kicking yourself because you should have eaten it when it was in front of you. We're wired to be scared of hunger. If you're scared of hunger, you can't be rational. Also wired to go for fat. You know, Pringles and potato chips are the new cigarettes because we love the fat, we love the crunch, because we have stress receptors here that love biting and crunching.
And so everything we think is wrong about food is actually, from our mind's point, no—it's right. You should eat when you see food. You should load up on calorific food because we lived in a feast and famine for years. But if you can understand it, you can change it. And the whole diet industry is based on absolute abuse and self-hatred. You know, we talk about "punishing" those pounds, "doing a punishing workout," living on a "shake diet" or "powdered soup diet" that tastes disgusting. We go to groups where we get weighed and shamed in front of people. We talk about food as "sins" and "we've had a naughty day" or "I've been good, I've been so good, I haven't eaten, now I've been really bad, I ate a cookie." And that is wired to make you feel like a massive, massive failure. Even you saying, "I shouldn't eat the Pringles, I shouldn't eat the chocolate." You know, the way you eat is only down to the pictures you make in your head. If the picture's right, you eat. It's why vegans can't eat meat, because the picture is wrong. Jewish people can't eat pork, because the picture is wrong. So if you want to succeed, you've got to maybe set fire to some Pringles or do something—make some glue with jelly sweets—and then when you make the picture different, you'll never want to eat it again. But you can't succeed at that by beating yourself up.
That's so very true. The thing that stopped me drinking Coke was watching a clip that someone had shared and they just boiled Coke and it—they showed the residue that was left behind and it looked like oil.
Yeah.
And this picture I have in my head now is that if I drink Coke, I'm putting this gloopy black oil in my body. And I'm scared of that.
The way you feel about everything—everything—is down to only two things: the pictures you make in your head and the words you say to yourself. And I think I've now trained 13,000 therapists in RTT all over the world, and they all say, "You know, that—that's such a condensing therapy into a moment. The way you feel is down to the pictures you make and the words you can say, which you are free to change." "I can't get on a plane, it's killing, it's dangerous." Well, actually, the most dangerous part is the cab ride to the airport. But it's a state of mind. They feel free. And so if you can just look at every time you think of something or feel something, think "What are the pictures and words? What am I saying?" And if you can change them, it changes everything.
And of course, they are *your* words and pictures. "I'm going on a date, I might be rejected." But I could be with someone amazing who just thinks I'm the most amazing thing ever. "I'm going for this job, I could fail." But I could also get this amazing job of my dreams. We've all been told that human beings are very complicated and that the mind is very complex. It isn't. It's very simple.
You only have to know three things about your mind. One is: the way you feel about anything is down to the pictures you make in your head and the words you say. The second is that your mind is hardwired to keep returning to what's familiar while running away from what's unfamiliar. And that's a true... but you can make anything... you can put a bit of silicone on your finger and shove it in your eye every day and it becomes so familiar. But at first, using lenses is very unfamiliar. But the most important thing about the mind is that it does what it thinks you want. And you've got to sit down and think, "But what do I want?" "I want attention, so I've got a nervous twitch." "I want attention, I'm getting all these illnesses." "Oh, I see, I should have said 'I want positive attention for being really smart or really kind or really evolved.'" So really you don't need a study in human behavior; you need to know those three things. And if you know them and apply them, you can make sense of your life and everyone else's life. But also you can make your life so much better by thinking, "I can change the pictures. I can take sugar out of my coffee and make it familiar very quickly. And if I tell my mind like a satnav what I really, really, really want—but I'm very clear..." Like, "I want more money"—well, what's that, 10 bucks? "I want passionate relationship"—for how long, a week? So if you just keep always going back to those three things and looking at them, you can have whatever you want once you can look at those three things and make them work for you and not against you.
When I talked about the Pringles there, you talked about the kind of the initial stage being that acceptance of understanding that this is my hardwiring, and this is, you know, I'm not—I'm not a bad human; in fact, I am a human.
