SOLVED with Mark Manson - What Everyone Gets Wrong About Mental Health (ft. Lori Gottlieb)

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Could it be that today’s increased awareness about emotions, and our obsession with mental health issues, are actually causing more mental health issues? More people are doing therapy, but are those people potentially doing it wrong? Therapist, counselor, and author Lori Gottlieb says that a lot of our culture’s approach to mental health is wrong. In today’s podcast, we discuss what it takes to do therapy effectively. We discuss the prevalence of mental health content online and why that may be a bad thing. We talk about how people’s misunderstandings of vulnerability and boundaries can backfire. And we get into the effect social media might be having on this. Enjoy. Signup with Rocket Money and start for free: ⁠https://rocketmoney.com/idgaf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, before we get into it, if you listen to the show, you probably consume a lot of personal growth content. The books, the podcasts, YouTube videos, all of it. And you've probably noticed the gap between knowing what to do and then actually going out and doing it. You've got the insights, but what you don't have is something that connects them to your actual life. That's why I built purpose. It's a personal development AI that learns you, your patterns, your blind spots, all the stuff that you keep circling back to over and over again. Instead of handing you another framework, it gives you specific personalized direction.

So check it out. You can try it for free for seven days. Go to purpose.app. That is purpose. What if we're all getting therapy wrong? What if we're becoming too aware of our emotions? What if it's our constant obsession with mental health that is actually making our mental health worse?

These are just a few of the questions that I discuss on today's episode with Lori Gottlieb, a therapist, a couple's counselor, and a best-selling officer. of the mega hit, maybe you should talk to someone, which is sold over 2 million copies worldwide. Lori has been at the forefront of public discussions around therapy and mental health and what makes therapy useful and what can make it potentially harmful. Some of the ideas that we talk about in this episode include the number one quality to look for in a romantic partner and why it's so easily overlooked. Why the goal of therapy is to not know yourself rather than to discover who you are. What makes a bad therapist and how to know when it's time to stop attending sessions? You might be

surprised by that one. When vulnerability and boundaries go wrong, the damaging ways that we've potentially made ourselves too aware of our mental health. And finally, how men's attitudes towards therapy have changed and what that means for society. I enjoyed today's episode because it looks at the possibility that there might actually be such a thing as too much mental health awareness, which definitely calls my job security in the question. It also acknowledges that the human mind is far more complex than we give it credit for. So stick around. You're going to learn a lot, and be sure to subscribe and leave the show a review. Follows and reviews, help me book amazing guests like Lori.

So you're not just helping me, but you're helping yourself, friend. So most of therapy should take place outside of the therapy route. And people don't understand that. So not doing it well is you come in, you download the problems of the week, you leave, and you think that's your therapy. No, that's not your therapy. Another way not to do therapy well is to come in. you gain some insights and you think, wow, now I understand why I do that thing that gets in my way.

And that was therapy. Yeah. What you, so what you need to do to do it well is you actually need to take that insight and use it in your life in the week between. So someone might come in and they might say, oh, I got into that argument with my partner over the weekend and I understood why. And I'll be like, well, that's great, but did you do something different? Well, no.

Right. So it's not just understanding why. It's then saying, okay, I'm in a dance with this person. And if I want to change something in this relationship, I need to change my dance steps. I don't know what they're going to do. They'll either fall flat on the dance floor or they'll start using different dance steps too. But I won't know unless I change my dance steps. So doing therapy well is about you changing your dance steps out in the world, whether that's

with your relationship with yourself, your relationship with other people, your relationship with work, whatever it might be. And I don't think that people understand that they think I'm going to come to therapy and it's going to be really like relaxing and I'm going to get validated. And my version of the story is going to get validated. Yeah. Yeah. Let's break that down the implementation of, say, having a realization in the therapist's office, bringing that out into the world. Like what are the steps of that implementation? Obviously, there's an awareness component, and awareness in the moment as well. But what have you seen be most effective with people?

Or what are the patterns that you've noticed with patients of people who actually do something different? Or what's the breakthrough that helps them do something different? There has to be a readiness. And so I think when a lot of people come to therapy, they know they want something to change because something's not working. But usually what they want to change is someone else or something else. Right.

Right? So they don't realize like, oh, I am going to have to make some changes here. So I think the people who realize that are the people who do make the changes outside. And I think, you know, I talk a lot in the book about the difference between idiot compassion and wise compassion. So idiot compassion is what we do with our friends. So our friends tell us like this happened with this person and we say, yeah, you're right. They're wrong.

That's terrible. You go, girl, right? Or whatever it is. Like, of course you're right. We think we're being a supportive friend. Therapy is all about wise compassion. We hold up a mirror to you. and we help you to see something about your role that maybe you haven't been willing or able

to see. So if you come into therapy with that mindset, not being blamed, not that something's wrong with you, in fact, something's right with you. If you're saying something's not working, so of course I want to do something differently. Yeah. That makes sense. You talk about in the book the difference between the presenting problem, which is the problem that people think they have and then often the actual problem and how, you know, like,

Like you said, people come in and they're like, oh, he's an asshole. I want him to change. Or, you know, my job sucks. You know, it's unfair and not realizing that there's a lot of layers underneath. Talk a little bit about that process of like bridging that gap and seeing the connections between like what we come in perceiving to be wrong and then like what is actually, you know, the willingness to actually dig deep and discover what's actually going wrong. Yeah.

