The Jordan Harbinger Show - 358: Is My Friend Blowing Her IVF Money on Gifts? | Feedback Friday

Episode Date: May 29, 2020

Your friend wants to be a mother more than anything, but says she and her husband can’t afford the IVF it would take to make this possible. On the other hand, she habitually buys expensive gifts for everyone in your social circle. Is there any socially acceptable way for you to have a conversation with her about priorities? We’ll tackle this and more here on Feedback Friday! And in case you didn’t already know it, Jordan Harbinger (@JordanHarbinger) and Gabriel Mizrahi (@GabeMizrahi) banter and take your comments and questions for Feedback Friday right here every week! If you want us to answer your question, register your feedback, or tell your story on one of our upcoming weekly Feedback Friday episodes, drop us a line at [e-mail]. Now let’s dive in! Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/358. On This Week’s Feedback Friday, We Discuss: Is your friend — who says she wants to be a mother more than anything — blowing the money she could be using for IVF on expensive gifts for everyone else? And if so, is there any socially acceptable way for you to have a discussion with her about it? You were on the path to a job in a new field until the pandemic hit, and now you’re finding it hard to land interviews without past experience on your resume. Should you go back to your old field in the meantime until things go more or less back to normal? There’s a gap on your resume where you took a year off of college to go to drug and alcohol rehab. Is there a way to spin this positively? While you’ve sought therapy to mitigate the effects of your father’s abuse as a child, your BPD-diagnosed sister hasn’t — and it causes her to act out in ways that are dangerous to herself and others. How can you best help her? How do you decide when it’s worth pushing through something (like learning a new language), or quitting because it causes anxiety and isn’t pleasant to endure at the time? Life Pro Tip: If a bee colony has set up a hive that you need removed, don’t call the exterminator. Google local beekeepers, who will relocate the hive often for free. This is an easy way to be nice to the bees and to your wallet! Recommendation of the Week: Spaceship Earth A quick shout out to @thatphysioguy for making use of Six-Minute Networking to get his business through this pandemic! Have any questions, comments, or stories you’d like to share with us? Drop us a line at [e-mail]! Connect with Jordan on Twitter at @JordanHarbinger and Instagram at @jordanharbinger. Connect... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host Jordan Harbinger and I'm here with Gabriel Mizrahi. Hey Jordan. So we have a little bit of an announcement here today. I know we mentioned last time that this was JPD's last feedback Friday and that he was going to be going on and doing a bunch of other stuff with podcasts and podcast land and sort of separating from the Jordan Harbinger Show team. He's still part of the family. Of course, today we have a new co-host here on Feedback Friday. He's the head of editorial for the Jordan Harbinger show and has been for years. He's one of my best friends.

Gabriel Mizrahi is going to be joining us here. He's going to be providing advice. He's going to be reading the questions. He's going to be doing weird yoga poses and stuff and stretches during the show. You don't see the video of us doing this. And just be thankful. You don't need to see all the weird stuff going on behind the scenes. Nobody wants to see how the sausage is made.

But Gabriel Mizrahi is here, and I am thankful for that. And I think we're going to have a totally different and very fun unique vibe and probably a little bit of a different take on advice because Gabriel is a more sensible person than me flatly said. So I'm really excited to have him on board here today. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah, of course. As I all know, on the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most brilliant people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. And if you're new to the show, on Fridays we give advice to you, we answer listener questions.

the rest of the week, we have long-form interviews and conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes, to authors, to thinkers and performers. And this week, we had a deep dive also with you, Gabriel Mizrahi, making the most of quarantine, how to stay productive, learn some new skills. A lot of people are talking about how cooped up and bored they are and how there's no end in sight for a lot of folks. And I think that's always troublesome for those of us that are overachievers or just want to get something done.

We also had Robin Drake, retired FBI agent, talking about how to read other people. This is stuff he used as one of our nation's top spy recruiters inside the United States. Robin Drake's a friend. We go way back. So this was an interesting episode as well. I also write every so often on the blog. The latest post is also how to stay productive under quarantine. So we're quarantining it up this week here on the show.

I think, you know, normally we don't talk a lot about COVID-19, but really there's a lot of people that just feel like they're not moving forward, and that's a deeper problem that people need to address. So make sure you've had a look and listen to all of that, the episodes in the feed, and everything at Jordan Harbinger.com slash articles. Of course, our primary mission here on the Jordan Harbinger show is to pass along our guests and our own insights and experience to you. In other words, the real purpose of the show is to have conversations directly with you. That's what we're going to do today and every Friday here on Feedback Friday. I just want to place one brick in the structure that makes up your life. That's what this podcast is about. And you can reach us at Friday at

Jordan Harbinger.com. That's Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com. Gabriel, you want to introduce yourself at all? I mean, you're new to the show, but you're not new to the show. You're not new to the company, that's for sure. Yeah, we've been working together for God years now, right? Writing and chatting on the podcast. So if you've heard past episodes, then you probably know what we talk about. And we're going to get more into it on Feedback Friday. I'm excited to be here with you guys. Yeah, you sound really excited. You definitely don't sound like a guy who just took a yoga class and is now jonesing for a nap. This is my default voice, man. I don't know what to do about it. It's just right here. That's all right. There's room for everybody in radio, you know. As always, we've got fun

questions. We've got doozies. You know, you picked the questions this week. I feel like you're a doozy magnet. We've got some seriously heavy duty. Yeah. We got some good ones. There's some really good ones this week. We do, yeah. Gabe, what's the first thing out of the mailbag? Hey Jordan. I have a friend who is the most thoughtful, generous person you've ever met. She often buys gifts for her friends and family just because, and always gets extravagant gifts for special occasions. For example, she will randomly buy our group of friends small gifts for no reason at all. She always makes sure to get our kids nice gifts for their birthdays and Christmas, and she even bought her nephew a tablet for his fifth birthday. She also just told me she's sending a super nice gift to an old friend who's graduating from college, who she doesn't even talk to anymore. I know she takes a lot of pride in her gifts. Here's the thing, though. She and her husband have been struggling with infertility for years. It's been very hard on her, and I know being a parent is what she wants more than anything.

