Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Eric from the one you feed. Happy
Speaker 1: Holidays to you. Whether you enjoy them or you hate them,
Speaker 1: I hope you're making the best of them. As a
Speaker 1: holiday gift and as preparation for the new year, we
Speaker 1: are rereleasing seven of the older episodes. If you're new
Speaker 1: to the show, all these episodes are over a year old,
Speaker 1: so you may not have heard these yet if you've
Speaker 1: only been listening for a year. I picked the episodes
Speaker 1: because either a I think it's a really great episode
Speaker 1: or B I think it talks about behavior change, which
Speaker 1: we're heading into the new year, and that's on a
Speaker 1: lot of people's mind. Speaking of which, we are going
Speaker 1: to try something this new year. We're going to try
Speaker 1: the first one You Feed Group Transformation program. It will
Speaker 1: be a hundred dollars for a month. We're gonna limit
Speaker 1: it to ten people. We will meet online four times
Speaker 1: that month, will discuss tips and tricks and different ways
Speaker 1: to ensure that you stay on track behavior wise. You'll
Speaker 1: be able to ask questions of me, and we'll do
Speaker 1: some things where you're paired up as a group so
Speaker 1: that you can get some support outside of the calls
Speaker 1: as well to make sure you get the new year
Speaker 1: off to a great start. So if you're interested, just
Speaker 1: send an email to me Eric at one you feed
Speaker 1: dot net. I hope you enjoy these episodes. I listened
Speaker 1: back to a couple of them, and um, let's just
Speaker 1: leave it at we are getting better at what we do.
Speaker 1: In the very first one, I sound very nervous and
Speaker 1: I was so. Anyway, it's still a great interview. Enjoy these,
Speaker 1: have a happy new year. Thank you for listening, and
Speaker 1: we will talk to you soon. Bye. What I keep
Speaker 1: discovering these days is that I have to run towards
Speaker 1: this year, and I actually have to sit with my anger,
Speaker 1: and I actually have to look my envy right in
Speaker 1: the eye, and if I can be still with it,
Speaker 1: it eventually transforms into something beautiful. Yeah, welcome to the
Speaker 1: one you feed throughout time. Great tinkers have recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of the thoughts we have quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest today is glenn and Melton Doyle, found or
Speaker 1: of momastery dot com and the author of the New
Speaker 1: York Times bestseller carry On Warrior Thoughts of Life Unarmed.
Speaker 1: In the book, Glennon tells her story of being a
Speaker 1: recovering alcoholic addict and beliemic in a collection of confessional
Speaker 1: essays that lay bare the dark secrets of her past
Speaker 1: while maintaining a welcoming, inclusive, and hopeful tone about her
Speaker 1: current life as a mother of three. Her work has
Speaker 1: been featured on The Today Show, Parents Magazine, and Reader's Digest.
Speaker 1: Here's the interview. Before we get started with the interview,
Speaker 1: I wanted to remind you that I am offering some
Speaker 1: one on one sessions. Confucius said that all men's natures
Speaker 1: are alike, it is their habits that separate them. So
Speaker 1: if you're looking for some help with your behavior, and
Speaker 1: habits to help you build a better life. Send me
Speaker 1: an email to Eric at one you feed dot net. Thanks,
Speaker 1: and here's the interview. Hi Glenn, and welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. Yeah, I appreciate you taken
Speaker 1: the time to talk with us. So our podcast is
Speaker 1: called The One You Feed, and it's based on the
Speaker 1: parable The Two Wolves, where there's a grandfather who's talking
Speaker 1: with his grandson and he says, in life, there are
Speaker 1: two wolves inside of us. What is a good wolf
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and
Speaker 1: he thinks about it for a second, and he looks
Speaker 1: up at his grandfather and he says, but, grandfather, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Well. The interesting thing is,
Speaker 1: my dad used to tell me that story all the time. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it kind of gives me the chills to hear
Speaker 1: it again. I mean, I don't parable means something different?
Speaker 1: To me today, as I hear it, I think then
Speaker 1: it always has before. I mean, I've always understood that
Speaker 1: to to mean that we are to run towards um,
Speaker 1: the good and the interesting thing that that I keep
Speaker 1: learning the hard way and over and over again is
Speaker 1: for me, um, the good stuff. It's almost like I
Speaker 1: have to get through the bad wolves to get to
Speaker 1: the good stuff. Like I can't just run one way
Speaker 1: or another. Like for me, you know, I started this
Speaker 1: whole journey. I kind of got lost to addiction when
Speaker 1: I was very very young, when I was eight years old,
Speaker 1: and and then it morphed. I was a loss to
Speaker 1: foot addiction, and then that morphed into some other addictions,
Speaker 1: and I didn't get out of it until I was
Speaker 1: twenty six. UM. And so this whole past eleven years
Speaker 1: has been kind of trying to unravel all of that
Speaker 1: and figure out just what happened. And I really really
Speaker 1: believe that it all comes down to the fact that
Speaker 1: I was uncomfortable with pain, that I was so terrified
Speaker 1: of the hard parts of life, um, you know, my
Speaker 1: own anger and sensitivity and fear, UM, that I felt
Speaker 1: like I had to numb it all, that I just
Speaker 1: had to numb it all away and run from it.
Speaker 1: And I ran from it for decades. And what I
Speaker 1: keep discovering these days is that I have to run
Speaker 1: towards the fear, and I actually have to sit with
Speaker 1: my anger, and I actually have to look my envy
Speaker 1: right in the eye, and if I can be still
Speaker 1: with it, it eventually transforms into something beautiful. You know.
Speaker 1: I just envy is on that list. And I just
Speaker 1: spent two hours writing about envy today and how oh gosh,
Speaker 1: as a creative person, envy can just eat you alive. Um.
Speaker 1: But I actually have found when I don't run from it, right,
Speaker 1: when I actually run towards that wolf of envy and
Speaker 1: just admit that I'm envious and sit with it for
Speaker 1: a while, I find these beautiful gifts inside of envy. Like,
Speaker 1: for example, when I was just drinking myself to death,
Speaker 1: I was so incredibly envious of writers, to the point
Speaker 1: where if somebody gave me a good book and said
Speaker 1: it was beautiful, I would not read it because I
Speaker 1: was too just brokenhearted by this envy for this writer.
Speaker 1: And now I know that, you know, I feel like
Speaker 1: we're envious of people who are already doing what we
Speaker 1: were made to do. And so if we kind of
Speaker 1: use that wolf, that envy wolf as sort of a
Speaker 1: arrow pointing us towards um, you know, maybe our destiny.
Speaker 1: That's what a beautiful thing that can come out of
Speaker 1: staring that wolf down. So I don't know now, I
Speaker 1: see it as like I gotta get I gotta face
Speaker 1: those those bad wolves just so I can get to
Speaker 1: the good ones. I explore on the show all the time.
