The Dr. Hyman Show - How I Fixed My Corrupted Love Software with Lauren Zander

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth, InsideTracker, and Rupa Health. Just like other parts of life, we can fall into patterns when it comes to how we love. For example, many people choose par...tners that reinforce the limiting beliefs that they have about themselves and their lives. I’ve discovered this about myself over the years and worked with a coach to rewrite my corrupted love software. Today, I’m excited to share a conversation with that person, Lauren Zander, who has been a strong force in my life for positive change.  Lauren Handel Zander is the Co-Founder and Chairwoman of Handel Group®, an international corporate consulting and life coaching company. Her coaching methodology, The Handel Method®, is taught in over 35 universities and institutes of learning around the world, including MIT, Stanford Graduate School of Business, NYU, and the New York City Public School System. Lauren is also the author of Maybe It’s You: Cut the Crap, Face Your Fears, Love Your Life, a no-nonsense, practical manual that helps readers figure out not just what they want out of life, but how to actually get there. She has spent over 20 years coaching thousands of private and corporate clients. This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth, InsideTracker, and Rupa Health. Cozy Earth makes the most comfortable, temperature-regulating, and nontoxic sheets on the market. Right now, get 40% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com and use code MARK40. InsideTracker is a personalized health and wellness platform like no other. Right now they’re offering my community 20% off at insidetracker.com/drhyman. Rupa Health is a place where Functional Medicine practitioners can access more than 2,000 specialty lab tests from over 20 labs like DUTCH, Vibrant America, Genova, and Great Plains. You can check out a free, live demo with a Q&A or create an account at RupaHealth.com. Here are more details from our interview (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): My personal journey to understand and improve my beliefs and patterns in love (6:53 / 2:00)  Creating a pathway to deal with our corrupted love software (9:38 / 6:48)  Learning from our past relationships and experiences (11:56 / 9:07)  Loving yourself for better love relationships (17:09 / 14:42)  The three voices inside us that drive our relationship choices (22:25 / 18:10) How Lauren’s personality has changed and led her to develop Inner.U Love (29:44 / 25:11)  Asking yourself what you want from love today (38:05 / 33:45)  How we manifest our inner dialogue (42:42 / 38:29)  The value of telling the truth to yourself (46:49 / 42:33) Expanding through love (51:57 / 47:37)  Learn more about Lauren’s course, Inner.U Love, here.  Learn more about La Vette, an intentional dating platform for singles, at lavette.love.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Your heart has a lot to talk about and feel and wants to be known and wants to play. I always tell my patients that sleep is the most underrated yet important part of health. And that's why creating a bed that you can't wait to lie down on works wonders for sleep hygiene. That's why this holiday season I plan on giving my loved ones Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth's loungewear, pajamas, and bed sheets are made from ethically sourced bamboo viscose, a super lightweight, breathable, machine washable fabric. Who wouldn't be excited to jump into something soft and comfy like that for the holidays? And you can't go wrong giving the gift of better sleep. Plus, Cozy Earth has a 10-year warranty. Right now,
Starting point is 00:00:49 Cozy Earth is offering my community their highest discount ever of 40% off. Just go to CozyEarth.com with the discount code MARK40. That's CozyEarth.com, C-O-Z-Y-E-A-R-T-H.com, and use the code M-A-R-K-40. That's 4-0. Now, something I get more and more excited about every year is personalized medicine. Now, when I began practicing functional medicine over 20 years ago, it was clear to me we have to look at how unique each body is. Now, with technology advancing in amazing ways, we can truly take that concept to the next level. Like one of the tools that I recently discovered that can help us all do this from home is InsideTracker. Founded in 2009 by top scientists in aging, genetics, and biometric data from MIT, Tufts, and Harvard, InsideTracker is a personalized health and wellness platform like no other. It's purpose-built to help you live a longer, more productive life.
Starting point is 00:01:36 Their cutting-edge technology analyzes your blood, DNA, your lifestyle to give you highly personalized recommendations. Then, using the app, you can track your progress every day. Inside Tracker tells you what to do and why, so your health goals are clear and actionable, and most importantly, based on exactly what your body needs. And now you can connect Inside Tracker with your Apple Watch to unlock deeper, more precise insights into your health. With real-time exercise, resting heart rate, and sleep data
Starting point is 00:02:03 synced with your Inside Tracker plan, you can truly wear your health on your sleeve. My team took Inside Tracker for a spin and really loved it. They discovered some important things about their health that led them to stop procrastinating when it comes to certain parts of their health, like, for example, finally taking a vitamin D supplement after seeing they were deficient, or eating more iron-rich foods due to low ferritin and hemoglobin and making an effort to embrace stress reduction techniques after seeing high cortisol levels. Now, health is not black and white. Your wellness plan shouldn't be either. If you're curious about getting your own health program dialed in to your unique needs, I highly
Starting point is 00:02:39 recommend checking out InsideTracker. Right now, they're offering my community 20% off at insidetracker.com forward slash Dr. Hyman. That's I-N-S-I-D-E-T-R-A-C-K-E-R.com slash Dr. Hyman. That's me, Dr. Hyman. And you'll see the discount quote in your cart. Now, let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. A quick note before we get into today's episode. This conversation includes some mature language and topics. Listener discretion is advised. Pharmacy. A quick note before we get into today's episode. This conversation includes some mature language and topics. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to the doctor's pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. That's pharmacy with an F, a place for conversations that matter. And if you've ever struggled with love,
Starting point is 00:03:22 if you want to figure out how to find love, keep love, have love, and figure out your love software, well, this is the podcast for you because it's very special with someone very special to me who's helped me fix my broken picker and actually get the viruses out of my love software, my best friend, my life coach, Lauren Handel Zander, who's the co-founder and chairwoman of the Handel Group. It's an international corporate consulting and life coaching company. Her methodology, the Handel Method, is taught in over 35 universities and institutes of learning around the world, including MIT, Stanford Graduate School of Business, not too shabby, NYU, and the New York City public school system. She's also the author of Maybe It's You, Cut the Crap, Face Your Fears, and Love Your Life.
