The Power of The Tools: Phil Speaks With Gwyneth Paltrow
MEET PHIL
Gwyneth: I’d love to start at the beginning. How did you come to want to be a therapist?
Phil: It's an interesting story. It started when I was nine years old. I had a brother that died. I was nine, he was six. My parents had no spiritual or emotional backup—they were atheists. It was the Upper West Side—you probably grew up on the Upper East Side, is that right?
Gwyneth: Yeah.
Phil: I lived on 78th Street. Sometimes I go back there, just to take a look at where it happened, because my whole life, in a way, either began or ended at the time of his death. I was coming home from school and just as I got to the front door of the building, my mother and father pulled up in a cab, and the second I saw them, I knew he was dead. My mother didn't tell me anything about it—she didn't allude to it, she just walked right past me. It wasn't a cruel thing, it was too much for her, she had no resources.
So it was death that intruded itself into the family. I was too young for it, but I was appointed as the watchdog to deal with death going forward. The immediate evidence of this was if I were to come home from school, let’s say that I was playing in the park and I had to be home by 5:00. If I was home by 5:05 or 5:10, they would crack up, they would just go crazy. And this would happen all the time.
The other thing that happened was my father appointed me as a doctor, and he wouldn't let go of it. My father was slick. He wouldn't say you have to be a doctor, he wouldn't do it like that. What he would do is he would take doctors like the pediatrician that was taking care of my brother, and he would adulate them. Basically the message was you can do whatever you want, but whatever you want is nothing, it means nothing unless you become a doctor. So I did it. I became a doctor. That was the first step of the thing.
“As a little kid, I thought I could bargain with God. “
—PHIL STUTZ
The second step was psychiatry. Psychology I loved and was interested in—the rest of medicine, I really wasn't. So, in the senior year of medical school, I made what turned out to be a good decision—I said, I love this being a shrink, and I have no interest in the other stuff at all. Now it's different because of money, but at that time, being a shrink was the lowest thing on the totem pole. The only thing that was lower than that was probably a dermatologist. These were things where you didn't have to get up early in the morning, and you didn’t have to get blood on your hands. Now, you know, things are completely different. I don't look at it as I was pushed into it. I mean, I was, but it felt like it came from a higher thing, and probably in some ways, is culminating now.
I remember when I said to myself I'm going to be a shrink because I can't stand the other stuff, I felt really guilty. I felt like I was taking the sissy’s way out. I remember exactly when I decided I was going to become a shrink, for some reason I said to myself, “I know I can't make any money doing this, the ceiling will be $55,000 a year.” I don't know where I got the number from. But for me, there was a lack of any kind of guidance on the one hand, but on the other hand, it actually turned out well, in a way that it wouldn't have otherwise. I probably would have ended up as a screenwriter. And, by the way, I have a couple of scripts I want you to read, just one or two.
Gwyneth: Do you think it was because of the role that your parents put you in that when you understood what psychiatry was, you felt like you slotted into it?
Phil: Yes, definitely. So two things. Number one, my parents, mostly my father, he just wanted me to be a doctor. He didn't even consider psychiatry being a doctor. I give him credit for one thing though. When I said to him, “I'm doing it,” he said, “Okay.” He was pissed, but he did say okay. It was an adaptation to the family—I was doing my job on the one hand—but on the other hand, it was something much higher up that said, “This is your place. This is your job in life. This is your mission.” Even when I was a little kid, I had that feeling. I'm a very adaptable person, you might not think so, but I am possibly too adaptive. So I adapted.
Gwyneth: Can we lean into the idea of a higher power or something bigger than you that was guiding you? You said your parents were not spiritual, right? They didn't have a spiritual practice to lean back on when they encountered tragedy in their life, but you did. It sounds like it was innate to you already. What was your experience of that?
Phil: I'll tell you one interesting thing, when he was dying, in those days, kids couldn't go to the hospital, no matter how ill they were, so he went in there and he never came out...
Gwyneth: Shit, what did he have?
Phil: He had a rare kind of kidney cancer. His pediatrician said the moment he walked in the room and saw that it came with a rash, he knew it was terminal. I’ll tell you an interesting thing: when he was really dying, let's say in the last six weeks of his life, I would for some reason go into my parents' bathroom and put one knee up on the toilet bowl. Basically, I felt like I was some kind of a medieval knight and I would talk to God and I would say, “If Eddie dies, I'm not going to believe in you.” As a little kid, I thought I could bargain with God.
