Sibling Revelry with Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson - How to Get Over Yourself with Dr. Mark Epstein

Episode Date: April 30, 2021

Mark Epstein, M.D. is a psychiatrist who has written numerous books about the integration of the Buddha's teachings into psychotherapy. He joins Kate and Oliver this week to discuss trauma, meditation, the ego, and how we can all get over ourselves.Executive Producers: Kate Hudson and Oliver HudsonProduced by Allison BresnickEdited by Josh WindischMusic by Mark HudsonThis show is powered by Simplecast.This episode is sponsored by The Great Courses Plus and Coors LightSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. September is a great time to travel, especially because it's my birthday in September, especially internationally. Because in the past, we've stayed in some pretty awesome Airbnbs in Europe. Did we've one in France, we've one in Greece, we've actually won in Italy a couple of years ago. Anyway, it just made our trip feel extra special.

So if you're heading out this month, consider hosting your home on Airbnb with the co-host feature. You can hire someone local to help manage everything. Find a co-host at Airbnb.ca slash host. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? Answer, a new podcast called Wisecrack, where a comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story.

Does anyone know what show they've come to see? It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life. This is Wisecrack, available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos. Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians, artists, and activists to bring you death and analysis from a unique Latino perspective.

The moment is a space for the conversations we've been having us, father and daughter, for years. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos On the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Kate Hudson. And my name is Oliver Hudson. We wanted to do something that highlighted our relationship. And what it's like to be siblings. We are a sibling rivalry.

No, no. Sibling reverie. Don't do that with your mouth. Sibling revelry. That's good. Today we have on psychotherapist Mark Epstein, Dr. Mark Epstein, who is known for lucidly mapping the ways in which Buddhism can enrich Western approaches to psychology. And I absolutely... Oh, yeah.

This was... It's funny timing. Timing is a funny thing. This interview couldn't have come in a better time for me. I feel good. I felt great. I felt kind of shitty going into it, and now I'm ready. What is your dude doing?

Danny Fujikawa is on a chair. Oh, he's jumping up. He's trying to see. We had this crazy thing happen while we were on this call is a bird flew into the window. It was very sad. And the bird flew into the window and then was paralyzed. What are you doing, honey? And now Danny's trying to look. I believe

I've seen this bird up on one of outside the house. It built a nest. I'm afraid that it's the mom. The irony is we were literally talking about trauma. And we also were talking about Buddha who lost his mother at one week. Right. And then all of a sudden we hear a thunk.

And this bird flies into the window and I had to like go out and it's all paralyzed. It's very sad. This is very very sad. I'm trying to help the bird. The bird is stunned and then we're trying to see if there's a nest with with eggs or babies. But that's what happened during this interview, which at the very end of the interview. But during, I mean, the irony of that is it was we were talking so much about how he integrates Buddhism into his therapy sessions. This guy is so cool. He basically stuck.

with all of the people that anybody's quoting on Instagram. Yeah, they were his like mentors and teachers who we actually hung out with. Yeah, traveled with. Yeah. You know, Ram Dass, I'm not going to ruin it. But said something to him that I thought was incredibly profound and awesome. The only bad thing that came out of this is I kind of want to have him do my therapist now. But I don't know what to tell Ellie.

You're like, are you taking new clients? he really is wonderful I loved talking with him it was inspiring and I think everybody's going to really love listening because living is hard and everybody has and carries trauma

you know he said if it's if you're not in post-traumatic you're in pre-traumatic and I thought that was a really sort of I don't know took the pressure off of anybody who feels like they're carrying something and maybe is apologetic about it or feels like they shouldn't feel like they have trauma or they shouldn't feel like they have issues because other

people's problems are worse and yada yada but the end of the day we're all just living this life each experience is just completely different and his approach to it just being so present in every person's experience or every client's experience as their doctor sort of as a great way to look at like we're all living. Well, and he also gives you hope that there's, you can help yourself. There's a way to help yourself. You don't have to just wallow and stay in it. Yeah.

You know? And all of his books are a great guide. Yeah, he's got quite a few books. He's working on a new one right now. And, you know, read his books and change your life. There's my, uh, there's my promotion. Read his books. Or you could say, change your life.

Read his books. Yeah, okay. It could go either way. Yeah. Trying to figure out which one's... That's a different meaning, right. Yeah, so I really, I really am so happy that he came and joined us, and I hope that everybody gets something from this and that everybody, you know,

gets over themselves because that's basically what this is all about. That's right. Get over yourself. Get over yourself. I'm trying right now as you're listening to me. And here is Dr. Mark Epstein. Hi there. You're, you know, it's the irony of having you on today is amazing. Can I share with him what just happened?

So Oliver, Oliver just got off of his antidepressants and is having a hard time. Oh, we can talk about it. I know. I took a walk this morning listening to your book. Uh-oh. Well, that didn't help. No, I was devastated. I was like, I'm sort of.

Good morning. Take the pill. I'm going to listen to the doctor's book. You know, I totally vibe with his philosophies of this integration of Western Eastern and it's going to be good. And then I just, it's hard to feel good doing anything. Feeling good. If you set feeling good up as like what you have to be feeling, then you're just creating

another thing that you're failing at, you know? Right. Feeling whatever you're feeling, if you're going to do the meditation, thing, feeling whatever you're feeling and making room for it, really accepting, really accepting, including the bad feelings. It's very hard to do that. But if you can apply, you know, sometimes it'll really help. I was, you know, reading all kinds of excerpts from your books, and one of them was talking about, you were talking about how meditation can be seen as an escape versus like being in life is escaping from life

and how we can actually use meditation differently. You're actually dealing with what's happening versus trying to not deal. And I think that all the time, sometimes I have friends who get in these like kicks and it's like, what are you doing? Yeah, you're avoiding this as to avoid your life. Right.

