How To Break Free From Self-Deception | Elisabeth McKay | Ep. 146

Introduction and guest welcome 0:00

One day I came home from preschool and there were FBI agents surrounding my house. My parents had this terrible habit of not giving me the information that I needed to feel safe. This started your whole career, your invention, and your technology started from a young age. I knew from an early age, my mom was not living in the same reality that i was. The expert here on today's podcast is Elizabeth McKay. Ever feel like your brain is trapped on repeat? Our next guest treats human behavior like software.

Cracking the code on childhood conditioning with flawless precision. Welcome the phenomenal tech founder, Elizabeth McKay. Finding the root cause of treating from the roots is not financially viable for a business model that has crashed into human health. If those two have intersected and they've become clustered together, we're never really going to be able to free ourselves because getting healed is NOT lucrative. What is the true problem with our behavioral health system now? Most of our behavior health systems in particular, talk therapy, psychotherapy, is based on self-reporting.

We are incapable of accurately self reporting. If that is our primary data source, we've completely lost the plot. What has been more difficult? Studying people or dealing with this, the traditional system? I feel like I was Welcome to another episode of a Healthy Point of View podcast. I'm your host, Sam Tahata. And as usual, we're bringing experts from all over the world to talk about health, wellness, beauty, and mindset. Today's guests, We're gonna be talking about behavioral health. We'll gonna talk behavioral patterns, emotional regulation.

What our current system does to treat some of these behavioral issues and how we have it all completely wrong. We're gonna learn something new. Today's expert here on today's podcast is Elizabeth McKay. Welcome to a healthy point of view. I've never had a welcome like that before. There you go. See, I like it. Is that a rubber chicken? Guys, rubber chickens. So there's a little story behind that rubber chicken, by the way. So I went out to California for a media tour when I launched one of my books and I was walking on Hollywood Boulevard, you know, they got all the little vendors and somebody had a rubber Chicken and.

I want the rubber and it's become part of the welcome. Does he have a name? I'm assuming it's a man. Is it a magic? You know, we haven't given it the name, but I don't know if you had it. So what should the maybe we're going to give it? A name. KFC.

Elizabeth's childhood trauma and pattern recognition 2:53

The one that got away. The rubber chicken. We're going to do a whole episode on the rubber-chicken one day. But Elizabeth, thank you for coming on podcast. This is going be some really good information that I know our viewers and listeners are going enjoy. You put in a lot of work with what you have, but before we get into the meat and potatoes of it, What I want to do is people get to know who you are, right? And I wanna go way back. So when you were like five years old, I wanted to understand your upbringing and what got you where you're at today.

I was raised in a extremely wealthy family on the East Coast and I bring this up because I think sometimes when people think of trauma or hardship, we're primed to think about it in a specific way. We're prime to immediately think that means physical abuse, sexual abuse poverty. And one of the things that I've found over the course of my whole career, but also my life previous to that is that really every single one us experiences trauma and that's relevant to the context in which we grew up. So I think very frequently we look at people and we say, oh, they have privilege.

privilege means that they shouldn't have any problems. And really the human condition is such that we all have trauma unique to our experience and it doesn't matter how we compare it to somebody else. It's still trauma. I had a two-parent household up until I was nine and my parents hated each other or loved each. They were either passionately making out in the pantry or they were threatening to kill each and there was very little in between. And I had a dad who was very high up in his career. And when I was three, actually, one day I came home from preschool and there were FBI agents surrounding my house and we actually had to go live on the lam for a year.

That's one of my first memories actually is just realizing I can't trust anything that's happening in my world. It felt like at any moment, anything could become unstable. My parents had this terrible habit of not giving me the information that I needed to feel safe, and they would tell me one thing and then do another thinking that i wasn't smart and wouldn't put the pieces together. And all it really did, you know, thankfully, I'm very grateful that had the life that it had, it made me constantly a hundred steps ahead of everybody.

I could always see through any adult in my world, i was always game-theoring out what the different variables were and what was likely to happen to me, because no one was giving the me information to trust anything in life and how it was unfolding. One of my pivotal moments actually was I was never allowed to do a lot of kids stuff And then one day my parents finally took me to Chuck E Cheese. Do you know what Chuck-E-Cheese is? Oh yeah, they had great pizza at least back in the day. I mean I Was so excited because I never got to to kids' stuff like this So I get to Chuck E.

Cheese and having the time of my life. And then I remember looking at my grandma and being like, hey, you know, where's mom and dad? Oh, they went to Italy for 10 days. I'm like what? They waited until I got distracted and then just left because they didn't want to deal with it head on, which was very classic of. My upbringing was like I was always always had a nanny. Anytime I would get close to my nanny, my mom would fire them. That was another pattern that I noticed really quickly where it was like she didn't want a parent.

But if she noticed that i was building a maternal bond with my Nanny she would find something to fire him about. So I say all this to say, despite growing up in what would look like a picturesque family. I developed really strong pattern recognition because to me, every day felt like if I wasn't 10 steps ahead, I was going to survive. And I think that can happen to people that on the outside, it looks like their lives are okay. But when you understand how their brain patterns developed, what we've found with the technology that I've created is there are very specific variables that if repeated in your childhood, cause you to develop one way or another.

I certainly developed in the way of pattern recognition, situational awareness, being able to scan people. And instead of making their mood or what they were saying about myself, I tried to figure out how I could be of service to them. What can I do to help you stay stable? What that ends up looking like in terms of nervous system is I learned how to self-regulate and become self contained in service of you. If you are unstable, if you're going to do x or y or z, what do I have to to help you co- regulate?

Because I learn very quickly people who exhibit emotional volatility are typically those who need co regulation to calm down. So I learnt how become that coregulation for them while not needing it myself. You know, Steve Jobs always said that you can only connect to dots looking backwards, not forward. And I'm connecting the dots of how you even got to where you're at today. I mean, this started. your whole career, your invention, you're technology started from when you were from a young age. Absolutely.

