[Music] I'm so glad here to be here today and to be moderating um for our two distinguished guests and why did we come here today why did We Gather here today well since we are the Veritas Forum we like talking about the big questions those big questions that normally do not come up in the classrooms so that means we are here today to talk about one important topic and it is a topic of which many people on this campus in this nation and in the world think about all the time that of happiness and just important just as important overcoming its counterpart depression so what we want to know here today is what is happiness and how might one go about achieving this excellent state of body and mind so being someone who does not understand much about the brain or the mind and their intricacies I'm here to ask the dumb questions the dumb questions concerning happiness the dumb questions concerning depression Sadness and Sorrow and the dumb questions concerning the science surrounding all of it and hopefully at the end of this discussion I and a throng of all the other hardworking Stanford students May go about pursuing this elusive happiness so with all that said let's get into the discussion so let's start with definitions and concrete Concepts many philosophers throughout human history have labored to find the human good and many have landed on happiness and it was those same philosophers that then labored a good amount of their years to then Define this term so putting these two extremely talented psychiatrists and experts on the mind on the Professor Spiegel first and then Dr K on in your practice and in your own philosophical belief system how would you define happiness well thank you first of all you okay um we on the faculty are devoted to the belief that there are no dumb questions only dumb answers so I'll try and demonstrate that that to you now um the uh the famous uh philosopher saurin kirkgard said that the self is a relationship that relates itself to its own self it's not the the relationship but it's the process of relating uh and I think what kirar was trying to point out is that we tend to lose our opportunities for happiness by slipping into thinghood to being a thing a type of person and really it is the brain's capacity to help us relate to people around us to this beautiful spring evening to the opportunities we all share here to prosper in this wonderful institution um but it's how we relate to it it is not it and we are not an it and one of the things that I found most helpful in my work using hypnosis is that people can use it to concentrate intently on something engage with it in a way that changes their relationship to their experience but do it by suspending their relationship to themselves and who they are to not let their preum presuppositions about who they are impair their capacity to enrich the experience that they're having and so I once helped using hypnosis the Stanford women swimming team to swim faster in Meats than they did in practice because it used to be the other way around and what they were doing was focusing on the goal of beating the woman in the next Lane rather than the experience of helping their bodies to swim at their best and when they started doing that they actually started swimming faster in Meats than they did in practice so it's the process of engaging that is part of what is uniquely I think not uniquely human but is human and contributes to happiness I I I really want to emphasize the importance of of asking the dumb questions um because it's it's so easy to go along with your old assumptions old beliefs and the only way that you can really make a change is by is by engaging that question of of the fundamentals and I think it's a great question um when I think about happiness I think the the part of the challenge comes in the the word is used in so many different senses and so I sometimes like to break it out um into into different dimensions um so there's there's happiness as a mood State like I I feel happy in a moment sort of a subjective experience maybe goes along with certain states of physiology um but that's it's essentially transient um that that comes and goes and is is somewhat difficult to control um the word I like uh for what I'm usually trying to do in my professional work is is encourage uh flourishing um and the the books that were so generously distributed today um I talk about flourishing as this as the state of of uh well-being wholeness things working together um kind of across the dimensions across the spectrum of the human being uh a person living um as he or she uh was designed to or living in a way that fulfills all of the capacities and ways that that we were uh either created and or evolved to be um and I think this is uh this is something that is uh that involves a lot of different um aspect ects of sure there's partly uh the the mood the subjective but then there's also uh doing things that are important having a meaningful work having meaningful relationships being able to uh uh be um ethically good with a response to uh people around you um enjoying Beauty there's a whole uh spectrum of things that go along with capacities that we have that we we need to use um in order to to flourish um but then there's also another state which goes beyond my professional work um which is a state of of blessedness um there's people through history and uh that sometimes we may call Saints who are able to experience these states despite all of the physical things not working uh in states of terrible pain or deprivation um or suffering um who are able to experience this this this goodness this Joy this this almost uh separation from the physical uh in a way that's really profound and so I'd say that uh that that that's a and so sometimes that is that's called Happiness yeah if you look at a person who's in that state yeah they're happy um but that's not the fundamental thing to that's not the most interesting thing about that state um the most interesting thing about that state is is how it's able to transcend uh everything that is uh that is circumstantial so one question in this uh in this uh discussion concerning uh definitions and Concepts one to each of you for uh Professor Spiegel so this relationship to self that is explained um in kirar how would you distinguish that from things like pleasure or materialistic utility how does one have happiness in the K Guardian sense that is not those things or perhaps they are I would love for you to expand on that well uh Kirker got taught that it is not in being anyone thing but in being a being who can process and relate to experience and create an experience that not only is pleasurable which is one way but we can be genuinely very much ourselves in difficult or uncomfortable circumstances but rather in a state of evolution and Discovery so as you engage with the world around you with the experiences you have as you use your brain to modulate those experiences people in hypnosis for example can filter out the hurt from the pain they can actually go through very difficult experiences and make them experiences of Mastery uh and so part of happiness is not simply it's not pleasure it's a capacity to enlarge the experience you have and make it new and different so that you are validating your experience of relating to and Beyond the experience you're having and that means being transparent and open with other people learning from them um I heard there was a debate about debates here in a lawn like this and there was a wonderful freshman who said you know I discovered doing debating that the purpose of not of debating is not to win but to learn and when you're in that constant state of evolution where any new experience can change you that is genuine pleasure and relatedness so one more question before for uh Dr Karen before we jump into the scientific means to achieve this happiness I would love to drill down more into that tripartite framework you just laid out of Happiness flourishing and blessedness um from which tradition does that spring first of all and then could one be blessed while