How to Quiet the Ruminative Mind and Avoid The Traps of Self-Help — Tim Ferriss

You want to play soccer, but first you're going to read all the textbooks and get a master's degree and PhD in soccer. And then you're going to practice dribbling and penalty shots and so on by yourself. And you want to become as perfect a player as possible by yourself before you ever actually get on the field and play the game of soccer. And you can start to believe that you're playing soccer by yourself. There's always more room for improvement. You're never going to be perfect. And if you get caught in that trap, which is the partial trap of self-help, you're always polishing this self and you never actually play soccer.

Thank you, sir. Nice to be back. Nice to see you.

That is both a deceptively simple and complex question. My answer, thankfully, is really straightforward. Better than ever. I feel absolutely fantastic. We could dive into how and why that's the case if you'd like. But I would say, keeping it short and sweet for the moment, I would say fantastic, better than ever. Mind, body, soul, psycho, emotionally, muscular, skeletally. Really feeling holistically very good, optimistic, and we could keep going. So I'll let you take that anywhere you'd like to.

Mhm. Yeah, I would say a few things. So one of the risks of personal development, or let's just call it more broadly self-help, is that it can very easily become self-infatuation or self-obsession. And the counterbalance to that, the bet that offsets it, is very simple: relationships. Really doubling down, tripling down on relationships. We are evolved to be a social species. And whenever you are in isolation physically or simply in thought loops in your own head, that tends to catalyze or worsen tremendously any type of instability or OCD or depression or anxiety or fill-in-the-blank psychiatric condition. So my policies, which were already in place last time we spoke, that I have really continued to invest into, are doing a past-year review every year, looking at my top relationships that are nourishing, energizing, energy in as opposed to energy out, and then blocking out time in advance for the entire year for extended periods of time with those people. Now, extended will depend on your circumstances. For me, that could be anywhere from a long weekend to a week, spending, say, five days in the wilderness in Montana with some of my oldest, closest friends, etc., etc. And that will do. Not to denigrate therapy in any way, but sometimes talking more about your problems, if it were to solve all of your problems, would have worked already. And there's a place for talk therapy. There's a place for talk therapy, but it is not, nor does it need to be, the only tool in the toolkit. So simply spending time around your silly, dumb, amazing friends and laughing, whether it's around a bottle of wine or a meal or a campfire, really, really goes a long way. So that's one piece of it.

Second piece is to maybe hit a familiar thread: very consistent meditation, typically twice daily, ten minutes, very, very straightforward in my case. And then also, if we're going out to the edges a bit, technologically speaking, there is something that some of your listeners may have never heard of, which is accelerated TMS. TMS stands for transcranial magnetic stimulation. It's a type of brain stimulation that has existed for decades. But the hardware and the software, everything about these technologies, has improved dramatically in the last five to ten years, particularly in, I would say, the last five years, thanks to certain researchers like Nolan Williams out of Stanford, who sadly passed away in the last six months, and others. But what accelerated TMS looks like is typically up to, let's just call it maybe one or two years ago. Accelerated TMS takes what you might do in conventional TMS over several months, where you go in and you have this paddle put against your head. It produces a magnetic field that, just to keep it very simple, either excites or inhibits certain parts of your brain, certain types of circuitry. And that can be applied to depression, it can be applied to neurodegenerative diseases. In fact, in some cases, it can be applied to anxiety, OCD, and so on, depending on the target where you place these coils. And in the case of accelerated TMS, you're taking what you might do over three, four, five months and you're compressing it into one week. So every hour on the hour, ten hours a day for one week, you're going in and getting, let's just call it a few minutes, three to nine minutes of pulses on your brain. And then you take fifty minutes off, you go back in, you get hit again. And that has been referred to, at least in one format, the SAINT protocol. S-A-I-N-T. They've shied away from it, but it was developed at Stanford. And the SAINT protocol in many, let's call them, patients produces seventy, eighty percent remission of depression that is quite durable. It's not one shot, you're done. Typically, people will, let's just say, do a five-day sequence. Then they might go in and have one- to three-day booster sequences three months, six months later. And this technology has tremendous effects. I've experimented with this over the last handful of years, and the first time I did it, it had near-miraculous results. I went from having severe, and I've been officially diagnosed, so this is not just throwing it around loosely, but you know, moderate-severe OCD with lots of rumination. I'm not flipping light switches or washing my hands, but I have these ruminative loops that I get caught in. People, I'm sure some listening can identify with this, where you just can't turn off these kind of compulsive thought loops. Could be a grudge, could be a fear, could be something you're planning for, could be a conversation you need to have. It just loops and loops and loops, which causes insomnia, which causes fatigue and just general, the general wearing down of the system, which leads to depression. That's, I've realized that's my sequence. It actually starts with anxiety, not depression out of the gate. And I was having, let's just call it seven, eight out of ten symptoms when I went in to the first treatment I did of five days. That's really severe for people who are not clear. Like, it's really, really severe. Like, it's affecting every aspect of my life. Had the treatment, there was a delayed onset. And even the scientists most involved with this don't really have a great explanation for how or why this would happen. But nothing really happened for two, three weeks, and then flipped a switch and had basically zero anxiety, zero rumination for, let's call it, three to four months. I've never experienced anything like it. And that includes psychedelic-assisted therapies, which I know very well and have supported a lot of science underlying. Now, this is a bit of a long answer, I realize, but for people who are interested, I really recommend the conversation I did with Nolan Williams. Then there are different types of hardware. But I tried it then with boosters several times afterwards. Null effect. Zero. Didn't work.

