Blaise Aguirre (on overcoming self-hatred)

Blaise Aguirre (I Hate Myself: Overcome Self-Loathing and Realize Why You’re Wrong About You) is a child and adolescent psychiatrist specializing in dialectical behavior therapy. Blaise joins the Armchair Expert to discuss becoming an expert on Borderline Personality Disorder and DBT, the correlation between BPD and suicidal ideation, and that it’s not a choice to live with the disregulation of BPD. Blaise and Dax talk about the analogy of a person with a BPD brain being saddled with a very fast car but not the skill to drive it, the fact that when we are disregulated we can’t think properly, and why being too protective of one’s feelings can actually rob them of the ability to confront necessary emotions. Blaise explains the glory he has when a patient leaves therapy, the saying in DBT that you have to go where angels fear to tread to truly help patients, and how liberating it is to realize that our common destiny is stardust. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ http://www.wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:07Dax Shepard?

  And I want to quickly say that our guest is Dr. Blaise Aguirre. Aguirre. Blaise Aguirre.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Aguirre.

• 0:17Dax Shepard?

  You say it. I'm just, I'm gonna own it. I'm having a very hard time pronouncing Blaze's last name because it's A-G-U-I-R-R-E. And Wabi Wabi was nice enough to write it out phonetically for me.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:30Dax Shepard?

  Which is A-E-H, gear, eh.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Aguirre.

• 0:35Dax Shepard?

  Aguirre.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:36Dax Shepard?

  Woo!

• 0:37Speaker 01

  That's a hard one. That's a hard.

• 0:38Dax Shepard?

  It's a hardie.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 0:40Dax Shepard?

  But I'm not a baddie.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  No, you're not.

• 0:41Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Uh, Dr. Blaze is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and an assistant professor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is one of the world's foremost experts on borderline personality disorder. We've been dying to get an expert on BPD in here and we finally have, and it was incredibly interesting.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  So interesting. We do love a deep dive into a personality.

• 1:06Dax Shepard?

  Great, yeah.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Disorder.

• 1:08Dax Shepard?

  I have been trying my best to repeat everything he said. I told my entire family almost this whole interview.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  You did?

• 1:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I've, I've found Blaze to be incredibly interesting.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22Dax Shepard?

  Um, his primary focus and specialty is he has dealt with 5,000 suicidal patients. And that is a very unique experience for a psychiatrist to have. And so, if you want to talk to an expert on this topic, this is the guy.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41Dax Shepard?

  And it was incredibly informative. And he has a book out, again, I've already given away that one copy I read, and then I've ordered two more for people I love. "I Hate Myself: Overcome Self-Loathing and Realize Why You're Wrong About You." Yeah, this is an incredible topic.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Hopefully will help a lot of people.

• 1:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think so. And, uh, he had another big crazy endorsement for CBD and dialectical behavioral therapy.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:06Dax Shepard?

  Yep.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Uh, which we've had on Jenny Tates, we had on was also a DBT.

• 2:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Specialist.

• 2:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's pretty amazing stuff. Uh, please enjoy Dr. Blaise Aguirre.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Aguirre.

• 2:19Dax Shepard?

  Aguirre. Dr. Blaise Aguirre.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 2:25Dax Shepard?

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• 2:27Speaker 01

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• 2:47Dax Shepard?

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• 3:02Speaker 01

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• 3:14Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm going to tell you this, it just got chilly for the first time this year in California. And I'm so excited and I'm wearing my Quince cashmere right now.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 3:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I am going to gift this to some of my friends. I hope they're not listening.

• 3:26Speaker 01

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• 3:48Dax Shepard?

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• 5:39Speaker 02

  Can I start with a question I'm so embarrassed to ask you? Yeah. I've never seen your first name. Blaze, patron saint of throats. So I grew up Catholic. Are you Irish? Half Irish, half Iberian. Aguirre is actually Basque from northern Spain. My mother is actually Spanish. So Blaze is the patron saint of throats. And it's interesting, her name is Isabel and Blaze and Isabel are anagrams.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Oh wow.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  And I was like this with my mom.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Oh, that's so sweet.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  And where did you grow up? I grew up in South Africa. Oh, you did. Okay, that's why I cannot.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  You've got a lot going on.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're high in 57, my friend.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Have you been to San Sebastian?

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Yes. So in 2011, some Spanish people found me and they said, would you teach dialectical behavior therapy in Spain? And I said, yeah, of course I will. But I spoke like an eight year old because I left Spain when I was eight. And I said, okay, I'm committed to learning fluent Spanish. So every year I go to Bilbao. Home of the Gary. Exactly.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  I've been there.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  You've been there?

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, we went.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  He was so worldly.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  I know.

• 6:38Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so you grew up till eight in Spain.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  I was born in Columbus, Indiana. I left when I was one. We moved to London. My brother was born there. And then from there, we moved to Spain. I had four siblings born there. Wow. And then we moved to South Africa. And two siblings were born there. The eldest of eight, born in four countries on three continents.

• 6:55Dax Shepard?

  I can't even begin to guess at what industry would have brought your parents to all those locations.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  My grandfather, Antonio Garrigues, was the Spanish ambassador in the Kennedy White House.

• 7:06Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  And they actually grew very close to the Kennedys. So my mother had been the daughter of a diplomat. Her mom had died, and she was the eldest girl. So she sort of took over hostess.

• 7:17Dax Shepard?

  Learned that trade.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Exactly. And then my dad was in the US Navy. At the time, he was in the Pentagon. And then they met at some official function. And then he started an import and export business.

• 7:27Dax Shepard?

  I guess those were all seaports. I could have put that together.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 7:31Dax Shepard?

  So I could imagine this could do a real number on you, identity-wise.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Yes and no. I had this mom who was such a profound, loving mainstay. My dad was very conservative, and I identified much more strongly with my mom.

• 7:46Dax Shepard?

  You were anchored and tethered to her.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  Exactly. And she was so grounded in her own sense of self. But I mean, I definitely have seen, even living in the United States, if I'm in little towns where people haven't moved out of those little towns, their identity is that. So having traveled, it's really been interesting.

• 8:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, do you think that it all gives you a healthy outsider's perspective? That you're kind of observant of these places you go? And wow, there's a different modus operandi here. That's intriguing, what's going. Do you think that could be the seeds of why you find your way to psychology and psychiatry?

• 8:20Speaker 02

  I wanted to be a philosopher. But you know what they say? How do you get a philosopher off your front porch? Pay for the goddamn pizza.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  That's good. I take for the.

• 8:33Dax Shepard?

  That took me a second.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:34Dax Shepard?

  So not a highly employable.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Not a highly employable skill set. It did get me curious about the mind and then that led me to psychology, which led me to psychiatry. So I went to medical school in South Africa and then I became an expert in dialectical behavior therapy. So all I do is treat suicidal kids and I've been doing that since 2007. But then teaching in Jerusalem was different from teaching in Riyadh was different than teaching in the UAE, different than teaching in South Africa, teaching in Spain and looking at identity and pathology through this cultural lens is just really interesting.

• 9:09Dax Shepard?

  Through all this travel, by the way, obviously you inherited your parents wanderlust if you've been in all these places.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm actually going to India in two weeks and introducing DBT. We're seeing increasing rates of suicide in Indian youth and whatever we're doing isn't helping. So I'll be there in two weeks and I'll be in Spain in four weeks.

• 9:27Dax Shepard?

  Okay, but throughout this whole time, you have held the position for 25 years at McLean Hospital?

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have.

• 9:33Dax Shepard?

  So we've had a great interest in borderline personality disorder. It comes up occasionally and we've yet to have an expert on and you've written three or four books about borderline.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  We sometimes talk out of school on it.

• 9:47Dax Shepard?

  We have the thinnest understanding of what the predictable pattern of someone's suffering from that is and we could be completely wrong because we've fucked up OCD a couple times. We've stepped in it, our colloquial understanding.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, we try to fix those things by having someone who really knows in the room.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  I think we've had about 5,000 patients come through our programs since we opened them in 2007 and I'd say about 70% have had borderline personality disorders.

• 10:11Dax Shepard?

  So is there any enormous correlation between suicidal ideation or suicide and BPD?

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, very, very high. For the people who come to my unit, I don't remember one that hasn't had suicidal ideation. So I say of all those 5,000, they've all had suicidal ideation. A very large percentage have made attempts. Now, it's possible that the people who come to my unit are people with very severe forms of BPD. You know, it's like not everybody with asthma ends up in an intensive care unit.

• 10:38Dax Shepard?

  Spectrum disorder.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Exactly, and I think that there's mild to very severe forms. But I think that when you get to the severe forms, almost everybody has suicidal ideation and self-destructive behaviors.

• 10:49Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so first of all, what is the difference between a mood disorder and a personality disorder?

• 10:53Speaker 02

  So mood disorder, as we think a little bit about it, is you have discreet episodes of mood states, typically either depressed or manic, that last for a certain period of time, 10 days, two weeks, and respond typically to treatment such as medication and cognitive behavioral therapy. When you're in that state, there's very little reactivity to that state. So when somebody is depressed, they stay in that state for some period of time. With personality disorders, there are traits about who you are, the way that you experience yourself in relationship to other people.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Maybe you're emotionally very intense, maybe you tend to be reactive to what people say and do. That those personality traits, when activated, interfere with your ability to function. So what's confusing is that, say, somebody has borderline personality disorder, and everything's going fine. To the outside observer, they're just like doing fine. But they're on Instagram, and they didn't get invited to a party, and they see all their friends at a party, and now there's incredible rage, incredible anger, incredible jealousy, envy, and it spikes their emotional state. And in that state, they cannot function. Their relationships begin to be impacted, maybe their work does.

• 12:13Dax Shepard?

  So that's already revelatory to me, because I thought of it as like a status quo. You're in a state of this disorder.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  And this is what's interesting. Let's just say that somebody was drunk, and they walked into the studio. And we all walk in independently. We could see that the person is drunk. That state is permanent in that moment. But let's just say it's somebody with borderline personality disorder, and you guys have a good relationship with that person, but I really pissed them off. So then you come, and you're chit-chatting and everything, and I walk in, and suddenly you see this spike of rage. From your perspective, that person seems to be doing fine. But from my perspective, all of a sudden, this person's angry, and maybe they're devaluing me, or very, very upset, and you guys are saying, what's going on? That state only manifests when there's something either interpersonal or intrapersonal, inside their own head, that gets triggered.

• 13:03Dax Shepard?

  Now, is narcissism in a state of flux as well?

• 13:07Speaker 02

  It's interesting that I don't know narcissism as well. And the reason why is because people with narcissism don't tend to come in for therapy.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 13:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we had a narcissist expert and she said exactly that. One of the rarest cases to come seek treatment.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can't diagnose it really, because who's coming in?

• 13:24Dax Shepard?

  Understand it correctly from the expert we had on, it's like, you don't suffer from narcissism the way you suffer from some other...

• 13:29Speaker 01

  It's the scariest one, because they're in it in such a way that they don't want to feel better.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  Maybe I could teach you a thing or two.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Okay, give us some tips.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  No, no, no, what I'm saying is that's what the narcissist will say.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 13:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  But the most common comorbidity with a personality disorder is another personality disorder. So you can have borderline personality disorder with some narcissistic traits. And one of the ways in which I have been able to work with a few cases of people with narcissistic personality disorder is to say, here's the thing, no one actually likes you. And you also have to just call it out as the truth. Like, I know that you feel that people adore you and you're surrounded by people who you believe are supportive, they don't actually. And the thing about it is you can't even see it. So I'm going to teach you how to see the world differently, even if you don't feel that what I'm telling you is true, because what's happening is that you're kind of lonely for a narcissist. Like, what's going on? Is it actually about everybody else, or maybe it's about you?

• 14:26Speaker 02

  So mostly, it's hard for me to answer that question, only because I see so few people with NPD.

• 14:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so what are the symptoms of...

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Borderline personality disorder. Yeah, and I talk a lot about it in the book, because that's the group that I found with most self-hatred and self-loathing was the group of people with borderline personality disorder. Okay, so if we go through the criteria, the first criteria is frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. So what do I mean by that? Nobody wants to be abandoned, you know, and say like, okay, I'm gonna go home, my kids and wife have disappeared.

• 14:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  I know, I'm already scared. Every time we have someone on who's speaking about psychology, I think I have it.

• 15:04Dax Shepard?

  That's your OCD.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  What's so beautiful about this is we're all on the spectrum. Yeah. Who wants to be abandoned? Go home. The people who love you aren't going to be there because they don't want to be there with you anymore. Well, that would be terrifying. But the person with borderline personality just sort of fears it, whether it's real or whether it's not real. And sometimes it's like, boy, this relationship is so painful for me that I can't be with you anymore. And so then that's real abandonment. But then the other one is no one's ever liked me, no one's ever cared about me. I just worry that people are going to abandon me. And so then what they start to do, this is the first part of the criteria, frantic efforts to avoid the abandonment. It's constant texts, constant phone calls, constant seeking of reassurance. Then to the other person, it's like, how many more times do I need to tell you I love you?

• 15:51Speaker 02

  And it becomes actually the kind of behavior that then creates the self fulfilling prophecy.

• 15:55Dax Shepard?

  Exactly.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  It's like, I can't do this anymore.

• 15:57Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Okay, that a little bit matches what my understanding was that you'll find people with BPD will become very quickly infatuated with somebody.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:06Dax Shepard?

  They'll get very quickly close and heightened. And then there will be some period where they've decided you're actually kind of out to get them. And then they will flip to a kind of comparable level of hatred.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  Okay, so you've actually touched on two of the other criteria. So the second criteria is intense interpersonal relationships. So they're very rapid, very intense, characterized by extremes of idealization and devaluation. So in one moment, I just met you, Dax, you're like the best person ever. I'm going to marry you tomorrow.

• 16:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  And there's this glow. And then all of a sudden, hey, listen, I'm not making it for dinner tonight. You're the worst person ever. What did I ever see in you? And then the ninth criteria, which you find especially if there's been trauma, is paranoia. Clearly you're plotting against me. Clearly you must be seeing somebody else. Clearly you never cared about me and I'm very suspicious of that. Now just imagine living that way.

• 16:57Dax Shepard?

  Ah. Oh, so awful.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  And the thing is, people don't choose it. It's not a choice to live that way.

• 17:02Dax Shepard?

  I often say this even with pedophilia, which is like, no one went to the grocery store. Looked at the fucking options on the shelf and were like, I'll take that. No one would pick that.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's heartbreaking and the compassionate thing is just to remind yourself of it.

• 17:15Dax Shepard?

  Treating them as. It's got to be one of the most precarious because naturally they would probably want to idolize you initially.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  They idolize me and then when I, hey, by the way, I need to cancel this session because I'm gonna go to LA to.

• 17:26Dax Shepard?

