The Liz Moody Podcast - Why Therapy Isn't Working + What We Need To Do Instead

Episode Date: July 1, 2026

More people than ever have a therapist, yet 1 in 3 US adults report symptoms of depression or anxiety. So what gives? Is therapy even working? I had on a top clinical therapist and she said no, it’s not, but there is something we can do to feel better. Dr. Maytal Eyal is a top practicing psychologist whose writing has been featured in The Atlantic, TIME, Wired, and Psychology Today, and her insights have appeared in NPR, BBC, Vogue, Vox, The Guardian, and Cosmopolitan. In this conversation, we dive into what we can all do instead of 1:1 therapy to feel better, how to know if therapy is working for you, and we answer many of your therapy questions. 🎧 What you’ll learn: • How labeling your experiences might be making your symptoms worse • The science behind the nocebo effect you need to know • 3 signs to know if your therapy is making you better • How to know when self-reflection is actually hurting you • Why your attachment style may not be because of your parents (+ what shapes it more) • What "McVulnerability" is and why you should be aware of it • The skill we should all be focusing on  • A research-backed way to feel better in two weeks Check out our NEW YouTube Channel with tons of YouTube exclusive Shorts, exclusive podcast content, and full video episodes: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@LizMoodyTV⁠  Check out the previous episodes of The Liz Moody Podcast discussed today: Interview with Dr. Ethan Kross: “Do THIS When You Can't Stop Spiraling: Top Neuroscientist Explains” • Listen on Apple • Listen on Spotify • Watch on YouTube Interview with Dr. Corinne Low: “New Science: Why Women Are So Exhausted + The Surprising Ways to Feel Better” • Listen on Apple • Listen on Spotify • Watch on YouTube  For more from Dr. Maytal Eyal: • Substack: https://maytaleyal.substack.com/ • Website: https://www.maytaleyal.com • Twitter/X: https://x.com/maytaleyal Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome.Buy our cute sweatshirts, conversation cards, and more at https://shop.lizmoody.com/. Use our discount codes from our  highly vetted and tested brand partners by visiting https://www.lizmoody.com/codes.  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. This episode is brought to you completely free thanks to the following podcast sponsors: • Birch: go to https://BirchLiving.com/LizMoody for 20% off a new mattress. • PaleoValley: Head to PaleoValley.com/LizMoody or use code LIZMOODY at checkout for 15% off your first purchase. • LMNT: head to DrinkLMNT.com/Liz to get a FREE 8-count sample pack with any order. • Timeline: visit Timeline.com/Liz to save up to 39% off. The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 444. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What they found is truly shocking. Self-reflection had no significant relationship to positive mental health. It had no significant relationship to higher satisfaction or positive well-being. What they did find was self-reflection had a significant relationship with depression and anxiety. And so what does that tell us that being so focused inwards where I think therapy culture often pulls us actually makes us depressed and anxious? We have to get outside of ourselves. How far should we take that? Like, was ignorance fully bliss?

Should we be like, la, la, la, I don't want to think about my childhood? If you dig deeper into this line of research, what you'll find is that a lot of us are just self-reflecting wrong. Welcome to the Liz Moody podcast where we believe that there is always something that you can do to create a life that feels amazing. And we help you figure out how to find the lever to pull at any moment to actually do that. Meytle, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. The reason that I wanted to have you here today is because one in five U.S. adults receive some kind of mental health care like therapy.

But one in three U.S. adults now report symptoms of anxiety or depression, which is roughly three times as many people as in 2019. I feel like that number feels low to me. If more of us are in therapy than ever, why are so many of us anxious and depressed? You are one of the top therapists in the country. So I wanted to have you on here to ask you directly. Is therapy even working? I think this is the most important question right now.

I think every single person in the field of psychology that's a therapist out there should be asking this question. And I call this idea the fact that it's not that just more people are in therapy than ever, it's that therapy culture has exploded. And our mental health doesn't seem to be getting better. It actually seems to be getting worse. So I call this idea the therapy paradox. I think the way for us to make sense of it is to kind of look at two different layers.

So the first layer is what are the academics? What are the researchers? What are the people in the field of psychology that are looking at the literature that are looking at the data? What are they finding? And layer two is looking at the deeper, more invisible forces at play. If we look at layer one, what are the academics finding? What are the researchers finding? And what they're finding is that as therapeutic diagnoses have crept into the most mild and mundane

corners of our lives, as we've started labeling our ordinary day-to-day experiences as trauma, as ADHD, as depression, as anxiety, as autism. We have accidentally created something called a nocebo effect. Most people have heard of the placebo, right? If you take a sugar pill and you think it's going to cure you, it does because the power of belief is absolutely remarkable. The nocebo effect is like the same thing but the opposite. So with therapy, as more and more of us are identifying all these mild experiences in our lives as therapeutic symptoms, we're actually causing ourselves to have more therapeutic symptoms. So for example, if you had a horrible experience with your boss at work,

and you go on and start identifying that as a work trauma, and you sort of start convincing yourself, I was traumatized at work, what the research is finding is that can literally lead you to have more trauma symptoms. So there was like a really interesting study done a few years ago with this researcher at Harvard. And he took two groups of students. And for group A, he had them read all these materials about trauma. And the material said, okay, trauma is this really rare thing.

It only happens if you go to war or it happens if you have some horrific experience within a natural disaster. Like it's super rare. It doesn't ordinarily happen. The second group was asked to read a bunch of materials that had them understand trauma is a thing that can happen all the time. It happens to everyone. It's ordinary. It can happen in breakups. But now life experiences can be traumatizing.

He then had both groups watch a disturbing film. And then afterwards, in the hours, days, week after watching the disturbing film, he monitored their mental health. And the group that read the material that said trauma is this ordinary thing that can happen all the time had more trauma symptoms in the hours, days, week following watching the disturbing film. Wow. So if we believe something is wrong with our mental health, we make it more likely that

something could be wrong with our mental health. And as more and more and more of us, like, identify our day-to-day lives through these diagnoses, we're getting more symptoms associated with these diagnoses. That's what the research is showing. Okay. So that's layer one. I'm going to let you get to layer two in a second. But I have to ask about that because a lot of people feel seen, feel permission, feel finally understood by these diagnoses. So how do you square that with the diagnosis might actually be causing you to feel worse? This is what kind of sucks. Because even a couple decades ago, there was so much stigma associated with all these

diagnoses. And for many people, being able to figure out, this is how I explained my problem, it's very liberating. You can be freeing and it can lead them towards a path of treatment. But I think what's just happened is we've jumped too far to the other side where we've labeled so many of our very ordinary life experiences. through these diagnostic terms. And so now it's about figuring out the middle ground.

I think my advice here is not to avoid labels altogether, to avoid labels like depression or anxiety. Sometimes they're really helpful. My advice is more so when you're describing a hard week or when you're describing a rough relational experience, just maybe think twice before you say, I'm traumatized or I'm depressed. because when you say to yourself, I'm depressed versus I've been having a really hard month,

it creates a very different effect in your mind and body. Saying to yourself, I've just had a really hard month, actually feels more workable to solve it. That's so interesting. I also imagine there's different populations who would benefit or be harmed in different ways by this. There's people who maybe haven't been able to acknowledge to themselves or others that they were traumatized by certain elements of their childhood, whereas there's other people who it's like everything is trauma and that means that they cannot get out of this hole that they're keeping on digging deeper into. Absolutely. I wonder if there's a generational divide here. Like I think if we look at older generations where there was so much stigma attached to these

diagnoses, it might be more helpful for them to be able to use diagnoses to explain their experiences because it's been forbidden for so long. But when we look at the younger generation, we look at the generation that's been versed in therapy speak, that might be a group of people we might want to consider using less of this language because it might have the nocebo effect on them. I feel like I get it in some ways where I'm like, yeah, your ex probably isn't really a narcissist. Like it's a pretty rare diagnoses and maybe there exists somewhere. Like they have some narcissistic traits, but they're probably not a narcissist.

But the reason I can't be productive in a normal way is certainly because I have my TikTok diagnosed ADHD. You know what I mean? It's like I'm willing to allow for it in some places. But otherwise, I'm like, no, no, no, no. What is about me is real. Yeah. I mean, I just think what's so interesting about diagnostic speak, therapy speak in general, is it's almost like we've developed two distinct vocabularies. One is to describe ourselves and one is to describe others. And the vocabulary we're using to describe ourselves is so generous. It's like I'm a highly sensitive person and I need to just regulate my nervous system and I'm engaging in self-care. But we've fallen into a trap of

identifying others with these more negatively charged therapy speak terms like you're a narcissist, you're avoidantly attached, you know, so on and so forth. So that's layer one. What's layer two? So layer two is like the deeper thing at play. It's a more philosophical, it's a more historical answer. If you look at human history throughout time, we have always found meaning and purpose from something outside of ourselves. So if you look at like indigenous hunter-gatherer society, Meaning and purpose was found through the web of life. It was found through nature and spirit and ancestors. If you look at Western history in the time of Aristotle and Plato,

meaning and purpose was found through civic service and public duty and serving the republic. If you look at the Middle Ages up until very, very recently, meaning and purpose was found through God. It was found through religion and tradition. In the 20th century, something unprecedented happened. Therapy was invented, therapy cold. exploded across the Western imagination, and we as humans started finding our meaning and purpose within ourselves, within our own happiness, within our own self-factualization, within

our own self-fulfillment. And this has been really bad for our mental health to be this far, turned inwards, and so focused on self-factualization. I've never thought about this before. When was therapy invented or popularized? Therapy was literally invented about 120 years ago. it is newer than Coca-Cola. That's insane. It is a relatively recent invention. Around, I think it was 1950, Freud had already died,

but Hitchcock made a film about psychoanalysis that was nominated for multiple Academy Awards and he used the art of Dali. It was starting to become really popular in mass culture, but it was really the 60s and 70s where therapy culture blew up.

