Richard Lloyd Jones: Everywhere we look, the world's getting more difficult. There's traffic and pollution. Cell phones ringing day and night. We've got global warming and terror alerts. Disappearing bees and school shootings. The drug companies push medication on us relentlessly through a medical system that's been corrupted by money and brainwashing. How do we cope with all this stress? I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and today I'm Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.
I want to look at a psychological condition in the human being and his society that, if we understand it better, can truly change how we approach everything, from science and politics to human relationships and society's laws. This is the process of psychological inversion that Norberto Keppe discovered in his clinical research over the past 50 years. Simply put, inversion is the process whereby we see everything upside down.
We see money as more important than work, like a corporation that lays off 20,000 employees and its stock price jumps in value. We think disease comes from bacteria and viruses, rather than that it primarily comes from a loss in inner force because of our psychological state of mind. We think it's a jungle out there and live our lives accordingly. This is a large topic, admittedly, because our inversion of values and priorities is everywhere.
We've talked about it in a number of ways already on this podcast, related to money and power, and even looked at quantum physics and reality through non-inverted eyes. Today I want to focus our discussion of inversion in the area of stress. Have a listen and let me know what you think. Rich at richjonesvoice.com Sofie Bergqvist is a Swedish teacher and international lecturer and seminar leader who's been studying and working at Norberto Keppe's International Society of Analytical Trilogy for over 10 years.
Sophie, in your experience, where do you see the evidence of this inversion in our society?
Sofie Bergqvist: In general, we see that there are lots and lots of people who are not growing, who are not feeling better and better, who learn and go forward in life. And we see that it's difficult for people to really do what is right and feel happy. So what happens is that I think that in this sense, this discovery by Dr.
Keppe about the inversion, it's like it's a light. It's what can really make the difference in a person's life. If he starts noticing this problem, that we invert everything and that we're like deep inside, we reject these things. We think that everything that is kind of good is somehow dangerous to me. It's dangerous, it's something that we reject, we don't really like it.
And on the other hand, we are so interested and curious and kind of feeling some kind of pleasure in things that are not good to me. Like, I have lots of students who are terrified of speaking English. But speaking English, it's not dangerous, it's nothing. But you love to see a person being tortured. But speaking English, oh my God, it's like so easy to do
Richard: the wrong thing.
You teach in the classroom a very interesting exercise about the inverted will, how the desire of
Sofie: the human being is against.
Richard: It's sort of like it wants to do the things that
Sofie: are less important. It's like an inner conflict. Actually, that was like an insight for me. When I first read about inversion in one of Dr. Kepes' books, wow, all of a sudden I noticed that, my God, everything is like an inner conflict between my desire to do something and my ethics that tells me not to do this.
Even if you ask a person, I used to ask the students in the classroom to see if they could give some examples of very important things, very good things that they should do. But it's so hard. It's so boring. It's something that you prefer to do next day, you know? And they give lots of small examples like study, work, get up early in the morning, clean your home, do exercises, eat healthy food, try to treat other people well, telling the truth.
It's like, oh no, today no, it's going to be a lot of problem, I do that next week. Anything is like, I know that I should do this, it would be very good for me, but tomorrow, next week, next year. And on the other hand, I used to ask them about things that are not really important, that might even be a little bit unhealthy, but are so easy to do.
It's like a kind of waste of time. I know it, but it's so nice. And immediately, the first one is television. Secondly, you have chatting, Internet, wasting a lot of time just talking, talking, gossiping.
Richard: Junk food.
Sofie: Junk food, drinking, going out, doing nothing special, just like wasting your time hanging around. And it's like you can see that very clearly that sometimes we have this.
I need to finish this project for tomorrow. I need to do this. I know that. But on TV, my family is watching some movie and it's like, oh, my God. Oh, I really want to see this movie. And if I'm a little bit more disciplined or more conscious, I probably will go and I do the project and I'll finish it and I'll feel so alleviated and relieved after.
But many times we don't do that. We follow this will, this desire that we have and we just watch this movie. Sometimes it's not even a good movie, but we watch it until the end and it's late and we say, oh my God, I haven't finished yet. Oh my God, what am I going to do now? And it's like we are fighting with ourselves.