Speaker 1: Some of those dichotomy is really around UM. And you know,
Speaker 1: your story is very resonant to me. I'm recovering how
Speaker 1: coholic and addict and uh, you know, I started into
Speaker 1: being sort of troubled very early in life. You know,
Speaker 1: by the time I was probably about the age you describe,
Speaker 1: I had, you know, challenges that were going I mean
Speaker 1: I wasn't you know, like kicking back a six pack
Speaker 1: of booze at at nine, But I was clear, you know,
Speaker 1: I could look back and go, well, there were some
Speaker 1: things that really weren't working out well there. And you
Speaker 1: talk about how I've heard you say that you around
Speaker 1: that age you started to feel very uncomfortable and you
Speaker 1: lost yourself to pretending an addiction. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that that we talked about on the show a lot,
Speaker 1: and I'm always interested in is the difference, you know,
Speaker 1: that line between positive thinking and delusion, like when when
Speaker 1: are we feeling what we need to feel in dealing
Speaker 1: with it, and when are we um So that's so
Speaker 1: one extreme is to sort of do that, is to
Speaker 1: is to wallow in our our feelings. And then the
Speaker 1: other extreme is to deny that that they're they're they're
Speaker 1: at all and the world's a wonderful place. And if
Speaker 1: feels like somewhere in between those two things is the
Speaker 1: place to be. And it can be really challenging to
Speaker 1: find that right balance, at least for me. But don't
Speaker 1: you find Yeah, so it's like this um continued journey
Speaker 1: of valleys and mountains, right, Like it's you're in a
Speaker 1: valley on a mountain. And but I do think that
Speaker 1: people who won't let themselves experience the agony being in
Speaker 1: the valley also then don't get to experience sort of
Speaker 1: the ecstasy of the mountain moments. I do think that
Speaker 1: there's a sort of a type of person that kind
Speaker 1: of numbs both you know, we call it so I
Speaker 1: call it the word brutiful, like that there's this these
Speaker 1: parts of life that are so so brutal and um,
Speaker 1: and they are also beautiful, you know, and that that
Speaker 1: you know, marriage, parenting, recovery, health, all of these parts
Speaker 1: of life, you know. I just had an experience recently
Speaker 1: where somebody asked me, tell me what talk about what
Speaker 1: the word brutiful means. I am, my sister said a baby. Um.
Speaker 1: And the night before she had the baby, we found
Speaker 1: out that my grandmother was dying, and so I had
Speaker 1: flew to Virginia. My sister and I are in several boats,
Speaker 1: extremely close, and so I flew to Virginia and I
Speaker 1: was holding her baby and she named the baby Alice,
Speaker 1: after my grandmother. So I'm holding this brand new, a
Speaker 1: little thing. And then that night I get on a plane,
Speaker 1: I fly to Ohio and there I am in the
Speaker 1: nursing home and I'm holding my grandmother Alice's hand, and
Speaker 1: the last thing she says to me is take care
Speaker 1: of my baby Alice. And I mean, just within twenty
Speaker 1: four hours, the most one of the most beautiful experiences
Speaker 1: and then one of the most brutal, and I just
Speaker 1: felt both. I just felt both so intensely, and it
Speaker 1: was so hard. It was just the hardest day, but
Speaker 1: I was so grateful because I just felt human, you know,
Speaker 1: like I've numbered those feelings for so long, because I
Speaker 1: felt like I couldn't handle them, like the pain would
Speaker 1: be too much and the duty would be too much.
Speaker 1: And so to be fully present for something so beautiful
Speaker 1: and for something so brutal um in twenty four period
Speaker 1: just felt like victory to me. It's so like I'm
Speaker 1: doing this human thing. I've been doing it, you know.
Speaker 1: Um So, I don't know I was. I was at
Speaker 1: this uh my marriage sort of just imploded two years
Speaker 1: ago and we're working our way back um to some
Speaker 1: honesty and health and some good stuff right now. But
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks after the implosion, I was at
Speaker 1: this grocery store checking out, kind of like a zombie,
Speaker 1: and I was in that like depressed moode where I
Speaker 1: hadn't showered for a week and I was really bad,
Speaker 1: and uh, grocery checkout woman asked for my I D
Speaker 1: so I handed it to her and she looked at
Speaker 1: it and she said, oh, Glennan, that's a pretty name.
Speaker 1: What does it mean? And I said, oh, it's an
Speaker 1: Irish name. It means a girl from the valley. And
Speaker 1: then I just started cracking up because I thought, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, that's so ironic, Like, you don't know why
Speaker 1: I'm laughing, but I just figured out that this is
Speaker 1: hilarious because I basically live in the valley and I've
Speaker 1: never put that together before that that's actually my name.
Speaker 1: And so she she started, she just looked very serious,
Speaker 1: and she stopped me and she said, listen, don't knock
Speaker 1: the valleys. She said. Everybody wants to be on the mountaintops,
Speaker 1: but up there the air so thin you can barely breathe,
Speaker 1: and all there is to do is stand still and
Speaker 1: try not to fall. But in the valley, that's where
Speaker 1: the river runs, that's where all the power is. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, that's so beautiful. I felt like I handed
Speaker 1: dis leave this idea and she hand me back this
Speaker 1: whole new identity because the truth is that for me,
Speaker 1: in the valley times of my life, like my addiction
Speaker 1: recovery and during that time of my marriage falling apart,
Speaker 1: the hardest times are sometimes the times where I glimpse
Speaker 1: the most power and beauty. And yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: my goal just to not numb it anymore and just
Speaker 1: sit with it, because pain is a really a harsh,
Speaker 1: horrible teacher, but a really good one, probably the best
Speaker 1: one I've ever encountered. Right, you say, there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of things, and what you just said there a that's
Speaker 1: probably the first chapter in the best wisdom ever dispensed
Speaker 1: in the grocery store chapter of for Sure. Um, but
Speaker 1: you've said before that a broken heart is not the
Speaker 1: end of anything, it's the beginning. Yeah. I just talked
Speaker 1: to my kids about that recently, actually, about how we're
Speaker 1: all well, it's the same idea. I mean, how we're
Speaker 1: all just you know, so scared, holding our hearts so
Speaker 1: so so tight, like you know, they're made of glass,
Speaker 1: and that is if anything hurts our heart, we should
Speaker 1: run from it. My experience is that the opposite is true.
