WEBVTT - Christie Tate 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:12.120 Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Side Podcast. 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:15.720 My guest today is Christie pat author of the new 0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:20.120 bestseller Group All about how group therapy saved her life. 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:23.520 You can't put this book down. It's written from the 0:00:23.640 --> 0:00:27.440 viewpoint of the patient. It's not a tone with all 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:31.440 the words and vulnerabilities we all have. Christie, Welcome to 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:33.760 the podcast. Thanks for having me, Bob. I'm glad to 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:36.519 be here. You know, too many people therapy has a 0:00:36.880 --> 0:00:40.479 bad image. What did it take for you to cross 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:44.080 the threshold and actually enter therapy? Well, it's it's nothing 0:00:44.159 --> 0:00:46.640 very laudable. I was in a lot of pain, and 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:50.479 I was really really afraid I was gonna die alone, 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:53.760 and nobody knew how much pain I was in. I 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:56.600 had I hit it really well. I was. I was 0:00:56.640 --> 0:01:00.840 probably just depressed. And but if you're not telling anybody, 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:04.080 it starts to feel like there's something so so wrong. 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:09.000 And I was having suicidal thoughts and wondering something more 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:11.399 than what is life for? It was more like how 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:15.200 could I die? And this was so incongruous with my 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:17.720 outside life. I had just found out I was the 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:20.720 valedictorian of my law school. I was in the I 0:01:20.760 --> 0:01:22.399 was the number one in my law school after the 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:25.880 first year, and I should have been happy, but inside 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:28.240 I was just like, this is this is going to 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:31.440 end badly and I'm seriously gonna die alone. And then 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:35.240 I became willing because I thought therapy would be a 0:01:35.360 --> 0:01:40.160 slog and expensive and self indulgent and ultimately not work. 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:44.000 I didn't think it would work. Okay, let's go back 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:48.040 a little chapter in retrospect. Was this always your identity 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:51.520 to feel disconnected and alone and somewhat depressed, or was 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:55.480 it triggered leader in your life. I think I always 0:01:55.520 --> 0:01:58.240 had seeds of it. I think I felt a little 0:01:58.240 --> 0:02:01.280 bit like a misfit in my family. Ly, I was 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:06.120 moody and artsy, and my family was pretty buttoned up, 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:11.440 very Catholic. They loved football in Texas, and I just 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:14.639 didn't quite fall into step with them. And I think 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:17.839 it probably could have gone either way. And then when 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:20.000 I was in high school, right before high school, I 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:23.720 was in a traumatic accident. I was with another family 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:26.200 and the father that we were with he drowned on 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:29.440 the beach while we were in Hawaii, and I think 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:32.240 that was a very traumatic thing, and I think I 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:36.280 just buried it in my body, and that just pushed 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:38.680 me all the way farther from people. And I could 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:41.080 put on a good show, I could smile, I could 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:44.720 make good grades, but deep down inside, there was like 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:47.400 a bomb ticking. Is what it sort of feels like 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:51.440 looking back. Okay, now that you've had years of therapy 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:56.040 to look back on it, what about that death negatively 0:02:56.120 --> 0:02:58.840 impact you? Obviously that's a significant thing. But why was 0:02:58.840 --> 0:03:01.880 it such a traumatic eve in in your life? I 0:03:01.919 --> 0:03:05.440 think it's because of denial. I always told myself. From 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:07.959 the minute we got in the car leaving the beach, 0:03:08.760 --> 0:03:13.000 I started telling myself a story. This isn't my tragedy, 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:15.640 it's it wasn't my dad. My dad was at home 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:19.760 in Texas. This was my friend's dad. Don't be dramatic, 0:03:19.840 --> 0:03:23.320 don't make this about yourself. And consequently, I was a 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:25.800 thirteen year old, I was two weeks actually from my 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:31.200 fourteenth birthday walking around with traumatic images and sights and sounds, 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:35.960 and I just wouldn't let myself feel one drop of 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:38.880 it because it didn't belong to me. And part of 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:41.280 that was I was just scared. It's very, very scary 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:44.760 to face death and something unexpected on a beach is 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:48.840 a horrible situation. So I think having the trauma and 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:52.760 burying it served to push me far away from people. 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:55.600 And what was explained to me by my therapist, who 0:03:55.680 --> 0:04:00.520 I called Dr Rosen, was because I had unprocessed trauma, 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:02.960 if I got close to people, I was going to 0:04:03.040 --> 0:04:06.560 feel attached and I was gonna worry about losing them, 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:08.760 and to me that there's just no way. And I 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:12.240 didn't know that was operating like subconsciously, I thought, I'm 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:14.400 a nice girl. Why can't I find nice friends and 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:18.200 a nice boyfriend? But the truth was some subconscious mechanism 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:20.919 was keeping me far away because I was scared I 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:23.880 was gonna lose them. And I hadn't even dealt with 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:26.960 how how how could you get over something like that? 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:31.840 Because I hadn't. Okay, so uh, this would beg the 0:04:31.960 --> 0:04:35.799 question were these types of thoughts acceptable in your family 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:39.280 or did you just talk about events as opposed to feelings. 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:45.240 That's a good question. Generally we would talk about events, 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:48.760 and I think my parents they could see that I 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:52.200 was hurting. When I came home from Hawaii, I started 0:04:52.240 --> 0:04:55.760 my freshman year. I was at an all girls, very 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:59.480 selective challenging school, and I would come home and I 0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:01.479 would sleep for hours, and then I would do my 0:05:01.600 --> 0:05:03.760 homework till like two in the morning. I just was 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:06.599 things were off with me, and I don't think my 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:09.600 parents had the tools. They wanted to help me, and 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:13.320 their way was to sort of a message of buck up, 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:16.520 but my mom's way of phrasing it, and my dad, 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:19.560 they would stand in my doorway and say, you need 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:21.920 to like act like a normal teenager. You need to 0:05:21.960 --> 0:05:24.800 go to football games, you need to stop sleeping, you 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:27.640 need to have normal hours. And we sort of just 0:05:27.720 --> 0:05:31.040 attacked like the outside without the inside, because I don't 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:33.480 think any of us we just didn't have the tools. 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:37.080 We had no idea how to begin to unravel what 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:40.960 I'd experienced. And even before then, I have my eating 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:44.400 disorder had already developed, like two years before I was bliming, 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:47.600 and that was a secret, so my parents didn't even 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:50.320 know about that. So there was a lot kind of 0:05:50.360 --> 0:05:53.960 crashing in on me during a pretty formative era of 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:57.760 my life. I'm interested, what was your relationship with your 0:05:57.839 --> 0:06:02.920 friend and her family subsequent to her father passing away. Yeah, 0:06:03.000 --> 0:06:07.080 that's a good question. So we stayed really close, right 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:09.560 at the beginning the beginning of high school. I went 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:13.240 over to her house every weekend. My parents brought them food. 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:16.080 We really were sort of on a sort of a 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:20.920 grief a grief huddle, the my myself with their family, 0:06:21.520 --> 0:06:24.039 and then slowly we it was like we had that 0:06:24.120 --> 0:06:27.680 trauma bond that was so intense, and then slowly we 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:30.920 had different ways of coping. And my way of coping 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:34.280 was to sort of like buck up, get good grades 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:38.919 and just dive into perfectionism and achievement. And my friend 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:41.720 that I was with, she had a different experience, and 0:06:41.839 --> 0:06:46.000 she ended up leaving our high school and her herd. 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:49.160 Her journey was very different than mine. She ended up 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:52.640 sort of cutting ties with all of us because she 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:55.479 needed to do her healing in a more isolated way. 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:58.719 And we didn't we lost touch until I until this 0:06:58.800 --> 0:07:01.400 book came out. Actually, that was the next question, So 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:04.520 you reconnected. What were her feelings about you telling her 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:07.279 story in the book? Oh, my gosh, I was. It 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:10.360 was the thing I was the most afraid about. That's 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:13.880 how persistent the idea in my head was, I can't 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:17.080 steal this story from my friend and her brother and 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:22.760 their family. And of course Intellectually, I knew my grappling 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:26.960 with death and grief, and this event in Hawaii was 0:07:27.120 --> 0:07:30.360 a huge part of my therapy. But I still that 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:34.760 that pernicious idea that I was borrowing their their story 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:38.080 from my own. It persisted, and when the right before 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:40.080 the book came out, I reached out to her and 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:42.000 to her brother and we were all three on the 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:45.320 beach together when her dad drowned, and I sent them 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:48.280 a copy and I let them know what their father 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:51.360 meant to me, what their family meant to me, and 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:54.960 they just they had totally taken me in. We've gone 0:07:54.960 --> 0:07:58.320 on another trip together, and they were a family who 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:01.880 just accepted me, and I wanted them to know that 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:06.200 that love and what what the acceptance from another family 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:10.360 can mean to an awkward kid can be totally life altering, 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:14.360 and that I certainly wish that her father hadn't died 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:17.120 and we hadn't gone through that. But I don't regret 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:20.440 being being one of the witnesses. I don't regret the love. 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:23.160 And part of the cost of that was I was 0:08:23.200 --> 0:08:26.720 there when a horrible thing happened. Okay, just to clarify, 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:29.120 you went on another trip while you were still in 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:32.120 high school or since you've reconnected. I'm sorry. We went 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:35.080 on a trip before we went to Hawaii the spring 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:38.000 bright before we've gone on a ski trip together, and 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:42.760 so I felt very I felt just accepted and unfolded 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:46.560 into their family in a way that was just remarkable. 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:49.520 And really it really did a lot for me because 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:52.960 I didn't feel that same kind of love and acceptance 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:56.040 in my family for whatever reason, and it was really 0:08:56.120 --> 0:09:00.160 a wonderful thing to land there. Okay, Now you talked 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:03.439 about in high school subsequent to this tragic event me 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:08.800 having perfectionist tendencies in retrospect, were those always there or 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:11.280 was it black and white? After this event? Then you 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:15.360 became a perfectionist. I would have told you that I've 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:19.160 always been like this, but recently my mother sent me 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:22.040 all my old report cards, like from first and second grade, 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:24.439 and I have this idea that I was always like 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:28.719 a straight A student, like real diligent. Not true, not 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:32.840 true at all. In second, third and up through fifth grade, 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:35.600 I had lots of bees, which is funny because when 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:37.920 I look at it now, when by the time I 0:09:38.040 --> 0:09:41.599 got to high school, a B was anathema to me, 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:44.880 A bee was a failure. So I think that supports 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:48.360 the theory that there was something about that trauma that 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:52.160 happened right before high school that just turned all my screws, 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:57.599 and getting a bee was just absolutely devastating to me, 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:00.199 and I worked really hard not to ever have one 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:04.440 high school, college, graduate school, and then in law school. Okay, 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:07.719 you know, since you're so honest in the book, you 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:11.600 talk about your own physicality, you talk about your own 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:16.520 sexual experiences, so certainly there's a lot of opening as 0:10:16.520 --> 0:10:20.120 a result of years of therapy. But you do say 0:10:20.640 --> 0:10:23.959 that you did have relationships, you did have sex in 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:28.680 high school, and so that seems to be at odds. 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:33.080 How do you explain that? You mean, how how it's 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:35.679 not the case that I had no experiences until I 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:38.040 got into therapy. And well, I guess what I'm saying 0:10:38.240 --> 0:10:39.880 is to the if you look at it just on 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:46.079 a factual basis, you're saying that you are inexperienced sexually, 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:50.760 you're not feeling sexually, but statistically, you had had sex, 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:54.320 you had relationships. So how do you explain the fact 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:58.079 that you did have those? Oh, sure in high school. 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:00.400 That's when I senior year of high school was when 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:03.800 I first became sexually active. I had a boyfriend, and 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:07.760 the whole thing, the whole relationship, from the very first day, 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:11.960 it was just laced with betrayal and high school drama, 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:15.680 and he was always cheating on me. And so while 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:19.800 yes I did have those physical experiences, I felt like 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:22.439 I had to have sex with him or he wouldn't 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:24.959 be my boyfriend, which is a really tricky way to 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:28.800 go into a relationship and not so great and myself 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:32.600 esteem and my sense of myself as as being someone 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:35.560 who was allowed to pick a partner or pick a boyfriend. 