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#898 - Alain de Botton - How To Fix Your Negative Patterns - Modern Wisdom | Wave AI Podcast Notes

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#898 - Alain de Botton - How To Fix Your Negative Patterns

Modern Wisdom

Mon Feb 03 2025

Summary

Podcast Summary: Modern Wisdom Episode #898 - Alain de Botton: How To Fix Your Negative Patterns

In Episode #898 of the "Modern Wisdom" podcast, host Chris Williamson engages in a profound conversation with renowned philosopher and founder of the School of Life, Alain de Botton. The discussion delves deep into understanding and transforming negative inner patterns, the influence of language on emotions, the complexities of attachment styles, and the intricate dynamics of adult relationships. Below is a structured summary capturing the essence of their dialogue, enriched with notable quotes and timestamps.

1. Origins of Negative Inner Voices

Alain de Botton begins by exploring the genesis of negative inner voices, emphasizing that these voices are essentially internalized external influences.

Key Points:
- Negative inner dialogues stem from external voices that have been internalized over time.
- Just as children unknowingly absorb language, they also internalize emotional "syntax."
- Changing these ingrained patterns is as challenging as learning a new language.
Notable Quote:

"An inner voice is always an outer voice that got internalized... It will operate throughout our lives, and it will be immensely hard to change." ([00:06])

2. Language and Emotional Life

The conversation moves to the pivotal role language plays in shaping our emotional experiences.

Key Points:
- A rich emotional vocabulary allows for better identification and management of feelings.
- Psychotherapy and journaling equip individuals with the language to define and contain emotions.
- Translating feelings into words can make emotions more tangible and manageable.
Notable Quotes:

"The more words we have, the more we can attend to what we feel." ([03:05])

"What is it about translating a feeling into a word for that feeling? That's helpful... it contains and narrows the spread of difficult emotions." ([05:13])

3. Detecting and Changing Negative Patterns

Alain introduces practical methods to identify and address negative inner dialogues.

Key Points:
- Negative inner voices often go unnoticed as they blend seamlessly into one's thought patterns.
- Sentence completion exercises can reveal underlying negative beliefs (e.g., "Men are cruel").
- Recognizing the external origins of these patterns is crucial for meaningful change.
Notable Quote:

"When you do that, I feel this, et cetera. And that's the enemy, the sort of normal word is people who say communication, but it's really language." ([08:40])

4. Influence of Upbringing and Society

The discussion highlights how societal norms and upbringing shape our inner selves.

Key Points:
- Individuals are deeply influenced by societal language and cultural norms from a young age.
- The journey of individuation involves separating self from these external imprints to align more closely with personal values.
- Authentic self-expression often requires shedding socially ingrained behaviors and beliefs.
Notable Quote:

"We are penetrated by society. Every one of those words is both spoken by us and was made by other people long before we were even a rumor in anyone's mind." ([12:08])

5. Therapy vs. Other Coping Mechanisms

Contrasting therapy with practices like meditation, Alain emphasizes the depth therapy offers in understanding oneself.

Key Points:
- While meditation and intellectual pursuits offer temporary relief, therapy provides a structured environment for deep self-examination.
- Therapy involves an external perspective that can uncover hidden aspects of one's psyche.
- Intellectualizing emotions without addressing their origins can hinder genuine emotional growth.
Notable Quotes:

"I've learned more about myself in a year of twice weekly psychotherapy than I did in 1500 sessions of meditation." ([40:39])

"If you are not accepting the primary emotion, you're creating additional layers of distress." ([24:42])

6. Understanding Attachment Styles

A significant portion of the conversation is dedicated to attachment theory, exploring avoidant and anxious styles.