As early as three, from what I can tell. And the other pieces of it were that my mom has borderline personality disorder. I knew from an early age that my mom was not living in the same reality that I was. Because I'm so good at scanning my environment, I have a photographic memory when she would share something with me. I knew enough to know that either I had to buy into her delusion with her and experience gaslighting, or I could become laser focused on everything around me and recount every detail so that it couldn't be weaponized against me my sister didn't make that choice.

My sister fell into that delusion and ended up as a byproduct, repeating some of those patterns with my mom. I knew that I had to fight for every ounce of my sanity in that relationship. And by the time I was 13, I finally got to go away to boarding school. Being in boarding in an environment that was completely controlled and stable, It was completely life-changing. I realized I had never spent more than three consecutive days knowing what I could count on, right? And I wasn't being used as a pawn in between my parents' marriage, I was having to help my mom soothe another one of her breakdowns where she would throw things all around the house, and I actually really just got to focus on myself.

Like I really don't think I got be a kid until I about 13 years old. And when you have dorm parents who are just, you know, I don't know if you I'm assuming you've gone to some sort of college or something like that. Did you ever go to college? Fire Academy. OK. So when. You're living in a college environment, You have like an R.A., like a resident, right? Attendant or assistant. And there there's not a lot of subjectivity there. They're not they don' have a. Lot of emotional buy in with your life.

By and large, they treat everybody the same. It was so nice to just. be one of the crowd and to not be targeted day in day out. And I really thrived in boarding school and it was actually when I was in my first year boarding and I know that we were talking about this before we started rolling. I was offered mushrooms for the first time. I as 13 years old and up to this point, if you have to become the arbiter of truth, I realized as a child, that I couldn't let my foot off the gas for one second.

And I always laser focused, always on. Now that was in this environment that actually felt safe and somebody was like, hey Biz, do you want to do a shrooms? I remember thinking there and being like oh my God, am I going to say yes to that? Just feeling so exciting. Frankly, it took way too much. And I put it in soup. I don't know what I was thinking. So I took a picture I didn't I tried to go gourmet I Was 13 you guys by the way now people know What we talk about behind the scenes, but yeah, which I Don't mind This is what we talked about guys when you're not looking So, I take these mushrooms and I have the time of my life I feel like I've never felt more free ever in my whole life and The day after, especially when you've just done them for the first time, you're in a very neuroplastic state.

And it's almost a dreamlike state where you are not tripping anymore, but you aren't all the way back in reality either. My friends asked if I wanted to go see the movie Fight Club. I did. Let me tell you, I'm a really spiritual person. that whole kind of roughly three day long period was very divinely orchestrated for me to have my breakthrough. I feel like I wouldn't have had the breakthrough that I had if I hadn't previously done Mushrooms, so I then go watch this movie Fight Club and in the final scenes when all the buildings are blowing up you have the realization if you hadn' already in movie that actually the two characters are one character and they don't realize it.

In quite literally one instance I remember taking this deep breath and just thinking Oh my God, my mom doesn't know she's crazy. With how smart I am, I had never considered that one. I really just thought my whole life was a big joke on me and that she knew she was crazy, but she just kind of mass manipulating everything. And really in one moment, one instant, My whole perspective changed. and I knew in that exact moment if I have to plant a flag on why I do what I I had to understand what is self-deception and how can somebody be so deeply entrenched in self deception that they can no longer see objective reality.

And I have been on a meandering path In a way that I never could have orchestrated on my own to the place where I am now and I believe every single Every job that i've had every iteration of my career Even if it felt out of place in that moment when I look back and i connect the dots It all makes sense to

Boarding school, mushrooms, and the Fight Club breakthrough 12:40

why i'm here today. Wow You go very deep into thought you have a very strong imagination. I would assume This is a really interesting question. I would say that imagination and kind of ideation, innovation are two actually very soul and separate things. And we actually track these markers in brain pattern mapping. I actually have very low scores for just imagination. To me, imagination would be somebody who can get lost in their thoughts and they almost create, I call it world building. I don't know what language you would use, but where people can kind of build alternate worlds in the mind as a form of escape.

I have almost no markers for escapism. I'm like two feet fully planted in reality at all time. My markers, for presence, are off the charts. And I believe that's, I think that is required. What do you mean by that? You don't live in the present? No, i'm extremely high on presence. And what we have, I've found the markers that end up equating to flow state and metacognition. So I can, you could give me a sample of a hundred people. We run them through PredictiveMind. I could tell you every single person that would have off-the-chart scores for metaccognitions and for flow-state.

And if you want to interview them, i'd get them right every time because we can see it in the data. for somebody to operate in flow state and i don't know if this is something do you feel like you hit flow stay quite frequently or do need something you know i'm trying to go where you're going with it and understand because I do believe that I have a very strong imagination, but I'm not the kind of person who likes fiction. Like, you know, I don't go into that realm. It's like I more of like a visionary.

Yeah, so you would be on the other ones where you're more in that flow state presence and metacognition layer, not actually the imagination escape layer. They actually function very differently. If somebody has high scores in the realm of imagination. they typically are also very prone to rumination and negative self-talk and suicidal ideation. Oh, really? For the people, it sounds like you and I, which by the way, we've scanned 20,000 people and i have done all the digging on what makes the top 1% the Top 1%.

And part of what you're describing, that's what separates kind of the oil and the water, right? What I have found is that the people who rise to the very top of something, they are, their innovative and their visionary, but that always is immediately met with action. And actually what we've distilled is impulsive commitment. So the People that actually make it impulsively commit as soon as something in them is like, yep, I want to do that. They just, They go do it there. they don't stop themselves.