Well, you know, first of all, I should say that there really are difficult people out. there. You know, we always say before diagnosing someone with depression, make sure they aren't surrounded by assholes, right? Because there are assholes out there. They're going to be irritating and frustrating. And those assholes might share your last name or they might share your house with you. You know, you might work with them. So, of course, so we always have to keep in mind, you know, you might be depressed because you're surrounded by assholes. Okay. But then the question is, what is, what are you doing there? Like, where's your agency? So can you set boundaries with these people? Can you react?

act differently to the way that they might be provoking you. Why are you in relationship with them? Do you need to be in relationship with them? So I think that's what therapy helps you do. You're not the victim that you actually have a lot of agency. And I think a lot of people think that therapy is so much about the past. Let's talk about your childhood ad nauseum and analyze this. And we do want to know where you learn something or where a belief that you're carrying around and navigating through the world with came from. But then we're very present focused. So what, knowing what you know now or knowing that that belief maybe isn't so true, it's like wearing clothes that don't fit anymore.

When you were a child, that was how you coped or how you protected yourself and that made sense. But you are free now. And so now you can do things differently. I remember when I was in therapy, my own therapist said, and I write about this too, he said to me, this is a very humbling experience. He said, you know, you remind me of this cartoon. And it's of a prisoner shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out.

But on the right and the left, it's open. No bars. So the question is, first, why don't we see that it's open? Yeah. And then when we see that it's open, why are we still shaking the bars? Why don't we walk around the bars? And it's because with freedom comes responsibility. If we walk around those bars, the decisions we make, the choices we make, what we do in the

world, that's up to us. And now we can't blame it on someone else. Yeah. It reminds me of the parable about. the baby elephant that's tied to the fence post. Have you heard this? No. Oh, it's a classic. So it's apparently zookeepers discovered years and years ago that if you take a baby elephant and tie it to a fence post, it can't get away. But even when the baby elephant grows into an adult and it could easily just pull the fence over, when you tie it to the fence post, it thinks it can't get away. So

it doesn't try. Exactly. And I think the same thing happens a lot to us. You know, if we grow up under certain circumstances, you know, the metaphorical fence post that we leave ourselves tied to. I've also noticed that I think the point you made about obsessing over the past, it's something that I've definitely been guilty of in my life. It took me a long time to realize that worrying and explaining everything that was ever wrong or any emotional problem I ever had, that can subtly be its own form of avoidance. Yes. You know, it's like really obsessing over, you know, what mom and dad did when I was a teenager and all this horrible thing that happened to me when I was eight years old and oh, that's why I'm always shy around these sorts of people and stuff. It's a way

of generating a sense of progress without actually doing anything different to the original point. Yeah, I like to say that, you know, a lot of people think that coming to therapy, you're coming to know yourself, but I think that you're coming to unknow yourself. And when, I mean by that is that, you know, what you just said about, oh, well, when I was eight, this happened and that's why I'm shy. You probably weren't born shy. You learned that. So the stories that we were told when we're younger were told to us by people who have their own reasons for telling us those stories. So, you know, the parents who said, oh, you won't amount to anything, or you're not smart or you're not pretty or whatever they said. That says more about the

storyteller, the person who told that story, than the person they're talking about you. So you, internalize these stories. And then you said, that's my identity. I'm not good enough in this way. I'm not enough this. I'm not enough that. I'm too much this. And then you get older and you come to therapy and you unknow those stories. So you think, oh, I really know myself. This is who I am. No, that's not, that's who someone told you you are. So the process of discovery and therapy is about who are you really? Let's unknow all that stuff that isn't true, these faulty narratives that you're walking around with. And let's find out what is true. It's the discovering that you were wearing the clothing. I'm going to keep this clothing metaphor going. Okay. Let's see how far we can go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're still wearing that tattered childhood shirt, you know, 20 years later.

It's discovering it's not sufficient. You also need to be able to take it off and put on a new shirt. It never fit. Similar to the question of what makes a good therapy patient. What do you think allows people to take advice well? I've definitely run into, I mean, I'm not a trained therapist. I get emails all the time. get asked at my events, book signings, everything. And I have personally noticed that some people

you give advice and it's like it clicks and they seem to immediately be able to implement it in some way. And then some people, it feels like you're just throwing stuff at a brick wall and it like it just bounces off. And so I'm curious what your perspective on taking advice well and then maybe dealing with somebody who doesn't take advice well. Yeah. It's interesting. In my TED talk, I talk about help rejecting complainers. So those are the people who come to you for help. but they reject every bit of advice you give them because it serves them to be trapped. It serves them to be the victim. We all know people like this.

I've been this person. You've probably been this person. You know, there are times in our lives when we really don't want help. We just want to complain. And that's okay. That's legit. If you just want to complain, that's fine. But then don't keep asking for advice.

So, you know, and I think this comes down to listening. So when somebody comes up to you and somebody that you, know, comes up to you and they tell you like, this happened, I usually ask them, my friends, I would say, you know, how can I be helpful right now? Do you just want to vent? Do you want to hug? Do you want a problem solved together? Do you want my opinion about this? Do you want my thoughts? What do you want? And it forces them to step back for a second and say, I just want to tell you what happened. And then I'm not even going to give advice or try to help because they're telling me, I just want to be heard. I want to be seen. I want to be understood.

And once people feel like, oh, you see me, you hear me, you understand me, that's when they're more receptive to advice. So maybe they'll come back a day or two later, a week, later, a month later, and say, you know that thing that we talked about? I've been thinking about it. And I really would love your opinion about this. So I think it's timing and dosage. Yeah. Right? Like, when is the timing and then how much are you going to share with them about what you can probably see a little bit more clearly because you're not inside the situation?

