Frederik Journals

If you’re an oh I never cry kind of person, if nothing seems to touch you or move you that deeply, this is for you.

Few things might be more impactful — and more challenging — than giving space to what has been avoided for a long, long time.

Because that was me. With the exception of brief outbursts, I didn’t allow myself a lot of emotions. It was difficult (and expensive!?) to re-connect with my heart and body. Every week I stepped into a bland office with tired carpets and waited for the dreaded words: “How does that make you feel?”

I was not feeling anything.

If anything, my body felt empty. There was a void. And tension. Like someone holding a door from bursting open.

The head was my safe space. I wanted to think about my life, not feel it. Kudos to my therapist who gently prodded me back to my body when I tried to divert and tell a story.

Anger might have been the hardest to access.

Hot flashing anger. Boiling anger. Stewing anger. Even today, anger is a tough one. I still push it away. If I get angry, I may feel a short pull, a hint at something happening. Then it gets bottled up and placed in the toxic waste storage somewhere down in my guts. Anger does not feel safe.

I had to learn, like a toddler, that experiencing anger was not the same as being an angry person. I had to teach myself not to feel guilty for anger simply arising. I had to grasp that being angry at someone I loved did not threaten to break our bond.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to act from a place of anger. I don’t want my life to be filled with anger. No, like all feelings and thoughts, it arises and vanishes. The anger burns off. The better my overall state, the more centered I am, the less interesting it is. (This was where meditation changed my life profoundly.) But the self-denial, I found, leads to a dissociated existence, to a disconnect from my truth.

It creates tension and numbness in my body. It leads to behavior that is hard to explain — like suddenly avoiding a person or place. It leads to the willful destruction of the gift of time to experience distraction and release.

Then I climb down the ladder and open the anger barrel. Ah. That’s what’s going on…

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ― Carl Jung

I have found different ways to access that space. What seems to work best is movement, movement that lets the body express and release without the mind as an intermediary. Workouts, dance, TRE, breathwork all seem effective. And, yes, even writing — which has the advantage of being available for free to anyone at any time (well, provided some privacy).

It’s dead simple, but not easy.

I learned this technique from the books of the late Dr. John Sarno (I shared it here with other notes on journaling). Years ago, Jim O’Shaughnessy mentioned Sarno to me, but I was not listening. Sarno focused on chronic pain, particularly back pain, and that was not a major issue for me.

Last year, one of my stepbrothers used Sarno’s method to overcome long COVID. The way he described it was very moving, as if he was dropping the weights he had been carrying by communing with his heart. It blew my mind.

Strange as it may seem, people with an unconscious psychological need for symptoms tend to develop a disorder that is well known, like back pain, hay fever, or eczema. — The Divided Mind

“John Sarno was a rehabilitation-medicine specialist at N.Y.U.,” writes Sam Dolnick at the New York Times. A doctor frustrated with his tools which didn’t seem to be effective. His encounter with psychology made him see “his own physical ailments — an irritable stomach, itchy skin, shrieking headaches — as manifestations of his emotional well-being.” Mind and body appeared to him as one system and chronic pain often as a psychosomatic phenomenon — a physical symptom caused by psychological factors (he called it TMS).

I don’t know whether he is right about pain being a ‘distraction’ but I don’t doubt the connection between mental and physical health.

As with Freud’s patients, I found that my patients’ physical symptoms were the direct result of strong feelings repressed in the unconscious. — The Mindbody Prescription

The medical community thought Sarno, who called himself ‘a heretic’, went too far. “Because his colleagues wouldn’t listen,” writes Dolnick, “he bypassed the journals and instead wrote best-selling books, conversational in tone, that detailed the link he saw between emotional distress and physical pain; he sold more than a million copies.”

I didn’t suffer from chronic pain, but I was familiar with the issue of bottled-up emotions. How else could they manifest? What issues was I risking down the road?

Sarno focused on rage perhaps because that was his predicament (“I am furious!” he said. “It’s there all the time! I’m in a rage!”). What about the other stuff we push away? The sorrow, shame, guilt, envy, fear, all the hurt and judgment and nasty stuff we would rather avoid.

What if Sarno didn’t go far enough?

“It is perfectly acceptable to have a physical problem in our culture, but people tend to shy away from anything that has to do with the emotions.” — Healing Back Pain

I wanted to know the truth about how I felt — the embodied truth, not the story my mind would come up with. And I wanted to drop the weight. I needed to know how Sarno had helped people.

