Speaker 1: I do think all of us have the capacity to
Speaker 1: be manipulative, and being aware of it is just half
Speaker 1: of the battle.
Speaker 2: Really, Welcome to the One You Feed. Throughout time, great
Speaker 2: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 2: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 2: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 2: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Katherine Gray,
Speaker 2: who is a return guest on The One You Feed podcast.
Speaker 2: She's a best selling author who has sold over a
Speaker 2: half a million books in English speaking territories alone. Her
Speaker 2: books have been translated into ten languages and received much
Speaker 2: acclaim from New York Times, BBC Breakfast and Radio Two. Today.
Speaker 2: Eric and Catherine discuss her newest book, which is a
Speaker 2: novel called Versions of a Girl.
Speaker 3: Hi, Catherine, welcome back.
Speaker 1: Hi, thanks for having me back.
Speaker 3: I don't know if this is three or four for
Speaker 3: having you on, but it's been a good number and
Speaker 3: you're always one of my very favorite people to talk to,
Speaker 3: so I'm happy to have you back. We're going to
Speaker 3: be discussing something new for you, which is a novel
Speaker 3: instead of a nonfiction book, and it's called Versions of
Speaker 3: a Girl. But before we get into that, will start
Speaker 3: like we always do with the Parable. In the Parable,
Speaker 3: there's a grandparent talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 3: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 3: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 3: and hatred and fear. The grandchild stops, they think about
Speaker 3: it for a second. They look up at their grandparent
Speaker 3: and they say, well, which one wins, and the grandparent says,
Speaker 3: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 3: by asking you what that parable means to you and
Speaker 3: your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: I love the parable and for me. So whenever I
Speaker 1: had my daughter, I became a parent age forty two
Speaker 1: years ago, and something happened which really made me think
Speaker 1: about the parable a lot. In that my bedtime routine
Speaker 1: became completely disrupted. And for many many years now, every
Speaker 1: night before I go to sleep, I write a list
Speaker 1: of gratitudes, and a lot of that is to counter
Speaker 1: the fact that I have such a negatively biased brain,
Speaker 1: as most of us do, and left unattended, my brain
Speaker 1: will become, you know, a doomsayer, a nihilist. It will
Speaker 1: focus on everything that's going wrong and everything that could
Speaker 1: go wrong. And I found it was actually a magical
Speaker 1: cure from my insomnia, this writing of all the positive
Speaker 1: things that were happening could potentially happen. And yeah, as
Speaker 1: I say, when I had my daughter, that just fell
Speaker 1: on the customer own floor because of tiredness, and you know,
Speaker 1: you schedule goes out of the window, and for six
Speaker 1: months I became very, very negative and irritable towards myself.
Speaker 1: So it really does make a difference what you feeded
Speaker 1: your brain, and for me, I need that nightly diet
Speaker 1: of positivity otherwise my brain goes to a dark neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I have to really call it back. So
Speaker 1: that's what it means to me, Lovely.
Speaker 3: Did you experience any postpartum depression? Was that part of
Speaker 3: the irritability and all that, or how was that time
Speaker 3: for you? Because I know it can certainly be challenging.
Speaker 1: I definitely felt the hormones. I've read that the hormonal
Speaker 1: surge that you received during pregnancy and also thereafter, which
Speaker 1: apparently lasts about two years, is akin to feeling pre
Speaker 1: menstrual all the time. Now when I'm pre menstrual, I
Speaker 1: don't get tiery like a lot of other people do,
Speaker 1: but I do get very irritable, even sometimes murderous. I
Speaker 1: haven't got murdered anybody yet, So I didn't experience postpartum depression.
Speaker 1: I experienced what is a lesser known offshoot of it,
Speaker 1: which was postpartum rage. And this wasn't directed anybody in
Speaker 1: my life apart from potentially myself and the items in
Speaker 1: my fridge. So I found myself doing things like throwing
Speaker 1: peppers at the law, which do not do that. It
Speaker 1: creates a mighty mess, and also a tub of hermes,
Speaker 1: which again really bad things to throw. Fact. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's completely settled down now, but I've really struggled with it,
Speaker 1: and also the tiredness, and that just everything that you
Speaker 1: can't predict is going to happen to your life happens.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was a tough period. But I'm through
Speaker 1: and I'm out and I'm okay, and all I've murdered
Speaker 1: is some peppers.
Speaker 3: Good. I'm glad that that's been the extent of the damage.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: A couple thoughts come to mind there. I mean, I
Speaker 3: do think the first couple of years after having a
Speaker 3: child can be very difficult, just the sleep, all of it.
Speaker 3: And I think it's a beautiful time, but it's a
Speaker 3: very trying time for many people. The other thing is
Speaker 3: you were talking that I thought about was this is
Speaker 3: interesting because in men, depression is often diagnosed by irritability. Interesting,
Speaker 3: that's the way it manifests. So for me, my depression
Speaker 3: manifests is general deadness and irritability. Rue just irritable with
Speaker 3: every little thing for no good reason. Right, It's the
Speaker 3: sort of stuff that you know, at least I know,
Speaker 3: I'm like, there's no reason to be irritated by this,
Speaker 3: but yet I am.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's one of those emotions that you really
Speaker 1: tend to beat yourself up about because you're like, I
Speaker 1: should be better than this. I shouldn't, I shouldn't be
Speaker 1: irritated by this, and yes I am, so what do
Speaker 1: I do? So it was a really hard time for me.
Speaker 1: The only time I can liken it too would be
Speaker 1: early recovery, although the emotions were different because in early
Speaker 1: recovery I didn't feel like that, but yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a similarly challenging time. I would say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this latest book is a work of fiction.
Speaker 3: Your previous books have been memoirs about recovery. How are
Speaker 3: they described?
Speaker 1: Well, they're often described as a hybrid because they're not
Speaker 1: just memoirs. So my story does feature in them. Then
Speaker 1: I go off and explore journalistically all of the research,
Speaker 1: talk to experts, and also weave in lots of self
Speaker 1: help you tips and tricks. So it's like a hybrid
Speaker 1: between those two. And yeah, so I've done four of
Speaker 1: those now, and this is my first fiction. It's my
Speaker 1: debut novel.
Speaker 3: I think we may have only talked about three of those.
Speaker 3: We must have missed one. I don't know which one,
Speaker 3: but we'll sort that out off air. But the fiction is.
Speaker 3: I told you that. I think the book is amazing.
Speaker 3: I was captivated from the very first sentence. Any book
Speaker 3: that basically says in a way she's looking forward to
Speaker 3: prison as a place of starting is so good. Like
Speaker 3: I'm like, well, okay, I have to know who is
Speaker 3: she and why is she going to prison and what's
Speaker 3: wrong with her life enough that she actually is looking
Speaker 3: forward to it. It's a great start.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you so much. Yeah. I love a bit
Speaker 1: of crime in any novel. Yes, I love somebody to
Speaker 1: Die and possible, you know, softing out who did it
Speaker 1: and why and you know what happened. So for me,
Speaker 1: it was a really key lynchpin that sort of crime aspect.
Speaker 1: Although it's not a crime novel. It's coming of age
Speaker 1: more than crime. But I guess it's a blend of
Speaker 1: the two.
