Esther Perel: Use This Simple Trick to Heal & Deepen Your Relationships EP 1291

The relationship becomes the holder of all that stress. And that is part of the divorce rate of the moment and the weight that has felt on the relationship. It's not just people didn't get along.

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What is the main thing you would recommend people work on themselves, whether in transition of relationships or in a relationship? Is there one thing that they could always be working on to improve themselves to be better for other relationships?

If their entire story about the relationship that just ended is about what the other person did wrong to them. Something is missing in the story. That doesn't mean that the other person may not have done things that were hurtful to them. But add to it, who were you in this relationship? What role did you play? What did you see that you didn't want to pay attention to? What things do you wish you had done differently? What pieces do you wish that your partner had seen and accepted from you differently? Where did you wish you would have said less and where did you wish you would have said more? What do you learn from this relationship? And if when you see what you learn, it's just that I want to make sure that the next person is.

Gives me what I need.

Or is less of this or more of that, Who do you want to be in the next relationship?

How are you going to add value?

A relationship is a story of many people. It's not even a story just of two. Who was too involved in your relationship? Who was not involved enough? So there's a cast of characters in a relationship. And it's all those questions that you want to ask when you are in transition. I think that's it. I mean, you can, but they are both directions. If you find yourself with a spotlight only on the other person and you in a passive, receptive stance, you're missing a whole pan of the story.

Yeah. And you're probably more of the problem than the. Of the relationship than them. If you're just focusing on them, probably.

A relationship is not about this person and that person. The relationship is what happens in between. This is my view on relationships. It's not an essentialist view. This is this personality and that personality. It's the dynamic. You can have a dynamic with a certain partner. You've had dynamics with certain partners. And of course it was just the right fit between the match and the ignition. And so you had enough inside of you to react with a certain kind of, let's put it, your jealousy. But you may meet another person who acts differently, and you may still have a little bit of that jealousy inside of you, but it doesn't get activated because this person is responding very differently to you. And when you say, Where were you? They don't say, why do you always have to ask me that question? They just say, I just went to do this. It's all good, darling. I'm right here. I've got you back. and then you don't go into your chest pain. So this is very important to understand. We are not the same person with different partners. We may have certain things that come out depending on what is being sent over to us. So the relationship is a figure eight. It's what I do that makes you do something, that then makes you react to me a certain way, that then draws that out of me, that draws that out of you, and each one actually creates the other. And when you get that view of relationships, when you come out and you're in transition, you say to yourself, let's say I was with someone who completely disconnected. Okay, they disconnected. Did I push them away? Are there ways in which I contributed sometimes to the disconnection? And that is not self-blame. that is understanding the dynamic. You can take responsibility about things without blaming yourself, and you can hold the other person accountable without blaming them. It's not a blame dance, but it is an understanding of what did I do that made you do what you then did to me, and then they met. That's the relationship.

And if someone's like, you know what, they listen to you Esther, they really want to have an amazing relationship. They want to have a rich life. knowing it's not going to be perfect, but they want to create beauty and adventure and play and go through life through the sadness and the adversities and all the things that happen in life. And they're thinking to themselves, how much should I pour into myself for my dreams, my health, my friends and family? How much should I pour into the other person, into their life that I'm creating a partnership with? and how much should I pour into the relationship itself? What would you say to that?

But you asked me, it's different questions, right? What keeps a relationship alive is one question. How much do you invest in a relationship is a different question. So, I'm going to go to the one about what keeps it alive. It's part of, and I'm suddenly watching the box and thinking, it is what I'm mostly interested in. Because I work on eroticism. What keeps us alive? What keeps us hopeful? What keeps us engaged with possibility?

Not physically alive, but connected alive.

Connected to life. Life force, life energy. Why? Because Because I think everybody understands relationships that are not dead versus relationships that are alive. Teams that are not dead, companies versus companies that are alive. What is flourishing versus surviving? And because it is part of my personal history, and I come from a background of survivors, of parents who were in concentration camps, and I wanted to understand how do people stay alive when they spend five years in a concentration camp? So that's why I've got interested in eroticism. Sexuality is a piece of this, but sexuality is not eroticism. You can have sex every day and feel nothing. Eroticism is the poetry that accompanies it. It's the meaning we give to it.

Yes.

Right? It's the story that's attached. So eroticism in a relationship is the quality of imagination, curiosity, playfulness, mystery, risk-taking, novelty that people bring to their relationship. Those are the things that I think bring life to a relationship. So in the research of Eli Finkel, it means doing new things together, taking risks beyond your threshold, out of your comfort zone. Because if you do pleasant things that are familiar, it's cozy, it's friendship, It's love, but it's not exciting. It's not erotic. It's not necessarily desire. It's calibrating your expectations. So that you have, and that means diversifying your intimate connections or your deep connections. For me, intimacy doesn't mean sexual either. It just means people that are important to you, that accompany you through the life stages and through the big events in life. These treatings, expectations, calibrating expectations, diversifying your social connections, and taking risks and doing new things is the research of Eli Finkel for thriving relationships. But then in that piece, I think play is essential.

It's huge, right?

It's huge. And it is actually the quality of emotions that is the least talked about.

How often are you playing in your All the time.

All the time. Humor is essential. It's an essential salve and balm in my relationship. I can be in the middle of an argument and then I start to laugh and then I just get perspective and we just kind of ground ourselves back again. It's flirting, it's teasing, it's making fun of. It's that whole realm of We're not really serious and we don't take ourselves that serious.

And what happens when relationships are taking themselves very serious and they're not playing?

Look, I had a teacher who once said to me, if a couple comes to you for therapy and there is absolutely zero humor left, it is diagnostic.

