ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the true life podcast I hope everybody is having a beautiful day I hope everybody gets to hear the birds singing and gets to see the sun shining and realize that we're all sort of a work in progress which is a wonderful transition until my guest today the one and only dr abby marono a pioneer in the delicate art of decoding human behavior, a social engineer with the deafness to map not just networks, but the intricate pathways of the human mind. As both a scientist and practitioner, she's carved out a space where psychology meets influence, using her knowledge to navigate and empower the social landscape with precision. But perhaps Dr. Morono's greatest feat isn't just in teaching us how to read others. It's in how she turns the mirror inward, urging us to confront the discomfort we often run from. Her groundbreaking work, Work in Progress, The Road to Empowerment, The Journey Through Shame, doesn't just offer a new perspective. It rewires the way we understand shame, empowerment, and ourselves. In a world that seeks to bulletproof its emotions, she reminds us that our vulnerability is not a weakness, but the key to unlocking authenticity. With the resume recognized by the U.S. State Department, which placed her in the top one percent of her field internationally, Dr. Morono brings a unique blend of scientific rigor and social insight. She's not just an observer of behavior. She's a master of influence and authenticity. engineering the delicate balance between the two. Today, we peel back the layers with a true architect of empowerment, one who doesn't just study human behavior, but builds bridges with it. Dr. Morono, thank you for being here today. How are you? Thank you so much for having me and for such a warm introduction. I'm good. How are you? I am fantastic, thank you very much. The new book you got coming out, Work in Progress, I think it marries nicely with your TED Talk, which may have been a precursor to that. You really get into the ideas of shame and authenticity. Maybe you could just give us a little bit of background on how you end up writing this book. Yeah, so it was very unexpected in my line of work, especially as the kind of person I was known as. So I work in information security. I was a professor in the UK, professor of psychology, forensic psychology. My background has always been dark psychology. So if you look at my research, it's, you know, what creates a cannibal, the life history of serial killers, counterterrorism. There's a lot of really dark psych in there. Loved it. You know, my PhD was in information elicitation and I was funded by CREST, so Center for Research and Evidence and Security Threats. So I've always been on the security side and always, you know, when I would submit an ethics application, everybody would sweat. God, what is she going to be looking at? And I loved it. I was never into positive psych and I'd always joke with them and say like, oh, you weak guys over there hugging each other while I'm looking at the criminal mind. And I was always brought up in the way that no one is going to come and save you from your issues. My dad always taught me if you're on the ground, get up. If you fall down, get up. No one is going to reach out their hand. Just get up. And I always kind of went on with that mentality. And I was just known, very tough love, very dark psych. And I was, like I said, a professor in psychology. And I eventually moved over to the US and moved into the private sector. Started again, working in information security, but more on the practical side of things. Still very tough love. And I got involved in, I trained secret service, trained FBI, trained Homeland Security through ICAC, which is Internet Crimes Against Children. So again, these industries that are very stoic and very security focused, and you kind of have to have this really hard outer shell. And then all of a sudden, I just released this book into self-help. And I started more publicly doing volunteering with the Innocent Lives Foundation. And when I released the book, everybody was like, I can't wait to read this book about non-verbals and information elicitation. I'm going to train my agents with it. And I was like, you probably want to read the title and read the description before you make that decision. And the deciding factor for me was, you know, it's a long story how I really got to that point. But ultimately, I was holding myself back in my career. I didn't want to do things publicly. I didn't want to do the TED Talk. I had done a talk prior to the TED Talk, which was my first kind of personal talk. And before those, I was really hesitant to let anybody know who I was. I was known as the company Rottweiler, the uni Rottweiler. And I was just not someone you could relate to in terms of vulnerability, because it just was very stoic and very, again, tough love. And it was all from a place of I was so scared of people finding out that actually I was really soft underneath. And actually I had gone through a lot of really difficult traumas and I'd had a lot of really tough struggles in my life and made a lot of mistakes that I was so deeply ashamed of that I just hated the person that I was. So I was like, this is a persona that I want to put across and I'm going to hide every aspect of myself behind this persona. And that was that tough, cold, hardworking person. And after a certain point where you're just living the life of someone else, it just, it wears you down. And I was not sleeping because I was worried someone would find out I was a fraud every single day. And I just, I couldn't do it anymore. And there was a point that I just decided that's enough. I can't be who I'm not anymore. I just have to be who I am. And then I decided to be open about my experiences and just there was a student that I was trying to relate to. She had gone through some really tough times and I had said to her, you know, I understand. And she said, what do you know? You look like someone that's never been through anything. You're like someone that's had everything given to them. And it just shook me. It shook me completely because I've never had anything given to me. I fought for everything that I've had and I have not had an easy life, but I realized, of course, people are going to assume that I created this persona and And I'm trying to help people, but why on earth would they feel comfortable with me? And why on earth should they listen to me when I say, be honest with yourself and heal this and heal that if I'm not doing the work too? So I realized I have to change. I have to be more open. And then everything really changed for me from that point. Man, that makes me think of so many questions. Do you, Do you think as someone who has studied like the darker side of psychology, do you think you having to be in that field of security and studying all these people that you saw similarities a little bit and then you're like, wait, I'm being the imposter. I'm