Good Life Project - Ellen Hendriksen, PhD | Taming Social Anxiety [BEST OF]

Episode Date: June 17, 2021

It’s one thing to feel uncomfortable around others, especially new people in a new environment. But, it’s another thing when those feelings fuel anxiety and, potentially, even panic and dread. And as we all emerge back into a more peopled daily life, social anxiety can be a very real issue. So, we’re sharing this Best Of conversation with clinical psychologist, Dr. Ellen Hendriksen, who helps millions calm their anxiety and be their authentic selves. She serves on the faculty at Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders (CARD) and is the author of How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (https://amzn.to/3gBaW4x).During her tenure as founding host of the award-winning podcast, Savvy Psychologist, the podcast was downloaded 15 million times, rose as high as #3 on the overall iTunes charts, and was picked as a Best New Podcast on iTunes. Her scientifically-based, zero-judgment approach has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC News, New York Magazine, The Guardian, Harvard Business Review, Scientific American, O: The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Business Insider, Psychology Today, Quiet Revolution, and many other media outlets.You can find Ellen at:Website : http://ellenhendriksen.com/Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/ellen_hendriksen/If you LOVED this episode:You’ll also love the conversations we had with Emiliya Zhivotovskaya where we dive into 20 tools to tame anxiety : https://tinyurl.com/GLP-Emiliya-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So it's one thing to feel a bit uncomfortable around others, especially new people in a new environment, but it's another thing entirely when those feelings fuel anxiety and potentially even panic and dread. And as we all emerge back into a more people daily life, social anxiety can be a very real issue. So we're sharing this best of conversation with clinical psychologist, Dr. Ellen Henriksen, who helps millions calm their anxiety and be their authentic selves. She serves on the faculty at Boston University Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders and is the author of How to Be

Yourself, Quiet Your Inner Critic, and Rise Above Social Anxiety. During her tenure as founding host of the award-winning podcast Savvy Psychologist, which was downloaded 15 million times and rose as high as number three on the overall iTunes charts and was picked up as a best new podcast on iTunes. Her scientifically based zero judgment approach has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, BBC News, New York Magazine, and so many other places. And I am incredibly excited to share this conversation with you at a moment in time where I think we all need new ideas and tools as we step back into an increasingly more social existence. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.

Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die.

Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. So as a kid, what are you into? I was a quiet kid. I was an early reader. I read when I was three. I distinctly remember my first grade teacher having to go to other classrooms,

to second and third grade classrooms, to go get books for me and to bring them back. I was just ripping through books. And so, yeah, I was a voracious reader. And I think that actually informed my later transition to writing. And actually, backing up, I think it actually informed my interest in clinical psychology because it's a story because you get to sit down with somebody and say, what happened to you? What's your story? How can I help you?

And just the stories that you hear from clients, the stories you're privileged to hear because oftentimes they will preface that story by saying, I've never told anyone this, and here we go. It's just that trust and that privilege is so humbling and so wonderful. And the more stories you hear, at least for me as a psychologist, the more I realize that people are kind of all the same and that I'm not special and that we all have our neuroses and our foibles, and we all struggle with how we were brought up. And just, we all have such room to grow. And it's just so, it's so wonderful to be able to sit with somebody for an hour and hear a story and be able to like help them tweak it. They take the lead. They do the work. But to be able to do that and to see them then go fly and be free at the end of their course of therapy. So were you the kid who everybody came to? Were you the advice stand person? Yeah, I was the good listener, which I am realizing, you know, is, well, I have realized is something that's very valuable and can be rare. And so, yeah.

I feel like increasingly it really is rare. I think having someone, I think that's why some people come to therapy. I mean, people come to therapy for many, many reasons, for personal growth, to work on a particular issue in their life, to conquer anxiety or depression or whatever their issue is. And some people come to be able to just talk and have that listening ear. And that's a totally legit reason. If you just want a witness to your thinking or a witness to your reflections about yourself and your life and why you do things, I think that can be an absolutely legitimate reason. Yeah. I mean, I wonder if the need for that is also going up a lot these days because of technology, as much as it gives, it takes to a certain extent. Absolutely.

We're just bombarded with, you know, constant connection and constant stimulus. And I feel like we have so much, or not that we have, we choose not to make the time. We choose not to actually sit across from somebody and say, hey, how are you? How's your day going? Right, right.

And it's almost like a luxury to have that experience these days. Yeah, the last time I was in New York, I was on the subway and I saw this advertisement for a food delivery service. And. The last time I was in New York, I was on the subway and I saw this advertisement for a food delivery service and it said 8 million people in New York and we help you avoid them all. And, and it just, it just drove home that, yeah, that attention and listening is just human interaction and face-to-face and one-on-one is, is increasingly rare. I think sometimes by, by choice and sometimes just by, you know, by coincidence. Yeah. And I think sometimes by choice and sometimes just by coincidence.

Yeah. And I think it's so interesting also, because you bring up the point of, and that's sort of like the typical rap on New York City, right? But there is some truth to it. There's some really interesting data, I'm sure you're much better versed in it than I am, that I've seen over the last couple of years that shows that we've never been more surrounded, never just constantly around people in real life and virtually. Yet it seems like the incidence of loneliness is skyrocketing. Absolutely. Well, I mean, so I'm actually, I'm glad you brought that up because loneliness is a perception, right? Because we can be in a crowd and feel lonely.

We can be in solitude and feel completely fulfilled and not lonely at all. And so it's not really the objective aloneness that generates that sensation of loneliness. And I also want to think about loneliness as a drive. It's kind of like hunger or thirst. Like Hunger makes you go and seek out a sandwich. Thirst makes you go get a glass of water. Loneliness makes you search out social connection. And so I think that with the skyrocketing epidemic of loneliness, that is a sign that we collectively are needing more social connection, are needing more of this face-to-face. And I think that, and I can see the tide starting to turn a little bit with, I mean, everybody, everywhere I

go, people are still staring at their phones, certainly. But I think there is a sense of not wanting to do that, of wanting to connect in real life, of looking for reasons to put down the phone. And I can see that just starting to bubble up in the larger consciousness. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting that that's your observation, because I'm curious about that also. And I wonder if, to a certain extent, that is a generational thing. So I'm sort of like the edge of Gen X. And I see, you know, Gen Y and millennials, and I hate like giant sweeping calculations like that. So it, you know, it bugs me like crazy because I didn't come up as a native

of having my head in a device all the time. Oh yeah, no, me neither. Whereas, you know, your kids and my daughter are coming up in a world where they don't know anything but that. Right. And I wonder if the experience of loneliness is being felt equally across generations or

whether because we've grown up with different assumptions, different expectations and different sort of rules about social interaction, whether generationally we're feeling it differently as we interact with technology. That's so interesting. I don't know. I've never seen research on that, actually. Yeah, no, I haven't seen compare contrast of generations. I have not seen that. I have seen work on millennials or, depending on what you call them, some people call them Generation Z, some people call them the iGen. But I think that because there is less practice talking face-to-face, that because, you know,

before, if you needed to find out how to do something, you would ask a friend or ask your neighbor. Or if you needed directions, you know, you would consult a map and two of you would lean over it and like figure out, plot out your way. And now- Well, not if you're a guy, Ash. No, I guess not. This is true. Then you just sally forth and- Then you just get massively lost and then finally submit to the fact that you have no idea what's going on. And then whoever you're with yells at you. But I guess what I'm saying is that we've outsourced a lot of what used to be discovered by asking people to technology.

We ask Siri or we ask Google or we ask Alexa. And so I think with the younger generations, because there's just less practice talking face to face, that they don't have as much experience under their belt. And that creates uncertainty. Like, what's going to happen if I ask somebody for direction? What happens if I walk into a restaurant and I haven't perused the entire menu online yet? You know, what's going to happen if I don't have a map that tells me step by step where to go? And so, I mean, you wrote a book about uncertainty struggling more with loneliness and personal connection, but I think there is a skyrocketing, I know there is a skyrocketing problem with anxiety and social anxiety, which we can certainly talk about more. So I work at Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, and we treat everybody. We treat Boston University students, but also it's a community clinic. And so whoever walks through the door is welcome. And I've noticed that the population that we see

is skewing younger and younger. And so we still get the full range, but there are a lot of college kids, a lot of young, like early twenties. And, and they're really struggling with feeling anxious about their lives, about connection, about just existential. Who am I? Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's, there's a lot of that going on.

Yeah. And I, and I do wonder how much of that is related to technology on so many different levels. I'm, I'm also curious because, so if you have I'm also curious because so if you live and breathe in the clinic where kind of like by its very nature where it is and who it served, a larger number, a larger percentage of the people who come in and seek help are sort of like people outside of that are also just less willing to seek help for something that maybe they a, thanks to kind of this online culture of like revealing oneself or being more personal or, you know, confessing various problems or, you know, or foibles or whatnot. I think a lot of people are able to look online and read a story that actually does sound like them and say, oh, this, oh, this is so validating. And if somebody else feels like this, that probably implies that there are a lot of us and the stigma is lifted.

And oddly, it takes stigma being lifted to be able to seek help. And I wish it wasn't that way. But I think when you realize you're not alone, you don't feel so ashamed. Like if it's so widespread that this has a name, like it has a diagnosis, then that gives hope and that makes people seek out some assistance. Yeah. And I know we've seen that just sort of over the years with what I've been doing and the people I've had an opportunity to sit down with. I don't think a lot of those conversations would have been had quite so easily and quite so publicly five, 10 years ago. I think even just in that window, there's been a real sea change. I agree. I agree. I think it's an awesome thing too. No, I love it. Yeah. Especially these days, because the thing that we're hearing in the news, more and more anxiety, yes, and depression, yes, and diagnosis and treatment. But the thing that has been, I think, terrifying for

so many people is the incidence of people who have suicidal ideation and are actually taking their own lives, which I don't know whether the numbers are actually going up or whether the focus on reporting and revealing the truth about the numbers is just being increased. But it seems like that is an increasing and alarming part of sort of the public conversation around the struggles that so many of us have. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think, I don't know, I've been, so with, especially with the suicides of celebrities, like recently, like Kate Spade or Anthony Bourdain, there is always this surge of calls to help centers. And I think it indicates that, I mean, there's no way that public suicides could somehow create that level of pain. It just reveals the pain that was there

already. And I think that the fact that people are searching out help is amazing. I think that if there's any silver lining to public tragedy, it's that it allows people to reach out and gives them permission to try to get some help. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about suicide in the sense that there's an assumption that whoever commits suicide wants to die. And that, I think, is often a myth that really people who commit suicide want to end their pain. And that's different. And so, especially for folks who are afflicted with major depression, depression takes away hope and it also takes away efficacy. So there is this sense of hopelessness

and helplessness. Things will never get better. Right. This is me for life and I can't deal with that forever. Exactly. Right. And so depression has a funny way of kind of worming into your brain and telling you that the way to end your pain would be to not be here anymore. And so I think that in the depths of depression, that can start to make sense. And so wanting to end your pain, not wanting to die necessarily, I think is an important distinction. Then I think there's also the distinction of, again, when depression worms into your brain, it can seem like the world would be better off without you. A lot of people will say, oh, how could they kill themselves? That's so selfish.

He had a family. He had X, Y, Z. And I think the mindset of someone who is truly suicidal is often that of the world would be better off without me. I should, I would, I would be doing the world a favor by doing this. And so I think, yeah, just to shed some, some, some light on, on what I think what goes through the brains of folks who are facing that. No, I actually appreciate you making that distinction. I think it's a really important one. I wonder whether also you mentioned that every time there's something in the news that calls

to help centers go up dramatically. I wonder if that's always been that way or what I've seen recently over the last couple of years is that whenever the reporting seems to all be coupled now with flashing helpline numbers on the screen and all over social media, you see a massive surge of call, call, call, call, call. Like there is, there's somebody who can help you. This is what you're thinking about now, which, you know, and I wonder how much of it is actually attributed to that, but.

That's a good point. I don't know. Yeah. So we kind of jumped into the deep end. We're all over the place. It's okay. I don't know. Yeah, sure. Somewhere in my research, like the fact that you were also really fascinated with architecture came up. So where does that fit in? Yeah, no. So interestingly, so I was an art and architectural history major in college as well as a psychology major.

I realized I had accidentally taken every psychology class that I would have needed to get the degree, except for statistics. It's like the world is telling you something. Exactly. It's like, this is information. And so I took stats and ended up dolomitering. But I also loved art and architectural history because I think that tells a story as well. And so it tells the story of history through a building or through an object or through an art, a painting. And so it all comes back to stories, really, for me. Yeah. And really, stories that it sounds like in some way illuminate the human condition. Right. Exactly. Exactly. What happened to you? Yeah. So you graduate college then with this double major. Sure. Then were you even thinking about potentially

going one way or the other, or was it immediately into? No, it was, it was immediately into architecture. And so I spent a couple of years working at an urban design firm. And so this, I had, so after college, I moved out to Seattle with my boyfriend at the time. And then about a year later realized I didn't like my relationship where I was living or my job. Everything was wrong. You're like, check, check, check. Yeah. So that, so, so I was miserable, you know? And so it, I, I, check. Yeah. So I was miserable. And so I started to look around and say, okay, how can I make this better? And so I changed everything at once. And so I broke up with him and moved across the country. And my sole criteria was, in what city do I have the most friends?

And so- Probably legit, isn't it? Absolutely. When you're 24, that's what city do I have the most friends? And so... Probably legit, isn't it? Absolutely. When you're 24, that's what you do. And change careers all at once. And so I moved to Boston and started working for a psychologist because due to the aforementioned, gee, if I took every psychology course by accident, and I had coordinated a peer counseling program in college for fun. You know, this was not a paid gig. And so I was like, well, maybe I should listen to those things. Maybe, you know, this is a sign. And so I was working in a community health center for a psychologist that was, so he was doing therapy for depression with folks who were living with HIV. As he treated their depression and they got better, their biological markers for HIV improved. And that hooked me. That was amazing

that you can treat depression and your physical well-being improves. That was super cool. And so I was hooked. And so since then, I've spent the last 12 years bouncing back and forth between the Boston area and California to either finish my professional training or to follow my husband to finish his professional training. And so we are finally back in Boston and we are settled and we're done after six, I think, cross-country moves. It's like we are not moving. Minimum commitment, 10 years. We are living here for the next 30 years. Yes. That's pretty cool. So you ended up in, I think, UCLA and then back to Harvard and Boston.

Yep. I love the fact that you also, the thing that lit you up was this awareness of the fact that there is no separation between mind and body. It is a seamless feedback mechanism. And I think a lot of us get the fact that if we are in physical pain, it's going to affect our state of mind. But I think a lot of people are still kind of don't quite believe the fact that if we are in psychological pain, we will have very real physiological symptomology. Oh yeah, totally. Yeah, I agree. I think, yeah, the mind-body connection is kind of a misnomer because it's really one in the same. There's not this like bridge between them. It's really the overlap of the Venn diagram is way, you know, bigger than we think. Yeah. So did that end up being a focus of yours while you were pursuing education or did it start

to broaden out from there? So that particular field is called health psychology. And so it's the idea that you can, you know, work with the mind, work with like psychological, psychologically based therapies to improve physical health outcomes. And so that was my jam for a long time. And then I stumbled into this project where a mentor of mine was doing work with stage four cancer patients. So people with metastatic cancer and anxiety. And so he had this interesting spin where it made sense that they were anxious. Usually when you treat anxiety, you try to change people's thinking and challenge their thinking to show like, see, really, you don't have to be anxious. It's irrational in some way.

Exactly. This isn't logical. This is a thinking error. When you have stage four cancer, it makes sense to be anxious. And so it was this very validating therapy. And it focused more on like, is this anxiety useful to you? Is this helping you live the life you want now? Is this values driven? What do you want to be doing as opposed to what you want to be worrying about? And so that got me interested in anxiety. And so I kind of pivoted my way into the anxiety world. And there, I think I really found my home. I didn't set out. I found my home in anxiety. I found my home in anxiety.

I feel very comfortable in anxiety. And so I think I didn't set out to be an anxiety expert. But I think once I found it, I was like, oh, this. Yes. Okay, this. I get these people. These are my people. Yeah.

And so, I mean, as I talk about in my book, I have a history of social anxiety. Right. I know that everybody is different and that a client who comes to my office is going to have a very different story than my story. And at the same time, there are things that I get. Like if they, you know, just various things that they're real. I'm like, oh, I get that urge or, you know, I know what you mean. I feel like being able to truly empathize, not just kind of cognitively empathize. Like I, you know, we use theory of mind a lot.

Like, oh, I can imagine what that was like. I can figure out what your perspective might be. It's like, no, it's your lived experience. But if it's one's lived experience, then I feel like there's a special connection there. And I don't bring my own story into the office. I don't try to say, well, be like me, you know, or this worked for me. No, we're going to work within their values and work within their life. And this is all about them. This is their hour. And at the same time, I enjoy having that connection. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton

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available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.

Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. One of the things that you talk about is when we think about this thing called social anxiety, and what do we actually do with that? There's sort of like two tracks. There's change and acceptance. Tell me more about these. Oh my goodness. So change is, to use a metaphor,

is getting in the ring with your anxiety and going a few rounds. So it's really challenging it and questioning it and saying, really, is that really the case? So, you know, social anxiety predicts that horrible, humiliating things will happen. And so it's saying, well, you know, how likely is that? Like, what, really, what are the odds? Or how bad would that really be? That, you know, if we're predicting that, you know, if we were giving a presentation and we stumble over our words, how bad would that really be? You know, and so we can question our anxiety that way and try to actively change it. We can ask how, well, okay, so let's say the worst case scenario happens. How would I cope?

What would I do? How can I handle this? And so that takes away the what ifs and gives a plan, right? So all that is change. And then there's, there's acceptance. And so by acceptance, you know, I don't mean resignation. I don't mean like, oh, I guess this is just how it's going to be. I mean, I mean more like mindfulness, like, like to look, to get some space between you

and what that inner critic is telling you, and to see it as a thought, to see it as a perception. And so, you know, as like to use Jon Kabat-Zinn's example, to try to be behind the waterfall rather than have that waterfall falling on your head and yanking you all around. This is a big difference between, so as a social anxiety thought perhaps, between I'm annoying or no one wants me here. It's the difference between that and I'm having the thought that I'm annoying or I'm having the thought that no one wants me here. Those things are really different. One is truth and one is a thought. And thoughts, you know, can be changed or simply sat with as we go on and behave because thoughts and behavior are different. And so we can make our behavior work in line with our values, even as we carry

this thought along with us. And that can be very powerful. Got it. And along the acceptance line of exploration, would the sort of the conversation that you shared earlier around the early work that you had done and the person you were working with around anxiety in the context of people who are living with stage four cancer diagnosis, where there's a legitimate reason for the anxiety. So it's more, is that a sort of a scenario where it's like, how do we become mindful and find a certain level of acceptance with the anxiety that is around this very real circumstance? Sure. Or not so much.

Well, I mean, you can, I think it, anxiety in that circumstance makes sense. Absolutely. And so I think that there you can, you can kind of honor that anxiety and say like, okay, anxiety, I get it. You're trying to keep me safe. You're trying to help me plan for the future. You're, you're trying to, you're trying to tell me what's really important. And at the same time, if it turns into worry where you can't get traction and you're not doing anything, then you ask, is this useful? And you can try to dial that back or just say, you know, thanks, anxiety. I really appreciate life and challenge ourselves and grow and stretch and that anxiety lessens, it might pop back up in times of stress.

And we can still use the skills and say, thanks. Thanks, anxiety. Oh, here you are again. I appreciate you. And I'm going to move on and live my values and act in the way that I know that I want my life to be. Yeah. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. There's a weird, it may be in part because I've been an entrepreneur for so long also. And I'm also, you know, I've sort of woven in and out of this experience of social anxiety.

Very often, I think I've learned to almost look for and interpret the embodied feeling of anxiety, especially in the context of social situations, as a signal that I have an opportunity. Oh, yeah. To actually, I was like, okay, so this kind of sucks. I don't feel the way I want to feel. Right. And yet the reason I'm feeling this is because there's a blend of fear, but that cannot exist without possibility too. So it's like, okay, so where's, I'm not seeing the possibility, but if I'm feeling it, it has to be there. Where is it? And if I was going to act on it, what might I do? It's not nearly as rational or linear process as that.

But I've noticed myself defaulting to that over the years more often. I'm guessing, again, it's because it's just the more I repeat it, the more that becomes more sort of like the more common experience. For me, when I have a moment where social anxiety comes back. So I check in with myself and I say, like, okay, is this something that I really do not want to do? Or is this fear that is getting in my way? Is this something I do want to do, but I'm just scared? And if it's the latter, I'm like, well, I guess I have to know. I know what that means. But that's a great, what a great question to kind of like check in with. Yeah. Because if you don't want, like, if it's something that you honestly do not want to do, you do

not like, no, that's not, that's outside of your values. Don't do that. But if it's something where only fear is standing in the way and you would love to do it, you'd love to be on the other side of it or have done that, then absolutely push through. Because the things that we feel badly about looking back are not the things that we did. They're the things we didn't do. And so that's why, you know, social anxiety is the disorder of mischances is, is, is so sad because we, there is, there is a lot to regret. And so, but I think, again, that can be turned

into fuel and turned into like, okay, if it's, if I know it's fear and this is within my values, here, here we go. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. What was at least on some level then was your intellectual curiosity about all this stuff also a bit of a quest to understand how you personally could live more comfortably? I'm sure. Well, I didn't set out to do that, but I, yeah, of course. There's a saying that, you know, research is me-search, right? Like everybody wants to learn more about themselves and to figure out what makes them tick. And so, yeah, absolutely. I'm sure that's a huge part of why this is of interest to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You use the phrase social anxiety, which is different than sort of anxiety

generally. I guess they're all different categories. Oh, yeah. Many different flavors. Yes. 31 flavors. I'll have one of those, one of those, one of those. Yes, I'll have an ACD and yeah, you're right. Talk to me about the distinctions here. Sure. So, okay. So here, I'm just going to riff on this for a little bit. So I guess you could, okay, social anxiety is self-consciousness on steroids. It is this idea, this perception, I want to emphasize perception, that there's something wrong with us. And that unless we work really hard to conceal this perceived deficiency, it will be revealed and that everybody will see it and will judge and reject us for it. But the reason that it's a disorder is because this perception is not true. It's either not true at all, it's an illusion,

or maybe it's like there's a grain of truth in there, but not to the degree that anybody would ever notice or judge you for. So for instance, maybe somebody really does stumble over their words or has trouble with word finding, but it's not to the extent that they perceive that others are noticing or judging them for. Perhaps people do actually blush and turn quite red if they're embarrassed or, you know, are the center of attention. Again, it's not to the extent that people would reject them to the extent that they believe they would. So that's a very long way of saying that social anxiety can probably be encapsulated in the phrase, it will become obvious that I am blank. So the reveal. With other types of anxiety, I would say, so if we're going to talk about like

official diagnosable terms, like generalized anxiety, which is kind of worry about, you know, just everyday matters. You kind of like your worries chained together, like, oh, well, my partner's late getting home. I hope they're safe. And oh, by the way, it just, the worries, exactly. There's no traction. The worries just spin out of control. So I'd say that is encapsulated with the phrase, what if? What if? What if? Oh, what if?

What if this? What if this? Then OCD could be characterized by, did I? It's the doubt. It's the doubting disease. Did I check the stove? Right. So you keep going back to cycle and cycle and cycle.

Did I get all the germs off my hands? Did I assault that woman? You know, it's the did-eyes. Right. Yeah. And it's not trusting one's own memory, not trusting one's own experience, and always questioning and having that nagging, torturous doubt come back again and again. So I think all the, I mean, there are others certainly, but the disorders,

I think, can all be boiled down to one phrase or one question that each person who suffers that disorder is plagued by. And it seems like the commonality is that there is this perception and at the same time, there's this small potential nugget of truth that you can kind of like your brain kind of just say like there's – where probably like somebody who didn't experience this would take that nugget of truth and be like, nah, I'm good. Yeah. Like, yeah, it's possible. There's a 0.1% chance of this, but I'm good. Whereas if you just keep cycling back to that or if you can't let it go. I mean, there is a 0.1%. That's where it becomes.

So that's where it moves from, okay, this is just a generalized behavior to the level of disorder. Where is that threshold? Is it when it's interfering with your ability to live your everyday life? That's exactly what it is. Yes. So the threshold for disorder is distress or impairment. And so you talked about impairment. So it's interfering with your everyday life.

You can't live the life that you want. Or you can kind of white knuckle your way through your life, but it's extremely distressing. And so, for instance, I'll use me as an example. Something like this sitting down for an interview that I knew was going to be recorded and then broadcast to the world would have been unthinkable, like I'd say about a decade ago. And so I would have been very distressed. Like I probably would have lost sleep over it. I probably would have had GI problems for a number of days beforehand. It would have been extremely distressing. I would not have had GI problems for a number of days beforehand. It would have been extremely distressing. I would not have been able to concentrate on anything else because I knew this

was coming up. Today, this is very different. Whenever I do an interview, I actually like to, I'm so nerdy, I like to rate my anxiety quantitatively. And so if zero is, you know, hanging out on the couch, petting my cat, watching Netflix. A hundred is like the worst anxiety I can imagine or like a panic attack. Like I've, as I've done more and more interviews, I've watched that number drop from 60s to 50s to 40s. Last week I did one that was a little bit stressful that popped me back up a little bit. But I, you know, coming here today, yeah, 20. Yeah, it's, it was, coming, coming here today, yeah, 20. Yeah. It's, it's, it was, I was looking forward to it. It was, I, it's, it's so interesting to see the

progression of like when you practice something that you're afraid of and you, you, you, you do the thing before you're a hundred percent ready to watch oneself get better at it. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's like the, the relationship between mood and action. Like we are like the, the, we always want to feel like doing something before we do it. We want to be in the mood to go to the gym or, you know, sit down and write or start our diet or whatever. But really what happens is if we just lace up our shoes and go to the gym or do the thing first, yeah, exactly. Then our mood catches up. So same thing for action and confidence, right? So if I had waited to feel confident enough to come hang out and talk for an hour about my life, oh my God, that never would have,

I never would have gotten there. You'd still be on the couch with the cat. I'd still be on the couch with the cat. I'd feel fine. Right. But like that wouldn't be. But it closes off so much of life at that point. Exactly. Exactly. And so, and it's hard because like having your anxiety go away, like if you, so for folks with social anxiety, the MO is to avoid. And I'm all over the place, so I'll circle back. And we can avoid in one of two ways. So there's overt avoidance, which is not showing up. So staying on the couch with the cat. Or there's covert avoidance. So there's showing up, but then doing all these little behaviors that artificially tamp down one's anxiety or keep one safe, like avoid eye contact, or talk really fast to get it over

with or try not to reveal very much about oneself just to keep it close to the vest and make the other person carry more of the conversation. It could be that we show up to the party, but we scroll through our phone or we find the host's cat. I'm just like checking every box there. But we all do some of these things to an extent, certainly. And it's, I guess it's when, you know, again, when it crosses that threshold into distress and impairment is when it becomes a disorder. But yeah, like so many of us do these little behaviors. We're just trying to keep ourselves safe. We're just trying to,

we're trying to neutralize. Yeah. We're trying to breathe. We're trying to breathe. We're trying to neutralize that anxiety. It's trying to breathe. We're trying to breathe. We're trying to neutralize. Trying to like feel okay. That anxiety. It's interesting the way you described the progression of getting comfortable with the process of being interviewed. Similar to my experiences. So I speak like, and my daughter recently said, she's like, I don't understand how you can do what you want. Like, why would anyone ever voluntarily like do that?

Public speaking, number one fear. Because I thought about it. And when I was her age and much later in life, I would, exact same thing. Terrified, nauseous. The idea of standing in front of a room of people was the least attractive thing I would ever want to do in life. Sure. But then through this sort of like exposure therapy and over and over and over and over. It was like, you know, Susan Cain is a friend.

I think she's a friend of yours as well, right? Yeah, she is, yeah. So I remember her, you Cain is a friend. I think she's a friend of yours as well, right? So I remember her year of speaking dangerously, you know, where she took her introverted self and she's like, this is what I'm going to do for a year. And by the end of that year, she was actually pretty good. Absolutely. Yeah. She was comfortable. Yeah. And it was through do it. It was before. And so, yeah, again, she did it before she was a hundred percent ready. Yeah. You know, she didn't jump into the deep end. She, you know, it wasn't, but she, you know, she prepared. Absolutely. And, you know, I'm sure it was gradual, you know,

in terms of like bigger and bigger audiences or, or, you know, revealing more about herself. I'm sure, I'm sure there was some kind of hierarchy involved, but absolutely. Yeah. It's, it's through, through doing the thing that we build the confidence. I have, I have a lot of people come into my office and say, you know, I really want to like kind of hit pause on my life. I want to kind of, you know, just go away for a little while and work on myself and build my confidence and then reemerge into the world and then start living the life I want to live. And I say, you sound super motivated and let's do it in the opposite order. Like let's have you start living the life you want to live and your confidence will catch up. And that is always

kind of a terrifying prospect when you're looking at it from that direction. But when you're on the other side and you can look back or so what happens actually is, so there's this thing I call the moment where you do something that you never would have done before, but you do it kind of without thinking. Like for social anxiety, you might wave a waiter down for more ketchup, or you might go to a party without thinking of a million reasons to stay home, or you might gladly be a bridesmaid in your best friend's wedding and speak and give a toast. And you could have never done that when you started this journey. And then you do the thing, you're like, oh, I never could have done that before. That's so interesting. Like, look how far I've come. And so as we're gaining

confidence and doing the thing and learning how to fight our anxiety, we can't see that in real time. We can only see it in hindsight. We really only see it when we're looking back and say, oh, I just did that. That's pretty cool. Yeah. And so I feel like that's been my story as well. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not.

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you're running these low experiments up to that moment, a little bit of this, a little bit of this step out a little bit here. So there's like this iterative slow progression of getting a little more comfortable. But then you have that moment where you actually, you become awake to the fact that something really big and different has happened. In your experience working with so many clients and patients over the years, does the awakening to that moment then in any way accelerate sort of like the path to ease from that moment forward? Or does it just kind of stay incrementally? Yeah, I think the moments help you turbocharge your...

Like a tipping point. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Because I think you realize, oh, you know, if I could do that, what else could I do? Or I think it's, you know what it is? It's evidence. It's proof that, oh, I can change. Or a way I like to put it to clients is when you see yourself doing it, you start to believe you can. And so I think once they go through the anxiety, you know, not around it, not trying to avoid it either

overtly or covertly, but go through it and do the thing. And again, you don't have to jump in the deep end. You don't have to do, you know, something that would be 100 on the scale for you right away. You know, you absolutely start with the 20s and work your way up. But I think once they experience that, like, oh, that wasn't so bad. You know, I can, maybe I, maybe I can stretch and grow a little more. And now maybe I can stretch and grow a little more. And it's just so, I love working with people with social anxiety because inevitably they are lovely people. Like, I think their, their social anxiety tends to be a package deal where on the, so if you reel back caring too much about what people think of you, if you, if you kind of

reel that in a little bit, you simply get caring about people and that, and that's a wonderful thing. And it hangs together with, you know, conscientiousness and empathy and often being a good listener. And, and so it's all these lovely characteristics. And I, and I, I am privileged to help these folks realize how amazing and cool they are because they've been walking around with this perceived deficiency. edge it out and the realization that, oh, hey, wait, I am pretty cool or I am competent or kind or whatever, that takes up more of the space as we edge out the perceived deficiency. And so that process is really amazing to watch. So then the sort of more positive traits or qualities that I guess are often associated with social anxiety anxiety as you work

with the social anxiety to help it, to help minimize it or help it go away. Those same traits remain though. Correct. Exactly. I'm glad you said that. Yes. Yes. Those do not recede.

Right. Right. The fear does. Yeah. Right. But those don't. Right. Are those traits, are we talking about sort of like the big five or other, are there specific

things that are like really correlated with people who tend to show up with social anxiety? Sure. Yeah. It's not necessarily the big five because, okay, so for instance, so for like introversion, extroversion, you can be socially anxious and be either of those. We often think of it correlating with introversion. Because those kind of oftentimes seem like the same thing. You know, there's some inhibition there, you know, there's the tendency to be quiet, but you can absolutely be an extrovert and be socially

anxious. So for example, I was talking to a socially anxious extrovert the other day. And so he, he is a teacher and also a standup comic. He loves being on stage. He gets energy from the crowd. He gets energy from being in front of people. And he worries that they all hate him. That sounds like every comic. Right, right. Seriously, yeah. That's a really good point.

Yeah, and so he worries that he is going to be rejected by all these people that he gets his energy from. It's really a hard place to be because if you are not around people, if you're not getting your energy, you end up sluggish and bored. But then if you are around people, you end up scared. And so my heart goes out to socially anxious extroverts. That's a hard place to be. Is it, how do you approach that?

Because that's gotta be very different. So the same roots are, you know, I mean, it may give rise to different flowers, you know, like the socially anxious extrovert, socially anxious introvert. But the fundamentals are the same. And so, you know, there are various techniques that we use and that, you know, I talk about in the book that are pretty straightforward and work quite nicely. So, yeah. As you were mentioning these sort of moments, something popped into my head as well, which is that, so I grew up and to this day,

I remain probably somewhat socially anxious. I would never guess. It has gotten way, way, way better. As a kid, I was much more so. And I remember in college, I've also been an entrepreneur my whole life and I was a club DJ in college. So I was always surrounded by mass numbers of people in loud environments, but I was behind a booth controlling the entire social dynamic.

You had a role to play. Yes. Exactly. You figured it out early. Right. I was like, this is what I'm going to do. If I was at a party, I would show up and I was a person who was in the kitchen helping out. I was like, okay, I have a job. I have a job, so I'm good. But what popped into my mind as you were talking about moments was shortly after college, I decided to jump on a plane and spend three months backpacking in Australia on my own. Not because I wanted to, but because my friend who I was going to go with bailed last minute.

So I decided to go. And there's a moment that has stayed with me some 30 years later, which is this seemingly innocuous, like it happened in a split second. It was small. It was nothing. And yet for some reason, I still remember today. And it was when I showed up at a tiny little backpacker's town in northeast tip of Australia. I was learning how to scuba dive for a week. I was in a group of about 20 other people in their young 20s. And we broke for lunch.

And everyone went across the street to a little place where you could grab a tray of food. And I grabbed my tray of food. I turned around. It's just me. And I realized there are a couple of other people in my class, women, who are sitting at a table. Oh, I didn't know. I hadn't spoken with. And something in my head made me say, okay, so I can either go and sit alone at a table. But if I do that, there's a

really good chance I'm spending the next three months alone. Or I can make myself really uncomfortable and go and say, hey, my name is Jonathan. Mind if I join you? Which is what I did. Good. And that became some of the three most incredible months of my life. And I had like friends that would go back and forth as we, you know, all hostile through. And in theory, that is the tiniest, silliest little moment. But that's so hard from so many people. Decades later, it stays with me. So clearly it was something bigger for me.

Yeah. No. And I think, so you said that you so you said that you were a lot shyer as a child, and I think just to give some numbers to this and some context for how common this really is. So shy is just another, like an everyday way of saying socially anxious. And so if you poll a bunch of people and you ask everybody, are you shy? So you don't say, are you socially anxious? Like you don't use the technical term. 40% of people will say, yeah, I'm shy. That's a lot of people. That's, you know, that's four out of 10.

But then if you change the question in your poll and you say, have you ever been like dispositionally shy? Like not have you had a shy moment, but like have you ever considered yourself to be shy? Like an identity level almost. Exactly. Right. So like, were you shy as a child? Were you shy, were you like awkward as a teenager? Then 80% of people say yes. And so that's, that's the vast majority of us. And then, you know, all of us with the, you know, the exception of the 1% of us who are psychopaths have, you know, the 99%, have experienced socially anxious moments. Like there, there've always been either, you know, you have to public speak or it's the first day of school or the first day of a new job where you feel like you're going to be revealed as a fraud or revealed

as something deficient. And we've all had those moments. And, and so I think it's really common, but so many people don't people don't talk about it. And those moments that, like, just like what you mentioned, like introducing yourself to strangers or, you know, breaking into an already formed group or, you know, being one in this new group of 20. Like that's actually quite difficult for, I'd say, the majority of us. So, you know, good for you for breaking through that, because I think it would have been so much easier to go and sit by yourself. So at the beginning, I was talking about the phrases that kind of encapsulate each disorder. And so social anxiety is sometimes called the disorder of missed chances. And I think that's such an accurate term because inhibition or the questioning of, am I going to be revealed for this mistaken thing that I think is wrong with me, makes us pass up so many chances. So for instance, we might be sitting in

a meeting at work and we have an idea, but we don't say it. The moment passes because we're not sure how to say it, or we just feel too awkward, or we're not sure how to break into conversation. That's another thing that a lot of folks with social anxiety have a tough time with, how do I break into an already going on conversation? And then the moment passes, and then someone else says your idea, and silently rail against everything and say, ah, that was my idea. Or we decide not to ask out our crush or we decide not to join the table of friends or we decide to eat lunch in our office as opposed to in the break room with our colleagues. And so there are these missed chances. And I think the flip side of that is that there are so many chances to turn that around, to join the friends or to join the strangers, as it were, to try to ask the questions. That every day there are opportunities to turn it around, to stretch and grow and to try again.

The 80% to 40% to me is kind of miraculous. Oh, isn't that amazing? Because yeah, I mean, it really reinforces this idea of like, cause I think a lot of people feel, well, if this is me, this is me for life. It's kind of the way it's the way I am. Right. And I think when we talk about things like social orientations, like introversion, ambivertion, extroversion, there's maybe a stronger argument that yes, that is more of like a deeply ingrained and less changeable phenomenon. Nor should it be changed. Right. Right. But in the context of this, you know, like this overlay of social anxiety, which is sort of this perception. Yes. The idea that in some way,

shape or form, 80% of us have felt that. And over time, probably without deliberately trying to change it, we've just ended up doing things or trying things that have let a lot of us feel a lot more comfortable. So it's like, it's this really big piece of evidence that says, yes, in fact, this, we can feel differently. And what if we actually invest our energy in intentionally doing the things that make us move along that sort of like continuum faster? Exactly. Because I think that, you know, we can't avoid everything like the, because social anxiety is really fed and watered by avoidance, whether that's that overt or the covert. And so as we go through life and get older, we can't avoid everything. And so

just incidentally, we're going to refute the two lies of anxiety, which are that the worst case scenario is definitely going to happen. Whatever our anxious brains can come up with is a foregone conclusion. That's one lie. And the second lie of social anxiety is you can't handle it anyway. That whatever situation life throws at you, you're going to be unable to cope. And so just getting older and living our lives, again, we can't avoid things. And so we're going to slowly accumulate this evidence that, oh, wait, the worst case scenario doesn't usually happen. That usually people are friendly and things are benign and I ask for help and I

get it. Or that people are happy to do favors or be asked questions or start a conversation or hear about me. And that even if things do not go perfectly or even well, you know, I can cope. I can handle it. I can reach out and talk to somebody who I love and trust and they can give me a pep talk. Or I can figure it out if things don't unfold according to how I thought they were going to. Or even if things go really wrong, you know, I can take some time out and do some self-care and bring myself back. And so we learn to refute those two lies just by getting older. But absolutely, if we can be intentional about it and try to think of some things that, you know, maybe if I could conquer this little fear or this little fear, or just do it, even do it on the fly. Like I could, just like your story, like I could either

go sit, eat lunch alone, or I could go join this table. Okay, here's my, here's my decision tree point. And if we take that, you know, that harder road in, in the moment, it pays off and we learn. Absolutely. But it is, it is hard and that avoidance. So I think had, had you gone and, you know, sat by yourself, your anxiety would have diminished. And that is like crack. Like having your anxiety go away is really reinforcing. But at the same time, it's that missed chance. Right. I mean, the quality of my life would have diminished along with it.

Right. And there was something in that moment that made me realize that. Oh, yeah. And I was especially, I think, because I had my ticket three months down the road. I knew I wasn't, I think I didn't even have the money to change it. I was like, this is no for today. This is no for three months.

I was saying no now. And it kind of dawned on me. I was like, that's not okay. I'm here to do something different, to experience something differently than that. So you, as an empathetic feeling human being, sitting across from people who are sharing these stories with you every day for months and years, that's got to, how do you just on a personal level process that and be okay? How do you,

do you have really clear boundaries where it just bounces off of you? Or like, do you feel it? That's a great question. So I can definitely, I am genuine when I show up. Especially because some of this is your lived experience. So there's got to be some like, wow, I really feel that. Yeah. So when I'm working with somebody, they get my full attention. I bring who I am to the room. Absolutely. It's genuine. And, but I, I have learned, you know, certainly not,

not to take it home that, that I know, you know, it's, it's, you know, that it would be inappropriate for me to take that on and to meld our lives outside of the, you know, the therapy room that way at the same time that, yeah, it's, it's, it can, it,, yeah, it's okay for a therapist to be moved to tears sometimes or to really, you know, have one's heart break on behalf, you know, on hearing a tragic story. You know, therapists are humans. And so, you know, I think that it's a myth that we somehow have to sit there with stone faces and writing on a clipboard, you know, that, yeah, it evokes real feeling. And again, because I do have some lived experience with social anxiety that, yeah, it's a true connection. When a tragic story is told, the client doesn't want somebody to just cry along with them.

They want to move forward. And so I think that the job there is to provide that hope and to keep the movie rolling. I think so often we tell our narrative and we stop the movie at the low point. We stop at either the point that is the scariest or the worst or the most tragic. And so what my job is to do there is to help them keep the movie going until we get them to a point where they're safe and that they have gotten out of whatever pain that they are in. And so I think it's important to connect, not just to cry along with them, but to connect and to feel compassion and to have that compassion compel you into action. And then that's where, you know, my training comes in and I can

say, okay, well, let's try this technique or let's try this technique. And then they do the work. I don't take their credit for that at all. That's, you know, they are the ones who are really doing the heavy lifting, and I respect that. And then we work together to get them to where they're doing better and feel safer and are feeling more confident. Which makes a lot of sense. And you're human. Absolutely. And, yes, big hands.

I have sort of a fascination of people who are in helping professions. And the closer they are to helping people who've gone through real trauma. It's been interesting for me to sort of have conversations to and observe that very often. It's not unusual for people who, for example, provide aid to people in really tough circumstances or PTSD and end up with their own PTSD from having provided care. So I'm always kind of curious how you take care of yourself, like how you actually, like on a personal level, how do you live your good life? How do you continue to be okay? It's got to be stunningly nourishing to you when you see the positive effect and positive outcomes with your patients. It's amazing. Yes, yes, absolutely. I think so. So the, yeah, what keeps me going is seeing people improve. And yeah, seeing that this does make a difference. And and my job is to make myself obsolete. Like I my job is to take the skills and to transfer them to whoever I'm working with, and then have them go fly on their own. My job is to not have a job anymore. And unfortunately, there is enough, you know, anxiety and depression in this world that I will always have a job. But I think that it's important to either one by one, you know, in the clinic or many at once through a book or through some other kind of project to be able to help people find their, you know, their, their, the, the answer, the, the balance,

the, the refutation of what anxiety is telling them. So anxiety is telling them that, you know, there's something wrong with you. People will see you can't do that or it's, you know, their anxiety is criticizing them. And so to, to help them move on from, from that and to get out from under that is so rewarding and really fuels me. Yeah. Was that the driving reason for you to write a book? Because books aren't necessarily easier fun along the way. This is true. This is true.

