1013 Overcome Shame, Process Pain & Maximize Mental Health w/Lori Gottlieb

This is episode number 1013 with New York Times bestselling author, Laurie Gottlieb. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Author Robert Broudt said, in the end, there doesn't have to be anyone who understands you. There just has to be someone who wants to. And actor Harvey Feirstein said, accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself. I'm so excited because my guest today is one of the wisest women I've ever met, someone who truly understands the value of writing your own story in life and writing it extremely well. And Lori Gottlieb is a renowned psychotherapist who writes the weekly Dear Therapist column in the Atlantic. And now she's out with a New York Times bestselling book called maybe youy Should Talk to Someone, which weaves Laurie's experience giving advice with her decision to seek counseling herself as a therapist. And I've wanted to have Laurie on this podcast for a while now, and we had an incredible wide-ranging discussion on how her decades of wisdom can translate to a better life for you. In this episode, we discuss how people have much more agency than they realize. the importance of something called wise compassion when dealing with your loved ones who are going through heartache. Also tools to help you heal from the damaging effects of shame, how to better narrate the story of your life, because I feel like so many people don't tell a good story from their past, and it affects them now, and why you should look yourself straight in the mirror every single day for 60 seconds minimum. I'm so excited about this, and if you're enjoying this during this episode at any time, make sure to share this with someone who you think would love listening to this as well and who would get a lot out of this. And a quick reminder, make sure to click that subscribe button on the School of Greatness, on Apple Podcasts, as well as giving us a rating and review if you want to help spread the message of greatness to more people in the world. Okay, after a quick message, the one and only, Laurie Gottlieb. One of the best parts about my job as a podcast host is getting to know people on a deeper level. And I love discovering the interests my guests have that they don't always talk about, you know, world class athlete whose favorite pastime is painting or the billionaire who still plays a weekend garage band. And the truth is everyone has layers and people are rarely as simple as they appear on the surface. For marketers, that complexity can make the job even more challenging. After all, how can you reach your customers if you don't really know them? That's where TransUnion's marketing solutions come in. TransUnion brings clarity to marketing chaos by delivering a 360 degree view of your customer, helping you deepen your insights accelerate your decision making, and better measure the impact of every marketing dollar. Visit transunion.com/clarity to learn more. The School of Greatness is proudly sponsored by Amica Insurance. As Amica says, Empathy is our best policy. That's why they'll go above and beyond to tailor your insurance coverage to best fit your needs. Whether you're on the road, at home, or traveling along life's journey, their friendly and knowledgeable representatives will work with you to ensure you have the right coverage in place. Amica will provide you with peace of mind. Go to Amica.com/peace .com and get a quote today.

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The question I get the most as a therapist is how can I be in less pain? People don't ask it like that, but I think that's what people are doing when they first come in. You know, basically when people come in, they want something to change. That's why they made the appointment. But usually what they want to change is someone else or someone else. Right? Like, I want that person to change. Yes, yes. How do you get, how do you get that person to change? And I think what they come to realize is that they're going to have to make changes.

But okay, so people come in because they're in pain and they want the pain to go away.

Yeah.

And they've tried, maybe they've tried something else that didn't work and you're like talk medicine, right? Without having to take a pill, how can I relieve this pain, this suffering, this problem? But the problem, what I'm going to say is never about another person, it's always with them.

Well, not always. I think that relationally a lot of people don't realize that even if the other person is problematic, so right, when I was training, one of my clinical supervisors once said, said, before diagnosing someone with depression, make sure they aren't surrounded by assholes.

Right.

Right? So, you know, it's not like there aren't problematic people out there.

There are.

Right. But then what is your response to that? And I think that people don't realize how much agency they have. They don't realize that they can choose their response to their circumstances. They can choose their response to the people around them. And I'm not saying that there aren't incredibly daunting circumstances right now in the world. for example. But then how do you respond? What are you going to do about it? And I think that's where people get stuck.

And you talk, I love your TED Talk because you talk about rewriting your story from the past. And I believe that we hold onto our stories and we probably continue to write them in a more powerful way that keeps us trapped or traumatized. Is that fair to say that something happens in our past, we hold onto the story daily or whenever we're triggered, And it amplifies the story in our minds.

Well, it does. And the problem is that often whatever that version of the story is, we carry with us and we never revise it. And so you create a story when you're younger, for example, about something that happened in your life. And then as an adult, you've never looked at that story through the adult lens. You're still looking at it through the childhood lens. And so that's why I say that when people come in that we're all unreliable narrators.

Yes.

That we all tell a story through, you know, this lens. And the thing is, these are usually faulty narratives. So there's a broader version of the story that people haven't looked at. And so I feel like in a lot of ways, what I do as a therapist is I act as an editor and have, of course, a writing background. And so I help people to revise their stories, 'cause the reason they can't move forward in the story, the reason they can't get to the next chapter, is because of something is wrong with the story. They are stuck. And so it's almost like I'm helping them with writer's block.

I mean, for me, life is an interpretation.

Yes. Right?

There's an instance that happens and we can interpret it as good or bad, or we can interpret as, this is a neutral event and I'm gonna make.

The most of this.

Is that fair to say?

Yeah, absolutely. And also how we attribute other people's parts of the story, right? So who are the villains and the heroes in the story? You know, I talk in the book about the difference between idiot compassion and wise compassion. And idiot compassion is what our friends do. They back up our story no matter what. We say, this happened. This happened with my boss. This happened with my partner. This happened with my parent, right? This happened with my best friend. And we say, yeah, that was terrible. Screw them. They're a jerk. You know, that's awful. You're right, they're wrong. Don't let anyone treat you that way. That's what we do. And if you listen to your friends' stories, you start to realize over time that even though the situation and the names might be different, The kind of story they're telling is similar. It's kind of like if a fight breaks out in every bar you're going to, maybe it's you.

Yeah, exactly.

We don't say that. That's idiot compassion.

Idiot compassion is where we as friends say, yeah, you're the best person in the world. This person's horrible. Leave them or let them go. Forget about them. They're so bad at what they did. There's always two sides to every story.

Well, right. And so the value of therapy is that we offer wise compassion. We hold up a mirror to you and help you to see yourself in a way that maybe you haven't been willing or able to do. And that's where the other version of the story comes in.

So how do we have wise compassion for our friends when they're like, She cheated on me, he left me, they had an affair, whatever. How do we change our story and also show compassion that we're there for our friend, not making, when they're in a vulnerable place, not making the other person right or wrong. being there for them and also kind of giving them some tough love, I guess?

I wouldn't call it tough love, I would just call it- Reality. Love. Love. It's love, it's much more loving to be truthful in a compassionate way. So I sometimes call them compassionate truth bombs because we need to hear them, but how do we do it? It has to do with timing and dosage. So the timing is when they're really raw, when something just happened. Now's not the time to say, you know, this has happened with your last three boyfriends. Maybe you're the problem here. Have you noticed that going through people's phones is not working well for you? We are not gonna say that maybe in that moment. So that's timing. And then the dosage is how much are you going to say in a particular moment and in a particular conversation? It doesn't all have to happen in one conversation. So I think that that has to do with being a good listener. And a lot of us don't know how to listen. And I think it's really helpful. I see a lot of couples in my practice too. And if you can say to the person when they come to you with something, how can I be helpful in this conversation right now? I know you're really hurting. Do you want to just vent? Do you want a hug? Do you want me to help problem solve with you? Do you want my honest opinion or do you want me to hold off and we can have that conversation another time? Let them tell you what they want so you can give them something that is helpful to them in that moment and then in another conversation, you might be able to offer them something more.

When they're not completely raw or broken and hurt. So what is that specific question when anyone's coming to you with a challenge or a complaint or hurt, what's the question you should ask them?

How can I be helpful to you right now? I know you're really hurting.

What does that do for the person who's hurting when they hear that?

It helps them to reflect on, oh wait, what do I need?

Right?

Am I just gonna download all of this stuff and then I'm not gonna feel any different at the end? Or is there something else that I want right now? And maybe downloading it will make them feel different. Just make them feel seen and understood and heard, which is important. Or maybe they want something else, but let them tell you. And I think the other thing is these three words that are really helpful when they're talking to you are tell me more. So instead of saying, you know, when they say like, oh, here's what's going on, and we say, oh, well, we try to cheer them up. Like, you know, here's what you can do. We try to fix it. We try to cheer them up. We try to make it seem like it's not so bad, whatever we do. instead just say, tell me more. We do this with our kids. I can say as a parent, we do this all the time, right? So your kid comes to you and says, I'm really sad about this, or I'm really worried about this. We say, oh, don't worry. No, it's not a problem. We say, oh, don't be sad. Right? Go have ice cream. Let's go to the rug. Right, exactly. But the thing is that then you get the message as a kid that like, oh wait, I'm not supposed to feel this. And really what it is is we get uncomfortable as parents with our kids' feelings. Why is that? Because we can't, we are uncomfortable with feelings. We grew up in a way where feelings were messy, feelings were uncomfortable, feelings were something that, you know, they were gonna be trouble. Yeah. As opposed to- Stop crying, stop crying. As opposed to just, you know, feelings are actually a great thing. People say, oh, there are these negative feelings like sadness, anxiety, anger, whatever. Even envy. I always say, Feelings are like a compass. They tell us what direction to go in. So with envy, for example, I say, follow your envy. It tells you what you want. If you are feeling envy, that's great because it says, what do I desire? It puts you in touch with your desire. What is it that I desire? And what steps can I take to get something like that in my own life? If you're feeling sad, if you're feeling anxious, what is not working right now that you can look at if you stuff down that feeling? if you pretend it's not there, it just gets bigger and here's what happens. It doesn't go away. It comes out in too much food, alcohol, drugs, insomnia, a short-temperedness, inability to function, distractibility, that mindless scrolling we all do through the internet. A colleague of mine said that the internet was like the most effective short-term non-prescription painkiller out there.

