Why We Keep Repeating the Same Mistakes & How to Break the Cycle with Carl Greer, PhD, PsyD

[00:00:00] Carl Greer: We all know for sure we're going to die. That's for sure. How soon are we going to die, and what do we want to do between now and the time we die? The work that I'm talking about doing can help one enter into those things a little bit more elegantly, with a little bit more agency, because they feel they're taking charge more.

[00:00:20] Dr. Melinda Ring: This is Next Level Health. I'm your host, Dr. Melinda Ring, Director of the Osher Center for Integrative Health at Northwestern University. On this show, we explore ways to take actionable steps towards optimizing our health with leaders in the integrative, functional, and lifestyle medicine fields who believe in science-backed and time-tested approaches to well-being. Let's take your health to the next level. So many of us are working hard to get healthy. As we try new diets, we promise ourselves more sleep. We download meditation apps, but despite all that, we can stay stuck in the same emotional patterns, old stories, and unhelpful habits. My guest today, Dr. Carl Greer, offers a powerful explanation for why so many people struggle to change and what it truly takes to create real and lasting transformation. Carl is a retired clinical psychologist, Jungian analyst, shamanic practitioner, philanthropist, and the author of several bestselling books on healing and personal transformation. His newest book, Go Within to Change Your Life, offers a practical and experiential guide for accessing what he calls our "hidden wisdom"—the deeper inner resources that can help us shift not just our mindset, but our entire life path. As a personal background, Carl and I first met years ago through my work here at the Osher Center for Integrative Health at Northwestern, where his support helps us bring education about holistic healing practices to medical students, expand integrative health access in underserved communities, and just rethink what true healing can look like beyond procedures and prescriptions. And over time, Carl has become not only a colleague, but a mentor and a dear friend. Many years ago I attended one of his shamanic retreats, and I had a profound experience that helped me explore patterns that were holding me back. And that experience continues to influence my own growth as a physician and just as a human being. So today we'll explore how turning inward can change your relationship with your body, your emotions, your purpose, and your health. Welcome, Carl.

[00:02:46] Carl Greer: Thank you, Melinda. Nice to be here with you.

[00:02:48] Dr. Melinda Ring: Let's just jump in with why do so many of us struggle to shift our habits or our direction in life, even when we really want to?

[00:02:55] Carl Greer: There are parts of all of us that clearly want to change. But I believe if we don't, there are clearly parts of us that don't want to change. Just like if you have ever heard somebody say—or say yourself—"Gee, why did I say that?" or "Why did I do that?" And I think the answer is because some part of us wanted to say or do that. So I think one way to facilitate change is to get in touch with those parts of us that don't want to change and work with them.

[00:03:34] Dr. Melinda Ring: Interesting. So it sounds like there's something internal that needs to get addressed, or that hasn't shifted yet into that place of readiness or change. And what you're saying is we need to identify, see that, and address that before we're going to be able to make lasting change. Is that accurate?

[00:03:53] Carl Greer: Yeah, exactly. And I would say that place where that is, in psychological terms, would be one's unconscious. It's unconscious to us, but it's accessible to us if we work with it in certain kinds of ways, which I've tried to describe in ways which you've experienced.

[00:04:12] Dr. Melinda Ring: Yeah. Personally right now, this idea... because you write about this idea of "going within," and that can sound really abstract. So what does it mean to go within in practice, and why do a lot of people just avoid that, do you think?

[00:04:29] Carl Greer: I think people avoid it because, in some cases, they don't really know how to do it and they may not believe that there's something other than what their ego is conscious of. But the gift to oneself is realizing that we're more than what we're conscious of and trying to work with those unconscious parts. I come from a Jungian tradition where the belief is that people have a personal unconscious where things we don't like to remember we repress, or we just don't remember them—all part of our personal experience. But Jung suggested that we also have a relationship to what he calls the "collective unconscious," which influences how we think, act, and feel in ways that we're not always aware of, but we can become aware of. So the inner work that I talk about is working with both realms—one's personal unconscious and one's collective unconscious—to have a new relationship to those energies so that the changes that have been so hard for us are more possible.

[00:05:42] Dr. Melinda Ring: You just brought two things to mind for me. So the first is, you know, you mentioned some people just don't know. Do you think other people have fear that blocks them from that idea of going within and exploring these sorts of things? Thinking things are good enough? "Maybe I don't want to uncover certain things." Maybe I don't wanna uncover certain things.

