Entrepreneurial Coping Mechanisms: Dr. Stephen Neff

Summary

In this episode, Christian Brim and Dr. Stefan Neff engage in a deep conversation about the impact of personal history on professional success, the coping mechanisms that entrepreneurs often adopt, and the importance of understanding emotional needs in relationships. They explore how societal pressures can lead to unhealthy coping strategies and the necessity of self-reflection for personal growth. 

Takeaways

• Dr. Neff emphasizes the importance of discussing negative emotions.
• Many successful individuals use work as a coping mechanism.
• Addiction can manifest in various forms, including work and food.
• Understanding love languages is crucial for healthy relationships.
• Self-reflection is necessary for personal growth and understanding.
• Societal pressures can lead to neglecting emotional needs.
• Successful entrepreneurs often struggle with personal relationships.
• Emotional intelligence is key to recognizing unhealthy patterns.
• The need for connection and community is vital for well-being.
• Redefining success can lead to more fulfilling lives. Success can be defined by simple measures like waking up each day.
• Parenting can significantly impact personal success and fulfillment.
• Compensating for absence in parenting can lead to regrets.
• Self-assessment tools can reveal hidden emotional struggles.
• Confronting emotions is essential for personal growth.
• Fear can be harnessed as a strength through acceptance.
• Grieving for lost relationships is a vital part of healing.
• Creating healthy habits is crucial for mental well-being.
• The past does not dictate the future; change is possible.
• Surrounding oneself with supportive people is key to transformation.

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Transcript

Christian Brim (00:00.786)
Welcome to another episode of the Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me is Dr. Stefan Neff. Dr. Neff, welcome to the show.

Dr. Stephan Neff (00:12.12)
Thank you very much for having me. And first off, thank you very much for creating such a beautiful platform where we can have really meaningful discussions, authentic and raw discussions about those things that people maybe are shying away to talk from or are far too busy to talk about. So negative emotions, feelings, and all those things trigger warning might be coming today.

Christian Brim (00:30.654)
Well, you're welcome.

Christian Brim (00:37.628)
Yes. Yeah, absolutely trigger warning. 100%. Did I pronounce Stefan Rett correctly? Very good. Nevermind. I, my as I told Dr. Neff before we started the show, two of my children speak German. And I have I have all of these anecdotes that my my son says that just are going to flip through my head through this program, but I'm not going to say most of them.

Dr. Stephan Neff (00:42.978)
Perfect, absolutely perfect.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:06.702)
Ha

Christian Brim (01:06.746)
Anyway, Dr. Neff, what are your bona fides? What brought you here to the show?

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:15.682)
Well, I'm in my late 50s. I'm a functional medicine doctor, retired anesthetist. I have been a very driven man for most of my life and still am.

and that has really made me the man I am. A lot of alphabet soup behind the names, of, know, accolades, but there was always this kind of need to, a mixture of people pleasing and impress other. So deep down, probably a lower self-esteem and lower self-confidence.

Christian Brim (01:51.784)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:58.894)
childish core belief that I'm a failure and I have to prove myself again and again. And that's great in the American culture and also the German culture because you prove yourself, you're the man, look what I have achieved. And that has been a very strong point of me. But equally, I have only very late in life learned the lessons

Christian Brim (02:02.098)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (02:10.27)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (02:24.542)
how to deal with challenges, how to deal with the obstacles, the drama, the trauma that is part of life in maybe more effective ways rather than the typical escape mentality that so many of us do. So many of us are very successful entrepreneurs because we work 16 hours a day.

When you ask the five whys, well, why are you working 16 hours a day? Because, et cetera. And then you ask again, why, why, why? Ultimately, you come to reasons that often have to do with escape, escape of maybe a loveless marriage.

Christian Brim (03:03.326)
you

Dr. Stephan Neff (03:05.216)
maybe escaping trauma from your childhood and the fact that you can't sit still because you actually can't think just for one moment, let these negative emotions, those demons catch up with you. people, I certainly became a workaholic long before I found alcohol. I became an alcoholic. And so many of us are doing exactly the same.

Christian Brim (03:09.139)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (03:19.078)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (03:32.85)
some addictions are societally supported like work or like sport. Well, look at him. He's four hours a day in the gym. Why are you four hours a day in the gym? Okay. So the shopping that is of course, the advertisements are leading us that way. And of course the food. And actually, if you ask me how many people are addicted out there, I would say in percentage probably

Christian Brim (03:37.885)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (03:54.13)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (04:01.39)
High 90s, 90 % of the population would see addiction. Typically food and when we certainly look at the obesity epidemic in the United States, the proof is there.

Christian Brim (04:03.336)
Hmm?