Yeah. I started to kind of conceptualize it as planting seeds. Like I think early in my career, I was very naive about it. I was like, okay, this guy is emailing me with a problem. Here's my perspective. Here's what I think, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then he'd start arguing with me. And I'm like, well, dude, you came to me.

Like, what the hell? Now I kind of see it as like drop a little seed. Like, here's a perspective. Take it or leave it. It's none of my business. Because what I found over time is that a lot of people would come back like a year or two later. And they say, like, hey, I emailed you two years ago and you responded, and I completely disregarded everything you said.

I thought you were an idiot. I thought you were wrong. But now it's two years later and I realize, yeah, maybe there was something to that. And I just want to say thank you and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. In the therapy room, the way we do that generally is, you know, we might see that this person keeps getting into the same situation over and over. It's kind of like if a fight breaks out and every bar you're going to, maybe it's you.

So you could maybe see that by like session three. Sure. Oh, wow. You know, you're dying to say that. Like, what's the common denominator here? So I do want to return to this idea of the holding the bars because you mention that sometimes we get attached to our bars. We start to identify with holding the bars.

Like, that starts to become a part of our identity, how we've been validated throughout our life. And so we develop defense mechanisms to kind of protect seeing ourselves as jailed or imprisoned. You talk quite a bit about defense mechanisms in the book. I'm curious, like, how you go about disarming those or showing a patient or a person what they're doing, making it apparent to them. So defenses are there for a reason. They feel like they're protecting us, but actually they're getting in our way.

So that's sort of the paradox of defense mechanisms. And so you have to go very, very gently because, you know, if someone, if someone feels very vulnerable around something and they're using this to protect themselves, So if you're saying, I'm taking away the thing that makes you feel safe, you can't just take it all away at once. So otherwise, they're just going to put up a huge wall because they're going to say, whoa, danger, danger, danger. So you might just ask a question. Like, I wonder how you make sense of the fact that this keeps happening. It's so gentle, right? So it's not like you're, again, you're not saying the thing if a fight breaks out and everybody you're going to, maybe it's you.

You're saying, I wonder how you think about that. What do you think is happening? And usually it'll be external because that's the defense mechanism. Well, men are like this or women are like this or my mom is like this, right? Okay. And then, you know, what do you think that is going on with the other person or what do you think, what happens for you inside when that happens, right? Just getting them to self-reflect a little more, but in a safe way. And the more they can self-reflect, the less they need.

that defense mechanism to keep me, as the therapist in the room, away. And then the more they feel comfortable with me, the less they're going to need that defense mechanism with other people. Therapy is kind of like it's a dress rehearsal. It's a place to kind of try on different ways of being that you don't have a lot of practice with. And once you feel comfortable doing it there, you can do it outside. I often get questions from people who want to change.

or fix somebody in their life. I'm sure you get the same question all the time as well. Where I run into it is I hear a lot from people who say, you know, it's either an ex or a partner or a friend who their life's a little bit of a mess. And this person is very, very attached to the idea of saving them or fixing them or changing them. They ask me, they're like, what do I say or what do I do?

so that they, this person in my life will realize that they're wrong or that they should change. And I, first of all, I don't answer those questions, but second of all, so nobody write those in. There are a lot of questions I don't, I don't answer, Lori. But it's, but second of all, I always, it always, when I do run into those people in my, in person, I'm always, like, I tell them, like, be very careful because there's a very fine line between wanting to support somebody and kind of a toxic rescuer, saver dynamic, right? Yeah.

Like a codependent enabling of that person. So I'm curious what your take on that situation is. And if somebody comes to you wanting to change or fix somebody in their life, like what is your default response to that? So you can't change another person, but you can influence another person by doing something different. You know, we were talking about the dance. before people come to couples therapy with me, instead of asking them what the problem is in the

relationship, what I say is, I want you, before they agree to come, I won't see them if they don't do this, that each person separately has to come up with a goal about what they want to change in themselves to be the best possible version of themselves in this relationship. Interesting. So it's not about whether the other person's going to do anything different. It's if I am being my best self in this relationship, I'm going to learn a lot about myself. I'm going to be acting in alignment with my values and how I want to be in a relationship. And so each person comes up with a goal and their focus solely on their goal as we talk about whatever's not working in the relationship.

Interesting. And I think that that's really important. And I think that the reason that people can't change other people is partly because it's really controlling and nobody wants to be controlled. But another reason is that it's hard for us to change ourselves. How do we imagine we're going to change someone else when we think about, and the reason that it's so hard for us to change is because people think that it's like you make a New Year's resolution, you decide you're going to do it, and you change, which is why they don't work. In the book, I talk about the stages of change.

And it starts with, you know, people don't even realize that they're ready to make a change. So it starts with pre-contemplation where you are not aware that part of you is getting getting ready to make a change. You're thinking about making a change. That's pre-contemplation. Contemplation is you're aware now. I need to make a change, but I'm not quite ready to do it. Preparation is when you start taking steps to make the change. What do I need to do to prepare to kind of, you know, set the table to do this? And then action is when you're making the change. And a lot of people think that that's the end. That's action. You're doing it. You either succeed or you fail. No. The most important stage of change is the last one,

which is called maintenance. And it's how do you maintain the change? And the biggest misconception about maintenance is that if you slip back, you have failed. That maintenance is about, you just maintain it. It's smooth sailing. No, you have all these other ways of being that we're familiar to you. And we cling to the familiar. Change is like you've been plopped into like this foreign country. You don't speak the language. You don't know the culture. You don't know anyone there. and you're supposed to suddenly just be okay and assimilate or be, you know, be able to function in this world. Of course not.