Wow.

And so what happens is your feelings are still there, but you're not dealing with them.

What happens when we never deal with our emotions or feelings?

Well, you first of all get sick. Physically sick, emotionally sick, mentally sick. Everything, everything, right? So we have, just like we have a physical immune system, we have a psychological immune system. And we have to take care of our psychological immune system. So it's just like, you know, what do you do to keep healthy with your body? Like you're gonna eat right, you're gonna exercise, you're going to do all the things that you want to do to take care of yourself. You're going to get enough sleep. Those things also help your psychological immune system. They're not totally separate. The mind-body connection is profound. But at the same time, are you going to be around people who don't nourish you? That's going to hurt your psychological immune system. That's going to make you sick. Are you going to stuff down your feelings? That's going to make you sick. And so how do we take care of ourselves? And part of it is instead of trying to numb out your feelings, because numbness Numbness isn't the absence of feelings. Numbness is a state of being overwhelmed by too many feelings. Wow. And then, not only do you not experience the feelings that you don't want to experience, but you don't experience the other feelings. You mute one feeling, you mute the others. You mute the pain, you mute the joy. So you're living in this state where you don't actually get to feel the range of feelings that make us human.

What does that state called?

I was going to say dead. I mean, I feel like you can be alive but not living. And that's what happens to people is that they're alive, they're going through the motions, they wake up every day, but they're not really living their lives.

What's an assessment we could take for ourselves if someone's listening or watching to ask themselves how alive or how dead they are and if the people in their life closest are actually good for them or are hurting their psychological states. Is there a questionnaire we could take just off the cuff? Is there an assessment? Is there a few things we could ask ourselves?

I think that it has to do with a sense of vitality, right? Which of course, like vitality, the word life is right in there. When you wake up in the morning, are you excited about what you're doing? Is there meaning in what you're doing? Do you feel connected to how you're spending your days? Because at the end of your life, are you gonna look back and say, what did I do that was meaningful? You know, and maybe you should talk to someone in my book. There's a woman that I treat, she's this young woman who goes on her honeymoon, she's newly married, she comes back, and she has cancer. and she says to me at one point, she says, why do we need a terminal diagnosis?

To have a wake-up call.

Why do we need a terminal diagnosis to live our lives with intention? Why do we need that to really pay attention? And I think that if we can keep the awareness of death sitting on one shoulder, and I don't mean in a morbid way or in a creepy way, it's not depressing. It's actually, again, going back to vitality, it helps us feel alive because Life has 100% mortality rate and that's not for other people. We like to believe that, right? And so the thing is that if we know that we have a limited time here, I think we would pay more attention to what we're actually doing every day.

Why is it so hard for people to pay attention?

Fear.

But they feel like they're stuck sometimes for years. It's like I stay stuck in a relationship that's, I know it's not right for me for years, I stay in a depressed state for years. I stay in a job that I hate for years. It's all based on fear?

Well, I think it is fear. You know, I think it's fear of uncertainty. This is gonna sound strange, but change is really hard because we cling to something that's familiar to us. So even though we may know, oh, this would help me. This would be a good change for me. We don't do it because it's unfamiliar. And so if you grew up with a lot of chaos, if you grew up feeling sad all the time or anxious all the time, that feels like home to you, even if it's unpleasant or even miserable.

She'll keep finding chaotic environments.

Right, and recreating it. Yeah, and so, you know, it was funny because my own therapist gave me this great analogy. He said to me, he said, you remind me of this cartoon, and it's of a prisoner shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out. But on the right and the left, it's open. Right, no bars. So basically, the prisoner is not in jail. And that's what so many of us are like. We feel trapped. We're not in jail. We can change. We can just walk around the bars. But why don't we? Because with freedom, the freedom to walk around the bars, comes responsibility. And if we're responsible for our own lives, that scares us. We feel like, oh, I don't know if I can do that. I don't know if I'm competent enough to do that. Or, now I'm to blame. if things don't go right, I can't blame it on everything else.

Is this one of the reasons why inmates after a long time being in prison who get out go back into prison because they feel like they need to be back in that environment? Or are there other reasons?

I think there are other reasons. I think we don't give people the support when they come out. You know, the mental health issues that they needed to be treated for were whenever, you know, they never got that support. Then they come out, and they're back in the same situation where they don't have that community support.

Why is it so hard for us to take responsibility for our own happiness?

I think that if you grew up in a household where you were seen and heard and understood, those are the people who do take responsibility for their own happiness. I think for people who felt like they were ripped off in their childhoods, there's a part of them that's still in a fight. There's a part of them that still wants that redo. And so it's kind of like they're not aware of this, but what they're saying is basically, I will not change mom and dad until you give me the things that I did not get in childhood.

So they'll go find a partner that emulates their environment from mom and dad and try to change them so they well, right.

This is the irony of relationship, right? For those people who have not sort of worked through it. This is so common. And I think all of us have this peace in us, right? Because nobody had a perfect childhood. So what happens is people say, okay, when I'm an adult, I'm gonna pick a partner who really makes me feel nourished, who really gives me all those things that I did not get growing up. But what they don't realize is unconsciously they have this radar for the people who look very different from their parents on the surface. But then once they get into that relationship, It's kind of like, -oh, this feels familiar, right? And so what they did was their unconscious said when they were picking their partner, hey, you look familiar, come closer. Even though consciously they thought, oh, you're totally different from my parents. This is gonna work out great. But no, they have radar for that if they haven't worked out the stuff that's sort of their unfinished business. There's this saying, we marry our unfinished business. We actually do marry our unfinished business. So that is why it is so important as an adult to take responsibility and say, you know what? I'm going to have to grieve this loss of what I didn't get. And I'm going to have to work through this and assess where I am as an adult so that I pick people and surround myself with people who are healthy for me.

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To heal together, right.

And so that relationship could thrive.

If you both are willing to look in the mirror at yourselves and do the work, yes, that could be a really beautiful relationship. And it could be very healing for both of you, in fact.

It could potentially be the strongest bond ever if you both were able to go through that.

Yeah.

But if you're unwilling to go through that, then what?

You're going to be in- Both people.

Have to be willing.

Right, well both people have to be willing. I mean, that's the thing. So it's like you may wake up one day and say, oh, wait a minute, I have all this unfinished business. And then your partner says, yeah, it's all you. You're the problem in the relationship. You know, it's kind of like in couples therapy so often, I'll see something like, someone will say, like, you never listen to me.

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If you're just yelling at someone all.

Day, they're gonna wanna listen to you. Right, right. So, you know, there's this dance that we do in relationship. And what happens is people are doing these dance steps and people become very, they become very ingrained. It's like, oh, here we go. You can script out people's arguments.

You know exactly what they're gonna look like. It starts with one thing and then.

It goes back into many different things where you're like, oh, okay. And you know exactly how it's gonna go and who's gonna feel what and who's gonna accuse the other person of what. And that's the dance. And so if one person changes their dance steps, the other person either is going to fall flat on the dance floor Or they're gonna have to change their steps too if they want to keep dancing. And usually, so we always say you can't change another person, but you can influence another person. How? By changing your dance steps. So for example, we like to say insight is the booby prize of therapy. Meaning people will come and they'll be like, oh now I understand why I keep getting into that argument with my partner. And so then they go home and they come back the next week and I'll say, well did you do something different when you got in that argument? Well no, but I understand why I didn't. So you have to be both vulnerable and accountable when you come to therapy.

How do we fight better when we are in constant repeat pattern every month or every week it becomes an argument around something for whatever reason. It's a pattern and couples start to notice it. How does one person or both people recognize and say, okay, I'm gonna change my dance steps and I'm gonna fight or dance better?

Yeah, the first thing is to notice sort of what do you own in this? What is your reaction? So we have a choice. every time someone presents us with something, there's a great quote in the book, it's a Victor Frankl quote, where he says, Between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space lies our freedom to choose.

Between stimulus and response, so between an.

Action happening and your response to the action.

So your partner says something.

There's a window of opportunity. Yes, there's that space. Usually that space for us will look like a breath. The breath is everything. the breath, really. If you don't breathe, you're screwed. If you need to take the breath or you will just respond, it's sort of like we have these neural pathways that are wired, right? And someone says something and you react not just to what that person in front of you is saying, but it goes back to something that reminds you of something from a long time ago. People who aren't even in the room are in that moment with you. And so that's that neural pathway. And so what you need to do is you need to you need to take a breath. It's like a big stop sign on that road that's your neural pathway. So hold up the stop sign. You can even picture a stop sign in your mind. Stop. Breathe. Now you get to choose, how do I want to respond to this? Do I want to respond in the way I've responded the last gazillion times?

