How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

Summary

In this engaging episode of the Huberman Lab podcast, Andrew Huberman sits down with Lori Gottlieb, a renowned psychotherapist and author, to explore the complexities of romantic relationships. They discuss how understanding one's feelings with certain people can guide us in selecting suitable partners or highlight when a relationship might need reevaluation. They also delve into how technology affects relationships, and Gottlieb shares insights on improving communication and using emotions constructively. The conversation emphasizes the importance of self-awareness in developing healthier relationships and pursuing personal happiness.

Highlights

• Lori Gottlieb emphasizes the significance of understanding one's feelings as a compass for compatibility in relationships. 🧭
• The episode explores the impact of technology and social media on modern relationships, highlighting challenges and adaptations. 💻
• Communication is stressed as a critical component of healthy relationship dynamics. 📞
• The discussion ventures into how past familial relationships often reflect in adult romantic connections. 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦
• Huberman and Gottlieb discuss the narrative we tell ourselves and how it affects relationship dynamics. 📖
• Discussions on individuality stress breaking old patterns and dynamics for healthier connections. 🌱
• Contemplating mortality is suggested as a means to nurture life’s vitality and vibrancy. 🕊️
• The nuanced dialogue delves into managing grief and moving forward constructively after a breakup. 🌼
• Overall, the episode provides a comprehensive look into how self-reflection and understanding enhance personal happiness and relationship satisfaction. 😌

Key Takeaways

• Understanding personal feelings is key to identifying suitable partners. 🧐
• Technology has profoundly altered how we interact in relationships. 📱
• Improving communication skills can make or break romantic relationships. 🗣️
• Unresolved childhood issues often influence adult relationships. 🧒
• Self-awareness and confronting personal narratives are crucial in relationship success. 🧘
• Breaking free from comfort zones can lead to personal growth and healthier relationships. 🚀
• Embracing the fear of death can inspire a more fulfilled life. 💀➡️😊
• Presence over projecting narratives can enhance one's peace and vitality. 🧘‍♂️
• Breaking up can be tough but approaches like reflection and self-awareness help heal. ❤️‍🩹

Overview

In a rich dialogue with Andrew Huberman, Lori Gottlieb navigates the intricate world of romantic relationships. She underscores the importance of understanding one's emotions as a guide in choosing compatible partners and reassessing existing relationships. They explore how technology shapes our interactions, urging listeners to refine their communication skills and embrace self-awareness for relationship success.

The conversation reveals how unresolved childhood issues often manifest in adult romantic relationships, shaping our choices and interactions. Gottlieb's insights into personal narratives highlight how self-awareness and challenging ingrained beliefs foster healthier relationship dynamics. Listeners are encouraged to confront and recalibrate these narratives for personal growth.

Gottlieb and Huberman also tackle the profound topic of mortality, suggesting that embracing this awareness can lead to a more vibrant, fulfilled life. They discuss the complexities of breakups and grief, emphasizing the importance of reflection and personal growth in healing. Overall, the episode offers a toolkit for listeners to enhance their relationships and personal well-being.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Podcast Overview The introduction chapter of the Huberman Lab podcast, hosted by Andrew Huberman, provides an overview of the podcast's focus on science and science-based tools for daily life. Andrew Huberman, a professor at Stanford, introduces his guest Lori Gotautlib, a renowned psychotherapist and best-selling author, who is an expert in relationships. The discussion will cover aspects such as finding, maintaining, exiting, and grieving relationships.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Guest Introduction: Lori Gottlieb In this chapter, the guest Lori Gottlieb discusses the importance of self-awareness and introspection in relationships. The conversation emphasizes how the feelings we experience around certain people can be an essential indicator of their suitability as partners. Lori highlights the common tendency to overlook crucial signals in relationships by not being attentive to our emotions. The discussion encourages listeners to pay closer attention to these emotional signals to better understand what we truly want and need in our relationships.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Understanding Relationships and Communication The chapter titled 'Understanding Relationships and Communication' explores various aspects of how we communicate and interact with each other in the context of modern technology. It discusses ways to enhance communication skills and evaluate the validity of critiques about us. Additionally, it addresses the impact of texting and technology on relationships, highlighting the importance of exercising personal agency in navigating these changes. The chapter concludes with insights from Lori on accessing more vitality and enjoyment in life, emphasizing that people often resist change due to the comfort of familiar situations.
• 01:30 - 02:30: Impact of Technology on Relationships The chapter 'Impact of Technology on Relationships' is an enlightening discussion that aims to help listeners gain a better understanding of their personal needs and how to achieve happiness both in and out of relationships. This episode emphasizes the accessibility of science and related tools to the public, free of charge. It features a conversation with Lori and highlights a commitment to providing valuable science-based insights, despite being distinct from the host's academic roles at Stanford.
• 02:30 - 03:30: Role of Therapy in Relationships In this chapter titled 'Role of Therapy in Relationships,' Lori Gotlib discusses her approach when meeting a new patient. She highlights the importance of understanding both the spoken words and the patient's tone and physical cues. Typically, she begins by asking the patient to explain why they have decided to seek therapy. Gotlib emphasizes the complexity of reasons individuals decide to pursue therapy, pointing out that initial explanations can often be quite varied.
• 03:30 - 04:30: Sponsor Break: Helix Sleep This chapter discusses the experience of seeing a therapist for the first time. It emphasizes the discomfort and nervousness that can come with sharing personal information with a stranger. The text highlights the importance of making the patient feel comfortable and not pressuring them to share more than they are ready to share. It's described as a sensitive and very human interaction.
• 04:30 - 05:30: Sponsor Break: BetterHelp The chapter titled 'Sponsor Break: BetterHelp' discusses the concept of therapy, emphasizing the human-to-human interchange rather than an expert-novice dynamic. The speaker reflects on the practice of sharing narratives in therapy, questioning whether some people create extensive internal and external narratives about their experiences. The discussion highlights the role of training in therapy while maintaining a balanced interaction between therapist and client.
• 05:30 - 06:30: Relationships and Evolving Dynamics This chapter explores the varying ways people experience and interpret the world around them. Some individuals process life through a verbal or internal dialogue, while others perceive through emotions and sensory experiences. A unique perspective highlighted in the narrative is from a comment on Instagram, where a person expressed that they 'think in feels' rather than in words. This indicates the diverse cognitive processing styles that people embody.
• 06:30 - 07:30: Sponsor Break: AG1 and Dave's Protein Bar The chapter discusses the concept that language may not be the primary way everyone understands their surroundings. It touches upon how humans create narratives to make sense of their emotions, even when they are not well-trained to understand these feelings, often due to societal conditioning from childhood.
• 07:30 - 08:30: Understanding Emotional Dynamics The chapter 'Understanding Emotional Dynamics' delves into the impact of parental responses to children's expressed emotions. It highlights that when children share feelings such as worry or anger, parents often dismiss these emotions by saying things like 'don't worry about that' or labeling their children as 'too sensitive.' This response may stem from parents' discomfort with their child's sadness and the misconceived responsibility of ensuring their child's constant happiness. The chapter emphasizes the importance of parents being present, understanding, and supportive rather than dismissive of their child's emotional experiences.
• 08:30 - 09:30: Insights on Personal Growth and Change The chapter explores the dynamics of communication and emotional intelligence in relationships, emphasizing the importance of allowing others to express their feelings without immediately trying to negate or fix them. It discusses how often people tend to respond to others' feelings with solutions or dismissals instead of simply listening and encouraging further expression, advocating for a more supportive and understanding approach.
• 09:30 - 10:30: Sponsor Break: Element The chapter discusses the importance of emotions as guiding tools, likened to a compass, that indicate direction in life. It emphasizes that by acknowledging and exploring these emotions, like asking someone to elaborate on their feelings, individuals can uncover underlying reasons and solutions for their experiences. The narrative suggests that people naturally have the capability to resolve their issues by listening to their feelings. However, societal norms often teach people to suppress these emotions, leading to confusion and difficulty in addressing feelings such as sadness, anger, or anxiety as adults.
• 10:30 - 11:30: Romantic Relationships and Individual Growth This chapter explores the dynamics between romantic relationships and personal development, highlighting the importance of using one's feelings as valuable information rather than dismissing them. The speaker shares a personal anecdote about an agreement with an ex-girlfriend that focused on mutual respect and the principle of not attempting to change each other. This concept is presented as beneficial for fostering healthy relationships and supporting individual growth.
• 11:30 - 12:30: Navigating Love and Partnership The chapter titled 'Navigating Love and Partnership' explores the dynamics of a relationship where both partners are learning to communicate and set boundaries effectively. It highlights a specific strategy they devised to improve their interactions, particularly after work. The agreement was to refrain from trying to change each other's mood unless specifically requested. This plan arose from understanding that the initial moments after returning from work could be tense and needed a more considerate approach, focusing on mutual respect and consent in shifting each other's emotional state.
• 12:30 - 13:30: Sponsor Break: Element The chapter explores the concepts of self-regulation and co-regulation in managing emotions and responses. It highlights the idea of self-regulation as a personal process of managing internal experiences, such as anger, by acknowledging it and understanding underlying reasons like boundary issues. The discussion suggests that having a policy of not shifting emotions onto others can be liberating.
• 13:30 - 14:30: Role of Technology in Modern Relationships The chapter titled 'Role of Technology in Modern Relationships' discusses the impact of technology on emotional self-regulation and co-regulation in relationships. It highlights the importance of managing emotions like anger, anxiety, and sadness without resorting to unproductive expressions such as screaming or self-sabotage. It emphasizes co-regulation, particularly in parent-child dynamics, as a crucial aspect of modern relationships enhanced by technology.
• 14:30 - 15:30: Understanding and Resolving Conflict This chapter discusses the importance of self-regulation and co-regulation in resolving conflicts. It emphasizes that while it's beneficial for both parties in a relationship to be calm and regulated, individuals are responsible for managing their emotional states. The presence of a calm adult can help others, including children, to regulate their emotions during heightened situations.
• 15:30 - 16:30: The Concept of Grief and Moving Forward The chapter discusses the dynamics of grief and the importance of emotional regulation in interactions, especially in arguments. It emphasizes that when both parties in a conflict are emotionally dysregulated, it is more productive to pause the discussion until at least one person is calm and collected. This approach is particularly useful for couples who often feel an urgency to resolve issues immediately, although taking a step back can lead to more effective communication and resolution.
• 16:30 - 17:30: Insights on Personal Storytelling and Narratives The chapter focuses on the importance of timing and emotional management in personal narratives and storytelling. Instead of reacting immediately during emotional confrontations, the speaker suggests taking time to cool off by engaging in activities such as taking a walk, going to the gym, reading, or relaxing. This pause allows individuals to stay connected and communicate more effectively when emotions are not as heightened. The narrative cautions against creating stories or assumptions during this cooling-off period, emphasizing that this approach can lead to healthier and more productive discussions.
• 17:30 - 18:30: Reflection on Societal Changes The chapter titled 'Reflection on Societal Changes' discusses the importance of empathy and understanding differing perspectives in interpersonal relationships. It emphasizes the practice of seeing a situation from another person's vantage point to foster compassion and improve communication. The chapter suggests seeking a common ground or a genuine element that resonates with both parties to facilitate reconciliation and growth.
• 18:30 - 19:30: Conclusion and Podcast Wrap-Up The conclusion chapter wraps up the podcast by emphasizing the importance of regulation and quality sleep for overall well-being. The host acknowledges the sponsor, Helix Sleep, and highlights how a well-customized mattress and pillows are crucial for achieving good mental and physical health through quality sleep. The emphasis is on the importance of a mattress's firmness, softness, and breathability in enhancing sleep comfort.

How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday [Music] life I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine My guest today is Lori Gotautlib Lori Gotlib is a psychotherapist and best-selling author and is considered one of the world's leading experts on relationships how to find relationships how to be in relationships effectively how to leave relationships if necessary how to grieve
• 00:30 - 01:00 them after they're gone and how to renew them All from the perspective of looking inward at ourselves and the stories about ourselves and others that we tell ourselves that can lead us to what we want and what's best for us or that lead us away from those things During today's episode we discuss how the feelings we experience when we're with certain people are the absolute best guide of how poorly or how well those people are suited for us as partners and the ways in which we miss key signals both good and bad in relationships by not paying attention to how we feel Lori explains
• 01:00 - 01:30 how to better our communication skills how to determine if somebody's critique of us is valid or not that certainly is important for everybody And how texting and technology has changed relationships and how to navigate all of that by leaning into our own sense of agency the things that we can control And last but not least Lori explains how we can all access more vitality and enjoyment of life and how so many people don't allow themselves to do that because the familiarity of their present circumstances overrides their
• 01:30 - 02:00 willingness to move forward This was a really eye- openening episode and one that I'm certain will help you better understand yourself and what your needs really are and how you can be happier in or out of a relationship Before we begin I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford It is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public In keeping with that theme this episode does include sponsors And now for my discussion with Lori
• 02:00 - 02:30 Gotautlib Lori Gotlib welcome Thank you Great to be here What's the first thing you ask a patient when you're meeting them for the first time Usually it's something like "Tell me what's going on Tell me why you're here Tell me what made you decide to come in." And are you listening both to the content of their words and their tone their physicality everything Yeah Yeah I think it's so interesting because sometimes people will say "I'm here because of" and they'll talk about something very
• 02:30 - 03:00 difficult but they're smiling through it Um you know I think it's very nerve-wracking to come in and see a therapist and you don't know this person and you're about to share some very personal information that maybe you haven't told anyone in this way And so you want to make somebody comfortable you want to make sure that you know you feel like they are not being rushed to share something that they're not ready to share So it's just the process I think it's a very human interaction Um
• 03:00 - 03:30 you know therapy to me is not like expert and this other person and then it feels very asymmetrical Of course we're using our training and that's why they're coming to us but I feel like it's very much a humanto human interchange Do you think because I've heard but I don't know if it's true Do you think that some people um tend to create a lot of internal and perhaps external narrative about what happened who they
• 03:30 - 04:00 are um how people are in the world how they're not in the world you know a lot of lot of words to their experience either spoken or internally versus people who um maybe experience life a little bit differently Uh once somebody said in a comment on Instagram and I still think about this um they said I don't think in words I think in feels And my first reaction was like yeah I'm from Northern California People
• 04:00 - 04:30 talk that way sometimes So I thought that's interesting Maybe there are a lot of people who um for whom language isn't the primary mode of understanding what's going on around them I think that as humans we try to make sense of our feelings through stories That we tell oursel a story about why we're feeling a certain way And sometimes we aren't that skilled because nobody taught us this to access our feelings And that happens because kids are often talked out of
• 04:30 - 05:00 their feelings So when you're young for example and say you say to your parent um I'm really worried about this And your parent will say oh don't worry about that That's nothing to worry about or I'm really mad about this You're so sensitive right Or because parents are really uncomfortable when their kids are feeling sad because they feel like it's my responsibility to make sure they're not sad which is not your responsibility as a parent you're there to sit with your child and be present for them So if your child says "I'm really sad that so-
• 05:00 - 05:30 and so sat with so- and so at lunch today." And you know the parent will say "Well here's what you can do." Or "That's terrible." or right instead of like "Oh tell me more." And I think that as a parent or even as a partner when your when your partner comes to you or your friend comes to you or a family member comes to you and tells you something often what we do is we try to talk them out of the feeling that they're having or help them get rid of the feeling because we think it's a negative feeling when feelings are all
• 05:30 - 06:00 positive because they're like a compass They tell us what direction to go in if we can access them So when you say to someone tell me more Then the kid might say well yeah it was really hard And then they'll talk about maybe like why the person might have sat at a different table or what might have happened And we really do have a lot of answers inside if we listen to the feelings But we're talked out of the feelings and then we grow up thinking if I'm feeling sad or angry or anxious then you know I need to
• 06:00 - 06:30 get rid of the feeling as opposed to I need to use that feeling And so instead what we do is we come up with all these stories like the problem is out there as opposed to oh I have some really good information in here I had a now ex-girlfriend we're still on great terms who uh we had an agreement that served us super well and uh that I try and apply going forward which is um nobody tries to shift anyone else
• 06:30 - 07:00 In my mind I was the one that came up with that but I think in reality she was the one that came up with it cuz now I'm like there's no way I would have come up with that But I think it it came about through a couple different interactions where I would get off work and and sometimes like the initial 20 minutes of interacting was much more difficult than it needed to be And and then I remember we just came up with this plan where we just decide no one's going to shift the other person unless they're like shift me please you know like help me relax or help me uh get excited about this which
• 07:00 - 07:30 we would never do right So like when so a policy of not trying to shift anybody um or somebody trying to shift our emotions I think felt really liberating Right I think what you're talking about is self-regulation versus co-regulation So self-regulation is when you're having some kind of internal experience You have choices like I'm really angry about this Okay How do I self-regulate not to ignore the anger because the anger is telling me that maybe a boundary was
• 07:30 - 08:00 broken or maybe somebody's treating me in a way that I don't want to be treated or maybe I'm upset with myself for the way that I acted So it's good information but then what do you do with it Can you self-regulate Can you find ways to look at the anger without screaming yelling um self-sabotaging whatever people do that's not a productive use of their anger or your anxiety or your sadness Um co-regulation is important though Um and that's something that you see again you can see it with parent child where if the parent
• 08:00 - 08:30 can stay calm when the child is not calm that helps the child to learn to self-regulate And with a partner like say you had a really hard day at work and you come home and you're just not in a good mood It's not your partner's responsibility to help you through that You need to self-regulate But it sure helps if your partner is regulated and they can help co-regulate you just because they happen to be regulated You you want two adults in the room or at least one adult in the room If you have two children in the room like grown
• 08:30 - 09:00 children adults um then everybody gets disregulated So it's really important that at least one person is being the adult in the room and one person is regulated If both people like you're in an argument both people are dregulated nothing good is going to come from that in which case is the best option to just pause it until somebody returns to adulthood Yes And that happens so often It's such an easy fix for couples because sometimes they they think we have to deal with this right now and it feels urgent to deal with it right now
• 09:00 - 09:30 because I feel hurt right now or I can't believe you said that or we need to you know resolve this right now That can be the worst possible thing So it's not like let's forget about it It's I'm going to go take a walk or I'm going to go to the gym or I'm going to go you know read for a few minutes or I'm going to go relax whatever that is and then let's talk in an hour about it or let's talk tonight right And you can stay connected during that time So what are you going to do in the intervening time If you're just making up stories about
• 09:30 - 10:00 the other person they're insensitive They don't care about me They don't prioritize me Then that's not helpful But in that intervening time if you can say if I were telling this story from the other person's perspective what would their version of this story be And is there a nugget of overlap And there is there a nugget of something that feels really genuine to me that I can understand and even have compassion for And that's going to help you come back when you have the
• 10:00 - 10:30 conversation But you have to be regulated I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor Helix Sleep Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs Now I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health physical health and performance Now the mattress you sleep on makes a huge difference in the quality of sleep that you get each night How soft it is or how firm it is how breathable it is all play into your comfort and need to be
• 10:30 - 11:00 tailored to your unique sleep needs If you go to the Helix website you can take a brief two-minute quiz which will ask you questions such as "Do you sleep on your back your side or your stomach Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night?" Things of that sort Now maybe you know the answers to those questions maybe you don't Either way Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you For me that turned out to be the Dusk mattress I started sleeping on the Dusk mattress about three and a half years ago and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had So much so that when I travel and I'm not on my Dusk mattress I really miss it And when I get
• 11:00 - 11:30 home I just find that I sleep so much better because of that mattress If you'd like to try Helix you can go to helixleep.com/huberman Take that 2-minut sleep quiz and Helix will match you to a mattress that's customized for you Right now Helix is giving up to 20% off on all mattress orders Again that's helixleep.com/huberman to get up to 20% off Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online
• 11:30 - 12:00 now I personally have been doing therapy weekly for well over 30 years Initially I didn't have a choice It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school But pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to one's overall health There are essentially three things that great therapy provides First of all it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about pretty much any issue with Second of all it can provide support in the form of emotional support and directed guidance And third expert therapy can provide useful insights Insights that allow you to better not just your emotional life