And I started to lose hope again because I thought this was going to be a replicable, reliable tool that I could use. I was so excited. And then I did a hail mary, kind of last-ditch round with the accelerated TMS recently. I did this in Northern California. And instead of doing five days, so keep in mind it's like, let's just call it three months of TMS gets compressed into five days. Instead of doing five days, I did one day, but I pre-dosed with something called desloratadine. And desloratadine, or DCS as it's sometimes referred to in the literature, is in many ways an antiquated antibiotic that used to be used for tuberculosis and sometimes urinary tract infections, which affects the NMDA receptors in such a way. I think it's a partial antagonist. It might be an agonist, so don't quote me on it. But the point is this little drug that is not typically used anymore is a catalyst for neuroplasticity. And when you take this beforehand, you can do something like one day of accelerated TMS. And sometimes the results are better than what you previously, let's just call it seven years ago, would get from three, four months. And I did one day, and Dan, this time around, boom, it was just like a switch basically the next day. And it has now been two or three months, and I don't want to set expectations that it'll be this way for everyone. It seems to be particularly effective, yes, for depression, but it seems to be particularly effective in a very small sample size at this point for anxiety and OCD. And man, it's just a different life. It is a different life. So all of those things in combination, plus the basics, right, the kind of basic macronutrients of health, exercise, etc., etc., etc., diet and so on, are just doing their job together. The last one I'll throw in, and then I'll shut up because I realize this has turned into a TED talk, is intermittent ketosis. So the ketogenic diet and ketosis overall, which can be achieved a few different ways, which I'm in right now, is absolutely phenomenal for addressing a lot of psychiatric pains, psycho-emotional pains that are failing to be treated by medication. And there's something called metabolic psychiatry. Chris Palmer out of Harvard and others have looked at this very closely. All right. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

All right, we'll do.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Yeah, it is impossible, I think, to overstate the difference between an eight out of ten of nonstop ruminative monkey mind with a fixation on things that are anxiety-producing to getting to like a one or two out of ten. Like, those are two different lived experiences. They are so far apart from each other. It's really remarkable.

Magnetic stimulation. Mhm.