Starting point is 00:04:13 It's a no-nonsense practical manual that helps readers figure out not just what they want out of life, but actually how to get there. She spent over 20 years coaching thousands of private and corporate clients, including executives at Vogue, BASF, AOL, and she's been featured in the New York Times, BBC, Forbes, Women's Health, Dr. Oz, Marie Claire, and many other outlets. Welcome, Lauren. Hi. Hi. So this is going to get deep and personal. You all may have heard a different podcast with Lauren and I've shared a little bits of my story, but I'm just going to lay it all out there.
Starting point is 00:04:53 I really had so much success in my life in so many areas. You know, I figured out, you know, how to have a meaningful career. I have great friends. I have, you know, figured out how to be healthy. I, you know, just figured a lot out. But love was not something that I really have figured out. And, you know, and Lauren quickly figured out that I hadn't figured it out when we first met. And I ran away from her because I did not want to deal with it. And I basically have been married three times, uh, divorced three times, uh, and, uh, had other relationships that didn't work out. And after the last, uh, divorce, I was like, wait a minute, uh, maybe it's me. And I decided to face my fears. Like the title of her book says, a baby is you. And I decided to go in deep and work with Lauren to fix my corrupted love software. And it was hard. It wasn't easy. It wasn't easy to look at myself. It wasn't easy to look at my patterns and my traits, my habits, my beliefs, my, all the things that were in the way. And you know thank god i had someone like lauren to help
Starting point is 00:06:06 me because without that i don't think i'd be in the incredibly happy um easeful relationship that i'm in now which uh i don't i don't think i would have got there uh and the method that she used is one that's available to all of you too it's not just something private that she had to do with me but it's something that you can actually access and And we're going to talk today about this. We're going to talk today about the work that she's put out in the world, including an incredible online program called Inner You Love. And we'll give you the link to that in the show notes. I'll tell you the link in a minute and how to get it. And it also comes with an incredible masterclass, which if you get the Inner You Love coaching program online,
Starting point is 00:06:45 you also get a masterclass with Lauren, which is 10 different modules. Fantastic. We'll talk more about that. But I want to sort of first share a little bit, Lauren, if it's okay about my journey and how you helped. I kind of touched on it, but I want to kind of go a little deeper. Is that okay? I love that. Okay. I mean, I know this is a podcast. I'm going to interview you, but I think setting the stage with me first, I think will be helpful to sort of talk about some of the method you use and how it works. So for me, I did not realize that the trauma, which I didn't even identify as trauma as a child around my mother and my sister had so kind of distorted my view of what love is and what love means. And obviously
Starting point is 00:07:34 not just, you know, how my mother dealt with me, but her relationship with my father, her relationship with my stepfather, I had no examples of what healthy love looked like or what it should be and what was normal or good. And so I kind of struggled to figure it out. And it was a very intense process of looking at myself, of examining my own inner dialogue, of looking at what my lower self was doing and creating quite a mess in my head about love. And through a lot of work we did together and similar kinds of things you would get through interview love and through the masterclass, I got to understand this corrupted love software and got to kind of rewrite the software, which I didn't actually think was possible, but together we together we did it. And I, you know, my mother, my mother was a child of a deaf parents and my grandparents were deaf.
Starting point is 00:08:29 And because of that, she was the caretaker of them and she learned that love was taking care of broken people. And that's what I learned. And I, my mother depended on me and psychologically, uh, depended on me for her therapy in a second marriage that was terrible and with my father and i it was just the worst you just never do that to a kid kids to be kids you need a therapist you go to a therapist or go to a coach or something and and that led me to pick women who were damaged uh like my first wife who was mentally ill and alcoholic and so it just took me decades to figure this out, honestly. I wish I'd met you when I was 25, Lauren.
Starting point is 00:09:07 I didn't. I was 55. I mean, 52. But I think, you know, it's never too late. And as I found out, it's really never too late. And so I think I just really want everybody to realize that, you know, we all have to deal with this. You know, yeah, I can look at Dr. Hyman and think he's happy, successful, great, and he's got it made.
Starting point is 00:09:28 Well, no, not necessarily. And I think we all have our shit. And you've had your shit too. So can you kind of share with me a little bit and share with everybody. You know, what is your view of how we create a pathway to healing our corrupted love software and how we start to go down the path of self-discovery and what your method is for doing that and how you kind of were inspired to create inner you love? Yeah. Well, first of all, there's layers to understanding yourself. And so the first thing you'd have to start with is to love yourself is to understand yourself. your relationship to what happened to you and where are you now and what do you want and are you getting it? And do you even talk about it? And do you think you can change anything? Right? So if I just sit with any person and I ask them five good questions about their current love life,
Starting point is 00:10:38 they go into a dissertation of how it's been and how it's going to continue to be with them, with the others and with life itself. So the first thing that can change, no, they, they don't even know there's another, like what they've done is all there is right. Like it doesn't, it doesn't deny everybody else's different. It just means I have no access. I am this way. This is how I've been. You know, what do you mean? This is how I've been.