• 12:00 - 12:30 and your relationship life but of course also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and to all sorts of goals BetterHelp makes it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you resonate with and that can provide you those three benefits that come from effective therapy Also because BetterHelp allows for therapy to be done entirely online it's super timeefficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule If you'd like to try BetterHelp you can go to betterhelp.com/huberman to get 10% off your first month Again that's betterhelp.com/huberman
• 12:30 - 13:00 One thing that I've observed I don't have any formal data on this is that some of the happiest couples I know are couples where I would refer to one person in the relationship as more emotive and expressive and the other person as a little bit on the spectrum And my observation is that part of the reason those couples seem so harmonious is that the little things don't seem to bother the person on the spectrum cuz they don't register them they don't get
• 13:00 - 13:30 entangled in the other person's um downs or or ups which I guess um could be problematic in theory but just seems like they get along really well because and I won't you know kind of stereotype the labels but these these couples that I know it does happen to be the male who is um a little bit on the spectrum and the woman who's a little more emotive
• 13:30 - 14:00 And it just seems like there's so much harmony there And when I talk to him I'm generally uh closer to the the man in the relationship Uh although not always Um they say like "Yeah like you know doesn't bother me There's I just like will listen or if there's something to a request I'll respond to the request." There there isn't this entanglement of she's upset so I like have to respond or this is really painful to listen to It's more um of like a kind of matter of fact
• 14:00 - 14:30 and um I just think it's an interesting dynamic It's obviously not one that people can pre-program themselves for Uh but I do think it's an interesting dynamic as opposed to what you're describing where um emotions can kind of ratchet together like gears and that can be wonderful when people are in you know ecstatic states or happy or that there's like the banter of certain couples that are seem pretty emotive is something I'm also familiar with observing But those couples also seem like more volatile like when when somebody's upset the
• 14:30 - 15:00 other person gets upset that they're and it just starts to um deteriorate pretty quickly Yeah You don't want two highly reactive people to be together Um you also I think need to think about there's a saying we marry our unfinished business right So let's say that there's somebody who had a parent who was very kind of avoidant or withdrawn That person if they haven't processed that will be drawn to the partner who is more avoidant but not because it feels good
• 15:00 - 15:30 but because it's familiar And so sometimes in the kind of couple that you're describing and I don't know the experience of your friends but I've seen a lot of couples where it looks like that would be a good match because one person is you know sort of more in the emotional sphere and one person is less so Um but sometimes what that is is one person gets very lonely because they're not really getting that kind of emotional interaction that they want So
• 15:30 - 16:00 it can be a solution for some people because they don't know how to be with a different kind of person but I also feel like um you want to make sure that you have figured out your unfinished business that you're not just you don't just have radar for the kind of person who hurt you So what often happens is people haven't processed whatever it was that they wanted more of or less of when they were growing up And then they go out into the world and they're looking for a partner and they literally have radar for a person who is exactly like
• 16:00 - 16:30 the person who hurt them but doesn't look like that So it's like I'm going to choose someone who is the opposite of the parent who hurt me and then you find this person and after you get to know them a little bit you're like wow that person drinks a lot too I didn't realize that or that person is really withholding too I didn't see that at first Or that person yells a lot I didn't notice that at first And you're like how did I get into this exact situation that hurt me as a child And
• 16:30 - 17:00 that's because your unconscious is saying you look familiar Come closer Because what we're trying to do is we're trying to win We're trying to master a situation where we felt helpless as a child We couldn't control the situation with our parents when we were growing up And now we think again this is completely outside of our awareness I'm going to win this time I'm going to master this I'm going to get love from that kind of person and it doesn't work out So I think that you really want to make sure that you are choosing someone
• 17:00 - 17:30 for healthy reasons and not because there's some unfinished business that you're trying to work out with this person who is not going to meet your needs to go a little bit further into this idea which by the way I fully subscribe to um based on your explanation of this and um my belief that our unconscious mind is driving a lot of our choices My understanding is that what you just described doesn't adhere to mom dad male female um
• 17:30 - 18:00 compartmentalization And what I mean by that is that I think a lot of people will hear what you just said and assume okay if my dad hurt me in the following ways then and let's say it's a woman and she said you know my dad hurt me in the following ways he was a drinker withdrawn or he was violent or whatever then uh that woman will seek out men that mimic that here I'm assuming a heterosexual relationship but if her mother was the one that was
• 18:00 - 18:30 the drinker violent andor withdrawn and she's heterosexual My understanding is based on the dynamics that you describe if she will find those traits in a man yes because she's heterosexual she's seeking men for romantic partners And I think that's very important I think that sometimes we put the the mom dad um labels on top of the the uh attraction to again staying in the heterosexual framework here um the opposite sex
• 18:30 - 19:00 framework and then people say well why is it that this woman always seeks out these like what end up being really terrible guys like she had such a great dad but she had a dreadful mom That is absolutely correct And I think it's so interesting because I think that people think that having one parent that gave you what you needed is protective And in some ways it is but the thing that hurts is the thing that gets the most attention inside of our bodies So we don't necessarily think it but we felt
• 19:00 - 19:30 it We internalized it It lives inside of us And so yes having a good parent one of the two if you have two parents one of the two is important but it's interesting that it's not like we seek out the person that like the good parent always sometimes again because we're trying to work something out We seek out someone like the parent who really hurt us So such a flaw in our wiring Well I mean I think that's where therapy is really helpful I think that's where you
• 19:30 - 20:00 know people are like well what is therapy really for And I think it's really about what are the things that are outside of your awareness but that are sort of driving the car So it's like we think we're the driver of our own car but often like someone else is driving the car and we don't realize it and we think why does this keep happening or or you know what is happening in my life that I'm not getting what I want in you know whatever dimension it is whether it's professionally or personally and so often it's because there's some force that you are acting out that you don't
• 20:00 - 20:30 even realize and I think the role of therapy is to kind of hold up a mirror to people and help them to see something about themselves that they haven't been willing or able to see You said that um people will pick um the person who's exactly wrong for them who feels exactly right at least at first Um that it has this kind of um come here uh this summoning uh aspect to it like we feel drawn to it It feels drawn to us I mean
• 20:30 - 21:00 that's how relationships start after all one would hope Um but in this case um you said that people come to find that that person is exact harbors some of the exact same traits I'm calling them that behaviors traits So you know whatever it is that hurt them in in the context of their uh child parent relationship Why do you think um initially it presents as the opposite I
• 21:00 - 21:30 think it's about the the familiarity that there's something so visceral about this feels like childhood and even if childhood was not optimal or even miserable it still feels familiar And humans in general are very afraid of uncertainty They're very afraid of the unfamiliar I remember when when I was in therapy my therapist said to me you know you remind me of this cartoon and it's of a prisoner shaking the bars desperately trying to get out But on the
• 21:30 - 22:00 right and the left it's open No bars right So why do we stay in this prison Why don't we walk Why don't we even see that it's open And why don't we walk around the bars And it's because with freedom comes responsibility and uncertainty We don't know what's We know what it's like to be in prison That's that's been our experience So that feels comfortable even though we say we desperately want to get out And then if we choose the uncertain path we're responsible for our lives now We can't
• 22:00 - 22:30 blame it on mom or dad or this situation or that situation I'm not saying those situations weren't impactful Of course they were But we have choices as an adult We have freedom as an adult that we didn't have as a child And sometimes it's really hard for us to say "I'm going to have to be responsible for my life." That's terrifying because we feel like we don't have the tools to do that We feel like again the uncertainty We'd rather have the certainty of like I know what it's like in prison At least I'm I know what that's like and I know you know the devil you know and that's not
• 22:30 - 23:00 again that's outside of our awareness I think what you're describing is a um is a pervasive feature of like being human If I may uh there's this uh kid he's now a young adult but um I've watched grow up from a very young age who got into college He was doing really well Then he fell in love He made the decision to leave school The relationship ended and was talking to him recently and he's kind of in this kind of dizzying spin of
• 23:00 - 23:30 like thinking about how great things were how he blew it and he's young I'm like "Listen you're good Like he he didn't drop out He just withdrew he can go back and you know he'll find another relationship But um you know and I empathize with him but um I passed something along to him that was actually discussed on a uh by a former guest on this podcast who was a former child chess prodigy has gone on to do a number of things and he said exactly what you're saying which is in a different context He said um we get so attached to
• 23:30 - 24:00 our current identity and our past identity and trying to resolve those that we're more willing to stay in that state of discomfort than we are to step into a path of potential success right It makes no sense right I mean and so I pass this along We'll see what he does with it with it with that knowledge Yes It's kind of like the the misery of uncertainty The certainty of misery is sometimes more palatable to people than the misery
• 24:00 - 24:30 of uncertainty So you can be certain that you're going to stay miserable if you stay in jail but the the misery of uncertainty is worse So it's it's really interesting that people will make that tradeoff And the other thing about this attraction question that you're asking about it's like I had this therapy client and she would pick people who were exactly like one or both of her parents and she would be so attracted to those guys She would always go for them
• 24:30 - 25:00 and she's like "Men are terrible Guys are terrible." It's like "No no no The men you're choosing are are terrible to you." But then you go out on dates with these like great guys and she's like "Yeah no chemistry No chemistry." Yeah Let's talk about that What what what is the the flip side of this The lack of of interest in somebody that doesn't um overtly or uh covertly harbor the the the painful thing that you're so used to right So so that's the thing She was working out this this way of she hadn't separated yet from her childhood So she
• 25:00 - 25:30 was trying to kind of reenact her childhood reenact her childhood with these men And she didn't realize she was doing that She'd just be like "Oh I'm so attracted to this person." or things like you know I just I like this guy so much I don't know why he doesn't call when he says he will right And it's like well who is that like Who does that remind you of When have you felt that before that like I never know where I stand with this parent with this boyfriend And then the people who were really reliable who by
• 25:30 - 26:00 the way it wasn't about their physical traits like these men were all physically attractive It was she felt no sort of again that word chemistry because there's something very threatening about like oh there's no friction It's a frictionless you know thing where he says he's going to call and he does He's reliable He does what he says he's going to do I don't know what to do with that It just it doesn't like light her up in that way because she's not having that big emotional reaction to it because it doesn't feel
• 26:00 - 26:30 like the thing that would give her a big emotional reaction And so once she sort of works that through by the end of the therapy she became very attracted to the kinds of guys who would treat her the way she wanted to be treated And she was no longer attracted to the guys that she so she'd get that initial kind of like oh I feel something when I'm in the presence of a guy like that but I'm I'm not really interested in a relationship with that kind of guy So that's I think what therapy can do for people Yeah One
• 26:30 - 27:00 of the things that I've noticed in my own life is that as I've gotten older I'll be 50 later this year Um been looking forward to that I feel great But um some of the things that I assumed for so many years like slow is low like when things are really slow like it for many years it felt kind of depressive Now I love slow mellow like peace is the
• 27:00 - 27:30 thing that I'm just I savor so much But for so many years I think what you're describing that sort of activation state of excitement I was a pretty wild youth and then you know I mean I like adventure and I'd taken on at times dangerous adventures that I shouldn't have Lived told myself I wouldn't do them again Picked a different adventure But even in like my scientific career or podcasting things that feel at times like a bit of a tightroppe walk just given the number of variables that I can't control just by virtue of what
• 27:30 - 28:00 they are and the challenge of like long cycles of trying to publish like the they they're kind of scary at some level It's your profession after all But I did the same thing in a lot of my relationships Lovely people in some cases some cases not but in most cases fortunately for me um lovely people But but there was this sense that like um if something felt like a little bit of an upstate kind of like a bit more of autonomic arousal or a lot more autonomic arousal that it had this um
• 28:00 - 28:30 kind of magnetic quality to it Whereas I think um and I'm not joking or lying here I think owning a bulldog taught me how to really savor relaxing I'm not saying this just to highlight Costello again And I mean I observed his relationship to the world and that the bulldog's contract with its owner is is an amazing one that I think I learned a lot from The contract is I will die for you I will literally give up my life to protect you Andrew
• 28:30 - 29:00 But if that's not on the line I'm not going to do anything We're just going to sit here and enjoy the sunshine right We're just going to breathe and we're going to eat food right Friends are coming over and I'll get excited And you know and I'm not I'm not trying to make too much of this I I really noticed I was like "Wow he needs so little to be blissful." And yet I know that if like push came to shove like he's on my side we've got each other's backs Yeah As opposed to let's talk about a more human contract of like
• 29:00 - 29:30 this picture or story of of a couple that they have about themselves Ride or die is something people say a lot nowadays It's beautiful concept right loyalty like you're in it together no matter what But there's a calm version of that like ride or die and then there's like ride or die like like we'll take on anything We'll we'll bring in chaos we'll be the chaos and we just don't quit Mhm Very different activation states Oh absolutely And it took me 49 years to learn this I see it in
• 29:30 - 30:00 professional relationships too People want the exciting thing the big build and then they're like it's the chaos of like oh this founder left and this person And it's like well of course it started in drama it's going to end in drama Does this some of this resonate Yeah absolutely I mean two things One is that there's this concept of cherophobia which is um kind of fear of joy And so so many people um because they grew up in a way where whenever let's say the parent was reliable um in moments right like at certain times and then they were
• 30:00 - 30:30 unreliable or they were really calm but then they would blow up and you never knew what was going to happen It was like you were walking on eggshells the whole time right So you're very afraid of anything that goes well You think the other shoe is going to drop like at any moment So you're you're you don't want to pick something that and again again outside of your awareness like you don't pick the calm partner because it feels too good like something's going to go wrong So I'll pick the volatile partner because I'm I'm prepared I'm prepared for that level of volatility right And
• 30:30 - 31:00 so people sabotage all the time whether it's about a job or a partner or you know whatever they want They think I am not going to go there because it's not safe to feel joy because something will go wrong and I will be crushed and it will be harder to have the experience of joy and to have it crushed than to never feel the joy So there was a woman that I wrote about in my book who she just she wouldn't let herself feel any joy or get
• 31:00 - 31:30 excited about a partner or excited about she wanted to be an artist and and doing her art and things were going really well and then she she'd self-sabotage ra it's like I would you can't fire me I quit right It's like I'm going to create the bad thing to happen to myself because if it happens from the universe it's going to feel even worse So I think we need to kind of really be aware there are lots of people out there who are terrified of good things happening even though they say they desperately want good things to happen
• 31:30 - 32:00 and so they make bad things happen or they make sure good things don't happen to them because it feels so uncomfortable to sit in that space of the other shoe's going to drop at any moment and I can't deal with that But the other thing I want to say about this this slow burn type of thing is there was a study that was done that I wrote about in one of my books where they did a longitudinal study and they looked at people over 20 years and they followed up with them every 5 years from the first date to where they are later and they had them instead of like historically saying you know when you ask people in relationships and you say
• 32:00 - 32:30 what was it like when you first met and they'll tell you some story but it's retrospective It's not like you weren't there at the time you're sort of telling it through the lens of where you are now What was great about this study was people wrote down at the time here's what here's how I feel So people who were let's say got married and were happy would say almost unilaterally like there was so much chemistry We had such a good time on the first date It was amazing Whereas at the time they might have said like "Yeah it was okay Maybe
• 32:30 - 33:00 I'll see this person again Fine." Like no butterflies or you know whatever But that's not the story they're telling themselves about it Now people who either are unhappily together or no longer together would say "Yeah there was nothing there There was no chemistry I didn't really like the person." By the time they might have said like "Wow I'm really interested in this person It was like we had so much chemistry." So we change our stories based on our present experience And we think we're telling an
• 33:00 - 33:30 accurate version of what actually happened And the reason I bring this up is because since people who are sort of happy couples tell these stories to other people we think in our culture that if you go on a first date and you don't have that immediate spark that it's not worth it like don't go on a second date And what happens is sometimes a lot of the time when you have that immediate spark it doesn't mean what you think it means It's not that a spark is bad It means that you really need to see what it means And
• 33:30 - 34:00 it's not that not having a spark is bad If you go on a date and you feel like I it was a like nice conversation I had a good enough time Go spend another hour with this person Just go on another date with them and see what happens But we don't do that because we have this illusion that you can just go back on an app or there's so many people out there And so we try to optimize as opposed to saying "What would it be like I had a I had I felt good when I was with this
• 34:00 - 34:30 person And I didn't feel that rush but I felt pretty good So I think I'll go see what that's like again And that should be our bar Not like do I feel this rush Do I feel like this is amazing But did I have a good enough time Sure let me go see what that's like Yeah one certainly wouldn't want to be bored in somebody else's presence Um but calm seems like a good uh touch point Yes to look for as opposed to this
• 34:30 - 35:00 activation state You know I maybe it's the neurobiologist in me and I'm guilty of also working on this autonomic arousal thing for so many years This seessaw in us of being like upstates that can either be stress or bliss and down states which can either be depression and fatigue or can just be like pleasant relaxation Like the label becomes critical right Alert and stressed versus alert and elated is very different Same level of alertness two very different things same you know depressed versus peaceful when relaxed
• 35:00 - 35:30 you know um and looking for or or trying to figure out what sorts of interactions um bring about that that kind of even seesaw might be best Not one or the other Maybe a little airing even a little bit more towards peace Yes Um and when I see couples who come in and they've been married for a long time now and they say you know well I'll say the what is the origin story How did you meet What was that like what were you attracted to in the other person And so often I'll hear words like it was so
• 35:30 - 36:00 exciting I found this person so exciting Um and it's like that's the very thing that what you thought was excitement was actually volatility or was actually sort of anxiety as opposed to that sense of you can be calm and feel excited about the other person So we're talking about a neurological state right your nervous system and then we're talking about your interpretation of what that means So
• 36:00 - 36:30 sometimes calmness is exciting Sometimes excitement is anxietyprovoking And so you have to be able to tell the difference between the two Yeah I'll just say yes and yes to both those statements I I think um I think peace is it's not everything but it's um it's necessary but not sufficient as we say If I may I'd like to get um kind of uh a little deep and abstract along this dimension of um why
• 36:30 - 37:00 people are so much more willing to stay in a state that doesn't feel good versus risk um the unknown and the opportunity to win in relationship in in life in career etc because I do I do believe that I happen to be reading it's a hard book a genuinely difficult book but I'm really enjoying it um I'm reading Erns Becker's the denial of death highly recommend it to everyone a Pulitzer
• 37:00 - 37:30 after all you don't need my endorsement and you know I mean the the central thesis of the book right is that we're a weird species because we understand that we're going to die at some point we're all going to die and that they that humans go through these very complicated gymnastics related the ego and symbols and we create notions of meaning and story to try and distract us basically from this really scary reality It's terrifying right It's terrifying Nobody really understands or knows what happens next We can't be sure
• 37:30 - 38:00 And I have this idea in mind as you're telling me that indeed people are willing to stay in a set of circumstances that don't work for them even ruminating on the mistakes that got them there for a very long time willingly when all they need to do is make some new choices that they're fully capable of making And I wonder whether or not it's because they're alive now They know they're quote unquote safe now Like they're not dead I mean the number of people I know who
• 38:00 - 38:30 stayed in circumstances that didn't work for them for so long professionally relationally it's like how do they do that And I understand sometimes there's kids sometimes there's financial issues but there's it's always the case that um they've eventually gotten out thank goodness and they always say "I wish I' I had done it so much earlier." And I wonder whether or not as as a biological and psychological being we we do this because we're thinking "Well I'm alive now Oh I'm breathing now I'm quote
• 38:30 - 39:00 unquote safe now but I don't know what's going to happen if I make this other choice Like it defies logic But at the at the same time if one just assumes that our like our biggest fear deep down in our unconscious is fear of death we'll pretty much stay anywhere where we're continuing to be alive and not like in the moment of fearing death Sorry to get a little philosophical here but but I think this unconscious thing we make a lot has been made of it the word means okay well we don't it's happening but we don't know what's happening but like what are we really
• 39:00 - 39:30 afraid of and I I do think ultimately we're all just really afraid of death I don't think we're afraid of death I think we're afraid of not having lived so what I mean by that is I think we deny death we're all sort of death deniers like we know it's out there somewhere but we don't know when or how it's going to happen and so we just pretend because there's no real no pun intended but deadline right and so we just think sort of we know intellectually we don't have forever but we kind of think we do And so when you