Dr. Stephan Neff (04:14.344)
And yes, of course, there's marketing there. Yes, of course, there is secretly pushing some very highly addictive foods into your mouth, so to speak, or into your shopping cart. Okay, I'll accept all that. But the reason that you're going for those foods is that your other needs are not met. That the dopamine is...

Christian Brim (04:35.304)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (04:38.642)
needed after a very busy day and it is so, it's intriguing. When you actually start to look at your own trauma and when you actually look at how you really tick and take the same attitude that you do to your business, take that to your pillars in your life, you suddenly get surprises that are initially breathtaking.

but then again they allow you to become your version 2.0, your version 5.0, however many versions it takes for you to become the version that you deserve to be.

Christian Brim (05:17.566)
I love that I have a entrepreneur colleague that successfully exited his business for nine figures in his 40s. And he decided he wanted to go back and get his psychology doctorate. And he and I had a conversation and the way he phrased it was, entrepreneurs don't have good coping mechanisms.

And I, I'd never really heard it spoken that in clinical terms, but I'm like, no, you're right. We don't. And, and, I'll go even further and say that to what you said, I think a lot of times the business is the coping mechanism, because they control, you control the variables, right? So you construct, you construct this thing that gives you what you think you need.

Dr. Stephan Neff (05:51.729)
yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (06:06.334)
Absolutely.

Dr. Stephan Neff (06:10.943)
Absolutely.

Christian Brim (06:15.742)
without dealing with any of the things that you don't want to.

Dr. Stephan Neff (06:21.602)
And I think that is the biggest pitfall. In most of our lives, we try to escape from pain.

Christian Brim (06:24.04)
Right.

Dr. Stephan Neff (06:28.536)
We are no longer used to sit with pain and to examine it, to accept it as part of our life. We are nowadays in a society where you have to be hustling, where you have to be out there, where you have to be successful, where the social media status is so much more important than anything else. And that is a huge pitfall. And I think we are paying the price for it, every single one of us, because with that comes inevitably

a huge tsunami of low on effects because all the other pillars in your life, community, service to others, the relationships that you have got with your children, with your partner, with your loved one, with your parents, with your wider family, they're all going down by the wayside.

Christian Brim (07:21.917)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (07:22.018)
How many successful entrepreneurs are really successfully married? In the sense I define successfully married that actually you spend some time together and you actually fulfill the needs of the other. You know the love language of the other and actually do daily small acts that they can understand as love.

Christian Brim (07:43.262)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (07:43.558)
I was blind on that eye. Man, I wouldn't have known love language if it bit me in the ass. And I have to admit that. you could, I've just gone through a divorce. And in fairness, was I there for my wife? No, no.

I had little idea about love languages, she had little idea. I laid the blame truly in both camps here. But we were essentially emotionally exceptionally naive. From our star signs, we should have had 100 % compatibility, yet from the word go, we were fighting like dogs and cats. And that fighting stopped when we had children, kind of, because we were busy.

again busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. And then the children left and we suddenly were realizing who are you? And there was nothing there. And that's so hard. And yes, this is probably a story that many, many men...

recognize out there. And I say, men, I'm a man, you're a man. And many of the entrepreneurs and the people around me, business people are men. It just so happens to know, I know that side more. I am 100 % sure that very similar things appear, would come out if you had a woman entrepreneur at our age group, and who has probably done similar steps in her, taken similar steps in her life.

with similar end results. In fact actually, they're probably worse off if you think about it. Because not only do they want to break through the ceiling, they want to be super mum, super lover, super everything.

Christian Brim (09:33.736)
Right.

Dr. Stephan Neff (09:36.91)
I think their pressures are just another potency more because inevitably they fail. mean, we have the father thing, but as a mother, you've got a different responsibility, different things happening with your children. So bloody hell, how do they do it? And why are there not more broken women than there are already? So I've...

Christian Brim (09:46.141)
Right.

Christian Brim (10:03.39)
They're tougher than we are.

Dr. Stephan Neff (10:05.376)
Yeah, scratch away the patina and then you... No, no, no. I had the chance, the privilege to interview what, 560 or so guests on my show. Actually more women than men and virtually every single one of them had basically completely shared her thoughts with me and essentially...

displayed the same principles, the same broken core beliefs, because something went really not so nice in their childhood. And that's true for 50 % of us, men or women. 50 % of us have got some very broken patterns from being brought up in a dysfunctional family. That does not necessarily mean to be that you're sexually abused and trafficked, but it was just dysfunctional.