For some patients, knowledge was enough. That’s why Sarno’s books analyze the condition, the treatment methods, and (Freudian) psychology. Unfortunately, Sarno buried a key idea among his many pages (kudos to his student Nicole Sachs for re-surfacing it): if knowing about the connection between psyche and body is not enough, you can choose to face and release whatever you are holding.

The best description I’ve found is in the chapter ‘treatment’ in The Divided Mind. Barely five pages of a “daily study program.” It’s that simple.

* Make three lists with all the sources of your emotional pain:

* One list for your past: “Anger, hurt, emotional pain, and sadness generated in childhood will stay with you all your life because there is no such thing as time in the unconscious.”

* One list for your current life circumstances: “List all the pressures in your life, since they all contribute to your inner rage.”

* And one list for your personality traits, whatever contributes “to the internal emotional pain and anger.” For example: being a people pleaser, self-critical, a perfectionist, very driven, shy, self-sacrificing etc. — “The child in our unconscious doesn’t care about anyone but itself and gets angry at the pressures to be perfect and good.”

* Set aside time and “write an essay, the longer the better, about each item on your list. This will force you to focus in depth on the emotional things of importance in your life.” I called it write Until the Heart Catches.

* Ideally, do this daily. More realistically, commit to it as an experiment, say for a month, then regularly to check in.

This is done by hand. With pen and paper. I know you all want to type it and have AI analyze it. Or speak it into a transcription app and avoid typing altogether. That may be effective in different ways, but in this what matters is not insight but to have an emotional experience that was previously avoided.

The point of the pen is movement. We need to move from head to body and stay with discomfort. We need to see the words take shape and be able to stare at them. We need to feel the emotional charge. It’s work. If you stay at the level of trivial chatter, your experience will likewise be trivial.

Yes, your hand may cramp in the beginning. It gets better.

Yes, it may be illegible. That does not matter. We’re not writing to share.

This is about healing, growing, and a chance to get closer to your essence.

What happens on that page is for your eyes only. It may be effective to destroy the pages later on. I haven’t tried that yet, but I know it can be useful to ‘release’ written statements — say a letter of forgiveness — to the ocean, fire etc.

Occasionally, this writing yields creative sparks. Ideas and insights, songs and poetry, maybe waiting for you. There is gold in your shadow. When that happens, you just write the spark up somewhere else. Keep the mindbody writing between yourself and the universe.

A few things I’ve learned doing this many times:

* Turn off the phone. Practice discipline. You may feel the urge to go to the kitchen, the bathroom, to text someone, check the apps, to do work, to do anything but experience what has been avoided for so long.

* Set a timer. It can take a while to go deep. I often start at the level of story with my gaze outward (“my problem is [person] is [doing]”). Give yourself enough space to go beyond the surface. Keep writing until you find the trail of feeling, then discomfort. Look for I feel [X] and, frankly, I’d rather not…

* Stay with the body. The mind will try to distract you. For the purpose of this exercise what happened is irrelevant. The story does not matter. All that matters is whether you can give yourself permission to feel what your unconscious is holding.

* Privacy. This is about experiencing emotions that don’t feel safe to feel, let alone express around others. Even with my therapists and my IFS coach I censored myself. The more privacy you have for this work, the better.

* Mindbody experience. I’ve broken pens, punched through pages, sobbed, cried, yelled, and cursed. I tend to shift back and forth between writing auf deutsch and in English. Many of my pages are illegible. Sometimes the letters get very large, at other times the writing is tiny. Allow yourself a full body experience. Give your parts the space to express themselves the way they want to.

* Try speaking. Try reading the emotionally difficult/juicy stuff out loud. Don’t think or dictate but rather let the hand write and then say out loud what appeared.

* Let go. We’re not trying to make this our reality. The goal is to visit the dragon’s cave and return to the village. Say what needs to be said, cry if you feel like crying, and when you’re done, close the notebook and leave it behind on the page.

* End with soothing. Things might get loud and wild and you might feel raw and upset after. Give yourself time to calm down and comfort yourself. I’m not joking. Don’t do this and hop on a work call right after.

* Find a couple of self-care rituals as rewards for doing the work — a walk in nature, yoga nidra, a nap, hot bath, soothing music or guided meditation..

