Dr. Mary Bates 0:00
It's, you know, definitely the sense of, you know, somebody's got to do it, and it needs doing, and we're like, all in this together, and this needs doing, or we're all going to fail.
Josh Lavine 0:16
Welcome to another episode of what it's like to be you. I'm Josh Lavine, your host today, my guest is Dr Mary Bates. Mary is a primary care doctor in Southern New Hampshire, and she's also a mother of two kids. She's married and she writes about philosophy, stoism and medicine. This episode really foregrounded for me how important the sense of duty and responsibility is for the six the sense of concern, like wanting to do my part, or make sure that the whole ship doesn't sink, or that the world doesn't fall off the rails, and the sense of, if there's something that I see that needs to be done, then I will do it. I must do it. I must call it out, or that call out that it needs to be done. Also, this episode really framed up for me slightly differently the issue of anxiety in the six it kind of actually poked some holes in what I understood anxiety to be in the first place, and opened up a question, which I'm still not quite sure I have an answer to, but the question is very interesting, what really is anxiety, and how does that? How does it manifest? Six is a mental type. And just to set this up in a kind of Enneagram pedagogy, way, the mental center in the Enneagram is all about guidance and wayfinding. And how do I know what to do? The fives? Answer to that question is, I can only trust the guidance that comes from within the seventh answer is, I take a sampling approach to life, and I will know what I need and when I discover it. And the six basically says, well, I'll just look for people who've traveled the path of four, or anchor myself to how to guides and recipes and the manual, sort of the Life Manual. And in the absence of that, it can be very difficult for me to tune into my own inner guidance, even in micro instances, like for example, should I pull off the road right now to read a text message that may or may not be important? Which is an example we're going to talk about in this conversation. We also spend a great deal in this episode talking about Mary's tri fix 692 and particularly the six nine stem that has a kind of religion of anti narcissism, and I'm not that big a deal. I'm not trying to be too flashy or too standout, ish, I'm just trying to serve the bigger picture and be a person who is being is a responsible member of society. And we also talk about just the whole constellation of 692 as being a perfect fit for Mary in her vocation as a doctor. So I hope you enjoy this conversation, and without further ado, please welcome my friend, Mary. Welcome everyone to another interview. I'm very excited to be with my new friend, Dr. Mary Bates, Hello, Mary. How you doing? Thanks. Hi. Great. So let's frame this up so you're typing your full typing is self press social 692 and it's core six with a seven wing, correct? Yes, yeah, that's right. Okay, cool. So I would love to start this by just hearing about your Enneagram origin story. So how did you learn about it? And I know that you went through a kind of mistyping journey, right and then before you landed on your core type. And so I'd love to hear about that and how it's all sitting with you now. Okay,
Dr. Mary Bates 3:29
so I heard about the Enneagram for the first time about eight years ago. My husband has has been involved with the Enneagram for for a couple of decades, and he told me about it, and I had come from a hard science kind of background, and so I had the idea that, you know, really, anything associated with psychology was, was, was bullshit. And so I had not, would not have considered the Enneagram, as you know, even if I'd heard about it earlier, I would not have considered it as a thing worthy of, you know, my time as a serious person until, you know, until my husband suggested it to me, my then boyfriend suggested it to me, and I took an online test and tested as a two and I was absolutely appalled when I read about twos and because, because of the whole manipulation aspect of twos, I didn't see that that was a thing that I could do. I at all. It was completely outside of my image of what I might do. And. You know, it sounded pretty repulsive, and then then I tested, or then I think I I think I took another I learned more about it, and I think I retested, or maybe thought about it some more and tested as a nine, and thought it was a nine for a while, and then I actually went back. So this was probably maybe six months of each of these. And then I went back to thinking, No, I probably really am a two. And I spent a lot of time there thinking I was a two. And, you know, really, finally, actually doing some of the work like at first, you know, when you learn about Enneagram, it's kind of like a shiny new toy. And then, and I think I was sort of viewing it as like a shiny new toy for for the first maybe year. And then after a while, I went back, and I was like, oh, there's actually, like, some work I could do here. And I spent a lot of time working on two issues, and I actually became, I became aware of the ways in which I am manipulative. And, you know, they're not, they're subtle. They're not, they're not, you know, it's not huge, but they're definitely there. And I was able to definitely, whoops, dig those out of the subterranean part of my psyche and kind of put them on the top and make them into something I was aware of. And I think, or maybe I just am fooling myself, but I'm definitely, I think, when I'm manipulating people, like maybe, or attempting to be manipulative, I think I'm aware of it, like maybe 80% of the time. So that's pretty good. It was huge. And then I spent a lot of time thinking I was a nine, like, probably another, probably on to, oh, maybe five years of thinking I was a nine, four, whatever, somewhere around there, some, some, you know, fairly substantial chunk of time, it did a lot of work as a nine. And I think I have pretty, I mean, even still, I think I have a lot of pretty nine ish tendencies. And I, again, I was able to improve my life significantly, make myself an easier person for the people around me to deal with. And then I started thinking. And now we're on to roughly, roughly a year and a half ago, I started thinking, really, is this, is this really right? Like, I kind of felt like, Okay, I've, I've done, I've done a lot of work, and this has been great. But really, am I like, is this it? Am I like, not like, done, but like, there's, like, it didn't feel like I was going any further and, um, a couple of my friends had been, had sort of undergone typing journeys themselves around this time, where they were, which made a big difference for them. And they and I was like, Oh, I wonder if, I wonder if I need a typing journey. And so i And about this time, I also heard about any the Enneagram or universe Facebook group, and thought, Oh, this is pretty this is pretty interesting. This is, you know, I wonder, I wonder what these guys would think of me. And I typed myself, or I may didn't have myself. I'd made my typing video fairly soon after I joined the group and I posted it, and the feedback I got was, I think it's roughly half and half, six and nine. And it was funny, because I had not even considered six, because I thought my tri type was, you know, before that, I thought my tri type is probably nine to five. It definitely had the two. Definitely had the nine. I thought it was probably five for my head type. And Nicholas was talking about this as well in his your type two interview that you did a few, you know, just before me, was talking about this as well that really, he thought, like, two was the prototypical human. And for me, it's like, well, when I read the descriptions of six, it's like, well, yeah, everyone is a six, of course, and six is just like a blank human being, and other things are painted on top, which, you know, in retrospect, that is sort of saying, you know, you're a sixth year but, but in my defense, I do want to point out that I think probably about three quarters of the world's population is six fixed one. You. They're, you know, in their tri type, at least or and probably 50% of the world's of my local population is six fix. So I, in my, in my defense, I was looking at a lot of sixes, sure.