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:37.959 It didn't that would have never occurred to me. I 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:41.679 had to take whoever liked me, and this kid liked me, 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:44.240 and even though he cheated on me, I had to 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:47.160 just figure out it seemed like it was my problem, 0:11:47.320 --> 0:11:51.199 not his. In other words, I remember thinking senior year 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:54.240 around prom time, well, if I lose some weight, if 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:57.920 I go tanning, if I toss up my big Texas hair, 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:01.840 then he'll stay with me and be faithful. It became 0:12:02.440 --> 0:12:06.240 my problem to solve his cheating, and that was like 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:10.959 not very satisfying. We'll say that, Okay. One thing you 0:12:11.160 --> 0:12:16.480 emphasize in the book is that men were not hitting 0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:19.560 on you, and you did not feel attractive. You would 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:23.160 go out with your friends and men would interact with them, 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:27.680 but not you. In retrospect, with all this insight from therapy, 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:31.000 what do you think was going on there? What I 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:33.319 think is that I would go out with my friends, 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:38.040 and I think I put out a vibe that basically 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:40.520 said don't touch me, don't talk to me, don't look 0:12:40.559 --> 0:12:43.520 at me. And it was totally subconscious because I'd be 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:46.400 with my friends, I'd be dressed up, i'd wear lipstick. 0:12:46.840 --> 0:12:49.920 I there was nothing physically wrong with me. There was 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:52.760 no reason I don't I wasn't aware of sitting there 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:55.199 with a scowl on my face. But I think that 0:12:55.600 --> 0:13:00.719 all the all the subconscious layers of unresolved grief and 0:13:01.720 --> 0:13:04.440 spear of attachment, all the things I hadn't learned how 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:07.760 to do in high school and through college, I think 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:11.000 I ultimately just put out a vibe. It was like 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:15.360 almost like an invisible fence, like just don't don't go 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:18.120 there when it comes to me and when I look 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:20.760 back and I think about nights at these bars in college, 0:13:20.920 --> 0:13:23.280 or when my roommate from college and I at the end, 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:27.640 we traveled through Europe, everywhere we went. These men loved her, 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:30.559 and I couldn't. None of them would pay any attention 0:13:30.640 --> 0:13:32.480 to me. And when I think about it, I don't 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:35.719 have a single memory of looking any of them in 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:39.720 the eye. I think I was really, really, really shut 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:42.840 down and really repressed, to the point where I couldn't 0:13:42.920 --> 0:13:46.360 even look a strange Swiss guy in the eye just 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:50.959 to say hello, Okay, you mentioned your boliemia. Can you 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:53.679 tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, So 0:13:53.800 --> 0:13:57.800 I started throwing up and engaging in all kinds of 0:13:57.880 --> 0:14:02.360 beliemic shenanigans. When I start it, I started seventh grade. 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:06.480 It was March of seventh grade, so I was like thirteen. Now, 0:14:06.600 --> 0:14:08.400 you say you went to a girls high school? Was 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:11.839 it a girls junior high to middle? In middle school? 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:14.439 There were boys there and then they separated. We separated 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:17.559 at high school, and so it was the first time 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:21.160 I did it. I remember, I remember feeling I probably 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:24.400 wouldn't have used the word pressure, But what I was 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:27.640 aware of is cheerleading tryouts were coming up. This was 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:30.040 seventh grade. It was you know, it's Texas. If you're 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:33.440 not going to make the cheerleading squad, that's a real problem. 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:38.240 So cheerleading. I was also very into ballet, where, of 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:40.920 course the standards of having a body the minute you 0:14:41.000 --> 0:14:45.000 get breasts, you can't be a star ballerina, and I didn't. 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:47.440 I was always I was not obese. I was not 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:51.000 an obese child, but I was chubby and fleshier then 0:14:51.480 --> 0:14:54.600 I wanted to be. I wanted to be a bony ballerina. 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:57.680 I wanted to be like Kate Moss, and that would 0:14:57.720 --> 0:15:01.400 have been enormously unhealthy for me and my body type, 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:05.400 maybe even for k Moss. But so I remember thinking, well, 0:15:05.480 --> 0:15:08.800 I can't control my appetites. But I had read little 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:13.440 teen books about believing gymnasts and seen some ABC after 0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:15.400 school specials, and I was like, well, I'm gonna try it. 0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:18.920 That'll that fixes the problem. If I can't control my appetite, 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:22.520 I'll just control what happens when I've lost control with 0:15:22.640 --> 0:15:25.280 my appetite. And it felt like this is a pretty 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:27.880 good idea. But on some level I knew it was 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:30.160 very messed up because it was total secret. I didn't 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:32.960 tell anybody. I knew not to say. Oh, I discovered 0:15:33.000 --> 0:15:36.560 this great trick for losing weight. But that started in 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:40.280 seventh grade. Okay, A couple of things. In retrospect. Do 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:43.720 you believe same sex education like you had in high 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:47.560 school good thing, bad thing, good for you, not good 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:51.680 for you. I think it was good for me. I 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:55.920 think that I'm really torn. Here's the here's what I 0:15:56.320 --> 0:15:59.960 believe were the pros. The pros were it really really 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:04.640 really cemented my own idea of myself as a feminist. 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:07.120 And when you go to an all girl high school, 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:10.120 there's no pretending to be dumb, because you don't want 0:16:10.120 --> 0:16:12.000 the boy next to you to think you're like a 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:15.960 buzz kill or not girlfriend material if you're acing physics. 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:19.520 So everybody worked really hard. The downside of that is 0:16:19.560 --> 0:16:22.600 there's a lot of pressure. But also and an all 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:26.160 girls high school, every leadership position is held by a 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:32.080 woman or a young girl, right, every every student council member, 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:35.000 and all the ideas that are generated about what we're 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:37.680 gonna do here, it was all girls. So I think 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:42.480 that that really instilled in me something really important about 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:46.200 understanding who can be in charge, who can run the show. 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:49.080 I mean, that's great for a young feminist, that was awesome. 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:51.360 But by the time I got to college and I 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:53.880 went to a giant state school Texas, A and M. 0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:56.520 There were boys everywhere. I hadn't sat next to a 0:16:56.600 --> 0:16:59.400 boy in math class since I was thirteen years old, 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:02.320 and I didn't know how to be just friends. I 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:04.600 didn't know how they just like, go have a meal 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:07.160 with a boy. Everything was the date felt like a date, 0:17:07.440 --> 0:17:10.160 and I just I it took me a long time 0:17:10.640 --> 0:17:15.200 to find some ease in friendships with boys because we 0:17:15.520 --> 0:17:17.600 I didn't have access to them all day long, all 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:21.000 through high school. Okay, Now, one point you make in 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:22.760 the book was you had a dream to go to 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:26.280 an Ivy League school, but you ended up going to 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:30.800 a state school for financial reasons. To what degree did 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:36.160 that negatively impact you and possibly still negative impactly? Um, 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:40.880 you know, I thought, I've had some I've had some lingering, 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:44.639 like longing for a different kind of college experience. It 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:47.920 sounds ridiculous because I'm forty seven years old. And one 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:51.840 thing I did for myself was when I finished with 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:55.159 my undergraduate degree, I thought to myself, I mean, I 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:56.879 don't know what you do with an English degree. That 0:17:57.000 --> 0:17:58.480 was one of the things I thought. And the next 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:02.000 one was, if you're gonna walk around being resentful about 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:05.159 where you went to college, do something about it. So 0:18:05.280 --> 0:18:08.000 I did have I got a master's at the University 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:10.440 of Chicago, which is not Ivy League, but it was 0:18:10.520 --> 0:18:13.080 close enough and had the Gothic walls, it had the 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:16.399 harsh winters, and had the really smart people. So I 0:18:16.480 --> 0:18:18.960 went and did that sort of as an amends to myself. 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:22.480 And luckily now I've I've done enough in my life 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:24.920 that no one cares where I went to college. But 0:18:25.040 --> 0:18:28.160 it is part of my story in that I remember 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:31.840 that longing and it's it's something that I still think 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:35.000 about from time to time. Okay, this is glossed over 0:18:35.080 --> 0:18:39.840 in the book. So you went immediately from college to 0:18:39.960 --> 0:18:44.359 graduate school where you off and your graduate degree is 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:47.800 in what my graduate degree from the University of Chicago 0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:51.640 is in humanities. So, first of all, for those people 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:54.080 don't know, Universe Chicago and we can define what an 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:58.399 Ivy League schools, but certainly elite, unbelievable and I've actually 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:03.920 been there. But since you were going for humanities, you said, 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:06.040 what would I do with an English degree? What was 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:09.000 your plan? What to do with the humanities degree? That 0:19:09.320 --> 0:19:12.040 is such a good question. That's where my parents were 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:15.920 like humanities, Um what And my thought was I'll do this. 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:18.679 It was a one year terminal Masters, and I thought, well, 0:19:18.680 --> 0:19:21.639 I'm gonna go. I'm gonna dabble in all the humanities 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:23.920 and figure out which way to go for a PhD. 0:19:24.840 --> 0:19:27.840 And at the end of the program, all of the 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:31.040 members of my my class there was like maybe twenty 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:34.320 seven of us in the Humanities department for that year. 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:37.960 Everybody was either going to become a teacher or a lawyer. 0:19:38.520 --> 0:19:41.120 And I still wasn't sure, so I took more time off. 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:42.639 I just went. By the time I got to the 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:45.600 University of Chicago, I knew so many people who were 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:49.120 all a b D all but dissertation, and they looked 0:19:49.320 --> 0:19:52.639 really smart and really unhappy, like really unhappy, and I 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:55.600 was like, I was worried that the pH d route 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:57.800 was going to be really lonely and that no one 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:00.040 would ever read it. Who's gonna read my PhD? I 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:02.280 couldn't picture it. I knew someone who was doing like 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:07.080 images of women and chessboards and medieval literature, and I 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:09.640 was like, this is what I'm gonna do with my life, 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:12.240 and it just didn't feel right. So I kind of 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:14.280 wandered for a couple of years after that until I 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:17.240 too settled on law school. Okay, just because you bring 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:19.920 up debt in the book, did you have a debt 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:24.480 from the University of Chicago? Yes, I did, and that 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:27.440 was a very sobering experience. You know, you differ for 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:29.679 the song. I was able to defer for the summer 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:32.520 for some reason because I didn't have a job. And 0:20:32.600 --> 0:20:34.720 then once, you know, I get a job, I got 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:37.399 a I got an apartment and I was living a 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:40.320 whole Mary Tyler more in the city thing. And then 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:43.399 that that first bill comes and like, please remit your payment. 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:45.640 It was like four hundred and twenty three dollars, which 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:49.320 was insane. That was like half of my first paycheck. 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:52.600 And it was very, very sobering, and I thought it 0:20:52.680 --> 0:20:55.040 was worth it. But it's it's I really feel for 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:57.680 people who are struggling with student debt. It's it's not 0:20:57.800 --> 0:21:01.120 a joke. Okay, So many years did you take off 0:21:01.119 --> 0:21:05.760 from between graduate school and law school between? I graduated 0:21:05.840 --> 0:21:10.000 from the UFC and nine and then I matriculated in 0:21:10.080 --> 0:21:13.040 law school in two thousand. Then what do you do 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:15.440 for the two years in between? I went to d C. 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:19.160 I moved with some friends to a group home in Washington, 0:21:19.280 --> 0:21:21.960 d C. And I took a job. We called it 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:25.600 a mix job because it was not a career position. 0:21:25.920 --> 0:21:29.280 And I worked for a company that helped law firms 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:33.760 retrieve legal documents from recalcitrant judges. It was it was 0:21:33.840 --> 0:21:35.320 just like sitting on the phone all day trying to 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:38.480 find documents back. This is before the internet was Could 0:21:38.560 --> 0:21:41.040 you could do it? All? Right? And then I moved 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:44.920 back to Chicago, UM and I was I worked for 0:21:45.040 --> 0:21:48.040 the University of Chicago as an administrative assistant with a 0:21:48.160 --> 0:21:51.760 master's degree, still thinking I don't know. I wasn't ready 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:54.160 to let go of the PhD. And I needed one 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:56.560 more year. I worked for a professor who was a 0:21:56.640 --> 0:22:00.960 PhD and statistician, and that killed the h D dream 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:03.160 killed it dead. And then I went to law school. 0:22:03.359 --> 0:22:06.800 How did you decide to go to law school? Well, 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:10.360 I was when I was working at the UFC. There 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:13.040 was a woman there who I just I loved her. 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:15.119 She was a little bit younger than I was, so 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:17.040 she was I was probably twenty five and she was 0:22:17.080 --> 0:22:19.919 twenty four, and she was married, and she was smart, 0:22:20.040 --> 0:22:21.639 and she was studying for the l set and she 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:23.520 was gonna go to law school. And she just she 0:22:23.680 --> 0:22:26.560 had this plan and it looked so appealing to me. 0:22:27.359 --> 0:22:30.520 And around that time, I had a boyfriend and we 0:22:30.680 --> 0:22:33.080 broke up and I was so devastated and I was like, 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:35.879 I need a plan, I need something to do. And 0:22:36.000 --> 0:22:38.840 I had that kind of feeling around the breakup where 0:22:39.359 --> 0:22:41.960 where I was convinced this is where I started realizing 0:22:42.080 --> 0:22:46.200 I may die alone because the relationship fell apart and 0:22:46.280 --> 0:22:49.240 I couldn't imagine how I could fix whatever inside of 0:22:49.320 --> 0:22:52.440 me had made that relationship go wrong, or picking a 0:22:52.560 --> 0:22:55.200 person who wasn't right for me. And I was like, well, 0:22:55.840 --> 0:22:58.159 if I'm never going to have a good personal relationship, 0:22:58.240 --> 0:22:59.680 if I'm never going to be able to get the 0:23:00.160 --> 0:23:03.399 for the romance part of my life in order, then 0:23:03.440 --> 0:23:05.680 I'll go to law school because it will give me 0:23:05.760 --> 0:23:08.760 so much to do. I'll just grind myself into the 0:23:08.800 --> 0:23:11.080 ground and it won't matter that I don't have a 0:23:11.160 --> 0:23:13.960 boyfriend and now at least have money and social power 0:23:14.480 --> 0:23:16.320 and people will at least be like, well, she's got 0:23:16.400 --> 0:23:20.280 this great job. And it was like a consolation prize decision. Okay, 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:23.280 because it also comes up in the book you talk 0:23:23.359 --> 0:23:25.920 about the status of your law school and the ability 0:23:26.000 --> 0:23:29.879 to get a job subsequent graduation. How did you feel 0:23:29.920 --> 0:23:32.080 about the law school you went to. Was that the 0:23:32.119 --> 0:23:34.479 one you chose or did you try to get Did 0:23:34.480 --> 0:23:37.240 you apply to a Smoker's board of law schools? What 0:23:37.440 --> 0:23:41.160 was your comfort level there? Oh? My god. I dreamed 0:23:41.320 --> 0:23:45.600 of going to Northwestern Law School in Chicago or the UFC, 0:23:46.560 --> 0:23:48.640 and I also knew I didn't have the els AT 0:23:48.680 --> 0:23:50.439 score for it at that time. I don't know if 0:23:50.480 --> 0:23:52.640 it's still like that, but at the time I was applying, 0:23:52.720 --> 0:23:57.280 which would have been the els AT score was everything. 