The One You Feed - How to Let Go of Expectations and Transform Disappointment into Growth with Christine Hassler

Episode Date: November 24, 2023

Christine Hassler, a renowned author and life coach, shares her insights on how to let go of expectations and transform disappointment into growth. Drawing from her own experiences, Christine discusses the concept of expectation hangovers and how they can leave us feeling lost and unsure of how to move forward. She explains that an expectation hangover occurs when life doesn’t go as planned or when we don’t achieve the desired outcome we were hoping for. By embracing our emotions and making choices that serve our well-being, Christine believes that we can navigate disappointment with resilience and thrive in the face of adversity. In this episode, you will be able to: Discover the keys to effectively managing disappointment and overcoming expectation hangovers Unlock the power of choice in overcoming challenges and achieve personal growth on emotional, mental, behavioral, and spiritual levels Learn how to ride the waves of your emotions without suppressing or controlling them, allowing for authentic healing and growth Shift your focus from external forms to desired feelings and learn how to create a life that aligns with your true desires Gain resilience and thrive in the face of adversity, navigating challenges with confidence and grace To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We hope you'll enjoy this episode from the Archive. An affirmation that I just say because I'm trying to make myself feel better is different than when I'm saying something authentically because I believe it. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that

hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor,

what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Christine Hassler left her successful job as a Hollywood agent at 25 years old to pursue a life

she could be passionate about, but it did not come easily. After being inspired by her own unexpected challenges and experiences, she realized her journey was indeed her destination. In 2005, she wrote the first guidebook written exclusively for young women entitled 20-Something, 20-Everything. Her newest book is Expectation Hangover, Overcoming Disappointment in Work, Love, and Life. It's a guidebook for how to treat disappointment on the emotional, mental, behavioral, and spiritual levels. Today, we discuss her challenges with divorce, depression, and disappointment, and how to carry on and thrive in the face of challenges. Hi, Christine. Welcome to the show. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Eric.

Thank you for coming on. So, we're going to talk about your new book, Expectation Hangover, which I sent you an email earlier where I said I was just sort of getting through the book. I was delayed in getting to it, so I've been reading a lot of it. And this morning, I was just like, this sounds so—like, your way of thinking about things sounds so much like the way I approach the world. So I was really—there were a lot of things in it that were pretty striking to me, so I'm looking forward to talking about those. Cool, me too. So our show is called The One You Feed, and it's based on the parable of two wolves,

where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson, and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops, and wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. He looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. First, I love that parable.

It's one of my very favorites. And I love that we're starting there because I think it gives us a great context. And what comes to me first is, you know, I think control is one of the master illusions that we have as human beings. And we never have complete control over what happens or doesn't happen in our life, but we do have choice in how we respond to it. And to me, that parable is really illustrating how we have choice. You know, we don't have control, but we have choice. And whatever we choose to think about, whatever we choose to give our energy, it tends to grow inside of us.

So if we want to feed thoughts about how grateful we are, how appreciative we are, how accepting we are, that tends to grow. And if we want to entertain thoughts about lack or fear or worry, then that tends to grow in our life. But I think it all comes back to choice. I love Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl's books. It's one of my favorite books. And I don't know, I don't think I'm quoting exactly what he says in the book. But he says in between stimulus and response is a window. And in that window lies our freedom. And that window to me is choice. That's one of my favorite quotes too. So I got to ask you then, what are some of the books that have been most inspiring to you over the years?

Because I think Man's Search for Meaning was certainly one for me. What else is in there for you? I'm sitting next to my bookshelf. The books that got me on the path and really turned me on to all this and just blew my mind, I read at the same time. So my first two were The Celestine Prophecy and The Alchemist. Okay. So those were two books that just was like, whoa, just kind of opened my mind to what was possible. And I think that I was very much raised in a traditional family, um, grew up Catholic. And so my belief system was, was kind of limited and I didn't

really have a very expansive mindset. And so those books just completely blew my mind. Um, I'm trying to think of other, you know, I'm a big fan of Marianne Williamson. All her books have really touched my heart and my life. And then, you know, I, I don't know if you've read the science of getting rich by Wallace water waddles. It was written in 1912 and it talks about wealth consciousness. And that really shifted things for me in terms of wealth and money and my relationship with money. Um, and then speaking of relationships, I have all different

boxes. I love David Data's books. The Way of the Superior Man, I think, is a must read for any man and woman to really understand men. And then his other book, Intimate Communion, is about the different kinds of relationships that we have and the different stages we evolve through as men and women. So I really love books on spirituality, thoughts of conscious creation, relationships. Those are all the books that I dive into. I would say most of my books are nonfiction. Yeah. Yeah. I read a lot of nonfiction too, although I grew up loving fiction and I occasionally go back to it. And there's something about experiencing the world and emotions through somebody else's eyes that can be very, I think it's very good for empathy. Oh, absolutely. I was such a nerd

