Dr. Sunita Sah
speaker
332 appearances
4 recordings
4 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 6 Feb
Dr. Sunita Sah’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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One of the things that I really noticed in the people that I've interviewed is if you have seen your parents defy as well, it's so powerful. And I do have one or two moments where my parents did defy, even though they were compliant most of the time. And that stayed with me.
Yes. And it changed my view of compliance and defiance being personality traits. I realized this is a skill. We can choose to use it or not, because even the most compliant person, my mother, she does all the shopping, the groceries, looking after all the family. I had very neatly put her into the box of being compliant. And one day when she was defiant, I just... just blew my mind.
I was like, wow, that's so impressive. She's actually really strong and she can be defiant when she needs to be.
If I can do it with the upbringing I had, I think most people can learn how to defy. It's just you have to learn that skill set. You have to get out. So if you're talking about neurological I was rewarded for being compliant. That's when the neural pathways start to form like obedience. It becomes our default. We start equating obedience with being good, compliance with being good.
Absolutely. So we become what I call wire to comply, right? It becomes the default without thinking. Somebody says to do something, we go along and we do it. And so that's really powerful socialization, the messages that we get to obey, to be polite, you know, don't make a scene, don't question authority, listen to them.
And that makes a difference to the rest of our lives in a way and our default setting. But if we think about situations where we learn how to defy We need to really practice so we can change that default setting. The more that we practice, the more those other pathways start to strengthen. For example, I have these five stages of defiance.
So the first one, like usually when we're in a situation where we want to defy or we think we should, we feel some kind of tension. So our body immediately tells us we don't think this is quite right. So I felt it with a CT scan. I'm sure you've been in situations where you felt like, oh, I don't know about that. Yeah. And so often we just ignore it. We think it's not worth our doubt. Exactly.
Is it worth it? Yes.
And we probably have our own signs, right? People will probably feel it differently. Maybe for some people it's a headache. Maybe for some people it's their throat constricting. Maybe it's feeling butterflies. So we all have a sign that comes up. And then the second stage is to acknowledge that rather than disregard it is to admit it to yourself, right? I'm feeling something.
Yeah, avoid it. And that's a shame because it's a warning sign. And if we actually listen to it, it could help us because we just need to like, why am I feeling this way? What does it actually mean? I felt it with a CT scan and I was like, OK, but it actually got worse as I carried on having the CT scan. It didn't go away.
And so I felt it more. And then I felt so much regret afterwards, like how easy would it have been for me to say no? Why couldn't I say no? Actually, it wasn't that easy. But what can I do to make sure I say no next time? And so feeling the tension, acknowledging it to yourself. And then stage three is the real critical stage is just vocalizing it to someone else.
And the reason that stage is so critical is because if you tell someone else you're not comfortable with this, you've stated how you feel. You can't then go back and rationalize to yourself, I was actually okay with it after all, right? You know, it was fine. So once you've said that, all you have to do then is continue saying it. And this was the same in the Milgram experiment.
So there were people, even though two thirds of the subjects went up to 450 dangerous shocks, And they were called the obedient subjects. Not all of them did this willingly, right? Yes, I'm going to shock that person.
Milgram called them the moral imbeciles, but they were groaning, nervous laughter. They had these signs of tension, the nervous laughter. Oh, I have that for sure. And then I will smile. I have what a colleague of mine called the crocodile smile, is that as soon as I'm uncomfortable, I'll be like... Yeah. Okay. Oh, that's funny.
Yeah. It's an appeasement. Okay, I'm not a threat. Exactly. I can't let my face betray me. Yeah.
That third stage, if you could say, I'm not comfortable with this or the people in the Milgram experiments, is he actually okay? If they had resisted four times, that was the experiment. There was four prompts. then the experiment would have ended. So you just then need to continue. And stage four is that threat of noncompliance. I can't go through with it.
Yeah. Stage three, you're still in a subservient position.
Yes. And then four is stating that you can't. And then five is your final act of defiance.
So understanding those stages, it might not be linear. You might skip some stages. There are certain situations that I found that I find it easier to define and you can go from stage two to stage five. And we can all find those places where, oh, this is actually more natural for me to do it.
Right. So they are. consequences for being defiant, for sure. That's what holds us back a lot of the time. So, you know, when we think about why don't we defy, why do we actively even resist defiance? Number one, immense pressure from other people to do what they want you to do, the insinuation, anxiety aspect of all those psychological processes. And then the
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