It's totally new. Like you're going to fall back. But when you fall back, the question is, what do you do? Do you self-flagellate? Do you tell yourself your failure and you can't do it? Or do you have self-compassion? And people think, oh, if I have self-compassion, I'm not going to hold myself accountable. It's the opposite.

If you have self-compassion, then you're not in this shame spiral. And then you can really reflect and say, what happened right before I ate the thing I wasn't going to eat or I acted this way in my relationship when I said that I wouldn't. I called that person at 3 a.m. and I said I was breaking up with them, right? Yeah. Like what happened right before? Oh, now I understand that a little bit better. Next time I'm going to do this instead and that will help. Totally. It's acknowledging the problem, but not judging or shaming for the problem simultaneously, which is weird because it's like it's an ability. to let yourself feel bad, but not feel bad about feeling bad, right? It's like, you're not a bad person

because you messed up, but you messed up, you know? So it's like, let's work on it. What can we do better next time? And my industry and my world, it's the maintenance piece is the big piece. Because generally, anybody who comes to a book or a podcast like mine, they're already trying to change. They're already doing something. And it's the maintenance level that is really, really difficult. and that inevitable slide back to old habits. What you were saying about how change has second and third order effects throughout, you know, it's like ripple effects throughout all of your life that you don't expect and that are really hard to deal with.

Like I quit drinking about a year ago. No, year and a half ago. Originally just to lose weight, but it ended up being like kind of an epiphany of like, oh, wow, this was a problem in my life and my life so much better without. it, it was very surprising to me that I, how much of how many areas of my life that it extended to that I didn't expect. Like I thought, you know, dinners and parties were just going to be a little bit more boring for a few months. And it turned out that like it made me reevaluate friendships. It made me reevaluate hobbies. It made me reevaluate my work. Like what I wanted to

spend my time working on, what I wanted to spend my time doing, what I wanted to pursue. And so it was like very jarring and rattling and I wasn't completely like prepared for it but and thankfully I'd like a good support network around me to like help me kind of work work through it and process it but I think it's something that's very very underestimated that like the the ripple effects that happen with any sort of substantial change that you make in your life and dealing with those repercussions afterwards. That's so true. So many times in fact the people around you don't want you to change. Yes. Because then you're holding up a mirror to them, like with drinking, for example. I see this all the time. But, you know, or someone decides

they're going to exercise. Why do you wake up so early in the morning now? Like if you're like, usually I see this with partners. One person decides to get healthy. And the other person is like, why do you get you? You know, you wake me up when you get up early. Why do you have to do this? And, you know, this was our time together. And it's really just because they start to think, well, now I see my partner getting healthy. Now my partner looks really hot. I'm a little bit threatened by that, but also that means that I really have to look at the fact that I'm doing nothing for myself. It's, yeah, the partner thing is wild. I mean, I'm very fortunate in that my wife and I, we kind of both jumped on the health train around the same time. But again, so many things you don't think about.

The attractiveness thing is one. The other one is you don't realize like how much of the quality time with your partner is spent during meals. And so if you're like, you know, you're, you know, eating rabbit food out of like some mail order service or whatever to like lose weight. Now you're not having those meals with your partner. You know, now you're not going to your favorite restaurant anymore. Now you're not, you know, maybe your favorite thing was to make cocktails and watch movies together. Now you're not doing that anymore either.

And so there, again, those reverberations happen within the relationship and you have to be very communicative. You know, my wife and I, we had to sit down and be like, well, you know, she's got all these diet restrictions now and I'm not drinking anymore and I've got some diet restrictions and we can't go to half the restaurants we used to go to. So, like, what are we going to do together? We need to find other things to do together now to still enjoy our time together and have quality time and all that.

Yeah, and I also think it's also about balance that, you know, some people, when they make a change, they go really in one direction. Yeah. And then they sort of lose sight of, well, maybe I can have some of this in my life. I, you know, it might not be around drinking or whatever it is. But, you know, I think that some people, they decide they're going to make.

a change and they feel like the only way to really make that change is to do something very extreme. And what people tend to find in the long term is that something in between tends to work best. Yeah. It's more sustainable. One thing that's like I think non-obvious to us as humans is that it's the James Clear thing. Small change is compound over a long period of time and it's much more sustainable that way. It's better to change 1% every day for 100 days than try to be a completely different person tomorrow because that's not going to work. And also, I think, think that we underestimate joy. Wait, we're supposed to be happy.

It's like, why are you making this change if it's making you miserable? So you have to say, wait a minute, what part of this am I miserable because I'm missing something unhealthy because that can happen? Like, I need to get out of this toxic relationship. Okay, so I'm miserable because I miss the toxicity of this relationship, right? Well, that's a good, that's a good misery to be in because you're not going to be in misery for a long time. You're going to start to get healthier.

Yeah. But with other things, sometimes. people deny themselves so much pleasure that they start to say, you know, why am I making this change? Like, we only have a certain number of years on this planet. Obviously, I want to be healthy. I want to be emotionally, physically, spiritually, however, you want to be healthy. But is that going to require me to give up everything that I love? No. For sure. I'm curious, in all the years, as time has gone on, you know, there's a lot in the news these days about mental health crisis, technology, Gen Z.

