Okay, Pashoshim, look it up. I'm taking this forced time out to re-record several old talks which are no longer available on my channel, interviews mostly.
And today I'm going to discuss how to use my new model of the mind, the intra-psychic activation model, IPAM.
How to use this model to decode your mind and then to heal. I applied this model to the narcissist.
So go to the description, there's a link as to how this model explains narcissism, and I've applied it to people pleasers. And again, go to the description and you will find the narcissist and the people pleaser in close proximity, exactly like in real life.
Click on the links and watch these previous videos at your leisure.
Now, to clarify one thing, you don't need to be a psychic to make use of the intra-psychic activation modelIPAM.
Intracychic means inside the psyche. Those of you who are spiritually inclinedinside your soul.
So I'm going to hand you the key to how human psychology operates. And you can open the door to your own healing and your own recovery and more generally to your own wellbeing.
IPAM is a model that puts together to the best of my knowledge, most branches of psychology, including biological psychology and evolutionary psychology. I put all these insights together. And so it's a kind of unifying theory. It's a model that correlates internal processes with internal structures, with external outcomes, including behaviors with motivations, but not only behaviors.
The model, for example, takes into account the effects of the environment and how the environment triggers us to behave and to think and to emote in certain ways. Everything in IPAM, in the intra-psychic activation model, everything starts with the environment. Everything starts with reality. This is where we interface.
And this is essentially biological psychology. Reality bombards us with information. Some of this information is stimulating. It's called stimuli. The stimuli enter our brains through the senses and this input is called sensa.
Sensa is the plural. So stimuli enter our minds through the senses in the form of sensa. We are exposed to sensa. We are exposed to stimuli.
And so there's a lot of information coming in. Most of this information, vast majority, is quite useless and we dump it. Actually, we process around 5% of the information that we are flooded with. 95% are relegated to the unconscious. Nothing gets lost though. 95% remains somewhere stuck in your mind, but it doesn't affect your behavior theoretically.
There are schools of thought, starting with Sigmund Freud, that claim that this is not true. Even information you are not conscious of does affect your moods, your cognitions, your emotions and your behaviors.
But in IPAM, this is not the case. In IPAM, there's a lot of junk information, junk data that has very minimal effect on who we are and how we comport ourselves, our conduct.
So there is the environment, there is external reality, but there's also another environment. And that environment is internal reality, external reality and internal reality. Things are happening in your mind all the time. Processes, thoughts, cognitions, emotions, they are constantly happening.
Whether you trigger them intentionally or not, because there's always the illusion of free will, the illusion of self-control, the illusion of self-discipline. So whether you believe that you are triggering, for example, your thoughts intentionally or even your moods, and whether you don't believe this, no one can dispute that there isn't a rich internal environment, which is somehow correlated with the external environment.
But we're not quite sure how.
And this is what the IPAM model tackles a bit later.
The IPAM model assumes that free will, free control, self-control, and even self-discipline are illusions, because they're probably illusions.
There are many autonomous processes happening in your mind, which you're not responsible for. You better think of yourself as a highly programmable robot or machinerythat's much closer to reality, as we shall see when we continue.
We know, for example, that nerve activity in the brain starts a fraction of a second after you actually take actions. I'm going to repeat this because this is very, very counterintuitive.
First, you take action. A fraction of a second later, your brain reacts.
So the original theory, the orthodoxy was that you act and there is brain activity that correlates with your action. But actually, in reality, whatever is happening in the brain lags substantially your actions. You seem to act brainlessly, mindlessly.
So actions precede activity in the brain. Actually, about 80% of actions precede any activity in the brain whatsoever. These are activities that used to be attributed to free will, like writing or lifting your hand or slapping the intolerable samvakni, a positive activity, if I know of any.
So most of these activities are not preceded by any signal in the brain.
And that's why I'm saying that free will is an illusion. But we will not go into it.
There's a video on my channel, a dialogue with Benny Hendel about free will. You're invited to watch it.
Let's go back to the environment.
There are two types of environment, external and internal. And these two environments, these dual environments, they keep feeding you with data, information, stimuli, sensor processes, things are happening outside, things are happening inside. And these two environments generate a lot of inputs.
How do we cope with all this?
The current dogma is that you have a core identity. This core identity is essentially immutable over the lifespan. It doesn't change. The core identity interacts with the environment.
That's what we teach in university. But the environment changes. The core identity doesn't.
Stop to think about it for a minute. You will see how stupid this is. Nothing that is immutable, nothing that is unchangeable can cope with change.
If the environment keeps changing externally and internally, how come your identity is incapable of change? Your identity should change along with the environment, both external and internal.
So the whole idea of a coreunchangeable, immutable, fixedlifelong identity is probably very wrong because you can't have something that never changes. Coping with something that always changes, like the environment. The environment always changes. It cannot be that you have something inside you that never changes in charge of coping with a kaleidoscope. That is reality. You have winter and you have summerand you change your clothing accordingly. You have winter clothes and you have summer clothes. You have clothes for all seasons.
So similarly, you probably have identities, multiple, not one, which somehow correlate with and interact with the environment. You change clothes all the time. You change identities all the time. You cannot say that there is a fixed self that never changes over the lifespan. This is who you are. This is your identity. Never mind what happens to you. You go to prison, you meet a beautiful girlor you meet a beautiful girl in prison. You need to go get a hamburger. Never mind what happens to you. This unchanging entity is the one to cope, to manage all these situations. This is simply a stupid premise.
You see how wrong it isintuitively.
Instead, what I'm suggesting, what I'm using actually, is something called self-states. I didn't invent this concept. The main proponent of self-states was Philip Bromberg, but I'm making use of it.
What I'm saying in IPAM, in the intrapsychic activation model that I've recently developed, what I'm saying is that there is an ensemble. There is a group of self-states. Think of it as a theater troupe or a group of actors in a movie. There's a collection of self-states.
Now, each self-state is optimized for a specific environment.
Normally, when you come across that environment, you trot out. You will trot out. You will make use of the relevant self-state. You will activate the relevant self-state.
If you have, for example, a psychopathic self-state, when you are among criminals in prison, probably the psychopathic self-state will take over.
If you have a loving, compassionate, empathic self-state, then you're likely to use this self-state when you're flirting or courting someone. Normally, you will have self-states which are different and they're optimized for specific environments, as I say. These states come to the fore. They're triggered.
