The Security Circle
An IFPOD production for IFPO the very first security podcast called Security Circle. IFPO is the International Foundation for Protection Officers, and is an international security membership body that supports front line security professionals with learning and development, mental Health and wellbeing initiatives.
The Security Circle
EP 145 Dr Jen Fraser, Author of 'The Bullied Brain' Returns with the Eagerly Anticipated 'The Gaslit Brain'. If a Counterterrorism Expert Can be Gaslit… So Can You
Jennifer Fraser is an author, award-winning educator, and consultant. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature and her books have always focused on how we have the capacity to transform ourselves. We can go from being readers to writers of culture. We can reject society's demands that we suppress our emotions and instead come alive with them. We can question the bullying dynamic we've been raised in and ask wouldn't empathy and compassion be healthier? Her fourth book, The Bullied Brain: Heal Your Scars and Restore Your Health, introduces brain research into our wellness journey. It shares the empowering and inspiring neuroscience and neurobiology that informs the evidence-based practices we can all do in order to have happier, healthier, more high-performing brains.
Website: https://bulliedbrain.com/
Link to Book: https://bulliedbrain.com/the-bullied-brain
Psychology Today "Bullied Brain" series: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-bullied-brain
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bulliedbrain/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bulliedbrain
I acknowledge, with gratitude and respect, that I live and work on the unceded lands of the Lekwungen speaking peoples
(250) 896-3325
https://www.amazon.com/Bullied-Brain-Scars-Restore-Health/dp/1633887782
The Gaslit Brain Pre-Sales https://www.amazon.com/Gaslit-Brain-Gaslighting-Institutional-Complicity/dp/1493090925
Security Circle ⭕️ is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers
If you enjoy the security circle podcast, please like share and comment or even better. Leave us a fab review We can be found on all podcast platforms. Be sure to subscribe. The security circle every Thursday. We love Thursdays. Hi, I'm Yolanda And welcome to the Security Circle Podcast, produced in association with IFPO, the International Foundation for Protection Officers. This podcast is all about connection, bringing you closer to the greatest minds, boldest thinkers, trailblazers, and change makers across the security industry. Whether you are here to grow your network, spark new ideas, or simply feel more connected to the world of protection and risk, you are in the right place wherever you are listening from. Thank you for being a part of the Security Circle journey...
Yoyo:Well, I am bringing back a lady. Who partook, partaken, partook in a podcast, oh gosh, a long, long time ago now, it was, the most popular downloaded podcast for several months. It's sat at number three, which is huge, cause we're talking really high numbers. And that podcast was about the bullied brain, Dr. Jen Fraser, welcome back to the Security Circle Podcast. How are you doing?
Jen:I'm doing great. I'm so thankful to be back here and excited to talk to you.
Yoyo:Well, look, I couldn't, you know, not, especially upon hearing that you've got a new book out and that that new book is a follow on from The Bullied Brain called The Gaslit Brain, Protect Your Brain from the Lies of Bullieding, Gaslighting and Institutional Complicity. Wow, where should we start? What didn't The Bullied Brain cover that you felt needed a second book, Jen?
Jen:You know, it's a, it's a great question, Yolanda, because what I realized, I had an epiphany when I was at Oxford University, I was presenting in September with all of the people I most deeply admire, like Bessel van der Kolk was speaking and Gabor Maté and the absolute leaders in the field of, um, psychological awareness and well being, and Brain science and I was listening to them and I was listening to all the speakers and they were amazing and I was presenting and I felt like an outsider and I was like, what is wrong with me? These are my people. How come I'm not fitting in? And I realized I was in the middle of working on the gas lit brain and I'm working and I'm working and I'm thinking and I'm presenting and I realized it came to me in a flash. I don't want to fix the crisis anymore. I think that we have to change focus and stop it from happening. So there is a huge industry that is about repairing trauma, done for brains, done to brains, done to people's psyches and lives. And I don't want that to happen anymore. So the Gaslit Brain, the way it's the same passionate focus on mental wellness, but it's looking at Let's stop the trauma from happening. Why do we let it happen to us? And how can we learn a completely different way so that it doesn't happen?
Yoyo:the gas lit brain continues the journey. What was your most profound kind of learning in the transition of creating this from your brain into words for people to understand?
Jen:Well, in 2022, the word gaslighting got looked up 1, 740 percent times. more frequently than before. And it was chosen as the word of the year by Merriam Webster dictionary. And that was the year that the bullied brain was published. So the Bullied brain came out and I was very focused on, you know, we need people to understand that they can, they can use brain science to get better if they've been harmed, if they've been manipulated, if they've been harmed. What amazed me was The sensation myself, that in the workplace, and a lot of this came from talking to, um, Jonathan as well. You know, Jonathan and I were with you, Yolanda, in the Bullied Brain podcast. And I admire him so much, and he is the least likely person on the planet to get manipulated. He's an expert in not being manipulated and he was still vulnerable to it and that really got me thinking and he and I've talked a lot about it and I ultimately dedicated a chapter to him in the Gaslit Brain to his whole story because I think it's really important for people to understand that there's nothing about being gullible, there's nothing about being ignorant, none of that is relevant. to gaslighting. Gaslighting can happen to anybody, even the smartest person, the most highly trained person, and the most, just cutting edge, insightful person like Jonathan Wilson. And if it can happen to him, it can happen to anybody. So that was kind of my big breakthrough moment and really kind of a foundational bedrock to what people need to learn about this phenomenon, gaslighting.
