Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brained behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. Today,
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to have Wory Gottlieb on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author
Speaker 1: of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, which is currently
Speaker 1: being adapted as a television series with Eva Longoria. I
Speaker 1: think that's how you pronounce her name. In addition to
Speaker 1: our Critical Practice, she writes The Atlantic's weekly Dear Therapist
Speaker 1: advice column and contributes regularly to The New York Times
Speaker 1: and many other publications. She's also a sought after expert
Speaker 1: in media such as The Today Show, Good Morning America,
Speaker 1: the CBS Early Show, CNN, and NPR's Fresh Air. Worry.
Speaker 1: This is amazing to talk to you today. I'm so
Speaker 1: excited to have this conversation with you. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever opened up the podcast by saying amazing talking
Speaker 1: to you today. I was just saying nice chatting with
Speaker 1: you today. You know, So this is I really mean it.
Speaker 1: I really mean it. Your book is terrific. It is.
Speaker 1: I finished it last night. Finally finished it last night.
Speaker 1: I've been like chipping away at it for like a
Speaker 1: while because life keeps getting in the way. So how
Speaker 1: you wrapped everything up? I was in tears and I
Speaker 1: can't imagine, like how someone could be human and read
Speaker 1: your book and not be in tears by the by
Speaker 1: the end of your book, Yeah, you know, I really
Speaker 1: wanted people to have the experience that I had when
Speaker 1: I was seeing these patients, and so I hope that
Speaker 1: people feel a lot when they're reading the book. Oh
Speaker 1: I felt quite a bit. In fact, I saw I read.
Speaker 1: I finished the book right before I went to sleep,
Speaker 1: and my dreams last night were so weird. I feel
Speaker 1: like they were like like partly tied to the stories
Speaker 1: in your book and partly tied to like my mom.
Speaker 1: Like I was like, I woke up this morning, I
Speaker 1: was like, Mom, I miss you, you know, like she's
Speaker 1: she's still she's still alive. I was like, I want
Speaker 1: to see you every day, And I'm like, where did
Speaker 1: that come from? I thought I didn't like my mom. No,
Speaker 1: I'm joking. I love my mom. She's going you know now,
Speaker 1: I know, I know, and I love her. I love her,
Speaker 1: but but I've been trying to put my distance but
Speaker 1: between me and her a little bit because she's a
Speaker 1: very overprotective Jewish mother. But and still is, you know.
Speaker 1: But but just reading your book, I was just like,
Speaker 1: it made me want to like hold on to time
Speaker 1: as much as possible. It's always something I've had an
Speaker 1: issue with anyway. It's like the idea of time passing
Speaker 1: by has always I've always been erotic about that, ever
Speaker 1: since I was actually counseling as a little kid over
Speaker 1: that because it freaked me out. But especially after reading
Speaker 1: your book now as well, it's like it's heightened my
Speaker 1: appreciation of everyone in my life. Yeah. I think most
Speaker 1: people don't think about that until they get to a
Speaker 1: certain age. And you know, so in the book, I
Speaker 1: follow these four very different patients and then I'm the
Speaker 1: fifth patient. And I think that woven throughout all of
Speaker 1: our stories is this question of how do we want
Speaker 1: to spend our time. You know, are we being intentional
Speaker 1: about how we're spending our time or are we just
Speaker 1: squandering it away? And you know, I hope that you
Speaker 1: know when you read the book that it made you.
Speaker 1: It didn't scare you, but that it made you be
Speaker 1: more aware of you know, what am I doing with
Speaker 1: my life? It did absolutely, It didn't scare me, No,
Speaker 1: it it just made me appreciate, just have more gratitude.
Speaker 1: Your book remind you remind me kind of like a
Speaker 1: modern day or irving y'allom a bit. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think there'sn't been anyone else who's done what he's
Speaker 1: done since you, you know, like you know, in terms
Speaker 1: of being a therapist, in writing such compelling stories about
Speaker 1: their patients, and even you know, the existential themes of
Speaker 1: your writing in particular. I don't know has he been
Speaker 1: an influence on your work? He has, definitely. I first
Speaker 1: read him when I was in medical school at Stanford
Speaker 1: and he of course was at Stanford, and he can
Speaker 1: you read it. Pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everyone
Speaker 1: off is a piece of cake. Absolutely. Absolutely, If I
Speaker 1: had a cup, I would be drinking to that too.
Speaker 1: So so I you know, I corresponded with him a
Speaker 1: little bit and met with him when I was at
Speaker 1: Stanford briefly, and that was a million years ago. And
Speaker 1: then I reconnected with him when I wrote this book.
Speaker 1: And I was really nervous giving this book to him,
Speaker 1: because you know, he's such a master at bringing people
Speaker 1: into the therapy room in a way that's universal that
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel like it's about therapy, but it feels
Speaker 1: like it's about the human condition. And he was so
Speaker 1: lovely and such a fan the book. And I actually
Speaker 1: was supposed to do an event with him in the
Speaker 1: Bay Area when I was on book tour and he
Speaker 1: became ill and couldn't do the event, and his son,
Speaker 1: who's also a psychotherapist, Victor, did the event with me.
Speaker 1: And it meant so much to me to have the Yallams,
Speaker 1: you know, supporting this absolutely, and now you have Kaufman
Speaker 1: supporting it. You're your maid. I know that was that
Speaker 1: was like the icing on the cake when and I
Speaker 1: got Coughlin supporting it. But no, I'm such a big
Speaker 1: fan of Yaolm's work as well. I reached out to
Speaker 1: him a couple of years ago. I was in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: I was like, Hey, can I come over your house
Speaker 1: and talk to you? And he's like sure, and like
Speaker 1: I spent an afternoon with him, and like we talked
Speaker 1: about so much. He turned out he was friends with
Speaker 1: Rold May. He was one of my favorite psychotherapists, and
Speaker 1: he was at he was on roll May's deathbed. You that, yeah,
Speaker 1: well I did, because roll O May was was his
Speaker 1: therapist at one point. Exactly, that's exactly, yeah. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: he's so generous in that way, you know, to say
Speaker 1: to somebody, yeah, just come over. And and you know,
Speaker 1: he thinks about the world in a way that I
Speaker 1: think he tries to encourage everybody else to, which is
Speaker 1: to really consider, you know, what do you want to
Speaker 1: do with your time on this planet? Yeah, And he
Speaker 1: talks about these fundamental themes of human existence. And your
Speaker 1: book is full of those themes. And if you see
Speaker 1: enough patients, you'll just like it's basically like doing like
Speaker 1: a subjective factor analysis, you know, it's like non objective
Speaker 1: factor analysis, but subjectively you start to notice, like there's
Speaker 1: these groupings, like these things keep coming all over over.
Speaker 1: We all think we're like so unique, you know, and
Speaker 1: like our problems are so I'm the only one, you know,
Speaker 1: suffering with guilt or redemption meaning mortality, loneliness, love, you know.
Speaker 1: But you know, you see enough patients you start to
Speaker 1: see these themes over and over again. How does that
Speaker 1: impact sort of your own life, you know, and thinking
Speaker 1: about these themes and how they play on your own life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's such a such a great point because I think
Speaker 1: that we all know that everybody else experiences heartbreak and
Speaker 1: grief and loss and you know, great joy and you know,
Speaker 1: all of those things, but when it happens to us,
Speaker 1: we think that ours is particularly unique, that no one
Speaker 1: has experienced it in exactly the same way. So, you know,
Speaker 1: the book opens with me going through this breakup, and
Speaker 1: of course I feel like, well, you know, it's very
Speaker 1: specific to me, you know, and I know intellectually that
Speaker 1: so many other people have experienced something like this, but
Speaker 1: the way that it happened, what you know, in the
Speaker 1: play by play that I keep giving my therapist, I
Speaker 1: really want him to understand my unique experience. And what
Speaker 1: you see as a therapist is that we're all more
Speaker 1: the same than we are different. And I think that
Speaker 1: there are so many times that we feel isolated in
Speaker 1: our experiences because we don't realize how connected our experiences
Speaker 1: are to everybody else's. And I think that when you
Speaker 1: know the title of the books, maybe you should talk
Speaker 1: to someone. And I don't necessarily mean maybe you should
Speaker 1: talk to a therapist. I mean maybe we need to
Speaker 1: talk to each other more because we do feel so
Speaker 1: alone in our experience. And the more that we could
Speaker 1: talk to people and really talk to people, the more
Speaker 1: we'll realize that, oh, you know, other people have experienced
Speaker 1: exactly this. We were having this conversation. I was having
Speaker 1: this conversation with my students just yesterday. I have a
Speaker 1: large lecture hall and I just put up a poll
Speaker 1: a students can do anonymously with their self with their
Speaker 1: cell phones, and I just put up the question are
Speaker 1: you lonely and yet yes or no. What I wanted
Speaker 1: to do is for them to all see just how
Speaker 1: lonely everyone else was in the classroom. Now. I was
Speaker 1: praying that I would get a good number on the
Speaker 1: yes and yeah. I mean, just to make it worth
Speaker 1: the point, although if it wasn't, then I actually would
Speaker 1: be good for good for the students if they weren't
Speaker 1: with But anyway, it came out about thirty three percent
Speaker 1: said yes, And I said, you know, like that's really telling.