It was just things were missing. And 50 % of us have become people-pleasers or fear avoidance. Those kind of coping patterns are huge. And they have run us like a monkey on our backs. They run us through the rest of our lives if we can't develop the emotional intelligence to recognize what has occurred then and why we actually

for example, as a person being attracted to a certain type of man or woman despite the fact that they are probably not so good for us. Because you know, at least you know what is happening when you meet a certain, let's say a woman who comes out of a family violence home, at least there's a certainty for her if she gets attracted again to a bad boy, she knows what happens.

The fear of the unknown, in this case, is sometimes harder than actually being in, again, in an abusive relationship. And whilst this might sound like a cliché, similar patterns are happening throughout our lives. And that's where then these core beliefs of I'm not worthy, I am a failure, I'm not worthy of money, worthy of success.

Dr. Stephan Neff (12:30.584)
comes out. And that sounds already bullshit. But then you take actions that actually make that come true. You might be actually procrastinating, you might be actually sabotaging, you might be so full of fear that you don't take an opportunity that could really propel you towards a far better enterprise or far better relationship, far better, whatever it is. So

Christian Brim (12:39.282)
Yes.

Dr. Stephan Neff (12:59.712)
It's so important that we recognize from the word go that there are actually influences happening within us that determine our success in life. of course, we are focusing on business here, but we need to go further. Those pillars in our lives are so important because we often are exceedingly successful in one and absolute failures in all the others.

Christian Brim (13:24.36)
Yes, yes, yes. There is absolutely nothing that you said that I don't agree with. I'll start with this feeling of inadequacy. I recently read on the recommendation of my business coach who formerly was an

Dr. Stephan Neff (13:32.098)
Ha ha ha.

Christian Brim (13:53.21)
Orthodox Jewish rabbi He had me read the book Kabbalah of shame. I knew nothing about Kabbalah. I still don't really know that much but you know what I took away I took some different things from away from the book, but you know, I I truly believe you know whether whether it manifests itself as as imposter syndrome or You know

people sabotaging themselves. I think every human by design has this feeling of inadequacy, lack of self worth, know, whatever, however you wanted to find that and whether you wanted to find that secondarily or spiritually, it doesn't really matter to me. I think it's just a fact that

Every person deals with that and the people that don't deal with it or don't even discuss it are the ones that just don't realize it. Some might call them a psychopath, but whatever.

Dr. Stephan Neff (15:03.758)
Exactly. 1 % of the population.

Christian Brim (15:07.792)
Right. So the second thing that I would say to you is you talked about family dynamics impacting your relationships as adults. And I recently read Secure Love. I don't remember the author's name. She is a doctor of psychology as well. But she talks about these emotional attachment

coping mechanisms like you said, which are either avoidant or anxious. there was an interesting exercise in that book. And it was a list of like 10 or 12 things. And it was to do with your partner. And it was in order to feel safe, secure with you, I need to know that.

And then there was a list of 12 things. And so my wife and I are sitting here and to this day, I mean, we've been married 32 years in August. it was one of the most profound and intimate conversations we've ever had. And we only got through like three or four of them. Right. And, and, and it was just making that statement. Like, so in order for me to feel secure or, or connected to you,

Dr. Stephan Neff (16:24.622)
Beautiful.

Christian Brim (16:36.046)
I need to know that you value my opinion, something like that, you know, I mean, right. but what was really fascinating about this was when she answered the question, she wasn't doing it from her perspective. She was doing it from what she thought. I thought.

Dr. Stephan Neff (16:40.984)
Beautiful. Beautiful.

Christian Brim (17:05.038)
And I noticed this as a pattern after about three times and I'm like, no, no, no, no, you're supposed to be answering this, asking this question for you, not for me. Right. And, and it was just this profound realization. Like she wasn't even thinking about what she needed. She was, she was automatically answering for me. Right. and, and a lot of people, myself included, like

Dr. Stephan Neff (17:05.592)
Ha ha ha.

Dr. Stephan Neff (17:23.598)
Exactly.

Dr. Stephan Neff (17:34.446)
I see I got goosebumps. Christian, this is such profound stuff that you're talking. Who does that?

Christian Brim (17:34.618)
Yeah? Yeah.

Yeah. And, and, and the thing that I believed that like you're, you know, it's this belief that drives actions. This belief that I have been burdened with that it's not, it's not appropriate for you to think about what you need in a relationship. It's, it's to think about taking care of the other person's needs, right?

which is which they're not mutually exclusive. But but it seems like you know, well, if I can just fix the other person if I can make them happy if I can, you know, whatever, then then it'll be okay, right? And never never really looking at what you need.

Dr. Stephan Neff (18:29.102)
That is a huge breakthrough that you guys did, but it also is such a profound thing to do as a couple. And my goodness, as I said, mean, my marriage dissolved after, what is it, 30 years? And we never did stuff like that.