One time we went to a baseball game, I think it was a Giant’s game, and there were some nuns there trying to raise money. I was really young—I must have been six years old—and I didn’t know what a nun was. I asked my father if I could have a quarter to give to them, and he said, “All right.” I walked over, I put the quarter in the little thing they used to collect money. And as I walked away, I heard one nun say to the other nun, “Do you know that kid was Jewish?” What was happening was over my head, but there was something about the whole thing—I was moved without full awareness of what I was doing. So yes, it was there the whole time, no question.
CREATING THE TOOLS
Gwyneth: You have a very wonderful, innovative way of practicing. You're not the typical psychiatrist that has somebody laying on a couch and just talk while you take notes. It’s a very active approach, and, I dare say, a spiritual approach as well. I would love to ask a little bit about how you arrived at this approach. When did you decide that someone just talking about their life wasn't going to be an effective way of making change?
Phil: When all this started, I was probably in my mid 20s, or late 20s, and I was starting to get a practice. At that age you have a supervisor, a guy that tells you what you’re doing right, and what you’re doing wrong. And I got pissed off right away because back in the day it was the psychoanalytic era, and they wouldn't let you give any kind of instruction to the patient, any kind of direction, or certainly any kind of tools. It was seen not just as unhelpful, but as a violation of Freud's rules. Freud was a genius, but he was a crazy fucking genius. He could rationalize anything and turn it into a rule or a law.
So I was starting to get patients, and I was treating them as I was taught, which was to go back into the past and they would tell me this happened and that happened. That’s okay, but when they would leave my office, they would leave without anything. They came in with nothing, and they left with nothing, and I couldn't stand it. I couldn’t stand people paying me and then walking out with nothing.
So I said to the supervisor, “Can’t we give them anything besides this free-association sort of thing? Something that they can walk away with that would give them some confidence?" And the guy says, “No, don't you dare, that's directive.” And I said, “Well, how are they supposed to know what to do?” And he said, “They'll come to it on their own, and you just have to be patient.” I was rebellious at that age, so I said to the guy ”Is that why they call them patients?” But I didn't like it.
Frankly, most of The Tools I made up myself. It wasn't the self-help era—there were probably only about 40 books you could read on this. So I took on myself the responsibility to have them come away with something. I set two requirements. First, it needed to work. The pain needed to be abated for at least a day or even an hour. That's important because it gives them hope. At that point, I was doing what was considered to be impossible, but it wasn't impossible.
Gwyneth: What were you doing in those moments?
Phil: You're making this tough! Let's say someone is passive and shy and can't approach other people. Let's say they were abused a little bit, not physically abused but maybe dominated by a sibling. Once they realized that, and that was clear to them, it was all done in pictures. None of this was figured out.I would see a picture of them being able to approach somebody, and I would feel the picture come alive, and then I would ask myself what they would need to do to make this picture real, to make it actually happen.
Then I would just talk out of my ass, because in the beginning, I didn't know what The Tools were, so I would just make them up as I went along. But it's interesting because when you keep trying to answer the same demand over and over, you actually get pretty good at it. There are not that many different types of problems—maybe there are 10 or 14—but it’s not like you're dealing with 700 problems. The two that are most common are anxiety and depression.
“I believe that the deepest spirituality has to do with relationships, whether it's a relationship with a spouse or relationship with God or a relationship with a group.”
—PHIL STUTZ
Gwyneth: What are the other problems that you see?
Phil: Blockage [creative blocks] is a tremendous problem. Self-attacking is a tremendous problem. Being able to conduct a relationship, especially if there are problems like one of them travels a lot or cheats. I believe that the deepest spirituality has to do with relationships, whether it's a relationship with a spouse or relationship with God or a relationship with a group.
The female factor in the world is now in its ascendancy. The female force is coming, and it has at least two standout qualities, one of which is the desire for inclusiveness. The other part of it would be the ability to feel things and learning to trust your own instincts, which for the most part is a female quality.
Gwyneth: I want to go back to when you were a young psychiatrist. You are rebellious and you don't think the classic Freudian approach is really helping anyone. Take this example of someone who is really shy and they can't approach anybody, and you felt you saw a picture accompanied by what they could do to actually move forward. What would you say to the patient?