She disclosed to me that IVF was not an option because they could not afford it. Knowing how much she wants to be a parent, part of me wants to take her aside and tell her to stop buying all of these appreciated but unnecessary gifts and put that money into a savings account for IVF in the future if they want to go that route. Do you think it's overstepping a boundary to give this unsolicited advice? I don't want to make her feel bad or stop being the thoughtful, loving person she is, but I think she could find ways to do it in less expensive ways and save that money for her and her family's future. Is there a good way to approach this topic with her, signed unsolicited advisor? First of all, for people who don't really know what IVF is, so in vitro fertilization, this is when they, what do you say,

you see artificially inseminate? I'm trying not to be crude, but that's really what it is. And it's a surgery and it costs anywhere, if you have insurance and you get subsidies, anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000. And you've got medication that's thousands of dollars. I've got friends who've done this. They went to Taiwan to do it and they spent around $5,000. So it is cheaper overseas.

But barring medical tourism and taking multi-thousand-dollar flights to Taiwan and getting hotels and then trying to fly back and recover, I mean, that could be just as expensive and then you're in a foreign country. So I just wanted to throw that out there in case people aren't familiar on what IVF is. I will come back to this, but for anybody's read the five love languages, this is not a book on science. I think there's a useful paradigm here for looking at relationships. And one of the love languages in that book is gift giving or gifts.

And if you're saying your friend takes pride in her gifts, that's great. That means she gets value from giving the gift. So you might say something to her like, hey, you know, you got to be careful. You should make sure that you're saving money for IVF. but you have to be careful telling her that so that she doesn't feel judged or unappreciated. You know, IVF is expansive. If you know lots of her friends and many of them are well-to-do, you could get together and maybe crowdfund the money for them to do IVF if you're sure they want it.

That might be overly ambitious, but it is a thought. I hesitate to tell people who enjoy gift-giving to stop giving gifts simply because we think they need something else more. You know, it's not necessarily going to change their behavior, and it might push them away from you when what they need to. most, potentially need most, is emotional support and friendship. I think if I gave great gifts and somebody said, hey, you know, Jordan, you should keep these nice gifts. I appreciate them, but you should keep them because I noticed that really, you should replace your car. I'd feel embarrassed about that,

and then I'd also feel really bad and probably a little stupid about that. And I feel like it might rob them of the joy they get from being kind to their friends. What do you think, Gabe? I think you're right. I mean, it is up to her friend to decide how to express that love. that you're talking about and to accept the costs of that expression, whatever they might be. But, you know, the person writing in is asking a really, really good and kind of complicated question, which is, is it overstepping a boundary in our friendship to give this unsolicited advice that I think is really important? And I feel like, and I think the answer really depends on two things. The first is the nature of their friendship, like how close they are and how

much, you know, the person writing in cares about this person, which it sounds like he or she does a lot. And second, their friend's willingness to talk honestly about this subject and get a new perspective. If you guys are not very close or you don't have the kind of friendship where you can discuss intimate topics and give each other advice freely, then telling your friend, you know, hey, maybe you should stop buying us all 4K UHD TVs for Christmas and start saving for that baby you really want. That's, you know, probably crossing a line a little bit. If you guys are close and it's the type of friendship where offering unsolicited advice is totally within the bounds of your friendship, then you can probably bring this up without violating any boundaries. That doesn't mean she'll take it

well necessarily. It just means that you probably could broach the subject. But based on the email, I get the sense that maybe the person writing is somewhere in between these two places. Tell me if you agree, Jordan, maybe close enough to care about her friend's ability to have children, but maybe not so close that bringing up the money stuff is no big deal. And I feel like that's what makes it so hard. So my advice is this. If your friend brings up the financial challenges of having a child or doing IVF a lot, like if she talks about how badly she wants kids and how it's not possible on multiple occasions, then I think you have a license to say something. I mean, you should still be gentle about it because it's a sensitive topic for most people.

I mean, you're talking about money and fertility and the nature of your friendship, which is just like a turduckin of tension potentially. So a good approach would be something like, you know, so look, I know you brought up IVF a bunch and how it's hard to afford and I know that having a family is really important to you. Like I hear you say that. And I also notice how insanely generous you are with your friends, including me, and I have to imagine that that really adds up. You know, you say you don't have the money for IVF, but here you are spending this money in gifts, which is really sweet. But, you know, have you ever considered saving some of that money for a little while so you can have a family?