Yoyo:For those that don't know what happened with Jonathan Wilson, he was a very, very senior police officer in the Metropolitan Police, and like you said, highly trained, highly competent, very skilled, and yet he was literally bullied out of his job. By senior ranking police officers. And he went through a very traumatic process. He's very open. He talks about it. So for those of you that do want to follow his story, it is a further episode number, we'll provide a link to that because it's just, the story is phenomenal and it makes everybody think this is a white privileged man. You know, what, what you wouldn't have thought that it would happen to him. He breaks all of the misconceptions, doesn't he?
Jen:You know, I'm so glad you said that because as I worked on the book, I give four case studies where we were all being bullied and gaslit. We're all professionals. We're all white, all at the same time. So one is a Nike executive. she was the lead. leader, the VP on basketball for North America. There's Jonathan Wilson, the counterterrorism expert in the UK. There is a law professor in Canada. And then I tell my own story. And so all four of us simultaneously are, we're at the top of our game. We're exceptional. They can't afford to lose us. And we. are driven out of our jobs. And so I really wanted to look at that. And my, my discovery was, you know, we talk so much about old protected classes and, you know, this and that and discrimination and diversity and equity. The only protected class that I found was the abuse of individuals. They are protected to the ends of the earth. It's amazing.
Yoyo:So, look, I'm going to draw your attention to a book that I read, uh, on the recommendation of somebody else, actually, and, um, it's John Ronson's A Psychopath Test, and I saw someone reading it on the plane, you know, you just chat to people behind you, I chat to random people, Jen, everywhere I do. And I could see that he literally is right at the end of his book, he's got a couple of pages left. And I said, Oh, is that any good? And he went, yes, pretty good. And I said, Oh, I don't suppose, you know, you have any plans for when you finished it? He said, no, no, you can have it. And he literally gave it to me and it sat on a bookshelf for like seven years. But I never forgot where this came from. And I read it very recently because my favorite radio presenter mentioned it in his talk show. And this is the only thing that I've had recently, Jen, that's made me realize that. The commonality between all of you was that you each had somebody highly manipulative, very mean, low empathy, who was able to just perform in this way that ultimately makes other people's lives miserable. And I learned that. What do you have to say about that?
Jen:Well, what was, um, so startling for me is I, I see myself and especially after writing the bullied brain, and I've been researching this for years. I really thought I had a powerful grasp of empathy. I thought I knew what it was inside out. And I realized in the work that I did in the Gaslit Brain, that there is a key component of empathy that I didn't know. And if I don't know it, probably lots of people don't know it. Because they, you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about empathy, and reading about empathy, and looking at the science. And the key thing that we all need to know, and I think Jonathan would be right here in agreement with me, is that there's two circuits of empathy in the brain, not one. So we can never just talk about empathy. We have to talk about the two different circuits. One circuit is called cognitive empathy. And the other circuit is called affective empathy. And it's a very complex process in our brains. At least 10 different brain regions are engaged. So, when you are a healthy individual, you have affective empathy. Which means, you feel someone else's pain. Put plain and simple, that's the absolute heart of it. You feel someone else's pain. And they've done all kinds of extensive brain studies of this. You, you know what someone's feeling, you know what they're thinking, and you know what they're intending, but bigger than that you actually feel their pain, and when they, when they put people into a, uh, fMRI brain scanner, if, so let's pretend you and me were put into fMRI brain scanners, okay, and they started to cut my hand, my brain would light up with pain, your brain, would light up with the same pain patterns as mine, but muted. And the reason being is our brains were wired like this through evolution in order to help each other. Humanity only survives in community. We, we're not going to survive out in the wilderness alone. That's just a fact. And so, we have this very special capacity to completely, on a brain level, relate to one another's emotional context and feeling. That's affective empathy. And we all take it for granted, because many of us have it. Now, on the flip side, there's cognitive empathy. Cognitive empathy is when you know what someone is feeling, you can see it, by studying them. You know what they're thinking and you know what they're intending. You, you essentially really know what makes a person tick. But the problem is That's all they are to you. They are just simply a clock. You can, you can read them like a book, but that's all they are to you, is a book. They are an object. Your brain has objectified them, therefore, you don't feel their pain. And therefore, you can hurt them. If you want to think about the types of people that really, really hurt people, including animals or children, those people do not have They have eroded affective empathy, and that is the definition of psychopathology. It's a person that can do very sick and twisted and cruel things, but they don't feel it. So in my line of work, because I work on abuse, people say, How does so and so sleep at night? And I'll tell them, she or he sleeps perfectly. They don't feel guilt. They don't feel remorse. They're not tossing and turning. I mean, the average person with a healthy brain, if you've said something wrong, you've embarrassed yourself or hurt someone's feelings or, or even told a lie, kind of a, you know, a lie in a moment of like embarrassment or weakness, you will toss and turn. You're not going to sleep. But the person that doesn't have affective empathy sleeps like a baby because they don't have feelings.
Yoyo:Or guilt. Or probably mental health, uh, that's driving them to suicidal ideation, because again, all those connections aren't there, are they?
Jen:No, they're not. They, and, and the rest of the world is, is like, uh, a game to them. They get a lot of energy from, manipulation. They, they get like hits from it. They get excited by it. They love to play games. They love to see people destroyed. They, it's a competition. They want to win. They see other people as losers. It's very, very different.
