GUY WINCH: Hello, everyone. I'm Guy Winch. I'm here to speak to you about
emotional first aid. And so first of all, thank
you for having me back. It's great to be back
here at Google. So let's get going. I'm going to assume that within
the past few weeks some of you have had a
cut or a scrape. And you've used antibacterial
ointment, or you've used a Band-Aid. And some of you might have had
a cold and rested up in bed. And some of you might have
sprained a muscle and used an ice pack. And I say that because we get
these kinds of physical injuries all the time in life. And when we do, we know exactly
how to treat them. We know exactly how to ease
our aches and pains. And we know exactly what steps
to take to prevent them from getting worse. Well, we sustain psychological
injuries all the time in life as well. But when we do, we do not
know how to treat them. We do not know how to ease
our aches and pains. And we do not know what steps
we need to take to make sure they don't get worse. And that's what we're going
to discuss today. We're going to talk about seven
common psychological injuries that we encounter
in daily life-- failure, rejection, guilt,
loneliness, brooding and rumination, loss and trauma, and
bouts of low self-esteem. I do hope we'll have time
to get to all of them. We will also talk about the
surprising ways in which these things impact us. Because they do it in ways
which are unexpected. We'll also look at
the science. Because for scientists to study
these things, they have to recreate these human
experiences, in essence, in their lab. You can't grow rejection
in a Petri dish. And so that's a difficult
thing to do. We'll look at how they do it. And I'll give you a
hint right now. It usually involves lying
through their teeth to the poor subjects who sign up for
these experiments without a clue about what they're getting
themselves into. And lastly, we'll look at why
and how we should apply emotional first aid to
these kinds of common psychological injuries. And we'll look at a few
examples of how we can actually do it. Now I want to get back for a
moment to the comparison between how we think in general
of physical injuries versus how we think of
psychological injuries. Because it's so obvious to us
that we need to monitor our physical health. We need to monitor our bodies. That's very, very clear to us. But it's not clear to us at that
we need to monitor our psychological health. And when we are riding a bicycle
or our skateboard and we wipe out, the first thing
we'd think to do is to check ourselves for injury. But when we have a really bad
rejection or a really bad failure, we don't think to check
ourselves for any kind of injuries. We just go on. And the other thing is that we
know what kind of injuries require treatments, when they're
physical injuries, so they don't get worse. We know that if we don't--
we know that a cut can get infected. We know a cold can turn
into a pneumonia. So we know we need to
attend to that. We don't know anything about
what psychological injuries can get worse or how
they can get worse. And lastly, when it comes to the
basic physical injuries we sustain in daily life, we
can pretty much treat all of them at home. We have our medicine
cabinets with our pills and our ointments. And we can pretty much do
all of that at home. And when it comes to
psychological injuries, as I say, we don't know how
to treat diddly. But that means we really
have no clue about what we're doing. And it isn't just our physical
bodies that we're prioritizing. It's even our teeth, if you
really think about it. Because look, we know
our teeth need constant care, right? We know that. We brush and we floss. And we do that every
single day. And not only that, if we have
a pain in the tooth, we immediately take action. We go to the dentist because we
know that cavity can turn into a root canal. So we know to do it. And we even teach our
children to brush their teeth every day. Three-year-olds know to brush
their teeth every day. So if you really think about it,
we put more care into our teeth than we do our
psychological health. And I'm sorry, but it
really irritates me that that's the case. And I'm not suggesting you
neglect your teeth. That's not my point. And I'm not resentful. I don't hate the American
Dental Association. I think teeth are great. I have teeth. I'm all for teeth. What I'm saying is that
there is a strange favoritism that we have. Whereas, our physical health
and our teeth are like the step-sisters in the Cinderella
story that get all the love, and all the care, and
all the affection. And our poor psychological
health is as ignored and as marginalized and as neglected
as Cinderella, left to sweep the floor with the mice
and the birds. That's Freud, you see. Because it's very
hard to depict psychological health in a picture. So I use-- and you can
see the cigar. That's the hint. All right, so anyway-- so my point is that that fairy
tale is not going well. But here's the good news-- happy ending. Here's your fairy godmother. And here's your Prince
Charming-- I don't mean the picture
of me in the flap. But here's your Prince
Charming. Because what you can do is
you can start to help the psychological health catch up
a little bit and help take care of it. So look, as I said,
psychological injuries impact us and in more ways than we
realize, in surprising ways. So I want to show you how. And I'm going to start
with a really common injury, failure-- something we certainly all do. And when I tell people, oh,