Starting point is 00:11:13 So first layer is admitting whether you go in or out of dealing with yourself at all and that you think that there's self-discovery, like deep self-discovery. If you haven't discovered something about yourself in love or what you're doing about at all and that you think that there's self-discovery, like deep self-discovery. If you haven't discovered something about yourself in love or what you're doing about it or what you're causing or how's it going, it's because you're not doing anything about it, actually. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And complaining or talking to your girlfriends or talking to your guy friends or being in a men's
Starting point is 00:11:45 group or being in a woman's, there is no amount of talking about it without focusing it into very specific concepts. So if I sat someone down in a class and I said, write down a list of lovers that you can remember their names and had some significance to you, what happened in that relationship? Why did it start? Why did it end? And what did you learn? Most people have never answered that question, like basic 101 of love. So when I talk about love language, I'm not talking about like, I have a dictionary for you, though I do have words for you. I'm talking about discovering that you have to write your own and learn your own love language. So you had so much trauma around your family of origin
Starting point is 00:12:55 and growing up being such a giver with your sister was pretty broken, your mom, she wasn't broken as an individual, but the way she survived shit in her life and how many things made her unhappy. And that, you know, she created many hauntings in you about what it was to be a family member. Like, you know, what you should do for your family, what you should do for everyone. If you're the guy that can. Look at those eyes. You see them wrong, right? Mom. Okay. Your mom did the best she could. We all know people did the best they could unless they really didn't, but we can give them that credit, right? Forgiveness is an entirely different section in love. So for you, we went
Starting point is 00:13:43 through all of your hauntings and your hauntings created very deep patterns with your picker. And you couldn't tell that story before. Now you're like excited to tell everyone something that you didn't even have language for. You can like sum it up, right? Eat your broccoli, stop with the sugar, don't touch this, eat that, sleep, right? So you now- Yeah, it was interesting. You made me write down the history of all my relationships and where I was out of integrity with myself or with my partner, where I lied to myself or my partner. And it was a very disturbing exercise to do, honestly, because I got to see the patterns over and over again. And so that was a huge part of the work
Starting point is 00:14:33 that helped me kind of go, oh, crap, I got to fix this. Yeah. So you heavily broke through. So each individual is different. And except what we do to ourselves, right? So we're in a relationship. We either are lying in the relationship. We're getting what we want. We're not getting what we want. We have the reasons we're living with, why we'll take it and not. So we're storytellers.
Starting point is 00:15:00 And then we think the story, like you think the story you wrote down and told me was something you were stuck with for the rest of your life like if mark said it mark thought it it's a bone right it's like that's an elbow and when we could process what you wrote down and start to look at it from a much more macro. What we really did to you is we took you out of being such an individual with the way you talked about everything. And we made you a man. And we made you a being and we made you oversee what it is to be human. And, you know, at this point, I really do like reincarnation, not whether I know if it's true or not, but I like it a lot because the concept that we're here to learn and we're coming back and back, like,
Starting point is 00:15:51 you're going to be back, Mark. Like, let's learn it this time. Like, come on, baby, let's face it. Right? Like, what are you saving yourself for? You have a chance to get free every lifetime right and and you didn't need you know i think did you go did i who did i make you call because i usually make people have to speak to people and really check in did i don't they were all dead they were all dead my mother was dead my sister was dead i think you and i you know um were able to let you take over the narrative after you saw what you had thought your whole life or had accumulated your whole life. You then could realize why it was broken yourself. And for me, the big moment with you was when you got, you had never really been in love before because love was always, always overgiving. Always overgiving. Always trying to be good enough.
Starting point is 00:16:55 Always being the greatest doctor in the world and not having an experience of being loved fully as is. And so if I asked you now, and then the other thing we had to do is you personally needed a timeout from all women, because it's not like you couldn't date or find beautiful women or wonderful people who loved you. You just couldn't feel it or pick the right one. And so I also asserted you weren't, you didn't really love yourself or think you deserved the kind of love you wanted Well, that's really important because I had to tell you I when you first said you don't love yourself. You don't have self-worth. I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm, dr. Hyman, you know, like I like myself i'm good with myself. I like being alone and I just kind of like
Starting point is 00:17:42 Kind of in my head, I was like, oh, that's ****. And the truth was you were right. You were right. And you were really right. And it took me a long time to see the ways that I wasn't loving myself, that I didn't have self-worth, that I felt some emptiness or need that was there because I kind of, as we sort of talked about it, had my light taken from me by my mother, just as she had her light taken from her as a child by her parents. You know, she called it a parentified child where she became the parent. And I was the parent to my mother in a way that was so inappropriate. And so I always felt empty.
Starting point is 00:18:21 There was something empty and lacking and needy in me, which I didn't know how to erase or get rid of. And I didn't even know where it came from. And so, you know, I'm a little bit thick and it took a lot of time and a lot of hammering over my head. But I finally kind of got it. And once I did, it was just like this huge liberation and everything changed. It was like all of a sudden I put on new glasses.
Starting point is 00:18:44 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, changed. It was like, all of a sudden I put on new glasses. You used to let, let everybody understand that Mark Mark admits you admit that you had never used me for love. Really? Like he used to show up for me so I could like fix things. Right. It was like, I was not doing the root cause. You never let me do the root cause. And we agreed that one day you would let me do the root cause. No.
Starting point is 00:19:11 And that you would go through the work with me. You really did. I was like, I just want to be your friend. You can give me advice, but I don't really want to do the actual coaching because I'm a little scared. I didn't want to deal. I want to do it my way. And I was, and I, well, you have a saying, you have saying never, never on schedule, always on time. So that's like,
Starting point is 00:19:35 it's not mine. I'm quoting, I'm quoting. I think I'm quoting Nas. It's a rap song from the nineties. Okay. Great. Hey everyone. It's a rap song from the 90s. 90s rap. Okay, great. Hey, everyone. It's Dr. Mark. I know a lot of you out there are practitioners like me helping patients heal using real food and functional medicine as your framework for getting to the root cause. What's critical to understanding what each individual person and body needs is testing, which is why I'm excited
Starting point is 00:20:05 to tell you about Rupa Health. Looking at hormones, organic acids, nutrient levels, inflammatory factors, gut bacteria, and so many other internal variables can help us find the most effective path to optimize health and reverse disease. But up till now, that meant you are usually ordering tests for one patient from multiple labs. And I'm sure many of you can relate how time-consuming this process was, and that it could all feel like a lot of work to keep track of. Now there's Rupa Health, a place for functional medicine practitioners to access more than 2,000 specialty labs from over 20 labs like Dutch, Vibrant America, Genova, Great Plains, and more.