* Add self-love and forgiveness. We’re looking to meet ourselves on the page as honestly as we can. You might bump into shadow that can be difficult to face. That’s valuable, but we also need to make sure we don’t stay in that mindset. Aside from soothing self-care, end with an affirmation to love and forgive yourself. Perhaps find someone to share that love with. Share a hug.

* The weirder this sounds, the more important it is. If everything love and forgiveness gives you the ick, try something like Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It by Kamal Ravikant.

I’ve used mindbody writing for life circumstances like money or writing, for relationship and family issues, for hang-ups like my avoidance of intimacy, and for the big leaps I have not allowed myself. I could easily find dozens more for which I haven’t explored with it yet.

Like my reluctance to ask for help. Gotta be independent! Can’t rely on others… oh. Is that so. I wonder what feelings are hiding in that space. Or my teeth clenched at night. I wonder what wants to be expressed there…

Still, I’ve found it very effective already. I feel lighter and less tense. My story has been changing. I find peace and bliss on the other side of broken pens and mad pages.

It is simply one way I meet my darkness and stuckness to release it, one page at a time.

Maybe it’s time to start the work?

I hope this helps.

— Frederik

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I talk to author, trader, and DJ Jared Dillian about writing, lives, and his new collection of short stories: Night Moves.

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My conversation with Lyn Alden, author of Broken Money.

Twitter: @LynAldenContact

Disclaimer: I write and podcast for entertainment purposes only. This is not investment advice.

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I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Jonny Miller, writer, podcaster, and breathwork facilitator. Jonny wrote some of my favorite recent pieces, including the amazing operating manual for the nervous system and How to Pay Off Your Emotional Debt. Jonny also puts together terrific small wikis like this one on emotional resilience, the ‘spiritual MBA’ and Somalist (‘a global directory of somatic practitioners + trauma-aware bodyworkers’).

We talked about breathwork and its benefits and risks (including Wim Hof), ‘state over story’ and the ability to change the state of your own nervous system, Jonny’s own journey, the $55,000 he spent exploring various modalities and experiences to find the most impactful ideas (including super interesting stuff like darkness meditation), emotional debt, repressed anger, and men’s work.

In the context of a breathwork journey, incomplete reflexes will rise to the surface and they will be felt. The body will move in a certain way, and then there'll be relaxation. It's almost like layers of an onion that keep on unpeeling. The more we become comfortable with feeling the full spectrum of emotions, the more that these deeper pieces start to arise.

We tend to focus on the outer journey, the how of success. How to spot opportunities, how to invest, how to build a business. Mastering the inner journey is equally important: both understanding your why and having the tools and practices to master the stress and setbacks along the way. That’s one of the lessons of the maze. Remember: great investors are survivors and experts at cultivating resilience.

We have what I think of as this Cartesian hangover, almost going back to Descartes, of this mind-body dualism. I think the rational brain, the intellect, the kind of left-hemispheric way of perceiving the world has been very prioritized and almost worshiped in our culture.

Controlling your mind, mastering your mind, mindfulness, all of these things have been really, really emphasized. I think what is starting to happen is the pendulum swinging back to, ‘oh no, there is no actual distinction between the brain and the nervous system.’

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I had a chance to interview William Duggan, professor at Columbia Business School and author of Strategic Intuition. He explained how Kendo led him to his big idea, the difference between creative/strategic intuition and expert intuition (with examples including Howard Schultz, Henry Ford, and Elizabeth Holmes), and the roles of memory, passion, and presence of mind.

Quotes that stuck with me:

There is no now. Everything is history. … There is no other guide to the future.

You don't have to have the passion before you have the idea. The idea gives you the passion. Oh great, this is what I'm gonna do.

How do you judge an idea when you have it? Is it based on real knowledge and experience? Real pieces of the puzzle. That's how you judge.

The moment you step into the battle, you forget everything. Meaning that you let your brain make the correct connections. That's the presence of mind, where your mind is clear. In martial arts, it's very fast, but it's really the same idea. It's to clear your mind and let your brain make its own connections, according to the situation and the circumstances.

A lot of people think Henry Ford invented the assembly line. He did not. The assembly line was invented a hundred years before, at the start of the Industrial Revolution. He invented a certain kind of assembly line, meaning he put together the old assembly line with something new.

