00:00:00
these are very valuable lessons that we need in our relationships so lesson one the bestelling author the modern
00:00:07
philosopher of love his goal to help you live a better more meaningful life the average human has 70,000 thoughts a day
00:00:15
the problem is that we don't know how to use them for example we tend to believe we'll find the one but that belief has
00:00:21
led to more rage more disappointment cuz we're not free to love just anyone what's problematic is that we're drawn to love stories that are echoing our childhoods and this is something that
00:00:32
troubles so many people because our past was not necessarily happy we are all confused about love the most romantic sentence that people will say is I met this person and we didn't even need to
00:00:44
speak we just felt on the same page but this leads to a catastrophic outbreak of
00:00:49
sulking they say to you is anything wrong of course there is but you're not going to tell them and the reason is that you're a romantic and you believe
00:00:56
that your partner should have alien capacities to look into your wounded soul to understand what the upset is but
00:01:02
of course they can't because they're just human so what would you say are the core habits of two people who have a
00:01:08
really successful relationship what we need is Let's Talk About Sex Goodness Me does it cause problems 26% of people in relationships are having sex less than
00:01:19
10 times per year so the question is what are we getting wrong one of the leading answers that neither party knows
00:01:26
is there is that ding- Ding that's normally a sign of a problem quick one this is really really fascinating to me on the back end of our YouTube channel it says that
00:01:38
69.9% of you that watch this channel frequently over the lifetime of this channel haven't yet hit the Subscribe
00:01:44
button I just wanted to ask you a favor it helps this channel so much if you choose to just subscribe helps us scale
00:01:50
the guest helps us scale the production and it makes this show bigger so if I could ask you for one favor if you've watched the show before and you've
00:01:56
enjoyed it and you like this episode that you're currently watching could you please hit hit the Subscribe button thank you so much and I will repay that
00:02:03
gesture by making sure that everything we do here gets better and better and better and better that is a promise I'm willing to make you do we have a
00:02:09
[Music] deal Alan you write about so much you produce content about so many different subject matters but what is the overarching mission that you are on I trying to look
00:02:31
almost systematically at a variety of causes of unhappiness created by the world we live in um you know obviously the world we live in has solved many many problems but it's also generated in
00:02:43
a host of areas particularly um difficult challenges that have not really struck Humanity before and I like
00:02:51
to think both personally and on behalf of others um about what those problems are and how we might steer through them
00:02:58
the average human has 70,000 thoughts a day right not huge elaborate ones but just stray little fragmentary
00:03:05
thoughts 70,000 of them pass through Consciousness every day and the problem is that we don't know how to process them or use them this is part of the reason why we end up with such you know
00:03:17
busy and troubling Minds we haven't stepped back in order to ask ourselves at the end of the day some of those questions that can calm us down like you know who am I angry with what am I
00:03:29
excited by what's really happened today you know we let experiences Rush past us and then of
00:03:36
course experiences that haven't been digested properly have a nasty habit of coming to sting Us in the tail um and I
00:03:43
think you can look at a lot of mental troubles is essentially the outgrowth of unprocessed emotion um you know depression is often sadness that hasn't
00:03:57
understood itself anxiety or irritability is worry that doesn't know its own cause and so often what we need particularly in the modern world is
00:04:10
occasions on which we can get to know our own minds it's it's a it's a strange thing surely we know our own minds surely we know no no the way that we're built is obviously not prioritizing a
00:04:24
full awareness of ourselves we're outward facing creatures we're action focused creatures which is all the good
00:04:29
and has many advantages but because of the way we live now more sedentary lives lives that call upon us not merely to be active but also to be fulfilled um those lives require periods
00:04:43
of introspection that are routines often don't allow for so I'm always trying both of myself and Advising others you know take that time in the evening and just sit down in a semi darkened room
00:04:58
and just ask yourself what's coming up for me what's really happened inside me because it can take a little while to realize what you're really upset by what you're really excited by Etc we're not
00:05:10
obvious to ourselves and as I say so many of things that we call mental disorders or mental illnesses are really stored emotion that hasn't found a way
00:05:24
out emotions that haven't been acknowledged have a nasty habit of um stirring our conscience demanding to be heard they might want to tell our spines
00:05:37
they might want to tell our stomachs you know and again a useful exercise so as not to be struck by so many of these
00:05:43
psychosomatic disorders is to ask the body what it's trying to tell you so that it doesn't need to tell you in the
00:05:48
more dramatic forms that end up as illnesses so again if you you know if you lie down you simply say to yourself
00:05:54
if my back could speak what does it want to tell me if my shoulders could have their say what are they trying to say if
00:06:03
my stomach could have a voice what might it be trying to utter can you apply that same rationale to things like anxiety
00:06:09
absolutely you know if you think of take something like insomnia right you wake up at 3 in the morning the way I like to
00:06:17
think of it is insomnia is if you like a kind of Revenge for all those thoughts that you were so careful not to have in the day you very carefully schemed not
00:06:28
to have those thoughts in the day because of our emotional conscience they want to be heard and if you're not
00:06:33
hearing them at 3:00 p.m. you're going to be hearing them at 3:00 a.m. and so you know one of the best ways to sleep
00:06:39
is to make sure you're having a little bit more of an in-depth conversation with yourself before you enter sleep
00:06:47
because that will allow you that kind of deeper rest so as I say we have this emotional conscience that requires that the key things about us have a chance to
00:07:00
be heard and look let's not forget I mean this is the whole theory of trauma you know what psychotherapists have very
00:07:06
usefully over the last 2030 years informed us about is that um events in our past especially in our early childhood that we have not had a chance to properly understand and how much can
00:07:18
a 3 four five six year old understand events that we can't understand um it doesn't mean that they haven't registered they've registered all the more deeply and they haven't had a chance to be processed you know I I was
00:07:30
thinking friend of mine recently lost a parent he's in his 50s well educated got
00:07:35
resources got friends spouse Etc he was telling me he was laid Low by depression
00:07:41
just couldn't get out of bed completely stunned by his loss and I was thinking in a way he's lucky because he's got all those resources of adulthood imagine a
00:07:52
5-year-old child who suffers a bereavement they've got no friends that they can have those sort of dialogues with they've got no books that they can
00:07:59
re read about this they've got no capacity to process they've got no understanding of time Etc um emotions
00:08:05
that can't be had lodged themselves in us and gum up our systems and um I think so much of the work that we need to do on ourselves is to process pain that has not been properly understood not because
00:08:20
anyone's evil but because we've lacked the resources to do so you got me thinking about this
00:08:26
concept of Happiness as you're speaking and whether it's a natural thing for our species to be
00:08:31
aiming at or whether it's a new more modern thing that we've decided to focus upon and are we causing oursel immense distress in this pursuit of this thing that maybe our ancestors didn't didn't
00:08:43
ever think about this whole you know we think about self-actualization and they were probably thinking about survival and reproduction more look these all
00:08:51
belong to the sort of paradoxes of modern times modern times have obviously brought us enormous advantages but
00:08:56
they've also brought us particular complexities that I think we'd be wise to to realize and one of them is The
00:09:01
Disappearance of religion I mean we are still among the first Generations in many parts of the world to be um trying
00:09:09
to live good lives without the support of religion think of how religion's structure time and Human Experience in
00:09:16
time as a religious person you immediately feel the present moment is not as important as 100 200 2,000 million year history that has come
00:09:28
before and that will continue after the present moment is a speck in time and and there's a whole Narrative of which
00:09:35
you're part of that immediately diminishes you in scale now nowadays all of us want to be rather large we want to be big big people we want to make a big impression but um arguably this is a
00:09:47
fast route to mental illness because the graceful acceptance of your miniscule position in the cosmos is the gateway to calm and harmony
00:09:59
and when people say you know I went into this hotel you know the person made me feel small that's the bad way of being
00:10:06
made to feel small but there's a good way of being made to feel small pick up an ancient text read words that were
00:10:11
written by someone in a foreign tongue 3,000 years ago that'll make you feel small go into the desert notice the the
00:10:18
age of the Rocks inscribed in you know time inscribed in sand that'll put you in your place um spend time with an
00:10:25
animal that has no concern for your state your sense of importance your foiled Narrative of your own success all these things that drive modern humans mad these are not present in an older kind
00:10:40
of religious sphere and as I say what religions do is they tell us you're part of a bigger story they also tell us many faiths tell us that life and you
00:10:50
particular are imperfect um you know think of Catholicism and its notion of original sin now lots of lots of bad
00:10:58
stuff associated with with original sin I'm not you know a huge fan of many aspects but let's look at the good side right what it what Catholicism tells is
00:11:04
that everybody's broken everybody is flawed it's quite a helpful starting point right because um if you think well all right I'm bit broken but so's
00:11:15
somebody else so's somebody else so we're all doing our best that's the gateway to vulnerability to Friendship