And if you can make that a conversation with the other person as much as possible and try to help your friend see the truth for herself, rather than telling her what you think is right, then I think that conversation will go a lot better. But if your friend does not bring this topic up a lot, if she only said it once in passing when she had a few glasses of wine or something and never brought it up again, then I think you have a smaller window into that conversation. And you might still bring it up, but you'd be doing it with less of an indication that your friend actually wants to have that conversation. So what I do is balance the nature of your friendship and your friend's state of mind against your desire to see her make the right decisions. And ultimately, you know, her life is up to her. You can help her see the truth as you see it. But at the end of the day, it's her life, and I think that's the real line that you have to honor.

That makes a whole lot of sense. There is sort of the consideration where if this were me, I would say, am I close enough to this person to say, hey, I know you really want to have kids? And you said that IVF is really expensive. Have you thought about making a plan to save for that? And if they go, well, it just seems impossible to get $10,000 together.

You go, well, we could game this out right now. Do you want to do some back of the napkin stuff? And then we can be like, cool, do you mind if we look at what you've spent money on in the last few weeks. Like, I know you buy gifts. Like, we could start with those. And then if she's like,

nah, I really don't want to talk about this. It's a sensitive subject or, I don't really know. I don't really want to go there. Then you kind of have your answer. But if she's like, well, okay, I mean, yeah, you know, our rent is this, our mortgage is this. And yeah, I bought these two gifts.

And you're like, so if you didn't do this, but you still paid your rent, your mortgage, or your grocery bills, but you didn't buy gifts for a while, which everyone would understand, looks like you'd have $10,000 in one year. And then it's like, yeah, but I love giving gifts. Yeah, and everyone loves getting gifts from you, of course, but I think you

should give a gift to yourself, you know? What about having a kid? You could give it a shot for a couple rounds. Then it's like, anyway, do you want more wine? You know, you just kind of let that seed germinate for a little while, and it might be like, oh yeah, this is within reach. Because there's a chance that she wants to have kids and wants to do IVF really bad and then just goes, it's impossible for me to save $10,000 and then doesn't realize that spending $400 on a tablet adds up to over two years to IVF money or quicker to IVF money. I still like my crowd fund idea, but it might be a little bit embarrassing. Hey, here's my go fund me for get Karen a kid.

Share it widely. Here's a picture of her and her husband. They're infertile. I don't know if that's going to go down. I don't think so. I mean, especially after giving all those gifts, it's going to feel like a quid pro quo or just totally reckless or something. But it is kind of funny.

Yeah, good point. Like, hey, remember that woman who gave you a tablet? it, pony up, man. She's trying to reproduce. And if you don't, we're all going to know it was you. Yeah, we'll know. We'll know. Put your name right next to the donation. Tom. You cheap, bhaired. All right, what's next? Hey, Triple J. I can't help but feel stuck right now.

I've been unemployed since March after leaving a commission-only life insurance job after working there for six months. I've been sending out resumes nonstop, but none of the interviews I've done are sticking. At the beginning of the year, I took a certificate course in technology sales from a local university, part of the class was the idea that we would be able to find jobs at the end of the course. I actually only pay for the course if I get a job that pays $50,000 or more. Even though the course gave me exposure and interviews with great companies, I'm still unemployed. I know part of the problem is my resume. It's not all geared towards sales in the way that the companies want. I come from a PR and communications background and not a

business background. Also, I have mostly restaurant experience for now. Additionally, there is a gap on my resume where I took a year off of college to go to drug and alcohol rehab. That rarely comes up in interviews, but I was wondering how I can spin that positively. Should I go back to the restaurant industry so I have income? Should I check out a trade? Should I go ahead and start working towards that master's in public health I've always wanted? I'm 27, and listening to your show has given me hope that I'm not doomed. However, driving for DoorDash and being unemployed in quarantine was only cool for about a week. Any thoughts? Signed, dazed and Quora infused.

Did you make that one up? I did. That's awesome. Dazed and Quar infused. Oh man, that's good. One of the main things I was worried about with producer Jason, JPD, leaving, was all these awesome nicknames because I'm hopeless with it. I mean, look, you're talking to a guy who named his podcast the Jordan Harbinger show

literally because I didn't know what else to call it. So the fact that you're able to come up with stuff like this is a huge relief. That and, you know, doing the show with me and everything. So definitely work, Dazed and Quarrenfews. core infused, if you can, so that you have income. I know right now things are crazy, but any income is better than nothing, and restaurants usually have flexible schedules so you can go do interviews, and that's if your restaurant is even open right now. If you do have money to continue job searching, I recommend giving yourself budgeted financially responsible deadline. So if I don't have a job in

June 1st, then I'll go back to the restaurant industry, or if I don't have a job in three weeks from this date, I will go back to the restaurant industry. Based that on how much runway you have financially. As a side note, staffing agencies always seem to be hiring, so that might be a good route to go if you want a sales-like environment, and you need a job right now. A friend of mine and friend of the show who helped us with this question, she got hired in recruiting with literally zero experience,

and now she does recruiting for Amazon and helps us with feedback. Friday questions like this one, so clearly she is a smashing success. Trades are always a great option if you're interested in them. If not, they're going to be a nightmare. There's always work so it's stable, they have unions, there's good pay. You can eventually start your own shop, be your own boss. A lot of people like to work outside depending on where you are.

