More Life with Carl Radke - Lori Gottlieb on self-sabotage in dating and why change is hard

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

Carl is joined by psychotherapist and bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, Lori Gottlieb, for an honest conversation about relationships, self-awareness, and the stories we tell ourselves. Lori shares insights on love, attachment, grief, and why discomfort is often the doorway to growth. This episode is about radical honesty, emotional courage, and finding more life through deeper connection - with others and with yourself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and sit. Play. Post. Taste. View and enjoy. Via rail, love the way. All right, guys, I'm Carl Radkeke.

And welcome to More Life. Today is a very, very special episode. I've got one of my favorite people ever. I met her very early on in my sobriety journey. We've got Lori Gottlieb. She's a psychotherapist. She's a New York Times best-selling. author. She's a TED Talk speaker. She's the author of maybe you should talk to someone. You might have

seen this book. If you haven't, I highly recommend checking out. It's something that changed my life and has been a huge part of my story. She also has the co-host of a podcast called Dear Therapist. And also, since you ask, she answers questions. It's an amazing column. I love Lori. I hope you guys love her as much as I do. I'm excited to dive in. We are here live in Los Angeles at Sony Studios. Can't wait for you you guys elicit this conversation. Lori Gottlieb, welcome to more life. It's great to see you. Great to see you too.

Thanks for having me. I feel like you were coming from New York right now. Yes. And I'm in L.A. Normally I'm in New York and you're normally here. We're reversed. We're switched. So I'm glad we can make this work.

Yeah. I'm so just honored you would come and take the time. I've been a big fan of your work. And I just want to remind some of our listeners and the watchers. I got a chance to discover Lori's book. Maybe you should talk to someone. It was around 2019, 2020. It was really going to going through my own personal stuff.

realizing that I had an alcohol problem, I had a drug problem, and I wasn't really being honest with my therapist. I wasn't seeing a therapist as often. And there was something about the way you shared your personal experience, but also you're a therapist yourself. Just the thought of a therapist having a therapist was like mind-blowing to me. And a lot of what you talked about in the book was really helpful to me at the beginning of my journey. So I just wanted to thank you. Yeah, we had a conversation back then. We did back in the IG Live days. Exactly. It's a testament to who Lori is. She responded to my message. I'd reached out to you because I wanted to do an Instagram Live. Yeah.

You wrote back right away, super friendly and responsive. Just so as you know, this podcast is called More Life. It's one of my favorite sayings. I used to say it on Bravo. Yeah. For many years, Lori, can you give me an example? Like my mantra, More Life. Do you have anything that you embody or saying?

You know, it's so interesting because I never thought, do I have a mantra? But no, I realize, like, in front of my desk, I have this quote, which is about joy in the snow. And so my mantra is joy in the snow. and the quote is, if you don't see the joy in the snow, you're going to miss the joy, but the snow will still be there. And I love that because no matter what's going on, you're not necessarily going to take away the other stuff,

but you're missing the joy. I like that. Yeah. Now you are a licensed psychotherapist? Yes. Okay. You hear psychology. You hear therapy.

You hear counseling. Right. You hear a drug. You know, there's somebody to various areas. I'm wondering if you could maybe explain some of the misunderstandings. Yeah. There are different kinds of people who do therapy, so psychiatrists do therapy.

do therapy, psychologists do therapy, psychotherapists do therapy, some social workers do therapy. But I think what people have misconceptions about is what therapy is. If someone says, I want to go to therapy, what do they think the experience is going to be like? And that's why, and maybe you should talk to someone, I follow the lives of four of my patients as they go through various things. And you can see what is it like to be a fly on the wall in the room? What actually happens in the room? And then I'm the fifth patient in the book. And you see me go to therapy because I'm going through something and I need to go get my own therapy. So what I wanted people to do was to see that therapy is, you know,

it's not where you're going to come and they're just going to validate your experience and say that you're right. And, you know, it's really about looking at your role in your own life and looking at the agency that you have. You know, a lot of people think, well, I'm going to go and I'm going to tell them about this thing and they're going to say, yeah, that's so hard. and these other people are terrible. Like coddle you or something.

Well, it's like the difference between, I talk about in the book, the difference between idiot compassion and wise compassion. So idiot compassion is what your friends do. You know, you say like, oh, this person broke up with me or my boss did this or my mother did this. And they say, yeah, you're right. They're wrong.

You deserve better. You go, girl. Right? That's not necessarily helpful because sometimes it's like, that's idiot compassion. That's idiot compassion. It's like if a fight breaks out in every bar you're going to,

maybe it's you. Do we say that to our friends? Well, hopefully your friends can be honest with you, but sometimes they're hesitant to because you are not ready to hear it. And so in therapy, to answer your question about what therapy is, in therapy, we offer wise compassion, which is we hold up a mirror to you to help you to see something about yourself that maybe you haven't been willing or able to see. It's not that the thing that you said is untrue, meaning the other thing did happen, the interaction did happen. But what was your role in it? Are you responding or are you reacting? Do you have choices?

Are you in a pattern where you keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting something different to happen? What's going on there? So that's where I think therapy can be really useful. That's a really good explanation. I think the more I'm trying to talk about therapy is for me personally, I started going to therapy with my family in fifth grade. And my brother had struggles.

And as a family unit, we collectively would go to a weekly session. And as a fifth grader, it was maybe 12, 13. it was confusing because I was so afraid at that time to tell anybody about therapy. I even mentioned it, I think, to some friends, and I'd be like, you're crazy. You're screwed up. So I had this weird kind of relationship with therapy at a younger age because it was always so intense. And it didn't know. It felt like it was for someone else, not necessarily for me. You know, that's interesting because I think that when you look at people think of mental health as different from physical health, even though it's all health. And your physical health affects your mental health, your mental health affects your physical health.