So, yeah. So, I mean, it's a mix of reasons. And so one was absolutely, yes, that I wanted. I was getting frustrated with helping people just one at a time. And I love doing that. I still do that. But there was the sense that this could be more useful to more people. jump ship from being a full-time academic to being kind of like a part-time academic. It was because I was frustrated that there was such cool research going on, that there was, that there were things that were happening that could help a lot of people, but they never got out of the academic silo. And so I wanted to be the person who could translate that and could do, I mean, in scientific

terms, what I do is called dissemination. So you just, you take what's in the silo and you, you show everybody, you know, outside the silo. And so there was a sense of wanting to share that, but also just, I mean, just personally, there was my love for stories and, and wanting to, to, to try writing something besides grants and papers. And, and so it was a hard decision. So I had, I was in California and, you know, are bouncing back and forth. And I had just made faculty at Stanford, which, you know, by any measure is like, okay, I've made it like done. I'm done. Exactly. And a couple of things happened. So one is that in a lot of research institutions,

you have to bring your own salary. So they will, you know, they'll give you an office and they'll give you a title, but you have to fund yourself through grants. And so I was doing okay at that, not amazing, but the climate is really difficult, ask any academic. And so I had just missed getting a grant funded. And my reaction when I had learned that was actually relief. And I said, uh-oh, that's information. And so I realized that what I liked is I liked writing the project. I liked pulling together the research and making an argument and making it really clear and doing the, and proposing the project. And then I like

writing the stuff afterwards, like this is what we found, and here's the narrative, and like this is what happened when we worked with all these people, and this is how they improved, but I didn't like actually doing the project. So that was information. And then the second thing is that my mentor retired early because she just got so sick of the academic climate and just how difficult it was to justify your existence. And so I said, you know, this is a sign. And so I knew I wanted to stay in clinical work, in working with clients, but decided, you know, okay, I think this is a sign and it's time to try to see if I can make something out of my love for stories and writing and try to help some people with the science at the same time. And so what happened first, I basically just threw a lot of spaghetti at the wall for about a year.

Yeah, just terrible ideas gave way to less terrible ideas. And so eventually I had stumbled across a website that was a consortium of experts. And I used, there was one website in particular called Grammar Girl that I used for writing. And I was clicking around. I was like, you know, they have all these different experts. There's a doctor, there's a fitness guy, there's, you know, there's a math guy. They don't have a mental health person. Hmm. And so I cold emailed the editor and said, hey, are you looking for someone to do a psychology column? Do you need a guest spot? And she said, oh my gosh, what amazing timing. We've been getting requests for someone who knows about psychology and mental health and well-being. Would you like to try out, basically?

And so she asked me to write three try-out columns. And she said, okay, we're going to have you compete. We're going to run you against a gardening expert and a wine expert. And you're like, wow, this is better again. And so I was like, I'm not tooting my own horn. And at the same time, I was like, well, people want to know about themselves. You know, people are curious about what makes them tick. And so I'm pretty sure psychology is going to come out in front.

And so it happened that it did. And then she said, okay, well, here, let's give you a podcast. And then that's when everything kind of stopped. I said, wait a minute. I have to be a performer? I got into this to be a writer. It never occurred to me that this was going to turn into me talking into a microphone. That was just, that was at that time of my life, that was just something that I'd never pictured ever before. And so I learned in public. And if I go back and listen to my first recordings, I cringe because they're so awkward. And so I totally get that. That's not your recording.

No, no, no, absolutely. And I'm realizing as I try more new endeavors, like writing a book or, you know, just any new thing that I try from, you know, from learning how Twitter works or to, you know, trying to sign my kids up for a new summer camp, like that matches this week's interests. Like every time I do something new, I feel a little incompetent, you know, like you just kind of flail around for like, is this what's working? How do I do this? How does, you know, and so, but I'm realizing that that is just how it works. That, that you just push through feeling incompetent. And, and then again, that, and then again, the confidence, you know, catches up. You're like, oh, I can do this.

Or, oh, this is how this works. Oh, and that uncertainty ratchets down as you go through it. And so, so yeah, I learned in public to do a podcast, learned in public to write a book, and I've just continued to do that. Yeah. But I mean, it feels like you're genuinely lit up by sort of the mix of what you're doing right now, you know, a blend of still seeing clients. Absolutely. Yeah. So that's almost like it's like, that's your laboratory. Yep. And then you have time to think and integrate and formulate. Then you have time to bring the stories and the ideas to people through different forms of media.

Right. And it feels like from the outside looking in that you've kind of dialed in something that makes you smile. Yeah, absolutely. I often have students come to my office and say, oh, Dr. Hendrickson, can I talk to you for a little bit? How are you doing what you're doing? As those visits have increased, it's made me reflect and say, wow, I'm living the dream. This is pretty cool. And the thing that still blows me away, though, is that what I'm doing now is inexorably tied up with the thing that brought me the most shame, which is social anxiety and thinking that something was wrong with me. Because as I've gone

through my life, that inner critic, that little voice that tells you that something's wrong with you has evolved based on my kind of social surroundings. So like in college, where a social life is very important, that little voice was like, you're a loser. Like when I was starting my career, the little voice was, you're incompetent. And, you know, when I was writing the book, certainly the voice was quieter by then. You know, I'd gotten older, I'd done a lot of work. But it was when I was trying to email academic luminaries of psychology and ask to interview them about this book about social anxiety from an unknown writer, that little voice came back and said, you're annoying.

And so just the fact that the mix of things that I'm doing all centers around this thing that made me so miserable for so long is just unbelievable to me. Yeah. And pretty cool. And pretty cool. Who would have guessed? Absolutely. Which feels like a good sort of a place for us to come full circle as well. So we're hanging out here in the context of this thing we call a good life project. So if I offer out the phrase to live a good life, what comes after that? Absolutely. So I think, okay, so I'm going to crib from Freud here. So I'm not a Freudian,

but because he was wrong about a lot of things, but he did get some things absolutely right. And one of them, in my opinion, was that to live a good life, you need to love and work. And so love, I think, is pretty self-explanatory to surround yourself with the people you love and who love you, whether that's family or friends as family, or if you have a partner or kids, then yes, absolutely. Those people are your core and will really determine so much of your happiness and your health, it turns out. And then in terms of to work, I actually interpret that as purpose because work doesn't have to be paid. It could be, you know, you could be a stay-at-home parent or you could have a side hustle or it could be your actual career. But whatever gets you out of bed in the morning, whatever your purpose is, that is your work. And so I think with a little help from Freud,

that to love and to work makes a good life. Thank you. Thank you. It was a joy to talk to you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, safe bet you'll also love the conversation we had with Emilia Zivotovskaya, where we dive into 20 tools to tame anxiety. You'll find a link to Emilia's episode in the show notes. Even if you don't listen now, be sure to click and download so it's ready to play when you're on the go. And of course, if you don't listen now, be sure to click and download so it's ready to play when you're on the go. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app so you never miss an episode and then share the Good Life Project love with friends because when ideas become conversations that lead to action,

that is when real change takes hold. See you next time. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X.

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