being depressed or being the opposite of flourishing being the opposite of happy and I would love for you to expand all that as well yeah the idea of of U blessedness in the midst of suffering um is uh from the Christian tradition and I think there's uh a lot of things uh so there's other Traditions that will talk about um separation of Detachment or um you know cutting off desire such that you're you're not uh it doesn't bother you as much in a sense uh but the the fact that the suffering itself can somehow be transmuted into some kind of blessedness um is is very much um from the the Christian tradition and specifically the life of Jesus who was able to do that who uh you know sometimes in some places called The Man of Sorrows experienced uh you know toward the end of his life just the absolute worst of the worst in every possible category of misery of suffering um and yet uh is is is in the state of of blessedness is that's um that we as Christians try to emulate or or aspire to or um try to seek um and so in a sense it's almost a it's almost the vertical plane we can talk about like you know going from flourishing to depressed I sometimes think about depression is the opposite of um of this flourishing state that it that this this brain condition or a condition that at least largely lives in the brain um is able to impair a human in just such such a variety of of terrible ways kind of broad spectrum um and so you maybe you can think about a you know a plane of movement that you could you go you know left to right but then blessedness is a new dimension so yeah you could be blessed and not flourishing um there's a there's a story in the in the book of um a woman who was in this uh State condoles um hospital it just absolutely like had been alone for for years and years was blind and so you know I I in talk in the book about like oh yes you know going out to the outdoors which you guys are all doing that's wonderful great great start uh you know that's that's where we want to go uh and you know exercising and she she couldn't walk and uh I talk about you know a community but she was Alone um and so all of these things are are present in her life and so she has none of the things I talk about as generally being good for a human organism um and yet she talks about how uh when she was asked by a visitor you know what do you think about all that time in the dark Alone by yourself and she says I think about my Jesus about how wonderful he's been to me and how and she talks about how fortunate she is to have her Jesus and and it's and it's it's so interesting that um that it's this this like my it's almost this this ownership it's the kind of state you could be in uh when you're in love or when you're when you're uh connected with someone it almost doesn't matter what else is going on because you have that connection and and I think that's the this that that love uh this this deepest Kind of Love Can can transcend uh these other experiences now um that's that's like Saint level connection uh So for anybody who is experiencing depression whether or not you are a Christian uh very much I encourage you to move in the flourishing Direction get treatment as necessary um but at least as a as a a category there are people who are suffering um that are in this blessed State and there's people who are flourishing who at the bless day so I'm glad both of our uh speakers think that you know happiness is a thing and we can achieve it so now we can move on uh to discussing specific scientific means to achieve that happiness that flourishing starting with you Professor Spiel you are an expert in this area can hypnosis help us achieve this kirka Guardian happiness this this good relation with oneself um yes I think it can I'm not saying I'm the example of happiness or flourishing but I'll try and share my experience in helping other people get there uh hypnosis is a simple state of Highly focused attention it's like getting so caught up in a good movie how many of you have had that experience you get so caught up in a good movie you forget you're watching a movie you enter the imagined world it's been called believed in imagination and and when you have that sense of intensity of focus you can give yourself to an experience in which you get more from it you give more to it um and you don't judge and evaluate it you just have it to do that you dissociate you put outside of conscious awareness things that would ordinarily be in Consciousness right now for example you're feeling Sensations and your bottoms touching this lovely Green Lawn here but hopefully you were not aware of those Sensations until I mention it any of you were aware you're allowed to leave now if you were um so in order to focus intently you have to dissociate disconnect from thoughts including thoughts that could interfere or judge or uh make the worst of a good situation the third thing that happens um is the thing that scares people the most about hypnosis how many of you have been to these awful hypnosis shows any of you've seen that where the football coach dances like a ballerina and all this stuff it creates the false impression that the hypnotist controls everything and can HP do this to anybody that's not true um they select people in the audience who are likely to be more hypnotizable and all hypnosis is really self- hypnosis you're not losing control you're gaining control you know we all come with these wonderful three-pound organs on the top of our shoulders that are connected to every part of the body control every part of the body but it doesn't come with a users manual we're not aware of the things we can do and one of them is to dissociate and control things in a way that you never would have thought of before think of yourself in a way you never would have thought of yourself before so the football coach didn't think he could dance like a ballerina in front of 500 people okay not very interesting but I've seen people um who have felt demeaned by trauma in their lives and I had a woman the other day who uh felt absolutely terrible about having been sexually abused as a young girl and I asked her to go back and be her own mother to think about what it would be like um for the her as a girl to go through what she went through and I said answer one question is this your fault and she started to cry and she said no I'm stroking her hair I'm stroking her hair and she called me a week later and said my psychiatrist wants to know what you did to me because I'm not depressed anymore so she was able to let go of this rigid belief that she somehow deserved the miseries she got and most of us would rather feel guilty than helpless hypnosis can help people restructure that revisit it and experience it in a different way and that can contribute to the ability to let go of the depression and experience happiness that story was beautiful um but before I get to Dr Ken I would just like to plow in uh for for two more questions on hypnosis so the effect or the results of hypnosis is focus attention how would you distinguish Focus attention from things like meditation and prayer and then my second question just to dispel further dispel any uh conflations between uh what has been termed staged hypnosis and what you do clinical hypnosis if you could uh you know put those rumors to rest right here and now that would look great um well H stage hypnosis is just a gimmick it's it's a show and it you know it is a part of the tradition but you know there are snake oil salesman uh for drugs too and it doesn't tell you what the phenomena really is hypnosis is a way of helping people restructure their understanding of themselves and it's something that I teach to patients I've taught to 7,000 people in my career and by the way if you want to try it you know being a Stanford Professor you have to have a company you have to you know be do a startup so I did um it's called revery re v r i I'm co-founder uh of revery and we have a series of programs uh at the moment nine there are more coming uh that help you focus your attention control your pain sleep better stop