Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind of brain, behavior and creativity. I'm doctor
Speaker 1: Scott Barrick Kaufman, and in each episode I have a
Speaker 1: conversation with a guest who will stimulate your mind and
Speaker 1: give you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the
Speaker 1: world to live in. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast.
Speaker 1: So it's great to have doctor Robert Leahey on the
Speaker 1: podcast today. Doctor Lahey completed a post Doctor of Fellowship
Speaker 1: in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: Medical School under the direction of doctor Aaron Beck, the
Speaker 1: founder of cognitive therapy. Doctor Lahy is the past president
Speaker 1: of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, past President
Speaker 1: of the International Association of Cognitive Psychotherapy, past President of
Speaker 1: the Academy of Cognitive Therapy, Director of the American Institute
Speaker 1: for Cognitive Therapy in New York City, and a clinical
Speaker 1: Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at Wyle Cornell University Medical School.
Speaker 1: Doctor Lahey has received the Aarran T. Beck Award for
Speaker 1: Outstanding Contributions in Cognitive Therapy, and he is author and
Speaker 1: editor of twenty five books, including The Worry Cure, which
Speaker 1: received critical praise from The New York Times and has
Speaker 1: been selected by Self magazine as one of the top
Speaker 1: eight self help books of all time. His latest book
Speaker 1: is called The Jealousy Cure. Learn to Trust, overcome possessiveness,
Speaker 1: and save your relationship. Thanks so much for chatting with
Speaker 1: me today, doctor Lahy. Thanks Scott. It's a pleasure to
Speaker 1: be talking to you today. Total pleasure. Wow, that's one
Speaker 1: of the longer bios I've read. I intentionally, I mean,
Speaker 1: I selected the bio, but I felt like in coming
Speaker 1: up with it, it didn't do full justice if I
Speaker 1: didn't include all those elements to it. I wanted to
Speaker 1: give the listenership an accurate reflection of all that you
Speaker 1: do for the field. So thank you for all that
Speaker 1: you do for the field. Thank you. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to start off by saying personally that your book, the
Speaker 1: work here really helped me a lot during my more
Speaker 1: anxious moments, particularly about seventy eight years ago. What year
Speaker 1: did the book come out. It must have been more
Speaker 1: than seven years ago. Yeah, I think it came out
Speaker 1: at about toward into two thousand and five, two thousand
Speaker 1: and six. That makes a lot of sense. That makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. That's around the time. I was
Speaker 1: in England and just suffering from generalized anxiety disorder or
Speaker 1: whatever they're calling it these days, and the therapist I
Speaker 1: was seeing handed me, you know, your book, and she
Speaker 1: used your book in her practice and we went through
Speaker 1: the workbook and it was incredibly helpful. So thank you.
Speaker 1: I mean, why you know that book was an amazing
Speaker 1: synthesis of lots of research from lots of different psychologist
Speaker 1: as well as your own research. What's for me to
Speaker 1: write that book before we get into your new one, obviously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sort of an interesting origin of the book. My
Speaker 1: wife and I were in Istanbul, Turkey, on nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, and I was watching the sixth
Speaker 1: and plane hit the building on CNN, and when we
Speaker 1: got back to New York, everybody was worried, including me
Speaker 1: and all my staff. So a few months later I
Speaker 1: thought I could either worry like everybody else, or I
Speaker 1: could write a book on worry. And what was interesting
Speaker 1: is that in terms of contemporary CBT, there really wasn't
Speaker 1: anything out there that reflected the research and the theory
Speaker 1: and the clinical tools and CBT on worry that I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, would be helpful to people. So that was
Speaker 1: sort of the motivation to write it. Yeah, it was amazing.
Speaker 1: There was really nothing like it out there, so it
Speaker 1: really did break some ground. Now there's so many books
Speaker 1: on meditation and how that cures your anxiety, but I
Speaker 1: think your book went a bit deeper than It's not
Speaker 1: just saying just meditation, it's saying they're all these kinds
Speaker 1: of various things. So I want to back up seconds.
Speaker 1: So I noticed that you did your PhD at Yale.
Speaker 1: Who did you study with a Yale Well, I studied
Speaker 1: with a number of people. Is that he did with
Speaker 1: Edward Zigler, with Bill Kessen, Irving Child, Tom Ackenbach, a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of people. So yeah, I have a pretty
Speaker 1: general background through a lot of different areas, which I
Speaker 1: try to integrate in my writing. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of the work that people do in clinical psych often
Speaker 1: does not reflect the research and theory from other areas
Speaker 1: of psychology. So you know, for example, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of research on social cognition, and from social psychology, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of research on cognitive processes that affect decision
Speaker 1: making that. You know, people in cognehavior therapy often don't
Speaker 1: seem to talk about and to integrate into their work. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I could agree more. And you know, it's so interesting
Speaker 1: that you mentioned at Ziggler. I did my pitchdel as well,
Speaker 1: and he was there and I found out, you know,
Speaker 1: he's still kicking this guy. I know, it is amazing.
Speaker 1: This guy like spans how many generations of students? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he's probably been at Yale since maybe the
Speaker 1: late fifties. He's been there for a long time. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So yeah, how's your work informed by like developmental policy
Speaker 1: for instance? Well, I don't know about policy, but my
Speaker 1: work just development in general. Yeah, yeah, I mean looking
Speaker 1: at for example, I'm interested in how people, how people
Speaker 1: learn about emotion, and you know, the kind of the
Speaker 1: rules they have about emotion, you know, which emotions are okay,
Speaker 1: how do you express emotions? How families teach people about emotion.
