E183 | Finding Your Life's Meaning (w/ Dr. Joel Vos)

This week Dr Alex speaks with psychologist and philosopher Dr Joel Vos about what it really means to live a meaningful life. They explore why modern culture can leave people feeling distracted, disconnected and overly focused on external goals, and how existential psychotherapy can help people reconnect with what matters most to them.

The conversation also examines the relationship between meaning, mental health and radicalisation. Lastly, they discuss Transactional Analysis, and under discussed form of therapy, and the unconscious roles, masks and “games” that shape our relationships. 

Find out more about Joel's worl here: www.joelvos.com 

Interviewed by Dr. Alex Curmi. Dr. Alex is a consultant psychiatrist and a UKCP registered psychotherapist. Website: alexcurmitherapy.com

Check out The Thinking Mind Blog on Substack: https://thinkingmindblog.substack.com/

If you would like to invite Alex to speak at your organisation please email alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Speaking Enquiry" in the subject line.

Alex is not currently taking on new psychotherapy clients, if you are interested in working with Alex for psychological coaching , you can email - alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Coaching" in the subject line.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You need to think for yourself, why can I not live the life that I want? And there's several responses to that. You can internalize that. So that is where depression comes from and a suicidality in the end. And if you have the feeling that you're not living a meaningful life, if you have that all the time, and you start to really have a sense of like, I don't know why I'm here, or I know I'm here, but I can't do it. So your body is putting you in this fight-of-flight mode, which on the long term either will deplete your resources eternally, or you need to do something with it auto-societely by actually starting to fight against others. This is more or less what we see.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Today I'm happy to be in conversation with Dr. Joel Voss. Dr. Voss is an award-winning psychologist and philosopher who conducts research, writes books, lectures, and offers consultancy and psychotherapy about how people can live a more meaningful and satisfying life. His expertise spans various fields, including research on meaning and purpose, the helping professions like coaching, therapy, business and economics, mediation, politics, and social change. Today we're going to discuss a few things, including an existential approach to psychotherapy, and one of his most recent books, all about a kind of therapy I really like called Transactional Analysis. And this book is the Handbook of Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy, which was written in collaboration with Biliana Van Rien. Joel, thank you so much for joining me today.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Thank you very much for inviting me to be here. Really exciting to share some of my passions with your big audience.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

I do love to talk about existential approaches to therapy. And what I've noticed is the audience really loves it as well. And it does seem like existential approaches to psychotherapy are under discussed. And maybe it can be a little bit opaque, especially to people who are outside the therapy profession. What does it mean to take an existential approach to psychotherapy?

SPEAKER_00 1:59

In the first place, it just means yeah, being human, being authentic, and and not talking about irrelevant topics, but really go to the heart of the big questions that people actually ask. Because I would say all of us we're thrown into this existence, and we're like, no one really knows what we're doing and and what we can do with it. We get a lot of guidance from our friends, family, our religion, but we need to find it out ourselves. So, and this is where an extension therapist can really help people find out like how do you live a meaningful life, a satisfying life? How do you do that? And and with all the guidance that there is in the world, which ones are helpful for you, which are less helpful. So it's it's really about taking the bigger questions serious in therapy.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

I often find actually people are like I think a lot of people need to go to psychotherapy or find psychotherapy useful because they're precisely not asking those questions. Like they're not asking, How do I find meaning in my life? They're not asking what does it mean for me to live a rich life. And I worry increasingly that we live in a culture that's really also not asking those questions, actually, a culture that's quite diverting and distracting. Is that I mean, I sometimes it's hard to want, it's hard to know whether you're just um complaining about culture or whether you actually have your finger on the button of something real. Do you think our culture is leaning more in this, let less in the direction of answering meaningful questions and more in the direction of distraction and diverting our attention to more meaningless things?

SPEAKER_00 3:37

Oh, absolutely. And this is also one of the things that I've always been interested in. That is about how does our society limit or enable us to live the meaningful, satisfying life that we actually want. And there are a lot of opportunities that are helping us that empowers us to live the life that that we find is meaningful. But there's also a lot of distractions, a lot of things that do not help. And what we usually see is that in particular our modern, more capitalist-focused society, that sometimes we can have this very mechanistic or a very goal-driven perspective on life. Um, that doesn't really take the time to really listen to our authentic, real deep intuitive experiences about what is truly meaningful for me. Because we're too too quickly going into the goals that we that we think that everyone is having. But it's so important that we go inside and listen to ourselves. What do I feel intuitively in my body, even? Well, what's really authentically meaningful for me, and to take the time to feel, to connect. And very often in our very b busy society, we often don't have time for that. And if we do listen to our intuition, very often the marketing, the propaganda, the all of that is also influencing our intuitions or what we think, and it's distracting from that. So it's how to how can we develop this critical intuition as I describe it? And at the same time, also our society also then focuses at the same time. Not only is this approach too often mechanistic and overlooks this critical intuition, but also too often it our society too often focuses on materialistic, hedonistic, or self-oriented types of meanings, whereas we know that it's more the social or the larger types of meanings in life that are more fulfilling and better for our well-being, sense of life satisfaction, and etc.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

So it's this lifelong process, isn't it, of like searching inside you. Again, it's an introspective process, harder to do nowadays because we can never be bored, basically. That we always have the option of having some sort of information beamed at our minds. So I think that's one problem. We have to look inside ourselves, continually like look for these. It's almost like having a metal detector on the beach. That's kind of the nudge I using. You're trying to find that feeling of meaning or fascination, and then maybe the something I emphasize, which I don't necessarily see everyone emphasize, is how do you then translate that? How do you bring that into your life in some meaningful way? So it's not just, oh, I think I like helping people, and it stops there. But you might realize, okay, on introspection, I like helping people. How do I actualize that? How did I make that a thing in my life? So the way I think about it is it's this it's this continual oscillation between introspection on one end and then behavior, action, bringing it into your real life. And then the cool thing about bringing it in your real into your real life is you then learn more stuff that then feeds your introspection and it goes back and forth um from there. Does that is that kind of how you think about it, or do you think about it in any importantly different way?