And that time period is called the Human Potential Movement. And that's when, like, you know, the hierarchy of needs, Maslow's needs became popular. And people were joining, like, scream groups and the Esselin Institute was created. So the human potential movement of 60s and 70s was a huge explosion time in therapy culture. But I think in the last two decades, we're almost experiencing, like, human potential movement part two. I think in the last decade has been the biggest explosion of therapy we've ever seen. Because in the 20th century, therapy and therapy concepts were still resolved.

for kind of like a privileged sect with society. And what social media and the internet has done is it's democratized therapeutic concepts. We'd think that would be a really good thing. We'd think it would be an amazing thing that this sort of like social technology, this healing technology would become available to all of us. But what seems to have happened is it seems to have turned us very inwards.

And it seems to have created this culture of hyper individualistic narcissism. not to use labels. True. Nocebo in all of us right now as we speak. Did we move away from religion and all these other things that were turning us outward and then therapy stepped into that void? Or did therapy push us away from all the other things that were turning us outward? We used to answer the big questions.

What does it mean to live a good life? What do I do with my suffering? Religiously. We had religious answers to that question. In the 20th century, as religion declined and therapy culture really took off, we started answering life's big questions with therapeutic answers. What does it mean to live a good life? To be my authentic self, to be happy, to self-actualize. What do I do with my suffering? I go talk about it and excavate it and figure out a way to heal from it by sitting in an office with another person. Do you think that's

better or worse? Or do you think they're equally damaging but in different ways? I think that that therapy culture's explosion was a very good thing to happen to us. Because if you think about the time when Freud developed therapy, we lived in a very, very different world. It was way more conformist. People were oppressively stifled inside these norms and these traditions. And Freud came along and said, hey, we all need to turn inwards. That wasn't a thing human beings used to do. I think the turning inward that happened as a result of Freud's theories and as a result of therapy culture led to a lot of human rights advancements in the 20th century. Like the quest for emotional freedom led to political freedom. But it also came with a tradeoff because this sort of inward focus philosophy really took off.

And we became so focused on ourselves. It's like the questions of the past used to be, what is my family? what is my faith, what does my community expect of me? And now the question is, what do I want? What do I need? What makes me happy? And that shifting in questions has turned us too far inwards, and it's not good for us to be this focused on ourselves.

Wait, tell me how the emotional freedom and inquisition led to the political inquisition and freedom. I think by society caring more about humans being happy and humans feeling good, led to more people caring about the political freedoms of people. It led to more people caring about people having rights and groups that were historically oppressed, having more freedom and liberation and dignity. Does that make sense? Yeah. What would you see as the ideal if it's neither of these other extremes? So we were really far turned outwards, and now we're the opposite. we're too far turned inwards. We have to find the balance. We have to come back outwards again.

And the reason why is because therapy culture right now is working right alongside technology. It's almost like they are two heads on the beast of hyper individualism. Because on one hand, we have therapy culture telling us, focus on yourself, focus on your self-actualization, excavate, excavate, go inwards on your life. And on the other hand, we have all this technology, you know, our algorithms, our apps, our LLMs, keeping us track. inside of these self-referential bubbles. Therapy and therapy culture needs to be a corrective for technology rather than working in tandem with technology to keep us trapped within ourselves and atomized from each other. Wait, so technology has amplified even further this hyper-individualization

that therapy was already causing. Yes, exactly. What I want to see is that therapy becomes more of a corrective force. The way we do therapy, the way we think about therapy, the ideals that are brought forth by therapy culture. And I think there's two ways to do that. One starts with, we need to do a lot more group therapy. Right now, 95% of therapy is individual. 95% of therapy happens where it's one person going off siloed in an office with one therapist. Maybe 5% of therapy is done in groups. This is such a miss. Group therapy is so powerful. Research shows it's just as effective as individual therapy. it's much, much cheaper.

And it comes with a slew of all these other benefits. I think it's one of the most underutilized things right now. Because you get the benefits of excavating and finding your authentic self and all of that, but you're doing it while you're in this environment that forces you to turn outward. Because it brings you back out to other people, and it helps you with the relational work. I feel like when you're in an office with a therapist alone, and you're going so deep inwards on yourself,

it doesn't always translate to your relationships with other people, whereas group therapy is all about relationships with other people. So group therapy is like a relational laboratory. That's the best way I can describe it. Yeah. For somebody who's never done group therapy, which I think is many of us, what does it look like? Are we all sitting in a circle?

Is there like a question posed to everybody? Do I have to be willing to talk about the stuff that's most shameful to me in front of a bunch of strangers? So there's a lot of different types of group therapy. All these different forms, you know, support groups, A.A. There's something called authentic relating circles. I think they're all great. The kind of group therapy I think is really fantastic are called process groups. You do sit in a circle with other people and you do talk about your life and the hard things in your life and the shameful things in your life. And you get witnessed and loved through that. But I think there are a couple elements that make group therapy so powerful. One is you're listening to other people's problems and you are helping them. And there's a lot of research to show that sometimes helping others can actually be more helpful for your mental health than helping yourself. So you're weighing in as the other participant in addition to the therapist weighing in? Absolutely. So that's a part of it. But I think what really makes group therapy and process

group therapy powerful, it's a relational laboratory where you can practice being in relationship. So when you're in group therapy, you get jealous of the other people in group therapy. You get angry at the other people in group therapy. You feel complicated, uncomfortable feelings with the other people in your group. And in group therapy, you talk about it. I'm jealous of you right now. I've been angry at you for three weeks. And you literally get to work on it.

You get to, in the moment, sit with the discomfort of feeling jealous or angry or whatever it is with another person. We don't get many opportunities to do this in our lives. This is one of my theories about what's going on. that's making us our mental health so much worse despite being in therapy is I think we have an increasing intolerance for discomfort. Exactly. So being confronted with a therapy situation that is less comfortable, but perhaps more healing is not something a lot of us would voluntarily do. We like our therapy sessions to affirm the decisions that we want to make. Absolutely. And in group

therapy, that is a place where someone will be like, what are you doing? You're hiding behind that. or you're not being totally honest. You know, you're way more likely to get called out on your stuff by other group members. But how do we push through even the subconscious discomfort that is preventing us from engaging with that type of thing? You know what I mean? We don't like to do things that are uncomfortable for us.

And I think that's becoming increasingly prevalent. Like our discomfort with discomfort is just going up and up and up. So I think subconsciously or consciously, many of us would probably talk ourselves out of putting ourselves in that situation in the first place. I think that's such a good point. I think there needs to be a cultural moment when we realize that avoiding discomfort

is the ultimate pathway in experiencing anxiety and depression. The more you avoid putting yourself in friction situations, the more you avoid discomfort, the less happy you're going to be. The less you're going to flourish. Discomfort is a pathway into growth.

This is something I've been thinking about a lot, which is discomfort is not something that you need to push through. Discomfort is often the point. It's not something we need to endure. it is the benefit is in the discomfort. I completely agree. And I think group therapy is the best tool for that. Okay.

We're going to get into some more things around vulnerability and discomfort and all of that. But we're going to play some games throughout this. Okay. You prepared two truths and a lie for me. So you're going to say three things and I'm going to guess which one is the lie. Yeah. Let's do it. Okay.

So I was thinking we should do this in the realm of attachment theory. Okay. Because I feel like that's a very popular. therapy idea right now. How do you understand attachment theory? Like, what do you generally know about it? I think of myself as avoidantly attached. I will say my one quam with attachment theory as I hear it online is I hate when people say they're an anxious, they're an avoidant. And I'm like, they're not like, it's such a crazy label to give people versus they experience avoidant attachment. They experience anxious attachment. I think of myself as avoidantly attached.

And I often think of that as negatively impacting my relationships. And I view that as something that formed in my childhood. My mom was in an accident when I was two years old and kind of taken away from my life for a pretty long amount of time without any explanation or anything like that because those two. And I think of that as having, I don't know, like messed up my attachment in some way. Okay, that was an amazing summary. Perfect. Okay. Okay. So I'll name three things. Okay. So one is most Americans are securely attached. Okay. second one is our attachment style is determined by a relationship with our parents at a young age. And the third one is, insecurely attached people are more likely to seek out therapy.

Let me know if you need me to say them again. Okay. I think the first one is the lie because I don't think that most Americans are securely attached. I feel like we're all on the struggle bus over here. Most Americans are securely attached. That's a truth. That is a truth. Attachment is growing. Uh-huh.