kind of doing what some of these guys were doing. Was there like a moment when you saw a bridge like, wait a minute, I'm sort of like the Stanford prison experiment when you become the people you're studying? Yeah. That's such a great question. I've never been asked that. I do podcasts all the time and I've never been asked that, but yes, absolutely. And that was one of the points when I was in the dark side. Right. Because I was doing such heavy work in it and I had started doing research when I was, uh, I was working with Joe Navarro at that point, who was an ex-FBI agent, world-leading expert, non-verbals. And I was also working with some criminal profilers to access this really great data. So I was doing this really deep depth dive into some really dark stuff. So you have to compartmentalize because I would go into these cases of, okay, well, how did they enter the scene? How did they exactly stab? Where did they stab? How deep? All of these things that If you really think about it and humanize it, it gets to you. So I had to just dehumanize everything. Everything was a data point. And when that's your life day in and day out, even though you're not actively involved in the cases, everything kind of becomes dehumanized. And I was just desensitized to all of that suffering. And I would talk about the dark stuff and people would get agitated. And I'm like, it's just research. What are you being agitated about? But when I became a professor, I've always been someone that I love what I do. I love psych. So I go to sleep excited to wake up to work. I don't want to go to bed because I have to stop working. I've always been that way. But academia slowly started to wear me down. And I wasn't really aware of the effect that that dark psych was having on me too. Until Joan of Arc said, you've got to get out of this side of things and come more into business. And then I moved from the dark psych more into positive psych because I I was a biopsychosocial researcher. So instead of just looking at one side of just looking at the psychology or biology or neurology, I looked at how our psychology and our neuroscience and our biology and the social systems all interconnect with each other to create our behavior. And I looked at things through patterns of behavior. So when I stepped out of forensics, it wasn't a difficult move for me just to go more specifically into social psych. because I already had those transferable skills. So I moved into the positive side of social psychology instead of deeply the forensics. And I realized I'm actually a lot happier. It was like this weight was taken off of me. And I did realize that a lot of my empathy was being suppressed. And I did it purposefully so I could get on with the work that I was doing. And it was when I stepped more into the positive side too, that I learned a lot of really healthy coping mechanisms. And I realized, oh no, mindfulness isn't just a hippie hoo-ha practice. There's so much neuroscience to it. And I really wanted to hate it because I'm like, no, this mindfulness, giving yourself grace and compassion, I don't want any of that. I want you to force yourself up in the morning, get to work, do it, you know, work hard, no complaints, just power through it. And I realized, oh no, the science actually supports a softer approach. So as a scientist, you have to adapt your understanding. So I really made an effort to dive into positive psych and I fell in love with it. And through positive psych, I engaged in a healing of my own traumas that I hadn't allowed myself to get into because I was like, no, I've just got to be headstrong. I've got to power through it. You know, real strength is being cold and being heartless and just not, letting anybody get to me. And it was just such a corrupt view of what healing is. And that positive psych really gave me the academic understanding that I could then put into practice into my own life. Wow. It's mind blowing to think about all those different factors. And I didn't know you had such an extensive background and the biology of it, the social aspect of it. And It helps me better understand the picture of who you are. Thank you for saying that. In your opinion, how much of our ideas about shame and maybe guilt in the relationship is biological versus cultural? Well, it's both. So shame is an internal signal. Every emotion is an internal signal. That's what they are. They're survival mechanisms. They say to us that something in us or something in our environment is either making us feel good or feel bad. Ultimately, that's it. And what do we do about it? So when you feel anger, something is creating a sense of unjust. When you feel joy, something is making you feel good. When you feel happy, it's something you should repeat. They're very basic signals, but they're driven for our survival so we know how to act. Shame, when we feel it, it's an internal signal that we are doing something that is conflicting with our sense of who we are, who we feel we should be or who we want to be. You don't feel it's different than guilt. Say I behave in a way and I feel guilt. That might mean that I'm behaving in a way that's still in line with who I want to be, but I can still feel guilty. And maybe I hurt someone, I feel guilt, but I know that it was in line with who I am or who I want to be. And it was best for me. So I don't feel shame, just guilt. shame is that I did something that really goes against that sense of self because it is deeply, you know, I feel flawed for that behavior. And so much of that is cultural because our ideas of who we should be and who we want to be are culturally based. They're based on being part of the social group. You know, we need our social groups to survive. We know that we're a social species and much of that is cultural. So I, Often when we behave in a way that is going against cultural norms, that's why we feel shame. But again, it's a survival mechanism because when we feel shame, we're more likely to then change our behavior. Sorry, my cat is trying to come. No, it's awesome. Bring him in. Bring him in. I love cats. I do. He's moving my camera. His name is Darwin. So maybe he heard the conversation. um but so shame is that social driver when we feel it we go okay so I'm doing something that goes against either who I want to be or goes against this social standing so if I correct it I can then get back into the social group in the way that I need so it really is a survival mechanism um So ultimately, it isn't actually a negative thing, but it feels like a negative thing because it's actually helping us stay as who we are and ultimately stay within our social groups. But it tells us. It tells us, so I'm so sorry. No problem. But it reflects that, okay, well, I'm doing something going against my sense of self, and that doesn't feel nice. It doesn't feel nice to go, I'm not behaving in a way that I want to, because we then have to think about, well, why am I at? Why am I doing that? And usually underneath