Really?

Now, is it true, you know, nobody has proven that scientifically, but what you know is that humor, And if you listen to my podcast, if you listen to the sessions on Where Should We Begin? or On How Is Work? you'll see in the middle of talking about trauma, painful event, major fight, strife, I laugh with them. I manage to see if they can see themselves, if they have a bit of distance, of perspective, if they understand sometimes the absurdity of the things that we get into, the things over which we fight, the way we do it. And even if it's just a glimmer, a smile on the side, on the corner, I know they know that, I know that we know. And it creates that complicity and it invites a new possibility.

Some people may be resisting the humor, they may be like, they want to hold on to the seriousness.

Yes, yes. If you want to hold on to righteousness, to I am right, to victimization, to I have the view that is the only view that matters and only my and my experience is the truth, then you are in a polarized system that is rigid and unyielding. Humor and play is possibility. Possibility invites change. Change invites healing.

Yes. I want to ask you a few more questions, then I want us to play your game for a little bit. Over the last two years, was there anything that came up for you personally? in your own inner world that you noticed, oh, there's something, like we talked about, it created a lot of pressure for people if there were things that didn't that came out. Was there anything for you that you were like, huh, there's something I still need to work on myself or need to continue the healing journey of that came out in the last couple of years with being at home and, you know, not doing things the way they used to be?

I will answer this in two ways. The way that I experienced the pandemic. So in the first, in the beginning, right after I left you, I went back to New York and I went in lockdown. And basically it was in the, you know, suddenly kind of, I got gripped with a bit of a panic. And primarily because I thought I can't catch this thing.

Right.

Because if I catch it, I am now suddenly considered elderly. I'm past 60.

That was 35. Yeah, yeah.

For the pandemic it changed. It suddenly shifted overnight. I became elderly. And that meant I wasn't sure if we entered the hospital, me or Jack, that we will pass the triage.

Interesting.

And he's older than me. And I got really, really scared. I had a lot of post-traumatic stress symptoms that are very much connected to the Holocaust and to my family experience. That sense that overnight, this whole life I have built could just disappear like this. And it was irrational. I was terrified that Jack would die to the point, you wanted to know about Yom Kippur and my relationship. Yes. So we are in the middle of construction at the time and the workers and at day point he comes to me and he says, I asked the workers to dig a hole in the garden. I said, oh yeah, why? He said, so that when I die, you can just roll me right in.

Oh my God. Wow, talk about humor.

But I cracked up because he showed me, Girl, you gripped in fear. And I just started to laugh and I just realized, no, no, no, he's not dead. Because I was ready to stop construction. I said, We're not making this.

No one can come here within a thousand yards of a... No, no, it's.

More like we will not survive.

No way.

I really, when it's post-traumatic, it's trauma is different.

Interesting.

Right? So I really was very, very, very scared. And his humor diffused it for me and just brought me back and said, we're continuing to build, we're gonna live, we're gonna survive. Don't worry, girl. It's like, so this was one. And it slowly, you know, I entered into the long term of the pandemic. It dissolved. And that's when I understood, this came out of that. I missed my friends, I missed my dinner parties, I missed intimacy. And I created a host of different group experiences, pods. I had a movie club on Zoom, on three continents.

Oh, that's cool.

I had a book club. I had a yoga group that met four times a week still till now, that is over two continents.

Wow, that's cool.

And I had a hiking group, I had a swimming group in the summer, and then one day I said, I need to play. And I need to continue to have conversations where I learn something new. I was so freaking tired of talking about the pandemic.

Sure, sure.

And I said, I'm gonna create a game. Not having any idea of what this thing was going to become and what it represented. I just thought, oh, I wanna do something creative, and I'm gonna, I want people to be able to talk about something that isn't just When you live six months like this in lockdown, you begin to have the same conversation.

Of course, yeah, of course.

So I just thought, how am I going to make couples have fun, get energized, be curious about each other, talk about something else? And I thought, we need to play. Because play is a container. Play gives you the possibility to take risks, to talk about things that you would otherwise not talk about. because it's under the guise of play, play allows you to ask questions that you would otherwise not ask, certainly not to your partner, because we get more shy with the people that we live with than with strangers.

Really?

Interesting.

You know, you're more daring to ask sometimes questions to strangers.

That you're never gonna see again.

Or people you've just met than the person you live with for decades on end.

That's interesting.

I just, so play became very, very central. When you play, you still are able to lift yourself from the ground, and it means you can enter the world of imagination and where the rules are different. And every child at this moment, you know, around the Ukrainian crisis, you can see when kids are still able to play, it is the moments when they are not in hypervigilance. It is an essential survival strategy.

Yes. Yes.

Underrated. And from that place came- that's great. Where should we begin?

It's one of the key things in relationship and in life, is what I'm hearing you say.

It's essential.

It's essential. It's essential. Now here's another side question before we get into this.

Play is problem solving. Play is creativity. Play is risk taking. Play is spontaneity.

It's all these things.

It's the other side of fear.

Well, you can't, when you're playing, and as an athlete, when I'm playing, I'm not thinking about other things. If you're playing, you get in the zone, you're in flow, and you can't put your attention somewhere else. When you do, that's when you mess up the game, right? You're not in your best flow state when you're thinking about something else. So play allows you to get out of that, which I think is really powerful. And my friend Matt, he's like, I'm always playing.

When you play, do you play for fun or do you play for To win? Yes.

No, I play for both. Yeah. I used to only play to win. Now I play for fun, but I also, you know, it's like me and my girlfriend, we play cards a lot. We have a game that we started playing over the holidays called Nerds. It's kind of like Speed Solitaire, right? Where you both play and there's like some shared space in the middle where you play as well. And I'm a, we play for fun, but I'm also, I want to win. So it's like I'm competitive, but it's okay. I can just play and have fun too.