Speaker 1: I certainly moved away from from a developmental orientation that
Speaker 1: Ziggler and Achenbach and Susan harder Will helped me understand
Speaker 1: Beck many years ago. Fair enough, but you know they
Speaker 1: planted some scenes. Yeah, well, you know, actually Actually, what's
Speaker 1: interesting to me is I was there was a time
Speaker 1: I was very much interested in the page's approach, you know,
Speaker 1: the child construction of malady or whatever it is. I
Speaker 1: thought that Beck's work was kind of very much in
Speaker 1: the pet tradition, you know, looking at the individual's construction
Speaker 1: of depression and anxiety, and you know how people's thought
Speaker 1: processes affected what they felt and what they did. And
Speaker 1: so when I got interested in the issue with jealousy,
Speaker 1: I thought, well, let's let me take a look at
Speaker 1: how the jealous person constructs the world. You know, what
Speaker 1: are the assumptions they have, how do they process information?
Speaker 1: What are their rules for themselves and other people? So
Speaker 1: I guess that sort of constructive this model has influenced
Speaker 1: my thinking in terms of cognitive therapy, cogni therapy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can certainly see that. And I'm thinking of his
Speaker 1: ideas of accommodation seem relevant as well for some reason,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of importance of kind of having
Speaker 1: to adapt and change your cognitive structures sometimes radically sometimes
Speaker 1: are you know, I like, if I'd have a really
Speaker 1: good meditation session, I find it fascinating that when I
Speaker 1: opened my eyes the whole world just looks different than
Speaker 1: it did ten minutes ago, right exactly? What's not all about?
Speaker 1: How's that possible? I find it so fascinating phenomenon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the thing that's interesting is that if you get in
Speaker 1: the head of somebody who's anxious, a lot of their
Speaker 1: anxiety makes sense. In other words, if you adapt the
Speaker 1: assumptions that the anxious person has and you collect information
Speaker 1: in the manner in which they collect information, it always
Speaker 1: logically follows that things are going to be catastrophic. The
Speaker 1: cognitive approach, in a ways, it is very much an
Speaker 1: empathetic cognitive strategy to try to understand how things make sense,
Speaker 1: how does hopelessness make sense, how does suicide make sense,
Speaker 1: and how to make sense of the alternative. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: jealous person may start off with some assumptions that people
Speaker 1: can't be trusted, that people are going to betray them,
Speaker 1: and that they have to constantly be hyper vigilant, and
Speaker 1: that if anything bad happens then it means relationships going
Speaker 1: to fall apart. So if you approach any intimate relationship
Speaker 1: with those assumptions, you're going to end up being jealous
Speaker 1: and distrustful. They're like use the word assumptions. They're also
Speaker 1: like their worldviews or they're like they're beliefs. They're yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think about what they really are. These
Speaker 1: kind of like beliefs that we've internalized through lots of
Speaker 1: you know, interaction of processes. So yeah, but you're absolutely
Speaker 1: spot on, and changing those beliefs can literally change our
Speaker 1: outcomes of our relationships. And the linkage the commonality there
Speaker 1: between your Worry Cure book and Your Jealousy Cure, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of parallels and some overlap in terms
Speaker 1: of this sort of non judgmental acceptance, so to speak,
Speaker 1: of the situation seemed to be in common across both books.
Speaker 1: This could be a whole like really famous series like
Speaker 1: Chicken Soup for the Soul. I mean, you could just
Speaker 1: go every year, you could have a different cure, like
Speaker 1: the sexual Cure could be there next one that would
Speaker 1: sell a lot of a lot. Yeah. Yeah, well you
Speaker 1: know what. I again thinking about jealousy issue because of
Speaker 1: a number of patients who tend to struggle with jealousy,
Speaker 1: and I thought, gee, you see, is there something I
Speaker 1: could recommend? And I couldn't think of anything I could
Speaker 1: recommend to read that from a contemporary CBT approach, and
Speaker 1: then I began looking at the research. I mean, there
Speaker 1: is research by evolutionary psychologists like David Buss and other
Speaker 1: people on jealousy. There's research on what would factors make
Speaker 1: people more inclined to be jealous, But in terms of
Speaker 1: contemporary CBT, there really was very little out there, if anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, there were kind of somewhat naive approaches that
Speaker 1: you know, sort of equated jealousy with low self esteem,
Speaker 1: and it's not really clearly related as low self esteem.
Speaker 1: You could have high self esteem and feel jealous, like
Speaker 1: you can think no one can treat me that way,
Speaker 1: and so you can be assertive because you're feeling jealous.
Speaker 1: But there really wasn't anything out there, and I think
Speaker 1: I think it was like a blind spot. And there
Speaker 1: are certain kinds of emotions Scott that I think, you know,
Speaker 1: people kill people over or they really have difficulty with,
Speaker 1: and you like emotions like jealousy or envy, or ambivalence
Speaker 1: or boredom or resentment or the desire for revenge, and
Speaker 1: there's very little in the CBT field that addresses these
Speaker 1: kinds of emotions that people are told they should not
Speaker 1: feel that way. My view is that all emotions have
Speaker 1: evolved because they're useful in certain contexts, and jealousy is
Speaker 1: one of those emotions that, from a devolutionary point of view,
Speaker 1: is quite useful. Oh that's so interesting. So is it
Speaker 1: still useful from a proximal point of view, Like, you're
Speaker 1: not advocating to get rid of jealousy completely right now.
