Our New World Inside & Out w/ Fareed Zakaria & Donna Fish

the Golden Globe. After all we've been through. We deserve an orgasm. Cis I deserved Welcome to Go Ask Allie. I'm Ali Wentworth and this season I'm digging into everything I can get my hands on, peeling back the layers and getting dirty. Today is a big episode because we're going to try to tackle a lot of things, because we're talking about relationships, lives, and the country as the

pandemic continues for who knows how long. So if this is a long term thing, how are we going to manage the stress and how are we going to manage the stress of the country at large? You know, I look around at my family and friends, and I see how many people have dealt in so many different ways with the anxiety of the pandemic. You know, some people don't watch the news anymore. Some people eat up the news. I have friends that were alone during the pandemic who

have realized they like being alone. They're not lonely than other people. I know. Couples got tighter, other couples broke up all because of this global virus. And that is why I have two very special guests today because I think one for Read Zakaria needs to deal with the macro the world at large, especially our country. And then the micro Donna Fish, a mental health therapists, will offer advice on how to deal with ourselves and others and how we slowly start to re engage in the world

during this incredibly emotional time. So first up is for Red Zakaria. For Zakaria hosts a weekly international and domestic affairs program for Red Zakaria GPS for CNN Worldwide, and is a columnist for The Washington Post, a contributing editor for the Atlantic, and a best selling author. His latest

book is Ten Lessons for a Post Pandemic World. He was named a top ten global thinker of the last ten years by Foreign Policy Magazine in twenty nineteen, and Esquire once called him the most influential foreign policy adviser of his generation. Welcome for Red Zakaria, author of Ten Lessons for a Post Pandemic World. I'm so happy to have you here to answer a million questions. I have great to be with you, Ali. I wanted you on this podcast because I'm trying to figure out what the

next few years look like. I want to know if it's gonna change us for the better for the worst. Let me start out by asking you a toughie, which is is this the worst of times? Um? It's the biggest crisis we've ever faced, this pandemic because if you think about it, it's truly global. It's it's incredibly broad, and it's it's been it's been much longer than most crisis so compared, for example, the nine eleven, So nine eleven, if you were somebody living in Japan or Brazil, it

really had very little impact on you. Um, Or think about even the financial crisis. The financial crisis goes on for a few months and then everything starts getting kind of back to normal. This case, everyone in the world has been affected by this. It's it's almost true to say, I think that every human being on the planet in some way has been affected by this pandemic. And it

has been a long running thing, you know. I mean, we between the health public health aspect, the shutting down of the economy, the change in the nature of work, the effects are still going on, right. So I can't think of anything we have gone through in our lives which has had that broad and that deep in an effect. I mean, but it's different from the Spanish flu of nine eighteen. I mean, we are, thank thank god, a

little more technologically advanced. But I have to say, I think our health care is a mess in our country and I don't see that getting better anytime soon, do you. So you're right there two big differences between the Spanish flu and now, and even actually the Asian flu of nineteen fifty seven and now. The big differences which is a positive one. We got a vaccine within nine moment. This is what distinguishes this, uh, this pandemic from every

previous pandemic in history. In nine months, you had five vaccines, all of which worked. It's really amazing. Uh. The second pieces we shut down the economy. Um. Now, the reason that that's unique is before that you couldn't In ninety seven, half of Americans didn't even have a phone line. So the idea that you could just continue economic activity in

the digital space was not an option. So in all those all previous pandemics, while there was a case, you know, there were some lockdown, some curfuse, basically people kind of had to get back to work as soon as they could. So those are two positives about this. We were able to keep the economy going. We got the vaccines. Now the big question you ask is, you know, has this

been a shock to our system in terms of reforming it. Look, the fundamental problem we have in the American health care system is it is basically a private health care system, not a public health care system. If you're rich, if you have money, you get the best health care in the world. But it is not universal. It does not extend out. And in a pandemic, that's a huge problem because you leave ten percent behind or behind, and the

pandemic is going to spread. And and what we saw was the reality or the or the consequences of the way we have chosen to structure health care, which is unlike other advanced industrial nations, we really do not care about universality. We do not care and and so looking at it from kind of the thirty feet view, it's a very inefficient system because we overspend on people like you and me, and we underspend on people who desperately

need the care. Like if if we were to take five dollars away from each of us people like us um and give it to the poorest stent of Americans, it wouldn't change our health at all for the worst and would massively benefit those people a the But we don't have a mechanism to do now. It doesn't look like it's going to pivot that way anytime soon. And if anything, and I'd love you to talk about it, I think that it's it's sort of shine a light on how a mass or health care is. But also

it even widens the wealth disparity. It even makes the haves and the have not even more glaring a problem. So it feels like we're we're being more and more polarized and not coming together, even though this is a global crisis, which you think would bring people together. It's not. Yeah, at so many levels, alleys so first, take the point

you made. Um, the thing that the pandemic has exposed is the digital divide, which is in fact also an income divide, a class divide, a cultural divided, geographic divide. So if you look at the top of Americans and most recessions, the rich and the poor lose jobs at about the same pace. In this recession, the top actually gained jobs by the end of and you can imagine why, right, Like, so it's easy to do consulting and coding and stuff, and that kind of stuff we're doing online. I'm not

