Understanding Mental Health: Self-Reflection, Emotional Trajectories, Cognitive Changes, Life Purpose

Mental health 0:14 0
“The first thing to do is to look inside oneself like how do I feel right this is where sometimes I I talk a lot about a life narrative and a person can just start you can start writing you can start talking with someone you can start introspecting that there ways of taking stock of what is going on inside of me am I being kind to myself what's the voice inside of me saying to to me do I feel good about any of this right is any of this what I want”

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Mental health 2:45 0
“I want to ask you just to start in your experience working with people um is that what you see do you see that people generally become happier more um more satisfied as they age do you think that's the exception is the Rule and and I guess as a followup to that how deliberate does one need to be about emotional health to ensure that you can reap what I just said which is hey you could actually be on an increasing curve of emotional health as you age”

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Mental health 3:15 0
“I think unfortunately emotional health often declines as people get older and that that is sort of the rule but but it doesn't have to be I think that that can be the exception and and that emotional health can improve throughout the lifespan but there's so many things that we have to be aware of as you said does it take intention like yes we have to really think about how are we taking care of ourselves how is my emotional health setting the climate for my physical health my cognitive Health uh for my happiness”

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Cognitive stimulation 6:27 0
“Arthur Brooks has written quite eloquently about the transition from fluid intelligence to crystallized intelligence and so well you know our fluid intelligence peaked when we met each other um and in that regard only become stupider we've gained other intelligence this crystallized intelligence that's more experiential and more about pattern recognition and while we might not have the processing speed we once did we're intelligent in a different way.”

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Mental health 7:59 0
“I think the way we evaluate is by looking inside so so then what are we looking for inside we're trying to understand what's going on in us you know when we wake up in the morning how do we feel about ourselves how do we feel about life are we lowgrade afraid right do we feel on the back foot you know there's so much of this going on in us and then that impacts our selft talk which is why we may not have biomarkers but we can look inside so to speak by asking the right questions like what do you say to yourself when you're alone right what kind of phrases or mantras seem to repeat over and over um do you criticize yourself do you have a shadow voice within you that is that is oppressive or that is regretful or that is ashamed right what is going on inside of us is often very opaque to us even though we're living through that when we then interface with the world.”

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Purpose 12:39 0
“one would be something that's talked about a lot which is sense of purpose right and I think there's so much literature on this in as much as there's literature in this field which is obviously harder to you know do this type of work but you know you say to a person who's you know working hard but down and out hey look would your life be better if you won the Power Ball to and you never had to work again and the data are pretty clear that the answer is no right like if you didn't have something to do and it doesn't have to be the job but if you don't have something to do if you don't have a purpose it's very difficult to have an emotional Keel that's that's that's that's adequate um so sense of purpose would be something”

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Social connection 14:01 0
“what you're I think talking a lot about is relationships too so what what is the nature of our relationship to self and then the the the quality of our relationships with others”

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Mental health 14:17 0
“the field of mental health has long understood that we have drives within us it has been focused on an assertion or an aggression Drive which makes sense like we have to do things right in order to survive in order to achieve in order to move ahead so there's an assertion Drive within us and there's also a pleasure this must be highly highly preserved I mean like natural selection must have been ruthlessly selecting for this”

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Purpose 18:08 0
“ultimately I believe greatest human thing to to make more than what we are so the contrast to that is not winning the Power Ball in fact it's it's the same thing in coming in a different disguise right it is now not honoring the generative Drive”

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Purpose 18:40 0
“if having the money that would come from the lottery win and having the time subserves the generative drive then that is a good thing but money alone doesn't provide that”

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Purpose 22:20 0
“I think we all have a generative drive it varies a lot among humans but if we really step back and we look we're probably selected to be within a relatively narrow range”

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Mental health 24:59 0
“there are people who look the same from the outside and are driven by shame or fear or previous deprivation that they're can never be enough to to so that what you have can't be taken away from you right there are people who are laboring under those fears often from Early Childhood experiences and from the outside they look very very uh productive and and successful but on the inside that things are very threadbear or they're filled with fear right”

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Purpose 27:22 0
“the generative drive and the enthusiasm and the Joy inside people when when that is being realized does pull Humanity forward”

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Mental health 29:25 0
“people who are not fearing death and we see that they are often in very good balance the generative Drive is being honored and the assertion within them and the ability to feel pleasure and satisfaction these are all well balanced and then they're in places where they can find some peacefulness and some reflective capacity and some ability to feel contentment and Delight in the world around them”