But right now, as the number stands, it seems that most Americans are securely attached. Wow. Do you know the percentage? So there's a little bit of differing in the research. More people would self-report that they're insecurely attached, but if they actually take the test, it looks like it's around 56%. Okay. Interesting.

Okay. So that one, I'm wrong. What were the next to? So the other one is insecurely attached people are more likely to seek out therapy. And the third one was, our attachment style is determined by our relationship with our parents at a young age. Those both feel true to me. If I had to say one of those is a lie, maybe insecurely attached people don't seek out therapy because something about that attachment style prevents them from getting the help that they need. Insecurely attached people, especially anxiously avoidant attached people, are the most likely to seek out therapy.

So I just, I got wrong twice. I made it really tricky. I made it really tricky. And my sister's a therapist. And I have hosted like 500 episodes of this podcast. Okay. So the one that is the lie is that our attachment style is determined by our childhood. Yep.

That is insane. Okay. Every single person listening is like, girl, attachment styles are definitely determined by our childhood. Okay. Let me explain. So if you look at the very recent research and you look at the people kind of summarizing this. What they are finding is that there are plenty of people who had difficult experiences at a young

age and still grow up to have secure attachment styles and vice versa. And what actually impacts your relationships the most in your 30s and 40s especially are the relationships you had with other romantic partners? Way more than your relationships with your parents at a young age. I married my first long-term boyfriend. Oh. What do I do with that? How old were you guys when you got together?

We were 21. And had you had any relationships before? I'd had a lot of sex. Were you ever in like not a long term like serious relationship? Like high school, you know, my boyfriend writing notes and stuff, but nothing that was like a deep emotional relationship. So there's other research to suggest. So you were probably more influenced by your parents, but there's also research to suggest that your friendships in high school had a big impact on your attachment style. Wait, tell me more about that.

there's one study in particular that looked at this, that the way you related to friends when you were growing up impacted the way you connect with your partner right now. Like if you had any really horrific experiences relationally with peers growing up, it could have an impact on your attachment style. Or if I had really meaningful, deep connected, which I did. I had a long-term best friend through most of my childhood who was really influential and impactful in my life. That probably had a huge effect on your attachment style. Can we go through multiple attachment styles with the same partner? Like I met my partner when I was 21. Could I have been more insecure and securely attached and move towards a secure attachment style in the relationship? Absolutely.

It can change. Okay. Interesting. So what should we do with that information? Just know that the different relationships you've had in your life are having an impact on your attachment style. So rather than overly focusing on your parents and the impact your parents had on you, Think about other relationships you've been in, whether it was in a positive or a negative direction, and think about how they might be impacting your current relationship.

Do you think that we focus too much on parental trauma and our childhoods in therapy? I do. The word I use for this is parental determinism. There's this belief that our parents determine who we are. And, you know, if they treated us in certain ways that shapes so much of our personality, but there's actually a lot of research that shows that that's not necessarily true. There's this amazing book by this author, Judith Rich Harris, that's called The Nurture Assumption. So Judith Rich Harris's story is that she was writing all these textbooks for developmental

psychology and writing about how parents influence kids' lives and how kids develop. And she started was writing all these textbooks. And she was just like, oh, my God, all the research is just contradicting each other. Like, I need to dive into this. something doesn't feel right. And so she writes this book that basically systematically proves that our parents do not have as big of an influence on our adult personalities as therapy culture would lead us to believe. And actually, who has a way bigger effect on our adult personalities are our peers. What should parents do with that information? Who your kid is friends

with is one of the most important things for their psychological development. How much can we control that? We don't have much control. So instead of stressing out about all of our little parenting decisions, we should be like inching them towards each other on the playground. Well, part of it is there, maybe part of it is their impact by their peers, but also massive, highly funded studies that show, you know, three siblings who grew up with the same parents where there wasn't any big socioeconomic shift or any big trauma that happened. Those three siblings will grow up to have three wildly different personalities from each other. So the truth is, we actually shouldn't stress too much. We don't have that much control. I have a friend right now and she read a book that was about the amount of words your kid is exposed to before three determines how their brain's going to work for the rest of her life.

So she's trying to say all these words to her kids. And I just, all of this research comes out and people are like, I need to action this research. I had a podcast guest, Dr. Corinne Lowe, who is from Wharton. And she talks about how parenting has taken up more and more time because as we have more and more information, we feel like we feel like we need. need to action that or we're quote unquote bad parents. Yes. How should we think about the idea that maybe our parenting doesn't matter as much as people might say it does in the face of all of this research?

It's really hard to accept that we have little control. And that's why I think we do all this different stuff. We take all these actions. We feel all this responsibility to do this and that for our child because it makes us feel like we actually have control, like we can move the needle. but our control is quite limited. And I actually think that message can be liberating. I think that message can mean you don't need to feel all this mom guilt.

There's only so much you can do. Your kid will be who they are. And also, your kid will probably have to struggle and suffer at some point. And your job actually as the parent is accepting that. And giving them as much as you possibly can, as much and many resources you can to protect them, part of your job is accepting your limited control. The mattress that you sleep on is one of the highest exposures that you have. Like if it's off gassing, you're breathing that in for basically a third of your life.

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important because there's more and more research coming out about how many of us are not getting all the nutrients that we need. And also these antioxidants are really important for our skin health and our gut health and just for our bodies to function optimally. And somehow, this is the part that I find the most confusing personally, but I am not here to question things. They also taste amazing. Like you read the ingredients list and you're like no way, but they actually taste so good. The apple cinnamon and the red velvet, also the dark chocolate's really good, but the apple cinnamon and the red velvet are my personal favorites. These are the kind of bars where you like think about them all day and you're getting excited about them and you're like, oh yeah, that's like

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sip it all afternoon or I'll use it as like a fun little moktail. Element is a zero sugar electrolyte drink mix with no fillers, no dodgy ingredients and it delivers a powerful dose of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to support real hydration. Electrolite imbalance can cause headaches, fatigue, cramps, and brain fog, things that so many of us deal with daily. You can get a free eight-count sample pack with any order at drink element.com slash Liz. It is totally risk-free. If you do not love it, they offer no questions-asked refunds. You truly have nothing to lose. Go to drinklm-n-t.com slash Liz. You're a new parent and you're also a top therapist. What are you doing differently? Number one, I am not being hard on myself.

At least I'm trying not to be hard on myself and not over fixate on doing the perfect thing or the right thing. So that's the most important thing to me. The other thing I'm thinking about is just how to get outside of my own self and my own anxieties. And one of the best ways to do that is just like truly spend time outside in nature and not be so fixated on me and myself as a parent and just kind of just go outside and let go. How do you approach moments of mom guilt in your own life? Like on a pragmatic basis, you flew out here to do this podcast. Did you have mom guilt about that when you're choosing to spend time with your friends or fill your own cup?

How do you approach that? I felt quite a bit of mom guilt when I had my kid. I was actually rocked by how intense it was. I think there was a hormonal component. What really kept me grounded and what still keeps me grounded is I don't. truly believe that the mental health of the mother and the well-being of the mother flows through and translate to the child. You know, me coming out here was good for myself and fills my cup, and that will translate to me being a good mom for my kid. And when I think about, you know,

my childhood, I don't remember much of what my parents did. The only thing I honestly remember, I mean, I remember some things. But the main thing that I really remember is what it felt like to be around them. And that's what I think about with my son. Like, if my cup is filled, if I'm nourishing myself. If I'm taking care of myself, it will translate to me being a mother that feels good to be around and it will strengthen our relationship. The crazy thing about becoming a mom is it really caused me to question how demonized moms get through therapy culture. Oh, that was a huge thing that happened for me. And I think part of the reason why I've gone down this topic. And sometimes I've wondered, like, what if therapy was from the perspective of the mom rather than the child, would it all

look very different. You wrote an article for the Atlantic where you said that one of the reasons that therapy culture is suffering these days is because we're not really being vulnerable. We are performing vulnerability. You call that Mick vulnerability. Tell me about Mick vulnerability. So I went down this rabbit hole where I discovered crying TikTok. Have you been down the crying TikTok rabbit hole? I think it's appeared on my for you page, but I don't think I've gone deep. Yeah, so basically it's not just on TikTok. It's on Instagram. It's influencers posting videos of themselves crying. I found this to be so interesting. And I found it to be interesting for two reasons. First of all, I think what's really fascinating about the world we're living in today is it's not

just that we're selling things by pulling at people's heartstrings and pulling at their emotions. Emotions themselves have become commodities. Like people are selling their own emotions to get likes and to get people to be interested of them and committed to them. So I think that's really interesting. And the term for that, there's a sociologist, she calls it emotional capitalism. And I think there's a lot of that going on.

And just to frame that a little bit for listeners, algorithms reward human reactions and strong emotions are the strongest ways to solicit human reactions. And so people who are creating content online know that. You first saw that, I think, with the wave of online media, with clickbait headlines.

And it was like, Is it rage baiting? Is it making you feel sad? It's why we see tragedies like plane crashes covered in an outsized way in the media because it elicits a really strong reaction for people. And what you're seeing now is all of these thousands of content creators understanding that the algorithm, which is trained on people's interactions, rewards strong emotions.