And so if someone said, look, you know, I'm having chest pain, would you say, oh, but it's not that bad because someone else has stage four cancer, right? There's no hierarchy of pain. If you fall down and break your wrist, you're not like, well, it's not that bad. I'll just kind of live with it. But people do that with their emotional health. So what they do is they say, well, I'm feeling kind of depressed or maybe I'm feeling really sad. I'm feeling anxious. I'm having this relational difficulty. but it's not that bad because I have a roof over my head and food on the table and I have maybe great friends or a loving family. So it's not that bad. So therapy is not really for people like me. And that's where people struggle. And it's kind of like if you don't come to therapy, there's a study that shows that the average amount of time that elapses between the time that someone first thought they might go to therapy and when they actually get there, 11 years. Wow.

11 years. So people have suffered unnecessarily for whether it's days or weeks or months or decades. Or 10, 11 years. Right. I use this as an example for friends when they're like telling me about their fear of therapy. And I say, well, you go to the gym to work out to maybe get stronger or more lean or more fit. Yeah. I view therapy is the same thing but for your brain. It's you're working out your brain and you're sure the first session maybe you might be a little sore after it. But over time it builds off itself and it builds. But that's like the only metaphor I can find that kind of. to make sense, but it's interesting. Like you wouldn't give someone a hard time if they had cancer or, you know, some of the mental illnesses that are out there. It's like it's hard to see it. Right. Like someone just wrote, I write the Asa Therapist column for the New York Times. It's an advice column. And someone just wrote in and said, my friend is flaking on me a lot. And she mentioned that she's struggling with depression, but I'm really tired of her flakiness. And I said in my answer,

if she had cancer, and we just used that as a place, but she had any kind of physical, illness that would make sense to you in a different way. Sure, you might be a little frustrated with the flakiness, but you'd probably respond to it differently than as if she has a choice. And I think that's where the stigma comes in with therapy. People think, well, you have a choice. You're sad. Be happy. You're anxious. Do meditate. You know, whatever it is. Like, as if you're just supposed to kind of buckle up and take care of it yourself. Well, I want to explore that a little bit because I think sometimes like the self-talk and things that I personally, like I could have a really, be really happy and confident.

And then sometimes I have this voice in my head that's like, you're not good enough, you're not worthy, you're less than. And I worry sometimes like that, that can cloud the thought, but versus I read a lot about people like, it's all about that self talk and like wake up in the morning and really, even if things are hard, almost psyching yourself like, no, it's okay. And like, I don't like, is there a connection between what you're saying there? Like, yeah, I mean, I think that's where the societal stigma creeps in.

like we think I shouldn't feel this way. Yeah, you're not supposed to, or it's like you're flawed or screwed up. Right, whereas that's the gamut of emotions. That's the human condition. Yeah. But I also think the way we talk to ourselves, we're not really aware of. And I have so many people who come to me and they say, well. I talk to myself horribly.

Right, right. And they think that, but you're aware of it. You're aware of it. But some people aren't, and they don't realize, you know, the stories that we tell ourselves in our head are stories that were told to us by the culture, by the people who brought us up, by whatever we were surrounded by, and we took them as truth. And then we talk to ourselves that way. It's really interesting because we're not born saying like, you're so stupid.

You're not good enough. That's not how we're born. And I think we have this idea that if we're hard on ourselves, that somehow we're going to improve and get better. But the thing about that is that when we kind of say it's hard to form new habits, it's hard to do something different. And instead of saying, this is hard and I'm going to have self-competent. as I'm forming this new habit.

If we say, you say, I'm going to exercise, you know, this amount and then you don't do it, you say, well, I guess I failed at that, forget that. It's kind of like if you had a kid and they did badly on a test and they came home and they said, I really did badly on this test, would you scream at them? Do you think that that's going to help them? Or would you say, hey, let's understand what happened. So it's self-compassion with accountability. And people think you're not going to have accountability if you're nice to yourself.

They don't understand that you can be nice and hold. yourself accountable. So let's see. Did you just not study? Was it too hard for you? Were you afraid to ask for help? Did you want to play video games instead? Yeah, like get to the bottom of it more than just like. Yeah, so that you can actually solve it. But you don't have to tell yourself, I'm horrible, I'm stupid, I'm bad. That's not helpful. Sometimes it helps a little bit in the short term. It does not help at all in the long term. Okay. Well, what's the difference between like that and like humility? Because I guess sometimes I try to hold like humble myself or be self-deprecating and I almost feel like there's a, the reason I do that is like,

I'm going to be my own worst enemy, so no one else could even touch that. Like, it's not going to hurt me because I can fire me. I quit. Exactly. Yeah. I don't know. Can you make a connection with some of that? It's self-protective, it sounds like. You're protecting yourself.

Like, whatever you say to me won't even get near what I would say to myself. But thinking less of myself versus thinking I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread. But, you know, so on Instagram or social media, you hear a lot about narcissism. Of course. just completely misunderstood. So narcissism, that's people who feel really bad about themselves. And so in order to deal with the pain and the discomfort and the shame that comes with that, they inflate themselves.

Sure. So it's not that they actually are super confident or conceded. It's that they feel less than. And they have to make themselves. So if you're on one end of the spectrum or the other, that's not wholeness. That's not groundedness. That's not a strong, what we call strong sense of self. Strong sense of self is I know what my challenges are.

I know what my strengths are. And I'm okay with it all. Okay. I think I'm that last part or at least striving to get that part. Yeah. And this is a big reason I wanted to do this podcast was like really, I'm still on this search to learn and understand myself better. Because I, you know, just be five years, January 7th that I celebrated getting sober.

And congratulations. Thank you. It's changed my life. But I will say in the last year, you know, I feel essentially. sense of more confidence in my body. But then I have these moments, and I've opened up recently more about imposter syndrome. And I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about that.