0:23:57.640 --> 0:24:00.200 And I'm a hustler and I'm a beast when it 0:24:00.280 --> 0:24:03.200 comes to making good grades. But I can't do those 0:24:03.240 --> 0:24:05.040 tests in a way that would get me into a 0:24:05.119 --> 0:24:07.520 school of my dreams. So I sort of had to 0:24:08.080 --> 0:24:10.720 decide how I was going to proceed with this. And 0:24:10.840 --> 0:24:13.000 one of the things I decided was, Okay, if I 0:24:13.160 --> 0:24:15.720 just get in somewhere, the deal is, I just have 0:24:15.880 --> 0:24:17.440 to be the best there is. I just have to 0:24:18.080 --> 0:24:20.639 I have to be number one in my class, or 0:24:20.680 --> 0:24:22.760 at least I didn't think number one. That's not true. 0:24:23.040 --> 0:24:25.040 I thought I have to be in the top ten percent. 0:24:25.560 --> 0:24:27.240 If I'm going to be at one of these law schools. 0:24:27.280 --> 0:24:32.040 That's not top tier. Okay, you do end up number one. 0:24:32.960 --> 0:24:36.399 I have to ask how that happens. Are you that smart? 0:24:36.720 --> 0:24:39.399 Are you that hard of worker? Is the competition not 0:24:39.560 --> 0:24:42.440 as stiff or all of those things? Give me your take. 0:24:43.640 --> 0:24:46.400 My take on it is number one. I had come 0:24:46.520 --> 0:24:49.000 out of the graduate program that I've done at the 0:24:49.119 --> 0:24:53.600 University of Chicago. It was so hard and so intense, 0:24:54.320 --> 0:24:56.960 in part because I'd come from Texas a and then 0:24:57.040 --> 0:24:59.520 which is not it would just it, frankly, isn't as 0:24:59.600 --> 0:25:02.080 rigorous as what was going on at the UFC. I 0:25:02.240 --> 0:25:05.800 was plopped from Texas into Chicago all of a sudden, 0:25:06.480 --> 0:25:09.440 like one week's reading would be for one class would 0:25:09.480 --> 0:25:14.040 be like four or five scholarly articles plus Uncle Tom's Cabin, 0:25:14.200 --> 0:25:17.159 which is a nine hundred and seven page book, And 0:25:17.480 --> 0:25:20.000 that was one class, and I was taking three, and 0:25:20.200 --> 0:25:23.879 I was I almost drowned, like in the in the 0:25:24.040 --> 0:25:26.280 pursuit of just trying to get it all straight. And 0:25:26.359 --> 0:25:28.000 I didn't feel like I was very good at what 0:25:28.119 --> 0:25:30.639 was happening in graduate school. So by the time I 0:25:30.720 --> 0:25:34.200 got to law school, I was like so well trained 0:25:34.480 --> 0:25:38.080 on reading a ton and just working really hard and that. 0:25:38.240 --> 0:25:41.200 The thing about law school as it was taught at Loyola, 0:25:42.320 --> 0:25:44.600 it was all black letter a lot. If you memorize it, 0:25:45.000 --> 0:25:46.879 you've got it. And so I didn't have to like 0:25:47.000 --> 0:25:52.400 make up theories about Lakhanian mirror stage in Uncle Tom's cabin. 0:25:52.600 --> 0:25:55.280 I had to memorize what's the rule of perpetuities? How 0:25:55.359 --> 0:25:57.600 would you apply it? And I could wrap my hands 0:25:57.680 --> 0:26:00.080 all the way around it, and I think that And 0:26:00.200 --> 0:26:02.280 also I just that's all I did. I did not 0:26:02.440 --> 0:26:05.960 do one. I said no, no, no to social things, 0:26:06.080 --> 0:26:14.560 and it's I didn't have a life. I just studied. Okay. 0:26:14.640 --> 0:26:18.400 The book opens with you with a moment of existential angst, 0:26:18.960 --> 0:26:22.040 which is really I've never seen it described as well, 0:26:22.600 --> 0:26:25.560 we're on paper, you're at the peak of your life, 0:26:25.600 --> 0:26:29.440 and emotionally you're crashing. This is before you start therapy. 0:26:29.480 --> 0:26:32.560 Can you tell us about what you were feeling? Then? Yeah, 0:26:32.600 --> 0:26:36.840 I remember that day so vividly, the day before the 0:26:37.119 --> 0:26:40.399 real loud crisis in my head became full blown and 0:26:40.480 --> 0:26:43.199 not just a low grade drum. I had gone up 0:26:43.240 --> 0:26:45.200 to school, you could go. It was during the summer, 0:26:45.280 --> 0:26:47.600 so I was working at a like a lof term 0:26:47.640 --> 0:26:49.879 as an intern, and you can go up to school. 0:26:49.960 --> 0:26:51.560 You go to the burst's office, you give them your 0:26:51.640 --> 0:26:53.240 I D. And they give you a card and tells 0:26:53.280 --> 0:26:55.360 you your class rank. And I have this little white 0:26:55.400 --> 0:26:58.280 card and it says number one out of two seventy 0:26:58.280 --> 0:27:01.000 two out of one seventy two. And I felt this 0:27:01.320 --> 0:27:05.040 moment of like shock and euphoria, like oh my God, 0:27:05.200 --> 0:27:08.000 like oh my God, like all the ramifications of that, 0:27:08.119 --> 0:27:10.440 all my hard work paid off, and I can work 0:27:10.480 --> 0:27:12.879 anywhere I want in the city and maybe even in 0:27:12.920 --> 0:27:15.840 a different city. And I felt euphoria. By the time 0:27:15.880 --> 0:27:19.159 I had taken the elevator down and walked to the sidewalk, 0:27:19.480 --> 0:27:24.200 I felt I had suicidal ideation, like, well, you did it, Toots, 0:27:24.560 --> 0:27:27.200 But that's all you're gonna get. You can work really, 0:27:27.320 --> 0:27:30.679 really hard, and you can ace all these exams whatever, 0:27:31.480 --> 0:27:34.600 but you can't have a best friend, and you can't 0:27:34.640 --> 0:27:36.680 have people over to your house, and you have no 0:27:36.880 --> 0:27:39.040 idea how to have a boyfriend, and you never will. 0:27:39.680 --> 0:27:42.560 And that the thought of all of that made the 0:27:42.760 --> 0:27:47.359 victory of the valid potential Valectorian. It made it feel 0:27:47.440 --> 0:27:51.240 so hollow and so fraudulent in some way, because I 0:27:51.320 --> 0:27:54.359 had done it to hide and so I think that 0:27:55.880 --> 0:27:58.520 I I think that. So then the next day what 0:27:58.600 --> 0:28:01.560 happened was I is driving around and it was just 0:28:01.680 --> 0:28:04.960 like getting louder and louder, like your number one, You're 0:28:05.040 --> 0:28:07.800 totally alone. And I knew that those were linked, and 0:28:07.920 --> 0:28:10.320 no one else in the world knew that the way 0:28:10.400 --> 0:28:13.000 that I knew it in my bones, and I just thought, 0:28:13.720 --> 0:28:16.760 am I going to kill myself? Should I kill mice? 0:28:16.840 --> 0:28:20.040 I was like, wait, should I? Is someone in my position, 0:28:20.280 --> 0:28:22.959 like I'm I'm having the Socratic method with myself, right, 0:28:23.359 --> 0:28:26.280 Is someone in my position who's just gonna work hard 0:28:26.600 --> 0:28:30.120 to make money for some corporation, doesn't have any idea 0:28:30.160 --> 0:28:32.880 what her two hearts desires are? Is that a person 0:28:33.000 --> 0:28:36.359 who should kill herself? And when I had that question, 0:28:36.400 --> 0:28:38.960 I was like, oh my god, I'm in trouble. I'm 0:28:39.080 --> 0:28:42.840 thinking I just I should die it just I could. 0:28:43.000 --> 0:28:46.200 I could see the disparity, and I was so I 0:28:46.360 --> 0:28:50.440 was so clueless about how to pull out of the 0:28:50.600 --> 0:28:52.480 despair that I was in, and I could imagine it 0:28:52.600 --> 0:28:55.960 going lower and lower and lower. And that's a person 0:28:56.080 --> 0:28:58.640 that I'm grateful that the pain was so scary that 0:28:58.720 --> 0:29:01.760 it made me willing to check out some therapy. Okay, 0:29:02.560 --> 0:29:04.520 I just want to say, because people tend to paint 0:29:04.600 --> 0:29:08.160 with a broad brush, and once you dig deep, the 0:29:08.240 --> 0:29:12.200 reality is a little bit different. You did not. Let's 0:29:12.240 --> 0:29:14.880 go back to subsequent to this traumatic event, just before 0:29:14.960 --> 0:29:18.040 high school. You essentially never had a close friend. You 0:29:18.120 --> 0:29:20.560 didn't have people come over, you didn't have your group, 0:29:20.880 --> 0:29:24.720 you were isolated. That's a good point in high school. 0:29:24.880 --> 0:29:28.840 I had so high school's right after the events of 0:29:29.640 --> 0:29:32.600 of Hawaii, the traumatic event, and I did. I had 0:29:32.720 --> 0:29:37.040 close friends, but I couldn't hold on. I could, you know, 0:29:37.160 --> 0:29:39.120 go with the crew and we go to the park 0:29:39.320 --> 0:29:42.440 and we'd underage drink and I'd go to the dance 0:29:42.520 --> 0:29:46.720 with my friends. But I felt like I was very 0:29:46.840 --> 0:29:49.560 far away, if that makes any sense. I felt like 0:29:50.280 --> 0:29:53.320 the whole me wasn't there. And maybe that's because I 0:29:53.400 --> 0:29:55.120 had the sense of I had all these secrets. I 0:29:55.160 --> 0:29:58.480 had a secret eating disorder, I had a secret I 0:29:58.560 --> 0:30:00.800 had a sense that I could never talk about Hawaii. 0:30:00.880 --> 0:30:03.200 I could never say I was scared. I could never 0:30:03.320 --> 0:30:07.720 admit to all the wonderful, bubbly Catholic girls that I 0:30:07.800 --> 0:30:09.440 was in school with, I couldn't admit to them that, 0:30:09.560 --> 0:30:11.760 like I think I may be not believing in God 0:30:11.920 --> 0:30:16.000 right now. Um, so I had the sense of partners 0:30:16.080 --> 0:30:17.760 because of all the things I held back. But I 0:30:17.880 --> 0:30:21.240 did I did have friends like I. They loved me, 0:30:21.880 --> 0:30:24.320 but there was a part of me that they couldn't reach. 0:30:24.520 --> 0:30:26.840 And I got more and more isolated as the years 0:30:26.880 --> 0:30:29.520 went by. And in college I had I had a 0:30:29.720 --> 0:30:33.480 very close best friend and we ran around together and 0:30:33.600 --> 0:30:37.480 it's and and then she was able to transition into 0:30:37.520 --> 0:30:41.040 adulthood and I'm still going to school. And once I 0:30:41.120 --> 0:30:43.840 got once I moved from Texas to Chicago, so by 0:30:43.880 --> 0:30:48.200 then I was twenty two. I just didn't know. I 0:30:48.400 --> 0:30:51.760 was so shut down. I could do small talk and 0:30:51.880 --> 0:30:54.760 I could chit chat with people and fairly extroverted. That's 0:30:54.800 --> 0:30:57.960 always been true. But in terms of being a true 0:30:58.280 --> 0:31:01.560 person who could be vulnerable and do the things of 0:31:01.600 --> 0:31:04.760 a friendship, I just didn't have it in me anymore. 0:31:04.800 --> 0:31:07.360 I didn't know how to do it. So common int 0:31:07.400 --> 0:31:11.240 with all these experiences, you're going to overreaters, anonymous or 0:31:11.280 --> 0:31:14.120 whatever by the exact a group as you can tell me, 0:31:14.440 --> 0:31:16.360 tell me when you started that and what that was. 0:31:16.520 --> 0:31:20.440 Experience was like, yeah, so that actually saved my life. 0:31:20.800 --> 0:31:25.080 At the time I was in college. I was a sophomore, 0:31:25.720 --> 0:31:29.400 and all the pressures of I had to get a 0:31:29.440 --> 0:31:31.760 four point oh so far I had a four point 0:31:31.800 --> 0:31:34.520 oh in college, and now I'm starting my sophomore year 0:31:34.760 --> 0:31:38.200 and there's a lot of drinking and I'm I'm not 0:31:38.440 --> 0:31:40.840 great with that. I just felt really uncomfortable. I was 0:31:40.840 --> 0:31:44.080 scared of getting fat and drinking in Bolimia are a 0:31:44.160 --> 0:31:46.840 really bad We're a bad combination for me. Maybe it 0:31:46.880 --> 0:31:50.080 works for other people. Um, And so I got really 0:31:50.200 --> 0:31:53.840 scared because I was starting to not be able to 0:31:53.920 --> 0:31:57.400 hold onto everything. I was starting to binge during the 0:31:57.520 --> 0:31:59.760 day and I used to just binge at night. And 0:31:59.840 --> 0:32:02.920 I skipped a class. I skipped an English class, which 0:32:03.160 --> 0:32:06.240 never in my life, never never had I ever skipped class, 0:32:06.600 --> 0:32:11.080 certainly not my beloved literature class. And I realized I 0:32:11.160 --> 0:32:13.200 turned in a paper. Then I was writing a paper 0:32:13.240 --> 0:32:16.320 after I skipped class, and it was terrible, and I 0:32:16.480 --> 0:32:18.880 was like, I didn't I didn't have the energy to 0:32:19.000 --> 0:32:21.400 make it right. And I just kept binging. And I 0:32:22.360 --> 0:32:24.760 went to get rid of the food and I fainted 0:32:25.160 --> 0:32:27.720 in the shower and I was like, oh my god. 0:32:28.120 --> 0:32:30.960 I was nineteen, and I thought I'm going to die 0:32:31.240 --> 0:32:33.880 doing this. I'm a very dramatic person, but I was like, 0:32:34.760 --> 0:32:37.560 I was like, this is dangerous. This is very dangerous. 0:32:37.960 --> 0:32:40.200 And a friend of mine in high school had gotten 0:32:40.240 --> 0:32:43.800 into a twelve step program for alcoholism, and she suggested 0:32:43.920 --> 0:32:46.200 that I go to the one for eaters. And I 0:32:46.320 --> 0:32:48.280 was like, but I'm not fat. I thought I had 0:32:48.320 --> 0:32:50.160 to wait until I was obetes. I didn't even know, 0:32:50.800 --> 0:32:52.320 and she said, why don't you just check it out. 0:32:53.080 --> 0:32:55.200 People who are believe it can go too. And so 0:32:55.280 --> 0:32:57.720 then I started going to meetings, which was great because 0:32:57.760 --> 0:33:00.720 they taught me, they gave me some skills. I work steps, 0:33:00.800 --> 0:33:03.320 I had a sponsor, I got the coins and that 0:33:03.440 --> 0:33:06.640 stuff is all really great. But I also treated it 0:33:06.760 --> 0:33:09.600 like a secret. I didn't tell my roommate knew because 0:33:09.600 --> 0:33:11.400 she's like, where are you going on a ninth at 0:33:11.440 --> 0:33:14.680 nine thirty on Saturday morning? Every Saturday morning. So I 0:33:14.760 --> 0:33:17.160 told my roommate, but I never wanted to talk about it, 0:33:17.400 --> 0:33:20.440 and it just became another way I had a secret 0:33:20.480 --> 0:33:23.400 from the world. I exchanged the Bolivia for the meetings 0:33:23.480 --> 0:33:25.920 as a secret. Okay, but in the when you go 0:33:26.080 --> 0:33:27.960 through the steps, don't you have to make amends to 0:33:28.080 --> 0:33:32.160 people and therefore interact and reveal that you're in the group. Yes, 0:33:32.280 --> 0:33:34.040 and I did make a mint, so I made him 0:33:34.080 --> 0:33:36.480 in my roommate. Um, bless her heart. I stole so 0:33:36.640 --> 0:33:39.280 much food from her. So I had definitely made amends 0:33:39.320 --> 0:33:42.680 to her and to my family. And there were you know, 0:33:42.760 --> 0:33:45.760 there was some uh friends on there too, and I 0:33:45.920 --> 0:33:49.800 definitely told them. But by then, like when I had 0:33:49.840 --> 0:33:51.560 to go back to my high school. I went back 0:33:51.600 --> 0:33:54.120 to my high school because I'd stolen money when I 0:33:54.240 --> 0:33:56.120 was a junior and I was in charge of the 0:33:56.560 --> 0:34:00.200 parking lot fees and I just took some money and 0:34:00.400 --> 0:34:02.040 of course I had I took a check and I 0:34:02.120 --> 0:34:04.560 had interests and I walked in the building. I'm now 0:34:04.760 --> 0:34:07.000 I'm probably right before I moved to Chicago, and I 0:34:07.120 --> 0:34:10.200 ran into my trigonometry teacher and I was like, I 0:34:10.320 --> 0:34:12.279 just blurted. I was like, I'm the I'm a member 0:34:12.320 --> 0:34:14.320 of a twelve step program, and in order to stay sober, 0:34:14.360 --> 0:34:15.960 I have to give you this money because I stole it. 0:34:16.000 --> 0:34:18.200 And she was like, uh, let me take you to 0:34:18.520 --> 0:34:20.360 the office. And she's like, I don't know what to 0:34:20.400 --> 0:34:22.600 do with this money. Um, So I did do that. 0:34:23.280 --> 0:34:26.320 But I think that I, you know, I wasn't open. 0:34:26.640 --> 0:34:29.439 It wasn't Nobody ever asked me a follow up question 0:34:29.560 --> 0:34:32.080 like how are you doing? Do you still go to meetings? 0:34:32.280 --> 0:34:34.640 I think I just blurted it out and then went 0:34:34.719 --> 0:34:39.160 back behind the curtain because I didn't. I was ashamed. 0:34:39.360 --> 0:34:42.439 I was super ashamed of what I'd done, of being 0:34:42.520 --> 0:34:45.279 a being nineteen years old and going to twelve Step 0:34:45.360 --> 0:34:48.040 meetings like some old dude from a A on TV. 0:34:48.840 --> 0:34:54.280 And I kept it still very guarded and very under wraps. Okay, 0:34:54.400 --> 0:34:58.480 now it's through oh A that you ultimately connect with 0:34:58.800 --> 0:35:03.520 the therapist. Can you tell sad story? Yeah? So two 0:35:03.600 --> 0:35:06.960 pieces of that. Number one is the summer. So after 0:35:07.040 --> 0:35:09.680 I find out my class rank, I'm starting to sort 0:35:09.680 --> 0:35:13.920 of like Frey at the edges emotionally, and I'd go 0:35:14.000 --> 0:35:16.759 to my meetings, my little twelve Step meetings, and I 0:35:16.800 --> 0:35:19.360 would just cry and people say are you okay? And 0:35:19.440 --> 0:35:22.080 I'd be like, yeah, I'm fine, just kind of like 0:35:22.160 --> 0:35:23.960 I don't even know what to say. What do I say? 0:35:24.120 --> 0:35:26.200 I'm I'm first in my law school class, and I 0:35:26.320 --> 0:35:28.640 kind of want to die it just I didn't know 0:35:29.000 --> 0:35:32.160 how to do that. And people started recommending their therapists 0:35:32.280 --> 0:35:34.720 to me, and I was like, I'm not going to therapy. 0:35:34.760 --> 0:35:37.160 I don't have any money, first of all. And then 0:35:37.320 --> 0:35:40.520 finally this woman was like, please come to dinner with me, 0:35:40.680 --> 0:35:43.080 and I didn't want to go. I was like, that 0:35:43.239 --> 0:35:45.719 was not something I didn't do. The fellowshipping very well. 0:35:45.760 --> 0:35:47.719 I didn't want to do that, and so I went 0:35:47.760 --> 0:35:50.360 to dinner with her and she just looked, you know, 0:35:50.400 --> 0:35:53.160 like when you run into someone who something's changed. Like 0:35:53.360 --> 0:35:55.600 I was like, did you fall in love? Are you pregnant? 0:35:55.719 --> 0:35:58.160 What's going on here? She's wearing lip glass and her 0:35:58.239 --> 0:36:01.640 eyes are bright, and she just seemed lighter. And she said, oh, 0:36:01.680 --> 0:36:03.560 it's my new therapist. And I was like, oh, here 0:36:03.640 --> 0:36:06.960 we go again. And she didn't even really She said, 0:36:07.040 --> 0:36:09.120 you know, he could really help you, and I was 0:36:09.160 --> 0:36:11.319 like yeah, yeah, yeah, and she said, well he does 0:36:11.400 --> 0:36:14.680 groups and they're really cheap. And I just seized on 0:36:14.760 --> 0:36:16.839 the word cheap and I said, what do you mean cheap? 0:36:17.360 --> 0:36:19.600 And she's like, it's like one third the cost of 0:36:19.640 --> 0:36:22.360 an individual. And she started telling me about her group. 0:36:23.120 --> 0:36:25.120 But really what sold me was what I saw in 0:36:25.239 --> 0:36:28.360 her eyes and what I could see about her being 0:36:28.719 --> 0:36:31.040 because everyone had everyone loves their therapist and wants you 0:36:31.080 --> 0:36:33.920 to go see their therapists. But I saw something in her. 0:36:34.440 --> 0:36:37.600 Plus it was cheap, and so that sort of convinced me. 0:36:38.120 --> 0:36:40.160 And then when I went to my first meeting, I mean, 0:36:40.400 --> 0:36:43.959 I went ahead and called him because I thought, well, okay. Oh. Also, 0:36:44.080 --> 0:36:46.440 she told me right before we left, like you're standing 0:36:46.480 --> 0:36:49.800 at the the exit of a restaurant, She's gonna go 0:36:49.880 --> 0:36:51.640 one way and I go to the other. Off the 0:36:51.719 --> 0:36:53.200 top of her head, I don't even know what made 0:36:53.239 --> 0:36:56.440 her said say this. She said, Oh, he's really happy. 0:36:56.560 --> 0:36:59.440 He just got remarried, and he smiles all the time. 0:37:00.440 --> 0:37:05.839 And something about that just so captivated my imagination, like remarried, 0:37:06.200 --> 0:37:08.720 he knows what it's like to lose love and a divorce, 0:37:08.880 --> 0:37:12.279 and he smiles. And I just became convinced that this 0:37:12.440 --> 0:37:15.160 therapist could help me. So I made an appointment and 0:37:15.239 --> 0:37:16.960 I go see him, and I sit down for my 0:37:17.040 --> 0:37:20.200 first appointment, and I knew him. I had seen him 0:37:20.320 --> 0:37:23.960 in meetings meeting meetings when I was in graduate school, 0:37:24.480 --> 0:37:27.160 and I immediately thought, oh, my god, he's gonna tell 0:37:27.239 --> 0:37:29.440 me he can't be my therapist because he knows me 0:37:29.560 --> 0:37:32.480 from meetings. But he didn't actually recognize me, and by 0:37:32.520 --> 0:37:34.919 the time I told him where we've been, he said, 0:37:35.520 --> 0:37:39.400 that's not a reason for us not to work together. Okay, 0:37:39.520 --> 0:37:42.600 And you saw him three times before you went to 0:37:42.680 --> 0:37:46.000 the group which we inspired, you know, in that prep 0:37:46.080 --> 0:37:50.120 of three times. Oh my gosh. He was so weird. 0:37:50.360 --> 0:37:54.759 He was so weird, he was so confident. I would 0:37:54.800 --> 0:37:57.640 tell him two little lines about like a relationship i'd 0:37:57.680 --> 0:37:59.560 have like the guy that I dated in high school 0:37:59.600 --> 0:38:01.640 who did on me a lot and smoked a ton 0:38:01.719 --> 0:38:04.960 of pot, and he would so then he just said, oh, 0:38:05.040 --> 0:38:08.680 you like addicts, you love alcoholics, And I thought, well, 0:38:09.080 --> 0:38:12.200 I don't know. That seems sort of aggressive. Um. I 0:38:12.280 --> 0:38:16.080 didn't disagree, but I thought that he was being pretty 0:38:16.200 --> 0:38:20.000 forward and pretty copy um. And part of me didn't 0:38:20.040 --> 0:38:21.880 like that, and part of me loved it, like I 0:38:22.000 --> 0:38:25.359 felt so seen, and the fact that he could pick 0:38:25.480 --> 0:38:29.080 up on the patterns in my life helped me know 0:38:30.160 --> 0:38:32.200 that I was kind of a type in some way, 0:38:32.320 --> 0:38:35.000 that he'd seen women or men like me, and that 0:38:35.280 --> 0:38:37.680 he he had my number. I knew that when I 0:38:37.760 --> 0:38:40.120 mentioned I was first in my class and that I 0:38:40.239 --> 0:38:44.600 have I was BLIEMI recovering Beliem it. He just seemed 0:38:44.640 --> 0:38:47.360 to be He just kind of looked at me like, ah, okay, okay, 0:38:47.600 --> 0:38:49.360 so what do you want? He just kept asking me 0:38:49.480 --> 0:38:51.759 what do you want? What do you want? And what 0:38:52.000 --> 0:38:55.880 I really wanted was the way that I phrased it 0:38:55.960 --> 0:38:58.200 back then, was I wanted to be a real person. 