  Hang out with the movie stars.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  With the movie stars and everything. It's like, if you, where'd you get your degree? You know, you're terrible. You're abandoning me and all of that. And the thing about it is it's such a horrible way to live because that's how you're experiencing the world. It feels so interpersonal. It is interpersonal, but it's a manifestation of pathology. It's not like I'm waking up in the morning and thinking, how am I gonna mess up somebody else's life today?

• 17:48Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  It's not malicious, but what happens is that when somebody gets really activated, the most difficult of their pathology begins to show up. But that happens to all of us. And I've never met a person for whom this wouldn't be true. I could put you under so much stress, threaten the person you love most, that the worst of who you are, worst in quotation marks, whatever it is that you have to do to get through that moment would come out. Exactly. And that when you're dysregulated, you can't think.

• 18:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the part of your brain that is in charge of executive functions is not accessible, right?

• 18:18Speaker 02

  If you hear that your house is on fire right now, we're not continuing this interview. Wait a second, don't you want to hear about borderline personalities? Absolutely not. I'm gonna go and save my house.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  They're like living in Survivor.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  In many cases, yeah.

• 18:30Dax Shepard?

  They feel also perfectly situated to be love addicts as well. Because this is also a very kind of similar cycle of love addiction.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Where it gets tricky is that, I mean, what a wonderful thing to feel loved. And you can't make anyone love you. When you feel it, there is no word for it. Words do such a violence to our experience because we try to capture this concept in words. But I mean, what does a three-month-old say to its parent? I love you? No, it's not in the words. You sort of feel something. And if you felt threatened for such a long time, and then you're in the context of somebody who elicits a warmth, an expansiveness in who you are, it's such a beautiful feeling. And then you want more of that. But who wouldn't want more of that? And when you've been deprived for most of your life, you want to cling to it. The problem is that that clinging can have its own consequences. And that's where you start to see the fifth criteria, which is like suicidal behavior, the sense of emptiness, and then the reactivity of mood.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  You know, it's like, wait, why are you looking at me that way?

• 19:25Dax Shepard?

  I don't think anyone would be hearing this and not be able to quickly think of someone in their head. I'm going to, yeah, a couple of people that I've had this distinct feeling of. I can feel you creating a narrative about me that I'm out to get you. For me, on the other side, it's exhausting.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:43Dax Shepard?

  It's a little demoralizing to the experience we've had. I've earned more than this, right?

• 19:48Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 19:49Dax Shepard?

  Now, it's a spectrum, so there'd probably be a different answer for whoever you're at on this continuum. But are all of their relationships going to follow that pattern? Or do some trigger it and others don't?

• 19:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, the way I think about it, and a lot of my patients have really liked this. I think of a dartboard. And I think about there's that inner circle, the bull's eye, and then that one around. The people on that inner circle, where there's the most intensity, are going to both experience the best of who the person is, but also like the most difficult part. And as you go out in the spectrum, trivial relationships, acquaintances, aren't going to be able to experience it. So if we were to think about the earlier example of somebody who is, say, drunk, it wouldn't matter where you are on the dartboard, you'd see the person as drunk. But then often, if people are more acquaintance level relationships, they're not going to see that behavior. It's not going to activate or trigger those strong emotions.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  But the closer you are to the person, the more you're going to see it, and the more it's going to be triggered. If you think about the brain of somebody with BPD as being a supercharged Porsche versus somebody who's driving a golf cart. A person who drives a golf cart, maybe that's their emotional range, up to 20 miles an hour.

• 20:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  The person with BPD drives up to 200 miles an hour. It's okay to be emotionally intense and have that fast car, but you have to know how to drive it.

• 21:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  You know, and so for people with BPD, they've got this emotionally intense brain, but they just don't know how to manage it. They don't have the skill set to do it. I'm a very emotionally intense person, but for me, it brings me joy. But that's because I know how to drive this brain. Even still, every now and then I go a little too fast.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, you're a human. I mean, even when you say the bull's eye thing. In general, we have our best and worst selves with our most intimate people.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 21:29Dax Shepard?

  I would imagine there's some also predictable fallout in their professional life and their relationships, is there? A pretty well worn path that folks suffering from this find themselves on.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  The historical narrative was that this was kind of untreatable and that what would happen is that the lives would ultimately be lives of despair, of incompleteness. And I just refused to accept that that was true. I said, I'm going to teach you how to drive your car at 200 miles an hour because you don't have that skill set. And when you're able to do that, then you're able to function. And so many of the people that I've worked with using treatments like dialectical behavior therapy.

• 22:05Dax Shepard?

  Do I understand this? This is an offshoot of CBT, yeah?

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Exactly. You have to be able to monitor those high states. But I think it's also monitoring the low state. And the best way to do that is through the practice of mindful awareness of that moment. If I'm in a low state right now, it's like, I don't like the questions you're asking me. Why are you so annoying? Just leave me alone. I just want to go back to Boston and lie in bed.

• 22:26Dax Shepard?

  Or I'm celebrated.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, wow, you think I'm the best interview that you've ever had? Can we be here for three hours and we can hang out? So when I'm filtering that and then my mind runs away one way or another, it does a lot of damage. So it is paying attention to that and saying, okay, I'm heading that direction.

• 22:43Dax Shepard?

  I'm here.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  And you know what? I'm just going to do the very best that I can. I'm going to pay attention to that. I'm going to catch my mind going to, I'm going to be the most celebrated interviewee ever. Or like, they think I'm an idiot. They keep looking at their watches. It's catching that. That's the part that is the mindfulness piece. And then it's saying, what am I lacking in order to be able to manage it? And that's more of the CBT part, the skills piece.

• 23:06Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so what causes it?

• 23:08Speaker 02

  It's the same thing as the topic of self hatred. I've not met a person that wasn't highly sensitive that developed borderline personality disorder. So first of all, the biological DNA condition is that the person with BPD tends to be a highly sensitive person.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Emotionally, or you know how some people are like, I'm an HSP and I can't wear these clothes?

• 23:31Speaker 02

  It's a really good question. And I think actually a lot of highly sensitive people do also have sensory issues. But it's more of an emotional highly sensitive. So what do they do? They feel things quicker than other people to seemingly smaller provocation. When they have reactions, they're bigger than their peer group. And then when they're feeling something, it takes longer for them to get down to baseline. Strong emotions are the super glue for labels. Let's just say that you call somebody, hey, you're kind of fat. Now, if they're not highly sensitive, they're going to brush it off. If they're highly sensitive and that was a label that was used in childhood, that label is going to stick powerfully to the person's experience. It's super glue, it's like those flytraps to those kinds of labels.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  And so you have this highly sensitive child who then experiences what DVT calls invalidation, saying, "What you're saying doesn't matter so much, you're making a big deal of a thing, you're overreacting." Imagine somebody has a peanut allergy and I give you some peanuts and then you have a big reaction saying, "Dax, you're overreacting."

• 24:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, which I am, by the way, to my cohort.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 24:39Dax Shepard?

  Most people don't have anaphylactic shock from peanuts.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  Exactly, and here you are, like, that's the reaction that I get when I'm exposed to the prompt that I'm getting. And in this situation, that peanut is an expression of some sort of dissatisfaction. By the way, it doesn't have to be done with malice, it could just be, "Why aren't you like your older brother? Your older brother doesn't complain about things, gets up and goes to school. He doesn't care about those bullies in school. Like, come on, get up, it's okay, you're gonna be okay. And you are okay if you are okay." It's not like you say, "Today I'm gonna be impacted by the cruel words that people say." And you are. It's because they don't have the ability to manage those things. It's a skills deficit problem. So when you map invalidation onto a highly sensitive person, they're very much at risk of developing borderline personality disorder.

• 25:22Dax Shepard?

  And the highly sensitive person is a physiological biochemical baseline you're born with?

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:30Dax Shepard?

  Is it observable in any part of your body or is it a neurochemical thing we would have to measure?

• 25:36Speaker 02

  I think that's what the research shows. We wanted to see this kind of response that people were having. And so we created this experiment where we compared typical teens with BPD teens. What we did is we had a cursor on a screen and then you had the mouse. And if the cursor moved one way, you had to just move the mouse to map it. Halfway through the experiment, we switch it so that if you move the mouse to the right...

• 25:59Dax Shepard?

  The opposite thing happens.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  And so what happens for typically developing teens, yeah, they get a bit annoyed, but then that's it. With people with BPD, it is really, really upsetting. You can see massive amygdala reactivity. I had a kid who was extremely bright and... I said, how was the test? And she says, oh, it was okay. I said, wait, what? Did it upset you that the cursor went the other way? She said, no, I turned the mouse around.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, she outsmarted it.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  She outsmarted the whole experiment.

• 26:26Dax Shepard?

  Which would be a skill. That was something you would probably teach in C V T.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Exactly. If we think about the amygdala and you think about the hippocampal system and then you think about the prefrontal cortex as the brake. You know, again, if you're driving that fast car, having golf cart brakes for the fast car isn't going to help you. So you either have to strengthen those brakes or learn how to drive that fast car a little bit slower.

• 26:48Dax Shepard?

  It also overlaps what we would think of trauma response. I'm thinking of, of course, the beginning of Body Keeps the Score and him observing veterans deal with these pretty trivial challenges and have these very outsized reactions. And I myself really relate to that deeply. I don't think because of a B P D situation, but because of a trauma one where the slightest thing for me becomes life and death pretty quick. So it's very similar. It's interesting how many ways there are to arrive at the same reaction.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Totally. And at least 50% of the kids who come to our unit have had trauma with a capital T. But only about a third actually develop PTSD. And most people can have a traumatic event, including things like rape, and not develop PTSD.

• 27:36Dax Shepard?

  Interesting.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  Which is really interesting. Actually, the majority, about 70% of people who've had those kinds of experiences don't go on to develop PTSD. And that's probably because either they had a lot of other protective factors or maybe they weren't that emotionally reactive. So the case would be that you're probably a highly sensitive person.

• 27:53Dax Shepard?

  I am quite sensitive.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  And then impact of those peanuts on you is going to be much, much more than for your peers.

• 28:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the combo.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  For people who are around that type of behavior, who don't identify, is it okay to abandon them? I'm thinking of one's very specific person in my life. And I did do that. I have a lot of guilt because I do know, oh, God, this is like the worst thing to do. It confirmed it, but I can't.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Here's what I think the key thing to do is, I think that there's integrity in letting the person know. And that is to say, When we get into the Porsche and you're driving at 200 miles an hour down Santa Monica Boulevard, I get scared. It's just too fast for me. And that when I'm with you, the kinds of emotional reactions and responses that you have are more than I can handle. And maybe I need to develop my own skill set, but it's too much for me. It's causing me a lot of pain and what it does is it pushes me away from you. And I don't want to spend time with you and I think that that's really hurtful. So I really hope that you can get some help or whatever it is. I mean, ideally, if they were really in a much, much better state. Whatever drew you to them in the first place, those qualities are still there.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  It's just that there's a lot of other qualities that are alienating. So maybe if you can get help, we could get back together, but this is too much for me to handle. I can't eat peanuts.

• 29:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're doing them a kindness and almost helping not confirm their own pattern, which is if you are to just ghost them and leave their life, you actually confirm everything they've been saying.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 29:25Dax Shepard?

  Whereas if you say, I wanted to be a part of this and love you, the intensity for me is very scary and I am always feeling like I'm going to do something wrong. It gives me a state of anxiety and I just can't handle that personally. I think that's a kindness.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  We treat people as fragile and it's the worst thing that we can do. If you just told me I've had trauma and then I might have a reaction and I now have to filter everything I say through the idea that might be triggering you. And then I say, you know what, sorry about the interview. I was walking on eggshells and I treated you as fragile. I'd rather just be able to have a conversation with you.

• 29:59Dax Shepard?

  And I would hate it.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  You would hate it to be treated as fragile.

• 30:02Dax Shepard?

  There's nothing I hate worse than being pitied or...

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Pitied or be treated as fragile. And by the way, I'm robbing you of an opportunity to tell me, you know what, Blaze, that was kind of hurtful. And I'm saying, okay, well, now I know, but like I'm thinking, should I say peanut one more time?

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, this gets tricky though, because if you know someone well, I mean, let's...

• 30:21Dax Shepard?

  Depersonalize it?

• 30:22Speaker 01

  No, I'm going to personalize it.

• 30:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, great.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Wait a second. Did you guys invite me here because this is our session?

• 30:28Dax Shepard?

  We always do. We bring in the best experts in the world to try to navigate this partnership.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Exactly. The reason I can do this is because I don't think you have this. But I do think for both of us, we know each other's triggers. So I'm going to try... Why not to throw a bunch of peanuts in your face?

• 30:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Because I know that causes pain or that is going to cause a huge reaction. So I am avoiding it, but out of care.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  So there's two things about that. One thing is, right now, we don't have good treatments for peanut allergies. And you just know nothing that we do at this point in time because we don't have a treatment for it.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  But let's just say that you know that there are things that are part of ordinary life that might be triggering. Then the responsibility is for the other person to say, do I need exposure therapy? Bezel and I often talk about psychodrama sort of stuff, why he keeps the score, that kind of work, that it doesn't actually serve you to not have dealt with that. Because in this context, you could say, well, we know each other very well. And I'm not going to say things are going to be activating. But you know, you walk onto the street and somebody's going to say something. And I would rather know that there's something wrong and then I make a choice about I'm going to deal with it or I'm not going to deal with it. You don't intentionally want to be upsetting someone. At the same time, you're not the world. The world is going to do upsetting things.

• 31:42Dax Shepard?

  You could be soft, kids gloving it, but you're one person. So would you really? Yeah, I think we could further articulate devaluing.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  It came from an old psychoanalytic concept. So more like Freudian kind of ideas. And I was trained in Freudian psychoanalysis. I then moved to behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy. So the idea is that I, as an individual, feel very flawed. But that's unbearable for me to experience. So I project my lack of value onto you. And then I devalue you when you're doing behaviors that I don't like. Devaluing is like you're the worst person ever.

• 32:22Dax Shepard?

  Could we say if you notice who you hate, it generally will fall into two categories. They either exhibit a side of yourself you hate about yourself or they've achieved some success in this deficit you think you have.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that we see both of those sorts of things. But I think there's often an emotion that shows up before that. And that is sadness, maybe jealousy. But staying in that emotional state is very, very painful. It moves from that primary emotion, which is generally 10 to 30 seconds, to a secondary emotion, which includes a lot of cognitions and thoughts about what the other person is.

• 32:59Dax Shepard?

  Kind of creating the story to explain the feeling you initially had.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  Exactly right.

• 33:05Dax Shepard?

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. We get support from No Bull. The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a post summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  That's when you really need to ground yourself.

• 33:23Dax Shepard?

  Exactly. And that's why I keep my training routine through the holidays. It's the whole No Bull idea. There's a no bullshit training brand built around consistency, honesty, and just putting in the work. It's not about adding more pressure to an already packed schedule. It's about having the gear and the habits to move through the season your way. My personal favorite, all three of the shoes are fantastic. The Outwork, the Outwork Flex, and the Drive 2. I like the Drive 2 because it's a hybrid. And I lift, of course, but I also like to do what's called box jumps.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 33:55Dax Shepard?

