How To Not Let Your Past Define You - Scott Barry Kaufman

Scott Barry Kaufman is a Psychologist at Columbia University, a writer and podcaster. Why is victim culture so common in the West? Everyone’s been hurt, so it’s easy to claim victimhood, so why has it become a core identity, and how do we honour pain without being defined by it? Expect to learn where a victimhood mentality comes from, what predicts whether someone is likely to fall into the victimhood trap or mindset and if modern culture is contributing or incentivising victimhood, the most harmful myths around identity and trauma, how you cultivate psychological flexibility in moments of deep emotional pain, the big difference between authenticity and self-esteem, and much more… - 00:00 Reconciling With Your Past 04:45 What is Victimhood Mentality? 10:26 Where Does Victim Mentality Come From? 14:30 Why is Victimhood So Seductive? 17:46 Our Feeling of Being Broken 20:28 Victimhood in Evolution 30:50 Are Genes Destiny? 37:35 The Dynamics of Epigenetics 44:46 Researching Highly Sensitive People 50:34 How to Recognise if You Are Highly Sensitive 59:19 Advice for Highly Sensitive People 1:04:56 The Role of Internally-Generated Safety 1:09:29 Links Between Self-Esteem & Victimhood 1:12:17 Accepting Your Past Without Being Ruled By It 1:14:05 Where to Find Scott - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  Sooner or later, you have to give up all hope for a better past. What's that?

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Yes, isn't that a great quote? It's probably my favorite quote out of all quotes in the history of the world. The psychotherapist Irving Yalim talked a lot about that and the importance of taking that existential perspective with his with his patients. And I think for all of us, it's really important to recognize that we shouldn't be prisoners of our past. As much as we keep ruminating over and over again that we wish something was different, that's not going to change the thing. No matter how many times we ruminate about it, it's not going to change it. So what I really want to do is help people practically and hopefully move forward with their lives.

• 0:45Chris Williamson?

  I mean, it's a great point that you, if you're kind of railing against something that happened in your past, hoping that you can enact some kind of control over it or alter what it was that occurred, you are fighting a losing battle. That's just not going to happen.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think for a lot of us, we get stuck on a certain frequency. And, and, and I think sometimes therapy is not helpful with that, you know? And that shouldn't be a controversial thing to say at all, you know?

• 1:24Speaker 01

  If I had to choose, I would choose Irving Yalim as my psychotherapist.

• 1:28Chris Williamson?

  Who?

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Because Irving Yalim is the psychotherapist who has that quote, sooner or later, you have to give up all hope for a better past. Yeah.

• 1:35Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Talk to me about the intersection of psychotherapy and identifying with our pasts.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Well, there are a lot of different orientations out there for psychotherapy. There's an orientation called trauma-informed therapy that I criticize a little bit because a lot of therapy is going and talking about your past. And I think that it's possible that if you're viewed only through the lens of your trauma, you can, you can forget that you have other things that you can provide to the world. You forget that you're allowed, you're allowed to have a future. You know, you're allowed to have a great future. So, I mean, there's not all, and not all trauma-informed therapy is bad. Of course, there's nuance here. But I think, you know, a big part of what I wanted to, the message I want to give in this book is that if we only view you through the lens of your victimhood,

• 2:28Speaker 01

  um, your pain, you know, your potential takes a back, a backseat to your pain.

• 2:34Chris Williamson?

  I have to say, I, I did twice weekly psychotherapy for about a year.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Was it a lot?

• 2:40Chris Williamson?

  Fascinating. I, it, it taught me more about myself than fifteen hundred to two thousand sessions of meditation. Uh, you know, it's like inviting somebody into a house you've lived in your entire life. And then walking around and pointing out rooms that you didn't know existed. And those rooms connecting to other rooms that you did know existed. And you're going, holy fuck, like, I wondered why the kid, they threw the back of the kitchen and, oh, that's, that leads into, that leads into the living room. And that's how that thing's connected to that thing. And you, the veils really do fall from your eyes. But it creates a fucking ton of open loops. It's basically, here is a thing that happened. Uh, and maybe this is why, and this is how it impacts you in the present.

• 3:22Chris Williamson?

  But if you're sort of action oriented, if you're a bit of a ruminator, if you're a little bit sensitive, dude, the fucking temptation to become a victim is so strong. And I saw this, I've, I'm still seeing this in myself. And that's why I was so excited to speak to you about your book, largely so that you can, uh, you know, detox me. I need to be exercised of, uh, of the, the stuff that I'm fighting with.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Do you know what orientation your, the psychotherapy was that you underwent?

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:57Chris Williamson?

  I could ask.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, was it like psychoanalysis?

• 4:01Chris Williamson?

  A little bit, yeah. It was a little.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Well, therapy obviously could be very helpful. I'm also a big fan of coaching. And so that's why I've gotten into the coaching space in the past five years because coaching is very future oriented. And it's not about diagnosing you or trying to find what is the diagnosis. I think sometimes we get hung up too much on what is my diagnosis, you know, or what am I? And we get so hung up on that, that it's like we're grasping for something to reduce ourselves to, to hang our, to hang our identity on. And that can get in the way of us seeing our, our full potential, but you know, seeing the depths of our being as well.

• 4:44Chris Williamson?

  What do you mean when you talk about a victimhood mindset? Let's set our terms.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. So having a victim mindset means you tend to blame all your problems on external circumstances. Whether it's that life dealt you a bad hand, or that a person or even entire group of people have it in for you and are holding you back. You believe you don't need to take responsibility for your actions or reactions because of your past trauma. So it's perfect. Okay. To go around being an asshole to people because you can blame that on your own past trauma. You can't stop ruminating about your past victimization. And this is probably the most important part of the definition. You may fixate on how to enact revenge and you rarely think about solutions or ways of moving forward with your life with hope and purpose. That tends to be a real big part of it.

• 5:28Chris Williamson?

  Everybody has bits of that, though. So to say, you know, the entirety of you, you explain all of your, I think most people would go, well, that's not me. I don't explain all of my, even the most victim-y victim doesn't explain all of their things. Everyone has a degree of agency, right? I, you know, I have control at least over this one bedside table. I have control at least over the color of socks I put in my feet or whatever it might be. So dig into that for me a little bit because I guess that most people are

• 5:59Chris Williamson?

  varying degrees of victim on different days, based on how much sleep and their blood sugar and, and, you know.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Well, you nailed it. And this is, this is what was tricky about the framing of this book and trying to come up with, how are we framing this book? Because most of the self-help books that sell really well, will tell you, it's not you, right? It's, it's either, usually the two go-tos we blame are your ex-boyfriend and your mom. Those are the two big ones. And, and most of the, the corner of the market in self-help world either blame the mom, you know, the narcissistic mother, borderline mother, or the ex-boyfriend. And so in discussing this with, and then also the Jews, we like blaming the Jews and everything as well. That's, that's another story. So I was working with my publisher. At first I wanted to pitch a book on vulnerable narcissism,

• 6:49Speaker 01

  which is what is the topic I've been scientifically studying for the last 10 years. And they're like, well, people aren't going to admit that they're vulnerable narcissists. So I was like, okay, but this is something that we all, it's a dynamic mindset that we all can go in and out of. And I do think that you lose your agency and you lose your empowerment when you do outsource all your problems to others. When you blame all your problems on someone else, you are stripping yourself of your agency. And so I really wanted people to see that. And I also wanted to come from a clear place of caring and not diagnosis. And I go through great pains, you, you'll, you see in the book, right? Like every sentence, there's a caveat, you know, I'm not here, I'm not in the game of shaming anyone.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Not in the game, usually when you talk about narcissism, when you talk about victim mindset, it's always like, it's the liberals, or it's the, you know, the libtards, or it's always about something else that, that people bond together to like, to have the outgroup be the narcissist. And that's not the vibe of my book. I really wanted, I call it honest love. You know, you really validate someone's real felt experience of suffering and you're honest with them that you believe in their higher potential. What I think is missing is that latter part in our society today.