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Oh, absolutely, yeah, because this is also one of the problems in our current society is that you may have a good understanding of what's truly meaningful for you, uh, authentically meaningful, but you may not have the resources for that. And it's one of the things that we see, particularly in our current society, uh, for example, we see it in all the polarization that's going on, also politically, where people also start to become more extremists. People have more radical ideas about how we can achieve what they see as meaningful, because people struggle to have the resources to live the meaningful life they want. So, what you what you then start to do is you start to devent your own meaning more aggressively, and you it becomes more like this fight for the resources, and that is where a lot of the polarization comes from. Because my more recent research is all about radicalization and polarization and extremism, which are very often driven by the fact that people struggle to really realize the meaningful life that people have envisioned for themselves.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Something I've been thinking about recently is this idea that it's actually really hard to construct your like this process I outlined, you know, and maybe I can make it sound nice, or at least hopefully I made it sound nice. Um, but it's really hard. It's really hard for individuals to f to find their own meaning and to construct their own sense of meaning. Like I said, it's a lifelong process, and it's quite new that it falls to the level of the individual, that this burden falls to the level of the individual. You know, normally people find meaning through pre-existing societal or perhaps tribal structures that they can plug into. So I guess one question worth raising is is it even reasonable to ask individuals to go about this whole journey? Because some people might be predisposed to it, like you or I, we may have personality traits which might predispose us to want to go on this journey. But for the average person, is it reasonable to put this burden on them or should we thinking more broadly about collective institutions that society should offer to give people um maybe a bit of an easier sense of how they can have meaning in their life?

SPEAKER_00 8:54

Yes and no. Um because, yes, on the one hand, I do think that as society we need to be more clear in giving people guidance in how to live a meaningful and purposeful life, um, and where we need to give, for example, more um education. Uh, I think it is key for in in our education system that with young people, children, that we already teach them and help them and we give them the skills how to live a more meaningful life. We I also think it's a responsibility from a government to to enable people to live a more meaningful life and to learn how to deal with frustrations if you can't. However, I'm not at the same time saying that there should be like a like a form of conformism, uh of conformity, because or imposing a tradition. That's something very different. Because this is one of the things that I discovered in my research that there are three different approaches how to find meaning in life, two different ways how to find out for yourself as meaningful. The first one is what they describe as a traditional conformist approach, that's an approach that was dominant until let's say the 15th, 16th century in most Western countries, and that's an approach where people grow up in a in a certain tradition, and where you're being told, hey, this is what's meaningful, and you're you just follow that because that's what you're what was expected. And that's great if that's what people want, and still there are beautiful traditions that inspire people. However, we know now from research that this is not always beneficial for the individual's well-being, and it can actually be suppressing individuals. Um, as we know that certain traditions can be very uh suppressive. I'm not saying all of them are, because there are a lot of traditions that can be very helpful. But this is what we overall, what we know from the traditional conformist approach, that that's not always helpful. Um then uh around the 16th century, 16th, 7th century, with the Enlightenment, we developed the idea that we can actually ask the personal question, what is my meaning in life? Because before that, the question was more what's my meaning according to my tradition, how do we fit in there? But suddenly we started to ask ourselves the question, what's my meaning? And so then we started to set those goals for ourselves. And this is where a lot of the modern economy and neoliberalism, capitalism also evolved in the same period, where the idea is that, well, you just set your own life goals and you follow that in the most direct and most mechanistic way possible. However, that's not always how society or how life works. Um, and I think that we have benefited a lot from this more mechanistic approach to life, but it's also quite artificial. And uh, this is where we see um a lot of the populist and popular ideas about meaning and purpose that I often describe as as existential fast food, or almost like it's like uh like a burger mech meaning, as I often joke, um, which is which g may give you a very quick sense of oh, that is nice, that gives me a quick sense of meaning, but it's actually quite superficial. And this is what our current economic society or economic uh driven society often uh tells us uh is just set whatever goal it is, uh ideally the goals that are quite materialistic, that you can translate into profit, etc. Um, and that's how you find meaning. But we also know from research that this mechanistic approach also does not give the real deep life life satisfaction that we need, and that's also not the best for our well-being. Then we come to the third approach that I've already appealed to before, and that's about this more critical intuitive approach, which is about going inside yourself, listen authentically to what's truly meaningful to you, while at the same time having the critical mindset towards, for example, the influences from the tradition, the influences from the economy. And so, what I would say if people want to live a more fulfilling life, and if they want to improve their mental health and even their physical health, um yeah, then really listen to your own authentic intuitions about what's truly meaningful for you while having that critical mindset towards your tradition as well as the economics of uh the all the economic influences and propaganda. Whereas I'm not totally dismissing the traditions and economic propaganda, but we need to use that or listen to that from that critical mindset and see what resonates with us authentically.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

So it's a delicate balance of individualism and collectivism, and to the extent that we build in society and institutions, I suppose we could say let's have those institutions that help people, support people to discover what's right for them, rather than institutions which impose uh a value structure. You know, this is what you should care about in a more dogmatic way.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Yeah, it's it's about teaching people about these other different approaches there are to finding meaning in life. And this is, for example, the the the way how we can listen or learn to listen to your intuition, uh uh to what's authentically meaningful. This is how we can be critical in your critical thinking. Not to say this is the only thing that's possible, but to say this is what we know from research on big, big studies that this is the most, yeah, it gives you the most life fulfillment. When you know this, and you know that these are the options, then you can still decide to go for a tradition, that's fine. But what I think is important is that people know that there are options, there are different ways how we can find meaning in life, and it will empower people by giving us information and that they then can make their own decision. But the problem is that in our current society there's not enough education on this, whereas people grow up in a tradition, they get stuck in it, or they get all the propaganda, all the marketing from yeah, from companies that benefit from telling us that if we buy that Ferrari that uh or we go on a holiday that our life will be perfect. Um so so yeah, it's important that we have more of this education for people like young people in education, but also as psychotherapists, um, that we it will educate and empower our own clients in learning about the different ways how we can find meaning in life, and that we tell them, hey, this is what we know from research, how you can find the most fulfilling life, this is the best for your mental well-being. But hey, if you don't want to go for that, fine. That's your decision in the end.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