You can hire others, be a job creator. There's a whole lot of benefits working in a trade if you are interested in that trade. I would first though explore shadowing other people in those trades for a couple of days to see if there's something you'd like to work in. You don't want to go and be like, I guess I'll do HVAC, my own does it, he says it's good money, and then the first day on the job, you're like, this is a nightmare, and I'm taking an apprenticeship with somebody or an internship or a job, you know, shadow a buddy or two and say, wow, you are in small spaces all day, and I would have a panic attack doing that. I don't

think that I can do this. You know, you want to do this sort of take your daughter to workday type situation at first. And when I say trade, I don't mean law or medicine. I mean HVAC, roofing, drywall plumbing. The guy who installs reverse osmosis water filters in our neighborhood is busy seven days a week. He makes multiple six figures and the only reason he doesn't earn more and work less is because he's the most disorganized human being that I've ever met in my life. He hasn't hired anyone because he doesn't have time and he gives a lot of stuff out for free because he actually forgets to collect payment. So talk about a high quality problem. If you prefer education and more education, bear in mind that you should be doing what you want, not just doing a trade you hate

because you need cash. Persistence, especially in this economy, actually does matter. And getting into a field you want, like public health, matters a lot for long-term happiness. You know, you're going to feel better doing something you enjoy. So don't just take a job that pays the bills, except for short-term plays. This part is really a lot more difficult to advise without knowing more information. So some questions that might help would be asking yourself, are you able to afford going into a master's program? Are you open to taking on significant debt if you do? I usually advise against debt, but, you know, education is education. If you really need it, you really need it. And what job would you look for after the master's program? Is the master's degree actually required or is there another way into that

field? I think a lot of people go, oh, I really need this degree because I want to do this. And then it turns out that you are working next to people who have a high school diploma. And it's like, yeah, you're the manager, but you're making $3 an hour more than everybody else that you're with, but you have $100,000 in debt because of that and you started three years late. As to your hiring concerns, I did again ask friends of the show, Kyle and Jordan, both recruiters, what they thought of your situation. They had mentioned that interviewers and recruiters will probably wonder why you left after six months, if you only had your first job for six months. So try to positively state the reasons for leaving. It was a layoff. I don't know how positive that is, but in the time of

Corona, it's probably fine. Hiring managers may assume you were fired since six months is usually around when performance is reviewed after training. If you're still looking for another sales boot camp, a friend of Jordan, the other Jordan, went through the alwayshired.com sales boot camp. We'll link to that in the show notes. She said he was able to get an SDR tech job, so sales development and rep tech job within two weeks. So you can check that out. Again, we'll link to that in the show notes. You can also try applying to sales coordinator positions.

Your communications degree seems applicable, and it could set you up to future sales roles, or you can try and get a retail sales associate position, which could also lead to future sales positions. And that's anything where you're selling something in a store. If you're not doing so already, I recommend tailoring your resume to each specific job that you apply to. This means including keywords that are in the job description in your resume and including the job

rec ID that you find on the application if they have one. Our recruiter friends here said one of the first things they do is do a control F whatever to find keywords and they're always impressed by the amount of customization that candidates put the effort into doing. As for your gap year, quote unquote, for rehab, I would put it on the resume so there's not a gap year with zero explanation. I recommend not going into specific. interviews usually do not care about gaps in college as long as you graduated. They generally do

care about gaps in employment post-graduation. If it does come up in an interview, give a very general answer about how you had health-related issues where you needed to take time off. That should be fine, especially with everything else going on. Although interviewers aren't legally allowed to deny you the job because of drug and alcohol rehab, they might just come up with another reason why you're not qualified because they don't want to take the risk. The more confident and concise you make this point, that assures the interviewer that the gap is not a big deal and they will continue the interview process normally. The point here is to address any red flags the interviewer might think of and assure them that you're not going to suddenly leave the job

if they hire you. I do advise against spinning it more positively after that, but if you really need to make it a quick part of your story about how the break helped you find a passion for the relevant job or industry or made you more qualified in some way. Again, I'm I wouldn't advise spending too much time on the specifics of this topic, since it doesn't seem like it helps unless you're applying to a position that is related to rehab or therapy. Gabriel, anything to add? No, I think you covered it at all. That's super sound advice.

The one thing that stood out to me in this email is that the one thing you really seem to want to do is pursue a master's in public health. And if you can do that for good reasons and do it responsibly, then why not just go do that? You're still young, you're still building. Go do it. Sometimes life is harder when we're not pursuing what we're meant to. You know, that could be the case with these sales jobs. It's possible that sales just isn't working out because you're not that person. So why not put yourself on a path to being the person you actually want to be if you do have a passion for public health rather than trying to scramble for jobs that don't quite fit who you are?

I'm not saying you couldn't be great at a number of things or that you could do some of these things on the way to your masters in public health. But if that's really the one thing that in your heart you know you care about, I don't see why you should spend more time trying to make something else work when you could do you. you could be going after that. This is the Jordan Harbinger Show and it's Feedback Friday. We'll be right back. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us going. So to learn more and get links to all those great discounts you just heard so that you

can check out those amazing sponsors yourself, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget that worksheet for today's episode. The link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. And now for the conclusion of our episode, it's Feedback Friday. All right, Gabe, what's next? Hey, guys, I'm a huge fan of the show. My brother-in-law introduced me to it several months ago, and I've been obsessed. I'm almost done listening to all the Feedback Fridays,

and I love the insights and commentary that you guys provide. I'm writing about a problem that relates to my sister. She and I are very close, and both suffered from physical abuse from our biological father when we were around five to seven years old. She was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder last year and has been participating in nonstop treatments, medications, and therapy sessions to help. Sadly, she doesn't seem to be progressing very much. She's always been a little crazy, but it got much worse last year when events triggered flashbacks to our troubled childhood of physical abuse. I managed to seek counseling about a decade ago, which helped mitigate the effects of my trauma, but sadly, she didn't have the same opportunity and it looks as if she's paying the price now.

