What happens when a doctor decides to rewrite the story he is living?
In January 2019, I spoke with Mani Saint-Victor, MD, a physician, hypnotist, and coach, and the author of Thinking About Quitting Medicine, which now runs to two volumes. He left his psychiatry residency to build a different kind of working life, and most of his coaching today is with physicians who are asking the same questions he once asked.
We talked about compulsive gaming, physicians who struggle in silence, the stories people tell themselves, and music as a tool. This is an archive episode, recorded when the show covered addiction and recovery broadly. He speaks openly about suicidal thoughts, and the help line at the end of this page is there for anyone who needs it.
Why did a psychiatry resident walk away from medicine?
At 1:34, Dr. Saint-Victor told me he had quit medicine three times. The decisive one came three days into the third year of his psychiatry residency, when he left to join a startup building a virtual world for children.
From 4:23, he explained why. During residency he felt he was not practicing what he preached, and that he was projecting his own sense of being trapped onto his patients during long overnight shifts. Today he uses the same skills of listening and observation in coaching, writing, and entrepreneurship, and he finds that far more fulfilling.
What does constant gaming do to a person’s sense of reward?
At 2:56, I raised a worry many parents share about children who cannot look up from their phones. Dr. Saint-Victor took the point further at 3:23.
In his view, the real cost is not the hours spent in front of the screen. It is what happens afterward. The part of the brain that weighs value stays conditioned to the game, so ordinary rewards like time with other people or satisfying work feel weaker by comparison. He compared it to the way smokers enjoy the taste of food less.
Why do so few physicians ask for help with substance use?
At 12:25, I said that very few physicians who struggle with substance use reach out, because asking for help can put a target on their back. Dr. Saint-Victor said he has coached physicians in exactly that position.
At 13:16, I described doctors who had contacted me about opioid dependence. Their first concern was privacy. Unfortunately, there is only so much privacy anyone can promise, since prescriptions are tracked in a state database. I also mentioned a physician who told me that thoughts of suicide are far more common among doctors than most will admit, and I said that physician suicide and depression are clearly a problem.
How can a person look at a dark thought without shame?
From 14:33, Dr. Saint-Victor described how the culture of medicine can cut people off from their own emotions and bodies. In his view, that disconnection is a pathway into substance use, because a person who cannot find comfort in real connection reaches for something else. He was candid that fleeting suicidal thoughts had crossed his own mind at times when he was exhausted.
His central point was about stigma. When a thought like that is met only with shame, he said, it is pushed down but keeps running, and the person builds a story about being defective. Yet, once it is in the open, a more useful question appears: am I sleep deprived, isolated, hungry, angry, or exhausted? Talking about the thought with someone, rather than hiding it, is where that question can begin.
Can a person step out of the story they have been living?
At 18:57, I told him what I had heard on his podcast, where he talks about fear and about people living inside a story they could choose to rewrite. It reminded me of a scene in the film After Earth, in which a creature can find a person only through his fear.
At 20:12, I said that each of us lives in a story we wrote or that others wrote for us, and nothing really stops anyone from putting it down and walking away. His answer, at 20:33, was short. That is what he did.
Can music change a person’s state of mind?
At 22:11, Dr. Saint-Victor described the music on his album Urban Asylum. He calls it hypnotic, trance, and entrainment music, and his aim is to help a listener move into a deeply relaxed state. Interestingly, he treats any thought that surfaces while listening as something the unconscious mind is bringing up for resolution.
He tied this to what the poet John Keats called negative capability, the ability to hold uncertainty without rushing to close the gap. At 24:43, after I mentioned binaural beats, he described work with Dr. Kwanza Pinkney, an emergency physician who also performs as a DJ. Their plan was to add bilateral stimulation, which he hoped would help a person scramble a painful memory, so that a trigger becomes a chance to make a new choice.
What could help with cravings in early recovery?
At 27:06, I explained that most of my patients are people with opioid dependence, and that medication cannot do everything. Many of them also struggle to sleep, and I would rather not add another medication. So, I tell them about sleep hygiene, yet a list of good habits does not do much for someone going through a very difficult time.
Dr. Saint-Victor answered at 28:10. He described a craving as a physical signal that sets off old scripts promising relief. In his view, shifting attention to something complex in another sense, such as deeply patterned music, can take some of the sharpness out of the urge. He added that it does not work for everyone.
How do you encourage someone in the first weeks off a drug?
At 29:11, I said that many of the people I see are intelligent and creative, and that I want to tell them so without sounding strange. Dr. Saint-Victor suggested, at 30:14, doing it through questions. Now that you have two weeks behind you, what will you do with all this extra energy?
In his approach, which he traced to Ericksonian conversational hypnosis, the nervous energy of anxiety is reframed as anticipation, even as fuel. In fact, he prepares people for the fact that the same feelings will keep returning, so that each time becomes another chance to channel that energy into something they value.
Does the law of attraction actually work?
At 32:31, I asked about the film The Secret, which I watched shortly before I started my current practice. Still, it seemed to me there was something to it.
Dr. Saint-Victor said at 33:01 that the film presents an incomplete version of the idea and sets people up to fail. In his view, visualizing helps only when it comes with next steps. He described mental contrasting: picture who you want to become, then describe honestly who you are now. Of course, acting on that gap brings criticism and mistakes. His advice was to choose goals small enough to reach and let small wins build confidence.
Who is Mani Saint-Victor, MD?