Speaker 1: Like just think on this campus, one out of every
Speaker 1: three people that you walk past in this campus has
Speaker 1: the experience of I am lonely, and no one's smiling
Speaker 1: each other, no one's you know. I tried to experiment
Speaker 1: yesterday where I try to smile at everyone that I passed.
Speaker 1: Do you try you know, don't ever try that? In
Speaker 1: New York City. They think that something is wrong with you. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they think I'm ready for the mental institution. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know. It's interesting because they think that no matter
Speaker 1: what people come in with, there is this kind of
Speaker 1: loneliness in the background, even if they're surrounded by people,
Speaker 1: even if they you know, have families and friends and
Speaker 1: all of those things. I think that we're so disconnected
Speaker 1: in so many ways that we don't realize how lonely
Speaker 1: we are. Just for the simple act of sitting face
Speaker 1: to face with another person uninterrupted, like you do in
Speaker 1: therapy for fifty minutes. But people don't do that outside
Speaker 1: because they've got something pinging or dinging or vibrating or ringing,
Speaker 1: and they're always distracted and there's there's something so you know, connecting,
Speaker 1: I think, and it feels so good to be able
Speaker 1: to sit with someone face to face in the same
Speaker 1: physical space, not mediated by a screen or FaceTime, and
Speaker 1: really just sit there without any interruptions. We have so
Speaker 1: few opportunities for that nowadays. Oh my gosh, so few opportunities.
Speaker 1: And not just I mean I feel like we I
Speaker 1: have the opportunities, but my I'm addicted, like like like,
Speaker 1: there's there's the two issues. There's the opportunity, but then
Speaker 1: there's like, you know, yeah, the phones there, and I
Speaker 1: have the opportunity not to look at it, but I
Speaker 1: gotta look at it. Oh my god, I gotta do what.
Speaker 1: I gotta know what they said on Twitter? Did they
Speaker 1: like my post? One of my colleagues calls the internet
Speaker 1: the most effective short term non prescription painkiller out there,
Speaker 1: and I think that that's so true. When you talk
Speaker 1: about addiction, it's addiction is a way to THEMB right,
Speaker 1: it's way to not feel. And so that's what the
Speaker 1: internet does. What our phones do for us. It's it's oh,
Speaker 1: I'm having a feeling. Oh let's see what's on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm having a feeling. Let me just you know,
Speaker 1: scroll through my phone. But it's just it's so isn't
Speaker 1: scary to think that, Like, like I'm addicted, but because
Speaker 1: it's so normalized like some certain addictions, I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm more normalized than others, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like we're all like, yeah, what is like it's perfectly
Speaker 1: normal that we're all in the elevator together and we're
Speaker 1: all looking at our phones and you know, like it's
Speaker 1: perfectly like it's it. So there's certain things that but yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's I just want to scream and everything. You're
Speaker 1: all addicted like like to like, it's no different than
Speaker 1: being addicted to like chocolate, you know, or anything. Right,
Speaker 1: It's it's it's not And I think that that people
Speaker 1: don't realize it, so they feel this loneliness, and especially couples.
Speaker 1: You know, I see a lot of couples in my
Speaker 1: practice and they'll come in and they'll they'll talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, not like feeling like something is missing, something's
Speaker 1: not there. And then when I get into their lives,
Speaker 1: you know, you find out that like there are ones
Speaker 1: person's on the iPad and the other person's watching the show,
Speaker 1: and the other person is scrolling through the phone and
Speaker 1: it's like they really they might be in the same room,
Speaker 1: they might be next to each other and even touching
Speaker 1: each other, but like you know, there's there's there's something
Speaker 1: else there that gets between them, and that's when you
Speaker 1: realize it's an addiction where you can't let it go. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So just just talking like at a metal level about
Speaker 1: your book, because I know not everyone has read it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you knew that, but not everyone
Speaker 1: in the world has read it. Kidding, it seems like
Speaker 1: it's so disappointing. I don't I don't know how to
Speaker 1: handle that news. It seems like it so even my
Speaker 1: you know, my new therapist that I'm just starting to
Speaker 1: see who I had to change my appointment today because
Speaker 1: I was like, I have a podcast chat with the
Speaker 1: Worriy Gottlie. First She's like, oh my god, you have
Speaker 1: a chat with Wriy Gottlie. She's famous. Anyway, I mean everyone,
Speaker 1: I feel like everyone has. It feels like everyone has
Speaker 1: read your book. I mean people love it. Like, Like, now,
Speaker 1: how does this not go to your head? Like you
Speaker 1: seem like such a grounded, you know, humility, you know,
Speaker 1: like like for a book to become a bestseller for
Speaker 1: a writer. Do you have any tips on how to
Speaker 1: still stay grounded? I think that's an important tip in
Speaker 1: itself for people to know. Well. You know, it's funny,
Speaker 1: and I talk about this in the book that I
Speaker 1: wasn't supposed to be writing this book, and so there
Speaker 1: was a long saga that led up to it. You know,
Speaker 1: I had written this piece for The Atlantic called how
Speaker 1: to Land Your Kid in Therapy? Why are obsession with
Speaker 1: our kids happiness might be dooming them to unhappy adulthoods?
Speaker 1: And that piece went crazy viral, and publishers wanted me
Speaker 1: to write that book. And I talk about in my
Speaker 1: book and maybe shut someone. I talk about how they
Speaker 1: offered me this like ridiculous amount of money, like amount
Speaker 1: of money I'd never seen on paper before with my
Speaker 1: name associated with it. And I said no. I said no,
Speaker 1: and everyone thought I was insane. But I just felt
Speaker 1: like I was starting out as a therapist and I
Speaker 1: wanted to write something I didn't want to write a
Speaker 1: book about, you know that. I felt like there were
Speaker 1: a lot of books out there that talked about overparenting,
Speaker 1: and I felt like the world needed something else at
Speaker 1: that moment, and I didn't know what it was. And
Speaker 1: I thought, I want to write about the adults. And
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, you want to write a happiness book,
Speaker 1: and I'm like no. But it ended up being sort
Speaker 1: of this happiness book, and so I couldn't write it,
Speaker 1: and I like had writer's black. I didn't feel connected
Speaker 1: to the material at all. I felt it was, you know,
Speaker 1: beside the point. I feel like happiness as a byproduct
Speaker 1: of living your life in a fulfilling way, in a
Speaker 1: meaningful way, is great, but happiness as a goal in
Speaker 1: and of itself is kind of a disaster. And that
Speaker 1: wasn't the book I wanted to write. So I ended
Speaker 1: up canceling that book, and I didn't think I was
Speaker 1: going to write another book. And then one day I
Speaker 1: decided I just want to bring people into the therapy room.
Speaker 1: That's the experience that I wanted them to have. I
Speaker 1: wanted to write about the human condition, and so I thought,
Speaker 1: like three people would write this book. This was not
Speaker 1: the reception of, you know, like the parenting book. So
Speaker 1: when I turned in my first draft to my editor,
Speaker 1: you know, she was like, oh, we really like this.
Speaker 1: We think a lot of people are going to read it.
Speaker 1: And I thought oh god, I should clean myself up.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't, like, because I really didn't think anyone was
Speaker 1: going to read this. But I didn't clean myself up.