You don't control these self-states. They're not choices. They're not subject to decisions. They're triggered automatically. You don't say, "Wait a minute. What is the environment now? I'm going to be a psychopath. What's the environment now? I'm going to be an empathic, compassionate, loving, caring person." You don't say this.
Your self-states are automatically triggered. The environments trigger them.
So when you're in a specific environment, a self-state comes out, takes over youtotally.
And the other self-states that you have, they are quiescent. They become dormant, latent, suppressedif you wish.
There's a single self-state that takes over your functioning in any specific environment, one environment, one self-state.
I think all people have self-states, not only unhealthy people. Every human being has self-states. And these self-states are not dissociative. They are aware of each other. They share databases.
For example, all the self-states share your intelligence and other resources. All the self-states have access to a database of memories, shared memories. All the self-states have access to the same emotions and cognition.
So there's no dissociation involved. These are simply different manifestations of assets that you have, underlying assets, different combinations of these assets. They are shared in some way, memories, for example.
So everything is shared, but everything manifests with specific emphases. And these specific emphasesare these plural other self-states.
If you have traits, for example, traits 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. There will be a self-state which will make use of traits 1 and 3. And there will be another self-state which will make use of traits 4 and 5.
But both of these self-states will share the same memory. So there's no dissociation.
Sookay, you have self-states. You find yourself embedded or you find yourself in an environment. The self-state is optimized, but now you need to work in this environment. You need to operate in the environment. You have an environment. You have a fitting self-state, the right self-state for the environment.
And now you need to function in the environment. You need to operate there.
There are other processes in your mind that continue to work and have started to work long before the self-state has taken over. These processes are continuous. They don't pay mind or don't pay heed to which self-state is in control. They are kind of background processes.
Some of these processes, however, may conflict with the same self-state. Some of these processes may be incongruent. They may contradict the self-state. Some of these autonomous processes that started long before the self-state took over may contradict the self-state, undermine the self-state, act against the self-state.
So what to do with these processes? They need to be silenced. How to do this?
And this is done with something that I call construct.
Let us summarize. Let us recap. I'm going to do it often.
This is a very difficult, very complex lecture. So this environment, you have a set, a group of self-states. Each self-state is optimized for a specific environment.
So when you find yourself in that environment, this self-state that is optimized for that environment takes over. It takes over automatically. It's triggered.
However, there are internal processes, background processes, which started long before any specific self-state took over. These processes sometimes conflict with the self-state, contradict the self-state, or undermine it, and they are silenced via a structure called the construct.
Constructs are in charge of mediating reality. They are in charge, they are the interface between you and reality. And the way they mediate reality is by falsifying it. Falsifying may be a bad word because it's used among fraudsters and criminals. We are more gentle, we are academics and more gentle. And so we should say reframing, not falsifying, but reframing.
So the constructs are in charge of mediating reality by reframing it.
The constructs reframe reality, they mediate reality.
So when the self-states, when a specific self-state takes over, the self-state is coupled with a specific construct.
So one environment, one self-state, one or more constructs, are tend upon the self-state.
Each state has one construct, two constructs, and so on. The self-states are like generals, and the constructs are like the army, they are like the soldiers.
So the self-state comes to the fore, and it drags with it the soldiers, the constructs.
So the constructs are kind of membranes, they're kind of filters. Reality penetrates the mind through these membranes, through these filters, through the constructs.
Constructs are organizing principles. Constructs make sense of the world, they imbue it with meaning. Constructs are also hermeneutic and exegetic principles.
In other words, constructs allow you to interpret, to make sense of reality, interpretative principles.
So constructs tell you how to interpret reality. So the construct basically has two functions.
One is to organize reality in a way that makes sense to the self-state.
The second function is to interpret reality in a way that will not challenge or undermine the self-state.
Now all of you may think, or some of you may think, at this point, isn't this reminiscent of defense mechanisms?
Psychological defense mechanisms falsify reality to allow us to survive. Psychological defense mechanisms render reality palatable, less threatening.
This is the main function of psychological defense mechanisms, to impair reality testing, to keep reality bearable, because otherwise it's not bearable. So isn't it the same like constructs? I mean, what's the difference between defense mechanisms and constructs? I will come to this a bit later.
They are not the same. Constructs filter out all the information, all this filter, I'm sorry, not filter out, but filter all the information and all the stimuli. They create the equivalent of a database of relevant information, information in the environment that's useful.
And so the constructs interpret this information in order to buttress, support, and uphold the self-state.
So for example, if you have a psychopathic self-state, the constructs will filter out from the environment, will take in threats. So the constructs will feed the psychopathic self-state with environmental threats and menaces.
They would inform the self-state of any risk and danger. And they would in this way persuade or convince the self-state that it is right. The constructs message would be, you are right to be a psychopath because the environment is threatening.
In other words, the constructs main job is to create what we call ego congruency and ego symphony.
Constructs make you feel comfortable with your self-state, make you feel at peace with your conclusions, the way you perceive reality, and ultimately the ways you behave.
The psychopathic self-state would perceive threats in everything, psychopathic self-state and in everyone.
Psychopathic self-state is hypervigilant, suspicious, paranoid, and in the psychopathic self-state, the construct will filter out any data or information which challenge this perception of the world as a hostile place.
So if you're in a psychopathic self-state and someone shows love to you, this creates enormous dissonance. You are not going to like it. No one is supposed to love you because people don't love. People are horrible, they're dangerous, they're risky. You should avoid people because they're threatening.
This is the psychopathic mindset.
So if someone suddenly loves you, cares for you, shows compassion, is helpful and altruistic and charitable, this would create a dissonance and increase your level of anxiety when you are in a psychopathic self-state.
Talk to any psychopath, I'm not kidding you. You show a psychopath love, it makes him feel anxious because it contradicts his almost permanent self-state.
So the first thing the constructs do, they filter out reality, they reframe it, they make reality compatible with the self-state, but they tackle mostly external reality.
What about internal reality?
As I mentioned before, in internal reality, there are autonomous processes, some of which inevitably are incompatible with the new self-state and these processes have to be silenced.
And this is where the introjects come in.
The constructs hail introjects, they interpolate them, they call upon them.
The constructs call introjects to them and they say, "Hello, introject, can you help me with this? I have a problem here."
And to remind you, introjects are internal voices that represent meaningful people in your life, past and present.
Every human being has, for example, a mother introject, a father introject, a teacher introject, a leader introject, role models, pop stars, influential peersand so on. We are all our minds are populated, there's a population of introjects.