Speaker 1: I mean I I was just with a friend who
Speaker 1: was telling me that, Um, it was so lonely growing
Speaker 1: up that you know, she was one of the kids
Speaker 1: that nobody played with, and um elementary school and then
Speaker 1: bullied in middle school and grew up broken hearted. And
Speaker 1: now she's a mom. And what she does is she
Speaker 1: starts these programs all over the country for kids to
Speaker 1: have these benches where kids who are cheesed can sit
Speaker 1: and find friendships with other kids. And that just got
Speaker 1: me thinking about how every I mean, I get to
Speaker 1: travel a lot because I do a lot of nonprofit work,
Speaker 1: and so I get to meet people who are doing
Speaker 1: really good things to change the world, and I can't
Speaker 1: I really can't think of any of them who when
Speaker 1: I sit down with these incredible leaders who are changing
Speaker 1: the world for people, don't tell me that their passion
Speaker 1: started with their own broken heart. It's always that way,
Speaker 1: but something happened in their life that hurt them, and
Speaker 1: then they used it as fuel to help others with
Speaker 1: the same pain. So I don't know. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: that's another wolf, right, broken heartedness like envy, and if
Speaker 1: we run from it, we could be missing kind of
Speaker 1: a stepping stone to our best life. Well, I think
Speaker 1: the way, the way that I interpret the parable in
Speaker 1: in that way is that it's what we It's what
Speaker 1: we do with all those things, right, It's not about
Speaker 1: just feeling the good or the bad feelings, but how
Speaker 1: do we how do we interact with all those things
Speaker 1: in a in a useful way. But I have a
Speaker 1: question for you about this idea of um, you know,
Speaker 1: broken heart is not the end of anything. It's the
Speaker 1: beginning or that we find our passion and energy from
Speaker 1: our pain. Because I believe that absolutely, because that's certainly
Speaker 1: been my experience. But I also know that there's a
Speaker 1: reason that lots of people numb themselves, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who never find their way back up
Speaker 1: out of that. So what are some of the ways
Speaker 1: that you work with that pain so that it becomes
Speaker 1: transformative instead of being something that turns you bitter or
Speaker 1: permanently shuts you down. What are what are some of
Speaker 1: the things that allow it to become a positive experience? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean for me, I am a words person obviously,
Speaker 1: and I I just there's a word that every time
Speaker 1: I feel really really hurt, and it happened to me today,
Speaker 1: it happens to the other time. But every time I
Speaker 1: feel really really hurt, I have this instinct where I
Speaker 1: want to absolutely it feels like shutting down, Like I
Speaker 1: just want to shut down completely. Um. I want to
Speaker 1: close my computer and never go back up my blog.
Speaker 1: I want to stop writing. I want to circle the wagons.
Speaker 1: I want to quit what I'm doing. I want to
Speaker 1: get hurt. I want to stop, and I just this
Speaker 1: this thing, this words, these words that stay stay open,
Speaker 1: stay open, stay open. The words stay open for me
Speaker 1: are some kind of magical thing. I don't know. Every
Speaker 1: single time that I've been hurt and I have refused
Speaker 1: to lash out, you know, because when we lash out,
Speaker 1: it's just we're deflecting pain. It It's like sometimes I
Speaker 1: feel like pain is like a hot potato, you know,
Speaker 1: like you somebody passes it to us, and we just
Speaker 1: want to quick as quickly as possible, just pass it
Speaker 1: to somebody else, hurt somebody else, and get it out
Speaker 1: of our own hands. And I get that completely. I mean,
Speaker 1: I do that all the time, and I have to
Speaker 1: apologize for it. But when I don't do it, and
Speaker 1: I just force myself to be still, actually have that
Speaker 1: tattoo on my wrist constant reminder just be still in
Speaker 1: it and let this pain turn into something beautiful. It
Speaker 1: always does if I can stay open and let the
Speaker 1: pain sort of. Um, I don't know what it does.
Speaker 1: To tell you the truth, it just morphs into widening
Speaker 1: my heart, I guess. And what is it, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's forgiveness on the other side of it, I don't know.
Speaker 1: What it is on the other side of it. Um,
Speaker 1: But when I sit still with it and don't deflect
Speaker 1: it or not or run from it, I think that's growth.
Speaker 1: Nitty growth is the right word. Yeah. I had a
Speaker 1: friend tonight I was talking to who is feeling kind
Speaker 1: of I guess lonely would be the word. And he said, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm sitting with it now, what what do I
Speaker 1: do next? And I thought that was a really interesting.
Speaker 1: I think the only answer I had was, I guess
Speaker 1: you sit with it more. I'm sure you hear that
Speaker 1: all the time while I've sat with it, and it's
Speaker 1: still it's still here. Yeah. Well, I mean service and
Speaker 1: art are the two things to save me again and again.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't just sit forever. I get that, right,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that in order to well, I'm
Speaker 1: I given um my j others. I'm a completely destructive
Speaker 1: person like that. That's what I did my first half
Speaker 1: of my life, just destroy right. So for me to
Speaker 1: have basically a rule for myself that I'm going to
Speaker 1: do with my feelings now, things that are couldn't instructive
Speaker 1: to me, that's art and service. So you know, when
Speaker 1: I say something magical happens. Usually for me, it's a
Speaker 1: new esa. It's I write something out of that experience
Speaker 1: of sitting with that pain and whatever it taught me,
Speaker 1: and I write something and what comes out of me
Speaker 1: after that experience touches a lot of people, and that
Speaker 1: for me seems like, um, that it was all worth it. Wow.
Speaker 1: I love that art and service. I would say those
Speaker 1: are probably that's probably mine too, if I boiled it down,
Speaker 1: that would be the two constructive ways that I've learned,
Speaker 1: you know, besides feeling the emotion that's the other Those
Speaker 1: are the two other constructive approaches that have worked for me.
Speaker 1: Isn't that interesting? Right? So feeling it and then doing
Speaker 1: something constructive afterwards, I think that's the whole ball game
Speaker 1: for me. I think it's just that over and over
Speaker 1: and over. Yeah. And I think there's one other component
Speaker 1: to it that you talk about a lot. You say
Speaker 1: that the only difference between your life in the past
Speaker 1: and now is that you used to numb your feelings
Speaker 1: and hide, and now you feel your feelings and share.
Speaker 1: And I think there's some element you've You've got that
Speaker 1: other piece, which is and I think that's maybe the
Speaker 1: service element of it, but it's also just the connection
Speaker 1: to other people. It's that not feeling alone element. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: that's it. I mean, that's you know, that's what I
Speaker 1: experienced at me at my meetings the first time when
Speaker 1: I started going to meetings, and I thought, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I thought all of this nastiness inside of me and
Speaker 1: all of the sphere and you know, things are ashamed of.
Speaker 1: I thought this was just me. I thought everyone else
Speaker 1: was fine, and I was living this horrible dark existence inside. So,
Speaker 1: you know, the first time I went to one of
Speaker 1: my meetings and sat around and listened to people telling
Speaker 1: the truth about themselves, I don't know if there's anything
Speaker 1: more wonderful than that, and just hearing the words me too,
Speaker 1: me too. Of those have got do. Some of them
Speaker 1: use freeing words that another human being can hear. They
Speaker 1: are I I remember my memory is so foggy for
Speaker 1: obvious reasons, for so many years, but I remember the
Speaker 1: first time I ever came across a recovery book. It
Speaker 1: was a narcotics anonymous book, and I was still years
Speaker 1: away from getting clean. But I remember I read that
Speaker 1: book and I just sat and sobbed because I had
Speaker 1: never heard anybody describe what was going on inside me,
Speaker 1: and I was like, holy shit, like that is I
Speaker 1: could never have put it into words. I was so
Speaker 1: lost and confused. But when I read that and realized
Speaker 1: that other people felt that way, it was certainly Again,
Speaker 1: it took me a while to get there, but it
Speaker 1: was certainly the beginning for me of recognizing what was happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we don't even need, like you said, like, we don't.
Speaker 1: You don't have to figure myself out. Like that's another
Speaker 1: thing that I've learned, Like people don't even need for me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have this community of people who depend
Speaker 1: on me right now to show up, and that's really
Speaker 1: all they depend on me to do. They don't need
Speaker 1: me to show up and fix anything for them or
Speaker 1: figure out anything. Basically, we just need I don't realized
Speaker 1: a while ago that all we need is witness it.