I like to distinguish the natural flash of insight … Steve Jobs was good at it. He'd search and search and search and then something would strike him. I don't know if you know about the origin of Starbucks. Howard Schultz was working for a coffee company, high quality coffee, where you fill up your bag and take the coffee beans home. He goes to Milan for the first time in his life and he sees the coffee bar and he says, oh, okay, well we should clearly convert all our stores into that.

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Hello everyone,

I had the pleasure of chatting with Jared Dillian, author of The Daily Dirtnap and We're Gonna Get Those B******s, about his new book Those B******s. Years ago, I read his book Street Freak and I fondly remembered his wit, candor, depth of introspection, and keen eye for the antics of markets.

Those B******s is a collection of Jared’s essays on life, death, meaning, friendship, marriage, luck, ambition, suicide, and much in between (including a few great bits on markets and finance). It’s refreshingly honest and fun and led to a lot of reflection.

In our conversation we touched on writing and finding your voice, escaping the caterpillar pillar, how markets are ruled by fear, being the guy who knows a guy, mental health and the power of writing, making meaningful memories, the right temperament for markets, why people don’t change, and why you should ask people if they are lucky.

A few highlights from the conversation:

A lot of people think that markets sort of oscillate between fear and greed, right? But it really isn't fear and greed. It's fear and fear. It's all fear, right? Greed is fear of not getting something that you want. So working in the markets is, if you have any background in psychology, it's a very depressing place because the markets are filled with fearful people, like acting based on fear. But the thing is that it's very predictable. People behave in very predictable ways. So that's been my thesis about markets all along.

I like to know lots and lots of people. Now, having a newsletter has been the perfect way to do that because a lot of times if I have a question about like air conditioning, I can put it in my newsletter and I get 20 responses. I know somebody who owns an HVAC company. I know people in all different kinds of industries and if I ever need help, I can reach out to them. I like to call that having a big world. I like to have a big world. I like to know lots of people. That's just my personal philosophy.

I learned that people had similar experiences, they just would never talk about it. There are things you cannot talk about in polite conversation, but you can do it with words, you can do it on the page and you can bring people into this world. And that's the magic of it. My Substack is like a safe space for people to read this stuff and think about these issues, really the only place you can talk about 'em is with a therapist or something like that.

The top five memories piece came from the show Lost. There's a character named Charlie and he has a premonition that he's going to die. He knows exactly when it's going to happen. And so he sits down and he starts thinking of his top five memories of all time.

And it got me thinking like, that's actually a really good exercise. Like what are your top five memories of all time? I think one of mine was marching band in high school. One of mine was DJing. Really your goal in life should be to make more of those top five memories and keep doing that over and over again.

I had a trade that made 15 million bucks. That was a great trade. But it doesn't make my list of top five memories, because top five memories are about relationships and achievement and things like that. Lehman was a great place to work, but ultimately that's not what we're here on earth for.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.frederikjournals.com/subscribe

Hello everyone,

I had the pleasure of chatting with Jared Dillian, author of The Daily Dirtnap and We're Gonna Get Those B******s, about his new book Those B******s. Years ago, I read his book Street Freak and I fondly remembered his wit, candor, depth of introspection, and keen eye for the antics of markets.

Those B******s is a collection of Jared’s essays on life, death, meaning, friendship, marriage, luck, ambition, suicide, and much in between (including a few great bits on markets and finance). It’s refreshingly honest and fun and led to a lot of reflection. For a taste of Jared’s writing check out his excellent recent essay People Don't Change:

People don’t change, until they do. What has to happen is that person has to hit bottom. Bottoms vary for different people—people with a high bottom get to keep their jobs and spouses. People with a low bottom have to lose everything before they learn.

In our conversation we touched on writing and finding your voice, escaping the caterpillar pillar, how markets are ruled by fear, being the guy who knows a guy, mental health and the power of writing, making meaningful memories, the right temperament for markets, why people don’t change, and why you should ask people if they are lucky.

Enjoy,

Frederik

You can listen to our conversation on Spotify, Apple, anchor (and via RSS).

A few highlights from the conversation:

A lot of people think that markets sort of oscillate between fear and greed, right? But it really isn't fear and greed. It's fear and fear. It's all fear, right? Greed is fear of not getting something that you want. So working in the markets is, if you have any background in psychology, it's a very depressing place because the markets are filled with fearful people, like acting based on fear.

But the thing is that it's very predictable. People behave in very predictable ways. So that's been my thesis about markets all along.