Since then, she's alienated many friends, seems to suffer from the lowest of lows through self-harm, like saying she'll cut herself, which can suddenly shift into delusions of grandeur and superiority. For example, acting racist, saying certain people don't deserve to live or live in America. Everyone around her is constantly walking on eggshells. She has threatened suicide several times, and each time will find someone to blame. She gets derailed by everyday inconveniences and says things trigger her PTSD. The biggest problem is, when we walk on eggshells and apologize for things that are not our fault, I feel as if we're enabling this behavior.

Agree with me, apologize to me, et cetera, or I will kill myself. Of course, more counseling should be a primary focus, but I think doing more at a familial level is called for, since individual counseling hasn't made any significant impact over the last year. I love my sister. Even though she has always been a little crazy, she's one of the most generous and intelligent people in my life, and I want to see her succeed.

What do you suggest? sincerely living on the borderline. Oh, I'm sorry to hear you're going through this. I'm sorry for your sister, too. This can't be easy because there's a part of me. I've never gone through this, but I would imagine that when you're slowly losing yourself like that, there's a part of you that knows it, right?

You have to know, and it's just overwhelming. So that must feel tremendously difficult. Whatever happened to her before has really bubbled up to the point where she can't even work, which I think is not helping. Because I think for a lot of us, work gives us a sense of purpose. It gets us out of the house. It stops us from ruminating about our own lives because we're thinking about what we're

working on. I'm not a licensed psychologist or therapist, so I'm not saying this with any clinical authority. I can't give specific treatment recommendations, but based on the literature and what we've learned about BPDs, so borderline personality disorder, here is what I think. If she's been in therapy and it's not helping, I have to wonder what the therapist says. Perhaps you can go with her to a session or two and ask for yourself. I asked a psychologist friend of mine and he said, in my opinion, the whole family should be attempting therapy together and probably worth switching therapists if they're not seeing improvement in communications outside the sessions in one to three months.

You'll want to look for family systems therapists who utilize attachment theory. That would be a good place to start. But again, not a medical recommendation. You just might want to look at some other therapists and things like that. continuing to get treated here because this sounds like something that she is just not improving with with the current therapist and you have to be really careful about that nobody wants to go to therapy and see no results that's got to be the most frustrating thing especially when you're dealing with something like this as an

individual or as a family Gabriel what do you think I just want to reiterate I am so sorry that you're going through this this sounds really really hard I mean you guys the two of you have been through something really traumatic and extraordinary in your childhood and it wasn't your fault And I can feel in this letter that beneath all the frustration and the anger and the confusion, there's like a ton of love there and a desire to see your sister succeed. and I feel that. I have a sibling. I care about her more than anything in the world. That is tough. And sibling relationships are really complex. Like, in addition to being complicated relationships in and of themselves, they also carry all the residue of childhood and, you know, how you deal with that in adulthood. I want to just echo, I'm not a licensed psychologist or a therapist. I'm just an amateur. You know, I read up on this stuff and I happen to find it very interesting. So I can just share what I've learned. I'm not, you know, an expert. So look, Borderland Personality Disorder is a response to trust. trauma, which you guys experienced when you were younger. And being around someone with BPD is incredibly draining and incredibly exhausting. And it sounds like, you know, just based on what you've shared,

it sounds like your sister might be dealing with some bipolar disorder on top of it. I don't want to analyze her. I'm not trying to put her in a chair. I'm just based on your description of her grandiosity in certain moments. It sounds like there are a couple things potentially going on, and that creates a very difficult combination. So basically, it sounds to me like your sister is in dire need of good intensive therapy with someone who is really good. I'm hoping she's getting that now. It sounds like she's already in therapy, but that it might not be helping, which is tough, but ultimately not something you can really do anything about because that's her process and that's her life. My main recommendation is this, and it's going to be a little bit hard to hear, and it might be a little

hard to put into practice, but here it goes. You're going to have to set and maintain pretty firm boundaries with your sister. I'm not saying you need to cut her off. I'm not saying you have to reject her in any way. I'm just saying that you have to set and maintain boundaries with the person in your life who's dealing with borderline personality disorder because it sounds like those boundaries with your sister are very weak. And by boundary, I just mean the line between your life and her life. You know, your identity and her identity. Your sense of self, her sense of self. Basically, where your world ends and her world begins, that's where the boundary has to be drawn. So when she threatens suicide or hurts herself or blames you or expects you to deal with the chaos of what she

creates, you are taking on her emotional experience. And that is a classic borderline personality disorder dynamic. You know, I don't blame you for doing that. It's totally natural. It's an expression of how much you care about her and that you guys were super close. And it's probably if I had to guess something you learned to do way back in childhood. But that has to change starting now for your sake and also for hers. So just in practice, to be very specific for a moment, you know, drawing a boundary with your sister will mean, depending on how you choose to do it, could mean limiting the time you spend with her, limiting contact for a period of time, limiting conversation, potentially so that she doesn't suck your energy, which is something that happens in this type of disorder, and making a conscious commitment

