Lori Gottlieb ON: How to Set and Keep Better Boundaries & Ways to Know if You Are Settling in Relationships

with your authentic self. Today's guest is someone who's been on the show before and you loved the episode, so we had to bring her back. I'm speaking about the one and only Lori Gottlieb, a psychotherapist and New York Times best selling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, which has sold nearly two million copies and is currently

being adapted as a television series. In addition to Laurie's clinical practice, Laurie is co host of the popular Dear Therapist podcast, and she writes the Atlantics Dear Therapist advice column. Check those out if you haven't already. Laurie's the creator of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone's Workbook, a toolkit for editing your story and changing your life and maybe you should talk to someone journal fifty two weekly sessions

to transform your life. If you don't have a copy of this, make sure you go and grab one while we're having this conversation. And I'm so excited to welcome again to On Purpose Lurie Gottlieb Lurie, thank you for being here.

to be in a relationship, I want to date. She wants to just build up good connections, good friendships, and what ends up happening is that she ends up in these scenarios where men are then sometimes guilty shaming, bullying her into believing that there's something more here and that she's denying it. And she feels really uncomfortable because deep down she cares about this individual, She admires them, appreciates them,

but she just doesn't see them romantically. And I think what's really hard is the deeper point that I think is more universal that a lot of people can connect with, is you care about someone, just not in that way, so you don't know how to keep a distance at the same time you don't want to be intimate with them. Does that make.

Are you interested in being friends with me? Because I'm not interested in anything else, And part of being friends with me is hearing what I have to say and believing me. Otherwise they don't think we're going to have a friendship that's healthy. So if you want to be in my life, I would like to be in your life. If you want that, then I need you to believe me when I tell you this is how I feel, and not try to push me into something that doesn't

feel comfortable to me. And then that person can really think do I want this person in my life? Knowing this is their hard boundary, But people don't say it that way. They feel like I'm going to hurt this person, or they start arguing with the person. If you find yourself arguing with someone about how you feel, that's not a great friendship.

How do you kind of accept that it might be time to draw a line, maybe distance or disconnect and move on even though that's painful, Or what is that moment where you can kind of just say, I'm going to honor myself. I'm going to honor what I wanted from this friendship that doesn't exist anymore.

have been too hard. But look how hard it is to have it on text. I think it's so much harder to have it on text, because when you're together, you're actually connecting, even if it's difficult, even if you're saying some things that might cause some discomfort, it's easier actually to do it in person. So it's kind of paradoxical that people think I'm going to protect myself and somebody else by doing this on text, because you're not

protecting anyone. It's easier to have a challenging conversation in person. It goes so much better.

not ready to hear. And I find more and more people, whether it's in the workplace, whether it's in their marriage, whether it's in a friendship, struggle to have difficult conversations face to face. What are some of the practices or methods or tools that you've shared with people to help them do that well.

the pattern in the relationship with anything. So many people put up with a lot at the beginning of a relationship because they think this person has all these other great qualities. So what if they can't really have a conversation with me, right, you know, I have so much fun with them, or I can fix them or over time. I'll bring this up later, but I don't want to

bring it up now because we're early in the relationship. No, no, no, that's the time you should bring it up, because the cement is drying, and it dries quickly, so patterns get established. So if the cement is dry and then you try to change it and say, let's have a face to face conversation, but you guys have been texting about things for months instead of talking about them, it's really hard

to change that. So I would say, very early on, establish what you want in a relationship, and if the other person isn't down for it, that's really good information to have early on.

come back to relationships. One of the biggest ones that we obviously get a lot about is social anxiety, and a lot of the questions that came up and some of the stories that I dived into, is people just struggling with being around big groups, people going to events or parties or even their friends home where other people are there, struggling to strike up a conversation, feeling lonely and disconnected even in the crowd, feeling uncomfortable being able

to share what they're doing, and feeling confident about what they're doing. Let's talk about where's the root of some of that social anxiety coming from. I know it can be many different things. What are the variety of things it can be, and what have you seen some of the ways of helping people understand that anxiety better. Rather than staying at home, keeping away and maybe not encouraged to go out and meet people.

So social anxiety is usually something about I will not be liked, I will not be loved, and that has to do with how you were liked or loved when you were younger, if you haven't processed that and worked that out. So I think that it's about kind of rewriting your story before you say, you know, I'm not going to go to that event. Is what am I afraid of? What am I afraid someone's going to think? And is that true? And do I have evidence from other parts of my life now as an adult that

it's not true? I think unfortunately, the stories that people told us about ourselves are about the storyteller, meaning it was the person you know in our past who had mental health issues, or they had their own insecurities and they projected them onto their children. They were limited, they didn't know how to interact, they didn't know how to love, and then they criticized their children, or they neglected their children, or they couldn't hear them or see them or value them.

