Self-control in a stressed society – Lecture by Dr. Augusto Cury

Dr. Augusto Cury , in his lecture at the 7th Freemind Congress, talks about how to maintain self-control in a stressed and digitally intoxicated society

In the history of Freemind, two people have been, are and will always be very important: Father Haroldo and Dr. Augusto Cury.

The traditional perception is that science and religion are two completely different things; that science tries to understand how the world works and religion talks about the spirit of man and existential, moral and value issues. But it's not quite like that: we see a very small part of the world and what science does is try to broaden our view of what the world is.

Father Haroldo Rahm spent his life working for the recovery of drug addicts and for the inclusion of the people who suffered the most. He rescued thousands of lives using, in addition to traditional therapeutic methods, his pluralistic spirituality to promote a spiritual awakening that would lead the addict to the will to recover.

He was a man respected by psychiatrists, doctors, psychologists, addicts, family members, volunteers, businessmen, religious and representatives of the Government here in Brazil and wherever he went, showing that religion, science and politics can, yes, do a beautiful job together and save lives!

Freemind only exists because Father Haroldo believed, inspired and helped.

And since its inception, even before the first Congress in 2013, Dr. Augusto Cury has also been present. He was and has been, over the years, a great supporter and motivator.

He participated in organizational meetings, spoke at all Congresses, donated his time and knowledge in parallel prevention actions organized by Freemind, was present at retreats with homeless people in São Paulo.

He wrote and donated thousands of books "Free Mind – Healthy Emotion", the result of his international doctoral thesis in Multifocal Psychology at Florida Christian University in 2013, the same year as the 1st Freemind International Congress.

Her history with Freemind has helped save many lives. Through its powerful tools, millions of people can fight, daily and directly, stress, anxiety, low self-esteem, relationship problems, problems of problematic substance use, fears and anguish.

At the 2022 Congress, his presence was fundamental and it was special: this time, online, Dr. Augusto Cury spoke to the congressmen present at Expo Dom Pedro, in Campinas, to the more than 4,500 people who followed us live on Freemind's YouTube and also on his Instagram, to tens of thousands of his followers.

He began by paying homage to our late Father Haroldo and reminding us that death is just a comma, so that the text continues to be written in eternity.

He also talked about an extremely sick society. As he said, "we are facing the saddest, most depressed, most anxious generation that has ever walked this earth, despite all the advances in modern medicine."

Follow a little of what Dr. Augusto Cury said. If you want to watch the lecture in full, go to Freemind's YouTube. The lecture is available in Portuguese and English.

Despite medical advances, we have not built emotion management tools to prevent emotional disorders, according to Dr. Augusto Cury.

To give you an idea, one in two people has or will develop a psychiatric disorder in their lifetime. We are talking about more than 3 and a half billion human beings and, probably, not even 1% of these people should be treated, either because the treatment is expensive, or because there is a lack of professionals and/or professionals with experience - and not only in Brazil, but all over the world - or because people deny their diseases.

They are quick and eager to point the finger at others, but they have difficulty recognizing their conflicts, their mental phantoms – such as self-punishment, suffering in anticipation or rumination of mental garbage, losses, hurts and frustrations... In short, the rate of mental illness is very high.

It would be necessary, then, to work on preventive tools to have at least minimal and acceptable self-control in this digitally intoxicated society.

And what are these tools? Dr. Augusto Cury had the privilege of developing the first current program of Emotion Management. And Emotion Management is different from Emotional Intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence talks about emotional skills like flexibility, honesty, and transparency, while Emotion Management involves the phenomena that lie behind the scenes of the human mind – for example, the windows of memory.

There are three types of windows, three types of files:

• In the neutral windows, which correspond to more than 90% of the files in the cerebral cortex, there are millions of data – from mathematical formulas, information about physics, chemistry, biology or work activities – that is, they are windows that have no emotional content or have very low emotional content.
• Another group of windows have high emotional volume – some are traumatic or killer. Dr. Augusto Cury uses this term because it does not murder in life, but it murders the tranquility and pleasure of living, the enchantment for life, the ability for you to date existence, to live lighter, quieter, serene.
• And the healthy windows, which contain the skills, such as: thinking before reacting, working through losses and frustrations, managing stress, reinventing yourself, and so on.

The big problem in the human psyche is this window war: if killer or traumatic windows are preponderant (both in quantity and in quality and intensity) in relation to healthy windows or lights, then the person will get sick.

For example, imagine a person who has glossophobia - the fear of public speaking - when he is in front of an audience, even if he knows the whole subject, the whole conference, at the exact moment when someone yawns in the audience, the trigger is detonated (which is an unconscious phenomenon),  a window opens in milliseconds - in this case, A traumatic or killer window – who has the fear of speaking, the fear of being embarrassed, the need – unhealthy and anxious – to live up to everyone's expectations –  that's impossible!

If you want to live in society, to live a healthy and self-controlled life, you have to know that you won't be able to satisfy everything and everyone... Some people won't like you, others will criticize you and there will even be those who are haters, but your peace should be worth gold, the rest is garbage.

If you don't have the awareness, if your "I" doesn't manage your mind to such an extent that you introject every day that your peace is worth gold and the rest is insignificant or even mental garbage, then you're going to detonate the trigger, open a killer window, and then a third phenomenon comes in: the anchor of memory that comes. It closes the loop and so, thousands of windows, with tens of thousands of data that you know very well, will not be accessed.