• 8:04Chris Williamson?

  Where, give me some examples of times where people might be acting like victims that they might not realize it. The person who, you know, moderately agentic, upwardly mobile, I do my thing. But where does a victim mentality sneak in in ways that we might not notice?

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a terrific question. All throughout the course of our day, there's an opportunity to choose a victim mindset or to choose an empowered mindset. If we're waiting at Starbucks, there's a long ass line. It's very easy for us to forget that there are other people in that line as well that are probably also not having a great day. You know, but it's very easy to fall prey to the notion, gosh, don't they know how bad my day is? I deserve to be at the front of this line, you know? It's like, it's like this certain mentality that I think we all can kind of fall prey to and we forget that we're not the only ones that are suffering. It, it happens everywhere. A big, a big cognitive distortion associated with a victim mindset is seeing malevolent intent in ambiguous stimuli. Very nerdy. I know you'll be able to parse that, but it's a very nerdy way of saying.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  You, let's say you're going down the street, you smile at someone, they don't smile back and you take it personally. You get mad. You're like, what the fuck? Why did that motherfucker not smile back at me? I went out of my way to smile at them. It's like, okay. Chances are they probably didn't even see your smile. They're not thinking about you. They don't care about you. Why should they care? Why should they care about you? They don't, they don't know anything about you. You know, most likely it was just, it was just ambiguous. It wasn't that aggressive. So personalizing everything, seeing malevolent intent in really just neutral stimuli. A really good example of that is, is really, that really bothers comedians, you know, because that's their job.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  But if they're like, they see aggression in ambiguous facial expressions when they're performing on stage. And that makes them really angry. Like, why are you not laughing loudly at my jokes? And, and it doesn't, and they, they interpret that as, well, the person hates them and hates their jokes. So that's an extreme example, but if we go across, you know, our everyday life like that, you know, over personalizing things. You know, if someone doesn't text you back right away, you fall apart and think, oh gosh, they hate me. You know, all that stuff is really holding you back.

• 10:25Chris Williamson?

  Where does a victim mentality come from? Like, why? Yeah.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Well, I think everything honestly comes from a mix of nature and nurture. All of our personality dispositions. It's definitely a personality disposition in the sense that some people we find in our studies over and over, people, some people score higher than others regularly on it. But I also think it's a dynamic mindset and a lot of it does come from. I'm hesitant to use the word trauma, but a challenging experience in our life. Where we felt like we've been wronged. There's some really interesting research where they they wronged people in the laboratory intentionally. And they look to see what that does in terms of whether or not they punish an innocent person in the in the experiment. Don't you love social psychologists?

• 11:17Speaker 01

  So they found that a very, a very statistically significant effect. That those who were wronged in the study, like they got the short end of the stick in one way. Were more likely to give a puff of white noise to annoy a completely innocent. They suddenly became a sadistic.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  They suddenly.

• 11:36Chris Williamson?

  That's so good.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Normal, everyday people became a sadistic psychopath. So I think it is. It is a mindset that we all can be, it can trigger all of us. I really can't stand this constant, you're a psychopath, I'm not. You know, we're living in a society right now where everyone is so quick to call everyone else the narcissist and and see themselves as the perfect angels. And I just don't think that's the accurate reality of the matter.

• 12:00Chris Williamson?

  So is this retributive justice? Is that what you think these people are doing?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  No, I think we feel justified. Because the universe, to balance things out a little bit, to, to, it's like a, you know, it's interesting, a lot of people say they're really into justice. But what they're really into is self justice.

• 12:21Chris Williamson?

  What's the difference?

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Just not justice for all, but when there's injustice they see against their self. Then suddenly they hashtag myself matters.

• 12:34Chris Williamson?

  Oh, right.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  You see what I'm saying?

• 12:36Chris Williamson?

  So most, most people's.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Self justice is a threat against one's own ego.

• 12:42Chris Williamson?

  But also their campaigns publicly are usually motivated personally. That I would get something, something would tell me that most of the people. Well, actually, I was gonna say this, but then.

• 12:57Chris Williamson?

  This would kind of run against Rob Henderson's idea of luxury beliefs, right? Like, although I suppose that that's actually a hollow campaign. That's someone not really caring about defunding the police, not really caring about black people, not really caring about this.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  No, I think they really care. I think they really care. But they care because it's a threat to something they see themselves a part of. And I think that what really is.

• 13:21Chris Williamson?

  So they count a signal against, I am not part of the bourgeoisie, I am not oppressing you.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's interesting that you link that to the luxury beliefs idea. I mean, the idea of signaling is everywhere. Once you start to look, Jeffrey Miller told me that once. He said, he said that it copies it. Once you start to study signaling, you can't see anything in this world that in any conversation that isn't some form of signaling, signaling. So I always thought that was interesting. But I think that what is really lacking is a real care for universal principles, universalism. If you say you care about justice against, you know, racial discrimination, you should care when a white person is discriminated against, right? Like, and that's just, I mean, that's just an example, but it should work all the way around.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  If you're a white person, or if you're a white supremacist and you're like, I care about justice against white people. You should also care about black people, too. You know, like, like, we should care about universal principles, not just to the extent to which an injustice has occurred against something that correlates with yourself.

• 14:30Chris Williamson?

  Why is victimhood so seductive? Like, what's the?

• 14:33Speaker 01

  We're so seductive. It is our default state. Here's something interesting. Have you heard of word helplessness, the theory of word helplessness?

• 14:40Chris Williamson?

  I have. That was, you put dogs in a cage, you shock them.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:45Chris Williamson?

  Give us the full, give us the full overview and explain how it's been debunked.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  You were you were halfway there. Martin Seligman in the seventies and eighties did a whole series of studies, starting with dogs and rats. And then they eventually went to humans and I'll get to humans in a second. But they found that in dogs, you continually shock a dog. And then you open up the cage. So you keep them locked in a cage and you this this is delightful, right? This this sounds like psychopathic behavior, doesn't it? But on the part of the experimenter, but you continually shock a dog while they're locked inside a cage. And then you look to see at what point when you open up the cage, do they walk out? Because you you you you give them the option to be free at some point.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  And you look to see how many times do you shock them before they no longer walk out of that cage? Even though they can be free. And so they found that dogs pretty quickly were in helplessness. You know, it doesn't take that many shocks for a dog to give up. And and not walk out when the when the doors open. But what was interesting is when they got to humans, they found and they had to completely redo the theory. So they have a paper fifty years later where they say they got it completely wrong. They're completely opposite. In humans, it seems like learned helplessness is the default state in humans. It is something very primal about that where we default to learn helplessness. And what we have to learn is hope.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Hope is an intentional process that has to be learned. So you ask, why is it so seductive? Well, there's something so primal about the rewards we know we're going to get if we signal victimhood. It is something that just through the we're such a social species. And we know that the person who's perceived as the victim throughout the course of human evolution got

• 16:40Speaker 01

  a lot of support.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  And of course, there are real victims and of course, we need to say that. It should almost have to not be said, but we obviously should make clear that we're too compassionate humans and of course, there are real victims. But there also are, so a victim mindset is independent of victimization. You can have real victimization and not harness a victim mindset about it. I have a friend who's really cool and he has like no arms or legs and he has two hooks,

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Tom Nash, and he, he's like, I'm not a victim. He had, he had Menin Cockle disease that, that caused him to lose, to become quadriplegic. And he's like, I'm not a victim. I actually, I love these hooks. He like rolls up in style with them, you know?