0:38:58.480 --> 0:39:02.480 I wanted to like exhale around other people and not 0:39:02.719 --> 0:39:05.759 constantly be striving to make them happy or get the 0:39:05.840 --> 0:39:08.160 good grade or be the best. I wanted to just 0:39:08.760 --> 0:39:11.120 be a person. I wanted friends to just stop by 0:39:11.160 --> 0:39:14.040 my house and me not put any makeup on or 0:39:14.160 --> 0:39:18.160 do anything. I just wanted ease and casualness and real 0:39:18.320 --> 0:39:22.320 deep attachments. And I really wanted a boyfriend. And I 0:39:22.440 --> 0:39:25.200 told him all that, and then he kept saying, what else, 0:39:25.600 --> 0:39:30.560 what else? And I was almost annoyed because I was like, listen, 0:39:31.400 --> 0:39:34.359 Mr Perfect, And I could see his degrees on the wall, 0:39:34.400 --> 0:39:37.360 and they were fancy. They were Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, Harvard. 0:39:37.400 --> 0:39:40.600 I was like, listen, Harvard, if you deliver on those things, 0:39:40.640 --> 0:39:42.919 then we can talk about what else. But I didn't 0:39:42.960 --> 0:39:45.600 have this bucket list full of I want to be 0:39:45.920 --> 0:39:49.399 a poet, I want to travel the world. I didn't 0:39:49.440 --> 0:39:52.000 have any of that. Let's deal with the basics here. 0:39:52.440 --> 0:39:56.080 So I was intrigued by his confidence about what he 0:39:56.200 --> 0:39:58.719 saw in me. And then at the end of the 0:39:58.800 --> 0:40:02.920 first session, he said, I can get you where. We 0:40:03.200 --> 0:40:05.920 can get you where you want to go. If you 0:40:06.120 --> 0:40:10.400 join a group and you disclosed to the group every 0:40:10.480 --> 0:40:14.239 aspect of your relationship, life, every aspect of love, friendship, 0:40:14.880 --> 0:40:16.320 all of it. If you can turn it over to 0:40:16.360 --> 0:40:19.560 the group and commit to the group, we can get you. 0:40:19.880 --> 0:40:21.760 We can get you married, we can get you friends. 0:40:21.920 --> 0:40:25.560 You want babies, it's like babies, Like, let's just get 0:40:25.600 --> 0:40:28.680 me a hygienic boyfriend. I was not there yet, but 0:40:28.760 --> 0:40:31.160 he was really I thought it was really overpromising to 0:40:31.280 --> 0:40:34.760 be frank. Okay, so you show up for the first 0:40:34.840 --> 0:40:38.200 day at the group. What's your experience? Oh my god, 0:40:39.160 --> 0:40:42.279 Oh my god. Well I was really happy that right 0:40:42.400 --> 0:40:46.279 before my last that that third session when he's Dr 0:40:46.400 --> 0:40:48.520 Rosen is like, and that's not his real name. Everyone 0:40:48.560 --> 0:40:52.000 thinks it is. It's not that last session, Like, with 0:40:52.160 --> 0:40:55.600 two seconds to go, I had the wherewithal to say, wait, wait, 0:40:55.920 --> 0:40:58.040 what's going to happen to me when I start group? 0:40:58.440 --> 0:41:01.520 And he did that. I'm so glad you asked, and 0:41:01.680 --> 0:41:04.719 he said, every single one of your secrets is going 0:41:04.800 --> 0:41:07.400 to come out. And I felt like someone had just 0:41:07.520 --> 0:41:10.800 like shot an arrow through my heart like terror. I 0:41:10.880 --> 0:41:13.320 didn't even I didn't have in mind like what secret 0:41:13.360 --> 0:41:16.319 it was. But I was like, oh, oh my god, 0:41:16.920 --> 0:41:20.160 so afraid. And so then I go into my first session. 0:41:20.760 --> 0:41:24.200 And this will tell you something about how little, how 0:41:24.320 --> 0:41:27.879 few boundaries I had. The first thing that someone says 0:41:27.920 --> 0:41:30.480 to me, a man in the group across the circle 0:41:30.560 --> 0:41:34.879 from me says, top or bottom, I know he's talking 0:41:34.960 --> 0:41:38.960 about sex, and I it didn't even occur to me 0:41:39.239 --> 0:41:41.759 to to say, why are you asking that? Or I 0:41:41.840 --> 0:41:44.200 don't have to answer that, or who are you or 0:41:44.360 --> 0:41:47.360 why don't you go first? I was just like, uh okay, 0:41:47.800 --> 0:41:52.799 uh top, Like I did not know that. I think 0:41:52.880 --> 0:41:55.279 that says everything about my state of mind and my 0:41:55.440 --> 0:41:58.879 state of people pleasing, because I was like, you want 0:41:58.920 --> 0:42:00.400 to know, I'll tell you anything you want to know. 0:42:00.680 --> 0:42:02.959 And all these years later, I still go to group. 0:42:03.520 --> 0:42:07.239 I've seen people come in, men and women deal with 0:42:07.400 --> 0:42:09.440 that kind of hazing, as I call it, in so 0:42:09.640 --> 0:42:12.680 many different ways, and I just didn't. I did. I 0:42:12.800 --> 0:42:15.839 did my thing, which was try to deliver and I've 0:42:15.840 --> 0:42:18.520 seen other people say I'm not going there with you. 0:42:18.880 --> 0:42:21.880 I'll tell you later or maybe or we've got to 0:42:21.920 --> 0:42:23.800 do some more work before I tell you how I 0:42:23.880 --> 0:42:26.560 want to have sex. So it was like from the 0:42:26.760 --> 0:42:31.040 very first second, it was like go time. Okay, there's 0:42:31.080 --> 0:42:33.279 a lot of stuff you reveal, so for people who 0:42:33.320 --> 0:42:35.480 haven't read the book and maybe sound like I'm really 0:42:35.560 --> 0:42:37.799 digging deep, but it's right there in the book. One 0:42:37.880 --> 0:42:41.160 there's a focus on your breasts and that they are large, 0:42:41.800 --> 0:42:44.800 and you say a couple of things, one that you 0:42:44.920 --> 0:42:49.320 were brought to sleep, be that you wear two bras, 0:42:49.800 --> 0:42:53.359 and this comes up in therapy, So what's going on there? 0:42:54.719 --> 0:42:58.239 I that that that absolutely did happen. We still talk 0:42:58.280 --> 0:43:01.839 about breasts all the time, which to me, I would 0:43:02.040 --> 0:43:05.400 never be comfortable doing the work I needed to do 0:43:05.760 --> 0:43:08.160 around my breasts and how I feel about them and 0:43:08.239 --> 0:43:10.320 what they mean to me and what they mean to culture, 0:43:10.400 --> 0:43:12.680 and what they mean to my lovers or my children 0:43:13.280 --> 0:43:15.680 or anybody else. I would never be able to do 0:43:15.800 --> 0:43:17.600 that work. If I was not in a group with 0:43:17.719 --> 0:43:20.840 other women, I would not be able to sit across 0:43:20.920 --> 0:43:25.720 from an authority figure like a therapist and just talk freely. 0:43:25.760 --> 0:43:27.919 I just don't. I can't imagine it. Maybe I could, 0:43:28.040 --> 0:43:30.839 I can't imagine it. But because I go to group 0:43:30.880 --> 0:43:34.120 where there's three or four or five other women in 0:43:34.200 --> 0:43:37.279 the circle, and all of us have different relationship to 0:43:37.360 --> 0:43:39.800 our breasts, right, it happens to be My story is 0:43:40.280 --> 0:43:43.600 that little Christie Ballerina in me is so sad that 0:43:43.760 --> 0:43:46.480 I have breasts and I don't have the super flat chest. 0:43:46.560 --> 0:43:48.960 It's like I always think of that as like, that's 0:43:49.000 --> 0:43:52.160 my anorexia talking the part of me that like I 0:43:52.239 --> 0:43:56.520 just want that bony, flat Margot Fontaine Ballerina chest and 0:43:56.640 --> 0:43:58.560 that's not what I have. I have like double ds. 0:43:58.960 --> 0:44:01.440 And so there's other women in my group who are 0:44:01.600 --> 0:44:06.640 deeply ashamed, deeply ashamed that their breasts are really really small. 0:44:07.200 --> 0:44:09.440 There's women in my group who are sad that they 0:44:09.480 --> 0:44:12.480 were big, they had children and now they're small. And 0:44:13.200 --> 0:44:16.840 how complicated that is and how how that's tied to 0:44:17.040 --> 0:44:20.840 my understanding of myself as a woman, as a sexual being, 0:44:21.320 --> 0:44:25.280 as someone who's safe in society or not safe based 0:44:25.360 --> 0:44:28.560 on my breast. It's been incredible and one of the 0:44:28.680 --> 0:44:31.960 things we excavated in the This was probably my second 0:44:32.040 --> 0:44:36.120 year I had had an experience in high school where 0:44:36.680 --> 0:44:39.160 I participated in this. I it was like one of 0:44:39.200 --> 0:44:42.279 the dances, like a spring fling dance, and we were 0:44:42.320 --> 0:44:45.240 out this part. I was drunk. I've been drinking proudly, Zeema, 0:44:45.440 --> 0:44:47.920 I'm not proud of that, but that's what happened. And 0:44:49.320 --> 0:44:52.400 I was buzzed and the boys were like paying attention 0:44:52.480 --> 0:44:54.680 to me, and I had a strap the stress my day. 0:44:54.719 --> 0:44:56.680 I don't know where my date was. He was somewhere off. 0:44:56.760 --> 0:44:59.080 All the girls were off somewhere, and I somehow wandered 0:44:59.120 --> 0:45:01.160 over to all the boy They've got their dip in 0:45:01.239 --> 0:45:04.320 their mouth, they've got their beers, they all are dating 0:45:04.360 --> 0:45:06.520 my friends. And one of them walked over and he 0:45:06.560 --> 0:45:10.880 stuck his hand down my dress. And I remember laughing, 0:45:11.800 --> 0:45:15.360 but also like not like just knowing like something was happening, 0:45:16.239 --> 0:45:18.800 that the laughter was covering it like shame. It was 0:45:18.920 --> 0:45:22.880 shame and violation, and also like I don't know how 0:45:22.920 --> 0:45:27.360 to stop this, and somewhere inside I knew I didn't. 0:45:27.520 --> 0:45:30.720 I wasn't like the other girls who had self esteem 0:45:30.840 --> 0:45:34.279 or didn't have boys hands down their dress. Um, And 0:45:34.360 --> 0:45:36.279 then one by one they did. I think it was 0:45:36.360 --> 0:45:39.319 like five couple of them more than once, and I'm 0:45:39.400 --> 0:45:43.279 just laughing, carefree. I liked the attention. I liked the 0:45:44.200 --> 0:45:47.040 None of these boys really paid that much attention to 0:45:47.120 --> 0:45:51.560 me was my perception, and that was something that came 0:45:51.600 --> 0:45:55.920 out in group early on. And when I shared that 0:45:56.120 --> 0:45:59.600 in group, every single woman in the group shared a 0:45:59.680 --> 0:46:03.120 story about her breasts. Not all violations, some of them 0:46:03.239 --> 0:46:06.520 just feelings. And I can't even tell you how much 0:46:06.640 --> 0:46:11.239 less alone I felt, which sounds like not like that 0:46:11.360 --> 0:46:15.640 doesn't sound like therapeutically cataclysmic, but it was. It was 0:46:15.760 --> 0:46:18.919 to me. I'd never had these conversations. I never knew 0:46:19.400 --> 0:46:22.840 I could say what had happened to me and have 0:46:23.320 --> 0:46:26.280 like watch women's heads nodding like yeah, yeah, that happened 0:46:26.320 --> 0:46:28.560 to me something like that. I feel that way too. 0:46:29.280 --> 0:46:32.600 That's where I started to change and become a different 0:46:32.680 --> 0:46:38.040 person by connecting with other people. Okay, let's get into 0:46:38.080 --> 0:46:42.960 the apples. Tell us the story with the apples. Oh 0:46:43.080 --> 0:46:48.440 my gosh. So when I started my twelve step program, 0:46:49.520 --> 0:46:51.360 and when I was nineteen years old, I had a 0:46:51.440 --> 0:46:56.239 sponsor and she told me she's like you. I was like, 0:46:56.320 --> 0:46:58.279 the wisdom and twelve step program is to find a 0:46:58.320 --> 0:47:01.160 sponsor asked someone who as what you want and ask 0:47:01.239 --> 0:47:02.840 them how they got it. So I get the sponsor. 0:47:03.080 --> 0:47:06.920 She's this nice woman, she's a housewife, she's real gentle. 0:47:07.040 --> 0:47:08.920 She seems very sane around food. So I said, how 0:47:08.960 --> 0:47:11.160 do you eat? I want to eat the way you eat. 0:47:11.560 --> 0:47:15.439 And she said to me, I eat anything I want 0:47:16.280 --> 0:47:18.960 in any quantity, at any time, any pace. But I 0:47:19.040 --> 0:47:23.400 don't need any sugar, no corn, no flour. And there 0:47:23.440 --> 0:47:25.920 was a couple of other things on there. And I 0:47:26.040 --> 0:47:28.279 was like, Okay, that's it, and she was like yeah. 0:47:28.719 --> 0:47:32.120 And so somehow in my brain I turned that into 0:47:32.400 --> 0:47:35.439 I can eat. I made a list of maybe ten 0:47:35.600 --> 0:47:38.360 foods I would let myself eat, and it was like 0:47:38.680 --> 0:47:43.760 turkey and cabbage and cheese and fruit, and I was hungry. 0:47:43.840 --> 0:47:46.560 Looking back now, I can think to myself, maybe at 0:47:46.680 --> 0:47:50.920 night I binged on apples because my body needed more food. 0:47:51.160 --> 0:47:54.000 I would I would drink skim milk at nights, or 0:47:54.520 --> 0:47:57.920 I would have yogurt. But it was a very diety deprivation. 0:47:58.000 --> 0:47:59.800 Even people who are on diets e way better than that. 0:48:00.400 --> 0:48:02.439 But at night I would be really hungry, and I'd 0:48:02.480 --> 0:48:05.880 be so scared that I was gonna binge on something 0:48:06.760 --> 0:48:10.360 problematic like ice cream or bread or chips. So I 0:48:10.400 --> 0:48:13.759 would buy these apples, and early on, maybe before I 0:48:13.840 --> 0:48:16.000 left college, I would have like two apples at night, 0:48:16.560 --> 0:48:19.239 and I remember my roommates saying, that's weird. Who eats 0:48:19.280 --> 0:48:22.400 two apples? And I was like, leave me alone. I'm 0:48:22.440 --> 0:48:24.640 in a program. But by the time I was living 0:48:24.640 --> 0:48:28.480 alone in graduate school, and even when I had roommates 0:48:28.520 --> 0:48:31.360 in d C and then back to living alone in Chicago, 0:48:31.640 --> 0:48:33.960 it's just like escalated. So by the time I got 0:48:34.000 --> 0:48:38.319 to dr Rosen at night, I would eat. I would 0:48:38.320 --> 0:48:42.880 eat anywhere from five. One time, I ate twelve apples. 0:48:43.239 --> 0:48:45.879 And sometimes I call my sponsor back in Texas and say, 0:48:46.040 --> 0:48:50.640 I just ate twelve red, delicious apples that cannot be 0:48:51.360 --> 0:48:54.279 sobriety or whatever, and she would say, did you pick 0:48:54.400 --> 0:48:57.840 up your drug, which she wouldn't consider, like flour or 0:48:57.880 --> 0:49:00.480 sugar was the drug and apples weren't. So She's like 0:49:00.520 --> 0:49:04.920 it's fine, and I was like okay, but nobody in 0:49:05.040 --> 0:49:07.960 my nobody else. She was like this disembodied voice back 0:49:08.000 --> 0:49:10.640 in Texas. No one in Chicago knew I knew I 0:49:10.760 --> 0:49:14.640 did that it was super expensive. And I remember one night. 0:49:14.840 --> 0:49:16.800 It was snowing, and I still, what do I know 0:49:16.840 --> 0:49:19.320 about snow. I'm from Texas and I get in my 0:49:19.440 --> 0:49:23.239 car and it's eleven thirty and I'm driving to the 0:49:23.400 --> 0:49:26.840 all night grocery store on Broadway to get more apples, 0:49:27.480 --> 0:49:30.560 almost at midnight, and I was like, this is as crazy. 0:49:30.680 --> 0:49:32.880 This is like those movies where someone's going out to 0:49:32.960 --> 0:49:35.640 get cracked. It said, I'm going to get apples, and 0:49:36.160 --> 0:49:39.480 that's That was one of the secrets that that last 0:49:39.800 --> 0:49:42.600 um individual appointment when Dr Rosen was like, your secrets 0:49:42.640 --> 0:49:44.839 were gonna come out. I remember walking down the hall 0:49:44.880 --> 0:49:47.680 of thinking, if they find out what I eat, I 0:49:47.840 --> 0:49:52.440 am so screwed. And they did. Ultimately, the that is 0:49:52.600 --> 0:49:55.080 revealed and you get a prescription to make us take 0:49:55.640 --> 0:49:57.719 uh make a call? How did it come out? And 0:49:57.760 --> 0:50:01.279 then tell us about the prescription in the ultimate phone holes. Yeah, 0:50:01.400 --> 0:50:04.319 this was that. When this session went down, I thought 0:50:04.400 --> 0:50:08.480 that Dr Rosen was a mad genius because we were 0:50:08.640 --> 0:50:11.560 not talking about food. We I swear we were talking 0:50:11.600 --> 0:50:15.200 about Rory's ferret. We were not talking about food, and 0:50:15.320 --> 0:50:18.160 out of the blue, He's like, Christie, why don't you 0:50:18.200 --> 0:50:21.719 tell the group what you ate yesterday? And I was 0:50:21.840 --> 0:50:25.000 like my whole body was like inflamed. I'm just like 0:50:25.120 --> 0:50:27.400 I felt like sweat was pouring down. I was like, 0:50:27.760 --> 0:50:30.600 I can't, I can't. I jumped. I had taken my 0:50:30.680 --> 0:50:33.000 shoes off, and I jumped out of my chair and 0:50:33.040 --> 0:50:35.360 I was like hopping around the circle like kind of 0:50:35.480 --> 0:50:37.560 making a fist and pound punch in the air like 0:50:37.640 --> 0:50:40.600 I can't, I can't, I can't, And everyone is like 0:50:41.040 --> 0:50:43.960 what is wrong with you? And I just said I 0:50:44.080 --> 0:50:46.840 just can't. I'll tell you anything, I just can't do it. 0:50:47.640 --> 0:50:50.680 And then I sat down and everyone's like you have to, 0:50:51.040 --> 0:50:54.040 Like the way that you're acting is proof you need 0:50:54.640 --> 0:50:57.120 some help, and so, you know, I tell them the 0:50:57.160 --> 0:51:00.200 first part. I couldn't look anybody. I like like grew 0:51:00.280 --> 0:51:03.440 my fists into my eyes and I'm like okay, And 0:51:03.520 --> 0:51:06.200 I said it real fast, like an auctioneer, like cabbage 0:51:06.200 --> 0:51:08.759 and cheese, milk. And I got to the part where 0:51:08.800 --> 0:51:11.120 I told them my dinner and I paused for a 0:51:11.200 --> 0:51:14.680 long time and someone's like, what is what is the problem? 0:51:15.080 --> 0:51:17.239 And I was like, well, there's more. And I'm sure 0:51:17.360 --> 0:51:20.320 they were expecting like biscuits or I went out and 0:51:20.400 --> 0:51:22.759 got more a chocolate cake and I was like, I 0:51:23.000 --> 0:51:27.280 ate some apples, five apples, actually it was seven apples, 0:51:27.840 --> 0:51:31.040 and and I just waited for like the ceiling to 0:51:31.120 --> 0:51:33.400 fall in. And when I took my hands away from 0:51:33.440 --> 0:51:36.280 my eyes, oh, Dr rose And said, can you open 0:51:36.320 --> 0:51:39.879 your eyes? And I was like nope. It's like okay, well, 0:51:40.440 --> 0:51:42.839 why don't you try or pray for the willingness? Right? 0:51:43.080 --> 0:51:45.800 So I looked at everybody and nobody was like scorning me. 0:51:46.480 --> 0:51:52.960 Everybody looked curious and compassionate. And somebody said, do you 0:51:53.000 --> 0:51:55.960 think you're hungry? And I bat it that a way 0:51:56.000 --> 0:51:59.080 I wasn't ready to eat differently. And then Dr Rosen's 0:51:59.160 --> 0:52:04.120 prescription was He's had me look at another group member, Rory, 0:52:04.640 --> 0:52:06.879 who had her own food struggles. He's like, look at Roy. 0:52:07.440 --> 0:52:09.680 Can you call her every night and tell her what 0:52:09.800 --> 0:52:12.000 you ate? And I was like, why don't I call 0:52:12.080 --> 0:52:13.920 her tonight and I'll tell her what I'm gonna eat tomorrow. 0:52:13.960 --> 0:52:15.839 He's like, no, no, no, no no, We're not trying 0:52:15.880 --> 0:52:18.160 to keep you from doing anything. But at the end 0:52:18.200 --> 0:52:20.200 of the day, tell her what you did so that 0:52:20.320 --> 0:52:22.160 you can let go of the shame. I said, but 0:52:22.200 --> 0:52:24.919 what if it's like ten apples every night. He's like, great, 0:52:25.400 --> 0:52:27.920 that's what you're calling her for. It doesn't matter. And 0:52:28.239 --> 0:52:31.000 I looked at Rory, like, why does this woman who's 0:52:31.560 --> 0:52:35.480 a busy professional want to hear this apple monologue every night? 0:52:36.080 --> 0:52:38.640 And she just said, great, sweetie, I'll tell you my 0:52:38.760 --> 0:52:42.000 food too. And I was like, she was like, she 0:52:42.120 --> 0:52:45.200 just doubled down on me. And I was so afraid 0:52:45.280 --> 0:52:47.920 in the first three nights I called her At nights. 0:52:48.520 --> 0:52:52.880 I just bawled afterwards because I was so scared of 0:52:53.040 --> 0:52:55.800 letting go of the secret. I'm scared of change, and 0:52:55.880 --> 0:52:58.399 I knew this was big. This was big. To tell 0:52:58.520 --> 0:53:01.160 someone every day about my food. That was the river 0:53:01.280 --> 0:53:03.880 I had never crossed before, and it was scary. It 0:53:04.000 --> 0:53:06.759 was scary for weeks, but it was those first three 0:53:06.880 --> 0:53:10.879 nights I was just beside myself. But it did get easier. Well, 0:53:10.920 --> 0:53:14.239 the question, obviously is twofold one. Did you continue to 0:53:14.280 --> 0:53:17.160 eat that volume of apples? To do eat apples at 0:53:17.160 --> 0:53:22.680 all anymore? Um? You know the volume. The volume came down, 0:53:23.200 --> 0:53:26.080 but it took about and not consciously like I would 0:53:26.120 --> 0:53:28.279 go into group and say, well, I've been calling Rory 0:53:28.320 --> 0:53:30.880 about my food and my apples and I'm still eating 0:53:31.160 --> 0:53:33.040 you know, I'm still at four or five six, and 0:53:33.080 --> 0:53:35.239 even like it doesn't matter. It's your job isn't to 0:53:35.719 --> 0:53:38.239 fix your apples. Your job is to tell Rory what 0:53:38.400 --> 0:53:41.120 you eat. So I'm my fine um and the volume. 