Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - 7 Ways We Self-Sabotage and How To Stop with Dr Ramani Durvasula #332
Episode Date: February 1, 2023This week’s episode is all about a subject familiar to many of us: self-sabotage. Whether it’s the inability to stick to our health goals, leave a toxic relationship, or get that promotion, we oft...en seem to be our own worst enemies. Self-sabotage is a spectrum of feelings, beliefs, and behaviours, but they all set us up to fail.  Dr Ramani Durvasula is a clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychology at California State University, and a world-renowned expert on narcissistic personality disorder. She’s written two books on the subject, Should I Stay or Should I Go and Don’t You Know Who I Am. She hosts the podcast Navigating Narcissism, and posts regularly on her YouTube channel, which has over 1 million subscribers.  In this conversation, we talk about relationships not with others, but with ourselves. Dr Ramani talks us through the common ways in which many of us self-sabotage, including procrastination, social comparison, taking on too much and not living in alignment with our values. She explains their links to anxiety and perfectionism and shares the practical solutions that she uses with clients to overcome them. If you’ve ever considered having therapy, Dr Ramani provides some useful insights about how it can work.  We discuss a wide range of topics, including why so many of us stick around in toxic, unsupportive relationships, the importance of cultivating friendships and communities outside the home and not expecting our romantic partner to be all things to us. And you’ll hear Dr Ramani explain a new way of thinking about our inner critic.  Dr Ramani has decades of real world experience helping her clients, she is a brilliant communicator and this is a conversation full of fresh insights and practical insights that you are going to be able to implement immediately. Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Thanks to our sponsors: https://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore https://www.vivobarefoot.com/livemore Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/332 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Getting to the core of self-sabotage is so essential.
Procrastination is a big one, right?
Because it links very much to anxiety.
You're procrastinating.
What are you afraid of?
What is the pain that's being brought out by this task?
Because you're avoiding it.
You're avoiding this because it's uncomfortable.
Really do a deep dive because in understanding that,
the procrastination can lose some of its power.
Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far.
My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More.
How many times have you told yourself that you are going to get up early to meditate,
or find time to be more active, or start writing that book
you've always wanted to write, yet despite your best intentions, you don't manage to follow through.
I think pretty much all of us have been there at some point in our lives.
So what's actually going on when we do this? Well, this week's episode is all about a topic
that I haven't really covered in detail before
on my podcast, self-sabotage. Why do we so often end up being our own worst enemies?
My guest is the quite wonderful Dr. Romani, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology
at California State University and a world-renowned expert on narcissistic personality disorder.
She's written two books on the subject, Should I Stay or Should I Go? and Don't You Know Who I Am?
She hosts the podcast Navigating Narcissism and posts regularly on her YouTube channel,
which has over 1 million subscribers. Now, in our conversation, we talk about the common ways in which many of us
self-sabotage. This includes things like procrastination, social comparison, taking on
too much and not living in alignment with our values. We talk about the relationship between
self-sabotage and things like anxiety and perfectionism. And throughout the conversation, Dr. Romani shares practical solutions
that she has used with her clients that we can also use for ourselves.
We also cover a variety of fascinating topics,
including why so many of us stick around in toxic, unsupportive relationships,
the unintended consequences of living in small nuclear families,
the dangers of expecting our romantic partner to be all things to us, best friend, lover, coach,
co-parent, as well as a potentially new way of thinking about our inner critic.
Dr. Romani has decades of real-world experience helping her clients.
She is a brilliant communicator.
And this is a conversation full of fresh insights and practical information
that you are going to be able to implement immediately.
I hope you enjoy listening.
And now, my conversation with Dr. Rahmani.
I thought a really nice place to start would be around self-sabotage.
Number one, it's not something I've really spoken about much before on my show.
But I think the second point is that I see this in practice. Many people want to make changes in their life. They know what they should be doing. You know, I want to get up earlier to
meditate. I want to eat better. I want to find time to exercise. Yet despite the best intentions,
they don't actually manage to follow through. Is this something you've seen? And maybe
you could talk about, you know, what's going on here, basically. Absolutely all the time. And I
think that what ends up happening is that people will, like you said, especially it's in we're
talking, it's the beginning of the year, they set a lot of they'll set goals, they don't see the
goals through and that almost results in more distress.
And so getting to the core of self-sabotage is so essential. And the challenge with self-sabotage is it's so multifaceted, right? I mean, it has, it's like all, like any issue relevant to mental
health, it sits on a spectrum, right? It's not an, it's not like you're a self-sabotager and I'm not. It's not
an either or. It's not a black or white. You know, at some level, self-sabotage is something we
definitely see as part of mental health issues like depression. That a person, for example,
who's depressed will have the thought of, I'm never going to amount to anything or I have no
hope in the future. And so in a way that belief
can drive behavior. So that's one sort of compartment of self-sabotage.
Another way self-sabotage shows up is not, again, we don't want to simplify it. It's not like
somebody wakes up one morning and says, I'm going to ruin everything I did today. It's very subtle.
going to ruin everything I did today. It's very subtle. And so what we sort of classically see in the self-sabotage universe is stuff like procrastination, social comparison, taking on
too much. It's behaviors that almost set a person up to not be able to succeed. So it would be a
person, I'll give an example,
because I was a university professor for a very long time. I would see students who were working
full-time and then they would sign up for six classes. And I'd say, this is not possible.
They say, I want to graduate early. And I'll say, everything's going to implode. You'll feel
like a failure as a student. You're going to feel like a failure as an employee.
Many of them had other responsibilities too.
And yet the big goal of, I want to finish school in the allotted amount of time, or
it was this almost a sort of a self-sabotaging level of grandiosity.
And so we'd have to bring them down and say, it's okay to take five or six years to graduate
from college.
But if you're going to work full time, let's set this up differently. So there's sort of
different issues around self-sabotage, which is sort of what is the core of it? What might be
driving it? Then there are the sort of foreshadowing behaviors like procrastination,
social comparison. A great example would be going on social media. That actually is a form of
self-sabotage. A person will,
give you an example, Rangan, a person will want to lose weight. And they'll go on social media
ostensibly for inspiration and look at these people who have these dramatic weight loss stories,
even their friends who are getting up every morning and doing some CrossFit and then they're
showing their smoothie they made for breakfast. And then this
person simply isn't able to do that for whatever their reasons are. They may be very real practical
reasons, but as they see their friend's success on social media at weight loss, or even parenting
is another great example. A person might be a parent of young children and feel like I'm failing
at this every day. And yet they see their friend with their perfectly coiffed children and saying, I'm a failure. And so looking at that
will make a person say, I don't even know why I should try. That's another example of self-sabotage.
So, and then there's obviously the self-sabotage behaviors of not doing procrastinating because
a person feels too overwhelmed. So it's a complicated behavior.
Yeah, it's really interesting. I think that example around weight loss, and as you say,
going on for, in inverted commas, inspiration, but without realizing it actually is probably making that goal a lot harder to achieve because of how one is going to feel or one potentially could feel afterwards.
Let's go through some of these in a bit of detail. You mentioned procrastination, okay?
This is something I think everyone, I think, at some point has experienced. And as you say,
these things are on a continuum. So a bit of procrastination, I think we all do at certain times. But for some people,
it's really quite paralyzing, isn't it? This inability to make a decision is keeping them
stuck in their lives. So what are some things we can think about if we're suffering from
procrastination? So procrastination is a big one, right? Because it links very much to anxiety.
Okay. It links to another self-sabotaging pattern of perfectionism, which is a huge self-sabotage issue. Right. And it is also, again, the taking on of too much. So when a person procrastinates, what you have to remember is we as human beings rarely do something unless it's rewarding.
human beings rarely do something unless it's rewarding. That's how people are. We are ultimately really, really smart and angsty rats in a maze. We do things that feel good or feel right or feel
better. And to that end, human beings, pretty much like all life forms, avoid pain.
So procrastination is a form of avoiding pain.
Now you might say, what pain is someone avoiding by putting something off? Because that task,
that task may bring up feelings of inferiority, that task may bring up feelings of incompetence,
of insecurity, of having to face down an uncomfortable truth, any number of things
that that task, that thing that needs to get done represents. So what better way to avoid the pain
than to not engage in the task? Okay, so now the task isn't getting done. For the moment,
you're relieved, right? I'm going to give you the tiniest, simplest example because it happened to
me an hour ago. I set my alarm for 5.45 this morning. So I'd be able to get up, take a shower,
put my face on, be in front of you. But I had worked late last night. And when I woke up,
it's still dark, right? So I was like, oh, I want to get out of bed. So I procrastinate 15 minutes,
15 minutes more. Now it's 6.25, reading the news, reading a book,
anything to get out.
It's very cold for LA here.
So I get out of bed at 6.25.
Now I have 20 minutes to get ready, right?
Scrambling into the shower, throwing on a face.
My bathroom's a mess.
The cat's food is everywhere, right?
And I was like, oh, I want to be really prepared for this.
And ultimately, yes, I was at 659
setting up my Zoom, but that's not how I wanted to show up. Now that's a small example, but why
didn't I get out of bed? Not because I wanted to ruin talking to you today, but because it felt
good to stay in that bed. It was warm. Do you see what I'm saying? I was avoiding the pain.
That's simple. Now take that to anything else,
studying, cooking, meal prep, exercising.
So I always will tell people that the most important thing to do
is take a task and chop it up.
Chop it up into manageable chunks.
One way to do that is time.
I'll tell people, set an alarm.
You have to do whatever this thing is for 15 minutes.
And 15 minutes, that alarm's going to go off
and you can stop doing the task.
In a majority of cases, a person's like,
okay, 15 minutes, I can do it.
I would say probably 60, 70% of people will keep going.
They're like, okay, well, I'm doing it now.
And they'll turn off the alarm and they'll keep going.
There is a subset that'll say, okay, the 15's done.
I'm out of this task.
But most people will see it through further.
It can also be taking it and breaking it into component pieces.
I'm just going to chop the carrots first, and then I'm going to take a break.
Whatever it may be, I'm not going to start.
I'm not going to go and run 5K the first day I work out.
The first day, I might do 10 minutes on a treadmill. What we're
doing is trying to create habit versus taking on these enormous tasks. And I think the enormity of
the task is also part of the issue. Is that, okay, a person saying, I have to study for the exam.
Well, what does that mean? Does that mean you have to read this chapter, make an outline, take a sample test, break down the big amorphous goal or task into its component processes? But that's practical. On the other side of this is the management of the anxiety. And that's a deeper dive. Now, ideally, if a person's in therapy, they could talk with a therapist
about what they're actually anxious about.
For a person's not in therapy,
and this is not causing them significant distress,
they can sit down and ask themselves a question.
You're procrastinating.
What are you afraid of?
Okay.
And that's the question of what,
because that's what,
what is the pain that's being brought
out by this task? Because you're avoiding it and you're avoiding this because it's uncomfortable.