Speaker 3: It's a blend. I mean, there's definitely a who done
Speaker 3: it in it that runs through the whole book, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's a character who is murdered and you don't know
Speaker 3: who through most of the book, and it seems significant,
Speaker 3: So I would say, yeah, it's kind of a mix
Speaker 3: of too. But the heart of the book is really
Speaker 3: about why don't you describe the coming of age and
Speaker 3: the split between Fern and Flick. You'll do better than
Speaker 3: I will.
Speaker 1: Okay. So the book opens on a fourteen year old girl.
Speaker 1: She's called Flann. She's spent equal years with each of
Speaker 1: her parents. Her parents are divorced, they've been separated for
Speaker 1: a long time, and her parents are very, very different.
Speaker 1: Her father is a hell raiser. He lives hunt to
Speaker 1: mouth in Californian motel. He's a borderline genius. He means well,
Speaker 1: but he's mostly a disaster. Her mother is this ex
Speaker 1: ballerina who lives this gorgeous life in a London townhouse.
Speaker 1: Her biggest concern is what you think of her. She's
Speaker 1: more of a helicopter parent. And an unexpected visitor comes
Speaker 1: along and throws Ferm, the main character, a dilemma as
Speaker 1: to whether she stays with her father in California or
Speaker 1: goes back to her mother in London. So it's an
Speaker 1: exploration of how your dominant parent and how your dominant
Speaker 1: home life can shape your future trajectory. The story splits
Speaker 1: and then we follow both versions of the same character
Speaker 1: over the next twenty one years and see how they
Speaker 1: unfold and how they're shaped differently and how they shape
Speaker 1: similarly as well. So I wrote the first draft when
Speaker 1: I was pregnant and I was obsessed with nature versus nature,
Speaker 1: and this is what came out. So I think it's
Speaker 1: really an exploration of the kind of parent that I
Speaker 1: want to be and the kind of parent that I
Speaker 1: don't want to be. I would say, if you boil
Speaker 1: the book down to one central theme, it's the parent
Speaker 1: and child relationship. I think that would be it, because
Speaker 1: there's lots of different examples in the book of how
Speaker 1: that dynamic unfolds. And what's interesting is the parent in
Speaker 1: the book that arguably commits the biggest crime in in
Speaker 1: verse Econa, this is the one who comes off probably
Speaker 1: the best because of the way that they deal with
Speaker 1: what they did. So, yeah, it's childhood character shaping addictions
Speaker 1: and different forms, recoveries in different forms. There's lots of
Speaker 1: juicy topics in there that were fun to play with,
Speaker 1: especially with the dual timeline narrative and.
Speaker 3: What age remind me. The two of them sort of
Speaker 3: splits how old fourteen fourteen, So up till fourteen, they're
Speaker 3: one person. They've lived the same life. At the age
Speaker 3: of fourteen one decides to go back to London to
Speaker 3: see her mother, who she's not seen in a long time.
Speaker 3: The other, at the last minute, decides not to get
Speaker 3: on the plane, and at that point they're two separate stories.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 3: What I find fascinating about that is that it is
Speaker 3: nature versus nurture. But what you've got is both. Right,
Speaker 3: You've got someone who's got the same genetic makeup, someone
Speaker 3: who had the same formative year experience, but yet at
Speaker 3: the age of fourteen, they go different directions and their
Speaker 3: lives unfold very very different, And it's just interesting to
Speaker 3: think about. As a parent. I think you always think about, like,
Speaker 3: how long does what I do as a parent matter?
Speaker 3: And there's a lot of research out there that shows
Speaker 3: like it's the first few years. Those are so formative, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: But what I love about the book is, yes, those
Speaker 3: first years are formative, but it also shows that that
Speaker 3: influence does not end at fourteen, even though it's less
Speaker 3: than it was when you're young. These two girls take
Speaker 3: very different paths from the age of fourteen, largely based
Speaker 3: on the environment theory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think everything that is coming out recently says
Speaker 1: that the first three years are the most key, and
Speaker 1: if you get those rights, almost like you're fine. But
Speaker 1: I also think that launch into adulthood those years of
Speaker 1: I would define it as fourteen to twenty one, especially
Speaker 1: with so many young adults living at home now. I
Speaker 1: mean I rickcheted back to my home many times over
Speaker 1: my twenties and even early thirties. So it's so important
Speaker 1: that the way that you're sort of finished and pushed
Speaker 1: into the world and the messages that you get in
Speaker 1: adolescence when you're figuring out who you are, and also
Speaker 1: how you know, romantic relationships come into play, and also
Speaker 1: your use of substances come into play as well, and
Speaker 1: you know, we often do what our parents do rather
Speaker 1: than what they say we should do. So it was
Speaker 1: really fun to play with. And also because the same
Speaker 1: set of characters in each timeline are doing different things,
Speaker 1: there's that butterfly effect. So in the timeline where Burn
Speaker 1: stays with their father who's wrestling with a savage addiction
Speaker 1: to alcohol, because she spends a lot more time with him,
Speaker 1: the effect on him is different than in the timeline
Speaker 1: when she leaves right and he becomes famous in the
Speaker 1: other timeline for his music because he's a really talented musician,
Speaker 1: and that has an impact as well. I really wanted
Speaker 1: to explore also the idea that money doesn't necessarily solve things.
Speaker 1: In many ways, it can make being okay harder because
Speaker 1: you have the money to numb the consequences and pay
Speaker 1: to get yourself out of trouble almost And if you're
Speaker 1: surrounded by yes people as well, that can have delayed
Speaker 1: effects on any sort of self realization and improvement that
Speaker 1: you want to make. So I wanted to play with
Speaker 1: that as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really fascinating the way that unfolds. And I
Speaker 3: think what you said there is really important about adolescence
Speaker 3: in that we put into action what we've learned about
Speaker 3: romantic relationships. And again, by and large, that's when substances,
Speaker 3: you know, drugs, alcohol, come online for us. And what
Speaker 3: I think is interesting about the two characters, and you
Speaker 3: mentioned this in an email to me, is you know,
Speaker 3: thinking about their attachment styles. We've done episodes before about
Speaker 3: attachment styles, anxious attached versus avoidantly attached versus securely attached. Right,
Speaker 3: And neither of the girls is securely attached. And that
Speaker 3: happened early, right, that's when that forms, It forms early
Speaker 3: on and so neither of them had a life that
Speaker 3: would have been securely attached. But it is interesting that
Speaker 3: in those adolescent years their attachment styles avoidant and anxious
Speaker 3: come to the play. They each have a different one,
Speaker 3: and so I think it further shows this idea. How yes,
Speaker 3: a lot of things are formative in those first few years,
Speaker 3: but they're not definitive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a fourth attachment style that often people don't
Speaker 1: read about. It's disorganized attachment, which basically means that you're both.
Speaker 3: That phrase too. I mean you could just call it
Speaker 3: like both or dual attachment styles. But the fact that
Speaker 3: it's called disorganized and I think I have that one
Speaker 3: cracks me up, Like, like, who knows what's going to happen?
Speaker 1: Could go either way. Yeah, basically, I think the easiest
Speaker 1: way of thinking about it. So John Bowlby, who I believe,
Speaker 1: came up with a theory of attachment style and did
Speaker 1: a lot of groundbreaking work on it in the sixties.
