The Mindset Mentor - Lori Gottlieb: Therapist Reveals the MINDSET HACKS To Completely CHANGE YOUR LIFE! | Rob Dial

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

In this episode, I interview psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb, writer of the book Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and host of Dear Therapists Podcast. We go really deep into relationships and the psychology behind them. I think you will love this episode and can't wait for you to listen! Watch the video interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlIsDwfc7ks&t=1s&ab_channel=RobDial Special thanks to the sponsors of this show Public Goods: https://www.publicgoods.com/dial Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/dial Indeed: http://indeed.com/rob Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

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choice of either free pack of bamboo straws or reusable food storage wraps with your order. So you have nothing to lose. Just go to publicgoods.com slash dial or use the code dial at checkout. That is P-U-B-L-I-C-G-O-O-D-S dot com slash dial to receive $15 off your first order. Welcome everybody to the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. I'm excited today to have psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb, who has an incredible book, which I don't know if you know it, almost 10,000 Amazon reviews, which is not a small feat, called Maybe You Should Talk to Somebody. And I'm excited to dive into

the brain, human psychology, and the stories that we tell ourselves. But thank you so much for being here. I appreciate your time. Oh, my pleasure. So one of the things that I noticed as I was researching you is obviously you have a new book that's out and you talk about the stories that people tell themselves and you go through kind of the stories of the journey that some of your clients, actually the people who came in and worked with you, went through. But the thing that's most interesting to me is I've been to therapy. I know other people have been to therapy and I know people who are terrified of therapy. First off, do you feel as a therapist that most people should go

to therapy? And then also at the same time, why do people get so afraid to go and talk with someone that's a therapist? Yeah. Well, first of all, I don't think everybody needs to go to therapy. I think, you know, the title of the book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is a little bit of a nod toward trying to say to a friend, well, maybe you should talk to someone. But it also means maybe we need to talk more to one another. And I mean, in an honest way,

in a way that is going to be helpful. And we need to learn how to listen to one another. And I think that the reason that people are afraid of reaching out and going to therapy, because I think therapy can be very useful. I feel like going to therapy is like getting a really good second opinion on your life from someone who is not in your life.

And people don't go because they think that you're gonna go to therapy, you're gonna talk about your childhood forever and you're never gonna leave. Whereas therapy is actually a very active process of having someone go in and hold up a mirror to you and help you to see your blind spots, help you to see what keeps you stuck, helps you to see your patterns so that you can be more effective out in the world. So do you feel like, you know, if I think from like the spiritual aspect, people always talk

about the ego, right? Are people afraid of change because it's going to destroy the ego, the self, the, the image, the identity they've built up for so long, or is it they're just, they just would rather not change in the moment that they'd rather stay exactly the same because they know what they know tomorrow is predictable if they don't change. Right. That's such a good point because, you know, even positive change, people have trouble with. So that's why New Year's resolutions, for example, often don't last. And the reason is that with change comes loss and what we lose is the familiar.

So, you know, there's something about knowing exactly how things are going to go, even if we're not really happy with them. When you make a change, you are going into a place of uncertainty. You're changing an old habit. You're doing something that's outside of your comfort zone. You're going to experience some discomfort because you are changing. And humans don't do well with uncertainty. So what we do is we sabotage our efforts at changing. And the other reason, and I go through this and maybe you should talk to someone, there are many stages of change.

It's not like you wake up one day, you say, I'm gonna change and then you change. Sometimes that happens, but more often, you go through the changes that I talk about in my book where there's pre-contemplation, you don't even realize you're thinking about change. There's contemplation, you're sort of contemplating it, but you're not ready.

There's preparation, then there's action. And the most important phase of change is maintenance. And maintenance is once you've made the change, how do you maintain that change? And most people, the second they split back, and you will because you're human, they say, oh, it didn't work. I failed. As opposed to, oh, that's okay. I'm just going to get back on the train again tomorrow. Yeah. One of the things that I find with people is they get so stuck in the story of, I guess you could call it identity that they have. You hear story, you hear identity, you hear blueprints, you hear personality. It's all kind of one in the same once you dive into it. But I find that for so many people, they have so many habits that are attached to that identity

that it makes it hard to even shift it. And one of my favorite quotes, and I'm curious what your find that for so many people, they have so many habits that are attached to that identity that it makes it hard to even shift it. And one of my favorite quotes, and I'm curious what your thoughts are around it, is Alan Watts says, you're under no obligation to be who you were five minutes ago. But the problem with that is that I'm curious with you, do you feel like people, if there's a massive shift, like if someone has a heart attack, they can literally decide to be a different person with a different identity, with different habits. But majority of the time, it's like you said, they kind of go out of them and then they come back in them. People will lose a hundred pounds and then they'll gain a hundred pounds back or they'll win the lottery and then they lose all

of their money. So do you find that a lot of times it's because of the story that they're attached to, the identity behind everything that kind of, they can go out of it and then it pulls them right back into it? Well, right. I think those stories are so powerful and they're operating behind the scenes. So we're not even aware that we're telling ourselves that story. My TED talk is all about how you change your story. And one of the things that I say both in the book and the talk is that a lot of people think they're coming to therapy to get to know themselves. But I feel like what you're doing when you come to therapy is you're coming to unknow yourself to get rid of that old story that is not accurate, doesn't work for you, doesn't fit anymore.