The constructs call upon the introjects to help them to manage the internal environment and, as you shall see, also the external environment.
All these people in your life leave impressions in your mind, they're represented in your mind through internal objects. These people, these significant people are introjected, you identify with them, internalize themand introject with them.
So the introjects are active, they're active voices, they're always there.
Now, introjects, exactly like self-states, exactly like constructs, are activated, they're triggered, they're always on standby, always ready to speak up.
The constructs select specific introjects.
So if the self-state is psychopathic, the construct will filter out reality to fit the self-state. The construct will notice only threats, as I said, and dangers. The construct will ignore love or reject it and resent it, repress it, reframe it. The construct will say, this person loves me because he wants something from me. He loves me because he has some agenda, hidden agenda. And so the external reality is solved and resolved by reframing. This leaves the internal reality, and this is where the introjects come in. The constructs select specific introjects. So the construct can, there's a self-state, the self-state is associated with the construct, and the construct says, I need introjects number one, 13 and 45. They're the ones I need.
Each one of them has a different message, and in Gestalt therapy they're called tapes or recordings. So they really like recordings.
The introjects play out in your mind.
Well, these messages play in your mind.
So the constructs have a map, a list, a dictionary, encyclopedia of all the introjects with their messages, and they know which ones to select.
Now, you're all acquainted with introjects. Some of them speak to you very clearly. For example, a very famous cluster of introjects is known as conscience. Your conscience is a cluster of introjects.
When you do something, when you act in a certain way, you say it's wrong to do this, or it's right to do this, or I shouldn't be doing this, or I ought to do this.
The conscience is an example of a socialized cluster of introjects that can be activated in the environment through a construct.
So imagine that your self-state is "I'm a good man", the self-state of a good man. The construct is attached to this self-state. You're in an environment, and the environment presents challenges to you, temptations, fears, but you still, your self-state is that of a good man.
And so your self-state activates the construct, and the construct interpolates your introjects.
If your self-state is a self-state of a good man, and then you come across temptation and seduction, something you really shouldn't do, the construct attached to your self-state as a good man will interpolate, will call upon, the cluster of introjects known as conscience. And your conscience will prevent you from acting in the wrong way, will affect your behavior, modify it.
So this is an example of the IPAM model in action, an environment, seduction, temptation, a self-state, "I'm a good man, I'm a good person", construct. The construct calls upon specific introjects known as conscience,
conscience inhibits you, prevents you from acting in the wrong way. So the construct selects introjects and activates them.
And what do they do? What do introjects do?
They generate what we call automatic thoughts.
And so you're beginning to see how I put together all the strands and various schools of psychology, because automatic thoughts is a concept in cognitive behavior, cognitive behavior theory.
So introjects spew out automatic thoughts, the engines of automatic thoughts.
Imagine that you have a self-state of a loser, okay? That's your self-state, you're a loser, you're a failure. So you go to a job interview.
The first state that will come out will be the self-state of a loser. This self-state of a loser will select a construct, and the construct will call upon specific introjects.
The introjects will generate automatic thoughts. You're a loser, you're a failure. Don't even try. You're going to flunk the job interview. It's hopeless, you're helpless, it's not going to work, you're not going to succeed.
These are the automatic thoughts generated by the introjects called upon by the construct in order to validate and prove right the loser self-state.
So you could ask, why would anyone allow these messages? Why would anyone accept them? Why would anyone agree to be a loser?
Well, a loser is a self-state, and you're emotionally invested in your self-states. You want the self-states to succeed. You don't feel comfortable when they fail.
So the success of the self-state, of the loser self-state, is a failure. When you fail, the loser self-state is successful.
That's the irony. Some people feel very bad when they succeed. They don't know how to manage, how to handle success. They fall apart. It destabilizes them. They begin to act out. They react badly. They self-destruct.
These people have a self-state of a loser. That's why some people seek abuse. They want to be abused. They ally very closely with abusers because abuse is their comfort zone. The self-state is affected. There's an emotional investment in the self-state of a victim. You become attached to your victim self-state.
This is who you are, essentially. When you put all the self-states together, and each one of us has many, when you put the self-states together, that's who you are. That's as close as you get to your identity.
You want to be yourself. You will do anything to continue to be yourself, even if it is self-defeating, self-destructive, masochistic, humiliating. You will still pursue it because it gives you a sense of existence, a sense of a core.
The construct selects introjects. The construct activates introjects, and they begin to generate automatic thoughts. The automatic thoughts have a function, which we will discuss later.
So now we come to another problem. The automatic thoughts take over the internal processes. They drown out the internal processes that don't conform to the self-state.
So if you have processes that contradict the self-state or challenge or undermine the self-state, the constructs will generate a flood, a tsunami, an avalanche of automatic thoughts triggered by introjects.
So this way, the constructs silence, rebel, or defiant, or non-conforming internal processes.
I'm going to recap.
When a self-state takes over you, there are internal processes that negate the self-state, vitiate it, attack it, undermine it.
The construct associated with the self-state activates introjects that generate automatic thoughts that flood, drown out the non-conforming internal processes, the non-conforming voices.
So that way, the construct creates a lot of noise. This internal noise makes it impossible for specific internal processes to operate. The frequencies cancel each other, so they become silent.
So these processes, which again conflict with the self-state, recede to the background. And they're in all intents and purposes, they're inactive. They don't affect behavior.
So now everything is fine and dandy.
But what about memories? Memories are there.
Let's go back to the example where your self-state is that of a loser. The self-state takes over, the right construct is attached, the construct activates automatic thoughts that keep telling you that you're a loser and a failure.
There's a lot of internal noise generated by these introjects, by these automatic thoughts.
And so other processes are silenced. And everything theoretically is congruent. Everything is harmonious. You have an internal harmony because the messages you are getting conform to the self-state, confirm the self-state, and amplify and magnify the self-state, which is optimized for the environment, a job interview, for example.
So the construct is working well, but not well enough because you may have memories of having succeeded in the past. You may have dissonant memories. Your self-state is that of a loser, but these memories of success challenge your self-state.
It's like these memories are saying, "What are you talking about?" These memories conflict with the self-state. And they're saying, "Self-state, what are you talking about? I'm not a loser. I succeeded in the past. Don't you remember?"
So these memories need to be silenced too because they threaten the stability of the self-state. If they are not silenced, they will destroy the self-state.
They challenge and conflict with the automatic thoughts.
