Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Do you want to know the shocking, counterintuitive truth about your problems?
[00:00:06] Your worst issue, your most agonizing mental health troubles. Your life in its most deplorable state is not an illness. It's not a brain disorder. It's not a disease you just have to manage with pills and psychological mind tricks.
[00:00:26] It's a powerful transformative process you can tap into and use to change not only your problem, but your whole life as well.
[00:00:36] During my 10 years in Switzerland, I worked with thousands of clients in private practice, at a psych clinic, and in workshops. Over time, I began to notice that there were two types of people in terms of their relationship to their problems. The first were folks who just wanted to feel better.
[00:00:55] They just wanted relief. Regardless of how they got there, these clients tended to seek strategies to simply manage their problems. Some took psych meds, some meditated, some learned how to rationalize their irrational feelings.
[00:01:13] But none of them really changed. At their core, they were people with problems who learned how to deal with them better, right?
[00:01:22] The second were folks who did something very strange.
[00:01:27] Somehow something happened, or they made something happen where they changed a fundamental aspect of who they are and this, for some reason transformed their problem.
[00:01:41] It's like they became a different person and this person no longer had the issue. This even happened with people who had been told they need lifelong psychiatric medication.
[00:01:53] This made me wonder if the reverse is true. Do problems happen in order to push us to make specific changes in who we are, like in our basic identity?
[00:02:06] Is the mental health paradigm completely off course in its exclusive focus on trying to just get rid of our pain so we can function normally? It took me many years of research to answer this. Through painstaking studies and through analysis of the research literature, I finally discovered that, yes, we've totally missed the mark.
[00:02:32] First, despite our societal belief that we now have effective psychiatric treatments for our troubles, rates of disability caused by depression, anxiety and other problems have skyrocketed in the last 30 years.
[00:02:49] Even if we account for an increase in the rate of life problems due to changes in the world, effective treatments should decrease, not increase, the rate of disability.
[00:03:01] In fact, when we look at psychiatric medication outcomes in the long term aggregate, like over years, we find an extremely inconvenient fact.
[00:03:12] They shift for the worse compared to the natural spectrum of outcomes. Our drug based paradigm of care is actually fueling the mental health epidemic by increasing, not decreasing, the risk of disability.
[00:03:28] Second, by going into people's experience of their difficulties, by studying, amplifying and expressing all the obvious and subtle contents and Instead of just trying to cover over their pain, they discover an inherent purpose in the issue. One that points in a highly specific direction for personal change and growth.
[00:03:49] And empirically this transforms their troubles.
[00:03:54] Depression, anxiety, attention deficit and even downright delusions are not pathologies. They're not random, meaningless phenomena. The mind is structured and meaningful and its contents, no matter, no matter how seemingly irrational, are expressions of purposeful processes that aim at growth and self awareness.
[00:04:18] You're not sick.
[00:04:21] You have a growth process and you have to learn how to tap into it and facilitate it. Your problem wants you to change who you are.
[00:04:31] When you integrate its message, the trouble transforms. I've seen this thousands of times in this podcast. I'm going to show you how your issue, no matter what it is, is your guide to growth.
[00:04:46] I know that depression, anxiety, relationship conflict, loneliness, frustration or whatever can be agonizing and even life threatening. But it's not an illness to just dismiss and try to zap away. It's a meaningful process designed to wake you up to something new, increase your self awareness and expand who you are.
[00:05:11] Your problem has an inherent purpose and even though it messes up your life, that's not its purpose.
[00:05:18] It aims to change you for the better.
[00:05:21] With the right tools, you can discover how even your worst issue is the doorway into personal transformation.
[00:05:30] Now if you think about it, this is the exact opposite of what we've all been taught, right? Everything we hear about mental health, relationship problems, work issues and so on centers on trying to get rid of the problem.
[00:05:47] We're really big on quick fixes, suppressing symptoms, bypassing conflict, and generally trying to make it all go away.
[00:05:59] So claiming that our problems are meaningful and purposeful is the antithesis of what we've been doing. Told be happy, pull it together, don't be so sensitive, be normal like everyone else. And if you're depressed or anxious or phobic, get some medication to mask it.
[00:06:20] And nowhere is this conquer the problem attitude more prevalent than in America.
[00:06:27] It's part of our pioneering pull yourself up by the bootstraps industrious spirit, like just get on with it.
[00:06:36] But the one place this doesn't really work is with our life problems.
[00:06:43] The more we try to tamp down our issues with potions and pills, the worse it seems to get.
[00:06:52] Now don't get me wrong, some folks claim their medication is life saving, but there's a more effective and healthy way to deal with your distress and dysfunction and messed up life situation. You can learn to process it. And that's what I'm going to teach you about in this podcast now. Saying that problems have something valuable in them flies in the face of everything. In conventional psychology and psychiatry, they view problems as illnesses to cure, not as meaningful processes to unfold. Even many holistic approaches to therapy tend to view our emotional wounds like one would view a physical wound as an unfortunate trauma that requires interventions to make the pain go away.
[00:07:47] Your wounding is viewed as a poison for which we need the medicine.
[00:07:54] But this is all backwards.