Starting point is 00:20:42 Rupa Health helps provide a significantly better patient experience, and it's 90% faster, letting you simplify the entire process of getting the functional medicine lab tests you need and giving you more time to focus on patients. This is really a much-needed option in functional medicine space, and I'm so excited about it. It means better service for you and your patients.
Starting point is 00:21:01 You can check it out and look at a free live demo with a Q&A or create an account at rupahealth.com. That's R-U-P-A health.com. Now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Yeah. So tell me more in your mind how you sort of deconstructed my love software and helped me reconstruct it. Cause I think it'd be helpful. Cause that's what you do in the inner. You love, that's what you do in your masterclass. So I don't want people thinking,
Starting point is 00:21:31 Oh, you know, you need to have Lauren as your personal friend, as your best friend, as your personal coach. You don't know, you know, this is not rocket science.
Starting point is 00:21:38 It's just a method that can actually be taught. And it's now, it's so great that you've really put the time and energy to create this remarkable course for next to nothing, probably the cost of what you'd pay for one or two therapy sessions. That's right, definitely. But it literally can change your life. Yeah. So first of all, you and I, the most important,
Starting point is 00:22:03 so there's so many pieces to this. It's not that it's hard or many hours if you're listening to this, but there really is the assessment of who you've been dating or who you ever loved, even if you've been in a marriage for 30 years, right? So Mark had been in marriages and relationships. So there's still like the 10 significant relationships, right? So which are one of the things I figured out, which actually is profound and may sound simple, but really rocks is I say, you have a head, you have a heart and you have a hoo-ha and they don't, and they all have different voices. They all have different points of view. And if
Starting point is 00:22:46 you haven't figured it out yet, they are always fighting with each other. They actually don't agree with each other. Right. And, or you could get two out of three, right? Like your heart really thinks she's sweet and your hoo-ha thinks she's hot. Right. Your head's like, how's her English? Right. Like, how's her, how old is she? What is, what does she know? Right? Like you're shut up with you, right? You're so perfect, right? We'll figure, like, you can't know her till you know her, either, Heart says. So everyone, but that's really the hoo-ha talking. So everyone has voices aiming at agendas and the heart's agenda is different than the head's agenda is different than the hoo-ha's agenda, right? And then Mark's head, heart, and hoo-ha are not,
Starting point is 00:23:33 if he wrote what his heart most wanted, his head most wanted, and his hoo-ha most wanted, it's not the same thing as mine or yours. So what I do is when I talk about making up language, I made Mark have to deal with his own rating scale of head, heart, and hoo-ha, right? Simple like that. One out of 10 with your first wife. Why did you marry her? What did you think? Where did it start?
Starting point is 00:23:55 Head, heart, and hoo-ha, right? And then when it ended, where was it? Okay, now do the rest of the relationships. Head, heart, and hoo-ha. And start to explain. And so what happens when we all humans are hunting for our partner, this is the big mistake everybody makes in my assessment, is that we think that they're fighting over dominance, the head, the heart, and the hoo-ha out of 100%, so that if you have two out of three, you should be happy, right?
Starting point is 00:24:25 So your head gives her an eight. Your heart is a nine, but your hoo-ha is a six. But because your heart's so happy and it never felt so nurtured, it's going to sell out on everything else, right? So that is very much a pattern that you got from your parents, but you don't see that yet. So what happens in inner you is over the 30 years I've been doing this, it's been like 25, I'm getting old, I'm 52. Over the years I've been doing this, I've been developing, watching people make predictable
Starting point is 00:25:06 patterns, right? So you have predictable patterns that come from your parents and we have to give you language so that you could start to figure yourself out so you can have insights into choices, right? You, you didn't know you had a choice. You didn't know you thought the same way. You didn't know why you were attracted to that girl in the room, right? You didn't, you really didn't get it. And so I remember as you started dating again,
Starting point is 00:25:36 right? And we had a rule about your head, your heart and your hoo-ha and you having to really pick and you can't get attached and they can't want babies and they can't want this. and they like, come on, Mark, let's see if we could like put it all together now and not come home with the wrong fish. Okay. And it was right. Right. So as you hear what he's saying is like comprehensive. It really is. It was comprehensive to get Mark to sit down for an hour and write down the answers. That was comprehensive, right? It wasn't the answers that were so shocking. It was that he finally sat down and cared about himself enough to look at the ugly part. This doesn't take a long time, right? It takes a very short amount of time, but a very, you have to be willing to go into what do I, everything into the marriage you're in now, into your relationship with your
Starting point is 00:26:31 kids, into your sex life. Like don't come near my masterclass if you don't want to turn your love light on. Yeah. I mean, I, I kind of realized that the only way it was going to work was if I, you know, was unfiltered in what I wrote down. Because, you know, one thing is to think stuff in your head. It's another thing to't ever say out loud. And, you know, not make me wrong about it. But actually hear that it was a narrative that was my lower self. That wasn't my highest wisdom in the room. And that helped me to kind of actually see it.
