Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Side Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Christie pat author of the new
Speaker 1: bestseller Group All about how group therapy saved her life.
Speaker 1: You can't put this book down. It's written from the
Speaker 1: viewpoint of the patient. It's not a tone with all
Speaker 1: the words and vulnerabilities we all have. Christie, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. Thanks for having me, Bob. I'm glad to
Speaker 1: be here. You know, too many people therapy has a
Speaker 1: bad image. What did it take for you to cross
Speaker 1: the threshold and actually enter therapy? Well, it's it's nothing
Speaker 1: very laudable. I was in a lot of pain, and
Speaker 1: I was really really afraid I was gonna die alone,
Speaker 1: and nobody knew how much pain I was in. I
Speaker 1: had I hit it really well. I was. I was
Speaker 1: probably just depressed. And but if you're not telling anybody,
Speaker 1: it starts to feel like there's something so so wrong.
Speaker 1: And I was having suicidal thoughts and wondering something more
Speaker 1: than what is life for? It was more like how
Speaker 1: could I die? And this was so incongruous with my
Speaker 1: outside life. I had just found out I was the
Speaker 1: valedictorian of my law school. I was in the I
Speaker 1: was the number one in my law school after the
Speaker 1: first year, and I should have been happy, but inside
Speaker 1: I was just like, this is this is going to
Speaker 1: end badly and I'm seriously gonna die alone. And then
Speaker 1: I became willing because I thought therapy would be a
Speaker 1: slog and expensive and self indulgent and ultimately not work.
Speaker 1: I didn't think it would work. Okay, let's go back
Speaker 1: a little chapter in retrospect. Was this always your identity
Speaker 1: to feel disconnected and alone and somewhat depressed, or was
Speaker 1: it triggered leader in your life. I think I always
Speaker 1: had seeds of it. I think I felt a little
Speaker 1: bit like a misfit in my family. Ly, I was
Speaker 1: moody and artsy, and my family was pretty buttoned up,
Speaker 1: very Catholic. They loved football in Texas, and I just
Speaker 1: didn't quite fall into step with them. And I think
Speaker 1: it probably could have gone either way. And then when
Speaker 1: I was in high school, right before high school, I
Speaker 1: was in a traumatic accident. I was with another family
Speaker 1: and the father that we were with he drowned on
Speaker 1: the beach while we were in Hawaii, and I think
Speaker 1: that was a very traumatic thing, and I think I
Speaker 1: just buried it in my body, and that just pushed
Speaker 1: me all the way farther from people. And I could
Speaker 1: put on a good show, I could smile, I could
Speaker 1: make good grades, but deep down inside, there was like
Speaker 1: a bomb ticking. Is what it sort of feels like
Speaker 1: looking back. Okay, now that you've had years of therapy
Speaker 1: to look back on it, what about that death negatively
Speaker 1: impact you? Obviously that's a significant thing. But why was
Speaker 1: it such a traumatic eve in in your life? I
Speaker 1: think it's because of denial. I always told myself. From
Speaker 1: the minute we got in the car leaving the beach,
Speaker 1: I started telling myself a story. This isn't my tragedy,
Speaker 1: it's it wasn't my dad. My dad was at home
Speaker 1: in Texas. This was my friend's dad. Don't be dramatic,
Speaker 1: don't make this about yourself. And consequently, I was a
Speaker 1: thirteen year old, I was two weeks actually from my
Speaker 1: fourteenth birthday walking around with traumatic images and sights and sounds,
Speaker 1: and I just wouldn't let myself feel one drop of
Speaker 1: it because it didn't belong to me. And part of
Speaker 1: that was I was just scared. It's very, very scary
Speaker 1: to face death and something unexpected on a beach is
Speaker 1: a horrible situation. So I think having the trauma and
Speaker 1: burying it served to push me far away from people.
Speaker 1: And what was explained to me by my therapist, who
Speaker 1: I called Dr Rosen, was because I had unprocessed trauma,
Speaker 1: if I got close to people, I was going to
Speaker 1: feel attached and I was gonna worry about losing them,
Speaker 1: and to me that there's just no way. And I
Speaker 1: didn't know that was operating like subconsciously, I thought, I'm
Speaker 1: a nice girl. Why can't I find nice friends and
Speaker 1: a nice boyfriend? But the truth was some subconscious mechanism
Speaker 1: was keeping me far away because I was scared I
Speaker 1: was gonna lose them. And I hadn't even dealt with
Speaker 1: how how how could you get over something like that?
Speaker 1: Because I hadn't. Okay, so uh, this would beg the
Speaker 1: question were these types of thoughts acceptable in your family
Speaker 1: or did you just talk about events as opposed to feelings.
Speaker 1: That's a good question. Generally we would talk about events,
Speaker 1: and I think my parents they could see that I
Speaker 1: was hurting. When I came home from Hawaii, I started
Speaker 1: my freshman year. I was at an all girls, very
Speaker 1: selective challenging school, and I would come home and I
Speaker 1: would sleep for hours, and then I would do my
Speaker 1: homework till like two in the morning. I just was
Speaker 1: things were off with me, and I don't think my
Speaker 1: parents had the tools. They wanted to help me, and
Speaker 1: their way was to sort of a message of buck up,
Speaker 1: but my mom's way of phrasing it, and my dad,
Speaker 1: they would stand in my doorway and say, you need
Speaker 1: to like act like a normal teenager. You need to
Speaker 1: go to football games, you need to stop sleeping, you
Speaker 1: need to have normal hours. And we sort of just
Speaker 1: attacked like the outside without the inside, because I don't
Speaker 1: think any of us we just didn't have the tools.
Speaker 1: We had no idea how to begin to unravel what
Speaker 1: I'd experienced. And even before then, I have my eating
Speaker 1: disorder had already developed, like two years before I was bliming,
Speaker 1: and that was a secret, so my parents didn't even
Speaker 1: know about that. So there was a lot kind of
Speaker 1: crashing in on me during a pretty formative era of
Speaker 1: my life. I'm interested, what was your relationship with your
Speaker 1: friend and her family subsequent to her father passing away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. So we stayed really close, right
Speaker 1: at the beginning the beginning of high school. I went
Speaker 1: over to her house every weekend. My parents brought them food.
Speaker 1: We really were sort of on a sort of a
Speaker 1: grief a grief huddle, the my myself with their family,
Speaker 1: and then slowly we it was like we had that
Speaker 1: trauma bond that was so intense, and then slowly we
Speaker 1: had different ways of coping. And my way of coping
Speaker 1: was to sort of like buck up, get good grades
Speaker 1: and just dive into perfectionism and achievement. And my friend
Speaker 1: that I was with, she had a different experience, and
Speaker 1: she ended up leaving our high school and her herd.
Speaker 1: Her journey was very different than mine. She ended up
Speaker 1: sort of cutting ties with all of us because she
Speaker 1: needed to do her healing in a more isolated way.
Speaker 1: And we didn't we lost touch until I until this
Speaker 1: book came out. Actually, that was the next question, So
Speaker 1: you reconnected. What were her feelings about you telling her
Speaker 1: story in the book? Oh, my gosh, I was. It
Speaker 1: was the thing I was the most afraid about. That's
Speaker 1: how persistent the idea in my head was, I can't
Speaker 1: steal this story from my friend and her brother and
Speaker 1: their family. And of course Intellectually, I knew my grappling
Speaker 1: with death and grief, and this event in Hawaii was
Speaker 1: a huge part of my therapy. But I still that
Speaker 1: that pernicious idea that I was borrowing their their story
Speaker 1: from my own. It persisted, and when the right before
Speaker 1: the book came out, I reached out to her and
Speaker 1: to her brother and we were all three on the
Speaker 1: beach together when her dad drowned, and I sent them
Speaker 1: a copy and I let them know what their father
Speaker 1: meant to me, what their family meant to me, and
Speaker 1: they just they had totally taken me in. We've gone
Speaker 1: on another trip together, and they were a family who
Speaker 1: just accepted me, and I wanted them to know that
Speaker 1: that love and what what the acceptance from another family
Speaker 1: can mean to an awkward kid can be totally life altering,
Speaker 1: and that I certainly wish that her father hadn't died
Speaker 1: and we hadn't gone through that. But I don't regret
Speaker 1: being being one of the witnesses. I don't regret the love.
Speaker 1: And part of the cost of that was I was
Speaker 1: there when a horrible thing happened. Okay, just to clarify,
Speaker 1: you went on another trip while you were still in
Speaker 1: high school or since you've reconnected. I'm sorry. We went
Speaker 1: on a trip before we went to Hawaii the spring
Speaker 1: bright before we've gone on a ski trip together, and
Speaker 1: so I felt very I felt just accepted and unfolded
Speaker 1: into their family in a way that was just remarkable.
Speaker 1: And really it really did a lot for me because
Speaker 1: I didn't feel that same kind of love and acceptance
Speaker 1: in my family for whatever reason, and it was really
Speaker 1: a wonderful thing to land there. Okay, Now you talked
Speaker 1: about in high school subsequent to this tragic event me
Speaker 1: having perfectionist tendencies in retrospect, were those always there or
Speaker 1: was it black and white? After this event? Then you
Speaker 1: became a perfectionist. I would have told you that I've
Speaker 1: always been like this, but recently my mother sent me
Speaker 1: all my old report cards, like from first and second grade,
Speaker 1: and I have this idea that I was always like
Speaker 1: a straight A student, like real diligent. Not true, not
Speaker 1: true at all. In second, third and up through fifth grade,
Speaker 1: I had lots of bees, which is funny because when
Speaker 1: I look at it now, when by the time I
Speaker 1: got to high school, a B was anathema to me,
Speaker 1: A bee was a failure. So I think that supports
Speaker 1: the theory that there was something about that trauma that
Speaker 1: happened right before high school that just turned all my screws,
Speaker 1: and getting a bee was just absolutely devastating to me,
Speaker 1: and I worked really hard not to ever have one
Speaker 1: high school, college, graduate school, and then in law school. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, since you're so honest in the book, you
Speaker 1: talk about your own physicality, you talk about your own
Speaker 1: sexual experiences, so certainly there's a lot of opening as
Speaker 1: a result of years of therapy. But you do say
Speaker 1: that you did have relationships, you did have sex in
Speaker 1: high school, and so that seems to be at odds.
Speaker 1: How do you explain that? You mean, how how it's
Speaker 1: not the case that I had no experiences until I
Speaker 1: got into therapy. And well, I guess what I'm saying
Speaker 1: is to the if you look at it just on
Speaker 1: a factual basis, you're saying that you are inexperienced sexually,
Speaker 1: you're not feeling sexually, but statistically, you had had sex,
Speaker 1: you had relationships. So how do you explain the fact
Speaker 1: that you did have those? Oh, sure in high school.
Speaker 1: That's when I senior year of high school was when
Speaker 1: I first became sexually active. I had a boyfriend, and
Speaker 1: the whole thing, the whole relationship, from the very first day,
Speaker 1: it was just laced with betrayal and high school drama,
Speaker 1: and he was always cheating on me. And so while
Speaker 1: yes I did have those physical experiences, I felt like
Speaker 1: I had to have sex with him or he wouldn't
Speaker 1: be my boyfriend, which is a really tricky way to
Speaker 1: go into a relationship and not so great and myself
Speaker 1: esteem and my sense of myself as as being someone
Speaker 1: who was allowed to pick a partner or pick a boyfriend.
Speaker 1: It didn't that would have never occurred to me. I
Speaker 1: had to take whoever liked me, and this kid liked me,
Speaker 1: and even though he cheated on me, I had to
Speaker 1: just figure out it seemed like it was my problem,
Speaker 1: not his. In other words, I remember thinking senior year
Speaker 1: around prom time, well, if I lose some weight, if
Speaker 1: I go tanning, if I toss up my big Texas hair,
Speaker 1: then he'll stay with me and be faithful. It became
Speaker 1: my problem to solve his cheating, and that was like
Speaker 1: not very satisfying. We'll say that, Okay. One thing you
Speaker 1: emphasize in the book is that men were not hitting
Speaker 1: on you, and you did not feel attractive. You would
Speaker 1: go out with your friends and men would interact with them,
Speaker 1: but not you. In retrospect, with all this insight from therapy,
Speaker 1: what do you think was going on there? What I
Speaker 1: think is that I would go out with my friends,
Speaker 1: and I think I put out a vibe that basically
Speaker 1: said don't touch me, don't talk to me, don't look
Speaker 1: at me. And it was totally subconscious because I'd be
Speaker 1: with my friends, I'd be dressed up, i'd wear lipstick.
Speaker 1: I there was nothing physically wrong with me. There was
Speaker 1: no reason I don't I wasn't aware of sitting there
Speaker 1: with a scowl on my face. But I think that
Speaker 1: all the all the subconscious layers of unresolved grief and
Speaker 1: spear of attachment, all the things I hadn't learned how
Speaker 1: to do in high school and through college, I think
Speaker 1: I ultimately just put out a vibe. It was like
Speaker 1: almost like an invisible fence, like just don't don't go
Speaker 1: there when it comes to me and when I look
Speaker 1: back and I think about nights at these bars in college,
Speaker 1: or when my roommate from college and I at the end,
Speaker 1: we traveled through Europe, everywhere we went. These men loved her,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't. None of them would pay any attention
Speaker 1: to me. And when I think about it, I don't
Speaker 1: have a single memory of looking any of them in
Speaker 1: the eye. I think I was really, really, really shut
Speaker 1: down and really repressed, to the point where I couldn't
Speaker 1: even look a strange Swiss guy in the eye just
Speaker 1: to say hello, Okay, you mentioned your boliemia. Can you
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I started throwing up and engaging in all kinds of
Speaker 1: beliemic shenanigans. When I start it, I started seventh grade.
Speaker 1: It was March of seventh grade, so I was like thirteen. Now,
Speaker 1: you say you went to a girls high school? Was
Speaker 1: it a girls junior high to middle? In middle school?
Speaker 1: There were boys there and then they separated. We separated
Speaker 1: at high school, and so it was the first time
Speaker 1: I did it. I remember, I remember feeling I probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have used the word pressure, But what I was
Speaker 1: aware of is cheerleading tryouts were coming up. This was
Speaker 1: seventh grade. It was you know, it's Texas. If you're
Speaker 1: not going to make the cheerleading squad, that's a real problem.
Speaker 1: So cheerleading. I was also very into ballet, where, of
Speaker 1: course the standards of having a body the minute you
Speaker 1: get breasts, you can't be a star ballerina, and I didn't.
Speaker 1: I was always I was not obese. I was not
Speaker 1: an obese child, but I was chubby and fleshier then
Speaker 1: I wanted to be. I wanted to be a bony ballerina.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be like Kate Moss, and that would
Speaker 1: have been enormously unhealthy for me and my body type,
Speaker 1: maybe even for k Moss. But so I remember thinking, well,
Speaker 1: I can't control my appetites. But I had read little
Speaker 1: teen books about believing gymnasts and seen some ABC after
Speaker 1: school specials, and I was like, well, I'm gonna try it.
