You Winning Life Podcast with guest Kim Schneiderman, LCSW:Author of Stepping Out of Your Story

Today's guest is licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist, workshop facilitator, Psychology Today blogger, and the author of Step Out of Your Story: Writing Exercises to Reframe and Transform Your Life, Kim Schneiderman. She integrates internal family systems, focusing on the Enneagram and Jungian archetypes into her spirituality-oriented psychotherapy private practice in Manhattan. She's also— I don't even know how many years we've known each other at this point.

A long time, good friend.

A long time.

I want to say, I want to say like 20 years maybe.

It's probably been at that point, right? So it's not only exciting to have you on as an expert in your area as an author, but also as a, as a long-standing friend. So Kim, thanks so much for hanging out with us today.

Yeah, thank you.

So right off the bat, let's start off with the idea, the story of how did you end up becoming a therapist? Like, what was that about? Like, when did you know? How did you know? And, and, you know, let's go into a little bit of that backstory because that always fascinates me. How people decided to do that which they do.

Yeah, um, so my career path didn't follow a straight line. Um, it really— I'd always wanted to be a writer. I actually wanted to work in copywriting for advertising, and, um, I was sort of turned off when one of my, like, English professors in college said that, like, the greatest copywriters of our time had like sold their souls to Nike shoes. And then I thought, okay, well, maybe do I, do I still want to, you know, I was sort of like, whatever. Anyway, I started as, so I, I, um, happened to land my first job as a journalist. And, um, during that time I was living in San Francisco and just struggling with some internal stuff and, and got into therapy. And so that was sort of my first, it was sort of my introduction into psychotherapy and self exploration, and I was, I was more and more curious about it. I also was at that time sort of beginning a spiritual journey, and that coincided with that, and I wasn't really sure whether I wanted to be a therapist or a professor of psychology and religion or a rabbi. And to make a long story short, I just through the process really of going to social work school and doing my first clinical placement at a family service agency, I realized that I really love clinical social work, and it kind of stuck.

Yeah, it sounds to me like all, like, 3 of those areas, right, the business side, the therapeutic side, and the spiritual side, do go hand in hand with the work that you and I do with our people. And we don't necessarily have to call it spirituality, but when you're working on self, right, personal development, personal growth, Right? We have this old-school way of thinking about therapy, that old school's like— what's that old joke? And it's like, if you have a therapist, there's something wrong with you. But over the last, thankfully, 10, 15 years— and I see this more as, you know, the few years that I did my time in New York back in, you know, '98 to 2001— the position was, if you don't have a therapist, there's something wrong with you. And do you think that there's been, you know, that shift? Especially maybe like, because you're in New York, you're in Manhattan, right? You're in the, you know, the hub— of the, you know, one of the epicenters of the world. Do you think like the stigma— one, on one side, it's really a two-pronged question. One, the stigma has changed, but two, the work that you do is not just about like mental health. It is about spirituality, is about personal development. It is. And that's kind of why your focus has led you where you focus.

Absolutely. In fact, I'm part of an organization. It's a, it's an interdisciplinary interfaith collective called the Psychotherapy and Spirituality Institute. And what's different about us is that we welcome conversations that integrate spirituality or look through things. We take a mind-body-spirit approach to psychotherapy. And so much, you know, so much I think about this work, as you mentioned, is about use of self. And the more that you're developing and the more that you're growing, the more accessible, the more, the more helpful that you can be to other people. You know, as you deepen in your own compassion towards yourself, you create a space to be more compassionate to others.

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit more about like this narrative, because I know one of the things that you and I are both huge fans of is like this narrative that we carry, right? I'm trained in marriage and family therapy. And one of the models that we're big about is both solution-focused and narrative therapy. And, and I know that's something that you've really really delved deep into. You have written a book about this type of thing. I remember years ago when I first started off in therapy, and, you know, there was all these models that talk about scripting, right? Now turn to, turn to your partner, or turn to your friend, or turn to your family member and say this. And now you turn back and you acknowledge it, and you say this to them, right? And it was, it felt like very forced and very like not organic. And then as I evolved, and as I learned more, and as I grew through in my own comfortability as a therapist to realize how powerful scripts are, but how much the scripts that we already carry consciously and unconsciously keep us back from our potential, keep us back from really being in the moment, really being in the experience because of all of the programming that we carry that doesn't allow us to see what we're actually seeing because we have all these biased filters, right?

For sure.

So can you break that down for us? Can you break that down for the listeners about what that means. A, what's a narrative? B, what are some of those potential scripts and filters and layers or schemas or what are all the different terms that we can use to throw at it that you help people see that we should be acknowledging and maybe looking for as we journey and experience our world?

Sure. So I want to make a distinction between like people often mistakenly identify me as a narrative therapist. And actually, when I was coming up with the idea for my book, I went to a workshop, or a weekend actually, with David Whyte, who's the founder of Narrative Therapy, to see if these ideas that I was coming up with was actually Narrative Therapy. And what I realized that it wasn't. It was something kind of along the lines of, but it was sort of my own thing. And I can just tell you, like, I mean, a narrative, we're constantly using language. To make sense of the world, right? And how we tell, like, we're constantly telling our stories all day long. We're telling our stories to ourselves, we're telling our stories to each other, and that's how we're sort of like creating our world, right, is through speech. And how we tell our story is really important because how we tell our story affects how we feel about our story, and how we feel about our story is so influential in terms of how it unfolds, the whole self-fulfilling prophecy. And there are many ways I think sometimes human suffering is a storytelling deficit, right? It's like the failure to find a coherent cause and effect narrative that helps us make meaning of our world. And oftentimes I think people, get very, very stuck in telling their story in a particular way, like a self-defeating story. And oftentimes, like I've used in my book and in my writing workshops, I often use Wizard of Oz as an example, right? There's like, there's a Wizard of Oz narrative, the self-defeating story, you know, is Dorothy, you know, is really unhappy at home, and she gets swept up in a tornado, you know, and Somebody wants to kill her dog and she gets swept up in a tornado and she kills this witch and then she's pursued by, you know, she has all this bad luck, she's pursued by this evil witch and, you know, and she gets, and then finally like this wizard turns out to be a fraud and then she, you know, finally comes home and nobody believes it. You know, she says, "I went on this journey," and nobody believes her, right? That's the self-defeating story. But most of us read it as what I call a soul narrative. You know, because what it— and that the soul narrative is, um, looking at it through the lens of how does Dorothy grow. You know, she starts off as this, um, really sort of disenchanted young girl who dreams that, you know, of greener pastures over the rainbow, and then through no agency of her own other than running away, she swept up into this other universe where she undergoes all these kinds of like trials and tribulations that helps her really get to know her own heart. And by the end of the story, she's a different person, right? And so my narrative therapy is really about my way of narrative therapy. And again, I don't do traditional narrative therapy. Is really looking at your life as an unfolding story, a unique, unpredictable, dynamic, and potentially heroic story that's open to interpretation, especially your own. And so, like, and seeing yourself as the evolving protagonist in that story. And really, really, and I want to say one more thing, and I know I talked a lot, is really, really valuing character development and your own character development. So that's how I, that's how I see it.

