The Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous Podcast - After Her Disastrous Date, DeAnna Needs Therapy

Episode Date: November 2, 2025

After DeAnna's disastrous blind date, Ben has enlisted the help of Psychologist Dr. Hillary Goldsher to do a deep dive!In this intimate one-on-one, Dr. Hillary is bringing her expertise on divorce and dating! Even if you aren't Famously Available, this session is for anyone single and looking for love.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Johnny Knoxville here. Check out Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, my new true crime podcast from Smartless Media, campside media, and big money players. It's the true story of the almost perfect crime and the Nimrods who almost pulled it off. It was kind of like the perfect storm in a sewer.

That was dumb. Do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, here we go again. We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? Each week, I'm calling up my friends, like Bill Nye, Lily Singh, and Pete Buttigieg, to talk about everything from the space race to movie remakes to psychedelics.

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for redemption, no matter the price. Listen to the Crying Wolf podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I live below a cult leader and I fear I've angered her. Wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader?

Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they might be part of a cult?

Hold up, a real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue, Dakota. Find out how it ends. Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. IHeart Podcasts bring you the ultimate Summer of Love Tree. This is famously available.

Welcome back to famously available. It's your host, Ben Higgins. And this week, I decided to enlist some professional help for our famously available gal, Deanna. After that date, didn't it go so well. I'm bringing in psychologist, Dr. Hillary, Goldscher. To go in deep with Deanna, Dr. Hillary does in-depth work in the arena of relationships,

guiding couples, and individuals in all seasons of life, such as premarital, married, separated, divorce, and high conflict divorce. I've raved about my own experience with therapy, especially after a breakup. So I think this will be really good for Deanna. So ladies, take it away. Hi, Dr. Hilary. I'm Deanna. Thanks for coming in today. I'm here for you to fix me, heal me, and make me better.

Wow. So if I could do that in one therapy session, I would be an incredibly sought after therapist, but I will do my best under the circumstances. So I am a licensed clinical psychologist and I am an expert in relationship stuff. And one of my areas of expertise in particular is divorce and high conflict divorces and co-parenting. And so it may or may not be relevant. You'll have to tell me.

It's pretty relevant, Dr. Hillary. So under that umbrella. of course, is often the world of dating and the unfolding of a new season of relationships in the after marriage. I like to call it the period of time once someone is divorced. So it sounds like, from what I understand, you are square in the middle of that trajectory. You know what? I was having this thought this morning. I was just running through much of my morning. And I was thinking, like, when I talked to you, I was really scared that you were going to be like, okay girl you're not healed you don't need to date you don't need to do these things um and and

i listen i'm an advocate for therapy i believe in therapy i believe in all of the help that you can possibly get i'm in therapy right now and have been over the years um so i don't believe that uh healing just happens that one day you wake up and you're cured because you've done eight sessions with therapists right i believe that healing is a life situation that we are currently being refined to be our best selves. And that is a goal of mine and always has been. But I started running through just kind of my dating history in my own brain this morning. As I was looking at, have I ever really had an example of a healthy relationship? And I don't think that I have, Dr. Hillary, my parents divorced when I was really young. And I would say that they were

absolutely high conflict. So one of the few things that it taught me is what I don't want to be for my own children and oddly enough my ex-husband and I are high conflict we are we are not friends i have a lot of bitterness resentment and hatred towards him and it was it was so interesting because when we were divorcing even though it wasn't something that i asked for i had that mental note that like i don't want to do to my children what my parents did to me so you know i work really hard at not speaking negatively about their father because the truth is our marriage ended, we are no longer together, and I may have my own feelings and some of those can be valid and not, but the truth is my children deserve to have their father and love

their father. That's what they get. I don't want them to carry the burden of the unhealth that took place within myself or with him or within our marriage. So I have really worked very hard and people don't talk about that. Co-parenting with someone that you absolutely hate. You know what I mean? Or how difficult that is with the history between us and stuff. So long story short, I started running through the gamut in my own head of relationships. My parents divorced when I was very young and it was very toxic. I watched them fight a lot. I have dated throughout my life. I am no spring chicken. I am 43 years old. And I started looking at some of the relationships that I have been in. And I don't know that they were good examples of what a healthy, loving relationship looks like.

And then before I got married, you know, and I have a history on television. I literally went on a dating show, which is a whole other session here, Dr. Hillary. But I believe that I was a securely attached woman when my ex-husband and I met. I had a very healthy outlook on relationships and what they should be like. And somewhere along the way, I became. a very anxiously attached woman. I clung to a marriage on hands and knees some days. And I don't know now looking back that it's the anxious attachment that was triggered at the time. But it's so funny because I have done a DSM 5 since and I have been evaluated and I actually scored really well.