Speaker 1: That'll that fixes the problem. If I can't control my appetite,
Speaker 1: I'll just control what happens when I've lost control with
Speaker 1: my appetite. And it felt like this is a pretty
Speaker 1: good idea. But on some level I knew it was
Speaker 1: very messed up because it was total secret. I didn't
Speaker 1: tell anybody. I knew not to say. Oh, I discovered
Speaker 1: this great trick for losing weight. But that started in
Speaker 1: seventh grade. Okay, A couple of things. In retrospect. Do
Speaker 1: you believe same sex education like you had in high
Speaker 1: school good thing, bad thing, good for you, not good
Speaker 1: for you. I think it was good for me. I
Speaker 1: think that I'm really torn. Here's the here's what I
Speaker 1: believe were the pros. The pros were it really really
Speaker 1: really cemented my own idea of myself as a feminist.
Speaker 1: And when you go to an all girl high school,
Speaker 1: there's no pretending to be dumb, because you don't want
Speaker 1: the boy next to you to think you're like a
Speaker 1: buzz kill or not girlfriend material if you're acing physics.
Speaker 1: So everybody worked really hard. The downside of that is
Speaker 1: there's a lot of pressure. But also and an all
Speaker 1: girls high school, every leadership position is held by a
Speaker 1: woman or a young girl, right, every every student council member,
Speaker 1: and all the ideas that are generated about what we're
Speaker 1: gonna do here, it was all girls. So I think
Speaker 1: that that really instilled in me something really important about
Speaker 1: understanding who can be in charge, who can run the show.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's great for a young feminist, that was awesome.
Speaker 1: But by the time I got to college and I
Speaker 1: went to a giant state school Texas, A and M.
Speaker 1: There were boys everywhere. I hadn't sat next to a
Speaker 1: boy in math class since I was thirteen years old,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know how to be just friends. I
Speaker 1: didn't know how they just like, go have a meal
Speaker 1: with a boy. Everything was the date felt like a date,
Speaker 1: and I just I it took me a long time
Speaker 1: to find some ease in friendships with boys because we
Speaker 1: I didn't have access to them all day long, all
Speaker 1: through high school. Okay, Now, one point you make in
Speaker 1: the book was you had a dream to go to
Speaker 1: an Ivy League school, but you ended up going to
Speaker 1: a state school for financial reasons. To what degree did
Speaker 1: that negatively impact you and possibly still negative impactly? Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I thought, I've had some I've had some lingering,
Speaker 1: like longing for a different kind of college experience. It
Speaker 1: sounds ridiculous because I'm forty seven years old. And one
Speaker 1: thing I did for myself was when I finished with
Speaker 1: my undergraduate degree, I thought to myself, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know what you do with an English degree. That
Speaker 1: was one of the things I thought. And the next
Speaker 1: one was, if you're gonna walk around being resentful about
Speaker 1: where you went to college, do something about it. So
Speaker 1: I did have I got a master's at the University
Speaker 1: of Chicago, which is not Ivy League, but it was
Speaker 1: close enough and had the Gothic walls, it had the
Speaker 1: harsh winters, and had the really smart people. So I
Speaker 1: went and did that sort of as an amends to myself.
Speaker 1: And luckily now I've I've done enough in my life
Speaker 1: that no one cares where I went to college. But
Speaker 1: it is part of my story in that I remember
Speaker 1: that longing and it's it's something that I still think
Speaker 1: about from time to time. Okay, this is glossed over
Speaker 1: in the book. So you went immediately from college to
Speaker 1: graduate school where you off and your graduate degree is
Speaker 1: in what my graduate degree from the University of Chicago
Speaker 1: is in humanities. So, first of all, for those people
Speaker 1: don't know, Universe Chicago and we can define what an
Speaker 1: Ivy League schools, but certainly elite, unbelievable and I've actually
Speaker 1: been there. But since you were going for humanities, you said,
Speaker 1: what would I do with an English degree? What was
Speaker 1: your plan? What to do with the humanities degree? That
Speaker 1: is such a good question. That's where my parents were
Speaker 1: like humanities, Um what And my thought was I'll do this.
Speaker 1: It was a one year terminal Masters, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go. I'm gonna dabble in all the humanities
Speaker 1: and figure out which way to go for a PhD.
Speaker 1: And at the end of the program, all of the
Speaker 1: members of my my class there was like maybe twenty
Speaker 1: seven of us in the Humanities department for that year.
Speaker 1: Everybody was either going to become a teacher or a lawyer.
Speaker 1: And I still wasn't sure, so I took more time off.
Speaker 1: I just went. By the time I got to the
Speaker 1: University of Chicago, I knew so many people who were
Speaker 1: all a b D all but dissertation, and they looked
Speaker 1: really smart and really unhappy, like really unhappy, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I was worried that the pH d route
Speaker 1: was going to be really lonely and that no one
Speaker 1: would ever read it. Who's gonna read my PhD? I
Speaker 1: couldn't picture it. I knew someone who was doing like
Speaker 1: images of women and chessboards and medieval literature, and I
Speaker 1: was like, this is what I'm gonna do with my life,
Speaker 1: and it just didn't feel right. So I kind of
Speaker 1: wandered for a couple of years after that until I
Speaker 1: too settled on law school. Okay, just because you bring
Speaker 1: up debt in the book, did you have a debt
Speaker 1: from the University of Chicago? Yes, I did, and that
Speaker 1: was a very sobering experience. You know, you differ for
Speaker 1: the song. I was able to defer for the summer
Speaker 1: for some reason because I didn't have a job. And
Speaker 1: then once, you know, I get a job, I got
Speaker 1: a I got an apartment and I was living a
Speaker 1: whole Mary Tyler more in the city thing. And then
Speaker 1: that that first bill comes and like, please remit your payment.
Speaker 1: It was like four hundred and twenty three dollars, which
Speaker 1: was insane. That was like half of my first paycheck.
Speaker 1: And it was very, very sobering, and I thought it
Speaker 1: was worth it. But it's it's I really feel for
Speaker 1: people who are struggling with student debt. It's it's not
Speaker 1: a joke. Okay, So many years did you take off
Speaker 1: from between graduate school and law school between? I graduated
Speaker 1: from the UFC and nine and then I matriculated in
Speaker 1: law school in two thousand. Then what do you do
Speaker 1: for the two years in between? I went to d C.
Speaker 1: I moved with some friends to a group home in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. And I took a job. We called it
Speaker 1: a mix job because it was not a career position.
Speaker 1: And I worked for a company that helped law firms
Speaker 1: retrieve legal documents from recalcitrant judges. It was it was
Speaker 1: just like sitting on the phone all day trying to
Speaker 1: find documents back. This is before the internet was Could
Speaker 1: you could do it? All? Right? And then I moved
Speaker 1: back to Chicago, UM and I was I worked for
Speaker 1: the University of Chicago as an administrative assistant with a
Speaker 1: master's degree, still thinking I don't know. I wasn't ready
Speaker 1: to let go of the PhD. And I needed one
Speaker 1: more year. I worked for a professor who was a
Speaker 1: PhD and statistician, and that killed the h D dream
Speaker 1: killed it dead. And then I went to law school.
Speaker 1: How did you decide to go to law school? Well,
Speaker 1: I was when I was working at the UFC. There
Speaker 1: was a woman there who I just I loved her.
Speaker 1: She was a little bit younger than I was, so
Speaker 1: she was I was probably twenty five and she was
Speaker 1: twenty four, and she was married, and she was smart,
Speaker 1: and she was studying for the l set and she
Speaker 1: was gonna go to law school. And she just she
Speaker 1: had this plan and it looked so appealing to me.
Speaker 1: And around that time, I had a boyfriend and we
Speaker 1: broke up and I was so devastated and I was like,
Speaker 1: I need a plan, I need something to do. And
Speaker 1: I had that kind of feeling around the breakup where
Speaker 1: where I was convinced this is where I started realizing
Speaker 1: I may die alone because the relationship fell apart and
Speaker 1: I couldn't imagine how I could fix whatever inside of
Speaker 1: me had made that relationship go wrong, or picking a
Speaker 1: person who wasn't right for me. And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: if I'm never going to have a good personal relationship,
Speaker 1: if I'm never going to be able to get the
Speaker 1: for the romance part of my life in order, then
Speaker 1: I'll go to law school because it will give me
Speaker 1: so much to do. I'll just grind myself into the
Speaker 1: ground and it won't matter that I don't have a
Speaker 1: boyfriend and now at least have money and social power
Speaker 1: and people will at least be like, well, she's got
Speaker 1: this great job. And it was like a consolation prize decision. Okay,
Speaker 1: because it also comes up in the book you talk
Speaker 1: about the status of your law school and the ability
Speaker 1: to get a job subsequent graduation. How did you feel
Speaker 1: about the law school you went to. Was that the
Speaker 1: one you chose or did you try to get Did
Speaker 1: you apply to a Smoker's board of law schools? What
Speaker 1: was your comfort level there? Oh? My god. I dreamed
Speaker 1: of going to Northwestern Law School in Chicago or the UFC,
Speaker 1: and I also knew I didn't have the els AT
Speaker 1: score for it at that time. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's still like that, but at the time I was applying,
Speaker 1: which would have been the els AT score was everything.
Speaker 1: And I'm a hustler and I'm a beast when it
Speaker 1: comes to making good grades. But I can't do those
Speaker 1: tests in a way that would get me into a
Speaker 1: school of my dreams. So I sort of had to
Speaker 1: decide how I was going to proceed with this. And
Speaker 1: one of the things I decided was, Okay, if I
Speaker 1: just get in somewhere, the deal is, I just have
Speaker 1: to be the best there is. I just have to
Speaker 1: I have to be number one in my class, or
Speaker 1: at least I didn't think number one. That's not true.
Speaker 1: I thought I have to be in the top ten percent.
Speaker 1: If I'm going to be at one of these law schools.
Speaker 1: That's not top tier. Okay, you do end up number one.
Speaker 1: I have to ask how that happens. Are you that smart?
Speaker 1: Are you that hard of worker? Is the competition not
Speaker 1: as stiff or all of those things? Give me your take.
Speaker 1: My take on it is number one. I had come
Speaker 1: out of the graduate program that I've done at the
Speaker 1: University of Chicago. It was so hard and so intense,
Speaker 1: in part because I'd come from Texas a and then
Speaker 1: which is not it would just it, frankly, isn't as
Speaker 1: rigorous as what was going on at the UFC. I
Speaker 1: was plopped from Texas into Chicago all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: like one week's reading would be for one class would
Speaker 1: be like four or five scholarly articles plus Uncle Tom's Cabin,
Speaker 1: which is a nine hundred and seven page book, And
Speaker 1: that was one class, and I was taking three, and
Speaker 1: I was I almost drowned, like in the in the
Speaker 1: pursuit of just trying to get it all straight. And
Speaker 1: I didn't feel like I was very good at what
Speaker 1: was happening in graduate school. So by the time I
Speaker 1: got to law school, I was like so well trained
Speaker 1: on reading a ton and just working really hard and that.
Speaker 1: The thing about law school as it was taught at Loyola,
Speaker 1: it was all black letter a lot. If you memorize it,
Speaker 1: you've got it. And so I didn't have to like
Speaker 1: make up theories about Lakhanian mirror stage in Uncle Tom's cabin.
Speaker 1: I had to memorize what's the rule of perpetuities? How
Speaker 1: would you apply it? And I could wrap my hands
Speaker 1: all the way around it, and I think that And
Speaker 1: also I just that's all I did. I did not
Speaker 1: do one. I said no, no, no to social things,
Speaker 1: and it's I didn't have a life. I just studied. Okay.
Speaker 1: The book opens with you with a moment of existential angst,
Speaker 1: which is really I've never seen it described as well,
Speaker 1: we're on paper, you're at the peak of your life,
Speaker 1: and emotionally you're crashing. This is before you start therapy.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about what you were feeling? Then? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that day so vividly, the day before the
Speaker 1: real loud crisis in my head became full blown and
Speaker 1: not just a low grade drum. I had gone up
Speaker 1: to school, you could go. It was during the summer,
Speaker 1: so I was working at a like a lof term
Speaker 1: as an intern, and you can go up to school.
Speaker 1: You go to the burst's office, you give them your
Speaker 1: I D. And they give you a card and tells
Speaker 1: you your class rank. And I have this little white
Speaker 1: card and it says number one out of two seventy
Speaker 1: two out of one seventy two. And I felt this
Speaker 1: moment of like shock and euphoria, like oh my God,
Speaker 1: like oh my God, like all the ramifications of that,
Speaker 1: all my hard work paid off, and I can work
Speaker 1: anywhere I want in the city and maybe even in
Speaker 1: a different city. And I felt euphoria. By the time
Speaker 1: I had taken the elevator down and walked to the sidewalk,
Speaker 1: I felt I had suicidal ideation, like, well, you did it, Toots,
Speaker 1: But that's all you're gonna get. You can work really,
Speaker 1: really hard, and you can ace all these exams whatever,
Speaker 1: but you can't have a best friend, and you can't
Speaker 1: have people over to your house, and you have no
Speaker 1: idea how to have a boyfriend, and you never will.
Speaker 1: And that the thought of all of that made the
Speaker 1: victory of the valid potential Valectorian. It made it feel
Speaker 1: so hollow and so fraudulent in some way, because I
Speaker 1: had done it to hide and so I think that
Speaker 1: I I think that. So then the next day what
Speaker 1: happened was I is driving around and it was just
Speaker 1: like getting louder and louder, like your number one, You're
Speaker 1: totally alone. And I knew that those were linked, and
Speaker 1: no one else in the world knew that the way
Speaker 1: that I knew it in my bones, and I just thought,
Speaker 1: am I going to kill myself? Should I kill mice?
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, should I? Is someone in my position,
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm having the Socratic method with myself, right,
Speaker 1: Is someone in my position who's just gonna work hard
Speaker 1: to make money for some corporation, doesn't have any idea
Speaker 1: what her two hearts desires are? Is that a person
Speaker 1: who should kill herself? And when I had that question,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, I'm in trouble. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking I just I should die it just I could.
Speaker 1: I could see the disparity, and I was so I
Speaker 1: was so clueless about how to pull out of the
Speaker 1: despair that I was in, and I could imagine it
Speaker 1: going lower and lower and lower. And that's a person
Speaker 1: that I'm grateful that the pain was so scary that
Speaker 1: it made me willing to check out some therapy. Okay,
Speaker 1: I just want to say, because people tend to paint
Speaker 1: with a broad brush, and once you dig deep, the
Speaker 1: reality is a little bit different. You did not. Let's
Speaker 1: go back to subsequent to this traumatic event, just before
Speaker 1: high school. You essentially never had a close friend. You
Speaker 1: didn't have people come over, you didn't have your group,
Speaker 1: you were isolated. That's a good point in high school.