Well, one of my favorite new phrases that I've adopted from, um, one of my coaches, Coach Michael Burt, is you can't see the picture when you're in the frame, right? So a lot of times the story that we keep telling is a broken record that will only allow us to get the same outcomes of the story that we keep telling. So the first part, right, I think that I— and I had this conversation literally an hour ago with one of my clients— is sometimes, and I always apologize first, I'm like, what I'm about to say, please do not think I'm an a-hole for what I'm about to say. And I want to honor you because I always want to create space for you to say this in our sessions, for you to know that you can share anything with me. But of the, of what you just shared with me, how many times from the day that we've gotten to know each other over our last 10 sessions do you think you've shared that exact story with me?

Hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm.

And how much more about that story do you think I need to know, or do you think I don't understand or don't get?

Hmm.

And then 3, If you need to keep telling that story, what do you think other people aren't getting about you and the experience you're having through that, that you need to keep telling that over and over again?

Wow.

Right?

Yeah.

And 4, how do you feel when you retell that story? Right? So I'm trying to distinguish, right? And as I'm sure you have your ways into that, of is it you? Are you being you or are you being the story that you're telling?

Mm-hmm. Right.

And I think that's what, like, you and I have a lot in common. We might, we might be doing it in different ways and different interventions, but I think we do it very similarly as well, of like, everybody out there who's listening to this conversation, you are constantly telling yourselves the same things that are allowing you to have the right— excuse me, the continuous same outcomes over and over again. And then you get upset at yourself for not having, or the persons around you, not having different experiences or different outcomes because Everything that you're saying and talking about it is leading to that same outcome. And our job, and in collaboration and partnership with the people that we work with, is to get them to take ownership over that so they can start telling a different story. So they can start— and I always start with challenging words. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, hold on. Can we just say that sentence over again? But what does that one word in there mean to you? I'm like, oh, I don't even know why I use that word. How long do you— every time you describe it, do you use that same word? What does that word actually mean? It doesn't actually mean what you— Right. Or if we put it in a different word, we insert a different word that means the same, but it just has a different intensity to it, automatically gives them a very different perspective or able to be more strategic. And it's one of the things I love. I had this recently with a client where they were talking about like how they felt obligated, how they were constantly being a disappointment. I'm like, well, who, who, who are you disappointing? She's like, I don't know. Like, it's like that. Like, I feel like I'm like, I'm disappointing them. Okay, well, who's the them? Who's the they? And it turned out it was someone from 24 years ago in their senior year of high school that they're no longer in touch with.

Right, right, right. The they.

So I'm like, I'm like, wow. So what's, what's all of our they or them? Who is the them that we're doing things in our life that we're scripting ourselves, that we're acting over and over again, that of the fear of either proving ourself or disappointing ourselves to the others? So I'm wondering like how much of that, like, as you talk about like this soulful journey? Like, what are some of those like possible theys that you have found to be consistent patterns? Because I know, right, you get into Jungian stuff and you get into Enneagram, which let's spend some time on, on that lens, you know, in this answer.

Well, actually, I want to— when I— as I was listening to you, you know, it's like, you know, so many paths to the same mountaintop. Um, because I started off just to say like I started off in a much more cognitive, you know, storytelling through a much more cognitive lens. I mean, so much of my book is really about writing exercises. I mean, I use the third person narrative, which helps people get some psychological distance from their story, right? Because when we write in I, there's so much ego involved, and we need a little bit of distance. But it really is sort of like— and I think that it does, it's a little bit more cognitive. And since I wrote my book, I've been trained in Internal Family Systems, which is a much more somatic therapy. And as you were talking, I was thinking about like, when, like, from an IFS perspective, people sometimes show up with their storyteller part. And that storyteller part can be a way, and I have one too, so I know this. And you know, like, I have a part like, I want you to hear your story. But I also know that that narrative part of mine is coming from a place from like my childhood wound, my exile in IFS terms, of not being seen. So like, I'm going to tell you my story because I want to make sure that you really, really get me, because if you misunderstand me, then I'm going to feel really alone, and that's going to make me feel like I'm a kid again. Right?

So my existence may or may not have any validity or value, right?

Whatever.

Yeah, whatever that story.

Right. Yeah. I mean, so the storytelling part can be a part, a way of getting of like someone— because one of the questions, a typical IFS question is if that part couldn't do its job, like, why is that part doing what it's doing? And if it had to step back, what is it concerned that you would feel? The idea is every part's trying to protect you and help you in its own way. And sometimes it's like, well, I feel, you know, a particular grief, or I feel sadness, or I feel, you know, it's trying to keep you from some sort of pain. And so I think storytelling parts can at times get us in the— like, if someone's telling the same story over and over again, it can be a way of avoiding that pain or that wound that it's protecting, you know. Um, and sometimes it becomes this scapegoat. I want to just go back to the they. So like, in the way that you found like that they was from like 20 years ago, in IFS— and sometimes IFS is done with your eyes closed, and I have people like sensing into different like body part embodied parts of themselves— you'll find out that like a memory will come up Right? Because our parts are stuck in the past. That you'll find out in a different way, through an embodied way. Your body will reveal, like, your body needs to feel safe enough to share its story. And if you can create that safety, it'll show you the story of the "they," as opposed to somebody telling you.

