We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - The 90 Second Rule: Feel Your Feelings

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

Glennon, Abby, and Amanda are getting cozy and diving deep into what it means to actually feel your feelings. They discuss:  - How they’re getting through the awkward, messy “middle school of middle age”;  - Why feelings are 90-second-waves—and why thinking about them keeps you stuck in anxiety;  - How to stop using other people to regulate your nervous system; and - The radical truth that your body already knows what to do—you just have to let it.  We don’t need to think, process, or solve our way out of our feelings. We just need to feel them.  Follow We Can Do Hard Things on: Youtube — @wecandohardthingsshow   Instagram — @wecandohardthings TikTok — @wecandohardthingshow

Do you guys see my eyeballs? I mean, everyone sees your eyeballs. We're on video. This is wild. It looks like little weird men. We're just poking my eyes out with sporks all night. Okay, do you want to talk to the people? I wouldn't be surprised if they were.

It does feel like that's what they're doing all day to us. I'm just having that weird time of life where my face is getting older. And it's scaring me. I mean, Amanda, are we recording? Is this what's happening? Oh, wait, hold on. So last night, so last night we were in bed, we were taking pictures of our faces. No, this is two nights ago.

Two nights ago, yeah. We were just taking pictures of our faces, handing the phone to each other, going, when did we start? When did this happen? It's really something. Yeah. I was looking at old pictures from my, from my camera roll. And I was like, oh my gosh, I think I used to be kind of good looking, past tense. At the very least, my face looked fine.

It's a time. Also, the opposite is true. Sometimes I look at myself and I'm like, you look amazing and you look better than you did then. So it's a real, we're having a different fucking experience. We can look at you and see that too, you asshole. We're talking to you look great. No, but I'm just saying it's all relative. Everyone has their moments.

Some of us are late bloomers. Oh, so you feel like you're peaking now? I mean, yes, and also it's a strange time. Also, I was having this conversation with my friend. I won't say their name, but they were wearing this sweater to dinner the other day. I don't think we're going to use any of this, but it's interesting. And they had They've always had

A really beautiful bosom Are wearing bosom I'm what is the words we use breast I can never remember if it's a great rack A great wisdom or butt Okay No butt is lower than bosom But I never know if bosom is butt or bosom is chest

She also doesn't know if medium is in the middle Every Mild medium My God Mild medium I don't get it doesn't. Although I now know that medium is in the middle. When I tell you, that we have to have a 10 minute conversation every time we try to order any sort of food with spice. I blame it on heading, the soccer ball. She'll hold it and go, which one's in the middle

again? Is it mild? So then I have to say, I want you to picture some shirts. Large, medium, small. So medium is always going to be in the middle and she'll go yes got it and then the next time what's medium again can you go ahead and finish your sweater big boobs great rack next to this story great rack and she is talking about how she's wearing the

sweater that she's had for 20 years and how annoyed she is that she didn't wear things in her 20s that would have shown off her great rack that she was this was the sweater that she was wearing 20 years ago and she's like why why

is that the case of course because she was self-conscious then and we're all like think the thing that was awesome in retrospect is always a thing that makes us self-conscious in the moment and I was like yes that is true like yes may we have been people who would have worn this sweater 20 years ago and didn't, but also let us remember that in 20 years from now, we'll be saying, I can't believe our asses were sitting there worried about X, Y, and Z when we could have been enjoying what was good then. And like, we're failing to see it right now. So what the hell? Like, just, it is true that there are things that you are sad not to have. And it is true that the things that you can't appreciate now, you're going to be sad not to have in the future. And

And so just, just like what there's to like. Like what there is to like. Because two things are true at the same time. Number one, yeah, that's your face. That's your face. Time is passing. Your face is acknowledging it. Okay.

And you will never look younger than you do right now. This is the youngest you will ever. you will ever look on this side of life every once in a while though i'll have a good face day yeah i'm like there you are because the the thing that's startling about it for me it's startling it's startling yeah is that i don't look like the self that i feel like yeah that's the weird part it it's like a i identify very much with my face and when it changes it's a little bit it's scary i I feel a little scared. Like, whoa, am I going to like the future face?

It's so interesting because it's a double whammy. It's like you feel different on the inside. So it's like you want to feel older on the inside and you don't. And you don't want to feel older on the outside and you do. Yes. If we could switch it. Yes. Yes.

That's the truth. It's like time is marching on. But yet I'm the same dumb ass. I've ever been. So I feel like if time is marching on, we should at least have the benefit of that by accruing some kind of wisdom. Exactly.

