Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Lori Gottlieb on Embracing Self-Compassion for a Better Life EP 278

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

On Passion Struck, I sit down with Lori Gottlieb, a psychotherapist and NY Times bestselling author of "Maybe You Should Talk To Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed" to discuss self-compassion's impact on personal development and relationship building. Gottlieb stresses the importance of examining one's negative thoughts and beliefs, asserting that self-compassion is essential for showing empathy towards others and fostering personal growth. Transform Your Emotional Well-being with Lori Gottlieb's Insight Throughout the conversation, Gottlieb emphasizes the need to question and challenge negative thoughts and beliefs, suggesting that practicing self-compassion can lead to more meaningful connections with others. By promoting kindness towards oneself, individuals can improve their mindset and efficiently work towards their goals. Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/lori-gottlieb-on-embracing-self-compassion/  Brought to you by Green Chef. Use code passionstruck60 to get $60 off, plus free shipping!” Brought to you by Indeed. Head to https://www.indeed.com/passionstruck, where you can receive a $75 credit to attract, interview, and hire in one place. --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/E-E4L3Ldrlc  --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Catch my interview with Gaia Bernstein on how to overcome tech addiction: https://passionstruck.com/gaia-bernstein-fix-the-tech-addiction-crisis/  Want to hear my best interviews from 2022? Check out episode 233 on intentional greatness and episode 234 on intentional behavior change. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m  Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/     

Coming up next on Passion Struck. I think we need to learn how to listen. And most of us really care about the people who are coming to us when they want to talk to us about something. But often we don't ask them, how can I be helpful right now? How can I be here for you right now? And if you just were to ask that, you would actually be able to give them exactly what they want. But instead, what we do is we make all kinds of assumptions, like, I better fix this for them.

I better make them happy or whatever it is. And maybe they just want to hug. Maybe they just want to vent. Maybe they just want to watch a show with you. Maybe they just want to take a walk with you. But just ask instead of jumping to the conclusion of, oh, this is the way that they are coming to me for help. Just say, how can I help you? Or three words, tell me more.

Tell me more. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators,

innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 278 of PassionStruck. Frank MyApple is one of the top 20 health podcasts, and thank you to each and every one of you who come back weekly to listen and learn, how to live better, be better, and impact the world. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here. Or you simply want to introduce this

to our friend or family member, we now have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans favorite episodes that we organize into convenient topics. Just go to either Spotify or passionstruck.com, slash starter packs to get started. And in case you missed my episodes from last week, they featured some great ones,

including Dr. Ronda Patrick, the host of the Found My Fitness Podcast, and we discuss all things, SANA, Optimal Health, and Micronutrients. I also interview University of Chicago professor, John List, who is also the chief economist at Walmart, and we discuss his latest book, The Voltage Effect, how to make good ideas great and great ideas scale. And lastly, I interviewed

Isowatson, who's a scientist, and the founder and CEO of Squad, as well as being an expert in social media and connection. And we discuss her latest book, Life Beyond Likes, logging off your screen and into your life. Please check them all out in case you've missed them. And we so appreciate the ratings and reviews that you give this show. It goes such a long way in bringing more people into the passion strike community and our movement where we can give them weekly and daily doses

of hope, connection, meaning and inspiration. And I know our guests love to hear from you as well. Now let's talk about today's interview, a significant number of people who require assistance. From mental health issues, don't seek it out. According to a study, one in five Americans suffer from a mental illness, but only about half of those with moderate to severe impairment actually seek help.

Several factors contribute to people's decision not to seek therapy when they need it. However, in today's episode, we will explore ways to alleviate any hesitations about using therapy who enhance your mental health. We provide a candid perspective on the inner workings of therapy from the point of view of Lori Gottlieb, an experienced therapist who's also personally benefited from it. We will go into topics such as why finding freedom and letting your emotions out is the key to making progress. Why if there's one thing that we hate as human beings? It is painful emotions. Many of us tend to push painful things deep inside instead of dealing with the painful events of our past. We will discuss the ramifications of doing this and why addressing these painful things and

experiences is the key to moving forward. Also, why we have problems that are deeper than the presenting problem and how to go about finding the underlying issue. When patients seek therapy, they often have a flawed understanding of the issues that led them to seek help in the first place. They may use defense mechanisms and faulty narratives to avoid confronting the true nature of their problems. These problems can stem from fear of death, isolation, or a sense of meaninglessness, loneliness, or helplessness, which is often accompanied by lack of freedom. Recovery hinges on restoring that sense of freedom, but patience and eternal resistance to change and make

it challenging to achieve. Overcoming that resistance requires acknowledging and expressing the emotions surrounding the underlying problem. We will discuss all those topics in so much more. Laurie Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and a New York Times bestselling author of maybe you should talk to someone, which is being adapted to TV with Eva Lungoria. In addition to her clinical practice, she writes the Atlantic's Dear Therapist column and contributes regularly to the New York Times. She is often sought after in the media, such as the Today Show, Good Morning America, CPS this morning, CNN, and NPR's Fresh Air.

Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your hosting guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I'm absolutely ecstatic today to have Lori Gottlieb on PassionStrike. Welcome, Lori. Well, thank you for having me. Well, we're going to discuss a number of things today, including your great book that I have

here in front of you that many of the listeners may have already read titled Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, which turned out to be a huge blockbuster in New York Times, Mass Cellar, with well over a million copies sold. So congratulations. Well, thank you so much. I'm so glad that it's resonated so widely. Well, for those who haven't heard this part of the story, if you wrote that book, you actually were asked to write another book. And it's interesting because I happened to hear Matthew McConaughey be interviewed a few months ago and he was talking about how he had gotten so good at doing romcoms that he couldn't get out of doing them. And it reached a point

where at first he was offered seven million. Then they came back and said, 10, then it was 15 and then I got to a point where it was over 20 million. And he actually said no. And it had not been for that. He would have never won the Oscar or anything else. And it opened this completely new chapter. And for you, a similar thing happened. Yes, I was not offered 20 million. I was, I had written a piece in the Atlantic called How to Land your Kid in Therapy. Why are trying to make them happy is actually making them less happy?

And they wanted me to write a happiness book for adults. First, they wanted me to write the one for kids and for a lot of money and like a, like a struggling amount of money. And I said no because I didn't think the world needed another helicopter parenting book. And I said what I wanted to say in the article. And then I said, I'm really interested in what's happening with the adults. And they said, well, right, a happiness book about adults. And I just started working on it.

And I just felt like happiness was kind of beside the point. When as a therapist, when I see it in the therapy room, as I see people looking for her love and connection and meaning and purpose. And of course, that brings us happiness. But happiness as the end goal is sort of the recipe for disaster and happiness as a way of finding meaning, purpose, connection, love, and then happiness as the

byproduct. That's what I think we all want. And so I was really unmoved by all of the sort of studies around happiness. It felt very clinical. It didn't feel like the kind of beauty of what I saw in the human condition in real life in the therapy room. So I ended up not writing that book and I just started bringing people into the therapy room and maybe you should talk to someone. I follow the lives of four very different people who are my

patients as they go through different things in life. And then I'm the fifth patient as I go through something in life and I end up going to a therapist. Well it's interesting. My sister Carolyn in her forties made a major career change from what she was doing and she pursued a master's of social work not too distant from what you did. But I think it's important for the listeners to understand that often our career and our lives zigzag, it's not always this linear path that we think it's going to be. And you started out going to medical school before becoming a successful journalist and then you pivoted to become a psychotherapist. And I wanted to ask you, why did you make some of your best decisions when you were nearly 40?

why did you make some of your best decisions when you were nearly 40? Yeah, well it's interesting. I actually started out in my 20s working in film and then I moved over to television and I was working at NBC as a development executive. This was the year that ER and friends premiered. So it was a very good year for NBC and it was because I was in the ER so much looking to do research for story ideas that the person that I was shadowing said, you know what? You like it better here than you like your date. And it was true. I really liked, I loved, of course,

ER was an amazing show, but it was fictional stories. And I loved the real life stories. I love those moments of when you go to an ER, it's an inflection point. Nobody expects to go there. That's why it's an emergency. But I think that so much of what happens in our lives happens at these inflection points,

they change our lives. They kind of mark us in a certain way. And so I went to medical school. And when I was there, I started writing a lot about what was happening and I left to become a journalist and I was a journalist and I still am a journalist, I still am a writer, but at a certain point after I had my son, I decided that I wanted to not only help people to tell their stories, but help people to change their stories. And so I went from kind of telling fictional stories to telling nonfiction stories, and helping people to get their voice out there, and then helping people to really change their stories through the work that we do in the therapy room.

Yes, well, it's really interesting path. And I've had so many guests on the show who start out going one direction and have ended up doing something completely different. So many people get into these careers or lives where they're not feeling fulfilled with the work that they're doing, which is something we're going to get to later in the episode for sure. I think for me, what I realized is that there's always sort of like a kernel of something that you're doing something and it brings up like it really resonates for you. So for me, it was like story and the human condition. And so when I was working on shows,

it was story and the human condition and then it was nonfiction, but it's the same thing and I think therapy is the same thing too. And I feel like even as a therapist, my work is really about helping people to edit their stories. It's helping people to say, what are these faulty narratives that I'm carrying around? And how can I edit the story so that it catches up to the present day? And so it's more accurate and so that I'm not self-sabotaging and getting in my way with these outdated stories that are no longer true and maybe never were. Well, oftentimes those outdated stories begin with our upbringing and a relationship with our parents who greatly influence who we become and also create some of the biggest hurdles

we have to deal with. On those lines, I wanted to ask you, what did you learn from your parents and how do you identify with them? So I was very close with my father and I had a very difficult relationship with my mother and I think that there's this saying we marry our unfinished business that if you don't sort of process the ways that you were maybe hurt or not seen in childhood that you follow them in adulthood and I think that one of the things I really had to learn was how to not marry my unfinished business and how to seek out relationships that were healthy for me. And I think

we all learn that from our parents. Either you see the healthy relationship modeled or you see something not modeled in your relationship with your parents that you then want to change. So I think I learned a lot about both what I wanted in relationships and what I didn't want in relationships. And I mean that in all relationships, not just romantic relationships, but also friendships and setting boundaries with family and even professional relationships.