Speaker 1: I had so high school's right after the events of
Speaker 1: of Hawaii, the traumatic event, and I did. I had
Speaker 1: close friends, but I couldn't hold on. I could, you know,
Speaker 1: go with the crew and we go to the park
Speaker 1: and we'd underage drink and I'd go to the dance
Speaker 1: with my friends. But I felt like I was very
Speaker 1: far away, if that makes any sense. I felt like
Speaker 1: the whole me wasn't there. And maybe that's because I
Speaker 1: had the sense of I had all these secrets. I
Speaker 1: had a secret eating disorder, I had a secret I
Speaker 1: had a sense that I could never talk about Hawaii.
Speaker 1: I could never say I was scared. I could never
Speaker 1: admit to all the wonderful, bubbly Catholic girls that I
Speaker 1: was in school with, I couldn't admit to them that,
Speaker 1: like I think I may be not believing in God
Speaker 1: right now. Um, so I had the sense of partners
Speaker 1: because of all the things I held back. But I
Speaker 1: did I did have friends like I. They loved me,
Speaker 1: but there was a part of me that they couldn't reach.
Speaker 1: And I got more and more isolated as the years
Speaker 1: went by. And in college I had I had a
Speaker 1: very close best friend and we ran around together and
Speaker 1: it's and and then she was able to transition into
Speaker 1: adulthood and I'm still going to school. And once I
Speaker 1: got once I moved from Texas to Chicago, so by
Speaker 1: then I was twenty two. I just didn't know. I
Speaker 1: was so shut down. I could do small talk and
Speaker 1: I could chit chat with people and fairly extroverted. That's
Speaker 1: always been true. But in terms of being a true
Speaker 1: person who could be vulnerable and do the things of
Speaker 1: a friendship, I just didn't have it in me anymore.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to do it. So common int
Speaker 1: with all these experiences, you're going to overreaters, anonymous or
Speaker 1: whatever by the exact a group as you can tell me,
Speaker 1: tell me when you started that and what that was.
Speaker 1: Experience was like, yeah, so that actually saved my life.
Speaker 1: At the time I was in college. I was a sophomore,
Speaker 1: and all the pressures of I had to get a
Speaker 1: four point oh so far I had a four point
Speaker 1: oh in college, and now I'm starting my sophomore year
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of drinking and I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: great with that. I just felt really uncomfortable. I was
Speaker 1: scared of getting fat and drinking in Bolimia are a
Speaker 1: really bad We're a bad combination for me. Maybe it
Speaker 1: works for other people. Um, And so I got really
Speaker 1: scared because I was starting to not be able to
Speaker 1: hold onto everything. I was starting to binge during the
Speaker 1: day and I used to just binge at night. And
Speaker 1: I skipped a class. I skipped an English class, which
Speaker 1: never in my life, never never had I ever skipped class,
Speaker 1: certainly not my beloved literature class. And I realized I
Speaker 1: turned in a paper. Then I was writing a paper
Speaker 1: after I skipped class, and it was terrible, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I didn't I didn't have the energy to
Speaker 1: make it right. And I just kept binging. And I
Speaker 1: went to get rid of the food and I fainted
Speaker 1: in the shower and I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: I was nineteen, and I thought I'm going to die
Speaker 1: doing this. I'm a very dramatic person, but I was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, this is dangerous. This is very dangerous.
Speaker 1: And a friend of mine in high school had gotten
Speaker 1: into a twelve step program for alcoholism, and she suggested
Speaker 1: that I go to the one for eaters. And I
Speaker 1: was like, but I'm not fat. I thought I had
Speaker 1: to wait until I was obetes. I didn't even know,
Speaker 1: and she said, why don't you just check it out.
Speaker 1: People who are believe it can go too. And so
Speaker 1: then I started going to meetings, which was great because
Speaker 1: they taught me, they gave me some skills. I work steps,
Speaker 1: I had a sponsor, I got the coins and that
Speaker 1: stuff is all really great. But I also treated it
Speaker 1: like a secret. I didn't tell my roommate knew because
Speaker 1: she's like, where are you going on a ninth at
Speaker 1: nine thirty on Saturday morning? Every Saturday morning. So I
Speaker 1: told my roommate, but I never wanted to talk about it,
Speaker 1: and it just became another way I had a secret
Speaker 1: from the world. I exchanged the Bolivia for the meetings
Speaker 1: as a secret. Okay, but in the when you go
Speaker 1: through the steps, don't you have to make amends to
Speaker 1: people and therefore interact and reveal that you're in the group. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I did make a mint, so I made him
Speaker 1: in my roommate. Um, bless her heart. I stole so
Speaker 1: much food from her. So I had definitely made amends
Speaker 1: to her and to my family. And there were you know,
Speaker 1: there was some uh friends on there too, and I
Speaker 1: definitely told them. But by then, like when I had
Speaker 1: to go back to my high school. I went back
Speaker 1: to my high school because I'd stolen money when I
Speaker 1: was a junior and I was in charge of the
Speaker 1: parking lot fees and I just took some money and
Speaker 1: of course I had I took a check and I
Speaker 1: had interests and I walked in the building. I'm now
Speaker 1: I'm probably right before I moved to Chicago, and I
Speaker 1: ran into my trigonometry teacher and I was like, I
Speaker 1: just blurted. I was like, I'm the I'm a member
Speaker 1: of a twelve step program, and in order to stay sober,
Speaker 1: I have to give you this money because I stole it.
Speaker 1: And she was like, uh, let me take you to
Speaker 1: the office. And she's like, I don't know what to
Speaker 1: do with this money. Um, So I did do that.
Speaker 1: But I think that I, you know, I wasn't open.
Speaker 1: It wasn't Nobody ever asked me a follow up question
Speaker 1: like how are you doing? Do you still go to meetings?
Speaker 1: I think I just blurted it out and then went
Speaker 1: back behind the curtain because I didn't. I was ashamed.
Speaker 1: I was super ashamed of what I'd done, of being
Speaker 1: a being nineteen years old and going to twelve Step
Speaker 1: meetings like some old dude from a A on TV.
Speaker 1: And I kept it still very guarded and very under wraps. Okay,
Speaker 1: now it's through oh A that you ultimately connect with
Speaker 1: the therapist. Can you tell sad story? Yeah? So two
Speaker 1: pieces of that. Number one is the summer. So after
Speaker 1: I find out my class rank, I'm starting to sort
Speaker 1: of like Frey at the edges emotionally, and I'd go
Speaker 1: to my meetings, my little twelve Step meetings, and I
Speaker 1: would just cry and people say are you okay? And
Speaker 1: I'd be like, yeah, I'm fine, just kind of like
Speaker 1: I don't even know what to say. What do I say?
Speaker 1: I'm I'm first in my law school class, and I
Speaker 1: kind of want to die it just I didn't know
Speaker 1: how to do that. And people started recommending their therapists
Speaker 1: to me, and I was like, I'm not going to therapy.
Speaker 1: I don't have any money, first of all. And then
Speaker 1: finally this woman was like, please come to dinner with me,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to go. I was like, that
Speaker 1: was not something I didn't do. The fellowshipping very well.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to do that, and so I went
Speaker 1: to dinner with her and she just looked, you know,
Speaker 1: like when you run into someone who something's changed. Like
Speaker 1: I was like, did you fall in love? Are you pregnant?
Speaker 1: What's going on here? She's wearing lip glass and her
Speaker 1: eyes are bright, and she just seemed lighter. And she said, oh,
Speaker 1: it's my new therapist. And I was like, oh, here
Speaker 1: we go again. And she didn't even really She said,
Speaker 1: you know, he could really help you, and I was
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, yeah, and she said, well he does
Speaker 1: groups and they're really cheap. And I just seized on
Speaker 1: the word cheap and I said, what do you mean cheap?
Speaker 1: And she's like, it's like one third the cost of
Speaker 1: an individual. And she started telling me about her group.
Speaker 1: But really what sold me was what I saw in
Speaker 1: her eyes and what I could see about her being
Speaker 1: because everyone had everyone loves their therapist and wants you
Speaker 1: to go see their therapists. But I saw something in her.
Speaker 1: Plus it was cheap, and so that sort of convinced me.
Speaker 1: And then when I went to my first meeting, I mean,
Speaker 1: I went ahead and called him because I thought, well, okay. Oh. Also,
Speaker 1: she told me right before we left, like you're standing
Speaker 1: at the the exit of a restaurant, She's gonna go
Speaker 1: one way and I go to the other. Off the
Speaker 1: top of her head, I don't even know what made
Speaker 1: her said say this. She said, Oh, he's really happy.
Speaker 1: He just got remarried, and he smiles all the time.
Speaker 1: And something about that just so captivated my imagination, like remarried,
Speaker 1: he knows what it's like to lose love and a divorce,
Speaker 1: and he smiles. And I just became convinced that this
Speaker 1: therapist could help me. So I made an appointment and
Speaker 1: I go see him, and I sit down for my
Speaker 1: first appointment, and I knew him. I had seen him
Speaker 1: in meetings meeting meetings when I was in graduate school,
Speaker 1: and I immediately thought, oh, my god, he's gonna tell
Speaker 1: me he can't be my therapist because he knows me
Speaker 1: from meetings. But he didn't actually recognize me, and by
Speaker 1: the time I told him where we've been, he said,
Speaker 1: that's not a reason for us not to work together. Okay,
Speaker 1: And you saw him three times before you went to
Speaker 1: the group which we inspired, you know, in that prep
Speaker 1: of three times. Oh my gosh. He was so weird.
Speaker 1: He was so weird, he was so confident. I would
Speaker 1: tell him two little lines about like a relationship i'd
Speaker 1: have like the guy that I dated in high school
Speaker 1: who did on me a lot and smoked a ton
Speaker 1: of pot, and he would so then he just said, oh,
Speaker 1: you like addicts, you love alcoholics, And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. That seems sort of aggressive. Um. I
Speaker 1: didn't disagree, but I thought that he was being pretty
Speaker 1: forward and pretty copy um. And part of me didn't
Speaker 1: like that, and part of me loved it, like I
Speaker 1: felt so seen, and the fact that he could pick
Speaker 1: up on the patterns in my life helped me know
Speaker 1: that I was kind of a type in some way,
Speaker 1: that he'd seen women or men like me, and that
Speaker 1: he he had my number. I knew that when I
Speaker 1: mentioned I was first in my class and that I
Speaker 1: have I was BLIEMI recovering Beliem it. He just seemed
Speaker 1: to be He just kind of looked at me like, ah, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so what do you want? He just kept asking me
Speaker 1: what do you want? What do you want? And what
Speaker 1: I really wanted was the way that I phrased it
Speaker 1: back then, was I wanted to be a real person.
Speaker 1: I wanted to like exhale around other people and not
Speaker 1: constantly be striving to make them happy or get the
Speaker 1: good grade or be the best. I wanted to just
Speaker 1: be a person. I wanted friends to just stop by
Speaker 1: my house and me not put any makeup on or
Speaker 1: do anything. I just wanted ease and casualness and real
Speaker 1: deep attachments. And I really wanted a boyfriend. And I
Speaker 1: told him all that, and then he kept saying, what else,
Speaker 1: what else? And I was almost annoyed because I was like, listen,
Speaker 1: Mr Perfect, And I could see his degrees on the wall,
Speaker 1: and they were fancy. They were Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, Harvard.
Speaker 1: I was like, listen, Harvard, if you deliver on those things,
Speaker 1: then we can talk about what else. But I didn't
Speaker 1: have this bucket list full of I want to be
Speaker 1: a poet, I want to travel the world. I didn't
Speaker 1: have any of that. Let's deal with the basics here.
Speaker 1: So I was intrigued by his confidence about what he
Speaker 1: saw in me. And then at the end of the
Speaker 1: first session, he said, I can get you where. We
Speaker 1: can get you where you want to go. If you
Speaker 1: join a group and you disclosed to the group every
Speaker 1: aspect of your relationship, life, every aspect of love, friendship,
Speaker 1: all of it. If you can turn it over to
Speaker 1: the group and commit to the group, we can get you.
Speaker 1: We can get you married, we can get you friends.
Speaker 1: You want babies, it's like babies, Like, let's just get
Speaker 1: me a hygienic boyfriend. I was not there yet, but
Speaker 1: he was really I thought it was really overpromising to
Speaker 1: be frank. Okay, so you show up for the first
Speaker 1: day at the group. What's your experience? Oh my god,
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Well I was really happy that right
Speaker 1: before my last that that third session when he's Dr
Speaker 1: Rosen is like, and that's not his real name. Everyone
Speaker 1: thinks it is. It's not that last session, Like, with
Speaker 1: two seconds to go, I had the wherewithal to say, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: what's going to happen to me when I start group?
Speaker 1: And he did that. I'm so glad you asked, and
Speaker 1: he said, every single one of your secrets is going
Speaker 1: to come out. And I felt like someone had just
Speaker 1: like shot an arrow through my heart like terror. I
Speaker 1: didn't even I didn't have in mind like what secret
Speaker 1: it was. But I was like, oh, oh my god,
Speaker 1: so afraid. And so then I go into my first session.
Speaker 1: And this will tell you something about how little, how
Speaker 1: few boundaries I had. The first thing that someone says
Speaker 1: to me, a man in the group across the circle
Speaker 1: from me says, top or bottom, I know he's talking
Speaker 1: about sex, and I it didn't even occur to me
Speaker 1: to to say, why are you asking that? Or I
Speaker 1: don't have to answer that, or who are you or
Speaker 1: why don't you go first? I was just like, uh okay,
Speaker 1: uh top, Like I did not know that. I think
Speaker 1: that says everything about my state of mind and my
Speaker 1: state of people pleasing, because I was like, you want
Speaker 1: to know, I'll tell you anything you want to know.
Speaker 1: And all these years later, I still go to group.
Speaker 1: I've seen people come in, men and women deal with
Speaker 1: that kind of hazing, as I call it, in so
Speaker 1: many different ways, and I just didn't. I did. I
Speaker 1: did my thing, which was try to deliver and I've
Speaker 1: seen other people say I'm not going there with you.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you later or maybe or we've got to
Speaker 1: do some more work before I tell you how I
Speaker 1: want to have sex. So it was like from the
Speaker 1: very first second, it was like go time. Okay, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff you reveal, so for people who
Speaker 1: haven't read the book and maybe sound like I'm really
Speaker 1: digging deep, but it's right there in the book. One
Speaker 1: there's a focus on your breasts and that they are large,
Speaker 1: and you say a couple of things, one that you
Speaker 1: were brought to sleep, be that you wear two bras,
Speaker 1: and this comes up in therapy, So what's going on there?
Speaker 1: I that that that absolutely did happen. We still talk
Speaker 1: about breasts all the time, which to me, I would
Speaker 1: never be comfortable doing the work I needed to do
Speaker 1: around my breasts and how I feel about them and
Speaker 1: what they mean to me and what they mean to culture,
Speaker 1: and what they mean to my lovers or my children
Speaker 1: or anybody else. I would never be able to do
Speaker 1: that work. If I was not in a group with
Speaker 1: other women, I would not be able to sit across
Speaker 1: from an authority figure like a therapist and just talk freely.