00:11:21
if you like lower expectations lower expectations but also to to connection with others you know so often people who
00:11:28
become successful F find it really hard to make friends why because they associate success with invulnerability
00:11:35
and the more successful they get the harder it is for them to admit to the real truth about being human which is
00:11:40
that we're all helpless children some of the time at least frightened helpless children and it becomes harder to make
00:11:47
to keep up the contact with that let alone admit that to somebody else so again religions handily reduce our expectations and our sense of ourselves we are merely flawed humans there is a
00:11:59
perfect world it doesn't exist in Beverly Hills it doesn't exist in you know the fancy parts of Singapore or or
00:12:06
Sydney it exists up there in a in another world in other words um the human realm is inherently imperfect
00:12:14
quite a good starting point I mean even if you went on a date right imagine two characters you might go on a date with
00:12:19
right first one tells you yeah I'm kind of perfect and I'm achieve I'm aiming to achieve total Perfection think wow good
00:12:26
for them but slightly scary next to somebody else who goes I'm kind of flawed but I'm sort of managing my flaws
00:12:33
and I'm interested in how to get to know my flaws and work with them instantly one thinks H life might be easier around
00:12:39
such a person there's there's something about the pursuit of perfection which makes day-to-day life extremely hard and religions slightly by The Bu tick that
00:12:51
box they were able to reduce us in our own eyes while raising us in the eyes of you know a Divine being um and and that
00:13:00
has helped us to have an that helped us to have an easier relationship with with ourselves and and the notion also was
00:13:06
you cannot perfect this life you know life becomes perfect in another realm we'll build Jerusalem somewhere else not
00:13:12
on this Earth in the next world again it takes the pressure off us we moderns we modern people we think the present
00:13:20
moment is supremely important now is important everything that's going on right now is supremely important doesn't
00:13:25
matter remember 100 years ago a thousand years ago now is the only criteria of time you are perfect right so if there's
00:13:31
something wrong with you you're failing against an ideal of perfection again very very hard um and that you are made
00:13:40
I mean the biggest the biggest challenge of all you're made to be happy as you suggested that the true goal of every
00:13:46
human is happiness not fulfillment not you know the realization of a grand scheme not living for others your own
00:13:53
happiness and again it's a beautiful idea but Goodness Me does it cause problems goodness me you know think of Emil durkheim beginning of the 20th century
00:14:06
French sociologist writes this book um so contrasting the differences between ancient societies and modern societies and he identifies one troubling
00:14:18
difference between ancient societies premodern agricultural village-based societies where religion plays a role and Modern urban technologically driven
00:14:29
success oriented individualistic societies and that's the suicide rate he realizes in his book on suicide published in 1900 that modern societies
00:14:40
for all their advantages leads their members of a share of their members often the most ambitious of their members to take their own lives why
00:14:50
what's going on and this becomes well it's the birth of modern sociology really it's it becomes a major inquiry
00:14:57
into what modern times does to the soul and I'm deeply fascinated by that I can't let that one go because what's
00:15:05
this Paradox what's this Paradox of suffering amidst plenty of regress amidst progress this fascinates me I spoke to the CEO of calm campaign
00:15:18
against living miserably Simon gunning and he shared some stats with me about exactly what you're talking about about
00:15:23
suicide he said someone dies by suicide in the UK every 90 minutes 76% a male there's 25 attempts for every death um the single biggest cause of death for men under 45 is suicide single biggest
00:15:35
cause of death for 15 to 49 year olds is suicide that 19 to 35y Old category are
00:15:41
twice as likely to report being in crisis than any other group and 16 to 24s is the fastest growing group in
00:15:47
history to exhibit suicidality and more recently there's a big conversation emerging now around young women and
00:15:55
suicidality which is um a fairly recent unfortunately exploding Trend this trend
00:16:01
of young women now experiencing suicidality and look people don't just commit suicide when things are bad people commit suicide when things are bad and they think it's a delicate point
00:16:16
they think it's their fault they cannot disassociate the trouble they feel from an intense sense of responsibility which then also entails shame now what's going on there you see when I say that we live
00:16:29
in a individualistic world what that really means is we live in a world where people feel that they control their own
00:16:36
narratives that that what happens to them is very tightly a reflection of who they are and what they've done and this was not always the case you see for long
00:16:48
periods of History um people were not necessarily tightly held to the observable outcomes of their lives this happened with money for example um in
00:17:00
Old English a poor person was known as an unfortunate right um what is an un let's unpack that word unfortunate there's the
00:17:11
word Fortuna in there what was Fortuna for the Romans Fortuna was the goddess of luck the goddess of Fortune and the
00:17:18
Romans were there all the time sacrificing things to the goddess of Fortune as a way of saying you know please you know it's not me it's you
00:17:26
know this Outside Agency nowadays this sounds completely weird I mean what do we
00:17:32
call in the most individualistic country in the world United States what are poor
00:17:37
people called it's not a nice term they're called losers right you say that's a loser so we've gone from
00:17:42
unfortunate to Loser that's a trajectory of 400 years what's happened in that time is a story about who's responsible
00:17:51
for people's fate and nowadays you know if I said to you Stephen things have not been going so well for me I've just been
00:17:57
sacked uh you know my my book haven't sold you know but it's not me I just had a bit of bad luck you very nice person but a modern person side of you'd be
00:18:08
thinking H you must have done something wrong right you'd be think you must done something wrong because that's how we
00:18:13
think we don't allow people the benefit of luck right similarly if you said to me oh you know my podcast be doing brilliantly we've now got 8,000 million million billion subscrib how many you
00:18:26
got nowadays um um and and you said and you said to me oh I just just a bit of good luck right I think oh Steph's
00:18:33
really you know he's very modest but you know it's not true he's done something we believe that people do things and
00:18:40
that that action leads to results or failures and that's why people take their own lives because in extremists
00:18:46
people think there is nothing other than me to explain what happens to me of course the reality is much more
00:18:51
complicated I'm not saying that's the truth but that is the perceived truth you know look we live in a world that is
00:19:00
meritocratic right that word meritocracy is on everybody's lips if you put take politicians left and right in the United States all over the world
00:19:11
everybody wants to create a world that is meritocratic some people think we've already got there what does that word mean I don't know meritocratic is the
00:19:19
concept of meritocracy is a a world in which um people's outcomes are dependent on their Merit rather than on who their parents
00:19:31
were um some corrupt class in society the influence of whatever so you know a left-wing politician and a right-wing politician say we want to make a meritocratic world where your kids will
00:19:44
go to where they deserve where if you work hard you can get there and um you know where everyone has a chance to succeed you know you know that kind of rhetoric it's it's the rhetoric of
00:19:57
modern times now it sounds great and in many ways it's an enormous advance but again let's just focus on the psychological toll of that because if you really believe in a
00:20:10
world in which those who get to the top deserve to get to the top by implication
00:20:16
you are also positing the existence of a world in which those who are at the bottom deserve to be at the bottom in
00:20:23
other words a meritocratic worldview turns success and failure from chance to a necessary fate and that's why it makes the winners quite hard potentially quite
00:20:39
heartless because they're thinking well I got there on my own you know don't need to thank anybody might not need to
00:20:44
pay many taxes why why pay taxes you know it's fine and similarly those at the bottom are kind of crushed so we
00:20:54
we've created this very complicated ideology where um there's a hidden toll what is love let's if we're talking about let's talk
00:21:04
about romantic love what is that well can I just first start by saying we're bit confused about it and and so I can't give you an immediate answer but I want to register that not
00:21:17
just me but the whole of the current world is confused about love and I think we've been confused for about 200 years and and let's let's go easy on ourselves here because
00:21:28
the way in which we approach Love Now is a neverbe um approached philosophy you know for about the last 250 years we've been loving under the eges of a philosophy we could call
00:21:42
Romanticism and Romanticism is is a vision of love with very particular assumptions let me run through a few of them um there's one soulmate for everybody you're going to find this
00:21:55
soulmate um you're going to find them through slightly mysterious ways possibly through almost something almost
00:22:01
quasi Divine like you'll feel pulled you'll meet them at the supermarket checkout line the nightclub and without
00:22:07
even knowing too much about them you will sense that they're your destiny so you'll feel impelled towards somebody
00:22:14
that you don't necessarily know too much of a a force will pull you and you will feel this is the one and there will be
00:22:20
an angel literally a sort of descended being from from another Another World um The Romantics were very very keen on on
00:22:28
the notion that you didn't have to know someone too well to understand them even
00:22:34
speaking not very much the connection would be even deeper um The Romantics also thought that love and sex
00:22:40
absolutely belong together and that that you couldn't have a millimeter of disjunction between the two love and sex
00:22:46
had sometimes drifted apart in the old world and that had been sometimes a problem but it became a tragedy so
00:22:53
adultery moved from a difficulty to a tragedy that's where all modern novels and films are all about the tragedy of
00:22:59