Speaker 1: We just need to witness for each other. We just
Speaker 1: need to say I see your pain. It's real, Yes
Speaker 1: I see it, and we need somebody else to say
Speaker 1: that same thing for us, and we don't want anybody
Speaker 1: to snatch it away from us, you know, Like I
Speaker 1: think that's another really big mistake we make with each
Speaker 1: other's pain and each other's grief. We we think that
Speaker 1: we have to fix it, or you know, a friend
Speaker 1: tells us about our pain and we just want to
Speaker 1: grab it. You know. It's out of love, I think,
Speaker 1: but we just want to take it from her. And
Speaker 1: and you're so uncomfortable with pain. But I think that
Speaker 1: pain is a you know, it's a gift. It's hotly,
Speaker 1: it's just like joy. I mean, it's it's a human
Speaker 1: um holy there for a purpose. And we don't actually
Speaker 1: need to snatch it from each other. I think we
Speaker 1: just need to say I see it, Yeah, I see it.
Speaker 1: It's real. I feel that too. Isn't this hard? This
Speaker 1: being human together? You had a line that really struck me,
Speaker 1: and I think it's I think it's a useful thing
Speaker 1: to explore, particularly for people who might be wrestling with
Speaker 1: addictions of any different sort. And you said that getting
Speaker 1: sober was like recovering from frostbite. Oh god, yes, and
Speaker 1: the my coral area to that, as I always say,
Speaker 1: you know, getting sober is terrible. Being sober is pretty wonderful,
Speaker 1: but get in there that process is really so painful.
Speaker 1: And but the reason I think that's important to talk
Speaker 1: about is so that people don't confuse what that feels
Speaker 1: like with what being sober is. No, absolutely, oh lord,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the oh the detox those draw I mean,
Speaker 1: you just you just realize every single hour why it
Speaker 1: is you started drinking in the first place. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you're just like, oh, yeah, that's right, all
Speaker 1: of these feeling and all the stuff you've been numbing.
Speaker 1: And but and and then of course, I mean for
Speaker 1: those of us who've been drinking for decades before that,
Speaker 1: then you have to face all we keep drinking so
Speaker 1: we don't have to think about all the awful things
Speaker 1: we've done too. I mean, it is certainly, you know, um, physical,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's addiction, it's real. But it's also
Speaker 1: the second we start getting sober, we have to face
Speaker 1: things that we are are uncomfortable, and messages we've made
Speaker 1: and bridges we've burned, and so, oh, sweet lord, have
Speaker 1: mercy that those first weeks and months and days are horrible.
Speaker 1: And yeah, people need to talk about that because it's
Speaker 1: worse before it gets worse or whatever they like, so rough,
Speaker 1: but I mean, but oh gosh, I just I just
Speaker 1: I don't want people to to let the hard part
Speaker 1: of getting there keep them from how wonderful it is.
Speaker 1: On the other side, I remember, you know, trying to
Speaker 1: get sober and it would be that bad. And I go,
Speaker 1: if this is what sobriety is, forget it right, like yeah,
Speaker 1: you feel like the smart one. Yeah, right exactly. And
Speaker 1: so I it's that it's that that there is really
Speaker 1: another side to that. That is that that that early
Speaker 1: part is is um, it's just not indicative of what
Speaker 1: being sober is. And I think I've stayed sober. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I think I've stayed sober before. Were just remembering how
Speaker 1: hard it is to get there. Sometimes, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: that is enough to do it, isn't it? That is
Speaker 1: enough to keep you sober for sure? Just not wanting
Speaker 1: to go through the first few days again. I feel
Speaker 1: like the battles are things that people get addicted to. Also,
Speaker 1: you know, like my addictions are kind of like flashy
Speaker 1: and like so dangerous that um, they seem so like
Speaker 1: bold and wild and and put me in like a
Speaker 1: different category of addict. But you know, I also feel
Speaker 1: like they run into a lot of people who are
Speaker 1: addicted to unkindness and snark and um, jealousy and guilt
Speaker 1: and false pride. You know, I think that those things,
Speaker 1: especially unkindness, like I think, I think that those things
Speaker 1: can be UM equally destructive in a life and can
Speaker 1: keep people from their best lives and from connection just
Speaker 1: as surely as boots can and drugs can. UM. And
Speaker 1: I think people use those things. I run into people
Speaker 1: all the time who I feel like are using unkindness
Speaker 1: as a pain deflector yeah, so they don't have to
Speaker 1: they get hurt and then they automatically lash out. Um
Speaker 1: they are using They are keeping um, not allowing pain
Speaker 1: to transform them, just like somebody who's addicted to boost does. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of a lot of different
Speaker 1: levels of that. And sometimes I feel grateful for the
Speaker 1: type of addictions that I had, because it certainly led
Speaker 1: me to a place that I had to do something
Speaker 1: about it. There was there was nowhere else to I
Speaker 1: mean it was there was nowhere else to go with it. Really,
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for that all the time. I hear you completely.
Speaker 1: I was doing an interview recently and I said, I
Speaker 1: brought up my addictions, and the reporters said, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't need to go back to that, Like your
Speaker 1: your past, that you're over, that that's in the past,
Speaker 1: let's move on. And so mad and I couldn't figure
Speaker 1: out why I was mad, and then I didn't think
Speaker 1: of anything good to say, so I blew it. But
Speaker 1: later I figured out that I was just so upset
Speaker 1: that somebody would look at that rock bottom moment I had.
Speaker 1: I was on the bathroom floor. I just I was
Speaker 1: holding a pregnancy cast I it was the end of
Speaker 1: twenty years of being lost to student drugs and booze,
Speaker 1: and I was like being faced with this idea that
Speaker 1: I might need to become a mother, and it was
Speaker 1: just wow. And um, I think of that moment as
Speaker 1: the best freaking moment of my life. Like it, I mean,
Speaker 1: I am grateful to God, the universe, who ever was
Speaker 1: in charge around here for forcing me to the ground.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like life just wants you to just
Speaker 1: say uncle already, you know, just wants you to say,
Speaker 1: I can't do it. I can't do it on my own,
Speaker 1: I need help. And some people never get forced to
Speaker 1: their knees like that, right, and so they just spend
Speaker 1: their whole life, which is good enough. And I would
Speaker 1: I would hate that. So I don't know. I'm good.
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful. And the same thing happened with my marriage.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like another rock bottom moment. I was like,
Speaker 1: are you serious, I'm on the freaking bathroom for again.
Speaker 1: Basically it was my marriage, and I start I didn't
Speaker 1: have the perspective to be grateful for it at the moment,
Speaker 1: but I am now like we were forced our marriage
Speaker 1: was forced to the ground and we had to like
Speaker 1: deal with it. Man, we didn't. We didn't get to
Speaker 1: do that. Okay, we'll just be good enough for fifty years, right,
Speaker 1: you know. And I don't think I don't think well,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's possible to to to be grateful
Speaker 1: in those moments. I mean, there's one of that's one
Speaker 1: of those like when you're in a in a bad
Speaker 1: space ands AND's like, well it's a chance to grow.