  Right? I do a lot of jumping onto a little platform and I want a little more flexibility. And boy, do they deliver.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  And if you're a cardio person and you're running and you also need to be lifting.

• 34:05Dax Shepard?

  And the style is banging. I don't know what to say. Beautiful style, very breathable, very, very comfortable, lots of support. They were built for lifting.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  They also make a great holiday gift. You know, I love gifting, a purposeful one that actually supports someone's goals and routines. And it's not a gift that just ends up in the back of a closet.

• 34:22Dax Shepard?

  Stay stronger than the season. Head to nobullproject.com all holiday season to shop new deals every week. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Every family has that one holiday tradition nobody actually enjoys, but everyone keeps doing because stopping it would feel like a federal offense. For me, it was a specific meal situation that I will not name because my family listens. But at some point, you have to ask yourself, am I doing this because I love it or because I'm afraid of what happens if I don't?

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Yes. And that question applies to so much more than the holidays. I think a lot of us carry these invisible rules about how we're supposed to spend the holidays, who we're supposed to see, what it's supposed to look like. And when you start unpacking that with a therapist, you realize half of your stress is coming from rules you didn't even write.

• 35:09Dax Shepard?

  This is where BetterHelp can be a great resource during the holidays. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences, which means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recs.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  I just love therapy. I've been avoiding it recently, or not avoiding it, but I was like, oh, I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy. I haven't canceled, canceled, canceled. But then I-

• 35:36Dax Shepard?

  You start feeling it.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause then I had it this past weekend and I was like, oh my God. And just thank God, thank God for her. Yeah.

• 35:44Dax Shepard?

  BetterHelp is now in network with more than 125 health plans with many copays as low as $15 for eligible members. And if you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the US, you can still get 20% off your first month. Sign up and get 20% off at betterhelp.com/dax. That's betterhelp, H E L P, dot com slash dax. This episode is supported by Helix.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Okay. Can we talk about how November is basically survival mode between the holidays, the travel, the hosting, the cooking, the everything? Sleep is the one thing keeping me from completely unraveling.

• 36:22Dax Shepard?

  It really is the foundation. And I think people underestimate how much a bad mattress is quietly ruining their day. You wake up stiff, your back's angry, you're already behind before your feet hit the floor.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  That was me before Helix. I took their sleep quiz, which is so fast. It took me like two minutes. And they matched me to a mattress that actually fits how I sleep. Not a guess, not a firm or soft coin flip. It's a real match. I have a midnight mattress and I really like it. I was noticing it because I actually had to sleep in one of my other beds.

• 36:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Recently.

• 36:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  That doesn't have a Helix mattress on it. And I really could tell a big difference in my sleep.

• 36:55Dax Shepard?

  Temperature was all over the map.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  It was a mess. I need a new one.

• 36:58Dax Shepard?

  Look, they've got over 20 mattress models. So whether you sleep hot, need extra back support, or you've got a partner who moves around all night, there's one built for you. Plus free shipping and a 365 night happy with Helix guarantee. That's a full year to decide.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Helix has been named the most awarded mattress by Forbes, Wired and more. So it's not just us being enthusiastic. The experts agree.

• 37:20Dax Shepard?

  Right now, Helix is running their Black Friday sale with up to 30% off. Go to helixsleep.com/armchair for up to 30% off your Helix mattress. That's helixsleep.com/armchair for up to 30% off your Helix mattress. helixsleep.com/armchair.

• 37:38Dax Shepard?

  We get support from Skims. Okay, I have a confession. I genuinely love matching pajamas. It's the best part of Christmas morning, really. Everyone in the same matching set, looking ridiculously cute in front of the tree.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  I love matching pajamas. I'm literally going to be in coordinating sets with all my friends this holiday season. Because I got them, spoiler to my friends who are listening, the same Skims pajama set I've been living in. They are so soft and cozy and they look cute. So you can leave the house and go get a late night hot chocolate, be cozy.

• 38:12Dax Shepard?

  Hmm, it's so great how Skims has sets for everyone, too. Women's, men's, kids, even your pets. So nobody in your life has to be left out this year.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  I have a bunch of different pajama sets. One of my favorite is the organic cotton sleep long sleeve set.

• 38:30Dax Shepard?

  Okay, tell me more.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  It is so comfortable, very chic, too. The top is a button down, but very, very soft, easy to sleep in. But as I said before, you can multipurpose this and look super cute.

• 38:43Dax Shepard?

  Hot chocolate runs. It's like the pajamas we grew up in, except without the scratchy polyester that made opening presents feel more like a hot yoga class that nobody signed up for.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  All the nostalgia, none of the discomfort. Shop my favorite loungewear and pajamas at skims.com. After you place your order, be sure to let them know we sent you. Select podcasts in the survey and be sure to select Armchair Expert in the drop down menu that follows. If you're looking for the perfect gifts for everyone on your list, the Skims Holiday Shop is now open at skims.com.

• 39:18Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so the treatment for this, I mean, 5,000 patients, I would imagine. I couldn't ask someone better about what the course of action is if someone does want to confront this.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  I've been trained in different modalities. And as with everything, in the same way that no one antibiotic treats every infection and no one exercise is the exercise to make you fit. No one treatment is the treatment. There's MBT, mentalizing based therapy. There's schema therapy. There's all sorts of therapies. What I like about dialectical behavior therapy is Especially in the people that come to see me is that DBT says until we've addressed suicide and suicidal thinking, none of the rest of therapy makes any sense.

• 39:57Dax Shepard?

  Sure, we have to first keep you alive.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  I often say, listen, I'm one of the best DBT therapists in the world. I haven't been able to treat a dead person, so I have to keep you alive.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  There's a lot of irreverence in DBT. You've got to be a little bit careful.

• 40:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  So I don't want to talk about your difficult relationships or your struggles with your sense of self until we have an idea that when suicidal thoughts show up, which they're going to, that you're not then going to act on them. Often what happens, and this is where I think other therapies get this wrong, they start exploring what caused the pain without having the skill set to manage the strong emotions and suicidal thoughts that come up. We say, until you know how to drive that Porsche, we're not going to talk about going on a racetrack or anything else.

• 40:42Dax Shepard?

  Why you wanted a Porsche in the first place?

• 40:44Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 40:44Dax Shepard?

  You're right. You're already driving this fucking thing.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Not very well, but.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  And it's painful to unearth all of this stuff. So it's going to just exacerbate this situation.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  So when you don't have the skill set to be able to manage those things, leading to those suicidal thoughts and behaviors and self-destructiveness, toxic relationships, devaluing relationships, we're not going to do that. And actually, for a lot of the young people who come to see me, if they're not in a relationship, I say you can't be in a relationship until we're done with treatment because you're bringing the worst version of yourself into relationship and what you're going to attract because of your low energy state is people at the same low energy state and it's going to be negativity that drags you down rather than the higher version of who you could be. You have to regulate before you can reflect. And the problem is that a lot of people with BPD are in a heightened state of dysregulation a lot of the time.

• 41:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I will say I'm generally skeptical of all the modern child raising advice that comes over the transom every 36 hours. But one that I have recently heard that my wife's a big proponent of, which I can't help but agree with, and I think anyone who's got kids could relate to this, is like, the kid does something, they injure themselves, and you want to teach them a lesson in that moment. You go, that's why you don't play. With scissors.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:58Dax Shepard?

  But the part of their brain you want to access is not accessible until you've regulated.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 42:05Dax Shepard?

  Like, the first order of business has to be, let's calm everyone down.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 42:09Dax Shepard?

  Let's return to some kind of homeostasis where this lesson you're going to give them could even be heard.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  I've got four kids and my second has become a social worker. My third is in law school and the other one's doing AI. And so very, very different kids. I recently went to Vegas with my son because we wanted to walk in the desert and hike and meditate. And I said, what is some of the most brilliant advice I ever gave you? And he says, I don't remember at all. Not one. Like, a lot of it was actual bullshit. But I remember how you made me feel. And it was very, very moving because when we settled and we were connected, he felt safe. He doesn't remember what I said.

• 42:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Is there any part of the treatment that is pharmacological?

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Not for core borderline personality disorder. And I think people have tried to use contemporary drugs and been part of doing some studies with experimental drugs that seem to dampen down amygdala response. Because it has to do with a perception of self in the context of relationship. And there's no medication that can do that. Now, parents have said, well, isn't there something that can calm my child down? I said, yes, it's called anesthesia. I promise you, your niece or kids, the child, they are not going to misbehave at all. Like, you can dampen down the brain so much that a person cannot think, can't stay awake.

• 43:28Dax Shepard?

  These are kind of the horror stories.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  Now, having said that, BPD has a lot of comorbidity. So say a person has bipolar disorder, who has obsessive compulsive disorder or severe major depression. The biological intervention through medication is to treat the comorbidity, but not core BPD.

• 43:43Dax Shepard?

  Got you. How successful is the treatment?

• 43:47Speaker 02

  What I was told when we opened the unit in 2007 is that for hospitalized people, the research showed 10% would die by suicide.

• 43:55Dax Shepard?

  God, really quick, take that in to know that one in 10 of your patients you'll have to watch die is a very gnarly endeavor.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  Right. So we've had 5,000 as far as we know because people respond fewer than 30. And by the way, every single one of those is tragic. So we've reduced the number, any number. And this is where the thought of the book then starts to show up.

• 44:17Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so through the course of all this work and the 5,000 patients. It occurs to you at some point, you're occasionally hearing something, but you're not really focused on it. It's not something that's listed in the DSM that should be addressed. And you basically are led by your patients to start considering self-hatred and self-loathing as a condition that really needs exploration, research. We need to really start considering that this is a component that needs addressing. How do you come to this?

• 44:49Speaker 02

  Right. When I thought about the people who'd taken their lives and whose parents I was really close to, and I looked back on the records, the one thing that came up in the people who had tragically lost their lives to suicide was statements of self-hatred. Now, if you've had therapy, so you go in for an initial psychiatric evaluation. What's your name? How old are you? What do you do professionally? How do you sleep? Do you have any nightmares? How's your eating? Energy level, obsessions, compulsions? Do you hear voices? Suicidal thoughts? Homicidal thoughts? Are you anxious? Anything else you want to talk about? How's your attention and concentration? Ruminations, compulsions, whatever it is. No one ever asks about self-hatred.

• 45:31Dax Shepard?

  I've not been asked that.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  You've not been asked that in any psychiatric evaluation. So here was the numbers in terms of the people who tragically took their life. They were expressing self-hatred. And when I started to speak to people who had persistent suicidal ideation and behaviors, I started to say, wait a second. If those former patients of mine acted on suicide and discussed self-hatred, let me ask these people about self-hatred. And I would say, what do you think about yourself? And said, no, I don't like myself very much. Well, how much do you not like yourself? Not very much at all. Is it ever self-hatred? And it would surprise them because that would be the first time in tons and tons of therapy that somebody had actually asked, do you not like yourself to the point of self-hatred? And it'd be like,

• 46:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do hate myself.

• 46:18Dax Shepard?

  There's lots of excerpts of dialogue between you and patients. I don't know why, but I'm blown away with how intelligent some of the patients are and how articulate. And some of them are downright confrontational with you, which I think is so brave and cool. There's something about the dynamic that makes that hard. And one of your patients, a young woman, is like, you're not listening to me.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 46:38Dax Shepard?

  I'm not upset with myself in this moment. I hate myself across the board. You need to fucking listen to me. And I'm impressed and grateful that someone would have that conviction to push back against you like that.

• 46:50Speaker 02

  I tell patients, I said, if I've gotten it wrong, you've got to just tell me I've gotten it wrong. Because otherwise I'm going to continue down this path, believing what I believe to be true.

• 46:59Dax Shepard?

  You too are also limited by your own experience.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 47:02Dax Shepard?

  Yes, you've learned from the DSM, all these other things, and you know how to look for them. But because you yourself can't necessarily relate immediately to a constant state of self hatred, it's a little inconceivable until it's detailed for you.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, what does it mean?

• 47:17Dax Shepard?

  Because I think a lot of people go like, well, I hate myself often.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, or I feel like a failure sometimes.

• 47:22Dax Shepard?

  I'm lazy.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  So let's just imagine a binary world. Do you identify as male?

• 47:26Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  Female? Yes. Okay, now, how certain are you of that, those states?

• 47:32Dax Shepard?

  A hundred percent.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  Okay, what if I told you that you were wrong? What if I told you that, you know what, I actually quickly snuck a DNA test? And you're actually XY and you're actually XX. How easy would it be for me to convince you that you're female?

• 47:46Dax Shepard?

  It'd be impossible.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  Impossible. Male?

• 47:48Speaker 01

  I mean, I guess if you had proof.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Okay, no, but not only that. Okay, so here's, wait a second.

• 47:54Dax Shepard?

  This couldn't be proven to you?

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Even if I had like, okay, here's your DNA.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

• 47:59Dax Shepard?

  You'd go, that's fucked up.

• 48:00Speaker 02

  Exactly. So even if I said, okay, here's some proof, now you need to be convinced.

• 48:05Dax Shepard?

  I would pull my dick out and go, great, you're holding that. I'm showing you this.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  Right, but here's what I want you to do. You're actually wrong about yourself. You are actually female. What would the relationship between me and you be if I kept insisting that you had to see yourself as female?

• 48:20Dax Shepard?

  Well, you would be an adversary. You would be a threat. You would be someone that's living in certainly a different reality than I am.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  Exactly, because there's nothing that I could do that would convince you that's the level of belief.

• 48:31Dax Shepard?

  Right, so I'm saying I'm worthless and I am toxic. They use often this term toxic. Doesn't matter what proof you present to them.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  Right, it doesn't matter. There is no separation from the is-ness of self-hatred.

• 48:44Dax Shepard?

  Meaning they're as convicted about that as they would be about their biological sex.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Biological identity. And then if I say, okay, you know what? I want to start talking about self-hatred. It's as alienating as if it would be, I want you to start thinking of yourself as this other gender. So like, I know, I've got kids, I know who I am. Like, you're not going to convince me out of this. We're wasting time in therapy because I don't want to talk about this.

• 49:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so it's very hard to tackle, it sounds like.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  Well, that was the problem is that I thought, okay, so now what I need to do is tackle self-hatred. Why aren't any therapies tackling self-hatred? So I did what academics do, which is to go to the literature and say, "Find me the 10,000 papers on self-hatred," and three show up. That's all I could find.

• 49:24Dax Shepard?

  And what was the conclusion of those papers or the thesis of those?

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Self-hatred is very, very hard to tackle.

• 49:30Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:32Dax Shepard?

  Each paper ended with, "We give up."

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Exactly, because I can't convince you that you're female.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  You should get me in the room, I'm easily convinced.