of adultery so look these are some of the difficulties that the modern world has created we we tend to believe
00:23:06
nowadays that love is an emotion that we should feel never a skill that we should
00:23:14
learn you know for example if I said to you we should probably study love we should probably go to a school of love
00:23:20
you go that's not very romantic now every time every time that someone says that's not very romantic ding-ding that's normally a sign of a problem like most things that don't sound very
00:23:32
romantic are a good idea and most things that are romantic like marrying in Vegas after you've met someone for 5 minutes
00:23:38
is not so great now what are we getting wrong one of the things we're getting wrong is this whole
00:23:45
business of instinct right so we tend to believe that love will pull us instinctively towards marvelous people that will be correct for us you know the
00:24:00
old world people were set up in relationships you'll marry this person because of this reason you know that
00:24:06
person goes well with with my family blah blah in other words nothing to do with you you you're put together with somebody nowadays we're nominally free
00:24:12
to choose anyone hooray fantastic aren't we going to make great choices uh no why don't we make great choices because
00:24:19
we're not free why are we not free we need to go to psychotherapist to tell us why we're not free we're not free to
00:24:26
love just anyone we love in tracks laid down for us by our childhoods adult love sits on top of
00:24:38
tracks and a script laid down for us in childhood you might go what's the problem with that so what well what's
00:24:44
problematic is that many of us had childhoods in which affection was mixed in with more problematic dynamics that
00:24:50
maybe in order to derive love in childhood we also had to encounter somebody who was in a rage someone who
00:24:57
was violent someone who was depressed someone who put us down someone who preferred another sibling whatever it was and we go into adulthood and we find
00:25:05
that we're drawn to love stories that feel familiar because they're echoing some of childhood Dynamics but they don't necessarily for that matter lead to happiness and you know sometimes we
00:25:18
have situations where you set up a friend let's say you got a really good friend and you know
00:25:23
another friend you think those people would really go well together you set them up on a date and then you call them up afterwards you say how did it go you
00:25:30
know it must have gone really well they say I'm not sure maybe something was lacking a little spark what they're
00:25:37
really trying to get at is they're not going to put it this way your friend this date did not show me signs that
00:25:45
they would make me suffer in the way that I need to suffer in order to feel I'm in love in other words this relationship threatened to be happy that's why I had to go away so we are
00:25:56
paradoxical creatures because our past was not necessarily happy we're not necessarily that happy that our future romantic lives should be happy either
00:26:07
and this is something that you know they they weren't thinking about that When Love Was reinvented 250 years ago when
00:26:13
people say they have daddy issues and things like this are you saying then that there's often truth in that because
00:26:21
they had a early experience with a father figure a male figure in their life that might have left them or might
00:26:26
have you know created a anxious attachment style or something so they then end up pursuing dysfunctional men
00:26:33
and relationships because that's the suffering that they associate with love sure I mean we repeat what we don't understand and so long as we're unaware
00:26:44
of the stories that we've grown up with we will enact them in our adult lives so
00:26:50
we're not compelled to do this forever but and and look I think a lot of us have a desire to give the story of our childhood a different ending Our Father might have been a distant and you know
00:27:02
mean-spirited creature but also had some good qualities the dream is to find somebody a bit like that but to make sure that the story has a good resolution so it's not merely a desire
00:27:13
to repeat it's a desire to repeat and give a better ending but frequently you know we don't get there and I think
00:27:21
that look the thing about psychology is we see all around us people people doing
00:27:28
so-called crazy things you know falling in love with people not going to make them happy sabotaging their
00:27:35
careers not able to open up to people and we think we can step back and go why are they doing that stuff what's going on now one way to look at it and it's a kind of compassionate way to look at it
00:27:47
a lot of the stuff that looks crazy now once made a lot of sense it was once probably a really clever thing to do if you were were growing up let's say in an environment in which let's say a parent
00:28:01
was suicidal right a parent was suicidal and you shut down your emotions totally and decided you would never trust anyone fantastic that's a fantastically clever thing to do when
00:28:13
you're 5 years old and you've got a suicidal parent right because that will get you through to the next stage of
00:28:19
life if you open your heart at five and there's a parent who's suicidal it'll tear you apart so good for you you're
00:28:25
you're doing something brilliantly clever right or imagine somebody who um is a becomes a clown as a child because there's a very sad atmosphere and
00:28:38
there's a depression and all they can have time for is jokes they're just a manic Joker right brilliant what what a
00:28:44
fantastic thing for a kid to work out that they need to be quite a kind of manic Joker but what happens 10 years
00:28:51
later 20 years later 30 years later is that what used to be a fantastic defense against an intolerable situation has turned out to more or less ruin people's chances because the person you know with
00:29:04
that difficult father will end up never being able to open their heart to anyone even a very safe person they won't even
00:29:10
know their heart's closed but they will be acting out the same defensive strategy or the person who you know it
00:29:17
was a great idea to be a bit of a joker early on but now they have no time for anything serious and their friends feel
00:29:22
that they're a slightly plastic person can never connect with them that's a real toll in in in the in the adult
00:29:29
world so you know very often what we need to do is to say thank you to our younger selves for having devised strategies that really were clever but
00:29:40
at the same time say thank you it's enough I want I want to live in a different way that was a fantastic
00:29:46
strategy then it may no longer be the right way for me to live now I was thinking as you were speaking about that that there's kind of two groups of people I was bouncing through different PE people that I know to see how it fit
00:29:58
with them and I identified in my mind that there's basically two PE groups of people there the ones that are aware of
00:30:04
their cycle you know and whether they've acted to change it or they're just reliving it who knows and the ones that
00:30:11
are totally unaware that they're in this cycle and they just think oh God the my luck you know they say phrases like that
00:30:17
just my luck how does one increase their awareness of their own cycle do you think there's a way yes um so much that
00:30:26
can be done let's imagine the very simplest exercise psychologists have these things called sentence completion tests where you start with a stub of a question and then you end it with an
00:30:37
ellipses a dot dot dot and you say to somebody don't think too much just finish the sentence and typical ones are
00:30:44
men are dot dot dot women are dot dot dot I am dot dot dot life dot dot dot now if you give somebody that sheet of paper and say to them don't think too much as just write it down all right
00:30:59
amazing things Bubble Up men are you know authoritarian villains wow where did that come from right you're carrying out you know women are you know whatever it is life you know I am you know a
00:31:12
nobody who deserves to be stamped did you know a minute ago that you have that in you not necessarily in other words
00:31:20
sometimes you need these little levers to shine a light now the thing that really Happ helps and I'm not you know for your viewers um many therapists many
00:31:32
psychotherapists are not what they should be uh but some are great if you find yourself with a good psychotherapist they can also increase
00:31:40
your level of self-awareness I think that's what we're talking about increasing level of self-awareness and and the reason is very simple you know
00:31:48
there's stuff that we all do let's imagine I don't know when you're around a man you think that person's judging me
00:31:54
therefore I'm going to withdraw and not enter into competition with them I'm around a woman I think I'm going to have
00:32:00
to you know I'm going to be treated badly therefore I you know whatever it is something from your past is projected
00:32:06
onto it you end up in a therapy room with a man or a woman and lo and behold what do you do you bring out that thing
00:32:13
and you bring out that thing that you're doing normally except this time you're not doing it in the office you're not doing it in a relationship you're not
00:32:20
doing it in a context where people are busy and have' got their own stuff going on and doing their own games you're doing it with somebody a trained
00:32:26
professional in a quiet room and they can see it's like a pety dish they can see the stuff that you're doing and so suddenly you'll be saying to your therapist I know you hate me and the
00:32:38
therapist will be going I I really don't think so but I'm interested that you have that conviction that you do um or someone will be going
00:32:48
to the therapist I need to look after you I think you're quite tired and I really you know you've been doing such
00:32:54
great work I feel I want to look after you maybe you'd been doing that all your life and the therapist will be going you
00:33:00
don't need to look after me but was there someone in your past that you needed to look after and that made you
00:33:06
feel guilty and that has meant that every time you're with somebody you feel that their needs are more important than your needs and there's a chance therefore to see more clearly than ever
00:33:18
before outside of the kind of hubub of relationships or office life the kind of stories that you're projecting onto reality to your huge cost so I'm now aware of my cycle that
00:33:30
originates from my childhood the next step is doing something about it how do I overpower that sort of hardwired urge
00:33:39
to repeat the cycle that comes from my childhood well look Stephen let's not minimize that's already an enormous
00:33:47
achievement you know what I mean I mean that's that's if you know if you're there that you have a handle on look we
00:33:54
don't need people to be perfect right we don't need people to be perfect at best we need people to know how
00:34:01