I like to know lots and lots of people. Now, having a newsletter has been the perfect way to do that because a lot of times if I have a question about like air conditioning, I can put it in my newsletter and I get 20 responses. I know somebody who owns an HVAC company. I know people in all different kinds of industries and if I ever need help, I can reach out to them. I like to call that having a big world. I like to have a big world. I like to know lots of people. That's just my personal philosophy.

I learned that people had similar experiences, they just would never talk about it. There are things you cannot talk about in polite conversation, but you can do it with words, you can do it on the page and you can bring people into this world. And that's the magic of it. My Substack is like a safe space for people to read this stuff and think about these issues, really the only place you can talk about 'em is with a therapist or something like that.

The ‘top five memories’ piece came from the show Lost. There's a character named Charlie and he has a premonition that he's going to die. He knows exactly when it's going to happen. And so he sits down and he starts thinking of his top five memories of all time.

And it got me thinking like, that's actually a really good exercise. Like what are your top five memories of all time? I think one of mine was marching band in high school. One of mine was DJing. Really your goal in life should be to make more of those top five memories and keep doing that over and over again.

I had a trade that made 15 million bucks. That was a great trade. But it doesn't make my list of top five memories, because top five memories are about relationships and achievement and things like that. Lehman was a great place to work, but ultimately that's not what we're here on earth for.

A few quotes from Those B******s:

As a trader you must have the memory of a goldfish. You f**k something up, you clean up the mess, and move onto the next trade. There is always another trade.

This is something they teach professional athletes. It was said that Derek Jeter was the best at doing this- he did not dwell in the past. He had absolutely no memory, and was out there hacking at his next time up at the plate. We all have slumps. It's about your ability to shake it off, rub some dirt on it, and get back in the game.

If you are to be successful, pray that it happens very slowly. Peaking early isn't just true in high school--it's broadly true throughout life. You see this a lot on Wall Street. Good performance is difficult to sustain over any period of time. Early success leads to hubris which leads to mistakes.

After a few successively smaller fund launches, you end up as a CFP in Evanston, Illinois. I was 34 years old at Lehman Brothers and still a vice president. A 34-year-old VP. Many people are surprised to hear that. Well, most of the guys I worked with are now selling insurance.

I'm not a snob and I don't look down on people, but I did resent people dumber than me getting paid more for work that required less technical sophistication. But as time has gone by, I've learned ... that a bonus has practically zero correlation with performance. Once you learn that, life gets a lot easier.

Finance is depraved. The further away it gets in the rear-view mirror, the worse it looks. I like investing. I like the intellectual challenge, I like taking risk- but I am allergic to b******t. And there is more b******t than ever on Wall Street.

I like to say that when you work in finance, you understand how the world works. The average person sees used car prices rising, and has no idea why. The financier knows. You become conversant in politics, geopolitics, raw materials production, trade, the FDA approval process, venture capital, private equity, and many other things. In short, you become much more worldly. A kid from Staten Island can get hired on a desk and within a few years, acquire enough sophistication to carry on an intelligent conversation with most world leaders.

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"What first led me to Wall Street was a desire to make money so I could buy great art and support artists. What I didn't know when I started is that working on Wall Street can be a fascinating art in itself and one for which I was almost immediately suited." — Roy Neuberger

DISCLAIMER. I write and podcast for entertainment purposes only. None of this is investment advice and any information contained in my work should not be relied on to make investment decisions. Do your own work and seek your own financial, tax, and legal advice before making any investment decisions.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.frederikjournals.com/subscribe

Disclaimer: None of this is investment advice. I write and podcast for entertainment purposes only and this conversation reflects our personal opinions. It should not be relied on to make investment decisions. Do your own work and seek your own financial, tax, and legal advice before making any investment decisions. Also see Speedwell’s Disclaimer.

Drew and I talked about Meta, Constellation, Floor & Decor, Restoration Hardware, and his research and writing process. I will share excerpts from the conversation and Drew's work on the substack.

Drew Cohen writes at Speedwell Research and is a Portfolio Manager at Davidson Kahn Capital Management. Prior to Davidson Kahn, Drew was at Capital Group, where he helped managed $5B+ of AUM. Prior to his role at Capital Group, he worked at Goldman Sachs in New York in their Global Investment Research division.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.frederikjournals.com/subscribe