I've opened up to some people in my similar field where they have a following and they open up about their ups and downs publicly. But sometimes I'm like in these rooms or at these events, and I'm like, am I supposed to be here? But I've realized that a lot of people feel like that. It could be an entrepreneur or starting a new business. It could be a sober person newly sharing his story, publicly. I don't know. I guess sometimes I feel like I'm not supposed to be there. But then

everybody's so glad I am. So it's like this weird juxtaposition sometimes. Have you ever? No, I think a lot of people, what happens is they imagine that other people don't feel that way. So you walk into that room and you see all these impressive people and you think, well, they don't feel this way. They know that they belong there. Oh, okay. I like that. Need a vehicle that isn't afraid to make a splash? That's the Volkswagen Tauce, capable of and confident, the Volkswagen Taos is fit for everyday life, nimble in traffic, agile and tight spots, and still spacious enough for weekend getaways, while available 4-motion all-wheel drive gives confidence in rain and snow.

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Follow Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Apple, Spotify, IHeard Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. And I remember when I got to college and the first thing at the first convocation, they said, like, I'll bet that a lot of you are looking around going, how did they pick me? What am I doing here? And I thought that I remembered that, you know, all these years later, because I think so many of us do that, we look around and we think nobody else doubts themselves. Nobody else is wondering, wow, you know, do I really belong here? All of these impressive people are here. Am I, you know, am I in the right place? But I think

that the comparison thing can be really dangerous. And the problem with comparison is that either you feel superior to other people, which means that you don't actually see other people and you inflate your own worth or you feel inferior to them and you don't feel good enough. So I think that when you start to feel that imposter syndrome, it's more about how do I feel about myself and where I am in relation to my own growth and my own trajectory instead of looking around at other people. It's the comparison that I'm running into. And I admire a lot of individuals in the behavioral health community and the mental health community and athletes and music. So here's the thing that I think is interesting. People don't like to feel envy, right?

And there are certain times when people say, okay, these are the bad feelings and these are the good feelings. Like a bad feeling is sadness, anxiety, envy, whatever those things are. And the good feelings are joy, right? All feelings are information. Feelings are like a compass. They tell you what you want. They tell you what direction to go in, just like a compass does. So when you feel envy, like when I feel envy, I'm like, that's great.

I welcome it. Come here, envy. Talk to me. because it says I have a desire for something. I'm alive and I want this and I'm excited about it and I don't have it yet. But now if I can acknowledge that I want it, then I can sit down and say, how can I get whatever version of that works for me? So I don't want to be the other person or do exactly what they're doing.

But it points me in a direction of, oh, I really want that. And now I'm going to sit down and take some steps to get there. So listen to your envy. Yes, follow your envy. It tells you what you want. And so many people deny. their envy and then they don't follow their dreams or they don't follow things that they want to do because they're so busy saying, oh, I feel so much shame when I feel envious, I'm going to push it

away and not listen to the message that it's delivering to me. That's something, I mean, I totally love and believe in the listening to your body and your feeling and honoring that. There was a period of time when I was drinking and using a lot of cocaine where I wasn't, you know, the body was telling me the truth, but I wasn't listening to it. And now in my sobriety and just really trying to take care of myself, I really, my body knows. Yes. And it's kind of cool if you can trust and listen, but it took some time to get there. And your body will revolt if you go a long period of time and not listen to it. Yeah. I mean, can you give examples how that might manifest?

Someone is, you know, feeling anxious, right? But they kind of ignore it and they kind of rationalize it away. Oh, I'm just stressed. Oh, I, you know, they have all kinds of reasons for it. at a certain point, they're going to start making really bad choices because they're going to be making choices out of fear instead of out of desire. Sure. And I think also their anxiety gets in the way of relationships. I think we live in an anxiety generation now or like a culture of anxiety with, you know, how connected we are or disconnected we are. The more we talk about that, the more people will say, oh, I'm having trouble with this. I'm going to do something about it instead of just white knuckling it through every day.

And that's, I think, as a male, sometimes we're kind of taught to be that way. You know, young boys, tough it out kid, you know, grin and bear it. Let me tell you, as the mom of a boy, I'll tell you the difference is when he was... And I'm a mama's boy, just so for the record. So there you go. I'm curious to hear about your relationship with your son. Yeah. Well, I was just going to say I noticed the gender difference from very early on.

Like, if my son was like two and he fell off the jungle gym, what would people say, Oh, just, you know, stand up, brush it off. You're fine. If a little girl at two falls down, everyone rushes over. Are you okay, honey? Let me give you a hug. Why do we do that? So what happens is these boys and girls grow up and they come into my office and they become my patients. And the men will say to me, you know, I've never told anyone this before. Literally, they have not told a soul. Even if they have a great marriage, great friends, great family, they've told no one. women will come in and they'll say, you know, I've never told anyone this before,

except for my mother, my sister, my best friend, my aunt, my, right? So they've told a few people because it's okay in our culture. So when you say, you know, as a man, yes, you know, these conversations, I think that people need to realize that it's not like emotions are in the realm of women and that men don't feel and think and struggle with all of the same things.

The kinds of things that men and women coming with are so incredibly similar. How can I love and be loved? How do I feel about myself? What does it mean to be a good human being? What does it mean to be successful in life? What do I do with regret? What do I do with bad decisions? Yeah, it's all on both sides. Yeah. This is so interesting, Lori. So I'm always just blown away by some of the information. So I get a ton of questions over here at More Life, ranging from sobriety, recovery, mental health. And this is a topic that I think is super important. People ask me, Carl, I know I need a therapist. Where do I find one? How do I find one? How do I know who to trust? And I myself, it took me a few different therapists to get to the final therapist that I've

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talkiatry head to talkiatry.com slash life and complete the short assessment to get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in minutes that's talkiatry.com slash life to get matched in minutes sobriety's helped me so much as I kind of told you but it also has kind of changed on my emotional capacity and my how do I socialize how it's like literally changed me totally Like I watch myself on reality TV, old seasons, and I cringe. And it's almost like, how, that was me. How do people grieve the version of themselves that they had to let go? Like sometimes I have friends that grieve the old Carl.

They're like, I kind of miss old Carl. He was a little bit spicy with his mouth and he'd say something ridiculous. And maybe he was like really outlandish and fun. But I don't miss them. All right. So first of all, when we make a change, there's the difference between a virtuous cycle and a vicious cycle. So before you make the change, you're in this vicious cycle. You're repeating patterns over and over.

