2022-12-06 Tue 13:42 PM ![[Pasted image 20221206203431.png]] Released November 14 2022 on Netflix. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81387962 - What's the first thing you ask a new patient? - The first thing you ask them is what do you want. Why are you here. - The average shrink will say, "Don't intrude on the patient's process; they will come up with the answers when they're ready." - That sucks. That's not acceptable. - When I got into psychiatry the model was "I'm neutral, I'm just watching, I have no dog in this fight." - It was a very slow process. - And it was a lot of suffering. - And you know me, my reaction will be, "Well then go fuck yourself. Are you kidding me?" - If I'm dealing with someone with depression like that, who's afraid they won't recover, I say, "Do what the fuck I tell you. Do exactly what I tell you. I guarantee you'll feel better. Guarantee, 100%. It's on me." - I wanted speed in this. - Not speed to cure somebody in a week. That's impossible. - But I wanted them to feel some change, some forward motion. - cf: [[Ref. Ragins 2016 - Person centered vs illness centered (recovery model)]] - > In the blackest times of despair what’s needed first is hope as a light at the end of the tunnel, some idea that things can get better, that life will be more than the present destruction. Without hope there’s no real possibility of positive action. To be truly motivating, however, hope has to be more than just an ideal. It has to take form as an actual image of how things could be if they were to improve. It’s not so much that people will attain precisely the vision they create, since realistically most outcomes are products of chance and opportunity more than careful planning. But is does seem essential to have some clear image, if people are to make difficult changes and take positive steps. - > To move forward, people need to have a sense of their own capability, their own power. Their hope needs to be focused on things they can do rather than new cures or fixes someone else will discover or give to them. It is often needed for someone else to believe in them before they’re strong enough to believe in themselves and to start focusing on their strengths instead of their losses. It also often takes some actual experience of success to really believe one can be successful. Waiting until someone is ready to move on can often be stagnating and disempowering, because “readiness” often occurs only in retrospect after something has been done successfully. - It gives them hope. It's like, "Oh, shit, that's actually possible." - So, what are the tools? - A tool is something that can change your [[State]], immediately, in real time. - It takes an experience that's normally unpleasant, then it turns it into an opportunity. - Jonah: Tools change your mood, and then just give you a sense of hope that that won't be your mood forever. It's basically a real-time visualization exercise you do in your head at that moment. - Phil: Yeah. So in that sense, I'm a teacher. I'm teaching the person how to use it and also teach them when to do it. - Jonah: So, before meeting you, my experience with therapy was very traditional. - In the sense of: I would be talking, and the person would say, "How does that feel?" or, "Interesting." Basically keeping me at a massive distance. - And I was thinking about how in traditional therapy, you're paying this person, and you save all of your problems for them, and they just listen. - And your friends, who are idiots, give you advice. Unsolicited. - And you want your friends just to listen. And you want your therapist to give oyu advice. - [[Life force]] - Here's the classic thing that happens. A guy's depressed, he comes into my office, and he says, "I know my habits are shit. I know I'm undisciplined, I know I'm lazy. But if I only knew what I was supposed to be doing, what my mission was in life, essentially, I'd be like I was shot out of a gun. But I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. So I'm nust going to be lazy and do nothing." - Then, from that, obviously comes the depression. - There's something that will apply to you and to anybody else who doesn't have a sense of direction or doesn't know what they should do next. And the answer is, you can always work on your life force. - The only way to find out what you should be doing, like who you are, is to activate your life force, because your life force is the only part of you that actually is capable of guiding you when you're lost. - If you think of it as a pyramid, there's three levels of the life force. - The bottom level is your relationship with your physical body. - All you gotta do is get your body working better. And it always works. The most classic thing is not exercising. Diet is another one. And sleeping. - The second layer is your relationship with other people. - Cause when people get depressed, it's not that they end their relationships. It's like a ship disappearing over the horizon. They start to get pulled back, away from their life. - And relationships are like — you know those things when you're climbing a mounting, pounding those pitons, it's like a handhold. So your relationships are like handholds to let yourself get pulled back into life. - The key of it is you have to take the initiative. If you're waiting for them to take the initiative, you don't understand. - You could invite somebody out to lunch that you don't find interesting. It doesn't matter. It will affect you anyway, in a positive way. That person represents the whole human race, symbolically. - And the highest level is your relationship with yourself. - The best way to say it is to get yourself in a relationship with your unconscious. Because nobody knows what's in their unconscious unless they activate it. - And one trick about this is writing. It's really a magical thing. You enhance your relationship with yourself by writing. ([[Why do I want to write]]) - Some people will say, "Write what? I'm not interesting. I'm not a writer." It doesn't matter. If you start to write, the writing is like a mirror. It reflects what's going on in your unconscious. And things will come out if you just write in journal form. That you did't know that you knew. - ![[Pasted image 20221206204451.png]] - Jonah: So what percentage of that stuff is what makes you actually feel better at first? - Phil: Well, when it starts out, it's probably 85%. It's very high. - Jonah: when I was a kid exercise and diet was framed to me as "there's something wrong with how you look."" But never once was exercise or diet propositioned to me in terms of mental health. - These are the three levels of the life force. If you're lost, don't try to figure it out. Let it go and work on your life force first. - It's about passion. Increasing your life force so you can find out what you're really passionate about. But step one is to be passionate about connecting to your own life force. And anybody can do that. - Jonah: If I just do that pyramid, everything else seems to fall into place? - It will. Everything else will fall in place. - Jonah: So how do you come up with this stuff? - Well, I once had a supervisor — I was very young. I didn't even have my own practice yet. I'm talking to people about what happened 30 years ago in their life. Or what was the cause of their problem. They would walk out the same way they walked in. Feeling like shit and basically hopeless. - So I said to him, "Is there anything we can do so that they can feel better, feel something at least, sooner?" - And the guy says to me, "Don't you dare," he says. - It was like somebody who fundamentally didn't understand the human condition. - I said, "Wait a minute, we have to do something right at the moment. It doesn't have to solve all their problems, but you have to give somebody the feeling that they can change right now. I didn't want people walking out of my office with nothing." # [[Journal section]] ### 2022-12-06 Tue 14:05 PM - 2022-12-06 Tue 14:05 PM - Lot of interesting things coming up while watching this. Things like - being a therapist as a man - giving advice as a therapist — many therapists say don't do it; Stutz says that under certain circumstances he'll say "Do what the fuck I tell you." - State chasing and non-pathological intentional action directed toward state change ([[What's wrong with state chasing]]?) - Taboos, and why they should be fucked [[Fuck taboos]] - The strategic shittiness of many growth modalities (Buddhist passivity — you'll awaken in 7 lifetimes, Freudian be nothing but a mirror) - Related to [[Shift]] and [[AI-assisted therapy]] - If the [[Dodo bird verdict - everybody has won, and all must have prizes]], then all this stuff about "tools" would be wrong. What's really happening is something more like he has a really compelling personality; he really believes in his stuff. - But on the other hand, I find this tools approach quite compelling. - Therapy is probably like learning music in a certain way: you have to do the experiential stuff, but you also have to learn some theory. Not all therapists have strong theory, and not all of them see it as part of the work to get the client to learn psyche theory. - [[Faith]] and the practical/prudential/non-alethic reasons to have it.