Key Points:
- Avoidant Attachment: Stems from emotionally distant or unresponsive caregivers, leading to discomfort with intimacy and dependence.
- Anxious Attachment: Results from inconsistent caregiving, fostering a fear of abandonment and a constant need for reassurance.
- Understanding one's attachment style is pivotal for forming healthy adult relationships.
Notable Quotes:

"Avoidant person... feels overwhelmed by love because they've grown up in a context of emotional deprivation." ([52:23])

"Anxious person... wants to test the love they're receiving, often resulting in counterproductive behaviors." ([52:23])

7. Relationships as Emotional Tests

Alain posits that adult relationships act as litmus tests for our emotional development and unresolved past issues.

Key Points:
- Relationships often mirror early attachment experiences, bringing past emotional wounds to the forefront.
- Successful relationships involve mutual growth and healing from past traumas.
- Challenges in relationships can signify opportunities for emotional maturation and deeper connection.
Notable Quote:

"In a good relationship, we are drawn towards people who... hold out the promise of a different ending." ([73:26])

8. Letting Go and Ending Relationships

The discussion addresses the complexities of ending relationships and the emotional barriers involved.

Key Points:
- Fear of judgment, loneliness, and attachment to past patterns contribute to staying in unfulfilling relationships.
- Healthy breakups involve clear communication, understanding underlying reasons, and allowing space for healing.
- Platitudes like "get out" can overlook the nuanced reasons individuals struggle to leave relationships.
Notable Quotes:

"Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes we stick around very challenging situations because we want to try and grow together." ([76:29])

"One of the worst ways is not to explain at all why something has come to feel necessary." ([86:59])

9. People Pleasing and Defensive Behaviors

Alain explores the roots and impacts of people-pleasing tendencies and other defensive emotional structures.

Key Points:
- People-pleasing often originates from childhood environments where individuals had to manage caregivers' moods.
- Such defensive patterns, while adaptive in early life, can become maladaptive in adult relationships.
- Healing involves acknowledging and honoring past strategies while allowing for new, healthier behaviors.
Notable Quote:

"The people pleaser needs to tell themselves it was amazing... to carry them to a later stage and working out something so clever." ([82:52])

10. Authenticity and Self-Understanding

The conversation shifts to the balance between intellectual self-awareness and emotional authenticity.

Key Points:
- Deep self-understanding involves both intellectual insights and emotional honesty.
- Relying solely on intellectualization can distance individuals from their true emotions.
- Embracing one's flaws and limitations fosters self-compassion and genuine relationships.
Notable Quote:

"The deep thinker, the earnest person... they're just paying more attention to the stuff that's in everybody's mind." ([97:23])

11. Embracing Humor and Melancholy

Alain underscores the importance of accepting life's absurdities and the role of humor in coping.

Key Points:
- Dark humor and melancholy can provide relief and a sense of shared human experience.
- Accepting the irrational and flawed aspects of life fosters resilience and compassion.
- A relaxed relationship with one's own silliness can boost confidence and emotional well-being.
Notable Quotes:

"A smile on one's lips at the sheer... absurdity. Absurdity of oneself." ([75:07])

"If you can have a relaxed relationship to our foolishness and our blindness, that's a huge confidence booster." ([68:41])

Conclusion

The episode with Alain de Botton offers a nuanced exploration of the human psyche, emphasizing the interplay between language, upbringing, and personal experiences in shaping our inner narratives. Alain advocates for a compassionate understanding of oneself, encouraging listeners to delve deeper into their emotional patterns through methods like therapy and reflective exercises. He underscores the importance of balancing intellectual insights with emotional honesty, fostering authentic relationships, and embracing the inherent absurdities of life with humor and resilience.

For Further Exploration: Listeners interested in delving deeper into Alain de Botton's work can explore his books, engage with the School of Life's resources, and follow his ongoing contributions to understanding the human condition.

This summary captures the essence of Episode #898, providing insights and actionable takeaways for those seeking to understand and transform their negative emotional patterns.

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Transcript

Chris Williamson (0:00)

Orlando Botton, welcome to the show.

Alain de Botton (0:01)

Thank you so much.

Chris Williamson (0:02)

Where do bad inner voices come from?