• 39:30 - 40:00 think about sort of the stages of psychosocial development you know you start with um you know these these conflicts that you have to work through at every stage of life And sort of the the one where you're sort of the last stage is integrity versus despair So integrity is if you have lived a life where you don't have a lot of regret You feel like you lived the kind of life that you wanted You accomplished the things that you wanted to accomplish for the most part Whether that's relationally professionally some combination there Um you you have a
• 40:00 - 40:30 sense of integrity at the end of your life If you didn't you have this sense of despair People who work through that and have integrity are not afraid of death The people who are in despair are very afraid of death because they have so many regrets and they can't go back You don't get a redo And so I like to in psychotherapy really remind people that they need to keep death awareness sitting on one shoulder Not to be morbid
• 40:30 - 41:00 but to actually make you live more fully If you are aware of death if you really look death right in the eye you have more intentionality When you wake up every day you say "I don't have forever." So it's not like sometime in the future I might die It's like you could die today tomorrow you you know anything could happen Um and and I think you know when I saw I write about this in my book where I was seeing this woman who was in her early 30s and she was diagnosed with cancer and everyone thought she was going to be fine and
• 41:00 - 41:30 then there was this sort of rare recurrence and um and she was newly married and her whole life was like turned upside down and she really made me as the therapist look death in the eye in that way You know how like you want to say something like you know she was talking about the things that people would say to her because we all have this death denial and they would say "Did you get a second opinion?" as if no she's not going to get a second opinion about whether she's going to die right Um you know they'll say things like
• 41:30 - 42:00 "Well these experimental treatments might work." You know anything to deny the reality that she was going to die and very soon And nobody wanted to sit with her in that And it was my job to do that even her husband had had trouble sort of sitting with her in that in the beginning right Um and and there was this one moment this beautiful moment between them that she came in and told me about where he was like you know uh doing something and trying to relax and and he was a great like incredibly
• 42:00 - 42:30 supportive of her And she came in and said "Hey there's this thing and and I I read about this and I want to talk to you about this." and and he said like "Can't we just have one night off from cancer?" And she said "I don't get any nights off from cancer There's no nights off." Right And I understand both perspectives on that But it brought up this beautiful conversation between them that really helped them to think about how much do we let death in and how much
• 42:30 - 43:00 do we let sort of life or what whatever's left in and how do we let death inform the aliveness that we still have So I think it's really important that you know when why do people stay in relationships too long Why did they stay in jobs too long Why do they make choices that are not serving them and that they will later regret It's because they are in full-blown death denial And I think when people really acknowledge
• 43:00 - 43:30 their mortality um it's one of the most healthy invigorating things that they can bring into their lives When people say "What is the opposite of depression?" It's not happiness It's vitality And where do we get vitality from knowing that we have a limited time here and we get to choose how we spend it I agree 100% Um this is something I think about constantly although I've never looked at it through the lens that you
• 43:30 - 44:00 just presented it and I I love uh what I just learned from you which is um that vitality is the is the the state the state of of being vitality is so key I um I think about death um probably more than I should um because for a kid who wasn't from the inner city or in the military I've just had a lot of friends die a lot of suicides a lot of drug stuff unfortunately and all three of my scientific adviserss suicide cancer
• 44:00 - 44:30 cancer I was very close with all of them and uh only I got to say goodbye to the second one That was a rough conversation anyone that's ever had a conversation with somebody where it's a goodbye conversation I had to do the like this is it and that you know and it was brutal but I'm you know I don't want to well up I've cried before on this podcast I don't feel like doing it today I don't have problem crying in uh from time to time on camera but I don't want the this the uh plotline here to shift too much But I started after that
• 44:30 - 45:00 conversation to adopt a practice I I do this yoga nidra non-sleep deep breath thing every day uh for about 10 to 30 minutes and there's this moment right at the beginning you're supposed to take a deep breath and then a long exhale to relax your body and then you go into listening to the script and um ever since that conversation I've insisted on uh doing that and as I do it I remind myself this is if I'm awake or if it's not an accident that happens very fast
• 45:00 - 45:30 this is probably what it's going to feel like to like die And so just trying to like I'm so I I like this idea of readying myself for death every day Um as a means to access what you're talking about which is a trying to live better right Again not to be morbid just try to like yes I'm like a biological vessel At some point my body my brain or both will just give out or I'll bullet buster cancer is kind of what I always say Something will take me out and there'll be this final and that's it And the closer that I feel
• 45:30 - 46:00 like that we can get to that understanding and be like "Okay super scary and I'm not there now so I'm going to go back into the world and do the best I can." And it doesn't have to be scary It sounds like you're aiming toward an acceptance of death which is I think the the way that we get motivated to live So it's not fear of death That's not what I'm suggesting at all I don't think we should be afraid of death I think we should say we get this precious time however long we get everybody gets
• 46:00 - 46:30 their own amount of time on you know in this life and so it's an acceptance of that it's not a fear of that and and I think about how when people are afraid of death they they do things that are counterproductive like a lot of affairs happen in the wake of a death so a parent dies and somebody then feels like oh I don't have a lot of time left am I really happy in this relationship am I really alive am I really living and then they go and do something like have an
• 46:30 - 47:00 affair because they want that sense of vitality because they're doing it out of fear not out of oh I accept that death is a part of our existence and if I'm not feeling alive is it because of my relationship or my marriage or is it because I am not actively doing things in my life to create that sense of vitality So very often in the wake of some kind of brush with death like some kind of closeness like maybe you had a brush
• 47:00 - 47:30 with death or maybe a parent died or someone close to you died or a friend or a sibling So often people act out and they do these things to create this sense of I'm alive Um as opposed to saying wait what do I need to look at in my life that will make me feel more alive that is not self-sabotaging I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor AG1 AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens I started
• 47:30 - 48:00 taking AG1 way back in 2012 long before I even knew what a podcast was I started taking it and I still take it every single day because it ensures that I meet my quota for daily vitamins and minerals and it helps make sure that I get enough prebiotics and probiotics to support my gut health Over the past 10 years gut health has emerged as something that we realize is important not only for the health of our digestion but also for our immune system and for the production of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators things like dopamine and serotonin In other words gut health is
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• 49:00 - 49:30 have been shown to help with everything from mood and brain health to heart health and healthy hormone production and much more Again that's drinkaga1.com/huberman to get the free 1 month supply of omega-3 fish oil plus a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 with your subscription Today's episode is also brought to us by David David makes a protein bar unlike any other It has 28 g of protein only 150 calories and 0 g of sugar That's right 28 g of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein
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• 50:30 - 51:00 davidprotein.com/huberman Gosh so much to go into here Um this thing about vitality is is so key A friend recently said to me something He I was talking about how gosh there's like these certain interactions in life that are like uh I feel like they like pull me in I don't like them and then it just like really takes away from what I know I should be doing And but um and he said "You know you have to do things that energize you." Mhm And immediately I
• 51:00 - 51:30 thought "Yes and be very careful about the things that activate us." Like there's this difference between activation and being being activated versus being energized I mean it's a little bit semantic right But I feel like something that energizes me is like I love seeopods I used to have cuttlefish in my lab I I love octopuses And by the way it's octopuses is the plural folks Not octopi We'd go into a whole thing here but I won't Um and you know looking at a a one of those guys or
• 51:30 - 52:00 gals solving a puzzle like just energizes me in a way I feel it in my body It's energy that I can use for other things It's you know it's like an inspiration for me Um and there are many other things that do that Uh and then there are things that activate us like where we it's a it's like a stress response It's arousal but it's negative veilance right It's draining It's like pulling and it's and it's taking from these things that energize us And I feel like it's it's being able to notice those subtleties is hard in real time
• 52:00 - 52:30 And um but I feel like vitality is about the things that energize us right And so when you talk about that draining kind of activation sometimes what we do when that happens is we go numb right So we don't want to feel anything So you know there's this great expression that the like scrolling through the internet when people mindlessly do that it's a colleague of mine said it's the most effective non-prescription painkiller out there Can you repeat that because I want people to understand this So yeah So it's the most effective non-prescription painkiller out there
• 52:30 - 53:00 right And so it's interesting when you think about numbness because people think that numbness is the absence of feelings but actually numbness is the sense of being overwhelmed by too many feelings And so you're shutting down So when people say "Oh I'm numb I'm not feeling anything." Actually you're feeling so much and you're feeling flooded You're feeling overwhelmed And so we need to figure out what are you feeling So it's it's actually a state of
• 53:00 - 53:30 arousal that you you're you can't handle And so then you're shutting down But it's not that you're not having feelings You're having so many feelings that you can't tolerate it And that is not you know that is not the you know people say "Oh I'm I'm feeling numb I'm feeling nothing." No we need to figure out what is so overwhelming to your nervous system right now Gosh that's so important I hope people will listen to that hundred times Um because you know we've heard so much about dopamine hits that I think people have lost sight of
• 53:30 - 54:00 the fact that when you're online and you're just a wash in all this information and videos you're you're not getting those hits you're in the postdopamine hit trough and we've been there for a long period of time unless we you know unless we're uh judicious about our use of social media an hour or 3 minutes or 15 minutes whatever it is but hours upon hours there's there's no dopamine hit anymore the peak is gone you're in the trough and that's why it feels kind of like how did all that time go by the importance of this really can't be overstated I I think that we
• 54:00 - 54:30 hear so much about fight or flight and the stress response that I think people forget Yet that another component of the stress response of drama of of you know being a wash in all this information and like movies and and politics and violence and sex and all that stuff coming at us at once as we just scroll our thumbs is this thing of brachiardia you know there's this phenomenon where when we're stressed our heart rate
• 54:30 - 55:00 actually slows down And that's the kind of the kind of numbing and you just kind of you're just kind of blanking out And um I think that's a lot of what people are starting to experience with a lot of high drama input Yeah I see that in couples a lot where they come in and one person is saying you know like I feel nothing I don't know what this other person's so upset about Right And then when you really get into it it's like this person's feeling all kinds of things And it's really important that we
• 55:00 - 55:30 understand you know when we are shut down versus when we are calm Those are two very different states Could you um go into that a little bit further Yeah Well here's an example So a couple comes in Let's say it's a heterosexual couple but it could be any couple Often it is the woman in the couple who will say something to her partner like "I just feel like I can't reach you I feel like we're very disconnected I want you to tell me how you feel." And because of
• 55:30 - 56:00 our cultural stigma around men showing emotion he has told himself like "Yeah this bothers me or that bothers me or I'm unhappy in this way but I don't feel anything I'm fine Our marriage is good." So he doesn't even understand why he's there um and he thinks he's there for her because she insisted on it And so when we finally get to maybe something that he's feeling and he finally does open up it's so interesting because maybe he's sharing something very
• 56:00 - 56:30 vulnerable or maybe he tears up a little bit So there you can tell like your body will tell you what you're feeling even if you aren't aware of it You see okay there's some moisture there in his eyes or maybe a tear falls or maybe he actually starts crying And her reaction and her whole reason for bringing him in was you know I need you to open up to me I want to feel connected to you I want to understand your inner life more Well he does it And she then looks at me like a deer in headlights like "Oh wow I don't feel safe when he doesn't open up
• 56:30 - 57:00 to me but I also don't feel safe when he's being vulnerable in this way." And these are sort of gender stereotypes that we think we might not fall prey to but we do And so it's so interesting that often men are the ones who seem sort of numb or calm right Which are two again very different things in the relationship But that's not really the case It's that there's no room for him to express anything So he has to kind of
• 57:00 - 57:30 push everything down probably again outside of his awareness And then the couple feels disconnected and both of them are unhappy this idea that more words means more emotional I don't buy it Yeah exactly Um you know it's interesting because men will come in if I'm seeing them alone and they'll often say something like "I've never told anyone this before." And they literally mean "I've never told anyone this before." Because when men hang out
• 57:30 - 58:00 they're not it's not the same sort of level of let's talk talk talk right Um women will come in and say something like "I've never told anyone this before except for my mother my sister my best friend." Right So they've told maybe one two or three people but they feel like they haven't told anyone because for women that's kind of not telling anyone Well now you have people concerned So if somebody if a woman says uh to me um I didn't tell anyone that means she only told four people I don't mean secrets I
• 58:00 - 58:30 don't mean secrets I mean like something about themselves where they feel maybe hesitant to share that or they feel ashamed about that um or they're not sure about something So you can see that difference But I also think it it it happens very early So I'm the mom of a boy I mean he's now a teenager But it's interesting cuz when I I didn't notice this till I was raising a boy and I grew up with a brother but I didn't notice it that um when he let's say he would like
• 58:30 - 59:00 fall on the playground right And like at like 2 or 3 years old um everybody would say to him or the boys around him like "Oh it's fine Brush it off You're good You're good." Right Even if he was like in pain And if a girl falls and she's in pain at that age they're like "Oh honey come here How are you Let's see how are you feeling about this Are you hurt Are you okay So very early on they get these messages like girls can talk about it boys can't talk about it I remember when my my son was he was a basketball player
• 59:00 - 59:30 and and um in high school and um he had or this was in actually middle school and in a practice he got you know pushed down and his arm was kind of like not right and you know everyone was like get back up just get it's fine Well his arm is like hanging off right And so you know I was like "No I think he know needs to go to the ER." And of course he was mortified that I said that but in fact he had broken his arm So that's the difference If a girl had fallen down and
• 59:30 - 60:00 her arm was like that people would say like "Oh why don't you get it checked out?" So what happens when these people get into adult relationships and this was what they were told about words and talking about things um you really see those differences But the other thing I want to say about words is women are brought up to think that whenever you have a feeling you should share it And my response to that is no So and people say "What do you mean you're a therapist What do you mean don't share your
• 60:00 - 60:30 feelings?" You don't need to share every thought or feeling that crosses your mind unfiltered with your partner That is not healthy communication Healthy communication means we have filters and we get to think about and we call it mentalizing how will what I'm about to say land on the other person It's not like you're regurgitating all of your thoughts onto the other person They're just supposed to deal with them It's about relationally thinking how will
• 60:30 - 61:00 this person respond to that Not like you have to take care of their feelings but is it kind Is it true Is it useful Does it meet those three criteria And if it doesn't why am I talking Why am I sharing this You said it not me Um but I'll wager a theory Mhm That I think that some people when they feel something um it the the kind of uh relief that
• 61:00 - 61:30 comes from evacuating Yeah that feeling or trying to evacuate it with words feels reflexively better to them than sitting with it internally Right So I think people when when they feel an emotion I think sometimes they they feel like if they just talk about it or evacuate it then it's like get they get rid of it but they forget that it has an impact Yes Yes And and what you're talking about is is projective identification So a projection right is
• 61:30 - 62:00 when um you like you're feeling angry about something Say you had like your boss did something to you at work and you know they they they upset you in some way or they were you know unkind and you're angry about or they going to make you work all night and you're really pissed about that right So you're angry so you come home and you end up um you know yelling at your partner right So you're projecting you're really mad at your boss but all of a sudden you're
• 62:00 - 62:30 like yelling at your partner you're angry at your partner That's projection You're projecting one feeling about someone onto a different person that had nothing to do with the situation Projective identification is a psychological process where you actually insert your feeling into the other person So you're angry about something that happened at work It's not that you are now angry at your partner It's that you make your partner angry It's like a hot potato Like you take your feelings and you toss them to someone else because you can't tolerate the
• 62:30 - 63:00 discomfort of that feeling So I don't want to deal with the feeling So I'm going to say something to you that's going to make you angry right And now they have to hold all the anger You feel great You're fine because you're not holding the anger anymore And now they're the ones who can't sleep They're the ones who are upset They're the ones who have to deal with what you couldn't tolerate So it again we have to think about you know do we need to like why are we saying what we're saying Can we be more intentional about how we communicate Which doesn't mean you have to walk through a minefield It just
• 63:00 - 63:30 means that you have to be more aware of your feeling state and owning your feeling state and making sure that you aren't using other people in your environment to release your feeling state to something else that you need to learn how you can shift your own feeling state to one that feels better for you I love that I um I realized recently that thinking is something that we can practice M I I for all the tools and
• 63:30 - 64:00 protocols that you know talked about on this podcast and elsewhere you know like physiological size and morning sunlight and working out and zone 2 cardio and cold and you know all the things I I realized um recently like spending five minutes just thinking about something and really trying to work through it linearly um like a like a challenge like a life challenge is so valuable
• 64:00 - 64:30 Um and I didn't come up with this on my own I now have a practice of of like when something feels irritating or activating I'll just like stop put everything away and I just sit and think like what's going on here And um inevitably there's some like some growth in understanding at the end of that But it's hard work like to think like what's going on here Am I activated because it's like true Am I activated because it's false Am I you know like having a sort all that you might think well who has the time for this but actually I would argue you
• 64:30 - 65:00 don't have the time to not do it I think that's the difference between reacting and responding So often what we do is we react to something and that's not processed not thought through And again it doesn't have to take like you're saying it doesn't have to take a long time to just even count to five and breathe and see you know cuz reacting reacting means acting again So you are normally when you're reacting and it's like that 0 to 60 you're acting on something that happened in the past and
• 65:00 - 65:30 you're layering it on to whatever's happening in the present So you're having a big reaction to something We like to say if it's historical it's if it's hysterical it's historical Meaning if you're and by hysterical I mean if you're having a big reaction there's probably something from your past some reaction that is visceral to you that you're having that is getting layered on to this current situation experience problem and you don't realize it So that's reacting You're acting again You're acting on something that happened
• 65:30 - 66:00 in the past If it's hysterical it's historical responding is I'm going to take a breath I'm having a big reaction I'm going to sit for a minute Again regulating your nervous system And now I can kind of think about this differently So we need space between you know there's that famous Victor Frankle quote of you know between stimulus and response there is a space and in that space lies our choice and our freedom Um that's a paraphrase of it But you need that space between the stimulus whatever
• 66:00 - 66:30 the thing is that activated you and your response So that's the difference between reacting and responding I totally agree And yet life happens in real time I mean parents with kids they got to pick them up and they're working and there's stuff coming through on the phone My question is do you think nowadays there's too much um communication bombardment through text social media um phone and real life that
• 66:30 - 67:00 we we've eliminated all the space I think what we've eliminated is there's so much more space in a face-to-face conversation So when I have young therapy clients who are you know maybe in their early 20s and I I had one client who was telling me this story in therapy a while ago and now I understand what this means but this was several years ago And she was telling it like this She had her thumbs in the air and she said "And then I said and then he said and then I said and I'm thinking
• 67:00 - 67:30 what is she doing?" And then I I realized I said "Wait you had this conversation on text?" And she said "Yes." Yes And it was really important conversation And I said I was trying to explain to her why they were missing certain cues They were missing what it feels like to be in the space together They were missing the experience of looking in each other's eyes of seeing facial expressions and body language And she said "Oh no but we also used emojis." And I had to explain to her why an emoji does not replace face-toface
• 67:30 - 68:00 interaction Face to face interaction slows you down right you can just text anything and you don't realize there's another person at the other side of this on their phone who is reacting to your reaction And I think that you know this is when we go back to comment sections We don't realize like there's another person out there We know that But when there are so many times that we would have a very different kind of conversation with our partner with family members with friends in our
• 68:00 - 68:30 workplace um in comment sections if we could remember that there's a human there and the easiest way to do that is to see someone like this looking across the table at you We can't always do that But I think when there you're having important conversations that we should remember wait this probably isn't appropriate to talk about on text Even though people think that well of course it's so much more efficient Actually it's not because now you're going to have conflict Now you're going to have