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Vice versa, you can not have been a victimized and have a victim mindset as well. And I talk about the dark triad in the book. I have a whole section on dark triad activism.

• 17:43Chris Williamson?

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• 18:27Chris Williamson?

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• 18:36Chris Williamson?

  Just dig a little deeper for me. I think I, I've heard you talk about this upending of learned helplessness to learned hopefulness.

• 18:45Chris Williamson?

  Just that kind of turns the gravity of a lot of the way that people see their efforts, their perspective on how successful they are. You know, the fact that I don't default to thinking positive some to being agentic. I find it hard to overcome difficulty. A lot of the time I feel like things are outside of my control. I sometimes get this sense that my past is marionetting me in the future. Just like sink a little deeper because I really think that's, I think that's just such a fucking powerful remover of guilt for people where you go, oh, I'm not, I'm not broken.

• 19:29Chris Williamson?

  This, this isn't some personal curse. This is a inbuilt part of being a sensitive human.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  I'm really glad you said that. A lot of people, and this is really no, this is well known in the trauma literature. A lot of people who have had a terrible thing happen to them, especially when they were young, they do implicitly unconsciously believe they deserved it. It's a defense mechanism. It's not, it's not a healthy one. But a lot of people will say in tribe that why, why did this happen? I must have deserved it. And they start to develop a sense unconsciously often that they're broken inside. And a big, you know, a big mission that I'm on and, and the whole second half of the book, that's the whole second half of the book is find the parts of you that are not broken. Find the light within yourself.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  And that is the biggest problem when you identify singly with your, with your victimhood. And, and what boggles my mind is there's a lot of people that are committed to that. They're committed to identifying with their victimhood completely. And it boggles my mind. I guess for some people it is the only way they know. It's, it's, it's encouraged in their community, in their certain in-group. You know, that that's like the way to be. But there are entire communities where it's not. I mean, if you, if you're part of like the athletic sports community, I feel like there's a whole culture around overcoming a victim. You don't lose a game and the coach goes, all right, team. Let's pack it up. Let's blame the other team for all our problems. Let's give up. There's not going to be a next season.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  You know, did LeBron, the Lakers, I mentioned the Lakers. But I don't think he has a victim mindset over, over that situation that happened this year. So I, I think there's certain cultures and communities that really encourage it and some that, that don't.

• 21:17Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. So just go a little further back that you mentioned people who are struggling because humans are so pro-social will tend to be helped up. There will be given assistance. This is sort of ancestrally, I guess. Have you thought any more about the EP approach, the adaptive reason for sort of how victimhood works, that dynamic, what it means?

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hinted, I hinted at that a little bit earlier, but we are such a social species and social value is such an important core part, you know, reputation and social value is such an important part. And I think when, if you go all the way back to, you know, like Savannah desert.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  We're, we're a very tribal species. And to be, and there's a constant, I think there's a constant battle. There's a kind of victimhood Olympics going on, going back to the start of humanity, the dawn of humanity, we've been engaging in this victimhood Olympics. Where you have two sides that are warring against each other. And there's this notion that there can only be one victim and there can only be one oppressor. It, it, it, it just, that is what gets you the greatest rewards. Because if you claim that spot of being seen as the victim of the conflict, you get resources and support. But if it's the second that you're seen as the tribal group that is the oppressor,

• 22:49Speaker 01

  you are, nothing you can do can be right. You know, like nothing, you are, you are pure evil, no matter what happens. So I think there's something so primal about that war for that coveted seat. And, and as you see, it's in my, in my last chapter, I don't shy away from saying how it's playing out again in the Israeli, Palestine conflict and how it plays out in almost every intractable conflict among humans. There's something so primal about it.

• 23:18Chris Williamson?

  Does that suggest then that modern culture isn't contributing to incentivizing victimhood? Because a lot of culture war conversations talk about how victimhood is now being pedestalized. It's allowing people to get completely like contribution free status and manipulate the system. But you're saying this is vestigial and has gone back as long as humans have had social groups. So which one's right?

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Well, do you think our modern culture incentivize, does not incentivize victimhood?

• 23:51Chris Williamson?

  Oh, I would say it does.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  It does.

• 23:54Chris Williamson?

  I'm trying to work out, is that a magnifying effect? Does it become a catalyst? What is it about modern culture that's caused that to happen?

• 24:01Speaker 01

  I think it's like asking, why do humans still like fatty foods? I mean, I think that we're seeing remnants of an evolutionarily primal need that needs to be overcome. I mean, it's something that I think we see generation after generation after generation because it's so deeply seeded into our DNA to incentivize that. It's very hard for people to, because it's so deeply ingrained, it takes cognitive work to be able to perceive that there could be two victims at the same time.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Very hard for people to wrap their head around that. And I think that's the only way forward.

• 24:41Chris Williamson?

  Is, is there an additional level of incentivization or, or contribution from the modern world? Is it social media or is it a desperate, desperate need to try and upend inequality? Why is it that there's a little bit of a catalyst going on?

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Yes, and yes, yes, and yes. I just had a conversation with Jonathan Haidt on my podcast about this.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Yes, social media, especially TikTok, really incentivizes a victimhood identity among youth. So there really is a lot of peer pressure for, for, you know, it's no, no surprise that teenagers go through an identity crisis. That's happened since the dawn of teenagerhood and hoodom, but.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Now teenagers are hitching their identity as much as possible on some sort of marginalized identity because they know that's the way, that's the only way they can belong. That's the only way they can feel like they're included.

• 25:47Chris Williamson?

  Why, why would, why would somebody be more included on the margins than in the middle?

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Well, this is the million dollar question. We, you get the Nobel Prize if you figured out exactly what was happening. But there seems to have been a cultural shift among youth where, and Jean Twenge has, has done a great analysis of this in her book Generations. Prior generation, high self-esteem and grandiose narcissism was the, was the major form of entitlement, which is we're the best, you know, we're the best generation and, and they're, you know, and they're proud and happy about, about being superior. But now the entitlement, you get special privileges for saying you've suffered. So it has become a vulnerable form

• 26:36Speaker 01

  of entitlement that is being incentivized more than prior generations. It's an interesting question. I think social media must play some role in that. There's some sort of feedback mechanism where that seems to be what gets more attention and gets more likes. I mean, when we deal with the attention economy, like we're doing with social media, you start to see certain things start to get magnified and certain things start to compound that maybe we didn't even, that weren't as prominent in the past. But you just don't get as many likes if you're not being polarizing and if you're not talking about some sort of victimhood.

• 27:19Chris Williamson?