growing up and I would build these furniture tents, like furniture forts. Did you ever do those? Like you move your furniture together and get like blankets and things. Chris is doing one right now. Oh, I love it. I love that. I want a picture of that. But I would climb in my furniture forts with my flashlight and be reading, you know, my novels and books and all that. I love to read. Love it. You said, we don't have control, but we do have choice, which is a really great little quote there. So let's talk about your new book, which is called Expectation Hangover. And I think a lot of that book gets to the fact of we don't have control, right? We have these ideas of the way we want things to turn out, but we don't have control. And the book is about how do we deal with those things. So can you maybe tell us what is an expectation hangover?

Sure. It's a term I made up and it is a variety. It can be different things. It can be when a desired result or an expected result does not occur. Things don't go as planned. Life throws us an unexpected curveball that just sends us reeling. Or we reach a desired result. Things do go according to plan, but we don't have the expected feeling or experience that we really counted on. And we're left with hangover-like symptoms. And I'm sure everybody out there has had a hangover. If you haven't, that's awesome that you've avoided that. But I don't think anyone has a hangover and is like, it's awesome. I just want to feel this way forever. And the symptoms of an expectation hangover are similar. You have a headache, not necessarily physical, although that can be the case, but your head is aching from all the

thinking and obsessing and analyzing and wondering about what did or didn't happen. You're spinning. The room isn't spinning, but you're spinning in confusion. There's often a sense of regret. There's a lack of motivation. There's kind of being down on yourself. And there's just really wanting to crawl into bed and pull the covers over your eyes. So that's the definition of an expectation hangover. So you mentioned a couple of different types of expectation hangovers. One was when we expect that something's going to happen, it doesn't, and we're disappointed by that. The other you said was when we do get something we want, and it doesn't give us the feeling we like, which I think is a fascinating one. I'm really interested in that one, having experienced it a bunch of times. What was the third one?

interested in that one, having experienced it a bunch of times. What was the third one? Did you say the curveball? When life throws us a curveball? Is that the third one? Okay. All right. And so that is, it's not that I had an expectation that I was going to get a certain thing. It's that I had an expectation that my life was going along a certain path. And then a curveball comes, whether like that, maybe that's something like illness or a divorce. Yeah, how much she eats on you. All of a sudden, like your business goes bankrupt, your house burns down. I mean, it's just kind of, you know, or it can just be like, all of a sudden you like, you know, we're on your way to the grocery store and you got an offender vendor. It's just little things. And I think that too, there's three kinds of expectation hangovers.

There's interpersonal, meaning someone has disappointed us, someone has let us down. There's personal, meaning the kind of the self-imposed, we don't meet our own expectations. And then there's situational, you know, when things just happen or don't happen. Yeah, exactly. So you talk about in the book that we all tend to cope with these things several different ways. And these are the ways that don't work. Could you tell us what the ways that coping with these? I won't go through them all. But so a favorite of most people is overing, over drinking, over eating, over working, over shopping, over being on the internet, just doing anything to like avoid

the feelings, anything to distract ourselves, anything to numb ourselves. Even like getting super involved in someone else's life, over caretaking, that's an example. Another kind of coping mechanism that I see a lot, and this has sort of become more prevalent with the personal growth industry, is just trying to get to the positive right away, like giving yourself a pep talk or trying to do a spiritual bypass where you try to get to the silver lining and tell yourself it's all okay and life is great and dah, dah, dah, dah. And why that doesn't work is because, you know, we're humans. And even though part of us knows or has the awareness that, you know, everything does happen for a reason and there's a blessing in every lesson, there's still the human feelings of sadness, anger, shock, regret, shame, guilt, the things that

are normal to experience during an expectation hangover. So trying to just get to the positive right away doesn't really work. So any kind of distraction, avoiding, numbing, any of those techniques are common. I know so many people, for example, who in the midst of an expectation hangover start drinking more. With all of these coping strategies, they work in the short term. If I'm really sad because I just had a breakup and I go drink a half a bottle of wine with my girlfriends, I'm going to have a moment of relief and that's going to feel good. But it's not authentic. It's not real. It's something that I've contrived through the alcohol. And then the next day I feel even worse because alcohol is a