to not jump to her rescue or put up with irrational or unfair behavior or apologize when something isn't your fault or agree with her to keep things on an even keel, which it sounds like you're doing, or stop her from making bad decisions. Basically, you need to say, this is where my experience ends and yours begins. This will be really tough and scary. It might even be quite painful for both of you, but it's from what I understand and from my own experience, it's the only option. You know, one of the things about changing those codependent or enabling relationships and you do describe feeling like you're enabling your sister is that you have to, in the words of some

really great psychologists, you have to step down so that other people can step up. You have to accept that the other person, your sister, might hit rock bottom without your help. I think that's the moment that you've been avoiding by trying to do all. of this for her. And you have to tolerate your own anxiety about what happens when you do that. And your sister will react to this. Anytime anyone sets boundaries with anybody, the other person always reacts, you know, especially someone with borderline personality disorder. So she will probably find it very scary. She will probably find it quite rejecting. In the short term, you'll probably want to swoop in and rescue her, but in the long term, you're really not doing her or yourself any favors. And this is really

tough because you don't want to be responsible if something bad happens. But if you don't draw that line, then you reinforce the behavior and you're always on the hook and she will never step up in her own life. I do recommend you work with your own therapist or psychologist, counselor, on setting and maintaining those boundaries. It is hard and it's an ongoing process. It's not a one and done type of thing. I do agree with Jordan on this, you know, family therapy could be helpful for the communication aspect, but because your sister seems to pull so much attention when you guys get together, it might be tough for you to really work through some of those issues, especially on your side of the equation. So if you do do family therapy, maybe do it in conjunction with your own resources so you can get your

own help dealing with this in a room where she's not pulling all of the attention all the time. DBT or dialectical behavior therapy is considered right now the gold standard for BPD treatment. So if your sister can find someone trained in DBT, it would probably help her out a lot. But again, that's not something you can necessarily make happen for her. That is her choice. A couple other resources I'll just throw at you because I think it might help. You might want to consider attending an Al-Anon meeting or a similar. meeting for some extra support. Al-Anon was developed as a meeting for family members of addicts.

I know that's not exactly what you're dealing with, but a big part of Al-Anon is talking about codependency and enabling behaviors that we get sucked into. And since you mentioned enabling specifically, that type of meeting could be really helpful in dealing with somebody who is chaotic. There are also some really, really good books on coping with borderline personality disorder. One of the best that I've heard mentioned from some experts recently is loving someone with borderline personality disorder. I think we will link to that in the show notes. Here's the tough news, but also ultimately the good news. At the end of the day, you cannot save your sister. Nobody can accept her. And you can help her and you can support her up to a point. That's the boundary.

But you can't fix her on your own. You can love her and you can be there for her in a way that you feel as appropriate, but you can't live her life for you and it's not your job. We just can't do that for other people. Only your sister can do that for herself. The best thing you can do is give her the difficult, sometimes painful, but ultimately healthy gift of letting her learn how to live her own life. It's rough to see this because they both grew up in the same way and he's handling it differently than her and he probably is like, why can't you just be more like me where I either went to therapy earlier as he mentioned or dealing with this in a different way? And I'm sure she feels that too, where she's like, what the hell? We both dealt with this and my brother is functional and fine.

and I'm the screw up who like can't get it together. Yeah, I definitely feel that in the letter. I would not be surprised if that were part of what makes the dynamic difficult. Yeah, so it's just got to be so rough. Man, it's amazing to me. I think about this whenever we get letters like this. It's amazing to me how all of your crap as a parent gets transferred to your kid, and if you have a lot of it, you completely overwhelm your kid's ability to, like,

develop normally. All my little flaws now, I'm like, oh, God, I can't have my kids see this. Can't have my kid see it. Can't have Jaden see me get unreasonably upset about this stupid thing. Can't have Jaden see me do this other dumb thing. Like, you know, had too many whiskeys in the evening. Like, can't let them see me do that. Got to cut this stuff out.

Like, I don't drink very much. That's the problem, right? If what I do, it's like, I have two whiskeys and I'm like, I'm going to go to sleep at the dinner table. That's the thing. It's like all these little things that were just kind of like eye rolls, you know, like rolling your eyes or your wife would roll her eyes. Now it's like, what are you doing?

and it's just I'm very much acutely aware of that. So, man, maybe my thing is I derail other people's personal questions and turn them into my own stories about my own life. Huh, something to think about. No, what I'm hearing is that you're a very thoughtful parent who's using the opportunity to be a parent to look at some of that stuff and magnify it because it matters now.

What's really heartbreaking about this letter is that they had a parent who did something really, really bad. You know, you didn't go into detail, but I'm taking you at your word, that there was some pretty serious abuse in your childhood. And I feel for this person who's writing in because I think because he has managed to work through some of this stuff on his own and seems to be doing better as more functional, he probably feels a responsibility to be there for his sister and to

pick that up for her. And I get that impulse. I mean, it's natural. You guys are close. You love her. She sounds like a really interesting, smart, caring person. If she weren't, it would be easier. If she weren't special to you, it would be easier to just let her go off the rails. But because you care about her, you want to help. And the hard part is accepting that sometimes you can't help. and sometimes the only way to help is to stop helping in the way you've been doing it this whole time. This is the Jordan Harbinger Show, and yes indeed, it is Feedback Friday.

Woo! We'll be right back. Thank you for listening, you guys, and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us going. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard so that you can check out those amazing sponsors for yourself, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget that worksheet for today's episode.

