Speaker 1: I think people treat dating like shopping. I want this.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go find this. You don't choose a
Speaker 1: partner a la carte. How do I feel with this person?
Speaker 1: That is the most important question you can ask. And
Speaker 1: if you enjoy their company, you feel heard, you feel understood.
Speaker 1: All the rest is just nice.
Speaker 2: A psychotherapist and New York Times best selling author.
Speaker 1: Glori Laurie Gottlieb A lot of times relational issues or
Speaker 1: childhood issues in disguise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're spot on.
Speaker 1: Many problems are so fixable. You can heal a lot
Speaker 1: of things to have more of a relationship than you
Speaker 1: ever thought possible.
Speaker 2: Before we jump into this episode, I'd like to invite
Speaker 2: you to join this community to hear more interviews that
Speaker 2: will help you become happier, healthier, and more healed. All
Speaker 2: I want you to do is click on the subscribe button.
Speaker 2: I love your support. It's incredible to see all your
Speaker 2: comments and we're just getting started. I can't wait to
Speaker 2: go on this journey with you. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for subscribing. It means the world to me. The best
Speaker 2: selling author on the host the number one Healthy Well inness.
Speaker 1: Podcast On Purpose with Jason Jenny.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one
Speaker 2: health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every
Speaker 2: one of you that come back every week to become
Speaker 2: a happier, healthier and more healed. I'm so grateful that
Speaker 2: you lend me your ears every day, some of you
Speaker 2: multiple times per day or multiple times per week, to
Speaker 2: dive into conversations to help you grow, to help you
Speaker 2: become the person that you want to be, and connect
Speaker 2: with your authentic self. Today's guest is someone who's been
Speaker 2: on the show before and you loved the episode, so
Speaker 2: we had to bring her back. I'm speaking about the
Speaker 2: one and only Lori Gottlieb, a psychotherapist and New York
Speaker 2: Times best selling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone,
Speaker 2: which has sold nearly two million copies and is currently
Speaker 2: being adapted as a television series. In addition to Laurie's
Speaker 2: clinical practice, Laurie is co host of the popular Dear
Speaker 2: Therapist podcast, and she writes the Atlantics Dear Therapist advice column.
Speaker 2: Check those out if you haven't already. Laurie's the creator
Speaker 2: of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone's Workbook, a toolkit
Speaker 2: for editing your story and changing your life and maybe
Speaker 2: you should talk to someone journal fifty two weekly sessions
Speaker 2: to transform your life. If you don't have a copy
Speaker 2: of this, make sure you go and grab one while
Speaker 2: we're having this conversation. And I'm so excited to welcome
Speaker 2: again to On Purpose Lurie Gottlieb Lurie, thank you for
Speaker 2: being here.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Jay, so great to be here again.
Speaker 2: I've always loved collaborating with you, and I've always appreciated
Speaker 2: your work. I know so many people in my life
Speaker 2: that have benefited from your work and your books and
Speaker 2: your podcast and everything you do online. And so I
Speaker 2: thought the most fitting thing to do in my team
Speaker 2: thought was to get you questions from our audience so
Speaker 2: that you could answer real life scenarios, challenges, pain points
Speaker 2: that my friends or my community are going through. How
Speaker 2: does that sound.
Speaker 1: That sounds fantastic?
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Well let's dive in. So I've been
Speaker 2: talking to a friend and one of the biggest challenges
Speaker 2: she's going through is that men tend to want to
Speaker 2: have a relationship with her, even though she tends to
Speaker 2: want to be friends with them and is open potentially
Speaker 2: at some point in the future to it going somewhere else,
Speaker 2: but is not putting herself out there saying I want
Speaker 2: to be in a relationship, I want to date. She
Speaker 2: wants to just build up good connections, good friendships, and
Speaker 2: what ends up happening is that she ends up in
Speaker 2: these scenarios where men are then sometimes guilty shaming, bullying
Speaker 2: her into believing that there's something more here and that
Speaker 2: she's denying it. And she feels really uncomfortable because deep
Speaker 2: down she cares about this individual, She admires them, appreciates them,
Speaker 2: but she just doesn't see them romantically. And I think
Speaker 2: what's really hard is the deeper point that I think
Speaker 2: is more universal that a lot of people can connect with,
Speaker 2: is you care about someone, just not in that way,
Speaker 2: so you don't know how to keep a distance at
Speaker 2: the same time you don't want to be intimate with them.
Speaker 2: Does that make.
Speaker 1: Sense, Yeah, it absolutely does. And I think that the
Speaker 1: pro people have is that they feel like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to hurt this person, and at the same time
Speaker 1: they're not thinking about what matters in this friendship to me,
Speaker 1: So it doesn't sound like a great friendship if the
Speaker 1: other person is telling you no, you actually feel this
Speaker 1: other way. So you want to talk about. Are you willing?
Speaker 1: Are you interested in being friends with me? Because I'm
Speaker 1: not interested in anything else, And part of being friends
Speaker 1: with me is hearing what I have to say and
Speaker 1: believing me. Otherwise they don't think we're going to have
Speaker 1: a friendship that's healthy. So if you want to be
Speaker 1: in my life, I would like to be in your life.
Speaker 1: If you want that, then I need you to believe
Speaker 1: me when I tell you this is how I feel,
Speaker 1: and not try to push me into something that doesn't
Speaker 1: feel comfortable to me. And then that person can really
Speaker 1: think do I want this person in my life? Knowing
Speaker 1: this is their hard boundary, But people don't say it
Speaker 1: that way. They feel like I'm going to hurt this person,
Speaker 1: or they start arguing with the person. If you find
Speaker 1: yourself arguing with someone about how you feel, that's not
Speaker 1: a great friendship.
Speaker 2: And that's so hard right I feel today so many
Speaker 2: of these conversations are happening over text yes or messaging.
Speaker 2: These aren't face to face conversations. They're happening in a
Speaker 2: way where you're writing this much, someone's responding reply back.
Speaker 2: When you find that this goes on and on and on,
Speaker 2: and it can kind of spiral for days, sometimes weeks.
Speaker 2: How do you kind of accept that it might be
Speaker 2: time to draw a line, maybe distance or disconnect and
Speaker 2: move on even though that's painful, Or what is that
Speaker 2: moment where you can kind of just say, I'm going
Speaker 2: to honor myself. I'm going to honor what I wanted
Speaker 2: from this friendship that doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: You know, first of all, I think that this thing
Speaker 1: about text is really important. I have so many clients
Speaker 1: who come into therapy and they'll say, you know, we
Speaker 1: had this conversation and they'll tell me this conversation that
Speaker 1: went on and on and on and on, and I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: how did this conversation go on? Were they there for
Speaker 1: five hours whatever? And it turns out they've been texting
Speaker 1: for days about it. Yeah, why didn't you just have
Speaker 1: conversation face to face? And they say, well, that would
Speaker 1: have been too hard. But look how hard it is
Speaker 1: to have it on text. I think it's so much
Speaker 1: harder to have it on text, because when you're together,
Speaker 1: you're actually connecting, even if it's difficult, even if you're
Speaker 1: saying some things that might cause some discomfort, it's easier
Speaker 1: actually to do it in person. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: paradoxical that people think I'm going to protect myself and
Speaker 1: somebody else by doing this on text, because you're not
Speaker 1: protecting anyone. It's easier to have a challenging conversation in person.
Speaker 1: It goes so much better.
Speaker 2: How have you encouraged people to take that leap into
Speaker 2: having difficult conversations across relationships, not just in this scenario
Speaker 2: in person, because it's exactly what you just said. People
Speaker 2: feel anxious, they feel like they were't no how to
Speaker 2: control their emotions. They feel they might say something that
Speaker 2: don't mean, or the other person might say something they're
Speaker 2: not ready to hear. And I find more and more people,
Speaker 2: whether it's in the workplace, whether it's in their marriage,
Speaker 2: whether it's in a friendship, struggle to have difficult conversations
Speaker 2: face to face. What are some of the practices or
Speaker 2: methods or tools that you've shared with people to help
Speaker 2: them do that well.
Speaker 1: First of all, I think that people establish patterns in
Speaker 1: a relationship very early on. I always say that relationships
Speaker 1: are like cement, So in the beginning, there's a little flexibility,
Speaker 1: So the other person is texting you when you want
Speaker 1: to have a conversation. You can kind of mold that
Speaker 1: by saying, hey, let's talk in person. But if you
Speaker 1: keep texting them, then the cement dries and that becomes
Speaker 1: the pattern in the relationship with anything. So many people
Speaker 1: put up with a lot at the beginning of a
Speaker 1: relationship because they think this person has all these other
Speaker 1: great qualities. So what if they can't really have a
Speaker 1: conversation with me, right, you know, I have so much
Speaker 1: fun with them, or I can fix them or over time.
Speaker 1: I'll bring this up later, but I don't want to
Speaker 1: bring it up now because we're early in the relationship. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's the time you should bring it up, because the
Speaker 1: cement is drying, and it dries quickly, so patterns get established.
Speaker 1: So if the cement is dry and then you try
Speaker 1: to change it and say, let's have a face to
Speaker 1: face conversation, but you guys have been texting about things
Speaker 1: for months instead of talking about them, it's really hard
Speaker 1: to change that. So I would say, very early on,
Speaker 1: establish what you want in a relationship, and if the
Speaker 1: other person isn't down for it, that's really good information
Speaker 1: to have early on.
Speaker 2: It's almost like, well, now, if you want to talk
Speaker 2: to me about in person. It must be high stakes. Yes,
Speaker 2: it almost like amplifies how significant this moment is when
Speaker 2: it shouldn't be that way. It should be the norm.
Speaker 2: If someone is doing it later on in a relationship,
Speaker 2: how do they do it in a way that doesn't
Speaker 2: feel like this is groundbreaking or this is we need
Speaker 2: to talk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's really it's actually pretty straightforward. And I know,
Speaker 1: I know it's hard to do in the moment, but
Speaker 1: to be able to just make that shift in the
Speaker 1: relationship and say, you know what. I know we've been
Speaker 1: texting about this stuff, but I think it'll be so
Speaker 1: much better for us. It's so much easier to talk
Speaker 1: about this in person.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then you see, will the other person show up,
Speaker 1: will they keep texting you, or will they say, sure,
Speaker 1: let's get together, let's talk about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I feel like a lot of people just keep texting.