And then people are always trying to equate the two, which I appreciate. All the songwriters are saying, the lines on our face are the lessons we've learned. Well, where the fuck are they? Where are the lessons? The only evidence of the lessons that I see is the evidence on my face.

I see no evidence in my lived experience or the decisions that I make. so i appreciate the effort poets but i fail to see the silver lining or it's not in reality yeah i remember looking at my grandmother's hands when she was alive and i remember her being really conscious and self-conscious of her frail skin and her wrinkles and i remember just being like But grandma, I think that when you have like aged skin, I think it's so beautiful and I really meant it. I really meant it then.

Well, yeah. I meant it then. I was, I didn't understand then what she was feeling. I think, I also think that people who look really old are the most beautiful thing. So here's what I think. I don't think I like the in between. Yeah. When you're really old, you look like you're doing that shit on purpose.

Yes. that is a that is a decision you are being that thing it's like with my hair like i'm trying to figure out what the hell because it's really all gray when it grows out now and i don't think i would mind all gray hair i just don't like walking around looking like i'm not in on the joke like i don't like the transition i don't look i don't like looking like i am not neither here nor there like i haven't mean a decision like the the roots are a secret and i forgot to keep it so it's the in-between yeah you know what we are we're in the middle school of middle age and and that feeling of being like we feel awkward in our bodies we don't understand the changes that are coming

we're becoming a woman now but we but it's the tweens we're in the tweens of middle age and it's just maybe going to be awkward as hell for a minute until we really get there and to that point everyone just going to have to be patient with our mood swings and our bitchiness because it's a hard time well i see a lot of older women older than me women who their faces look fucking normal and i realize that there's there's things that they're doing and maybe it's not Botox or maybe it's not facelifts no it's not those things but it's also maybe like a skin care regimen that I just can't seem to figure

out. You know how everyone has 49 bottles of shit? We can't do that. We can't understand it. We can't know all things and the steps. It's just not going to happen. Hydrochloric acid. I do think I could drink water that that might help. Retinal. I keep thinking that might help.

Water? Like we have this plant and it's called a lily of something. I don't know. Anyway, somebody got it for us. And sometimes maybe every five days it just droops it just I love this plant because it does not suffer silently it's not going to die because it shows its needs okay it's like just sitting on the clock table just just slowly dying in front of us and I think oh thank you for sharing your needs

because I need people to be loud around here because I can't I don't want to guess okay I take this plant to the sink I pour a bunch of water in it and I'm telling you it's like Two hours later, it's like, and it's all tall again. And I say to Chase, is that what water does? Is this why everyone's carrying around water bottles? I feel like the universe is trying to teach me, Glennon, we're serious about the water. Look what it does. Glennon, you are the lily.

You're a juppy-ass lily. So I believe them, and then I just carry around the water bottle all day. right taking zero sips well it's sort of like weight lifting too which is also important for the osteoporosis so it's great two birds so we're doing great pod squad um today is when we do what my dream of heaven is which is pretend that we are all just on a cozy couch together just chatting just asking each other questions there's no end to it there's nowhere we have to be we're just in cozy clothes, just talking things through. And so we have gathered many of your questions that if we were all sitting on a couch,

you'd ask, and we'd ask you back. And we have them here, and we're going to read them, and we're just going to have some couch time where we're all just chatting. Does that sound good? I love, these are my favorite podcast, because I love to know more about you, too. You're so sweet, and I love your face. perfect well my eyes little little men were stabbing them with forks all night long well if that's the case then you're even more impressed with how good you look

I've been stabbed all night okay Amanda I'm up squad has a question for you and it is this Amanda I feel like my mind works like yours so I have a question I keep hearing from very wise people that I need to feel my feelings so fucking wondering if she's actually just heard that for me and I want to say I don't know if it's a wise people I feel like I must be doing it wrong because it doesn't give me any relief oh yeah okay sister how do you do it I'm very happy about this question because two weeks ago I would have been like the wise people are full of shit because I but I have a therapist who I love and is like really wonderful and working for me for

the first time if you've done the thing where you're like I'm in therapy so it counts like I have a gym membership I just haven't gone in three years I've done that for like decades and if it's not working it's annoying but just find a new one also cecy your relationships just start a new one because it doesn't count just because you're doing it it's got to work i see it's like the water bottle you had to can't just carry it around you have to yeah i think so i think so um anyway i feel grateful for her but she is always doing very annoying things like I'll be having a really good discussion of what's going on for me and she will stop me mid-stride when I'm really about to reach the crescendo of explaining