They couldn't feel that excitement around, like I love who this human being is and I think. Then that gets internalized, and then you grow up and you think everybody in the world thinks that about me, and A it's just not true that other people think that. But more importantly, it's just not true that you are whatever story you were told about you. So you need to say what is the true story? And then you go into that

environment with the true story. And it doesn't mean you have to go to a party with one hundred people. It means maybe I open up to a friend a little bit more, Maybe I try hanging out with a group of three people and see what that's like. And you kind of experiment. And when you see that this story, this old story, doesn't seem to be playing out in these new situations, you get more confident going into bigger and bigger situations.

extra itself. But if I go to an event where I don't know anyone, I'm likely to try and find one person that I can have a really deep, meaningful conversation with rather than working the room or trying to connect with loads of people, because I feel so much happier and fulfilled if I can walk away from an event and go, wow, I met one person and we have so much in common, and we share so many values, and now I'm actually going to keep in touch with

that person, as opposed to the idea of like, well, oh my god, I feel the pressure that I need to talk to twenty people here and I should be networking and I should be exchanging numbers and whatever it may be, which isn't how I like to operate. And so I love that idea of those baby steps and starting small.

anxious going into them. And so I think what you're talking about with social anxiety is I'm anxious to just reveal the truth of who I am to anybody. I'm worried about showing up and being found wanting.

that definitely has helped me and help people. I know where you also know that you do feel comfortable sharing that part of your life. Have you found any other tools or methods that have helped individuals in those spaces?

they're talking about. People like to talk about themselves, So if you're here, and I don't mean that in kind of a narcissistic way, I mean that people like it when you show interest in them, and we don't a lot of people don't ask other people about themselves enough, so when they have an opportunity, for a person who genuinely is curious, this isn't just some kind of strategy for your social anxiety. It's actually a way to relate

to people. I'm genuinely curious to get to know you, and you ask questions about their life, They're going to be really interested in interacting with you.

everyone feels like everyone is uninterested in everyone else. Yes, And so I've been to events with people before and they've come with me and they've said, oh, that person was so cold, or that person seemed like they had an ego, and I was like, well, no, I know that that person just feels uncomfortable in these And it's weird how we all just look at each other and we kind of make these judgments of like, oh, they

were called they brushed me off. Yeah, but actually everyone's just feeling quite anxious as opposed to having this like vendetta against you or some sort of And obviously there could be something else as you get to know them better, but it's worth giving someone the benefit of the doubt and stepping it out there. Yeah.

and they're like, oh, I grew up here. Oh really, wow, you know that's so different from where I grew up or I grew up somewhere similar and you know, did you have siblings? Did you what was that?

And then as you were just saying, now, like I love asking people where they're from because I'm from London, I lived in New York, I live here now. It's like, it's great for me to learn about the United States because people are from all over the place here and places I've never heard of or never been to. It can be an education and all of a sudden, it's

you can see someone opening up. And it's easy for most people to mention where they grew up or where they started, rather than a question about like their job or whatever.

I'm very hard working, I'm very focused. I've started dating this person who I like a lot of qualities they have, but something I really obviously value is someone who's driven, an ambitious, and a doer. But I'm not really seeing that in them. Does this relationship have a chance to last, does it have a future? Or am I always going to feel this way?

who they are now. It's different if the person says, I'm working on this for myself, this is something that I'm trying to do. This is my area of growth right now. And maybe you might say, how can I support you? And then you only do what they ask you don't do more than they asked in terms of supporting that. But if you want someone who comes, you know, intrinsically driven in that way, that's probably not a good partner for you.

will have all of these things. How have you navigated that with clients when they're telling you, I feel like I'm getting older, I'm worried about my body, Clark, I'm scared about, you know, not finding someone. I'm getting pressure from my parents and my friends. But at the same time, I don't want to settle, which is a completely fair,

valid feeling. Right at the same time, you're saying, well, you can't order someone a la cart, and so how do we kind of how do you help people grapple with those I guess conflicting ideas or what at least seems that way.