Speaker 1: I just don't. I can't imagine it. Maybe I could,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine it. But because I go to group
Speaker 1: where there's three or four or five other women in
Speaker 1: the circle, and all of us have different relationship to
Speaker 1: our breasts, right, it happens to be My story is
Speaker 1: that little Christie Ballerina in me is so sad that
Speaker 1: I have breasts and I don't have the super flat chest.
Speaker 1: It's like I always think of that as like, that's
Speaker 1: my anorexia talking the part of me that like I
Speaker 1: just want that bony, flat Margot Fontaine Ballerina chest and
Speaker 1: that's not what I have. I have like double ds.
Speaker 1: And so there's other women in my group who are
Speaker 1: deeply ashamed, deeply ashamed that their breasts are really really small.
Speaker 1: There's women in my group who are sad that they
Speaker 1: were big, they had children and now they're small. And
Speaker 1: how complicated that is and how how that's tied to
Speaker 1: my understanding of myself as a woman, as a sexual being,
Speaker 1: as someone who's safe in society or not safe based
Speaker 1: on my breast. It's been incredible and one of the
Speaker 1: things we excavated in the This was probably my second
Speaker 1: year I had had an experience in high school where
Speaker 1: I participated in this. I it was like one of
Speaker 1: the dances, like a spring fling dance, and we were
Speaker 1: out this part. I was drunk. I've been drinking proudly, Zeema,
Speaker 1: I'm not proud of that, but that's what happened. And
Speaker 1: I was buzzed and the boys were like paying attention
Speaker 1: to me, and I had a strap the stress my day.
Speaker 1: I don't know where my date was. He was somewhere off.
Speaker 1: All the girls were off somewhere, and I somehow wandered
Speaker 1: over to all the boy They've got their dip in
Speaker 1: their mouth, they've got their beers, they all are dating
Speaker 1: my friends. And one of them walked over and he
Speaker 1: stuck his hand down my dress. And I remember laughing,
Speaker 1: but also like not like just knowing like something was happening,
Speaker 1: that the laughter was covering it like shame. It was
Speaker 1: shame and violation, and also like I don't know how
Speaker 1: to stop this, and somewhere inside I knew I didn't.
Speaker 1: I wasn't like the other girls who had self esteem
Speaker 1: or didn't have boys hands down their dress. Um, And
Speaker 1: then one by one they did. I think it was
Speaker 1: like five couple of them more than once, and I'm
Speaker 1: just laughing, carefree. I liked the attention. I liked the
Speaker 1: None of these boys really paid that much attention to
Speaker 1: me was my perception, and that was something that came
Speaker 1: out in group early on. And when I shared that
Speaker 1: in group, every single woman in the group shared a
Speaker 1: story about her breasts. Not all violations, some of them
Speaker 1: just feelings. And I can't even tell you how much
Speaker 1: less alone I felt, which sounds like not like that
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like therapeutically cataclysmic, but it was. It was
Speaker 1: to me. I'd never had these conversations. I never knew
Speaker 1: I could say what had happened to me and have
Speaker 1: like watch women's heads nodding like yeah, yeah, that happened
Speaker 1: to me something like that. I feel that way too.
Speaker 1: That's where I started to change and become a different
Speaker 1: person by connecting with other people. Okay, let's get into
Speaker 1: the apples. Tell us the story with the apples. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh. So when I started my twelve step program,
Speaker 1: and when I was nineteen years old, I had a
Speaker 1: sponsor and she told me she's like you. I was like,
Speaker 1: the wisdom and twelve step program is to find a
Speaker 1: sponsor asked someone who as what you want and ask
Speaker 1: them how they got it. So I get the sponsor.
Speaker 1: She's this nice woman, she's a housewife, she's real gentle.
Speaker 1: She seems very sane around food. So I said, how
Speaker 1: do you eat? I want to eat the way you eat.
Speaker 1: And she said to me, I eat anything I want
Speaker 1: in any quantity, at any time, any pace. But I
Speaker 1: don't need any sugar, no corn, no flour. And there
Speaker 1: was a couple of other things on there. And I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, that's it, and she was like yeah.
Speaker 1: And so somehow in my brain I turned that into
Speaker 1: I can eat. I made a list of maybe ten
Speaker 1: foods I would let myself eat, and it was like
Speaker 1: turkey and cabbage and cheese and fruit, and I was hungry.
Speaker 1: Looking back now, I can think to myself, maybe at
Speaker 1: night I binged on apples because my body needed more food.
Speaker 1: I would I would drink skim milk at nights, or
Speaker 1: I would have yogurt. But it was a very diety deprivation.
Speaker 1: Even people who are on diets e way better than that.
Speaker 1: But at night I would be really hungry, and I'd
Speaker 1: be so scared that I was gonna binge on something
Speaker 1: problematic like ice cream or bread or chips. So I
Speaker 1: would buy these apples, and early on, maybe before I
Speaker 1: left college, I would have like two apples at night,
Speaker 1: and I remember my roommates saying, that's weird. Who eats
Speaker 1: two apples? And I was like, leave me alone. I'm
Speaker 1: in a program. But by the time I was living
Speaker 1: alone in graduate school, and even when I had roommates
Speaker 1: in d C and then back to living alone in Chicago,
Speaker 1: it's just like escalated. So by the time I got
Speaker 1: to dr Rosen at night, I would eat. I would
Speaker 1: eat anywhere from five. One time, I ate twelve apples.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I call my sponsor back in Texas and say,
Speaker 1: I just ate twelve red, delicious apples that cannot be
Speaker 1: sobriety or whatever, and she would say, did you pick
Speaker 1: up your drug, which she wouldn't consider, like flour or
Speaker 1: sugar was the drug and apples weren't. So She's like
Speaker 1: it's fine, and I was like okay, but nobody in
Speaker 1: my nobody else. She was like this disembodied voice back
Speaker 1: in Texas. No one in Chicago knew I knew I
Speaker 1: did that it was super expensive. And I remember one night.
Speaker 1: It was snowing, and I still, what do I know
Speaker 1: about snow. I'm from Texas and I get in my
Speaker 1: car and it's eleven thirty and I'm driving to the
Speaker 1: all night grocery store on Broadway to get more apples,
Speaker 1: almost at midnight, and I was like, this is as crazy.
Speaker 1: This is like those movies where someone's going out to
Speaker 1: get cracked. It said, I'm going to get apples, and
Speaker 1: that's That was one of the secrets that that last
Speaker 1: um individual appointment when Dr Rosen was like, your secrets
Speaker 1: were gonna come out. I remember walking down the hall
Speaker 1: of thinking, if they find out what I eat, I
Speaker 1: am so screwed. And they did. Ultimately, the that is
Speaker 1: revealed and you get a prescription to make us take
Speaker 1: uh make a call? How did it come out? And
Speaker 1: then tell us about the prescription in the ultimate phone holes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was that. When this session went down, I thought
Speaker 1: that Dr Rosen was a mad genius because we were
Speaker 1: not talking about food. We I swear we were talking
Speaker 1: about Rory's ferret. We were not talking about food, and
Speaker 1: out of the blue, He's like, Christie, why don't you
Speaker 1: tell the group what you ate yesterday? And I was
Speaker 1: like my whole body was like inflamed. I'm just like
Speaker 1: I felt like sweat was pouring down. I was like,
Speaker 1: I can't, I can't. I jumped. I had taken my
Speaker 1: shoes off, and I jumped out of my chair and
Speaker 1: I was like hopping around the circle like kind of
Speaker 1: making a fist and pound punch in the air like
Speaker 1: I can't, I can't, I can't, And everyone is like
Speaker 1: what is wrong with you? And I just said I
Speaker 1: just can't. I'll tell you anything, I just can't do it.
Speaker 1: And then I sat down and everyone's like you have to,
Speaker 1: Like the way that you're acting is proof you need
Speaker 1: some help, and so, you know, I tell them the
Speaker 1: first part. I couldn't look anybody. I like like grew
Speaker 1: my fists into my eyes and I'm like okay, And
Speaker 1: I said it real fast, like an auctioneer, like cabbage
Speaker 1: and cheese, milk. And I got to the part where
Speaker 1: I told them my dinner and I paused for a
Speaker 1: long time and someone's like, what is what is the problem?
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, there's more. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: they were expecting like biscuits or I went out and
Speaker 1: got more a chocolate cake and I was like, I
Speaker 1: ate some apples, five apples, actually it was seven apples,
Speaker 1: and and I just waited for like the ceiling to
Speaker 1: fall in. And when I took my hands away from
Speaker 1: my eyes, oh, Dr rose And said, can you open
Speaker 1: your eyes? And I was like nope. It's like okay, well,
Speaker 1: why don't you try or pray for the willingness? Right?
Speaker 1: So I looked at everybody and nobody was like scorning me.
Speaker 1: Everybody looked curious and compassionate. And somebody said, do you
Speaker 1: think you're hungry? And I bat it that a way
Speaker 1: I wasn't ready to eat differently. And then Dr Rosen's
Speaker 1: prescription was He's had me look at another group member, Rory,
Speaker 1: who had her own food struggles. He's like, look at Roy.
Speaker 1: Can you call her every night and tell her what
Speaker 1: you ate? And I was like, why don't I call
Speaker 1: her tonight and I'll tell her what I'm gonna eat tomorrow.
Speaker 1: He's like, no, no, no, no no, We're not trying
Speaker 1: to keep you from doing anything. But at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, tell her what you did so that
Speaker 1: you can let go of the shame. I said, but
Speaker 1: what if it's like ten apples every night. He's like, great,
Speaker 1: that's what you're calling her for. It doesn't matter. And
Speaker 1: I looked at Rory, like, why does this woman who's
Speaker 1: a busy professional want to hear this apple monologue every night?
Speaker 1: And she just said, great, sweetie, I'll tell you my
Speaker 1: food too. And I was like, she was like, she
Speaker 1: just doubled down on me. And I was so afraid
Speaker 1: in the first three nights I called her At nights.
Speaker 1: I just bawled afterwards because I was so scared of
Speaker 1: letting go of the secret. I'm scared of change, and
Speaker 1: I knew this was big. This was big. To tell
Speaker 1: someone every day about my food. That was the river
Speaker 1: I had never crossed before, and it was scary. It
Speaker 1: was scary for weeks, but it was those first three
Speaker 1: nights I was just beside myself. But it did get easier. Well,
Speaker 1: the question, obviously is twofold one. Did you continue to
Speaker 1: eat that volume of apples? To do eat apples at
Speaker 1: all anymore? Um? You know the volume. The volume came down,
Speaker 1: but it took about and not consciously like I would
Speaker 1: go into group and say, well, I've been calling Rory
Speaker 1: about my food and my apples and I'm still eating
Speaker 1: you know, I'm still at four or five six, and
Speaker 1: even like it doesn't matter. It's your job isn't to
Speaker 1: fix your apples. Your job is to tell Rory what
Speaker 1: you eat. So I'm my fine um and the volume.
Speaker 1: I want to say it was maybe nine months before
Speaker 1: it sort of came down to after dinner I'd have
Speaker 1: two pieces of fruits, which is as my roommate in
Speaker 1: college said, it's still weird, but within the realm and
Speaker 1: to this day, my kids love apples and I just
Speaker 1: can't do them. I can not apple pie maybe, but
Speaker 1: not a straight up apple I have. I've eaten my
Speaker 1: lifetime share and probably somebody else's lifetime share too. The doctor,
Speaker 1: a typical of many therapy experiences, gives prescriptions. Could you
Speaker 1: talk about some of the prescriptions? One is obviously called
Speaker 1: Rory about the apple. When you're interacting with a guy
Speaker 1: who has a boyfriend a girlfriend, could you tell what
Speaker 1: he tells you to do there? Oh my god. When
Speaker 1: I look back at this, I'm like, you know, I
Speaker 1: kind of I didn't have to do everything he said.
Speaker 1: But here's what Dr Rosen said. I I love this boy.
Speaker 1: I love him so much. She's in my law school
Speaker 1: we have like this great connection. But PSC has a
Speaker 1: girlfriend and he's very unsuitable in so many ways, but
Speaker 1: I just loved him, and so I knew I was
Speaker 1: going to be going out with him in a group
Speaker 1: of people that night. So I'm in group and I'm like, ah,
Speaker 1: the dreamy boy, and and Dr Rosen puts on his
Speaker 1: thinking face and he's thinking, and I think he's gonna
Speaker 1: tell me something very interesting about myself or some insight,
Speaker 1: or maybe he's gonna say I think you shouldn't go.
Speaker 1: And then I was gonna be like, fuck you, I'm
Speaker 1: totally going, and he didn't. He said, tonight, I want
Speaker 1: you to be honest with the smoker. We called him
Speaker 1: the Smoker. I said, okay, what should I tell him?
Speaker 1: And he said, tell him the truth that you are
Speaker 1: a cock teeth And everyone in my group like the
Speaker 1: sucks in the air in the room, and I think
Speaker 1: Rory and Carlos were both like, she can't say that,
Speaker 1: Dr Rosen, what are you doing? And I, because of
Speaker 1: my trying to please Noess, I'm like, I'm pissed because
Speaker 1: he's given me something that I don't think I can do.
Speaker 1: And and in the end, so we go off that night.
Speaker 1: I go out that night with the Smoker and We're
Speaker 1: in this cab with this other guy, and I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: am I going to do it? And part of me
Speaker 1: I wanted to go back to group and to show
Speaker 1: Dr Rosen, whatever you throw at me, I will do it.
Speaker 1: I am here to play and I had the pride
Speaker 1: of that. And and plus this guy did not like me.
Speaker 1: I mean he was not This was never gonna go anywhere,
Speaker 1: and I was sick of that. So I lean over
Speaker 1: and I tell him, I said, you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: total cock tease and like and then I like look
Speaker 1: out the window. I'm like, oh my god, what have
Speaker 1: I done? What have I done? Like? Why am I
Speaker 1: doing with this crazy therapist of mine? Has said? The
Speaker 1: other guy in the cab was sort of like what
Speaker 1: And the the guy that I loved, the Smoker, he
Speaker 1: didn't really react. Um. And when I got in bed
Speaker 1: that night, I was like, I cannot believe I did that.
Speaker 1: But part of me too, that was part of me.
Speaker 1: The other part of me was like I did have pride,
Speaker 1: like that was probably an insane thing to do, and
Speaker 1: that guy is gonna have a story about me for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life if he remembers it um,
Speaker 1: And I was like, what if he tells someone at
Speaker 1: law school that I said that? And then I was
Speaker 1: just like, I don't care. I'm on my side. Dr
Speaker 1: Roe isn't is on my side. I don't know what
Speaker 1: it's gonna take to get well. I thought he was
Speaker 1: going to prescribe me some pills, maybe some trasdone, and
Speaker 1: I would be out of there. And that's not how
Speaker 1: it worked out. And I decided that this was like,
Speaker 1: this is gonna sound very cheesy, but there's something like
Speaker 1: this is fun, this is this is interesting. I'm at
Speaker 1: least interesting now right like I've done something crazy, but
Speaker 1: at least I'm interesting. At least I'm alive. Okay. Reading
Speaker 1: the book, it doesn't seem like in real life you
Speaker 1: are a cock tease? Was he just saying that to ultimately,
Speaker 1: you know, challenge you or in retrospect, are you a
Speaker 1: cock tease? Or were you? No? That is one thing
Speaker 1: that I wish. I wish I could time travel and
Speaker 1: go back and ask him if he knows what a
Speaker 1: cock teas is because I was not. I was a
Speaker 1: single woman. I was by then people knew that I
Speaker 1: did very were well in law school because by then
Speaker 1: everyone knew I don't know how, but it was people
Speaker 1: knew I was the top spot, right. So so I
Speaker 1: had a reputation as a smart girl and a driven girl.