I'm not coding for it. Yeah, in fact, I'm believe it or not, you are very much a part of the digital economy. Um. But the bottom, uh in lost jobs at about the same pace as during the Great Depression. And that disparity where the the rich actually gained employment and the and the and the poor suffered a massive hemorrhage never happened before, at least not in not in modern times. Then you say, where are the people who have who have the jobs, who have this ability to

keep generating income even though the physical economy shut down. Well, they tend to live in cities or metro areas. They tend to have some college education, they tend to you know, vote Democratic more than Republican. And the people who are who are in the opposite side tend to be a mix, but a lot of them are rural, a lot of

them have less education and all that. So you you know, all the divides we think about have just gone stacked on each other and white well, and it also seemed like here we were in lockdown in a global pandemic and it was a perfect storm of everything else. So we had well civil unrest, but all kinds of big movements like Black Lives Matter. It did also shed a light on how incredibly racist our country is. Do you

think we're going to learn from this? So, I mean, you're absolutely right that the pandemic also produced social unrest. And I think it produced social unterrest because whenever you have one of these shocks to the system, a kind of big disruption in a strange sense that allows people to ask themselves questions of like am I living the life I want to? Is this country organized the way

I wanted to? And I think we are very bad at handling the issue you were talking about, which is really the issue of identity, diversity, plurality, because America is two things that are very different for most minorities. And I say this as a minority. You know, an Indian American, I'm Muslim by birth, my brown skin, I have a

funny name. And for most people in my category, America has actually been remarkably welcoming and it has integrated and assimilated people, and compared to most other countries in the world, you're lucky to be a minority in America. I mean I know this from my personal experience, but the data also shows we assimilate people much better if you are um African American black, or if you are a Native American, or you know, there are certain categories. Principally black. America

has been horrendous to you. I mean, you know, the Black experience in America is just stunning, lee cruel, right. I mean, it's hundreds of years of slavery in which families were forcibly pulled apart, husbands and wives sold separately, children so separately, which then destroys the family structure. Then you have another hundred years of aggregation, which perpetuates in a de facto kind of slavery. Then you have the you know, the the civil rights movement, but still the

massive disparities are never really addressed. So I mean the the the obvious one would be wealth, right, I mean, average black family's wealth's much much lower than a white family. And so what I often find is there is this weird you know, putting it all into one box and saying we're going to do better with people of color.

It's like, you know, I'm doing fine. We were trying to turn it into a larger conversation that involves everybody, and really what we need is a much more specific reckoning I think with slavery and with Native Americans, and I mean I think yes, and I think, uh, you know, obviously this was exacerbated by George Floyd, but something happened psychologically, I think during this pandemic as well. I mean, people were in lockdown, like you said, they had to think

about their lives. But people seem to be incredibly angry, and in some ways it's come out, I think in a positive way through activism. But you know, we are seeing a lot of that in fighting, and I think there's gonna be a civil war, which is probably an extreme thing to say, but I do feel it sometimes. I don't see us coming together. I don't see everybody being on the same track as far as sort of the future of our country goes. Am I being too extreme? No,

you're not being too extreme. This is the thing I worry about more than anything else. I mean, otherwise, you know, the America economically, we're doing really well. We're doing technologically, we dominate the world. Were the only rich country that is growing demographically, you know, because of immigration, we're strong. But we have this crazy politics and it's become you know of what I was saying before is it's not political anymore. It's culture, it's class, it's uh, you know,

which which are much harder to bridge. I mean, if politically we have a disagreement, you know. I mean when Georgia and I first got into this this world, the liberals wanted to spend a hundred billion dollars, the conservatives wanted to spend twenty billion dollars. Well, you know what, there's a number between those two. You can always split the difference on those kinds of issues, But how do you split the difference when when you know, when the

issue is sort of core identity. I believe my country is being is being totally transformed culturally, I believe, you know, or gay rights or or you know, abortion, These are you know, it's very hard to compromise. So that's become the nature of politics now. It's all these identity culture class divisions. Are these issues where they exasperated by the pandemic. Um, would we be talking about this today if there had not been a global pandemic? Yeah, no, we would be.

I mean this has been the story of American politics. Let's say the end of the Cold War as a market but that it was really Liberals wanted to spend money and in post taxes, Conservatives wanted to save money and you know, cut taxes. Um. Now it's become completely different. And that's not the pandemic. The pandemic is with all these things kind of heightens and accelerates it. But this rise of kind of identity politics is is the big

trend in American politics. Okay, So it seems it seems to me right now that the the unions are getting very heated. Do you think that there's any positive outcome from that? Yeah? Actually, I think this is one of

those cases where the bad news actually is good news. So, yeah, unions are getting more more demanding, you're seeing more strikes even but more importantly, you're seeing this crazy situation whether ten million people unemployed in eight million unfilled jobs in the United States, which has never happened before, and other wads, why are these jobs not getting filled? And the reason is people are saying, you're not paying us enough, you're

not treating us well enough. And it's not just about the money, because the hospitality industry has raised wages on average eight percent and still they can't fill tens of thousands of jobs. I think this is somebody described this as like the great Reassessment. We're going through a period where people are asking themselves what, you know, what is the work life balance they want? What is the kind