You're doing what nature wants you to do, actually.
Yeah, and that acceptance is... you talk about it when you talk about Terry in your book when you're talking about dealing with hard feelings—this "Triple A" sort of process. Can you give me a little bit of illumination on Triple A?
Yeah, I love Triple A. I invented that—a lot of things I invent is, first of all, makes it easy for me. But when I'm teaching therapists, it's easy for them to think Triple A—what does that mean? It means: Be **Aware** of what you're feeling.
So this is a formula, almost a three-step process for dealing with hard feelings.
So any hard feelings—or indeed any feelings, they don't even have to be hard. Be aware of what you're feeling. And **Accept** it—that's the second. People think, "Oh, what am I feeling? I'm feeling jealous, I shouldn't feel jealous, I need to eat a cake." "I'm feeling a feeling in my stomach, the seat of all emotions, and I shouldn't really feel that feeling, let me eat it, drink it, smoke it, shop it, Netflix it." But when you say, "I'm going to be aware. I'm aware that I'm feeling incredibly jealous of someone else whose book is selling more than mine. Oh, I feel really jealous about that. Now I've got to accept it. Yeah, I'm feeling a little envious. But you know what? My book is doing good, not as good as theirs, but I've got to accept it." Then you've got to **Articulate** it. You've got to say out loud, "I'm feeling really a little envious about that poor McKenna, he's got so much bigger numbers than me. But you know, Paul deserves it, he's worked really hard. He's not me, I'm not him, our books are different." And if you can just do that Triple A... always start with the awareness: what am I feeling? People say, "Oh, you shouldn't feel that." And you go, "But my feelings are the most real thing I have. How can I not feel it?"
I was having a conversation and someone said, "Well, you shouldn't feel that." I'm like, "Shouldn't feel it? The feelings are real, I can't not feel it. It's like saying you shouldn't be diabetic." So first of all, I'm feeling it. And you can't tell me I can't feel it because I'm feeling it. So I'm aware I'm feeling it, and I'm going to accept that I'm feeling it. And then I'm going to articulate. "Right now I'm feeling this rage towards my boss who's taken my idea and passed it as... I'm feeling this rage towards my sister or my partner because they're not listening to me." So I'm aware, I accept, I articulate. If you do those three, it goes away because feelings are like children going, "Hey, notice me!" And if you don't notice them, they regroup and become stronger. When you eat your feelings, shop your feelings, Netflix or drink or drug your feelings, they don't go away. They regroup and come back. But when you feel them—when you are aware of them and you accept them and you articulate them—they actually go away really quickly.
So many people come in and say, "I just feel so angry, so sad, so frustrated, so disappointed." "Well, okay, let's feel that right now and let's say it out loud." And then—then it will go away. And if only we all knew that, it makes such a difference to our life.
We see it in men, don't we? Men express themselves the least and kill themselves the most.
Yeah. The highest suicide rate in the world is young men. And actually, it goes... they always... someone has always made them wrong. It's always someone has made them wrong before they take that action.
Someone has made them wrong?
Wrong, yeah. Someone has made them wrong, someone else has been right, and they feel very wrong. They've been dumped, they've been rejected, they failed at some exam, they've been humiliated. They feel wrong. But yeah—and they don't feel that they're allowed to have those feelings. "Men don't cry," "You're running like a girl," "Stop being a big girl's blouse." We have all these expressions for men: "man up." And all they say is: don't feel. And—and that's killing people, not feeling. You know, we've got people—a glut of people taking antidepressants to be numb because they don't want to feel. And yet, your feelings are the most real thing you have, and they would do you an immense favor if you tune into them. Sometimes you think, "You know, what am I feeling? Actually, I'm feeling really nervous. I'm about to give a speech and I'm feeling kind of nervous." "What can I do?" "Well, I can remember that I always feel like that before a speech, but I always do them and in five minutes it will all pass, it'll be gone." And I'm just talking myself *into* it instead of talking myself out of it. So I'm going to accept I feel nervous, I'm aware of it, and I'm going to say, "Oh yeah, here's that old nervous feeling again. Actually, it's adrenaline, it's excitement, and I always get this and it's always gone." You can always talk yourself into something or out of it. Talk yourself out of the negative and into the positive ones. It—it will change your entire life.