You know, let me check with this person. Let me go research this through external source. They just go for it. And they're present in the iteration process so that they can learn lessons and keep pivoting and making changes along the way. The distinction would be there are plenty of people who impulsively commit. But if their self-deception message leads them to believe that it was perfect right out of the gate, they're going to be completely blinded and they won't be able to iterate their creation.

So there have to all these markers met with each other where you also have strong metacognition. You've got to think about your thinking and you've gotta be about what you're doing as you are doing it so that you can continue to correct. When you match all of these these marker, you really can and this is a huge part. Not everybody can do that. That's why it's the top 1%. Here's the thing, I think my body of work proves that what happens in your life repetitively either creates that or it doesn't, and then there are those who are close enough to them on the brain pattern spectrum where maybe they could learn some hacks to try to adopt more of that style, but in general the top 1% have the same exact childhood markers in the Therefore, they were nurtured into becoming the top 1%. They didn't learn that in school.

They did not learn in a book. You either are or you aren't. Yeah, I feel like I was born with it. I'm the kind of person that you use the word pivot. I just have to get in the right part of my mind. And when I pivot, it's a switch that you can't turn it off. Oh, yeah. You know, so that's what you need to rise to the top because you. Can't be in delusion about your own creation. I don't know what your spiritual beliefs are, but one of. My favorite things to look at would be if you even go back to Genesis, one.

Of the frameworks that we get is that God basically thinks God speaks, God creates, and then he actually reflects on his creation was and it was good. That's the same process that we're supposed to go to. We ideate, we've got to speak it into existence, and then we have to observe our creation and be honest with ourselves. Was it good or was it not good? And unfortunately, many people's childhood environment causes them to believe that something is good when it's not. If there's one thing, if any of you are listening have kids, The most helpful thing you can do for your child is to teach them how to accurately self-reflect and not delude your kid into thinking that they're good at something that not good.

So everyone shouldn't get a trophy. No, no, that's one of the most devastating things to human. I mean, and I feel like we see where we've landed as a society right now. The more we have shifted toward that narrative, the worse our outcomes are, especially in teen populations. And I work with teens and kids all the time. it has not served them well. If you look at generational trends, which I'm really grateful in the work that I do that my youngest client that built strategy for is three and my oldest client I've had is 81. So I get to see all these different generations and actually in my work with Break Method, I have often gotten to actually work multi-generations of a family.

I'll have the mother-in-law, the grandma, mom, niece. You can map the whole thing. which is great for us on the data side, but it's also great even on anecdotal side where you just kind of get to hear everyone's perspective and then you get align that with the date. Generationally, we have really gone backwards. Although our previous generation, so let's think maybe, I don't know how old you are. I'm 41. How old are you? I am 39. Okay. Yeah. So if we look at our grandparents' generation the conditions in which they were raised were harsher.

Therefore, what was spit out of those inputs often ended up reporting a higher, higher quality of life. What we've done accidentally is instead of, I'll, let me go back and use this example. So what was more common even in my parents' generation would have been to be raised by the neighborhood, right? You get kicked out and, you know, don't come home until the sun goes down. Fend for yourself, figure it out. That sort of figure-it-out mentality actually very much set those kids up for success. And while maybe love was a little bit harder.

They had more walls up. Yeah, that's how I grew up, right? Same. If you actually look at who they've become, we can definitively say the harsher environment built self-efficacy and self efficacy built a better quality of life. And maybe and often they do struggle with intimate relationships because that softening and vulnerability that is required for love. That's the hard part. But any day of the week, I, it's easier for me to help somebody who's crushed it everywhere, but their love life sucks.

I can fix that person in two weeks. You give me a person who was coddled and enabled as a child, their parents bought into their delusion with them. Great example. My son at one point really wanted to go to travel baseball, right? He had done little league and he really want to try out for this travel, baseball team. and eventually we got ourselves into a position where because the coaches knew me it was very clear during tryouts they're gonna give my son a spot on a team but it's not gonna be for the right reasons, right?

So they ended up offering him a slot on the team. I realized in that moment I had a choice as a parent to let my kid live in the delusion that he got onto the Team via his own merit or to be honest with

Brain pattern mapping, flow state, and top performers 21:08

him so that you can make a Choice. What do you think I chose? I would assume the second one. Honesty is the best policy. So I sat him down. I'm like, hey, buddy, I know you've been working really hard for this because he's been training. Because I said I was there for your trial and you have improved so much. You are not at the level that the other kids are. They did give you a spot on the team, but I suspect it's because the coach knows me. So what would you like to do? Are you okay with potentially being the worst kid on team all season and you can just use this as an opportunity to level up?

Or do you want to stick with Little League? He was like, mom, thanks a lot. Thank you. I really appreciate you telling me that I want to stick it out. And I'm like cool. So you're OK with how this could go. He's like yeah, I am just going to push myself. Take the opportunity. Hated every second of it. Oh wow. Every second. At one point he wanted to quit. Buddy, before you know that my policy is we never quit midseason. and I was I hate this too. You hate it, but we're going turn this into a win for both of us.

you're not quitting because you did, he hated sucking compared to everybody else. He hated it. But do I think that that's still built character in him? Absolutely. A hundred percent. If I let him back out, like there's so, I, think it's another thing is we don't realize as parents, we have so many small opportunities to turn our child into the best adult imaginable. And we overlook them because we're busy. We're distracted. Raising the toddler years, my work has proven is actually the most important.

We are who we are by the time we're roughly five. So if you buy into this cultural narrative, that toddlers outgrow things, you're really setting your kid up for failure because they don't out grow things. And speaking of the generational patterns, I think, although I don t think it was coming from an educated place, If we look at my dad's generation, my Dad's 80, his parents, they weren't coddling. I'll tell you that much. There's a picture of me in my little bassinet on the couch and my grandmother like all the way over here sitting like this.

