i was a professor at the santa barbara
graduate institute and enjoyed this
essentially i was working with masters
and phd students uh what do you think
when you hear when you read this uh what
we call hadith every athlete goodness is
charity even if it is just a smile when
a man loves his brother he should tell
him he loves him that's what i've
observed with muslim people that i've
known that's my own limited
understanding of islam so another one
here is
uh allah just simply means god the
creator who's wise and prescient has
many of the things that i've heard
muhammad say are this is the dean show
welcome to
your host how are you guys doing every
week we got an exciting guest and this
week is no exception
so we have dr
keith witt who's a licensed clinical
psychologist teacher and author
who has lived and worked in santa
barbara since 1973.
he has conducted over sixty five
thousand therapy sessions and published
eight books
presentations in the us and
internationally dr keith has explored
love therapy interpersonal relationships
and development from multiple
perspectives
weaving neuroscience integral theory
wisdom traditions and numerous forms of
psychotherapy in a coherent cosmology of
love and healing
and he's also
a shotokan
karate black belt
how you doing
dr keith with how are you doing very
well i'm happy to be here with you today
i'm happy to be with you also forget
about all the the big resume there what
about tell me about this karate shotokan
you know that was that was my
introduction to spirituality when i was
15.
um
i
i had my family was going through a very
difficult time
uh there was a lot of emotional upset
and alcoholism and my parents committed
me to a hospital
and then in 1965 what they did with
teenagers is give them electroshock
therapy
so they gave me electroshock therapy and
in that hospital at 15
i decided i needed to go deep and ask
myself
how do i want to live in this world
and what i wanted was to be a healer and
a warrior
and so when i got out of the hospital i
began studying psychology and shotokan
karate
and i had a black belt three and a half
years later and i had my first license
10 years later
and shotokan karate was my introduction
into spirituality
wow many people i like what's that
warrior and a healer wow this is uh this
is deep and many people they've kind of
forgotten about you know some of these
um you know traditions in the martial
arts you know developing good character
integrity and a lot of these traits that
help you through life yes absolutely
so would you recommend in your in your
field uh would you recommend this you
know different life hacks of things that
you can do would martial arts be one of
those things that you recommend
everybody get involved in not everybody
i don't recommend anything for everybody
because we're all different and unique
yeah if if someone is is delighted with
the practice of a martial art
whether it's karate or tai chi or aikido
or
kendo or any of any of them
if it delights you to practice if the
philosophy moves your heart then do it
and
find something else that delights you
and moves your heart a lot of my
teachers are out there in california
because i'm also involved in the martial
arts i've been also doing this for quite
a while but yeah you do
i'm i teach also a gracie brazilian jiu
jitsu oh
gracie the best jiu jitsu in the world
gracie jiu jitsu
yeah so the brazilians uh many of them
which we've learned from the gracie
family you know many of them uh they're
used to the nice weather in rio and
brazil so
it's
yes in california kind of matches that
you know i was a wrestler in high school
and the great thing about uh gracie jiu
jitsu is that you can do all the things
in jiu jitsu that you that we weren't
allowed to do when we were wrestlers in
high school it's
it's just
it's a wonderful it's a wonderful
probably the best grappling system
that's ever been developed
right don't get me started on wrestling
wrestling i mean
tremendous work ethic is built oh yes
and it's it's amazing some of the
hardest workers out there you know are
wrestlers yeah no matter how hard i
worked when i was a wrestler i didn't
feel like i was working hard enough
yeah yeah and that's another thing that
just can carry you on with life yeah uh
yeah so now tell me with all of you
you've been doing this for 40 40 years
huh yeah yeah about that
yeah so one part of your resume there it
talks about this uh in
interim
theory this developed by was it ken uh
wilbur and wilbur yes
yeah and what was i found interesting is
this is more like it seemed like a
holistic approach because putting many
of the different things together not
excluding the mind body and soul and
spirit yes
kind of goes you know a little bit away
from the the mainstream you know which
is just kind of pushing pharmaceutical
drugs oh god
don't get me started on pharmaceutical
drugs
um in a rule i discovered in a girl in
my 40s
um
it's a it's a meta theory it's a it's an
understanding of the universe that has
pure science and empiricism on one side
pure spirituality on the other
and it's it's a structure that
integrates both of those into a way of
being in the world doing your work
understanding the cosmos
understanding your spiritual connection
to other people and to god
um
it's just was so exciting to me it woke
me up and
and every single one of my books is
informed by integral theory and is is
taking some aspect of of the world that
i think is important for people to know
[Music]
and
expanding it through the integral system
uh and offering it to people in ways
that hopefully help them live in love
better and grow better so we have some
prophetic traditions that i just wanted
to get you you know to comment on
certain key words that from these
quotations how you see
them you know through your eyes as a
clinical psychologist you know
somebody's because you talk about love
you know this is you know a guiding
force there and much of your therapy and
some of these other
um
uh quotations and teachings probably
maybe maybe you have maybe you haven't
ever been exposed to so i just want to
get your honest feedback and
since you're more of an open-minded you
know therapist and see what you think
sure
sounds great every afternoon witness is
charity even if it is just a smile
this is a quotation by prophet muhammad
so