Right.

So that's why I'm thinking it's like different ways of getting to the same thing.

Yeah. Right. Well, I mean, any good therapist shouldn't be telling them what that is, right?

Right, right, right.

Unfold that package. But yet we have so many times we've heard stories about that, like, nope, you're wrong. This is what it is. I know more about your reality than you do. You know, and it's something because especially in the world of neuro-emotional technique, all we do is like, right, it's we shrug our shoulders when a story comes up and we're like, I don't know, that's your emotional reality. We don't know what that, you know, we're not here to tell you what that means. That's your emotional reality that your mind-body has come up with, right, to, to explain that in some form of a narrative, whether it's congruent with actual timeline reality or not is not really our concern. It's what's that story that you've created that's either helping or hindering you, right? In a lot of ways, right, that term, the scapegoat, right? How did this part of you become a scapegoat or a protector or a healer? Or who are you honoring? Who's right? Who in your family are you honoring? Who in your history are you honoring by continuing to carry that story? One of my favorite examples of this, I don't know if you've ever heard her say it, is from Esther Hicks and the Law of Attraction. Jason Wasser world, where she went over to a friend's house and the friend was playing some album. And they're like, oh, that's, that's really interesting music. She's like, yeah, it's my mom's favorite album. She's like, well, is your mom here? And she's like, no. She's like, well, that's cool. Do you like the music? She's like, no, I don't like it. She's like, well, why are you playing it? She goes, well, because it was my mom's favorite album. Right, right. And, and how we constantly do that in so many different parts of our lives where we're unconsciously, right, honoring things even that we don't feel good for us, things that don't uplift us, things that don't allow us to be more expansive because we're doing this unfinished business of honoring or playing out some type of role in some way, shape, or form that doesn't necessarily serve us, right? On one side, it serves us to be dutiful, to be honorable, to be— just to keep a connection. But can we find a healthier, better way to honor, keep connection, and stuff like that? And right, so the devil that you know is better than the devil that you And then sometimes it's the devil that you aren't even aware that you know, right?

Right.

In this con— right, in this, in this unconscious.

Well, that's why, like, and I wanted to talk about this, like, why I think right now is a really unique time in our lives. I mean, it's a really challenging time and heavy time, um, but it is a unique time for, for us to really step out of our stories. And ask ourselves, like, who's writing our script? You know, what character am I playing? And does that, you know, does that fit? You know, and also, and I think this is individually and collectively, right? It's like a time to pause, you know, because we've been for so long so busy, and I'm, myself included, in playing these roles, you know, and staying on top of these roles that we play. And, um, and not ex— you know, when you're so busy, you just don't have time to do that kind of reflection. I think this time really can be a really good— and has been, from what— not only, not only for myself, but like I'm noticing in a lot of my clients. And that's not to say that it that this is not to whitewash over all of the pain, because that is present. But, you know, this is even like, this is an embodied crucible that we're in right now, and that's pushing us to feel the pain in the areas of our life that do not work, and both individually and collectively. And so that's how, you know, we are getting a chance to really step out of our story, to step out of our lives and look at it from sort of this broader perspective in a way that we have, you know, in our lifetime, in my lifetime, never been given, or never given collectively. Maybe individually some of us have had these experiences, these dark nights of the soul, or, you know, the loss of a parent, which I've been through too, to cancer where you have that alone or with a few people that you share the loss with. But as a society, it's really different. And it feels like everybody's doing that work. Yeah.

Well, do you find it's more— I don't want to use the word polarizing, but maybe more binary where there are people who are— the word that I think was used the most the first 30, 45 days of this, especially in my entrepreneur circles, is pivot. How are you pivoting? How are you taking advantage of this? How are you not being a victim to this? How are you— especially if you're a business owner, right? Like, I had to, um, within the span of 24 hours, actually the second to last weekend of March, I was in Asheville, North Carolina doing a retreat with a buddy of mine for some young professional entrepreneurs. And Saturday night at 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock in the morning, I had to compile an email. I had to make sure I had Zoom and set up the rooms and make sure the privacy was coming in. And I had like people in the group like, Okay, now try to log into my thing. And like, all of a sudden one of them popped in and like, oh crap, that's going to break confidentiality. No, no. What setting?

Right.

I had to literally reformat my entire practice and then type up an email and write— what's the— they'll talk about copywriting to make sure that I had a— I had only 2 clients who said they didn't want to continue. One I did after our conversations continued, right after saying, I'm not sure if I want to do this because it's going to be weird. Right. But the way that I languaged my email to my clients was not, do you want to continue? But the practice is continuing. Your session is scheduled as usual. Instead of driving to my office, this is the button you're going to click to talk to me. You're still going to have a waiting room. It's not going to be the waiting room in my office. It's going to be a waiting room as my session ends. And you'll see it. You're right. It'll literally say waiting room, right, as Zoom has it. So I literally, like, I had to do some psychoeducation, but give it to them as The narrative that I had to do, the scripting I had to do, the copywriting I had to do was life is going on as normal in some way, shape, or form. It's just going to be different. And I realized this, that one of the questions that especially people in our field or practitioners or healers or helpers, right, that we can't see someone one-on-one and still do what we do, is we shouldn't be saying it's going to feel different. We know it's going to feel different. We should honor it's going to feel different. The focus should be, will the value still be there? Right. And I think that was like one of the big things, like for people who have had to pivot during this, are they being proactive? Are they like, oh my God, technology sucks. I hate technology. I'm afraid of technology. Right. That thing that we hear from certain populations that's going to make this process more difficult for them versus seeing this as I'm going to go on an adventure. I'm going to use this to learn all the things that I've been waiting to get on my list to learn and jump on the bandwagon. Right. And embrace the shift and change. That our industry for sure was 10 years behind the ball on, right, with telehealth and everything like that, right? Over— or be right again, it's, it's the empower mode. I'm gonna take this as an adventure. I'm excited about this. Yes, it's gonna be work. Yes, it's gonna be effort, but I'm gonna— or, oh God, this really sucks. Now I got to do this, right? So what are you seeing out there? Because, right, you're, you're, you're— you guys, especially New York, I mean, you've been like— you got hit hard and everybody's isolated and and everybody's been working from home as much as possible?