shame is a sense of pain. There's hurting. There's trauma. There's escapism. There's suppression. There's really... deep, painful emotions that reflect on our sense of self. So it feels like we failed and what happens, and this is where we change from positive shame to negative shame is what happens is in sense of going, this behavior is bad. This behavior is shameful. We turn it to, I am bad. I am shameful. And when we do that, and I say we take our emotions too personally, when we take our emotions personally and we say they tell us something about who we are as a person instead of what we are doing in that situation, it makes us feel like we're flawed. I'm not angry. I'm an angry person. I'm not scared. I'm a weak person. You know, it's not that I feel fearful, it's that I'm weak. I don't feel shame. I am flawed. And when we feel that we are flawed, it makes us feel like, well, what's the point changing? And what's the point growing? And what's the point even trying? Because I am flawed inside. So that's where it becomes negative. When we stop thinking of it as a signal and start thinking of it as a reflection of who we are and who we can be. It makes a lot of sense. I know for me, I struggled with the definitions and the understanding of the relationship between guilt and shame. So thank you for helping me see it in a better way. I think that's something people can learn from. I know I can. Shame seems like a double-edged sword, especially with your background. I can only imagine... the power of shame or like if you're if you're analyzing someone who may have been on the dark side like shame is probably used against a weapon against them for a long period of time or maybe someone that's questioning them maybe you turn that it's like kind of a double-edged sword right it can be wielded either way yes and this is where a lot of cults come in so the methodology to keep someone largely shamed Yeah, because it is that deep reflection of ourselves and whether it's good or bad, that feeling, the feeling of shame is always a negative one. Shame under no circumstances feels good. And that's what I want to get across. But the goal of shame is to get us to change. Does change feel good? Absolutely not. Change is uncomfortable. And when that change comes from, because I did something bad, you've got all those other emotions connected to it. Embarrassment. You've got that. I'm angry. I'm hurt. I have grief. All of these things that drove that behavior that is causing us shame. If we want to address that shame, we've got to address what drove that behavior. So it does not feel good under any circumstances. But when we listen to it and say, okay, this feels horrible, but let me dive into it. Let me figure out why I'm doing it. It can be used as a force for good because now we can start changing our behavior. But again, it doesn't feel good. It's just to get to that point where we can be better, where we can be kinder, but we can also use it to control people. So it can be used as that motivating factor of, okay, I want better for myself. I want to grow. I don't want to do this anymore. Let me listen to what my shame is telling me. That may be better. But if you know someone is struggling with X, Y, Z. If you make them feel shame about those things, you can really make them feel flawed as a human. And when someone feels flawed as a human, they are vulnerable. So let me take away their sense of self and let me put in who I feel that they should be. And let me make them feel flawed of character. Let me make them feel flawed as who they are. Tell them if you do these things, you're going to feel good. going to be worth something and this is what a lot of abusive relationships do same cult abusive relationships they make you feel flawed and then they give you something that makes you feel a little bit better they keep you in that negative insecure pain cycle so you don't feel like you're worth getting out of it and you get these like full sense of self and full dopamine hits through You know, whether it's the relationship of, okay, will they give me some attention? They must love me. They give me this intimacy. Or in a cult, they say if you behave in these ways, you'll get this praise or you'll have this outcome. So you get trapped in these cycles. And it's all shame-driven. It's very, very shame-driven because you just feel flawed inside. And that's such a great way to trap someone, to make them feel like they don't deserve something. to get out. They don't deserve to grow and they have to stay in this cycle in order to be worth something. Darwin's chiming in over there. I love it. It's so awesome. Maybe this speaks volumes of me, Abby, but I feel, okay, let's think about the word culture for a minute. The first four letters of culture or cult, you know what I mean? And so when we start looking at culture, whether it's the programming on TV. And it is such a powerful tool. I can't help but see that form of manipulation. You don't have enough. You're not enough. You don't drive this car. You don't have this house. Maybe it's the circle I run in, or maybe that speaks volumes of me. But like, I think on some level, our society may have overcorrected. We went from the scarlet letter to this way over here. Like, I feel like we've really overcorrected all shame, no shame, but it just seems like it's being pushed on us somehow. Is that, Is that just volumes of my personality? Okay. Yeah. And shame is so common in society. Like if you speak to most people, they will say, no, I don't feel shame. But inside they do. And no one wants to talk about it. We're told it's okay to talk about our feelings, but never shame. Shame is something we go, oh yeah, I feel all these things. But then we hide our shame so deep down. Again, because it is that sense of self, which is so personal, right? But that again, just referring to what shame is, it's that I'm not living up to who I want to be, who I feel I am, who I should be. If we go on social media, what are we faced with? This is who you should be, right? This is the kind of mom you should be. This is the kind of dad you should be. This is the kind of house you should have. This is the kind of success you should have. Oh, you're a businessman. This is what you should look like. Oh, you want to be successful. This is what you should do. This is the car you should drive. Everything is, Oh, you want to work out? This is the body you should have. If you want a good relationship, this is how you should act. This is what you should eat. Everything, this is who you should be. So we get these idolized versions of every aspect of our life. It's not authentic to be that because it isn't who we are, but it's who we feel we need to be. So we try and force ourself into this. And when we don't fit that box, what do we feel? I feel like I'm flawed. I feel like I'm not enough. I feel like my sense of self isn't good enough. Where does shame come from? feeling like we are not behaving in a way that is in line with that