they're imperfect and that they can have a chance to warn us of their imperfections in good time before
00:34:08
they've done too much damage there's an enormous difference I mean look again take the take the dating idea let's
00:34:13
imagine you know I often say don't do this to me because we're not um we're not under a date but um but
00:34:22
a great question to ask somebody on a date is how are you mad how are you mad right if the person says I'm not mad I'm completely sane run away because you know everybody has folly inside them and
00:34:35
we're approaching a measure of everyday tolerable sanity when we've put some Flags in the areas of our Madness so total sanity is not a possibility for
00:34:46
any human being um but the awareness of where the insanity lies and a little bit
00:34:51
of warning and prompt apology you know after um an incident ENT goes a huge long way you know people often say I'm looking for a partner with a good sense of humor no one needs jokes it's not
00:35:05
it's not about jokes it's really about modesty about oneself right somebody who's able to go I think I mean look
00:35:12
take the other thing if you meet somebody who thinks they're easy to live with run away no one's easy to live with
00:35:18
and someone who thinks they're easy to live with is really trouble so somebody who can put out the hand go you know what yeah I'm bit of I'm pretty tricky
00:35:24
to to to live with great that person is safer not necessarily totally safe but they're safer because they've started on
00:35:31
the road to self-awareness and so ultimately the best we can do in this world is self-awareness prompt apologies when we slip up um yeah and a genuine intention
00:35:45
to uh make progress I guess is that is that important as well so like me being aware that I have certain habits in my relationship is one thing but then I think my partner would like to know that
00:35:59
some of the destructive Cycles I might have I'm working on them I'm I'm I'm at least trying to make Forward Motion yeah
00:36:08
totally I mean I think one of the most destructive ideas in the modern world is the idea that true love means accepting
00:36:14
somebody for who they are in all of their you know all of their good and bad sides it's a it's a lovely dream and you know sometimes when you hear of breakups they'll go you know my ex you know they
00:36:26
just didn't accept me for who I was and everyone will go oh yes God what a terrible person you know how you know
00:36:31
politely one wants to go hang on a minute do any of us really deserve to be loved for the whole of who we are is
00:36:38
that really a fair expectation or isn't as you suggest isn't it fairer to suppose that all of us are Works in progress and that you know there is
00:36:49
nothing contrary to the spirit of love in a desire to improve the ancient Greeks had this right you know for the ancient Greeks Plato saw love as a classroom beautiful idea love is a
00:37:00
classroom in which two people in a spirit of generosity and kindness I mean we're not talking about shouting here
00:37:06
we're talking about generosity and kindness two people Endeavor to help each other to become the best version of
00:37:13
themselves of each other right the that love is is geared towards progress and working on yourself that sounds very odd nowadays you know if you if you went around saying I've read some Plato and
00:37:23
uh he's kind of guiding me towards the idea that love is a classroom so therefore I'm going to give you a 40-minute lecture on some of your flaws
00:37:30
and then I'd like you to give me a 40-minute lecture on some of my flaws this would be considered ding ding ding
00:37:35
unromantic right that's not very romantic is it doesn't mean it's a bad idea as I say love is a skill to be
00:37:42
learned not just an emotion to be felt and some of that means that we might need to go back to school I've been thinking more recently that most
00:37:54
relationships the success of most relationship comes down to this idea of like how good you are at conflict resolution because I've had a previous
00:38:00
relationship where um we we both can take the the blame per se we were just not good at conflict resolution and then
00:38:07
I've had a more recent relationship where we're very we seem to be much better not perfect but much better at
00:38:13
conflict resolution and it makes all the difference and but I think St you know it's not if you were bad at conflict resolution it's not just your fault it's it's partly the way our society Works
00:38:24
come back to the idea of Romanticism right Romanticism gives us this extraordinary idea that love is
00:38:31
something that should be felt and communicated without words right so the most romantic people thing the most
00:38:37
romantic sentence that often people will say is I met this person and we didn't even need to speak we just felt on the
00:38:44
same page everyone goes oh how romantic ding ding danger um because it's you know well this leads to a catastrophic outbreak of sulking right what is sulk
00:38:56
suling right a what is a sulk a sulk is a fascinating pattern of behavior where you get very angry with someone because they have not understood you without
00:39:07
even though you haven't said anything they've not understood you and you get offended because you think because you're a romantic person you think they
00:39:14
can't possibly love me because true love means understanding somebody you know intuitively um wordlessly and therefore
00:39:21
I'm not going to speak and so you know you're coming back from a party with your with your partner and uh they say
00:39:26
to you is anything wrong darling and you go mm of course there is but you're not going to tell them and then they start
00:39:32
saying come on you can tell me what's wrong and and the sulking person goes no and this can go on and on and on I mean you know we're all we've all been at it some sometimes you know you you go home
00:39:43
uh you go straight upstairs you go to the bathroom you shut the door and then your partner's kind of knocking at the door going please darling just just tell
00:39:49
me what's wrong and you go from behind the door no and and the reason is that you're a romantic and you believe that
00:39:57
your partner should have miraculous almost alien capacities to look through the bathroom door into your nared and wounded soul to understand what the upset is but of course they can't
00:40:09
because they're just human you know takes us a long time to realize that other humans are not mind readers you know one of the first thing we should
00:40:15
always ask is have I told them this I I know I'm upset but did I tell them this and so often the answer is not quite because we're Romantics and so we have to do that really I mean you know we can
00:40:28
accept it's really boring we've got to use words we got to painfully stack up words and go the reason that I'm getting
00:40:36
a little tety is because and you got to explain yourself it's not very romantic but that is normally a sign it's a good idea so honesty I I've struggled at
00:40:47
times to be completely honest in my relationships when I felt like the honesty might hurt them
00:40:53
so can we have true love and total honesty I believe that the the wish to tell someone absolutely everything is is both beautiful and
00:41:07
ultimately utopian in a problematic way because we all of us have within us ambivalences doubts um Unfaithful thoughts Etc and it isn't the work of
00:41:21
love to rub your partner constantly up against the most troubling Disturbed sides of your psyche now we're not talking this is not an advocacy for sort of total mendacity and lies but it is an
00:41:35
advertisement for editing you know we should hope that we don't meet the fullest version of each other all the time you know I know it
00:41:47
sounds romantic but sometimes it's you as parents know is it is it that great as a parent to tell your child absolutely everything about what's going through you or sometimes you know is
00:41:58
there a role for saying I'm just going to edit myself not in the name of subu or deceit but in the Name of Love That love could be compatible with an editing
00:42:10
of certain aspects of your reality one of the areas where a lot of editing happens is in the
00:42:16
bedroom in relationships in sex in sexless relationships um I was looking through
00:42:23
some statistics earlier on because I know that you've talked quite um extensively on relationships and sex and
00:42:29
sexless relationships I found this stat that says a 2022 study by relate to UK based uh counseling Network found that 26% of people in relationships were
00:42:39
having sex less than 10 times per year and 8% we're having no sex at all this is a stark rise from 2018 um where the numbers were quite
00:42:51
significantly lower than that it seems like as a society we're getting increasing ly
00:42:57
sexless yeah so the question is where's the problem is the problem in the body or is the problem in the mind now you know being the kind of guy I am I'm going to shift us to the mind I'm sure
00:43:08
sometimes there are bodily issues and you know they deserve attention too but if I can talk about the mind um why is
00:43:14
it that sex is easier at the beginning than in a long-term relationship one of the leading answers
00:43:22
is anger it's not very easy to have sex or want sex with someone that you're angry
00:43:28
with and in many relationships there's a lot of stored anger that neither party knows is there and that anger has come from micro incidents of disappointment
00:43:40
someone didn't quite call when they said they would someone didn't laugh when they might have done someone didn't show
00:43:46
generosity when it might have been required um and these things get stored up and the result of too much of this is
00:43:54
that you don't want someone going anywhere near you cont because you're because you're Furious you're essentially Furious but in the way of
00:44:00
these things you don't know you are you don't know you're Furious again you know the mind is not obvious to itself so you
00:44:07
know if you want to have more sex don't just invest in candles and fancy linen um a quite useful thing to do is to go and have dinner with your partner and say to them we're both going to ask each other
00:44:20
how we've annoyed each other because we have annoyed each other not because we're evil people but because we're human and we're in a relation ship and
00:44:26
no relationship survives more than an hour without a buildup of frustration and the more we can let out that
00:44:32
frustration at the dinner table the more it won't you know create a blockage in the bedroom and so the chance to
00:44:39
discharge frustration and you know often the reason why we don't tell our partners what our frustrations are is
00:44:46
that they sound ridiculous it's like well hang on you're upset with me because I use the word really in what
00:44:53
you thought placed too much emphasis on the why when I was speaking to your mother are you crazy right you could you
00:45:00
are laying yourself open to your partner pointing to you going are you crazy but I think that we're all in love very
00:45:08