Starting point is 00:27:24 I'm like, ooh, yuck. And that's not right. And then there's like two layers. It's too good. It's too good. So the reason when we identify something, right, like when we give it a name, right, it then can become a placeholder that we can put a compartment somewhere, right? So when we started to develop that, Mark, there's a higher you and a lower you, and we're going to give everything you ever did in the past or anything you don't like about yourself to your lower self. And then we're
Starting point is 00:28:00 even going to have the guy that's been running your life. This was very important for you, that you had your highest, lowest self, right? Like the good guy who always tried hard, but still was in the old lower self narrative. Well, it's the con man in your head. So, but because you started to just tell the truth and start to realize what you were saying, whether it was about Mia or about yourself or about dating or about aging, right? You have done a number on yourself about like, as if everyone, does everyone think Mark Hyman is a hot man and is getting better as he ages? I heard everybody say yes. We don't believe we can get hotter and more profound as we get older. I don't agree. See me? I think I'm getting sexier, better, like you.
Starting point is 00:28:56 I'm following your plan. And it gets sexier when you get older because you're liberated, right? You know what you like and you don't, you usually can afford it. So you were perfectly on time to get to love the most important part of your life, which is when it was all about, when it can really be all about you and your life, not all about making money, having children, building a house, like everything that's the first half of one's life. So Lauren, in your work, you talk about having developed this sort of new framework for our heart language and what that is. Can you talk a little bit about that and what you've learned about the heart? Because you've also been through a lot recently, too, and a lot of changes.
Starting point is 00:29:48 So you've had to sort of also go on your journey. Yes. Just in case anybody wondered, if you become a life coach, does that guarantee shit doesn't happen to you? No. Even if you're like the best life coach, right? Like I'm really good. And I even follow my own coaching, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen to me.
Starting point is 00:30:13 I can't control others. Yeah. So, um, basically as my life started to wind down from how much work I was doing and traveling and everything I was doing, um, to wind down from how much work I was doing and traveling and everything I was doing. I showed up in bed with my husband at the time and was like, baby, I'm back. I have all the hours of the day. Shouldn't we get into each other? So for the first time in David's life,
Starting point is 00:30:38 I wanted a play date with him all the time. And he wasn't that into it. I could tell pretty much instantly that he wasn't in love with me. Now you could go, were you really in love with him? And I'm like, eh, I knew how to be someone who loved. So, right. I knew how to overgive easily and love whatever I had. So Mark would be like, how is this working for you for years? And I'm like, cause it's what I chose and I love what I chose. And so this is good enough. This is what, it's not good enough. Like it sucks, but I love what I chose. And I'm really good at that, but that doesn't mean I'm getting hot sex.
Starting point is 00:31:26 Right. It means I'm getting regular consistent sex because I keep my promises. All right. So David Zander looked like he wasn't in love with me anymore. I had a rule and I kept the rule, which is if we're not in love with each other, we're not staying together. We don't owe staying together if it isn't hot and what we both want. And so we admitted that to each other after I discovered it in his eyes and unwound our marriage till today. Right. So we broke up starting basically like COVID 2020. We started unwinding. We are separate, you know, legally everything done, right, waiting for the states. And I would proudly say that because
Starting point is 00:32:16 of that experience, and setting David free, and making sure my kids were happy with the transition, and that we all are good together. I could hang out together forever. Right. And then I had to, and then David started dating early and I didn't, right. I wasn't even jealous.
Starting point is 00:32:36 That's not a good sign. Anyway, but I, I personally waited till my heart healed until I wanted, my joke is until I wanted to actually see a naked man again. I had to wait. And that happened. And so the whole experience of changing my life or figuring it all out is all the new love language and starting to be able to talk from my heart because it's not a plan that my head came up with and it's not integrity and it's not keeping promises. Those are all great things, but the truth is the heart doesn't give a shit about
Starting point is 00:33:19 any of that. The heart wants to get, I don't need a promise to paint. I get up and paint every day. I don't need a promise to show up to my coaching calls. I love coaching, right? It's when you need a promise. I don't need a promise to go on a walk for two hours. So the heart is an entirely different, but if we don't live in it, ask it questions, talk to it, journal with it, paint with it. If we don't do anything with our own heart, how does it develop language? Which is why I'm focusing on inner you love. If you're married,
Starting point is 00:33:57 bring your marriage. If you haven't gotten laid in 16 years, You're like, how many people since you started this, Lauren, have you like turned sex back on? Like on, right? And I'm like, oh, I turned the sex light, love light back on, right? And we're all getting better as we get older. That's the rule. So love language came out of my disaster, which was really David turned not into the soulmate, turned into my baby daddy. And he's the best father and he's a good man and he's a great ex-husband. So we're good. So I can teach all of that now. And so what is the sort of heart language? I'm not, I'm not quite clear on what you mean by that.
Starting point is 00:34:51 Okay. So if you, well, so one of the ways I, first of all, it's a really good question and I don't have a flat answer to it yet. It is, you go, why are you teaching the master class? Because I. Tell us about that. Okay. So the master class is going to be me developing language for love.
Starting point is 00:35:20 So I'm actually using the class to practice what I have been developing. So you know how I have head, heart, and hoo-ha, right? I'm going just, if you want to know about life coaching, I would tell you to do inner you life. That's all my structures. That's all my integrity. That's how you develop a dream and make plans and keep integrity. It's brilliant head material. I have never developed heart material where it's about the painting. It's about doing things that
Starting point is 00:35:55 make you feel connected to spirit and energy and love, right? Now that language is in each of us alone it's not right and so i want to develop practices that have us all fall more in love with our partners with ourselves with our vaginas with like you name it we're falling in love with it so you've basically created this this course interview love and then this companion master class which is sort of really a newer, a newer sort of rendition of your view and learnings over the last year or two. Right. And so in the master, in the masterclass, you know, what are some of the sort of nuggets and things that you actually lay out that are going to help people in a different way?