sense of self. So we set these unrealistic standards of who we should be. And so much of that is cultural driven. We're never going to meet them. So of course we feel shame. And often when we feel shame, we don't like to feel it because it is negative. So we often try and escape it or we suppress it. And we suppress our emotions. We behave in ways that we don't like, we suppress them. And we try and feel these negative emotions. The brain is saying, hey, feel me. And you go, no, I don't want to. Hey, feel me, don't want to. Feel me, don't want to. So eventually the brain gets tired and goes, fine, I won't feel anything then. And it mutes all emotions. So when we continue to suppress our negative emotions, because all of our emotions are felt in similar regions of the brain, We can't cherry pick what emotions we don't want to feel. So if we keep suppressing our negative emotions, ultimately we're going to suppress our positive emotions. We're going to feel numb. We're going to feel muted. We're not going to feel like ourselves. We're going to feel that dissociation. If we instead, instead of suppress, we escape. I don't want to feel this. So I'm going to play video games all day. I'm going to go on social media all day. I'm going to drink. I'm going to do drugs. I'm going to have meaningless relationships constantly. So I don't have to be alone with myself. I'm going to do this behavior to escape the feeling that leads to more shame because we don't like the way we're behaving, the person we're turning into. So we go into denial, keep doing it. So we get stuck in these cycles and ultimately it's because of that sense of shame that we try and get rid of. And I do think that social media is such a huge part of that because it starts the cycle of making us feel like who we are is not enough. And when you say to people, like, do you feel like enough? Their answer probably isn't honest, but if you really sit down with them and say, this is a safe place, do you feel like enough? Most people deep down don't feel like they're enough. And that is shameful because I'm not enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not this enough. So therefore I'm flawed. Therefore I'm not worthy of love. And it's something that we just see so much in society now. Yeah. How can you have a flourishing society if everybody is constantly second guessing who they are and if they're enough, right? That sounds like a recipe for disaster. Yep. And if you don't know who you are, how do you know how to act? Because when I make a decision of how to act, I go, does this reflect what I want to create for myself? Does this reflect the person I feel like I am or who I want to be? I don't know who I am because I'm denying all of my emotions and I don't want to feel my feelings. How do I know how to act? And that's again, what really creates that cycle because we behave in ways that aren't in line with who we want to be because we don't know who we want to be. So we get trapped in this and we feel that negative emotion for the behavior. So we keep doing the behavior. I remember speaking to an individual who was a recovering alcoholic and it was for this nonprofit work that I was doing. And I spoke to him and I said, you know what was the deciding factor for you to change? And why did you do it for so long? And his was the shame. And he said he felt so much shame for the things he had done that he had absolutely no choice but to keep doing them. Because he said when he stopped, he felt the consequences of his actions and he felt the shame. So he had to keep doing them because he had to escape that feeling. But the more he did them, the more negative he felt. So he said it just piled up and piled up and piled up, that the only way out that he saw was just to keep staying in this world of bad behavior. But eventually he got to that point where it was like he was so unhappy he was either going to kill himself or something huge had to change. And he said he had to deal with that mountain of shame. And if he had stopped and turned around earlier and just go, I'm going to face this, I'm going to deal with it, it would have been so much easier, but the more we escape, the more it feels impossible to start again. So we keep escaping. That's what I did for a really long time. I just kept running and I kept running and I kept running and I kept saying, I'm going to look back one day and it's going to be so much easier to stop right now because of all this stuff, I'm going to keep running. So I don't have to face it. And it never got easier. It just got worse. So yeah, you know, eventually you do have to turn around and face it because what's the alternative? Keep living in denial, keep behaving in that way. It's not a comfortable way to be. Yeah. I heard a quote once that said people change through either inspiration or desperation. And too often it's desperation because you just, you're trapped. You're in a corner. You got to, now you have to fight, you know, where if you could have killed the monster when it was small, it's interesting to think about it. Yeah. Right. And that's what I wanted to do with. Yeah. I'm sorry. There's a delay slightly. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No, that's what I wanted to do with this work, with the book. And that was that flip that, that switch that flipped of, If I don't speak out about mine, why would anyone listen to me? It's that instead of watching other people go through that desperation, and I made so many mistakes, I wish someone had sat down with me and said, it's okay to feel what you feel. Let's work through it. If someone had sat down with me, maybe I wouldn't have made all of those other mistakes after. Maybe I would have, but maybe I wouldn't. So I realized that I felt almost like a moral responsibility to be honest about my feelings, my journey and my mistakes. So people don't have to change through desperation and maybe they can change through inspiration. Yeah, it's beautiful. I think that that's a huge part of the change we're seeing in society. And it seems to me that a lot of times in education, you're learning from people who may not have had the actual experience of the event. That's why I think your book is top of market where it is, is because you're talking about actual events and you're talking about a recipe that you use personally to change yourself. Like there's real reflection in there. Yeah, I feel like a lot of people... that teach change, they feel almost like they have to be perfect themselves and they have to sit on this pedestal and say, be like me, you know, be like me. If you do these things, if you buy this course, if you spend all this money, you can get to this glorious point that I'm in. And it paints this idea that healing is reached and then it's done. And then you are wonderful and everything you do, you're unbothered and you have no negative emotions. And, you know, you sit on this high horse and like all of these people below you still struggling with