I mean, I feel very grateful that it's been kind of a seamless transition for me. My clients just sort of took, most of them just sort of took to the new platform. And I, you know, I think I'm part of this group and we meet every Wednesday morning and share experiences and everybody's a little, has Zoom fatigue. It's not the same thing as sitting in a room with someone and sensing their energy. But in terms of like pivoting, I think more in terms of, well, first of all, like we're pivoting along with everybody else. And I think that that's part of what makes this whole experience really unique is that we are actually fellow, you know, I always say to my clients, I'm a fellow passenger here. We're on this journey together. You know, how often is someone like the same stress one of your clients is going through, exactly the same thing, and you have to be very careful that because, you know, we're always looking, as therapists, we're always looking for countertransference, right? We always want to be careful that we're not like imposing our own fears, or, and, you know, and someone can say something and it can trigger like, oh my God, she went out in a crowd.

Whether asking—

I did that, and am I going to get COVID? You know, it's so, it's— It's a really, first of all, I just wanna say that's a really unique experience. And the pivot that I mean mainly, I mean, the pivot that I'm kind of working with with my clients is more the internal one of like, how do you pivot your fucking, excuse my language. Oh, it's all good. Yeah, your life, you know, like you were, your life, you expected your life to look one way and now it looks It's totally different. And one of the ways that I've been sort of reframing it is like a spiritual boot camp. You know, I had one client, I even said she was someone who was in Al-Anon working on her sort of addictive relationship patterns, always needing to be in a relationship, you know, falls in love easily kind of thing. And now she's sort of alone. And I was like, and she was really, you know, like, and it's bringing up all of these, you know, what happens when you're, when experiences is that it does bring up all of your pain and your, from your childhood. And that's coming up for her. And, you know, and she's, she's a pretty, she's a pretty self-aware, you know, client, very invested in her therapy. And I kind of said to her, wow, this is So she could hear this, and I sort of said, "Wow, this is really your codependency boot camp, isn't it?" She's like, "Oh, yes." And that has been her whole reframe, and that really helped her. It helped her reframe the whole thing. It's like, "Oh, this is my opportunity to work on my stuff. This is going to be the time that I get to look inside and develop all of those flabby, underdeveloped emotional muscles so that I can, that character development workout that I've been avoiding, so that I can really emerge from this." stronger, more evolved human being. So that's kind of the pivot I've been working on with everybody. And then I just want to talk, and there's the really hard stuff. I mean, one of my clients is a very well-known restaurant owner and chef. She's been in the public eye a lot, especially lately as a representative. She lost her frickin', she lost her business. You know, like, she didn't lose her business, okay, she didn't actually do that, but the fear of that is so intense. And that's a really intense pivot to make, you know, for anybody. I mean, she's a survivor and she's, you know, brilliant. I know she'll land on her feet, but—

But it's easier for you to see that than someone who is stuck in that story, right? And I think that's like what you're hitting on is so huge, and I want everybody who's listening to this to really understand that. Like, when you talk about this being a boot camp, And I'm visioning like, no, you're being thrown into the deep end with no floaties on. And, and right, everything that you were ever afraid of or ever worried about, all your anxieties, all your fears, all your insecurities, right? This is like the massive mega flashlight that's being shown on that. And again, I think that's the duality of this whole scenario is predisposed personality traits, right? Of the, you know, it's going to be exponential, unfortunately, but can we use this as a— yeah, I mean, this is, right? This is the boot camp. This is the deep end. This is the, you know, those in the entrepreneur world who know Andy Frisella's 75 Hard, 2 workouts a day, and you have a meal plan and you're doing— can you commit to this as seeing it that way where you have a game plan now? And I'm wondering, like, looking at it from a strategic perspective, I always talk about this paradigm of like reverse engineering where you want to be and setting yourself up to get there. And we didn't look at this as a possibility of what could happen. Now, like, we can have political fallout and we can have economic fallout and we can have— but like, but the political and the economic now coupled with you can go outside and you don't even know where you are or who you're talking to, and, and they can— and you can get sick from just having a conversation or being of help to someone else or being kind to somebody else. Right, can actually cause you, God forbid, death.

Or protesting.

Or protest, right, which we're going to see, unfortunately, just an exponential influx of cases in the next 2 weeks. And I tongue-in-cheek— you know, I'm in South Florida, and the weather for the last 2 weeks has been pretty awful. And I'm so thankful for that. I'm so thankful that the weather has been awful. Yes, on the mental— people need to be outside. We need to go run. We need to be in nature. We don't need to be in the mall. Yes, I know the businesses need to, whatever it is, but like, I'm so thankful. And I know this sounds so hard and there'll be people who disagree with me. Like, it stormed like crazy on Memorial Day weekend. But I also know that we've had, I don't know, 1,200 new cases yesterday or 2,500 new cases of COVID yesterday in the state of Florida.

Wow.

Right. And our protest has only started and our reopening only started really more so a week and change ago. Right. So the duality— again, I use that word a lot— but the duality is, yes, we want freedom. Yes, we want businesses to grow. Yes, we want things to go back to normal. But it's not yet normal. And it's not a one-size-fits-all of like— so I'm kind of happy there's rain. I'm kind of happy there's a tropical storm brewing in the Gulf Coast because we need to do more work to figure this out. It's not like, oh, yeah, we're going to do this slow opening and everything's going back to normal. But no one's listening. No one's following directions. People are still partying.

It forces us to go inside.