Speaker 1: And that's fine. But but when I think about like,
Speaker 1: I don't I and then my heart of hearts, I
Speaker 1: think that Dr Ross doesn't know what a cock tease is,
Speaker 1: and I think he just gave me something provocative to say.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do think maybe that's unfair. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's too harsh. What I did have a pattern of
Speaker 1: doing was chasing unavailable men, and he was just the
Speaker 1: next and the Smoker was the next in line. He
Speaker 1: had a girlfriend he was really loved and she was
Speaker 1: so beautiful, and so I think that he was trying
Speaker 1: to break that pattern. But I do think often of
Speaker 1: that word cock tease. I wasn't. I don't. My understanding
Speaker 1: of the word is I was just a nice girl
Speaker 1: who I gave him my notes. At this guy at
Speaker 1: the Smoker, I gave him my notes. Sometimes we'd have lunch.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a chatty person, so we would like
Speaker 1: make fun of our teachers. There was a girl in
Speaker 1: our law school class who would bring her money. We
Speaker 1: would talk about the bunny girl, and none of this
Speaker 1: seems like salacious. So I don't know why that word,
Speaker 1: And I wish I could go back and excavate that
Speaker 1: and figure out why that word if it just seemed
Speaker 1: provocative and or if he was just like saying if
Speaker 1: I would do it? Okay, The word in the group
Speaker 1: is is if you're really doing well, you'll graduate to
Speaker 1: have a second group and your goal, your goal is
Speaker 1: to qualify for a second group. One tell us about
Speaker 1: your desire to do that too. Aren't you thinking on
Speaker 1: some level this is gonna be more money and you know,
Speaker 1: we'll just sort of leave it at that. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: what's going on there? Yeah, they're definitely And certainly my
Speaker 1: experiencing group is different from my groupmates. But I was
Speaker 1: watching and there were people in my group, but when
Speaker 1: I started, three of the group members were in other groups,
Speaker 1: and I was sort of like, huh, you get to
Speaker 1: home twice it felt like they'd been anointed and they
Speaker 1: were chosen. Like that's a real big trigger for me,
Speaker 1: the idea that you have someone has been chosen for
Speaker 1: something that I haven't been chosen for. That will get
Speaker 1: me every time. And so while while I'm in my
Speaker 1: first year, wrapping up my first year, one of the
Speaker 1: guys in the group, Carlos Dr Rosen, has this intense
Speaker 1: conversation with him and invites him, invites him to join
Speaker 1: a second group, and I'm like, huh. It felt like
Speaker 1: he was going to be laughing me, and he was
Speaker 1: more beloved, and I just lost my mind, Like why
Speaker 1: don't you offer me this like deluxe treatment? It felt
Speaker 1: I wasn't really thinking about what the logistics of that
Speaker 1: would be or what it really meant. Um. I just wanted.
Speaker 1: I wanted all the opportunities that everybody else got. It
Speaker 1: was like super greedy like that. And by the time
Speaker 1: he offered it to me, there was a point at
Speaker 1: which he thought I was ready. Oh yeah. It was
Speaker 1: right after I had a sex dream of about Dr Rosen,
Speaker 1: or actually it wasn't about Dr Rosen. I had a
Speaker 1: very satisfying sex dream, one of my first ever about
Speaker 1: Luther Vandross who Because of that dream, I will love
Speaker 1: forever And I go to group and I talk about
Speaker 1: it because I see it as a symbol of my
Speaker 1: burgeoning sexuality. My repression is going to fall away. Look
Speaker 1: what Luther and I did, and I was so proud
Speaker 1: of myself. And at the end of the dream, Dr
Speaker 1: Rosen says, oh, that dreams about me, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I was so offended. I was like, don't ruin my dream.
Speaker 1: And so then we we go around and round about
Speaker 1: this dream and whether it's about him. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that Freudian people or therapists always think their dreams are
Speaker 1: always about them, um, And I didn't really. I was
Speaker 1: just mad. And then at the end when I finally
Speaker 1: accepted out, like, fine, Dr Rosen, I wish you would
Speaker 1: go down on me. I just gave into it. Then
Speaker 1: he proclaims I was ready for a second group. So
Speaker 1: then I was like, oh, you tricked me. You tricked me.
Speaker 1: But by the time he offered that, I had had
Speaker 1: an internship with a law firm where I got paid
Speaker 1: like big law firm books. So I had that cash
Speaker 1: just waiting around to just double up on my therapy. Okay,
Speaker 1: what is different about the second group from the first?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, the second group was so scary. It
Speaker 1: was so scary. It was all women. And when I started,
Speaker 1: one of the things Dr Rosen said to me was
Speaker 1: I went to my first group and it was like scary.
Speaker 1: There was a woman in there who was like a
Speaker 1: buddy of mine from from the twelve step program, and
Speaker 1: she already like I knew her in in our relationship,
Speaker 1: and then I get there and she's like already friends
Speaker 1: with everyone in the group, and I felt like I
Speaker 1: had intruded. I had a sense she didn't really want
Speaker 1: me there. And the women were just larger than life.
Speaker 1: They were incredible and complex and loud, and they got
Speaker 1: into a fight and they talked about sex I'd never
Speaker 1: heard of, and I was I felt like I was
Speaker 1: a little bitty kid, like a four year old who
Speaker 1: was sitting at the table with the adults. And I
Speaker 1: didn't know what I had done, and I wasn't expecting
Speaker 1: it at all. I thought it was gonna be this
Speaker 1: cozy women like a womb, and it was not like
Speaker 1: that at all. And I wanted to leave from the
Speaker 1: second I got in there. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that I thought was, why is this so different? And
Speaker 1: Dr Rosen said to me when I went back to
Speaker 1: my when I went to the next week, I went
Speaker 1: to my former group, and I was like, that sucked.
Speaker 1: I didn't like that for one second. And Dr Rosen
Speaker 1: said to me, I think you have more problems with
Speaker 1: women than you do with men. And I protested that vehemently.
Speaker 1: I was like, are you kidding? Look at the way
Speaker 1: these men treat me, look at what I've done, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. And he just like sat there, like I
Speaker 1: think what I think. You can you think what you think.
Speaker 1: But that's that's my take on you. And it's taken
Speaker 1: me about fifteen years to realize. I think that he
Speaker 1: was right. I think that he was right. Okay. One
Speaker 1: thing you mentioned, and it's really very interesting in the
Speaker 1: book is being a people pleaser. You tell us about
Speaker 1: being a people pleaser, where that came from and how
Speaker 1: you made progress there. Yeah, I I wonder where that
Speaker 1: came from. I think it's it's some of its culture.
Speaker 1: Some of it is kept Texas Catholic. Being a girl
Speaker 1: and being a pleaser. There's so many affirmations you get
Speaker 1: from the world by being a pleaser. People like people
Speaker 1: who are trying to please them. My teachers loved me,
Speaker 1: my friends who were the recipients of me trying to
Speaker 1: please them. You know, I was always the designated driver
Speaker 1: I you know, I would volunteer for things, thinking well,
Speaker 1: if I'm the designated driver, then I get to go
Speaker 1: to the party and they can't leave me behind. I
Speaker 1: was always motivated by this fear of abandonment, and so
Speaker 1: it's like over functioning and a lot of relationships. And
Speaker 1: one thing I loved about when I got to group,
Speaker 1: it was so obvious from that first day when I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to be the valedictorian group therapy and answering
Speaker 1: questions about my sex life with total strangers who were men,
Speaker 1: and I think I was I thought that when you
Speaker 1: went to therapy you had to do pure excavation. What
Speaker 1: does your dad do, what does your mom do? How
Speaker 1: did this impact you? And we do a little bit
Speaker 1: of that, but what what happens most often and probably
Speaker 1: seventy five percent of the time, we look at the
Speaker 1: relationships that we're having in the group in the moment
Speaker 1: with Dr Rosen and our peer groupmates, and it all
Speaker 1: comes out right there, so it doesn't really matter as
Speaker 1: much like, well, it was your mother's Swedish background part
Speaker 1: of the reason why you can't spend a penny, maybe,
Speaker 1: but what what about now? And so we would get
Speaker 1: into group and I remember one time I had a
Speaker 1: huge fight with Carlos. He had asked me to help him.
Speaker 1: He was doing something at home, like something decorating, and
Speaker 1: I had a law school exam the next day and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to go help him, but I went anyway.
Speaker 1: And I was so resentful and I was so mad
Speaker 1: and didn't he know how to test? And why didn't he?
Speaker 1: So we go into group and I'm getting ready to
Speaker 1: open my mouth to say I was so resentful that
Speaker 1: I did that just to please him, just because he's
Speaker 1: my friend, and I thought he wouldn't love me if
Speaker 1: I said no, and he Carlos opened his mouth and said,
Speaker 1: you know, Christie came over to help decorate, and she
Speaker 1: really fucked up the wreaths and I was like, excuse me,
Speaker 1: and we were I was so mad. I was like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? And he was they were
Speaker 1: having a party and they we were stringing these like
Speaker 1: ribbons on a wreath and I guess I didn't do
Speaker 1: it right. He was like, I thought you were in
Speaker 1: a sorority. I thought you could do stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And I was like, wait a minute, no, I'm mad
Speaker 1: at you because I didn't want to be there. I
Speaker 1: had a test. I had a crim log exam, and
Speaker 1: so we got to tease it out right there like
Speaker 1: all like I didn't really want to be there. I
Speaker 1: didn't set the boundary. I didn't do what I wanted.
Speaker 1: So when I went there and I did a sort
Speaker 1: of subpar job, and and I could have avoided all
Speaker 1: of if I had just said, this weekend doesn't work,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to help you and my exams are over,
Speaker 1: because I would have been. But I was always so
Speaker 1: afraid if I ever said no, I would never get
Speaker 1: another invitation, and not only that, then he would like
Speaker 1: stop being my friend, which is so immature, But that
Speaker 1: was me, at age, with a year of therapy under
Speaker 1: my belt, going to do these wreaths when I had
Speaker 1: a legit reason to say I can't do it today.
Speaker 1: Can we find some other time for me to help
Speaker 1: you decorate your house? It's crazy? Okay, you're very analytic. Uh,
Speaker 1: bubbly's got a bad connotation. But let's just say you're
Speaker 1: upbeat and you were very articulate. What would be the
Speaker 1: difference between the conversation you and me are having pre
Speaker 1: therapy and now we just wouldn't have this conversation. What
Speaker 1: I think I was so good at before therapy, was
Speaker 1: not seeing opportunities, so I would never have to step
Speaker 1: up like I would have. I would have never written
Speaker 1: a book. I would have just never I could I could.
Speaker 1: I had blinders on and I didn't see opportunities professional
Speaker 1: personal We just would we just it would have been
Speaker 1: impossible for us to have this conversation. I just would
Speaker 1: have blocked the opportunity. But long before we'd ever sit
Speaker 1: down together. But you mentioned that you were chatty with
Speaker 1: the smoker where you did you have the same personality
Speaker 1: now just different content or have you become more valuable
Speaker 1: as a result of therapy. I've definitely become more valuable, definitely,
Speaker 1: But some of it, I mean, I've always been sassy,
Speaker 1: and when I think back to my lunches with the smoker,
Speaker 1: I think about, like how I tried to connect with him,
Speaker 1: and most of what I recall was bringing to bear
Speaker 1: my sass and my analytics to really like make fun
Speaker 1: of other people, including myself. So there's a ton of
Speaker 1: self denigration. And I would I would tell him like
Speaker 1: I would maybe by then by I was dating a
Speaker 1: little bit, like going on blind dates, and they were
Speaker 1: always they were fine in the in the real world, honestly,
Speaker 1: they were just fine. They weren't love connections. But I
Speaker 1: would like play it up and I would tell him
Speaker 1: about these guys and it was so maybe that is why,
Speaker 1: maybe that's why Dr Rosen called me a cock tease,
Speaker 1: because I would, you know, we would play out these
Speaker 1: conversations that I was always the butt of the joke.
Speaker 1: I was always the poor smart girl who's dating dating
Speaker 1: the boy who's doesn't have a wallet or camp pay
Speaker 1: his rent. And it was just sort of like, not fully,
Speaker 1: I wasn't owning any of my competence or my for
Speaker 1: my full self. You know. It was like I was
Speaker 1: sort of playing at jackass because I thought it was entertaining,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it was. I mean, there's there's plenty
Speaker 1: of that to do, but there's it was my only mode. Okay,
Speaker 1: As a result of therapy, you end up having relationships
Speaker 1: to use. You use the vernacular, so I'll repeat it.
Speaker 1: You have a relationship, extended relationship, and then you ended
Speaker 1: by saying you're no longer gonna suck dirty dick. Tell
Speaker 1: us about that relationship and your revelations there. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think about that a lot, and I think about like
Speaker 1: my I think about when I think about what I
Speaker 1: put up with in relationships, what I thought I had
Speaker 1: to do to be a person deserving of relationships, I
Speaker 1: think about that exact thing, and I think about, you know,
Speaker 1: I had a boyfriend and I loved him. I did
Speaker 1: love him, and he did love me, and we were
Speaker 1: really ill suited for each other, in part because he
Speaker 1: didn't want to be in a relationship and I desperately
Speaker 1: wanted a boyfriend. I wanted the works, I wanted brunch,
Speaker 1: I wanted regular sex, I wanted presents on birthdays, and
Speaker 1: he just wanted to play video asky video games. And
Speaker 1: I kept thinking, as is my way, If I just
Speaker 1: do it right, if I could help him snap out
Speaker 1: of his bunk, or if I I could get him
Speaker 1: to go to more of his a A meeting, will
Speaker 1: He'll be this boy of my dreams. And it just
Speaker 1: it wasn't the case. And when he got really really depressed,
Speaker 1: like I am not proud of this, but I watched
Speaker 1: him like wake up in the morning, drink a cup
Speaker 1: of black coffee, didn't even have a toothbrush, don't know
Speaker 1: where the toothbrush went. The cat, his cat would like
Speaker 1: defecate in the living room. It just languished there and
Speaker 1: I'm there, right, I'm watching all of this. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: making judgments and thinking what am I doing here? Like?