All right. I'm happy to tackle that with, as you said, the disclaimer. I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on the internet, but I do spend a lot of time in these waters. So what I'll say is that the evidence for TMS broadly, there are decades of evidence with different applications of TMS. And then as we look at accelerated TMS, there's actually, I would say, a very compelling body of evidence. Once we get into the vanguard, which is always risky, right? You don't necessarily want to be one of the first hundred monkeys shot into space, but in this particular case, the pain was great enough that I decided to opt in. Then you're getting into the bleeding edge, which is this desloratadine, DCS plus TMS. That's very much at the outer reaches. I would say, at least based on the clinic that I went to, and maybe overall for all I know, I am one of perhaps sixty patients with OCD/generalized anxiety disorder who have been treated that way. So it's a very small number. In terms of accessibility, there are, let me start from the top in no particular order, but I'll just say that there's a hardware stack. So the two companies that I'm most familiar with, which make hardware that I've used myself, are Brainsway, that's one company, and then another one is MagVenture. And the hardware are different, but I know people who have responded very well to both of them, right? So you can vet certain providers, I would say. Not saying this is the only way. I'm not saying it's fair. Perhaps there are other technologies out there, but there, as you would expect, is a fair bolus of fly-by-night operations that are promising miracles and offering, quote-unquote, TMS that is actually not following any protocol whatsoever. And I think that's very unethical. But Brainsway, MagVenture are two types of hardware. And then you really want to look, it is available, is the short answer. Accelerated TMS is available in a lot of major cities. It is not as widely distributed as I would like because it is generally not covered by insurance. Accelerated TMS is generally not covered. TMS, let's just call it conventional TMS, is often covered by insurance depending on the indication. But accelerated TMS, where you're basically taking a week off work and just getting your brains zapped ten hours a day for five days straight, typically not covered. And part of why I'm so excited about the implications, if the data scale and are robust and show comparable or superior results with this pre-administration of this drug, is that the ability of anyone, whether they are average, less financially stable, or very well-heeled, of taking one day off of work is not only logistically so much easier if they're able to pre-administer with this DCS, but it should be much less expensive. Right? So I'm hoping, even if people have to pay out of pocket, that these breakthroughs, hopefully they're breakthroughs with combination therapies of TMS, accelerated TMS, and desloratadine, will really make it much more widely available. That's my hope. It's going to take a little while, but it is available. I know there are clinics in, for instance, New York. I know there are clinics in California and Chicago that are credible. They may exist in other places as well.

Oh, for sure. And I think there were a few different reasons for that. I don't know if hindsight's 20/20, but I think it's easier to see from my vantage point now that, and it's a balancing act because there's compulsive socializing because you are incredibly uncomfortable or afraid of being alone or with yourself, right? There's compulsive socializing to distract yourself, like protect yourself from yourself, which is problematic. And then there's compulsive isolation. And I would say I probably leaned far more towards the compulsive isolation. And there were two reasons for that. One was workaholism back in the day, for sure. And I just felt like I was more effective, able to produce, more able to focus on business, finances, whatever it might be, in isolation. And there might be some truth to that. Then I would say there was also this belief that I think at the time was really implicit. I don't think I explicitly grasped it, which was, and I've written this incredibly long essay that maybe I'll publish at some point, but talking about some of the dangers of self-help. And one of them is the following, which ties into what we're talking about and leaning towards isolation. This implicit belief, or explicit, that you need to work on yourself and fix yourself and, quote-unquote, do the work, and then you'll be ready to interact with other people and have a significant relationship and engage with your family if that is an option or you want it to be an option, etc., etc. So in effect, the analogy that I've drawn for some friends is you want to play soccer, but first you're going to read all the textbooks and get a master's degree and PhD in soccer. And then you're going to practice dribbling and penalty shots and so on by yourself. And you want to become as perfect a player as possible by yourself before you ever actually get on the field and play the game of soccer. And you can start to believe that you're playing soccer by yourself. There's always more room for improvement. You're never going to be perfect. And if you get caught in that trap, which is the partial trap of self-help, you're always polishing this self. And it can become this real recursive, dangerous trap, this fixation on the self. And you never actually play soccer. And at a point you start to believe that you are, but you're not. You're simulating by yourself life, but not actually engaging with life. And I have, who knows, maybe this is a function of getting older. I don't think so necessarily, but for so many decades I was interested in the cutting edge, the cutting edge of everything. And I still am, but I've become interested equally in things that have lasted millennia or more than millennia. And I recommend if you're trying to learn how the latest LLMs differ from one another, etc., you also spend some time looking at evolutionary biology and studying the things that we have evolved to optimize for, to experience. And man, it's just like, I think it was Reaganomics, right? It's the economy, stupid. It's the relationship, stupid, right? If you don't have, like, physical contact with people, if you don't have these in-real-life physical experiences, if you model that in animals, they become a complete disaster, right? They exhibit the same types of behaviors that we now see spiking in humans: anxiety, depression, lethargy, sitting in a cage, not doing anything. Like, we need this type of contact. So I'd say that I've sort of offset the bleeding edge with the very, very super dull edge of things that have lasted a long time.