So they are trying to solicit as strong of emotions as possible with their content. Perfectly said, this is what I think is the problem with this. I think what is happening is people are now going online and getting their vulnerability hit by spending time scrolling. Ooh, where should we be getting our vulnerability? We should be getting our vulnerability through our IRL friendships. We should be going out into the world, opening up, putting ourselves out there because vulnerability is the greatest path to intimacy.

But now people don't have to do that as much anymore. They don't have to be vulnerable in their real life relationships because they can just open their phone or pull up YouTube, pull up a video of their favorite influence or crying. And you're saying not even as a creator simply by consuming this vulnerable content. We feel like we've checked off the vulnerability box. We've engaged in this vulnerable situation, but we're getting the pseudo hit of it. Exactly. It's like we're getting synthetic vulnerability.

And we're subsisting off synthetic vulnerability. And it's not very healthy for us. We need real vulnerability. It's one of the most important parts of human connection. Are we getting any benefit from this Mick vulnerability? I think there are cases where influencers crying and showing their emotions online can be so helpful. I mean, I think about like if today, if you're a postpartum mom and you are having the hardest day ever and you open your phone and you find someone sharing their experiences and, you know, they're tearing up, that can be really helpful. But what I worry about is being a postpartum mom and that's the only place you get that connection and not with a really.

mother in your neighborhood or through a friend circle that you get to have that vulnerability exchange. Or you think that that has filled your bucket. You can tell yourself like, well, I got this. I feel seen. I feel heard. I'll move on with my life. But you've given yourself like a fake dose of that medicine. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of synthetic vulnerability out there and we're subsisting on that. I think a lot of that comes back to the discomfort conversation though. Oh yeah. Because it is so much easier to watch an influencer cry or to see a mom who you will never meet in real life talking about the struggles of postpartum than to go to your friend and say, I'm having a really hard time or to say something embarrassing and shameful. Absolutely. I think so much of this conversation comes back to discomfort.

There's a writer, Michael Easter, he calls it the comfort crisis. it's this allergy to discomfort we're experiencing. There's two ways we can escape discomfort now. Technology that allows us to never even have to interact with another human being, not have to experience very much friction in our day-to-day lives. And in the same time, we have therapy culture, which every time we feel any sort of discomfort, we can sort of diagnose it away.

Therapy needs to be a corrective. It needs to be a pathway for you to sit and feel discomfort. But therapists have financial incentives too, I had a friend who was in couples therapy and I felt like their therapist was giving them very bad advice, but wanted to keep them as clients, essentially. But I feel like that happens quite a bit. We were talking before we got on air about how increasingly difficult it is for therapists to make a living these days. So how do you think about that? Like therapists need to be telling their clients uncomfortable things and their clients are very likely when told uncomfortable things

say, well, I don't, this doesn't make me feel good. Why would I pay to come to this session every week? I think if you're a good therapist, the incentive to keep a client coming back so you can keep making money, I just, I don't see that. Like, good therapists, if the client stops coming, a new, a new patient will come in in their place. My hot take is that most therapists are not good therapists, though. Wow, really? I really think that it is something we do not talk about enough. We're like, therapy is great. Go to therapy. But we're asking people often to see like five or six different therapists to find somebody who's a fit for them, who pushes them in the right ways, who creates a safe enough space where they can be pushed, et cetera, et cetera.

I think there's a lot of therapists who are medium at best and harmful at worse, and it can cost a lot of money, it can take a lot of time, it can take a lot of energy to find the really great people. Can I tell you what my hot take is? Yeah. There are kind of two of two hot takes that are related. One is, I think individual therapy is overrated. And the second is, I think in a matter of a decade or two, individual therapy is not going to

exist the way we see it now. Tell me more. So I think what's going to happen is our LLMs are going to get significantly more sophisticated and biomarker physiological data is going to get significantly more sophisticated. And I think we are going to have this agent that's with us all the time that is in touch with all the different physiological responses going on in our body. and that can be, in a way, this incredible therapist. It can tell us, hey, your blood sugar is low right now,

or your nervous system is activated right now, or it can give you action-oriented tips. And I think that will replace the need to sit with an individual therapist. However, what happens if we're just talking to an LLM all day and they're theripizing us, it can cause us to become even further atomized and even further isolated and even lonelier than we are now?

And I think where therapy is going to have to move is towards the direction of group therapy. I think people are going to have to go to do therapy in groups so they can connect again with other people and learn again how to be in relationship and tolerate the discomfort of being in relationship with other people. Because this like conversation we're having about discomfort, oh my God, it's going to get so much worse. When you have an agent all day beside you that's constantly validating you that is available 24-7 that can tell you anything you want to hear at. any time that can speak at your exact pace, that can speak in your exact language, it is going to

become so frustrating to interact with other human beings. We're going to have to like relearn how to do that. And I think group therapy is going to be the way. And to my point about I don't think a lot of therapists are very good. Do you think even a medium therapist can be really effective in a group therapy format because you're really relying on the dynamics with the other people? Yeah, I do. So it can serve as an equalizer. Yes. Michael Easter thinks that the way that we become more comfortable with discomfort is doing hard things. And he often talks about kind of male hard things like rucking and he goes on a like caribout hunting trip in Alaska that sounded really horrific and difficult. What is your best advice for overcoming our discomfort with discomfort?

Oh, that's a great question. It's interesting that the male approach to discomfort is like, get in the coldest cold plunge and like ruck up the tallest mountain. But I actually think there are so many subtle yet radical ways we can sit with discomfort in our day-to-day lives. Sitting with the feeling of jealousy and admitting you feel jealous of someone else or admitting it's uncomfortable to tolerate the jealousy being put onto you, that is a radical act. Like we are a culture where part of our issue is we just will do anything to avoid uncomfortable emotions. And so I just think one of the most radical things you can do is really truly sit with uncomfortable emotions.

It's funny because you'd think like therapeutic language should help with that. But sometimes what it ends up doing is it helps us avoid feeling the uncomfortable emotions. Because sometimes rather than sitting and thinking about how maybe you contributed to the fall out of a relationship or you contributed to your friend being hurt, therapeutic language gives us this escape route. It helps us analyze and rationalize our position and not actually sit with the discomfort of like we have a shadow side. We have icky, difficult parts of ourselves that we have to face. head on and acknowledge. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does make sense. How would you suggest we think about the therapeutic language in terms of action that in our lives? Like, do you think it's helpful to seek out diagnoses? Do you think it's helpful to relate to a TikTok that says, if you have ADHD,

you're likely to do this? Or if you have autism, you're likely to do this. If you're exes and narcissist, it might look like this. How do you suggest we action your thoughts on this? Well, here's the barometer. Is all of this, is the language or the ideas, are they making your relationship stronger? Are they making your relationships more brittle? If they're making your relationship stronger, go for it. Keep self-diagnosing, keep using the language. If they're making your relationships more brittle, rethink it and use it less. Oh, I love that. Okay. We're going to get into why some of the worst people that we know are in therapy in a second. And then we'll also come back to the LLMs and the AI of it all

because I do think that's a really interesting conversation for the future. But I have another little game. We're going to play underrated versus overrated. Okay. So I'm just going to share

a bunch of things that are in the therapy world and you can tell me whether you think they're underrated or overrated. Journaling. Underrated. It's the best. It's the best. Journaling is the best.

Morning pages all the way. It's like windshield wipers for your mind. Venting. Overrated. Venting can actually make you feel worse. Tell me more. I've actually had Ethan Cross on the podcast,

who I think is the person who did a lot of the research on why venting can make you feel worse. Venting to other people is a form of co-rubination, and rumination is one of the things that leads to depression. Closure. Underrated. It's so important. I thought you were going to say overrated for closure because I feel like, and maybe this is my hyper-individual thing, I'm like, isn't it about my work and I don't really need them to say anything or do anything for me to experience healing and forgiveness and whatever? Is that me being hyper-individualistic? I think closure can happen without needing the validation or the, you know, green flag from someone else. I think closure can happen within yourself too. Going no contact. If you have a terrible person in your life who is truly a

narcissist, who is abusive and truly gaslighting you, going no contact can be one of the most powerful things you do. However, I think this concept of going no contact or low contact has exploded and that's why I'm going to say it's overrated. What's the light? What's the light? that we have a true narcissist in our lives? There's differing opinions. Some narcissist researchers think one and four people are narcissists. Some think it's like 2% of the population. So really depends who you ask.

But what I think is important to say is it is true. Narcissism is a real thing and it's a really dangerous thing. And if a true narcissist is in your life, it's really problematic and it's very important to figure out a way to live your life without them. I'm sure this is so case dependent, but is there any advice that you can give just because going no contact has become increasingly common with parental relationships? And I think a lot of people wonder when do I owe it to this relationship to keep putting in the work and when do I owe it to myself to not? There's some really interesting research out there where it's like one and four

people have gone no contact with someone in their family and the majority of it are parents. I think that there are certain cases that it is very important to cut a parent out of your life. I have sat with people whose parents have caused them such intense horrors and they were truly liberated when they let go of their relationship with their parent. But I think very casually going no contact or low contact and doing it over something that shouldn't really separate you from a family member, I would really ask people to think about it deeper. Well, and to the point of some of the stuff we talked about earlier, your parents might not have fucked you up as much as you think. Meditation. Underrated. Do you meditate? I do some sort of meditative practice every morning. I think

morning ritual is one of the most important habits for mental health. So if I can't, if I'm with my baby who's like needing all my attention, maybe I can't properly sit and breathe in and out, but I might like read him a Mary Oliver poem and that's my form of meditation for the morning. Why is morning ritual one of the most important things for mental health? It's how you start your day, and I think it's a really beautiful opportunity to connect to something larger than yourself, that quiet time in the morning. And even if you're like me who's a mom of a young baby and you don't have much time in the morning, just finding even 30 seconds to, get outside of yourself can be super helpful.