And to really do a deep dive into what that discomfort is and to start to sort of take
apart some of those beliefs, because in understanding that the procrastination can
lose some of its power. Yeah. It's so beautiful the way you broke
that down. So much for me there to reflect on. The first thing is that it kind of makes sense
that we procrastinate because we're trying to avoid discomfort or pain. As you say, it may be
inferiority, incompetence, uncomfortable truths, whatever it might be, you know, we're human. Of
course, we have a bias to wanting to avoid that. So I guess we can be compassionate to ourselves
about that. Second thing was, is that when you talked about breaking it down into manageable
chunks, well, that's kind of what all the best behavioral change science shows us as well. If
we want to make a change, you've got to, a change, you've got to start really, really small. And one thing that came up for me as you were describing that is
something I have spoken about on the show before is something my wife and I try and do every
evening, which is what we call the five minute tea ritual. And the goal is simply that, you know,
and the goal is simply that you know people these days are so busy juggling work child care elderly parents whatever it might be it's very easy to be in the same physical space but not
actually spent meaningful time together so we have this thing where once our children are in beds
we'll come to the kitchen and it's's five minutes. We say the requirement is
for five minutes, we sit down over a cup of mint tea or whatever it might be and catch up with each
other. Now, when we do it regularly, our relationship is immeasurably better. There's
more connection, more intimacy, everything is better. And when we think we're too busy to do it, little niggles and problems start to build up. And it's what's incredible.
And what I think relates to what you just said is if you say, for example, I need to spend more
time with my partner or my flatmate or whatever it might be. And you say, it's got to be an hour.
I don't have time, But because it's five minutes,
it's not as if at five minutes we go, hey, babe, you know, you're done now. You've had your five
minutes. No, some days when we're busy, it will just be five minutes. But often before you know
it, it's 15 minutes, 20 minutes, could be an hour. So I think just a couple of observations from me
based on what you were saying there, I think, about procrastination.
Yeah, it is. I mean, part of that, what you're also talking about is intention. And, you know, procrastination sits alongside avoidance and also sits alongside intention, right? Because it could very well be that you and your wife could say, okay, let's not do it tonight. Let's put it off tomorrow. We'll do 10 minutes tomorrow.
And it doesn't work that way, right? Some things do need to be touchstones every single day. They
need to be things we do every day. And we do, and everyone will say, no, I'm not able to learn a
habit. I say, the hell you're not. You brush your teeth every day. It's not like you say,
I'm going to brush my teeth on Friday, five times as long to make up for the other days. All of us get up in the morning, we do our thing,
we brush our teeth. There's things we are, and that's not, it's not even like doing other things
like drinking water. That is a bodily function we have to do. Brushing our teeth, if you want
to view it as it's an optional behavior, yet everyone managed to get that habit on board.
And when we think of it, everything is like
brushing teeth. The thing is, we don't feel insecure about brushing our teeth. We do feel
insecure about other things. And so I think that that's why it's about drilling down. And what
you're talking about too, is if there ever was a point when you or your wife were saying, oh,
I don't want to do tea tonight, that would speak to a larger issue. What are you afraid of? Maybe there was something you didn't want to talk about with each other.
What were you avoiding? That avoidance piece, which is the core of anxiety,
what are you trying to avoid? Because all of anxiety is about avoidance. Nobody wants to feel
uncomfortable. Why aren't you making that phone call? Why aren't you answering that email?
Why haven't you returned that text message? I was working with somebody recently who really
struggles with social anxiety. And one of their biggest struggles was returning text messages and
emails in a timely manner. And it was causing problems for this person, right? It was resulting
in disrupted social events. It was leaving this person's social, people on this person, right? It was resulting in disrupted social events. It was leaving this
person's social, people on this person's social network were starting to sort of split away from
them. They were screwing up job opportunities by not returning emails and even paying bills late.
So there's a lot of things happening. And when we came to the core of it, what happened was this,
this person then recognized, I actually don't know what to say.
I feel like I'm hogging up people's time.
It was, again, it was a very classically socially anxious sort of framework.
And then in not answering these messages for so long, this person actually did actually
have a true mess on their hands now.
It wasn't a mess two months before.
It was a mess now when we were working on it. And so then it became that slow burn of once an hour returning a text. And then once the
person started doing one, they returned others. It wasn't easy because some people said, you know,
we were hurt. You didn't respond to our messages. But when this person understood and was able to
see in some ways the kind of the distortion of their belief that,
you know, that they were using a people's time, they reached out to you, why wouldn't they want
to hear back from you. But that went to again, a deeper core insecurity this person had. And that
would that ended up becoming the work of therapy. Yeah, I really love this. It's really trying to
dig into the root cause what's really going on here? Let's not overly focus on the procrastination
necessarily. It's like, what does that tell us? What is that teaching us about what's really going
on? So I think that's a really great example. Okay, so procrastination is one way in which people
self-sabotage. I think the other one you've already mentioned is comparing ourselves to others.
So I imagine comparing ourselves to others was also a problem 20 years ago, pre-social media,
but I suspect it's got immeasurably worse.
I've had the tremendous privilege of training and practicing as a therapist
before there was ever social media.
And now I'm practicing with it.
And I have to tell you, those of us who have been in this game long enough to understand those bookends,
it's like the difference between living in a life, then an asteroid hits the earth, and then living in a new life.
And it wasn't overnight.
earth and then living in a new life. And it wasn't overnight. But when I think back to the ways we were grappling with some of these issues, you're absolutely right. Social comparison has always
been an issue. Before it might've been a person compared themselves to their neighbor and the
neighbor's new car or a cousin and the cousin's new job or a classmate or a friend. But now though, the focus
of comparison is everybody in the world that you might identify with. That's why I gave the example
of mothers of small children, that even if a mother with a small child, you might live in Los Angeles
and the mother of that small child might live in Boston. You identify with them as being a mother
of a small child, much like you would a friend with a small child. The in Boston, you identify with them as being a mother of a small child,
much like you would a friend with a small child. The difference is, this is a very different person
than you. And yet you're comparing yourself to them on that one key similarity, right?
And so what this has done is it has caused a tremendous distortion and a tremendous anxiety,
but there is a little bit of good news. And some of this goes to this, some of this work on digital natives versus digital immigrants.
And if you talk to adolescents and people who've pretty much grown up in the social media era,
so it's sort of been around since they were children, they're actually a bit more circumspect
than you'd think. I'm the parent of two, an adolescent and a young adult.
And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, it's going to be distorted.
It's certainly distorted a little,
but they are also saying, yeah, no, I get it.
They're doing this, they're this.
They're a little bit aware of some of the manipulations
that happen on social media,
which I actually think in a certain age group
that didn't grow up with it,
there's a greater vulnerability.
But all of that said,
whether the social comparison
is happening in an online space, in your own peer group, in your family group, in your community,
what it does, it sets up sort of a, you're now using the barometer as something outside of
yourself. Human beings are a social species. We are going to use other people as sort of a touchstone.
But when we over rely on that,
then what ends up happening is we start living in service
to what we think the world wants us to look like,
the world expects us to do,
what we think the world is telling us,
for example, good parenting is.
Instead of sort of saying,
well, this is my family, these are my children, this is what works for us, for example, good parenting is. Instead of sort of saying, well, this is my family,
these are my children, this is what works for us, even if it may not be what works in the world.
And I think that the ability to sort of separate oneself and identity from what the world is
demanding from them, that's a really, that's a kind of a tall order. But when people try to do what they think the world wants, right? I have to take the vacation to this place and stay in this hotel and do this activity because this is what looks good. I'm like, is that the vacation you really want to take?
the precious amount of vacation time they have, that now they've tried to go and do what they think someone else wants them to do. And they've lost a really important, restorative, recreational
time. It can be, it can apply to anything, but the level of social comparison people are engaging in
is really resulting in a lot of distress and in all ways, instead of people saying,
what matters to me, it may not be the same as what sort of I'm being told matters to the world at large.
I mean, firstly, I'm pleased to hear what you said about the digital natives.
You know, it's something I'm noticing as well.
My kids are 12 and 10 at the moment.
Yeah, so they really are natives.
But I wonder actually if it's people in their 40s and 50s who might be the worst here.
Because we didn't grow up with it.
And then I remember when Facebook came out in, I don't know, 2005, 2007.
And it was just incredible what you could share with your friends and who you could stay in touch with.
And then within two years, you've got 2000 friends.
It's like, that's ridiculous.
I don't know these 2000 people.
They're not000 friends. It's like, that's ridiculous. I don't know these 2,000 people. They're not real
friends. So I think that's really interesting. But, you know, Dr. Ramani, what can people actually
do? Because it's easy to say to people, don't compare. It's not good for you. We all know
when we compare too much, it doesn't feel good. Yet these platforms are so, I don't know,
they're so tempting for so many of us. What do you practically do with people
who are falling into that trap?
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Yeah, it's a tough one because I think that in some ways when you're younger, you are more impressionable.
I think that social pressures matter more when you're younger, which actually makes sense in terms of because that's a time when people are starting a career, choosing a partner, all of that.
As you get older, I think that the kind of the stereotype of the older person is like, I don't care what other people think of me. There is some truth to that. As you get older, I think that the stereotype of the older person is like,
I don't care what other people think of me. There is some truth to that.
And so I think that the place to begin is not to tell people to not socially compare,
but to actually drill down into themselves and very intentionally, honestly, even once a day,
to ask themselves the question, who am I? What do I stand
for? What am I about? They seem like such simple questions. You can do them while you're sitting on
a bus, on a subway, in the car, taking a walk. Look, who are you? What is your you? What matters
to you? And all of a sudden, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're trying to shoot for something extraordinary or ordinary or everything in the middle.
When you do that, you may catch yourself in saying, ah, it's really sort of the model of
keeping up with the Joneses. I was so focused on keeping up with the Joneses that actually what I'm
about is a person might say, I'm about family. And actually, I don't really care that I have a big car if I'm able to get home by 4.30 and spend time with my children. Someone else will say,
I'm a teacher and I'm really about teaching. And yeah, maybe I'm not doing this and this or
whatever, but that's what I've signed up to do or whatever it is a person does. I'm a storyteller,
whatever. And it's funny, I can only give this from a personal example,
but I was recently in a situation where I was being told, you're not doing enough of this,
Romani, and you're not doing enough of that. And you could be doing this and you could be doing
that. And I actually was really anxious about it in the last few days. And when I woke up this
morning, my procrastinated rush, I did in the shower reflect on this idea of, Ramani, what are you about?
What is it you set out to do? And when I did that, it became a recalibration of, yeah,
actually you are doing what you set out to do. Perhaps if you did what these other people were
doing, you'd make more money, you'd have more notoriety. But I'm like, do you need those things?
I'm like, yeah, anyone wants a little more money, but more money, more headaches. I'm able to pay my mortgage. I've got a car, I've got food in the
house. And so I thought before you get pulled in that direction, pay attention to whether you're
living in alignment. And I actually don't think a lot of people have ever asked themselves that
question of who are you and what are you about? Because the more of that you do, it does create a little distance between yourself and the social media. And you're able to say,
ah, I see that this person is doing this and that's great. I'm happy that they're doing X,
Y, or Z. I'm doing what I want to do. And then all of a sudden you're able to actually occupy
more of a co-located space of they're doing that, that's different than me. Sometimes
we may even wonder if I had taken that path or what would this be like? But then also,
even with my own clients, I'll say, let's do a little bit of guided imagery work.