  I remember, I think it's in the happiness hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt says, sympathy is investment advice. And, and that's really what he's talking about is the fact that if you see somebody who's really down on their luck and kind of desperate and in need of support, that person will, you basically get a multiplier for every unit of effort that you give them compared to somebody who doesn't really need the effort. Now, the person that doesn't really need the effort, you give them some berries, they might be thankful for some berries. But someone who's starving, if you give them some berries, they really, really owe you. Now, there's lots of reasons why we have sympathy. We're a pro-social species. We don't want to see other people suffer, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, deep down, there is going to be a bit that says, hey, You support this person, they're really gonna owe you. This is gonna be great for you

• 28:03Chris Williamson?

  long term. And I wonder whether your opportunity to crowdsource that level of sympathy across the internet is a big motivating factor for people to do that, because you have an unlimited sized tribe of people who can think, whoa, God, I really should help this person. I don't really know why, but they really seem to be struggling. And wow, in an internet filled with people that are being performative and not showing their true selves, look at this person. That's real vulnerability. That's authentic. That's relatable. I see me in them. And as soon as you create this dynamic where people are incentivized to help, and you stand out by

• 28:44Chris Williamson?

  having some degree of what appears to be authenticity, authenticity very easily. I think a good way to talk about authenticity would be, or to signal it, is to say a thing that typically would be costly to say otherwise.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:00Chris Williamson?

  Sam Harris, I think, is authentic. You don't need to agree with him or disagree with him, but he pays a high price for a lot of the opinions that he holds. So you have to assume that he believes them, because if he didn't believe them, why the fuck would he still hold them? Like, why would he talk about them? Like, you would just say something that was easier than that, and you would sort of hide.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  And he gets a lot of shit for it.

• 29:19Chris Williamson?

  He gets tons of shit from it.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  He says, he says, the only way he ever finds out about it is when I forward them to him, the emails.

• 29:25Chris Williamson?

  Keep, keep doing that. That's very important. But yeah, what do you think about that? What do you think about this sort of, yeah, investment advice, authenticity, relatability dynamic? Is that contributing?

• 29:37Speaker 01

  I want to think this through. Is it contributing to, to the, to what? I mean, I think Sam is a-

• 29:43Chris Williamson?

  Incentivizing victimhood at large.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Ah, see, you see, like, Sam is such an oddball, you know, in the human species. He, he's willing to say what he believes to be true regardless of the cost.

• 29:55Chris Williamson?

  I understand. Sam, Sam wasn't the example that I was using. The point being that typically, people see a degree of vulnerability as being authentic. But the problem is, if you can bypass the authenticity and just be vulnerable, That gives all of the benefits of authenticity whilst not having to do it, which is where performative vulnerability comes from. If you film yourself crying on camera, people think, wow, they're really sad. I didn't know if you were sad or not, like, maybe you're just good at crying. Maybe you convinced yourself that you were sad. Maybe you overegged your degree of victimhood in order to be able to show this online, because you're going to be positively reinforced to do it because people are going to care.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  I think there's a really great insight there. I do talk about the difference in performative, I call TikTok vulnerability versus authentic vulnerability. I see this kind of TikTok vulnerability on steroids and it does get rewarded. I think that there is genuine sympathy involved there. There are people, you know, it's like, there are people who, when they see the signal, they, they generally want to help. They generally have the empathy and want to help. And so that kind of, that kind of TikTok vulnerability, they know that they, they are going to get some reward. It's like when you're a child, you exaggerate a little bit that you're sick because you want to stay home from school, you know, and you get rewarded by your mother

• 31:16Speaker 01

  showing you a lot of care and concern. It does feel good to have that attention. It does feel good, you know, like even you, Chris, Mr. No Victim Mindset. I'm sure if you're not feeling well, whatever, like there might, there, there's a human tendency to want to like broadcast to others that you're not feeling that well, to kind of get, to get that sympathy.

• 31:40Chris Williamson?

  Hmm, okay. Are genes our destiny? Surely they're the most immutable parts of us. So how can people not identify with their genes?

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Did I, did I address your prior point, though? Because I thought it was a really interesting one. Yeah, I thought it was really interesting.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, so genes, okay, so G is like a dirty word, right? In, in a lot of circles, I think people think of genes as something that is immutable, that we can't change. But I would much rather live in a world where nature and nurture contributed than, than either living in a genetic deterministic world or an environmentally deterministic world. So I'm actually happy with the way that evolution has given us genes that are highly sensitive to the environment, but are not completely determined by the environment. Um. So I like that. So do you want to do you want to do you want to cover attachment theory? Is that?

• 32:38Chris Williamson?

  Whatever you think is best, dude. Yeah, whatever you think is most salient from the genes side.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  Let's let's dive into attachment theory.

• 32:46Chris Williamson?

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• 33:31Chris Williamson?

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• 33:41Speaker 01

  Because there is, there are so many misconceptions about what attachment theory is, and there are so many ideas that it's all the fault. I think a lot of people have a victim mindset about attachment theory. They say, well, I have an insecure attachment because of the way I was raised. But as I talk about in the book, the behavioral genetics research shows that there is a pretty substantial heritability of your attachment style. And I think that it relates to your personality. Like, if you are, score very high in neuroticism, which is going to be influenced by your genes and your environment, but genes really matter in influencing the development of your neurotic traits, you're going to be more anxious in your relationships. You're going to be more self doubting, and it's going to show

• 34:26Speaker 01

  up in your relationships, but it's also going to show up everywhere and everywhere else in your life. So I think attachment theorists sometimes look a little too narrowly at the attachment relationship domain. And I think they could use a zoom out a little bit and take a bit of a personality neuroscience slash genetics perspective a little bit more.

• 34:44Chris Williamson?

  Well, I mean, like genes are everything, right? They are the your height, they're your weight, they're your ability to gain muscle. I'm sure you've looked at in some parts the sort of incel, black pill ideology, a lot of that is, you know, genetic dead end. But that's actually what they refer to themselves as. So it's difficult for a lot of people, facial symmetry. Are you telling me I'm gonna have to go? People go and get leg lengthening surgery, you know, all of the different ways, the compensatory mechanism. I've gone bald early in life, you know, whatever you're and then you compensate. You fly to Turkey and get new teeth or get new hairline or whatever. Genes in many ways are our destiny,

• 35:26Chris Williamson?

  and it's hard not to identify with them because they are immutable in many ways.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Yes, but if I gave only that message, then there'd be no point of writing the book Rise Above, because we also have an agency, as you said, to compensate, to do what we need to not, you know, what's it gonna do to help you to say, oh, I have the genes for shortness, I'm just gonna never talk to women ever again, you know? What is the use of that? What is the benefit of that? So no matter what circumstance you're in, and no matter what hand God has dealt you, I think it's very much in our control to do what we can with what we have. So I think both are true, and we can hold both in our mind at the same time. But you're right. I mean, it drives me crazy when people ignore

• 36:17Speaker 01

  the role of genes. And I have a whole section of my book on that in terms of not just attachment theory, but but also, well, it's a very controversial thing to say that trauma is heritable. That's probably one of the most con- if you want to not be a lot of people to like you at a cocktail party, tell them that heritability, that trauma has a high heritability.

• 36:41Chris Williamson?

