I Can’t Get No Satisfaction: Peter H Addy On Why So Many Of Us Are Feeling Unsatisfied & What We Can Do About It
An Interview With Drew Gerber
Express it. When you allow feelings to bubble to the surface, you might find with them spontaneous movement or sound or expression. Let yourself cry or yell or growl. You can also express it through writing, singing, painting, building, all sorts of things. The point is to take an internal experience and make it an external thing. Birth something from your discomfort.
From an objective standpoint, we are living in an unprecedented era of abundance. Yet so many of us are feeling unsatisfied. Why are we seemingly so insatiable? What is going on inside of us that is making us feel unsatisfied? What is the brain chemistry that makes us feel this way? Is our brain wired for endless insatiable consumption? What can we do about it? In this interview series, we are talking to credentialed experts such as psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, brain science experts, as well as spiritual and religious leaders, and mind-body-spirit coaches, to address why so many of us are feeling unsatisfied & what we can do about it.
As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Peter H. Addy.
Peter H. Addy earned his PhD in clinical psychology studying transcendence, wholeness, and transformation. As research faculty with Yale School of Medicine, he explored how the brain experiences reward and addiction. He works with clients as a psychotherapist in Portland, OR and provides professional training through several training institutes. You can follow Dr. Addy and sign up for his latest offerings through his website.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to know how you got from “there to here.” Inspire us with your backstory!
We can start the flashback montage when I was a child in the early 90s. I was, and still am, a huge Star Trek nerd. It’s what first radicalized me to the idea that consumerism and capitalism are not necessary for, and might even get in the way of, living a satisfied life. Captain Picard once explained “People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of things. We’ve eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. We have grown out of our infancy.” As a child and into a young adult I sought satisfaction through learning and gaining knowledge, which eventually expressed itself as earning a PhD in clinical psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and pursuing a research faculty position at Yale School of Medicine. Something happened to me there and I fell into the trap of equating satisfaction with productivity. I confused “being good” with “doing good at my job for my boss”. What a terrible experience! I developed a chronic health condition and had to seriously slow down and evaluate my priorities. Nowadays I work for myself and set my own pace. I value connection and kindness. I did not often come across those values in corporate or academic work settings.
What lessons would you share with yourself if you had the opportunity to meet your younger self?
To again quote my first mentor Captain Picard, “Seize the time. Live now. Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again.” It seems a lot easier to live in the past or the future. It takes practice and discipline and courage to live in the present, and that is a constant lesson I am learning.
None of us are able to experience success without support along the way. Is there a particular person for whom you are grateful because of the support they gave you to grow you from “there to here?” Can you share that story and why you are grateful for them?
I’ll give you two, a married couple named Jean and Norman Bradford. They were both psychology professors at one of the colleges I went to. Jean introduced me to anti-psychiatry, Nina Simone, and transpersonal psychology. I later earned my PhD at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Norm showed me an open, gentle, and at the same time strong, way to be a man, and he got me interested in dreams, the therapeutic power of silence, and the play and film versions of Equus. He also looked basically how I imagined Gandalf to look, before Peter Jackson came up with his take.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think it might help people?
In 2023 Oregon will roll out a legal framework for people to receive psilocybin services. I am faculty at a nonprofit training institute called Synaptic, and I’m going to help train psilocybin facilitators in the first state-approved, supervised adult-use psilocybin program in the world. I’m very excited! I think psilocybin services have the potential to help people find meaning and connection, and can sometimes catalyze personal transformation.
Ok, thank you for sharing your inspired life. Let’s now talk about feeling “unsatisfied”. In the Western world, humans typically have their shelter, food, and survival needs met. What has led to us feeling we aren’t enough and don’t have enough? What is the wiring? Or in other words, how has nature and nurture played into how humans (in an otherwise “safe and secure” environment) experience feeling less than, or a need to have more than what is needed for basic survival?
Well, if we’re talking about satisfying needs let’s talk about Abraham Maslow. He famously came up with the “hierarchy of needs”. First you have to satisfy basic survival needs, like the ones you mentioned, and then you can work your way sequentially up the hierarchy to satisfy safety and security needs, love and belonging needs, self-esteem needs, and finally self-transcendence needs. Most researchers and therapists these days don’t think of it as a hierarchical pyramid. We work to satisfy all of these needs all of the time, like a big ball of wibbly wobbly psychological stuff.
