Philosophy for Life

Why Do We Need God? | Dr. Mark Baker

• Darron Brown • Season 3 • Episode 12

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Get ready for a transformative conversation with Dr. Mark Baker, a clinical psychologist who uses the Bible as a therapeutic tool to help people navigate life situations and relationships. Leveraging the teachings of Jesus in the context of modern psychoanalytic theory, Dr. Baker offers profound insights on how spirituality can play a significant role in our emotional health. With increasing societal shifts away from traditional religious values, the discussion brings to light the potential impacts on relationships and the essential need for spiritual fulfillment beyond religious confines.

In an era where technology and social media are reshaping the way we connect, we explore with Dr. Baker how these platforms have influenced relationships, often leading to increased levels of anxiety and depression. We delve into the fascinating world of relational therapy, where Dr. Baker assists clients to build trust, foster vulnerability, and heal past traumas. We discuss the art of setting boundaries to facilitate healthy vulnerability and the power of emotional intelligence in fostering stronger connections.

Finally, we confront challenging subjects such as resentment, insecurity, and envy, which can have detrimental effects on relationships if not addressed. Dr. Baker emphasizes the healing power of resolving resentment, particularly for men who often harbor unprocessed anger towards their fathers. As we wrap up the discussion, we reflect on the unmatched influence of love in relationships and how, according to Dr. Baker, loving others is the ultimate way to live. Join us for this enlightening conversation that promises to change the way you view relationships, spirituality, and emotional health.

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Dr. Mark Baker:

If your abuse happened in your childhood, what you learned was wow, I'm invulnerable with these adults and my vulnerability led me to be exploited by these adults. So then people learn well, I'm not going to be vulnerable again. So they come up with defenses. Maybe they're angry, maybe they're withdraw. Whatever their defenses are defense against vulnerability, because that's where they got abused. They get into their adult life and now they're defensive all the time and they're angry all the time. It's not working. You can't keep using the same techniques you used in your childhood in your adult life. It doesn't work.

Darron Brown:

I have a special show for you today. I'm really excited about our next show. Our next guest, dr Mark Baker, is a clinical psychologist. He uses the Bible as a reference to help people handle their relationships, deal with life situations and also how to manage the evil that lies within themselves. Whether you believe in God, the universe or some higher power, dr Baker believes that if you follow the principles that are explained within the Bible, you can apply those principles to your life and have more fulfilling life.

Darron Brown:

Now, anyways, before we get into that, 90% of you guys are not subscribed to the channel. Hit that subscribe button and turn your notification bell. Also, if you're listening on any of the streaming networks, follow us and give us a five-star review. Anyways, my name is Daron Brown and this is the podcast Philosophy for Life. Hey, dr Baker, I checked out your book, the one that was called Jesus the Greatest Therapist who Ever Live, and I also checked out your book Wisdom for Living A Happier Life. But before I get into that book, I want to know why did you name your book Jesus the Greatest Therapist who Ever Live?

Dr. Mark Baker:

Well, actually I don't get to pick the titles. You know, when you send the book to the publisher they have the right to pick the title. The original title was the Greatest Psychologist who Ever Lived, and Jesus' name wasn't even in the title. But the publisher wanted to make it more direct, more specific, so we put Jesus in the title, and it's really the outgrowth of my years of research.

Dr. Mark Baker:

I studied with one of the leading psychoanalysts in the United States today and kept hearing from him these concepts that were healing. He was not religious at all, he was actually an atheist. I studied with him for ten years to really learn the best psychoanalytic understanding of how to be helpful, and I kept hearing things that were very similar to what I learned when I got my master's degree in theology. There were concepts there that Jesus taught 2,000 years ago that are being applied today, and so I integrated those two the Contemporary Psychoanalytic Theory of Interceptivity Theory, which we can talk about, and the teachings of Jesus, and that book has sold 2 million copies around the world today, so it just has taken off. People want to put together their spiritual life and their emotional life. They're interested in putting those things together. That's a long answer.

Darron Brown:

Yeah, that's a great answer. I noticed the same thing within myself. I read this book by Jonathan A Hath called the Righteous Mind, and it's all about psychology and how your emotions in your mind, how they work together the writer and the elephant concept and ever since I've gotten into psychology, for whatever reason, I've been pulled more into spirituality books and they're all kind of tied together. But the thing that I find interesting is that a lot of people I want to say in the modern age, they were kind of pulling away from religion. Why do you think that people are still seeking this connection to the universe but we're also, at the same time, pulling away from traditional religions and, by the way, jonathan Hath is one of my favorite authors.

Dr. Mark Baker:

I quote him all the time I would say that religion by and large has really never been helpful. What people miss about Jesus is he did not come to establish religion. He was not here to set up Christianity. He's not the founder of Christianity. Jesus came to teach people about how to have a better relationship with God and each other. That was his mission. I'm a bridge between you, humanity and God, and I'm here to introduce you into a more vibrant way of living, a more effective way of living. And then his followers then made it a religion. Some say Peter was the head of the church. It's a bit of a debate, but religion is a socially constructed, man-made institution to help people connect with God. But Jesus was more interested in spirituality, which is really the connection with God. So the latest generation, gen Z now, are leaving the church in droves. When you ask them on a survey form what's your religious identification? Are you Protestant, catholic, muslim? And at the bottom there's none. That's the most frequently checked box none.

Dr. Mark Baker:

So we have a whole range of nuns coming up, but N-O-N-E-S nuns, because they're not interested in their parents' religion and neither with Jesus. He was interested in teaching people how to live spiritual lives where they're connected with a personal relationship with God, and that's what people are interested in. They're still interested in that. How can I be a spiritual person, a person that is connected to God and connected to other people? But are they interested in the trappings of religion? No, they're not. They're not interested in religious rituals.

Darron Brown:

Do you believe the breakdown in religion is also connected to the breakdown in modern-day relationships, because, you know, today we have more of a hook-up culture? How do you feel about that?