So I
Josh Lavine 10:24
actually just real quick, that, just that moment right there, was, first of all great, and also six ish in a sense that, do you know what I'm pointing at? Yeah. Do you want to articulate? Can you articulate yourself? Do you want to go there? No,
Dr. Mary Bates 10:39
I'd love to hear what you say. Well, I
Josh Lavine 10:41
just the the in my defense thing, like rolling out the ways that, well, you know, I really did try to consider all the possibilities, and this is where, and this is my head, you know. And so that whole thing of, like, laying out the evidence, laying out my thought process, trying to, like, get on the same page with you. And the in quotations, in my defense posture, of of the six, in a sense, yeah,
Dr. Mary Bates 11:10
yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's, it's, it's interesting. Also, there's some, some component I think of sixes, like feeling like we're every man, and in fact we are. Yeah,
Josh Lavine 11:28
yeah. Well, I guess the, um, I just got more clarity on the point I was making. It's like not wanting to be exposed for having not thought of something, right?
Dr. Mary Bates 11:39
Yeah, yes, yes. I've got all the yeah, I've got all the angles covered. And yeah. And this was a perfectly reasonable thing for someone to think,
Josh Lavine 11:50
under the circumstances. It certainly was, yeah,
Dr. Mary Bates 11:56
yes, yes. And that's, that's definitely yeah, yeah, we'll be saying that over and over again today,
Josh Lavine 12:05
yeah. Well, so So you so you got a typing video, and you were typed as, and then six, and that was surprising to you, right?
Dr. Mary Bates 12:14
It was surprising to me. And part of why it was surprising to me is I did not, I mean, I told you the thing about, like, well, everyone's a six but, but also, part of a way was surprising to me is the whole fear thing, that's not and the anxiety thing. Like, I know what anxiety looks like. I primary care doc. I, you know, and anxious people have always been attracted to me, you know, my, my for whatever reason, my patient panel, my my office mate, used to attract depressed people, and I used to attract anxious people. And that's just, you know, the way, the way it, it's the way it's always been for me is, is anxious people always, always come to me, always feel comfortable around me. It's like, okay, I know what anxiety is. And in fact, I am, you know, I'm, I think of anxiety and OCD and depression now, now this is part of my primary care talk, but I think anxiety and OCD and depression is kind of like three faces of the same coin. Um, three sided coin, yeah. And I, and I think most people who are, I think most people are prone to any of them. Can get all three of them, but I'm definitely prone to the depression OCD kind of side. And, you know, OCD is a primary care doc. That's great, you know, because I'm never prescribed, like, I'm double checking my how many milligrams of that medication was I prescribing? Was that, you know, I'm, like, double checking everything and, you know, so it's, it's, you know, and there was one time in my life when I had an episode of anxiety about two or three months and, oh my gosh, it was horrible. Or at least, this is what I thought. This is what I what, this is what I would have told you at the time is, like, I I'm not particularly prone to anxiety. I understand what anxiety is, and I'm not prone to it more More recently, I had, I had this experience where my my dog was really sick. She sort of kind of got sick out of the blue, like she was one Saturday, we went for a five mile hike, and then a couple days later, she had a urinary tract infection that we couldn't seem to get rid of, and and then it turned out the urinary tract infection was a bladder tumor, and but during This course, I thought that I had injured the dog, and I felt so horrible, and like so well, I just I felt so horrible, and I was really having a hard time thinking about other things. And I. I, you know, I felt it physically. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is how I used to feel all the time, 20 years ago. And over the years, I've done a bunch of work. I've gotten some people out of my life. I've, you know, cleaned up my cleaned up my act, so to speak, and and the feeling kind of went away gradually, but it when it came back, when I thought I had, you know, done this terrible thing to my dog. Turned out I didn't, spoiler alert, heavens, but when I thought I had done this horrible thing, I had all, all this anxiety, and I realized, Oh, I actually was probably anxious for the first 45 years of my life, and I just noticed it, because, yeah, yeah, or maybe not the first 45 years, but for a big, you know, a big, a big chunk of my life that I just was completely unaware of. And I had, like, these, you know, I had these, these little routines. I had my sort of OCD tenancy, kind of routines that soothed me. And I'm great at self soothing, you know, I I had, I had this upbringing where I, you know, essentially been without parents since I was seven. So I'm like, I'm great at self soothing. I can, you know, I can be anxious, and I can figure out how to get myself through it. But, yeah, so I discovered, much to my surprise, that I actually had been anxious for a long time.
Josh Lavine 16:34
This is just fascinating to me, and there's a lot about what you're saying that could be a lot of threads that could be pulled. I just want to tie one thing real quick, just we might get into this a little bit later. But the idea of you being a doctor and being a primary or core type six, self press, social and also 692 this just seems to be like a perfect match of that that feels Doctor ish, you know, to me, yes. And you know you've got the six like, thinking of all the things, the double whammy of being a self pres, six, nine harmoniousness, wanting everyone to be cool, okay, two leaning in, taking care. That's just a very Doctor ish, healing kind of trifix. So, yes, absolutely,
Dr. Mary Bates 17:20
yeah, yeah. Especially, you know, the self pres six is really interested in life cycles and trajectories of things, and that's my kind of what I tend what I do in primary care. I'm also board certified in palliative in hospice and palliative medicine, so what I kind of specialize in is the over 65 set. And a lot of what we're doing is, what's our trajectory here? What are, what are the next 30 years going to look like? Oh, now that we've got this new thing, what are the what are we how are we going to adjust our view of what we think the future is going to look like?