smoking and you get to hear my malous voice anytime you want day or night um I used to think that it wasn't couldn't be quite as good as me in the office and then I thought if you're having trouble getting back to sleep at 3:00 in the morning you probably don't want me in your bedroom telling you how to do it uh but you can do it with the app you can download it from the app store or Google play um and it's interactive so I ask you a question is your hand floating in the air if it is I go on to something else if not I help you with that so give it a try if you'd like um now there was the second question how would you distinguish Focus attention oh from meditation yes so hypnosis is related to it's a change in Consciousness and in meditation also you want to get over yourself you know that's the idea just let thoughts and feelings flow through you have open presence um you you do a body scan you check out how your body is feeling and um you develop compassion which is a wonderful thing but I think of meditation as a it's a long proud tradition in Buddhism and Hinduism um it's uh something that people enjoy and feel good about but it's a practice it's not a tool it's a way of being rather than a way of doing hypnosis is also a shift in attention they both can involve um letting go of these presuppositions about who you are um but hypnosis you use to solve a problem to control pain to get to sleep uh to to reconceptualize your experience of being traumatized and so it's much more a tool you use when you need it it's more like an antibiotic and my fness is like a vitamin thank you um Dr Caren your clinic has pursued some Innovative scientific techniques and treating depression if you could expand on that that would be great and then also what are answer the first question please and then I'll get into the second one uh yeah so so we uh I'm the uh co-founder of a aaca clinics um where our main office is just down the street 20 minutes and uh so we started doing regular uh good old fashion Psychiatry with medication management um and so and then uh and then Psychotherapy which I want to say something about too about um sort of the the similarities of psychotherapy in general um and then the and maybe I'll do that now so if we want to talk about recovery or remission or Improvement um all of that is going to involve a Brain Change um and so our brains are constantly changing Moment by moment um and then when it changes and sticks we might have a mental illness say depression and then when it you go through a therapy and it changes for the better that also sticks great so we're able to make these changes that are semi-permanent the brain is always changing and that we can but that our attention uh in my opinion our attention is the main thing that's rewriting the script that's reprogramming the uh the cores in that brain is is reconnecting different parts of the brain that weren't connected and so um with the Professor Spiegel's saying about we were talking at lunch about which particular nodes of the brain are connected in hypnosis well that's different than the nodes that are connected in say mindful meditation where your attention is on your nose um and the kind of psychotherapy that I tend to prefer um cognitive behavioral therapy is yet another set of connections between this uh different sets of the brain but the point is you can direct your attention you have this this incredible capacity to redirect reprogram repurpose uh different parts of your brain um with practice and so uh and that's kind of the idea of of psychotherapy in general is you're rewriting re programming changing your brain in ways that uh you and the therapist are uh are are desired so we do Psychotherapy um the thing that we do that um is a bit more unique is that we also take brain scans looking for these specific networks um it's called an fmri uh sort of a 20 minute video of the blood flow of the brain we sort of look what's connected to what we're able to uh see well this part that's usually in control of depression is is uh is connected to this spot that we can hit with a particular kind of uh powerful magnet called a transcranial magnetic stimulator we can zap it we can you know kind of tap on it so with the TMS coil you tap on the part of the brain that controls the hand and you get a thumb movement you move it a little bit you get a finger movement it's really fun uh and uh and so we do that we have to do that to uh to kind of calibrate the machine and then we move forward to the part of the brain that controls uh you know top down and control a rational thought and then we supercharge the part that is supposed to be in control over the negative thoughts the ruminative thoughts the negative selft talk and we we just uh zap that a lot we stimulate that for five days we're able to get these incredible remission rates um by figuring out where to go and then stimulating that part of the brain and the thing that's exciting about that is that this is this is sort of the first application of what might be the future of Psychiatry and Neuroscience and neurology that there's a whole bunch of conditions that have AB noral brain connections as at the root whether it be pain or whether it be um something like Alzheimer's or whether it be something like Parkinson's we've seen improvements in all of these conditions when you hit the right spot with this uh with this you know little zap um so all to say that it's it's it's a really exciting time and uh but I think the the more important point for the uh average person is that this is this is kind of doing uh supercharged what you can do with your own mind with your own uh directed attention and uh you want to connect the uh the part of the body that is uh the part of the brain that's connected to thinking about your body and uh where you are in space and focused attention um great then now you're in hypnotic State you want to think about uh you know weightlifting okay we're connecting the uh Central executive network with the motor cortex wonderful um so you're able to direct that attention and that's the power that you have uh to change yourself and uh we can do it you know at a clinical office in cases where things are really bad um but most people don't need that so there seems to be a common theme of focused attention and so Dr K and I have two questions for you is focus attention the most productive constructive path to happiness and then the second question if Focus attention is the mo most constructive way to happiness what are the ways the modern world makes it hard to achieve this focused attention in my opinion focused ATT mention is the only choice we have when we talk about free will it's all to some degree or other us focusing on I'm G to raise my hand i'm GNA move my finger I'm focusing my brain on the part that moves the you know the the thumb that's the foundation of it so yeah um but but in a way that's the sort of just dodging um that that yes I I think that human choice that that human um volition is the pathway to to happiness but what are we choosing and I think that the the modern society makes it difficult in innumerable ways and um I think Professor Fel and I both see it in our patients of just innumerable ways that that attention is either bought and sold so there's a whole you know a whole bunch of companies that that come up you may have heard about them they're they're just down the street uh you know fa Facebook and uh Google and you know all these guys what do they do they they buy and sell attention and uh the uh I I looked up um the social soci media companies uh it is uh the amount they are selling your attention for everybody think of a number what's the number what's the number you're thinking of just how much are they selling how much do they value your attention at 14 14 books $1 so when you are on I guess Instagram is popular around here uh or Facebook or whatever it is there they're selling it for a dollar like your time is more valuable going for a walk or or you know talking to a friend or con in um out a beautiful green to think about the Deep questions