Phil: Well, there are two parts to the question. One part is how I developed the Tool, and the other part has to do with this—nothing happens that's good, nothing happens that changes anyone, unless they feel it, and what they are feeling are forces that are invisible. They are learning how to use and work with these forces.
Essentially, what I would do is use pictures. Pictures tend to work best, because thinking is usually a waste of time. I would go over it and over it, almost like what an actor would do trying to rehearse their part, and I would see what the goal was—I would try to sense the force that they needed to make the change or to grow or to get in Forward Motion. Nothing else matters. It's just seeing where you have to move forward and being able to take the risk. By doing that, you activate a Higher Force.
Now you can imagine saying that in 1970 in medical school, and it was like,” fuck you!” Some of it I couldn't say. In other ways, I was just considered the freakish black sheep of the medical school.
Gwyneth: You started to say things that made people feel better and gave them hope. How would you do that?
Phil: It's a great question, but it's hard to answer. I would almost put myself into the dynamic of what was happening, and I would try to feel the force that if I were in that position, what would be the force that I would need or want. I say the word force advisedly. It's not an idea, it's not a concept, that's not going to get it. Force is something that impacts and moves—that's the definition of a force. The forces that were involved, at least in psychotherapy, were invisible, but just because they were invisible doesn't mean that they didn't have power. And I would repeat it over and over.
By the way, the technology of developing this stuff... It's not like I was planning it. As my father would say, I was just on the balls of my ass sliding down a hill. But what I always had was a sense of urgency, like I can't let this man or woman leave the room with nothing. Even if they didn't believe what I was telling them, they still got something.
MEET PART X
Phil: I guess that brings us to Part X. There's a part of every single person that doesn't want them to thrive, that doesn't want them to move forward, that doesn't want them to expand. Because it doesn't want that, Part X will give you a problem that you don't need to have. Drugs and alcohol are a classic example. Part X gives you problems you don't need to have, and then it gives you a solution to the problem that makes it worse. It's like trying to get a cab at 11 on a Saturday night—it seems impossible to do, but it's not impossible. Part X wants growth to seem impossible, and it wants you to give up on your own development.
If you use the tools assiduously, and you make some inroads into your problems, you're also helping the whole world. There is an individual aspect to this, and then there is a macro. Most people, even in Southern California, at first think “come on,” but that's the nature of Higher Forces. I call it The World of Small Things, which says that what you are doing on that individual, small level will move the whole world. Not if two people do it—you need a lot of people doing it—but I didn't know any of that at that point.
Gwyneth: Why does Part X exist more broadly? What is the universal function of Part X?
Phil: Part X has a double effect. It has a negative effect because it is constantly blocking you and making you do stupid things, making you make bad decisions, causing you to be attached to things—it does a million things that are overtly bad. But the process of fighting those things and using The Tools to fight them causes you to expand.
It's hard for people to grasp this—it's neither good nor bad, it depends how you deal with it. To make it a positive, which means you learn something from your battle with it, you have to have some sense of Tools. I call that The Gap. You can bring up the past, but if what you want is change, that isn't good enough. You have to cross that Gap, and crossing The Gap means that you as the shrink and the patient have to enter into this world of Forces.
“If you use the tools assiduously, and you make some inroads into your problems, you're also helping the whole world.”
—PHIL STUTZ
You have to enter into it, but most people don't like it for whatever reason—they think it violates their religion, they don't believe it, they're lazy. I've heard every excuse you can imagine. What I always tell them is, “Don't believe what I'm saying. Be as negative as you want, but please do what I'm asking you to do, and then judge. And if you don't feel change, fire me.”
Gwyneth: Is Part X something that feels like an evil force to us, but it's actually providing the obstacles we need to grow, so it's actually a positive?
Phil: Yes, that's exactly right. You have to have a specific way of identifying when Part X is present, of understanding what it is doing to fuck you up, and then you have to have a Tool that puts you in Forward Motion.
Gwyneth: So I need a little bit of a crowbar to separate my voice from Part X’s voice in order to understand that this is a negative force from the universe that's keeping me from expanding and growing and learning, because if I truly understand the power that I have within me to better myself, then the global forces of evil will be diminished.
