Therapist REVEALS How To LET GO, MOVE ON & HEAL From A Toxic Relationship! | Lori Gottlieb

If you truly forgive that person, great. But that's not necessarily the goal. It doesn't make you less of a person. It doesn't make you less evolved because you can have compassion but not forgiveness. This is why people don't change because.

They say, Let's say we've gone through a breakup and you're like, Man, I feel wounded from this previous relationship where there was a lot of hurts and pains that just, you know, didn't feel good. What would be the process that you would recommend for someone while they're single to really grieve, heal, forgive, process in order to set themselves up to being the best person they can be when they're in that next relationship.

Well, first of all, you've used the word forgiveness a little bit, so I just want to talk about that for a second. So I think there's this idea that if we forgive someone that we will be set free in some way. And I don't think that's always the case. We have this expression forced forgiveness, which is like, you know, you don't actually forgive the person, whether it's a parent or an ex, or someone who really wounded you. You don't have to forgive them. And I think with parents, it's easy to say, I can have compassion for them now as an adult because I see what their life was like or I see what their struggles were, I see that they had mental health issues or whatever it is, or I see how hard their upbringing was. But I don't necessarily forgive what they took from me in my childhood or how they treated me.

So you're saying it's sometimes it's good not to forgive.

It's okay. I'm saying if you truly forgive that person, great. But that's not necessarily the goal. It doesn't make you less of a person. It doesn't make you less evolved because you can have compassion but not forgiveness. And the same with an ex. If someone really hurt you, maybe you can have compassion for the woundedness in them that made them treat you in that way. But you don't necessarily have to forgive them. In fact, I think that can do more damage than good when you tell yourself that you forgive someone when you actually don't. That forced forgiveness can be a trap. And it can leave you in a stuck position for much longer than you would be if you just acknowledge that I don't actually forgive them. I can see that they were wounded. I'm not going to put myself in that position. I'm going to choose a different kind of partner next time.

Right.

I'm not gonna, I don't need to beat myself up or hold a grudge anymore, but I don't wanna forgive. Is there a way to like not.

Hurt yourself and still not forgive? Well, why is so much of my emotional real estate going in that direction? You know, it's like we only have so much emotional real estate. How much time are you thinking about thinking of this other person. We had this again, I keep talking about the podcast because these are such common issues that on the Dear Therapist podcast, we had this woman come on and she was spending so much emotional real estate on this person who had treated her badly. And we were like, you are spending so much time on this that you are not even available for another person right now. You are not available. You won't even think about people who are, it's kind of like I use this analogy, the dry well. that there are people who, they keep going back to the dry well. They know there's no water there. They know that there's like an emotional void there. And they keep going back every day expecting that there's gonna be water there.

Just thinking about it or talking about it?

Yeah, like thinking like, I'm gonna keep trying to get this. Like this time you're gonna be emotionally, the person has never been emotionally there for you in the way that you want.

What should they do? Just move on there?

So it's like go where the water is. Go to a different well. And they don't, they're so focused on, but I want water from that well. I want it from this particular well.

The dry well.

The dry well. It's like you're never gonna get water that well is dry. Go where the water is.

Psychologically, why do we fixate on that sometimes?

Because they had a dry well somewhere in their lives. And they think, I'm going to now, we call this repetition compulsion. Freud called it repetition compulsion, and I'm not all on board with Freud, but there are certain things that he wrote about that actually do play out that I see all the time. And one of them is, we say, this time, I'm gonna choose a partner who is exactly like that person who didn't meet my needs. We don't do that. consciously, right? They, in fact, they look very different. We think, Aha, I won because I chose someone very different. But then when you get into a relationship with them, you see they're also not emotionally available or they also have an anger issue or they also are withholding or whatever it is. And so then we say unconsciously, but this time I'm going to win. This time I'm going, I couldn't get my parent to do it, but I'm going to get them because sometimes they can be so loving and kind and all these other things. So, this time I'm going to get them to do that. But you won't. Again, we don't change another person. You can only change yourself. In that case, the change might be, I'm going to go where the water is.

I'm going to choose differently. I'm going to go where the water is.

And I'm going to look at why I don't go where the water is because so many times people don't see that they are literally surrounded by water, but they don't take it. They won't drink it. To them, it's almost like water is the poison, even though the poison is the dry well.

Why is that?

Because they don't know that it's safe. They never experienced it. It feels so foreign to them. It's like, it's kind of like you are in this war zone. And we're gonna fly you.

Fly you?

Fly you. Right, your whole life. And we're gonna fly you into a safe territory. And you land in the safe territory, but you've never been in a safe territory before. So they speak a different language and they drive on the other side of the street and they have different customs and they wear different clothes. And you're like, this feels really uncomfortable because I've never been in a place like this, even though it's really warm and sunny. and the people are really nice there. But you're like, I don't know, all I know is the familiar. This is why people don't change because they say, I would rather be in something that is familiar to me because at least I know it than to go in this situation where I don't know the customs and the language and I don't know how to be around people who are kind to me. I don't know how to be in those situations.

Is this so relevant to me right now because my girlfriend we started dating and within the first couple months I go, this is really weird. This is really weird. And I go, I don't know what it is. It just something feels weird. There's nothing wrong. It just feels weird because it's so healthy. I go, it's so healthy that I just never experienced this and it's so foreign. But I know this is so much healthier than anything I've ever experienced. I'm like, I just need to communicate. And I was telling my therapist, I was like, I don't know what it is. It's just so healthy. It just feels good.

It feels good, but you're like, you don't feel it.

But it's just different. It's just like, it's just weird to the mind.

Right, and you have to get used to it.

You gotta get used to it. Like, wait, there's peace? Wait a minute. There's not bombs going off everywhere. Like, okay, yeah, there's peace. I'm not gonna get exploded on. You know, it's like a process of learning how to adapt to a healthy environment.

Right.

At least it has been for me.

Yeah, and for people who grew up that way, that is what they seek and that feels good to them. And when someone isn't good to them, they get out of that very quickly. They're aware of it. They say, so the way you feel in a healthy relationship is how they feel in an unhealthy relationship. They feel like really on edge and they're not gonna stick around. The goal here for you is to say, wait a minute, this is actually safe. Don't sabotage. And to not let your fear blow it up.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's weird. I don't know, it's just really weird.

There's a word, cherophobia, which means fear of joy. So, cher-oh means fear and phobia. I'm sorry, cher-oh means joy and phobia means fear. And people who grew up in those environments that didn't feel safe often struggle with cherophobia because when they feel joy, they don't trust it. Like, maybe sometimes their parents were there for them and then, oh, my depressed mom would go back into her room again and you know, I couldn't trust it. Like it felt so good to have a mom, but then she's gone again, right? So then when they grow up and then they meet someone who's there and really available to them. Consistently. They think, -oh, the other shoe's gonna drop. Eventually they're gonna do something. Right.

I cannot trust this peace, this healthiness, this joy. So what does someone do when they're in that situation where it's like, wow, there's a healthy environment, but maybe they're in a previous relationship where it felt healthy for six months or a year, and then something switches in the relationship and it's not healthy, but you stick to whatever pattern you had before. What should they do in that, speaking to myself, what should I do? Or someone like me, when they're in a healthy environment, when they've got an amazing partner.

That's when you have to realize that the war is over.

Oh my gosh.

So, you know, you're not in the war zone, the war is over, and it's like PTSD. It is. It really is. And so you have to look around and you have to ground yourself. You can put your feet on the floor. You can breathe. You kind of have to orient yourself to your environment and say, Hey, it's peace time. The war is over. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

And not conflate your past with the present. So people are time traveling what they're doing in that moment. They're saying, Wait a minute. You know, like, I, but I'm in the war. I've got to be hypervigilant. No, you're actually safe.

Otherwise, I'm gonna yelled at or exploded on or whatever.

I'm gonna step on a bomb.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and also the first time something happens in those relationships, like a healthy relationship doesn't mean that there's no conflict or that you don't disagree or whatever it is. It's that it's gonna be handled really differently. It's hey, let's talk about it. It's all good, let's figure it out. It's okay, it's not again rupture and repair. How do we repair? And so it's not like, oh there's a rupture, that's the end of our relationship. It's there's a rupture and we're gonna have lots of them in the course of our relationship. So let's see how we repair things together. Let's see how we work as a team.

Yeah, that's powerful. What would you say if someone's getting into a relationship, a new relationship, when would they know, what would the signs be that this is the environment of a really great match for both of you? What would that environment look like or those things happening look like or feel like?

It depends who you are. So if you're someone again who grew up with what we call secure attachment, then what looks good to you is what you saw growing up. That you guys, you know, you might have disagreements, but there's a lot of goodwill. You know, there's that the Gottmans who are these marital researchers, they always said, you need, you know, we talked about the goodwill bank, that you need to put five deposits into the goodwill bank for every one withdrawal that you make. So, you know, do you have that five to one ratio? Are there like five positive interactions between the two of you for every sort of, Difficult interaction.

Because if it's five difficults and one positive, the relationship's not gonna work.

It's, it's, well, again, it's not gonna work, but if you grew up, again, with, with this other kind of modeling.

Secure attachment or...

Insecure attachment.

Insecure attachment.

Insecure attachment is what you want. You want secure attachment, right. Insecure attachment is... As you grew up, you grew up with, you know, different, there are different versions of it. You've got too much of something, not enough of the other thing, whatever it is. But in a way that was exaggerated, in a way that it really affected so, you know, we talk about the good enough parent, like no parent is perfect. So it's more about being the good enough parent. That's secure attachment. But if there was, you know, like a constancy to the enmeshment or the withdrawal or the neglect or the chaos or the anger or whatever it was, or the, you know, the parent who was really inconsistent, which is really confusing for kids. Like one minute the parent is like this, the next minute the parent is like that.

So they're more insecure attachment.

Right, right. And then so then if you're in that relationship, that might feel normal to you as an adult.

But is that healthy?

No, of course not.

So when do you know you have a healthy match? What does that look like?

Right. So, you know, I think you have to say like, what is the quality of this relationship on a daily basis? What does it look like on a daily basis? And sometimes it helps people to keep a journal. We had this woman on the podcast, she was in this relationship, and it was really, really dysfunctional. And Guy and I were like, you know, it was so apparent and I think to the listeners too. And Guy and I were saying to her, listen, you keep justifying his behavior. You know, you keep saying, oh, but then he's also like this. So, you know, there was no reality check. And we said, we want you to actually keep a journal. Every day we want you to write down like, what is going, what are the deposits in the bank? What are the withdrawals from the bank? And she kept the journal and it was very eye-opening. The memories of all the things, yeah. Right. Because it was kind of like, you can justify anything in your head, but when it's all there on the page, is this the kind of relationship that I want? And then you have to do the work of why am I attracted to this?

