Overcoming Self-Defeat, with Dr. Mark Goulston | EDB 240
Author & psychiatrist Dr. Mark Goulston returns to share tips for overcoming self-defeating behaviors.
(31 minutes) Originally a UCLA professor of psychiatry for over 25 years, and a former FBI and police hostage negotiation trainer, Dr. Mark Goulston’s expertise has been forged and proven in the crucible of real-life, high stakes situations. An influencer who helps influencers become more influential, his unique background has made him an indispensable and sought after resource and change facilitator to Fortune 500 leaders, entrepreneurs and educators across the nation. His latest book is “Why Cope When You Can Heal?”.
Dr. Goulston will be giving a free webinar on behalf of Different Brains Thursday, June 17th at 7:00pm ET. To learn more and register click here!
For more about Dr. Goulston: http://markgoulston.com/
For more about his audio course: https://himalaya.com/defeat (use offer code DEFEAT)
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FULL TRANSCRIPTION
DR HACKIE REITMAN (HR):
Today — I can’t say his name without laughing because it brings back such good memories — Dr. Mark Goulston, the psychiatrist extraordinaire from California, the best selling author, the man with the podcast, the man with it all. Dr. Mark Goulston, author of “Trauma to Triumph”. Mark, welcome back.
DR MARK GOULSTON (MG):
Well, thank you, you know, when you said Exploring Different Brains, I felt sorry for you because you have your work cut out for you today Hackie.
HR:
But it’s always fun. It’s great to see you. And I really admire everything you’re doing, you know, each time I interview you, or we catch up on the phone after that long hiatus of, oh, 40-50 years, you’re at a new level. You’re a wall street journal bestseller now with this book, and why don’t you give the audience a proper introduction, because I’m going to start laughing– Mac, Mac.
MG:
And the reason he’s saying “Mac, Mac” is because we went to the same medical school, and there was a Dean of Students that we both loved. And more importantly, he loved both of us. And especially important to me, isn’t this is a Different Brains. program. I think he may have saved my life. Because something I’ve talked about in previous programs here is I dropped out of medical school twice, and I think I had untreated depression. And the second time, the school wanted to kind of cut their losses, I can’t blame them. I don’t know that I would have given me a second year off, which is what I asked for. But Dean McNary, who we call Mac, and he called me Mac, Mac, Mac, Mac. He, he saw something in me he saw some he saw a future for me that I didn’t see any went to bat for me. And he stood up for me against the the medical school who basically wanted me to withdraw. I was somehow passing even though I was depressed. But so they couldn’t really kick me out. But you know, they had, they’d given up on me.
To be honest, I’d given up on me, but our Dean of Students saw something in me that I didn’t. And he went to bat for me and I took a second year off. And in that second year, I discovered that I may not have known a lot about medical facts, but I knew a little bit about empathy, probably because I’d known what it’s like to feel really depressed. And then I went back and I think I may have shared this with you. After I went back to medical school after dropping out two times. I not only finished medical school, and finished my psychiatric residency. I went about six years without ever taking a sick day off. I mean, I would see patients with you know, I wouldn’t see them if I was contagious. But I have 104 fever, I’d be throwing up between the patients. But I was I had to superstition. Like if I took a day off, I dropped out again. And it was a big breakthrough. When I said this is ridiculous mark, I mean, you can’t move. And I remember, you know, when it was like a revelation to finally take a sick day, you know, after having dropped out twice, and gone seven years straight without a sick day. Even though I’d been sick. It was kind of crazy.
HR:
Great. Isn’t it ironic, as we sit here today, in the year 2021. That we’re talking about your newest project, Defeating Self-Defeat. And I’m getting chills saying this now but as I heard you recount the story of Dr. McNary. That’s what he was helping you do. He was helping you defeat, self defeat. Expound on that.