Speaker 1: You're kind of like I'm going to strangle you, like
Speaker 1: you know, but but it's it's such a true thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's one of those things that's interesting, too
Speaker 1: helpful to try and get to that perspective, but isn't
Speaker 1: usually like to your point, sometimes the only way through
Speaker 1: the pain is really through the pain. Yes, and no
Speaker 1: one's allowed to tell you. No one is allowed to
Speaker 1: try to give you perspective when you're in the middle
Speaker 1: of your pain. That's my rule. Even if everybody knows
Speaker 1: it's all going to be good, and if everybody knows
Speaker 1: it's all happening for a reason, no one's allowed to
Speaker 1: say it until the person who's in the pain says
Speaker 1: it exactly. You use the phrase a lot, just show up.
Speaker 1: But I've been exploring the idea of bringing our whole
Speaker 1: selves to every situation that we end up in. It's
Speaker 1: it's easy, at least for me to bring one person
Speaker 1: to a consulting situation and a different person to playing music,
Speaker 1: or I mean not different people, but only certain elements
Speaker 1: of you know of ourselves, and you have a You said,
Speaker 1: the problem with surface conversations, which it's easy to get
Speaker 1: into and all those situations, is that you stay lonely
Speaker 1: all the time because everybody's surface is different. But if
Speaker 1: you take the chance and a leap of faith and
Speaker 1: you go deeper, you find that at those deeper levels
Speaker 1: were all the same. Yeah, And I think the blessing
Speaker 1: of figuring out of that out is that I was
Speaker 1: forced to because I'm just a raging, raging introvert. Put
Speaker 1: me in a cocktail party with people talking about the weather,
Speaker 1: and I can't handle it. I mean, my husband and
Speaker 1: I actually have these like hand emotions where he tells
Speaker 1: me that stop, like, you know, she just asked about
Speaker 1: you know, the kids. You don't need to talk about
Speaker 1: your depression or whatever, like because I tend to go
Speaker 1: it's like this, you know, this throat. It's like making
Speaker 1: the slash across his throat, like no, Gwennan, We're just
Speaker 1: at the playground. It's yeah, yeah. So I'm learning that
Speaker 1: there are, you know, places that are good for it
Speaker 1: and are not. But I don't know, I find something
Speaker 1: logical between people. Seems to happen when I say the
Speaker 1: thing that I'm really thinking instead of the thing I
Speaker 1: think I'm supposed to say. You know, it's feels like
Speaker 1: going off script, you know. It feels like we all
Speaker 1: have to we're supposed to be. I sometimes feel like
Speaker 1: I'm like in a show, Like I'm on a in
Speaker 1: a play and I already know what everyone's going to say,
Speaker 1: and then I have to say my lines and all
Speaker 1: day it feels kind of crazy to me, like why
Speaker 1: don't we all just say what we're thinking. I like
Speaker 1: that lady in the grocery store. I mean she changed
Speaker 1: my life, that lady who grabbed my I d and
Speaker 1: told me that little story. Like she was going completely
Speaker 1: off script with me. She was just supposed to say,
Speaker 1: here's your bag, haven't I stay? And instead she stopped
Speaker 1: and saw me as a human being and probably saw
Speaker 1: my pain and had something beautiful to offer me, and
Speaker 1: so she did it. Even it was kind of weird
Speaker 1: and truly changed my thinking that day. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: I do. I do think that we stay on the
Speaker 1: surface with people. You know, we talk about our I
Speaker 1: don't know, religion and cars and countertops. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: and that's fine. But I do think that's why were lonely,
Speaker 1: because those like you said, those serface things are all different.
Speaker 1: But I have learned because I tell my story so
Speaker 1: honestly in my books and online. The most by far,
Speaker 1: the most transformative and beautiful and holy part of my
Speaker 1: work is not the writing, and it's not the speaking,
Speaker 1: although I do that a lot. It's the reading and
Speaker 1: the listening because I spend part of my day every
Speaker 1: single day reading letters from women all over the world.
Speaker 1: They write to me, they tell me their stories, like
Speaker 1: their stories, like the stuff they've never told anyone, And
Speaker 1: that daily practice of just I call it just being
Speaker 1: broken hearted. Like I'm just gonna sit here and I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna be broken hearted for you. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: read your story. I'm just gonna hold some space in
Speaker 1: my day and my heart to just hear you. So
Speaker 1: how that we're brave is is interesting. So you started writing,
Speaker 1: you know, you're. One of the things you're known for
Speaker 1: is how just very incredibly honest and upfront you are
Speaker 1: about what's going on in your life. When you started
Speaker 1: doing that, you were I believe you were a school
Speaker 1: teacher at the time. How hard was it for you
Speaker 1: to start doing that? Um, did you wrestle with that
Speaker 1: in the beginning? You probably still do, But did you
Speaker 1: wrestle with that more in the beginning, And did you
Speaker 1: wrestle with it particularly because you're like, well, I'm going
Speaker 1: to go back into this school and you know, I'm
Speaker 1: going to work with these people that have just read
Speaker 1: these incredibly intimate things about me. How did you deal
Speaker 1: with that? Yeah, Like my husband said, well, I hope
Speaker 1: this writing thing works out because you've rendered yourself completely unemployable,
Speaker 1: and I was kind of like, that's awesome. That is awesome.
Speaker 1: I accidentally can never get a job again. That's amazing. Um, well, listen,
Speaker 1: this is how that happened. It actually, so I was
Speaker 1: feeling when I started dis jury being with babies. I
Speaker 1: had so many kids, and I was have been sober
Speaker 1: for um, I guess six years, and I was starting
Speaker 1: to have those moments where I remembered why I started drinking,
Speaker 1: you know, like, oh my gosh, life is so hard,
Speaker 1: and I started to get some shame, and that, of course,
Speaker 1: shame is like the kiss of death for addicts. And
Speaker 1: so I did know that art in service art and service,
Speaker 1: art and service, and so I really did want to
Speaker 1: start writing, but I was lazy about it. So one
Speaker 1: day I was passing the computer and there was this
Speaker 1: um thing going on on Facebook called the Things, and
Speaker 1: so people were just listing quick things about themselves, and
Speaker 1: so I thought, oh, I could do that. I could
Speaker 1: make a quick list. So I made a list, walked away,
Speaker 1: came back to the computer like twenty minutes later, in
Speaker 1: my inbox smashed with so many emails and this list
Speaker 1: had been shared so many times. Well, I of course
Speaker 1: did not read anyone else's list before I did mine.
Speaker 1: So this is okay, let me give you an example
Speaker 1: of my number six, because it's like etched into my
Speaker 1: brain forever. So I'm sweating right now as I'm trying
Speaker 1: as I'm telling you this, because it was so such
Speaker 1: an embarrassing situation. But my number six was I'm a
Speaker 1: recovering food, alcohol, and drug addict, but I still sometimes
Speaker 1: miss a booze in the same twisted way that you
Speaker 1: can miss someone who beats you and repeatedly leaves you
Speaker 1: for dead. Okay, here's my friend Lisa's numbers. My favorite
Speaker 1: boot is hummus. Okay, that's how my entire list was. Everyone,
Speaker 1: all of the all the numbers were like that. No,
Speaker 1: it was. I remember calling my sister and saying, how
Speaker 1: do I get it back? And she she was saying,
Speaker 1: you can't. That's it's out there, it's done. You can
Speaker 1: just step away from the computer. And so it was terrifying.