Speaker 1: Because what they're afraid of is they're afraid that it's
Speaker 1: going to be harder again, like they're going to drop
Speaker 1: some big bombshell And you're saying, no, I just want
Speaker 1: us to be able to be in a room together
Speaker 1: and talk about anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, all right, Great, Well, I hope, friend, if
Speaker 2: you're listening, I hope the answers to your question. Another
Speaker 2: one that kept coming up from our audience, there are
Speaker 2: a couple of people who felt this way was around
Speaker 2: and I want to spend some time in Actually, we'll
Speaker 2: go back and forth. We'll go back and forth, We'll
Speaker 2: come back to relationships. One of the biggest ones that
Speaker 2: we obviously get a lot about is social anxiety, and
Speaker 2: a lot of the questions that came up and some
Speaker 2: of the stories that I dived into, is people just
Speaker 2: struggling with being around big groups, people going to events
Speaker 2: or parties or even their friends home where other people
Speaker 2: are there, struggling to strike up a conversation, feeling lonely
Speaker 2: and disconnected even in the crowd, feeling uncomfortable being able
Speaker 2: to share what they're doing, and feeling confident about what
Speaker 2: they're doing. Let's talk about where's the root of some
Speaker 2: of that social anxiety coming from. I know it can
Speaker 2: be many different things. What are the variety of things
Speaker 2: it can be, and what have you seen some of
Speaker 2: the ways of helping people understand that anxiety better. Rather
Speaker 2: than staying at home, keeping away and maybe not encouraged
Speaker 2: to go out and meet people.
Speaker 1: So I think that whatever we're experiencing is relational and
Speaker 1: so a lot of times relational issues or childhood issues
Speaker 1: in disguise and even with social anxiety. So for example,
Speaker 1: if you have a story that you've been told when
Speaker 1: you were younger, like I'm not good enough or I
Speaker 1: don't measure up, or you know people are going to
Speaker 1: criticize me. Whatever your experience had been, you're going to
Speaker 1: project that onto all of your relationships as an adult.
Speaker 1: So social anxiety is usually something about I will not
Speaker 1: be liked, I will not be loved, and that has
Speaker 1: to do with how you were liked or loved when
Speaker 1: you were younger, if you haven't processed that and worked
Speaker 1: that out. So I think that it's about kind of
Speaker 1: rewriting your story before you say, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go to that event. Is what am I
Speaker 1: afraid of? What am I afraid someone's going to think?
Speaker 1: And is that true? And do I have evidence from
Speaker 1: other parts of my life now as an adult that
Speaker 1: it's not true? I think unfortunately, the stories that people
Speaker 1: told us about ourselves are about the storyteller, meaning it
Speaker 1: was the person you know in our past who had
Speaker 1: mental health issues, or they had their own insecurities and
Speaker 1: they projected them onto their children. They were limited, they
Speaker 1: didn't know how to interact, they didn't know how to love,
Speaker 1: and then they criticized their children, or they neglected their children,
Speaker 1: or they couldn't hear them or see them or value them.
Speaker 1: They couldn't feel that excitement around, like I love who
Speaker 1: this human being is and I think. Then that gets internalized,
Speaker 1: and then you grow up and you think everybody in
Speaker 1: the world thinks that about me, and A it's just
Speaker 1: not true that other people think that. But more importantly,
Speaker 1: it's just not true that you are whatever story you
Speaker 1: were told about you. So you need to say what
Speaker 1: is the true story? And then you go into that
Speaker 1: environment with the true story. And it doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: have to go to a party with one hundred people.
Speaker 1: It means maybe I open up to a friend a
Speaker 1: little bit more, Maybe I try hanging out with a
Speaker 1: group of three people and see what that's like. And
Speaker 1: you kind of experiment. And when you see that this story,
Speaker 1: this old story, doesn't seem to be playing out in
Speaker 1: these new situations, you get more confident going into bigger
Speaker 1: and bigger situations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's those baby steps, and I often surprise people
Speaker 2: when I tell them that I'm in some cases so
Speaker 2: much more of an intro than I am an extrovert.
Speaker 2: And it's so it's kind of confusing for people because
Speaker 2: I generally am in places where I can be my
Speaker 2: extra itself. But if I go to an event where
Speaker 2: I don't know anyone, I'm likely to try and find
Speaker 2: one person that I can have a really deep, meaningful
Speaker 2: conversation with rather than working the room or trying to
Speaker 2: connect with loads of people, because I feel so much
Speaker 2: happier and fulfilled if I can walk away from an
Speaker 2: event and go, wow, I met one person and we
Speaker 2: have so much in common, and we share so many values,
Speaker 2: and now I'm actually going to keep in touch with
Speaker 2: that person, as opposed to the idea of like, well,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I feel the pressure that I need
Speaker 2: to talk to twenty people here and I should be
Speaker 2: networking and I should be exchanging numbers and whatever it
Speaker 2: may be, which isn't how I like to operate. And
Speaker 2: so I love that idea of those baby steps and
Speaker 2: starting small.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And I also think there's a difference between
Speaker 1: being an introvert. I'm exactly like you in the sense
Speaker 1: of I really like to have these deep conversations and
Speaker 1: I'd rather be with fewer people and have a deeper
Speaker 1: connection than be with more people and have a more
Speaker 1: superficial connection. But at the same time, I feel like
Speaker 1: it's one thing to say I would rather have these
Speaker 1: sort of smaller and more intimate conversations, but I'm not
Speaker 1: anxious going into them. And so I think what you're
Speaker 1: talking about with social anxiety is I'm anxious to just
Speaker 1: reveal the truth of who I am to anybody. I'm
Speaker 1: worried about showing up and being found wanting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that is what a lot of
Speaker 2: people are struggling with. So I guess does it help?
Speaker 2: Then having a question you want to ask people? Does
Speaker 2: it help? I found that for people that I work
Speaker 2: with when they struggle because they're like, what do we
Speaker 2: talk about? I don't want to sit there and talk
Speaker 2: about the weather or I don't want to talk about
Speaker 2: the news, or And it was like having a question
Speaker 2: to open with, to ask, to share with someone, and
Speaker 2: being confident to share on that question felt like something
Speaker 2: that definitely has helped me and help people. I know
Speaker 2: where you also know that you do feel comfortable sharing
Speaker 2: that part of your life. Have you found any other
Speaker 2: tools or methods that have helped individuals in those spaces?
Speaker 1: What you're saying is so true, And I think that's
Speaker 1: curiosity that I think when people feel anxious, they feel
Speaker 1: like they have to tell a story that's entertaining. They
Speaker 1: have to keep the person from being bored with whatever
Speaker 1: they're talking about. People like to talk about themselves, So
Speaker 1: if you're here, and I don't mean that in kind
Speaker 1: of a narcissistic way, I mean that people like it
Speaker 1: when you show interest in them, and we don't a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't ask other people about themselves enough,
Speaker 1: so when they have an opportunity, for a person who
Speaker 1: genuinely is curious, this isn't just some kind of strategy
Speaker 1: for your social anxiety. It's actually a way to relate
Speaker 1: to people. I'm genuinely curious to get to know you,
Speaker 1: and you ask questions about their life, They're going to
Speaker 1: be really interested in interacting with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think what's even more true about what
Speaker 2: you're saying is that everyone's feeling that way, and therefore
Speaker 2: everyone feels like everyone is uninterested in everyone else. Yes,
Speaker 2: And so I've been to events with people before and
Speaker 2: they've come with me and they've said, oh, that person
Speaker 2: was so cold, or that person seemed like they had
Speaker 2: an ego, and I was like, well, no, I know
Speaker 2: that that person just feels uncomfortable in these And it's
Speaker 2: weird how we all just look at each other and
Speaker 2: we kind of make these judgments of like, oh, they
Speaker 2: were called they brushed me off. Yeah, but actually everyone's
Speaker 2: just feeling quite anxious as opposed to having this like
Speaker 2: vendetta against you or some sort of And obviously there
Speaker 2: could be something else as you get to know them better,
Speaker 2: but it's worth giving someone the benefit of the doubt
Speaker 2: and stepping it out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I also think another thing that turns people off
Speaker 1: is when you ask about sort of external things like
Speaker 1: tell me about what you do, tell me about your work, right,
Speaker 1: because then it feels like, oh, are they trying to
Speaker 1: network with me or did they actually want to get
Speaker 1: to know me. You know, you can ask something like
Speaker 1: where did you grow up? Yes, something as simple as that,
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, I grew up here. Oh really, wow,
Speaker 1: you know that's so different from where I grew up
Speaker 1: or I grew up somewhere similar and you know, did
Speaker 1: you have siblings? Did you what was that?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: How did you end up here? Just get their story?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, I think you're spot on. I think the
Speaker 2: work question is kind of it's kind of faded away.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's how people used to talk and connect.
Speaker 2: And you're so right. I think now everyone always feels
Speaker 2: like what's the agenda here? But asking about Yeah, for me,
Speaker 2: when I'm at a birthday party, like how do you
Speaker 2: know the person whose birthday is? How do you know
Speaker 2: the person who's getting married? Like how are you connected
Speaker 2: to them? I found that to be a much healthier question.
Speaker 2: And then as you were just saying, now, like I
Speaker 2: love asking people where they're from because I'm from London,
Speaker 2: I lived in New York, I live here now. It's like,
Speaker 2: it's great for me to learn about the United States
Speaker 2: because people are from all over the place here and
Speaker 2: places I've never heard of or never been to. It
Speaker 2: can be an education and all of a sudden, it's
Speaker 2: you can see someone opening up. And it's easy for
Speaker 2: most people to mention where they grew up or where
Speaker 2: they started, rather than a question about like their job
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 1: It may be, right, because that always feels there's so
Speaker 1: much pressure with that. Am I successful enough? Am I
Speaker 1: telling the right story? Or if you are successful, I
Speaker 1: don't want to make them feel bad, you know. So
Speaker 1: there's all this stuff underneath, whereas we're just connecting human
Speaker 1: to human with tell me about yourself, tell me about
Speaker 1: your story.
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, all right, now I want to switch into
Speaker 2: back into relationships because it seems to be a big one.