Yeah, like the whole that's the opposite of what all of this is for. But, you know, enough about Oliver. Enough about me. And don't mind if I just break down in tears every 30 minutes or so. That's a good sign in therapy. Yes. I just want to get right into sort of where this journey of taking Buddhism and, you know, psychotherapy, how that all began, like, where it started for you. Well, how it really started, I'll tell you.

Okay. It started in my first year in college, so I was, you know, 18 years old. whatever. And I came from a secular, you know, Jewish secular background where academia was the religion of my household, you know, but no, no spirituality, no religion. I wasn't interested in it. But my first year in college, I met a girl right away the first week of school, and she was taking an introduction to world religion class. And I was like, introduction to world religion, You know, that would have never occurred to me to take that class. But because she was taking it and it satisfied a requirement,

I decided I would take it too. And the whole first semester was Eastern religion and the second semester was Western religion. And the Eastern religion stuff, I was fascinated by, the Tao Te Ching, you know, and then there's a collection of Buddhist verse called the Damapata. which was Buddhist instruction for householders, you know, in simple language. And that was my favorite book in the whole course.

And they had a chapter about the mind, you know, the uncontrolled mind is like a fish thrown on dry ground flapping all the time. And I was like, oh, that's me. So that sort of primed me. The Western religion part of the course was of a lot less interest to me. But then everywhere I went in the psychology department, there was, I walked into a graduate student teaching room, and the graduate student there had just come back from India

and was wearing these purple bell-bottom pants and had this long frizzy hair. And I was like, he knows something, he has something that I want. That was my. I love you to remember his bellbottom. Yeah, that was the purple bellbottom, really. With cordial, like purple cordial. I'm like, I want them. Can we find them?

I want them. It looked right to me at the time. It was 1972. And he was a friend of Ram Dass, as little did I know. He had already been in India with Ram Dass and had just come back to go to graduate school in psychology. And I made friends with him and was like, you know, where, how? can I learn what you know? And he said, go out to this place in Colorado called Naropa

Institute that was just starting. It was 1974 by then. And I listened to him and went there and Ram Dass, Joseph Goldstein, Jack Cornfield, Sharon Salzburg. It was like the New York art world and the West Coast spiritual world. I mean, you were like right in the center of the mecca of all. I thought it was Woodstock. That's what I'm saying. This is the, is this the psychological Woodstock. It was too, I was too young for Woodstock, but at least I made it to Noropa. And I just, I just devoured it. I took, you know, I took meditation classes from Joseph Goldstein and Jack Cornfield.

I made friends with all of them. And I was like a little puppy dog sort of. You know, they were 10 years older than I was, but they took me on. And I ended up traveling with them in India. I went back and met all there. teachers with them. We went to Burma and Thailand and Sri Lanka and, you know, to the Dalai Lama. I traveled all around. And then I went to medical school. So I decided I had been brought up. My father was an academic physician who wanted me to go to medical school. And I was like, I'm

never going to medical school. But finally, after all, the immersion in Eastern spirituality, I was I had to figure out what I was going to do with my life, you know. And I had the idea that maybe I could blend the Eastern stuff. I went to medical school with the idea of becoming a psychiatrist. And so nobody else in the class wanted to be a psychiatrist. So I sort of had the field all to myself. So that started. Then I was like always looking at what I learned about psychiatry through a Buddhist lens

because I was already so... Did you know that you were going to try to integrate the two once you started your own practice? I had that idea. Yeah, that was my motivation. And when I got to medical school, I went to Harvard Medical School. And when I got there, I freaked out

because I was surrounded by all these people who really were new science better than I did. And the curriculum was you had to memorize like these big, big, they called them camel. They were big books full of information, and you had to, like, swallow, digest, memorize and spit back all this stuff. And I thought, this is too much for me. And I tried to drop out and go to social work school. But everybody looked at me like I was crazy dropping out of Harvard Medical School to go to social work school.

So I stayed with it. But I did it with the idea of trying to blend that stuff, which I started to do once I got out of, in my last year of medical. school, actually. I started to do that. Now, just for people who don't know, the difference between psychiatry and psychology is what? Psychiatry means you went to medical school, which means you can prescribe drugs. And it means as part of your education, you had to learn everything that you learned in medical school.

So cancer and heart disease and emphysema, you learn about the, um, mythology of the human body and the human mind. And when you finish all that, you have to do a medical internship, and then you do three years of specialty training and psychiatry. So it's equivalent if you were going to be an anesthesiologist or an obstetrician or a pediatrician. You have the same basic education, and then you specialize after you graduate from medical school. Psychology, there are various ways to be a psychologist or a psychotherapist. get a five-year clinical psychology degree or a two or three-year social work degree or a

P.H.D., which is a Ph.D. in education, there's there, all these different routes to becoming a psychologist. But the main difference is that the psychiatrist ends up being able to prescribe and sort of speaks to medical language. A psychotherapist and a psychologist, is there a difference between? A psychologist would have a specific degree. They would have a certain kind of training. Almost anybody can call themselves a psychotherapist, and there are very, in every state, like in California, you can be a marriage and forget what they call it, a marriage and family counselor. I think they have special degrees in California. You know, to become a psychiatrist, I could have learned everything that I needed to know as a psychiatrist in about, you know, six months of medical school. But instead, it was four years worth of stuff. But it ends up being useful to know. People come in there, you know, something's wrong with them physically, and I can understand what the issues are and what the treatments are and, you know, speak to their doctors if I knew to.

I thought I knew that that was the difference, but I didn't realize it was exactly the same amount of school. That's intense. That's why I decided to do the medical thing, because if I was going to do a doctorate in clinical psychology, you know, it was the same number of years. and everyone told me I would have more authority in the world if I had the medical degree, given what I wanted to do, which was to talk about Buddhism. And that turned out to be true. I think people listened to me

because they saw the Harvard Medical School thing and the MD, and they thought, well, at least we should give them a chance to... Right. When you were seeing all of the sort of medical jargon through a Buddhist eye in college. Yeah. Were you, did you bring that into the classroom? Like, did you ever challenge teachers about these?