that's going to surprise you. They're like, no, it's not. I know what happens
to me when I fail. I fail, and my ego gets bruised
and I get demoralized. And my motivation goes. And all of that is true. But failure also impacts
us in ways in which we are not aware. And here's an example of
a study people did. They took people to a field
with a football post. And they had them kick an
American football over the post 10 times. And it was 10 yards away. It was an unmarked field, but
it was 10 yards away. And then they had them, when
they were done, say, right. Well, how far and how high
is that goal post? And everyone wrote down
how far and how high that goal post was. But then when they looked at the
results, they divided them into people who succeeded and
people who failed at the toss. And the people who failed at
kicking the football over the goal post estimated it to be
much further and much higher than the people who succeeded. Now they're all standing
on the same field. It's not an eyesight issue. They're looking at
the same thing. But that's what failure
does to us. It can distort our perceptions,
our very perceptions, of the goals we
have, so that they seem to us to be further away and
further out of reach. And that is an unconscious
thing. That's an unconscious way
in which that happens. But failure can also impact
us in other ways. It can also change
our perceptions of our actual abilities. I'm going to give you one
other example of an experiment. This one was done quite
a few years ago. And they were curious about how
people respond to failure. But they did the experiment
with dogs. Some of you might have
heard of it. It's not a new one. They put dogs in a cage with
a low barrier in the cage. And one part of the cage
was wired up for an electrical shock. And they say it's an electrical
shock, not a painful one for the dogs,
though whether they interviewed the dogs and asked
them if that was uncomfortable or painful, I'm not sure. But so they put the dog in
that part of the cage. They zap it. The dog jumps over the
barrier into the safe part of the cage. Part one done. Part two, they put the
dog back in the cage. But this time they put
a harness on the dog. They tether the dog so
the dog can't move. Zap the cage. Dog tries to jump over
the barrier-- can't, whimpers. Done with part two. Part three, remove
the harness. And then they zap
the cage again. And the dogs were free to
jump over the barrier. And an alarming number of these
dogs didn't jump over the barrier. They just stood there
and whimpered. Because they actually thought,
we're incapable, even though they weren't tethered. They were free. And so the scientists were like,
wow, we wonder if it works that way with people. But it turns out, ethical
committees frown upon putting people in cages and
electrocuting them. So they did it differently. What they did was they
gave people a test. And they said, oh, this test
actually measures your intelligence. But what they did is half
the people got a test that was passable. And half people got the test
that was impossible. They were going to fail. It couldn't pass this test. And then they gave them another
version of the test after that. And this version, everyone
could pass. And again, an alarming number
of the people who are given the impossible test and failed
it, failed the one they should and could have passed. Because they believed
that their abilities weren't up to the task. And it turns out that when you
believe your abilities are not up to the task, you
can't use them. It's as if you don't
have them. And so what happened was that
the failure distorted their perceptions of the basic
fundamental abilities. And that's what failure
can do to us. It can take one experience, one
small experience, and turn it into something much bigger
that impacts our lives going forward in ways in which
we are unaware. And that's why I consider
failures to be emotional chest colds that become psychological
pneumonias, or can become psychological
pneumonias. And I want you to think about
times in your life where you were convinced you couldn't
succeed at something and maybe you need to rethink it. Because maybe you were being
influenced in ways in which you were not aware. Let's look at another example,
brooding and ruminating. So it's natural to reflect
on painful experiences when we have them. It's something we all do. Experiences or worries,
we tend to do it. If our boss yells at
us in a meeting-- don't think that happens much at
Google-- but let's say your boss yells at you in a meeting
and embarrasses you in front of your colleagues. Then you might stew about it. And you might think about it. And you might talk to this
colleague about it. And you talk to that
colleague about it. And then you go home and you
call your friends and you think about it. And you think about it at night
before you go to bed. And you think about
it the next day. And you think about it
over the weekend. And then you start to involve
fantasy in the thoughts. So the fantasy-- where you have the heroic
fantasy, where you envision the boss yelling at you. But then you stand
up to the boss. And everyone applauds, and
it's happy ending. And then you have this, the
victim fantasy, where boss yells at you again. And you just break into tears. And the boss realizes how harsh
and unreasonable they are, and they apologize. And they hug. And it's all very nice. And then you have the tragic
version, where you yell back. And you end up homeless on the
streets, whatever it is. But you replay it over and