[00:06:03] Carl Greer: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, there's always the fear of the unknown. I mean, there are people that come to therapy and say, "I don't want to proceed any further because I'm afraid if I do, I'm going to be forced to change my job or divorce my partner." And they don't realize that the therapy's not going to make them do that. That's going to be a choice for them to make, but they don't want to even think about that possible choice. Part of your work, I think, is to get people to change to be healthier, but they have to then get over the notion that it is "good enough" or that if they change, bad things will happen.

Part of your work, I think, is to get people to change, to be healthier, but they have to then get over the notion that it is good enough, or that if they change, bad things will happen.

[00:06:48] Dr. Melinda Ring: Diet and behavior change feel a little more like they're external or they're physical. People are making those behavior changes based on physical optimization or improvement. But the work that you're doing when you're working within relates to that, because it helps stop some blocks that are keeping people from achieving it. But I think it can also have just a whole different experience of life, right? Like you're living a more limited life if you're not allowing yourself to open to connection to many different things, and intimacy and other things.

[00:07:31] Carl Greer: I believe that all these realms that you mentioned are connected. You know, your health, your relationships, your jobs, your connection to a higher power, your desire to give back to others. You know, all these things are connected, and as one realizes that they're connected and also experiences, if they're lucky, that we're part of a bigger picture, that can free one up to make changes that, again, they otherwise might not do. Then the question always is: "Well, how do you do that?"

[00:08:08] Dr. Melinda Ring: This Jungian approach, this idea of the personal and the collective unconscious—is it separate from this idea that we have different parts inside of us that we need to bring together and connect and acknowledge and honor?

[00:08:24] Carl Greer: It's the same. It's just a question of how one accesses and relates to those parts. And then, having had the conversation, like you and I are talking right now, we have to believe that there's some inner part that really exists and somehow feel that it has information for us. And then we must be able to shift our consciousness enough into that part when we ask it questions, so that that part can be responding to us as opposed to our part that's asking the question. And so there's a belief that has to be around that, and then there has to be an experience that that is so. And that's very difficult for people, particularly for the first time, because we want to tell that part what it's supposed to say from our ego. To allow it to speak through us is not easy, but it's always possible. I mean, if people really want to do that, I've never seen anybody that hasn't been able to. So you're having a conversation with some part of yourself that may be holding you back or may be giving you an insight as to why you're not making the changes that you want to. And that part can be not just another person or a voice; it can be a symbol or a color, with the notion that spirit and our larger allies don't always speak in sentences. You know, they may speak in terms of energetic symbols. Or all of a sudden you have an issue in your life that you're having trouble with and you become aware that, "Hey, I just saw a...caterpillar." What does that have to do with anything? But then you start to think. Maybe five people out of six wouldn't find any meaning in that caterpillar, but given the thing you're working on, all of a sudden, "Oh, think about that. Holy moly." And you do. And then it's useful information. I'm a believer that there's a lot of useful information around us and within us if we allow ourselves to explore it and listen to it and see it.

[00:10:40] Dr. Melinda Ring: One of the core practices you teach, and that I learned through you, is this idea of dialoguing. I guess you could dialogue with an emotion or you can dialogue with a symptom. Can you describe a little bit more about what it means to dialogue and why it can be more powerful sometimes than just trying to think or talk through a problem?

[00:11:05] Carl Greer: Because the part that's thinking or talking through a problem is still that part that we talked about in the very beginning of our conversation that wants to change but can't. It's the one that says, "Gee, why did I say that?" We want to get the counterpart to that, that can give us some information. And that's why it's interesting to talk to it. For example, you mentioned you talk to a symptom. You've got a shoulder that's bothering you. And you could say, "Well, it could be a labrum, it could be a rotator cuff." But hey, ask the pain, "Hey, what's going on? Can you give me any insights into anything?" And I don't know how that conversation could go, but it may not be in Western medicine terms. You might say, "I feel weighted down," or "I've got a lot of heavy stuff." All of a sudden you get other ways to think about it that give the person who does that work information from which they can choose to maybe make some changes. So it's not just, "I'm going to take my anti-inflammatories, I'm going to go to physical therapy," all of which would be very useful. But maybe there's some other things in their life that are connected to that in ways that they wouldn't realize unless they did some of this inner work.

[00:12:33] Dr. Melinda Ring: From a practical perspective, I know there are different ways that you can have this dialogue. One of the ways that you taught me—which feels very silly when you are first starting out—is to have a rock or some object that you sort of imbue with whatever it is you want to have this dialogue with and hold it. Sort of say like, "Okay, rock, you are this sadness that I have," or whatever it is, and even just put it on a chair and face it and say, "Rock, what message do you have for me?" and go back and forth in this way. Which can feel a little awkward the first time you do it. The other way that I had people do it too is just journaling back and forth, one voice to another. It's you asking a question and then shifting and saying, "Okay, now you're responding." And it's so fascinating because it's still coming from inside you, right? Like these ideas—everything is in you, and that's coming out. The rock is not magically talking to you. That idea of this wisdom that's in us... I'm just amazed again and again what comes up when they do that kind of work.