Well, in college, I really studied more Buddhism than I did psychology, because I found all these sort of undercover Buddhists who were already graduate students and young teachers, you know, at Harvard. In medical school and in my, really in my. residency, because I had to do these three years of training as a psychiatrist where being supervised by all these seniors in those days psychoanalysts, you know, sort of scary psychoanalytic types. And I had a friend in Boston who was a Sufi psychiatrist. I think he was the only Sufi psychiatrist in America at the time who told me when I went to do

my residency, I was studying under this guy named Otto Kermbron. who was a very fierce, he had a very fierce reputation. My Sufi psychiatrist friend said, if you tell Otto Kernberg what you're interested in, he will eat you alive. So I very diligently kept all my Buddhist leanings very quiet while I did my training. And then I had Otto Kernberg as a supervisor,

and I liked him. He really helped me with my patients. And I started to divulge, you know, oh, actually I'm interested in this Buddhist stuff. Then it turned out all the psychiatrists who were working at this hospital, they were all open to it and interested in it. And I had been keeping it in the closet, you know, for no good reason. It was starting to come out of the counterculture

into the mainstream in those years, in the 80s. Yeah. We know that a lot of the practices that exist in Buddhism are actually good for our brains and can help expand, our awareness and our consciousness and all of this, how do you connect that to a patient? Well, okay, so here's the thing. So I was around in all those early years, I was around all the people who did the groundbreaking work about how meditation is good for your brain and good for your blood pressure and, you know, trying to investigate research-wise what happens in the

brain when you're meditating, you know. And I was interested in that, but I wasn't so interested in that that's how I wanted to make my career. I really wanted to be a psychotherapist and work one-on-one with people. So I took the root personally of learning what I could really learn about being a good therapist, not worrying about teaching patient's mindfulness or getting them to lower their blood pressure by five points, you know, by doing the relaxation response. I really wanted to be, you know, like, what makes a therapist a good therapist? So I did my best to become a good therapist. And in doing that, I kept the Buddhist thing quiet.

You know, I kept it into, I figured if it was really doing anything for me personally, it should come through in the way that I am in life. You know, my family, we could talk to it another time. But at least in the office, one-on-one with people, it should come through in some way. And for 20 years, 25 years or so, that's how I operated. And I didn't talk about it that much. If someone was interested, if I knew they were interested, I would tell them where I go on retreat and who my, you know, Joseph Goldstein, Jack Cornfield, Sharon Salzberg, the good teachers,

they could go learn more. And then we could talk about what their experience was. and the past 10 years or so I've gotten a little freer about okay we could actually talk about spiritual stuff the line between the emotional and the spiritual and the psychological all started to blur so I think a good psychotherapy it is like a good meditation it's like a two-person meditation where we're really using whatever is happening in the moment in the relationship, in the conversation, in the room. We're really using that to free ourselves as best as we can

from the preconceptions that we've brought into the room, from the feelings that we might have that what we're remembering or what we're feeling is wrong or bad or shameful to allow all that stuff to come up, and then to expose it, to hold it in the field of awareness like we learn to do in meditation. So lately I've been thinking, oh, maybe there's some kind of, you could almost call it a transmission, although that's getting, you know, pushing it a little bit. But maybe there's some kind of experience that people can have in psychotherapy that's analogous

to what they experience in meditation. Well, do you think there's a natural synergy? just just overall i mean forget about sort of the evolution because it seems like there's been an evolution to blur the lines right 20 years ago maybe it wasn't like that but do you think there's a natural synergy between that buddhist spirituality and psychotherapy i i think there can be depending on the mind of the psychotherapist um like like i i had a a conversation that always stayed with me with Ram Dass, who, you know, who he was. He just died last year. He was Richard Alpert. He was with Timothy Leary, LSD, and so on. Then he went to India, became Ram Dass. He was an early

teacher of mine. And then I stayed in contact with him over the years. So 20 years into my training as a psychiatrist, I went to visit him in California. He'd had his stroke. And I hadn't seen him in 20 years. And he was sort of making fun of me. And, oh, are you a boo? psychiatrist now, you know, and I sort of sheepishly said, I guess so. And he said, well, do you see your patients as already free? And he'd had a stroke, so he had to, he said it very slowly, do you see them, you know, as already free? And that thought went really deep into me, you know, because that's where the synergy might be, because I think I do, you know, like, especially if their synergy with the person, you know, like when you, when you make a new friend and already

you feel a kind of resonance, it's like that with the patients. So being able to see them, even if they're upset or going through something bad or, you know, to see their, you could call it their Buddha nature or their, or just their soul or their specialness, you know, or their love, to see that from the start and to know that everything we're talking. about is we're trying to part the, you know, part the curtains in order to let that emerge. I think I'm operating like that. Well, that's a really, it's a really amazing thing to say. I mean, that's like so incredible. But, you know, I think a lot of times people do enter therapy because they feel stuck, they feel stifled. They feel lack of that kind of freedom. Like, I always say,

people say, what is happiness or, you know, I get asked these crazy questions as if I have the answer, you know it's like you're supposed to come on right right yeah but for me like real happiness is liberation is freedom from from from from oneself right from oneself yeah and a thousand percent you know when you feel that kind of like liberation of whether it be fear or how people how you feel that you are being seen or that you see yourself or other you know um in that is how is this sort of like this pure feeling of freedom. It's when you're listening to the driving song, like you're in your car and there's a song on

and you feel this sort of like there's no weight on your shoulder and like your hairs going on the wind. And you're like right now, everything feels perfect, you know? And that to me is freedom. And then the question is, then you have to meet all these challenging obstacles and egos. and connections and that can just really fuck up that freedom. Yeah.

