Speaker 1: Welcome to The Laverne Cox Show, a production of Shondaland
Speaker 1: Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. Hello, Hello, hello, everyone, and
Speaker 1: welcome to season two of The Laverne Cox Show.
Speaker 2: We are back. We're back. It's been a minute.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry it took me so long, but girlfriend's been busy.
Speaker 1: She's been booked and busy. As the kids say that,
Speaker 1: it was so important for me to do another season,
Speaker 1: and I am so excited. So this season, the second
Speaker 1: season of The Laverne Cox Show, we're doing things a
Speaker 1: little differently. We're going to have some episodes where I
Speaker 1: just talk to you about what's going on with me,
Speaker 1: where I'm at, what we're doing. And we thought the
Speaker 1: first stream of consciousness, if we've want to be James
Speaker 1: James Joyce about it, I wanted to talk about how
Speaker 1: I'm approaching this podcast differently and overall, how I'm approaching
Speaker 1: life differently. We wrapped the first season of the podcast
Speaker 1: at the end of twenty twenty one, and then I
Speaker 1: started a new job as the host of EA's Red
Speaker 1: Carpet and that was really different and it's turned out
Speaker 1: to be a tremendous amount of fun. And then we
Speaker 1: did an interview show called if We're Being Honest that
Speaker 1: was part of my deal with E and had a
Speaker 1: lot of fun with that. Ended a bunch of other
Speaker 1: things in twenty twenty two, like having a Mattel Barbie
Speaker 1: doll created in my image that premiered to coincide with
Speaker 1: me turning fifty the Big five. Oh, I turned fifty
Speaker 1: years old in twenty twenty two. Of all the things
Speaker 1: that happened in twenty twenty two, that was like, I
Speaker 1: don't even know how to say accept.
Speaker 2: I went in.
Speaker 3: I was like, I'm gonna be like.
Speaker 1: Happy and proud and evolved and like go into fifty
Speaker 1: guns blazon and I did and we had like a
Speaker 1: I don't usually do birthday parties, and I had a
Speaker 1: big fiftieth birthday party that was Barbie themed and we
Speaker 1: recreated my Barbie outfit life size, and I invited my
Speaker 1: friends and my mom was there and my boyfriend and
Speaker 1: it was great and there was so much love, and
Speaker 1: I was feeling really positive about turning fifty, or so
Speaker 1: I thought, And about three weeks late and not even
Speaker 1: a full month later, I kind of had a bit
Speaker 1: of a breakdown, meltdown, spiritual awakening I love you know,
Speaker 1: reference Berne A. Brown a lot, and she talks about
Speaker 1: having like a breakdown slash spiritual awakening. I don't know
Speaker 1: how spiritual awakening it was, but it definitely was a
Speaker 1: breakdown meltdown where I kind of just lost it and
Speaker 1: I had to kind of go away.
Speaker 3: For a little bit.
Speaker 1: I had to like just like stop for a minute
Speaker 1: and get myself together. And sometimes we have to just
Speaker 1: acknowledge that everything has kind of fallen apart and we
Speaker 1: have to put ourselves back together again. And that happened
Speaker 1: about three weeks a month after I turned fifty, and I.
Speaker 3: Had to, you know, cancel some things.
Speaker 1: And there's so many things around that, and have a
Speaker 1: lot of guilt around that, and I'm like that part
Speaker 1: of the reason, like it's been a year since we
Speaker 1: had the podcast. I mean it took like a month off,
Speaker 1: but I also had tons of other obligations, right, So
Speaker 1: I'm really busy. I have a really big life, and
Speaker 1: I'm really grateful for it. It's everything I've dreamed of. But
Speaker 1: with a big life comes a tremendous amount of pressure.
Speaker 1: So there's pressure that I put on myself to deliver
Speaker 1: and to prepare and it can sometimes be an unhealthy perfectionism.