When you start to make the change, when you're in the maintenance phase, which just keeps going, but it gets easier, new things happen that are good. Like with sobriety, for example, I'm more present. And when I'm more present, I get more done. And I'm meeting people who are maybe really good for me, and I wouldn't have met them otherwise. And I'm less reactive. And I don't do things where I embarrass myself anymore.

So it's this virtuous cycle, like good. things happen because you're making the change. You know, it's like a snowball effect. But the other thing is when someone makes a change, the people in their world, they don't always like the fact that you're making the change, which is what you're speaking to. So sometimes like, let's say that you're in a couple and one person says, you know, I'm going to stop, I'm going to drink less. And the other person drinks too much, like you both drank too much. But one person says, you know what, I'm going to try to drink less. and your partner doesn't like that very much because now they're forced,

it's like a mirrors in front of them and they're forced to see, I actually drink a lot. And so what they say to their partner is, you're no fun anymore. Why can't we go to this bar and drink this much anymore? You know, like you've lost your personality.

And it's just because they don't like the change in the other person because it reflects on them that, oh, wait, maybe I need to change and I don't want to change. I'm not ready to change. It's funny. I mean, that's a great example because I, before I had gotten sober, I remember this vividly. I went to a World Cup soccer game. It was USA versus Mexico. And a friend of mine invited a friend of his from California. We were tailgating at MetLife Stadium in New York and we were outside. Soccer fans are going crazy and we were drinking. And then his friend arrives. And he looks at me and he's like, I don't drink. I'm sober. I'm like, I was like, oh, come on. I gave him a hard time. I actually haven't reached out to him since I just admitted this, but I want to text him and say like, I'm sorry because I was kind of an asshole to him, but it was that mirror and like that feeling of wait.

Like you're not, and he had a great day. He was fun and happy. He was in a good space. Guess what? I was a disaster. I was drunk. I didn't really remember the game. But it was my behavior towards him and it reminded me even now since I've gotten sober that kind of when someone's uncomfortable with your change or your choice, it almost points that light and kind of what they're uncomfortable inside of their body. I mean, you said most people don't fear change. They fear the grief that comes with it, right? Well, I think that's why they fear change is because of the loss. They fear the loss of the familiar for the unknown. It's something I'm still grieving.

I mean, I feel like I'm still actively grieving, like kind of can you talk about, like just that grief isn't just a one-time thing, right? No, I mean, you know, life is full of loss. Yeah. And we feel it at all different times. And that whole people think that there's that rubric of the stages of grief, right? But those were actually... I forget what movie it was.

It was a Billy Crystal, and there was a movie he talks about grief, and it's like these stages. And it's almost like... Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Those are Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. She came up with those. But they were not for someone who's experiencing grief of the loss of something outside of them. They were for terminally ill patients and how they deal with the loss of their own life that was impending. Right?

So how do you deal with the fact, like, I am dying and this is making me grieve? So people have adapted them. They also think that they're sequential as if you're going to go through them in lockstep, denial, then anger, then bargaining, that depression and acceptance. And instead you bounce around in them, right? Well, I feel like it's like, in our society, we want that, like, quick fix. It's like you do this, then you do that, and then you're fixed. And it's like, it's not like that.

Right. But I think that, again, going back to why change is so hard in the grief and the loss around it, there's something else that comes into play, which is when I was in therapy, and I wrote about this in the book, my therapist, said to me, he said, you know, you remind me of this cartoon and it's of a prisoner shaking the bars desperately trying to get out. But on the right and the left, it's open. No bars. So why, why do we first all not see that it's open? And if we do, why don't we just walk around the bars? That's change. The reason we don't walk around the bars is because with freedom comes responsibility. And so if we

walk around the bars, we can't blame all of our lives problems on circumstances and this thing out there and that thing out there. And that's not to say, by the way, that there aren't incredibly difficult circumstances in the course of our lives. But at the end of the day, we are responsible for our own lives and our own choices within the parameters of what our circumstances are. So I think that a lot of people say, well, I'd rather just shake the bars and blame it on anything but me than walk around and feel like, well, now I'm responsible and that scares that. Can I say shit out of me? Absolutely.

That scares the shit out of me. Yes. I mean, you encapsulated that, I think, so well. I've, in my past, that I can see the cartoon, you know, it almost looks like a New Yorker cartoon to me is like, you know, the therapist telling the patient, he's right in front of the bars, and there's plenty of room on either side. Yep.

It's like that fear of, yes, the change. And I've said this to some friends and people that are like afraid to maybe go to an AA meeting for the first time or afraid to call a therapist for the first time. And on the other side of that fear, for me personally has always been like a small glimmer of like hope and like growth. Yeah. And that little for me personally, that feeling also almost like it outweighs that fear after I do it. It's like the weirdest feeling.

It's so scary. And once you get through the door, you're like, oh. And I got a little something out of it. It's such a relief. Yes. Yeah. But it's like I don't know how to help people understand like, of course it's hard to step through the change and all that. but I'm like, if you're that down,

like don't you, aren't you willing to want to just feel? I think that for a lot of people, and we deal with this in therapy, the problem isn't that they don't see that glimmer of hope. It's that it feels so overwhelming to them. And so I always say if you can't do something, it means that the steps are too big. You have to take smaller steps.

So what is this first small thing that you can do right now? Just one small, tiny, tiny thing. And if even that feels too overwhelming, let's break it down even smaller so that you can just do because you want to create something where you have some success. Like I did that small thing. Like I was going to react this way and I counted to 10 in my head and I took a breath and I didn't yell.

Something small like that. I love the small wind stuff and you actually reminded me of something I've talked about, which is one of my favorite books outside of yours. He was a U.S. General Admiral McRaven wrote about making your bed every morning. Yes. It was a commencement speech. I think at the University of Texas,

and he wrote about this making the bed kind of mentality first thing in the morning. Yeah, it's like these small things that you can do that change the course of the next minute or hour or day or week. Yeah, like set yourself up for like a small win. Yeah. And like that accomplishment, as silly as tucking in the sheets and putting your pillows on.