• 49:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're a great candidate. It'd be misleading, in fact.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  It's this construct that gets internalized as truth. And if ever there is greater fake news, it is that. Because a child is not born hating itself. It has to learn to hate. And if it can learn to hate itself, it can learn to love itself.

• 49:57Dax Shepard?

  So Jewel wrote a foreword.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:59Dax Shepard?

  And what we learn in that story is that she had an abusive father who was an addict. We've interviewed her.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Yes, we have.

• 50:06Dax Shepard?

  And that at 15, she started considering just moving out. And she's starting to confront whether she'll feel better from that. And recognizing that he's the bad guy in the story. But even when she's away from him, the bad guy's still there. And this concept of internalizing your abuser, which is fascinating. And then she has this beautiful metaphor where she's peeling an orange. And she starts to become open to the idea that what she thinks of as herself is actually the peel of the orange. And that peel is there to protect this beautiful fruit inside from all the elements. And that perhaps the trauma is just the peel. And she doesn't actually know who she is.

• 50:49Dax Shepard?

  The nurture is the peel and the nature is this orange inside. And she becomes dedicated to finding the real her. It's so beautiful. Does that align nicely?

• 51:00Speaker 02

  So much, you know, I was thinking, okay, who am I going to get to write the foreword? I was thinking all these famous people, sort of psychiatrists and other things like that. And when I met Jewel in 2019, I found a kindred spirit. I loved how she paid attention to who she was, to the impact of things, how she practiced meditation and skills building. It's almost as if she developed dialectical behavior therapy on her own because of the way that she paid attention. And so I found a kindredness in this. And I thought, because she's so kindred, I want her to write. And ironically, my publisher had already decided that the cover was going to be orange. So they'd already determined. And you see the peeling piece. And she writes this independent of knowing the covers.

• 51:41Dax Shepard?

  That's so serendipitous. Do you have kind of your own DSM in your head where you would be able to delineate what is average disappointment in oneself versus something that needs this true attention and these tools?

• 51:54Speaker 02

  Because if you were to come into therapy and say like, ah, I'm so dissatisfied. I'm really upset about something. I say, what's going on? And you say, I did this interview or I met this person or I tried to do something. It just didn't work out the way I wanted it to. So what are you saying about yourself? You know, that I'm not very good under certain circumstances. So, okay, let's just talk about that. And then how can we work on that? So that kind of stuff is typically dealt with in cognitive and dialectical behavioral therapy, CBT, DBT. It's when I say, okay, let's just address the ways in which you're dissatisfied with yourself. And that's when you get the patient saying, you're not listening to me. This is not a flaw that can be fixed.

• 52:32Dax Shepard?

  I'm a toxic entity.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  I am an entity that is not only toxic.

• 52:37Dax Shepard?

  Repellent.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  It could be repellent to people, but there's something called the interpersonal theory of suicide. What are the elements that lead people to make a determination that suicide is the answer? One of them is loneliness, non-connectedness. It has a certain weight to acting and completing suicide. But another element to this, which is much more powerful, is burdensomeness. I am a burden. To those around me and to the world, and I have nothing to contribute.

• 53:03Dax Shepard?

  World would be better without me.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  The world would be better off without me. I wouldn't be a burden to my family.

• 53:09Dax Shepard?

  Yes, this young woman in your book, when kind of explaining to you why she's so worthless is, it's kind of implicit, she's already had a suicide attempt.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:19Dax Shepard?

  Her mother is, she knows, worrying about her all day long. The weight of that, I'm causing this person, I love all this distress. And just one thing after another, that's, I'm a burden and this place would be better without me.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  That is a weird self fulfilling prophecy too, because of course you're not a burden, but people are worried about you when you're in that state.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  And by the way, and here's the other thing is, I don't try to reassure people that they're not a burden. Some of that behavior is burdensome. It's not like they're gonna say, okay, that isn't a burden. Maybe they'll try to reassure you, but that's disingenuous. And that's not honest. And so I'm saying, some of that behavior is burdensome. But much of your behavior is you washing all the dishes before your mom comes home at night. Is that burdensome? No, that's actually kind of helpful. What about taking your little sister to school? Is that burdensome? Well, no. There's all these things that they do that aren't burdensome, but that's not how they're filtering their experience.

• 54:09Dax Shepard?

  So what was your personal breakthrough in treating this? What were the things you started noticing could work?

• 54:15Speaker 02

  I started to think about conditions that had been highly stigmatized, whether it was HIV AIDS, and I was in South Africa at the time, and no one would talk about it, cancer, other things like that. And the first thing you have to just talk about it. We are gonna bring it up because it is actually impacting your life in terms of your relationship choices, your academic choices, your employment choices, your friendship choices.

• 54:37Dax Shepard?

  You can definitely see it as fuel for the BPD.

• 54:40Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. The second thing is, I needed to drive a wedge between who you are and self hatred. Now, were your parents English speakers?

• 54:49Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Okay. Why don't either of you speak, I don't know, Greek?

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Nobody taught, nobody taught me.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  From very early on, you weren't taught. If I had plucked you from your crib and put you into a Greek speaking family, that's what you would have learned. So the idea is that you aren't born speaking English or Greek or anything. You're born blank slate in terms of language, and you learn something because you're exposed to that thing. That you weren't born hating yourself. You learned how to hate yourself.

• 55:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's a big admission.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  That was the only way in which I was able to break through.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  They could hear that.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  They could hear that they learned. And so I would say, who were your teachers? So the other part of it is, I wanted them to start writing. You weren't born hating yourself. When do you have a recollection of you starting to hate yourself? I want you to write that down. I want to know who your teachers of self-hatred were. The bully in school, the parent who expected perfectionism, the comparison with a more achieving sibling, the teacher who abused you. All of these teachers said that you were not enough.

• 55:53Dax Shepard?

  There's even incidents where your conclusion could be that, right? Because this woman eventually writes you this letter, which is really inspiring. She's the reason that her parents got divorced. Neither of them needed to tell her that. That could have just been a conclusion she made.

• 56:06Speaker 02

  Exactly, so there's all this faulty conclusion. And the more you're exposed to you being the fault of something, the more every single time something goes wrong.

• 56:14Dax Shepard?

  It's like muscle memory.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  Exactly, it's like, that must be the reason, because I am this broken individual. And so that's what happens. And the other thing is, we often determine the righteousness or the wrongness of something we do based on the outcomes. If you are really hungry and I give you $10, that's all you have, and you go and you buy a sandwich, well, that would make sense. But let's just say you go and buy a lottery ticket. And I say, what are you doing? Like, you're hungry and you buy a lottery ticket. But then you win $100 million. You say, you see? Well, it was still the wrong decision to make. I mean, you got lucky. But we determined that it was the right decision just because you won $100 million.

• 56:51Dax Shepard?

  The ends justified the means.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  If you were exhausted right now because you hadn't had a good night's sleep, this interview might go differently. And you might be critical about that and say, okay, next time I want to get better sleep. But it would make sense that it would be different if you were exhausted.

• 57:05Dax Shepard?

  And my nature would be to confirm a shortcoming I have and ignore the sleep aspect.

• 57:11Speaker 02

  Exactly, you would say, I'm not going to pay attention to any vulnerability factors that may have shown up.

• 57:15Dax Shepard?

  I have to be fully responsible. This is a failing.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  It's almost self-aggrandiz- it's putting way too much, it's ego, really.

• 57:24Speaker 02

  So when the Dalai Lama was asked about self-hatred, he said, "It's a form of self-indulgence and self-absorption that is actually toxic." You know, "I am the best, worst person on the planet."

• 57:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 57:37Speaker 02

  There's certainly this faulty self-evaluation that's taking place.

• 57:40Dax Shepard?

  That's the thing in AA, which is the other side of the coin of self-aggrandizement is self-pity. That was very helpful for me to police self-pity, which is like, it's just as egomaniacal to think the world is conspiring against you. You're not that important on either end.

• 57:54Speaker 02

  At all, at all, at all. As I say, our common destiny is to stardust. In any case, we aren't that important. And then I think that when you tell somebody who doesn't feel that good about themselves, "Hey, look, you're not that important, but more am I."

• 58:07Dax Shepard?

  You don't have the power to make your parents get divorced. You don't have the power to keep them.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 58:11Speaker 02

  You think that you're so impactful when you actually aren't. And it's liberating that the one thing that you have is to recognize that you're having an experience and then make a decision about what you're going to do. One interesting thing that patients say, "Well, I have this tendency or I have this habit." I say, "Okay, you can no longer say that." Once you recognize a tendency or a habit, it's now a choice.

• 58:33Dax Shepard?

  That's top medicine.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  The thing is, is the glory that I have is when a patient leaves therapy. I don't want to keep them in therapy. That shouldn't be your primary relationship. You should be able to function on your own. It's always interesting to me when people have been in therapy for 10 or 15 years with the same therapist. If you think of therapy as getting to a place of autonomy, dominion over self, self-agency, what's that about? I speak very bluntly. I challenge colleagues to really examine that. Now, if somebody, say, has bipolar disorder and they need medication to be able to manage manic depressive episodes, that person's probably going to need somebody to continue to prescribe and to check in. We've pathologized so many typical...

• 59:15Speaker 02

  Human experiences that all of a sudden you can't walk without being a pathological specimen.

• 59:22Dax Shepard?

  Well, this is the great danger of the DSM that's implicit is inadvertently we're establishing what normal is. And now that there's normal, that's the objective. And then your belief about what normal is, which is not true.

• 59:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's all slippery.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  Well, that's the benefit of going to other cultures because American pathology is different than other countries. It's not all the same thing. And so to know that we just defined it.

• 59:47Dax Shepard?

  Okay. So once you drive that wedge in there and you get them to accept that they weren't born this way, which I can see on the surface is very powerful. How now do you start nudging them towards considering they could return to that?

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  So the other thing that I've done with me and my patients, maybe they're in their late teens, early twenties, is I want them to bring me photos of their birthday, age one, age two, age three, age four, age five until now. And I say, okay, do you hate that one year old? Do you hate that two year old? When does it start, you know? And even if you say it starts when I'm six or seven in kindergarten. So do you really hate that little girl, that little boy? Do you hate that person? They say, no, because they were abused. They were hurt. And just what would you do if that little girl came into your life? You would hate her because she learnt.

• 1:00:37Dax Shepard?

  She was already so fucking flawed and busted that you would dispose of her?

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And that what the messaging was, she was a highly sensitive kid for whom rejection and criticism stuck so powerfully and started to believe that about herself. She carried that burden until now. Now let me ask you this, does future you want to hate herself? They say, no. So say, okay, but if your goal is to climb to the top of the mountain, sitting around playing video games isn't gonna get you anywhere. You have to start doing squats, running, you've got to start doing some hiking. So that eventually future you will be grateful for present you. If you start taking the steps necessary to hike to the top of the mountain, that's your goal. If future you doesn't want to hate herself, then you have to start taking the steps right now to.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  Recognize that it was learned to start recognizing any kind of life-affirming behaviors as acts of self-compassion and then not give the power to your toxic teachers to continue to define who you are as a human being. The narrative has to be, no, no longer do I accept that I was broken, that I was flawed, that I was stupid. Okay, I recognize I'm sensitive and I recognize that those labels stuck.

• 1:01:55Dax Shepard?

  There's a moment, again, back to this young woman, where, boy, it feels like you take a huge swing. I can't imagine myself doing this, but the outcome was really interesting, which is she had taken time to write you this kind of long letter and it was full of lots of kind things about you. And she clearly took a lot of time on it. You read it and she is not to a place yet where she has transcended self-hatred. And you said, this is lovely and I can see you've taken a lot of time on it, but I'm afraid I have to reject this.

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  You cannot give that which is not within you to give. You cannot experience that which is not with you to experience. We go back to this idea.

• 1:02:37Dax Shepard?

  I like the stolen money analogy you gave her. You can't give someone $100 you stole.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  Exactly. It has to be within you. What's it like to have your menstrual period every month? Dex?

• 1:02:47Dax Shepard?

  That's rough. I'm so mean to my husband.

• 1:02:52Speaker 02

  Exactly. It doesn't matter. There's no way that you can experience that because you don't have that experience. When you experience love, when you experience kindness, it's happening in inside of you. You are the source of it. There might be things in the environment that allow it to manifest more, but if it's not within you already, doesn't matter who shows up or what shows up. And if it's within you and if it's within you to give, it's within you to give to yourself as well.

• 1:03:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you said to accept this, you hate yourself and you're toxic and you're devoid of love. So this letter is the opposite of that. And for me to accept it would be to accept a lie.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  There's a concept in DBT is going where angels fear to tread. I have to enter the experience Ultimate darkness with a patient and risk that what I'm saying could potentially be very destabilizing.

• 1:03:43Dax Shepard?

  Yes, because that particularly not knowing her diagnosis, but if she were BPD, this is ripe to fulfill the narrative that you're not what she thought, rejecting this thing I spent all this time on.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:03:57Dax Shepard?

  But it did penetrate. I guess you get great at knowing when the time is.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. I have to know that the relationship is strong enough to be able to withstand.

• 1:04:05Dax Shepard?

  I think her making that letter to you was a good flag for you.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  Well, what was happening with her that she did that?

• 1:04:12Speaker 02

  So what was happening is that she was one of these people who was uber talented and lots of things. Sadly, I think that this happens more with women who are ultra intelligent, very talented. They're objectified in a certain kind of way that they're only seen through this one lens of maybe attractiveness or whatever it is.

• 1:04:29Dax Shepard?

  Or good.

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  Any of those sorts of things. And yet there's a multidimensionality capacity where there's artistic, linguistic, cognitive, and other things that don't actually often get seen. And her experience of being hurt for such a long time led to this experience of self hatred. And she was also very self destructive in terms of a lot of self injury and a lot of suicide attempts. And we had really reduced all of that to the point that her relationships with her family were better and everything. So she was grateful for that, but this core self hatred still remained. And I was floundering at that time because I didn't know what to do. That was in the early days of my program. And I just decided to go for it. I realized that there was a lot of risk, but I also had seen that she

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  had been able to tolerate some very, very difficult moments. The one thing that I hadn't seen is whether she could tolerate a difficult moment with me. And I said, I have so much compassion for you. And her argument was that's because you don't see me completely. You see some of the things that I do.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  You don't really know me.

• 1:05:28Speaker 02

  If you did, then you would also have the hatred for me. She actually once showed up a few minutes late and people for many reasons showed up late and she said, I think you should punch me in the face as punishment for this incredible transgression when I had so much loving compassion for somebody who made an effort. Showed up, really worked hard and it was inconsistent with the way that she saw herself. That was early on and later on we were able to do this and subsequently she began to see. In fact, there was a lot of worthiness and when she started to do that, she started to exercise more.

• 1:06:00Dax Shepard?

  It becomes a virtuous cycle.

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  It does. Yeah, it went the other way.