Speaker 1: Again to reference Brene Around Brene distinguishes between perfectionism and
Speaker 1: healthy striving. She says that like perfectionism is when you
Speaker 1: want to do everything perfectly to shield yourself from shame,
Speaker 1: blame and judgment, and healthy striving is showing up, allowing
Speaker 1: yourself to be seen doing your very best and knowing
Speaker 1: that that's enough. And a lot of the way that
Speaker 1: I've worked throughout my life, and I've been aware of
Speaker 1: this for a long time, but it's like the story
Speaker 1: that I have told myself my whole life is that
Speaker 1: I'm black, I'm trans I'm a woman. I have to
Speaker 1: work four times as hard as everybody else.
Speaker 3: I have to be prepared. I can't make a mistake.
Speaker 1: And even though I've known intellectually that this is a tragic,
Speaker 1: deeply unhealthy, problematic story, to tell myself walking that path,
Speaker 1: knowing and having it really be embodied right. And that's
Speaker 1: what's been the difference too. With sematic therapy I've been
Speaker 1: doing since twenty sixteen. If you recall, in the first
Speaker 1: season of this podcast, I spoke with my therapist Jennifer
Speaker 1: burdon Flier two different podcasts about the trauma resiliency somatic
Speaker 1: therapy work that I do, and it's really about landing
Speaker 1: in the body right that eighty percent of our information
Speaker 1: comes from the body to the head and twenty percent
Speaker 1: from the head to the body, right, so our body
Speaker 1: keeps the score all that you know. It's like, even
Speaker 1: though intellectually I know that I can't continue to tell
Speaker 1: myself the story that I can't make a mistake, I
Speaker 1: can't fuck up because of all these identity things like
Speaker 1: having my body know it, having my nervous system know it,
Speaker 1: and having my nervous system fire and wire in different
Speaker 1: ways so that the default setting right when there's pressure,
Speaker 1: when there's stress, is like to tell myself that story
Speaker 1: and freak myself out and release a lot of adrenaline,
Speaker 1: a lot of cortisol and deplete myself that after fifty years,
Speaker 1: that just doesn't work anymore. It's not sustainable in terms
Speaker 1: of overall health. If we remember the first season, this
Speaker 1: podcast was so much about me trying to get myself together,
Speaker 1: like so many of the guests I had on those
Speaker 1: guests were about me trying to work through my shit.
Speaker 1: And the Nadingburg Harris episode where we talked about asis
Speaker 1: adverse childhood experiences and how big doses of adversity in
Speaker 1: childhood basically constantly living in survival mode, in flight or
Speaker 1: freeze mode, how that can have negative health consequences throughout
Speaker 1: our lives and if we don't figure out a way
Speaker 1: to live differently that like that toxic stress can kill
Speaker 1: us us literally And so knowing that and absorbing all
Speaker 1: that information, continuing my somatic therapy, trying to have the
Speaker 1: resources and the tools that I've been learning, like trying
Speaker 1: to like have them make a difference in how I
Speaker 1: live my life on a day to day basis. Is
Speaker 1: the work, and so much of where I'm at now
Speaker 1: is like, Okay, how do I just let shit go
Speaker 1: and quiet thoughts. We can think something and it can
Speaker 1: completely shift our nervous system. I can think a thought
Speaker 1: about all the things I have to do next week,
Speaker 1: or like the show have to go and shoot in
Speaker 1: Savannah and all the podcast episodes we have to do,
Speaker 1: and the other show that I have to shoot and
Speaker 1: this other project that I have going. When I start
Speaker 1: thinking about all that stuff, I feel my nervous system
Speaker 1: ramp up.
Speaker 3: I have to stop myself.
Speaker 1: And this is the thing that my therapist tells me
Speaker 1: that I'm getting better at that. I'm tracking what is
Speaker 1: going on my body. If you remember, tracking is one
Speaker 1: of the tools of the community Resiliency model, one of
Speaker 1: those six tools we talked about in that episode Go
Speaker 1: reference the episodes with Jennifer Burned Flyer that I have
Speaker 1: to track and know what's going on in my body
Speaker 1: and feeling myself the ramp up, my brain becoming flooded
Speaker 1: with thoughts, worry, anxiety, and the anxiety feels like there's
Speaker 1: so much to do. I can never get it done.
