12 Dr. Mark Goulston: Suicide Expert + More
“I am on this mission to really bring back empathy.”
Coming from a family where your only worth is what you do, Doctor Mark Goulston was feeling a whole new low when he requested to take his second leave of absence from medical school. Just as life seemed as though it couldn’t get worse, he was called into the dean’s office to be notified that he was getting kicked out of college. In that moment of worthlessness the dean was kind to him and told him that he had value, a goodness in him that they can’t teach in medical school, and a future. Doctor Goulston has made it his mission to pay it forward and to teach the world how to reach people in just the way that the dean reached him in a moment of true despair. Tune in as Doctor Goulston discusses with Jeff the plummet of being suicidal, masculine and feminine energy and its effects on cortisol, and his seven word technique of assertive empathy to break through the log jam of an addicted brain.
Highlights:
01:34 A man of many stories and accomplishments
08:18 What happens when you are suicidal
17:01 Masculine energy and feminine energy
22:57 Interventional empathy and the seven word technique
31:00 Dealing with the irrational and the impossible
36:38 People are hungry for oxytocin
Tweets:
Tune in as @MarkGoulston discusses with @TFRSolution the plummet of being suicidal, masculine and feminine energy and its effects on cortisol, and his seven word technique of assertive empathy to break through the log jam of an addicted brain. http://thefamilyrecoverysolution.com/ #family #recovery
Quotes:
37:32 “People are hungry for oxytocin. One of the reasons I think the world is getting worse is because oxytocin takes patience that people don’t have, takes compassion that people don’t have, takes tenderness that don’t have. People only feel those things towards their animals, towards their dogs. People have become increasingly emotionally shy and disabled from having intimate conversations. They look for release and relief in things. The internet for things, addictions. I am on this mission to really bring back empathy.”
41:41 “You have conversations with people, let go of your agenda. Let go of checking boxes. If you look into people’s eyes and say ‘Seven words. Hurt, afraid, angry, ashamed, alone, lonely, tired.’ And you look into their eyes, at least two of those words are going to be screaming out at you to be heard and you then you say ‘Talk to me about those.’”
Resources:
Dr. Mark’s Books
The 6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder For Dummies
Real Influence: Persuade Without Pushing and Gain Without Giving In
Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone
Talking to ‘Crazy’: How to Deal with the Irrational and Impossible People in Your Life
Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior
Connect With Dr. Mark
Website: http://markgoulston.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markgoulston/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkGoulston
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drmarkgoulston/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/markgoulston
Got ideas? Perhaps a future podcast? Schedule time with Jeff here: https://meetme.so/jeffjones
Transcriptions
JEFF: So welcome family. This is Jeff Jones with the Families Navigating Addiction and Recovery Podcast. And I’m very pleased today, my guest is Dr Mark Goulston. And he is – I’m not sure I pronounced that right.
MARK: You did well Jeff.
JEFF: It was an effort, but he is – I am just getting to know him. He’s written a couple books. He is an expert on a lot of different things. The name of the book that I see right behind him is called Just Listen. His other book is Get Out of Your Own Way and he’s an expert on suicide. So welcome Mark.
MARK: Glad to be or Jeff. Thank you for inviting me and hope we can both serve your audience.
JEFF: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. So, you know, I’d like to just start, if you could talk a little bit about just yourself so people could get a sense of you.
MARK: Sure. I’m a man of many stories and the majority of them are true. [laughs ]
JEFF: [laughs]
MARK: So, I’m a psychiatrist and I’ve accomplished a lot in life. When people google me, I’ll say: “Boy, he’s accomplished a lot in life.” But my greatest personal accomplishment is that I dropped out of medical school twice and finished. I don’t know anyone who dropped out of medical school twice and finished. And I didn’t drop out to see the world. I dropped out because I probably had untreated depression. What that meant is I was highlighting my books so they were all in yellow. And I could understand what I was reading, but I couldn’t really recall it, but I was somehow passing my courses. I’m not sure what I retained out of them. So, I took a leave of absence. And I went and did some blue collar jobs and I romanticize those jobs to this day because there were so simple.
They were – I would just go out and I’d be finished at 5:00 PM and there were no worries of the world on me. And yeah, I’m sure I’m over simplifying it because I probably was depressed. Let’s face it. I dropped out, but life was very simple. And then I came back in my mind, seem to come back at the level of doing blue collar work and when I came back the depression came back. I didn’t know it was depression. I just thought my mind blocked. And so, I asked for another leave of absence. And I met with the dean of the school and the dean of the school is all about fundraising. It’s all about money. And they lose money every time someone drops out and leave the space empty. Now I didn’t understand any of that, but I met with him and I don’t remember the meeting and I was pretty down.