what is your you know this is
emphasizing you know charity is
something that's so important in islam
but now
even the point of smiling
in someone's face you know
how important is this smile so i'm
focusing on smile you know if people
read that then uh what's his name from
how to win friends and influence people
and many other great thinkers you know
what do you think when you hear when you
read this uh what we call hadith
we have tremendous effects on each other
as human beings every single one of us
and so when you pass someone
there's a there's an a relationship
if you meet someone's eyes there's a
relationship that's instantaneously
formed
and if you offer them love through your
smile
then they're enlivened um they're healed
a little bit
and we all have the power to do that
and i think that the more that we grow
the more we feel every sense of
responsibility
to give that gift all the time
and i i think that that's that was wise
and prescient as
many of the things that i've heard
muhammad say are
uh also you've heard of prophet muhammad
well of course i
you know i don't know much about islam
i've studied all the religions uh
they all have so much to offer
uh it's it's a lot like the martial arts
you know when you get to the the highest
practitioners of the martial arts they
if they sit around together the
different martial arts artists will
agree to agree with each other
of the wisdom teachers that i've known
if you get them all together
they say well
we agree
we agree that there's one race the human
race and that there's one injunction
let's
let's do our best to serve god through
our life um
and so
that's something that it seems to me
that the wise people i've known of all
agree read about
moving on to the next one
a statement when a man loves his brother
he should tell him he loves him now this
can be for the also it doesn't mean
necessary for just a man this is also
for both man and woman and you talk a
lot about love yes i do
and what i mean by love is feeling at
one with um
and this particular one
many of us for a variety of reasons grow
up feeling separate from other people
and so
and we feel inhibited sometimes letting
other people know how we feel
if you feel love for someone at any
point i think that it's wonderful
and healing to share that
how do you balance that i'm guilty of
both like not doing both times because
i'm usually in a deep state of thinking
reflection so sometimes people will
comment like you know i'm the program
i'm just doing what i love so i'm
smiling i'm happy but some you know i'm
on off i'm just really in a in a deep
state of just a lot of times reflecting
i'm very you know
my mind is thinking a lot and whatnot so
sometimes i'll get criticized like where
you know where's your smile so i got to
remind myself
uh
what do you how do you balance that now
because i don't want to be fake you know
i just feel like if i'm just putting a
smile i don't want to feel like i'm
being fake well of course not it's
you know we go back and forth between
being connected with other people and
being more inward connected with our own
selves
and we have so much
that we're having to deal with every
moment as human beings
there's material material flowing up
from our unconscious what i call shadow
our adaptive unconscious
all the time
feelings stories impulses
memories ideas
and so
uh how we deal with that determines how
we move through the world i write a lot
about the that in my book shadow light
and so sometimes when you're caught up
inside yourself you're you're not really
connecting to the outside world now if
other people see you like that and
they're used to having to be engaged and
smiling
they might worry they might go oh no
he's mad at me
he's he doesn't like me
uh
and so they'll they'll interrupt in a
way and they'll say well
are you are you having a problem and
and then again you respond no i was
having an inward moment
and as you look at them and connect with
them then that connection that energetic
connection that we all have gets
reestablished and then your warmth is
communicated again
and you know people
we are insecure it's very difficult to
grow up and be a human being and so we
we often will feel insecure with other
people and when that happens if we talk
about it with each other with open
hearts we can resolve it
beautiful thank you for sharing that
with us here's the next one
and i want just to relate like how these
were kindness so the one here is about
kindness so we went from the first one
to smile you know talking about the
importance of that and this being
mentioned in the prophetic traditions
and then we had the the second one about
you know being open to um
you know sharing your love for someone
uh let me just touch up bet going back
to that because as men you know we're
kind of more reserved right right so in
your therapy sessions do you do you tell
like let's say the brother to tell his
brother or you know um how do how do you
uh relay that in actual in your therapy
sessions like being open about your love
towards your family member or someone
close to you
your wife or because i'm generally quite
transparent
about yeah about that
um
generally
uh whatever is going on inside of me
will be shared with someone else i think
kindness is huge
you know i've probably done somewhere i
don't know 25 35 000 sessions with
couples
okay
and
inevitably if there's a problem with a
couple
i mean
almost every single time
is because someone has forgotten to be
kind
and when couples start trying to be kind
to each other good things happen
when parents start trying to be kind to
their children good things happen when
children start trying to be kind to
their parents
good things happen so another one here
is
uh allah just simply means god the
creator
uh is kind and he loves kindness in all
matters
well first of all it reminds me of the
last line
of one of my favorite books a book of
five rings by miyamoto musashi that was
written in 1645 about the way of the
warrior
and in it he said in in the void is
virtue and no evil
wisdom has existence
principle has existence the way has
existence
and spirit
is nothingness
in other words
in the void there's no evil
um
that that if we're open to the infinite
that what comes through us is kindness
become and and understanding
i i wanna i wanna just also kind of uh
you were talking about what's in your