Dr. Mark Baker:

I do. I think that, sadly, the loss of identification with traditional values has resulted in a huge breakdown in societal values. The unwed pregnancy rate is skyrocketed for everyone. The hook-up culture, as you mentioned, a lack of interest in people committing themselves, a lack of interest in getting married. People are living together in even monogamous relationships, but living together, not getting married. That's skyrocketing too. So I think we're going to see we're already seeing a number of problems that are coming with the rejection of these traditional values. It's not certain to be what they're replacing those values with. That's not clear yet. So, yeah, we've got some problems we need to face with our values and our culture today.

Darron Brown:

You mentioned how unwed pregnancies are skyrocketing. I'm just trying to connect it to my personal experience. I'm wondering that if people in your book you mentioned that people they grow the most, they learn the most through their relationships, whether that has to be with a friendship or that has to be with a partner but at the same time, because we're so isolated from each other, people don't really have those connections that they once had and they tend to suffer at an accelerated rate. How do you feel like when you are working with one of your patients? That's what I got from your book. When you're working with one of your patients, how do you help them deal with the suffering that they encounter within their relationships, romantic relationships, how to get over that and reopen again?

Dr. Mark Baker:

Well, the kind of therapy that we do at my counseling center is relational therapy. So we don't just give people advice, we don't give them homework, we don't give them workbooks to work through. We don't do manualized therapy, which is legitimate. Cognitive behavioral therapy, symptom reduction therapy those are legitimate forms of therapy. That's not what we do. We enter into a relationship with people because our belief is that's where the problem is and that's where the problem's solved. Your problems came to you as a result of your relationships with people. The problems are going to be solved as a result of your relationships with people. This is a central tenet of the teachings of Jesus is that he came in order to introduce us to a better relationship with God and each other through these principles that he taught and that's what psychotherapy is trying to do is help people get better at relating to other people and themselves. Of course, psychotherapy doesn't include the concept of God, but they're doing the same thing. We're storing relationships between people. That's what we do.

Dr. Mark Baker:

So when people come to me with a traumatic background, I'm not in a rush. I'm going to take time to understand them, to get to know their story, and over time they'll develop trust in me. They'll be able to be more vulnerable with me and in that relationship with me is really where the healing takes place. It's not just my advice that heals people. You saw in my book over and over again it wasn't my advice, but it was the relationship that we formed that allowed them to be more vulnerable and then to heal the traumas that came from previous relationships. That could be healed by a new kind of relationship where vulnerability was a powerful thing.

Dr. Mark Baker:

Most people who were abused in the past, being vulnerable is what resulted in their abuse, so they don't want to be vulnerable again. So they come to therapy. They don't want to be vulnerable. They have to work that through where they can say no way being vulnerable can make me a stronger person if I learn how to do that, whereas before I was taken advantage of and made to feel like I was a weaker person for being vulnerable. So we have to reverse that and that takes time.

Darron Brown:

Okay, so I'm guessing when people are vulnerable, you said that you have to be vulnerable to actually have a healthy, thriving relationship what's the line between being vulnerable and being I want to say having the ability to set boundaries? How do you teach somebody how the difference between two? When to basically prevent somebody, tell somebody to stop when they're going over the line?

Dr. Mark Baker:

Right. Well, that's a skill set that people need to learn, and you also have to learn who it's smart to be vulnerable with and who it is not. There are certain people that it's not wise for you to be vulnerable with them. There are certain people that you need to move on from in your life and realize they're not the kind of person who is going to be reciprocal, they're not going to be vulnerable back with me. So you and that's trial and error. You know we figure out where it works and where it doesn't For most people.

Dr. Mark Baker:

If your abuse happened in your childhood, what you learned was wow, I'm vulnerable with these adults and my vulnerability led me to be exploited by these adults. So then people learn well, I'm not gonna be vulnerable again. So they come up with defenses. Maybe they're angry, maybe they're withdrawal. Whatever their defenses are defense against vulnerability, because that's where they got abused. They get into their adult life and now they're defensive all the time and they're angry all the time.

Dr. Mark Baker:

It's not working. You can't keep using the same techniques you used in your childhood in your adult life. It doesn't work. Maybe it was good for you to never speak up when you were a child because it kept you from being abused. That doesn't work for you as an adult. So in therapy we help them realize okay, these strategies you learned in childhood to survive your abuse are not working for you now. So now we have to learn how to appropriately be vulnerable with certain people so you can have intimate relationships with them and learn who is not safe to be vulnerable with. So some people yes, some people know that's where you learn the boundaries. But if you just keep doing the same thing you did in your childhood, you're never gonna grow, you're just gonna be stuck that being said Agreed, agreed, agreed.

Darron Brown:

What I'm getting at is that I know that, at least in my generation. I wanna say when I first started, like when I first entered college, for example, social media just came out so people understood that if you were gonna connect to the opposite sex or even if you were gonna build friendships, you had to communicate. So even if you watch movies from the 80s you can see like that nerd he gets the confidence to speak to the girl. Everybody kind of went through that stage of development in college. But now, because of social media, because we're so isolated, I see a lot more people. They have more anxiety when it comes to just speaking, having a casual conversation with the average person. How does a person who's coming from a mindset where they're dealing with a lot of fears and anxiety develop a strategy to help them be more confident and to have these thriving type of relationships?

Dr. Mark Baker:

So it's interesting that you bring that up because actually Jonathan Haidt, who we were just talking about, has done a lot of research on the advent of social media and smartphones. And when smartphones and social media peaked like around 2007, 2008, 2009, around in there, where people were all on their phones and we had no idea if this is good or bad, but we had the technology so we were doing it At that time mental health problems spiked for young adolescent girls, especially adolescent boys too, young adolescent girls. So the last decade, the younger generation has been turning to social media, turning to their devices and the illusion of having relationships with other people, but it's false. They're only presenting what they want other people to see, so they're presenting their best image in social media, and the people today that report the most anxiety, the most depression, the most social isolation are the people who are on social media the most. So they're substituting a real relationship for a fake one and it's causing tremendous psychological problems.

Dr. Mark Baker:

Haidt is writing a book right now on that subject where he believes that social media, particularly for adolescent girls, is toxic because they are thinking they're having friendships, they think they've got 500 or 5,000 friends. There was one instance where this guy had something like I don't know several thousand friends on one of the social media platforms, so then he threw a party at his house. Nobody came. So nobody is a real friend, they're only social media friends, and our younger people today are paying a huge psychological price for that, because it's not a real relationship. It's people pretending to be bigger and better than they are. So we've got a big problem on our hands.