Speaker 1: He theorized that it happens in the first five years
Speaker 1: of life and ultimately, if you have a secure, consistent,
Speaker 1: safe relationship and home life, then you are likely to
Speaker 1: grow up to be securely attached. Whereas if you do not,
Speaker 1: then you are likely to grow up to be either anxious,
Speaker 1: avoid or both, which is disorganized, and I definitely relate
Speaker 1: to that. Mostly I skew anxious, but that is because
Speaker 1: I'm very attracted to avoidant people, and so therefore that
Speaker 1: tweaks my anxious side, whereas when I have dated secure
Speaker 1: people and also anxious people, I skew avoidant. But ultimately,
Speaker 1: what you're subconscious is trying to do in this awful
Speaker 1: recreation of your early years is to stop you being
Speaker 1: stable and to almost keep things unstable, because that's what
Speaker 1: you're used to, and we repeat what we don't repair,
Speaker 1: and so it's almost if you do find yourself in
Speaker 1: a secure relationship, I will burn things down, I will
Speaker 1: blow them up. I will find a way to make
Speaker 1: them unstable. But the awareness of that is the key
Speaker 1: to changing it. So that's why the two different versions
Speaker 1: of Fern, one of them skews anxious and one of
Speaker 1: them skews avoidant, because of the relationships that they're in.
Speaker 1: And that was really fun to play with as well
Speaker 1: and really made me think about myself. I think while
Speaker 1: I was writing the book, I did actually realize I
Speaker 1: am both and before that, I would have told you
Speaker 1: that I was anxious because I really related to the
Speaker 1: avoidant character as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you more or less described the way I am
Speaker 3: in relationship if I'm not bringing a lot of consciousness
Speaker 3: to it, which is, if you are attached to me,
Speaker 3: I'm going to run away. On the other hand, if
Speaker 3: you're not attached to me, I'm going to chase you.
Speaker 3: But there's going to be a certain amount of distance
Speaker 3: between us either way. And yeah, right, just whichever way
Speaker 3: you move, I'm going to move the opposite way exactly.
Speaker 3: It's just perverse. I guess that perverse makes it sound
Speaker 3: like it's a willful thing. It's just baked into me.
Speaker 3: Now I've become very conscious of it, and I'm better
Speaker 3: able to work with it than I used to be.
Speaker 3: But that pattern haunted all my relationships until this one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if somebody was really into me and they were
Speaker 1: like I want this, you know, I want to get
Speaker 1: married and have kids with you, that there was nothing
Speaker 1: more likely to turn me off. I've had some psychologists
Speaker 1: describe it to him really brilliantly, and she said, it's
Speaker 1: like a box dance where you know, like you said,
Speaker 1: you always maintain that distance. So if somebody steps towards
Speaker 1: you, you step away, and that just carries on none and
Speaker 1: none and on until you finally break the pattern by
Speaker 1: being aware of those urges and impulses and trying to
Speaker 1: counter them. And I'm now engaged to a long term partner.
Speaker 1: We have a child together, we have a house, and
Speaker 1: he excuse avoidant, and I've just sort of accepted that's
Speaker 1: my fate. You know, I am destined to end up
Speaker 1: with avoidance. But thankfully he is aware of being avoidant.
Speaker 1: And I'm very aware that that tweaks my anxious sides.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't mean that it's not without challenges. It
Speaker 1: presents many challenges as dynamic, so we have to work
Speaker 1: with that constantly and be aware of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think what's interesting about that is, as you said,
Speaker 3: you know the pattern, know my pattern, it doesn't stop
Speaker 3: the feeling coming up, Yeah, of wanting to pull away
Speaker 3: or wanting to grasp that still emerges within me. It's
Speaker 3: just as you said, I have most of the time
Speaker 3: enough awareness to go okay, hang on. That's just an
Speaker 3: old pattern, and it's similar to how we learn to
Speaker 3: work with not drinking early on. Right, The desire to
Speaker 3: drink emerges, but we learn how to handle it differently,
Speaker 3: although I will say it is different in the sense
Speaker 3: at least for most people who are in long term recovery,
Speaker 3: the desire to drink or use just disappears, kind of vanishes,
Speaker 3: but the feelings that caused us to want to do
Speaker 3: that don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's absolutely true. I think what happens is you
Speaker 1: just learn to deal with them in other ways. That's
Speaker 1: maybe why it fades into complete obscurity, because you've actually
Speaker 1: just assemble the whole new toolbox, the things that you
Speaker 1: do instead of drinking. And I'm now eleven years sober.
Speaker 1: I just turned eleven at the weekend, and I honestly
Speaker 1: never missed it, crave it, wants it. It doesn't even
Speaker 1: occur to me now, no matter what is going on
Speaker 1: in my life, Like when I was talking about that
Speaker 1: postpart and rage that I experienced, my hand never itched
Speaker 1: for a drink because that's just not part of my
Speaker 1: coping strategy toolbox now. So I have just so many
Speaker 1: other ways that I deal with that, And yeah, it
Speaker 1: does fade, and it's lovely exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I'm in Amsterdam right now and I was
Speaker 3: a heavy marijuana smoker. In my using days, I loved it.
Speaker 3: It was up there with alcohol, and I've been getting
Speaker 3: used to this over the last few years as it's
Speaker 3: become legal in parts of the US. Also because with alcohol,
Speaker 3: I just became immune to it because it was all
Speaker 3: around me all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's omnipresent. You literally can't get away from it.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. I've never thought about how the legalization
Speaker 1: of marijuana could affect people who are in recovery from
Speaker 1: addiction from marijuana.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because all of a sudden it's showing up yeah
Speaker 3: again in a way that it hadn't before. It also
Speaker 3: has the allure of sometimes what a new drink will
Speaker 3: have to somebody who's in recovery, Like, oh, I never
Speaker 3: got to try that drink, right, It's like, oh, there's
Speaker 3: all these different types of weed I could try, and
Speaker 3: I could just go shopping for it. So even with that, though,
Speaker 3: my point in bringing that up is I walk by
Speaker 3: pot stores all the time here in Amsterdam and it
Speaker 3: smells like weed outside of all of them, and I
Speaker 3: just have it's a flicker. It's just a flicker of
Speaker 3: a like hm. I used to like that, and then
Speaker 3: it just kind of dies away, you know, and it's
Speaker 3: so minor, but it's weird to see it occasionally brought up.
Speaker 3: I imagine it's what would happen to me if suddenly
Speaker 3: they start selling heroin on street corners. I'd probably that
Speaker 3: long dormant part of me would probably be like, well
Speaker 3: hold on, you know, like I still won't watch any
Speaker 3: sort of like needle being used in any way in
Speaker 3: a movie or on me. I you know, close my eyes.
Speaker 3: I just I don't want to see it because it's triggery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so interesting. I've never thought about that, And
Speaker 1: that's perhaps one of the reasons that with alcohol you
Speaker 1: do have to become immune to the constant marketing in
Speaker 1: presence of it, because it is just everywhere, even you know,
Speaker 1: every single social event is the centerpiece of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you're sort of thrown into the fire. I've
Speaker 1: never thought about that. Yeah, what an interesting way of
Speaker 1: thinking about it.
Speaker 3: I want to pause for a quick good Wolf reminder.
Speaker 3: This one's about a habit change and a mistake I
Speaker 3: see people making. And that's really that we don't think
Speaker 3: about these new habits that we want to add in
Speaker 3: the context of our entire life right. Habits don't happen
Speaker 3: in a vacuum. They have to fit in the life
Speaker 3: that we have. So when we just keep adding I
Speaker 3: should do this, I should do that, I should do this,
Speaker 3: we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what
Speaker 3: we're not going to do in order to make that happen.