• 1:06:03Dax Shepard?

  What are some things you feel new in our culture that are compounding this?

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  We market to self hatred. You're not tall enough. You're not skinny enough. Your boobs aren't big enough. You're not light skinned enough. You're not intelligent enough. You don't have six packs enough. But by the way, if you buy my product, you'll be fabulous and everybody's gonna love you.

• 1:06:22Dax Shepard?

  There's a very well-funded mechanism out there.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  We market to self hatred. So the thing is that people who are at risk are gonna be dissatisfied with whatever that is within them. And we sell an idea of what virtue perfection is going to be if only you do this one thing. And so for those who are vulnerable, they chase that.

• 1:06:44Dax Shepard?

  I find myself frustrated with those folks and not as compassionate and I should. Part of me wants to go like, this billboard of this person is not an assault to you. I do discount sometimes that there is varying levels of vulnerability. There's part of me that just wants to go like, yeah, there's also cars that are faster than yours. It's not an assault on you.

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. I think that in an already very, very vulnerable person that then spends a lot of time on social media, TikTok, Instagram, watching these videos over and over. It reinforces the idea of that. So I think that for the vast majority of us, you go by that billboard. Now, what I do with the kids on my unit, I say, okay, show me what your social media apps are. What I want you to do is I want you to open TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, whatever it is. Tell me how you feel when you consume that social media. If you feel good about yourself, if you feel neutral, carry on. It's not a problem. If you're feeling terrible about yourself, it's like me eating gluten. You're allergic to it, but in the nanny state. We take away not only personal responsibility, but we say dominion over self is not important.

• 1:07:48Speaker 02

  I want the person to make that determination that for you TikTok's okay, but for this other person it isn't. They are the ones who determine that. I don't want to be the one who says I'm gonna take away all social media.

• 1:07:59Dax Shepard?

  I can't eliminate all the triggers in the world

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  I can.

• 1:08:01Dax Shepard?

  to satisfy the most triggered among us. It's very defeatist too, right?

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. Isn't it better that either you've learned how to deal with it or that you've decided, yeah, I hate seeing my friends at parties all the time where I'm not invited. Okay, well then you don't have to continue to consume that media if it's making you sick, if you're allergic to it.

• 1:08:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Okay, this is petty for me to bring up, but you would be the person that I could ask this to. I have said committed suicide on here several times. I've heard in the comments, people say I'm not allowed to say that anymore. And you who specializes in suicide, I feel like it's a little bit of pandering and pageantry. And I actually think it's just for the people who are advocates and not the people who have done it. I think it's like when people say I can't say drunks and junkies, which is what we call ourselves.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:08:49Dax Shepard?

  Do you have a take on this? What's this move to not say committed suicide?

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  Okay, so there's a couple of things. First of all, let me just say that I used to say that all the time. When people died, they died by cancer, by pneumonia, by whatever it is. The problem was that it assigned a certain degree of blame when you use that rather than saying they died by suicide. They died by cancer, they died by pneumonia, they died by whatever it is, rather than committed like I committed a crime. I walked into your house and I stole your money.

• 1:09:14Dax Shepard?

  Because you could say my dad committed cancer. He smoked like three packs a day.

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I suppose you could in a certain way, but you wouldn't say it. But you wouldn't.

• 1:09:21Dax Shepard?

  You wouldn't, right, right, right.

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  And the other thing is I have this concept of do I want to be right or do I want to be effective? And there's some times when maybe I know what I'm saying, but I don't want that to be the disagreement. And what's it cause our relationships? If what anybody's gonna remember about this show was that you said

• 1:09:37Dax Shepard?

  Committed suicide.

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  committed suicide, then people are gonna say what a jerk, like you didn't understand. And then you may have had 99% really great points. That's not what they're gonna remember.

• 1:09:47Dax Shepard?

  That's a great rebuttal. And that's generally the answer for all these things. I know. I'm gonna keep saying.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  You can, but I want to push back on that too because you hate advocates.

• 1:09:55Dax Shepard?

  When I think they're protecting themselves and not actually the victim.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  They're often connected to a victim. There's a reason that people become advocates. Normally, people don't just stand up and become an advocate for something for no reason.

• 1:10:07Dax Shepard?

  But my gut reason I hate it, there's an actual hatred of it, which is you're not owning your shame that someone you love did that. You actually don't want the shame for yourself and fuck you. That's why I have a conviction about it. You're trying to protect your own shame and you shouldn't be feeling shame about this. You're not doing your work.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  No, but if someone was talking about alcoholism and they were calling people a bunch of drunks and fuckups, I'd be like, no, that's not correct. And I don't feel shame that you're an addict.

• 1:10:38Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  I feel a responsibility as someone who knows more about it than the average person to say, actually, that's incorrect. Here's the reality.

• 1:10:49Speaker 02

  Here's the dialectic. Both of you are right. There is so much ignorance in the world. And then what happens is we bite into our ignorance and then we spout our ignorance. Then you're just going to continue down that ignorant path. Now, I would be with you if I heard people talking about drunks and junkies and I just said, okay, I know one of those guys who's turned his life around and done an incredible service to the world. And that when you devalue and diminish somebody into a state that through your ignorance means that they're going to be on skid row for the rest of their life, you're doing a disservice. If I can have a discussion that's going to open somebody's eyes to another possibility, that's fine. But I think that what happens with a lot of ignorance is that people just have a degree

• 1:11:31Speaker 02

  of certainty about a perspective and then they're not willing to change it. They open their mouths before they open their hearts and their minds.

• 1:11:38Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm going to declare right now, I'm happy to drop it. I'll get with the program.

• 1:11:44Speaker 02

  You might win something, but at what cost? People get lost in that message and then you'll be labeled as this one-sided person.

• 1:11:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so I don't think I've been reading a book that I wanted to give to more people than this book. I immediately thought of some people that I just know are buried under this self-hatred. People I love dearly. I don't know if it's triggering to receive this book again, but I certainly immediately thought of a couple of people I really want to read it. Because it's heartbreaking when you love someone and you know they're walking around with this sense of defectiveness and you can't penetrate. But also, I would say this book is a call to other psychologists. So maybe just love to wrap up with what your hopes are for the book.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  If we go back in time during the COVID pandemic, I wrote the book with a colleague, DBT for Dummies. And it hit number one on Amazon, not number one in psychology or in therapy, number one on Amazon for three days in a row. It was the number one and you know, we were on a lot of shows and stuff like that. And I thought it was a very, very important book. And so when I proposed this book, because I'd written other books, they were willing to take a chance, but they said, there's no comparison. No one's ever written about this sort of topic. And then they asked me the question, what do you hope from it? And I really wanted to speak with two people with lived experience to say, you've learned this false truth. And by the way, there's a lot of fake news in the world today. A lot of false narrative that many of us believe.

• 1:13:07Speaker 02

  But this one is going to destroy your life and is very, very toxic. So I said to the publisher originally is, you know, I want it to be for everybody, for therapists, for parents. They said, no, it can't be that. You have to pick one lane. You know, that's just the way it works. First of all, there's no other book on this. Secondly, pick a lane.

• 1:13:21Dax Shepard?

  Well, we need to know who to market it to.

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  Exactly right. So I said, okay, so we're going to do it for people with lived experience because they're often at the bottom of the pecking order in terms of like, who gets help. But what happened is that as I started to talk about it, therapists started to say, would this be helpful to us? And I said, yeah, because A, you'll understand the condition a lot more. Secondly, what I want you to start doing is I want you to start asking the question. In your inventory of questions, include a question about self. If I say, do you have nightmares? And you say, no, I don't have nightmares. Are you addicted to drugs? No, I'm not addicted to drugs. I'm not going to continue down like, okay, we have to work on your nightmares and your drug use. I don't have a problem with those things. If there is no core self hatred, then great, let's just move on.

• 1:14:05Speaker 02

  But there's kindred ideas like perfectionism, people pleasing behavior, self criticism, self judgment, there are. On the way to self-hate is

• 1:14:14Dax Shepard?

  Like all things, right? It's a spectrum.

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. Then I have a questionnaire that I ask all my patients and I think the therapist could also take that questionnaire. When did it start? How old were you when you first remembered? Who were the teachers? What were the circumstances in which you started to believe this about yourself?

• 1:14:29Dax Shepard?

  And the book is a bit of a workbook. You have provided space in the tools section to explore this on your own. Cause I think that's the great sadness I have is that so few people have access to someone like you.

• 1:14:41Speaker 02

  I don't have access to someone like me sometimes.

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  Again, I don't want something that could potentially be helpful to a lot of people to remain the exclusive domain of anyone who can just like afford best care. You can work on some of these ideas yourself, understand it a little bit better. And then when you go to therapy, maybe you say, I do want to explore this.

• 1:15:03Dax Shepard?

  Well, I think it's an incredible book. I'm so glad you've written it and shined a light on it. And it's probably crazy to you how long you were missing it.

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. And not only me, but the world. Just want to say on the other hand is I think it takes courage also for you and other people who are interested in having this discussion to have me on because it can also seem like this is so way out there that we can talk about OCD, even if you get it wrong. We can talk about depression and alcoholism, but there's this sort of degree of novelty that hasn't been well researched, hasn't been well examined. What happens if it turns out that this whole construct is wrong? But you know what? Even if the book prompts more research, more thinking about it, but more than anything else, to think that somebody who is struggling with this feels that they're so burdensome that the only way is out. You know, if one person can read the book and

• 1:15:54Speaker 02

  say, I can see myself differently, then we've done something important. And I appreciate you guys being part of this journey and helping.

• 1:16:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. It's a great book. I Hate Myself, Overcome Self-Loathing and Realize Why You're Wrong About You. It's out now. I urge everyone to get it. And I think a lot of people will relate deeply to the feelings that your patients have. Thank you so much, Blaze. The first Blaze I've ever met. And it was a home run.

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  Was he the first Dax you've ever met?

• 1:16:20Speaker 02

  He is.

• 1:16:21Dax Shepard?

  So hopefully we'll form stereotypes about Daxes and Blaze that'll become self fulfilling prophecies. All right. Well, good luck with everything. Thanks for giving us so much time.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 1:16:32Dax Shepard?

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. We are supported by Squarespace. So here's something I think about a lot. Most people I talk to on this show, the ones doing really interesting things, they all had a version of their work that existed before anyone else saw it. It was just theirs, notes, ideas, projects they were tinkering with. And then at some point, they made the decision to share it. That's the part that's scary, right? Going from, I'm working on something to here's what I made. Rob went through the exact same thing, building our site on Squarespace. And what made it doable was that he didn't have to become a web developer overnight. He just had to show up with the idea. Squarespace handles the rest. Beautiful templates that actually look like you hired someone,

• 1:17:15Dax Shepard?

  built in SEO so people can find you, email campaigns, scheduling, analytics, all under one roof. No code, no patchwork of random tools. And honestly, the thing I keep coming back to is how low the barrier is. If you've got something you've been building quietly and you're ready for people to see it, Squarespace makes that leap feel a lot less traumatic. Head to Squarespace.com/dax for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code DAX to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. We get support from no bull. The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a post summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  That's when you really need to ground yourself.

• 1:17:57Dax Shepard?

  Exactly. And that's why I keep my training routine through the holidays. It's the whole no bull idea. There's a no bullshit training brand built around consistency, honesty, and just putting in the work. It's not about adding more pressure to an already packed schedule. It's about having the gear and the habits to move through the season your way. My personal favorite, all three of the shoes are fantastic. The Outwork, the Outwork Flex and the Drive 2. I like the Drive 2 because it's a hybrid and I lift, of course, but I also like to do what's called box jumps. Right? I do a lot of jumping onto a little platform and I want a little more flexibility and boy, do they deliver.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  And if you're a cardio person and you're running and you also need to be lifting.

• 1:18:38Dax Shepard?

  And the style is banging. I don't know what to say. Beautiful style, very breathable, very, very comfortable, lots of support. They were built for lifting.

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  They also make a great holiday gift. You know, I love gifting, a purposeful one that actually supports someone's goals and routines, and it's not a gift that just ends up in the back of a closet.

• 1:18:55Dax Shepard?

  Stay stronger than the season. Head to nobolproject.com all holiday season to shop new deals every week.

• 1:19:06Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for the fact check. It's where the party's at.

• 1:19:14Dax Shepard?

  I just really shit the bed myself on my time management.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 1:19:19Dax Shepard?

  I had got all my workout gear on. I was like, should I ride my bike today?

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Sure, always a big question.

• 1:19:24Dax Shepard?

  Big, big question. And I was like, I really need to change this rear end or tube.

• 1:19:29Dax Shepard?

  The nozzle kind of popped off, still holding air, but I can't risk it.

• 1:19:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:19:32Dax Shepard?

  I'm gonna need to repair it. And then this lift, we're gonna lift, got in my outfit. Then I went to, I thought, well, now I have a little extra time. I got to working on the bicycle. I did the tires, a little more challenging than, there's a lot of challenges. So when I finally got it all done, cleaned up the tools, like, all right, let's go work out. And I looked at my watch, 12:40. My entire workout had blown by.

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  That'll happen.

• 1:19:59Dax Shepard?

  Got away from me.

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  That'll happen.

• 1:20:01Dax Shepard?

  You get tinkering in the shop. You know, those guys get tinkering in the shop and the time just flies by. Blew right by.

• 1:20:10Speaker 01

  Oh, my lord.

• 1:20:11Dax Shepard?

  This cookie boy likes to tinker.

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, cookie boys do like to tinker.

• 1:20:16Dax Shepard?

  They'll tinker. Your morning was good? Did time get away from you?

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  My internet was out.

• 1:20:21Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  At the beginning of the morning.

• 1:20:23Dax Shepard?

  Wow, unacceptable.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  I know. And I got a text from AT&T saying so, but I thought it was spam.

• 1:20:31Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  Or a trick. I thought it was a trick and a way to, for them to take all my money. So I didn't click it.

• 1:20:37Dax Shepard?

  Kristen just dealt with the exact same thing. She started getting tons and tons of emails and texts from Spectrum. Like, we're gonna shut your cable off.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:20:45Dax Shepard?

  Shut off your internet.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:20:47Dax Shepard?

  And she's like, I don't even think I signed up for the account. I don't think I, it's in my name or anything. Now there's a big.

• 1:20:55Speaker 01

  Mystery?

• 1:20:55Dax Shepard?

  There's a huge mystery. So very similar, but she, the whole time, she's like, this is all a ploy to get my credit card.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  Got to be careful.

• 1:21:01Dax Shepard?

  I think they got it.

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  They did.

• 1:21:03Dax Shepard?

  I think so.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  You're never supposed to click on it.

• 1:21:06Dax Shepard?

  Well, she looked up the actual web address for Spectrum and it was the right.

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  No, you don't click on it.

• 1:21:12Dax Shepard?

  Still scary.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  So scary.

• 1:21:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I didn't click on it and I was wrong. They were, that was real.