At that moment, you cease to be a homo sapiens – a thinking human being, who has a critical conscience – and become a homo bios – instinctive – that is, at that moment, the audience becomes your predator and you become a fragile prey.

Therefore, when the anchor enters and closes the memory circuit due to the volume of tension of a killer window, we cannot think before reacting, we cannot organize ideas and we have an instinctive mechanism to escape from the very high risk situation.

That's why the memory fields are blocked and the cloud of molecules that travels through the bloodstream, increases the heart rate, increases the respiratory rate and people end up failing in what they know, failing in the knowledge they have.

So, the first phenomenon is the trigger, the second is the window – in this case, opening a wrong window, the killer or traumatic windows – the third is the anchor that fixes or closes the memory circuit, generating hyperfocus, and the fourth phenomenon is the phenomenon of self-flow. 

This self-flow begins to read and re-read that window, producing disturbing thoughts that are recorded back, and produces another phenomenon – unconscious – in addition to these four, called the RAM phenomenon – automatic memory logging: the more you try to look at the audience or adequately express your words and organize and concatenate your ideas, the more you fail.

At this point, you must retreat for a few seconds – even if the audience is stunned by your seconds of silence – and you must regain self-control, for example, using the DCD technique – doubt, criticize and determine: I doubt that I will not be able to express my ideas properly, I criticize my anxiety and my fear of public speaking and I determine to be the author of my story, manager of my mind.

It can be seen that our species, due to the fact that it has not deeply studied the process of thought construction and the program of emotion management, has been right to talk about emotional intelligence, but wrong to not understand the mechanisms that are at the base of the unconscious and that can lead the human being to be incarcerated in the only place where he should be free: within oneself.

That is why in the first 30 seconds of tension politicians err dramatically when they are criticized, parents also err in a suffocating and cruel way when they are in some way let down by their children, as well as teachers, executives and so on.

So, there are no heroes! We need to learn to have self-control of our psyche, but self-control does not go through the 'action and reaction' mechanism.

The 'action and reaction' mechanism can be great for physics, but terrible for human relationships: the person who 'doesn't take discouragement home', for example, does not take discouragement to the physical house, but takes discouragement to the mental house and suffocates those around him.

You have to understand that, many times, behind the one who hurts you, there is a wounded person and, even if he criticizes you unjustly, your peace is golden. You can't negotiate what's non-negotiable!

Freud, according to Dr. Augusto Cury, was right to point out when he said that we suffer trauma, but he was wrong or not properly correct in understanding that it is not the original experience that is the big problem, it is not an offense,  a bullying or a person who has been imprisoned in a dark room... It's not the original offense that's the penalty – it's the rumination of the original offense: it detonates the trigger, it opens that killer window, we anchor the "I" in that region and the self-flow starts from the phenomena reading and rereading – the more reading and rereading, the more it is registered, widening the boundaries and an original experience that should be worked on – the loss, frustration and disappointment -  it is worked on and oversized, generating mental imprisonment.

That is why if the "I" does not regain control, we potentiate by ten the disaffections, the people who frustrate us, "the enemies" and that is also why the feeling of revenge, anger, hatred and exclusion does harm to the host.

When you understand that your peace is golden, that it is non-negotiable, and when you understand that only an unhappy and unresolved person is capable of hurting you and others, you give a discount... That's why the happiest and healthiest people aren't those who are vengeful, authoritarian, they're not the ones who react to the hit-and-run phenomenon... They are those who are more tolerant, more flexible, who understand that a stressed, anguished, irritable, tense, depressive or unresolved person is capable, in a focus of tension, of saying words that hurt, hurt, suffocate you, rob you of the oxygen of your freedom.

To be healthy is to raise the threshold for enduring frustrations. Do you want to be healthy? Increase the threshold to endure frustrations, that is, decrease the counterpart of the return, because the intimates are the ones who are most capable of hurting you.

In short, we must have self-control in times of stress; Society is digitally intoxicated and people don't even have time to connect with themselves. They're on their phones all day. They even have an abhorrence of boredom, an aversion to loneliness, not knowing that boredom and mild loneliness are important to unleash creativity and to make you become the author of your own story.

Boredom and loneliness are solemn moments for you to delve into yourself. Of course, atrocious boredom and toxic loneliness are terrible, but it's important to know: if society abandons you, loneliness is bearable; But if you abandon yourself, it is intolerable!

As final words, Dr. Augusto Cury left: "I hope that you learn to have self-control in this highly stressful society and if you train your "I" to have self-control, don't be afraid to fail. If you fail, relax. Don't be afraid to cry and if you do, use the tears as commas, so that you write the most important chapters of your story in the most difficult moments of your life!"

Dr. Augusto Cury is a psychiatrist, researcher and writer. He is the author of the Theory of Multifocal Intelligence, which analyzes the process of constructing thoughts, the functioning of the human mind and the strategies for achieving a free and healthy mind. His books on applied psychology and social-emotional education are published in more than 70 countries, in several languages, with more than 30 million copies sold in Brazil alone. The bestseller "The Dream Seller" became a movie and was released in theaters in 2016. Dr. Augusto Cury achieved national and international recognition, becoming the most read author of the last decade, according to the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo and the magazines Veja and IstoÉ.