Speaker 2: And this is something that a couple of people that
Speaker 2: came through our audience have been struggling with, and it
Speaker 2: was this idea of being with someone or dating someone
Speaker 2: but you don't like their work ethic or you don't
Speaker 2: think they are focused enough. So these people say that
Speaker 2: I'm very hard working, I'm very focused. I've started dating
Speaker 2: this person who I like a lot of qualities they have,
Speaker 2: but something I really obviously value is someone who's driven,
Speaker 2: an ambitious, and a doer. But I'm not really seeing
Speaker 2: that in them. Does this relationship have a chance to last,
Speaker 2: does it have a future? Or am I always going
Speaker 2: to feel this way?
Speaker 1: This reminds me of this saying you don't choose a
Speaker 1: partner a la carte. You can't just order up all
Speaker 1: the qualities that you want, you know, I want them
Speaker 1: to I want them to be sensitive, and I want
Speaker 1: them to be kind, and I want them to be
Speaker 1: super driven and ambitious and I want you know, you
Speaker 1: get what you get, and there's going to be all
Speaker 1: these different qualities. And if that's really important to you
Speaker 1: and you are going to feel like I want to
Speaker 1: change this person, then that's doomed that the person is
Speaker 1: who they are now. It's different if the person says,
Speaker 1: I'm working on this for myself, this is something that
Speaker 1: I'm trying to do. This is my area of growth
Speaker 1: right now. And maybe you might say, how can I
Speaker 1: support you? And then you only do what they ask
Speaker 1: you don't do more than they asked in terms of
Speaker 1: supporting that. But if you want someone who comes, you know,
Speaker 1: intrinsically driven in that way, that's probably not a good
Speaker 1: partner for you.
Speaker 2: And I guess the counterpoint is also true that you
Speaker 2: may discover someone ambitious and driven, but they may not
Speaker 2: have the other qualities. But I think it's obviously what
Speaker 2: researches today are calling the paradox of choice. Right. We've
Speaker 2: heard that so many times, and I think today because
Speaker 2: there is so much more choice or at least the
Speaker 2: perception that there is so much more choice. I think
Speaker 2: there is a belief that people have of I don't
Speaker 2: want to settle. I believe this person does exist that
Speaker 2: will have all of these things. How have you navigated
Speaker 2: that with clients when they're telling you, I feel like
Speaker 2: I'm getting older, I'm worried about my body, Clark, I'm
Speaker 2: scared about, you know, not finding someone. I'm getting pressure
Speaker 2: from my parents and my friends. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: I don't want to settle, which is a completely fair,
Speaker 2: valid feeling. Right at the same time, you're saying, well,
Speaker 2: you can't order someone a la cart, and so how
Speaker 2: do we kind of how do you help people grapple
Speaker 2: with those I guess conflicting ideas or what at least
Speaker 2: seems that way.
Speaker 1: I think you have to know what your deal breakers are,
Speaker 1: but they have to be the right kind of deal breakers.
Speaker 1: So I want people to kind of let go of
Speaker 1: some of the things that research shows doesn't matter for
Speaker 1: a happy, lasting relationship, and I want people to have
Speaker 1: higher standards ironically about what does. So the character issues,
Speaker 1: you know, is this person a kind person? The two
Speaker 1: most important predictors of whether a relationship will succeed are
Speaker 1: emotional stability? Do you both have emotional stability or your
Speaker 1: whole in that way? I don't mean like you're finished, right,
Speaker 1: I just mean that you can self regulate, you can
Speaker 1: have a conversation, you don't act out in egregious ways,
Speaker 1: you're honest, those kinds of things. And the other one
Speaker 1: is flexibility. It's really hard to be in a relationship
Speaker 1: with someone who's very rigid. So those are two things
Speaker 1: really to think about. But in terms of the character
Speaker 1: qualities that should be the big deal breakers. Is this
Speaker 1: person responsible? Do they say, do they mean what they say?
Speaker 1: How did they show up? What do they do under stress?
Speaker 1: That's really important because you will experience that in the
Speaker 1: course of your lives together. Do they have a sense
Speaker 1: of humor right in when things are stressful? Can we
Speaker 1: still hold those contradictions of this is hard and we
Speaker 1: can support each other and make each other laugh.
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: The things that people get hung up on are, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that that career is the career that
Speaker 1: I want to be with someone, right, as opposed to Wow,
Speaker 1: they're really passionate about this thing. That's a really cool quality.
Speaker 1: So maybe they won't make as much money, but between
Speaker 1: what I make and what they make, will that work
Speaker 1: for us? So, you know, letting go is sort of
Speaker 1: like a lot of these fantasies that we're told growing
Speaker 1: up we should be looking for in a partner versus
Speaker 1: who do you want to spend time with every day?
Speaker 1: Who is the person that you really enjoy spending time with,
Speaker 1: who you also feel safe with? And I think safety
Speaker 1: is so important. I feel safe with this person because
Speaker 1: I know that the rug is not going to be
Speaker 1: pulled out from under me.
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Speaker 2: use the code on purpose. I love hearing about the
Speaker 2: things that should be deal breakers and the things that shouldn't,
Speaker 2: and I want to talk about those first two. I
Speaker 2: find that so much growth today, and maybe it's always
Speaker 2: been this way, but so much of our growth is
Speaker 2: happening while we're with people. It's not happening in that
Speaker 2: we solved it before we were eighteen or twenty one,
Speaker 2: and now we move on to a relationship. And I
Speaker 2: don't think people are often getting the best versions of people.
Speaker 2: You're getting the work in progress version at all times.
Speaker 2: Like you said, no one's ever finished. But I find
Speaker 2: that more often than not, I'm just hearing about such
Speaker 2: a lack of flexibility and such a lack of emotional
Speaker 2: regulation when I'm hearing about people's stories and learning about
Speaker 2: them and how people talk to each other, how people
Speaker 2: deal with problems, and I find, of course, where do
Speaker 2: obviously all of that I'm in talking to you from
Speaker 2: a therapist perspective, A lot of that's coming from childhood,
Speaker 2: a lot of that's coming from personal trauma. It's very
Speaker 2: hard to make sense of that. When you first meet
Speaker 2: someone and you're dating someone, you're almost meeting the you
Speaker 2: are meeting the best version of them, because it's the
Speaker 2: one they're portraying or the one that they want you
Speaker 2: to see. And then naturally you spend longer with someone,
Speaker 2: you see them stressed, you see them angry, you see
Speaker 2: them upset, You start seeing all of this other three sixty.
Speaker 2: I guess the question is, how do we allow for
Speaker 2: the fact that we're less likely to meet someone who
Speaker 2: is the finished product, but at the same time give
Speaker 2: ourselves enough time to not feel too deep or fall
Speaker 2: too hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think about that saying, in the first three
Speaker 1: months of a relationship, you're not you. You're the ambassador
Speaker 1: of you, so it's very hard to know and everybody's
Speaker 1: on their best behavior. But I think that people, you know,
Speaker 1: you're still having a lot of deep discussions in those
Speaker 1: first three months because you feel this incredible vulnerability and intimacy,
Speaker 1: and people will tell you a lot of things that
Speaker 1: maybe you don't want to hear, so they are these
Speaker 1: red flags and you kind of block them out. You think, oh,
Speaker 1: well that's okay, or I'm not going to pay attention
Speaker 1: to that. You project onto them who you want them
Speaker 1: to be as opposed to who they actually are. And
Speaker 1: I think that what you said about we grow in
Speaker 1: relationship is so true. I think that people grow so
Speaker 1: much more in couple's therapy than they might even an
Speaker 1: individual therapy, because you are forced to contend with another
Speaker 1: person that you're coming up against, and I really feel
Speaker 1: like a you have to listen to those to those
Speaker 1: everything that they tell you, the good, the kind of questionable,
Speaker 1: all of it and just say what does that mean?
Speaker 1: And you can even think about, well, let me get
Speaker 1: more information about that. What did they mean when they said, oh,
Speaker 1: they don't really want kids? Like, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: Does that mean? Now? Does that mean? Ever? What does
Speaker 1: that mean? You have to listen to these things, you know,
Speaker 1: what does that mean? Where they're they talk really really uh,
Speaker 1: you know, with a lot of aggressive language about a
Speaker 1: parents for example, that means that, yes, maybe that parent
Speaker 1: really disappointed them and maybe there was a lot of trauma.
Speaker 1: But how have a sort of process that and where
Speaker 1: are they with processing that? Because if that's still so
Speaker 1: raw to them, that will come out in your relationship
Speaker 1: with them. You might not think they're gonna that's gonna
Speaker 1: come out toward you, but it will. Right we marry
Speaker 1: our unfinished business. So I think you really have to
Speaker 1: look out for that. So, no, you're not looking for
Speaker 1: like a person who has all the answers. I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody ever has all the answers. But you're looking
Speaker 1: for willingness to show up, willingness to take responsibility, willingness
Speaker 1: to apologize. That's huge, and also will to bring things up.
Speaker 1: So and are you willing to hear what the other
Speaker 1: person has to say. So a lot of times when
Speaker 1: I'm seeing a couple and someone will say, you know, oh,
Speaker 1: this person never brings things up, I'm less interested in
Speaker 1: the fact that they don't bring it up, and I'm
Speaker 1: more interested in why what are you afraid of? Why
Speaker 1: can't you talk to your partner? And they might say
Speaker 1: when I have brought things up, my partner tries to
Speaker 1: talk me out of the way that I feel. When
Speaker 1: I try to bring things up, my partner tries to
Speaker 1: tell me I'm wrong. When I try to bring things up.
Speaker 1: My partner shuts down. When I try to bring things up,
Speaker 1: My partner yells. When I try to bring things up,
Speaker 1: my partner acts like they don't like me anymore. Right,
Speaker 1: So then they say, okay, I'm not going to bring
Speaker 1: things up. So then we need to talk about Well,
Speaker 1: this is a dance that the two of you are doing.
Speaker 1: It's not just that this person is avoidant. It's that
Speaker 1: you are inviting the avoidance. So no one's to blame here.