Josh Lavine 17:58
Right? And the one other thing about the six there is the I would expect, I imagine that that gives you a certain kind of boost as a diagnostician, you know, the wondering, like really figuring out what's really going on here, that peering under the surface, looking under the hood, considering all the possibilities. Well, what about this? What
Dr. Mary Bates 18:19
about that? Yes, absolutely, absolutely, yep. And sometimes it's, you know, sometimes it's boost in a positive way. And sometimes it's like, would you just leave it alone, damn it, you know, like, sometimes I just cannot, like, you know, I'm like, well, but we could do this, we could do this, we could do this. And it's like, No, sure. No stop.
Josh Lavine 18:42
And that is a really interesting that's a good segue into this whole anxiety conversation too, because this whole the notion of, have I covered everything? Have I thought of everything, the angst that arises out of that, that's when we talk about anxiety in the six I mean, part of this whole thing that you didn't you kind of woke up later in life to the realization that you've been anxious this whole time is is fascinating to me, because for so for so many sixes, anxiety is so foreground, and it's just an obvious aspect of my existence and and for you kind of realizing it, well, I wonder if there's just a reframing of the word Anxiety or what, or a redefinition of what it means in terms of this kind of second guessing angsty space. Or how would you, how'd you put it?
Dr. Mary Bates 19:29
I guess it could be. I mean, I don't see it as, I don't see it as a second guessing angsty space to me, that feels different to me, that is like looking behind the curtain, like, what's really going on here? What's that's like curiosity and interesting and pleasurable, like, what's you know, and when, when you figure out what's going on, like with a patient, when I'm the only person in the entire universe who knows why? This person is short of breath. That's really cool. That's really cool. Yeah, yeah. And so I don't, I don't see that aspect of it as as angsty. Sometimes I I've, I haven't found the right word for me for six like, anxiety doesn't exactly feel right, fear doesn't exactly feel right, although I'm, you know, I'm coming to see it, I'm coming to, I mean, I am coming to see it. As I said, with six for a year now, sometimes it feels like restlessness, like, sometimes I definitely do feel sort of restlessness, like, you know, and I've, I've, when I watch myself, sometimes I find like, we're, you know, I'll be doing something, and then like, I'm done. I'm done doing this. I can't really even articulate why it is that, like, what happened? Why did why was this moment things were fine. In this moment, it's, I'm done, but, you know, not like, done, like, Oh, this is terrible and must be stopped, but done, like, Okay, this activity is over, and now we're on to our next activity. And there's, there's almost like a internal kind of clock inside that interesting I don't have any any handle on. And when I deny that clock that says, like, it's time. Like, I play with this sometimes when I'm I'm when I'm firing all cylinders, and really things are going well, I can play with this clock, and I can be like, Okay, I can feel that I'm done. Like, the first time I was aware of this was I was brushing the dog. I can feel that I'm done brushing the dog. I have no idea why this is and the dog is fine, and there's no reason that I should be that I need to be done brushing the dog now. So let's just continue brushing the dog and see what happens, you know. And I can feel myself getting anxious, like, we're done. It's, it's time, like, it's almost like, you know, like the inner committee like, like, Okay, we're done brushing the dog. It's time to brush it's time to be done brushing the dog. Although they're not like voices, but they're, they're like, you know, just like this, this really, really restless feeling in it eventually, you know, you just they're there. It's okay. We're just gonna brush the dog. The dog is fine. She's not objecting to being brushed. And, you know, there's no place else you have to be right now. Just continue brushing the dog and see what happens. And I do that a little while longer, and it kind of goes away, and now I'm just brushing the dog.
Josh Lavine 22:30
Oops. This is okay. There's a few things happening in my head right now. One is, I love this, the direction of this conversation to kind of peer under the hood of what anxiety really is, or search for a better word for it. Because I agree it does. It does feel sort of unpinned downable. That is a that is maybe a facet of it is the difficulty of even explaining it, in a sense, and it seems to me like this whole framing around being done, brushing the dog versus, is it, you know, is it time to be done? It seems like at some point, an inner knowing just surfaces, and it's just, you're done, you it's like, and I don't what's happening in me right now, partly, I am trying to not invoke traditional Enneagram concepts, because I think there's a really interesting open sandbox that we've, you know, created here in terms of what is anxiety really? There is one concept, though, that I think is interesting around the idea of inner guidance and how one how you know, like, for example, the question, how do you know it's time to stop brushing the dog? How do you know? I don't know. There's no There's no recipe, there's no manual for it. There's no it's just you alone in your house with your dog, and then you're doing something, and you could choose to stop at a certain point in annoying arises and you stop. And I wonder if that's if what we're saying is copy paste that general question, like, how do I know, for example, it's time to stop searching for another answer for a diagnosis? How do I know it's time to stop searching for another I don't know what possible routes on the way to the beach or the right pair of hiking shoes to buy for this trip? Right? How do I
Dr. Mary Bates 24:23
know explanation for why this person was rude to me?
Josh Lavine 24:27
There you go. Yeah, yeah. So this is, it's a fascinating framing of this. How do you know when enough is enough in terms of your own Yeah? What analysis or something like that. I hmm,
Dr. Mary Bates 24:43
yeah, that's really interesting. That is really interesting.
Josh Lavine 24:53
I want to invoke one other thing I'm cheating here, but I remember you wrote in the Facebook group not too long ago about. Yeah, this thing that happened to you, I think this was you, you were driving, and you maybe passed an exit.