Yoyo:I think what I, what I struggled with the, the psychopath test is the fact that, you know, a lot of these traits of narcissism and lack of empathy, uh, you know, exist in very senior successful people. And of course, in all of the circumstances that you describe in your book with the Nike VP and with Jonathan Wilson and yourself, it all involved more senior people, people who have power and all of those ticky boxes you really don't want in a boss, right?
Jen:Yeah, they are, it's really interesting. Because the more like from a brain science point of view, the more power you have, the less empathy you have. So, exactly. It's in an inverse relationship. So think of how crazy it is, our society, we are still putting single individuals in positions of Grotesque amounts of power. We give them access to the nuclear codes. They're allowed to launch an invasion if they want. They can do whatever they want. They can destroy the environment. They can do anything. And so we have to change as a society. You yourself just said it, Yolanda. People who have more and more power, they, they go up the ranks, they, they trample people beneath them, they lie and manipulate and, and so on. We all know that. We all talk about it. There's all kinds of statistics that are truly disturbing about psychopathology and narcissism, Machiavellianism up at the top. But we're not doing anything about it as a society. We've got to make that shift whereby, if you are in a position of power, That there's so many huge demands on your brain that empathy is going to be eroded. So you need to be surrounded by a council of empaths that help you make wiser, more caring, more, um, fair decisions.
Yoyo:The thing is, I, that, that, that terminology empath cringes me a little bit because somebody who was in my life, who acted as the, the flying monkey, the narcissist, the Bullied, he described himself as an empath, uh, to everybody. He was proud of it. And I think he was the least empathetic of anybody that I've known, because otherwise he couldn't hurt people the way he did. But that was his strategy. So anyway, I always say beware of anyone that calls himself an empath.
Jen:Absolutely. And you know what you just described is brilliant because what people don't understand is that I'm just going to call I'm just going to say psychopath for shorthand psychopath. Let's understand it's part of the dark triad. It's Narcissist and it's Machiavellians. They actually have different brains. And I talk about that in the Bullied brain, like what the research shows, but for the sake of just you and me talking, let's just say the psychopath. Okay. So what, what you just described is one of their strategies. They are brilliant at putting on what's called that the psychopath psychopathic mask or the fictional mask. So they would take a look at you and they'd go, you'll learn to privileges people who actually care about other people. I'm going to put on the empath mask. Let's pretend you were a Christian. Oh, I'm going to put on the religious mask. So that Yolanda lets her guard down and thinks that she's having a spiritual conversation with someone who shares her same, you know, biblical background. Oh, wait a second. This person is into money. I'm going to put on the financial mask for that person and I'm going to talk to them, get them to put their guard down, get them to share their inner workings and secrets because they just feel so heard. They feel so seen. They, they, what they do is they give you What you want. They mirror what you're looking for. This is how they use. This is how these individuals operate in in romance relationships. They are everything you ever dreamed of until all of a sudden they pull the carpet out from under you and you you're face to face with a monster. That's when the mask comes down.
Yoyo:Yeah. Oh, Jen, I should imagine people listening are probably thinking, Oh, Lord have mercy. This reminds me of several people that I've worked with.
Jen:Yeah. It's okay if you work with them. You just don't maybe want to marry them.
Yoyo:Oh, no, no. Um, but look, society is growing. society is evolving. And when it is important, as you say, to your point about, you know, keeping in tune with more empathy, the right empathy, it's harder, isn't it? When you look at all of the things socio politically we are struggling with right now, the fight for our attention from digital and technological advances. We're not exactly walking down the joyful path of merriment. We should be though, shouldn't we, really, to stay healthy.
Jen:So in the book, the way I constructed it was I did four case studies. In the middle of the book, So part two, I talk about what is going on in the brains of these people and why do we keep falling for their lies? Why are we so susceptible to liars? It's incredible. And then the last part answers your, your point that you made that's very important. It's six chapters on all the different things we need to do in order to, or to know, I guess, in order to understand how our brains work. So we're in a society that It doesn't mention the brain. You're not going to learn anything about your brain at school. Not going to learn about it in university. Workplace isn't going to teach you anything. So, Truly right now in this time, 21st century, especially with the geopolitical stuff that's going down, you gotta get educated. If you don't know how your brain constructs reality, you can't discern between lies and truth. And if you think about it, the only thing that stands between every single one of us and mental illness Is our ability to understand what is false and what is real if we can't discern we're in a lot of danger. And so I think it's the most important education out there and everybody needs to know it. And so when I looked at what the all the brain scientists know about how we construct reality, because it's a constructed thing and we all construct different realities. It's like step by step, six different ways you need to know how the brain works. And those six steps are all completely tied back to, okay, here's what we know about psychopaths and here's what our four case studies taught us. So once you put those three things together, I think you want, you close that book up, let's pretend you're on the airplane and hand it to someone else and just say, you know what, we all need to do this. It is. It's gotten to be like even you're saying that about how our attention is getting pulled in all these different ways. What the scientists know is they literally are using the term. I don't know if you've heard it yet. They talk about brain rot and neuroscientists. I know neuroscientists don't use emotional like power words like that. They are very clinical. Usually they're very precise. When I started hearing them use the term. The phrase brain rot. I was like, Whoa, they are worried. And that's from social media. That's the bombardment of endless algorithms and advertisements and all these dopamine hits. They're very consciously. I mean, if you want to talk about people that know about the brain, the tech brothers, the tech bros, they know about brains. They are in the business of manipulating them. So you have got to take charge.