depressant and you already feel bad. So when you put any of these kind of depressants, anything alcohol, drugs, TV, internet, those kinds of things that lower your brain chemistry, it's like you're already climbing a mountain of disappointment and you add those things and it's like putting a 50 pound backpack on your back and you're just making the climb harder right which is why i would just drink again the next morning and keep that keep that keep that rolling which is uh why i don't drink anymore so i'm fully familiar with that that that phenomenon i do i might say one more thing about that that's important for people to get is the thing about when using those coping mechanisms, like you just said, is you have to keep upping

the ante. Right. And oftentimes an expectation hangover left untreated does lead to an addiction problem. Yeah. Be it alcohol, drugs, sex, whatever it is, because in order to keep numbing the pain, you have to keep upping the ante. Yep, absolutely. I love that phrase, spiritual bypass, because I think that is such a common thing. And I think you're right, particularly as it's sort of a dark side of personal development because there is a real tendency to immediately think, I should never feel bad, and if I do feel bad, then I need to do something about it. And I even think that sometimes the positive actions that we take,

you know, I was in a recovery program, and there was a real tendency or am in a recovery program, a real tendency that like, if you ever have a negative emotion, there is something you should go do that will make it go away. And the reality, like you say, is that those emotions need some degree of processing. Absolutely, absolutely. Because we all feel things and men too, not women are not the only ones who feel and when we don't process our feelings, it's like trying to keep a beach ball underwater. You know, you struggle with it when we don't process our feelings, it's like trying to keep a beach ball underwater. You know, you struggle with it for a while and sooner or later it's going to pop up and slap you in the nose. And I think we're so uncomfortable with emotions. We're not taught how to process emotions.

We're not taught how to deal with them. We're told to be strong. That's another coping mechanism that doesn't work, just being strong and fighting our way through it. That's a common one for overachievers, you know, just be strong and just plow right through it. But when we suppress our emotions that are a natural part of the human experience, not only does it lead to not dealing with an expectation hangover, but it can actually create illness in our body because emotion is energy in motion. So if we don't have healthy ways to get that emotion out, it's going to sneak up on us, it's going to come out in some other form. Yeah, and I think that is, that is so true. And I think if there's one, one area that I tend to go

wrong with that these days, it would be with that spiritual bypass. It would be by simply finding a way and I think that's, we talk on this show, one of the guests we had on wrote a great book, and it was examining the American self-help industry. And she had a quote in there because she grew up with a father who was a therapist and a self-help author himself. And she asked the question that I really thought was a great question, and I think it speaks right to this, which is, when is it positive thinking? And when is it sort of outright denial? Yeah. And that is such a tricky line. then it's, you know, an affirmation that I just say because I'm trying to make myself feel better is different than when I'm saying something authentically because I believe it.

You know, and the unconscious mind can tell when we're BSing ourself, which is why, like, I call it pendulum thinking in the book. You know, to go from, let's say that, like, you just, you're an entrepreneur and your business just failed. Most likely you're naturally going to have thoughts like, I failed, or I'm a loser, or something that's like that. To then shift to, I'm learning from this, and I am an amazing person, and I will thrive from this. It's this huge pendulum, and your unconscious mind is like, no, no, I don't believe you. It's like it's this huge pendulum and your unconscious mind is like, no, no, like I don't believe you. So it's better to kind of get to the middle and go, you know, something like I accept where I am.

I did the best I could. You know, those kind of like I am enough. All is okay. You know, those things that calm us down a little bit and don't perpetuate the negative. I'm not saying perpetuate negative thinking, but I think you and I are both saying, don't try to get to the silver lining when you haven't gone through the breakthrough that's right in front of you. Yeah. And I think the other thing that's interesting about everything that you just said and your book, your, your book sort of talks about this in different ways is everything that you just described are thoughts. Yes. And, and it's, it's the, it's the emotion that we're

talking about how we, and I always think that's the it's the emotion that we're talking about how we and I always think that's a that's an interesting distinction is because I do think it's important, at least for myself to control to some degree to work with the thoughts I'm having, because thoughts largely, I think our stories to a great degree, but emotion is something different. There's no an emotion is an emotion. Now, there's an interaction between those two things, but I think that what you just described is being in touch with what the emotion is. Absolutely. People tend to think their emotions rather than feel their emotions. And in the book, I talk about the difference between releasing and recycling emotions. And why the emotional section is the first part of the treatment plan is because everybody just wants to think their way through something rather than really feel their way through something.

And we end up recycling so many of our feelings and our emotions because let's say I have a good cry. And I don't really feel better after the cry. And I have so many clients that come to see me and I'm like, well, we really need to process your sadness. And they're like, well, I've cried and cried and cried and cried. And I said, yeah, but you're just recycling. And how we recycle is while we're crying or having the feeling or whatever it may be, there's a part of us that's judging and analyzing. There's this commentary going, when is this going to stop? I hate this. I shouldn't be so sad.