Alain de Botton (0:06)

Well, the way I like to think about it is that an inner voice is always an outer voice that got internalized. You know, we're very porous people. The way in which we're spoken to becomes the way in which we speak to ourselves. I mean, if that sounds too weird, think of language, right? All of us arrive in the world not speaking any language, and by the age of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, you know, we'll have learned a lot of words. But the fascinating thing about human beings is we don't know we're learning. So we can be doing other stuff like, you know, doing handstands in the garden or drawing buttercups in the kitchen. And we're becoming expert grammarians. Hundreds of words are entering our minds. Complex grammatical constructions are entering our minds. Now, the way I like to think about it is that that language analogy holds true for emotional life as well. So at the same time as we're learning a language of, you know, words and declensions, we're also learning a language of emotions. We're learning things like, what's a man like? What's a woman like? What happens if you give something to someone? What happens if you're vulnerable? What happens if you want to play? What happens if you say no? What happens if you say yes? All of these are the syntax. They comprise the syntax of our emotional lives. And it's an invisible syntax, just as our grammatical syntax is invisible, but it's there, and it will operate throughout our lives, and it will be immensely hard to change. I mean, you know what it's like if you're, you know, if you grew up speaking English and then you want to learn a foreign language. You suddenly want to learn Italian. Well, good luck to you. You're going to be learning a long time. It's not impossible can be done, but I think it's helpful to think of how hard it is, because sometimes people get very impatient in their attempts to change things about themselves. They go things like, you know, I want to change how I relate to people in relationships, say, and I've read a book, and I've been to three therapy sessions, and I'm really annoyed. Nothing works. You want to go, okay, imagine this was Italian. So you've looked at a book on Italian, you've taken three classes, and you don't speak fluent Italian, and you're complaining. So we do need some modesty here just in order to be properly ambitious. I mean, as you know, the root cause of sort of early despair and early retirement from things is a false picture of what success demands in an area. And I think in the area of emotional improvement or maturation, we sometimes let ourselves down by thinking it's going to have an ease, which it won't have.

Alain de Botton (5:35)

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And, you know, think of relationships, couples. The more their vocabulary for what they're going through increases, the more they can say, you know, I'm feeling this, I'm feeling. You know, when you do that, I feel this, et cetera. And the enemy, you know, the sort of normal word is people who say communication, but it's really language. It's putting language to feelings. And so much goes wrong in life because we're unable to do starts with ourselves. We can't do it with ourselves. There's a useful phrase that psychotherapists use to disassociation. It's a fascinating concept. What would it mean to disassociate? And the way it's understood, sort of therapeutically, is that you could feel an emotion. It's so difficult, tricky in some way, and you then stop feeling it. You disassociate from the feeling that's in you. It's still in you, but. But you're no longer registering it. Tricky, tricky. And the argument is always, the more you can associate and the less you can disassociate, the better off you will be. But look, there are many bits of life that are unbearable to us. Let's remember this. There's a wonderful quote in Middlemarch, George eliot, big fat 19th century novel, where she says, if we could properly register the full sounds of life, we would lose our minds from the full richness of existence. In other words, if you were sensitive to everything that's around you, you would sort of go mad, you know. And I think if we think about what madness is, so called, what colloquially called madness. If you think of people with severe mental illness, very often what has happened is that their ability to sequence thoughts has gone. Everything is coming at them and they can't grade thoughts. They can't say, this thought must go away now. So they'll go, I made a mistake 15 years ago. And if you're balanced, you'll go, well, that was 15 years ago. And it's not a problem. We don't have to have it pressing down. If your reason is buckling, often everything that is alarming comes at you at once, everything that is difficult at once. And so in a way, I'M sticking up for the ability sometimes to take distance from our feelings. So I started off by going, it's really important to know what you're feeling. But let's also remember at points the ability not to feel the full force of everything also belongs to health. So it's a double edged sword there.