And you can appreciate a good game.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. 'Cause it makes me want to go again. Let's play again, you know? So I love playing, yeah. But I used to be only, I have to play to win. And it was like an obsession. And now that's shifted to, I'm still a very competitive human, but I can play for fun.

So I used to play without having to create a situation where there is a winner and a loser so that I could have fun.

That's great.

And then it was the same idea here.

That's why you created it.

There is no winner. It's a storytelling game. So there is no winner so that you don't have to compete so that you can have fun.

That's great.

Some people, I like, yeah, I want.

To get into this in a second, but there's one thing I want to ask you about this last couple of years. If someone's listening or watching and they're thinking to themselves, Here's Esther Perel. She is one of the top people in the world on healing and therapy and connection. And she's been studying this and created bestselling books and podcasts and games. And this is your life's mission. And yet she has post-traumatic stress or things that come up for her still. And she's the expert in this. Is there anything that you feel like you still need work healing in order to let certain things go? Or are these things always gonna be with us at certain times, different stresses or pains or wounds or PTSD from the past of our individual lives.

Look, the notion that when you heal something utterly disappears is one component of healing. But the other part is that you need a bigger trigger to reactivate an old wound, but there is a whole new range Right. Where the wound can live without being activated. Right.

You've healed a certain amount of triggers, but there might be a bigger...

So, you know, you come back from Iraq, from Afghanistan, from all the wars that people have fought here, or you are a refugee from Syria or from Afghanistan, I mean, all sides. You may not, at every siren, jump anymore. But if suddenly...

If there's a bomb, yes, you will jump. Gotcha.

So the range and the response, you know, to the danger shifts. That's the piece around healing. I think for me, it was a real surprise that this fear that I got to experience, I didn't remember that. It had been a long time.

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Because you're constantly doing the work.

You're constantly in the forefront. I have kind of created a life where I have a sense I have a sense of ownership, I have a sense of control, I have a sense, but I always live with dread.

You do?

I do.

Still today?

That's my whole life. Live with dread like... That every minute something could happen.

The sky could fall and...

The whole thing could disappear.

Really?

Because that is the core story of my family. But I don't have the dread all the time. But when it grips, In the past, it would grip without anything happening. It just was like happening to me because I had a day where I just didn't know what I was gonna do with my life. So it disappeared. I could talk about it, but I wouldn't necessarily feel it. It's physical, it's visceral. It's like you described the chest for me, it's the gut. It says, right. But when the pandemic arrives, it's a trigger that is strong enough to bring back that sense of dread. And at that time, I wasn't aware of my dread. I was feeling my dread. That's very different. That's what I mean by the external versus the internal.

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Now, what people struggle with, people have struggled with prolonged uncertainty. Here are the five things of the pandemic that have affected relationships the most. One is a prolonged sense of uncertainty. It's not just that you're not sure when this is going to end, but you're not sure about you're not being sure. Okay? The distinct keeps coming and going all the time. One minute you say it's gone, the next minute you realize, oh, it's not gone at all. Okay, that. Then it's the notion of what we experienced was a collapse of all the boundaries. Here I am. I'm at home. I'm on my chair, at my kitchen table, and I am a therapist and a supervisor and a podcaster. and a mother and a friend and a wife and, and, and, and. And I haven't left the chair.

Oh, man.

I'm still just in sweatpants with the, you know, and I'm like, where is work? Where is life? Where is morning? Where is night? Where it's just like all the roles have collapsed. And we are not made like this. We are physical people, and we are spatially oriented, and we change location for our activities, we change clothes for our our activities and they help us enter the role. Now I'm going to work, now I'm going to play sports, now I'm going to the club, now I'm going out, now I'm going to visit my mother. And I feel different, I look different, I wear different, I have rituals, I have things, a different bag, a different racket. None of this. Do you know what it means when your entire arsenal of rituals that give meaning and frame your parts dissolves, you get exhausted. So that was the collapse of boundaries. Then there was the sense of ambiguous loss. You know, we lost spontaneity, we lost plans, we lost the weddings, the graduations, the parties, the promotions, everything.

Sports, games, everything, yeah.

It's not, there is the loss of death, but there is that other loss, the buildings that are standing, but they're empty. They're physically present but emotionally vacated. We have the grandparents and the parents that are physically gone but emotionally present. We call that ambiguous loss when they are either physically present and psychologically gone or psychologically present and physically gone. That ambiguous loss became a part of what then Adam Grant began to describe in the languishing. Languishing is you're not depressed, you're just like, lifeless, flatness, nothing is really giving you the sense of meaning and purpose and joy that you generally want. That has happened in your relationship. And what happens when you are in a period of liminality like this, where the big dilemmas are not getting answered, is that all the unknowns are filtering onto your relationships. And the relationship becomes the holder of all that stuff. stress. And that is part of the divorce rate at the moment and the weight that has felt on the relationships. It's not just people didn't get along. It's that people needed in the relationships to deal from the political polarization to the racial reckoning to the economic insecurity to the ambiguous loss to the prolonged uncertainty. All of that fell on relationships. this is the story of the last two years that people know, they feel it, but they don't necessarily articulate it.

Hard to make a relationship last if you don't have the tools and you're not willing to work through it.

How do you stay grounded when the ground itself is moving?

It's quicksand.

It's the great adaptation of this moment. And so relationships began to see the cracks inside their relationship. and people also began to see the light that shines through the cracks, both ends.

Yes. Well, play is key in a relationship, and I'm glad that I'm playful and I'm down for this game. Where should we begin?