So there's a war between specific negating, conflicting, contradicting memories, and supportive, buttressing automatic thoughts. This is known as dissonance.
If you have memories that challenge the self-state, this causes dissonance in a conflict, and it creates anxiety.
So the number one mental health task of every human being alive and many dead is to reduce anxiety. Almost everything we do is intended to reduce anxiety.
And end of story, this is a number one, two, and three priority.
So the minute memories begin to conflict with the self-state and challenge it, the minute memories provide counter- examples, the minute memories say, "It's not true. You are not a loser. You have succeeded in the past."
That minute there is dissonance and extreme anxiety, and the memories need to be silenced somehow.
And this is the third function of the construct.
To remind you of the first two, the first one is to filter reality, to reject some information, to accept some other data, to reject some sensa, to reframe and filter reality as a membrane in order to support the self-state.
The second function of the construct is to activate relevant, useful, specific introjects. These introjects will generate internal messages, and this supports the self-state.
But there is a third function, and that is to falsify memory, to render all memory compatible with the self-state, even when it is actually not compatible.
And this falsification of memory, this forging of memory, is done in three ways.
Everything is done in three ways in IPAM, because I'm a Jew, and we do everything in three ways.
So the construct falsifies uncomfortable memories, memories that conflict with the self-state, in three ways.
The first way is dissociation. This is where dissociation comes into play.
Memories that conflict with the self-state are simply eliminated, deleted, forgotten, amnesia. You forget about them.
The second mechanism the construct uses is to change the emotional content of the memory. So for example, if you're in a loser self-state, and you suddenly have a memory that you had succeeded in the past, the construct will falsify the emotional content of this memory. The construct will tell you, the construct will use introjects to tell you, you have succeeded, but don't you remember? You hated to succeed. Or you have succeeded, but it was an accident, a random occurrence, a chance. Or you have succeeded because there were no other competitors, etc.
So the construct will minimize the success, almost render it a form of failure. He will falsify what had happened. The construct will change the emotional content of the memory to render your success pitiable, minimal, irrelevant. Whatever you're doing, whatever you're making, all your accomplishments are not yours. It's not you. You are not the one to have succeeded. It just happened that way, and so on.
And so this is the second mechanism, changing emotional content.
And the third mechanism, which allows the construct to falsify memories, is selectivity or selective memory.
It's when certain memories are given much higher weight than other memories. To the extent that these memories, these heavier memories, are selected, and the other memories are so lightweight that they're forgotten.
So certain memories become weighty. The construct attributes to the gravity.
And other memories are lightweight, featherweight, and they just float away. And this is known as selective memory.
This is what the construct does. It's a massive job of forgery. It forges reality. It forges your memories. It provides or provokes automatic thoughts that are usually counterfactual. They're not true. They're against the facts.
So what I'm trying to say is that we live, we inhabit totally false realities internally and externally. All of it is false. All of it is fake. All of it is wrong. The way you perceive the outside world, the way you perceive your internal environment, what you remember, what you think, what your emotions are, everything is falsified by the construct with the help of an introject in order to conform to a specific self-state and support it.
It is a survival strategy. Had it not been done, there would have been so many out of control processes occurring simultaneously that this would have created insurmountable, uncontrollableinternal conflict. There would have been, it's like there would have been no boss.
The IPER model is like the mafia. There's a tough boss. This tough boss tells some memories, shut up. This tough boss shuts down some processes. And you're told what to think. If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you. And I will tell you what to say. And I will falsify reality. It's kind of cult dynamic. If there were no such control mechanism, you would spend all your life in debilitating, paralyzing anxiety because all the time there will be conflicts between external reality and internal reality. There will be conflicts inside internal reality between your memories and some processes and your self-state and so on. So it would have been a mess. It would be mayhem.
So there's a central authority specific to each self-state. And this central authority is the construct.
And the job of this central authority is to generate harmony, if necessary, by falsifying everything.
But internal love of harmony has been established. Once it has been established by the construct, it's perfect.
Reality has been falsified to fit it.
The self-state specific introjects, relevant introjects, supporting introjects have been activated. Your automatic thoughts support the self-state.
So if you're a loser, you get loser thoughts. If you're a psychopath, you get psychopath automatic thoughts. Your automatic thoughts conform, go along with the self-state.
The memories are selected or deleted or falsified. All is well in the kingdom of the self-state.
Now everything is perfect.
But there's still one risk. What if you were to behave in a way that would challenge this harmony?
Your behavior must conform to the self-state. To sustain the harmony, you cannot allow yourself to behave in certain ways. And you cannot be allowed to behave in certain ways.
There are some things that should be forbidden, inhibited, some actions, some behavioral choices, some modes of conduct. They should be blacklisted.
And we're coming to the concept of inhibition. If behaviors were left to be independent or autonomous or agentic, if it were true that you have free will and you make free choices, that you're in charge, that you have agency, if all these were true, you would have ended up paralyzed.
Because your behaviors and your actions and your decisions and your choices would have often contradicted your self-state. There would have been some paternal conflict. You would have been debilitated.
An example, I think, is writer's block. So the construct needs to control not only memories. The construct needs to control behaviors.
It's not enough to control the internal environment. The construct needs to modify the external environment via behavior. The construct needs to establish total control in order to render the twin environments external and internal compatible with the self-state.
Internal harmony, no challenges, no dissonances, no anxiety, inner peace is restored on condition that I manipulate the external environment via my behavior to not contradict the self-state.
So the construct needs to inhibit certain behaviors. He puts them on a blacklist. These are behaviors that cannot be engaged in right now. They don't conform to the self-state.
So the construct positively reinforces certain behaviors and negatively reinforces others.
And this is known as conditioning reinforcement or to some extent operant conditioning. This is behaviorism in a way.
So the construct makes a list of all possible behaviors. And then he assigns reinforcement values and weights to each of these behaviors.
Some behaviors are encouraged via reinforcements. Others are discouraged. The belief is that behaviors modify the environment and if your behaviors are the right ones, you can affect your environment to provide the self-state with support and approval.
Imagine for example, let's go back to the psychopath self-state. Imagine that you have a psychopathic self-state immediately. Some behaviors are inhibited. For example, you can't cry. The psychopath is not allowed to cry. It will conflict with the self-state.
Psychopaths are tough. But you are allowed to beat someone to a pulp because it conforms to the self-state.
