The Brain Rot Dr: We're ALL Getting More Narcissistic!

Alok Kanojia (0:00)

This is the whole problem that everyone makes. Anytime we have a problem, the first thing that we do is we try to jump to a solution. If I'm unhappy in life, I need to make more money. If I'm struggling with dating, I need to be sexier. It's a concept that I call toxic fuel, and that will never work. Because if I give you a glass of water, and then I piss it, and then I add sugar, it doesn't remove the piss. Because no amount of building something good will remove something back. In order to change behavior, what you need to do is...

Steven Bartlett (0:26)

Save the tree. Dr. K is the Harvard-trained psychiatrist, and former monk specializing in modern mental health.

SPEAKER_3 (0:32)

Blending neuroscience with real life wisdom to help millions of people unlock their true potential.

Alok Kanojia (0:36)

There's a loneliness epidemic, social anxiety is increasing, and falling in love seems harder. But we have all the answers. The problem is that everyone is doing the wrong things now. First of all, talking about our problems can absolutely make things worse, because there's a particular way we have to talk, but we're not taught how to do that. The second thing is that we are struggling to fall in love, and that's actually because we're exhausting our dopamine through things like devices. Yeah, people don't realize. And then the rise in social anxiety is because everyone is texting. So the parts of our brain that reassure us in social situations are starting to rust. So there are core things that we have to start doing. So the first is that...

Steven Bartlett (1:12)

Dr. K, why don't people achieve their goals?

Alok Kanojia (1:14)

Now, this is really interesting. There are two kinds of people in life. There are people who like, I'm going to advance towards my goals. And then there are the rest of us who are like, you know, I'm trying to be like these people who are productive. But I'm going to do nothing. And trauma is the big difference here.

Steven Bartlett (1:26)

Really?

Alok Kanojia (1:27)

Yeah. And this is what tends to happen. So...

Steven Bartlett (1:36)

Okay, if you had to summarize what you do for people, professionally, how would you summarize it?

Alok Kanojia (1:46)

I help them understand themselves.

Steven Bartlett (1:49)

And now expand for me, what that means.

Alok Kanojia (1:52)

Yeah, so here's the thing, right? So there are two great traditions that have taught us about how humans work. One tradition is spirituality, which we've had for a couple thousand years. The other tradition is science, which we've seen an explosion of, especially in the fields of neuroscience and psychiatry over the last 20 years. And so these are the two places that human beings learn about themselves. So when I work with someone, what I try to do is draw on both of those traditions. And I especially focus on the area of spirituality that has scientific verification and teach people how they work. So in the same way that if we think about when you buy a car, you have like a manual that is in the glove compartment that tells you what everything is and how it works. The problem is that in life, like we don't have that manual for ourselves, but we do have these two great traditions that can teach us so much about this stuff. And so what I try to do is basically translate those two traditions to an individual, the situation they face, the challenges they face, and the goals that they want to achieve.

Steven Bartlett (2:57)

And what experiences and work are you drawing on to arrive at the conclusions and the support that you give people? What have you done in your life? What experiences have you had? How many patients have you seen?

Alok Kanojia (3:08)

The first experience that I draw on is my own. So I struggled a lot in high school, college, failed out of college, was addicted to video games, had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Then I went to India at the age of 21 to find myself, and I found myself. I spent about seven years studying to become a monk. So that was very, very formative in helping me see how human beings work. But then I was really like kind of skeptical of a lot of that stuff. So I started doing neuroscience research for a couple of years. I had a couple of spiritual experiences, and I was super curious, like, what is happening in the brain? I'm starting to change as a human being, but that has to be at a neuroscientific level as well. Then I ended up going to medical school. So I was thinking about how can I learn the most about human beings. So I considered doing a PhD in neuroscience, but ultimately went the medical route because the brain exists within the body. Became a doctor, became a psychiatrist, because the mind was my favorite organ. Trained at Harvard Medical School, where I was faculty for a few years. Then over the last couple of years, I've focused a lot on addiction psychiatry, and also performance-based stuff. So once we understand, okay, I once had a patient, for example, who came in after about two and a half years, and was like, Dr. K, I'm still depressed. And then I assessed them, right? So when someone has like a mood disorder, they have like depression, which causes them problems in their professional life, causes them problems in their personal life. And I asked them, are you having problems in your professional life? And they're like, no. Are you having problems in your personal life? They're like, no, but I still feel the same. And that's when I told them, I said, Mike, you're not depressed, you're unhappy and there's a difference. And then he turned to me and he's like, well, what do we do about that? And I was like, I don't know, but let's see if we can figure it out. So really the work that I do is on that whole continuum of pathology where something within you is broken. But then going from negative 100 to is what medicine does, right? A doctor is not going to help you become healthy. They're going to remove sickness.