small children at least a small part of us is and um as we know small children get upset about really weird tiny things
00:45:15
you know you'll move a button and they start wailing and you go what's happened and they go you moved a button and you go I did uh why does that matter but for
00:45:22
them it matters or you know pencil has slightly changed Direction so we should learn we should remember what it felt
00:45:27
like to be a child and we should acknowledge that there remains even in an adult who's very competent in all sorts of areas a small child who is
00:45:36
liable to be getting very upset about small things triggered triggered but because they're an adult this is the problem we we think well an adult can't possibly be having such childish
00:45:47
reactions again we need to just um cast aside our fears of Shame and say you know what yes an adult can can get very upset about tiny things an adult probably is upset about tiny things and
00:46:00
we're doing ourselves an honor when we can dare to reveal this to our partner and they can do likewise so if I'm if if
00:46:08
I'm someone listening to this now and I'm in a relationship where I don't think because it's interesting even when
00:46:14
I say I don't think I'm having enough sex the idea of how much sex is enough sex has probably come from movies which
00:46:20
is a bit of a trap as well right um but if I'm in a relationship and we are in a sexless relationship by what a
00:46:26
definition Solution One you presented there is try and resolve the anger the underlying contempt um are there
00:46:34
anything else that you think is effective ways of solving for that look I think we I think one useful thing to
00:46:40
do is to go why does sex matter what is this thing called sex why why does it matter and when people get very upset I
00:46:48
think the answer tends to be that sex is a symbol of something very poignant and very delicate which is my partner loves
00:46:56
me and they can't the reason why it becomes such an acute issue is that they cannot hold on to the idea that the
00:47:02
partner might love them and might not want sex this is psychologically impossible now it is important to say it
00:47:09
is possible it is possible that your partner both loves you and doesn't want to have sex there could be other reasons they're feeling unwell so and and then
00:47:17
we can ask ourselves what does sex really aim at sex aims at intimacy you know even we'll say they you know in in
00:47:24
in in people polite language I say they became intimate which means they had sex so what what we know about sex is that
00:47:31
the really exciting thing about sex is not the sex bit it's the intimate bit um it's the idea that someone is without
00:47:39
their guard you know most of the time we approach other people with our guards on
00:47:44
and um in this very rare and unusual thing we do we meet another human being in a vulnerable state and this is such a
00:47:51
relief from the normal limitations of life and there are other ways of doing this you know sex is not the only way of doing it so by understanding better what
00:48:02
sex is we can also have a chance to get some of what we get in sex in things that are not sex if that makes sense I had Tracy Cox on the podcast and she said something to me which really stuck
00:48:14
with me because I hadn't noticed it until she said it which is this idea I believe she called otherness which is when your partner almost becomes like a
00:48:25
family member or you start seeing them as like a a sibling because they are in their
00:48:30
sweatpants around you and she made the claim which I think I've read in your books as well that in many respects
00:48:36
that's the very opposite of the the spice that makes sex so appealing in those early days when it's new and novel and risky you know and so she kind of
00:48:48
alluded to the fact that love and sex were actually sit on two different ends of a pole right and again come back to
00:48:53
my theme um what do the romantic say a romantic Romanticism tells us sex and love belong entirely together but I think what you're saying and you know what many of your viewers will know is
00:49:05
that the relationship is is trickier and again let's not torture ourselves about
00:49:11
this let's let's get curious and then let's communicate about this um and I think that look a growing child has a paradox to deal with and this is what
00:49:25
Freud famously doesn't matter what you think of Freud it's very useful observation really that um the child
00:49:34
experiences love in the first instance at the beginning of Life we all experience love um at the hands of
00:49:41
people who everything's gone right we will have no sexual connection with right so given the debt that adult love owes to Childhood um that sets us up
00:49:52
with a problem when we as adults start to fall in love with people and start to build up relationships which is that the
00:49:59
more we get cozy with someone the more we feel like we did a little bit with our parents when things were really cozy
00:50:07
which is oddly why um people like going to hotels why do people like going to hotels to revive a relationship it's cu
00:50:14
the furniture doesn't remember you the curtains don't remember you you are you're allowed to be for a chosen moment somebody without the history and it's the history that is making intimacy hard
00:50:28
because that history while it's knitting you together and making you emotionally close is also
00:50:35
rendering sexual Freedom problematic and I think it's just we need to go very easy on ourselves for the fact that this happens and um what do we do about it though um do I need to book a lot of
00:50:48
hotel rooms do I need to spend a lot of time away from my partner I noticed even that you're laughing you're smiling as
00:50:53
you say that and I think that's partly the CL you know when we come up against the hardest conundrums in in life um
00:51:00
having the tolerance of a sense of humor a shared sense of humor you know if a couple can turn the sexual challenges
00:51:08
from a tragedy into something you know closer to um a comedy it's an enormous achievement think of you know think of teasing right there are sides of couples
00:51:19
that they find really really hard isn't it wonderful when a couple learns with affection to tease one another they go
00:51:25
ah Stephen yeah there's that thing that you do it gives you a little nickname calls you whatever it is you know a little affectionate nickname that's a
00:51:33
wonderful moment because it means that irritation has been sublimated into tender compassionate understanding for why someone is as difficult as they are so the best thing we can do with our
00:51:44
irritations with our partners is to be able to tease our way out of them um and we may need to do this in Troublesome areas like uh like sex it's an enormous achievement if your partner can call you
00:51:55
you know can go from thinking that you are an idiot to smiling at you and thinking you're a lovable idiot right
00:52:02
we're all in the end of the day a lovable idiot we don't need to believe in God but if God was watching us from
00:52:08
up there on the space station um we are all you know 8 billion lovable idiots and once we can have that sort of compassionate relationship to ourselves that's the beginning of a big pit of the
00:52:20
big bit of the solution I often think you know I've been in my relationship now for a couple of years I have think
00:52:25
how do I stop my partner getting bored of me will there become a day sometimes it does cross my mind like is she just going to get like bored of me and also
00:52:32
you know vice versa you think of being with someone for like 40 50 60 years I'm sure some people listening have been
00:52:39
with their partners for multi- decades is there a risk of us getting bored of our partner and then seeking the sort of
00:52:46
you know the novelty in Affairs and how do we prevent that okay well look here's one suggestion um the thing that becomes
00:52:55
very very boring in all relationships is when people cease to listen to each other now you know when you when you say
00:53:00
the word listen you got to think oh yeah yeah I know what that means hang on let's complicate this issue a little bit usefully um to you know most of us have
00:53:08
never been listened to properly it's not something that normally we know how to do we know how to speak you know there are there are there are lessons in how
00:53:15
to become a good public speaker not very many lessons in how to become a good listener right that telling us something
00:53:20
um so what is it to listen imagine a situation where someone says something to you and rather than you jumping in going oh that reminds me of you know something happened with my auntie or that reminds me of or you know starting
00:53:31
to give advice and going the thing that you need to remember is 1 2 3 4 right which is normally what we do when people
00:53:37
speak is to Simply hold back and therapists are good at doing this and simply do what they call reflexive
00:53:43
listening so you know you say to somebody um I'm really annoyed I've had such a difficult day at work this
00:53:48
happened that happened that happen and then you simply repeat back to them using slightly different words the
00:53:53
essence of what they've said and you say I'm hearing that life's quite difficult for you at the moment at work and that
00:54:00
you you know coming under pressure from your boss and the person you know it'll be try it because the person will
00:54:05
immediately feel I'm being heard and then they will have they will feel more they understand more about themselves
00:54:12
you know why is it that in the company of some people we feel really interesting and have lots to say and in
00:54:17
the company of others we kind of feel bit bored we don't have anything to say we're the same people it's because we
00:54:22
feel we Ure it that we're in the presence of a listener and the best way to listen is literally
00:54:28
to not give advice not um give anecdotes but repeat back to somebody what they've
00:54:36
said in slightly different words and I mean you know parents bless them I've been a parent we' all been parents many
00:54:42
of us been parents um parents are often quite bad at listening to their children they think they're listening I I was in
00:54:48
a um holiday Resort a few months ago and there was this kid little kid must have been three
00:54:55
for and it was having a bad day it was really screaming and the parent the mother was say might be the mother someone was saying um what's what's wrong um and the kid was saying I hate
00:55:08
it here the whole place smells um it's a poo and I want to be back home at kindergarten and the caregiver said don't be so silly darling we're on holiday holidays are fun and what's more
00:55:22
this hotel has cost a lot of money and you want to go okay I get it this woman was trying to help she was trying to you
00:55:29
know calm down this this distressed child was she listening not really because basically what the kid was saying is I'm having a really bad day
00:55:36
Everything feels absolutely disastrous help me ah right and we're all we all have a version of those days and we
00:55:43