Yeah, well isn't it so common how even the relationship you get into, they could mimic what you saw as a father figure or what I saw as a mother figure. And that's what you tend to be attracted towards when it oftentimes might be the worst thing for you to attract. Well, right. I mean, I think that the thing is it's outside of our awareness. So it's kind of like we gravitate toward the familiar. So we call it, it's been called repetition compulsion. And what happens is you think the last thing I want to do is get into a relationship

with someone where I felt unseen or unheard or criticized whatever it might be. And then what happens is you end up with that person. How is that? Why would we do that to ourselves? It's because of that pull toward the familiar. So you're unconscious sees that. And they say, you look familiar, come closer. Even though the person on the outside, maybe looks a little bit different. And then you get into the relationship with that person, and you think, how did I not know that they have anger problems? How did I not know that they drink too much? How did I not know that they were very critical? How did I not know that they're actually depressed? And it's because of that pull to the familiar because we think I'm going to master it this time. This time, I'm not going to be the victim here. I'm going to master it. This is all completely

outside of our awareness. And until we really understand where our childhood lives inside of us, and we do process our unfinished business, then we go for people who are going to meet our needs and give us the kind of relationship that we want, but we can't do that unless we're aware. Well, I'm going to go to the opposite spectrum on this and that is when you lose a loved one like your parent dealing with loss is an inescapable human. And what do you tell patients who come to you and ask what will make this pain go away? There are so many misconceptions about grieving. And a lot of the misconceptions stem from this idea that you're going to be done grieving at some point. And you're probably not. The point is the pain is a sign that there was so much love there. And of course, you're going to be in pain if this person that you loved is no longer here. It's going to sit inside of you differently.

It's going to live inside of you differently at different times in your life. So she's probably in quite acute pain right now. But that doesn't mean there's going to be an end point. And why would we want there to be if it's a sign of how connected we were to this person? And so I think that there's this idea that a lot of people talk about the stages of grieving and denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. And that's Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, and that was actually meant for people who were grieving their own loss, meaning they had a terminal illness

and they were trying to come to terms with the fact that they were going to die. It's not, it wasn't meant to say, these are the stages you go through when you're the survivor and somebody else has died that you love. So I think that people think you're going to go through these stages and it's going to end. And also people say, like, they'll say, it's been two years. Why aren't you, it's really insensitive things where you can move forward in your life, but doesn't mean you've moved on. And I think when we think about it as moving forward, you're going to move forward, you're going to have other experiences, you're going to love other people, all those things will happen. But that doesn't mean that you aren't still feeling the loss. And this happens a lot too when say somebody, their partner dies, and then they get into

a relationship with somebody else. And the person says, why do you still have pictures of your former partners because they're a part of my life? Yeah, I mean, even if you go through a divorce and it's hard to think about your life without that portion in it no matter. If it was good or bad, it was still a major portion of your life, especially if you have kids, but you are right for those who have lost a loved one. One of my best friends is engaged to a widow and she has kids. So how do you not have a picture of him up when he is the father of the children? Absolutely. Yes. Yes. So these people, they aren't erased. You don't want to erase these people from your life. It's not people feel threatened. Like, if you have that person up, do you still love me?

And both can be true. I love and miss this person who's no longer here and I love you and I'm so lucky to be with you and both and a lot of people just in general in life have trouble with both and the both and is really important. Yeah and then what would your advice be if you were the spouse of the husband you lost or the other way around and it's been a long-term relationship where you've kind of become co-dependent on each other for support and strength and friendship and then all of a sudden they're gone and you're just in this deep abyss. How do you help people see through that abyss and find their way out of it. this and find their way out of it. So I have a podcast called the Deer Therapist podcast, what we do actual sessions with people and then we give them advice

and they have a week to do it. And then we hear what happened. We literally just taped this yesterday. It's very much on my mind. And it's so interesting that people, first of all, they need to be seen in their pain and in their loss and in their grief. And so many people want to skip over that because they're really uncomfortable with it.

They want to say, oh, we'll look at what you have and like look to the future and all of those things. It really invalidates their experience of, I wake up in the morning and I open my eyes and the person isn't there and I realized that it wasn't a nightmare. That it's true. That then I have to get up and out of bed and figure out how to get through my day. When that person was integrated and graded into every part of my life, my running the household, the meals, how many times you talked every day, the how was your day, the mutual friends, the social life, each other's families, everything.

So you didn't just lose that person, but you lost the entire life that you had with that person. Not that it's gone, but that it's different now. It's going to change. It's different because that person isn't there with you going through it in that way. So I think just being understood is so important. I remember I was seeing a couple of months and she said to her husband, you know what three words I really want to hear? And he said, I love you. And she said, no, it's I understand you. We have a real primal need to be understood. And I think when people are grieving, other people in their lives

mean well, they want to help them, they want to support them, but they do it in a way that makes them feel so misunderstood. They're so uncomfortable saying, I know how much pain you're in, I know how hard this is without also saying, but look at the bright side or something to try to cheer them up. Instead of just giving you then your presence. No, I think that's an extremely good point. And I think grief similar to trauma is gonna be different for every single person. The trauma or the grief that you experience

and the way that you deal with it is gonna be completely different than me or John Smith. So you also have to take that into, you're looking at it in the empathy that you're showing to that person. I think we need to learn how to listen. And most of us really care about the people who are coming to us when they want to talk to us about something. But often we don't ask them, how can I be helpful right now? How can I be here for you right now? And if you just were to ask that, you would actually be able to give them exactly what they want. But instead, what we do is make all kinds of assumptions like, I better fix this for them, I better make them happy or whatever it is. And maybe they just want to hug, maybe they just want to vent, maybe they