Right.

Which has not worked out well, or do I want to try something different? So that's part one. Part two is, Perspective taking. A lot of people who are in really highly conflictual relationships have trouble with perspective taking. They can't imagine that the other person has a valid perspective. Now you might not agree with every piece of how they view this, but there's some overlap between how this person views it and how you view it, but you are not willing to see that. And so I have this new podcast called Dear Therapist, On the podcast, so much of what we do is we help people to take the perspective of the other person. There's something that you are not seeing right now.

Why is that so hard for people to see someone else's perspective?

Well, two things. One is because, you know, that unreliable narrator thing that we think that we are right and we don't want to be told. And so what we hear when we say there's another perspective, we're not saying you're wrong. We're saying there's more to the story. So there's a difference between their perspective is valid as well, is not saying your version is wrong. We're saying there's more. So people hear it though as you are wrong. And the other part of it is that there's a lot of shame. That people are sticking to a certain story because if they allow that other part of the story to come in, the part that they're responsible for will probably come up. and they feel a lot of shame. So when I see individuals in therapy, they come in and they tell me a story and they leave out the parts that they are embarrassed about. The parts that they feel like that was not my finest moment.

Like what? Give me an example. Like, oh, I screamed back or I did this.

Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, here's what happened or here's, this is, this is the situation and my, my partner did this or my mother did this or my child did this or my boss did this, whatever. And they they don't tell you these other details and they sort of trickle out later on. And they're very relevant to the story. But that's shame, right? And so, you know, that's why the therapeutic relationship is so important because you get to a point where you really trust the therapist and you're able to be really honest about what happened.

How much does shame shape our stories?

Oh, so much. I think that, you know, as humans, we want to belong. And what shame is about is, I'm not going to belong. I'm not going to be loved. The greatest human need is, you know, how can we love and be loved? And when you feel like there's something I did that people will look upon badly, they might not like me if I tell them this. That's just, you know, wired into us.

It's like the ego death to us. It's like the emotional death of, like, If someone knew this about us, they would not love me and I would emotionally die.

And I would be alone.

And I'll be alone, yeah.

Yeah, and we need other people.

I felt like this way for many years where I opened up about sexual abuse about seven years ago and for 25 years, no one knew because I was so ashamed. And I felt like if anyone knew, how could they possibly love me or accept me? Or how would anyone want to date me or my family? How would they not disown me? These were the stories that I was writing. I was a bad editor. How does someone who's done something that they're not proud of in the past, who's had something done to them that they're not proud of, whatever, they've been in a situation that they feel shame around, how does someone start to process that shame to heal so that it doesn't continue to run their life and keep them imprisoned?

Yeah. Well, I think they do what you did, which is you started talking about it, and I think you you have to choose your audience, which is really important, especially as you're just starting out. So you want to make sure that--.

Don't tell your abuser who's the toxic relationship.

Well, you know, I think you have to really choose someone who's safe. And if you don't have those people, you know, I think a therapist is a really good place to start. But I do think that it's harder for men to talk about anything, whether it's sexual abuse or even, you know, just sort of like anything they feel vulnerable about. And so men will come into my office and they will say to me at some point, you know, I've never told anyone this before. And then- Do women say that? Yes, so here's the thing. Women will say that. They'll say, I've never told anyone this before except for my mother, my sister, and my best friend. Right? You're the only one who I don't know. I'm the only one, right? Well, I haven't told this- I told my book club. I told, you know, whatever it is. They've told like a few people, but they feel like because women, it's acceptable for women to talk about these things. And so they feel like they haven't told anyone because they still feel like there's some degree of privacy around it. Men literally have told, no one has told, no one. And even if they have like a great partner and they have close friends, you know, they have a great family, whatever it is, they feel like I cannot tell anyone because vulnerability for men in our in our culture is not okay. Even though we say that, so this is the thing.

Even though women say, I wish she would open up, I wish she would be more sensitive, but then when they are, they're like, I need you to be strong right now.

Right, so this is exactly what happens in couples therapy. So I'll have two people sitting on the couch and I have a couple and say it's a heterosexual couple and the woman says to the man, like, I really wanna get to know you. I feel like we would connect so much more if you would Just open up to me. I wanna know what's going on inside there, right? And he does. And let's say he tears up. Let's say he actually starts crying in a way where like his body is convulsing, right? She looks at me like deer in headlights. She's so profoundly uncomfortable. I mean, this is the thing that.

She was asking for.

So what she'll say is, I don't feel safe when you don't open up to me. And I don't feel safe when you're vulnerable with me. It's like, it's like Goldilocks. It's like not too much, not too little, but right in the middle. That's how vulnerable you can be with me.

I've been saying this for a long time that I feel like this is one of the main things that hurts all intimate relationships. Yes. When a person doesn't feel safe to share their emotions to the person that says they love them the most and actually makes them wrong for it or makes them less than or retracts their love when they're vulnerable. So I don't know the solution for this besides saying this all the time and besides saying ladies, like if you want a vulnerable man who's emotional, you have to accept him when he's emotional.

Well, not just accept but embrace. I mean that's-- Encourage. Encourage.

Because it's so much harder for a man in general in our society to be vulnerable based on what we've grown up with and based on what we see, that if you're not encouraging it consistently and celebrating it almost, why would you expect them to keep opening up when they have something they want to share if you're gonna make them wrong for it?

Well, right. So that's exactly what happens. There's somebody I write about in the book who, you know, there's this tragedy that happens in the family and he feels like he has to be the rock for the family. My wife, she can cry about this, she can be sad about this, but if I break down, I'm the thing holding everything up. And that was just not true. Actually, that was the thing that was making their marriage not work, that was making him feel anxious and not sleep and not function well, right? And that was the thing that got his wife to, at a certain point, say, I can't be in this marriage if we can't connect. But he thought he had to be the rock for the whole family. He could not feel his feelings. healing. And instead, what happened was when he finally said, no, actually, this is tearing me apart, too. That's when they started healing. That's when they started getting close to each other again.

What advice would you have to any woman entering a relationship, a new relationship with a male partner?

I would say make sure that there's no double standard in the relationship. Make sure that if you want an open relationship where there's lots of trust, You feel like you can come to each other with anything. You know, there's this saying about like you invited the lie, which means that when you don't give people the space to talk to you about something that's difficult, they will keep things secret from you.

They won't share with you.

They won't share with you and they will start keeping lots of secrets from you. And then they'll be like, later on they'll be like, really this was going on in your life? Why didn't you tell me about this? Because you created a culture and which they couldn't. So if you want to feel safe and secure in the relationship and you want that openness, then you have to really embrace it and make sure that you're embracing it not just with your words but with your actions. So your partner comes to you and they talk to you about something and you don't try to kind of shut it down. You don't get profoundly uncomfortable. If your friend, like your girlfriend came to you and did that, like you know your best friend, you would be like, oh, however you would be to them, why are you gonna be different to this person who is the person that you're spending your life with?

Why are, again, I don't wanna generalize all women, but why are women in general, I guess, wired that way? To not feel safe when a man opens up and shares an insecurity, a vulnerability. Why are women wired that way?

These are artifacts of a culture that that taught men and women, girls and boys when they're growing up, this is how you are in the world. And you see this as parents, right? So I have a son and I saw this, it was profound for me to see this. So when my son got to a certain age, when he was little and he would fall down and he would cry or whatever it was, everybody would be like, oh honey, at the park or whatever, little boys, at a certain age.

Like two, three, four, five.

All of a sudden it was like girls, they fall off the jungle gym, everybody's there. Boys, they're crying. It's like, oh, it's okay, shake it off, shake it off. I was horrified. Shake it off, like he might even have a concussion, right?

Shake it off, right? I mean, this is my whole childhood. It's like, you know, you play football. I remember breaking my wrist in a game in high school and then just saying tape it up.

It was just like, my wrist was broken.

It's like hanging there, right? No, it's broken. I tape it up, I keep playing. because it's just like, oh, keep it playing. Unless you're dying. I remember I broke my ribs in a game and I could not breathe and I was just laying on the ground. I could not move, so I had to be like taken off. But you break an arm, you have a concussion once, I just kept playing. Like, it's just, oh, just be tough.

Right, right.

It's hard for men, making sure men stay accountable, but it's hard for men to, we have that mindset to switch it off and then be vulnerable and then switch it back on. Well, I have to be tough and strong.

Well, so it's interesting you're using the words tough and strong because I think that what happens is that men start to associate tough and strong with not feeling. Like, I'm not gonna feel the pain of my broken wrist. I'm just gonna keep playing. I'm not gonna feel the pain of this breakup. I'm not gonna tell anybody about it, right? About how much pain I'm in. I'm not gonna tell people about the pain of my sexual abuse because I'm gonna be strong. And what they don't realize is that strength is actually being able to talk about these things. So when people make the call to come to therapy, I'm looking not only for what's not working in someone's life and why they're there. I wanna know why now, why this week or this month did they call? Because that to me is a sign of strength. And I'm looking for their strengths as much as what's not working. So they think, a lot of men think, and they'll say, they'll say like, oh, I'm so embarrassed that I'm here. Women tend not to say that. Women are like, I'm so glad I'm here. I've been waiting to do this. Right? So to them, it's a sign of strength that they came because they value their health in that way. Men are like, I can't let anybody know that I'm here. Like it's a weakness. And I have to reframe it for them and say, no, the fact that you are here is a strength. That's why I think it's really cool.