I come from a family in which your worth is basically what you do, what you produce. And if you don’t do and you don’t produce, you’re not worth very much. Now, you know, not unusual. Parents were good parents. And my dad was a little on the harsh and critical side. And so I asked for a second leave of absence. And the dean of students who was a Irish Catholic in Boston calls me. And his name was a dean William McNairy. He was the dean of students. And he didn’t care about money. He cared about students. So, he calls me and he says: “Mark. This is Mark. Mark. You better come in here Mark. You got a letter from the dean. We better read this thing together Mark.” So I go in there and I read the letter. And the letter says, I’ve met from the other dean of the school who, you know, who’s the most powerful person says: “I met with Mr Goulston. We discussed alternate careers, perhaps the cello, I don’t know where that came from, and I’m advising the promotions committee that be asked to withdraw.”
And I’m in a low point, Jeff. And so I said: “What does this mean?” And dean McNairy, we call him Mac said: “Mark, you’ve been kicked out.” And I’m not the most spiritual person, but I think a miracle happened because when he said that, it was like a gunshot wound. And I know what a gunshot wound feels like because 10 years ago I had a perforated colon. I almost died from it. And he said: “You’ve been kicked out.” And I went: “Ohhh!” I looked down and I felt something wet on my cheeks and I thought I was bleeding. So, I just kept touching my cheeks and looking at my fingers. And I wasn’t bleeding. I was crying. And so imagine you come from a background in which, a fair amount of criticism. You’re only worth what you do and you are at this low point. Now, if he had said: “If I can help you, give me a call.” I would have said: “No. I’ll be okay.” And I’d probably go to my apartment and I might not be here today. You know, so I crater. But I cratered in the presence of someone who I now come to believe was an angel, a literal angel sent to save my life.
And so, imagine that background. You know, you’re cratering, I’m not thinking suicide yet. Well, I might have if I went back to my apartment. And this is what he says to you. He says: “Mark, you didn’t screw up. Your passing stuff miraculously, but you are screwed up. But if you get unscrewed up, I think this school would one day be glad they gave me another chance.” And so, I start to cry because he’s been kind to me. I don’t even understand what he’s saying. Compassion. And then he says: “Mark, even if you don’t get unscrewed up, even if you don’t become a doctor, even if you don’t do another thing the rest of your life, I’d be proud to know you.” That’s right.
JEFF: Wow.
MARK: And he said: “Because you got a streak of goodness in you that we don’t grade in medical school and that the world needs and you have no idea how much the world needs that. And you won’t know what until you’re 35, but you’ve got to make it to your 35 and up.” And I’m looking down and I’m just sobbing. I mean, he’s pummeling me with compassion. And he’s seeing value of future and goodness in me when I saw nothing. And then he said: “Look at me.” And he pointed his finger at me. And he said: “You gotta make it to your 35 for you to see how much the world needs you and you deserve to be on this planet. Do you understand me? You deserve to be on this planet.” And he pointed his finger at me. He said: “You look at me.” And he said: “You’re going to let me help you.”
JEFF: Oh my gosh! Oh!
MARK: And then he stood up to the entire medical school. I mean, he was just an anatomy instructor. And he stood up for me and something clicked inside me. So I understand to me, what suicides about. And some of the people listening, you know, have people in their family who have felt suicidal. What happens when you’re suicidal is you’re going about life, suddenly your future is taken away from you. And you feel stress but you can sometimes push through this stress and with difficulty, you can still sort of keep moving forward. But when the stress becomes overwhelming, it becomes distress. And if it would becomes distress, you do everything to kill the distress and you can’t focus on goals. You reach for those opiates. You reach for that alcohol. You reach for that heroin. You reach eating, you reach for that porn and you reach for anything.
JEFF: Right.
MARK: Because you can’t tolerate the distress. And everything you reach for maybe gives you immediate relief, but it makes your life worse. So you start to plummet. And so, you get that immediate relief, which is why you’re addicted to it because nothing else will take the distress away. And then what happens is you plummet. And not only have to deal with shame and guilt, you feel anxious. You feel depressed. You feel discouraged. And you know, I went on to become a suicide specialist, boots on the ground interventionists and I’ve retired. So, you know, people listening, you know, I won’t see anyone individually, but I am teaching the world how to reach people the way Dean McNairy reached me.