  Have a look, dig into the research around that for me.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Okay, how do we, how do we cover this sensitively? Well, um, I think that in a lot of ways, trauma is the narrative that we tell ourselves about an experience that happened to us. Um, this notion that trauma is stored in the body, I don't think is scientifically accurate. You know, the body keeps the scores like the number one. It's been on the New York Times bestseller list. It's created a whole cold falling and has so much popularity. But I don't, and I don't believe that's how the brain works. So it, our trauma story is stored in our brain. It's not stored in our body. What we have in our body for sure is survival stress. We have in our body, um, lots of, um, uh,

• 37:30Speaker 01

  we, we can obviously feel, um, the stress involved with assaults with, with various things that happened to us. But the, but the word trauma, that really is the narrative that we've cognitively and consciously put on a series of things. And although, and, and it can change, you see, you can see it change too. You can see situations where a person never thought they had trauma. And then they go to therapy and then they get convinced by their therapist that, that what happened was trauma. So then they change their whole narrative. So you can see how, how fluid our notion of traumatic experiences are. So when I say that trauma has a high heritability, well, it is interesting because there is research showing that people who have a genetic variability towards the personality, personality trait neuroticism do tend to see the world differently than people who are low in neuroticism.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  They tend to see threat everywhere. Um, whereas people who score low in neuroticism don't tend to see the threat everywhere. You could have twins, um, you could have, well, you could have siblings who are not twins. You have siblings who don't share a lot of genes, um, not, not identical twins. And they both could have experienced the same exact thing in their childhood from their parenting style. And one is like, I had a traumatizing childhood. And then you, you see this case and then the other child is like, what are you talking about? We had such a great childhood, you know? And it's like, what's the truth? In a lot of ways, the truth is. In the eye of the beholder. And you also see that with attachment styles. So I talk about in the book, but the genes for neuroticism color the extent, what you focus on in your relationship.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  And so you're, it, it, it focuses your attention on various aspects of the relationship and it makes you ignore maybe some of the better lovely aspects of relationship that you just can't see because you're so focused on, will they leave me, will they leave me, will they leave me? Does that make sense? And I hope that was somewhat sensitive.

• 39:18Chris Williamson?

  No, yeah, it does. It does. I mean, I remember you talk a bit about epigenetics and I can't remember who it was I was speaking to. Might've been Roy Baumeister. And he was saying that if a mother goes into poverty during pregnancy. So if a mother who's pregnant loses her job, which is a pretty reliable way to go into poverty. You get epigenetic changes inside of the baby that is, is, is being carried inside of us. So, you know, ancestral trauma, which is, I think people talking about, I'm one 16th Native American, one, one, like 120th Native American,

• 40:03Chris Williamson?

  and I can feel the sort of pain of the ancestral land. I think that starts to get us outside of the realm of science and into the realm of woo a little bit. But given the fact that if you have a daughter as a, a baby that's inside of you, that baby has every egg that she's ever going to carry for her entire life. So at one point you were inside of your mother, who was inside of your grandmother. Like, that's the kind of position that you hold. I don't know how epigenetics works down to the level of egg cells inside of a developing baby. But I could see that you could quite easily create two generations of epigenetic change by having a really, really stressful event

• 40:48Chris Williamson?

  occur to the mother while she's pregnant.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. And people do make too much of intergenerational trauma effects because the data does show that beyond two generations, there's.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  No indication in the blood of this. So I think that there is some partial truth to this, but I think the trauma researchers make too much of it. They go way beyond what the evidence actually shows. I mean, I could literally show you papers.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  I want to minimize my use of the word literally. I want to work on that. I overuse the word literal sometimes, but I would love to show you some papers that really cast doubt on the pervasive effects of intergenerational trauma beyond two generations. So in terms of Holocaust, for instance, or in terms of people's slavery, blacks, you know, people say intergenerational trauma, you know, from, you know, my great, great, great, great grandmother is the reason why I am the way I am today. And evidence is actually slim on that idea.

• 41:48Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. One final element here to try and curveball you. Epigenetic change, the increased activation of particular genes and expression of genes within someone. Surely, let's say that you start off child of a slightly neurotic parent. You've probably got the genes for a bit of neuroticism. And then during childhood, you, or even during adulthood, you go through a really, really protracted period of chronic stress. And this epigenetic change that was primed, you had all of the materials, you had all

• 42:31Chris Williamson?

  of the ingredients for this very neurotic soup inside of you, and they get turned on. How do people not identify with the fact that maybe they can even remember a time before this when they weren't this way? And now this epigenetic change has occurred. It's very, as far as I am aware, it's easy to increase the expression of genes, but it's very hard to decrease the expression of genes once they've begun to be expressed.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, great point. And if you want to discuss epigenetics within the development of an individual's lifespan, there is a lot of evidence for that, for sure. And that's a different topic than the intergenerational trauma issue. Those are separate issues. Within, within an individual's lifespan, there seems to be genes that influence general sensitivity versus orchid and lion, you know, hypothesis. So there are genes that influence you to be the kind of person who sensitive to everything for better and worse. And then there are some people who seem to have a combination of genes that cause them to not be so affected by anything.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  And for those who have the genes that make them really sensitive to everything, the environment, the epigenetics really, really matters for those folks. Because there's some really cool studies with like summer camps that takes these kids who have, who are prone to a general sensitivity and may show neurotic like traits and cause them to, to really face their fears. And in a very supportive, encouraging environment, Rachel Gracio Plané and Colin Young did a great study about this, by the way. And really support them and activate the curiosity element of this.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Because sensitivity, it can go either way. It can cause you to avoid the world, but it can also, sensitivity doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, or a way of holding you back in life. If you're in a supportive environment where you learn early enough that you can take that feeling of fear and anxiety and, and, and still act, it actually gives you a sense of great resiliency and it gives you a great sense of curiosity. So they found that they had, that those kids had the highest, by the end of the summer camp, they had higher curiosity scores and openness to experience than anyone else in the camp.

• 44:55Chris Williamson?

  But unfortunately, most people listening to this podcast are not going to be children.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Try to be hopeful.

• 45:04Chris Williamson?

  Realistic. We're being realistic and hopeful.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and both, both, both. Yeah. It is true. The other way around is true as well, and it's a real it's a real shame. I mean, it matters a lot what kind of partners you choose. Do you have sensitive you have partners who are sensitive to your triggers? Do you have partners who are

• 45:25Speaker 01

  going to gaslight you, abuse you, you know? Especially, you know, if you have a genome that makes you super sensitive to that sort of thing. It is interesting, though. There are some people with these genes that don't, that make them just rock solid, like stoic, regardless of like whatever's thrown at them. That's interesting. You know, there's like a genetic preclivity towards that as well, you know? I don't know. Maybe David Goggins has those genes, or maybe he developed it. Maybe he was the other way and he developed it. Who knows? But, but it is interesting. So, yes, so of course, we should have compassion as well for all the different ways epigenics happen. But I don't think it means that there's no hope. I mean, like you said, it makes it harder, especially in childhood. I bring up childhood because it's in adulthood, you know,

• 46:10Speaker 01

  if these things happen, you're really influenced a lot by these sensitive periods in your life when your brain is still developing, when your prefrontal cortex is developing and you're coming up with cognitive strategies to overcome things and learn things. But I do think you can learn these strategies at any point in your life to a certain extent.

• 46:29Chris Williamson?

  Right, okay. What's the research on highly sensitive people? I literally didn't even know that this was a thing. I thought it was just

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Really?

• 46:38Chris Williamson?

  I thought it would just be like a colloquial term. Oh, yeah, he's very sensitive. But highly sensitive people is a I mean, tell me what it is. Explain it.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. And we should also talk about the link between masculinity and being an HSP, because I think a lot of men score high in this trait and feel ashamed of it because they feel like societal expectations say that they're a sissy boy or something just because they score high in these traits. But being a highly sensitive person is the combination of two traits, neuroticism that we talked a little bit About which is being fearful, having a lot of anxiety, but also people who were highly sensitive also score very high in openness to experience, appreciation of beauty and excellence. And what you often find is that they're so open to so many, so much input in the world that they get overwhelmed quickly and then they need to retreat. So there's a constant push and pull

• 47:29Speaker 01

  between a full engagement, a full engagement in the world and all its splendor, in all of its splendor and in avoidance, because one becomes overwhelmed with all the input that's coming in. That's really all it means, you know. Some people make more of it than it is. I saw a post, an interview with Kanye West where he said, he's very misunderstood. He's really just a highly sensitive introvert. And then I, I made the argument, it's actually possible to be a highly sensitive asshole.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  There's no contradiction in that, in that.