Darron Brown:

Why do you believe that social media is impacting women far more, greater than it's impacting men? Because the reason I ask that is because I've had men who were jealous of me because of what I'm doing now, or I had something on TikTok that went viral and it got a few million views. I don't even check that out, but I did notice that some people were envious of that. So why do you think it impacts men women more than impacts men?

Dr. Mark Baker:

Well, we're talking about mental health problems as a result of social media on the phone. Women are making use of certain apps more than men and other apps. Like men are on YouTube more than women, but women are more on Snapchat or TikTok or these other apps more, which are getting even more likes, more traffic. So, and it's always been true that adolescent women are just more emotional than adolescent boys. That's always been true. That's not new. Adolescent girls dress for other adolescent girls. They're not dressing for boys. They're looking around what the other girls are wearing and then they go I got to have that or I got to look better than that. They're very, very aware of who's connected to who, who's in, who's out. Oh wow, boys are a little more dumb. We want to know who's in control. Women want to know who's connected to who.

Darron Brown:

Oh wow, you know that's crazy because I was telling, I was telling a friend of mine. I was like, no, my mother, I'll send my friend something my mother had told me when I was like 14. And she asked her how do you get a girlfriend? And she looked at me and she said if she like, if you want her to like you, her friends have to like you too. And that's completely true. Women are very. They're governed by their social group. Even before, even without, even without social media, they care a lot about who they're dating, who are, if their friends think he's cool or not, and where does he stand within the group. Same thing. That's why that's why celebrity men and athletes they get so much attention is because of I guess this is exactly what we're talking about how women are. I guess they're attracted to the popularity.

Dr. Mark Baker:

Yeah, women are very aware of who's connected to whom. Men are more willing to be loners. Women are not as easily willing to be loners.

Darron Brown:

Okay, all right. So one of the things that I want to know about is that in your book you mentioned like people going through pressure and then points of going through pressure because it makes you strong. But from my personal experience, I've seen so many people who have had hard times in life or they reach any kind of friction in life and it just tears them apart. I see that more times than I see the opposite side, where somebody becomes strong and you know, they become a better person. What is the good balance between knowing when do you know it's too much pressure and how does a person actually what is the mindset of a person that's actually growing from these difficult life experiences?

Dr. Mark Baker:

Well, that's in. I write about that in a couple of my books. Pressure itself doesn't necessarily make you a better person or a worse person. It's how you face it. The way I put it is if you're having a deal with difficult circumstances in life, you're gonna come out of one of two ways. You're gonna come out of it bitter or better, and it's up to you to decide which. Because the people I know who are the most bitter angry in person people in life are people who've suffered a lot and they're angry and bitter about it. And the people I know who are the wisest people the people I go through go to for advice are the people who've suffered a lot. So what's the difference? The difference is how they face their suffering. Suffering is just a vector, it's just a force. It doesn't make you bitter or better. You make yourself bitter or better based on how you face your suffering.

Dr. Mark Baker:

And the key thing and this is right out of the teachings of Jesus, the key thing that's gonna make you a better person, not a bitter person, when you suffer in life is you don't try to go through it alone. It's a big mistake men make. We try to white knuckle it and go through hard times alone and we end up angry and bitter a lot and we die younger than women and we have more physical problems than women Because we try to suck it up and go inward with the struggles in life and don't ask for help. We are not hardwired to go through problems alone and most men think they are, think they're supposed to. The problem for men.

Darron Brown:

That's interesting. I had somebody else on my show and one thing that he mentioned was is that when people disappear, you don't hear from people, it's because they're having a hard time. And he, for example, he went to Wharton Business School and the best business schools in the world and he ended up being a taxi driver for about 15 years and he was discussing with me about how he was, about all these fancy parties, all these events. He would never show up. He would never show up because he was afraid of showing his face.

Darron Brown:

And your statement right now reminds me of not only his statement but, like friends of mine, I have friends who are going through hard times and we've come from the same background. They've seen the things that I've done and they've never, not once. One of my friends, specifically, I spoke to his mother. They've never, not once, have called me and asked me for help, and I was just. It dawned on me. I was like why, for me, it makes sense If you're having a hard time or you're you need help with something, ask somebody for help. But there's something about men who may. It's like a pride thing, I think. I think for men, if they feel like they have to ask for help. It makes them feel even more weak than they currently feel.

Dr. Mark Baker:

The number one thing that men fear the most is appearing weak. That's our greatest fear. So anything we do that we think makes us appear weak, we run from that. We won't do it, and asking for help makes a lot of men feel weak and that is a serious problem. It leads to much, much bigger problems in their lives because we're not hardwired to deal with problems alone. We're basically fundamentally relational beings. I would say that's the central point of my book Jesus, the greatest therapist who ever lived, is that we are fundamentally relational beings. Now Jesus says you need a relationship with God and each other, and so he adds the God piece to it.

Dr. Mark Baker:

But as a psychologist, I can tell you, any suffering you go through in life, you will do better if you're not doing it alone. We know that. We've got plenty of psychological research. Think about this. You know people and I know people who had terrible childhoods, terrible difficult circumstances, and they turned out pretty good people. And then I also know people who had really easy childhoods, nothing, really no trauma in life, and they're idiots. Today they're jerks. They turned out terrible.

Darron Brown:

They're horrible people. Yeah, I think there's a difference.

Dr. Mark Baker:

What's the difference? Every one of those people who had terrible childhoods, you'll find there was someone else. There was an aunt, an uncle, a preacher, a youth minister, a teacher. There's someone there in that kid's life that made the difference. They weren't alone. They weren't alone. That's how those people survived difficult circumstances. They didn't have to go through it alone. So that's a really important thing.

Darron Brown:

That's a great point, you know I was. Are you familiar with the book called King Warrior, lover and Magician?

Dr. Mark Baker:

Yes.