• 68:30 - 69:00 misunderstandings and now you're going to spend all this time trying to repair the rupture that just happened because you had the conversation on text I refuse to argue over text Yes I just won't have an argument over text And I'll say to people you know because like I have a client and and he's always sort of he says "Well I just get pulled into it with my girlfriend." And I'm like "Really Does somebody have a gun to your head?" Right And and this is where I think change You know we talk about what we want to accomplish in therapy And it's change It's not just coming in and
• 69:00 - 69:30 downloading the problem of the week and leaving and downloading the problem of the week again and leaving I like to say that insight is the booby prize of therapy that you can have all the insight in the world but if you don't make change out in the world the insight is useless So someone will say "Oh I got into that argument with my you know whoever my partner over the weekend and I'll say "Well did you do something different?" They'll say "Well no but I understand why." Great That's good that you understand why but you need to do something different because we're all
• 69:30 - 70:00 doing this dance with someone else right And if you change your dance steps so people say "I want the other person to change." And I said "Well you can't change the other person but you can influence the other person by making changes yourself." So if you change your dance steps the other person will either have to change their dance steps too because you're not doing that old dance with them anymore or they'll leave the dance floor And people are so afraid the person will leave the dance floor And it's like well if they're not going to dance with you in a way that is the kind
• 70:00 - 70:30 of relationship that you want it's okay that they leave the dance floor Go find someone who will dance with you in the way you want to dance When it comes to behavioral change are you a fan of small onederee turns or um I'll propose an alternative not as a counter but just to explore next But do do you like um do you encourage your clients Do you call them patients or
• 70:30 - 71:00 clients by the way Either I don't think either is a good word I think it's so interesting because I think that it's just we're just humans And I don't mean to sound all woo woo about this but I really feel like the relationship that you have in that room it's so unique And I have not figured out a way to describe it And I don't think client or patient quite does it But for simplicity sake we use either Okay Um thank you I've always wondered about that Um do you recommend that your clients um make specific
• 71:00 - 71:30 subtle changes behavioral changes when they're after they have an insight or maybe even before they have an insight I think the reason that people have so much trouble changing is because the step that they've chosen is too big of a step to take at once That you need small manageable steps And I think people also forget this is why New Year's resolutions tend not to last very long because change is a process And there's a there's a chapter in my book called How Humans Change And I think it's so important for people to understand that
• 71:30 - 72:00 there are stages of change And it starts with pre-contemplation where you don't even realize that you're thinking about making a change You think like something's not right but I don't really need to change Like something's just not right in the world Um you know it's my partner it's my you know it's my child it's my whoever right Um there's then there's contemplation which is oh maybe I could make a change but I'm not quite ready to do it And that's when people usually they come to therapy somewhere
• 72:00 - 72:30 around pre-contemplation and contemplation Like something's not right they come to therapy we get them to contemplation which is like oh maybe I'm contemplating making some changes Um and then there's preparation which is you're taking some steps to prepare for the change So it's not like I'm going to dive into the deep end of the pool It's like oh maybe I need to take some swimming lessons or maybe I need to get a swimsuit or maybe I need you know whatever it is Like I need to prepare to make this change And
• 72:30 - 73:00 then there's action where you actually make the change And people think that's the last step that's action No the last stage is maintenance And maintenance is how do you maintain the change And maintenance does not mean that you are perfectly maintaining the change It's more like shoots and ladders if you remember that game where like kind of you go up and then you go down if you you can make mistakes during this time because you're forming a new habit You're forming a new way of being and until it becomes familiar Going back to our discussion about how the familiar
• 73:00 - 73:30 feels really good to us and the unfamiliar feels really scary The new thing will take a while to feel familiar So let's say that you say like I'm going to eat healthy and that means that I'm not going to you know like eat an entire hogen or something when I'm sad that I'm going to do something different Well sometimes when you're sad you might do that again but then you don't self flagagillate So it's not like oh it failed so forget it I'm not going to like I I failed and I'm not able to make this change No Or you don't say like oh
• 73:30 - 74:00 I'm so terrible and that was awful and I'm so weak Self flagagillation is not helpful Imagine if your kid came to you and they said like "I did really poorly on this test." Are you going to say "You're so stupid." You know like "What's wrong with you?" No you're going to say "Well let's talk about what happened." And they might say "I needed help and I was embarrassed to ask." Or "I didn't understand it." And or "I didn't study I messed up I should have studied and I didn't study." Okay Well what are you going to do differently next time Let's come up with a plan So
• 74:00 - 74:30 you need to have just like you'd have some compassion for your child and hold them accountable both It's hard to hold yourself accountable when you self flagagillate In the short term you can but it doesn't last because it feels so unpleasant You're just sort of bathing in shame What you need is self-compassion And actually if you have more compassion for yourself you're more able to hold yourself accountable So you can say oh you know what happened I was feeling really sad I had this whole pint of hog
• 74:30 - 75:00 and I it's okay that I was sad and there's another way to do this So next time when I'm sad I didn't have enough support so I'm going to call a friend next time Oh self-compassion with accountability or I'm not going to keep the hogands in the house because I know that when I'm sad I'm susceptible to that Maybe one day I'll be able to do it but right now I'm not going to keep that But there's something else I can do which is I really feel like I want for me self-compassion is related to I'm going to give myself a treat So maybe my treat is I'm going to um you know uh I'm
• 75:00 - 75:30 going to have like a healthy snack that I like or maybe my treat is I'm going to go to a movie or you know whatever it is But you have to figure out what works for you and what works for other people might not work for you So it takes a little bit of experimenting So maintenance is this kind of experimentation but having self-compassion with accountability until you find a system that works for you and the new thing becomes a habit It becomes familiar and the thing that you used to do becomes unfamiliar and
• 75:30 - 76:00 doesn't feel good anymore I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors Element Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need but nothing you don't That means the electrolytes sodium magnesium and potassium all in the correct ratios but no sugar Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes The electrolytes sodium magnesium and potassium are vital for
• 76:00 - 76:30 the functioning of all the cells in your body especially your neurons or your nerve cells Drinking element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes I dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning And I drink that basically first thing in the morning I also drink element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes
• 76:30 - 77:00 They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element They have watermelon citrus etc Frankly I love them all If you'd like to try Element you can go to drinkelement.com/huberman to claim a free element sample pack with the purchase of any element drink mix Again that's drinkelement.com/huberman to claim a free sample pack Yeah For so many years the field of psych popular psychology um was obsessed with you know how long does it take to make a change It was like 28 days and it was like 90 as like as
• 77:00 - 77:30 somebody who studies neuroplasticity um I can tell you that there's one trial learning you'll never go back and there's stuff that takes years um it's just depends on the intensity and the consequences right and and even with consequences I mean anyone that's seen somebody relapse from drugs so many times over it's you clearly they're working with more complicated dynamics there I think that um this notion of reinforcing change is is super key I'm really glad you raised Uh I I want to
• 77:30 - 78:00 ask um as a I don't know how to phrase this As a counterpoint or or as an alternative There we go Uh as an alternative to uh onederee shifts or or um I'm somebody that I've always benefited from deadlines I love deadlines Like a deadline is how I get things done and and I just if there's a grant deadline and a paper deadline you know deadlines work Mhm And even if you don't meet them um it's great to see how far off you
• 78:00 - 78:30 were you know if you did your absolute best and how the mistakes you made to lead to the place where you didn't complete things in time It's just I I love deadlines and I love rules And so um I've become a a pretty strict rule enforcer for myself in my life And I think one of the rules that's really helped me in recent times uh with visav relationships has been um no drama Just none Like none I don't
• 78:30 - 79:00 tolerate any drama But that's rigid I realize But it's helpful I'm far happier than I've ever been truly um in large part because of that Like no drama But the thing that I had to accept with a with a hard rule like that is that I'm going to lose people Mhm Like that So earlier you said you know that that this uh patient client you know maybe he doesn't have to put up maybe there's somebody better for him There's someone else out there that you don't that they don't have to deal with I think that one of the things that I notice in my own
• 79:00 - 79:30 past and um with others that I know struggling with with a dynamic with people typically it's romantic relationships but could be anything is you have to be willing to let go You you can't like always resolve the conflict And I find that a lot of people maybe it's this childhood thing They they feel like they have to like remain on great terms or they have to stay friends or they have to put a bow on it And I I so admire the people in life that are like
• 79:30 - 80:00 "Yeah that didn't work Done." Because I look at the time wasted Yes And I think that in our desire to make everything kind of okay in the end we burn valuable life energy and incredibly valuable time And so some people might hear like no drama and think well you're going to lose a bunch of people And I I will Um I I certainly will Um or they'll rise to the occasion or whatever you want to
• 80:00 - 80:30 call it Um but I have a full life of many people with whom I have zero drama and wonderful relationships So I'm full My dance card's full right But I'd rather I'm I feel so so firm about this um given the peace that it's brought me Yeah That I realize like yeah like I may never talk to that person again I might I might not Right But at the first hint of drama like I'm done And and I think it's because um I forced so much
• 80:30 - 81:00 suffering on myself for so long of trying to resolve these things that clearly wouldn't work And uh I don't know I feel immense freedom from it But I think I hear this with other people like "Oh yeah but you know they're gonna change or you know he's gonna stop drinking or not referring to me I'm not a drinker but there was a hard and I quit drinking." Um didn't have a problem with it I just was like I'm done with alcohol Just like that relationship's over Um and they just cling to this like thing
• 81:00 - 81:30 that it's got to like they just won't let go Yeah And and and I don't What is that about Why Why do we hold on to the thing that doesn't work even if we know we're not going to like stay with it Yes What is this obsession It's interesting So um I'm thinking about how when you say no drama um you know what does that actually mean And it's really important because when you look at why people who are most satisfied with their lives um
• 81:30 - 82:00 you know what is it about their lives they're surrounded by people that they feel good about Now let me be clear about what that means So you know we talk about this concept of idiot compassion versus wise compassion Idiot compassion Idiot compassion I love that phrase I don't even know what it means and I love it already So idiot compassion is what if you surround yourself with people who are only going to validate your experience when you say no drama that's not necessarily a great thing So like for example um you know let's say that um you know someone says
• 82:00 - 82:30 to her friends like I don't understand why he broke up with me or I don't understand you know why this keeps happening to me and your friend's like no you go girl he's wrong you're right you know whatever or or you know my partner's doing this and we we tend to kind of feel like our job as a friend is to support the position of our friends That's idiot compassion Wise compassion is what you get in therapy where we say you know like what might be going on here It's kind of like if a fight breaks out in every bar you're going to maybe it's you We don't say that to our
• 82:30 - 83:00 friends in idiot compassion Okay So so think about that So is it that you want no drama meaning you want your friends to kind of back up everything you're saying You're not going to grow as a person You're not going to hear what you need to hear The friends you want to surround yourself with are people who will tell you the truth in a kind respectful way and that you're willing to hear it So some people think that it would be drama if their friends kind of called them on their right Um
• 83:00 - 83:30 that's not drama So that's a healthy communicative open honest relationship I agree By the way I think that my definition of drama is when challenging things are presented in a way that's not uh in effort to resolve Right Right What I'm talking about is evacuative expression Like when things you know um I mean and I'm sort of chuckling on the inside too about this thing about friends I mean I would say my group of friends is they're amazing I'm blessed
• 83:30 - 84:00 with incredible friends and friendships I'm so blessed I only wish I had more time for all of them the um were pretty hard on each other in terms of being very blunt very um like that was dumb is maybe maybe more male specific kind of language like that was dumb Like why'd you do that It was super stupid Or yeah don't be an idiot Don't do it again Or um no I totally disagree That that's a lot of the exchange in my friend group
• 84:00 - 84:30 Um I would say maybe it's just the culture I grew up in in academia very very little validation Validation isn't a big part of it Um but I am also surrounded by people that are very self-critical So it's sort of inherent to the way they work in their work in their relationships in their life in their fitness Like pretty much everyone's pretty get after it right What I'm talking about is when people say no drama what they mean is um don't bring anything up right Don't don't challenge anything don't bring anything to my attention that maybe needs to be
• 84:30 - 85:00 brought to my attention because I could be better in this relationship Um you know to me I think what you're talking about is volatility um which is drama right Like can you express the thing you want to express in a way that feels um like an invitation or like it comes from a place of curiosity as opposed to blame So often people will come at the person and say you did this as opposed to I was confused by what happened back there
• 85:00 - 85:30 What what happened Why you know why did you make that choice or why what happened between us here Can we talk about that So you're being curious about the other person's experience as opposed to blaming the other person and assuming their intentions or why they did something or something about their character So drama tends to be from all the assumptions Like I know that my truth is the right story That's how you would come at that right And yours you were wrong And I think it's so
• 85:30 - 86:00 interesting because people come to therapy with these faulty narratives Um you know we're all we're all storytellers We all try to make sense of something and we all believe that our story is the absolute accurate version of the story And it's it's actually it's so funny when you see couples and they experienced the same you know they were part of the same experience and they have wildly different versions and then there's some part where the ven diagram overlaps and then finally they can see oh that person's not a bad person They
• 86:00 - 86:30 were coming at it because they in their story they believed this and that's so important So drama happens when assumptions are made People characterize the other person's story as inaccurate their own story as accurate and then there's lots of kind of there's no space for curiosity or connection It's all rupture no repair As you're saying this I realized what I mean by drama because I it's a very broad term Um and I I come from a a background where my dad's from
• 86:30 - 87:00 South America my mom's from New York Like so like emotive expression is not what I'm referring to right like I'm people being passionate about something or even angry about something or even having a problem like hey that didn't feel good That's not what I'm referring to I realize as you were saying it what it is that gets me It's when that I put under the the category of drama which for which I have zero tolerance for unless you can convince me otherwise is when people dynamite the mind on the way out It's yes I'm telling you how much
• 87:00 - 87:30 this sucks This is how I feel or this is what you did and then I'm inaccessible and um you know so they're not really interested It's this evacuative expression or projection as you said That's what I'm defining as trauma That to me is far and away different than saying hey listen like this sucked Can you think about this Can we talk about this Um Andrew you screwed up Like okay great Like let's let's figure it out Um absolutely But it's this um I'm rolling
• 87:30 - 88:00 a grenade in the door and I'm out of here Right That to me is the one that um I'm like I just I'm too old for that The the silent treatment is actually incredibly aggressive and hostile People think that that the loud one is the problem in the relationship Sometimes the silent one is the one who's the problem You know it's the person who smiles through everything and doesn't really say anything but they're being so passive aggressive Or the person who then as you said detonates the bomb and then goes silent and that's
• 88:00 - 88:30 their punishment the they're punishing you by not talking to you for a day or two or three That's incredibly hostile And the other way that people do that is you bring up something in a nice way to someone and here's how they they create drama and and but they're shutting something down They're shutting down any possibility of communication is every time you bring up something to them they cry Now people don't like it when I say this They say as a therapist they should be able to feel sad or hurt when someone
• 88:30 - 89:00 brings up something and they should be able to cry And I'm saying no Sometimes crying is a manipulation You can manipulate someone So I'll see a couple and one person will bring up something Let's say you know like when you do this you know or this hurts me or I don't like this or I need more help with this and the person cries like you're hurting my feelings this is you know as opposed to saying this person is trying to communicate with you You're going to have feelings about it but there's a manipulative way in which
• 89:00 - 89:30 people will cry every time or many times And it shuts down any possibility of communication And so we have to say you know what are you doing here Every time you cry then the other person feels like well I can't bring this up because I'm hurting my partner And now we can never have communication because if I bring something up I'm in a catch22 If I don't bring it up we have a problem If I bring it up you're gonna say I'm hurting your feelings and and then I have to stop So
• 89:30 - 90:00 I have to be extra careful And I don't know there's no way to to move forward here So what do you do in that instance We have to talk about the functionality of the crime You know why is it so hard for you to hear something that your partner is saying Do you feel blamed Do you feel shame Shame is something that we avoid at all costs right No one wants to feel that Do you feel like this person is making a global statement when they're not That they're saying you're a bad person as opposed to what you did
• 90:00 - 90:30 here was bad So there's a difference between who you are and what you did And often we paint with a big brush when we're trying to communicate with our partners you know like you're bad as opposed to that thing that you did that was not good that thing you did was bad but you inherently are not a bad person And we we tend to tell our partners in all kinds of ways that they're bad people when they do something that displeases us We have to be really careful about separating what they did
• 90:30 - 91:00 from who they are And we need to do that with ourselves So often we do something and then we feel so much shame around what we did and we say "Oh I'm a terrible person." As opposed to "I did something that doesn't align with who I want to be." it doesn't align with actually who I am And that's good that you feel bad about it because if we didn't have guilt right So guilt is a good positive feeling Shame nothing comes from shame We just tend to sort of like retreat from shame Guilt is great
• 91:00 - 91:30 Guilt is saying you're not a sociopath Guilt is saying um what I did did not align with the person that I am So I am a good person I did something that felt not aligned with that And so I need to be aware that it's good that I feel guilt If I didn't feel guilt that would say something about my character but the fact that I do feel guilt means that I'm willing to look at myself and I'm willing to do something different and I'm willing to make a change And here I'm making a bunch of assumptions I wonder if the crying is uh is
• 91:30 - 92:00 pre-programmed in some people because it's what um was able to elicit sympathy and protect them like if like if they didn't do it that they'd get hit or if they didn't do it it would like the bombardment would continue Yeah Absolutely Everything we do is for self-preservation and we're just not aware of it Like we we want to avoid pain at all costs and so even though a lot of what we do to avoid pain creates
• 92:00 - 92:30 more pain but that's not our intent So anything that you know when people there there's somebody that I write about in my book who comes off as as very unlikable at the beginning of the book and people say why did you even take him into your practice Why did you work with him Why did you treat him And when they get to the end of the book not to spoil everything but they he's probably the person they love the best And it's because I'm looking at that person's actions as they're coming from a place of he's protecting himself from pain So
• 92:30 - 93:00 he's an to everybody because it doesn't let anybody in It doesn't let him have the possibility of being hurt again because he was terribly hurt And so you know we say hurt people hurt people What are they doing They're protecting themselves from more pain because if they let themselves be vulnerable they're exposed to the possibility of pain and they don't want that Are there some people for whom therapy just ain't going to help Yes Um
• 93:00 - 93:30 people who are not willing to self-reflect and it's hard right I think a lot of people come to therapy and they say "I want something to change but what they want to change is something else or someone else." And you again you can influence that You can't change another person Before people come to couples therapy with me um I ask them to each separately come up with the one thing that they want to work on about themselves M so it's not what do you want to change in your partner It's if
• 93:30 - 94:00 you were going to be the best possible version of yourself in a relationship What is the one thing that you really want to work on in our coup's work together Well no I I I want to work on things but I really need the other person No wait a minute I won't even see them in the room until they each have a very clear sense of this is the thing that I want to work on Now that might change over time depending on what we uncover but they need to come in with a goal Like we all know that there's something about ourselves that we could
• 94:00 - 94:30 do better at in a relationship And so what is that thing What do you want to work on And if the other person happens to change great If they don't that's good information too But you're not coming in because you think the other person's going to change You're coming in to grow on your own And you're growing in the context of this relationship but you are doing some personal growth in the couples I happen to think couples therapy moves us along faster individually than individual therapy does Interesting Because in
• 94:30 - 95:00 individual therapy you're telling a story It's your perspective I have to as a therapist intuitit what else might be going on out there In couples therapy I see how this person reacts with other people Now I can see that in the therapeutic relationship individually like whatever this is a microcosm of how they interact out there But I'm different from the people they interact with out there because of the nature of the therapeutic relationship So they will there will be what we call transference where they transfer some of
• 95:00 - 95:30 their feelings about other people into the relationship with the therapist and that gives me a really good idea of how they interact out there Could you give me an example of transference um positive and negative Yeah So um let's say that I say something and it turns out that they felt criticized Well it could be that I said something in a critical way maybe Um entirely possible It could be that um they have kind of transferred feelings about a parent onto
