Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Amber Tamblyn: Intuition Not Anxiety

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

Amber Tamblyn (actress, director, and writer) joins us to discuss all things intuition, from its biological importance and practical ways to be in touch with it, to how modern society has taught us to ignore our intuition and our mind-body connection. She explains why intuition often gets mistaken for anxiety, why feminism matters, the power of the MeToo Movement, and the real societal repercussions of women’s inequality. We also analyze Amber’s recurring wolf dreams, the significance of recurring dreams and consider what it means to redefine the term “psychic.” Amber Tamblyn's new essay collection, Listening In the Dark: https://www.amazon.com/Listening-Dark-Women-Reclaiming-Intuition/dp/0778333337 BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our understanding of ourselves has been weaponized against us time and time again. And I'm not purporting to know all the answers. But when I look at it and I think about the numbness that we've all faced, the way that we feel so disconnected from who we are and our inability to push past the fears that have been placed in us and have been handed down from generation to generation from mother to mother or even father to father or anybody to anyone, you know, this is how we've arrived here. And I think part of the missing piece of the fight is helping others to also understand their own intuition, their own connection with their body. And I do think that

harnessing intuition right now is a very unique way to fight fascism. It's my and biologics breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. Because you I know she knows a thing or two. And now she's going to break down. Hi, I'm I am Bialik. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. Welcome to our breakdown. This is the place where we break things down so you don't have to.

Today, we're going to break down intuition, yo. We're going to do it. Jonathan, we're going to speak to a person who has a collection of essays essentially all about what intuition is, how you get it, how you learn it. and what it can do to not only like literally change your life, but possibly change the world. And I believe her. But what's interesting is she's also someone that people probably know about

because she's an Emmy and Golden Golden Golden Candidatian nominated actress director and writer. I intuitively knew this was going to happen. She's the author of seven critically acclaimed books across genres, including her most recent anthology, which I mentioned, which is called Listening in the Dark, Women Reclaiming the Power of Intuition, which has essays from a bunch of powerhouses,

Amy Polar, Giotolentino, Congresswoman Ayanna Presley, and many more. She also is an opinion writer for the New York Times, The Cut, and The New Yorker. She writes a lot about gender inequality and women's rage. You might be thinking, who is this? Well, she played Emily Corderman on General Hospital when I was a kid. And it's Amber Tamblin.

Amber Tamblin, who she's like this person that you can know from so many different things, but she's really dedicated her life to writing, motivating people. She's really part of a tremendous movement. She was one of the founders of Times Up, which is one of the movements surrounding the Me Too movement. She's a very, very interesting family history. Her dad is Russ Tamblin, who's an actor that many people may know. I know him from Twin Peaks, but I didn't realize that that was her dad. and she's also married to comedian actor David Cross.

They have a daughter, and she was a child actress who is just like this incredibly interesting, intelligent woman. She's funny, and this conversation about intuition, I think, is one that really has a lot of potential to connect a lot of threads that we have had as part of our life and discussion. So, very excited. Also, Jonathan, as many of you know, is a practitioner of intuition. and is really, really good. He's looking very confused right now, but he's a person who often listens to his gut. I mean, that's literally what we're talking about here.

What does it really mean to listen to your gut and how does it impact the decisions you make and the choices that you make? All right. With that, I will stop making jokes about intuitively feeling things. Let's welcome Amber Tamblin to the breakdown. Break it down. I'm just going to say that I watched General Hospital.

when I was younger and very excited to get to talk to you for many reasons. But my mom and I watched all my children One Life to Live at General Hospital. I'm older than you. So it was kind of like in, I think, my blossom years when I would often have like lunch break that was either at one o'clock for one life to live or two o'clock, which was general hospital. So I'm 47. And so I think that's about the right timing for when I first was introduced to. you as an actress. Obviously, you've done many things since then, but I did, I did have to just share with you that you've been part of my life for longer than you realized. That's perfect because I think

I also grew up watching Blossom. So like, we were like deeply entwined without even knowing it. We were. We have some other interesting kind of intersections as well. You have a vast catalog of sort of sharing aspects of your life and your experience both as an actress and then obviously as a writer and an activist, if you don't hate that word. I know the rooms you speak of, you know, that you auditioned in because I auditioned in them too. And I wouldn't be surprised if our paths crossed in ways that we may not have even realized. I'm going to start this conversation in an unusual place. You sent a list of kind of suggested reading. And I have read stuff you've written. But I read some very specific excerpts from listening in the dark.

and this is your new collection of essays. It's available wherever books are sold, in case anyone was curious. I went through your list, and like a good student, I read the things. And I guess I thought it might be kind of a fun place to start for you to maybe talk a little bit about what you suggested I read and why. And this isn't a quiz, just like I didn't feel like you were quizzing me by saying like, here's some things. but one of the essays, the science of intuition and deep connection with nature, I don't know how to pronounce her last name, Nicole Appellian. Of course, exactly not how it looks to my brain. Dr. Nicole Appellian.