Mani Saint-Victor, MD, is a physician who left psychiatry residency and now works as a coach, hypnotist, author, and musician. He wrote Thinking About Quitting Medicine, and at 42:09 he described his coaching program, Cognitive Program Restructuring, which he organizes around three stages he calls heal, grow, and thrive. Most of the people he coaches are physicians, though he is open to anyone willing to do the work.
What can listeners take away from this conversation?
The story a person is living is not the only one available, and that is as true for a doctor who feels trapped as for someone in the first weeks off a drug. Dr. Saint-Victor’s message was that difficult thoughts and feelings are signals to be understood, not secrets to be ashamed of. Talking with someone about them is often where change begins.
How do I approach this today?
My thinking has kept developing since this conversation was recorded. Today my practice is built on one idea that runs through all of it: when the body has adapted to a substance, the safest way off is usually gradual, with the smallest steps the person’s nervous system can tolerate. Physical dependence is not addiction.
For opioid dependence I prescribe buprenorphine, which steadies the body so a person can rebuild their life without the cycle of withdrawal. Visits are monthly, or weekly when needed. Some people stay on it for a long time, and that is a legitimate choice. Others later taper slowly, using the same gradual approach I use for every other medication.
I believe medication for opioid dependence should be available wherever people need it. I prescribe in Florida only.
Call 911 or go to an emergency department if there is a seizure, confusion or hallucinations, or thoughts of self-harm. For thoughts of suicide or any mental health crisis, you can also call or text the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
This page is educational. It is not medical advice, and listening to the episode or reading this page does not create a doctor-patient relationship. Decisions about starting, continuing, or tapering any medication should be made with your own physician.
Full transcript
A note from Dr. Leeds: my guests speak from their own experience and expertise, and the terminology they use is their own. Whatever the topic, this show holds to one distinction: physical dependence on a prescribed medication is not addiction. This transcript is educational content, not medical advice, and nothing here creates a doctor-patient relationship.
Read the full transcript (45 minutes)
Dr. Mark Leeds [00:09] Welcome to The Rehab on the Mental Health News Radio Network. I am Dr. Mark Leeds and I will be your host. Join me in exploring the world of addiction treatment. How can we improve the ways that we help individuals to overcome addiction? The goal of treatment is to save lives and help people to get back on track to a path towards success and happiness in life. Dr. Mani Saint-Victor, welcome to the Rehab Podcast. Thank you for joining me today.
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [00:50] Thanks for having me, Mark. I appreciate it.
Dr. Mark Leeds [00:52] So you are a physician, a hypnotist, co-founder of an organization called Thinking About Quitting Medicine. You’re the author of the best-selling book, Thinking About Quitting Medicine.
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [01:03] Volume 1 and 2. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Leeds [01:06] Oh, you come out with a second volume?
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [01:08] Yeah, volume 2 went Amazon bestseller as well. So we got two bestsellers in our hands.
Dr. Mark Leeds [01:12] Oh, that’s incredible. And I know you do a lot more. You have a television channel and you’re all over Facebook with a huge amount of material. You’re a coach. It’s just incredible, all the different things that you’re doing. So tell me about thinking about quitting medicine. Did you quit medicine?
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [01:34] I did three times, most effectively in 2008 when I left my psychiatry residency, three days into my third year to join a virtual world startup.
Dr. Mark Leeds [01:45] Oh, okay. And what was the virtual world startup?
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [01:47] We were building a sports-themed virtual world where the kids would step into the world. And this is earlier in the virtual world history where the worlds were isometric instead of really immersive 3D. So the kids would step in there. They would step into a lobby. They would create an avatar. And then they would go in there and play some really simple casual games within that world and meet each other and so on. So it was early days of social gaming around the era of pre-Farmville.
Dr. Mark Leeds [02:15] Oh, okay. So that was 2008, like just after the iPhone came out, but before the iPad. And, you know, not quite where we are with – although they did have some good 3D games back then. I used to play Quake 2, Quake 3, and, you know, but we didn’t have – like now we have Roblox and Minecraft.
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [02:34] Yeah, it was still at the point where casual games were in the process of going viral on different platforms. So gaming was still, I guess, stigmatized as something that kids did. And it was before adults started developing that habit of chronic compulsive gaming. Before Facebook pushed the adoption of Zynga-style addiction.
Dr. Mark Leeds [02:56] Oh yeah yeah and game gaming addiction and not not only that but just addiction to using screens and social media and phones I mean that’s clearly a problem now I mean you know people are worried about their children becoming addicted to technology and you know kids walking around with their face looking down at their phone all the time yeah you know the pediatricians are recommending limiting screen time to two hours a day yeah yeah
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [03:23] And the sad thing is that what But what the addiction is costing us is not even the fact that the person is spending that amount of time glued to the screen. It’s the fact that even after they walk away from the screen, their ventromedial prefrontal cortex is still conditioned to decrease the utility they get from anything other than the game. It’s like smokers enjoy the taste of food less. People who play these video games all the time to the point of addiction, their value representation is less powerful. When they’re interacting with other people because they’d rather be playing the game, you know, when they’re doing work, because, you know, the game is just got them have lobbying condition to get those rapid rewards. And it’s just such a shorter, faster reward cycle.
Dr. Mark Leeds [04:11] Yeah. So now do you like currently are you do you practice medicine at all? Or as far as like do you maintain a medical license and are you do you have a medical practice or you’ve completely put that behind you?
