Interview with Dr. Sanj Katyal – 390
In this podcast episode, John interviews Dr. Sanj Katyal, a radiologist turned mental health expert focused on the power of the subconscious mind. Dr. Katyal describes the use of rapid transformational therapy (RTT) to address modern mental health challenges, particularly in children.
As a physician and certified therapist, he shares insights on accessing the subconscious mind to create lasting positive changes, drawing from his experience helping physicians and families navigate mental health challenges in today's digital age.
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Understanding the Subconscious Mind
Sanj explains how 95% of our thoughts and behaviors originate from the subconscious mind, shaped by early life experiences. This understanding is crucial for addressing deep-rooted issues through RTT, which can achieve significant results in just 1-3 sessions by accessing and restructuring subconscious beliefs.
Studies demonstrate that RTT can reduce anxiety by 62% after six months, offering a promising complement to traditional therapeutic approaches.
Protecting Youth Mental Health
The discussion focuses on the critical intersection of social media and youth mental health, with Dr. Katyal providing practical strategies for parents. He recommends delaying social media exposure until age 16, implementing screen time limits, and creating phone-free zones to sustain meaningful family interactions.
These guidelines stem from extensive research showing the causal relationship between social media use and increased rates of anxiety and depression among youth.
Summary
For parents and professionals interested in learning more about rapid transformational therapy and strategies for protecting youth mental health, visit sanjkatyal.com. Dr. Katyal offers remote sessions focusing on anxiety, screen addictions, sports performance, and career development, helping clients unlock their full potential by addressing limiting beliefs at the level of the subconscious mind.
Links for today's episode:
- Dr. Sanj Katyal's Website
- Dr. Sanj Katyal's LinkedIn
- How to Apply Positive Psychology to Save Your Career – 190
- Why You Must Put Yourself First to Avoid “Healthcare Disease” – 243
- How Can I Boost My Resilience? – 183
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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 390
The Secret Power of the Subconscious Mind
- Interview with Dr. Sanj Katyal
John: We're going to deviate slightly from our usual topics today, and there's a good reason. One of the consequences of working long hours under stressful situations is that invariably it affects our families, it affects our children, and with children facing a lot of mental health issues in recent years, including things like the pandemic and all social media, I thought I would get Sanj back here on the podcast and just get his thoughts on these problems. with that, welcome back to the podcast, Dr. Sanj Katyal.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Thanks, John. Happy to be here. It's great to see you again.
John: Yeah, it was basically about four years ago that you were here. I think it was April, let's have it written down, 6th of 21. And, we talked a lot about what you were doing at the time. I think a good place to start today is to kind of update us on what you were doing then and what you've maybe, what's changed and what else you're doing now, which in four years, I'm sure there's some new things.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: I'm a radiologist. I ran a large private startup radiology group for about 10 years, managing a group of about 100 radiologists. And probably back in 2012 or 2013, I, and I visited a lot of hospitals, talked to a lot of C-suite CMOs, and I began noticing back then a really growing discontent among physicians. Didn't really matter what specialty they were, or even really what stage of career they were. There just seemed to be a growing unhappiness.
I remember thinking back from one of these drives about my own life, wondering why I wasn't happier than I was back then. It's not like I was unhappy. I had pretty much achieved everything I set out to achieve. And, and I didn't really find myself bursting with joy or fulfillment. And I really sought out to figure out why. And that search led me to become certified in positive psychology, which is, some people call the positive, the science of happiness.
And I did that for a while. I taught university classes to college students in positive psychology and lectured nationally to various groups, a lot of physician groups. And I started working with physicians for, for several years. And I think that's probably around the last time I came on the podcast.
And that's been very fulfilling, but I always seem to hit some sort of limitation when I worked with physicians and even kind of in my own life and my own personal development. And I didn't really understand why until I came across a book called Tell Yourself a Better Lie by Marissa Peer. And she's a world-famous therapist out of London.
My wife actually gave me that book. She's a therapist and she's like, oh, you love studying about the mind. You're going to like this book. And I really did. It basically shed light on why the physicians that I worked with and even myself kind of kept coming up against blocks and seemed to default back to kind of our default state. And that journey has led me to, to really study and become certified in therapy called rapid transformational therapy.
John: Okay. A couple of things that I would comment on. One is that, it's interesting because to me, I talk to a lot of people that want to change careers, have changed careers. And a lot of them say, well, I went into medicine and I pretty much didn't like it from the very beginning, but I did it because it was, I was smart and I was expected to, and I do all these things.
But then I think there's another group like you who had a vision. It was awesome. They love doing it, but I can see how something gets old after 5, 10, 15, 20 years, particularly if it's very stressful because to me, at least personally, I started just experiencing just the emotional and intellectual strain of just having to focus and concentrate much for long every day, not, trying to hurt a patient or something. Yeah, just there's different things that lead us to that point where, well, it's time for a change.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, absolutely. I'm definitely in the second camp. I enjoyed it for a while, but things get, you don't want to spend your life on autopilot. Just going through the motions. And I think part of staying healthy and fulfilled is continuously learning and challenging yourself and kind of figuring out what your next passion may lead you to.