Alain de Botton (12:08)

So that's literally the language. We're permeated by social language. Even our biology as we know our gut bacteria, is both us and not us. The neat Chris Alain. We are these sort of entities where you can put a strict circle around. Now we're interpenetrated by society, biology, history, et cetera. So then the question comes, well, is there anything that's more me, less me? And I think here, Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that one of the journeys. Life's full of journeys, One of the journeys that I think we all are on is to start to separate out a little bit. I can understand there's a lot in me that was just put there by society, by the context in which I was born. Which of those bits do I want to keep or focus on and which those bits do not fully represent my values, my considered choices, et cetera. And this is where life gets interesting because people start to say things like, well, where I come from, normal meant. But the more I think about it, the more I'm reflecting on who I really am, the more I want to ditch that and that and that as a form of editing process, self authorship. Absolutely. And I think that the more mature someone is. I'll use that word because you used others. The more mature someone is, the more what they do, what they think. The values they hold owe more to their own work, their own sifting, their own editing, than it does to the context that they were born into. I think, you know, it's interesting if you look at the arc of a life, right, A very small child is often remarkably authentic, which is why we adults, in small doses at least have such a great time with little ones. Because they come out with stuff and you think, oh, my God, I can't believe they've just said that thing. You know, they've just said that granny's nose is too big or that this restaurant's boring or this very expensive thing is a load of rubbish, et cetera. They'll come out with stuff that is non normative. And that's very interesting because as an adult you recognize a kind of, you know, you recognize your own spontaneity that's been lost normally. So it's kind of bittersweet. You think, oh, you know, you don't want exactly the child's version of it because that would lead you in trouble, but you want an adult version, and it's very hard to get. And probably the high watermark of the opposite is when you're 14 and a half and you're at school and your most fervent wish is to be like everybody else. You want your parents to be like everybody else. You want your name to be like everybody else. You want your appearance, your haircut, et cetera. You cannot bear difference. And then slowly, slowly you individuate, you know, and that's a very exciting journey seeing. I don't think anyone. Sorry, anyone, individuates in all areas. So I think the first choice is what are the areas that matter a lot to you? I'm interested in individuation, but when it comes to clothes, you might have noticed, I kind of, you know, it's a really interesting area, but I just. Just leaving that one for another time, you know, I'm just not engaging with that. Similarly, food, fascinating area, you know, very interesting.

Alain de Botton (25:44)

And also, I think, happier one. I mean, you know, talking just a minute ago, people escaping love, people also escape happiness. I mean, the way I think about it is that very often we're in a situation of. It's like being a prisoner. You've been kept in jail for a very long time, your diet's been restricted, it's not been much fun. Then the gate opens and you're allowed to walk out. It should be a great day, Fantastic, you're free. Nah, you know, we know what happens. Let's say you've been on a calorie restricted diet. Suddenly someone says, you know, here's a buffet. You can eat anything you like. You don't want to eat it. You can't. You can't digest it, you can't process it. It's too much. So, you know, something similar goes on in our attitudes to happiness. Often, I mean, it's useful to say to yourself, ask yourself, in the circumstances in which I grew up, what did it mean to be happy? And for some of us, it meant upsetting a parent. It meant challenging the dominant mood in a household. It meant taking away attention from somebody else. It meant danger. And that's odd, because we think, why would it be dangerous to be happy? Well, but there are all sorts of risks associated with it. And so in our deep minds, sometimes in adulthood, we simply cannot accept the circumstances of our lives and therefore go about spoiling them so that we put them more. There's a wonderful paper called something like a criminal psychotherapy. Criminal in search of an offense. A sense that you've done something wrong. If you carry that from your past. And then you think, how am I going to get rid of that feeling? Oh, I know I'll do something wrong and then I won't feel that feeling anymore. Sometimes, you know, it's a bit like that. It's like saying, I'm feeling happy, but I shouldn't be happy. What shall I do? Oh, yes, I'll make myself unhappy. Or, you know, I'm feeling loved. Someone's offering me love. That's not normal. I don't recognize that feeling. Oh, what shall I do? Oh, I'll drive them away. Yeah, I'll go and be rude to them or go and have an affair with somebody else or whatever it is. Something to spoil something. That's nice. So the impulse to spoil is really deep. Happiness and love are hard to bear.