Dr. Mary Bates 25:11
Oh yeah, yeah, no, I was driving, and I wanted to think about something that someone had texted me, and so I was like, Okay, I don't want to, like, look at my phone and try to find it, you know, while I'm driving. I do that sometimes, but I it's not a good idea, so I try not to do it. So I'm like, especially on this particular road, it's kind of windy, so I'm like, Okay, I need to pull, you know, I need to pull off the road, and I see a place that would actually have been perfect to pull off the road, and I'm like, oh, but that's kind of close to someone's house. And if I pull off there, what if the people feel like I'm being really weird, and they come out and they are, they're like, you know, are they, what if they feel like, like, I'm casing their house, like, what if? What if I make them uncomfortable? And so, you know, these thought, well, they won't feel that. They won't feel uncomfortable. You won't be there that long, you you know, you're, you're kind of far from their house. You're not super close, and you're going to be looking at your phone, and they can figure it, oh, yeah, this house is now, you know, three blocks behind me. There you go. Yeah, yeah. And it's a particularly good, you know, it's particularly good because it really is, like, time sensitive, like, I'm not going to turn around and go back there and, you know when, at the time I was like, oh yeah, this is, this is, this is overthinking, isn't it? This is, you know, the way, the way I feel right now. This is the way I feel when I'm overthinking.
Josh Lavine 26:45
I just love that as a microcosm. That's like, that's, that's the whole thing, right there, yeah, you know, that's six. That's, that's being a six, you know, right there, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what helps you with
Dr. Mary Bates 27:03
that? Um, so it's an expression I have one of one of my, one of my. Well, I think I can't remember if I said this on the camera or not, but healthcare is filled with sixes, and especially, especially six ones, six nines too, but especially six ones. And I, you know, so I've got a whole, a whole tool case of things that that I use, you know, I sometimes have students as well. So I have these things that I use with students. And one of the things that one of my students, who's definitely a six, found really useful is, I told her, Well, you know, you just have to take yourself by the hand and do it, even though it's scary. And I think that's there's there's really, I think that's good. And I think that really speaks to I think that really does speak to sixes. And that's sometimes I really do have the sense of, like, you know, you know, or thinking about it like from, from, like, internal family systems, or something like, you know, my big sister has to take me by the hand and hold my hand while I do the scary thing. And so sometimes that's, that's just what I have to do, is I just have to do the scary thing, you know, with whatever kind of internal help I can muster. Sometimes I really can think of myself out of it, you know, I think instead of, you know, going like, oh, well, it's too close to their house, you know, sometimes I really can go, it's not that close to their house. It's, you know, it's going to be okay. And I can can, like, you know, sometimes I really can talk myself out of it, prepping for these things ahead of time. Like, now that I've had this experience of driving by a place that I could have pulled off and I didn't get to read the thing that I wanted to read, now that I've had that experience, I can think about, Okay, the next time I want to drive off the road to read a text, make a phone call, whatever, I am going to err on the side of just pulling off and see how that goes. You know, maybe I'll air too far this way, and then I'll need to swing it back this way. But that's okay, and so that's also really helpful. And it's it's really when I was in my 20s, I did this exercise with myself, where I was just like I was. It was very difficult for me to do anything because I was afraid of making mistakes, like, just, well, whatever, um, did I mention that my nine and my two both have one wings? Um, oh, okay, yep, yes. So I was just like, I really did not want to be wrong in any way, shape or form. And. I so when I was in my 20s, they did this exercise with myself where I decided, okay, every day I'm going to make a deliberate mistake and I'm going to see how that goes. I'm going to see what happens, and whoa, okay, yeah. And they would be like little mistakes, like I would order a I would order an ICE T and I'm going to fess up to it and ask for, you know, ask for forgiveness, or say that I've made a mistake and I need to fix it and see how that goes. Like, I would ask for, you know, I'd be in a I'd make my order, and, you know, I'd be like, Oh, actually, I made a mistake. I don't want a small iced tea. I want a large iced tea. And, you know, I'm sorry I made a mistake and, and it took me a while, but, you know, now I actually view the fact that I'm willing to admit when I've made a mistake. I view that as, as you know, on the plus side, at the ledger of of the way I deal with the world, I'm actually really very comfortable with making mistakes now, which is, you know, like to that point of like, oh, well, I'm gonna gonna try and see what happens if I err on the side of of stopping, and let's just see how that goes. If I err on the side of getting too close to people's houses for a little while. Well, somebody comes out with, you know, a shotgun, I'll be like, Okay, I'm gonna air this way now. So, but that's, you know, yeah,
Josh Lavine 31:27
this is interesting from the point of view of just what is, what is a practice? You know? What do we mean by a practice? And I think that it's, you know, there are the traditional cookie cutter practices that have been around for 1000s of years, like meditation, for example, which is great. Meditation is amazing, but this is a really interesting, customized practice for your own specific nervous system, you know. I just love it as an idea, like, pull off the road, you know, or, like, make a deliberate mistake, yeah? Thank you. Yeah. That's cool. That's cool. Yeah, okay, I would love to switch gears again and talk about reactivity, and I know that this is another part of you just rediscovering yourself in the through the lens of sixness, and kind of looking back on your life and realizing that you actually have been more reactive than you thought you were, or something like that. Can you just talk about that and what that's been like for
Dr. Mary Bates 32:28
you? Yes, um, so the the when you did your interview with Emeka, the type eight, and he said, um, I'm I'm a reactive type, so I'm provocative. I was like, Oh, I'm a reactive type, too. My provocative. I was like, I'm provocative. Little old means provocative. And so I spent some time thinking about that, and I was like, Well, I'm not provocative. I'm like, if something needs to be said. I'll say it like, that's, that's like, you know, but that's, that's not provocative, is it? And so I think that was, that was an interesting thing for me to think about, is that, no, actually, I am kind of provocative at times, although I wouldn't use that word for it, and then I started thinking more about it, and I I had a couple of of realizations, one of which was that I I thought about my professional career, and about like 20 years ago, my first professional doctor job the I realized that my boss, bosses kind of thought of me as a troublemaker. And I was like, Oh, well, yeah, I guess that would be sort of something that a reactive person would do, because I was always like, you know, no, I can't. We can't see more people, no, we can't, you know, we can't do this. We can't do that like, you know, I don't know, like various you know, we can't. We can't accept that kind of error rate in, you know, our electronic medical record or whatever. And so I guess that, yeah, that's that is sort of reactive. And I was thinking about it more recently, recently still. And I like really trying to look at myself and watch myself being reactive and or watch myself like watch what happens when I get told no. So embarrassing when I get told I can't have what I want or I have to have something I don't like. And. And I realized that I have always had the feeling of, like, this is bullshit, but I was better. I've been like, very good at, like, the impulse control thing, like, I'm not, I'm not going to I'm not going to have, I'm not going to express that this, you know, and that more recently, when I've been more I don't know. Maybe it's because I've, you know, given myself permission since I'm a six I can be reactive. Or maybe it's because I'm older, or maybe it's because I'm more mature, or because I've done some inner work, I can feel a little bit more like I can. I mean, in some of it is like, I can take up space with my reaction. I can take up I can take up space with my opinion. When someone says something that I think, you know, that I think is, is stupid or dangerous or, you know, I can actually say that, right?