So you recommended that, which I read, and then this one gives me chills just because the title alone, in the mouth of the wolf, you will find it on dreams and healing trauma by you. You did all your homework. I did my homework. But there's a lot of Jonathan's voice and heart in what you write and the way you write it. And so I was actually very interested to get to talk the three of us because one of the things that Jonathan and I spend a lot of time on is him trying to convince me, A, that intuition is a real thing. B, that there is a scientific and specific connection between our gut and our brain, which I'm the, the scientist. So I'm the one who is supposed to get on board, and I am, but he knew it intuitively long before it was, you know, sort of scientific fodder. And in addition, Jonathan has a very, very elaborate and beautiful dream world. He's also a writer. So talk to us a little bit about in the mouth of the wolf. And you can sort of talk about however you want, but I'm curious sort of

what, yeah, what was my assignment when you assigned that to be? Well, it's so funny. that you gleaned so much meaning from the assignments or the ones I suggested because the truth is I just I had to get back to, I think your producers or somebody with an answer. And so I just quickly was like, tell her read all my essays because there's only like four. And then Nicole's, because it's great. And it's like, sciencey. Had I known that it was going to be taken like, you know, with this seriousness, there's a few others I would have also recommended including Dr. Derek Cass, who's an emergency medicine doctor in New York, who talks a lot. lot about the power of Gestalt and the idea behind how doctors use this sort of second mechanism

beside what they have learned from medical school and their training and the straightforward rational intelligence that you use in making decisions. And there is this sort of second part of that that has been ignored, which is the gut, which is the intuitive process, a sort of connection between the brain and the body. But I think Nicole's is actually, you know, now that I'm sort of talking to you, I also think just like a very wonderful essay because, so Nicole, Dr. Nicole Pellian, for anyone who has seen the show alone, it's one of my favorite shows.

I don't know if you've ever seen it, but it's phenomenal, and it's about sending survivalists out into the wilderness and whoever can last the longest wins, and it is crazy. And it makes me feel like such a loser for any time. I'm like, I'm cold. I need a bigger. coat. These people are like, I have a fly in my ear and I'm going to die and I don't know how to get it out or there's like a bear chasing me. Truly, truly. And so Nicole sort of talks about how this is such a Western culture problem, right? This disconnect with our body and this disconnect with our intuitive selves. Our ability to know something is true without having to have a rational explanation or rational language behind it and that they're all other cultures.

especially like tribesmen and Africa and, you know, people who have survived for thousands and thousands of years could not do that without intuition. Rational thought is really rational intelligence, scientific-based thought is really only of the last, you know, several hundred years. It's not something that we have always survived on. And I think that she makes a really beautiful, profound argument for the, you know, gut-brain connection and all of these things that we're sort of now understanding. more about the connection between the two. And then obviously I did want you to read the other essays that I wrote, one, because I knew. There's no way that you and I have not had some of the same experiences with auditioning and being an artist and having this connection with something like the rational brain can

memorize lines, but what is this other part of yourself that brings it off the page? And to a degree, that's a form of intelligence that you can explain, but it's also not. And we can go deeper into this because there is lots of data behind it. There is lots to be explored. I think I talk about it a little bit and I quote Gerger-Gyger-enzer, who's a philosopher, brilliant philosopher, who talks a little bit more about this in detail. And overall, the book is just here to sort of remind us of what oppressive cultures have done to the process of intuitive intelligence and harnessing it and using it in our everyday lives,

both for men and for women. I mean, the book is the voices of women, but frankly, I really hope that a lot of men read this book, too, and that we can sort of have a larger discussion about what intuition means and how we should be using it, especially right. My Ambialx Breakdown is supported by Superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful. Maybe they're like, you're fine, drink more water. There's no real data. There's no game plan.

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Head to superpower.com. Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention My Ambiotics Breakdown to help support the show. now. My first thought, and it's funny because Dr. Appellian in her essay, and just to be clear, you know, this is an entire collection of essays of, you know, Amy Polar wrote what, like there's all these amazing, amazing women who wrote pieces. But I especially appreciated hers because, you know, the first thing I think of is like, but I don't know what my intuition is.

Like, is my intuition like, I want to throw this cup on the floor? Like, is my intuition like, something feels shifty about this relationship, I should probably get out. I will say that almost every single time I've felt that since I started dating, you know, at like 16 or whatever, I was right.

And what it was was that like, I just didn't listen, right? But one of the things that she talks about is that this is not something that you just like decide tomorrow to listen to your intuition. Yes, exactly. And I think that's something that like,

again, in our like Western, you know, thinking, it's like, Okay, how do I do it? Like, what's the fastest way to get to what she has, right? Like, what's the pill? What's the thing? And guess what? It's a process.

And she lays out, and I started reading through her list. And I was like, I love a list. And it's in bold at the beginning of each paragraph. Like, I'm digging it. But the list went on and on because it's not just like, here's the top. I wanted the top five things to do to be like her. You know, I want like the top five things to do to be like you. Like, how do I write it and understand it and live it?

And it's like a longer list. We're in a culture of shortcuts, too. I mean, that's really what we are. That's part of the problem. Like, you know, you look at that list and you're like, find a sitting place under a tree, like boring, move on. A six spot. Yeah.