Starting point is 00:36:43 So you're going to, everything that Mark did, everything that Mark did to get to this place that he is right now are all the modules in Inner You Love. So y'all are going to listen to your module and do your homework. It's not very long and hard, but you're literally going to start to write out your history of love, figure out your ratings, and start to talk about the lessons, the things that haunted you. This is where hell breaks loose, right? Because there's sexual traumas. There's things you've
Starting point is 00:37:16 never forgiven. Mark had s**t with his sister. I had s**t with my brother. We have weird things that we have been through. And if you, and you've never looked to see how that has been impacting you, even if it happened 35 years ago, it's having you get undressed, not in front of your husband, but in the bathroom. Why you think he doesn't know,
Starting point is 00:37:43 right? Like when was the last, so we have so many ways we're dressed. Like we get dressed from our past. We pick out colors from our past. So the heart, love language, everything you're going to see in this course is about how you are predictable. And what do you want from love? And if you haven't asked yourself that question, say, what do I want from love today? What do I want from myself today in the area of love? If you're not asking yourself heart questions,
Starting point is 00:38:19 how could you be answering them? How could you be feeling it? It's like you can't see a punch buggy on the road unless you're looking for them. So what's happening is I'm going to help people focus. And there's, and there's exercises and like things that people have to do in order to like home homework, you call it homework. It gave me homework. It was homework. And I had to do my homework every day and it wasn't pointless homework. It was actually not for you. It was for me. And I was like, you do homework for your teacher. But no, it's actually homework is for you. And when I got that, I was like, I thought
Starting point is 00:38:56 I was just doing it to please you. And then I was like, no, this isn't stupid. I don't know why I'm not actually being honest or why I'm not telling the full truth or why I'm not divulging like all of my stupid inner thoughts or dialogue I was like and I remember at this moment I was like oh this is not Lauren just telling me to do this so she can have it or it's her thing it's like it's actually a gift for me to actually figure out my crap and yeah that that was a turning point for me where I actually was like oh oh, okay. Like I can't, I can't filter anything. Like there's no filtering or, or making it seem like it's not as bad as it is, or having some, you know, um, sort of diversionary kind of, kind of conversation that isn't actually the nugget of the core of what was interrupting my ability to actually love myself, to heal my love software,
Starting point is 00:39:47 to understand the origins of it and to end up in a place where actually I could meet somebody and feel whole before. Like I, it was like, it was such a big thing, you know? And I, and I, and I got to a point where I remember feeling like I never – if I never am in another relationship again, if I never make love again, if I never have any of that, like I'm great. Like life is great. I'm great. I don't need anything to be happy. Wait, wait, wait. Food to eat, a place to sleep.
Starting point is 00:40:18 I have to say this because many people think they're there but gave up on having love and sex. Right? Many people think they're like, see, Mark. It wasn't that. It wasn't that. For those of you who are not having love and sex and go, I am satisfied because I figured out. That's like the same person who goes, how's your spirituality? I don't believe in religion.
Starting point is 00:40:47 I'm like. Right, right, right. Does that does that mean did the whole chapter die it's not that it wasn't that no it actually no it's actually the opposite it's actually the opposite it actually liberated me to be able to actually have it it's kind of a weird paradox it's like once i felt whole then i was like, oh, and I, and that was just such a, it's like, and actually I didn't believe that I could, um, and I don't think I've erased at all. Obviously I think there's echoes, but I didn't really think I could like, it was like a chiropractic adjustment. Like I didn't like something was out in my neck and I couldn't move my neck and I was like in my neck and maybe there's still a little not 100% range of motion but like I mostly can move my neck and it was it was such a it was such a radical thing and it was surprising to me because I was like well I normally would react like this but I don't do that anymore I
Starting point is 00:41:38 don't have those same thoughts or patterns or occasionally I'll get triggered and we'll kind of it'll be like, like a faint wind that blows by, not like a hurricane that knocks me over, you know? So it's really, it's interesting. And I think the method of, of this process to go through is so unusual. It's not what you go through in therapy. It's not like, it's just like not relationship counseling. It's not, you know, the normal kind of self-help stuff, which, you know, doesn't always get to the root of it.
Starting point is 00:42:09 And that was sort of what was so powerful. It's like, how do we get to the origin and the root? And it's like functional medicine. Like how do you get to the root cause? And it's not like, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy is great and helps a lot of people. But it's really about, you know, managing the outside, not the inside. And so what I got to experience with you was to manage the inside and heal the inside out instead of just taking on the form of whatever it was. And so, um, it's such a gift to be able to actually, I think one of the
Starting point is 00:42:42 things I really do make people do once they understand it, like you, in the class, they will have to do this, which is trailing your inner dialogue where someone else will read it, like your buddy or a coach. You will need to share your inner dialogue and deal with that we want to sound good or we want to look good to ourselves versus what are you really listening to in your head when you look in the mirror or what do you really say about how you think that man on the date saw you or right so we don't think that the voice in our head is destroying or making our life great so So we don't take over. So when people talk about manifesting,
Starting point is 00:43:27 people talk about manifesting all the time, right? So I talk about manifesting, but manifesting is understanding that whatever you're saying to yourself is manifesting. And so we're like, well, why do you need to know what you're saying to yourself? Did you hear the other line I just said? Whatever you're saying to yourself, you're manifesting.
Starting point is 00:43:50 And you know my other favorite word. Yeah. Come on. Manifest yourself. Don't manifest yourself. Right? Because if you manifest yourself, it's fear. It's I don't deserve, I don't get. So the way you used to, so I remember what you're talking about, which was you would call me, you'd be out on one of your world adventures, doing your thing. And you'd be like, Lauren, I didn't care. I didn't care. I felt so good. I walked away. I didn't care. I didn't notice. I didn't have to stay. I didn't have to...