And my mom looks at this picture and she's like, that's about as close as your grandma ever got to you. You know, just like harsh Eastern European, They weren' t codling. They were' n't enabling. they probably weren t even overly holding the kid. The were just kind of letting the kids figure it out and fend for themselves. and if you let a child exercise their independence, Toddlers are actually way more capable than we have been led to believe that they are. And so we end up actually handicapping them.

We get them codependently attached with us, and we take over all these tasks at a time when they could be learning to do these things for themselves. For what it's worth, I don't get paid by Montessori School for this reason. I think Montesori school for little kids is absolutely the best thing you can possibly do. because it teaches self-efficacy and it actually supports that impulsive commitment style. Because the whole thing is it's built in these sort of little studio environments where it is very self led by the child, but you have to show sequential commitment and motivation for you to be able to stay there.

So you need to fully engage, otherwise they will move you into something else, which I think is a pretty beautiful lesson for a toddler. Who has had the opportunity to study you? I mean, I've done brain pattern mapping on myself. I don't know. Yeah, but you're studying yourself. You have a very interesting, very powerful mind. It seems like you are really looking at everything. Some call me an alien, others call my a genius. We're not really sure which one to adapt to. So I'm happy you brought up aliens because we're talking about imagination.

And one of the things where my mind does go is into outer space. Like I am really, not into fiction stuff, But I into like, is there life elsewhere? Like I will sit there and watch documentaries of like UFO sightings. Do you have a favorite extraterrestrial movie? I grew up watching E.T. and X-Files and all that stuff, but I want to say I have favorite one. Have you seen Arrival? No, I haven't. What? Okay. You have homework. I actually talk about Arrivals in my book because the whole premise of the movie is And I want all of you to go watch Arrival.

I'm not gonna ruin the plotline for you, so don't worry. Everyone take a deep breath. The whole premise of it is that language is a construct that can trap you. And if you can free yourself of the confines of a specific language, your beliefs follow that and then your perception shifts. The reason I love that so much is because that's really a core part of work that I do, is what happens with repetition in your childhood environment, it creates this framework for how you start to see the world. And whatever we see, our brain generates language, right?

Sammy, microphone, cactus. We cannot perceive something and not try to constrain it into words. Those words end up completely holding us captive. And if we don't learn how to fight the language that that brain pattern generated with better language we will not be set free. we we'll not get back our capacity to change. What is better Let's say what happened to me as a child, and I'll use some examples from my life. I could feel completely safe. and do, still, I grew up in New York City. I could feel completely safe at Central, or Grand Central in the middle of the night.

And as I often did, would go out talking to the homeless people and stuff, waiting for the last train home after going to a rave or being out with my friends. To me, that would feel complete safe. There would be no part of me where my nervous system would just be regulated. But if I was at home sitting on the couch with my mom, my nervous system would be absolutely skyrocketing. This is where we have to understand that the patterns that we've learned are going to generate language as simple as, and I'm making this simple for the listener, I am safe or I not safe, right?

If I just hanging out with my mom, there's gonna be no part of me that will be in a relaxed state because I already have that previous experience that she could turn at any time, so you can't let your guard down. So let's say that I had just come home from school and I have the worst day ever. And all I wanted to do was confide in somebody about my day. If I was sitting with my mom, there would be no way for me to break that rule of my Mom's not safe. I would never confided in her about anything.

Just go upstairs and deal with it myself. Go put on music. Maybe I'd find a friend to talk to. You maybe I call my aunt, but there my brain would not let me be have a scenario available to me where I be like, Hey, Mom, can I tell you about? My day just never happened. But that's not technically because I it's, not possible. It is possible my brain's just hiding it from me in that moment. So then comes the part where we have to figure out if the brain is actually constraining the choices that we believe we What argument would we have to make to get your brain pattern to put up its hands and be like, all right, you got me.

That's true. Because technically, self-deception for us is often true because we've built our lives that way, so we become a self fulfilling prophecy. But the key is that it's not always true, and if we can start to see the exception and we get our brain to expose the error in how it is currently constructing its argument, Typically, then, in our prefrontal cortex, really, oh, wow, okay, that makes sense. So often what's happening with behavior is we're trying to tell somebody to use willpower. We're like, you want to break that pattern?

Don't do that. Right. That's not very successful for people. We have to help that person understand how they move from a mental state where they're maybe seeking help because they don't want to do that thing. The next thing you know, they are doing that and they can't see why they were doing it in that moment. We've got to bridge that gap and the way that we bridge the gap is to ask the right series of individualized questions to little by little expose the error. Have you ever seen the movie Mission Impossible?

Yeah. Okay. The original with Tom Cruise, where he's dropping into Langley on the little wire.

Parenting, self-efficacy, and raising capable kids 29:28

In the very first slide of the first lecture that I teach in Break Method, I have that slide. If you recall, there's temperature sensors, right? There's the lasers. There are all these different things, so if one wrong thing happens, he is done for. When we go into our psyche, our subconscious, That is how we have to go in. And unfortunately, many people, they don't go like Tom Cruise and they unfortunately will butt up against our own defense mechanisms that will bob and weave and cause us to never get to the right information.

So the way that we go into it in break method is a very specific process so that our defenses are not coming up and we're able to actually be honest with ourselves in a way, that maybe we never have been before. I often have therapists that will, after the first session, they'll start laughing and they're like, But seriously, how did you do this? I've been doing this forever. I have what I was able to get to in one session is deeper than I got in 10 years. That's crazy. And I'm like, yeah, that's how we got to do it.

Another good analogy would be looking at the movie inception for anyone that seen inception. If you start to change too much too quickly or go too fast, remember then that person's subconscious will start attacking the intruder. The way that we ask the questions has to be very intentionally sequenced, so you're exposing a little bit, a LITTLE bit and by the time they're getting to that aha moment that you need them to get to so that they can actually choose something else, usually people are laughing, which, if you think about how hard things appear to be in recovery, addiction, medicine, therapy, it's very rare that somebody is laughing at themselves.