Alain de Botton (28:53)

Let's start with compassion. You know, we are the way we are, you know, for poignant reasons, not, you know, we didn't get to be that way. You know, think of the bookish child, you know, think of the child who's reading a lot. Often it's because life around is quite difficult now. It's great to read, it's good to read, et cetera. But if you spend all your time in books, it's often a sign things are challenging. And so often people who excel at intellectual pursuits, et cetera, are in flight from an overwhelming situation. I'd wish them well that in time the overwhelming situation could get a little less intense and they could get a little more of reality into their intellectual world. I mean, I'm describing myself. Perhaps you want to try and see reality for what it is. And if you're warding it off with intellectual structures, let's say thank you to those structures. I think it's really important. Whenever you look at people doing stuff that seems a bit suboptimal or a bit strange, they're reading too much, they're jogging too much, they're trying to make too much money, whatever, whatever. They're feeling too much, they're feeling too little. All of these departures from so called health, normality, et cetera. Always ask yourself, why are they doing it? And it's normally a defense. It is a defense against a situation that was very difficult. At some point they learned that defense. And even though it would be optimal now to let go of that defensive structure, they're still clinging onto it because that's what feels safe. It feels safe to make jokes all the time. It feels safe to be very serious all the time. It feels safe to be depressed, it feels safe to give up. It feels safe to try and win at all costs, including your own health, et cetera. All these are defensive structures that once kept us safe, that I think in order to evolve. We almost want to say thank you, thank you to your younger self for working this out, for finding a way of coping with reality. But. But could we learn to cope in a slightly different way?

Alain de Botton (31:38)

Yes. And I think our minds, it is much easier to have the headline than the meat of the topic. And very often we reach an uncomfortable state of half knowing ourselves and we think, oh, I've covered it, right? I know in my childhood there was this and then there was this, then there was that. And you've got a kind of a headline tension with my dad or tricky with my mom, whatever it is. And we think, oh, I've got that, I've got that, I know it. Now, let's go back to the eastern Enzo circle, right? And the east says, meditate for hours repeatedly on the thing that looks obvious, the thing that you know. So they're saying the whole of life is that circle. So look at that circle and keep coming back to it. And the more you look at it, the more you will see in it. Now, the western approach is a bit. It's too impatient. It'll say, all right, yeah, it was tense with my dad. I know that. I go, hang on, hang on, hang on. That's an Enzo of its own. I was tense with my dad. You could meditate around that for an hour a day or an hour a week or whatever it is. You can keep coming back to that. There are so many things still to be discovered there. It's not dead. And so I think I'd almost want to excite those who are listening to think, okay, I think I know something. Do I really know it? Might I go back there? Our real experiences tend to be so much richer than our work a day sense of them. Think about a holiday, right? So have you ever been to Greece? Oh, yeah, I went to Greece. All right. Have you been to Santorini? Yeah, I've been to Santorini. Okay, so we think we covered that one. The person's been to Santorini. Hang on. First of all, our minds are amazing mechanisms of capture. You know, we've got cameras around, sound equipment, et cetera. Nothing beats the human mind for capturing absolutely everything. Often the time to explore. This is sort of twilight of your mind as you're going to sleep or waking up. If you say to yourself, yeah, Santorini, what was that like? What was it really like? And you realize, oh, my God, I remember there was a tiled hallway that led to a blue door. And I actually remember there was a flower in a little vase and there was light coming in from. I think it must have been from the left. And actually, if I looked to the right, there was a little window, et cetera. And it's all there, it's all in your mind, just waiting to be asked. Waiting. This is the famous. Can I talk about Proust? Marcel Proust, great French novelist, 19th, early 20th century, et cetera, came up with this famous idea of the Proustian moment. Some of you will know it, some of you won't. It's basically a moment when you take something sensory, like a sip of water or a smell. Imagine the smell of concrete after rain, or the smell of snow just after a snowfall, et cetera. And suddenly you get that sensory experience and a world opens up. You think, oh, my God, I'm five years old again and I've just gone outside of the garden of the yard where I grew up, and there was a brick wall and there was that exact smell, and I'm there again. And suddenly your world becomes so much richer. And these are just little moments of expansion around a topic, like after a snowfall or first day of spring or Santorini or whatever it is. So, in other words, many of the things that are in our minds in intellectually compressed forms can be expanded with the addition of. I mean, you know, the sort of fancy, trendy modern word is meditation. But, you know, some people don't get on with the word meditation. Let's just say by giving it some time, by allowing an experience to assume its proper shape. And we do rush past our experiences. Things are very compressed. And that's why at the end of an average day, my goodness, how much we've seen, how much we felt, how many little things crossed consciousness, if we were able to give some of that space, how much lighter we would start to feel. But we. We live so much and we experience so little, we see so much and we notice so little.