I'm gonna hook you to this game so that you and Marta, we play.

It all the time.

We tell stories to each other like never before.

This is a game that came to you, you know, this is one of the things that came to you during the pandemic because you wanted to have creativity, you wanted to have play, connection, all these different things. So you created this game, Where Should We Begin? A game of stories by Esther Perel. And there's no winner, there's no loser, so it's not the type of game I'm used to playing.

Exactly.

Yes, exactly. So we both have a set of cards. Do I pick any or should I give you one?

I'll pick from mine. I'm gonna have you pick from mine.

Should I go first or you go first?

Yeah, you go first.

You sure? Yeah. Let's go with the safest one. Okay, so then I pick And do I get to say if I want to answer it or not?

No, you have to answer it.

I have to answer it. Okay. A rule I secretly love to break.

A rule.

When are you rule breaking?

I feel like I'm always breaking the system.

But it's a story.

Okay, tell a story. Okay.

It's a story.

Okay. Why do I always break?

I actually think stories, relationships are stories. Stories are bridges to to each other's stories bind us.

So here's a rule I like to break consistently.

Yes.

Since we're going on the story of play, in some ways I feel like I've emotionally and physically matured and grown up. In other ways I feel like I've kept this childlike curiosity inside of me. It's one of the reasons why I love to interview people and do the podcast. It's one of the reasons I try to make people feel uncomfortable when I meet them for the first time by asking them questions that maybe they wouldn't have answered with a stranger. So one of the things I love to break is in my relationship is trying to bring play to every moment, even when it's stressful.

Do you like to be goofy?

I love to be goofy, love to be silly, and tease. And I think there's a difference between teasing and bullying.

I don't want to be a bully.

It's a world apart. Yeah, exactly. I don't want to be a bully, but I love to be playful and tease and just throw a little, oh, what about this? You know, a little comment here. Martha, she says that she thinks I was like, you know, a Mexican in another life because I have, she says I have the humor, not of a white person from America, but of a Mexican, because I'm teasing and playful. and I have a sarcasm that she says is similar to the way that she grew up. So I think for me, I don't take anything too seriously, and especially in the relationship, which is why I love that you said play is one of the keys to success. And which is why if someone is not reciprocal, then it becomes challenging if they're not wanting to play with you.

It's like throwing a ball that drops the floor.

Yeah, you're playing ping pong and it just with yourself, yeah. Yes. So that is a rule I love to secretly break, is just being a child, having childlike energy, but having maturity at the same time.

Nice.

Yes. Okay, so then what? I finished the card and now it's your turn.

Right now we're doing it like this, but sometimes I put two cards and then I get to pick for the other person or people pick themselves. Then we have little orange tokens in which, when you play with the group, we can put pressure on the card.

Oh.

And then we have. The group says, we want you to talk about this.

So it becomes very to make some kind of, like, have someone do it. Yes.

So there's all kinds of variations, but it's.

I kind of want to do a sex one with you. I think we took all those cards out, but here, I'll let you just choose one.

You asked for us to take them out, so I was gonna Google.

I know. I should have. Oh.

God. The most humiliated I've ever felt. Oh, God.

The most embarrassing or humiliating story.

I can tell you immediately the thing. It's. It's. It's. I'm like 10, 11. Okay, it goes back a long time. I I I stole a candy.

Oh, that's it.

Well, you don't want to be caught.

You got caught.

I got caught by who?

The. Your parents. By that store person.

The person that. was waiting in line.

They saw you.

They saw me and said to the.

Person, she stole it. No way. What did you have to do?

I gave it back.

Oh, man.

And she said, you have to pay for it. I said, I don't want it. She said, you have to pay for it. I said, I don't have the money. She said, you leave me something, and then you come back with the money.

Wow. So you have to pay for it even though you didn't take it?

Well, I didn't have the money, so I went home. I got the money because I had to leave my school.

Oh my gosh. Oh, you had to leave like some collateral, some like your ID or your phone at the time. Yes.

Yes, I had to leave collateral and bring money back.

That's so embarrassing. It's humiliating.

It's like, you know, yeah. Because if you're gonna take something, you're not supposed to take the whole point of it.

Is then I get caught.

It's not to be caught.

You know, it's interesting. And I probably love this because I bet other people have conversations when you answer, and then it triggers something in someone else. Yes. I stole for a couple years from, I don't know, 10, 11, somewhere around there, 11, 12. Candy all the time. Candy. And I thought I was so smooth. I never got caught from a store. But one time I went to my, this was the most humiliating, probably, and embarrassing, and probably the most shameful thing, you know, as a kid growing up. My dad brought me and a friend of mine after basketball practice to go to one of his clients. He sold life insurance. And we had to drive out of the 45 to an hour away to a farm. He was like a client of his at a farm in Ohio. And we'd go there and my dad's like, okay, you kids like hang out on the farm or whatever in the house and walk around. I gotta talk to Mr. So-and-so for an hour to go over stuff. So we're walking around, nosey little kids, you know, 12 years old, go down in the basement and I'm like opening up drawers, I'm doing stuff I shouldn't do. I see a wallet. I take out the wallet, I open it up, there's a $20 bill and a $5 bill. And we're looking at each other, we're like, Should we do this? And like, he will never know. I take the five, my friend takes the 20. I get woken up that night at, I don't know, 4:00 a.m. in the morning. My dad is hovering over me. At this time, my dad's pretty intimidating still and he's hovering over me, Did you steal from so-and-so money? And I go, no. Right away, I'm like, Am I dreaming? Am I awake? I'm like, no, I'm defending myself, right? Lied. Right to my dad. And he goes, Mr. So-and-so was going to buy food for his cows, right? Or for his animals on the farm. And he doesn't have the money to go buy the food. It's gone. I go, I don't know what happened. You know, I just lied. But I was also like waking up. I was like disoriented. And then he calls my friend's parents and he admits to it. And it was the most humiliating, embarrassing, shameful thing because I had to drive back alone. My friend didn't have to go, but I drove back for the hour with my parents in the front seat, me in the back seat just so ashamed. And I had to go face this guy. and say, I'm sorry with, like, the most, you know, he was so frustrated and angry and upset, and I never stole again after that. So, I don't know. Did you steal after that moment?