Incredibly—incredibly inspiring, and I relate to a lot of that. We have a—we have a closing tradition on this podcast...
Okay.
...where the previous guest writes a question for the next guest.
Okay, how cool!
So the previous guest has written you a question. They didn't know who they were writing it for.
Okay.
And I won't tell you who they are, but...
Okay.
You're going to have to riddle this one a little bit. But the question is: **"Are you experienced? If so, what did you learn?"** And then they've done an asterisk at the bottom that says **"In the Jimi Hendrix sense."**
Oh, I just love Jimi Hendrix. Are you experienced? Yeah, I am experienced, you know. People say to me, "But you're not a doctor. You're not a psychologist, not a psychiatrist." But I've been a therapist for 35 years—my entire adult life. And I feel I am very experienced in understanding human pain. And what did I learn? I learned that almost all my clients' pain comes from not believing they're enough.
It's why I have all these "I am enough" bracelets, why I created the "I Am Enough" movement. Because I worked with millionaires and Olympic athletes and sports stars and movie stars, and I realized they have the same problem. So what my experience taught me, from starting as a therapist working with, you know, everyday people—school teachers and police officers and stay-at-home moms—to working with billionaires, taught me that we're all the same and we all have the same core issue: "I just don't feel enough." But that isn't true. But if you keep saying it, it becomes true because it *feels* true. And so if we can just change those thoughts and feelings...
So my experience taught me that therapy is not complicated. And it taught me that this belief—"Oh, someone's got depression, that's very complex, so the treatment's complex too"—no, it isn't. The treatment can be really fast and effective because it comes from, again, the not-enoughness that's so insidious. But it's not even real. It's like saying, "My headache is psychosomatic." That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It's just the same as a headache that's caused by an exposure to toxic fumes—they both hurt the same. One is real, one is psychosomatic, but they feel the same. And so my experience taught me to treat people and to simplify—simplify therapy, simplify the cure. You know, the word "cure" comes from the word "curious." And if you're curious and if you treat every client as if they are fascinating and compelling and interesting, you'll always unravel in your curiosity. I mean, we're not allowed to say we "cure" people, but still, I love the fact that "cure" comes from the word "curious."
Marissa, thank you so much. And thank you for writing such a brilliant book. I—it's the first time I've read a book like this that was centered around case studies of patients. And because you're telling real stories of patients and really dissecting them, it's much easier to follow and to relate to than if you were just like, you know, if it was a textbook. Because I read those textbooks in school, the childhood psychology textbooks and the psychology textbooks—they were difficult.
Yeah.
With diagrams and stuff. But this felt very, very human. And I think that's what made the book so...
Yeah, I wanted people to think "I identify with Terry, I identify with Joe." And if I see Terry's story, I can see my story, and in Terry's transformation, I can see how to transform me because we all relate.
Exactly. It's a very different approach, but it's incredibly powerful, and I think it's an incredibly important book for everybody to read. Thank you as well because, you know, your—your work influenced my—my first book in a big way. And just the... when I saw that clip going viral online where you talked about people not feeling like they're enough, it was exactly what I had felt for my—my whole childhood. And it was really just an illuminating thing that allowed me to behave in a different way and cure some of my own sort of insecurities, shall I say. So thank you.
The simpleness of it was the... people think if it's simple, it can't be profound. But the strength often is in the very simplicity, and it can be so profound. So I'm thrilled.
Yeah, it's always easier when it's simpler, you know.
Thank you. I'm so pleased and touched that I could help you.
Even not just me. Yeah, many, many millions. Thank you, Marissa.
Thank you too. It's been lovely, thank you.
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