So a lot of people are telling themselves these stories like I'm unlovable or I can't trust anyone or nothing will ever work out for me, or I'm the whatever kind of person, right? Which is some kind of story that maybe doesn't really reflect who they are. So it's really teasing out who do you think you are? What are these stories? What are these myths

that you're telling yourself about yourself so that you can get a much clearer picture of who you really are? And that gives you freedom. That opens up possibility. First thing you said was that I'm unlovable. And I feel like that hits home for a lot of people, you know, with, with my podcast, I get a lot of emails of people just saying, they just talk so much trash to themselves.

They say stuff to themselves. They would never say to someone that they love ever. Um, one of my friends, Jay Shetty did a great video and he had women write down that they were probably in their twenties and thirties and they had them write down all of the negative stuff they say to themselves. And then they didn't know, but in the other room was their little sisters that are teenagers. And he had them come out like, you know, eight to probably 15. He said, I want you to say this to them. And they're like, I could never do that. You know? And so what is, why do people get stuck in that story of, I hear it all the time. And I feel like it's so common that they just talk so crappy themselves all of the time. And then they get stuck in this loop of that's all that they know that they don't even know how to pull themselves out of that loop

to talk positive themselves. So people are so unkind to themselves. And I had a very similar experience where I had a client come to me and she was so clearly self-critical, but she didn't think she was being self-critical. We have these voices in our heads that speak to us all day long. So when I'm doing events and I'll say to people from the stage, who is the person that you talk to most in the course of your life? Show of hands. Is it your partner? Is it your best friend?

Is it your sibling? Tons of hands for that. But if I say, no, actually, the person that you talk to most in the course of your life is yourself, people gasp. And they gasp because they know it's true. And so I had this client come in and she said, Oh no, I'm not like that. I don't, I'm not, you know, harsh on myself. Well, I said, I want you to write down everything that you say to yourself over the course of a few days and then come back next week and we'll talk about it. So she does the assignment. She comes back the next week and she starts to read it.

And she says, I can't even read this. I am such a bully to myself. And there were things like, she was just, you know, going about her day and she made a typo in an email and she said, you're so stupid. You're such an idiot. She said that to herself. Who would think that? Cause you made a typo. You wouldn't think that of your friend, if your friend made that typo or she, she saw her reflection in a mirror and she said, oh my God, you look terrible today. Or she did not look terrible. And you wouldn't think that, or none of her friends would think that if they looked at her. And so I think it's really important to ask yourself to listen for that voice, because that voice is guiding all of the choices and decisions that you make about what's possible for you,

what you can achieve, who you can be with, what your value is. That voice is dictating all of that. And you don't even know that it's there. So I say to people, listen for that voice and then ask yourself, is it kind? Is it true? And is it useful? And if that voice, whatever your voice is saying to you, doesn't meet those three criteria, stop listening to that voice. Is it kind? Is it true? Is it useful? Do you feel like that's learned for people to talk that way to themselves? Do you feel like maybe it's, I mean, everybody wants to go back to believe their parents, but it could be their parents. It could be society. It could have been an aunt or a brother. Do you feel like that's

something people learn to be negative to themselves or is it just natural for humans to compare themselves and go, oh, well, I'm fat because I don't look like that woman on Instagram. I think it's learned both in your family of origin and also in the culture. So you're going to get it from somewhere because we're not born sort of hating on ourselves. For sure. So what happens is, you know, that voice came from somewhere. You know, somebody was giving you these messages. And if they weren't, let's say that you got really good modeling in your family growing up, the culture

will do that to you. The culture will say, you're not successful enough. You're not attractive enough. You're not this enough. You're not that enough. And the problem with comparison is that it does one of two things. Either you look at somebody else, let's say you're scrolling through Instagram, right? And you say, I am less than, I'm not good enough. And so you feel inferior or you scroll through and you do that kind of schadenfreude thing where you say, oh, look, I'm more successful than this person because this just happened to me. And that's a narcissistic place to be. It's not a true sense of your worth. And so I think when we talk about comparison, it's really important to

compare yourself to yourself. Where am I today compared to yesterday? How am I doing in terms of my goals for myself? And do they align with my values and who I want to be in the world? I love that. And it makes me real curious when you talk about, all right, so we could talk trash to ourselves, or we could see somebody and compare ourselves in a narcissistic way, build ourselves up. But it seems like both of those could come from a lack of self-worth, right? Right, that's a false self. So can you dive more into that and explain the both sides of that? Because both of them, it seems like either, oh my God, I don't look like her or she must starve herself or something like that can come from a place of low self-worth, right? Yeah. Those are sort of defense mechanisms that we use. So the

one of the superiority is a defense mechanism. You know, it's, it's those people who say like somebody has something that you want and you say, Oh, I would never want that. Even though you actually really want that people are so afraid to feel those kinds of messy feelings like sadness, anxiety, envy. I always say about envy, it's a great thing to notice your envy because I always say, follow your envy. It tells you what you want.