0:53:41.239 --> 0:53:44.040 I want to say it was maybe nine months before 0:53:44.160 --> 0:53:46.239 it sort of came down to after dinner I'd have 0:53:46.719 --> 0:53:49.279 two pieces of fruits, which is as my roommate in 0:53:49.320 --> 0:53:52.440 college said, it's still weird, but within the realm and 0:53:52.880 --> 0:53:55.840 to this day, my kids love apples and I just 0:53:56.080 --> 0:54:00.120 can't do them. I can not apple pie maybe, but 0:54:00.239 --> 0:54:02.759 not a straight up apple I have. I've eaten my 0:54:02.880 --> 0:54:13.640 lifetime share and probably somebody else's lifetime share too. The doctor, 0:54:14.360 --> 0:54:18.960 a typical of many therapy experiences, gives prescriptions. Could you 0:54:19.040 --> 0:54:21.399 talk about some of the prescriptions? One is obviously called 0:54:21.480 --> 0:54:24.759 Rory about the apple. When you're interacting with a guy 0:54:24.960 --> 0:54:28.000 who has a boyfriend a girlfriend, could you tell what 0:54:28.080 --> 0:54:30.719 he tells you to do there? Oh my god. When 0:54:30.760 --> 0:54:32.680 I look back at this, I'm like, you know, I 0:54:32.800 --> 0:54:35.280 kind of I didn't have to do everything he said. 0:54:35.680 --> 0:54:38.600 But here's what Dr Rosen said. I I love this boy. 0:54:38.760 --> 0:54:40.720 I love him so much. She's in my law school 0:54:41.239 --> 0:54:44.279 we have like this great connection. But PSC has a 0:54:44.360 --> 0:54:47.840 girlfriend and he's very unsuitable in so many ways, but 0:54:47.960 --> 0:54:50.200 I just loved him, and so I knew I was 0:54:50.239 --> 0:54:51.839 going to be going out with him in a group 0:54:51.920 --> 0:54:55.120 of people that night. So I'm in group and I'm like, ah, 0:54:55.280 --> 0:54:58.759 the dreamy boy, and and Dr Rosen puts on his 0:54:58.880 --> 0:55:01.560 thinking face and he's thinking, and I think he's gonna 0:55:01.640 --> 0:55:05.480 tell me something very interesting about myself or some insight, 0:55:06.000 --> 0:55:08.440 or maybe he's gonna say I think you shouldn't go. 0:55:08.760 --> 0:55:10.799 And then I was gonna be like, fuck you, I'm 0:55:10.840 --> 0:55:14.719 totally going, and he didn't. He said, tonight, I want 0:55:14.760 --> 0:55:17.200 you to be honest with the smoker. We called him 0:55:17.239 --> 0:55:19.719 the Smoker. I said, okay, what should I tell him? 0:55:20.160 --> 0:55:24.080 And he said, tell him the truth that you are 0:55:24.160 --> 0:55:27.600 a cock teeth And everyone in my group like the 0:55:27.840 --> 0:55:30.600 sucks in the air in the room, and I think 0:55:30.760 --> 0:55:33.880 Rory and Carlos were both like, she can't say that, 0:55:34.080 --> 0:55:37.440 Dr Rosen, what are you doing? And I, because of 0:55:37.600 --> 0:55:43.200 my trying to please Noess, I'm like, I'm pissed because 0:55:43.239 --> 0:55:45.320 he's given me something that I don't think I can do. 0:55:45.960 --> 0:55:48.560 And and in the end, so we go off that night. 0:55:48.600 --> 0:55:50.799 I go out that night with the Smoker and We're 0:55:50.800 --> 0:55:53.399 in this cab with this other guy, and I'm thinking, 0:55:53.520 --> 0:55:55.440 am I going to do it? And part of me 0:55:55.840 --> 0:55:58.799 I wanted to go back to group and to show 0:55:58.960 --> 0:56:02.600 Dr Rosen, whatever you throw at me, I will do it. 0:56:02.960 --> 0:56:07.480 I am here to play and I had the pride 0:56:07.560 --> 0:56:10.200 of that. And and plus this guy did not like me. 0:56:10.360 --> 0:56:12.200 I mean he was not This was never gonna go anywhere, 0:56:12.239 --> 0:56:14.400 and I was sick of that. So I lean over 0:56:14.480 --> 0:56:16.920 and I tell him, I said, you know, I'm a 0:56:17.080 --> 0:56:21.680 total cock tease and like and then I like look 0:56:21.680 --> 0:56:23.560 out the window. I'm like, oh my god, what have 0:56:23.680 --> 0:56:25.440 I done? What have I done? Like? Why am I 0:56:25.640 --> 0:56:28.719 doing with this crazy therapist of mine? Has said? The 0:56:28.880 --> 0:56:31.000 other guy in the cab was sort of like what 0:56:32.120 --> 0:56:34.320 And the the guy that I loved, the Smoker, he 0:56:34.400 --> 0:56:38.120 didn't really react. Um. And when I got in bed 0:56:38.200 --> 0:56:40.719 that night, I was like, I cannot believe I did that. 0:56:40.880 --> 0:56:42.759 But part of me too, that was part of me. 0:56:42.880 --> 0:56:45.240 The other part of me was like I did have pride, 0:56:45.320 --> 0:56:48.279 like that was probably an insane thing to do, and 0:56:48.360 --> 0:56:49.880 that guy is gonna have a story about me for 0:56:49.960 --> 0:56:52.560 the rest of his life if he remembers it um, 0:56:52.840 --> 0:56:54.359 And I was like, what if he tells someone at 0:56:54.400 --> 0:56:55.880 law school that I said that? And then I was 0:56:55.920 --> 0:56:59.680 just like, I don't care. I'm on my side. Dr 0:56:59.800 --> 0:57:01.960 Roe isn't is on my side. I don't know what 0:57:02.040 --> 0:57:04.000 it's gonna take to get well. I thought he was 0:57:04.040 --> 0:57:06.800 going to prescribe me some pills, maybe some trasdone, and 0:57:06.840 --> 0:57:08.640 I would be out of there. And that's not how 0:57:08.719 --> 0:57:12.200 it worked out. And I decided that this was like, 0:57:13.080 --> 0:57:16.400 this is gonna sound very cheesy, but there's something like 0:57:17.040 --> 0:57:20.400 this is fun, this is this is interesting. I'm at 0:57:20.480 --> 0:57:24.480 least interesting now right like I've done something crazy, but 0:57:24.600 --> 0:57:28.760 at least I'm interesting. At least I'm alive. Okay. Reading 0:57:28.880 --> 0:57:32.720 the book, it doesn't seem like in real life you 0:57:32.920 --> 0:57:36.680 are a cock tease? Was he just saying that to ultimately, 0:57:36.960 --> 0:57:39.880 you know, challenge you or in retrospect, are you a 0:57:39.960 --> 0:57:43.160 cock tease? Or were you? No? That is one thing 0:57:43.280 --> 0:57:46.080 that I wish. I wish I could time travel and 0:57:46.160 --> 0:57:48.080 go back and ask him if he knows what a 0:57:48.160 --> 0:57:51.360 cock teas is because I was not. I was a 0:57:51.480 --> 0:57:54.840 single woman. I was by then people knew that I 0:57:54.960 --> 0:57:57.400 did very were well in law school because by then 0:57:57.440 --> 0:58:00.240 everyone knew I don't know how, but it was people 0:58:00.320 --> 0:58:03.600 knew I was the top spot, right. So so I 0:58:03.760 --> 0:58:07.680 had a reputation as a smart girl and a driven girl. 0:58:08.280 --> 0:58:12.240 And that's fine. But but when I think about like, 0:58:12.960 --> 0:58:15.240 I don't I and then my heart of hearts, I 0:58:15.320 --> 0:58:17.600 think that Dr Ross doesn't know what a cock tease is, 0:58:17.680 --> 0:58:21.000 and I think he just gave me something provocative to say. 0:58:21.640 --> 0:58:24.600 I mean, I do think maybe that's unfair. I mean, 0:58:24.680 --> 0:58:27.360 that's too harsh. What I did have a pattern of 0:58:27.440 --> 0:58:30.320 doing was chasing unavailable men, and he was just the 0:58:30.400 --> 0:58:32.240 next and the Smoker was the next in line. He 0:58:32.280 --> 0:58:35.520 had a girlfriend he was really loved and she was 0:58:35.680 --> 0:58:38.800 so beautiful, and so I think that he was trying 0:58:38.920 --> 0:58:42.800 to break that pattern. But I do think often of 0:58:42.880 --> 0:58:46.960 that word cock tease. I wasn't. I don't. My understanding 0:58:47.000 --> 0:58:49.080 of the word is I was just a nice girl 0:58:49.120 --> 0:58:50.840 who I gave him my notes. At this guy at 0:58:50.880 --> 0:58:53.840 the Smoker, I gave him my notes. Sometimes we'd have lunch. 0:58:54.480 --> 0:58:56.520 I mean, I'm a chatty person, so we would like 0:58:56.640 --> 0:58:58.320 make fun of our teachers. There was a girl in 0:58:58.360 --> 0:59:00.600 our law school class who would bring her money. We 0:59:00.640 --> 0:59:02.920 would talk about the bunny girl, and none of this 0:59:03.040 --> 0:59:07.720 seems like salacious. So I don't know why that word, 0:59:07.840 --> 0:59:10.960 And I wish I could go back and excavate that 0:59:11.440 --> 0:59:13.840 and figure out why that word if it just seemed 0:59:13.920 --> 0:59:15.920 provocative and or if he was just like saying if 0:59:15.920 --> 0:59:20.000 I would do it? Okay, The word in the group 0:59:20.160 --> 0:59:23.200 is is if you're really doing well, you'll graduate to 0:59:23.280 --> 0:59:26.360 have a second group and your goal, your goal is 0:59:26.440 --> 0:59:30.240 to qualify for a second group. One tell us about 0:59:30.240 --> 0:59:34.000 your desire to do that too. Aren't you thinking on 0:59:34.160 --> 0:59:38.320 some level this is gonna be more money and you know, 0:59:38.920 --> 0:59:40.440 we'll just sort of leave it at that. Yeah, so 0:59:40.560 --> 0:59:45.040 what's going on there? Yeah, they're definitely And certainly my 0:59:45.280 --> 0:59:49.200 experiencing group is different from my groupmates. But I was 0:59:49.360 --> 0:59:53.400 watching and there were people in my group, but when 0:59:53.440 --> 0:59:57.840 I started, three of the group members were in other groups, 0:59:58.000 --> 0:59:59.880 and I was sort of like, huh, you get to 1:00:00.040 --> 1:00:03.680 home twice it felt like they'd been anointed and they 1:00:03.760 --> 1:00:06.240 were chosen. Like that's a real big trigger for me, 1:00:06.320 --> 1:00:09.080 the idea that you have someone has been chosen for 1:00:09.240 --> 1:00:12.320 something that I haven't been chosen for. That will get 1:00:12.360 --> 1:00:15.520 me every time. And so while while I'm in my 1:00:15.720 --> 1:00:19.200 first year, wrapping up my first year, one of the 1:00:19.240 --> 1:00:22.320 guys in the group, Carlos Dr Rosen, has this intense 1:00:22.360 --> 1:00:25.360 conversation with him and invites him, invites him to join 1:00:25.400 --> 1:00:27.840 a second group, and I'm like, huh. It felt like 1:00:27.960 --> 1:00:30.320 he was going to be laughing me, and he was 1:00:30.400 --> 1:00:34.040 more beloved, and I just lost my mind, Like why 1:00:34.120 --> 1:00:37.840 don't you offer me this like deluxe treatment? It felt 1:00:38.440 --> 1:00:42.200 I wasn't really thinking about what the logistics of that 1:00:42.320 --> 1:00:46.200 would be or what it really meant. Um. I just wanted. 1:00:47.160 --> 1:00:49.640 I wanted all the opportunities that everybody else got. It 1:00:49.720 --> 1:00:53.280 was like super greedy like that. And by the time 1:00:53.360 --> 1:00:55.840 he offered it to me, there was a point at 1:00:55.880 --> 1:00:58.400 which he thought I was ready. Oh yeah. It was 1:00:58.480 --> 1:01:01.040 right after I had a sex dream of about Dr Rosen, 1:01:01.280 --> 1:01:03.960 or actually it wasn't about Dr Rosen. I had a 1:01:04.280 --> 1:01:08.000 very satisfying sex dream, one of my first ever about 1:01:08.120 --> 1:01:11.240 Luther Vandross who Because of that dream, I will love 1:01:11.320 --> 1:01:13.919 forever And I go to group and I talk about 1:01:13.920 --> 1:01:15.720 it because I see it as a symbol of my 1:01:16.000 --> 1:01:20.480 burgeoning sexuality. My repression is going to fall away. Look 1:01:20.520 --> 1:01:23.080 what Luther and I did, and I was so proud 1:01:23.160 --> 1:01:25.200 of myself. And at the end of the dream, Dr 1:01:25.320 --> 1:01:28.640 Rosen says, oh, that dreams about me, and I was like, 1:01:28.960 --> 1:01:31.640 I was so offended. I was like, don't ruin my dream. 1:01:32.320 --> 1:01:35.439 And so then we we go around and round about 1:01:35.440 --> 1:01:37.480 this dream and whether it's about him. I didn't know 1:01:37.600 --> 1:01:41.080 that Freudian people or therapists always think their dreams are 1:01:41.080 --> 1:01:43.800 always about them, um, And I didn't really. I was 1:01:43.840 --> 1:01:46.160 just mad. And then at the end when I finally 1:01:46.200 --> 1:01:48.720 accepted out, like, fine, Dr Rosen, I wish you would 1:01:48.760 --> 1:01:51.520 go down on me. I just gave into it. Then 1:01:51.600 --> 1:01:54.240 he proclaims I was ready for a second group. So 1:01:54.320 --> 1:01:57.240 then I was like, oh, you tricked me. You tricked me. 1:01:57.960 --> 1:01:59.720 But by the time he offered that, I had had 1:01:59.760 --> 1:02:02.880 an internship with a law firm where I got paid 1:02:03.000 --> 1:02:05.880 like big law firm books. So I had that cash 1:02:06.080 --> 1:02:11.720 just waiting around to just double up on my therapy. Okay, 1:02:12.600 --> 1:02:15.120 what is different about the second group from the first? 1:02:16.240 --> 1:02:18.960 Oh my god, the second group was so scary. It 1:02:19.120 --> 1:02:23.160 was so scary. It was all women. And when I started, 1:02:23.920 --> 1:02:26.360 one of the things Dr Rosen said to me was 1:02:27.800 --> 1:02:30.040 I went to my first group and it was like scary. 1:02:30.120 --> 1:02:31.480 There was a woman in there who was like a 1:02:31.560 --> 1:02:35.480 buddy of mine from from the twelve step program, and 1:02:35.600 --> 1:02:38.520 she already like I knew her in in our relationship, 1:02:38.560 --> 1:02:40.600 and then I get there and she's like already friends 1:02:40.680 --> 1:02:42.240 with everyone in the group, and I felt like I 1:02:42.280 --> 1:02:45.120 had intruded. I had a sense she didn't really want 1:02:45.160 --> 1:02:48.640 me there. And the women were just larger than life. 1:02:48.720 --> 1:02:53.840 They were incredible and complex and loud, and they got 1:02:53.880 --> 1:02:56.680 into a fight and they talked about sex I'd never 1:02:56.800 --> 1:03:00.080 heard of, and I was I felt like I was 1:03:00.120 --> 1:03:02.640 a little bitty kid, like a four year old who 1:03:02.720 --> 1:03:05.640 was sitting at the table with the adults. And I 1:03:05.720 --> 1:03:07.800 didn't know what I had done, and I wasn't expecting 1:03:07.840 --> 1:03:09.040 it at all. I thought it was gonna be this 1:03:09.200 --> 1:03:13.920 cozy women like a womb, and it was not like 1:03:14.040 --> 1:03:16.320 that at all. And I wanted to leave from the 1:03:16.480 --> 1:03:19.960 second I got in there. And one of the things 1:03:20.440 --> 1:03:24.080 that I thought was, why is this so different? And 1:03:24.280 --> 1:03:26.280 Dr Rosen said to me when I went back to 1:03:26.400 --> 1:03:28.720 my when I went to the next week, I went 1:03:28.760 --> 1:03:30.840 to my former group, and I was like, that sucked. 1:03:31.040 --> 1:03:33.880 I didn't like that for one second. And Dr Rosen 1:03:33.960 --> 1:03:36.400 said to me, I think you have more problems with 1:03:36.560 --> 1:03:41.560 women than you do with men. And I protested that vehemently. 1:03:41.640 --> 1:03:43.560 I was like, are you kidding? Look at the way 1:03:43.640 --> 1:03:45.760 these men treat me, look at what I've done, blah 1:03:45.800 --> 1:03:48.360 blah blah. And he just like sat there, like I 1:03:48.480 --> 1:03:51.120 think what I think. You can you think what you think. 1:03:51.200 --> 1:03:54.520 But that's that's my take on you. And it's taken 1:03:54.600 --> 1:03:57.880 me about fifteen years to realize. I think that he 1:03:58.000 --> 1:04:01.720 was right. I think that he was right. Okay. One 1:04:01.760 --> 1:04:04.120 thing you mentioned, and it's really very interesting in the 1:04:04.200 --> 1:04:07.360 book is being a people pleaser. You tell us about 1:04:07.400 --> 1:04:09.520 being a people pleaser, where that came from and how 1:04:09.600 --> 1:04:13.520 you made progress there. Yeah, I I wonder where that 1:04:13.640 --> 1:04:16.120 came from. I think it's it's some of its culture. 1:04:17.080 --> 1:04:20.800 Some of it is kept Texas Catholic. Being a girl 1:04:22.080 --> 1:04:25.000 and being a pleaser. There's so many affirmations you get 1:04:25.080 --> 1:04:27.720 from the world by being a pleaser. People like people 1:04:27.800 --> 1:04:30.760 who are trying to please them. My teachers loved me, 1:04:31.520 --> 1:04:35.080 my friends who were the recipients of me trying to 1:04:35.120 --> 1:04:37.479 please them. You know, I was always the designated driver 1:04:38.120 --> 1:04:41.480 I you know, I would volunteer for things, thinking well, 1:04:41.520 --> 1:04:43.440 if I'm the designated driver, then I get to go 1:04:43.520 --> 1:04:45.760 to the party and they can't leave me behind. I 1:04:45.880 --> 1:04:49.280 was always motivated by this fear of abandonment, and so 1:04:49.360 --> 1:04:52.480 it's like over functioning and a lot of relationships. And 1:04:53.600 --> 1:04:55.800 one thing I loved about when I got to group, 1:04:55.840 --> 1:04:57.800 it was so obvious from that first day when I'm 1:04:57.840 --> 1:05:00.880 just trying to be the valedictorian group therapy and answering 1:05:00.960 --> 1:05:03.840 questions about my sex life with total strangers who were men, 1:05:04.480 --> 1:05:07.600 and I think I was I thought that when you 1:05:07.680 --> 1:05:12.600 went to therapy you had to do pure excavation. What 1:05:12.760 --> 1:05:15.000 does your dad do, what does your mom do? How 1:05:15.080 --> 1:05:17.560 did this impact you? And we do a little bit 1:05:17.600 --> 1:05:21.280 of that, but what what happens most often and probably 1:05:21.600 --> 1:05:25.360 seventy five percent of the time, we look at the 1:05:25.480 --> 1:05:28.040 relationships that we're having in the group in the moment 1:05:28.120 --> 1:05:31.520 with Dr Rosen and our peer groupmates, and it all 1:05:31.600 --> 1:05:34.520 comes out right there, so it doesn't really matter as 1:05:34.640 --> 1:05:37.920 much like, well, it was your mother's Swedish background part 1:05:37.960 --> 1:05:40.760 of the reason why you can't spend a penny, maybe, 1:05:41.240 --> 1:05:44.520 but what what about now? And so we would get 1:05:44.560 --> 1:05:46.920 into group and I remember one time I had a 1:05:47.040 --> 1:05:50.400 huge fight with Carlos. He had asked me to help him. 1:05:50.480 --> 1:05:54.080 He was doing something at home, like something decorating, and 1:05:54.160 --> 1:05:56.960 I had a law school exam the next day and 1:05:57.040 --> 1:05:59.320 I didn't want to go help him, but I went anyway. 1:06:00.040 --> 1:06:02.640 And I was so resentful and I was so mad 1:06:02.920 --> 1:06:05.320 and didn't he know how to test? And why didn't he? 1:06:05.600 --> 1:06:07.120 So we go into group and I'm getting ready to 1:06:07.160 --> 1:06:10.480 open my mouth to say I was so resentful that 1:06:10.560 --> 1:06:13.120 I did that just to please him, just because he's 1:06:13.160 --> 1:06:14.680 my friend, and I thought he wouldn't love me if 1:06:14.720 --> 1:06:18.600 I said no, and he Carlos opened his mouth and said, 1:06:19.680 --> 1:06:22.240 you know, Christie came over to help decorate, and she 1:06:22.440 --> 1:06:26.320 really fucked up the wreaths and I was like, excuse me, 1:06:27.000 --> 1:06:29.120 and we were I was so mad. I was like, 1:06:29.200 --> 1:06:31.400 what are you talking about? And he was they were 1:06:31.440 --> 1:06:34.360 having a party and they we were stringing these like 1:06:34.600 --> 1:06:36.320 ribbons on a wreath and I guess I didn't do 1:06:36.400 --> 1:06:37.600 it right. He was like, I thought you were in 1:06:37.680 --> 1:06:39.600 a sorority. I thought you could do stuff like that. 1:06:40.000 --> 1:06:41.600 And I was like, wait a minute, no, I'm mad 1:06:41.640 --> 1:06:44.680 at you because I didn't want to be there. I 1:06:44.800 --> 1:06:47.360 had a test. I had a crim log exam, and 1:06:47.800 --> 1:06:49.640 so we got to tease it out right there like 1:06:49.880 --> 1:06:52.000 all like I didn't really want to be there. I 1:06:52.040 --> 1:06:54.160 didn't set the boundary. I didn't do what I wanted. 1:06:54.240 --> 1:06:55.680 So when I went there and I did a sort 1:06:55.680 --> 1:06:59.760 of subpar job, and and I could have avoided all 1:06:59.800 --> 1:07:01.880 of if I had just said, this weekend doesn't work, 1:07:02.600 --> 1:07:04.440 I'm happy to help you and my exams are over, 1:07:04.480 --> 1:07:06.160 because I would have been. But I was always so 1:07:06.240 --> 1:07:08.760 afraid if I ever said no, I would never get 1:07:08.800 --> 1:07:11.440 another invitation, and not only that, then he would like 1:07:11.520 --> 1:07:14.360 stop being my friend, which is so immature, But that 1:07:14.560 --> 1:07:17.840 was me, at age, with a year of therapy under 1:07:17.920 --> 1:07:20.400 my belt, going to do these wreaths when I had 1:07:20.440 --> 1:07:23.760 a legit reason to say I can't do it today. 1:07:24.160 --> 1:07:25.800 Can we find some other time for me to help 1:07:25.880 --> 1:07:31.200 you decorate your house? It's crazy? Okay, you're very analytic. Uh, 1:07:31.440 --> 1:07:34.000 bubbly's got a bad connotation. But let's just say you're 1:07:34.120 --> 1:07:37.880 upbeat and you were very articulate. What would be the 1:07:37.960 --> 1:07:42.080 difference between the conversation you and me are having pre 1:07:42.280 --> 1:07:47.120 therapy and now we just wouldn't have this conversation. What 1:07:47.360 --> 1:07:51.800 I think I was so good at before therapy, was 1:07:51.960 --> 1:07:55.000 not seeing opportunities, so I would never have to step 1:07:55.120 --> 1:07:57.920 up like I would have. I would have never written 1:07:57.960 --> 1:08:00.560 a book. I would have just never I could I could. 