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [04:23] I do not do any of that. I do coaching and I do entrepreneurship. I actually, most of my coaching is with physicians who are thinking about quitting medicine or looking for ways to shift the way they practice so that it’s more aligned with their values. The main thing was that the whole time, like I mentioned, I left medicine, I quit three different times. And each time I went to pursue something that I believed was closer to what my core was telling me to do at the moment, But along the way, it has been everything from entrepreneurship to writing to software to who knows what else, teaching. Basically, along the way, what I didn’t realize was that I was accumulating this set of ideas to help me more effectively work with people now. So with the hypnosis models, I’m able to recognize the same patterns that I learned during my psychiatry training and during my medical training. But I also have an alternative set of choices that I can use to classify people such that I don’t my brain doesn’t automatically evoke the medicine paradigm answer. Instead, it provides some alternative algorithms and opportunities that have been shown to be effective out here. So that to me is more fulfilling. And as one of the key things that I was feeling during my psych residency was just this feeling that I wasn’t practicing what I was preaching. I was not living in alignment with my values. And then in addition to that, I was projecting whatever sense of trappedness on and disempowerment on my patients, probably during my, you know, 30 hour shifts. You know, I mean, they call them 24 hour shifts, but, you know, during during wrapping up and stuff is just I realized that there’s a way to use these same skills, these same abilities of listening and observation so that I’m serving people in a way that I believe is helping them get towards their truth. And while unfolding my own truth on a daily basis. So coaching and entrepreneurship and writing and living on social media, you know, where I can communicate with the people who I’ve known and loved most of my life in a way that I hope inspires them to a better way of being. I mean, that works for me.
Dr. Mark Leeds [06:35] Do you have a dedicated community to, say, physicians that you’ve been working with or physicians or other people that might want to work with you as a coach? Like, do you maintain, and I know there’s groups on Facebook and forums outside of Facebook, you know, where leaders maintain a community. Do you have a place where people can gather and discuss things amongst each other and talk to you?
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [07:00] I have a Facebook group called Dr. Manning’s Asylum Triage. I’ve been kind of, I tend to withdraw to work sometimes. And when I do that, only my habits are running. And my habits include the social media posting and memes and stuff. But I haven’t been so much lately doing the deep dive in the asylum community on Facebook because my intention is in the next few weeks to transition to Patreon as a platform for membership management. That way I intend to grow a more dedicated community where we can share private details because we’ve kind of committed to the cause, to a vision. So that’s in the works coming in the next few weeks
Dr. Mark Leeds [07:43] Yeah and Patreon is excellent I know of at least one YouTuber that did very well when YouTube started cutting back on the ability to make a living broadcasting YouTube videos this one particular YouTube star that I followed moved over to Patreon and did very well with it so that’s a great idea
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [08:06] Yeah thank you I keep hearing I keep hearing it’s a better place to create a hub and direct people to the other social media platforms afterwards, because that way I have that dedicated private place, like you said. So when people ask me, is there a community where my people can go and have these deeper discussions, that way I’ll be able to say yes. You know, I also I have my website, but thus far I haven’t created the depth of architecture in there that I know I could. Back in the day, I used to back when WordPress was young, I used to be in this was before we used to push comments to Facebook. I used to be big into managing my community on my website with the comments sections. There was also an app called Disqus back in the day, D-I-S-Q-U-S. I don’t know if I had two S’s, but I used to use that as a means of creating a deeper community discussion. Facebook became the norm. But honestly, one of my main goals is to live in alignment with what I understand to be true in a way such that my actions are in alignment with my knowledge. And the same way I felt like I wanted to pull away from the architecture of psychiatry as a guiding structure of my thought process more and more I want to pull away from the way that social media essentially can yank my mood around from time to time under the guise of keeping me connected with my closest friends and family so the goal is to move to a platform exactly like you said sooner than later and that’s going to be patreon
Dr. Mark Leeds [09:42] Yeah that sounds great there’s also there’s a forum. There’s a book called, I don’t know if you’ve read this, The Millionaire Fast Lane. Really good book about entrepreneurship. And the author maintains a forum. And it’s completely separate from any kind of a social media platform. It’s a forum software that he maintains. It’s a product that anybody can purchase for, I think, $150 and deploy it online. And it makes it so you can maintain your own community and your community can gather and you can interact with them and they can interact with each other and it’s something that you own and you don’t have to be on somebody else’s platform.
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [10:26] Yeah, because I think it’s important to manage the ethos as well as the brand in a more focused, emotional way Where with Facebook, the whole time someone is interacting with your brand, there’s no guarantee that they won’t also be interacting with whatever other noises in their timeline, whatever distractions, and the whole Pavlovian loop. So I would prefer to have a place where when people go there to read stuff, they can reflect. They can send me a message. Possibly they can reach out to me. But I just I really think it’s important to create that metaphor of separation, quiet and the whole asylum metaphor, which I’ve adopted. It’s around the whole concept of creating. Cal Newport has a book and he in his book. I can’t remember the name of his book now, but he writes about basically reaching expertise and getting to the next level of work, deliberate practice and so on. And one of the things he talks about is a eudaimonic machine where you, in the machine, you go through these steps and in each step you become, each step creates a context for thinking about a specific aspect of the problem that you’ve decided is the most important thing in that moment. And with me, more and more, as I become minimalist, I just want to do more of that. I don’t necessarily want to be a full recluse, but I want to control my consciousness. And so definitely part of creating healthy boundaries is deciding who blurts into your mind when and I think often in Facebook there are people that you may have known earlier in life when you were less effective at choosing who speaks how to you and keeping them around at the same level of prominence and disclosure and access to your thought process with their opinion isn’t necessarily nurturing to a healthy overall state of mind. It’s my experience. So I’m going to go create my own eudaimonic machine.