And I tried to actually bring that in after I went to rehab and sort of my own dependence on alcohol as a coping solution, coping mechanism after I sorted that out. But it never really worked because she felt, don't psychologize me. there was obviously hurdles there. So I was never successful in that. Neither did I pursue that. As an end result, I never fulfilled her needs with hindsight.

Christian Brim (19:07.624)
Yes.

Dr. Stephan Neff (19:18.274)
they were never there. I don't think she realized what her needs were. A very similar situation, isn't it?

Christian Brim (19:24.006)
No, she didn't.

No, and I remember when I first started working with my business coach, my marriage was in turmoil. There were a lot of external factors. Kids had left home, health issues, and pandemic, you know, like it was a mess. we spent, my business coach and I ended up spending probably the first six months working on

marriage things rather than business things, right? Because, you know, you don't become a different person when you go home, you're the same person. So, you know, if you can't just compartmentalize your life and it not get through the door and affect it. So he said, after he had asked me this question, he said, I want you to go ask your wife this question.

What do you need from me? And the first dozen times I asked that question, my wife was like, I don't know. mean, after she was defensive and didn't want to answer the question and don't psychologize me, know, all that other stuff, once you got down to the, okay, what do you need from me as your husband?

Dr. Stephan Neff (20:43.361)
Ha.

Yeah.

Christian Brim (20:56.506)
it and she sat and thought about it. She's like, I don't know. And and I think you're exactly right. Like if someone isn't going to look inside themselves to figure out what they need, they can't get it from someone else. It doesn't matter.

Dr. Stephan Neff (21:01.71)
Exactly.

Dr. Stephan Neff (21:13.006)
Christian, don't you think that sometimes we men, or we entrepreneurs, think that we are working so hard?

And there's no question about it, we are working hard. We're working 16 hours a day because we think of ourselves in the role of a provider. That was my pitfall, I think, with hindsight. Look at me, I'm working my guts out to feed this family, to bring money home, look at the lifestyle that you can afford. If you want to go for a holiday, we can go. We can go two holidays a year.

Christian Brim (21:30.462)
Yes.

Dr. Stephan Neff (21:44.609)
or by the way, I will only come part of the holiday because I can't afford to take the time off because I want to work more, etc. So you hear the story, okay? So, and that is so common. So we actually believe we are working really hard to provide for the family, which we consider as a sign of love. And when there is, when...

Christian Brim (21:52.968)
right. Yes.

Christian Brim (22:07.57)
Yes.

Dr. Stephan Neff (22:10.87)
your opposite does not recognize that necessarily as a love language or a sign of love and she takes that for or he takes that for granted that makes it really really hard so therefore exactly absolutely so so no we need we all have got a duty to think of being successful to redefine that

Christian Brim (22:23.782)
It makes it easy to become very resentful too. Like, yeah, like.

Christian Brim (22:39.848)
Yes.

Dr. Stephan Neff (22:40.322)
Being successful for me meant that I was that esteemed societal position of a doctor, of an anesthetist. And in my job, I was very, very good. Did I hold my...

Christian Brim (22:56.434)
People woke up.

Dr. Stephan Neff (22:58.158)
And in this corner, we have got Dr. Neff with 45,000 knockouts. So yes, they went to sleep and they woke up, but there's a bit more to my job. But we won't go there now. The reality was I defined myself as very successful. Did I hold myself to the same kind of principles when it came to me being a father, for example?

Christian Brim (22:59.656)
That was your definition of success. They woke up. Okay, good.

Yes. Exactly.

Christian Brim (23:15.827)
Yes.

Dr. Stephan Neff (23:27.566)
That's one of the things I absolutely still struggle with because I was not a good father. I was not there for my children. How often did they ask me to be there? But no, initially when they were younger, I was working those 16 hours and I came home and the first thing was two glasses of wine. And then my shoulders went, ah.

And this warmth came from the center of my chest and I thought, now I can relax. And then the kids said, let's play or let's go on the trampoline. I said, no, no, no, no, daddy needs to relax. Yeah, right. Was I there for my children? No. Categorically, no. And then later on, and unfortunately, we were not that happy household when I said.

We were too busy to fight. Well, that's not really true. The kids were trying to get off the dinner table within seconds because they knew that within a minute, mum and dad would be rowing. So, you know, there was a very broken family home there that I created. Was there ever violence? Was there ever? No, they had all the toys you could possibly wish for. They had. But I was basically compensating for not being there for them.

And that is so brutal. I think that is one of the resentments and regrets I have with regards to my behavior over the last 20 years. I pay the price for it now. With the divorce, one of my children felt he had to choose between one and the other, and he cut me off. And hurt people, hurt people, so he spoke words, I spoke words that I regret.