There's a list of behaviors. Biting someone is okay. Crying is not. All these behaviors have consequences. Every action has consequences, however, minor.
The construct is pursuing the consequences. The construct is goal-oriented. Construct is not interested in the actions. Construct is interested in the outcomes.
Remember, the construct wants you to modify the environment. The construct is an environmental modification program. It induces new behaviors that modify the environment to fit the self-state.
It's not your actions that are of interest to the construct. It's the environmental consequences of your actions.
Construct is actually telling you, "Change the environment in this way and here is what you need to do to accomplish this. I need you to change the environment because right now it's not in perfect harmony with the self-state. I need you to change the environment to be in perfect harmony with the self-state."
So let's go back to the loser self-state.
Loser self-state, for example, in covert narcissism. The covert narcissism is a constant, is an almost constant loser self-state.
So here's the environment. The construct will push you to behave in a certain way that will bring about failure. The construct is not interested in what it is that you are going to do to bring about failure. Construct wants you to generate losses and defeats. Construct wants failure, wants you to change the environment, modify itin order to secure failure and losses and defeats because this would validate the self-state of a loser.
Behavior is irrelevant. That is a great insight of the IPAM model. Behavior is utterly besides the point. The entire psychological apparatus is focused on goals.
And this is, you could say, very psychopathic because psychopaths are goal-oriented. All the psychological apparatus, even in healthy people, is goal-oriented. It's consequences that matter.
So as a loser, I would behave in ways that would modify the environment to confront the middle of a loser.
Imagine, for example, that I go to a party and I'm in a loser self-state. A girl comes to me and says, "I like you. Can we have a drink?" But I'm in a loser self-state. My introjects are already acting out. My introjects are telling me, "You're ugly. She will dump you. She will reject you." So I'm getting these messages because I'm a loser. That's my self-state.
Now, the construct wants me to lose because I'm a loser. He wants me to lose this girl. He wants me to fail with this girl because if I were to succeed with this girl, the self-state would have been challenged and it would have created dissonance with the loser self-state. If I were to succeed, I would actually be in a heightened state of anxiety. I need to fail to reduce my anxiety, to eliminate my dissonance. I need to fail with this girl.
And on one hand, I feel bad having failed with this girl, but on the other hand, I feel good because my self-state has been validated and sustained.
So this is rule number one. Everything we do and everything we, every act we adopt is about reducing anxiety.
So when I'm faced with this girl now, I have two options. I have two behavioral pathways.
I can go for her. I can and will be successful because she has already told me I'm going to be successful. That's path number one.
Second door, I can behave in a way that will put her off, push her away. I can make sure that nothing happens. And this is also success because I succeed in failing. I self-sabotage, I self-defeat. Most of it is unconscious.
And so by self-defeating, by failing with this girl, I'm protective of the self-state. I make sure the self-state is not harmed or injured and can therefore remain fully functional and operational.
At this point, defense mechanisms kick in.
How do you explain to yourself that this gorgeous girl approached you and you rejected her or pushed her away? You failed. Success was within your grasp and you failed.
How do you explain this to yourself? You rationalize it.
Rationalization is a defense mechanism.
So rationalization tells you, yeah, you may have been rude to her, but it's because you don't actually like her. This is known as cognitive dissonance. Or you may have been rude to her because she was rude to you first.
Defense mechanisms are trying to make sense of the world. It's a narrative. It's a post hoc theory. Nothing to do with what's really happened. What's really happening is that in your self-state, you were challenged by the environment, by this girl who had approached you. And when the environment provides you with the stimulus, you have to adopt the stimulus to fit the self-state.
And so the only way for you to do this is to behave in a way that will modify the stimulus to save the self-state, to safeguard the self-state.
You need to push this girl away because if you push her away, you fail. And if you fail, it upholds and buttresses the loser's self-stateand you're not anxious.
It seems that what the construct does in addition to all the other functions is it modifies your behaviors.
The construct dictates to you which behaviors to adopt in order to guarantee conformity and compatibility with the self-state, whatever the self-state may be.
So if you have a self-state as a winner, always succeed, and so on, I have orange hair, well then of course your self-state will cause you to behave in ways which will bring about success. So the success may not be real. It may be imaginary, but you will experience it as a success because it conforms to your self-state.
Assuming that it is not a covert process or something, you may even be aware of it.
So behavior is modified to affect reality, to yield what we call self-efficacious outcomes, outcomes that support harmony, reduce anxiety, and allow you to function because you are not anxious. You can function when you're not anxious. When you're anxious you cannot function.
It's all about functioning, survival.
In the self-state, the constructs, the memories, the behaviors, they all have to fit each other snugly like handing love. There's no conflict between them, there's no daylight between them. They're all one, an apparatus working efficiently, seamlessly, a well-oiled machine.
Of course the environment changes all the time. At some point the environment can change to the extent that you will need to choose another self-state, and another self-state will come forward and take over at this point. And so the new self-state will have a new construct with new introjects selectedwith new automatic thoughts, and these will affect your behaviors in a totally different way.
And this explains why the vast majority of people are not constant. They are in flux.
The assumption that people are constant and predictable is the biggest nonsense in psychology. No one is. Not a single human being alive is either predictable or constant.
We are a kaleidoscope of self-states, and these self-states constantly bleed into each other, they constantly change, we constantly switch.
It is true that self-states can be totally mutually exclusive. It is true that they cannot be totally contradictory because they share, as you remember, your internal resourcesincluding your memories. A set of self-states that are diametrically opposed to each other and negate each other, this would create anxiety.
This is actually an excellent definition of mental illness. Mental illness is the case where we do have conflicting self-states.
So in the borderline, for example, we definitely have self-states that are mutually exclusive and contradictory. One self-state of the borderline is loving and caring and compassionate and overwhelmed by emotions.
And then suddenly the borderline switches and becomes a rank, facto, to a psychopath with no thought or empathy for anyone. She just does whatever she wantsand she breaks things, she cheats, she overspends, there's no empathy, nothing.
Mental illness. So mental illness is a situation where you have incompatible self-states competing through the same physical space using incompatible constructs with incompatible introjects and finally incompatible behaviors. This is known as identity disturbance.
But how do the constructs know which introjects to select?
I mean, okay, there's a self-state. Self-state is associated with a specific construct.
But who tells the construct, these are the introjects that you should activate.
How do the constructs know which introjects to approach and to interpolate?
The answer is what we call in psychology identity.
The construct organizes or activates introjects according to your identity.
