Tara Brach - Heart to Heart: A Conversation Between Dan Gottlieb and Tara Brach (2020-12-16)

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

Heart to Heart: A Conversation Between Dan Gottlieb and Tara Brach (2020-12-16) - This very real and human interchange touches on pain, loss, love, gratitude and much more.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. I am honored to be introducing to you Dr. Dan Gottlieb. And I say his name formally, Dan's a very close heart friend, a dear friend. He's been a psychologist for about five decades and many of you know him as a public radio host, Voices in the Family from Philadelphia, super popular call-in radio show. That's been for over 30 years to stop last year, I think it was. And you also know him probably as the author of letters to Sam and the wisdom we're born with and he's got a new one coming out soon, so stay attuned. So if you're not familiar with, then you will discover as I have. He's got just this wonderfully warm, bright heart. So, welcome to you, Dan.

Oh, thank you, Tara. It's so good to be with you. I've been so looking forward to this. Yeah, yeah. So, Tom, just to start, just to share, how's your heart today? How are you? How's my heart today? It's very open and loving at the moment being with you. I mean, seeing your smile, feeling your heart, feels tender and open and loving. When I was practicing just now, I just experienced myself holding my tender heart. So that's how I am today at the moment. That sounds really lovely. So I have a lot of things that, as you know, because I've been

emailing you, a lot of things I thought would be really juicy for us to explore together. But the place that I wanted to start is, to me, the one that jumps out is that you have more well-being, more happiness. than most people I've ever met. And I just want to name that there's all this happiness research out now. And it basically says that we humans mispredict what's going to make us happy. We think if we're going to win the lottery or lose weight or get that raise, then we're going to be happier.

And we think if someone dies or relationship crashes or we lose our vision or something, that then we're going to be really unhappy. And research shows we go back to this kind of, set level. Of course, meditation can change a set level, but we go back. So here you are, and you're one of the happiest people I know, and I guess I'd like you to share, because you've endured some of the greatest losses people endure, how you land up being this grateful, happy person, you know, just to share a bit on that. I never was before my accident. P.S., I've kind of history of depression, and I float in and out of it, somehow it doesn't affect my baseline

happiness. After the accident, I told my family that I would give it three years, because I didn't know if I could live with this quadriplegiously for the rest of my life. So I said I'd give it three years, and I would decide then whether I was going to go on or not. I would. I would, at the end of three years, give or take, I sat alone and I asked, negotiated with, I don't know, a higher power or a deeper truth. And I said, okay, I said, I'll live with it. But give me hope that one day I'll walk again. I knew I'll never walk again. And then I said, give me hope that I won't be so sick.

Those first few years I was in and out of hospitals overnight. And I knew that truth, too. No hope. And I said, okay, I'll live with it. I'll do it for the sake of my daughters, my wife, my parents, my sister. and then I thought, well, do it for the sake of my patients and friends. And then I realized I did it because I want to live. I love having a life.

And that kind of changes everything. appreciate living to be grateful just for living. I was in South Africa five years ago, and I was taken to a school for disabled children. Very impoverished, hairy impoverished school. There were kids of all ages with all kinds of, the disabilities, all the teachers were volunteer. The founder of the school, was a very old woman now. She lived in a little hut on the grounds. And every time I saw her, she had a big smile on her.

So she comes out of her hut. One day she's or an a cane. She's bent over with arthritis, obvious pain, and a big smile on her. So I said to her, You always seem to be so happy. Are you? She said, oh, yes, I'm happy. I said, what makes you happy? She said, as long as my hut is clean, I'm happy. Now you set the bar down that low.

You have to win, you know? That one wouldn't work for me. I just can't manage keeping the hut clean. but it's great. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I realized that I asked you that question and there are some people listening that don't really know your story about the accident.

So you may backtrack a little bit and share other lessons you've gotten from it. Well, if you don't mind, I'd like to go back before the accident. I'd like to go back to seventh grade. when my teacher introduced me to psychology. And as I learned about it, I knew I was going to be a psychologist. I wanted to be. I was going to be. That was at 12th.

That same teacher who I idolized sexually abused me on two occasions. And what that did to me was of course like almost everybody who was experiences, that kind of trauma. I felt shame. I had my secret. I felt different. And I felt less than. And I carried that feeling through college and graduate school, through my early career, my kids, my marriage, the sense of they say I'm good, but if they only knew. They say they love me. You know the Montreau Tower. And then I had a car accident when I was 33 years old, 41 years ago. And at first, that didn't do anything for my self-esteem,

of course. It took years. I mean, years of suffering and depression. And, you know, You know the story of the emperor's new clothes where culminates, he's riding around naked, and he doesn't know he's naked? I became like the emperor who knows he's naked and is still okay. If you're naked long enough and you know damn well, there's nothing you can do about it, you adapt, you learn to live with it. And that's what I've done with sexual abuse, with quadriplegia, with all the losses I've experienced, the death of my wife and my sister.

I've learned, I know, when the heart breaks, it heals. It's not magic. I'm not resilient or strong or any of that. I'm human and I'm happy to report that. I know that you have that on your business card. I read that you, Dan Gottlie, human, you kind of left out all the initials. I just put down the important thing. It is the important thing.

And when you say it's being adaptive and you and I were talking about this, it's the great gift of life. that there's some intelligence in life that wants to live no matter what. And I know for myself, my downward spiral with health where I didn't think I was going to be able to move much anymore, my prayer was, please, may I love this life no matter what, no matter how much is taken away. But as with you, what allowed that? Because I was in a period where I didn't know what I didn't know what I didn't think I had any reason to hope for anything. What allowed it was the grief. I had to grieve what I was losing. Just let this body grieve what it grieves, you know. And it was the heartbreak that broke open that I felt a sense of being held by love. And so love made it worth it.

feeling held by love made life worth it. And then I started being able to see the little things. I thought I had to have physical activity, the stuff I used to love, like, you know, running and swimming and so on to be happy. And I found out that I could look at the fern in my bedroom and see the grace of its leaves and be happy or play with my puppy. you know so that's what shifted it and i've gotten better and now i see myself attached again to feeling better and know i will have to grieve again it's not like i've learned how to love life no matter what i'll have to re-grieve losing it happens every round but at least i know the pathway yeah as does your body you know my body knows the pathway that's a better way of putting it yeah

Yeah. I remember reading Tuesdays with Morrie. And as Morrie deteriorated or began to, he said to Mitch album, his student, the author of the book, he said, oh my God, one day somebody's going to have to wipe my ass. And I remember a flash in my mind when you get used to it. I got used to it. I I hated it at first. But you get used to it. It's, you know, this is my life. You know, you get used to it, but I feel like you do more than getting used to things, Dan. So I'm just going to invite something more about this because you really do depend on people. And people depend on you. And when I sense that relational field around you, it feels tender and beautiful.

So it's more than you've gotten used to it. It feels like you live in a real beautiful interchange. Am I projecting? Or is that how it is? No. Those around me do love me. And I feel their love. And I love them.

I mean, my nurses, I'm blessed to have the kind of insurance where I have 24-hour nurses. My nurses, I bit with them through episodes of depression or loss or divorce. I've been with them through their children who have gone through difficulties. And of course, they've been with me. You're right. It's an intimate, tender, caring relationship. But it goes beyond that, Tara.

I feel that way with, of course, Joan, my loved one, my daughters, but my friends, you know, close and far out. I feel love towards that. I found over the course of the last whatever, three, four decades, that love is. habitual, that the more you do it, the easier it is to do. I love it. What you practice grows stronger. I get that. And so here's what I'm wondering. So many people have a hard time letting in love. They just have a hard time letting in love.