Well, it also has to do with how do you respect yourself and take care of yourself? So do you want to treat yourself well? What are some things that you can do to treat yourself Well, there are people that we call help rejecting complainers. We all know them. I've been that. We've all encountered them. It's the people who they just want to complain.

They just want to tell you like what their problems are. And when you say, what if you try this or how about this or have you thought about this? They say, that won't work or I can't do that. And here's why. And they don't actually want a solution because they don't want to take the next step. I try to them. I best to not complain because I try to offer, you know, gratitude. and being grateful for everything I do have

and not get caught up and all of that. It's something I think about a lot. Well, I think there's a difference between saying, I'm having difficulty with us and I want to talk with you about it versus just coming back with the same story of, I'm helpless and there's nothing I can do. And I don't really want any help.

I just want to vent. Now, when people first come to you with something, you know, help hug heard. Do you know what that is? No. It's when people come to you with something, sometimes we think that what we would want in that situation is what they want in that moment. So they come to you, they've got this thing, they're having a problem.

Do they want help? Do they want to kind of brainstorm with you? Do they just want to hug or do they just want to be heard? Do they just want to vent and tell you what happened? Because once you find out what they want, maybe then a few days later, let's say they're just like, I just want to tell you what happened. I'm so upset about this. I just want to tell you what happened.

Okay, I'm here to listen. Great. And then a few days later, they might be like, so remember that thing I told you about the other day? I'm still thinking about it. I don't know what to do. Can we talk about this? So at different times, people might want different things.

Totally. But that's how you get out of that cycle of just someone complaining and then you're trying to fix it for them, but they don't want to hear that at that moment, and then you just get into this pattern. Help hug heard. Yes.

I like that. I haven't heard that one. And I like to hug. There's something about that, I don't know, it just brings a safety and a comfort, even meeting someone new for the first time. Yes, and it regulates your nervous system. Okay, good, because I've always felt safer and more comfortable,

even in meeting someone and interacting with them if I've given them a hug at the beginning. Yeah, and that's what we call too in parent-child, couples, friends, co-regulation is that we actually regulate each other's nervous systems with touch, with safe touch. And something I'm curious, like with family and just environment, you mentioned just like some of those circumstances that people have, of course there's very, very difficult things that people have. But some of the complaining and some of the hereditary component,

like this is no shade of my parents. Like the family I grew up in at sometimes, there was an air of negativity, like waiting for the shoe to drop. You know, there was always challenges in the family. You know, my brother had some ups and downs. And it was always kind of the air of what's going to go wrong next. Yeah. And sometimes I think for me getting out of that kind of family environment

where that was kind of the mood. Yeah, where you're hypervig. vigilant. Yes, but then sometimes I go back home to visit and I get that air of negativity tiny bit. And I'm like, this is why I got out of Pittsburgh a little bit. But I'm trying to think about how do I bring some of this kind of, I don't know, information too. Like, how do I break the family cycle? So some people who grow up that way, they have what we call cherophobia, which is a fear of joy. Because when you're in that environment, cherophobia. How do you spell it? So chero is joy and phobia is fear. So fear of joy. And it means like, you're

you always think that the other shoe is going to drop. That's kind of how I feel like. Right. And so what happens is you feel like, you know, you're going about your day as a kid. And then like you think everything's fine. And then the other shoe drops. And that keeps happening. So you start to feel uncomfortable when you're comfortable.

Because you think like, well, at any moment this could end. And I've got to be really, as I said, hypervigilant. So I can't really sit with that feeling and sink into it with that good feeling. that comfortable feeling, that safe feeling. And even people around joy, they feel like, well, yeah, this great thing happened, but I can't get too happy about it because something bad is going to follow it. And that's, I mean, I will say my sobriety, or prior to sobriety, I have these massive highs and these massive lows.

But now it's almost like a wave. And I've learned to appreciate that more than anything because those highs were, of course, they felt so good. But that low was horrible and debilitating. took a few days to even get out of. But now it's like this wave, I kind of ride. Yeah, I like the wave. I kind of think of feelings as weather systems

that they kind of blow in and they blow out. So sometimes people think... Like this two shall pass? I think that people think like, if I get sad, I'll never get out of that. You know, like when you're feeling sad sometimes, you feel like, well, I'm going to feel sad. But then you realize like the next day, it feels different.

In grief, a lot of people, experience this. They say, well, I will never feel happy again. And then somehow they find themselves dancing or laughing at a joke or having a good time. And they think, well, how could I possibly feel that way when I'm also so devastated about the loss of some person that they love? I'm glad you brought that up because, I mean, I lost my brother to an overdose in 2020. And the way I learned about it was while we were filming the reality show I've been on. And it was I mean, it's tragic. It was really difficult. But it was a shock to me. And it was a reason I had to look in the mirror and actually get the help I needed. But with grief and like losing a family

member, I after that at all transpired, I did get sober. And he was a huge catalyst for that. But I was being praised in a way almost for like how I was kind of navigating this new chapter of my life. But I would have given any amount of money to get my brother back and do whatever it takes. So it's kind of, it's been this like, I don't know if it's not imposter, but like I'm sad about my brother not being here, but then look at all these things that have happened in my life. And I've broken down on TV in the past about, I've been afforded and given a lot of opportunities. I've been very lucky since my brother's been gone. And getting sober, getting the support I've needed, I've opened up and tried to help.

But it still doesn't take away that sadness. Of course. And kind of like, I miss him. Yeah. But it goes into the stories that we tell ourselves that your story is. is somehow that if you enjoy all of the things that have happened since he died, that somehow you don't feel sad about the fact that he died. And it's both.

It's, you know, both and is a great. Both and, yeah. I like, because that's exactly, you encapsulated very well. It's like I almost have been upset at myself some days because things are going so well. You know, I've had success with this or something really positive there. I've helped support someone. And I'm like not sad about my brother. And I almost like get angry at myself for like, you should be still sad.