Phil: That’s it.
Gwyneth: So how do you get people to identify the crowbar and make space between their voice and Part X?
Phil: What I try to do at the beginning is shrink the whole thing down into bite-sized pieces. That's why I call it The World of Small Things. Let's take the shy person. Maybe there's somebody that they have been afraid to approach, usually it's romantic, but it doesn't have to be. Usually they'll say yes and then we just focus on that. The classic tool for this is called The Reversal of Desire, which evokes the principle or The Law of Fear. The Law of Fear says if you avoid fear, or avoid approaching people in this case, the sense of fear grows and gets out of control. On the other hand, if you can force yourself to stop avoiding it and enter right into the fear, the fear diminishes. People don't believe it at first, but it works.
I had one guy who saw me for 14 years. He didn't do one thing that I asked him to do, and he was getting nothing out of it, but he was starting to drink too much and his daughter was getting really pissed. He was so afraid to be abandoned by his daughter that he actually started to use The Tools. I would say within six weeks he changed more than in the preceding 14 years.
Gwyneth: We should call out the book that you and Barry Michels wrote called The Tools, which really does chronicle every Tool for every conceivable state of anxiety. The answers in there are pretty incredible. You guys wrote such an amazing book.
Phil: Thank you. Yeah, that's the great Barry Michels. He's a great partner for me, because a lot of things that are difficult for me he does flawlessly, just naturally. So he's writing his own book now, and if he does, I’ll kill him. (laughs)
Gwyneth: I'll pass that along. (laughs)
THE FIELD
Gwyneth: I want to ask you a little bit about this concept of The Field. When I was lucky enough to talk to you a few times when I was going through a really tough time in my life, you brought this concept into relief for me. It really resonated with me this idea that we're all playing in this energetic field, and the choices we make really can determine outcomes. So what is The Field, and how did you develop this philosophy?
Phil: There was a guy named Michael Faraday, I think it was in 1870-something when he discovered the concept of a field. At that time the psychological field, the emotional field, the electromagnetic field—there was no distinction between them all because it was all new and people just liked to make up things. What this guy was postulating was very interesting. He said what we consider a thing, like you in your physical manifestation, isn't what you think it is. It's not what you see—it's a field that spreads out to the horizon. That came out of the same shop, so to speak, as quantum mechanics. There is a whole subatomic world, and at some point there was a split because the scientists weren't interested in the human part of it, but the point is that every human being is part of a field.
Once you accept that you are more than what meets the eye, that you spread out to the edges of the universe, once you have that concept, then things become possible for you that you didn't think were possible. A lot of serendipitous events are because of the field. You want the field to “like you,” And there are four rules to the field, and if you play according to the rules, it's not like the field is going to give you every single thing you want, but things will begin to appear possible that you didn't think were possible.
“Once you accept that you are more than what meets the eye, that you spread out to the edges of the universe, once you have that concept, then things become possible for you that you didn't think were possible.”
—PHIL STUTZ
The first part is self-restraint, the second is non-attachment, the third is microtransactions. An example of microtransactions is let’s say you are an executive and you are going to the bathroom and the janitor is mopping the floor. You may not have time to strike up a conversation with them, but you can look at them with the idea that they are equal. This is how it works in The World of Small Things—The Field will reach out to include all things. It is the cutting edge, the power, the force that comes when you include or attempt to include everybody. Evil in the world now is dis-inclusion.
Gwyneth: It's such a fascinating rubric for being a successful human being, and so simple, right? The importance of self restraint that's really about curbing your ego, right? Because, generally, reactivity is never coming from a magnanimous place.
Phil: Yes, that's right. You see, The Field exists on a higher plane. You want to restrain your impulses, especially your lowest ones, because you're putting yourself way down here, and it's almost like The Field can't see you. And if it can’t see you, it can't help you. It’s like you don't even exist to The Field when you are at this lower level.
Gwyneth: Why is non-attachment important?
Phil: Non-attachment allows recovery from something that you failed or think you failed at. If you're attached to something, and you can't manifest it, it means you're going to die. That sounds a little crazy, but there will be an extreme punishment. Non-attachment says I can go for this thing, and I can go as hard as I want to get it, but I'm also willing to not have it.