over and over again. And you might think, so fine. I'm processing. I'm processing my feelings,
if that's how I'm feeling. I'm talking about it
to friends and expressing my feelings. I'm processing them. Surely as a psychologist, I
should be very pleased when people are processing
their feelings. Surely I should be thrilled. Well no, I'm not thrilled. This is not my thrilled face. And I'm not thrilled because
there are differences in self-reflection. There is adaptive
self-reflection. And there is maladaptive
self-reflection. So let's look at the
differences. When you're self-reflecting in
a way that is adaptive, what you're doing is you are easing
your emotional distress. The whole idea of adaptive
self-reflection is that it lowers the potency of the event,
so that when you think about it afterwards, it
evokes less emotion. It's less distressing. And that happens because by
thinking it through, you're reaching new insights. You're seeing things from
a fresh perspective. You're learning something. You're remembering for example,
that huh, in that meeting, I actually disagreed
with the boss before he yelled at me. And no one really does disagree
with that boss. So I stepped on the
boss' toes. Then the boss stepped
on my toes. Um, I understand what I
shouldn't do in the future. Or you talk to other people and
hear, yeah, that person has an anger management issue. You can decide maybe I want to
speak to Human Resources and try and transfer. The idea is, it clarifies
actions that you can take to fix your situation. So having those insights and
having the idea of what you need to do differently, it all
adds up to a certain release that you feel. And it helps you move on. And you can move on. And it's less troubling. But that's when the
self-reflection is adaptive. When it's maladaptive, what it
does is it just increases our emotional distress. That's what it does. And the thing is that we used
to think that oh, if you're just getting your anger out-- if you're just expressing
it-- it's a release. There's a stereotype
of a psychologist. They always say, punch a pillow,
when you're angry. Have you heard the
punch-the-pillow theory? So there was this movie years
ago with Billy Crystal and Robert De Niro called, "Analyze
This." Have you heard of this film? And Billy Crystal plays
a therapist. And Robert De Niro is a patient
who has anger issues. And he's in the mob. So Billy Crystal says, well, if
you're angry, why don't you punch the pillow? And Robert De Niro goes
ah, good idea. And he takes his gun and he
shoots the pillow three times. And Billy Crystal is alarmed. And he goes, feel better? And Robert De Niro goes,
yeah, yeah, I do. But Hollywood-- because actually that's
not what happens. When we do studies with a pillow
punching, and we have some people feel annoyed
and think of a person and punch a pillow. And other people feel annoyed
and think of the person and not punch a pillow, the people
who punch the pillow are angrier afterwards. They're more aggressive
afterwards. And they're more likely to take
out their aggression on innocent people, than the people
who just thought about it but didn't punch
the pillow. So this catharsis theory
doesn't work. So just stewing doesn't
help us. And in fact, it makes the
urge to keep thinking about it more potent. The idea will flash into your
head more often and more frequently and more
powerfully. And the other thing is that
when we're doing so much stewing and so little
doing, it actually makes us feel passive. And it makes us start to have
problems with problem solving. And here's another slightly
shocking example. They did a study in which they
looked at women who found a lump in their breast. How long does it take them to
call their doctor to make an appointment? And they looked at that. And they divided the women
into two groups-- women who tend to ruminate
and women who don't tend to ruminate. And the women who tended to
ruminate waited on average two months longer to make an
appointment with their doctor, which is a critical amount of
time when you find a lump in your breast. And that is because they were
probably so worried about it and looking it up and discussing
it with people. And what if this and
what if that? But they weren't acting. And so that's what can happen. So when we brood and when
we ruminate, we get very, very passive. We see the world in
negative times. So it puts us more at
risk for depression. It puts us more at risk for
alcoholism, because we get angry all the time. Because we're stirring
ourselves up. We have to take the edge off
at the end of the day. It puts us at risk for eating
disorders, because we want to manage our feelings with food. And also we're releasing so many
stress hormones into our bloodstream, it puts us
at higher risk for cardiovascular disease. So that's all of the things
that rumination does. And so to me, ruminate and
brooding is basically like picking at emotional scabs. You're opening the wound. You're not letting it heal. You're not doing
something good. All right, let's look at
one other example. And one of the injuries I get
asked about a lot is guilt. And not just by my mother. So we all experience
guilt quite a bit. Now how much guilt
do we experience? Well, in short bursts
of guilt, like oh, I have to call her. Oh, it's an hour now. I still haven't called. But short bursts like that-- we
can have 2 and 1/2 hours a day of mild guilt, five hours
a week of moderate guilt and three and a half hours a