Alain de Botton (46:30)

Think of how this plays out in couples, right? So people come together because they're fed up with being lonely, right? You know, it's lonely. So you try and find a special person and we, we dignify this concept by saying, I'm in a relationship. You know, I'm, I'm a special friend, I'm getting married, et cetera. We've got these words. But really what this means is I'm no longer so alone in a terrifying world. So you have this special person. And in the early days of love, it's thrilling that you can say stuff that you wouldn't say to anyone else. And it's so delightful. You can say things like, you know, I still long for my teddy bear. And they go, I long for them too. And then, you know, you hug to the teddy bear. And it's so amazing because, you know, you're the CEO and you know, you're an important lawyer, Dr. Banker, and actually you're clutching your teddy bear and it's amazing. Or you can go, I really want to put, you know, mayonnaise on the pizza. And that's great. And then, you know, you push it further and then you go, I'm going to go to a museum, but I don't like any of the art. I don't like it either. Or, I've never read that book, but I always pretended I did, and it's just thrilling. And then sex gets invited and you go, I like this strange sounding thing. And they go, I like it too. I like this other thing, et cetera. And you're building a wonderful universe. But this is the challenging thing about love because let's imagine you're with this person and you've shared all this stuff, et cetera. And then you go to a cafe, say, and you say, waiter's hot. And then you look at their face and they're like, look really quite heartbroken that you've just commented on the visual appeal of a waiting staff. And they, they feel hurt and they feel jealous and they feel upset. And suddenly you think, oh, my goodness, there's a choice here between kindness and honesty. And I think that's what we're circling around, which is, can you be. At what moment does honesty run up against the limits of kindness or the requirements of kindness? I think what you're saying about therapy is you don't have to be kind to the therapist because it's 50 minute session, you're giving them money, and people go, oh, it's a bore that you're giving them money. Well, Freud thought long and hard about this, about the role of money in therapy, and his view was it's an agent of liberation. It's a good thing you can pay the therapist, and that's why you want people to bring cash and leave the cash on the table at the end of every session. Nowadays, you might put your card on, but the point is, it's a way of saying, I can be fully myself because I have earned this person's attention. Some people go, but they don't really love you, et cetera. And you go, maybe they don't really love you, but that's a liberation.