Starting point is 00:44:26 You not pleasing people or not having to be... Your ability to like someone, walk away, not have to make sure they have plans with you for the next... Marry them.
Starting point is 00:44:40 Marry them. Write them checks. You didn't have to you didn't have to you didn't have to invite them on a trip because right like the way you people please you were a people pleaser right and we there's nothing wrong with pleasing people but when you're a people pleaser in order to get love, that becomes very sick. So all these nicknames that we're giving Mark, he discovered by having doing the assignment, like which trait,
Starting point is 00:45:20 like, so, so you guys, I can never explain it. It's, it takes, it's 10 hours, right? It's 10 sessions, right? So I'm not going to explain it. He's I can never explain it it's it takes it's 10 hours right it's 10 sessions right so I'm not going to explain it he's not going to explain it we're talking about it it's
Starting point is 00:45:31 like talking about Italy once you're there you really do experience it so you guys come to come to interview love with me is what we're talking about but mark is an incredible example of someone who really you do not have what you used to have at all like we're not talking about any of your old like i haven't heard about it in almost feels like two two years yeah no it's a while i mean i might call you occasionally but i haven't felt the need to. Mark, you have not. Mark, you have not called. I'm not taking it off the table. I might. I'm not.
Starting point is 00:46:09 I don't know. But I can't. No. You know what? Wait, wait, wait. It makes me even happier because you used to call and be shocked you were happy. And you used to, like, as if as if like you really were waiting for something to come right and and now when you call it's like not a big deal you're like it's yeah it's perfect
Starting point is 00:46:36 we had the most perfect day yesterday how's your day where you used to have to like oversell it because you were so relieved you had a good day. Yeah, all that's different. I mean, I think part of what you do is terrifying, to be honest, because telling the truth is something we don't do very well in this culture. And you basically say we're all liars. And I kind of really resisted that for a long time. And I'm like, I'm not a liar. What do you mean?
Starting point is 00:47:07 And, you know, I think the worst kinds of lies are the ones you tell to yourself. And I did not actually want to look at myself. Yeah, I know. And I thought I did. That was the trick. It was like, I thought I did. You know, I've been studying Buddhism for 40 years and I meditate and I do yoga and I, you know,
Starting point is 00:47:28 do all these things. And I, but like, it was just like, I go to workshops. I've done this stuff. It's like, I just, there was just some layer of like, the sort of blindfolds of not being able to tell the truth, even to myself. And that, once I kind of figured that out and could do that, then I could tell the truth even to myself and that once i kind of figured that out and could do that then i could tell the truth to everybody else and and so actually this is the first
Starting point is 00:47:52 relationship i've been in where i i'm actually honest and yeah i was lying oh i like you know i said i went and bought you know didn't go buy chocolate ice cream and i went by chocolate it's not that kind of lying it's like lying of omission or not telling what I'm really feeling or not saying things that I'm worrying something gonna be upset or not actually sharing everything that that is happening in a honest transparent way because I feel I'll be left or judged or someone won't love me or whatever whatever it is stupid thought I had in my head and and now it's like oh I get to tell the truth how fun and it's like, oh, I get to tell the truth. How fun. And it's like a magic trick that I actually know you've been telling me for 10 years. And like I said, everybody, I'm kind of slow. But I finally kind of figured out that it's such a better way to go.
Starting point is 00:48:36 And then there's something to manage. And then you get to be in relationship with what is, right? So if you tell the truth and whoever you're with doesn't like it and they leave you well then that's probably what should happen right if you are sort of lying to keep love or manage love or hide this or that about yourself or i mean it's not you're having an affair and you're lying about an affair i'm not talking about that it's all the little stuff that we aren't honest about like and i you know i had an experience like this recently where i i got in trouble uh kind of not in trouble but like i got called out for not being honest where i was sick for two weeks and i had i think i had covid i was coughing all the time and i was exhausted and i
Starting point is 00:49:16 had to record my audio book and i like had to take steroids to kind of clear my voice and it made me really exhausted even more and i was just fried and then you know, I wasn't able to show up and be present instead of going, oh, I feel like crap. I need to go home and lay in bed. I tried to show up. I didn't think I was lying. I was trying to be a good boy and do the right thing. But the right thing was saying, hey, I really can't be here right now or I need to go to bed and I'm sorry I came all this way to see you, but like, I'm just not feeling well and please forgive me. I tried to fake it and faking it is lying. And, and it, and it, and it left the people I was with, with a really bad impression, which wasn't an accurate, like representation of how I felt about them, but it was really just,
Starting point is 00:50:03 it was just a result of me lying. And so I still, I still have it, but, but then I can go, oh, I can still look at it and say, yeah, that's, that's not being honest. And, and, and that, and the truth is like, if I would have said that, I would have been fine, but I thought I would get in trouble or they wouldn't like me or whatever the nonsense in my head was. So I think it's's you constantly have to be vigilant for how you don't tell the truth because it's very subtle yeah it's very invisible and the beautiful thing about your work lauren and handel method and interview love and by the way we're going to put the link to the course in here it's it's inner uh with a u just a letter u um that coach. But it's quite amazing.
Starting point is 00:50:45 There's 12 really profound audio sessions, all these assignments that help you kind of get to the heart of things, free coaching calls. There's a buddy system. You're gonna get a whole community of people to help you. You can actually track your integrity in the process. Like, you know, I just said,
Starting point is 00:51:00 like I was out of integrity with myself and I was out of integrity with my partner because I didn't tell the truth, right? So that's like, how do you track that? just said like I was out of integrity with myself and I was out of integrity with my partner because I didn't tell the truth right so that's like how do you track that how you can attract all these things so it's really a very robust um program that is available for like I said probably the cost of a good therapist you know and and it's profound and and I think it's it's really a gift that you've created for the world um because love is hard I mean love is really. And I think it's really a gift that you've created for the world. Because love is hard.