Speaker 1: It's just that you guys are doing a dance and
Speaker 1: you both have to change your downce steps if you
Speaker 1: want to change the dynamic in the relationship.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of our inflexibility leads to this
Speaker 2: binary thinking of oh my gosh, if they've got issues
Speaker 2: with their parents, then I can't be with them. Or
Speaker 2: if they've got this, I can't be with them, and
Speaker 2: I think, or if they're like this, then I should
Speaker 2: be with them. And I almost feel like there's that
Speaker 2: middle ground of just no, I just these are things
Speaker 2: I need to be aware of, and then I can
Speaker 2: still be in a relationship or choose not to. But
Speaker 2: I feel like there's a lot of binary decision making
Speaker 2: based on small data points. Yes, because we are so
Speaker 2: scared by our own trigger or by our own pain
Speaker 2: that comes from that, that we can easily write something
Speaker 2: off that may just need a little more work. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know if that. If you agree, you can
Speaker 2: disagree completely. That's I'm just sharing what my thoughts at least.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I agree. A great example of that is
Speaker 1: I was seeing a couple and he had a lot
Speaker 1: of issues with authority because his father really kind of
Speaker 1: misused authority as he was growing up. So that's a
Speaker 1: big trigger for him and he's really working on it.
Speaker 1: So if he wasn't working on it, that would be different.
Speaker 1: But he's really working on it, but sometimes things happen.
Speaker 1: And so his partner had this beautiful we came up
Speaker 1: with in couple's therapy, a beautiful way for her, you know,
Speaker 1: when you can see the childhood wounds and you can
Speaker 1: help you. They're working on it, so you're not solving
Speaker 1: it for them, but you can support them in some way.
Speaker 1: So if she saw him out in public, maybe getting
Speaker 1: triggered by something, it wouldn't happen often, if it happened
Speaker 1: a lot, that would be a problem. She would just
Speaker 1: put her hand on his arm like that, and it
Speaker 1: just calmed his nervous system and it brought him to
Speaker 1: the present. Was such a beautiful thing that she could
Speaker 1: do for him, and she had stuff from childhood, and
Speaker 1: he knew, oh, I can see the little girl in
Speaker 1: her right now. I have so much compassion instead of
Speaker 1: getting frustrated by it, so much compassion for the little girl.
Speaker 1: I know this about her, and here's what I can
Speaker 1: do for her in that moment. These shorthands, these little
Speaker 1: things that you can do to kind of help someone.
Speaker 1: Instead of going from zero to sixty, just go from
Speaker 1: like zero to five and then be like, oh, now
Speaker 1: I can come back down.
Speaker 2: We think we can see where our partner's triggers are
Speaker 2: and what their weaknesses are, especially if you get to
Speaker 2: know them better and you start to think, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I know that his mum talks to him like that,
Speaker 2: and so that's why he's talking to me like that,
Speaker 2: because he's taking that stress out on me. That's useful,
Speaker 2: But often we don't look at that as context and
Speaker 2: compassion and empathy. We look at that as how does
Speaker 2: he not get it?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Or how did they not get it that? That's where
Speaker 2: it comes from, and we almost want our partner to
Speaker 2: learn the lesson or it's so obvious, how can you
Speaker 2: not see it? And here you are talking about like
Speaker 2: a gentle test in the arm that helps someone calm
Speaker 2: their trigger. How do you help each other understand your
Speaker 2: triggers in a way that doesn't trigger you? Because I
Speaker 2: feel like it's such a sensitive conversation to have, and
Speaker 2: because some people areselfs unaware and some are self aware,
Speaker 2: or you're seeing things in others but you can't see
Speaker 2: in yourself, how do you have healthier conversations around Hey,
Speaker 2: do you know why we're behaving this way? Do you
Speaker 2: know why we're talking like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we just had a beautiful episode on the podcast.
Speaker 1: So on our podcast Gear Therapist, we have we bring
Speaker 1: people on for actual sessions and then we give them
Speaker 1: homework to do and then they tell us how it went.
Speaker 1: To the end of the session, we had this young
Speaker 1: couple on and her trigger was wait that she wanted
Speaker 1: to She was trying to set a boundary, but it
Speaker 1: was a very difficult boundary. It was you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: we think about boundaries as I'm going to make this requestion,
Speaker 1: You're going to do it, and if you don't do it,
Speaker 1: then you have broken my boundary. That's not how boundaries work. Okay,
Speaker 1: boundaries are about and I think this is a really
Speaker 1: important point related to this, which is that when you
Speaker 1: set a boundary, you're deciding for yourself what you will do,
Speaker 1: not what the other person will do. So you can
Speaker 1: say to the other person in her case, I don't
Speaker 1: like it when you talk about weight, because that's a
Speaker 1: big trigger for me growing up. That was something that
Speaker 1: was always talked about. I don't want to talk about dieting,
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk about people's weight or people's appearance.
Speaker 1: That really bothers me. But it got to the point
Speaker 1: where he couldn't say anything about you know, like it
Speaker 1: was too restrictive of a boundary. And so they would
Speaker 1: argue about this because he's just like, I'm just not
Speaker 1: going to say anything because I never know what's going
Speaker 1: to trigger you. Her boundary could have been I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask him not to say a reasonable number of
Speaker 1: things about weight, but there are certain things that he
Speaker 1: might say and I'm going to have to maybe leave
Speaker 1: the room or I'm going to self regulate, or I'm
Speaker 1: going to have a mantra for myself. That's what I'm
Speaker 1: going to do. They would argue about this, and what
Speaker 1: would happen is she would you know, we had to
Speaker 1: get to sort of what was underneath this, and she
Speaker 1: finally discovered it's like I need more affirmation. I need
Speaker 1: more like just flirt with me during the day or
Speaker 1: you know. And he said I need that too, and
Speaker 1: so we gave them this homework assign where they just
Speaker 1: had to do one very subtle flirtation, you know, just
Speaker 1: once a day, and she left a little note on
Speaker 1: the bathroom mirror and he said, oh my god, that
Speaker 1: made me feel so the whole day. I was so excited.
Speaker 1: It is these tiny things, and so then she was
Speaker 1: less triggered when like food would come up, because he
Speaker 1: was so much about, like, you look beautiful, and she said,
Speaker 1: you always say when I get my eyebrows done, You're
Speaker 1: like dang, And she's like, why won't you do that
Speaker 1: with other things? I don't want to have to get
Speaker 1: my eyebrows done, right, And he was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I think you're so beautiful. I should be saying that more.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it just realizing, you know, what is the trigger
Speaker 1: really about? And then how can you as a partner
Speaker 1: support that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I just want to reemphasize that point if
Speaker 2: anyone missed it. It's like, boundaries are not to control
Speaker 2: other people's actions towards you. There to control your own
Speaker 2: actions based on what others do to you.
Speaker 1: Right, And the important part about boundaries is maintenance, by
Speaker 1: the way, So it's not just one time. It's let's
Speaker 1: say that you say to someone, you know, if you
Speaker 1: yell at me, if you raise your voice, I'm going
Speaker 1: to end the conversation. We had this on the podcast
Speaker 1: with someone else that the father was kept talking to
Speaker 1: his daughter about when are you going to get married?
Speaker 1: When are you and your boyfriend going to get married,
Speaker 1: and she said to him, if you bring that up,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna end the conversation or I'm going to leave
Speaker 1: the room because I want to have fun with you
Speaker 1: when i'm with you, and this just makes it really stressful.
Speaker 1: And so every time it had to be in every
Speaker 1: time he mentions that, you say, Dad, just reminder, we'll
Speaker 1: talk another time. And if you don't do that, if
Speaker 1: you don't do it consistently, like let's say that you
Speaker 1: do it ten times, but then one time you like
Speaker 1: let that conversation continue, the person thinks, oh, I can
Speaker 1: still talk about this because they're not going to leave
Speaker 1: the room. They're not going to end the conversation. So again,
Speaker 1: it's what you do. You have to hold the boundary
Speaker 1: every single time for yourself and the other person is
Speaker 1: going to realize at a certain point, if I want
Speaker 1: to be in that person's presence, I can't bring this
Speaker 1: up because every single time they're going to leave.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the mistake we make. We break
Speaker 2: our own boundaries in order to show our care or
Speaker 2: to be seen as a good person or whatever it
Speaker 2: may be. But that ends up setting us up for
Speaker 2: more failure because now that person thinks they can cross
Speaker 2: the boundary as well because we're doing it anyway. Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: boundaries are just such a fascinating thing because I find
Speaker 2: them so useful in so many areas of my life.
Speaker 2: But I think you just hit the nail on the
Speaker 2: head that it's our own letting our guard down about
Speaker 2: our own boundaries that actually allows people to think they
Speaker 2: can break them anyway. It's not about them breaking them down,
Speaker 2: like if you stay pretty strong on that, I mean,
Speaker 2: if I mean, people can still do what they want,
Speaker 2: but at least you'll know where you stand with them.
Speaker 2: I remember a small example of what you just said.
Speaker 2: I remember whenever i'd go back to London because I'd
Speaker 2: like to see my family there. There'd be certain members
Speaker 2: of my family. You'd always say to me, Oh, you're
Speaker 2: only back for thirty days, and then i'd see them
Speaker 2: the week. Often they'd be like, oh, you've only got
Speaker 2: twenty one days left, and I'd just be like, guys,
Speaker 2: I'm back for thirty days, like you know. And I
Speaker 2: had to draw a boundary around just and it sounds
Speaker 2: so small and silly, but it isn't. Because I didn't
Speaker 2: like hearing that, because I was like, let's just be
Speaker 2: really grateful for this present moment, Like let's have the
Speaker 2: best time w'k together right now. And I don't want
Speaker 2: to sit here and think about how many days I
Speaker 2: have left again. It can be so small, but it
Speaker 2: can be so important to you. But I have to
Speaker 2: honor that. Okay, if you bring up time again, then
Speaker 2: XYZ is going to happen or whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the other thing about boundaries is that people
Speaker 1: think that boundaries separate you. The point of the boundary
Speaker 1: is to bring you closer. It's I can be in
Speaker 1: RelA I want to be in relationship with you, but
Speaker 1: we need to have these boundaries. I remember somebody wrote
Speaker 1: into the column. A parent wrote in and said, my
Speaker 1: daughter has all these boundaries about how many times I
Speaker 1: call her during the day. And she said, you know,
Speaker 1: I want I'm setting a boundary. And he wrote in
Speaker 1: and said, I don't want to have a boundaried relationship.