Alain de Botton (52:23)

Understand, understand, understand where each one's coming from. I mean, why is someone an avoidant? They're not evil, they're not mean, they're not, you know, it can be pretty horrible to be on the receiving end of certain kinds of pattern of behavior. But let's try and remember, why does this exist? Someone becomes avoidant when they've grown up in a calorie, emotional, calorie controlled diet environment where they have had to get used to very little. The way they survive is mum's not so interested, Dad's not interested. No caregiver around, a lot of disappointment. I'm just gonna hunker down and get used to very little. Literally, like an animal that gets used to a very thin diet. That is what has happened to an avoidant person. And then when they get to love and someone goes, I adore you, let's spend every evening together. Let's, you know, you're marvelous. They feel a bit often they don't even understand that they're feeling it. Totally engulfed. They feel overwhelmed. They feel their very identity is in threat of dissolution by something that's lovely, but it's too much too soon. And what they need is an experience of love titrated. They need the titration of love. But often they don't know how to ask for it, they don't even know. Often they might smile through it and go, I'm not really feeling this. And then they can't bear it, they can't bear. And then they run away or just become weird or something. So explanation. Hello, I'm somebody who had to get used to a very calorie, controlled diet. Emotionally, I really feel warmly, this relationship matters a lot to me. But the kindest thing is not to be too kind to me in an overwhelming way. The most generous thing is not to be too abundant, not because I don't want this, but because I grew up in situation deprivation. So that's our avoidant friend, anxious friend. Similar kind of story of explanation. Why did people become so called anxious? Normally? Because unlike the avoidant person, they have had an experience of love. So in some ways the anxious person's had a better childhood, better journey through life. In a way, they have experienced love, but they've also experienced loss and the disruption of that attachment. So someone died, someone went away, someone had to go to the army. Something happened to disrupt the bond. It was very intense, but it was disrupted. And that person needs to understand that they are. It's a wonderful sentence from Donald Winnicott, great psychoanalyst, who said, the catastrophe you fear will happen has already happened. And the key thing is it's been forgotten. You forgot the catastrophe and that's why you keep seeing it in the future, whereas actually it belongs in the past. So what you need to do is understand this structure and repatriate the emotion and put it back where it belongs. So the avoidant person at dinner on an early date needs to go, I really want to believe in your love, but if you say you love me, I might not be able to believe it very easily. And what I will do is test it. And the person might go, oh, test, fine, fire away. And the anxious person should go, yeah, this test is going to be quite unhealthy, quite horrible. It's going to mean that when you say I love you, I'm going to start to act up because I want to see if you really do. So I'm going to be really difficult around you, not because I don't want you, but because I want to test whether your affection is really real. And the only way I know how to do that, because I'm carrying this stuff from childhood, is to act up, play up. And so when we're in a nice restaurant and you tell me that things are great, I'm going to Say, actually, the food's not that nice and I don't really like the clothes you're wearing and I'm going to cause a drama. Why? To test whether the love is real. Very unfortunate. So the more the anxious friend can get on top of their anxiety, the more they can translate everything I've just said into something that sounds like it's been processed and can be understood by another person, then the better it can be. So anxious and avoidant people are walking wounded and they need to be able to explain the nature of their particular wound so that appropriate care can be set up. Awareness, Awareness. Which is why it's great for people to go to therapy. It's great for people to explore themselves. It's not merely fancy, it's not merely whatever. It's a serious indicator of an easier life with them. I mean, if you're with a partner who's able to go, okay, hang on a minute, I think I'm slipping down. I think I'm confusing you with my mother at the moment. Or I think, I think an anger that actually belongs to my father is weirdly in the room. Because that's what happens when you start to explore your past. You see the intermingling of past and present all the time. And the more you're able to get a handle on that and warn your partner, the easier it is. I mean, we don't need people to be perfect. We need people to understand how they're imperfect and warn us of the coming imperfection or retrospectively apologize for it. In relatively civilized terms, that's what we need.