mind and you being transparent i want to
be transparent with you also is because
one of the main reasons that we do the
dean show is to dispel many of the myths
and misconceptions and help to bridge
you know the gap of misunderstanding
because the media really hasn't done a
good job of doing that and most people
when you do surveys they know nothing
about islam or muslims and a lot of
times their opinions are formed by the
misinformation that's put out there by
the media and this creates division and
humanity fear and then fear leads people
to doing unreasonable
things and they end up a lot of times it
can lead to uh violence i agree so
yeah so by doing many of these programs
we tried to bridge that gap of
misunderstanding and to really show what
islam is about and connecting you know
with our fellow humans in humanity right
so this is kind of just to see the other
side because you don't see the media
talking about some of these beautiful
core teachings
that were brought by
prophet muhammad by god almighty oh yeah
you know i have an aunt and uncle
dorothy nelson and james nelson who's
recently died he died several years ago
who were very very central figures in
the baha'i faith and they're the ones
that showed me the quran for the first
time
um it's a in the baha'i faith the quran
is the sacred text
and they said it's beautiful keith and
they were right
you know
that
people grow through stages and and i and
also traditions grow through stages at a
particular stage of development when
people have a self and other orientation
and a sense of threat
um then that sense of threat and that
suffer another could lead to violence
that's true for every tradition but if
people grow
they grow towards a sense of unity with
everyone in a sense of of experiencing
god as a fountain of love and kindness
that's what i've observed with muslim
people that i've known that's my own
limited understanding of islam and
that's that's been my experience
yeah so the islam has uh two main
sources that it goes by the quran which
we say is the verbatim word of god
almighty uh allah the creator and then
you have the authentic um statements
prophetic statements of the last and
final messenger we say was sent to
mankind muhammed peace and blessed be
upon him
uh which by the way muslims believe in
all the proceeding the messengers that
came before him jesus moses abraham and
we believe that they all came with the
same message worship one and only one
god and be morally upright yeah so
here's another one be kind whenever
kindness becomes a part of something it
beautifies it whenever it is taken away
from something it leaves a tarnish this
is another um unkindness so in your
therapy sessions
do you see
one party or the other or both sometimes
like you said lacking you know this
essential quality of kindness well yeah
well you know
when we're frightened
when people are threatened feel
threatened okay now feeling threat isn't
the same as being threatened just
feeling threatened
uh if somebody appears in a way that
scares you or says something that
triggers a memory or something
what happens is your nervous system
starts protecting you and what it does
is it creates a state of consciousness
that separates you from the other person
and gives you impulses to fight or run
from that other person those are called
defensive states
and they happen often
and if you're aware of that you can go
i'm in a defensive state and you go so
what's what's the compassionate
understanding of me and this other
person but if you're not aware of that
then you'll end up instinctively telling
yourself stories that that that support
fighting with this other person or
running from this other person um and
you lose kindness when you do that
and so one good hook for some people
is to notice when they're not feeling
kind and then go wait a minute let me
anchor myself in kindness again
sometimes that works but like i said
earlier nothing works for everybody
everybody has their own path forward
uh i believe earlier i don't know if you
said something about race
and i just thought about this prophetic
tradition that talks about the white has
no superiority over the black and black
has no superiority over the white
except in piety and good action you know
this is something in today's day and age
where you have a lot of still racism
that's uh afflicting us
and yes yeah i remember and also men and
women masculine and feminine my aunt
dorothy when she was teaching uh she
would always use the metaphor the two
wings of the dove she said the masculine
is one wing the feminine is the other
and you know you need both wings to fly
um and i think that's true for the whole
human race too
uh
you know it's just we're one we're we're
one uh but again when people are
threatened they tend to see a self and
another and that's with an individual or
even with a group
and when those threats happen that's
when the bad things happen in the world
that's when the bad things happen in
relationships and to the extent we can
catch those things and adjust to
compassion
things happen
uh i want to focus on this uh next one
self-control self-restraint it seems
that it was once a forgotten place in
the center of psychology a turning point
uh was triggered in a
now famous study by walter
uh mesquel
yeah it was the the
the famous marshmallow experiment yes
the marshmallow study where they offered
one
marshmallow now or two later to go ahead
and test the ability of delayed
gratification uh you know dr ellen uh
galinsky also she concluded from
so many reviews of thousands of studies
that's the seven essential life skills
for children to reach the full potential
and the number one was that self control
that's right then you have the world's
most prolific uh psychologist dr roy
boy mister from the florida state
university
you know he talks about in his book um
willpower success intelligence and
success um i'm sorry self-control being
at the top so can we talk a little bit
about that self-restraint self
self-control there's one here prophetic
tradition that talks about the strong
person's not the person who overcome or
powers one with adversities or takes
them to the ground or cannot wrestle him
and some other narrations talks about
but a strong person is the one who
contains themselves when they're angry
yes