The link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. And now for the conclusion of Feedback Friday. All right. Next up. Greetings, Jordan, Jen, and team. Hope you're doing okay during these challenging times. I am someone who strives to improve and challenge myself. The problem is I'm also a perfectionist and have a couple phobias, including public speaking. I'm currently finishing up my first year in beginner German.

My dream is to eventually relocate to Germany. The class moves quickly, and I've been struggling. to keep up and I feel like the worst student in the class. My public speaking phobia is also a constant presence since the class is very interactive and we have to present and role play, things like that. I always anticipate making a fool of myself. German is hard. I don't often look forward to going to class, but what makes me so happy is thinking about being in Germany someday and having day-to-day conversations. My big question for you is how do you decide if it's worth pushing through something or quitting because it causes anxiety and isn't too pleasant or fun at the

time. Thank you for taking my question. Checking my dignity at the virtual German class door. Well, I can certainly relate to learning German and other tough languages. German is hard. Chinese is hard. I understand not wanting to make a fool out of yourself. And having an increased speaking phobia because you're worried about doing it in a foreign language, I would never quit something just because it's hard or not fun at the time. A lot of things are that way. There's this kind of learning curve where the first year or two of a language really, especially of languages, really sucks because you're going, ugh, I'm in Chinese and it's month number six and all I'm doing right now is learning these dumb sounds. And I don't even know how to say anything other than

hello and goodbye and please and thank you. This is terrible. And then like, as you kind of roll over to being able to understand what people are saying and say more things, you start to go, oh, that's kind of fun. Oh, wow, I can do this. Oh, I can read now. Oh, I can write stuff now. That is really rewarding. And that's the reason most people quit languages is the first few months or years really seem

almost impossible. Our Russian teacher in college, I don't speak Russian anymore, but she got us over this by saying, hey, I know you have a different alphabet, and everyone would go, yeah, this looks really complicated. And she goes, I expect you to be done with this, memorize it, and be able to write it in cursive by the end of the month. And we were going, what are you talking about? Not only do we have to memorize this alphabet,

but we have to be able to write it in cursive. And she goes, oh, I'm sorry. I meant you're going to know this alphabet by the end of the week, make some flashcards, just learn it and drill it. And then you're going to be able to write it in cursive by the end of the month. But you'll also be writing sentences by the end of the month. It's not the only thing we're going to learn. And everyone freaked out.

And then after the first three days, I was like, oh, I do know this alphabet. And then after the first week or two, I could write it in cursive. and I can still write cursive Cyrillic, which is kind of awesome. She just didn't allow us to drag it out and make it more painful. And we were like, wow, this is really hard. Why would you do that? And she goes, yeah, I know this is really hard.

I just know that if you do it fast, you get it done. And if you do it slow, it's going to take you a year and you're going to think Russians really hard and it's really not. And I thought that was genius. She was also an old school teacher from the Soviet Union, so she didn't give a crap if we hated it. But we actually liked it. She was kind of a brilliant genius.

as far as that was concerned. She taught us like she was teaching little kids, but then she gave us no leeway like you do when you're with adults. I just think you should do that to yourself. It doesn't have to not be fun. German is hard. Nobody's judging you in that class. Everyone thinks German is hard.

I guarantee you that because it objectively is hard. And if you're thinking about being in Germany someday and having dated a conversation, the last thing you should do is quit German. What I would do if you're really worried about it and you feel like you're behind the curve, take some German lessons online, email me Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com.

I'll refer you to my German language teacher. I have a few great German teachers that I take lessons with over Skype, and they're interesting and they're fun, and they can show you how to get ahead. And so if you feel embarrassed because you feel like you're the last in line in class, that's one thing.

But if everyone's having a hard time and you're just self-conscious about it, I would say push through. What do you think, Gabriel? Yeah, I totally agree. I think to answer your main question, you shouldn't quit. I think you need to just make a mental shift

and decide what you want to get out of this class. Like in your mind, you're conflating, man, this is really hard and embarrassing with this isn't something I should do or something I can do. And I would ask you, what do those two things have to do with each other? Like maybe German is just hard and that's part of it. Maybe it's something you should do because it's hard. I mean, you're frigging learning a new language and moving to another country at some point. What part of that would ever be easy?

It's really challenging. Now, if you realize at some point that you actually don't want to live in Germany after all, then that changes things. But it sounds to me like your dream of moving there is still very much alive and it excites you to think about speaking German with people, which is so cool. Like it is so much more meaningful to learn a language knowing that you are going to be using it to experience another country as a local as best you can. And if that is motivating you, then keep visualizing that and keep focusing on that. I think it will get you through some tough phases. As for your deeper question, I would use this huge goal of learning German as an opportunity to work on your perfectionism and your phobia of public speaking.

both of which, by the way, so many people have, and everybody can relate to. Everybody listening to this is going, oh my God, I totally can relate. I know what that feeling is like. By the way, those are the things that get in the way of a lot of people learning languages. So you are not alone in this. Perfectionism always hides deeper stuff, usually anxiety about struggling or failing and discovering your weaknesses or being perceived by other people a certain way, even if it's only in your mind and opening yourself up to criticism. And one thing that helps, I think, is talking about it, acknowledging that.

acknowledging that phobia is a really powerful act and it can be an important first step for you. Could you own it in your class? Could you make fun of yourself or laugh at yourself when you make a mistake? Could you talk to some of the other people in the class or your teacher about it? I mean, I think if you start to like open up a little bit about it, it'll take some of the stigma away from it and also open you up to some new ways of thinking to deal with it. I think if you talk about something out loud, the shame around it always starts to ratchet down. Jordan, I want to know if you agree with this. There's one piece of advice that I think my mom and then a few teachers gave me when I was learning languages a decade ago. You have to be willing to sound kind of silly when you're learning a new language.