Yeah, you are. So these are the flow-on effects. If you do not look at yourself and if you don't stop for a moment and really look at you, who are you? And those questionnaires that you did with your wife is gold. There are many other tests that you can do. For example, to look at your childhood. We were talking about adverse childhood experiences. So there is an ACE test, adverse childhood experiences.

Dr. Stephan Neff (25:37.97)
and it's beautiful to go through there. And you might think, well, I had a normal childhood. And suddenly when you start ticking things, think, hmm, hmm, hmm. Exactly. I interviewed yesterday a lovely lady for my show and she had gone through kind of a normal childhood and was actually in a very abusive relationship.

Christian Brim (25:45.854)
Maybe not.

Dr. Stephan Neff (26:03.22)
And she said, no, no, no, no, I'm not, I'm not. And she actually went to a woman's, or to a helpline, had a meeting there. the, because she was worried about her relationship. So she went there and after a little while, the woman opposite her asked her, well, you know what we do here, help women escape relationships, et cetera. And she said, I'm sorry, I don't want to take your time. I'm obviously, no, that's not for me. I'm fine. So this woman gave her.

a sheet of paper with sort of a tick boxes there and said, okay, just in the last six months, which of these things have happened to you? She said, okay, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. So sometimes these tests can be incredibly helpful. Okay, nowadays we have got this information at our fingertips. Not just, you can not just ask chat GBT to help you with something in your business. You can also use that to actually help yourself.

Christian Brim (26:43.549)
Yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (27:01.998)
And it's so amazing how many of us, okay, for example, what you mentioned already, the psychopaths and sociopaths who can't really deal with emotions because they don't really recognize them and et cetera, 1 % of the population, 10 % of the population, personality disorders. So, which is difficult, the amount of neurodivergence that we have got out there. And you wonder why sometimes you come over maybe a bit of a rough.

Christian Brim (27:02.088)
Yes.

Dr. Stephan Neff (27:31.064)
dude and straight into the face, etc. I suggest find a neurodivergence assessment questionnaire and actually do it. One friend of mine just did that and he is very clearly on the spectrum and it was a huge eye-opener for him. So there are other things that are just there and they just make you. We do not stop to assess what's going on and then when we find something that we don't like,

Christian Brim (27:47.325)
Yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (28:00.268)
try to run away. I guess what? That doesn't work. So maybe to learn to stand still for a moment and actually reflect, maybe start something like journaling and actually write down your worries. That is incredibly powerful for me to actually write down, okay, what I'm, one day, a while ago, I woke up again, ratty and angry and argh.

Christian Brim (28:02.14)
Yes.

Christian Brim (28:15.506)
Yes.

Dr. Stephan Neff (28:30.094)
and lots of things, I was overwhelmed with all the things that were maybe not right in my life. So I wrote down this anxiety list and it was actually really beautiful. I really addressed the demons. What am I worried about? Relationship with son, lack of income, bang, bang, bang, bang, just wrote it all down. And then I went through it one by one, relationship of son. What can I do about it? How can I deal with that? Do I love him?

Christian Brim (28:43.088)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (28:59.936)
Yes. Do I want to do something? Yes. He doesn't want to know me. Okay. What can I do? I decided, okay, I sent one text, but thereafter I can't do anything. And I wrote that down. And that was with that I could mentally take it off. Emails. I was worried about some text emails, et cetera. And I had procrastinated and not read my emails. Okay. Do it right now. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bang. Worked through. And surprisingly, remember,

Christian Brim (29:10.75)
You're right.

Dr. Stephan Neff (29:25.294)
All those fears and anxieties that 95 % or so don't come true, well, they didn't come true. And again, I proved to myself those things. So I created habits of dealing with things, and I think that is the biggest thing. But these need to not just create to-do lists in your business, but to-do lists on yourself, and I think that's the power.

Christian Brim (29:35.774)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (29:47.974)
And, it's again, as an entrepreneur, it's easy to, use the business as a coping mechanism to not have to deal with those things. think, you know, one of the lessons I learned early on was that, you know, you can't avoid these feelings. You can suppress them. You can ignore them.

Dr. Stephan Neff (30:01.006)
Exactly.

Dr. Stephan Neff (30:16.846)
Exactly.

Christian Brim (30:17.776)
You can eat them, you can drink them, you can sex them. It doesn't really matter, but they don't go away until you let them come out of your subconscious and deal with them. And it is uncomfortable. I remember when I was going through a coaching program to become a coach, the gentleman that was running it,

gave us this exercise of if you have an emotion that you don't like, you you're sad, you're afraid, whatever. He said, imagine that it's a balloon and it's in front of you and you're holding onto that balloon. And he said, now just let the balloon go. And he said, watch it float up. And then if you feel that again, you may feel it again immediately. Do the same thing.

