Speaker 1: You think if you would just love them enough that
Speaker 1: they'll change, or you can maybe heal that part of
Speaker 1: them and they'll stop hurting you. But you're actually just
Speaker 1: an enabler. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 1: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think, ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Rachel Krantz,
Speaker 1: one of three founding editors of Bustle, and she's the
Speaker 1: recipient of the Peabody Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Center
Speaker 1: for Justice and Human Rights International Radio Award, the Investigative
Speaker 1: Reporters and Editors Radio Award and the Edward R. Murrow
Speaker 1: Award for her work as an investigative reporter with y
Speaker 1: Are Media. Rachel is also the host of Help Existing,
Speaker 1: a new interview podcast offering help with different aspects of existence,
Speaker 1: and the author of the book discussed on this episode,
Speaker 1: Open An Uncensored Memoir of Love, Liberation and non Monogamy. Hi, Rachel,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Hi, thanks so much for having me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm excited to have you on. We're going to be
Speaker 1: disc us in your book called Open, an Uncensored Memoir
Speaker 1: of Love, Liberation and Nonmonogamy. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's start like we always do with the parable. In
Speaker 1: the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with a grandchild
Speaker 1: and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 1: of us that are always a battle. One is a
Speaker 1: good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 1: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops
Speaker 1: and thinks about it for seconds, says, well, which one wins,
Speaker 1: and the grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Well, you know, it makes me think, actually,
Speaker 1: if not the two wolves, but are too closest genetic
Speaker 1: relatives chimpanzees and bonobos, which are actually very representative of
Speaker 1: the same parable. So chimpanzees more people know about. They're
Speaker 1: the less endangered species. They're actually, despite being adorable, patriarchal, violent,
Speaker 1: can wage warfare, there's um, sexual assault, all these things.
Speaker 1: Then there's our other closest genetic relative, even a slight
Speaker 1: percentage more closely related to us. But nobo's much less
Speaker 1: studied and well known, partially because they're very endangered, but
Speaker 1: also because they're a matriarchical species. All the females are bisexual,
Speaker 1: they're very nonviolent, they use sex to diffuse conflict. And
Speaker 1: so you think about that, and those sides are so
Speaker 1: obviously intention or present in all humans, right, the desire
Speaker 1: for domination and warfare, maybe the bad wolf the worst
Speaker 1: of us, and then also the side of us that
Speaker 1: are lovers and want to be peaceful and perhaps more
Speaker 1: fluid and emotional in loving ways. And so I guess
Speaker 1: I think with that parable that both sides are within
Speaker 1: us and that it's also very fluid. I don't tend
Speaker 1: to like dualistic thinking because I've seen, you know, for example,
Speaker 1: with emotions like jealousy that are represented in the book
Speaker 1: very much the bad Wolf. That It's true, the more
Speaker 1: you feed it, the more it grows. I do think
Speaker 1: what you practice grows stronger, good or bad. At the
Speaker 1: same time, I saw how disavowing that bad wolf a
Speaker 1: k jealousy or shame or whatever else also fed it.
Speaker 1: So the more I was angry at the bad Wolf
Speaker 1: of you shouldn't be feeling this or why are you
Speaker 1: feeling this? That also made it stronger. So I think
Speaker 1: one lesson to me is that we kind of have
Speaker 1: to love and accept the bad wolf to rather than
Speaker 1: disavowing it or trying to reject it completely, feed the good,
Speaker 1: but recognize that it's all fluid and part of us. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that is such an interesting dynamic to think about,
Speaker 1: which is how do we deal with quote unquote negative
Speaker 1: thoughts and emotions? Right, it's pretty easy to think about
Speaker 1: feeding the good, So, okay, we want to, you know,
Speaker 1: we want to. You write a lot about this, nurturing
Speaker 1: the good, right, noticing the good things in your life,
Speaker 1: and paying more attention to them, which is definitely, you know,
Speaker 1: the cultivation side. And then there comes the other side.
Speaker 1: And I like the parable sort of because it really
Speaker 1: doesn't mention what we should do with the bad wolf.
Speaker 1: Doesn't say you have to starve in it, because I
Speaker 1: think that's a really nuanced, an important point, and I
Speaker 1: think it's becoming more and more clear, and I hear
Speaker 1: more and more people answer the parable that way these days,
Speaker 1: saying well, hang on, let's not put the bad wolf
Speaker 1: in a cage, or let's give him some attention. I
Speaker 1: want to start off with the line that you wrote recently.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was on Twitter. I don't know where it originated,
Speaker 1: but you wrote, when you're a woman writing about sex
Speaker 1: and early readers start calling you brave, you know you're
Speaker 1: about to be in for some ship. I assume that
Speaker 1: you have gotten some. Yeah, I have. I've been very
Speaker 1: heartened that at the love and kindness has so far
Speaker 1: outweighed the trolling or negativity. I was not expecting that,
Speaker 1: to be honest, like I think perhaps was more cynical
Speaker 1: of I'm going to just get harassed really badly all
Speaker 1: the time. And I think the fact that that hasn't
Speaker 1: been the case that it's been more minimal, or that
Speaker 1: I've so far been able to control it by having
Speaker 1: certain limits in place, like no contact form on my
Speaker 1: website unfortunately is for that reason. But that said, my
Speaker 1: d ms on social media are open, and I find
Speaker 1: by and large it's just people reaching out with kindness
Speaker 1: and really feeling less alone, either in my talking about
Speaker 1: themes of emotional abuse and gas lighting or non monogamy
Speaker 1: and more flawed depictions of what can go wrong in
Speaker 1: those relationships, rather than only having a perfect representation all
Speaker 1: the time, people have just been appreciative. So that's been
Speaker 1: really heartening to see that there's less less ship than
Speaker 1: I thought. But that said, I think there's still. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of trolling and negativity. I think what's
Speaker 1: been more hurtful to me has to see from certain
Speaker 1: media establishments comments like, oh, we can't cover it because
Speaker 1: we just had a polyamory book three months ago, and
Speaker 1: so there's so obviously like a quota for how much
Speaker 1: is this representation allowed, Whereas I hope now we're at
Speaker 1: a point in the culture where they wouldn't say to
Speaker 1: me as a queer woman or Jewish woman, oh, we
Speaker 1: just had a Jewish queer woman three months ago. We
Speaker 1: can't have another. But it's clear that with any representation
Speaker 1: of non monogamy, no matter how much the book is
Speaker 1: really about so many other things that there's sort of
Speaker 1: still the idea of this is a ghetto wise limited
Speaker 1: topic that you know, we can only cover once or
Speaker 1: twice a year. And I think what you're saying rings
Speaker 1: true in my experience. And I am not a email
Speaker 1: who writes openly about sexual topics, so I'm going to
Speaker 1: get very different things. But the vast, vast, vast majority
Speaker 1: of feedback that I've ever gotten has been positive. And
Speaker 1: I think life is like that. A lot in the
Speaker 1: the good and the bad are there. You're going to
Speaker 1: have the trolls, and you're gonna have a lot of
Speaker 1: people responding kindly, and back to sort of what we
Speaker 1: talked about, you kind of have to think about, Okay,
Speaker 1: which these things do I want to give more attention to?
Speaker 1: Which of these things do I want to allow to
Speaker 1: occupy my head space because they're both true and real
Speaker 1: that they're there. But we sort of get to determine
Speaker 1: to some degree what we do with the limited real
Speaker 1: estate sort of in our brain definitely. And one thing
Speaker 1: that's been important to me is to keep the virtuous
Speaker 1: cycle going. So when someone reaches out to me with kindness,
Speaker 1: I always message them back. I'll usually like leave them
Speaker 1: a voice message if it's on Instagram, and and thank
Speaker 1: them and let them know how much that really keeps
Speaker 1: me going. To hear things like that, that makes me
Speaker 1: feel like it wasn't just sent out into the void
Speaker 1: and that all that matters are sales or something like that,
Speaker 1: but to really hear about how it's impacting individuals, It
Speaker 1: matters so much, and so I try to reflect back
Speaker 1: to them how much that kindness really matters, and that
Speaker 1: I think it's a special kind of person who not
Speaker 1: only reads the book and is impacted by it, but
Speaker 1: then is brave enough to reach out to an author
Speaker 1: they care about, and so to kind of reflect back
Speaker 1: their goodness. I think it's important to them keeping the
Speaker 1: cycle going of them perhaps reaching out to an author
Speaker 1: of the next book they read that touches them, or
Speaker 1: to just see where they can perform more random acts
Speaker 1: of kindness is important. Yeah. I think it's a great
Speaker 1: tip for people who don't know like authors are very
Speaker 1: accessible and they often hear from people less than you'd think,
Speaker 1: and so it's a really kind thing not to only
Speaker 1: take the second to give a star rating or a
Speaker 1: one line review, even on good Reads or Amazon can
Speaker 1: actually a huge difference unfortunately, and how the algorithms work.