[00:07:57] The poison is the medicine. Now, I know it's so paradoxical, it sounds like it makes no sense, but hang in with me and I'll show you how your wounding is the doorway to transforming your life on the deepest level.
[00:08:14] This is actually an ancient idea that I've updated to modern times. The first healers, medicine men and women, were called shamans.
[00:08:24] They were really the first psychologists. The term shaman means wounded healer, or one who knows or one who sees in the dark.
[00:08:36] In ancient tribal cultures, a person afflicted with what we'd call a mental health problem was viewed as a potential healer because their wounding was considered a calling to leave their everyday, normal existence and dive into the spirit world, or what we would call their psychology or process.
[00:08:58] The poison is the medicine.
[00:09:02] In fact, one of my songs is called Medicine Gun, and the words of the chorus go, my poison is a medicine gun. Bang. Shooting me full of changes.
[00:09:18] That's right.
[00:09:19] Problems are purposely designed catalysts for your growth and expansion.
[00:09:25] Or put more succinctly, your problem is your process.
[00:09:31] Everything in your life, including your worst pain, aims ultimately at helping you transform who you are.
[00:09:40] It's not just about making your symptoms disappear or even healing the wound.
[00:09:46] These are important things to do. But there's something much deeper and profound going on when a problem enters your life.
[00:09:55] It's your calling.
[00:09:58] It's your sign that transformation is trying to happen.
[00:10:03] The problem itself is just the seed, the impetus, the agitating force to get you onto the path of change, growth, and consciousness.
[00:10:16] I want to ask you a question. What's the first thing you think of when you feel messed up?
[00:10:22] If you're like me and most people, it's, I got to get rid of this issue. This sucks. This is bad and wrong. It's unfair. It's ruining my life. It's evil. It's blocking me. It's making me suffer.
[00:10:35] But this common reaction, while totally understandable, is based on a false assumption about why shit happens. It assumes your problem has no purpose other than to make you miserable.
[00:10:50] The roots of this way of thinking come from the belief that pleasure and freedom from stress are good and difficulties are bad.
[00:10:59] It's an intention, instinctive, unconscious way of interpreting experience.
[00:11:04] And most of us live with this mindset.
[00:11:08] We use science and technology to improve our lives by applying the scientific method to the idea that problems are purely negative and should just be eliminated. Yet in psychiatry, psychology and self help, this demonization of problems makes us impotent to really understand and transform them.
[00:11:30] This is because the very nature of a problem, the reason it exists, gets overlooked.
[00:11:38] Pain and suffering hurt and we want it to go away again. Totally understandable, and I feel like this too.
[00:11:46] But the reason problems happen is to irritate us, disturb us, frustrate us, hurt us, and even threaten to kill us in order to get our attention on something we need to wake up about.
[00:12:01] And why do we need to wake up about things? Why?
[00:12:05] Because waking up means growing. And growing is the essence of life.
[00:12:10] Creation, transformation, change, expansion, process.
[00:12:16] Life isn't about one static state of being. In fact, the more you try to establish an unchanging set condition for your life, even if you're sitting on a mountaintop meditating, the more problems are going to find you. That's just how nature works.
[00:12:35] When I have a problem, I might complain, yell, scream and curse.
[00:12:40] But then I process it as a meaningful and purposeful event in my life.
[00:12:46] I use my mind, my body, and even my music to hunt for and uncover and integrate the change is trying to happen.
[00:12:57] Sometimes I can do it right away, other times it takes me years. But during those years, I'm slowly transforming, growing and embracing my process.
[00:13:08] Your problem is a process designed specifically to make you develop as a person.
[00:13:16] Now this isn't something arbitrary where you get to decide which of your troubles relate to personal growth and which don't.
[00:13:24] Everything you struggle with is meant to force the evolution of your consciousness, expand your identity and increase your self awareness.
[00:13:37] Each issue you encounter aims at a specific change. You need to make a transformation of your awareness in a highly targeted area of your life.
[00:13:47] The details of your difficulty contain information that's trying to point you toward a new way of being.
[00:13:55] As I said, a problem has a purpose. And despite the fact that pain sucks, making you suffer is not its primary purpose. It's designed to get your attention. It's an alarm signal calling you to yourself to bring your focus onto the hidden directions trying to happen in your life.
[00:14:16] Just wanting to get rid of what bothers you without getting its message is understandable and human.
[00:14:22] Nobody wants to suffer, but it's an attitude rooted in a simplistic understanding of all of life, and it's ineffective. The process paradigm changes your perception of your problems from obstacles and demons into opportunities for profound change and growth.
[00:14:43] And once you have the tools to dive into and unfold your process, you'll be able to experience real transformation.
[00:14:52] Martin Luther King said, a riot is the language of the unheard. Your problems are like internal riots.
[00:15:00] They're your process calling out for attention.
[00:15:05] They need you to wake up to what you don't want, see, hear, and feel.
[00:15:15] See you next time.
[00:15:17] Stay aware.
[00:15:42] Hey, I'm Dr. Zwig. Thanks so much for watching. If you want to connect with the transformative power of your life issues, subscribe to the channel and check out the next episode in the playlist. For exclusive content, join the mailing list. Check the links below.