Josh Lavine 36:08
This is partly I'm rationalizing something about having two positive outlook types in your tri fix, underpinning the natural reactivity of the six plus you have a seven wing, so triple positive adjacent, you might say, and that might just have a softening or mitigating effect on the core reactive thing going on. But you know, my experience of you, even just when we first met, you were, I mean, one of the first things out of your mouth was, I was asking about being a doctor, and you were like, well, I just, you know, because of the way the medical system is, I just can't do what I need to do, you know. And it's true, you know, part one, one way to frame up what reactivity is is negativity. It's like pointing out the thing that's wrong about the thing, or what people aren't seeing, or whatever. And I think that's especially true, like tapping people on the shoulder, that whole thing about the six like, hey, everyone wake up to this thing that's going on, right? So that's one piece of it, and that says just something I noticed about you, right off the bat. But what I'm really interested in, terms of reactivity is, like, how reactivity isn't just a, I don't know, a philosophical stance on, like, wanting, like wanting to call something out, but like and in the moment, reflex or response to something. And that's where I'm starting to get, like, my curiosity really piqued about how you experience a reflex, just knee jerk. Need to say something to, like, call something out in a moment when you know what I'm saying. Like, do you get activated? Where, like, if you see someone doing something stupid or saying something that you disagree with, or whatever, do you feel compelled in the moment to what, call it out or set it straight or something like that?
Dr. Mary Bates 38:08
Yeah, I'm not always, but yeah, that's Yeah. And it just like it just it feels so good.
Josh Lavine 38:23
Yeah, let's switch gears for a second. I'm I want to talk about duty and responsibility and concern as themes for you, and I'm pulling specifically from just so for people who aren't familiar with any grammar, universe watching you submitted a typing video to the Andy grammar team, and then David Gray did a video commentary on your video. And one thing he pointed out was that, you know, if you pause the video at various moments, there is a an expression that you're making of very clear concern or deliberation, or something like that. And so I'd love for you to just talk about what it's like to I mean, do you experience the sense of duty and responsibility and concern as a baseline? Yeah, yeah. So we're okay, yeah. I
Dr. Mary Bates 39:19
definitely experience. I see, I see responsibility, like I experience, oh my gosh, responsibility, like I'm responsible for the whole damn world. You know, it just very, I mean, I know I'm responsible for things I'm not responsible for. Like I feel responsible for things I'm not responsible for, yeah, all the time. And I'm that's, that's actually something I'm trying to work a little bit with myself on, because I like, professionally, I am, you know, well, other people, other people, aren't going to do it. As well as me. Well, maybe that's the case. Maybe that's not the case, but maybe that is the case. But even if other people aren't going to do it as well as you, if you kill yourself because you're working so damn hard, it's not going to matter how good a job you would have done at, you know, managing Mrs. Jones volume status, because you're not going to be managing anybody's volume status, because you're not gonna be, you know, not gonna be able to work to keep this up, babe. So, so that is something I'm but, yeah, if, if I can do something I feel like I need to. Like, if I, if I can't, you know, yeah, if something needs doing, I'll do it, you know. I mean, I'm perfectly happy to have like, I don't need, I don't need like, the spotlight. I don't need people paying attention to me. I don't need people thanking me. I don't like people to thank me, but I don't need people to thank me. I just, if it needs doing, okay, fine, I'll just do it because it needs doing. And it's, you know, definitely the sense of, you know, somebody's got to do it, and it needs doing. And we're like, all in this together, and this needs doing, yeah, or we're all going to fail.
Josh Lavine 41:11
And just to point out, also, you have a double super ego type, right? Is six and two in your tri fix, yes, and, and so the sense of obligation or need the if I feel I can, I must, that seems to be strong.
Dr. Mary Bates 41:28
That is very strong, yes. And I'm, you know, I have a pretty I have a pretty good sense of what a lot of crappy things feel like, and I don't want other people to feel like these things, you know. So, so there's also that, like, I do have a pretty strong sense of of, like, yeah, like, I know what bad things feel like, and I don't want other people to feel bad things. If I can stop you from feeling a bad thing, that's, that's really nice, you know, if I can stop you from from sometimes there's like, even a sense of if I can, if I can, stop you from feeling a bad thing that erases a little bit of the bad thing that I felt, you know. So there's what,
Josh Lavine 42:12
what is hard about letting that go? Like, why? Why is it hard to shirk responsibility.