Speaker 1: And I think that's why so many people have read it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's been like twenty odd weeks on the
Speaker 1: New York Times list at this point, and it's amazing
Speaker 1: to me that so many people are reading it. But
Speaker 1: I think that the reason they're reading it is because
Speaker 1: it's so real. You know, nobody's cleaned up in there,
Speaker 1: and so it doesn't go to my head because I
Speaker 1: feel like, this is what I wanted to do. I
Speaker 1: wanted to offer this experience to people. And it's so
Speaker 1: gratifying that so many people they say, like, you know,
Speaker 1: they're dog earing it and highlighting it and pinning up quotes,
Speaker 1: and I feel like that's so gratifying. It's not it's
Speaker 1: not about how many people are reading the book. It's
Speaker 1: about the impact that it's having on the people who do.
Speaker 1: I love that so much, and that's such a great
Speaker 1: attitude to have for a book. You know, being a
Speaker 1: fellow psychologist and reading your book, it's like automatic can help.
Speaker 1: But you you know, as I'm reading it, like its
Speaker 1: people say like, is there a switch? Can you just
Speaker 1: turn it all on? Like like, I can try, but
Speaker 1: it's but I still can't fully Like when I even
Speaker 1: you know, when I go on dates, you know, people like, oh,
Speaker 1: are you analyzing me right now? I'm like no, but
Speaker 1: like subconsciously it's like I can't. I can't help it.
Speaker 1: I can't help it. But so, uh, do you want
Speaker 1: to know some things I observed about you as reading?
Speaker 1: I'm curious, So so just uh, just to start, I
Speaker 1: was really quite blown away, and I would say touched
Speaker 1: by how deeply you find meaning in almost anything. You know,
Speaker 1: even the slightest, slightest thing. You're you're searching, what is
Speaker 1: the meaning of this? What is the what is what
Speaker 1: is the pattern here? What you know? You're you're you're
Speaker 1: such a deep, deep thinker. Now, now the tright thing
Speaker 1: would be like, well, you're trained do those like psychotherapists
Speaker 1: to do that? But I don't think that's quite right.
Speaker 1: I mean I think that that's probably part of your
Speaker 1: personality as well, that you in your in your in
Speaker 1: your life are just like I mean, the extent to
Speaker 1: which you just think so many different angles about a
Speaker 1: person's life and things has that always been part of
Speaker 1: your your characteristics? You know, I was a competitive chess
Speaker 1: player growing up, and I think one thing you do
Speaker 1: when you're playing chess is you think several moves ahead.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's what you do as a therapist, too,
Speaker 1: is that you're thinking, Okay, if I make this move,
Speaker 1: let me see what the what the person is going
Speaker 1: to do in response to my move, and you might
Speaker 1: need to adjust, right, But you're always kind of planning
Speaker 1: your moves and then adjusting based on what the other
Speaker 1: person does with it. And I think that's that's part
Speaker 1: of what you have to do. And I think that
Speaker 1: you know, when you talk about finding meaning and things,
Speaker 1: you know, my whole kind of nonlinear very circuit is
Speaker 1: trajectory to becoming a therapist. I write about in the
Speaker 1: book I I never thought I would be a therapist.
Speaker 1: It never occurred to me. I started off working in film,
Speaker 1: and then I moved over and I was a network
Speaker 1: executive at NBC, and then I was working on er
Speaker 1: and that made me want to go to medical school.
Speaker 1: And then I wanted to be a journalist because I
Speaker 1: wanted to get inside people's stories in a different way.
Speaker 1: And then I became a therapist, and so you know,
Speaker 1: I think I always just followed something that really excited me.
Speaker 1: And I feel like sometimes we're so afraid to do
Speaker 1: something that excites us because it's inconvenient or risky. And
Speaker 1: my philosophy has always been, you know, for better or worse,
Speaker 1: by the way, has always been I want to follow
Speaker 1: the excitement. Take me there. Yeah, well that's very that's
Speaker 1: very clear. You're but you're you're such a j exposition
Speaker 1: of things that you know, you're you're an excellent writer.
Speaker 1: Obviously the story part is part of it. Your excellent
Speaker 1: sort of communicator captured. But you also have this like
Speaker 1: kind of absurd like sense of humor, like you sort
Speaker 1: of you can see a sense of humor in things
Speaker 1: as well, right, Like that's not just the meaning of things,
Speaker 1: but like like humans we are, I mean I feel
Speaker 1: like I have that too, you know, like like I
Speaker 1: feel like humans, like we're ridiculous and and we don't
Speaker 1: realize how ridiculous we are till we like kind of
Speaker 1: see someone else do the same thing we're doing. And
Speaker 1: I like, like, I think being a psychologist, especially a
Speaker 1: clinical psychologist, having a private practice or a practice of
Speaker 1: some sort and seeing patients in a way is very
Speaker 1: healing to the psychotherapist itself in itself itself, because you
Speaker 1: start to see, oh, you know, like I've been really
Speaker 1: ridiculous and worrying about this myself, you know, like you
Speaker 1: kind of see it as at a distance. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I say, you know, I talk about how we're mirrors
Speaker 1: for each other, so we're not doing therapy for ourselves
Speaker 1: when we're helping somebody else as a therapist, But you
Speaker 1: can't help but think about the things that somebody is
Speaker 1: talking about as it relates to your own life, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think that our patients open us up to
Speaker 1: lots of questions that we need to explore for ourselves,
Speaker 1: and they show us what our sort of areas of
Speaker 1: challenge are in the ways that we react to them,
Speaker 1: in the ways that we think about what they're talking about.
Speaker 1: And you know, when you talk about sort of humans
Speaker 1: are ridiculous, you know, we're all ridiculous. And I think
Speaker 1: that going back to that sort of loneliness theme, that
Speaker 1: we feel so alone in our ridiculousness, but we also
Speaker 1: all have blind spots, and I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that a therapist can do for people is to
Speaker 1: hold up a mirror to them and to help them
Speaker 1: to see their reflection in a way that they haven't
Speaker 1: already seen it, and that helps them to see this pattern.
Speaker 1: You know, why do I keep doing the same thing
Speaker 1: over and over? That's going to guarantee my own unhappiness?
Speaker 1: What is that pattern? What is that blind spot? And
Speaker 1: once you can see those things, you can make different choices. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And you're giving free advice to our listeners right now.
Speaker 1: That's very very generous of you, very generous. So you
Speaker 1: said something in the book, one of the themes in
Speaker 1: your book that I just have been contemplating because I
Speaker 1: agree with it, but I also think there's some deeper
Speaker 1: implications than even you may realize or as you present
Speaker 1: it in the book. You say that there's no hierarchy
Speaker 1: of pain, that suffering shouldn't be ranked. That's right. Elaborate
Speaker 1: a little bit, then, can we think we talk about
Speaker 1: it a little bit? Yeah, I think that's so important.
Speaker 1: I feel like so many people minimize there are whatever
Speaker 1: their emotional struggles are. So you know, I think like
Speaker 1: if something feels off with our bodies, like you're having
Speaker 1: chest pain, you'll probably go to the cardiologists before you're
Speaker 1: having a massive heart attack. But if something feels off emotionally,
Speaker 1: often we say things like, oh, it's really not that bad,
Speaker 1: or I'll just power through, or I have so many
Speaker 1: other things in my life, or look at all the
Speaker 1: people who are really suffering, you know. So we feel
Speaker 1: like it's on this hierarchy. And then people don't really
Speaker 1: get help until they're having the equivalent of an emotional
Speaker 1: heart attack, they're having a crisis. And why, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't do that with our health. We don't wait
Speaker 1: until we're like on our deathbed to go get help.
Speaker 1: So I feel like people don't realize that you don't
Speaker 1: have to struggle so much, you don't have to suffer
Speaker 1: so much that our emotional health matters. It matters, probably
Speaker 1: more than anything else in terms of the quality not
Speaker 1: only of our lives, but the quality of the lives
Speaker 1: of the people who interact with us, our families, our friends,
Speaker 1: are co workers, and so, you know, I think the
Speaker 1: couples do this a lot. They compete with pain, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm so exhaust you're supcially when't have kids, right, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm so exhausted, And I did this, and I did
Speaker 1: that and my pain is bigger than yours, so you
Speaker 1: need to do this for me. And it's not a
Speaker 1: competition's room for both of your struggles. And I think
Speaker 1: people yeah, and so I think people like they compete
Speaker 1: or you know, so that's say they try to either
Speaker 1: up their pain on the hierarchy or they minimize it
Speaker 1: and they and they don't get help. And I think
Speaker 1: those are the two things. And why do we even
Speaker 1: have to rank our pain? I don't think pain should
Speaker 1: be ranked. Pain is pain. Well, I love I love
Speaker 1: that point, but there's such deep applications of that for
Speaker 1: political issues. So I was wondering just how you contemplated
Speaker 1: and how you square that away with the social justice movement,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, as a professor at Barnard College,
Speaker 1: like I'm a meshed in this world, you know, but
Speaker 1: there's a certainly language as well, so white privilege. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're in the privileged class, I think they do
Speaker 1: kind of rank. There is kind of a hierarchivet pain.
