Dr David Lieberman Transforming Relationships Part 5

hello everyone el hope you had a beautiful shabbos welcome to transforming your relationships a big thank you and shout out to kazakh chickens for shabbos and taurani time as well as to my esteemed uh co-presenter here rabbi david gowasur you've got to make sure that you stay tuned after my uh talk in order to enjoy his wisdom it's absolutely fascinating i'm perky avas you'll really learn a lot and i encourage you to stay tuned so we're speaking about transforming relationships and today i'd like to talk about a couple of areas that people seem to have an issue with um and we'll see how much progress we make so first off is like this you know when i speak to people and i'm sure you do as well or maybe you are that person you know it's natural for people to blame others for their problems that's just what the ego does rather than take responsibility that you know we blame others something called attribution error by the way in psychology it says that we're more inclined to attribute our errors or our i'm still by the way trying to figure out where the camera is on this thing if someone wants to tell me i don't know so if i seem to have a wandering eyes just because i always wondering whether i think it's over there but i don't know i don't mean not to look at you but okay uh so attribution error basically says that we tend to attribute our own uh mistakes or errors or faults to other people and other people's mistakes to themselves meaning like this let's say that you are late arriving somewhere uh to meet somebody you're going to be more inclined at least the ego would be more inclined to refuse responsibility to say you know what it was because of traffic is because um you know you left too late because somebody you know needed you for something uh or whatever it is you're less inclined to take responsibility when it comes to other people who keep you waiting of course they didn't care enough they didn't respect you enough and so on you're not likely to assume that it was due to external circumstances again it's called attribution error but what's fascinating is how this applies to childhood and yes it all begins in childhood i always tell people you know when they come to my office you know i can see them you know 20 years just blame your mother and call it a day it's always mom um and that's not the case by the way but that's mom and dad whatever it is and it's not to say that parents you know don't contribute or don't make it difficult for some kids out of the gate but what we'll understand here is this idea about blame and not why it's just not productive but how the logic is so flawed and it works like this you know you take a child growing up and you know now they're an adult and by the way i had somebody come to me recently uh very sort of funny i find these things funny i guess in time like shakespeare said comedy is tragedy plus time or maybe mark twain anyway um he said that um i'm sounding more and more like rabbi orlowski i i don't know what that is okay i mean i'm spending too much time with him i don't know so um uh this guy comes anyway so we're talking about taking responsibilities for your problems and so you tell me that whatever damage a person calls they cause they need to take responsibility he i said yeah i said of course he said okay you know send my mother the bill for the therapy sessions i'm like okay so um so where are we ah so uh yeah so those people are very inclined to blame their parents blame other people so you know typically a person my mother treated me this way and that way because you know she didn't like me she didn't care about me by the way it's natural for children who are egocentric to blame themselves because who else could it be about but the son of the universe which is why any child that grows up in a home that is chaotic or um or unpredictable uh much less abusive you know we'll we'll always presume that it's because of a defect or deficiency within them you know no no kid a seven-year-old child is gonna say you know what wow dad had a hard day at work you know what yeah he's screaming at me but let him let off a little steam have a drink calm down and all is fine no the children child naturally assumes you know what my father's doing this my mother's doing this because of something broken bad defective within me which is why as parents you have to be very very careful anything you say and do your child feels as if it is the complete reflection of their own self-worth now as adults we know better but we don't we know better than a shaman knows better but the ego doesn't the ego is still locked in this place that how people treat me as a reflection of my self-worth which by the way i think we touched on this last week and that's that's you know how somebody treats you is a confession of their character it reveals everything about that person and speaks to their emotional health but says nothing about you you treat other people based on how you feel about yourself if you love you you can love other people you respect yourself you can respect other people um if you don't have it you what do you have to give i have noah weinberg's i used to say if you don't love you don't love me now doesn't mean a person that doesn't love themselves and we all don't most of us to some degree will all have low self-esteem except for me but uh but uh but it's it's important to recognize that how somebody treats us has nothing to do with us oh it's only the ego that makes it about us you know one of the examples i give a lot in my talks and if you've been following me on tour anytime and you hit the follow button you'll get all future talks and you'll have to wonder what we're talking about when we talk about it so you know if you're at a hassana and somebody's you know comes over and starts screaming says you're a thief you're a ghana you're an awful human