Why am I in this?

Why do I stay?

Yeah.

Why do you think people stay in something like that where they have pages and pages daily of things that are around neglect and frustration as opposed to, an environment, quality of peace, and abundance. You have to remember too that change.

Doesn'T happen just because you have an insight. So, you know, if it did, it would be so easy. Awareness isn't good for me, but I'm.

Not gonna change though, yeah.

Well, people, you know, it's like this is why New Year's resolutions don't work too. Because, you know, it's not like you just the Nike thing, like just do it. Change goes through this process. So, there's actually a chapter and maybe you should talk to someone called How Humans Change. starts with pre-contemplation, where you don't even know that you're thinking about making a change. Like maybe I'm gonna leave this relationship someday. You don't even know you're thinking that. That's pre-contemplation. Contemplation is you're thinking about it, but you're not ready to do it. Then there's the preparation stage. And in preparation, you're actually thinking about what would that look like? Let me look at apartments. Let me think about-- so it's a process.

It's not like a-- I have an idea of leaving tomorrow.

But here's the thing about the stages of change. So there's the preparation, then there's action where you make the change, like you actually leave. That's not where it ends. Maintenance is the next phase.

Because you might want to go back. Right, right.

It's that 3 a.m. of a soul, right? Where you're like, oh, I'm so lonely and oh, he's texting me and you know, whatever. Maintenance is how do you maintain the change? And the big misconception people have about maintenance is that you make the change and you're gonna maintain it. And if you slip up, like, you know, you give in at 3:00 a.m. and you're like, oh yeah, no, I'm not doing it. You're lonely and you miss, yeah. Or, you know, like, oh, you know, I'm gonna eat healthy and then, oh, no, you didn't eat healthy for one day. Oh, I failed. No. Built into the maintenance phase is that you're going to slip back. That's human. And you have to have so much self-compassion in the maintenance phase. And people think, oh, if I have self-compassion, then I'm not holding myself accountable. That's not true because nobody has ever succeeded at something through self-flagellation, at least in the long term. Self-flagellation is where you're like, oh, you're so terrible, you're awful. Think if your kid came home and was like, oh, I really, I did really badly on that test. And you said, that's terrible, that's awful. Are they gonna do better on the next test? Are you gonna say, oh, let's see what didn't work. Let's see what you didn't understand. It's okay. Let's see what you can do. Maybe you need to study differently. Let's see what happened. If you slip back, which you will, you have to be really kind to yourself and say, okay, let me try to check in with myself. What happened? Oh, my mother called and that triggered me. Or, oh, I'm really worried about this thing about work and I was feeling insecure or I'm just really lonely and I didn't have a better coping strategy for being lonely. So next time when I'm lonely at 3:00 a.m., I'm gonna do this instead. Right? And you're really kind to yourself and then the next time you do it differently.

Before the interview continues, if you feel like you're not living your most authentic life, not leaning into your purpose and not living the life that your future self would be extremely proud of. I've written a new book called the Greatness Mindset, and I think you're going to love this. Through powerful stories, science-backed strategies, and step-by-step guidance, the Greatness Mindset will help you overcome all the different challenges in your life to design the life of your dreams and then turn it into your reality. Make sure to click the link below in the description to get your copy today. Okay, let's get back to this video. 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. If 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 have to choose your audience, which is really important, especially as you're just starting out. So you wanna 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's like, Don't know? You're the only one. Right, right, 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. No one. And even if they have a great partner and they have close friends, they have a great family, whatever it is, they feel like I cannot tell anyone because vulnerability for men in our culture is not okay. Even though we say that, so this is crazy.

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

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, 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 his body is convulsing, right? She looks at me like deer in headlights. She's so profoundly uncomfortable. And 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 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 going to 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. He's like, 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. 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 in 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, 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 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 going to be different to this person who is the person that you're spending your life with?

Why are, again, I don't want to 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 taught men and women, girls and boys when they're growing up, this is how you are in the world.

Right?

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, you know, at the park or whatever, you know, little boys. Okay, at a certain age.

Like two, three, four, five.

Yes, 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 mean, 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 was 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. It's just, I'll 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. I'm not gonna feel the pain in 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 want to 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 things.

On all these basketball players too.

To Kevin Love and all these people.

Yeah, Kevin Love. Demar Derozen?

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, they went to therapy or dealt with sexual abuse and talked about it open. 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. They never tell a soul where a woman in general might share three friends before they come to the therapist and say they've never shared. When I opened up about sexual abuse, There were hundreds of essays from men emailing me, but also when I did it in person in a private 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. 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 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 this 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 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 Derozan on a panel and they were talking about depression and anxiety and how much they suffered. Packed room, right? And all of these men raising their hands saying like, we need to talk about this. 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.

Mm-.

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 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 to have 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 gonna 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, 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 like 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? 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 like, 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? And it's 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 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 Yeah. Or very like 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 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, right? And I said to the girl, I said, Listen, here's the thing. 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.

Right?

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? Like how does that even... How can you even have that conversation?

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

Yeah. So, having a script, okay, read your column and you can learn how to do that. Yeah. The quality on a daily basis, that's really like the main thing I'm hearing you say of like, this could be a potentially healthy match if the daily quality is solid, is good, is positive, is inspiring, right? Is there anything else to look for if like this could be a great match? Same values.

Well, yeah, I mean, you people think, you know, just because we really have fun together and we're really attracted to each other, that it's all gonna work out when one person wants kids and the other person doesn't or one person wants this lifestyle and the other person doesn't. Yes. Or this person's values are different from mine, as you said. And I think at the end it really comes down to the character qualities. So many times people ignore the basic character qualities about a potential partner. Like, is this person responsible? Do they do what they say when they say they're going to do it? Can I trust them? And I don't just mean trust in terms of what we were talking about earlier with affairs. I'm talking about, can I trust that they have my back? Can I trust that they're going to show up for me in the way that they say they will? Are they reliable? Generosity, and I'm talking about emotional generosity. Can they be emotionally generous in the moment with me? And the number one quality, by the way, when you look at studies of what will predict whether a couple Whether somebody is a good partner in a couple is how flexible is this person?

Flexibility, right?

Flexibility, yeah. Flexibility.

Around what?

Around everything. Just can you be flexible instead of like, my way is the right way. And that doesn't mean, by the way, that you give up your sense of self, that you agree with everything the other person says. It's can you see another point of view? Can you entertain another point of view?

Be open to it.

Can you be open? Are you open? Yeah. Is your partner flexible?

So if you feel like you're a good team, you got the character qualities of they show up for you, they're reliable, you feel like you can trust them, they have emotional generosity, flexibility, similar lifestyle, and the quality on a daily basis is good, then that's a pretty good match, is what I'm hearing you say.

Again, there's those intangible qualities, but if all of that is there and that's going on, yeah. Yeah, look at the Goodwill Bank. How's the Goodwill Bank going? Yes. If you did the assignment that we gave this person, Elena, on our podcast, to really keep that log of the day to day, what does it look like? And you have to think, people think when they first meet someone, they're thinking so much in the present instead of, they're like, yeah, well, this person doesn't really call when they say they will, or yeah, this or that, but it's okay because there are all these other great things. you know, they're like obsessed with that person. And I always say to people, like, is this the marriage you want? Is this what you want 15 years from now? Do you want to worry about like where, why this person isn't calling me or are they going to be there or they forgot to do this or they said they were going to pick up the toilet paper, but they didn't every time. They always have an excuse. They lie about the little things like, you know, there are those people who are like, They won't just tell you, yeah, you know what? I forgot to do that. I had this experience with this couple where he was always coming up with excuses because he didn't want to take responsibility for the things. And they were just little lies. And she's like, why would you lie about these tiny little things? He said, I wanna be responsible. Instead of just, right. And so there was this one time where he was supposed to go to the market and she was always, they had kids and she wanted him to get organic strawberries because she was worried about the pesticides and the little kids. And he bought the regular ones. And he used to lie about it and be like, oh, they were out of organic. And this time, he said, you, know what? It totally slipped my mind. It totally slipped my mind. I should have bought the organic ones, and I didn't do it. And she started crying. She said, you, told me the truth.

Wow.

Like, all I wanted was the truth. I just wanted you to own it and acknowledge it and take responsibility. He's like, I'll go back and I'll go exchange them right now. He's like, no, no, no, it's fine. Like you told me the truth, you forgot. Please don't forget next time. He never forgot again.

Wow.

But do you see how these little things in relationships can change a dynamic?

Yes.

In a big way. He never forgot again and she trusted him.

Yeah.

What would you say are the biggest red flags then women should look for when entering a relationship?

Well, I think it's not a gender thing. People, you know, I think people, I think you look for just How do I feel around this person? Do I feel on edge? Is there something, I think even when people are ignoring the problems, there's a place of knowing that we all have inside of us that gets drowned out by all the noise out there. The bigger voice is like, I really want this to work out. Or look at how great on paper this person is, or I feel really good about myself because this person's a catch, you know, or whatever it is. Or I'm this age and I really feel like, yeah, you know, what happens if I don't, if I give this up? What if I don't find somebody? Those are those really loud voices. There might be this really quiet voice that says, I don't think this person is the right person for me. Or, I don't really trust this person. Or this person isn't really as stable as I would like. Or this person drinks too much. Or this person doesn't really emotionally regulate. Or this person says mean things to me and I don't like that. And yeah, they were drunk, but I don't like it.

Right.

And be aware of that.

Yes.

If they continue doing this, which they probably will or may, are you okay with that? Right.

Well, if you talk to them about it, and what does that look like again? The repair, and then do they change their behavior as a result of that?

Right.

If they don't change the behavior, then.

You know what you're saying. Right. You can justify it any way you want, but you're not listening to that voice inside of you. So I think we all have this place of knowing it's not your friends' opinions. Like, you know, it's always like, I think your friends have all these opinions.

And then we try to like crowdsource. Oh, this guy's amazing. You're so lucky to have this guy in your life.

He's a catch. Like what a great guy. You don't have to live that life. And I think the same thing, by the way, going back to affairs, like people say, like leave the guy. Like he's trash. Leave and it's like you don't have to live this person's life and this person might have really good reasons why the affair didn't break their marriage. You know, so when someone had an affair, like don't go telling 12 of your friends, like right away. Like you need to process this, maybe go to a therapist, process this, but don't go telling like 12 people and don't broadcast it and don't go on social media about this because you might actually find that you love this person and want to stay with this person and that this person really is the right person for you and they will never do this again and they will not, you know, like they understand what happened. But telling the world and your family.