Speaker 1: But listen, the amazing thing was is that when I
Speaker 1: checked my email box and started reading these emails, there
Speaker 1: were some people that I had known my entire life,
Speaker 1: but who were like introducing themselves to me for the
Speaker 1: first time, they were saying, I just read your list.
Speaker 1: I can't believe it. My sister is so depressed. I
Speaker 1: wan't know how to help her. I just read your list,
Speaker 1: and I'm struggling so much in my marriage. I don't
Speaker 1: know how to talk to it about it. I just
Speaker 1: read your list and my brother is an addict and
Speaker 1: we're so sad. I mean, it was like people telling
Speaker 1: me that, and I was like, I was almost pissed
Speaker 1: because I was like, what are we doing? Why are
Speaker 1: we even calling each other friends? We sit together and
Speaker 1: we're talking about these things that don't matter when you're
Speaker 1: in so much pain and I have the same pain,
Speaker 1: And the next got to be what we're here for
Speaker 1: to talk about this stuff? You know? So I don't
Speaker 1: know that's it was an accident and I didn't really
Speaker 1: understand what I was doing, um when I put that
Speaker 1: list out there. But that was the day that I
Speaker 1: learned maybe this whole like shameless um revealing of myself
Speaker 1: could actually be used to sort of unlock people. It
Speaker 1: absolutely can, and yet still sort of a frightening thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm at a point with the show where
Speaker 1: there's a lot of visibility, but it's not what what
Speaker 1: I do full time. I still do some different consulting work,
Speaker 1: and occasionally I'll walk into a consulting place and people
Speaker 1: start me like, I listen to your podcast. I heard
Speaker 1: of your podcast, And my immediate reaction is oh shit,
Speaker 1: Like you know, like I I wonder what thing I
Speaker 1: said last time, but what's been to your point exactly.
Speaker 1: The amazing thing is that nine times out of ten
Speaker 1: they go on to say something about themselves that I
Speaker 1: never would have known. I would have had no I mean,
Speaker 1: we would have just kept skimming along on the same level.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, now most of these people
Speaker 1: are are saying something to me. I'm like, well, I
Speaker 1: didn't pig that. I I didn't see that, but the
Speaker 1: level of relationship deepens. It's funny that for every nine experiences,
Speaker 1: the one one that is maybe more. I wouldn't even
Speaker 1: go so far as to call them bad, but maybe
Speaker 1: lukewarm is still sometimes enough to for that fear to
Speaker 1: start to seek back in. And it's sort of an
Speaker 1: a conscious going against that consistently and saying nope, I'm
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep bringing who I am to every situation
Speaker 1: that's right, And if we didn't have that one that
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be breakin good point. If everybody was just
Speaker 1: telling us how awesome we were all the time, something
Speaker 1: would be missing in it, right, because there has to
Speaker 1: be a struggle in it. I don't know, there has
Speaker 1: to be sort of there has to be a constant
Speaker 1: overcoming as kind of a truth teller and an artist. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: what's the point? I mean, I think that's part of
Speaker 1: the growth for us is to be is to be
Speaker 1: a little scared and do it anyway. So I've got
Speaker 1: just a couple more things. Although I could probably do
Speaker 1: this for about the next four hours, and I know
Speaker 1: that how long? How long before the kids go to bed?
Speaker 1: How much longer do we have to have? Well, I
Speaker 1: don't even know. I'm not even in the well. I
Speaker 1: think we're trying to avoid avoid you having to put
Speaker 1: them to bed. So no, that's the point here. The
Speaker 1: point here is that we continue until they are sound
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, so then I just get to
Speaker 1: go out and watch. So how long do we have
Speaker 1: to keep this going forever? Balance your desire to do
Speaker 1: that with Chris's desire to go to bed himself here shortly.
Speaker 1: Um so, but speaking to parenting, I haven't known your
Speaker 1: story that long, so, but it seems to me like
Speaker 1: there was a point where you wrote something about not
Speaker 1: always enjoying parent and there was there was some degree
Speaker 1: of controversy about that. But what I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about in that where two things that I thought was
Speaker 1: was really interesting. One was you're not enjoying certain parts
Speaker 1: of parenting, which I think is a completely obvious statement, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not always fun. I can't even you
Speaker 1: would think, so, yeah, it's It's just completely obvious to me.
Speaker 1: But what you talked about was the double guilt about parenting,
Speaker 1: about Okay, I'm not doing it well, which I think
Speaker 1: every parent has, right, I mean, that's at least I
Speaker 1: do on a on a consistent basis, as well as
Speaker 1: now I also feel guilty because I'm not enjoying it enough.
Speaker 1: And and I talk on the show a lot about
Speaker 1: this idea of layering suffering on top of suffering, like
Speaker 1: I feel bad because I feel bad, like I'm depressed,
Speaker 1: and now I feel bad because I shouldn't be depressed.
Speaker 1: And I was really struck by that. So can you
Speaker 1: explain a little bit about what was going on, or
Speaker 1: it probably still does go on with you related to that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it things are a little different from me right
Speaker 1: now because my kids are a little bit older there, twelve,
Speaker 1: nine and six right now. But there was a time
Speaker 1: when they were don't check my math, because I'm awful
Speaker 1: at numbers. I'm a words girl. But they were little.
Speaker 1: They were like five, three and zero, you know, they
Speaker 1: were just tiny, and I was, you know, like a
Speaker 1: friend stark. I was dripping with children, and man, I
Speaker 1: love my kids like everyone does. But there's something about
Speaker 1: parenting young children that just brings the anger. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like you don't even know. I heard somebody say
Speaker 1: once you don't know how angry you are actually you
Speaker 1: have kids, and you don't know how selfish you are
Speaker 1: actually get married. Like I feel that to be true.
Speaker 1: We're not allowed to say that. I don't know why
Speaker 1: I think that. I think we make parenting harder by
Speaker 1: just walking around pretending it's not hard, you know. I
Speaker 1: think the one thing we could do to probably make
Speaker 1: it easier for each other is to admit out loud
Speaker 1: that it gets really freaking hard and lonely and scary. Um,
Speaker 1: not because we don't love them, because we love them
Speaker 1: so much and so we're terrified that we're doing it
Speaker 1: wrong and not giving them what they need and not
Speaker 1: good enough for them. Um. So yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I would be at target, and like I
Speaker 1: don't know if we people with young child them with
Speaker 1: a target. We all with a target, and we I
Speaker 1: would be checking out, and you know, there would be
Speaker 1: like one tanting on the ground. I'd be like moving
Speaker 1: her forward like you do with your luggage and the
Speaker 1: you know, airport line, just like pulling her by her
Speaker 1: jacket forward because she was screaming. And one would you know,
Speaker 1: we have like a bra on his head. And then
Speaker 1: I'll be tangering and you know, I'm just like counting
Speaker 1: the minutes until I get out there. And some woman
Speaker 1: who it was always an older woman would always stop
Speaker 1: me and just say the following words, Oh, honey, I
Speaker 1: just hope you're enjoying every moment because it just goes
Speaker 1: by so fast. And now I understand I get it,
Speaker 1: like I get their nostalgia. I already get the nostalgia.