Speaker 3: So it's really helpful for you to think about where
Speaker 3: is this going to fit and what in my life
Speaker 3: might I need to remove. If you want to step
Speaker 3: by step guide for how you can easily build new
Speaker 3: habits that feed your good Wolf, go to good Wolf
Speaker 3: dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. We
Speaker 3: talked about nature versus nurture a little bit earlier. Let's
Speaker 3: talk about nature versus nurture in the creation of addiction.
Speaker 1: Well, I have done a lot of research on this
Speaker 1: for previous books, so I'm just going to quote you
Speaker 1: some of the studies that I've seen and things that
Speaker 1: experts have told me. But it's quite commonly know that
Speaker 1: if one of your parents is addicted, then you are
Speaker 1: four times more likely to grow up to encounter addiction yourself.
Speaker 1: What's less commonly known is that the chart topping predisposition
Speaker 1: to a later addiction is a traumatic childhood And when
Speaker 1: we think of trauma, we think of very extreme events,
Speaker 1: but actually childhood trauma includes things like just being routinely
Speaker 1: insulted by a caregiver, or moving house a lot, or
Speaker 1: bearing witness to a caregiver's addiction, whether it's a step
Speaker 1: parent or your actual parent, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: us would actually qualify the childhood trauma, and we don't
Speaker 1: think we do. So there's a test. It's a really
Speaker 1: interesting test. It's the Ace test that you can look
Speaker 1: up and find out if you would fall under that umbrella.
Speaker 1: And so that seems to suggest that nurture, more than nature,
Speaker 1: is the thing that sort of activates addiction within and
Speaker 1: I think it often takes grit in adolescence, which is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why I made very fourteen, because
Speaker 1: I think that's when it's activated, because that's often when
Speaker 1: we pick up alcohol or whatever other drug we later
Speaker 1: become addicted to, and that's when it really get teeth
Speaker 1: and calls into us. And there's also very compelling evidence
Speaker 1: that shows that if you pick up young, which I did,
Speaker 1: I was twelve, So if you pick up before the
Speaker 1: age of fifteen, I think it is you are again
Speaker 1: four times more likely to later become addicted. Because it
Speaker 1: makes sense, but our brains aren't fully formed until we're
Speaker 1: twenty five. So if we are drinking routinely to medicate
Speaker 1: anxiety or whatever other emotion in our early teens, then
Speaker 1: we're going to become more attached to it, right.
Speaker 3: We just have more time for our brain to alter
Speaker 3: in the negative ways that alcohol or drugs alter the brain. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I know this question was of particular interest to
Speaker 3: you as you were about to have a child, and
Speaker 3: it certainly was of great interest to me unbelievably twenty
Speaker 3: five twenty six years ago that my son was born
Speaker 3: because his mother and I were both heroin addicts. So
Speaker 3: it was this like, are we birthing a destined to
Speaker 3: be an addict child? So talk to me about that
Speaker 3: for you, you know, from a personal.
Speaker 1: Sense, Well, that was one of the reasons that I
Speaker 1: arrived at motherhoods so late, because in my thirties now
Speaker 1: I know, so I thought I don't want to have
Speaker 1: a child. So from the ages of thirty three to
Speaker 1: thirty nine, if you'd asked me, I would have said, no,
Speaker 1: that's not for me. But when I had a lot
Speaker 1: of therapy around my own childhood. I realized that the
Speaker 1: reason I didn't want to have a child was because
Speaker 1: I thought I was going to be a terrible parent
Speaker 1: and b that I was going to birth a child
Speaker 1: that was pre destined to become an addicts and therefore
Speaker 1: I would be subjected to that terrible ordeal of what
Speaker 1: the person love the most, go through what you've been through,
Speaker 1: and knowing that you can't really do anything to help
Speaker 1: until they ask for help. So a lot of that
Speaker 1: research is what informed my decision to have then become
Speaker 1: a parent, and I was very lucky that I was
Speaker 1: able to in my forties and now I feel much
Speaker 1: more at peace. My daughter does have a higher chance,
Speaker 1: but it's not as simple as you're just four times
Speaker 1: more likely to become addicted. You inherit characteristics that can
Speaker 1: predispose you to addictions, so things like anxiety, introversion, but
Speaker 1: also spontaneity and extraversion. I believe, so those characteristics you
Speaker 1: can inherit them, and therefore it depends on the home
Speaker 1: environment as to where those characteristics lead you. So that's
Speaker 1: the way I see it now, and I've made all
Speaker 1: these promises to her that she's completely unaware of because
Speaker 1: she's doing in that I will always endeavor to make
Speaker 1: her feel safe. That was the word that my research
Speaker 1: kept coming back to, was feeling safe. That is the
Speaker 1: way that you can give your child the best possible start.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't necessarily look like a nuclear family that
Speaker 1: stays in one town forever more with a white picket
Speaker 1: fence and a labrador. You know, that doesn't necessarily look
Speaker 1: like that. But certainly so if you look at my childhood,
Speaker 1: we moved seven times before I was eighteen, and I
Speaker 1: was adjacent to three very acrimonious breakups, and so that
Speaker 1: didn't make me feel safe. And so there's lots of
Speaker 1: things that but it doesn't necessarily, like I say, mean
Speaker 1: that I will stay with my partner forever or I
Speaker 1: will stay where I live now. It's just that I
Speaker 1: would be much more conscious of the impact that it
Speaker 1: could have on her that consistency. So no matter what
Speaker 1: I do, I will try and provide an environment isn't
Speaker 1: hostile because that's something that I experience and I'm not
Speaker 1: going to be perfect. That's another thing you just have
Speaker 1: to reconcile. Yeah, life is going to throw me all
Speaker 1: these curve balls, and there are going to be choices
Speaker 1: that I make that are imperfect as a parent. That's
Speaker 1: just how it is. But as much as possible, I
Speaker 1: want to point myself in that direction.
Speaker 3: Yeap, it's a beautiful intention. My son is, as I mentioned,
Speaker 3: much older, and I guess that you know, you never know,
Speaker 3: But up till now, he shows no signs of addiction.
Speaker 3: That the way I describe it, he doesn't have the
Speaker 3: desperate personality I did, right, you know, even my teen
Speaker 3: years before I started using, there was just a desperation
Speaker 3: about me that he's just never seemed to have. And
Speaker 3: so I think we hopefully did okay. But his mom
Speaker 3: and I split when he was two and a half, right,
Speaker 3: like she fell in love with somebody else. I mean,
Speaker 3: I ended up being foreign away the stable parent, which
Speaker 3: blows my mind that anybody would apply that to me,
Speaker 3: given the fact that you know, when I had him,
Speaker 3: I was three years off being a heroin addict. So
Speaker 3: for now he seems okay.
Speaker 1: That must be so satisfying to see it is.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think the satisfying thing for me
Speaker 3: is I don't believe, by any way, shape or form,
Speaker 3: I did it perfectly there's some things I can look
Speaker 3: at and be like, oh boy, I wish there could
Speaker 3: do a do over on some of that. And I
Speaker 3: know that at every age i've looked at him, I've
Speaker 3: been able to say he is more mentally and emotionally
Speaker 3: well than I was at that age.
Speaker 1: But you are modeling for him that a person can
Speaker 1: be very happy without any drug of any type. So
Speaker 1: that has a massive impact on a child and something
Speaker 1: that I try and do with my daughter every night.
Speaker 1: I've read this research. It's really good for them to do.