emotional stability? Do you both have emotional stability or your whole in that way? I don't mean like you're finished, right, I just mean that you can self regulate, you can have a conversation, you don't act out in egregious ways, you're honest, those kinds of things. And the other one is flexibility. It's really hard to be in a relationship with someone who's very rigid. So those are two things really to think about. But in terms of the character

qualities that should be the big deal breakers. Is this person responsible? Do they say, do they mean what they say? How did they show up? What do they do under stress? That's really important because you will experience that in the course of your lives together. Do they have a sense of humor right in when things are stressful? Can we still hold those contradictions of this is hard and we can support each other and make each other laugh.

for us? So, you know, letting go is sort of like a lot of these fantasies that we're told growing up we should be looking for in a partner versus who do you want to spend time with every day? Who is the person that you really enjoy spending time with, who you also feel safe with? And I think safety is so important. I feel safe with this person because I know that the rug is not going to be pulled out from under me.

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and I want to talk about those first two. I find that so much growth today, and maybe it's always been this way, but so much of our growth is happening while we're with people. It's not happening in that we solved it before we were eighteen or twenty one, and now we move on to a relationship. And I don't think people are often getting the best versions of people. You're getting the work in progress version at all times.

Like you said, no one's ever finished. But I find that more often than not, I'm just hearing about such a lack of flexibility and such a lack of emotional regulation when I'm hearing about people's stories and learning about them and how people talk to each other, how people deal with problems, and I find, of course, where do obviously all of that I'm in talking to you from a therapist perspective, A lot of that's coming from childhood, a lot of that's coming from personal trauma. It's very

hard to make sense of that. When you first meet someone and you're dating someone, you're almost meeting the you are meeting the best version of them, because it's the one they're portraying or the one that they want you to see. And then naturally you spend longer with someone, you see them stressed, you see them angry, you see them upset, You start seeing all of this other three sixty.

I guess the question is, how do we allow for the fact that we're less likely to meet someone who is the finished product, but at the same time give ourselves enough time to not feel too deep or fall too hard.

red flags and you kind of block them out. You think, oh, well that's okay, or I'm not going to pay attention to that. You project onto them who you want them to be as opposed to who they actually are. And I think that what you said about we grow in

relationship is so true. I think that people grow so much more in couple's therapy than they might even an individual therapy, because you are forced to contend with another person that you're coming up against, and I really feel like a you have to listen to those to those everything that they tell you, the good, the kind of questionable, all of it and just say what does that mean? And you can even think about, well, let me get more information about that. What did they mean when they said, oh,

they don't really want kids? Like, what does that mean? Does that mean? Now? Does that mean? Ever? What does that mean? You have to listen to these things, you know, what does that mean? Where they're they talk really really uh, you know, with a lot of aggressive language about a parents for example, that means that, yes, maybe that parent really disappointed them and maybe there was a lot of trauma. But how have a sort of process that and where

are they with processing that? Because if that's still so raw to them, that will come out in your relationship with them. You might not think they're gonna that's gonna come out toward you, but it will. Right we marry our unfinished business. So I think you really have to look out for that. So, no, you're not looking for like a person who has all the answers. I don't

think anybody ever has all the answers. But you're looking for willingness to show up, willingness to take responsibility, willingness to apologize. That's huge, and also will to bring things up. So and are you willing to hear what the other person has to say. So a lot of times when I'm seeing a couple and someone will say, you know, oh, this person never brings things up, I'm less interested in the fact that they don't bring it up, and I'm more interested in why what are you afraid of? Why

can't you talk to your partner? And they might say when I have brought things up, my partner tries to talk me out of the way that I feel. When I try to bring things up, my partner tries to tell me I'm wrong. When I try to bring things up. My partner shuts down. When I try to bring things up, My partner yells. When I try to bring things up, my partner acts like they don't like me anymore. Right, So then they say, okay, I'm not going to bring

things up. So then we need to talk about Well, this is a dance that the two of you are doing. It's not just that this person is avoidant. It's that you are inviting the avoidance. So no one's to blame here. It's just that you guys are doing a dance and you both have to change your downce steps if you want to change the dynamic in the relationship.

based on small data points. Yes, because we are so scared by our own trigger or by our own pain that comes from that, that we can easily write something off that may just need a little more work. Yeah, I don't know if that. If you agree, you can disagree completely. That's I'm just sharing what my thoughts at least.