1:08:00.640 --> 1:08:04.920 I had blinders on and I didn't see opportunities professional 1:08:05.480 --> 1:08:09.000 personal We just would we just it would have been 1:08:09.040 --> 1:08:11.520 impossible for us to have this conversation. I just would 1:08:11.520 --> 1:08:15.360 have blocked the opportunity. But long before we'd ever sit 1:08:15.400 --> 1:08:18.560 down together. But you mentioned that you were chatty with 1:08:18.720 --> 1:08:22.040 the smoker where you did you have the same personality 1:08:22.200 --> 1:08:25.599 now just different content or have you become more valuable 1:08:25.680 --> 1:08:29.839 as a result of therapy. I've definitely become more valuable, definitely, 1:08:30.160 --> 1:08:32.160 But some of it, I mean, I've always been sassy, 1:08:32.520 --> 1:08:35.920 and when I think back to my lunches with the smoker, 1:08:36.960 --> 1:08:39.680 I think about, like how I tried to connect with him, 1:08:40.520 --> 1:08:44.599 and most of what I recall was bringing to bear 1:08:44.720 --> 1:08:47.840 my sass and my analytics to really like make fun 1:08:47.920 --> 1:08:50.519 of other people, including myself. So there's a ton of 1:08:50.600 --> 1:08:54.040 self denigration. And I would I would tell him like 1:08:54.160 --> 1:08:57.560 I would maybe by then by I was dating a 1:08:57.680 --> 1:08:59.840 little bit, like going on blind dates, and they were 1:09:00.000 --> 1:09:03.799 always they were fine in the in the real world, honestly, 1:09:03.880 --> 1:09:06.400 they were just fine. They weren't love connections. But I 1:09:06.439 --> 1:09:08.519 would like play it up and I would tell him 1:09:09.000 --> 1:09:13.320 about these guys and it was so maybe that is why, 1:09:13.520 --> 1:09:15.800 maybe that's why Dr Rosen called me a cock tease, 1:09:15.800 --> 1:09:18.160 because I would, you know, we would play out these 1:09:18.280 --> 1:09:20.840 conversations that I was always the butt of the joke. 1:09:21.040 --> 1:09:24.400 I was always the poor smart girl who's dating dating 1:09:24.439 --> 1:09:28.000 the boy who's doesn't have a wallet or camp pay 1:09:28.080 --> 1:09:32.320 his rent. And it was just sort of like, not fully, 1:09:32.479 --> 1:09:36.600 I wasn't owning any of my competence or my for 1:09:36.920 --> 1:09:39.160 my full self. You know. It was like I was 1:09:39.240 --> 1:09:41.639 sort of playing at jackass because I thought it was entertaining, 1:09:41.680 --> 1:09:43.599 and I'm sure it was. I mean, there's there's plenty 1:09:43.640 --> 1:09:47.719 of that to do, but there's it was my only mode. Okay, 1:09:48.080 --> 1:09:50.960 As a result of therapy, you end up having relationships 1:09:51.560 --> 1:09:55.360 to use. You use the vernacular, so I'll repeat it. 1:09:55.400 --> 1:09:59.360 You have a relationship, extended relationship, and then you ended 1:09:59.400 --> 1:10:03.000 by saying you're no longer gonna suck dirty dick. Tell 1:10:03.080 --> 1:10:07.160 us about that relationship and your revelations there. Yeah, I 1:10:07.400 --> 1:10:10.160 think about that a lot, and I think about like 1:10:10.240 --> 1:10:13.519 my I think about when I think about what I 1:10:13.600 --> 1:10:17.160 put up with in relationships, what I thought I had 1:10:17.240 --> 1:10:21.120 to do to be a person deserving of relationships, I 1:10:21.240 --> 1:10:26.360 think about that exact thing, and I think about, you know, 1:10:26.400 --> 1:10:30.160 I had a boyfriend and I loved him. I did 1:10:30.240 --> 1:10:32.160 love him, and he did love me, and we were 1:10:32.240 --> 1:10:35.240 really ill suited for each other, in part because he 1:10:35.320 --> 1:10:38.440 didn't want to be in a relationship and I desperately 1:10:39.040 --> 1:10:41.639 wanted a boyfriend. I wanted the works, I wanted brunch, 1:10:42.040 --> 1:10:46.000 I wanted regular sex, I wanted presents on birthdays, and 1:10:46.200 --> 1:10:49.120 he just wanted to play video asky video games. And 1:10:49.880 --> 1:10:53.200 I kept thinking, as is my way, If I just 1:10:53.479 --> 1:10:56.599 do it right, if I could help him snap out 1:10:56.640 --> 1:10:58.559 of his bunk, or if I I could get him 1:10:58.560 --> 1:11:01.120 to go to more of his a A meeting, will 1:11:01.280 --> 1:11:03.560 He'll be this boy of my dreams. And it just 1:11:04.080 --> 1:11:07.839 it wasn't the case. And when he got really really depressed, 1:11:07.960 --> 1:11:11.200 like I am not proud of this, but I watched 1:11:11.280 --> 1:11:14.160 him like wake up in the morning, drink a cup 1:11:14.280 --> 1:11:19.080 of black coffee, didn't even have a toothbrush, don't know 1:11:19.120 --> 1:11:22.160 where the toothbrush went. The cat, his cat would like 1:11:22.560 --> 1:11:25.880 defecate in the living room. It just languished there and 1:11:26.080 --> 1:11:28.840 I'm there, right, I'm watching all of this. I'm I'm 1:11:29.439 --> 1:11:32.200 making judgments and thinking what am I doing here? Like? 1:11:33.040 --> 1:11:35.280 Why is this what I think I deserve? What am 1:11:35.280 --> 1:11:38.639 I doing? And there was one night where I thought, oh, 1:11:39.240 --> 1:11:41.920 I know how I can fix this. I'm gonna I'm 1:11:41.920 --> 1:11:45.960 gonna give him pleasure. And he hadn't showered in days, 1:11:46.800 --> 1:11:49.759 and you know, a body isn't A body that hasn't 1:11:49.800 --> 1:11:52.439 been showered has a lot of issues and you probably 1:11:52.479 --> 1:11:54.439 don't want to be that close to it. But I 1:11:54.680 --> 1:11:57.600 just was like gung ho, and that was really, like 1:11:57.880 --> 1:11:59.880 you know they say in the pro the twelve stepper, 1:12:00.160 --> 1:12:03.000 like that was a bottom. That was definitely a bottom. 1:12:03.040 --> 1:12:05.560 By the time I went to group and reported the 1:12:05.680 --> 1:12:07.599 first group, I was too scared to tell him because 1:12:08.320 --> 1:12:11.840 if you say that out loud, I I gave my 1:12:11.960 --> 1:12:14.680 boyfriend a blowjob when I didn't want to, when his 1:12:14.800 --> 1:12:18.120 body was unwashed, and he didn't seem all that into it, 1:12:18.439 --> 1:12:21.800 and my pure motive was to snap him out of depression. 1:12:22.800 --> 1:12:24.840 You can't say that in therapy and not have someone 1:12:25.520 --> 1:12:27.599 you know give you a side i and maybe suggest 1:12:27.720 --> 1:12:30.760 you take different action. And so in the afternoon group 1:12:30.800 --> 1:12:33.440 with the ladies, I told them about it, and they 1:12:33.600 --> 1:12:36.479 did react as you would imagine, like, oh my god, 1:12:36.680 --> 1:12:39.519 you have to stop. And it was that that helped 1:12:39.560 --> 1:12:42.519 me let go of the relationship to like that very 1:12:42.600 --> 1:12:45.439 basic thing that's like on like sex in the city, right, 1:12:45.479 --> 1:12:47.160 the lesson over and over again, it's better to be 1:12:47.240 --> 1:12:50.200 alone than in a bad relationship. But I had to 1:12:50.280 --> 1:12:52.920 test that theory so many times and in so many ways. 1:12:53.560 --> 1:13:01.120 You reference yourself is frigid? Uh were you? I think? So? 1:13:01.600 --> 1:13:06.400 I think that I was scared. I think I don't 1:13:06.400 --> 1:13:08.559 know what that Maybe that's not totally the right word. 1:13:08.600 --> 1:13:11.880 But when I think about who I chose, I chose 1:13:11.960 --> 1:13:15.080 a man who did not want to have sex. That 1:13:15.280 --> 1:13:18.360 tells me that if I take the focus off him 1:13:18.520 --> 1:13:21.439 and put it on myself, I chose a man who 1:13:21.560 --> 1:13:24.479 didn't want to have sex. That tells me I don't 1:13:24.520 --> 1:13:27.840 want to have sex. And I watched my once I 1:13:27.920 --> 1:13:30.400 got closer to people, and I'm having relationships with people 1:13:30.400 --> 1:13:33.280 in group, and I got a roommate, which was amazing, 1:13:33.520 --> 1:13:36.599 and this wonderful woman from law school, and I'm able 1:13:36.640 --> 1:13:39.600 to like participate more in the social world of my 1:13:39.840 --> 1:13:45.360 law school classmates, and they're talking about they're wonderful getaways 1:13:45.439 --> 1:13:48.160 with their boyfriends, and I can tell they're talking about 1:13:48.960 --> 1:13:51.840 having hot sex, and I'm just like, oh, really, I 1:13:52.000 --> 1:13:55.000 watched my boyfriend play computer games and I slept like 1:13:55.120 --> 1:13:57.960 in head to toe flannel. I really do think that 1:13:58.280 --> 1:14:04.200 there was a frigid be born of repression and I 1:14:04.360 --> 1:14:07.000 just didn't have I hadn't come, I hadn't grown up, 1:14:07.200 --> 1:14:09.960 and I hadn't learned how to do a relationship in 1:14:10.040 --> 1:14:12.719 the way that I needed in order to be sexually 1:14:12.760 --> 1:14:15.320 expressive and have a sex life that made some kind 1:14:15.360 --> 1:14:21.080 of sense. Tell us about opera boy? Do you mean 1:14:21.120 --> 1:14:24.360 the one I married? No? No, wasn't there a guy 1:14:24.600 --> 1:14:27.000 his family was connected so that he could have really 1:14:27.080 --> 1:14:33.600 good tickets? Yes? Yes, yes, Oh my gosh. Um that 1:14:34.000 --> 1:14:38.960 so that relationship. You know, by then, each relationship I 1:14:39.120 --> 1:14:42.639 had a harder time. I mean, each relationship got better. 1:14:42.720 --> 1:14:44.760 I will say that each one got better, which is 1:14:44.840 --> 1:14:49.280 exactly what should happen. And I was always very invested 1:14:49.320 --> 1:14:53.080 in well, I'm recovered and I'm in therapy, so I 1:14:53.280 --> 1:14:56.800 deserve a good relationship. So I started dating this young 1:14:57.040 --> 1:15:02.559 man and he was sweet and kind and very well 1:15:02.640 --> 1:15:06.080 connected and very wealthy, and that was a step up 1:15:06.080 --> 1:15:08.400 because I had paid rent for my last boyfriend. And 1:15:10.439 --> 1:15:13.800 what was strange about our relationship There were several things, 1:15:13.880 --> 1:15:17.519 but one was there was no easy communication. For all 1:15:17.600 --> 1:15:20.240 that I've learned by then, I've been in therapy, I 1:15:20.280 --> 1:15:22.800 mean almost four years, and I've learned how to go 1:15:23.080 --> 1:15:26.479 and do things and emote and have relationships. And here 1:15:26.520 --> 1:15:29.800 comes this guy, and I felt like he was so respectable. 1:15:30.000 --> 1:15:34.479 He was another one who had impressive credentials, and I 1:15:34.640 --> 1:15:36.560 felt like I had just go along with what he 1:15:36.720 --> 1:15:39.400 was doing, and like we had a we had a 1:15:39.479 --> 1:15:42.599 situation where this is the best example. When we would 1:15:42.640 --> 1:15:45.280 be intimate, he would always have to flip me over 1:15:45.520 --> 1:15:48.560 so he couldn't look at my face. I don't know 1:15:48.640 --> 1:15:51.760 what was going on. And what's really cringey about that 1:15:51.880 --> 1:15:54.640 whole thing is I never asked. I never had a 1:15:54.720 --> 1:15:58.160 sense of my own voice. And I remember I would 1:15:58.160 --> 1:16:00.400 be in his bedroom with my face and his pillow 1:16:00.439 --> 1:16:03.639 because he flipped me over, and I'm like, I don't 1:16:03.680 --> 1:16:06.800 want to be doing this I and well, maybe I do, 1:16:07.160 --> 1:16:09.000 but I at least want to know what's happening and 1:16:09.040 --> 1:16:11.960 why aren't we talking about it, and I couldn't believe that. 1:16:12.080 --> 1:16:14.360 I couldn't use my voice just to say like, hey, 1:16:15.160 --> 1:16:17.880 what's this about for you? Or this is kind of 1:16:17.960 --> 1:16:21.800 hot maybe, but what's what is this about? Do we 1:16:21.880 --> 1:16:24.320 always have to have sex this way? I didn't say 1:16:24.320 --> 1:16:26.720 any of that, and it made me feel like, the 1:16:26.840 --> 1:16:29.640 hell is all this therapy for it? This is what 1:16:29.800 --> 1:16:32.960 my sex life is? And I hung on here we 1:16:33.000 --> 1:16:35.160 go again because I didn't want to be alone because 1:16:35.240 --> 1:16:38.240 now now I'm thirty four and that's even older than 1:16:38.240 --> 1:16:40.400 when I was thirty and doing dumb things with men, 1:16:40.840 --> 1:16:43.920 and it just felt like every time I felt like, 1:16:44.080 --> 1:16:46.519 this is my last chance, and if I can't make 1:16:46.560 --> 1:16:49.600 it work, there's no other men. It's not like I 1:16:49.680 --> 1:16:52.160 lived in a teeny tiny Mayberry. I lived in Chicago. 1:16:52.240 --> 1:16:55.599 There were men everywhere. But I just had this terrible 1:16:55.800 --> 1:16:58.479 kernel belief that this was my last chance and if 1:16:58.520 --> 1:17:00.479 I didn't make it work, it was because I hadn't 1:17:00.520 --> 1:17:05.080 worked hard enough. Okay, talking about the end of that relationship, 1:17:06.040 --> 1:17:10.200 Oh my god, this was so dark, and it seems 1:17:10.280 --> 1:17:11.880 like when I was writing it, I was like, this 1:17:12.000 --> 1:17:14.759 seems like it's not real. But we're at this fancy 1:17:15.040 --> 1:17:18.559 club in Chicago, and or we're walking into the health 1:17:18.600 --> 1:17:21.639 club and his friend stops us in the parking lot. 1:17:21.880 --> 1:17:24.880 He like, it seems like you know people who you know. 1:17:25.200 --> 1:17:26.880 He was a doctor, So all these doctors all know 1:17:27.000 --> 1:17:29.280 each other and they're all at the same places, and 1:17:29.320 --> 1:17:31.880 so they're these guys are chatting and they're talking about 1:17:32.040 --> 1:17:36.000 stocks and whatever, hospital politics, and all of a sudden, 1:17:37.320 --> 1:17:40.479 the friend asked my boyfriend like, oh, tell me about 1:17:40.479 --> 1:17:43.880 your upcoming trip. And I'm like, what trip? And it 1:17:43.960 --> 1:17:46.000 turns out he had this whole trip planned that this 1:17:46.120 --> 1:17:49.880 friend knew about with another woman. And I'm like, this 1:17:50.120 --> 1:17:52.479 can't be. Is that his sister? Like you know you do? 1:17:52.640 --> 1:17:54.799 All those things were like how thick is my denial? 1:17:54.960 --> 1:17:57.120 It's so thick. I was like, well, maybe he's going 1:17:57.160 --> 1:18:00.160 with his sister. Well maybe that's part of a bus 1:18:00.240 --> 1:18:04.000 this thing to Cancun, and that's not where that's that's 1:18:04.080 --> 1:18:05.920 not the case. And when I find it's like it 1:18:06.000 --> 1:18:08.720 was snowing and it was like January, and I was 1:18:08.800 --> 1:18:12.439 just like, I give it, I give up. This is done. 1:18:12.640 --> 1:18:14.640 We're done. And I just like walked back to my 1:18:14.760 --> 1:18:17.880 car tell us who he was going with. That was 1:18:17.960 --> 1:18:22.120 a key element yeah, yeah, yeah. He was going with 1:18:22.320 --> 1:18:27.320 this like super hot, like hot in a way like 1:18:27.479 --> 1:18:29.519 I'm fine whatever, Maybe I'm hot, maybe I'm not. But 1:18:29.600 --> 1:18:32.639 this one who was like New York, she was super chic. 1:18:33.600 --> 1:18:35.680 They all knew her. She was one of those you 1:18:35.720 --> 1:18:38.719 know that there's always a woman who's in the boys circle, 1:18:38.840 --> 1:18:42.280 who's like everybody loves her, like she's cool as hell. 1:18:42.760 --> 1:18:45.360 And she's also she had this great hair, and she 1:18:45.439 --> 1:18:48.560 had this funky eyeglass company, and I'm just like, I 1:18:48.720 --> 1:18:51.560 cannot compete with that. And they were going to go 1:18:51.680 --> 1:18:54.840 off to Cancun and we give him if I just 1:18:54.920 --> 1:18:57.479 turned around, I get in my car, and he he 1:18:57.640 --> 1:19:02.040 was sort of like, what's wrong, Like hmmm. I mean, 1:19:02.080 --> 1:19:04.080 there were so many clues leading up to this that 1:19:04.960 --> 1:19:06.960 I mean, I can't even hardly blame this guy because 1:19:07.000 --> 1:19:08.800 look at me, Look how I look what I took. 1:19:09.200 --> 1:19:11.679 Look how I trained this guy to think I would 1:19:11.840 --> 1:19:14.799 be cool. I'd be totally cool with this, and needless 1:19:14.840 --> 1:19:17.439 to say, I'm proud to report I was not, and 1:19:17.560 --> 1:19:19.960 we did. We did break up that weekend. I think 1:19:20.000 --> 1:19:22.080 that was the first that's one of my only I 1:19:22.240 --> 1:19:26.280 initiated the breakup, Thank god, you know, I have to 1:19:26.360 --> 1:19:28.640 ask you may or may not know what ended up 1:19:28.720 --> 1:19:31.679 happening with that guy and that woman. Did they would 1:19:31.720 --> 1:19:34.360 get together? Did he ever get married? You know? I 1:19:34.560 --> 1:19:37.200 heard a couple of years ago I was that I 1:19:37.320 --> 1:19:40.320 was listening to a band in Hyde Park and someone said, oh, 1:19:40.520 --> 1:19:42.080 you used to date so and so and I was 1:19:42.160 --> 1:19:44.400 like yeah, and they were like, oh, yeah, he just 1:19:44.520 --> 1:19:46.639 recently got married and he moved to a different part 1:19:46.680 --> 1:19:49.120 of town. And I was like huh. And I was like, 1:19:49.520 --> 1:19:51.640 you know, you don't want to act too interested when 1:19:51.720 --> 1:19:54.080 you hear about your ex, like oh, who did he marry? 1:19:54.640 --> 1:19:57.080 And Um, this person didn't know. They just heard the 1:19:57.160 --> 1:19:59.920 fact of his marriage. And I'll confess I googled it 1:20:00.080 --> 1:20:01.920 to try to find out. But I don't know, but 1:20:02.080 --> 1:20:04.960 I certainly wish him well. And um when I when 1:20:05.040 --> 1:20:08.920 the book was being published, my husband said, oh no, 1:20:09.640 --> 1:20:12.519 what if his wife reads this and figures out it's him? 1:20:13.000 --> 1:20:15.080 I was like, how would she do that? She was like, well, 1:20:15.120 --> 1:20:18.400 what if he flips her? I'm like that was his 1:20:18.560 --> 1:20:22.400 problem that and it's her problem, is not my problem. Okay. 1:20:22.800 --> 1:20:26.639 How many years after you start therapy do you start 1:20:26.760 --> 1:20:31.679 to date your husband? Okay? So I started therapy August 1:20:32.880 --> 1:20:36.040 of two thousand one, and I started dating my husband 1:20:36.320 --> 1:20:40.280 in March of two thousand seven. Okay, that's a long time. 1:20:40.320 --> 1:20:42.280 How did you ultimately connect with him and why did 1:20:42.360 --> 1:20:45.519 that work as opposed to the previous relationships. Oh my gosh. 1:20:45.720 --> 1:20:48.160 So we worked at the same law firm, and when 1:20:48.200 --> 1:20:50.920 I first met him, we were paired up as like 1:20:51.080 --> 1:20:55.240 associates who were supposed to shepherd the summer interns. So 1:20:55.360 --> 1:20:57.920 what that means is we had this unlimited budget to 1:20:58.000 --> 1:21:02.400 go do stuff with these young Harvard and UFC and 1:21:02.880 --> 1:21:04.519 you know, these young kids. So we'd like have to 1:21:04.640 --> 1:21:07.880 organize dinners and we went to this shop and or 1:21:07.960 --> 1:21:12.000 this diner in Chicago that only sold cereal, and so 1:21:12.280 --> 1:21:15.040 what we spent a lot of time together and that summer. 1:21:15.640 --> 1:21:17.880 I thought he was interesting. He was single, and there 1:21:17.880 --> 1:21:21.280 weren't that many single people in our firm. Everybody's like 1:21:21.320 --> 1:21:23.240 hooked up or married or whatever. So I'm always like, 1:21:23.280 --> 1:21:25.840 I was always trying to make myself like the single guys. 1:21:26.120 --> 1:21:28.760 But I thought he was real boring. He seemed to 1:21:28.800 --> 1:21:30.960 talk about golf a lot, and he didn't have a TV, 1:21:31.360 --> 1:21:32.760 and he didn't have a car, and I was like 1:21:33.160 --> 1:21:36.360 what is this? What? What? Like I I didn't get 1:21:36.479 --> 1:21:38.640 what he was doing. And then we went to that 1:21:38.800 --> 1:21:40.360 we went to one of those places. We took all 1:21:40.400 --> 1:21:43.680 the summer associates to that place. You know, it's like 1:21:43.720 --> 1:21:47.680 a Brazilian steakhouse where there's just like meat. We're there 1:21:48.040 --> 1:21:50.360 and he told this crazy like I thought of him 1:21:50.400 --> 1:21:54.400 as like super buttoned up conservative. He was from l 1:21:54.479 --> 1:21:56.720 a Um and so I just I couldn't quite get 1:21:56.760 --> 1:21:58.439 a beat on him. And he told this crazy story 1:21:58.479 --> 1:22:01.639 about his dad's colon oskar Be and the shaving thing. 1:22:01.800 --> 1:22:03.720 And I was like, huh, Like he was like a 1:22:03.760 --> 1:22:06.680 little edgier than I thought he would have like a 1:22:06.800 --> 1:22:08.680 story and it was like really funny, and it's such 1:22:08.720 --> 1:22:11.120 a dry since if he like, I'm more of a slapstick, 1:22:11.600 --> 1:22:14.120 say something outrageous and he just like deadpand it and 1:22:14.160 --> 1:22:18.680 I was like huh. And so that nothing really ever 1:22:18.760 --> 1:22:20.599 came with that, although he did ask me to dinner 1:22:20.760 --> 1:22:24.200 shortly thereafter that I was dating. I was dating the Flipper, 1:22:24.720 --> 1:22:28.120 and I was like, oh, I said yes to my husband. 1:22:28.240 --> 1:22:30.000 He wasn't my husband yet, right, So I say yes 1:22:30.080 --> 1:22:32.679 to John, thinking oh, this is gonna make the Flipper 1:22:32.760 --> 1:22:34.840 feel like, oh, I'm hot, he's gonna want to be 1:22:34.960 --> 1:22:36.160 with me. Maybe I will want to look at me 1:22:36.200 --> 1:22:38.280 when we have sex because I'm going on a date 1:22:38.320 --> 1:22:41.080 with another guy that didn't happen. And then I broke 1:22:41.160 --> 1:22:44.240 the date with John because the Flipper didn't care, and 1:22:44.400 --> 1:22:46.880 so John and I mean, the Flipper and I broke up. 1:22:47.240 --> 1:22:49.800 Oh no, before that, John invited me to the opera 1:22:49.880 --> 1:22:51.680 with a group of people, and I was like, all right, 1:22:51.680 --> 1:22:54.200 I'll go to the opera. It's January and Chicago. And 1:22:54.240 --> 1:22:56.559 I went to tell the Flipper, thinking he's not gonna care, 1:22:56.920 --> 1:23:00.400 and he didn't really care, but he did bite me 1:23:01.000 --> 1:23:04.000 to see the exact same opera from his parents, like 1:23:04.280 --> 1:23:07.519 third row seats, two days before John and I were 1:23:07.560 --> 1:23:09.559 going to go. So I was like, that's interesting, Maybe 1:23:09.600 --> 1:23:12.599 he does care, Like that's what that's recounted for love 1:23:12.680 --> 1:23:16.040 in that relationship. And so I went to the opera 1:23:16.080 --> 1:23:19.800 twice that week, same opera, two different seats, and and 1:23:19.920 --> 1:23:22.840 then when the Flipper and I broke up, I was 1:23:22.920 --> 1:23:25.960 just like, what about that guy John, Like maybe he's 1:23:26.000 --> 1:23:29.200 not so boring, and also maybe boring is okay? Like 1:23:29.360 --> 1:23:33.040 I had enough drama. I didn't need super flashy or 1:23:33.120 --> 1:23:35.680 fancy like what. It was just a nice guy and 1:23:36.439 --> 1:23:38.880 I we hung out one night with other people from 1:23:38.920 --> 1:23:42.360 the law firm, and he just had this like quiet 1:23:42.520 --> 1:23:48.200 confidence and every question I asked him he answered thoughtfully 1:23:48.400 --> 1:23:51.360 like and I was throwing real random stuff at him, 1:23:51.400 --> 1:23:54.200 like what's your religion? He was like Jewish. I mean, 1:23:54.240 --> 1:23:56.080 I was raised Jewish and this is in the middle 1:23:56.080 --> 1:23:58.760 of the House of Blues, And so I just was 1:23:58.840 --> 1:24:02.240 impressed by his candor and his sort of there's just 1:24:02.320 --> 1:24:05.639 no fluff about him. And then I think I think 1:24:05.680 --> 1:24:09.559 at that point, I was just so tired of all 1:24:09.680 --> 1:24:12.280 my shenanigans and all the dumb things I'd done that 1:24:12.400 --> 1:24:14.640 I was just ready just to shoot it straight. And 1:24:14.760 --> 1:24:17.760 I think I drew him to me and and it 1:24:17.920 --> 1:24:20.280 just sort of worked. I've done I've done enough work 1:24:20.320 --> 1:24:23.519 to know I'm not hiding. I'm not pretending. I'm certainly 1:24:23.560 --> 1:24:25.360 not going to tell you I'm not in therapy. We're 1:24:25.360 --> 1:24:27.600 just gonna we're just this is who I am, and 1:24:27.760 --> 1:24:29.519 like it or lump it because I'm not doing this. 1:24:29.880 --> 1:24:32.040 I'm not doing this not have a voice thing like 1:24:32.240 --> 1:24:41.600 ever again, Okay, h is he boring? Um? Is he No, 1:24:42.080 --> 1:24:45.160 I don't think. So it's funny when I say Dr 1:24:45.320 --> 1:24:50.320 Rosen's theory is if you're bored, it's a synonym for lonely. 