And you let it in. Like I can feel you get touched. And you certainly know how to give love. but how do you practice letting in love if it feels so threatening or scary or just impossible? I spent a long time not letting it in because of shame and unworthiness. Tara, I don't have an answer. I really don't. I mean, I'm a therapist. I could make something up. We get enough of it.

made up stuff in this world. No, thank you. I really don't. My heart just did open. I just, I gave up disbelief. Hmm. Hmm. I gave up disbelief. That's really, I mean, what stops us from letting in love is a belief that in some way we're not worthy and something bad will happen. If we let it in, then they'll find out that we're not worthy, that we'll get betrayed. later on. It's habitual, so you let go of disbelief. Yeah, and that fear, it's like love. I mean, you're going to be fearless to love. You know, you could get your heart broken.

To love fearlessly, you know, you have to be willing to risk having your heart broken with confidence. then you'll be okay after like you say Tara after we grieve after you know there's a a Sufi saying goes when the heart weeps for what it's lost the soul rejoices for what it's found that's beautiful yeah yeah sure is yeah I know for myself as I'm you know I'm posing that question to myself I get that when I can be vulnerable you know, if I can just take the chance to be vulnerable, my heart finds out that it's safe. And it doesn't mean being vulnerable with everybody in every situation, but just practice

leaning in that direction. So I feel like when I first started teaching, I presented a much more, I tried to present, a together persona that kind of knew about stuff. And I, like you just did, and I love that you did it, that you modeled, okay, I don't know, you know. And there's something about it being okay to not have the answers. There's something about knowing that the conditioning is still in me to go to sleep in so many ways and to be able to name it out loud and name it. each time I do it, it becomes safer to just let love in and out.

Yeah. You know, back to the emperor's new clothes. You know, I am lucky. I can't hide my vulnerability. I am so lucky in that way. And you know, it's in our hardwiring. my vulnerability brings out the best in people. Vulnerability opens people's hearts.

Look at my riches as a result in that. You're on a fast track. When you can't hide it, you're on a fast track. And I get that. I'm curious, though, because there are a lot of people whose vulnerabilities right out there, and they're very sensitive to how others respond. And I'm wondering if there's anything you can say to me and to us on how we respond to your vulnerability and others that you know of.

One of the chapters in the book I'm working on is call me cripple. Now that's an awful word. I don't care what people call me. I can feel their hearts. So if people call me, whatever the word is, I don't know, disabled these days, differently abled, I don't know. But yet they're doing it in a way

where their heads turn emotionally. Sometimes it hurts. And sometimes I just hurt. sometimes I feel compassion for them and I want to reach out to them to make them feel better and sometimes I'm reactive and I say something and I know when I'm reactive

it's because I'm feeling more insecure at that moment so I get reactive What people need to know when they see someone who's different? It's like to name on my card. I suffer. I want peace in my life. I love.

I want well-being and I want my family to experience love and security. That's all. That's me. Yeah, I'm sitting in a wheelchair and my hands don't work. But the importance, that's me. That's you. Yeah. That's what I'm hearing, that what you want me to see is you're just like me, you know,

that we both are these humans feeling these things. And if I can to not turn away. Those are the two messages I just got. Yeah. Yeah, hold me and I'll hold you. Well, I remember when you shared with me that wonderful piece about the Redwoods and how they're super tall and what allows the Redwoods to stand strong in the storms is they're shallow root systems, but they're all connected. Yeah. And it's like if we get all self-conscious and protective about our vulnerability and don't share it, then we don't.

actually get to recognize and see that it's universal and that when we feel our togetherness, we can become fearless, that that is the way to become fearless. You know, there's a horrible election and sequel I, even before it. What I see on both sides is the argument, the anger on one side, the righteous indigni, indication on the other. You scratch the surface, you see fear, fear of change, fear of loss, even terror that horrible march in Charleston, KKK and neo-Nazis, the phrase was, Jews will not replace us. What's the emotion behind that phrase? Fear. being replaced. So we're all feeling the same thing, but don't know it. It's true. That was one of the things I wanted to talk some about is if there's any one conversation or question that seems

predominant, I can see it on the Saturday satsungs we have. It's like, how do I talk to this person who we have such different views? And I feel really angry. It's like, if they're, if they're that person's view is I shouldn't have to wear a mask, but their view threatens me because then they're not wearing a mask and I'm threatened. How do I have a respectful conversation or whatever the issue is? It doesn't really matter. And I hear you that it's fear. It always is fear when we create separation. I think the big inquiry for us right now with each other is how do we bridge that? You know, how do we bridge it societally and in our individual lives? And I'm just curious if you have people in your circles that have different views that

you're practicing, acknowledging the fears and bridging the separations with right now. Because a lot of us live in very cocoonish type social circles where we don't actually, we don't get involved with people who are thinking and looking different than us? Well, I'm in the middle of that right now with a Facebook friend, a young lady I've known for many years. My friends, the leads I follow, you know, they're all, you know, my political bent,

which is more liberal. And she posts this angry, diatribe against the liberals against Joe Biden. And she said, I've been hearing this enough, this anti-Trump in it. It was an angry, angry monologue. And I wrote back and I said, I can understand your anger. And because I care about you so much, my heart breaks for you that you're this upset, that your nervous system is in this much turmoil. Regardless of the president-elect, the president-elect, it doesn't matter in this moment.

What I care about is you and your body and your health, and I'm so sorry to hear that it's in turmoil at this moment. And when we both settle down, then we can talk. But not when you're in turmoil or when I'm in turmoil or when we're scared of each other. you know, we have to settle down and take that deep breath and let what you said in your meditation tonight was kind of activate that parasympathetic nervous system. You know, the part of the nervous system where we go, it's okay. I'm with you that it's like a two-step in the sense that I feel like we need to do what I call taking a U-turn, a U-turn meaning instead of me focusing on what's wrong with your views and fixating

outward, I go back to my own agitation and upset and fear and anger and find a way to come back home to a place that's more spacious, more caring where I see the others upset and I just care that they're so upset. But first, I need to calm myself so I have the eyes to see. Because when we're reactive, we're in a trance and we're not seeing the whole picture. If I'm reacting to you, I can't remember the human. I'm just reacting to certain conditioning that's coming out. I'm reacting to the way your fear expresses basically. So I feel like we all need to have the kind of heart and mind trainings that let us calm

down enough so we can see each other more truly so we can actually start to understand, how did you come to believe that? We may not ever agree, but at least we can understand more, which actually allows us to not be violent. I wrote a column from Philadelphia Enquirer a long time ago. One of my most popular column, I wrote four words that can save the world. Four words that will cut down on divorce, conflict, international conflict. So what are those four words? Tell me your story. Sit down, look in someone's eyes, and say, tell me your story.

It's such a gift to give someone. And then sit down and listen with, you know, a curious mind and an open heart. It changes everything. You know that. Yeah. It takes a certain consciousness to truly be interested and want to listen and understand. And I think that Tell Me Your Story is our way through. So maybe to bring it to something a lot of people wonder about and struggle with, you have had decades and decades of experience working with pain, physical pain, just real, raw physical pain. And we're so rigged to be afraid of it, Dan, that most people make it the

enemy and leave their body, their heart, kind of leave town when it's painful. What are some lessons, you know, anything you want to share about that? A couple of things. You know, we've talked earlier about how healthy our bodies are, how smart they are. So when we feel acute pain, that pain demands attention, which is a good thing, you know, we deal with it. The problem is when pain becomes chronic, like mind, or living with the sudden death of a loved one, both physical and emotional pain laid up in the same area of the brain. I found with my physical pain that when I first started, when I first started experiencing it, I said to myself, this is agony, I can't live with this, I don't want to live with it,

what if it ever gets better? Great works of fiction. I stopped telling stories. pain is pain that's all it is it's pain it sucks it hurts it my pain doesn't hurt any less

but would I stop telling stories about that it just became pain and boy it doesn't hurt any God knows I don't enjoy it but you know

it's there And it goes. It's, you know, it's, my pain is like the cousin who's a pain in the ass who shows up at your door. You know, they stay as long as they stay and they leave when they leave. And you got to live with it. You know, it's okay. It's a cousin that's familiar. Well, what you're saying totally resonates.

I mean, the stories are what create the suffering. The pain is completely unpleasant, but the suffering. but the suffering, the emotional suffering, comes from the proliferation. Yeah. That trip to South Africa. My daughter was on it with me. And we were in a van and we were driving down a rutted road. And all that movement, I was in agony.