And it took me a long time. And I don't say that I've perfected it, but it took me a long time to understand that emotions really are separate from you. They're not you. They're just feelings, right? And so being able to let that feel the feeling, let it come through you, let it feel and let it go.

Dr. Stephan Neff (31:29.282)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (31:43.046)
I remember I was doing this exercise back from one of our training sessions. I was on the plane back and I was, I was just letting this, this feeling come back up and I, and I would, I would release it. And I just, I just had tears streaming down my eyes in, in, in the, in this airplane, like, you know, and, but it was the first time in my life. And I was probably 40 at the time.

that I actually let myself feel that feeling. And it was from a childhood trauma. And it was like, you know, how hard it is and how hard your mind, your ego will work to protect you from that feeling. I mean, that's what it's doing. It's saying don't feel it because it's gonna hurt. And it did that for me in spades for decades.

Dr. Stephan Neff (32:41.71)
It's so beautiful that you described that. And that was what it took for you to get used to it. If we take other highly successful people, in this case tier one operators and special forces soldiers, what they basically do is a system of fear inoculation.

So they always work how, they always train how they work. So it's all real, it's all out there and they are getting used to that fear. For them, that is part of their training and they begin to realize what is fear, they know it very intimately. No one likes fear, let's be clear about it, but they actually learn how to accept it as being part of them and harness it as a strength.

I was forcing myself to do something very similar, not by now jumping out of airplanes or something like that, but I did a course on radical self-compassion. And as part of that course, I was, exercise was to conjure up a negative emotion. And in me, I did that, well,

a year and a half ago and it was my wife and I had started divorce proceedings. I was forced to retire from my job and I lost about everything. I was literally the phoenix burning in the ashes and there was fear. Fear was riding me. So when they say, contra up a negative emotion, fear was there, boom. And they say, now really contra it up. Imagine it, feel it, et cetera.

And it immediately was there like the tsunami that is so easily becoming. It was completely overwhelming. And then that miserable five minutes started because I was forced to sit five minutes with that fear. The longest five minutes in my life. And to sit that fear, feel it, see what it does to you, see the emotions, the chaos, the catastrophizing, all that that came with it. Then after five minutes, we...

Dr. Stephan Neff (34:50.678)
The exercise was to learn to examine this fear and to interrogate it and deal with it and then thereafter to nurture yourself. So it was actually this process of accepting that it's part of you, the fear, and learning getting to know it and then thereafter to nurture you and to actually say, hey, it's okay Stefan.

It's okay Stefan, and I'm already doing it here for those of you who can watch us. I'm doing some havening. Havening is a beautiful technique where you essentially give yourself a bear hug. Some people just rub the other arms. I give myself a big hug, close my eyes and squeeze really tight because that's my love language. That's what I would do to my boys. That's what I would do to someone I love. And in this case, I do it to myself. Stefan, you're an amazing man.

Christian Brim (35:18.408)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (35:43.694)
Look through all that, look at all the shit that you've gone through. You're amazing, I love you, I love you, you're amazing. And I do that for about 15 seconds. Squeeze really hard. And with that I release dopamine in my brain. And it's beautiful. It's that kind of technique to actually.

accept yourself in a different way, accept the dark side of you, accept the not perfect side of you, the side that we are running away from. And then you start beginning to realize that actually, yes, you are driven by shame, guilt, and all these negative emotions, that they are there. They are there maybe because they serve the purpose once upon a time, as a child, et cetera.

Christian Brim (36:30.685)
Yes?

Dr. Stephan Neff (36:32.886)
and that they are normal, they are part of you. You can't be angry about them. Well, you can, but it doesn't help you. They are like waves of neurochemicals washing over you, just as much as when you're in the ocean and there is a big wave coming. And you can get angry at that wave and say, hey, wave, go away, I hate you. Do not come close to me. This wave will come. It doesn't care. So you might as well learn to surf.

Christian Brim (36:54.739)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (36:56.734)
or learn to dive under it, or just feel the sheer power of it and get thrown around and accept it for the power that it is. This is all your choice how you respond to that wave. But that wave also comes and goes. It's the same with the neurochemicals washing over you, the negative emotions, et cetera. They come and go. There are ways that you can mitigate that. There are ways that you can understand where they come from.

For example, shame and guilt. They are really hard-coded in our genes. Because if you look back when you were living in small tribes, 50 to 200 people in a cave, well, you had to work together. And if you were doing things that were going against the tribe, you were ostracized, you were thrown out of the tribe, which at that time was a death sentence.