And so his partner had this beautiful we came up with in couple's therapy, a beautiful way for her, you know, when you can see the childhood wounds and you can help you. They're working on it, so you're not solving it for them, but you can support them in some way. So if she saw him out in public, maybe getting triggered by something, it wouldn't happen often, if it happened

a lot, that would be a problem. She would just put her hand on his arm like that, and it just calmed his nervous system and it brought him to the present. Was such a beautiful thing that she could do for him, and she had stuff from childhood, and he knew, oh, I can see the little girl in her right now. I have so much compassion instead of getting frustrated by it, so much compassion for the little girl. I know this about her, and here's what I can

do for her in that moment. These shorthands, these little things that you can do to kind of help someone. Instead of going from zero to sixty, just go from like zero to five and then be like, oh, now I can come back down.

triggers in a way that doesn't trigger you? Because I feel like it's such a sensitive conversation to have, and because some people areselfs unaware and some are self aware, or you're seeing things in others but you can't see in yourself, how do you have healthier conversations around Hey, do you know why we're behaving this way? Do you know why we're talking like this.

was a very difficult boundary. It was you know, sometimes we think about boundaries as I'm going to make this requestion, You're going to do it, and if you don't do it, then you have broken my boundary. That's not how boundaries work. Okay, boundaries are about and I think this is a really important point related to this, which is that when you set a boundary, you're deciding for yourself what you will do,

not what the other person will do. So you can say to the other person in her case, I don't like it when you talk about weight, because that's a big trigger for me growing up. That was something that was always talked about. I don't want to talk about dieting, I don't want to talk about people's weight or people's appearance. That really bothers me. But it got to the point where he couldn't say anything about you know, like it

was too restrictive of a boundary. And so they would argue about this because he's just like, I'm just not going to say anything because I never know what's going to trigger you. Her boundary could have been I'm going to ask him not to say a reasonable number of things about weight, but there are certain things that he might say and I'm going to have to maybe leave the room or I'm going to self regulate, or I'm going to have a mantra for myself. That's what I'm

going to do. They would argue about this, and what would happen is she would you know, we had to get to sort of what was underneath this, and she finally discovered it's like I need more affirmation. I need more like just flirt with me during the day or you know. And he said I need that too, and so we gave them this homework assign where they just had to do one very subtle flirtation, you know, just once a day, and she left a little note on the bathroom mirror and he said, oh my god, that

made me feel so the whole day. I was so excited. It is these tiny things, and so then she was less triggered when like food would come up, because he was so much about, like, you look beautiful, and she said, you always say when I get my eyebrows done, You're like dang, And she's like, why won't you do that with other things? I don't want to have to get my eyebrows done, right, And he was like, oh my god, I think you're so beautiful. I should be saying that more.

When are you and your boyfriend going to get married, and she said to him, if you bring that up, I'm gonna end the conversation or I'm going to leave the room because I want to have fun with you when i'm with you, and this just makes it really stressful. And so every time it had to be in every time he mentions that, you say, Dad, just reminder, we'll

talk another time. And if you don't do that, if you don't do it consistently, like let's say that you do it ten times, but then one time you like let that conversation continue, the person thinks, oh, I can still talk about this because they're not going to leave the room. They're not going to end the conversation. So again,

it's what you do. You have to hold the boundary every single time for yourself and the other person is going to realize at a certain point, if I want to be in that person's presence, I can't bring this up because every single time they're going to leave.

But I think you just hit the nail on the head that it's our own letting our guard down about our own boundaries that actually allows people to think they can break them anyway. It's not about them breaking them down, like if you stay pretty strong on that, I mean, if I mean, people can still do what they want, but at least you'll know where you stand with them. I remember a small example of what you just said. I remember whenever i'd go back to London because I'd

like to see my family there. There'd be certain members of my family. You'd always say to me, Oh, you're only back for thirty days, and then i'd see them the week. Often they'd be like, oh, you've only got twenty one days left, and I'd just be like, guys, I'm back for thirty days, like you know. And I had to draw a boundary around just and it sounds

so small and silly, but it isn't. Because I didn't like hearing that, because I was like, let's just be really grateful for this present moment, Like let's have the best time w'k together right now. And I don't want to sit here and think about how many days I have left again. It can be so small, but it can be so important to you. But I have to honor that. Okay, if you bring up time again, then XYZ is going to happen or whatever it may be.

I want I'm setting a boundary. And he wrote in and said, I don't want to have a boundaried relationship. And I wrote back and I said, every relationship is a boundaried relationship. You can't just do whatever you want in a relationship. All relationships have boundaries. It's like it's kind of like the difference between being in an ocean with no boundaries, or being in a fish bowl where

the boundaries are too tight and people can't live. You want to be in an aquarium in relationship, right, so there's enough room for each person to kind of have their space, but it's not so constrained that like everybody's walking on eggshells, and it's not so open like an ocean where there's you can just do whatever you want.