Speaker 1: So if you're in a more if you're in a
Speaker 1: quote appressed group, your pain is worse than if you're
Speaker 1: in a privileged group. It sort of feels that way,
Speaker 1: that kind of discussion occurs, and I was wondering if
Speaker 1: you've linked that at all to your idea. I think
Speaker 1: what gets lost in those conversations is that we all
Speaker 1: want to be on a human level understood, and so
Speaker 1: I think for people who have not had privilege, they
Speaker 1: feel like they haven't been heard, they haven't been seen,
Speaker 1: their pain has been invisible, and so they feel like,
Speaker 1: you really need to see my pain. And then what
Speaker 1: happens is for people who have had privilege and they
Speaker 1: do struggle and they do have pain, that that it
Speaker 1: feels like you don't get to do that, you don't
Speaker 1: get to be seen or heard because you've ignored our
Speaker 1: pain and struggle for so long. And my feeling about
Speaker 1: that is that everybody's pain and struggle and experience needs
Speaker 1: to be heard and needs to be worthy of being heard.
Speaker 1: That I feel like silencing anyone is just dangerous. Well here, here, here, here,
Speaker 1: I agree. So I've just been thinking just so much
Speaker 1: lately about like how we can have a healthy social
Speaker 1: justice movement that is not premised on on psychological principles
Speaker 1: that are not going to be conducive to growth, you know,
Speaker 1: for anyone, you know, But that kind of will uplift
Speaker 1: all groups, and it's it's just I'm just think it's
Speaker 1: been on my mind a lot. Laiasa, thanks for talking
Speaker 1: about that with me. Yeah, well, I feel a person
Speaker 1: a personal example of that, which is that in the
Speaker 1: book I, one of the people that I see is
Speaker 1: this young woman who is in her early thirties and
Speaker 1: she had just gotten married, and she comes back from
Speaker 1: her honeymoon, she discovers she has cancer. Ultimately, she discovers
Speaker 1: she has terminal cancer. And I always wondered, you know,
Speaker 1: would I go from seeing her to someone who's like
Speaker 1: my husband doesn't initiate sex, you know, and would I
Speaker 1: be able to kind of, you know, give this person,
Speaker 1: you know, like not minimize this person's pain. In my head,
Speaker 1: because I just came off of the session of this
Speaker 1: young woman in her thirties who's dying, and I really,
Speaker 1: you know, it really was not a problem at all.
Speaker 1: And I realized this because I think that underneath our
Speaker 1: struggles are very similar kinds of things. Of course, I'm
Speaker 1: not comparing this person who's dying to this person whose
Speaker 1: husand wouldn't initiate sex. But I think that's the point,
Speaker 1: is that everybody is struggling with something, and there's great
Speaker 1: pain in feeling rejected and feeling like the person that
Speaker 1: you love doesn't love you, in feeling unlovable, that's incredibly painful.
Speaker 1: And so I didn't need to compare it to the
Speaker 1: pain of this other woman. I just needed to take
Speaker 1: her pain for what it was. Yeah, that's I love that.
Speaker 1: I love that you did that, and that you also
Speaker 1: acknowledged that your gut reaction was want to say, look,
Speaker 1: I just saw someone who's dying like any chill, But
Speaker 1: I love that you acknowledged that you had that urge,
Speaker 1: but then you were still able to kind of override
Speaker 1: it and think about the greater humanity or the common
Speaker 1: humanity in it. Wonderful. So, look, why is it so
Speaker 1: hard for us to change when we really know what's
Speaker 1: good for us? Like, it's not that complicated, like your broccoli?
Speaker 1: You know, you have your broccoli or you got your pizza.
Speaker 1: Is it rocket science that you like, if you choose
Speaker 1: the broccoli, you'll be healthier. You know, we get it,
Speaker 1: you know, but we I choose the pizza almost all
Speaker 1: the time. So what's wrong with us? You know? It's
Speaker 1: interesting because change, even really positive change, like a job promotion,
Speaker 1: or you know, moving to a new city that's going
Speaker 1: to be have more opportunities for you, or getting married
Speaker 1: to the person you love, or having a baby and
Speaker 1: you really wanted a baby. All of those changes involve loss,
Speaker 1: and so I think we forget about that, that that
Speaker 1: we have to give up the thing that we've been
Speaker 1: holding onto for so long, even if the thing we
Speaker 1: were holding on to is miserable. You know, it's why
Speaker 1: people stay in bad relationships for so long, because you know,
Speaker 1: even if the relationship is making you miserable, at least
Speaker 1: it's familiar. You know what it is, it's home. And
Speaker 1: if you leave and you go somewhere new, there's the
Speaker 1: uncertainty of what's that going to be like. You know
Speaker 1: exactly what it's going to be like in your current relationship.
Speaker 1: You know what the arguments are going to be about,
Speaker 1: you know what the eye roll is going to look like.
Speaker 1: You know, you know, you know what the pain is
Speaker 1: going to be like. But if you go into this
Speaker 1: new experience, you don't know what it's going to be
Speaker 1: like yet. What if it's what if it's worse? You know,
Speaker 1: what if what humans don't do well with uncertainty and
Speaker 1: when we change especially, Yeah, we have to, we have
Speaker 1: to face uncertainty, right, And I think also that you know,
Speaker 1: there are lots of times when something is good for us,
Speaker 1: like you get the broccoli and the pizza example, something
Speaker 1: is good for us, and yet part of us doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be good to ourselves and we don't realize that. No.
Speaker 1: There you know, there's for people who have had trauma,
Speaker 1: there's almost like you're so uncomfortable with the healthy decision
Speaker 1: that like you're averse to it. We right, if there's
Speaker 1: something that feels almost wrong about it and it's not conscious,
Speaker 1: like you're not thinking this, it's not in your awareness.
Speaker 1: But sometimes doing good things for yourself it feels you
Speaker 1: you sabotage yourself because you don't feel deep down that
Speaker 1: you deserve to do that, and you don't know how
Speaker 1: to handle it, Like what would it even feel like
Speaker 1: to be kind to myself? There was one there was
Speaker 1: one patient I had who you know, and so many
Speaker 1: of us, trauma or not, are so unkind to ourselves.
Speaker 1: Just what we say, like you're such an idiot, or
Speaker 1: you look terrible, or you know that will never work
Speaker 1: out for you, you know, whatever, it is. I had
Speaker 1: somebody write down everything she said, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: in her head and bring it back the next session.
Speaker 1: And she came back and she said, I can't read
Speaker 1: this to you. I am such a bully to myself,
Speaker 1: Like I'm embarrassed to read this to you. And she realized,
Speaker 1: you know, all of the things that she would say
Speaker 1: to ourselves, she would never say to a friend in
Speaker 1: the same situation. You would never You wouldn't have any
Speaker 1: friends if you said that. So I think we don't
Speaker 1: realize how unkind we can be to ourselves. And that's
Speaker 1: part of why we don't make positive changes for ourselves
Speaker 1: because we don't. We don't let ourselves be happy. A
Speaker 1: lot of people in the self compassion movement treat they
Speaker 1: kind of define self compassion is treating yourself like you
Speaker 1: would treat a good friend. But I have a spin
Speaker 1: on that. Do you want to hear my spin? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because people can be can be cruel to us. So
Speaker 1: for instance, like if you you might have grown up
Speaker 1: with a parent and your parent might have said you're
Speaker 1: a loser, You're you're horrible. So I think self compassion
Speaker 1: is allowing yourself to treat yourself kinder than other people
Speaker 1: treat you, you know, like as well, like there's another
Speaker 1: aspect of it. Yeah, I don't think it's about treating
Speaker 1: yourself the way other people might treat you, because that's
Speaker 1: out of your control. I think what's in your control
Speaker 1: is how you treat other people. So I would say
Speaker 1: self compassion is about treating yourself the way you treat
Speaker 1: other people that you care about. But what if you're
Speaker 1: an asshole and you just don't treat anyone well, Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's part of what therapy helps you do,
Speaker 1: is it helps you to have a better relationship with
Speaker 1: yourself so that you can have a better relationship with
Speaker 1: other people, you know. I always say that that insight
Speaker 1: is the booby prize of therapy, that you can have
Speaker 1: all the insight in the world, but if you don't
Speaker 1: actually make changes out in the world, the insight is useless.