what's going on and she'll say stop where do you feel that and it's so annoying because I was just about to get to the point where we were going to discover the discovery and then we have to do this thing where I have to pretend to close my eyes and pretend like I feel something I don't know in my belly or is it supposed to be in my chest. I don't know what they're looking for, but this happens all the time. So I try to just get through that moment so I can get back to explaining what was going. Sure, sure. So like two weeks ago, I had what, if you're very healthy listening to this and it feels like what shouldn't be a revelation, like good for but for like the one person who this might feel

relevatory to, I want to explain it. So what usually happens when I try to feel my feelings is I will, usually it's when I'm going to bed because I think the rest of the time I'm able to avoid it. But like I feel some disquiet. I feel some like restlessness. I feel something that like won't let me go to sleep. And so I think I need to feel my feeling. And so I tried to identify what the feeling is.

So am I feeling stressed? Am I feeling angry? Am I feeling? And when I identify what the thing is, I begin to process through that by thinking, okay, you're angry about this. This is what you're angry about. This is what they did. This is what you did.

can you think of a way through that what if you try x i tried to talk it into resolution okay and this is the way of dealing with my feeling a couple weeks ago i was having a feeling and i think it was stress and i was doing the thing where i was talking about it processing it solving it And for some reason, I decided, okay, I'm just going to do what she tries to tell me to do in therapy, and I'm just going to try to feel what it actually feels like. And so I sent my energy away from my thoughts about the feeling to try to feel what it felt like. And so my energy goes away from my head and into wherever it is in my body. And in that case, it was like a kind of like clenching, like pulsating.

And I stayed with it for one minute and then it stopped. And this is what I think people are talking about, okay? It turns out that thinking, about feelings is not the same as feeling your feelings. Wow. That's right. That's good. Thinking about your feelings turns out to be the opposite of feeling your feelings. Feelings don't have words. This is important to me, Because I think this, all I have is words. And so then I talked to my therapist about this and she's like, yeah.

And I'm like, well, you should have just fucking said that because it's really clear now to me. But here's what the actual science is. Okay. A feeling, a real emotion feeling is like a wave where it builds. builds, it crests, it crashes, it's done. That process, good people of America, lasts a maximum of 90 seconds. That is one minute and 30 seconds that that lasts. Why then do we stay up for two hours and 20 minutes sitting with our feelings.

It's because we aren't feeling our feelings. We are thinking about our feelings and that is a different thing. Here's what happens. If you have disquiet, if you have anxiety, if you have sadness,

if you have clenchy, icky, fiery. And then you go to it like I do and say, hey little baby, we're here to help. We're going to start identifying what that is that's a first kind of thinking even going to it and saying that's stress that's anger that's whatever you don't need any of those words in fact you need not those words you don't even need to identify what it is and you sure is shit don't need to start thinking about why it's there or what to do to solve it because when you start putting words on a feeling

you have now taken it out of feeling and you have taken it into processing, solving, anxiety, and you are prolonging it for however long that takes. And by the way, that takes indefinite amount of time because you're solving something you have possibly misdiagnosed and you are solving for potential outcomes that aren't even in the present. they are made up things right so that is what is happening when you add words to a feeling and not only that but the wave never crests and it never breaks you don't allow that process to happen and so for me what was absolutely mind-boggling is that

there was no work to be done. There was no solving or fixing to be done. Like literally, I just put the energy towards whatever the rumble constricting thing was. Then it was over. And I had this weird piece and was able to go to sleep because I hadn't introduced the words that then I needed to spend the next three hours solving for and working my. energy and frustration and having all the pretend arguments in my head that I thought was in service to resolving my feeling. But the feeling resolved on its own in its 90 seconds of a window.

Wow. It's like that idea of you don't beat your own heart. Your heart just beats and you don't have to think your own feeling. they just come and go so from the outside how would that look have looked in the first scenario you would have stayed up all night and tried to match stories to the feeling and then the words and the stories would have been more fuel for the for the feeling and it just would have kept going going going going going without cresting or falling like you're like adding it's like a wave but you're adding a wave machine with your thoughts but it's not even the wave you've you've you've ignored the wave

You have now been like, I think you're solving the wrong problem and it's not, it is not a feeling. It is anxiety. When you're adding words to a feeling, you are in anxiety. And so when you're in anxiety, that is the opposite. Anxiety doesn't exhaust itself. Feelings exhaust themselves. So when I would say, hey, my tool is anxiety, I'm here to solve. of your feelings. I am now ignoring my feelings because they don't operate in words. And now I am

in the spin cycle of anxiety, which by definition will never end. So like, and I'm also feeding that anxiety to such an extent that I am now fighting with people who haven't started fighting with me. I am finishing pretend conversations that will likely never happen. And so I'm, now adding that to my mental load. So when I have the actual conversations or the actual things, I am bringing all of that pent up energy to those interactions. But like what is so huge to me is that there is a system that requires nothing of me to resolve itself. Like it seems so simple that it should not be true. Right. But it requires presence of you.