Yoyo:Yeah, because otherwise they wouldn't create algorithms that know exactly how the brain is hardwired to become so addicted to the diatribe and shite they're putting out, right? That's exactly
Jen:it. That's it. And they're running the show right now. They, they've got all of us in the palm of their hands. The fact that kids have been handed over to them is the saddest thing ever. But you know, there's a pushback. People have got to start pushing back.
Yoyo:I do think about that, especially because here in the UK today at the time of our recording, it's online awareness day and there's an awful lot of awareness around and parents are catching on. But they're slow to catch on but they are catching on. I'm hearing more stories now about parental intervention on how children are accessing a very adult world through their mobile phones. It's the way I put it, you know, you're at the end of the day, one of them said today, and I know this is slightly deviating, but they said, you know, would you, if you knew there was a building nearby where there were loads of really bad people that harm people. in there and people can get physically and mentally harmed. Would you allow people to walk into it? No, of course you wouldn't. We're very protected from the physical space, but we're not protected from the digital space and we're not protecting our children from the digital space. I learned that today, just, you know, half listening to my favorite radio station. It's a huge problem. for our children because they aren't fully developed yet with that wisdom and with all those bullet holes we've all got to sort of say, okay, I think what I'm doing is relatively unhealthy now, I'm going to do something to stop it.
Jen:Who does
Yoyo:that?
Jen:No, I, you know, it's the bullied brain. That was the driving force behind it is, you know, and I use this analogy all the time. If you went into the workplace and someone broke your leg, that would be, I mean, the police would be called, right? If you go into the workplace and someone breaks your brain, no one knows that it's happened. You don't know that it's happened. No one talks about getting a brain scan right away just to take a really good non invasive look at what just happened to you. And you know, our brains register neurological scars. Our brains register physical damage from, from all the behaviors out there, including all the stuff, the garbage on the internet. All that stuff has the potential to physically damage brain architecture and function. This is why neuroscientists talk about people who have brain wrought. Their brains aren't working anymore because they are so digitally lost. They're so in the face of screens. Our brains were never designed by evolution to be face-to-face with a screen. They, we are mammals. We are designed to be in nature, number one. Like even if it's just such a little thing, but it's an important point to make. If you took a potted plant and put it into your room or a big bouquet of flowers, you are going to totally change your nervous system. Your brain is gonna be that much healthier. So I, I was presenting in Pennsylvania a couple of weeks ago to a bunch of, um, you know, parole officers and social workers and educators and stuff like that, and I was talking to them about, you know. Do you know that putting a bunch of plants in a room is going to change the physiology of, of children, of kids? Like, if you think about kids and the sensory deprivation they're put into when they're put into prison cells, like, it's mind blowing. There's no way their brains are going to recover in any way, shape, or form. They're going to get, their brains are going to get progressively more and more seriously traumatized, so they don't have a chance when they get out. So, I'm talking about it and talking to all these brilliant people, and I look around and I'm like, look at the room that we're in. There's not a single plant in here. Not one. And we need plants, we need to be in nature, and we need human contact. We need to talk to other human beings. That, you know, if a psychopath has eroded empathy, eroded affective empathy, usually they come to it, I mean it's complex, but in general, let us say, a generalization, they get that kind of brain damage from abuse and neglect in their formative years. And, you know, in the great, in the great change that the world will hopefully come to, really we should be working double time to rehabilitate those brains. Because we have neuroplasticity and brains can repair and recover. So when someone is harmful, when they are highly manipulative, when they are someone who tells lies, when they are objectifying you, you really should feel sad. A deep sense of sadness and loss for them and a recognition that they're not all powerful. They're actually profoundly mentally ill. And you know, that takes their power away that they would like to unleash over you. And I think that's part of the training that we need to see a lot more of in the workplace.
Yoyo:Number one, I can't wait to read your book, Jen. And I should imagine there'll be lots of people listening too. But look, I've got to ask you, without, you don't have to give away any massive spoilers, but how does a law professor get bullied?
Jen:So this is a law professor in Canada. And one of the things that I found is a defining feature of people that get bullied. so we do a lot of, I mean, people will get bullied and manipulated if they're vulnerable in some way, that's often true. And we know that, you know, hence. misogyny, hence racism, hence, you know, people who have disabilities of any kind, any type of vulnerability is going to ignite the abusive individual. But the abusive individual is also very threatened by talented people. They cannot stand a talented person and they will drive them out of the workplace. So the law professor is not just a law professor. She has the Order of Canada, which is one of the highest It's the highest award you can get in our country. So she's an absolutely brilliant woman, but her fault, her, her flaw, her weakness was to have integrity. And this is exactly what brought down Jonathan Wilson. Jonathan Wilson was a target from the get go because when people are manipulators. When they're liars, when they're corrupt, the one thing they cannot tolerate is integrity. They have to get rid of it as quickly as possible because it exposes them. It's a real danger to them. So that's how the law professor went down. She had integrity.
Yoyo:Oh boy. You see, I've got somebody else. So I know somebody in my circle who has a lot of integrity, very high efficacy. And they are entering into some very difficult conversations with their employer because, um, there are the, the values of the individual and the values of the business are not aligning in the way they should. And, and, and what sort of advice would you give to that person? Because I basically said. Start looking for another job now. If your values aren't aligned, don't even try and change the business. They're going to want you to change you. And when they went into this meeting, they came out and they said to me, they want me to change. Do you want to stay in an organization that's going to want you to change when ultimately you know they're not following the very values they're promoting? What would you say to that person?