And I suppose it's particularly insidious because since the idea of meaning is so underdiscussed, people often are quite unconscious of it. They don't really know what they're looking for as meaning when they're doing a variety of things. So they don't know they're looking for meaning when they're watching the World Cup, they don't know they're looking for meaning when they're buying a new trendy pair of shoes, they don't know they're looking for meaning when they're watching the new Marvel movie that comes out. And so because they're not aware that that's what's happening, it makes it all the more easier to fall into a trap like that. Of course, these are kind of more trivial examples, but there are a lot more serious examples, I suppose, even like the polarization you mentioned. So falling into the trend of following a political, a particular politician or political movement as a search for meaning of sorts, various things like that.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Yeah, absolutely. And this is also why in my recent research I'm looking more into the radicalization. I spoke with several demonstrators who were throwing beer bottles at refugee centers and um whose opinions are very much the opposite of what I stand for personally. But I I came from this perspective of what I describe as existential compassion. So I try to understand why you are now throwing those beer bottles at those refugee centers? Where's that coming from? When actually within a minute I was able to talk with some of those guys, because usually it it is blokes, but I don't want to generalize, but um, who actually saying that their wish is to live a more meaningful life, but they don't know how to do that. How to do that? And they've tried so many different things. Yeah, and and and like things like I I still remember one particular conversation that I had on the street with a particular uh protester who said, Listen, I simply want to be able to actually buy my own house where I can live with my birds and my kids and have a stable job. That's what I want, but I can't. And then I I've I've been trying so many things, I struggle in education, I try to keep a job, and and and the the economy is not is not too well. And this was a guy who lived in in northern England where the economy is not the best, and it was like, yeah, and and now I'm seeing all those rev all those refugees coming in who in his idea or how the populists have been framing it, how how how they can actually be be how they are able to live a more meaningful life than he is, and he was like, hey, that's not fair. And then I started talking with him for like, hey, listen, I hear you, I hear your wish to live a more meaningful life, but instead of like polarizing and saying that the problems are the immigrants, so you're possibly ever think together. How can we then create a society where everyone is able to live a meaningful life? Because what you're saying there is valid, mate. That's because of course I understand that you want to have a stable place to live and start a family. These are very basic, beautiful wishes for your life. And they understand, listen to you, you've tried so many things, but you see, due to your personal life circumstances, the the economy uh that's not doing too well, you're struggling with that. I understand that. So let's work on that. Instead of directly polarizing that and immediately jump to the conclusion, it's because of the refugees. And it's really intriguing that as soon as it comes as existential compassion, within a minute, I'm able to diffuse all the polarization, all the racism, all the xenophobia, I'm able to get rid of that, just to listen to people to what are your real existential struggles in life? And I find it so really intriguing that actually by simply asking those questions about what do you really want out of life and what are your struggles, by actually bringing that up, we can so much overcome polarization and mental health issues and other issues in society.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Is that kind of case? Is that typical of the psychology of radicalization? Is it typically that sense of like what do we know from the research about the psychology of radicalization more broadly?

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Yeah, so recently I conducted a systematic literature review on all the studies on meaning and purpose in life and radicalization, where we found 667 studies, um, which we then tested in over 1400 extremists in their life story. So uh this is the right question. And yeah, well, it this is in the end what I have been describing so far. This this is what seems to be driving it, is that people want to live a meaningful life, and sometimes they don't precisely know what it is, so that can be one reason why they can radicalize in that. But quite often what I do see is that when people then struggle to realize it, uh, because they don't have the resources, then you need to think for yourself, you you need to embrace it, you need to evaluate why I can not live the life that I want. And there's several responses to that. You can internalize that, so that is where depression comes from, and a suicidality in the end. But you can also then look outside and start playing modest, um, and because also a sense of meaning is also associated very closely with our mental well-being, as well as our physical well-being, because that's the thing that we often forget is that living a meaningful life and the sense of meaning is embodied, it's in a body, it is involving the autonomous nervous system. In fact, the feeling of meaning exists in your body, yes, like it is an embodied experience, and if you have the feeling that you're not living a meaningful life, if you have that all the time, and you start to really have a sense of like I don't know why I'm here, or I know I'm here, but I can't do it. So your body is putting you in this fight-of-flight mode, which on the long term either will deplete your resources eternally, or you need to do something with it also societally by actually starting to fight against others, to say it in a very, very simplistic way. Now, of course, it's much more nuanced, but it is more or less what we see. And then people start to shift in the approaches, the methods they use, to actually you get the resources they think they need to be able to live a meaningful life, or people start to shift their priorities. Um, so very often what we see is that if you cannot live a meaningful life, um that you then start to narrow it down to the most important ones. Because if you have very limited resources, you're focused on only those ones. That are the most important. So that is radicalization. You start to focus on only one meaning. And very often what we see is people may start to find meaning, for example, by being part of an extremist group, but actually after a while, even the group itself is no longer meaningful, and it becomes more the very abstract ideals that become meaningful in themselves. And this is like in a nutshell the full model of radicalization. And this is why it comes back to why I really believe in the importance of helping people to live a more meaningful life, and how that is a topic that we really need to really talk about in society, but also in psychotherapy and in psychiatry. And it's a topic that we're not talking about enough, but it's it's vital.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