the healing journey. And that's a great way to sell because you can put yourself as someone that people want to be because you want to be unbothered. You want to be perfect and you want to be all of these things. So it's great. It's a great way to sell. I see it all the time. What I don't see is, is people that says, and as well, when they talk about their mistakes, they talk about things that were done to them. These things were out of my control. I feel shame for them and I've healed from them. And people go, oh, amazing. Look what you've done. You've overcome. Rarely do they ever go, hey, I behaved badly for no other reason than I chose to. These are the consequences of my actions. They're the things we go, well, I don't forgive you for those things. So people hide those. And I just realized, when I was reading those books, they weren't healing for me. They were great for like a short period of time, but actually they keep you in that shame cycle because again, you're trying to reach this impenetrable goal. It's unrealistic. So I realized again, when I'm teaching people how to heal, I'm teaching them the real raw science, but I'm not sat up there saying, Hey, I'm done with my healing. I'm like, I still hurt inside sometimes. You know, there's a lot of things in my life that I haven't fully healed. And I probably never will because that's not how it's done. I'm not a perfect person. I'm not a completely unbothered, bulletproof person. Nobody is. Nobody is. And nobody should be sat on that pedestal saying, I'm completely done with the work. Listen to me. What we should be saying is here is the science. Here is how you heal. Here is how every single day you make choices that make you feel better. And they're going to work towards a healthier version of you. But you're never going to be done. And you're never going to feel a hundred percent perfect. No one ever will. That's just the human condition. The human condition is our emotions overwhelm us. They do sometimes. To say you're going to get rid of all of these negative feelings forever is just so unrealistic. It's about self-acceptance and self-understanding. And that is really it. I always say, The empowerment for me is you can't use me against me. I understand myself so deeply that I make choices in line with my moral compass. And I accept myself. Doesn't mean I think I'm perfect. Doesn't mean that every behavior I do is perfect. But it means I accept them and I recognize them. that I might not be perfect and there's areas for change. But if you reflect my behavior back to me, you can't hurt me with me. You can't hurt me with reflections of me because I accept it. And that's empowerment. It isn't this, I'm so perfect and bulletproof. It's not that at all. It's just acceptance and understanding of oneself. Yeah, it's well said. You know, in your TED Talk, which I recommend everybody go and check out, you spoke very candidly about drugs when you were a teenager. And I see in our world today, a lot of doctors are prescribing different kinds of antidepressants, which probably just as sometimes can be just as bad as street drugs. Yes. And I even talk a lot about psychedelics where I am, where people are helping each other. I'm curious to get your maybe I know that's kind of a broad shot out the back window, but maybe you could speak a little bit about that relationship between drugs and psyche and where you see that today. Yeah, I can. I've never been asked this question, but this is a great question. So my opinion is science-based but seemingly controversial. And the thing is antidepressants don't work in the way that they're not a cure because if they were a cure, you could take them, do a series of them, and then get off of them and you're done. That's what it would be a treatment. You're done. They don't work in that way. Neither do antidepressants and neither do anti-anxiety meds. they don't work in that way. So it's not like you, you know, you have an infection, you take antibiotics, infection's gone. You know, you have depression, you take antidepressants for a couple of weeks, depression's gone. It doesn't work that way because depression is very, very complicated. There is a biological aspect to it, but there's also a psychological and a behavioral. And the thing is, I'm not against antidepressants. but I don't think that they should be pushed in the way that they should, because what happens is when we behave in behaviors that are not conducive to health, like we sleep in and we know, we know that waking up early and going to bed early is the best for mental health because our circadian rhythms are in sync with sleep and wake cycles of the sun, basically. So our cortisol, our, is in line with the sunrise sundown so are our hormones so are our neurotransmitters that's just the way that we're built so having a good schedule eating a good diet because our microbiome is deeply deeply connected to our brain through various systems including our immune system and our vagal nerve our vagal system So our diet absolutely affects our mental health. And given most of our serotonin is produced in the gut and not the brain. And then we also know exercise is a huge factor to not just physical health, but psychological health. We know that our social networks are a huge factor to our physical health and our social health, emotional health, mental health. So much so that the parts of our brain that process physical pain process social pain. That's why after heartbreak, you get heart tension. So all of these things, the way that we live, also our passion, you know, do we feel that our job is fulfilling? That is so tied to our mental health. Do we feel that we belong to a social group, to a network, to anything tied to our mental health? So all of these things have an effect. So there is also a biological effect. There's a neurotransmitter effect. That biological effect affects the psychological, which affects the behavioral. It's a system. So to say it's just this one thing that can be treated with drugs is flawed. Because if we're not making those behavioral changes, it does not matter what we do biologically. We are still going to stay in that negative feeling. So you need to change the behavioral things when you want to stay in bed. to find a way to get yourself up when you want to isolate you have to find a way to build a social connection when you want to eat rubbish all day you have to find a way to try and eat healthy otherwise nothing is ever going to change that makes it sound easy it isn't it is hard but if you don't make those changes you're going to keep getting those negative mental health effects So you can take those drugs and they can mute you and they can help you feel less worse. But they're never going to get rid of that depression or rid of that depression because it's so much deeper than that. Where it comes in where I do think that, okay, they're absolutely necessary is when someone is at such a deep, dark point in their life. Because remember, they do