Speaker 1: We have a dance party. And when I was teen,
Speaker 1: I would describe myself as very buttoned up. I was
Speaker 1: very tense and very anxious. And when I discovered alcohol,
Speaker 1: I was like, this is the answer. This is the
Speaker 1: magic solution to my constant feeling that I'm almost locked
Speaker 1: within my body and I can't let go, and I'm
Speaker 1: really quiet and I can't express myself and I can't
Speaker 1: dance or talk to people that I fancy or whatever
Speaker 1: I wanted to do when I was a tea And
Speaker 1: I try and model that with my daughter by throwing
Speaker 1: myself around the kitchen like a total loon to try
Speaker 1: and show her and to encourage her to have that
Speaker 1: lack of inhibition that made me feel like I needed
Speaker 1: something in order to disinhibit. Yeah, your son has had
Speaker 1: the most incredible role model.
Speaker 3: In that in some respects. The other thing that we
Speaker 3: did is his mother and I started talking to him
Speaker 3: as early as it seemed like he could actually understand
Speaker 3: what we are talking about, about the fact that we
Speaker 3: were both addicts and how destructive it was to our lives,
Speaker 3: and the fact that given that he is the child
Speaker 3: of that, he is more predisposed to it, and so
Speaker 3: he should approach substances with more caution than the average
Speaker 3: person would. I don't think it stopped him from experimenting,
Speaker 3: but I do think there was an idea in his
Speaker 3: mind of like, Okay, I need to be a little
Speaker 3: more careful here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's so important. I do remember having
Speaker 1: a chat with my father along these lines as well,
Speaker 1: but it was too late by that point, and I
Speaker 1: was seventeen, and I remember us going I remember it
Speaker 1: so clearly as well, us going for a walk on
Speaker 1: the beach, and he clearly clocked that I had a
Speaker 1: growing addiction to alcohol already. I was so shabbagely hungover
Speaker 1: I could barely talk, and he said to me, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty years over or whatever he was at the time,
Speaker 1: Actually he would have been more like ten, and so
Speaker 1: you have a greater likelihood. So just to be aware
Speaker 1: of that, you need to be careful with alcohol. But
Speaker 1: by that point I was going in yeah, and I thought,
Speaker 1: you don't know what you're talking about. You know, it
Speaker 1: will be different for me. I will be able to
Speaker 1: outside do it unlike you. And no. Yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 1: I think it's great that you've got that message in early.
Speaker 1: And I will allow my daughter to read my books
Speaker 1: whenever she's you know, probably very young.
Speaker 3: As we look at the two girls, they have their
Speaker 3: own different set of problems. You alluded to this a
Speaker 3: little bit before. But the one who takes on the
Speaker 3: name Flick grows up in a very wealthy London home.
Speaker 3: And I find it interesting because you talk about how
Speaker 3: self obsessed she becomes with her appearance, which she gets
Speaker 3: largely from her mother, And it was just striking how
Speaker 3: well you wrote about how uncomfortable that is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's something that a lot of women
Speaker 1: of my generation grow up with. But again, it's everyone,
Speaker 1: isn't it. You know, everyone's surrounded with images of perfection,
Speaker 1: and that's now being countered by a lot of different
Speaker 1: sorts of images. But I certainly I remember taking two
Speaker 1: hours to get ready for college. I mean that's and
Speaker 1: if I was having a bad hairdo or a bad
Speaker 1: skin day, I just wouldn't go, even though I was
Speaker 1: obsessed with learning the type of college students that would
Speaker 1: hand in extra essays, and my tutor was like, what
Speaker 1: are you doing someone and mark me the extra essays.
Speaker 1: We've got enough to do. But something that was paramount
Speaker 1: to my self esteem was looking perfect or as perfect
Speaker 1: as I could, And so I poured a lot of
Speaker 1: that into Flick, because I do think that relates to
Speaker 1: that whole love addiction, anxiously attached feeling like your outsides
Speaker 1: have to be as flaw as as possible in order
Speaker 1: to be accepted as a person. Oh my gosh, I
Speaker 1: do not miss those days. I mean I constantly carried
Speaker 1: abound this little magnifying mirror and would check my face
Speaker 1: before I met anyone, just in case there's anything in
Speaker 1: the teeth or anything out of place. And now I
Speaker 1: couldn't be more different. I just basically only quit makeup
Speaker 1: on for precedents or whatever. So it's so nice when
Speaker 1: you break free of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I interviewed somebody recently. She wrote a book called
Speaker 3: boy Mom, and it was about raising boys, and she
Speaker 3: takes a similar approach to how you described your books,
Speaker 3: which are there's a thread of memoir in it and
Speaker 3: then there's a lot of journalistic research, right, And one
Speaker 3: of the things that she found was that more and
Speaker 3: more boys are taking on that.
Speaker 1: Oh I can imagine, which I mean for me.
Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like I had it from the
Speaker 3: very beginning, I said to her in the interview. You know,
Speaker 3: comic books I used to read had the Charles Atlas
Speaker 3: comics in them. Charles Atlas was a bodybuilding system and
Speaker 3: it showed like this skinny kid on a beach getting
Speaker 3: beat up or pushed around, and then he goes and
Speaker 3: buys the Charles Atlas comics gets big and bulky and strong,
Speaker 3: and now all the women love him. And so I mean,
Speaker 3: even for a boy that was marketed so young.
Speaker 1: To me, yeah, now I'm thinking about all the superhero
Speaker 1: stories and with boys, it was often if you have muscles,
Speaker 1: then everything will be sold.
Speaker 3: Yes, yep, Yeah, it's a thing we all wrestle with
Speaker 3: and it is good to see more body positivity things
Speaker 3: coming out. I still think it's a long way to go,
Speaker 3: but it's some progress. There's a particularly telling part in
Speaker 3: the book where you're describing Fern slash Flick, the one
Speaker 3: girl who split into two, her mother, and in the story,
Speaker 3: her mom kind of gives her up at like age four.
Speaker 3: Is that about the time it is?
Speaker 1: Or age seven six and a half seven?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yep, So she just basically says to her dad,
Speaker 3: here take her, and the book starts to explore her
Speaker 3: experience up to that point. Yeah, definitely the mother's experience.
Speaker 3: And there's a particularly telling part where in my notes
Speaker 3: I titled it the mother inquisition, which you write about
Speaker 3: like did you have a natural birth? Did you have
Speaker 3: pain relief? Are you breastfeeding you know? Are you swaddling enough?
Speaker 3: Are you reading to her? All these ways that we
Speaker 3: like interrogate mothers to make sure they're doing the right thing.
Speaker 3: Where did that come from?
Speaker 1: Personal experience? Entirely because I found that when I was pregnant,
Speaker 1: And also I would say it's fallen off now, but
Speaker 1: I've curated my life so that I'm less exposed to it.
Speaker 1: I'm not in touch with any sort of NCT group
Speaker 1: or anything like that. NCT is in the UK. It's
Speaker 1: something that you go see when you're pregnant and you
Speaker 1: meet lots of other parents. Okay, also in the same
Speaker 1: stage of the process as you now. I actually ended
Speaker 1: up because I did feel there's just so many messages
Speaker 1: when you're pregnant that your body is no longer your own,
Speaker 1: and people feel entitled to a pine all over your
Speaker 1: pregnant body, and you're told to do things and not
Speaker 1: do other things, and eat this and don't eat that,
Speaker 1: and stop running or keep running, and you know, everyone
Speaker 1: seems to have an opinion. And that then continues into
Speaker 1: the early years, where lots of people interrogate you as
Speaker 1: to how you're doing it and whether you're going to
Speaker 1: use baby rice and start weaning it four months or
Speaker 1: whether you're going to wait to six months or you know,
Speaker 1: and often the only right answer is the answer is
Speaker 1: that you give that matches how they.
