Dr. Baland Jalal
speaker
177 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Dr. Baland Jalal’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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That's the overplay of the emotion. Yeah. By the way, the hippocampus also turns out the memory part of the brain is also hyperactive in the dream REM world. So you have the memory spilling in into this narrative about a monster chasing you. So you give it identity, you give it name, you give it all these negative features.
You contextualize it based on the hyperactive hippocampus. Because then it's chasing you and you can't run away because we said the motor, central motor generator of your brainstem is making it very hard for you to move. So you don't have the, so movement normally occurs in the motor cortex of your brain that gives you voluntary movement.
But because that part of the brain can't compete with the central motor, automatic part of the brain firing and making your behaviors all, you know, sporadic and automatic, so you can't get away. Now, what you said was interesting. You said if you turn around and approach the monster, the monster will become diminished in strength.
And that's interesting because we know in the real world, if you walk, simply by walking, you will turn down the activity of the amygdala because you're telling your brain or yourself that you are approaching, you're engaging in approach behavior instead of withdrawal behavior.
You're changing and saying, now I'm no longer the prey here. I'm the predator. I am the one that is doing the haunting. And so in that sense, it would make sense that the monster would vanish. So that's very interesting. But I also want to touch on monsters since we're on the topic of monsters. So there's a condition called sleep paralysis, and I talk about it in my Peterson Academy course.
There's a whole lecture on sleep paralysis. So are you familiar with sleep paralysis? Yes.
Do you see any monsters? Can you explain? I'm curious.
It's whatever you dread, whatever is lurking in your unconscious mind, that's coming to the fore. And so during sleep paralysis, interestingly, you didn't have any of the monsters. But it turns out about 40% of people will see monsters. Sleep paralysis is a terrifying experience. So you have this REM paralysis, obviously. You're paralyzed from head to toe during REM sleep. You're dreaming away.
And occasionally for some people, they might start feeling like they can, you know, they can see their surroundings. So they might open their eyes and then they realize, my God, I'm paralyzed. I can't move. I can't speak. And it's terrifying at this point. And then they look around. And I had one of these experiences. So let me tell you about my own experience.
So I was sleeping in my room as a teenager in Copenhagen. And I grew up in a ghetto-like neighborhood in Copenhagen. And I was lying there sleeping. And then I woke up paralyzed, unable to move or speak. And then I had this creepy feeling of a monster from the corner of my room approaching me. And it came closer and closer until it was on my chest, strangling me.
And I saw my legs flying up and down. And mind you, at this point, I was like, is this real? It was as crisp as this conversation you and I are having right now.
Well, I'll tell you. Okay. So at this point, I just saw my legs flying up and down. And it was choking me and I couldn't do anything. I was literally trying to kill me. Now on this occasion, I didn't see a monster. I didn't see a monster on this occasion, but I've had sleep paralysis since then on many occasions. And I've had various monsters.
So I've seen like one was Colonel Gaddafi, you know him, eccentric figure. He was hovering over me when I was in Egypt. I was living in Egypt for a period of time in my early undergraduate years. I was a little bit out there. And I saw during the Libyan revolution, Of all people, Gaddafi was in my bedroom, hovering over me, attacking me. So that can happen during sleep paralysis.
Yes, absolutely.
Egypt, yeah.
Around that time, there was a spring, the Arab Spring and the Libyan Revolution, all that was going on and I was watching CNN all the time, you know.
That I should never do, right? So I was doing that. I was sort of watching the news and, you know, I was influenced in some way. So that's really interesting. So our research now in about seven countries has shown that, you know, whenever you have a cultural narrative for it, like stories of witches, of,
of space aliens or whatever, you will have those lurking into your unconscious and you will see that manifest, right?
Those are your Carl Jung archetype figures appearing. So for example, in Egypt, we showed that the evil genius of Aladdin, you know Aladdin, the cartoon? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You will have that appear in front of you. So, you know, they will have bloody fangs and everything will be creepy, very scary monsters you will see in Egypt.
In Italy, for example, in the Pandathica region of Italy, you will see these giant cats or witches. So that's very common. And in the US, space alien abduction is very common in the US. So you might see that.
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