Dr. Mark Leeds [12:25] Yeah, yeah, definitely. Now, as far as, you know, the topic of this podcast is generally addiction and the treatment of addiction. And I know that there’s a huge problem of addiction in the medical community and very likely amongst physicians where a relatively small number of them actually reach out for help because as soon as a physician dealing with addiction reaches out and asks for help, now there’s like a target on their back. The medical boards are going to discipline them. They’re going to have a lot of difficulty with continuing with their career. Have you dealt with coaching or helping physicians who are dealing with addiction and struggling with it and maintaining their career?
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [13:10] I have. I have. Yep. Yeah, I have.
Dr. Mark Leeds [13:16] Yeah, and I spoke to a physician who is overcoming addiction and getting treatment and told me that any practicing doctor who hasn’t at some point in their career thought about killing themselves or doesn’t admit to it is lying because this person claimed every doctor has thought about it. And there’s clearly an issue with physician suicide and depression. You know I’ve had doctors reach out to me about getting treatment for opioid addiction and their main concern is privacy and of course you know there’s only so far you can go because there’s a state database prescriptions are tracked and you know they asked me some questions of what options are available and but yeah it’s when I when I saw your title the title of your book thinking about quitting medicine I imagine a whole series like a whole bookshelf of the thinking about quitting series you know thinking about quitting drugs thinking about quitting your job thinking about quitting your marriage I love that yeah that is a brilliant idea yeah I mean it just just quit therapy in general you know kind of like subtractive synthesis you know taking away taking away as much as you can until what’s left is something that you can live with and
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [14:33] Exactly it’s meaningful yeah yeah yeah and I think one of the key things as a medicine And we there’s so much architecture of decision making that has it creates a state of alexithymia and alexithymia, you know, disconnects you from your body. And it’s the pathway to addiction when you’re not emotionally connected and you’re not able to get like the standard rewards of reaching out to someone, making a true deep emotional connection that is healing and creates, you know, a little bit of oxytocin, which is anxiolytic, you know, oxytocin to bring that cortisol down. Then you’re going to be in those states where you’re doing those limbic things. I like to think of it as amygdala hijack, where you’re running these scripts and your rational mind is there like, no, this doesn’t make sense. But you’ll be like, I’m so tired. Like with me, I think my, quote, suicidal thoughts that may have crossed my mind were never like, oh, I want to kill myself. It would be something irrational like, you know, if my car wrecked right now and I died, I’d probably get some really good rest. You know and then you’re like what and the thing about it is it would be something that I would think as I was falling asleep at the wheel and I was like wait a minute are we are we arguing for sleep taking a nap at 90 miles an hour you know because you like and sometimes I look down I’m like okay I’m rushing home to get to sleep because I’m afraid of falling asleep meanwhile instead of focusing on the road or slowing down I’m sitting here thinking to myself about the physics of how sleep would be delicious right before death. You know, I think when we take the concept of suicidal ideation and we bring it to a space of stigma, it eliminates people’s ability to actually sit through it and think about it without the immediate reactive shame. You know, if your brain is burping up something, you can suppress it if you want to, but it will continue to run. Your amygdala will continue to fire. The cortisol will continue to fire, And that representation will continue to be present in your mind and the internal conflict of wondering why you’re thinking about this thing will continue to exist. But once you bring it out, if you’re like, OK, oh, I had these suicidal thoughts, then what emerges actually is a lot of people have these fleeting thoughts. They’re just your brain is going to burp up with 60 to 70,000 thoughts a day is what they like to say. You know, so all day long, these thoughts are coming up. A bunch of them are just raw nonsense. So if your brain at some point bursts up a thought about suicide and it makes it all the way up to consciousness and it lingers in your consciousness long enough such that you then form an emotional judgment about it and you start to give it a story, then we’re looking at turning pain into suffering. And it becomes a matter of, okay, what’s going on within me that my unconscious mind brought this up for resolution and the resolution that seems to be sticking with me right now long enough for me to notice is suicide. And then from there, instead of going immediately to a place of shame and suppressing it or shame in creating this dense story of what’s wrong with me, I’m deficient, I’m defective, I’m undeserving, I’m unappreciative, all these great things happening for me and I’m still having these thoughts of harming myself. So instead of going down that entire road, which is a pretty reactive amygdala-based road, you can instead be like, you know, what is going on with me? Am I sleep deprived? Am I not spending enough time with my loved ones? Am I not drinking enough water? Or like they say in the Alcoholics Anonymous Protocol, am I hungry? Halt. Am I hungry, angry, lonely, or tired? You know what is happening in this moment such that my conscious mind is being hijacked by these ideas and they’re lingering long enough in my consciousness for me to feel as if I need to create an entire other set of scripts to rationalize make sense and resolve their cognitive dissonance
Dr. Mark Leeds [18:35] Now in your podcast and you I know you just started a podcast and I listen to it, and it’s really great. I mean, just to hear you talking, and it’s engaging. And it sounds like you’re just kind of speaking off the top of your head. I don’t know if you have notes in front of you, but it sounds like you’re just kind of out there walking along and talking.