Speaker 1: So if you say, yeah, I know that, you know
Speaker 1: I treat people a certain way, Now I know why
Speaker 1: it was because this happened in my history, it doesn't
Speaker 1: that you know that if you still go out in
Speaker 1: your an asshole, right, So it's about what are you
Speaker 1: going to do now that you have that information? How
Speaker 1: are you going to make those behavioral changes? And they're
Speaker 1: small changes, they're very small, because it's those small steps
Speaker 1: that add up to really large change over time. And
Speaker 1: so I think that people think they need to like
Speaker 1: change overnight. No, you won't be able to do that.
Speaker 1: You will fail. So I don't want to set people
Speaker 1: up for failure. I want them to make one small change.
Speaker 1: When you're about to say that thing that you say,
Speaker 1: I want you to take ten deep breaths. That's the
Speaker 1: only thing I want you to to do. You might still
Speaker 1: say that the horrible thing, but take ten deep breaths
Speaker 1: and see what that is like. Just have some time
Speaker 1: between stimulus and response and see what happens. Right, And
Speaker 1: then the next time they might not say the thing,
Speaker 1: and another time they might do something else. And it's
Speaker 1: about these graduated steps to changing behavior until it becomes automatic,
Speaker 1: until they relearn and they're literally rewiring their brains to
Speaker 1: do something different. And that neural pathway that used to
Speaker 1: just do the asholic thing and I just made up
Speaker 1: that word asholic, but to do that asholic thing that
Speaker 1: they normally do right, that gets rewired and they won't
Speaker 1: automatically do that anymore. Well, I do love that point
Speaker 1: very much. I want to just elaborate on what I
Speaker 1: was trying to say as well, and see if you
Speaker 1: see any any wisdom in it at all, because it
Speaker 1: seems like people it does. It doesn't dawn on certain
Speaker 1: people that they don't have to treat themselves as harshly
Speaker 1: as an abuser has treated them, like like you don't
Speaker 1: have to believe the words of someone else, you know, like,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's very easy, you know, when you
Speaker 1: get any kind of abusive relationship or whatever to start
Speaker 1: like believing I am scum or I am a loser,
Speaker 1: you know, but be like, you know what, you're not, like,
Speaker 1: that's that's not true, you know, like yeah, so anyway,
Speaker 1: that's well, yeah, I think that that's you know, there's
Speaker 1: this woman in the book Rita who's her adult children
Speaker 1: won't talk to her because you know, she she grew
Speaker 1: up with a very kind of lonely, lonely, neglectful childhood,
Speaker 1: and you know, then she picked guys, you know, she
Speaker 1: picked husbands who would not who would not treat her well.
Speaker 1: But when she found somebody good, she couldn't she couldn't
Speaker 1: rejoice in that. She was always hyper vigilant. It's like PTSD, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's a word cherophobia, which is which is fear
Speaker 1: of joy. Chero is joy, So fear of joy, and
Speaker 1: she had that like, you know, the minute she felt joy,
Speaker 1: the piano was going to fall from this guy. You know, something,
Speaker 1: something bad was going to happen. She would be punished
Speaker 1: for her joy. So for her, joy wasn't pleasure. Joy
Speaker 1: was anticipatory pain. And I think that for people who
Speaker 1: have a history of trauma that they don't know what
Speaker 1: to do with joy. It feels anxiety provoking, it feels scary,
Speaker 1: They can't trust it. Yeah, I think it's it's easier
Speaker 1: to beat up on themselves. It's easier to just keep
Speaker 1: that monologue in their heads about like, you know, what
Speaker 1: a horrible person they are, because that's familiar and that's home.
Speaker 1: So is the process of therapy for you a process
Speaker 1: of kind of you do you try to rewire or
Speaker 1: change those pathways that make it feel familiar, and you
Speaker 1: have like like pave new pathways that are healthier that
Speaker 1: feel familiar. Yeah, I think that, you know, the relationship
Speaker 1: that happens in therapy is so important. It's very different
Speaker 1: from going to like a dentist who is going to
Speaker 1: give you, you know, fill your cavity. And it's very
Speaker 1: specific about what's going to happen. And it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: how much you like your dentist. It's nice, but you know,
Speaker 1: you can't talk anyway because someone's in your mouth, so
Speaker 1: you know. But when you're but when you're doing therapy,
Speaker 1: you know, study after study shows that the most important
Speaker 1: factor in the success of your therapy isn't the person's
Speaker 1: training or the modality they're using, or the number of
Speaker 1: years of experience. It's the relationship. All of those other
Speaker 1: things matter, don't get me wrong. They do matter, but
Speaker 1: they don't matter as much as the relationship does. And
Speaker 1: so when you could go and have a relationship with
Speaker 1: somebody and be vulnerable and be authentic and show the
Speaker 1: truth of who you are and you get a very
Speaker 1: different response than you got from whomever in your history,
Speaker 1: that's life changing. And then you can translate that and
Speaker 1: and bring that out into the world. Absolutely. That's why
Speaker 1: I love, uh, you know, the Carl Rogers approach. I'm
Speaker 1: such a geek for humanistic psychology, like we got to
Speaker 1: bring it back. But I think a lot of therapists,
Speaker 1: you know, do bring a lot of his you know,
Speaker 1: this this client centered, humanistic approach to their work because
Speaker 1: I you know, I think gone, here are the days
Speaker 1: of the brickwall therapist, the one who just kind of
Speaker 1: sits back and says, uh huh. You know, we're doing
Speaker 1: a the TV The book is being made into a
Speaker 1: TV show, and one of the things that's really important
Speaker 1: to me is that we don't kind of therapy. Therapy
Speaker 1: and therapists, I think have been portrayed in these ways
Speaker 1: that are so cliched and so outmoded. You know, there's
Speaker 1: either like the brickwall therapist that I was just talking about,
Speaker 1: or there's the one that you saw on in treatment,
Speaker 1: you know, the hot mess, the train wreck, the therapist
Speaker 1: who you know is a mess in his or her
Speaker 1: personal life, and those don't. Neither of those reflects what
Speaker 1: therapists are really like or what therapy is really like.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're just normal people, like everybody else. And
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, I say at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the book that my greatest credential is that I'm
Speaker 1: a card carrying member of the human race. That that
Speaker 1: allows me to help you because I know what it's
Speaker 1: like to be a person in the world. I love that,
Speaker 1: and I imagine it also it makes people feel good
Speaker 1: to kind of know that your therapist is a bit
Speaker 1: of a mess as well as I don't know, there's
Speaker 1: also a certain sense of something there shadow freuder is
Speaker 1: that I don't know. I don't think it's been about
Speaker 1: being a mess. I think it's about the fact that
Speaker 1: life is messy, and I think it's about the fact that,
Speaker 1: you know, nobody gets through life without struggling, no matter
Speaker 1: what it looks like on social media. Right, So, you know,
Speaker 1: no matter what it looks like, we all struggle. If
Speaker 1: you are human, you struggle. Whether you acknowledge the struggle
Speaker 1: or you don't acknowledge the struggle. How you move through
Speaker 1: the struggle, how you navigate through the world, that's going
Speaker 1: to be different, but everybody struggles. We'll speak for yourself. No, No,
Speaker 1: you're right, You're absolutely right, You're abso right. Okay. So
Speaker 1: what makes for a boring patient? So many people are
Speaker 1: worried about boring their therapists. You know, I think that
Speaker 1: what makes people boring are the people who won't let
Speaker 1: you in. They're the people who, you know, let me,
Speaker 1: let me step back for a second. I think that
Speaker 1: when most people come to therapy for the first time,
Speaker 1: there's almost a performative aspect to it, meaning that they
Speaker 1: want the therapists to like them, they want the therapists
Speaker 1: to respect them, and they want the therapists to think
Speaker 1: that you know, I think they have a lot of
Speaker 1: shame around the fact that they're struggling, and so they
Speaker 1: want to seem a little bit more together maybe than
Speaker 1: they really are. And I think that that gets boring
Speaker 1: after a while because what happens is you don't really
Speaker 1: get to see them. And I think what makes people,
Speaker 1: what draws people to other people is their humanity. What
Speaker 1: draws people to other people is their authenticity, is being
Speaker 1: genuine and people who kind of put up a wall
Speaker 1: like I'm going to perform for you, I'm going to
Speaker 1: entertain you, or I'm not going to really let you
Speaker 1: see me. We're just going to stay up here on
Speaker 1: the surface. That gets boring. And so it's ironic because
Speaker 1: I think the thing that people are trying to do
Speaker 1: to get you to like them is actually causing me
Speaker 1: not to like them. Yeah, that is so true. Well,
Speaker 1: should we both reveal something to each other? That's deeply
Speaker 1: personal to overcome this. I think I was so personal
Speaker 1: in the book that you're enough, personal enough for a lifetime.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, no, you really were. I mean yeah, like I,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better term, like mad props to you,
Speaker 1: you know, like for putting so much of that out there,
Speaker 1: Like I've put my own personal story out there as well,
Speaker 1: and being a special ed as a kid. And it's
Speaker 1: like you think it's going to be this horror terrifying
Speaker 1: thing and then you do find it actually is the
Speaker 1: thing that that people like about you. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I mean that that that that gave you, I think
Speaker 1: so much more credibility right to to be able to
Speaker 1: say and here's my story. And I think that ultimately
Speaker 1: that's what we all want, is to say, you know,
Speaker 1: this is my story, here's who I am, and can
Speaker 1: you can you see me? Can you understand me? You know?