Darron Brown:

Sam. Okay, so I met with that professor, I want to say about two months ago, and I mentioned to him is that what I noticed growing up is that I grew up in a neighborhood that was Murder Capital in the early 90s and Come in the Utah for college I met other people have come from dark backgrounds as well, but since we've been in Utah, we've all kind of, we've all improved in multiple areas of a life would become a lot more positive. I noticed other kids who grew up more with the silver spoon, who they went the opposite direction and I always saw it as I never saw it as lesser than or greater than. I kind of see it as expanding. Like people, there's something in us that makes us want to expand and to experience more.

Darron Brown:

But I'm basically from what you're saying, though. The kids who grew up from that potentially the kids that grew up with the silver spoon they may have not had the social connections that people from other environments may have had to Help them become, get to their stage in life. Is that, is that accurate?

Dr. Mark Baker:

Correct. Yeah, a guy by the name of Byron Johnson is a criminologist. He studied. For 30 years he's been studying crime in the inner city. And why is that? Why is that there's certain kids who grow up and get into crime and certain kids who grow up and don't get into crime.

Dr. Mark Baker:

And he has found that the number one agent to prevent crime in our society today in the inner city is the church. If there is a christian church there with an active youth program and kids are going to that, that youth program, they don't get involved in crime because they got relationships. There's a, there's a preacher, they care. So there's other kids that care for them. They've got social connections makes them want to do something with their life. They're going to grow up and graduate from high school and and get married before they get pregnant and get a job and it's something about those social connections that keeps kids out of crime more than any other factor. Government programs don't do it. Police don't do it. Education doesn't do it. Nothing as as effective as the church in the inner city to prevent crime. He's got a book called more god, less crime, where he does all this research. That's very impressive, very impressive, and I believe it's the relationships that those, those kids, develop in church that saves them from from a life of crime, when, when they, when they make that decision.

Darron Brown:

That's a great point. I'm applying it to my life as you're, as you're speaking. I remember growing up all those a rough neighborhood. I did go to the boys and girls club a lot and I did. I was a part of a lot of youth sports groups. I played college football from the university of utah and, um, yeah, I was always at the school programs.

Darron Brown:

I was always around People, even though I probably wasn't the nicest kid when I was a kid, but those relationships they changed me in ways I'm probably not even conscious of that other kids didn't have. It's weird because I'm think I remember I said this as well one of my shows there were kids that were way more intelligent than me and, um, well, they got better grades than me in grade school and a lot of those kids ended up joining Gangs and I always saw it as, oh, those kids were invisible. So the kids who were invisible, they felt like they weren't acknowledged. Those are the ones that Were joining. We're joining groups. They they were. They were basically joining these games because they didn't have that kind of connection, social, group that that they weren't known or seen as much Exactly when stand out.

Dr. Mark Baker:

Zach, we know, we know that to be true. Kids will join games because they don't want to be alone.

Darron Brown:

So how does I want to talk about vulnerability a little bit more? How does vulnerability lead to living a more powerful life?

Dr. Mark Baker:

right, we don't. We don't think about that in western culture. Uh, we think about being individuals and being individualistic and what I'm thinking about being vulnerable to other people as being a strength. What we, what we found now, is that Really trying to control other people or be more powerful than other people and make them do what we want, is a short lived form of power. It is a form of power Like if you lived in russia today in under a controlling regime. That is a form of power, but it's it's only as powerful as long as there's a physical threat.

Dr. Mark Baker:

But in a society like ours, a free society like ours, trying to control people doesn't work very well in your relationships. What does work Well is inspiring people to want what you want, making people do what you want. It's not as powerful as making them want what you want, and that means you have to inspire them from within, and the way you do that is by being vulnerable. I'm not trying to control you. I'm trying to be open with you and in that openness that inspires you to want to listen to me. So there's a, it's a skill set that you need to learn, and it requires great courage that to live, to live really in our society, the most powerful life. I have to be willing to be a vulnerable person, the person who's willing to talk about my deeper feelings. See, anger is a superficial feeling. I can control people with my anger, but it's we call that a secondary motion because there's always something underneath it. The the main three things are hurt, fear and frustration. Well, someone who's angry, they're hurt or scared or they're frustrated. And if you're vulnerable enough to be willing to talk about the deeper feelings, the vulnerable feelings, you can resolve conflicts much, much faster. Then trying to angrily control people and make them do what you want, it's not as effective. It works in a military state, but only as long as there's a military power. It doesn't work in a free society like ours. You have to be much more psychologically sophisticated to be a powerful person with other people in our society.

Dr. Mark Baker:

Right now I have a video that's trending right now on marital conflict, and it's it's making that point is that in marital conflict, when you're fighting with someone, there's two ways to have power with them to try to control them, to make them agree with you, which just makes the fight go on and on, or to try to validate them, to say you know what I see, why you believe what you believe. It makes perfect sense why you believe what you believe. I don't happen to agree with it, but it's. I get why you feel that way, that validation of the other person makes them want to listen to you. My willingness to be vulnerable and say you know what? You have a good point. I don't happen to share that point, but it's a good point which is different than well, that's stupid. Why would anybody believe that? Right, that makes the conflict worse. So vulnerability is is the key to a more powerful, relational, relational kind of power in our society today, not trying to control people.

Darron Brown:

I think that people just need to be better educated, because on the internet, you know, there's a lot of people are talking about alpha males and traditional relationships and it's not like we're trying. We're not trying to create a relationship based off of modern-day dynamics and try to Apply modern-day, the modern-day mindset to our to marriage. We're not trying to evolve and create a new system around marriage. We're trying to keep women. We're trying to keep men at the head of the household, keep women beneath us and basically a submissive feminine woman Is somebody who listens to her husband. But what I want to say what, what, what do you think needs to happen to actually allow people to, to teach people that, hey, you know the time is different. Now women really don't need man the way they used to need man. Like, what do you need within a relationship to keep it, to make sure that is stable for the long haul?

Dr. Mark Baker:

I guess those are great questions because our world is different. Uh, I've got two kids in college and both their colleges. There's 70 percent women, 30 percent men. So the world is flipped. Women are going into the marketplace to getting educated Much greater rates than men are right now. So the old ways of thinking are not going to work anymore. You got to get with it. You got to. You can't Do that traditional alpha male stuff anymore and get away with it. You know she's going to make more money than you. She's going to be more educated than you.

Dr. Mark Baker:

So we got to, we got to wake up and now let me say this I don't think there's anything wrong with traditional roles.

