Your Mind Is Being Hijacked — Here’s What to Do!
- Bernard Beitman, MD
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
How modern thinking may be pulling us away from direct experience, with Richard Petty.
What if one of the biggest problems facing humanity is happening inside our own minds?
In this episode of Connecting with Coincidence, Bernard Beitman talks with psychiatrist Richard Petty about a powerful imbalance in modern life. We rely heavily on analytical thinking, but in the process, we may be losing touch with direct experience, the body, and the living world around us.
Petty argues that when the mind becomes too dominated by analysis, we start living in abstractions. We think about life more than we actually experience it.
That disconnection can affect not just personal well-being, but the future of humanity itself. If we are cut off from reality, from nature, from embodied awareness, and from deeper meaning, it becomes much harder to respond wisely to the crises around us.
Bernard and Richard explore what it means to come back into balance. Their conversation touches on mind, meaning, spirituality, resilience, and the ways modern people can reconnect with a more grounded way of being.
Richard Petty brings a rare mix of backgrounds to this discussion. He trained in medicine, biochemistry, and cell biology before moving into psychiatry. He also studied psychotherapy, acupuncture, and qigong, combining scientific training with a deep interest in consciousness and healing.
The result is a conversation that feels both timely and timeless. It asks a simple but profound question: Are we fully living in reality, or are we trapped in our thoughts about it?
Meet Richard now on the Connecting with Coincidence podcast:
About Dr. Richard Petty
Dr. Richard G. Petty graduated in medicine from the Royal London Hospital Medical College, University of London. While a student, developed a deep and abiding interest in the work of Carl Jung and spent two years training in psychotherapy. After graduation, he also obtained a Master’s Degree in Biochemistry, a doctorate in cell biology and trained in acupuncture and qigong in England and then in China and the USA.
He practiced, researched and taught internal medicine, endocrinology and metabolic medicine for 14 years, before psychiatric training at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospitals, London and a research Fellowship in Neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, Baltimore.
Seven years on the Faculty of the University of Pennsylvania and has been a visiting Professor, Guest Lecturer, Keynote Speaker and workshop leader on every continent. Except Antarctica; teaching wellbeing, healthy aging, spirituality and methods for increasing energy and resilience.
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