month of severe guilt. So that's a lot of guilt. Except that guilt is not
necessarily a bad thing. Because it does something
really important. It alerts us. It gives us a warning as to
when we might have done or might intend to do something
that can cause harm to another person. And that allows us to not do the
thing or to apologize if you've done the thing or
to atone for it in some kind of way. So guilt is a great thing
because it really preserves our relationships. It's a relationship protector. And so that's a good thing,
except that when your guilt is unresolved. When it's excessive, that little
flashing signal in your brain like, oh, call your
mother, doesn't shut off. It just keeps going and going. And that can be an extremely
distracting thing. It's a huge mental drain. It impairs their ability to
focus and to concentrate. But it also does a bunch
of things of which we are often unaware-- sometimes aware, but
sometimes unaware. Because it turns out our
unconscious minds make decisions about how it's going
to manage guilt without us. Like the committee met without
us and then decided oh, we're going to do this. And so what does our unconscious
mind tend to do? It prevents us from
enjoying life. And in one experiment,
college students were made to feel guilty. And the typical scenario with
guilt is they play this game in which they tell them, oh,
the way you played the game you deprived your
other student-- who's fictitious and doesn't
exist-- but you deprived the other student of lottery
tickets. Eh, two lottery tickets-- big whoop, not a big thing
to feel guilty about. But then they offer them, now
you have payment for the experiment. You can choose. And for people who weren't
made to feel guilty chose movie tickets and
DVDs and CDs. And the students who are made
to feel guilty by, again, depriving someone they didn't
know of two lottery tickets, what did they chose? Notebooks and pans and folders
and fun, fun stuff. And so that's guilt what does. It prevents us from
enjoying life. But it does more than that. It actually makes us adopt
self-punishment. In another version of that
experiment, they wanted to see whether students who were made
to feel guilty, again with a lottery ticket scenario, whether
they would be willing to give themselves an electrical
shock, which they claimed again was uncomfortable
not painful. And they set them up with this
box where they could put their hand in the box and flip the
switch, if they were willing to do that. And then they pointed to some
research assistant sitting there and going, that's the
guy that didn't get the lottery ticket. And zap-- everyone was
zapping themselves. Now psychologists
have a heart. So it actually wasn't rigged
to give them a zap. They just wanted to see if
they'd pressed the button. There was no benefit from
actually giving them an electrical shock. So that was the test. But so many of them were like,
oh, yeah, I'll zap myself for lottery tickets for
goodness sakes-- for someone they didn't know. So it can make us adopt
self-punishment. And it actually has a
name in psychology. It is called the Dobby Effect. Who know why? Really? "Harry Potter", thank
you so much. The elf in "Harry Potter" that
smacks his head against the wall because Dobby's
a bad elf. That's what it's named after,
literally the fictitious elf. And the other thing that guilt
does is that it makes us really try and avoid the people
or the situation or any reminders of the things
that we did. So if we did something and Aunt
Flossie is very upset with us, we don't really want
meet with Aunt Flossie and with Uncle Harry either
because he's related. And we stay away a little bit. And it happened in that
part of town. So we're going to stay away
from that part of town. And she used to live
in Philly. And we don't go to
Philly anymore. And we'll slowly really try
and withdraw and avoid. And it can really hamper
our relationships. And so what happens, guilt is so
toxic to us and so toxic to our relationships, I consider
it the poison in our system. Now let's get to the most common
psychological injury we all experience, and
that is rejection. Rejections are an extremely
regular part of life, if you think about it, because
we get turned down by potential dates. We get turned down by
potential employers. Our partners rebuff our
sexual advances. Our friends go to lunch
without us. Our colleagues don't tell us
about the birthday party. Our neighbors give us
the cold shoulder. Our parents don't approve
of our lifestyles. Our social media contacts don't
post our posts, and they don't retweet our tweets. There are just so many ways in
which we can get rejected. But all of them have one thing
in common, and that is they really, really hurt. And that's the thing that
fascinated scientists at the beginning when it came
to rejection. Why do they hurt so much? Why does it hurt so much? So they wanted to study it. The thing is, you have to be
able to catch rejection in action, if you want
to study it. You can't just take your
research assistant to a local singles bar and go, oh, look,
that dude just got shot down. Quick give them the
questionnaire. That's not going to work. So you have to recreate it
in some kind of way. So how do you recreate it? So here's what they did. Imagine that you signed up for
a psychological experiment-- which none of you are ever going
to do after this talk. But just imagine you signed
up an experiment. And you're sitting in
the waiting room. And there are two other people
in the waiting room. And there's a ball