don't want to be told come on you're living in really wonderful times the sun is shining you know uh there's lots to
00:55:49
celebrate we want someone to go I hear things are bad for you I'm hearing things are bad for you um I'm hearing you're not coping very
00:56:00
well and you're pretty sad now if you do that don't rush them don't give advice don't give you know you will get a great response back we
00:56:12
can put money on it listening what are the um the other core components then because I really want to close off this topic on love and sexless relationships what would you say are the
00:56:23
core components or the core habits of two people who have a really successful long-term enduring sexual and romantic relationship if we just focus on the
00:56:35
this the sex side of things first what are those core habits so I guess Communications when that's come through quite loudly look I'd start a little bit further upstream and go like overall
00:56:46
what do these guys need to do and I think overall they both need to acknowledge that they are frail fragile
00:56:54
slightly crazy people because not because they are them but because they're human and there's no other
00:57:00
option for a human being than to be slightly crazy and nevertheless against that background they're attempting to do
00:57:07
their best right so that the combination of an acknowledgement of their fallible nature mixed in with um a dedication to
00:57:15
trying to understand it through broadly therapeutic means so this is a very crucial thing the other absolutely crucial thing is an acknowledgement that a lot of what people will be getting up
00:57:26
to in relationships will have nothing to do with the person in front of you that you will be importing from different
00:57:32
periods of your life scenarios and assumptions that owe nothing to the here and now and owe quite a lot to Mom Dad
00:57:40
caregivers and other scenarios and the capacity to acknowledge that with grace to say okay I'm sorry I'm you know I'm getting confused about who's in front of
00:57:51
me right I importing into this situation an energy that doesn't belong there we all do this the whole basis of
00:57:57
attachment Theory let's remind ourselves is that your attachment style is governed by your first attachment the
00:58:04
attachment that you had with a parental figure and therefore you know you will be let's say insecurely preoccupied
00:58:11
attached to somebody um not because they deserve that quality of attachment because your early caregiver did that's
00:58:19
that's what they mandated through their own behavior but your partner maybe someone completely different is someone
00:58:25
completely different so if I can put it this way getting on top of your projections we project wildly as human
00:58:32
beings and being able to have at least a sense that the person in front of you may not be entirely who you think they are and that reality in the here and now may be slightly more innocent um and I
00:58:44
think you know you owe it to yourself it's look it's so boring I'm sorry Stephen I'm sorry to your listeners you have to get on top of your childhood it's so boring to be told this to be to
00:58:56
be 30 40 50 60 and to be told that you have to get on top of your childhood I mean my goodness this is not a Nostalgia
00:59:03
Fest the only reason is so you can put the damn thing to bed and never have to think about it again but it's going to
00:59:09
be rattling around unless you have done so and I think it's so look think of language all of us when we were kids we
00:59:17
were put in an environment where without us doing anything we learned an entire language with syntax grammar complicated vocabulary Etc and this happened while
00:59:27
we were doing handstands in the garden drawing buttercups in the kitchen Etc we absorbed an entire language and we had
00:59:34
no idea the same thing was going on emotionally we learned an emotional language not a language about grammar
00:59:41
and vocabulary but a language about trust a language about self-esteem a language about who we are a language
00:59:48
about what will happen to us when we trust someone a language about whether it's safe to go with someone to be
00:59:54
ourselves Etc we learned that whole language and we have no idea we learned it just that we have no idea we ever
01:00:00
learned our language of birth it just happened but it's inside us no less than the grammatical language and what we have to do and it's just as difficult as
01:00:11
learning in adulthood you know how difficult it is imagine if I said to you learn Finnish now now you're going to learn Finnish or next week we're going
01:00:18
to go off and we're going to learn you know I don't know Korean right you'd be like in a week uh well it's going to
01:00:25
take a long time isn't it we're GNA have to do this for a long time do you know what I'd say there's two things I'd reply if you told me to end Finish first
01:00:31
one is God that's gonna this is what I think that's going to take forever and the second one is what's the point but
01:00:38
I'd also say let's say we're not trying to learn Finnish we're trying to learn trust let's say we're not trying to learn Korean we're trying to learn the
01:00:46
lesson of vulnerability safe vulnerability right these are very valuable lessons very valuable lessons
01:00:52
that we need in our relationships I say that because I I point at the childhood patterns that you're talking about and I
01:00:58
think one of the reasons why people don't open up that closet and do the work there is because they don't realize
01:01:03
that that is the Puppet Master dictating their career relationships and everything in between so I think Step One is like them understanding the
01:01:10
impact that that childhood narrative is having today yeah and and then also realizing you know this is where
01:01:15
language can be a useful metaphor is is about time because sometimes people say okay so I I understand and I saw listen to a podcast a great great guy um
01:01:26
Stephen you know really gets on top of it listen to many of his podcasts problem is after three podcast I'm not
01:01:33
healed and you want to go look how many lessons of finish or Korean did you do or three are you fluent uh not quite I
01:01:39
might need another 150 150 more well in other words we need to take it slowly and we need to repeat these things you know we talking about religion earlier one of things about religions is they understand that our
01:01:51
minds are like cives you know take Islam Islam wants us to remember their God three four five times a day in many religions you're on your knees constantly because they know these
01:02:02
religions know that it goes in one a it goes out the other it comes you know that that we're not very good at holding on to the even the truths that we are
01:02:09
most attached to and I think part of the problem with the modern world is we tend to think I'll just listen to that idea
01:02:14
once I'll just read an interesting book said said something to me once and and I'm going to change my life you want to
01:02:20
go no no you know again think of the Holy books how many times you supposed to read the Bible the Quran it's a Buddhist textt every day because we're
01:02:28
not very good at holding on even to the things on which Our Lives depend is there a risk though in this sort of
01:02:34
healing culture where we're all just healing forever and we're all kind of like broken and trying to recover from
01:02:42
our early years where someone snatched candy out of our hands or something is there I read an article a couple of
01:02:48
weeks ago and it said there was a bit of a bit of a risk to this long-term ongoing healing mentality that we're
01:02:54
look I I sense your frustration and I share it it would be so nice if we could just get on with life without having to bother with all this stuff I I understand but I think Stephen the thing
01:03:07
you have to bear in mind is we are no longer merely trying to survive we're trying to thrive right the age of
01:03:13
survival is behind us you know we're not just looking to reach the age of 30 and then collapse into bed and thinking you
01:03:18
know it's been fantastic life I've not been butchered by an enemy right you know we want to reach 80 85 and we want
01:03:26
not just survival we want fulfillment and if we want that we're going to have to pay attention to things that previous generations didn't again let me use another metaphor right um for most of
01:03:38
human history people here I am drinking glass of water right um people didn't pay much attention to water if it looked
01:03:43
like there wasn't anything actively floating in it like a frog or something they'd think it's was clean water right I just gulp it back and through such
01:03:50
nonchalance if I can put it that way millions of people died okay and then towards the end of the 19th century at
01:03:56
about the very same time that Sigman Freud in Vienna was getting going helping us to think about certain things in the psyche various people got very
01:04:03
interested in water supply and all the main cities Paris London New York got a complete overhaul of their water supplies because it was suddenly discovered that microscopic organisms
01:04:14
could kill hundreds of thousands of people in a glass of water that looked completely clear you might have enough
01:04:20
to kill a city right and this is deeply perplexing you think hang on a minute it's just a glass of water must be fine
01:04:26
and you know I don't want to be hard on you but in that tone of like really is could we be bothered with that old
01:04:32
childhood stuff why don't we just get on with it you want to go unfortunately we have to take care
01:04:37
because there are macrobiotic organisms as it were in our lives that are gumming up our capacities
01:04:45
for fulfillment and it's not that it's not necessarily they're going to kill us but they will hamper our capacity to be
01:04:53
you to exploit our full potential and after all you know this is what this podcast is about this is what many people are concerned about and it's
01:05:00
going to require work can we ever truly heal from those things can or will they always be there in the back room just exerting less power over us um look wonderful German philosopher
01:05:12
schopenhauer he says that the goal of life is to turn tears into knowledge wonderful progress tears what what are you going to do with those they just end up in your pillow they might end up you know being uh things you can learn from
01:05:24
so I think the best we can do is to learn to turn so many of the troubles that afflict us you know no life is without Affliction but that moment when we go you know what I've learned
01:05:35
something from this torment this was a total nightmare but I've pulled out of it something about myself about human
01:05:41
nature about psychology then we're really learning then we're really on the path to a good life because a good life
01:05:47
is not a problematic free life it's a life in which we've found a way of learning from our inevitable pains you will never find the right person I read
01:05:57
that sentence and that sounded a little bit um negative I think I read it in your book you'll never find the right person well I was teasing gently our old