No. You know, I.

My.

My moment is I'm taking the thing, and somebody goes like this.

No, they did that? Yes. No way.

They left the book.

Oh, my gosh.

And it's like, you freeze. Oh, the shame. Shame.

I'll never forget this guy's face. Like, I was 12 years old, right? Okay.

Oops.

Okay. If I could whisper something in the ear of my younger self, I would say, man, I'd probably say something very loving. Part of me wanted to be playful, but I'd probably say something loving because that's what I needed to hear. I'd probably say that. you are loved, you matter, and it's all gonna be okay. That's what I would say. 'Cause I think that's what I needed to hear the most. And it's funny because I've said this so many times on my show, so my audience is gonna get tired of me saying this when I'm gonna show you this. Over a year ago, I put a photo of my younger self on my screensaver. I've talked about this so many times now. And so for the last year, since my therapist Clara had me do work on my inner child, on healing the relationship that I had with myself back then and really having intimate conversations, exercises with the five, six, seven year old that was sexually abused. I've talked about that with you before, which I never really fully healed, you know, that whole conversation with. And it's been a beautiful journey to have intimacy, connection, you know, and bridge the gap from five, six, seven till now and be able to have a conversation between that space and time and really bring the two together, you know, my inner child into me.

So what does this one say to you?

What would he say to me? Oh, my gosh. That's a good. Actually, that's really good.

May I bring him back?

Yeah. Yeah.

What does he say to you?

Oh, my gosh. He probably says, let me think. Let me get in my heart here. he says, thank you. Thank you for being willing to be courageous in all these scary emotions, all the scary emotions that I'm feeling right now, the things that I'm uncertain about, the things that I'm afraid of. Thank you for having the courage to dive in and be, you know, put all your emotions on the table, address the messiness. handle it all and supporting me in finding peace and healing that I've always wanted. That's what it would say.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I know it's crazy. It's crazy. Oh, okay. Okay, I'm going to the next one. This is what I do. I laugh when things get deep, too. I get deep and then I'm like, okay.

You laugh when your tears are streaming down.

Of course, of course. Okay, this is you.

Oops. I would sell everything to be able to. It's interesting. I don't have a dream, you know, I live a lot of my dreams at this moment. So I don't feel like I would sell, but I think if I was to, I would sell everything to remain healthy. Or I would sell everything for my kids or my partner to be healthy. If I needed to, I would go everywhere in the world just to make sure that if there's something that can keep them, it's not just a life, it's healthy.

Because I don't want them just to suffer and live. Not just suffering and alive, yeah.

Yeah, I think that at this point.

That'S the only... Is that the biggest fear for you?

Yes, but you see, when I say I live with dread, you jump to, like, really? Because it's not the, you know, I live with the fear of loss. It's not dread, just bad things happening. What's underneath is the fact that my parents had lost everybody, and so, their entire families, they were the only two that came out. And I, this is part of my DNA. And so the fear of loss, of traumatic loss and the grief, that's what I fear. So health or selling everything or, you know, imagining myself, you know, cruising the world to find the best doctor that could help. Solutions, yes, with something. is part of preventing that loss.

Have you had major losses?

No, except actually I on a personal level have not. But I often, you know, if one of them drives, I often at night...

They're worried.

You know, I just, I've never said don't go, but I just like to keep them cool when they arrive.

You're like my mom too.

I can feel, I can easily imagine accidents.

Oh, man.

I can easily imagine, yes, I am a catastrophizer in that sense, you know? But I, so what does therapy do? It allows you to just, in your mind, it's like, no, it calms the mind. You go out, it calms you. But I still like the cold.

Of course, there's the assurance.

So the fear is lost. and the dread is the manifestation of that fear. So I would sell everything. Actually, I don't know what it's like. I could put it like that. I would sell everything to be able to live without dread. Oh, that would probably be the.

What would it take from you?

I don't know.

To process.

I. I look at people who don't have those fears, and I. I think they. free of this. It's like, what does life look like without worry?

Peaceful.

You know, peaceful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They have other things. Yeah.

They have other stresses. It's an amazing thing when I see people who don't have, you know, that is not their thing.

Yeah.

I don't have their things.

You don't have jealousy or insecurity. Yeah.

I don't have that.

Do you work with a therapist yourself?

I have. I don't do. I don't work with a therapist at this moment, but I have over the many years of my life. Yes.

Do you think it's important for therapists to have therapists?

Absolutely.

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Absolutely. You, you, first of all, if you don't, then you, you will be triggered by things that people bring into your office and you will be projecting things on them that don't belong to them. We call that counter transference. So, you know, there There is what people put on you, but there is what you put on them.

Because you have something unresolved.

It is what you can't work with because of what is happening inside of you. So it's necessary.

You've got to be cleansing yourself constantly probably. Interesting. What do you think? You said you haven't had a therapist in a while or worked with one in a while. Where do you think, what would be?

Where would I go for today?

Yeah, what would you, what would be available for you today if you were doing?

Today I would go to a coach. because I need practical help. It's less internal at this moment. It's more practical things.