Jen:Well, I think you're right. I think the wise advice in these dark times right now, is to absolutely happy having career conversations with other people. Absolutely. In the book, I try to look at the spectrum between the liar. And the truth teller, so the person with integrity is a truth teller. The most advanced form of that is the whistleblower. The whistleblower sacrifices everything to publicly say, let's use Boeing as an example, this airline is not safe. And I've seen it, and I work on the floor, and I need to go public with it because people are going to die. And lo and behold, They did die. You know, planes fell out of the sky and the whistleblower is, it's a very, it's a person driven by integrity because there's, you don't get any benefit from it. You are likely to be destroyed and everything about you destroyed your livelihood, your career, your family, you lose your house. They take your reputation away. They smear campaign you. I mean, you're just doomed, but there are still people that do it. Now, what I would do if I was your person in your circle is, and I use this research in the book, I would go into my employer and say, look, I can see you'd like me to change, but let me just have a discussion with you here about the research. The research shows that businesses that actually respect and care for and listen to their whistleblowers are much more productive and much more profitable. So if I was that business and that's 15 years of Harvard data, That's 15 years of research. So what I would say to them is, why don't we have a real conversation here where you guys think about where you're going in the future. I'm here to help. I'm here to show you that having this image, this mission statement and this vision and all this blah, blah in the public sphere, while in the private sphere, we actually are compromising ourselves in serious ways. It's not going to fly. It's not going to work. It's not going to make you productive or profitable. 15 years of research. Come on, guys, let's make a change.
Yoyo:And, having spoken to a couple of whistleblowers on the Security Circle podcast, I started reflecting myself on the qualities of a person who is a whistleblower. and I also drew a correlation. I produced an article because I have a column and the article, I reflected a completely different angle that businesses should look at whistleblowers as a first line of defense. This is something that can hurt your business. And you should look to remediate it straight away with some really good solutioning. Why can't businesses think like that? It's terrifying. You know, it's,
Jen:that's exactly what perplexed me, that's what drove me to write the book, The Gaslit Brain. I was like, what is going on? Because it doesn't make sense. And I slowly but surely through the book, it's like I'm learning along with my reader, because that is exactly like, I got stuck on that question, I couldn't answer it for myself. And so, It's really, really interesting, the pattern, because there is a very, we are locked into a downward spiral, it's a bad pattern, and just the way you put it, it can get fixed. We don't have to do this. We, I mean, think of the Met Police losing their top guy. How dumb is that? Think about Nike. Nike lost their top VP of basketball for North America. Why? Because they, they simply are trapped in this way of thinking. and it's very, I don't, it's too complicated to actually just chat about. But just trust me when I say, as you unpack it through the book, it's very, um, on the one hand, it's shocking. And on the other hand, it's really empowering and encouraging. Because the bottom line is, Gaslighting and people who Bullied and institutional complicity even. It is the most textbook thing ever. It's textbook. It follows the same rules. It uses the same gestures and words. And this is why the VP of basketball and Jonathan Wilson, counterterrorism expert. And Jennifer Fraser, educator, and law professor, we're all leading the same crazy lives because we are targeted for having integrity, for being too talented, and the psychopaths are trying to get rid of us, and our institution is helping the psychopath. And you're just, like, it's mind bending. This is why People suffer such serious mental illness afterwards, you know, suicidal ideation to put it out there. Why do they suffer that? Because you can't wrap your mind around it. It doesn't make sense. And the brain's job is to make sense of reality. And when it can't make sense of reality, it starts to degrade all systems. That's why you feel horrible when you're caught in these scenarios.
Yoyo:So let's talk to the individual now caught in those scenarios. They do vary, but they clearly, are not happy in the workplace. I make it very simple. I say, look, are you being set up for success?, I mentor a lot of young women professionals and when they have challenges, you can easily see whether they're fixable or not fixable. And if the challenges are not fixable, ultimately it's the person who has to make the decision to leave. And there's no shame in that. This is life's way of saying, you don't belong there anymore. You've outgrown them. Now it's time to move on and do something else more exciting. You know, when you break up with the boyfriend and you're like, Oh, I'm never going to meet anybody else. Then you meet this more amazing guy. That's the way I see it in life.
Jen:Yeah.
Yoyo:Because every time you meet somebody, you think, Oh yeah, that's going to be it. And yeah, you end up meeting somebody far, far better. and I even have joked in the past, certainly with other guests that. You know, there was this horrible man that I used to work with in around about 2015 16, and he had a reputation of making all the women cry in the offices. And he shouted at me one day, and I was so blown away. I was completely shocked. I'd like him to say that same thing to me now. but back in the day, I was, I was so shocked really that I didn't really know how to put it. And I've got a bit distressed and then I ended up leaving that company there you go. He was a bully., and in the end, I remember getting a really great job and saying to somebody, Joe, if I met that guy, I'd just give him a hug. I say, you're such an amazing asshole if it wasn't for you. I would still be working for you now, and I'm so much happier where I am, but that's just my way of twisting things. As we grow older, how do our brains adapt to what we tolerated when we were younger? and what we tolerate when we get older, because they have this phrase in the UK when a misogynistic man came out and said something that women of a certain age, you know, always more likely to complain. Yes, that's because we've reached the threshold of no, not taking any more shit. How does our brain age in terms of how we defend ourselves?