Speaker 3: Did it exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: So I did some things that were potentially controversial, like
Speaker 1: I co slept once my baby was big enough, and
Speaker 1: I breastfed for a lot longer than some people would.
Speaker 1: I did it until she once. I'm still doing it
Speaker 1: and she's over too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I really found that in order to stay sane,
Speaker 1: you just have to detach from all of that, which
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons why I actually ended up
Speaker 1: leaving the NTT WhatsApp group that I was a part of,
Speaker 1: because I really felt myself being drawn into that and
Speaker 1: you just have to go off instinct and make your
Speaker 1: own decisions and say okay, yeah, thanks for the advice,
Speaker 1: and then do whatever you want to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, there's so much of it. There's so much
Speaker 3: of it. I remember we parented Jordan's similarly, where you're
Speaker 3: describing like he slept with us, and he breastfed for
Speaker 3: much longer, and people told me over and over, you'll
Speaker 3: never get him out of your bed, he'll never learn
Speaker 3: to sleep right, you know. And there just came a
Speaker 3: time where all of a sudden, it just seemed like
Speaker 3: it was the right, natural time and he went off
Speaker 3: to his own bed and everything was fine. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: you made the joke there, and you made it in
Speaker 3: the book, which is the only acceptable answer is the
Speaker 3: one that you did, you know, like when you're asking somebody,
Speaker 3: because I think we're all insecure about the choices we
Speaker 3: make as parents, and so when somebody's doing something different,
Speaker 3: we read that as oh, I didn't do it right,
Speaker 3: which we then turn on its head and make it
Speaker 3: you're doing it wrong in order so that we don't
Speaker 3: feel wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we like people to match us, and so whenever
Speaker 1: I'm talking to parents to be or new parents, I
Speaker 1: try absolute best to just keep my mouth shut. Unless
Speaker 1: they asked me directly for advice, then I will give it,
Speaker 1: but I will very much posit it in the context
Speaker 1: of this worked for us. Yeah, that every parent and
Speaker 1: every child is different, So that seems to be the
Speaker 1: way around it is to remember that you are an
Speaker 1: individual who had a very individual experience and everyone's going
Speaker 1: to have a different way.
Speaker 3: That advice giving or thinking that the way you did
Speaker 3: it is the way everyone should do it also applies
Speaker 3: to recovery.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we see this again and again. Unfortunately, it most
Speaker 3: often comes out of people who are in twelve step
Speaker 3: traditions insisting that everybody do it their way, although there
Speaker 3: is an equally large group of people who insist that
Speaker 3: twelve step programs are garbage. But it's this, here's how
Speaker 3: I did it, It's the only way to do it,
Speaker 3: which is patently insane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I low that rhetoric, and I think it comes
Speaker 1: from all pathsive recovery. The you know, this is how
Speaker 1: I did it, so this is the right way, and
Speaker 1: that's why I actively rail against it in all of
Speaker 1: my writing about addiction and recovery. I just say, there
Speaker 1: is no one way, and you just need to try
Speaker 1: everything and work out what fits you. Beth Is. It
Speaker 1: entirely depends on you as a person and your internal beliefs. Like,
Speaker 1: for instance, I discover having left twelve Step, but one
Speaker 1: of the reasons it didn't fit with me, even though
Speaker 1: I learned a lot there in the six months that
Speaker 1: I was there, I innately knew that I would need
Speaker 1: to move away from it in order to continue is
Speaker 1: because I have something called an internal locus of control
Speaker 1: I've since been told by a therapist, and that means
Speaker 1: that I don't feel comfortable when I'm sort of making
Speaker 1: things dependent on external influences. Even though I know that
Speaker 1: the Higher Power doesn't necessarily have to be a theistic,
Speaker 1: you know, bearded god as you know it can be
Speaker 1: a god as you understand them. I literally don't believe
Speaker 1: in any sort of like force of good out there,
Speaker 1: which is a bit depressing. Actually, I literally believe, you know,
Speaker 1: we're bored, would die and that's it, and there's no
Speaker 1: sort of unseen force looking after me. So I found
Speaker 1: that I continually butted up against that aspect of the program.
Speaker 1: I was having to contort myself quite a lot to
Speaker 1: sort of fit in with it, and so I just
Speaker 1: found other ways. But I would never presume to tell
Speaker 1: anyone that my way was the right way, because I
Speaker 1: really believe that every recovery path is different, even if
Speaker 1: it does follow a traditional mode. I do believe it's
Speaker 1: always slightly different, even if it looks the same, and
Speaker 1: so yeah, people just have to find their own way.
Speaker 1: There is no one.
Speaker 3: Way right right There absolutely isn't, and I think we've
Speaker 3: gotten to a place where more and more people are
Speaker 3: acknowledging that. Thankfully, you know, I ran into some of
Speaker 3: the same challenges in AA, although it saved my life twice,
Speaker 3: so I'm extraordinarily grateful to it. Where I eventually felt
Speaker 3: like the contortions I was having to do to translate
Speaker 3: everything just got to be a bit much for me.
Speaker 3: There were some other challenges I had also that had
Speaker 3: to do with how what being an alcoholic meant to
Speaker 3: me and what it seemed to mean to a lot
Speaker 3: of people in twelve step programs, and those increasingly diverged
Speaker 3: as I got better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I found that too, things like I would no
Speaker 1: longer refer to myself as an alcoholic. Now I do
Speaker 1: if I'm in circles where that's the term that everyone uses.
Speaker 1: But about four years sober, I let that term fall away,
Speaker 1: and I did it very quietly because I was a
Speaker 1: bit scared, to be honest, I had internalized the belief
Speaker 1: that if I did allow that term to fall away,
Speaker 1: then I would slip into denial and start thinking I
Speaker 1: could moderate it again. But for me, two things coexist.
Speaker 1: I no longer believe I'm addicted to alcohol, but I
Speaker 1: also believe that if I were to pick up again,
Speaker 1: I would very quickly become addicted to alcohol. So I
Speaker 1: approach it in a very neuroscientific way. So I believe
Speaker 1: that the path in my brain that was addicted to
Speaker 1: alcohol does still exist, even though it's disused and overgrown,
Speaker 1: and it's more of a frail that's been forgotten throughs
Speaker 1: and woods, whereas once it was a six lane highway. Ectly. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it does still exist there. So I will never
Speaker 1: drink again. I will never believe that I could moderate,
Speaker 1: because I don't believe I can. But equally, I do
Speaker 1: not feel like I am currently addicted to alcohol, So
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel right for me to call myself an
Speaker 1: alcoholic these days that I'm eleven years sober.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I still refer to myself as an
Speaker 3: alcoholic and addict. But I do it because it's just
Speaker 3: a shorthand for me of saying something similar to what
Speaker 3: you just said. Yeah, I clearly am not addicted to
Speaker 3: alcohol because I haven't used it. I haven't used a
Speaker 3: mind altering chemical in fifteen years, so I'm clearly not addicted.