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Mental health 30:55 0
“the first thing to do is to look inside oneself like how do I I feel right this is where sometimes I I talk a lot about a life narrative and and a person can just you can start writing you can start talking with someone you can start introspecting that there ways of taking stock of what is going on inside of me am I being kind to myself what's the voice inside of me saying to to me do I feel good about any of this right is any of this what I want”

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Mental health 36:04 0
“when we don't feel good about ourselves often we are out of kilter with the generative Drive within us that is absolutely a part of what makes people unhappy but also coming along with that is not owning what is ours”

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Purpose 36:34 0
“it is being the best that we can be and honoring the drive inside of us to live and to create”

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Mental health 39:10 0
“societies even today who are by and large hunter gatherer Societies or the societies that we from the outside think have nothing are often happier than we are”

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Mental health 43:03 0
“it's going to be very difficult to feel good if one is not taking care of the basics of their physical function we get down to the first principles physical health the things that contribute to lifespan Health span right cognitive health and emotional health but we have to go back to the first principles of like who are you and let's talk about your story right because that understanding is what leads to the next decisions and the next decisions are not obvious from where we stand now”

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Mental health 44:45 0
“very very high predictive value because think about what's the link between the two like it doesn't feel good to get up every day and not feel good right it doesn't feel good to know that one is unhealthy and energy levels are low it doesn't feel good to look at oneself in the mirror and say I could would should be healthy right or to not be able to keep up with one's kids or whatever it is that goes on inside of us that makes us know that if that's going on something isn't aligned well within us right like what is the reason for that or I have to work to do this this and this so I don't have time to take care of myself or I've got to be in this job I hate or I'm so stressed that I can't like we have all these reasons but but there aren't good reasons right I mean like this is what we have our bodies and our minds are what we have so the idea that we can just push that aside and not pay attention to it like can't be right right it cannot be…”

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Nutrition 46:27 0
“Peter, you don't need to be eating this extra helping of dessert or whatever.”

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Mental health 46:53 0
“You are really emotionally eating right now and I think we talk about that a lot.”

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Stress management 46:59 0
“You're so stressed out, get out of the freaking pantry.”

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Stress management 51:41 0
“when a person seems to be taking care of themselves from the outside and maybe is right you can see from the outside but they're so frustrated on the inside or they're so afraid or they're so overly managing themselves to make up for something then you we don't necessarily see that that keeps them healthy right there may be a higher inflammatory state that increases risk of cardiovascular disease for example or of autoimmune phenomena like we know this happens”

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Mental health 52:18 0
“it is amazing what we hide from ourselves you we we we go through life hiding so much of what is going on inside of us from our eles in the service of maintaining some direction we've decided was important”

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Mental health 53:01 0
“excessive emotional eating it might may not be the determinant of absolute misery for a person but like there's something going on there that's not happy that's not in alignment with oneself”

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Mental health 57:45 0
“Perfect Isn't just the enemy of good enough, perfect is really the enemy of everything that's not misery right because no one is perfect, nothing is perfect and when we're over managing ourselves that's what we're telling ourselves right this super ego part of us if we want to call it that is always looking at us what are you doing wrong what's not right what's not good enough.”

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Mental health 1:00:29 0
“I think that kind of self talk destroys motivation, destroys confidence, increases levels of inflammatory markers, increases risk of illness like there's so much bad that comes of us comes of that but that's inside of a lot of us.”

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Mental health 1:02:52 0
“for a long long time was you know really not not happy and depressed and ashamed of things and you know feeling in ways I had to then through my own work get out of me”

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Mental health 1:03:57 0
“I wrote a little bit about this in the book about the discovery of the inner voice and you know in my case it was so startling”

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Mental health 1:04:44 0
“there have to be a lot of other people out there with abolutely potentially as awful a voice in their head they might be listening to us now thinking yeah that would be awful and yet they have it and they don't recognize it”

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Mental health 1:08:34 0
“when you have a curiosity about yourself that leads you to now do something where you're thinking about yourself right and you're thinking about yourself with the help of other people outside of you right and you've engendered this across time and now you go do something that's intensive then all of a sudden something becomes clear to you and you see oh I'm now I'm now interested in this and now you start to do all the things that you do when you're interested in things”

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Mental health 1:09:48 0
“what am I saying to myself is there a running narrative inside of myself is someone else's voice inside of me these happen to us and it's amazing that we often just don't know it”

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Mental health 1:12:49 0
“I was instructed as I was leaving PCS to um take my phone out every time there was every time I made a mistake um or fell short by by whatever metric and to um speak to speak out loud audibly and record the way I would uh speak to my best friend if he had made the same mistake”

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Mental health 1:14:45 0
“I think 3 months to totally change but that's 3 months of work work right yeah it's it's that same theory that matter is not evenly distributed change has not happen in a linear way you know okay it's only 3 months but you had to run countercurrent to patterns of neurotransmission that were inside of you for years and years and years and years.”