Like on and on and on. And what that does is it just recycles the emotion. And why therapy or coaching or even 12-step groups to some extent really work is because someone's given permission to be vulnerable and share their feelings, and other people are just holding a space of compassion. They're not offering advice. They're not judging. They're not analyzing. Like a good support group, a good coach, a good therapist will just really hold a space for someone to be able to just emote and know that that's not who they are and say things like, you're doing okay.

It's okay. Keep going. And we need to learn how to do that for ourselves. To be able to have the feeling and at the same time discover this part of us that's like, it's okay. It's okay. You're okay. Rather than having this judge or analyzer trying to get out of the feeling as quickly as possible. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

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knight welcome to really no really sir bless you all hello newman and you never know when howie mandel might just stop by to talk about judging really that's the opening really no one of the books that I loved a lot, I read when my son was two. We were talking about him earlier, and my wife and I split, and it was a really difficult time for me, and there was an author, Pema Chodron, who had a book called When Things Fall Apart, and she talks very much about that. Don't indulge or repress those things and drop the storyline of what's happening. I think that's so important. We talk on this show a lot about feeling bad, about feeling bad, or the second arrow, which in Buddhist terminology, which is this, exactly what you described.

Now I've got a feeling and now I'm telling myself what that feeling means. It means that I'm not good enough or it means that I shouldn't have this feeling. So if I feel this way, then I'm weak. And all these things that we layer on top of, and if we can get back to that, what that original pain was, what's this actually about, it tends to allow us to do that. And I love that phrase where you said that, you know, it's by analyzing these things that we go into recycling. Yeah, yeah. And I love that you brought up When Things Fall Apart.

When my fiance dumped me in my 20s six months before our wedding, that was my go-to book. Oh, wow. Yeah, and I remember during that breakup, that was like such an important emotional release for me. And I remember having to like do kind of use the temper tantrum technique that I describe in the book like every day for like days. because the thing about an expectation hangover is that you are not only dealing with that particular event, we're also dealing with everything in our past that it triggers.

And so let's say you're dealing with like a loss, a breakup, a divorce, like whatever it may be. When that happens, you're also dealing with a lot of the other breakups you haven't dealt with yet. And I saw this really when I, so I got, my fiance broke up with me in my 20s and then I got married to someone else. And then in my early 30s, it was clear my husband and I were going on different paths and it was a marriage that I completed and got divorced.

And I have to say, and I don't think whether you're the one who gets broken up with or you're the one who leaves, I think breakups just suck. Like they're just awful. Like no matter how you slice it, they're just awful. But I have to say that because I had done so much cleanup work when my fiancé broke up with me and really dealt with so much of the grief that I had never dealt with in my life, the divorce was actually a lot easier because there wasn't so much unprocessed, uncovered material. And that's what I've really learned with disappointment. I don't know if this is true for you, Eric, too. It's like, as you kind of go through each one and you learn more tools and you process each one deeper, the length of time between disappointment gets longer and the time you spend really suffering in the disappointment gets shorter. Oh, I think absolutely. And I think that's the one thing. So I, I told you this,

you know, I mentioned that with my, with my ex, you know, my son's mother and he was two years old and she came home one day and said, oh, I'm a, I want you to leave the house. I'm in love with someone else. And I was just like, holy shit. And I mean, my world really did fall apart. And a lot of it was, you know, I wasn't going to be living with my son. And but I what I got to in that place was I had no choice but to process those emotions. I had nowhere to go. I think partially being in recovery, I was like, well, I can't go do this. And I can't go do that. And I did a lot of the things that are in your, you know, that you talk about in the book, the writing of, I mean, angry letter after angry letter after angry letter that just got thrown away. But the interesting thing was I felt like

for the first time ever, I really worked all the way through that. And it's interesting now because I have a pretty good relationship with my ex and there is no hint of any bad feeling or anything there. It's like it's over. And that's an interesting experience to have something be so totally transformed. And it was, I will not say in any way, shape or form that was enjoyable going through it. And I think if I could have thought of a way to avoid it, I probably would have, but I couldn't. I couldn't. And so when I read your book, it brought a lot of that back, me thinking about how that was an example of me really processing emotion versus doing these different things and maybe what I've done more recently, which is more of the spiritual bypass route.