Speaker 1: I'm going to fail, I'm going to suck. Like it
Speaker 1: just happened. Before I went on to record this, I
Speaker 1: felt myself ramping up.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, okay, girl, no, don't do it. Let
Speaker 3: it go.
Speaker 1: What's right in front of me, and trying to focus
Speaker 1: on that and bringing the noise down, And I think
Speaker 1: like the work is to quiet those thoughts as much
Speaker 1: as possible, or try to let them just sort of
Speaker 1: pass through me. Feelings aren't facts and thoughts aren't commands,
Speaker 1: So trying to just kind of clear my mind because
Speaker 1: it really feels like all those thoughts are just not useful.
Speaker 1: I had this moment in my journey, like maybe six
Speaker 1: months ago, four months ago, however long ago with something
Speaker 1: that I read years ago, just finally clicked in around
Speaker 1: thoughts and just like, these thoughts are not serving me
Speaker 1: and they are actually bumping me out of my resilient zone.
Speaker 1: So I'm being bumped out of my resilient zone into
Speaker 1: high zone constantly with my own thoughts. So wipe my
Speaker 1: brain thoughts and just like the consciousness. I actually, in
Speaker 1: preparation for the podcast that I just did with Glennon Doyle,
Speaker 1: she had an episode of her podcast We Can Do
Speaker 1: Hard Things with Doctor Becky and they were sort of
Speaker 1: talking about thoughts and how the three rings circus and
Speaker 1: I talk about this with Glennon Doyle in the podcast.
Speaker 1: But the three rings a of like what it means
Speaker 1: to be human and the three ring circuits's thoughts, emotions,
Speaker 1: and then like everything else that's happening in the outside world.
Speaker 1: Lennon was sort of talking about like this one side
Speaker 1: of her that thinks one way, on the other side
Speaker 1: that thinks another.
Speaker 3: Way, sort of fighting each other.
Speaker 1: All of it's like not really helping her, but then
Speaker 1: like she's watching herself. That part of herself that watches
Speaker 1: herself understand this as an outside world, that part of
Speaker 1: herself is a soul or pure consciousness, and I love
Speaker 1: the idea of that being pure consciousness. And in transcendental meditation,
Speaker 1: there's an idea around getting to sort of pure consciousness, right,
Speaker 1: like having the mind just be quieted and getting into
Speaker 1: the space of pure consciousness so we sort of observe.
Speaker 1: It really actually sort of reminds me of Neo. I
Speaker 1: didn't think I'd be talking about the matrix, but like
Speaker 1: that moment when Neo realizes he's the one, that he's
Speaker 1: the chosen one, he like begins to like observe. He
Speaker 1: moves every every kind of slows down around him, and
Speaker 1: then he can see the bullets coming, he can see
Speaker 1: the punch is coming, and then he can dodge them.
Speaker 1: It's this peaceful, calm state of pure consciousness. That's what
Speaker 1: it sort of feels like when I'm in that place
Speaker 1: where I kind of let the thoughts go, allow myself
Speaker 1: to have feelings, but not let those feelings bump me
Speaker 1: out of my resilient zone. The idea is that we
Speaker 1: widen the resilient zone, right, so that it's wider and
Speaker 1: so my capacity for life or emotion for the hard
Speaker 1: things gets bigger because my resilient zone gets bigger. And
Speaker 1: it's so interesting because when I think about it, I
Speaker 1: think about something I know I probably said a rezillion
Speaker 1: times in the first season of the show, something a
Speaker 1: therapist said to me years ago, Carolyn Irlick, and she
Speaker 1: said that we're not living in reality when we're ruminating
Speaker 1: on the past, making positive or negative predictions of the future,
Speaker 1: and reading people's minds. Our work is to stay present, curious,
Speaker 1: and non judgmental. Really, so much of the ramping for
Speaker 1: me is like the anxiety about the future. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to be enough, I'm going to fail. Fear of
Speaker 1: failure is huge for me. A fear of just being
Speaker 1: bad at what I do is just it can overtake me.
Speaker 1: And the Red Carpet brought up a lot of that.