But hey, Vaknin, again you're contradicting yourself. Have you switched to another self-state?
You said earlier that we don't have an identity. True, I still maintain that no one has an immutable, unchangeable, lifelong identity. What I call identity is not what psychology calls identity.
In psychology, as I said, it's an unchangeable, immutable core. What I call identity is a set of principles that regulate the appearance of self-states.
And this definition is much more flexible and much more accurate.
Everyone has a set of principles unique to him or to her. You have a unique set of principles. You are just a very nice set of principles that have worked for you in the past. I am a very unique set of principles. Everyone has their own unique set of principles on how to regulate their repertoire of self-states, which self-states to use, in which environment.
Now, these set of principles, the algorithm that determines which self-state will take over in which environment, the algorithm that links self-states to environments, this algorithm depends crucially on socialization, upbringing, experience, exposure, memories, and so on. That's why each one of us has a different set of principles.
I have a strong intuition or suspicion that the set of principles, this set of principles that each one of us has, is subject to change. I don't think it's fixed either. I think it's mutable. I think it changes as well.
But I think these sets of principles, they change much more slowly, much more glacially, imperceptibly. It gives you illusion that you're continuous.
This set of principles in this illusion that you're continuous is called personality. You have a set of principles on how to select specific self-states in specific environments. And this set of principles changes very slowly, so slowly that you appear to be stable and continuous. And this is what we call personality.
Principles are adopted. And in due time, you're likely to select different self-states.
So you're not the same when you're 20 as when you're 50.
The selection criteria, the set of principles, are modified by life, experiences, trauma.
You begin to select other self-states. You learn your lessons.
This self-state is not efficacious. I'm not going to choose it.
So the selection criteria coupled with the self-states are also in flux.
What the facade that you present to the world, that you exhibit, what we call personality, is also in flux.
So this is a very flexible definition of what it is to be human.
Well, hitherto, we've had very rigid German no offense kind of hierarchical approach. There's a boss. There are workers. Everyone obeys the boss.
And so that's not the way humans are constructed. The boss is the self.
Yeah. That's not the way humans are constructed.
I'm sorry. Most models in psychology are dead wrong in this sense.
Humans are a river. They're not a pond. They're not an ocean, even. They're a river. They're in flux. Everything is in flux.
Even the banks of the river change, the shape of the river.
It's true that over extended periods of time, we would have the same selection criteria, the same sets of principles on how to select self-states. We would have the same algorithm on which self-states will emerge to respond to which specific environments.
Yeah. Over extended periods of time, everything is stable. And this gives the illusion or the impression that we are constant, that we are the same.
But over longer periods of times, we changeand we change dramatically to the point that you can easily say that you've acquired another personality.
Any human being, anyone will tell you this is true. You don't need a psychologist. Talk to your grandma. And anyone and everyone will tell you this is true.
And it's shocking that psychology is the only discipline to deny this.
Don't forget that the fathers of modern psychology were medical doctors, neurologists, psychiatrists. Their ambition was to make psychology a science.
So they created what they call the physics of the mind, psychoanalysis, as if you can construct an analytic model of the mind.
There is a mechanics of the mind. They're moving parts. And if you know these parts and their trajectories, you can predict behavior and so on and so forth.
And this is the equipment you have for life. This is a thoroughly wrong model. Seriously flawed model of how humans and the human mind works. Unfortunately, it's a prevailing model.
But it's wrong.
If you remove someone from one country to another, immigrants. Immigrants develop totally new values. Immigrants acquire new personality.
Most things change in order to conform to the new environment.
So if there is a personality, if there's a self, if they are unchangeable, how do people change to that extent?
You know, people are super, super traditional when it comes to sex in one culture, and then they immigrate to another culture of societyand they become promiscuous.
How can you explain this? This is a fundamental shift.
So people are empathic in one settingand then put them in another settingand they become totally cruel and disempathic.
I don't know, soldiers, for example, we are in flux. There is a set of instructions when you're faced with changing environments. There's an algorithm. It tells you in environment number one, you should choose selfstate A and its attendant construct.
And when you change the environmentand you transition to environment number seven, you should choose selfstate Q with its attendant construct.
And if you write down these principles, this is your personality. This is your personality.
The selfstate dictate behavior via the constructs in the introjects. The selfstates modify your behavior in reality.
So your behavior is an outcome ultimately of your personality.
But what is not true to say is that your personality is an entity that is fixed, that will never change.
No, your personality is heuristic. It's reactive to the environment and to changes and to transformations. It's flexible.
I asked the question, how do the construct know which interjects to activate?
The construct says, I am attached to selfstate Q.
Now let me look at this set of principles. Let me look at the algorithm. Let me look at the selection criteria.
This algorithm says that selfstate Q is reactive to environment number seven.
In other words, selfstate Q should generate specific behaviors, which will allow the individual to be selfefficacious in environment number seven.
When you react to the environment, it means you behave in the environment, you're acting on and in the environment.
So the principles, the set of principles, the selection criteria, the algorithm that I mentioned, this is your personality.
And it simply says in environment number seven, activate selfstate Q and behave in the following way.
This is your set, your list of allowed behaviors. Only these behaviors are permitted. All other behaviors are forbidden, inhibited, because likely to yield bad or suboptimal outcomes.
The construct accesses this database, this algorithm, this list of criteria and choices. It has access to this database. And the database tells, informs the construct what it should do when selfstate Q is in charge. And when the environment is number seven, these are the behaviors that are allowed.
The construct is encouraged to generate these behaviors.
Now, how to generate these behaviors, the construct needs to activate interjects, which interjects one, nine and 14.
The big table, the algorithmconnects selfstates, environments and interjects. So the construct has access to this database.
The construct realizes the selfstate is Qenvironment is number seven. And it should yield specific behaviors.
And to generate this centrifugation behaviors, the construct needs to activate interjects listed in the algorithm, one, nine and 14. It's like a big encyclopedia.
The voices that will make you behave in the most efficient way are the voices that would be activated by the interject. And they are listed in this encyclopedia. It's a Wikipedia of the mind.
So for example, let's take an environment, a job interview, and there's a loser selfstate. The loser selfstate is a selfstate that came out in the job interview.
And now the construct resorts to the selection criteria, resorts to the set of principles, resorts to the encyclopedia, resorts to the algorithm. The construct accesses this Wikipedia of this individual's mind.
And the construct asks, which sub state am I? Oh, I'm in a loser sub state.