Speaker 1: But also to just send that quick message on social
Speaker 1: media through their website, it can really mean a lot
Speaker 1: to people. Just with all my author friends hearing from
Speaker 1: them to like, that's what makes you know it's worthwhile.
Speaker 1: As a podcaster, same thing, So listeners, I expect lots
Speaker 1: of emails of support and I'm kidding but sort of,
Speaker 1: but I do love them because you you do you
Speaker 1: I see the numbers of people who are listening. But
Speaker 1: the best part for me of this has been hearing
Speaker 1: from people and getting to know them and the programs
Speaker 1: we've done in the community that we build. That's been
Speaker 1: what's really special. And I think, like you said, a
Speaker 1: lot of people assume, oh, they wouldn't want to hear that.
Speaker 1: They probably get a ton of it, and you know,
Speaker 1: until you get to be huge, it's always lovely to hear. Anyway. Onwards,
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about non monogamy slash
Speaker 1: pol amory. Are they the same thing, just one's describing
Speaker 1: what it is and the others describing what it isn't
Speaker 1: sort of, but a nonmonogamy is a larger umbrella. So
Speaker 1: it's anything that's not monogamy. So people like swingers or
Speaker 1: a couple that only has a don't ask, don't tell policy,
Speaker 1: or it can only be anonymous sex that would all
Speaker 1: fall under non monogamy, as would polyamory. But polyamorous make
Speaker 1: the distinction that it's kind of in the word right,
Speaker 1: more than one love, So that tends to be an
Speaker 1: emphasis on multiple relationships, multiple emotional attachments potentially, whereas you
Speaker 1: could have other people practicing something that's non monogamy where
Speaker 1: they try to compartmentalize, keep emotions out of it, or
Speaker 1: there's only one relationship to their nonmonogamy. Got it. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a very helpful distinction. So the book really talks
Speaker 1: about I'm going to summarize it very quickly. I'm going
Speaker 1: to put your life's work in a sentence. Now, Basically,
Speaker 1: the book sort of talks a little bit about you,
Speaker 1: your earlier life, and then you get it into relationship
Speaker 1: with someone who polyamorous wants you to be polyamorous, and
Speaker 1: you want to give it a try for a lot
Speaker 1: of different reasons. You know, one is to please him,
Speaker 1: but also a lot of it is because you think
Speaker 1: that there's a lot in it for you. Also, in
Speaker 1: the book really depicts that relationship broadly speaking, and that
Speaker 1: relationship certainly has the polyamory aspects of it, but it
Speaker 1: also talks about the aspects of that relationship that we
Speaker 1: might call gas lighting or I don't know if you
Speaker 1: would use the word abuse, maybe that's harder than you
Speaker 1: would go with the word. But the dynamics in that relationship,
Speaker 1: and so it's not just the polyamory part of this
Speaker 1: that makes this whole thing challenging for you. It's also
Speaker 1: the dynamics of the relationship itself. And so I kind
Speaker 1: of wanted to, as you do in the book, break
Speaker 1: those apart a little bit, and you know, start off
Speaker 1: by talking a little bit about the polyamory part and
Speaker 1: then maybe move into some more of the their pieces.
Speaker 1: Talk to me a little bit about what it was
Speaker 1: from your perspective that made you want to try this
Speaker 1: type of relationship. Yeah, well, I was twenty seven when
Speaker 1: I met Adam. He was older and more experienced and
Speaker 1: I felt the pressure that many people socialized as women
Speaker 1: feel to find the one before it was too late.
Speaker 1: Even at seven, I felt that pressure that, oh, this
Speaker 1: serial monogamy pattern I have of falling in love, growing
Speaker 1: gradually bored and restless, not feeling my future narrowing, not
Speaker 1: wanting to only be kissing or one person, or never
Speaker 1: have a first date again for the rest of my life,
Speaker 1: and to sort of know how that part of my
Speaker 1: story ended was just so claustrophobic and unappealing to me.
Speaker 1: Because love was my favorite thing to write about, to explore.
Speaker 1: I loved falling in love, but I also felt like,
Speaker 1: oh God, I better grow out of this. I hope
Speaker 1: I grow out of this once I meet the magic one.
Speaker 1: Even though a part of me didn't really believe that
Speaker 1: was a thing, I guess I was hoping it was
Speaker 1: and that it would kind of put my restlessness to bed.
Speaker 1: And so when I met Adam and he was saying
Speaker 1: that he was also looking in some ways for that
Speaker 1: one someone to share his life with, the serious life partner,
Speaker 1: and he was so many of the traits that I
Speaker 1: found compelling, you know, very very smart, from a great family,
Speaker 1: was an adult in a way, I hadn't really experienced
Speaker 1: dating a real grown man quote unquote before I could
Speaker 1: imagine that future with him. But a future with him,
Speaker 1: as he pitched, it also meant I wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: give up that possibility of future adventure. And so you know,
Speaker 1: I think, I write in the book he was offering
Speaker 1: me the chance to eat the cake and have the
Speaker 1: pie too, right, And and so I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: I guess I better try this. I was familiar with
Speaker 1: the concept of nominogamy, and even though it scared me,
Speaker 1: I was also intrigued and thought, perhaps this will work
Speaker 1: better for me because what I've been doing before is
Speaker 1: not working right, right, I can totally relate with that.
Speaker 1: As I've grown older, my needs and desires have shifted
Speaker 1: very much, and that isn't something that particularly interests me now,
Speaker 1: but I think it at twenty nine, for example, very much.
Speaker 1: So I I totally understand that feeling of like, well,
Speaker 1: I really want a partner that I settled down with
Speaker 1: and holy crap, that's it. That's the end of the game. Right.
Speaker 1: That felt really constricting and really hard to imagine, And
Speaker 1: the idea of having both sounds really wonderful and Adam
Speaker 1: pitched it to you in a way that said like, hey,
Speaker 1: we can start this with only you having multiple loves
Speaker 1: to use the polyamory term, and I won't for now.
Speaker 1: So he gave you sort of an easy way in yes,
Speaker 1: And that was one of his ways of demonstrating he
Speaker 1: was serious about me that this was a long term
Speaker 1: commitment or investment, but it was very much understood that
Speaker 1: that offer would expire and that it was up to
Speaker 1: me went to lift it, but it was implicit. But yeah.
Speaker 1: He also revealed that his kink was seeing me with
Speaker 1: other men, which had never even occurred to me as
Speaker 1: a thing that people were into, Like I had you
Speaker 1: heard of the other way around, but not that, and
Speaker 1: so I was like, well great, so yeah. For the
Speaker 1: first year we pretty much just explored things together, which
Speaker 1: is actually how a lot of people who practice now
Speaker 1: monogamy do it is as a couple. And then when
Speaker 1: I met someone and started dating them individually, that's when
Speaker 1: I felt like, I think we need to open this
Speaker 1: up on your end to this feels unfair because it's
Speaker 1: now something that I'm not sharing with you all the time.
Speaker 1: And and that's when my battles with jealousy began, which
Speaker 1: is is an emotion that's very deeply explored and researched
Speaker 1: in the book, and we'll get to that here very shortly.
Speaker 1: So there's the appeal of Okay, I don't want to only,
Speaker 1: you know, have one love in life. I want the
Speaker 1: ability to have, as you said, more adventures, more different things.
Speaker 1: But there's also an element that this is a preferable
Speaker 1: way to be because it is more generous. You said,
Speaker 1: being open also seemed like the more generous way to be.