of job they want? And you know, the people who have not been treated well over the last thirty or forty years in America are these sort of lower middle class, working class just workers. So the fact that they are revolting the fact that employers are going to have to hustle and ask themselves, what do I do to make these people's lives a little bit less miserable? In these way you know, those dishwashers at restaurants. I think it's great that they will that they will be paid more,

they will be treated better. It's by the way, great for the economy because it means those are the people when you give them more money, they spend it. You know, you give money to rich people, they save it. You give money to poor people, they ended. So I think this will end up being one of the big positive

changes that will come out of the crisis. You know, my concern is, uh is our country's ability to deal with the crisis, because uh, yes, we have the vaccine, but you know we're not out of the woods yet. And I know that you've cited Taiwan and Korea as places that were able to deal with the pandemic a

lot more efficiently than we have. We don't seem to be dealing with this particular crisis as well as we could be, which makes me nervous about future epidemics, which makes me worry about future any kind of issues, chemical warfare, biological contagions, or whatever it is I worry about it. Should should I Should I be taking xanix or is it going to be okay? No, I think you should be worried. I think you've be This is the in a way the central problem we face is the American

government has just gotten very bad. You know. I say, one of my lessons is, it's not the quantity of government, it's the quality of government. Because Taiwan spends five percent of its GDP on healthcare, we spend and they did stunning lee well, and we did abysmally um and here and here's the fascinating thing, Ali, it's not that they

did lockdowns. Taiwan did no lockdowns. Korea did no lockdowns because they got to it early and they understood that the key in a pandemic is you isolate, You isolate that small number of people. And I talked to the guy who ran the program in Taiwan and I said, well, you know, Americans would say you could, we could never do that. And he said, well, think about what you're saying.

Because we quarantined in total, one percent of the population for fourteen days, So we deprived them of liberty for fourteen days one percent of the In return, the other could go about business as usual. No lockdowns. We never

shut the economy down. We never. You guys say you can't do that, But in response to your pandemic, then what you had to do was you did a lockdown that put tens of millions of people out of work, shut out hundreds of thousands of businesses, and that the government had to spend four trillion dollars to make up for it. And that's not an infringement on liberty when

people lose their jobs their livelihood. So I thought it was a really good example of you know what we have lost the capacity to do, which is kind of intelligent risk reward behavior. Okay, I'm willing to take this much pain for a small short period of time to get much larger. Again. No, we just stumbled through it. And just because we're so rich, we can kind of throw enormous amounts of money at the problem. That was the vaccine, that was the COVID relief, and we'll be

all right because of that. But you know, imagine if we didn't have this kind of money, would be really screwed. Yes, we were, So I want you to do two things I bet you haven't had to do on any of these uh zoom interviews, which is, paint me the worst case scenario of the next five years, and then we're gonna do a pivot into pure optimism. But right now, the next five years. If it went off the rails, what would what would America look like to you? Yea?

So the worst scenario is nothing gets done, Biden ends up being a failed president, the Republicans take to take the House and the Senate, which means this total gridlock. Trump doesn't win, but manages to manipulate the results so that hu wins. So you have, for the third time, now you would have this sense of deep illegitimacy. You know that that the group that didn't get basically thought the other group stole it um. And then you I think you would do end up with some kind of

you know, violence, constant demonstrations. You'll end up in a situation where the United States becomes a kind of banana republic, where it can't be governed, nothing gets done. You know, I don't think it will collapse. I mean, the private sector will keep going, I I suppose, but I think it becomes very difficult for any large problem to be solved. And I think that what worries me most about it is, and I'm not describing something that extreme, many of these

steps could easily happen. Frump could decide to run, he could get the nomination. The last election that Biden one in the electoral College was close about a hundred thousand votes in three states, and it would have gone the other way. And if if the Secretary of State of Georgia and the Pennsylvania Legislature and Wisconsin had said, we think that this is all wrong the electors, we're going to nominate our own slate, boom, you have a constitutional crisis.

And and my fear about all this is, I don't see what stops it. We could get lucky, he loses very badly, but at least if he would have win decisively, that would be another thing. But I doubt that. I think you're going to end up with a very close election. We've had very close elections for the last twenty years now. And with the erosion of trust in the US government, as soon as that starts to crumble, then America does

not have an ability to respond to a crisis. I mean, you know, I even think about global warming right now, even that is a political debate as to whether it even exists or not. And yet we have wildfires and floods. I mean, there's we're witness to it um And so for me and for the sake of this podcast, for it.

I'm thirty two years old. For me, a thirty two year old woman, you know, I I there's no category of life in America that doesn't concern me right now, you know where, whether it's the forest or the courts, or you know, people of color, or the wealth disparity. I mean, it's it's very hard right now to be optimistic. And I know that you've written that. Lennon once said our decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen.

And I feel like we're in that right now. Yeah. Look, first of all, let me say, since people are going to hear the podcast, Ali looks like she's twenty eight, not thirty two. Time already a little startled for another. Um, Look, the challenge we face is that all these crises seem to be happening at the same time, and we somehow

have politicized things at a level that no other country has. So, you know, the issue of global warming, as you said, there's no other country in which there's a big debate going on. I mean there's a little bit in Australia, but it's really I mean in every other country. If you look at the Conservative Party in Germany, in Britain, they're all completely on board with dealing with it the pandemic.