And so how you handle that becomes, I think, such a huge part of your own well-being. I guess the question is, how can you live in a sob convertible going down the PCH on a 75-degree summer day all the time? Yeah, listening to Little Pink Houses. Right, or Boys of Summer by Don Henley. Yeah, or Africa by Toto.

how do we achieve that that's been that's been my every book i've written has been trying to get at at exactly that question the very first meditation retreat that i ever went on you know i've over the years i've tried to do one of these two weeks silent retreats every year although when we had children i went for 11 years without ever going um but the very first one that I ever went on, where all you do is you sit quietly, hour by hour, trying to pay attention to the sensation of the breath going in the nostrils and the breath coming out the nostrils and the lips touching and so on, you know, practicing mindfulness. The first retreat I ever did, after about five days of doing that, suddenly I was absolutely,

you know, filled with love. just like in a way like and I was not I had no at that point I had never really been in love you know it wasn't like a familiar feeling but first my body started to like quiver and and I felt very light you know more lightness than happiness but and then I was just filled with like waves of love it's never happened again and I've gone on a lot of retreats like where is it where is it where is it you know but but um it made a deep impression i think it was the equivalent of of the sob uh riding down the highway and uh uh and it goes to that do you see your patience is already free because it having the sense that oh that there's something something about myself i didn't

know like i'm really capable of this kind of freedom you know um were you trying to have you been trying to find that? I mean, I know. No, I didn't know it was there. No, I'm saying, I'm saying after you felt that and you're saying, I can't, I, I, I had never really got back to that place, you know. I've never gotten back to it in the intensity with which it took me the first time. That new discovery. But it, but it became, but it, but I could see, oh, this is, this is, uh, an essential aspect of my being. And so I can feel, but it, but it, but it, but I can feel it. I remember when my daughter, who's now 34, when she was born, a couple of months later, we went to visit a couple of friends in the country. And we didn't have a crib for her. So we made

a bed in a drawer. And she slept in a drawer. And it was like two months after she was born three months, something like that. And we got a little stone, which I hadn't been doing. And suddenly I was with my daughter and I saw her looking at me with love, like until then I had only been seeing her like, this is just the baby, you know, we have to take care of the baby, like how to get change the diaper and everything. But to experience that, oh, that love is there, you know, was there in her from the beginning, you know. And my ego was closing myself off to it, you know, trying to be the capable, responsible, you know, sort of obnoxious. father person, husband and father. But there it was again, you know. So I think it's there.

It's knowing that it's there and then letting it being surprised by it and where in different ways that it's interesting. You say that. I can relate in the way I'm not going to get into this because I've talked about a thousand times on this podcast, but I went to this place called the Hoffman Institute. I'm not sure you've heard of it. I know about that. We're going to cut the, we're going to go because I've talked about it too much, right? But I really was an incredible. This will be a clip. It was an incredible experience for me, but you leave there. It's a bell. Every time we need a Hoffman, but I left there floating in a place that I didn't even know existed.

And I was almost seeing things, you know, in a psychic sense in a way. And coincidences were no longer coincidences. It just was like part of my entire world. that honeymoon phase sort of you know drifts off and you wonder if you can ever reach that again and it's almost depressing that shit i was so it was i was so capable of living in this space for at least two or three months after and then it faded it sort of faded away but i feel like it's stuck i just don't live in that the buddhist thing is all about integrating it how do you how do you integrate that that's why they frame it all as the eightfold path you know it's not just about

meditation. It's also about livelihood. It's also about the way you speak to yourself and to others. It's how you look at the world. It's how you think about the world. That, you know, that really helped me. Because I had those early, you know, I was floating also and where, you know, oh, this is the point, you know, like maybe, maybe I'm enlightened, you know, go running to the teacher. but it's really about integrating into every you know into your family life into your personal life into your work life how to keep that how to make it relevant you know because there are a lot of very accomplished Hoffman Institute therapists or Buddhist meditators you know they get they get very high in their environment but then they're you know lousy you know lousy

to be around. Where do birds die? Well, it's an interesting, interesting you ask that question because you can go on Great Courses Plus and probably find out, which is our new sponsor, and I actually had a call with them,

and I loved everything that they had to say. I signed up for the app. it's basically you can learn about anything that you want to learn you can go deep into mathematics or you can learn about beekeeping and making IPAs and it's really cool it's all professionals professors if that's what it is or people who have been in these businesses and teaching these businesses for a long long time that's cool they're in 30 minute bits basically and it's like a course so you can keep following right up my alley oh it's so great I love this stuff, especially because we didn't go to college.

Oh, well, I mean, I didn't. I went to two years, but, you know. But I, but, but, but yeah, I mean, I, I, I'm always constantly wanting to learn about something. Right. It's binge learning. So we've been in this. Love this. Yeah, binge learning.

We've been in the world of binge watching, but this is binge learning. So you are constantly educating yourself. Well, you've got economics and finance, food and wine, health, fitness and nutrition. Categories. hobby and leisure, literature and language, mathematics, music and fine arts, philosophy and religion. Oh, I love this. I'm telling you, you're going to dig this. Yep.

I'm so into it. Those are the categories, and then of course you've got all the subcategories underneath, but it's video. You've access to video and audio, so you can also switch it from just audio if you wanted to listen in your car or watch the video. There's guidebooks, there's new content that's added every single month. It's really, really cool. is so great. I can't wait to do this. All right. So don't miss out on this great deal. Go now to The Greatcoursesplus.com slash sibling to get your free trial. And our listeners will also get 20% off the annual membership.

Again, that's The Greatcoursesplus.com slash sibling. And our listeners will also get 20% off the annual membership. Coors light. Oh, Coors Light. There's only one beer out there that's literally made to chill, Oliver, and that is Coors Light. The mountains on the bottles. They turn blue when your beer is cold. That's when you know it's time to chill. You've got to hit the reset button, open up a Coors Light, and boom.