It gives you a sense of desire. So that doesn't mean that you feel envious and then you go to this place of self-loathing. It means you use it to say, what does that tell me about something that I want in my life? And what are the steps that I can take to get my version of that? The one that would look right for me or feel right for me, as opposed to just denying the envy because then you won't go after what you want, or just bathing in self-loathing because you don't have what you want. It's a really active process when you say, how can I use my envy?

And I feel like all of our feelings are like a GPS system. They tell us what direction to go in. And if we pretend that we're not feeling something, it's like walking around with a faulty GPS. You never know what direction to go in. That's so good. Hey, you're the hiring expert at your company. And what you really need is help making a short list of quality candidates. You need a hiring partner that

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The one thing that I'm curious of that you said is a little bit of the guilty side in there. Because what I noticed is that people, it's the spiral of people will go down, right? So it's like they see something, they judge it, or they judge the other person, or they judge themselves, and then they don't feel good. And now they judge themselves for doing that, and they guilt themselves for being that type of person. So with that spiral, I know the first thing is probably there's some self-awareness that needs to be there. But if someone notices, because I feel like I talk about this a lot in my podcast of you've got to become self-aware, you've got to notice, you've got, as Dr. Joe Dispenza says, take yourself out of the jar

and read the label. If somebody notices themselves in that spiral, is there some sort of tips or strategy that you typically use to get someone out once they become self-aware? Yeah. I mean, the thing to ask yourself is what can I learn? What am I learning right now from this feeling? What is this feeling telling me? So to have a better relationship with your feelings, meaning that your feelings are not the enemy, they're actually your friend. And if you start to feel something that makes you uncomfortable, you welcome that feeling because that's going to help you understand something about yourself that maybe you hadn't been aware of before. So you have a reaction to something you see out in the world. What is that telling me about myself right now? What can I learn from this about me? Not about the other person, but about me.

So would you say that the best thing is at that point is just, hey, get curious. Instead of start getting mad, it's just more like, hey, get curious about what's going on in this moment. Well, right. Instead of judging yourself, have compassion for yourself. I think self-compassion is so important because we can't grow without self-compassion. A lot of people think the opposite. They think I have to self-flagellate to hold myself accountable, to be really hard on myself so that then I can achieve and succeed and meet all of my goals. But it turns out that people don't function well when they are being harassed by themselves or by anybody else. I mean, think about it as a parent with kids.

If you say to your kid, you know, how did you get this grade? That's terrible versus, oh, let's understand what that mistake was about. And let's try to understand what the challenge was here so that we can figure out what might work better next time. That kid is going to succeed so much more if their approach from a place of curiosity, as opposed to a place of you did badly or you are bad. And so we do that to ourselves as adults, that we aren't compassionate with ourselves. We don't say, okay, well, you know, I wish I had done this differently, or I wish that I were at this point in my life or whatever it is, what can I learn right now? How can I get curious about myself? And that's self-compassion. You can't do that when you're telling yourself that you're not good enough, that you're bad,

that you're worthless. That's not a place from which you can grow. Yeah. And the whole idea of finding out your story and realizing where you're kind of stuck, try to get yourself unstuck. The thing that's, I have a friend, I have a lot of friends that come to me and just ask me questions and kind of throw their life stuff at me, right? And one of them has an issue with one of their parents. And we're talking about how, you know, we're at the, I feel like there's, once you kind of get over the age of 18, 20, 22 years old, it's hard to change. But as you get older and older and older, I feel like it gets even more stuck where people get stuck and they're like, this is how I am. And they blame everybody else but themselves for their anger or their sadness or their worry or whatever else,

the fear that's going on with all this stuff that's happening in the world right now. Do you find that as somebody gets older, it's harder for them to change or it's just dependent on every single person's situation? And I have a lot of listeners that are all ages. So I have people go up to 75, 80 years old. So some of them I hear, I had literally a course that I went through and someone was 96 that went through the course, right? So it's like, even at 96, somebody wants to change and get better. But I mean, with age, do you feel like you see more people that kind of get stuck in who they are in the story that they built for themselves? I think what's great about being

human is that you can change at any age. And maybe you should talk to someone. There's someone that I see who's about to turn 70 and her life has been extremely messy and unhappy up to that point, to the point that she doesn't want to live anymore. And so much changes in her life over just the course of a year. And so I think that when people are ready, that change can happen at any age. And I don't mean that you can change the past. And so I think, you know, one of the big things is that people come into therapy and they're kind of like, you know, they want to redo on their childhood somehow, or they want to redo on some period of their lives and they won't move forward because they're so fixated on, I want, I want this to have happened

differently as opposed to, okay, now that that happened, here's where you are now in the present. What can we do moving forward? And so you don't, you don't get a redo. And it's true that as you get older, more things have happened. But I also think that as you get older, you become much more aware of our limited time on this planet. You become much more aware of our mortality. And that's a huge motivation to make change and to make change quickly because you realize that you don't have all the time in the world to do it. So do you recommend for people that are stuck on their past and they've been stuck for a long time to try to sit down and find the lessons that come from it and how they can grow and become a better person or to look back and forgive or to look back and

go, it is what it is. There's nothing I can do. What's the process of looking back through the past? Obviously, it could take a lot of sessions to do something like this, but look back at the past and kind of just let the past be the way that it is versus feeling like, I wish it would have been different, or I wish I would have acted different than she wouldn't have left me or whatever it is that that's going on. I think that so many people spend time on the what ifs that they don't spend enough time on the what is. And so what happens is they spend a lot of time thinking about how could I redo this thing from the past? And what it does is it prevents them from actually living in the present. You're not actually alive in the present.