Work it as a mental experiment. Take it out in your mind. If you had those other things,
like even if I'm saying, oh, if I had more notoriety or more money,
then how would that pull me off my original mission?
What would my day-to-day life look like?
Is that what I really want?
You know, the old adage goes,
be careful what you wish for, you might get it. And so I think that that kind of mental work on one's self,
we are so focused on other, other, other,
what do I look like to the world?
That many people aren't asking
themselves a simple existential question of what are you about? And then once you start doing that
and you become your reference point, even when you get pulled and we all do like that person's
got it together. Whoa, that's a really nice house. Or how do you have so much time to travel?
You then start seeing yourself within the context of your own life, what you
stand for, what you are about, that that I think is something that people aren't doing enough. And
that instead, and then if you want to look at social media, you'll be potentially looking at
it through new eyes. Yeah, it's so powerful, because it's in some ways, which way do you
want to tackle the problem from? one way you could say okay i'm
going to stay not knowing myself with all my insecurities and i'm going to get tugged every
time i go on social media i'm going to get pulled thinking i need to do that i need to do that oh
i'm not as good looking as them or i don't have as much time or have a nice holiday as them or
whatever it might be or because that's a that's a that's an unwinnable battle if you haven't done
the inner work. Whereas what you're proposing is actually if you bolster up yourself, your own
self-esteem, figure out who you are, live in alignment with your own values, then you almost insulate yourself and your being so that you are more
bulletproof and resilient, I guess, and less likely to be pulled by comparison. I mean,
certainly as you were saying that, I was playing with that sort of tug of war in my head thinking
a much more sustainable and probably successful way to not suffer with problems with comparison
is to do the inner work, isn't it? Always. And I think the inner work does become,
and even with these other things we're talking about, what is it you're trying to fear? What is
it you fear? What are you trying to avoid that this is reflecting
on yourself? Yes, you're within a larger system and you may even say, I feel the pressure because
it's coming from my family. It's coming from my partner. You know, you'll reflect where these
external pressures are coming from, but it's also then bringing yourself back to, and what do I want
this life to look like? You like? I was speaking with somebody who
actually said, they were talking to me, they said, wow, I work a lot. I work seven days a week. I
have zero work-life balance. And I know why that is. There's certain things I want to get off the
ground. There's certain messages I want to get to the world. And I was talking with somebody who
very much has made their lives a nine to five, right? Five o'clock they're done and they do not think about work the next day until they clock in at nine o'clock. And they
were very clear on who they were. They're like, I love spending time with my family and in my home.
And I like reading books in the evening. And, you know, they were talking about someone, they said,
I've had mental health struggles in the past and pushing myself to a stressful point actually
really harms my depression. And so, and they're fine. They
don't live in a palace. They definitely are a little, they're financially cautious, but this
person had done the work to say, I know myself. And, you know, they said that I'd love to have
some of the things you have, but it's not so important that I know also I like having my
evenings and my weekends to myself. And I actually really admired the assuredness of this person.
They said, yeah, sure.
Again, I would love a new car.
I'm not saying that this person wasn't, they weren't like an ascetic or like a monk.
They were someone who's like, yeah, I'd like those things.
But what's more important to me is this time, this time with my child, my children, this
time with my partner.
We go on the weekends,
we have picnics, we have beaches, and we have times at the beach. And I remember thinking like,
hmm, this person actually knows themselves better than me. Like, why am I chasing my tail all the
time? And that conversation has stuck with me because there was, you know, this person was just
so very assured in almost what we could call an ordinary life, which I personally think is extraordinary because I really adore this person.
But they were so clear on it.
And they were also very clear of being custodians of their own mental health history.
This is a person who's lived with depression and anxiety.
And it said, that kind of stress is going to spin me out.
This is part of who I am. My depression is part of who I am. And I have to be careful. And I really, that kind of stress is going to spin me out. This is part of who I am. My
depression is part of who I am. And I have to be careful. And I really, really admired that.
Yeah, when I hear stories like that, for more, more money, more status,
more holidays, whatever it might be. Often if people end up there getting those things,
they still feel empty because actually it wasn't what they really wanted. But again,
comparison, you know, it know this reminds me a little
bit of how you finished your TEDx talk which I thought was brilliant by the way um you said at
the conclusion I think the very qualities associated with material success are bad for our
health yeah and then you went on to say we need need new metrics of success. We need to reward things like authenticity, compassion, kindness, and empathy.
But that's kind of it, isn't it?
The system around us, the society around us is set up to value a lot of things that just
don't make us happy, basically.
That's right.
That's it.
Well, it's set up to value things that are going
to keep commercial systems running, right? So you really, really have to be aware of the value of
compassion. That's why I'm saying the knowing who you are, giving you the example of that person who
it's a very clear structured work hours. They don't have a lot of money. They do have a very
loving family and they found these joy in these simple things.
That came at some cost. A person had been in therapy for a long time, struggling with depression.
And so they'd done a lot of inner work. And it's much easier, frankly, I think,
it's much easier to chase more money, to chase for a car. Those are actually easier goals to
chase for because
they're sort of right there in your hand. Like, look, I got the goal. There's the car in the
driveway versus having to do that inner exploration and really sitting with who you are. Because the
fact of the matter is a lot of who we are, who we want to be, how we want to show up in the world
is actually at odds with what we were told we're supposed to be. People were told you have to be, how we want to show up in the world is actually at odds with what we were told we're
supposed to be. You know, people were told you have to be, you know, I culturally grew up in a
South Asian family where you have to be a doctor. You have to do this. You have to have a certain
outcome. Like it was very much like there was a way you should live. And as an immigrant's child,
I really felt that pressure to sort of deliver on the sacrifices that my parents made
and I don't know that I became the right kind of doctor but I even when I changed my program of
study to study something that was more compelling to me I felt I had betrayed them that's a really
heavy weight for a 23 year old woman to have had on her back and so we have to it is very I'm not
saying this is easy that you
just sort of sit there in low disposition and say, oh no, actually I want to be an artist. And you
run off and become an artist. It's, these are things that we really, really have to struggle
with and pull the layers off and understand the intergenerational layers that are playing out
there because it's complicated. And I know a lot of my work ethic comes from still trying to
almost sort of please and honor this cultural tradition I came from. And I have to keep
catching myself in that. You know, as a fellow child of immigrant parents here in the UK,
I can resonate with so much of that, you know, almost word for word at times. I think many of us know what that feels like. It's interesting,
your friend who seems to really understand who they are and realizes that everything has a cost
and that I'm not prepared to pay that cost anymore. It sounds as though their sickness,
their ill health taught them some really valuable lessons. And that's a theme that often comes up on
my podcast where disease or illness or adversity, whatever you want to call it, can end up being one
of the most powerful teachers. And I say that with compassion. I say that with sensitivity.
I'm not wishing bad things on anyone. But when they do happen,
as they inevitably do in all of our lives,
there's often some profound learning
on the back end of that.
If we're fortunate enough,
if we've taken the time,
it sounds like your friend went to therapy,
learned a lot about themselves and what they need.
Is that what you've also found
that when people come to you,
they go into your clinic,
they're struggling with a problem, that through the process of you helping them learn about
themselves, that on the other side of that, they have a much deeper and I guess in many ways a
better understanding of what life is really about.
Some do, not all. I think that again, that spectrum, that continuum, I think some people can get there and they come into therapy. And usually people come into therapy because something's
not going right. Very rarely does somebody say, oh, I want to grow more. I'm going to go to therapy.
It's really, I'm having trouble in my marriage or I'm having trouble at work or I'm feeling really sad or I'm so anxious I can't
get out of bed. I'm struggling with drugs and alcohol, whatever it may be. Those are the things
that might get somebody into therapy. So they're typically already in a crisis. Obviously, I think
therapy has sort of like, it's a two-part goal, if you will. The first goal of therapy is to help the person cope with and get the tools with and get them
out of that acute episode of distress.
From there is the sort of that level two, where it is then continuing to practice those
tools.
I always say that a person comes into therapy with an empty or a half-empty toolbox.
The goal of therapy is to fill that toolbox up,
but also teach them how to use those tools. So once they're either in between sessions,
or they start weaning off the therapy, or they stop attending, they're like, okay, I have
something here I can turn to. I have a different way I can talk to myself. I have a breathing
exercise. I've thought about this issue differently. Whatever tools and skills that
they have taken out of therapy, that's sort of the goal. But like I said, not everyone gets there.
There are things that can block people in perpetuity from getting there. And that's,
I mean, it's a tough way to live, but therapy is not a miracle, right? There has to be tremendous
motivation on the part of the person coming in. And it's not a magic pill. It's not a miracle, right? There has to be tremendous motivation on the part of the person
coming in. And it's not a magic pill. It's not a surgery. It is a very collaborative process.
And if the client is not willing to sort of almost make some of the psychological sacrifice,
which is feeling uncomfortable, feeling a little unsafe at times in their life, like pushing
themselves to the next level, somebody's not willing willing to do that there's only so far they're going to get I mean that
that's going to limit them so under the umbrella of self-sabotage we've spoken about procrastination
we've spoken about comparing ourselves to others I think another way in which we often self-sabotage without realizing it is when
we're surrounded by people in our lives, I guess you could call them toxic people or people who
aren't necessarily supporting our goals and what we actually want. Is this something you've seen?
Would you say that this also fits under the umbrella of self-sabotage?
Absolutely. I mean, again, my expertise is in working with people who are healing from what
are called narcissistic and antagonistic relationships. I think this goes well
beyond somebody not supporting your goals. This is about people who are actually invalidating
somebody else, right? Confusing them, devaluing them, leaving them or saying to them that you are less
than, chronically criticizing them. I think that that's actually probably the biggest self-sabotage
of all, is continuing to stay in those relationships and not attempting to either see them clearly
or when it's possible, it's not always possible, to distance or get out of them. Because I think
that for a lot of folks,
they'll actually get, they'll understand why they're avoiding things. They'll understand why they're procrastinating. They can even train themselves to avoid the social media.
But if day in and day out, there's a voice in your head that is invalidating you, that is
leaving you feeling less than, that is questioning you, that is questioning reality. You're constantly confused. You're filled with self-doubt and you continue
to maintain that relationship in the status quo and keep thinking, well, maybe I can change them.
Maybe I can get them to notice me. That is the ultimate self-sabotage because you can give so
much bandwidth to those toxic relationships and just keep getting sucked deeper and deeper into another person's vortex. And like I said, I know that a lot of people can't distance from really unhealthy relationships. They may be in marriages, for cultural, traditional, religious or reasons of finances or children, they can't leave, or they genuinely love the person. And they say for all
their toxicity, there's something that matters to me here. There may be their family and they feel
they can't step away. It could be a job that they need. So I'm not so arrogant as to sit here and
say, well, the easy solution is to get out. But the kind of work I do with folks is to say,
when something is toxic enough and it has been consistently for a long time and nothing you're
doing is changing it and
in fact often making it worse. That there really has to be some level of radical acceptance that
this isn't going to shift and realistic expectations for what you've got in front of you.