It's like that person actually values and respects you so much to actually open up and share with you a weakness or a pain point.

of life, whatever they might be. And this person was like, I am doing this because I want to Our friendship matters to me. It's important. And once the other friend heard that the boundaries were fine, it was that this person thought, oh, you're trying to dump me, and she's saying, no, I'm doing the opposite. I'm trying to keep our friendship alive.

than it is a setting of a boundary. And it's so much more powerful when someone says to you, Hey, I actually really value our relationship and I think this is going to bring us closer. And that's why I'm actually being really vulnerable with you and I'm sharing with you this is how I feel when you do this, and it mean the world to me if we were able to shift this or this is how I'm probably

going to behave if this happens. But that kind of casing that sometimes our communication needs to be and it demands a lot of us. And I get this feedback from a lot of people when we're talking to them on the podcast and through my books and everything, is that people feel like they're often the one carrying the torch to help this maturity develop in a relationship, and a lot of people are quite exhausted by it. They're like, well, gosh, I'm like trying to help us set boundaries. I'm the

one like setting agreements. I'm the one who's like encouraging us to be positive, and it can get really exhausting carrying the torch. How what do you say to people who feel that way right now? But they're like, you know what, Laurie, I'm trying to be curious with my partner. I'm trying to do this with my friends. I'm like the one setting up this, but like I'm exhausted now, and so I don't know how long I can do it for and I just want them to step up.

maybe some old stuff. And then you then you think like, I'm going to do it with this person because this time i'll win. This time I can make it happen. I couldn't make it happen when I was a child, but this time I'll win. Except you won't win. It doesn't happen that way. The way you win is you let go of that, you grieve what you didn't get, and then you go find it in someone without trying to change them. So you're not trying to win anything.

It's already there. But another reason, another thing that happen is this couple comes to couple's therapy and the person says, I'm not showing up because the other persons so controlling. This person has tried to control everything. They're trying to set every rule, they're trying to manage every aspect of our lives, and there's no room for me and my thoughts and how I want things to go. And when I say I want this, they say, no, you're wrong, No, it can't be that way. It's my way, this is

the way this is. I'm the healthy person, you're the not healthy person. And that doesn't feel good either.

say or no impact or no involvement. One of this scenarios that came up in this conversation while we were preparing for this podcast was this couple. The woman earns more than the man, and she doesn't have an issue with it. She's very comfortable with it. She didn't care, she wasn't she that wasn't a big priority for it. It wasn't a deal breaker for her. But it's really triggering to him and he's uncomfortable with that. And so if the topic of money comes up or budgeting comes up,

he often tries to. Yeah, he gets very uncomfortable about it. It can make him, can make him angry, it can make him upset. She's trying to figure out how does she help him become more confident and comfortable and happy about who he is and not feel this pressure that he feels potentially coming from his family or his upbringing as well.

did you spend money on that? Right, And they're not really talking about how do we both feel about money? What was money like in our households when we grew up. What were the messages that we got around money. Some people got really mixed messages. You know, money is good, money is bad. We have money, we don't have money value judgments. It's okay to spend money on this but not on this, and so you bring all of that into your relationship and then the gender roles of course, right,

So what does that represent? What kind of family did you grow up in in terms of how they thought about gender and power and money, and how that changes with culture, with the kind of maybe egalitarian marriage that you want. Those are all conversations they need to have. Yeah, not about let's sit down and make a budget, but about all the questions that I was just bringing up.

was very very different. I started working very very young, My wife started working while she was at college and after and just as time grew in, our lifestyle change and things changed, there were so many conversations we had

to always reset as well. It wasn't just like, oh, we've solved it now, we don't talk about money anymore, and it's we've had to almost re evaluate and rethink that topic so many times, depending on how many changes there are, but I find that those are the questions that I find people avoiding, or when they do talk

about it, it's always a full blown argument. So it's like you said, it's either about budgeting if they talk about it in a healthy way, or like at least a practical way is probably a better word, or we don't talk about it because you're like so scared to mention it because when you do, it turns into a full blown argument, and now we're arguing about not even money, we're arguing about something else. I want to help people have the tools to start difficult conversations with people in

their life. It could be of mom, it could be a dad, it could be you know. I feel like all of us avoid We avoid discomfort in our lives, and uncomfortable conversations are one of the biggest ones. Whether it's when you're firing someone, when you're giving feedback to someone, when you're trying to be directed with someone, these are such challenging things to do. How do we sit in the discomfort or how do we prepare for uncomfortable conversations to help them go better.