He passed away four and a half years ago. Like, why aren't you crying? And it's like this weird, when I do get the feeling of crying, I'm like almost happy because it shows I care. But it doesn't mean that you don't care if you're not sad all the time. And I think that people who are grieving feel that so much and they just don't understand grief. Yeah, that hits me really hard because that's like about as accurate as I feel sometimes with just the things that have transpired over the life. last five years and since he's been gone. You know, I've, I can't understand it.

I've been so lucky and had a lot of great things happened to me and some ups and downs for sure, but it doesn't take away that feeling of like I would do anything to have him back. But here I am, like having all this growth and all these like really amazing things in my life because he's gone. And it's like this kind of, this thing I always think about, but I appreciate letting me kind of open up about it.

I mean, grief is so unique and there's some universals around it, but it's also a very personal experience. And sometimes people don't understand the other side of grief, which is say that there's a big loss, you know, say someone had a divorce or they had a miscarriage or there was a death. And it's been like two years. And people will think, well, this isn't healthy.

Why aren't you moving on? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like you don't move on. You move forward in your life, but you don't necessarily move on. That that experience gets integrated into, the life that you're living. So you keep living your life and you find ways to move forward. But it's so interesting that people think that grief is this one and done thing. Like you go

through some process, you're done, we're done. Grief is passed. Check that box. Yeah, with the Grief Academy. I passed with flying colors. Yeah. I'm good to go. And even, you know, like years later, like someone will feel whatever they feel. And grief stays with you forever, depending on what it was. And it doesn't mean that you haven't moved forward. But to say, to somebody, well, that happened, oh well. You know, that's what it sounds like to people. Well, I think giving yourself the opportunity to grieve. I feel like some people don't. And I've been in a weird position because not a weird position, I'm grateful for the position, but just in the manner that I learned about his passing. And it was a part of the show.

And it was something that was public, you know, very public. And I think for me, I've tried to learn have more compassion for myself. But it's something I'm actively working on. I'm curious, like I can be really hard of myself. I'm probably my own heart enemy. And as we talked about before, it was like this, it's like a safety thing. It's like, okay, no one's going to say anything that I've never said to myself, you know?

So no one's going to be meaner to me than I'm to myself. How do you tell the difference between being accountable to yourself, which is what I try to really do, and self-punishment? Like accountability versus self-punishment. Because I ran a small example. A couple years ago on Summerhouse, we did a reunion,

and I had been through a lot of stuff and had a lot to explain and talk about and I really was trying to be accountable. And after it ended, one of my friends was like, Carl, you went 300 times more accountable than you ever needed to be. Like, you're way too, like, yes, there were things I owed apologies

and justification or explanations, but also just being honest and saying, I fucked up and I'm sorry. But I'd get it like to an extra, extra level and she was like calling me out for it. I'm just curious like how that, how you can talk through that. That goes into, first of all,

just how do you feel aligned with yourself? So I think that when you're talking about accountability, it's I did something that doesn't align with how I want to be in the world. Exactly. And so that's what accountability looks like. And it also goes to this question of apologies and who is the apology for?

So when people go overboard with the apology, at a certain point, it doesn't feel genuine. It starts to feel like, I need forgiveness from you. Yes. I need something from you. I'm not offering you this gift of an apology. I'm asking you for something back. And apologies are not asking the other person to give you something back.

And apology is a gift that you give to someone else that is genuine with no expectation of anything in return. I say sorry too much. And I have some friends of mine that are like, you don't need to be sorry for that. Is that there's some connection to that too? Yeah. I mean, that's the other side of it. Sometimes in therapy, and it's so funny that it's happening in therapy because like there's literally boxes of tissues all around you and people will start apologizing for crying.

It's kind of like if you're going to be anywhere, that's the place to cry. That's the place to cry. Yeah, you're in the right space. You know, that's why you're surrounded by tissue boxes. So they'll say like, oh, I'm so sorry. And I wonder, I start to wonder, you know, where did you get the message that you need to apologize for your feelings? Who told you that? And so that might be, you know, when you're growing up. And sometimes parents can be uncomfortable with their kids' feelings because they love their kids so much and they don't want their kids to be uncomfortable and it causes a lot of discomfort in the parents. So the kid says, oh, I'm really sad. So-and-so didn't sit with me at lunch today. And the parents like, let's go get yogurt. Like, let's go get ice

cream. Let's go to Disneyland. You know, as opposed to like, well, let's, it's okay. Like, that makes sense that you feel sad. And so we try to talk them out of their feelings. Don't feel sad, don't feel anxious, don't be angry no matter what, right? Oh, my, my sibling did this. Oh, don't be angry. You know, it's like, but they did something that would make any human angry. That's, I'm having a normal reaction to this, but my parent is telling me, I shouldn't feel that way. So when you get talked out of your feelings when you're younger, then later you talk yourself out of your feelings and you apologize every time you have them. So you do that in your relationships. You might do it in the therapy room. You're having a feeling. I'm crying. I'm anxious. I'm

angry and then you start apologizing for having a normal human reaction to something. This is so good, Lori. I guess like, what does self-compassion look like when you've made major public mistakes? And I'm one of those. You know, I've had some really, you know, not so great moments on TV. I've treated people I love and care about poorly. I've, yeah, not handled things well. And I think I still, I'll give you a quick example. There's a friend of who was on our reality show, season four, which is back in 2018, there's a moment that kind of stands out from that season. I screamed at her and yelled at her, and I was really drunk and under the influence.

In that moment, I still, I got a message last week, hey, Carl, I'm watching. You were the biggest, you know, a hole, all these things. And I was like so, I've made amends to her. I've done work. I'm still friendly with her. We talk every once in a while. Every year I'll message her, hey, I'm so sorry about what happened. but because of the world I've been in with reality TV,

that episode will occasionally re-air. And someone's watching it thinking it's current time. Yeah. And I get these messages and I understand where they're coming from because I watched this moment back and I hated myself for this. And it still bothers me deep down. Like she forgave me and we're cool. She almost told me to stop apologizing to her about it.