What's holding you back from...

I don't. I am a person who likes to receive help, so I don't... You just.

Haven'T found the right coachee.

I wrote a whole piece recently about asking for help in the blog, because I realized that It's very easy for me to ask for help. Actually, when we met early, early on, I asked for help.

Absolutely. And I just thought, I've never done this marketing stuff. Yes, but, yeah.

Like, I know nothing about marketing. You're like the genius marketer. I'm a therapist who suddenly finds that, and I just thought, I know people and they can help me. And I don't feel, like, I have no problem saying, I know nothing about this. But because I know, I trust what I do know a lot about.

Sure.

And this is new for me. so I don't experience it as belittling or admitting or vulnerable or I think it's an amazing thing to ask for help. I love and by the way, I did ask on social. I asked people, you know, how do you feel about asking for help? And like 70 something percent of people said, I don't do it. I don't like it. That doesn't make me feel good, et cetera. And then I said, and how do you feel when other people ask you for help? And the same 70% said, I love it. And I'm thinking, you know what? It's like when other people ask, you don't think they're stupid, they don't know they're vulnerable, you know, you think-- you- want to help. You want to help. Well, why don't you think that when you ask for help, other people enjoy that too? So I'm big into the asking for help these days. And therapy is a piece of that. At this moment, therapy is not the.

Thing that you need one.

You need one. But that doesn't mean that Jack thinks I should meditate.

Maybe you need a meditation coach.

So I do, I do, but in movement.

I get calm when I'm walking or hiking.

That does not work for me.

What's the one thing that triggers you the most that you would like to evolve beyond?

What's the thing that irritates you or.

Triggers you or frustrates you?

Rigidity. Rigidity, which is the opposite of playfulness.

Not flexibility, yeah.

And arbitrariness, rules for the sake of rules, bureaucracy, you know, in the big sense of the word, and bureaucrats as a whole, you know, that, you know, things that, you know, Rigidity, which means that you write, you don't listen to others, you make your point. I mean, conversations that are not conversations. People that yell at each other for the sake of yelling at each other, cancel culture from all sides.

Frustrating, yeah.

Yes, I mean, my work is about helping people have the difficult conversations that they need to have, want to have, don't know how to have. as long as they want to, I can do something. If they think they know it all, and if they think they know you even better than you know yourself, and that they have no curiosity, I find that challenging. I love curiosity, I hate, what's the opposite of curiosity?

Fixed, yeah.

Yeah, certainty, but certainty is the enemy of change.

I want to go one more question each, I want to make sure I'm respectful of time. I think we got about 10 more minutes. Before I ask the, I think it's mine. I'm gonna pick, before I ask, 'cause I wanna pick it, but you just brought something up to me that I had a conversation with another therapist, Dr. Romani, and she speaks all about narcissism.

Yes, she was the keynote speaker at a conference that I went to this year too.

And this video got so much attention that I did with her in this interview. And we don't have to go into it for too long, but you were just mentioning how people have like, that don't want to do the work, right? You mentioned like they're fixed, they're shouting for shouting, they're not willing to look at themselves. And she was mentioning how it's really hard to diagnose a narcissist because they have to be willing to come to therapy and most of them will never do it unless they're forced to. In your practice, do you interact with a lot of narcissists? And she also mentions how it's almost impossible. I don't want to say exact words she said, but I think she said it's almost possible for a narcissist to change and evolve. Unless they do therapy every day type of, you know, mentality where they really are practicing this thing on a consistent basis. And I'm sure there's a spectrum of narcissistic personality traits and a range of how strong someone is in that. What's your thoughts on narcissism in general and can people change or evolve out of it?

I can answer it clinically and culturally. I mean, maybe we should start by talking about the like Christopher Lasch talked about it. We do live in a narcissistic culture.

Selfie culture, the likes, the culture of narcissism.

Once you are continuously evaluating yourself, proving yourself, performing, demonstrating yourself, you know, posting about yourself, engaging in fake news about yourself, you are in a narcissistic culture that, you know, criteria, diagnosis, accompany the culture of the day. In the 19th century, we talked about hysteria. We do not talk much about hysteria today because we realized that the majority of these hysteriC women, supposedly hysteriC women, were actually women who had experienced sexual abuse. They were not hysterical, they were traumatized.

Yes.

Narcissism is the word that we come back with on the 21st century. stress and anxiety and depression was the 20th century. So every century and every culture has its expressions through mental illness or mental manifestations. Eating disorders exist in some cultures and not in others. A diagnosis, a personality disorder, doesn't just exist like that. without a background. So that means that it's easy to make these issues very personal, but they are also societal. That said, I have sat with people who have a whole range of narcissistic tendencies to get to saying somebody is a narcissist, somebody is depressed, somebody is, you know, I think that there are, there's more to us than just that.

Right.

But you see a lot of people with narcissistic tendencies, and you see a lot of people who are not just exhibiting it with manifest narcissism, but there's a whole other form of narcissism that is called covert narcissism, which we talk about much less because we don't name it in those ways.

What is the difference?

That is a long conversation. Really a long conversation.

In the short form, what is the...

You know, Power can come from above and power can come from underneath. You can have power through victimization, you can make people feel guilty all the time, you can be passive-aggressive, you can make people continuously feel that they are responsible for your life, that if they don't do what you want, that you may kill yourself. There's loads of ways to make other people submit themselves to you.

And that would be considered That is.

Expressions of more covert.

Covert, it's not like this domineering, but it's a psychological.

From the top and you can control people from their needs.

Yes.