And your friends, they're never going to support that person in your life again. It's good. Every time you go around for the next years, you're gonna make it uncomfortable.

Right.

And that's gonna be rupturing the relationship in the future.

Right.

And what feels really good in the.

Moment is to blame your partner. Now, yes, they're responsible for having the affair, but they're not necessarily necessarily responsible for all the other factors that are going into this. Yes.

Interesting. What are the, what are some unrealistic expectations that people should stop having?

How long do you have?

Well, entering a relationship because I feel like, yeah, people, not just women on men, men are women, but people have an expectation that their partner should be kind of like everything, you know, and should be perfect and All these things. What are some things that they could have a standard? I want my relationship to have this standard, but this expectation is unrealistic.

If you ask people if they have unrealistic expectations about certain things, nobody thinks they do. So people will say, no, no, no, no, no. I know that they don't have to be the hottest person or the most this person or they make the most money or they're the most charming or funny or entertaining or whatever it is. I know that. But that's not what their behavior says. You'll find. So people with unrealistic expectations are often the people who don't realize that they have them. People who actually have realistic expectations sometimes think they don't have realistic expectations. It's interesting. There's a sort of a lack of self-awareness there.

That's funny.

The unrealistic expectations have to do with, you know, maybe it's like, you know, it could be around appearance. It could be around what the other person is going to do for them. When somebody isn't satisfied in their own life, they somehow think it's the other person's responsibility to make them happy, to fill the hole, to fill the gap. You know, when they're having a hard time in their life, suddenly they're bored in the relationship, right? It's like, I don't feel good about myself and oh look, I wonder if maybe I'm with the wrong partner. I wonder if she's the problem. I wonder if he's the problem. You know, I'm feeling stuck in my life. Oh, maybe I need a new relationship as opposed to maybe there are other things that are making you feel stuck in your life. And this idea that I think that some of us have that we would never articulate, but that your partner is there to save you. Save me from my damaged childhood. Save me from the other hurts in my life. Save me from these wounds. And when there's misattunement in the relationship, and there always will be, So again, I'm very suspicious of couples who say, oh, no, we agree on everything. There will be misattunement because somebody's tired one day, somebody had a bad day, or you're just different people and you see the world differently. So when there's misattunement, suddenly that person becomes, oh, you don't understand me. As opposed to, Wait, you didn't understand that. Let me explain it again. Let me help you understand me because you thought this, but actually what I'm trying to say is this. Right. Right. But then people don't do that. So they think, oh, they just sit with it and they go, My partner never understands me. Every time I say something, my partner thinks this. But I've never tried to help them to understand me. They're supposed to magically, intuitively be telepathic.

Read my mind.

Read my mind and understand me in exactly the way that I need to be heard and seen and felt. Now, in therapy, we have this expression feeling felt, that that's what you want. You want to feel felt. And it's such a great feeling when it happens. But even therapists will get it wrong. You know, sometimes I will misunderstand someone, but the person doesn't like it. yell at me about it, or they don't think, like, I need a new therapist, because we'll repair it right there in the moment. But they don't do it with their partner. They'll go home and their partner will make the same mistake I did, and they will say, oh, I don't know if I should be with this partner. He doesn't understand me. And the partner's, like, bewildered. Like, I didn't even know that I didn't understand, because you never told me I didn't understand. Yes.

So I just assumed that I was. That I understood you. 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? 'Cause 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 should feel bad.

We should feel guilty.

If you don't feel guilty, you're a sociopath.

Okay.

Right? 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 hurt 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, you know, oh, you know, 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, you know, he cheated on his wife, he left her for a coworker, and he couldn't take responsibility for what he did because it would give her ammunition, like if he took responsibility and 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 something.

You need to 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 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 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 like sentencing the punishment.

Right. It's like, right. Like would a jury of your peers...

It's a horrible mistake and so 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. 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 is it gonna help me.

How is it gonna help the person I hurt? 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, Do you forgive your parents for some abuse that happened? And then we almost force people. 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. 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 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.

That way.

Gotcha. 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 a long time.

So, in the book, there's this mother who has, her adult children are estranged from her because of 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 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. 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 to 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. 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.

Okay?

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 It was wrong. 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 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, person, you're going to 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.

And so it's not denying our feelings.

Right, it's saying, I'm not, 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. Whatever, I didn't have equal rights, I didn't have these things. I've been a victim of sexual abuse, 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, 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, you are not a victim because you have agency.

You have the ability to choose differently or think differently.

You're talking about cases like 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 too. 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.

That's so bad.

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, Mm-. 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 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, I'd 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 you're at now and what's in the way?

Yeah.

Like, what's holding you back from getting there? Or 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 in 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 that you need to take.

What is the main emotional block that most 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 like political season, people are probably just feeling like, I feel helpless. I can't do anything. I can't make an impact. There's so much division. Right. 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 have been?

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's 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.

What would you say is the main traits of a narcissist?

Grandiosity, really wanting to be the center of attention, this veneer of confidence, Being very easily wounded. Oh, wait a minute, you complimented this other person's whatever it is, they get so wounded, like, well, why didn't you compliment mine? Right? Oh, yeah. Oh, you think that person's attractive? They'll like ice you out. Wow. So super jealous too, or no?

Very, very. But they act like they don't care.

Oh, you wanna do, go ahead. I have a question.

Like passive aggressive jealous or something, right?

Yeah.

Very passive aggressive.

Yeah. Huh.

Any other signs that people should look out for if they're like starting to date someone, they're like, huh, this seems very narcissistic?

I think that Jekyll and Hyde quality, that one minute you're like this and the next minute you're incredibly cruel. You can be incredibly warm and loving and incredibly cruel. And the two, you toggle between the two in a way that is frightening.

It's like a split personality, huh?

Yeah, yeah. But it's not because the narcissist is doing the thing, you reel them in, the narcissist reels them in, the person in with the charm, with the seduction, with the you are the center of the universe, and then, oh oh, you're getting too close to me, so I'm gonna be cruel.

So it's interesting, so it's like if you're with someone who's showing these traits and they're just wowing you and they're so nice and loving and grandiose, but then if you truly open up and you want to get to know their heart, that's when they start to do other things or what happens then?

Yeah, yeah.

You get too close.

You get too intimate. Either you're being too intimate with them, although they want you to be somewhat intimate with them so they know how to use it against you.

Right.

Tell me your deepest, darkest secrets, but.

I can use it against you later.

They want to use it against you in the moment when you are most vulnerable.

Wow.

Or they don't want you to know too much about them, right?

They hide certain things.

Well, they hide their vulnerabilities. They don't know how to get authentic to another person.

Why does someone become a narcissist?

Oh, that's... You know, I think so many people, anybody who's had experience with someone like that wants to know that. And you'll see that, you know, this is when we talk about we marry our unfinished business, right? So it's the person who grew up feeling very... They didn't get their needs met. They didn't get... You know, they were either neglected or Or they grew up with a narcissistic parent. So what do we do with parents who don't meet our needs? On the one hand, we rebel against them. We say, I'm not going to be like that. I'm not going to choose someone like that. So the narcissist doesn't choose another narcissist. If the narcissist grew up with a narcissistic parent, they don't choose another narcissist. They choose someone like the other parent who was with the narcissistic parent. And then what they do is they take on the traits of the narcissistic parent. Now, why do they do that even though they were so injured by that kind of parent? It's like the person who grew up with an alcoholic parent or a person who like couldn't self-regulate. Why did they become the angry yeller even though their parent was the angry yeller and they said, I would never do that. How do you get close to a parent who couldn't get close to you? You become like them. That's your connection to them. This is completely outside of your awareness. You don't realize that. But we still, the wish never dies that we can be close to our parents. The wish never dies. So what do we do if we don't process this?

So if we process it, then we know.

If we process it, then we know, okay, I have to watch out for that. I have to find another way to grieve what I didn't get growing up. I have to really go through that grief process. And I'm going to have that loss is going to live with me, but it's going to live with me in a way that isn't so sharp. So you really have to grieve it. But if you don't grieve it, you repeat it.

You take on the trait of one of your parents or something.

You take on their traits because it helps you feel close to them. Oh, I'm gonna feel close to you in this way. This is not in your conscious awareness. And then people don't realize it. They think, oh my gosh, one day someone says to them, you are exactly like your mom, your dad. And then they go, oh my God, I am. Right, if they're not, if they can get past sort of like the narcissistic protection.

Yeah, of course.

Which would be one.

I don't hear it.

I'm not like my parents. No, I'm not like them at all. I'm not like them at all. Like if you could take a videotape of a scene from your childhood and you take a videotape of how you're acting now with your own child, you would be stunned. Wow.

So how does someone, if they're, okay, they've realized they've, maybe there's narcissistic traits or that's a full-on narcissist that they're in a relationship with. What are the next steps they should take? Is there a way to actually, I mean, you can't really change someone in a relationship when I'm hearing you say you can't, no matter what you do, the person's not gonna change. Right. So do you need to change in order for them to change or is it just if you're with someone who's diagnosed narcissist, there's no hope for actually healthy growth in the relationship?

Well, someone who has narcissistic traits generally doesn't come to therapy because they don't think they have a problem.

They're like, no, I'm good.

Right. So how they come in is they're having some relational difficulty. And the relational difficulty is either they're coming in for couples therapy because the other person dragged them there. So often we say that the reason that people come to therapy is to deal with the people who won't go to therapy. You're coming to therapy to deal with the person in your life who won't come to therapy.

It's funny that, yeah, three previous relationships I was in, I was like, we need therapy. We need to like, we're getting to the point where I was like, something's not working here. Let's go to therapy and like try to work this through. None of my partners wanted to go to therapy. They resisted, resisted, resisted. And I was like, what? We're not figuring it out on our own. Like, I'm trying, you're trying, it's not working.

Let's go.

Let's have someone look at, no, it's.

Like so much resistance. I was just like, right. And so in that case, I'm not.

Saying they were all narcissists, but there.

Was some- no, no, no, so I'm not even talking about, so let me differentiate. So there's, a narcissistic person, meaning diagnosed narcissistic, or even people with narcissistic traits, they tend not to come on their own to therapy unless they actually agree to come in couples, and they're coming because their partner is making them come.

Yes, that's the only reason.

Or, and then you kind of see how flexible are they with their story, right? Because everybody's coming in with their story, both people, both perspectives.

Right.

The other reason, like, and maybe you should talk to someone, John, right? When I talk about him, he's this guy who's in his 40s, he's married, he has some kids, and he is incredibly insulting to me from the minute he walks in the door. Everybody else is the problem. In fact, the chapter is called Idiots because he says everybody else is an idiot, right? Why can't people, why aren't people as smart as he is? Why aren't people as competent as he is? Why can't people do things right? Why does he, and he's like the beleaguered victim. You see that sometimes. So talented and smart, I'm the victim.