Speaker 1: I think that it's unrealistic to think that people are
Speaker 1: going to have happy emotions all the time, that they're
Speaker 1: going to feel good all the time. My old friend
Speaker 1: David Burns's sort of an excellent book called Feeling Good.
Speaker 1: I'd like to write a book called Feeling Everything, which
Speaker 1: I think is kind of reflects the reality of human existence.
Speaker 1: That we're going to go through life. We're going to
Speaker 1: have feelings like envy where we think that other people
Speaker 1: are getting ahead, feeling like jealousy that people are threat
Speaker 1: through our relationship. We're going to have feelings of boredom, intense, anger, shame, guilt,
Speaker 1: and all these emotions. And to sort of tell people,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying anybody is saying that. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that CBT says you shouldn't have these emotions but a
Speaker 1: lot of times people have these emotions, other people say, oh,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't feel that way, and that's validating, and then
Speaker 1: it makes people feel bad about having an emotion that
Speaker 1: doesn't feel good. It's like feeling bad about feeling bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the whole should just should be taken out of
Speaker 1: the cab and everyone's mental exicon, right, right, Well, I
Speaker 1: think I just didn't hear what I just said. I
Speaker 1: just had should should be taken out to be taken
Speaker 1: out right, Yeah, I mean I think like my view
Speaker 1: is that, I mean, some people think like shame and
Speaker 1: guilt those are really bad emotions. But think about it
Speaker 1: this way. Listen, imagine if you were single and you
Speaker 1: start dating somebody and she's really like you, sky, really terrific,
Speaker 1: and spend a lot of time with you. But I
Speaker 1: think I should tell you that the module in my
Speaker 1: brain that allows me to have feelings of shame and
Speaker 1: guilt is missing. I'm in capable of shame and guilt.
Speaker 1: I don't think you would trust the person. So these
Speaker 1: emotions have some adaptive value if you like, if you
Speaker 1: believe that people you work with would feel guilty or
Speaker 1: shamed if they betrayed you, you're more likely to trust them.
Speaker 1: If someone's good at convincing you that they feel guilty,
Speaker 1: you're more likely to trust them in the future. Jealousy.
Speaker 1: If somebody said to you, if you have an intimate relationship,
Speaker 1: someone said to you, you know something, you can go
Speaker 1: out and have sex with anybody you want. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be jealous. I don't think you would trust the person.
Speaker 1: And some people think you that. Some men think all
Speaker 1: I want to all that freedom, and it sounds good
Speaker 1: until you begin thinking what would it mean if somebody
Speaker 1: actually say that to you. It would probably mean that
Speaker 1: they didn't love you, you weren't special to them, and
Speaker 1: that they wanted freedom to pursue other options. So the
Speaker 1: emotion of jealousy is one of these disparaged emotions, and
Speaker 1: of course it gets to the extreme with people. For example,
Speaker 1: jealousy is the leading cause of homicide in the couples
Speaker 1: and the man kills the women. It's overwhelmingly the leading cause,
Speaker 1: and so jealousy is a killer, and people kill themselves
Speaker 1: over jealousy. So obviously it can get extreme. But you
Speaker 1: don't want to say I want to get rid of
Speaker 1: jealousy completely right, because jealousy in a way is a
Speaker 1: way of a way. Taking the temperature, you can have
Speaker 1: a temperature that's too low or too high. Just going
Speaker 1: back to the evolutionary approach a second, they make a
Speaker 1: big ado about sex differences in what they're jealous about,
Speaker 1: like the content of versus cheating versus you know, sexual
Speaker 1: versus emotional intimacy, et cetera. Do you make that distinction
Speaker 1: in your book. Yeah, so that's an important distinction. Of course.
Speaker 1: You know, both men and women are jealous about those things,
Speaker 1: but women tend to be more jealous about emotional closeness
Speaker 1: and men tend to be more jealous about the sexual infidelity.
Speaker 1: And so from an evolutionary point of view, the model
Speaker 1: is called parential investment theories developed by Robert Rivers at
Speaker 1: Cambridge back in the nineteen seventies. That the apparential investment
Speaker 1: theory is that the woman always knows the babies or
Speaker 1: a baby. The man doesn't really know for sure. So
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, he has the maybe baby, he's
Speaker 1: not quite sure if that's his baby. So the male
Speaker 1: is very, very threatened by any sexual infidelity of a
Speaker 1: female because he doesn't his evolutionary adaptation. He's not going
Speaker 1: to want to protect the or take care of the
Speaker 1: genes of offspring that are not his offspring. So I
Speaker 1: mean it's sound like a very dark view, but evolution
Speaker 1: is about competition and about survival. So the female wants
Speaker 1: to have the part of the male, and so if
Speaker 1: the male is directing his emotions toward another female and
Speaker 1: his support and his resources and his protection, then he's
Speaker 1: not going to be available to take care of the offsprint.
Speaker 1: So it's really about the genetic fitness of the pattern
Speaker 1: to protect the investment in the genes in the next generation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get that distal perspective, but there's huge individual differences
Speaker 1: in you know, people who were jealousy is an issue
Speaker 1: for them, Like it's whether it's a pair trigger sort
Speaker 1: of thing for them or not. Attachment style seems to
Speaker 1: be relevant here, Yeah, so anxiously. Yeah, So you know,
Speaker 1: with the research shows is exactly that that individuals who
Speaker 1: have an anxious attachment style are far more likely to
Speaker 1: be jealous. But what's also interest in Scott is that
Speaker 1: people differ in terms of how they feel in a
Speaker 1: close relationship. Some people really want to have a close
Speaker 1: relationship and some people don't want to have a close relationship.