on the table. And one of them takes the ball
and goes, eh, and throws it to the other person. And the other person catches
it and goes, eh, and throws it to you. And you catch it. And you don't have to go, eh. I don't know why I said that. And you catch it. And you throw it back to the
first person, who then goes, hmm, throws it to the second. And the second doesn't throw it
to you, throws it back to the first person, who then also
doesn't throw it to you, throws it to the
second person. And now they are tossing the
ball and you're excluded. And then the researcher shows
up and goes, oh, we've ready for you now, and takes you
into the other room. Now how would that
make you feel? Now most people think, two
strangers in a waiting room didn't toss me a ball,
big whoop. I don't care. But it turns out we
care quite a bit. Because this is a paradigm that
has been used dozens and dozens of times. And everyone who goes through it
reports feeling significant emotional pain. And not just emotional pain,
it hurts people's moods. It makes them angry. It hurts their self-esteem. And this is about as mild
as rejection gets. And so the experimenters were
really, really curious about-- wow, so this is a very
kind of potent thing. I mean, let's try something. What if-- does it depend on who
the people are? So they said, let's run
the experiment again. And what if we told them that
the people who rejected them were people they despise. So they run the experiment
again. And they take people into the
other room, and they go, you know, those two people in the
waiting room are here for some kind of social science
experiment. They are members of the Ku
Klux Klan, KKK members. Now does it hurt? And they're all like,
yeah, still hurts. And scientists were like,
wow, that's amazing. So let's try something
even more radical. So they ran it again. They took them in and they go,
OK, we're coming clean. Those are research assistants. It wasn't real. The whole thing was rigged. Now does it hurt? And people were like, yeah,
it still hurts. [LAUGHING] So scientists were like, what is
going on in our brain here with this rejection thing? Like how come it's
so unreasonable? I mean, we're telling people
it wasn't real, and they're still hurting. So they put people in a
functional MRI machine. They want to see literally what
happens in the brain. And what they found was
shocking to them. Because what they saw was the
same pathways in the brain light up when we get rejected as
light up when we experience physical pain. They were literally
overlapping. The rejection pathways were
piggybacking on physical pain pathways in the brain. And so that was really
shocking to them. And then the scientists were
like maybe we don't have to do many experiments. Maybe we'll just give
people Tylenol. And so they did. They ran the experiments
again. And they gave half the group
of people Tylenol. And the people who got Tylenol
reported less emotional pain. Because again, these are
physical pain pathways that are getting activated. So acetaminophen, a pain
reliever, was enough to-- now, I'm not suggesting that
you go out on our next date packing Tylenol. Because I'm-- it's a little pessimistic,
if you ask me. And I'm not sure that's
the best thing. But they were really
curious about that. So why is that? Why are we wired to experience
rejection so severely? Why? And the answer is because of
our evolutionary past. Because we grew up in tribes. We evolved in tribes. And we couldn't survive
outside them. As hunter-gatherers, we
needed our tribe. Being ostracized from your tribe
was a death sentence. So we evolved an early
warning mechanism. We evolved a way to alert us
when we were at risk of being ostracized from our tribe. And that was rejection. So people who experience
rejection as more painful were more likely to take corrective
action, were more likely to stay in the tribe, were
more likely to pass along their genes. And people who didn't were
more likely to be ousted from the tribe. And they didn't live to pass
along their genes. That's why that mechanism
evolved. But it also explains why we
feel things so harshly. And today we don't live in small
pockets of humanity. We live in rather large
pockets of humanity. So the opportunities for
rejection are innumerable. And that's why I consider
rejection to be the cuts and scrapes of daily life. Now I hope you're beginning to
realize that these simple psychological injuries
are not so simple. That they really do impact us
in very significant ways. That they can damage our
emotions and our mood and perceptions and our thinking
and our cognition and our behavior and our mental health
and our emotional well-being and even our physical health. Because I gave you the example
of brooding and ruminating. But let me give you one other
example, because there's one more psychological injury that's
even more damaging to our physical health
than brooding. And that one is loneliness. 40% percent of adults
will experience loneliness in their lifetime. We can experience that when we
move away to college, when we move to a new town, a new state,
or a new country, when we get divorced, when our
children grow up and leave the nest, when we retire and we stop
seeing our colleagues. Loneliness is something
we can all experience. And it damages us
psychologically. But physically what it does
to us is quite alarming. Because, yes, like rumination,
it does put us at risk for cardiovascular disease
and for depression. But it also puts it at risk