You assert that most people in Western cultures have survival needs met. First, I question if that’s true. As one example among many, clean drinking water is a basic survival need. Water rights activists are continually fighting against corporations for this basic right, anyone reading this in Flint Michigan or Jackson Mississippi would probably vehemently disagree with you, and climate catastrophe is already complicating access for many. Second, even if our survival needs are met, that’s only one fifth of the pyramid or non-hierarchical jumble that is our total needs as human beings. If you do in fact have shelter, food, and clean water, but that’s it, of course you’re not satisfied! You’re only 20% of the way toward feeling satisfied.
I could also posit that if I’m in the Western world and my needs are met, and I am aware that is possible only because of domination and exploitation of people elsewhere in the world, I might feel unsatisfied.
How are societies different? For example, capitalistic societies trade differently than communists. Developed nations trade differently than developing nations. In your opinion, how does society shape a human’s experience and feelings of satisfaction?
Well just going back to your last question, if society is telling people they should be satisfied with meager rations of bread and water and shelter and if they’re not something’s wrong with them, well that’s definitely going to shape a person’s experience of and feelings toward satisfaction. We’re experiencing an epidemic of loneliness, of feeling disconnected from others, from ourselves, and from our environment. People feel tremendous anxiety about the present and the future, and find it increasingly difficult to express themselves and have something to connect with or look forward to.
I only know about living in capitalism, so I can’t speak to other systems. At the same time, you and me living in capitalism is like a fish living in water: we generally can’t tell what’s around us and how it affects us because we literally can’t conceive of another way of existing. Capitalism shapes every aspect of our experience, including how we value ourselves and others. Just think of the commonly used phrase “cost of living”. We literally have to exchange our work, usually to a boss, to earn the right to continue being alive. How can anyone feel satisfied in such a system? The worker can only approach satisfaction through selling themselves, and they are always one sick day or life event or global economic crash away from being unable to afford existence. On the other side, the owner can only achieve wealth by exploiting the worker, an act which is inherently dehumanizing and cuts the owner off from community and deep relation.
With a specific focus on brain function, how has the brain and its dominion over the body and beliefs been impacted by the societal construct?
The brain doesn’t have dominion over the body or beliefs. Body, Brain, Beliefs, and Society are not arranged in a hierarchical pyramid. Back in my research days at Yale School of Medicine I studied how drugs of abuse alter brain structure and function. Our nervous system extends beyond the brain throughout our physical self. The second most dense and complex neural network in our body is the gut, where the majority of serotonin is released. Most of our endocannabinoid system exists outside the brain, which hugely influences mood, motivation, and memory. The entire body impacts our beliefs, and our beliefs impact every piece of our body.
Do you think the way our society markets and advertises goods and services, has affected people’s feelings of satisfaction? Can you explain what you mean?
To the extent that our society markets the consumption of goods and services as the best or only way to feel satisfied, we will never feel satisfied. Satisfaction does not come from selling your labor for the means to survive, or by consuming products in order to keep up with other peopole who are consuming products.
How is the wiring of the brain, body, and beliefs shaped by marketing, language, and how humans trade?
That’s several entire emerging fields of study and I don’t know where to even start. Your question is “how humans trade” and “marketing”, which for most of us is capitalism, affer our brains and beliefs. It is chronically stressful to exist in these types of trade and marketing. Chronic environmental stress reduces the connections within and between brain regions. People with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have reduced brain volume compared to similar people who have experienced trauma but did not develop PTSD. Chronic stress and trauma literally reshape our brain structures, functions, and connections.
I work in marketing so I’m very cognizant of this question. In your opinion, how do you think marketing professionals can be more responsible for how their advertising shapes humans’ health and experience of happiness overall?
Quit your job. I could steal a Bill Hicks routine, but seriously advertising and marketing are not usually in the same room as promoting health and happiness. The default way to do marketing and advertising is to encourage feelings of dissatisfaction and unhappiness and scarcity, and then offering to sell a widget which will solve that problem. Encouraging those feelings is the exact opposite of encouraging health and experience of happiness.