'Cause no one knows.

I'm the victim of all these other people are causing so much anxiety in my life. Like why are they doing things the way that they should be done? Why are they complaining about all these things? Not realizing that he's the one doing the complaining. About everything, yeah. Right, right. You know, we call it complaining from the victim position. You know, or being offended from the victim position.

Sure.

Now everybody else is the problem. Or the reason that people are cruel to another person is they say, you know, like I was the victim, so I can hurt you twice as much. So if you hurt me, I have a right to hurt you back. Right, right, right. I'm doing this to protect myself.

Right.

So when John came in, he was, you know, you very much say, a lot of people would say, I don't wanna treat somebody like that because I don't know how much progress they're going to make. Because if they can't self-reflect, you have to be able to see yourself. In the book, I talk about the difference between idiot compassion and wise compassion. So idiot compassion is what we do with our friends. So your friends say, listen to what my partner did, or my mom, or my kid, or my sibling, or whatever it is. And we say, yeah, that's terrible. You're right. How dare they? You're right. They're wrong. It's just we just back them up blindly because we think we're being supportive. But if you actually listen to your friends over time, you might hear that there's a pattern that they are kind of complaining about similar types of things. It's kind of like if a fight breaks out in every bar you're going to, maybe it's you. Don't say that. I need compassion. So in therapy, what we offer is we offer wise compassion. And in wise compassion, we hold up a mirror to you to help you to see yourself in ways that maybe you haven't been willing or able to do. And compassion is the key key word here because we're doing it compassionately. So someone who comes in and they're not able to self-reflect, they're not able to see their reflection in the mirror and say, yes, oh, I have a role in this too. Yes, it's true the other person does this, but I have a role in this too. So when you are asking about change, when people come in for couples therapy, I always give them an assignment before they come in. And the assignment is this, because normally the first thing that will happen if I don't is they're going to come in and they're going to name all the ways that their partner needs to change, and then we get nowhere. So I say to them, I want you to come up with how you can make this relationship better. I want you to come up with what you're going to do, what are you going to be working on to make this relationship better, even if your partner never changes. And they each have this assignment. So from day one, they come in, and even though they might have a lot of reasons that things aren't working out that they think are their their partner's issue, their goal in therapy is to work on the one thing or the two things or the three things that they think they can do to make the relationship better. And it changes the whole course of the couples therapy because it's not about changing the other person. The magic of this is that they say, well, what's the point of doing it if they're not going to change? Well, first of all, again, going from the me and the you to the us is things are going to go more smoothly. Because you're gonna be doing something to improve the relationship. But the other part of it is, and where the magic comes in is, you can't change another person, but you can influence change in another person. So when you do something differently, you are helping the other person to change. No one changes because you say, I want you to change in this way. That doesn't really happen. They might do it, they might pay lip service to it, it doesn't really last. But if you start changing, if you make it easier, you help them to change by making it easier for them. to change. So let's say they really need space. Give them some space. Let's say, you know, you try to control them less. Let's say that you don't engage in the same familiar argument over and over and over. You. Maybe you do something kind for them. And then people say about that. They say, well, why should I do something kind? Why should I go first? If they would be nice to me, I'll be nice to them. It doesn't matter. You need to go first. because someone needs to do something. Someone needs to change the dynamic. It's like a dance. And so if you do something nice for them, you might notice that they, not because it's a tit for tat, not because they're doing it because you did, it's because they feel safer. They feel more loving toward you. They feel like, oh, that was really nice. I really liked that. Now I actually want to, on my own volition, want to do something nice for you.

Yeah. what if someone says, I'm gonna, I'm gonna improve all, you know, three, five, ten areas that I know can improve. And after six months, the other person's like, yeah, I deserve all these things, and I'm not going to give any more. Then what? If you keep coming back, have you seen that where people come back to therapy? It's like, okay, I've done this, I did this, I did this, and they're still not happy, they're still upset, and.

They'Re still not shifting in certain ways. Well, first of all, I think that what they engage in then What I call the pain Olympics, which is like, whose pain is greater? You know, like, I'm working so hard, I'm working 12-hour days. Well, I'm taking care of the kids, or I'm doing this, or, you know, like, I'm doing all of this kind of labor in the relationship, and you're doing all of it. It's, there's no, there's no winning the pain Olympics.

Like, let's just say that you're both.

At a 10, okay? You both win. You both are in pain. You both lose. You both lose if you keep trying to compare it. The point is, because you're both struggling. And what's really interesting about couples is that couples don't tend to tell the other person exactly how they're struggling in a relationship. Instead, they act it out. They act out their fears or their disappointment or their hurt in other ways. But they don't directly say, this is how I'm struggling. And so if you're in couples therapy, you're gonna start talking about those things. And if you're not, then you're not really doing couples therapy. so, you know, I mean, I think that your therapist will tell you very early on, like, this is the work that we're doing, and this is, I think some people think that couples therapy is you come in, you download the argument of the week or the struggle of the week, you leave, you come back the next week and you download the new thing. No, that, that's, that's like talking to a friend. There's no point to that.

What should the point of therapy be?

The point is that you want to be doing the most of the therapy. Couples Therapy takes place outside of the therapy room, meaning what happens in between sessions. So we came in, we talked about this. You learned something new about yourself. You learned something new about your partner. And then we always say insight is the booby prize of therapy. You can have all the insight in the world, but if you don't make changes out in the world between sessions, the insight is useless. So then, okay, you have this insight. You learn something. What are you going to do with that knowledge? Use it. Like, why are you wasting your time and your money coming in here every week if you're not gonna use it?

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. And 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 gonna 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 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 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 all the time, yeah.

Right, and if I'm not helping you, why are you here? And then she said, 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 ended treatment with her because I realized that she wasn't ready and that happened after she said, 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 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 know, 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 like 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? proud of that you're keeping your word to yourself and other people, or are you letting yourself and other 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 into it, right? And then they'll say something like, and with that picture that they filtered a million times and it was however many takes they had, they'll say like, 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 like, you know, 30 minutes to get that picture. But then they say that, you know, 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 for it to normalize and to stigmatized, 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. 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 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. 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.

Right.

And also, you know, are those reciprocal relationships?

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

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 like 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. 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 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.

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? When do you know that your partner understands you even if they completely disagree with you? When should someone know like, okay, they disagree with everything I just said? But I feel felt and they understand me at least.

Yeah, because we say that expression feeling felt because you feel it. So it's not up here. It's in here.

It's probably just, it's an emotional feeling. I feel, okay, my partner disagrees with everything I just said, but they understand where I could be coming from if they stepped in my shoes.

I think it has to do with respect, right? You feel respected in that moment. You feel like, like, and you feel loved and cared for. Like you and I see this very differently, but I love you, I care for you, I don't agree with you. But I respect you as a human. Like I respect you as a person.

Yes.

I'm not gonna like cast aspersions on your character.

Right.

Because of this.

Right, right, right.

Like I can accept and acknowledge the separateness of us as two different human beings. And when people get really enmeshed, they have a real problem with that. Like someone will say, My friend did this. Can you believe that my friend did this? And her partner will say, like, yeah, well, but I can kind of see, because you also did this. And she's like, How can you take her side? I'm not taking her side. I'm just giving you a perspective. I see it a little bit differently. I can see why you felt the way I can see why you feel hurt. I can see both and. And if you can't accept the both and about yourself and your partner, then you're gonna end up feeling very alone.

So, it's almost like you need to be flexible in their communication as well and them not siding with you on everything but saying, okay, I understand where you come from and I see this perspective. I just see it differently. So, having the flexibility to be okay with that also.

I can hold both. You can hold both and I can hold both and we care deeply about each other and we have each other's backs, which doesn't necessarily mean we agree, we have the same perspective on every single thing.

Yeah.

The beginning of this year, I had, I started seeing a therapist in a previous relationship. And the therapist had me just working on my own healing stuff, that's like healing stuff that I was going through. She had me put a photo of myself around five or six years old on my phone. So I see it. So I still have this up where I just constantly remind myself, like, you're safe, you're okay, I got your back. We're, you know, we're healing together, things like that. It's been a beautiful journey for me to, like, work on inner child healing and just kind of the memories of the past.

And.

I'm curious about just, like, the consistency of healing in a relationship. And because I heard you say that like it's hard to fully heal alone, we almost need a mirror to be able to practice and integrate this is what I think I heard you say, right? It's like you need to have someone where you can practice it coming up. If you're in a vacuum, you're not going to be triggered, right? Right. It's like, can you show up differently in the future and not repeat the past? What is the thing people usually need to heal? Is it something from childhood? Is it something from previous relationships? Is it their whole life?

It can be anything from, you know, there's different, we use the word trauma a lot and people say, oh, you know, trauma is, trauma is something big, like someone died in a car crash, or you were in the war, or, you know, systemic racism, right? All traumas that people accept as trauma. Think about though, the daily trauma, the little tees. The little tees, but they're big because the trauma might have happened to you once, like you got in this bad accident and you're traumatized by that or, you know, whatever it might be. The dailiness of a parent saying, you,'re stupid. What's wrong with you? You're so stupid. Right? We had someone on our podcast like that. And we really got him through that in that hour of going through a way to think about it differently. And he needed to understand, like, this was real trauma. And he knew that, right? He knew that, but he kind of felt almost like, nah, it's not really that.

Silly or something.

Right, right, right. But just like, you're worthless, you're stupid. What's wrong with you? All those things. And think about the number of times that that happened. If you add all those up, I mean, that's trauma. It's a lot.

Yeah.

So when you talk about the inner child, and I love what your therapist had you do, it's really important that we are able now, we weren't then, able to be that adult for our inner child, but now we are. So don't expect your partner to be that, that you have to be that for yourself. And then your partner is there because you're not in that toxic environment anymore.

Right.

So it makes it safe for you. It makes it safe for you as the adult. It makes it safe for you as the child. And at any given moment, by the way, a different age of us will be exposed. So, like, you know, you go home for Thanksgiving, you're 12, you know, with your siblings or whatever it is, right? You know, something happens with your partner that just feels very similar to you of some feeling you had when you were five. You're five. You're gonna act like you're five. You know, there are times when you act your age. So you don't know, like, so I always say to people, like, when couples are getting at it in couples therapy, I'm like, how old are you right now? I will say that to them. And they'll step back for a second and go, oh, I know exactly how old I am. I'm eight. I'm 16. Ooh.

So you mean how old are you emotionally reacting? Yes, yes, yes.