• 95:30 - 96:00 me if I happen to be the age of their parent um or similar to or if there's enough of an age difference between us And they heard something that was meant to be compassionate but it was also true and and something they need to look at but they heard it as criticism Sometimes you transfer there's romantic transference People get you know romantically attached to their therapists and you have to be able to talk about that Obviously you know you have very clear boundaries Nothing can ever happen All that but it's okay to
• 96:00 - 96:30 bring that up People think I'm not allowed to say that you know I have these feelings And then we deal with them and we see you know how we can talk through that And it's generally not that the person wants to get with you It's really more about like what it means to feel romantically loved or what it means to be loved in general and that they put like a romantic veneer over that So you know love is so complicated and it's so multiaceted Um so there's that kind of
• 96:30 - 97:00 transference that happens But I think with with couples when I say you need to be able to work on the you know something that would if you were to be the best possible version of yourself in this relationship what would you want to work on It might be I need to self-regulate better It might be um I need to be less needy um of the other I need to expect In other words a lot of people think that their partner needs to be like everything You need to telepathically read my mind and if you don't you don't care You need to intuit
• 97:00 - 97:30 it what I wanted to do for my birthday And if you didn't then you don't really know me Um and these sound like kind of extreme almost immature examples but these are the kinds of things that that people get caught up in you know and I'm giving kind of like the highest level of that but they can be much more nuanced and and and much deeper And so um you know I think that people you asked who cannot be helped people who are not willing to self-reflect and look at themselves I love that uh statement you made which is um if people are coming to
• 97:30 - 98:00 therapy they need to ask about the change they want to make in themselves Yeah And and what their role is in what is not going the way they want in their lives And is this isn't about blaming them for the problem at all It's about saying there might be some truly difficult situations out there You might have a parent with mental health issues and you know what are you going to do about that You probably aren't going to change the fact that they have mental health issues Um but your reaction can change So you can do something different
• 98:00 - 98:30 We can talk about what that might look like You cannot engage in that dance You can set boundaries You can you know there are different ways to make choices about that Um there are sort of like societal things that we can't change but like what can you do so that you feel like you have agency in the world Because we all have agency to some degree So where do we find that agency as opposed to going into this like helpless I'm the victim position And
• 98:30 - 99:00 people don't like to hear that They say what what are you what kind of therapist are you calling people victims I'm not saying people are victims I'm saying people have the mindset that they don't have agency and then they become victims But when you realize that you have agency you realize wow there are really difficult people things circumstances in the world but I get to choose how to respond to them going back to this thing about texting How many of the challenges that people present to you in your office these days um incorporates or
• 99:00 - 99:30 starts with yeah so I got this text uh versus you know somebody came to me or called me and uh we had a hard interaction or or we had a conversation or something happened at work I mean how much of it is in the digital world nowadays Yeah So here's what's interesting about texting is so many times people will come in and they'll say "We had this conversation on text and I'll say "Can you show me the conversation?" Which people think why would you do that Why wouldn't you want
• 99:30 - 100:00 to hear the narrative from that person Well I just heard the narrative but I want to see what was actually said because they're like "Oh I don't really know All right let me read you what they said." And so but I want to see what both parts of that were And then the person can see oh here's how I contributed to that or here's a choice that I made in that moment Again I prefer that these conversations that people have are face to face conversations when they're kind of about
• 100:00 - 100:30 something in the relationship You know text is great for like your dailiness of hey look what I had for lunch or how you doing or I love you or whatever right Or you know can you pick up the kid But when you're having some kind of you know again rupture or or conflict between you that's not a text conversation But many people will do that on text And then now we have a record So it's not just like what my client is saying to me It's like this is how the conversation actually went down We have a transcript of it And
• 100:30 - 101:00 it's really helpful for people to be able to look at that transcript I agree Um at the same time I feel like breakups are much harder than they used to be because you can block someone on social media but then the block itself becomes this thing Um you can mute people You can put your phone away but unless you block their number they can you know send you things You can um go back and
• 101:00 - 101:30 read texts if you're an obsessive person Um you know there just so many venues for or avenues excuse me for people to access our psyche when we're trying to move on And in the old days kids you know you had a phone with an answering machine you broke up it sucked you looked at the photos you put the photos in a box or you burned them and you put the box in a shelf and then when you got into a new relationship you either hid the box or you destroyed the box and you
• 101:30 - 102:00 moved on And um people's phone numbers changed and uh it was so much easier I noticed that one tended to just remember more good stuff because there wasn't other stuff coming in The bad stuff tended to dissipate or maybe it didn't It was just so much easier You weren't being uh infiltrated by the past and um you know because of the the nature of electronic stuff I just feel like it's
• 102:00 - 102:30 like the past trying to like hold us back and and this is on both sides you know It doesn't matter if the breakup was amicable then you long for the person now and again or the breakup was rough and then you like you relive ele you know there's so many variants on this that um I don't know it just feels like breaking up's already the one of the hardest things People I think don't acknowledge just how hard breakups are right They don't And I think there's this hierarchy of pain that people have about certain things like well you only
• 102:30 - 103:00 dated for this amount of time How can it be that painful this amount of time after the breakup You know that like there's this hierarchy But if it was a divorce then you know people understand why a year later you're still dealing with it or you know how if you were only married for 5 years versus married for 20 years Like there's some hierarchy of pain that we have around things like it was a miscarriage but your child you know your eight-year-old didn't die you know sorry I mean that's just people say that kind of thing No no no they don't
• 103:00 - 103:30 they don't say it but that's how they treat people It's like you had a miscarriage like that what they say is like oh it's okay you'll get pregnant again if your child dies they're not like it's okay you'll have another child right but it feels the person who had a miscarriage is that they lost their child It's very very painful But listen to how we talk to people who have these experiences that we tend to think that some experiences are sort of higher on the hierarchy of pain than others are And so we think like a breakup is not as bad as like a breakup that in a
• 103:30 - 104:00 non-marriage or a short marriage is not as hard as a breakup with uh you know a long marriage or whatever the hierarchy is Um or even someone who you know it's like well and this is the reason that people don't actually get help for things because they think well you know it's just this it's not really that bad or I'm feeling kind of sad or I can't sleep or I'm having trouble in this relationship but it's not that bad cuz I have a roof over my head and food on the table so I don't need to go get help But
• 104:00 - 104:30 let's say you fall and you clearly have like you know broken your wrist You're not going to sit there and go I don't need to do anything about that cuz I don't have stage 4 cancer You're going to be like I'm going because I need to get my wrist repaired So we treat sort of physical health and mental health as two separate entities when of course the mind and the body are all intertwined And I think that with breakups it's the same thing It's like people think well it's not that big of a deal after the
• 104:30 - 105:00 first x amount of time And breakups can really mark you depending on how they went down Like if it was really volatile if it was one of these things where you got no sense of um if you were cheated on um if you didn't understand why the breakup happened like you it was very surprising to you um you know all those things It can really it can really be a different kind of breakup than a breakup where a person it might be very painful
• 105:00 - 105:30 but you understand sort of why the breakup is happening Doesn't mean you don't feel the loss but there's something different about the quality of the breakup And so then people tell stories about the breakup because they didn't get the real story So the story now becomes like you don't really understand why the person is breaking up with you um because they didn't communicate during the relationship that maybe they were unhappy and now you watch them on social media So you're watching a story and you have this whole story in your mind of look at them
• 105:30 - 106:00 they're on this vacation or they're not even like with another person They're just like look they look so happy but it's social media Of course they look happy People are not posting on social media of I'm so sad about my breakup generally There's a whole like sort of subculture of people who do that but it's a different thing Very generational Yes Yes But I mean in general you're having to you sort of like you want to move forward but and by the way about grief it's not like moving
• 106:00 - 106:30 on because we're sort of shaped by every experience that we have but it's about moving forward So people always say about grief you need to move on No you need to move forward Let's just talk about that Um so you let's say you have to move forward It's very hard to move forward when you're watching the other person's life You're not moving forward at all They're moving forward Maybe you don't really know But why are you spending so much time watching someone else move forward Can we focus on how you might move forward Whatever that
• 106:30 - 107:00 might look like but it's really hard when you have this like split screen of their life is happening and your life is happening I definitely want to talk about grief Um before we do that I' I'd like to kind of double click into this uh breakup thing Um in my observation and experience one of the hardest things about breakups is uh this idea that we we want to somehow um come to a common narrative And there seems to be a lot of um desire to kind
• 107:00 - 107:30 of understand where the other the other person's experience of of what happened um and a very I don't I don't think it's intentional but I think people can be somewhat um destructive in a breakup by um changing the whole this notion like the like it was all an illusion or something or you know where you know I mean I I guess I've had enough relationships and breakups to realize that you know there's love that continues
• 107:30 - 108:00 there's things that you thought were love that weren't I mean there's there's love that doesn't continue and and the there's all sorts of shapes and forms of this stuff but that um like good well-meaning people that take divergent paths um I've learned it doesn't mean that um anything else Sometimes it it literally just means that right there isn't a need to rewrite the script like it wasn't what I thought it actually was what I thought and then it was something
• 108:00 - 108:30 different or it just circumstances changed or things changed I'm not trying to make light of this I mean I I would argue I'm probably one of the least skilled people at breakups although I've gotten quote unquote better at it It's always super painful Like I've never had a breakup that didn't really hurt It doesn't matter if I left or they left That just didn't really hurt And I think it's this idea of like and this is why I think it's an interesting perhaps segue to grief is that it's almost like as
• 108:30 - 109:00 something ends we look back and and we we evaluate the story Mhm And try and figure out was that real Right Was it not real How could that have been real And then we're here right There was all this hope and expectation And I um yeah I think about this a lot Yeah So sometimes what the loss is about isn't so much about the other person It's about the loss of what it feels like to be in a primary relationship So you're losing the primary relationship and then
• 109:00 - 109:30 happens to be with this specific person And so there were good qualities about that specific person and qualities that maybe weren't right for you but what you're losing is the dailiness So so much of what feels good about being in a primary relationship is you know you get to tell the person the minutiae of your day the little things um the shared history and the shared experiences that become the shortorthhand and the inside jokes and the routine of you know you
• 109:30 - 110:00 your flight landed who are you going to text Oh text your partner right Um you know just the the built-in infrastructure of being in a primary relationship and someone who knows like what kind of pizza you like and you know all those little things that come from you know going through daily life together and you know all the things about their families and you know all the things about the people in their lives and the people they're talking about like this friend and this boss and whatever their co-workers Um so it's this whole world that's been
• 110:00 - 110:30 co-created and then all of a sudden when that person isn't there anymore that the daily of your life changes drastically like you're not waking up with that person you're not eating meals with that person you're not talking about what's for dinner with that person you're not um saying you're wondering how that thing with their sister worked out but you don't know now because right and you're losing the side kind of shared people too Like you might have liked
• 110:30 - 111:00 that person's family a lot Sometimes you stay in touch with the family but sometimes you don't Um so like your world changes so much in the day-to-day You're not just losing that person you're losing an entire world that you were living in And now your world looks so different and you have nothing to replace it with yet So it doesn't mean you have to replace it with another partner You might replace it with things in your own life but you just you know breakups tend to happen Um maybe you saw the breakup coming but you're not really
• 111:00 - 111:30 imagining what it will be like after until you're in it you can't really really understand what it's like until you're in that breakup phase So I think that that makes it so hard because you're losing a lifestyle right Like the daily of your life And um you know it's like it's like when you're in a relationship you're in the present but you're also in the future So you imagined that the present was going to be the future And now mother of all plot twist the future was just taken away
• 111:30 - 112:00 along with the present So it's not just you're losing the day-to-day you're losing what you imagine next year was going to be like in five years were going to be like So it's a huge thing Um it's so interesting because in in my most recent book it starts with my breakup and that's how I end up in therapy And my whole thing is like you know the idiot compassion that we were talking about with my friends of he's a jerk and he's terrible and you dodged a bullet my therapist which who I thought was going to validate this position um
• 112:00 - 112:30 didn't for the for the better Um and so by the end of the book you know people even write in now they're like "Oh I can't believe I call him boyfriend in the book I can't believe he did that." And I'm like "No no no no I was trying to say he's a good guy." Like you have to understand that I was seeing this through the lens of the breakup And then over time I see that I was responsible for this too I had a role in this too I chose not to see the things that I didn't want to see because I didn't want to live in that world of the breakup Right So um so I think it's it's uh
• 112:30 - 113:00 wanting what you were saying earlier about wanting to have a shared narrative like we feel so wounded by the fact that the person let's say that they broke up with us um or even if you break up with them that they don't see the relationship the way you saw it like they had a different experience of it and you feel like well they're not seeing it in the right way No they're just seeing it They are seeing it in the right way from their perspective And I
• 113:00 - 113:30 think that we have this way of wanting to heal the wound by they're saying "Oh no no you were great in this relationship It was me." Or "We were both great and it just didn't work out." Yes Yes Right Right But and we so want that And and and the reality is that um your partner's going to see things about you that maybe you don't agree with or maybe they're true and that's why they hurt I always find I miss the person's smell Yes It's those little things those kind
• 113:30 - 114:00 of intangibles I think that takes the longest Yeah Uh I have a really good uh audio memory too I can like close my eyes have been able to do this since I was a kid and hear people's voices Mhm And um Yeah Um but like smells I think um we come to expect them Yeah Um and then we don't notice they're there Yeah And then the person's gone and then we're like "Wow it smells different here." So there's this theory It's it's
• 114:00 - 114:30 from the Gottmans who do this research on couples and they talk about the bank of goodwill that you need five deposits into the bank of goodwill for every one withdrawal And so we tend to when we're in a relationship we don't like something about something that's happening in the relationship We think about what's not working We're taking all these withdrawals from the Bank of Goodwill But like things like smell that's a deposit Like you smell so good I really like your smell Do we say that
• 114:30 - 115:00 enough Do we focus on the things like how many deposits are we actually making so that when we do make a withdrawal it doesn't empty the bank account And it it's usually when a breakup happens that all of a sudden we think about all those things that we didn't deposit but now we miss right That were sitting in our bank account and we don't have access to that account anymore The account's closed But when the account was open we didn't look at what we had in there And I think that
• 115:00 - 115:30 the people who are what I see with couples who are most successful are the people who do notice what's in the bank account even if they have to take a withdrawal every now and again I'm always um struck by how people talk about their partners when their partners aren't around Very important Um the other day this kid came up to me in the gym kid He was probably in his 30s but there I go again um he was a podcast fan We were just chatting I like to ask people like what do you do and he's in uh tech I think now I don't
• 115:30 - 116:00 recall but um and uh like where are you from And he's like he's from Brazil Cool You know and then we were talking about something He said you know my girlfriend um and then we got into some discussion about about travel in South America or something and then at one point he said oh yeah yeah she's like my flower And the way you said it I was like "Wow that's beautiful." You know again I'm half half Latin and um but I haven't heard that enough And I was like "Wow." And I said "That's amazing that you just referred to her as a flower." He goes
• 116:00 - 116:30 "Yes she's just she's like the flower in my life." And I was like "Wow." Like "You don't hear that often." You know I also don't get into conversations like this very often but somehow he just shared that spontaneously Yeah And uh she wasn't there to hear it I can't remember the guy's name forgive me um she'll never know that I that he referred to her that way but it was really beautiful Yeah And there's certain people um like I heard Rogan one day talking about his wife on a podcast
• 116:30 - 117:00 He was like she's just so nice Like he just the appreciation he has for her in the in the in the small details of how he refers to her Um and those are just two examples And then I could give a bunch of negative examples about people Gosh I I don't want to put it on one or the other side of the male female dynamic but like but when people say like "Oh yeah like they're a pain in my ass or like the um referring to people as their old lady or their old man." Like that's that's an interesting but
• 117:00 - 117:30 kind of in my mind not the sweetest um way Maybe it could be Maybe it depends on the tone Anyway I'm I'm casting a lot of um shadows and light where where perhaps I shouldn't That interaction was delightful and I thought awesome for him and awesome for her That's why I often start a couple session with how did you meet Because usually when people come to couples therapy they think the first thing that's going to happen is you're going to say so what's going on What's not you know what's then they'll start with the problem and then they're like
• 117:30 - 118:00 in that withdrawal from the bank account space So I like to say "Well tell me how you met." And immediately usually there's like "Oh," and they have this great story right And they they remember what they love about the other person So we start with that And you can see them sort of remembering who the person is that they fell in love with Like oh I thought he was so cute or um you know oh was this really we were friends for a year and I didn't know if he liked me and then this happened and then I really
• 118:00 - 118:30 admired this about him or her right And so they start in this different space And I think I think about it like and this is going to sound like a weird metaphor but you think about like non-stick pans versus like you know a regular pan that you have to put something in so that the stuff doesn't stick to it When I think about like there are people for whom the good stuff they're like teflon pans The good stuff doesn't stick but the bad stuff about the other person sticks like a non-stick like a like a a pan that sticks right So
• 118:30 - 119:00 it's like you think about like what is sticking about your partner when you when you think about like what they're putting in the pan right Like are you a teflon pan for good things or are you an you know a different kind of pan for for good things Because you have to think like what am I focusing on Where does my attention go And so you know why are you focusing on the things that are upsetting you so much And you know there there are there are certain things that you're never going to change about your partner like your partner We don't get
• 119:00 - 119:30 to order up our partners all a cart We don't get to say like I'll take these qualities of my partner but I'll take this thing that I don't like about them on the side You don't get to do that People come there are no substitutions They come as a whole That's it That's what's offered on the menu And so people think well I can change the thing that I don't like and I can like make that person all a cart You can't do that You can't order them up that way So there are always going to be things that irritate you or that are suboptimal in in a perfect world about your partner
• 119:30 - 120:00 Are you going to focus on that or are you going to focus on the things that you really love about your partner There's a saying from 12step which is identify don't compare which is um like because you'll hear people outside of 12step talking about for instance um you know like uh you know well he's this this and this and ambitious and this and that but he's like kind of emotionally unavailable but he's more available and and people will talk about male or female partners right
• 120:00 - 120:30 um or potential partners as like or people that they're dating as if you to cluge together the best of all people and get this like perfect tapestry of the person that's got all the features you want because yeah some people are a little more um easygoing light-hearted and sometimes not always less ambitious Those things in my experience tend to correlate not always Some people are super hard driving They get it done and they have the capacity to be immense providers but they have less time and
• 120:30 - 121:00 sometimes they're not as emotionally available Again stereotyping like crazy here Um but people get this idea that they're sort of like com through the comparison they can arrive at the perfect person when in fact I think appreciation not being teflon about the positive stuff comes from kind of shutting out the idea that there's an alternative but of course you don't want to end up in a situation where the person is you know not truly not good for you right well right that's not what I'm talking about right and I don't think you are but yeah with that caveat I
• 121:00 - 121:30 think that um accepting that people are complicated And there is no cluing together of people At some point you make a choice And this is when people cheat What often happens is there's a there's a specific quality about their partner Maybe sometimes it has nothing to do with your partner By the way and I think this is so important to talk about when we talk about infidelity that often it really has nothing to do with the partner that somebody is expecting their partner again going back to vitality and aliveness to provide that for them And
• 121:30 - 122:00 if the partner doesn't provide that for them but your partner shouldn't be providing that for you They're additive They're not providing a lack or a deficit in you Um that sometimes that's why people cheat But other times they say like there's this quality about my partner that is really you know like I don't like it Um like let's take for example um I wish that my partner were more let's say ambitious So they go and they like cheat with someone who's more ambitious but then the person isn't