So, you’re falling apart, you’re depressed, you’re discouraged. And I’ve written, I wrote an article called Why People Kill Themselves: It’s not depression. And what I talk about is there’s hundreds of millions of people in the world whose depressed who don’t kill themselves. One of the reasons, one of the things they have in common at the end, and a lot of addicts, if they weren’t so busy just complicating their lives and scaring the people around them is that the moment they killed themselves, nearly everybody has despair. And if you break the word despair D-E-S-P-A-I-R into two words, it feel, it means you’re unpaired with hope.
JEFF: Yeah.
MARK: Powerless, helpless, worthless, useless, meaningless. And then when they all line up and your unpaired with all of them, you pair with pointless and you pair with deaf to take the pain away. So, my approach as a suicide specialists in recreating what Dean McNairy did with me and my mentor, one of my early mentors after Dean McNairy was the founder of the whole movement and suicide. His name was Dr Ed Shneidman. He was a suicidologist in UCLA. He co-founded the suicide prevention centers in Washington and Los Angeles. And he would see in-patients who needed to be discharged who was still suicidal, but they weren’t acutely suicidal, but you can’t keep them there forever.
And so, a number of the residents didn’t want to see them because there was still suicidal. So Ed would refer them to me. And very quickly I realized that if I sounded academic or pedantic and I checked boxes and I looked into their eyes, I wasn’t reaching them. And so I learned to let go of all that other stuff and reach into their eyes. And I’ll share an anecdote because, see my book Just Listen is really about how do you listen into people. And that’s driven and listening to two people. So even though you’re not talking Jeff, you’re kind of go: “Hmm. Oh. Uh.” So I’m getting through to you in some way.
JEFF: Yeah.
MARK: In some way, and this is different than just the conversation where I’m sharing information. So, I can see and the listeners won’t see, but on video, I can see. I have your attention. [laughs]
JEFF: You definitely have my attention. And so, I’m very thankful for, you know, the sequence of your story and your being able to share that. And I want to go back to that and you know, with your professor or dean or whatever and his ability to connect with you in such a direct way. And it’s like you are going to let me help you. And you know, really showering you with you are a worthy person.
MARK: Oh completely! And I’ll finish the sequence and if you go to that article, Why People Kill Themselves: It’s not depression. I talk about it’s despair. I put that up after Anthony Bordain killed himself.
JEFF: Yeah.
MARK: It went viral in five days. We got 500,000 views, 80,000 weeds. And I’m now speaking around the country on how to intervene with the people you love when they’re depressed and suicidal. So, but to finish the sequence that I went through and that you can find if you read that article, is when you’re plummeting and you go into despair, your mind literally starts to fall apart. I mean, your thoughts, your feelings and your actions. And there’s three parts of our brain that think, feel and fight or flight. They pull apart and you use words like, I’m unglued. I’m coming unglued. I’m wigged out. I’m out of my mind. I’m out of sorts.
JEFF: Yeah.
MARK: Reality, I can’t sort anything, you know. And so, we even use those terms in our cry for help. And then here’s what happens because I’m working with a number of veterans, there’s a point in what I call the not in control triad. When you plummet and if you’re a bit of a control freak, which many people are, the non controlled triad is when you’re feeling not in control. You begin to feel out of control. And the next step is after out of control is I’m going to shatter. And I’m going to lose my mind. I’ve never gonna come back. And this is when veterans, and I can’t tell you the number who have the same scenario and if you’re listening, addicts have the same thing, but these veterans that are looking down the barrel of a gun and they say: “God, give me a sign.” And what happens is they surrender. They surrender to God. They surrender to faith. They surrender to a higher power. They don’t surrender to people because people are flawed. People will say: “I’ll help you today.” And you get a busy signal. You can’t find them tomorrow. So, the act of surrender, when you feel the next stop from not in control to out of control is going to shatter. What happens is you don’t shatter.
JEFF: Yeah.
MARK: You surrender. And what happens is when you surrender and the people in 12 step programs who really get this higher power thing, they feel it.
JEFF: Yeah.
MARK: And what happens is you surrender into it. And when you surrender into it, you start to cry with relief and you cry because what happens is you peer with relief to your pain so you don’t have to kill yourself. And I’m a neuroscientist so I’ve got your wrapped attention, so I’ll froze some them because I sometimes have to talk to these, you know, tough nuts to crack academic things. I have to push some of this in. And what’s actually happening in your brain when you’re stressed out, you have a hormone called Cortisol. The adrenals secrete it when you’re under stress. And when cortisol goes up, what happens is there’s a part of your emotional brain called the Amygdala, and it’s your emotional brain. And what happens is as your cortisol goes up, the blood flow starts to go into your survival lower brain. So, it’s not even in your thinking brain. You can’t think anymore. And what happens is when it starts to go into your lower brain, your amygdala hijacks you away.