Right now. Right now. Not physically. Yes, that's what I meant. So they're doing something. Something's happening for them. and they're not able to kind of, I can see them regressing and their partner's getting really frustrated and you're watching this happen and I just say to them, how old are you right now? And if they can just step back and they have so much compassion for that kid that they are at eight or 12 or 16 or whatever they are, and so does their partner by the way, when their partner says, oh, you look like a grown man. You look like a seven-year-old. But that eight-year-old and they They don't mean it in a pejorative way. They don't mean it. They're not judging their partner. They become really compassionate, like, oh, that eight-year-old and they move toward their partner. Like, I can see that. So the partner isn't healing the eight-year-old, but the partner is creating this environment that lets the eight-year-old do the, that lets the adult do the work for the eight-year-old there.

What should the adult be saying or doing for the younger version of themselves that is having an emotional human experience that is not their age in this moment. What's the conversation or the...

It's exactly what they wished at age eight that someone would have said to them. We all know what that is. We all know what we wanted to hear because as a kid you fantasize about it. You look at other people's parents and you say, oh, that interaction. You know, like you can see what you would like it to look like.

My parents were like that, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So saying that out loud internally to your 8, 12, 16-year-old self.

Right, right.

In that moment.

You're really kind. Have you ever noticed how unkind we can be to ourselves? You ever noticed that?

My entire childhood, it's pretty much unkind.

Right.

To myself.

Right. And but we carry that into our adulthood. And so, I had this patient who was like so self-critical and she did not realize it. And you have to realize, I said to her this, that the person we talk to most in the course of our lives is ourselves.

Yes.

And what we say to ourselves isn't always kind or true or useful. I say that all the time to people. I will say that till I'm blue in the face because people don't get it until they try this exercise, which is what I had her do. I said, I want you to write down everything you say to yourself over the course of a few days. And then when you come back next week, we're going to talk about it. And so she did the assignment. She was very skeptical.

She's like, I'm not that. I'm not that.

I'm not like Not that. Like every thought that comes to you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like everything, like when you hear, it's like this radio station that's playing in the background that you think you're not hearing because it's just like playing in the background. Or like a TV show that you have on in the background, right? And you're like, I'm not really paying attention to it. I'm doing other things. But no, you hear it. And so she came back and she starts to read this and she said, I can't even read this. I am such a bully to myself. And they were little things she would do in the course of a day, like she was typing an email and she made a typo and the voice in her head said, you,'re so stupid. Like it was spontaneous. And she would not have paid attention to that before. Like she didn't know she was saying that. Or she passed her reflection in a mirror and she said, God, you look terrible. Now if your friend or someone you cared about made that typo or looked however she looked that day, you would not truly think that person is stupid or that they look terrible. You think like, oh, you know, they made a typo. There's no emotional generosity toward oneself.

Yes. So what should we be doing instead?

And so it's starting to notice how do you talk to yourself? You know, like whose voice is that? It's not yours. We are not born with that voice. So that voice came from people who raised you. It came from the culture. It came from, you know, the people around you. It came from whatever we're being told. It's external. Is the point. It's external to you. It is not of you. So we need to listen to that voice inside of us that is of us. And we will be so much kinder not only to ourselves but to other people because as we always know, like the biggest bullies are twice as mean to themselves.

Right? Yeah.

So when you think about like the environment, I talked about the biosphere before, like the ecosystem in your relationship, that's the ecosystem in your home. We saw during COVID right? where everybody was in the same contained space. And we were all worried about the contagion of the virus. And I said to people, I want you to look at the contagion of mood. Look at the contagion of anxiety. If someone is anxious or someone's in a crabby mood or someone is being unkind, everybody's going to be crabby or anxious or unkind.

Yes.

Right, because it's so contagious.

So when a partner is coming from that space of angry, upset, or negative mood, what should be done in order to try to shift that energy without rushing them along, but without allowing it to be going on for so long that it's just like sucking up all the air and the energy of the atmosphere. What should happen next?

Right. I mean, it depends what they're going through. If they're going through something that's kind of like they're grieving something or there's a loss, the worst thing you can do is rush their wellness. We call that actually rushed wellness. where you are trying to kind of, oh, well it's been a year, shouldn't you be over this? It's like, but the person's still dead. It's like, what does that even mean? So how are they grieving? What does their grieving process look like? What kind of support are they getting? Are they able to talk about it? Do they have a therapist? Do they have a grief group? What are they doing in their lives to go through through this process, how can you support them in it? So there's that. But I think if people are just being crabby or they're just being unkind because they're worried about a promotion at work or someone, their brother said something mean to them or whatever happened, and they take it out on you, that's when you've got to say, Wait a minute. What's going on here?

Right.

Let's talk about what you're at upset about before it gets to that point. You know, and if someone's really anxious all the time, it's like, what are you doing to. Let's talk about the anxiety in the household because it's really contagious. Like, I can support you in certain ways, but you might need to get a different kind of support. Maybe it's medication. Maybe it's a therapist. Maybe it's, you know, why don't you explore some options? Sure.

If someone is bringing in this contagious energy from a previous relationship, you know, there, there. they're recalling events from the previous relationship, they're talking about the previous relationship, they're in fear from things that happen, they don't want it to re occur in this current relationship. How important is it to let the past be in the past and not bring it up? Or how do we not ruin the current relationship by talking about the past relationships? What is that balance? It's like, well, here's what has happened in my previous relationships, but not talking about it all.

Right, so that's called punishing the new... Punishing your partner for the crimes of some... for someone else's crimes. You don't want to punish your partner for someone else's crime. So your other partner, previous partner, treated you a certain way and then you don't trust your partner. You know, you're like, why are you looking through my phone? Oh, well because in my last relationship this happened and so I want to make sure it's not going to happen to me again. But I didn't do that to you, right? And I don't like people looking through my phone. There's a difference between secrecy and privacy. We all need privacy in relationships. We all need privacy. So secrecy is something like, you know, Carl Jung called secrets, it was like emotional poison or something like that. It was, you know, it's a poison when you keep secrets. That's different from privacy. Privacy is We're allowed to think things and feel things. We don't need to share every thought or feeling that comes across our frontal lobes. We don't, or anywhere in our brain or in our heart. We don't need to share everything. So it's not like you have an x-ray of the other person. So in this relationship that I'm talking about, she was like, but you know that I have these trust issues. And he said, But I'm not breaking your trust. But I'm not doing anything to break your trust. And by the way, let's redefine trust. So a really good redefinition of trust is that you are okay with what you don't know. That you feel safe with what you don't know. Then you really trust someone. If you can feel safe with what you don't know, that's trust. What she was confusing was she was saying, I will trust you if I know everything. No, no, no, no. Trust is gonna be if you don't know everything and you feel safe. Yes.

How does someone get to that place where they have no reason to mistrust someone? You know, everything they say they're doing, they're backing up, you know, maybe you checked their phone 'cause you thought something and then you didn't see it and everything was fine. Like how do you get to a place of just accepting their word and trusting them?

Right. So it's within reason. So if someone says, you, know what, I have a sensitivity around if I text you and I don't hear back for five hours, then I get worried. And I know, and you're in town and you're at work and things are normal or whatever, right?

And your phone is near you, yeah.

Yeah, and I know you keep your phone by you all the time. That's gonna make, that's gonna trigger me. And so then you want to make sure that you respond to the person in a timely manner, but that doesn't mean like you have 30 seconds. So it has to be reasonable, right? You have 30 seconds or else I'm gonna like, I'm off to the races. Those kinds of things. What does it mean? What do you mutually agree on? How often do we need to be in contact? What does it mean to be in contact? And what feels good to both of us? Because it's not going to work if it doesn't feel good for both of you. It's not good for both.

It's only good for one, and the other person feels like, oh, I'm constantly.

Having to do something I don't want to do. That's not good. And then what the person does is they become untrustworthy. Because they don't want to report in. And so then they start hiding things just because they weren't given enough space. It's kind of like I use this analogy with parenting, but I think it works in relationships too, which is the aquarium. So it's like you don't want to be so confined that you feel like you're in a fishbowl, but you don't want the boundaries to be so loose that you're like in the ocean. You want to be in an aquarium with your partner, which is that like.

We'Re in a safe contained space, but we both have enough room to swim around.

I've got some darkness over here.

I can just chill and I can You go, yeah, exactly. I can like-- I'm still in the bubble, but let me just be alone for a minute.

Yeah. Yeah. 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 something else. Right? Like, I want that partner to change. Yes, yes. 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, 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. Their environment. 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 on to 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 because 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 it as this is a neutral event and I'm going to make 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. 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 friend's 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.

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.

Yeah.

How do we change our story and also show compassion that we're there for a friend, not making it when they're in a vulnerable place, not making the other person right or wrong, but 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 going to 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.

Yes.

Hurt.

Yes.

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 them make it seem like it's not so bad. what do 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 get a 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 feelings. Stop crying, stop crying. Yes, 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. 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 going to eat right, you're going to exercise, you know, 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, you know, 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 isn't the absence of feelings. Numbness is a state of being overwhelmed.

By too many feelings.

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 is 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?

Yeah, 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 going to look back and say, what did I do that was meaningful? You know, in 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.

Yes.

It's like I stay stuck in a relationship that I know is 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.

Fear?

Well, I think it is fear. You know, I think it's fear of uncertainty. This is going to 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 even if it's unpleasant or even miserable.

She'll keep finding chaotic environments.

Right, recreating it. Yeah, and so, you know, it was funny, 'cause 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'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 unconsciously 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 am 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.

What if you've chosen someone that you love deeply, but it's unconsciously your unfinished business? Is that the wrong person for you once you realize, oh, they're never going to change, or is that a point for us to reflect back and say, actually, I need to heal the past. accept this person for who they are and be willing to flow within this relationship.

Well, what happens is, so you married your unfinished business, but so did they. And so if you can both recognize that, if you realize, hey, wait, we have a lot of conflict in our relationship, or we're really avoidant in our relationship, or we don't feel connected in the way we want to feel connected, that's a great opportunity for both of you to work out your unfinished business.

To heal together.

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 gonna be in... 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, you never listen to me. And I'll say, how well do you listen to them? Right.

Right.

It's always like-- if you're just yelling at someone all day, are they 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 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, yeah. 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 wanna 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 Viktor 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 take a breath. It's like a big stop sign on that road that's your neural pathway. So hold up the stops and 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. And 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 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 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, well, I screamed back or I.

Did this or... Yeah, yeah, like, you know, here's what happened or here's, this is the situation and my partner did this or my mother did this or my child did this or my boss did this, whatever. And they don't tell you these other details and they sort of trickle out later on. And they're very relevant to the story.

Right.