Not saying it doesn't still sting or hurt, but what may come of that is you're less likely to
blame yourself for what's happening. Because if you're blaming yourself for what's happening,
your entire conception of yourself is shifting to,
I'm a bad person.
And so these relationships really do shift
how people think about themselves.
People do feel like, I'm a bad person.
I'm disloyal.
I'm thinking all these bad thoughts
about someone I'm not supposed to be
thinking bad thoughts about.
And I have to say,
probably of all the causes of self-sabotage
I've ever worked with clinically or run into, this idea of maintaining toxic relationships and not seeing them clearly
is probably one of the, if not the biggest contributor.
So for people who are in relationships where they're having difficulties, it sounds like
there are a number of options, right? What advice do you
have for people when they're not sure what to do? You know, should I stay in this relationship?
Should I try and work at it? Should I leave this relationship? I know it's very difficult to give
a black and white answer to that. What are some of the things you would encourage people to think
about when considering what they should do with the state of their relationship?
So you're going to sit with yourself right off the bat. And especially if it's, again,
this is not a judgment you can make after knowing someone for a week or two. Odds are that by the
time a toxic relationship is sort of taking a toll on someone, they've been in it for a year or two or even 50 or 60.
But it's to ask yourself the question, how will I proceed in this relationship if I know this person's not going to change and this circumstance is not going to change,
meaning the situation, the relationship? How am I going to proceed? Because that's a very
different question. Many people in these relationships
are living on hope. It's going to get better in a year. It's going to get better when they finish
school. It's going to get better when the children move out. It's going to get better when this
happens, when we have more money, yada, yada, yada. I'd say no. Today, I'm asking you, if I'm telling you
this relationship is not likely to change, what would you do? Listen, some people say, if this is never going to change. I don't want to spend another minute doing this. And they may
actually set on the path of ending it. Some people will be hit with a wave of grief saying, what?
This is not going to change. And then say, no, it's not. And then the next series of questions
is then what do you need in life?
A person will say, well, I want someone to talk to.
I want people to spend time with.
And that might then lead people down paths of cultivating friendships in a deeper way,
joining social clubs, becoming more involved in workplace, volunteering in their community,
getting involved in their spiritual community, learning what the dance is in their
relationship, recognizing that this is going to sound like a strange example. I always call it
the good, the bad, and the indifferent. But if they're really in a toxic relationship, I'll say,
listen, if something really good happened to you, can you please take that to a really supportive
friend first? You got the promotion, tell your friend, tell someone you know is going to be so happy for you. Get that good energy. And then when you tell that person who
traditionally invalidates you and they're like, oh, did that promotion of yours come with more
money or something cynical like that? You've already gotten those good feelings. I'm not
saying it's not going to hurt, but at least it doesn't deflate your balloon right out the gate.
The same thing with bad news.
I'll often say to folks like this person who's very toxic for whatever reason they
are, may not be able to be there the way for you and show up the way you need them to if
you're going through something hard.
Same thing.
Let's say you find out, I don't know, you get a medical diagnosis or you get bad news
on a loan. I don't know. So whatever is the bad news, you take it, I don't know, you get a medical diagnosis or you get bad news on a loan.
I don't know. So whatever is the bad news, you take it to someone else and say, I got this bad
news today. Can I talk it out with you? You'll talk it out with somebody you care about, who
cares about you. For some people that might be therapy actually. And then when they have to talk
with the toxic person about the bad news. They've already sort of
approached it from a place of empathy and were held for a minute. The problem may still be the
problem. They may still need to figure it out with the narcissistic person. I don't know with
a toxic person, the refrigerator's broken, but at least there was some empathy. So what's left
to talk about? Indifferent stuff. The weather, the neighbor's new window.
And people say, well, that's not really a relationship.
I'm like, yeah, no, it wasn't before.
The difference was you were trying to make it into one.
And so some people may write this off as cynical.
I don't think it's cynical for a person to try to protect themselves.
Sometimes these are family relationships.
Like it could be a person's mother
or father or sibling, right? And so maybe they're having a different kind of daily contact with them,
but it's the same thing. A person will say, I just want my parent to be happy for me.
And it is painful for me to say, and they're never going to be the way you want them to.
And that is then doing the grief work of grieving, not having
had that kind of parental relationship, because the only thing more painful than having to grieve it
is to go in every single day and get hurt and be reminded and try to make it into something it's
not. And so as a person grieves that, then there is an acceptance and you recognize, okay, I have some chosen family.
I have people who are my supporters and have my back.
And this is my story.
It doesn't mean I'm divorcing my parents.
I may still have contact with them, but instead of trying to get them to notice me like an
attention seeking five-year-old that they're not interested in, I'm an adult.
I have important places and people
in my life who do understand me and I will show up and have whatever sort of maybe more superficial
relationship with these people. But now there's a little more of a sense of command, but it does
mean you do have to process that grief because there can be a lot of it when you recognize that
these really important relationships are not what you'd hope they would be. I mean, if you're stuck in a relationship of whatever sort,
and it's as you say, you're hoping every time it's going to be different,
and you're getting upset every time, you've given your power away to that other person. You know,
you are like a little puppet on a string, like on the off chance that they treat you well, or they behave in a way that you want them to behave. Okay, great. You may
have a good day, but you're not really in control of your life at that point. So what I hear is you
give some really quite profound advice on relationships that is, you know, you're really adding some nuance to it.
You're almost, you know, in some ways you're actually,
and there's an irony that you're in LA
as we have this conversation,
you're in some ways shattering the myth
of the Hollywood romantic relationship.
Like, yeah, I call myself the fairy tale killer. I'm like, no, no, no.
Yeah. But it's true because I think, you know, buying into that story,
like many of us do growing up, that we're going to just meet the one and fall in love,
get married, and then life is going to be roses and whatever else every single day.
That's not reality. That is just not how it goes down. But again, if you think it is,
you keep thinking that you're failing because you're not meeting this fictional reality.
And this wider point that, and I want to where you think this fits in here.
In the West, at least, we're becoming more and
more individualistic, aren't we? We're living in nuclear families. We're often away from friends,
tribe, family. We've moved away for work. And it's really interesting in these kind of settings,
we often put a huge amount of pressure on our partners to be everything, to be the romance,
the confidence, the great parent, the friend, whatever it might be. And so, yes, there can be
some very abusive relationships. I understand that where the best thing might be to leave,
of course. But maybe you could comment on some of these themes that I brought up and how that relates
to what you've just been talking about.
Right. So there's sort of two pieces to this, right? So there is, first of all, there is the unrealistic expectation of what a relationship can be in our life, because we can harm even a healthy relationship with those expectations.
This kind of fantasy that an intimate partnership is all things to us, is our best friend, is our hiking partner, is our sex partner, is our everything partner, it's unrealistic.
We've never run ourselves like that as human beings. I mean, really, when you think of what that intimate relationship was, it was like, get in there, have some kids, make sure everyone gets fed.
But we were living in these larger social systems,
right? The industrial revolution brought us down to this bizarre nuclear family.
But this idea of people being a one-stop shop, that is not realistic. And every so often,
I will see a relationship where that happens, but that's definitely more exception than rule.
But that said, that's one piece of it. And then we have the second piece,
which is that social comparison. We're looking around and people are, again, maybe posting about
relationships that are just so happy and all of this, and it seems like everything's perfect.
A lot of that is fictionalized just for whatever, whatever they're selling or whatever point of
view they're trying to push forth. But then there's this third piece, which is when you have a relationship where the dynamics are
actually and genuinely unhealthy, there's chronic invalidation, manipulation, entitlement,
dysregulated anger, betrayal, deceit, like it's not good. It is not healthy.
deceit, like it's not good. It is not healthy. That becomes an entire other game, right? Where a person may still really feel stuck in that structure. They may justify the person's behavior.
They may keep trying to change themselves, trying to change the other person, keep running on this
hope. It's going to get better. It's going to get better. And it doesn't, right? That's a different,
that's a slightly different issue issue and that gets sometimes even to
issues around trauma and not being able to break out of intergenerational cycles of relationships
being about invalidation. But I think all of this though goes back to that original point I made,
which is around expectations. And the bigger the gap between our expectations and what our lives actually are, the greater the distress. So if our expectations are this and our actual life is this, that's a lot of distress. The more we bring the two together, and that's not about lowering expectations per se, but it's really about looking at, again, reflecting on oneself, like what is it I want? What is this life about for me?
But I do think that it becomes two different conversations when it becomes whether it's
a person expecting too much of one relationship. And even that idea of a happily ever after is
just going to come. It's not just going to come. I think that life has become a rather complicated
space. People are living a very long time.
I think people underestimate how much pressure, for example, children are on a relationship.
There's interesting data that shows marital satisfaction plummets to its lowest when people
have children who are around five years old.
And it really makes sense because those have been tough years of sleeplessness and uncertainty and people's attentions being divided and maybe less intimacy and less flexibility.
And so this idea of like, now we have kids and it's going to be even better.
I'm like, now that you have kids, it's about to get a lot harder.
And I can say that as somebody who's worked with couples and worked with them and watched the difference between before and after kids.
and worked with them and watched the difference between before and after kids,
it was very rarely pretty unless these were incredibly well-resourced people who really weren't raising their own children. And then that's a different story. You see what I'm saying?
So it's that these scripts around expectation and how things are supposed to be and all of that get
complicated. But then when you throw in there that you're in a relationship with somebody
who actually this relationship is psychologically harming you because of their behavior.
And yet you don't understand that. Like we're not taught what psychologically unhealthy behavior
looks like that a lot of people then immediately will blame themselves and say, this has got to be
something I'm doing because I actually liked this person at one time. So it's got to be me.
And then they'll
keep trying to really destroy themselves in the process of trying to make this thing work.
What did you see after March 2020 when there were lots of lockdowns across the world and
specifically in relation to relationships whereby what I observed is a lot of people who
had a system. They'd go to work, they'd spend this amount of time with their partner, they'd
have this hobby that they do. Without realizing it, they had created a life where they had
different relationships for different things. Whereas when suddenly all those things
got shut down, of course, depending on where you're living in the world and what the restrictions were,
people were often spending a huge amount of time with the same person, the person potentially that
they love and they really liked. But they thought, I kind of liked it when we had this
pace to our life, not when I'm spending seven days a week, 12, 14 hours a day.
How did this change for you? Did you see this sort of coming into your practice or certainly
playing a part there? Absolutely. I have to tell you, I know of very few intimate relationships that did not take a hit. I think the pandemic did more harm than good to intimate relationships or to close relationship. There's no two ways about it.
are not meant for 24-7 consumption. They're not. They worked because these two people were apart 8, 10, 12 hours a day. But that idea of constantly being in each other's space,
it didn't work. And at the most extreme version of this, WHO and other agencies,
there's data that came out of the UK, out of the United States, rates of domestic violence skyrocketed. And so that was already one sort of canary in the coal mine, that this was a
problem, that these were likely that the separation of time and space between these two people may
have dropped that likelihood of violence because they just simply weren't together as much.