Speaker 1: It felt like an ultimate active love to sacrifice your
Speaker 1: ego and the interest of a partner's bodily autonomy, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to give that loving generosity back. So there's
Speaker 1: also something embedded in it that says, hey, this is
Speaker 1: a better model. It's one based on deep love and
Speaker 1: commitment for each other and trust, but also generosity and
Speaker 1: non possessiveness and non attachment. So there's, in addition to
Speaker 1: the cake part and the icing part of it, right,
Speaker 1: there's also the sense that this may be a more
Speaker 1: evolved way. Maybe that's not the term you would use,
Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, I think that it's something that Adams
Speaker 1: certainly felt and that many polyamorous people have kind of
Speaker 1: made an argument for this idea that it it is
Speaker 1: more evolved or or loving in certain ways, that it
Speaker 1: just seemed more generous and less controlling. I think that
Speaker 1: part of what you see throughout the book is how
Speaker 1: now what matters more is the dynamic and really, if
Speaker 1: someone's controlling, they can use non monogamy to control you,
Speaker 1: or they can use monogamy to control you. It's really
Speaker 1: the less that any relationship model is inherently more enlightened
Speaker 1: and more about the power dynamics that exist between individuals
Speaker 1: and how do they relate. Do they exploit those structures
Speaker 1: or do they use them as ways to foster security
Speaker 1: and freedom. So I think that's totally possible for non monogamy,
Speaker 1: that's totally possible for monogamy too. But yeah, I think
Speaker 1: like a lot of people, I had an interest in
Speaker 1: Buddhism since my early twenties and some knowledge, had gone
Speaker 1: on some retreats and done some reading, but nowhere near
Speaker 1: what I have now in terms of really going much
Speaker 1: deeper and actually studying these concepts and having a monk
Speaker 1: who's a teacher to me and who I can really
Speaker 1: untangle these themes with and so I think that I
Speaker 1: didn't have a full understanding of what non attachment actually means,
Speaker 1: and so I kind of took Adam's word for it
Speaker 1: as someone who had read more Teet not Han and
Speaker 1: and other thinkers of like, Okay, this is the more loving, evolved,
Speaker 1: perhaps enlightened way to be. But actually that ended up
Speaker 1: being in some ways a tool for their manipulation, which
Speaker 1: is not totally unusual. We see in any spiritual community.
Speaker 1: There can be instances of people using it as a
Speaker 1: means of control, or to get sex, or to tell
Speaker 1: people that their reality is unevolved or their emotional reactions
Speaker 1: are incorrect, and that if they can just rise above
Speaker 1: they would see it their way, right. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to show how that kind of spirituality can sometimes be construted,
Speaker 1: because I think it's actually a very common thing, not
Speaker 1: just with non monogamy but in general. That's right, and
Speaker 1: not only is it something that other people use for
Speaker 1: power and control, it's something we tend to impose on
Speaker 1: ourselves very much. And you certainly talk about this how
Speaker 1: over time what Adam's views were on things became the
Speaker 1: views that you thought you should have, not just to
Speaker 1: make him happy, but that we're actually the correct views.
Speaker 1: And I think that's sort of what I'm describing with
Speaker 1: the spiritual stuff that you're talking about, is these ideas
Speaker 1: of non attachment, we can give them back on ourselves.
Speaker 1: You know, shouldn't I be better than this? Shouldn't I
Speaker 1: know better than this? Shouldn't I be more evolved? Shouldn't
Speaker 1: I be non attached? All this stuff which causes us
Speaker 1: to really suffer? Yes, absolutely, And I think you know
Speaker 1: that's the thing with gas lighting, which I know we
Speaker 1: can get into more later, but that what's so insidious
Speaker 1: about is that, like the person takes over your thoughts.
Speaker 1: So it's incremental, right, It's not something that happens overnight
Speaker 1: or just with one instance of an argument where there's
Speaker 1: gas lighting. This is over a period of years where
Speaker 1: eventually it got to the point that what his opinions
Speaker 1: and desires were were stronger than my own intuition or
Speaker 1: even the voice inside my head. So if I felt
Speaker 1: uncomfortable with something, I would immediately hear him in my
Speaker 1: head arguing why that was incorrect, why that was unloving
Speaker 1: or unevolved. And so yeah, you take on their worldview
Speaker 1: and arguments, and it's a sort of mind control that's
Speaker 1: made all the more confusing by the fact that the
Speaker 1: person doing it doesn't always mean to consciously be doing
Speaker 1: that to you, but it's part of the dynamic that
Speaker 1: you have gets to a very unhealthy place. But I
Speaker 1: think also one I got on the other side of
Speaker 1: that and talked with Monktashimima, who features in the book
Speaker 1: and who is my teacher. I mentioned that He said,
Speaker 1: you know, non attachment is not indifference. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter to you whether you eat poison or
Speaker 1: healthy food, and it has a lot of near enemies
Speaker 1: like dissociation. And you know, he helped me make the
Speaker 1: distinction of yes, when an emotion is yours, it is
Speaker 1: your responsibility, you know. But the distinction is someone else
Speaker 1: should never be telling you what should and shouldn't be
Speaker 1: in your feelings. So it could be true that your
Speaker 1: jealousy is based in something that you need to examine
Speaker 1: and is not rational or true, or is an emotion
Speaker 1: you need to take responsibility for. But if someone else
Speaker 1: is telling you you shouldn't be jealous, that's irrational and
Speaker 1: can't hold that reaction with compassion and say why is
Speaker 1: this happening? Do you think, is there anything I can
Speaker 1: do to help you feel safer than we can examine
Speaker 1: the root of this to other and maybe heal it.
Speaker 1: If they can't do that, and there instead just saying
Speaker 1: your thoughts or your feelings are are wrong and incorrect
Speaker 1: or untrue. That's a major red flag and something that
Speaker 1: Tash she said people should never be doing, whether it's
Speaker 1: a partner or spiritual teacher or parent, whoever else might
Speaker 1: be telling you that, yes, emotions are your responsibility, but
Speaker 1: it's never up to someone else to dictate what should
Speaker 1: and shouldn't be in your emotions, which I thought is
Speaker 1: a very good, important distinction. It is a really important distinction,
Speaker 1: and it is one of those things that I think
Speaker 1: is really hard to let me say this, it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to do right, Like I can see someone
Speaker 1: else having a reaction to something, and I can be
Speaker 1: thinking in my mind, it's not cold, like get over it,
Speaker 1: but it is like, you know, there's a different way
Speaker 1: you could look at this, and this is an overreaction,
Speaker 1: and I recognize that in myself. It's just sort of
Speaker 1: a generalized fear of emotion. It's a generalized like, oh,
Speaker 1: someone else is having a strong emotion near me. That's
Speaker 1: not safe, and I know the reasons why I respond
Speaker 1: that way, and I work very hard not to do that,
Speaker 1: and yet I feel it arise in me. I feel
Speaker 1: it arise in me, and I have to work with it.
Speaker 1: I think again, it's like everyone is responsible for their
Speaker 1: own emotions. That doesn't mean you can't help hold other
Speaker 1: people's in compassion. That's what it is to be in
Speaker 1: in relationship often. But that also doesn't mean you should
Speaker 1: just tolerate any situation or anyone throwing any emotions on them.
Speaker 1: You know, you can have compassion with boundaries. You can
Speaker 1: say I have compassion for you know the fact that
Speaker 1: you are having a lot of trouble with jealousy. But
Speaker 1: after years of trying to work with you on this,
Speaker 1: it's a boundary for me that I can't work with
Speaker 1: this anymore. And that's okay. That can be a loving
Speaker 1: thing to step away. Where it becomes unloving is when
Speaker 1: you stay in a dynamic where you're kind of feeding
Speaker 1: your suffering and the other persons suffering by saying, know,
Speaker 1: you should be different, this is wrong, or whatever else,
Speaker 1: that you can't hold what they're feeling with compassion. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's always going to be that we're going to have
Speaker 1: responses to what other people are feeling, and sometimes we
Speaker 1: do need to have those boundaries and say, look, I
Speaker 1: can't talk to you when you're being this reactive that
Speaker 1: can totally come from a loving place. Hello, listening friends,
Speaker 1: This is Jenny and I just wanted to pause for
Speaker 1: a moment to tell you about something. When I became
Speaker 1: a certified mindfulness teacher, I did so through the year
Speaker 1: long training program offered through the My Fullness Training Institute
Speaker 1: and it was a truly transformative year of my life.
Speaker 1: And they are currently enrolling for their next training class.
Speaker 1: It's going to be in Berkeley, California, in September of
Speaker 1: this year, and they're currently accepting applications, So I thought
Speaker 1: I might share just a little bit about it with you,
Speaker 1: and if you're interested, you can go to Mindfulness Training
Speaker 1: Institute dot com and apply for this next cohort. The
Speaker 1: Mindfulness Training Institute has been training people for ten years,
Speaker 1: with over three hundred graduated teachers working in thirty countries
Speaker 1: around the world, and the year long training program is
Speaker 1: led by my two teachers, the two renowned teachers Mark
Speaker 1: Coleman and Martin ill Ward, who between the two of
Speaker 1: them have five decades of teaching experience. The training is
Speaker 1: really deeply experiential, really intimate. So there are four in
Speaker 1: person training modules that take place in this case in California,
Speaker 1: and they really allow for a deep in person connection
Speaker 1: with the teachers and with your trainee peers. I will
Speaker 1: say that I have made lifelong friends through this program.