Dr. Mary Bates 42:26
Oh, some of it is, this is gonna sound so infantile, but it really is. Some of it is really as simple as it's just bad to shirk responsibility. Like, it's like, like, it really is a fairly, I feel like it really is, like a fairly bedrock kind of belief that I have of, you know, doing what you can is is good. You know, I I like to spend time in graveyards, of course, because, of course, I do, right, because I'm a success. P, that's part of the whole life cycle thing. I'd like to, I'd like to spend time in graveyards. And you read people's epitaphs, and the one that I've seen that I really like is she did what she could.
Josh Lavine 43:18
Wow. That's a pithy little statement right there. Yeah,
Dr. Mary Bates 43:20
yeah, yeah. And I feel like that's that would be, that would be an okay epitaph to have. That
Josh Lavine 43:25
could be religion of your trifix, baby, yeah,
Dr. Mary Bates 43:29
yeah, yeah,
Josh Lavine 43:32
yeah. And one other, actually, that phrase I just remembered I got from David Gray's commentary at The religion piece part, he also pointed out the six nine stem anti narcissism thing. And just to frame that up, it was like, it's like a sense of, I'm an awareness that I'm actually not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. I'm just a steward of something, maybe, and, and I'm aware of that, and I'm not trying to be too well, narcissistic, I'm not trying to take up too much space. I'm not trying to be that too flashy. I'm just like, here to serve, do what I can that sensibility, yeah, and I actually, I really want to hone in this idea of narcissism or just being making it about you. You know, like, Do you have a like, What's your relationship with doing things for yourself or pleasure or taking up space?
Dr. Mary Bates 44:39
Well, it has been, it's been something I've had to spend some time really working on. When I was talking about doing some nine work that was, you know, the idea of taking up space is definitely something that I spent that that was definitely part of that, the idea that it's, you know, it's a. Okay to take up space, it's okay to use resources. It's okay to get what you want. It's okay to even if it's not what someone like, even if it's not consonant with what everyone else wants, it it's okay. Um, so yeah, that's yeah. That's definitely been a real that's been a real challenge for me. That's been something that I've worked on. And it's, it's funny as I come a little bit more into that. What the hell was it I had? I had an experience the other day where I don't, I'll just use the standard example of, what do you want for dinner that you know, it's like, okay, what are we having for dinner? And I was like, Well, I didn't exactly say whatever you want for dinner, whatever you want, but it was, it was something along that lines. And I realized that, like, that's actually really an annoying response. Like, I hadn't, like, people have told me this before, but I never really kind of understood, but that's actually really annoying response, because the person, the other person, it doesn't help the other person at all. Like, and maybe they actually want to provide. Maybe they're feeling like they want to do something nice for you, because maybe they have some bad news they're going to tell you. So they really want to get dinner from a place that you really like. Well, you think they can't do that because you're just not going to tell them, yeah. Or maybe they like, actually want to have a relationship with me and not, not, like, with some sort of miasma. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, that's actually not, not a helpful answer. And I it was like, like, the light bulb went off finally, and it's like, oh, that's, I get that. Like, sometimes my, um, I've told the story before, but I don't think I've told it to you. When my husband and I first got together, I was like, Oh, I was very, you know, like, you know, he would be like, do you want lasagna for dinner? And I'd be like, and I'd say, Sure. And it took him, because he's he's a pretty smart guy. It took him, like, not very long to figure out that when I said, Sure, that meant yes, no, I don't care. Hell no. That's the best idea ever. Like, it meant all of those things. It was just like a totally non committal answer that could then be warped, morphed into whatever answer was going to work for what he wanted. And yeah, and he actually stopped accepting that as an answer fairly early on in our relationship, and that was a really, really helpful thing for him to do, yeah. So
Josh Lavine 47:59
it strikes me about that way of learning about yourself is that it is sort of justifying your own or us, or giving yourself permission to begin expressing yourself through the lens of the impact on other people. Oh, yeah, absolutely,
you know, it's a, it's a fascinating kind of roundabout justification. It's not, it's not like, I'm allowed to just because I'm allowed to. It's like, well, I ought to express myself, because that makes the impact that I have on other people more palatable or less. That will make less burdensome. Yes, yeah,
Dr. Mary Bates 48:37
yep, yeah. That's yeah. It's yeah, absolutely,
Josh Lavine 48:45
well, so I mean, it really, I like, I want to just like, Okay, I'm just gonna, this is a question that's gonna burrow in there, I think. But like, what? What is it like to consider that you're just allowed to, because you're allowed to um,
Dr. Mary Bates 49:23
yeah, I can, I can. Can do that intellectually, yeah, but that's, that's an example of an area that I feel like is pretty active right now for me in terms of my emotional growth, yeah,
Josh Lavine 49:47
okay, so it's like kind of a hot spot or a sensitive point, yeah, yeah,
Dr. Mary Bates 49:52
yeah, yeah. And I might be able to, might be able to come up with something, but that's. Yeah, and then I think that's related to, that's related to the the instincts, more, you know, where, or as an, as a sexual blind, like, I am really largely clueless about what the hell I want, you know, sure, how I like,
Josh Lavine 50:17
Oh, that's interesting, yeah,
Dr. Mary Bates 50:19
yeah, yeah. So to some extent, like, I mean, sometimes I have, like, sometimes I have ideas about what it might be, ideas, of course, about what it might be. But I, I'm not like, like, it's not, it's not that often that I really know, right, you know, and I, I'm that's actually something that I'm actively, you know, working on is trying to, trying to find the little teeny shreds, the little teeny threads of sexual instinct in me, and notice them and and, you know, give them little seedlings, give them the space to grow a little bit. Yeah,
Josh Lavine 51:02
I was actually thinking of it slightly differently, not that this is I'm counterproposing Or saying that you're wrong. But another way in is the, are you familiar with the idea of the missing piece? Yeah, so the whole three being the missing piece for six and I, I love this missing piece idea, because, I mean, as I understand it, the concept is that if you were to truly integrate the experiential knowing of the missing piece, it would dissolve your ego structure altogether. It's like the final, you know, I don't know, foundational thing that you just knock away and it's and then you dissolve into whatever essence. But for the for the six, the missing piece being three, it's like, I am, the radiance and the glory it is. It's me, you know, it's like, and I'm not. It's not just that I'm allowed, but it's a gift and a celebration for the world, for me to shine. You know that's and there's a so as a three, speaking as a three, it's like there's something that feels like, so, like I just, I mean, I have six of my traffic too, and that six nine anti narcissism stem. So there's a bit of an allergy, in a sense, to it still in my organism. But as a core three, there's a real alignment to that, like I can, I can feel the truth that right at least I sense, I sense a wanting, a yearning for that you know to be my reality and my experience of you, or the way that you're framing this, like the fact that such a hot spot for You and so sensitive territory is that it's like the opposite of a yearning, or whatever that would be. It's like just to the the the imitation, even to considering that is itself like, like, it causes Some like, deep existential consternation for you. Yeah, yeah, do.