The frustration, the anger, the financial issues, the fear, all of that really, really kind
of multiplied. But the fact of the matter is, is that by and large, the pressures of the pandemic,
the shifts and the shift in how time was spent. Another thing that happened that was interesting
too was the way socializing happened changed. It became that the family, whoever you were sort of locked down with, became sort of the sole social space, as it were. And so people were now, again, putting a, they were putting pressure on a relationship. The only way I can liken it is you have your car in your garage. Your car's probably not designed to be driven 100,000 miles a year. It's going to conk out. Relationships aren't meant to be driven 24 hours a day either. And that's what the pandemic did. People were looking to the person to be
their therapist. What are we having for lunch, breakfast, dinner? Like, oh my gosh, I haven't
eaten lunch with this person in three years. And now all of a sudden we're eating all these meals
together. And people were actually sadly, more than a few people were learning, I don't really like this person. I like them for three hours a day. I don't like them 24 hours a day. It didn't mean the marriages and the relationships were done. It meant that we were really learning how these people sort of consumed these relationships, how they were in these relationships.
relationships. And some of us are, I mean, listen, as a naturally introverted person, I don't like being around people all the time. And so now this idea of having to be with people
all the time, because I was locked in with them, like, where can I, I'm in California with great
weather. Like I'm going to go outside for a little while, but I think people also found their limits
being stretched in terms of what they, how they choose to be social people, but relationships took a hit. And if people
were in any kind of relationship that had any sort of toxic underbelly to it, forget about it.
Those relationships blew up because that kind of pressure and uncertainty took people with those
more antagonistic personality styles and they could not cope.
And in the face of that lack of coping, they took it out on their family members.
And those folks suffered immeasurably during the pandemic.
Another way I think people self-sabotage is with the voice inside their heads, the negative thoughts, the negative
voice, basically, that's just saying what could go wrong and all these sort of things that many
people struggle with. How would you encourage people to think about that if that's what's
keeping them stuck in their lives? Well, so there's some interesting work on this. There's work in models
like internal family systems therapies and even self-compassion work that talk about the inner
critic, right? And even trauma therapists talk about this idea of the inner critic.
If you want to view that inner critic as being responsible for a lot of these negative voices,
you're never going to be able to make it. You're never going to find another job.
You're a loser. You know, you are never going to be able to support your family. Those, you know,
those kinds of negative thoughts, right? That's the inner critic. The inner critic is something
that we almost want to just sort of, you know, strangle, like, shut up. Why are you doing this
to me? But one thing that has been suggested by people who do this work, for example, this internal family systems work,
is some of this idea that this inner critic actually evolved to protect us. It protects us
from, for example, our fear of failure, right? Well, if someone's like, why even bother trying?
You're such a loser. It's a cruel way to
say it. But what the inner critic may be trying to protect us from is this much larger catastrophic
experience of failure. Right. But that's not the right way to do it. But what the inner critic is,
the internalized voices we've heard all our lives. And so they get transformed into this sort of,
sometimes they're trying to keep us safe. Like, why would you try that new job? You're perfectly fine in this town. It's that sense of keeping the person safe.
When people have been through any kind of trauma, safety is everything. And our sympathetic nervous systems evolve to keep us safe, which means we tend to be a bit more vigilant even when things are safe. Because if you've been through trauma, you've been through tremendous danger, you want to stay safe. The inner critic is doing all of that.
When you look at Dr. Kristen Neff and other people's work on self-compassion,
it becomes a really interesting offset to that. Because I think a lot of time is wasted in talking
about self-love. Like, tell yourself how beautiful and wonderful you are. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm not there. I just want to not be mean to myself. And that's where self-compassion comes
in. And it consists of things like being kinder to yourself, being more forgiving to yourself,
no longer judging yourself as much, recognizing that you're not the only person who's going
through this. There's lots of people who are in the same situation. You're not the one outlier that's so strange.
And also not getting over-identified with your feelings,
like thinking like, it's always going to be this terrible
versus like, okay, things aren't that good right now.
I guess they could be better in the future.
Like holding a curious possibility
for the idea that things could change.
It's just sort of being a little nicer to yourself
and almost like sort of creating an inner compassionate friend to sort of offset that
inner critic. But it can help to think of your inner critic as like, oh, I see what you're doing
inner critic. You're trying to protect me from looking foolish. And then that higher level is
to say, you know what? If I look
foolish, it's not the end of the world. I'll be okay. But I think what happens is as inner critical
voices, we take them in as truth. But if we could view them as a form of protection that I see
what's happening, my psyche, my interpsychic apparatus is trying to protect me from a fall,
almost like an overly solicitous
controlling mother. It's like, don't get on the slide. Don't get on the swing. You might hurt your
knee. That's in a way what that inner critic is trying to do, to which you have to say, I got this.
And if I fall off the slide, I'll just bandage my knee. I'll be fine. And so we almost have to be
the grownup in the face of this rather infantilizing inner
voice. Yeah. It's, it's a bit like what you said about procrastination. It's telling us something,
right? That inner voice is telling us something like instead of getting caught up in it and going,
Oh, it's saying that again, you know, I'm not going to do this. It's like, well,
where's that come from? Why is it there? What is it protecting me from? You mentioned internal family systems.
I spoke to Dick Schwartz on the show last year. And the reason I wanted to speak to him is because
internal family systems or IFS has been transformative for me.
I'm sure it's for many people, for many people.
It has been absolutely phenomenal. You mentioned a lot of the beliefs we take on as, you know,
children of Indian immigrants, you in America, me in the UK, and, you know, where our self-worth comes from and the competitiveness and, you know, this sort
of need to be successful because that's kind of what is valued. And you can think about this stuff
all you want, but I found the process of IFS helped me go in and change the story. You know,
the original story where that came from, it's going back in there and changing that. And it's been phenomenal for me. In your view, you know, what do you think of
internal family systems? And for people who are struggling with that negative voice,
you know, what other kind of modalities do you recommend to them?
Yeah, I mean, I think that I'm not a certified IFS provider. I've worked, I've worked
with clients who have, and friends, my friends have used IFS and people have found it to be
incredibly, incredibly useful. So I think that there's, I mean, I recommend it to people who
want to explore that and can find a practitioner who can do that kind of work. And so, but that idea of, are there other models that help people
sort of detach from these voices? I think another really powerful model is something called
acceptance and commitment therapy. It was a model developed by someone named Dr. Stephen Hayes.
And I like acceptance and commitment therapy because it really finds that sweet spot between
cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness and some of the
work you see done in dialectical behavior therapy around acceptance. And so it takes in all of that.
And again, I'm also not a certified acceptance and commitment therapy provider, but certainly I
bring some of the techniques into my work with clients. But it's really, again, it comes back
to that idea of over-identification
and Dr. Hayes talks about something called cognitive defusion, where we're often like
sort of fused with our thoughts. Our thoughts become literal reality rather than just thoughts
and giving, you know, and encouraging people to diffuse from those thoughts so they don't become
so real. And they just become one of many options.
I have the thought this is happening.
Instead of saying, I think I'm stupid and a failure,
Hayes would even suggest a switch in language
where you might say something of,
I have the thought that I'm stupid and a failure.
It's such a tiny little linguistic switch,
but then you're like,
which means there's another possibility, right?
It opens it up.
And these kinds of techniques are sort of opening us up,
making us more curious to not saying,
I am this versus I could be this.
I could also could be that.
And to do this work of acceptance
and recognizing that, yeah, there, I mean,
life is hard and there are hard moments, but they don't define it.
It is that idea that things are kind of, I always view it as like those restaurants where
this food just keeps going by.
You could take off the little trays.
It's like a conveyor that something else is going to come by.
And so I think models like that, that also bring in a lot of mindful awareness that
thoughts come, thoughts go, feelings come, feelings go. And our fear of feeling often
means that we detach ourselves from our feelings so we can feel safer.
I mean, one of the things that seeing someone like you in clinic or seeing a therapist gives people is perspective. It helps
them step outside of their life to actually look at what's going on. And I think I've heard you
talk about a process called whiteboarding. Is that what you use with clients sometimes?
I have, yes. But I think with whiteboarding, it's probably giving it more of a techniquey
name than it deserves. You can do it with a piece of paper, which is really laying things out diagrammatically.
Sometimes just seeing your stuff written out,
you're like, oh, I see the train there.
I see where this is coming from.
It's not because the more we make things identity.
So in other words, if you make a failure, your identity,
failure is even a strong word, a mistake.
If you make a mistake, your identity. Failure is even a strong word, a mistake. If you make a mistake, your identity, oh, I'm the disorganized, foolish person who can't keep anything in the right place
and is never going to succeed. Versus, you know, what is that voice protecting you against?
Where did that come from? You sort of snake through the origins of that. And then you start to recognize that that
voice often isn't your own. Again, it's internalized from other places. It's serving to protect you.
It might even be helping you avoid something else. But too often, we let all of that simply
become our identity. And that this idea of sort of whiteboarding it and putting it outside of you,
and then showing that this is coming from here,
is there a different kind of response you could have?
That that allows people to just sort of lay it all out and then even erase things and say,
okay, I could try it this way.
Or I didn't even realize that this was,
I was internalizing this from my father
or something like that,
that there is a way to sort of do this by laying it out.
But you're absolutely right. Therapy is a perspective-inducing place. And when done right,
the therapist will, again, not only bring empathy and compassion and respect,
but also, I don't practice psychoanalytically. I practice very humanistically. So I'm very much present with my own emotions in the room.
So when a client shares with me
that they've had some kind of particularly
invalidating experience, you'll see it on my face.
And I might say something like,
ouch, that must have hurt or did that hurt you?
And they'll say, oh, it know, it did hurt me. I
thought I was just being too sensitive. And in that moment, when I'm saying, I'm just hearing
a story as a third person and I could feel that hurt. And they're now saying, oh, it was okay to
be hurt. Like, I'm not weird for that. That now what's happening is they're having the opportunity
to have validation for very real emotions that they're experiencing, especially for people in
really antagonistic, toxic relationships who have been told over and over again, you're a drama,
you're being ridiculous, you have no right to feel that way. And so when someone's saying,
gosh, that was hurtful,
they're saying, oh my gosh, my emotions do have validity.
You have no idea how powerful that is because all of a sudden now a person's giving their feelings permission,
something they were told to cut off a long time ago.
Trying to get this heightened perspective on our life,
of course, can be done in many different ways. We mentioned
therapy, this technique called whiteboarding. What is your perspective on things like
journaling or meditation? Because these things can be fantastic, can't they? Where people can
do these things for themselves and maybe get some learnings and some insights about their life
if they just take a pause, take a bit of time to
step outside so they can reflect back. Absolutely. I'm a big fan of journaling.
And whatever way people want to journal, I think that the traditional conception of journaling is
you have a book and a pen and you write in it. That's traditional. And that's what a lot of
people have argued is the best old school way to do it. But some people say, I like to type my journal. Some people say, I like to
speak my journal. I'm like, great. However you're doing it, that's great. The advantage of writing
it is you can see it and sometimes look for patterns. I actually have a healing program
for people who have been in antagonistic relationships. And as part of that program,
I give them three journal prompts a week
for them to work on,
to reflect on whatever theme
we're working on in a given month.
So I think that the beauty of journaling is,
again, it continues the work of therapy.
It keeps people,
it's not like people should only be self-reflective
for an hour a week or an hour a month
or however often they go to therapy,
but it pushes a person to do
that, to be reflective, to recognize they have a private space to write down feelings that could be
uncomfortable, that they're struggling with, to give themselves a different kind of perspective.
So I actually think that journaling is a very powerful technique. I think meditation can be
useful too. I think the challenge with meditation is people feel overwhelmed by it.
They feel like I don't want to sit
for an hour and a half someplace in silence.
And then again,
it's almost like those successive approximations.
I say, you don't need to.
Why don't you try five minutes?
And even in those five minutes,
it can even be a mindful meditation.
Well, I'll start small with clients.
I'll say, let's just do a sensory kind of meditation.
Look around you,
just sort of pick out five things you see, and maybe even, you know, think about the colors of those five things. And then four things you can hear and, you know, and three things, you know,
something else you can touch or whatever, but like stay in sensation. And when people do that,
they get, they can kind of get lost in that. I'll often say, also work with people on the fine art of description.
So like to sit in front of something, anything, it could even be the smallest sliver of window,
but to describe everything they're seeing in a room and then to get lost in that, to
pull them out of their minds, because that can also snap people out of those sort of
thought and feeling loops.
Yeah, I think that's a really great example. For someone who's skeptical, who's hearing that and
going, okay, Dr. Ramani, I can sit there for a few minutes and I can tell you or tell myself or
write down five things that I'm seeing and four things that I can touch or whatever it might be.
What's that really going
to do for me? How's that going to help me in my life? What would you say to them?
Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my
very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning a really special evening
where I share how you can break free from the habits
that are holding you back
and make meaningful changes in your life that truly last.
It is called the Thrive Tour.
Be the architect of your health and happiness.
So many people tell me that health feels really complicated,
but it really doesn't need to be.
In my live event, I'm going to simplify health and together we're going to learn the skill of
happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you
back in your life, and I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good?
All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour,
and I can't wait to see you there. This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question
Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now,
journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision making and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression.
It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long term habits and improve our relationships.
There are of course many different ways to journal. And as with most
things, it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may
want to consider is the one that I outline in the three question journal. In it, you will find a
really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions I believe
that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every
evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of
answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January,
I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much it has helped them and how
much more in control of their lives they now feel.
Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal, that is completely
fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three-question journal completely free
on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to
drchatterjee.com forward slash journal, or click on the link in your podcast app.
It's breaking you out of, it's taking you out of a, like off of a treadmill in a way.
It is, it's clearing out the mind in its essence.
Like I'd say to someone, you have a trash can in your house.
Why don't you just, why don't you just keep filling it and never take it out to the larger
bin in the street.
Just keep filling it up.
And they'll be like, that's gross.
There'll be trash everywhere.
I'll be like, yeah, that gets real messy, doesn't it?
But you do take that trash out. I said, this is taking the trash out. And once I put it like that, I'm like yeah that gets real messy doesn't it but you do take that trash out i said this is taking the trash out and once i put it like that i'm like it's just
getting stuff out they're like okay i can see that and that that those kinds of sort of accessible
metaphors can help too you mentioned your online program how can people find that if they're
interested so if you if the the the design of the program is that people who are experiencing toxic, difficult, antagonistic,
narcissistic relationships often aren't able to get the kind of therapeutic care that they need,
or they need something that's an adjunct to therapy. This program is not meant to be therapy.
It is very much an educational program where people learn about the themes of these relationships and again,
do journal prompts, have workshops, have Q&A sessions, have a moderated, safe community platform. All of that information is available on my website, which is drromany.com. It's D-O-C-T-O-R
and then R-A-M-A-N-I.com. And then if you go there, you'll find that all that information
is there for how to enroll and what's included and what to expect. And then if you go there, you'll find that all that information is there for how to enroll
and what's included and what to expect. And that becomes a real touchstone for people. They'll say,
oh, now I understand what this dynamic is, what that dynamic is. It's a place to sort of try to
help people, again, encourage therapy where it's going to be necessary, but also understand the
terminology and to understand what's happening
to them, to their psyches, to what to expect in these relationships, what, you know, how people
are so filled with self-doubt, self-blame. And it's a place to really validate what happens in
those experiences and get your questions answered. Yeah. I mean, I've no doubt your online program
will be super helpful for so many people. I mean, I've seen what happens on your
YouTube channel. You've really struck a chord with people, which is why I think so many people
are consuming that content. They're leaving such wonderful comments there, which really,
to me, you know, it's been fun spending a lot of time there over the past few days
researching for this conversation. And, you know, the comments are just wonderful to read
in terms of you're just shining a light on issues that people didn't have a voice,
they didn't have a way to communicate, they didn't know what was going on until they saw
some of your videos. So yeah, I think the content you're putting out is fantastic.
I think the content you're putting out is fantastic. Perfectionism, right? That's another way we self-sabotage, isn't it? I wonder if you could speak to that a little bit, please.
Perfectionism is a particularly nasty part of the self-sabotage cycle because it's setting a bar
you will never reach. Nobody, nothing is perfect, right?
So just by setting a perfectionistic standard,
you've already lost, right?
So you'll never get the thesis written.
You'll never get the dinner made properly.
Nothing's ever going to be enough.
And some people believe perfectionism is a defense, right?
It can be a defense of allowing a person to live in sort of in an idealized state of,
if I can say I'm going to try to make it perfect, then in a way I'm aspiring to be perfect.
So on an unhealthy side, it can be part of a grandiose defense of like, I'm trying to
be perfect, which means it's possible to be perfect.
But then on the other, the perfectionism means
that people never get anything done. It can stop things from getting done. The perfectionism can
also be part of what we're just now talking about, a part of being in a very toxic, antagonistic,
unhealthy relationship. Because the belief then becomes is if I'm perfect, then this relationship
would work out. If I could keep the house perfectly clean
and the dinner comes out perfectly and I go to work perfectly and succeed and make money,
then I will be lovable. So the perfectionism in a sort of twisted way gets connected to love.
I will be lovable if I do everything just right. Because it's impossible to be perfect,
people who are high in perfectionism
really do exhaust themselves because it can't be done. And in the case of more toxic people who
attempt to be perfectionistic, they'll often rage at the world because they can't be perfect and
they'll blame other people for not being able to achieve that. So it's a really, really insidious
kind of a dynamic. And I think, unfortunately, we're talking about social comparison. The way the world is set up these days, you could be a perfect
parent and a perfect worker and have a perfect house and your refrigerator can be perfectly
organized and you can have a perfect wardrobe and a perfect body. Those are always being touted
as possible standards. And so because it's like,
well, I could have a better body. I could have a more organized refrigerator. I could have a,
whatever, cleaner house or a more successful career. People are always pushing themselves.
Perfectionism, what it does is it pushes people out of the moment. You're never staying present
in the moment because there's always something else you could be doing because there's no way to achieve that state. You're running after a constantly
moving goalpost. You're never going to reach it. Yeah. You know, the way I've seen it with
patients is, I don't know, something as simple as, yeah, doc, I want to, I'm going to start running.
Yeah. I think that's going to be really good for me. And two months later, they still
haven't done anything because they're still researching the best shoe, or the right running
gear or the correct type of workout to do. When just go for a 10 minute run around the block,
it's probably the best thing they could do to get started. So I see this very much, you know,
through the lens of health, when people are
trying to engage in health promotion behaviors, I think they do self-sabotage with this perfectionist
ideal, this unattainable ideal. What's the solution for that person? Or what's, you know,
it's not easy to just click your fingers and go, oh, I'm not going to be a perfectionist anymore. I think it's often, it signifies something deeper underneath. But for someone who that resonates
with, how can they start to go? How can they start to think about it? How can they start to
try and change it? Well, part of it is the tolerance of the discomfort of not being perfect. Does that make sense? Is that the idea of things not being perfect can literally bring up anxiety in a person.
compulsive disorder, that idea of exposure with response prevention, which is be in imperfection for a minute. Like we're just going to hand that in like that. We're just going to, we're going to
have people over and yeah, there's still going to be some laundry in the corner. Let's see how that
feels. And the person will say, I feel like I'm actually about to have a panic attack, but say,
okay, we're still going to do it. You're not going to, you're going to be fine. Even if you have a
panic attack, it'll be fine. And then afterwards say, what was that like? And because again, what is it with OCD
that people engage in the exposure, they recognize they're exposed to whatever the thing that they're
afraid of without being able to do their compulsive behavior. And they're still standing when it's
over. They're very uncomfortable, but they're still standing. They're like, okay, you're right.
Nothing terrible happened.
And it's that idea of nothing terrible happens when the perfect thing doesn't happen.
This goes back to your earlier point of why in the case of things like illness or other
sort of really bad things that befall a person, why we sometimes see a correction, that actually
pushes back on
perfection.
When the whole world kind of comes crashing down on you, right?
People are getting sick and jobs are getting lost and people might even be losing their
homes.
Perfection kind of, you're just trying to stay alive.
And those moments of survival can just be where some of that stuff almost kind of gets
broken off and it just kind of goes away.
But it is just the tolerating that discomfort.
It's not easy to do because people are never going to run into discomfort is definitely one piece of it.
I think another is also for people to get perspective and hearing the truth from other people.
I hate to say it.
We live in a world where a lot of people aren't telling the truth of their lives. And they're like, I've got it all figured
out. I'm happily married and I have a beautiful home and I run every day and I do this and I do
that. And I'll tell you that one thing I'm very transparent about is what an absolute mess I am
with people. I don't mean that in a disparaging way to myself, but like I am highly disorganized. I struggle with certain kinds of relationships. I think that when we can
hear people really be open and honest, I think this idea of the therapist of having it all together,
it's a very, very, very dangerous trope. Like I'm somebody who has had a lot of issues with
toxic relationships in my life.
And I've had experienced trauma.
And I see how like, you know, little things about myself. I was telling someone the other day, I can never sit in the middle of an auditorium.
I always have to sit on the end or I will sit on the floor because I have panicky thoughts
when I can't get out of a space quickly because of my own trauma history.
And so I'm the kind of bizarre looking
woman who's like, I don't care if I can't hear or see, but I'm on the aisle now, so I'm okay.
And so I think that when we start hearing other people's stuff, especially people that we might
value or admire, all of a sudden it humanizes this idea that nobody's really perfect. And I
think that we live in a world where we've almost fetishized people
who seem to have it all together, right?
And people don't feel good when they see that.
It's not that they want other people to be suffering,
but nobody's got it all together.
And I think sadly, social media does fetishize
these people who seemingly have it all together.
And I can guarantee you they don't.
So that's another piece of this too, is recognizing that nobody does. That's that
common humanity. That's such an essential part of self-compassion.
You sharing that was really powerful. I think the more people who share
the realness, the things that they're struggling with. Not oversharing, which of course can be problematic,
but just sharing some of those things.
I think it helps the world actually be a more compassionate place.
Absolutely.
Because that story there about you in the auditorium,
you won't sit in the middle.
It has to be the aisle or you'll be on the stairs, right?
On the stairs or I'll leave.
Or you'll leave. That means that anyone who's heard that next time, let's say they go to the
theater or a concert or a lecture and they see someone doing that, instead of getting irritated
and thinking that person's being obstructive.