It requires, like, what you're describing to me sounds like refusing self-abandonment. Like, sometimes we go to our mind because that's what we've been doing forever. And it's almost like a form of self-abandonment of not, like, staying with yourself and staying with the feeling. So it does require something of you, like you did something different with your awareness. Right. Right. It's, it's a, but it doesn't feel like self abandonment. It feels like, like I always thought when I went and was like, what am I feeling, let me solve, that I was partnering with myself.

That's right. That I was helping myself out, that I was hooking myself up like, hey, body, you don't need to be alone in this. I'm here to help. I'm here to solve for you. I'm here to, I'm here to brainstorm and problem solve. Yeah. And so it didn't feel like a denial. It felt like, you know, it's the equivalent of like if your kid is crying and you run in

and you say, oh my God, what happened? Who's mad? Okay. I can call their mom. Who can do whatever? Maybe you could try this versus going in and holding them and letting them cry it out. Oh my God. That's it.

That is what everyone's talking about. It's a form of parenting your inner child, reparenting yourself. It's like staying with yourself. not making up stories being with your being with the wave until it's over. And now it's time to thank the companies who allow you to listen to We Can Do Hard Things for free. One of the biggest moments of my life was probably the day I decided to leave the corporate law job I worked so hard for jumping out into the unknown. But here's the thing. That pivot brought me to you all. It's the reason I'm here. I'm so happy. I'm

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and I am very reluctant to feel sad. sadness. Is there like an emotion now that you're new to this, that you're like, okay, I can do that. Is there like another deeper emotion that you're afraid to actually go into a feeling? I am not even at that place. And I don't know if it's a more beginner place or it's actually a more advanced place because the only way I can stay out of anxiety is by bringing zero words. Yeah. So I can't even say this is anger. This is sadness. this is whatever it is because as soon as i bring a word into the mix i have done some kind of identifying and diagnosing that my next step is why are you angry why are you sad why are you

whatever so i have to just like i literally have to say to myself no words no words and then are you are you like dissecting or like trying to figure out where in the body this this this this this this disruption is or this feeling is coming from. Is that a place that like, I know you're trying to break free from the mind, body connection because that's where there's getting a lot of like knots in the process. When you go into experiencing your feeling, are you going to a certain place in your body

or you're just letting it happen? I can't even often tell like where it is. Like if it's sometimes I can feel in my chest, sometimes I can feel it in my belly sometimes. But like I think even. that thinking is too hard for me like like brings in too much of my brain i think i just try to like send energy to it and try to meet it without deciding where it is and just ride with it and then have it go because the more like any kind of processing i do the more i risk getting

into words and it feels like there is one kind of communication that is valued right this is if you can can make a logical compelling forceful eloquent argument that is like the communication that is valued period and what felt so interesting about this is I'm like this first of all well two things I want to come back to the communication thing but this in a weird way felt the fact that the body has a self processing self cleansing no actual assistance required in fact assistance will only fuck it up system felt as profound to me as when Bobby was being born and we took you know six months of Bradley natural birth classes and read the books and bought all the shit and figured out what we need to do on day one and day two and day three and

And here's like the breast consultant person who's going to come help with the thing. And he was born. And 30 seconds after he was born, they put him on my chest. And he started rooting around, looking for my breast, attached himself and started. started nursing. Now, I also realize nursing is very hard for a lot of percentage of the people and very hard for a lot of babies for a lot of reasons. It didn't happen for me, but...

Yes. But for some, for my baby and for some large portion of babies, 30 seconds after they're born, you have taught them nothing. there has been zero literally zero things modeled for them in the world there is no learning or of any kind and he knew exactly what he needed to do to exist and for me it felt like this kind of like oh my god is everything i've taught been wrong because i've always just taught that you had to acquire more knowledge you had to figure something something out, you had to get the inside scoop to know how to do what you needed in order

to be okay. This is how I felt when that feeling went away that I've spent my lifetime fighting and not being able to sleep, trying to figure out the solve for all these complicated things happening in my body and my mind. Is that the body knew what to do the whole time. just needed me to get out of the fucking way to do it and when it happened I was like okay if this is happening if a feeling happens and a feeling resolves itself as long as I don't get in its way as long as I don't impede its process by adding my words and my anxiety then that means that

feelings are happening all the time only in me and only because of me and whatever my makeup is, which means that there is a form of communication that is between me and me and me, and only me, that there is a world that only we exist in and there is communication, and there is communication happening in that world and that has to be the ultimate intimacy like when you think about intimacy with your people you think about you look over at them and you know they're thinking what you're thinking what they're thinking and you never have to do it it's the it's a secret special world that only you exist in that is what intimacy is but i have never had intimacy with myself because i have never been able to receive the communication that was only between me and me.

Wow. And think about that wisdom. Think about like, I have like over indexed to the moon on the other kind of communication, on the other kind of wisdom on the, but, but because I never knew this was a thing, I have lost full access to, I've never had this wisdom. And it's like so exciting. Did you just come up with all that right this second? because that was fucking amazing like that's that's new it's so is it's like even the words we have around

the thing you're talking about right because you're you're talking about it and I'm like yeah that's it but then we say things like what are your feelings trying to tell you and the word tell activates our mind like oh it's trying to tell me something tell means talk tell means words so then we translate what really emotion is energy in motion. No like word before it. Not good energy, bad energy, sad energy, anger energy, energy that is trying to tell you something that you should translate into words. It's none of those things. It's just energy. Yeah, we lay all of this like made up judgment on what it is and what it means and why we have it and how we fix it and all the bullshit. It's like if we could just be still enough for 90 seconds, like for me,

that's the, that's the breakthrough here. It's that Pema Shodron quote. It's like if you can sit with the hot loneliness for 1.6 seconds when yesterday you could only sit with it for one, then that is the journey of the warrior. And in this context, what she's talking about is the journey of the warrior is this inner intimacy where there is communication of some sort that maybe is nonverbal, that is your relationship with self, that is a ride. Like, it's more of a ride than a talk. Yes, yes. And I don't know if there's some kind of evolution of this where the communication goes

from, oh, there's a feeling to, oh, there's a feeling. And now I'm so intimate with myself that I know that this feeling, my wisdom tells me that means this in my life. And I don't know if that's like, if that's an evolution, but I know right now that attaching any kind of intention or diagnosis or assistance or meaning is actually opposite of helpful to me in this baby stage. Because I think what happens is like your body is existing in the present. Right. So, whatever is happening and whatever emotions are happening or feelings are happening is by definition in the present and that's what the body does.

But your mind is only in the past or the future. So when you bring your mind to your emotion, you're by definition not actually accurately helping it because you're bringing the past to it and the future to it, which is why it's anxiety and not the actual thing that's happening and so I feel like maybe I never felt like my emotions were present because I never existed in a place that wasn't my mind and by definition my mind is never in the present. It feels like this is like an evolutionary leveling up for human beings. Like it feels like there's something really sacred and special about this like to be able to bring a personal sovereignty back to ourselves that we were born with

because it's like the world beats it out of us like one little age grade step at a time and I will just say like Amanda I am so grateful that you're saying this out loud because I've never been able to actually ironically put words to some of the ways that I feel about myself like why can I love myself and I think that this has a lot to do with it for me in terms of that personal intimacy, like that personal relationship that I have with only me. And my God, I need to care for that so much. And so to have the sovereignty with myself will inevitably kind of be cast out into the world for other people to also have sovereignty within themselves. And I think that that is an evolutionary development of human

species truly if we could collectively do that like but good job for you personally in that body in your sovereignty it would help our relationships our outer relationships too because what i'm always doing this happened last week and i'm trying to analyze what happened but i think i started feeling a feeling and then i attached just and the feeling was about like fear and the kids and like how to have them out in the world and feeling like I can't protect them and a lack of control and just like this feeling that I have that I'm attaching words to right now that is like there's no system in the world that will ever protect the kids and me and anyway I did not sit with it enough what sometimes I tend to do when I'm attached words and then I

reach out to somebody that I think should fix it. And I made up a story about no one's protecting us. And then I somehow connect that to somebody in our life who I feel like should be doing more. It's a weird, it's like a weird step process. And then I, last week I reached out to this person. Usually, now that I'm almost 50, I can feel when I'm activated. I can feel when that wave is happening, and I know don't do anything right now. The last thing you need to do is do anything right now.

But sometimes when the wave feels really strong, I can override that. I hear it. I feel it. I know it. And I'm like, fuck it. I don't care. It's too big, and I'm going to do it anyway. So I reached out to this person, said some shit.

like it didn't even it was just shit it was ridiculous like i have to see this person today i have to be like i am so sorry and the crazy thing is that what i was saying to this person who i love so much was basically like i don't trust that you're showing up i don't trust you i didn't say those words but that's what i was saying and i think what i really meant like if you took out my heart and like untangled everything that was going on in that moment i think what i meant is i trust you so much and I'm scared that can you help me I think that's what I was saying I trust you help me protect my my family can you are you my mom like I trust you so much and I feel scared and I'm scared and can you fix it and all of this all of this is stuff that I'm going to have

to clean up today this stuff that I like I got messy got messy it's embarrassing to get messy It's like needy and messy and not making sense and entitled and all these things. Anyway, if I had sat with the energy inside of me and not ask someone else to fix the wave, none of this would be happening. And now it's time for our ads. Let's talk OCD. The actual reality. of living with it. OCD is not about being super neat or hyper-organized. It is actually about

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Go to Shopify.com slash hard things. Shopify.com slash hard things. Shopify.com slash hard. things you know what happens to you more now than ever is when the kids get activated and they when they call you it it triples your activation if the world is not treating them it's like really interesting to me yeah why is his self gone but but that's what is i feel like there's a lot with like the system that I feel you know like death and losing everyone you love and you know that I feel like I would have made a better system than that okay yeah I don't I mean you that's a that's a solid C on this system but this I feel like great job God I feel like the 90

seconds is not too much to ask what if it had been like 35 minutes what if it had been like bad news humanoids it's going to be 35 minutes for every emotion that would not work for me but like 90 seconds feels imminently doable you know when it's not 90 seconds is when we do any attachments to it it's just like it's just that we think we're going to drown in the emotion and if we add any meaning or any words or any solves to it we are absolutely going to fucking drowned because then the 90 second deal, the cosmic deal of 90 seconds is off the table. You've turned it into another deal that is of your own making and it's going to take as long as it takes. And by the way, that's going to include the cleanup of what it took for the thing that you did. So that's

infinite. Infinite minutes of that. My 90 seconds is very long. Yes. Sometimes it's three and half years. And so, but like that is the beauty of that promise. Like that is a promise. If you sit with it and don't try to solve it. It is 90 fucking seconds. We can do that. Do you think that, and then I'll let this go, this is what always happens. We have like seven questions from people and then, but do you think that it's because some of this like attaching going to your brain and trying to understand and making up a story

about why this is happening is partly because or due to or stronger in people who don't believe that they deserve to have the feeling they have or have a little bit of shame about the feeling that they have. So they constantly go into courtroom mode where they're trying to, and I'm just talking about myself, but like where you're trying to like justify, label, prove that this feeling is legit and okay. Like I'm not crazy. I'm not, it's like you're trying to not gaslight, like ungaslight yourself by creating a case for yourself. So if we really believed that this is just being human, that these waves, these, this energies in motion, this disquiet, whatever, it's restlessness, this ache that comes,

clench, ache, whatever it is, is just truly the human experience and does not need in any way to be justified, then maybe we would do that less. It's like an acceptance of humanity, like people whose feelings were denied. when they were little or whatever end up making cases for their own feelings for the rest of their lives. I think there's at least as many reasons for us to do that as there are people and experiences. I think people who think that their value is solving things. And so, you know, if you're only tools, a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. This thing has presented itself my job is to solve will jump in and do that i think people who for whom that's their gift

where they're like i okay this is how i contribute is i help to solve i think there's people who have never been taught that there's any value in feeling which is by the way probably 95 of us but we have been taught that the way that we survive this world is thinking and strategizing and solving and so of course we're going to jump straight to that because we don't know what this weird thing is that keeps interrupting shit quietly but we do know that if we keep our head on a swivel we'll be able to get through things and so of course that's why we do that there's also that like ooh i feel like i'm not sure i'm allowed to have this feeling so let me build a case for myself before anybody else tells me i'm not allowed to have it but also i think at the

end of the day, it, whether, however you get there, it is, the baseline is, I don't have a tolerance for this discomfort. And so I can't tolerate this. I can't tolerate this icky thing. So my way to survive that is to attach whatever it is, is to say, I'm going to make this go away by doing the solve. I'm going to make this go away by making it someone else's fault. I'm going to go by lashing out at someone else. You know, I was at Gilbert's all the way to the river book event last a couple weeks ago. And she, in her recovery for codependency and,

love and sex addiction, defined her sobriety as any day in which she does not use another person to regulate her nervous system. Yes. And last week. That is what I do. Every time I have a feeling. and it is either using myself or it is using someone else like yourself can count as that you don't need to use a person to regulate your nervous system like by adding on your own solves or and

I think that's what happened with you and your mess right you're like I need I need someone else I did it last night I was super upset about something and I felt very itchy and very uncomfortable in my body and very like this is all fucked up but I couldn't I it didn't make any sense to me and so I texted John about why why the fuck don't we have any avocados in this house that's basically my problem had nothing to do with avocados right avocados have never been anyone's problem but right that little hit of someone take a fall yeah right now to balance out the fact that I feel like shit and don't know why is using someone else to regulate my nervous system. Even when it has nothing to do with my original disquiet.