01:06:08
Friends The Romantics who tell us that of course we will find the right person and the belief in the right person has
01:06:15
led to more rage more disappointment more frustration than any other you know if you tell people you will find the right person and if you build up a model of what it will mean to find the right
01:06:27
person you will be dooming people to disappointment if for example they meet somebody who's really good many ways
01:06:34
very very good but they've had an argument with them well oh I'm not supposed to argue with somebody that is the right person we're supposed to be
01:06:40
Bliss Blissful so I'm teasing really the concept of rightness rightness can include a lot of wrongness and that's why you know Wonderful English psycho analyst Donald winot who came up with
01:06:51
this phrase a good enough he applied it to Parenthood he he argued that no child
01:06:56
needs a perfect parent indeed it's quite dangerous to have a perfect parent because you never leave home quite good to have a parent who causes you few
01:07:03
frustration it'll it'll get you out there um but he argued no one needs a perfect parent no one needs a perfect
01:07:08
lover they need a good enough parent a good enough lover do you think um that people that
01:07:14
are in relationships romantic relationships should spend time apart do you think that's healthy for
01:07:20
the stuff we've talked about with sexlessness and stuff cuz I think I I tend to get more excited about sex with
01:07:25
my partner when she's been away for a while and there's a real novelty to it yes look I think one of the things that distance can do is to remind you that there is no pre-ordained reason why
01:07:37
someone should be with you I mean it's one of the most miraculous things that anyone should choose to be with anyone because anyone is a quite complicated
01:07:44
proposition and some of the mystery of that um can kind of you know achieve its necessary Force after a a a period away look it's like being very ill imagine being ill for a while you've been you've
01:07:58
not been in the world for very long um for a while suddenly you're feeling better you go out into the world you go
01:08:04
to the park and suddenly oh my God there's this thing called a tree it's amazing it's got leaves there are some
01:08:09
bugs crawling all over there's something called grass there's a brick wall you are suddenly like a three-year-old full
01:08:16
of appreciation and wonder and one of the great challenges of life is how to keep being people who have Wonder in in
01:08:23
their life because habit swallows everything up you oh yeah tree yeah yeah I I know what those are I know what a
01:08:29
tree is like that's why we need art you know for example I mean what's the point of art small topic let's bite that one
01:08:35
off too what's the point of art well one of the things that happens when you go to one of these places called galleries or museums is they're full of paintings
01:08:43
by people who look at the world as though they've never seen it before maybe it's their wife or husband they
01:08:48
look at their wife or husband as though they've never seen them before alone and behold quite an amazing thing wow it's
01:08:53
going of amazing it's full of tenderness and beauty and compassion and interest wow I could you know I could like this
01:08:58
person they look at a tree they look at a cloud they look at the grass and you know we are part of what makes children small children so fascinating but also frustrating is you suggest to walk to
01:09:10
the park it takes them an hour and a half to go to the park why because everything's interesting what have we
01:09:16
done with those layers of interest that we also used to possess we think we know
01:09:22
what's going on but but we don't um and one of the wonderful things that children can remind us is the
01:09:28
foreignness the true foreignness of a world that we feel we know we feel we've seen but we haven't actually looked at you say on page 75 of that book that
01:09:39
the solution to long-term sexual stagnation is to learn to see our lover as if we had never laid eyes on him or
01:09:45
her before it feels so natural though that through this process of sort of habituation everything in our lives
01:09:51
becomes less uh yields less Joy than it once did and I and I I often fight with that because you know as things get financially more uh as you get more
01:10:01
financially free in life you're able to experience the the you know the nice restaurants and the nice things and the
01:10:06
nice holidays and the nice planes all those kinds of things um but with that the awe and the surprise escapes you
01:10:14
absolutely and I think we need to work at it the Buddhists were onto this um the wonderful Buddhist scroll from the
01:10:20
Middle Ages medieval scroll uh six personman you know personman kind of fruit um it's
01:10:26
got bit like an apple um uh and it's just six pans on a on a canvas beautiful rendition and the idea is that the Buddhist Sage is meant to look at those six pmans for an hour the true one could
01:10:40
could keep going for even a day right just six persans right and you might go hang on a minute can I change the
01:10:46
channel please can I look at something else the capacity to stare intensely at something and draw benefit from it is absolutely something that we lose as
01:10:58
especially as life gets more more dizzying the the thing to bear in mind is life can ever only be so exciting
01:11:05
it's not by more stimulation that you ever if your senses are wrecked if you're unable to draw benefit from one lemon having a thousand lemons or a sports car isn't going to make you more
01:11:17
of an appreciator the goal is to learn to appreciate more of what we've already seen and that is you know we talk about
01:11:24
gym and exercises and and and workouts it's something we need to do I mean it's it's literally learning to see into
01:11:31
appreciate is a skill um and you can dial it up or dial it down and as I say one of the good things about works of
01:11:37
art is there are records of careful looking by people they might not be looking at things you're looking at but
01:11:43
it's less about what you're looking at that it's a method of looking that you can learn from as you'll know if you've
01:11:49
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pretty sure it's going to sell out a therapeutic Journey lessons from the school of Life the Sunday Times
01:12:45
bestselling author of the school of life I've seen this book everywhere um I walk into bookshops all the time and I just
01:12:52
wish my book had the prominence it does I saw I yeah I was in a foils the other day and I think you've got some signed copies in there I picked up one yeah um why why did you write a book
01:13:04
called A therapeutic Journey um because I have to say you you have written lots and lots bit too much a lot
01:13:15
of books I mean this is not even half of them no there's about 70 of them yeah this book a therapeutic Journey um it's
01:13:22
really following the art of what one could call mental breakdown or a mental a mental crisis from the moment of its Inception the moment it
01:13:33
strikes us through to the moment of recovery and then I go into lots of byways and lots of uh you know lots of
01:13:39
digressions but essentially it's saying how can we keep our minds safe how can we help them to heal um what can we do when we are in a mental crisis it's written in a tone I hope of sympathy um
01:13:53
of kindness and also trying to give people a sense of what's happening to me because very often you know when when there is a breakdown we don't know what on Earth's going on you know yesterday
01:14:04
we were happy go-lucky now we can't get out of bed yesterday we were able to hold it together now everything that
01:14:10
comes out of our mouth makes no sense so I think that the um uh it's it's it's supposed to be a companion through what might be some of our loneliest hours why do we need this book right now do you
01:14:21
think in society I think because look I hope that people will think hm okay this
01:14:27
is written from a place of somebody who probably gets what what they're saying and what I'm feeling I think we need
01:14:33
companions through things that probably feel very personal but are actually this
01:14:39
is the good news very general but I think you know at the school of life we see so many people who are going through
01:14:45
these things and the thing that each one thinks is I'm alone and the best thing you can say to people is say no you're
01:14:52
not and the reason they think they alone is that you know it's a paradox of human beings we only know people from what
01:14:58
they choose to tell us but we know our own minds from introspection and so there's a massive sort of cognitive gap
01:15:06
between self- knowledge and knowledge of others and in that Gap shame develops right and um there's so much shame
01:15:13
around mental illness because it's still as we know so rarely spoken about and so
01:15:19
the book aims to rehabilitate to educate and to comfort this is a book about getting
01:15:27
unwell imagining that we have let everyone down and losing Direction and hope it's also a book about Redemption
01:15:33
about re gaining the thread rediscovering meaning and finding a way back to connection warmth and joy what are the ways in which we're
01:15:45
unwell increasingly well you know it's very hard when your mind is operating well you almost don't notice what it's doing doing because it's doing so many things to keep you feeling you know we
01:15:57
even have that word normal right how do you feel I feel normal yeah that's that's my Baseline that's just that's
01:16:03
just how I am it's it's the result of we could call it gifts because when those gifts are taken away Goodness Me do you
01:16:10
notice right so for example there's something in our mind in a well-functioning mind that more or less
01:16:18
keeps us on our side right there would be so many reasons for all of us to despair of who we are you know why would I be on why would I be on my side I've made mistakes I'm not perfect Etc but
01:16:29
most of us you know on a on a good day you Steven will go look I'm not perfect but you know I'm okay I can keep going
01:16:35
when you're mentally unwell that that faculty breaks down and suddenly you can't abide your own self you can't
01:16:40
forgive yourself you know there are people who are unwell who will say 17 years ago I said something to someone
01:16:46
and I can't forgive myself and you want to go that's 17 years ago it's okay and they can't let it go that's what illness
01:16:53
is illness is not being able to let go of an argument against yourself because you have turned into Your Own Worst Enemy um the other thing that that people manage to do um in in a healthy
01:17:06
mind is bracket things so that not all the things that could be in your mind are active in your mind at any point right so you're able to sequence thoughts so you think you know well you know I've got this to do I'm
01:17:17
interviewing this guy now tomorrow I'll be in New York uh there's also thing with my granny and there's also thing
01:17:22