Look at the vaccination. We are the only major country in the world that has this bizarre situation with of the country will not take a life saving drug called a vaccine because they want to make a political point and it's more important to own the Libs than to vaccinate yourself against a pandemic. Alright, so let's let's conclude with some optimism, and let me ask you this, What is the biggest, clearest, most important thing that we have

learned because of the pandemic? If we can bring anything with us out of this horrible period, you know, besides the fact that we can zoom, what are what are some of the things that we can benefit from learning? If anything, we've learned that we have a lot of problems, and they kind of expose that reality. You know. It's like Warren Buffett's great line, it's only when the tide goes out that you know who's been swimming naked? So

I think the tide went out in America. There's a lot of nudity, and there's a lot of naked people. I think, you know, if at some fundamental level. I hope we've realized that wealth does not buy health, that being being rich and having a healthy society is not the same thing. We need to we need to restructure in a way that allows, you know, that allows some of those dollars to get to people who really desperately needed.

I think we've realized that people do honorable jobs, work really hard, and should have a lot of dignity even though they don't make a lot of money, you know, I mean, I think we we all saw that the people who went to work every day in offices, in factories, in water treatment plans and sewage facilities so that we could sit at home are often the worst paid people. Um. So you know, if you shine a light on this stuff, it's it's actually all fixable. It's not so hard to fix.

And you asked an optimistic scenario. Look, we've already with the first COVID relief bill, which had the childcare credit, right, you know, you have, we have reduced childhood poverty in America by by half in one year. I mean, what that should make us realize is, you know, we don't have to live with these things. They are actually very

simple ways that we can solve them. And you know, and and I think even the most uh the purest libertarian would agree that, you know, to invest the money for in a child who has you know, it's it's not like the child is being lazy or not working or anything like that. This is a no brainer. You will you give them better nutrition, you give them better education, and then they end up, you know, being better citizens and more productive members of the economy. So there's so

many things we can do. So if Biden gets two of these bills done, you know, the the infrastructure Bill and the soft infrastructure Bill, if he's able to have a reasonably successful presidency. If Trump is defeated decisively, I think the best thing that could happen is that he does get nominated and it's a wipeout and he loses. I think then you have the beginnings of restoring a

kind of normal politics in America. I'm hoping that people looked at Trump and enough people looked at it and said, you know, this is a dangerous path um And yes, there are people who believe in him. But but but just one piece of my optimism comes from this alley, which is you're never going to get a percent of the country still supported Nixon after he resigned. Percent of the country supported McCarthy after the Senate centure. So you know, your best case scenario is six but I think you know,

maybe not that. But could we get to a sixty forty Saint Politics. Yeah, it's possible. It's I wouldn't bed money on it today, but that's what I hope. Okay, I'll take it. You know they say, um, in life, we only use ten percent of our brain. I think you only had to use three percent of your brain on my podcast, and I used all of my brain. I tend to be an optimist, So I'm going to hope that lessons are learned from this. And now it is your time for reads a car to ask me

a question. I could ask you so many questions. You know, I'll be honest, Like I still remember the first time I said next year at the dinner party, which is probably twenty odd years ago. Um, and I just came away thinking that was so much fun. So my question is you are one of the funniest people I know, one of the most naturally comedic people I know. Do you do you think that you know this? And I'm

thinking of the Dave Chappelle type stuff. Do you think it's possible to be to be really funny if you have to be sure never to offend anyone any any member of any group. Well, it's funny that you asked that question because I just did a podcast about that, because it is something that I think about every day because what with the Dave Chappelle controversy. But also I find that a lot of times when I joke around, even in the confines of my own home, I have

two children that are saying, you can't say that. Mom. You can't do that, Mom, you can't post that. You know, So it's a mine field. I can't say anything. But then again, I'm not doing stand up. I'm not on any kind of global stage. But you know, my feeling is this. A lot of times I think comedians are the truthsayers, and whether they're saying something provocative or not, it does make us think and it also gives a sense of sort of the temperature of the culture at

that time. And so my feeling with comedy is nothing should be off limits, and if if things are off limits, then it should be universal. You can't have Ricky's your vase, make age jokes, but then somebody else isn't allowed to do this, you know. So my feeling is let comedians who are craftsmen, who are who are generally funny, and let them go be kind of the narrators of our

time and let them push buttons. Well, I just wanted to, for the benefit of our listeners, remind bit make once mall correction when you grew up in the Clinton administration, not the Oh I'm sorry, I messed that up. It's I lie so much about my age, I forget who was in power. But I did have a huge crush on g Gordon Liddy's son in my youth. So there I said it, Fury, thank you, thank you so much.

Such a pleasure, such a pleasure. When we come back, we'll talk with therapist Donna Fish about how to handle the uncertainty of a long term pandemic. Now for some insight from a top mental health expert as we re entered this unpredictable world. So I recorded this interview back in September, and that was a day after my daughter was diagnosed with COVID, right as she was supposed to go to college for the first time, and the Delta variant had emergency rooms filled all over the city and

she had a breakthrough. Um, she was already vaccinated and it just spun us all out. Now she's thriving in school and Delta has subsided a bit. But these are two of the conditions that could happen to us at any time, and that is a point. We can't make any predictions which way this virus will take us for the foreseeable future. So how do we deal? Enter Donna Fish. Donna Fish is a psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker

in Manhattan. Her current specialties include trauma, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and family and couples therapy. She's lectured and held agent positions at the Harvard Medical School Department of Continuing Education in Columbia University, and she often writes for Psychology Today and as many many articles published by the Huffington's Posts. Donna Fish, thank you so much for being with me today and go ask Alley. There's a lot to cover.