Speaker 1: So people who have this sort of distancing in an
Speaker 1: intimate relationship who don't want to be close are far
Speaker 1: less like we would be jealous. There's interesting research showing
Speaker 1: that they actually make a stable, well long term relationship,
Speaker 1: the anxious and the avoidant. Even though there's constantly drama
Speaker 1: in the relationship, it lasts a long time because each
Speaker 1: one is kind of like what the other person. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's kind of an interesting dynamic there when
Speaker 1: you mix the avoidant with the anxious attachment person right exactly.
Speaker 1: And I've actually seen that we have you have the
Speaker 1: same particular case. Thinking of a woman who wants a
Speaker 1: very close relationship and who wants to have constant contact
Speaker 1: with her partner and a man who values freedom and
Speaker 1: spontaneity and doesn't want to be tied down. So her
Speaker 1: approach to try to connect with him and be close
Speaker 1: to him triggers his desire for autonomy and pushes back,
Speaker 1: which then triggers her jealousy and anxiety vice versa. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's a self fulfilling prophet. The more she pushes,
Speaker 1: the more he avoids. But interestingly, the research suggests that
Speaker 1: kind of relationship works. It works better than an avoidant
Speaker 1: avoidant one does it never works right right, But an
Speaker 1: anxious anxious that works better than even an anxious anxious
Speaker 1: one for instance. So it's just interesting to think how
Speaker 1: these can come together. So having a hair trigger for jealousy,
Speaker 1: is that correlated with a hair trigger for rejection sensitivity. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what happens with some people is that they
Speaker 1: have these triggers, like if you know, the trigger could
Speaker 1: be you're at a party and your partner is talking
Speaker 1: to somebody else and they could just suddenly trigger the
Speaker 1: idea that they're going to chase after that person and
Speaker 1: leave me. Or the trigger could be retrospected jealousy. It
Speaker 1: could be your partner is thinking about, or talking rather
Speaker 1: talking about an experience with a former partner and that
Speaker 1: can trigger it. And so I think part of the
Speaker 1: scott is that people who are prone to jealousy all
Speaker 1: and have rules about relationships, and a lot of these
Speaker 1: are really perfectionistic rules about the way people should be.
Speaker 1: For example, one rule that people have is that I
Speaker 1: should be the only person in the world that my
Speaker 1: partner finds attractive. First several billion people in the world.
Speaker 1: It's hardly imagine you're the only person in the world
Speaker 1: that's attractive. Or if my partner find somebody attractive, they're
Speaker 1: going to leave me. Or if my partner had a
Speaker 1: good time with somebody else in the past, that means
Speaker 1: they can never be happy with me, or that I
Speaker 1: should be interesting and exciting to my partner all the time,
Speaker 1: or I should know everything my partner is thinking. You know,
Speaker 1: some people equate trust with the sort of like existential
Speaker 1: merging of two people, which is just so unrealistic. As
Speaker 1: people push for more and more, you know, demands for
Speaker 1: certainty and interrogating control, it drives the other person away
Speaker 1: the person pushes back. What's interesting, Scott is the kind
Speaker 1: of things that the target of jealousy might say, you know,
Speaker 1: to try to defend herself or himself. Let's say, for example,
Speaker 1: if a man is feeling jealous and the woman says,
Speaker 1: you know, well you shouldn't feel that way. You should
Speaker 1: trust me. You're neurotic, that's your problem, you know, don't
Speaker 1: bother me. You must have low self esteem. All of
Speaker 1: these sort of dismissive and critical and contemptuous statements actually
Speaker 1: feed into the jealousy because jealousy is about a threat
Speaker 1: to attachment. So if the man is expressing his jealousy
Speaker 1: and the partner is rejecting him, that this sort of
Speaker 1: feeds into his sense that his attachments threatened, and then
Speaker 1: he ups his his demands for certainty and reassurance, which
Speaker 1: then leaves to the pushback. It's an interesting dynamic to see.
Speaker 1: One of the problems I think that people have in
Speaker 1: their relationship is the difficulty in accepting the emotions that
Speaker 1: the other person has. So if you keep telling your
Speaker 1: partner they shouldn't feel jealous, they're jealousy is not going
Speaker 1: to go away. I've never seen somebody say, oh, my
Speaker 1: partner tells me to stop feeling jealous, jealousy just disappeared. Alternatively,
Speaker 1: if you validate the person, say do you really understand
Speaker 1: that you feel that way? You must feel really connected
Speaker 1: to me. I feel really flattered that you care enough
Speaker 1: and value me that much. That must be a difficult
Speaker 1: emotion that you're having. You should feel free to talk
Speaker 1: to me about it. I can accept those feelings. I
Speaker 1: care about those feelings. I have compassion for you. In
Speaker 1: other words, if you go into an attachment compassion validation
Speaker 1: mode with a person, who's jealous. That's going to be
Speaker 1: reassuring in a very emotional fundamental way. They still may
Speaker 1: feel the jealousy, but they also believe that you have
Speaker 1: room and you're accepting those emotions and that you still
Speaker 1: respect them, so you're not rejected. It's it's just like
Speaker 1: having a baby that's crying and yelling at the baby
Speaker 1: that stopped crying. That never works. If you pick up
Speaker 1: the baby and you sue the baby, the baby feels
Speaker 1: that there's a secure place. So in some ways, even
Speaker 1: though my approach is cognit behavioral, it's very much, very
Speaker 1: much ground and attachment theory. That's great. And yeah, they
Speaker 1: do seem to be such good bad fellows so to speak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is a I'm just sort of black and right now,
Speaker 1: but there is a recently developed training for attachment staff
Speaker 1: for a couple's being more sensit to each other. Think
Speaker 1: it's called like emotion focused therapy or something like that.