just want to watch a show with you, maybe they just want to take a walk with you, but just ask instead of jumping to the conclusion of, oh, this is the way that they are coming to me for help. Just say, how can I help you? Or three words, tell me more. Tell me more. Or, and some times, maybe they just want to hear eventually it's going to be okay. Or, and sometimes maybe they just want to hear eventually it's going to be okay. Yeah, I'm here for you. I'm here for you. We're going to get through this. Last year there were three really good books that came out about deep emotions. One was by Dan Pink on the power of regret. Another one was better sweet by Susan Cain and then Liz Fossilian wrote big feelings. And it was interesting to me because you don't often see a lot of people writing about deep emotions because most people don't want to express them. But I found in each one of those the importance really came to life of how meaningful

really came to life of how meaningful deep emotions can be in order to let our guards down. And I know that this is something you cover in your own book. And I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about this link between letting our guard down and the release of deep emotions. That's why I wanted to write maybe you should talk to someone and do it through the perspective of the patient stories in my own story because it's one thing to tell people it's important to talk about what you're feeling and why vulnerability is important. It's another to see it in action.

And I think what's interesting about our feelings in the book when you follow these stories is that people think that certain feelings are good, quote unquote, and certain feelings are bad. Like the bad feelings are maybe sadness, anxiety, anger, and the good feelings are joy and those kinds of things. And there are no good or bad feelings. All of our feelings are good in the sense of our feelings are like a compass. They tell us where to go. They tell us what direction to go in. So if you're feeling anxious, that's great. Follow the arrow. What am I anxious about? What do I need to change in my life? If you're angry, is there a boundary that you're not setting? Are you feeling

taken advantage of? Are you doing too much? Right? What's is somebody not treating you well? If you're feeling sad, what is going on? What caused this sadness? Is there something I need to do differently in my life? Because I'm not living my life in the way I want to live it, right? Maybe I'm lacking connection and I need to find more connection. That's usually a reason why people are sad. So even envy, people say, oh, that's a terrible thing to feel because it's not okay to feel envious. And it's great. I always follow your envy. It tells you what you want. It tells you about desire. So instead of going, oh, I don't want to notice my envy. It's notice it and say,

what am I missing in my life? So that I can have something, the my version of that in my life. So it's pointing you to, oh, I'm wanting something more. That's interesting information. So I think that it's really important when we talk about feeling, we are like walking around with like a faulty GPS, if we aren't noticing our feelings and using that to point us in the right direction. And I think the thing about vulnerability too, is that vulnerability is a strength. It's one of the most courageous things you can do is to sit face to face with somebody who matters to you with mistakes or there. And to say, here is the truth of who I am. It is not and bravery it takes, I think everybody would be doing it if they had the strength to do it.

So what prevents us from doing that? These cultural messages around, oh, vulnerability is a weakness when it's really the opposite. there's also this kind of gender stigma where often I'll have men come into my therapy office and they'll sit on my couch and they'll say, so I've never told anyone this before. And they've literally not told anyone. And it's the kind of thing that like women will discuss over lunch in the sense of that's how much stigma there is for men to talk about anything emotional. And women will come in and they'll say, you never told anyone this before, except for my mother, my sister, my best friend. So they've told maybe one, two, three people.

So what's wrong with our society where somehow it's not okay for men to talk about what they're feeling? We really need to change that. to talk about what they're feeling. We really need to change that. Yeah, I did a solo episode months and months ago on the importance of vulnerability and it turned out to be one of the highest downloads I've had of any episode and I was really trying to tackle it from a perspective of being a male and how through much of my corporate career, it was really looked down upon to be vulnerable. Especially when I was in the military, you wanted to be macho, you didn't want to see that you had any imperfections or that you had insecurities or other things like that. So you end up

bearing all these things, which is the worst thing that you can possibly do. Well, it's interesting that you use the word imperfections because vulnerability, it's your beauty, it's your showing who you really are in every well. And I think that's such a gift to give to somebody. Do you, when somebody comes to you and they're vulnerable with you, don't you feel honored that they trust you, that they feel like, wow, you are somebody that I can talk to about this. I feel safe with you. And the same when we're vulnerable with somebody else,

that they feel honored, that we would trust them with something that's like a diamond for us. That is our most precious gift and we're giving it to you, we're trusting you with it. I don't think these are imperfections. I think these are beautiful gifts that we give to each other. And they're the glue of relationships. When you wanna have a real relationship,

not a superficial, hey, how you doing? I'm good, how are you relationship? But like a real relationship where you can really talk to each other about your lives. There's nothing better than where you feel that level of safety with somebody else. I can talk to this person about anything. I can show authentically with this person and they can show up in turn authentically with

me because I've shown them this is okay. It makes me think of Bob Waldinger. I'm not sure if you're familiar with who he is. Bob, the current director of the Harvard study of adult aging, which is an 85 year megastudy that's been examining a group of Harvard students, about 300 of them, and then a group that completely was on the opposite line of the poverty spectrum. And now they've gone into their descendants, both males and females, but this goes all the way back to John F. Kennedy, who is one of

the original people. But what it showed was that our relationships more than anything determine not only happiness, but longevity, the quality of them. And people often come in to seek help or therapy because of the loss and recovery of human connection. Why is this such an important thing for people to figure out? I think it's because we are taught math and history and science and literature and all kinds of things in school, but we are not taught how to have a connecting relationship. We're supposed to just pick that up somehow. We're supposed to just somehow biosmosis learn that. And some people do when their environment is such

that they're seeing lots of healthy relationships. But many people are seeing people who also didn't learn how to have these kinds of relationships and truly connect in a healthy way. And so they're kind of picking up things biosmosis that maybe are not serving them in relationships and truly connect in a healthy way. And so they're kind of picking up things by osmosis that maybe are not serving them in relationships and then they don't understand why their relationships are so challenging. It's interesting as we're in this digital world that we're in, which is something we'll talk more about.