Speaker 1: And I wrote back and I said, every relationship is
Speaker 1: a boundaried relationship. You can't just do whatever you want
Speaker 1: in a relationship. All relationships have boundaries. It's like it's
Speaker 1: kind of like the difference between being in an ocean
Speaker 1: with no boundaries, or being in a fish bowl where
Speaker 1: the boundaries are too tight and people can't live. You
Speaker 1: want to be in an aquarium in relationship, right, so
Speaker 1: there's enough room for each person to kind of have
Speaker 1: their space, but it's not so constrained that like everybody's
Speaker 1: walking on eggshells, and it's not so open like an
Speaker 1: ocean where there's you can just do whatever you want.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well said, I like that analogy, and I.
Speaker 1: Think that the important thing about the boundary is when
Speaker 1: you set the boundary, it's saying I want to be
Speaker 1: closer to you, I want to be in relationship with you.
Speaker 1: But if you keep doing that, it's going to push
Speaker 1: me away. So please don't mention this, right, don't criticize me,
Speaker 1: don't talk about whether I'm married, because that's going to
Speaker 1: make me go farther away. I want to be close to.
Speaker 2: You, and actually that is a sign of closeness because
Speaker 2: if someone actually learns about your boundary, they actually are
Speaker 2: learning about some of the most intimate details about you.
Speaker 2: Because if you're saying this triggers me, or this makes
Speaker 2: me feel upset, or this really gets to me, you're
Speaker 2: actually displaying vulnerably something that's so significant and meaningful to you,
Speaker 2: and so it should bring you closer to someone else.
Speaker 2: It's like that person actually values and respects you so
Speaker 2: much to actually open up and share with you a
Speaker 2: weakness or a pain point.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I saw some friends on the podcast we were doing,
Speaker 1: and they came together and they were saying, like, I
Speaker 1: set some boundaries, and the other person thinks that I
Speaker 1: don't want to be friends. And know what you're saying
Speaker 1: is I want this friend. They've been friends since childhood
Speaker 1: and things change, things evolve as you move into adulthood
Speaker 1: and you move into family life and your different stages
Speaker 1: of life, whatever they might be. And this person was like,
Speaker 1: I am doing this because I want to Our friendship
Speaker 1: matters to me. It's important. And once the other friend
Speaker 1: heard that the boundaries were fine, it was that this
Speaker 1: person thought, oh, you're trying to dump me, and she's saying, no,
Speaker 1: I'm doing the opposite. I'm trying to keep our friendship alive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's part of the communication. I
Speaker 2: feel like there's a need for whoever you are, if
Speaker 2: you're the person in the relationship, that's almost to some
Speaker 2: degree guiding this conversation. It's important for you to clarify
Speaker 2: why you're setting the boundary. I think often we just
Speaker 2: say this is what I want to do, and we
Speaker 2: kind of announce it, and it's more of an announcement
Speaker 2: than it is a setting of a boundary. And it's
Speaker 2: so much more powerful when someone says to you, Hey,
Speaker 2: I actually really value our relationship and I think this
Speaker 2: is going to bring us closer. And that's why I'm
Speaker 2: actually being really vulnerable with you and I'm sharing with
Speaker 2: you this is how I feel when you do this,
Speaker 2: and it mean the world to me if we were
Speaker 2: able to shift this or this is how I'm probably
Speaker 2: going to behave if this happens. But that kind of
Speaker 2: casing that sometimes our communication needs to be and it
Speaker 2: demands a lot of us. And I get this feedback
Speaker 2: from a lot of people when we're talking to them
Speaker 2: on the podcast and through my books and everything, is
Speaker 2: that people feel like they're often the one carrying the
Speaker 2: torch to help this maturity develop in a relationship, and
Speaker 2: a lot of people are quite exhausted by it. They're like, well, gosh,
Speaker 2: I'm like trying to help us set boundaries. I'm the
Speaker 2: one like setting agreements. I'm the one who's like encouraging
Speaker 2: us to be positive, and it can get really exhausting
Speaker 2: carrying the torch. How what do you say to people
Speaker 2: who feel that way right now? But they're like, you
Speaker 2: know what, Laurie, I'm trying to be curious with my partner.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to do this with my friends. I'm like
Speaker 2: the one setting up this, but like I'm exhausted now,
Speaker 2: and so I don't know how long I can do
Speaker 2: it for and I just want them to step up.
Speaker 1: So often what we'll see is if that person will
Speaker 1: come to couple's therapy, we'll find out either the person
Speaker 1: doesn't want to step up and you keep asking them
Speaker 1: to do something they are not interested in doing, and
Speaker 1: so that just you know, So the question I would
Speaker 1: ask the person who feels like they're holding the burden
Speaker 1: of it all is why are you trying so hard?
Speaker 1: Why are you in this?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Like, what is how is this serving you? Because this
Speaker 1: is so hard, you're not happy? Why do you remain it?
Speaker 1: Why are you trying to get this person to do something?
Speaker 1: Why don't you find someone who is willing and interested
Speaker 1: in the kinds of things that you're interested in in
Speaker 1: a relationship, and so then there's some usually some old
Speaker 1: stuff there about. You know what we call repetition compulsion,
Speaker 1: which is trying to you find someone who is unwilling
Speaker 1: to give you what you need or want, which is
Speaker 1: maybe some old stuff. And then you then you think like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it with this person because this
Speaker 1: time i'll win. This time I can make it happen.
Speaker 1: I couldn't make it happen when I was a child,
Speaker 1: but this time I'll win. Except you won't win. It
Speaker 1: doesn't happen that way. The way you win is you
Speaker 1: let go of that, you grieve what you didn't get,
Speaker 1: and then you go find it in someone without trying
Speaker 1: to change them. So you're not trying to win anything.
Speaker 1: It's already there. But another reason, another thing that happen
Speaker 1: is this couple comes to couple's therapy and the person says,
Speaker 1: I'm not showing up because the other persons so controlling.
Speaker 1: This person has tried to control everything. They're trying to
Speaker 1: set every rule, they're trying to manage every aspect of
Speaker 1: our lives, and there's no room for me and my
Speaker 1: thoughts and how I want things to go. And when
Speaker 1: I say I want this, they say, no, you're wrong, No,
Speaker 1: it can't be that way. It's my way, this is
Speaker 1: the way this is. I'm the healthy person, you're the
Speaker 1: not healthy person. And that doesn't feel good either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it requires so much self excavation to just see
Speaker 2: whether we're being that person or we can often so
Speaker 2: get lost in our holier than thou and kind of
Speaker 2: this feeling of like, oh, I'm so emotionally mature and
Speaker 2: I'm so self aware, and I'm doing the work and
Speaker 2: I know the language, and all of a sudden, actually
Speaker 2: we're we're being so evangelical that the person that we're
Speaker 2: speaking to is kind of feeling like they have no
Speaker 2: say or no impact or no involvement. One of this
Speaker 2: scenarios that came up in this conversation while we were
Speaker 2: preparing for this podcast was this couple. The woman earns
Speaker 2: more than the man, and she doesn't have an issue
Speaker 2: with it. She's very comfortable with it. She didn't care,
Speaker 2: she wasn't she that wasn't a big priority for it. It
Speaker 2: wasn't a deal breaker for her. But it's really triggering
Speaker 2: to him and he's uncomfortable with that. And so if
Speaker 2: the topic of money comes up or budgeting comes up,
Speaker 2: he often tries to. Yeah, he gets very uncomfortable about it.
Speaker 2: It can make him, can make him angry, it can
Speaker 2: make him upset. She's trying to figure out how does
Speaker 2: she help him become more confident and comfortable and happy
Speaker 2: about who he is and not feel this pressure that
Speaker 2: he feels potentially coming from his family or his upbringing
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this would be a great thing for them to
Speaker 1: talk about in couple's therapy and really get it sort
Speaker 1: of What does money represent to them? Does it represent
Speaker 1: self esteem, acceptance, love, power, lack of power? Money represents
Speaker 1: so many things. I think people when they talk about money,
Speaker 1: if they talk about money in their relationships, it's such
Speaker 1: a sensitive topic. They tend to talk about it on
Speaker 1: the content level, like let's make a budget or why
Speaker 1: did you spend money on that? Right, And they're not
Speaker 1: really talking about how do we both feel about money?
Speaker 1: What was money like in our households when we grew up.
Speaker 1: What were the messages that we got around money. Some
Speaker 1: people got really mixed messages. You know, money is good,
Speaker 1: money is bad. We have money, we don't have money
Speaker 1: value judgments. It's okay to spend money on this but
Speaker 1: not on this, and so you bring all of that
Speaker 1: into your relationship and then the gender roles of course, right,
Speaker 1: So what does that represent? What kind of family did
Speaker 1: you grow up in in terms of how they thought
Speaker 1: about gender and power and money, and how that changes
Speaker 1: with culture, with the kind of maybe egalitarian marriage that
Speaker 1: you want. Those are all conversations they need to have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not about let's sit down and make a budget, but
Speaker 1: about all the questions that I was just bringing up.
Speaker 2: Those are such great questions and I know that for
Speaker 2: that they work because me and my wife have sat
Speaker 2: down and looked at that through our marriage, and we've
Speaker 2: had so many questions about that because we both came
Speaker 2: from very different financial setups and our relationship with money
Speaker 2: was very very different. I started working very very young,
Speaker 2: My wife started working while she was at college and
Speaker 2: after and just as time grew in, our lifestyle change
Speaker 2: and things changed, there were so many conversations we had
Speaker 2: to always reset as well. It wasn't just like, oh,
Speaker 2: we've solved it now, we don't talk about money anymore,
Speaker 2: and it's we've had to almost re evaluate and rethink
Speaker 2: that topic so many times, depending on how many changes
Speaker 2: there are, but I find that those are the questions
Speaker 2: that I find people avoiding, or when they do talk
Speaker 2: about it, it's always a full blown argument. So it's
Speaker 2: like you said, it's either about budgeting if they talk
Speaker 2: about it in a healthy way, or like at least
Speaker 2: a practical way is probably a better word, or we
Speaker 2: don't talk about it because you're like so scared to
Speaker 2: mention it because when you do, it turns into a
Speaker 2: full blown argument, and now we're arguing about not even money,
Speaker 2: we're arguing about something else. I want to help people
Speaker 2: have the tools to start difficult conversations with people in
Speaker 2: their life. It could be of mom, it could be
Speaker 2: a dad, it could be you know. I feel like
Speaker 2: all of us avoid We avoid discomfort in our lives,
Speaker 2: and uncomfortable conversations are one of the biggest ones. Whether
Speaker 2: it's when you're firing someone, when you're giving feedback to someone,
Speaker 2: when you're trying to be directed with someone, these are
Speaker 2: such challenging things to do. How do we sit in
Speaker 2: the discomfort or how do we prepare for uncomfortable conversations
Speaker 2: to help them go better.