Speaker 1: So I let it rip in the book. I sort did,
Speaker 1: and you know, and I and I think that that
Speaker 1: I wanted people to see that you can be a
Speaker 1: very capable, competent clinician and you know, or it doesn't
Speaker 1: even have to be a therapist, like you can be
Speaker 1: a really capable, competent person in the world and also
Speaker 1: struggle and they're both true. Yeah, there's this you just
Speaker 1: made me think. Like like Abraham Maso said that one
Speaker 1: of the characteristics of self actualizing people was dichotomy transcendence,
Speaker 1: And it seems like a lot of work in psychotherapy
Speaker 1: is like helping patients transcend these kind of like rigid
Speaker 1: dichotomies they have that either they're an evil person or
Speaker 1: they're a good person, or either they're you know, the
Speaker 1: world is either this or that. And that was another
Speaker 1: thing that you just another dichotomy you just transcended. Just now. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that when people come in, I would
Speaker 1: say a lot of people come in and they say
Speaker 1: they want to change, but what they really want is
Speaker 1: they want someone else to change because that other person.
Speaker 1: They can't hold the dichotomy that they have a role
Speaker 1: in what's going on in this relationship, right, whether it's
Speaker 1: with their child, whether it's with their partner, whether it's
Speaker 1: with their parents or you know, sibling, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: they can't hold the fact that the other person has
Speaker 1: a role in it. But so do they And I
Speaker 1: see that in couples a lot to this dichotomy of
Speaker 1: here's the story. I have the true version, right, my
Speaker 1: partner has some other version that really there's a lot
Speaker 1: of gaps in it. But the fact is, like, just
Speaker 1: because you see the same story from different perspectives doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that one or the other isn't true. They're both
Speaker 1: true from that person's perspective. Yeah, let me let me,
Speaker 1: let me let me process what you just said there,
Speaker 1: because so isn't there is there a scientific, generalizable, objective
Speaker 1: truth though as well the lies kind of above both
Speaker 1: of them. I think there's a truth in terms of facts, right,
Speaker 1: like right, you were late, you weren't late, right, you know,
Speaker 1: those kinds of things. But I think people try to
Speaker 1: argue with each other's feelings. They try to say, how
Speaker 1: can you be angry about that? Or how can you
Speaker 1: be upset about that? Or no, you know you you
Speaker 1: thought this. You know. It's like, no, you can't really
Speaker 1: argue with somebody else's feelings. You can, you can, you know,
Speaker 1: you can argue, you can disagree with what they want,
Speaker 1: why they're disappointed in you, You can disagree with that.
Speaker 1: But to try to convince them not to feel disappointment
Speaker 1: is you're arguing with something they feel and you can't
Speaker 1: change that. You can talk about the relationship differently. So
Speaker 1: I think, you know, when talk about is there like
Speaker 1: an objective truth? There are there are sort of facts,
Speaker 1: and then there are feelings, and you can't really argue
Speaker 1: with the feelings. You can work with the feelings, you
Speaker 1: can do something with the feelings. Well, Ben Shapiro says,
Speaker 1: my facts don't care about your feelings. But anyway, that's true.
Speaker 1: That is absolutely true. That's right. But also sometimes feelings
Speaker 1: don't care about the facts. Wow, you don't hear that
Speaker 1: reverse too much. You don't hear that part. It is
Speaker 1: a staple of couple's therapy because and I'll tell you
Speaker 1: there's like a gender difference there too to be you know,
Speaker 1: very you know, to generalize that sometimes if it's a
Speaker 1: heterosexual couple, the man and the couple will very much
Speaker 1: try to argue with the facts, right or will he will?
Speaker 1: He will try to like stick to like the facts,
Speaker 1: and the female partner is like arguing with the facts
Speaker 1: and he gets like infuriated by this, and so you know,
Speaker 1: you have to kind of reframe. I always say to
Speaker 1: people come to couple's therapy before they even step foot
Speaker 1: in the office, I say, what I want you to
Speaker 1: do before you come in is I want you to
Speaker 1: think about your goals for yourself. I don't want you
Speaker 1: to think about what you want the partner to do.
Speaker 1: I don't want you to think about anything that you
Speaker 1: want the partner to change. I want you to think
Speaker 1: about what you want to change to make this a
Speaker 1: better relationship. And if they're always focused in that way,
Speaker 1: they're not going to start arguing so much about the
Speaker 1: facts and the feelings and this and that, because they're
Speaker 1: going to focus on you are responsible for your feelings
Speaker 1: in your facts, not the other person's. I love that.
Speaker 1: Like that, that element of responsibility seems to be a big,
Speaker 1: a big part of the therapeutic process. Yeah, do you
Speaker 1: want to follo up on that? Yeah, no, it is.
Speaker 1: I mean I think that's that's such a theme in
Speaker 1: the book, is that we need to take responsibility for
Speaker 1: our own lives since it's so much easier. And you know,
Speaker 1: I say this from personal experience in the book and
Speaker 1: in life, that it's so much easier to blame somebody else.
Speaker 1: It's so much easier to blame another person or our
Speaker 1: circumstances or the world or the culture or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that those that those aren't valid
Speaker 1: stressors in our lives, but also we have choices about
Speaker 1: how we respond to them. We have, Yeah, the Victor Frankel, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well you sound like you're a good therapist. I just
Speaker 1: got to say, thank you. You sound like you're a
Speaker 1: good therapist. I kind of want therapy from you. No,
Speaker 1: So do you have a lot of clients right now?
Speaker 1: So you know, it's funny because I was really a
Speaker 1: lot of people said to me, what do you think
Speaker 1: will happen to your practice when you reveal so much
Speaker 1: about yourself so publicly in this book? And I I
Speaker 1: had a full practice before the book came out, So
Speaker 1: my hope wasn't that I would get more patients, but
Speaker 1: my hope was that people wouldn't leave in droves. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: really okay. And it was really interesting because the the response.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't tell people that I had a
Speaker 1: book coming out, but I did say I'm going to
Speaker 1: be away for this amount of time and I didn't
Speaker 1: say why. And it was the most amount of I took.
Speaker 1: I took four weeks off, which I've never done. I
Speaker 1: don't even think I've ever taken more than one week off,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, nobody asked. I said, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be a way for you know, these dates. And
Speaker 1: when I came back, some people came in and they
Speaker 1: sat on my couch and they said, so I read
Speaker 1: your book, right, And we had such really rich, deep
Speaker 1: conversations not about me, but about them and about their experience,
Speaker 1: and about our relationship, as you know, and what it
Speaker 1: meant to them, and and what was working for them
Speaker 1: and what was not working for them, and you know,
Speaker 1: just it gave them permission to kind of open up
Speaker 1: that conversation about the two of us, which I think
Speaker 1: is really important to have in any therapeutic relationship. And
Speaker 1: then there were other people who to this day, you know,
Speaker 1: have not said a word. And I find it, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know whether they just don't know about the book,
Speaker 1: but I find that a little bit questionable. I think
Speaker 1: if they are coming to me, they probably know that
Speaker 1: I've written this book at this point, and they haven't
Speaker 1: brought it up. So so there's there's both sides of that.