Dr. Mary Bates 53:34
Yeah, it's interesting to think about. I'm thinking about and maybe this is not an example of that, but I'm thinking about the, well,
yeah, I don't know. I'll, I'll think about that some more. I'll just leave it at that. Okay, see, I don't want to take up too much space or time, you know, with my thinking, oh,
Josh Lavine 54:06
yeah, What? What? What happened there? What just happened when you were, when you were sitting and thinking,
Dr. Mary Bates 54:14
Well, I was, I was, first I was, I was thinking about what you had said, and then I was realizing that I was taking a lot of time and that it wasn't going to be, you know, useful video, and that I it was also a way in which I felt like, well, maybe I'm not going to come up with anything useful, and then, you know, like, you know, it'll be embarrassing, and Josh will think I'm really stupid. Besides, I. Yeah. So I, you know, collect them all.
Josh Lavine 55:11
Yeah. I have no idea if I include this in the final letter or not, but I find it fascinating how allergic we are to silence, always, right? I mean, in our lives, right? But especially in recorded content. Yeah, you know, dead air is like the last thing you want on radio or TV. And there's actually something about silence that I feel super drawn to and even my experience at that moment was like as you were sitting there and considering in that moment of silence, I noticed myself kind of drop in to myself a little more. So it's kind of nice for me.
Dr. Mary Bates 55:58
Oh, well, if, it's good for you, then we can, can be silent a little longer. And I, I do, I mean, definitely in medicine, like silences of can be a really useful thing in medicine. You know, we're so we're definitely so programmed to talking, talking, talking and being silent with someone can actually, you know, be a tremendously powerful thing, even for, you know, even for like, five seconds. And the other thing you can do with silence and medicine is that you, if you are just simply silent, like, you ask a person a question and you're just like, wait for their answer, and you're like, silent and you just don't speak, people eventually will actually say something and and like, you know, if there's a silence that's probably something that they don't really want to talk about, and then they're finally going to actually talk about it. So you can get really sometimes you can finally get people to talk about the real thing, you know? Oh yes, and I'm afraid that I'm gonna die from this.
Josh Lavine 57:11
Yeah, when we connected for our initial chat, you shared your life story with me, and it's quite an extraordinary life story from from a lot of points of view, particularly around trauma and what you experienced and how you move through it. And it's probably too big and hairy of a story to contain on the podcast. But just you know, as a headline, it's like kind of capital T trauma, kind of situation, and you have a remarkable level of interiority and self regulation, it seems to me, that is a marker of having moved through it in a really profound way. So I'm curious, Yeah, you're welcome, um, what? What happened for you after the big T trauma that helped you move through it, and what did you How do you what? What's your what helps you on your journey? And if you want to give any sort of indication of what it was, I'm not trying to prompt you with this whole story, but whatever you want to say, Yeah,
Dr. Mary Bates 58:32
I wrote this piece that is kind of talks about this a little bit when about it's called, I don't know if I don't think I sent it to you. It's called, I'm a natural stoic, which is about
my sitting in the car with my foster mother when I was
eight years old or so, and she said to me, like we were listening to a program on the radio about people who had been in Soviet prison camps, and we were and she was saying, you know, like, so, you know, if you were in a Soviet prison or what's the one thing that no one can take away from you, like, if you're in A Soviet prison camp, they can take away everything from you, your freedom, your food, your your water, your you know, everything, but what's the one thing they can't take away from you? And the answer that she was hoping for, the answer for her was for Loretta, was your memories, your happy memories, was the answer for her, okay? And I thought about that, and then we the, you know, I thought about that, and it didn't feel like quite the right answer for me, okay? And I, you know, I thought about it more and realized that for me, I mean, and certainly that's something that can't be. Taken away from you, of course, but like, I tried to imagine, like, if I'm in a Soviet prison camp, like thinking about, you know, some happy memory was really not and honestly, I didn't have any happy memories at that point in my life anyway. So thinking about happy memory is not, not really something that's going to sustain me like that, that that didn't feel like enough. And I, I thought about it, I realized, for me, what it was, was thinking about the fact that no matter how I was treated, I could still maintain my core of humanity like that was what would I thought? That's what would sustain me, yeah, and then, you know, then I had sort of 11 years of not very pleasant life with them, where that really was what sustained me, that no matter what kind of horrible things were done to me. I did not become like my captors, my parents.