Speaker 1: First of all, I think that people are worried that
Speaker 1: somehow they're being unkind by bringing something up that's uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: The kindest thing you can do is to have a
Speaker 1: conversation with somebody that is real and genuine and authentic.
Speaker 1: I think that the first the way you start that
Speaker 1: is you start it with yourself. So before you even
Speaker 1: get to the other person, you want to be able
Speaker 1: to say to them, to say to yourself, I'm being
Speaker 1: really kind and I'm remembering their humanity, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to have this conversation in an open, generous, curious way.
Speaker 1: So I'm not here to set my agenda necessarily. I'm
Speaker 1: here to be curious about their experience so we together
Speaker 1: can come to some kind of understanding about each other
Speaker 1: that we didn't have before. And I think that's the
Speaker 1: framework that you come into any hard conversation with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's almost like again comes back down to
Speaker 2: what we're discussing it today is like framing a conversation.
Speaker 2: I think we get so lost in like what are
Speaker 2: we trying to solve? Yeah, and we're trying to be
Speaker 2: very logical, and actually it's like, well know, framing the
Speaker 2: conversation in the emotion of understanding how people feel about
Speaker 2: things and where it come from and what this could
Speaker 2: lead to is so much more important than actually solving
Speaker 2: the problem.
Speaker 1: Right and knowing that this is going to be a
Speaker 1: dialogue not a monologue. I think then we're like, I
Speaker 1: have something important to say, and you're going to deliver
Speaker 1: whatever you're going to deliver to them. It's not a monologue.
Speaker 1: It's not I'm coming to deliver something. It's I'm coming
Speaker 1: to bring up a topic, and I want to hear
Speaker 1: where the other person is coming from, and you might
Speaker 1: want to ask them first, like, Hey, I know that
Speaker 1: money has been kind of stressful for us. Can we
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about it. I'm curious to hear
Speaker 1: more about what money is, what it means to you,
Speaker 1: what it was like growing up. I want to share
Speaker 1: that with you, about what it means to me, what
Speaker 1: it was like for me growing up, and you could
Speaker 1: have a really beautiful conversation. The other thing is, if
Speaker 1: it's a romantic relationship, hold hands. It's really hard to argue.
Speaker 1: It actually calms your nervous systems. Just hold hands as
Speaker 1: you're having the conversation. It's so lovely. It opens people
Speaker 1: up to be more vulnerable.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I love this advice, and I really hope
Speaker 2: everyoneho's listening to watching you're going to try and practice
Speaker 2: some of these. They're so subtle and there's such small insights,
Speaker 2: but they make such a big difference because it can
Speaker 2: be a game changer when you approach the same conversation
Speaker 2: in a completely different way, and it can transform the
Speaker 2: trajectory of your relationship with an individual because they have
Speaker 2: so much more respect for how you handled it too.
Speaker 1: And we just did a podcast episode with a mother
Speaker 1: and daughter. They've been having the same fight for twenty
Speaker 1: five years and they came on the podcast and we
Speaker 1: have never talked about it this way. And it's not
Speaker 1: because we did something, you know, like unheard of. It
Speaker 1: was just because they had never been taught to talk
Speaker 1: about They've been having literally the same conversation or lack
Speaker 1: of conversation when you know one person would shut the
Speaker 1: other person out, usually the daughter shutting the mother out,
Speaker 1: and they just never talked about it in this other way.
Speaker 1: And I think so many people think, oh, we have
Speaker 1: a problem and it's not fixable. Are so fixable. You
Speaker 1: can heal a lot of things, maybe not in exactly
Speaker 1: the way you want, but certainly to have more of
Speaker 1: a relationship than you were ever than you ever thought possible.
Speaker 2: All Right, I've got so many more for you. I
Speaker 2: hope you're having fun, Laurie.
Speaker 1: And sure, yeah, I love talking about all this stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so it's so fascinating to just dive into,
Speaker 2: you know, these real scenarios that all of you have
Speaker 2: said in it. And I want to give a big
Speaker 2: thank you to everyone who on Instagram sent me all
Speaker 2: of these incredible notes for this episode. There's a few
Speaker 2: more here that I really want to get to. So Okay,
Speaker 2: this this one's a good one because it kind of
Speaker 2: relates to something we discussed earlier, but it's it's a
Speaker 2: more specific question on when in your mind do you
Speaker 2: know when you're settling or you're not settling? Well, how
Speaker 2: do you know?
Speaker 1: I think if you're asking yourself that question, that's that's
Speaker 1: a really important sign. But I think you need to
Speaker 1: get clear. Is is this something culturally? Like the clture
Speaker 1: has told me that I need to be with someone
Speaker 1: like this, And whether that's like the greater culture or
Speaker 1: your specific culture that you grew up in or your
Speaker 1: family culture, whose voice is it? I think that's really
Speaker 1: important that as adults sometimes we can't tease out our
Speaker 1: own voice from the voices of people who raised us
Speaker 1: or the culture. Even so, I think that's an important question.
Speaker 1: I also think the question is are they you know,
Speaker 1: when we think about what compromises we have to make
Speaker 1: with another person, we don't tend to think about what
Speaker 1: compromises somebody has to make to be with us, which
Speaker 1: is a really important point. It's not like it's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, I think people treat dating like shopping, like
Speaker 1: I want this, I'm going to go find this, and
Speaker 1: it's not like the clothes when you're shopping are to
Speaker 1: be like I don't think you're going to look good
Speaker 1: in that, or I'd rather be with someone who looks differently,
Speaker 1: like the clothes are not judging you, right. But the
Speaker 1: thing is like when you're going into a relationship with
Speaker 1: going back to the you know, we can't order up
Speaker 1: people a la carte. They can't order up you a
Speaker 1: la carte either, And we have this weird notion in
Speaker 1: our culture that like love is loving all the annoying
Speaker 1: things about me too. No, people are not gonna they're
Speaker 1: going to love you even though you have these annoying things.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean, they're going to love the annoying things.
Speaker 1: So we have this weird idea that this unconditional love,
Speaker 1: and it's just they misuse that term. So I think
Speaker 1: we have to remember that as we are thinking about
Speaker 1: this whole human being, this person is choosing us with
Speaker 1: all of our annoying things, our quirks, are maybe our
Speaker 1: past that we haven't really worked through, that we're still
Speaker 1: working through. And you know, we have this idea that
Speaker 1: you know, I'm shopping for someone. You're not shopping for someone.
Speaker 1: It's how do I feel with this person? That is
Speaker 1: the most important question you can ask. How do I
Speaker 1: feel when I'm with this person? And if you feel
Speaker 1: you enjoy their company, you feel hurt? Or do you
Speaker 1: feel understood? You feel safe? You you're having fun, You're
Speaker 1: not settling. All the rest is just noise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I really like those two really powerful points.
Speaker 2: I think so many of our definitions of the perfect
Speaker 2: partner settling, you know, whatever it may be, comes from
Speaker 2: a societal parental impact. Yeah, and so what do my
Speaker 2: friends think of him? Or what will now they react? Oh, no,
Speaker 2: they're gonna know I'm settling. Did it? And it's like, well, no,
Speaker 2: was that your definition of what a good partner was.
Speaker 2: And the second point that you meant there that I
Speaker 2: love because I do it all the time. Whenever I'm
Speaker 2: sitting there in my head and I'm thinking, God, I've
Speaker 2: made so many sacrifices for my wife, I've done this
Speaker 2: or that, I come up with a list of hers
Speaker 2: in my head and I'm like, oh, she's made so many,
Speaker 2: Like it's such a great activity to do that. When
Speaker 2: I think about I often ask people to zoom out
Speaker 2: and say, you may think, like maybe someone sitting there
Speaker 2: going I do everything financially for a relationship, or I
Speaker 2: do everything physically for this relationship, like I get the groceries,
Speaker 2: I do the house cleaning, whatever it may be. I
Speaker 2: always ask people to zoom out and go look at
Speaker 2: your life physically, financially, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Okay, if
Speaker 2: you're making all the sacrifices across all five of those,
Speaker 2: there's something really important to look at. But more often
Speaker 2: than not, when people zoom out, they go, oh, actually,
Speaker 2: you're right, Like I pick up the slack here and
Speaker 2: they pick up the slack there, and there's a bit
Speaker 2: of give and take.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I would say, also one exercise to do
Speaker 1: is describe the relationship from their perspective. Yeah, right, Like
Speaker 1: what are they putting up with? Really? If they were
Speaker 1: to really talk about, you know, the relationship from their perspective,
Speaker 1: there would be all these great things and there would
Speaker 1: be all the sacrifices they're making too, And sometimes we
Speaker 1: forget about.
Speaker 2: That absolutely all right. I like this one. So there's
Speaker 2: this person who was let go from their job and
Speaker 2: decided that she may want to get into comedy because
Speaker 2: she always had a dream of being a comedian, but
Speaker 2: doesn't want to feel like she is taking a step
Speaker 2: back into the service industry in order to pursue her
Speaker 2: goals that may be very far to reach. She has
Speaker 2: some trouble with structure and facing the unknown of it all.
Speaker 2: How do you suggest she structures herself and gives herself
Speaker 2: tangible benchmarks.
Speaker 1: I think that people make this binary. I'm either going
Speaker 1: to pursue my dream and give up everything else, or
Speaker 1: I'm not going to pursue my dream. And I always
Speaker 1: say to people, you can have two things going at once.