• 48:12Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 48:16Chris Williamson?

  Going to the highly sensitive people thing, because I get the sense that this sort of show is going to be very heavily trafficked by people who lie somewhere on that spectrum, you know, they're introspective, they reflect, they do self-work, they consider whether or not this is the best use of their time, they want to be better, they're probably plagued with quite a lot of self-doubt, maybe they're dealing with a little bit of low self-esteem, they worry about what other people think of them, they care deeply about other people's opinions, probably too much.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:46Chris Williamson?

  All of that stuff doesn't sound very good. What are the advantages? Like, how can people transform high sensitivity into a strength?

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm really glad you asked that question because I think a lot of people can view these things as negatives. But contextually speaking, it is very conducive to creativity, to be able to see the nuances and things, to be able to see, to have such an open mind. Where you're able to make connections between things that most people aren't seeing. A big part of my PhD dissertation was investigating the trait reduced lane inhibition and its correlation with creative thinking. People who have a reduced lane inhibition, I actually did this research with Jordan Peterson, believe it or not, back before he was famous, we published papers on this. But a reduced late inhibition means that your filter is is down where you don't see things as necessarily irrelevant

• 49:38Speaker 01

  to the current goal that you have. So there are people who, when they have a goal, they're so narrow minded and single focused about it that they ignore everything else around them that doesn't seem obviously relevant to their goal. But we found that really creative people, especially in the arts, and actually the paper I published, Jordan, looks at the difference between scientific creativity and artistic creativity. We found that people, particularly in the arts, have this reduced lane inhibition where they actually at an unconscious level let in a lot more information than that that they're, for some reason, their their their salience brain network is not tagging

• 50:19Speaker 01

  this incoming input as irrelevant. So they they're they're able to entertain it, and they also have the working memory capacity to entertain it. Shelley Carson also did some really great research showing that having a reduced lane inhibition plus an enhanced working memory capacity is kind of like the ideal state of being for creativity. You can handle this influx of information and and and sort out what's relevant and what isn't at the conscious level. Whereas most people filter out at the subconscious level.

• 50:46Chris Williamson?

  I imagine, I imagine if you get this wrong, you get perilously close to attention deficit disorder as well.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  And schizophrenia. Yeah, in the most extreme versions, this is what you see in mental illness. You know, we put people in mental institutions for having two extreme versions of this, but for people who can. Have a moderate version of it seems to be the most conducive towards creative thinking.

• 51:08Chris Williamson?

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• 52:23Speaker 01

  I also think that social sensitivity, I think being able to be in a conversation and feel what another person is feeling or taking a lot of information, even nonverbal cues, not be blind to them can be very valuable. It can help make you a more caring human in a lot of ways. So we have the creativity, we have the sort of social aspects. I think also just appreciating life, being able to see beauty where other people don't see beauty could be a big part of it as well. You do, you do, you do tend to find, they actually have separated. I talk about this study

• 53:03Speaker 01

  in some of my articles, but they separate the appreciation of beauty and excellence part from the anxiety part. And I find that if you separate that part of the high sensitivity, it's actually correlated with much higher levels of happiness and wellbeing. Whereas the anxiety part is correlated with lower levels of anxiety and wellbeing. So I think there are good things we can take from being a highly sensitive person and we can try to manage the other parts.

• 53:27Chris Williamson?

  Great. Lead in there to if, actually, first off, how can you tell if you're one of these people? How can people, we don't want to get self fucking diagnosing, but you know what I mean? I don't, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole, but how can people tell if they're highly sensitive? And then on top of that, if this is you, if this sounds like you, what are the challenges that people should be aware of? What are the areas that if you can just get control of this and this and this, your quality of life is likely, you're really able to unlock the advantages of being more highly sensitive?

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Do you think you, do you think you might be a highly sensitive person?

• 54:04Chris Williamson?

  I am. Yeah, yeah, I, based on what I've read, given the fact that I've known about this concept for about two days, I would identify with a lot of those things. I had a huge genetic test done at the back end of last year and all of the alleles that came back that were interesting from a behavioral perspective would predispose me to, to this stuff. Very dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, sometimes struggles with serotonin, very goal driven, may struggle to come back to emotional baseline after a perturbation, clears adrenaline slowly. Like it's dude, it's fucking wild. Like when you look at.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I think this is really important for people like you to admit that. I was in a movie recently called Sensitive Men Rising, starring me and Alanis Marsat. And Luke Goss, do you know who Luke Goss is, the actor?

• 55:02Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Google him, Luke G O S S. He reminds me of you a little bit. He, he's, you know, he's, he's very buff, very good looking.

• 55:17Chris Williamson?

  He's bald.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, testosterone is correlated baldness, but, but, but look, you know, he's, he's, he's, he's a great actor. But he really talks in this movie about how he thinks he's a highly sensitive person and how he feels like there should be, there shouldn't be this stigma about manly looking men saying that they're highly sensitive people. And I really agree with that. I agree with that completely. And I think, you know, we need more people like you and Luke and, and me. I've been hitting the gym, making, no, I'm, I'm being cheeky, but we really, we really need to, to give more men the memo that it's not, it's not a negative, doesn't make you a sissy, you know?

• 55:59Chris Williamson?

  Well, dude, look at what is it that drives people to do the things that they do to their career or to their body or to their mind or to their net worth or to their ability to communicate or these things. Like, a lot of it is a need for control, safety, validation, desire for respect, a sense of something that was missing when you were a child. And yeah, certainly for me, I was pretty lonely, pretty bullied in school, pretty unpopular, and started.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  Really, you were bullied?

• 56:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  For what? For what state?

• 56:35Chris Williamson?

  Uh, I was small in school. I was a late bloomer. I spoke differently. I don't have the accent of the place that I'm from, even though I'm, you know, the same working class scum that everybody else was. The town that I'm in didn't appreciate the fact that I spoke differently, that I used long words, like my obsession with stupid vocabulary has kind of existed since I was like nine or 10.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Were you gifted? Were you in gifted education?

• 57:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  You strike me as.

• 57:04Chris Williamson?

  Also didn't, didn't help. I think from the school that I went to, maybe, I think my year group would have had 200, 200 kids in, 250. So it was a big school. And I think maybe one or two other people went to college, so sixth form, continued into high school, only maybe one or two other people. And of that, maybe those one or two other people also went to university. So it was such a low rate of people going on to higher education. Maybe the college number was wrong, but the university number is almost definitely correct. I think I know of one other person from 250 in the school I went to for five years that went on to university. So anyway, and you know, I get to university and I start

• 57:48Chris Williamson?

  being able to lift weights and I get this job that's kind of socially impactful, running nightclubs or helping to run nightclubs at that stage. And I realize, wow, if I become successful, then the world needs me in a way that it's never really needed me before. It seems like it respects me. I get validation. I get positive reinforcement. I've got friends. I've got people that seem like they've got my back. I don't even know what that that feels like. And all the while, you're kind of building up this. Version of you outside of you, which is competent and successful and looking increasingly masculine as you're able to gain muscle and go to the gym and you're diligent with these things. And you go to uni and you do one degree and you do two degrees and then you finish and then you build this business.

• 58:30Chris Williamson?