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [18:55] That’s what I do. I walk and talk.
Dr. Mark Leeds [18:57] Yeah, and there’s just some really great ideas in there. You talk about fear and how people are kind of writing their own story and living in their own story, and you could actually maybe rewrite your story and live a different story. And it actually reminded me of a scene from a movie. Did you see the movie After Earth? It’s a Will Smith movie, and he gives a talk to his son for about two minutes, and it’s kind of the same thing. He was in fear. He was near death with an alien creature about to kill him, and then he realized that the creature could only identify him by fear. It couldn’t see or hear or smell. It could only detect fear. And he realized that he didn’t need to live in the story he was living anymore and he could rewrite his own story.
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [19:54] Wait, his son was the main character in that one, right?
Dr. Mark Leeds [19:56] Yeah, that was it was him and his own son. And it was almost like the YouTube videos he does now, but in the form of a movie.
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [20:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, that was an awesome movie. I remember it now that you bring it up. Yeah, I’ve forgotten about that movie. That’s interesting.
Dr. Mark Leeds [20:12] Yeah, yeah, and so it’s a similar kind of thing, but yeah, it’s just incredible to think that, you know, the way people see the world, I mean, the entire world is, in a sense, you know, you’re living in the story that either you’ve written or people have written for you. Yep, it’s an illusion. And there’s really nothing stopping anyone from just kind of putting it all down and walking away from it.
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [20:33] Yep and that’s what I did yeah
Dr. Mark Leeds [20:36] So no as far as now you also have have a music career now too I see you have an album out and
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [20:46] Urban Asylum yeah
Dr. Mark Leeds [20:48] No someone wanted to purchase the album where would they go to find that
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [20:51] You can find it on Tidal if you want to stream it you can also listen to it on apple music it’s on spotify it should be on pandora soon if you’re an amazon person, you could stream and purchase it on Amazon as well. IHeartRadio, it’s supposed to be on there shortly. I believe YouTube music and Facebook music and Instagram music will have it on soon as well.
Dr. Mark Leeds [21:14] Okay, so if someone had one of those Amazon devices, what would they say to it to get the music playing?
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [21:19] Well, the song that is Amani Enchante would be the song that I would send them looking for. Because Amani is my daughter’s name and I just like the concept of people out there saying my daughter’s name. But I guess would Alexa play Mani Saint-Victor MD work? I guess that would work.
Dr. Mark Leeds [21:41] Yeah, we’ll have to try it out. Alexa, play Mani Saint-Victor MD. And hopefully enough people are listening that are going to complain to me now that I just set off their devices.
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [21:53] That is beautiful. I love it. Yeah, that is beautiful. So thank you for that.
Dr. Mark Leeds [21:59] Yeah, so that’s – now the music, it’s not only to listen to just for the beauty of hearing the music. It’s functional in some way also, right? It’s meditative or induces a certain state of mind.
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [22:11] Yeah, yeah. The goal is – the ultimate goal is music that drops you beyond alpha right into theta. I’m intending to work with some of my buddies who do the EEG research, like who have EEG access, who work in neurophysiology to get all the data back it up. But it’s hypnotic music it’s entrainment music it’s trance music so the intention is that with each piece you go somewhere and decide which state of mind you want to attain and you take a couple deep breaths and you know put on your earbuds take a deep breath and lose yourself in the music and from there you shift your attention between returning to the breath and losing yourself in the music. Now, any third element that comes up, you want to take note of that because those are the things your unconscious mind is bringing up for resolution in that moment. Some of the more active stuff, I have one piece called King Kong Chess Pound, which some of my mentors have told me have helped inspire them to create pitch decks and slide decks. Some of the docs have told me that they find a lot of the tracks helpful to help them get through the charting process. So what I’m going after is the Mozart effect where the music, by creating a set of complex background patterns that create an entrainment, where the fact that you’re hearing the music means that on some level you have an unconscious and partially conscious representation of it running in your mind, and your nervous energy goes there so that you can resolve that cognitive dissonance without creating a negative story. It allows you to stay in a state of uncertainty for longer. I think the poet John Keats called it negative capability, the ability to hold two distinct thoughts in mind without actively striving to close the gap prematurely.
Dr. Mark Leeds [24:10] One of my previous podcast guests was the founder of a company called Sacred Acoustics. And they do – they create recordings that are meant to put people in certain states of mind. And one of the techniques they use on many of the recordings is binaural beats. Yeah, where you have like a slightly different frequency in each ear. And I guess the difference of the frequency, your brain interprets that beat of, you know, somewhere maybe 10 hertz or 6 hertz or 4 hertz, depending on the state you’re trying to entrain your brain into.
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [24:43] Yep. Yeah, we got that coming too. I’m working with DJ Dr. Code Blue, which is Dr. Kwanza Pinkney. She’s an ER nocturnist, and she’s also a DJ. And one of the things she’s working on right now is mixing in the binaurals. We’re going to put some hypnotic suggestions and some subliminals, as well as we’re looking to experiment with various aspects of bilateral stimulation with the intention of providing music that allows people to be able to hold the narrative of a trauma or a major stressor in mind long enough while the bilateral simulation causes them to retrieve the memories from both sides of the brain. And what that does is, like, you know how Tony Robbins says you should scramble a negative memory so it’s not there when you’re triggered? Yeah, because a lot of us, we get triggered, we automatically go on to the memory. So the goal is to create that bilateral simulation so that people are able to scramble a memory and then the trigger becomes an opportunity to create a new choice.