A lot of the younger generations, my kids are 19 and 24, but a lot of the younger workers right now have come to me with a bunch of questions such as where should I take my career? And I can't tell you how many people, experts I've had on the podcast who say that while everything is going to change and hundreds of jobs are going to get displaced, the soft skills that are going to be needed to lead the workforce wherever you're at and to communicate are going to become more and more important. And it's so interesting that in the education systems throughout most of the world, we are concentrating on things like STEM, but we're not concentrating on the basic building blocks of teaching people how to function in life.

One of the most important factors in predicting the success of a marriage is, first of all, emotional stability, of course. But in the top three is flexibility. Can you be flexible? People who have high rigidity don't do well in relationships, and they don't do well in workplace, and they don't do well in romantic relationships, and they don't do well in friendships. So flexibility is so important. And so when you talk about the soft skills, there are things like how do you collaborate?

Can you take in other people's ideas? Can you see a perspective that's not your own? Are you trying to control everything? Or are you open to, are you making space for other people? How do we do that? We're not learning that. We're learning some of very different message in our culture, which is get ahead, achieve, be successful,

and do that by, don't worry about everybody else. Just worry about you. And I think it's a really toxic message and it actually doesn't help people to achieve whatever they're trying to achieve because those soft skills are going to really hold them back. The lack of the soft skills are really going to hold them back. Well, I think this is a great lead in to where I wanted to go, which is whether it's Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, I mean, you name it. All of these platforms are pushing the concept of individual over relationships over everything else. It's monetizing individuality. And so these platforms that more and more of society are going on are taking us further

and further away on purpose from the emotional ingredients that are necessary to have healthy relationships such as real connection with others, time and patience for processing our experiences and giving ourselves a silence. Here are ourselves think. And instead, it's like every free minute that you have, you're on your device checking email, checking messages, checking your social links, whatever it might be, or your social presence or what you think you're idolizing by looking at these people who you're only seeing what they want you to see on their platforms and not the reality of what their lives really are like. And I wanted to ask you, what changes have you noticed across your patient base and their

emotional health and also that of your loved ones as we're becoming more and more digitized. That's such a great question. Maybe you should talk to someone. There's a whole chapter about this and one of my favorite quotes from that is this moment where my clinical supervisor says, the speed of light is outdated. Now everyone moves at the speed of want. It really summarizes the whole social media world and the pace of it. And I think there's another thing that happens with social media, which is group thing, that people post something. And everyone likes it so and so did this. And everyone says, oh, they're terrible.

You should set boundaries and you should do this. But no one knows the other side of the story. Everybody's toxic. Everybody's awful. Everybody's awful. Everybody needs to be estranged from their family members. It's like, there's much more nuance to this. And so I think that's really dangerous. It reminds me of this concept that I talk about in the book, the difference between idiot

compassion and wise compassion. Idiot compassion is when your friend says, look at what my partner, my parent, my sibling, my boss did. And we say, yeah, you're right, that's terrible. They shouldn't have done that. You go girl, whatever. And we don't have our friend examine whatever his or her role might be in the situation.

And then they might keep telling you these kinds of stories where they're always complaining about something. But it's kind of fight breaks out and everybody you're going to, maybe it's you. We don't say that to our friends. We don't say, maybe you have a role in this. Maybe things are not working for you, or maybe you keep getting into these conflicts, because there's something you're doing too. In therapy, what we offer is wise compassion, where we hold a premiere to you, and we help you to see something about yourself that maybe you haven't been willing or able to see.

And it's really important to examine your role, even if your role is how can I react differently or respond differently when somebody does something like that. So in social media, it's kind of like the hordes, the crowds who are like just supporting whatever someone posts, this person is toxic, this person is awful, this person, right, as opposed to, what might be going on relationally here? But nobody can do that on social media. And the other thing about social media is this kind of faux vulnerability. When we were talking about vulnerability earlier,

where people will post, oh, I'm putting this thing up here and I'm being so vulnerable with all of you, that's not vulnerability. You don't even know these people, you're never gonna have to see them. That's so different from what I was talking about with the, I'm gonna sit face to face with you

and show you the truth of who I am. Posting something on social media that you curated, that you have complete control over of how you send that message. It's not really that vulnerable. So I think that there's this with the younger generation, they're confused about what vulnerability really is. They're confused about how to have face-to-face relationships.

They're having important conversations on text. So there's a moment in the book where one of them seen someone in her 20s and she's telling about a really important conversation. She's having with the guy she's dating and she's doing this thing with her thumbs. And then he said, and then I said, and then he said, I'm like, what is she doing? And then I realized, wait, you had this conversation on text?

And she said, yeah. I could not believe that these are the kind of conversations that you need to have placed to face with somebody. And if they're not learning how to do that, how are they going to learn how to do that? They're getting no practice. No, I mean the problem with it is you can't see emotion through an email or a text message. There's no body language. There's no tone of voice.

There's none of that silence that you see in between the I-Thou relationship, the I'm going to go and you're going to go. And we're going to react to each other. But you can't really do that because you'll see like the three dots, someone's texting, and then they edit them. And then they erased it.