Speaker 1: But if they read your book, wouldn't they know that
Speaker 1: how cathartic it is to reveal that you like, know
Speaker 1: something about someone and you didn't, like you were with Wendell,
Speaker 1: and you're like, you say, you make it clear, so cathartic,
Speaker 1: like admitting that you know, you know. I googled stocked
Speaker 1: stocked my therapist one night, and then I was editing
Speaker 1: myself in the therapy room, and then finally I came
Speaker 1: clean and yeah, you know, but I still think that
Speaker 1: there's a you know, how people interact in the therapy
Speaker 1: room is a microcosm of how people interact out in
Speaker 1: the world. And for people who may be more avoidant
Speaker 1: or people who don't know how to bring something up,
Speaker 1: you know, they're going to do the same thing in
Speaker 1: the therapy room. So it's it's it. I think it
Speaker 1: depends on that person's character, logical makeup in terms of
Speaker 1: how they respond to the fact that their therapist has
Speaker 1: put so much personal information out there about herself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, Yeah I would. I was I was predicting
Speaker 1: that you would just get so many more patient like
Speaker 1: people wanting to work with you after reading your book. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I'm actually expanding my practice. Cool, because you know, I
Speaker 1: think there are a lot of people who really want
Speaker 1: to come see someone, and I think the book has
Speaker 1: inspired a lot of people to come see someone. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I either refer people to other people or
Speaker 1: I'm trying to expand my practice to bring in more
Speaker 1: therapists to my practice to accommodate people who want to come,
Speaker 1: because I don't want to turn people away. That's what
Speaker 1: That's great. Well, so I wanted to ask you, is
Speaker 1: there a common myth about therapy that you'd like to dispel?
Speaker 1: How much time do you? I know, I don't, I
Speaker 1: asked that, like, but obviously there's so many I would say.
Speaker 1: I would say the main one that I think people
Speaker 1: have is that you come to therapy, you're going I
Speaker 1: think people are afraid to come to therapy for this
Speaker 1: reason that they think if they come to therapy, they're
Speaker 1: going to talk about their childhood at nauseum and they're
Speaker 1: never going to leave. That that's sort of like the
Speaker 1: stereotype of therapy is that all you do is talk
Speaker 1: about your painful childhood and you're never going to leave,
Speaker 1: and you're going to come back every week and you know,
Speaker 1: just download the story of the week, and that's therapy.
Speaker 1: That's not at all with therapy as and in fact, therapy,
Speaker 1: of course we talk about how your past informs the present,
Speaker 1: but we're very much focused on the present in the future.
Speaker 1: And I think that people don't realize that at all.
Speaker 1: It sounds counterintuitive to them. They think it's about sort
Speaker 1: of working through your past. And what I think most
Speaker 1: therapists nowadays do is they want to say, how is
Speaker 1: something that you're carrying around, like clothing that no longer fits.
Speaker 1: How is wearing that clothing impacting the way you present
Speaker 1: yourself in the world. And so we really focus on
Speaker 1: how what they're doing now is maybe not serving them.
Speaker 1: It maybe served them when they were younger, but now
Speaker 1: it doesn't serve them anymore. And then also thinking about
Speaker 1: how the present informs the future. So what you do
Speaker 1: now informs what your future is going to look like.
Speaker 1: So we really want to be mindful of what you're
Speaker 1: doing now because it will affect the different directions that
Speaker 1: your future can go. And I think people don't realize
Speaker 1: that that's what we're talking about in therapy. And the
Speaker 1: other thing I think people don't realize is that we
Speaker 1: very much are aware of if someone comes in and
Speaker 1: they're not really work work, or they're not or they're
Speaker 1: just sort of, you know, talking about the anecdote of
Speaker 1: the week. I want to know are they done or
Speaker 1: are they not talking about what they really need to
Speaker 1: be talking about. But I don't want to keep them
Speaker 1: there if I'm wasting their time. You you are so perceptive,
Speaker 1: Like you're so perceptive. But yeah, you're like a chess
Speaker 1: player too, though, Like it's not just the you're perceptive,
Speaker 1: You're you're you're like automatically are constantly thinking of yeah,
Speaker 1: like you said earlier, like the next step down the line,
Speaker 1: or what is the meaning here? What do you do
Speaker 1: you ever? Just like let go and just like not
Speaker 1: think like can you shut it off? Ever? Oh? All
Speaker 1: the time? I mean I think I think that that's
Speaker 1: why as a therapist, and I know so many therapists
Speaker 1: feel this way that you know, you limit the number
Speaker 1: of people you can see in a row, for example,
Speaker 1: because more than I think, so many jobs maybe being
Speaker 1: a surgeon, you have to have this kind of focus
Speaker 1: of course, right, But I think like when I'm doing
Speaker 1: my writing, for example, I don't have this kind of
Speaker 1: focus at all because I can be like, oh I'm hungry,
Speaker 1: let me go in the other room, or let me
Speaker 1: think about these three emails I need to return or
Speaker 1: you know, whatever it is. You can't do that. When
Speaker 1: you're doing therapy with someone, You're hyper focused on what's
Speaker 1: going on in the room, on every aspect of what's
Speaker 1: going on in the room, whether it's body language or
Speaker 1: energy in the room, or a look or a facial
Speaker 1: expression or a pause. You're really focused on you know,
Speaker 1: I always say I'm listening for the music under the lyrics,
Speaker 1: that the lyrics are what they're talking about, but I'm
Speaker 1: also focused on the music, is what is the underlying
Speaker 1: sort of struggle or pattern or what else are they
Speaker 1: communicating to me that's not through their words. And so
Speaker 1: you have to be really really focused to do that.
Speaker 1: And so we can't see that many people in a
Speaker 1: row without a break. Whereas when I'm writing My God,
Speaker 1: my mind is, you know, in five different directions. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I also occur to me, I mean, how not
Speaker 1: just your thinking, but it would ring the book. Just
Speaker 1: how deeply you feel a thing and how much empathy
Speaker 1: you have your patients comes through so clearly in your book.
Speaker 1: And you know, a real thing in this profession is
Speaker 1: empathy burnout or compassion fatigue or what people call it
Speaker 1: different things. Do you do you do you ever feel
Speaker 1: empathy burnout? I think I'm very careful to protect myself
Speaker 1: from it, and if I feel that, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: veering in that direction. I think that, you know, all therapists,
Speaker 1: I think I have a consultation group. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people do consultation groups where we talk about
Speaker 1: our cases every week with other therapists, but we also
Speaker 1: talk about if we're feeling burned out, and what do
Speaker 1: we do and how do we practice self care and
Speaker 1: what do we need to do to make sure that
Speaker 1: every person who comes to us is getting, you know,
Speaker 1: the best version of us. But of course there are
Speaker 1: times when you know, I've had a session and I
Speaker 1: leave that session and I think that was not my
Speaker 1: finest hour, you know, because I'm human. But then the
Speaker 1: next week and then I say, okay, now what do
Speaker 1: I need to focus on with this person next week?
Speaker 1: Because I wasn't as presence as I needed to be.
Speaker 1: I love that. Wait, I'm gonna can I adapt that
Speaker 1: in my own personal life the phrase you know what,
Speaker 1: that wasn't my finest hour? Like I was giving a
Speaker 1: lecture yesterday to my students and I was like I
Speaker 1: told my tas afterwards, I was like, I feel like
Speaker 1: a dork today, Like I just felt like I'm I
Speaker 1: felt old, like I was making jokes about like social
Speaker 1: media and stuff, but I didn't like I wasn't up
Speaker 1: on things, and I felt like I just felt like
Speaker 1: such a dork. But then I was like, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: that just wasn't my finest, Like like, now that's going
Speaker 1: to be my new catch phrase. I can I love it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can have it. I don't even know where it's from,
Speaker 1: but I feel like, well, I don't want to like
Speaker 1: own it, but I'm just saying, you know, it seems
Speaker 1: so helpful. Borrow it, bar it just seems so helpful,
Speaker 1: share it, share it? How about share it? Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I think we need that. That goes back to sort
Speaker 1: of the self compassion is you don't beat yourself up
Speaker 1: when that happened. You say, you know what, I didn't
Speaker 1: get enough sleep last night, or my father's in the hospital,
Speaker 1: or you know, whenever it is, and that's what happened,
Speaker 1: and so then you you address it the next time.