Thank you, Ellie, thank you so much for having me so here. We are, Donna Fish, We're not getting out of this pandemic anytime soon. UM. I want to talk to you about how we kind of readjust our lives to fit into this global scenario. And I gotta tell you something. Yesterday my daughter, who's eighteen years old, who's about to go to Brown University, tested positive for COVID. So it just it's a ship show over here because we now have to prolong her moving in. We're all

quarantining for ten days. And the worst part about it is, I I feel like, wait, we already got through this. What's happening? Why are we back eating noodles again? So I want to talk about anxiety first, because there is an anxiety for a virus that seems to never end. Yeah. Absolutely. First off, most importantly, oh my god, as a parent and your poor daughter, I mean, it's so awful. It's the worst. And also she has anxiety in general about starting college for the first time. Of course, I mean

what I've been thinking about lately. And I love that you brought up anxiety to talk about first, because I'm obviously hearing about it from all of my patients every day, and you know, my own kids, myself, and I'm realizing, I think, okay, so we're really having to move into a really different way of thinking and kind of framing things. It's like living with a chronic illness, you have to adjust your expectations. So everything, we've got to reframe everything,

Like my family is in Canada and from Canada. Originally I can't just pop off to Toronto and go see my daughter who's just moving into in a new apartment that I want to help remove, Like what if I get stuck in Canada and can I afford. So there's a rethinking of everything, And I realized we could we have sort of a choice here. We could get super anxious about it and go into disaster mode thinking, or we can kind of accept that, like this is really

the name of the game now. It's endemic, right, I mean, meaning we're living with this, and to also understand that everybody's going through this, so your daughter is not alone. Number one. Well that's one of the things that I said to her, was because I've heard more and more friends who have kids that we're supposed to go to college and the same thing. Exactly, either they got it, somebody else got you know. So I feel like it's a little bit of groundhogs day. But also this is

the new norm. You know, there's gonna be people quarantining all the time exactly. So she's not the only one missing out, you know fomo. Yeah, the whole world is in fomo. Well, at least when we were like locked down, it reduced the fomo. Yea, now we as we as we're re emerging, there can be that also anxiety of like, but you know, my best friend is moving into the dorm and I'm not right right, you know, my daughter's

upset because it's not like nobody's going to college. Everybody who's supposed to be going to move in or moving in it except for her because of the circumstances. So you know, I worry about anxiety with that. I also worry are we in this endless whirlwind of pandemic crisis and that is a whole other, you know, huge thing to have to deal with. I think that this idea

like the stop start kind of thing. Right you're just thinking, oh, I'm gonna be able to get back to work because my kids are going to school now, and the fact that well, no, your kids just tested positive or there's another kid who tested positive, so your kid is being quarantined in their back home and you're back doing zoom school and then you have to tell your boss like oop, sorry, can attend that meaning or you know, and I think that everybody is just going to have to have a

tremendous acceptance of that. At any moment, your life is going to have to kind of stop, and you're gonna have to readjust and recalibrate. And so that's kind of the new normal. I mean, one of the ways we cope best, right, that helps anxiety is to be able

to predict things right. And so the more we can predict and readjust our expectations of like, Okay, well we really can't expect to go back to whatever life we used to have because that's not happening, then we can at least go, okay, what can we expect, what's reasonable, what's realistic? Exactly? So if we can all get on the same page and we are at least all in this together, whether you're vaccinated not vaccinated, we're all sort

of vulnerable. Yes, I do wonder because I think we all sort of went through COVID for a year and a half. We all, as you said, we're taking off our masks. This summer was you know, fun fund socializing. Everyone was out. We sort of felt like, oh that's over, Well now it's now, it's not over, and I wonder our kids finding ways to control the few things they can just because the whole world looks out of control

right now. Well, what you're hitting on is in fact exactly what's important for trauma, right I do a ton of work with trauma, and one of the most important things when you're dealing with a lot of you know, overwhelming powerlessness and helplessness, which is like we are powerless over the course of this pandemic to a degree. Obviously, what's the most important thing is to find at least

a few things that you have control over. And so that's a single thing that you can always help as a parent with your children, help them find things that they can control. The other thing, I don't know if this is a moment I can launch into a little technique or tool that I offer people. Please, um, we'll take tools. So one of the things that happens when you are struggling with anxiety is our brains will worry, and worry is actually our brains attempt to decrease anxiety.

Believe it or not, it's our way to kind of help ourselves feel a sense of control and feel less anxious and less panicked. So we our brains are sort of scrambling. It sometimes gets circular and just kind of drive you crazy. And it doesn't it doesn't actually work to really decrease anxiety. However, I have the best thing that I love to use, which is called the worry sheet. And what I do is I have people really right down and you. People could do this with their children too,

really young children. You could just do the writing yourself. You could ask them, so, what's going on in your head? Let's write down all of your worry thoughts. So I'll make a list of all the worry thoughts. I like to group worry thoughts into productive worry thoughts and non productive worry thoughts. The productive worry thoughts are things that you're worrying about that you can do something about them. So let's say, for example, if you're worried that you

have a deadline coming up. Let's say it's a college student and you know you've got this big paper that you have to write. You know you don't have to do it yet, but it's hovering over your head. Make a schedule of some actionable items I call them. I'll say, okay, let's put it in your calendar. Oh, this is when I'm gonna are x y Z, I'll go to the library or I'll start researching. And so you really make a list and you take each worry thought and you

see is there something you can do about it? And you make it actionable. The non productive worry are the things you have absolutely no control over. Yeah, is the pandemic exactly? I would think that, Yeah, when is the pandemic going to be over? I have another little tool for that one. If you want to hear it, I need a tool kit. You. So, one of the things that I like to I like to reframe all emotions. Okay,

because emotions are not good or bad. Okay, all emotions are beautiful because we're human beings and were we have this capacity for a full palette, right, and they're all varying degree is almost like a paint strip. Right. It's the intensity of the emotions that usually create the suffering. It's not an emotion in and of itself. So let's say anxiety. For example, anxiety, if it's a ten out of ten, it really makes it analonging to think straight.

That being said, in certain circumstances might be really useful at panic, right, gets your adrenaline goings, the fight or flight response to you a better panic, right. So it's not that panic is good or bad. It has its advantages. It's just that if you're panicking when you're in the situation where you're not in danger, it's going to get in the way of your judgment and your ability to

think straight. So let's look at the advantages of your anxiety about the pandemic, and not only the advantages, but the great things it says about you and your core values that you're anxious about the pandemic. Well, number one, anxiety helps you mobilize, right, It gives you adrenal, It

helps you kind of be on the alert make good decisions. Well, it can help you make good decisions because you're using the emotion of anxiety to use your thought, your rational mind to go, oh, I'm anxious, therefore, oh it might make sense. I just got exposed. Let me go get tested. So that's good anxiety. And then you know, you want to validate the emotion, and that validation of the feelings also helps coping and helps soothing, So that validation is important. Right.

So it's important to particularly with our children, to validate their anxiety about this new world. Absolutely. So the next piece of this, which obviously anxiety has a strong hold on, is how to socialize now, because I can tell you from speaking to adults, I have seen a huge shift with how adults now view socializing. I think people in a lot of ways had positive responses to being in their pod right. And on the one hand, you know, that's kind of great. People are sort of cutting out

the fat, They're finding out what's important to them. But I have also noticed that there is a lot of anxiety out going and socializing. Yeah, you know, just re emerging, right, And it it is so true. It's like we were habituated. We were trained really to be socially distant and to be anxious enough to get near each other and to reduce the people we socialize with. Um. And it's a little like what I was referring to about how much

anxiety is useful versus how much gets crippling. And so I've noticed in my practice I'm having to help people re emerge because right now their anxiety could be pitched so high that they're like I have to stay in my apartment and I can't get together with my friends, and like that's not really going to help you with living a you know, a happy life and helping you it's your depression. So and to some degree that's not

necessarily true that you can't socialize. So it's like their anxiety is still pitched at the level of like where it was. So we have to sort of figure out, Okay, well what's realistic, what's doable, and also what's what's doable for you? So what kind of baby steps can you take to you know, starting to see maybe three people at a time, and what are the things you need to do to feel somewhat comfortable but still push yourself.

One of the things that's actually really important to treat anxiety is exposing yourself to anxiety because the more you avoid feelings of anxiety, the more crippled you become. You know, people get a hoorophobic or they stop, you know, they can't do things, they can't socialize, or they can't go out and they're too frightened. And the more we avoid, the more we sort of create these monsters in our head. And so it does take you know, a little bit

of kind of pushing. I've been trying to help people actually feel more uncomfortable and more anxious ironically and paradoxically, because the roots through anxiety is more anxiety believed or not to get to the other side. Yeah, no, I believe it. Yeah, there's anxiety runs through our family, so I understand that. I'm also thinking about again, when we were all in lockdown own, we all knew the rules, we all knew what we were supposed to do, and I have seen a lot of anxiety now with well,

yes there's the delta variant and other variants. It's COVID is still going. And yet I'll get a paperless post to go to a big party, and then I have friends who will not come out of their house. So now we're in this kind of free fall of everyone being very confused. We'll should I go to this birthday party? It's one of my best friends, but she's having forty people. That's crazy. You know. It is a lot of head scratching.

It is a lot of head scratching, and I think it's one of those great times where everybody has to figure it out for themselves and what works for them too. Yeah, there is no one rule, one size fits all here. Yeah, we kind of have to have respect, right, you know, one friend need not want to come to your birthday party because she's too uncomfortable and to some degree and other things, I think we have to be a little

bit cautious of this. Right, There's something called secondary gain, which means that you can maintain your anxiety because it really helps with something else, so that you don't actually want to get over your anxiety because if you did, you have to actually go, you know, go to a

birthday party you don't want to go to. So, you know, like for kids, like sometimes they might be like, I'm scared to go out because of delta Um, but Cher Sully, it's really a social anxiety issue that they're dealing with, or a bowling issue. So we have to be a little bit cautious that it's not used to be able to avoid really avoid. But is that so hard to