so this is more complicated than it
sounds
and the reason for that is that we're
all born with different temperamental
uh capacities and types
for instance um
self-control is highly uh correlated
correlated with conscientiousness
some people are born with more capacity
for consciousness some people are born
with less capacity for conscientiousness
and so i don't want people to judge
themselves if they have more difficulty
with self-control
um or go yeah i have i i have it's easy
for me to do self-control and it should
be easy for everyone
what we can agree about is that
self-control that that self-observation
and then that ability to pause before
action
um
and and then make a good choice is a
good thing it's a healthy thing
and so what you do with children and
what you do with people is you start
where they are wherever they are in
their capacity to self-regulate um
whether it's their emotions or their
behaviors
and you go okay
we start where you are fully accept
where you are and now let's move towards
better affect regulation better
willpower self-control you know
biomaster in his book on willpower
quoted a number of studies not just the
michel studies but but other studies
that have been done over the years on
how we can learn self-control how we can
learn affect regulation
and all of them are based on an
understanding there's a directionality
to this
in other words
when we're talking about willpower we're
talking about being able to make healthy
choices we're talking about regulating
emotion affect regulation we're talking
about being able to keep ourselves in a
certain level of arousal and with a
certain compassionate attitude towards
other people
so that we can
have good relationships and we can
function optimally as individuals
and so some of us we have to work harder
at it some of us don't have to work so
hard
that's just the way humans are
and so that's
psychotherapy coaching
spiritual work
all of it involves
accepting who you are at this moment and
then as fast as you can whatever your
rate of growth is growing towards these
qualities of kindness effect regulation
self-control that we know are good for
human beings capacity to love to express
love all those things
uh you write about
um
something to the effect of we all
go crazy or we lose it um at times
everybody go crazy sometimes
everybody goes crazy sometimes
so how do you like can you um
articulate a little bit more into that
like what what what do you mean
i know what you mean but for our
audience like oh i understand that i
think i know what you mean yeah i i
think you do you know when i talked
earlier about those defensive states
um
those defensive states when we feel
threatened by another
and that and our unconscious
sets that sta that's stayed up
that's a powerful
um
state
you have amplified or numbed emotions
uh you have a distorted story
you have the diminished capacity for
self-reflection and empathy
you have destruction destructive
impulses
this happens to us when we feel
threatened so when that happens and if i
indulge those destructive impulses
if i elaborate on that negative story
you're bad because of this oh and let me
remember another reason why you're bad
um if i stay disconnected from you and
don't reach for understanding of your
heart if i stay disconnected from myself
and don't go keith you're in you're in a
defensive state if i don't do those
things then i'm going to to basically do
damage i'm going crazy
now there's little bits of going crazy
um what i call normal crazy and then
there's big bits of going crazy which i
call extra crazy and extra crazy is
particularly dangerous okay
normal crazy is honking your horn at
somebody because they're not going fast
enough
extra crazy is stopping your car and
punching them okay
normal crazy extra crazy you know or do
it
jumping out and doing some shuttle con
on yeah oh god you know you know
you know one thing they discovered with
martial arts which i love
is you know guys that used to get in
fights a lot when they start studying
martial arts to get in fewer fights what
that's true
so true people don't understand martial
arts is way more about control
self-awareness and self-control than it
is about violence and aggression
so if you got like so many kids and you
know it's driving the mother crazy and
she loses it you know don't hold that
against her huh of course right now so
or if the or if the the husband comes
home
and he had a long day at work whatever
the case obviously is not being violent
physical but you know sometimes like you
said we make excuses for each other you
say you know but don't the thing is
where sometimes a person will lose it
uh and i'm not talking about going to an
extreme violent crazy but someone might
you know who's normally doesn't uh utter
profanities or normally is in line with
good moral character but then they just
lose it and then you want to hold that
you forget about there's a statement
from a from a very um prestigious
scholar in islam he talks about you know
when a man does some a man can do 99
good things then he does one bad thing
and you want to hold him to that one bad
thing
well i've said similar things and i said
it to men often
yeah and never mind 99 100. you can do
you can do
909
999 minutes of good acts
and you do one minute of emotional or
physical violence and you will be
defined by that minute of emotional and
physical violence by other people
now there's reasons for that we're wired
to be aware of threats and to avoid them
this is this is deep in the human genome
and so knowing knowing that it makes us
can teach us that as we get distressed
angry or frightened instead of
surrendering to our impulses we can slow
down and question our impulses
uh i have less instead of being more
certain of our hostile beliefs
we can become suspicious of our house to
believes i don't really trust what i
think if i'm super anxious if i'm
frightened or if i'm angry i don't
believe
that the thoughts that i have of the
stories that i have
are true stories i think they're
distorted i don't trust them until i can
have compassion and understanding of
those stories and then i tend to have
and then i'll have more faith
and when i'm working with couples and
when i'm working with individuals or i'm
working with kids or i'm working with
families i teach them this
you know so you make a mistake fine