That Michael Phelps is talking about therapy.

And talking about all these-- On all.

These basketball players too.

--Kevin Love and all these people are talking about-- Kevin Love.

--Demar Derozen? --Yeah. --Yeah. I think it's really important for us to see models of men that we're inspired by. I didn't really see that growing up of like a man that was going through challenges that went to therapy or dealt with sexual abuse and talked about it openly. I never saw that model. So I just felt like, oh, I'm the only one dealing with this. This doesn't happen. But when I started to open up, it's crazy the amount of men that you mentioned like men never share. Even to a friend. You never tell a soul where a woman in general might share three friends friends before they come to the therapist and say they've never shared.

Yeah.

When I opened up about sexual abuse, there were hundreds of essays from men emailing me, but also what I did it in person in kind of a private kind of group therapy session. So many men came to me privately after the session and said, I'm 55 years old. I've got three kids and my wife doesn't know. My kids, like, no one knows this happened to me over and over again when I was nine. more people would open up that no one knew. It's like, what happens to us when we have a secret around a shame that we're so ashamed of and no one knows? What happens when we hold that in?

I got the most heartbreaking letter in my advice column, this dear therapist column that I write. And it was from a man who was, you know, I think he was like in his 60s, maybe he was in his 70s. And he said, I have the secret and nobody knows. And I am so profoundly lonely. I'm so profoundly lonely because he has like tons of friends. It wasn't that he didn't look lonely in life. He said, Inside, I am so lonely because I've carried this around with me for my entire life. I have not told a soul. And I feel like I'm pretending like I'm one person to everybody else, but they don't they don't know everything. They don't know this thing that is so important to me. And I wrote back to him and that letter got such a big response because everybody felt so much compassion for him and just wanted to say to him, please talk about this. Please tell people who you really are. Please don't pretend. Please take the mask off.

Yeah. Right?

I remember the same thing happened when I saw Kevin Love and Demar Derozen on a panel and they talking about depression and anxiety and how much they suffered. Packed room, right? And all of these men raising their hands saying, like, I, you need to talk about this. And, you know, what was, you know, people wanted to know about their experience. And I remember DeMar DeRozen talking about, like, he was, like, having this anxiety attack and he was driving and he was driving to the stadium and he saw this big billboard of him. you know, that he was like this guy who had it all together. He's like, I'm having a panic attack in the back of the car right now and no one knows. Right? So that's what I see in therapy with men. And that's what I think in relationships, we have to be so aware that men have all this extra baggage. And to really create a space for them to be who they are, who they really are, and not some image of what our culture thinks they need to be.

For someone watching or listening right now saying, Men have so much privilege, men have so much rights, men are so much fortune and opportunity. Who cares if they have baggage? It doesn't matter because they've been whatever. Oppressing, they've been privileged for many, many years. So deal with it.

Let me tell you something. Part of toppling the patriarchy is allowing men to have feelings because it gives gives women more equality too. So if you give men these privileges of, and I say it's a privilege, right? To be able to be who you are, men then have the space to make room for women. It is something that privileges everybody.

When you give permission for men to open up and not shame them or not make them wrong, It actually gives you more power as well.

It gives, so the reason that a lot of men, there's so many, I mean this is a really complicated topic, but I can say that this is what I see. That when men are given the permission to be vulnerable, women are given the permission of power.

Wow.

And that's, so that's what happens is like you need to level things.

So if women want more power, more say, more opportunities, in general is what I'm going to hear you say. The more you embrace men for the vulnerabilities that they have or the insecurities of the shame they have and you celebrate them for their emotions, the more they're willing to connect and open up opportunities back in return.

And also it gives women power in another sense because when emotional lives are valued, okay? So women, it was always like, oh, these are women's issues, right? Anything that was in the emotional realm, these are women's issues. Like, but men, we're talking about the really important things. But women, they have all these emotions, right? So that's not really relevant. That's like they have their little things over there. But now when you say, Maine, where.

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Transacting in your account apply. Fidelity Brokerage Services member NYSC SIPC. Wait a minute, emotions are something that are powerful and they impact not just the individual and not just the people in your family, but society and culture at large, right? So when we start to say, wait a minute, our emotional lives matter for our society, then something that was considered, you know, a women's issue now becomes a human issue. And that gives women more power.

That's powerful, yeah. It's talked about more. That's interesting. Should everyone do therapy, even when things are going great?

Yeah, you know, so I'm not someone who proselytizes therapy. I'm not like everyone needs to be in therapy. I think therapy is like getting a really good second opinion on your life from someone who's not in your life. And that's the part that's key, like someone who's not in your life. Because again, going back to that idiot compassion and all of that. But also, sometimes the people in your life will say, you need to change, you need to do this. And it's because it will benefit them, not because it will benefit the person that they're trying to say, you need to go to therapy, right? Sure, sure. And so I think that it's really valuable To be able to take off the mask, to be able to say, here's what's really going on. And I don't have to worry about the bias of this person who's in my life who might have some ulterior motives that they're not even aware of.

To benefit them, yeah. Should we be accepting ourself where we're at, or should we be always wanting to change?

I think that, first of all, when you say accepting, I think that if anything, we are too hard on ourselves. that we aren't kind to ourselves. And so people get really confused about this because they say, well, if I'm really kind to myself, if I have a lot of self-compassion, then I'm not gonna try to grow. I'm not gonna try to be better. I'm not gonna hold myself accountable for the things that I need to change. That's not true. If you self-flagellate, you're gonna make it so much harder to grow and change because you are going to be bathed in shame. Self-flagellation just makes you feel ashamed, so maybe you'll like do things, but you're not going to be doing them in a way where you can really look at yourself because you're going to feel so much shame around looking at yourself that you are going to deny a lot of things you need to take responsibility for. So when I talk about kindness, I talk about people will come in and they are so self-critical and they don't realize how self-critical they are. So I had this patient who said, who she completely had no awareness of how self-critical she was. And I said, I want you to write down everything you say to yourself in the span of a few days and come back next week and let's talk about it. And I said this because when I give talks, I will say to people, show of hands, who's the person that you talk to most in the course of your life? Is it your partner? Lots of hands. Is it your sibling? Is it your best friend? Is it your mom? Whatever. It is ourselves. We don't realize that. And we don't even know that that voice is playing in the background like a bad radio station, right? just playing all the time and it's things like, oh my God, you're so stupid, you made that mistake. Or, oh my God, you look terrible. Or, you'll never be able to do that. We say that to ourselves all the time.

Or, you're so awkward. Or, you know, whatever it is. Isn't it something like 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts a day we have and most.

Of them are repeating thoughts and most of them are negative thoughts? I believe that. I believe that because I hear that inner dialogue. I hear it in myself, but I hear it in my patients. right? Because that informs why they believe what they believe and why they act the way they act. And so she came back, this patient who I said, Write down everything. She came back the next week and she was like, oh my God, I'm such a bully to myself. I had no idea. She's like, I can't even read this to you. It is so mean.

Because you would never say this to your partner or someone you cared about.

Right. Not only because it's not because you're being kind and you wouldn't say, it's because you don't actually I believe that about them. So if you say to yourself, oh, you're so stupid. You said that. If your partner said that, you wouldn't think, oh, my partner's so stupid. I can't believe they said that. You wouldn't judge them in that way.

I wonder if every parent did that exercise and did it to themselves and asked them, would I say this to my kid every day? And if so, what type of life would they have if I always said these thoughts to them?

Yes.

The way I say it about myself.

Yes.

And I think a lot of parents probably are saying those thoughts to their kids in some ways, which is very critical or very degrading in certain ways when they don't achieve, which repeats the cycle of them saying, I'm not enough. I suck. I'm stupid. I'll never be smart enough, whatever it is.

Well, it's the pressure, right? So it's like they might not say it that way, but there's this sense of, you know, do better, you're not good enough. So this week I got a letter in my my dear therapist column, and it was from a 14-year-old girl. And she said, My mom is always pressuring me to get better grades, to be thinner. And if I'm not outside exercising because she wants me to be thinner, then she says, I'm not studying enough. But if I'm studying, she says, Get outside. You're not exercising enough. And she's like, I don't know how to talk to my mom about this. And I said to the girl, I said, Listen, here's the thing. Your mom your mom thinks that she's being a good parent. That's the irony of this. Like your mom thinks that she's trying to set you on a path to have a better life and she's showing her love this way, but she's showing her love in a way that is not at all loving. And so you need to talk to her about the fact that you don't feel loved.

How does a 14-year-old, 10-year-old communicate to their parent that I'm not feeling loved without the parent reacting, getting angry? How does that even I couldn't even have that conversation.

So I gave her a script in the column. That's great.

So having a script, okay, read your column and you can learn how to do that. How do we eliminate shame? Is it all by responsibility? Is it by editing our story? Is it by talking about our story? How do we get rid of shame? Because I feel like a lot of people live with minor shames over years that they never get rid of.