for Alzheimer's disease. And it also suppresses
our immune systems. They did one study in which
they gave college freshman the flu shot. And they just gave them
questionnaires about loneliness. And the students who were
lonely, who reported feeling really lonely, had a poorer
response to a flu shot than the students who didn't. It really impacts our
immune system. And so scientists have concluded
that the risk factors posed by loneliness
are actually equal to the health risk factors posed
by cigarette smoking. Because it can shave-- chronic loneliness, yes, can
shave years off our lives. Now cigarette packs come with
warnings from the Surgeon General-- this is a dangerous,
dangerous thing. But we don't have warnings
about loneliness. We don't know if we're
inhaling two packs of loneliness a day that it's
going to kill us at the end of the story. And that is an important
thing. The other thing that loneliness
does is that it really makes us isolated. It keeps us to ourselves. So our whole relationship skills
and our social skills and our ability to relate
and to get into deep relationships, they
atrophy over time. And they get weaker. And that's why I consider
loneliness to be some form of relationship muscle weakness. We're not used to using
those muscles. And a lot of times when
somebody's been, let's say, single and then they start
dating again, they come out and either they're way too
intense or they're too suspicious because their
muscles are not quite regulated well. Unfortunately, they
don't conclude, I need to work on this. They conclude, you see,
I'm unlovable. So let me just retreat again. So loneliness is very
self-reinforcing. And we really, really need
to find ways to treat it. So as I said, our physical
health is certainly very much impacted by these psychological injuries as well. So now I hope you can see why
I was so upset earlier about why I'm so upset that these
things get ignored, that we ignore the psychological
injuries. Because look at what
they do to us. They have such a huge
impact on our lives. So now let's look at what
we can do about them. And so since we were talking
about rejection, let's start with that. I mean, we have time for
a couple of examples. But let's start with
rejection. Now remember I said that when
it comes to psychological injuries, we sometimes don't
even realize we're injured. Eh, not the case
with rejection. We know that pretty much
very, very well. Because we have a strong
response to rejection. So let's look at how people typically respond to rejection. So one of the first things that
happens is people can get slightly angry or aggressive. "Fatal Attraction", anyone? I don't know. You know the movie? She boiled the bunny, and then
she came at him with a knife. So you can get slightly
aggressive when you feel rejected. The other thing people typically
do when I ask people, so, what do you do
when you feel rejected? Vodka! They reach for the bottle
of tequila, whatever. They reach for the bottle. Not a good idea-- it turns out
that when you stuff your feelings down with alcohol, they
often come back up again. So that's not going to work. And the other thing we often
do is we turn to food. We try and drown our sorrows
with food by hugging the desert bowl, perhaps while
somebody has a sympathetic hand on your shoulder while
you're doing it. Now needless to say these
responses don't really work very well. They really don't do anything
for the rejection. They just numb you out or
give you a sugar high or whatever it is. So what do we need to do? How do we need to really
treat rejection? There are several wounds
we need to treat. But the most urgent of them is
that we need to do something to revive our self-worth. Because our self-esteem
just took a body blow. So we need to do something
to revive our self-worth. And one of the ways that is most
common in terms of how people do that is positive
affirmations. I don't know if you're
familiar with them. Those are statements like I
am attractive and worthy. I'm going to be a
great success. You will find those statements
in books and on refrigerator magnets and at the bottom
of annoying emails. And you'll see them
everywhere. And the thing about positive
affirmations-- you think, that's great. That's a nice thing. I'll recite that mantra
on a regular basis. But when we do studies about
them what we find is that positive affirmations
don't work. And worse, people whose
self-esteem is feeling low actually end up feeling worse
when they use positive affirmations not better-- actually worse. Well, why is that? Why is it when your self-esteem
is low, telling yourself that you're going to
be successful and people are going to love you and everything
is going to be great, why would that
make you feel bad? Well, we have to look at
persuasion theory. Persuasion theory tells us that
when a statement falls within the boundaries of
our belief system, we'll accept it. And when a statement falls
outside the boundaries of our belief system, we'll
reject it. And so when you're feeling
really unworthy of love and really unworthy of success, and
you're telling yourself I'm worthy of love, I'm worthy
of success, you'll actually reject that statement. Your unconscious mind will
reject that statement. And you'll actually endorse that
other statement of, no, actually, I don't feel like
I'm worthy of love. I don't feel like I'm going
to have success. It's going to make
you feel worse. And I'll tell you, the positive affirmation industry-- I mean, there are subliminal