We have to go inside, literally, not just inside, like, and that's like, I love, right, especially if we narrate that going inside in this time doesn't mean staying inside, means go inside yourself and do the work. And there's no more excuse. I discussed this with someone recently, I'm like, I'm probably never ever ever, 99% short of like having to be actually physically touched by a doctor, I will never go to a primary care physician again in person. There's no need. After this experience and going online to a doctor twice, clicking set appointment, 17 minutes later the doctor showing up, and by the time— from the time I clicked appointment, set appointment, to the time I returned back home from picking up her prescription was 45 minutes.

Wow.

I'm not gonna go— there's no need for me to ever go to a primary care physician again in person.

How's someone going to listen to your heart through the web? I mean, I don't know. I haven't thought—

if I need to do that, that's fine, but right. But that— but I think we're learning that like certain diagnostic methods that have just been because are no longer necessary if I'm not exhibiting, right. This thing of like, we have to check your heart to make sure you don't— okay, fine. Like, I don't have asthma. I don't, you know, I do, right. I know what I have. I know what I don't have. And if, and if there's a trust builder, if you start listening to your patients slash clients more, Right. If you start trusting, right, this is part of our medical, right, where we as therapists are, you know, you and I probably see our clients more as clients, you know, they see, we see them as clients, not patients, not, not patients. So therefore we're a consultant. We're not the end-all be-all expert. Right. That's where I think you and I are very similar with, right. Versus in the medical field, the medical model, we know what's right for you. You can't be an informed consumer. We're going to tell you, even if you did your research, we're still not going I'm not going to trust you on the research you've done because who are you that you found that on the internet? How dare you be an informed consumer? That's starting to change, I think, with this a lot more.

Yeah. I mean, I hope that while I think that technology offers lots of opportunity for innovation, I just hope that it doesn't— that we don't lose— that, that human connection of being in each other, you know, like, that's so important. I wanted to say something about the Spiritual Boot Camp too, which is that Spiritual Boot Camp doesn't mean pushing yourself to like do a million things. So, and, you know, and I think that many people I've heard both friends and clients saying, like, I'm just so overwhelmed. I can't, I can't, like, I thought I would work on this. I can't, I can't do it. And, um, I think that's okay. I mean, this is about, like, your spiritual boot camp doesn't actually have to be an actual, you know, goal-oriented workout. It can just be, like, feeling into your pain getting in touch with, you know, not getting stuck, you know, getting stuck there, but like really getting to know yourself and like feeling your freaking feelings, you know.

Um, it doesn't have to be task-oriented. It doesn't have to be—

doesn't have to be task-oriented. And I think that's, you know, that's sort of like, as a society— and I was, uh, sort of sharing this with someone recently, you know— we're so measured by our by our achievements and our gains and not by our vulnerability and our inner growth, which is so hard to measure. I mean, the only one that, sometimes the only person that really gets that is yourself. I mean, usually those people that are closest to you can say, wow, like, you're handling things a little differently than you used to. I see, you know, I see, but usually it's much more about how we feel about ourselves or how we show up in the world, how we feel about our lives. And, you know, I can just speak for myself that it was a real, you know, like everybody else, it was a real jolt when this whole thing happened. And I was in the middle of like a lot of stuff that I was, you know, had a lot of goals about. And, you know, after kind of like grieving these, um, my, uh, my, my, um, my, my agent, my loss of agenda. I sort of just settled into the stillness and the everyday moment and of what this is and found, you know, found that I was actually able to hear my voice in a way that I hadn't, and my, you know, listen to myself in a way that I hadn't, um, before. And it kind of helped me find a new center in some ways. So I, I wrote, I wrote a blog on Psychology Today, um, sitting on my couch, I find my ruby slippers.

Nice. Yeah, and I hear this from so many people, right, that, um, I was on a— there's a great podcast episode with, um, Jesse Itzler and, uh, Sarah Blakely. Sarah Blakely, the creator Spanx, women's clothing company. So husband and wife, both are crazy amazing entrepreneurs. And they were talking about like on the Lewis Howes School of Greatness podcast. And he was talking about like at the beginning, he's like, this is gonna be amazing. Like every week I'm gonna write a new book and then I'm gonna do this and then I'm gonna do this. Like after week 1, he's like, yeah, that's going out the door. Like I remember like at the beginning, like everybody's like, this is like a forced vacation. This is so amazing. Now I can clean my apartment and now I can do this. And now I— and you do see all these people right at the beginning, like especially on social media, like, or it's like, oh, now I'm doing a home garden. Now I'm baking banana bread. Now I'm doing sourdough. Now the thing, right, especially I've seen in New York with my friends in New York is the sourdough starters, right?

Yeah.

Everybody's making their sourdough, right? So now all the ingredients for sourdough bread is out. Banana bread was a few weeks ago. Right, or growing their own seedlings, or like, it's like constantly progressing. And I'm like, or don't care about any of that crap at all and just go for a walk. Like, I remember like seeing, like, it was so incredible where like at 6 o'clock on a Tuesday night, everybody was out walking around and right. And I'm like, wow, that usually only like even on a weekend. And I happen to live in a Sabbath-observing Jewish community. Like, even on, like, when everybody's walking on this on Shabbat, on the Sabbath here, this is 5 times as many people that would be doing it than even then. Like, this is incredible. This is the Florida that I would always wanted to see. I don't have to go to Boulder, Colorado to see that. I'm finally seeing that here, and I'm thankful for that, you know. Um, the last couple weeks it's been like the weather's been awful, so I haven't seen it as much, but like, there's the silver linings, there's the blessings in all this, like, just like, and I find myself like, no, no, no, don't keep my phone out when I'm running. I don't need to check it. It's like, just listen to music, go for my walk, go for my run. I don't need to like, and it's hard because like you said, like we're on the computer all day, digital technologies all day. One of the things I'm finding that has been very recharging for me and very restorative for me has actually been not taking my one-on-one time, which I have blocked out, but actually leading more groups and workshops.

Mm-hmm.