being and all of a sudden a big crowd is forming around you and it's starting to feel very very bad embarrassed uncomfortable and then this person says you know what and then other thing kayam yakov will assume your name is khaim yaakov and it's a mistake of case mistaken identity and you realize as well as everyone else around you at that moment that he's got the wrong guy now rather than feel embarrassed to feel bad for yourself you're starting to feel like oh my gosh when this guy realizes that he's screaming at the wrong person he is going to feel like this big and you're standing up straight you're thinking oh everyone around you should think why is this the sonic the next yo gold story is going to feature you about alexa didn't talk back at a wedding when he was being yelled at so um it's a lot of noise here so um it's uh important to recognize again how people treat you as a reflection of their self-worth let me just give you another example let's say you're in an amazing expansive great mood everything is going really really well for you how are you treating the people around you you're treating them great wonderful top to the bottom i mean you do that anyway your mensch or manchester but you know when you're in a better mood an expansive mood it's easier to go and do that but when you're in a negative state and you're just not feeling good maybe you don't treat everyone with the proper cover the proper respect now did their self-worth change did they become less worthy as a human being of course not but your ability to give your capacity given that moment was stunted and so from our perspective we have to appreciate that how people treat us has nothing to do with us it has everything to do with them their mood how they feel about themselves by the way we talk about mood and self-esteem mood is the shadow self-esteem a person that's in a it generally has higher self-esteem is in a largely speaking uh assuming that we're not talking about pathology here a more steady higher mood the lower self-esteem the lower our mood and the more fluctuates the reason for this is because just very briefly is that the more self-esteem i have uh the less dependent i am in other people to build up a faltering self-image right the ego and self-esteem and university related so the more self-esteem i have you know the less i really care it's not i don't want people not to like me or respect me but i know that how they treat me is nothing to do about me but as my self-esteem decreases my ego takes over i begin to look at everything through an egocentric lens which means how you treat me as a reflection of me if i get two red lights in the roads because the universe hates me if it's raining it's because hashem wanted to ruin my picnic everything's about me so the the lower our self-esteem the more mood is going to fluctuate because it's based on the capricious winds of whether or not things are bouncing in our direction or not with higher self-esteem i recognize that you know what everything isn't about me sidebar here is that everything is about us the question is that the neshama says this is hashem this is something hashem is doing for me the ego that says this is something hashem is doing to me meaning the ego looks at everything lends up wow the world hates me while as the neshama the soul the real part of us tries to get the genuine message so everything is about us insofar as we should take it personally whether it's a leaf falling from a tree any interaction conversation relationship um uh you know any event or circumstance is a personal message for us but we want to mine it for the positivity for the good rather than presume it's because our treatment is due to defective deficiency within us and again the large of the ego so something we continue to stress here in the talks is that you know the larger the ego the more we're going to take things personally and we're going to assume it's because of a defective deficiency within me now something we alluded to way back when i think way back when maybe the beginning the first talk uh maybe a month ago monthly chavez is about pathologies and personalities and how they can develop into personality disorders and we're going to see that they're all sort of egocentric based uh in terms of whether it's narcissistic whether it's histrionic whether it's borderline they all have an ego that fears a sense of vulnerability and disconnection the exception here is someone suffering with sociopathy sociopath they interestingly enough they they recent studies have shown that they really do want connection but because they are so cut off uh they pretty much act and behave in a way that's completely autonomous as if they don't but interestingly enough again recent really super recent research shows that uh even people suffering with sociopathy while they while they crave autonomy and control they do also somewhere deep deep deep deep down also want connection but machlok uh among psychological postcards anyway um i happen to be in that camp though that that they do but it's so corrupted they're just not in touch with it all right now how are we on time okay so haha um so okay fine so let me just go ahead and end with this and then we'll get to this another time um that um you know we talk about blame that's how we started this whole zap and um you know so someone will come in the blame their mother their father their parent to blame other people for where they are who they are with their problems but then when it comes to how they treat other people right they just throw up their head and say you know i'm a victim what can i do you know i grew up in this house i was raised this way i this kind of environment this is what happened to me so yeah i'm a domino i got banged in too but i bang them to you also you know what what are you blaming me for but now why doesn't that person look at the per at his parent let's