I'm curious, as someone who's been in this field for a couple decades now, have you seen a change in the issues that patients come in with, the way they talk about them, the way they experience them? I feel like because of the column and because of the Dear Therapist podcast, we get, you know, thousands and thousands of letters from people all over the world. So it's almost like scientific data, or I should say unscientific data. Totally. But it's like if you wanted to do a study.

of what issues people were dealing with, just go to the inbox of the podcast or the column. Because it's so interesting, people are dealing with so many of the same things, no matter where they live, no matter how old they are, no matter what gender they are. It's fascinating. And it's so funny because I think that people think

that other people are not going through similar things, especially men. I would say men so often think that other men are not going through similar things. And so in the privacy of the therapy room or in an email where they make up some, you know, other email because they don't even want to be identified. They're getting like something at hotmail.com. Yeah, yeah. Right? It's like, I know that you just created that to send in this letter.

But it's really interesting because when men come into therapy, often they'll say, you know, I've never told anyone this before. And they think it's so unique to them that no one else in the world, like they would be so ashamed if people knew this about them. And then the thing that they tell me is something that like women discuss at lunch, right? So, so, so, and also when women come in and they say, you know, I've never told anyone this before, they'll say, except my mother, my sister, my best friend. So they've told like one, two, three people because in our culture, there's so much stigma for men around talking about, like, whatever they're going through. And yet, the things that they say are so universal. And I wish men could know that, that whatever that thing is that they've

never told anyone before, I've heard it thousands of times before. Yes. From people that if you looked at on this, you'd be like, I want to be like, that guy. He's amazing. He's so cool. And it's like, do you know he's dealing with something very similar to you? But our culture is so strange about this. Like when I see couples and I see all kinds of couples, but if I'm seeing like a man and a woman, right,

usually it's the woman who drag the guy there and she's like, I want to feel closer to you. I feel like we're so disconnected. And so he opens up in the therapy room to her. And let's say he tears up or he's. starts crying. She does this thing where she kind of freezes and she looks at me. Like, I don't feel safe when you don't open up to me. That's why I brought you here to therapy, but I don't feel safe when you're that vulnerable with me either. So what is that about? And I think we have to be really aware, just all of us, that if we want to give men the space

to open up, we have to literally deprogram ourselves around what it means. Yeah. I actually started my career writing for men, for young men in particular, dating advice. And I told them, open up, share your feelings, share your thoughts. And you can do it in a way that's not wishy-washy. You know, you can state with confidence how you feel or what you think about something or if you're attracted to a woman. Like, it's not, the world's not going to end. But I've definitely experienced that firsthand. I mean, to this day, I get hundreds and hundreds of emails from young guys. Like you said, you know, they'll write me this page-long email. detailing some horrible thing they're going through, and you can tell that they think they're the only

one. Yes. It's, I have found that to be true in general. First of all, I love the unscientific data, because I've gotten the same thing over the years. It's just thousands and thousands of emails from readers, life problems all over the planet, every gender, every age. And you really see that there's like half a dozen categories, like 99% of problems fall underneath half a dozen categories, whether you're a woman in Pakistan or an old man in Canada,

like everybody's kind of worried about the same things. But I think what ultimately comes down to is this question of we all want to love and be loved. Yeah. And so no matter what the scenario is, and people will write, you know, just like their idea, they'll write these very long, detailed play-by-plays of here's this happened and that happened and this person said that and then I did this. And it's like at the end of the day, what this person is saying is, am I lovable? you know, how can I be loved? How can I be understood? How can I be seen? I've kind of come to the

conclusion after many years. I rarely, I don't reply to very often. Usually when I do, it's because I've noticed that so many emails that I get, it's almost like people just want permission to feel the way they feel. Yes. Or they simply want to be reassured that it's okay, that it's okay to be sad or it's okay to have their heartbroken. I got an email the other day from a woman from the side of the world who was accepted into a graduate program in the U.S. But she's very close with her family. And it was this two-page long thing, you know, about, oh, my mom is like this and my dad were so close and all this.

But I really want to go, you know, and it's just you could feel the tension and anxiety. And, you know, she was like, am I crazy? Like, is this bad? Am I a bad person? And I was like, no, you love your family. And you're really excited about this program. Of course you feel this way. This is completely normal.

She sent back a reply. she was like, oh, thank you, you know, like so relieved. And it's just, I feel like a lot of times we just need to, like you said at the top of the show, like be validated, have our feelings validated. Like it's be reassured that we're not crazy for thinking or feeling something. And I think a lot of people, first of all, they just want permission to be human. Like, of course you're going to feel the push and pull of that. Yes.

I want this and I love my family and they're going to miss me and I really want to do this. It's both and. I think that's so helpful that there are all these places now where people can see they're not alone and they can get help even if it's not for that specific thing, they can take those lessons. Because like you said, things fall into like these 12 buckets and so do the lessons. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk.

Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. So this raises a little bit of a conundrum that I have not figured out. Like, I don't know where I land on it. And I'm curious to hear your perspective on it. I agree with you. The awareness of these topics, mental, emotional health, relationships,

I mean, you can get on any social media platform, find amazing advice from doctors and psychologists. You can listen to amazing podcasts. You can, there's more books than ever written about these topics, and they're selling more than ever. And yet, the mental health statistics continue to deteriorate. So I'm not sure what to make of that. Yeah. You know, I mean, I feel a little bit conflicted about this because I feel like on the one hand, it's great that people are talking about mental. health. On the other hand, the way they're talking about it is really dangerous. Everybody thinks

they've experienced trauma. That's something that you can't say, and I'm saying it anyway, but you can't say that as a therapist, that, no, that's not really trauma because the person will say, well, to me, it was very traumatic. And so, you know, how do you define trauma? But I think that because of social media, you know, everyone is a narcissist who has disagreed with you. Everyone is gaslighting you because they have a different view of something. True, there are narcissistic people out there, but very few, statistically speaking, really meet the diagnostic criteria for narcissism. You know, in my book, I read about this person, John, who probably does meet the diagnostic

criteria for narcissism, but I don't even think of him that way. I just think this is the way he defends himself. But most of the people that you see on social media, when they describe the situation, that person's not a narcissist because they didn't ask about you. Well, it could be a little bit self-absorbed or maybe that was, you know. They're having a bad day. Yeah, exactly. Like, who doesn't have a personality disorder?

You know, like meet the criteria for one on like their worst day. Yeah. Right? You know, not their finest moment. But I do think, obviously, people do have personality disorders, but they're more rare than people imagine. And social media is making it seem like, you know, everyone is gaslighting you. everyone's a narcissist, everyone's toxic, and the solution is cut them off. Yeah. And so there's never

this kind of what we call rupture and repair. So there's sort of the hallmark of relationship is there's a rupture. You feel misunderstood. You feel hurt. You misunderstood somebody else. You hurt them. How do you repair it? It's not about whether people are going to argue or fight or disagree. It's about how do you repair a rupture in a relationship. And if you don't know how to do that and your response is, well, I'm going to cut that friend out of my life. I'm going to cut that family member out of my life. There are times when, yes, that might be the solution that works best, but let's see first. Let's see what is possible when you approach somebody with the intention of repairing. Yeah.

So I think that all this, you know, all this sort of talk of mental health when you say, oh, it's skyrocketing, I think a lot of more people are reporting different things that maybe are just sort of like what it's like to be a person in the world. Yeah. I'm glad, I'm really glad you brought this up because there's something called the the prevalence inflation hypothesis, which is basically the more mental health issues get talked about. There's a concept creep. I was hanging out with a friend a few weeks ago, and I'm trying to remember what it was

like her flight was delayed. And she was like, oh, it was traumatic. And I was like, that's what I'm talking about. I was like, really? Really? Trauma? Like, oh, I can't. It was awful.

You know, spent the night in the airport. It was traumatic. Yeah, it was a pain in the ass. That's really different from it was traumatic. It sucks. It sucked. It sucked. It sucked.

I remember when I was in medical school, whenever we would study a new disease, we would all think we had it. It was like, oh my God. I mean, at one point I was like, I think that I have a swollen lymphoma. No, just I haven't been sleeping enough. There's been some research around this, which is that if you talk about mental health issues to people enough times, they will start rationalizing ways that they might have it. And they'll start projecting it into their own experience more often. And it is an interesting phenomenon. And I do think social media, there's something, and I feel weird about this because it's back when I started, you know, my career kind of blew up on social media in 2011, 2012. And one of the reasons I blew up was I was one of these guys

out there talking about vulnerability, mental health, boundaries, you know, emotional health, all these things. And it's, those things have kind of become cool and trendy now. and part of the common vernacular. And if you go on TikTok now, it's like there are viral memes of kids bragging about how neurodivergent they are and stuff like that. And so it makes me worry that just human nature is such that if you discover you're going to be validated for something, you start looking for ways that you can be that something. Well, here's the perfect example.

So people go on Instagram or wherever they go and they say, you know, I'm sharing this with all of you guys. I'm being so vulnerable, you know, hashtag vulnerable. And because they know they're going to get so much validation for that. And everyone's like, that was so brave of you. That was courageous. That is not the definition of vulnerability. Yeah. So what I think you were doing was trying to say,

this is what vulnerability actually is I'm educating you about this. That's different from people doing performative vulnerability. And so performative vulnerability is I'm going to get so much validation for this thing where I'm talking to strangers and I'm posting this thing that's curated. and I know exactly how it's going to go. And what's interesting is that these are the same people who maybe, because I see them in therapy, right? And I know what they're posting. They'll talk about it.

And there's this big difference between there's this gap because they cannot actually be vulnerable with someone in their own lives. True vulnerability is I'm sitting here with someone who I know well and I'm going to take off the mask. I'm going to say something that is really hard for me to reveal about my. or about something that is difficult in the relationship to someone where the stakes are high. There are no stakes on social media. You don't get the like from this one. It doesn't matter how many likes you get. Yeah, you feel like those stakes are high.

But they're not as high as this is a person I'm in a relationship with. And I'm going to reveal something about myself. And I'm still going to want to be lovable. Yeah. That's true vulnerability. So I wrote a men's dating advice book back in 2011. And one of the cornerstone concepts of it was vulnerability. You know, be open.

Share your feelings. Tell the women you're dating, how you're feeling, what you think, what you want, et cetera. And it was funny. I used to get so many emails from guys who were like, hey, man, I tried that vulnerability thing. Totally didn't work. Didn't get laid at all. This is bullshit. You know, like, come on, guys.