In Break Method, the way that we do it, even a person who has struggled for years will eventually start laughing themselves and it is literally like, all right, you got me. Not today. Wow. And it's because we're not forcing it. If I were just your smart guy, if I would just tell you, don't do that because XYZ is going to happen, there's a part of your brain that's going push back and be like, you can't tell me what to do. So I have to be able to circumvent that process to get you to come into agreement with what I know is best for you.

But I'll have do it in a way that is a little bit sneaky. It's almost like you're you know, like growing up and watching TV shows, you would get the character that would have the little angel on one side. Yeah. It it's like, your communicating with two versions of yourself and you have to be able to just overcome the negative side of it, I would say. The way that I teach it in Break Method is that every one of us, by way of our brain pattern, has a prosecutor and a defense attorney. And unfortunately, what happens is, that our prosecutor is really good.

It knows how to weaponize all of her insecurities, it knows all the secrets that we keep, It know all our negative self-talk, so it can keep using those things to keep you back in jail. Right now, our defense attorneys is absolutely weak, has no good argument. So our job is to bolster the argument of the defense attorney while also knowing how the prosecutor is going to play dirty, which is how I build out all the questions. And so we're able to break apart the. Argument before your brain's even able.

To form the, argument, Which is what makes somebody go like, Oh, my God, it's too clear. I got it. We're not going. Do this anymore. . I've seen people come to me and we do small groups every other week. where they'll come to me and literally say something like, I mean, this literally feels like magic. I have tried to do this for so long and couldn't get anywhere. And now I'm like just suddenly not in an A-hole. Like how did you do that? How did I change like that. We change the way you perceive reality and most things do not do that.

Most things are helping you change a behavior or consciously process a behaviour a certain way. We fundamentally change how you are programmed to perceive the reality because everything else is downstream of our perception. In brain pattern mapping, we track nine markers. The top two help us understand your perception of reality, what your self-deception themes are, or what you're underlying motivations are. And with that, What you are aware of and what is hidden because of what are you aware? And I think maybe you and I talked about this before we even started.

People tend to be either oriented towards situational awareness or relational awareness, but only those who are in the very middle of the spectrum have an equal match of both. The interesting thing is what we've found, the people that are in the center of the spectrum, they often live very repetitive, mundane, boring lives and they don't take a lot of risk. Therefore, there's not a a reward. So I still see those clients very often in my practice when they become empty nesters or if they get laid off because that sort of identity crisis that can ensue when everything that you've built your life around goes away, that's usually when the crisis comes in.

But for everybody else, you're typically oriented one way or the other. I'm very oriented towards situational awareness, and I can scan and read what you were thinking, but I would never put too much stock in trying to assume what that means about me. i'm just going to try to figure out how I have to show up to keep things moving in a good direction, right? Because everything for me is trying keep the peace, trying For somebody who's on the right side and they're very fixated on relational cues, they could miss everything that's happening in the environment because they are going to be like in their head, does he like me?

Am I talking okay? Does he think I'm articulate? Is he even going air this episode? All of a sudden, their brain is having this scaffolding of all these things because I am trying to figure out what you're thinking and how present do you think that person could be. They're not that present. They can't be present at all. In fact, when somebody is thinking like that, they're either exclusively in future worst case scenarios or they replaying the past to justify why they are projecting future, worst-case scenarios, but they almost never there.

Let me ask you this. If you're out, let's say at a happy hour restaurant or something like, are you, someone else or a group of people, like focus or are you looking at like the whole environment and seeing everything that's going on? I think how I am now is likely different than how i would have answered in my 30s because I've actually done this work on myself. If I went to early 30's busy I would've been acutely aware of everybody's facial expression monitoring everybody mood around me and I could because of the way my brain works I have really good memory recall so I tell you exactly what somebody said, but was I deeply present for what they were saying?

Probably. Yeah, that's kind of how I am. But like, I'm just like when I out and about and there's a lot of people, not necessarily there for saying, like I, um, just watching everything. Absolutely. You know, same. And it's just, what's your sign? That's very left side spectrum pattern. What did you say? What's you're saying like a astrological, Pisces, around like February, March, 19th. Wow. How about you? I mean, Aquarius. Yeah, I'm right on the cusp of Aries. And often in my early life, when I actually read horoscopes, that usually was more aligned with the Ares than the Pisces.

But I am a Pisce sun and moon. So I really I should be more Piscean than I than. I. Am. Interesting. Yeah. What effect does having a spiritual belief or religion have on that behavioral health, emotional regulation, et cetera? This is an interesting one. I can explain from my personal perspective and then also explain what the data says. Okay. Let's start with the An interesting phenomenon is that when somebody is raised with religion and they would self-describe being raised without religion as comforting, and this is actually part of our diagnostic evaluation, they historically have very poor outcomes in life.

when somebody was raised with religion and they designate that they had a conflicting experience with it, that tends to move them a little bit further to the left on the spectrum. When somebody reports that it was confusing, they're usually kind of more toward the center. So you and I would be naturally more likely to say conflicting if we were raised religion because there was a part of us that saw value in certain pieces,

Religion, faith, and family conflict 38:08

but maybe, and we go further in the diagnostic evaluation of what meanings you assign to it, if something was seen as hypocritical, or if it was done in one place, not the other, it wasn't congruent. The child's brain that's going to be more left side spectrum, they're going be looking for the gaps in understanding and what's not quite making sense, because that skepticism is something that has been already emerging in them in their brain pattern. So the interesting thing is, I think When skepticism happens at an early age and then that person finds their way back to God, profound shift, right?