So, you’re in survival mode. And when the pain is awful, the way you survive the pain is by killing yourself. It takes it all away. And so your cortisol goes way up. Your Amygdala is way up. You can’t even access your upper brain. And what people don’t realize, and this is one of the reasons why female energy people live longer than male energy people. Male energy people and female energy when they’re under stress, their cortisol goes up. What happens to the male energy people, masculine energy people, because some women have masculine energy people. Men are more feeling and they have, you know, feminine energy.
And what happens is your cortisol goes up. You start to get paranoid. You withdraw from people. And if you’re lucky and you don’t give in and you don’t go to the path of addiction, you come up with a solution. You come back. You take the hill and that’s how you master it. But your cortisol stays high the whole time. And high cortisol over time breaks through the nerve cell membranes and breaks down nerve cells. So people who are addicted to power often as they get older, they start to not be able to think that clearly. And I’m not going to bring in politics, but there’s probably someone you know that you could say, you know, this is happening to someone you know.
JEFF: Right.
MARK: You know, the power gets to their brain. But what happens is, what feminine energy knows is the antidote to high cortisol is not to go away and then come back. It’s oxytocin. And so what happens is when you feel less alone and you bond with people, oxytocin goes up. Blood flow starts to go back to your upper brain. Your Amygdala settles down. You start to cry with relief. You feel less alone. You start to pair with people. And what happens is you start to come up with solutions because you can think. And so, what happens with Dr. Mcnairy is, he didn’t wait for me. He just stepped in there and said: “You’re going to let me help you.” So, he went into my mind and my brain and he connected with me. And so, he gave me a huge burst of oxytocin. The world needs you. You have value. You’re important and you don’t have to do anything.
JEFF: Yeah.
MARK: You’re capable of just be a good person and you’ll see how much the world needs you, but you got to live to see that. So, what happened is I was probably, you know, heading down, you know, down a black hole, but he just gave me a huge injection of unconditional love and value, whatever. And so it just switched me. So, that’s why I became a specialist.
JEFF: Yeah. Wow.
MARK: So you’re sort of tracking with this Jeff? Does this make’s any sense?
JEFF: Oh my gosh! I’m just, I’m getting chills as I’m listening. Chills and sweating. And, you know, I’m thinking so much about connection. Just human connection and the ability to, you know, really connect with another human being in a really deep way. And that’s like from your story. That’s one of the things that I’m getting and that dean or professor or whatever. His ability to one, you know, pair the fact that: “Hey, this school is kicking you out, with, you are a good human being, you know, and I am proud to know you kind of thing.” And then kind of not asking if he could help but telling you that he was going to help. And I’m just listening to your story. I can’t help think that he knew what was going on inside of your brain. And so the question was probably inappropriate, but the telling and staying with you and with that connection. Oh my gosh!
MARK: So let me give you some tips for you.
JEFF: Thank you.
MARK: So, you know, here’s some takeaways. So, apparently you didn’t fall asleep with me and you’re not texting [inaudible].
JEFF: [laughs]
MARK: [laughs] So, we’re good for at least a few more minutes. Interestingly, 10 years late. So what happened is I took another leave of absence because he stood up for me. He fought for me. And the promotions committee saw goodness in me too. I mean, I don’t know how he did it, but they saw, you know, this guy worth saving. And so, I went on and I didn’t even know what psychiatry was, but during that leave of absence, I went out to something called the Menninger Foundation, which was in Topeka. It’s now in Houston. And I went there actually with a thought: “Well, if I have a breakdown, I’m going to work at Topeka state hospital that just hospitalized me.”
But what happened is I seem to have some knack in connecting to people deeply, even schizophrenics. And Jeff, I wandered around because I’d never felt competent really for years. I remember going to the psychiatrist there and I say: “Is this legitimate?” They said: “What?” I said: “I walk. I talk with them. We walk around into the middle of winter and snow here in Topeka. And you know, I mean, this is nothing like medical school.” And they said: “No, mark, it’s legitimate and you have a knack.” So I thought: “Wow, maybe there’s something I actually can do in the world.” And this is September suicide prevention month. So, I have a full court press. I sent you a press release, an email and hopefully you’ll share that with people.
JEFF: Sure.