• 1:21:21Dax Shepard?

  That was real.

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  Cause my internet was out and, uh, but then it came back.

• 1:21:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wonderful.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  Then it came back. But I do this, right? Do I like plan, I plan my morning or my getting ready to the minute.

• 1:21:37Dax Shepard?

  Uh, uh huh.

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  Which is a problem.

• 1:21:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  But I, I'm a busy girl.

• 1:21:43Dax Shepard?

  Yes, very busy, multiple jobs.

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  Fit in there, but then the makeup, okay, that's gonna take seven minutes and then it takes seven and a half. And then you add a half minute to each of these line items and you're late.

• 1:21:56Dax Shepard?

  Line items.

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Business speak.

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  And then you're late.

• 1:22:00Dax Shepard?

  You, your P and L and you realize more losses than profits.

• 1:22:04Speaker 01

  And the ROI is low.

• 1:22:06Dax Shepard?

  Not good.

• 1:22:06Speaker 01

  It's not.

• 1:22:07Dax Shepard?

  Not a good ROI. I hate all those terms and then once I learn them, I realize they really are useful.

• 1:22:12Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:22:13Dax Shepard?

  It's annoying and then I'm the person I hate.

• 1:22:15Speaker 01

  You, you're the, you've become the person you've always hated.

• 1:22:18Dax Shepard?

  It's almost my full arc as a human is becoming fully the person I hated.

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:22:23Dax Shepard?

  I did a good prank last night.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  Oh my God, tell me because I'm into pranks now.

• 1:22:28Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so as you know, my girlfriend, Khaleesi's visiting.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  Yes, your little baby friend.

• 1:22:32Dax Shepard?

  She's seven, Kenny's daughter. I told you about the hike. We had a great hike. We held hands the entire time. I'd love to show you some pictures.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  And she calls Kristen, your wife, Aunt Kristen.

• 1:22:44Dax Shepard?

  My wife and Kristen.

• 1:22:44Speaker 01

  Previously Chris, Dax's mom.

• 1:22:46Dax Shepard?

  Dax's mom, which is really sad, but I did discover after we talked, she is calling my sister Delta's grandma.

• 1:22:57Dax Shepard?

  Which is great.

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  Stop it.

• 1:23:00Dax Shepard?

  She kept saying, is Delta going to with her grandma to the movies? When's she gonna be done with her grandma at the movies? So now TT is grandma, which is so fun.

• 1:23:11Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. I'm scared for her to give me a name.

• 1:23:14Dax Shepard?

  At least it's consistent. So like, if, if Kristen's my mom and my sister is Delta's grandma, those are their peers, which they are.

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:23:23Dax Shepard?

  In this weird structure.

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  What if she started calling me Dex? What about your Indian friend?

• 1:23:29Dax Shepard?

  Oh, no.

• 1:23:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:30Dax Shepard?

  No, she's not gonna do that. It's more of an age mix up. So anyways, Cleese, Delta, Lincoln, Kristen, Kenny and I went to Cafe 101 last night. We're in a big booth. Cleese is so excited. There's older girls.

• 1:23:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:43Dax Shepard?

  The older girls have had enough. But I tell them, I try to tell them, you know, what if we went somewhere and there's two older girls? You know, I, it's really tough being a parent in these situations.

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:23:54Dax Shepard?

  Cause you're really kind of weighing a couple of things.

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:56Dax Shepard?

  I want teachers to be kind and civil. And also, they're in their house.

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:01Dax Shepard?

  They have some boundaries. I also want them to have boundaries. I don't know.

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  I know. I think I may have made a mistake on this front.

• 1:24:07Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Did you advise them to punch Cleese?

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  I did. No, I told Delta, the other day I did a pop out. I pop out here. I walked by and I decided to go pop into my house. And as I was walking by your fence, I heard you grunt.

• 1:24:25Dax Shepard?

  I was unloading motorcycles and power washing them.

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:24:28Dax Shepard?

  And I heard your little voice coming from like the woods.

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  I said, hi. And you, you kind of like jerked around. This is why I'm into pranks now, actually. Because it was actually very funny, because you got really spooked.

• 1:24:40Dax Shepard?

  Well, and you were obscured behind FICA's, like a hedge, a row of hedges. So you, you got to watch me react and look stupid for a while.

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was really funny.

• 1:24:50Dax Shepard?

  Come on, goddammit.

• 1:24:51Speaker 01

  You said, who's saying hi?

• 1:24:53Dax Shepard?

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  You, you got into that mode where you were scared.

• 1:24:56Dax Shepard?

  Protect my family, my property mode.

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  It's Monica. I'm here. I'm over here by the fence.

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  Monica, your Indian friend, I'm over here by the

• 1:25:05Dax Shepard?

  Your grandma.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  So then, yeah, you came over and then Delta came over and so we were chit chatting a lot. And yeah, she mentioned that there was gonna be a young

• 1:25:13Dax Shepard?

  Young girl. And Khaleesi is so friendly.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  I know, she's so cute.

• 1:25:18Dax Shepard?

  Cute and friendly.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  But Delta was anticipating being, you know,

• 1:25:24Dax Shepard?

  A little overwhelmed.

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  A little overwhelmed and then, but really her ire was towards Lincoln.

• 1:25:29Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:25:30Speaker 01

  She was like, that Lincoln shuts the door and then I have to just play by myself with her. And also she looks at me and she says, please take care of it. And then I do, and I just, I don't want to do that this time. And I said, well, that's good. That's boundaries. You can, so I taught her about that.

• 1:25:49Dax Shepard?

  But then if you saw little Khaleesi excited to play with him, you'd be like, girls, get over it.

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 1:25:54Dax Shepard?

  Play with this cute little girl. So, yeah, Lincoln's largely spared. Because of the age gap, I think Delta's more interesting to Khaleesi.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:01Dax Shepard?

  Anyways, all this to say, we're at dinner and I'd love talking to her, right? Cause I'm just messing with her the whole time. Exactly how I talked to Lincoln and Delta is there. Cause she's family. She's Kenny's

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:26:13Dax Shepard?

  So she's, Kenny says something she doesn't like, so she starts punching Kenny. She's like, won't stop punching him. He's like, stop punching me. And I go, Khaleesi, I'm gonna tell you right now, they throw people out in this restaurant. They have a zero tolerance policy on violence. He's like, no, they won't. And I go, no, they'll throw you right out of here. And what is great is I've developed, now I, without this ever in sight, I've developed a really good relationship with the busboy.

• 1:26:39Speaker 01

  Oh, nice. Okay.

• 1:26:40Dax Shepard?

  I love the dude. You know, we have a great rapport. So I go, that's it. I'm gonna get the manager. So I got up and then luckily he was just standing right around the corner. And I go, oh, perfect. Will you tell that, ask that little girl if she's been punching people? And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah. So we come back and now there's an employee of the restaurant and he goes, have you been punching people? And she, she was busted.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:02Dax Shepard?

  She was so scared she was about to get thrown out.

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:27:06Dax Shepard?

  And then we all started laughing and then she started laughing. It was great.

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  She laughed.

• 1:27:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but I came back with an employee and he got right into it.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  That is funny.

• 1:27:14Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it was, it was glorious.

• 1:27:16Speaker 01

  Oh, I just got mirror neurons, though. Like, I'm back to not liking pranks anymore.

• 1:27:21Dax Shepard?

  You're afraid of getting kicked out.

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, I would have cried. And then, and then I would have felt bad that I was crying because I, I would know everyone else felt bad.

• 1:27:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  But I wouldn't be able to help myself.

• 1:27:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot there.

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  Tricky.

• 1:27:36Dax Shepard?

  But it did stop the punching.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  Well, that's good.

• 1:27:39Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so the other thing she and I have going is we were in the hot tub two nights ago and she's telling me all these different stories. And she tells me about how mean this gymnastics coach is, and he's real mean. And one girl is gonna have her water and he said, oh, you want some water? And he poured the water on her head.

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  No, she's a liar.

• 1:27:57Dax Shepard?

  I'm gonna be honest, I don't believe that story. And she's like, what? What do you mean you don't believe it? Like, I, I, I trust you and I love you, but at the same time, I just, I really can't, I don't think I'm able to believe that story. And it became this whole thing about believing that story. And then later she told me, you know, your eyes turn color when you lie. My grandpa told me that. And I go, yeah, I love your grandpa Joe. He's one of my buddies, but I, I, I'm afraid I can't believe that story. And she fought me on that for a while, but then in the car on the way to Cafe 101, she was saying, yeah, my grandpa told me your eyes turn color when you lie. I don't think I believe it anymore.

• 1:28:43Speaker 01

  No, you made her turn on her grandpa.

• 1:28:46Dax Shepard?

  That's okay. It's good to be skeptical. This, you can't believe in fairy tales.

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  But the reason the grandpa said it is because she's a little liar and she's running around telling lies and the grandpa's basically saying, don't you do that. I, I'll,

• 1:28:57Dax Shepard?

  But just call her a liar. You don't need to make up a whole thing where her eyes.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  The little baby's liar.

• 1:29:02Dax Shepard?

  You can tell kids exactly everything is what my experience.

• 1:29:05Speaker 01

  You do, but not everyone does that.

• 1:29:08Dax Shepard?

  We were having a blast.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Although, don't they say that about Hazel? It's like, sometimes you're green, sometimes you're blue.

• 1:29:15Dax Shepard?

  Because sometimes you're in light, that makes them look that way. And sometimes you're in light that makes them look the other way.

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  Very.

• 1:29:21Dax Shepard?

  Wishy-washing?

• 1:29:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:22Dax Shepard?

  Transient?

• 1:29:23Speaker 01

  It's very ephemeral. It changes, it moves, it's amorphous.

• 1:29:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. All to say, your eyes don't turn a different color when you lie.

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  Okay, this is back to me really wishing I had green eyes since I learned they're the rarest.

• 1:29:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you can't, didn't you already know they were the rarest? Did you need to learn that?

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  We already talked about this. I like, guess I kind of knew in my heart of hearts, but I-

• 1:29:47Dax Shepard?

  Haven't you just met the least amount of people with green eyes?

• 1:29:50Speaker 01

  Hmm, that's a great-

• 1:29:51Dax Shepard?

  I'll answer for you, yes.

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  Well, no.

• 1:29:53Dax Shepard?

  Yes, you've met way more people with blue and brown eyes than green.

• 1:29:57Speaker 01

  Well, brown, yeah, brown's a dozen of those.

• 1:29:59Dax Shepard?

  Here we go around. Also, I love brown, don't listen to her. Daniel Ricciardo's brown eyes?

• 1:30:04Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:30:05Dax Shepard?

  Like a saddlewood?

• 1:30:06Speaker 01

  I know, but like, it's just you always want, the grass is always greener when your eyes are green.

• 1:30:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I, Rob, what call your eyes? Brown?

• 1:30:18Dax Shepard?

  Blue.

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  Wow, see, I don't really know.

• 1:30:21Dax Shepard?

  That was a dangerous question.

• 1:30:22Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:30:24Dax Shepard?

  Because people take it so personal if you don't know their eye color.

• 1:30:27Speaker 01

  Really? Oh, no, I'm sorry, Rob.

• 1:30:28Dax Shepard?

  This is one of these, I think, trends about how to out guys for, you know, another thing guys are terrible at is like, guys don't know your eye color. This is a test for a guy.

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:30:38Dax Shepard?

  What's your mom's eye color? What's your, what's your wife's eye's color, eye color, eye's colors?

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:30:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so it's, it's real dangerous. It's, people get very hurt if you don't know what color their eyes are. Do you know color mine are?

• 1:30:51Speaker 01

  Blue.

• 1:30:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:52Speaker 01

  Cause I know that, cause we were talking about it. I think I sort of thought blue eyes were the rarest.

• 1:31:00Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow. I don't know how you thought that.

• 1:31:03Speaker 01

  I, I like blue eyes the most.

• 1:31:08Dax Shepard?

  Name three people with green eyes.

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  Okay, Callie, she has green eyes.

• 1:31:13Dax Shepard?

  Are we playing it fast and loose?

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:31:15Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  Let me text her.

• 1:31:16Dax Shepard?

  There's solid green?

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  Let me text her. Well, what's solid green? Is there such a thing? Callie might be mad because now we're back to the thing I said you have green eyes, right?

• 1:31:26Dax Shepard?

  She goes, I'm so hurt. Lose my number.

• 1:31:30Dax Shepard?

  I think she has blue eyes.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  She doesn't.

• 1:31:32Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:31:33Speaker 01

  Um, she either has green or hazel.

• 1:31:36Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:31:37Speaker 01

  My friend Gina, green or hazel?

• 1:31:39Dax Shepard?

  Okay, you're asking me?

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  No, I'm telling you. These are two people.

• 1:31:43Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so we're up to two?

• 1:31:45Speaker 01

  All right, and um.

• 1:31:47Dax Shepard?

  You're currently sitting with two people with blue eyes, so that's already neutralized.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  Okay, so evens, even Stevens.

• 1:31:54Dax Shepard?

  With immediate people in your vicinity and all the people in the world, you know, yes, it's even Stevens so far.

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  What does Kristen have? Blue?

• 1:32:01Dax Shepard?

  Blue.

• 1:32:01Speaker 01

  And the kids have blue?

• 1:32:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:04Speaker 01

  See, I'm not paying much attention.

• 1:32:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you know the kids have blue. They're so prototypical blonde blue.

• 1:32:11Speaker 01

  I know, but.

• 1:32:12Dax Shepard?

  They're generically.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  I don't, I think, I don't, you know, people think eyes are like the window to the soul.

• 1:32:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:19Speaker 01

  Um, and I guess I get, like, when I look, like, in your eyes, I get it.

• 1:32:23Dax Shepard?

  That's where the human is.

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:32:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  But I guess I'm never looking.

• 1:32:28Dax Shepard?

  You can't see very well, though, in your defense. I don't know that you can even see most people's eyes.

• 1:32:33Speaker 01

  Your eyes are like.

• 1:32:36Dax Shepard?

  Shit blue?

• 1:32:37Speaker 01

  Don't say that when you know I have brown eyes. That's so insensitive. Um, yours are like grayish blue.

• 1:32:45Dax Shepard?

  Uh, yeah, for sure.

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:47Dax Shepard?

  I would agree with that.

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is nice.

• 1:32:50Dax Shepard?

  Jess has said the nicest thing about my eyes is anyone has ever said. He said there's icicles in them.

• 1:32:55Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:32:56Dax Shepard?

  It's very sweet. You know what color my brother's eyes are, right?

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  What are his eyes? His eyes are probably green.

• 1:33:02Dax Shepard?

  No, they're red.

• 1:33:04Speaker 01

  No, that's his hair.

• 1:33:07Dax Shepard?

  He has brown eyes. Go ahead, test it. You're a bad boyfriend. I'm a much better boyfriend than you are.

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  Color of your eyes, question mark?