1:24:50.880 --> 1:24:52.920 So now when I think, I put that through my filter, 1:24:53.120 --> 1:24:57.560 like I'm not bored with John, like he's I like 1:24:57.800 --> 1:25:00.080 his mind, I like how he thinks. He thinks so 1:25:00.360 --> 1:25:02.880 differently from the way that I do. So if we 1:25:03.000 --> 1:25:06.240 spend time together, um, which we do because we're married 1:25:06.280 --> 1:25:10.640 and we're raising children, I find him. I find him 1:25:10.760 --> 1:25:13.360 dynamic because he's not doing anything the way that I 1:25:13.400 --> 1:25:15.880 would or mostly the way I want him to. But 1:25:16.000 --> 1:25:19.080 I do not find him boring. Okay. One of the 1:25:19.120 --> 1:25:21.639 big points in the book is feeling good about about 1:25:21.680 --> 1:25:25.160 yourself to ultimately try to get a job. It's scadding, 1:25:25.760 --> 1:25:30.240 and you do. Now. I'm certainly where the firm because 1:25:30.439 --> 1:25:34.280 a good friend with Jason Flam's father's Joe Flam. Okay, 1:25:34.840 --> 1:25:39.120 but at this point you no longer work. It's scadden, correct, 1:25:40.479 --> 1:25:43.599 So I'm interested being an attorney myself. I haven't practiced 1:25:43.640 --> 1:25:49.040 for decades, but you know, you ultimately achieve the goal 1:25:49.240 --> 1:25:52.360 you set right after graduate school. Where are you at 1:25:52.479 --> 1:25:56.560 with practicing law today? Today? I'm a government lawyer. I 1:25:56.640 --> 1:26:00.200 work full time and it's after you know. It's a 1:26:00.240 --> 1:26:03.040 similar thing where once I left the University of Chicago 1:26:03.320 --> 1:26:05.720 studying humanities, by the time I got to Loyola, it 1:26:05.800 --> 1:26:08.920 felt like kind of not a walk in the park. 1:26:09.000 --> 1:26:12.040 That's overstating it, but it was like, very straightforward, what 1:26:12.160 --> 1:26:14.599 we're supposed here to do. I have that similar feeling 1:26:14.600 --> 1:26:18.120 about starting my career at scant where it was just 1:26:18.280 --> 1:26:20.720 so much coming at me and just thrown into the 1:26:20.800 --> 1:26:23.640 fire and hours and hours and hours of work, some 1:26:23.800 --> 1:26:26.720 of it boring, some of a document review, but just 1:26:27.160 --> 1:26:29.800 really just thrown in the deep end. And now as 1:26:29.840 --> 1:26:32.760 a government lawyer, it's like, oh, I understand what we're 1:26:32.760 --> 1:26:35.400 doing here. I'm supposed to do my job. I plug in, 1:26:35.880 --> 1:26:38.920 I do it, I go home. It's legit nine to five, 1:26:39.400 --> 1:26:43.920 which is awesome. Now it's it's not it's not sexy. 1:26:44.120 --> 1:26:46.000 It's not on the cover of the Wall Street Journal. 1:26:46.160 --> 1:26:47.840 But it works for me and it allows me to 1:26:48.000 --> 1:26:51.400 mother and to write and to you know, have dinner 1:26:51.479 --> 1:26:53.880 with my family every night. And how did it end 1:26:53.920 --> 1:27:00.320 its Scatton I had. I left there right in the session. 1:27:00.400 --> 1:27:03.560 I had my first child, and it was So I 1:27:03.640 --> 1:27:06.479 had my first child in two thousand nine, and things 1:27:06.520 --> 1:27:08.920 were so grim, and I came back from my maternity 1:27:09.000 --> 1:27:11.320 leave and I was working four days a week, which 1:27:11.479 --> 1:27:13.920 was offered by the firm, and a couple other women 1:27:14.000 --> 1:27:16.599 did it. But I could see the riding on the wall, 1:27:16.920 --> 1:27:19.439 which was there wasn't a lot of work to go around, 1:27:19.520 --> 1:27:22.200 like all the credit markets were tight, and so none 1:27:22.240 --> 1:27:25.519 of our clients wanted anything. They didn't want us to 1:27:25.560 --> 1:27:27.360 do anything, and I was doing a ton of pro 1:27:27.479 --> 1:27:31.439 bono work, and I could just tell I was at 1:27:31.479 --> 1:27:33.880 a disadvantage because I had been gone from eternity leave 1:27:33.920 --> 1:27:35.760 and then I came back and I was part time, 1:27:36.120 --> 1:27:39.200 and once things got cranking again, I wasn't gonna be 1:27:39.200 --> 1:27:42.519 anybody's go to. I wasn't. I just I had I 1:27:42.560 --> 1:27:45.519 always say I had fallen through the cracks um and 1:27:45.600 --> 1:27:48.759 if I had come back full bore in a different economy, 1:27:48.800 --> 1:27:50.720 it might have gone differently. But I could see the 1:27:50.800 --> 1:27:53.240 writing on the wall. So then I just that's when 1:27:53.280 --> 1:27:57.000 I said I should get out before before everything dry 1:27:57.280 --> 1:27:59.240 drives up. So I went to a smaller firm for 1:27:59.280 --> 1:28:03.479 a little while, and then eventually transition to governments you 1:28:03.680 --> 1:28:11.759 like practicing law. Well, no, I feel like I'm supposed 1:28:11.800 --> 1:28:15.560 to say yes. But the truth is there's I like. 1:28:15.960 --> 1:28:18.559 I like. I like the part of law that it's 1:28:18.600 --> 1:28:22.480 telling a story. I believe in storytelling. I love storytelling. 1:28:22.520 --> 1:28:25.200 It's my favorite thing. And whenever you're writing a brief, 1:28:25.240 --> 1:28:27.400 you're telling a story to the court, right your version 1:28:27.479 --> 1:28:30.960 of events. I like that. There's so much more to 1:28:31.040 --> 1:28:33.840 the practice of law. There's so much fighting, there's so 1:28:33.960 --> 1:28:37.640 much haggling, there's so much bureaucracy. That part I don't like, 1:28:37.800 --> 1:28:42.160 and that's more than six of my job. So and 1:28:42.280 --> 1:28:44.759 I don't like the other thing that I have found 1:28:44.840 --> 1:28:47.680 I have so little tolerance for. And this makes me 1:28:47.760 --> 1:28:50.200 think I must not like being a lawyer. Is I 1:28:50.280 --> 1:28:55.680 don't like dealing with all like courts where if your 1:28:55.880 --> 1:28:59.760 font size isn't right, your brief is rejected, or if 1:28:59.800 --> 1:29:03.360 you don't if you were two hours late. I mean, fine, 1:29:03.360 --> 1:29:06.040 I'm all for deadlines, but like, there's so much pickyune 1:29:06.160 --> 1:29:10.240 and judges have so much power over litigants and attorneys, 1:29:10.680 --> 1:29:14.040 the fiefdoms and the egos that are involved. If you 1:29:14.080 --> 1:29:17.799 don't like ego, you're in trouble. If you're a lawyer. Okay, 1:29:17.920 --> 1:29:20.640 let's use the example of a more Towels. He was 1:29:20.720 --> 1:29:24.320 a banker. His college professor, Yale said you should be right, 1:29:24.320 --> 1:29:26.400 said no, no, I gotta go for the money. Then 1:29:26.439 --> 1:29:32.040 he ultimately writes two books which are mega successful. So, hey, 1:29:33.000 --> 1:29:37.360 has the book reached or exceeded your expectations and will 1:29:37.479 --> 1:29:43.760 disaffect a future career plan? The book has done so 1:29:43.960 --> 1:29:47.599 much more than I would have expected. I had no idea. 1:29:47.960 --> 1:29:50.519 I had no idea what it meant to be the 1:29:50.720 --> 1:29:54.439 first to tell a version of a therapy story. Like 1:29:54.640 --> 1:29:57.080 the part of what I think the appeal of my 1:29:57.200 --> 1:30:00.679 book is nobody knows anything about group therapy. They just don't, 1:30:00.760 --> 1:30:04.760 So it's the first. And that I didn't know the 1:30:04.880 --> 1:30:07.640 power of that. I thought it was. I don't know 1:30:07.720 --> 1:30:09.880 what I thought, but I I didn't realize the power 1:30:09.960 --> 1:30:13.160 of that. And to have Reese Witherspoon endorsed my book 1:30:13.200 --> 1:30:15.960 and put her sticker on it catapulted this book so 1:30:16.160 --> 1:30:20.080 far beyond my my wildest dreams that I I hardly 1:30:20.200 --> 1:30:23.320 can believe it's even happening. And when I think about 1:30:23.680 --> 1:30:25.400 I keep saying to my husband, I was like, am 1:30:25.439 --> 1:30:27.720 I supposed to quit my job? Am I supposed to 1:30:27.800 --> 1:30:31.880 be writing full time? And you know, he's he's like 1:30:31.960 --> 1:30:33.720 the guy who's like, well, let's look at the spreadsheets. 1:30:33.800 --> 1:30:36.360 Let's think about this, you know. And I'm sort of like, 1:30:36.600 --> 1:30:39.519 my gut, my gut is telling me maybe we're moving 1:30:39.600 --> 1:30:42.439 in that direction. But I don't think it's not a 1:30:42.520 --> 1:30:46.120 foregone conclusion because you know, I carry the benefits. My 1:30:46.240 --> 1:30:49.400 kids need braces. You know. I don't take for granted 1:30:49.439 --> 1:30:52.760 that I have a decent, steady job that I like 1:30:52.880 --> 1:30:54.960 to point out to myself when I'm like, oh, I'm 1:30:55.040 --> 1:30:57.880 squandering my potential, Like what if you know, I'm working 1:30:57.880 --> 1:30:59.280 on a brief for work and I'm like, oh, I 1:30:59.280 --> 1:31:01.880 should be writing a novel or doing my next thing. 1:31:02.880 --> 1:31:05.840 But the truth is I wrote group while I had 1:31:05.960 --> 1:31:09.000 this full time job. So maybe it's part of the 1:31:09.080 --> 1:31:12.200 secret sauce, and maybe it will preclude me. There may 1:31:12.280 --> 1:31:14.840 be something for me as a writer about the compression 1:31:14.920 --> 1:31:16.800 of time. The fact that I don't have as much 1:31:17.520 --> 1:31:20.519 may make me a better writer. I don't know. It's 1:31:20.600 --> 1:31:22.640 up in the air. Okay, you say you're the one 1:31:22.720 --> 1:31:25.000 carrying the benefits. What's your husband doing? So he's still 1:31:25.040 --> 1:31:27.799 at scadding, But what is he doing. He left scadding. 1:31:27.960 --> 1:31:31.840 He works for a company. We just the federal benefits 1:31:31.960 --> 1:31:33.960 felt like they were too good to pass up, and 1:31:34.120 --> 1:31:36.720 so I've I've carried us all. But he does have 1:31:36.800 --> 1:31:40.760 a job. He's he's a gainfully employed person. But is 1:31:40.800 --> 1:31:43.920 he a lawyer still? Uh No, he works more on 1:31:44.040 --> 1:31:46.160 the business side. He had gotten a j D m 1:31:46.240 --> 1:31:48.680 B A and he likes the NBA side of that 1:31:48.880 --> 1:31:52.240 much more than the j D because he's a smart man. Okay, 1:31:52.280 --> 1:31:55.400 on the first night of Hanukkah is when we're recording this, 1:31:55.680 --> 1:31:58.920 you're raising your kids Jewish. We do both. We have 1:31:59.120 --> 1:32:02.439 both traditions and um so we get to do all 1:32:03.200 --> 1:32:05.960 John's families obviously Jewish, and we've got all the Hanaka 1:32:06.000 --> 1:32:09.360 stuff ready to go. And I personally love that. I 1:32:09.400 --> 1:32:12.519 don't have any bags around Judaism, and I love you know, 1:32:12.880 --> 1:32:15.920 all the symbolism isn't fraught for me because nobody shoved 1:32:15.960 --> 1:32:19.000 it down my throat. So I'm way more pro Jewish. 1:32:19.240 --> 1:32:22.360 But the kids also like Christmas and my family has Christmas, 1:32:22.439 --> 1:32:27.439 so we just do it all. Okay, So you went 1:32:27.560 --> 1:32:31.000 to therapy, you still go to therapy. At this point, 1:32:31.120 --> 1:32:34.800 it's got to be like eighteen years, seventeen years, and 1:32:34.920 --> 1:32:37.240 at one point you were going three times a week. 1:32:37.800 --> 1:32:40.240 What do I know is a heavy therapy goer to 1:32:40.360 --> 1:32:45.680 begin with, there's a lot of negative judgment on the exterior, Hey, 1:32:45.840 --> 1:32:49.000 why are you going? Be you can talk to your friends, 1:32:49.439 --> 1:32:54.800 see you have to stop? Have you experienced that NonStop? 1:32:55.080 --> 1:32:59.080 Especially now, people say to me, wait, you went because 1:32:59.080 --> 1:33:02.200 you wanted relationship ships and you got them, so why 1:33:02.320 --> 1:33:04.800 on earth are you still going? And people love to 1:33:04.920 --> 1:33:08.400 focus on the money I'm putting in Dr Rosen's pocket, 1:33:08.920 --> 1:33:13.240 which I guess I get, but that also like obliterates me. 1:33:13.560 --> 1:33:16.760 It oblorates what I've gotten, what I've decided works for me. 1:33:17.520 --> 1:33:19.640 And when I think about it, to me, I'm like, 1:33:19.840 --> 1:33:23.000 that's the best argument for staying. Because I had a 1:33:23.080 --> 1:33:28.559 certain set of desires and un unmet longings when I started, right, 1:33:29.640 --> 1:33:32.000 I'm still a person with longings. There's lots of things 1:33:32.040 --> 1:33:34.960 I want, so I don't need group now to get 1:33:35.040 --> 1:33:39.000 those things. And when I think about people have also 1:33:39.120 --> 1:33:43.719 asked me all through this talking about the book, well 1:33:43.960 --> 1:33:46.879 are your groupmates your friends? Are they do you consider 1:33:46.920 --> 1:33:50.400 them friends? And that's a really interesting question, And where 1:33:50.439 --> 1:33:53.160 I come down on that is, they're They're like a 1:33:53.280 --> 1:33:56.120 third category that doesn't I don't have language for it. 1:33:56.240 --> 1:33:58.759 They're more than friends. I'm friendly with them, I travel 1:33:58.840 --> 1:34:01.719 with them sometimes, I take walks with them, whatever, have coffee, 1:34:02.080 --> 1:34:05.000 do things outside of group. But they're more than friends 1:34:05.080 --> 1:34:08.240 because they've seen me at my worst and they have 1:34:08.680 --> 1:34:13.120 we have this tie, and so it's deeper than a friendship. 1:34:13.320 --> 1:34:15.799 And I love my friends and I can tell them anything, 1:34:16.200 --> 1:34:18.800 but it's not the same. They haven't seen me interact 1:34:19.520 --> 1:34:23.120 in a sort of a close fish fowl like experiment. 1:34:23.200 --> 1:34:26.000 They haven't seen me do this process and deal with 1:34:26.200 --> 1:34:29.719 Dr Rosen in real time. And that intimacy that's built 1:34:29.760 --> 1:34:33.400 up over time, that's something way deeper than friendship. And 1:34:34.000 --> 1:34:36.679 I don't know. I mean, because I've been continuously going, 1:34:36.760 --> 1:34:39.840 I don't know how you keep that going. I believe 1:34:39.880 --> 1:34:42.920 I'm capable of deep intimacy inside and outside of group, 1:34:43.360 --> 1:34:45.720 but I don't. I don't know how you keep that 1:34:45.880 --> 1:34:48.600 going without the support of a group to sort of 1:34:48.680 --> 1:34:52.800 go process all that. I've never done it. Okay, And 1:34:52.880 --> 1:34:54.759 at this point is who is one of your goals? 1:34:55.200 --> 1:34:59.400 Do you have close friends? Can people come to your house? Yes, 1:34:59.640 --> 1:35:02.360 I'm so happy to say that that is the case. 1:35:03.040 --> 1:35:07.160 There are if my doorbell rings, I it has happened 1:35:07.200 --> 1:35:09.920 where someone stopped by. A couple of my groupmates actually 1:35:10.200 --> 1:35:13.720 very randomly lived nearby. They'll stop by and they'll bring me. 1:35:13.920 --> 1:35:16.360 The other day, someone brought me a copy of a 1:35:16.880 --> 1:35:19.960 like at Chicago Tribune article because my book was in there. 1:35:20.040 --> 1:35:21.800 So like, I thought you'd want this, I'm like, open 1:35:21.840 --> 1:35:23.800 the door. I mean, the pandemic is a problem because 1:35:23.840 --> 1:35:27.400 I can't invite people in. But there's the openness in 1:35:27.560 --> 1:35:31.960 me that I know that they're my people and I 1:35:32.080 --> 1:35:34.040 can be I can come right up close to them 1:35:34.080 --> 1:35:36.160 with my full self, and they've done the same for me, 1:35:36.920 --> 1:35:39.679 and that is that is worth every penny I've paid. 1:35:39.680 --> 1:35:42.479 I don't care how rich Dr Rosen gets. I have 1:35:42.640 --> 1:35:45.040 my friends, I have my life, I have my people. 1:35:45.439 --> 1:35:48.280 That's what I wanted. Okay, So how many times a 1:35:48.320 --> 1:35:52.000 week do you go now pre pandemic which has changed everything? Right? 1:35:52.160 --> 1:35:55.040 We so we I zoom in for twice a week. 1:35:55.560 --> 1:35:57.400 I'm in one group that meets twice a week and 1:35:57.439 --> 1:36:02.080 we zoom in now. Okay, and are these the same 1:36:02.360 --> 1:36:05.080 players that they started out or what degree are you 1:36:05.200 --> 1:36:08.840 the life, and everybody else is new. Interestingly, in my group, 1:36:08.920 --> 1:36:11.120 I am not the lifer. I'm about the mid I'm 1:36:11.160 --> 1:36:16.320 the midlifer. There are four members, four members who were 1:36:16.360 --> 1:36:19.400 there before I got there, and one of them is 1:36:19.400 --> 1:36:22.120 a charter member. Started in the eighties and this group 1:36:22.760 --> 1:36:25.280 or maybe it's ninety one. Maybe it's ninety one. Um 1:36:25.560 --> 1:36:28.320 and so it's a very stable group. That being said, 1:36:28.720 --> 1:36:31.960 people do move around. We had one member quit. We 1:36:32.080 --> 1:36:34.680 had a group member die, which was really terrible and 1:36:34.800 --> 1:36:38.400 really moving and an unbelievable experience. UM So people do 1:36:38.600 --> 1:36:40.880 come in and out. But for the most part, the 1:36:41.000 --> 1:36:43.880 core of like the there's four or five of us 1:36:43.920 --> 1:36:46.880 who are sort of like where the where the pillars there? 1:36:46.960 --> 1:36:49.400 And then okay, this begs the question was this is 1:36:49.479 --> 1:36:53.120 this the initial group or was this the woman's group? Uh? 1:36:53.320 --> 1:36:55.120 Is it half and half? Or how did it in 1:36:55.320 --> 1:36:58.600 with one of the groups? Right? So I this is 1:36:58.880 --> 1:37:01.200 the third group is in the book in part three. 1:37:01.520 --> 1:37:04.400 It's the third group that I joined that meets twice 1:37:04.439 --> 1:37:07.200 a week. There's one woman who was also in my 1:37:07.360 --> 1:37:09.920 very first group, and I'm no longer I let go 1:37:10.040 --> 1:37:12.800 of the women's group when I joined the twice weekly group, 1:37:13.200 --> 1:37:15.760 and then once I had my baby. When I had 1:37:15.800 --> 1:37:18.040 my first baby and went back to scadding to work, 1:37:18.439 --> 1:37:22.720 I dropped the the Um, the original group, because I 1:37:22.800 --> 1:37:25.120 just couldn't imagine having a baby and going to group 1:37:25.160 --> 1:37:27.519 through times a week and working. Even I had to 1:37:27.640 --> 1:37:30.719 cry uncle on that. So I've been going since since 1:37:30.840 --> 1:37:33.840 two thousand ten, I've been going just to my twice 1:37:33.920 --> 1:37:37.000 weekly group. And is your husband before you met him, 1:37:37.200 --> 1:37:40.040 he'd been in therapy and subsequent theater as he had 1:37:40.080 --> 1:37:43.880 any therapy, you know what he did some before we met, 1:37:44.320 --> 1:37:47.879 and you know he it sounds like from his reports 1:37:47.920 --> 1:37:51.280 he had a very positive experience, and he's he's always 1:37:51.320 --> 1:37:55.040 supported me, but it's my thing, and he doesn't. I 1:37:55.080 --> 1:37:56.880 am happy that he would never be the kind of 1:37:56.920 --> 1:37:58.680 person who's like, well, I guess I gotta go to 1:37:59.680 --> 1:38:01.960 At that being said, I think if I ever approached him, 1:38:02.000 --> 1:38:03.960 it was like, I think we should go together, like 1:38:04.040 --> 1:38:06.680 if something came up intractable in our marriage, or that 1:38:07.160 --> 1:38:09.760 it seemed clear we needed some support. I have no 1:38:09.920 --> 1:38:13.120 doubt he would be along for the game for that, 1:38:13.520 --> 1:38:16.760 maybe even suggested himself, but he's not felt the need 1:38:16.960 --> 1:38:20.680 since since we've been married. Okay, but I've had relationships 1:38:20.720 --> 1:38:23.520 and I've had a lot of therapy. Well you're interacting 1:38:23.560 --> 1:38:28.040 with somebody who say, man, they need therapy. Yes, well 1:38:28.160 --> 1:38:31.160 that too, Like there are you know, that's true, there are. 1:38:31.520 --> 1:38:33.880 And certainly I'm a person who has a tool, and 1:38:34.000 --> 1:38:36.679 I think everybody's problem. You know, I have a hammer. 1:38:36.720 --> 1:38:38.720 I think everybody's got a nail or whatever that's saying. 1:38:38.840 --> 1:38:42.080 Is so a lot of times when I'll see, you know, 1:38:42.240 --> 1:38:44.719 John struggling with something at work or with the kids 1:38:45.080 --> 1:38:49.559 or I mean he's a very self reliance, very composed person. 1:38:49.640 --> 1:38:51.760 But every now and then I'll think that would be 1:38:51.800 --> 1:38:54.240 awesome if you could just if you had a group 1:38:54.360 --> 1:38:56.719 or you could go and work on that, it would 1:38:57.040 --> 1:38:59.200 I mean, I have a I believe in group, right. 