John: I did want to mention at this point, because you talked about the positive psychology, you wrote a book called Positive Philosophy: Ancient and Modern Wisdom to Create a Flourishing Life. Just our listeners know that if they want to really learn more about what you've done and written in the past, they can get that at Amazon or wherever. Things have changed. And now you were telling me before we got on the call that there's some recent revelations that you've experienced, you talked about, you mentioned right now, I guess, the rapid transformational therapy. tell us more about that and why that is interesting and exciting for you now.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah. The thing that's interesting about rapid transformational therapy is it can access the subconscious mind, which is where 95% of our thoughts and behaviors come from. Most of us use our conscious mind, our willpower, our quote, thinking mind to try to make changes in our life, self-improvement, new morning routines, new exercise regimens, diets, whatever it is. But really, it's our subconscious mind.
And what's kind of deeply ingrained at that level, that determines the vast majority of our thoughts and our behaviors. And this is why we always seem to default, and we default to the state of our subconscious mind. And this is the roadblock that I kept hitting up against using positive psychology and our quote, thinking mind to change habits and forth.
John: Okay. This is where some of us concrete thinkers are like, okay, this is going to be confusing. I'm going to have to have you to try and sort this out for me. If I think about my subconscious and accessing it or changing it, I'm pretty much at a brick wall. The closest I can come to is I could say, well, sometimes I have certain dreams, and I have to assume that maybe some of that is triggered by my subconscious. But why don't you explain a little more about how we can even access the subconscious and how can we change what's going on subconsciously? I guess that's what we're going to talk about for the next 10 minutes or so. That'll be very interesting to hear.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah. So, it's all part of the same mind, but you can think of it in simplistic terms as two different minds, the conscious thinking mind and the feeling subconscious mind. And feeling always wins over logic. Most of us know exactly what we should do, but the vast majority of us don't do everything we're supposed to do or, know that we should do at a conscious level. If we take a step back, as children, we've all had experiences that were unpleasant. It could be minor things like friends not being nice or excluding us from a group to more significant challenges like bullying or abuse.
These experiences left their mark on us and our minds, in an effort to protect us and try to make sense of the situation, came in and formed some beliefs about the situation. The three most common beliefs are, number one is I'm not enough. So, my parents yelled at me because I'm not good enough. My friends didn't include me because I'm not funny enough. I'm not smart enough, thin enough, pretty enough, whatever it is.
The second major belief, and this is a big one for physicians, particularly physicians that may be listening to this podcast, is what I want isn't available. As children, our basic need is love and acceptance. And those experiences where those needs are unmet lead us to form beliefs like what I want, which is basically love and acceptance as a child, isn't available.
The third main limiting belief is I'm different and can't connect with others. And this one was a big one for me, being the only Indian child in an all-white school with a funny name and parents with accents and stuff like that. But we carry these beliefs, these beliefs become deeply ingrained below the level of our awareness, in our subconscious mind. And we carry them basically like baggage or heavy anchors with us throughout our adult life. And they really distort how we see ourselves and how we see others in the world around us. Those are big, big burdens to kind of unshackle ourselves from.
John: I think what you were saying was that the approaches to addressing that is not the same as approaches to what, in the previous, the more superficial kinds of issues. You mentioned that rapid transformational therapy. What is that and how is that different?
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, behavior change is really the last, it's far downstream of the thing. We're talking about negative experiences leading to limiting beliefs and faulty programming that lead to kind of distortions and behaviors that don't serve us. And most of us try to focus on the very last part and change our behavior, maybe act a little different, do some things that may mitigate symptoms, symptom relief of anxiety, of depression, discontent.
But it's really going back upstream and uncovering the root cause of where and why and when these limiting beliefs formed. And it's really just understanding where they formed, how they formed, that you become free of them. You don't really even need to do anything except gain an awareness of them.
And then you can install more effective beliefs that serve us better, align with our highest aspirations and true selves. And that's what rapid transformational therapy does. Typically, very common things like anxiety, phobias, fear of heights, fear of needles, agoraphobia, depression, these are all, could be handled very effectively in one to three sessions.
This is not long-term weekly therapy for years going back. And the reason that can be done that effectively and quickly is because it's done under a guided simple hypnosis that allows us to bypass the critical thinking mind, goes to the subconscious level where these childhood experiences took place. And then once we're aware of them, it's easy to dismantle those beliefs that form from those experiences.
John: Is there much research or follow up either you personally or in the literature with the ability for that kind of shift to maintain itself for more than three months, six months a year? I don't know that there would be any difference, but I'm thinking for people who are attached to, well, five years of one-on-one weekly therapy for an hour versus what you're talking about, they're going to probably have a little skepticism. Where do you stand on that?
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah. And I want to be clear also, this is not like, I think as physicians, when we look at new things or things are maybe are unfamiliar to us, we're looking at everything as an either or thing. And this is not an either or thing. This can very easily be a supplemental add on to counseling, therapy, medication, if that's appropriate.
I'm not here to say this is going to replace everything in the field of psychiatry. What I am saying is that this is very effective, quickly bypassing and uncovering blockages that have been, that have kept us stuck for many, many years, often unknowingly because of that subconscious access. There are studies also, because there's a large number of growing physicians trained in RTT, MDs. And I'm actually with another physician in Asia forming a group of physicians trained in RTT. There are several studies. The latest one I saw was six months out, 62% reduction in anxiety. So, these are obviously ongoing and stuff, but that's, those are, and from my experience and anecdotally from all the people that I've interacted with, that's a pretty significant and realistic number to achieve.