• 122:00 - 122:30 loving or isn't communicative or isn't you know whatever the other good qualities that the partner they have has So they think that by replacing this one trait that the other person's going to have all the other great traits that the existing partner already has And generally you're trading like one set of problems for another set of problems So it's interesting that people think like I can fix this problem because this person has that thing that I really want Now if your partner doesn't have any of that like it's a degree It's on a
• 122:30 - 123:00 spectrum So is your partner not ambitious at all Or is your partner ambitious about different kinds of things Like they want to be a really good parent and they're really you know invested in that or they want to do something like philanthropic and they're really invested in that but it doesn't pay a lot you know So like what are they like what energizes them What where is their purpose Where is their meaning You know there's different kinds of ambition I feel like um placing one's attention on the good things uh as much as
• 123:00 - 123:30 possible and and really and really letting those fill us up as much as possible is really key I I didn't say this I I borrowed this but you know that um two of the most dangerous words in the English language are if only you know this this idea like if only this you know because for two reasons one is it's very unlikely that if only comes true but the other one is it it takes our our attention away from seeing what what's there right so I like to say it's the difference between the what if and
• 123:30 - 124:00 the what is and people who focus too much on the what if what if this lose sight of what is and usually there's so much good that's that they really don't want to give up in the what is so If you're going to keep focusing on the what if you can you blind yourself to the what is And I think the what if is a big trap Yeah I think this this notion of of of attention and appreciation um just seems so so fundamental Well
• 124:00 - 124:30 it's kind of like think of it So I I am sort of an amateur photographer and I think about it like you can take a picture of you can like focus on the same subject you can f focus on one part of it or you can just move the camera slightly and then you're focused on something entirely different but it's the same thing that I'm taking a picture of Right So I always say to people like can you your focus is always on this can you like move the camera slightly and focus you know find a different part to focus the camera on If you're always
• 124:30 - 125:00 focusing on something that makes you unhappy you're going to be unhappy So why don't you just move the camera and focus on the other things You get to choose People think they have no choice in the matter right Like well my brain just goes there My mind just goes there It's like no you get to choose what you put your attention on You actually have a choice What I love about what's coming through here is that you emphasize the role of these unconscious processes we default to people that aren't healthy for us sometimes not always Um and yet
• 125:00 - 125:30 you also emphasize that we have a lot of agency these days It seems like there's a default toward um looking outward You know for all that's been said about meditation and reflection and journaling on this podcast and others like we all know these tools are available they basically just take time I mean with meditation you don't even need a pen and paper Mhm Um but we tend to look outward for for answers Um do you ever give
• 125:30 - 126:00 homework to your patients to just like think or journal or is there work tend to be more behavioral you know it's kind of like I feel like the work that we do in the room is about understanding um and you know and and understanding sort of like where the gap is between what we say we want and what we actually do Mhm So usually there is it's all about what is in that gap what is getting in the way because we're very
• 126:00 - 126:30 clear by the way about what we want usually and then there's like some gap between our behavior that isn't moving in that direction In fact moves us often either keeps us stuck or moves us in the opposite direction So it's kind of out in the world between sessions We're working on the behavior around what is getting in the way in that gap And then we're doing kind of the thinking and the feeling in the session I don't mean that people aren't thinking and feeling outside of session It means they're using their feelings and their thoughts
• 126:30 - 127:00 differently They're taking different actions with the feelings and thoughts outside of the session Do you ever tell people um whatever whenever you think that just do the opposite So it's really funny because so many people say like your gut knows right Like listen to your gut And for some people because it's historical right Like what's in their gut It's like no no no don't listen to your gut And it sounds really strange for a therapist to say to somebody no don't listen to your gut But sometimes you literally have to
• 127:00 - 127:30 say to people whatever your first instinct is there do the opposite Do the thing that feels uncomfortable Because your gut is what feels comfortable And the thing that feels comfortable again is the familiar and the familiar isn't necessarily the thing that is going to lead you to where you want to go So it's not like I want people to second guessess themselves or not trust themselves It's that sometimes you have to learn how to hear that very very quiet voice inside you because your gut is the louder one right Your gut is your first instinct and it's the kind of the
• 127:30 - 128:00 pre-program the pattern the automatic response Like if you think when we talk about sort of like neurological pathways there's this like freeway that's been built with this one response Like here's the input right And here's the map that that follows Like this person did this and you're going to like travel down that freeway because that's been the well-paved road because you've done it a million times Doesn't really work out for you I want people to create kind of side roads and different roads and let's take a different path and let's let's kind of dig out a new um like a new road
• 128:00 - 128:30 right that now So your first instinct is still going to be like let's get on the freeway And I'm like no let's take a side road Let's do something a little bit different Let's take a different path and let's that path will now become the new freeway because you're going to keep going down You know we're going to dig out that path The freeway is going to not be trafficked on We're going to shut down that freeway eventually and you're going to have a new freeway that's your automatic path So right now you've got to do the opposite to build this new freeway I just mixed 20 metaph metaphors but the the point is that um
• 128:30 - 129:00 sometimes your gut is just taking you down a welltrodden path that is not the best path for you There's a great line in that movie High Fidelity based on the Nick Hornby novel which I also highly recommend where he's like you know people tell me that we should listen to our gut Well after what 30 years I've come to the conclusion that my gut has for brains you know like you know he's just realizing that his his reflex on what to do with you know his relationship life is just completely off
• 129:00 - 129:30 Um some people will hear what we're talking about right now and we'll say "Yeah but um my gut also tells me when I'm in danger." We're obviously not talking about when you can sense danger So here's the thing So what feels dangerous sometimes so your gut is trying to protect you So what feels dangerous is going into this new situation because it's uncomfortable to do something different So your gut is saying "Oh let's do the comfortable thing that we've always done." Even if
• 129:30 - 130:00 the comfortable thing makes you miserable let's do the comfortable thing that we've always done because it feels very dangerous to try this new thing But sometimes doing the thing that feels dangerous is actually less dangerous Oh my So so in other words people say a lot of times people say "I don't want to take a risk It's too risky." But sometimes the safest thing you can do is to take a risk Doing the safe thing is actually you know you say it's too
• 130:00 - 130:30 risky If the safest thing you can do is to take a risk because it's going to lead you closer to what you want to accomplish or the thing that you're trying to get toward I um completely agree Uh I also in my in my life I've had the experience of I've taken big risks with my career multiple times and it's always worked out Thank goodness A lot of my teen years and 20s and 30s were were spent um learning to
• 130:30 - 131:00 overcome the adrenaline response Mhm And I learned to take progressively more and more risk and you know ended up having a air failure scuba diving cage at diving with great white sharks I don't say this to sound tough I say this cuz it's like what was I thinking I was I took it too far Mh Right You know so I think learning to overcome the adrenaline response and be calm and adrenaline I think has its value Um I also took
• 131:00 - 131:30 tremendous risk in my personal life getting involved with people I never should have gotten involved with And I blame myself I don't blame them right I mean I was in choice So I can imagine that some people are so averse to uh danger that they they don't put themselves into circumstances in which they could really come to thrive And some people are just wired to um go into the fire to the point where it's destructive Yeah Either in with with with physical pursuits or in uh romantic relationships You know I I I'll take
• 131:30 - 132:00 take it outside my own story I mean I I have a a friend a dear friend who um you know was in an like an incredibly physically abusive relationship number 12 Mhm And she eventually came to the conclusion that her threat sensing um threshold was just way too high Did some really good work to understand why that was and realized that her fear response didn't kick in until it was like a nine alarm fire right And so you know she
• 132:00 - 132:30 needed um to listen to that as you mentioned that like super quiet whisper early on um because anyone else who didn't have her history which is sadly a very very challenging history in her family would have um immediately been like "Yeah I'm out." But she was like "This is normal." Yeah when um when I was in medical school I remember the people who wanted to work in the ER were like who were like I want to do emergency medicine were people often who um grew up in
• 132:30 - 133:00 environments where danger was a part of it right So they're used to that and it doesn't really strike them as like their their sense of danger their barometer is different from maybe a different person's Um I think of it as like a thermostat When you think about like let's say you want to set your thermostat at like 72 degrees right Some people their thermostat is off because in their house like they did the slightest thing and their parents
• 133:00 - 133:30 treated it like it was a huge horrible mistake and they're bad and it was an emergency right So they don't know how to calibrate like what does 72 actually feel like or the opposite like some big thing happened and their parents underreacted and so they don't really know kind of like what is what does 72 feel like I don't really know what that like good temperature is like So I think that there's a lot of um people who stay in situations that are like it's like other
• 133:30 - 134:00 people would say "Whoa it's like 100 degrees in here Get out There's a fire." Right And this person's like "No it's just it feels like 72." They don't know Um and so it's really about recalibrating And I think when we talk about risk and danger you have to learn how to calibrate your own thermostat And I think that that's that's really important We talk about the difference between productive anxiety and unproductive anxiety So unproductive anxiety is there's some
• 134:00 - 134:30 kind of danger and I'm going to ruminate and ruminate and ruminate and I'm thinking about it all the time and and somehow that's going to keep me safe because I'm thinking about it And then there's productive anxiety which is oh it's good that I sense the danger because I'm going to do something about this Like I have a plan for how to deal with this So it might be I'm in this relationship and it just doesn't feel right but and this person is is acting this way toward me and I know I shouldn't be treated this way but I
• 134:30 - 135:00 don't know maybe it's okay And that's not productive That's just anxiety You're just circling ruminating Productive anxiety would be like "Something's wrong Like I shouldn't be treated this way So my plan is I'm going to try to talk to my partner about this or we're going to go to therapy about this and see if it improves And if it doesn't I'm going to leave to find a different relationship." You're right You want to sense danger but the question is is it productive or is it unproductive What do we do with it So people when I say like trust your gut some some somebody might say well my gut
• 135:00 - 135:30 is that like when things are really unpleasant you stick with it because my parent stuck with my other parent when things are really unpleasant and that's what you do right so that doesn't make sense So I think that do the opposite in that case It's like oh you think you're supposed to stay in this case because your parents did like do the opposite See what happens if you do something different We hear that um there's value to being able to be on one's own right Like you know some people seem to always
• 135:30 - 136:00 need to be in a relationship and um some people probably don't But um do you think there's value to people really understanding themselves first I know some couples that got together in like their first year of college that are still together Uh they have kids now in college which is a trip and they seem super happy They are super happy from what I know And I know people that have had many relationships and then find somebody and some people take time on
• 136:00 - 136:30 their own some people don't How important is this notion about knowing oneself really Yeah So when you look at what are the factors that determine the success of a relationship or a marriage um emotional maturity is number one Number two by the way is flexibility That being with someone incredibly rigid is very hard Define rigid Uh rigid is things have to be this way in the practical space like toothpaste has to be on the right not on the left kind of
• 136:30 - 137:00 thing And emotionally rigid like this is wrong this is right this is the way you do it this is not the way you do it um you know you behave this way you don't behave this way as opposed to people have different personalities They have different ways of communicating Um and yes the rigidity around sort of like the household of course too but just a rigid personality you know like I can't leave it this time I have to leave it this time We have to be here now you know like whatever We can't there's no flexibility around anything Or even flexibility around plans Like when you
• 137:00 - 137:30 get married you don't know what 5 years 10 years down the line is going to be like Are you flexible with how you're moving in whatever direction the other person is moving in whatever direction Like if you need things to be static that's very rigid And it's hard because people are not static There are things about their core personality that tend to be static but people evolve And so you have to leave room for the evolution of of there are three entities There's you there's the other person and there's the relationship And all three
• 137:30 - 138:00 of those entities are going to evolve over time And if you don't have flexibility and you insist that they stay exactly the same that's going to be problematic Going back to whether somebody needs to spend time alone before they get into a relationship or how much you need to know yourself before you get into a relationship I think people have this misconception that they have to be fully formed and then before they can get into a relationship And the thing is that you grow in connection with others And so people you're saying you're so surprised that these people met in college and you
• 138:00 - 138:30 know they've been together all this time and of course they were so young Oh no I'm not surprised Okay No no no I'm I'm envious Okay uh because they in a in a in a in a light way because they got their first jobs in parallel They they uh sadly their parents passed away in parallel They they went through a number of life evolutions together Their life story is a co-mingled story Yes You know it reminds me of um I had a therapy client who was divorced and she was
• 138:30 - 139:00 talking about dating again and she met someone great and she said "I love this person so much and this person is actually a much better person for me but there's a sadness that she said he will never have met my parents cuz they had died um he will not know like all these things about who I was when I was 25 or 35 or you know what it was like when I went through this particular thing in life or you know again like the you know wasn't there with with the birth of our
• 139:00 - 139:30 children um didn't know our kids at that age So it's true that there there's something very um important about having a shared history It's not end all beall She's happier in that second marriage But there is something to be said about people think well I have to wait until I'm at this point before I can seriously consider dating someone who might become my life partner And I think that you grow in connection with people or people
• 139:30 - 140:00 say you know like I'm not ready to be in a relationship because I don't know enough about myself You're going to learn so much more about yourself when you are with someone because you're forced to someone's holding up a mirror to you It's like how I say that you know I was saying earlier that when I see couples people grow individually so much faster because they're in relationship with someone and really having that mirror held up to them I mean you can sit there and think like by yourself till the you know till you turn blue in the face But the reality is no one's
• 140:00 - 140:30 giving you feedback You're not interacting You're not pushing up against anything Yeah I totally agree I mean certainly most of my uh evolution has been in relation to other things and not just romantic relationships I mean like like jobs that didn't feel right that I eventually moved on to a different job Like you just learn so much based also on what didn't work Yeah I mean there's there's real information there I definitely want to uh go back to grief and talk about loss but I feel like um
• 140:30 - 141:00 there's a hatch that we opened earlier that I'd like to um peer into for a bit which is this um male female distinction dynamic uh that nowadays is very prominent especially in um I would say people like 40 and younger Um it's so different now um in terms of the dynamics of what boys and men hear about boys and men generally what girls and women hear about girls generally and
• 141:00 - 141:30 therefore how like we think about ourselves But um you have a son Mhm What do you think are some of the positive things that have evolved in this kind of landscape and then what do what do you think are some of the things that are are creating problems for for sake of romantic relationship but also just relationship to self I think romantically um it's very hard for young people like in their teens and early 20s because they they don't have kind of an
• 141:30 - 142:00 infrastructure around romantic relationships Um there's not the typical kind of courting um because it feels kind of old Guys don't ask girls out on dates anymore They they they do but they don't really know how or they do it on text right um as opposed to just like there's something really profound about having to call someone on the phone and ask them out on a date You grow so much as a person by doing that and it kind of sets
• 142:00 - 142:30 the stage for the relationship as well Um or asking someone out in person It's hard You're really vulnerable So it's easy to kind of avoid vulnerability because you can do so many things on text and you know pretend that it's not a vulnerable act Um and people you know don't necessarily even call it a date you know it's like hey you want to hang out Um you know which is just it's kind of the language around it So there's not
• 142:30 - 143:00 sort of like the structure of we're going on a date that's much less common Whereas in in your era and my era it was much more like you knew when you were being asked on a date It was it was not so ambiguous Um and I think social media makes it really hard because you know any misstep someone's going to post about it potentially or they've got you on video or things that are really embarrassing or scary when you're first getting into a relationship with someone You know that could become if you're with the wrong person who's emotionally
• 143:00 - 143:30 immature And many young people you know they're they're learning and growing Um they do all kinds of things that humiliate the other person you know like here's a list of someone's red flags that I'm going to share with everybody Can you imagine And it's on social media So teens are doing this people in their 20s are doing this Yes Yes Or can you believe someone you know like information that should remain private does not remain private I'm not talking about things that are bad that someone did that are like need to be reported
• 143:30 - 144:00 I'm talking about like embarrassing things or someone was you know socially unskilled Her breath was bad His his his he smelled bad That kind of thing Yeah Anything like or or you know this is this is what or this is what he did on the date that was you know embarrassing Um you know he did this weird impression or you know whatever it is Um but also just like sexual encounters or you know like nothing feels totally private like
• 144:00 - 144:30 you just the level of trust that you have to have in your partner now that were just was just taken for granted Like sure people might have said something to their best friend but they also had better boundaries around that Like you kind of knew in our society what was private and what was not And because people grow up on social media they don't really have experience with this sort of there's a private sphere and there's a public sphere So it's all kind of blurred and they don't really learn like what is private and what is
• 144:30 - 145:00 not And I think it's really nerve-wracking for people So people don't take we were talking about risk People don't take risks in relationships They don't they aren't really vulnerable because they're afraid that um you know they will be humiliated So what do you think the need is to um to share that with the world Is it because then they don't have to acknowledge that it might have been at least in part them like like if you paint red flags on somebody then it it can't then you're the person painting is not the one under scrutiny
• 145:00 - 145:30 right I think they just feel hurt and they want to feel and so they feel like a dip in their self-esteem and they want to feel validated And of course if they make this list their friends are going to say "Yeah you dodged a bullet This person wasn't right for you You deserve better." Um and then they feel better about it But you don't grow from that So the thing is that if you can sit with that really hurts and this isn't and
• 145:30 - 146:00 like this person is not the arbiter of my selfworth whoever broke up with me and for whatever reason you know just because someone doesn't value you doesn't mean you don't have value and I think that's a really important lesson for people to learn So you know if I took like a a a some gold right Like a a brick of gold and um you know and someone said like "I don't like that I like silver or I like whatever I like right?" Doesn't mean the gold inherently lost value It means that for that person
• 146:00 - 146:30 that block of gold didn't have value but the gold has the same amount of value that it had And I think that we tend to kind of consider somebody else's opinion of us to be the arbiter of our worth And it's not like your worth is stable and people some people will value it some people won't Find the people who value it because those are the people that you want to be with But it doesn't mean that you have less value because somebody doesn't value it or you have more value
• 146:30 - 147:00 because someone does value it You have the same amount of value either way But I think young people are not you know it always hurts We talked about breakups earlier they always hurt And especially when you're young and you don't have experience but my concern is that they're not getting the experience of um of kind of sitting with it And yes you want you want to you know have your friends support you and all of that but I think once you start posting about it or once you start kind of vilifying the other person you're not learning the lesson you're not learning how to deal
• 147:00 - 147:30 with loss in your adult clients Um how much of the struggle that you hear about in terms of romantic relationships relates to again uh online aspects like uh apps and things like that Do you think they facilitated things or or made them um relationships more challenging Well I think what the apps do is there's a phenomenon that Barry Schwarz talks about in his book The Paradox of Choice
• 147:30 - 148:00 And it's the idea that the more choice we have the less happy we are So you need some choice but it's kind of like think of like a fishbowl an aquarium and an ocean Fishbowl is not enough choice just too constrained Ocean too much choice You're like "Yeah there's no direction Oh my gosh." The aquarium is perfect It's a certain amount of choice but it's manageable You don't get flooded you don't get overwhelmed So they did these experiments where like you'd be able to test out like we have this new jam and um we have uh 10
• 148:00 - 148:30 different flavors and which one do you like best and which one are you going to pick People would get so overwhelmed they didn't even want to try them They're like it's too much or we have two flavors Which one do you like better Right Manageable Um so there are people who are what we call satisficers and people who are maximizers So satisficers well let me tell you about maximizers first Maximizers are people let's say you want to buy a sweater okay You go into the store you find a sweater that
• 148:30 - 149:00 you like Um it's the right material it's the right price it fits you well it's the right color it's good Great The maximizer says "But maybe I can find something better." So I'm going to take that sweater I'm going to put it on bottom of the pile so that nobody buys it I'm going to go to the store next door and I'm going to see if they have something better Maybe something's on sale Maybe it's slightly higherend material whatever it is right Um but they keep going to stores and they keep doing this and then they think "Oh well