And interestingly, something that's exposing this is the rise of AI as well, because so many people are now using AI to actually have maybe for some people their only meaningful relationship is within AI, and because AI is always available and relatively low cost, uh, people can find themselves almost falling into a tunnel of AI. Last week we released an episode about AI-induced delusions, which is which can happen when people use AI so much that they form these delusional beliefs, and what are beliefs, if not in part an attempt to create a sense of meaning from the world? It's a whole other discussion. But but I would like to ask what is the role of socioeconomics in in polarization? Because most often, when you hear about people becoming radicalized, it'll be someone from a poorer socioeconomic background who's you know feeling disenfranchised, and clearly um being less affluent is going to make you vulnerable, as you said, because you're not gonna have the resources to to that someone else might have to bring meaning into their life. But you also hear of cases of people becoming radicalized when they're very materially well off and affluent. So what's going on there? And do we know the role of social economics? I'm raising this to make the distinction that it's not just about the the presence or absence of material wealth.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Oh, absolutely not. The key ingredients are what are the meanings we envision? What are the resources and the methods we have to realize the meanings we envision? How do we appraise that or how to evaluate when we cannot do that? And what are the emotions, both um effective as well as physical, the physical experiences that relate to that? And how do we cope with that? How do we regulate our emotions and our frustrations? So these are the four key ingredients to understand radicalization, but all four of them are, of course, always influenced by our personal life story, by the social networks, the social groups that we're in, as well as by society. And that also that does not only tell that's not only about the specific dynamics or the resource we have, but also the narratives, the public narratives, or the narratives that you get from your family, the intergenerational issues where we see that radicalization quite often also runs in families. But also a very important role is for propaganda and marketing. And that is, for example, when I conducted my book on the economics of meaning and life, that I looked into thousands of studies. Um, so I conducted a systematic review of all studies ever conducted on meaning in life and economics, and where it's very clear how economics is not neutral, uh companies and businesses are not neutral, it is influencing us all the time, implicitly, explicitly. So, yes, I would definitely say that we should not be re be reductionist when we talk about regularization or extremism to say it's only people who are, for example, poor or certain class. Absolutely not. Because we also know from research that the that there's a big myth that's created by capitalism and by a lot of business coaches that actually we can only have a sense of meaning in life is our bay if our basic conditions are fulfilled. So we know that Maslow's pyramid, that I guess a lot of your your people in your audience will know about, the idea that there's a pyramid where first your basic needs to be fulfilled to be able to realize your potential or live meaningful life. We have the illusion from this Maslow uh uh pyramid that yeah, just fulfill the basic conditions and then you can flourish, and that's nonsense. There's no research evidence for that at all. That's a myth that has to be created by business leaders, uh business coaches, uh, that's very convenient for the big companies, but that is not how life works. Because actually, you can live a meaningful life even if you have no or very limited circumstances. That's what big studies are definitely showing.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

And that's that's I guess Viktor Franker's huge point that in Man's Search for Meaning, that you can find meaning in a concentration camp. Not that it's easy or desirable, of course, so that's something you would wish on someone, but meaning is something you can, if you look for it, you'd be surprised how easy you can find it. And in general, what I find, I'm curious what you found in your life. But in my personal life, the things which bring me the most meaning are generally very simple, low cost, low tech, whereas actually the more tech and the more complication and the more money something involves, often the that's the all those different layers divorce you from the meaning. In my in my that's what I've found, at least. Is that what you found?

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Yeah, so this also has to do with another illusion that we have in a society that meaning can only come from the big things in our lives, but very often it's indeed the small ones. So, one of the homework that I give a lot of my clients, if I can give always one homework, it is this one, where I tell people at the end of each day, write down the three moments of the day that felt relatively the most meaningful. Because very often we think about I can find meaning by marriage or by graduation, by character the full Nobel Peace Prize. Actually, I'm asking people, no, at the end of each day, look back, relatively speaking, what were those moments? And it can be about listening to the bird in the park, it can be about that beautiful gaze that I that I shared with the person when I was on the tube. And the thing is, you can keep a diary like that for what is it, two, three weeks. And that creates two different things in the first place, makes you aware of how meaning is already everywhere, it helps you to connect with that also in your body, or primarily in your body. So again, I come back to that. But also you you often start to see trends, and so from the trend you can then decide for yourself, oh, I now see this trend, what can I do with this? And can I possibly have more of those types of meaning? So if I see all the time that I find meaning by listening to the bird in the park, should it possibly go more into nature then? So this is a very simple exercise that almost immediately gives you a bigger sense of meaning in your life. But because we're not talking about this in a society, and we're we are so out of touch of checking for myself what actually are those meaningful moments in everyday life, because we don't do that, that is where things can go wrong. Our mental health, our physical health can yeah deteriorate from that. So this is a very quick, simple intervention that your audience, as like some therapists, maybe there, some some some psychiatrist, but also for people in their own lives. It's you can create very quick change.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

I love that intervention. And hearing about it, I'm wondering have you have you come across the work of Marianne Milner at all? Undoubtedly. Uh, but can you remind me of that? I'm bringing her up because she's so like actually really under discussed, and I was totally unaware of her until my friend Tom Schkolnik told me about it. So he's a film director and he's making a film about her and her life because she's so unheard of. But she was a psychoanalyst in the UK, and uh before she ever started any psychoanalytic analytic training, she was a 29-year-old woman in 1929 in Britain. And imagine what that's like. You know, post the decade post-World War I, and she at that time was recognizing that society wasn't going in a great direction in a lot of ways, and that she noticed that she had a profound lack of meaning in her life, and she did your exact exercise, but she did it on steroids, so she did it for like two or three years. She just kept a journal of what she found joy and engagement and meaning from, and refused to do anything that she to the extent that she could, she refused to engage in activities that didn't give her that sense of joy and meaning. And obviously, this profoundly then influenced her work as a as a psychoanalyst. But it just goes to show how how important it is to not listen to the noise and look at your own experience because that's a that's a form of evidence. You know, we often talk about making our lives more evidence-based, and we're thinking about scientific evidence, and scientific evidence is really good, as I'm sure you can attest to, but there's also your personal empirical experience, your own personal evidence that you can accrue because ultimately we are all individuals, and we will have our own this predispositions and fascinations. So we need to know what's right for you in a world that's so full of different options.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