Yeah. Well, and see, I love what you're saying because what it reminds me of is that, you know, the agenda of our ego and the desire of our soul are often in direct conflict. And our ego wants things like marriage, job, it wants form, it wants outcome, it wants to check things off a checklist. But all our soul kind of cares about is our evolution and our growth. And coming back to the parable for a moment about the one you feed, I think that most people in the personal transformation spiritual world would all agree that we all start out as love. We all start out totally connected to source energy,

call it God, divine nature, call it whatever you want. But we're all kind of connected to this oneness, this love. We know we're whole. We know we're complete. And then things happen, and we move into fear and judgment and shame and all that kind of stuff. And so I think we have the constant choice, again, coming back to choice, is are we going to feed love or are we going to feed fear? And oftentimes we have to go through these difficult, challenging times to get us back to love. And sometimes it takes a catalyst like a divorce or an addiction or an illness or something like that to bring us to our knees enough to surrender, to stop clinging for safety, security, control, and to eventually move out of that fear and back into love. Because I think that like our true

purpose here is to come back to how we started, you know, to come back to that place of wholeness, completeness, knowing that nothing's wrong with us, knowing that we're loved, knowing that we're lovable, knowing we're not broken, knowing we're enough, independent of anything we create. knowing that we're lovable, knowing we're not broken, knowing we're enough, independent of anything we create. Yeah, that's a wonderful place to get to. So in the book, you have a treatment plan that you talk about for going through these expectation hangovers, and it's a four-step plan, you say.

And I think it's in order, right? Emotional, then mental, then behavioral, and then spiritual. So could we spend a minute and kind of walk through each of those? And then I have a question about the order. Yeah. Yeah. So one of my first spiritual teachers and coaches, I met her when I was 22. Her name was Mona Miller.

And she really called me out. She saw me with love, but also could see through all my bullshit. Oh, sorry. I hope I can say that. I think I've sworn several times already, so I think we're good. Okay, good. So, oh, sorry about that. Let me just turn this off.

So that's when I really first kind of learned of myself as a multidimensional being. I think that for all of us, thinking is easy. But thinking and feeling are very different, as you said. And then thinking is great in terms of awareness, but awareness without action, without changing our behavior means nothing. but awareness without action, without changing our behavior means nothing. And then if we're just sort of these thinking, feeling, acting beings with no higher connection, then we never feel totally fulfilled. So that's why the, you know, there's those four levels. So I'll just walk through a little bit of each one. So like I said, we start on the emotional level of an expectation hangover because that's the one we don't want to deal with. That's the one we want

to avoid. And the treatment plan is really about learning how to release emotions rather than recycle them. So there's things you learn like release writing, which is a way of writing that isn't like journaling that you go back and reread, but is really about an emotional release, mind dumping, burning or ripping it up when you're done, just a way to get emotion out. And the temper tantrum technique is definitely unique, but it's a way to actually let yourself have an adult version of a temper tantrum. And the reason why this is important is because, you know, if you imagine a little kid and you see a kid have a temper tantrum, if you don't interrupt them, what ends up happening is first they get

really, something happens and they get upset. And then first the anger revs up and they may yell and scream and kick. And then they start crying really loud. And then the crying kind of turns to a whimper. And then the whimpering kind of turns to like, you know, shortness of breath and just kind of going, you know, and then eventually they start to rock themselves and they start to self-soothe and then they're totally out of it and they're fine and they want ice cream. And what, what they've done is they've learned how to ride the wave of emotion. And on every level, emotional, mental, behavioral, and spiritual, I have something called role-playing RX, where you kind of embody a role to help you understand these tools. So on the emotional level,

it's that of the surfer. And you really learn how to ride your emotions all the way to the beach without trying to dive off the board or control the waves or whatever. So that's, you know, each section is pretty deep and rich. So I'm just kind of skimming the surface here. Is there an ice cream stand waiting for me on the beach? Yes, whatever your favorite flavor is. It's there. Waffle cone or in a cup, whatever you like. It's there. And then moving on to the mental level, the role playing our acts on this level is that of the horseback rider. And, you know, we can't control every thought that comes in.

Our mind is like a galloping horse. But we have dominion over the reins. We hold the reins. We can stop it. We can redirect it. We can slow it down. We can stop it. We can redirect it. We can slow it down. We can speed it up. So on the mental level, you're learning how to basically rewire your brain by watching normal thought patterns and changing the neural nets in your brains by creating new ones.

There's also a lot of exercises to help you realize what your story is because we all have, there's what's happened to us in our life and then there's what we've made it mean and we all have these stories that we carry around like backpacks and collect evidence that support our story even if our story sucks like you would have a story about always getting rejected well that's a really sucky story but if you keep believing it and replaying it then you're going to start collecting evidence and your life is going to be about continual rejection. So it's really about what is the story you want to tell. And on the mental level, we also work with time travel. So past hacking and future tripping,

we tend to go back in our past and do things like regret things and use information we have now to go back and analyze and beat ourselves up for things we didn't know in the past, which is not fair. And then we tend to future trip and come up with a scenario thinking. So there's a lot about really using your mind as your servant, not your master. And if you're going to go back to the past, go back from the perspective of what can you learn. And if you're going to go in the future, at least make it good. You know, we're making up the future anyway. So like, at least make it good. You know, we're making up the future anyway. So like at least make it something you want.