During this time, and how I find I'm so much more energized, and the time is going like this when I'm doing something like this for a group. And I didn't realize that before this time frame, right? And I'm like, wow, okay, so maybe one of the things I do need to focus on now is how do I get now in front of more people to bring more value post this scenario and make that more part of my career than just, right, the one-on-one therapy and start working more on groups and presentations and workshops. And that came out of me literally being on the screen 3 to 5 times a week now teaching different things for different groups, right, for young professionals and young entrepreneurs, our age bracket. So that's like— so my, my thing now is By the time this is over, let's say by September, I'm going to literally go back and say like between April something and September 1st, I literally did 350 online webinars. I did.

Wow. Right.

Whatever.

Blah, blah.

Right. And I can now make it as a, you know, as a cool fact in my head. I'm like, wow, okay, that's pretty cool. So I was able to be in front of this many people, able to help this many people. Wasn't just Right. Obviously my clients are my clients and I love them.

Mm-hmm.

But I didn't just like, okay, now I'm done at the end of the day.

Right, right.

You know, I'm going to sit and watch Office reruns, which I do.

It's a good show, right? Yeah.

But I was able to add that to my repertoire and I've learned so much about myself and what I'm enjoying and where my energy, you know, if we want to get into the Enneagram stuff, right, of like what, you know, what do you do when you're fully at your best versus when you're responding from a stress point or when you're responding from a fear point, right?

Yeah, I mean, first of all, you're inspiring me 'cause I have not done a writing workshop, which is, I have one, I have two scheduled this month. Stay tuned, look at my website or my Facebook page and you'll see the information. But yeah, I've been more focusing on, I've just been really busy with clients individually and doing some of my own writing. And also just keeping up, you know, I've like, for the first— I've done like, today was day 49 of my meditation, like 10 minutes of meditation, which I've never been able— like forever I've been wanting to do meditation practice, never could, never could do it. And so yeah, but I think, you know, the way I'm sort of looking at it, Jason, is that we are entering like the third trimester of like a rebirth, like maybe possibly 9 months, who knows. But, you know, the third trimester of a really, like for many of us, a really difficult pregnancy, you know. And there are moments of like, you know, bliss and when we feel, you know, in times when we even feel like, you know, pregnant with possibility. And excited about the future. But the pangs of— those pangs and those, the queasy, all the queasy, queasy, queasy times that we have, especially this week, are all part of this process. And I hate to say it, but no pain, no gain. Like, if we're gonna grow, if we're gonna, if we're gonna, if we're gonna rebirth ourselves, like, we have to move through all of the feelings, you know. And, and just like also really appreciate those moments where we're like really jazzed up because we did a great webinar and, you know, wow, this is what I'm meant to be doing. Or a podcast, you know, that felt like, oh, spot on, I want to be doing more of this. So um, all of that, to make room for all of that, you know.

Well, we can't become a diamond without millions of pounds of pressure on us, right?

Right, right.

Now it's again like, now it's very much in our— it's everywhere we go, this million pounds of pressure. We might have felt it, or we might have like realized, yeah, there's something here, something there, this part of my life needs some improvement. But like, but I think we're seeing it in like, you know, especially for people who are like— I always like ask the question over the last couple weeks myself, like I'm alone, right? So the only people I'm seeing— and I just saw my family for the first time in the last couple weeks since March, and we're now— that was the end of May, um, and they live 15 minutes away from me, and we haven't seen each other in person until then. But like, I'm— it's like, wow, okay, so I'm alone, I'm by myself. I see my neighbors in the hallway, or I see them out when we do a lunch together, you know, on Shabbat or on the holidays the last couple weeks. With our socially appropriate distancing, but like, what would it be like if I had someone living with me right now, right? Or, you know, so, and I have my couples and my families that I'm working with and like with the kids and my whatever else. So I'm always asking like, okay, like, I'm trying to be conscious of that space of like, I can't just look at how I've been dealing this by myself living alone. And yes, it's isolating. Yes, it's lonely. Yes, it's, you know, But I don't have to worry about someone else's noise in the other room while they're trying to work and them being on conference calls. I have to worry about my neighbor who's walking up and down the hallway taking his calls, which, you know, not being mindful of everybody else working from home, right? And thinking that the hallway is now that person's office space. But it's— but on the other side of the coin, people who are home and they're with families or they're with partners or they're with whatever people that take care of them, they're like, oh, well, maybe it would be better if I didn't have anybody around me. It's like there's always the duality and the grass is always greener. Especially in this circumstance. And it's again, it goes back to a script and a narrative and like our biases are being shown of, you know, well, why am I really okay? Why am I really okay not being bothered by someone else's stuff right now?

Right. I mean, it's, yeah. I mean, everybody, I think everybody's experience has its own set of, set of challenges, you know, except for maybe people that are, you know, like celebrities who live on their own little private islands. Um, but, you know, who knows what's going on in their individual lives. Yeah. Um, yeah, I think every life— everybody's experiencing this, you know, has their own, like, insights and aha moments and challenges. And I also feel like we I want to make sure that I don't gloss over like the real challenges of people that are, that had pre-existing serious, you know, depression and anxiety, who are feeling isolated and now this is compounding their isolation, or were in really difficult relationships and this is compounding those relationships. I mean, all of this again is fodder for growth, right? I mean, it's all— especially if you're working with a therapist, everything is going to come up. Anything that— and I, and I wanted also, like, I know I wanted to talk about this, you know, being sort of a Jungian-leaning therapist, you know, that shadow stuff. Uh, and I just wrote a, wrote a blog about it on Psychology Today, like our shadow is up, right? We're seeing we have an opportunity to sit with our own shadow. And even like, again, individually and collectively, because you can't, you can't confront what you don't see. And if you can't see it, it's going to run you, you know.

And so can you explain just a quick overview for people who've never heard that phrase before, the shadow, like the shadow side?

All right. So, so it was a Jungian idea that we all have like a shadow side, like a part of us that, you know, for lack of a, you know, is sort of tend towards like, you know, parts of us that are like jealous or angry or resentful or, you know, angry, um, or like have evil thoughts from time to time. I know I have them when I watch the news, but about a particular individual who I don't even know if I can call him.

Stop watching the news, solves that problem.