Speaker 1: It's a lot safer to say I'm going to try
Speaker 1: comedy and I'm going to put everything I have into it,
Speaker 1: but I'm also not going to maybe leave my job yet,
Speaker 1: and so I can see whether this really works for
Speaker 1: me or not before I give up this other thing,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't have to be so binary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with that. I think that I think
Speaker 2: too often we make that move too quick. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 2: if someone comes up to me and goes, yeah, I just
Speaker 2: listen to your podcast and have decided to make this
Speaker 2: big station of like, oh't think I said that, Like,
Speaker 2: please don't do that. You know, that's definitely not what
Speaker 2: I'm encouraging. If anything, I'm encouraging this journey of learning
Speaker 2: about something you love first, experimenting, maybe interning, apprenticeships, shadowing,
Speaker 2: watch how the job's actually done. Like, I'm so much
Speaker 2: more into an incremental approach to change as opposed to
Speaker 2: thinking that this big all in approach is going to
Speaker 2: suddenly deliver some miraculous reward. If anything, if you go slower,
Speaker 2: you learn more, and then when you do make the
Speaker 2: big jump, it will actually more likely be more successful.
Speaker 1: That's right. And I think the other question to ask
Speaker 1: is am I moving towards something or am I trying
Speaker 1: to escape from something? Because sometimes people will just jump
Speaker 1: into something very impulsively because they want to get out
Speaker 1: of their situation and they don't do well with uncertainty,
Speaker 1: because most people don't, so they want an answer. So
Speaker 1: they feel like, I can't just leave this other thing
Speaker 1: that I know is making me unhappy. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be a lawyer anymore. I don't want to do
Speaker 1: this job anymore. But I don't know what else to do,
Speaker 1: So I'm going to do this other thing. But you're
Speaker 1: not even sure you want to do the other thing yet,
Speaker 1: So are you? Are you escaping or are you moving toward?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Definitely, And I think when we're try to escape.
Speaker 1: Too soon, yes, without thinking it through.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And that's actually been one of the biggest things
Speaker 2: that I've I've actually been talking about this a lot
Speaker 2: lately in it because I think it's impacted me so
Speaker 2: much in my life. And I was it's almost like,
Speaker 2: if you don't like where you are, if you can
Speaker 2: figure out a way to learn from it. And when
Speaker 2: I say learn from it, I don't mean some magical
Speaker 2: life lesson. I mean like thinking about what are the
Speaker 2: practical lessons I could learn here? What are the things
Speaker 2: I can get curious about? Sure, I don't like the setup.
Speaker 2: I don't like my manager, but maybe there's something here
Speaker 2: that's actually going to benefit me in the future all
Speaker 2: of a sudden. I'm not saying that becomes the best
Speaker 2: job you've ever had, but it doesn't feel as painful
Speaker 2: while you build the next step. Yes, whereas this desire
Speaker 2: to just rush out of pain or again pain is
Speaker 2: maybe a strong word, but rush out of a place
Speaker 2: that you want to escape from, you actually might fall
Speaker 2: into the same thing again in another way, which we
Speaker 2: again do in relationships as well.
Speaker 1: We do that all the time. Somebody is like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to leave this relationship and then oh, but I
Speaker 1: fell in love with this other person. Maybe you do
Speaker 1: need to leave that relationship, But why don't you take
Speaker 1: a beat? Why don't you see are you just going
Speaker 1: to another person You're going to repeat all the same
Speaker 1: things in this other relationship? Or do you want to
Speaker 1: understand more about Do I understand what happened in this relationship,
Speaker 1: why it didn't work, and then now I can leave
Speaker 1: in a way that feels good. Or maybe I was
Speaker 1: wrong and maybe there actually was something great here, but
Speaker 1: there was a problem that I wasn't willing to face
Speaker 1: in this relationship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to ask you this question because obviously
Speaker 2: we're talking today about your beautiful new journal that assists
Speaker 2: maybe you should talk to someone. Which is the book
Speaker 2: that I interviewed you about a couple of years ago,
Speaker 2: which is such a phenomenal book. It's helped so many people.
Speaker 2: How and why is journaling valuable to everything we're discussing today.
Speaker 1: I think that one of the things that happens when
Speaker 1: you journal is you go into this space that you
Speaker 1: don't go into to when you're not writing it down,
Speaker 1: when you actually can see something. It's very different from
Speaker 1: thinking it. Our thoughts are fleeting, they just move around.
Speaker 1: They're very disorganized. And the thing about journaling is no
Speaker 1: one's judging it, no one's seeing it. It's just for you.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I used to think it's funny because I put out
Speaker 1: this journal, But I used to not want to journal
Speaker 1: because I would think, Oh, it's a chore and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to sit down and it's going to have
Speaker 1: what if, you know, I don't know what to say
Speaker 1: or I don't really have anything to say, and what
Speaker 1: The way that I've structured this journal is there's a
Speaker 1: prompt that comes from maybe you should talk to someone
Speaker 1: just to give you a little bit of structure, but
Speaker 1: it follows you through the fifty two weeks of the year,
Speaker 1: like a therapy session. And we always say that the
Speaker 1: work of most of the work of therapy happens outside
Speaker 1: the therapy room. So people think I'm gonna come to therapy,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have all these insights and that's my therapy. No,
Speaker 1: you're gonna If you don't use what you learn in
Speaker 1: therapy and you don't put it into action during the week,
Speaker 1: then the insight is useless. So someone might say, oh,
Speaker 1: I got into that fight with my partner again, and
Speaker 1: now I understand why. And I'll say, well, that's great,
Speaker 1: but did you do something different? Well no, but okay,
Speaker 1: well good first step understanding why, But now you need
Speaker 1: to do something different. So when you reflect every day
Speaker 1: during the week, then you say, what am I doing
Speaker 1: with this bit of insight? So the prompt will maybe
Speaker 1: inspire some kind of insight into your life, and then
Speaker 1: how do you noodle that around during the week and
Speaker 1: you can watch your progression because you've written it down.
Speaker 1: And what I love about the doing a journal for
Speaker 1: a year is that you can look like three months
Speaker 1: ago I thought this, but look how I'm handling this
Speaker 1: situation now, and it just takes five minutes. A lot
Speaker 1: of people will wake up in the morning in journal
Speaker 1: just to clear their minds. Many of us will wake
Speaker 1: up in the first thing we do is we look
Speaker 1: at our phones and already we're stressed, and already we're
Speaker 1: thinking about Oh I didn't do this, or I'm behind already.
Speaker 1: It's not a good way to start your day. I
Speaker 1: love taking five minutes in the morning to just write
Speaker 1: down so that then it's out there and I don't
Speaker 1: have to sit with it all day long. A lot
Speaker 1: of people also will do it right before bed, because
Speaker 1: you know how sometimes we'll just think all these thoughts
Speaker 1: before bed and it keeps you up at night and
Speaker 1: you can't sleep. You journal before bed, and now you
Speaker 1: feel like, oh, I'm really I'm all cleared out. I
Speaker 1: feel good. So I think that journaling is really valuable,
Speaker 1: and I think it reminds me of something that we
Speaker 1: often say in relationships that it's easy to notice the
Speaker 1: person who gets angry in a relationship and harder to
Speaker 1: notice the person who smiles all the time. So when
Speaker 1: people say, like, oh, my partner's angry all the time,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, because you're ignoring that person's holding
Speaker 1: the anger for both of you. If you journal, you
Speaker 1: might notice if you're the person who smiles all the time,
Speaker 1: that maybe you have some anger too, or maybe you
Speaker 1: have trouble bringing something up. And if you're a really
Speaker 1: avoidant person, like the person who does smile all the time,
Speaker 1: it's a good thing to put it down in a
Speaker 1: journal because then you say, oh, wait, there are things
Speaker 1: that I want to bring up and let me figure
Speaker 1: out what to do with them. Or if you're the
Speaker 1: person who's angry and is holding the anger for both
Speaker 1: of you, you might start to know notice through journaling,
Speaker 1: I'm not it's not my job. Why am I angry
Speaker 1: all the time? This person is not willing to have
Speaker 1: any of these conversations. This person stonewalling me. So you
Speaker 1: discover a lot about yourself and your patterns when you
Speaker 1: have this space that's you can be vulnerable in that
Speaker 1: no one's judging.
Speaker 2: To add to that, one of the things that I
Speaker 2: think that's so special about journaling is that it's so
Speaker 2: much easier to measure physical change. So if you're trying
Speaker 2: to put on weight, lose weight, if you're trying to
Speaker 2: build a muscle, you know, whatever it may be, you
Speaker 2: can measure that and there's a number to it. And
Speaker 2: I found that for me, journaling has always been a
Speaker 2: great way of looking back a week ago, a month ago,
Speaker 2: a year ago, and going what was I thinking about then?
Speaker 2: Where was I in my headspace? What was I worried about?
Speaker 2: And often I've found when I've gone and done that,
Speaker 2: you can actually see growth, yes, in the same way
Speaker 2: as having like a marker. And if you're not journaling
Speaker 2: every day, you kind of don't know whether you're moving
Speaker 2: forward or backward because you don't have something to think about.
Speaker 2: You just have your feeling in the moment. Whereas when
Speaker 2: you look back and you think, wow, five years ago,
Speaker 2: I can't leave. I used to worry about that exam
Speaker 2: or that interview, or that whatever it may have been.
Speaker 2: In noun like, I wouldn't be worried about that at all.
Speaker 2: Things have changed. Yeah, So to me, it's a great
Speaker 2: way of monitoring and measuring growth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that change is really hard. This
Speaker 1: is why New Year's resolutions tend not to work out
Speaker 1: for people a lot of the time. And you can
Speaker 1: see when you journal. I talk in the book maybe
Speaker 1: you should talk to someone about the stages of change,
Speaker 1: and you can see them happen. So pre contemplation is
Speaker 1: you don't even know that you're thinking about making a change.
Speaker 1: So that's when you're kind of in denial in your journal, like,
Speaker 1: oh no, this isn't really happening, and you see yourself
Speaker 1: kind of justify or rationalize things that you know just
Speaker 1: are not right. And then contemplation is you know you
Speaker 1: need to make a change, but you're not ready yet.
Speaker 1: So now you're getting more real with yourself. That's usually
Speaker 1: when people come to therapy at the contemplation, but you
Speaker 1: can see it in the journal. Oh now I'm really
Speaker 1: getting out of denial. And then there's preparation where you're
Speaker 1: sort of saying, how do I prepare to make this change?
Speaker 1: What steps do I need to take? Whether I want
Speaker 1: to leave this relationship or I want to get into
Speaker 1: a relationship and put myself out there more, or I
Speaker 1: want to you know, I want to go after some
Speaker 1: dream or I want to set a boundary, So how
Speaker 1: am I preparing for this? And then action is when
Speaker 1: you actually make the change, But that's not the last step.