Speaker 1: And my kids are you know, they're they're not babies anymore.
Speaker 1: And I already feel it. I get it, but it's
Speaker 1: just an example of what we talked about before, how
Speaker 1: you don't like step into someone's painful moment and like
Speaker 1: shame them for it. It really did feel like a shaming,
Speaker 1: you know, because I would just want to say, what
Speaker 1: part of this looks enjoyable right now? Because now not
Speaker 1: only am I stressed and sad, but I'm also shamed
Speaker 1: because I feel like I'm not doing this right. And
Speaker 1: now I feel guilty because I feel like I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to be enjoying it too. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: there's a I always knew, even when the hardest moments
Speaker 1: with my little ones, I always knew that there was
Speaker 1: something really precious um and something to be treasured and
Speaker 1: cherished about most moments, but as sure as hell, didn't
Speaker 1: enjoy a lot of it. And I think that is okay.
Speaker 1: It's like this idea of, you know, the end both
Speaker 1: of life, that you can find um, parenthood and your
Speaker 1: children to be absolutely beautiful and also completely brutal. All
Speaker 1: the best things in my life are that way. In
Speaker 1: my marriage absolutely one of the most precious and beautiful
Speaker 1: parts of my life and absolutely one of the hardest.
Speaker 1: I think there's there's no doubt. And it's it's back
Speaker 1: to that sort of very fundamental idea of only two
Speaker 1: trying to recognize or find the good parts of something
Speaker 1: and deny that those other parts are there, which they
Speaker 1: absolutely are. And and and I think it is that
Speaker 1: when we start feeling bad about the fact that we
Speaker 1: feel just like everybody else does, but since we tend
Speaker 1: to not talk about it, we don't know that everybody
Speaker 1: feels that way. I know now we feel so alone
Speaker 1: and ashamed, and I I do. Here's here's something that
Speaker 1: I think is true. It might sound obnoxious, and I've
Speaker 1: never said it before, so I'm just trying it out here,
Speaker 1: but I really do believe. I mean, I hinted at
Speaker 1: it before. But I think that the fact that I
Speaker 1: am willing and able and often do step right into
Speaker 1: the how hard this is and how brutal this is
Speaker 1: and admit to you know, the down moments. Um, I
Speaker 1: feel like I am able to enjoy and like, um,
Speaker 1: grasp beauty in a way that I'm not sure everyone does.
Speaker 1: I really, I mean, I cry at freaking trees. I
Speaker 1: can't sit at church without crying six times. I mostly
Speaker 1: just want to. I can be out at dinner and
Speaker 1: I just want to like stand up and clap for
Speaker 1: everyone in the room because I'm so proud of everyone
Speaker 1: for just you know, being vertical, and because life is
Speaker 1: so hard and we are doing such a good job,
Speaker 1: and just you know, I haven't made an intense um
Speaker 1: capacity for joy and beauty. And I don't think that's
Speaker 1: an accident, you know. I think it's because I'm also
Speaker 1: willing to just sit in the valley. Well. One of
Speaker 1: the first things I heard in recovery that I well,
Speaker 1: I heard a lot of things, but I do remember
Speaker 1: that idea of you can't selectively repress um. You can't.
Speaker 1: It's like you just basically you you're gonna you're gonna
Speaker 1: repress everything. You're gonna turn the volume down on everything.
Speaker 1: And I know that's true, certainly in my case. So
Speaker 1: I think it's I think you're absolutely right. I think
Speaker 1: that I never get into sort of like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know how everybody else is doing, but I just
Speaker 1: know for me when I am that numb is sort
Speaker 1: of numb across the board is yeah, the bad turns down,
Speaker 1: but so does so does the good. So you do
Speaker 1: feel that way like you feel like the more the
Speaker 1: deeper you get into the sobriety. I like how you
Speaker 1: said the volume was turned up. It does feel like that.
Speaker 1: Doesn't like the color that turned up. The volume is
Speaker 1: turned up. Sometimes the pain is turned up, but it
Speaker 1: kind of feels like, yeah, I mean, I go. But
Speaker 1: I mean I think it's not been a you know
Speaker 1: the mountains and the valleys, you know idea that it's
Speaker 1: I don't think any of this stuff is linear. It's
Speaker 1: not like I just keep getting better, keep getting better.
Speaker 1: It's like it goes up, it goes down. And I
Speaker 1: think there are times that I've been more open to
Speaker 1: life and and more open to feeling things, and I
Speaker 1: do across the board, and I think there's other times
Speaker 1: where I get into more of a pattern of sort
Speaker 1: of just trying to turn it all down. Maybe not
Speaker 1: in the in the dramatic fashion as dramatically as I
Speaker 1: used to, but there's plenty of other ways to numb
Speaker 1: or to to lessen our ability to feel. And I
Speaker 1: think we it's very easy to use personal development and
Speaker 1: spirituality in that way. We had a guest on who
Speaker 1: called it the spiritual bypass, and I was like, that's
Speaker 1: exactly it it's like and and in recovery programs that
Speaker 1: is a I think that's a very common one is
Speaker 1: you know, oh, it's all happening for a reason. We
Speaker 1: tell ourselves that so quickly, right, just to enough, just okay,
Speaker 1: God that'll you know, or or you know, I think
Speaker 1: service is so important. But I know in in recovery
Speaker 1: there's sometimes it's like a bad mood starts to enter
Speaker 1: the room anywhere, and it's like you gotta work with
Speaker 1: another person, right, you gotta you gotta do something like
Speaker 1: like all right, let's just relax a little so I
Speaker 1: can get into that with work or anything. But I
Speaker 1: do think it's a true statement of you can't you
Speaker 1: can't selectively repress things and is just refusing to try
Speaker 1: to fix things too fast. We had a guest on
Speaker 1: the of view hasn't come out yet, but he said something.
Speaker 1: His name is David K. Reynolds, and he wrote a
Speaker 1: book called Constructive Living, which is um it would be
Speaker 1: interesting to explore in context of what we're talking about here,
Speaker 1: but he has something that he said that really struck me.
Speaker 1: And he he's very focused on behavior. You know that
Speaker 1: that you you drive, you drive change in your life.
Speaker 1: By behavior, which I think is very much a a
Speaker 1: partially true statement. Um. But what he said that for
Speaker 1: people who don't have their behavior under control, they're more
Speaker 1: afraid of feelings because those feelings have the ability to
Speaker 1: just lead you way, way off track. But that if
Speaker 1: you if you get to the place where you've got
Speaker 1: your behavior on some degree of control, you can feel
Speaker 1: that full range of emotions with less fear about what's
Speaker 1: going to happen. That really that really hit me strongly.
Speaker 1: It's that idea I have a little sticky on my Um,
Speaker 1: what little mirror does my computers has struck sure liberates,
Speaker 1: and I feel like that is so important for me.
Speaker 1: I think that's important for a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are in you know, the creative world or recovering people.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I have to stick to my like
Speaker 1: daily disciplines. I think people would be surprised by how
Speaker 1: structured I am actually. Um. And it does feel safe
Speaker 1: for being me and knowing that I'm going to have
Speaker 1: a wide range of emotions throughout the day. It feels
Speaker 1: safe knowing that they're all going to happen within a
Speaker 1: structure that I already have and the experiense, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I think, at least for me, you know, if I
Speaker 1: go way back into those really bad years, a particularly
Speaker 1: sad feeling could just lead to you know, weeks of
Speaker 1: even beyond the normal destructive behavior, right, and that's scary.
Speaker 1: Whereas now I think there's a structure in my life
Speaker 1: that I go, Okay, well I can handle this. I don't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can feel that without going on a on a
Speaker 1: twelve day bender. Yeah yeah, But isn't it weird because
Speaker 1: it's like the second you think you figure something out,
Speaker 1: every nothing is black and white because it's like you're
Speaker 1: exactly right, and like, yes, we need to feel it all.
Speaker 1: But then in my head, I know I can hear
Speaker 1: my therapist saying, actually, glad, and you're not going to
Speaker 1: feel your way out of anything. You have to just
Speaker 1: do something right, Like you have to do what you
Speaker 1: need to do, regardless of how you feel about what
Speaker 1: you need to do. So, um, yeah, there's a big
Speaker 1: gray area and it's all a balance of feeling and doing.
Speaker 1: I guess that's such a common thing that that's one
Speaker 1: of the probably the most prevalent thing we talked about
Speaker 1: on the show is that, um, you know, you've got
Speaker 1: to take the phrase that that I use, and I
Speaker 1: probably got I'm sure I got it somewhere in recovery,
Speaker 1: as you can't think your way in the right act,
Speaker 1: and you sometimes you have to act your way into
Speaker 1: right thinking. And I'm just interested in that idea of
Speaker 1: how thoughts, emotions, and actions all interact with each other
Speaker 1: in some extraordinarily complex way, but that sometimes we can
Speaker 1: use one of those. If we can get a handle
Speaker 1: on one of those, we can use it as a
Speaker 1: lever to work with the other ones, and different that
Speaker 1: different lever seems to work better for different types of
Speaker 1: things or situations. I have to remind myself all the
Speaker 1: time that I am part mind, part body, part spirit,
Speaker 1: and that there's three lives going on every single day.
Speaker 1: And if if it were up to me, I would
Speaker 1: just stay in my mind all day and I would
Speaker 1: go I would be back where I was, you know, um,
Speaker 1: because the mind is a beautiful and terrifying place to live.
Speaker 1: So I have that's part of my discipline of my structure,
Speaker 1: is that every day I can spend I don't let
Speaker 1: myself right all day, and that would not be good
Speaker 1: for me. I let myself write for a few hours
Speaker 1: a day and then I am doing some some kind
Speaker 1: of like body stuff my exercise, even though it's not
Speaker 1: my natural want to do that. But and I have
Speaker 1: to have some stillness every day because of that spirit part.
Speaker 1: And that's what tends to keep me healthy is just
Speaker 1: remembering that I'm a triangle and that I have to
Speaker 1: address each day the three different parts of myself. That's
Speaker 1: a very good way to think about it, and that
Speaker 1: that resonates very much with me. And and when I'm
Speaker 1: doing the best is when it's all those things are
Speaker 1: being taken care of, don't you think? And then it's
Speaker 1: like this weird thing like I'll be having this this
Speaker 1: challenge writing and I can sit I could sit in
Speaker 1: front of my computer all day and try to figure
Speaker 1: it out and it won't work. But then like if
Speaker 1: I remember that I have a body and I go
Speaker 1: for a walk or go for a job, like magically,
Speaker 1: halfway through the job, the mind thing gets worked out,
Speaker 1: Like I figure out like when you said the lever thing,
Speaker 1: I'm like, what is that? That's exactly right? Like why
Speaker 1: it's not even just I'm addressing my body right now.
Speaker 1: It's like, Okay, I'm going to remember I have a
Speaker 1: body and then my body will help take care of
Speaker 1: this mind thing. I can't figure out. It is all
Speaker 1: so weird and connected. It totally is, and and I
Speaker 1: think that's why I'm always when people talk about, like,
Speaker 1: you know, is the is there a mind body connection,
Speaker 1: I'm always like, I'm yes, Like, how is that even
Speaker 1: a question? I've been listening to The Smiths and Old
Speaker 1: Band a lot, and one of the quotes is does
Speaker 1: the mind rule the body or does the body rule
Speaker 1: the mind? And I think the answer is both. The
Speaker 1: answer is both, absolutely, and there's just people who tend
Speaker 1: to I think people who identify most with their mind
Speaker 1: have to work to live the life of the body.
Speaker 1: And you know, my husband's opposite. He's an athlete, He's
Speaker 1: an athlete his whole life. He would live his whole
Speaker 1: life in his body. He has to work to address
Speaker 1: the mind part. And that's really been interesting and that's
Speaker 1: been part of the journey we've been working on with
Speaker 1: our but with our my own marriage is like we
Speaker 1: live two different ways. Yeah, um, and that's just been fascinating.
Speaker 1: I certainly have not even come close to unraveling all
Speaker 1: of that, but it's just a new journey. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think The amazing part of that is when you've got
Speaker 1: that kind of difference, if you can find a way
Speaker 1: that those differences compliment and support each other, it's so powerful.
Speaker 1: And then the flip side of that is when they don't,
Speaker 1: it's so so hard. That's right. We're hoping we're going
Speaker 1: to get to the beautiful part. It's going to be
Speaker 1: just amazing. But right now, all the time, totally totally amazing,
Speaker 1: all the time. Yes, exactly. We'll let me know when
Speaker 1: that happens. Right, that's right, I'll call you right away.
Speaker 1: We'll get you, we'll get you back on the show
Speaker 1: and you can solve this for all of us once
Speaker 1: and for all. Yeah, you'll have to get me on
Speaker 1: real quick before it all falls apart again. Exactly that
Speaker 1: five minutes it that's all perfect. Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: This has been really a great time. And like I said,
Speaker 1: I could, uh, I could do it a long time,
Speaker 1: but we're already like double the normal show length, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to show some degree of discipline here, structure
Speaker 1: liberal as you say. I'm just grateful. Thank you. It's
Speaker 1: been a great conversation. Yeah, it really has. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for taking the time to do it and
Speaker 1: let's keep in touch. Let's please do and thank you.
Speaker 1: I just love you so I'm so grateful to be
Speaker 1: a part of it. And just keep doing your work.
Speaker 1: It's so important and so good and so helpful. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, you too, Thank you. And as a reminder,
Speaker 1: if as a reminder, if you're interested in doing some
Speaker 1: one on one work with me, I might need a
Speaker 1: second here. And as a final reminder, if you're interested
Speaker 1: in doing some one on one work with me and
Speaker 1: you want some laughs, send an email to Eric at
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net. Thanks. You can learn more
Speaker 1: about Glenn and Moulton Doyle and this podcast at one
Speaker 1: you feed dot net Slash Doyle