So it's like, in this sense, my will is like my biggest enemy. It's like something that many times will, if it's very strong and very unconscious, it dominates me somehow. It's like I can't stop. I can't stop. I know I shouldn't do this, but I can't stop myself.
Richard: Are you going to do what you know you should do? Or are you going to continue to silence that little voice, tell it to go away, shut up, shut up, leave me alone.
And follow that pleasure until you do real damage to your body. That's the battle that we're having.
Sofie: So this will, this inverted will, you could talk a little bit more about this because this is not well perceived in the world, I don't think. We don't know this. And there is very much this idea that I have to do what I like. People are like so ruled and so governed by their will, what I want to do.
I like to do this, so I have to do it. And we don't really consider, wait a minute, I have lots of things that I like that aren't really good. The human being is like this. We like a lot of things that aren't good. It's not good for me, it's not good for the others, but we think that I like it so I should do it.
And we don't question this. We don't question to see wait a minute, I like it, okay, or I don't like it, but so what? Maybe I'll have to do it even though I don't like it, because if you do just the things that you like you're going to be a disaster. You notice that the person who is more ethical, that grows in life, he's more successful, is because he kind of frustrates himself a lot.
It's like a little bit of a sacrifice, or even a lot of sacrifice, but he has to do this. You have to, you can't expect yourself because of this inverted will to spontaneously want to do the right thing. Unfortunately it's, that's not how we are. It's not like uh we wake up in the morning, oh wow I'm so happy, it's another day, I'm going to work, yes, another day to resolve all my problems.
Oh please tell me more about my problems so that I can grow. We spontaneously don't do that. We have to force ourselves. And many people are very governed by this idea, I have to do what I like. And it's a kind of a philosophy nowadays that do what you like, you must do what feels good for you. And we don't consider really where this leads.
Because I can like a lot of disastrous things. Not only with unhealthy food or smoking, but I can like to spend all my money, and I can also like to be kind of dependent on another person. I don't work but you pay for me because I'm married to you, and I know that you don't like this but I like it.
Richard: I can like to have a life of only travel, yeah, only
Sofie: pleasurable things, going rafting on the Colorado River and hang gliding and these things, and nothing wrong with those things, but we won't achieve anything in our lives if we follow that route.
And it's like very ego-oriented, it's like me, I want, I don't want, no, I'm not going to do that because I don't want to, I don't like that. He's like well so what, you don't like it but you have to do it. It's something very good for the others, it's something very good for you. Imagine if everybody only did what they wanted to do for themselves.
That's actually why the world is so disastrous, because everybody just wants to do what they like, what they want, what they imagine is good for them. This immediate thinking is like okay, I do this now, I know that I'm destroying like the nature or I'm destroying this river or I'm doing something that is not legal, I'm doing something, but I want the money now.
So it's like this big inversion, that money, that power, whatever, is so important that the rest is secondary. It's like secondary if I have true friends, if I have like a good life. Yeah yeah, I wanted to
Richard: actually ask you how all of this that we're talking about relates to stress. Yeah, and this inner anguish,
Sofie: so you're, you're approaching that question now.
Talk a little bit
Richard: more about how all of
Sofie: this relates to like, yeah, there are so many different forms of. I was thinking also because I'm from Sweden, right, and and in Sweden now actually I've been nine years in Brazil, so many of these things they have changed so much in nine years that is interesting for me to see the difference now when I, I go back to Sweden and I see.
Because Sweden has always been known as a country of political consciousness, of a neutral country that is always like defending minority groups and always involved. People are interested in political questions and they don't like wars in general and so on. Canada is similar in a sense. And what has happened the last years, the last four or five years, the new generation that is growing up is very, very different.
Nowadays, what's important now for people, and what they're starting to question a lot now in Sweden, is the thing that what's most important now is if your wallet matches your Gucci bag or not, and if your shoes are from that nice designer or not. And you have to show somehow, with some detail, that actually you can afford something more. It can be your cell phone, it can be something else.
And Sweden has never really been like that. And they're questioning, is this really good? Is this really something human to be like this? And why has this happened? You know, we weren't like this so much in the past. And they also noticed this. They're speaking about this boom, economic boom, and the economy is going forward. And also, in the same time, the increase of antidepressant medicine is growing 40%.