Speaker 1: Have you heard of it? Right right? You're thinking about
Speaker 1: lest the Greenbird's work. I think that's what you're thinking about,
Speaker 1: This emotional focused therapy, which is good, and also John
Speaker 1: Gottman's work. Yeah, gotsh quite quite good. I think one
Speaker 1: of the fundamental things in a relationship is the sense
Speaker 1: that your partner really cares about your feelings. And when
Speaker 1: a partner expresses the jealousy thing, I really feel jealous
Speaker 1: and you're flirting with that person. We tend to do
Speaker 1: when somebody says that, we tend to become defensive and
Speaker 1: we go on the counterattack, which you know may be
Speaker 1: a perfectly human thing to do, but what it does
Speaker 1: is it fees right into the jealousy because it makes
Speaker 1: a person feel more insecure. We have a very hard
Speaker 1: time normalizing and validating emotions that a person has when
Speaker 1: we feel the person's angry with us. We want to win,
Speaker 1: we want to defeat them, we want to even humilitate them,
Speaker 1: and that just makes the jealousy and the insecurity worse.
Speaker 1: David Buss, in one of his books, describes research where
Speaker 1: they found that couples where they had issues about jealousy
Speaker 1: were more likely to stay together five years later. And
Speaker 1: if it stands, the reason really because yeah, because jealousy
Speaker 1: indicates you care enough. You know, like if you think
Speaker 1: about people who have very superficial relations, you know, just
Speaker 1: shallow one night stand, you know, no tender whatever, those
Speaker 1: don't lend themselves to jealousy. So you know, people feel
Speaker 1: they have something invested in they care enough, you're more
Speaker 1: likely to express the jealousy. And sometimes people will intentionally
Speaker 1: try to get the partner to feel jealous to sort
Speaker 1: of test them out. Do they care enough? You know,
Speaker 1: do they care enough to be jealous? And you know,
Speaker 1: if the person's personale, you can do whatever you want.
Speaker 1: I don't care. You know, Perth's thinking that maybe he's
Speaker 1: not that into me, maybe he doesn't care that much
Speaker 1: about it. Wow. You know. Stephen Pinker and how the
Speaker 1: mind works refers to a lot of as a doomsday device.
Speaker 1: I wonder if jealousy is a doomsday device as well,
Speaker 1: to help you know, kind of do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, like evolved like as a binder as a
Speaker 1: way of protection if like someone like the hot guy
Speaker 1: next door moves and you know that you don't just
Speaker 1: go onto them, right. Yeah, So there's you know, I
Speaker 1: think I think, I think the reality is that we
Speaker 1: do live in the competitive world, and you know, as
Speaker 1: a result, I think one of the most universal emotions
Speaker 1: that really hasn't been examined that well, the cognitivehavioral feel
Speaker 1: is the feeling of ambivalence. And you know, I've seen
Speaker 1: so many people who struggle with the ambivalence because they
Speaker 1: think they should not be ambivalent. And you know, like
Speaker 1: some people have this kind of idealized view of love
Speaker 1: that it should be like Romeo and Juliet. And you
Speaker 1: think about, like when you're fifteen years old in high school,
Speaker 1: you'll be Romeo and Juliet and say, oh my god,
Speaker 1: isn't that wonderful? How wonderful in love? It's all idealized,
Speaker 1: it is so perfect and everything. But can you imagine,
Speaker 1: like if you and I sat down and we wrote
Speaker 1: a television script for the Romeo and Julia television series
Speaker 1: that would be about Romeo and Juliet when they're in
Speaker 1: their forties living in Queens, New York, and they're both
Speaker 1: quite a bit overweight, and they're a little bit pissed
Speaker 1: off at each other. Yeah, you know, I have this
Speaker 1: idealized romance continuing on for more than a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks probably. Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean,
Speaker 1: don't mean get saturated no matter what it is eventually, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so what happens I think, you know, I think
Speaker 1: people have a you know, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people have this kind of emotional perfectionism, like I should
Speaker 1: feel excited all the time, my partner should never be
Speaker 1: tracking anybody else, and everything should go well. If it doesn't,
Speaker 1: it's going to fall apart. As opposed to thinking that
Speaker 1: at a patient years ago who said he was divorced
Speaker 1: and was starting a relationship with somebody who was a
Speaker 1: bit rocky. And he says, so, Bob, what's the key
Speaker 1: to a good long term relationship? I said, well, let
Speaker 1: me tell you. You You know, about ten years ago, I
Speaker 1: should do a lot of windsurfing. I was down on
Speaker 1: the Virgin Islands of Saint John and I went over
