Anna Lembke

I mean, I think that's something we have to admit to ourselves.

We want to escape ourselves.

And I think part of that is a function of this incredibly narcissistic society that we live in where we're so preoccupied with ourselves and our problems and our achievements.

Like we're desperate to get away from ourselves.

Plus, you know, you have all these amazing drugs that make that possible.

Yeah, so this was a lovely young student of mine, a doctor in his residency for psychiatry.

And I was teaching a small group of residents how to do something called motivational interviewing, which is a way of harnessing the patient's own motivation to change their behavior.

So we got into these pairs.

So that one could role play the psychiatrist and the other could role play the patient.

And the patient could talk about a behavior that they want to change.

And the psychiatrist could do this motivational interviewing to try to explore how to help them do that.

And, you know, we had an odd number.

So that means that I had to pair with the student in order to do the role play.

So he said, well, I'll be the psychiatrist.

I said, okay, I'll be the patient.

And he said, you know, is there a behavior you'd like to change?

And I just sort of said without even thinking about it, yeah, you know, I do some late night reading that I'd like to change.

And in usual motivational interviewing style, I said, well, why is it that you want to change that behavior, right?

You're trying to explore with the patient what their reasons are.

And I said, well, you know, I just think it's gotten into a bad habit.