Speaker 1: Why is this what I think I deserve? What am
Speaker 1: I doing? And there was one night where I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I know how I can fix this. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give him pleasure. And he hadn't showered in days,
Speaker 1: and you know, a body isn't A body that hasn't
Speaker 1: been showered has a lot of issues and you probably
Speaker 1: don't want to be that close to it. But I
Speaker 1: just was like gung ho, and that was really, like
Speaker 1: you know they say in the pro the twelve stepper,
Speaker 1: like that was a bottom. That was definitely a bottom.
Speaker 1: By the time I went to group and reported the
Speaker 1: first group, I was too scared to tell him because
Speaker 1: if you say that out loud, I I gave my
Speaker 1: boyfriend a blowjob when I didn't want to, when his
Speaker 1: body was unwashed, and he didn't seem all that into it,
Speaker 1: and my pure motive was to snap him out of depression.
Speaker 1: You can't say that in therapy and not have someone
Speaker 1: you know give you a side i and maybe suggest
Speaker 1: you take different action. And so in the afternoon group
Speaker 1: with the ladies, I told them about it, and they
Speaker 1: did react as you would imagine, like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you have to stop. And it was that that helped
Speaker 1: me let go of the relationship to like that very
Speaker 1: basic thing that's like on like sex in the city, right,
Speaker 1: the lesson over and over again, it's better to be
Speaker 1: alone than in a bad relationship. But I had to
Speaker 1: test that theory so many times and in so many ways.
Speaker 1: You reference yourself is frigid? Uh were you? I think? So?
Speaker 1: I think that I was scared. I think I don't
Speaker 1: know what that Maybe that's not totally the right word.
Speaker 1: But when I think about who I chose, I chose
Speaker 1: a man who did not want to have sex. That
Speaker 1: tells me that if I take the focus off him
Speaker 1: and put it on myself, I chose a man who
Speaker 1: didn't want to have sex. That tells me I don't
Speaker 1: want to have sex. And I watched my once I
Speaker 1: got closer to people, and I'm having relationships with people
Speaker 1: in group, and I got a roommate, which was amazing,
Speaker 1: and this wonderful woman from law school, and I'm able
Speaker 1: to like participate more in the social world of my
Speaker 1: law school classmates, and they're talking about they're wonderful getaways
Speaker 1: with their boyfriends, and I can tell they're talking about
Speaker 1: having hot sex, and I'm just like, oh, really, I
Speaker 1: watched my boyfriend play computer games and I slept like
Speaker 1: in head to toe flannel. I really do think that
Speaker 1: there was a frigid be born of repression and I
Speaker 1: just didn't have I hadn't come, I hadn't grown up,
Speaker 1: and I hadn't learned how to do a relationship in
Speaker 1: the way that I needed in order to be sexually
Speaker 1: expressive and have a sex life that made some kind
Speaker 1: of sense. Tell us about opera boy? Do you mean
Speaker 1: the one I married? No? No, wasn't there a guy
Speaker 1: his family was connected so that he could have really
Speaker 1: good tickets? Yes? Yes, yes, Oh my gosh. Um that
Speaker 1: so that relationship. You know, by then, each relationship I
Speaker 1: had a harder time. I mean, each relationship got better.
Speaker 1: I will say that each one got better, which is
Speaker 1: exactly what should happen. And I was always very invested
Speaker 1: in well, I'm recovered and I'm in therapy, so I
Speaker 1: deserve a good relationship. So I started dating this young
Speaker 1: man and he was sweet and kind and very well
Speaker 1: connected and very wealthy, and that was a step up
Speaker 1: because I had paid rent for my last boyfriend. And
Speaker 1: what was strange about our relationship There were several things,
Speaker 1: but one was there was no easy communication. For all
Speaker 1: that I've learned by then, I've been in therapy, I
Speaker 1: mean almost four years, and I've learned how to go
Speaker 1: and do things and emote and have relationships. And here
Speaker 1: comes this guy, and I felt like he was so respectable.
Speaker 1: He was another one who had impressive credentials, and I
Speaker 1: felt like I had just go along with what he
Speaker 1: was doing, and like we had a we had a
Speaker 1: situation where this is the best example. When we would
Speaker 1: be intimate, he would always have to flip me over
Speaker 1: so he couldn't look at my face. I don't know
Speaker 1: what was going on. And what's really cringey about that
Speaker 1: whole thing is I never asked. I never had a
Speaker 1: sense of my own voice. And I remember I would
Speaker 1: be in his bedroom with my face and his pillow
Speaker 1: because he flipped me over, and I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be doing this I and well, maybe I do,
Speaker 1: but I at least want to know what's happening and
Speaker 1: why aren't we talking about it, and I couldn't believe that.
Speaker 1: I couldn't use my voice just to say like, hey,
Speaker 1: what's this about for you? Or this is kind of
Speaker 1: hot maybe, but what's what is this about? Do we
Speaker 1: always have to have sex this way? I didn't say
Speaker 1: any of that, and it made me feel like, the
Speaker 1: hell is all this therapy for it? This is what
Speaker 1: my sex life is? And I hung on here we
Speaker 1: go again because I didn't want to be alone because
Speaker 1: now now I'm thirty four and that's even older than
Speaker 1: when I was thirty and doing dumb things with men,
Speaker 1: and it just felt like every time I felt like,
Speaker 1: this is my last chance, and if I can't make
Speaker 1: it work, there's no other men. It's not like I
Speaker 1: lived in a teeny tiny Mayberry. I lived in Chicago.
Speaker 1: There were men everywhere. But I just had this terrible
Speaker 1: kernel belief that this was my last chance and if
Speaker 1: I didn't make it work, it was because I hadn't
Speaker 1: worked hard enough. Okay, talking about the end of that relationship,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, this was so dark, and it seems
Speaker 1: like when I was writing it, I was like, this
Speaker 1: seems like it's not real. But we're at this fancy
Speaker 1: club in Chicago, and or we're walking into the health
Speaker 1: club and his friend stops us in the parking lot.
Speaker 1: He like, it seems like you know people who you know.
Speaker 1: He was a doctor, So all these doctors all know
Speaker 1: each other and they're all at the same places, and
Speaker 1: so they're these guys are chatting and they're talking about
Speaker 1: stocks and whatever, hospital politics, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the friend asked my boyfriend like, oh, tell me about
Speaker 1: your upcoming trip. And I'm like, what trip? And it
Speaker 1: turns out he had this whole trip planned that this
Speaker 1: friend knew about with another woman. And I'm like, this
Speaker 1: can't be. Is that his sister? Like you know you do?
Speaker 1: All those things were like how thick is my denial?
Speaker 1: It's so thick. I was like, well, maybe he's going
Speaker 1: with his sister. Well maybe that's part of a bus
Speaker 1: this thing to Cancun, and that's not where that's that's
Speaker 1: not the case. And when I find it's like it
Speaker 1: was snowing and it was like January, and I was
Speaker 1: just like, I give it, I give up. This is done.
Speaker 1: We're done. And I just like walked back to my
Speaker 1: car tell us who he was going with. That was
Speaker 1: a key element yeah, yeah, yeah. He was going with
Speaker 1: this like super hot, like hot in a way like
Speaker 1: I'm fine whatever, Maybe I'm hot, maybe I'm not. But
Speaker 1: this one who was like New York, she was super chic.
Speaker 1: They all knew her. She was one of those you
Speaker 1: know that there's always a woman who's in the boys circle,
Speaker 1: who's like everybody loves her, like she's cool as hell.
Speaker 1: And she's also she had this great hair, and she
Speaker 1: had this funky eyeglass company, and I'm just like, I
Speaker 1: cannot compete with that. And they were going to go
Speaker 1: off to Cancun and we give him if I just
Speaker 1: turned around, I get in my car, and he he
Speaker 1: was sort of like, what's wrong, Like hmmm. I mean,
Speaker 1: there were so many clues leading up to this that
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't even hardly blame this guy because
Speaker 1: look at me, Look how I look what I took.
Speaker 1: Look how I trained this guy to think I would
Speaker 1: be cool. I'd be totally cool with this, and needless
Speaker 1: to say, I'm proud to report I was not, and
Speaker 1: we did. We did break up that weekend. I think
Speaker 1: that was the first that's one of my only I
Speaker 1: initiated the breakup, Thank god, you know, I have to
Speaker 1: ask you may or may not know what ended up
Speaker 1: happening with that guy and that woman. Did they would
Speaker 1: get together? Did he ever get married? You know? I
Speaker 1: heard a couple of years ago I was that I
Speaker 1: was listening to a band in Hyde Park and someone said, oh,
Speaker 1: you used to date so and so and I was
Speaker 1: like yeah, and they were like, oh, yeah, he just
Speaker 1: recently got married and he moved to a different part
Speaker 1: of town. And I was like huh. And I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't want to act too interested when
Speaker 1: you hear about your ex, like oh, who did he marry?
Speaker 1: And Um, this person didn't know. They just heard the
Speaker 1: fact of his marriage. And I'll confess I googled it
Speaker 1: to try to find out. But I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I certainly wish him well. And um when I when
Speaker 1: the book was being published, my husband said, oh no,
Speaker 1: what if his wife reads this and figures out it's him?
Speaker 1: I was like, how would she do that? She was like, well,
Speaker 1: what if he flips her? I'm like that was his
Speaker 1: problem that and it's her problem, is not my problem. Okay.
Speaker 1: How many years after you start therapy do you start
Speaker 1: to date your husband? Okay? So I started therapy August
Speaker 1: of two thousand one, and I started dating my husband
Speaker 1: in March of two thousand seven. Okay, that's a long time.
Speaker 1: How did you ultimately connect with him and why did
Speaker 1: that work as opposed to the previous relationships. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: So we worked at the same law firm, and when
Speaker 1: I first met him, we were paired up as like
Speaker 1: associates who were supposed to shepherd the summer interns. So
Speaker 1: what that means is we had this unlimited budget to
Speaker 1: go do stuff with these young Harvard and UFC and
Speaker 1: you know, these young kids. So we'd like have to
Speaker 1: organize dinners and we went to this shop and or
Speaker 1: this diner in Chicago that only sold cereal, and so
Speaker 1: what we spent a lot of time together and that summer.
Speaker 1: I thought he was interesting. He was single, and there
Speaker 1: weren't that many single people in our firm. Everybody's like
Speaker 1: hooked up or married or whatever. So I'm always like,
Speaker 1: I was always trying to make myself like the single guys.
Speaker 1: But I thought he was real boring. He seemed to
Speaker 1: talk about golf a lot, and he didn't have a TV,
Speaker 1: and he didn't have a car, and I was like
Speaker 1: what is this? What? What? Like I I didn't get
Speaker 1: what he was doing. And then we went to that
Speaker 1: we went to one of those places. We took all
Speaker 1: the summer associates to that place. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: a Brazilian steakhouse where there's just like meat. We're there
Speaker 1: and he told this crazy like I thought of him
Speaker 1: as like super buttoned up conservative. He was from l
Speaker 1: a Um and so I just I couldn't quite get
Speaker 1: a beat on him. And he told this crazy story
Speaker 1: about his dad's colon oskar Be and the shaving thing.
Speaker 1: And I was like, huh, Like he was like a
Speaker 1: little edgier than I thought he would have like a
Speaker 1: story and it was like really funny, and it's such
Speaker 1: a dry since if he like, I'm more of a slapstick,
Speaker 1: say something outrageous and he just like deadpand it and
Speaker 1: I was like huh. And so that nothing really ever
Speaker 1: came with that, although he did ask me to dinner
Speaker 1: shortly thereafter that I was dating. I was dating the Flipper,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, I said yes to my husband.
Speaker 1: He wasn't my husband yet, right, So I say yes
Speaker 1: to John, thinking oh, this is gonna make the Flipper
Speaker 1: feel like, oh, I'm hot, he's gonna want to be
Speaker 1: with me. Maybe I will want to look at me
Speaker 1: when we have sex because I'm going on a date
Speaker 1: with another guy that didn't happen. And then I broke
Speaker 1: the date with John because the Flipper didn't care, and
Speaker 1: so John and I mean, the Flipper and I broke up.
Speaker 1: Oh no, before that, John invited me to the opera
Speaker 1: with a group of people, and I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'll go to the opera. It's January and Chicago. And
Speaker 1: I went to tell the Flipper, thinking he's not gonna care,
Speaker 1: and he didn't really care, but he did bite me
Speaker 1: to see the exact same opera from his parents, like
Speaker 1: third row seats, two days before John and I were
Speaker 1: going to go. So I was like, that's interesting, Maybe
Speaker 1: he does care, Like that's what that's recounted for love
Speaker 1: in that relationship. And so I went to the opera
Speaker 1: twice that week, same opera, two different seats, and and
Speaker 1: then when the Flipper and I broke up, I was
Speaker 1: just like, what about that guy John, Like maybe he's
Speaker 1: not so boring, and also maybe boring is okay? Like
Speaker 1: I had enough drama. I didn't need super flashy or
Speaker 1: fancy like what. It was just a nice guy and
Speaker 1: I we hung out one night with other people from
Speaker 1: the law firm, and he just had this like quiet
Speaker 1: confidence and every question I asked him he answered thoughtfully
Speaker 1: like and I was throwing real random stuff at him,
Speaker 1: like what's your religion? He was like Jewish. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was raised Jewish and this is in the middle
Speaker 1: of the House of Blues, And so I just was
Speaker 1: impressed by his candor and his sort of there's just
Speaker 1: no fluff about him. And then I think I think
Speaker 1: at that point, I was just so tired of all
Speaker 1: my shenanigans and all the dumb things I'd done that
Speaker 1: I was just ready just to shoot it straight. And
Speaker 1: I think I drew him to me and and it
Speaker 1: just sort of worked. I've done I've done enough work
Speaker 1: to know I'm not hiding. I'm not pretending. I'm certainly
Speaker 1: not going to tell you I'm not in therapy. We're
Speaker 1: just gonna we're just this is who I am, and
Speaker 1: like it or lump it because I'm not doing this.
Speaker 1: I'm not doing this not have a voice thing like
Speaker 1: ever again, Okay, h is he boring? Um? Is he No,
Speaker 1: I don't think. So it's funny when I say Dr
Speaker 1: Rosen's theory is if you're bored, it's a synonym for lonely.
Speaker 1: So now when I think, I put that through my filter,
Speaker 1: like I'm not bored with John, like he's I like
Speaker 1: his mind, I like how he thinks. He thinks so
Speaker 1: differently from the way that I do. So if we
Speaker 1: spend time together, um, which we do because we're married
Speaker 1: and we're raising children, I find him. I find him
Speaker 1: dynamic because he's not doing anything the way that I
Speaker 1: would or mostly the way I want him to. But
Speaker 1: I do not find him boring. Okay. One of the
Speaker 1: big points in the book is feeling good about about
Speaker 1: yourself to ultimately try to get a job. It's scadding,
Speaker 1: and you do. Now. I'm certainly where the firm because
Speaker 1: a good friend with Jason Flam's father's Joe Flam. Okay,
Speaker 1: but at this point you no longer work. It's scadden, correct,
Speaker 1: So I'm interested being an attorney myself. I haven't practiced
Speaker 1: for decades, but you know, you ultimately achieve the goal
Speaker 1: you set right after graduate school. Where are you at
Speaker 1: with practicing law today? Today? I'm a government lawyer. I
Speaker 1: work full time and it's after you know. It's a
Speaker 1: similar thing where once I left the University of Chicago
Speaker 1: studying humanities, by the time I got to Loyola, it
Speaker 1: felt like kind of not a walk in the park.