Speaker 3: I like the neuroscientific thing because the other danger, this
Speaker 3: is the thought that sometimes gets in my brain, and
Speaker 3: it is the one that says, well, sure you use
Speaker 3: drugs and alcohol because you didn't know how to cope
Speaker 3: with the world, But now you know how to cope
Speaker 3: with the world, so perhaps, And that's what got me,
Speaker 3: after eight years of sobriety, back to drinking. It was
Speaker 3: that exact line of thinking, You've done all this work,
Speaker 3: you've done all this recovery, you make good decisions and
Speaker 3: all aspects of your life. I was sure it would
Speaker 3: be fine, and of course it wasn't. And so for me,
Speaker 3: I just basically stay with a risk reward calculus, which
Speaker 3: is the reward if it went right, would be that
Speaker 3: a time or two a week I got a slight
Speaker 3: buzz on, that would be the reward at best. The
Speaker 3: risk is everything, right, The risk is my entire life.
Speaker 3: And I'm just like, well, that's a crazy trade. Like
Speaker 3: I wouldn't do that for anything else. If somebody was like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, twice a week, you could come here and
Speaker 3: you could play this game and you'd be happy for
Speaker 3: an hour, but you're betting at the same time that
Speaker 3: if that doesn't go right, I'll take everything you own,
Speaker 3: I'd be like, that's a crazy bet. Like no, like
Speaker 3: that's not now, and that are terrible. So that's kind
Speaker 3: of where I am. But I love your neuroscientific idea
Speaker 3: too that that pathway still exists. And yeah, because that
Speaker 3: was my experience after being sober eight years and picking
Speaker 3: up and using again was it wasn't immediate. I didn't
Speaker 3: immediately go back. I never went back to using heroin,
Speaker 3: but over the course of a couple years, I ended
Speaker 3: up just as sick as I had been in the
Speaker 3: first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I really do believe that that would happen
Speaker 1: to me. And what you were just saying about the
Speaker 1: risk reward analysis really reminds me of that recovery saying
Speaker 1: that using or drinking is temporary fun with permanent consequences.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I love that and I think about that
Speaker 1: a lot. And also it's the addictive voice. So I
Speaker 1: also use something called addictive voice recognition back in the
Speaker 1: early years. Now, now my addictive voice is nonexistent. I
Speaker 1: don't hear it. But if that voice were to pipe up,
Speaker 1: the voice saying but you're you know, it's been eleven years,
Speaker 1: surely you could just maybe have one or two I'd
Speaker 1: be like, no, I know what that voice is, and
Speaker 1: that is just my addiction in a different form, because
Speaker 1: it will take so many different wily conniving you know,
Speaker 1: that thing about it being cunning and powerful. It is,
Speaker 1: So I would shut that down immediately. There's a nuance there,
Speaker 1: even though in the right circles I would use the
Speaker 1: term addict and alcoholic, yeah, because I'm not against those terms.
Speaker 1: It's just that ordinarily I would describe myself as an
Speaker 1: ex adict that feels more accurate to where I'm at.
Speaker 3: Yeah. There's a line in the book where Flick, which
Speaker 3: is the version that moves to the rich London home,
Speaker 3: has a friend named Sita. Is that how you would
Speaker 3: pronounce it? Yeah, that's right, And Cita accuses her of
Speaker 3: being manipulative, and Flick says, well, what do you mean manipulative?
Speaker 3: And she says, you know, massaging the narrative for your
Speaker 3: own means. And I'm reading what you said. Flick didn't
Speaker 3: understand why they would even war it comment. Wasn't that
Speaker 3: what everyone did? Wasn't that just being good at life?
Speaker 1: This came directly from my own experience, because I recall
Speaker 1: I was probably one year out from sobriety one of
Speaker 1: my friends saying that I had become very, very manipulative,
Speaker 1: and similarly to Flick, I didn't even understand what the
Speaker 1: word meant. I couldn't wrap my head around the word
Speaker 1: because I just had assumed that everyone did that, everyone
Speaker 1: manipulated the narrative and tried to control how other people
Speaker 1: saw them and tried to get the best results for them.
Speaker 1: So I'm still manipulative now, I know that I have
Speaker 1: that in me because it was so much a part
Speaker 1: of me verse thirty three years of my life. And
Speaker 1: I do often have to stand back and think, Okay,
Speaker 1: what am I trying to gain? Here? Am I withholding
Speaker 1: parts of information in order to make people think about
Speaker 1: me a certain way? And I really have to pull
Speaker 1: myself back and just be straight down the line and
Speaker 1: you know, counter that manipula to urge that I want
Speaker 1: to go with all the time. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The problem is that none of that is as straightforward
Speaker 3: as just drink or don't drink, right, Because we all are,
Speaker 3: to some degree, even without knowing it, controlling the narrative
Speaker 3: that we tell ourselves. I mean, the way we present
Speaker 3: to the world like that is kind of baked into us.
Speaker 3: And there's a subtle form of it that I recognized
Speaker 3: in later years. Right, there was the obvious manipulation where
Speaker 3: I'm manipulating something to get what I want, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: But there's another type of manipulation, which is that I'm
Speaker 3: trying to control your emotional response.
Speaker 1: That's it that really hits the knell on the head.
Speaker 1: I think for that reason, sometimes I will type a
Speaker 1: text and then I will delete it because I know
Speaker 1: that I am trying to emit a certain response from
Speaker 1: the perform I'm texting, and then I will bring it
Speaker 1: back and I will remove information that is, you know,
Speaker 1: designed to evoke pity or admiration or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: You know, my minipulis of alter euros come up with
Speaker 1: and I just keep it as straight as possible for
Speaker 1: one of a better word, And that's how I fight
Speaker 1: against it. Yeah. I do think all of us have
Speaker 1: the capacity to be manipulative, and being aware of it
Speaker 1: is just half of the battle.
Speaker 3: Really, As you were saying that, it made me laugh
Speaker 3: a little bit. I was thinking in my mind, like
Speaker 3: this being thoughtful means that I have to retype texts
Speaker 3: and emails over and like, you know, I write it
Speaker 3: out and I'm like, hang on, let me, I need
Speaker 3: to think of it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It's just funny. But the subtle nuance of this that
Speaker 3: I even realized was that I was manipulating people with
Speaker 3: quote unquote good intentions because I would think they can't
Speaker 3: handle what I'm going to say, or what I'm going
Speaker 3: to say to them is going to make them upset,
Speaker 3: and I don't want them to be upset. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: a whole another level of withholding honesty, which in certain
Speaker 3: situations I think actually makes a lot of sense, and
Speaker 3: in other situations, if you're trying to be intimate and
Speaker 3: close with people is a terrible idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really is, because that leads to resentment, because
Speaker 1: if you're not being honest with people about how you feel,
Speaker 1: then you're running the danger of nurturing resentment. So it's
Speaker 1: really hard about I know exactly what you mean, and
Speaker 1: I like to be as nice as possible, but also
Speaker 1: have people think well of me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course. Yeah. There's another great line in the
Speaker 3: book where you're talking about Flick where she realizes she's
Speaker 3: a people pleaser, like she desperately wants to please people,
Speaker 3: but she has the unfortunate habit of displeasing people the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But personal experience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely personally through it. I promised the entire book
Speaker 1: isn't autobiograph. Just the line that you're plucking out really
Speaker 1: only just things that I've experienced. That is one of
Speaker 1: the things that I think is so true of people
Speaker 1: who come into recovery and just people in general, is
Speaker 1: that so many of us intend to be or are
Speaker 1: driven to people pleasing, and then we accidentally end up
Speaker 1: people displeasing because actually it doesn't really work. It just
Speaker 1: ends up going very, very wrong. And so that's something
Speaker 1: that I fight against it on a daily basis as well.