But there's something in it that these other folks are really bothered and upset by it, and it's new to them. And then they're coming to me sharing that frustration and feeling. And I'm, I guess, trying to offer more compassion myself because it's been six, seven years since that happened. So there's a woman in maybe you should talk to someone who her adult children are mostly estranged from her. Yeah.

And she is wanting their forgiveness, that she's changed, she's tried to make amends, she's doing all these things differently. And what I said to her was, it's not for them to forgive you. It's for you to forgive yourself. It's not for me to forgive you. It's not for them to forgive you. It's how are you going to come to terms with what you did, which doesn't mean that it's okay what you did. You caused harm. Sure. So how do you, just like when you yelled at this person, how do you deal with the fact that you caused harm, but you've made space to forgive yourself because you've decided that I used that to grow. I've used that to

become a different person. I can't change the harm that happened. So what, how does it help anyone for you to feel bad still? It doesn't. You can, you can be embarrassed by it. Maybe you were embarrassed in a shame. Well, shame and embarrassment are different, right? So, you know, guilt is good. Guilt is a great thing because it means that we did something that does not align with our vision of who we want to be in the world. So if you don't feel guilt, you're kind of a sociopath. That's who doesn't feel guilt. Thank God. Shame is, so guilt is I did something bad. Shame is I am bad. I am a bad person.

That's shame. That's different from I did something bad. So you have to say I did something bad. I am not a bad person. I did something bad and I've done everything humanly possible that I can do from that experience to align more with who I want to be in the world. But I can't change it. And so you have to live, you know, we all live with things that we can't change.

I acknowledging that and saying, how long is the sentence for this? You know, that's what I say to the woman in the book. I said, you know, how long is you're putting yourself in this jail? How long is the sentence for this? Do you want a life sentence for this? Because that's what you're giving yourself. It's, I mean, this is so good. Lorry, we're getting towards the end here.

I've got a couple minutes left. It's like the 50 minutes of therapy. We're almost out of time. I know. This is great. I mean, I did want to just touch on a little bit of dating and vulnerability and then kind of wrap things. up. You obviously have talked about, you know, in some of your past writings, like the dating and

settling in some of those topics and concepts. I guess for me personally and something I'm curious, like at your perspective is like dating sober is something I'm learning and still exploring. You know, a lot of my friends were like, oh, why don't you date the sober girl? And of course, that's an obvious thing. I've tried to meet and date people that have a healthy relationship with alcohol. It doesn't necessarily mean they're sober. But I'm curious, like, how honest for anybody who's watching too, how honest should you be early on and getting to know someone and then your relationship with alcohol? I mean, is it like the first sentence with me?

I have a pretty public thing that people know, but I get a lot of questions about this. Like, hey, Carl, when do I tell someone on a date that I don't drink? Is it before? Is it during? Is it not at all? How do you navigate that? Or can you give us any perspective you have on that? Like the fear? I think because it's such a fear that it feels much bigger than it is.

So there are lots of things that people don't reveal on the first date. I guess that's like part of like the package. It's like is that one of them you just don't reveal on the first? There's no rule. It's more about your comfort with it that you are thinking this is going to be a negative thing

as opposed to it's just part of who you are just like there's going to be part of who the other person is. You know, we can't order up people a la carte. Like I'll take this person but I'll leave aside this part of them or this aspect of them. You know, everybody is going to have to accept things about another person

that maybe are less than ideal because everybody is human. But I also think that it's important to bring up certain things that you expect early on. So I like to say that relationships are like cement, that it's kind of like I was dealing with this couple and the woman was the person who kept saying, you know, I'm dating this guy and I really like him,

but he's always late and he just doesn't prioritize me and I don't know if I can tolerate this. And she's like, and I've brought it up to him. And, you know, it's just like, it doesn't change. He keeps saying, I'm going to try, I'll try to be there, but then I'm just sitting there waiting for an hour and I don't like it. And his side, which she didn't know, was my boss does not let me leave. And I've been trying to leave early and I'm getting in trouble at work, but I'm trying so hard to please her.

So she thought he doesn't prioritize me. In fact, he was doing everything possible to prioritize her, but they weren't communicating about it. And so what I mean about relationships or like some men is like if she had just said early on, hey, you know what, it's really important for me not to sit there alone. It brings up all this historical stuff with me. I don't like it. And then he could be able to say, oh, well, I can't get there till 7.30. So can we figure out, you won't be sitting there, but can we do it later?

Then it's good. But if otherwise, the things that you are not okay with, then the cement dries. And then later you have to bring things up. And then everyone has to say, like, but that was fine with you for the first six months. Yeah, you were good with that at the beginning. Yeah. Like, why are you bringing this up now? So it's harder after the cement dries.

When the cement is still wet, you can negotiate and talk about it. I like that. I haven't heard the cement one before. Because I've gotten on dates and going into it, I might express, hey, you know, I don't drink. But if you're wanting to have a beverage or do whatever you want, because some people are, you know, they're being very respectful of me and asking if they, if it bothers me and it doesn't. I actually have no issue. I have no desire if that's what you want to do.

But I guess over time I've started to feel like, okay, if you don't like, you don't like, me because I'm not going to have a drink on the date. It's not the right match. Exactly. And I try to advise that to anybody who's newly sober or even a couple years in and now dating. If anyone's really going to give you that level of like make you uncomfortable about a choice that's best for you, that's like a red flag beyond. It's like, just move on.

Also, their discomfort and this is important to remember, is about them. Yeah. It's not about you. It's not as if something is wrong with you. It's that they have some baggage around them. that is not about you. So if anything, it saves you some time. It saves you so much time.

Which I appreciate because, you know, I'm dating more intentionally and, you know, I don't want to waste anybody else's time. But we only have a couple minutes left, Lori. So I just want to kind of wrap things up. But I guess if you were sitting across me as a therapist, I know this wasn't a therapy session, but kind of slightly, just kidding. What's one question you might ask me that I might be avoiding? I couldn't presume to know.

Yeah. There's a word in my book that I mentioned. It's ultra-crepidarianism. And it's... Ultra-crepidiarianism. This is another post-it that I have. It's like a supercalifragilistic. Exactly.