Dr. Mark Leeds [25:49] Now, someone were to listen to a piece of music that you created that has that ability to help someone scramble a negative memory or trigger, how would they find the instructions on how to use it properly other than just listening?
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [26:05] That’s what’s going to be behind that Patreon paywall. Yeah, yeah, because I’ve been creating stuff for, like, I put all my stuff out for free all the time, but the more organized versions will be behind the paywall. And to be honest, I do so many. There was a time when I was doing Facebook Lives and podcasts like every day. And as I’m doing this work, I tend to get excited about it. And usually if you catch the right Facebook Live, I put the instructions there, and I tend to put them on my blog as well. I’m a big believer in making everything that I’ve been fortunate enough to understand accessible to everyone independent of cost. So I tend to put this stuff out for free somewhere. And then behind any type of paywall, it’s going to be that particular audience. I’m going to create a more streamlined, clarified, and deep inversion. But that’s only because with that particular audience, I can focus on their specific needs and continue to drill in, drill down.
Dr. Mark Leeds [27:06] It sounds really incredible. And I think it’s something that would be helpful to my patients and other people who work in my field where I’m mostly working with people who are addicted to opioids. And, you know, we’re using medication to help them, you know, medication assisted treatment. And, you know, of course, the medication can’t do everything. And we want to keep people ideally off of other medications. You know so when someone comes in and they’re tell me you know they’re having cravings throughout the day you know one solution is to increase you know the buprenorphine a little bit and that can help in some cases but you don’t want to depend on that and some people have side effects where they can’t tolerate any more buprenorphine or you know some a lot of people have difficulty sleeping and you know ideally you want to avoid giving them additional medication to sleep and there’s only you can only go so far with sleep hygiene you know tell people you know turn off the tv and put the phone in the other room and you know you give them the whole list of sleep hygiene and that it sounds great but it doesn’t really work for people going through a really difficult time yeah it sounds like you have some tools here that could really help someone struggling early on with addiction and recovery
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [28:10] Yeah the goal is to overload a different modality because if you’re having a craving the craving is it’s a it’s a body sensing it’s a pure physiological signal coming in triggering an inference of whatever narratives and scripted behavior has been promised and has promised in the past to resolve the dissonance. So now if you can shift someone’s attention with something complex and deep enough in a different modality, for example, deeply patterned music, where they shift their attention to that, then the sharp pain and the itch that’s experienced in the moment that drives the urge loses some of its potency. And this is not stuff that you’re like, oh, it works for everyone. But there are a set of people who are like, you know what, this is going to be the time I quit. And you give them that opportunity to anchor to something that resolves some of the uncertainty and give them the right narratives to focus on, and it will do what it does. I mean, that’s the nature of hypnosis.
Dr. Mark Leeds [29:11] The people I see, and I’ve been doing this full time for a few years now, working with people who are struggling with addiction. And I found that they tend to be very high-functioning people and very intelligent, creative. And it seems like that’s, you know, people who are above average intelligence and especially high levels of creativity seem to be more susceptible to addiction. And, you know, there’s just so much potential there. If these people, if they could just stay clean long enough to let their brains kind of heal and recover and, you know, and develop, in different ways. I mean, what would you recommend to someone who’s just, you know, trying just to stay clean? And I mean, sometimes I feel uncomfortable even talking about it. Someone comes in and they’re detoxing and, you know, maybe a week or two later, they feel better. And I want to tell them that I see all this potential in them, but I don’t want to come off sounding, you know, strange, you know, they’re kind of set in their ways and they’re doing what they’re doing. And I want to, but I really do want to motivate them and let them know that I see something in them that they could be more than what they are now.
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [30:14] Okay, so I think that’s a great opportunity for suggestion through questioning. Like, well, what do you see next? Now that you’ve accomplished this, you’ve got two weeks. What are you going to do with the energy that normally would be tapped by using drugs? I wouldn’t even, language-wise, I’m big on not activating passwords, so I wouldn’t even bring up the language of drugs. I’ll say, so what are we going to do now with all this extra energy you have? And you basically reframe the nervous energy of anxiety to anticipation. You know, in the frame, you’ll be like, okay, yeah, you have this nervous energy. And then, you know, you let them use the language of nervousness. And you’re like, well, you know, sometimes I feel like if I look at my nervousness in a different way, it becomes like rocket fuel. Because if I could just find the right thing to do to channel that energy. Because a lot of times the anxiety is really just a fear that I just haven’t been able to figure out. I can’t put my finger on what’s making me feel afraid in this moment. I wonder if I could find something to do that would take the fear away, what it would be. What about you? What do you think? And then you let them think about it and they’ll give you an answer what they want to do next. Yeah, that’s that old school Ericksonian hypnosis. You know, that’s that conversational hypnosis. You just you hit them with that frame and you let them like you know what? I want to try such and such. And then you prepare them for the fact that those emotions are going to keep coming up. And in each moment, it becomes their opportunity to reframe when those emotions come up as more rocket fuel. Look at this energy I got. I got this nervous energy. And one of the things that I love is the model that says that you have the neurotic or the creative. The neurotic is not able to express, is not able to channel the energy that the uncertainty generates into something beautiful and valued by society. Instead, they retreat into shame and guilt and a feeling that everything that they express will be devalued, I mean, as a result of prior conditioning. Now, the creative on the other side is on the other hand is able to resolve cognitive dissonance through sublimation which is the process of creating something based on your values that aligns with the cultural values and is perceived as beautiful yeah and is able to help other people reach a state of whether it’s flow or just a state of awe you’re able to generate what the law of attraction people call a higher vibrating higher frequency emotion
Dr. Mark Leeds [32:31] Yeah and what do you think of the law of attraction I back like around the time, but just before I started my current practice, I was watching that. I think Netflix was showing that movie, The Secret. And it’s all about the law of attraction. It’s based on some turn of the century or turn of the 20th century book on the law of attraction. And I mean, it seems like I mean, how could that be real? You just wish for something and it comes to you and you think about it enough. But there does seem to be something to it.