let's limit the amount of damage
let's heal from it but also let's learn
from it
um if you're not learning from your
mistakes then that eventually erodes
your relationships with other people
and so it's it's it's
it's not just forgive yourself for your
mistakes we need to learn from them and
grow from them and if if we're doing
that in relationships that makes us safe
and makes it easier
to forgive each other
if we're not learning from from our
mistakes then eventually the people that
are close to us will leave us um
because it'll be too frightening for
them for us not learning
in psychology i don't know how long this
term there's some new terms that have
been developed and coined and uh one of
them that comes to mind is narcissism
narcissists so can you help define these
terms this word and what are some of the
signs of that and also so someone if
they have one is it are you classified a
narcissist if you have one or three of
those signs or is this something kind of
um you know open to interpretation and
at the end in the essence of trying to
avoid you know falling into being uh one
of these
well
first of all
there's lots of different um
uh uh
definitions
of narcissism
um the the definition in the diagnostic
manual of psychology
has there's a series of characteristics
of being manipulative
being self-absorbed feeling grandiose
feeling entitled and to the extent that
it interferes with your relationships in
your life and then that according to the
diagnostic manual that's pathological
narcissism now you got to remember that
that diagnostical manual was created the
first time in in the early 50s just so
that
psychiatrists could build insurance
companies i mean
that's why it's there you know all those
caring those those characteristics are
just descriptions
of characteristics that people have said
okay this makes this this means
something
yeah wait help help me help us
so i'm understanding that correctly so
this uh term was coined in the 1950s
yeah yeah well earlier than that
earlier than that he was coined
um sigmund freud when he was uh coming
up with his understanding of the
unconscious
encountered people that were chronically
uh self-absorbed selfish and entitled
and he said that that and he saw that
interfering with him and he said that
was narcissism
now
also later on
some of his students melanie klein among
them when they were looking at kids they
realized when a child is about 10 or 11
months old
that child feels like they're the
greatest thing in the whole world
everybody's been just loving them for
nine or ten months
anything they do has been wonderful and
so that's called primary narcissism and
that's really healthy you know we want
10 and 11 month old kids to feel like
they're god's gift to the world
now now in the next year those kids will
learn that they have to adapt to culture
but you want them to keep that sense of
i am a good person and i am a united
instrument of god in uh in the world and
that's that's healthy narcissism that's
a healthy sense of myself as somebody
who has the power to to help or to hurt
and i want to help
and so that's part of the complexity
here's another thing that's part of the
complexity
in the last hundred years one of the
things that
in the world is it's become more and
more acceptable to be a unique person
people get much less
attacked
or
hurt for being different in today's
world and this has happened rapidly
particularly over the last 70 years
so part of that has been instead of
learning how to can
primarily conform to the cultures around
you
what you see particularly in western
parenting is we want to find out who you
are as a child and we want you to be the
best version of yourself
now this is mostly a healthy thing but
also when you start having a culture
that says well we need to have less
conformity to cultural standards and
more personal like being the best
version of yourself it tends to create a
lot more narcissism at certain stages of
development and we've seen that with
college students with teenagers the
levels of narcissism at that stage of
development have gone up gone up a lot
now if those kids keep growing they
become less entitled and less less
feeling less superior and special and
they start feeling more of a sense of
everyone has something to offer
including me they become more honest
they become more humble if they keep
growing but some people don't keep
growing some people get stuck and then
they're stuck in that narcissistic place
in the personality research this is
called the the h factor the honest and
humble factor some people are born with
with a lot of capacity for that some
people are born with less capacity for
that
and if you're born with less capacity
for that if you're born more egocentric
and and entitled and it's that is
actually a personality trait
then you have to work harder to become
humble you have to work harder to become
honest
and you can't
we can all grow for some people it's
easier some people it's harder
and some people they get caught in
and i'm special and you don't count and
this is the most pathological form of
narcissism when you see other people as
objects to give you supply and to and to
to worship you essentially and to serve
you and you don't feel any
responsibility to care for them
and that is pathological narcissism and
that causes an awful lot of problems in
the world and we see it
unfortunately we see it a lot in leaders
because people that are low on that
honesty and humility uh frame and higher
narcissism those people tend to want to
be in charge of other people and so
there's a lot of them in politics
unfortunately
uh just uh
go back real quick you mentioned
something about building the insurance
company what was that about so they
how did they have to make some kind of
diagnosis yeah so
if you fit any of those qualities then
how did that work with the with the
building the insurance company well
you know that there's this whole
business of
of health care in this country which
unfortunately is a mess and that's all
there is to it i mean and it is it is
corrupt
uh pharmaceutical industry from my
perspective the insurance industry the
healthcare industry is full of
well-meaning people doing their best to
do right and yet when you get to the
money side of it it's corrupt
um
and so one thing that happened in 1950
is um