MARK: And when I give out is, you know, talking about despair, but something I’m hoping to do is to add something to suicide hotlines. But you, if you’re listening, you can use this with the people you love. And it’s what I call Interventional Empathy because what happened with that dean is he intervened with me with empathy, protectiveness. And when I couldn’t do anything, he said that: “I’ll do it with you and for you.” So, what Interventional Empathy is, and you can use this with your addicted family member, if you want to break through, get them talking. And you might sort of say, the worst thing that’s going on in your life. And as you listen, listen for four things.
And in my book Just Listen, and you can find out because Just Listen about how do you listen into people. How do you cause people the feel felt by you. And I just understood. And you live for things. You listen for hyperbole like, awful. “I hate my life.” You listen for inflection where they raised their voice and I talk loudly. Where you listen for adjectives, which is a way of embellishing a noun or adverbs, which is a way of emotionally embellishing the verb. So those four key things. Hyperbole, inflection, adjectives and adverbs all have emotional juice in them. So, whenever they say what they say, if they say something, what’s the worst thing that’s happening in this? “I hate my life.” And they go on. Let them finish and say: “Say more about the hatred life.”
So you focus in on those four things and they’re going to go what? And you can say: “Yeah. Yeah. Say more about the hatred life thing.” And then they’re going to open up even more. And so, in Just Listen, there are things called Conversation Deepeners, focusing on those words and saying, say more as a deepener. Another thing you can say to someone after they shared something is you go: “Really?” And they say: “Oh yeah, it’s a mess. Yeah, I don’t even know. I don’t think anything’s going to work.” So you do that to establish rapport. Don’t give them advice. Don’t give them solutions. Don’t say it’ll all be okay because what the message when you say it’ll be okay. What you’re really telling them is you’re making me nervous. You’re scaring me. And so in what they’re thinking is: “See, I told me, so I shouldn’t have told you because you don’t know what to do with me. Why did I even bring it up?” That’s what they’re thinking.
JEFF: Right.
MARK: And that’s why they’re tempted to say: “You know? Why do I even bother having conversations? Gee! I need my heroine. Gee! I got to get that hit because nothing helps.” And so what you want to do is to open them up, open them up, open them up. And then in this press release that I sent you, I’ve come up with a technique called The Seven Words. And it’s what I call a sort of empathy. So in the same way as the dean said to me, you’re going to let me help you. What you say to someone. So picture in your mind’s eye Jeff, that you’ve opened them up, you know, getting them talking. And then when you’ve opened them up, you want to confuse them. And break the lock in their head where they’re locked in the addiction. You say: “Seven words.” And they go: “What?” You say: “Seven words.” And they look at, you know, kind of a little angry, confused, but you’ve broken through the log jam in there. Their addictive brain, where it’s brain locked.
JEFF: Right.
MARK: And then you say: “Yeah. Hurt, afraid, angry, ashamed, alone, lonely, tired. Pick one.” And they pick one. And then you go in with the deep listening. “Yeah. Say more about that one. Ashamed. Yeah. Say more about that.” And then they talk about where they’re ashamed. And then as they’re talking, give me an instance of when that was at its worst. And what’s really interesting about this is when they bring up, when any of those words were at its worst, they re-live them with you. Something that they only lived alone. So when they’re very specific, get them to be specific, you know: “You know, well, I’m really, you know, the shame that I was really most ashamed after I did something. I told everyone I wouldn’t do it. And there I was doing it again and before we won’t fell there, I just felt this incredible shame, you know? And I was afraid because they were going to find out yada yada yada…” And you push them into detail. So tell me about the exact moment when you felt that shame. And when they tell you the exact moment, they re-feel it, but they re-feel it with you. And so, if you won’t push them with an answer, you give them a burst of oxytocin. And as they get a burst of oxytocin, they start to cry because they feel less alone. As they start to cry, they pair with you. The cortisol goes down, the agitation and the need to use goes down. And what happens is they start to feel relief based on connectedness.
JEFF: Bingo. Yeah. Oh my God.
MARK: Are you tracking with me Jeff in this?
JEFF: Oh my God! It’s beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. I am way tracking.
MARK: So the whole idea is with the assertive empathy. See, the parallel is if the dean had said to me: “Call me. If I can help you.” I would have had the false pride. “No, no, no. I’ll be okay.”
JEFF: Yes.
MARK: At the same way, I feel for people who want to manage suicide hotlines because you have to follow protocol. And it’s much different, you see, if I were to say to you: “Do you feel angry, Jeff? Do you feel alone?”
JEFF: Right.
MARK: What you’re feeling is the other guys checking off his check boxes. “Yeah. Okay. I feel angry.” But the point is, you know, what you feel like saying is: “Well, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist. I’m calling in on a suicide hotline. What do you think I’m feeling?” But you can’t say that because they’re asking you politely and you have to be polite. But that’s why if you go in and say seven words, it’s exactly like when the Dean said to me, you’re going to let me help you. And you go right into and they’re going to be feeling one of those things.