And now they're writing something else. In a conversation, you don't edit yourself like that. You're saying what you're saying with it. You can't just erase it. And I think it's really important that people are having a real conversation in real time, in real space, not mediated by a screen. Well, and I will just admit that there have been times in my career where I have not been

the best at this. And you end up getting into a heated debate and emails with a bunch of work people over a certain topic and they're not able to see it all like you're saying, your body language, your intention, your desired outcome in this. And so nine times out of 10, they respond the opposite way that you want them to. Right. Everybody gets more backed up into their positions because you're not actually seeing a real human there. You're seeing a screen. I think we forget that there's a real live human on the other end of these interactions. And that's how we use also also sometimes people will break up with people on text

or they'll deliver difficult information on text or on email because they're avoiding having a conversation but it would go over so much better and it would feel so much better to the other person even if it's painful if you could be face to face with that person or at least voice voice with that person but hopefully face to face. We person or at least voice voice with that person, but hopefully face to face We always say that avoidance is a way of coping without actually coping And I think that's what we're doing when we try to use our phones to deliver something very human We're avoiding something because we don't know how to tolerate the discomfort Even though we're actually making it

more uncomfortable by not doing a face to face. Well, you've talked a lot about our kids and they're not understanding how to be vulnerable, they're not understanding how to have conversations, but I also find that as I've gotten older, that my parenting is constantly changing as well, as my children have grown from babies to toddlers, to adolescents, and to now adults.

What is your advice for parents on how to recalibrate what their role is as a parenting relationship evolves over time? I think that what most of us want for our children ultimately is for them to feel good in our own skin, for them to feel whole. And I think that if we try to cut off uncomfortable parts of them when they're younger, they're going to get that message. So, for example, your kid comes to you and they say, I'm really worried about this test tomorrow, or I'm really worried about this party tomorrow, whatever it is depending on their age. And you say, oh, don't worry about it, it'll be fine.

You don't need to worry. Well, you just tried to talk them out of their feeling. You invalidated their feeling, and you didn't give them any tools to learn how to sit with the feeling, process the feeling, and come up with a way to cope with the feeling. So again, going and come up with a way to cope with the feeling. So again, going back to those three words,

tell me more. You can say to them, oh, tell me more about that. And what their learning is that it's okay to feel anxious or even sometimes they'll feel sad and parents go, oh, let's go get to my screen, right? And let's like not even deal with the fact. Like, let's cheer you up. As opposed to letting them sit with the sadness, but they're not alone in it because you're there.

You're giving them your presence. I'm here. I see your sadness and I'm here with you. That feels so wonderful. It feels so validating. And so to be able to sit with them and say, tell me more. And then they say, well, I'm worried because this, this, or I'm sad because this, this, okay?

Tell me more. And they talk about it. And by the time they're done talking about it, they will have come to a place of, well, maybe I can do this, or maybe I'm gonna study this, or maybe I'll go to the teacher for help, or maybe I'll talk to my friends,

or maybe I'll go with a friend, so I don't feel so uncomfortable at the party. Whatever the thing is, they are so capable and you teach them through experience. Well, they're so capable of knowing what to do, but I didn't abandon them. I didn't say, oh, don't worry about them. I didn't tell them it's not okay to feel these things.

I told them, oh, wow, let's do this for a minute and see what happens when we slow down a little bit. And I'm here for you and you can come to me anytime and I will sit with you while you're feeling whatever you're feeling. And it's not going to kill you this feel it. It's okay because if you try to talk them out of it, they would, oh, it's bad to feel sad. I better get rid of that feeling right away. Bad to feel anxious, I better get rid of that feeling right away. Yeah, I know for me, it's been difficult to learn how to give the proper space where I feel my role as the kids have gotten older is to educate but allow them to experiment because some of the hard lessons in life that they're going to have to go through. I'd much rather have them go through them at a younger age when we're more active and being able to, if they make a mistake, help support them through it than as they get older, those lessons become harder and harder to learn. But it is very difficult at times to remove yourself from that situation where you give the advice as much

as it may be, and then you let them use their own free will as to what to do with it. And I know that's something that a lot of parents struggle with. Right. I think we can give them guidance. So it's like, you can be angry, but you can't treat someone that way when you're angry, right? So we'll come back and we'll talk about it when you can talk about it in a respectful way. They're gonna make mistakes in terms of choices that they may, especially when they're teenagers. And they're gonna make all kinds of choices that they realize through sort of natural consequences that maybe that wasn't the best choice. And I think it's really a balancing act of,

is there safety at risk? So you don't want them to get into a car when they've been drinking, or get into a car with somebody who's been drinking. That's not something you want to let them experiment with. That's something where you have to be really clear about that. But there are other choices that they're going to make that maybe are not great choices. And then instead of shaining that, and I think this is where kids don't learn from them,

is when they're shamed, as opposed to holding them accountable, but with compassion. So let's talk about what happens there. There is a consequence for this. Here's the consequence. And also, let's talk about what happens and what you could do differently next time

so that you have a better outcome. One of the sections of the book that I liked the most and it's something that I wanted to make sure we covered was the topic of future self and how it relates to present self and I recently interviewed Dr. Benjamin Hardy at the beginning the year who came out with a book this year on the science of future self. Please go audience and check it out if you haven't. He's a great writer, one of my favorites. But he believes that our present is determined far more by our future than by our past. And you have a concept that the future is also the present.

