Transcription
This is so interesting. Very few people train themselves to question their perception. We always talk about training our willpower, training discipline, training emotional regulation. We never talk about training perception.
Most of medical school is not about treatment. It is about training your perception. What do you hear when you oscultate? What do you feel when you percuss?
When your patient comes in and says, "Oh my god, you're the best psychiatrist on the planet. I've had 16 psychiatrists before you, but you came along and you're Dr. K. And you're amazing. You can save me when no one else can. You're so great, Dr. K."
And if I'm not careful and I haven't trained my perception, I'll be like, "Oh yeah, tell me I'm great. Oh my god, I'm going to be empathic and compassionate. Tell me about all these other psychiatrists that are so bad. Tell me about how they screwed you over. Oh my god, I'm going to be compassionate. Such trauma and everyone in the medical system has screwed you and I'm going to be different. You want me to be your hero? I'll be your hero."
Instead, we train our perception. Oh, this is idealization. This is splitting. This person could have borderline personality disorder. Today, I'm getting the positive side. Soon I will be number 17 on the list. Train your perception.
Recognize that your mind perceives certain things. Specifically with social anxiety, the money is on ambiguous stimuli. When they don't say hi, what's the differential diagnosis? What are the reasons they could not say hi? Have you ever considered that they're socially anxious, too? And when they walk in the room, they see you observing them like a hawk, and they're like, "Oh my god, this person is pissed off. They're not smiling at me. I better try to be small cuz I don't want to piss them off more so they don't say anything to you."
Two socially anxious people walk into a room and they walk out out each feeling like they're a piece of when they're terrified that the other person doesn't like them. And all they want to do is tell the other person how much they like them, but they're afraid.