Dr. Mark Baker:

Uh, that's not the problem. Uh, the problem is, uh, trying to control your spouse. That's the problem, not if you decide that he wants to make the money, she wants to stay home and raise the kids, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. If you guys decide that, but you can't come, keep, come on cross. Well, because I said so, because I'm the man, or you have to do it my way. Because I said so, that's just not gonna fly. I'm not in a world anymore. You have to be more sophisticated.

Darron Brown:

You know, yes, the dynamic dynamics have changed. Women are being educated at the way higher rate that men are being educated. But from what I can see is that women are taking on the mindset that men once took on, like they were the ones who were educated, they had more money you had to listen to me. And now if, like, women are competing against men, like, how do you get people to eliminate the competition from relationships? Like I'll give myself for an example I have a master's in IT. It's information systems. I have a master's in IT and I'm doing pretty well. And I've met some women who felt threatened by me, although they were educated because of my education. Like they wanted to be the leader, I guess. But I'm wondering, like, how do you eliminate the brother or man or woman? How do you eliminate competition from the relationship?

Dr. Mark Baker:

Well in certain relationships. I don't know that you can. If you're both working, there may be a certain degree of competition, but what you've got to establish is a skill set to be able to stay connected. You can be different, you can have different strengths. She can be better in some areas than me. I'm better in certain areas than her.

Dr. Mark Baker:

That's built into a relationship. No relationship is equal. People are not equal. They're inequities in every relationship. But what you need is mutual influence. So how you eliminate the conflict or mitigate the conflict is to realize that we have mutual influence on each other, that if I hurt your feelings, that's just as important as you hurting my feelings. There's nobody who's more important with their feelings. Now someone's better than the other person in certain areas. But we mutually influence each other. And that gets me back to what I was saying earlier about validation. What's important in a relationship is that we recognize that we each bring a valid contribution to the relationship and neither one is more important than the other. They're different, but they're both valid, both valid. And that requires a skill set, because if a woman makes a lot more money than a man, he's immediately threatened, and that's a problem you guys have got to work out.

Darron Brown:

Yeah, from your experience dealing with couples, people who are married. From your experience, what do you think a healthy relationship looks like? Does it look like the more traditional or more traditional models of relationships more healthy and sustainable for the long term? It?

Dr. Mark Baker:

depends. I would not. I don't necessarily think yes or no to that answer. It depends on whether or not there's mutual respect in the relationship, if there's, as I said earlier, understanding of the importance of vulnerability and validation of the other. If you've got to have those things, there's got to be mutual respect, there's got to be willingness to call your own fouls and be vulnerable, and you have to have the skill set to be willing to make repairs when something happens wrong.

Dr. Mark Baker:

The biggest problem in marriages today why they don't work out is because things go wrong and we don't know how to fix it. Why don't we know how to go back? So you know what happened yesterday. I feel really bad about what I said, really lost my cool. I want to talk about that with you. And the other person goes yeah, I'm sorry too, I shouldn't have said that. They make the repair.

Dr. Mark Baker:

And what too often happens is one of the two of them will bring it up and say you know, I want to talk about what happened yesterday, and the other one will say, well, I don't want to talk about it and they shut down and there's no repair. Failed repair attempts is a serious problem and that's a skill you can learn. We have to be more sophisticated because society doesn't support marriage the way it did before. If someone wants out, they're out. If you want a long-term relationship, you have to be psychologically skillful to make that work, because you're the divorce rate. You know what the divorce rate is. It's terrible. We've got to be more skillful in the way we negotiate conflict.

Darron Brown:

That's a great point. I remember telling a woman I was seeing before that we should create a plan to handle conflict. This is like at the beginning of a relationship you should kind of brush it off. But just listening to you now I see how important that really is. I didn't know how important it was when it came to long-term marriage or something like that, but I guess I didn't realize so many people were dealing with conflict resolution issues when it comes. In one of your videos you mentioned power struggles and relationships and you mentioned a variety of different types of power struggles. Could you name those off if you remember them?

Dr. Mark Baker:

Well, there are different kinds of power. There's political power, military power, physical power, intellectual power. There's lots of ways to talk about being a powerful person, but in marriage, the two kinds of power that are important are the ones I just mentioned Control and authority. Those are the two kinds of power. Control is trying to make someone do what I want, make you agree with me. Authority is trying to inspire you to want what I want. As I said earlier, you validate the other's perspective so that then they are wanting to listen to you. So authority inspiring people to want what you want is always more powerful than control, which is trying to make people do what you want.

Dr. Mark Baker:

In marriage, that doesn't fly, and most of us think when we're fighting in marriage, that our problem is we don't agree. So you just keep fighting, trying to get them to agree with you. No, it's this way or no, it's that way, and you just get louder and louder because they're not agreeing with you. Agreement is not what you want in marriage. What you want is connection. I wanna be with someone who sees it differently than me. They've got a different degree, different area of expertise, different area of education.

Dr. Mark Baker:

I'm not threatened by that. I'm fine with us being different, but I need to feel connected to you. So the goal in a strong marriage is not agreement, it's connection. It's feeling like you've got my back, I've got your back. I feel connected to you and after you have a conflict you wanna be able to say you know what? I'm glad we talked about that. Not, boy. I wish we never brought that up. That tells me that you've got a problem. So you have to have the self-esteem really to be with someone who sees things differently than you but respects the way you see it. They value your perspective. That's what we really want. I wanna be with a woman who's very smart, who values my perspective even when she disagrees with it. That's the strongest union. So you don't really want someone who agrees with you all the time. You just think you do?

Darron Brown:

I've heard you mentioned inspiring a few different times and I've heard this when it comes to. I've never heard it applied to relationships, but I heard it applied to like trying to influence people. If you wanna influence people, it's better to be the example. You know you'll be the example and they're likely the people who follow you will follow you. But in a relationship, how do you inspire your partner? Do you have to look for a partner who's already inspired to you from day one? Or you know, like, how do you get that If you don't have that at the beginning at the relationship? Is there anything you can do to have a to help your partner look up to you?