John: That's pretty interesting to hear because, today, if you're a family physician, you're treating somebody for a medical problem and there's always some kind of psychological component, or it is a completely different DSM-3 diagnosis, but it's like, you have to refer them. Sometimes you can't get them in for months and months. You are, as a family physician, kind of committed to treating, more than just, 2% of their illnesses. It sounds like something that maybe in the future, pediatricians, family physicians, others could learn this and just incorporate it into their approach to patient care.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Oh yeah, no doubt. There was a journal article, which I can send you any of these, in the Annals of Internal Medicine that showed RTT is the most effective treatment you have yet to prescribe. That's the title of the article. And it kind of goes through that.
John: All right. But we were going to talk about a specific topic that you're very interested in and that many of us are. And I mentioned in the intro is that the rate of mental illness in children is just skyrocketing, really. I'm not going to go into the details, but it's just been something that's been talked about and written about for years now. Seemed to be the tipping point was the pandemic, but I'm really interested in hearing about that. And the issue with social media, it just seems like it's obvious there are issues and maybe you can expound on what social media, the impacts have been negative impacts primarily. We kind of know the positive and then how this might fit into therapy or coaching or a different approach.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Sure. Yeah. The mental health crisis really started back in 2010. If you look at it, it's basically a hockey stick graph. It goes like that. And in 2010, a couple of things happened. The social media companies introduced forward-facing cameras. They introduced third-party apps that had intentionally addictive principles by behavioral psychologists embedded into these apps. number of likes streaks. Those are all the infinite scroll.
The goal was always singular. And that was to keep as many eyeballs on the screens for as long as possible. They didn't care at all about the consequences. And consequently the rates of anxiety and depression and suicidal ideations and suicide itself, successful suicide have skyrocketed. And people, skeptics have said, well, that's correlational, that's not causation, but there have been now hundreds of causation studies.
If you take teens and you remove Facebook or Instagram for one week or three weeks or a month, and you measure pre and post metrics using well-established statistically significant life satisfaction skills, anxiety surveys, all of that, there is no doubt that it's a causation in addition to a correlation. And what's interesting to me, because I give a lot of lectures to schools and to parents around screen addiction and youth mental health is the tech company founders, the people that got really rich off of social media, they are very stringent with their own families on when they get social media and how much they use, because they know that they know the dose dependent relationship.
There was a big article in wall street journal a few years ago on Facebook files where it all came out of all the data they had on Instagram and causing anxiety and depression and suicidal ideation in young teenage girls, and they covered it up for years. It's a huge problem, but I think it's related specifically to social media itself, as opposed to just banning phones.
John: Do you have guidelines that some of us could just take, easy guidelines in terms of limiting exposure and how to even do that? Is there some way to logically have a conversation with your kid?
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, there is, because I think you can show them now graphs and I can send you a graph. I have a graph on my Facebook profile. It's pinned up there. And it basically shows the rates of anxiety, depression in adolescence and undergraduates, I believe since 2010. I've shared all this with my kids and say, what do you think about this? Have you experienced this? Have your friends experienced this? It's not a secret to any of them. They know that the levels of stress and anxiety are rampant among them and their friends.
Probably the number one thing is I would delay social media as long as possible. Definitely till age 16 at the earliest, if you can, many people need to give people kids phones for convenience, say contact, picking up for sports and stuff like that. That's fine. But if you can delay, especially Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, good 14 year olds aren't on Facebook, but Instagram and TikTok are the big ones. And as long as possible, if you can delay that, there are a few other very simple guidelines.
If you'd like me to share them now, let's do that. One is I would turn off all notifications except text messages. Steve Jobs, the way he intended the iPhone to work was talk, text and music. That's what that was his great dream. It was not infinite scroll or constant interruptions while you're trying to study or in school or having dinner with your family or whatever. I would remove notifications. And what that tells them is you want to teach your kids to use their phone on their own terms with intention. I'm going to go in and I'm going to check my email. I'm going to check social media. I'm going to check this. I'm not going to be a passive person sitting here with a barrage of stimuli coming at me that I can't control all done on other people's timelines. That's no way to live life.
John: Absolutely. I would say, and it's probably easier for us old people. I'm a few years older than you. I'm sure to me, none of those should be synchronous. They're not synchronous. The only thing that synchronous is when I pick up the phone to call somebody, I don't even consider texting synchronous. People ask, well, you didn't answer your text. So, what it was 15 minutes ago. A text can be answered whenever I feel like it.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah. See the difference between the younger generation and us is their preferred means of communication is text. That is to them, that's a synchronous conversation, which is why I say, okay, texts are fine. If you cause your friend is that's all they do is text. That's how they communicate with each other. But you're right. Everything else is totally asynchronous. But there's a lot people around me, adults, physicians that I work with they're addicted to checking their emails. They're addicted to social media. It's a habit that's very easy to fall into because it's a dopamine hit intentionally designed to be that way.
John: Oh boy. All right. What else should we know about this other tips or other things to watch for and where can we get help?
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah. I think delay social media, turn off notifications. Apple screen time is a great tool. I limit the number of minutes that they can go on different apps, and then they have to request permission for additional time to do that. My son, when he was an undergrad, he told me, he's like, you need to just remove my Twitter at all, because I have finals coming up and I don't want to spend, I don't want to waste any time on that. They know that it's a waste of time. Once they learned to live with limits. Limiting with screen time is a big deal. I would say no phones and at the dinner tables and restaurants and in car rides, car rides, especially for people that have kids at home, they're not going to be at home forever.