is you start it with yourself. So before you even get to the other person, you want to be able to say to them, to say to yourself, I'm being really kind and I'm remembering their humanity, and I'm going to have this conversation in an open, generous, curious way. So I'm not here to set my agenda necessarily. I'm here to be curious about their experience so we together can come to some kind of understanding about each other

that we didn't have before. And I think that's the framework that you come into any hard conversation with.

talk a little bit about it. I'm curious to hear more about what money is, what it means to you, what it was like growing up. I want to share that with you, about what it means to me, what it was like for me growing up, and you could have a really beautiful conversation. The other thing is, if it's a romantic relationship, hold hands. It's really hard to argue. It actually calms your nervous systems. Just hold hands as

you're having the conversation. It's so lovely. It opens people up to be more vulnerable.

because we did something, you know, like unheard of. It was just because they had never been taught to talk about They've been having literally the same conversation or lack of conversation when you know one person would shut the other person out, usually the daughter shutting the mother out, and they just never talked about it in this other way. And I think so many people think, oh, we have

a problem and it's not fixable. Are so fixable. You can heal a lot of things, maybe not in exactly the way you want, but certainly to have more of a relationship than you were ever than you ever thought possible.

know when you're settling or you're not settling? Well, how do you know?

or the culture. Even so, I think that's an important question. I also think the question is are they you know, when we think about what compromises we have to make with another person, we don't tend to think about what compromises somebody has to make to be with us, which

is a really important point. It's not like it's not like, you know, I think people treat dating like shopping, like I want this, I'm going to go find this, and it's not like the clothes when you're shopping are to be like I don't think you're going to look good in that, or I'd rather be with someone who looks differently, like the clothes are not judging you, right. But the thing is like when you're going into a relationship with going back to the you know, we can't order up

people a la carte. They can't order up you a la carte either, And we have this weird notion in our culture that like love is loving all the annoying things about me too. No, people are not gonna they're going to love you even though you have these annoying things. But that doesn't mean, they're going to love the annoying things. So we have this weird idea that this unconditional love,

and it's just they misuse that term. So I think we have to remember that as we are thinking about this whole human being, this person is choosing us with all of our annoying things, our quirks, are maybe our past that we haven't really worked through, that we're still working through. And you know, we have this idea that you know, I'm shopping for someone. You're not shopping for someone. It's how do I feel with this person? That is the most important question you can ask. How do I

feel when I'm with this person? And if you feel you enjoy their company, you feel hurt? Or do you feel understood? You feel safe? You you're having fun, You're not settling. All the rest is just noise.

love because I do it all the time. Whenever I'm sitting there in my head and I'm thinking, God, I've made so many sacrifices for my wife, I've done this or that, I come up with a list of hers in my head and I'm like, oh, she's made so many,

Like it's such a great activity to do that. When I think about I often ask people to zoom out and say, you may think, like maybe someone sitting there going I do everything financially for a relationship, or I do everything physically for this relationship, like I get the groceries, I do the house cleaning, whatever it may be. I always ask people to zoom out and go look at

your life physically, financially, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Okay, if you're making all the sacrifices across all five of those, there's something really important to look at. But more often than not, when people zoom out, they go, oh, actually, you're right, Like I pick up the slack here and they pick up the slack there, and there's a bit of give and take.

watch how the job's actually done. Like, I'm so much more into an incremental approach to change as opposed to thinking that this big all in approach is going to suddenly deliver some miraculous reward. If anything, if you go slower, you learn more, and then when you do make the big jump, it will actually more likely be more successful.

this job anymore. But I don't know what else to do, So I'm going to do this other thing. But you're not even sure you want to do the other thing yet, So are you? Are you escaping or are you moving toward?

I can get curious about? Sure, I don't like the setup. I don't like my manager, but maybe there's something here that's actually going to benefit me in the future all of a sudden. I'm not saying that becomes the best job you've ever had, but it doesn't feel as painful

while you build the next step. Yes, whereas this desire to just rush out of pain or again pain is maybe a strong word, but rush out of a place that you want to escape from, you actually might fall into the same thing again in another way, which we again do in relationships as well.

in a way that feels good. Or maybe I was wrong and maybe there actually was something great here, but there was a problem that I wasn't willing to face in this relationship.

like a therapy session. And we always say that the work of most of the work of therapy happens outside the therapy room. So people think I'm gonna come to therapy, I'm gonna have all these insights and that's my therapy. No, you're gonna If you don't use what you learn in therapy and you don't put it into action during the week, then the insight is useless. So someone might say, oh, I got into that fight with my partner again, and now I understand why. And I'll say, well, that's great,

but did you do something different? Well no, but okay, well good first step understanding why, But now you need to do something different. So when you reflect every day during the week, then you say, what am I doing with this bit of insight? So the prompt will maybe inspire some kind of insight into your life, and then how do you noodle that around during the week and you can watch your progression because you've written it down.