Speaker 1: I love that. By the way, I could see you
Speaker 1: being a really good lawyer as well. Like I I
Speaker 1: feel like a lawyer. No, I feel like you would
Speaker 1: hate it too, But I think you'd actually be a
Speaker 1: really like a really quite special lawyer because I could
Speaker 1: actually I see this certain element in you where you
Speaker 1: like you really are kind of a versed to bullshit,
Speaker 1: Like there's there's another side of you that I that's
Speaker 1: very clear to me, that like you're always and you're
Speaker 1: also a very good bullshit detector. I get the sense
Speaker 1: you know that like it like like automatically like like
Speaker 1: you're like no, like that that's not true the therapist,
Speaker 1: right right, right, right right, No, No, you're not You're
Speaker 1: not You're not much. I'm very much like I want,
Speaker 1: you know, I always said I want to hold people accountable.
Speaker 1: So I feel like when you come to therapy, you
Speaker 1: need to be vulnerable and accountable. And and if I'm
Speaker 1: not holding you accountable, then I'm not doing you a
Speaker 1: service in here. Yeah, and that's what makes you a
Speaker 1: terrific therapist as well. By the way, you know, you
Speaker 1: understand I'm not saying like you should have been. I'm
Speaker 1: saying I could see you, do you know. I have
Speaker 1: this like image of you with like someone on the
Speaker 1: witness stand and you're like cross examining them and they
Speaker 1: just like crack immediately under with you because like, do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Right? So you know, I
Speaker 1: was a journalist. I still am a journalist, so you
Speaker 1: know after all those years of journalism where part of
Speaker 1: what you're doing is you're getting inside a story, right,
Speaker 1: and you really want to find the story and it's
Speaker 1: not well, I was gonna say it's not manipulative, but
Speaker 1: it is manipulative, but not in a negative way. So
Speaker 1: you're actually trying to help somebody to open up to
Speaker 1: you and because that's the interesting story, and they don't
Speaker 1: realize that's the interesting story. And I think that that's
Speaker 1: what you do as a therapist, is you try to
Speaker 1: help people to get to the interesting part of the story,
Speaker 1: the part that matters. And I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're a lawyer, you're trying to do the same thing,
Speaker 1: which is except you have an ulterior motive, but you're
Speaker 1: trying to get them to talk about this part of
Speaker 1: the story. And so you know, and I think it's,
Speaker 1: you know, how do you get people to talk to
Speaker 1: you about what you want them to open up about.
Speaker 1: But I think you know the goal and the motive
Speaker 1: of the lawyer is very different from the goal and
Speaker 1: the motive of the ory, and that's why that's precisely
Speaker 1: why you wouldn't enjoy it, because of the motive behind it.
Speaker 1: But I still think you'd be good at it, you know,
Speaker 1: like I think within four seconds four minutes that you know,
Speaker 1: even the person who did the worst crimes, like, no,
Speaker 1: I didn't do it all, but you would, like you
Speaker 1: would get beneath the surface somehow and they'd be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I admit it. Worried. Well, you know, what you do
Speaker 1: in therapy is a lot of times you call people
Speaker 1: on their contradictions. So somebody will say, yeah, I you know,
Speaker 1: I I wish that I could stop this affair, right,
Speaker 1: I wish I could stop this affair. And on the
Speaker 1: other hand, they keep doing it, you know, so it's
Speaker 1: like I love I love my partner, and I know
Speaker 1: I'm tearing up my family doing this, but I wish
Speaker 1: I could stop. And so you know, what are the contradictions?
Speaker 1: What are the two get like each of those pieces
Speaker 1: of that person to say out loud their piece and
Speaker 1: they can argue with each other. And it's so interesting
Speaker 1: to hear that we all have these these parts of ourselves.
Speaker 1: So we go back to going back to the dichotomy
Speaker 1: that there's a part of us that want something and
Speaker 1: there's a part of us that gets in the way
Speaker 1: of the thing that we want. And how the story
Speaker 1: of my life, right, and how do you get those
Speaker 1: two parts of yourself to talk to each other? And
Speaker 1: once they can talk to each other, that's when something
Speaker 1: moves forward. It's so true. And I had a lot
Speaker 1: of insights reading your book, and one is you know,
Speaker 1: personal insights, And one was just clearly the fact that
Speaker 1: like I get in my own way, like I would
Speaker 1: be so much better off in so many ways if
Speaker 1: I just didn't do things as opposed to if I
Speaker 1: did something more, If that made any sense, right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sometimes we like think that we need to do something
Speaker 1: in cases where not doing something is the better decision. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like with like you know, like on dates and stuff.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes, you know, I would have been so
Speaker 1: much smoother if I just didn't say those forty things
Speaker 1: I said, you know, and that's it. Just change nothing else,
Speaker 1: but just eradicate those forty things, right, And that's anxiety.
Speaker 1: Usually we take action, and when we take sort of
Speaker 1: extraneous action or action that sabotages ourselves. We do it
Speaker 1: because out of anxiety a lot of the time. Well
Speaker 1: that's something I struggle with my whole life. But you know,
Speaker 1: final lastly, I do want to point out that you
Speaker 1: have a column. You write it. I mean you do,
Speaker 1: you do. You're a busy person, so you write this
Speaker 1: dear therapist column which I love. Thank you, I love
Speaker 1: this advice you gave to this woman once and you
Speaker 1: just like, I mean, you were such a some The
Speaker 1: thing I like about you, by the way, is that
Speaker 1: you are such a sharp shooter, like I tend to
Speaker 1: gravitate towards those kinds of people in any way, probably
Speaker 1: just like it's just a value of mine as well.
Speaker 1: So and you find that by being that that level
Speaker 1: of honesty with like, you know, calling people on their
Speaker 1: contradictions as you put it, people respond to that positively
Speaker 1: because they know that you're doing it from a place
Speaker 1: of wanting to help them, right. And I think it's
Speaker 1: a relief to be called on your contradictions. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I think that when you have these two parts of
Speaker 1: yourself that are fighting with each other, it creates a
Speaker 1: lot of anxiety and a lot of stress, and it
Speaker 1: takes a lot of emotional real estate to do that,
Speaker 1: you know, It's like takes up so much emotional real estate,
Speaker 1: even if it's sort of under the surface. And I
Speaker 1: think once you give those contradictions some air, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like you can breathe easier too. They need air,
Speaker 1: Our feelings need air. We always say that, you know.
Speaker 1: I think so many people come into therapy and they're like,
Speaker 1: help me not to feel, help me not to feel
Speaker 1: so anxious, help me not to feel so sad, help
Speaker 1: me not to feel whatever it is. And it's like,
Speaker 1: if you suppress one feeling, you suppress the others. And
Speaker 1: what happens is the way that they suppress them is
Speaker 1: they go into a state of numbness. And numbness isn't nothingness.
Speaker 1: Numbness is isn't like a lack of feelings. Numbness is
Speaker 1: a state of being overwhelmed by too many feelings. And
Speaker 1: so when you are numb, you're just you're like on
Speaker 1: overload and you just shut down and you can't function
Speaker 1: in that state. So I think in my call of
Speaker 1: what I try to do with people is I try
Speaker 1: to say listen, I try to hold up that mirror
Speaker 1: and I try to say, here's what you're telling me
Speaker 1: in your letter, and if you came to me as
Speaker 1: a therapist, here's what I might not say in that
Speaker 1: very first session, but here's what I would be thinking.
Speaker 1: And I just lay it all out there for them.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's really helpful, you know. And
Speaker 1: it's not so much like no, don't talk to your
Speaker 1: mother in law, you know, it's not that. It's I
Speaker 1: want you to see your own role in this, and
Speaker 1: I want you to see the choices that you have.
Speaker 1: I want you to see your agency. And pretty much
Speaker 1: every letter, every answer that I write is about here's
Speaker 1: what you're not seeing in terms of your agency and
Speaker 1: what is under your control and what you can do well.
Speaker 1: I want to end on that note because it's so
Speaker 1: empowering and it's also so human. So thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Laurie for all the work you've done and for writing
Speaker 1: such a terrific, terrific book that gives a window an
Speaker 1: insight into the life, the real life experience of a
Speaker 1: wonderful therapist such as yourself. Thank you well, Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. It was such a pleasure to do this. Likewise,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening to this episode. Of the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to react in some way to something
Speaker 1: you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion
Speaker 1: at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology podcast
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