Absolutely. And this is what I describe as critical intuition, the term that I was talking about before. Right. To listen to our intuition in an authentic way while at the same time being critical of all the noise we have around. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

As people are going on this journey, and maybe they're doing these kinds of exercises and trying to figure out what's meaningful for them, what are the common roadblocks or obstacles that you find people encounter? Common roadblocks.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

A lot of people they are in the head. Well, that is because um very often when clients come to me to my psychotherapy practice, um, they've they've googled me that or that they've listened to some of the podcasts that I do people with people like yourself, and then they come to me. So quite often they are already very much in the head, and so they're over-reflecting. So Victor Frankel used the terms hyper-reflection and hyper intention, and I really love those terms, and I see that in a daily basis in my own practice. Um very often the main thing that I do with those people is to bring them back to the body and to the flow of experiencing, like the very basic, simple exercise I've just given. But it's also very often to actually learn to listen because even when you reflect on what's meaningful to me, where does it resonate in your body? So um try to feel in your own body what where where are meaningful feelings? Which which place is that? And nowadays with uh with some of the more autonomous nervous system research, we we know where that that may sit. But where how how does it feel for you? Where is that? Can you connect with that bit? And that is where I often now start with. So I often describe it uh with the metaphor of people who actually are living a meaningful life by, for example, playing on the beach, and people who look from an air-conditioned hotel room to people on the beach, and then they start to complain like, Oh, I cannot find the meaning of life, and I'm jealous of those people on the beach who are living a meaningful life. And then what I'm actually doing is to tell them, like, okay, let's stop sitting in your air-conditioned hotel room theorizing about life, get the beach towel towel out, uh, and and put on your swimming trunks and get out there, have fun. And some some of my clients, they with all deep respect and they just need to come on, live.

SPEAKER_01 33:51

Why do people end up in their heads? Like I, you know, lots of people are in their heads, a lot of my clients. I'm a guy who can I can end up in my head a lot. Why do we end up there in the first place? What happens to people such that they become so disembodied?

SPEAKER_00 34:06

Um, well, we've already been talking a lot about society. We are living in a very much headed heady society, also with our education system is very much about that. Um, but of course, also it has to do with how with our socialization when we're raised in the family. So, what are the key messages that we get from our parents? And how do we learn how to how to live a more meaningful life? How how we do that? That's often what we learn from our education system, but also from our parents, but also from negative life messages, where um when we are traumatized, um, because and I would say who isn't traumatized in some form, um, or who doesn't who hasn't had those deep life frustrations, that that makes us quite often then step out and reflect on life, and which is good because when you get stuck and something goes wrong, it's good to reflect. That is a beautiful, unique human capacity, but sometimes also due to how our nervous system works, we can get too stuck in that, and that is where um yeah, where for example therapists can help or psychiatrists can help.

SPEAKER_01 35:21

I find the concept of self-hate quite useful in that not only do we retreat into our heads as a kind of defense, but I think a lot of people, because of stressful or potentially traumatic life experiences, actively distrust themselves because in the past, following their intuitions has led to maybe a really common example, social humiliation. Like you say, the first thing that comes to your mind in a classroom when you're five, you end up in a situation where everyone's laughing at you, you learn to distrust your intuitions, and so it's not merely a process of disconnection, but it's a process of actually aversion to self. And what what what I find helpful is to take a really experimental attitude with yourself, be like, follow yourself and understand that it's okay that you might listen to your own voice and it still might go wrong. And people might laugh at you again today, but that's okay. You try that enough times and you cultivate a strong sense of self. That can be something that leads to really valuable skill formation. That can lead to, yes, maybe a few failures, but some of your biggest victories and the victories which will feel good to you will be the ones that come from trusting yourself, as opposed to trusting, you know, the value structure of someone else, like your best friend or your parents or your teacher or someone like that.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

Oh, absolutely. And uh and you may see now at the background here in this podcast that I have a lot of masks because I I have a big mask collection, and I I am really fascinated by masks from across the globe, literal masks, but also psychological masks. I've been looking into that over the last year. Also, also for myself personally, how in society, how often we create masks? Because we create masks to survive. Masks are survival mechanisms, and it's good because I think without masks um in society it it will be not as flexible because it's helpful masks, but at the same time, masks come at a cost. Yeah, presenting a bit a side of yourself that's not totally authentic, that's not showing the full you, um, or where you are following the meanings of others, but not what's authentically meaningful. And that can come at a big cost, and so it is about learning which masks or which aspects of your mask are okay, and in which context can you unmask. And sometimes you can find out for yourself that actually what you need to be able to unmask in a safe way is to move to a different context. Because it could be that your workplace is not a place where you can unmask and follow what's authentically meaningful for you, or it can be from your family that actually with your family background that you cannot thrive, and where your masks are so big that you cannot truly be meaningful or or listen to what's truly meaningful to you. So it can be needed that you need to find out for yourself what in which conditions or which contexts are you able to unmask a bit more.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

Yeah, I think that's a really good point for people to know, actually. If you want to sort of go about this process of following your yourself and your intuitions more, definitely we would recommend I think a gradual process and start for when it feels safe and easiest, and then gradually expose yourself outwards. Almost imagining I'm doing concentric concentric circles with my hands for people who are listening and are watching. Start small, slowly build over time. You may find with time, maybe maybe you can be more yourself with, say, your family who are very abusive, but maybe not, and that's okay too, you know.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