It's mountain cold refreshment. I need a little bit of mountain cold refreshment right now. Summer is around the corner, and it's a Coors Light. summer we go to colorado during the summer and we stay there for the for three four months at least i do and uh if there is not corz light that is constantly chilling in my cooler something is wrong i'm dreaming of a corz light on a mountain right now corz light is the one that we choose when we need to unwind so when you want to hit reset reach for the beer that is made to chill get corz light in the new look delivered straight to your door with drizzly or instilly or instant

Descartes. Celebrate responsibly Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado. You know, I made a whole thing out of the fact that the Buddha had no relationship with his mother because his mother died when he was a week old. And I was like, you know, as a psychotherapist, why is that story in the buddha's in the you know in the myth if it's you know of the buddha why does his mother die when he's a week old and i was determined to make something out of that like i was going to like eric ericson with luther or gondi you know i wanted to do like a psychobiography um and i i'll try not to talk too long about this but i i went on one of these retreats uh they have a little library at these retreat centers that are filled with just Buddhist books. And you're not supposed

to read or write or anything, but I always sneak into the library for half an hour and pull a book off the shelf at random to see what, you know, maybe the universe will give me a teaching. So right when I was thinking about this, I went into the library five days into my retreat. And the Buddhist sutras are like the encyclopedia of Britannica. They take up a whole shelf, you know. So I picked one volume out at random and opened it up at random. And I opened to the only place in the whole Encyclopedia Britannica where they talk about the death of the Buddha's mother. And it says, oh, she knew that when he was 29, he was going to abandon the family, and it was going to cause her so much pain. So to save her that pain, she decided to die when he was a week old.

And so I thought, well, that's kind of a rationalization. but my theory was that the that sense that a lot of us have developmentally of not being loved enough by our one parent or both parents or if if one of them dies or leaves or is alcoholic or depressed or whatever many people are left with some kind of residual sense of what, you know, was it, what was wrong with me that I wasn't seen or heard or loved or held or felt, you know, enough so that a kind of developmental trauma that the Buddha must have also been feeling. And so I think the Buddha's whole enlightenment thing, like that he's searching for that, in his case, maternal love, you know, that he was,

wanting from the outside but he had to find eventually that it was in him already you know maybe from that first week of life or just because we all are inherently capable of that kind of love but anyway that's helped me a lot clinically with my patients and so on what what about ego ego yeah yeah just give us the just a brief on that crazy word because it's good it's bad it's negative I mean, what, what are we talking about? Can I just say that your book, it's advice not given a guide to getting over yourself, right? Yes, yes. And that's a lot about focused on the ego, isn't it?

That became focused on the ego once I got the subtitle of a guide to getting over yourself. I had to try to explain what I was talking about. Well, I mean, sorry, and then I'll let you go, but that sucks what I feel like I have to fucking do, personally bringing you back to me and everything else is just get over your, go over your fucking self. You're not that important. I mean, in that sense of the world. you know what I mean it's like do something for others it's a delicate thing because you are that important right you know you individually you specifically Oliver are that important you know in fact

I'm going to hold it in I got to hold it you're not just your ego though so so where how does the ego fit in the we all need our egos the ego is a necessary adjustment in order to cope with being a person in the world. It starts to emerge around the age of three or four or five when the mind realizes that, oh, I'm a separate person, you know, and I have to cope with going to sleep at night and being hungry and being alone, and my parents are expecting all this stuff from me,

and I have to, like, toilet training, like, really, I have to do this. and eating the food, you know, that doesn't smell good, and then going to school and dealing with other kids and making fun of me. So the ego is like a defensive organization that comes into being to help us. It's there to help us, and we all need it. If you try to get rid of your ego too quickly,

like with psychedelic drugs or too many retreats or whatever, you just get psychotic. And the definition of psychotic is not enough ego, you know, or people with ADD, they talk about a lack of executive function, you know, the ability to organize yourself to like do your homework or take out the garbage or pay the bills. That's all ego. So we all need the ego. But too much ego, you know, the ego is about controlling the environment ourselves and as much as possible the outside world so that we can. can survive. But the ego kind of gets a hold of us, and we think that's all there is to life, and we think that we should be able to control everything, even that which can't be controlled. So the ego has to learn, once it's established enough, it has to learn also how to let go. you know it has to learn when to be helpful you know uh but also when to let go so but it's really we have to learn when to deploy the ego you know and when to allow other qualities that are

inherent to our being to take priority that's such an interesting thing because you would think like you know, I sometimes struggle with that, meaning that you have like, especially I think being female, when things feel out of control, I have an instinct to take control, right? And then be seen as controlling. You know, so like when do you let something go? When do you actually sit back and go, this isn't going to serve me or them? What is the balance? Yeah, what becomes?

balance. That's where your own intelligence is really necessary. And that's why the eightfold path, you know, in a Buddhist way, tries to spell out, oh yeah, we need all of these qualities in order to walk this balance. So absolutely in that role, you have to be able to step in. If you step in with too much ego or too much attachment to being right or getting everything under control, then you'll be experienced as too rigid or too controlling or too, you know, like too much like Scott Rudin throwing thing. But if you come in, you know, just doing what needs to be done. Like in Zen, it's all about, you know, washing the bowls and picking, weeding the weeds and

so on. So if you come in, and in psychotherapy, it's very similar. when do you do something and when do you not so if you if you come in you know uh with the right kind of balance uh with the right touch um then uh you can get a lot done and people will still respect you you know and then you and you can sense when when to when to let go so it's that balance between uh applying your will applying your agency and then and stepping back. And even in meditation,

that we have to do that. Like, you have to deploy your ego in order to meditate, you know, otherwise you'd just be sitting there, you know, but at a certain point,

once it's, once you're established in your meditation, then it's all about sitting back and just allowing the movie to unfold. I know, but it's so crazy. Like, who the hell are we? You know,

like, are we are conscious? We don't have to know. Are we our conscious, what is our consciousness? Like, am I myself right now, or am I the voice that is constantly talking to me, you know, and explaining things or, you know, who, who the fuck are we, really? I mean, it's, I know, I always say before, before my therapy and before meditation, I didn't know who I was and it was a mess. And after it all, I still don't know who I am, but it's okay. Well, you wrote about how to not be a prisoner of your ego. Like, what does that mean for you as a doctor?