mute your emotions, right? They do make you feel a little bit more zombified. But when someone is at such a dark, painful point in their life, maybe something awful has happened and their emotions are so overwhelming, they still need to do all of that work to address that behavioral component. But right at that point in their life, they are not able. So they might need that buffer a few months, a year, however long they need. to get themselves out of that dark, dark pit that they're in, absolutely take those antidepressants to get yourself to a point where you can start addressing the behavior. Because ultimately, you are always going to feel that negative feeling until you address the behavior. And addressing that behavior often, you know, why do I do these things? It's because of childhood trauma I haven't dealt with. because of relationship issues or attachment issues, all of these things that are really, really painful, that drive our behaviors, we need to get to. But we're not always mentally strong enough to start doing that work. So if you really can't, I do think that's where antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds become a life-saving thing. But we're so quick to go to them. That's the issue. We're so quick. I feel this horrible feeling. Why can't I get out of bed? If I take this tablet, maybe I can start getting out of bed. We're not addressing the real issue. We're treating the symptoms, not the cause. And again, that's what antidepressants treat the symptoms. That's what they are designed to do. Treat the symptoms. It's you that has to treat the cause, but sometimes treating the symptoms can be lifesaving. You just have to decide whether that's right for you. And I just don't think that it's right for as many people as the people that go to it so quickly. Yeah, it's well said. I think that whole idea... not only addresses the idea of antidepressants, but I think what you said addresses the idea of addiction. So much masking, like we don't really solve the problem. And that's part of the thing with shame. Like we see this Ariadne thread that's running through all of these emotions. Have you looked at the world of psychedelics? I have some really cool people that I would love you to meet that have found a way to see or feel a different state of awareness. And I think that's similar in some of the through points in your book. You have to find a way. You have to be aware of what this means. You have to be aware that maybe it's not your fault or maybe you're aware you can't do it. And if you can see things without shame, then you can move past it instead of running from it. Have you looked into the psychedelic movement at all? Yes. So psychedelics are really great for healing and they're very misunderstood. And there's been a lot of really great research in recent years to show that psychedelics are so effective because they actually help us create new pathways. They are great for neuroplasticity and neuroplasticity is everything we need to change behavior, to create new pathways. to grow, to undo patterns that keep us locked in habits. Neuroplasticity allows us to create new networks. Psychedelics, they enhance neuroplasticity. They allow us to grow and change in a really amazing way. And the thing with trauma and the thing with really dark negative emotions and things like, especially CPTSD and PTSD, is trauma. why it occurs is because the brain is trying to protect you and saying this bad thing happened and you need to remember that this bad thing happened so you don't repeat it so it keeps showing us this bad thing and it's like save yourself save yourself and you're like okay I get it like this bad thing happened I don't need to keep being told about it but the brain is going no I'm trying to help you but it is actually hurting itself so then it goes uh-oh we're having this really negative effect because of this thing that I'm doing to try and save you what do we do Well, we shut down the emotional regions because this is where it's coming from. So that's where that emotional blunting comes from. And that's often what suppression does is it shuts down those regions of the brain. It's really hard to think them back on, to go, no, no, let me feel again. That's why often we can't cry. We, you know, trauma will happen and you go, why are they so cold? Do they not care? Why aren't they crying? Because the brain is saying you cannot feel anymore. And to go, let me cry is so hard. So what psychedelics can do that just thinking can't do in that same way. And not so quickly is they can create activation in those regions of the brain that have turned themselves off to save you. That's why it's so important to do it too, with the right intentions and a controlled safe environment, because you are playing with your brain activity. That's what you're doing. You're, you're playing with activation of your brain, that you don't fully understand, that science doesn't a hundred percent understand either. So to do that in a forest with some friends, isn't the best way to do it. Doing it in a controlled setting with experts is a really, really healing thing. And I'm actually working with the Innocent Lives Foundation and another nonprofit to set up this recovery center but individuals who have gone through sexual trauma and are really, really struggling or sexual trafficking, they can come to the center and do psychedelic work to support their trauma healing. So we're currently working on this because there is so much research behind it because it is so healing. And there's a lot of great research into PTSD that it is helpful because PTSD is ultimately a brain disorder. It's that it's the disorder of emotions and memories. And psychedelics allow us to turn on those regions of the brain that bring us back those memories. Because sometimes what we do is purposeful forgetting. So after trauma, sometimes what happens is we can't access our memories. And it's not that the memory is gone. It's that the brain is going, I don't need to see this. Like I'm just shutting down. I'm not going to let you get to this because if it was gone, we couldn't get it back. It's still there in the brain. The activation just isn't there because it's saying, no, no, no, this is going to hurt you. So we can't heal because we can't. That's what happened. How are we supposed to get over our traumas if our brain is saying you can't remember them? So psychedelics can allow us to get that activity back so we can start healing similar to the way that hypnotherapy works. can work. There's a lot of myths about hypnotherapy as well, just like there is about psychedelics. But ultimately, they're about changing states in consciousness. But psychedelics do have that added neuroplasticity effect that I think they're a great treatment if you're open and willing and safe and ready Yeah, it's a great point and it's really well said. I'm very hopeful and there's so many incredible people that have found a way to have a new state of awareness or