You know, I think that there is a certain profile at this point of when we say narcissist, everybody has five or six associations that are quite similar. And this is really a whole other conversation. Sure. What I will say is that, yes, I have sat with people who have very little regard, people who bring everything onto themselves, people who see everything as a reflection of themselves, people who are charming, charming when they need to seduce you, and then once they think they have you, they turn and they go into the next people who they need to charm, but those that they have already recruited are disregarded and discarded. So those...

So they got the most out of them already, yeah.

You know, people who can lie pathologically to you, people who have very little empathy for what is happening. So there is a cluster of things, but I think for me, I tend to look at behaviors and I tend to look at interactions because I'm a relational therapist and I'm a systems-oriented therapist. And so I'm less I spend my time labeling a personality. I think it's useful on occasion, but it is not my primary vocabulary. But she's very, very eloquent about it.

Yes, yes. We'll have to have you back on to do a whole two-hour conversation on that another time. There's a lot to that.

It's really, I do not want to talk about complex topics.

In a short amount of time. Yeah, yeah.

Because it doesn't do them justice.

Of course.

And I don't like to reinforce notions that have not been examined.

Absolutely.

But that are easy to grab on.

We'll have you back on for that. I'll do one final card, and then I think I've got to make sure I'm respecting him the time.

That you're gonna touch on me? Yep. What is that?

Okay. I'm my own worst enemy when It's interesting. I... You know what? Wanna give me a different one?

Yes.

Okay.

I wanna give you this. Okay, because of what happened just a few minutes before.

Last time I cried was, I mean, yesterday, you know, in terms of, my father just died two months ago. And so I've been crying a lot, you know, every couple of days I hear a song that really connects me to a memory to him. And to the whole, it was a sad experience because he got into a car accident 17 years ago, had a severe brain trauma, was in a coma for three months. Then he woke up in a different country, in New Zealand at the time. I was in college. Then he came back and it was like my dad was physically here, but emotionally, mentally and spiritually not.

Ambiguous loss.

Yes.

This is it.

I never was able to fully grieve.

That's ambiguous loss.

My father, he was physically here, but the emotion.

He was the same person.

And every interaction I had with him was reminding me of the loss. Was, I'm grateful he's here and it's great to experience some time with him, but every time I go and say hello, he says, Louis, right? Didn't you, didn't she used to play? What sport did you play growing up? Where did you go to school again? So he could have a conversation with you and speak conversationally. But it was the same story over and over again. I'm needing to remind my father for 17 years of the memory loss that he had. Show him photos of him with me taking photos of me playing sports. the second half of my life with him was beautiful. He showed up, he transformed, he overcame a lot of the anger and resentment he had. And I had two different lives with him. When I was 13 before, I had some love, some scary with him. Then after 13, it was like this incredible friendship. So it's like I lost my dad, but he was physically here. And every year there was some type of health scare. He had a couple of strokes, a heart attack, he had multiple surgeries from the accident, just the complications from the accident. And so every year I didn't know if he was going to survive or not. And it was always, is it going to happen this year? Okay, he's in the hospital now. Is he going to make it? Do I need to be there in this 17-year cycle of learning to accept something and doing my best to be okay with it? and accepting and loving where it's at. So for me it was 17 years of, I want to say numbing, but it was acceptance and just like managing it the best I could. And then when he passed in February a couple months ago, it was just full circle, kind of like going back 17 years ago and reliving that and then reliving my whole childhood and allow myself to be to have a full range of emotions. And I think it's beautiful because... Do.

You feel like this time actually you can fully grieve?

I feel like I can.

Because it's, see, this is ambiguous loss, what you just described. Can't grieve, can't mourn because he's there but he's not there.

Yeah, and it was...

This one gives it, now you can experience the full range.

Absolutely, I didn't feel like I could. And I feel like I have a more spiritual connection to him now then in the last 17 years. You know, every night I'm connecting with him in my own way in my little meditation room and, you know, throughout the days there are things that come up where I feel the spiritual presence and it's a beautiful, sad, it's beautiful, it's emotional, it's a wide range of emotions. And, you know, there's a lot of sadness I have because I wish it wasn't that way, but I also... It really I have some relief and I'm also doing my best to create meaning from the whole thing so that it's not just this thing I'm frustrated with constantly but like you know what? I probably wouldn't be doing this without that pain and sadness and loss. I want to be a curious hungry. I wouldn't have been as resourceful if I had him there. So yeah, I mean I've been crying a lot. Been crying a lot. And It's been beautiful to have a safe environment in my relationship with someone who allows that. Because I think that's hard for some people to allow that, especially for men to be able to express their full range of emotions and for that their partner to feel safe with that too. So I feel very grateful. Absolutely. It's not, it hasn't been fun, but it's also been allowing me to have like peace with it.

It's an amazing thing that if you ask people, when's the last time you laughed? Nobody has to justify laughing.

But crying.

But crying, people have to justify it. They have to.

Interesting you asked that.

It is the absolute natural emotion to feel in sadness, in grief, in loss. What man, woman, they them, whoever I.

Had a woman on two days ago who hasn't cried in years. And I had a man on yesterday who hasn't cried in, I think, 10 or 12 years. And it's interesting. It's like there's something there, I think, to be able to have the full range.

Of course.

Not saying you need to cry all day long or something, but allowing yourselves to feel. But that's probably for a whole other conversation.

I mean, I would say that it's hard for people to really fully say yes if you can't fully say no. And it is hard for people to fully laugh if you can't also cry. If something is funny, you automatically do this. If something is sad, the fact that you stay like that, affectless, or that you repress it, or that you hold it in, or that you don't even notice it, or that the thing is coming down your face and you don't even realize. I've had people tear in my office while they say, I never cry.

What does that mean when someone isn't able to fully laugh or fully cry?