MG:
Well, I’m Dean McNary, or Mac, I’ll call him Mac, he was my first mentor. And I didn’t even know what a mentor was. But what happened is, he reached out to me because the head of the school sent a note to him saying that they wanted the head of the school the dean of the school was a good guy cared, but you know, cared about finances and I was kind of a liability. And he sent Mac a note saying, we’re going to ask this kid to withdraw. You might want to check in with him. Because you know, I think rightly they worry Jesus He’s that low going down for the second time, is you’re going to do something. And, and, and I share this with you because I’ve had, since Mac, I’ve had eight mentors, they’ve all died. The last one was Larry King. And I breakfast with him every day until COVID. He had this little breakfast club in Beverly Hills, he’d had it for 21 years, and it got the guy out of bed. And there were quirky people at the breakfast table, including me. And I was the last member, which meant that one day a week, I’d pay, you know, and the other people would pay the other days.
But I’ll tell you how you can use mentors. And I want to get into what one of the ways to get around self defeating behavior is one of the reasons we engage in self defeating behavior is because it makes us feel better for the moment. It feels good to procrastinate, initially, I don’t want to do it, I don’t want to be bothered, push it away. But then, as the deadline comes close, you’re going to push yourself into anxiety attacks that you have to do it. And so all self defeating behavior makes you feel better yelling makes you feel better. Having road rage makes you feel better for the moment, but you can destroy your life. Not to mention all your credibility in what I learned through having eight mentors, and it probably took eight mentors for me to learn this lesson is that one of the ways that I now choose to feel better is when I make a you know, when I make mistakes, I make mistakes every day. And what I’ll do is I’ll reach out to one of my dead mentors. And instead of beating up on myself, and I’ll share with you I do a lot of I’m a guest on a lot of podcasts for some reason or other. And, and so I used to call up Mac, but I got a whole slew of people I can call. So lately I’ve been calling up Larry King. So I was on a podcast I know a couple of weeks ago, and I said Larry Larry, and he says in his Brooklyn accent, you’ll do a better job than he says Mark Mark, What? What is it already? What are you waiting for? Larry, what what’s going on, even with his Brooklyn accent, and I said, I get it again. He said what I was on a podcast. And I started a story. I don’t finish the story. I say, here are the five points you need to remember. I remember three, you know, and going all around the whatever. And he said, Mike, you want me for this? Yeah. He said what else think? Oh, the host said they want me back again. Next week. Mark, Mark, put a sock in already. Let me go RIP already. It’s been a long time I had a few bad years you were there a breakfast, okay, let it go. And, and what’s interesting now is whenever I make a mistake, I want to beat up on myself. I can select from eight mentors. And I really made it concise, so I can wake any of them up. And they don’t have the same voice as Larry. But they all say mark mark, put a sock in it. And they say it with such love. I can’t believe I just did this again, Mark, Mark, Mark, Mark, you know, it’s not the end of the world, put a sock in.
The key is being able to talk it out. Do you remember when we were in preschool, use your words, and there was a certain rationale to that use your words instead of acting out and and that seems to seem to go by the wayside. And actually, I want to share something sort of a teaser from the course. So there is a course called defeating self defeat. If you go to himalaya.com — and Himalaya is I keep misspelling it but it’s h i m a l a y a .com forward slash defeat that will take you to defeating self defeat. And if you put the word “DEFEAT” I think all capital letters in the promo code you can you can listen to the whole course for free I think for 14 days or something. But I want to give sort of a teaser because the the first lesson that we talked about is procrastinating and I want to share it with you because I talk about an example that had to do with being on a radio show years ago. So my take on procrastination and all this stuff is covered in this book that just came out that came out just came out 25 years ago and made it to the Wall Street Journal bestseller list two weeks ago, the e-book, go figure.
HR:
“Get Out of Your Own Way”, Mark Goulston and Philip Goldberg and after 25 years of dormancy it’s now on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. That’s great. Yeah, no, it
MG:
Well it was the ebook, but here’s the thinking behind it. So, procrastination is something that — most people procrastinate about something. And what we talked about in it is that the people procrastinate not because they’re disorganized or lazy. We spoke that people procrastinate because they’re lonely. And people go, what does that have to do with it? Well, you know, when we’re young, and we have to do things, and we can’t stand them. We often say to ourselves, when I get older, when I’m an adult, I’m not gonna do anything I don’t want to do and so we put it off. And, and what happens going back to a little neuro chemistry is, is that when we’re stressed, and we want to avoid it, the stress releases high cortisol, which triggers our amygdala until we’re all agitated, so we pull away from it, and we procrastinate. But my evidence that we can overcome procrastination is organizations like AA. Why do they stop procrastinating giving up alcohol? Because they have a community, they talk to each other? They have a fellowship. But I talk about this interesting story.