Right. So let's differentiate, first of all, between shame and guilt. Because we should feel guilt. We do something bad, we should feel guilty. If you don't feel guilty, you're a sociopath.

Okay.

Right? So we should feel guilt. So shame is, I am bad. Guilt is, I did something bad. So when you say, you know, how do we get rid of shame? I think that we need to be able to say, yes, I did something that hurts someone else. and I need to take responsibility for that. And I feel bad about that, and you should, right? So when people always say like, oh, I don't want to make someone feel bad about that. No, they should feel bad about what they did. I had a guy come on the podcast who said he cheated on his wife, he left her for a co-worker, and he couldn't take responsibility for what he did because it would give her ammunition, like if he took responsibility and said, She said, you know, I did something really bad. That then she would say, you,'re right, you know, you did something bad. Yes, you should feel bad. You should feel bad about what you did. But that doesn't mean that you as a person are bad.

You made a bad decision.

You made a bad choice. You hurt someone profoundly. Take ownership of that and the consequences of that.

How long do you live with that guilt slash shame?

Well, sometimes I will say to people, you know, how long do you think the sentence should be for this crime? Right? Is it a life sentence? Because then basically you self-flagellate for the rest of your life. Really? Is it a life sentence or is there some kind of period of reckoning where you are taking responsibility, you are trying to make it up to people in whatever way you can, you are trying to be a better person in the ways that you can, you have grown from this experience, right? Okay, that might be your prison sentence. But then you move on. You're out of jail. I don't mean you're out of jail like you don't remember it.

You can't do that again.

Yeah, you can't do it again, right? And you've taken responsibility. You've done your sentence right now. But so many people want to say, okay, well, I deserve a life sentence for this. And then they don't, again, then they're not really living.

Yeah, it's almost like we're the worst judges to ourselves of sentencing the punishment.

Right. It's like, Right, like would a jury.

Of your peers... You're going to jail for life for this action, right?

Right, would a jury of your peers give you the same sentence?

Interesting.

People who really love you, would a jury of peers who really love you and who think what you did is wrong give you the same sentence?

Is there a scenario in which we do something really bad, we hurt someone, we leave someone, we whatever, we steal, lie, cheat, whatever it is, We do something really bad and we feel guilty and shameful. Is there a way to eliminate shame quickly and just move and stay in guilt for your sentence until you can move on?

Well, I think a lot of people try to get rid of their shame through an apology. And I write in the book a lot about apology because I feel like you have to ask yourself, who is this apology for. So many times people apologize because they want to feel better, but it actually doesn't help the other person, right? In fact, it probably creates more pain in the other person. Should we not apologize if we make a mistake?

No, I'm not saying don't apologize, but.

I think you have to, first of all, understand, you know, why am I apologizing? What is this apology going to accomplish? How is it going to help the other person?

How is it going to help them? Not how's it gonna help me?

How is it gonna help help the person I love. How is it gonna help them? You know, a lot of people, they feel like, well, if I apologize, then, you know, everybody will feel better. It's almost like they want forgiveness from the other person. And there's this myth in our culture that, you know, you should forgive people and you will feel better.

Right?

No. If you actually don't forgive them, that's called forced forgiveness. You don't have to forgive people. You can have compassion for them. So someone will say, like, do you forgive your for some abuse that happened. And then we almost force people, like you have to forgive your parents or else you can't be free of this. No, you can have compassion for your parent in terms of they had an abusive childhood, this is why they did what they did, but you have to forgive them if you don't actually feel that forgiveness. No. The compassion in and of itself will help you to move forward, but it's almost like a double abuse, right? To say you have to forgive someone even though you don't actually feel this forgiveness?

I've always heard that like forgiveness is not about the other person, it's about you setting yourself free from the anger, resentment and pain.

But only if you actually feel that way.

Gotcha. So, so you don't have to, but you should get to compassion so you can set yourself free. I mean, otherwise you're gonna be feeling a lot of anger.

So, so in the book, there's this, there's this mother who has, or adult children are estranged from her because there were ways that she didn't protect her children from abuse from the alcoholic father, right? And the kids are extremely upset with her and they suffered and still suffer in adulthood because of this. And so she kept wanting their forgiveness. And what I said to her was, you know, you can be the best mother now that you can be, but nothing will change what happened in the past. And if you expect them to forgive you for something that happened in the past, you're not being a good mother to them now. What they need is they need you to take responsibility for what happened and then not to have a life sentence. You know, they might give you whatever sentence they want to give you, but not to give yourself a life sentence and be the best mother that they need now. What do they need now? And that's what she did. And she was giving them what they needed now, and it didn't erase what happened in the past, but it allowed them to have some compassion for her. And it allowed some kind of relationship to happen. that was very healing for the kids because now they had a mother, whereas they didn't have a mother before because of all of this anger and resentment.

What if someone does something where they don't feel like what they did was wrong?

Yes.

Or intentionally trying to hurt someone and they actually felt like, oh, I wasn't trying to do something wrong or I didn't try to hurt you. But the person is so offended and so hurt and they're like, I will never forgive you. How does someone handle that?

Yeah, I think that's where the perspective taking comes in, where if you are in relationship with someone who can't perspective take enough to say, okay, I can see what you're saying. I can see this was your intention. Then that's not maybe a great relationship.

Gotcha. Yeah, maybe that's the right person for you. How do we start to become better narrators of our past story. What's a process? Because we all have stories that we hold on to and we imagine things in different ways. We amplify or downgrade things from the past.

-Yeah.

-How do we learn to rewrite those so they're in our favor?

-I think that the first thing is if you can write the story that you've been telling yourself over and over from the perspective of the other people in the story, so whether that's your mom or your dad or your sibling or your partner or whoever it might be, if you can actually get out of your story for a minute and go into their headspace without going back and saying like, you know, as you're writing their story, but wait a minute, there was this other, you know, extenuating circumstance. And just writing it as you imagine they were doing what they were doing because of whatever reason.

Not saying it's okay what they did.

Yeah, it's not okay, but this was what they were doing and this is why they were doing it. There's no way that you can do that if you're doing it in good faith, meaning you're not doing it to be right, you're doing it because you're saying, I can imagine this is what they were thinking. Even the guy who had the affair, right? If she could rewrite that story and say, oh yeah, I can see how every time he tried to bring something up in our relationship, I avoided it. And so he felt like he had nowhere to go. That doesn't excuse the affair, but I can see why he felt trapped. Okay, so if you can write it from his perspective, even though what he did was, you know, he made-- it was wrong. It was-- everybody agrees it's wrong.

What does that do for us? That gives us compassion for that person in that moment during that story, or what does that do when we write it that way?

It helps us to see that that people are complicated. And, no, but I think we forget that. I think that when we're really married to one story, we forget that as complicated as we are, so is the other person. And so if you vilify the other person, you're gonna be stuck in this victim position. You are going to feel like a victim, and you're never going to see that this person didn't try to hurt me in this way, that this person did hurt me. And we all agree that I was profoundly hurt by this. But the person wasn't trying to do that to me.

It's not denying our feelings.

Right, it's saying, I wasn't necessarily a victim in this in the way that I think I am. And if you can get out of the victim position and say, this was really hard, this was really painful, this is something that has affected me and probably will affect me in lots of ways, But at the same time, I can understand that there was more to it and you're not holding on to that other piece of, you know, I was the victim.

Because when we claim ourselves as the victim, what happens?

Then we feel helpless and we don't feel like we have agency in other parts of our lives. That becomes our identity. I was the victim then. I have to protect myself all the time in every other relationship, every other encounter that I have and it doesn't give us the freedom to actually be who we are. We will always have that sense of I have to be extra careful here.

I mean what if someone's saying well this sounds great but I have been a victim my whole life. I've been a victim of parents who weren't there for me. I was in foster care. I was adopted. I whatever. I was I didn't have equal rights. I didn't have these things. I've been a victim of sexual abuse. of all these things, how can you say that I haven't been a victim in my life when these cases are all proving that I have been?

Right. The point is that you might not have had the resources or you might have been helpless as a kid, right? Because as a kid, you are helpless, but you're not a victim now. And I think that's the difference. So in your relationships now, Right? You are not a victim because you have agency.

You have the ability to choose differently or think differently or- You're talking about.

Cases like, you know, someone rapes you, okay? You're a victim, right? That you did not have a choice there. I'm talking about in your relationships when you feel really hurt by somebody and then you start to understand, well, the reason, like in the affair there, okay? The reason he did this was this. Doesn't justify it, but it helps you to see that, oh, I was doing something Every time he tried to connect with me, I would say, you know, why are you criticizing me? That was what happened in this scenario. Every time he came to me, I would say, why are you criticizing me? And now I realize, oh, maybe he wasn't criticizing me. Maybe he was saying, like, I want to feel closer to you, but I heard it as a criticism. And I contributed to the dynamic in the relationship and in the marriage. What he did was still wrong, but I can see that I need to learn something from this, too, that if I go into my next relationship, as a victim, I will probably feel like every time my partner comes to me and I'll say, why are you criticizing me? I'm gonna perpetuate this and I will be a victim again. But I don't have to be. Because next time when my partner comes to me and says, Hey, there's this thing going on in our relationship. Instead of saying, why are you criticizing me?