figure out exactly? Which is where as a parent, you're the expert on your own kid, you knew your kid better than anyone, and as a mom or instincts are so homeed, like we could feel it right when it's like that, maybe there's some other reasons that you're wanting to not go to this party or you know, not wanting to live in the dorm this year or whatever,

and they could be super valid reasons too. I'd like to really open up, like it's okay to have all these things that you're worrying about and that you're scared up, you know, right exactly. Another thing is there's a lot of anxiety an animosity with the mask war. I call it, Oh my god, So with the anti vactors and the factors in the mask and not wearing the mask, and I find that that's triggering people. I know, I know, No, it's so unbelievably emotional, and I think it's because it's

addressing like our survival, you know, and feeling threatened. And both camps are feeling the same way. Right, you're threatening my kid. My kid can't breathe with a mask. But I do really believe and know this. Every parent is absolutely, always, always doing what they feel is best for their child.

It's not because they're wanting to hurt other people. It's so primitive our instinct to protect our kids, even if it seems malevolent, you always can find the threat of the parent was feeling instinctively and absolutely believing this is what I need to do to help my child and

to protect my child. Yeah. The other thing that happens where we're really frightened is that we like to blame other people for the problem, because there's something about blaming and focusing that and blaming the other person for the problem. I think that gives you a weird sense of control. But but it does. It does, I mean it does.

I think about you know, if you and I were lost in the woods, you would probably blame me because I didn't read the map well, and I would blame you because you didn't wear the right shoes and you're slowing us down and it's getting dark. I mean exactly exactly. If I'm frightened and feel powerless, I go to anger because anger is power. I mean, that's one of the benefits of anger in fact. Yeah, but it's also it's

a very primal feeling. I mean, think about every wild animal exactly, if you, you know, approach their cubs or their babies, they'll kill you bingo. So I think a part of what happens is in the space that we're in right now of this absolutely not knowing what the fuck is going to come next, right, And that really messes with our coping because part of helping people's anxiety go down, and coping is predicting things. We can't predict things anymore, and that messages with our ability to feel

calm and in control. So it's just completely missing with our basic kind of hard drive that kind of goes, this is how I function, And so it's so easy. We we are feeling so helpless and powerless, but instead of recognizing that, validating it, saying Okay, this is what we are helpless and powerless over, we want to just blame. There's something satisfying about just being able to blame the other person right and wanting to be right and wanting to be thinking we're doing the right thing. And it's

time for a short break. Ye, and we're back. So let's let's bring it up now to adults, because I think too. I mean, it's been rough on marriages this whole period um, and I think it's taken more of a toll on relationships than we even realize. The stress it comes out in relationships in different ways. How do we maintain our relationships without completely losing our minds, a good sense of humor and our ability to laugh at our own selves. Well, I've been trying that. You're very

good at that. Um. You know, I think that the most useful thing to maintain any close relationships is to be willing to look at your own role in the problem and to stop blaming the other person. That being said, when we're really angry and really upset it's not realistic, which is fine, but finding some truth in what the other person is saying about how angry they are with you or whatever you did wrong, even if it feels unfair, and then finding some way to imagine what what does

that feel like? Yeah, of course, oh I get it. You know. Of course you were really frustrated with New York. Of course that made you feel really ashamed. If you can just create and continue that skill of like, okay, well what's that like from the other person's point of view?

And you know that person, Like when you're in a relationship with somebody, you know, being able to fight also is a great skill, like being able to fight and then reconnect, because some people avoid fighting and avoid conflict, which is unhealthy, or they let it build up, or one person is the fighter and the other person shuts down.

So being able to figure out how to how to fight productively, I call it is really useful and learning good skills to be able to not just because we always want to be listened to write who doesn't want that, But our capacity to actually listen to the other person is usually pretty limited, and it requires empathy, and it requires really asking and saying, Okay, you said this, and I'm imagining you might might have been x Y z am I getting that right, and to make sure that

you're actually getting it from their point of view. A lot of people think empathy means thinking, oh, I would feel like this in that situation. That's actually not empathy. That's subjectivity. That's that's kind of more thinking of it from your point of view. And so like if you just took a moment and said, okay, well how my day I felt, as you know them, not how you would feel. And that's the hard part. And then there's

one last piece that's really really important to maintain. You find at least one to two things that you could say to the other person that you really do genuinely respect about them, because respect is in fact what breads ongoing love and closeness and you know the ebb and flow of long term marriage and so too to have enduring love, respect is what fuels that and literally finding those things at least one a day, every single day, like brushing teeth, some habits so that you can maintain

and even get closer. And then we could talk about the situations where you know, you want to maintain the status quot or you make a decision like this is a person where no, it doesn't make sense to stay with because in fact, I think the pandemic that's how

people realize, like life short. Yeah, I don't want to stand in this marriage, right, Yeah, but I wanted to say that that's something that I have found that's been helpful for me in my marriage is that there are times where you know, we're fighting about something and a lot of people like like dig in even more, you know, they kind of like, no, I'm right. And there are times when I've realized, you know what, I'm wrong, I'm just wrong about this, or I'm stressed out, like I'm

stressed out about COVID. You know, when everything blew up when my daughter tested positive, I was angry and upset and lashing out and arguing with my husband and the right in the middle the argument, I went, you know what, I'm sorry this, this has nothing to do with you. This is COVID and I'm sorry, but that self awareness that you have is what saves and what creates and endur's relationships. We can't always be, you know, in in this con state of mind and listening perfectly, like believe me.