JEFF: Yeah – yeah -yeah.
MARK: And as they start to share what they’re feeling and you don’t rush them with a premature solution or advice, which just makes them feel, why did I open up to you? And it’s interesting. I’ve gone through this whole program with veterans. And there’s one veteran that I’m doing it with. And, you know, they’ve had PTSD and suicide, whatever, and I was doing one actually with an active military person. He’s a colonel in the army. And we were doing a zoom call and I was going through this protocol and that’s called The Road Back From Hell. So if people look up, like Why People Kill Themselves: It’s Not Depression. I have all these resources and links at the end of it, including infographics that show what I’m talking about. And I’m going through The Road Back From Hell with him, this picture. And his following all those steps that I mentioned to you in the surrender. As he’s listening, he’s closing his eyes and he’s crying and smiling and we finished. And I said: “What are you crying about?” He said: “Because I’m reliving all the awful stuff that’s happened in the war.” And I said: “What are you smiling about?” He said you’ve put it all together. I feel like a person.
JEFF: Yeah.
MARK: And I said: “What do you mean?” He said: “You don’t get it.” He said: “When you’re in the military or veteran and you have this mental stuff going on, they carve you up into billable procedures that don’t even talk to each other. And then when you get frustrated and angry, a moron you’re talking to says let’s throw an anger management just to be safe.”
JEFF: Yeah – yeah – yeah.
MARK: And I went: “Whoa!” I went: “Really?” And he said: “Yeah, welcome to our world.”
JEFF: And what you were doing is just connecting with, you know, genuinely curious and listening and connecting with him as a human. And he felt that. And he got that and it was so different.
MARK: Absolutely. So, now you help me because apparently, you know, I got you at a low and it got better after that. So, talk to me about how you see what we’re talking about could help families and people with addiction. How how does it fit?
JEFF: Yeah. Well, I mean, there’s definitely overlapped. And there’s so many different situations. There’s not just one but one that I’m, I mean, some very difficult conversations. Like years ago, I heard this story that, you know, a mom and her daughter. And her daughter is on heroin. The mom knows that. And the daughter can’t drive and wants the mom to drive her to a party. And the daughter says something like, or the mom is like: “Well, is there going to be heroin there? Are you going to do any?” And the daughter’s like: “Well, I might probably.” And the mom’s like: “No, I’m not going to take you.” And the daughter whips out a razor blade and threatens to cut her arm, right there. And says: “If you don’t take me, I’m going to cut myself.” And it’s like, wow, the level of pain. The level of manipulation. The level of – it feels like power. There’s power underneath there. There are powerlessness. And definitely for the mother, but there’s just –
MARK: This is monday morning quarterback, so can I give you a tip for that mother could use?
JEFF: Please.
MARK: Well, you liked these takeaways. You’re the one who told me, give me something we can use.
JEFF: Yes, you’re right.
MARK: So there’s something. So my most recent book, and again I hope the listeners aren’t offended, it’s not about mental illness, but my most recent book is called Talking to Crazy: How to Deal with the Irrational and Impossible People in Your Life. And it’s basically about how to deal with people who drive you crazy. I’m very compassionate about mental illness. I was a suicide specialist. People who are depressed, who suffer from bipolar, so it’s not meant to ridicule mental illness, but what it was meant to do is get people to be curious about the book. And what they discover it’s really about empathy. It’s about how do you go in and disarm people when they’re being irrational and impossible.
JEFF: Yeah.
MARK: They want to hurt themselves. So there is something an approach that I developed that the mother could have used. And it’s called Mediated Catharsis. And what that means is when you can give the other person awful words that they may be thinking, but they’d be afraid to say because they think it would upset you. But when you give them awful words to tell you and you tell them to tell them to you, you don’t get defensive because you’re mediating. They’re getting something off their chest.
JEFF: Right.
MARK: So I don’t know if I can use a swear word on this. It’s a podcast, but it will just make it more real. So what I would suggest that mother do in that instance is when she’s threatening to use the razor blade, I would look her straight in the eye and say: “Before you do that, honey, let’s try something else.” And you got to say it firmly, not angrily. And she’s going to say: “What?” “Yeah. Before you do that, I mean, you can always threaten me with the razor thing and yeah. And I don’t know what we’ll do, but let’s try something else.” So you’re taking charge. Let’s say what? And then you look right in the eye and say: “Honey, try this on for size. Just say this to me: ‘Mom, you don’t fucking get it. You’ve never gotten it. And Dad is even fucking worse than you. So I’m all fucking alone in this thing. And I can’t make the pain go away. And I need to do things to make the pain go away because when I’m conscious and cognitive and open. I just await to how, what a fucking loser I am. And so I’m going to go to this thing. And I’m going to find fucking relief because I’m not going anywhere in my life and I need relief. And if you don’t let me go, I’m going to cut myself because that will both give me relief and tell you fucking leave me alone. So honey, could you say that to me?'”