Sematic therapy. Underrated. Getting into the body is really important. Therapy retreats or intensives. Underrated, I think they're really helpful. Because of that group dynamic or because of working on something for like eight hours a day? Both. I think we might see more of that as well, like to my theory earlier about less and less individual therapy. I could totally see way more retreat group therapy, intensive experiences.

knowing your attachment style. Overrated. Do you think it matters at all? Like, is it helpful for me at all to think of myself as avoidantly attached or anxiously attached or securely attached? Like, if I'm patting myself on the back every day, I'm like, you go go, you're securely attached. Is that good? Is it making your relationship stronger? Is it making your relationship more brittle? It always comes down to that question. Setting boundaries. Underrated. I'm a big believer in boundaries. Boundaries done right are the most relational, generous thing you can do. Boundaries done wrong or selfish. I actually think when you don't put up boundaries, when you instead try to please people and don't stay in touch with your needs, it's actually a lot more selfish than you might think.

Because what you're more concerned with is your own self-image than actually the relationship with another person. Do you think boundaries, though, are preventing us from having the strong relationships that are going to prevent all these mental health issues? Boundaries done right make our relationships very strong. Boundary is a fancy way for saying your needs. So if you are letting your friend know your needs, if you are letting your partner know your needs, it trusts your partner to show up and meet those needs. Boundaries done wrong is when you're using that as an excuse to cut people out and not repair ruptures.

It's when you're using it to avoid accountability and to avoid discomfort. A boundary done right is very uncomfortable. A boundary done wrong is quite comfortable. The let them theory. I haven't read the book, so I don't. You know what the theory is. Is the theory that the theory is, just let them be? Essentially, it's we can only control ourselves. So there's let them.

And if somebody is doing something, you can't control it. So let them. And then there's also the let me, which is the part that I think is less talked about online, but it's what's within my control to do here. I think it's underrated if it's being interpreted in a way, where you understand that you can't change anyone else. You just have to focus on changing yourself. I think it's overrated if you're using it in a way to not show up for other people

and just spin into a void of your own hyper-individualism. Gentle parenting. Overrated. Actually, there's a lot of research showing that gentle parenting can lead to worse outcomes for kids. There's a really famous research study that shows that authoritative parenting is actually the healthiest for kids. Like yelling at them? No, so there's authoritarian, which is like,

the scary kind and authoritative, which is like firm boundaries, rules, structure. Structure is really helpful for kids. I totally relate to that. My anxiety always tells me to remove structure from my life. Like it's like, wake up at any time, do whatever you want, like create this space so that you can not feel anxiety about having to be anywhere or do anything at a specific time. But then when I put structure on myself, my anxiety goes away. Yep. Which I feel like my anxiety is the most childlike part of myself. So there's something about that that that makes me relate to the idea that kids just really want that structure. Absolutely.

Romanticizing your life. Hmm. I don't even know what that means. It's looking for like little moments of like I'm walking down the street and it's like magical and beautiful. It's kind of treating yourself like you're a main character in a movie. And I'm curious your take on it specifically because I think there's something delicious and magical about it.

And I think there's something that can lead into this main character energy that perhaps butts up against the group ideas that you want to. to embrace. I mean, I think if main character syndrome overrated really bad, but I really believe in this idea that heaven is a decision you make. And if you can walk about in your normal life and see the magic and the beauty of the things right in front of you, it can indeed turn your life into a heavenly experience. The body keeps the score. Underrated, I'm really interested in like the psycho neuroimmunology research, which is a very, very fancy word for saying the mind-body connection. And the body keeps the score might not be a perfect book and the impacts it had on

society might not have been perfect. But the fact that it led us in a mainstream way to start talking about the mind-body and connection is so important. And I think we have just at the tip of the iceberg. I think we are going to see in the decades to come so much more interesting information about the mind-body connection. Are different types of therapy more or less effective? outside of group. There's like acceptance and commitment therapy, there's CBT, there's a relational life therapy, which is a type of couples therapy. Like, do you think of different modalities of therapy is more or less effective? So there's like a term in psychology. It's called the dodo bird theory. And basically the idea is that none of the different therapy interventions are more effective than

the other. And it's highly controversial. Different research shows different things. there's a wide-body research that shows the most important thing for therapeutic outcomes is your relationship with the therapist, not the intervention they use. But there are certain mental health disorders that are more likely to be improved as a result of certain treatments, like bulimia is more likely to be improved from CBT versus psychoanalysis. But I think the main thing that stands out to me is the relationship with the therapist is more important for your therapeutic outcome. And group therapy gives us like 10 opportunities for relationships. It gives us such mass opportunity for connection. It's so important. And like, that's the thing about psychology research. It gets

proven and disproven and proven and proven over and over again. There's a massive replication crisis in psychology. But the finding that has, that is super robust, that is not disproven, is that the quality of our relationships affects the quality of our lives. And that should be the number one thing we are focusing on. Is there a way to know if our therapy is working? That's a great great question. I think there are three goals you should be meeting from therapy, and if you are meeting these goals, your therapy is working. One is you are able to metabolize your emotions. I like this idea that emotions that aren't transformed or transmitted. So if you're not actually metabolizing your emotions, are going to be spilling out to the people around you. So number one goal is therapy is you are

metabolizing your emotions. Number two, are your relationships are going stronger and your relationships are not becoming more brittle. And number three is you are developing an increased ability to sit with the discomfort of being a human being in this life. If therapy is meeting those three goals, it's working for you. If it's not, rethink it. I feel like for many people I know,

and even myself at various times in my life, Therapy has mostly helped me justify that which I am already doing. It hasn't helped with any of those three goals. But I feel more firm when I tell other people like, this is how I am and it's okay. And I expect them to deal with it. It's such a good point. And that's why I'm just thinking that this medium that we have was a medium that made a lot of sense when we were really turned outwards and we needed to turn inwards like in the past.

And right now, I don't know if individual therapy makes as much sense as a medium anymore. Yeah. If we have a friend or a partner who we feel like is being made worse by therapy, can we do anything about that? There are people who are in therapy and their therapist is actually unethical and causing harm. And at that point, you should literally do an intervention. But for the most part, I don't believe you can change people. I actually recommend you go do the work on yourself, you go do the change and the growth that you'd want to see in your friend and model that for your friend. What if they're just getting so annoying?

Sometimes you have to accept that friction. Ooh, the discomfort is the point. I think about that sometimes with like family members that are annoying to hang out with. But you are sitting there and you're like, they're going to die someday and I'm going to be sad that I didn't spend this time with them. Totally. Absolutely. To love is to be inconvenienced. That is a huge part of love. That is a huge part of intimacy. It's inconvenience. Love and intimacy is not about ease. It's not about comfort all the time. Sometimes you get that.

And it's not about pushing through the inconvenience to get some other result. The inconvenience is the point in many ways. Exactly. You wrote a piece for time that was called I'm a therapist and I'm replaceable, but so are you. What was your thesis there? So therapy is a field that is very right for disruption for reasons we talked about today. Therapy is very, very expensive. It can be really difficult to actually find a good therapist, even if you have the means to afford it. More and more people are going to turn to LLMs to get therapeutic support.

But as people get used to talking to LLMs as their therapist, people are going to get used to a very specific type of relationship. It's going to be a relationship that is frictionless. it's going to be a relationship that's available 24-7. A relationship with an LLM means being in a relationship with someone who doesn't have any of their own needs, any of their own opinions, never needs to take a bathroom break. And as people get used to being in relationships with LLMs, not just as therapists, but in their day-to-day lives, it's going to impact our ability to be in relationships with other human beings with each other. Have you seen that already? I have seen that some of my clients have come in. and they have talked to an AI.

And the AI has very much validated their experiences. And sometimes I wonder if it's helping them or not. Have you seen people being less relationally tolerant because AI usage is going up? I don't know if I've seen it yet with AI. But what I have seen is our phones have had such an impact on our lives. And social media has had such an impact. on our lives and has impacted our ability to relationally connect with each other.