Like, how can someone out there not be a prisoner to their ego? Well, I think Oliver was getting at it a minute ago when you were saying, who am I, you know, am I these, am I the voice in my head that's saying all of this stuff or am I the awareness of that voice in my head that's saying all of that stuff? or am I in, you know, am I somewhere else in my body while this is going on? Most people, I think, are really identified with that voice in their head, which is them to some degree. It's the them that they probably know the best and might also be quite ashamed of, but it's not the totality of who they are.

So the big revelation coming out of meditation, and I think it can come from psychotherapy also, is that the witnessing element, you know, the awareness of, like, you're thinking all those thoughts, but you're also aware that you're thinking all those thoughts. And the awareness can't be the same as the thinker. You know, like that was my first book was thoughts without a thinker, you know. So the thoughts are going on that happen by themselves. In some way, that's really us, you know, neurotic mess that we are. And yet at the same time, we can cultivate this other thing, which is the witness consciousness, or so you can think about

as coming from your head as like you're watching or listening or seeing, but you could think of it also as coming from your heart as the way a mother holds a baby, you know, like you're creating a holding environment for your mind or for your feelings when they're difficult for your feelings so that you're holding with that kind of loving awareness. And I think the Buddhist thing has helped a lot by bringing in a bit of that loving awareness aspect to it because otherwise it can get a little bit dissociative. It can get a little bit dry.

Yeah, because to simplify it, too, is difficult because it can get overwhelming. You know, just this idea of these sort of different personalities that you're fighting every day, how do we quiet that down? What do we need to do to sort of at least let go? Right, or get over ourselves. Or get over ourselves, exactly, you know, but it's simple but not. Simplistic, as our therapist says.

I used to go, the therapist that I used to go to, I would often start with what, you know, like part of me is upset. Part of me feels this, but part of me feels that, which goes to your point of all that, are we and we're all these different and he would always say to me he would say you don't have parts mark you know which always like sort of shook me and i and i do that now to my patients whenever i notice the the language that we use to talk about our experience is very important but the dividing yourself up into parts that's a dissociative thing like you know so when he would say to me you know there's only one of you that you know oh i'm all of you

this you know it you know it's i'm the thoughts and i'm the awareness and i'm you know it's weird too i bet so many people do that because you you want to disassociate from negative or positive you know you want to compartmentalize certain things well it's also frustrating because it's like i feel like i know my essence but it's impossible to get to it that's another clip you know that's a profound Buddhist teaching okay that they they talk about it's like a a dog chasing its own tail oh that's allie for sure oh yeah and you go I'm gonna cry so you go in a circle you know yeah I know my essence but I can't find it but I can feel it but I can almost and you you create like a whirlpool in your mind you you know that ultimately

creates enough agitation and confusion that it... Burst. Well, yeah, you burst. And then... Don't you have the moment? Yeah, I was like, oh, yeah, this is it. Yeah.

That's so interesting. You know, I had this thing, you know, recently, like for me, it's also kind of when life becomes a lot of the same thing and it's the same kind of concept of it chasing, you know, but for me, it's like not my own tail. it's like all these tails you know it's like i'm you know it's like this one over here and then there's this one there's and i'm finally like i want to quit i want to sell my house i want to move i want to

just break out of this whatever this cycle is totally feel you i do i i get what that feeling is and i i sometimes wonder i think it's a very very common thing especially at our age but like i I would also think that, like, we're responsible for our own trappings, right? Like, we've created this experience. Yeah. And do you just listen to those things? Like, I'm like, should I quit? Like, should we act on this and actually just bail?

You know, sometimes you need an awakening, you know. Oh, and this is where I was going with that. You know, some people, and I wonder if you, I think about it sometimes with the Tara, like the white tar or the red tar you know and and i'm very i'm fire right and and and i know that sometimes i have to balance whatever that is but like everybody comes at these things in in different ways i'm like an explosion of fire you know and and when you're working with patients do you ever kind of see them energetically as you know an element or oh i see them energetically as pure expressions of themselves, absolutely, which I think that's what those tar, that's what all those

things are, you know, white, tar or red, they're pure expressions of energy. And we're all, we all are pure expressions of something. So then what do you do when you're feeling like so much heat? Is that your, is that my ego? That's probably not your ego. That's probably your essence. Oh, great. But how you're relating. And how you're relating to your heat is really important, you know, because the only thing we really have any ultimate control over is how we relate to whatever is happening to us, you know, either in us or to us. So you could relate to it of like, this is too scary, I have all of this heat, or I'm going to burn everything down, you know. but so um right finding finding that uh where you know where you're that balance between giving it full rain and holding it uh compassionately you know like that that sort of becomes the work i think

i think we're in a really interesting time and i don't want to forget this because there's so much there's so much happening in the world people are so connected to negative stories and, you know, terrible things that have not only happening now, but have been happening for forever. But what I'm finding is this sort of, it's like I want to shut it all off. And I think maybe there's a lot of people who feel the same way. It's like you feel like we need to be involved.