Josh Lavine 1:01:12
One other piece of this is you became a doctor, kind of later in life, or you decided to go to med school later in life, and that that whole piece is just so interesting to me that you can you just share real quick that story that go ahead,
Dr. Mary Bates 1:01:28
yeah, yeah. So I decided I'll condense the story. I decided during the postpartum period of my first daughters with after my first daughter, I decided that I decided that I didn't want to go back to being a computer programmer. Yeah, and I started looking around for what is it that I want to do? I thought maybe I wanted to be a doula. And I volunteered at a doula training Association, and I was listening to people talking about a test that they had taken, people who were in the doula training program talking about a test that they had taken, and the they were like, trying to remember whose blood was in the placenta. Oh, I know whose blood's in the placenta. That was really interesting, like all those sort of pseudo medical books that you read when you're pregnant. Oh, I could be a doctor. I could be a doctor. And it was like, everything. Suddenly clicked into place. And like, this world that had maybe like been, you know, half a degree off of square was suddenly
Josh Lavine 1:02:31
Yeah, square
Dr. Mary Bates 1:02:32
and how made sense. How old
Josh Lavine 1:02:33
were you when you had that realization? 28 Yeah, 28 and so then you applied, after that to med school, yes,
Dr. Mary Bates 1:02:42
yeah, yep, yep, yeah, yeah. I think, when I think about it, I wonder, at least, if that was not a body sensation knowing,
Josh Lavine 1:02:55
yeah, there's something about that whole thing that is deeper intuition. I mean, it's, it's max of something like that, you know, some something came through you, you know, and it was like, Oh, wait, no, this is actually my orientation in the world this. And that image of all the puzzle pieces which weren't really kind of connecting before, all of a sudden, clicking into place. You could call that Gnosis or something. I mean, that's like, yes, a body knowing, or a mental, whatever it is, it's, you know, something really aligned. And, you know, there's something about your story and just your way of being that feels heroic to me in the sense of like there's a you know, what you what you suffered through early on, early in your life, and then what you were able to turn that into, in the alchemical process of your own inner work, to the to The devotion you have now as a doctor, and just the really, it just feels to me like your 692 trifix constellation is really singing through your life now. I mean, the whole way that your life is organized, and particularly through the through the profession or vocation of being a doctor feels like there's a real just fit, you know, like you, you kind of found your calling and you followed it. And that also feels like kind of, you know, another piece of the puzzle or anchor point in your story that helps you kind of process and move through all the trauma to where you are now. Oh, yeah, so I feel right to you, yeah, yeah,
Dr. Mary Bates 1:04:39
yes, yeah, definitely the sense of like, like I was talking about before, like, Oh, if I can, if I can help, like, I can help this family deal with this death and yeah, like, that's like, helps a little bit erase the. You know, the trauma associated with my mom's death, you know, if I can, you know, and I definitely can see like, Oh, if I can help this family, if they can help this person and this family have a good death, I can see that that's something that affects multiple generations. Like, I can see that from my own life. And so when, you know, when I do that, of course, I, of course, I want to be obsessive about being sure I've done everything I can and done it as well as I can, because, because it's something that really matters, yeah, yeah. And because it's something that that i Yes, that is personally connected to me. Yeah, yeah,
Josh Lavine 1:05:52
beautiful. Thank you. Yeah. Is there anything about sixness or yourself that we haven't covered that you definitely want to hit. Um,
Dr. Mary Bates 1:06:06
why? Well, I'm sorry we're coming to an end so soon. Um, you didn't ask me what it was like to be to hear myself introduced.
Josh Lavine 1:06:19
Oh, that's right, I didn't do that. Yeah. I think I'm, like, moving away from that question actually
Dr. Mary Bates 1:06:27
interesting, yeah, because I, you know, I thought about it the whole like, I thought about that, like, okay, so when Josh says that I'm gonna, like, then I'm gonna know that I'm, like, really being interviewed my gosh, yeah, and, and, what am I going to say? How am I going to answer that question? Is my answer going to be good enough? Is it going to be like, sexy enough? Is it going to be, you know, is it, is it going to be like, like? I've thought about it so much and known that he's going to answer and imagined what it would feel like to hear him interviewing or to hear him introducing me. So am I gonna is my answer going to be so contaminated by my anticipation of it, or is it going to be authentic? And you didn't even ask me, and I didn't get to hear it, it's very disappointing. Yeah, I was all looking forward to that, and what a great six answer that is, right.
Josh Lavine 1:07:27
Oh my gosh, that's so funny. Yeah, wow. Well, that might be actually the clip that I start, that I lead with, actually, that's so funny. Yeah, there's, there's a way that, I mean, just for me, like the the way that I do these interviews, the reason I'm stopping that question is, is because what I noticed is that my asking it was activating a certain kind of, like, I don't know, performance mode or something like, it's like, a question I'm asked too many times and so, so now I like, I have to keep it I have to keep varying it up for myself to prevent myself from going into a kind of inauthentic three land
Dr. Mary Bates 1:08:24
that makes sense to me. Yeah, yeah.
Josh Lavine 1:08:26
So how do you feel now? I'm
Dr. Mary Bates 1:08:32
disappointed to be done. Yeah. I
I actually feel a little bit nervous. Like, oh, did I like? I feel like, oh, I maybe I missed something. Maybe there's but we didn't, we didn't talk about attachment. What did I, you know, maybe there's something else I didn't think about that, that we should have talked about, that we didn't talk about. And, and what more could I have said? And, you know, what? What you know, what could I say now that would, you know, rehearse people's opinion, people's impression, that I'm an idiot. It's
Josh Lavine 1:09:09
too late. Yeah, it's all done. Too late. It's done.
Dr. Mary Bates 1:09:15
I actually feel nervous now when I didn't really so much at the beginning. It's funny. That
Josh Lavine 1:09:21
is fascinating, yeah, yeah. Well, thank you for doing this. Yeah, I really appreciate it. And yeah, it's great talking to you. And I appreciate your Yeah, your willingness to reflect in real time about yourself, yeah, yeah. And yeah, no, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:42
So it's fine, okay, okay.