Jen:I think the best, depending on who you are, as you say, there's always going to be different ways. Some people are going to be, profoundly harmed by the trauma of workplace Bullieding. There's just no getting around it. I believe, though, fundamentally, and this is why I write these books, and this is why I do the research, I think knowledge is power. And I think women, and men, and everybody, like, on the spectrum, who's been through garbage, gains a lot of power from it. if they don't let it destroy them, you know, it's all of us. You have to work so hard to put yourself back together after someone has undermined. Your sense of selfhood, but you know that kind of outright Bullieding where the person yells at you, that's so incredibly offensive. It's like getting an electric shock, right? But at least you know that you got hurt, right? It's so obvious, it's so unacceptable, it's so obvious, so psychotic, right? Where gaslighting gets to be very, very dangerous. Is the person, um, you know, and Jonathan put this in such a way that was really helpful to me because he talked about, you know, you get called into a meeting by a superior or you get brought into the meeting with HR and he said, you need to know you need to be trained to understand that it might be an ambush meeting. And so you see you go into these meetings with your guard down because you think these people, and this is a really important part of gaslighting that I'd love people to grasp gaslighting. Really uses and you can see from what you said before, but people in positions of power, they've usually risen up through the ranks because they are, they don't have a problem doing really horrible things to other people. So if that is the case, some leaders, of course, are just. It's fabulous and they're amazing and we love them. But when you get the negative destructive command and control ones, we all know what we're talking about. And it's really, um, when, when someone like that has risen up and has the power and they are pretending. Pretending to be kind, pretending to have your back, pretending to share information with you, to get information from you, and get you to tell the truth about what's going on. They will be the most kindly, caring, you know, it's the psychopathic fiction again, they've got a mask on. But if you haven't been trained to understand that people do that, even the kindest people, then you're doomed. And the, and Jonathan and I talked about this, I said to him, if you had been trained To think that the people that you work closely with that are trustworthy, like they're not terrorists. They're your colleagues, right? They're your superiors. They got positions of power and prestige and social standing because they must be good. That's how the brain works, right? The brain makes a lot of assumptions. It goes, this person's position means. They, you know, they're the top of the top. They must be good. They could never have gotten that position if they were an evil person, a manipulative person, a liar. And that is the most fatal mistake the brain can make. and our brains are wired and scripted to do that, even when we get older. So what we have to do is, I mean, in the six chapters is about how do we train our brains differently. One of the things it's the second chapter. I talk about how you need to have two sets of rules. Because your emotional self is, it's shaped by your society. The emotions that you have are culturally scripted. And different cultures have different emotional reactions and names and so on and so forth. So, starting from that place, you have to understand that, okay, let's pretend the man yelled and screamed at you. If you had grown up in a family where your mother yelled and screamed at you all the time, you, your wiring, your brain wiring, your cultural coding might have just gone. Oh, you know, whatever. Not a big deal. You know, so and so is having a bad day. They're stressed. They're in fight mode. They can't help it. They'll be sorry later or that's how they get stuff done. Right. You can imagine. But if you'd grown up in your formative years and being with bosses and colleagues and so on that actually operated out of. out of kindness and care and gentleness and they didn't raise their voice and they didn't yell and scream and they didn't succumb to stress. You'd be shocked by that and you'd have a totally different emotional reaction. So the point of that long winded answer is for all of us have wired brains. We all have unique brains, but then we all have brains wired by experience. We need to develop kind of like a backstage response to things. And the best example of this is the Trojan horse. So for all the people that don't remember this from Greek mythology, the Trojan horse is given by the Greeks to the Trojans as a big gift. They've been at war for 10 years, war of attrition, but all of a sudden the Greeks leave this fabulous, this wooden horse on the beach, and they leave. The fleet goes, there's no more war. It's all over. The Trojans are like, what, what is this big horse? Well, they've been culturally coded like the rest of us to believe that a gift, that the proper emotional response to a gift is gratitude, right? Gratitude, openness, vulnerability. Excitement, like there's nothing better than a big gift, right? So the Trojans go down to the beach and they bring the big wooden horse into their camp. They close up the doors and they're like, this is the greatest gift we ever got. And they have a big party. And then what happens? The Greek soldiers get out of the, the horse, the wooden horse in the night. And they slaughter the Trojans. Everybody needs to be trained. When you go into a meeting with HR, when you go and meet with your superiors, you have to ask yourself, they're going to give me a lot of gifts. Are they Trojan horses or are they real authentic gifts? So that type of double wiring is going to save a lot of people.
Yoyo:Now into women of. Hang on a minute, that could have anything in it. We've been there, done that before, got that t shirt right. So there is something about the way Experiences shape us, you know, as we do get older, because we get more experienced. why are we receptive to liars? Is it because we genuinely have good intentions and think that most people are we seeking those positive biases, basically?
Jen:It is very difficult to, it would take so much brain power to interact with people believing that they might be learning. That would be like driving your car not on automatic pilot, right? You know how when you get really, and here, actually I'm really glad you asked that because there's two sides to that. Knowledge is power, experience is gonna, when you've gotten burned, you don't put your hand back on the stove very easily. No matter. On the flip side though, I, when I was writing the book, I was really curious because there was one person who did not fall for the gaslighting. I fell for the gaslighting hook, line, and sinker. And I'm a smart person. I've been around the block. I'm an abuse survivor. I should have clued in right away. I believe the lies. I completely believe them. And I, so I thought a lot about it. I was like, what is wrong with me? And what I realized is. When you had repeat experiences with colleagues of goodness, it, and this is what happened to Jonathan. You do not believe that they could suddenly become manipulative, that they could start telling lies, that they could Bullied you. It just can't, your brain can't wrap itself around that possibility. And this, and so you're vulnerable. But, you know, if you, like, when that guy yelled at you, that, you took that as a shot across the bow. That was a warning sign and you weren't going to mess around anymore. And then you put two and two together. He's got a reputation for doing stuff like that. And you were smart to exit because you could have gone to your superiors and had them say, you know what, Yolanda, we think you're the problem we're not going to give you a good recommendation. You're a problem maker. You're like, yeah, yeah, move along.