Um but it's important to be aware that it can be the conditions as a problem and not you. And this is one of the things where you can hear my critical psychology or my critical psychiatry background. Um, but also what we know now very clearly from research is very often how frustration about life, how mental health problems very often have to do actually with the circumstances that do not enable us to live the meaningful life that we deserve. Because each individual deserves to live a meaningful life, but unfortunately, we don't always have those resources, the these the finances, or we don't have the emotional resources, or we were not lucky enough to grow up in the right family or in the right neighborhood, even. And um also in psychiatry or psychology, too, often we tend to label mental health problems as an individual problem, whereas it can actually be more about the context. That's not okay. And so very often what I see with a lot of my clients is that they don't have a clinical problem, they don't have a psychiatric problem, and we must be very careful uh in our assessments and when we talk with people who are struggling in life mentally, socially, and we do not judge them too harshly. Because too often, psychology and psychiatry, psychotherapy, we've harmed people by individualizing problems that are actually a societal problem and not their um and where it's not their problem in a sense.

SPEAKER_01 40:43

Yeah, I think that's a strong point, and it's a point we've raised often on the podcast that various kinds of uh patterns of thinking or behavior they may uh appear dysfunctional, they may be dysfunctional, but they may have served a really important purpose, especially in an earlier part of that person's life. You know, that could apply to sadness, depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive patterns are often a way of feeling a sense of control when that person's life is out of control. Really, all of these things to some degree can have use. Then sometimes they can become difficult when they're clashing with that person's present and not really clashing with that person's value system. So I do I do worry that sometimes, you know, all three of these areas psychiatry, psychotherapy, and self-development can can feel very blame blaming, I think, to the people interacting with them. Like something, you know, when we say, you know, these people are in their head, like it's a blame or something wrong. But actually being in your head is an amazing way of coping with some very difficult life stresses.

SPEAKER_00 41:47

Absolutely. Yeah, but it is important that we take our own responsibility there, because I know that quite a lot of people in in your own audience have have a professional background in those fields. But it's very important that we are very critical about our role and what we're doing and a message we give to our clients. Because I, for example, last week I I had a client, and and of course I cannot say too much, but but but he was talking about a very socially unjust situation, and he said, Yeah, possibly I could have done this or that. I said, Stop, I'm not allowing you to say this. Like because what you're doing here is you're blaming yourself for a situation that is very annoying. That's not okay. Your your context is not okay. And yes, you can then say possibly you should you could have responded differently. Yeah, that's all true, but it starts with your context. So let's be honest about that. And so I think that this these are topics that we really need to be fair to be training ourselves in, also as professionals, to be thinking of what are moments that we need to be realistic and remind ourselves and our clients about this is just a realistic context or situation that makes it difficult where struggle comes from, instead of labeling it. And this is also where, for example, in in my book on mental health and crisis that I wrote together with my very inspiring colleagues Ron Roberts and also James Davies. How, for example, in this book, we've been looking into also things like diagnoses, as we know, uh, from for example the DSM. And when you really start to unpack and unpeel that, you start to see that that individualization that's often assumed in a lot of the diagnosis, that we need to be very careful about. And and we we may need to have a very different understanding of mental health care, of assessments, of what do clients really need.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

Shifting gears a little bit for the towards the end of our conversation, I would like to talk more about transactional analysis. So you recently published a book, as I mentioned at the beginning, about transaction analysis. Uh, and you wanted me to be clear that you're not a TA transaction analysis therapist, but you've done a hell of a lot of research on it, and I'm interested in that. Um, transaction analysis is a fascinating therapy. And I encountered it quite early in my psychiatry training. And yet, despite the fact that it is so fascinating and has so much to offer, it's really quite under-discussed. But maybe for the uninitiated, what makes transactional analysis different to other approaches to psychotherapy?

SPEAKER_00 44:18

I will answer that by actually talking about my own journey. As you and the audience already get, like I've always been interested in the bigger questions in life. How can you live a more meaningful life? How can you live a life that is fulfilling? So in my own training in the Netherlands, I studied clinical psychology. I also studied philosophy. And that was all very helpful. But then the standard training was, of course, CBT, cognitive behavior therapy. We had a lot of neurocognitive already at the time, so I also studied a bit of that. And it was very that was all helping. But then I find out there's something missing. And missing, of course, were the extension themes. So that is we already be speaking about that. But another theme that was missing is also about the different sides, the different parts we have inside ourselves, and how we develop those in interaction with people through our relationships and through the transactions and through the messages we get in early life. And so, of course, the psychodynamic tradition has given a lot of wisdom on that. Um, but one of the issues with the more psychodynamic tradition is that some of the concepts are quite big, and there's a lot of hypotheses, a lot of assumptions about it, about the theories that can be quite complex for people to grasp. And then I came across the work from Eric Byrne, who started the transactional analysis in the 1950s, and I got totally excited by it. And there is a transactional analysis 101 that's like a basic course, basic training that you can do. I highly recommend that to people, where you can learn about some of the key ideas. Because what Eric Byrne did is he translated a lot of those concepts from psychedynamic, from also CBT, translated that into a model that people can understand in uh in in layman's terms, and really beautiful, but also where she's talking about the different parts inside ourselves and how they've developed in relationships with real people, and how the different parts inside ourselves can then sometimes be helpful and sometimes not helpful, and I find it fascinating. So um, but then I was like, shall I possibly study more about this? Or I mean, shall I do a full training? Shall I become a therapist in this? Uh, but then, as being a researcher, always I've had a research mind, I was like, oh, there's not enough research about it yet. So I was like, I'm not gonna train in it yet. But then I came across on my path uh in academia some amazing inspiring people, like for example, Guyana van Rijn, um who is a transactional analyst, and then we started talking and we said, you know what, we're gonna do a lot of research on it and review everything that's out there that's FMB set in the field. And so now, what is it, eight years later or so? Um, we've I've conducted a lot of studies together with, for example, Jana and others, where we reviewed all the research in that field and see what's evidence-based, what works, what doesn't work. And this is where I've now created, as you already mentioned, like the handbook of transactional analysis psychotherapy, an evidence-based approach. So it's paradoxical. I have not been trained as a transactional analyst myself, but I've become an expert and even got some awards for that.