JEFF: Yeah. [laughs]
MARK: [laughs] And what will happen is when she says it, see you don’t get defensive because you’re giving her the words that she could never say. She’ll start to giggle. And she’ll giggle because she’s saying things she would never dare say. She’s using her words. Remember in kindergarten we told our kids, use your words. Well, the problem is we don’t give kids in kindergarten the words to match their feelings because we give them polite words instead of the raw emotion fields, which is, ‘I hate my life and I hate you too, mom.’
JEFF: Yeah.
MARK: When you give the words to your child to say those things, and see the thing is you’re not defensive. You’re inviting them into [inaudible] experience. And when they say I’m telling you, you can look them straight in the eye because you’re not getting defensive because you’re the one running the show.
JEFF: Yeah – yeah – yeah. Mark, that’s beautiful. That’s brilliant. And so so much, I see people kind of do this back and forth kind of thing. Where one person will say one thing, someone will hear it a certain way. They’ll become triggered before they even say anything. You can just see what’s going to happen and it just goes, I mean, once one listener actually gets triggered and it generally does not end well and like to break that pattern. And I’m assuming also kinda disrupt some kind of pattern in the brain, like I don’t know about the brain to the level of what you’re talking about, but I’m just curious.
MARK: What you’re disrupting is, see what’s happening is people are hungry for oxytocin. And one of the reasons I think the world is getting worse is oxytocin takes patients that people don’t have, takes compassion, that people don’t have, takes tenderness, that people don’t have. People only feel those things towards their animals, towards their dogs. So, you know, and people have become increasingly emotionally shy and disabled from having intimate conversations. And so they look for release and relief in things, you know. The Internet of things and addiction. And so I’m on this mission to really bring back empathy. I’ll share an incident with you that, you know, it seems like you kept your interest this long.
So, this is probably what generated Just Listen in this incident. So you got a sense of how a being McNairy got through to me. And by the way, 10 years later I said: “Why did you go out on a limb for me? You know, you just stand up against the whole school.” And he looked at me and he said: “Because 30 years ago someone did it for me. And so all I’ve ever wanted to do was help good people and you were one of the better ones.” So, I’m paying it forward. But there was one incident, you know, you talk about how do you get through to people. So I had a suicidal practice and there was one woman, I’ll call her Nancy. And she’d made three attempts before I saw her. She’d been in the hospital three months every year for four years. And I was seeing her for, I don’t know, six months and I didn’t think I was helping her at all. The only thing what’s happening is that she hadn’t made a suicide attempt and she wasn’t back in the hospital, but I thought I was getting nowhere. She really didn’t make any eye contact. And I used to moonlight once a month at one of the state hospitals in California. You do that to pick up some money, you know, and you cover for the other. And sometimes you were up 36 hours. And so I was up 36 hours in there. I see Nancy on a Monday, so I’m a little overtime. And so I’m in the room with her. She’s not looking at me and I’m looking out of the room and all the color turns to black and white. So I’m looking out in the room is black and white. And I go: “Whoa! That’s pretty interesting.” And then I start to feel very cold and I thought: “Oh my God! I’m having a stroke or a seizure.” I’m a medical doctor, so I do a neurologic exam on myself. I’m tapping my elbow. I’m tapping my knees. I’m looking at my finger and I’m saying: “I’m all here. I’m not having a stroke or a seizure.” I thought, I don’t know how it happened, but I am looking at the world through Nancy’s eyes and feeling like she feels.
JEFF: Oh my goodness.
MARK: Because I was disinhibited, meaning, you know, I was sleep deprived. This is what I blurted out. I said: “Nancy, I didn’t know it was so bad. And I can’t help you kill yourself, but if you do, I will still think well of you. I will miss you. And maybe I’ll understand why you had to get out of all the pain.” And I thought to myself: “Did I I think that or did I say that?” And then I thought: “I think I said it, and I just gave her permission. Oh my God.” And that was the first time she really looked at me. And she looked right into me and I said to her: “What are you thinking?” And I thought she’d say: “Thanks for understanding. I’m long overdue.” What are you thinking? And she looked right through me and she said: “If you can really understand why I might have to kill myself to get out of all the pain, maybe I won’t need to.”