And it just makes me believe that as AI proliferates even more and becomes more and more common and our agents become way more sophisticated, that it has to have a massive effect on our relationships. All these technologies have limited our capacity to withstand friction with each other. And I think AI is just going to add to that. You know what I've seen? I've seen that people seem bored by normal conversations because it doesn't have the quick dopamine hit effect of social media. So you can feel people being antsy as somebody is fumbling for

thoughts or they're out at dinner and they're reaching for their phone and they're just needing like a quick hit to check without even realizing their phone ends up in their hand. And it's really disheartening if you're on the other end of the conversation and you're like, wait, am I boring you? Because you're reaching for your phone. Absolutely. I mean, something I even saw within me was there was like a brief period where I was using AI a lot more. I've actually like really limited it because I think it was having a negative impact on me. But I was finding is that I didn't have to explain things as much because the AI could just kind of understand and fill in the blanks for me. And then I was finding it harder in my day-to-day life to explain things. It was like diminishing my cognitive

capacity. And, you know, there's like a theory that in the past, we had to do all these small things that allowed for our physical capacity to be strengthened. Like we had to like walk to the well to get the water. And over time, as technology made it so we didn't have to do that, we became more sedentary and less physically strong. I think the same thing is going to happen with our cognitive and relational capacity with AI. Like, we won't have to do all these small cognitive tasks anymore. We won't have to do all these small relational tasks anymore. Like, I won't even have to, you know, call a restaurant to make. Yeah. Your agent can call the restaurant, make restaurant reservation. Everything. Or the agent can even book the flight. But all these small things we're doing helps train

our cognitive and relational capacities. And it's almost like we're going to become cognitively and relationally sedentary. So what's your advice for anybody listening who doesn't want that to happen to them? IRL experiences, human connection, vulnerability. And I do, like, the thing I am super optimistic about is I do think in-person experiences will only grow more valuable and more interesting. When you think about strength and resilience, like your ability to feel energized, to recover well to stay strong as you get older. What do you think that actually comes from?

Most people say working out or good nutrition and yes, of course that matters. But there is a biological foundation underneath all of that that most people are completely overlooking. I have been diving deep into this lately with the team at timeline and what I've learned has genuinely shifted how I think about my own health. Every single movement that your body makes every step, every workout, every muscle contraction depends on energy produced at the cellular level. And at the center of that is your mitochondria. Here is the thing that nobody tells you, certainly nobody told me, starting around age 30, our mitochondria naturally become less efficient. More get damaged, more become sluggish, and over time that impacts your energy, your strength,

your recovery, and your resilience. Most of us respond by pushing more. We're like noticing these things and we're adding in more protein. We're trying to fix it with more supplements. We're trying to do harder workouts, and those things do help. But timelines research suggests that we also need to be supporting the cellular machinery underneath, and that is exactly what their supplement, Mitopure does. It contains Erolithin A, which helps your body clear out damage mitochondria and support healthier ones so that your cells can produce energy more efficiently. Because this is happening to your cells, it's going to impact your entire body,

your immune system, your muscles. One study found that taking mitopure increased muscle strength by 12% in four months with no change in exercise routine, it's going to impact your energy, your sleep, your skin, your cell health impacts all of this, and urolithinea keeps your cells healthy. Timeline has done over 15 years of research and testing on this one product, urolithin A, which, by the way, most of us lack the gut bacteria to synthesize naturally. That's why many of us need to supplement it to get the benefits. this has become a staple supplement for me. It is my top way to support how I want to look and feel as I age.

Support yourselves and how you age with mitopure gummies from Timeline. Visit Timeline.com slash Liz and save up to 39% on your mitochondere gummies. That is timeline.com slash Liz. Did you know that more than two-thirds of protein powders tested have lead levels above California's Prop 65 safety limits? And in some cases, they have more than 10 times over. And a broader study found that nearly half of top-selling U.S. protein powders exceeded those safety limits with more than 20% clocking in at twice the allowed levels. This is so important because protein is something that a lot of us consume every single day trying to be healthier and then we're consuming something that's actually making us less healthy. A huge wellness tenant that I talk about is

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There's bourbon vanilla, which has real vanilla seeds from Madagascar and dark chocolate, which has organic cocoa powder. I also just really quick because I do take this every single day. I want to shout out their creatine. I take it every single morning for my brain health. I have an entire episode about creatine if you want to dive further into that, but TLDR, the hype is very real and very justified based on the research. and then I also take their fish oil, which has the specific ratio of DHA and EPA that my

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So go to puri.com and use code Liz Moody. Did you know that 80% of OBGYNs have no training, zero training in menopause, and 75% of physicians are uncomfortable even talking to their patients about it? Which means a huge number of women walk away from doctor's appointments being told that they're stressed or that their symptoms are normal or that they should just buck up. That is why I will not shut up about Midi health. Midi is a virtual care clinic specifically built for women in perimenopause and menopause, and their protocols are designed by top experts in women's health.

You can just make an appointment online, and the clinicians are so good. I'm often really frustrated when I meet with doctors in real life because I have access to these amazing people on the podcast. And then when I meet people in real life, I'm like, oh, that's actually outdated information or new research shows this. And I'm like that really annoying patient that everybody is. hates. But every single person that I have talked to at Middy is up to date on the most recent information, the information that the biggest experts in the world are sharing on podcasts like

mine. They are reading my lab results and they are helping me apply that information to my unique body. Here's how it works. You book a virtual visit and then you meet with your Middy clinician from your own home. No waiting rooms, no rushing. If you need testing, Midi organizes it locally. then you get all of the follow-ups that you need to dial in your treatment with your team available by messaging, email, and phone in between. If you have symptoms that you cannot explain, like sleep issues or brain fog or weight changes that don't respond to anything, or hair changes, or mood changes, or libido changes, Midi can be an absolute game changer. You deserve to not feel bad in your brain and your body on a daily basis. You deserve to live as long

as you can, as healthfully as you can. And I really, really, really appreciate Midi helping to fill this huge gap that exists in our health care system. And here's the best part. Midi is covered by major insurance plans in all 50 states. This is not some fancy thing that's for celebrities or influencers. This is something that we can all use our insurance for. I used my insurance for it to get covered and to have access to. If you have been feeling like something is off and you're not getting real answers, book your first MIDI health visit at join midi.com slash Liz Moody. That is join midi, mid, I, d, com slash Liz Moody. Do you think this is why rich people aren't as happy as we would expect them to be given that so much of society is set up to like, we want to make money and then

we'll be happy. But then rich people are not doing a lot of the mundane tasks of day to day life. Like, I have a very wealthy friend and she doesn't do her laundry. She doesn't cook. She doesn't clean. She doesn't make her own restaurant reservation. She kind of has the AI experience, but in real life, do you think to the point of a lot of the stuff we're talking about, those harder moments are not something to get through, but in fact, the point. And that's one of the reasons why we don't see this incline.

We do, rich people do get happier. I think the research is a little misrepresented around that, but not as happy as we would expect. And I wonder if that's one of the reasons why. It comes down what we've been talking about. Like, if you are living a life void of discomfort, it's not actually going to lead to a life of flourishing. The small discomforts of day-to-day life are a pathway into meaning-making. They're a pathway into getting to know yourself.

There's like an idea that suffering leads to wisdom, leads to service. And if you have no discomfort in your life, you'll feel that. So if you want to get rich or you are rich when you're listening, throw some discomfort. in there too. Discomfort's really important. Find ways to put friction in your life. So what are some ways you friction max in your life? I think again, it comes back to what we were talking about earlier, that some of the most radical ways to practice discomfort or friction max are just through feeling the hard emotions and having the difficult conversations with people in your life. I love that because I think it can provide a little bit of that extra boost, that extra motivation

to have those conversations. It's not only like, oh, I'm a little uncomfortable with this. Maybe I'd want to tell them, it's, this is actually going to be good for me in so many other ways because I am increasing my tolerance for discomfort. Exactly. Okay, we have another segment we like to do here, which is about questions that you are too embarrassed to ask. We love to embrace the taboo here. That's like my mission in life. So we have some questions that people are too embarrassed to even ask the internet that I'm going to ask you about therapy. Let's do it. Sometimes I feel like I don't deserve therapy because my problems aren't significant enough. I have a good job, a good boyfriend, a nice apartment, but I just don't feel good every day. But then I feel guilty

because I know I'm comparatively lucky. How do we know if our problems are significant enough to take two therapy? So interesting. I've never had a client who didn't at some point bring this up. It is so common for clients to come and sit and say, I just feel like my problems aren't that important. I feel like people have it so much worse. And all the problems are significant. If you are coming in to therapy to work on yourself so that you can be better in your relationships, your problems are significant. Bring them in. I think it's one thing to hear you say that and it probably provides a huge amount of relief and help. But is there anything else we can do to take our own problem seriously or to not feel this way? I just hope anyone out there who

feels this can be comforted by the fact that it's normal. I'm in group therapy and I'm an individual therapy. And for a long time, I was only in group, but I came back to individual therapy after I had a baby because postpartum was really intense. And I do that. I'm like, oh my God, I feel like my problems are just not that I'm significant. I say it to my therapist. And she made a really interesting point. And she said, you know, every time you do that, it's so you don't have to feel uncomfortable emotions. Every time you do that, it's so you don't have to feel into the fact that you were so anger. Every time you do that, you don't have to feel into the fact that you're actually not happy with your circumstances. So I think a question

worth asking might be every time I start wondering my problems aren't significant enough, maybe it's a defense against feeling something really uncomfortable. Discomfort with discomfort, the theme of the episode. I think vulnerability had a big moment with Renee Brown. I think distress tolerance needs to have a big moment in our culture. Okay, starting here. We're starting I think we're starting it right here. Well, starting, I think we're starting a different version of it because I do like Michael Easter's work around the comfort crisis. And I think it's very masculine in a way that alienates a lot of women from it. I think I've gotten a lot out of it.