My anxiety and my CPTSD is significantly lower. I'm no longer living in a fight or flight, but that I also, again, several years after my divorce, tested as a securely attached woman. But sometimes I wonder what is still broken because I haven't, I don't know that I know what a healthy relationship looks like. So I'll let you take it. Yeah. We brought up so many important, nuanced issues that I'm really happy I have a chance to talk about, which is. So two things can be true at the same time, which is often the case in life. but in this circumstance, I'm sure it's true that under certain circumstances and in certain seasons of your life, you are clearly a securely attached person. You test it as much and

you know yourself well enough to sort of endorse that that has felt true at seasons in your life. And it sounds like at other seasons, it's pivoted. And that often happens under the umbrella of trauma. What I mean is this. If it's true that you came from a family where there was a high conflict example as your primary model for a relationship, a high conflict divorce. I imagine there was some version of, and I'm careful with this word, but some version of trauma as a child of divorced parents and witnessing those kind of dynamics, right? And so you'd be pulled to internalize a more anxious or avoidant attachment style. It sounds like an intersection of your own disposition, just like how you came into the world and the therapeutic work that you have done, land in you,

in a place of secure attachment, at least having the skill set to show up that way. But under stress and duress, trauma returns, trauma responses return sometimes. And we're much more vulnerable to show up sort of immersed in the old patterns that are rooted in trauma. And so for you, I think both are true that you can and are securely, can be and are a securely attached person, but under stress and duress, that old pull for those old patterns and the things that you witnessed and saw might show up without you even realizing it until, to your point, you're out of fight or flight, you're out of your nervous system being so activated

that you then have an opportunity to be outside of your feelings versus in them. I really appreciate that, Dr. Hillary, because I was afraid I was going to leave here today and you were going to diagnose me with borderline personality disorder, severe depression, schizophrenia, whatever is on the gambit, you know, because there are times where I have felt like in and I know this now through a lot and I've done a lot of trauma work in particular that that I have felt nuts and I do know that women of emotional abuse or narcissistic abuse we tend to look at us and go okay I'm I'm crazy something is wrong with me I ended up in therapy and I kept looking at my therapist going what's wrong with me I am crazy there's there's something wrong

here please fix me something is wrong and I've done enough work to know that it's not always me I'm not saying that I didn't add to. I am not perfect by any means. But I do know that I don't have to carry the responsibility of all of it anymore. So I am joking when I say that, that you were going to leave here and tell everybody on famously available that I'm absolutely not saying to take me. But there are pieces for me to carry.

And that is why I have done so much work and so much therapy on myself is because my goal in life, my prayer to my higher power is like, I want to be a good woman. I want to be a good mother and eventually a good partner. Like I do really want that. I do really want a great, great love. And the other big piece, Dr. Hillary, is I don't want to make the same mistakes that I have made in the past. I don't live a life of regret. I obviously have two really beautiful, wonderful children. There is a reason my ex-husband and I came together and connected. Sometimes I have a really hard time finding those. But I have two wonderful children.

There is a purpose in life that he and I were supposed to be together. We were supposed to have these really great children. And I just believe that there is something guiding me to different things. And in order to get to those things, I am a constant work on myself. and refinement because that is the truth, I want to be better. I want to be healthier. I don't want to make the same mistakes. I do not want to dismiss the same red flags and a relationship ever again. Yes. I mean, it is, it may seem paradoxical, but it's a very empowering stance that you're describing, which is acknowledging that every dynamic is co-created, right? Every time. Like, even if all we contributed, I'm putting like, all we contributed in quotes, is to

stay longer than we should have, right? Even if that's it, that's still a dynamic that we bring. Yes. And so in your circumstance, when a relationship is painful and high conflict, and we have resentment and history of toxicity, being able to understand what your part is and what you created is critical. It's not about blame or shame. It's about empowerment and self-reflection and understanding. So I really like the way that you're talking about it. And the really nice thing about where you've arrived. And I highlighted this earlier, but I think it's so important. It's one of the keys in my view to psychological health, which is the ability to be inside the feeling or outside the feeling. And when you're looking at your therapist and saying,

what's wrong with me? Why did I do that? Why did I say that? What did I show up that way? If that's part of what you were conveying, that's you at that moment, inside the feeling, right? We're angry. We're hurt. We're resentful. We're sad, depressed, whatever the thing is, we're ashamed. and we show up embodying the feeling. And when we're in the feeling, it's really hard to make choices. It's really hard to feel like we have a bunch of options in terms of how we can show up. We're just operating from the feeling, and often that's anger. And then later we may have regret about how we showed up.