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [33:01] The secret presents an incomplete version of the law of attraction, and I think it sets people up for failure. The whole purpose of the secret is for you to, you know, quote, raise your vibration so that you can start visualizing something. The purpose of visualizing is to reduce uncertainty because what happens when your brain is triggered is, again, you can either go down the proactive or the reactive side. The proactive side happens if you have something in your working memory, in your long-term memory, that you can pull up as an action plan, whether it’s a ritual or an exercise or snapping your wrist with a rubber band. There’s some action that you can take in that moment to assert your autonomy as opposed to allowing those other scripts to run. Now, in the secret, they set you up with the visualization, but then now you have this thing that you vividly want. If you don’t have the next steps, the next steps are things like reaching out to the right people, understanding feedback, filtering out feedback that is evaluative and makes you feel bad, as opposed to feedback that is descriptive and continues to point you closer to the goal. To me, a much more effective model would be now there’s the Abraham Hicks model uses a pretty neat metaphor. And the book, I think, Ask and It Is Given, uses a lot of beautiful metaphors that allow people to consider doing different things with your nerves and emotional, negative emotional energy. You know, they have this like ladder of consciousness where the negative disempowering emotions are down at the bottom, including boredom, discouragement, disempowerment, anger, revenge. And it allows you to step through these negative emotions and move to the place where you feel empowered enough to take action. And to me, it’s a much cleaner metaphor. Also, other books that are more effective at getting you to that point will be something like Think and Grow Rich. And even Bob Proctor’s work, he has a book called Born Rich. But underneath all of it, there’s a set of core metaphors for social interaction that a lot of us may have mislearned due to cultural conditioning or possibly if we grew up in a household where a lot of the natural human interactions were stilted and resulted in some toxic games and toxic responses or projection and projective identification where our parents imposed their limiting beliefs on us. Now, until you put in models and metaphors that allow you to be able to really see things and not retreat into shame, then visualizing is just going to get you deeper into a state of sadness retreat. You know, some people, as soon as they get to visualizing, they start to feel greedy. And then from the greed, they run into guilt, shames, guilt and shame scripts. You know, from the self-doubt, they go into, you know, whatever other state. But the purpose of something like visualizing is to use the automatic aspects of your mind to use mental contrasting again. So with mental contrasting, you create a future self, an ideal aspirational identity. Who am I as this successful person? And then you create an honest version of who you are now. You’re like, these are my habits. These are my flaws. These are my fears. These are my strengths. These are my connections. These are my resources. These are my patience. This is my tenacity. Now, you hold those two models, and by being honest with yourself, and this is where the negative capability that John Keats talks about, by being honest with yourself as you’re holding those two ideas in mind and working through that anxiety that makes you want to jump to a conclusion, you’re able to be motivated. Your brain automatically does the next step and starts noticing opportunities in the environment to take action. Now, when you take those actions, you’re going to get feedback from the world, whether it’s people criticizing you or people telling you’re wrong or making mistakes. And your goal is to be doing that loop so many times that the fear no longer becomes a block. I mean, it’s a negative feedback loop. And this is in Psycho-Cybernetics. He talks about it a lot. Your goal is to narrow the gap between danger, which is the true thing that’s happening in the world that could possibly harm you, and fear, which is your reaction to that particular signal. Or even beyond that, anxiety, which is a blanket overgeneralized reaction to the fear that is really no longer there, but you’re still in that state in which you’re expecting it to come back. And as such, you’re not able to have these positive visualizations without going into a negative state of feeling as if you’re going to lose it. And that’s why a lot of the books, they say, when you visualize the vision, you got to go ahead and have gratitude that comes with the confidence of believing the vision can happen. So you don’t frame the vision in a state of fear and lack. This is all that abundance mindset. And then you bring that good feeling to the present. And in the present, you’re honest with yourself about where you really are and what it’s going to take to get there. And if you truly believe you can, if you can’t, then you choose a different goal. A smaller goal so that you can go through the loop again and start to get the small wins, and eventually the small wins make you feel more powerful and you can do bigger and better things. None of that is in the secret.
Dr. Mark Leeds [38:13] I don’t know. It kind of reminds me of the idea of manifest destiny, of what the early settlers of the United States, I guess they believed it was inevitable that eventually the country would spread from one coast to the other, and there was nothing that was going to stop it. And I kind of feel that way with things in my life where there’s things that I know are inevitable they’re going to happen you know I’m going to make this work I’m going to end up in this place I’m going to end up talking to this person and then there’s things that are blocked in my mind
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [38:45] And you take main punches to the face you’re like oh thank you yeah I’ll make a note when I see you next time to not walk in your direction lesson learned next opportunity yeah
Dr. Mark Leeds [38:55] Exactly yeah
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [38:56] I mean I just have a strong throat so the throat punches you know I’m like Oh, OK.