And what I love about the doing a journal for a year is that you can look like three months ago I thought this, but look how I'm handling this situation now, and it just takes five minutes. A lot of people will wake up in the morning in journal just to clear their minds. Many of us will wake up in the first thing we do is we look at our phones and already we're stressed, and already we're thinking about Oh I didn't do this, or I'm behind already.

It's not a good way to start your day. I love taking five minutes in the morning to just write down so that then it's out there and I don't have to sit with it all day long. A lot of people also will do it right before bed, because you know how sometimes we'll just think all these thoughts before bed and it keeps you up at night and you can't sleep. You journal before bed, and now you feel like, oh, I'm really I'm all cleared out. I

feel good. So I think that journaling is really valuable, and I think it reminds me of something that we often say in relationships that it's easy to notice the person who gets angry in a relationship and harder to notice the person who smiles all the time. So when people say, like, oh, my partner's angry all the time, and it's like, well, because you're ignoring that person's holding

the anger for both of you. If you journal, you might notice if you're the person who smiles all the time, that maybe you have some anger too, or maybe you have trouble bringing something up. And if you're a really avoidant person, like the person who does smile all the time, it's a good thing to put it down in a journal because then you say, oh, wait, there are things that I want to bring up and let me figure

out what to do with them. Or if you're the person who's angry and is holding the anger for both of you, you might start to know notice through journaling, I'm not it's not my job. Why am I angry all the time? This person is not willing to have any of these conversations. This person stonewalling me. So you discover a lot about yourself and your patterns when you have this space that's you can be vulnerable in that no one's judging.

Where was I in my headspace? What was I worried about? And often I've found when I've gone and done that, you can actually see growth, yes, in the same way as having like a marker. And if you're not journaling every day, you kind of don't know whether you're moving forward or backward because you don't have something to think about. You just have your feeling in the moment. Whereas when you look back and you think, wow, five years ago,

I can't leave. I used to worry about that exam or that interview, or that whatever it may have been. In noun like, I wouldn't be worried about that at all. Things have changed. Yeah, So to me, it's a great way of monitoring and measuring growth.

So that's when you're kind of in denial in your journal, like, oh no, this isn't really happening, and you see yourself kind of justify or rationalize things that you know just are not right. And then contemplation is you know you need to make a change, but you're not ready yet. So now you're getting more real with yourself. That's usually when people come to therapy at the contemplation, but you can see it in the journal. Oh now I'm really

getting out of denial. And then there's preparation where you're sort of saying, how do I prepare to make this change? What steps do I need to take? Whether I want to leave this relationship or I want to get into a relationship and put myself out there more, or I want to you know, I want to go after some dream or I want to set a boundary, So how am I preparing for this? And then action is when you actually make the change, But that's not the last step.

The last step is maintenance, and that's the most important change. And that doesn't mean I have to maintain the change and be perfect. It means that I'm going to slip back like and shoot some ladders. Right, So it's like, yes I will. There'll be Oh I broke up with that person, but no, I called them. I didn't mean to call them. That doesn't mean you failed. That just means you're human. And so how can you show yourself

and you can do this in your journal? How can you write something to yourself that's very compassionate but also holding yourself accountable. So and how you can look in your journal about how do I talk to myself? You know, do I beat myself up all the time? Am I a bully to myself? Or can I be compassionate with myself? Because that will actually help me to be accountable. I can be more accountable when I'm kind to myself. So that doesn't mean oh, it's fine that you called him,

You just get back in the relationship with him. It means, oh, you were feeling sad or you were feeling lonely, and you called him because you were lonely. But maybe next time I'll call a friend maybe next time I'll take a walk. Maybe next time I will go to this meeting. You know, whatever you need to do, And then you're really being compassionate, and you have in your journal kind of this friend that's really kind to yourself, that knows you really well, and that knows what you need to do.