Speaker 1: The last step is maintenance, and that's the most important change.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean I have to maintain the change
Speaker 1: and be perfect. It means that I'm going to slip
Speaker 1: back like and shoot some ladders. Right, So it's like,
Speaker 1: yes I will. There'll be Oh I broke up with
Speaker 1: that person, but no, I called them. I didn't mean
Speaker 1: to call them. That doesn't mean you failed. That just
Speaker 1: means you're human. And so how can you show yourself
Speaker 1: and you can do this in your journal? How can
Speaker 1: you write something to yourself that's very compassionate but also
Speaker 1: holding yourself accountable. So and how you can look in
Speaker 1: your journal about how do I talk to myself? You know,
Speaker 1: do I beat myself up all the time? Am I
Speaker 1: a bully to myself? Or can I be compassionate with myself?
Speaker 1: Because that will actually help me to be accountable. I
Speaker 1: can be more accountable when I'm kind to myself. So
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean oh, it's fine that you called him,
Speaker 1: You just get back in the relationship with him. It means, oh,
Speaker 1: you were feeling sad or you were feeling lonely, and
Speaker 1: you called him because you were lonely. But maybe next
Speaker 1: time I'll call a friend maybe next time I'll take
Speaker 1: a walk. Maybe next time I will go to this meeting.
Speaker 1: You know, whatever you need to do, And then you're
Speaker 1: really being compassionate, and you have in your journal kind
Speaker 1: of this friend that's really kind to yourself, that knows
Speaker 1: you really well, and that knows what you need to do.
Speaker 1: And it's right there on the page.
Speaker 2: Such a great note about your journal, letting you know
Speaker 2: how you talk to yourself, the language you use you yourself,
Speaker 2: and helping you change that, because when it's on the page,
Speaker 2: you can cross it out, you can edit it, you
Speaker 2: can write a new version. When it's in your head,
Speaker 2: it just keeps repeating and you never get that moment
Speaker 2: to edit it or to filter it. Laurie, you've been
Speaker 2: so kind with the time today. I want to ask
Speaker 2: you one last thing, and it's about what you just
Speaker 2: mentioned then, and I think it's breakups, and it's you know,
Speaker 2: I still find until this day that breakups seem to
Speaker 2: be the hardest relationship transition that people tend to go through,
Speaker 2: maybe apart from grief or maybe even similar. And I'd
Speaker 2: love your thoughts on that. But because it is a
Speaker 2: kind of loss, I think that people feel there was
Speaker 2: one person from the audience that we were connected with
Speaker 2: that had a breakup, and they really they were together
Speaker 2: with this person for two years. They really thought this
Speaker 2: to the person that they were going to spend their
Speaker 2: life with. They really thought this was going in that direction.
Speaker 2: They felt that they actually had good compatibility, they were
Speaker 2: good at talking about things. But then what felt like
Speaker 2: out of the blue to this person, They just felt
Speaker 2: that this person was like, I don't think this is
Speaker 2: going in that direction anymore, and then things withered away quickly.
Speaker 2: It's hard when you kind of you know, and this
Speaker 2: is probably what you get all the time. People don't
Speaker 2: feel a sense of closure. They don't really understand. The
Speaker 2: other person's not doing a good job explaining it and
Speaker 2: doesn't want to or doesn't have the time. What are
Speaker 2: some of the steps that we need to take when
Speaker 2: we're kind of lost in that no person's land of thought,
Speaker 2: I had something, it doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, loss is exactly it's grief, and
Speaker 1: people go through the stages of grief, and the stages
Speaker 1: of grief are not sequential, so they're actually meant for
Speaker 1: people who are experiencing terminal illness, denial, anger, bargaining depression acceptance,
Speaker 1: but they're very apt, I think for any kind of loss.
Speaker 1: And when you talk about a breakup, there can be
Speaker 1: denial like oh, you don't really mean that we really
Speaker 1: are compatible, and you try to talk the other person
Speaker 1: into maybe seeing the light that they can't see. You know.
Speaker 1: The anger is how could you have led me on
Speaker 1: for this amount of time? You're such a terrible person.
Speaker 1: You wasted all my time. You were lying to me
Speaker 1: this whole time when the person wasn't They probably truly
Speaker 1: you know, thought this was going somewhere, you know. The
Speaker 1: bargaining is, well, what if you know you know, and
Speaker 1: the person tells you maybe why they're breaking up with you,
Speaker 1: like I don't think that we're compatible in this way,
Speaker 1: and then you try to become the thing, you know,
Speaker 1: like what if I did this, or I can be
Speaker 1: more of this, or we can do this, and they're like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not really the way this will get solved.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Depression, which is just the whole I mean, it's so
Speaker 1: because I think what people don't realize is it's not
Speaker 1: what you're losing just in the moment. It's you're losing
Speaker 1: the future that you had imagined. So you lose the past.
Speaker 1: You lose like all the whatever amount of time you
Speaker 1: spent with that person. You built a life with this person,
Speaker 1: and it's the dailiness. There's an intimacy to that dailiness.
Speaker 1: There's a comfort, there's a safety of this person knows
Speaker 1: all these little quirks about me. You know, we have
Speaker 1: all these inside jokes, We have a shorthand you know,
Speaker 1: this person asks how my day is. I know. It's
Speaker 1: the dailiness of being with someone. So you lose that.
Speaker 1: It's very lonely. But then you also lose the future.
Speaker 1: You had built up a whole story about what your
Speaker 1: lives were going to be like in a year, five years,
Speaker 1: ten years, twenty years gone, and you have nothing to
Speaker 1: replace it with right now because you don't know what
Speaker 1: it's going to look like yet. So the grief is real,
Speaker 1: and I think people try to downplay it. They're like,
Speaker 1: why are you so sad about this? He was a
Speaker 1: jerk or she was a jerk or whatever. It's like,
Speaker 1: I'm sad because I lost something very important to me.
Speaker 1: And your friends need to realize that instead of just
Speaker 1: demonizing the other person, they need to realize, like you
Speaker 1: lost something really valuable in your daily life, in the present,
Speaker 1: in the future, part of your past. All of that
Speaker 1: is gone now, so that's really hard. I think the
Speaker 1: other part of them dealing with the grief is letting
Speaker 1: yourself feel it, because it's real, no matter what people
Speaker 1: tell you, it's real. And the other part is the
Speaker 1: story that you're telling yourself about it is really important.
Speaker 1: So you might be telling yourself a story of the
Speaker 1: other person's terrible that might feel good in the moment.
Speaker 1: It might be something like I'm bad, you know, like
Speaker 1: I'm not good enough. If I were only something else,
Speaker 1: this person would love me more. I'm not lovable, or
Speaker 1: I'll never find anyone. Right, Those are not helpful stories
Speaker 1: because it's not true. It's you were not compatible with
Speaker 1: this person for whatever reason, even though you thought you were.
Speaker 1: If the other person doesn't feel you're the right person
Speaker 1: for them, you're automatically incompatible, right. You can't make it
Speaker 1: so that well, they just don't see it. So we
Speaker 1: aren't compatible because the other person doesn't want to be
Speaker 1: with me. So many times i'll hear you know someone
Speaker 1: even without a breakup, like someone will be dating someone
Speaker 1: and the person isn't really invested in the relationship, maybe
Speaker 1: in the way that they would like them to, and
Speaker 1: the person sitting on my couch will state, but we're
Speaker 1: so compatible, we're so perfect for each other. That person
Speaker 1: just has intimacy issues and I could just change them.
Speaker 1: Even if the breakup was about you think the person
Speaker 1: had intimacy issues, doesn't really matter. The point is they
Speaker 1: aren't able to be with you. So you are not compatible.
Speaker 1: And so that is I think very comforting to know,
Speaker 1: like we are just not compatible, even though it hurts
Speaker 1: a lot. We're not compatible, and I have to sit
Speaker 1: with the pain of I need to know that we
Speaker 1: were not compatible and that's not going to jade me
Speaker 1: in other relationships, and I think that's the important thing.
Speaker 1: So many times we get into a new relationship after
Speaker 1: that and we punish the new person for something the
Speaker 1: old person did, right like the old the old person
Speaker 1: wasn't truthful with me. So I'm gonna like check your
Speaker 1: phone all the time. No, don't, don't like put someone
Speaker 1: in jail for a crime they didn't commit. So you
Speaker 1: got to really like know what are the wounds from
Speaker 1: this relationship? What am I learning from this? What does
Speaker 1: this teach me? About me, about the other person, and
Speaker 1: then how do I move into a new relationship with
Speaker 1: hope and with caution and holding both hope and caution.
Speaker 2: Fantastic. The reason why I love talking to you about
Speaker 2: this is you're doing this all the time, whether it's
Speaker 2: in your private practice, whether it's on Dear Therapist, or
Speaker 2: whether it's through your books. And if you've been listening
Speaker 2: or watching today, everyone, I hope that you go and
Speaker 2: grab a copy of Maybe you Should Talk to Someone,
Speaker 2: The journal fifty two Weekly Sessions to Transform Your Life
Speaker 2: by Lori Gottlieb, And as I said, you can subscribe
Speaker 2: to her podcast, and if you haven't read Maybe you
Speaker 2: Should Talk to Someone, make sure you go and grab
Speaker 2: that book as well. Laurie, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: joining us on on purpose, Oh my pleasure. We got
Speaker 2: to spend this time together today and answer some of
Speaker 2: our audiences, questions and challenges. And I'm hoping that all
Speaker 2: of you who had yours answered, or maybe even if
Speaker 2: you didn't send something in, but you felt heard and
Speaker 2: you felt seen and you felt understood, because so much
Speaker 2: of what we're all going through is so intertwined. And
Speaker 2: so thank you to everyone who is brave enough, courageous
Speaker 2: enough to share your stories and Lourie, thank you for
Speaker 2: answering them so expertly.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I always
Speaker 1: love having these conversations with you.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Laurie. If you love this episode, you'll love
Speaker 2: my interview with doctor Gable Matte on understanding your trauma
Speaker 2: and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on
Speaker 2: from the past. Everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable.
Speaker 2: So a tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick,
Speaker 2: does it. It goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable.