The Hilary Silver Podcast - 25 Years of Therapy Advice in 12 Minutes

Episode Date: January 5, 2025

If you’ve ever wished you could cut through the noise of self-help fluff and get straight to the good stuff, buckle up. Hilary is about to deliver 25 years’ worth of raw, unfiltered, no-BS therapy advice—distilled into just 12 minutes. Best believe she’s not here to hand you more surface-level band-aids for your problems.   Hilary’s seen it all. After tens of thousands of hours spent in one-on-one sessions with clients, she’s got the receipts on what works and what doesn’t. In this episode, she calls out the big lie of self-help: most advice out there is just symptom management. Meditate your anxiety away? Sure, that’s cute—for a minute. But unless you tackle the root cause, it’s like playing whack-a-mole with your problems.   The truth is, you are both the problem and the solution. And while that truth might sting, it’s also your golden ticket to real change. Hilary’s “self-centered” model shows you how to stop blaming the world and start owning your life. She’ll guide you through identifying the limiting beliefs and patterns that are keeping you stuck—and how to break free once and for all.   Episode Highlights: Why most advice is just symptom management and how it keeps you stuck. The real problem: Hint—it’s you (and that’s great news). Hilary’s “self-centered” model and why it changes everything. How to spot and break free from limiting beliefs and recurring patterns that keep you stuck. Why taking ownership of your life is the ultimate game-changer. Episode Breakdown: [00:00] Welcome and Introduction [02:30] The Five Self-Centered Core Concepts [03:01] The Real Problem vs. Temporary Solutions [03:56] Root Cause and Recurring Patterns [04:27] YOU Are the Problem [05:20] Self-betrayal and Trusting Yourself [07:17] Stop Blaming Others! [07:28] Ownership, Responsibility, and Mindset Shift [08:10] Ultimate Power [09:35] Empowerment, Liberation, and the Magic Pill   Ready to Transform Your Life? Don’t just listen—take action. Watch this episode to start making powerful changes today. And if you’re ready to go deeper, sign up for Hilary’s free video training, This Changes Everything: http://hilarysilver.com/guides.    Your best life starts here. Don’t wait.

I'm going to change your life in the next 12 minutes, so I hope you will take this opportunity to listen. I'm going to drop some knowledge on you that comes from a more legit place than all the major so-called experts who are in the spotlight today. I haven't just read books, and I didn't just interview other people, and I'm not just taking other people's ideas and making them my own. I'm sharing with you the wisdom and perspective that I've gained from 25 years of working in the trenches, boots on the ground with countless clients as a clinical psychotherapist and a master coach. Literally tens of thousands of hours of active listening in face-to-face, one-on-one personal conversations with men, women, and couples. I have been privy to the most intimate

and private inner thoughts of thousands of people, hearing directly from them in their most vulnerable times and in the most raw and unfiltered way, what they struggle with, what they worry about and wonder about, sitting with them through their grief and their anxiety, fear, shame, guilt, and insecurities, all the suffering. So today and in the next couple of episodes, I'm distilling it all down to one powerful model. It's an approach that is the solution to all of life's challenges, obstacles, and struggles. It's a revolutionary new way of thinking about yourself, and it doesn't just change your life, it changes everything. A gift for anyone who has the good sense to listen to me. Hi, it's Hillary. Welcome to the Hillary Silver Podcast.

Thanks for tuning into the conversation today. If you haven't already, it would mean so much to me if you'd take a minute to just click that five-star rating on your podcast app, leave a review, and subscribe so you never miss one of my episodes. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please consider sharing it with a friend because if you like it, they will probably like it too. Self-centered. That is what I call the model I've spent the last two and a half decades developing, testing, and perfecting with endless research and application. It's the method I've been using to help my clients experience profound personal transformation. So it is proven. It's proven to work. And there are five core concepts that I want to be sharing with you today and in the next

four episodes. So make sure that you stick around because you want to get all five of them. They all really build on each other and work together and you don't really want one without the other. So the first thing that I want to share with you is this. No matter what my clients have struggled with, love issues, weight issues, career issues, family problems and parenting, friendship problems, loneliness, body image issues, depression, anxiety, food issues, all those things. No matter what that is, and we all have that stuff in our lives, the solution is never found by focusing on those things. Because while all of that can be very problematic and it is absolutely painful. None of that is actually the real problem. Those are all surface level problems. They are the secondary problems, which means they

are all symptoms of the real problem, which we will get to in just a minute. But most helpers will stay on the surface and help you deal with those situations. They help you deal with your mom problem or your child problem or your marriage problem, offering tactical advice and solutions to only those secondary problems, like working on your communication, scheduling sex, or just having better boundaries. Or they tell you to meditate, breathe, exercise,

even count backwards from five to manage your anxiety, all the way to doling out meds. While it may feel helpful in the moment, it's only temporary because that is actually symptom control. And when you alleviate the pain or the inconvenience of a symptom, there is relief, right? But if you don't deal with the root cause and the core issues, it's really just only a matter of time before the symptoms return, like having another crisis or a problem in your life that you don't know how to deal with, which means you spend your life putting out fires and chasing more temporary solutions, going from one issue to the next

in life. So what is the real problem then? Well, that is the second thing that I want to share with you. Are you ready for it? Put your seatbelt on because this is going to be the edgiest thing that I'm going to say today. You are. You are the real problem. And that is something almost no one will tell you, especially if you're struggling, if you've been betrayed or hurt, or you're fragile and wounded, or if you've had trauma and you're just feeling particularly

beaten up from life's circumstances. But it is the truth. And so to put it simply, it just means that there is something that we are believing, thinking, feeling, or doing that is getting in the way. It's preventing us, limiting us, or blocking us from getting what we want. So we are always our own biggest obstacle, and we don't even realize it most of the time. To go a little deeper, it's not being clear who we are and what is important to us. So we end up doing things that are not authentic to us or that are not in our own best interest. Maybe doing what's expected of us or what we think others want us to do.

It's not having a relationship with ourselves that we can rely on. And so we end up betraying ourselves, abandoning ourselves, or even dismissing ourselves. And so then we come to learn that we can't depend on ourselves and trust ourselves to be true and to get our own back. This is the primary problem right here, the root cause and core issue right here. It always is this issue. And so this lack in our own relationship with self either creates so many of our surface level problems, these secondary problems, or the challenges that we experience in our daily living become problems that we just aren't equipped to handle on our own.

We don't trust ourselves to navigate through them. It becomes even more evident that you are the problem when you have a recurring problem area in your life or when there are patterns that repeat. Because when something happens once, well, okay, maybe it's a fluke or it's that one person in your life causing trouble. But when it happens again and again, or in many areas of your life, the common denominator is you. So for example, the clients that we work with in my company, Ready for Love, are super high achieving women. And they tell me often that they get feedback that they are intimidating. And so well, popular mainstream advice will just say, well, men are just weak or insecure.

She's a badass and she isn't doing anything wrong. And to this I say, sure, if one guy gave her that feedback, okay, then maybe that one guy is potentially weak or insecure. But when she hears that from many men or even from other people in other areas of her life, like friends or at work, there is something to it. She is the common denominator, so it's worth examining how she can potentially be projecting something she isn't aware of or isn't intending. Being unwilling to look at that means we end up blaming others and we remain stuck forever, which is why it is so exciting to take ownership and accept that yes, we are all always our own biggest problem. The first core concept of self-centered is that you, yes you, are both

always the problem and the solution. I refer to this as the bitter pill and the magic pill all at once. It's the bitter pill that you're the problem. Yes, it can be hard to hear. It can be humbling, but that is what we want. We want it to be you. And that's the next point that I really want to make and impress upon you. It's a mindset shift right now that we want to be the problem. I always want to be the problem in my life when something isn't working, because then I can just decide that I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to figure out what I'm doing or not doing that's the problem that is causing this issue for me. And then I always do figure it out and then I get out of my own way and I get what I want. Taking personal responsibility for all things gives us the ultimate

power in life because the external circumstances and situations in life are often beyond our control. But you have the power within you to make the changes that you need to make. You have control over what you do with it all and how you are showing up. I know you may be feeling resistance to this right now, but Hillary, how is it my fault that bad things have happened to me, that things in my child had happened to me? And here's the thing. This isn't about fault finding, nor is it about shaming and blaming. Nothing that happened to you in your childhood was your fault.

But as an adult, it is your responsibility. So what are you going to do with it? No matter what has happened to you in your life, it is up to you to deal with it. Maybe you have some healing work that you need to do with it. No matter what has happened to you in your life, it is up to you to deal with it. Maybe you have some healing work that you need to do. Maybe you need to challenge some of your limiting beliefs that you kind of came out of childhood believing about yourself. Maybe you need to work on your mindset or simply just learn a new skill. It is life-changing to be willing to see how you're the common denominator in all of your challenges, to be willing to see how you're the common denominator in all of your challenges, to be willing to see where you can take ownership and responsibility for your role in all the things, and to see how you've contributed to the situations in your life being what they are.

So while it's hard to hear that you are the problem, it is the truth, and it is the most empowering and liberating thing I can tell you. And that is why it's also the magic pill if you are willing to swallow it down. Because when you are the problem, you are quickly, easily the solution. You don't have to wait for anyone or anything to change your life. The answer to all our problems is not external or on the surface. It is inside of us. It is within our power to change it,

to have the life that we want. In the next four episodes, I'll be sharing each of the other four core concepts that make up this self-centered model. Make sure to tune in and stick around because again, you really want to have all five to really understand how this all works. They do all build on each other. If what we talked about makes sense to you and it resonates and you're excited about it and you wanna get a jump on making some powerful changes quickly, sign up for my mini video training called This Changes Everything.

The link is in the show notes and in the comments pinned at the top. Thanks for listening, everyone, and I'll see you next time.