And those car rides are going to become very precious memories to you, or they should be from very precious memories to you. And they won't be if your child is just on the phone the whole time. Those might be the only time you have alone with that child uninterrupted for that whole day. I would protect dinners, restaurants, and car rides from phones.
John: Now, this shows you how far out of the loop I am now. All my kids are in their 30s. Are you saying that basically the parent maintains control over the phone? They have set the access to certain things with their password, the adult's password that the kids can't fiddle with that and change those settings?
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, it's a screen time password that only you would know. And it sounds big brother-ish or draconian, but it's really not because these apps are addictive that unless you teach this generation how to limit themselves and find ways to occupy themselves without just going to the phone as a default, they're not going to do it.
John: Yeah. It makes perfect sense. Obviously. You have to think in terms of, well, let's see, am I giving my kid beer to drink at night? While he's watching TV? Am I giving him, handing him the car keys when he's 10 years old? These are just basic things. It's gotten to the point where you got to do that, even for social media, obviously, because it's just as important, just as dangerous.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, exactly.
John: All right. Now you're doing some of this right with your clients/patients, whatever. Tell us how that works for you. And then you can actually give us your website for anyone that might want to pursue your help.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Sure. Yeah. I think that the reason that kids, the default to screens all the time is that they're really living far below their potential and they're not engaged in life. And this all goes back to what we talked about at the beginning, the parents limiting beliefs and conditioning is being passed on to their children in the form, and they're now becoming indoctrinated with the same limiting beliefs, forget about what I really want to do. I better get a high paying job where I can make a lot of money and then retire one day and be happy.
Well, we all know that that just doesn't work. There's thousands of very wealthy, successful people that are miserable. And rather than pursuing what they're really interested in doing and having their parents facilitate that and support that most of the people that I see and work with, their kids are being inadvertently, and it's not malicious. That's just the way we think we're doing something good for them. We're teaching them how to succeed in the world.
But these limiting beliefs that are being passed on to our kids essentially limit their potential. And by limiting the potential limits, their ultimate happiness and fulfillment. And that's why a lot of kids are wasting time scrolling because they're not engaged. And that's quite frankly, why a lot of adults are right.
You think about the Gallup surveys about workplace engagement and stuff, and it's less than 40%. And that's why, because people are in jobs that they have no business being in. And I think that's something that you help facilitate physicians by giving them options to explore nonclinical careers that they can use their training, but perhaps in different, more fulfilling ways. And I think that's part of dismantling these kinds of beliefs. The life I want isn't available to me. The career I want isn't available to me. I'm stuck. I'm trapped. I'm just going to suck it up for the next five years until I can retire.
John: Yeah. Are you serving an audience or a clientele that's physically located near you? Are you doing a lot of remote work? How does it work? And tell us if we want to reach you, how would we do that? And for what kind of issues?
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, it's all on Zoom. I use Google Meet. it's very convenient. I work with people all around the world. I work primarily in four main domains. One is anxiety. The other is screen addictions and other kinds of addictions because addiction is basically a self-soothing behavior. And you got to figure out what you're trying to soothe yourself from, where the underlying pain is. Third is sports performance, really among kids and young adults. And then I work with a lot of adults that are trying to figure out where to go next in life, what to really uncover their own, their full potential and decide what to do. That's more of a career coaching stuff.
John: Got it. they can find you, tell us your website.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: It's sanjkatyal.com.
John: Okay, that will go in the show notes along with some of the other things, the book and so forth, and some of those other resources that you mentioned earlier. I don't know, any last words of advice or cautions for our listeners? Let's say our physician parents out there with their kids?
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, I would encourage everybody to kind of look at their own belief system, conditioning, and what they're passing on to their kids, and try to see where that came from, and whether it serves them or their children, because most of the time, at least in my experience, it doesn't.
John: Yeah, I think back to my childhood and my parents. My dad didn't finish high school. I don't think they ever thought about reading a book on parenting. And so all those things, residual things, you just don't have access to solutions to problems that they never solved, or never even dealt with. And it happens within every generation. We're learning new things, we're facing new challenges, and we may not have all the answers. Would you say to just observe your kids and don't assume, well, they're just going through some stage if they're unhappy, depressed, anxious?
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, I would try to find out what your kids really want to do in life, free of your own inputs, and what parenting advice or suggestions, what did they love to do? What do they naturally do, without being asked to do? What did they do when they were really young on their own, try to find out what really makes them tick, and then do everything you can to facilitate them doing that, because they will be able to make a career out of it. And they will be far happier than if they're pushed into some of the things that we've all been pushed into.
John: What happens if you have that conversation, and either one, they say, I just want to hang out with my friends, or B, I don't know. I don't know what I like to do. I don't know what I want to do.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, I think not knowing is a good thing. We shouldn't expect an 18 year old to make a life sentence decision. Not knowing and taking a few years now, if they're sitting on the couch and playing video games, you have to have some kind of guidelines around what they can do. But taking a gap year or two and exploring different things, gaining awareness of themselves, and their underlying aspirations. There's nothing wrong with that. There's no race there. I tell my kids and other parents' kids, there's no race to the job market. The job market is going to be there. You're going to be working there for the next 30 years. There's no race to ever leave college early unless it's a tuition thing.