Speaker 1: But as a result, you really learn to teach with confidence,
Speaker 1: with clarity, and it really grows your own practice in
Speaker 1: incredible ways. So if you have been thinking that mindfulness,
Speaker 1: which has touched your life might be something you want
Speaker 1: to bring to others again, whether it's in your local
Speaker 1: community or perhaps even in your workplace, I really encourage
Speaker 1: you to check it out again. I can't say enough
Speaker 1: good things about the program and about my two teachers.
Speaker 1: So again, if you're interested, you can go to Mindfulness
Speaker 1: Training Institute dot com, and I would encourage you to
Speaker 1: go and apply now if you're interested, because they are
Speaker 1: currently enrolling for the upcoming cohort that begins in September
Speaker 1: of this year. It'll take place in Berkeley, California. Okay, friends,
Speaker 1: take care. I want to move on from nonmonogamy in
Speaker 1: a minute, with just a couple of statements that you
Speaker 1: wrote that I think are useful, and you said one
Speaker 1: of them was perhaps romantic happiness had less to do
Speaker 1: with the relationship model itself than having a foundation of
Speaker 1: secure attachment and compatible desires. I think that's a great
Speaker 1: way of some in and up. And you also say
Speaker 1: there's nothing inherently abusive or enlightened about nonmonogamy. The individual's
Speaker 1: behavior determines that absolutely, and the same thing about monogamy. Right,
Speaker 1: We see that everywhere that monogamy can be a ripe
Speaker 1: breeding ground for abuse. In terms of that's kind of
Speaker 1: one oh one of why were you wearing that? Why
Speaker 1: were you talking to him? Right? Over half of women
Speaker 1: who are murdered in the United States are killed by
Speaker 1: romantic partners, and twelve percent of those cases are associated
Speaker 1: with jealousy. So obviously you can have monogamy be a
Speaker 1: breeding ground for abuse, but also you can have great
Speaker 1: love stories, and we see the whole gamut of that
Speaker 1: depicted in media, from the terrible outcomes to the most
Speaker 1: beautiful love stories. It's just the non monogamy so marginalized
Speaker 1: and taboo that that really has to be reminded and
Speaker 1: said explicitly of like, Look, it's not the relationship model itself,
Speaker 1: it's the people. Just in the same way as monogamy,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have any range of outcomes. Yes, I think
Speaker 1: it's a great way of saying it. So let's move
Speaker 1: on to jealousy, because when you open up the relationship
Speaker 1: on Adam's side, you are suddenly attacked by I don't
Speaker 1: know why he's called the green Why is jealousy considered
Speaker 1: the green monster? Do you know in your research on jealousy?
Speaker 1: You know I should know that, and I actually don't.
Speaker 1: I don't remember jealousy is the green monster. I don't
Speaker 1: know why. But you are attacked by it. And you
Speaker 1: describe a scene in the book where a woman walks
Speaker 1: into it. Maybe you guys are at a bar. I
Speaker 1: don't remember a restaurant. A woman walks and sits down
Speaker 1: and starts flirting with him, and the phrases that come
Speaker 1: to your mind are so vicious and so angry, like instantly,
Speaker 1: and you describe their not even thoughts you normally would have.
Speaker 1: It's not the way you think. Tell me about that moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was incredibly humbling and informative and kind of illustrative
Speaker 1: of social conditioning really, because before that I had never
Speaker 1: thought of myself as a jealous person. You know. I
Speaker 1: kind of even like it when partners I have like
Speaker 1: flirt with other people at parties, but that had always
Speaker 1: been within the context of monogamy. And this happened right
Speaker 1: after we opened the relationship, like two days after, and
Speaker 1: so the context of knowing he could now act on it,
Speaker 1: which he did, seemed to like change my entire emotional response.
Speaker 1: So first of all, that was just interesting. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I found all these phrases that I've only seen on
Speaker 1: I don't know, like Ricky Lake or Maury like as
Speaker 1: a child started coming into my head of like all
Speaker 1: these insults and kind of images of that, like woman
Speaker 1: lunging at another woman and things that I was horrified
Speaker 1: by because I was, like, these are not thoughts unfamiliar with.
Speaker 1: I was familiar with feeling anxious or maybe self hating,
Speaker 1: but I didn't tend to before that experience ever turn
Speaker 1: it on other people, especially not other women. I like
Speaker 1: to think that I was, you know, not that kind
Speaker 1: of feminist. I wouldn't do that, right, And so it's
Speaker 1: very humbling of immediately like, yes, you would given the
Speaker 1: right trigger. And that was kind of the continual lesson
Speaker 1: of jealousy was that it's so primal, it gets at
Speaker 1: so many of your childhood wounds, and it's also a
Speaker 1: word that actually encompasses many different emotions. It's it's that envy,
Speaker 1: green eyed monster, but it's also our feelings of inadequacy,
Speaker 1: our fear of abandonment. Yeah, like our feelings of enmity
Speaker 1: towards someone else that we're going to be replaced. It's anger,
Speaker 1: it's self hatred, it's anxiety and fear of the unknown.
Speaker 1: It's a perfect encapsulation of so many of the things
Speaker 1: that humans struggle with. A feeling Am I enough and
Speaker 1: I fundamentally lovable? Is there anything that can be counted
Speaker 1: on in the future or in life while other people
Speaker 1: leave me? It makes all of that feel for a
Speaker 1: lot of people a lot more unstable. And that's why
Speaker 1: most people make the deal of monogamy is because it's
Speaker 1: difficult emotional terrain for most people. Yes, you described it.
Speaker 1: I think the chapter heading was hell perhaps something like that,
Speaker 1: because it is, I mean, being deep in that is
Speaker 1: so painful, and you just described all the different ways
Speaker 1: it's painful. You know, it's not just one thing. I
Speaker 1: remember my son's mother left me when he was two
Speaker 1: for another guy. You know. She came home one day
Speaker 1: and said, I'm not in love with you anymore, and
Speaker 1: I'm in love with this guy. And literally fell like
Speaker 1: I descended into hell. And jealousy was a big part
Speaker 1: of that. There were a lot of things going on,
Speaker 1: you know, not living with my son was extraordinarily painful,
Speaker 1: but the jealousy that came up in that rendered me
Speaker 1: helpless for a while. It's very intense, and at the
Speaker 1: same time, I think that's what you see throughout. I
Speaker 1: find so compelling about exploring it as this sort of
Speaker 1: emotional adventure. I felt this strong sense because of the
Speaker 1: way Adam was framing it is the more evolved way
Speaker 1: to be. But also just a curiosity within myself. When
Speaker 1: I feel a strong emotion coming up that I don't
Speaker 1: want to identify, whether it doesn't match my values, my
Speaker 1: behavior is not matching my values or my emotional state,
Speaker 1: I get very curious to see if I can condition
Speaker 1: myself a different way, you know, Like I know, neural
Speaker 1: plasticity is real, and so I was very much like
Speaker 1: if I could just push through this feeling. I started
Speaker 1: to hope, like, because this is so challenging and so
Speaker 1: visceral and primal, and it's so clearly getting a core
Speaker 1: wounds and beliefs about myself that I felt like, if
Speaker 1: I could just come through the other side of this feeling,
Speaker 1: like maybe I will really accept impermanence, maybe I will
Speaker 1: really experience non attachment, maybe I won't even fear death.
Speaker 1: Because it felt like the most effective, prolonged ego challenge possible,
Speaker 1: Like I felt more challenge than I've done plenty of
Speaker 1: psychedelics alone, even and those have been useful experiences psychologically
Speaker 1: in terms of pushing myself to dissolve some of my
Speaker 1: attachments to myself an ego. But this was the next
Speaker 1: level experience for me, and it was so prolonged and persistent,
Speaker 1: So I felt like if I could just come through,
Speaker 1: maybe I would be really fearless, or maybe I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have this attachment to my own separate identity in the
Speaker 1: same way because I had to have it challenged. This
Speaker 1: is kind of the most visceral way to challenge. Ego.