There's a big difference between being alive and not dead, right? And meaning you can be alive, right? And really live and be someone who's vibrant and lives in the present, or you can be not dead and you're living in the past and you're living through all these other experiences, but you're not present for your life right now. And then people have more regret later because they say, I spent all of those years regretting my past instead of living in the present. I think that, you know, I talk in the book about the difference between idiot compassion and wise compassion. I think that's relevant here because what a therapist will do is really hold up the mirror to you and help you to see yourself in a way that

your friends won't. So your friends will say, you know, you'll complain about the same thing over and over with your friends. My parents this, my partner this, my boss this. And your friends will say, yeah, they're wrong. You're right. That's terrible. That's idiot compassion. Because if your friends really listen to you, they'll probably hear a pattern where you are feeling a lot like a victim. And I'm not saying that difficult things didn't happen to you. It's that you are putting yourself in a position of helplessness. We call them help rejecting complainers, people who they say they want help, but really what they just want to do is complain. And it's very hard to help a help rejecting complainer. And so your friends will give you idiot compassion, you know, but, but really if a fight breaks out in every bar you're going to, maybe it's you, but your friends are not saying that, you know, if you're seeing

this all across the board and all your relationships or all your situations. In therapy, a therapist is going to offer wise compassion where they're going to really help you to understand how it's serving you to keep talking about the same thing from the past where you're not moving forward in any way and you're ignoring your life in the present so what are you afraid of what are you terrified of facing right now what will it mean to say wait a minute i'm free my own therapist therapist, and I have the illustration in the book too, brought up this beautiful cartoon with me where he said, you remind me of this cartoon, and it's of a prisoner shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out. But on the right

and the left, it's open. No bars. The prisoner is not in jail. So many of us feel that way. We feel like we're trapped by our circumstances, our situation, the people in our lives. So we're shaking the bars, but really we can just walk around the bars. We're free. So the reason that people don't walk around the bars is because with freedom comes responsibility. If we walk around the bars, we are responsible for our lives. We are responsible for our happiness. We are responsible for the choices and decisions that we make. We are responsible for our happiness. We are responsible for the choices and decisions that we make. We are responsible for our reactions, for our behaviors, and we can't blame anyone else anymore. Oh my God. That's so good because I feel like there was a picture I

saw not too long ago and it looked like a politician. It was a cartoon politician. He had a whole bunch of people and says, who wants change? And everybody raised their hand. And then the next one said, who wants to change? And everybody's hand was down. It's kind of like everybody, especially I feel like nowadays, there's so many people that are on this side or that side and this belief or that belief.

It seems like everybody wants everyone else to change around them. And they never actually want to accept, as you're saying, the responsibility of maybe that if I change, I can change my circumstances, which kind of goes back to the Gandhi quote, be the change you want to see in the world. And that's one of the things that you say quite often is that people want change, but they want someone outside of them to change when in reality, they need to realize that part

of them needs to change in order for that change to happen, right? That's right. So I see that a lot when couples come in. So couples come in and usually what's the problem? The other person. Yeah. Right? And so what I do with couples is before they come in, I say, I want you to write down what you want to do, what work you want to do on yourself in this therapy to improve this relationship.

So it's not about whatever, you know, whatever the other person does is not going to be relevant here to your goals. Your goals are about how can you make change and a specific change, because we all know that even if the other person needs to change too, that we react to them in a certain way that is not helping, that actually exacerbates the situation. So it's really important to say, what can I do to change? You can't change another person, but your changing yourself can influence another person and help them to want to change

because you're reacting to them in a different way now. For sure. One of the things that I love that you had said is, I think you said it was one of your clinical supervisors said before you diagnose someone with depression, make sure they're not surrounded by assholes, which is like made me laugh out loud as soon as I heard it. How much do you feel like the person's environment

plays the way that they show up the way that they are? And then do you often give advice of, hey, maybe you should remove yourself from this group of people in order to make massive change in your life because you're pulling you back? What's interesting is that when we're younger, we don't get to choose our environment, but when we're adults, we do. And I think sometimes we forget that. And so what happens is people recreate a situation that seems very similar to the environment that they did not

want to be in when they were younger. And now that they have a choice, they end up surrounding themselves with friends, with romantic partners, with coworkers who are very similar to whatever dynamic they were experiencing growing up. And so why would people do that? You wonder, well, why would you do that when you're an adult and you can finally choose the people that you want to be around? Why would you choose people who are not healthy for you? And the answer is, again, going back to the familiar, that our unconscious has this pull toward the familiar if we don't work out our stuff. So we like to say, we marry our unfinished business. And I think that we do that with our friendships too. We choose friends based on our unfinished business for our friends.

