Dr. Daniel Siegel: Mental Health, Connection & AI | Guest Co-Host Patricia Freebery, LMFT

**Daniel Siegel** (0:00)
We've gone down a pathway of mistaken identity that happened starting 2,500 years ago with Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, who said, our mental lives are only up in our heads. That was wrong. It's much bigger than the individual brain.
And, you know, I've gotten a lot of pushback, but, you know, it's just more emotional than anything else, but it's not academic, really.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:45)
If someone has a problem with substance use disorder, please call One Call Placement. That's 888-831-1581.
And if we can't help you, we'll make a referral to someone who can. Please, We're Out of Time. One Call Placement is affiliated with Carrera Treatment Wellness and Spa and One Method Treatment Centers.

**Richard Taite** (1:07)
Today is a very special episode, because we're joined by Dr. Daniel Siegel, one of the world's leading experts on the brain, relationships, trauma, and human development, and who I believe is the world's greatest living psychiatrist. Dr. Siegel is a psychiatrist, clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, bestselling author of numerous books, including Mindsight and The Whole Brain Child, and the founder of Interpersonal Neurobiology, a groundbreaking framework that has transformed how clinicians, educators, and mental health professionals understand healing, attachment, and human connection. At Carrera Treatment, many of the principles that guide our work align closely with Dr. Siegel's teachings, which makes this conversation especially meaningful to me. And so today, co-hosting with me is Patricia Freebery, the Executive Clinical Director at Carrera Treatment. Patricia has spent more than two decades helping individuals and families recover from trauma, addiction, and emotional suffering.
She's widely regarded as one of the most respected clinical leaders in the addiction treatment field, and not only brings a unique perspective to today's discussion, she also happens to be the best clinician I've ever met. Dr. Siegel, it is truly an honor to have you with us. Thank you for being here.

**Daniel Siegel** (2:41)
Thank you so much.

**Richard Taite** (2:43)
Doctor, I'm going to jump right in, okay?

**Daniel Siegel** (2:46)
Sure.

**Richard Taite** (2:47)
You've spent decades studying the mind, relationships, trauma, and healing. When you look at where people are struggling today, what concerns you most?

**Daniel Siegel** (2:59)
What concerns me most is that our modern culture has given us a message that who you are at your core is your individual identity. You know, Richard, you're Richard, Patricia, you're Patricia, I'm Dan, and we're in these separate bodies.
And that's where we have our subjective experience, our perspective, what we act on behalf of agency. And if you put all those together, it's the acronym SPA, the spa of who we are. And I think that that message, while you may say, of course, who you are, your identity is the individual, that's who you are. But if the self is actually this spa of experience, we are missing out on the relational aspect of who we actually are. And that relational aspect has a feeling to it, a subjective experience, a perspective, and even when you act on behalf of something. So I think that's actually one of the biggest traumas is the unrecognized lie that your full identity is your individuality. And when we try to live through that, people are not only disconnected and alone, they find it hard to find joy and happiness and a feeling of belonging.

**Patricia Freebery** (4:20)
It's just so true. I know that you have done a lot of in your earlier years anthropological work with studying some ancient wisdom teachings, and I've had the privilege to work with some cultures in South America and Africa, and the Native American tradition. What reminds me is their phrase, Mitakwea Oweosan, we are all related.
And in the Mayan culture also, I just love that phrase. One guy will be on one side of the forest, yelling out, Ilaqe, and the other guy will yell, Ilaqe, I am you, you are another me. And at the core is, as you talk about, how the integration is just embedded in these indigenous cultures. How have we lost that in ours?

**Daniel Siegel** (5:06)
You know, I think there was a time, not so long ago, a few hundred years ago, when people started thinking in these kind of reducing kinds of ways. It certainly happened in science, but it also happened in modern culture, where we could say, who you are is just this bodily skin encased vessel, and you need to live life according to that master belief, that you are your body. Instead of, as you beautifully just said, the wisdom traditions of indigenous cultures, and also deep contemplative practices, when you do deep meditation inward, you realize, whoa, inward is just part of a much larger story, and indigenous cultures from all over the world have been teaching this for thousands of years, and modern culture has just forgotten that truth.