with friend Etc but those thoughts are sequenced you're able to line them up in in a coherent order when Health breaks
01:17:30
down all of these things come at all angles there's no Order anymore there's no hierarchy so something that happened
01:17:37
10 years ago is expressing something is happening right now um something that's deeply urgent collides with something
01:17:42
that you know by rational means is not that urgent but it seems as urgent and so everything coherent breaks down you
01:17:49
can no longer order things there are voices that start coming in not friendly voices all of us have voices in our
01:17:56
minds not necessarily you know they're not I'm not talking about psychotic voices but there are voices voices of
01:18:01
encouragement often you can keep going just just you know do it or it's okay you could dare to take that risk often
01:18:07
kindly voices that we've Incorporated from kind people around us when mental health breaks down we can only hear the worst voices the voices that are telling us you don't deserve to be here you've
01:18:18
made a mistake and we don't want you here anymore better thing would be if you didn't exist those voices and those
01:18:24
voices don't let up and then we're in trouble and we need to raise the White Flag because things are not well and sometimes we keep going we're so good at
01:18:35
keeping going that it's terrible half the problem is that we keep going so well you know we're we're half dead
01:18:41
before we realize there's a problem right and so the ability to go hang on hang on I can't take it anymore that is
01:18:47
the beginning of being knowing how to get help because when the mind is in trouble what it most needs is another mind it's like calibration right when
01:18:57
you've lost the correct calibration you need somebody else to go you know when you go everyone hates me and it's all
01:19:04
terrible and nothing I've done is of any value just have another mind that says okay I know how you feel let's think
01:19:11
about this is is that is that really who who you are who that that is and then you know gradually with love and let's
01:19:18
remember people always get mentally unwell because of love I don't mean romantic relationships but all mental
01:19:26
unwellness stems somewhere if if you scroll back there's always a deficit of love always there's always an experience of Cruelty in some way that breaks the
01:19:39
mind and when people get well there is also always an experience of love that heals and it could be love you know not romantic love love from a friend love from a therapist love from professionals
01:19:50
but it's essentially an act of love an act of love saves us redeems us so the problem and often the antidote is love or at least the cause and the antidote is often love yes imaginatively
01:20:02
understood not merely romantic love and its broadest sense and you know because mental breakdown is often emerges from a
01:20:10
buildup of Cruelty an unbearable cruelty which makes life unbearable for the person and they then have to you know project it outwards I mean in when when illness becomes very severe and you have
01:20:22
a psychosis you know what can happen is that people become obsessed with the idea that everyone is against them the CIA is
01:20:28
against them other people are plotting against them really what this is an outgrowth of is an unbearable inner
01:20:35
negativity that hasn't found any way of being handled you use the word resilience in this book and I think the
01:20:41
word resilience is often misunderstood because we think of resilience as like T it up and you know take it what is your
01:20:48
definition of resilience and why is why is that such a prominent word in this book look I think true resilience should
01:20:54
be compatible with things that don't look resilient at all things that look very desperate very humble very um
01:21:02
broken indeed so um yes I mean I like you am suspicious of the use of that word resilience as as really just meaning a kind of stoic um bouncing back
01:21:14
from all problems immediately um I I think it means a generous understanding of how much madness has a legitimate claim on even a healthy life um towards
01:21:25
the end of the book I have a little thing I Riff on about the seasons some of it is understanding that this is
01:21:32
normal this is part of the natural cycle not railing against it some of what what
01:21:38
does that help understanding that it's normal well sometimes when people have mental troubles uh they will have ups and downs right and sometimes people can
01:21:45
box themselves in and they'll go I suffered now I'm better again you know I'm I'm better and the advice is always
01:21:51
H careful careful that belief that you're better the rigid belief the past is behind me the darkness is behind me
01:21:58
can itself start to see kind start that can itself start to seem like a problem because it means that you'll be intolerant towards any regression and regression belongs to progress just like
01:22:10
dark days belong to Good Seasons you know we need some of that and and the natural world has a wonderful way if
01:22:16
we're ATT tune to it of telling us about Cycles really what we're talking about cyclicality darkness is followed by
01:22:21
light Autumn is followed by winter is followed by Spring the mind has its own seasons and the more we can accept the
01:22:28
legitimacy of those Seasons the less we'll rail against some of the necessary sliding into darkness which
01:22:35
for many of us is simply going to be unavoidable if someone chooses to pick up this book and they get to the final
01:22:43
page what do you hope they' learned or taken away from them by getting to the end of this book um really real Sympathy for the complexity of their minds a real
01:22:56
understanding that um It's Not Easy Being Human that there is nothing indulgent about you know working on
01:23:02
oneself as you put it that that this this is a a boring but Al very necessary task um some tools in there about how to do it from the very practical to the more theoretical there's a practical
01:23:15
book about how you can work on the most broken bits of yourself and find a kind of equilibrium um but it's also very deliberately a warm book it's a book of
01:23:26
comfort and I think that something that we often miss we get we can get a little too intellectual in this topic thinking
01:23:32
that people who are in trouble um mentally and just psychologically that all they need is some ideas you know get
01:23:39
some ideas and yeah sure we need ideas but you know what we also need is uh warmth kindness um friendship in a way now you could say well how could a book be a friend well you know many of my
01:23:52
best friends are books let me tell you and um I think it's absolutely in the remit of of a book to act as a friend
01:24:01
and to say to you very simply You are not alone you said earlier that a good conversationalist a good friend a good romantic partner is someone that makes you feel heard and understood and I
01:24:15
think that's exactly what you achieve in this book it is a very difficult thing to do because books can often feel quite
01:24:21
exclusive especially when the author is smart as you are um but this book does a wonderful job of first and
01:24:30
foremost making you realize that the thing you're going through in the way that you are isn't evidence of your
01:24:35
inadequacy it's actually evidence that you are perfectly human and that are you are like everybody else and through that lens you can offer support and some very
01:24:43
practical tips about how to you know endure or rise rise from the situation that we all find ourselves in in the
01:24:49
different seasons of life that you describe and that's why it's such an important important book and that's why it's done so tremendously well um and
01:24:55
it's being passed around by so many people Alan thank you so much for for your time today and thank you for all
01:25:01
your wisdom you're a remarkable talker I was learning I was watching you and I was just thinking hell you know
01:25:06
um got a wonderful way to hold people with the way that you articulate yourself that is so unbelievably
01:25:14
powerful and uh speaking the art of speaking is such a important incredible talent to have and you have that in such a Wonder way you it's so soothing and
01:25:25
engaging and intelligent and there's a real poetry to the way that you frame things which I think is just a
01:25:30
superpower that I would love to have more of you do Stephen you do no but not like you have it so it was wonderful
01:25:36
just to learn from the way that you speak we have we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next
01:25:41
guest not knowing who they're leaving it for and the question that's been left for you
01:25:47
is ah interesting what was the last thought thought to keep you awake at night the last thought to keep me awake at night um well last night I was quite
01:26:02
worried about coming here so I was I was kept up but um you know I'm often kept up I I do I do I do sleep in in quite a a fragile way and I
01:26:15
think that one of the ways of thinking about it is that there are thoughts that happen in the middle of the night that can't happen at any other time that
01:26:22
there actually some quite important thoughts often they to do with things that you didn't even know you were
01:26:27
concerned about but the night teaches you there is the school of night you know and and and I used to be very very
01:26:35
impatient um uh Insomniac so I used to wake up think oh my goodness I can't believe that I'm still awake how
01:26:40
annoying Etc now I'm thinking maybe there's something to learn here maybe my mind's trying to teach me something um
01:26:48
and it might not be anything sort of totally Earth shatter might not sound completely Earth shatter but it might just be something might just be like oh I really love this thing or I think I
01:26:55
should really steer away from that or this is really beautiful or whatever it is something uh a kind of
01:27:00
acknowledgement of the night and so I'm I've become a better not a better sleeper but something perhaps even more important a better Insomniac why were you uh never staying
01:27:13
up about coming here we're all friendly people I know you are um I think you know we've spoken a lot about expectation haven't we um and and you know if if your podcast had one listener
01:27:25
um and we were just going down to the pub that would be so lovely if you called me up and said we're canceling the show but we're just going to go to
01:27:31
the pub uh I would have slept like a baby well you've certainly exceeded All my expectations and it's a real honor
01:27:37
and a privilege that you chose to come so thank you so much for that and your wisdom I'm sure has impacted countless
01:27:42
people not just for the last couple of decades but even in this conversation that I guess you'll never get to see so on behalf of them thank you so much
01:27:49
thanks Stephen in 2023 I launched my very own private Equity Fund called flight fund and since then we've invested in some of the most promising companies in the world my
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