I might say, oh, tell me more about that. So what happens if we never rewrite our story from the past? To have that perspective and awareness and compassion mentality.

If we don't rewrite our story, we relive our story.

Over and over.

Over and over and over. We are stuck. It's like Groundhog Day. It is.

Oh man.

And you see it in everything. It's not just like in that particular situation. It's not just like in your romantic relationships. You'll see it at work when you're like, oh what did that person mean by that? You know what I mean? Like the things that you do in your relationships, you do in all of your relationships.

Wow, this is fascinating. What would a nighttime routine be for someone who feels trapped, stuck in the process of messiness, whether it be relationship work or just inner negative thoughts? What's a one to two minute routine that everyone could take at night to help let go of shame, negative thoughts, mistakes they made from that day, what they forgot, What can we do at night?

So, there's this thing called the miracle question. It's used in therapy.

-Ooh, I like this.

-And the miracle question is if you could have the kind of life that you want to have, what would that look like? And what is keeping you from having it? What is in the way right now that you can do?

-Okay. So, asking ourselves that question and then what journaling kind of what's in the way from us right now?

-Yeah, like write down what is that? What is what is that scenario? And what steps do I need to take to get there? What is it about me that is keeping me from getting there?

So taking responsibility.

Yeah, not about everybody else and this and that and whatever. What is it about me that is keeping me from taking that first step? You know, we always like to say that most big transformations come about from the tiny, almost imperceptible steps that we take along the way. So sometimes something feels really daunting because it's like, oh my gosh, you have to do all of these things. If you take one step every day toward that miracle question, right, you're going to get closer to it. Now, I mean, you're sounding like a.

Personal growth coach over here now. You're sounding like someone who just coach, you know, this is something that I would say to people a lot, like, what do you want? Where are you at now? And what's in the way?

Yeah.

It's like, what's holding you back from getting there?

What are the steps you need to take? Right. Well, sometimes what's in the way, though, is this is where the sort of the therapist part comes is there's something, there's an emotional block, right? So it's not just like, here's the step, but you have an emotional step.

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People have... A feeling of helplessness.

Why do we feel helpless?

I think it's an artifact of something that was from in the past, right? And of course, I mean, there are different layers. So it's not just your family, it's the culture in which you grew up. So society has a lot to do with it.

Especially right now with the political season, people are probably just I feel like, I feel helpless. I can't do anything. I can't make an impact. There's so much division. It's just that there's so much noise, there's so much chaos. I feel helpless.

Well, right. And I think that in reality, a lot of people in our society have been helpless, right? I mean, that's what whole Black Lives Matter has been about. That's what, you know, so many movements that are happening. And, you know, we say 2020 has been a horrible year in so many ways, but it's also been a year of, I think, reckoning. And so I think that a lot of people are saying, you know, it's not just what's not working in my immediate family, but what's not working in society. And, you know, what do we need to do to change that?

If someone has been oppressed or helpless or been put down in society or a family or a situation, how can they get out of the feeling of not being helpless when they because you.

Have to take the steps where you know that you aren't helpless, right? So there are always certain things that you can do, and so you have to start taking those steps. And then you have to get creative in your thinking. Okay, so here are the steps that I know that I can take. And then what is something that is really out of the box? And that's where people get really inspired. All of us, right? What is something that feels like impossible, right? What is something that's so out of the box. But if I didn't have any constraints, if society were different, here's what I would do. And you will be surprised at how creative you can be at finding a way to do some version of that.

The imagination is a powerful thing. What's the biggest challenge you've faced as a therapist in recognizing and having awareness of your own challenges, whether it be relationships or career or family what's something that you've had to face that you've overcome or you're still looking to overcome?

I think that as a therapist one of the biggest challenges is knowing that people are coming to you because they want something to change but that they're gonna have to do the work and I'm there to figure out a way to help them to do the work. So I used to play chess as a kid. I was a competitive chess player which makes me sound super nerdy. When you're playing chess, you have to think several moves ahead. And my job as a therapist is to help people to see, okay, if I'm going to come in a certain way and help them to kind of take responsibility, right, and they're not having it, I have to, you know, maybe I have to make a different move. I have to come in a different way, but I have to figure out a way to help them to see something so that they can be empowered in their own lives. There's a patient that I write about in the book, that I fail miserably with. And I wanted to include her because I wanted to show this is what happens. Like, you know, you can see great growth and transformation in people, and you can see people who just quite aren't quite ready or I wasn't able to help them. And so this is a person who had been to another therapist before me, and at first she said that the reason that she had come to see me was, you know, she just felt like she needed a new perspective. that she had done whatever work she had done, she needed a new perspective. But no, actually, basically she would tell me in various ways every week that I was not helping her. And she would do, you know, she was saying like, you know, she's having all these problems with all these other people in her life, and she was doing to me the same thing that she was doing to them, and I couldn't get her to see it. And we have these things called consultation groups where we bring our cases to other therapists and we talk about them, and everything they suggested I would go back and try, and it would not work. And then I would say to her very honestly, I would say, you know, you tell me I'm not helping you, why do you come back every week? Right? So what is it that you're getting out of coming here if I'm so useless?

If you're making me wrong and you're being right the whole time, yeah.

Right, and if I'm not helping you, what is she saying? Why are you here? And then she'd say, oh, well that thing that you said, that was kind of helpful, right? But then again, I would be a miserable failure. And so at a certain point, I just, I ended treatment with her because I realized that she wasn't ready. And that happened after she said, you know, this never happened with my other therapist. And then she said, will you talk to my other therapist? Maybe you need more information, right? And so I decided, yes, I will. So I got a release from her. I talked to the other therapist, and I didn't tell the other therapist anything that was happening in in our treatment. I said, I just want to know a little bit about your experience with her. And he told me the same thing, the same exact thing had happened. And I said, oh, that's really interesting because that's what's happening here. And I went back to her and I told her that. And she was like, well, that's not at all what happened, right? So I think when you talk about what is my biggest challenge as a therapist, it's working with people who aren't quite ready. And so sometimes I think people aren't quite ready to make changes themselves, but they're ready for change, and I can work with that. I can work with that. But what I can't work with is someone who's not willing to see anything different from what they came in with.

So it's almost like if you're going to go to therapy, if you want to solve a problem in your life, you need to have an open mind about what the other person is going through that you're having a problem with.

Yep.

And you need to take responsibility for everything on your side of the street as well.

I think you need to clear your lane, right? So I think that, you know, even if you're not having problems with other people per se, if you're having a problem with your relationship with yourself, that's going to be problematic in terms of, you know, there are people who are like, no, no, no, I don't have any conflict with anybody, everything's fine, but they're incredibly lonely, even though they have friends, even though they might even have a partner, right? But they're not really having the kind of connected, deep, rich relationships that they want to have.

How do we have a better relationship with ourself?

Well, I think that's about clearing out the muck. You know, that's about, you know- Does.

That mean the cleaning the past, the hurt, the pain, the resentment, the anger, the guilt, the shame, like everything?

And what you see when you look in the mirror every day. Ooh, yes. So all of that stuff, you may think that that other stuff isn't there, but I want to know, what is it like when you look in the mirror, what do you see? And if you don't see something, that makes you want to go out in the world and do stuff and be close to people, then there's some muck to clear out. Wow.

Yeah. I'm a big proponent of looking in the mirror and seeing like, how do you feel? How do you react by looking at yourself in the eyes? For five seconds, do you see something you're excited about, you're proud of, that you're keeping your word to yourself and other people, or are you letting yourself and other pull people down.

Yeah, and when I say look in the mirror, by the way, I don't mean so I'm gonna bring up social media for a second because, you know, I'm not anti-social media at all, but I do think that there are certain ways that it can really make us not see ourselves clearly. And so what I mean by look in the mirror is, you know how people will like post a selfie and they took like 50 takes, right? To get the perfect angle. And then they filtered it and they did whatever they did to it, right? And then they'll say something And with that picture that they've filtered a million times and it was however many takes they had, they'll say, I'm gonna share this thing with all of you and I'm gonna be so vulnerable. And first of all, you're not being vulnerable because with the picture it took 30 minutes to get that picture. But then they say that, I'm gonna be so vulnerable with all of you. Let me tell you something, true vulnerability is not saying to everybody out in the world, Here's what happened to me. I think it's helpful to normalize to destigmatize just our struggles in general. But here's the real test. Can you, not that, not doing posing for that picture, can you just show up looking however you look and say to the person who means the most to you, where the stakes are the highest, here's the thing that I want to say. I'm going to take off the mask in front of you because if I take off the mask in front of you, then I'm really being vulnerable. Yeah. And so when we look in the mirror, when I'm saying, how do you feel about yourself? I'm not talking about the Instagram version of yourself. I'm talking about you showing up in front of the person who means the most to you. And I hope that eventually you will be the person who means the most to you. That we are the judge. Like there's not some jury out there that gets to decide how we feel about ourselves. But then when we look in the mirror and not the the beautified version of ourselves, but the real version of ourselves, the messy complicated version of ourselves, the imperfect version of ourselves. When we look in the mirror, how do we feel about that? That's the kind of question that I want you to ask yourself. And if you can't answer that and say, you, know what? I embrace who I am. I know I have room for improvement. There are things I'm not proud of. But I know that I'm going to do something in the world that matters. I know that I matter. I know that I'm valuable. Then you got some stuff to work out.