[00:14:01] Carl Greer: We do have a lot of wisdom within us, but we don't know that it's there or believe that it's there. But in some ways, who knows us better than anybody else? Really, maybe we're not always objective, but in some ways we know ourselves better than a lot of other people do. Now, do we fess up to ourselves who we really are and what's going on for us all the time in a completely honest way? No, that's self-protective. But at the core, we know ourselves pretty well. Not to say that to go to other people and say, "Gee, I have these problems, tell me what to do"—in some cases that is useful. But I think if one can pose that same question to those inner resources and we're telling ourselves what to do, just as you said, it's useful for some of the people you've done it with. It has a different impact on a person if it comes from themselves as opposed to somebody telling them what to do.

[00:15:01] Dr. Melinda Ring: When can people do work on their own versus when should they be seeking professional support? There's always the concern: "Well, what if something very traumatic comes up?" Is there any caution that people need to take when they're doing this work?

[00:15:15] Carl Greer: This doesn't happen frequently, but if you have a person that may be predisposed to psychotic issues, schizophrenia, or some of the other disorders with psychotic features, this inner work can unleash the unconscious against an ego that may not be completely able to quell it and handle it. And so the question is: "Do you treat that after you've had the experience?" which you can. If somebody's going to be psychotic, they're going to have triggers that are going to cause that. It's certainly something to be aware of, but I've felt very, very rarely has anybody done this work that's been detrimental to them.

[00:16:03] Dr. Melinda Ring: You also invite people to create an "inner guardian," a protective presence, before going inward. Can you talk a little bit about that and why that's an essential part of inner work?

[00:16:18] Carl Greer: In shamanic worlds, you have a "lower world journey" where you're looking at your past. Things can get stirred up because you're in an altered state and you're allowing things to come in that heretofore have not come in. That could be a little overwhelming, as I was saying, to your ego. So I invite people to check in with this guardian to see: "Is it a good day to do what we're talking about doing?" And in almost every case when I've worked with people, the guardian says yes. But not always. Sometimes it says no, for whatever reason. Then the person starts to get some muscles in this; you might ask, "Why not?" or "Is there anything I can do to make it a good day?" So you're starting to have the ability to deal with these parts of oneself or these feelings in ways that you didn't do before. And you may talk to that guardian and the guardian says, "No, come back another day, Carl." And respect that. And then you try it again. But you get a sense of, "Okay, maybe there are some things that I'm not really ready to get into right now. I'm not ready to have the conversation." Just like with a significant other or a partner—one of the partners may be ready to go, but for the other person, it's not a good time to talk. You don't want to use that as an excuse never to get into it, but you pick your times. You pick your times when it's not going to be so overwhelming.

[00:17:52] Dr. Melinda Ring: I've done these journeys with you and led them with my own kids, even though I am not a shaman. But I have found the journeys just to be a really beautiful way of opening up some of this information, accessing information. And you do share scripts for them in your books, like Change Your Story, Change Your Life and Change the Story of Your Health, that people can access and use. It is a really creative process and one that I think creates answers that are very different than traditional therapy. Shamanism just seems... it's certainly not a standard part of Western medicine at this point. I think people understand talk therapy; they can understand mind-body meditation, calming the stress system. But this idea of exploration through wisdom that you get through shamanic work, through Jungian psychology, etc., I think that's less common. And your books are just really nice entrées into that. It demystifies it and doesn't make it seem like something that's the occult or black magic. It's like, no, this is a true healing process and practice.

[00:19:17] Carl Greer: Therapy or any kind of healing work, I think, has the goal that you have a past with facts, but having them live within you differently so that in the present you make different decisions than you would have made had you not done the work on the past. Shamanic work helps you do that; traditional psychotherapy helps you do that. Behavioral modification, Jungian, Freudian, and Adlerian—they all help you so that the current decisions are less negatively impacted by the past. The other thing that shamanic work does—and Jungian does as well—is it has the belief that we all have a future, and that future has a certain probability distribution of happening. The shamans would say, "Yeah, but there are kind of infinite possibilities—small probabilities." Can we somehow energize a future that's a little bit more pleasing to you? And if you believe in spiritual work and any kind of religion, you know that there's a higher power. Not only pleasing to you, but that higher power... if you can lock into the "good, better, best" future for yourself, that energetic connection will also impact how you make decisions in the present. And at the end of the day, all we have in the present is choices, moment to moment. We want to think about the past all the time, we want to think about the... what do we want to make choices in the present that are good for us? For example, you had a tough day, and maybe you might have a glass of wine to relax. But I also know that maybe I tend to drink a little bit too much. And if one of the reasons that we eat and drink like we do is unresolved psychological things—as that is true for most of us—well, let's work on some of those. So then in that moment, we're as clear as we can be as to what the choice is. And if we're looking out for that future as to what that may be—looking at more than just the DNA that we're granted, more than our life experiences, all of which predispose us...and not just ours, but our grandparents and their grandparents and their grandparents. Everybody's kind of influencing how we're going to be at the margin in the future. Can we somehow be freer to make that present decision because of some of this inner work that we do?