It's important to be involved in all of the issues that are going on in the world. And at the same time, it's so overwhelming that you just want to turn it off and not listen to it. And then you want to. to speak out about your feelings about things or life or your how you feel about one particular situation or thing. I think people are finding it hard to know where they belong and how to actually use their voice and are feeling a little bit stifled if they're not these like super loud people, you know. And I wonder like if you were talking to someone, like I was feeling

that way the other day I was thinking, you know, I have so many things I want to say and I don't say. I have so much anxiety speaking up about anything that I feel strongly about. Are we living in a time where it's like, good, feel anxiety and don't talk? Or do you think there's a way to be able to kind of just balance that out, you know, like for me, like I can't quite, I feel like something's missing because I don't feel comfortable speaking outwardly about certain things, you know? I think it is a time where speaking out is so fraught that everyone has to be very self-conscious, you know, because of the social media thing, that immediately, whatever you say is refracted and refracted and refracted in this way that shows how we're all connected, but maybe also how we're all entangling ourselves with, with each other, you know. So I think the way that all of the world's problems

are at our immediate, on our screens, at our feet, immediately available. Like we're feeling everything and feeling like we have to respond to everything. So that's too much for anybody. Well, in your practice, I mean, have you noticed just over the years they have more of a heightened anxiety overall,

just generally speaking, you know, with your... Not real. No, you haven't. No, there's been anxiety. There's always anxiety. I think it's just like, how does the anxiety get expressed? Okay. And what is it expressed around?

Right. So I think this, you know, this whole pandemic time, coupled with the social awareness that's been going on, has really thrust people, you know, deep into themselves, like where a lot of self-examination, it's a really internal time, at the same time that time is kind of, going in circles instead of in a straight line because we're, you know, so I think there's a lot of confusion about where speech, you know, what is right speech? You also said that people have a hard time in one of your books actually being with themselves. So, you know, then we're, you know, it's like coupled with everything that's going on in the world, social media, but then actually being forced to be with themselves. Like, yeah, I guess it would turn into a very reflective

or destructive time for people. It could be destructive. That's one of the nice things about therapy, I think, is that it's an intimate conversation that is protected. You know, so people can work out, they can work out their thoughts in a safe way instead of working their thoughts out on Instagram where they're going to be called,

out, you know, for those attempts. Yeah. You said, I was just looking at this quote, in resisting trauma and in defending ourselves from feeling its full impact, we deprive ourselves of its truth. I love that, but I'd love for you to expand on it a little bit because I think there's so many people, everyone experiences trauma in some ways. Yeah. Well, I've been saying if you don't suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome, that you suffer from pre-traumatic stress because the underlying potential for trauma, you know, old age, illness, death, separation from those we care about, loss, that potential is inherent in life. And we all know it, even though

the ego defends against it by trying to control like we were talking about. But underneath that, we all know it and we're sort of scared. And the pandemic has brought that on. So I, you know, that what you were quoting Kate came from, you know, seven or eight years ago when I was trying to figure out what, what is trauma. Now we're all living it, really. You know, this. So the idea that that it's over, over there happening to other people or it might happen to us sometime, actually it's happening right now. Everyone can feel it. But we don't want to feel it because it's scary and we would rather that the trauma was happening somewhere else and then we could feel sorry for the people who were victims of it for a little bit

and maybe send some money or some compassion or some love but then there's a sort of rush to normal where we think we should be able to live without trauma you know so that thing that you read where that was coming from my experience as the thing therapist, you know, helping, trying to help people who have had terrible losses, the, you know, where a child has been killed or parents die early or whatever. The, you know, the social pressure is really like, aren't you over it yet? You know, like go through the five stages of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, grief, you know, denial, anger, acceptance, bargaining, whatever, and then be done with it and get back to yourself. And that never seemed fair to me. It seems more like we have to come to turns with trauma as an inevitable component of this life that we're all living. And there's some kind of grief and love are connected. So if we're pushing the mourning or the grief or the sadness away, we're also pushing the love away,

And then we're creating a much more constrained, claustrophobic way of living. So I'm trying to say that it's safe to feel the difficult stuff and that in feeling the difficult stuff, we also can feel the good stuff. Yeah. If you were to give advice to people listening about how to deal with whatever life is throwing at them,

If you had like, you know, like what would be the first thing you would say to someone who's like, I have all this, like, I just have all this trauma or I have all this stuff happening. Like, what would be the first tool you would give them? The first thing I would do would just be to say, like, tell me everything. How much time do we have? Get it, put it into words, you know. Like I'm thinking when we're, now that we're talking, one of the patients who taught me the most about. dealing with trauma, came to me after the tsunami in 2004, whenever it was, and she had lost her whole family. Her parents and her husband and her children, they were vacationing at an

eco resort, and the tsunami, the wave came and swept them all away, and she survived by clinging to a tree branch, but everyone else died. And she ended up in my office. And I really didn't know how I was going to help her. But in the office, you know, I have two children and she had two children. And whether the children were alive or dead, I know what it's like to have children. And so I just made her tell me about her children. And she hadn't been, because they died and been so traumatic, you know, she'd been like having to keep them away. You know, that's the tendency, you know, the dissociative tendency. And so the first thing I said, then what you know like tell me about them and and that you know that was so so beautiful

because the love is all they were still there you know um so uh i couldn't so again you know how do you how do you go on from i mean how the is that just the will to live is that just primal something that takes over in your body chemically where it's like you know i'm i got to move forward because that's so devastating i don't think the moving forward isn't uh that it wasn't about moving forward it was really about uh being being in the present uh so the love was still there that was the key thing the feelings were still there they they were still part of her you you know so in was she spiritual i mean was was there spiritual not not before all this happened And she wrote a book about it.