How do we get someone to believe that they're valuable if they've never believed it?

They have to come to believe it. You can't help someone to do that, right? They have to come to believe that through changes that happen in the world. I think people come to believe that they're valuable when they feel connected in the world. When they feel like, you know, I can't emphasize enough how important relationships are, and it doesn't even have to be romantic relationships. But your relationships, I always say to people when they first come in, I ask some version of the question, How is your life peopled. I want to know, peopled. Peopled. And so, I don't know if that's even like a word. I might not even say it that way. Like, who are the people in your life? What are the relationships like in your life? And how nourishing are those relationships? And I mean both ways, nourishing. How much do you nourish and how much are you being nourished? People can have so many people in their lives, but the relationships don't matter to them in a way that they should.

So, do we build belief in ourself through the actions and energy we give in the relationships that matter to us?

We show our value in the world, right? Like, I think that, you know, we had a teacher on the podcast recently and she was talking about her students are so lonely and she is one of these people who, like, when she's at school, she really gets involved in their lives and she's really like sort of like a surrogate parent to them. And we were coming up with ways that she could really connect with them. And she came up with a way where she said, I asked them to do something kind for someone else this week. And they all felt so much better about themselves, right? When we put that energy out there, when we put kindness and generosity out there, that's where we feel valuable. So it's not, I'm so great, I'm so valuable, you know? because I have this amount of money or this kind of success or I look this way or whatever it is. That's not value. The value is how am I in relationship to the world?

Yeah. How am I adding value to other people? We build our belief in ourselves and our value in ourselves through the action and service of other people.

And also, you know, are those reciprocal relationships?

So, you know, are you only giving and they're taking?

Right. Right.

Because then you're gonna feel lonely as well, right?

Right.

So how do you know when it's.

Reciprocal or when it's a... Well, you feel it. You know it. I mean, when it's not reciprocal, that's when people say, Wait a minute, this relationship feels off. People eventually start to say, Wait a.

Minute, the ratio is off here. Yeah.

How often do you think we should be doing the mirror test? Oh, every day. Yeah. Yeah, every day. Just check in with yourself. It's a few seconds. But you actually, you want to just really sit there for a minute and really see yourself. You know, so often we talk a lot about how we don't look at other people, we don't actually see them because we're looking at our phones or we're distracted or whatever. We actually don't look at our own faces. What comes up, you'll see a lot of feelings come up and say, you actually try this at home. Look in the mirror at yourself. When you wake up in the morning before anything has happened, just spend a minute, set your phone for like 60 seconds, and actually force yourself to look at yourself for 60 seconds. It will feel like a long time.

It will feel like a long time.

And notice the feelings that come up as you are looking at yourself. How do you feel? Do you feel delight in yourself? Do you feel shame? What do you feel?

And then create a game plan and take action on the things you don't like and improve, right? Yeah. I feel like relationships has been a thing that that people are struggling with the most this year with quarantine, with just chaos of the world, everything that's happening. What do you see as the biggest problem in relationships? You work with a lot of couples as well as non-couples, but what is the biggest theme of why people struggle in intimate relationships?

Well, I think right now, and I think this applies more generally too, is often in relationships, there's sort of like this higher of pain, right?

What do you mean by that?

What I mean by that is like, okay, so someone will say, like, here's, let's take it into marriage, right? So someone will say, like, you know, I feel so neglected, right? I feel so neglected in this marriage. And I'm the one who's like, but I take the kids all day, but I make the money. But I'm the one who always gives the hugs or always initiates sex. or always this, right? And it's like this hierarchy of like, you know, whose pain is greater and that gets to be addressed. And the other person doesn't, there's no room for the other person's pain because it's like, but I'm the one who's in, who's, you know, in immense pain. My pain is so much worse than yours.

Comparing pain.

Right, right, comparative pain, right? And there's no hierarchy of pain. Pain is pain. We, but we do this, we do this with ourselves too where we minimize our pain. Like sometimes Sometimes people will say, you know, I'm not gonna go to therapy because, you know, other people have it worse. And that's a message that they got growing up, that they needed to minimize their pain. We don't do this with our physical health, right? So with our physical health, we don't say, like, I broke my wrist, for example, but somebody else has cancer.

So I'm just gonna, I'm not gonna go doing anything.

I have it so much better than them, so I'm not gonna deal with it. Right, we don't do that. But, you know, we do that emotionally. We say, like, yeah, I'm feeling sad or I'm anxious I'm having trouble in my relationship, but other people have it so much worse. So I'm not gonna go. So people don't land in my office until they're having the equivalent of an emotional heart attack, right?

Yeah, emotional trauma. It was like some big event.

Or their marriage is falling apart, or they lost their job, or they had a miscarriage, or something big happened, as opposed to maybe they had the miscarriage, but they didn't talk about all all the pain they were going through and trying to get pregnant and all the fertility issues. It's like, yeah, well, it's not that bad. Right. You know, or whatever it is, you know, or it's like someone will be like, yeah, I had a breakup, but it wasn't a divorce.

Right.

So, like, it's not that bad.

Yeah.

There are no kids involved.

It's not that bad.

Right.

But it's still painful.

Yes.

Yeah. So the biggest challenge in relationships is hierarchy comparison of pain within the relationship.

Why is that a big challenge? Because then what happens is it becomes like a pain competition. And then it's kind of like, well, you need to do this thing to minimize my pain, as opposed to what can we do together to say, you know, here are the things that here are some of the things that here are how your needs are not being met, and here are how my needs are not being met. And what can we do to help each other? We don't think about that. It's like, you need to do this for me.

Why do we always want the other person to do something for us to make us feel better as opposed to going back to what you say is responsibility, how can I show up differently, how can I give differently?

Well, what happens is people say you have to do this for me. If you do this, then I'll do that. And they don't, you know, they're saying like, well, the reason that we're not having sex is because you don't help me with the dishes or you don't give me enough affection or whatever. It's just like, like, and so I'm not gonna do this. I'm not gonna give you affection or I'm not gonna have sex with you or I'm not gonna do the dishes until you do the thing that I want. As opposed to, why don't you just do the nice thing? Why don't you just do the nice thing and you'll find that other people want to do nice things for you too. It's not like you have the other person has to go first every time. Be the person you want to be in the relationship and then see what the other person is capable of. if you're being the person you want to be in the relationship, and the other person isn't, okay, that's a problem. But if you're being the person you want to be in the relationship, and then you notice, oh, they're being the person they want to be in the relationship too because they're not feeling so much resentment all the time.

And what if after six months of this, it's a one-sided relationship?

Okay, so here's the thing. When people come to couples therapy, before they even step foot in my office, office, I tell them, you need to figure out before you come in here, what is it that you are going to do, you, each of you individually, to make this relationship better? Just from the start. Before you come in. And the first thing we talk about when they come in is each person says what they are going to do to make the relationship better. So it's not, oh, my partner needs to do this. Here's what I need to do, regardless of what my That's good. Here's what I need to do to make the relationship better. And so we have these, and there's something very specific. It's not just like, I'm gonna be nicer. You know? Like it's something very specific about, you know, like you, you know, depending on what's going on in their relationship. And they have to do that, right? And then we come up with more goals for each person. And what they find is that every time they set a goal for themselves, the other person wants to be better too. So each person is setting a goal and it's almost like if there's any competition, they're competing for who's going to be better in the relationship. Really, that's interesting. And you find that that's where emotional generosity comes in, where people start to.

See the good sides of the other person. Yeah. From your experience, what are the three to five things that the greatest relationships all have?

Flexibility is a big one. So, I mean, there are studies, and I can tell you what the studies say, but I see this borne out not just in my office as well. If you are a flexible person, your relationship is going to have a much better chance of weathering the vicissitudes of life than if you're a really rigid person. So flexibility is a big one. Emotional stability. You're with someone who hasn't kind of worked out their stuff. They're gonna be fighting with not just you, but lots of other people from the past in the room every time something comes up. There's this rule, the Gottmans have this rule of five positive things for every one negative thing that is said. That's the ratio. I look at it like a bank account, right? It's like you have to make five deposits into the bank account before you can withdraw something. And you can see that with your kids too, by the way. Like five positive things, five positive interactions for every one negative interaction, you're a good enough parent.

Are you saying five things first before you say something? No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It doesn't have to be five. No, no, in general, like if you look at the ratio, right, it's like you have to have like five deposits in the bank for every one withdrawal. So, you know, 'cause nobody's perfect in relationship, right? So you have to have five positive interactions for every one negative interaction that you have.

Yeah.

And that's what the Gottmans found.

That's what their study showed. 'Cause if it's the other way, if it's five negative and you have one.

Little positive thing every once in a while, it's gonna be emotionally draining. Right, because you're not gonna really notice that positive thing because everything is clouded by all the negativity.

I'm wrong, I'm this, I'm not enough. Okay, that's number three. Are there a couple more you have?

I would say taking responsibility for yourself is really important.