And I think we need to expand the conversation. Great point. I stopped short of saying my real issues in therapy because I don't want my therapist to judge me. I stop short of telling her stuff about past sexual assault. I don't tell her about terrible things that I have done in the past. I don't tell her about a lot of the thoughts I have. I want my therapist to like me and I don't want her to say I'm a bad person or I just can't be fixed. Do you ever judge your clients even if they tell you they've done really terrible or embarrassing things?

When you are sitting in a room with a person, this goes for therapists, this goes for human relationships in general. And someone opens to you and puts down their defenses and puts down their walls and really shows you who they are. It is really difficult to judge them and it is really easy to love them. So the only time I feel judgmental of clients is when they're super closed off and they're not letting me in and it's been going on for a really, really long time. And it just feels like it's not judgment. It's disconnect. People will say stuff like that. Like when you're really met with this, would you judge this person?

And I think a lot of us are like, yeah, I actually do judge a lot of people in my life. And maybe that's why I'm afraid other people are going to judge me. And I think we live in a culture where we see other people being. judged all the time, like constantly for everything that they say wrong, that they do wrong, that they think wrong. So how do we make sense of that? But let me ask you this. It's really easy to judge someone when you like see them online or you like look at their social media. But if you were to like sit and really have a conversation with them and really get to know them, I really don't think you would be judging them the same way. There's like a breakdown of

social connection in our culture. So of course there's an increase in judgment in our culture. We're talking to each other less. We're less intimate with each other. We're spending less time with each other. So judgment's going to proliferate. Okay. So the judgment that we feel that makes us afraid other people are judging us is because of that shallow relationship that we're experiencing over and over. Do you have any advice for bringing those really hard things to therapy?

Like, can you sit down on session one and be like, okay, I thought this really embarrassing or mean thought or I had this really terrible thing happen? into me or how should we ease into that in therapy? Oh, you don't have to ease into it. Just literally sit down? Absolutely. Okay. My favorite thing is when a client says, oh my God, you're going to fucking judge me on this. And then they say the thing and I don't. I actually love that because I do think sometimes vocalizing your own fear can make it feel easier. Like, I'm really scared of being judged for this, but I'm going to share it anyway. I'm really embarrassed about this, but I'm going to share it anyway. Maybe that's the great advice piece of like, if you're feeling nervous, just say that. So I'm scared. You're going to

to judge me. Just name what's happening in the process. That's my hottest therapy tip that I've gotten from my dad and my sister and stuff is even if you're like, I don't think this is working or I wish you asked me more questions. I must have a meta experience with therapy where you tell your therapist because one, you're going to get the benefit of I said the harder, more uncomfortable thing, which has its own benefit. And then two, your therapist will help you adjust your therapy to make therapy a better experience for you. Absolutely. I think what isn't talked about enough is like often the content of what's being said in the room is not the important thing happening in the therapy process. The important thing that's happening in the therapy process is the relationship with you and the

therapist. And it's really important that you as a client and the therapists are talking about it in the moment. Like it is so good to say to a therapist, I feel like you're mad at me or I don't, I feel like you don't like me and be just talking about the relationship in the room. That is the most powerful therapy. What about this last part? I do want to address it. I don't want my therapists to say I just can't be fixed. Have you ever had clients where you're like, this person is hopeless? No, but I've had clients where I don't think individual therapy is the medium that's going to help them. And I think it's really important to tell clients that or like the type of therapy I do is not the type of therapy that's going to help you.

Sometimes sitting in a room and doing this sort of relational work that I do is not the type of work someone needs. And I think it's our obligation as a therapist to let a client know that. And I would also add that the belief you are unfixable would be a really good thing to bring up in therapy. One million percent. I assume my therapist secretly dreads my sessions. I picture her seeing my name on the calendar and sighing. I apologize for rambling and being a lot probably three times an hour. I think part of me is testing whether she'll finally agree that I'm too much.

Oh. Do you ever have clients that you genuinely don't look forward to seeing? And do you have favorite clients? Okay. Can I speak first to the confession part? I think that client is really mad at their therapists. Tell me why. Anger is an emotion that will either go outwards or inwards.

And a lot of people, when their anger isn't going outwards, it goes towards themselves. And what that looks like is self-judgment, self-attacks, self-loathing, kind of like what that client was doing. Like, I think my therapist hates me. I think they don't like me. They think I'm boring. That might be self-attacking yourself instead of feeling the discomfort of being angry at your therapist. I know people for whom that would describe a lot of relationships in their life, not just their therapeutic one. I think this is one of my favorite theories in therapy.

It's that self-criticism, self-loathing, self-attack is just anger turned inwards. So many of us women were in spirals of like self-attack and self-loathing and self-loathing. and self-criticism, we're probably just really angry, but it feels really scary to be angry and feel it outwardly. Is there a way we can give that anger space? Are we supposed to be punching a pillow or screaming into the air? Every time I now start self-attacking myself, I just take a second and I ask myself, who am I angry at that I don't feel like I'm allowed to be angry at? Or what am I angry at that I don't feel like I'm allowed to be angry at? It's changed my life. It has completely changed my life. I used to self-criticized self-attack nonstop. I had a tape in my head that was,

you know, everyone hates me. And my life changed when I realized it was just anger turned inwards on myself. Who am I angry at that I'm not allowing myself to be angry at? What am I angry at that I'm not allowing myself to be angry at? Yep. Okay, do you have clients that you dread or that you love? If a client is putting down their walls and being open and letting me in, I love them. Like truly I love them. If a client for a long period of time will not let me in, will not let me in, it's really hard to feel connected. So you do have favorite. But it's not the sparkly personality person. It's that are they being open or not?

Exactly. Which would be within all of our power to be open. 1,000%. And the thing I need to work on in therapy is probably my desire to constantly be the sparkly. Like I shouldn't be going into therapy to surprise and delight my therapist with my wit. But it's really understandable. Yeah. We want people to like us.

We're social species. And I think that's difficult. Okay, let's do this as the last one. I'm going through a big life event. I just ended a very long-term relationship with somebody I love. And I am so sad. I feel like talking with a therapist won't do or change anything. I feel like I'm just sad and I need to weather the storm and only time will heal.

Is that true? It might be. I am not a therapist that thinks everyone needs to be in therapy. I think sometimes you need other things to heal. It might be time. It might be being a part of a community. It might be leaning on your community. You don't always need to go to therapy.

How do we know what we need to heal at any given moment? If we just feel awful, where should we start if we want to feel better? The worst thing you can do is isolate. You will never get better by isolating yourself and by bringing yourself away from other people. So number one thing to do is find support. And if you have a robust community that you feel like can support you through something, go for it. Turn to the robust community. If you don't have a robust community and you're looking for support and you need it from someone, maybe you turn to a therapist.

I'm immediately thinking of the sex in the city episode where all of Carrie's friends are like, this is out of our pay grade. Like you need to go see a therapist. And then you go see a therapist and start sleeping with another client, like a whole thing. Group therapy would have been perfect for Carrie Bradshaw. What would group therapy have done for Carrie Bradshaw? Because in group therapy, other people could have called out her patterns. And then she could have worked through her patterns in the group. Because the thing is, all of your interpersonal patterns in the world will come into the group space.

Like if you're a passive-aggressive person, you're going to be passive-aggressive with people in your group. If you're someone who likes to, like, hide and be kind of invisible in crowds, you're going to do that in a group. And so it's a place to work through those things and practice them. Okay, we have a quick speed round for you. What's one thing that people commonly do that you would never do as a therapist? I think that asking the question why too much is very harmful. Why? There's really interesting research that shows that why is kind of a gateway drug into negative thinking

and what is a gateway drug into more action-oriented thinking. So my recommendation and what I try to do with my clients is not over-emphasize why, why, why, why. But start asking what questions instead. What happens when we ask ourselves why is we overestimate our ability to accurately respond to why. Often we respond inaccurately. Often we respond with a really negative sort of thinking. And then why also leads to a lot of like negative beliefs and thoughts about ourselves. What's the hottest take you have about therapists? I think we really need to watch out for our jobs. I think AI is really coming for us and we need to be thinking about that a lot these days. Okay. So for the young therapist, you've just frightened, what should

they be doing? Two things to think about the relational experience, like how to take your therapy in a more relational direction. I think things like CBT are way more likely. You know, these manualized therapies are way more likely to get replaced by AI. But if your therapist is doing group therapy, You're a therapist who's about the relational focus between you and the client, and AI is less likely to replace you. How do we find good group therapy? I wouldn't even know where to begin with that. You can go on psychology today and find groups there.

Oh, like just in the normal therapy list, you can just search group therapy and you'll find therapist running groups. Yep. And I really recommend process groups. So can we even search on psychology today process group? Yep. Okay. Mm-hmm.