I discovered this when I was a freshman in college. We were playing this school north of Rutgers and we were killing them as they weren't a very good team. Toward the end of the game, I went up for a jump shot, and I saw, off in my left corner, I saw the referee bringing the whistle to his lips, and I figured, well, the ball is dead. But I figured I'd take the shot anyway. I thought it didn't matter, but what happened was it turned out the guy never blew the whistle, so it was a live play, and the shot went in. I was 16 years old, and I remember thinking if I could be this relaxed and this focused, I'd be unstoppable. It's easy to do it when you think it's a dead ball, it's harder to do it when you know it's not a dead ball, but the willingness to lose gives you tremendous power.
Gwyneth: Isn’t this backed by physics? Didn't they do tests that showed that if you’re concentrating on something in a certain way then the outcome is different than if you don’t concentrate on it?
Phil: I always forget the name of that experiment. Basically, they were shooting electrons through a screen, and what they found is that they could not predict the results—even though all the circumstances were the same for the first electron and the second electron, if there was somebody watching or observing, the outcomes were altered. It's technical, how they measured this stuff, I'm trying to think of the word for it, but basically electrons have spins on them, like clockwise or counterclockwise, and they found if you were observing it, it would affect the spin.It would go, let's say, from counterclockwise to clockwise. And it works at an infinite distance too, and that's mystical in my analysis.
So that's non-attachment, and it gives you tremendous power. If you remain attached, the field will abandon you.
[Ed. note: Phil and Gwyneth don’t discuss the fourth principle of The Field, which is commitment. You can learn more about The Field and these principles in this conversation between Phil and Barry.]
THE DOCUMENTARY WITH JONAH HILL
Gwyneth: Can we talk about this documentary for a second? What happened here? Jonah Hill is your patient, and he came to you and said, “I want to make a documentary about you?”
Phil: Pretty much. He’s pretty direct! I would say that's exactly what happened. And I said, “Excuse me?” He's a very good director. Very good. And he makes you feel relaxed, because I am not a relaxed person in a performance. You might not have been able to guess that, but anyway, because I've been treating him for maybe five or four years and he has really changed, and he was capable of doing things that he didn't think he was able to do up until that point...
Gwyneth: Like what?
Phil: Like the need to entertain and tell jokes and take the attention off the parts of himself that he didn't feel good about. He was able to stop doing that.
Gwyneth: Tell me how he convinced you to do it.
Phil: That was easy. I know him pretty well. He believes in everything I've told you today, and he felt that it actually could help the world, which I agree with. As soon as he said that, I said okay, this could be worth something.
Without me going into another tirade about socio-economic issues, therapy is ridiculously expensive. Nobody charges more than me, but there has to be another way for people to have access to this stuff. The beauty of it is that to a degree you can do it yourself with The Tools. You're much better off with a shrink, no question. I'm not trying to imply that.
“He [Jonah Hill] believes in everything I've told you today, and he felt that it actually could help the world, which I agree with. As soon as he said that, I said okay, this could be worth something.”
—PHIL STUTZ
But the idea that somebody could use a Tool and have an experience that empowers them on their own just by following this, he wanted to get that out in the public as a reality. He's an artist, so I guess that was his way of giving back. It turns out he is a terrific director. By the way, since you're an actor, I should remind you that my real goal is to direct.
Gwyneth: So when are you going to do that? I retired anyway—you don't want me in your movie. If you direct something, then I'll be in it. How's that? I'll come out of retirement for you.
Phil: All right. You heard it here!
Gwyneth: Having done the documentary, and having seen the documentary, do you feel it delivers a democratization of therapy? What is the exciting component of this for you?
Phil: Yes, just the raw information about what a Tool is, what Part X is, how Part X tries to fuck you up…
Gwyneth: Does it go into all that in the doc?
Phil: Briefly. It's only an hour and a half long, and I would say the second third of the film deals with that directly. What they did was cute, because I like to draw these cards, so there's a visual. They didn't actually use my cards, but a really good artist rendered my handwriting, which is pathetic.
There's something interesting happening now which is this tremendous focus on psychiatry, psychotherapy, and the epidemic of mental illness. I'm not sure why it's happening now, but it's definitely happening. This would be a good addition to that. There are more emotional problems, or people are more aware of their emotional problems and it's not as secret. Sometimes I see things in the paper like for $100 a month you get your choice of shrinks and you can switch shrinks anytime—they make it sound like one of those luxury spas where you can have a different person work on you every time you come in. That's not going to get it either.