the psychiatrists were upset that they
were treating people and they weren't
able to build insurance companies who
weren't paying them because it wasn't
like
like fixing a broken arm when somebody
being depressed and you talked to us
so they created the diagnostic manual
the first one we're on the
the fifth version now where it describes
psychological issues use medical terms
so that the insurance companies
eventually would be forced to have to
reimburse
psychiatrists and then psychologists
later on
for doing treatment
and these every for every subsequent
level you know that it's called the
diagnostic and statistical
uh
uh manual it wasn't supposed to be used
originally for treatment it was supposed
to be used for research but you know
that part of it got lost very quickly
and so every time that it comes out
there's more
problems that people have that are that
are framed as pathologies
you know depression anxiety ocd
personality disorders and so on
so that psychotherapist can
and put those on insurance forms and the
bill insurance companies have been
forced to reimburse for some of that
um and that's just the way but that's
the way healthcare works pretty much
with everything in this country um
it is just not a healthy environment
when you have people who are not doctors
who are gaining medical treatments for
people that need attention and the
people that need attention sometimes
have to wait weeks and months to get
attention um
you know it's just a problem and that's
one of the reasons why the united states
has eight times as much depression now
as they did three generations ago and
why we're like 17th or 18th healthiest
of all the
first world countries and we pay twice
as much for our health care as all the
other countries it's because
it's a system that is an a corrupt
system
and that eventually will i assume heal
you know because evolution is inevitable
but right now there's a lot of problems
with it
uh just a few more questions um
before we conclude so we talked about
narcissism would the antidote to that be
uh you said humbleness and one of those
ways there's bring this back to uh this
statement here the best among you are
those who have the best manners in
character
yeah you know
what do you think about this statement
well first of all
i always remember
you know muhammad was a leader
you know he he was a soldier he was a
leader he was in the real world having
to deal with with real
problems geopolitical problems
uh management problems
i mean i think that that shaped him to
be very very practical in terms of who
are the people
that have the best impact who are the
people that are the best leaders
who who
what are the where the the the ways of
being as a culture that makes you the
most secure culture
and so as that um he would notice that
people that had good character and that
had good man good manners those are the
people that were the good leaders the
good managers the people that could and
then
as they were in charge the people under
them would feel okay
the world is fair um and this is what we
all want we want fairness and care the
people
are
the people in charge are interested in
us being cared for and us and being fair
with us
and i think that relaxes people and
makes them more generous
from a psychological standpoint now
study we know that you know there's
through a lot of hardship a lot of times
when a person is going through a trial a
hardship they don't see like the good
but can you tell us like some of the
greatest people you know oprah winfrey
she talks about her book you know all
the different trials that she went
through and everything that made her so
many people just suffering at the end
they personally persevered and it made
them who they are so this is just one
quote quotation that talks about when
god wants good for someone he afflicts
them with trials uh
when you have someone coming to you and
they just trial upon trial you know
tests of life they're going crazy
they're like how do you deal with this
term trials the tests of life
first of all
or however you however you call it in
psychological terms well first of all we
all have them
um we all have challenges we all have
trials um and
one thing that my aunt used to tell me
is she said god never gives you trials
that you cannot deal with
wow wow let this remin wow this is
powerful you know this i'm sorry to
interject but there's a statement in the
quran where god almighty is saying that
god does not burden the soul more than
it can bear well yeah you know i think
you know
obviously you know she was the baha'i
right you know obviously the bob who
revered the koran got a lot of his stuff
and baha'u'llah got a lot of their stuff
from the quran i'm i'm sure that there's
an awful lot of baha'i quotes like that
that come directly from from the quran
we we all have trials being a human is
not an easy thing
um we have and some of them are
necessary it's a necessary initiation
from childhood into adolescence into
adulthood that is difficult that's a
trial
and that's why all cultures have had
initiation ceremonies that they've
created to help guide young people into
discovering who they they are and being
themselves virtuously in the context of
their various communities and
assemblages
so what's difficult though is when
someone feels overwhelmed by a trial
and crushed to the extent that they
don't feel like they have power to grow
or to learn or to understand
and so in therapy part of your job is to
validate the fact that a trial is is is
is painful and it's difficult and
sometimes sometimes they're brought to
us
from the cruelty of other people or by
the priests of nature or by bad luck
sometimes
you and it doesn't matter how it comes
to us once we experience it now it's our
responsibility to understand to accept
and to grow and learn from that
and as we have that orientation we
become happier
uh yeah our our our unconscious and our
bodies will vote if we're trying to do
right we're trying to be kind and
compassionate if we want to learn from
our trials and mistakes we become
happier we become more loving people
uh so you mentioned was this you
mentioned buy high a couple times was
this did you say your mother my aunt my
aunt dorothy oh your aunt
your your aunt yeah okay so this is your
aunt that you picked up a couple of
these uh statements from that you