Christian Brim (37:32.306)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (37:47.763)
Yes.

Dr. Stephan Neff (37:50.486)
So therefore, it was so important that things like shame and guilt kept you from doing stupid things that would kill you. So therefore, if you look at it just from where they come from, no surprise that they are so strong. And then if you think, well, OK, if I can maybe accept them for what they are and just understanding where that came from and maybe doing some work with someone who can maybe guide you towards

Christian Brim (37:50.504)
Yes.

Christian Brim (37:59.358)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (38:20.472)
what went wrong in your childhood asks the right questions, then this is so powerful. When I went through my divorce, I saw a counselor and I said, hey look, it's probably good that I see you because I'm going through all that blah blah. And she said, well, okay, tell me about your grieving.

And I said, what mean grieving? No one has died. What do mean? She said, no, no, I mean, it's basically very similar. And it was grieving for the living that she was talking about. And that was a completely foreign concept for me. And suddenly I realized, huh, of course I do. And that, just that realization, that being asked something that was then out of the left field and is now so logical for me, that was such a breakthrough.

Christian Brim (38:52.626)
guess.

Dr. Stephan Neff (39:10.978)
And it's actually us surrounding ourselves with people that can guide us in different directions, not just in a business, but actually just outside. That will change completely the way you live your life. Therefore, you're not that rabbit.

caught in the headlights or the idea caught in the headlights being driven by fear and anxiety and high sympathetic drive but you're actually learning how to use your vagal system, your parasympathetic nervous system to actually calm down.

And once you accept and learn more about that, you learn more techniques that can assist you there. Let that be breath work where you learn certain breathing techniques that calm you down. Let that be indeed the power of exercise, the power of stillness. Let that be meditation or I don't care if you're the fittest and strongest and more masculine person on earth, do a trauma focus.

yoga session and don't be surprised if you start crying there and that's not because you're actually holding some painful painful things but yeah exactly but you actually are letting emotions come out issues lie in the tissues and that's what we see in functional medicine so so commonly that essentially stress and burnout

Christian Brim (40:22.216)
kettlebell, yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (40:37.686)
all those kind of things that many of us know so intimately. They actually manifest themselves in very physical symptoms. And because we are all this intricate network of hormones, our

Christian Brim (40:44.99)
Yes.

Dr. Stephan Neff (40:50.306)
gut microbiome plays such a huge role and our stress and the kind of wrong beliefs, I only need five hours of sleep because that's what an entrepreneur does. Bullshit. You need seven to nine hours of good quality sleep. If you bring it down to five, you might as well cut off five years of your life, et cetera. If you don't exercise, if you don't actually put the focus on those pillars in your

life, you will die early and you will die miserably because not just your lifespan is decreased but your healthspan is decreased. So that is what we begin increasingly to realize and we knew it, mean generations before us knew that, but with our nowadays life where we can cut out

day and night as a circadian rhythm because we have got artificial light, we have got something that stimulates us 24-7. We got food that we can eat 24-7. There are no more boundaries, there is no more fasting, there is no more the natural things that helped us with our rhythms in our life and to get us from a from a

biological point of view to reset us and to bring out this balance from fight and flight and go out hard to rest and rejuvenation. And this balance needs to be there. If you constantly have to like that, you create burnout. You you create depression, you create anxiety. If you are worried about your mental health,

Christian Brim (42:08.456)
Yes.

Dr. Stephan Neff (42:29.644)
then boy, it's time to stop and actually think, hang on, do I lay down the foundation right? Do I create the right habits? Because I can create you a diet that will make you depressed and have an anxiety attack within a week or two. Not difficult to do. Many of you are doing it naturally. Warning sign, exactly. So, you know, it's those kind of things. We can change. But see, I was...

Christian Brim (42:50.334)
Yes.

Dr. Stephan Neff (42:59.65)
The reason I'm so passionate about that is because I was guilty of all those things for the better part of my life, have to say, initially because my parents didn't know better and then because, well, I followed what society was saying, know, self-made man, look, I'm working hard, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm drinking hard because that was part of it. That was, you know, it is very socially accepted.

use of food and alcohol. And yeah, I didn't know better until really my early 40s. And since then, I'm so lucky because I had so much trauma in my life that ultimately forced me to stand still. And nowadays I am such a different man and for that I'm grateful. whilst I would not wish my life onto my worst enemy.

I equally am grateful for it. I so often ask my guests, if I gave you a time machine, would you go back and change it? And I'm yet to find anyone who said yes, because most of them would say no, I would have not become the person I am now if I had not made all these mistakes. The reason I say that is for anyone listening out there,

Doesn't matter if you're 17 or 70. Likely is that you stuffed up big time at some stage and that there are things that you're not proud of, but the past does not equal the future. You can turn things around. A relationship that is on virtually hitting the rocks does not necessarily mean to end if you both are putting the right steps in. And that starts actually with you, if you're looking at yourself.