Yoyo:There are so many businesses as well that I'm not really geared up to handle HR issues really appropriately. Instead, you know, most people have now come to terms with the fact that HR is not there to help you. They're there to protect the business. But it takes people a long time to realize that. And usually they're sitting on the wrong side of the room when they realize, Oh, shit's going to go down. And I thought they were going to help me. So the distrust within organizations is certainly quite well embedded now, isn't it?
Jen:Yeah, the H R issue comes up a lot. Like I gave it. I was asked to speak to a couple of 100 HR executives because they are starting to really feel the trauma of what they're asked to do. They go. People go into human resources, not to throw the whistleblower truth teller victim under the bus. And but they get those directives from on high. And you know what? Most people don't understand. And this should be like absolute, like necessary corporate training. Leaders in businesses need to be trained to recognize that they will be target number one of the psychopath at work. Right. And so we are all very comfortable talking about how psychopaths groom victims and targets. And they do. They're really good at it. But the first person that they go after Is the HR people and the leader and the manager. They go for the power because they become their best friends. They start to play golf with them and they go for squash games and then they go out for dinner and they get to know their kids and they just love you. And so when a report comes into the leader. And to the HR exec that Yolanda has been actually Bullieding people or committing fraud or doing any other psychopathic thing, their brains go, no, that's not possibly true. I know Yolanda. She's actually a really good friend of mine. I know Yolanda has many kids. What are you talking about? So this is part of the game. This is part of the game that the psychopath wins over and over again. They groom higher ups. They groom the position, the decision makers like HR. And so if people are not trained to understand this dynamic, they are, they get, they are complicit. They are negligent. They let the Bullieding happen. So let's pretend, you know, let's say I came and I said, Yolanda's Bullieding me, and they're like, you know what, Jen, you're done. We don't want a problem maker like you. We love Yolanda. She's our best friend, blah, blah. But then the second report comes in. Then the leader goes, Oh, that's a bit weird. And then the third report comes in. Then the leader goes, I'm complicit in abuse that's been happening on my watch. I'm going to do everything to cover this up. And I'm going to make HR do all the dirty work. And all of a sudden you have a completely destructive dynamic in the workplace. And it happens fast.
Yoyo:I have to say, This is a cute little story, but I was playing Monopoly with my family. I was much, much younger about, I don't know, nine years old. And when everybody wasn't looking, I nicked a couple of hundred from the bank. I know this sounds daft, right? But I did. I nicked a couple of hundred from the bank and I ended up winning that game, but I couldn't live with the way that I'd won. And I had to say at the end that I nicked a couple of hundred from the bank. I think it was only 200. I seem to remember that number because when they were saying, Oh, well done, you did really well, you know, you, you won. And I'm thinking, Oh, it felt, I felt like I was rotting inside with guilt and shame because I'd, I'd won so deceptively. I'd obviously played reasonably well. I, and there were some that would say, well, it would have taken more than 200 for you to, you know, you had to strategically play quite well, but. As the minute I got those compliments, I felt wretched inside, so I had to say. And I'm thinking there'll be lots of people that will be thinking well, I probably feel the same way, you know, the guilt of me kind of tricking everybody. I didn't like that feeling of tricking people and I don't like magic or magicians very much for that reason either. I have to ask you about the Machiavellian brain because I know I haven't got one. I know because otherwise I would have enjoyed tricking everybody and I would have continued to trick people. what's the Machiavellian brain? Why is it so different?
Jen:So it, you have just given me insight into your family by telling that story. So let me just, let me ask you a question to see if I'm right. Would it be fair to say that your parents really supported you, and they really respected you, and they thought you were, they thought you were great,
Yoyo:no? No. No? No. We're all, rather, disassociated now. That's really interesting. Okay. Both my brother and I, we, if we were, still under 18, we would have emancipated ourselves, put it that way.
Jen:Okay. Well, here's, then I don't know the answer to your question. I'll tell you about Machiavellian brains, but you've just like completely stumped me and I'll have to write a new book about it because you like ruined my theory. okay. So the Machiavellian brain oftentimes emerges when a child is in a family where the family has extremely high expectations, but the kid doesn't have the ability to match up. They can't win the Monopoly game, but the parent expects them to, and when they fail, the parent puts them down. Degrades them, makes them feel horrible, makes them feel like a loser, um, essentially. And so, the Machiavellian knows that they can't reach the high expectations, but they don't have the intellectual wherewithal, or the hard work, or whatever it's going to be, that's going to allow them to please the parent. So they get deceptive. They get really good at finding shortcuts, at manipulating, at doing all of these different little deceptions, because it's the only way they can survive in this pretty awful parental environment. Interesting. You've
Yoyo:described character make up of a number of different television dramas where you've got the second sibling that's never as good as the main sibling or the favoured sibling. These are character traits, aren't they, for authors and movie makers?