John: Yeah. Right. So long as they're not spending their time in college drinking and partying. Let's see some decent grades. All right. We'll go off on tangents on this all day long, I think. All right. Well, I want to thank you for coming to talk to me today about these topics. And it's pretty thought provoking. And I know there's a lot of anxiety around our kids and social media, and can we just cut them off and how to handle this. I think just what you've mentioned today is very helpful. I think they can do their research and if they feel like there's a problem, they should maybe look at your website, get some ideas and possibly even contact you in terms of helping one of their kids.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, I'm happy to help. Thanks a lot for having me back. It's good to talk to you.
John: I'd love to do this a little more often.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, it sounds good.
John: All right, Sanj, thanks a lot. I'm glad you could make it today. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Thank you, John.
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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 390
The Secret Power of the Subconscious Mind
- Interview with Dr. Sanj Katyal
John: We're going to deviate slightly from our usual topics today, and there's a good reason. One of the consequences of working long hours under stressful situations is that invariably it affects our families, it affects our children, and with children facing a lot of mental health issues in recent years, including things like the pandemic and all social media, I thought I would get Sanj back here on the podcast and just get his thoughts on these problems. with that, welcome back to the podcast, Dr. Sanj Katyal.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Thanks, John. Happy to be here. It's great to see you again.
John: Yeah, it was basically about four years ago that you were here. I think it was April, let's have it written down, 6th of 21. And, we talked a lot about what you were doing at the time. I think a good place to start today is to kind of update us on what you were doing then and what you've maybe, what's changed and what else you're doing now, which in four years, I'm sure there's some new things.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: I'm a radiologist. I ran a large private startup radiology group for about 10 years, managing a group of about 100 radiologists. And probably back in 2012 or 2013, I, and I visited a lot of hospitals, talked to a lot of C-suite CMOs, and I began noticing back then a really growing discontent among physicians. Didn't really matter what specialty they were, or even really what stage of career they were. There just seemed to be a growing unhappiness.
I remember thinking back from one of these drives about my own life, wondering why I wasn't happier than I was back then. It's not like I was unhappy. I had pretty much achieved everything I set out to achieve. And, and I didn't really find myself bursting with joy or fulfillment. And I really sought out to figure out why. And that search led me to become certified in positive psychology, which is, some people call the positive, the science of happiness.
And I did that for a while. I taught university classes to college students in positive psychology and lectured nationally to various groups, a lot of physician groups. And I started working with physicians for, for several years. And I think that's probably around the last time I came on the podcast.
And that's been very fulfilling, but I always seem to hit some sort of limitation when I worked with physicians and even kind of in my own life and my own personal development. And I didn't really understand why until I came across a book called Tell Yourself a Better Lie by Marissa Peer. And she's a world-famous therapist out of London.
My wife actually gave me that book. She's a therapist and she's like, oh, you love studying about the mind. You're going to like this book. And I really did. It basically shed light on why the physicians that I worked with and even myself kind of kept coming up against blocks and seemed to default back to kind of our default state. And that journey has led me to, to really study and become certified in therapy called rapid transformational therapy.
John: Okay. A couple of things that I would comment on. One is that, it's interesting because to me, I talk to a lot of people that want to change careers, have changed careers. And a lot of them say, well, I went into medicine and I pretty much didn't like it from the very beginning, but I did it because it was, I was smart and I was expected to, and I do all these things.
But then I think there's another group like you who had a vision. It was awesome. They love doing it, but I can see how something gets old after 5, 10, 15, 20 years, particularly if it's very stressful because to me, at least personally, I started just experiencing just the emotional and intellectual strain of just having to focus and concentrate much for long every day, not, trying to hurt a patient or something. Yeah, just there's different things that lead us to that point where, well, it's time for a change.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, absolutely. I'm definitely in the second camp. I enjoyed it for a while, but things get, you don't want to spend your life on autopilot. Just going through the motions. And I think part of staying healthy and fulfilled is continuously learning and challenging yourself and kind of figuring out what your next passion may lead you to.
John: I did want to mention at this point, because you talked about the positive psychology, you wrote a book called Positive Philosophy: Ancient and Modern Wisdom to Create a Flourishing Life. Just our listeners know that if they want to really learn more about what you've done and written in the past, they can get that at Amazon or wherever. Things have changed. And now you were telling me before we got on the call that there's some recent revelations that you've experienced, you talked about, you mentioned right now, I guess, the rapid transformational therapy. tell us more about that and why that is interesting and exciting for you now.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah. The thing that's interesting about rapid transformational therapy is it can access the subconscious mind, which is where 95% of our thoughts and behaviors come from. Most of us use our conscious mind, our willpower, our quote, thinking mind to try to make changes in our life, self-improvement, new morning routines, new exercise regimens, diets, whatever it is. But really, it's our subconscious mind.
And what's kind of deeply ingrained at that level, that determines the vast majority of our thoughts and our behaviors. And this is why we always seem to default, and we default to the state of our subconscious mind. And this is the roadblock that I kept hitting up against using positive psychology and our quote, thinking mind to change habits and forth.