1:38:59.320 --> 1:39:02.879 I believe that catapults me and I've seen it catapult 1:39:02.960 --> 1:39:05.240 me from one place to another. And I think, God, 1:39:05.400 --> 1:39:07.840 what if John could do that and he could work 1:39:07.880 --> 1:39:11.280 out this issue? And every now and then I say 1:39:11.320 --> 1:39:14.479 that to him. But that's so so unpleasant for your 1:39:14.520 --> 1:39:17.840 spouse to push therapy on you, Like I don't really 1:39:17.920 --> 1:39:20.519 think it's holding him back, and he's certainly I'm either 1:39:20.680 --> 1:39:23.760 living I'm either a living testament to therapy or I'm 1:39:23.840 --> 1:39:26.840 not There's nothing I can say that would be more 1:39:26.960 --> 1:39:31.360 compelling than what's happened in my life. So Dr Rosen uh, 1:39:31.479 --> 1:39:34.519 he is an m D. He is a psychiatrist, which 1:39:34.560 --> 1:39:37.960 begs a question. Has he ever prescribed medication for you 1:39:38.360 --> 1:39:40.920 or other people in the group. Yeah, I've seen him 1:39:40.960 --> 1:39:44.320 prescribe medication. I first got medication after I had my 1:39:44.439 --> 1:39:48.120 babies and I was suffering with postpartum depression, and he 1:39:48.240 --> 1:39:51.240 did prescribe drugs for me, and I used them to 1:39:51.400 --> 1:39:55.519 get through that initial period of just I don't know, 1:39:55.800 --> 1:39:58.519 getting through that early baby stage. Yeah, he definitely, and 1:39:58.560 --> 1:40:00.320 I've seen him do it for other people as well. 1:40:00.880 --> 1:40:03.600 How does this change? How's your therapy experience change your 1:40:03.640 --> 1:40:08.240 relationship with your family? Yeah? You know, I think that 1:40:08.439 --> 1:40:11.000 when my experience of being in therapy is that I 1:40:11.120 --> 1:40:14.960 became unthawed and I became realer and more of who 1:40:15.080 --> 1:40:18.640 I was, and that affected every single one of my relationships. 1:40:18.680 --> 1:40:21.320 And I think I learned how does that boundaries and 1:40:21.400 --> 1:40:24.240 speak up for myself? And so I learned how like 1:40:24.360 --> 1:40:26.960 with my siblings, we used to, you know, whenever siblings 1:40:27.000 --> 1:40:28.760 would talk, and we'd figure out what were you getting 1:40:28.800 --> 1:40:30.439 mom and Dad for Christmas? And I used to just 1:40:30.520 --> 1:40:33.680 go along with what everybody else said, but I think 1:40:33.720 --> 1:40:35.960 I learned how and none of this was like super dramatic, 1:40:36.000 --> 1:40:38.280 but I was like, I have an idea, why don't 1:40:38.320 --> 1:40:40.200 we do this? Why don't we send them to Marfa? 1:40:40.520 --> 1:40:42.800 Or why don't we send them to Vegas? Or just 1:40:43.840 --> 1:40:47.320 just having a voice in all my relationships, And it 1:40:47.479 --> 1:40:50.000 was mostly positive. I didn't have an experience where like 1:40:50.479 --> 1:40:53.120 I got into therapy and I lost my family of origin. 1:40:53.360 --> 1:40:56.120 Like I think I just became more myself and gave 1:40:56.200 --> 1:40:59.280 more of myself to them. And do they judge you 1:40:59.439 --> 1:41:01.559 for being in therapies? A lot of people say your therapy, 1:41:01.640 --> 1:41:06.040 you're less than sure. I think they're well, here's the 1:41:06.120 --> 1:41:13.000 thing my family is, So what's the word private or reserved? 1:41:13.160 --> 1:41:16.200 I have no idea if they're judging me, We're not open. 1:41:16.760 --> 1:41:18.800 We're not open at all. I am because I'm just 1:41:18.920 --> 1:41:22.120 like all over the place. But that's an important value 1:41:22.120 --> 1:41:24.559 to me. I have no idea what my parents think, 1:41:24.720 --> 1:41:27.080 or my brother or my sister. They've never told me. 1:41:27.479 --> 1:41:29.599 We don't have the kind of relationship where that kind 1:41:29.640 --> 1:41:32.519 of sharing is even on the table, so I can. 1:41:32.840 --> 1:41:35.880 You know, sometimes I think they must think I'm crazy, um, 1:41:36.760 --> 1:41:39.280 and sometimes I'm like maybe they admire me, Like I 1:41:39.560 --> 1:41:42.599 I really, I honestly have no idea. So how much 1:41:42.640 --> 1:41:46.439 do you pay for one session? Today? One session is 1:41:46.920 --> 1:41:50.160 nine bucks? Okay? Now you make the point in the 1:41:50.240 --> 1:41:52.959 book when you start, you're in law school, you're borrowing 1:41:53.080 --> 1:41:55.880 the money for law school, and then you borrow the 1:41:55.960 --> 1:41:58.360 money to go to therapy. That must have have been 1:41:58.400 --> 1:42:02.320 a big step. How to to take that stuff? Yeah, 1:42:02.439 --> 1:42:05.160 I think I just once I I went, I knew 1:42:05.160 --> 1:42:07.560 I could afford the first meeting. The first meeting was 1:42:08.240 --> 1:42:10.240 at the time it was seventy bucks. I'm like, all right, 1:42:10.320 --> 1:42:13.840 I'll go. Maybe he can tell me. I don't know, 1:42:14.000 --> 1:42:16.200 I'll just go. And it wasn't like I committed for 1:42:16.240 --> 1:42:19.439 a long term. But then once I understood group would 1:42:19.479 --> 1:42:22.719 be seventy bucks a session, maybe it was even sixty five. 1:42:23.120 --> 1:42:25.160 I think it might have been sixty five. And once 1:42:25.200 --> 1:42:27.280 I understood the cost and it was gonna be monthly, 1:42:27.760 --> 1:42:30.479 and I was like, I was curious, and he promised 1:42:30.520 --> 1:42:32.960 me that he could change my life, and I just 1:42:33.080 --> 1:42:35.439 felt like, well, what do I do? Oh? And I 1:42:35.479 --> 1:42:37.200 asked him. I said to Dr ros I was like, 1:42:37.200 --> 1:42:39.160 how am I gonna pay for this? And he said, well, 1:42:39.200 --> 1:42:41.160 you're a law students and I was like yeah. He said, 1:42:41.240 --> 1:42:45.160 I know other patients of mine who have talked to 1:42:45.240 --> 1:42:49.320 their their institutions and there's like sometimes there's health care loans. 1:42:49.840 --> 1:42:51.760 I don't even know. I mean, I get why he 1:42:51.840 --> 1:42:54.200 knew that, but like, I'm glad I asked because I 1:42:54.280 --> 1:42:56.479 went to talk to the dean of my school and 1:42:56.560 --> 1:42:58.880 then there was a way to get a private loan 1:42:59.280 --> 1:43:02.840 to cover healthcare expenses. And that's exactly what I did, 1:43:03.000 --> 1:43:07.439 and best money I ever spent, ever borrowed and then spent. Okay, 1:43:07.520 --> 1:43:11.280 you made the point earlier that everyone loves their therapist, 1:43:11.880 --> 1:43:15.759 and I certainly know from experiences there's a better therapist 1:43:15.840 --> 1:43:19.519 and worst therapist, and there's a fit. So my question, 1:43:19.600 --> 1:43:23.200 are you now like those people? My therapist is the best? 1:43:23.320 --> 1:43:25.760 Group is the best? And to what degree are you 1:43:26.360 --> 1:43:29.559 saying that? And to what degree are your proselytizer, Hey, 1:43:30.000 --> 1:43:31.800 come into my group where you should be in a group. 1:43:32.280 --> 1:43:35.599 Oh my god, no, no, no, no. I did early 1:43:35.720 --> 1:43:40.560 on recommend Dr Rosen, like just so convinced that this 1:43:41.400 --> 1:43:45.280 these people and their issues with deprivation and intimacy. They're 1:43:45.400 --> 1:43:48.120 perfect for group, and I would give them Dr Rosen's 1:43:48.160 --> 1:43:50.920 number and they would they would have one conversation and 1:43:50.960 --> 1:43:53.640 they would just be just it's not for me. They 1:43:53.680 --> 1:43:56.360 didn't like him. One of them saw him one time 1:43:56.520 --> 1:43:59.439 was like m hmmm, and I was so it like 1:43:59.560 --> 1:44:02.280 offended me, or offend is not the right word. I 1:44:02.400 --> 1:44:05.040 felt so like, oh, like, you don't love it like 1:44:05.200 --> 1:44:08.200 I do. And I just decided. Then this was years ago, 1:44:08.360 --> 1:44:09.960 this might have been two thousand two. I was like, 1:44:10.640 --> 1:44:13.360 this is not for everyone. I don't know what anybody needs. 1:44:13.600 --> 1:44:17.200 It is a real scary proposition to say, hey, come 1:44:17.280 --> 1:44:21.479 do your therapy in a circle with six strangers. That's 1:44:21.720 --> 1:44:24.200 that is not for everybody. That is not everybody's cup 1:44:24.200 --> 1:44:26.760 of tea. I have I certainly have made it clear 1:44:26.880 --> 1:44:29.720 that like, I enjoy what happens in my therapy, but 1:44:29.840 --> 1:44:32.840 I haven't recommended him in years and years and I'm 1:44:32.920 --> 1:44:36.519 not starting now. Then, when you did recommend him, were 1:44:36.560 --> 1:44:39.400 you comfortable hypothetically that someone might be in your group 1:44:39.520 --> 1:44:41.880 or was the rule that you can see Dr Rosa 1:44:41.960 --> 1:44:45.040 but not in my group. Oh my god, yes, you're right. 1:44:45.360 --> 1:44:49.000 I there were people who I was like, Oh, no, 1:44:49.280 --> 1:44:51.680 if this skinny ass bitch comes into my group, We're 1:44:51.680 --> 1:44:54.280 gonna have such a problem because I'll be so jealous 1:44:54.360 --> 1:44:56.800 of her that what I do think that some of 1:44:56.840 --> 1:45:00.439 that calculus early on was thinking, Oh, if some really 1:45:00.600 --> 1:45:03.639 pretty girl comes into group and he's younger than I am, 1:45:03.880 --> 1:45:07.479 and just that would just get very complicated. So that's 1:45:07.560 --> 1:45:10.760 probably another reason I hadn't really totally consciously thought of that. 1:45:10.880 --> 1:45:12.920 But I don't want some of these jokers showing up 1:45:12.960 --> 1:45:15.839 in my group, and I don't get to say, Okay, 1:45:16.080 --> 1:45:18.639 there's another thing you bring up in the book. Your 1:45:18.800 --> 1:45:23.440 anger where you're throwing and breaking dishes. Was that situational 1:45:23.720 --> 1:45:27.120 or did you have underlying anger issues that Dr Rosen 1:45:27.200 --> 1:45:31.080 in the group helped you with. I think both. I 1:45:31.160 --> 1:45:34.080 think it was situational and I think I had pent up. 1:45:34.600 --> 1:45:37.200 When I look back now and think about what Bulimia 1:45:37.320 --> 1:45:42.800 really was, I think it was rage and like, that's 1:45:42.800 --> 1:45:45.519 such a violent thing to do, to make yourself throw up, 1:45:45.560 --> 1:45:47.560 And I think, oh, in my mind, I feel like 1:45:47.640 --> 1:45:50.760 that's rage. And so I think all my life I 1:45:50.960 --> 1:45:54.479 had swallowed anger. I had the idea that good girls 1:45:54.520 --> 1:45:58.040 aren't angry. And don't make mom and dad mad, and 1:45:58.200 --> 1:46:01.080 try to be a good girl. And I had all these, 1:46:01.439 --> 1:46:04.080 all these reasons not to feel anger. And I think 1:46:04.080 --> 1:46:06.760 a lot of women have it, and since being in group, 1:46:06.880 --> 1:46:08.920 I've learned a lot of men have it too. It's 1:46:09.160 --> 1:46:11.600 very hard to know what to do with anger. I 1:46:11.760 --> 1:46:14.439 had no idea, and so by the time I got 1:46:14.520 --> 1:46:17.280 to group, and I had all this support and feelings 1:46:17.320 --> 1:46:21.120 were encouraged and celebrated and lauded by the time I 1:46:21.200 --> 1:46:23.760 got there and some of it eked out. Then I 1:46:23.840 --> 1:46:26.880 just couldn't stop the flood, which is a really great thing, 1:46:27.000 --> 1:46:31.280 but really terrifying. It was very explosive. Okay, so now 1:46:31.400 --> 1:46:35.200 your book is both published and successful. The nature of 1:46:35.320 --> 1:46:39.200 having a project with a company is they set up interviews. 1:46:39.640 --> 1:46:43.479 As something becomes successful, there's further interactions. Some is just 1:46:43.640 --> 1:46:46.000 hit and run. You get a one three minute segment 1:46:46.080 --> 1:46:50.040 on TV. Forget that. Generally speaking, the people you've been 1:46:50.160 --> 1:46:54.200 interacting with promoting the book, do they get you or it? 1:46:54.880 --> 1:46:57.200 Do they want to go deep? Did they not understand it? 1:46:58.920 --> 1:47:02.599 You know what, that's a great question what I learned 1:47:02.680 --> 1:47:04.600 early on. I remember talking about this in group. I 1:47:04.720 --> 1:47:07.360 was like, oh, my God, everyone has their own agenda. 1:47:08.439 --> 1:47:10.680 Everyone in the group is laughing like yeah, Like some 1:47:10.840 --> 1:47:13.160 people when I talked to them about the book, maybe 1:47:13.200 --> 1:47:15.560 we'll talk for thirty minutes, and they seem to just 1:47:15.680 --> 1:47:18.360 think it's a book about eating disorders. And I'm fine 1:47:18.439 --> 1:47:20.960 to go there. There's plenty and there's plenty of material, 1:47:21.760 --> 1:47:25.200 but I don't think of it as an eating disorder book. Um. 1:47:25.280 --> 1:47:26.800 And then I always talk to someone else and they 1:47:26.840 --> 1:47:30.040 would they wanted to talk all about privacy and privacy 1:47:30.120 --> 1:47:34.400 and privacy because they were interested in all the complicated 1:47:34.439 --> 1:47:39.920 privacy parts. And so I do think that people people 1:47:39.960 --> 1:47:43.120 are obviously projecting into any book they read, but certainly 1:47:43.240 --> 1:47:46.320 something about therapy. People who have had therapy, people have 1:47:46.560 --> 1:47:50.200 such strong feelings about therapy and their therapists. I think 1:47:50.240 --> 1:47:52.320 it might make this book a little bit right for 1:47:52.479 --> 1:47:56.080 lots of extra projection and a lot. A lot of 1:47:56.160 --> 1:48:00.240 times I get questions where the person seems to already 1:48:00.280 --> 1:48:03.040 know the answer, and I can tell they're just not quite, 1:48:03.800 --> 1:48:06.400 like when they're asking me about, oh, you wrote all 1:48:06.439 --> 1:48:09.080 about your groupmates, and I was like, well, actually I 1:48:09.320 --> 1:48:13.120 didn't write all about my groupmates. I wrote about I 1:48:13.400 --> 1:48:16.800 didn't use composite characters. But I used my groupmates. But 1:48:16.840 --> 1:48:18.600 I didn't tell why they were in therapy or what 1:48:18.720 --> 1:48:20.640 they were doing. I said what they did for me 1:48:20.840 --> 1:48:24.320 in my story, and that maybe that's obscured in the 1:48:24.520 --> 1:48:27.920 in the narrative, but to those people, I'm just like, no, No, 1:48:28.320 --> 1:48:30.719 that's not anybody's real name, and that's not their story. 1:48:30.840 --> 1:48:33.880 It's my story and what they gave me. And have 1:48:34.000 --> 1:48:37.760 you heard from readers. Yeah, I've heard from readers, and 1:48:37.840 --> 1:48:41.880 I'm really so moved. I'm a huge reader myself, and 1:48:42.040 --> 1:48:45.559 I've only reached out, like I've sent three tweets thanking 1:48:46.160 --> 1:48:50.040 authors for their for their work. I've never written long 1:48:50.280 --> 1:48:53.800 letters or d m s or whatever to authors, and 1:48:54.560 --> 1:48:57.320 people have really told me really beautiful things about their 1:48:57.360 --> 1:49:00.400 own life and what my story mento them. And it 1:49:00.520 --> 1:49:04.200 has bowled me over. And I feel really lucky and 1:49:04.320 --> 1:49:08.040 really humble that that that it could omit this to somebody. 1:49:08.880 --> 1:49:13.120 And has your success change your personal interactions? Once again, 1:49:13.160 --> 1:49:16.040 it's covid era with the outside, and has it changed 1:49:16.080 --> 1:49:20.880 your interactions with the group, because it obviously is. Having 1:49:20.920 --> 1:49:25.919 a success would, and a public success would affect people's 1:49:25.960 --> 1:49:29.000 perception of your status in addition, your own personal assessment 1:49:29.040 --> 1:49:33.240 of your status. Yeah, I think that the outside of group, 1:49:33.320 --> 1:49:36.360 I have no idea because I never see anybody, although 1:49:36.640 --> 1:49:39.240 I have. You know, sometimes my friends will text me 1:49:40.240 --> 1:49:41.840 and they'll say, oh, I don't want to bother you. 1:49:42.000 --> 1:49:44.680 I know you're busy being famous, like or they're like, 1:49:44.720 --> 1:49:47.080 I saw a picture of Reef Witherspoon holding your book, 1:49:47.720 --> 1:49:50.160 Sorry to bother you, And I'm like, no, I still 1:49:50.200 --> 1:49:53.040 want to hear about the construction of your mudroom or 1:49:53.479 --> 1:49:56.680 what kind of cookies you're making to get through covid um. 1:49:56.960 --> 1:50:00.639 But that's been like little tiny ripples um. But in group, 1:50:01.240 --> 1:50:05.920 it's been very interesting because I all the issues that 1:50:06.000 --> 1:50:08.679 I'm bringing these days really are related to the book, 1:50:08.800 --> 1:50:11.920 like oh my gosh, some trolls that x y Z 1:50:12.080 --> 1:50:15.880 to me, or I'm going on Canadian television tomorrow. And 1:50:16.400 --> 1:50:18.360 I keep thinking that the group is going to have 1:50:18.479 --> 1:50:21.280 a backlash, like oh my god, shut up about your book, 1:50:21.720 --> 1:50:24.559 but they just continue to be like study and loving 1:50:24.920 --> 1:50:28.760 and um. The book is now a part of our 1:50:28.880 --> 1:50:32.479 group because it has affected all of us, and I'm 1:50:32.560 --> 1:50:35.840 the mouthpiece for this process that we're still engaged in. 1:50:36.400 --> 1:50:38.439 And it's been really and they've all read the book, 1:50:38.479 --> 1:50:40.400 and they've known about it since I started writing it 1:50:40.560 --> 1:50:42.960 five years ago. So in some ways it feels like 1:50:43.000 --> 1:50:45.800 a group project, and it's it's as much a part 1:50:45.840 --> 1:50:48.920 of our group and the the fabric of the group 1:50:49.200 --> 1:50:51.759 as members who have left that we still talk about 1:50:52.120 --> 1:50:56.160 or things that have happened. It's like an artifact from 1:50:56.240 --> 1:50:59.800 and of the group. And what did Dr Rosen say 1:51:00.000 --> 1:51:04.639 out the book? If anything, he said, he's always been 1:51:04.800 --> 1:51:08.880 very encouraging. One of the first things I said was, well, 1:51:08.960 --> 1:51:11.400 I should do some research on like the history of 1:51:11.479 --> 1:51:15.080 group therapy and I don't know theoretic underpinnings of what 1:51:15.200 --> 1:51:17.040 we do here. And he was like, don't do that, 1:51:17.600 --> 1:51:19.920 and I was like why. It's like, just tell your story. 1:51:20.680 --> 1:51:22.799 Tell your story and don't try to be a scientist 1:51:22.880 --> 1:51:24.800 about it, which I think was very good advice. That's 1:51:24.840 --> 1:51:26.760 one of the great things about the book. Yeah, yeah, 1:51:26.920 --> 1:51:29.000 Like I what would it would just be so different 1:51:29.040 --> 1:51:32.800 and that's not my lane anyway, and when so he 1:51:32.960 --> 1:51:35.040 read it all along, and I asked him to read 1:51:35.080 --> 1:51:36.760 it when we sold it, and I said, can you 1:51:36.880 --> 1:51:40.320 please read this as the therapist of all the characters 1:51:40.400 --> 1:51:42.960 in the book to be sure that I haven't crossed 1:51:42.960 --> 1:51:46.639 a line or just protect your patients and what I've 1:51:46.680 --> 1:51:49.040 done in this book. And so he did that reading 1:51:49.120 --> 1:51:50.960 for me, and he gave me a couple of pieces 1:51:51.000 --> 1:51:54.960 of feedback. Interestingly, none of them about my groupmates, um, 1:51:55.280 --> 1:51:57.400 two of them. Like one of them just about my parents, 1:51:57.520 --> 1:51:59.320 like are you sure you want to say you live 1:51:59.360 --> 1:52:03.240 in Dallas? I'm like, okay, why why? Who do who cares? 1:52:03.800 --> 1:52:07.360 I'm not from Houston? And so then, um, when the 1:52:07.400 --> 1:52:09.880 book was coming out some one day, so this would 1:52:09.880 --> 1:52:11.879 have been like in August. The book came out in October. 1:52:12.200 --> 1:52:15.360 One of the groupmates said, hey, Christie, asked Dr Rose 1:52:15.400 --> 1:52:18.200 and how he feels about your book? And I was like, oh, 1:52:18.439 --> 1:52:20.439 so I was like, how do you feel about my book? 1:52:21.040 --> 1:52:23.680 And he he did his like therapeutic sighing and like 1:52:24.760 --> 1:52:29.040 I feel I feel happy, I feel grateful, and I 1:52:29.160 --> 1:52:33.240 feel proud. And that was like, that was like a 1:52:33.320 --> 1:52:35.519 really great moment. I was really glad that my groupmate 1:52:35.600 --> 1:52:38.840 prompted me. And somebody said, asked him how he feels, 1:52:38.880 --> 1:52:40.880 like what if this becomes a movie? Asked him how 1:52:40.920 --> 1:52:43.240 he feels about that? So like, okay, how do you 1:52:43.280 --> 1:52:45.760 feel about the prospect of this ever being a movie. 1:52:45.800 --> 1:52:48.240 I mean, this isn't all theoretical, right, And he said 1:52:48.360 --> 1:52:52.280 I feel happy and I feel scared. So I was like, 1:52:53.000 --> 1:52:57.960 me too. And since it's a line with Wes Witherspoon, uh, 1:52:59.160 --> 1:53:02.759 traditionally she makes movies. Will there be a potential movies 1:53:02.840 --> 1:53:06.120 or a movie in development? There's not a movie in development. 1:53:06.240 --> 1:53:09.479 But I certainly feel like, you know, this has already 1:53:09.600 --> 1:53:12.240 shot me into the solar system beyond my dreams. As 1:53:12.280 --> 1:53:14.120 I said, so, I'm like every now and then, I'm 1:53:14.160 --> 1:53:17.240 like I let myself dream, like, ah, wow, well who 1:53:17.320 --> 1:53:19.320 could play me? I was on some webinar and someone 1:53:19.400 --> 1:53:21.880 was like, everybody hood in the chat who you think 1:53:21.920 --> 1:53:25.040 could play Christie? And people were saying like Sandra Bullock 1:53:25.160 --> 1:53:27.920 and Julia Roberts, And I was like, that's so fun 1:53:28.000 --> 1:53:30.720 to think about, Like I think, I think seven year 1:53:30.760 --> 1:53:34.120 old Who's lost is not the best role for Julia Roberts, 1:53:34.200 --> 1:53:37.720 but it's fun to dream about. Okay, Christie, this has 1:53:37.760 --> 1:53:40.200 been wonderful. I could talk to you for days more. 1:53:40.720 --> 1:53:43.439 These are the real issues as opposed to you know, 1:53:43.640 --> 1:53:48.640 possessions or status, etcetera. So thanks so much for coming up. 1:53:49.080 --> 1:53:52.679 Thanks for everything I appreciate being here. Okay, till next time. 1:53:52.800 --> 1:53:54.040 This is Bob left six