So if the present falls apart, then so too does our future, which is associated with it. Why is it that if we spend the present trying to fix the past or control the future, we remain stuck in place? Yes, yes, so that is a quote my book that people are really resonate with people because I think we don't think of it that way. That people think, well, let me talk more about my past and then they lose the present. So in therapy, there's a big misconception that you're going to go to therapy, you're going to talk about your childhood ad nauseam and you're never going to leave. And that is not what therapy is. And one of the reasons that I have the podcast, the therapist podcast, and I wrote the book, is because I want people to see how we actually help people so they can help themselves.

I wrote the book as I want people to see how we actually help people so they can help themselves. And one of the things that we do is we say, okay, let's understand how maybe some of your experiences have informed the patterns that you're in and the ways that you feel stuck in the present so you can create a different future. So we're very future oriented in therapy. People think we're very past oriented, but in fact, we're very future oriented. Meaning, let's talk about what's happening in the present so that you can create the future that you want. And if people don't have a sense of what they want, then they're going in circles in the present.

They don't really know what direction to go with. And they get mixed up in drama, they get mixed up in,, they get mixed up in they're drinking too much or they're sleeping too much or they're in these kind of chaotic relationships because they don't really have a personal mission. What is my goal? What is meaningful to me? Where is my purpose and how am I creating that? Well, I think it's an important point because so many people today feel lonely, feel helpless, feel hopeless. And I listened to a great podcast interview you gave with my

buddy, SBK Scott Berry Kaufman. And it was interesting because he in that podcast said he asked his class, can you raise your hand if you're feeling lonely and Scott teaches at Columbia. And so it must have been hard for students to wanna raise their hand, but amazingly, about a third of them raised their hand. And there has been a 20 year study

that just completed in 2021 that showed a third of all people that they surveyed in over 120 countries and territories were feeling lonely. And I think that the hopelessness situation is just as bad. And that's where this image that you're talking about as a therapist that you're trying to hold out for them is that they can have hope that they can muster something different for themselves. And I think that's so important that you are the only person that can change your predicament for the better. And I think sometimes when people come in and they are really disconnected and

not feeling and feeling lonely, that and feeling sad or hopeless or they can't envision the future, that it's my role as a therapist to hold onto the hope for them that they are not able to hold onto now. Like, I'm going to hold onto the rope. And even if they can't grab the rope right now, I'm holding onto the rope. And I think that's incredibly valuable.

We'll be talking about looking toward the future that someone holding onto the rope and I think that's incredibly valuable. We'll be talking about looking toward the future that someone's holding the rope. I can't hold it yet but I know I'm going to be able to because someone's holding it right now and they're going to help me to get to the point where I can not only hold on to the rope, climb the rope and get to the place that I want to get to. When I know when we're in those situations, we're often using defense mechanisms to avoid confronting the truth. And as a therapist, how do you help see people through those defense mechanisms? I think it's very much like when I was younger, I used to play chess competitively.

And you always had to think several moves ahead. And you always had to think of the consequences of every move you would make. And defenses are like that because if you, it's kind of like timing and dosage. If you come in at the wrong time, the wall is gonna go higher. If you come in with too much in one time,

the wall is gonna go higher. So it's finding those really organic moments when you see a little opening, like on the chessboard, when you see a little opening, that you can just kind of make a move in that direction, but not too much of a move, just a little bit of a move. You're not going to like get your queen over there. You're going to get a pawn over there.

And you're just going to take advantage of that opening over multiple conversations so that they start to kind of see that because the most powerful truths are the ones that we come to little by little on our own. They're not the ones that people tell us. Maybe sometimes people will tell us something but it only resonates if we've already thought it ourselves and we didn't really articulate it necessarily to ourselves. But that opening was already there.

So I think what you wanna do is you wanna get people to come to that truth on their own. And it's very liberating for them. When they start to notice, wow, I see that I was using this defense. We use the defenses to protect ourselves. But when they see that I didn't need to protect myself from that, in fact, that was actually harming me.

Putting up that wall might have in childhood been very protective for me. That was a very effective tool in childhood because I didn't have agency and I didn't have control over my circumstances. But now I'm an adult and I have agency and that no longer protects me. It keeps me isolated and lonely and disconnected.

Oh, it's so absolutely true. And it's something that I personally went through. And I guess the more of these episodes, I do the more vulnerable I've become and trying to share different elements in my life because the purpose here is to try to help people to not do what I've done and to help them get through it if they're experiencing it. But one of the things that I faced was I went through this period of time years ago where I reached a point where I was completely numb inside.

And it's something for those of you who might not have ever experienced this. Not like one day you're feeling great in the next day, you're numb. It's like a slow grade depression, but I think this numbness is kind of the same way, is it just builds up over time. Into all of a sudden, I was feeling like the meaning in my life was missing. I was overwhelmed by the immense stress from work. And yet I was at this point where I thought I was at this pinnacle I'd always wanted to get to, but I was raising young kids, relationships weren't going the way I wanted to.