Alain de Botton (82:52)

I mean, look, let's remember. So the psychology of the so called people pleasing person is someone who no one tried to please for themselves. In other words, they were in an asymmetrical relationship, probably with a caregiver or parent who didn't care about their feelings, they didn't prioritize their needs, et cetera, and they had to adjust to them. So if you've got a parent with a volcanic temperature where anything might set them off, well, what you say or think is going to disappear completely because all you're going to be doing as a child is managing the mood of a parent. They will be an infant, essentially, and you will have to be in the parenting role and you'll have to put aside your needs. And children are great geniuses at reading the room and doing what needs to be done to survive. It's a survival strategy. I will become a people pleaser not in order to annoy people in later life, but in order to survive, in order to get to the next stage of existence in order to reach adolescence. Let's face it. And the problem in this, as in so many other neurotic structures, is a very good idea outlives its use. And so it's still operating in circumstances where it's no longer needed. So what we need to tell, what the people pleaser needs to tell themselves is it was amazing. At the age of five, I cleverly worked out that I needed to people please in order to cope with my intemperate father. But that situation's now gone. And if I keep doing this with my partner, with my colleagues, et cetera, it's going to annoy everybody and it's going to create serious problems. So what needs to be done is that person shouldn't feel shamed, they should be made to feel proud. There should be a little ceremony where they're able to say to their five year old self, thank you, thank you little whatever it is, thank you for carrying me to a later stage and working out something so clever. And this applies for all defensive neurotic structures. I mean, let's imagine somebody, somebody who can't feel very much, who's invulnerable, doesn't open themselves up to other people and in relationships that person may be shamed. Oh, so and so. Oh, they're afraid of intimacy. You want to go, okay, shaming this person's not going to help. You have to ask a other question, which is in what circumstances did their current behavior make sense? First question. And it Always will make sense. You go back in time and you say, right, in those circumstances, of course it may. You know, your father was dying, your mother was absent, of course it made sense not to feel anything. You would have been destroyed by your feelings. Therefore, very clever five or six year old you to work out that it's best not to feel. Problem is, you're now 35 or 45 and there's lots of reason to feel because there's someone loving nearby or you've got children or whatever. And therefore we need to say thank you to the younger self and then we can move on. But shame is not going to do it. It to wag a finger and go, oh, another one who's afraid of intimacy. No one ever changed like that.

Alain de Botton (86:59)

Look, one of the worst ways is not to explain at all why something has come to feel necessary. In other words, just running away and leaving someone no sense. Because that then leaves the person to imagine everything. And most of our imaginations are dark places in this regard. In other words, we think that someone hates us boundlessly or is trying to humiliate us or deliberately want to be cruel to us or et cetera. And in many, many cases, I venture to say most cases, when someone leaves someone, it isn't those things. The truth is better than we think. It's still tough, you know, it's very Very tough. You know, those attachment ruptures in everyone's life, they're some of the most painful things we will ever have to go through to build a life with someone and then see that life disappear. I mean, we need space to mourn. In Judaism, when someone dies, you lose a spouse, you're allowed a year of mourning. You wear black and you have allowed a year of mourning. When not too much is expected of you, both professionally and personally, you can go a bit mad and that's all right. Everyone looks after you, they know you're in mourning. We kind of need that when we're heartbroken, when we're serious because we're dealing with something that is, from an emotional point of view, as serious. This is as serious. I mean, this literally is a loss. Someone has died and so we need that space. So to come back to your question, how to break up, to be able to explain diplomatically, kindly, generously, some of the real reasons why and as the person who's leaving, not to feel that those reasons, not to be ashamed of those reasons. You know, people feel relationships don't have to go on forever. Sometimes relationships have a sell by date. They are there, they were formed for a particular purpose, unconscious, to carry us to a next stage. And maybe that stage has come to an end for someone and we can explain that, we can try and, you know, verbalize that, but also clarity. And sometimes people try to be kind in ways that. That end up being very, very cruel. I want to leave you, but let's go on holiday together. Is that a wise thing? Or I want to leave you, but let's be in touch every day and I'll just still call you what I used to call you when we were very intimate. That's tough. That's tough. So we may, couples may, out of kindness, out of mutual respect, go, there's still a lot of love, there's still a lot of affection. But probably we shouldn't be in touch that much for a little while.