I know, right? So, but we all have this part of ourselves that we don't want to look at because it's like, yuck, ugly, that ugly part of ourselves that we're like—

Why are you triggered?

I don't want anyone— I'm going to shove that under the carpet. I'm going to make I'm going to make sure that nobody sees it in my Facebook posts. You know, I'm going to just push and like, but, but like, when we're triggered by, by, by, you know, what we see or what we hear or other people, which is usually our biggest trigger, that shadow is going to be up. You know, or what we're, or what we're not, or when we're not, when there's nobody around and we just have ourselves. Some of us can be our own worst enemies that it's going to be up. But if we can start to say, like, rather than feel ashamed— like, at the, you know, the bottom of all of this, the reason we don't want to look at our shadow is there's the fear of feeling ashamed. But if we can kind of understand, accept that everybody has this shadow, like, everybody's got it, and like be curious about it. And Jung's idea is that when we're not aware of our shadow, when we kind of want to repress all those ugly places, It runs us in our behavior. And we see it, by the way, in some of the actions— I don't know if I can get political here— of our president right now. I mean, who's very much run by a shadow that he can't see. And but if we can sort of start to get to know it and be like, oh, there you are, jealousy. Yep. I know you. Let's like look at what that's about. Oh, maybe they, you know, there's— or like, oh, you know, resentment. If we could start to really get to know these shadows, we can have a different relationship with them. There's usually— and there's usually some deep childhood pain, either invisibility, unlovability, feeling, you know, um, inadequacy, not feeling wanted, not feeling we're enough, not, you know, all of that that's underneath of it. And even get to know that part of ourselves that was wounded back then. I mean, in IFES, there's like a really deep dive into getting to know and hold and deeply under— get that part of you so that it can be healed. Because it's usually the idea is that like our child brains who were looking for love and attention or acceptance, when they didn't get it, children think it's all about me. And that idea that it's all about me stays sort of stuck. It's like a splinter, you know, a thought that becomes a splinter in your being and you don't know it's there and it gets triggered And sort of, you know, one of the goals of IFS is to do the sort of psychic surgery that helps like get at that splinter, remove that splinter of thought.

Right, which is so powerful. And it's all right, the self-awareness component of our growth and our healing and our relationship has to be there. I gave a class last night for a bunch of young professionals and 2 nights before that I gave a class for a different group of young professionals. So the person who facilitated the group 2 nights ago, I said, "Hey, by the way, if any of your people want to jump in on this, I do this every Wednesday night. So if your people from the Tuesday night class that I gave want to jump on, feel free to do." So it was like a mixture of 2 different communities. And like I found out afterwards that like one of the people was like hitting up one, like 5 different people direct message on Zoom, right? You can do the private messaging on Zoom and like overwhelm this other one person. Person, like completely lack of self-awareness, complete lack of like boundaries, complete lack of— and I'm like, oh my God, like, why? Like, this is great. This is a great learning experience. And I'm like, I wish you told me, like, not— and I'm like, wow, would I have kicked them out? Or would I have used that as an opportunity to be like, hey, let's do some self-awareness here. Let's do some— right. Cause the first reaction would be like, let's kick that person out of our lives. Right. Which is our visceral response to everything that's especially like on Facebook. Well, I'm going to unfriend them. I'm going to block them. I'm going to, right. Or I'm going to teach them what they're wrong about, because that never works, right? And that's a whole other episode which we can have, right? Like, you know, you're never going to teach anybody anything that they don't— that they're already not willing to want to learn, right? But, but the idea of like using these moments— so I reached out to the organizer of that other group, and I'm like, let me tell you what happened, and here's what I think we need to do as a possible— and the person was like, oh, well, if I knew that, you know, I would kick them out of my group. I'm like, no, no, no, we have a tremendous opportunity to invite all of those people to a workshop on self-awareness, on boundaries, on appropriate communication, on— right? And let's use it as like, if you're not getting what you want out of the attempts that you're doing, why keep doing it over and over again? Let's, let's— are you open and willing to learn how to do something differently? And now we have a conversation set up to how to brainstorm that and actually make that into an actual paid workshop. For, as opposed to like the immediate default, well, they're different. They're, I can't believe they did that. I can't believe they offended my friend. I can't. Yes, they offend my friend. I told my friend that they should have told me right away. They should have, like, I'm upset at my friend that they didn't tell me right away that this was happening in my, but it was your class. And I'm like, yeah, and, but it was your class. I didn't want to bother you. You, someone felt unsafe, right? That's more important to me. So we can use it as a pivot to now, like, are you open to having a dialogue around that? And I think that's the first step to self-awareness is, are you willing to are you willing to see your shadow? Are you willing to be, to hear a different perspective? And everybody out there needs to ask themselves this question. Like, what, and maybe you can ask it better or state it better than I can, is like, what are you not willing to hear in the regards of feedback about yourself from the people around you, whether they're incredibly close to you or people that you meet in pass about their judgments about you or how you might come across? Them off that might be beneficial to you in helping you get more of what you want, especially in these types of settings, right? Where in group social settings, where now we're being isolated, now we really want to connect, right?

Right.

But like, you know, what are you, what would be the last thing that you would want to hear about yourself from someone that you might not even realize that you're putting yourself out there in a certain way, or that you're acting in a certain way that you would be like, this would be absolutely mortifying and horrible. And like, I completely, you know, this is not in alignment with my values. That you might be, right, split about.

That would reveal the shadow for sure. Yeah, whatever they're afraid of would reveal the shadow, right?

Yeah.

No, then, oh, like, if that happened, people wouldn't like me, and I feel ashamed, it would bring up my unworthiness.

And but yet that they are probably doing all those things that are causing those things to happen, right?

Oh, for sure, right? For sure. It's always— it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, so many people, like, can't see their own shadows, and, you know, neither can we, right?

Right.

I mean, I try, but I don't always—

Well, you've known me long enough to see all my shadow stuff, so after our call, I'm expecting you to give me the 34-point, minimum 34-point bullet list of all the things that I'm— that I haven't seen since you've known me.

So, you know, it's been a while. It's been a while.