And she sitting across from me watching her father. be in agony. And I saw the look at her face. My heart went out to her. And when we got back, I was okay. I was back to baseline in fairly short order. And she wasn't.

And I put my arms around her. And I realized the difference between pain and suffering. Yeah. I felt pain, she saw. Broke my heart. I'm just listening and taking in, hugging your daughter and caring and feeling her caring and also the way it got tightened into suffering.

So what it makes me think of, Dan, is that you see really clearly how we tell stories and get ourselves in trouble. And you also have this really beautiful eyes. for the basic goodness underneath our storytelling. Like I'm thinking of your daughter and those you engage with, you have this capacity to see goodness and to have other people feel good about themselves when they're with you. And I can speak personally because that's what you do. And I call that being a mirror of goodness. And I love the way you do it. And I just wondered if maybe you'd speak to that a little bit, you know, how that happened.

for you and how that's emerged in your life to be able to offer that to people, all those people calling into your radio show that you made them feel good about themselves. I don't know. I think it starts with my insecurity. When I first started my practice, when people came to me, I was grateful that they came. And when I felt, I was grateful that they came. and when I first started giving lectures, I felt so grateful to the audience for coming to my lectures. And despite the fact that I'm not as insecure, I still feel that gratitude,

feel grateful to you for allowing me to love you. And that's how it feels inside my body. It's just gratitude. You know, love and gratitude. And they all get mushed up in there together. You know, I feel gratitude. Anybody that wants to have a conversation with me, willing to just feel grateful for their trust

if they open up with me. I really feel grateful and honored. You talk about gratitude probably more than most people I know. And that's a beautiful, remarkable thing because you described it. You set your bar at a certain place where you are just like wide open, receptive to life, you know, really, really grateful. Was that like an insight in a flash, or did that gradually unfold over time that you became a grateful type? Yeah, I think it unfolded over time. I think every time,

every time I came close to death, which has been four or five times, I just grew more grateful for life. And I hadn't experienced a couple of weeks ago where I'm sitting in my office and my blood pressure shot up. And when it does, it is. It's my autonomic nervous system and usually signals something's wrong with bladder or bowel, but it's almost always bladder. So I called my nurse and she came up and my catheter got kinked and I was soaked. Back we go into the bedroom. She puts me on the lift, gets me in bed, cleans me up, puts another pair of pants on me. And when it gets three quarters of the way up, my catheter bags sprung the leak.

Off come the pants. She's got to clean me up again. She puts on a third pair of pants. And I go back into my office. She comes into my office later that afternoon. And I said to her, you know, I'm having a really good day. she looked at me and she said why and I said it's been four hours and I haven't peed in my pants you sit at bar that low you gotta be it was true too

I believe it I believe it well you have fun with your life I mean you have fun setting the bar low And you genuinely take in the life that's here and get touched and appreciative towards it. I do. I have fun with my mind, too. Yes. It's like a playground.

I said, I said, Joan, like, whoa. I sent him a text the other day, and I said, I'm sad. So, of course, she calls me right away. And she says, what are you sad about? I said, Joan, I just realized. I'm going to have to spend the rest of my life inside my head. It's a good thing that you and your mind are good bedfellows. Yeah, right.

We should spend a lot of time to get. I have, you know, more than we have time for, but I want to kind of hone in on one that's one thing I've been thinking about and mulling over. That's a big one for me. And it has to do with forgiveness and with how deep our conditioning is to turn on ourselves and be unforgiving. And how, and again, this comes back to our divided society, how blaming and unforgiving we can be. Because it feels to me like we need to soften and open our hearts.

And I think a lot about our prison system in terms of this. I go on to a societal level and the backstory for me is that when I was in college, and this was in 1971 or two or something, I taught yoga in prisons. And I remember getting close to one woman, African-American woman who was part of a leftist type group and she was in prison for a number of years I could not even imagine at that phase of my life. And I was, it just broke me up. I mean, I was actually more than being heartbroken. I was really, really upset, angry about it. Because here she, it's a super bright woman who in her mind was fighting injustice. She hadn't killed anybody or committed violent acts. She had been with others who had.