And then we get to the behavioral level, which is, you know, awareness without action is nothing. It's just sort of like entertainment. And you start to look at what has driven behavior in the past. And you learn about things like what's been your compensatory strategy? You know, what's been the thing that you've gotten really good at that isn't necessarily good for you? Most compensatory strategies come from a wounded place. For example, I was bullied and teased a lot growing up as a kid. I formed the belief that I was not likable. Something was wrong with me. To compensate for that, to make up where I felt less than,

I became a severe overachiever, which made me successful in life. But since it was driven by massive insecurity, it was never fulfilling. So you start to look at behavior that has maybe has made you successful or made you well-liked or made you feel safe, but isn't necessarily creating the results in terms of the feelings that you want to experience. And you also look at your avoidance trap in terms of what you spend a lot of time and energy invested in avoiding. Do you avoid rejection? Do you avoid judgment?

Do you avoid upsetting people? Do you avoid feeling out of control? And how does that stop you from taking action in your life? And then finally, on the spiritual level, you start to look at your life. Oh, and on the behavioral level, you take on the role as a scientist. So you start observing yourself rather than judging yourself. And then finally, on the spiritual level, you become the seeker and you start to look at your life lessons and you start to move into things like prayer and deeper forms of meditation and surrender and forgiveness. I would say

forgiveness is probably the most powerful tool on the spiritual level because forgiveness doesn't mean condoning anything. It doesn't mean making things okay. It doesn't mean agreement, but it does mean letting go of the judgments that we're carrying around inside. And that truly is what sets us free. And I think what opens us up to our dharma, to our purpose, to really truly being guided. So that was a brief tour. Yeah, that was a brief tour. And I can say from having been through the book, there is a lot of detail on each of those things. And you've got a lot of exercises in there and different meditations and different things to use to work through that.

I'm interested in, I said I had a question about the order. What I always find interesting is I think obviously for a plan, you have to have an order of things to go through. What I always find interesting is I think obviously for a plan, you have to have an order of things to go through. What I always find so interesting is the dynamic between those four areas and how in some ways the interplay, like what I'm thinking can affect how I'm feeling, how I'm behaving can act how I'm thinking, and all those, because a quote that I use often is you can't think your way into right action. You have to act your way into, into right thinking in some cases, which is, which is just a slightly different take, but I really like where you start with

the emotional piece because I agree. I think that is the part A that we try and avoid and B, that's the part that sets off the emotional hangover. It's an emotional. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, there's not a lot out there in terms of how to teach us how to deal with our feelings. There's so much out there about manifesting and manipulating our mind. I think we're so mentally stimulated and mentally obsessed that we've really got to get back into ourselves as feeling people, you know, and that's part of the human experience. And even, you know, kind of with the movement to spirituality, which I love, I consider myself a spiritual person,

we can't go to spiritual bypass either. You can't just chant mantras the rest of your life and expect to deal with the deep anger and shame from your childhood. You've got to do a little investing on the emotional level in order to really clear that. You know, that's just been my experience personally and working with thousands of people at this point is eventually you've got to feel your feelings. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

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And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I've more and more been thinking, we end up talking on this show about depression a fair amount. It's something I've wrestled with on and off in the past, and I know a lot of our listeners have. And I've more and more become convinced that you really have to have a holistic approach to it. And these four areas that you laid out pretty much cover that, what that means. There's, it's not enough to just take care of the mental aspect of it, although it's critical to have the mental aspect of it, because, and you talk about in your book, this idea of ruminating about, you know, thinking about the same things over and over again can drive us into really negative emotional spaces. So there's, there's that interaction there. But I more and more become convinced that it's, you need all of this working in concert together. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, Eric got put on Prozac when I was