• 149:00 - 149:30 I found the greatest sweater ever and I'm going to get that one." Guess what They are less satisfied with that purchase than the person who the satisficer who would have bought that first sweater in that first store and would have been super happy with that sweater It's all opportunity cost Okay Because all of the the the energy the emotional and cognitive energy that went into maximizing something for what kind of benefit Like what percent benefit Not
• 149:30 - 150:00 much compared to the amount of energy that they spent trying to maximize they're never satisfied because even when they get that great product something better is going to come out There's going to be a new color that comes out like two weeks later that was in none of the stores So you're always kind of looking over if you're a maximizer you're always kind of looking over your shoulder for like what if something better is out there In dating that's what the apps are like You go out with someone you have a good time You think well no butterflies you know no
• 150:00 - 150:30 sparks pretty good time but I don't know Um I can go back on the apps You go back on the apps look at all the people there Maybe they're better on this dimension or that dimension And so what it does is it turns everyone into maximizers because there's an illusion of choice Like not everybody you see is going to be better And again we don't get the allocart option with people So there will be different dimensions in which people are more aligned with what you're looking for But no one's going to be like perfect right So why are we looking
• 150:30 - 151:00 for perfection Why don't we look for And by the way the satisficers are not settling This isn't about like eh I'll just settle for something It's like that sweater was great You liked everything about it You don't need to look for anything more Will there be if you pick a partner will there be someone more attractive Of course Will there be someone less attractive Of course Right And by the way if we treat dating like shopping we forget that um in shopping we're the choosers But in dating someone
• 151:00 - 151:30 has to choose us too And we by the way are not perfect So an exercise that I like to do with clients is I want you to write down all the reasons that it would be difficult to date you So instead of making a list of all the qualities you want in a partner like the partner has to be this they have to be that they have to you know have these interests they have to have this amount of ambition they have to um look a certain way they have to have these interests whatever it is Um I want you to write down everything that would make it difficult What a great exercise to be
• 151:30 - 152:00 with you And some people it's kind of like in a job interview and they say "What are your weaknesses?" And we tend to say things that sound positive you know like my weakness is that I work too hard that I'm too dedicated that I can't you know let go It's a non right So you have to be scrupulously honest with yourself So what makes it hard to be with you And if you're really honest with yourself suddenly you're less of a maximizer right because suddenly you're
• 152:00 - 152:30 like "Oh someone is thinking about the things that you know they're looking at me holistically as well." And overall I'm a pretty good package but there are things that you know maybe they could maximize if they really wanted to but then they're going to have to give up some other qualities that I have that the other person might not have So I think it's really important not to think about dating as shopping And I think that people who grew up on apps tend to treat dating like shopping and they don't sit there and make the list of oh
• 152:30 - 153:00 I can be this way and that makes it hard you know for someone to be with me And you could name a million reasons Oh and by the way I tell them that for all the traits you're looking for however whatever that number is because they tend to have a lot right It's not just like I need these three things It's like I need these 20 things The list right The list So I said for every um quality that you're looking for whatever number that is if it's 20 you need to name 20 things that make it hard to be with you So it can't be like there are two things
• 153:00 - 153:30 that make it hard to be with you but you have a list of 20 things that you want Do you think that after people make that list that they might take a look at that list and and make some effort to um like reduce or eliminate some things from that list Is that good selfwork Like if somebody is super rigid about punctuality anyone that knows me clearly uh that's not me Um like I know some people that are so rigid about that Let's say someone identifies that as one of the things that can be really
• 153:30 - 154:00 difficult Like they get really upset if somebody's 5 minutes late I've interacted with these people You're very difficult Um to be around as an academic everything starts 10 minutes late We end late That's how it works But um should they try to resolve that or or reduce that that feature or should they look at the list and say you know what like I'm not going to change that or this thing well I should probably change that What else can the list do for for people Okay so relationships are like cement So when you're first putting down
• 154:00 - 154:30 right the cement it's wet and it's malleable Um when it dries it's very hard to then now you have to like dig it up So let's say that punctuality is really important for someone and they think well I don't want to rock the boat It's the beginning of the relationship So yeah this person comes late all the time but I'm going to say nothing about it and I'm going to be cool with that even though I'm not And I'm sitting there seething every time they come late right And it's kind of like in the first three months of a relationship I think it was Chris Rock who said this in the
• 154:30 - 155:00 first three months of a relationship you're not you you're the ambassador of you So sometimes people will you know who really are not punctual will be punctual and then they'll change That's not what I'm talking about Um I'm talking about someone who you know someone has they're just not a punctual person like you're saying you are So if you're dating someone and that person is is telling themselves like I'm not going to bring it up I don't want to rock the boat It's early in the relationship The cement is wet This is when you need to bring it up So because if you don't what happens is it's like 6 months down the
• 155:00 - 155:30 line The person is like "I can't believe you're late What just h you know why are you you're always late You don't prioritize me." It's like the person's like "I'm this is the first time hearing about this." Like the person has had a no opportunity to change it if they want to but b no opportunity to explain So it might be that as happened with one of my therapy clients the person was always late but it was because he was trying to please her cuz she wanted to have dinner He knew that she liked to eat on the
• 155:30 - 156:00 earlier side He worked really late So he was trying to kind of like get his work done and get there And he was always late because he was trying to like be there when she wanted to have dinner So he said like "I'm late because I do prioritize you I'm actually leaving work early to be with you but I should have just said I can't be here at this time." That's what I should have said And I was worried you would get mad because it would be too late for you So you see the
• 156:00 - 156:30 assumption that she made was you don't care about me I'm not important to you Your work is more important And he's saying no I actually was leaving work to be with you and I still couldn't get there on time So we need to figure out how to work this out Like can we have dinner later because I'm just going to be late if we do it earlier and you know what can we work out So that's an example of if you just bring it up early you don't build up all these stories about the other person This person doesn't care they don't prioritize me whatever the story is that you're making
• 156:30 - 157:00 about that person Um and you have a chance to see is the person willing to do something about it or if they're not are you willing to be flexible and say you know what this person they just run late And I like so many other things about them and I'm going to adjust to the fact that this is one thing that in a perfect world I would like them to be more punctual but there's so many great things that this is one thing that I'm going to adjust to weaving this with what we were talking about earlier about gut sense um and the validity or lack of
• 157:00 - 157:30 validity of gut sense Um I certainly have had the experience and I know many other people have that after a relationship ends or when it's ending they think back and they go you know there was that thing at the beginning and I knew it then but I pushed it aside like I is that just a story we tell ourselves I think that the most important question to ask yourself after you go on a first date or a second date or a third date is how do I feel when
• 157:30 - 158:00 I'm with this person Because all the other stuff is just kind of like a a cognitive exercise right Like so one of my clients she was said to herself like I don't want to date any she was in her early 30s and she said I don't I want to have kids with a partner Um I'm 31 years old I don't want to date anyone I'll date someone who's divorced but I won't date someone who has kids She met someone online Um the it
• 158:00 - 158:30 didn't have the kid question in that particular app that she was using Um she went to meet him on the first date She's having such a good time and it comes up that he has a kid And she was having such a good time that she really debated like should I go out with him again not go out with him again This is not what I want I don't want to deal with that It's too messy and it's not what I imagined If she had known on that dating app that he had you know it had asked if
• 158:30 - 159:00 he had kids and he had put that she would never have met him That is her husband She is so happy I mean they've been married now for like 15 years They have kids together They have the other kid She's so happy So I think that when we make that list that you said like do you should you take things off the list I think that you need to have flexibility about things that may not matter but you have to be very inflexible about the things that do matter So character qualities they
• 159:00 - 159:30 matter Um values that align that matters So those are things that don't be flexible on that So I just want to make sure I understand So we're talking about two different lists here One is a list about a features about the other person This is what I we hear is like the list Um the number of times that friends are like you have to make a list I never get around to making the list But I like this other list that you described which are all the things about ourselves that would make us difficult to be with Which list or both do we need to have rigidity
• 159:30 - 160:00 versus flexibility on I'm saying that when we think of that list and by the way a lot of people don't sit there and write a list but they have it in their head you know there's this process of I know what I'm looking for or whatever Some people say like I know it when I see it but there's really a list in there because you you know what you're looking for and it matches this list in your head Um so on that list I'm saying you need to put more things like character qualities Are they honest Are they reliable Um can I trust them Do we
• 160:00 - 160:30 have the same kind of vision of the kind of life that we want to lead Um you know where are we aligned on those important things cuz those things are those are those are sort of hard to bridge those gaps Um you know like they're just going to keep coming up and and be very difficult to deal with things like do we have to have all the same interests No Um you know do we um you know does the person have kids or not Well you may that may not be the the ideal choice but look what happened to this other person
• 160:30 - 161:00 that you know like you don't know I think that question that I'm going back to of how does this person make me feel if the character qualities are there because sometimes people who don't have the character qualities that you want are very charming and they can make you feel great but if they have the character qualities do I feel calm around this person going back to the this idea of peace and calm um I like this idea somebody had mentioned that I I love this metaphor of of being able to bring your rough drafts to the other person meaning that you don't have to be
• 161:00 - 161:30 on all the time with this person that you can bring sort of the rough draft of yourself of this idea of um you know your your kind of imperfect draft and they collaborate with you on that and I think that's so beautiful right that like you can be what it means is you can be yourself and yourself doesn't mean I can be I can act in any way I want I can have no boundaries I can be abusive no that's not the rough draft but it's kind
• 161:30 - 162:00 of like I am working this through I'm trying to understand this I'm I'm not perfect sometimes I will make mistakes and can you be comfortable enough around each other to hold yourself accountable but still feel loved by the other person I love love love the um the criteria for lack of a better word of you know how do I feel when I'm around this person Yeah Peace being a uh an anchor point or a place to look for Um and when I say how
• 162:00 - 162:30 I mean do you feel calm Mhm Do you feel um content And so calmness is different from sort of the activation Um contentment is different from like out of your mind happy Of course in the beginning and hopefully throughout the relationship there will be times when you feel this like incredible energy around happiness and joy and being around the other person
• 162:30 - 163:00 But most of the time what you're going to feel around your partner is a sense of safety a safe place to land contentment Um I enjoy this person's sense of humor I enjoy sitting with them even through our silences I enjoy like sitting on the couch and watching a show with them Um I enjoy basically doing anything with them just because I like their presence That's what I mean Like how do you feel Does their presence feel additive to you Does it feel like you in just are happier with their presence
• 163:00 - 163:30 than you would be without their presence And sometimes people feel like "Oh we have such a strong relationship We're so drawn to each other." But what you're drawn to is when you're with each other the presence is volatile It's it's either like the high highs and the low lows And that's not you know I'm talking about that sense of contentment just being in the other person's presence the daily of it There's um so much made of these love languages like their acts of service and
• 163:30 - 164:00 I like you know gifts you know all that kind of stuff Um you know I've I've heard it said you know what what's what's your love language And someone you know I say all of them You know that person was me All of them Who doesn't like all of those You know both you know I like to think I I offer them too you know Um you know who doesn't like all of those things But I realize that some people place more value on on certain um gestures and expressions and and I think that's all fine and good Uh what I love
• 164:00 - 164:30 about what you're saying however is that it's more about like a now we're sounding woo but it's more of like an energetic match This feeling of safety You know that the word peace to me just feel like hold so much value these days I feel like the two things that I've come to really value more and more are peace and self-respect Because it's hard to have um peace without self-respect Yeah Certainly hard to have self-respect without peace Now
• 164:30 - 165:00 sometimes lack of peace can be from external things but then we have to ask ourselves like do we have any control over these external things Yeah I'm curious what your reflections are on on like energy like an energy match So instead of love languages I look at it as understanding each other's operating instructions We don't get a manual like when you get buy a car or a piece of technology right comes with operating instructions so you know exactly how it works like don't push this button do push this button this makes it run more
• 165:00 - 165:30 smoothly this will destroy it right so you understand those things so we don't know that about the other person like we make so many assumptions um you know if this person is coming to me to talk about this here's what I would want in that situation so we do that and the person's like no no no I came to talk to you about it I just wanted to vent I don't I I didn't come for you to fix it right but maybe You like it when people fix it So you you have to learn the other person's operating instructions So we talk about this idea of love
• 165:30 - 166:00 languages People like all those things As you said operating instructions is something so much deeper and more intimate which is I understand that um being late means this to you right I understand that it helps you when you're anxious if my voice gets quieter instead of you know I understand that you need a hug in this moment Um I understand that when we're going on a
• 166:00 - 166:30 trip you like to pack this way and I like to pack this way and let's do it our own ways right But or you know just like I understand these things about you and you understand these things about me and so if we understand them we know how the other person operates and we're going to operate ourselves with an eye toward that And there's something so loving about understanding somebody's operating instructions and honoring them And we don't try to figure out the other person We try to think like why are they acting
• 166:30 - 167:00 that way We don't get curious and ask "Hey why are you acting that way What's going on?" And you learn then oh well this is why And then now you know that in those situations here's how they can go more smoothly I rarely ask uh guests on this podcast to editorialize about other guests but here it feels uh appropriate Um Bill Eddie was on this podcast He's a therapist and lawyer and he wrote the book uh I think it was like five types of people that will ruin your life And one of the um cardinal features
• 167:00 - 167:30 of a person that he claimed will ruin your life is somebody one of the early warning signs let's not say cardinal features but is um somebody who has a story about their past failures that's always about how they were wronged by somebody else Yes like the victim stance like there's no other word for it People who are constantly talking about how they were a victim of somebody else There is a word for it It's called helprejecting complainers Help rejecting complainers
• 167:30 - 168:00 So a help rejecting complainer is a person who is always telling you you know this went wrong and it was somebody else's fault and they're seemingly coming to you for advice or guidance and no matter what you say like how about this or have you tried this or have you thought about this No that won't work because no I've tried that that's not going to help No because people are like this and that won't help So they don't actually want help it serves them in
• 168:00 - 168:30 some way to be to complain and be the victim and be wronged And so it's almost like you know that's that makes them feel better Um they don't want to look at themselves They don't want to look at their role in things So beware of help rejecting complainers because they're always going to come to you and you're going to at first feel bad for them You're going to be like "Wow they've really had a hard time Wow you know I wonder if I could help them this And then you start to realize they don't want help They don't want to be helped
• 168:30 - 169:00 They will reject any help that comes their way because if they get help they can't complain anymore I'm guessing you see this sometimes in therapy Oh and in the world In the world We've been making a fair number of assumptions about relationship structure There so many different permutations these days that we don't have to explore them all But um do you think that some people are just not well suited for um romantic
• 169:00 - 169:30 relationships Um I've known a few people in my lifetime a former uh adviser who he passed away as I mentioned earlier but who um had tried romantic relationships and decided they weren't for him Um most everyone I know in my life is either partnered or Yeah pretty much um thank goodness h happily so um but are there people for whom like they just opt out of the game for reasons that are
• 169:30 - 170:00 healthy as opposed to fear of rejection or or otherwise I think that we are wired to want to love and be loved whatever that means it could there's all kinds of love there's all kinds of ways to love um I think that people don't know how to love and be loved if they haven't seen it So generally you learn that because you've had it modeled for you Or if you haven't had it modeled for you you by trial and
• 170:00 - 170:30 error start to learn these things Maybe you go to therapy and you learn more about it Um but I think no matter what people come to therapy for no matter what we call the presenting problem you know they're coming because whatever they want to say it is deep down something got kind of ruptured in the love or being loved area of their life And really that's the core of it And we have to solve that problem so that the problem they came in for you know it's it's kind of like you're dealing with
• 170:30 - 171:00 content which is like here's the problem and process which is what's going on underneath And if we can solve the process then you solve content in multiple areas of your life It's not just this one problem that you came in with but generally if you learn at the core what the issue is that gets in the kind of love be loved area You learn how to navigate through the world differently in your professional life and your romantic life and your platonic friendship life and your family life Um
• 171:00 - 171:30 so it's not just therapy isn't just about solving like that one discreet problem Sometimes it is but many times it's about if we can get to the deeper process issue then you will solve so many different problems simultaneously Throughout today's conversation I feel like um what seems to be in contrast is kind of our stories about ourselves and other people and life
• 171:30 - 172:00 versus just really being present Yeah this image of the Teflon pan is really um kind of looping in my head because this idea that you know positive thing happens it slips right off Negative thing sticks What does that mean It's like we create a story about the negative thing and that the the story about the positive thing was a very brief brief story It was like one of those three sentence poems or something and then it's gone Um versus presence It's like the more um presence we can bring to something the more positive
• 172:00 - 172:30 meaningful experience we can extract from it I really believe this I I um I learned this in science actually um because I had a a absolutely spectacular neuroanatomy professor when I was an undergraduate and he said when you look down the microscope if you're looking for something you'll find it but you're going to miss all this context of like the inputs to that structure and and you you lose the pattern recognition that's going to serve you going forward So I learned I had this be I had so much time back then I would just sit at night as a
• 172:30 - 173:00 graduate student after I left you know my undergrad and went on to lab and I would just like stare at brain tissue and you you learn that and and about it in conscious and unconscious ways and then later when you're doing an experiment you see things like oh you know there's a there's a deficit here There there's a real effect here And and you and you learn that that through presence you um you're like experiencing things so much differently than if you go looking for something science if you go looking for something it's actually
• 173:00 - 173:30 bad science right and I've tried to transport that onto relationship in some ways like if like in relation to things and people and dogs and all the things in life if you're really present like the story is writing itself but you're not um scripting it out I don't know I don't think I have a language for this Rick Rubin talked a little bit about this in his book the creative act like we need to be on the front end of the of the vehicle experiencing space and time as it's happening as opposed to sitting next to it or in it and kind of creating
• 173:30 - 174:00 a narrative about what's happening around us Does that make sense Right So most of us all of us are myself included you all of us we're unreliable narrators because we're only telling the story through our own lens And so it's really important for people to kind of be expansive about what the story might be about themselves Like someone might have a story I'm unlovable or I can't trust anyone or nothing will ever work out for me that's their story that they're carrying around from childhood or from
• 174:00 - 174:30 you know some experience that they had in life and they don't realize that they're carrying that story around everything that they experience is viewed through that lens And so of course they're not finding you know they're not finding people they trust because their whole world view is I can't trust anyone even though the person might be trustworthy or they feel unlovable So of course they can't take in the love that they're getting because again what are they paying attention to this predominant storyline So they need
• 174:30 - 175:00 to rewrite the story I created this workbook that's a like a step-by-step guide I'm not sort of doing this to plug the workbook I'm saying it's a very methodical process You have to break down the story And my background is that you know I I come from a writing background So I feel like I'm almost like an editor in the therapy room when people come in and they bring this story and my job is to help them edit the story so that this faulty narrative that
• 175:00 - 175:30 was never true or someone you know whoever told them that story whether they explicitly said you're not lovable or showed them through their actions that they then felt not lovable that story was told by another narrator So that narrator was unreliable gave you this story that now you take as gospel and you move through life with that story So let's examine that story and can we look for examples of counter examples of when that story is not true because generally there are