Dr. Mark Leeds [39:00] Yeah, exactly. So but yeah, it’s just it is hard to get over those mental blocks of things that you believe that they’re impossible. And there’s no reason why they’re impossible.
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [39:11] Yeah. Yeah. Except that we decide they are. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Leeds [39:16] So, yeah. So as far as you know, let me wrap this up. So if someone right now wanted to follow you and get involved in, you know, in watching your videos, reading your book, listening to your music. And what would be the easiest way right now to connect with you?
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [39:31] The easiest way would be to send me an email. I’m still a believer in Gmail. […]
Dr. Mark Leeds [39:47] Okay. And people can also follow you on Facebook. They can follow you. What about Twitter and Instagram?
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [39:53] I don’t Twitter so much. I used to back in the day I just got I’m over it I do I do I’ve used some I’ve been doing more Instagramming lately and on Instagram I’m Mani Saint-Victor M-D M-A-N-I S-A-I-N-T V-I-C-T-O-R M-D and on Facebook it’s Mani Saint-Victor M-A-N-I S-A-I-N-T hyphen V-I-C-T-O-R
Dr. Mark Leeds [40:19] Yeah I’ll put I’ll put links to these things in the show notes so people can just go and click on them and on Instagram, actually, I follow you on Instagram, and I see you put up these incredible quotes. And also on Facebook, these quote pictures. Do you create those, or do you curate them, or do you create some of them?
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [40:35] I curate them. I curate them. Sometimes I’ll write my own quotes, but a lot of times I’ll find a quote on the Internet. And I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve been looking for a certain kind so much that the AI on these platforms starts feeding me the stuff that I like. And beyond that, occasionally, if I read something in a book that a quote in a book that moves me, then I’ll do a quick search on Google and then look for images. And usually I could find the meme with that quote with something pretty and clever.
Dr. Mark Leeds [41:09] Yeah. Dr. Mani Saint-Victor, thank you for joining me. And it’s been great having you. And, you know, and hopefully we can we can have another conversation on the podcast again, because I think this has been an incredibly productive discussion.
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [41:24] I appreciate it, Mark. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Now, is it Dr. Mark? I keep calling you Mark, and I’m like, am I leaving out his doctor?
Dr. Mark Leeds [41:30] Oh, yeah, it’s okay. Yeah, either way, yeah, Dr. Mark.
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [41:33] Well, Dr. Mark, I mean, it’s not okay. I mean, you earned your doctor. I’m going to give respect where respect is due. But, yeah, the main thing is if someone sees me on a platform, I’m there. You know, if they send me a message where they see me, chances are either me or someone from my team will get back to them quickly. And we can talk. I’m not that removed from the world. I like isolation for focus, but I’m still here.
Dr. Mark Leeds [42:02] Now, if a doctor wanted to reach out to you for coaching, do you still do individual coaching?
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [42:09] Absolutely. It’s one of my favorite things. I used to call it CPR, Cognitive Program Restructuring, which is a 12-week program I came up with, collecting some of the stuff from my psychiatry, some stuff from sales, some stuff from game development. It’s just a weekly meeting once a week, an hour, and I break it into three parts, heal, grow, and thrive. The heal part is learning how to deal with toxic people, toxic situations, your own demons, getting clear on your values, getting clear on your strengths. The grow part is about goal setting, clear intention setting, some law of attraction, but mainly I use it as a metaphor, a mental model for problem solving during the second four weeks. And during the last four weeks, this is the thrive part, is raw implementation. Because by then, you’ve memorized the core metaphors. You’re applying them in your life. And now, last month, it’s me sending you out there each week to really get it like you know you can. And you come back with data. And we chop that data up to get you to your next level.
Dr. Mark Leeds [43:09] That’s incredible. And do you also work with or are you willing to work with people who are not physicians trying to quit their jobs? Like just anyone?
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [43:20] Anyone absolutely you know successful people are people that want to be successful yeah yeah no I actually have two lawyers and two business school got two yeah two business school professors one one is actually a dean so I have I have people across the diaspora I just my core branding is around physician because that’s my tribe of origin so to speak that’s that’s who I grew up with but I’m definitely open to work with anyone who is passionate and willing to do the work that’s the main thing are you willing to do the work yes you know because I mean the stuff works and you know I mean I know all the different like the reason I love ericksonian hypnosis is because the emphasis is on helping you get over your unconscious blocks but at the same time if you don’t want the outcome and if you don’t really want to know who you are and don’t aspire to like creating a piece of work that has impact in his mastery then it’s kind of boring. It’s like, eh. I mean, I’d like to help someone transition from a job they kind of like to a job they kind of like. That’s meh. Yeah. I like people who are pursuing the impossible and I’m down to help them make it real.
Dr. Mark Leeds [44:25] Well, that’s great. That’s great. And thank you again. Thank you for joining me.
Mani Saint-Victor, MD [44:28] Thank you. I appreciate it, Dr. Mark.
Dr. Mark Leeds [44:31] Thank you for joining us today on The Rehab on the Mental Health News Radio Network. I hope that you have found this show to be interesting and useful. If so, please subscribe to the Rehab Podcast and share on social media. I appreciate your taking the time to listen to the Rehab.