10 years old and I was on antidepressants until about 30, so 20 years of my life. I was kind of numb. And part of my mission, you know, my big mission is to help ease suffering on the planet in whatever way I can. And, you know, a sub part of that mission is really bringing light to depression, because I think depression is often a result of suppression and repression. And most people that are depressed and medicated, a lot of them don't even need it. But they need their emotion. They need their creativity unlocked. They need to be given a way to feel again. And so much of my own journey coming off the antidepressants

and really healing depression inside myself because it's not something that I suffer from anymore. And P.S., I was told my whole life, you will always need medication. This is just the way you're wired and this is just how it is. So I had all of that kind of belief system seeded inside of me. And a huge part of finally being able to get through it and get to the other side of it was being willing to go into those really scary feelings and finally feel all of those things that I was so terrified to feel. And it was dark and it was hard, but I will tell you that once I went

into that and got through it, it's like something released, you know? So for anyone out there, I'm not here to say medication is good, bad, right, wrong, whatever, like everybody has to trust their own intuition and the people that care for them. But for anyone who may be suffering from, you know, either diagnosed depression or you just kind of feel depressed and sad, there is another side to that. And so just keep going, keep going. Yeah. The medication topic is a really interesting one because it certainly has been a huge help to me and a lot of people that I know. And yet the question does become, is it, is it something that you, how long do you need to continue? And is that medicine causing a

numbing effect to some degree? I think that's something that people who are on depression medication, myself included, I wonder often about, is there a numbing element to that? And how significant is that? And that's why I get back to sort of this idea of a holistic plan. And I didn't actually start taking medicine for myself until I had really done, I was doing all that stuff, all the emotional stuff, really working deeply with what was happening. When I was a kid, I was finally taking good physical care of myself. I was meditating. I was like, and I still feel awful. And so, and then, you know, the medicine sort of changed that, but things evolve

over time. I just think it's a very interesting concept, but I think that, um, we had a guest on last week, John, uh, Rotterman, who's a, um, he's a professor in Florida and he talks a lot about depression and he talks about depression being an evolutionary adaptation. Um, and that it's, it's, and he's in general, his general sense is, look, it's not, it's not enough to just give people medicine and send them home. And that's what I'm pretty much very much amazed by these days is how often that is the only answer that people are given. Yeah, yeah. And, and I think that, again, like the personal thing, and I will say the thing that was my, or I guess you could say, or lifeline through it and what finally got me off is that spiritual connection.

Like that kind of nurturing that relationship with a higher power and faith is what got me kind of was that final step. You know, I'd done the herbs and diet and all that kind of stuff. But that, having a relationship with a higher power and experiencing myself as a spiritual being, I would say was the missing link for me personally. Interesting. So you say you don't suffer from it anymore. Do you find that you cycle through emotion or mood? Or are you fairly steady at this point? I'm a woman. I'm not steady. All right. I was going to leave that aside. And I'm a human. So I would say, here's the thing. I am really good at using my tools.

I definitely have moods. I definitely have down times. I definitely have my own expectation hangovers. But I am much better at using my tools and I'm much better at asking for help too. Realizing I have a support system around me. Realize I have friends and teachers and mentors and communities that I can lean on in those moments. And then I have my spiritual foundation as well. So I would say that absolutely, I still have my moments, but I never feel depressed. If I ever kind of start to feel depressed, I know I'm suppressing something. I know I need a good like yell. You know, I know I need to go box or I know I need a good cry or I know I need to just go dance and move my body or do something creative. So anytime I start to feel that remnants of depression, it means something needs to move. Yeah, that's a really interesting way to think about it, because the thing that is so tricky about depression, I think, is that it's a lack of feeling by and large, right? It's not a sadness is is a whole different animal. Depression is that sort of deadness and that emptiness. And it's, it's very difficult to say, oh, it's because of X. Because that doesn't feel like it's because of X.

And I think your point is, that stuff just builds up over time and over time. And in a lot of cases, that suppression or that repression happened at a complete – it's very – it happened so long ago or being angry or being sad it's easy to find those oh I'm angry because I'm sad because largely whereas depression is like I don't there's no emotional now a lot of times there's an event that kicks it off right you go oh I'm I start to become depressed because you know I lost my job and then we can sort of see how it flows. But I think for people who've been in it a long time, it's so nebulous. Yes, totally. Totally. It's, it's, and I think that that's, that's when the self judgment kicks in big time. That's right. Of why am I feeling this way? What's wrong with me? I'm pathetic, which just makes it worse. So I think another huge lesson.

I would say that people that suffer from depression are often high achievers and are often people that are really hard on themselves and think being hard on themselves is an effective way to kind of motivate themselves, which is so not true. And another huge lesson that came from my depression was self-compassion. Like really learning how to be with myself in a gentle, loving way and not be so freaking hard on myself. That makes a huge difference. The other thing you talked about that I thought was really important was talking about asking for help and having friends and a support group and various things like that. Because I heard somebody say recently, it was in the interview that we just put out today, where the quote I think was loneliness masquerading as depression. That that can be such a catalyst.