You kind of miss the intentionality of what is the, yeah. But I also think that there's an. asterisk that comes with the vulnerability, which is choose your audience well. And so, you know, people think, well, I'm going to be open with everyone. No, that's insane. Why would you do that? You can be vulnerable with someone you have come to trust. Yes. Someone, you know, and trust isn't something like you just trust them or you don't. It's like, what have the behaviors been? Yes. And I always say at the beginning of a relationship, it's really important to evaluate these kind of things slowly. So, you know, I think about how cement dries. And so when you're getting

to know someone, whether it's a friendship or romantic relationship, cement dries pretty fast. So a lot of people will say like, yeah, this person, they didn't call me when they said they would or they were late. I didn't really like that. But I let it go because, you know, I can address that later. No, the cement is drying. When you can address that is when the cement is still wet. Yeah. And so now you can say, you know what? I noticed you were late. It really bothered me. Can you try to be more on time and see if they're responsive to that. You know, the time to do that is not after they've been late for three months and now you're like, I don't like it when you're late. Versen's like, I've been late for three months. You never cared about that before.

Yeah. I think what gets missed too is that by definition, part of vulnerability is the acknowledgement that you might be rejected. Yes. That it might not be received. And you need to be okay with that when you express whatever you're going to express. And it's if you go into it, thinking, of it as a tactic that's going to get you what you want, then that by definition is not vulnerable. That is, you know, you're... It's a manipulation. It's manipulation. Yeah. Yeah. And I think about that with boundaries too. You know, so many times people will say, this person didn't respect my boundary. The boundary isn't about what they're going to do. The boundary is with yourself. So the boundary is like, if you yell at me, I'm going to leave the room. If you, you know, if mom,

you're critical, I'm going to leave the room. You know, if you can't come on time, I'm I'm not going to, I'm not going to set up plans with you. But you have to keep the boundary with, it's not about, you have to leave the room. You have to leave the room. It's consistency. You have to leave the room every time. We had someone on the podcast who we gave this exercise to with her father of, you know, if you bring up this thing about whether my boyfriend and I are going to get married,

I'm going to leave the room because I enjoy spending time with you. And when you do that, I'm not enjoying it anymore. So I'm going to leave the room. And she would leave the room sometimes, but then sometimes not. And so then the person gets the message, like, I can sometimes break the boundaries. So why should I even make the attempt to do that? Which this ties into what you mentioned in passing earlier, which was this propensity to just cut off anybody who bugs us or not going into the repair phase of a relationship and just cutting people out. I do think it is important for people to develop the ability to cut somebody out of their life if necessary.

But if you overuse it or kind of just are flip it about it, you might very quickly find yourself completely isolated. And this ties into the mental health thing, which is the increasing amount of loneliness going on in our country and comes back to ultimately what everybody wants is to feel connection, to feel loved, to feel seen. So if you're cutting people out of your life in the name of mental health,

you might actually be unintentionally reinforcing worse mental health outcomes. You know, a message that we're not getting enough of is every person doesn't need to be everything for you. So, you know, this person might bug you in this way, or maybe this person isn't the person who really is receptive when you want to have a deep conversation, but you absolutely love going on runs with this person or going to a movie with this person or being at a party with this person.

Yeah. Right? That person is really fun in those circumstances. So if you cut them out, you're cutting out this thing that was fun for you in your life. and instead of focusing on what you're not getting from the person, focus on what you are getting and is that enough to keep them in your life in this way? And I think we do that in our romantic relationships too. Like, you know, this person has to like read my mind and rock my world in bed and anticipate

every feeling I'm going to have and know how to respond in every situation. No human can do that. And so then we get upset like this person isn't attuned to me. They're not attentive to me. Well, you need to ask for what you want and also know that they might be having a hard day too. And also I think, you know, there's this sort of shopping mentality that we have around partnership where we think, you know, like, oh, I'm going to have to compromise in these ways with this person and I'm not willing to do that.

Think for a minute about if people were being really honest with you and they weren't telling you how fabulous you were all the time. What would that person need to compromise on to be with you? And realistically, when you think about that, we all can be selfish. We all can be a little blind sometimes. We can be annoying. We can be rigid. In fact, the number one quality that predicts whether somebody's going to be a good partner is flexibility.

How flexible can they be? You don't want to be with a rigid partner. It's really hard. And what the mental health stuff out there is saying is be really rigid. Yeah. Be super boundyed. And Boundreed is synonymous with rigid. You can't be rigid if you want to have relationships.

Yeah. We had Oliver Berkman on the podcast a couple months ago, and he's got this thing that he says that I love, which is, he says sometimes the friction is the point, which is sometimes it's those little unpleasant, obnoxious parts of life. I mean, he uses it in the context of everything, but I think it's especially true in the context of relationships,

that it is kind of suffering through those little obnoxious things about people that ultimately makes you feel closer to them, right? Yes. There's a psychologist. I'm a big fan of named Robert Glover. He has a great quote where he says, we fall in love with people's rough edges. We fall in love with the imperfections and the inconsistencies in people.

And I think if our expectations of people both in friendships and romantic relationships become too inflated, then we're not willing to tolerate any sort of. inconvenience or discomfort and we rob ourselves of that the chance of that intimacy. Yeah. And the reality is we marry our unfinished business. We just do. So we are attracted to something that reminds us of something from a long time ago. And so then we get mad when the person does the thing that our unconscious was drawn to in the first place. So more prevalence, more social acceptance, a little bit of a double-edged sword. on the prevalence. Well, especially because, so one thing that I find really not helpful is when

there are people who go to therapy and all they do is talk about their therapy. That therapy is not working. Yeah. Because you're supposed to use the therapy to help yourself out in the world, not to just talk about, you know, my therapist said this, my therapist said that. You wouldn't believe what happened in therapy this week. I always say to people, you know, if you want to find a good therapist, word of mouth is really helpful, meaning, ask someone who has a good therapist if their therapist has any recommendations for you. But don't ask the person who is the person who's like, oh, my, I love my therapist so much. My therapist said this, my therapist, that there's something going on there that person is not progressing. Yeah. So you want to just look at someone