Speaker 1: to Coral Bay to see Mike, who was the windsurf
Speaker 1: hot dog on the island. And I said to Mike,
Speaker 1: I said, Mike, what's the key to windsurfing and heavy
Speaker 1: waves and heavy wind? And he said, Bob, it's rock
Speaker 1: and roll and convincing the action. And I said to
Speaker 1: my patient, that's the key to a long term relationship
Speaker 1: and roll and commit to the action. It's like if
Speaker 1: a windsurfer with waves going up and down and the
Speaker 1: wind and you're kind of leaning back and pulling the boom,
Speaker 1: you know, that's what it is. You've got to be
Speaker 1: able to go rock and roll ups and downs and
Speaker 1: just commit to the action. It's not going to be
Speaker 1: a smooth ride some of the time. And I think
Speaker 1: acknowledging and normalizing that you and your partner may see
Speaker 1: other people and find them attractive and interesting or have
Speaker 1: memories that that's normal. That doesn't mean that everything is
Speaker 1: falling apart, and that you can accept that that's the case,
Speaker 1: but focus on committing to the action making the relationship
Speaker 1: as good as big. Yeah, that seems like a really
Speaker 1: sensible advice. You know, it just dawned on me though, that, like,
Speaker 1: we never even defined what jealousy is. So let's like
Speaker 1: back up a second, and if you can define jealousy
Speaker 1: and how it's different from envy, that would be great. Okay,
Speaker 1: So jealousy, you know, jealousy is usually a very intense
Speaker 1: passionate emotion and actually derived from the Greek word for
Speaker 1: zeal ce a l zealous, and it reflects an intense
Speaker 1: passionate emotion that includes anger and the anxiety, and it's
Speaker 1: always about three people. It's always about the two people
Speaker 1: having the primary relationship and a threat from an imagic
Speaker 1: threat from a third person. So you can have jealousy
Speaker 1: in a romantic relationship. You can have jealousy with friends.
Speaker 1: Maybe your friends spend more time with Bill than with Scott.
Speaker 1: You have jealousy with co workers, even animals. They have
Speaker 1: done research on animals and they found like owners and animals,
Speaker 1: you know how jealous is your animal and the animals.
Speaker 1: The animals to show the most jealousy are dogs. Second,
Speaker 1: horses and cats are a little bit behind. Cats are
Speaker 1: a bit more self contained and they're kind of cool cats,
Speaker 1: so they But babies show jealousy on one study showed
Speaker 1: it was like eight month old babies and their mothers.
Speaker 1: They had the mother either play with an inanimate object
Speaker 1: or play with another baby, and when the infant sog
Speaker 1: mom playing with another baby, the infant express distress. So
Speaker 1: you have jealousy at eight months old. You have jealousy
Speaker 1: and cats and dogs, horses, you have jealousy with friends,
Speaker 1: You have jealousy with coworkers, and it's universal. You have
Speaker 1: jealousy with friends, romantic relationships, siblings, step parents, animals show
Speaker 1: jealousy or dogs are the most likely to be horses
Speaker 1: psyching cats third, and even eight month old babies show
Speaker 1: jealousy when their mother is playing with another baby versus
Speaker 1: an inanimate object. So jealousy is an emotion that you
Speaker 1: have and lots of different kinds of relationships, species, and ages.
Speaker 1: Envy is more about somebody getting ahead in the dominance,
Speaker 1: hierarchy or status or power whatever. So you might be envious,
Speaker 1: like you know, somebody who gets advanced over you at
Speaker 1: work or published. Is something that gets more attention or
Speaker 1: has qualities that you wish you had, and what we
Speaker 1: tend to be envious of, and it doesn't involve three
Speaker 1: people necessarily, so envious about somebody who is getting necessarily
Speaker 1: a threat to you to your attachment relationship. We tend
Speaker 1: to envy people who are most relevant to our comparison level.
Speaker 1: So I'm not going to be envious of somebody who's
Speaker 1: like a world class skier, because I'd be lucky if
Speaker 1: I could skip ten feet. Wait, but you could be
Speaker 1: jealous of their wealth or whatever. Right, I'm jealous. I
Speaker 1: might be envious of their wealth, but I'm not sitting
Speaker 1: here thinking that, oh they don't deserve that. You know, gotcha.
Speaker 1: But we tend to have our little comparison, a little
Speaker 1: status domain. You know, like if you go to a conference,
Speaker 1: you go to an academic conference, gud, You're going to
Speaker 1: see an epidemic of jealousy. It's the worst. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: academics are terrible. I kind of wonder that maybe that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why hasn't gotten as much attention.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, these are emotions people kill people over.
Speaker 1: This is not like you know, picking my fingers or something.