Speaker 1: It's a lifelong battle though.
Speaker 3: What I've found is the longer I sort of I
Speaker 3: never know what to call it. I don't really like
Speaker 3: the phrase the longer I'm on my journey, or the
Speaker 3: deeper I go into trying to be the best version
Speaker 3: of myself. Maybe that's the best way to say it.
Speaker 3: The deeper I go into that, the more subtleties I
Speaker 3: see that ten years ago I would never have seen.
Speaker 3: I never would have thought of that way in which
Speaker 3: I am, you know, not being the best version of myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so true. And I continually have a problem
Speaker 1: with my ship with the word now and I really
Speaker 1: have to work on that, especially from a work point
Speaker 1: of view, because I want people to like me, and
Speaker 1: therefore I say yes to par too much and then
Speaker 1: I burn out. So it's something that I do battle
Speaker 1: with a very regular basis.
Speaker 3: I wrestle with this a little bit too, and some
Speaker 3: of it is that I don't want to say no
Speaker 3: to people. The other thing that drives it, and I
Speaker 3: don't know if this is part of it for you.
Speaker 3: But when you're like you, you're an author, right. You
Speaker 3: make your living by people buying your things, Right, So
Speaker 3: when people ask you to do something, it's often the
Speaker 3: reason you do it is because you're getting your stuff
Speaker 3: in front of other people. And so there's certainly a
Speaker 3: I don't want to say no to people. But then
Speaker 3: there's also in my case of fear like I can't
Speaker 3: turn down any opportunity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a fear of becoming irrelevant. Yes, yes, we're all
Speaker 1: going away. I don't have to go and work in
Speaker 1: tefco on the counter. You know, every creative has that
Speaker 1: fear because they've often worked so hard to get where
Speaker 1: they are and spent so many years. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: spent many years doing second jobs and scrambling to get by,
Speaker 1: and it's only really in the last few years that
Speaker 1: things have really come together. So there is a constant alarm.
Speaker 1: But it might all disappear overnight just because you've said
Speaker 1: no to have coming on one.
Speaker 3: Event, you didn't go to that one place you were
Speaker 3: asked to speak where there were six people, and it
Speaker 3: just it tanked your entire career. Really Late in the book,
Speaker 3: this quote from Carl Jung that goes something like we
Speaker 3: are not what has happened to us comes up and
Speaker 3: one of the characters reacts fairly strongly to that idea,
Speaker 3: say more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the exact quote is something like, we are
Speaker 1: not what has happened to us. We are what we
Speaker 1: choose to become. And I take some serious umbrage to
Speaker 1: the first part of that quote, that we are not
Speaker 1: what's happened to us, And so just the character in
Speaker 1: the book flick because I think that's naive. I really
Speaker 1: don't think that you can erase the first eighteen years
Speaker 1: of your life or whatever and start afresh and decide
Speaker 1: who you're going to become now that you're an adult
Speaker 1: and you're supposedly sort of free of your childhood and
Speaker 1: your parental influence, because I just don't think that ever
Speaker 1: the case. I mean, no, we now know so much
Speaker 1: more about it. We know that the body stores early experiences,
Speaker 1: and that nervous system reacts before we do consciously, and
Speaker 1: that's why often we have outsized reactions to things because
Speaker 1: they remind us of the childhood wound and all that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So I do really think that in
Speaker 1: order to move past that and start to be able
Speaker 1: to choose you become. You really have to go deep
Speaker 1: and do the work. At the risk of sounds like
Speaker 1: a cliche. Otherwise, if you don't have the awareness of
Speaker 1: why you say, for instance, react in an outsized way.
Speaker 1: If somebody delays responding to your message and knowing why
Speaker 1: that hurts, you can't choose your reaction. So I didn't
Speaker 1: see it in so many people that I think in
Speaker 1: our twenties we often just sort of ricochet around in
Speaker 1: reaction to our childhood and often repeat our parents' mistakes
Speaker 1: or go to far the other way and go to
Speaker 1: the polar opposite. And it's only really in our thirties,
Speaker 1: forties and beyond that we begin to be able to
Speaker 1: choose who were going to become and make more conscious
Speaker 1: decisions about the person we want to be and how
Speaker 1: we want a parent. So it was something that I
Speaker 1: really wanted to sum up in the book, and I
Speaker 1: feel satisfied that I have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think. So. I was walking down the street
Speaker 3: the other day and I saw a quote on a
Speaker 3: card from Jack Kerouac, and I don't remember it exactly,
Speaker 3: but it said something like nothing behind me and everything
Speaker 3: ahead of me. About being on the road, and I
Speaker 3: was like, well, no, not exactly. Like now, we are
Speaker 3: a result of the countless causes and conditions that have
Speaker 3: come together to make us who we are today. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you can't unwind that far enough, right, even if you
Speaker 3: start to go, well, I think I might be this way,
Speaker 3: We're just making it up to a certain degree. Am
Speaker 3: I that way because my mom did this? Or am
Speaker 3: I that way because Johnny in third grade punched me
Speaker 3: over a juice box? Or I think that because some
Speaker 3: musician I loved when I was fourteen said, I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just this. You can't sort it out. Yeah, you
Speaker 3: can make some attempts to see what some of the
Speaker 3: big things were, but we never really know fully, No.
Speaker 1: We don'n't. But I think there is a middle ground
Speaker 1: to be found. So something that I do tend to
Speaker 1: do is I've been in and out of therapy. I've
Speaker 1: done therapy really three big times in my life. But
Speaker 1: I've always had an end in sight, and for me,
Speaker 1: I don't want to stay in forever because I do
Speaker 1: think that there is a happy medium to be found
Speaker 1: between It's that bumper sticker. Don't look back, You're not
Speaker 1: going that way. You do need to look back, but
Speaker 1: then you also need to go that way. Yes, so
Speaker 1: I think both can be true. That what has come
Speaker 1: behind us, you know we've already been through, doesn't form
Speaker 1: where we go. But then also that there is a
Speaker 1: point where you've done enough work on it that you
Speaker 1: can really start to choose your own directory.
Speaker 3: Can we use the line near the end of the
Speaker 3: book to sum that up? Or is that too much?
Speaker 1: I think we can so. Towards the end of the book.
Speaker 1: This isn't too much of a spoiler, because there's plenty
Speaker 1: in the book that has in surprised, lots of twists
Speaker 1: and turns, you know, the murder mystery, and another big reveal.
Speaker 1: But towards the end of the book, one of the
Speaker 1: versions of her flick rewrites that Carl Young quote and
Speaker 1: it becomes we are what have happened to us? But
Speaker 1: now I choose who I've become. And if anything could
Speaker 1: sum up my motto for life, it would be that.
Speaker 3: I think that's a beautiful place for us to wrap up. Catherine,
Speaker 3: It's always such a pleasure to have you on. I
Speaker 3: can't recommend the new book highly enough. I've loved all
Speaker 3: your writing, but this novel. I was so excited I
Speaker 3: just read it and it was one of those I
Speaker 3: didn't want to put it down kind of books from
Speaker 3: start to end. So bravo.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
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