Love that. Hot tip. What's the one piece of research that you've read that really changed your mind about something? Can I say two studies? Okay, one study was, it came out last year and it was two researchers that wanted to understand the relationship between self-reflection and mental health. And there's been like a debate in psychology for decades of like, does self-reflection lead to better mental health or worse mental health? Some people say, you know, like, too much self-reflecting leads to rumination and toxic thinking. Some people say self-reflection is the cure to anxiety. So these two researchers were like, okay, we're going to do a meta-analysis and look at all the studies that have ever been conducted on this issue and we're going to like get to the bottom of this. And what they found is truly shocking. They found that self-reflection had no significant relationship to positive mental health. It had no significant relationship to

higher satisfaction or positive well-being. What they did find was self-reflection had a significant relationship with depression and anxiety. And so what does that tell us that being so focused inwards, It's what I think, where I think therapy culture often pulls us, actually makes us depressed and anxious. We have to get outside of ourselves. If you dig deeper into this line of research, what you'll find is that a lot of us are just self-reflecting wrong. Many of us self-reflects by asking why, why, why, why? When in fact, what we need to be asking is are what questions. There's really interesting research from this organizational psychologist.

Her name is Tasha Urich. Hopefully I'm pronouncing that right. she basically looked at a sample of thousands of people and she wanted to understand like when to self-reflection translate to self-awareness. Like it actually leads you to have a better life with better relationships. First of all, she found that 85% of people are not actually self-aware. So she looked at the 15% that are self-aware and she's like, what are they doing differently? And she found that they are self-reflecting differently.

And the way they're self-reflecting differently is they're asking a lot of what questions instead of a lot of why questions. why did I have a bad childhood that's probably going to lead you to some negative thinking. Like her take is basically why is a gateway into negative thinking. Maybe by your childhood

a more helpful question would be what would I have wanted to be different in my childhood? And maybe by that line of questioning, it might lead you to do things differently for your own kid or it might lead you to do things differently in your own life as an adult.

So do you think reflecting is only valuable if it's going to change future actions? I think that insight can be overrated. Like it's helpful to understand yourself, but sometimes the act of understanding yourself becomes a defense from actually changing yourself. You can get so caught up in the understanding why and the understanding who you are that you actually avoid taking action to change a thing about yourself that needs to change. It becomes a substitute for action. I also think that self-reflection is a way to reinforce misinformation about yourself.

Oh, that's so well said. You can be like, I have this belief and I'm going to self-reflect, self-reflect, self-reflect, and just essentially go down this path of paving this belief about yourself. That's perfectly said, and that's why AIS are harmful. Because it will go down that path with you and it'll make that path even more robust and intense. The other piece of research that I think really changed me and how I understand therapy and everything I know was a study that came out a few years ago, and it was these Australian researchers. And what they did is they implemented an intervention with a thousand middle schoolers.

And they were like, we're going to take DBT, which is like dialectical behavioral therapy, which is the gold standard. I mean, therapists love DBT. And we're going to teach DBT skills to middle schoolers and we're going to improve their mental health. It's going to be this amazing prevention program. So they went and they did it and they taught, you know, these middle schoolers, DBT skills, which is like mindfulness, emotional regulation, distress talks, and they gave them education about mental health. And what they found is that the middle school's mental health outcomes got worse, their relationship with their parents got worse,

their quality of life got worse, and their self-awareness got worse. And this study just blew my mind and was just a moment where I was like, wow, like everything I might understand might be wrong. Make sense of that for me. I think it's the nocebo thing. When you start heightening your awareness about everything that could be wrong with you, you're more likely to start noticing everything that could be wrong with you. And when you start believing that things could be wrong with you, you feel worse. I think that we are noceboing perimenopause right now. I think that it's so important to make all of these women who have not felt heard with their symptoms who have been medically gaslit for years feel hurt. I think that is so important. I don't want to discount that. And I think that's why this is a scarier conversation. to tread into. And I think there are as many, if not more women, who are going to be experiencing

symptoms of perimenopause who otherwise would not have been because it's, one, become part of the cultural conversation in such a big way. And two, because so many people are now making money off of it. I think that is so brilliant. I think that's spot on. That's what sucks about this. I really don't think there are many influencers or educators out there that have malintent. I think So many people are spreading awareness and putting out the mental health checklist and teaching people about trauma because they want to help people. But it's having this negative consequence. And we as a society just need to be having a conversation that it could have a negative consequence. What's one habit that's changed your life?

I started doing something called two-way prayer. Have you ever heard of it? Prayer is this idea where you speak to whatever it is, the universe, love, God, and that thing listens to you. two-way prayer is you become the listener. So two-way prayer involves I take out a journal and I ask the thing that takes me outside of myself. For me, it's God. I'm not religious. I'm spiritual. For other people, it could be love or universe or source, whatever it is. And I asked, what would you have me know today? And I let it kind of speak to me and I listen and I write. Do you actually hear something? I don't know if that I hear something. I feel like it just comes through on the page and the pen. I have to credit. It's a practice that was really popularized by Liz Gilbert, but it originates with the founders of AA. And two-way prayer used to be a part of the AA process and it's not anymore. Which is interesting because she's in AA now, but I feel like she was doing that way before. Like there's parts of Eat, Pray, Love where she's like writing to herself in that way. I think that practice is super helpful

because it just gets me outside of myself. Like the main thing is in the morning, how do I remember that I am small and I have a part of something much larger than myself and I'm not the main character and I'm not the center of everything. How do I go every morning I go outwards? We love to leave people with action steps. What's one thing that anybody listening could do the second that they turn off this podcast if they don't feel the way that they want to feel in life? Because I do think that a lot of times we can come and we can critique therapy, we can critique optimization culture, we can critique the supplement industry and influencers and all of this. But people don't feel the way they want to feel. And that's why they are seeking out these solutions. So for that person,

what's one thing that they could do to feel better today? I'm going to recommend a way to go outwards. And it's do three acts of kindness over the next two weeks, three acts of kindness this week and three acts of kindness next week. And I'll tell you why. There was a study that came out very recently where they compared two groups of people. One were doing acts of self-kindness and the other group were doing acts of kindness towards others. The group that were doing acts of self-kindness saw their depression go down. The groups that were doing acts of kindness for others saw their depression, anxiety, and loneliness go down.

Doing acts of kindness for others will help with your anxiety, depression, loneliness. Their study was across two weeks, three acts of kindness a week. Can we throw out some ideas? Sure. What did they use in the study? I think acts of kindness can be as big or as small as you want. It can be texting a friend and be like, hey, I've been thinking about you. How are you doing?

Do you need anything? It could be dropping up soup at a new mom friend's house. It could be going and volunteering. It could be going and spending time in the park and picking up a few pieces of litter. It can be as big or as small as you want, but it is an act of going outside of yourself and contributing to someone else. Amazing. Maytall, this was such an interesting conversation.

For people who want more from you, where can they find you? You can find my sub-sac. It's called The Age of Self. And I'm also going to be coming out with a book next year called Therapy Six. So look out for it. What can we find on your sub-deck? More conversations about hyper-individualism, therapy culture, how it converges with technology, a lot of the things we were talking about today, like tips and books and all the stuff.

Amazing. Well, we will link that in the show notes, The Age of Self. And I really appreciated this conversation. This was just so fascinating. So much to think about. Cool. I really enjoyed it, too. Thank you so much.

That is all for this episode. Thank you so much for listening on Apple or watching on Spotify or YouTube. You can subscribe or follow so our next episodes get sent directly to your feed. If you like this episode, leave a comment or better yet, send it to a friend, a coworker, a parent, or somebody else that you think might love it. All right, I love you. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing.

It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional. This is genuinely one of the most innovative things that I have heard of in a long time. So here's the deal. I hate getting my blood drawn. The appointments are hard to get.

It's hard to know what to test for. I always end up waiting so long. So it eats up so much of my day. And then they like, stick this needle in your arm. And the whole thing is just miserable. It's terrible. I hate it. But knowing what is going on.

inside your body like your vitamin levels and what your hormones are doing is so important to be able to make the right decisions for your health, including preemptively treating things that are coming down the line and identifying things that might not be making you feel as good as you could be feeling right now, which is why I got so excited when I heard about rhythm. This is a home blood work test with zero pain. It feels genuinely too good to be true, but it is real. So I'm going to walk you through how this works because I was so nervous about it. They send you like a little envelope. And in it, there's something that looks kind of like a continuous glucose monitor,

if you've seen that. And you put that on your arm and you press a button and it takes the tiniest vial of blood. And I was like, there's this guy in the video and he's like, this doesn't hurt at all. And I was like, there is no way that this does not hurt, sir. But then I did it. You push the button. And actually, it genuinely did not hurt literally. at all. I was so nervous. You can ask my entire team. I was messaging them before. I was like,

I'm not sure I want to do this. I don't want to try it. But it was so painless. It was so easy, breezy. And then I got my data back. And I found out that I've gotten my APOB down from 125 to 79, which is crazy because that is one of the top heart health markers that doctors on this podcast say to look at. And also, it's a really hard one to get doctors to order tests for. It's one of the main reasons why I went on my weight loss journey in the first place. It's so, so important. And rhythm tests for it at home really, really easily. With rhythm, you can test every single month, easily, painlessly at home. So you can actually see how the changes that you're making are impacting your body. So you can stop wasting money or time on things that are not helping.

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