So medication is growing, people are feeling worse, feeling more anguished, feeling stressed, they have lots of burnouts, and in the same time we're speaking about the economic boom, the country is growing, everything is going forward, and they are now starting to see what's going on here. And there is like a lot of people with also psychosomatic manifestations, even young people with psychosomatic problems, like serious physical problems and autoimmune diseases and many other problems.
Lots of allergies, hyperallergy, people allergic to everything, even to water and electrical allergy. And there are so many different kind of manifestations that something is not good, something is not going well.
Richard: And what is it that's not going well
Sofie: in your analysis? Speaking about this question of stress and this whole thesis of Dr. Cláudia Pacheco's book, right, is based on the question of how we deal with stress and what is stress and in what situations do we feel stressed.
And one, which is, of course, related to this question of who we are and what should I do in my life. And that you are kind of wasting your life being focused only on secondary values. They speak about now social anguish in Sweden, which is very stressful, is that I need to have a very nice apartment in a very nice address, and I need to have a perfect family.
They have made a list of things that you need to have in Sweden to feel good now, and it's like they think it's this external thing. So it's like I need to have a very successful husband with a good and interesting job, and me too, I need to have a very accomplishing job and position, and my children need to be beautiful and successful as well, and my car and my house, and it's very nice to invite your friends and show them your new design sofa and this very chic apartment that you have with good taste.
And there are so many things that need to be, let's say, perfect in the surface, like this appearance, this perfect mask, that people are like so stressed inside, so anguished inside, because they're trying to keep up with this all the time, this social idea of what happiness is. And it's, it's, it's very stressful for people, and it's like totally losing contact with the real fundamental values.
The thing is like something else is missing, and they are speaking about now this emptiness, the life is meaningless, a life without objective, a life without goal, and people have really lost. And you notice this, there is a lack of contact with themselves, it's a lack of contact with spirituality, with something more elevated, it's a lack of God, it's a, it's a lack of something.
And you notice that the first thing what happens when people start doing psychoanalysis, many people do psychoanalysis from Sweden with the clinic here in San Paulo with Dr Kevin and Dr Apacheco right by phone, and what many of these people say is that for the first time the first sensation they have after some weeks in analysis is that this anguish, this like 24 hours anguish per day, is alleviating.
It's something they say well it's so strange, it's like nothing has changed in my life, my boss is the same, my work is the same, my husband is the same, but it's like I feel harmonic. It's difficult, it's different for them to feel this, this sensation. I really
Richard: have an interesting feeling as you're, as you're speaking, I just wrote on my paper as you're speaking, I was thinking of the emptiness of technology, that our economic boom is the mania we have to build and create an economy based on the destruction of
Sofie: the world.
So as we're building and building and building in this economy, our actual world, the reality we live in, is getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. Not just the external world, but this internal world you're talking about, this is the emptiness of scientific progress divorced or separated from this more spiritual idealistic point of view you're talking about. Speak a little bit more about this Sophie, how you see this in your, in your, in your country.
Yeah yes, I, I understand that um the for example it's an interesting thing is that you can have, if you don't have like contact with yourself you can't enjoy anything external. So when people say like this money doesn't bring happiness, it sounds like a cliche, something well everybody says that, but if you, you can be a millionaire but if you are not happy inside you're never going to enjoy this money.
You're going to try, you're going to try, you're going to try, but you are all the time trying to look, you're going to try to look for something else, something else. And in the other hand I remember an example that for example something simple, you're a person who goes to a restaurant, a group of friends going to the restaurant, and let's say that one of these people, one of these persons, the only thing that she wants is like this external thing to be perfect.
She needs to have the perfect table and she needs to have the perfect food, and she's like expecting a lot from these external things, and she's easily disappointed. It's like this table was not as perfect because I wanted to have one of those tables outside, oh we should have
Richard: gone to that other restaurant, it was too close to the,
Sofie: it was too close to the kitchen.
The
Richard: food wasn't warm.
Sofie: Yeah, I should have taken that other plate. Can we change? And it's like this kind of disappointment, dissatisfaction somehow. And the person is trying to like kind of take out from this food some kind of happiness inside. And this food can give a pleasure. It's like it can give this kind of momentary pleasure, right? Mmm, this food was good.