John: Okay. This is where some of us concrete thinkers are like, okay, this is going to be confusing. I'm going to have to have you to try and sort this out for me. If I think about my subconscious and accessing it or changing it, I'm pretty much at a brick wall. The closest I can come to is I could say, well, sometimes I have certain dreams, and I have to assume that maybe some of that is triggered by my subconscious. But why don't you explain a little more about how we can even access the subconscious and how can we change what's going on subconsciously? I guess that's what we're going to talk about for the next 10 minutes or so. That'll be very interesting to hear.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah. So, it's all part of the same mind, but you can think of it in simplistic terms as two different minds, the conscious thinking mind and the feeling subconscious mind. And feeling always wins over logic. Most of us know exactly what we should do, but the vast majority of us don't do everything we're supposed to do or, know that we should do at a conscious level. If we take a step back, as children, we've all had experiences that were unpleasant. It could be minor things like friends not being nice or excluding us from a group to more significant challenges like bullying or abuse.
These experiences left their mark on us and our minds, in an effort to protect us and try to make sense of the situation, came in and formed some beliefs about the situation. The three most common beliefs are, number one is I'm not enough. So, my parents yelled at me because I'm not good enough. My friends didn't include me because I'm not funny enough. I'm not smart enough, thin enough, pretty enough, whatever it is.
The second major belief, and this is a big one for physicians, particularly physicians that may be listening to this podcast, is what I want isn't available. As children, our basic need is love and acceptance. And those experiences where those needs are unmet lead us to form beliefs like what I want, which is basically love and acceptance as a child, isn't available.
The third main limiting belief is I'm different and can't connect with others. And this one was a big one for me, being the only Indian child in an all-white school with a funny name and parents with accents and stuff like that. But we carry these beliefs, these beliefs become deeply ingrained below the level of our awareness, in our subconscious mind. And we carry them basically like baggage or heavy anchors with us throughout our adult life. And they really distort how we see ourselves and how we see others in the world around us. Those are big, big burdens to kind of unshackle ourselves from.
John: I think what you were saying was that the approaches to addressing that is not the same as approaches to what, in the previous, the more superficial kinds of issues. You mentioned that rapid transformational therapy. What is that and how is that different?
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, behavior change is really the last, it's far downstream of the thing. We're talking about negative experiences leading to limiting beliefs and faulty programming that lead to kind of distortions and behaviors that don't serve us. And most of us try to focus on the very last part and change our behavior, maybe act a little different, do some things that may mitigate symptoms, symptom relief of anxiety, of depression, discontent.
But it's really going back upstream and uncovering the root cause of where and why and when these limiting beliefs formed. And it's really just understanding where they formed, how they formed, that you become free of them. You don't really even need to do anything except gain an awareness of them.
And then you can install more effective beliefs that serve us better, align with our highest aspirations and true selves. And that's what rapid transformational therapy does. Typically, very common things like anxiety, phobias, fear of heights, fear of needles, agoraphobia, depression, these are all, could be handled very effectively in one to three sessions.
This is not long-term weekly therapy for years going back. And the reason that can be done that effectively and quickly is because it's done under a guided simple hypnosis that allows us to bypass the critical thinking mind, goes to the subconscious level where these childhood experiences took place. And then once we're aware of them, it's easy to dismantle those beliefs that form from those experiences.
John: Is there much research or follow up either you personally or in the literature with the ability for that kind of shift to maintain itself for more than three months, six months a year? I don't know that there would be any difference, but I'm thinking for people who are attached to, well, five years of one-on-one weekly therapy for an hour versus what you're talking about, they're going to probably have a little skepticism. Where do you stand on that?
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah. And I want to be clear also, this is not like, I think as physicians, when we look at new things or things are maybe are unfamiliar to us, we're looking at everything as an either or thing. And this is not an either or thing. This can very easily be a supplemental add on to counseling, therapy, medication, if that's appropriate.
I'm not here to say this is going to replace everything in the field of psychiatry. What I am saying is that this is very effective, quickly bypassing and uncovering blockages that have been, that have kept us stuck for many, many years, often unknowingly because of that subconscious access. There are studies also, because there's a large number of growing physicians trained in RTT, MDs. And I'm actually with another physician in Asia forming a group of physicians trained in RTT. There are several studies. The latest one I saw was six months out, 62% reduction in anxiety. So, these are obviously ongoing and stuff, but that's, those are, and from my experience and anecdotally from all the people that I've interacted with, that's a pretty significant and realistic number to achieve.
John: That's pretty interesting to hear because, today, if you're a family physician, you're treating somebody for a medical problem and there's always some kind of psychological component, or it is a completely different DSM-3 diagnosis, but it's like, you have to refer them. Sometimes you can't get them in for months and months. You are, as a family physician, kind of committed to treating, more than just, 2% of their illnesses. It sounds like something that maybe in the future, pediatricians, family physicians, others could learn this and just incorporate it into their approach to patient care.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Oh yeah, no doubt. There was a journal article, which I can send you any of these, in the Annals of Internal Medicine that showed RTT is the most effective treatment you have yet to prescribe. That's the title of the article. And it kind of goes through that.