If you work on that, that is not unfinished business anymore. And now you're not going to have this pull toward recreating that situation that you had before. And the idea is that if you recreate that situation that you had before, that somehow you're going to master it this time. That's why we do it as adults, but it doesn't work out that way. You're just going to put yourself in that same position of how you felt when you were younger, helpless, um, you know, sad, anxious, unheard, unseen, misunderstood, all of that. So is it, do you feel it's fully subconscious that somebody would go like, for instance, somebody can marry a woman and then go, Oh shit, they're a lot like my mom. Like where they notice is it, is it a lot of times where it's just

fully, there's aspects of this person that they're dating that they don't realize remind them so much of their mom, but they marry them because they feel like that's the familiar and this is something I need to work on and this is all subconscious? Or do you feel like sometimes it is conscious as well? Well, if they haven't worked out their unfinished business, then there's this pull toward people who maybe look different on the surface. So when you first meet them, it's different, but you have this intense chemistry with them and you're really drawn to them. And when you have that really strong feeling of like, I'm really pulled to this person, I'm really drawn to this person and it feels ungrounded, then you might say, wait a minute, is this something more than who this

person is? Is this the past and the present coming together or is this just the present? So sometimes what people think of as chemistry is actually a pull toward some need to resolve some unresolved dynamic from the past through this person who will recreate that situation for them again again, in an unhealthy way. Again, people don't generally look like that person. So if you grew up with an angry parent, you're not going to probably pick someone who on the surface seems angry. But then as you get to know that person, you see, wow, that person really has a temper issue. Or if you grew up with an alcoholic parent, you're probably going to choose someone who doesn't seem like they have

addiction issues, but they have other kinds of issues that are very similar to addiction issues. This episode is brought to you by Public Goods, the one-stop shop for sustainable, high-quality, everyday essentials made from clean ingredients at an affordable price. Everything from coffee to toilet paper to shampoo to pet food, Public Goods is your new everything store thoughtfully designed for the conscious consumer. And rather than buying from a bunch of single product brands, Public Goods members buy all of their premium essentials in one place in one beautifully streamlined aesthetic. And Public Goods searches the globe to find you clean, healthy, eco-friendly, innovative products. And they ethically source and obsessively develop all of their products to be free of unhealthy ingredients and harmful additives

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or reusable food storage wraps with your order. So you literally have nothing to lose. Just go to publicgoods.com slash dial or use my code dial at checkout. That's P-U-B-L-I-C-G-O-O-D-S.com slash dial to receive $15 off your first order. Do you feel like because, so say for instance, somebody has an alcoholic father and then they get into a relationship with someone who has addiction issues. Do you think that there's a part of them that's like, I couldn't fix my father. So now I think that I can save and fix this person. A hundred percent. Yes. That's exactly what it is. Right. And so we're just pulled to those types of people and feel like we got to fix them. And that's our, you know, because we can't, I guess as a child, you can't change your parents, obviously.

Humans want to have control. And when you don't have control and what could, what could be a situation where you have less control than being a child with a parent who don't have control and what could be a situation where you have less control than being a child with a parent who doesn't have control over their own lives. And so you have this parent who's out of control. You feel very out of control as a child because you can't control the situation. And then you grow up and you say, I'm going to make sure I'm never in that vulnerable situation again, where I don't have any control. And then you end up being drawn to someone where you feel like I'm going to have so much control that I'm going to fix them. So is it kind of like, you know, my father was alcoholic and so he passed away when I was 15 from being an alcoholic. And so when I've done a lot of therapy and then psychedelics around it,

one thing that I put my childhood was uncertainty, right? And then I realized through a lot of work that I've built my entire life to be as certain as possible. And the problem with that is that then you try to control every situation and every person and that just ruins relationships for people. So I think there's a lot of people that are out there that are going, oh shit, like I'm looking at my spouse,

my boyfriends and girlfriends that I've had in the past and I'm starting to notice that I'm in a relationship or have been in relationships with these people. So what's, I know, cause you do a lot of couples therapy. What's the, when someone's in that situation, when they find out they're with somebody that has addictive personality or, you know, addictions that they go, oh man, I actually subconsciously have been wanting to fix this person. Do you recommend like how, cause I guess the way I'm trying to phrase the question, excuse me, is we just said you can't change the person. So now you're in a relationship with this person.

So we're talking about changing yourself before changing the person. So do you try to change yourself to change the dynamic of that relationship and hope that they change? Or is the best thing a lot of times just to get out of the relationship and seek somebody different? I think that the beauty of adulthood is that you're now with somebody where you're in the adult position. So you're not in the helpless childhood position. So you can set boundaries and you can set expectations. And boundaries are something that you set with yourself, by the way. A lot of people misconstrue boundaries. They think a boundary is,

if you do this, you can't do this. This is a boundary do this, you know, you can't do this. This is a boundary. I'm telling you, you can't do this. And what a boundary actually is, is you tell the person what you want or need, and they either can do it or choose to do it or choose not to do it or can't do it. But you choose your response. Your boundary is with yourself. If this person can't give me what I want or need, then what is my decision? What am I going to do? And that's where it's really important, especially where people try to drag you into their, their stuff. That's not yours. So in those couples where you say, Oh, wow, you know, there, there are a lot of aspects of this person that I

love, but there are also aspects of this person that remind me a lot of the things that were very detrimental to me in my childhood and are detrimental to me now. You talk with that person and you say, look, these are the things that I want or need. And this is what my response is going to be. You know, and at a certain point, if you're with somebody who's an addict and they're not going to do anything about it, you might choose to not be in that relationship. You know, it's a totally different ballgame if they are going to do something about it. But again, you get to choose what is OK for you and what is not OK for you. And you can't dictate to somebody else how they should live their lives. You can tell them what's important to you and they're going to live their lives how they live their lives and vice versa. They're going to tell