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Stress management 1:19:18 0
“the exercise here was an exercise suggested by Andy White who of course you very graciously introduced me to and um he said this is an exercise that he does with um patients he's working with who are trying to quit smoking mhm so the exercise is about separating creating a discontinuity between urge and behavior mhm so he says look for the first and I'm probably bastardizing this a little bit but let's just say for the next month you know you're you you come in here and you're smoking two packs a day for the next month I'm not necessarily going to reduce the number of cigarettes you smoke but what I will do is separate the urge from the behavior every time you have the urge to smoke I want you to pull out your phone and set an alarm for 40 minutes don't smoke now but when the alarm goes off go smoke we're g to separate that so you're not just feeding an urge every time it comes up you're going to go smoke and sometimes you might not actually even feel like going for a smoke mhm um and so what the exercise was…”

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Mental health 1:25:36 0
“so I so I so to me it's then becomes interesting that that you become very angry if I let's say for me if I become very angry about something like oh the flight is delayed or I rushed to get to the airport and the flight is delayed and I didn't get the text I was supposed to get and you know whatever it may be like that I become angry right and and and I'm very curious as why am I angry like I oh all my flights are always delayed like none of this is true actually right I'm like I'm a very fortunate person I see myself as a very fortunate person I don't feel that I'm cursed or that bad things only happen to me or that people have it out for me but in the moment when something triggers anger that's not how I feel right so the strategies help you slow down what are you slowing down to right and it brings me back to so the slowing down step is necessary but not sufficient for the real insight right it's it it could be sufficient if sometimes just slowing down it dissipates…”

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Stress management 1:30:05 0
“if flight's 90:05 delayed and I'm going to sleep in the 90:06 airport or whatever it may be like 90:07 that's not going to feel great but I am 90:09 not going to get down on myself or 90:14 anything else around me whether it's God 90:15 or fate or people you know it just it's 90:19 not right and it's not good for me 90:21 either and that's another reason we 90:23 don't do it that's why once you start 90:25 doing it you make progress right and 90:27 that's why you say you're 50% of the way 90:29 there I mean that's a huge achievement”

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Mental health 1:32:38 0
“how often is a person coming to you 92:38 where that's the source of the tension 92:40 the difference between the intellectual 92:43 understanding of what should be 92:46 gratitude and the emotional feeling that 92:48 is in congruent with it a lot and um and 92:53 if I could could comment a little on 92:55 what you said see I think 92:57 that there's a fallacy there or a 93:01 problem I don't know how to what word to 93:03 put to it but something is 93:06 not real or healthy in the framing right”

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Mental health 1:36:46 0
“the rule of all good mental health which we I believe undergirds Health span lifespan is simplicity doesn't mean it's simple to get to but it is Simplicity”

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Sleep 1:37:47 0
“I'm not getting enough sleep where I'm not sleeping as well so now I feel a little bit fatigued it's harder to take care of myself”

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Mental health 1:42:16 0
“How important do you think it is for our emotional health to have sort of peace with non-existence?”

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Mental health 1:43:58 0
“I think it's whether it's essential in everyone I'm not sure but I think it's I think it is very important.”

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Mental health 1:52:20 0
“Paul, I want to talk a little bit about how a person can find a therapist that's going to help them be a guide through a lot of the stuff we've been talking about today.”

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Mental health 1:53:25 0
“Rapport is very, very important and one might argue indispensable and that's why you see studies that people can come at things from different perspectives.”

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Mental health 1:56:17 0
“I would start with an overarching principle because I think the principle always applies and then it can get at a lot of these things underneath the principle.”