Jen:Yeah, I know. And I mean, the thing that really interested me and I put the research, of course, into the book is when people tell self serving lies. So, and they do all these psychological studies. So they tell a self serving lie. So that's what you did with the monopoly. And what happened was, if we talk about it from a brain point of view, what happened was your amygdala, the alert center of your brain or the threat detection center, it's, It got really uncomfortable. It started flashing and going, Yolanda, this is, you just breached society. Society doesn't, does not tolerate people who steal money and then succeed with it. That's like horrible. Don't do that. And you responded as a kid, probably, you know, healthy dynamic with your brain. You responded to the alert and went. Yeah, I got to tell the truth. I got to come clean. I don't like this discomfort. Now the adult who is telling self serving lies, what happens is the more lies they tell, the less alert they get from the amygdala. So this is how you get to the point where you have someone who's a pathological liar, because they don't feel, like we were saying before, not only do they not feel emotion, they don't get the alert anymore that they're breaching societal rules. They just don't feel anything. They don't get that anxiety. You know, think of them in a lie detector test. How that would flummox. The lie detector test. Because they're not going to get a faster heart rate. They're not going to start to sweat. They're not going to do anything like that. Because they're used to lying all the time. It's very, very comfortable.
Yoyo:And then people think that they can actually lie better by lying and telling the truth at the same time.
Jen:Oh God. Okay. That's way too confusing for my brain. My brain isn't as smart as yours. I can't hold those links
Yoyo:and mix them. It's in movies and dramas and things, but ultimately, you know, they say the best way to lie is to tell the truth in the sense of, you know, you might have to recount where you were. on a certain day, date, time and place, but if you're recounting the truth of an event that you were actually at the day before that, then you're going to come across more truthful than if you were trying to make up you were somewhere where you weren't. So yeah, there's that kind of deception. But again, I just don't enjoy deception. I don't enjoy receiving gratification from somebody when I've deceived them to get it. And I think I took the couple of hundred, A, because there was an opportunity to, it wasn't like I engineered it. I think I was taking a toilet break or something. And it was like, and then I did it because I could, number two. So, that was it. I thought, okay, we'll make a couple of hundred, but I was quite low on the cash, you see, and I knew there's a risk of me leaving the game. I didn't do it to win. I did it to stop losing. Does that make sense? Yeah. It's odd how that one thing has stuck with me my whole life. it is possible to break brains. I know. And certainly mental health gives us a road map to understanding how brains have become broken. Jen, what do you see ahead of you now, once this book lands? And have you already decided where you're going to go next?
Jen:Well, I'm very interested in kids that, so let's go back to this monopoly. So kids that get in really tough situations, whether at home or at school, they're being abused or they come from extreme poverty or they come from violence or all these different things. You know, they use their brains in very rational ways to survive, and that might involve self medicating with drugs. That might involve stealing money because they don't have food. I mean, nobody does these things unless they, you know, at, in, when they're young, unless there's a layer of real desperation and harm, right? So I'm very interested in Using the brain science to step in and say, look, putting a kid who's a teenager or 20 something into jail is like, and I'm not trying to, I totally understand the need for accountability. I completely understand the need for safety that you can't have certain people that are violent out and about. I don't mean that. I mean, kids that. You know, they had marijuana possession or something, or they stole something or these dumber things. So we're looking at building this, program. It's a diversion program. So that instead of the kid going into jail for six months, the kid goes into the brain diversion program and we teach them what trauma did to their brain. So the, we can use that phrase, the broken brain, what trauma did to their brain. The fact that they have. Their brain is wired to repair and recover if they do all the right things and we can teach them all the different stages of what you need to do to get better. Every single brain can be returned to organic, health and we teach them that. And then we teach them why they made a really bad decision in the first place and how to get better at self regulation, understanding when they are better. On a turning point of a bad decision and how to roll it back and how to get the kind of help they need or work with their brain, not against it. And, you know, it's really important to me because the adolescent brain, 13 to 24, is undergoing massive change. And the massive change that that brain is undergoing makes them highly susceptible to criminal activity. And they don't know that. And most parents don't know that. And teachers don't know that. Lo and behold, you know, we have these disasters. So the dream book that I'd like to write after The Gaslit Brain, I call The Liberated Brain. I want to make it about helping kids get out of the prison system. Saving them.
Yoyo:Oh my goodness. Gems. I know people I can put you in touch with that are definitely looking at reform for young people. look, Crikey, I'm blown away with what you've just said. I think that's phenomenal. I think it's, a huge teaser, but you'll be able to, listener, you'll be able to read the story about how the VP of Nike was gaslit. I, and Jennifer, Jen, I can't wait to hear your story as well. So I'm, yeah, I think I'm going to need a signed copy, Jen.
Jen:Sign, copy, no problem. I'm really excited for the book to come out. I hope it makes positive change. You know, we talk about the war on truth, we talk about the era of disinformation, and it all goes back to social media is filling us full of lies. We don't know what's true and what's a lie anymore. and it's dangerous. So I'm pretty excited about making, hopefully, positive social change just by getting the brain science out there. I'd love to talk to your reformed people because I think the brain science can help. Help them and help kids and save the system a ton of money, like such a loss of money that we could invest in getting these kids back to being citizens and taxpayers and not being a burden on the system. And plus save them. I mean, good Lord, why wouldn't we do that? Yeah. I'm happy to talk about my story anytime too. It's pretty horrible. So, let's save that for a rainy. you know, Thursday or something.
Yoyo:Let's do that. Jen Fraser, welcome back and thank you again for giving us your time. It's been an utterly phenomenal, enlightening, brain opening experience chatting to you. Thank you for joining us.
Jen:Well, thank you so much for having me, Yolanda.