This is some years ago, I think many years ago, when the book came out. There was this delightful radio host. And I said, What is something you’re procrastinating about? I might ask, you hacky. We might go through this, I might do it with you, because we’re friends. It’ll give us a chance to talk to each other. And I said to her, what are you procrastinating about? She said, Everybody says, I should write a book. You know, I got a lot of stories. I said, how long you’ve been procrastinating? Said, I know year and a half. I said, Well tell you what we’re going to do? What would be the best time for you to work at your computer? She said, Well, seven in the morning, and if I wrote for half an hour, I could get it. Get it going. I said, I’m three hours earlier than you. I’m going to call you every morning at seven in the morning. And this is this was on a radio show. And I’m going to call you at four in the morning, I probably won’t get back to sleep. I’m going to say get up, go to your computer, turn it on. And then I’m going to ask you what questions should I ask you that you’re going to answer and start writing for half an hour. So I did this for a month. I took breaks on the weekend, every morning for in the morning. And I said I think her name was Natalie’s and no, no, Natalie. It’s four in the morning. No, no, no, no, no, yeah. Get in front of your computer. And she told her audience, you know, that crazy psychiatrist and he’s calling me every morning, and and then six months later, she calls me because I just did it for a month. And she says, What’s your address? I want to send you the book.
HR:
Oh, wow, what a great story.
MG:
But can you see how when we do something with people — what happens, little little neurosciences, when you’re with people and you feel cared about them? There’s a release of something called oxytocin. And one of the things as I mentioned earlier, that I’m worried about is that oxytocin is is becoming less and less prominent because people are impatient.
HR:
Well also because you can’t get it over zoom, but you get it with a hug. That’s right. stocksy, Towson is when a mother hugs her newborn baby, it goes off the charts. But as much as I like seeing you now, I doubt that I’m making oxytocin if I gave you a hug and said, Mark, great to see you.
MG:
Well, it’s interesting you bring that up because something that I’ve been doing with organizations and companies. And a friend of mine, I may I introduce you to him because he’s in Miami. He’s a good friend of mine. He’s the CEO of ink, global, and ink global publishes 80% of the inflight magazines, American Way unite and all these things. And they also own most of the TV monitors airports. So I occasionally do presentations to his to his salespeople because they sell advertising. And I remember and in Simon Leslie, he’s from London, and the offices are London, Miami and Singapore. And so I did this. I did this zoom meeting with him, because he’s wonderful. He has energy, he pumps them up, he gives them energy. But one of the things that I worry about is that when you have someone who pumps you up, all you need to do is go back, get a lousy email, text message and you deflate. So I’m sharing this because it was an example of how to just do oxytocin in a zoom call. So Picture this, there’s over 100 people on the call. So you don’t see them all at one screen, you have to flip through them. And I said, I’d like you to think of the worst moment you had in the last week and raise your hand when you remember it. And they looked at me like deer in the headlights. I said, No, I’m serious. And so one by one, they raised their hands, they raised their hands, they raised their hands, it looks like Hollywood Squares with everybody raising their hands. And then I said in the chat area, next to your name, I want you to write down one of these words that fits how you felt during that bad time. And the words were anxious, frustrated, angry, depressed, overwhelmed, non ashamed, a long, lonely a bunch of words. And it’s initially quiet in the chat area. And then it starts. And then it goes, and then it floods. Jack – angry, Nancy – afraid, Brian – overwhelmed. And then what happens is they start to cry, because they’re feeling connected to each other. And then I asked them, How many of you felt better because of that? But 70%? How many of you felt worse? Zero? How many of you felt no change? 30%. I said, How many of you feel that you’re in a group of very special people, everybody raises their hand and say, Look, you know, more special than you were an hour ago, what happened is you shared a special moment. And I can say this to you, they wouldn’t have understood you just you just, you just were marinated in oxytocin. And you cared about each other. And you and you felt compassion towards each other. And you didn’t feel isolated and alone. And afterwards, some people came up to him and said, that was that was the best exercise we’ve ever done, you know, to help our culture. So I think it is possible. Yeah, you know what I see you we’re gonna, we’re gonna give each other a huge hug, and you’re gonna, because you’re big guy, you’re going to break my frickin spine. But I’ll deal with it. And but I think it’s I think it’s possible to do more than we think is possible. If you’re willing to be open.