• 1:33:16Dax Shepard?

  He's just gonna start crying. He'll get back to you in thirty minutes.

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  Who else should I insult?

• 1:33:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, exactly. What should you tell? You don't, tell me you don't care about me without telling me you don't care about me.

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  I actually, when I, like, all my, all the girls in the pod, I'm really trying to think.

• 1:33:31Dax Shepard?

  Who's got what?

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:33:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:33Speaker 01

  And the boys, I guess I hate eyes.

• 1:33:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they're not your thing.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  Okay, we have a really important thing to do today.

• 1:33:41Dax Shepard?

  Oh, we're gonna finally do the.

• 1:33:43Speaker 01

  It's a quiz.

• 1:33:44Dax Shepard?

  From the book.

• 1:33:46Speaker 01

  Clipbook.

• 1:33:46Dax Shepard?

  The quasi.

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  Oh, no. But we.

• 1:33:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Do it next week.

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  Tune in next week for.

• 1:33:56Dax Shepard?

  Us saying we'll do it the following week.

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  For the green.

• 1:33:59Dax Shepard?

  So what quiz is this?

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  Okay, this is highly sensitive person quiz.

• 1:34:03Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wonderful.

• 1:34:04Speaker 01

  Because this is for Blaze.

• 1:34:07Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. If you dare.

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  Now.

• 1:34:20Dax Shepard?

  Do you want me to read it? I always feel bad. You're always administering the quizzes and I'm happy to do it if you want.

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  I'd like to do it.

• 1:34:26Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  Okay, now discover your personality. Choose your gender to start.

• 1:34:30Dax Shepard?

  Male.

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  Okay, you find it easy to make new friends. Strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree.

• 1:34:36Dax Shepard?

  Strongly agree.

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  You could spend days learning about random things that interest you.

• 1:34:40Dax Shepard?

  Oh, strongly agree.

• 1:34:43Speaker 01

  When others are.

• 1:34:43Dax Shepard?

  You seem to have nothing into a sensitivity. It's just interesting.

• 1:34:46Speaker 01

  When others are upset, you feel upset too.

• 1:34:49Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, I hate it.

• 1:34:50Speaker 01

  Which one, agree or strongly agree?

• 1:34:52Dax Shepard?

  Strongly agree.

• 1:34:53Speaker 01

  You aren't one for backup plans.

• 1:34:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's. I'm not gonna go strongly, I'll go the next one.

• 1:34:59Speaker 01

  Okay, you stay cool, calm and collected even when under lots of stress.

• 1:35:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  Which one?

• 1:35:05Dax Shepard?

  Strongly agree. Right, have you ever seen me losing my shit?

• 1:35:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:35:09Speaker 01

  Oh, my god, yeah.

• 1:35:12Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my god, yeah. Wow, really?

• 1:35:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:35:15Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:35:22Dax Shepard?

  I just think when this shit's hitting the fan, I'm very calm. Is that not what the question is? You would agree with that?

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  Oh, my, yeah.

• 1:35:28Dax Shepard?

  Like, my car's on fire and I'm like, okay, let's get the hood open. Let's, like, there's no, I have no. Oh, no, there's no oh, no in me.

• 1:35:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:35:38Speaker 01

  When your car's on fire, yeah. Okay, when out and about, you don't really introduce yourself to new people. You prefer to chat with people you already know.

• 1:35:45Dax Shepard?

  That's true. Even though I can make friends really easy, that's true.

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:35:50Dax Shepard?

  But not strongly.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  So regs?

• 1:35:52Dax Shepard?

  Let's go medium.

• 1:35:53Speaker 01

  Neutral or agree?

• 1:35:55Dax Shepard?

  Let's go neutral.

• 1:35:56Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, because part of your thing is that you like talking to strangers.

• 1:36:00Dax Shepard?

  It's really weird. I like to talk to either dead strangers or people I know. It's periphery people that people I know know that make me nervous.

• 1:36:10Speaker 01

  I understand.

• 1:36:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:11Speaker 01

  I.

• 1:36:12Dax Shepard?

  Can you understand? That's weird, isn't it though? But like if I'm at a gas station, I talked like I'm, I'm very engaged.

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, you want to learn about them.

• 1:36:20Dax Shepard?

  Or the server or whatever. I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna ask the Uber driver where they're from.

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah.

• 1:36:28Dax Shepard?

  But if like the Uber driver, I kind of remember is friends with Callie. I'd be like, oh, fuck.

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:36:35Dax Shepard?

  Not her specifically.

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  Callie's friend is so cool.

• 1:36:38Dax Shepard?

  But you know, any friend of a friend.

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  I know, it feels like you have to be on in a little bit of a different way.

• 1:36:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we're supposed to connect because we.

• 1:36:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I get it. I'm like a no across the board. I don't want to talk to strangers and I don't want to talk to friends either.

• 1:36:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:56Speaker 01

  Okay, you don't like to start a new project until the first one's finished.

• 1:36:59Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm, agree.

• 1:37:00Speaker 01

  Okay, you're a sentimental type of person.

• 1:37:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I strongly agree.

• 1:37:05Speaker 01

  Okay, you enjoy using lists or schedules?

• 1:37:07Dax Shepard?

  Neutral.

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  Okay, making a small mistake can make you question your knowledge on a subject.

• 1:37:13Dax Shepard?

  Medium.

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  Neutral or agree?

• 1:37:15Dax Shepard?

  Medium, agree. Is that?

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  Just agree.

• 1:37:16Dax Shepard?

  Four?

• 1:37:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, agree.

• 1:37:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  Okay, you easily spark up a conversation with a stranger.

• 1:37:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, five.

• 1:37:24Speaker 01

  You love talking about and analyzing creative works.

• 1:37:27Dax Shepard?

  Four.

• 1:37:28Speaker 01

  You follow your heart more than your head. This is an interesting one.

• 1:37:32Dax Shepard?

  Boy, that's, that's a hard one to.

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  That's hard.

• 1:37:35Dax Shepard?

  Be objective about.

• 1:37:37Speaker 01

  Follow your heart.

• 1:37:38Dax Shepard?

  I'm open to your.

• 1:37:39Speaker 01

  You follow your heart more than your head.

• 1:37:42Dax Shepard?

  I kind of think so.

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  I do too.

• 1:37:45Dax Shepard?

  I do too.

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, so agree, regular four.

• 1:37:48Dax Shepard?

  Rights.

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  You tend to prefer following a daily routine as opposed to just doing whatever you want.

• 1:37:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I love a daily routine. Yeah, strongly agree, five.

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  When you meet new people, you worry about whether you made a great first impression.

• 1:38:00Dax Shepard?

  To five.

• 1:38:02Speaker 01

  You prefer solo activities over group activities.

• 1:38:05Dax Shepard?

  Neutral.

• 1:38:06Speaker 01

  Okay. You love watching movies that let you interrupt. Oh.

• 1:38:11Dax Shepard?

  A little projection. No, not projection, just interject.

• 1:38:14Speaker 01

  Interrupt.

• 1:38:15Dax Shepard?

  You put something.

• 1:38:16Speaker 01

  You, I wrote, what if I?

• 1:38:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  I started changing the quiz.

• 1:38:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:22Speaker 01

  You love to interrupt. What do you think?

• 1:38:25Dax Shepard?

  Six.

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  You love watching movies that let you interpret the ending yourself. That's a good question.

• 1:38:32Dax Shepard?

  Four.

• 1:38:32Speaker 01

  You get more happiness from achieving things yourself than you do from helping others.

• 1:38:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, terrible quality, but yeah.

• 1:38:40Speaker 01

  Strong.

• 1:38:40Dax Shepard?

  Five.

• 1:38:41Speaker 01

  You aren't interested in very many things.

• 1:38:44Dax Shepard?

  Oh, strongly disagree.

• 1:38:45Speaker 01

  You often worry about the worst possible scenario in any given situation.

• 1:38:51Speaker 01

  You love taking up leadership roles.

• 1:38:53Dax Shepard?

  Five.

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  You are an artistic type of person.

• 1:38:56Dax Shepard?

  Four.

• 1:38:57Speaker 01

  The world would be better off if people made more decisions with their feelings.

• 1:39:02Dax Shepard?

  No. It'd be worse.

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  Strongly disagree.

• 1:39:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, strongly disagree.

• 1:39:06Speaker 01

  Well, you work with your head, heart.

• 1:39:08Dax Shepard?

  I know, but I'm allowed to and no one else.

• 1:39:09Speaker 01

  Okay. You prefer to relax before getting into chores.

• 1:39:13Dax Shepard?

  That's weird. Relax before.

• 1:39:15Speaker 01

  You don't.

• 1:39:16Dax Shepard?

  I don't.

• 1:39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you're.

• 1:39:18Dax Shepard?

  I like to keep the mo- I like to keep the motor floored or off. So that's a disagree.

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  Okay. You don't mind when other people are having a heated argument in front of you. Oh, this is interesting.

• 1:39:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I don't mind. I like, yeah, I like it.

• 1:39:31Speaker 01

  So you.

• 1:39:33Dax Shepard?

  Is horny an option?

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Strongly agree.

• 1:39:37Dax Shepard?

  Strongly agree.

• 1:39:38Speaker 01

  You like being the center of attention.

• 1:39:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh, fifteen.

• 1:39:43Speaker 01

  Your mood is.

• 1:39:43Dax Shepard?

  This is like how gross you are, quiz.

• 1:39:45Speaker 01

  Your mood is generally pretty stable.

• 1:39:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'd say four.

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  You have plenty of patience for people that aren't as efficient as you.

• 1:39:53Dax Shepard?

  Zero. No.

• 1:39:55Speaker 01

  Strongly.

• 1:39:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, strongly disagree.

• 1:39:56Speaker 01

  You're spontaneous.

• 1:39:58Dax Shepard?

  Ooh, five.

• 1:39:59Speaker 01

  You have always been fascinated by the question of what, if anything, happens after death.

• 1:40:03Dax Shepard?

  Neutral.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  You prefer to be on your own rather than with others.

• 1:40:07Dax Shepard?

  Neutral.

• 1:40:08Speaker 01

  You love theoretical discussions and can engage in them for days on end.

• 1:40:12Dax Shepard?

  Fifteen.

• 1:40:13Speaker 01

  You have a hard time empathizing with people who come from a very different lifestyle to your own. Interesting.

• 1:40:22Dax Shepard?

  I feel like you have a, what would you give me on that?

• 1:40:25Speaker 01

  You have a hard time empathizing people who come from a very different.

• 1:40:28Dax Shepard?

  Also remember where I'm from.

• 1:40:30Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:40:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I love gay dudes.

• 1:40:32Speaker 01

  I'm gonna say something ballsy right now, okay?

• 1:40:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:36Speaker 01

  I think that has more to do with your contrarianism than it does with your empathy.

• 1:40:44Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  And I mean that positively. Like, I think you, you always want to look at the other side and you don't like a status quo.

• 1:40:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:55Speaker 01

  And in Michigan, there's, there was a status quo about people and I think it was not empathy that drove you.

• 1:41:01Dax Shepard?

  But I have an outcast identity, right? So I think I, I like, it's easy for me to lock into, uh, I don't know, I'm gonna go with neutral.

• 1:41:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:41:08Dax Shepard?

  I think I'm, I think I'm more, I think I'm more empathetic than the average dog from where I'm from.

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:41:15Dax Shepard?

  But also, yeah, a lot of times, like, I had to definitely become friends with you before I was able to truly understand how hurtful and doing an accent.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:41:25Dax Shepard?

  That's pretty shameful.

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  No, I wouldn't use.

• 1:41:29Dax Shepard?

  Let's use you.

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  Me. I actually mean more like, I think currently you can't empathize with like a very hyper liberal person. And that is from where they come from too.

• 1:41:42Dax Shepard?

  Well, let me, let's see though, is it that I can't empathize?

• 1:41:49Dax Shepard?

  I mean, I think I understand where they're coming from. I think it's gonna end in defeat.

• 1:41:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:54Dax Shepard?

  So I have like a real strong objection that I don't think we're ever gonna get in power again unless people have a reckoning.

• 1:42:02Speaker 01

  So neutral.

• 1:42:04Dax Shepard?

  We'll go neutral.

• 1:42:04Speaker 01

  When there's a decision to be made, you want to make it right away.

• 1:42:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:09Speaker 01

  Four or five?

• 1:42:10Dax Shepard?

  Five.

• 1:42:11Speaker 01

  You tend to second guess the decisions you make.

• 1:42:13Dax Shepard?

  No, I disagree.

• 1:42:14Speaker 01

  Socializing quickly exhausts you.

• 1:42:17Dax Shepard?

  Socializing quickly.

• 1:42:19Speaker 01

  If you start socializing, are you quickly exhausted?

• 1:42:21Dax Shepard?

  Oh, no, I'm energized. Strongly disagree.

• 1:42:23Speaker 01

  Okay, strongly disagree. You enjoy going to art museums?

• 1:42:26Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:42:27Dax Shepard?

  Hate them.

• 1:42:27Speaker 01

  Okay. Oh, my God, I went to one recently and it was, it was lovely. I went by myself.

• 1:42:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh, where?

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  This one in Echo Park.

• 1:42:35Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  And I went to see this awesome artist. Her name's Sophie. Uh, I am already a fan of hers and she had an exhibit there. So I went and I got a coffee and I went by myself and I felt so cultured.

• 1:42:47Dax Shepard?

  And you really enjoyed looking at the paintings?

• 1:42:49Speaker 01

  I did.

• 1:42:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  But there was only like, I was, I was in and out pretty quick.

• 1:42:53Dax Shepard?

  Okay, well.

• 1:42:55Speaker 01

  There weren't that many.

• 1:42:55Dax Shepard?

  I mean, I can remember the couple that I've loved. I've loved two. The old Picasso one in the alley in Barcelona and then the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

• 1:43:05Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:43:07Dax Shepard?

  I like walking around the Getty, but it's like, I look at the paintings and I'm, I feel like, um, Larry David.

• 1:43:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:43:13Dax Shepard?

  Where I'm like, I'm more annoyed that other people are getting some transcendent experience that I might not be. And I'm like, why, what is?

• 1:43:20Speaker 01

  I see.

• 1:43:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:21Speaker 01

  Uh, this is a ding ding ding for my other fact, which isn't a fact, but is flower poopy. The flower puppy, um, outside the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

• 1:43:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:33Speaker 01

  The Frank Gehry designed building. I went there.

• 1:43:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. That came up in this episode.

• 1:43:40Dax Shepard?

  Oh, right.

• 1:43:40Speaker 01

  And I just, I went there with Callie and, um, it was great.

• 1:43:45Dax Shepard?

  You loved it?

• 1:43:46Speaker 01

  I loved it.

• 1:43:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  And I'd like to go back.

• 1:43:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:49Speaker 01

  Okay. You struggle to understand what others are feeling.

• 1:43:52Dax Shepard?

  No. I disagree.