But when you finish the dessert, you're not going to feel happy tomorrow because you had a dessert yesterday. It's not like we confuse a lot this kind of pleasure with some kind of real long-term happiness or harmonic feeling or balance fulfillment, yes. And then in the other way you can have another person in this restaurant which is like more equilibrated, more in contact with himself, and he or she can enjoy this place anyway.
He's enjoying the company, he's enjoying this moment with his friends, the food for him is secondary, he's, that's not the most important in this moment. He's gonna enjoy the food, he's probably gonna enjoy it much more than the other, and it's gonna be fine for him. So this person is like it shows that what's inside of you is, is what shows how you're gonna relate to the things outside, if you're gonna accept this or not, if this moment, if you have gratitude for this moment or not.
And this is another example of inversion, that we easily try to find these kind of momentary pleasures, these sensorial pleasures of the time, and we forget the psychological values like spirituality, goodness, truth, knowledge.
Richard: Keppe and Dr. Bashego talk about this as developing a more mature aspect towards life. Keppe has said that our problems are not caused by things that happened in childhood or traumas or genetic factors, but are we weak when faced with the problems of life?
Or are we more interested in this spiritual life you're talking about, more linked to reason, development, service to humanity? Are we more interested in the inner life of harmony and balance? And the stronger we are in this inner life, this mature life,
Sofie: the more we deal with those
stresses,
Richard: which
Sofie: are increasing in the world. Imagine what's going to happen when we can't drive our cars like we want Because the pollution is too bad Or when the water from the sea starts rising and cities start flooding How are we going to deal with these stresses?
It's not going to matter what kind of Gucci bag you have In those moments, you know This inner
Richard: life is very important that you're speaking
Sofie: about And it's kind of an immune system, right? It's a psychological immune system Like if I get stronger inside, I can much easier deal with these external stress moments, right? I can kind of keep calmer. It's like my stress level is higher than for other people.
Some people that are very like... And some people have a very low, like, tolerance level for stress. It's like everything makes them worried, irritated, nervous. This noise, that bus on the other side of the street is making a noise. This smell, this and that, the temperature. It's like all the time, small things irritating, worrying me. And where did I put this? And what am I going to do now?
And other people take it easier they have more like some kind of inner harmony or tranquility somehow and it's interesting that Dr. Kepa speaks a lot about this, about action, because you can't kind of, you can't reach this kind of contact with yourself or this kind of balance inside without actions. And it's like it's not something that you reach through thinking proses or meditation or I want to be a better person now, I have to calm down, just
Richard: read this book,
Sofie: just read this book, but it's like something that comes very much through your action.
It's like something that uh to try to really do something good, to really try to, to make a good work, to do a good job, and to not see like action and work in itself as something that harms me, something dangerous, like we normally think. We think that that I feel stressed because I have so much work, I don't have a life, this work is killing me, I have no time for myself, I'm gonna get sick, my God work is dangerous, take it easy.
And it's like we have this inverted idea that work is dangerous to us, and what happens is just the opposite, because now in Sweden more than 10 percent of the working population is not working because of diseases. So this is one of the absolutely biggest problems of the government of the state now, that too many people have um even been retired in advance because of sicknesses, because of burnouts, because of anything whatever, even a small problem, a problem with the tiroid, whatever, you stay at home for the rest of your life.
Sometimes like 35 years old you get, you retire in advance, you get money from the government for the rest of your life, and you are probably gonna be totally depressed, because what happens is a disaster, what the government is doing to the population. It's like it's like creating stress, it's creating anguish, it's creating depression, to do nothing more in your whole life.
Can you imagine to be like 35 years old. And for the rest of my life, I'm not going to have a work. I'm not going to have a function. What am I going to do? And it creates this kind of total anguish. You're staying at home every day with your own thoughts. Everybody else is working. What am I going to do today?
What am I going to do with my life? What am I going to do for the rest of maybe 60 years of my life? And this creates an enormous anguish and stress in the person. We think that we, we think that work is making us stressed, but people who have nothing to do are much more stressed, much more, and and they don't know where to go, what to do, what to do today.
Am I going out to have a walk? Okay, I go out for a walk and I come back and now what am I going to do now? Watch a little bit of television, okay, and now what am I gonna do now? And the worst thing is that you are a useless person. It's the sensation that my life doesn't matter to anyone, even to me, even
Richard: to me it
Sofie: doesn't matter, and I have no meaning in my life.