you what is important to them. You know, a lot of people, we talk about safety in relationships and a lot of people say in order, you know, let's say that someone cheated on someone in a past relationship, right? And now you're with this new person who has never cheated on you or anyone else, but you hold them accountable for the crimes of the other person that you dated before. And so every time that person goes out, you know, the person says, you have to text me where you are, or you're not allowed to have friends of the opposite, you know, sex or, you know, whatever it is, that's unreasonable. So that person is saying, for my safety, you need to do all of this. You are, you know, perfectly capable of saying to that person, no, you know, I know you have trust issues

and I know you want to feel safe, but I can't make you feel safe by not living my life. I can't make you feel safe in that way. I can make you feel safe by being trustworthy because that's what I am, but I can't make you feel safe by doing things that feel unhealthy to me, like having to text you every minute that I'm away from you type of thing. And that tends to be for the person who wants the text message. It tends to be self-sabotage in every relationship they go into because with restriction, and I want to dive into it because one of the things you say that people want more than anything else is freedom. They put two buckets into in therapy is freedom and change, but for the person who wants

freedom, but then they go out with, a girl goes out with her friends and she's got to text every hour and let the guy know where she is. She's going to go through this. I don't want to, I love this guy, but I don't want to feel restricted in every single thing that I do. And people tend to have these self-sabotaging relationships and circumstances that they kind of carry through with them their entire life until they, I guess, unconsciously bring the subconscious to the conscious and go, wow, yeah, this thing is really actually holding me back. Is that typically what you find as well? Yeah, that they actually create the very thing they're terrified of having happened. That's crazy.

So, you know, they're with the person and they say, oh my gosh, you know, I have a fear of abandonment and I don't want to be abandoned. And then they do everything possible to make sure the person won't abandon them. But in doing that, that person feels so restricted that at a certain point they abandoned them, not because they didn't love them, but because they say, I can't be in this kind of relationship. That's crazy. It's almost like they guarantee their own unhappiness by trying to protect themselves from the thing that they think is going to be catastrophic for them. And it's kind of like the, going back to the whole parent thing as well, it's kind of like the idea of, you know, I've heard the phrase of fathers, you should raise your daughter the same way that you want her to marry. It's kind of the idea is because they're going to marry somebody that's a lot like you.

is kind of the idea is because they're going to marry somebody that's a lot like you. And it's interesting to me because so many people, I have a friend who's dealing with parents that are getting, one of her dad has extreme anger issues, right? And it's interesting to see what seems like child trauma come up in someone who is an adult, like a full adult. And I'm curious with, with anger and with emotion, with sadness and all of these things, do you tend to find that like in this case, someone who's got extreme anger issues that a lot of times this is something that's carrying from their childhood where maybe they didn't get a popsicle

when they were three years old and they got extremely angry and the parents are just like, I've had enough, just give them a freaking popsicle. And then it kind of clicks in their head of, oh, if I get angry, I get what I want. And they kind of bring this, or if I get emotional, I get what I want. And they kind of perpetuate this from childhood into adulthood and they're completely unaware of these things. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's where we learn about relationship is in our homes when we were growing up. And so there's a lot of

unlearning that some people have to do. Other people got great learning in their childhood homes and they bring that into their adult worlds. But definitely, and I think you have to be aware of that. But I think that one thing that even in sort of the best of environments, one thing that happens culturally, so outside of, you know, your parents might have been incredibly good role models for you. But at the same time, one thing that I think the culture does is even for the best of parents, it shapes the way we interact. And so what I see in the therapy room is that there's this difference between how men present and how women present. And when you talk about fathers and their kids, I think that men are really afraid of being vulnerable with their emotions, that they still feel like they need to be the stoic one. They

need to be the rock. They need to be the strong one, whatever that means to them. Because interestingly, being strong does not mean stuffing down your feelings, but somehow we've come to conclude that in our culture. And so when men come in to see me, they'll often say something like, you know, I've never told anyone this before. And they seriously have never told a soul about whatever the issue is that they're thinking about, you know, and it's a very sort of like common issue and they think they're the only one. And women will come in and they'll say, I've never told anyone this before, except for my mother, my sister, my best friend, right? So they've told a few people, but they feel like they haven't told anyone because they have permission to be vulnerable.