SPEAKER_01 47:31

I'd like to dig into that research, but just so people are aware, transactional analysis has been quite influential on the culture at large. So if you've heard of something like playing games with people, if you've heard of the phrase I'm okay, you're okay, that comes from TA, if you've heard of like live scripts. So even though it's not uh super well discussed, ironically, in the therapy world, the games people play, which was Eric Burns' first public-facing book, had a huge impact on the time. And in particular, what I love about TA is you know it's called transactional analysis, and the transaction means transactions between people. There's a huge focus in TA on looking at the specific words we choose with people, how do we communicate, and what are like the healthy and maybe less healthy ways we can communicate with people, and that's what made me fall in love with it, especially with a more medical mind. It's like using a TA frame, you can look at the nuts and bolts of how people talk to each other and derive so much like psychological wisdom from that. I agree.

SPEAKER_00 48:35

I agree, and this is precisely also where my own passion and my fascination with TA has come from. Uh because it has this, it has a very clear terminology. Uh, even though we, of course, when you start to unpack it, there's there's more to it. But so what so some of the things we found is to say was to talk about what is the clinical phenomenon or the the key clinical ideas in TA. There are two aspects. The first one, as you already mentioned, these are the life positions, and that's the life position of I'm okay, I'm not okay, and others are okay or others are not okay. And for people who have a bit more background, they know when I use those words, we're talking about also attachment style, self-efficacy. We can use all those difficult words, but actually comes back to just simply I'm okay, I'm not okay, are others okay or not? And our research showed yes, that is really key, and that is key because having the idea of I'm okay and others are okay, that will then also influence my mental health, it will influence my ability to also follow what's truly an authentically meaningful for me in connection with others. So that's key. And then the the second aspect that um that is the second clinical phenomenon to use that terminology that we found in our research is what's called as the eco-states. And um, so nowadays in a lot of the more therapeutic field, people talk about our inner parts and and and and the different parts we can work with ourselves. And the specific words do not totally matter for me, but what we've seen in our research is that it can be helpful to use the words to talk about how each of us has an inner adult, uh, a critical parent, a nurturing parent, an adapted child, and a free child. And in different moments, we different parts of ourselves are more dominant than others, and that's normal. And that is in a when we're healthy, uh or in healthy in the sense of like when we're flourishing mentally and not struggling with too many mental health issues, they usually see that the adult is quite strong, but uh where we kind of in a fluent way can shift between all those different aspects, and and so that sometimes we have a bit of the critical parent that can be helpful, other moments we are more in the free child, then we are more in that, and that's helpful. But sometimes due to the life messages that we've gotten, the negative life experiences, we can get stuck in a certain way of in a certain eco-state, which then also gives is often related to the to a negative life position, as I said, like I'm not okay, or others are not okay. And what I love about TA is also the idea that we develop those dominant eco-states, or we get stuck in a certain eco-state, due to our actual interactions with people. So for example, when you're when your actual parents uh or your caregivers were very critical towards you, they were giving you a lot of negative messages, and of course, you will develop also very critical parent yourself, where you have this critical parent where you are critical towards yourself, but also towards others.

SPEAKER_01 51:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 51:59

And that is what I love about TA is the relationship between our own internal states, those different ego states, and how it relates with others and the relationship with them.

SPEAKER_01 52:13

And the nice thing about what you just laid out is it's not saying any one ego state is bad. So it might be tempting to say, for example, being in the uh critical parent where you tend to be critical towards yourself or others, or being the adapted child where you tend to like submit to the demands of yourself or others, that these ego states might be bad or unhealthy, but what you're saying no, it's not about any one ego state, it's about how well can you, as an individual, how can you move between these different ego states according to the demands of the situation that you're in?

SPEAKER_00 52:47

Precisely, yeah, according to the demand of the situation, yeah. And it's also important to also mention that the words like critical parent they have quite often a negative connotation, and this is where I'm not always happy um uh about those words, because some people have suggested should we possibly use more like a word like a structuring parent? Because it's it's helpful to be critical, for example, or structuring or guiding, or that's also a bit we need. So the illusion to say, for example, get rid of a critical parent, let's get rid of an adapted child, because those words are often negatively associated. No, it's not about that, it's about how can we do justice to each of those aspects inside ourselves and make sure that the negative aspects, for example, of the critical parent, that's not too big. That's how much choice do you have, you know, how much agency do you have over these ego states, precisely, and that agency that is why I started by saying the most important bit is that the inner adult is the most dominant, that's what we see in the research. Um, and the inner adult that is the one that is realistic, and I've already been talking about it today a lot about importance to be realistic about a situation, um but also to be able to see what the situation needs. So where the inner adult is saying, okay, in the situation I am not safe, so I need to protect a certain bit of myself, or am I okay in the situation and can I explore more? Can I can I be more free? And so it's that adult function that really plays a very important role to kind of guide the different aspects in yourself that we want to give voice or that we want to use.

SPEAKER_01 54:34

And as I said earlier, I love the concept of games, and obviously, games is something you know people talk about. People say, you know, you're playing games with me. From a TA perspective, what does it mean to play games? And then what's like a healthier alternative to playing games?