What would it be like if a person comes into this world and doesn't scream? I mean, if a baby doesn't scream when they come out, you think they're death at birth. What is it like when people make love and make no noise? when it's impossible. I mean, you're a sports person. You know that if you lift something, you make mistakes. You're screaming, grunting here. Yeah. The voice is. It's just. What does it mean when this whole thing is closed off?

There's something inside that's missing or dead or trapped or. Trapped.

Yeah. Or was shoved down or can't come out or. But for sure it is a blockage. Yeah, we've got another.

We've got another session we're gonna have to do because I'm. I'm feeling. I'm feeling the time, and I want to be. respectful of what you have next after this, but I could talk to you for hours. This game is a lot of fun. Where should we begin? A Game of Stories by Esther Perel. So make sure you guys get this, get a few for your friends. Have it on your coffee table. Wedding season, graduation, schools, parties, births. All these things are happening now. So this is a way for you to connect. I think this is brilliant because I don't think I think most people have these type of intimate conversations.

This is something that I think is very important. You can stay perfectly light and you.

Can just do sexual fun talk and you can go deeper and all these different things. So get the game. It's going to be powerful for you. And I think the world is craving connection and conversations in this way.

You know what I was thinking? If people want to have an opportunity to have a conversation like we have. We're casting for house work.

Yes.

For the work related podcast. So they're live.

Where can they go to do that?

Estherperel.Com/Podcast.

Okay. And there's a casting on there.

There's a casting on there.

What do they get if they're selected?

A three hour session with me, recorded anonymously.

So they don't say their names or yeah.

No, all identifiable features are removed. so that it becomes a conversation for all of us.

Sacred, yeah, still. They get a free session. You're in high demand. Your wait list is like three years, so that's a big deal. So if they go to asktheraproud.com/podcast, they can apply for that to see if they can get a session.

If you want to work on a relationship issue that pertains to work. And the fascinating thing is that it seems that people have a harder time talking about the romantic relationship than about work.

Why is that?

That's for when I come back.

So many topics for the next conversation. Exciting. We've got this, we've got narcissism, we've got the trapped emotions of not crying, all these things. They can go to game.esterperel.com to get this game, where should we begin? I recommend you guys getting it. Esther Perel, everywhere on social media. Where are you spending the most time these days on social media? Where should they, is it Instagram or? Instagram. Okay, cool. So we'll go there and also your two podcasts.

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 your name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrelson, sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.

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They're both on Spotify, right? Powerful. Where Should We Begin?

Yes.

Where Should We Begin? Is life changing. If you want to master your relationships, you're going to hear so many crazy.

Fascinating stories about People say it's life couples therapy.

Life couples therapy. It's fascinating. You've done how many seasons now? Two, three... No, six. Six! I've only heard the first two, so I need to get caught up. Okay. So six episodes, six seasons of that, and then you've got Housework, which is all about work dynamics. You got some fascinating stories there, so I'm very excited about those. Make sure you guys subscribe. Get the book, two books you have. Making in Captivity. Making in Captivity. It's the state of affairs. Yes, get those books. We'll link all that stuff up as well. Two final questions for you that I've asked you before. This is your fourth time on, but I want to see if it's changed after the pandemic. Imagine it's your last day on earth many years away, but you get to live as long as you want to live. And you've gotten rid of dread in your life, right? So you've got no more dread. But for whatever reason, it's the last day for you, many years away. And you've got to take everything with you that you've created, or we don't have access to the games, the books, the podcasts anymore for whatever reason. but you get to leave behind three lessons to the world, three truths that you would share and this is all we would have. What would those three lessons be for you?

The quality of your relationships is determined, or I would put it that the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your lives. When people tell me, you,'ve changed my life, when people stop me on the street, to talk about the podcast all over the world. And it. But what they say is, you changed my life. You accompanied me through my relationship, my divorce, my affair. My. I just feel like I have a reason to be here. It's a. It's a tremendous affirmation. It's a. It's what I've done for others, what it means for them to have been in conversation with me. And this is true for my friends. This is. true for my patients or for the people who listen. So what I take with me is the people who would tell me what my presence has meant in their life. And the third one is I live with three men, my husband and my two sons. And I really, if I go, I want them to take all the love, the joy, the fun, the laughter that we have experienced together and go and experience it with other women. They happen to be into women, so they should all go to other women.

Right, right.

That, you know, that. That I will continue to live through the relationships that they will have with others.

Wow, that's beautiful. I want to acknowledge you, Esther, for the way you continually show up in this world, because I think I've known you for, like, six, seven, eight years. and the conversations we have here and off of the podcast are always so inspiring to me and also to so many people that watch and listen. And you're amazing at what you do and you help so many people. So I really acknowledge you for consistently living a life of service to help people on the thing that is the most important, which is the quality of their relationships, the relationships with others and work, intimacy and with themselves. so I really appreciate you and acknowledge you for giving us the wisdom and advice we need to help mend these relationships. My final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

I would love to hear what a thousand people must have defined this for you. And I'm curious what I answered on.

Other times about this.

I think that I like the sentence from my friend Terry Real, who you should have on the podcast. and who will talk to you about narcissism and grandiosity in people.

Okay.

On the other side of grandiosity, you know, it would be a great conversation to have with you about grandiosity. But greatness is when you can see yourself as a flawed individual and still hold yourself in high regard.

I don't think I've shared that before.

If you know that you are imperfect, you are actually not that great. You're great, but not the greatest. And you can still hold yourself in high regard, then I think you are great.

Mm. Lester, thank you so much. Appreciate you. Appreciate you. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple podcast as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's 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 your 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 your name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrelson sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.