And so I see this in couples therapy where let's say it's a heterosexual couple and the woman often will say to the man some version of, you know, I just, I want to feel closer to you. I don't feel connected to you. I want to know more about what's going on inside. I want you to share with me what you're feeling. And then he does. And let's say he starts crying and she will inevitably look at me like a deer in headlights. Like I didn't feel safe when you weren't sharing with me because I didn't feel close to you. I felt like there was this gap, this big gap between us. But I don't feel safe when you're sharing too much with me, like you're crying in front of me. Right. She doesn't use those words until we start talking

about it. But you can see her body tense up like she doesn't know what to do. Like he's crying. Does she hug him? But she kind of recoils. She knows she's supposed to move toward him and she does, but it's very mechanical. And so I think we need to give men permission to be vulnerable and see that as the strength that it is. And so when we're raising our kids, if you think about fathers, you know, I'm not saying, you know, break down crying for either parent, you know, in front of your kids. Although if you are sad, there's nothing wrong with letting them see you be sad in reaction to something that is sad. But I think just in a,

in watching you sort of like talk about feelings that that's not like sort of like, go talk to your mom about that. You know, that you are available for that, that you can share that, that you can engage in those kinds of conversations. That's how that that child is going to grow up and feel whole and feel able to be fully present with their partners when they're older. Yeah, it's almost like in our culture,

emotion is very, like, especially for men, but I also think it's just for everybody, emotion is kind of shamed a lot of times. One of the things that I notice is if somebody starts crying, almost always they say, I'm sorry. They have to apologize for having feelings. And do you feel like that's something that's just in the culture where they're just, we're not supposed to, we're more of like head culture versus heart culture. And, or do you feel like it's just people that are embarrassed by the fact that they're crying and you're not crying? I think it's so interesting because even in the therapy room where you would

expect there are tissue boxes right there. So, you know, that it's okay to cry in there, that people will apologize. They'll start crying and they will apologize on a therapist couch for crying while they're talking about something painful. So I think that's so interesting. And I think what happens is people then stuff down their feelings. And what happens is if you don't give your feelings some air, they will come out in other ways. So they come out in too much food or too much alcohol or a short temperedness or insomnia or difficulties in relationship, difficulty focusing, that mindless scrolling through the internet, right? A colleague of mine said the internet was the most, you know, it was like, it was basically a painkiller, right? It was like a non-prescription painkiller.

And so what happens is the feelings are there. They're just, you're trying to numb them out. But numbness is not the absence of feelings. Numbness is actually a sense of being overwhelmed by too many feelings. You're flooded. And so you go numb. And part of that is because of the culture, because the culture says, oh, I'm feeling a lot. I better not feel this way. I'm going to seem weak or needy or, you know, just pathetic. As opposed to, wow, I really want to use these feelings. I really want to understand. These feelings are going to help me understand

what is not working right now. What is not working in my life. If you don't feel, it's like if with our body, you know, with our physical selves, we don't do that. We don't say, oh my gosh, I got a cut. I'm going to ignore it. Right. Right.

Because you know, you got to like, you know, you got to disinfect it. You got to take care of it. And you got to say, okay, how did I get that cut? I got to be more careful next time. Now with your feelings, instead, what you do is you say, you're not like, why am I sad? Or why am I anxious? You're just like, I don't want to feel the sadness or anxiety. I'm going to go have a drink. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's one thing that I find real interesting because, you know, for my whole, my whole childhood, like the reason why I got into this is because I was trying to figure out my dad for so long and my dad was an alcoholic.

So I was like, I remember I was, I was listening to Gabor Mate for a couple of months ago, a couple of years ago, excuse me. And he talks about that almost all addictions come from some form of trauma. And it's like this whole thing that that's starting to come out. And I was like, I've always thought it was this way because I knew that my that my dad walked in the room when he was 12 years old after his dad shot himself and saw it. He just never overcame that. But what's really interesting about it is people look at him and say, oh, he's an alcoholic. Or they'll look at someone else's other way and say, oh, they're just fat, whatever it is. But they don't look at the other sides of people that are workaholics

a lot of times are numbing. People that are on Instagram, like you're saying all the time, workaholics a lot of times are numbing. People that are on Instagram, like you're saying all the time is numbing. Alcoholics and drug addiction, all of that is a form of numbing. And I'm really curious with the whole numbing that we have, one of the things that changed my life was reading the book, Brene Brown's books of vulnerability. And when I started this podcast, the first thing that I wrote down was I'm going to be as vulnerable as possible so that people feel like, oh, me too. Like there's other people that are going through the same stuff I'm going through.

I could have never imagined that making 900 podcast episodes would be the most cathartic thing I've ever done in my life is because I'm just giving my shit to people and people are going, yeah, me too. And I still love you through it. And so with the numbing and some people want to, yeah, me too. And I still love you through it. And so with the numbing and some

people want to go therapist, some people don't, is it just safe to find somebody that just doesn't judge you when you want to break down and cry and just be able to share? Or you were talking a few minutes ago about when people share with their friends, they don't tell them what they need to hear. Is it that you need to go to that friend and say, listen, tell me all the things I need to hear and be hard with me? Or like, what is the practical way to work through these things when we've started to identify that we're numbing feelings? Yeah, that's so true. I think it's really important to choose your audience in terms of who is the person that you're going to share with. A lot of people, what they do is they say, well, I don't want to be vulnerable because I get burned when I'm vulnerable. And what happens is they go to the same person

over and over who doesn't know how to listen, who doesn't know how to be present, who doesn't know how to sit with them. And I think that it's really important for us as friends, as family members, as partners, to know how to listen as well when people come to us. So for example, to know how to listen as well when people come to us. So for example, when somebody comes to you and they're talking to you about something, it's important to say to them at the beginning of the conversation, how can I be helpful to you right now?

I'm here with you. How can I be helpful? Do you just want to vent right now? Do you want a hug? Do you want me to share what I'm thinking about this or how I'm feeling about this? Do you want me to brainstorm ideas with you? And then the person reflects for a second, oh, wait a minute, what do I want out of this conversation? What is it that I'm needing now?