But those are the things we take for granted that are really, you know, a part of this process and thinking about it like a muscle to be flexed. When the book came out, some of our authors, you mentioned Amy Poehler and Samantha Irby is also one of the contributors and my mom, who's a school teacher, wrote a really beautiful piece amongst many other women. And for one of the launch events, I had the three of them come together and we did a virtual event that was very funny and fun. For those who don't know, Samantha Irby's work, she's an essayist who is incredibly foul-mouthed and super funny and writes about like the grossest

things about like being a woman with IBS with diarrhea and like anxiety. And it is, she's just fantastic. She's a fantastic fun writer. So you can imagine it was. It was. like Amy Poller sing out the Irby and my sweet school eat your mother. It was a hoot. So Amy talked a lot about in that interview, she says, you know, if we gave, and I actually have this note up on my wall that says, what do I want to eat? Amy said, if we gave as much attention to what do I feel or what do I think, not what do I know from, you know, the information I've been giving, but what do I, what is the knowledge that I feel about a certain situation if you're asking yourself this. And if we gave as much attention as we gave to thinking

about food all day long to this question, we would be radically different people because we do. We spend all day thinking like we have our breakfast and then we think about what we're going for lunch. And then when we're eating lunch, we think about what we're going to have for dinner. And we really don't spend nearly as much time thinking about what might be true for us. And that could be anything, you know, you're just talking about all the boyfriends you knew that were like not right for you. And it could be thinking about a partnership or a job. that you're living, you know, that you're working at or anything else that's going on in your life

that you might have a question about that you've just not been able to ask yourself. And I thought that that was like a really important point, which speaks to the idea that it's not something you can do overnight. It's not a thing you're just going to discover immediately. Okay, and I think that's the other thing, and I think about it also from the female lens of like, but I love him.

My intuition is that we're going to be together forever. Like, that's not what you're talking about. And I apologize that that was the voice that I just used to generically represent me as a teenager. But, no, but that's, and like, I don't mean to be a jerk, but like, that's not what we're talking about, like, at all. Yeah. It's not about like what you think. It's not like what your culture has basically constructed and raised you to be is what, you know, you then want. Like, I want a really expensive wedding. Like intuitively, I know that. Like, this is about taking many, many, many, many steps back. Tell us your favorite things that we're supposed to do to learn even what our intuition is. So first of all, let's kind of try. to define intuition, which is very hard to do because, and it's meant to be that way, we don't really have language to describe what it is. What I have sort of described it as is this

connection between the physical self, the body, and the mind. It's a connection between what your rational thought can no longer give an answer to, the space that it cannot define when you're asking yourself a question or you're trying to make a decision and the response of the body. But in order to have a response from the body, and that could be like a stomach ache. Some of the women in the books talked about

having a tingling in their ear or like a feeling of a rock or needing to run or needing to get quiet. But in order to get to that place, you need to have a better connection with your body. And this goes back to the conditioning, which women have traditionally had throughout history. And I go through that in one of the essays. I talk a lot about, you know,

the othering of women to their own voices dating back to Greek mythology and obviously women who were burnt at the stakes from the Salem Witch trials who heard voices of which we were told were the voices of God. But it could probably be something else and probably was all the way up to the modern advent of psychiatry, which created specific terms like hysteria to describe what otherwise, you know, a woman's emotions. It's just called a Monday for me. What Freud described is like, that's just Monday. Yeah, and it really wasn't until the modern feminist movements of the 1970s and something

called the Hearing Voices Movement, which was an actual movement for people who heard auditory hallucinations or heard voices or were being told or being compelled to do something, to make a decision to feel something based on a voice they were hearing, that that was given any kind of respect. So the first thing in defining it is recognizing that our connection with our bodies has been sort of under this one representation, which is that of like anxiety or hatred. And we have really learned to confuse our intuition for anxiety, for what we think might be true for an response of anxiety in some form. Or we have just been told the connection with our body is that we need to change it.

It's not right. It's too fat. It's too old. It's ugly. It's not the right color. All of the things that we have been told about the relationship to our body has kept us away from this deeper connection to it. So that's the first thing. And once you start to work on that and the listening process of what your body might tell you in an instance

where you're trying to be more connected to your intuitive intelligence, then you can push a little bit further. And that's sort of like at the end of the book, there is something there that really sort of runs, helps the reader run through a process of asking themselves a difficult question and pushing past the initial fear, which is sort of a flight or fight mechanism that kicks in. I don't want to take anything away from anything you've just said. The yes and for me is that male identified human beings have also been totally separated from, like, I don't think they're at all taught to understand what they feel. Big time. So when you talk about like understanding how you feel as a precursor to understanding

or being connected to emotion, we don't understand what we feel at all. We're actually actively taught not to think in terms of feelings. I would also argue that I think where women have been conditioned to feel less, that our feelings that our emotions are, are valueless and actually just get in the way, men have been conditioned. throughout time to lead with them and to lead with forms of their emotions that are in service to masculinity and that there is this real fear about the feminine. There's a real fear about being connected in a more present way to the way that you feel outside of masculine representations. Anger, rage. Yeah. Poffing up your chest, needing to be the most powerful, vicious person at the

room, you know, and women sort of take on those forms as well. I mean, certainly I have, and that that is sort of part of the conditioning that we've all experienced. I'm going to ask a dumb question that's also smart. Why is this important? I think this is important because we have to look at where we are and how far we have not come. And, you know, when we look out at the world right now, We look at our own country. We are looking at a country that is once again, you know, telling women, I'm so sorry, but you actually don't know what's right for your body. We know.

We got it. You're like all over the place. I don't know, you like bleed from down there. You're messy. You're upset. Like you have a lot of, let us help. Let us decide. You really should just be taking care of children or you really should just be doing these things

that we understand women to do, and we'll just take the rest. We'll take care of the rest. We'll tell you whether or not you can have free access to health care and to birth control pills and whether or not you can have abortions and whether or not that miscarriage is going to need an abortion. We'll be the ones to decide all of those things. And same thing for trans people, the exact same thing, the bills you're seeing right now, the unprecedented horrible bills, again.

against trans children and trans adults that is basically telling them you don't know what your body is or what it needs is a part of why this book matters right now and why this conversation, I think, is really important because our understanding of ourselves has been weaponized against us time and time again. And I'm not purporting to know all the answers, but when I look at it and I think about the numbness that we've all faced, the way that we feel so disconnected from who we are and our inability to push past the fears that have been placed in us and have been handed down from generation to generation from mother to mother or even father to father or anybody to anyone, you know, this is how we've arrived here. And I think part of the missing piece of the

fight is helping others to also understand their own intuition, their own connection with their body. The space that rationality does not occupy might be really helpful as a tool to fight in this war of the body that we have been experiencing for thousands and thousands of years. And I do think that harnessing intuition right now is a very unique way to fight fascism. and it's all part of a larger tool that I think, why not? It's here. It's available to us. You know, and not anyone, not everyone is like us.

You know, we might, the three of us might be sitting here going like, well, I kind of know, like when something doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel right. I'm aware. But we have to assume that so many people have no idea what we're talking about, so many women, so many young girls. I mean, I think about the therapy bills I would have saved if I had had a book like this when I was a teenager. You know, like I think about that all the time. I think about what a different world, what the patriarchy would look like if young boys, if teenage boys had been

made to read a book like this when they were younger, you know, to have a connection with yourself in a different way that isn't, once again, one of these, you know, foundational answers that's supposed to be the end-all be-all of our connections to each other. I'd like you to talk a little bit about dreams because in many cultures dreams are seen essentially as an extension of non-dream states. And, you know, we know a certain and a significant amount about the quote like purpose of dreams or kind of the playground that is the mind. And I have a very interesting relationship with dreams, as does Jonathan. I often have very, very active dreams where I'm like, translating things into languages that I speak that are not my native tongue.

Wow. I have never heard that before. It is not restful sleep. I'll be honest. Like I've composed music in my sleep. I've written poetry in my sleep. And like that's not restful. Like it's not I'm not like, ooh, I'm so special.

Like to me, that's not, it's not a healthy way to get rest. But for me, dreams are like a very, I see them as a very direct extension of what I do in my waking. life because they're often very similar. And of course, I have like dreams that don't quote make sense, meaning I have fantastical dreams. You talk a lot about the image of a wolf. For me, it's a whale, a blue whale in particular. It's just been like a recurring thing. But I'm curious for you to talk a little bit about in, you know, it kind of seems like with everything that you write about, there's a tremendous amount of like research that goes on. Yes, you know, either literally or emotionally. And so can you talk a little bit about dreams in general, meaning like what they can

teach us about intuition? Because Jonathan is always like, help me like, we're going to talk about this dream that I had because it means, you know, something. And I do believe in dream analysis. It's something my therapist. We've worked on dreams for many, many years, but you talk about it in a really, really different and specific way. So I want you to speak in particular about dreams, how you relate those to intuition. And then I'd like you to share a little bit of. about the wolf. Yeah, that's one of my favorite essays in the book that I wrote. It's called In the Mouth of the Wolf, You Will Find It.

And the essay looks at my obsession with keeping record of my life when I was a child. I have hundreds and hundreds of journals. I'm actually like, currently I have this one that I'm trying to remember the code to. Oh, I have some, I literally, I have a journal collection also, and there are some that just cannot be opened and I've broken them. I could totally break it, but I don't want to. Just break it open. I want to know what's in there.

I've just been sitting here at my desk just sort of like going through them. Where's the other, I have like some other little very funny things here. But anyway, I have a lot of fucking journals dating back to to young childhood. And it was almost like, and I don't know if this is just like the was the child actor trauma in Me Too, that it was like I had to have some record, some like artifacts, some archive of my real life as it pertained to me. and having a career that was sort of constantly suspended in disbelief and in which you're constantly playing characters for a living. There was this other part of me that needed to sort of have a record of my real life. So I just, I wrote down everything and I used to have really wild, vivid dreams. I don't so much anymore since having my daughter, but one of the things, one of

the recurring themes in my journals and in my dreams was a wolf and was different forms. of wolves, they would show up in different ways, but years ago, and this is what the essay is about, when I was sort of looking through and going through my old journals and doing a lot of therapy and sort of looking at my childhood, there was a reoccurring dream that happened over and over in this very similar way where a wolf is, I'm in the bedroom sleeping undercovers and wolves are coming in and there's someone there and they're attacking someone in the living room and it's, you know, it was a very specific thing. And every time I was reading them and I started to mark them and I'm like, why is this recurring?

And I also just had this like pit in my stomach. Like something about this dream is telling me something. And this is part of the intuition process, right? It's like, you know, I feel the same way about astrology and like the idea of like astrological science and stuff, which I think are absolute bullshit. But do I think that there is something true? about the stars and the planets all being aligned during the specific time in which I was born that maybe another person was also born at that exact moment. Sure. I'm not going to pretend to like know the answer to that. But I find that to be fascinating. And so I think dreams you can glean meaning from that as well. And that's part of who we are as human beings. We're not robots. We are storytellers. We are master mythologizers. This has been our practice since the beginning of time is to find meaning.

and to find story from who we are. And so as I looked into it, basically the short version of it is that it brought me back to a time in which something traumatic happened with a babysitter who was babysitting me and came in in the middle of the night in that exact room in that exact same way. And so my sort of obsession with wolves that I had all the way up through my teenagehood

was almost like guiding me towards this specific point of trauma in my childhood. And the essay sort of tracks. that and looks at it as something that was leading me much in the way that my intuition was. Do you know what a wolf, like why a wolf? I think because, you know, the wilderness of the subconscious mind is so vast and so unexplored and can be so scary. And a wolf feels to me, my guess, my feeling on it is that wolves to me feel like the epitome of that wildness.

And so they're sort of representative to the wilderness within me, the part of me that feels that is not in control, the part of me that might know something deeper that my conscious mind is not ready to process, which very much is a real thing for an intuitive connection and being able to know when you're ready to process something with the conscious mind. So the wolf to me sort of symbolizes, and I think did throughout my child, that other part of me that felt more wild and free. And certainly, you know, being a child actor, you have schedules, I went to school, and then after school, I went to work, then I went to bet. I mean, everything was so regimented. Your life is not your life. Your life belongs to Hollywood.

Your life belongs to this like career that you didn't really choose for yourself, that your parents chose for you. And then you spend all of that time pleasing adults and trying to get them to love you through doing this craft, which to me feels totally antithetical and totally opposite to what the wolf energy is and to how it would represent itself in my dreams, which was always, like, not fully, there was never violence against me, but there was always chaos. There was always a sense that, like, I was going into the woods. I was going into an unknown place where things were not controlled and where I could be this, like, feral animal and tell everyone how I really felt. And that's sort of how it was represented in my dreams.

The reason that I'm sort of like picking at this is because you're the notion kind of throughout these essays and throughout this book and really throughout this sort of, I mean, it's a movement. You're you're literally like starting a movement of, you know, a kind of awareness. And the notion is not just like, oh, we've been disconnected from ourselves, right? Meaning like we sometimes like it's true. I don't even know like that gut feeling I usually assume is. It's anxiety or I don't know what to say or I should shut up or, you know, like, whatever. Just. because that's just our existence. But there's also a distance from a larger communal understanding of what do we need or want as a society? How do we want to treat women? How do we want to treat men? But then this other notion also of what if our intuition is also this ancient thing? There's this connectedness with something even bigger, right?

And that is, you know, it sounds, it's not new agey to say that that has a connection in nature because, as you said, for thousands and thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of years, we've been working towards this point. But this is not the end point. The endpoint may have actually been some intuition from many thousands of years ago that we sort of kept working through. But that notion that nature is this very important component of teaching, is there other places that you've kind of found that or that it weaves its way through some of these other essays that really, the role of nature in kind of getting back in touch with your intuition? Yeah, my mom, my mom writes about it.

My mom has lived many lives beyond being a schoolteacher. But she really talks about how hard she's been on herself over the years and how unsure on second guessing herself, which she's been about certain decisions in her life that have led to things like, you know, loss of family heirlooms that dated back. seven generations, you know, to the Civil War and, um, and all kinds of different things. She opens her essay with, she lived up in June Lake in Northern California when she was younger and, um, seeing a fire up in the mountains and having, you know, which they do to sort of help clear brush. They do these controlled fires, or they used to rather, but, uh, having a

feeling about this particular fire and making her friend drive up the side of a mountain where there was no road. And sure enough, they found this guy in his car with his face all bashed. up and he had there been an explosion. You know, it's fascinating. And that was a good time when she did follow it when it was led to something. But there were other times when she really sort of, you know, ignored it or followed it and then found it to not be part of, you know, what her intuition was telling her. But I think that's also part of it, right? Is that like sometimes it is anxiety. And, you know, sometimes it is intuition. And sometimes they do really get confused. I always like to say, You know, that, you know, intuition has a more exciting feeling to it.

It feels less dreadful. When you're thinking about something with anxiety, there's, you know, you feel sort of not good. And there's a sense of doom, of impending doom. Whereas, you know, intuition, no, even if you're asking yourself the scariest question in the world, like something that would just upend your entire life, there's still a spark behind it. There's a, there's a kind of excitement or a joy or a sense. of a door opening to something. Maybe there's a wolf on the other side.

So I would say my mom's essay in there is really interesting and talks about nature. There's several of them in there. And also, Ada Limon, who is our U.S. poet laureate, interestingly enough, I had already written my essay about dreams and the wolf experience. And when she turned in her essay to me for the first round of edits,

she also talked about dreams and talked about the creative connection between dreams and writing, and she writes about her relationship with wolves. So we were both like having this simultaneous conversation in two different essays about our connection to our dream life and what that meant for the waking world, for the waking worlds around us.

I think there's a really interesting split between, am I afraid of something and it's guiding me not to do it versus am I drawn to it? So when you were speaking about the difference between intuition having a spark, I think a lot of people, because they have no past relationship with how to navigate emotion, emotion is just seen as this thing that overwhelms us. How do we begin to identify what am I being guided towards and how do I sort out the difference between those two things?

I appreciate that distinction. I've shared on the pod before about I've had a recurring dream and that I didn't even realize I had a recurring dream until it was like eight years later and I found myself in the place that I had been shown in that dream. Wow. And it was like, it totally blew me away because I hadn't had it for many, many years. And then when I got to this town that I'm in now and I walked downtown and it was a very distinct environment with like a river running beside it and a tree and a bridge and like the formation of a downtown, which was just a little square. It's not easily replicated. So it was very unique. And I got there at a particular time of my life. And I was just like all of a sudden brought back to this recurring dream that I had had. many, many years before, before my son was born. And when that hit me, I was like, what was I being shown in that time period? How was I, was it a prophecy? What part of me knew that I would be there at some time and would need that message to slow me down, to give me context that like where I was

on my journey of life because I had arrived at that town almost by accident, like, that I was supposed to be there. And it was, it for me provided the sense that like everything is going to be okay. It was a reassuring quality. You know, someone we've spoken to had said that you are every person in your dream. So like when you're dreaming about someone else, it's actually really a representation of you. And I wonder how the wolf plays into that, whether or not there are actual symbols or external guides in our dream or really are these just aspects of ourselves. And we all have all these different aspects of ourselves that then are externally represented to us. Mostly, I think that's because every time I would dream about babies, my therapist was like,

God, please don't have another child. It's just a part of you. It's, you're going to birth a new part of yourself. That's hilarious. Well, first of all, I think that there is, I mean, there is real scientific data behind psychic capabilities, not the kind that when we go to, you know, get the tarot read, which is also, I think, a fine thing. It's part of our mythology. I wouldn't, you know, take that as anything other than that. But some of that can be found not to like promote another book, but this thing called The Sense of Being Stared at. And Jonathan, I think you should read this. This is a really brilliant book, and it talks a lot about case studies in which they have found that people had premonitions about things exactly in this nature. It's absolutely fascinating.

And this book is quoted a lot in listening in The Dark in my own book. But as far as, you know, the wolf and what it represents, as far as I'm concerned, I think for me, I touched a little bit on that of just that it is, you know, it was a protector. It was a way for me to have something that felt like it was protecting me, that it was vicious and wild and scary to others. Because I grew up in an environment that sort of sometimes felt like the opposite of that, where there was a lot of predatory behavior. in an industry that treats girls and women as such as objects. And so I think my guess is as my, you know, conscious mind was forming, a lot of this idea about like a wolf being a protector and being something that was there to guide and show me

was probably what, that's probably what the symbology behind it meant for me. I don't think I was necessarily seeing myself as one, though maybe at times because I also, as I said, wanted to feel free and feral and wild and not feel so restrained with like a full career at 10 years old. So I think that those were sort of two of the aspects of what the wolf was trying to represent itself as in my dreams and in my writing. I mean, I really wanted to tell you all the things I learned from all the other essays that you told me to read.

But I'll put that aside. You know, there's so much to this book and these essays that, you know, they're each also such important different takes on this topic. This really feels like you've taken a very large concept that is also really, really specific. And it's just really, really beautifully, you know, kind of assembled all these different opinions. But something strikes me that I want to touch on with you. And it's sort of a series of questions or kind of thoughts that I've been asked a lot and that I ponder a lot. And I'm curious what your response is, because I think you're likely more fearless than I am or I think I'm less I think I'm more fearful than you. So there's something about

just the way you speak, the way you articulate things, the way you compose yourself that I find very just like attractive meaning like to to hold space with you to listen to you. Like I could listen to you all day. And I'm sure that there are ways that I can do that if I'd like to spend more time on the internet. It can be arranged. Right. We'll figure it up. But one of the things I'm curious about and I'm curious about it both because you've had such an interesting and prominent, you know, career and then, you know, found your way in a different aspect of, you know, representing yourself. I'm asking sort of, you know, for your perspective with everything you've been through, the experiences you've shared, the trauma you've experienced, the objectification, you know,

what, what is it that sort of do you see yourself as, as a voice? There's a really great and funny piece in the last book that I wrote, Era of Ignition, coming of age in a time of rage and revolution, which is sort of part memoir, part also looking at all of these pieces of conversations we've been having. But there is like a very funny list. I can't remember the name of it that I, it's something like requirements to become, to become president of the United States if you're a woman. and it goes through like a 10-page list, it becomes like aggressively insane with like sub-lists, subcategories, down to the craziest things of like the octave of your voice must be between these two, you know, decibels and, and then, but then it spirals and spirals out into the insanity of like, you must have all the degrees and none of the degrees.

You must have like gone to the Air Force and also had 57 children. You must have like the impossible litmus test. Like the impossible purity test of perfection that we put when and through to do anything or to be valued or to be taken seriously is kind of fucking funny. I mean, it's like so, it is so out of hand. And we can look at that. I mean, my favorite thing to always, my favorite discourse, besides like arguing with men about women in politics,

which is like my fucking favorite thing in the whole world. I will just beat someone into submission with my mouth about why women matter in politics, but also like the things that women are put through. And obviously Hillary Clinton's the easy one, but when we look at women of color, when we look at Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris to a degree,

you know, it is pretty profound to the ways in which we are completely terrified of any women who are vying for a position of power that we don't think they deserve because that's traditionally how it's been seen. For me, it's just interesting. And I also probably like you, exactly like you, like grew up in a business where, you know, pre-Me2 movement, pre the big cultural shift that we've had in the industry, which is still not enough, but it's something in which we want women directors,

we want more women behind the camera, we want more women in, you know, to be making decisions. And I grew up mastering the art of coming up with a good idea and making it feel like it was a man's. Whether that man was a show creator, a film director, a writer, I got very, very good at doing that. And so it was an old skill for me to sort of know how to make the men who were in positions of power around me feel good about themselves and feel like I wasn't trying to be too smart or too in the way of what they were doing. which I think is something that, like, lots of women in our business can relate to. I think lots of women in general. Yeah, true, true. I'm hearing more and more women, like, just, like, even at the supermarket, like,

can't, like, figure out a conversation with, like, the dude behind the counter that doesn't make him feel small if it's, like, about an artichoke. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think in any industry, which is also why the Me Too movement resonated in such a huge way, because it was, you know, talk about a collective. awakening of intuition, of a sense in our gut that something was wrong and we weren't going to be quiet about it anymore. That is sort of like one of the most powerful ones, I think, in modern history that we can point to. It's a joy to be in a space of discomfort when we're talking

about things that are difficult, when they're difficult to name, when they're difficult to identify. And I'm interested in that. I'm interested in knowing what is harder to explain or what is harder to express to someone than what might be easier. That also could frankly come from my background as a poet because poetry is like the most impossible thing. Victoria Chang once called it the armpit of the literary world. And I think that's true, how it's perceived. It's very difficult to understand and to write

and to just sort of be a part of. And so I lean towards those things. And I enjoy trying to find which part of a conversation, you know, when I think about women's rage, when I think about women's inequality, all of these things that we've read many books about in the last several years, you know, what is the underpinning of that? What is the piece of the puzzle that we haven't really touched? What is the thing that we think is a cliche or that we, you know, we think is something we understand and know, so we don't need to touch it again. But a topic like this to me is pretty fresh and new and is ready to be explored and to be looked at. out by women of all generations. I've also been on the journey of like the hormone, you know, party that, you know, honestly, if someone had told me, you know, when I was, I don't know, 13, like at my bat mitzvah, like, here's the story. And if they had actually told me, like, what your body is going to go through and, like, the number of also like emotional and thyroid

and autoimmune connections that are going to be made that, like, no one had done research on, I'd be like, I'm sorry, what's the world you're sending me into? What do you mean? No one's done research. So I've just been on this, you know, kind of, I mean, I'm 47, but I had my first hot flash. I think I was very young. I was maybe 40. And I've just been on like-

I'm perimenopausal. I'm 39 and I'm very metapausal. And everybody, including my own husband, was like, aren't you too young? Yeah, I get that too. I mean, this is normal. We just never talk about it. Look, there's a range of normal. And I remember I tend to not use like traditional obstetric care.

I'm a homebirth, you know, crazy person, meaning I'm crazy about the homebirth movement. And I'm, you know, I see a midwife instead of a, quote, regular obstetrician just because I prefer the care of midwifery. Even if you don't, this is something I always like to remind our female viewers. Even if you don't have children, don't want children, midwives are typically certified nurses. And you can actually go to them for well women care, even if you don't plan on having kids or whatever. Anyway, and it's just a different. That's amazing. Yeah, it's a different kind of care.

Anyway, I remember when I first went to my midwife about this, she's like, oh, that's because there's a 10-year process. You're just, I'm like, there's a who, what? Yeah, there's a 10-year process that your body's going to, 10 years. Like, there's not, I wasn't even married for 10 years. Like, that's a long haul to do anything with my body. In any event, one of the things that, you know, it's been shocking to discover is the kind of lack of information specifically about the links between women's mental health and our hormonal

status and also autoimmune conditions and specifically thyroid. I have an overactive thyroid. I'm like the weirder one just because I always have to be special. But, you know, for many women having an underactive thyroid or Hashimoto's or like these kind of things are so often in conjunction with many aspects of this. So I also just wanted to give you like a special shout out. And if you ever want to privately talk about any of these things. I would love to. But I just had one more question. Are you like a natural birth, listen to your body intuition kind of person? Or did you feel a different kind of intuition around parenting? I'm curious if there was overlap for you, you know, in that aspect of your life. That's such a great question. I had a C-section.

Which is also sometimes a very intuitive and necessary thing. So, yeah, I mean, Well, talk about the intuition of my doctor who was, you know, I mean, I think it was coupled, obviously, with just experience and the knowledge of doing what she does. But my daughter was not dropping. She was, she was, something was off about the way I was holding her in my body. And so she's like, I think we need to schedule a C-section. And I was very wary of everything I had been told and read and heard about, which I know that's a very real thing. It's like easier for doctors, hospitals make more money by just doing a scheduled C-section. And I really wanted the experience of a natural birth. But she was like, I really think something is off. And we were at the marker. It was like time to give birth, even though you know that that usually can take longer with our first child. Long story short, I did it. And sure enough, I had the shortest umbilical cord she had ever seen.

So much so. She asked me if she could talk about it in some case study stuff with some other doctors and bring it up at this lecture she was going to. You literally had a baby who didn't want to leave your womb. Didn't want to leave me and was held up by this like impossibly tiny umbilical cord. No doubt I would have been in an emergency C section. Anyway, right. So like talk about intuition and she couldn't figure out what it was.

You know, she was like, you know, went through all the different reasons why this was happening. Amazing. Why the lining wasn't thinning. Like everything that was going on. But like that was her intuition where all other. forms of decision making that you would run through a checklist as a doctor, like something else was failing her. She's like, okay, now I need to like lean on this other part of my of my head. You have a child with the shortest leash ever.

The shortest leash ever. Exactly. It's perfect. What a metaphor. It's been really a pleasure talking to you. And we really, we appreciate just all of your wisdom and your humor. And it's just been really wonderful to have our paths cross this way. Oh, it's a true joy. Thank you for having me. We didn't get to cover this idea of redefining or clarifying the term psychic. I think it has a lot of negative connotations because of the types of scams, charlatans, connecting with other worldly creatures, seances. I'm going to help you communicate with the dead.