Dr. Mark Baker:

Absolutely. It's what Daniel Goldman calls EQ. You know emotional intelligence. You inspire people by being emotionally intelligent. What I yes you can develop that in a relationship it starts off, where you don't have that sense of authority, where you're inspiring people from within. You have these power struggles. You can be the kind of person who's empathic Means I'm listening.

Dr. Mark Baker:

When she's talking, I'm not just listening to what she's saying, I'm also listening to how she's feeling. That's empathy. And at the end of the conversation, if she feels not just that I understood her words with my head, but I understood how she felt in my heart, that inspires people. She's gonna want to keep talking to me, she's gonna want to open up to me, cause I not only intellectually understand her, I emotionally get her. That's what inspires people. When they go away from the conversation say you know he gets me. This guy, he really gets me, doesn't just understand me, he gets me.

Dr. Mark Baker:

That is emotional intelligence. So you're listening for emotional words, you're responding to emotions and you're empathically letting her know that you're attuned to how she feels. And that has nothing to do with agreement. I might not agree with anything that she's saying, but I understand how she feels about it and if she's really passionate about that and this is really important to her and I say I see how passionate you are about this, how really important, it's impressive to me to see how passionate you are about this. Now she feels like I get her and I didn't even say I agreed with her at all with what she was saying. Those are two different things. It requires much more psychological sophistication to make marriage work now than it ever did before.

Darron Brown:

People agree.

Dr. Mark Baker:

People are getting divorced by ridiculous numbers People don't.

Darron Brown:

I don't think that the narrative about companionship is very negative for the younger crowd Is in the people who most people who are on YouTube, I would say that they aren't really talking about relationships in a positive way. They're talking about it in an entertainment way to get the views. But I think that the biggest issue really it comes down to maturity. A lot of the things that you're talking about it takes a lot of self-reflection, like you have to really do the self-work because we all come from different households. We're dealing with different issues.

Darron Brown:

You really gotta be introspective, I think, to really be able to empathize with people. Like, for example, I used to have a lot of anger towards my father growing up. I really didn't like him. He wasn't nice to most people. He was really. He was in prison a lot and he treated most people like crap.

Darron Brown:

And then, when I was 22, I overheard him speaking to. He was talking to me about his father and he was basically talking about his father in a negative light and I told myself after that conversation. I was like you know what? I do not want to repeat this cycle. So I had a conversation with my father about how I felt. He apologized to my surprise. And then after that I kind of felt bad for even thinking he wasn't a good father in the first place, because he was. It dawned on me that he was the best father that he could actually be. But it took I had to do the introspective work, figure out who I was. And figure out who I was helped me understand not just my father but helped me understand people better. And I don't think that a lot of people, I don't think that most people are able or willing to do that kind of self introspection.

Dr. Mark Baker:

They're not willing to have the courage to do what you did. I had a similar conversation with my dad. I did not have a good relationship with my dad growing up. He was angry all the time. Now he didn't end up in jail, so it wasn't as extreme as yours, but we were still alienated from each other and I never heard him say the words I love you to me. So, and when I got into my 30s, I realized that I needed to repair that relationship because it was hurting me. I was dragging this anger around with me and it was causing me to have a chip on my shoulder and I was having difficulty relating to women.

Dr. Mark Baker:

It was a lot because of my broken relationship with my dad. And so when he got cancer and I knew his days were limited, I had died, my time was limited, so I flew back he was in Tulsa at the time to try to make this repair with him and try to have this conversation. And it was a miracle I believe was to this day was a miracle by God that he actually was vulnerable with me. We opened up, we had a three-hour conversation. I asked for his forgiveness and he asked for my forgiveness and the last words he ever said to me where I love you. So I get to carry that with me the rest of my life.

Dr. Mark Baker:

I was willing to be vulnerable enough to admit my mistakes and say I was wrong, the way I left and the way I left home was wrong. I just wanted to confess that to you and and have a conversation. And he was ready then Because he knew his face and death. You know he was ready to make his peace with me. He went into coma the next day and died two weeks later. So it was. It was my last chance and also making that same repair for me, because I'm telling you there are a lot of men Walking around with a bad or no relationship with their fathers a lot and it creates problems in their lives.

Darron Brown:

Wow, yeah, I was just about to ask you about that before I get into. Are you from Oklahoma?

Dr. Mark Baker:

No, I'm not. I'm not. They move there after I left.

Darron Brown:

Okay, I'll my grandfather, my father's father, only made him twice in my life. The second time I met him was about two, three months ago. I flew out to Kansas, which are tall Kansas, nothing out there, but I flew out there because my dad told me his father was dying and If I want to see him I better go out there now and get to know him and those. I Couldn't talk too much because he's on his dying bed and he's kind of he doesn't have as much energy and he's trying to have a keep his energy up. I can tell he he was in pain and I'm there, even though we didn't have the deep conversation. I couldn't ask him the questions I wanted to ask him. It really helped me. It helped me see myself and see life better.

Darron Brown:

I look, I look at I look like my grandfather and he's had a hard life. He's been through some things and you know, just understanding myself, understanding my father, better than having that kind of relationship, building that kind of Relationship, my grandfather, just it, really it did something for me internally that made me just more aware of like life, what matters. You know I'm gave me a stronger sense of self. I wanted to ask you to follow up with my last question how many men do you think are is it? Is it important for a man to break away from the anger or the control that they have with their father in order to Elevate to the next level of maturity or to be like to have healthy relationships?

Dr. Mark Baker:

Yes, I think it's important for men to resolve their issues with their dads. That's right. It's holding you back, it's hurting you if you're holding on to resentment towards your father. The only person that's hurting is you and View to resolve that resentment. You got some work to do, because a lot of men have been mistreated by their dads and so you, you, you resolve that, which basically means you forgive them and you forgive your dad, not for him because he doesn't deserve it.

Dr. Mark Baker:

You forgive your dad, release you from the resentment, because resentment only hurts you and here's, here's the key Resentment.

Dr. Mark Baker:

We only resent people. You don't resent tornadoes, you don't resent earthquakes. You resent people, right? Why do we resent people? We resent people who demean us, people who put us down, people who humiliate us, people who make us feel bad about ourselves.