Speaker 1: That's overstating it, but it was like, very straightforward, what
Speaker 1: we're supposed here to do. I have that similar feeling
Speaker 1: about starting my career at scant where it was just
Speaker 1: so much coming at me and just thrown into the
Speaker 1: fire and hours and hours and hours of work, some
Speaker 1: of it boring, some of a document review, but just
Speaker 1: really just thrown in the deep end. And now as
Speaker 1: a government lawyer, it's like, oh, I understand what we're
Speaker 1: doing here. I'm supposed to do my job. I plug in,
Speaker 1: I do it, I go home. It's legit nine to five,
Speaker 1: which is awesome. Now it's it's not it's not sexy.
Speaker 1: It's not on the cover of the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1: But it works for me and it allows me to
Speaker 1: mother and to write and to you know, have dinner
Speaker 1: with my family every night. And how did it end
Speaker 1: its Scatton I had. I left there right in the session.
Speaker 1: I had my first child, and it was So I
Speaker 1: had my first child in two thousand nine, and things
Speaker 1: were so grim, and I came back from my maternity
Speaker 1: leave and I was working four days a week, which
Speaker 1: was offered by the firm, and a couple other women
Speaker 1: did it. But I could see the riding on the wall,
Speaker 1: which was there wasn't a lot of work to go around,
Speaker 1: like all the credit markets were tight, and so none
Speaker 1: of our clients wanted anything. They didn't want us to
Speaker 1: do anything, and I was doing a ton of pro
Speaker 1: bono work, and I could just tell I was at
Speaker 1: a disadvantage because I had been gone from eternity leave
Speaker 1: and then I came back and I was part time,
Speaker 1: and once things got cranking again, I wasn't gonna be
Speaker 1: anybody's go to. I wasn't. I just I had I
Speaker 1: always say I had fallen through the cracks um and
Speaker 1: if I had come back full bore in a different economy,
Speaker 1: it might have gone differently. But I could see the
Speaker 1: writing on the wall. So then I just that's when
Speaker 1: I said I should get out before before everything dry
Speaker 1: drives up. So I went to a smaller firm for
Speaker 1: a little while, and then eventually transition to governments you
Speaker 1: like practicing law. Well, no, I feel like I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to say yes. But the truth is there's I like.
Speaker 1: I like. I like the part of law that it's
Speaker 1: telling a story. I believe in storytelling. I love storytelling.
Speaker 1: It's my favorite thing. And whenever you're writing a brief,
Speaker 1: you're telling a story to the court, right your version
Speaker 1: of events. I like that. There's so much more to
Speaker 1: the practice of law. There's so much fighting, there's so
Speaker 1: much haggling, there's so much bureaucracy. That part I don't like,
Speaker 1: and that's more than six of my job. So and
Speaker 1: I don't like the other thing that I have found
Speaker 1: I have so little tolerance for. And this makes me
Speaker 1: think I must not like being a lawyer. Is I
Speaker 1: don't like dealing with all like courts where if your
Speaker 1: font size isn't right, your brief is rejected, or if
Speaker 1: you don't if you were two hours late. I mean, fine,
Speaker 1: I'm all for deadlines, but like, there's so much pickyune
Speaker 1: and judges have so much power over litigants and attorneys,
Speaker 1: the fiefdoms and the egos that are involved. If you
Speaker 1: don't like ego, you're in trouble. If you're a lawyer. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's use the example of a more Towels. He was
Speaker 1: a banker. His college professor, Yale said you should be right,
Speaker 1: said no, no, I gotta go for the money. Then
Speaker 1: he ultimately writes two books which are mega successful. So, hey,
Speaker 1: has the book reached or exceeded your expectations and will
Speaker 1: disaffect a future career plan? The book has done so
Speaker 1: much more than I would have expected. I had no idea.
Speaker 1: I had no idea what it meant to be the
Speaker 1: first to tell a version of a therapy story. Like
Speaker 1: the part of what I think the appeal of my
Speaker 1: book is nobody knows anything about group therapy. They just don't,
Speaker 1: So it's the first. And that I didn't know the
Speaker 1: power of that. I thought it was. I don't know
Speaker 1: what I thought, but I I didn't realize the power
Speaker 1: of that. And to have Reese Witherspoon endorsed my book
Speaker 1: and put her sticker on it catapulted this book so
Speaker 1: far beyond my my wildest dreams that I I hardly
Speaker 1: can believe it's even happening. And when I think about
Speaker 1: I keep saying to my husband, I was like, am
Speaker 1: I supposed to quit my job? Am I supposed to
Speaker 1: be writing full time? And you know, he's he's like
Speaker 1: the guy who's like, well, let's look at the spreadsheets.
Speaker 1: Let's think about this, you know. And I'm sort of like,
Speaker 1: my gut, my gut is telling me maybe we're moving
Speaker 1: in that direction. But I don't think it's not a
Speaker 1: foregone conclusion because you know, I carry the benefits. My
Speaker 1: kids need braces. You know. I don't take for granted
Speaker 1: that I have a decent, steady job that I like
Speaker 1: to point out to myself when I'm like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: squandering my potential, Like what if you know, I'm working
Speaker 1: on a brief for work and I'm like, oh, I
Speaker 1: should be writing a novel or doing my next thing.
Speaker 1: But the truth is I wrote group while I had
Speaker 1: this full time job. So maybe it's part of the
Speaker 1: secret sauce, and maybe it will preclude me. There may
Speaker 1: be something for me as a writer about the compression
Speaker 1: of time. The fact that I don't have as much
Speaker 1: may make me a better writer. I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: up in the air. Okay, you say you're the one
Speaker 1: carrying the benefits. What's your husband doing? So he's still
Speaker 1: at scadding, But what is he doing. He left scadding.
Speaker 1: He works for a company. We just the federal benefits
Speaker 1: felt like they were too good to pass up, and
Speaker 1: so I've I've carried us all. But he does have
Speaker 1: a job. He's he's a gainfully employed person. But is
Speaker 1: he a lawyer still? Uh No, he works more on
Speaker 1: the business side. He had gotten a j D m
Speaker 1: B A and he likes the NBA side of that
Speaker 1: much more than the j D because he's a smart man. Okay,
Speaker 1: on the first night of Hanukkah is when we're recording this,
Speaker 1: you're raising your kids Jewish. We do both. We have
Speaker 1: both traditions and um so we get to do all
Speaker 1: John's families obviously Jewish, and we've got all the Hanaka
Speaker 1: stuff ready to go. And I personally love that. I
Speaker 1: don't have any bags around Judaism, and I love you know,
Speaker 1: all the symbolism isn't fraught for me because nobody shoved
Speaker 1: it down my throat. So I'm way more pro Jewish.
Speaker 1: But the kids also like Christmas and my family has Christmas,
Speaker 1: so we just do it all. Okay, So you went
Speaker 1: to therapy, you still go to therapy. At this point,
Speaker 1: it's got to be like eighteen years, seventeen years, and
Speaker 1: at one point you were going three times a week.
Speaker 1: What do I know is a heavy therapy goer to
Speaker 1: begin with, there's a lot of negative judgment on the exterior, Hey,
Speaker 1: why are you going? Be you can talk to your friends,
Speaker 1: see you have to stop? Have you experienced that NonStop?
Speaker 1: Especially now, people say to me, wait, you went because
Speaker 1: you wanted relationship ships and you got them, so why
Speaker 1: on earth are you still going? And people love to
Speaker 1: focus on the money I'm putting in Dr Rosen's pocket,
Speaker 1: which I guess I get, but that also like obliterates me.
Speaker 1: It oblorates what I've gotten, what I've decided works for me.
Speaker 1: And when I think about it, to me, I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's the best argument for staying. Because I had a
Speaker 1: certain set of desires and un unmet longings when I started, right,
Speaker 1: I'm still a person with longings. There's lots of things
Speaker 1: I want, so I don't need group now to get
Speaker 1: those things. And when I think about people have also
Speaker 1: asked me all through this talking about the book, well
Speaker 1: are your groupmates your friends? Are they do you consider
Speaker 1: them friends? And that's a really interesting question, And where
Speaker 1: I come down on that is, they're They're like a
Speaker 1: third category that doesn't I don't have language for it.
Speaker 1: They're more than friends. I'm friendly with them, I travel
Speaker 1: with them sometimes, I take walks with them, whatever, have coffee,
Speaker 1: do things outside of group. But they're more than friends
Speaker 1: because they've seen me at my worst and they have
Speaker 1: we have this tie, and so it's deeper than a friendship.
Speaker 1: And I love my friends and I can tell them anything,
Speaker 1: but it's not the same. They haven't seen me interact
Speaker 1: in a sort of a close fish fowl like experiment.
Speaker 1: They haven't seen me do this process and deal with
Speaker 1: Dr Rosen in real time. And that intimacy that's built
Speaker 1: up over time, that's something way deeper than friendship. And
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, because I've been continuously going,
Speaker 1: I don't know how you keep that going. I believe
Speaker 1: I'm capable of deep intimacy inside and outside of group,
Speaker 1: but I don't. I don't know how you keep that
Speaker 1: going without the support of a group to sort of
Speaker 1: go process all that. I've never done it. Okay, And
Speaker 1: at this point is who is one of your goals?
Speaker 1: Do you have close friends? Can people come to your house? Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to say that that is the case.
Speaker 1: There are if my doorbell rings, I it has happened
Speaker 1: where someone stopped by. A couple of my groupmates actually
Speaker 1: very randomly lived nearby. They'll stop by and they'll bring me.
Speaker 1: The other day, someone brought me a copy of a
Speaker 1: like at Chicago Tribune article because my book was in there.
Speaker 1: So like, I thought you'd want this, I'm like, open
Speaker 1: the door. I mean, the pandemic is a problem because
Speaker 1: I can't invite people in. But there's the openness in
Speaker 1: me that I know that they're my people and I
Speaker 1: can be I can come right up close to them
Speaker 1: with my full self, and they've done the same for me,
Speaker 1: and that is that is worth every penny I've paid.
Speaker 1: I don't care how rich Dr Rosen gets. I have
Speaker 1: my friends, I have my life, I have my people.
Speaker 1: That's what I wanted. Okay, So how many times a
Speaker 1: week do you go now pre pandemic which has changed everything? Right?
Speaker 1: We so we I zoom in for twice a week.
Speaker 1: I'm in one group that meets twice a week and
Speaker 1: we zoom in now. Okay, and are these the same
Speaker 1: players that they started out or what degree are you
Speaker 1: the life, and everybody else is new. Interestingly, in my group,
Speaker 1: I am not the lifer. I'm about the mid I'm
Speaker 1: the midlifer. There are four members, four members who were
Speaker 1: there before I got there, and one of them is
Speaker 1: a charter member. Started in the eighties and this group
Speaker 1: or maybe it's ninety one. Maybe it's ninety one. Um
Speaker 1: and so it's a very stable group. That being said,
Speaker 1: people do move around. We had one member quit. We
Speaker 1: had a group member die, which was really terrible and
Speaker 1: really moving and an unbelievable experience. UM So people do
Speaker 1: come in and out. But for the most part, the
Speaker 1: core of like the there's four or five of us
Speaker 1: who are sort of like where the where the pillars there?
Speaker 1: And then okay, this begs the question was this is
Speaker 1: this the initial group or was this the woman's group? Uh?
Speaker 1: Is it half and half? Or how did it in
Speaker 1: with one of the groups? Right? So I this is
Speaker 1: the third group is in the book in part three.
Speaker 1: It's the third group that I joined that meets twice
Speaker 1: a week. There's one woman who was also in my
Speaker 1: very first group, and I'm no longer I let go
Speaker 1: of the women's group when I joined the twice weekly group,
Speaker 1: and then once I had my baby. When I had
Speaker 1: my first baby and went back to scadding to work,
Speaker 1: I dropped the the Um, the original group, because I
Speaker 1: just couldn't imagine having a baby and going to group
Speaker 1: through times a week and working. Even I had to
Speaker 1: cry uncle on that. So I've been going since since
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, I've been going just to my twice
Speaker 1: weekly group. And is your husband before you met him,
Speaker 1: he'd been in therapy and subsequent theater as he had
Speaker 1: any therapy, you know what he did some before we met,
Speaker 1: and you know he it sounds like from his reports
Speaker 1: he had a very positive experience, and he's he's always
Speaker 1: supported me, but it's my thing, and he doesn't. I
Speaker 1: am happy that he would never be the kind of
Speaker 1: person who's like, well, I guess I gotta go to
Speaker 1: At that being said, I think if I ever approached him,
Speaker 1: it was like, I think we should go together, like
Speaker 1: if something came up intractable in our marriage, or that
Speaker 1: it seemed clear we needed some support. I have no
Speaker 1: doubt he would be along for the game for that,
Speaker 1: maybe even suggested himself, but he's not felt the need
Speaker 1: since since we've been married. Okay, but I've had relationships
Speaker 1: and I've had a lot of therapy. Well you're interacting
Speaker 1: with somebody who say, man, they need therapy. Yes, well
Speaker 1: that too, Like there are you know, that's true, there are.
Speaker 1: And certainly I'm a person who has a tool, and
Speaker 1: I think everybody's problem. You know, I have a hammer.
Speaker 1: I think everybody's got a nail or whatever that's saying.
Speaker 1: Is so a lot of times when I'll see, you know,
Speaker 1: John struggling with something at work or with the kids
Speaker 1: or I mean he's a very self reliance, very composed person.
Speaker 1: But every now and then I'll think that would be
Speaker 1: awesome if you could just if you had a group
Speaker 1: or you could go and work on that, it would
Speaker 1: I mean, I have a I believe in group, right.
Speaker 1: I believe that catapults me and I've seen it catapult
Speaker 1: me from one place to another. And I think, God,
Speaker 1: what if John could do that and he could work
Speaker 1: out this issue? And every now and then I say
Speaker 1: that to him. But that's so so unpleasant for your
Speaker 1: spouse to push therapy on you, Like I don't really
Speaker 1: think it's holding him back, and he's certainly I'm either
Speaker 1: living I'm either a living testament to therapy or I'm
Speaker 1: not There's nothing I can say that would be more
Speaker 1: compelling than what's happened in my life. So Dr Rosen uh,
Speaker 1: he is an m D. He is a psychiatrist, which
Speaker 1: begs a question. Has he ever prescribed medication for you
Speaker 1: or other people in the group. Yeah, I've seen him
Speaker 1: prescribe medication. I first got medication after I had my
Speaker 1: babies and I was suffering with postpartum depression, and he
Speaker 1: did prescribe drugs for me, and I used them to
Speaker 1: get through that initial period of just I don't know,
Speaker 1: getting through that early baby stage. Yeah, he definitely, and
Speaker 1: I've seen him do it for other people as well.