But still, when if I'm paying really close attention, that did level that shit out a little bit. Someone else got in trouble for something, even if it had nothing to do with my thing. But then what happened? But then you had guilt and, right? Did you experience the same thing that I'm experiencing now where I, every night I want to cringe? I go to bed each night. I go to bed every night and think about this thing last week. And I can't sleep.

I have to force myself to think about something else. What if? What if tonight when you go to bed, I feel like shit about that thing, you don't add any words to it. Whatever the disquiet is will rise up in your body and it will because it's there and you let it. Yeah. It will go. See, here's what I think the thing is. is like I spend so much of my energy and time and thoughts purportedly solving my problems,

which is not solving my problems because I'm solving something that isn't a fucking problem. The feeling that I'm having is not the problem. And so if I let the feeling come in its baby 90 second lifespan and then go, suddenly I have so much time and mental energy to actually solve a problem. This is making me wonder if this is the whole deal with trying to get parents to be emotionally mature. Because hear me out, if you live with a parent who didn't learn all of this and who thinks that every feeling is a problem to be solved and that everyone in the family are chess ponds to rearrange in some way so that they can be calm again because they actually believe that then if you're one of the pawns you don't ever have any

practice in in in this internal language because you're a pawn you're always being moved to regulate somebody else's nervous system so you don't witness what it feels like for somebody to just deal with their own stuff and you also don't learn how to deal with your own stuff that is a version of egg shells that psychologists talk about right so that could be for some listeners an origin of then it's evolution because I actually think a lot of the past generation didn't have this language and really thought if they were upset I mean even the word upset just means like a lake where there's a little ripple and then the the bottom comes up a little bit you up the sediment yeah it's like upset it's like what so if you there's actually not a value or judgment

of the word upset it just means activated a little bit well and what you're talking about with the I mean there's the whole cultural idea of like if we can feel it, if it has logic. I mean, if we can say it, if we can hear it, if it has logic, if it can be in a five-paragraph essay, it's valid, right? It's also exactly what you're saying. If you grew up in a system in which your body was being used to regulate someone else's nervous system, which half of us grew up in, then you have lived. You have, you have learned very, very early, very, very ingrained that this communication, this intimacy with yourself is actually dangerous, is actually, it's not relevant because you, your, yourself could be

giving you a signal saying, this isn't right. I don't feel good here. I don't like this. Let's go away from here and it doesn't matter because that's where you are. So you have adaptively turned that off because what a worse place to live than getting all those signals that this needs to change when the conspiracy in the family is to pretend that this is normal. And by the way, it's never going to change anyway. So of course you turn that off. So this is why like awakening that. We're not we're not stupid. We came by all of this stuff very honestly and very adaptively, but then there's a certain point where it's like, oh, no, I'm missing out on half of the wisdom of communication

available in the universe because I've shut up the half that is only for me to me. I also think one of the things that you probably do a little bit, Glennon, is you attach any feeling that arises in you is that you are crazy. And so... Yeah, I'm just trying to make everyone think I'm not crazy. And so that's why you go to your brain, and your brain is very good at working the magic to prove to yourself that the emotions you're feeling doesn't make you crazy. It's because there's all of these problems out here that once you solve them,

then that then you, and only then will your nervous system settle and relax, but that's never been true. No, it's never worked. And so, I don't know. It's like, this is a really interesting. interesting conversation to me because it's like, oh, the attachment of thought to the experience of the feeling is what's blocking us from becoming the person that we're supposed to be. Yeah.

This is the non-attachment that the really smart Buddhists are always talking about. It's not like, don't like your Yeti. Don't be attached to your, you know, dog. It's like this. Yeah. The non-attachment, the Buddhist way, there's always something. that when I hear that word there's something that happens in my body that I'm like oh shit that's the truest truth to me yeah it's like I'll know what that means but I think they're

under something and I don't want it yeah it's scary but Glennon of course you aren't trying to convince everyone you're not crazy because you're crazy it's because of this like if you if you had an internal communicator that was telling you that things weren't okay when the entire ecosystem was predicated on these things are okay we all agree these things are okay right right everyone And that was the reality of your existence during the whole time where your internal communicator, God bless it, was like, I sure think these things aren't okay, but I'm just giving you another signaling case. But then of course, every time you have a feeling, your immediate posture towards that feeling is like, okay, but. I'm going to be the only one thinking this.