Right, exactly.
There's something, there's something, oh, wait a minute.
Dr. Ramani said that she does that because she doesn't like being enclosed or whatever the reason might be.
So it actually has that secondary benefit where it helps all of us just go,
oh, I wonder if that's going on for that person.
Maybe I'll approach that with a bit more kindness and empathy.
So I love that. I going on for that person. Maybe I'll approach that with a bit more kindness and empathy. So I love that.
I really, really like that.
And also for themselves,
they may say,
I am the person who has to sit in the aisle
for whatever reason,
could even be a health reason, right?
And I'm obstructing the aisle
and I feel really bad about that.
And so that all of a sudden they're saying, okay, that this is not, like, it's okay to
be the person who sits on the aisle.
Like there's nothing, I'm not being obstructive or difficult.
Like it's okay and I'll get up or maybe I'll show up, you know, I'll reserve a seat in
advance.
I'll show up early to make sure I get the seat on the aisle.
You know, that's how important that is for me, especially if it's something that is important for me
to go to.
So I think that that's the piece that anything that can foster that compassion, but above
all else, that none of us are perfect.
All of us have a thing, as it were.
And I think that what we try to do too much is we try to create the mythology of people
who don't have people who have no thing. Right. And it's a, it's a dangerous trope because it
does, it fosters that sense of, it can be perfect. I even think that just sort of what we see in
terms of filters, you know, filters that are used on photos and Instagram and all of that,
the image filters. And I'm like, a person doesn't have a flaw in their face.
So, you know, they obviously have filters
and the kinds of procedures people have
to transform their appearance.
I'm a firm believer that I don't judge anyone
who's going to, if this helps a person feel like
I'm more in my body to change how I appear,
then you do you.
However, what it does do, though,
it sets up this sense
of perfectionism for others. Like, look, they have the perfect abs, they have the perfect this,
they have the perfect that. And I think that, again, we fetishize that. And again, it relates
to economics and all of that. If you can keep setting perfectionism as standard, people are
going to keep spending money. And actually, in some ways, letting people know like, yeah, you're kind of being a shill for an economic system every time
you fall into that. People are like, oh, I don't want to be that. And it's like, then don't try to
be a perfectionist. Yeah, I think this, you know, social media, it's just inbuilt to the nature of
it. I think it's almost, I don't want to be too doomsday and call it a losing battle,
but there was some optimism at the start when you mentioned how the digital natives,
that generation now, perhaps some of them at least are getting the potential downsides of
these platforms. But I think it's called perfectionist presentation. That's what we post online generally. We don't
post the pile of dirty laundry that needs to be done, or the fact that the washing basket
hasn't been emptied in two weeks, or the fact that your fridge is messy. Because who wants to
really see that? Who wants to share that? Who wants to really see that? So we can rationally know that what we're seeing
from anyone who we follow is just a slither, a narrow slither, if they're right, of their life,
right? But I don't think that rational side of us is enough. I think our brain is just absorbing
these images that everyone else has got it together in a way that we don't.
They're all doing exciting things.
They're all going, seeing amazing sunsets every day.
To the point where you may have just been on holiday and had a wonderful holiday.
And then you come back, first day at work.
Well, you know what?
Someone else is going to be on holiday now, but you feel bad because you're seeing that.
So I think it's a really tricky one that
we're going to have to wrestle with as a society going forward how do we manage this i don't think
it's a simple fix no um it's not two other things dr romney i've heard you talk about um
relating to self-sabotage is when we're overly invested in a specific outcome and when we pathologize our own needs.
I wonder if you could speak to those two things and how they relate to self-sabotage.
So it's this idea of if I can get this, if I can just get into this university,
my life is going to be perfect. If I can just get that wedding venue, then everything in my
life will be great. If I got that car, then I know I'll always be fine, right? So a person attaches their sense of well-being
to some form of an external outcome achievement or something like that.
That is a slippery slope. You go back to that idea of giving your power away. Now you're really,
literally hinging your entire well-being on something, A, that's not within your control,
and B, is really fleeting. And what then ends up happening is the person does get into the
university, maybe does get the place they want to have their party, and then it's done. And there's
a real sense of, okay, now what, right? So now they might start chasing another carrot, or that
thing doesn't happen. And a person falls into a depression
of like, well, I didn't get this thing. So I'm never, ever going to come back from this.
And so I think that that getting too linked to a goal versus that, you know, these are,
these are the, there's a very various options. I work, I, a friend of mine, a guy named Matthew
Hussey gives a lot of dating advice. He said something so beautiful to me the other day.
He said, you have to fall in love with your plan B.
And I loved when he said that, because I would argue that you not only have to fall in love
with your plan B, you pretty much need to have a pretty good crush on your plan C and
D and kind of like your plan E.
Because I think what happens then is that we are opening ourselves up to option, right? The
more rigid someone is, the less healthy they are. Sort of a basic premise of personality, right? The
more rigid the personality style, the less healthy the person is because they lack that flexibility
to kind of go when things don't work out. And so antagonistic personalities are interesting
because they're incredibly rigid and unyielding. That unyieldingness not only makes it unhealthy for the person who has it,
it makes it unhealthy for other people. I always say it's like a tree. You'll see palm trees,
they have these really elastic kinds of trunks. And so in the wind, they can go like this,
but then you have like the mighty oak tree that with a big wind, the whole thing breaks because
it's a rather rigid kind of tree trunk. And so that rigidity is not good. And so that idea of like,
not only falling in love with your plan B, but like I said, having a crush on your plan C and D
is a way of saying that, okay, I'd love it if I got into this, we're going to have things we prefer.
I'd love it if I got into this university. I'd love it if I got this job. But I absolutely could see really enjoying also that job.
Like it's creating the openness of possibility.
And I think that the all or nothing thinking is never good.
And that's what that is.
It's all or nothing thinking.
So I'll often do sort of guided imagery or envisioning work with clients
where I'll say, okay, just close your eyes.
Let's play out plan B right now.
Forget plan A, we know you're going to love, right?
Let's talk about plan B.
And then really closing your eyes and say,
I want you to imagine walking in the door there.
I want you to imagine moving into there.
And then the same thing with plan C,
like envision those things
and help people sort of almost sort of pay attention to some of the
feeling and things that would come that would come of that and so i do believe that it's sort of
fostering that kind of flexibility but that concept like i said matthew's concept of falling
in love with your plan b could really be is is a um it's a very useful kind of a tool i think with
with relation to health let's say weight loss,
for example, something that many people are always, you know, struggling with, or there's
many people who sort of dip in and out of trying to lose weight. And there's often this thing that
when I lose weight, when I lose this amount of weight, I'll be happy. And I think this really fits into what you're talking about.
Do you know, they'll only be happy when that outcome occurs, which is again, very rigid,
because what if you get 90% of the way there? What if you have brought into your life three or
four beautiful practices that are giving you more energy, more vitality, your relationships are better. But yeah, you didn't quite meet that goal that may have been unrealistic anyway,
and everything starts to fall down. So I think this has so much crossover for so many different
things. And it's even bigger than that, because as we know, the biggest predictor of eating
disorders is dieting. And when you think about that number, sometimes people will get so focused, I need to hit this weight number, right? That that actually people will get themselves into
very disordered, sometimes even dangerous eating patterns. And I have worked with numerous clients
who'll say, once I lose 60 pounds, my life is going to change. Then they lose 60 pounds and
nothing changes because they have done no inner work.
It was always been about the food restriction, the excessive exercise, all these things they
were doing. They get the 60 pounds off. They're actually no longer an interesting person because
all they do is be obsessive about food and exercise. So they're not meeting the love of
their life. They're not getting their dream job because they've actually become so caught up in an over-identified with that goal that they'll actually say that that
was one of, when I was thin, it was actually one of the worst times of my life, or I was really
drawing terrible people. They were drawing people into their lives who were drawn only to their
appearance. They were not good people. And they then they got themselves into this really horrific
loop of saying if i gain even a pound i'm going to lose this relationship and this lifestyle
and i mean to sometimes even to tragic consequence so it's um it's a real problem
pathologizing your own needs what does that mean how do do that? What is the problem with doing that? And how can we change it?
It's huge.
You know, someone was asking me,
like, if you could have people
just learn one thing in the world,
I would say to find a healthy way
to express their needs.
This is something that's often
a very ancient problem for many people.
Even in childhood,
they may have been shamed
for expressing their needs
or being told that they're being imper shamed for expressing their needs or being told that they're being
impertinent for expressing their needs. And I mean, I mean, realistic needs. I mean, I'm not
saying like, I need someone to bring a private jet to me so I can go to a theme park. I don't
mean that. It's like a person who's saying that I need, I don't know, I need something, you know,
whether it's something related to nourishment or something relationally,
or just wanting to be closer or wanting more time, that to make a need known in an appropriate,
aware way, you can't just come barreling in and demand anything you want, is a really hard thing for a lot of people. And so what happens is, especially if their needs were shamed when they
were younger, that can then result in a person feeling that their needs were shamed when they were younger, that can then result in a person
feeling that their needs are a problem when they're an adult. They ask, they feel either
that they don't have permission to ask for anything, or if they do, they're being demanding,
they're being needy. And if they're in a toxic relationship, they're being told that they're
being demanding and being needy. If you even think about how people date, a lot of sort of the rules and rubrics about dating
are very much about like, don't respond too soon.
Don't let them know you're really interested.
Like, well, I am interested.
Why wouldn't I want to tell them that?
And like, no, no, no, you don't want to give it up.
So it's like, even how we suggest people
get into relationships can be very sort of,
you know, sort of opaque and
confusing. And you, people are often socialized, like do not even ask for what they might need in
the workplace, or they'd be afraid if you ask for too much, they may let you go or something like
that. And it goes on and on and on. So what happens is that people don't learn to express
their needs directly in a healthy way.
But what they may learn is to express those needs in an unhealthy kind of passive aggressive or
manipulative way, which isn't good for relationships. They may not learn to express them at all,
don't get their needs met, and then they may suffer from that. And ultimately it's thinking,
Um, and, and so it is, and ultimately it's thinking, well, I'm, I'm needy, or this is ridiculous that I need this, or I'm being lazy.
If I do this, like a person saying that I want to just take a few hours on the weekend
and whatever, do something fun and thinking, oh, that's not very, I should, I should be
cleaning the house instead.
Then that's another form of pathologizing one's own needs, like the need just simply
to have some downtime.
another form of pathologizing one's own needs, like the need just simply to have some downtime.
So I think that messaging that people get, and again, it often starts quite young.
If we don't break out of that, then we often don't give ourselves, we don't nourish ourselves with what we need, which like I said, maybe downtime, maybe a day off, maybe spending,
you know, going to therapy, whatever it may be, that when people
don't, getting what you need out of a relationship, that people don't get those things, it really can
be, it can really be bad for them. And I'm even going to push it further because where it can
even start to get dangerous is when people ignore their needs for long enough, they literally start
to ignore their bodies. And people may actually ignore symptoms on their bodies. They may put off getting preventative healthcare. They may say,
oh, I don't want to make the appointment. I'm being, that's a little dramatic going to the
doctor for this. And then may have found out that this is something that they should have absolutely
seen and communicated with a healthcare provider about. So that pathologizing one's needs isn't simply somebody pathologizing the need
for a few hours off
or just wanting to take an afternoon to themselves.