Dr. Mark Baker:

When, if someone demeans me, then I'm very likely to resent them because they put me down and and the reason I end up hating someone who's demean me? Because it makes me doubt myself. And if you doubt yourself, then you got to protest that you say no, no, it's your fault and you were a terrible dad and you were awful to my mother and you're the problem. And I'm protesting why? Because they've made me doubt myself. And if I, if I have some insecurity in there that makes me doubt myself, that makes me resent someone who demeans me. Otherwise, if someone were to treat me poorly or demean me, I'd say why you guys?

Dr. Mark Baker:

An idiot? Yeah, I don't, I don't believe it. This bother me. I mean, he was an idiot. He did the best he could. His father was a jerk. No, if you're still angry at your dad, that means you believe it somewhere in your heart that somehow you deserve that or somehow you have some insecurity. It makes you want to protest back and you got to resolve that because you're gonna drag that around the rest of your life Hating that old man. He's probably even some for some of his dad already right. So you got to resolve it. With a guy who's gone you can do it. That means you got to do the work to figure out that really the problem is with you. You've got a problem with how you feel about yourself, not with that old guy out there or a guy that's even gone. Resentment is a problem you have with yourself, not with somebody else.

Darron Brown:

You know something? You mentioned your book, your statement. Just remind me something. Book, I think it was the people who why do we hurt the people who love us the most? Thing was something like that, right? Why do you think I didn't read the whole chapter? Why do people Like even friends you see this with friends. You see this with family members. Why do people Hate, attack the people who love them, who respect them, who have their back? Why do they attack those people more and put on the face for other people?

Dr. Mark Baker:

we hurt the people we love the most, and the reason that is is because the people you love the most are the people you're the most vulnerable with, and when you're Vulnerable with someone, they have the ability to hurt you more than anybody else. That's why, so, like my wife can hurt me more than anybody else, I get more mad at her than anybody else on the planet. Other people can be as idiotic as they want, but if my wife hurts me, man, that makes me mad because I'm vulnerable to her. She's the one I'm who knows all my secrets. She's the one knows everything about me. So when she hurts me, that hurts deep, it cuts deep.

Dr. Mark Baker:

And it's true in friendships too. When someone knows you really well, even if they make a joke at your expense, that cuts cuts like a knife. So then we alliate. That's why we we get so angry at them and we say hurtful things back at them. Because they can hurt us the Most. Then we feel entitled to hurt them the most, and that's extremely dysfunctional in marriage Almost every marriage. People say things in marriage that they would never say to a friend because the friend would disown them. And so we take License with the people we love and say hurtful things because we just we're just banking the fact that they won't leave us. It's really really bad. I mean we need to work on being friends with our spouses and treat them like friends.

Darron Brown:

Yeah good point. I Want to know you also mentioned you're the second person that I've actually heard this from this week and in your book you mentioned that Most of us believe we're not good enough or not lovable. Why is that?

Dr. Mark Baker:

Well, I hope. I wrote a whole book on that called overcoming shame. Oh, wow, okay, and I Think that's probably the most clinically helpful book overcoming shame. The short story is this None of us had perfect childhoods. All of us had parents who Were flawed in some way, and none of us were perfect children, by the way. So it's a two-way street. So there were times when I didn't get what I needed, or times when my parents were too harsh, or times when they were too Neglectful, or times when they weren't there for me in the way that I needed them to be there. And so, as I was growing up and I was really small, if my parents fail me, I End up feeling that somehow it's my fault. That's what children do. You know, my parents are like gods to us when we're growing up, and if my mom wasn't there for me, then I feel bad, but I can't feel bad about her because I need her right. So I feel bad about me.

Dr. Mark Baker:

So that's the beginning of shame, the feeling of inadequacy. And we have, we have videotapes of children that are less than one year old who, if their mother and we have, bring them baby and bring the mother in, and we tell the mom Okay, we're gonna do experiment at a certain point. Just do a still face. Just don't smile, don't frown nothing, just a still face. I'm just still face. Within seconds the baby is screaming because the baby needs something from the mom that they're not getting and that there's writhing and screaming and Feel and baby can't feel they've done something wrong because they're too young, but they feel something is very wrong. So I think it's them. What's wrong here must be me.

Dr. Mark Baker:

So we developed the feeling of shame, which is the feeling of inadequacy. It starts very, very young, before we even have a language. If there's something wrong in our relationship with our parents, we think it's our fault. That's what, that's what children do. And then, as you grow up, you internalize that, and so everybody has this to some degree of Feeling of inadequacy or insecurity.

Dr. Mark Baker:

We call it the technical term is shame. Guilt is about what you do, shame is about who you are. So if you're a child and you can't really be old enough to have done something wrong and there is something wrong Then you must be something wrong. So that's where that feeling of shame starts. And then in our adult life we cover it over and we, you know, make a lot of money or we, you know, become Famous or we ways of covering over our feelings of insecurity. But we all have them, some people more than others, and I read a whole book on that, so that's a very long conversation. But yeah, we all to some degree have some feelings of insecurity that we've all got to deal with.

Darron Brown:

Think about Thinking about myself. I do know that. Well, try to think. I do know that one painful revelation that I had was I Said I told you earlier that my dad he treated people like crap is for this family and other people, you know, and Because I saw how the way he treated his family is okay, I'm gonna be kinder to my family and my friends.

Darron Brown:

And then, as I, like I took the neighborhood I came from, most people aren't Addressing the way that address and I do any type of things that I'm doing and I didn't get a lot of support.

Darron Brown:

I didn't get support from my academics. I got support, support for athletics, but none of none of my academic achievements. And it really was painful experience for me because in the back of my mind, I was accomplishing these things to make my family happy and it wasn't until I I kind of after going through that, having that experience, that I realized that you know, a lot of the things that I was doing was for like approval or for like a golden star, and I started. I'm just, rather than focusing on family members and people who hurt me, I just kind of sort of live in life for me, not worrying about what other people were thinking and trying to figure out what worked best for me. How does a person who has that kind of pain they have this kind of trauma from the childhood and they're bringing it into their relationships how do they actually heal from those old wounds?

Dr. Mark Baker:

Well, there's not one answer because it's different for everybody. Everybody's story is a little bit different and that's what therapy is for where people go back and they tell their whole life story. You know how I got to be who I am, what were the disappointments, who failed me? Who did I fail? What decisions did I make? Where we put together that whole narrative of your life so we can figure out when are the scars for you.