The skill of being able to be outside the feeling, meaning looking at it, acknowledging it, talking about it, advocating around it. So that doesn't mean we don't say, I don't like the way you're talking to me. I don't like the way you're treating me. I won't let you speak to me that way. Right? That's advocacy versus aggression. So the minute we're outside the feeling, we have all sorts of choices about how we want to show up and how we want to communicate what we need, what we want, how we want to set boundaries. Inside the feeling, we almost have no choices other than being led by this feeling that we don't have any say in. And so I really like to talk about this difference. It's a nuance. But once you deeply understand it and you have the goal to recognize when you're in and when you're out, when you're in, you can take a pause. You can take a break. You can come back later after resetting because we know when we're in the feeling, we don't usually get anywhere that feels good. And then we're outside the feeling we can

make a plan for what we want to do on our own behalf. Here we go. Hey, I'm Kelpen. And on my new podcast, Here We go again. We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating? itself. You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host. Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture. And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions. Like, are we heading towards another financial crash like in 08? Is non-monogamy back in style? And how come there's never a

gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes early. We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lili Singh, and Bill Nye. When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong. Look, the world can seem pretty scary

right now, because it is. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to here we go again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The forces shaping the world's economies and financial markets can be hard to spot.

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I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her. Well, wait a minute, Sophia, you know she's a cult leader. Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder.

I think they may be part of a cult? Hold up, Sophia. A real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue. But according to this person, contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with their ceiling, and her neighbors are not happy. Well, she needs to report them ASAP.

She did! And now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways all the time. So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the new podcast, Hell in Heaven, two young Americans moved to the Costa Rican jungle to start over. But one will end up dead. The other tried for murder. Not once.

People went wild. Not twice. Stoned. But three times. John and Anne Bender are rich and attractive, and they're devoted to each other. They create a nature reserve and build a spectacular, circular home high on the top of a hill. But little by little, their dream starts to crumble, and our couple retreat from reality. They lose it. They actually lose it.

They sort of went nuts. Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Gosh, you said so many nuggets of truth. I have forgotten at times that we're recording a podcast because I love therapy. I love therapy. I love the deep dive. I love to take a hard look at me and work on the things that I need to work.

on. And what came to mind for me when you just said that is that I have a real problem with perfectionism. And I don't like for people to view me as, as, and I'll share some of the words that have been used against me, right? Difficult, that I'm too difficult to love. In moments of pain where I didn't feel like I could stand up for myself because I didn't want to be too difficult. It was too difficult to be loved in my marriage. because I had an opinion. And I'm not saying that I always went about my opinion in the best way. I am a very strong personality.

I am very, very passionate about the things that I do believe in. And I have a real problem with expecting people to be like me. Just to put it in the dumbest terms, possible. I love really hard. I am loyal to a fault to myself, a detriment to myself. I am that loyal. I will go to the grave for the people that I love. My biggest moments of joy and happiness was when I was together with my ex-husband

and his family and we were together and joyful and laughing. And at times I chose them over my own family. I am loyal to a fault to myself. and what has been really difficult for me and a learning experience is that I expected others to be that way because I was that way. What's it called when you put it on someone else?

Yes, I projected that. I projected that. I wanted the people around me to love me and choose me because I did it at all costs, too detriment to myself. And then when I was viewed as being too difficult or too challenging to love. I was too scared to speak up for what I thought was right or my opinion because I didn't

want to be dubbed too difficult, too challenging because there is a lot of beauty in those things. I am not one to sweep shit under the rug and pretend like it's perfect. I'm just not. That's not how I live life. So in general, for any man that wants to to jump into a relationship with me or a dating scenario, that's not who I am. Life to me is not perfect. and I deal with hard things and I am willing to face them head on, but I am not a person who can

pretend that hard things don't happen. I've been through a lot of hard things in my life. I have had to endure some really difficult things. And it does me personally a disservice to stuff those. I am not a stuffer. I cannot function that way. But I share all of this with you because I guess I'm looking for advice when it comes to relationships and the deepness that I crave, I do not do surface level well. I am a deep lover in all relationships and all capacity of my life. I need that deep connection. That is what I need. I tend to project that on the other people around me because I want them to love like I do. And the truth is not everyone is capable of that. So, I think what I am asking you is with that little nugget of truth, what do I do in that scenario?

Am I choosing wrong? Is my picker off? Is that what's wrong here? You know, maybe, maybe not. I think there's sort of a macro theme here and then like in the weeds of being in a real relationship and what it's like to show up when you have conflict or misalignment. So on a macro basis, it seems like you need to find. someone who is interested in that kind of growth, that kind of expansion, that thematic notion

of like, I'm a person who likes to think about things, process things, and I consider it intimate to work through conflict with my partner. Like you should find someone who has an interest around that, a language around that, an ability to like that. That was the key word. Dr. Hillary, I should. Well, I mean, because I mean, look, if we get unemotional, that an objective. We can even say that it's not about right or wrong or good or bad. Maybe your way isn't right and another guy's way of like, I don't like to do those things. I like to kind of skate on the surface. We don't have to call it right or wrong, but they should be somewhat aligned. You should have sort of a mutual goal of like, yes, that's something, that's a language

I'm interested in. That's something I'm looking for is that kind of depth, that kind of intimacy, see that kind of passion because certainly in my experience from a clinical standpoint, when you have a relationship that that includes those aspects, it's intimacy building. It's bonding to be able to work through hard things and share vulnerable feelings and get to know your partners like pain points and care about them. Not everyone wants to have relationships like that, but if you do, you want to at least find someone that's up for that or interested in it. I mean, I interrupt you real quick because I like that that's the way that you labeled it.