Our last get-together was over sushi, so So yeah, at your book tour. Yeah, so let's wrap it up with that, right? So you have this really awesome book. You know, please share with everybody listening just a quick understanding of the book, what you want them to get out of it by actually going through the steps in the book. It's really, really awesome. I reference it with clients. I have one copy actually. I ended up with two copies that night at Books and Books down in in Miami when you were here.

Yeah.

So, you know, what can— by someone getting this book, what can they hope to get out of the work that you're challenging them to do?

I think it can help give them a new lens on who they are, where they're going, and what's sort of getting— and like kind of like what's getting in the way of them kind of growing into the kind of person that they imagined— that they would imagine themselves to want to be. I mean, the book itself is— I mean, the idea of the book is that like, again, I said before, like every life is an unfolding story. So one of the things that I do is I have people start by looking at the current chapter. Like, I'll ask them, you know, imagine that your life is a novel. What's the title of the current chapter? And describe it, give it, you know, give me sort of a chapter summary in the third-person narrative, right? Which gives them a little bit again that distance. And I might, and I even have them like use questions like, that authors use when they're writing a book. Like, you know, all authors use, like, do a character sketch to get a sense of where the character they're creating is going. So I have them do that with themselves, like, who is this character, what do they want, what's getting in the way, and what are sort of the stakes involved whether they get there or not. I also have them, and that really, the important, by the way, I wanted to say this, especially right now, of bookending a difficult, like, a time in your life is really important. Because sometimes when people get depressed, it's because they confuse the current chapter for the entire plotline of their story. It's really important to say, and giving it a title can say so much, because then you're, like, pointing to the themes, right? Whether the current chapter is, you know, Embodied Crucible or Transition, and Or, you know, Viral Spiral versus Viral Survival. You know, today we're cocooned, from cocoon to butterfly. You know, whatever it is, it tells you so much about your mindset. And sometimes people start with one title and then after doing it, they'll come to another and they'll be like, oh. And what the writing does in itself is it becomes a mirror, right, to your own, just like an art, like anything that's creative. Becomes a lens of looking at your inner world that you can't see when you're actually looking into a physical mirror. And then it's sort of like using the architecture of the story, which is the idea that there's a conflict. Like, every— I sort of normalize conflict. Every story has a conflict, and that conflict is the friction between the protagonist and antagonist, which could be like a challenging, you know, which is which I kind of define more liberally as the force in your life that is stretching you to grow, stretch and grow beyond your comfort zone. So it could be a person, it could be a stage of life, it could be COVID. And I have people look at like, what supporting resources do they have in their lives? Like what strengths, you know, what strengths does this character already possess? Where are the areas where they need to develop? And then I actually use dialogues, like I have people dialogue with different parts of themselves, you know, with— and they're guided dialogues so that they can kind of like, they can see that their fear is just trying to protect them and they can either talk back to fear or they can also dialogue with a part, with what I call a growing edge, a character trait that they want to develop, like courage, you know, and dialogue with courage and have courage tell them how to make the next step. So I use all kinds of perspective-bending writing exercises that help people just look at their— kind of get a new lens on their story. And so they leave there sort of looking at reframing conflict, because a lot of times people don't like conflict, but it's an inevitable part of life. It's an important part of the story. Without it, the character wouldn't grow, wouldn't evolve. So it's looking at how can you grow through that and be in charge of— even though we can't control what happens, we can't control our plotline in some respects, right? Like things happen sometimes, COVID, you know, all of this stuff, like we can't control it, but we can take charge of the narration of our story by sort of looking at like the ways that we want to that we are going to respond to the shifting tides of our storyline. And so in that way, we can feel empowered. And so people usually come through it having gone through sort of this sort of what I call a character development workout, you know, character development boot camp, where they're really looking at that challenge and by the end, but towards that resolution, resolution, they have like a new perspective on their story. Yeah. Oh, and I also run, I have a daily, I just want to say a little plug. I also have two courses on the daily OM, which are only like $15. And they're 10 weeks written courses, do in your own time. One's called Reframe Your Narrative About Challenging Relationships. And the other one is called, this was their title, not mine, but it's funny. It's, um, it's your fault, not mine.

So, which sounds very much like what we're going through in today's day and time. And so again, the name of the book is Step Out of Your Story: Writing Exercises to Reframe and Transform Your Life. And put obviously the, the link to that in our show notes. Um, and if they wanted to reach out to you directly, where can they do that?

And they can go to my website, stepoutofyourstory.com. There's like a little contact section. They can also go to my Facebook page, whether— I have a Step Out of Your Story Facebook page. They can also find me on the Psychotherapy and Spirituality Institute website.

So yeah, pretty easy, pretty easy to find. Kim, thank you again for spending spending some time with us. And I know there were so many things. And yeah, guys, like, go, go treat yourself to this, to this book. Treat yourself to one of the online workshops, right? If you're gonna say like, this is what I want to accomplish during this whole isolation thing, this should be something. Should, right? As I'm gonna put this on everybody, but the work and the value of everything that we've been talking about today is so incredible and will allow you to get through this experience and the next experiences a lot easier when we do take that time. And that effort and that investment. For the price of 2 Starbucks coffees, you can get all these wonderful, wonderful things. And I know, right, that reading a book here and there is going to be really, really bit by bit, right? It's not something that you have to work your way through in one night, especially if there's writing exercises. There you can get the book on Kindle. It's $9.99 on Kindle. It's $14.55 on paperback on Amazon.

You can buy that at Amazon, right?

Right. So, you know, not, not the world's greatest investment to have some really good insight into yourself, right? It's not the biggest financial investment to get some good work.

So cheaper than therapy.

Exactly. Way cheaper than therapy. And you might realize that you can now go to therapy.

Much cheaper than one session of therapy even.

Right. But it'll allow you to decide whether or not you might like, huh, I want to figure this out with somebody. Which I always challenge my students. Thank you. Thank you again for hanging out with us.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This was such a blast, and it's so good to see you. I hope I get to see you in person someday.

Very soon. Very, very soon.

All right, thank you, Jason Wasser. Stay well.