mentioned earlier and then one right now
oh yeah we had
we used to have many and
jim nelson dorothy nelson and i used to
have many many conversations like this
uh yeah
they they i gotta say
my uncle really didn't like it that i
got some of my spiritual orientation
from martial arts particularly from
miyamoto musashi the book of five rings
he was quite just yeah we would have
arguments about that uh and you know
that those kinds of arguments that
dialectic is is par is a tradition that
i find in in all the wisdom traditions
and that's how that's how knowledge goes
forward you know we we look for look for
better understandings there's always a
better understanding there's a deeper
understanding uh ahead
and it's it's useful to know that my
understanding now is just the best that
i have right now
yeah if someone will ask you like you
know for you uh just for your
information so this is like where you
have more of the orthodox where you have
like muslims and simply just to define
these terms a muslim is any person who
peacefully submits to the creator that
happens in earth and that's how you get
peace and life and islam simply means
submission to the creator not the
creation in simple laymen terms and then
uh adhering to the verbatim word of god
and then you have this authentic
tradition prophetic reports that say a
said b said c said an a is a person b is
a person c is a person where you know
their whole biography their history if
their memory was weak if they were known
for lying or anything we don't accept
any of that uh so then they when we
would narrate from that individual and
this is how we stick within the
boundaries of islam so this is the the
orthodox view following the sunnah the
way of prophet muhammad so this is what
we say the quran and the sunnah uh so
just a couple more questions sibling
rivalry
because you also write a lot about um
you also you write a lot about the
children and whatnot how do you stop
this is this something that um for let's
say give me let's say a 14 year old you
know with his younger brothers and
sisters and what you just can't figure
out your mind you're scratching your
head why is there so much fighting with
the younger ones is this something they
outgrow how do you deal with this
professor you know if you have kids
under nine
um
you know children under nine
they argue on an average if you just
studied a bunch of them they argue with
their siblings on an average of once
every 20 minutes
okay
wow i know
joy it wasn't every 20 minutes so you
know all for all those parents out there
worried about their kids arguing too
much hey look you know you're right at
the top of the bell curve when your kids
argue a lot
um you know families are cultures
you know when a family comes to me they
come to me with whatever their culture
is at that moment
we start working with it
usually what happens with children and
this is for teenagers too
is when there's distress it comes out in
how they behave and what they say and
what they think
um it'll come out in in a form of
emotional violence or sometimes physical
violence mostly emotional
um and so one thing that you do is you
stop
violence you know if kids are screaming
you
interrupt them if kids are fighting you
know you separate them
and then and then what you do is is you
wait until they they their arousal goes
down enough so that they can relate
and then you go okay so you you just
were very angry at your brother or your
sister yeah i was
and you know so what were you angry
about so you you validate the emotion
but not the behavior
you look for is there is there a problem
that needs attention yeah you took my my
truck and i didn't say yes well okay
that's not fair
so let's now set a boundary let's go
tell your brother you can't take the
truck without permission you give the
truck back no you know apologize for
taking the truck without her you know
you do that and then you move on okay
this is called emotional coaching
it's been studied extensively
particularly by john gottman up in
seattle
if you do this form
of emotional coaching with your children
and it needs to involve setting
boundaries i mean you can't let a kid
do damage to you or to another kid it
gets screaming and out of control put
them in their room let them calm down
but if you do this emotional coaching
that includes these firm behind
boundaries
kids are doing better uh by the time
they're eight or nine and they're 14.
they're doing better with other kids
they're more social they're doing better
at school they have more willpower
they have more ability to do affect
regulation
and so
with with issues that come up with kids
you just keep leaning into that system
again and again again patiently and you
don't just do it once you do it
thousands of times
some kids need it only a little bit i
have two children i have a son and a
daughter
my son
well he
he embraced this and so he it was easy
for him to get into the flow of us
my daughter didn't she resisted more she
had you know i had ocd in my family
obsessive compulsive and she had some of
that that makes you anxious
and so i had to do it more we had to put
more energy into helping her than we did
with him during certain stages
kids are different some of them need
more attention some some need less both
of them are doing great now they're 33
and 36 at this point
and so that's how you deal with it it's
you take you start where you are and
then you connect and then you find a way
to create a little insight and a little
healthy behavior a little little
understanding
and then you declare victory and move on
to the next thing
you call it emotional coaching it's
called emotional coaching as opposed to
emotionally dismissing emotionally
dismissing is you guys all shut up and
get over it okay you know johnny hurt me
that's too bad you know go back you know
go on now you know that's okay once in a
while you fall down when you're playing
soccer and you go god i got hurt you go
yeah i understand but get back into the
game okay there's sometimes that's
necessary
but mostly when it comes to things that
feel strongly emotionally coaching
emotional coaching is better for
children
it's not just better for children and
teenagers it's better for all of us
okay
it's a better way for us to be as human
beings it's respectful
it's self-reflective and it keeps keeps