like but that's but you know so they've made a lot of money selling and so so yeah that's one thing social media is a big thing but but even before social media our our social connections really started to break down there's some some some great um sociological literature on this but but just an absolute catastrophe of human connection the number of friends people have is drastically dropped there's a um famous book called bowling alone where um the uh the author talks about going from um I think it was 19 85 there were the me the uh the average number of friends a person had was Confidant was three and then in 2003 it was one um and then like the number of people just massive reduction in in connection over the past few decades even before social media got big um and it's only accelerated since then so I think those things have happened and then the other thing that's that's huge in mental health um and uh human happiness is um is religious service attendance in the United States that's um that's Church attendance um that's also started decline over the past uh decade after being stable remarkably like remarkably stable for like literally a century and for some reason a decade or two ago it started to take a dip um so I I think there's a lot of um things that are happening that make it difficult to pay attention and uh you know the the the breaking up of attention from being able to read a book um to well I I've got a scroll if it's not you know if I can't get it in in 2 minutes or in 140 characters like I can't pay attention to it anymore that's a Challen that we all face in the modern world so I mean I I'm going to keep talking forever if you let me but uh that's a that's a sampling thank you thank you so now we're going to move on to um personal application so we've been talking about philosophical Concepts we've been talking about definitions and then we've been talking about those scientific means to achieve those said Concepts but now for the most important questions for hardworking Stanford students how do we make this personal to our own life lives and I think what would help is if y'all uh Dr Ken and Professor Spiegel would give us personal stories of how you overcame depression in your life how you pursued happiness in your life and um perhaps even in your clinical practice a more uh descriptive uh evaluation than normative what practices apart from science-based methods so I'm thinking spiritual practices meditative rituals that you saw helped your clients really pursue this happiness that you laid out um Professor Spiegel I'll start with you well one of the principles that I use in using hypnosis and the intense focused attention is to focus on what you're for rather than what you're against don't let things Define you uh that oppose you focus on what you're for uh when I get people to stop smoking I don't tell them you won't want a cigarette I tell them think about your body as your child um would you ever put Toran nicotine smoke into the lungs of your child um well your body is as dependent on you as your child is focus on what you're for respecting and protecting your body I've used it myself I had a dislocating shoulder I had it operated on and I didn't want to be any more medicated than I needed to be I needed general anesthesia for the three-hour surgery but afterwards I was using no pain mes at all I was just using self- hypnosis and I went over to my medical record at Mass general and you weren't supposed to be able to do that but I worked there so the nurse couldn't stop me and and the the the orthopedic resident wrote patient using very little pain medication we mustn't have cut many nerves now I'm I'm here to tell you they cut a lot of nerves here but the thing about that is that it turned an experience of just being worked on into one in which I could experience Mastery I could feel good about what was happening what I was doing my wife Professor Helen Blau backer Professor St so biology wanted to be in control of the delivery of our children and so I taught her how to use self hypnosis as the anesthesia during the delivery our son Dan was 10 PBS when he was born that's big um and my wife was saying in the middle of the labor well I was saying you're floating in PL Tahoe pool tingling numbness filtered the hurt out of the pain and she said you know I teach pharmacology here there are drugs for this and I said keep floating and like how are you're doing fine and at the end of it I had no pain at all Dan got out fine and she had a sense of Mastery she had a sense that she had learned something about herself and her ability to manage the situation and one of the things that we don't give our brains enough credit for is the ability to transform perception to transform our view of ourselves and so the thing when when I'm feeling bad I think about what I have to face uh but I think think about it in a way that makes it a lesson something to be learned there's an old Buddhist saying that when you meet an obstacle on the road it's a signpost and so people can learn uh I had I ran groups for women dying of metastatic breast cancer for many years and we were told when we started this is a terrible thing to do they're going to see one another lie they'll get die they'll get demoralized and I thought no they can there's something to be learned there and one woman said at the end of uh one of the groups when somebody had died she said being in the group is like looking into the Grand Canyon when you're afraid of heights you know if you fell down it would be a disaster but you feel better about yourself because you're able to look I can't say I feel Serene but I can look at it and you begin to understand on the one hand the absoluteness of death and on the other hand the miracle it is that we're all alive here at all and so using these techniques can help people transform their own it in a way that adds meaning to it and that to me is the best anti-depressant I know of Dr car I think on the the the flourishing side there really is a a social crisis and the university is a little bit of a unusual place but even when I was um even when I was here I think I I sort of believe that there's there's there's almost like a a a social famine and everybody is starving and and so you know starving people are desperate for all kinds of things to make them feel better um but I think that that all of us are going to have to figure out how to reverse this course um and that even small things of you know having having you know we would have um brunches I would do brunches on Sundays after church and we just get together and talk and you know sometimes it was three people sometimes it was 10 people people um but it was a was a an anchor in the week and it was a place that people can go and and that just spending spending time and energy and money on like we've got to reconstitute society we can't just be atomized individuals for the rest of time you know moved around by the whims of Corporations which is the present state of things um and so paying very close attention to that how can you rebuild in small ways and start small um I think that's the one thing on the the other is is um paying attention to there's always something you can do I I I tell my patients this sometimes uh there's always something you could do to make yourself feel just a little bit less miserable it's not always the case that you could be happy in any particular moment but there's some part of your thought pattern some part of your behavior some part something you're doing that's not perfect and you could do better now and and even with severe depression like even in severe depression sometimes it's like okay maybe you can't go for a run but you could probably sit up at a bed and walk to the mailbox maybe you can't some I've met people who can't that that's sometimes not the case but like most of the time they can and so think about within your capacity what is something you could do to make a small change and then and then have those changes um build upon each other um to uh to go as far as human effort can go um and I'd say