The Problem with Desire • Desire is the problem because it pushes people to do things that are not in their best interests. • Desire is a contract that people make with themselves to be unhappy. • After achieving a goal, people may feel restless and unfulfilled. Transcript: Speaker 1 Atically, why watching It’s actually, I joke about it a little bit, but I think it’s a terrible traumatic awful thing. Natural selection doesn’t give a fig about our fitness or about our happiness. So a lot of people are just wondering about all the time miserable because the system is shaped to go with them, to do stuff that is not in their interest, it’s in their genes interests. It makes me a little pessimistic sometimes about the idea we’re all going to be happy if we only do the right thing and think the right way. On the other hand, that way of deeper thinking, I’m so glad you mentioned Bob Wright because I’m very impressed by him and his work. But he’s right, desire is the problem. We all have all these desires and none of us can satisfy all of them, and it’s all built into the design. Speaker 2 Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. That’s from Naval Ravecant. Speaker 1 You know, I don’t buy that desire or something. It pushes us to do stuff that’s good for our genes, and it doesn’t matter what we accomplish as soon as we do, it wants us to do something more. And so there’s no winning that particular one. The hedonic treadmill and all that. Speaker 2 I was talking to a couple of friends who were recently on a very big podcast over here in Austin, and one of them mentioned that he was faithful of gold medalist syndrome, which I wasn’t Familiar with, but I went and learned about afterward, which is, after you’ve completed the crowning achievement of your life’s work, well, what do you do next? What happens after that? (Time 0:05:10)
The Fundamental Belief That Is Holding Psychiatry Back • Most people in the psychiatry realm believe that if we feel bad, something is wrong. • This is not always the case, and in some cases, normal emotions are useful responses in specific situations. Transcript: Speaker 2 It seems like the fundamental belief held by most people, especially people in the more traditional side of the psychiatry realm, is that if we feel bad, something is wrong. The only reason that you can thrive. Speaker 1 Something is wrong, but not with the person necessarily. Well, we had a situation. I spent a year and a half just studying emotions, which is, I realize, I have been treating people with emotional disorders for 10 years, and I didn’t know why emotions existed. So after just studying emotions, by the way, the leading psychiatry textbook, a thousand pages, it had one half of one page about normal emotions. This is hopeless. In the rest of medicine, you see somebody with javry, you see somebody with cough, you see someone with vomiting. You know that those are useful responses, and you know what kinds of situations in which they’re useful. So you go looking for what’s wrong. So after that year and a half, I came to a very simple conclusion, which still hasn’t, it’s catching on, but not as much as I would like. (Time 0:18:22)
The Evolution of Anger • Anger is a useful signal in some situations. • Anxiety is also a useful signal in some situations. • Anger and anxiety can both be helpful in therapy. Transcript: Speaker 1 You can find articles that say the purpose of the function of anger is to signal you’re about to attack somebody, or is it the function of anger is to signal that you’re going to end the Relationship the person doesn’t shape up, or is the signal of anger to say that you’re dominant in a dominance competition, or so you can make up six or eight or ten of these kind of things. And they’re all true, kind of, but they’re all ways in which anger could give a useful advantage in one of those situations. A different way of asking it is, in what situations, though, is what situation is anxiety useful, in what situation is anger useful. In a generalization, I find it really helpful in therapy is to think, as somebody is really angry, the first thing I think of, hey, anger is really useful when you think you’ve been betrayed By somebody. It’s a signal that the person had better apologize and shaped up with a relationship is awful. And that helps me ask different questions. It also helps me help my patients to figure out that anger actually sometimes is a useful signal. It’s not something always to be avoided, that if that is, it’s possible to potentially threaten the relationship. Usually when people yell at each other, it’s because they’re really dissatisfied, but they can’t walk away and it gets into a big mess. Speaker 2 It seems like taking an evolutionary perspective with this allows people that are suffering with emotions, which sadly we all do, to see them with less shame, I suppose? Speaker 1 Exactly. I’m so glad you got to that. It changed my work with my patients and my patients, the view of themselves, Chris. (Time 0:20:12)