• 1:43:54Speaker 01

  Disagree. Okay. You like to have a to-do list for each day.

• 1:43:57Dax Shepard?

  We already answered this.

• 1:44:00Dax Shepard?

  No, I don't. I don't. Regs don't. Regs disagree.

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  You often feel insecure.

• 1:44:05Dax Shepard?

  I mean, what year is this question being asked?

• 1:44:07Speaker 01

  Now.

• 1:44:07Dax Shepard?

  Um, um, rarely.

• 1:44:10Speaker 01

  Disagree?

• 1:44:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but, but, right.

• 1:44:13Speaker 01

  You prefer talking to people on the phone over texting or messaging them?

• 1:44:16Dax Shepard?

  I used to, but not anymore.

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  Disagree.

• 1:44:20Dax Shepard?

  I'd go disagree. Regs.

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  When someone has a different perspective on a subject than you, you genuinely try to understand where they're coming from.

• 1:44:27Dax Shepard?

  I'd go, Regs agree.

• 1:44:28Speaker 01

  I think so. You find that telling the cold, hard truth is more important than being tactful.

• 1:44:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:34Speaker 01

  Five.

• 1:44:36Dax Shepard?

  He almost puked.

• 1:44:38Speaker 01

  You're happy to go with the flow when your plans are interrupted.

• 1:44:41Dax Shepard?

  No, I'm not at all. That's a strong disagree.

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  Mistakes you made in the past often haunt your mind.

• 1:44:46Dax Shepard?

  Oh, five.

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  You feel energized after spending time alone, engaging in solitary activities like reading or reflecting.

• 1:44:53Dax Shepard?

  Not energized, no. Regs disagree.

• 1:44:55Speaker 01

  Okay, you prefer to rely on your instincts rather than sticking strictly to a set plan or schedule.

• 1:45:00Dax Shepard?

  Five.

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  You often find yourself deeply contemplating the underlying meanings and implications of things rather than focusing solely on the surface details.

• 1:45:08Dax Shepard?

  Regs agree.

• 1:45:09Speaker 01

  I think.

• 1:45:10Dax Shepard?

  That's a neutral for me?

• 1:45:11Speaker 01

  No, I think you're.

• 1:45:12Dax Shepard?

  Strongly agree?

• 1:45:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:13Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay, strongly.

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  When making decisions, you prioritize logic and objective analysis over considering how it might impact others' feelings.

• 1:45:22Dax Shepard?

  I agree.

• 1:45:24Speaker 01

  You often.

• 1:45:24Dax Shepard?

  I would have gone right, but okay. I think we're there.

• 1:45:28Speaker 01

  You often find yourself worrying about potential future outcomes or what could go wrong in a given situation. You often find yourself drawn to new experiences and enjoy exploring unfamiliar places. Strongly agree. You tend to trust your gut feelings and intuition when faced with difficult decisions rather than relying solely on logical analysis.

• 1:45:46Dax Shepard?

  A neutral.

• 1:45:46Speaker 01

  Okay, you feel a strong sense of empathy towards others and are often affected by their emotions, even if they don't directly involve you.

• 1:45:53Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm affected by people's emotions, but you said I'm not empathetic, so I'm gonna have to take that. Let's go, Regs agree.

• 1:45:59Speaker 01

  I didn't say that. Okay, you prefer to have a well-structured plan in place rather than leaving things up to chance or improvisation.

• 1:46:09Dax Shepard?

  This, uh, Regs disagree.

• 1:46:10Speaker 01

  Okay, you thrive in dynamic, fast-paced environments and feel invigorated by challenging situations that require quick thinking and adaptability.

• 1:46:17Dax Shepard?

  Fifty-five.

• 1:46:18Speaker 01

  When faced with a problem, you're more inclined to seek out practical solutions rather than dwelling on abstract theories or hypothetical scenarios. That's a hard one.

• 1:46:26Dax Shepard?

  That is, I would go neutral.

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  Okay, you enjoy engaging in deep, meaningful conversations with others. Yes, strongly agree. You often find yourself reflecting on past experiences and considering how they've shaped your beliefs and values.

• 1:46:38Dax Shepard?

  Too much, so, yeah.

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  You're inclined to take charge in group settings, assuming leadership roles and guiding others.

• 1:46:44Dax Shepard?

  You already answered.

• 1:46:45Speaker 01

  It's a cheap.

• 1:46:46Dax Shepard?

  There should be a question like, do you hate being asked the same question twice? Or rather, it would say, you hate being asked the same question twice.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  God, okay, you feel most comfortable when your environment is organized and structured, and you may feel stressed or unsettled in chaotic or unpredictable situations.

• 1:47:00Dax Shepard?

  I agree with that, it, which seems like a contradiction.

• 1:47:04Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:47:05Dax Shepard?

  But I, yes, I, I keep my room really clean and my side of the thing, you know, like I am, yeah, I'm a little bit of a.

• 1:47:11Speaker 01

  You prefer spending time with a small group of close friends rather than attending large social gatherings?

• 1:47:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:16Speaker 01

  Four or five?

• 1:47:18Dax Shepard?

  Five.

• 1:47:19Speaker 01

  When presented with multiple options, you tend to follow your heart and make decisions based on what feels right in the moment.

• 1:47:25Dax Shepard?

  They're trying to confuse us. They keep asking the same question, but slightly different than you wonder.

• 1:47:30Speaker 01

  That's how all these are.

• 1:47:31Dax Shepard?

  And they're trying to catch you being inconsistent and they're about to catch me. One more time?

• 1:47:36Speaker 01

  When presented with multiple options, you tend to follow your heart and make decisions based on what feels right in the moment.

• 1:47:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I agree with that.

• 1:47:43Speaker 01

  Okay. You enjoy exploring new ideas and concepts, often seeking out opportu- okay, yeah.

• 1:47:47Dax Shepard?

  Fine. They're really trying to piss us off.

• 1:47:51Speaker 01

  You find it easy to-

• 1:47:51Dax Shepard?

  What if at the end it said, "Did this piss you off?" And that's the only question that mattered, because you're so sensitive.

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  You find it easy to adapt to changes in plans or unexpected situations.

• 1:48:01Dax Shepard?

  No, Rags, no.

• 1:48:02Speaker 01

  Often seeing them as opportunities for growth and learning.

• 1:48:04Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:48:06Dax Shepard?

  I mean, I get there after a long, long time.

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  When working on a project, do you value efficiency and strive to complete tasks quickly and effectively?

• 1:48:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, five.

• 1:48:14Speaker 01

  You often seek out opportunities to challenge yourself and push your limits, whether it's through physical activities or intellectual pursuits. Strongly agree. You prefer to focus on the present moment rather than dwelling on past regrets or worrying about future uncertainties.

• 1:48:25Dax Shepard?

  No, Rags disagrees.

• 1:48:27Speaker 01

  Okay. You enjoy engaging in lively debates and discussions, sharing your- Yep.

• 1:48:32Dax Shepard?

  Fine.

• 1:48:32Speaker 01

  Okay. You have a strong desire for structure and order in your daily life, feeling most at ease when following a clear routine or schedule.

• 1:48:38Dax Shepard?

  This is crazy.

• 1:48:40Dax Shepard?

  It's getting really crazy.

• 1:48:41Speaker 01

  You tend to be proactive in seeking out new experiences and opportunities, embracing change as a natural part of life.

• 1:48:47Dax Shepard?

  I like new things, but I don't know that I embrace change all that well. So let's go neutral.

• 1:48:52Speaker 01

  Okay. You feel energized and excited by social interactions, often seeking out opportunities to meet new people.

• 1:49:00Dax Shepard?

  Is it in a, is it like, is there a glitch?

• 1:49:03Speaker 01

  No, but it is different. Often seeking out opportunities to meet new people.

• 1:49:08Dax Shepard?

  I do do that. Let's go, Rags.

• 1:49:10Speaker 01

  Okay. When making decisions, you prioritize logical reasoning and objective analysis, considering the facts and evidence before reaching a conclusion.

• 1:49:17Dax Shepard?

  I'd say four. Oh, four.

• 1:49:21Speaker 01

  You tend to be highly self-critical and introspective, frequently reflecting on your actions and decisions striving for self-improvement.

• 1:49:28Dax Shepard?

  Five.

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  You often find yourself empathizing with others' emotions, even if you haven't experienced the same situation yourself, and strive to offer support and understanding.

• 1:49:36Dax Shepard?

  I'm not good at that. Let's go to, um, regs.

• 1:49:39Speaker 01

  regs disagree.

• 1:49:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:41Speaker 01

  You prefer to have a clear plan and direction in life, setting specific goals and working diligently to achieve them.

• 1:49:46Dax Shepard?

  Um, regs agree.

• 1:49:48Speaker 01

  Okay. What is your current relationship status? Married.

• 1:49:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but five? What is that?

• 1:49:55Speaker 01

  No, now it's new.

• 1:49:56Dax Shepard?

  Oh, now we're, okay.

• 1:49:57Speaker 01

  Married.

• 1:49:57Dax Shepard?

  Married.

• 1:49:58Speaker 01

  How long is your current relationship? Six plus years? How many relationships have you been in?

• 1:50:03Dax Shepard?

  Oh, God.

• 1:50:04Speaker 01

  There's zero, one, two, three, four, four plus.

• 1:50:07Dax Shepard?

  Four plus. Four pos.

• 1:50:09Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. How, this is personal.

• 1:50:12Dax Shepard?

  How long is your penis?

• 1:50:14Speaker 01

  God. How satisfied are you with your current relationship? We have dissatisfied, somewhat satisfied, mostly satisfied, very satisfied. What's your age? Okay. Oh, God.

• 1:50:26Dax Shepard?

  Five hundred? It's not even an option? Oh, my God. I'm too old to take this quiz?

• 1:50:31Speaker 01

  No, it's twenties, thirties, forties, fifties.

• 1:50:34Dax Shepard?

  And above.

• 1:50:34Speaker 01

  Sixty plus.

• 1:50:36Dax Shepard?

  Oh, so I'm, okay, there's at least.

• 1:50:37Speaker 01

  It's just weird to say fifties.

• 1:50:39Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's not even as concerning as I thought I was gonna say fifty plus.

• 1:50:42Speaker 01

  Right, no.

• 1:50:42Dax Shepard?

  And then the rest of everyone.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  Okay, mail, submit.

• 1:50:47Dax Shepard?

  They're gonna ask you for two ninety-nine.

• 1:50:48Speaker 01

  Yes!

• 1:50:49Dax Shepard?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:50:51Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:50:53Dax Shepard?

  My. These bastards.

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  What the fuck? I have to pay it?

• 1:50:59Dax Shepard?

  I know, because we filmed a whole segment.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:51:03Dax Shepard?

  What bastards.

• 1:51:05Speaker 01

  I am sensitive.

• 1:51:06Dax Shepard?

  Someone made this test up in their fucking basement?

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  I mean, it is blossom.co.

• 1:51:12Dax Shepard?

  Oh. That's not competence inducing.

• 1:51:20Speaker 01

  But some of their questions were good and repetitive.

• 1:51:24Dax Shepard?

  Some of their questions were great. And then on the second time, they were good. And then sometimes on the third time, they were no good.

• 1:51:31Speaker 01

  You didn't love it.

• 1:51:32Dax Shepard?

  How much do I owe you for this? Was it $2.99?

• 1:51:34Speaker 01

  It was $1.99.

• 1:51:36Dax Shepard?

  Are they gonna give you unlimited tests?

• 1:51:37Speaker 01

  Oh, you can take more quizzes.

• 1:51:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good.

• 1:51:40Speaker 01

  Oh, that's fun. Okay. Well, let's find it. Be my results. Show me.

• 1:51:44Dax Shepard?

  We'll tell you next week.

• 1:51:45Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:51:46Dax Shepard?

  Oh, fuck, another paywall?

• 1:51:48Speaker 01

  No, this just isn't about, this isn't.

• 1:51:51Dax Shepard?

  Have anything to do with.

• 1:51:52Speaker 01

  You're an ENTJ.

• 1:51:55Dax Shepard?

  An ear, nose and throat?

• 1:51:57Speaker 01

  Oh, no. This wasn't even a highly sensitive person test.

• 1:52:03Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:52:04Dax Shepard?

  What kind of test was this?

• 1:52:05Speaker 01

  It was like, you know, those, it's called something and it's, it's a personality type.

• 1:52:11Dax Shepard?

  Right now, like, someone has wanted us to take this test, but we don't know about it.

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  No, it's.

• 1:52:15Dax Shepard?

  It's like an Enneagram test.

• 1:52:17Speaker 01

  It is, but it's like a really common one. You're an EN or INFJ.

• 1:52:22Dax Shepard?

  But it won't tell you the name.

• 1:52:23Speaker 01

  I think it's Myers-Briggs, maybe. Let's see. ENTJ.

• 1:52:28Dax Shepard?

  Doctor Zamboni?

• 1:52:28Speaker 01

  Personality.

• 1:52:29Dax Shepard?

  Stanford Prison.

• 1:52:30Speaker 01

  It's Myers-Briggs. That's like the original ones. That's cool. Now you know.

• 1:52:36Dax Shepard?

  What am I, an ENT?

• 1:52:37Speaker 01

  You're an ENTJ. That's a confident leader.

• 1:52:40Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:52:41Speaker 01

  That tracks. Seventy-six percent extraversion.

• 1:52:46Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I'd agree with that.

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  Method of processing information, eighty-one percent intuition.

• 1:52:54Speaker 01

  ENTJs are intuitive thinkers fascinated by possibilities, patterns and future outcomes. Interesting. Okay. Fifty-five percent thinking.

• 1:53:03Dax Shepard?

  That feels like neutral. That's a push.

• 1:53:06Speaker 01

  Well, because it's either, so it's introversion versus extraversion. That's the I and the E. Intuition versus sensing.

• 1:53:14Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:53:14Speaker 01

  That's your method of processing information, your intuition. Decision-making functioning is thinking or feeling. You're thinking, but at fifty-five percent.

• 1:53:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'm on the fence.

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  And then management function is judging or perceiving, and you're sixty-one percent judging.

• 1:53:33Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:53:35Speaker 01

  What a left turn. We still don't know if you're highly sensitive.

• 1:53:39Dax Shepard?

  We'll have to find that test and we'll do it when we do the.

• 1:53:42Speaker 01

  They they tricked me.

• 1:53:44Dax Shepard?

  Briggs and Stratton test from your book. What was that called?

• 1:53:47Speaker 01

  Myers-Briggs.

• 1:53:48Dax Shepard?

  No, from your book.

• 1:53:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, green hats.

• 1:53:51Dax Shepard?

  Green hats.

• 1:53:52Speaker 01

  What a mess of a fact checker this was.

• 1:53:57Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:53:57Dax Shepard?

  All right. Oh, are there any facts?

• 1:54:00Speaker 01

  That was it.

• 1:54:01Dax Shepard?

  Oh, great. Love you.