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Almost punishing yourself, you know: "I don't deserve to eat well and I don't deserve to eat the right things." Get you to be yourself, get your machine. Let's see what the machine's doing and let's change the coping strategies. But the key to this would be, so if I'm 30 odd, you know, and I've got low self-esteem, I'm 33, got low self-esteem, and I came to you, where would you begin with trying to help? And that low self-esteem was manifesting in abusive relationships, bad work relationships, very negative sort of feelings about myself, and maybe even some impulsive behaviors. I'm eating too much, around, I don't know, whatever. Where would you start with me?
Okay, the first, I mean, just so people say, oh wow, that's a strange start, but I'm a doctor, so the first is make sure you're actually okay. I'm okay, because if someone were presenting with this, it could be depression, and that can present in many ways. Typically it's low mood, loss of pleasure in everything, and loss of energy, but that doesn't have to be so. I mustn't miss that. So I would make sure your mind is not ill. You would only need treatment if that was the case. Now, we assume that this is long-standing, and what you're describing is a lot of maladaptive coping strategies. So "I eat too much," which is probably comfort eating, or it's just habitual stuff that you're not, you know, or it could be low self-esteem. I've seen this: you're almost punishing yourself. You know, "I don't deserve to eat well and I don't deserve to eat the right things, so I deserve to be overweight, or I deserve to look like this." So that could be the bottom of it. My starting point is exploration. But the key to this would be to move all that to one side. If you're in a reasonable place where you can actually communicate, I'll let you express it all. It's important you get it off your chest. If you've got it, you say, I don't need to do that. What I do is what I've seen in the book here, in a passage I explain: the starting point is get a blank piece of paper and write down who you want to be, what behaviors you want to have. Let's define what you want, not what you don't want, not what you're experiencing. Don't start with a treacle. I call that "the treacle start." Start with a blank piece of paper and write down the person you want to be. Do you want to be... I want to be really confident. I want to have a girlfriend or a boyfriend. I want to get married. I want to have kids. I want to work out every day. I want to eat really good food, right? So what you're describing now is the human system. The great news is, when I ask you the characteristics you've got, so I want to be calm, I want to be happy, I want to be confident, that is you. How do you know it's you? Because if we could surgically remove interference, a neuroscientific glitch, we can see functional MRI scanners. If we remove the chimp and computer system, then you're completely in control of yourself, so you would choose to be calm, you would choose to be confident. Therefore that's you. The human system can choose. What happens is, when you choose, the chimp system interferes or the computer interferes and shows the world someone who's not calm. So it's very important to recognize who you are before we start. Now we've got a list you're not going to write, like "no one ever acts anxious." No one says that. What I want to be is calm, collected, a good friend, of integrity. That is you, if we didn't have interference in the machine. So it's very crucial. This is the biggest point in the book: to define yourself. Now you've got self-esteem that can rise just on that alone. Once you've grasped it, like you say, wow, when I'm presenting, the world is interference, it's not me. If I didn't have this machine I would not have anxiety, because that's a system that you say, in the human system, can't do anxiety. It's not built to do that. It's built to be rational and calm. But what it wants to do, and how I want to present, is a choice. The chimp has no choice. The computer has no choice. The computer is programmed, but these are interfering and presenting to the world someone who is not you. So it's very important to grasp that concept. That's my starting point. Now we've grasped that, we build on that. So now I know who you are.
I'll say this: sometimes when you're with a friend and you've been chatting a while, maybe it's gotten late in the evening, you've got a lot off your chest and you've discussed it, you calm down, and sometimes the real you presents. Suddenly you feel at peace. People often say, "I don't know, it's just that I felt relaxed and thought, I've got perspective. I accept things are the way they are and I've calmed down." And then suddenly you see the real person, and they've got morals and values. Not every human is, sometimes the chimps are the good guys, sometimes the human's not nice. So I do get people who do not write, for example, who you are. They don't write compassion, they don't write integrity, they don't care. If I challenge, say, "You didn't put compassion," and they say, "I don't bother about that," then I have to work out who you are. So not everyone is going to write the same things. That's why I know it's you. We're not just working from a generic list, because someone could just be virtue signaling because you're asking me to do it, or because I want to be these people, but really I'm a burglar, I'm a bad guy, I want to hurt people. I'll tease that out, that's my job, because then you look at the evidence base, you look at remorse, you look at whether somebody compensates for mistakes. There's a lot of things I want to see in the history. Then I'll challenge that, and challenge it. So that's a series of talks. We often have a long time when we detain someone to explore this, so we don't get fooled. Is this you?
Your talk is referencing much of your psychiatric work within psych hospitals, yeah. So, somebody is psychopathic. Everyone's version of what it is is different. For me, a newer scientific understanding is that we know there are certain tracks in the brain that are not fully developed or don't function, and this produces someone without empathy, without remorse, without any conscience. These are classic. So I'm not a mind reader. I can't tell until people talk. Yes, they could deceive me, and I have to go on what they tell me, but I can listen carefully to the words they use, to what they're saying, and look at their past life events, and it starts to unravel. Eventually you think, okay, I know what I'm dealing with now. But to be honest, people don't do that with me. What tends to happen is I set a scene where I don't care what you write, I don't care what you want to do with your life. It's not for me. I'm not a judge. I'm here as a doctor to explore this with you and get insights for yourself. Most people are not psychopathic. We're decent people who've just got lost, because the neuroscience of our mind has tumbled us. So my starting point, when you gave me all this, was to say: let's write out the real you, let's start building ourselves on that, recognize what is not us, and let's start unpicking it. Let's start saying, right, why would you have low self-esteem? Let's look at why you have that first. It's natural and healthy. That can help people. Sometimes just hearing that, people say, "That's amazing, I feel better for knowing it's natural and healthy." Maybe that's rubbish and unhelpful, but at least I know it's healthy and there's not something wrong with me. Because the second you start saying, "Oh, I'm trying to please people and I can't say no," and you see that as being a weakness or a fault, we're in trouble again, because you're muddling yourself up with a machine. So that's my starting point: who are you, what's the machine doing? Anything the chimp does is natural. There's nothing you're going to give me, even if it murders someone. That's what chimps do, they're violent. So it's still illegal and not acceptable, but I'm saying everything is natural, and that puts us on a different way of looking at it. Again, to give context: natural isn't always good. Overeating is natural, but it's not good. Like the classic one I always use with parents and teenagers: I always say, if you've got a teenager who's got a tidy bedroom, that's where I want to meet. If they've got a messy bedroom, great, that's normal. You're more concerned with teenagers who aren't being teenagers. If you've got a teenager who never lies, then it's a bit worrying, maybe they're good at deceit, because teenagers are learning to lie and learning to defend themselves. It's a natural part of growing up, and it's not helpful, but the hope is they grow out of it. You've got to say what's natural and work with that to minimize risk or whatever we want to do. So there's a long-winded way of saying: get you to be yourself, get your machine, let's see what the machine's doing, and let's change the coping strategies, but accept the machine is the machine.
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