And it also opens the door to the idea that there's not just one conversation, that right now during this 20 minutes, this is what I need right now, but maybe tomorrow I am going to want your thoughts on this, or I am going to want your thoughts on this, or I am going to want your honest feedback about this. Right. And maybe right now I'm so raw because it just happened that I just want to tell you what happened right now. And I just want you to sit with me. So it's really important to know how to listen and to choose people who know how to listen to you. So I want to go back to with what you just said. I want to also go back to the man who cries in front of the woman. And now she doesn't know what to do because I want to kind of close that

loop because as you're talking, I'm like, well, damn, we need to bring this frame in if you're the man wanting to speak to a woman and say something. But also I think we might've just scared some of the men to be like, oh shit, I don't know if I can say this now to her because I don't want to cry and be that person. So is it, is the man come in in that frame and say, Hey, listen, like, you know, I want to tell you something from my heart. And, you know, in, if I get emotional, I just ask that you don't judge me because of this. And, you know, I'll be the strong man that I've always been in 20 minutes after this. And how, how would they frame that situation? Cause it sounds like now it's like, Oh my God, I don't want to make her think I'm not the rock. You know what I mean? Cause I don't, it seems like it could offend

her and make her feel like, Oh, it's not, he's not strong anymore. You know? Right. I'm going no, only because of the way that you framed this thing about being strong that, you know, in 20 minutes, I'll be the strong man. No, you're actually being the strongest person in that moment by being vulnerable. So I just want to make sure that we don't reinforce that to the person we're talking to when you go, if you, if you, if you are the man who says, you know, I really want to talk to you about this or, um, you know, I, I think the way to say it is, Hey, you know what? One of the things that I think makes our relationship so strong or can make it really strong is if we're both able to be really vulnerable with each other. I think that that would show a strength in our

relationship and a strength in each other. And I want to be able to talk with you that way. How do you feel about that? Are you okay with me really opening up to you? Because I feel like that is a strength of mine to be able to do that. And it would be a strength in our relationship if we can really create that space for each other. Yeah. That was a big reframe when I read Brene Brown was she says, you know, we think that when we go and open ourselves up and we're vulnerable, that it shows that we're completely weak to everybody. But in reality, when we open ourselves up, people look at us and go, man, I wish I was that courageous to be able to open up myself to everyone else. Yeah. You know, that's, that's, so we started this podcast called Dear Therapists

and somebody comes on and you hear a therapy session and then we give them a concrete homework assignment that they have one week to do and then they come back and they tell us how it went and they do it all. We play it for you all in one episode so you can hear the whole story. And I think that what you're saying about this idea of strength and vulnerability is that we've gotten so much feedback. This podcast has just sort of exploded because everybody's saying, oh my gosh, I hear myself in this person and they're talking about it. And look what happens when they try the homework and they go and they talk to the people in their lives about it and,

and how much it moves them forward. And so even if it's not your exact situation, I think the homework is applicable to everybody because basically it's about how can I show up in a way that feels like a strength to me and my partner, whereas before it felt like a source of shame, or I was hesitant to do it, or I thought I don't want to rock the boat, or I didn't know how they would react. And so I think that the more that, for example, your podcast is out there or my podcast or all of these ways that people are seeing,

wait a minute, this is universal. We are all more the same than we are different and there's nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, being more human is going to lead to not only us having better lives, but our society being a stronger society as a whole. Yeah, I love that. And I love what you're giving people the opportunity is what I always say is people just want to go, me too. There's many times I've given speeches and I've talked about my father and there's a

couple hundred people and then someone will come up and say, oh my gosh, I completely relate to you. My mom used to beat me when I was younger. And I'm like, I didn't tell that story at all. But you heard something in my story that made you go, oh, I'm not the only one. It was the emotional similarity. It was the feeling understood. Again, when I do couples therapy, you'd think that in a couple,

the three words that the person wants to hear are, I love you. But really the three words that the other person wants to hear are, I love you. But really the three words that the other person wants to hear is, I understand you. That is the most loving position to be in where you feel like, I understand you. To feel understood is what we all want. And to feel understood by somebody with whom you've been vulnerable, with somebody who really sees you for who you really are, your true self, your authentic self. Say, I understand you.

Oh, that's like when you see the reaction of someone in a couple, when they feel understood by their partner in that deep way, there's really nothing like that. Yeah, that's amazing. I don't think there's any other way better to end than that exact way right there. So thank you so much for your time. This is amazing.

It was good to talk to you about these things. I think for a lot of people, they need this right now, especially with all that's happening in the world. So for people who want to find you, what's the best ways to find you out there? Yeah, well, first of all, just thank you so much for the conversation.

I'm so glad that these conversations are getting out in the world. And they can find me at my website, which is laurigotlieb.com. They can check out my book, which is called Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. They can listen to my website, which is lauriegottlieb.com. They can check out my book, which is called maybe you should talk to someone. They can listen to my podcast, which is called dear therapists, and they can watch my Ted talk about changing our stories, which is at ted.com.

Great. Laurie Gottlieb. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. And, uh, thank you for the great conversation as well. Oh, my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.