Absolutely profound. And that was what happened to me. Yeah, that's what happen to to. Right. I was raised as a Catholic and that just wasn't it. You know, like now I go to the non-denominational church and, you know if it's not in the Bible, I don't pay attention. So I think this idea that religion is always the right thing to raise your kids with, I think is categorically false. And what I typically will explain to my clients is you should only raise your kids with a religious belief system that you wholeheartedly believe that are doing everything you can to make it congruent and that your not weaponizing against your kid.

Because especially from a biblical perspective, turning your child away from God is considered one of the worst things you could possibly do. I think the Bible explicitly says you might as well throw a millstone around your neck and go down to the bottom of a sea. And time and time again I see families who raise their kids in religion, but they actually turn their child from God. So in a way, I believe if you're not going to do it right and be really all in, you are almost better off not doing it and letting your child find their way back to God." Wow.

For that reason, we're Christians. I actually was raised Jewish.I had a personal encounter with Jesus when I was 19 that changed my life forever. Even trying to navigate through that in my family dynamic was really challenging because When you're raised as an intellectual on the East Coast as a Jew, believing in Jesus is like believing and Santa Claus. And I knew that I was going to get shamed for it radically. And there, this is funny, talking about impulsive commitment, because I knew that I was gonna eventually have to go home and find a way to reconcile my new faith with my family.

I decided so that wouldn't back out on it, I got a huge cross tattooed on my ankle. Oh wow. And I went home for the summer and my dad invited me to play in a golf tournament. Super hot, East Coast, we were going to an all Jewish country club and I am not even thinking about it. I come out in shorts and dad goes, Piz, what the F is that on your ankle? I was like, What do you mean? And then I looked down and was, Oh my God. I was like, weird story, I believe in Jesus now. And I got that tattooed on my legs so that I wouldn't back out of it.

He goes, go get some mother effing pants on and never talk to me about this again. I'm like okay. Put on some white linen pants, and go play. Really my dad and I, now I am 41. Now I think I probably like 18 or 19 when this happened. 19, we've never really talked about it ever since. The only thing he will say repeatedly is, You're an extraordinary kid and with everything bad that's happened in your life, the only thing I can think when I look at what your is become is that it must in part be your belief system around God.

So he acknowledges that piece of it, but he's not willing to go there. But we take that really seriously with our kids at home. I have four kids and I actually pulled my oldest son out of a Christian school because they were teaching him something that to me is very counter to what I want him to know about Jesus. And I think that's the type of parenting that we need right now, where if you're doing it intentionally, you've got to walk that all the way out. And she was trying to shame him over a little, they were in probably third, second or third grade, and they had a policy that you are not allowed to talk about crushes.

A little girl out on the playground was like, so-and-so told me you have a crush. He's like yeah, I do have crush on you. It was that simple and innocent. and he lost his lead role in the musical. They told him he was doing the devil's work. you better believe i got my ass right in there and i was like first of all this is not what we're teaching my child about jesus today that he's gonna lose his lead in the musical for being honest with somebody in a very innocent sweet way so those are just if you're gonna raise your kids with religion you've got to be i think really intentional about it that's a powerful message elizabeth you know we live in our allopathic traditional medical system.

I want to talk about what we're currently doing when it comes to behavioral health. We live in this very algorithmic, pharmaceutical-driven system, medical systems. What is the true problem with our behavioral-health system now in what you've developed? How does that change things? Number one, most of our behavioral health system in particular, talk therapy, psychotherapy, is based on self-reporting, which is a fallacy in and of itself. We are incapable of accurately self reporting. And if that is the primary, I'm going to put data for those of you that are listening and putting data in air quotes.

If that was our primary data source, we've completely lost the plot. add one layer on top of that, now you also have the practitioner's bias and their own subjective lens in their brain pattern. So they're now trying to observe something through their subjective one. We've got now two skewed data sources, none of which are giving us what's actually going on with the person. We don't have enough data in the mental health space at large right now. And we have containers that are absolutely built around financial and emotional co-dependence.

It's a see you next week model in almost every place that you go. Keep something in business. Yeah, exactly. Similarly with pharmaceuticals. Many people will take a Western pharmaceutical and then there's a downstream effect for that. And then guess what? Oh, well, there is medication for them. So then people end up on these clusters of pharmaceuticals, all to suppress symptoms, none of which are treating the root cause. I find many pharmaceutical interventions from the psychiatry space to be doing much of the same.

and I'm not a psychiatrist, but I've had these conversations with many psychiatrists. Have you met Dr. David Rubin? I haven't. fantastic, you should meet him when you're in Austin in a couple weeks. I was on his podcast, The Psychedelic Report, and we were talking about this, he also talked about it on my podcast Decoded. Many of the interventions that are done in psychiatry are largely unwarranted, they're never actually going to solve the problem. In the mental health space, we also spent many years claiming that chemical imbalances were a thing.

Now to find out, not only are they not a think, but no one ever announced that. And I think that's something that we see in the academic space in general. We roll out all these theories, everyone comes behind in academic system and then we just, you know, whatever the theory or the approach of the day is that gets the financial backing, Everyone just has to get on board with that and we build everything underneath that paradigm. We've found and proven that chemical imbalance theory is inaccurate, but they didn't make an announcement.

If you were to ask random people on the street if chemical imbalances are what cause mental illness, most of them would say yes. But we know that's not true. So they don't have to do a large scale retraction. They just get to slowly walk it back, hide the data, et cetera. I think what my work proves with brain pattern mapping is that there is a chemical component to it, but the chemical components doesn't precede the problem. It's not the cause of the problems, it's actually an effect of problem itself.