Speaker 1: This is an emotion people kill other people over, or
Speaker 1: kill themselves over. People kill over envy. Now, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, there's also an upside to envy. Like Bertrand
Speaker 1: Russell said, without envy, we would not have democracy. So
Speaker 1: you can think about envy as as a concern about
Speaker 1: unfair distribution or unfair reward. So if somebody you know
Speaker 1: has you know, tens of millions or hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars that we view as undeserving, and a lot
Speaker 1: of these other people are poor, that kind of envy
Speaker 1: might be viewed as social justice. So in fact, Jonathan Wawls,
Speaker 1: who's with Harvard leading a legal scholar, actually viewed envy
Speaker 1: as an underlying emotion for distributive justice. So envy ID
Speaker 1: is an important emotion, and envy also teaches us who's
Speaker 1: getting ahead and who should we emulate. So you can
Speaker 1: think of envy as well, you know that person got
Speaker 1: a head over here, what did they do? Maybe I
Speaker 1: can do it, And so envy can be a motivational
Speaker 1: role model for the people and get us to pay
Speaker 1: attention and to emulate characteristics that are rewarded. So again,
Speaker 1: like I find many patients who are envious, I normalize
Speaker 1: envy and look at envy as it's an emotion that
Speaker 1: you have, and many people feel ashamed about it. They
Speaker 1: feel like, what's wrong with me? I have the envy
Speaker 1: as opposed to normalize it validated understand that that's how
Speaker 1: people feel. That people don't talk about envy. Very very
Speaker 1: few people say, gee, I'm really envious as that person
Speaker 1: who succeeded and I want them to fail so I
Speaker 1: can feel good. I mean, very few people acknowledge their
Speaker 1: shot and freud, you know, but everybody knows it's there
Speaker 1: and it's very powerful. People will undermine people that they
Speaker 1: feel competitive with. It's something that we have to bring
Speaker 1: out of the shadows and be able to talk about
Speaker 1: and normalize and figure out how we can use it
Speaker 1: if at all in a constructive way. Well, you seem
Speaker 1: like a terrific clinical psychologist. And I love the idea
Speaker 1: of normalizing and having people accept the size of themselves.
Speaker 1: But certainly that's not the same thing as saying that
Speaker 1: their life would be optimal well being with it remaining.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we could probably learn to not
Speaker 1: be so reactive to it, right, Yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: can think of let's just take envy. You can take envy.
Speaker 1: Think of it as I envy this person who is
Speaker 1: doing more than I'm doing and getting more recognition. So okay,
Speaker 1: so is there something positive that I can move that toward.
Speaker 1: And maybe I can move that toward clarifying my goals.
Speaker 1: I could think about that as developing my motivation. I
Speaker 1: could use the envy to expand my curiosity. I can
Speaker 1: also think about my envy if I envy this person's
Speaker 1: achieting these goals. I can look at what I e
Speaker 1: would call my life portfolio, all the things in my
Speaker 1: life that I have that are meaningful to me. So
Speaker 1: even if somebody is ahead on this thing, I do
Speaker 1: have many things in my life that have meaning. So
Speaker 1: you know, ironically, in a way, you can take this
Speaker 1: sort of darker kind of emotion maybe and you can
Speaker 1: transform it into some of the positive psychology domains that
Speaker 1: you're particularly interest to. Scott love that. I absolutely love that. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's just talk about some like practical strategies that
Speaker 1: many of our listeners might be on the edge of
Speaker 1: their seat waiting for this moment. But if you could
Speaker 1: just kind of give some techniques without obviously giving it
Speaker 1: all away because we won't be able to buy your book.
Speaker 1: But you know, what are some ways people can cope
Speaker 1: with their jealousy. Well, turn back to jealousy for a second.
Speaker 1: I think in terms of practical strategy, the first thing
Speaker 1: I think is to normalize that you're not a crazy
Speaker 1: person because you're jealous. So I would normalize the jealousy.
Speaker 1: I would validate the difficulty in having the emotions. I
Speaker 1: would try to develop some compassion towards yourself with a
Speaker 1: difficult emotion. I would ask you to think about the
Speaker 1: distinction between your jealous feelings and your jealous behaviors. So
Speaker 1: the coping behaviors are often would get people in trouble,
Speaker 1: like the interrogating, the accusation, all the control strategies that
Speaker 1: people use with their partner, stalking, threatening and all that.
Speaker 1: I would try to step away from the control strategies.
Speaker 1: See if you can give those up for a few weeks.
Speaker 1: I would accept the idea that you're feeling jealous rather
Speaker 1: than think you have to get rid of the jealous
Speaker 1: jealous feelings. One thing I ask people to do is,
Speaker 1: you're having all these intrusive jealousy thoughts twenty four hours
Speaker 1: a day, and this is driving you crazy. Set aside
Speaker 1: an appointment with your jealousy thoughts. So let's say between
Speaker 1: two and two thirty in the afternoon is going to
Speaker 1: be your jealousy time. During that time, you focus on
Speaker 1: your jealousy thoughts. So one way of viewing it is
Speaker 1: that like at ten o'clock in the morning, ten o'clock
Speaker 1: at night, you have some jealousy thoughts, write them down,
Speaker 1: put them all off to two o'clock in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: and then focus on them. And what people find is
Speaker 1: that the intensity of their jealousy usually subsides during the
Speaker 1: course of the day, and so they're not as upset
Speaker 1: about the jealousy. They begin feeling they have more control
Speaker 1: that they just because the jealousy thought comes to their head.
Speaker 1: They don't have to be hijacked by it. So during
Speaker 1: that jealousy time, there are several things you can do.
Speaker 1: One is you can ask yourself, you know, are my
Speaker 1: thoughts really rational? So? For example, am I engaged in
Speaker 1: mind reading? Am I jumping to conclusions? Am I taking
Speaker 1: things too personally? Do I have unrealistic expectations? Would my
Speaker 1: partner have the same reasons to be jealous of me?