Okay. I'm in a loser sub state environment job interview.
Okay, so now I've identified the environment, I've identified the sub state, what behaviors should I generate?
I should say stupid things, I should joke in the wrong places, and I should insult the interviewer.
These are the behaviors that the loser selfstate wants.
Why do I need these behaviors?
Because the goal is to fail in the interview. The goal is to validate and sustain and uphold the loser selfstate.
So what will cause me to behave this way?
I need to talk to the interjects, I need to activate the interjects.
Which interjects should I activate?
Let me look again at the encyclopedia, at the algorithm.
Ah, I should activate interjects one, nine and 14. Interjects one generates automatic thoughts, you always say stupid things. I can count on you to say something stupid right now.
And then you say something stupid.
So the interjects generate, generates the behavior.
Interject number 14 is activated into the automatic thought generated by interject number 14 is, you always fail because you're stupid, you make stupid jokes, and you insult the interviewer.
So the environment is coupled with the selfstate and produces behaviors, the interjects produce the behaviors.
So this environment, it triggers a selfstate, which then uses the construct to access the interjects, which then affect behavior, which then modifies the environment to fit the selfstate. That's a cycle.
And all of this is listed in a Wikipedia of your particular mind. A Wikipedia to which the construct has access to accomplish certain behaviorsto produce them, which is the goal.
The specific interjects are listed and need to be accessed to give specific instructionsto generate specific automatic thoughtsto suppress some memories.
And so this is the constructs work. The environment, selfstates, principles, this is whole thing is what we call personality.
So what can you do with all this? How can it lead you to healingor you would want to make a map of your selfstates, a list of your selfstates, you would want to reconstruct the Wikipedia of your mind externally, and communicate it to someone like a therapist.
So you make a map of your selfstates. And for each selfstate, you link it to an environment where the selfstate is activated. And then you associate the selfstate with automatic thoughts that hail from the introjects.
So then you as a therapist or coach or whateveryou show the client how his automatic thoughts cause him to behave in ways that produce results that support the selfstate.
And this selfawareness breaks the cycle, the client healsclient changes because now he's aware that these behaviors are not autonomous, that they're generated from the insight that they're interpolated, it breaks the cycle of mental illness, there is healing, the minute the client grasps it, there's a lot of healing.
So there's the environment, the selfstate takes over, constructs associated exclusively with the state of selfstate begin to act.
And they certain goals have to be accomplished to get these behaviorsto activate these interjects, the whole cycle.
So the interjects gives you, give you automatic thoughts, and you behave the way the interjects actually compel you to.
So and then the goal or the mission is accomplished because the environment is modified in a way which supports the selfstate.
So the selfstate says, you see, I'm efficacious, I succeeded. I prevented you from failing, I did it for you.
If you're in the loser selfstate, I got you to fail, because this is what you wanted. This has been your mission. And you should feel good about it.
Now, there's no anxiety, everyone is happy, you failed, you can feel relieved. You did not succeed, don't worry. It didn't work.
So at this point, there is an activation of defense mechanisms.
This for example, imagine that you're in a loser's selfstate. And the loser selfstate activated the construct and the construct generated automatic thoughts through the interjects and the thoughts change your behavior, and you indeed failed. You change the environment.
In the job interview, you failed, the girl rejected you, you failed, you should be happy. You should begin to think you should begin to think good thoughts, your selfstate, the loser selfstate is is buoyant by this is is buoyant is vibrant, because you're again failed.
So state the loser selfstate is validated, is strong, it's proven right. So, but you begin to think, why did I fail? I don't like that I'm failing all the time.
So you're beginning to have second thoughts. And this is dangerous. This is dangerous to the internal harmony.
And to maintain this harmony, cohesion, coherence, defense mechanisms kick in. Remember that the role of defense mechanisms is to essentially falsify reality for you, so that you can bear it, it becomes bearable.
Defense mechanisms kick in. And they tell you that you had failed, because the interviewer was stupid. You fail because there were other candidates more qualified than you fail becauseI don't know, the there was nepotism, someone's relative won the job.
So defense mechanisms, for example, splitting, projection, rationalization, intellectualization, there are numerous defense mechanisms.
Defense mechanisms, role is to render the outcome palatable to you, to render it acceptable to youto prevent second thoughtsto prevent secondary anxiety.
And this complete the picture.
Now you're hermetically sealed in a totally fake environment created by the construct. Everything in the environment, every single feature of this, of this worldof this reality is fake.
Your perception of reality is wrong. Your memory is falsified and tempered withyour behavior is affect is influenced and robotic. You're manipulated by automatic thoughts. These thoughts are not yours.
Your selfstate is triggered by a set of principles known as personality, which you're not aware of. It's all pretend. It's all fake. You are not there. You're actually a puppet. You're a toy. And you operate in a simulated environment like the Truman Show, the matrix. You're in the matrix all the time.
But the thing is, in real life, you delude yourself into thinking that you are real, that the life you perceive, the reality you perceiveis real. It's a defense mechanism. It's a kind of defense to believe that you are a genetic, you're an agency. You do whatever you do is because you want to do it.
You decide, you make choices, you operate because you face reality. You perceive it correctly. None of it is true. I mean, it's so pleasant to think that you're a puppet. I get thatyou're a marionette. I understand.
That's why the defense mechanisms kick in. But none of it is true.
To seal the process hermetically from any challenges, the defense mechanisms conclude the defense. They make sure that you are trapped now. You're trappedand you cannot spring out of the trap because even the environment is perceived wrongly.
The minute there is a new environment, the self-state changes. And all this hyper-constructed universe, all this simulation of reality, crumbles and vanishes. This is why when people transition from one environment to another, they experience momentary disorientation because once our self-state is goneand another one hadn't taken its place yet, you're in between. The second self-state didn't kick in. The first one vanished. And you're in between the cousin or the abyss between two self-states. You have like a split second or two seconds or 10 seconds, I know, where people feel they don't know where they are. It's like depersonalization or derealization. It's dissociative reaction.
And they say, I don't know why I acted this way. This is not like me at all.
And all these gaps between self-states are more common than you know.
You leave home, you go to work, you're in a gap. You go to the subway, you're in a gap. You disembark, you're in a gap. Every time the environment changes and it changes thousands of times a day, you are in a gap.
These are dissociative gaps. What happens in these gaps, you dissociate. And these gaps are so life-threatening because in the gaps, you don't exist. When you don't have a self-state, you don't exist.