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Social connection 1:57:55 0
“together there's something different that that each isn't going to find on their own right and that each isn't going to find with another person the in this case the diad is special the two people together are more than the sum of each of them”

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Mental health 1:58:56 0
“I think what makes real Rapport is the fact that here I am with you and there's something different with us than than there is in just the sum of us like something new and different is here and I feel that when I come in the room to see you right and I think you feel it too when I come in”

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Mental health 2:03:04 0
“if you develop enough of a holding environment enough benign regard enough real humanness with the person then that can come out of them without them having even decided it just naturally flows out because they know that they're in a safe place”

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Mental health 2:03:54 0
“I think that's actually an interesting example because I really felt uncomfortable sending those recordings to Katie and I think initially I said well I'm uncomfortable because I hate that I'm wasting her time like you know I'm lighting up her phone with text messages of these recordings but that's actually probably less what it was I think it was more I'm ashamed of the fact that I'm doing this and I'm ashamed of how difficult this is”

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Mental health 2:05:31 0
“shame can help us by changing behaviors right but now you have like competing shame should you be ashamed that you're not perfect and it's good that you're beating up on yourself should you be ashamed that you're beating up on yourself because it's okay that you're not perfect”

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Mental health 1:27:50 0
“so you know is there value in just having a person that you pay to listen to what's wrong or are you paying this person to help you become better at dealing with whatever it is that's going wrong which might indirectly result in less frequency of these things happening”

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Mental health 2:08:54 0
“the therapist is really transgressing something there that should not be transgressed”

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Mental health 2:11:01 0
“it's supposed to be work that everything in life is that way too so if it's too easy that's not a good sign”

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Social connection 1:32:59 0
“however much I may think about myself or you may think about yourself there's something different that happens when we're together right I I leave feeling different why because I saw you not because I saw someone right it would be different if it were someone who's not you right that's that's because we have a real human relationship now we call that friendship because that's what the language applies to it”

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Mental health 2:16:18 0
“we're all human and we're trying to help one another but we're coming at it from a place place of acknowledging what's going on inside of us and that we are not perfect”

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Mental health 2:18:22 0
“so I think what are you avoiding what are you trying to get away from because workaholic doesn't mean you work very hard and you achieve at a high level workaholic means you're working when it makes absolutely no sense to work so what are you escaping from”

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Mental health 2:20:57 0
“so then I think there's a defense here that is usually avoidance as a defense and there's other defenses that come along with it”

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Mental health 2:30:50 0
“I think it for me it starts with that because that's a physical separation right and then the idea that I can mentalize a lot meaning like think a lot and feel things we can all do this but like you do this when you're a therapist you're feeling what other people are feeling you're feeling for them it's easy to keep that in your mind too much then just like if we picked a word and said it 5,000 times it'll be in us tomorrow right if there's something you don't want to do and you repeat it 20 times you're more likely to do it again and the same is true when we have when we can't bound ourselves well enough from the suffering in other people this is why people have post-trauma syndromes from vicarious trauma right I mean this absolutely happens the brain is changed there are biological changes behavioral changes and all of that trauma is vicarious and this is why we see the levels of depression and suicidality and substance uses higher in people who are giving care to others.”

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Overview of Mental Health Insights

This summary discusses various aspects of mental health, offering insight into self-reflection, emotional health over time, intentional self-care, cognitive changes with age, the importance of life purpose, and the quality of social relationships.

Self-Reflection and Mental Health

The dialogues emphasize self-reflection as a crucial method for understanding one’s mental state. Writing, talking, and introspecting are recommended to explore personal feelings and thoughts, aiding in self-assessment and understanding of internal dialogues and self-talk. This self-awareness is pivotal for navigating one’s mental landscape, influencing life choices and personal contentment.

Emotional Health Trajectories

Concerns about how emotional health evolves with age are raised, with suggestions that while it often declines, this isn’t inevitable. Intentionality in maintaining and improving emotional health, through methods like self-care, is stressed as vital for fostering longevity in emotional wellness. This approach also underscores the impact of emotional well-being on physical and cognitive health.

Cognitive Changes and Intelligence Over Time

The concept of fluid intelligence, which peaks early in life and declines thereafter, is contrasted with crystallized intelligence that grows through experience and age. This transition highlights different ways intelligence manifests over one’s lifespan, affecting processing speeds and experiential learning.

Life Purpose and Mental Stability

Life purpose is highlighted as essential for emotional stability. A sense of purpose can lead to emotional fulfillment, impacting happiness and satisfaction at various life stages. This sense of purpose does not necessarily need to be linked to one’s job but can be fulfilled through various forms of engagement.

Quality of Social Relationships

The quality of one’s relationships, including self-relationship, significantly influences mental and emotional health. Healthy relationships are foundational to well-being, offering emotional support and enhancing life satisfaction.

Conclusion

The discussions encapsulate the complexity of mental health, involving introspection, handling emotional changes with age, understanding cognitive shifts, realizing life purposes, and nurturing social connections. Each aspect intertwines to paint a comprehensive overview of factors contributing to mental well-being, with practical recommendations provided to enhance each area’s positive impact.