SPEAKER_00 54:48

It can be used in many different ways, and possibly the pop the more popular term how to use may not be the same as how certain TA therapists use it, but did you just say it in a very simple form? It means that when we play games, it means that we are in a relationship with another person where we're stuck in a certain pattern. For example, where I'm stuck in being a critical parent and the other person in an adapted child. So, for example, if I'm all the time criticizing another person and the other person is then responding by all the time going into that position of the adapted child, um that's an example of a game that we can be stuck in. Um and but there are so many different uh games that people can play where you can get stuck in in your relationship where you're only showing one particular side of yourself where and the other response to that was only one particular uh uh way of showing that or responding to that. Yes, and to some extent, people can get stuck in those games because they're not aware of it, or because they don't know the alternative.

SPEAKER_01 55:53

I came across this definition of games once that I really love, and it's like games are a way of avoiding the vulnerability of intimacy or the vulnerability of like real expression. So, for example, imagine two parents they just drop off their kids at school and they're talking to each other, and what one parent might be feeling is gosh, I'm really worried this school might be not good enough. I'm really worried about how my kids are gonna do in studies and in their life. This generally worries me. But what they come out with is, oh, did you hear about what the teacher did last week? It comes out as gossip, and that's a game, so it's a way of transmuting a real anxiety, a real feeling, into this is a safe way of talking about it, is we can gossip about the teachers. What I'm actually feeling is anxiety about my son's life, and once I understood that, it's like it's like when you're neo seeing the numbers in the matrix, you know, once you see that kind of stuff, it's so revelatory.

SPEAKER_00 56:46

And and this is where when when I was talking about masks before in a conversation and the masks I have behind me, um these are masks we often start to put on and we we play a game, like in a lot of cultures, they they put on masks as a part of a ritual, of like a game, of a dance, etc. And that seems to be what we're quite often doing in in a daily life, and it can be beautiful if you can become aware of like in a conversation or in my relationship with another, how I'm using a certain role or only a certain part of myself or certain patterns. That's like a mask, and you can become aware of that that you're like, oh, that's not really me, because it's something like in front of me, between me and the other, and others are also showing their mask. What if we can create a sense of safety with each other where it's okay to say okay, this is the mask, and let's for now put off that mask and talk about what's really going on and see and see what's going on be beyond that dance. Yeah. And some and some of those games are okay. Because games can also be rewarding, can be a nice way to pass the time, they can um and they can be rewarding, and they can be fun. Because a lot of social interactions are that, and that's fine.

SPEAKER_01 58:02

I guess the difference is are you using the game or is the game using you?

SPEAKER_00 58:05

Precisely.

SPEAKER_01 58:06

Are you a slave to the game? You know, it would be great to know from your research how do we now now like what do we know about the effectiveness of TA? Because a lot of the the dominance of approaches, like for example, cognitive behavior therapy, are often based on arguments that, well, CBT is really well researched and we know it's really effective. What do we know about the effectiveness of therapies like TA, especially as compared to other therapies like CBT?

SPEAKER_00 58:33

What we quite often see is the myth, I really call it the myth, that it's mainly cognitive behavior therapy that is evidence-based. That's absolutely not true. Um, and this is what a lot of research has shown, and this has also been been um described by many other researchers, where we see that almost all professional psychotherapies have almost equivalent effects uh on improving mental well-being of people. Um, and this is also what we saw. For example, I saw that in my research on extensional therapies, that it's equally effective as, for example, CBT for a lot of specific diagnoses people have. And the same we saw again in frasexual analysis when I conducted my big systematic reviews and meta-analysis there from like like 56 clinical trials. Now it has equal, equally good outcomes on psychopathology, like things like depression, anxiety. Um, and what's intriguing is one of the things I always do in my research is I do not only look at okay, for example, when you have a clinical trial, you give a questionnaire before the intervention, after the intervention, and see the people improve in, for example, having diagnosis or not. And also looking at okay, the skills people actually develop during the therapy does not actually also predict the outcomes. Because, for example, what we say in transexual analysis is we hypothesize that people that people's uh psychopathology, their depression, anxiety that it reduces because the eco-states improve, because the life positions improve, because they are able to be more flexible uh in using those different eco-states. And that's precisely what we saw. We saw that it's precisely those specific TA components that participants improve in, and it's thanks to the improvement in those TA-specific uh um uh concepts that people then that the mental health and the mental well-being improves. And that is really important to also mention because actually, in a lot of the CBT trials, they only look at preposed, they don't look at actually do people improve because of the conceptual model that we have. Is it that people improve because they they're they are better in the in their thinking patterns? And was actually we know that very often that is not the only thing that matters. For example, CBT, the reason why people improve with in within CBT has also has to do with the therapeutic relationship, it has to do with the ability to live a more meaningful life, it has to do with the ability to actually make sense of also the live scripts, the messages that you got from your background. So, actually, like the illusion that CBT works because of the CBT model, I I would question that whether it is that simplistic. So, and this is what we precisely saw in trosexual analysis in our research, and this is beautiful, I would say, that we see that all the different therapeutic approaches have a lot of yeah, of the components in common, actually.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:43

Yeah, that's the the dirty secret of psychotherapy and especially tribalism within psychotherapy, is that many of these schools of thoughts are describing very, very similar concepts using different language, and that's why I get so sad when I see people in different camps being so um kind of toxic, for lack of a better word, about their school of thought and so so reluctant to engage with other different ideas, which seems like a shame to me, since psychotherapists are supposed to be some of the most mature people in our society.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:12

Absolutely, and and these are things that we need to talk more about, and therefore we need people like you with your amazing podcast to really talk about what do we know about all those different approaches that are around there and that and they can have helpful contributions.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:28

You know, we're working hard, we're working out we're working hard out here to try and decrease tribalism in the mental health world. We are out of time. Dr. Joe Voss, thank you so much for coming on and sharing some of your wonderful insights. If you guys want to learn more about transactional analysis, you can read his most recent book, The Handbook of Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy. If you're totally new, you want to read something foundational, you can also read games people play by Eric Brennan. In the meantime, Dr. Voss, thank you so much for joining me today.