But here she was and her life was being wasted in this prison. And then over the years I've become aware of how, you know, in the United States, we incarcerate more people than any country in the world, I mean, we're the worst in the world and how heavily weighted it is towards people of color. It's really our, it's like the tool of our hierarchical society to keep people down. And, I mean, basically just the lack of compassion in our society and it's reflected in how we are individually, that we are just so harsh with ourselves and with each other. So this is a kind of a long-winded opening to whatever sharings you might have about it because I'm so upset about our justice system, so upset about how unjust we are with ourselves

and not upset in a way that contracts me as much as just now breaks me open. Yeah, when I feel into it, Tara, I could. I could cry about the injustice. I've treated people who had been in prison and the suffering they endure in there. And somehow they hold on to their humanity and seek redemption and deserve redemption. I did a tent talk at the women's prison

in Wilmington, Delaware. And I get to hang out with the women for most of the day. And a couple of them were there for the rest of their lives. For something they had done 20 years ago, I said, God, what is this? What are we doing? And they've got no hope for parole. Why? Why?

You know, theoretically, you know, we put people away forever, theoretically, we take them off the street forever, we'll feel safer. But you know, the opposite happens. You know, we feel less safe. The more we put people down, the less safe we feel. It breaks my heart. Ultimately, who won't be able to. we want is a sense of security and the wider the net is, the more secure will feel. The bigger our network, the more secure will feel instead of putting our foot literally or metaphorically on a group of people. I did a little research and it starts with Ecclesiastes, not that I'm a biblical skull. Where it said in there, you shall imbue the head of the goat with all the sins of the people and banish the goat forever. The scapegoat, that's the origin of the scapegoat, carrying all the sins of the people. Well, it's really looping back to what you were saying before is that our

violence and the ways we harm each other come out of fear and that the survival brain thinks the thing to do when you're afraid is get rid of what you think the cause is. That's the survival brain. Get rid of those people. If we can just get rid of those people or if we can just get rid of that part of ourselves, then things will be okay. And the wisdom mind knows that it's by embracing, not getting rid of. sometimes it's counterintuitive. You know, a lot of times it is. I'm back to my pain to everybody's pain.

Our instinct is to clench around it, which makes worse. And the invitation is to see that and explore what it means. One of my teachers says, when you meet your edge, soften. it means instead of tightening to just experiment softening and including and saying this belongs until we really are saying this belongs to every part of life as part of our heart. So let me just check with you and sense if there's anything you had kind of hoped we'd touch on or wanted to add or just opening it to you. No, what I really wanted we touched on.

And that's simply that love is the magic sauce. You know, that's the magic ingredient. And the more we have, you know. I was at a place that said they were wheelchair accessible. And I was going down a ramp and my eyes looked over. It was in a club, a comedy club. And my eyes looked over at the audience. there was a step at the end of the ramp.

And my wheelchair seized up and I went flying out and landed on my face. I had a subdural hematoma, retort my neck, my spinal cord. So that my left arm, and you've seen me, left arm's been flying around today. My left arm, my dominant arm, was completely paralyzed and I couldn't move. And I said, I can't do this again. I can't survive. I don't want to losing a third of my body again. I just can't.

And then one day I was laying in bed. And I was thinking in the hospital. And looking at my arm, and then I looked out the window, and I thought about all the people I love. And my body felt warm and larger. And then I thought about all the people who love me. And my body felt so larger. I thought it was going to break through my skin.

And then I looked down at my dead arm and I said, almost out now it's an effing. or look at all the love I have in you. That's the magic sauce. Thank you. I love you, Dan. And I love you, Dan, and I really am imagining friends that are with us right now just to take that in and know that if we could enter this next moment and this next year remembering what we love and remembering the love that's here,

it would ripple out in the most mysterious, powerful, beautiful way to hold our lives, really. So thank you, Dan, from all of us. It's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure in an honor. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.