Speaker 1: Is someone you love and you're deeply attached to, and
Speaker 1: in this case that I really feared losing, which made
Speaker 1: it even harder. Is out with someone else? Wow, that
Speaker 1: just is gonna trigger everything. Yeah, and you really went
Speaker 1: through it. You had this sort of battle of on
Speaker 1: one hand. Yes, I want to use this, use the
Speaker 1: word liberation right a lot. I want to use this
Speaker 1: to free me from these destructive emotions. You know. I
Speaker 1: want to use it too, as you said, loosen my
Speaker 1: grip on ego and lessen my fear of death. And
Speaker 1: so do you feel like you have found a way
Speaker 1: to work with it more skillfully and do you feel
Speaker 1: like leaning into that was a helpful thing? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a great question. I do think leaning into it was
Speaker 1: a helpful thing. But for me I kind of had
Speaker 1: to push it so far to realize it was too much,
Speaker 1: and you kind of hit a point where it's not beneficial,
Speaker 1: it's masochism. And so I think taking it to that
Speaker 1: extreme helped me come to a place where now more
Speaker 1: than ever, I value equanimity. It's kind of like the
Speaker 1: pendulum swung so far the other way. There was the
Speaker 1: total comfort of monogamy and no ego challenge, and I
Speaker 1: was always the one to dump. The partner was never
Speaker 1: allowing myself to be fully vulnerable. Then swung into this
Speaker 1: relationship with Animhe's a non monogamous where it was a
Speaker 1: domb sub dynamic. So I really felt like totally at
Speaker 1: someone else's mercy in so many ways and really lost
Speaker 1: myself in that. But then when I sort of came back,
Speaker 1: it helped me find I think and value the middle
Speaker 1: of the middle way more because now I definitely am
Speaker 1: still interested in challenging myself, and I'm still interested in
Speaker 1: confronting jealousy, and I'm still non monogamous. But I would
Speaker 1: never go back to a situation or I hope, like
Speaker 1: I just I've in the book where I'm just anxious
Speaker 1: all the time, or I'm self medicating with drugs or
Speaker 1: controlling behaviors. I think I value a lot more now
Speaker 1: the symptoms of my relationship or relationships. I should say that, Like,
Speaker 1: that's one distinction I make in the book, is like,
Speaker 1: you can really love someone and they can love you,
Speaker 1: But if you were to make a list of the
Speaker 1: symptoms that love is creating, what would it look like?
Speaker 1: And so for me at the time would have been
Speaker 1: like anxious all the time, no longer trust my own judgment,
Speaker 1: or reality like I need to be better over exercising,
Speaker 1: controlling food, self medicating with weed. Now I'm in a
Speaker 1: situation where my partner, you know, we're still no monogamous,
Speaker 1: but it's a much less breakneck pace of things. It's
Speaker 1: a much more value and equanimity and security and safety
Speaker 1: and the symptoms of that. Maybe it doesn't always feel
Speaker 1: in every moment as intense and exciting all the time,
Speaker 1: which I think people would Anxious attachment can sometimes confuse
Speaker 1: with true love when really what they're feeling is the
Speaker 1: chase and it feels much more secure. But the symptoms,
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, I wrote my first book, I sleep great,
Speaker 1: you know, my health is really good. I have a
Speaker 1: regular meditation practice. These are all things that I did,
Speaker 1: not my partner. But I can look at, you know,
Speaker 1: what is that relationship reinforcing? What are the symptoms of
Speaker 1: my lifestyle and my health under the conditions. And that
Speaker 1: is an important distinction for me to show, because I
Speaker 1: think when people are stuck in relationships that are very
Speaker 1: dramatic or even in this case, you know, emotionally abusive,
Speaker 1: it gets very confusing, and sometimes people on the outside
Speaker 1: it's so obvious that's a bad situation that they can
Speaker 1: kind of be like, that's not love, and then you
Speaker 1: get further isolated because you're like, but I'm in love
Speaker 1: and he loves me. And so it was important for
Speaker 1: me to say to the reader, I understand, like, you
Speaker 1: can really love someone and they can really love you,
Speaker 1: But can you look at that distinction of what are
Speaker 1: the symptoms of that love if you were to list
Speaker 1: them out, Yeah, what's sort of the fruit of the relationship,
Speaker 1: you know what's coming out of it. You can really
Speaker 1: deeply love slash care for someone and it be absolutely
Speaker 1: the wrong situation. I mean my most recent X that
Speaker 1: was the case. We were a terrible fit and I
Speaker 1: was miserable through that whole relationship. But there was a
Speaker 1: great deal of care and affection and there still is.
Speaker 1: There's one other thing that you said. You touched on
Speaker 1: it there and you said it in the book, and
Speaker 1: I love this line. You said, I wasn't sure what
Speaker 1: was the discomfort necessary for growth and what pushed me
Speaker 1: beyond healthy limits? And I think that is such a
Speaker 1: great reflection and question because we know we need to
Speaker 1: be uncomfortable to grow, right, whether it be physical, like
Speaker 1: if I want bigger muscles. I know the way that
Speaker 1: I'm going to get them is by discomfort lifting in
Speaker 1: a way that does not feel comfortable. Um, so we
Speaker 1: know that we need to go beyond that. And yet,
Speaker 1: as you sort of described earlier, there's a way of
Speaker 1: way over shooting that mark and getting into a place
Speaker 1: where our reactions are so strong we can't grow in
Speaker 1: that environment either. There is sort of a Goldilock zone. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And just to continue that idea of the lifting weights
Speaker 1: that if we never take rest days, we're also not
Speaker 1: going to grow our muscles. So I think I was
Speaker 1: not valuing enough the importance of rest and stillness, and
Speaker 1: there's kind of you just see me pushing the equivalent
Speaker 1: of high intensity interval training day after day after day
Speaker 1: after day, and so in in some ways, yeah, I
Speaker 1: was in great shape, but in other ways, like I
Speaker 1: was not actually growing muscle the way I could have
Speaker 1: if I rested more, and I was more than that
Speaker 1: not healthy. So I think people who are curious about
Speaker 1: growing emotionally and spiritually, which I imagine is most people
Speaker 1: who listen to your podcast, I think we can be
Speaker 1: particularly susceptible to that where you have to be careful
Speaker 1: that you know spiritual or emotional evolution doesn't fall into
Speaker 1: being one more thing that you have to check off
Speaker 1: your to do list. Like I love your interviews with
Speaker 1: Oliver Berkman, who wrote For a Thousand Weeks is such
Speaker 1: a great book all about this of like we're not
Speaker 1: really valuing rest and stillness enough, and we treat even
Speaker 1: often like our leisure activities as something towards self betterment.
Speaker 1: Whereas if there's going to be some place we reach
Speaker 1: where now we meditate enough, or we push ourselves emotionally enough,
Speaker 1: or even we're still enough, then we'll you know, have arrived.
Speaker 1: And his whole thing is like, no, there's not going
Speaker 1: to be a point where you arrive. Um, it's just
Speaker 1: right now. I think it's something I know I have
Speaker 1: to continue to work with and and just be careful
Speaker 1: with of walking that that line again, that middle way
Speaker 1: of yes, some discomfort is good, but your body will
Speaker 1: really tell you if it's the right kind. And one
Speaker 1: distinction I also like in the book is the Buddhist
Speaker 1: teacher Kaira Jewel Lingo, who I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: interviewed her. She's great. She's had a book come out actually,
Speaker 1: because another main question I had that's similar, is what
Speaker 1: is the difference between intuition and fear? Because that started
Speaker 1: getting very confused, especially in a dynamic with someone who said,
Speaker 1: that's not your intuition, that's your fear. And so I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, I could sort of see how that's true.
Speaker 1: And she said the difference you might understand between intuition
Speaker 1: fears that fear tends to kind of contract you and
Speaker 1: close you down, whereas intuition is a little more expansive.
Speaker 1: But again, that doesn't mean that any time you experience
Speaker 1: fear it's bad or incorrect. It's just that you can
Speaker 1: know the difference by that contraction or or that expansion.
Speaker 1: And if you're in a situation where you're getting contracted
Speaker 1: and contracted by fear but saying no, I just need
Speaker 1: to push through this, it might be a sign that
Speaker 1: you need to like step off the gas a little
Speaker 1: bit so that you can step into more of that
Speaker 1: expansive space of intuition instead. That question of intuition is
Speaker 1: one I find endlessly fascinating because intuition feels very deep,
Speaker 1: it feels very available, it feels very strong, it feels
Speaker 1: very right. But so do our worst and most destructive patterns, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, doing heroin felt really right to me. It
Speaker 1: felt in my bones like it was the thing to
Speaker 1: do right. That was not intuition right, And so I
Speaker 1: do think this question of determining what are our habitual
Speaker 1: conditionings and what's intuition? And I'm changing direction a little
Speaker 1: bit here, but I was reading an article you wrote.
Speaker 1: It's been a while now, it's probably six years ago.