the third thing is and that even goes for for thought patterns I think that's another thing that seems to be uh really On The Rise is just this this almost omnipresent negative selft talk or negative self-opinion um and and just starting to fight that and uh I remember when I was in uh Medical School uh the very first part of uh the the third year you start to go into the hospital and all of that all that book knowledge gets put to good use when you perfectly remember all of that stuff in the moment when you're on the spot with you're attending asking you the hard questions but uh I I choked uh my first uh I really did not do well on my internal medicine rotation I remember and I was I was joking hard it was like I might not pass this rotation and the good thing the great thing is about past fail is that you know it's all pass you know you have to worry about a BCS but like the bad thing about pass fail is that you know you might not pass and so uh so I I really started to like you know I mean literally like trembling when I was giving my presentations and like you know thinking oh man I'm so stupid I I got they must have made a mistake in admissions like how could I go this far and fail I got I got all this de I'm going to be able to pay it back I mean it's it really started to cycle but then realizing okay I got to redirect that um what is what is actually true about the situation um well am I worthless no I'm loved by God I am I am a child of God so even if I am a bad medical student I'm still valuable um what about uh what this is okay well all I can do is my best I'm going to focus my attention on what I can do and hey maybe they did make a mistake I can't control the admissions committee at Stanford but it can say here's how I'm going to some hours to studying here's how I'm going to prepare for my presentations better so redirecting that and and it really it really made a huge difference um and but that that is a process that is a a pathway of anytime you're in that situation or situations like that what is true what do you know and then I think lastly is is realizing that that um and this is this is sort of uh the limit of Aristotelian happiness like you can you can you can work really hard and that's kind of this basis of like you can work really hard but then you know disaster can strike you might not actually be successful um things really bad things might happen and yeah well you're stuck you're not going to be happy then that's just not flourishing and and I think that is the limit to a human frame that yeah like and this is sort of uh some people will go to stoicism and say well you know maybe if we just figure out how to how to control my attention to a perfect degree I won't care or I won't be able to focus on the negative emotions or I'll be able to redirect but but it's still miserable you're just surviving the misery a little bit better um but but I think the question that we really need to also um think more deeply about and explore even experientially is is there something more um is there a way that we can get to this state of blessedness is there a way that we can really transcend um the the the ups and downs of uh slings and arrows of Outrageous Fortune um to a point where we can really do well and uh and experience love for one another and uh and experience against the love of something Beyond us love of God um even in the midst of whatever comes our way in terms of circumstance um awesome um so I'm gonna ask one more question but before I get to that uh make sure y'all are starting to think about um your Q&A responses uh I believe we're going to have two people holding mics um so once I ask this question go up to the two people holding mics with your question and Dr kerion and Professor Spiegel will be happy to answer so one more question um and this pertains to your book Dr Kion and I would like both of you to answer it is a practical question you talk about in your book as you just did pursuing good things well the operative question is what are these good things and why are they good in the final analysis I think that humans have a capacity um I I I like the the transcendentals um the good the true and the Beautiful I think that humans have a capacity um in the same way that we have a big part of the brain that's able to perceive um light and we're able to to photons come from the Sun and uh they you know bounce off stuff and they hit our our eyeballs and we're able to turn that into some uh appreciation of the world around us I think the same thing is happening with something like truth that uh that there is a source of Truth in my opinion God that is putting out these ideas of of goodness of uh whether it's a a good moral action that we see something of uh sful sacrifice or a heroic heroic action and we can we see that in the same way that we see the color green or the the blue sky and then we say wow that is good now I don't think our our capacity to see the good is as uh precise is as as infallible as our ability to see the color green for example um but even with that when we think about the physical world we have multiple people scientists who might uh put together uh will come together to coate their observations and discuss well I saw this well I saw that okay how do we reconcile these differences but I think that there's a capacity for humans to see the good um and so on an individual basis and in uh venues like this and smaller venues discussing it I think that's another thing that we've really not done a lot of is you know what is good well okay there's there's there's good actions there's there's good you know physical exercise that's a great thing and you know good food healthy food that's a good thing um social connection is a good thing you know good selft talk things that are saying speaking truth about yourself and not you know not lies that are destructive you know these are all these are all good things um but what precisely is the good thing for you in your situation well that that's that's hard that's something that takes discussion um disc with your friends with your pastor with your uh mentors um with therapists whatever the case may be um but I think that this is this is something we can discover um together as we um as we go throughout our lives Professor spel um I would say that um becoming is better than being um that what really makes us human is the capacity to grow and expand and learn to learn not just from what's around us but what's within us our our remarkable abilities our brain's ability to help us reconceptualize our experiences to transform pain um to reand relationships uh to build a life that is devoted not to a thing like getting rich or getting famous but to making lives better for yourself and for others to being part of a community and I think it's the capacity to not get stuck on one thinghood but rather be able to suspend them try on different ones and learn to be a better person and that's a a remarkable opportunity we all have and I hope you all enjoy it thank [Applause] you so if we can take our first question hello awesome um so you guys both sort of talk about this idea of seeing the good in bad experiences or maybe like transforming your own subjective experience of a you know quote unquote bad experience into a good one but you seem to have like two different takes on it like one is like this idea of blessedness and the other is the idea that we have this like I don't know control over our own perception I'm wondering if you guys could like debate or talk about these two ideas in a way that like joins them um I'm just curious about like having you guys talk about those things well I think the um there there's this the sense in I think maybe what uh Professor Spiegel SP earlier about um a tool like what what are you trying to do um and I think it's a perfectly valid thing to try to reduce the to I love that phrase the the the hurt take the hurt out of the pain um and uh that that there's there's a way that you can you can transform it um but that's not the same thing as as transcending it um that's not the same thing as