Speaker 1: How does this change? How's your therapy experience change your
Speaker 1: relationship with your family? Yeah? You know, I think that
Speaker 1: when my experience of being in therapy is that I
Speaker 1: became unthawed and I became realer and more of who
Speaker 1: I was, and that affected every single one of my relationships.
Speaker 1: And I think I learned how does that boundaries and
Speaker 1: speak up for myself? And so I learned how like
Speaker 1: with my siblings, we used to, you know, whenever siblings
Speaker 1: would talk, and we'd figure out what were you getting
Speaker 1: mom and Dad for Christmas? And I used to just
Speaker 1: go along with what everybody else said, but I think
Speaker 1: I learned how and none of this was like super dramatic,
Speaker 1: but I was like, I have an idea, why don't
Speaker 1: we do this? Why don't we send them to Marfa?
Speaker 1: Or why don't we send them to Vegas? Or just
Speaker 1: just having a voice in all my relationships, And it
Speaker 1: was mostly positive. I didn't have an experience where like
Speaker 1: I got into therapy and I lost my family of origin.
Speaker 1: Like I think I just became more myself and gave
Speaker 1: more of myself to them. And do they judge you
Speaker 1: for being in therapies? A lot of people say your therapy,
Speaker 1: you're less than sure. I think they're well, here's the
Speaker 1: thing my family is, So what's the word private or reserved?
Speaker 1: I have no idea if they're judging me, We're not open.
Speaker 1: We're not open at all. I am because I'm just
Speaker 1: like all over the place. But that's an important value
Speaker 1: to me. I have no idea what my parents think,
Speaker 1: or my brother or my sister. They've never told me.
Speaker 1: We don't have the kind of relationship where that kind
Speaker 1: of sharing is even on the table, so I can.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes I think they must think I'm crazy, um,
Speaker 1: and sometimes I'm like maybe they admire me, Like I
Speaker 1: I really, I honestly have no idea. So how much
Speaker 1: do you pay for one session? Today? One session is
Speaker 1: nine bucks? Okay? Now you make the point in the
Speaker 1: book when you start, you're in law school, you're borrowing
Speaker 1: the money for law school, and then you borrow the
Speaker 1: money to go to therapy. That must have have been
Speaker 1: a big step. How to to take that stuff? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I just once I I went, I knew
Speaker 1: I could afford the first meeting. The first meeting was
Speaker 1: at the time it was seventy bucks. I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'll go. Maybe he can tell me. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'll just go. And it wasn't like I committed for
Speaker 1: a long term. But then once I understood group would
Speaker 1: be seventy bucks a session, maybe it was even sixty five.
Speaker 1: I think it might have been sixty five. And once
Speaker 1: I understood the cost and it was gonna be monthly,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I was curious, and he promised
Speaker 1: me that he could change my life, and I just
Speaker 1: felt like, well, what do I do? Oh? And I
Speaker 1: asked him. I said to Dr ros I was like,
Speaker 1: how am I gonna pay for this? And he said, well,
Speaker 1: you're a law students and I was like yeah. He said,
Speaker 1: I know other patients of mine who have talked to
Speaker 1: their their institutions and there's like sometimes there's health care loans.
Speaker 1: I don't even know. I mean, I get why he
Speaker 1: knew that, but like, I'm glad I asked because I
Speaker 1: went to talk to the dean of my school and
Speaker 1: then there was a way to get a private loan
Speaker 1: to cover healthcare expenses. And that's exactly what I did,
Speaker 1: and best money I ever spent, ever borrowed and then spent. Okay,
Speaker 1: you made the point earlier that everyone loves their therapist,
Speaker 1: and I certainly know from experiences there's a better therapist
Speaker 1: and worst therapist, and there's a fit. So my question,
Speaker 1: are you now like those people? My therapist is the best?
Speaker 1: Group is the best? And to what degree are you
Speaker 1: saying that? And to what degree are your proselytizer, Hey,
Speaker 1: come into my group where you should be in a group.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, no, no, no, no. I did early
Speaker 1: on recommend Dr Rosen, like just so convinced that this
Speaker 1: these people and their issues with deprivation and intimacy. They're
Speaker 1: perfect for group, and I would give them Dr Rosen's
Speaker 1: number and they would they would have one conversation and
Speaker 1: they would just be just it's not for me. They
Speaker 1: didn't like him. One of them saw him one time
Speaker 1: was like m hmmm, and I was so it like
Speaker 1: offended me, or offend is not the right word. I
Speaker 1: felt so like, oh, like, you don't love it like
Speaker 1: I do. And I just decided. Then this was years ago,
Speaker 1: this might have been two thousand two. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is not for everyone. I don't know what anybody needs.
Speaker 1: It is a real scary proposition to say, hey, come
Speaker 1: do your therapy in a circle with six strangers. That's
Speaker 1: that is not for everybody. That is not everybody's cup
Speaker 1: of tea. I have I certainly have made it clear
Speaker 1: that like, I enjoy what happens in my therapy, but
Speaker 1: I haven't recommended him in years and years and I'm
Speaker 1: not starting now. Then, when you did recommend him, were
Speaker 1: you comfortable hypothetically that someone might be in your group
Speaker 1: or was the rule that you can see Dr Rosa
Speaker 1: but not in my group. Oh my god, yes, you're right.
Speaker 1: I there were people who I was like, Oh, no,
Speaker 1: if this skinny ass bitch comes into my group, We're
Speaker 1: gonna have such a problem because I'll be so jealous
Speaker 1: of her that what I do think that some of
Speaker 1: that calculus early on was thinking, Oh, if some really
Speaker 1: pretty girl comes into group and he's younger than I am,
Speaker 1: and just that would just get very complicated. So that's
Speaker 1: probably another reason I hadn't really totally consciously thought of that.
Speaker 1: But I don't want some of these jokers showing up
Speaker 1: in my group, and I don't get to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's another thing you bring up in the book. Your
Speaker 1: anger where you're throwing and breaking dishes. Was that situational
Speaker 1: or did you have underlying anger issues that Dr Rosen
Speaker 1: in the group helped you with. I think both. I
Speaker 1: think it was situational and I think I had pent up.
Speaker 1: When I look back now and think about what Bulimia
Speaker 1: really was, I think it was rage and like, that's
Speaker 1: such a violent thing to do, to make yourself throw up,
Speaker 1: And I think, oh, in my mind, I feel like
Speaker 1: that's rage. And so I think all my life I
Speaker 1: had swallowed anger. I had the idea that good girls
Speaker 1: aren't angry. And don't make mom and dad mad, and
Speaker 1: try to be a good girl. And I had all these,
Speaker 1: all these reasons not to feel anger. And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of women have it, and since being in group,
Speaker 1: I've learned a lot of men have it too. It's
Speaker 1: very hard to know what to do with anger. I
Speaker 1: had no idea, and so by the time I got
Speaker 1: to group, and I had all this support and feelings
Speaker 1: were encouraged and celebrated and lauded by the time I
Speaker 1: got there and some of it eked out. Then I
Speaker 1: just couldn't stop the flood, which is a really great thing,
Speaker 1: but really terrifying. It was very explosive. Okay, so now
Speaker 1: your book is both published and successful. The nature of
Speaker 1: having a project with a company is they set up interviews.
Speaker 1: As something becomes successful, there's further interactions. Some is just
Speaker 1: hit and run. You get a one three minute segment
Speaker 1: on TV. Forget that. Generally speaking, the people you've been
Speaker 1: interacting with promoting the book, do they get you or it?
Speaker 1: Do they want to go deep? Did they not understand it?
Speaker 1: You know what, that's a great question what I learned
Speaker 1: early on. I remember talking about this in group. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, my God, everyone has their own agenda.
Speaker 1: Everyone in the group is laughing like yeah, Like some
Speaker 1: people when I talked to them about the book, maybe
Speaker 1: we'll talk for thirty minutes, and they seem to just
Speaker 1: think it's a book about eating disorders. And I'm fine
Speaker 1: to go there. There's plenty and there's plenty of material,
Speaker 1: but I don't think of it as an eating disorder book. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I always talk to someone else and they
Speaker 1: would they wanted to talk all about privacy and privacy
Speaker 1: and privacy because they were interested in all the complicated
Speaker 1: privacy parts. And so I do think that people people
Speaker 1: are obviously projecting into any book they read, but certainly
Speaker 1: something about therapy. People who have had therapy, people have
Speaker 1: such strong feelings about therapy and their therapists. I think
Speaker 1: it might make this book a little bit right for
Speaker 1: lots of extra projection and a lot. A lot of
Speaker 1: times I get questions where the person seems to already
Speaker 1: know the answer, and I can tell they're just not quite,
Speaker 1: like when they're asking me about, oh, you wrote all
Speaker 1: about your groupmates, and I was like, well, actually I
Speaker 1: didn't write all about my groupmates. I wrote about I
Speaker 1: didn't use composite characters. But I used my groupmates. But
Speaker 1: I didn't tell why they were in therapy or what
Speaker 1: they were doing. I said what they did for me
Speaker 1: in my story, and that maybe that's obscured in the
Speaker 1: in the narrative, but to those people, I'm just like, no, No,
Speaker 1: that's not anybody's real name, and that's not their story.
Speaker 1: It's my story and what they gave me. And have
Speaker 1: you heard from readers. Yeah, I've heard from readers, and
Speaker 1: I'm really so moved. I'm a huge reader myself, and
Speaker 1: I've only reached out, like I've sent three tweets thanking
Speaker 1: authors for their for their work. I've never written long
Speaker 1: letters or d m s or whatever to authors, and
Speaker 1: people have really told me really beautiful things about their
Speaker 1: own life and what my story mento them. And it
Speaker 1: has bowled me over. And I feel really lucky and
Speaker 1: really humble that that that it could omit this to somebody.
Speaker 1: And has your success change your personal interactions? Once again,
Speaker 1: it's covid era with the outside, and has it changed
Speaker 1: your interactions with the group, because it obviously is. Having
Speaker 1: a success would, and a public success would affect people's
Speaker 1: perception of your status in addition, your own personal assessment
Speaker 1: of your status. Yeah, I think that the outside of group,
Speaker 1: I have no idea because I never see anybody, although
Speaker 1: I have. You know, sometimes my friends will text me
Speaker 1: and they'll say, oh, I don't want to bother you.
Speaker 1: I know you're busy being famous, like or they're like,
Speaker 1: I saw a picture of Reef Witherspoon holding your book,
Speaker 1: Sorry to bother you, And I'm like, no, I still
Speaker 1: want to hear about the construction of your mudroom or
Speaker 1: what kind of cookies you're making to get through covid um.
Speaker 1: But that's been like little tiny ripples um. But in group,
Speaker 1: it's been very interesting because I all the issues that
Speaker 1: I'm bringing these days really are related to the book,
Speaker 1: like oh my gosh, some trolls that x y Z
Speaker 1: to me, or I'm going on Canadian television tomorrow. And
Speaker 1: I keep thinking that the group is going to have
Speaker 1: a backlash, like oh my god, shut up about your book,
Speaker 1: but they just continue to be like study and loving
Speaker 1: and um. The book is now a part of our
Speaker 1: group because it has affected all of us, and I'm
Speaker 1: the mouthpiece for this process that we're still engaged in.
Speaker 1: And it's been really and they've all read the book,
Speaker 1: and they've known about it since I started writing it
Speaker 1: five years ago. So in some ways it feels like
Speaker 1: a group project, and it's it's as much a part
Speaker 1: of our group and the the fabric of the group
Speaker 1: as members who have left that we still talk about
Speaker 1: or things that have happened. It's like an artifact from
Speaker 1: and of the group. And what did Dr Rosen say
Speaker 1: out the book? If anything, he said, he's always been
Speaker 1: very encouraging. One of the first things I said was, well,
Speaker 1: I should do some research on like the history of
Speaker 1: group therapy and I don't know theoretic underpinnings of what
Speaker 1: we do here. And he was like, don't do that,
Speaker 1: and I was like why. It's like, just tell your story.
Speaker 1: Tell your story and don't try to be a scientist
Speaker 1: about it, which I think was very good advice. That's
Speaker 1: one of the great things about the book. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I what would it would just be so different
Speaker 1: and that's not my lane anyway, and when so he
Speaker 1: read it all along, and I asked him to read
Speaker 1: it when we sold it, and I said, can you
Speaker 1: please read this as the therapist of all the characters
Speaker 1: in the book to be sure that I haven't crossed
Speaker 1: a line or just protect your patients and what I've
Speaker 1: done in this book. And so he did that reading
Speaker 1: for me, and he gave me a couple of pieces
Speaker 1: of feedback. Interestingly, none of them about my groupmates, um,
Speaker 1: two of them. Like one of them just about my parents,
Speaker 1: like are you sure you want to say you live
Speaker 1: in Dallas? I'm like, okay, why why? Who do who cares?
Speaker 1: I'm not from Houston? And so then, um, when the
Speaker 1: book was coming out some one day, so this would
Speaker 1: have been like in August. The book came out in October.
Speaker 1: One of the groupmates said, hey, Christie, asked Dr Rose
Speaker 1: and how he feels about your book? And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: so I was like, how do you feel about my book?
Speaker 1: And he he did his like therapeutic sighing and like
Speaker 1: I feel I feel happy, I feel grateful, and I
Speaker 1: feel proud. And that was like, that was like a
Speaker 1: really great moment. I was really glad that my groupmate
Speaker 1: prompted me. And somebody said, asked him how he feels,
Speaker 1: like what if this becomes a movie? Asked him how
Speaker 1: he feels about that? So like, okay, how do you
Speaker 1: feel about the prospect of this ever being a movie.
Speaker 1: I mean, this isn't all theoretical, right, And he said
Speaker 1: I feel happy and I feel scared. So I was like,
Speaker 1: me too. And since it's a line with Wes Witherspoon, uh,
Speaker 1: traditionally she makes movies. Will there be a potential movies
Speaker 1: or a movie in development? There's not a movie in development.
Speaker 1: But I certainly feel like, you know, this has already
Speaker 1: shot me into the solar system beyond my dreams. As
Speaker 1: I said, so, I'm like every now and then, I'm
Speaker 1: like I let myself dream, like, ah, wow, well who
Speaker 1: could play me? I was on some webinar and someone
Speaker 1: was like, everybody hood in the chat who you think
Speaker 1: could play Christie? And people were saying like Sandra Bullock
Speaker 1: and Julia Roberts, And I was like, that's so fun
Speaker 1: to think about, Like I think, I think seven year
Speaker 1: old Who's lost is not the best role for Julia Roberts,
Speaker 1: but it's fun to dream about. Okay, Christie, this has
Speaker 1: been wonderful. I could talk to you for days more.
Speaker 1: These are the real issues as opposed to you know,
Speaker 1: possessions or status, etcetera. So thanks so much for coming up.
Speaker 1: Thanks for everything I appreciate being here. Okay, till next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob left six