say in the same lens and as a person a child let's go grows up in a house that's less than ideal called abusive call it um tumultuous chaotic whatever it is so they'll go ahead whether justified or unjustified they'll blame the parent now this child grows up with a whole host of issues and problems and this and that blame blame blame his treatment of others whether it's disrespect whether it's abuse his treatment of himself whether he's becomes addicted to a drugs alcohol whatever it is is always because not because of i'm lacking responsibility i'm not making good choices but i was raised in such a way i was treated in such a way that this is the inevitable outcome was funneled and i had no other choice now why doesn't this person look at the person who abused or injured or their parent whoever is the same way in other words why do you assume they had behavior they had choice maybe their upbringing which it was was so awful so they had no choice but again when it it is it's the yates or of the eagle that says you know what i'm a victim right of somebody else who had choice but now i will behave as if i have no choice do you see the inherent flaw in that logic and the the ego just sells us on that story very quickly go ahead and just blame to the left and then refuse to accept responsibility to the right meaning what happened to me in the past is because of how i was treated okay fair enough but we blame that person in other words if you're not blaming you for how you treat the person to your right why are you blaming the person for the left of you for how they treated you why is it everyone has bira everyone has choice except for you so the way i explain it or encourage people to see it is like a row of dominoes look you know guilt is so self-destructive with the exception of bubby we don't believe in jewish guilt guilt is useless unless we transform it use it as chuva as a mechanism to move forward and to grow but simply to wrap yourself up in this blanket of pity and guilt and say i'm worthless i'm awful i'm terrible is just pointless that's not what hashem wants you can't actualize your potential while you're busy blaming um everyone else or beating yourself up because you haven't done enough it doesn't work and uh you'll forgive the plug but i i wrote a couple of books and i don't recommend them all but one of my recommend is how free will works and there's a whole thing on about taking responsibility and why guilt and shame toxic shame is so destructive toxic shame and real shame are different by the way just very very quickly i know i'm going off in a couple of rabbit holes here but real shame is a self-correcting mechanism a person acts irresponsibly they feel ashamed of their behavior right that's normal that is what hashem wants us to feel because we acted beneath armadrega and so we feel that con that are annoying at our conscience and we correct the behavior toxic shame is not my behavior means that i feel yucky but your behavior towards me means that i feel yucky toxic shame is always the lens of the ego and it's a whole thing with childhood and once again uh the the the intricacies we'll save for another time maybe uh but going back here again so i encourage people to see like dominoes and that is that look if you banged into somebody to the right because you felt and you feel bad about that fair enough through truva but understand that person to the left of you also banged into you because someone else bans them and so on this doesn't mean for a second that we're not responsible for actions what it does mean is that when it comes to how we were treated just allow for the possibility that this person is was in a an emotional wheelchair in much the same way that a person can't get up and walk if they're in a physical wheelchair you can't really blame somebody for being emotionally handicapped so i mean you can if you want to but it's not accurate and the problem here is this is that if you believe that your whoever the ability abuse came from a parent uh mother father sibling whatever would be if you assume that there is bihira and here's the real the essence of this if you assume that they had choice then you have to assume that they did it because again as an egocentric child of you right there's something wrong with you see if i don't have choice i just did it but if someone gets abused and they didn't have a choice someone bangs into someone who bangs into me i don't it wasn't me i i just know i can take responsibility this guy spilled coffee on me maybe she should be more careful someone banged into him he bangs into me somebody splashes coffee on me i'll begin to say hey what did i do to deserve this right so if we're able to see that how we were treated right this person may not really have had bachera not have a choice it not only allows for us to look at that person through a different lens but ourselves because we no longer have to ask ourselves what was so dawn wrong about me that i deserve this behavior good nothing i know there's i'm throwing out a lot here and i i blame you not me by the way um and that is that is that um again let's take the other analogy which i think is apt somebody comes along and they throw coffee on you right your first response is what did i do right and what's wrong with you but if you see this person got bumped into and then their coffee went flying on you you're now can say hey you know i'm good i didn't do anything to deserve this and the poor network the person who's phil coffey on you you know they were just the victim themselves interesting way to look at it when you begin to sort of you know recast and reframe um the past it doesn't erase it but it does allow for us to look at it through a little different lens some food for thought through the week i wish you a beautiful week mr shem see you back here next moti shabbos have a great week thank you for listening and watching you