So we're currently, for the most part, we are currently treating it chemically. Would you say that's more sedative? So there's two options here in the traditional space. chemical intervention, more the psychiatry approach, or narrative-based talk therapy, psychotherapy approach. Often, they're somewhat coming alongside each other. Neither one of them gets to the root cause. And I think that this is true of where we've found ourselves with allopathy in general. Do the powers that be want us getting to the root cause?

I don't think so. I mean, I think now we're starting to see a shift. is not financially viable for a business model that has crashed into human health. If those two have intersected and they've become clustered together, we're never really going to be able to free ourselves because getting healed is Well,

Problems with behavioral health and the Break Method 47:48

that's one of the things with the whole MAHA movement is that recently, one other thing is they are implementing programs to get people off of these RSSI and getting off off them safely because it's making people worse. Oh, yeah. these kids get on it and are on for years and it causes a true further chemical imbalance from treating all of these issues with these chemicals. But it seems like they're missing something that they should implement in that program that you have. I agree with you. And I think with brain pattern mapping, the nine markers that we track.

It would help any practitioner understand what makes their client unique and how to uniquely work with that client. The nine markers help us understand how somebody sees the world, what their priority structure is, and how that impacts them biochemically. We have three primary biochemical markers that we track that help us understand what's happening as a downstream result of our perception of reality. So going back to that example of I could be at Grand Central Station at three o'clock in the morning, talking to a bunch of homeless people.

A lot of people, their nervous system wouldn't be able to handle that. They'd be shaking, they'd petrified. I'm super relaxed. At that point, I might as well have God, you know, lockstep with me because that's where I feel like I am at my best. If somebody else's nervous system is not programmed that way, they're going to be having a fear response and their whole body is going be coursing in their sympathetic nervous response, and I could be deeply and parasympathetic having conversations about God with a homeless person.

So we have to understand how your brain is labeling reality and how that impacts you biochemically and it's going move through that three phase cycle, early, transitional and late stage. The next four markers that we track are how your biochemical responses translate into physically observable behavior. And this is why I've always thought this was funny because to me, going back to my early childhood, I had mapped it so much in my mind as a child, but to be it just felt normal. And then when I became older, i realized, oh, other people don't think like me.

I'm weird. Like I am an outlier because I'd be able to anticipate somebody's behavior. They do this and then they're going to shift here. The next thing that's going happen is this. and the average person actually reacts as if it's completely shocking. i mean, ive dealt with couples who've been married for 25 years. who are still reacting shock to something that's been happening for 25 years. How does that happen? Well, it's because these self-deception blinders cause you to think that something is going to happen that would never happen, historically has never happened.

But it is all an effort to kind of get you that dinkling carrot. This is kind the whole piece that I think if you translate the information that brain pattern mapping has to give to a practitioner, I would be able to tell you whether someone's gonna stick to their program or not. Let's say that you give somebody this like four steps program that requires them to take pills, change their diet, I'd be will tell every single person that's going to do it and not do. I'll tell who's is going do really well out of the starting gate and who is eventually going fall off.

I'll tell you who's going to be really slow to start. But once they finally turn the engine over, they're going stick with it for the rest of their lives. You can see all of that in brain pattern mapping. And the value there is you can then tailor what you're giving them to who that person is and how they need to receive something. Right. I don't know anybody else that's actually doing that right now. More than that, we'll be able to tell exactly what the root cause is of all their problems. We can get to it in 30 minutes.

Man, I want to experience this myself. That's amazing. Now you have a technology, a wearable that you've created for this as well, too. I want to talk about that. Okay. It's not out yet. Comes out next year. Can we talk a little bit? Yeah, we can talk about that. That's fine. I trust your audience to talk. What is it about? The predictive algorithm is out in market. Anyone can do that now. The wearable pairs with the predictive algorithms. And then it uses the methodology of break method within the app and the wearables interface.

That's going to be really exciting. It's so exciting building a truly unique wearable that is not like anything else on the market. it's an undertaking you guys even just, you know, I think a lot of people have a tendency to go to a manufacturer and white label or change a couple things and we're building it literally from scratch. And the amount of back and forth and all that in the actual, I don't even know what you would call it, from the 3D printing to all the little mechanics, it's crazy how many iterations you have to go through.

We had one batch that was shipped to us and going through customs, they broke the whole thing apart because they thought they were bombs. Oh wow. Or some sort of explosive. So we got literally pieces and we're like, well, that prototype's not working. We can't use that one. Let me ask you this. What has been more difficult? You actually studying people and coming up with all the data to create these systems and processes that you have or dealing with this, the traditional system that gives you a little bit of backlash on what you've developed.

I feel like I was uniquely suited to handle backlash without losing my mind because I felt like my whole life from my mom was backlash. So I do feel I'm uniquely to be able to go head to head with a big system and it doesn't scare me and I don't find it that challenging. In particular because, I know that what I am saying is true and that it's built on something that if anyone broke it open and looked at its pieces, it would hold up. And I think for some people, if they don't feel confident in what they've built or it's partially borrowed or taken from something else, or even just having learned it through some sort of academic paradigm where you're just really borrowing on theories to build something.

I feel like then the risk of exposure maybe feels more profound and maybe puts you into a nervous system dysregulation. I encourage anyone that wants to counter me to go for it because I know I'm ready for, I was built for this. And I'm not afraid, I've gone against other systems before in my life and I truly care more about helping humanity break free than I care about being liked. I think any true innovator that is trying to solve a problem for humanity You have to be OK with not being liked. I mean, not to get conspiratorial, but I think up and to a point you have.

To be okay with being targeted, you. Have to. Be OK. With I don't know, maybe being whacked at this point. When are you going to start walking around with private security? Maybe I already have private. Security, Sam. We're not there yet, But I. Think the idea here is for anybody who is the real deal, who's actually doing something for the right reasons and not just because they want to make money. You have to grapple with this idea, because I've seen the future. I know what this is going to be, and I now what it's going do.