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. I think it is complicated because no one teaches us how to love and be loved. So you either get that modeling growing up or sometimes you don't get the best modeling growing up, but people don't really talk about it in the way that I think people would need. And so I think one of the problems is that people both want closeness and they fear closeness at the exact same time. And so people kind of walk on that tightrope and a lot of people get tangled up in that paradox. -Why do we want it so bad and what is the thing we fear.

About it so much? -Well, the thing we fear is that.

It'S going to wound us, right? So, I mean, love has the power to wound, but it also has the power to heal. So that's why we have that paradox, because we want it, but we're a little a little bit afraid of what might happen. And by the way, if you sign up for this, you will get hurt. That's just part of the deal. Even with someone who really cares about you, even in a really loving relationship, at times, you will hurt each other. Why? But then why? How do you repair it?

Is there a way to get into a relationship without hurting each other?

No, because people are human. And you know, when I'm talking about hurting, there's different degrees of hurting. You know, hurting could be you didn't understand me and I felt really hurt by that. Hurting can be something much more, you know, deleterious.

It could be awful.

Right, so there's something, those are very different things. Yes. But I think what happens is people need to learn what we call rupture and repair. So there's a rupture, something happens between you, and then how do you repair it? There will always be ruptures.

Really?

And so, you know, how do you guys repair it together? that's the biggest predictor of whether a relationship is going to be successful and people are going to be happy in it.

Your ability to repair.

To repair with each other, yeah.

What is, okay, first off, how do we get to a place where we have less ruptures? To where it's like once a year, once every six months, as opposed to like every other day, a little micro rupture. Is that even possible?

Yeah, so I think that the reason that people have ruptures is because they don't feel like they are understood. I remember one of the most formative things that happened for me was very early on when I started seeing couples. I had this couple come in and I remember that there was a lot of tension between them. And the woman said to her husband, she said, you, know what three words I really want to hear from you? And he said, what do you think?

I love you.

I love you, right? And she said, no, the three words I want to hear are I understand. and I just sort of sat there in my seat and thought, wow, I understand you. That understanding someone is a way of showing love. Really? Making the effort to really listen to them, to hear their point of view. And this is where, as a couples therapist, the idea of separate realities comes in.

Okay, tell me more.

Separate realities is we have to acknowledge that you are going to view things through your own lens, and both of them are right. Both of them are valid. And what people get into trouble is they try to convince the other person that their reality is right.

Yes.

So you see this, for example, take an example of a parent and an adult child. And you have the parent who, you know, the adult child comes to them and says, I feel like you really favored my sibling growing up. And the parent says, That's not true. We love you both equally. We were there for you. And they hear it as an accusation. So you have a choice in that moment. You can say, okay, I'm gonna defend myself against this accusation. And what the parent hears is, you were a bad parent. That's not what the kid is saying. The kid is saying, you weren't there for me in the ways that I needed you to be sometimes.

Yes, sometimes.

Sometimes. It's not black or white. It's not all or nothing. It's not good or bad. It just is in that messy middle.

Right.

And so you can say, I'm gonna try to understand your reality, even though there's a gap between what I intended and what you experienced. That's okay that there's a gap. So where romantic couples get into it is the same thing. There's a gap between my intention and your experience of me. And I'm going to make you believe that my intention trumps your experience of me.

Right, but my intention was good. I meant to say it this way. I meant for you to be understood. But the other person's like, well, that's.

Not what I felt. Well, what happens is, so you see this in therapy, right? So somebody says, well, that's not what I intended. And I will say to them, it doesn't matter that that's what you intended, it did.

It had that effect. Right. Right. So how does someone change their way of being or their intention or their actions so that the other person feels accepted or heard or seen or understood? or loved in that moment.

I think the question we don't ask ourselves enough is how is what I'm about to do or say going to be experienced by the person I love?

You really gotta get into the head and the heart of the other person with how you just interact in that sphere of influence, right?

Right, and I think people say, oh, that's so much work and it shouldn't be that hard and that's too much effort. But once you start to, going back to I understand you, once you start to understand them, it becomes very easy. You see, it's kind of like they are giving you their owner's manual. They are giving you the operating instructions. But if you don't read it, then you're gonna keep making the same mistakes over and over. They're saying, here, let me tell you what happens for me when you do that. Let me tell you what happens for me when you say that. And if you ignore the operating instructions, you're going to keep getting into accidents.

What if the operating instructions is completely against who you are? Like you're, I don't know, let's just say your love language is you like giving physical touch but the other person likes receiving gifts or acts of service for an example. And you're like, this is draining for me to do this thing that the person wants or feels loved by. It feels like so much effort and work Is there a way to make it so that your strength is actually something they love?

Yeah, well let's turn this around. So if your partner said to you, it's too draining for me to actually love you in the way you like to be loved.

Yeah, it sounds crazy.

Right? It sounds crazy. It's too draining for me to make the effort to show you love in the way that makes you feel good.

Then why do we do it? Is it because we feel like that's how we want to live our lives or why do we do those things?

Right, because we're paying attention to our needs and we're not paying attention to the other person's needs. And this is the primary problem in most relationships, whether they're romantic relationships, friendships, siblings, work, whatever it is, is that people think about the me or the you. Like, am I the problem? Are you the problem? As opposed to, we have a problem, the us. We have a problem. I had this couple in therapy. he had had an affair, and they both wanted to repair the marriage. So they were both interested in that.

So there was a rupture.

There was a rupture and a big rupture, right? Affairs are these incredibly painful betrayals. And he was all in in wanting to repair this.

He took ownership. He said, I'm sorry, I want to make this work. She said, okay, I want to figure out how to Accept this apology and forgive and move on as well.

I want to figure out what do we do? Who are we as a couple now? What does this mean?

How do we move forward?

And he was not a person who was used to opening up and a lot of men experience this. They don't know how to be vulnerable. They're afraid to be vulnerable. And so many men will come in, by the way, to my practice and they'll say, I've never told anyone this before. Of course. They've literally never told anyone. Women come in and they say, I've never told anyone this before except for my mother, my sister, my best friend, right? So they feel like they haven't told anyone. But they actually have. So he opens up for the first time and he says it was almost like a whisper. He could barely say it. And he said, I'm so lonely. In the relationship. In the relationship.

Just in general.

Like he didn't even know. Just, I'm lonely. He's not blaming her for the loneliness, by the way. He's just saying, I'm so lonely. And it was almost like he had gone in, ripped his heart out, extended it to her on an outstretched hand, and here's his heart sitting there. And she says, I feel exactly the same way. And I thought, oh, there's this bridge. There's this bridge now between them, right? But then she adds, But I didn't do what you did. In other words, I was lonely too, but I didn't cheat. I'm a better person. And what I said to them was, I said, Listen, you can go to this place of who's morally superior, who's right and wrong, and who's more injured.

Right?

You can go-- I've suffered more than you did. I'm the victim here. You can go to the place of casting someone, you can cast each other in a role of who's the villain and who's the victim. Or you can say, it's not a him problem or a me problem, it's an us problem. There's a loneliness in our relationship. And how do we as a team deal with it? Because we both, we have the problem in the relationship. Relationships are like biospheres. They're like ecosystems. so what you put into the relationship is the air that you're both breathing. Someone says like, oh yeah, I yelled in the relationship, but she iced me out. It's like, look at the environment. Look at the toxic air that you're both breathing. If you yell, she'll ice you out. If you ice him out, he's gonna yell.

Right? Right?

Like this is the air. You can't put toxic put toxicity out there and then expect that things are going to be okay, that things are gonna be healthy. Right.

So what was the homework for that couple on how to repair and what was the prescription, I guess, the therapeutic prescription?

Yeah.

Well for them it was really looking at the relationship from the us perspective is we have an issue that we're trying to solve. We want to solve this loneliness thing in our marriage. People think, people are so self-interested in relationships without realizing it. And we all do this. We think like, in the moment, I'm gonna do this thing. And we don't think about how is that going to affect the couple. It's gonna be good for me, so we're gonna do it. I'm gonna say this thing because I have to get it off my chest. I'm gonna keep this secret because it'll be better for me. No, what's better for the relationship? And we don't tend to think about that. So for them, it was about remembering that if the thing that you're about to do is good for the relationship, it's going to be good for you.

We forget that.

We think it's the opposite. It's like if it's good for me, it'll be good for him or her too, or them too. If it's good for the relationship, it's good for everybody.

Does that mean certain things you shouldn't say then?

Yeah, well I didn't do that. Yeah, I'm lonely too, but I didn't cheat.

Yeah.

It's like, yeah, I'm lonely too. that's the moment of connection right there. I'm lonely too. And what he did in that moment before she made that comment, he reached toward her. He teared up. It was beautiful. He teared up and he moved toward her and he took her hand. And then she says, But I didn't do it.

Oh, dagger. Right to your heart. You're already wounded. You're both wounded.

Right, and so people put up their swords to protect themselves and what they don't realize is that they're actually gonna make themselves feel lonelier. You keep that sword up, you're gonna be very alone. You're gonna feel very disconnected from your partner.

That takes a level of what? Just emotional intelligence, awareness, peace. What does that take in order to not say that final thing or try to one up the other person in a relationship? What does that take?

Right. The reason that we do that is because there's what's happening between you and your partner in the moment. You know, he cheated, she's very injured by that. That makes sense. We've talked about it a lot at this point. They'll talk about it more. It will be ongoing. But then there's sort of, you know, the unfinished business. We have this saying, we marry our unfinished business. And what we mean by that is if I see a couple, you know, show me, tell me how you were loved as a child. and I will tell you how you're loved now, right? How you love now. Tell me who you love now and I'll tell you who loved you as a child.

Really? Is there a way to break that cycle though?

Yes, yeah. So that's where the awareness comes in. Yes. So the unfinished business. So part of it is she had, she grew up in a family where her father was cheating. Her mother knew, nobody said anything. So, now, you know, she's got all of that on top of, you know, the crimes of her father in her mind are now the crimes of her husband. Oh, man. And they're very different people. You know, her husband was a very different person from her father, but she could not separate the two of them.

Right.

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 why people struggle in intimate relationships?

Well, I think right now, and I think this applies more generally too, is often in relationships, they're sort of like this hierarchy of pain, right?

What do you mean by that?

What I mean by that is like, okay, so, you know, someone will say, like, here's like just take it in a marriage, right? So someone will say like, you know, I feel so neglected, right? I feel so neglected in this marriage, or, you know, 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 just 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 immense pain. My pain is so much worse than yours.

Comparing pain.

Right, right. Comparative pain, right? And there's no hierarchy pain. Pain is pain. We do this with ourselves too where we minimize our pain. Like 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 do anything.