JEFF: Oh my goodness.
MARK: And then she smiled and she gave up her suicidality. So, that in a bunch of other things thought me how to listen to people from the inside out. And I will tell you that I hope you get something from this Jeff, but I will tell you, you have conversations with people. Let go of your agenda, let go checking boxes. If you look into people’s eyes and if you say seven words, hurt, afraid, angry, ashamed, alone, lonely, tired. And you look into their eyes, at least two of those words are going to be screaming out at you to be heard. And then you say: “Talk to me about this.”
JEFF: Yeah – yeah. Oh my goodness. Wow. Wow. Beautiful message here. And I just keep going back to the human connection and the level and kind of like taking it to a deeper and deeper level. I guess one thing that I want to say is I have really enjoyed and appreciated the messages that you shared with this audience. And you know, the other is I am curious like, is there anything else you want to say before we close? And I’m going to ask how people can, like if you connect with people, it sounds like that’s not what you do or how they can get your books.
MARK: Well, what I would say to people, I think I just said it, look into the eyes of people and try to put aside your fear that they’re making you feel. If you look deeply into their eyes. And you look for any of those seven words, if you look for hurt, afraid, angry, ashamed, alone, lonely, tired. If you look into their eyes looking for that, you don’t have to be a psychologist, or rocket scientist, if you look for those things, they will see you looking for it. They will share it with you. And they feel less alone. And you can’t rush in. If there’s someone opens up like that and then you rush in, you know, because you’re anxious with some solution, they’re gonna feel like you got them to open it up and then you close them down with some sort of, you put lipstick on their pain. And you shouldn’t have done that. So that’s what I would say.
In terms of reaching me, go to my twitter feed at Mark Goulston, M-A-R-K G-O-U-L-S-T-O-N. At the top of it I have left a tweet and it’s about asking people if they’ve known of someone or known someone who died by suicide. I used the wrong language, committed suicide. And it’s become a compassionate community. There are not over 950 comments, about half of them just list the number of people they know who died by suicide. About 10%. talk about their own attempts. Some of them I’m probably going to do it eventually. And so it’s not a clinical thing. I just have people connecting to each other. It has 1.4 million impressions. So I’m building a compassionate community. And I just encourage people to reach out to each other, you know. And if you’re feeling worthless and usually worthless, people feeling self absorbed, what I say is go back. Go back to the comments and find someone who’s been in a tough place. And if we haven’t heard from them, comment to them and say: “Are you okay?” And a number of these people, hopefully they haven’t hurt themselves. Some of those people had to come back to you and say: “You have no idea how much is reaching out to me, made a difference.” And if you’re feeling worthless today, you’re suddenly going to feel worthwhile because you did that. So, I’m trying to grow that community. And also if anyone’s listening, and I do give talks and trainings on some of the stuff we talked about, you know, how do you reach people?
JEFF: Yeah.
MARK: And you don’t have to be suicidal to hopefully get some takeaways about reaching people. And so, you know, I hope people do that. I have a couple of websites, one’s MarkGoulston.com. And I don’t think of myself this way, but apparently I’m a thought leader. Whatever the heck that means on communication. And there’s actually a video of me, the highlights of me empathizing with the Russian audience. I spoke to them for six hours. And they made this highlight reel because they warned me. They said: “You know, don’t try to engage with them. You’re an American.” I said: “All I do is engage.” I did it for six hours and they made a highlight reel. So you can check that out. And again, I apologize, but I don’t see people one on one anymore. I’ve retired as a doctor. I wasn’t keeping up with all the computerized hipaa stuff. And plus I’m a psychiatrist and I don’t do medications. So, I want to help groups of people and people want to bring me into their schools, their high schools, their communities, universities, you know. People could help me if, you know, if they think I have anything worth listening to.
JEFF: Mark, well, thank you very much. I for one want to say, you know, I got a lot out of this myself, so I know that you have a lot to share with the world. I thank you very much for your time.
MARK: I’ll tell you, you’re a great listener. And I’ll tell you one of the things, one of the best things about you, Jeff, that you don’t know, and I got this in the first two minutes. People can trust you to not hurt them and you do it naturally, but a lot of people don’t have anyone like that in their life. And so, you’re also a blessing and a gift to the people you touch.
JEFF: Wow.
MARK: So take that one to the bank.
JEFF: Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it.
MARK: Well, you’re welcome. Okay. To be continued.
JEFF: Yes. Thanks.