Perhaps less extreme, but maybe try being honest. You can sell toothpaste as a way to satisfy a survival need or perhaps a safety and security need. That’s not usually how it’s done though. The average toothpaste commercial sells a cure for love and belonging and self-esteem deficiencies. If your appearance is not perfect, you’ll be lonely and alone forever and rightly so, buy my toothpaste so that you’ll finally have friends and lovers. If you’re a marketing professional and you want to positively shape societal health and happiness, be honest in what you’re selling. Or quit your job.
For you personally, if you have all your basic needs met, do you feel you have enough in life?
No. I assume by “basic needs” you mean survival needs, and again that’s only a small piece of the pie of my needs. However, if we expand your term “basic needs” to include the rest of the needs in the jumble, I suppose so, yes, maybe. I have deep and fundamental needs to explore my identity, participate in authentic relationships with others, and practice spiritual transcendence. These sorts of needs, sometimes called “being needs” or “meta needs”, are at the core of what it is to “have enough in life”, and they are something I strive toward, never knowing if I’ll ever touch them.
Okay, fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview: Can you share with our readers your “5 things we can each do to address the feeling of not having enough.” Please share a story or example for each.
- Stop. You probably do a hundred things in a day to distract yourself from feeling your feelings. It’s a totally normal and healthy thing to do in moderation. Our society not only encourages but has learned to monetize distraction. Stop mindlessly stimulating yourself for 30–60 seconds and just be with your feelings and body.
- Feel it. What are you able to notice in your body when you don’t distract away from it? What is the size and shape of that feeling? Is it hot or cold? Just for a few seconds at a time, allow the feeling of not having enough to come into your body and your emotions without pushing it away or judging it or telling stories about it.
- Express it. When you allow feelings to bubble to the surface, you might find with them spontaneous movement or sound or expression. Let yourself cry or yell or growl. You can also express it through writing, singing, painting, building, all sorts of things. The point is to take an internal experience and make it an external thing. Birth something from your discomfort.
- Nurture yourself. So you’ve tapped into deep visceral emotional feelings of not having enough. How can you soften into that and take care of your self? Short shallow breaths are guaranteed to increase feelings of anxiety and scarcity, so maybe try practicing slow, deep, balanced breaths for a few minutes. Talk with a therapist, have a safe and well planned psychedelic experience, practice yoga or exercise. Do nice things for yourself because you deserve nice things.
- Change your environment. A major problem in the therapy and wellness industries these days is the focus on self care and adapting to your situation. Sometimes the situation needs to change. If you feel you don’t have enough, maybe the answer is to practice yoga and take a bubble bath and cultivate gratitude. Or, maybe the answer is to seize the means of production or join a mutual aid co-op or lobby for an increase in minimum wage. If you stop distracting and start feeling your feelings, you can begin to feel comfortable with discomfort and you can learn with nuance and subtlety why you feel that way and what you can do about it.
Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or resources that have inspired you to live with more joy in life?
The absolute most joyous book I’ve ever read is Be Here Now by Ram Dass. A more contemporary book that relates more to our current conversation is Radical Healership by Laura Mae Northrup, which I just finished and enjoyed immensely. When I feel overwhelmed and pessimistic about the present and future, I like to read optimistic science fiction about hopeful futures. I’m currently reading Everything For Everyone by M. E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi, and I really enjoyed Walkaway by Cory Doctorow.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Invest in a vision of an abundant post-scarcity world. It is in fact possible to live in a moneyless utopia where all our basic needs are satisfied. Scarcity is over when we want it to be.
What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?
Bookmark my website and sign up for my mailing list to learn about upcoming trainings and offerings!
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
About The Interviewer: For 30 years, Drew Gerber has been inspiring those who want to change the world. Drew is the CEO of Wasabi Publicity, Inc., a full-service PR agency lauded by PR Week and Good Morning America. Wasabi Publicity, Inc. is a global marketing company that supports industry leaders, change agents, unconventional thinkers, companies and organizations that strive to make a difference. Whether it’s branding, traditional PR or social media marketing, every campaign is instilled with passion, creativity and brilliance to powerfully tell their clients’ story and amplify their intentions in the world. Schedule a free consultation at WasabiPublicity.com/Choosing-Publicity
I Can’t Get No Satisfaction: Peter H Addy On Why So Many Of Us Are Feeling Unsatisfied & What We… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.