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes you think, oh, you know, I'm jealous
Speaker 1: of my partner. Will maybe they have good reason to
Speaker 1: be jealous of you too. Is it in my interest
Speaker 1: to interrogate my partner or threaten my partner? Will that
Speaker 1: drive them away? Is there some strategy that we can
Speaker 1: use to develop some money understanding about what kinds of
Speaker 1: behavior is okay for both of us and others. You
Speaker 1: may need to have kind of like an understanding that
Speaker 1: you have to clarify for the two of you. You
Speaker 1: can also have ground rules for what the two of
Speaker 1: you do when one person's jealous. So you go to
Speaker 1: a party. If your partner says she I'm feeling jealous,
Speaker 1: what is she going to do? What should she? Can
Speaker 1: she tell you that you're jealous? Is that going to
Speaker 1: be okay. Do you think that you have to get
Speaker 1: her to stop feeling that way or insult her. So
Speaker 1: you need to develop some kind of rules for accepting
Speaker 1: and discussing the jealousy without criticizing and suppressing the emotions.
Speaker 1: The person has another technique I use, and the sounds counterintuitive,
Speaker 1: is what's called the boredom technique. So, for example, this
Speaker 1: one patient who is feeling very jealous about his wife
Speaker 1: going away on business trips, and he had the thought,
Speaker 1: my wife could be unfaithful to me, and of course
Speaker 1: that's always trip. You can't prove that she cannot be faithful.
Speaker 1: So he had to accept. He had to get used
Speaker 1: to the thought that it's possible that his wife could
Speaker 1: be unfaithful to me. He was equating the thought that
Speaker 1: it's possible my wife could be unfaithful with the idea
Speaker 1: that she would be unfaithful. Those are two different things.
Speaker 1: You know, it was possible I could win the lottery,
Speaker 1: but it's not a fact that I'm going to win
Speaker 1: the lottery. So I had him repeat the thought literally
Speaker 1: hundreds of times, like he would sit at home and
Speaker 1: repeat silently, it's always possible my wife could be un
Speaker 1: faithful to me, and that thought initially became anxiety provoking,
Speaker 1: but after a few minutes the thought became boring. He
Speaker 1: just habituated to it. So there are a whole lot
Speaker 1: of techniques that I described in the Jealousy Care. You
Speaker 1: don't have to feel helpless when you have intrusive thoughts
Speaker 1: or a lot of things that you can do. I
Speaker 1: mean personally, you had that exercise in the work here
Speaker 1: with kind of put it aside, kind of take a
Speaker 1: step back, and that was so helpful for me. And
Speaker 1: it's all amazing how like the day, just the next
Speaker 1: day you can like totally not care at all about
Speaker 1: something that you're like, oh my god, this is the
Speaker 1: most important thing ever, you know, in the moment, it's
Speaker 1: just so weird, so weird. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: a good example of I think one of the goals
Speaker 1: in life sometimes is to develop the capacity of indifference.
Speaker 1: I mean, you might say that's kind of a zend goal,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a matter of just wisdom. And one
Speaker 1: way of thinking about it is one are the things
Speaker 1: that used to bother me like five years ago or
Speaker 1: five months ago, even you know whatever, And so noticing
Speaker 1: that your emotions can change, and that you could eventually
Speaker 1: become indifferent. I think the other thing that's important, Scott,
Speaker 1: is that sometimes jealousy is a warning that the relationship
Speaker 1: is at risk, So developing kind of a golden parachute
Speaker 1: that if this relationship didn't work out, I would be
Speaker 1: able to survive. So building your support network, you know,
Speaker 1: looking at your skill set, recognizing that you had a
Speaker 1: life before this relationship. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: techniques that people can use to kind of put the
Speaker 1: jealousy in perspective. But telling yourself not to be jealous,
Speaker 1: or telling somebody that they're neurotically makes me feel worse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that was a great aspect of your book,
Speaker 1: is putting jealousy and perspective, and that seems to just
Speaker 1: be a really general, sort of helpful principle for a
Speaker 1: lot of people that come to see therapy. Is you know,
Speaker 1: almost every problem that someone presents and therapy helping the
Speaker 1: patient put it in perspective seems to be helpful. Hey, look,
Speaker 1: I just want to thank you so much for coming
Speaker 1: and chatting with me today on the Psychology Podcast and
Speaker 1: for your great work in the field. Well, Scott, there's
Speaker 1: been a real pleasure in you know, as a friend
Speaker 1: of mine once said to me when I was writing
Speaker 1: the Worry Cure Book years ago, and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: if the book helps one person, it's been worth it.
Speaker 1: And I'm glad to hear it help you. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the thing like like, you never know when you write
Speaker 1: something and somebody they've never talked to as they read
Speaker 1: it and they feel better. It helps someone get through better,
Speaker 1: that's what you do, That's what I do. And we're
Speaker 1: very fortunate to be able to do what we do
Speaker 1: helping people have more meaningful arts. We're incredibly fortunate and
Speaker 1: something that I just think it's so interesting to think that.
Speaker 1: And I don't talk about this much on the show.
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever have. How I used to
Speaker 1: have very intense anxiety about seven years ago, and I
Speaker 1: just think about how much I've grown and changed, and
Speaker 1: just to think that it's possible to really grow. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, even just a little like boarding an airplane
Speaker 1: used to be the most catastrophic anxiety experience for me,
Speaker 1: and I had to take medicine, etc. Now it's like
Speaker 1: no big deal. I'm like whatever, you know, I'm boarding
Speaker 1: an airplane. I don't even think about it now. So
Speaker 1: just knowing that we can undergo such personal transformation, I
Speaker 1: think just make motivates me want to help people more
Speaker 1: because it's like, I know it's possible, you know. So anyway,
Speaker 1: thanks again, so great chat out with you. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, Scott. You have a great week and hope
Speaker 1: to talk to you sometimes again to make sure you well.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to react in some
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