  And you, you know, the classic insecure overachiever mindset is someone who tries to fill an internal void with external accolades. And yeah, I mean, I know some of my favorite people are highly sensitive super chats. Chris Bumstead, Chris Bumstead is one of these guys like regularly cries on camera, weeps on the floor of his bathroom because of the stress in the buildup to his event, but is a six time world champion in bodybuilding and maybe the greatest sort of bodybuilder of our era. Alex Hormozi, another guy who is unbelievably introspective, but also jacked out of his mind, literally looks like a caveman.

• 59:12Chris Williamson?

  And these are the people that I resonate with a lot because I think I see a lot of myself in them too. And, you know,

• 59:20Chris Williamson?

  there is a, there is kind of an inverse of pretty privilege for men. There's like masculine disprivilege in a way where if you present as somebody that's got it all together. Well, you look healthy and you're all right looking and you seem pretty muscular and people seem like they like you or whatever. What the fuck are you whining about? Like, why do you find things hard? Why have you got a problem with this? Like, you know, do you not see that person over there? Look at them. They're only five foot seven. Look at how many problems they've got in their life. And it's like, yeah, I get that dude, but he sees something bad happen and he doesn't even fucking notice it. Or is it, he, he had friends throughout all of his upbringing.

• 1:00:00Chris Williamson?

  So you have this, yeah, inverse pretty privilege where it's the same one, whenever anybody goes to the doctors in the UK, any of my friends that I used to train with in the gym, because it was a nationalized health service. If you walked in as a well person trying to get fit, the doctor looked at you and went, dude, this. Five people in the waiting room who are overweight, they've got angina, they've got heart palpitations, one of them's gonna lose a foot due to their diabetes. Like, I don't care about the fact that you slightly tweaked your back doing CrossFit. Getting from well to fit is not my job, getting from sick to well is. And you kind of end up with this same situation that if you present as somebody that's got it all together, if you start complaining about the challenges that you face, or you start saying, you know, sometimes I get a bit of self doubt, or this, this thing's

• 1:00:44Chris Williamson?

  hard, or I can't get over this stuff from my past, or blah, blah, blah. People go, oh, like, how dare you? And it almost feels, I get a sense that there's a bit of an ick around that too, which is, look at how broken this man must be in order for him to not feel internally the way he presents externally, given that he presents externally in an elite manner and his internal state does not comport with that.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  God, I hate that bias. You know, we really need to tell everyone that suffering is not a competition. And you really see it, all these hierarchies being created that like, these groups are, you know, inherently suffering, these groups are not inherently suffering. I'm not woke. Maybe this might be a surprise to you. Oh, no, I'm not, I'm not woke. I mean, I really, I'm not anti-woke either, but I really believe in humanism and treating all people with dignity and respect and listening to everyone's story regardless of how they present themselves. I do think that in a big way, we need more people like you really saying that you're a highly sensitive person, so we don't stigmatize the trait high sensitivity, because it really

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  can be a beautiful, beautiful thing, and I'm sure it motivates you and, and is a big reason why you're good at what you do. You ask thoughtful questions, you're good at integrating lots of things that other people are not integrating. I've noticed that in this interview. So, you know, you're a good integrator.

• 1:02:16Chris Williamson?

  It's definitely deep. It's definitely a high resolution way to view the world. But it can cause you to move slowly because you don't make rash. I don't make very rash decisions. I sort of think through things very carefully. I tend to move very conservatively. I have sort of massive loss aversion, fucking huge loss aversion, huge fear of regret. And you know, this is why the question that kind of got us onto this was if you're someone who resonates with this highly sensitive person archetype, what are the things that you need to get under control to unlock well being in your life as much as possible?

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Well, in my book, the biggest thing I say is don't be a victim of your HSP. Don't create a victim mindset around being a highly sensitive person. You see a lot of people who are HSPs, they literally see it as the core of their victim identity. So they expect people to tiptoe around them.

• 1:03:14Chris Williamson?

  Oh, I feel things so very deeply. Please be careful with me, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  And you, you see it. I mean, you see it. There's always one person who's like, I'm triggered, triggered. It's like, okay.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Really take responsibility for your HSP penis and don't expect everyone to cater to that one aspect of your being because I find that very disempowering. You empower your HSP penis when you lead with it.

• 1:03:47Chris Williamson?

  Scott, I can't let you continue to say the, the sentence HSP penis.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  I just literally said HSP penis.

• 1:04:00Chris Williamson?

  Yep. Highly sensitive person-ness. Yep.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  Is this an outtake?

• 1:04:05Chris Williamson?

  No, no, no. This is a, this is a keep intake.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Being a highly sensitive person, you know, is like anything else, any other aspect of your identity.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  Are you gonna make it the core of your victim identity, or are you going to harness it in the service of growth? And becoming a better person? And I think you can ask that about any aspect of your personality. No matter what it is, your extroversion, your introversion, your conscientiousness, you know, all these things can have trade offs. People who are too conscientious, too conscientious, like too gritty, that there's a dark side to grit, right? You know, if like, if you're a workaholic, if you're, you know, that could be part of your victim identity is that you're too, too, you work too hard, you know? You could make anything, you know, the core of your victim identity. And I don't want people to make anything the core of their victim identity.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  I want them to not see themselves as that's, that's the thing that's holding them back from the rest of their personality structure, but as the thing that enables the rest of their personality structure.

• 1:05:08Chris Williamson?

  Okay, how do people become victims of their emotions?

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, so when a lot of people think about becoming a victim, in general, they think about all the ways they're a victim to the external world. And the twist in my book is that part one or five ways that we're actually a victim to ourselves. It has nothing to do with the outside world. We can become a victim to our emotions when we take our emotions as facts. We don't just treat them as signposts, but we, we take them seriously, so seriously that we act immediately on whatever we're feeling. And we are quick to label, to find a label for whatever it is that we're feeling. As opposed to just checking in on, in on the experience itself. So that's a big way that we become victim to our emotions.

• 1:05:53Chris Williamson?

  And what are the emotions that people typically fall victim to?

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  Anxiety is a big one.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  Fear, fear is a huge one. Fear holds us back from so many things in our life. And that's why in that chapter, I talk about the ACT approach, which I'm a big fan of.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  Stephen, have you had Stephen Hayes on your podcast ever?

• 1:06:18Chris Williamson?

  Uh, no, who's that?

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  He's the founder of the ACT approach to psychotherapy, which is a really brilliant form of psychotherapy. That allows you to act in line with your values, no matter how you're feeling about about the situation. In the moment, maybe you don't feel like it. Maybe you wake up like, I want to go to the, I want to lose weight, but I don't feel it going to the gym today. And you really are able to regulate your emotions in a way where you still end up in the gym, you know, really thinking more about what you want to get out in the long term, as opposed to what may be holding you back in the short term. So I think the ACT approach is a really, a really great way forward.

• 1:06:58Chris Williamson?

  Right, okay. I just started the ACT Journal. It's the guys from, uh, is it Psychologists Off the Clock?

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's the, the two, the two ladies.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  You do, you do, you do follow the, uh, psychology, the Mean Psychology Podcast. I wrote this.

• 1:07:13Chris Williamson?

  I'm, I'm in, where do you think, where do you think that I get any of the stuff that I talk about from? I'm not doing fucking original research. I'm going on to Psychology Today. I'm going on to the Psychology Podcast. I'm going to Psychologists Off the Clock. I'm reading Rob Henderson's Substack. I'm listening to Jonathan Haidt, and then I'm shamelessly repurposing it as my own ideas, uh, with, with minimal credit.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  It's pretty cool that you do, that you care about that and that you admit that you do that, but you also do, you are interested in synthesizing. So maybe you're not giving yourself enough credit.