Starting point is 00:51:28 I mean, love is really hard. And I think people can get a lot of areas of their life right. But love is the hardest one to get right. For me, for sure. It was. And I think now it's... I think, you know, knock wood. I think it's also the one that can delight and surprise us the most. Right.
Starting point is 00:51:47 Like if you think about love and fun and surprises and caring, like if, you know, the amount of more love that people could give if they figured out that they wanted to. Right. Like it's not like people are over giving love, okay? It's not like love is like the commodity that it needs to be in your personal life at all, right? Like we don't experience or have an, everyone would say, do you have enough love in your life? Do you feel it all the time?
Starting point is 00:52:22 Do you see it all the time? If the answer isn't like, could you use more? Would you give more? Would you like more? Right? You have to understand what it is from you for you in order to grow, expand, or else we're always shrinking and getting more comfortable in our smallness or this is how I've always been. This is the way it is. And so anyone, anyone could shake up everything in a day. Yeah. I mean, I think the old adage that you can't teach an old dog new tricks is not true because I'm an old dog and I got a whole bunch of new tricks and I feel like I finally got free and it kind of is silly to say this, but I feel like I'm literally, I'm going to be 63 and I feel like I'm just beginning my life.
Starting point is 00:53:18 I feel like I'm 20 years old and I have my whole life in front of me now. It's like I finally graduated from, I don't know what, from just life in a way that I hadn't had the freedom to be who I fully am. Well, I think for you and I both, I think we adhered to societies like there's a right way to do family. There's a right way to do love. there's a right way to do family. There's a right way to do love. There's a right way to do money. There's a right way to be in this world. There's like, you must like, you know,
Starting point is 00:53:53 you need to own a house. You need to have a car. You need like all the, you know, that, that I don't have a house. I don't have a car. I don't have,
Starting point is 00:54:03 I don't have an address. Everybody. I'm a, I'm called a digital nomad. Right. And the, and the, and you know, the only app I really need are, you know, I have, right? Like, so it's, it's life, LeVette. Anyway, so it, love is something that you're never, you'll never know enough about it. You'll never be able to conquer it and you will never be done with it. And it's literally why we came to be on the planet. And if you're not talking about it, thinking about it, if you don't have anything to journal about today, yeah, that's because you're not in it. You're not in your life, right? So your heart has a lot
Starting point is 00:54:52 to talk about and feel and wants to be known and wants to play. If you don't go, my heart is like a 10 in life. Let's do inner you love together, right? Yeah. So, you know, Lauren, I think that the inner you love course is basically a framework that we use together to help me get free and figure out how to get love, which I really want for everybody. And I feel this is such a valuable framework for people to navigate this landscape that we have no map for. And essentially what you've created with Inner You Love is a map and a set of processes and tools and experiences
Starting point is 00:55:40 and teachings that allow people to do this without having to spend a fortune, which is amazing. Yes. And able to actually get the benefit of a lot of the things that you've developed over the last 25 years about how to get free. And I really encourage everybody to check it out. So Inner You Love is basically an elixir to love, dating, playing, relationships, and marriage. It's an online coaching course that helps give you the tools to find, fix, and figure out whatever, whomever, and how many ever it is that you truly and wholeheartedly want.
Starting point is 00:56:17 So I think we really are so messed up in this culture about love. And we don't have any good maps. And I just thank you for creating this. For listeners of the Dr. Stormer podcast, the course is normally $425. You get $100 off. So it's $325. It's a bargain. I think it's really a priceless bit of teaching. And you get this 10-part masterclass, which adds all kinds of new value that you wouldn't otherwise get. So I encourage people to check it out. Lauren's helped me measurably. I don't think I'd be where I was in any part of my life without her. She's got a lot of good things to teach and I think you value all the things that she has to say and what she'll teach you about how to navigate your own
Starting point is 00:57:03 sort of love software so i fixed mine you can fix yours it's not too late and uh lauren thank you so much for the work you do i just want to mention also that um you've uh co-founder uh of a company called lavette which is l-a-v-e-t-t dot love which is the URL. It's an online dating platform, which is very different from all the apps. It's an actually helps you go through and actually learn how to be the right partner and find the right partner. And it's fun and engaging and very different than anything out there. So people should check it out. That's levette.love. We're going to put all that in the show notes. Lauren, thanks for what you do. Thanks for being in my life. Thanks
Starting point is 00:57:43 for the hard work that it's taken you to figure out all this crap which gives us a shortcut to uh getting getting to where we need to be so thank you so much lauren yes my pleasure and i hope to see like i hope people find me i'm working i'm coaching and i would love the biggest gang in January ready to alter what's possible in love for yourself individually and then obviously your partners and then let that ripple out. Let's do it. Sounds like a good antidote for what's wrong with the world.
Starting point is 00:58:21 I thank you, Lauren, for that. And if everybody listening to this podcast loves this podcast, which I hope you did because it's pretty personal and intense, share it with everybody, share with your friends and family. I think everybody needs to hear this message. Leave a comment about how you've navigated love and where you've discovered the answers or where you have the questions and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And we'll see you next week on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy.
Starting point is 00:58:53 I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff
Starting point is 00:59:09 from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise. And all you have you do is go to drhyman.com forward slash pics to sign up. That's drhyman.com forward slash pics, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter and I'll share with you
Starting point is 00:59:37 my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger, longer. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner.
Starting point is 01:00:06 If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their Find a Practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.

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