who you think, wow, you know, I knew that person a couple of years ago when I've seen them make a lot of changes in their lives. I wonder if they're in therapy. Do you think, Therapy is one of those things that you can judge the success of it by the people who leave. Yes. In fact, we have the worst business model ever. But it's great because our goal, but it's the opposite, right? And I think that's where you get, you know, the reason that lots of us don't have any room in our practices is because people are leaving all the time, but that's why people want to come to us. Because they don't want to be the people. people who are just there all the time and they never leave. So our goal from the first day is to

figure out what is this person here for? What is their goal in being here? And it's a specific goal. And then, you know, when we get to that goal, we bring it up. If your therapist is not bringing up, hey, I think you're doing really well with this thing you came in for. Is there anything else that we should be talking about or is it time to say goodbye? Yeah. And saying goodbye might mean we're saying goodbye right now and then something else happens like you have a baby or you get married or you you have a new job situation you know something's going on in your life or you're feeling anxious and you need to come back that's great come back we'll work on that but this idea that therapy is just something that you do and you never leave that's certainly i i don't think the purpose

okay what is the best indication to a patient that it's time to go if you keep coming in and nothing's coming up for you, you know, and you're sort of like talking about, again, sort of the problems of the week, I as a therapist would say, hey, I wonder what we're doing here. What are you wanting to accomplish? And they might say, yeah, I'm so relieved. You said that. Patients should be able to say that, hey, I feel pretty good right now. I might come back. I don't know. People generally do. Yeah. But right now, I'm just. I feel like I want to take a little break or I want to go to once every two weeks. I want to come in once a month and see how things are going.

You can bring that up. People are so afraid. They feel like, well, I'm going to hurt my therapist's feelings. No, you're not. That's really the highest compliment is I feel like I'm doing really well. Yeah. That is music to our ears. Has the book success affected your practice at all?

It really hasn't. You know, it's interesting when, so in the book I talk about how I was supposed to be writing a book about happiness. and how the happiness book was making me depressed, literally. It was funny how that works. It was funny how that happened because it felt like I was talking about things from at arm's length, like here's all the studies and here's the science and here's all this. And what I have the privilege of doing as a therapist is I get to see the human condition

as it happens. This isn't the things we talk about at dinner parties or on social media. This is the stuff that matters most to people and that we talk about the least. And I feel like, wow, I get to see all this and nobody else really gets to see it and hear it. And it's not people think, oh, isn't it depressing hearing all these stories of pain? I think it's incredibly uplifting and inspiring because people are making positive changes in their lives. And they're incremental. They're small.

And over time, they're huge. So I really wanted to show. So maybe you should talk to someone, I follow the lives of four very different patients. again, every single person who reads the book says, I related to every single one of these people, even though they're very different from me. I'm the fifth patients in the book. I go to therapy because, like I say at the beginning, you know, my greatest credential is that I'm a card-carrying member of the human race that I know what it's like to be a person in the

world. And I really wanted to show that we all are so similar. And so when the book came out, the problem was when I decided not to do the happiness book, my publisher said, oh, no one's going to read the book that you're describing that you would like to write. And I said, well, I want to write it anyway for the three people who will read it. Because I just, I felt like I really needed to do something meaningful and the happiness book was not going to be meaningful to me. And so I turned in the book. I was very raw in the book. I didn't hold back in the way that I would have if I knew that right now two million people

have read it more than two million. I would have been like, oh, let's edit that out. Wait a minute. I'm not sure I should really reveal this. But I think that the reason is that it's resonated so widely is because I was really authentic. I didn't hold back. I didn't edit myself. And I think that, you know, when you asked, did my practice change? I think that people are not coming to me because they want to talk about whatever I revealed in the book. They're coming because they want that authentic experience. Yeah. You know, therapy is a relationship. In fact, the most important factor in the success of therapy, study after study shows, is your relationship with your therapist. It matters more than the training that they have, the number of years of experience they have, the theoretical orientation

that they use. All of it matters. Don't get me wrong. That matters. But it doesn't matter as much as the relationship. And I think that they know that when they're coming to me or people who practice like me, that they're getting that authenticity. And that's going to be most helpful for them. Yeah. So you've got the book. You've got the podcast. What's next? I am. We're going to go into season five of the Dear Therapist podcast. I'm still writing the Atlantic column. And I am writing a new book. Is it the happiness book? And it is not the happiness book.

It's a book that I actually want to write. Good. Yeah. But you can't share anything about it yet too early. No, but we are making a TV series of maybe you should talk to someone. Oh, cool. Kristen Bell is starring. Nice.

I'm very excited. Yeah. And Jason Ketams, who he wrote, he did Friday Night Lights. He did Parenthood. He's writing the series. So I'm very excited. Congrats. Thank you.

Amazing. Yeah. And hopefully we won't do those other kinds of portrayals of therapists. We really want it to be more like the book. You won't have the big couch and the guy laying down. Yeah. Yeah, I hope not. Well, it's great meeting you.

There's great meeting you too. Thanks for the conversation. Thanks so much for coming on. Hey, thanks for listening to my episode with Lori Gottlieb. If you got something out of it, please be sure to follow the show and leave a review on whatever platform you listen on. So, until next time, This is Mark Manson. Over and out.