Dr. Mark Baker:

We've all got trauma. We've all got scars Some of it's big, some of it's not so big and we've got to take responsibility for that. You know people think if they come to me, that they come to therapy, we're gonna blame everything on your mother. No, we don't. Now we talk about your mother, but not so we can blame her. But so you can take responsibility for the hurts in your life and do what you need to do to hit, to heal those.

Dr. Mark Baker:

We all need to understand where we got hurt, where our traumas were, what it did to us, what our insecurities are, what shame am I Dragging around? What doubts about my own worth Am I dragging around that I'm hiding under money or popularity? And that's a. That's an individual narrative that everybody needs to figure out, and that is the purpose of therapy. Perpetual therapy is not where you come To be relieved of your guilt, of the things you did wrong. Purpose of therapy is to understand when did you get the feeling of shame and inadequacy in your life that you don't even, maybe know you even have? That's that's affecting you and causing you to be reactive or have an anger problem and and that's a very long conversation In a relation, a relational kind of therapy, kind of therapy that we do, that. That takes a while to get to the bottom of that, but we've all got that story. That's. It's just, everybody has to own their story.

Darron Brown:

And you know there was. There was a chapter in your book that stood out to me. It was the wisdom for a happier life and it I didn't have time to really dig into it, but the title was, I Guess, disguise anger. Yeah, disguise anger with flattery. Could you explain what exactly? How does that actually look like? What is it?

Dr. Mark Baker:

Well, we all know people who come across as disingenuous, you know, like, oh, I love you, man, I really love you. You're so great, you're the best and you know, okay, so that flatters me. So that's better than you know saying bad things to me. But we all know that there's something fake there, right? So, yes, sometimes flattery is a disguise for people who actually maybe resent us for being the way we are. So they might say to you wow, your podcast is the best, I really love your podcast.

Dr. Mark Baker:

But really, secretly, they resent you because you're so successful and they're not. You know, and the root of that is envy. So envy is every time I look at you, you remind me of how I'm not successful and that makes me hate you. So envy is a cutting kind of thing because you're reminding me that I'm not as successful as you are and that makes me angry with you. And that's where flattery comes in. It's a disguise against envy. But really I don't think you're that great. I'm just saying that because you make me feel insecure is basically what I'm saying.

Darron Brown:

Is have you ever dealt with envy? Have you had feelings of envy? Sure, sure, I haven't. You know, I haven't had growing up. I've had moments where I wanted things people wanted, like, oh man, I can't wait to get married and have kids. I've had that feeling. I know for a fact because I felt it before for a period of time, but I wouldn't say that I really despised or hated somebody, because of the main reason I'm even who I am is because I've learned from people that I admired.

Darron Brown:

For the most part, I had friends that were better than me at multiple things. I took on their traits. I had friends who were. When I was drinking in grade school. I had friends who weren't drinking and I was like you know what? I can learn something from him? He's more disciplined than me. I had friends that were way more well spoken than me. That motivated me to speak better.

Darron Brown:

You know, and it wasn't until I was watching a video I want to say about a few weeks ago, and it and what it communicated was is that people want to feel significant. Whether you do that through sports, whether you do that through your accomplishments, there's something in us to increase our significance, and there's some people who base their significance on the on another person, their position. I've never, I've never done that before. I don't feel like I've ever based my my self value over another person's position in life. But what I'm wondering is is that, do you know? Is that something you're born with? Are you born with more envious traits, or is it just something that happens? Is it like a life experience that makes you feel that like? Why do people? What makes a person become envious? What makes them feel that way?

Dr. Mark Baker:

I don't think you're born that way. I think it's through life circumstances and your story is unusual. Most people do resent people who are wealthier, better looking, more successful, more popular, get girls more. Most people resent that because it makes them feel smaller. That's most people have that feeling of envy. It's the oldest emotion on record. That's why Cain killed Abel.

Darron Brown:

Cause he is. It's one of the, it's one of the most I know, it's one of the most nasty human emotions. Even in the book the laws of human you know, in the book the laws of human nature, there's a whole section on envy. It even mentions that people who are envious of you are more likely to want to throw you into a friendship. They want to rush a friendship so they can get close to you. And I'm just like. I remember reading that and I was just like man because I kept experiencing it. I was just like man.

Darron Brown:

I don't know why this happens and I've definitely I mean I've had friends that were definitely better looking to me. I play sports. I had friends that were faster than me, stronger than me, better looking to me, bigger than me, but I knew that I was not at the bottom, I knew that I was good enough to, you know, attract a woman. I never felt like because somebody else got some other girls out there were cute. That you know it hurt me because usually they would think I was cute too. He probably was cuter, but it didn't hurt me. You know, from from having a relationship. But, um, I'm fortunate most people don't feel that way. That's the scary thing. Yeah, yeah, you leave. Okay, I have one more question for you, because this, this, this show just went by really fast. Um, if you had to leave the guests, leave people with anything, what would be your philosophy for life?

Dr. Mark Baker:

That being loving is the most powerful way to live. That's the message Jesus came to to tell us all about that. Your relationships with God and others are the most important thing in your life. And at the end of your life, when you're on your deathbed, you're never going to say, gee, I wish I'd made more money. Gee, I wish I was more successful. Gee, I wish I was more popular. You're not going to say that the only thing that's going to matter to you is the relationship setting. Standing around that bed you might say, gee, I wish I was a better husband. Gee, I wish I was a better father. That's. What's going to matter is your relationships.

Dr. Mark Baker:

So I would say that the point of life is to figure out how to be a loving person and to have good relationships. And we now know that the people who are happiest later in life have good friendships. It isn't just a good marriage, it's a good friendships. Those are the ones who are happiest because you choose your friendships. You know, sometimes you get stuck in a marriage and you can't get out of it, but not friends. You've got to be a good and loving person to maintain friendships. So, yeah, I'd say that's the most important thing you need to take away. You need to figure out how to be a loving person, and your relationships are the most important thing in life. It's so much going to determine your happiness.

Darron Brown:

Dr Baker, thank you for leaving us with that and thank you for being here and I'll catch you guys next time.

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