John: All right. But we were going to talk about a specific topic that you're very interested in and that many of us are. And I mentioned in the intro is that the rate of mental illness in children is just skyrocketing, really. I'm not going to go into the details, but it's just been something that's been talked about and written about for years now. Seemed to be the tipping point was the pandemic, but I'm really interested in hearing about that. And the issue with social media, it just seems like it's obvious there are issues and maybe you can expound on what social media, the impacts have been negative impacts primarily. We kind of know the positive and then how this might fit into therapy or coaching or a different approach.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Sure. Yeah. The mental health crisis really started back in 2010. If you look at it, it's basically a hockey stick graph. It goes like that. And in 2010, a couple of things happened. The social media companies introduced forward-facing cameras. They introduced third-party apps that had intentionally addictive principles by behavioral psychologists embedded into these apps. number of likes streaks. Those are all the infinite scroll.
The goal was always singular. And that was to keep as many eyeballs on the screens for as long as possible. They didn't care at all about the consequences. And consequently the rates of anxiety and depression and suicidal ideations and suicide itself, successful suicide have skyrocketed. And people, skeptics have said, well, that's correlational, that's not causation, but there have been now hundreds of causation studies.
If you take teens and you remove Facebook or Instagram for one week or three weeks or a month, and you measure pre and post metrics using well-established statistically significant life satisfaction skills, anxiety surveys, all of that, there is no doubt that it's a causation in addition to a correlation. And what's interesting to me, because I give a lot of lectures to schools and to parents around screen addiction and youth mental health is the tech company founders, the people that got really rich off of social media, they are very stringent with their own families on when they get social media and how much they use, because they know that they know the dose dependent relationship.
There was a big article in wall street journal a few years ago on Facebook files where it all came out of all the data they had on Instagram and causing anxiety and depression and suicidal ideation in young teenage girls, and they covered it up for years. It's a huge problem, but I think it's related specifically to social media itself, as opposed to just banning phones.
John: Do you have guidelines that some of us could just take, easy guidelines in terms of limiting exposure and how to even do that? Is there some way to logically have a conversation with your kid?
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, there is, because I think you can show them now graphs and I can send you a graph. I have a graph on my Facebook profile. It's pinned up there. And it basically shows the rates of anxiety, depression in adolescence and undergraduates, I believe since 2010. I've shared all this with my kids and say, what do you think about this? Have you experienced this? Have your friends experienced this? It's not a secret to any of them. They know that the levels of stress and anxiety are rampant among them and their friends.
Probably the number one thing is I would delay social media as long as possible. Definitely till age 16 at the earliest, if you can, many people need to give people kids phones for convenience, say contact, picking up for sports and stuff like that. That's fine. But if you can delay, especially Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, good 14 year olds aren't on Facebook, but Instagram and TikTok are the big ones. And as long as possible, if you can delay that, there are a few other very simple guidelines.
If you'd like me to share them now, let's do that. One is I would turn off all notifications except text messages. Steve Jobs, the way he intended the iPhone to work was talk, text and music. That's what that was his great dream. It was not infinite scroll or constant interruptions while you're trying to study or in school or having dinner with your family or whatever. I would remove notifications. And what that tells them is you want to teach your kids to use their phone on their own terms with intention. I'm going to go in and I'm going to check my email. I'm going to check social media. I'm going to check this. I'm not going to be a passive person sitting here with a barrage of stimuli coming at me that I can't control all done on other people's timelines. That's no way to live life.
John: Absolutely. I would say, and it's probably easier for us old people. I'm a few years older than you. I'm sure to me, none of those should be synchronous. They're not synchronous. The only thing that synchronous is when I pick up the phone to call somebody, I don't even consider texting synchronous. People ask, well, you didn't answer your text. So, what it was 15 minutes ago. A text can be answered whenever I feel like it.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah. See the difference between the younger generation and us is their preferred means of communication is text. That is to them, that's a synchronous conversation, which is why I say, okay, texts are fine. If you cause your friend is that's all they do is text. That's how they communicate with each other. But you're right. Everything else is totally asynchronous. But there's a lot people around me, adults, physicians that I work with they're addicted to checking their emails. They're addicted to social media. It's a habit that's very easy to fall into because it's a dopamine hit intentionally designed to be that way.
John: Oh boy. All right. What else should we know about this other tips or other things to watch for and where can we get help?
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah. I think delay social media, turn off notifications. Apple screen time is a great tool. I limit the number of minutes that they can go on different apps, and then they have to request permission for additional time to do that. My son, when he was an undergrad, he told me, he's like, you need to just remove my Twitter at all, because I have finals coming up and I don't want to spend, I don't want to waste any time on that. They know that it's a waste of time. Once they learned to live with limits. Limiting with screen time is a big deal. I would say no phones and at the dinner tables and restaurants and in car rides, car rides, especially for people that have kids at home, they're not going to be at home forever.
And those car rides are going to become very precious memories to you, or they should be from very precious memories to you. And they won't be if your child is just on the phone the whole time. Those might be the only time you have alone with that child uninterrupted for that whole day. I would protect dinners, restaurants, and car rides from phones.
John: Now, this shows you how far out of the loop I am now. All my kids are in their 30s. Are you saying that basically the parent maintains control over the phone? They have set the access to certain things with their password, the adult's password that the kids can't fiddle with that and change those settings?
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, it's a screen time password that only you would know. And it sounds big brother-ish or draconian, but it's really not because these apps are addictive that unless you teach this generation how to limit themselves and find ways to occupy themselves without just going to the phone as a default, they're not going to do it.