She wrote a beautiful book that's just called Wave, if anybody wants to. The Times picked it as the best book a few years ago. And she found meditation? I mean, did she find her? No, meditation wasn't the biggest part of it. I mean, if you expand your definition of meditation to include the therapy and then her own writing, I got her to write stuff that she would bring to me and it turned into a beautiful book, you know. but putting words on the feelings that the tend i mean that's an extreme example of trauma you know

like almost no one could you know imagine but but the way that one deals with any trauma even covid you know uh is to do something of the same thing to like try to close yourself off from the pain of it in order to keep going so that the keeping going isn't really the point it's it's like you keep going with like a, you know, limping along. That's, I wanted her to be able to keep going with her whole vitality, you know. So that meant really dealing with what happened. Do you find that there are instances where people are using psychotherapy or meditation not in the best way and to sort of, you know, actually hide from themselves in a way, you know,

or they cross the line. It's like half the people you meet on yoga retreats. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying, like, because I've met some people where it's like, okay, on paper it looks like you're doing great, but you're actually not really present. We'll use anything. Oh, no.

Oh, God. I don't know if this is a sign. Oh, no. The bird just flew into the glass window, And that's, that's the end of it. Oh, really? Wow. Okay, we got to psychoanalyze this.

It's a sign. It's a sign sometimes. It's a sign. Well, okay, where were we? Talking about trauma. We're talking about trauma. We were talking about trauma, and the bird flies into the window. Yeah.

Life. No, we were also just discussing whether or not, you know, people can use it as a crutch. meditation therapy. That's where you were, yes. People will use anything. That's what I was saying. They use alcohol, they use drugs. They'll use yoga.

They'll use therapy. The ego wants to protect itself. There's a big effort to hide from what we're ashamed of or what we're disturbed by or what's difficult to feel. So, you know, it's very understandable. The book that you're writing, your new book, are you to? talking about this at all yet can you share with us a little bit what you're working on now my my new book i'm calling the the zen of therapy uncovering a hidden kindness in life and um for a year without

knowing what i was writing about or what the next book was going to be i tried to record one therapy session a week not not tape record but write down afterwards one session where i thought the buddhist influence was most obvious Because I was, I'm still trying to tease out, like, what am I really, am I doing anything that's different from any other therapist and what's the Buddhist element and so on? So I thought, okay, let's, I'll just, you know, show my hand, you know. So for a year I did this. And but I could, I had to force myself to do it. I don't usually take a lot of notes in my sessions. And then I didn't read it over for the whole year until it was done. And then I had this like pile of stuff, different patients, you know, you know, And it was pretty interesting, and I showed it to my editor, and she thought there might be something there, but that I should write like a reflection or a commentary after each session to highlight what it is I thought was happening. So I did all that during the past year. And I think it ended up showing that, yes, kind of what we were talking about at the beginning

of the hour, that there's some way that the therapy moves. towards giving people a sense of being rather than doing, you know, that that taps them into something deeper in themselves, hopefully, if I'm doing anything to part the ways of the ego. So I was trying to demonstrate that. That's so nice. Okay. Buddhist meditation, you've met some of the great philosophers, teachers, meditators. You're a Harvard medical graduate, right?

so what's your problem you know what i mean like what what i have do you have moments in your life where you're like i can't get out of this fucking rut i know all the tools because i literally am the tools but you want to come inside my mind yes this is what i'm saying like how like do you have the moments or where you're like a week and it's just like i i i just god damn it i don't know i can't get out of my head oh what uh do i have the moments i have my life is about getting out of my head. What I like about being a therapist is that, and I do talk about this in the book,

I think what I like so much about being a therapist is that when I'm being a therapist, I'm really not thinking about myself. And it's such a relief, you know? And I think the meditation has helped me with that. When I'm with somebody as their therapist, I mean, I talk a lot as a therapist. I'm not like quiet and, you know, just listening

and stuff. But I'm really not self-obsessed. You know, I'm really about like, oh, I want to get to that essential you, you know. And that's so fun. That's like driving down the highway and the sob, you know, and I can do it for seven, eight hours a day. So after that, I just want to watch TV or something. You do, right? I do. I watch a lot of TV. before we go just for those listening who maybe want to get into meditation you know do you have any do you have any sort of references of how to start because there's so many different ways to do it there's so many different kinds of meditation you know mindful meditation you know TM like what how does one get started without feeling overwhelmed um well i can i can tell people how to get started uh with the

people that I got started with, you know, which I'll be happy to do. But I think it's important to know that, one, meditation isn't for everybody. Some people really need just to be moving around and in their bodies and working or working out or whatever. And two, there's so many different kinds of meditation, so many ways in, and it really doesn't matter. It's whatever feels right to you. So I don't, you know, there's a lot of charlatans out there. So you want to try to stay away from the ones who demand all your money, but there's, there are many good ways in. But this friend of mine, a newscaster named Dan Harris, you guys might know him a little bit. He was a newscaster on ABC until he had a panic attack when he came back from Iraq.

And then his wife made him seek me out as a friend, not as a therapist. and I led him to my Buddhist teachers, and he got really into it. And he has a podcast and an app called 10% Happier. And he got my, he got Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg, a lot of the teachers that I respect the most to come into the studio and record beginning meditation instruction. So I think that's an incredible way in,

because those instructions are very, very, very, very on point. But that's just one, one approach. Yeah. Excellent. Well, thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for spending the time. I appreciate it.

And I think now more than ever, I mean, people are going to really resonate with this episode, and I'm so grateful that you joined us. So thank you so much. I'm going to go tend to that bird. I'm so sorry about the bird. They say it's sometimes a sign from the other. other side, you know, when a bird flies into your house. Oh, really? Yeah, there you go.

I believe it. Yeah, I believe it. What if it crashes into the window? Yeah, well. Another kind of sign. It's a different sign. Sibling Revelry is executive produced by Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson. Producer is Allison Bresden.

Editor is Josh Windish. Music by Mark Hudson, aka Uncle Mark. If you want to show us some love, rate the show. and leave us a review. This show is powered by Simplecast. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? Answer, a new podcast called Wisecrack,

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