You do, and you have to make your mistakes out loud. A lot of people, what they do is if they, like, for German, there's Der Dian Das, right? So masculine, feminine, and neutral nouns. And a lot of times if you don't know what it is, you'll go like, So ishish bin, der, da, da, da. And you'll, like, sort of mumbled. the dare d or das, and no one will correct you because, as they found actually through these kind of fun studies, Germans hear the correct gender of a noun. If you sort of mumble it, their subconscious

will just fill it in with the proper grammar. So you get away with it as a foreigner, or they'll be like, oh, she doesn't know, so I'm just not going to say anything. If you say, Das, da, da, da, and it's dare or d, then sometimes people will correct you, but they can't correct you if they're not sure what you said. So you really do have to make your mistakes out loud as much as possible. That's true for any language, but especially for something like German where there's these little tiny mistakes. Chinese, it's harder to get away with because if you screw up the word order, somebody will be like, oh, you meant this. Depending on who you're talking to, teachers will do it.

But a teacher can't correct you with German if they can't even hear what you're labeling the noun. So you do have to make your mistakes as loud as possible. I'm not saying you have to go around yelling, but make your mistakes big, sort of loud and proud. And if they correct you, then good, you'll know. Don't try and hide it and smooth it over. because you won't get corrected and you'll keep making the same mistakes over and over.

Let me ask you this. Have you ever met someone from another country who speaks broken English and thought, geez, what a loser. Or like, what an idiot. No, of course not. So give yourself the room to improve, except that you will not be perfect in the short term. Try to study your phobias a little bit to find out what's underneath them because there's always something underneath them. And most of all, try to enjoy it because there's nothing more exciting than learning a new language, well, except getting to use it in the country that you're going to be moving to, which is awesome. I wish you the best. Life pro tip of the week. If a bee colony has set up a hive that you need removed, so in a wall and a tree near you, don't call the exterminator. They're just going to

spray it and kill it, which is a shame. We need bees right now. Beekeepers, local beekeepers, they will often come by in a truck that same day and they will relocate the hive. Often they'll do it for free or they'll do it for a modest fee. Now, the reason they do this is bees are actually valuable. An exterminator doesn't care. They're just going to spray it and kill it, like I said, but a beekeeper will try and take it. And they're going, great, a free bee colony. And that's worth, you know, $100 or more, depending on if they're going to keep it or if they're going to sell it. So it's an easy way to be nice to the bees and to your wallet.

So you can literally look up beekeepers or honey farms and call them and say, hey, do you know anyone who can come and take this beehive? It's in a bush behind my house. I got kids. I don't want it here. That's for sure true around here. Jen will call her beehive buddies, and these guys will come by. he'll remove a swarm from a car. They're like, oh, there's bees on my car.

He'll just come by and take it. He'll take the hubcap off or he'll take the swarm right off in his bee suit and take the beehive. Google or contact local beekeepers associations, they usually have a list of people who will go and retrieve a swarm of bees for you for free. Recommendation of the week, Gabriel,

you got something for us? I got a few, but one of the best was a new documentary. It just came out on Hulu called Spaceship Earth. It's a documentary about eight, hippie scientist visionaries who embarked on a experiment for two years to quarantine themselves super timely inside of a thing called Biosphere 2, which was like a replica of Earth's ecosystem. It's really cool history and super interesting characters and just a really weird time capsule of a certain period of time in the 60s and 70s. And I think after that, starting in San Francisco

and just following these people on their journey to do this really bizarre experiment. Highly recommend super interesting, Doc. Hope you all enjoyed that. I want to thank everyone that wrote in this week. A link to the show notes for the episode can be found at Jordan Harbinger.com. Quick shout out to physio guy who took a major gut punch. Seven weeks after his business became profitable, he got totally screwed over for various reasons. And he's been using six-minute networking to get back on course. And his business has been cut by 75%, but that's better than most of the clinics in his area, which are seeing 90 plus percent's drop in sales. So he's thanking his lucky stars for digging the well before he got thirsty. So if you're not doing six minute networking, make sure you go and check that out. It's a free course at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. You have to build your network before you need it. Listen to the experience of Physio Guy, and if you don't, you can be in trouble.

I'm on Instagram and Twitter at Jordan Harbinger. It's a great way to engage with the show. Videos of our interviews are at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. This show is created in association with Podcast One. This episode is produced by Jen Harbinger, edited by J. Sanderson. Show notes for the episode by Robert Fogarty. The ads are fun because of Peter Oldring, music by Evan Viola. Special thanks to my new sidekick on Feedback Friday, Gabriel Mizrahi.

Keep sending in those questions to Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com. Our advice and opinions and those of our guests are their own. I'm not a psychologist or a therapist, and I have no clinical authority whatsoever, so I can't give specific treatment recommendations. I can only share what I've learned on my own and with my team. And yeah, I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. Remember, we rise by lifting others.

Share the show with those you love, and if you found this episode useful, please share it with someone else who can use the advice we gave here today. Lots more in store for 2020. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like something you should know with Mike Carruthers.

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