John: Yeah. It makes perfect sense. Obviously. You have to think in terms of, well, let's see, am I giving my kid beer to drink at night? While he's watching TV? Am I giving him, handing him the car keys when he's 10 years old? These are just basic things. It's gotten to the point where you got to do that, even for social media, obviously, because it's just as important, just as dangerous.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, exactly.
John: All right. Now you're doing some of this right with your clients/patients, whatever. Tell us how that works for you. And then you can actually give us your website for anyone that might want to pursue your help.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Sure. Yeah. I think that the reason that kids, the default to screens all the time is that they're really living far below their potential and they're not engaged in life. And this all goes back to what we talked about at the beginning, the parents limiting beliefs and conditioning is being passed on to their children in the form, and they're now becoming indoctrinated with the same limiting beliefs, forget about what I really want to do. I better get a high paying job where I can make a lot of money and then retire one day and be happy.
Well, we all know that that just doesn't work. There's thousands of very wealthy, successful people that are miserable. And rather than pursuing what they're really interested in doing and having their parents facilitate that and support that most of the people that I see and work with, their kids are being inadvertently, and it's not malicious. That's just the way we think we're doing something good for them. We're teaching them how to succeed in the world.
But these limiting beliefs that are being passed on to our kids essentially limit their potential. And by limiting the potential limits, their ultimate happiness and fulfillment. And that's why a lot of kids are wasting time scrolling because they're not engaged. And that's quite frankly, why a lot of adults are right.
You think about the Gallup surveys about workplace engagement and stuff, and it's less than 40%. And that's why, because people are in jobs that they have no business being in. And I think that's something that you help facilitate physicians by giving them options to explore nonclinical careers that they can use their training, but perhaps in different, more fulfilling ways. And I think that's part of dismantling these kinds of beliefs. The life I want isn't available to me. The career I want isn't available to me. I'm stuck. I'm trapped. I'm just going to suck it up for the next five years until I can retire.
John: Yeah. Are you serving an audience or a clientele that's physically located near you? Are you doing a lot of remote work? How does it work? And tell us if we want to reach you, how would we do that? And for what kind of issues?
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, it's all on Zoom. I use Google Meet. it's very convenient. I work with people all around the world. I work primarily in four main domains. One is anxiety. The other is screen addictions and other kinds of addictions because addiction is basically a self-soothing behavior. And you got to figure out what you're trying to soothe yourself from, where the underlying pain is. Third is sports performance, really among kids and young adults. And then I work with a lot of adults that are trying to figure out where to go next in life, what to really uncover their own, their full potential and decide what to do. That's more of a career coaching stuff.
John: Got it. they can find you, tell us your website.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: It's sanjkatyal.com.
John: Okay, that will go in the show notes along with some of the other things, the book and so forth, and some of those other resources that you mentioned earlier. I don't know, any last words of advice or cautions for our listeners? Let's say our physician parents out there with their kids?
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, I would encourage everybody to kind of look at their own belief system, conditioning, and what they're passing on to their kids, and try to see where that came from, and whether it serves them or their children, because most of the time, at least in my experience, it doesn't.
John: Yeah, I think back to my childhood and my parents. My dad didn't finish high school. I don't think they ever thought about reading a book on parenting. And so all those things, residual things, you just don't have access to solutions to problems that they never solved, or never even dealt with. And it happens within every generation. We're learning new things, we're facing new challenges, and we may not have all the answers. Would you say to just observe your kids and don't assume, well, they're just going through some stage if they're unhappy, depressed, anxious?
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, I would try to find out what your kids really want to do in life, free of your own inputs, and what parenting advice or suggestions, what did they love to do? What do they naturally do, without being asked to do? What did they do when they were really young on their own, try to find out what really makes them tick, and then do everything you can to facilitate them doing that, because they will be able to make a career out of it. And they will be far happier than if they're pushed into some of the things that we've all been pushed into.
John: What happens if you have that conversation, and either one, they say, I just want to hang out with my friends, or B, I don't know. I don't know what I like to do. I don't know what I want to do.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, I think not knowing is a good thing. We shouldn't expect an 18 year old to make a life sentence decision. Not knowing and taking a few years now, if they're sitting on the couch and playing video games, you have to have some kind of guidelines around what they can do. But taking a gap year or two and exploring different things, gaining awareness of themselves, and their underlying aspirations. There's nothing wrong with that. There's no race there. I tell my kids and other parents' kids, there's no race to the job market. The job market is going to be there. You're going to be working there for the next 30 years. There's no race to ever leave college early unless it's a tuition thing.
John: Yeah. Right. So long as they're not spending their time in college drinking and partying. Let's see some decent grades. All right. We'll go off on tangents on this all day long, I think. All right. Well, I want to thank you for coming to talk to me today about these topics. And it's pretty thought provoking. And I know there's a lot of anxiety around our kids and social media, and can we just cut them off and how to handle this. I think just what you've mentioned today is very helpful. I think they can do their research and if they feel like there's a problem, they should maybe look at your website, get some ideas and possibly even contact you in terms of helping one of their kids.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, I'm happy to help. Thanks a lot for having me back. It's good to talk to you.
John: I'd love to do this a little more often.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Yeah, it sounds good.
John: All right, Sanj, thanks a lot. I'm glad you could make it today. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Sanj Katyal: Thank you, John.
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