as using that for some spiritual good um in that case it would have to be um there would have to be a a spiritual end or a spiritual entity or a spiritual part of oneself um that is being not just less hurt but bettered uh by The Experience um and in fact that's um that's some research that we had done um you were talking about this earlier too we did we did a survey um called Soul pulse and and one of the things we discovered was that people who had the highest degree of daily spiritual experiences so so there was a a measure of uh how how much a person was flourishing and then how many stressors or negative events did people have and so as you'd expect as the average person had more negative things happen um their flourishing went down um and so but the question was okay what about the people with the very high spiritual experiences moderately High it went down but less the the the mind-blowing thing was the people who are at the highest um two standard deviations higher on that the slope reversed when bad things happened they felt better they were flourishing it got even it was even better than had it not happened and so you know am I in that state most days no but but that that is a that is a thing that is possible and so you know I I think that there's a there's a sense in which um I think these are good tools um but the best they can do is reduce the negative um but I I think I'm interested as my own you know personal project and I think the project that anybody can pursue is how do we not just reduce it but reverse it how can we how can we transform the suffering of this world into something that makes it even better than had it not happened and that's even the theological idea that um that why is there suffering at all and what is it for um and in some sense for our good for for some good um not just something to be endured um it's a very astute question and there there are differences in our conception of it I guess I would say um that part of understanding that miracle that we're all here doing what we're doing um comes in part from understanding and making better use of yourself your brain your body and what you have been so fortunate to inherit however you inherited it and we understand um what I would think of as a Divine in the world by understanding what the Divine lets us do as people it lets us help people and how the way we use our brains controls our brains neurons that fire together wire together and so we become we make ourselves become even more of our own possibility and that to me is a miraculous thing all by itself so I think if you're really genuinely making the best use of the opportunity you have as a person um you are in fact evolving and not getting stuck in being any one image of who you are you're constantly growing and expanding and helping other people do the same thing is there a Telos like if you're changing is there a direction you think people are going or ought to be going yeah I think they ought to be going in a direction of expanding themselves recognizing that they can help other people expand themselves that that our purpose in being a community is to help one another grow I see that in in groups of women dying of breast cancer that they turn their own fear and pain and disappointment into an opportunity to better understand the woman sitting across the room from them so they help themselves by helping others and they see that their own limited view of what their possibilities were is not so clear for the woman that she's talking with and they help one another develop so the Ts for me is helping other people do what helps you to do as well to grow and change and relate beyond what you thought you were so before we take our next question guys we have burritos and blankets uh the blankets is for our next uh next part of this um discussion um and burritos they're free so AB some okay uh like quick two follow-ups like one how do you define spirituality in that study and then two is why I think it feels nice to have that like form of Telos or like that you know direction of growth but what do you think is the the mechanism behind why that's a good thing the mechanism behind why it's a good thing yeah like is there like a not not necessarily evolutionary biology is like the the way to go about it but like what's the sort of justification behind um wanting to care for a larger group of people like I think like you know uh intuitively it feels right but um do you have like a a stronger reason behind it yeah I and I'd say that um I I I think that to Professor Spiegel's point I think there's a I I think that we can see a lot with just paying attention um and so what's the justification evolutionarily or from you know from from that perspective I'd say that what's happening in that study and what is that's evidence of is what God wants of us so I'll answer theologically first which is um I I I like one possible answer of what is the uh what is the the the chief duty of man and it's to glorify God and enjoy him forever it's it's Joy it's enjoyment it's this and what is that and then there's a picture in the Book of Revelation of um every tribe tongue people and Nation standing Before the Throne so so we could start with a group of 10 or maybe a hundred and those people can come together and they can expand and they can they can but then you you you take that limit as X approach as infinity and what do you get is is this this sort of unification of of everything but and uh in my opinion the unification is is is in Christ unification is in that person who who suffered most perfectly and completely um and so yeah evolutionarily I'd say uh that that's how we were made we're made with that as our you know we're the acorn turning into the oak tree um but the oak tree is that kind of love and that we can experience that and that's that's evidence of of something that we desire um to to we have a we have a desire to become what we were made what's in our DNA what's in our spiritual DNA I'm going to make my answer brief because there are other people with questions um my reason for thinking that we need to uh expand our lives by helping others expand theirs is very simple survival if we don't start doing that soon we're not going to survive thank you for your great talk um so uh my question is um there has been a debate between location ISS and con constructionists on um the the meaning of emotion basically and I was wondering um in your in your research and in your invention of the F day um depression uh treatment how did how did any of these opinions if you have any of these opinions uh helped you devising that um and on a follow up note um did um did you use any philosophical approaches um to like think about emotion um when you were coming up with um the plan for therapeutic reasons I I it's a great question and I think the um I was I was sort of a tag along um in the the study there already been design I contributed but um after the uh the design but as we're designing new targets it's a spectacular question um and I think that the the um because we're getting to the point where we can sort of arbitrarily change emotion that we can turn this up we can turn that down externally and that may or may not be a good thing I remember one patient that was uh extremely guilty for doing something that he had felt was actually wrong in his own opinion um and that just ruminating over that guilt again and again and again and I was going to you know I had the patient just like that before and I treated him and you know he reconciled with the person he was you know he had done and it was it was a beautiful story it was H Hallmark Channel um so I treated this guy and he sort of like you know dusted his hands off and said thank you doctor I'm gonna not reconcile with that person at all I'm just gonna you just you just Zapped my guilt away it's like oh gosh what have I done um so but um you know but in the same way like you know we treat people in the emergency room uh you know no matter how many times they got shot doing whatever that is that they were doing um that there's a there's a