Speaker 1: The first season of this podcast brought up a lot
Speaker 1: of that for me. The way I prepare for the
Speaker 1: first season this podcast, I read everything, watched everything, try
Speaker 1: to just be over prepared and know the guests work
Speaker 1: better than they did, you know, and I love being prepared,
Speaker 1: But the way I did it was coming from a
Speaker 1: place of scarcity and from I have to work harder
Speaker 1: because of I'm black, I'm trans on whatever, and not
Speaker 1: coming from a place of joy. And one of the
Speaker 1: best gifts my boyfriend, my current boyfriend gives to me.
Speaker 1: A lot of gifts he gives to me, but he
Speaker 1: like says, babe, have fun, have fun. What's the point
Speaker 1: if you're not having fun? And what I learned early
Speaker 1: on as an artist, like studying classical ballet as a
Speaker 1: kid and studying acting and performing growing up, is that
Speaker 1: you have to enjoy the process. So that I in
Speaker 1: the preparation for the podcast or for Red Carpet when
Speaker 1: I the first few Red Carpets, was like overload, Like
Speaker 1: we have a list of people who are going to
Speaker 1: be at the event, who we may be interviewing, so
Speaker 1: we prepare for anything and everything.
Speaker 3: So we have a question session.
Speaker 1: My first question session for e was like five and
Speaker 1: a half hours, Like I shit you not for the
Speaker 1: people stories of Wars in twenty twenty one, it was
Speaker 1: five and a half hours on a zoom and we
Speaker 1: went through potential questions for every person who's going to
Speaker 1: be walking the Red carpet. We have a great team.
Speaker 1: It didn't thieves who like preps me really well, but
Speaker 1: like I need to have seen at least an episode
Speaker 1: of their TV show. If they're on a TV show,
Speaker 1: reality show in People's Choice Awards, is music, it's reality TV,
Speaker 1: it's movies, and so ideally I want to have watched
Speaker 1: interviews that the person has done before and just have
Speaker 1: a sense of the work and the person that I'm interviewing.
Speaker 1: And so beyond that five and a half hour question session,
Speaker 1: there's like me watching Kobe's a Master television and film
Speaker 1: and listening to songs. And I still do that, But
Speaker 1: the first few Red Carpets, I was still in that
Speaker 1: like stressed out prep mode where I just would work
Speaker 1: myself up into a frenzy of anxiety and preparation instead
Speaker 1: of finding the joy in it. This is a good
Speaker 1: time to take a little break. We'll be right back though, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. So where I'm at today and as I
Speaker 1: approached all of the work I do now is that
Speaker 1: I am trying to find the joy and the happiness
Speaker 1: and the preparation and getting to a point where it's
Speaker 1: good enough. So that's how I'm trying to approach the
Speaker 1: second season of The Liver and Cock show and this
Speaker 1: new season of my life where yes I do want
Speaker 1: to be prepared and yes I'm going to do my work,
Speaker 1: but I have to at a certain point just have
Speaker 1: to like trust that I'm prepared enough and not but
Speaker 1: myself into kai zone where I'm in a fight flight
Speaker 1: or freeze that is just not useful anymore.
Speaker 3: And my body just feels it.
Speaker 1: When you have been in a constant state of fight
Speaker 1: flight or freeze for fifty years. I've just been exhausted
Speaker 1: for years, like physically exhausted for years, and I've worked
Speaker 1: with my doctors and therapists to get enough sleep and
Speaker 1: diet and whatever, but like so much of it is
Speaker 1: like not stressing myself out every single day in this
Speaker 1: like rat race that I've created for myself around scarcity
Speaker 1: of me not being enough. I'm trying to a day
Speaker 1: at a time find joy in the work that I do,
Speaker 1: find joy in the preparation. I know I've said this before,
Speaker 1: but my prayer to myself and it's like I have
Speaker 1: to remind myself every day throughout the day my prayer, God,
Speaker 1: give me permission to do this imperfectly and allow me
Speaker 1: to be of service. I've been saying that prayer since
Speaker 1: I think twenty thirteen. Oh my god, it's twenty twenty thirty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been saying their prayer to myself for ten years now.