Speaker 1: You wrote it about being on SSR eyes and I
Speaker 1: have done the on s s R I off s
Speaker 1: s R I dance. And in that article you wrote
Speaker 1: something that really grabbed me, and it basically says, was
Speaker 1: I more authentically myself off the drugs are on them?
Speaker 1: How did I know who the real me was? And
Speaker 1: what did that even mean? This idea of what's really me,
Speaker 1: what's really right, is such a perplexing idea because the
Speaker 1: most deep sort of Buddhist spiritual level would say, well,
Speaker 1: there is no actual essence of you there, So okay,
Speaker 1: let's set that aside for now, because one level up
Speaker 1: from that, there is very much a me that comes
Speaker 1: out of all the conditions that have evolved my life,
Speaker 1: my parents who raised me, my genetics, all these countless
Speaker 1: causes and conditions. There are ways to be more or
Speaker 1: less healthy within that constructive personality, if we want to
Speaker 1: call it. But knowing what's the real me? Boy? Is
Speaker 1: that an endless question? Yeah? Absolutely, And I think that
Speaker 1: in some ways that's what my writing will probably always
Speaker 1: be about. And just kind of tracking the impermanence of
Speaker 1: the answer and the evolution of that I think is
Speaker 1: really interesting to me. I mean, I think I also
Speaker 1: again how Tashi put it to me, where he said
Speaker 1: what matters is the intention and how it meets the results,
Speaker 1: So that can be one witness test that can be useful.
Speaker 1: I think he's also, since he's a Buddhist monk, is
Speaker 1: very much like you should go with whatever brings less suffering,
Speaker 1: which I do find useful as a barometer. But I
Speaker 1: have more resistance to again because of being that kind
Speaker 1: of emotional explorer or artist type where it's like I'll
Speaker 1: take the loads I want to, you know, experience all
Speaker 1: that life has to offer. But but there is something
Speaker 1: to be said for thinking will this decision lead to
Speaker 1: more suffering for myself and others or less? And what
Speaker 1: happens if you just keep following the one that's less
Speaker 1: and not thinking of that as a route of passivity,
Speaker 1: but rather just a way to make decisions, because sometimes
Speaker 1: the thing that will cause less suffering is actually going
Speaker 1: to require a lot of action. It might mean leaving
Speaker 1: a relationship that's really hard to leave. It might mean
Speaker 1: going vegan, it might mean doing things that are very challenging.
Speaker 1: It's not a passive thing to prioritize less suffering, but
Speaker 1: it can be a useful way for me to see, Okay,
Speaker 1: should I push it further or not? Or who is
Speaker 1: the real me? With the antidepressant sorry, of like is
Speaker 1: this fostering like less suffering in me? And that it
Speaker 1: continues to change over different periods, you know, for now
Speaker 1: I take them again. I find it just it just
Speaker 1: makes it easier. The side effects are not such that
Speaker 1: it's causing much suffering. But at other points in my
Speaker 1: life have been like, no, I really want to break
Speaker 1: from this. I want to feel something different. There is
Speaker 1: a suffering here to being on it of dullness, and
Speaker 1: then it's okay, I can take a break. But again
Speaker 1: with that sort of agnosticism of all right, and then
Speaker 1: when I start to suffer unnecessarily, how great that this
Speaker 1: tool is there that could maybe help me. There is
Speaker 1: no solid real me, but there is me in this moment,
Speaker 1: and am I making it unnecessarily difficult for myself in
Speaker 1: this moment to be present with myself and others? Well,
Speaker 1: maybe that's not noble so much as kind of silly. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I mean I have done, as I said, the same
Speaker 1: on again, off again dance and where that ants is.
Speaker 1: You know, the step we're on now is the on step,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's where it will stay. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that influence my decision to
Speaker 1: go back on them was what is the suffering I'm
Speaker 1: causing the people in my life? You know, because I
Speaker 1: just become an irritable I Am just not a lot
Speaker 1: of fun to be around, right I just have this
Speaker 1: irritation that's bristling, and I'm good at holding it in.
Speaker 1: I'm not like snapping it people. But you can feel that,
Speaker 1: you know, you can feel when you're around somebody who's
Speaker 1: constantly irritated. So that question of suffering was one and
Speaker 1: I think it's a great question, and it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: what will make me most comfortable right this minute. You
Speaker 1: really do have to have a bigger, broader wiser view
Speaker 1: in order to discern what will cause suffering and what
Speaker 1: will not. Yeah, it's that really broad definition. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I want to hit gas lighting before we run out
Speaker 1: of time. The word has come up a couple of
Speaker 1: times in the show, but it's honestly not something that
Speaker 1: I really understand very well. I know that one of
Speaker 1: my favorite bands of all time is called the Gaslight Anthem,
Speaker 1: but I don't even think it has anything to do
Speaker 1: with the modern term of gas lighting. And I've heard
Speaker 1: it used in so many different scenarios, in different situations
Speaker 1: that I don't fully understand it. So what does it
Speaker 1: mean to you? Gaslighting? A definition is manipulating someone by
Speaker 1: psychological means into questioning their sanity. And you can have
Speaker 1: that manipulation be conscious or not, which is tricky, but
Speaker 1: has to be that manipulation is there. And also, when
Speaker 1: I say gaslighting, I don't tend to refer to just
Speaker 1: one instance of it. We've all probably gaslight and an
Speaker 1: argument in moments or or whatever else, um kind of unwittingly,
Speaker 1: but when it's part of this really prolonged pattern of
Speaker 1: over and over your invalidating someone else's emotional experience or reality,
Speaker 1: saying things things like no, you're wrong, or that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: There's not a recognition that your own worldview is subjective
Speaker 1: as well, but rather it's only the other person who
Speaker 1: is subjective, and if they're not aligning with your perceptions,
Speaker 1: that they are incorrect and you need to correct that.
Speaker 1: So that's usually what gas lighting looks like is sort
Speaker 1: of invaliding someone else's emotional experience, trying to get them
Speaker 1: to align with your reality or convince them of yours,
Speaker 1: and not being able to on your side admit to
Speaker 1: fallibility or that you're ever wrong. Really is one of
Speaker 1: the telling signs got it. That's really helpful. And I
Speaker 1: think the distinction you put in there is really helpful
Speaker 1: for me too, which is that it's not always necessarily conscious.
Speaker 1: So the person who's quote unquote doing the gas lighting
Speaker 1: may not be thinking, oh, I'm trying to invalidate this
Speaker 1: person's emotional experience so I can manipulate them. They just
Speaker 1: think they're seeing the world as it is. Their view
Speaker 1: of the world is the way it is, and if
Speaker 1: your view of the world doesn't align with that, we've
Speaker 1: got to get you in line. Because I know better, yes,
Speaker 1: and I think Adam in his case, he really thought
Speaker 1: this was the best way to love me. That if
Speaker 1: I could just see things his way and act in
Speaker 1: accordance all the time and stop having a rational emotional
Speaker 1: response or or just kind of align with his worldview
Speaker 1: in all moments, that I would suffer less. And so
Speaker 1: I think he often really thought it was the best
Speaker 1: way to love me. And that was very confusing because
Speaker 1: as people friends or therapists on the outside, we're saying,
Speaker 1: he's gaslighting you, Like this is not okay, Like you
Speaker 1: don't have your own opinions anymore, Like you don't trust
Speaker 1: anything about your perception or your intuition. I would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: but like he doesn't mean to be doing that. He's
Speaker 1: just kind of this very dominant, all knowing guy who's
Speaker 1: super smart, and so that's just how he is. He's
Speaker 1: not thinking of that. So I think this misconception that
Speaker 1: someone who especially only like emotionally abuses you has to
Speaker 1: be getting up in the morning and plotting like how
Speaker 1: am I going to destroy their life today keeps a
Speaker 1: lot of people locked in those dynamics because they see
Speaker 1: how while the person doing, you know, hurt, people hurt.
Speaker 1: So they are often suffering a lot themselves. They need,
Speaker 1: you know, someone who needs to control someone else to
Speaker 1: that degree has a deep insecurity of abandonment, a deep
Speaker 1: disowning of their own fallibility or vulnerability. And this is
Speaker 1: why you see more often anyone can gaslight, but more
Speaker 1: often in relationships comprised of a man and a woman,
Speaker 1: men are the gas lighters and women are the receiving
Speaker 1: in And I think that's just because of socialization, right.
Speaker 1: Women have been taught to kind of adjust their feelings
Speaker 1: around what patriarchy wants and to believe more often that
Speaker 1: men are correct historically, and men have also been conditioned
Speaker 1: to think until at least very recently, their worldview is
Speaker 1: a more rational counterpoint to women's sational or rationality or craziness.