beautiful part of medicine where we don't care what you were doing that that that's you know that's for a a priest or a cop or somebody not me to figure out what you should be doing um but uh but no um like as we think about is this I have to ask that question when somebody's coming back in for retreatment are you just sad or is this depression because if I miss depression you might like Spiral and it's going to be really hard to fix it but is this just normal sadness that I can make get better with a with a magnet like gez these are really hard questions and uh and yes I I I have been starting to get back to um the philosophy which I've I've neglected in recent years and trying to do the you know the the science and business but yeah I think we really need to get back to that as we're getting more and more powerful brain tools um and you know maybe changing emotions for the worst speaking of which um 30% of adult women are on an SSRI like that that seems too high now I I get awareness we want to raise awareness and many of the people that aren't on medications uh you know that that aren't on them probably you know there's some people that should be but like we've really shifted the experience of the adult human woman substantially by having just this massive you know putting it in the water so to speak and like is that a good thing I probably not like what is it done like I don't know but like somebody should probably pay attention to that um it's not my you know it's not my day job but like that's concerning so so yeah like emotions have implications and that we really but yeah I I the the philosoph opy is is is really important we've neglected it including me I just say happiness is not a right it's a privilege you got to earn it there's somebody over here hi okay you for speaking with us today my question is to Dr seagull I'm wondering if you've ever practiced hypnosis with patients of psychosis or if you've ever wanted to try that um yes I have in general people with certain kinds of psychosis like schizophrenia are as a group not hypnotizable we we've tested them and we found that because it you have to suspend judgment and and allow your brain to try out experiencing things that others would call delusions uh that people with schizophrenia are too frightened of to be able to do their their attention is so fragmented but I have treated other people with psychosis I I treated a young man who thought he was possessed by Demons of Satan um and he was disrupting things in his family he was hospitalized a number of times and uh it turned out that what he was disrupted by was some secret sexual activity by his older sister at home which the parents didn't know about and he was told by the local Minister that he was possessed by demons and so he started acting like he was and I told him to practice having The Possession experience and then see that he could learn to control it and that it wasn't really that demons were possessing him uh it was that there was a very uncomfortable situation in his home I told the parents not why to to get them to live in separate bedrooms and not have that kind of problem in front of him and his mother did a wonderful thing he said he was possessed by demons at dinner he started lapping milk out of a dish and his mother finally said to him I don't care who is possessing you sit down and eat your dinner and stop laughing milk out of a dish and so they were able to kind of reconstruct the reality of what was going on so there are some kinds of psychosis where techniques like hypnosis can be very helpful thank you hello um thank you for your time um how do you approach very nihilistic people who really don't have you know a belief in any anything that has a meaning or something um I think it's easier as maybe Christians to approach people with the center our answer around the idea that we're children of God or your God's image but then for people who don't really have any belief or anything how would you do that especially that they think this is our role as Christians to be like to the world and help others so how do you approach that Ro well I'd say there's a process and a Content issue here in other ways may be very helpful in some circumstances but the worst thing you can do with a depressed person is try and cheer them up to say there're there it's really not so bad and they're just thinking you don't get it Buster you know and so instead I I said say I understand how bad you feel and I'm sorry I'm sorry you feel this bad and let me see if I can find a way to help you and then you can use techniques like this the cognitive behavioral therapy that Dr Ken talks about where you help them gradually see that their assumptions about themselves are different but again what I try to do is help acknowledge how bad they feel um and use other kinds of treatments like TMS and medication sometimes but also to help them let go of this rigid image of themselves and just give themselves the possibility that they can feel a little closer to a human being uh me or somebody else even though they feel so bad about themselves and that they may feel they're terrible but I'm acting as though I don't that I like and respect them and if you do that you can ease people out of it yeah yeah I think I think that's that's well put and the um the idea that that there's a there's a degree of like empirical search that if somebody says uh everything has precisely zero meaning okay well have you ever felt anything feel even a little bit meaningful um and then okay well maybe do more of that or explore that those sorts of feelings uh but yeah no it's a it's it's difficult but uh you know one more thing that's somewhat related is I think that um it's also interesting with these like very acute uh biological treatments to see a non-trivial amount of nihilism is depression that I don't believe anything has meaning because I don't feel like anything has meaning which is a perfectly reasonable assumption um but then to see like oh well how's how's that theory of nihilism doing for you now that you have all these feelings of of meaning in your life it's like oh well I don't think about it much uh people don't usually tell me like I converted or like I changed my belief but it's like ah it sort of like Falls away or it's a it's a it's a a hypothesis of the world that sort of Fades um but uh but but yeah I think that the um that that there's there's a almost like a biased random walk that people could do with um with these sorts of things that even if it is cloudy even if you're super depressed there are still usually some little blips of pleasure blips of meaning blips of connection it's like okay do more of that and uh see how far we can get hi my name is uh chinat I'm a master student here at Stanford I'm curious to ask um regarding like how would you suggest us going about discussing happiness in community and fellowship especially since like you mentioned earlier like some people who might not necessarily have as much of a knowledge be like oh try to cheer you up which end up potentially putting you in a worse position and like sometimes I feel like personally like my happiness really fluctuates with like the time of the day like I can get up feeling very inspired and motivated and get to work but then in the evenings I might go home and feel kind of lonely and then like Doom scroll on my phone and the next day I wake up kind of like guilty but then I somehow like practice self forgiveness but then it's hard for me to break out of the cycle and it's hard to have that discussion with other people with without them just being like okay just snap out of it but it's like hard I'm just curious to know what all your thoughts about that well I I'd say happiness is a process not an outcome and and it is very hard to say I want to make myself happy now but what you can do is do things that you know make you happy in the act of doing them and so if you can see it as a kind of experience a brain body experience that you can have then you do it not to make yourself happy but to work with your body and your life in a