tapes. It's an amazing thing. But the people who need it most
are the ones most likely to be harmed by it. So that's unfortunate. So what should you do? Well, there is another kind
of affirmation that actually does work. And that's the one I'm
going to suggest. It's called self affirmations. And the thing about
self-affirmations is they are generated by you. So you'll know they fall within
the boundary of your belief system because you're
the one that has to come up with them. And here's one of the exercises
I suggest in the book to revive your
self-esteem. I say-- and I'm saying it now-- make a list of five qualities,
attributes, that you have that you really believe
are valuable in whatever the domain is. So let's say it was a
romantic rejection. You could write that
I'm loyal. I'm emotionally available. I'm very supportive. I'm really open to
all kinds of fun. I'm a great cook. Whatever you make-- a list of attributes. If it's in the employment
domain, then I have a great work ethic, high
learning curve. I'm reliable. I'm responsible. I'm motivated. You make your list, as
long a list as you could possibly generate. And then you write a brief
essay, one or two paragraphs about one of the items on your
list in which you talk about why that's important, why you
value it, why other people value it, how you've expressed
it in the past, how that impacted people, how you might
express it in the future. You really elaborate why that's
an important thing. And that will actually remind
you of self-worth that you actually have. It will remind you of,
huh, you know what? I am pretty much of a bargain
for those people to hire me. Or actually I do have a lot to
offer in the dating room. That will make you feel
better, doing that. Now some people say to
me, I've tried it. It didn't work. And I'd like, you made the list
and you wrote the essay? No, no, no, I just thought
about those things. And I thought about why
they were important. And I'm like, well, no, that's
like saying I was hungry. So I thought about the food
I had in my fridge. It turns out I'm still hungry. [LAUGHING] No, yoiu have to write
the essay. You have to make the list. Because making the list is like
taking the food out of the fridge and cooking it. And writing the essay
is how you eat it. It's how you absorb it. Your brain needs for you to
think about it, to process it, to write it. That's how the message gets
absorbed, not on spec in some 30-second rushed thing. No, that doesn't work. So you actually have to write. The essay is an important
thing. Now it turns out that trying to
boost our self-esteem is a good idea in general. And this is something I talk
about in the self-esteem chapter of the book. Because when our self-esteem is
higher, not too high, but higher, it can actually function
as a buffer when we encounter things like rejection
and failure and anxiety and stress. Now I'm saying higher not high,
because narcissists for example, who seemingly have
very high self-esteem, it doesn't act as a buffer. One small insult to a narcissist
and they're a puddle on the floor
of outrage. So it's about higher,
but not too high. And so we know that when your
self-esteem is higher, it can actually help you feel more
emotionally resilient. And self-esteem is like this
armor that you can wear to life that will help
protect you. And that's why I consider-- and
when your self-esteem is low, it's like having an
emotional immune system. And when your emotional immune
system is low, you're more vulnerable. And when it's high, you're
less vulnerable. So low self-esteem is
like having a week emotional immune system. And using self-affirmations
will boost it. But there is one other thing
that will boost it that I want to mention as well. And this is why I think it's so
important that we're aware of our self-esteem as a
psychological construct that we actually have to protect. Because it's like this armor. And what happens that when our
self-esteem is low, the most damage it sustains is by us. When our self-esteem is low,
we tend to be self-critical and self-blaming and look at all
our faults, and focus on everything we do wrong. And we are like kicking
ourselves when we're down. Now it's something we all
do very, very naturally. We'll call ourselves
loser and stupid. People do it all the time. They do it publicly. Like, shut up. That's not a good thing to do. Because if you thought of
self-esteem as a literally an emotional immune system, or like
armor that you're going to wear to the battle of life,
you would hardly see people preparing to wear their armor
by poking holes in it and making it weaker. That would not be something
you would do. You would think to
strengthen it. That's what our self-esteem
is. It needs to be strengthened. And so one of the ways to do
that, one other technique you can use to do that
is the following. When your self-esteem is low,
and you feel yourself being very critical, and you're
feeling bad about yourself-- and again, I should say our
self-esteem, it fluctuates day to day, hour to hour. It's not this monolithic
thing. I have good self-esteem, or
I have bad self-esteem. It can be good one minute
and bad the next. It's like having a bad hair
day or a good hair day. You can have a good self-esteem
day or a bad self-esteem day. So it can really fluctuate. We can all have moments
of low self-esteem. When your self-esteem is low,
when you're feeling yourself becoming self-critical and self-blaming, do the following. Again, it's a writing thing,
because remember, that's how we absorb best. Write out-- if you had a dear,