by turning off the default mode network, they're able to rewire their brain in a way that allows them to see themselves without shame or guilt. It's fascinating to me. Let me shift gears for a moment and talk about linguistics and language. It sounds like so much of the words we have in our internal story play out in our life. And I'm wondering if you could speak to that a little bit. Yeah, that's such a great point. So I love your questions. This is so great. I love these topics and I don't get to talk about them enough because it's always like down one specific channel. But you're so right about self-talk. So the way we talk to ourselves is so important because it sets a precedent of how we then interact with the world. But it has a psychological and a biological effect. So if you're about to go to the gym and you go, I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this. What's happening is you're increasing your cortisol levels. Now, what does cortisol do to the body? Well, it creates muscle stiffness. It also blocks cognitive awareness. It blocks critical thinking. So if you're doing that before you go to a meeting. or presentation, I can't do this, I can't do this. Cognitively, you're less able to do it. If you do it before a physical thing, physically, you're less able because of that muscle effect. Instead, if you go, I got this, I can do this. Or if you catch yourself going, I can't go, you know what? Maybe I won't bring my best to it, but I'm going to do my best. And maybe that isn't going to be my ultimate best, but it's my best right now. That's okay. And I deserve to have this workout. I deserve to have this meeting. Maybe it goes badly, but I'll learn something from it. What then happens is that cortisol effect reverses. And it actually has a really positive effect on the body. And when we talk to ourself with kindness, it can activate our reward pathway. We get a little bit of a dopamine hit. And then what happens is we want to repeat it. So when we actively catch ourselves talking to ourselves negatively and go, no, no, I deserve kind words. And then we look in the mirror and go, you deserve this. You actually are worthy. And it might feel so unnatural, but we go, you are worthy. You are deserving. We're getting rid of that negative hormone effect, increasing, even if it's just a little bit of dopamine, but it's rewarding. So we want to repeat it. So the more we do it, And the more comfortable we get with, you know what, you can do this. You're the boss. And you see this character on TV, like you got this, you can do this, but do it. You know, hype yourself up before a meeting, before a game, before whatever it is that you're about to do, because you will start to create that cycle of reward. You'll start to do it more. And then you won't be so self-limiting. And it does take a little bit of time to untrain those negative habits. But the way we speak to ourself, affects our hormonal response patterns, which then affects our behavior and our feelings towards ourself. So start to break that cycle. And again, you're not going to go, you can do this, and then suddenly be like, wow, all of my insecurities are gone. I suddenly feel great. Of course not. It's a nudge in the right direction. But small moves in the right direction, when you look back, eventually you've come really far. But self-talk is a really, really key push for that. It's so true. And blending all of this together on some ways, you know, uh, in your Ted talk, you spoke about having to look at yourself in the mirror and whether that's an actual thing you did, but I'm sure that you've done it multiple times or whether it's something we just use as a figure of speech or whether it's something you do on a psychedelic journey, like looking into the mirror and just staring at yourself for a while. And maybe you flirt with yourself and you George is looking pretty good today, you know, or like, Hey man, you got some work you need to do, George, you know, but really it's such an incredible tool to use. And I would recommend people do that. Look in the mirror and have a conversation with yourself. Maybe you could talk about the looking in the mirror, whether virtually or verbally or actually. Well, there's two things on that. One, the point where I decided that, that my shame was so overwhelming. It was physically looking in the mirror. I remember I was on this trip and it was when I was sixteen years old and I was away with an old friend and I was coming out of a drug addiction and I didn't realize I was addicted at that point. And I had been away for a couple of days and I was sweating and I was being sick and I was shaking. And I looked at myself in the mirror And I'd been kicked out of my home, my dad's home, my mom's home. They didn't know I was living with a friend, kicked out of college. I was in bad relationships that had just ended. And all of these things had come to bear. And I was looking at myself in the mirror physically, and I didn't recognize the person looking back at me. And I looked at it, and I realized this person is going to die. And I'm sixteen years old, and I'm addicted to drugs, and a lot of really serious drugs. And I just looked at this person and I'm like, this isn't someone that I like looking at. And I said, that's enough. That's it. From that point, I never did those drugs again. And everything from that point changed because I physically hated the person looking back at me. Now that wasn't my empowering moment. That was my overwhelming shame moment. My empowerment moment came many, many years later and it was drips and drabs and it was slow. There was no big empowering moment for me. But, When it came to later on in terms of speaking to myself nicely and healing, I've always been someone that's been very self-critical. And I learned it from my mom. Everything I did wasn't enough. She wanted me to be skinnier. She wanted me to be prettier. If I drank, I was a mess and a disappointment. If I didn't, I was a prude. If I studied, I was a nerd. If I didn't study, I was a failure. And everything was just not enough. So I always was very self-critical. And I would always look in the mirror and from top to bottom, I could name hundreds of things I wanted to change about myself from like the freckles on the back of my hand to the shape of my eye, the shape of my lip, you know, every single aspect of my appearance, I just hate it. And I thought that was normal. And I remember speaking to my sister about it because when I would get into these very low states, I just wouldn't look in the mirror for days. And my sister said to me, when you look in the mirror, what do you do? And I said, I can't because all I see is everything I want to change. And she said, when you look in the mirror, I want you to actively look for things you like. And if you don't find them, keep looking, keep looking. And she said, you can't turn from that mirror until you list three things you like about yourself and do it every day. And it sounds