Somehow we have to split the difference between The Tools, which can be somewhat mechanical, and some kind of transference or faith in the shrink. How do you do that on a macro level, I don't know. I saw this happening, so I said to myself since he is interested in this as well, and he doesn't need money anymore, we said we'd try it as an experiment.
Here's the thing about it on a personal level that was so impressive. After maybe a year or a year and a half of shooting, we both looked at each other, and mostly it was Jonah who said, “This sucks.” Every time there was a chance to go deeper, either he or I would play it off with jokes. You might not realize it, but I like to tell a lot of jokes. But the point was, both of us were using that to avoid the deeper aspects of what we were trying to convey. So he tore the whole thing down and started again, and I said, “Wow, that is impressive.”
Gwyneth: Was that some of your Part X deflecting or not wanting to be intimate?
Phil: 100%
Gwyneth: So how much do you have to be aware of your own stuff? How often in your day are you fighting Part X?
Phil: I'm fighting it all day, especially now because I have stage fright, and then I have this (shows shaking), which makes me more self-conscious.
Gwyneth: Parkinson’s?
Phil: Yeah. I'm much better with it, but it's still there.
Gwyneth: But you say as well that Parkinson's has given you more insight. In its way, has it been a teacher, or has there been anything positive from it?
Phil: Tremendous. Way beyond anything I could have imagined. One thing is it has given me a sense of family because the neurologists don't want me alone without supervision because they don't want you to fall. If you fall and hit your head usually it's the beginning of a downward slope in terms of function. So that's one thing, and I was just incredibly lucky that the people that I hired here to watch over me are all great and they all love each other. So I've gotten that out of it.
The other thing I've gotten out of it is there are certain things that I would push myself to do because I used to be athletic. So I've had to slow down a lot and my default should be don't do it. So I've had to really exercise self-restraint.
Gwyneth: That's great. I'm glad that there's been a silver lining, because I can imagine it's daunting to receive a diagnosis like that.
Phil: Oh, yeah, that's another story.
DEALING WITH PERFECTIONISM
Gwyneth: And we're going to run out of time! If I could go a couple of minutes over just to ask you something that I've been thinking about for myself and having conversations with my daughter about, and that's this idea of perfectionism and how it can act as a force to keep you out of your higher self. What is the Tool you use to confront perfectionism?
Phil: The first thing is if you are judging your own work or anything about yourself you can't just stop by changing that—you have to stop judging everything. That's the secret. You can't judge. Judgment is like a heavy stone spiritually—it holds you down. Even a positive judgment will hold you down.
“Judgment is like a heavy stone spiritually—it holds you down.”
—PHIL STUTZ
What you need to go up to the higher level is complete love, complete acceptance, and ignorance, which means “I don't really know where this is going. It's none of my business.” This is very effective, but the trick is you have to do it all the time. And all the time means literally all the time. Usually someone will get to that point until something really bad has happened and they're too weak or too frightened to meet it head-on.
A Tool can't change the outer circumstance, but what it can do is affect your reaction. A part of that is what's called speed. And speed just means that once you realize there's something you need to do, whatever that thing is, the more time that elapses that you are not doing that thing, the weaker you become. There is a premium on speed, within reason. You're not going to buy a 4 million-dollar house in a day, but in general, speed carries with it its own force.
The other big one with perfectionism is this. They say “love yourself,” but I never knew what they were talking about. I thought it sounded like trite bullshit. But I found out what it meant, at least from my point of view. It means there is a part of you that we call the Shadow, and that's what Barry does great work on, and the Shadow represents, in this case, your failings and your imperfections. If you can love that part of yourself—forget about the good parts—if you can love that part of yourself, not only does that affect your contribution to the world, it has an immediate effect on your life. That's the dynamic of self-love, and that's the antidote for perfectionism.
Gwenyth: That's beautiful. Phil, thank you so much for joining me today on the goop podcast. Thank you for everything. You know, you have these very long tentacles that have helped me through Barry and directly and so many people. You're just such a wonderful spirit in the world, and brain.
Phil: Thank you so much.
This conversation was originally published on the Goop podcast: Gwyneth Paltrow x Phil Stutz: The Power of Small Things.