• 1:07:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, that's my highly sensitive person that's coming up. Uh, okay. So one of the things we've talked about a little bit, and I imagine that this is, this plays a big role when it comes to the emotion side of victimhoodness. The role of internally generated safety, self-regulation. You know, if we're not saying, if you're saying, well, hey, you can be tyrannized by your own internal state, as well as you feel like you're being traumatized by your own external state. What's the role of safety internally generated self-regulation, stuff like that?

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, I wanted to say you asked me where can people find out if they're an HSP? And I just want to see hsperson.com. Lane Aron has a scale that you can take some self tests. So I wanted to say that.

• 1:08:32Chris Williamson?

  Cool.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  This question you ask, I was wondering if you could ask it one more time so I can really fully process it. Safety and feeling a sense of internal safety, is that it?

• 1:08:43Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, what's the role of internally generated safety? I just get, I get the sense that when it comes to emotions, what people are struggling with is feeling out of control, feeling unsafe. I don't, I just like this feels like it's beyond me and I don't have, I don't have the capacity to deal with whatever these emotions are, which to me suggests you need self regulation.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that in general, we have much deeper reservoirs of resiliency than we realize. And we don't give ourselves the chance to test our resiliency muscles because we're too quick to constantly avoid things that we fear. So first of all, I do think that's very important. I also think that a lot of young people didn't get the memo that you don't have to feel happy all the time. A lot of young people, the second they, they're, they feel, feel unsafe, you know, they avoid at all costs, you know, what, what, what could happen? And of course, we want to be, we want to be safe, but don't always avoid the feeling of feeling unsafe.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  A lot of people feel unsafe around ideas, around words, you know? That's become a thing in the younger generation as Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff talk a lot, a lot about and Coddling and the American Mind. A lot of people feel unsafe with ideas with, with people that don't agree with them. They feel unsafe. And I don't think that's the way forward in life, you know? That's not the way you challenge yourself. That's not the way you learn and grow and, and encounter other perspectives. Also, experiences that get you out of your comfort zone are sometimes the most profound, wonderful experiences in humanity. Imagine if every time you start a new relationship, you, you start to, you know, you have one fight, you know, with the person like, and then you just give up, you know?

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  You're, you're going to have a long stream of. Unfulfilled relationships.

• 1:10:37Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Hmm. How uh? How can people cultivate better psychological flexibility in

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:47Chris Williamson?

  Moments, moments of deep emotional pain, discomfort, stuff like that?

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  That is the term, that is the, the psychological term that's used in the act approach.

• 1:10:55Chris Williamson?

  That's because I'm reading the ACT journal, Scott. That's because I'm.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  That's so cool. Well, I'm impressed. I thought it was because you read chapter four of my book. Which is all about.

• 1:11:07Chris Williamson?

  Because of both, it's been reinforced by you.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  Um, that's so cool. Um, I'm impressed. Um, yeah, I mean, there is no protocol for this, you know, there's no like, you have to, first of all, check in with your own experience and try your best to not label it, try your best to um, create a distance from what you're feeling and your higher values and where you want to move to. You know, let's say you know there's, you're starving, um, and you know that there's something really sweet and fatty waiting for you in the fridge. All you have to do is open up the fridge and get it and move toward it. What you do is you check in with, well, what actually, you don't check in with what are my feelings right now?

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  You check in with, well, what are my higher values? That's what you check in with, your higher values. I want to lose weight. I want to not be the kind of person that immediately opens up that fridge every time I'm hungry and picks out the most unhealthiest thing I have in the fridge. Check in with all of that first. Um, and let the emotions and the desires and those quick feelings subside. Um, but be with them, don't label them.

• 1:12:25Chris Williamson?

  I imagine there's a a correlation or a relationship between self-esteem and victimhood as well.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  Big one, a big one with low self-esteem. Well, actually, there's no such thing as low self-esteem. This is interesting, on psychological surveys, you, you, you very rarely will ever meet a human that says they have zero self-esteem. When you, when you ask them to rate on a scale one to seven, how much self-esteem do they have? It's usually a bimodal distribution, so you usually see a lot of six and sevens, the people with the high self-esteem are clear. But then the second type of person is usually it's in the middle somewhere so that it's unclear. So it's an uncertain self-esteem. Usually what we call low self-esteem is really an uncertain self-esteem. The person is constantly looking outward for, they don't know, they don't have a good inner compass of what they think they should be.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  And, and also from an evolutionary point of view, it's important to recognize there are different domains of self-esteem that evolved, that are very separate from each other. You can have very high self-esteem for your work, you know, and have very low self-esteem for your mate value.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  It can be very different things. So I think there's domain specifically evolved self-esteem as well. And there's some really great evolutionary psychology papers around that that I cite in my book.

• 1:13:46Chris Williamson?

  Right, so

• 1:13:49Chris Williamson?

  the issue I imagine with low self-esteem is that your sort of robustness to being able to deal with insults, both internally and externally generated, you're going to take them more personally, like, you know, your, your base is less resilient in that way.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  Vulnerable narcissism, which I, I talked about earlier, is very strongly correlated with this uncertain sense, sense of self. The more that you can have an internal sense of who you are and what you want and be clear on your values, the less your self-esteem is going to make a difference at all, you know? You don't want to be obsessed with your self-esteem. You don't want to be constantly in pursuit of high self-esteem. You don't want that to be your primary goal either. So that's why it's really important to get right with your own inner compass of what you want out of this life and, and, and what your actual real felt interests are and listen to them.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  I think a lot in life, we get values from our society. We get values from others and we want to belong. So we care so much about belonging to a certain group that we adopt all their values, even if they doesn't really suit us individually.

• 1:15:11Chris Williamson?

  How do you come to think about acknowledging past hurts and hardships while not identifying with it? It seems like on one end of the spectrum, you've got denial and on the other end of the spectrum, you've got identification. Like this didn't happen to me. I'm going to completely ignore it. And this is the most important thing in my entire life and totally chooses my direction moving forward. How do you come to think about this tension?

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  Like, what's the optimal point?

• 1:15:44Chris Williamson?

  Well, yeah, like, how do you acknowledge the fact that you've been through tough stuff? While not, while not identifying with it, while not making it your entire sense of self?

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  I think that's why we need to harness an empowerment mindset. We've talked so much on this podcast about the victim mindset, but my call is for everyone to adopt an empowerment mindset where you play yes and, you know, I really love improv, like yes and the game, where you say, yes, I've had something terrible happen to me and I got this. And it is a shame, I see so much in our society of us just stopping with the so much has happened to me. And I don't see the end part of that, which is, and I have the deep reservoirs of resiliency to move forward with my life with meaning and purpose. Both things can be true at the same time. We don't

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  need to neglect or downplay terrible things that have happened to someone else or that have happened to ourselves. That's, that's, that's love is being able to acknowledge and validate. People just want to be validated. But they, well, no, they don't just want to be validated. People want to be validated, but they don't just want to be validated. They want to be validated for what they've been through, but they also want people to believe in them that they can rise above it.

• 1:17:00Chris Williamson?

  Scott, I appreciate the heck out of you, man. Let's not wait five years before we bring you back on. Where should people go? They want to keep up to date with all the stuff you're doing.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  Thank you. And likewise, by the way, I really respect the hell out of you, man. Um, yeah, my website is, um, scottbarrickoffman.com. I have lots of stuff on there. I, um, you can buy Rise Above and uh, hopefully any bookstore or online bookstore. And I have the psychology podcast. Yeah.

• 1:17:24Chris Williamson?

  Damn right. Scott, I appreciate you, man. Until next time.

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  Until next time.

• 1:17:28Speaker 02

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