And I just had this, like, epiphany, I believe that that is what I crave is the emotional intimacy in a relationship. And I've never used those words to describe it that way. But I think you hit the nail on the head. That's what I want. I want emotional intimacy. People don't often conceptualize working through conflict and difficulty as that. But as a couple's therapist, when you guide and support couples to work through. hard things in like a caring, invested way, even when it's conflictual and painful, when they come

out the other end, it's intimacy building. It's bonding. And it's lovely. I mean, that kind of depth can be reached myriad of ways, but that's certainly one of them. And if that resonates with you, it's good to know. And it's a good way to be able to talk about it and like put words to it. When you get into that relationship, when you have a candidate that's at least somewhere like in the ballpark of interest and emotional intimacy, a couple of things. One, and you already acknowledged this, it doesn't have to look like your version of emotional intimacy. You have to broker something that mutually resonates, right? And we'll get into that. But it's a good thing to know about yourself that if you look for it to be exactly

like how you do it, that might get you in trouble. Because people have different ways to get there and different needs to have and seek support to get there. And so the goal of emotional intimacy can be reached a plethora of ways. And so being open to how you get there versus how a partner gets there and kind of co-creating something that works for both. And I want to say this kind of to allude to some of the things you brought up, which is that, you know, it's all in my view about the messaging, right? And so your interest in not sweeping things under the rug and calling things out and being truthful about your emotions and a relationship, I think is an appropriate way to move through relationships in general, unless two people agree, like, that's just not how we're going to do

it and that's good for us. But in general, that is my recommendation, because the more we suppress, the more we have symptoms. And symptoms in a relationship look like disconnection, lack of intimacy, agitation, irritation, disconnection, all the things, right? And so the more we suppress, there is going to be emotional rent to pay. There's just this. And so if you suppress, like it sounds like you did at some point in your previous relationship. I never, never suppressed. Maybe that's wrong. I never.

Well, it comes out some other way. So either you're not curating how you're communicating it and it's hard to digest or one is suppressing and there's symptoms that arise. So you have to figure out a delivery system that works, right? That is digestible to the other. And I think that's where we can get creative and have a lot of growth, is that I often say in my own relationships with my own young children, you know, my message is on point. You know, my delivery might have been off that time, right? And so the message is something we want to be deeply, you know, committed to, invested in, precious, sacred with, right?

But how we deliver it, we should co-create. What works for our partner? Is there a certain tone that doesn't feel support? Is there a certain time of day that feels like it's too overwhelming? Is there a way to move into a conversation about someone, like asking them if they're available for a hard time that gets them more grounded, right? That we should try to broker and negotiate. How do you want to have a conversation that's tricky?

And that doesn't mean we adhere to everything our partner asks for and bury who we are, but we should be in the business of like brokering, negotiating, co-creating something that works. And in the absence of that, I often see couples sort of like, you know, intense misalignment. They're just like missing each other constantly because the delivery system, the tone, the words, the approach that they're using to communicate what's happening with them is not resonant, is not digestible. It's been jumping back in here. This conversation with Dr. Hillary and Deanna is getting really good. But I think this is the perfect place for us to take a pause and we'll come back for more. very soon.

Hello, America's sweetheart Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, from Smartless Media, Campside Media, and Big Money Players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high-functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist. Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he, He steals some rich and gives to the poor.

I'm not that generous. It's a damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon, then just totally muffed up the landing. They stole $17 million and had not bought a ticket to help him escape. So we're saying, like, oh God, what do we do? What do we do? That was dumb. People do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist on the IHeart Radio app.

Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Chicago, a white woman's murder, a black man behind bars, for a crime he didn't commit. 90 years for killing somebody I have never seen. The Crying Wolf Podcast is the story of a corrupt detective, two men bound by injustice, and the quest for redemption, no matter the price. Listen to the Crying Wolf Podcast on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, here we go again.

We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? Each week, I'm calling up my friends, like Bill Nye, Lily Singh, and Pete Buttigieg, to talk about everything from the space race to movie remakes to psychedelics. Put another way, are you high? Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to Here We Go Again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I live below a cult leader and I fear I've angered her. Wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This person writes, my neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals. and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder.

I think they might be part of a cult. Hold up, a real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue, Dakota. Find out how it ends. Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.