[00:21:56] Dr. Melinda Ring: You mentioned that things can show up for people and they can have a meaning for a person. You know, like I've had people say that when they saw a bird, it really meant something to them where it wouldn't mean something to somebody else. Can you talk a little bit about that idea of archetypes and symbols and dreams, and how people can start to explore those and see them better to help shift real patterns in their life—whether it's, like you said, stress eating, or their own feelings about their own self-worth?

[00:22:46] Carl Greer: By taking time to reflect on your life in ways that you perhaps have not done before. In some of the things that you mentioned, if you look at your life, do you tend to have certain roles that you fall into? In the Jungian world, you could have different archetypes: there are helpers, there are healers, there are mothers. And so, are those roles happy for you? Or do people get a little bit overwhelmed by being helpers all the time, or mothers all the time? And the question is: "Do I take enough time to help myself or be a mother to myself?" And the answer is sometimes, "Yeah, that's probably true, but there's nothing I can do about it." Or if you're a business person, what are the roles? "Well, I'm the boss." Okay, well, what does that mean? "Well, I have to do this, that, and the other." And how does that work in other areas of your life? If you're the boss in all your intimate relationships with your kids and stuff, that has ramifications. So, how do you determine honestly what roles you identify with? What movies do you like? What characters do you identify with or disidentify with? What books do you read? What songs? What are the lyrics that kind of stir you up? People have had songs come to them at unbidden times that have been useful to them. So there are lots of things like that that are out there to give us an insight into the way some of these energies, which I'm just calling "archetypal," cast us in these roles. When we think about it, we wish that we had more fluidity around those things and were free of those roles. And then how does one get free, and maybe into the grip of another archetype, but more consciously? So I'm choosing to be this as opposed to being cast in it.

[00:24:50] Dr. Melinda Ring: Yeah, that's very interesting. Because I've sort of thought about it as analogous to... in my horoscope, I'm like, "Oh, I really identify with being a Libra," you know, the balance and all this. And so I read about it and I feel like I gain insight into myself. Of course, then I read this New York Times article that said, according to the dates, I'm not a Libra, I'm actually a whole different sign, which completely messed up my world. But so, I guess I was picturing it as we find... we see our archetype and it creates a framework that we can react against. But you're saying that sometimes we've fallen into an archetype that doesn't fit us and that we need to identify and then let go of it and shift to a different one.

[00:25:43] Carl Greer: It could be one that's still very useful, but it could be one that was useful five years ago or maybe never. But for whatever reason we got under the grip of it. You know, the victim... There's always the victim, the persecutor, and the rescuer. That's kind of a classic psychological thing. Are you the victim, are you the persecutor, or are you the rescuer? In deep philosophy, they say, "Well, we're all three of those, and we just have to see at the time which one we are, and be conscious as to the choices we make in those victim-rescuer-persecutor moments." It's all just grist for the mill.

[00:26:28] Dr. Melinda Ring: I loved your own journey in The Necktie and the Jaguar, and then you've also shared bits about your personal health journey and different health challenges that have come up for family members and for you. The message in many of your books is also that a lot of people have created a story for themselves like, "My body failed me, my illness defines me." "I am this." Not "I'm a person who has this," but "I am this." How did the inner work shape your physical healing? And how can people who have created this story, particularly around health issues, see that inner work can help their physical healing?