us understanding we're all emotional
people who have emotions come up all the
time like you and i right now as we
relate with each other we have emotions
that are coming up that have to do with
how we feel about each other as well as
how we feel about these topics
and so it's important to be aware of
of the sacred quality of that i think
that's sacred to me that's sacred uh the
last thing and i'm sure you can
talk about this for a long time but just
in short maybe when we have you um back
on again god willing we can talk more in
depth on this but how much what i like
about your approach is that you're just
not because
the majority of psychiatrists when you
think a psychiatrist you go there and
they make you numb meaning that they
just give you a pill and now
that pill leads to another pill and then
you're on a cocktail medications and
then you're just like a walking zombie
right
uh how much how much does food play a
role in mental health and good health
and in your type of psychiatry
well first of all um
and and also psychiatry is changing
there's a there's a lot of psychiatrists
now that are reluctant to prescribe the
drugs and we'll go to other things first
but you're right there this whole
pharmaceutical model you know like
depression is about chemical imbalance
that actually was a narrative that was
that was created by the drug companies
and it's a false narrative and it's it's
caused a lot of damage um and it
continues to cause a lot of damage
um
diet
if
if to address
emotional distress
what you do we what we're dealing with
is is is is
is self culture in nature so it's body
mind and spirit in self culture and
nature in an integral we call that
an integral life practice and what that
means is
all these things will fit together so
sleep is important
diet is important
don't eat too much sugar
intoxicants
if you have an emotion there's ways of
growing through that emotion if you try
to suppress it or deny it or make it go
away generally you will amplify it and
cause problems
food is very important and not just what
foods you eat
when you eat those foods and how you eat
those foods and with whom you eat those
foods because where eating is social
and so
if we if we eat in a way that in that is
pro-social um
we digest better and also we our mood is
elevated
and so
just
contact with other people uh having
purpose in our life having a a sense of
connectedness to spirit and a sense of
of of
of unity with god all these things as
you cultivate them
um change your mood and elevate it and
these are the things that that i
encourage people to go to
first with anxiety with depression with
obsession those kinds of things you
adjust those things now there's also a
lot of other stuff that you do because
again we're very complex beings
but diet is super important
and there's way too much sugar way too
much processed food and also there's a
lot of toxins in food frankly
uh a lot of processed foods have
chemicals in them that are just not good
for us
uh that's why you know eat organic food
why
glyphosate is is a universal uh toxin
that's put on non-organic food and you
don't want to get that in your body it's
a carcinogen and also it infects your
mood
you know don't eat that stuff
don't eat that stuff that don't eat that
and that model you said was created by
the model was created by the
pharmaceutical company the one what is
it called oh yeah the prozac the the
serotonin hypothesis
they found this drug
that increased the amount of serotonin
though they still don't know if that's
what did it and some people felt better
about a quarter of the people felt
better when they took it
the pharmaceutical company created this
narrative hired people hacks to write
studies suppressed the studies that said
it wasn't good for you suppressed the
side effects marketed the hell out of
this stuff and now 10 of the people in
this country are on drugs mostly those
and you can just if you look in the fish
in the pacific in the atlantic they have
measurable dose they have measurable
levels of of these
serotonin drugs in the fish so much of
it has been washed out to see from the
united states
and the major medical organizations the
american psychiatric journal the new
england journal of medicine have
dedicated issues saying we apologize
for
publishing studies that the insurance
that the pharmaceutical companies
foisted on us as good research and we
apologize for
for voicing the serotonin hypothesis
when the data really didn't support it
um i mean this is this is a big deal
and it's still happening and it's just
you cannot reduce
depression to a biochemical imbalance
it's way too complex for that there's
all kinds of other things including diet
including relationship including
spirituality that are necessary to feel
less anxious less depressed more engaged
in the world
and this is coming from clinical
psychologist dr keith witt over 40 years
experience also as a professor at
stanford university no no no no no i'm
not professors ever i was you taught you
taught at what universe you were
professor university
the santa barbara graduate santa barbara
that's what it's sorry i got him
confused yeah now the santa barbara
graduate institute many years a few
years ago was sold and then you know it
so it doesn't exist but while it existed
i was a professor at the santa barbara
graduate institute and enjoyed this
especially i was working with masters
and phd students and they were wonderful
in the
institute i'm sorry it's not still
around it was a wonderful institution
thank you for spending some time with us
professor well i really enjoy this and
you know keep doing your good work
thank you very much god bless you thank
you so much people can uh find you on uh
the was it dr keithwitt.com dr keith
with d-r-k-e-i-t-h-w-i-t-t
dot com
you can uh i have classes i have many
blogs i have videos you can find my
books uh shadow light on shadow loving
completely on relationships the gift of
shame about development and shame and
the etune family about attunement being
a central thing in the two minutes if
you're a therapist i wrote two of the
first books on integrally informed
psychotherapy waking up in in sessions
um and there you get all those books on
amazon.prime
thank you very much god bless you thank
you hopefully we can do this again
sometime in the future hopefully we can
do it again bye