And what I wanted to ask you is oftentimes we feel that numbness is nothingness, but it's really more feeling overwhelmed by all the emotions that are hitting you and it's like your emotional cup is so overwhelmed, you don't know how to process it. Right, so yeah, I say in the book that numbness isn't the absence of feelings, numbness is actually feeling overwhelmed by too many feelings

and then we shut down because we don't know what to do with them. And earlier we were talking about those kids who were talked out of their feelings. So those kids grow up to be adults who don't know how to access their feelings. So they often don't numb when they're feeling that, but we can also go numb when we are overwhelmed by too many feelings and we don't know what to do with them. And so they come out instead in behaviors like what I was saying before, whether it's comes out in workaholism or too much wine or too much food or not enough food or a short temperedness or insomnia or too much sleep, right? It could be any of those things, but it comes out behaviorally because we don't know what to do with the actual emotions. And so I think that it's really important to look at numbness and say, why am I feeling

numb? What am I not accessing right now? And that's a really good time to go to therapy is when you're feeling numb. What am I not able to access? And a lot of people think, oh, therapy, you have to be like something very major has to be presenting itself. And what I say about therapy is it's like getting a really good second opinion on your life from someone who's not already in your life.

And that can be so helpful to just, it's one thing to ask the people around you, but it's another thing to go and talk to someone in a different way, and they don't have the same relationships with you outside. And to be able to say, I'm feeling numb, and can we look at this together? My advice from what I was through is go see a therapist or get help long before you reach the point, feeling numb. As soon as you start feeling that things are off-kilters the best time to go and

start working on it because you don't want it to build up like it did for me and it has for many others. I study recently that said that the average amount of time it takes people from the onset of feeling like something isn't right in their lives, to going to therapy is 11 years. Oh, 11 years. Holy cow, wow. Yeah. Well, Lori, I wanna end on this and it's gonna kind of build off everything

we've talked about. This podcast is all about making intentional choices to bring about positive behavioral change. What do you think are the most important choices a listener can make today if they want to change their current predicament? I think the most important thing they can do is to be kind to themselves. And I say this because when I'm giving a talk often I will say to people in the audience, who was the person that you talk to most in the course of your life? Is it your

partner? Is it your parents? Is it your best friend? Is it your sibling? Lots of hands for all of those, but the person we talked to most in the course of our lives is ourselves. And what we say to ourselves is no we've kind or true or useful. And I had a therapy client who was so self critical that it was just holding her back in every way. And she didn't realize how self critical she was. So I said, listen, I want you to really listen to the voice in your head. I want you to listen to how you talk to yourself throughout the day and do this for the next week. And then we'll talk about it when you come back next week. And I want you to write it down. So she comes back the next week. She had written the whole thing down. She starts to read it and she starts to cry. And she said, I am such a bully to myself. And they were things like she was writing an email and she had a typo in the email.

And the thing that she said to herself immediately was, you're so stupid. That was what she said to herself in her head. How many of us have done things like that? She passed her reflection in a mirror and she was walking down the street and she said to herself, you look terrible to me. And of course she didn't look terrible and of course she wasn't stupid. And so why do we do that? So I think that it's really important as we go through our days to say, is it kind? Is it true, is it useful? And if it's not, change the radio station. Like, don't listen to that radio station in your head. Why would you have that on in the background? And when you have more self-compassion, when you have more compassion through yourself, you're able to be more compassionate with others too. And I think that's a great starting place for any kind of emotional work we want to do. Any kind of growth that we want to have is to start off in the place of kindness.

It doesn't mean you're not accountable. It means you can be accountable and you can hold yourself to certain standards and certain goals you have, but it's going to go a lot better when you're being kind to yourself. Well, then, Laura, you are very searchable on Google, but if there was one place you wanted people to go to learn more about you, what would it be? They can go to my website, which is Lori Gottlieb.com, and they'll find all of my socials, my Instagram, my Twitter, my Facebook, my LinkedIn. They can find out about my book.

Maybe you should talk to someone, my workbook, maybe you should talk to someone, your workbook, your journal, the dear therapist podcast, the TED Talk, really any of the topics that we talked about today, those are all resources where they can learn more about them. And soon enough, they'll be able to watch Even Lungoria, act out the book as well. So thank you so much, Lori, for joining us. It was such an honor to have you on today. Thank you so much for Laurie, for joining us. It was such an honor to have you on today. Thank you so much for having me. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Laurie Gottlieb,

and I wanted to thank Laurie for the pleasure and honor of having her on today's show. Links to all things Laurie will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use the website links in the show notes. If you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show, I'll proceed to go to supporting the show.

Videos are on YouTube at John Irmiles, which is our main channel and PassionStruck Clips, which is our Clips channel. Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at PassionStruck.com slash deals. I'm on LinkedIn and you can also find me at John Irmiles on both Twitter and Instagram, where I provide weekly tidbits of advice that provide you inspiration, hope, meaning, and connection. And if you want to know how I book amazing guests like Lori onto the podcasts, it's because of the network that I've built up over time. Go out there and build yours before you need it. You're about to hear a preview of the PassionStark podcast I did with Cyrus Cumbata

and Robbie Barbaro, who are co-authors of the New York Times, best-selling book, Mastering Diabetes, and the co-founders of Mastering Diabetes, a coaching program which teaches people how to reverse insulin resistance via low-fat, plant-based, whole-food nutrition. The truth is that if you take a look at the sort of marketing about diabetes, the marketing also reinforces this concept that, you know,

it's a genetic condition and that it's gonna to happen to you at some point, right? So what I want people to understand is that there are chronic diseases that have a strong genetic association and chronic diseases that have a weak genetic association. It turns out that the diseases that affect most people, including number one obesity, number two prediabetes, number three type two diabetes, number four hypertension, number five, high cholesterol. All of these have a very weak genetic association. The fee for this show is that you share it with family or friends. When you find something useful or interesting,

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