And so in these gaps, you don't exist. There's no self-state that has taken over in these gaps.
So what you do, you dissociate these gaps. They're very frightening. And we have thousands of dissociative milliseconds during the day, if not tens of thousands, every transition from one environment to the other.
And this is mentally healthy people.
There's also a thing that's continuous memory. There's also a thing that's continuous vision. We don't see anything continuously. We sample the environment 30 times a minute through our eyes and optical nerve. We take stills. We shoot still snapshots. And then we animate these snapshots. You never see a video. You see stills. You see snapshots. You sample 30 snapshots a minute. And then you animate them and you create a video and you believe this video is reality.
What happens to you is you exist in a self-state and then you cease to exist completely. You're gone. You're nowhere.
And then a new self-state takes over and you exist again.
So it's exactly like sampling the environment and then animating the sequence to believe that you had existed continuously.
But you did not exist continuously. And you did not see things continuously. There's no continuity. Continuity is an illusion.
Now, of course, in mystic traditions, they're new of this. They're talking about these moments as moments of enlightenment and so on and so forth.
And in these moments, you are no more. Your ego, so to speak, is gone. These moments could be therapeutic moments because sometimes in therapy, you need to suspend the self-states to obtain to get somewhere.
So what we do in therapy, in most treatment modalities that I'm aware of, we create anxiety. Therapy generates anxiety.
When you're faced with a new insight about yourself, with a new realization, when I'm telling you, look at your behavior, the way you're seeing it is wrong. This is the way you should see it. This creates dissonance and anxiety.
Therapy is about creating anxiety. What is anxiety? It's exactly what the self-states are trying to eliminate.
Anxiety of the gaps. When you're in a gap between one self-state and another, your anxiety is so maximal, so enormous that you dissociate it.
So therapy is fighting against the tyranny of self-states. Therapies create anxiety where the self-state's goal is to eliminate it.
Therapies, therapy and self-states, they're enemies because self-states are fallacious. They falsify. They lie to you.
Therapy is about the truth. If you eliminate all self-states simultaneously, this is healing.
Anxiety then can be tolerated. People will survive, change and transform.
Of course, self-states will eventually take over, but having experienced anxiety, there will be a transformation in the very set of principles known as personality. That's why we say that insight changes personality. Insight changes you.
What changes the set of principles, the selection criteria, the algorithm? Maybe next time you go to a job interview, you will have a winner self-state, not a loser self-state. If you're a loser and I suspend your loser self-state and I work with you on it, this can create a lot of anxiety because you're not used to not being a loser.
But at the end of a therapy, you will have a self-state. Maybe it will not be a loser self-state anymore. It will be some other self-state.
This self-state is inside you. It's just not activated properly. It's not included in the Wikipedia in the right place. Therapy activates self-states that are healthy, helpful, efficacious for you.
But it has to go through anxiety. Anxiety is a therapeutic tool.
One of the great inannities, stupidities of modern psychology is the constant battle against anxiety.
And the zeolithic medication, there's a constant pair of anxiety, which is essentially a healing tool.
Freud induced enormous anxiety in his patients. All treatment modalities are based on unsettling you, discomforting you, challenging your comfort zone, making you feel bad, imbalancing you. It's the only way to obtain any kind of meaningful change.
In cold therapy, I create such a shocking environment so suddenly that there is no time for any self-state to emerge. The shock is so total that the patient is traumatized to the point that all his defenses crumble.
There's a total decompensation and no self-state can come to the rescue.
At this point, the patient is open, vulnerable, non-existent on the one hand, and fully available to assume a healing self-state.
And this model applies to anything, schizophrenia, psychotic disorders, binary narcissism. It's a new concept. You can look it up on my channel.
I applied this IPAM interpsychic activation model to various states of borderline, to, as I said, narcissism, to people pleasing. This model is a universal model. Every mental illness and mental health, they are private cases of this model. It's applicable to basically everyone.
And the model says, the lesson of a model isonly the environment can change. And this is something which will provoke huge resistance, of course. Nothing comes from the inside. Nothing comes from the inside.
I repeat this. Only the environment changes you. Your self-states are triggered by the environment, not by any internal process.
There are situations where internal processes provoke a self-state, yes, but it is always in reaction to stimuli from the environment.
Take a borderline, for example. She can transition from borderline to secondary psychopath because she imagines or anticipates abandonment or rejection.
But she cannot imagine and anticipate rejection if she doesn't have a real life intimate partner, real in the environment, out there. This intimate partner is the borderline's environment.
You can, of course, impose a fantasy defense on the environment. You can fantasize about the environment. You can imagine an environment. It's a paracosm. You can have a process that is independent of the environmentand so on and so forth. You can imagine if you're a borderline, you can imagine that you have a new boyfriend. His name is James. You're together for three months. He's a honeymoon face.
And nowimagine that he's abandoning you. If you do, you're likely to feel bad, but you're not likely to decompensate and you're not likely to act out. There will be no behavioral outcome to this imagination or fantasy because no new self-state will take over.
But take the same borderlineand you give her a reallife boyfriend whose name is James. And it's the best boyfriend ever. And they are in the honeymoon phase.
But after three months, she imagines or fantasizes or anticipates that he's about to abandon her or reject her.
This time, there will be behavioral consequences.
Why?
Because there is a real boyfriend. There is a real environment out there. A new self-state will take over, a psychopathic, secondary psychopathic self-state, FCTO2. And this new self-state will activate the construct. And the construct will interpolate introjects, specific introjects. And these introjects will tell the borderline, you're not lovable. You will be abandoned. There will be huge pain. She will fall apart. All her defenses will crumble. She will act out and do crazymaking thingsand so on and so forth. It's nonsense to say that you can have internal processes divorced from any environment.
Even a psychotic person who listens to God, God talks to him. God talks to him from a wall. There's always an external environment. The psychotic embeds his introjects in an environment, hyper-reflexivity. The psychotic confuses his introjects with reality. So he thinks that this voice is not in his head. This voice is external. But the voice is talking to him from the outside and from some object, from some real external reality. Environment is the precondition and the only trigger to the change in self-states.
So this is the crucial insight. The crucial insight.
And it means that we should work on changing our environment, not so much on working on our internal environmentas to changing our external environment.
So getting rid of toxic people, for example, moving away, changing the job, just walking, going for a walk, changing the external environment is dramatically more important than changing the internal one.
Which in a way negates psychology itself.