"Think about your problems all time make your p...
You know, I never really considered that until your book. Until I heard the title of your book and I read the synopsis of it, I never really considered it. I never considered that thinking about your problems all the time and talking about your problems all the time literally make the problems grow. That's right. I mean, it's the number one symptom of depression is what they call rumination, this pathological obsessing over your pain. That's why stuff like exercise, that's one of the reasons, aside from chemical reasons, one of the reasons that doing anything, you know that running errands is good for your mental health, getting out of your house and accomplishing anything is good for you, but sitting around talking and thinking about your problems, that's a bad habit. And the best cognitive behavioral therapists and others, you know, the dialectical behavioral therapists, the ones who do really well with depression, the first thing they do is try to break that bad pattern. But a lot of therapists just indulge it. It's a luxury that's provided to you by a life that's fairly safe. You know, people that live in war-torn countries and have very difficult lives, they don't have that luxury of just sitting around all day and doing nothing and, oh, I'd go outside and run errands. That's gonna make me feel better. You're dealing with like real stress. That's right. And I think that there's an expression that someone told me once, and I say it all the time, the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you. If it's you got a dent in your car or it's your parents get killed in a car accident, either one of those things is the worst thing. Depending upon the level of whatever stress or anxiety or horrible things that you've experienced in your life, that sort of measure, that's your watermark for what you can and can't tolerate. That's right. And what we should be telling kids is that the amazing story of human history is of resilience. It used to be the case that people lost a sibling. That was common. People lost a parent, that still happens, right? These things still happen. And the amazing story of human history is that doesn't mean it's not painful, but of resilience, they get on. They aren't permanently suffering with mental illness or mental problem. They form families, they are responsible in their jobs, they show up for work, they can be dependent on by their friends. That's the story of human survival and resilience. And unfortunately, we're telling kids, no, you've had trauma. Yeah, yeah, you've had trauma and you need to work through that trauma. Right. It's not just, this is just a part of life. And what you need to do is just go out there and live your life and you'll get over it. And the thing is, the truth is that most kids and most people did. In other words, that didn't mean that dad didn't lose his job and they were forced out of the, they had to lose their house or these things happen. They've happened in every family. And I think one of the many reasons that kids don't know this today is we've cut them off from extended family. The story of their grandparents is a story of resilience in almost every case, right? You think of it, you hear about your family history and you're gonna hear a story of pain and survival and resilience and overcoming. But today you've got teenagers who say, oh, I can't drive past my middle school where I was bullied because of my PTSD. They don't have PTSD, but they think they do. And actually- What do they have though? If you are bullied, that does have a significant psychological effect on kids and it can lead to lifelong depression. I don't know that it can. I mean, sorry. Like for young people that like get treated like shit and told that they're nothing and useless. And that sort of like, I didn't really get bullied in high school, but I remember going back towards my high school when I was like 19 and I'd get anxiety. Right. I'd get weirded out by it, you know? Right. So let me just say, yeah. You start feeling like you used to feel when you went there. Absolutely. But that's not a PTSD flashback, right? What is that? That's a bad memory. And we have them. And by the way, when I say you can't have, you know, bullying can mean anything, right? So when I say, you know, I'm talking about teasing. I'm not talking about the horrific abuse that some kids have gone through. But do you have anxiety? Yeah. Anxiety exists for a reason. It's actually adaptive. And so there are benefits to anxiety and there are negative parts of anxiety. Now I'm not talking about anxiety disorder. We don't want anyone to suffer with an anxiety disorder that interferes with daily life. But a little anxiety feeling bad and a bad memory, that's not only part of life, but it can have positive effects. So some of the positive effects of anxiety is it helps with performance. If I weren't nervous for this, this right now, I wouldn't have prepared so much to make sure I remembered what I was gonna talk about. Right? And we don't want someone with no anxiety crossing a street because it's not gonna look for cars. Right. And we're going in with medication and we're deleting things like anxiety, depression. Anxiety helps you make beautiful memories. You remember Christmas morning because of all the nerves about it ahead of time. Or you remember your first kiss, partially because of things. That's why the memories are so clear. Right. And when we go in and we give kids a pill for that, not only are they not developing an emotional musculature they're gonna need as adults, but we're actually, they're losing a really important part of the human experience. Like feeling low because you were dumped and then seeing you can get over it. Right. That's a very important thing you just said about experiencing anxiety. It actually helps you be sharper. It does. It really does. You get nervous before you do things. That's right. That are difficult. It's just that uncomfortable feeling people avoid. Right. Because they get scared of the anxiety. But if you talk to like, like one of the best examples is UFC fighters. UFC fighters before they fight, they're all nervous, they're all scared. Every one of them, terrified. And they don't want to fight if they're not. Right. If you're too calm and too relaxed, you actually have bad performances. And I'll tell you something else, same is true with depression. Now I'm not talking about major depressive disorder that's chronic and needs treatment, of course. Right. But if you have something bad happen to you, you go through a divorce, you go through something hard. Okay. That doesn't mean you should never try, you know, use meds or therapy if you absolutely need it. But there can be good. And here's what can be good. Okay. Depression is adaptive. Okay. And the purpose, I learned this from talking to interviewing a lot of evolutionary psychologists. And one of the good things about depression is it shuts us down so we don't do anything rash. And we think about what change we might want to make in our life. Because sometimes we need to make a change. And if we just medicate away the bad feelings, the worst feelings might be dampened, but we also might be locked into that low state and never make the change we need to make. Right. Because we'll lose the motivation. That's the thing. We won't say, you know what? He treated me badly. I'm tired of this. I'm not getting back together with him. Right. You might just accept it and keep on. Right. Especially if you're medicated. Especially if you're medicated. That will to make a big change often happens after we've been brought low.
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