And I have been in it for 12 years at this point. I know what I have and I what it's worth. I've had to grapple with those things before. And I feel like in order for me to get to where I am now, I almost had make peace with these things and be okay with any of those potential outcomes and that all of these would have been worth it for helping humankind actually level up. One of the things that we say about Predictive Mind is that it's helping humanity create emotional intelligence at scale. Right now there's nothing scalable that can do what we do right now for humanity.

And if every single person had access to this information and they had even a simplified way of doing things differently, our world would look extremely differently. And for that reason, I know the future of this outside of the tech piece is that this has to be integrated in the education system. So I think my long-term career would be trying to figure out a way politically and through policy to get this integrated into the school system because really the people who need it the most are kids, in particular middle school, and I really think that if we're able to give this information to middle-schoolers, their life trajectories would be so much different.

And that's the core of our future. It is and I, as a parent of four children, I look at every single moment of every day with my child as they science experiment where I can what can I do to help you become the absolute most badass adult that's ever existed. And time and time again, when people meet my kids, usually it's Holy shit, like what? How did you do that? And it is because I now know from parsing through this data for 12 years, I know precisely what toggles have to be pulled to get my kid exactly where they need to.

And, it's the right balance of softness and love. My child knows, especially my son Zev that's with me. he knows that my love for him is completely unconditional and unending. But he also knows, I'm gonna call that little shit on any bad thing he does, and I've never gonna lie to him and he loves it. Because he doesn't often it's a trade off. It's either one or the other, right? You kind of like bullshit your kid into thinking that they're better at things that are because you don't want to hurt their feelings.

and they know that you love them. He knows that he doesn't have to be a certain way or perform a way to get my love, but I also want him to reach his full capacity. And I know what he's capable of, and I push the hell out of my kids, That's powerful. So before we wrap up, and I know the team is pushing me. You see, you got to get to the airport, I believe.

Wearable technology, backlash, and future vision 57:58

Um, so Steven Barlet came out with these from the diary of the CEO came up with this conversation card. I want you to open that up. Grab a random card, read it and answer it. Okay. Oh, okay. The card says, can you describe what winning means to you? Winning to me is a fulfillment of something I committed to, and that doesn't necessarily have to be monetary, there doesn' have be a prize attached to it. Anytime I commit to something and I know what I want and know the sequence to get there, When I've completed those steps, to me that's a win.

And to be honest, that win for me could be being really tired and I'm burnt out, but I know I don't want to wake up to a dirty kitchen in the morning when I actually am able to overcome myself and my preference to go get in bed and deal with it in morning, which is my natural brain pattern preference of just being like, whatever, I'll deal that tomorrow. when I can actually override my instinct and I. Can get the thing done that I know is going to have payoff in the morning. And I wake up in. The morning to a fresh, perfect kitchen.

I'm like. That's hell yeah, that is a win. So I, you know, wins can be monetary. Wins can. Be watching your kid accomplish something that you worked your ass off to get them to learn how to do. and. Think very often we think of winning paired with dopamine and chasing a dangling carrot. And I think it's all wrong. If we think of winning as fulfillment and accomplishment of a completed task that we worked our asses off for, a lot of us could be winners all the time. And a lotta those small wins create the big win.

Amen. So amazing. Elizabeth, if someone listening or viewing this podcast truly resonates with today's message, what is that lasting? I've worked with people who have struggled with severe mental illness and been in and out of institutions for the better part of their adult life. I worked some of the top 1% highest ranking people in the investment and private equity world. Every single one of you has a pattern of self-deception. that holds you back in some facet of your life, if not multiple. You don't have to be mentally ill in air quotes in order to seek help.

And I think that's something that we do so differently is break method helps you optimize who you are in your emotional intelligence. It's not only for the broken. Sure, we work with the broke and all the time, but you don' have t be broken to do it. In fact, I think for all intents and purposes, when I really started to embark on this work personally, I wouldn't have ever saw myself as broken, but has my life changed profoundly as a result? Absolutely. So I thing shifting that idea for people that I only have to reach for something like if I'm in my brokenness or if struggling, for some of you, your life might look perfect on paper, you're probably crushing it, maybe you are taking all of your biohacking stacks or doing all those things, there is still something for every single one of you to gain by understanding what magic trick is currently being pulled on you.

And once you start to pull back the curtain and you see what it is, most people are able to overcome those patterns very quickly. The work that I do does not take a long time. And I think that's one of the other counters with traditional therapy is this idea that you do see you next week for years. With me, you're in and out in less than four months, and I don't ever want to see again other than to high five you and be happy for you. But there's no next level, there is no other way to hook you with marketing.

anyone in the business industry is like, so how are you going to like increase their LTV? And I'm like I want to trust God on that one. And we're not going increase the LV.

Winning, final advice, and closing remarks 1:01:58

We're just going wave at them as they go live their best life. If people want find you, how can they find? Best place to start is PredictiveMind.io. And you can also find me on Instagram. My handle is at fizzygold, B-I-Z-E-G-O-L-D. I am currently going through a name change to take on my husband's last name, even though we've been married for seven years. So my website is currently Elizabeth McKay, and Elizabeth was with an S, not a Z. Any of those places, I'm active on the Instagrams. Awesome, which we'll have everything listed down below.

Elizabeth, it was a pleasure having you. And when we launch the wearable I'll certainly come back and debut with you guys. I love it. Let's do it amazing. Thank you Guys you heard Elizabeth Number one, you don't have to be sick to do better, right? You can optimize yourself and optimize your health, optimize the brain. You didn't just optimize performance. So there's different things you heard about the break break method. And these are certain steps that you have take, but you to understand it.

Make sure you take this podcast, share it with someone that it's going to resonate with today's message. Make sure you like, subscribe, do all that fun stuff and we'll see you for the next one. Awesome. Thank you so much.