Even if the action that happened was wrong and bad to take.

Take responsibility for how you respond to what happened.

Take responsibility for your response.

Yes.

Is there one more any chance?

You know what? Yes, I would say that emotions in a household are contagious. And if you are anxious all the time, if you come home at the end of the day and you're critical of everything that happened and you're complaining all the time, if you are depressed and you're not getting treatment for it, the mood of a house is contagious. And so really be aware that what is going on inside of you is affecting everyone around you. What do you think would make you.

You'Re already an exceptional therapist, you've got this amazing column, you've got a podcast, Dear Therapist with my friend Guy Winch, you've got this New York Times bestseller, maybe you should talk to someone, which is amazing. What would make you a better therapist? You're already great.

But what's, oh no, I mean I think that we're always growing as therapists. I mean, and maybe you should talk to someone the reason that I want I wanted to show, you know, I followed these four patients and then the fifth patient is me as I go to therapy and you can see that I steal things from my therapist all the time. Like he does something and I think, wow, that is really good. That was really effective and I will literally drive from his office to my office. Do it on the next five patients, right? I mean, you can see that happening in the book and I think that, you know, while I make it my own, right? Because I think I think authenticity is really what helps us connect with our patients. You know, I say at the very beginning, maybe you should talk to someone that my most significant credential is that I'm a card-carrying member of the human race. That I bring my humanity into the room all the time. I don't mean my personal life, but I bring my authenticity, my personality into the room. And I think that as a therapist, you know, when you're training to be a therapist, it's almost like if you want to be like a great pianist. You have to learn the scales perfectly. And then you can improvise. Same thing with therapeutic training. You learn all the techniques, you learn all the theories, you learn how to be with patients. But once you really perfect that, you do that in the first several years, then you can start to improvise. And I think you learn so much as you're improvising. You get better every year. I think every every week I probably get better as a therapist because you're learning, your patients hold up a mirror to you as much as you hold up a mirror to them. Wow.

So you're still a practicing therapist. You have clients come in person or I guess over Zoom.

Well now it's virtual.

Yeah. You've got your podcast, Dear Therapist, which you guys do weekly. Is that right? Yeah, every Thursday the podcast drops. Every Thursday and give us a scenario.

Of what that is. It's a caller. Yeah, I know it's great because what we're trying to do is democratize therapy. We feel like a lot of people maybe don't know what therapy is. They have a lot of misconceptions about it. They don't have access for all kinds of reasons, financially, logistically. And so just like in the book, I wanted to show what therapy really is and how it can be helpful. In the podcast, someone writes in their problem, then Guy and I talk about it. You hear like two therapists discussing everyday problems and And it's a different perspective because you normally don't get to hear how therapists might talk about your problem.

And then we bring the person on.

Oh, you bring them. And then we have a session. And then we have a session. That's pretty cool.

And so then we have a session with them.

And we, and we're talking. Do they get to hear you talking about this behind the scenes? Once they listen to the podcast, yes, but they don't get to hear it beforehand. Because we're sort of talking about it like, okay, this is how we think about the problem. And then we have a session with them. And we have an hour to move them to a new place because what's unique about the podcast is we give them specific actionable advice at the end of the podcast. That then they have one week to try out and then they have to tell us how it went.

They have homework.

They have homework and they have to report back and you hear it all in one episode so you hear what happened. And what's been great about the podcast is that everybody is doing their homework and they're telling us this is what I did and what's really great is when, you know, during the session it's maybe a hard session, right? And then you think, yeah, and we make predictions by the way. So at the end of the session, like they go off, they go do their homework, but Guy and I make predictions like, do we think they're gonna do it? What do we think is gonna be in the way of they're doing it? And they come back and they tell us what happened and then we talk about, you know, did they do it? Did it work? Did it not work? And why? So I think we can learn a lot about that piece of not just here's the advice, but why did it work or why didn't it work?

I think it's brilliant. I really love Esther Perel's couples therapy show, Where Should We Begin? So I'm assuming this will be-- that's.

What we do, yeah.

Yeah, it's just as powerful, but it's two heads. And guys are amazing. It's co-therapists, yeah. A guy's an amazing individual, a great wise person to bring on. So I think that's great you guys are doing it. I've got a couple final questions for you, but I want to make sure people get your book. Maybe you should talk to someone. Check it out online, anywhere books are sold. You can check out the podcast, Dear Therapist. It's on Apple and Spotify and all those places. You're also on social media. Lori Gottlieb underscore author on Instagram. Lori Gottlieb one on Twitter and Gottlieb Lori on Facebook.

Where are you most active?

Probably Instagram and Twitter. Okay. So Instagram and Twitter. We'll have all this linked up in the show notes. This question I asked him at the end is called the Three Truths. so I want you to imagine it's your last day on earth and you've accomplished everything you want to accomplish. You've got the family you want, the relationship, you've got the practice you want, you've written all the books, everything. But for whatever reason, everything you've created has to go with you to the next place, wherever that is, once you die. And we don't have access to your TED Talks, your books, nothing. All your great wisdom is gone. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true. that you would share with the world. Three lessons you've learned through your life or therapy or experience. And this is all we would have to remember you by. These three lessons. What would you say are your three truths?

I would say there's nothing more important than kindness to yourself and to other people. I would say remember that human beings are ridiculous because that allows us to, while we need to take our lives seriously, we don't don't need to take ourselves so seriously. And I would say that we all have a place of knowing inside of us that we don't often listen to. And it's very quiet because it gets drowned out by all of the other voices that are much louder. And if you can get quiet with yourself, you will hear the voice from that place of knowing, and that should be your North Star.

Yeah, it's really hard to get quiet. So much noise.

Well, listen, I, as you know, from maybe you should talk to someone. I switched careers a million times, and it led me to this hybrid career that embodies all of the different pieces of what I did from working in.

Like a Hollywood writer, right?

I was, I was, I was an executive at NBC, working on, like, friends and ER. I I left to go to medical school. I left medical school to become a journalist. I left journalism to become a therapist. And all of it had to do with story and the human condition. Every single thing I did, it was just experiencing it through a different lens. And everyone thought I was crazy. Every time I would make one of these changes, well, you know, that's not practical, or that's not this, or it's not that. And, you know, I think when you start second guessing yourself, because other people aren't going to live your life. Only you get to live your life. So why do you want to live your life based on other people's ideas? And so I really had to be in that place of knowing that I didn't know exactly where it would lead because there were all these places where I ended up leaving them to do something else, but I was going in the right direction. And so I think it's so important that's like when you think about what are you going to leave behind, what are these truths, I think about what I want my son to hold true to him, to hold dear to him as he goes through life. And I want him to hear that place of knowing and not get talked out of the life that he wants to live.

That's an inspiring story. And I gotta acknowledge you, Lori, for constantly listening to your truth. And even when you said, I'm investing in medical school and I'm invested in this career, for years you said, you know what? It's not exactly what I want to do, but...

But it's closer.

It's closer and it helped me learn a lot of things. I'm gonna make the most of this and go to the next thing and maybe this is what you do for a while and maybe this evolves into something else in three to five years or ten years and this will be part of your story for the next chapter. So I acknowledge you for constantly thinking about humanity and how you can tell better stories and help us learn how to tell our own stories better through your experiences and all these different things you've done. The work you do here in your book your podcast, your TED Talk, your column is truly changing lives and I acknowledge you for showing up with a big heart every day and helping humanity because that's the card you hold the most. That's a card you always have, the human card. So, I'm very grateful for that about you.

-Well, thank you. I mean, I think that these conversations that you have every week are doing exactly what I'm trying to do as well. So, I'm just so glad that we were able to have this conversation.

-I appreciate it. I'm an untrained therapist. And my final question for you, Laurie, is what's your definition of greatness?

Wholeness.

There you go. Laurie Goli. Thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it.

Oh, it's my pleasure.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode, my friend. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it is powerful to help you rewrite your own story, tell a better story, heal from the shame of your past, and truly start living the life life that you want to live right now. If this empowered you, inspired you, motivated you, lifted you up in any way, make sure to share this with a friend, post it on social media, tag me, tag Lori. You can use the link lewishouse.com/1013 or just copy and paste this wherever you're listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. And please, if this is your first time here, click that subscribe button over on Apple podcast right now if you enjoyed this. And if you've been around for a while, but you haven't left a review yet, please leave us a review and a rating because that'll help us spread the message of greatness to more people on that platform. And I'm just so grateful for you, for everything you do and how you listen, how you show up and be a part of the School of Greatness community. And if you want more inspirational messages from me, I send out weekly text messages to inspire you, motivate you and continue to take things to the next level, then just text me right now the word podcast to 614-350-3960 to get on my texting list of inspirational messages every week. And I'll leave you with this quote from the great Brene Brown. She said, Vulnerability is not winning or losing. It's having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Isn't a challenging one for us to have that presence, that passion, that peace, that love, even when we have no control over the outcome. And I want to remind you that if no one has told you lately, you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter, and you know what time it is, it's time to go out there and do something great. Hey, everybody. Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend. and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson. It's called Where Everybody Knows yous Name, and we're back for another season. I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more. You don't want to miss it. Listen to Where Everybody Knows yous Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrelson.

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