Okay, but I'm going to be the, like, I'm alone in this. I am the one who has the crazy ideas. When your ideas could have been by definition, the only ideas that weren't crazy, but it was just contrary to what we'd all agreed was the terms of engagement. That's right. Right, right, right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an interesting thing about, like, I don't know if this is true.

It's just something I'm thinking of right now, of like, the idea of parenting. the switch from like the authoritarian to something else is sort of the decision that it is okay to raise a child in which in a way in which you are ensuring that your voice and your will is not louder and stronger than their inner voice and their inner will that there's like I don't think it's quite that black and white but that is a turning towards like instead of listen to me, the effort of listen to you, or like, instead of I've got you, you've got you, but like, but it's not passive parenting. It's not, there's nothing passive about it.

It is extremely disciplined and tricky to use all that energy that you would have used towards authoritarianism to holding space and turning your kid back to themselves over and over again and like creating space in which your kid gets to practice that and fail at it and try again and do you know what I'm saying it's like just it's harder it's much harder authoritarianism just listen to me this is the way it is we're breaking the generational chain of the way that we were all parented to hopefully the way we're trying to parent our children and so there's this tension and and fear because this is new to us.

It's like an experiment in a way. So yeah, I, it's hard. It's all full circle because what activated me to do all this crazy shit is because my kid called me and was upset and I could not sit with, I could not sit with her hot loneliness for 1.7 seconds. Yeah. And I only cannot do that because I must not believe that she can sit with her hot loneliness. one point seven seconds so like if you buy this theory then it works all the way through then you

actually just have to keep turning your kid back to feeling it and letting it pass then fixing it and making a big mess because that makes them not trust themselves either then they're like oh my mom had to do all that shit that's right that is correct oh my god i also just think if you say out loud like I think the other I think you can get really religious about atheism too and this is what I mean by that like exactly be like I am trying I am not going to be an authoritarian parent I'm going to be so whatever the hell they're calling it I don't know that you like try so hard to get it right and then when you fuck that up you like try to hide it I mean I think I'm just always messing up. I'm like I'm like getting it right barely and then I'm messing it up and then

I'm just trying to be like oh lord what just happened there was I was upset that we keep making dinner and nobody eats it and it's really frustrating and like this just happened last night I like got so upset because I'm trying so hard to make them eat food and nobody's eating the food. But that's a story too. Do you think that's even it? Or is the wave like, we're all going to lose each other one day? Well, I'm just saying in the moment to moment things where I'm like, I'm just super frustrated and I snapped. But I snapped at a moment where Alice was like, I don't like that. And I was like, oh. And so and so I came back and I was like, listen, I want, I got. I got. really frustrated. I am really frustrated that no matter how hard we try, we can't seem to make this

work. And what I want you to know is that I don't want you to pretend to like things you don't like and I don't want you to put into your body things you don't want in your body. And I always want you to be free to say that. And so this is why I'm telling you that that was not about that. The way to fix that was not let me pretend to like this thing and smile even though I don't like it. What I'm telling you is I am just a human who's frustrated about not being able to figure out how to do dinner. And you bear no responsibility for that. What you're going to have to do is go in the kitchen and find something for yourself. Amen. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. Godspeed and hope you like bagels and cream cheese

because that's probably what you're having. But like, but I'm going to take responsibility for what was mine there you're going to take responsibility for what's yours and we're going to super clarify that i actually actively don't want you to use your body to regulate me yeah i will be so sad if you ever put in your body something you don't want in your body or pretend to like something to make mommy happy no that's what so like i think it's just like saying out loud the I don't even think there's a perfect way to do any of it. Well, because also, and then I'm sorry, we're going to stop, but like, if you had jumped and fixed her thing, then Alice is learning to use you to regulate her problem.

She has a problem. She does have a problem. She has a problem almost every night. Like, she doesn't like what's on the plate. You got upset because you were defending your right to not be used by. Alice that's right to solve her problem so really if Alice learns I get upset at dinner because I don't like any food so I better get up and get something then Alice is regulating herself you're okay regulating your own self you might have a feeling when Alice gets up to make

something else and that will be your problem right everyone has to solve their own problem okay wow thank you for that absolutely amazing pod squad i mean let us know what you're thinking or feeling and we're going to practice riding the wave oof so good and we'll see you next time bye we can do hard things is an independent production podcast brought to you by treat media makes art for humans who want to stay human. And you can follow us at we can do hard things on Instagram and at we can do hard things show on TikTok.