It's such a great word. And it means it's the habit of giving advice or opinions outside of one's competence or knowledge. So when people come to therapy and they say, just tell me what to do. Well, I know what I would do if I were in that situation, but I don't know what you should do because I'm not living your life.

So I can help you figure out. what you should do, but I wouldn't presume to know more about you than you know about what you want in your life. And so right now, if I were to ask you what you're avoiding, I couldn't possibly know what you're avoiding. Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, me just opening up to you more about this imposter feeling, the comparison, it's stuff that's been going on for last like year. And I've, over the last like month, I'd say, been really telling some people about it. And they're like, yeah, man, it's exactly how I feel. So I'm glad I'm talking about it. I'm talking about it. more about it, but you've really given me some good insights into that. Well, I think if I had to come up

with a question, ultra-crepentarianism notwithstanding, I would say, what is your relationship with fame and success? Because that's where the imposter syndrome tends to come in, is why is that important? How do you feel about the way other people think about you versus the way you think about you? Yeah, I mean, I was always wanted to be liked. And I think for a period of time, especially on the Bravo or reality world, you know, you get a lot of commentary. and I felt like I was the black sheep and like the bad guy. And I probably was two degree. But yeah, I just want to be liked.

And I'm a people pleaser. And I can't make someone happy or they hate me. It bothers me. It hurts. But what I'm trying to get to a place is this, where I putting out a book where I really put it all out there. I don't know where I read it. I'm taking someone's credit.

But it was basically like, I'd rather you hate me for who I am than like me for who I'm not. Yeah. And there was a period of time where I felt like with the fame, and the TV stuff, that there was a version of me that, yeah, it was me, but it wasn't all Carl. But it was maybe being celebrated or hyped or people were, you know, great, we like that guy. But now it's like, okay, I'd actually, I'm getting more comfortable with just, this is me. Yeah.

And that's okay. And if you don't like it, no worries. But now you have all of the information in front of you to make that decision versus like just, you know, 42 minutes a week on Summerhouse. Yeah, I think what so many of us are grappling with is what am I trying to prove and to whom? Yeah. Well, I was trying to prove that was smart, intelligent, successful, cool. Like your Yale family. Exactly. But the funny part is the opposite was being presented. You know, I was putting out egomaniac, disrespectful, and just very loud and annoying,

and just the opposite of what I was trying to put out there. But, again, everything you've been doing for the mental help community and just coming today to spend time with me, it really means a lot. You've helped me big time. for our listeners and watchers. How can people find more about you? I know you have a great podcast. So I have two podcasts.

One is called Dear Therapists. Dear Therapists. You can hear sessions with people. Yes. They get homework and you can hear how it worked out. I have another podcast called Since You Asked, which is an advice podcast. They can read, maybe you should talk to someone if they're curious about what it's like to be in therapy. And you have the, maybe you should talk to someone workbook.

And I have the workbook where it's a step by step guide to editing your story. And it's based on my TED Talk, which they, They want the 16-minute version. They can watch the TED Talk and then do the workbook. Would you advise people to go back and, like, I've re-read your book. I mean, it's been five years since I originally picked it up. I reread it last year. Because you explained one of the stories in the book I loved.

It was about that one patient. John. Yes, and the kids and all that. And like, I had a great relationship with my dad for the most part, but there was a period of time where we didn't, and I can relate to some of that. But it's almost like going back to rework the 12 steps, you know, if you are in the program.

Like you can't just like do it once. And I feel like with your work and some of the maybe you should talk to someone, like you kind of need to read it again. Yeah. It's so interesting. I get, you know, on socials, people say, I just, I read your book again for the third time and I saw something different. And I do that too with some of my favorite books.

Yeah. Like I've marked them up. And then I look at, what did I mark up two years ago? And then how have I changed as a person? Like, there are different things that hit me differently or I see something that I hadn't seen the first time. And in fact, I'm putting together a book right now of my advice columns. And so I had to grab like all.

all the Ashtherapist columns. And it was so interesting rereading them and seeing like, what did I say then? It's like adult homework. Yes. Like this adult school for life and just becoming the best version you can be. Yeah, it's like every version of every kind of dilemma

that anybody from all corners of the world because people write in from all over the world, what are the things that we as individuals grapple with that we seem like, oh, this is somebody else's problem or I don't have that problem? And yet hopefully every column speaks to every single person in some way. I love it.

You know, I want to be a place where people can feel comfortable asking questions and it's a safe space. You know, I really feel like you do a great job of answering some of these questions, which, you know,

I'm kind of putting it on the spot. So I appreciate the... It reminds us of the word again? Ultra crepidarianism. Ultra crepidarianism. Yeah. I need a T-shirt of that. It's a great word.

Lori Godlead, thank you for coming into more life with me. I appreciate it. It's great to see you. Wow. What an amazing conversation. Lori Gottlieb is just incredible. She's so intelligent and left me with a lot to think about,

but a lot of things to take away. And one of the biggest things that I realized with Lori is change means loss. And that's okay. But it definitely reminded me of the times when I was triggered when others were changing. Back in the day when someone told me they were sober, I used to give them a hard time.

And honestly, that change was my body kind of screaming outside. So thank you, Lori, for imparting all this amazing wisdom on us. That's all I got for today, guys. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Lori Gottlieb's incredible. Hope you guys get a chance to listen to More Life. It's been great hanging with you guys,

but check us out wherever you get your podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and let us know what gives you guys more life in your life. Have a great day, guys. Cheers. More Life is produced by Annie Siegel and executive produced by Adam Reynolds in Denham Pictures. This episode was directed by Annie Seagel, edited by Mike U.R.T.

and recorded at softbar studios in Brooklyn, New York. More Life is a production of Sony Music Entertainment. From Sony, our executive producers are Chris Skinner and Joanna Clay. Original music by Function Adams. Set designed by Michael Ignacio. Publicity by Caitlin Healy. Additional support from Abby Sharp. Special thanks to Allison Shano and Joanna Orland.

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