• 175:30 - 176:00 stories of you being lovable There are stories of people being trustworthy There are stories of things working out for you So we have to really rewrite those narratives and say you know what is true and what is an artifact of somebody else's story that we're carrying around and why why are we like writing the next chapter with somebody else's narrative that we never owned anyway Yeah It seems that like one of the challenges of being human is unless somebody is a narcissist where they
• 176:00 - 176:30 basically dismiss anything that doesn't make them feel good um in which case they miss out on so much of life and everyone can't stand them anyway Um if you're a a permeable person like you you you're paying attention to what people say you're trying to integrate that you're trying to do better be better Um the hard part is being semi-permeable You have to know what to let in what to reject what to accept what to work on I mean it's it's a challenging thing this process of being a person in in relation to others Right
• 176:30 - 177:00 Well well right And and again the story think about like how much we tell stories about ourselves and other people That example I gave you earlier about the person who said "Well he doesn't prioritize me because he comes late and work is more important to him." And in fact he was prioritizing her So we we tell all kinds of stories and we make meaning of interactions with people and generally we don't have enough information and we need to say "Can we expand this story What would that story look like if I got curious?" and ask
• 177:00 - 177:30 more about it or even just things that happened in our own lives Can I can I examine that story for myself Is that the story I want to tell myself about that experience that didn't go the way I wanted or can I look at it a different way Like am I a failure or am I actually growing Right You can look at the same story the same way I'm a failure that didn't work out or oh that's really interesting I learned something really important and I'm I'm really a courageous person for trying that and now I learned something totally
• 177:30 - 178:00 different experiences of the same event And I think sometimes the way we get to that story in the moment is to look at our senses So we have five senses We don't tend to pay much attention to them We just think through everything So can you say in a moment right Like even about your partner when you're upset with your partner can you say like with each sense like here's one thing I see about my partner that I really like even though I'm upset about something they just did Right Here's something I hear I
• 178:00 - 178:30 like the tone of their voice or I like the the way they laugh Um you know I like the way they smell Um you know whatever it is Um you know I I like the way you can just reach out And by the way touch is so important What I have couples do sometimes when things are getting a little bit uh escalated in the therapy room is I'll say "Can you take each other's hands right now?" And this is the last thing they want to do in that moment I say "Can you just take each other's hands?" Calmness right
• 178:30 - 179:00 Their nervous system is calming down And all of a sudden they feel "Oh yeah I forgot what that touch feels like." And they feel connected now So can we use our other senses Sometimes when we get really in our head and use it to kind of expand the story and and connect and uh whether it's connecting with yourself sometimes you know with anxiety we do that You know something I can see hear taste touch smell Um we can do that with a partner too I feel like the the whole
• 179:00 - 179:30 landscape around relationships has changed so much in the last 20 30 years It seems like in some ways for the better Like there's a lot more discussion about the sorts of things that uh you're explaining and and um better understanding of self how to show up better better choice um and so on Um I was thinking about the uh at the same time this example you you mentioned before of like uh someone in their teens or 20s will a couple will break up and then somebody's posting all these things
• 179:30 - 180:00 about them That that kind of quote unquote feedback because it's not really feedback It's more um signaling and posturing about what they aren't as opposed to what the other person is um has has got to create pretty detrimental stories in the in the person that it's about right because they either they have the choice of either believing those things Um or disbelieving them Um but it's not really an opportunity for growth in the same way that sitting down
• 180:00 - 180:30 with somebody and saying like "Hey these were some things that you did well and here are some things that didn't go well." Um and I guess how much of the story for um for men and women young uh men and women nowadays and and older do you think like uh is being uh written through the like what we hear about the the the opposite sex right like that like um in the last I would say 1015 years there it hasn't really been a moment of really trying to prop
• 180:30 - 181:00 young boys up and men of it's like like maleness is great like that's not something you hear very often Yeah And I certainly understand why there was a need and an effort to balance um opportunities right But uh a lot of young guys grew up hearing that maleness having a Y chromosome is a bad thing that testosterone is bad or something like that uh you know and I've been asked to comment on this more and more recently in the press and you know I only know my experience and what I
• 181:00 - 181:30 observe but um I mean you take any group and and tell them that they're bad and that hasn't really worked out well for any group and and or for society When my son was in preschool um there was a a shirt that girls would wear little you know preschool girls and it said "Boys are stupid Let's throw rocks at them." And it was supposed to be somehow girl power empowering but you don't empower by putting down another group right You
• 181:30 - 182:00 lift up but you don't bring down And my son was so confused by that I remember he was like "Why What does that mean?" And can you imagine if some boy showed up at preschool that said "Girls are stupid Let's throw rocks at them." Yeah He'd be in a different preschool pretty quick right I mean you know it's um so so I think it's it's interesting to think about um how it became that um it's very hard
• 182:00 - 182:30 for young men to navigate what does masculinity in a positive way look like And they get all kinds of messages you know all men are bad Um men should be more like women Men need to um you know be this way or that way But no if they are more communicative then they're weak But if they aren't communic you know like there's there's no kind of right way uh to be And I think that um I think
• 182:30 - 183:00 it's very confusing for young men if a if a a young like a teenager or someone in college wants to kiss a girl right like on a date um and they don't do it because like it for like they don't know what to do like do I need to say can I kiss you right which feels a little bit like takes away from the moment but at the same time they don't want to assume that she wants to be kissed but like it
• 183:00 - 183:30 seems pretty obvious to him that like they're standing out in front of their cars in front of the restaurant and like maybe she wants a good night kit you know and it's just so confusing um and I I think that um you know there's definitely I think a positive correction in you know what we call toxic masculinity um the ways that that men didn't really assume the personhood of women But I also think that it's gotten to a place where it's so confusing for both young men and young
• 183:30 - 184:00 women to understand sort of how do we how can we be with each other How can we relate to each other um where we won't be criticized cancelled uh you know we don't know what's right Like is it do I do I put myself out there Do I not put myself out there Um will I get in trouble And so it you know obviously it's a good thing that that people are having conversations and there's more communication around like what is okay what do you want is this
• 184:00 - 184:30 okay But at a certain level it becomes people are afraid to do anything Yeah Talk about lack of presence It sounds like they have to like write the story all the way to the 10 different outcomes for a given action you know evaluating if then they're no longer reading the other person's signals I mean it it sounds incredibly complicated right It it it is very complicated I think there's progress too I mean I think it's much better than having these situations where men just assumed like it was okay to do certain things whether you know
• 184:30 - 185:00 the woman consented or not But I also feel like um the education that they're getting around this which again is again it's so complicated because it's positive that they're getting this education but they don't know what it looks like in practice because the way that you know even when you think of like corporate training and you have to watch those videos right And and you know what is okay and what is not okay They give the most obvious examples of what is not okay But then there's just sort of like how like say you're at work
• 185:00 - 185:30 and there's someone that you you're a woman and you're at work and there's a guy that you're attracted to because a lot of people meet at work right Because it's hard where do you meet people when you're an adult Where do you spend all your time You spend a lot of your days five days a week at work So you might meet someone through work and then there's this sort of and maybe it's not someone you directly report to or reports to you They're in like a different department There's like a cute guy What do you do People don't know So women are confused too What is okay What is not okay In the ways that organically
• 185:30 - 186:00 people used to be able to say like "Hey that guy you know I'm going to go talk to him right?" But people don't know what to do Wow Tricky landscape but you're offering tools for people at least not at least but to communicate better and certainly to understand themselves better so they know what they're bringing to the table Well I I I think that it's about understanding that whatever we see in TVs and movies you know it's it it doesn't look like that
• 186:00 - 186:30 You know there's always like no somebody doesn't know what to do in a certain moment or something doesn't go the way that you imagine it will go or sex is can be ridiculous at times and you know all these like weird things happen I don't mean not consent I'm talking about like it's just it doesn't look like it does in the movies all the Well and sometimes there's great chemistry and guess what Sometimes there's not Like this chemistry thing is a real thing and sometimes it develops over time and sometimes it doesn't The the idea that there wouldn't be much uh room for um ex
• 186:30 - 187:00 healthy exploration error and adventure kind of breaks my heart because that's what I was referring to about things you know Um but young people are smart they can figure it out And and they also like to throw off the um uh the kind of like rules and standards of the uh of the adult generation So I trust they'll come up with with a better alternative for themselves right Um I want to make sure that I ask you about grief Mhm When a
• 187:00 - 187:30 client is grieving a a breakup or a loss of some sort um do you tell them to feel their feelings or do you tell them to compartmentalize and only feel their feelings certain times a day or do you um you know ever have to say "Hey listen you know it's it's time to bury this thing." Um I'm laughing because there's there's no one way to grieve a loss and even the same loss like um you know
• 187:30 - 188:00 siblings can lose a parent and they'll have very different ways of grieving the loss of the exact same person um you know there there's just no right way or one way and I think you really have to honor that person's process and what I mean by that is it doesn't mean sort of you know just spend the rest of your life um like dwelling and not living right but I think people have
• 188:00 - 188:30 this misconception about grief that somehow you're going to get over it and um often we carry those losses with us throughout our lives Like you lose someone important to you you're going to feel that loss and you might feel it in different ways at different times If someone was important to you and you lost that person and you hadn't thought about them in a while and then you're in an elevator and you hear this music this song and all of a sudden it's like someone just stuck a knife in your heart even though you were doing fine So um
• 188:30 - 189:00 people you know I I think that we are the accumulation of all the different people who have been in our lives for better or worse and um everybody makes some kind of impression on us that sticks with us So I think it's really important for people to understand um what the loss is about because the loss can represent lots of different things You lose a parent maybe it's the loss of your youth you're like "Oh no
• 189:00 - 189:30 I'm now the older generation." So part of it is the parent but part of it is this kind of I'm closer to death And what does that mean Um you know you lose a marriage and it could mean oh look just like my parents they got divorced and I failed even though that's not necessarily the meaning of it So we make meaning of the loss too So it's what does this loss mean to you How do you make sense of it um how do you sit with the loss and then
• 189:30 - 190:00 how do you again not move on but move forward I love that concept Uh we integrate the the things better for better or worse into us but um moving forward is something I think everyone would probably want one would hope Yeah I know you're not um here to pro to promote anything but um you caught my attention with this workbook because I think um I and a number of people probably want to think about how to um
• 190:00 - 190:30 uh put some of this into action Um and you've given us a lot of great tools to do that a lot of different ways to think about things I I certainly am um taking notes Uh can you tell me about the notebook um and and what the notebook is and and what who can make use of it Yeah this what by the way folks this wasn't preceded into the conversation We'll talk about the notebook later I just want to know for people who want to understand how to how to do good work It sounds like a a great tool right Um so
• 190:30 - 191:00 the workbook came about because um I wrote this book called Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and it's the stories of it's my story going to therapy and then it's the story of these four other patients that I had and um when I working with them and um and people said "Wow there was so much that made me think or feel or resonate with but I need some structured like a sort of a step-by-step guide to how I can make those kinds of changes too." and maybe they don't have access to therapy or
• 191:00 - 191:30 they don't want to go to therapy they want to work on it in a different way And I really wanted I feel like therapy is this thing where certain people you know it's sort of like one-on-one or if you have a couple it's like you know three people in the room and how do you bring that out so other people can use those tools So I created basically a workbook that's a companion to maybe you should talk to someone And it's it's I really focused on stories because I feel like the narratives that we carry around shape so much of how we think feel and
• 191:30 - 192:00 act every day So it's it's a it's a guide that really it's what I would do with someone in the therapy room if I were helping them to rewrite their story and to look at is this a faulty narrative What does this look like What are the true stories What resonates with me now at this part of my life Where do these stories come from Who told me these stories Um can I try this out in real life Here's an exercise to do this week So I I think that more of us sometimes need that kind of guidance It's one thing to theoretically think
• 192:00 - 192:30 about something And as a therapist I'm just very direct and active anyway As I said you know the insight is the booby prize of therapy that I want people to have more than insight I want them to have a plan with action and I want them to have small manageable steps because I feel like if you get overwhelmed and the step is too big that's really the only reason that people don't succeed at a change they want to make It's that you need the steps to be manageable So I really break it down for people You know how can we do this It's kind of like weekly therapy It's like how can we do
• 192:30 - 193:00 this this week and work on that And then you can kind of reflect on it And there's all these different exercises that take you at the pace that works for you It's great I I'm a huge fan of workbooks and online courses I'm taking an online course right now um just for my own enrichment I'm going to get your notebook Um I I think it's a fabulous idea I think there's so many books about the changes we can make and and in any domain of health wellness psychology
• 193:00 - 193:30 fitness whatever And we read it we might incorporate one or two little snippets and then it goes on the shelf and then we're proud to have it on our shelf because it says something about how we view life and it's cool to see those books elsewhere and all that's wonderful Um but I think workbooks are like a real thing Um so we'll put a link to that again Uh this came up spontaneously but I know a number of people will want um to know that I have one more question You write this column Is it a weekly
• 193:30 - 194:00 column Every two weeks I write Ask the Therapist Yeah Are there things thematically that are coming up more these days Like you're getting a thousand letters about blank and then two about something else I mean what what where are things batching these days And there can be more than one uh b uh bin excuse me bin to how it's batching Yeah Um so I think the same things come up I've been doing this for so many years I wrote it for six years at the Atlantic and I'm writing at the
• 194:00 - 194:30 New York Times And it's interesting because people talk about the same issues differently but it's the same issue So someone might say um you know a lot comes up around should I cut off this person Um whether that's a family member or a friend Um you know should I you know this person did this And boundaries are a big thing And everyone thinks everyone's a narcissist which they're not Everyone thinks everyone is you know gaslighting them which generally they're not It's all dope I mean I'm just I'm just kidding They're
• 194:30 - 195:00 these by But but I mean like the language is different is what I'm saying But I think that that what they're really struggling with and what we all struggle with are are you know relating It's hard Humans are unpredictable Humans are well in some ways they're very predictable but I think they're hard for another person to understand in that way going back to the operating instructions that sometimes you think this is going to be the expected response and you get something completely different Um they can't understand why a friend or a family member or a co-orker or whatever would
• 195:00 - 195:30 um would do or say or think something Um I think at the end of the day people really know what the answer to the question is but they want permission Um so so many times people say like you know what do you think about this Or I really want to do this but the people in my family think this And so they're almost asking for permission that it's okay to want something It's okay We are so cautious about desire in our culture
• 195:30 - 196:00 that sometimes we think that if I have a desire it's indulgent as opposed to you should you know have desires live a big life I always say to people when you're making a decision choose the bigger life That's how you make the decision And I heard that somewhere It's not mine originally but I think it's so true that you know it's okay to have these desires but then we get these messages from our culture or our friend group or our families that no
• 196:00 - 196:30 no no it's not okay And so a lot of people want permission that it's okay that you don't want to go to medical school you know like it's okay Um you know it's okay that you don't want to have children That's okay um you know so I think sometimes people want permission but I think what they're really I think most of the letters are about um I'm having trouble relating and I don't know if I'm crazy they're crazy what's happening and so they need sort
• 196:30 - 197:00 of that person who's going to zoom out and see it from a more objective place and help them to see again going back to narrative both sides of the narrative so I'm not just in my column I don't just say here's what you should do I do do that but I first say I want you have some context around this So here's how you're thinking about it and that's understandable Here's the other side of the story that you're not really paying attention to Now that you have this wider lens here's how I think this might
• 197:00 - 197:30 be managed Love it I love this concept of make the choice that is going to bring the bigger life Yeah because it's as you pointed out so easy for people to stay stuck in what is unpleasant but hasn't killed them yet or they're waiting for something like I will buy a house when I will look for a partner when as if there are these prerequisites that need to happen because that's the conventional
• 197:30 - 198:00 view of the order in which you should live your life you know like I won't I won't buy a house until I'm married as opposed to Why why can't you buy a house that you like if you have the money to do that right Um you know why do you have to wait for marriage for that Or I won't look for a partner until I have this kind of job You know that you have to have all these little pieces in this order And there are so many different ways to live your life And sometimes by the way you might want to live your life in that conventional order but it just doesn't work out that way for you So you
• 198:00 - 198:30 might have to switch up the order And that's okay I love a vote in favor of people enjoying their life more and hopefully deriving more self-respect by doing it You know that this this aestheticism of like we're not we're going to deprive ourselves of things in order to respect ourselves You know even though I value discipline and um I think learning to enjoy life is is also important right And and I think that you know when we talk about we're not talking about hedenism We're talking
• 198:30 - 199:00 about reflecting on what will make a meaningful purposeful life for you and then being very intentional about going after that goal So much here Um Lori thank you so much uh for the work you do with your patients slashclient slash we don't have a better word for it Um and also your willingness to get out and teach and and literally every two weeks you know field
• 199:00 - 199:30 questions from the general public It's not easy to do I imagine And um clearly you're you're thinking about things past present and future And um you know people really need these tools and not everyone will make it into your office unfortunately and have the the uh the experience of working one-on-one with you But I think that the workbook I'm so glad that came up so that people have an opportunity to put these things into action and you've given us a a ton to work with here I listed out many things
• 199:30 - 200:00 I won't I won't um list them out here We'll timestamp this episode in detail so people can go back and find them But um yeah I've learned a ton I'm going to put put this to action and um hopefully uh you'll come back again and talk with us about what's new because I know this is an evolving field and as the landscape of of society changes we're going to need new tools But it sounds like the fundamentals are really in there It involves self-reflection I love this thing about a list of the things that make us difficult to be with
• 200:00 - 200:30 as opposed to the list of the things we want in other people Um and that teflon pan is something I'm going to think about a lot Yeah Well thanks so much for this conversation and I love having these longer conversations and really exploring what it means to be human Well thank you You've certainly enriched my thinking about it and I'm sure everyone listening as well Thanks so much Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Lorie Gotautib I hope you found it to be as interesting and as actionable as I did To learn more about Lori Gotautlib's work and to find links
• 200:30 - 201:00 to her excellent book and other resources please see the show note captions If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast please subscribe to our YouTube channel That's a terrific zerocost way to support us In addition please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple And on both Spotify and Apple you can leave us up to a fivestar review And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode That's the best way to support this podcast If
• 201:00 - 201:30 you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast please put those in the comment section on YouTube I do read all the comments For those of you that haven't heard I have a new book coming out It's my very first book It's entitled Protocols an operating manual for the human body This is a book that I've been working on for more than 5 years and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise to stress control protocols related to focus and
• 201:30 - 202:00 motivation And of course I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included The book is now available by pre-sale at protocolsbook.com There you can find links to various vendors You can pick the one that you like best Again the book is called Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body And if you're not already following me on social media I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms So that's Instagram X Threads Facebook and LinkedIn And on all those platforms I discuss science and science
• 202:00 - 202:30 related tools some of which overlaps with the content of the Hubberman Lab podcast but much of which is distinct from the information on the Hubberman Lab podcast Again it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter the neural network newsletter is a zerocost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as what we call protocols in the form of 1 to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep how to optimize dopamine deliberate cold exposure We have a foundational fitness protocol
• 202:30 - 203:00 that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training All of that is available completely zero cost You simply go to hubermanlab.com go to the menu tab in the top right corner scroll down to newsletter and enter your email And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Lori Gotautlib And last but certainly not least thank you for your interest in science [Music]