Speaker 1: The work is to fire and wire differently, to reference
Speaker 1: what the language that doctor Joe Despenza would use, to
Speaker 1: create new neuro transmitters in my nervous system so that
Speaker 1: there's new pathways that are more resilient. That is the work,
Speaker 1: and so I have to practice that and it has
Speaker 1: to be embodied. It has to land in my body
Speaker 1: so that the old wiring of like stress, stress, stress, stress, stress,
Speaker 1: I'm not enough, and trying to listen to my body
Speaker 1: and what my body needs and letting it all go.
Speaker 1: Find joy in the moment. Sometimes I have to check out,
Speaker 1: and I love seam ripping. I'll explain later. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: bedging out on television thankfully. A lot of times it's
Speaker 1: just being in the arms of my beautiful boyfriend, that
Speaker 1: coregular that happens, and just being in such gratitude that
Speaker 1: I have the life right that I have the life
Speaker 1: that I've always dreamed of. It's like, Okay, I have
Speaker 1: worked so hard for so long and I am literally
Speaker 1: living my dreams, but I am like putting so much
Speaker 1: pressure on myself that I can't enjoy it. And I
Speaker 1: have to say there was a shift at the Emmys
Speaker 1: last year. I was like, Okay, I'm doing this differently.
Speaker 1: I need to enjoy this. I'm going to watch the
Speaker 1: TV shows. I'm going to do my interview, watch the interviews.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read interviews. I'm going to do all
Speaker 1: my prep and background, but I'm going to do it
Speaker 1: with joy and I'm going to have fun with this.
Speaker 1: I'm going to have fun with the process. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: It was just it was night and day in terms
Speaker 1: of like how I went in, Like before I would
Speaker 1: go in with all this anxiety and stress, and then
Speaker 1: like I would live in the moment and then like
Speaker 1: you know, once you're live on.
Speaker 3: TV, like you just have to jump and it is
Speaker 3: what it is.
Speaker 1: And I think after so many years of doing this,
Speaker 1: it goes and I and I not bad at what
Speaker 1: I do because part of it is just like the
Speaker 1: ten thousand hours I probably have, Like I have way
Speaker 1: more than ten thousand hours in what I do. But
Speaker 1: it was so beautiful to like have my preparation, be
Speaker 1: joyous and step onto the red carpet with Joy and
Speaker 1: step into the interviews for if We're being honest with Joy,
Speaker 1: and that's I've been proceeding with the second season of
Speaker 1: this podcast. So it might I have anxiety that it
Speaker 1: might feel less in depth or less nuanced or less researched,
Speaker 1: but it has to be enough because I'm enough, And
Speaker 1: so much of what I love about this podcast is
Speaker 1: me being on a search for healing, in search of
Speaker 1: like better tools to live my life, to be a
Speaker 1: better version of myself, a more healed version of myself.
Speaker 1: That is still my work every year day, but I
Speaker 1: want to have a lot more fun with it. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a lot more fun in season two
Speaker 1: of The Liver and Cock Show. Even when the topics
Speaker 1: are hard, We're gonna laugh. We're gonna have fun because
Speaker 1: I have to. It's time. I'm fifty years old. It's
Speaker 1: now or never, okay? And what else is true?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 1: So you know I end every podcast with the question,
Speaker 1: what else is true for me in this moment today?
Speaker 3: What else is true?
Speaker 1: Is this breath and that I can slow myself down
Speaker 1: and I am surrounded by beauty and things that bring
Speaker 1: me joy in this home I'm in right now and
Speaker 1: in my life with the people and the work that
Speaker 1: I do, I'm surrounded by joy and beauty that is
Speaker 1: so true and it's so amazing. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for listening to The Laverne Cox Show. Please rate reviews, subscribe,
Speaker 1: tell everybody you know. You can follow me on Instagram,
Speaker 1: Twitter and TikTok at Laverne Cox and on Facebook at
Speaker 1: Laverne Cox for Real and until next time, stay in
Speaker 1: the love. The Laverne Cox Show is a production of
Speaker 1: Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.