It could actually be for very,
much more severe things like health crises.
Yeah, really, really helpful.
I think we've done a really,
hopefully useful deep dive for people on self-sabotage.
And I think there
was about seven ways there that we covered which you know I'd be surprised if everyone doesn't at
least connect with one of them at some point in their life right we're all human we all fall into
these traps and patterns from time to time um as we sort of head towards the end of our conversation,
I wanted to ask you about raising children. You've been in practice for decades now, for many, many years. And what I'm interested in is you've seen a lot of adults who are struggling with various
aspects of their life.
And a lot of those aspects that they're struggling with may in some way be related to their
childhoods.
So given what you've seen, what have you learned is the most important thing or some of the most important things that we
can do as parents for our kids to prevent them being those adults who show up needing help in
the future? I think number one, going back to that perfectionism is we may not make the mistakes our
parents made, we're going to make new mistakes. And so that, you know, that if we look at Winnicott's work, you know,
he was an object relations theorist.
We look at Winnicott's work, talked about the good enough parents, right?
Good enough mother, but good enough parents.
And the good enough parent makes just enough mistakes that the child has to
figure some of this stuff out on their own.
You don't want to respond to the child's every need.
The kid's got to figure some stuff out on their own. It's a balancing act, right? You want to be
responsive enough that the child believes that they have a secure base, that they learn to
regulate, that they feel safe in the world, but not so much that they feel hovered over and don't
ever get to make a mistake on their own that they can solve and resolve and regulate and soothe
themselves. You want the child to learn how to self-soothe. And so I think that what we need to understand
is that all of us, all any of us can do is be that good enough parent. But in our terror of
not wanting to repeat the patterns that our own parents committed, we may rather unseeingly walk
into a whole new set of mistakes. And it's basically that there's a real risk of overcorrection. I can say very frankly, I did that. It was very difficult for my parents.
They were immigrants. They got a lot of stuff wrong. It harmed me. There's no two ways about it.
And I understand that. I'm able to see that in a very circumspect context.
But in my zeal to avoid what they did wrong, I got to make a whole new series
of mistakes. And so I think that if I were to go backwards, I mean, I think in some ways,
the best way I can give parenting advice is to look back at what I didn't get right. And I
understand some of it was circumstantial. I've been divorced and I know that that took its own
toll on my children. And I certainly can't sit here and say, well, I wish I had been better at, you know, choosing
a more compatible partner with me.
So I didn't do that.
I did.
And so it is.
But I think that to be mindful and present with children to the degree you possibly can.
Listen, if dinner is burning and there's someone at the front door and all of that,
we can't always be, but there are moments we can be, you know, to really allow that child to feel heard and seen and recognized so that they go into adulthood believing that they're worthy of being heard and seen and recognized.
Right.
And so that that is something that I think is so crucial.
And I also think another crucial thing is allowing children to experience disappointment.
We are in an era of bubble wrapping children, so they never have to have anything bad happen
and they always need to be comfortable.
And that's also a real mistake too, because the incapacity to self-regulate is a real
problem.
And when people can't self-regulate, they're at
risk for using drugs and alcohol, using food and using things external to them to soothe.
And it's to leave a child feeling that they're secure and safe enough in the world and can trust
themselves enough to sort of regulate themselves in that moment. But, you know, like I said, I got,
I'm willing to hazard that I, maybe I was about 50, 50. I got as many things right as I did wrong.
I'm not, I'm definitely not going to give myself the more right than wrong. My children could
answer that question better. But like I said, we have to be, I think my biggest mistake was in my
over-correction. That's where I made a lot of my mistakes I'm like I'm absolutely not going to do what my parents did but in doing that I created new mistakes it
was almost like I put when you get surgery on one leg you put too much weight on the other leg and
then you screw up the other leg that's what I did yeah I think many of us fall into that over
correction trap yeah one final thoughts I wanted to discuss with you is something that I heard you say once that
I've been thinking a lot about over the past few days. And it's when you said that you really want
us as a society to challenge the idea that mental illness is a disability.
What exactly do you mean by that?
disability. What exactly do you mean by that? Well, I mean, I think that it's a,
we're back to that issue of a continuum, right? That I think that I struggle with even what the construct of mental illness is in the sense that what I use as a
barometer is how a person is feeling in the world and how they're functioning in the world. And I
don't mean functioning in terms of earning money and all of that. I mean, like maintaining
relationships and feeling purposeful and meaningful and all of that. Those are the things that I would
look for in a person. In our zeal to give it a name, right, to call it
bipolar disorder or depression and all of that, we kind of get lost in that labeling and then we
limit people, right? He's depressed, so he may not be able to do as much. He's anxious. I mean,
and we know this to not be true, that people with a wide range of mental illnesses and mental health issues are actually contributing
in many ways. Now, when we get into the area of severe psychotic mental illness, schizophrenia
would be an example. There we do see impairments that would make it difficult for a person to
function in the world. So that might fall more under a person
being differently abled, right?
There may be things that might be more challenging,
but even there, I mean, I think the innovative work
and people working with people
with severe psychiatric illness,
including psychotic illness,
is still meeting a person from a compassionate place
on how can we then, given some of the limitations
of the symptomatology
they're experiencing, still allow them to achieve as much potential as possible and help them be as
safe in the world as possible. Because for individuals who are living with psychotic
illness, the world can feel like an incredibly unsafe place, especially if they're not getting adequate treatment. But I think that we don't accord
people who are going through experiences of mental distress and anguish and despair
and the sorts of, at times, functional limitations that can come from that,
and certainly the subjective distress that comes from that, we still view it very suspiciously. And we view these people as not being able to, again, like I said, function well, which is completely untrue.
10 to 20% of the population, depending on whose numbers you're looking at, that would mean if you work with five, if you work with 10 people, one to two of them is living with, you know, significant
mental health issues, right? And if they, if you're looking around saying, oh, everyone seems to be
doing well, then I don't know who that is. You don't know who that is. And so, again, I even,
You don't know who that is. And so, again, I even, I don't like the term disability. I really am focused on people who bring different abilities. And I mean, at the risk of sounding too, I mean, sociopolitical, I really do get exhausted with people thinking that the measure of a person is how they can contribute to the economy. And that that's how we sometimes designate whether or not somebody has
ability. And I don't think that that's what ability is. I think it is about being a good,
compassionate, respectful human being who's sort of part of this ecosystem of the world,
and not just that they can make money for people and make money to make other people money. So I think that that's sort of a bias I have in this
space. But I, you know, I think that we are, we're working on models of diagnosis and mental
illness that were conceived of by a very small group of people in a room. And, you know, if you
look at how the DSM was originally written, these were very privileged white men who sat in a room
in New York City, and most of them were psychoanalysts, and they started drawing down
what they thought were these sort of mental health conditions. And that became the core of what is
still the DSM. And while there is a little bit more research on biology and culture and all that, at the
end of the day, this is what a group of privileged white men in the 1950s sat in an office in
New York, the very office I've laid eyes on, and came up with this stuff.
And I think in that way, there is a very colonizing influence of how all of this works.
We do not account for different perspectives. We do not account for different perspectives.
We do not account for different abilities. And I think that other industries like pharmaceuticals
have really gotten their hands in there. So I think that we are getting to the point where
there needs to be a real, I don't want to say revolution, but maybe renaissance would be a nicer
word of like taking some of this apart. i have to say the icd the international classification
of diseases from from the world health organization they're making changes that i actually think are a
little bit more forward thinking but i still think we're stuck in a framework that was dictated by a
very narrow band of human beings too long ago so much there to unpick i think we're gonna have to
save that for our second conversation which i truly hope we have at some point. It's been such a joy speaking to you. It really has.
This podcast is called Feel Better, Live More. When we feel better in ourselves,
we get more out of our lives. For anyone who's listening or watching, who feels a little bit
lost in their life, a little bit stuck, maybe it's a relationship that they're struggling with. Maybe they're procrastinating and they can't seem to
make any changes. Have you got any final words of inspiration or wisdom for them?
I'd say this. I think a lot of, because so many of us work on computers, not all of us,
but many of us do, lift your eyes. And that lift your eyes is a
metaphor, not just even lifting your eyes off a computer, but lifting your eyes out of your life
for a minute, right? Get a different view, change things up, step outside. Even if it's wintertime,
sometimes that whoosh of cold air can sort of change your perspective. The other thing I'm
going to say is break things down, really break them down. Because I think the more you say like, I am never going to get this house clean, I'll
say start with a drawer.
Just clean one drawer out.
And if you want to keep going, keep going.
But if not, you got one thing done.
Whether you break things down by time, by task, I'll say to people, do the easiest thing
first because that builds efficacy.
Like, oh, okay, look at that.
I paid those three bills.
Okay, let's go on to the next thing.
Like start with the easier thing, develop that sense of like, oh, I'm getting some things
done and go from there.
Also, the other thing I'd suggest to people is there was actually an interesting article
in the New York Times about how messiness, like having a messy environment is actually
associated with mental health issues.
And I think it's also associated with procrastination.
Now, I understand some people say, well, actually clean to procrastinate.
I do get that.
And that's a subset of folks.
But there's something about a messy space that can make it hard to get going.
And cleaning something up is often a little bit easier than some of the other things we need to do. So maybe take that on. So, okay, this is the
area I'm going to work in. So let me make this tidy so I can work in this space. That could be
another thing that you do. And then have some clear rewards. Say, if I work for two hours,
one hour, three hours, whatever, 15 minutes. At the end of that, I'm going to allow myself to
whatever that to is. I'm going to take a walk. I'm going to allow myself to whatever that to is. I'm going to take a
walk. I'm going to allow myself to play one game on my phone. I'm going to play with my dog. I'm
going to call a friend. Give yourself little meaningful rewards that actually feel good.
So that, listen, again, like I said, we are existential rats in a maze. We always need
some cheese to be hunting for. So figure out what your cheese is. Give yourself those rewards because I think that that can also feel like, okay,
I did this and now I'm doing this other thing and this is my reward. And so I'm going to keep going.
You associate the task accomplishment or getting things done with a meaningful reward.
Yeah. Love that. Fantastic advice. I know you've got two books out
at the moment. Should I stay or should I go? Don't you know who I am? We've mentioned your
online membership community. You've also got a quite wonderful YouTube channel.
Anywhere else you'd want people to go to to check out your work?
Yeah, you can check. We're on all social media, Dr. Romani, D-O-C-T-O-R, dr romany d-o-c-t-o-r romany
r-a-m-a-n-i go to my website that's probably where you find everything in one place if you are trying
to heal from a toxic relationship and just sort of want more information you could join that
healing program you can go check out youtube if you want basic info and i have a new book coming
out in february 2024 so i hope we right before that. So I could remind everyone of that
and let them know how that's how that's shaping up. 100% that's an open invitation to look that
we'll get that in the diary. Thank you for coming on the show. I appreciate that. Thank you so much
for having me. Thank you. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. As always, do think about one thing that you can take away and start applying into your own life. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know
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