But the way that she was describing it was much more about intuition. and that we have another ability outside of what our actual senses are. And we've actually touched on this a few times in the podcast. With Bev. Once with Bev we have, I tried to articulate something extra sensory in the Jackson Galaxy podcast, which I actually revisited that clip

and it didn't come out quite as clear as I had hoped. He had asked, you know, about anxiety and what if the anxiety is not just the anxiety itself? What if it's telling you something, but you don't have the language to understand what it's telling you. That sounds like a great episode. What podcast is that? It's our podcast, but I don't know what number is.

Oh, I should listen to that. Well, one thing that I think maybe you could shed a little light on because I feel like this is something where, you know, sort of nomenclature can betray us, you know, like what we call something and the semantics of it. But if instead of psychic ability... People can even discredit intuitive ability or intuitive senses. They're like, oh, that's just you justify.

something that you can't explain with a feeling. Well, a lot of times what I get annoyed with you about is because you are, you are, and this is me being completely sincere, because you do have a very strong intuitive sense and in many, many and very many important ways you are correct about your intuition and about your intuitive sense, you sometimes get paralyzed when you don't feel a strong intuition about something. I know what you're talking about. It's like, oh, if I don't feel guided

towards something in a strong way, if it's just sort of neutral, it does, I am like, what should I do here? And I will say that I have had strong intuition and it's been inaccurate. It's not that we can only go by intuition. So for example, and I don't know what this was.

There was someone that we were talking to and I had this sense of like, I don't know how this is going to go. I don't know what it's going to be like. And it actually turned out to be awesome. And so not all sensing is the same. Okay. So for me, like when and I'm, you know, I'm going to lean into this heavily because I,

I do feel like I've come by this self-awareness, you know, honestly. Most of my intuition just feels like fear. I'm just afraid. Well, like, I'll be like, like, I'll be afraid to act. I'll be, meaning to act on something. I'll be afraid to say. something. I'll be afraid to do something. I'll be afraid to try something new. I'll be afraid to say yes to something that I don't know if I'm going to do well. And so what I get to hide or what

we get to hide behind is like, well, I just know that's not for me. I just intuitively know that's not for me, you know. And what that is is that's actually fear. That's not intuition. But it was very interesting that she pointed out that a lot of times what we perceive as anxiety is actually intuition. So the notion is not just like how do you become more in touch with your intuition. The notion is how do I learn to distinguish the emotions that underlie actions that I want to take or don't want to take and be able to authentically say this is me and this is not me? That is right. From our breakdown to the one. That's all you have to say. That is right. I very rarely say that is right to you. I thought you'd be more excited.

felt kind of unceremonious. I usually say that's not quite it. I wouldn't say that. You've somewhat miscategorized me. I figured it out. That's it. I figured that out. No, but do you know what I'm saying?

That like, it's kind of like... It's a huge process to separate those things out. Yeah. What am I feeling in this moment as a reaction? Right. Versus how do I feel in general? Two separate things. the moment is acute it changes it settles it shifts as time goes on as i get used to an idea or

someone gets used to an idea as new information is brought forth so that's like the immediate that's the reaction how i feel about things in general is i have more information i can see a bigger picture or our intuition is guiding us that even without logical explanation there's something think about a situation, a person, an experience that I'm being pushed towards. Those are two separate feelings, but they're both feelings and how do you separate them to understand them? Maybe the thing is not simply saying, like, I'd like to understand intuition better, or I'd like to be more into, maybe even before that, it's being able to move away from your fear, meaning not to identify with your fear so much so that it interferes with your ability to even know what your

intuition is and move away from our anxiety so that we're able to say this anxiety is about something that's not this or this anxiety is actually not anxiety. It's that gut feeling of don't walk alone on this street. And I can't tell you especially as a woman how many times we as women and yes, men too, but how many times as a woman we make calculations that we are hoping will be the right calculation. And like it catches in my throat and my heart because I know many, many women. And I don't know that there's a person who doesn't know a woman who has thought, I shouldn't go there or I shouldn't be there. I shouldn't.

I've been that person. I shouldn't have this one more drink, you know? I shouldn't stay. These are the calculations that we're. as humans making all the time. But it's so much fear also about what will people say. I can't tell you how many times I'm a pretty like, I mean, I'm not like a straight edge person, but like my life's pretty not exciting, right?

I mean, it hasn't been very exciting. There was some years that were like a little exciting. But even in those few years, like the calculations you make, right? What part of me wasn't ready to say leave, right? you shouldn't don't let somebody talk to you like that leave it's fear of what other people will think I mean I can tell you as a woman like that's that's programming that's just I'm just like programmed I mean I think I'm programmed both as a woman and I think also just you know with my particular whatever my my family and yeah for me a lot of just like fear of what will people think

instead of I know that I should go home like I know that I should and I envy you know when I see men behaving in ways that are like, oh my God, they just like totally weren't having a good time and they just left. Like wasn't even a thing. I once had a situation with someone. It was a date situation where like he had absolutely no problem being like, this doesn't feel right by. And I was like, wait a second. We're in the middle of like a negotiation of like a relationship. Like what? And I never do that. You know, I don't, I haven't. You're like, we're supposed to spend the next four hours both wishing we should. leave.

And then let's go to therapy. Inching ourselves off the chair, getting your foot ready to make a move, but not making that move until we're both sweating and anxious and exhausted and then awkwardly hug and say maybe we'll text again another time. And that's how we started this podcast from our breakdown to the one we intuitively hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's my and be allics breakdown.

She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fiction. And now she's going to break down.