But I also think we're all everything that it's been dialed up emotionally for all of us right now, like all of us, So I think it's a heightened emotional time and so you know, we all have to be aware of that. And one of the things that I want to go back to, which I think is so helpful. This is my big AHA moment with you, is that um, that we're all in it in one way or another. We're not all in lockdown anymore, but we're all dealing

with repercussions of this pandemic. And if we can look at everybody else and thank however they're acting, whatever they're doing, whether they're secluding themselves, they're being overly social, their screening at parents, they're this there that we can all agree that it comes from an emotional place and it comes from a place of being safe, whether for them or their kids, And that for me is a really interesting lens to look at all of this through because that's

the only way I'm able to have empathy and understanding with somebody who's, you know, maybe dealing with this in a way that I'm not exactly and respecting that, and that everybody has a right to do what they're comfortable with and we all have to figure that out differently, and it could keep and it's going to keep changing too, and to be open to that change. I mean, evolution happens because we adapt it, and so if we're going to survive this, we have to figure out how to adapt.

And that means that we've got to adapt to the fact that the reality that things keep changing and that there's no one way to be That being said, everyone has a right to create their own boundaries, so so it's the healthy wasp, but also everybody can make their own choices. Donna Fish, this has been really really helpful. Okay, Donna Fish, we've come to the point in the podcast

where you get to ask me a question. Okay, so my question for you was about social media and you you have two daughters, right, yes, and they're eighteen and how old is the other one? Six? Oh my god, perfect ages for this. So when my kids were at

that age. Oh my god, there was no Instagram. I mean, honestly, I feel for the adolescents I treat, and the young women and the young people I treat who are always like looking at images, not with social media, but like literally how everyone is being looked at and how everybody's saying selfiesn't like, how do you help them navigate that? It has been well? Of course I didn't grow up

with social media, and so I there's no handbook for it. Um, you know, I read books like The Big Disconnect, and I worried first of all about my daughters with this whole sexualization of social media. It was a huge red flag for me. And so what I did was I started to look at images with them and say, you see this girl, you know, she's doing this in a bikini, but what is what is she really saying? What is she selling? Let's look at the big picture, what's going

on here? What hole is she trying to fill? And so I would start with things that they could understand like that, and I used a lot of humor with it, you know, I I you know they were dressed provocatively. I'd say, you know, oh, I'm sorry, are you Kardashian, well, why don't you have Chris Jenner make you dinner? So

there's a lot of that. But also it was really important for me to talk about the interior and I would say, you know, it's really sexy, not being an Instagram influencer, but being like a really cool scientist, and I think it helped. I also had to be a parent and go, you're just not allowed to post bikini shots.

You're just you're not allowed to so, and then when they had friends that would do it, I would again sit with them and say, God, why why do you think your friend is sticking her ass out in the beginning, Like what's going on with her that she feels the need to do that. So those the combination of those two things helped a lot. But you know, it doesn't mean that they're still like not in their beds right now looking at images going like oh I want to

have that. I'm feeling so moved, really heartened, and just really respect you so much because you're offering your kids exactly what they need to build the resilience to cope with all of this, which is a close relationship with you, that you're engaged, that you sit there with them and that you're helping them think, you're you're you're asking them, you're asking them to think about things, but you're in there with them, and you have obviously such a great

close relationship. And guess what that is the key to helping our kids and to helping them deal with all the anxiety. As a mental health professional, my heads off. Thank you, I'm serious. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thanks for asking so thank you so so much. I really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you, Ali. I really think that the key takeaway from this episode, and there was a lot, is that we kind of have to

in our relationships, in our relationships with other people. Well, we may not believe the same thing, we may not act the same way in this COVID world, but we have to be able to think that, you know, this person over here is doing the right thing for themselves, or this person over here is doing the right thing

for their families. Because we are very polarized right now, and so much of this has been heated up by this pandemic, and as I sit here, I just want to close my eyes and think to myself, in one way or another, we are all in this together. We are all charting new territory in various degrees, and for some it has been horrific. People have lost jobs, people have lost lives, We have lost our sense of community.

But the one thing we can't lose is our sense of humanity and empathy, because that's all we have, and many people believe that's the only way we're going to get through this. And I want to thank for the Zakaria because I was feeling very dark about the state of our country and he actually made me feel very optimistic about the economy. About activism, it's a way of sort of righting the wrongs. I mean, maybe our country needed to take a very close look at the things

that are just not working. So maybe it's time for us as Americans to reflect on the things that need to be fixed. And since my conversation with for Reed, one of Biden's two infrastructure bills has become law and the other is still in the Senate. And in the ever evolve being in changing world, the omicron variant is now with us, and so fasten your seatbelts see where this goes. So thank you for Reid, and thank you Donna. Thank you so much for listening to go ask Alli.

Be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast, and follow me on social media on Twitter at Ali e Wentworth and on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth and look. If you have any questions or guest suggestions, I would love to hear from you, call or text me at three to three four six three five six or email Go ask Alli podcast at gmail dot com. Go ask Alli is a production of Shonda land Audio and partnership

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