And this is not going to be filled, this kind of sensation, with money or with some travel or with some whatever. It's just going to be better if I really start doing something, some good action. It has to be something that involves also others, to feel that I contribute with something, I'm doing something, and even like a voluntary work whatever, or some kind of project, some activity, whatever you do it will help you to feel better.
And I, I think that this kind of ego-oriented society that has been created in Sweden, this kind of idea of me, me, what I like, what's good for me might not be good for you, I want to do this because this is good for me, and and I, I don't want to work anymore because work is dangerous, and we are so confused uh philosophically speaking, and so materialistic, and so like thinking that the happiness will come from outside and from the senses all the time, that we are like all the time stressed and anguished, we're lost, totally lost.
What, what
Richard: can we do? You talked about action, taking action, helping people, are there other things that we
Sofie: can do to get more contact with this inner psychological life? I just want to offer people some sense that there is something they can do if they want
Richard: to develop in their lives in
Sofie: this, in this sort of spiritual way, more idealistic way you're talking about.
Well I have contact with many Swedish people and and lots of Swedish people who also come here to Brazil uh mainly for the question of therapy. Lots and lots of people in I think in the first world in general are looking for therapy help. But we are lost again, because there are so many different kinds of therapies and so many different kinds of meditations and religions and this and that, and we are lost again.
And I think that I know that what we have here, what Dr. Keppe and Dr. Pacheco, what they have developed with this kind of psychoanalysis that is really also involving the spiritual question is the only psychoanalysis that I know about that involves metaphysical questions, philosophy, existential questions, spiritual questions in the therapy.
Richard: As well as being very
Sofie: practical. Yes. It's not like something only related to action and reaction.
Do this and you have a result, and it's like this kind of like behavioristic ideas, you have to force yourself to do it, you have a difference, you make a difference. No, it's something that really will involve this kind of existential worries that we have, my life, my future, death, life, whatever. We are full of this kind of of thoughts and emptiness and anguish and and this kind of sensation of being lost and confused.
And the psychoanalysis, a true psychoanalysis, integral psychoanalysis, is called integral because it involves all of these aspects, and and what's so fascinating is that what people notice first is that they start feeling harmonic for the first time in their life. Sometimes they say that I don't know why but I start feeling good. And a girl she said to me like this last week, she said before I started doing psychoanalysis I thought I was perfect but I was very unhappy. Now that I'm doing analysis I noticed that I have a lot of problems but I'm happy.
She was very confused about it, but it's like she's starting to have contact with who she is really, and when like tolerating herself the way she is, not trying to escape from this consciousness about herself, not trying to pretend that she's something that she's not, but really I am me and I'm like this and I have to tolerate myself like this. And then you start noticing that there is a lot of strength inside which you will never find outside, it's something that comes from inside.
And this
Richard: is one of the premises of Keppe's work, is that the essence
Sofie: of the human being exists as a beautiful reality, our problem is that we want to destroy that or take away that. So when we begin to see the attitudes we have against who we really are, we
Richard: begin to enter much more in contact with the truth of ourselves. And this is very, as you said,
Sofie: alleviating, relieving.
Many, many of these psychosomatic diseases, with some sweets that I know, with allergies and whatever, they are much better. Many of the symptoms have disappeared. Nowadays they can eat things they couldn't eat before because the body is not reacting with this kind of paranoia so much anymore. This paranoia that we have to the world, this paranoia we have to consciousness about ourselves, to really have contact with ourselves is scary to people, right?
And this kind of paranoia creates stress, which creates problems in my body, which will weaken my immune system. And when Dr. Clara Pacheco wrote this book, Healing Through Consciousness, which is based on this idea, right, of this like basic inversion we have that we are so scared to really look inside ourselves and really have this contact with ourselves. So we prefer to all the time focus outside, outside, outside, outside.
And she's like trying to show in this book how terribly afraid we are and rejected we are to this consciousness, which would really heal us, which would really be good for us. And it's like we treat it like a monster. Oh, my God, somebody criticized me. Oh, what am I going to do now? It's like it's a terrible stress for people to live like that all the time.
In
Richard: Keppe's psychological work, there's much that can help us in our stressful and hectic lives. Write me anytime, rich at richjonesvoice.com, if you'd like more info or literature. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. This is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Thanks a lot for listening.