I have it so much better than them, so I'm not gonna deal with 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 or I'm having trouble in my relationship, but, you know, other people have it so much worse. So I'm not going to go. So people don't land in my office.

Until they're having the equivalent of, like, an emotional heart attack. Right.

Yeah. Emotional trauma. It was like some big event or, like, their marriage is falling apart or they lost their job or they had a miscarriage or, you know, like, something big happened as opposed to like, you know, maybe they had the miscarriage, but they didn't talk about like 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 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, here 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 is. 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.

Time.

Be the person you want to be in the relationship and then see what the other person is capable of doing. 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, 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. oh, my partner needs to do this. Here's what I need to do to, regardless of what my partner does.

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. Like it's something very specific about, you know, like, 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 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. I mean, there are studies, and I can tell you what the studies say, but I see this borne out 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 going to be fighting with not just you, but lots of other people from the past in the room every time something comes up. You know, 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, it doesn't have to be just that. 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. Because if it's the other way, if.

It'S five negative and you get one little positive thing every once in a while, It's going to be emotionally draining. Right. Because you're not going to really notice that positive thing because everything is clouded by all the negativity.

I'm wrong, I'm this, I'm not enough. Yeah. Okay, that's number three.

Are there a couple more you have or? I would say taking responsibility for yourself is really important.

Even if the action that happened was wrong and bad.

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 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 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. Over Zoom.

Yeah.

You've got your podcast, Dear Therapist, which.

You guys do weekly. Is that right?

Yeah, every Thursday the podcast drops. Every Thursday.

Give us a scenario of what that is. It's a caller, it's a... Yeah, I know, it's great because what we're trying to do is 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, you know, 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, you know, someone writes in their problem, then Guy and I talk about it. You hear like two therapists discussing everyday problems. And it's a different perspective because you know, 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 bring them.

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 with the therapist, we 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 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 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 their doing it? And they come back and they tell us what happened and then we talk about, 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 Lori Gottlieb 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 need to 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... You're like a Hollywood writer, right? I was an executive at NBC, working on like Friends and ER. 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 in 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? Right? 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 truths. 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 going to 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 10 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 way the work you do here in your 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 and helping humanity. The difference between secrecy and privacy in a relationship. What do we need and should everyone have access to someone's passwords and phones and at all the time?

No.

I mean, You know, I think that people have to agree again, but I think this idea that, you know, like you can look at my phone whenever you want, will feel very intru-- well, but it feels very intru-- I don't even, I'm saying I don't think that that's, I don't think that person has the definition of trust that I'm talking about, which again is that I feel safe with what I don't know. Meaning I know that you're not doing anything to betray me, so I don't need to look. If someone gives you reason to look, that's a completely different thing. If someone gives you any kind of.

Reason.

That'S like a completely different kind of conversation that you have. But if this person has been trustworthy to your knowledge, this idea that we need to know everything about each other, by the way, you want to kill sex in a relationship, know every single thing about each other, you will kill the erotic energy. In the relationship.

You need some mystery, right?

You need some separateness. You need some differentiation between you are you and I am I and we are different people. And if you know every single thing about that person, there's no gap to bridge. What happens with the erotic energy is like, we want to bridge this gap. We want connection, right? We've been apart. We want to connect. If you've been fused, it's kind of like, oh wait, Actually, I want space. Right.

You need space.

You need space, yeah.

It's the mystery that brought you together in the first place that made you attracted to each other. You know, it's like if you know everything all the time, it's hard to keep that going. You need that space. How much space do you feel like you need in a relationship to make it like still feel that sexual attraction and chemistry?

It's everybody's different, you know, but I think you know it. I think when one person feels like waiting wait a minute, this feels intrusive. Their body is telling them something. You feel all these things in your body. So, a lot of people say, How will I know? Like as if it's an intellectual thing. And I always say, your body will tell you. You know when you recoil from that person. You know when you feel like, oh, I hear their voice and they've just walked in the door and I'm not ready for this. You know, it's not even something that goes, it's like you feel it in your body. Did you just tense up? Did you feel it in your stomach? like, what just happened? Did your breathing change?

Right. What should you do in that space where you're not like, I want to leave this relationship, but I just need space and. And create a conversation where it's safe to say that.

I think it's all about audience and presentation. So. So choose your audience. Well, do you have a partner who can hear what you're saying and not. Not hear it as a rejection?

Take it personally.

Because, you know, a lot of what what people call complaints are actually compliments. And what I mean is, and I talk about this and maybe you should talk to someone, is that when someone is complaining about something, they're basically saying, I want to get, I want to have a better relationship. They're not saying to you, I want to break up with you. They would just say, I want to.

Break up with you.

So, when they're saying like, Hey, I want to come to you with this. Like, I need more space. I'm saying that because I want to be in this relationship. I value this relationship. I I care about you. And what's not working for me is that sometimes I need some space after work or I need some time to myself on the weekends. I don't want to do every activity together or I need to go out with my friends or whatever it is. And that's what's going to help me in this relationship because I want to be with you. I won't be able to be with you if I don't have some kind of, if we don't work out something around the space. So it's a compliment. It's like I I love you enough, I care about this relationship enough to bring this up with you. If I didn't care, I wouldn't bring it up. I'd just leave.

And how toxic is it, in your opinion, to think that the partner is supposed to make you happy?

The thing is, even if you don't call it toxic, it's just dangerous.

Okay, why?

They can't. They can't make you fundamentally happy. They can bring you joy. It's a great joy to be with someone whose company you really enjoy, of course. But they can't heal those wounds for you. They can't take away the hurts. They can't repair everything that happened for you in your life. They can't do that. You're going to have to do that for yourself. Again, they can provide that that sort of containing warm holding environment in which you feel safe enough to do that. But they can't do it for you. And when you depend on someone else, you were talking about expectations earlier. When you depend on someone else to do that for you, they will inevitably fail because hashtag human. Because they are human. They can't do that.

So don't have an expectation that you meet this guy or this girl or whatever and they're gonna make be happy. They should be able to add to my joy.

They're gonna be additive. Yes. They're gonna, they're gonna, your quality of life will be greatly enhanced if you have a good relationship.

Right.

Okay.

But you got to focus on your own happiness.

But in terms of, you know, those things where they're going to be misattuned to you sometimes, they're going to upset you sometimes. They're going to do things that you think, how could the person I love me make that choice?

Right.

You know, they're not going to be some, like, you know, magical fairy person. Yes.

And what about the online world? How have you seen this as a therapist, the online world supported or hurt relationships? You know, is online dating and overall, have you seen it to be a positive thing? And also it's just social media hurtful or helpful when in a relationship with someone.

And I would say to both social media and online dating, both and. I think that online dating makes it possible for people to meet who ordinarily would not meet. But that's really all it does. So it's not like, you know, it's like we used to meet people in a much more organic way, but we don't do that anymore. So now you can meet people and it makes it a lot easier. The downside of that is that there's this illusion with online dating and apps that you go out on a date. I hear this all the time from people. They went out on a date, they had a good time, no butterflies, but they had a really good time. They spent three hours there. They had a pretty good time. But yeah, no, I don't know, I just didn't feel like the chemistry or I don't know or whatever it was. But there's this other guy, whatever, so then they keep going through the apps as opposed to why wouldn't you go on a second date? with that person that you just had a pretty good three hours with. Like spend another two or three hours with that person. You can spend one hour and you do coffee so you can get out easily if you want to. But you had a pretty good time. And I think people think that it's gotta all be there right away. And actually they did these studies where they followed couples over 20 years, this longitudinal study. And what they did was they didn't do reporting where you look back and you say what was your first date like? they actually did reporting at the time. So they got all of these reports, you know, they followed them every five years and they would interview them. And the people who were happy 20 years later, when they recalled their first date, they would say, oh yeah, I was so into him, I was so into her, it was amazing, right? In those reports, often they would find what they reported at the time was really nice person, you know, like, yeah, no, I had a good time. Like, like there It wasn't like this magnetic attraction. --Attraction of the butterflies. --Sometimes there was, but in more cases than not, there wasn't. --Really? --And then when you looked at people who were like divorced or really unhappy but still married, and you asked them about their-- Chemistry was-- --I didn't really like him that much. --I'll read in the beginning. --They've revised the story, but when you go back to what they actually said at the time, they were like, you know, lots of chemistry. So in other words, our opinions about people change, the more we get to know them. And so, if you go out with somebody once, twice, three times, right? And you had a pretty good time that first time, go out with them again. Like, why wouldn't you go out with them twice or three times? And see what happens. People won't do that and they keep like cycling and juggling all these different people. Like, maybe the next person will be, you know, like, I'll feel more attraction to, but maybe that person, you don't have as much much kind of emotional chemistry with. --Right. --You know so then that person's ruled out. You know you don't have enough in common or whatever it is. --Sure. --So like at what point or it's like musical chairs.

Like at what point are you gonna sit down? Because the chairs are gonna get filled. --Well, I think you hear people say you know don't settle, but it's like.

How do you know when you've not settled? And you found a great match, but it's --Well so the thing is you never want to feel like you're with a person where you settled and you don't want to feel settled for. But I think again, going back to defining things, what does settling mean? So there was this study that was in one of my earlier books where men and women were asked, you know, what would it take to get a second date? Like what qualities would a person need to have? So men named three things that a person would have to have for them to want to go on a second date with that person. And they said she has to be attractive enough and they did not mean like she has to look like a supermodel. They meant like I think she's cute. That's all. I think she's cute. Like they know, you know, they know that they're not like a supermodel themselves. She has to be easy to talk to and she has to be kind. Like she can't be like, oh, you know, mean to the waiter or, you know, like kind of entitled or whatever. You know, just like, just to like seem like a really nice person. Sure. Okay, that person gets a second date. Women named 100 things. So from three to 100, 100 things that would not get a guy a second date, and they were, you know, these like really really picky things.

--She was looking at me if he was this, who was that?

--He was this or that or the other thing like you know oh he wore khakis and you know like just really ridiculous or he didn't like like you know --His hairstyle or he did this like really like and by the way people are nervous on first dates.

--Yeah they're sweaty.

--People can get nervous. They might be like maybe maybe they were a little bit overly animated because they were trying to impress you. Maybe they were just trying to entertain you and it was a little too much. But overall, you had a good time and overall there was enough there that maybe you'd go on a second date. And if they're that way on the second date, then no, don't go on the third date. Right, gotcha. But I think we have to kind of remember that it's a process. And so many people want immediate gratification. They want that story of like we met, it was immediate.

Explosive and chemistry.

Right.

And so when someone feels this like instant attraction and explosive chemistry and like finishing of each other's sentences or whatever this is, these butterflies the whole time, I couldn't stop thinking about them all week. What I'm hearing you say is that sometimes or most of the time, like 20 years later, those don't work out.