Speaker 1: And also that men have been socialized in this deeply
Speaker 1: destructive way to disown their own vulnerability and fragility and
Speaker 1: are often in relationships where they don't feel like they
Speaker 1: can show that side of themselves. Well, it makes sense
Speaker 1: that they would then more often try to prove to
Speaker 1: themselves and others that they are correct, because they would
Speaker 1: need to reinforce that worldview if they know more they've
Speaker 1: got it under control. They are not fallible and emotionally
Speaker 1: vulnerable in the same way. And so there's a lot
Speaker 1: of suffering there. And that was really important to me
Speaker 1: to depict an atom of like the suffering that he incurred. Yes,
Speaker 1: he was inflicting real psychological harm, but in upholding these
Speaker 1: kind of traditional values of what a man should be,
Speaker 1: so flawlessly in some ways, so dominant, so in control
Speaker 1: all the time of his emotions and his body even
Speaker 1: and he was not happy. Yeah, And it was important
Speaker 1: for me to show that because I think patriarchy is
Speaker 1: very destructive to men, totally, totally. I think you describe it.
Speaker 1: If you're a white man, it's especially easy to internalize
Speaker 1: that your responsibility is to uphold these values for others benefit.
Speaker 1: So these values of rationality and being in control, and
Speaker 1: you know you're supposed to know best. And you said,
Speaker 1: this is its own, albeit roomier cage, you know, it's
Speaker 1: still a cage. And I think that point is so important,
Speaker 1: and I think you do a great job in the
Speaker 1: book really depicting this that Adam in his way, thinks
Speaker 1: he is really doing the best and the right thing
Speaker 1: for you. He thinks he's caring for you. You know,
Speaker 1: even though what he's doing is clearly uncaring looking at
Speaker 1: from the outside, you can see. But as you said,
Speaker 1: hurt people hurt, and I think that is one of
Speaker 1: the toughest dynamics when you're in a difficult relationship or
Speaker 1: a bad relationship. Is this sense, you know, I can
Speaker 1: see it in the relationships I've been in the past,
Speaker 1: where there's this sense like, well, that's not who they
Speaker 1: really are, you know, back to this who is somebody
Speaker 1: really question? You know, she's just that way because X,
Speaker 1: Y and Z. I can see the hurt that happened.
Speaker 1: I can see how these patterns formed. I can see,
Speaker 1: and you get stuck in the belief and this is
Speaker 1: a really hard one in relationships, like but maybe they're
Speaker 1: going to change, and that maybe they're going to change
Speaker 1: is quite a way of keeping you hooked in totally.
Speaker 1: And you know it's tricky because people can change and
Speaker 1: this in every moment, right, so it's not untrue. But
Speaker 1: I think another distinction that's been useful for me is
Speaker 1: you can see and have compassion again for someone what's
Speaker 1: causing them to be harmful, And in fact, I think
Speaker 1: that's a very good exercise for people who cause harm
Speaker 1: in the world or anyone you view as an antagonist,
Speaker 1: See like, what what might be the suffering, the insecurity,
Speaker 1: the disowned, vulnerability or fragility that's causing this behavior. You
Speaker 1: can see that and still again have boundaries and not
Speaker 1: place yourself in a situation that's going to be again
Speaker 1: causing unnecessary suffering. And I think one good thing that's
Speaker 1: helpful for me to keep in mind or that I learned,
Speaker 1: is that you think if you would just love them enough,
Speaker 1: that they'll change or you can maybe heal that part
Speaker 1: of them and they'll stop hurting you. But you're actually
Speaker 1: just an enabler in that situation, and so you think
Speaker 1: you're helping them by having compassion, but really you're kind
Speaker 1: of reinforcing the pattern and the idea that that behaviors. Okay,
Speaker 1: And so sometimes the most compassionate thing is actually too
Speaker 1: really walk away or create a really solid boundary or
Speaker 1: whatever else it is so that you don't enable them
Speaker 1: to basically create more bad karma for themselves, because the
Speaker 1: more they're hurting you, they're also hurting themselves. So not
Speaker 1: only is it a bad situation for you, but it's
Speaker 1: actually a very bad situation for them. Is a dynamic
Speaker 1: of gaslighting that the person who's doing the gas lighting
Speaker 1: doesn't think they need to change, or are there situations
Speaker 1: where that person is like, yeah, I really am kind
Speaker 1: of screwed up. I'm doing my best, but I keep failing.
Speaker 1: That's a different animal, right, gaslighting is I don't really
Speaker 1: need to change. I've got the right view of the world.
Speaker 1: I'm doing things right. I didn't really do that bad thing.
Speaker 1: It's you. It's all you. Is that the dynamic? Yeah, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: that's the dynamic, And that's one of the most telling
Speaker 1: traits is like, basically, can the person say I am
Speaker 1: not always right or say I need to change this behavior.
Speaker 1: And it's certainly possible that people who are chronic gas
Speaker 1: lighters would therapy can work on changing themselves. But yeah,
Speaker 1: unfortunately that personality type that is one of the defining
Speaker 1: characteristics is that they will often refuse to work on
Speaker 1: themselves or say things like I tried therapy, M too
Speaker 1: smart for it or something like that, you know, or
Speaker 1: it doesn't work for me. They just think they're always right.
Speaker 1: The main delusion is thinking they're above delusion. Ah, that's
Speaker 1: a great line. And so you use the word a
Speaker 1: couple of times in the book Narcissist. Also, you know,
Speaker 1: I know a little bit about borderline personality, and borderline
Speaker 1: personality is certainly it's never my fault. Are people who
Speaker 1: are narcissists more likely to be gas lighters? Are people
Speaker 1: who have borderline personality more likely to be gaslighters? I
Speaker 1: don't even quite know if they're the same category or
Speaker 1: what to call them, but yeah, they are more likely
Speaker 1: to exhibit gaslighting. It's one of the main characteristics. Borderline
Speaker 1: is a narcissistic personality disorder. But certainly borderline is its
Speaker 1: own disorder. I don't think Adam had borderline personality disorder.
Speaker 1: That's a kind of specific thing. But he did exhibit
Speaker 1: narcissistic traits, as all of us do at times. But again,
Speaker 1: when it's kind of this prolonged path and of like
Speaker 1: my worldview is the correct one, you need to adhere
Speaker 1: to it. That's a real intense form of narcissism that
Speaker 1: we see in lots of powerful people around the world
Speaker 1: might have that view of their own opinions, you know,
Speaker 1: putin for example, as a current example, that's kind of
Speaker 1: an expression of yeah, my view is correct, and everyone
Speaker 1: else be damned. It's definitely a form of narcissism. You
Speaker 1: say that gas leaders follow predictable sort of pattern. Can
Speaker 1: you share what that pattern looks like in a romantic relationship. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the main characteristics in the beginning is something
Speaker 1: that psychologists called love bombing. So often when we fall
Speaker 1: in love with someone who chronically gaslights or people who
Speaker 1: are extremely narcissistic, they tend to be very charming and
Speaker 1: charismatic and very romantic. There's a lot of talk of
Speaker 1: like rescuing you and delivering you to a better life,
Speaker 1: and you can feel like you stepped into a fairy tale.
Speaker 1: And again, this might not all be like a conscious
Speaker 1: manipulation on their part, but they this is part of
Speaker 1: how the person on the receiving end gets really hooked,
Speaker 1: because they reached this level of feeling desired and seen
Speaker 1: and cherished on a level they've never felt before. And
Speaker 1: so as that is slowly begins to be withdrawn incrementally,
Speaker 1: the person being gas lit tries to get back to
Speaker 1: that place basically, and there's a kind of narrative established
Speaker 1: of if I could just be good enough, or if
Speaker 1: I could just you know, adapt to his way of
Speaker 1: being nominogamous, then he'll love me again that way. So yeah,
Speaker 1: after the love bombing stage or as that's happening, often
Speaker 1: they will start criticizing you a lot, correcting a lot
Speaker 1: of things you do, and you might resist that at first,
Speaker 1: or have a fighter or even try to leave, and
Speaker 1: they'll often become sort of even like hysterical because their
Speaker 1: fear of abandonment is triggered, and you get into this
Speaker 1: kind of fight and makeup cycle, like without him that
Speaker 1: when I tried to in the beginning, like assert certain
Speaker 1: boundaries that he would literally block the door and say, like,
Speaker 1: you can't get space, like we need to reconcile this now,
Speaker 1: we can't stay angry, and he would make me let
Speaker 1: him touch my leg or something like that. So there
Speaker 1: was this kind of thing of like I was not
Speaker 1: allowed to even get space to be upset with him,
Speaker 1: and you would kind of become desperate to have me
Speaker 1: not leave, and you'd say, I'll do whatever you want, okay,
Speaker 1: And he would become suddenly very vulnerable, and so this
Speaker 1: kind of indomitable figure would lower himself and and beg
Speaker 1: and plead, and then you'd reconcile and the cycle would
Speaker 1: start again so something would happen where, you know, I'd
Speaker 1: be criticized too much, or he would push too far,
Speaker 1: or I would try to stand up for I know
Speaker 1: this is not okay how you're talking to me or
Speaker 1: what you're doing, and he would get very defensive and say, no,
Speaker 1: you're wrong. And if I got the strength to try
Speaker 1: to leave, which I did many times, then he would
Speaker 1: prevent me from doing that by badging or or making promises.