way that is likely to result in happiness but it's the process not the outcome yeah I I I think that uh discussions about I think there might be an overemphasis on paying attention to your mood um and that you know farv it for me as a psychiatrist to say you should never do that um but I think that especially this like am I feeling happy let me try to change that it's like it's it's the kind of thing that comes when you're focused on other things other people other ends um and in terms of discussion I I I had really u a really good experience recently with one of my U my old colleagues um Brad Wright um who's a who's a sociologist who shifted his Focus to helping people increase their sense of meaning and purpose um and so he's got a a workshop that he's he's testing at University of Connecticut that's just um he talks about how people can when you do this sort of thing in a community when you start to ask questions of meaning and purpose and what makes you feel purposeful and what are some what are some imagined uh careers that maybe you'll never you never have but like what would be uh lives that you might have wanted to live or or old jobs you imagined having or um what are some things that make you feel meaningful right now um that's a that's a conversation that really brings people together in a way that is um is remarkable so we did that at my company um a few weeks back and it was really it was really remarkable so uh he's got a book um I think it's called the purpose Journal um but uh but yeah it's it's you know not focusing on uh on the individual self and my own emotions and whether or not they're right or wrong that's sort of you know a gauge sure um but you know don't don't spend too much time in the uh the default mode Network part of your brain um and focusing on others other activities um other things is good thank I call it the my fault mod no mode Network in the brain what we hey uh my name is Ross I'm a sophomore here and uh thank you all for your time uh my question is this so when we're talking about a SC to be to help us feel happier to flourish more whether it's connecting with God or connecting with other people in your community or doing a journal or self hypnosis um whenever you're trying to uh change the way you think or behave it does take energy and uh it can you can also fall into the opposite trap of trying to become perfect or trying to be happy and that could take over your brain and you will start judging yourself for not getting there so my question is when do you know when to take the fight and when do you know when to just let go well you know people often say the good is is the enemy of the best I would say the other way around the best is the enemy of the good um if you're constantly having to strive to do it in a way that you judg is the best uh you'll constantly find yourself coming up short and so it's one thing to work hard and and aim high in terms of what you want to do but it's the evaluation are you doing things now that are good just because it feels good doing it um when I first got here and was in the usual Junior faculty struggle of you know getting papers published and getting grants and somewhere I was worried about what I was going to do I said to myself you know what let's suppose I don't get tenure here can I think of anything I would rather do than take care of patients help to advance our understanding do research and publish papers and even if it doesn't work out I will have spent my time very well and I can feel okay about that so I think it's a matter of not focusing so much on the evaluation of the end but on the process of getting there and I think that in uh I'm I I a virtue ethicist uh by way of philosophy and so I think the answer is much more about it really depends on your circumstances and it's it's a sort of uh a skill of uh that you you could practice and you can learn from other people who are good at it um and maybe maybe one more thing I I'll add to the uh generic recommendation for Stanford um because I was here uh too um was U one of the most important decisions I made um in the middle of undergrad was um so you know Christian reading through the Bible I get to the Ten Commandments and I'm like okay you know doing pretty good at the not murdering people uh you know next one okay you know no adultery wonderful okay I'm doing good um keep the Sabbath and that one's like really long the text is like okay and then you know because God worked seven days you you know Works six days and rest of the Sabbath you need to work six days it's like okay well have I in any sense even attempted to keep this commandment like I I'm a I'm a you know sophomore in UCLA engineering like no I haven't I've worked every day that's how SP that's what everybody does and it was like okay well you know I so I was I was convicted in the moment I and this is not what everybody has to do and this is not the only way to interpret the passage but it's I've got to try to do this and so I just said okay Sundays are off I'm not going to do any professional work I'm not going do any school work on Sundays uh come come what may and it would really was like even if you drop out of school even if this means you can't pass your glass it's like hey I mean I get to tell God that's your fault not mine I I you know you just you said to do it um and it was the best decision at that time I I just it's like you know that first day of summer when like you can't even think of what you need to do that like release of Burden that release of guilt that release of like I don't have to do anything right now I could just I don't know go for a walk or talk to a friend or whatever it is like every week every Sunday it's amazing so I think that uh you know the question is should I strive harder well yeah sometimes um but sometimes you should strive less hard sometimes you should set very clear boundaries about when you're going to not be striving um when you're not going to be working um and so so one more thing I'll I'll encourage is is rest and also literally y'all like turn your phones off like put in some other room like uh there's there's you know voluntary sleep reduction is one of the major drivers I think of of U some of the recent increases in suicide um is like not sleeping makes you want to die literally so please put your phone away and also you feel better so you know even if you're not at the you risk risky end um these were amazing questions and this will be the last question after this question we will move on to small group discussion and those will be held on the on the mats that you see laying around thank you so much my name is Andy I'm from the community and I just heard about your talk so thank you uh I've heard a lot about how the brain and the body are kind of interacting with each other and have a question about chronic fatigue and if you've seen uh sort of transcranial um treatments for hypnosis be useful for that this would be like an after a viral attack and not sure if it's psychological or physical it's a very difficult thing and now you know we're seeing a lot more of it with long Co unfortunately um I have had some moderate success using hypnosis with people with chronic Tri you know part of the problem is that they just feel totally depleted when they do even moderate amounts of exercise they don't feel rested when they've woken up in the morning and so I get them to try and use self hypnosis to at least affiliate with times when they have felt better and more energetic and also to monitor how they do the exercise they do uh so that they don't sort of go from doing too little to doing too much and then feeling exhausted again so it's a matter of teaching them how to recalibrate the way their recovery and sometimes that can be helpful yeah to the uh the TMS end I'm I'm pretty uh uh pretty optimistic on most treatments but we've not had much success with TMS on chronic fatigue okay thank you merch so thank you Dr Ken Professor Spiegel I learned a lot I know they learned a lot and hopefully now us as a group and as a community can pursue happiness [Music]