dear friend who was saying to you, this is how I feel. I feel self-critical. I feel bad about myself. I'm blaming myself for this. I think I have all
these faults. What would you write to them,
if you were trying to cheer them up? If you were trying to encourage,
if you were trying to nurture, what would you say
if you were trying to soothe them and remind them
of all the great things that they are? Write that out. And that is what you
need to say to yourself in those moments. Another writing exercise-- it's called adopting
self-compassion. And self-compassion is a great
antidote to low self-esteem. Because it reminds you to treat
yourself kindly, to allow your self-esteem to
recover, to allow your emotional immune system
to get stronger again. And if you do, it
actually will. And so those two exercises-- one is for rejection, the other
for self-esteem, but you can use them both for
self-esteem-- are two things you can do. Because they happen very,
very frequently. And I assure you that if you
practice them-- if you take the time to do the thinking
and do the writing-- you will feel better. So look, I want to talk about
the benefits then of practicing emotional first aid,
what it can do for you. It can ease your
emotional pain. It can restore your cognitive
functioning. It can help you think
more clearly. It can minimize risks of
infection, like we saw with failure, and damage to your
long-term mental health. It can minimize risks to
your physical health. And it can increase
your emotional resilience over time. These self-esteem exercises,
for example, will increase your emotional resilience,
if you do them regularly. So look, I hope I've been able
to convince you to invite Cinderella to the ball, to
really think of your psychological health as
something that needs as much attention and as much care as,
yes, you give your teeth. And I've looked at you all. You all have good teeth. So do that to your psychological
health. I really hope that the next time
you experience some kind of psychological injury, you
won't just hurt, but you'll try applying emotional
first aid. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE] GUY WINCH: So we do have time
for some questions, if there are any brave souls who
want to ask any. AUDIENCE: I'll be
a brave soul. GUY WINCH: Excellent. AUDIENCE: I wonder where you
think the practices of Buddhism, like mindfulness-- and even though I was
thinking of the meditation loving kindness-- fall in terms of a first aid for
our emotional well being? GUY WINCH: OK. It's a great question. And I'm actually all for them,
because I do think they are good examples. I mean, they're actually
what I'm saying. The mindfulness, and especially
the Buddhist mindfulness, is a way of
thinking about your life in a way that does practice this. It's a way of thinking about
things in a way that you're paying attention to your
psychological state, to your thoughts, to your feelings. And especially a lot of those
things, they really do that trick of being kind
to yourself. Mindfulness is a
way in which-- for example, mindfulness
meditation is a way in which you reflect on your thoughts
and your feelings, but you don't judge them. You might note, I'm
feeling this. And you move it away. And you try and keep
concentrating. And you do that over time to
kind of clear your mind and move the thoughts away. Just label them so you know
what they are, but no emotional judgments to them. And they are actually
very therapeutic. And there are a couple of
exercises in the book which are very mindfulness
in their approach. So yes, I think that is
actually a good thing. I think it falls within the
spectrum of the things I'm talking about. AUDIENCE: Oh, thanks. AUDIENCE: Hi. So I want to think-- when you're planning something,
or you're going out for like a job interview, or
you're going out on a date, one thing I'll do that I don't
think it works-- and I don't know if it's true or not-- is
to try and pump myself up beforehand. So like getting myself like,
oh, you can do this. You've got this, when I maybe
feel like I don't. Do you think that's something
that can make the rejection or the damage worse? GUY WINCH: So here's
what I'm saying. I'm saying that I think the
pumping up is a good idea. How I would do it is
more specifically. I've got this or yay for
me is too general. I would actually maybe do that
self-affirmation exercise. I would maybe sit and journal
a little bit about all the things you have to offer to this
prospective date, all the things that you have to offer to
this prospective employer. Because that will actually get
you in touch with real stuff. That will allow to be more confident and be more yourself. Because when we're nervous,
we're too much thinking about, what are they thinking of me? And you're not enough thinking
about, well, what do I think of them? And do they want me
to work here? Well, do I want to work there? And do they like me? Well, do I like them? So doing that, doing the
self-affirmation exercise, I think, will put you in touch
with more real things, give you true confidence, as opposed
to the general yeah, yeah, yeah, which kind
of is like-- it's like a balloon. It's not very substantive
inside. So I would use the
self-affirmation exercise before a date or a
job interview. AUDIENCE: Thanks. GUY WINCH: Anyone else? No? All right. Well, look thank you very,
very much for coming. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much for
having me again. Have a great day. [APPLAUSE]