So they can work out. But sometimes, And again, it depends where you are in your own healing. Sometimes what your unconscious is doing is saying, oh, you look familiar.

It's familiar.

Come closer. You look familiar. It's like this, and his unconscious and her unconscious, and them, whoever you're dating. This works, and this is not gendered at all. This works no matter who your partner is and who you are. That if something feels familiar to you in this very, unconscious way and you haven't worked that stuff out, the unfinished business, you're gonna be like, yeah, this feels really familiar, but it feels so good, right? Come closer, it feels so familiar to me.

If something feels unfamiliar, but it feels good, is that a sign that... That's.

You and your girlfriend. Yeah.

Is it like, oh, maybe you're choosing something different and you're experiencing something different. Is that something that people should keep.

Exploring or what do you think? Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, if it feels better, right? It feels good. Again, keep that journal. Look at the bank account that you guys are creating together, your joint bank account. Are there five deposits for one withdrawal? Right. You're experiencing that right now. It's unfamiliar, but it feels healthy. It feels good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Man, what else do you see right now that people are really struggling with when you're doing therapy with them? or just the emails, the calls coming in for the podcast you guys are doing. What's kind of a common theme of right now?

I would say connection.

People are lacking the connection.

People are lacking connection or they want to learn how to better connect. So they have someone that they want to connect with, but they're bungling it up in all kinds of ways. That's sort of what happens on our podcast every week.

They're bundling it up.

They're bundling it, yeah.

What does that mean?

You know, it's like they want to have this healthy relationship, and they're afraid to have the conversations. They don't know how to have the conversations. They're doing things they know they shouldn't be doing. They don't see their own role in it. You know, all of those things. But again, I think that it's so relatable because we all act this way. We all have our blind spots. We all think that we're extremely self-aware and you can't see what you don't know. It's like you don't know what you don't know. Right, right.

What's something we should do on a weekly basis to check in with our partner to make sure we're cultivating that connection? Is it a question we should, Hey, every Sunday we're gonna have this 10-minute conversation what should we talk about?

I notice as a therapist that people talk more about what they don't want than what they do want with their partners. So they'll say, I don't like it when you do this, or I wish you wouldn't do this, as opposed to, I really like when you do that. I felt great when this happened. I want more of that, or I like that, just appreciating that. If you're always telling people, what you don't like about them, it's hard for them to see what you do like about them. So I think that people need to spend more time telling the other person what they do want. You know, when we talk about complaints as compliments, you can say to somebody, say you feel like your partner isn't being affectionate enough with you, right? You can say like, you never kiss me when you come in the door, or you don't hug me enough, or you can say, I really love it when you come in the door and you kiss me.

As opposed to being like, as opposed to making them defensive by saying, you,'re not doing this enough. And they're like, what do you mean? I was just doing this earlier and I did this before and you don't, you're not appreciating it. But when you show, like you said, appreciation, I really appreciate it when you do this.

It's gonna make you want to hopefully do it more. Right. And also not arguing with people's feelings. Like, I can see the other side of that where someone says, to someone, I really like it when you hug me, when you come in. And then maybe it's a guy who says to her, But I do. I hug you all the time. Right? And she's just like, okay, now we're gonna fight over the content, which is like, how many times do you actually hug me? And when was the last time you hugged me? Which is different, which is just like, oh, oh, to register for yourself. Oh, she feels like I don't hug her enough. So it doesn't matter whether I do or I don't. the point is she feels like I don't, so I'm gonna make a conscious effort to make sure that maybe when we're watching TV together, I'm gonna put my arm around her. Right. Instead of arguing about, but I just hugged you yesterday, you know, when I came home, and I hugged you the day before, and I'm sure that I.

Hug you every day. Don't argue about it, just be like, oh, noted. All right, I'll give you a hug later, yeah.

Yeah.

What would you say, you know, obviously you work with a lot of couples that are experiencing some type of problems.

Right.

Most of them don't come into you and say, everything's amazing. We're just here to like just make sure it's still amazing, you know? Which I think it's actually, I think it'd be healthy for relationships to, you know, get into therapy sooner when things are actually good for like just a checkup every now and then and say, hey, how can we keep cultivating this? But I'm curious from the relationships you've seen that have been thriving, like it's pretty healthy, happy, thriving, like it seems really good. What would you say those key things that they all have in common?

Kindness.

Kindness.

Yeah. You can't take back the unkindnesses. They're there. They live there. You know, people will remember, by the way. Always.

I remember three years ago when you did this thing.

Yeah, I remember when you said that thing. I remember how it felt in my body. So kindness is especially important. And I would also say, There are all these cultural norms that we have to get rid of. Like, I had this couple where.

It.

Was a heterosexual couple and she said to her husband, I just, I feel, I want to get closer to you. I feel like I want to know what's going on with you. I wish you would share more with me about your inner life. I feel like there's this distance between us. And he was like this guy's guy, right? Finally, finally he opens up to her and he gets a little tear and I see her body, I'm watching her and she's sort of, she's there with him, right? And then he starts crying, he starts talking about something really difficult. He has been holding in for a really long time. And she, on the one hand, feels so much compassion for him and on the other hand she's terrified because, you know, she kind of looks at me like, what do I do now? And so it was this interesting thing in our culture about safety with men and vulnerability. Because on the one hand, she's saying to him, I don't feel safe when you don't share with me. I feel distanced from you. I feel separated from you. I feel disconnected from you. I don't feel safe in our relationship when you're over there and I'm over here and we are not meeting. But on the other hand, if you start crying in front of me like that, and you really are vulnerable and you let down your guard like that, I also don't feel safe. safe, not because of anything you did wrong, but because I've been told by society that you are weak when you do that.

Right?

Like I feel like you are that now not my rock and you are now strong, you are not strong for me. And I didn't even realize I had those perceptions. I didn't realize that that's how I grew up. But that's what society has been telling me, that when a man cries like that in front of me, that he's weak and now I don't feel safe and that somehow as a woman, I'm weak if I don't I don't have a man to be strong for me. So we had to talk about all of these ideas that have been, you know, we've been brainwashed. And so then we have to like do the un-brainwashing and then they could actually come closer to each other and he didn't have to be the rock all the time and she didn't have to feel like you have to save me all the time.

I'm so happy you said this, Lori, because I wrote a book about this a few years back on the Mask of Masculinity. And I went on tour. I don't know if I told you this before, but I went on tour to talk about this. And the rooms were typically 50 50 men and women who are in the rooms. And I would say this exact thing that, like, women would say, well, I wish my, my partner or my husband were, were more sensitive or emotional or vulnerable and open up. And I'd say, well, you've got to learn to be there and be able to handle it because I've talked to so many men who say, you know what? My wife keeps telling me they want to do this and I finally do it. And then they're like, well, I need you to be strong. Now, I don't feel safe. Exactly what you said. I was like, I'm so glad you said this from a therapist point of view and not just a guy saying this, but I'm so glad that you're saying this and that you've witnessed this with your couples that have come in and you've actually seen this. Well, it's interesting. Because I feel like it's so hard for men to want to express their vulnerabilities. and if they don't fit, and I had a previous girlfriend that I would cry in front of, that I would show, you know, my vulnerabilities, and it was freely doing it. I never held back because I was comfortable doing it myself in certain moments. You know, when I'd see something on TV or a movie or a sensitive thing, I'd show emotion, and it's like she couldn't handle it. It's like she could not handle it. And she was like, crying is weakness, and she didn't cry in front of me. And I was just like, Man, you're never gonna have respect for me if you think I'm weak for showing vulnerabilities. And then why would I want to be vulnerable around you if you're gonna disrespect me? I'm gonna want to gain your respect. And I'm gonna want to get harder and have a wall, which luckily I.

Didn'T do, but it's like in general a lot of men do that. Well, what you're doing is you're being really courageous, right? So I think it takes an incredible act of bravery to say to somebody, this is who I am. Yeah. She's saying, oh, that makes you weak.

No, it makes you strong.

That's what I say. It's like you are so okay with yourself.

Yeah, I don't care if you make.

Fun of me, I'm still gonna do it. This is me, and I'm gonna show up, and I'm gonna share with you, and I'm gonna be in this relationship. It's so interesting that you say that. So, I'm raising a boy, and I noticed this because during COVID everyone was saying, Talk to your teenagers, talk to your kids about what they're experiencing. A lot of them are anxious. and depressed and all these things are happening. And my son one day said to me, he said, you know, that's really easy for people to say, but boys don't talk about this stuff. And I said, yeah, what do you think makes it so hard? And we had a little chat about it. And we actually put it on Instagram because I thought it was really important. And all these people responded to it.

So, he started...

Didn't he write an article I saw you send me? Yeah, he wrote an article for Time Magazine. But he started this thing called Talk with Zach on Instagram.

Instagram.

He saw us. Yeah. And he just wants to model that like for boys and men that like you can talk about what you're feeling, you can be vulnerable. In fact, not only can you, but you should because you want to be a whole human being. And I think that it's been really interesting because it's opened up the eyes of women and girls. Yes. That's beautiful.

You know, it's like, it's like I.

Have so many men who come to me for therapy and they say, I can talk to my guy friends. People think that that your guy friends will make fun of you if you open up to them. They won't, actually. The people who I'm most afraid to talk to, they'll say, with girlfriends, is my girlfriend, my wife, right? Like my sister. These are the people who, but your girlfriend or your wife especially, because they depend on you in this way.

Absolutely. They tend to be the rock because they may not be the emotionally stable person majority of the time. Maybe they are, maybe they're not.

The problem is though, so John in my book, He's one of these people who would like hold it all in, right? And then there's this tragic thing that happens in his marriage. And he and his wife are both grieving. And he says, I had to be the rock. Like I couldn't cry. And he's the one who has insomnia, he's having nightmares, but he can't talk about any of it. She's the one who always cries all the time. And I said, maybe she's crying for both of you. And it just stopped him in his tracks. Maybe she's crying for both of you. And when he was able to start talking about what had happened and this loss that they'd had in their marriage and in their family, their marriage completely changed. It transformed, right? Because he didn't have to be, he thought, she didn't tell him, you, have to be the strong one for me. It was something that he just took in from the culture. And when he was able to share in the grief and the loss and they were able to kind of do this together, It was a game changer.

The temptation is I'm going to throw myself into a new relationship as a palate cleanser. I'm like, you know what? Sit with that dirty palate for a minute.

Because you need to do this work in you.

Because I think the challenge is, is that when people get into narcissistic relationships or antagonistic or toxic relationships, they don't know what they're dealing with.