Christian Brim (44:52.112)
It has to. It has to.

Dr. Stephan Neff (44:53.46)
Exactly. So there is hope guys. Definitely. Definitely, definitely, definitely. So don't let anyone convince you otherwise. All the naysayers. You deal with them when it comes to business. You're used to that. But there are also the naysayers and those people who will try to convince you otherwise. Or maybe they don't want you to get better because it would show up that they are failing as fathers, as husbands, etc.

So it's in their vested interest for you to not change. So be always aware of where your advice is coming from, I think. You know, as for example, when you're an alcoholic and you surround yourself with other alcoholics, if you suddenly get sober, then it shows up that their drinking is abnormal. So suddenly you lose a lot of friends. And it's the same when you suddenly go on the self-improvement style. People like you when you're...

Christian Brim (45:44.104)
Right.

Dr. Stephan Neff (45:50.882)
half drunk and not doing sport and eating pizzas because that's the lifestyle they have. If you now suddenly get slimmer, it shows up that they are maybe not doing the steps and they don't like that. So just be aware of that pitfall.

Christian Brim (46:08.272)
Yeah, yeah, it's the crabs in a bucket. You know, they if you if the crab tries to get out of the bucket, they all drag the other crab down because you watch them. Yeah. And it brings to mind a book I recently read by Todd Henry called The Brave Habit. And he talks about bravery being not the absence of fear.

Dr. Stephan Neff (46:16.566)
didn't know that. Okay, here you go.

Christian Brim (46:37.47)
but the ability to work through the fear to do what you know to be right. And that's not necessarily a moral right or wrong. It's just what you need to do. And, you know, that's the definition of bravery. It's not the absence of fear. To your point about the special operators, I mean...

that they get to the point where the uncomfortable is comfortable. And we need to do more of that. Dr. Neff, first of all, I wanna thank you for your candor and your vulnerability. It's not easy for someone to say, I screwed up my marriage, I screwed up my kids.

Dr. Stephan Neff (47:07.736)
Correct.

Christian Brim (47:32.226)
And that in and itself is brave And and so I commend you on that How do people find out more about you and what you do?

Dr. Stephan Neff (47:43.884)
I'm a functional medicine doctor in New Zealand, I have got...

that as a passion so to help people so if you're close to us then check me out on neph functional medicine my website my clinic is going live very soon and otherwise neph inspiration neph inspiration is really the hub neph inspiration.com and it's equally the handle on most social media where I really talk about the mental health aspects but really trying to live your life to the fullest

And I've got my show, Neff Inspiration again, where you might find very inspiring people who are out there because they have been in the darkness and they now appreciate the light so much more. And I think that is the key thing to most of us. This is how can we go through this life, which is full of drama and drama.

We need to make sense of it. We need to learn from it. We've got a duty to learn, but it's also a privilege to learn. It's a privilege to have of choice. We can choose how we respond to all those negative things happening to us or that have happened to us. And we can either let that trauma and drama propel us towards a better future or can drag us down. It's your choice. Whatever you do is your life.

Christian Brim (49:12.488)
Yes.

Dr. Stephan Neff (49:15.764)
I've had enough of the trauma and trauma. Now, whoever runs the show, if there's a god or aliens or whatever, they think I'm a badass. They throw me one challenge after the other and think, yeah, he can cope with that. And that's okay. So life will continue to be full of challenges. But at least nowadays, I've got such a bigger tool set to deal with that than I ever had before.

And so therefore, if you wanted to see some of these things, my blog is full of information that I found valuable. So there's lots of things there. For those of you who are struggling with alcohol, I've written a book called My Steps to Supriety. So that is available in its third edition. And that's basically where I just, it's sort of a half memoir, half kind of...

What would I do? But essentially, I went for a 12-step system and that really helped me. The 12-step program is unfortunately written in 1930s. There's a lot of God in there and we are a secular society. So many people doubt that there is a God and that sort of pushes you away from it. And I've turned the 12-step system in an approach towards a failing business. What would you do if your best friend...

you're both in the same kind of style business and your friends is failing, what would you do to help him out? And essentially what you would naturally do is a 12 step approach. And so I've called it from an entrepreneurial point of view, which makes so much sense to me. So.

You find information there about mental health, etc. But all the pillars of life I'm trying to address. So hopefully there's something out there. neffinspiration.com might be a really good starting point for you guys out there. And I hope I can be of service to you there.

Christian Brim (51:07.912)
I love it. Listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, remember you are not alone.