And it's right there on the page.

so kind with the time today. I want to ask you one last thing, and it's about what you just mentioned then, and I think it's breakups, and it's you know, I still find until this day that breakups seem to be the hardest relationship transition that people tend to go through, maybe apart from grief or maybe even similar. And I'd

love your thoughts on that. But because it is a kind of loss, I think that people feel there was one person from the audience that we were connected with that had a breakup, and they really they were together with this person for two years. They really thought this to the person that they were going to spend their life with. They really thought this was going in that direction. They felt that they actually had good compatibility, they were

good at talking about things. But then what felt like out of the blue to this person, They just felt that this person was like, I don't think this is going in that direction anymore, and then things withered away quickly. It's hard when you kind of you know, and this is probably what you get all the time. People don't feel a sense of closure. They don't really understand. The other person's not doing a good job explaining it and

doesn't want to or doesn't have the time. What are some of the steps that we need to take when we're kind of lost in that no person's land of thought, I had something, it doesn't exist anymore.

into maybe seeing the light that they can't see. You know. The anger is how could you have led me on for this amount of time? You're such a terrible person. You wasted all my time. You were lying to me this whole time when the person wasn't They probably truly

you know, thought this was going somewhere, you know. The bargaining is, well, what if you know you know, and the person tells you maybe why they're breaking up with you, like I don't think that we're compatible in this way, and then you try to become the thing, you know, like what if I did this, or I can be more of this, or we can do this, and they're like, no, that's not really the way this will get solved.

all these little quirks about me. You know, we have all these inside jokes, We have a shorthand you know, this person asks how my day is. I know. It's the dailiness of being with someone. So you lose that. It's very lonely. But then you also lose the future. You had built up a whole story about what your lives were going to be like in a year, five years, ten years, twenty years gone, and you have nothing to replace it with right now because you don't know what

it's going to look like yet. So the grief is real, and I think people try to downplay it. They're like, why are you so sad about this? He was a jerk or she was a jerk or whatever. It's like, I'm sad because I lost something very important to me. And your friends need to realize that instead of just demonizing the other person, they need to realize, like you lost something really valuable in your daily life, in the present, in the future, part of your past. All of that

is gone now, so that's really hard. I think the other part of them dealing with the grief is letting yourself feel it, because it's real, no matter what people tell you, it's real. And the other part is the story that you're telling yourself about it is really important. So you might be telling yourself a story of the other person's terrible that might feel good in the moment. It might be something like I'm bad, you know, like I'm not good enough. If I were only something else,

this person would love me more. I'm not lovable, or I'll never find anyone. Right, Those are not helpful stories because it's not true. It's you were not compatible with this person for whatever reason, even though you thought you were. If the other person doesn't feel you're the right person for them, you're automatically incompatible, right. You can't make it so that well, they just don't see it. So we aren't compatible because the other person doesn't want to be

with me. So many times i'll hear you know someone even without a breakup, like someone will be dating someone and the person isn't really invested in the relationship, maybe in the way that they would like them to, and the person sitting on my couch will state, but we're so compatible, we're so perfect for each other. That person just has intimacy issues and I could just change them. Even if the breakup was about you think the person had intimacy issues, doesn't really matter. The point is they

aren't able to be with you. So you are not compatible. And so that is I think very comforting to know, like we are just not compatible, even though it hurts a lot. We're not compatible, and I have to sit with the pain of I need to know that we were not compatible and that's not going to jade me in other relationships, and I think that's the important thing.

So many times we get into a new relationship after that and we punish the new person for something the old person did, right like the old the old person wasn't truthful with me. So I'm gonna like check your phone all the time. No, don't, don't like put someone in jail for a crime they didn't commit. So you got to really like know what are the wounds from this relationship? What am I learning from this? What does

this teach me? About me, about the other person, and then how do I move into a new relationship with hope and with caution and holding both hope and caution.

whether it's through your books. And if you've been listening or watching today, everyone, I hope that you go and grab a copy of Maybe you Should Talk to Someone, The journal fifty two Weekly Sessions to Transform Your Life by Lori Gottlieb, And as I said, you can subscribe to her podcast, and if you haven't read Maybe you Should Talk to Someone, make sure you go and grab that book as well. Laurie, thank you so much for

joining us on on purpose, Oh my pleasure. We got to spend this time together today and answer some of our audiences, questions and challenges. And I'm hoping that all of you who had yours answered, or maybe even if you didn't send something in, but you felt heard and you felt seen and you felt understood, because so much

of what we're all going through is so intertwined. And so thank you to everyone who is brave enough, courageous enough to share your stories and Lourie, thank you for answering them so expertly.