HR:
Very well said, very well said, well, it’s a very important concept. Socialization is probably the most underrated aspect of health. And I don’t mean just mental health. When they did that 75 year longitudinal study at Harvard, on factors affecting longevity, health and happiness. They were sure it was going to revolve around cancer and heart disease and diabetes. Not at all. socialization blew them all out of the water, those with a strong social connections, such as, say, a good marriage are very good friendships. 20, 30 years longer. Big numbers, big numbers. And it’s not for psychological reasons. It’s because your body — who was it at Boston University used to say, God doesn’t make junk was that Mac? I don’t remember. But one of our teachers used to say, God doesn’t make junk, in other words, you do the right things, you take care of this machine. nature will take care of you. And you’ve just brought up there’s socialization than not being alone, having good feelings. And that’s why when the papers come out, after this pandemic, we’re going to see not just mental health, but all the stuff we have under the different brains roof, the mental health, the neurological, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and the developmental issues, Asperger’s, autism, ADHD, dyslexia. None of these occur in isolation. And you just spoke about the common thread, which is the community of caring individuals.
MG:
I’ll share a — since you seem to like my little nuggets, and my little steps thing: Something that we’ve discovered that helps cultures and I actually learned it. I think after we I did that with my friend at at Inc Global, and I, I had forgotten but I did this after 9/11 there were a lot of organizations and companies and said, You gotta you got to come in and do something we’re a little bit whacked out here. And here’s the trifecta, if you want to really build a community, the trifecta is vulnerability, courage and gratitude, because something vulnerability, courage and gratitude, because what we do, and what we did, then, and we’re doing now, to get past the pandemic, and to overcome burnout, as best we can, is we have people talk about a time they never thought they would get through, but they did. So a past time, they never thought they’d get through, but they did. And a time where someone was very, really instrumental in their getting through it. So for me, obviously, medical school and Dean McNary. And what happens is, what we’re seeing is when someone talks about a past incident that they actually got through that they didn’t think they’d get through. And when you share that people hear that they say, Boy, that was that took a lot of courage to not give up. And then when you talk about gratitude, as I’ve had, as I’ve spoken about Dean McNary, when you have people sharing like that they bond like crazy, the oxytocin through the roof. And, and what I’ve also been suggesting is that people can share if they’re going through a rough time. Now the problem is, if you’re in a community setting, are you in a meeting in an organization and someone’s going through a rough time right now, you know, it’s awkward, because you have to conduct business, you have to get through an agenda. But if someone says, You know, I think one of my kids might be suicidal, or my kids in the hospital, you know, it tends to cause everyone to stop whatever they’re doing to try to help. So now, now, we’re not saying ignore that, find a place in an organization to get help and talk it through. But if you if you want to start healing, in a community way, get together with your people in your organization, I would love you to try this with any of your organization, or try it at the hacker rights, the boys club that you’re connected with, let’s try a community thing. See, if we can, it’ll help us get through it. And you have people share times in their life that they didn’t think they get through, but they did. So that taps into the wiring, we’re able to make it through tough times. And then also, pick a time when someone was helpful to you. And then the homework is find that person or their next of kin, and thanks.
HR:
That’s great. It’s great, we’re gonna do that, we’re gonna do that. That’s a very worthwhile, for lack of a better term, I’ll call it exercise you do.