Speaker 1: Another traits that if they get caught in a lie,
Speaker 1: they will never usually admit to a lie. So you
Speaker 1: see examples of that throughout the book. Under those conditions,
Speaker 1: you become increasingly anxious, you know, because obviously you now
Speaker 1: no longer trust your own sense of reality, or someone
Speaker 1: telling you all the time that you're incorrect or that
Speaker 1: you need to change. Phrases like oh what would you
Speaker 1: do without me to take care of you are very common,
Speaker 1: so you sort of lose trust in your own self sufficiency.
Speaker 1: And so because you're so anxious in this dynamic, that
Speaker 1: kind of feeds their argument that you're acting irrationally, that
Speaker 1: no one else will love you, you just need to change,
Speaker 1: And the cycle continues and you become increasingly as I
Speaker 1: do in the books self isolating, anxious, self medicating. You
Speaker 1: don't tell your friends or family about the problems because
Speaker 1: often the gas later will say things like Adam did
Speaker 1: of like don't say bad things about the relationship and
Speaker 1: incriminate people against our relationship. They're gonna never like me
Speaker 1: if you say anything. So these are all patterns of
Speaker 1: of not just gaslighting, but emotional abuse as well. That's
Speaker 1: part of how it works, and it's very confusing, it's
Speaker 1: very destructive, and part of what I wanted to show
Speaker 1: is how it can really happen to anyone. I'd seen
Speaker 1: my friends be in situations like that and where I
Speaker 1: was like it was so obvious, or maybe I thought,
Speaker 1: oh I would I would never do that. I feel
Speaker 1: bad for them, but I wouldn't fall into them too
Speaker 1: self assured. And part of what was really important to
Speaker 1: me because I had this really unusual recording of how
Speaker 1: this unfolded over many years. Because Adam allowed me to
Speaker 1: record so many of our conversations therapy sessions, I was
Speaker 1: able to really depict almost verbatim in the book, with
Speaker 1: psychologists commenting throughout how exactly this dance works and how
Speaker 1: it happens incrementally over time to even the most self
Speaker 1: assured intelligent people. That really doesn't have anything to do
Speaker 1: with it. Dr Robin Stearns says that high achieving, ambitious
Speaker 1: women are particularly prone to being in relationships with men
Speaker 1: who guessed like them. Why do you think that is? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're determined to impress the one person they can't ever
Speaker 1: seem to can fully convince of their aptitude. Got it?
Speaker 1: And also I think that these people tend to be very,
Speaker 1: very dominant personalities, and so people who are very on
Speaker 1: top of it in their professional lives tend to sometimes
Speaker 1: enjoy being submissive in their relationships or in the bedroom
Speaker 1: because it's a relief from that burden of feeling like
Speaker 1: you're always in control or have to be on top
Speaker 1: of it. So at first, it can be a relief
Speaker 1: when you're someone who's very in your head to have
Speaker 1: someone else saying, don't worry, I've got it all under control.
Speaker 1: I know it's right, I've can figure it out for you. Um.
Speaker 1: The problem is that comes at a high price. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had a moment a couple of weekends ago where
Speaker 1: I was in that spot. I was like, I just
Speaker 1: wish anybody like someone tell me what's the right thing,
Speaker 1: and of course knowing that that's impossible, that like a
Speaker 1: the answer is unknowable and nobody can know for me
Speaker 1: what the right thing for me is except me. But
Speaker 1: boys that desire sometimes there. Well, I think the good
Speaker 1: news is that you emerged on the other side of
Speaker 1: this with a lot of healing and a lot of help.
Speaker 1: And you and I are going to talk in the
Speaker 1: post show conversation a little bit more about some of that.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about practical tips from a Buddhist monkey
Speaker 1: you recently got to, you know, help us deal with
Speaker 1: the despair of the world. We might talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about the signs of gas lighting. But there
Speaker 1: was a line that you use that I loved, and
Speaker 1: I thought maybe I could read it and then you
Speaker 1: could say a little bit about it and we could
Speaker 1: kind of end on it. And you said, basically, you
Speaker 1: had this growing realization that the only person who could
Speaker 1: really promise to always take care of me was me,
Speaker 1: and sort of a growth into really love and entrusting
Speaker 1: yourself in that way. Yeah, that was such an important
Speaker 1: lesson And it's almost a cliche, you know, woman emerges
Speaker 1: from bad relationship only to love herself. But I think
Speaker 1: like there's a reason for that cliches that it's a
Speaker 1: it's a lesson a lot of people need to learn,
Speaker 1: And especially when you're socialize as a woman, you're taught
Speaker 1: to believe that your life, in many ways is something
Speaker 1: at least on the romantic front, that's going to happen
Speaker 1: to you, like you're gonna come and be rescued. We're
Speaker 1: not taught to like necessarily go and find the prince
Speaker 1: charming right, or or ask out the person we have
Speaker 1: a crush on. There's this kind of passivity or resigning
Speaker 1: to fate, which might not always be conscious. We often
Speaker 1: don't believe in that, but it is the way we've
Speaker 1: been taught to see our lives. Whereas they say, like
Speaker 1: men much more often are taught to view themselves in narratives,
Speaker 1: childhood narratives as sort of the action hero, the protagonist,
Speaker 1: the initiator, And that's a very different way to be
Speaker 1: socialized to go through life right. One year much more
Speaker 1: in control of and have agency, and the other one
Speaker 1: is passive. So I think that learning to love and
Speaker 1: see myself as my own soulmate was a way of
Speaker 1: reclaiming Yes, there's hardly anything you can control in life,
Speaker 1: but I can at least promise to always be there
Speaker 1: for myself through all of it. That that's an incredibly
Speaker 1: powerful realization to lean into. And also that self nurturing
Speaker 1: is incredibly powerful, and that the only reason we think
Speaker 1: of it is soft or kind of like hippie dippy
Speaker 1: is because of the feminine energies being devalued. But there's
Speaker 1: incredible strength in that. And and so Tara Brock, who
Speaker 1: I know, um you've had on the podcast and who
Speaker 1: I love, she was a huge part of my healing
Speaker 1: and that practice of rain learning to sit with emotions,
Speaker 1: recognize them, investigate them in the body. But then really
Speaker 1: that last step of end nurture to say to myself
Speaker 1: the things I have been depending on Adam or someone
Speaker 1: else to say this imaginary I do other of I'll
Speaker 1: always be there for you, Rachel, you know, I think
Speaker 1: you're doing so great. I love you. If we can
Speaker 1: learn to literally say those things to ourselves, even in
Speaker 1: moments of extreme instability or grief, I think it can
Speaker 1: be really transformative and powerful, or at least it was
Speaker 1: for me awesome. Well, I think that's a great place
Speaker 1: to wrap up. As I mentioned, you and I will
Speaker 1: continue in the post show conversation listeners. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to get access to post show conversations, add free episodes,
Speaker 1: a special episode I do each week called Teaching Song
Speaker 1: and a poem, and other great benefits of being a member.
Speaker 1: Go to One You Feed dot net slash joint Rachel,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on. I really enjoy
Speaker 1: aid the book and I've really enjoyed talking with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. If what
Speaker 1: you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making
Speaker 1: a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast.
Speaker 1: When you join our membership community. With this monthly pledge,
Speaker 1: you get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our
Speaker 1: way of saying thank you for your support now. We
Speaker 1: are so grateful for the members of our community. We
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support,
Speaker 1: and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To
Speaker 1: learn more, make a donation at any level and become
Speaker 1: a member of the One You Feed community. Go to
Speaker 1: When you Feed dot net slash. Join the One You
Speaker 1: Feed podcast. Would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for
Speaker 1: supporting the show.