[00:27:17] Carl Greer: If they have a health story, for example, they say, "Gee, my parents all died in their fifties from heart stuff. I'm probably going to have the same thing happen to me, and there's not a whole lot I can do about it because genetics trumps everything." If that's their story, then there are certain things in play, as opposed to a different story that might be: "Gee, I believe in this idea called epigenetics, that we can cause our genes to express ourselves differently than they otherwise might by doing certain things." But I also believe that everything in my health story is connected to other parts of my life. It's connected to my psychological story, it's connected to my job, my relationships with my significant other, with my kids, with my parents, with my belief in a higher power. So all these things are connected, and if one can start to feel that those connections are real—some of them helping us and some of them hurting us—and maybe try to relate in those realms a little differently... You can change just your attitude towards your health story, which is a start. If something is predestined to happen, or "I know I have diabetes, but I'm not going to give up alcohol and sugar because it's just too important to me," period. Even if somebody doesn't say that consciously, they may unconsciously live that story. At least you've identified that, and the person can... this is the thing, are you willing to do that? And you may die six years younger than you otherwise would and have some suffering of other things that are going to happen. Just realize that. Sometimes physicians will give that choice to the person, but sometimes... hey, do you really want to give up? It's just having different relationships with yourself, and often if you have different relationships with yourself, you're going to have a little different relationship with your physicians and the people you talk to.

[00:29:41] Dr. Melinda Ring: Is there a best time for somebody who has a diagnosis to try to explore this? I'm thinking, let's just give an example of somebody who's received a diagnosis of cancer. Is there a right time to do it for them?

[00:30:01] Carl Greer: Anytime is the right time. Let's say you have cancer; a person can start to use this as a wake-up call to... hey, we all know for sure we're going to die. That's for sure. How soon are we going to die, and what do we want to do between now and the time we die? And with that diagnosis of cancer, you still have to get up in the morning. You still can exercise, you can still do stuff. It's just how much are you willing to think about: "What do I want to do with the rest of my life?" And can I get more in relationship with my death? Is death going to be a big scary thing, or is it going to happen when it happens? I prefer it to be a little longer than shorter when it happens. I'd like it to be as pain-free as possible, but if it can't be, then it can't be. And I hope between now and then I've lived the best life I can. So I think the work that I'm talking about doing can help one enter into those things a little bit more elegantly, with a little bit more agency, because they feel they're taking charge more. I believe that.

[00:31:13] Dr. Melinda Ring: When I think about patients, for example, with a diagnosis of cancer, in the beginning there's so much of doing what they're told to do. "I need to do the chemotherapy, I need to do my radiation, I'm going for surgery." Sometimes that is a challenging time to do it, but once they're through that initial therapy session, there's a space of: "What do I do now?" Finding space to work through it can not only help in the future, but can help make that tough time more meaningful as well. So, one last question for you. For someone listening, maybe, who feels stuck in their health or their relationships or their purpose, what piece of personal wisdom would you share with the listeners to help them reach their own next level of health?

[00:32:06] Carl Greer: Take time with yourself. Notice what's going on in the course of your day. Look for patterns. Try to talk to yourself as to what you can do differently. And if you say, "I'd like to do this," well, why don't you do it? And you say, "I can't because..." Are there ways you can have a more pleasing life by doing some of these things that we've been talking about? For myself, one of the benefits has been that I'm a little bit more patient than I was before I did this. I'm a little bit less judgmental; I listen a little better than I did before I did all these things. And all those abstract ideas, I think, have helped me live longer than anybody else in my family. I'm not saying that my practices are the only reason why I'm living as long as I have, but I say there's a probability greater than zero that they've contributed to it. I believe that very much so. I think we all have the chance to change ourselves. And I think this is just like preaching, but you know, to be kind to people, to be compassionate, to always think that other people have a lot going on too, and it's tough as it is for us. We never really know what's going on for somebody else, and just be able to be available to the world. And that includes others besides ourselves. I think if a person can learn and practice to do those things, I think that's a good thing.

[00:33:46] Dr. Melinda Ring: Wonderful. Well, Carl, thank you for sharing such thoughtful guidance and this reminder that true healing starts from within. For all of you listening, I hope this inspires you to pause, turn inward, and explore the stories and patterns that may be ready for change. And if you're interested in going deeper with Carl's work, I highly recommend his newest book, Go Within to Change Your Life. It's full of reflective practices, journaling prompts, and accessible exercises for anyone wanting to shift their inner narrative. As always, thank you for being with me on Next Level Health. I'm Dr. Melinda Ring. If you're enjoying these conversations, it truly helps us if you follow the podcast, leave a review, or share an episode with someone who might need this message today. Until next time, I hope you're able to stay curious, stay compassionate with yourself, and keep taking those small steps towards your next level of health. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Next Level Health. I hope you found some inspiration and practical insights to enhance your wellness journey. Don't forget to leave a comment on YouTube or a review on Apple Podcasts; I'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions for future topics or speakers. Be sure to follow Next Level Health with me, Dr. Melinda Ring, as we continue exploring the path to healthier, happier lives together.