like a really ridiculous practice. But looking in the mirror, and whether it's like, I love my ambition, I love my drive, or I love the shape of my collarbone or my cheekbones or whatever it is for you, whether it's physical or emotional or something like I love the way I treat people. Look in the mirror and actively look for things you like about yourself because we physically turn away from ourself just like we do emotionally. So there's that real physically looking in the mirror factor that does come into play. But then metaphorically reflecting on yourself is that not just what did I do, but why did I do it? You know, looking in the mirror as, okay, well, I did this thing. I did it because I was angry. That's not enough. Why were you angry? That's still not enough. Dig deeper. And that is that reflection of, you know, when you're in an argument with your partner and they tell you you did one thing and you said, yeah, but you did this thing. Just stop. and think really like they're telling you something you did upset them or hurt them. Don't just reflect back where you did this. Take that behavior and think, why did I do it? What did I do it for? What was my driver? Really reflect on it. And when we reflect on our actions like that physically and metaphorically, we can really start to grow and we can really start to grow into a healthier, happier version of ourself. Yeah, your sister sounds like an amazing person. She is. That's an awesome story. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, it's so deep when we start thinking about the way we can grow as individuals. And then you throw in your partner or someone you love or a friend or a family member. And there's these crazy concepts like transference and progression. Like, am I just fighting with my mom over here? Am I fighting with my dad? You know, it's so crazy to think about when you start becoming aware of all that stuff. Yep. And as well, because we bring previous relationships, whether it's family or personal, into our new ones. So if someone has previously done something to treat us badly and you see a behavior that is slightly indicative of something they used to do, you go, I know what you're doing. And you often put people in a box and you're often so scared of someone doing something that has been done to you, that you say you're going to do it. So you treat them as if they're already guilty for it. And we see this self sabotage behavior all the time. And it's because we haven't resolved our feelings towards what happened to us. So we're still carrying those expectations and those negative feelings into all of our relationships. And until we do that hard work with ourselves, we're going to continue carrying that hurt to other people. There's that cheesy saying, hurt people hurt people. But it's true. Because when we get into something, say it's a romantic relationship, and we go, you're going to leave me. You're going to hurt me. So I'm going to get really emotionally invested. And then I'm going to leave you because I know you're going to hurt me. And then what do we do? We leave people behind worse off. for how we found them. Now they're hurt. And now they're struggling because they don't understand your behavior and they don't understand your behavior because you don't understand your behavior. And then you leave a hurt person who if they don't deal with that trauma and that hurt, they're going to hurt someone else. So we've gone into this society and especially because we're told you can't talk about shame, people are suppressing their feelings and we're listening to these influencers online talking about being bulletproof and giving all this toxic, Horrible advice that we then take personally and we put into our lives and everybody's just treating each other badly. So everybody's just hurting each other. And we're seeing this. If you look at relationships now, Social media makes us feel like people are dispensable and people don't have value as individuals because I can just go get another one. I'll just swipe. Look at the amount of likes I have. I've got like fifty people here. What does this one person mean to me? So we treat them like a catalog. That is painful. So as a society with these expectations and things like dating apps and social media, we're kind of taking away people's sense of value. and individuality and real sense of worth because we're just making them feel like you're not anything special. Look at all these options I have. And that could be friendships too, as well as, you know, you're not successful because look at all these other people that have more than you do. So again, it's this, I'm not enough. I'm not worthy. So we're really encouraging this lack of one discussion of the real true science of emotions and vulnerability. And then we're also making people feel like they're not enough at the same time. So, of course, we're going to have this societal shift of everybody just feels like they're not enough. And until we start breaking that cycle, dealing with our emotions and being more vulnerable and honest and open, it's just going to keep getting worse. It's true. Yeah. Dr. Abby, you're amazing. I'm so I walked you right up to the hour line right here. And I think I got through one of the twenty questions that I had. So it's a sign of a fantastic conversation in my part. I get I get so thrilled and speaking with people. Conversations flow so naturally and I'm really thankful for that. If people listening to this heard this conversation and they're inspired, go down to the show notes and check out the book. But Dr. Abby, before I let you go, where can people find you? What do you have coming up and what are you excited about? You can find me on my website, which is just abbymorono.com, Dr. Abby Official on Instagram, and then just Dr. Abby Morono on LinkedIn. I am very excited about, I have three books coming out, three new books, two kids' books, and all of the profits for the kids' books for life will be permanently donated to the Innocent Lives Foundation. And they are for parents that want to teach their kids safety behaviours, in a way that doesn't feel like teaching them safety behaviors. It's in fun stories, get them to model safety behaviors. And then June of next year, I have a book coming out called the upper hand, which is an influence book. It's a framework for human decision-making, social influence and elicitation. So I'm very excited about that. And I've got some speeches coming up, but everything can be found on abbymorono.com. Ladies and gentlemen, go check out the site. Check out the current book that's out right now, Work in Progress, and stay tuned for more lectures and books she's got coming out. Fascinating to get to see it play out on a child psychology level. I'll talk to you more about that. And hang on briefly afterwards. I just had a few things I wanted to talk to you about. To everybody who hung out with us today, thank you so much for spending time with us. That's all we got. Aloha.