MG:
that. And if you want to put the icing on the cake, is it. So if you’re listening in and you have an organization, you’re related to healthcare, and you want to deal with the burnout, and let’s say you’re doing, you know, and let’s say you have a few hours, or two and a half hour thing to work on burnout, what you really want to do is go through the sharing part of it. And the gratitude part of it tables depending I did it for 150 CEOs and South Bend Indiana some years ago after 9/11. And but what what we what we’re doing now imagine this is when you’re feeling grateful towards someone, take out your phone, and you’re going to on you’re going to do a video. Thank you. And the thank you has three parts. And we call this a power. Thank you. And the three parts are, this is what you did you acknowledge how they went out of their way to help you and they didn’t have to. And the third thing is you tell them what it personally meant to you. So if I was speaking to one of Max family, and maybe I’ll do this, I’ll say, you know, maybe you’ve gotten calls like this, and I was just on with with hackie reitman and we both love Mac. You know, your, your dad, your grant. Dad went to bat for me. You know, he took on the medical school because he saw that there was something in me that I didn’t see. You didn’t have to do that. He was a PhD. He took on all these MDs, and he stood up to them and say, we’re going to give this guy another chance. And I think your dad or your granddad saved my life, changed everything. And what’s great if you can have people send out a video like that. I will tell you within a half an hour people start getting text messages back. We did this once in people — we said, interrupt whatever we’re talking about if you get a text message back, and someone raise their hand and say so and so just texted me or so and so sent me a video and said, I just watched your video five times, and I can’t stop crying. So I think there’s ways to make connection Hackie, you know? Yeah. Can’t wait to see you get that hug. But I think we can be innovative.
HR:
Well I stand corrected. I’m open minded and I, I think, by the way, that I hope that you’re right, and that we can all embrace, no pun intended, embrace it, because we’re not going back to the way things were. It’s going to be a hybrid world. It’s going to be a world where a mixture of live encounters and lots of what we’re doing right now, and I think it’ll be part of humanity’s evolution to rewire ourselves, even though as you point out correctly, now it exists now, even what we’re, we’re doing now, community sharing, and empathizing, I guess is the word is Well, tell our audience where they can learn more about you and your multiple projects at this time?
MG:
Well, one thing I’m going to do, I’m going to try this trick, did it work. If you look on the screen, you’ll see a QR code. I have a techie who advised me helped me with this. If you scan that QR code, it’ll I think take you to a safari link, and that’ll take you to my website. So if you go to mark, it’ll take you to MarkGoulston.com. You’ll see my latest blogs, there’s something up there about the defeating self defeat course. And other things I’m doing. I also have a podcast that hackie was on My Wake Up Call. And that seems to be exploding. And I have some interesting people on I had a fella named Jordan Peterson on who people may know of, he’s this psychologist from Canada who’s very articulate, and, and today we posted to CEO of the Philadelphia 76ers, I said, Hey, your episodes up, the Lakers looked like they’re gonna fall apart. So I’m going to root for the 70 sixers Good luck today. So you can find my wake up call or use that QR code, or go to markgoulston.com or go and you go to Amazon, look up my name, you’ll see a bunch of my books.
HR:
Mac, Mac, is there anything else you’d like to cover we haven’t covered today?
MG:
Well, I’ll tell you– So if you go to the Himalaya course, himalaya.com/defeat, one of the episodes is called holding on to a grudge. And when you hold on to a grudge, it’s like there’s a saying it’s like swallowing poison and wanting the other person to die. And I collect quotes. And and there’s one quote that knocked all the other quotes out. If you’re someone who holds a grudge and you want to let go of it, because it’s eating you up. It come from a Doctor Shaunie Duperon in Project Forgive. And she said forgiveness is accepting the apology you will never receive. I’ll say that again. Forgiveness is accepting the apology will never receive. And if you can think of the people who you’d like an apology from. And if you think about where they were coming from, you’re going to discover that most of them came from fear and acted up. Most of them were not evil, bad people. They were frightened people they acted up. And but if you can, in your mind, accept the apology from them that you’ll never receive. And you can do this with people who have died. It’ll set you free.
HR:
That’s a good — that was worth the price of admission. That was a good one!
MG:
I just wanted to squeeze that in. So that’s part of the course. So I hope people will check out the course.
HR:
Okay. Well, Dr. Mark Goulston we’ve covered a lot of grounds. clinical assistant professor of medicine and Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA neurophysical Institute, your new book, trauma to triumph, your program on Himalaya defeating self defeat. And so many, many other things you got going on. It’s been a pleasure to have you yet again here at exploring them. From brains, we hope you’ll come back soon. Keep up all the great work with your books, your webinars, your training courses, everything you have going on. Good luck and thank you so much.
MG:
Thank you, you’re not going to be able to keep me away.