Those two things show up symptomatically so similarly. Yeah. Yeah. They really do. Oh, they really do. Loneliness is brutal. And it's even like being in a group of people and feeling lonely. Yeah, that's the worst. The worst. Yep. Yep. So I think we're nearing the end of our time, but I did want to talk with you about one other part in the book that really struck me. And you talk about the different, you talk about form versus essence. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Yeah, this is the kind of the thing that that I learned. So my first my first job was an agent, I was a Hollywood agent. And I was like the youngest ever female agent. And I was, I was really, really, really successful at a young age. And I, you know, no matter what promotion I got or, you know, how much more money I made, it was like, I still wasn't getting the feeling that I wanted. I still wasn't feeling fulfilled. I wasn't feeling happy. I wasn't feeling on purpose. And like I shared earlier, I was mostly driven by insecurity, you know, and was looking for something that would finally make me feel good about myself. And I kept attaching different forms to it, like be a successful agent, make this much money, date this person, have this size

figure, like whatever it may be. I kept looking for the thing to make me feel that way versus realizing that it was really the feeling I was after, not the thing. So form versus essence means we all have certain desires. We all have ways we want to feel, things we want to experience. And because the mind likes certainty and the mind likes to know, it attaches a form onto that. And then we become obsessed with that form versus really letting the essence lead us. So I'll give an example. Are most of your listeners women or men? I don't know. I think it's a pretty fair mix. I can only go by the people who get in touch with us. And based on that, it seems like to be a pretty even split. Well, I'll give an example that's a female example,

but I think men will really get it as well as a good form versus essence. So most women feel the desire to have a baby. But really, and I've talked to a lot of women about this, what they're feeling is the desire to create, the desire to give birth to things, the desire to experience unconditional love, to nurture, to take care of, to mother. And they attach baby to that. That's the form. Boom. This must be what I want.

If I'm feeling this feeling, that must be what I want. But I've challenged women and I've had pretty honest conversations with women. And what I've seen in my own life and with other women is that it's not necessarily quote unquote baby. That's just the form. There's lots of ways that essence can be satisfied. Like for me, I don't have children, but I feel like my mothering essence is satisfied in creating books and nurturing people and coaching people and facilitating and having lots of creative expression in my life. And so I think that's another lesson that expectation hangovers teach us is that we definitely can have everything we desire in terms of feeling, in terms of essence. It just might not come in the form or the package that we thought it would. Yeah, I think that is such a profound understanding. I had an interview several weeks back, I think you quote her somewhere in your

book, Danielle Laporte, and her book, The Desire Map. And the thing that struck me about that was sort of exactly that same thing, which says, look, think about how you want to feel, start there and, and work your way through. And most of us do exactly the opposite. And I, I do it and have done it, you know, my whole life, which is, leads to that expectation hangover of, oh, I got what I wanted and I don't feel any different. And instead of questioning that whole mentality, it's you, my, my train of thought has always been, oh, well, it's just not enough of that thing. I thought that if I had a girlfriend, then I would be happy. Well, now I've got the girlfriend and well, she just must not be a good enough girlfriend, right? It's not, it's not the,

it's not the whole process that I'm thinking. And I really love that idea of starting with how we want to feel and making that the focus and then trying to sort of piece together, being a lot more open to what the form is. That's such a profoundly different way of looking at the world. And I really like the way you put that as form versus essence. Yeah. And then we can realize we can generate that right now. You know, like we, we can create experientially the feeling we would like to feel. And the more we live in that feeling, the more we attract, you know, that's how the law of attraction really works. You know,

that's how we attract those things that are in alignment with that feeling, you know, that's how the law of attraction really works. You know, that's how we attract those things that are in alignment with that feeling, you know? So it's sort of like, you know, single people are like, well, you know, I always find someone when I wasn't looking, you know, I was dating for years and then I finally just loved my life and stopped looking and stopped caring and boom, you know, I met my partner. And that's just one example of how, you know, when, when we're just in the wholeness and completeness and we're in like nothing's missing and we're in kind of the feeling that we want to feel, then, then we naturally attract those things that align with that. I agree a hundred percent. And, um, I, it's like, I keep thinking I need a better podcast partner. But the truth is, I just want to feel more supported. So right, Chris. All right. Oh, it would be terrible. This show would have been off the air like by the fourth week. It was a technology helped us out

when it didn't allow us to have a second microphone in here. That's hysterical. I see the Chris and Eric show coming soon. Yes. Well, I think, like I said, we are near the end of our time, but thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us. I really liked the book and I've had a great time talking with you. Oh, I've had a great time with you too. Thank you so much for having me on, for reading the book and just doing the work that you do in the world. All right. Well, thanks so much. We'll talk again soon.

Okay. Thanks, Eric. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join.

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