Welcome to she persisted I'm your host Sadie Saxton a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She persisted is the Teen Mental Health podcast made for teenagers by a team in each episode. I'll bring you authentic accessible and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental Wellness. You can expect evidence-based, Tina, proof resources, coping skills, including lots of DBT,
insights and education. In each piece of content, you consume, she persisted Offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle. While encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living. So let's Dive In. Hello. Hello, and welcome to. She persisted. I am so excited for today's episode. I mentioned on Instagram stories that this episode is like kind of late.
I got on a terrible schedule where I was releasing episodes like Thursday, Friday and Saturday and are up late day is Tuesday. So I took a couple of days off and held this episode until this week's that work back on schedule and it's a good one. So, I think it's well worth the wait. But before we get into this conversation with Liz and Molly about all things emotions, I wanted to give you a Midsummer check it catch up.
I'm starting to think about the fall semester and how I'm going to organize and plan and stay balanced. I definitely am. Going to make sure that my morning of my night routine are staying super consistent. Sleep is still a huge priority, really a lot more walking and saying consistent with working out so that I am still motivated and tired. When I go to bed, which is a huge thing for me. I'm really excited to get back to Philly. Get back into my routine.
See friends, get back into the schedule of school. It's been so nice to have a break, so I didn't Feel burnt out and overwhelmed through the whole summer but I'm also excited to get back into the rhythm of school and podcasting. And that structure, I've been doing a lot of reading of two books that I want to recommend to you. That I've read the summer that our mental health related in addition, I've also been reading lots of romance novel novel.
So if you have recommendations, DM, me, I want to hear them, but the mental health books are building a life worth living by Marsha, Linehan. It is her Memoir. So it's her entire life story. And Marsha Linehan is the woman that started Electrical behavioral therapy. And she actually started at because she herself struggled with suicidal, ideation emotional distress. All of that kind of stuff. And she spent some time in a really terrible mental hospital a really long time ago.
And from that, she really wanted to create a compassionate effective evidence-based treatment for patients, that were really struggling to find treatment to be effective. And so that's how DBT was born and it's such an amazing story. It's so inspiring and it's just so good. So if you are DBT fan, I highly recommend reading that because she puts the skills in the book. But it's also about her journey with spirituality and how she really wanted mindfulness to be
a part of DBT. And what her mental health, looks like when she was 18, 19, 20 and at the lowest of lows in the hospital and I'm leaving that starting to work in research, all of that kind of stuff. So really good. The second one I've mentioned it before, but Atomic habits everyone uses. It's in some way. And if you want to improve habits, or you just want to stay consistent or understand how to be more effective and creating habits.
I highly recommend. You read that, it's by James Clear. It's literally applicable to every aspect of life, whether you want to learn to play an instrument or be more consistent with working out or be better at
studying. All of these things, come down to habits and consistency and he breaks down the sides of habit building in a really easy to understand why there's lots of great Doats. And if yeah, if you are struggling to build habits, you want to see a change somewhere and let your life and your like, I don't really know how to do this. Highly recommend, I'm sure you've seen it on Tick Tock, but it is amazing. And I wanted to bring those up because we have authors on the
podcast today. We have Liz and Molly. The authors of big feelings how to be okay, when things are not. Okay. They're also the authors of the Wall Street Journal bestseller, no hard feelings. The secret power of embracing emotions at work. So for all of my book worms, myself included, these are three books that are applicable to any aspect of a life of Life
emotions. I mean maybe not the DPT one but emotions have it setting and then just learning about DBT Marsha because who doesn't love that? But yeah that's kind of how things have been going. I am thinking about doing more solo episodes on the podcast. So I would love to have your feedback on that. You want to listen to more solo episodes. What do you want to hear more of what? Topics, do you want me to dive into? Do you want more Q&A? Ask me, anything?
Advice tile episodes. Do you like these interviews? Let me know. And to wrap up this intro, you should follow on Instagram at at. She persisted podcast because I've been working on some merch for the podcast, and I'm very excited to share that with you soon. So, with that, Our guests today are Liz and Molly. They are the co-authors of no hard feelings and their second book.
Big feelings, how to be okay when things are not okay, which we really dive into in this interview, we discuss why the seven big feelings which are burnt out. Perfectionism comparison, uncertainty, anger, regret and despair are so difficult to navigate and tips to work through them. Why it's so important to identify the emotions, you're feeling tips to lean into the emotional experience to understand what your emotions
are trying to tell you. Recovering from suicidal ideation and what to say to someone in this headspace and lastly, any advice on supporting someone struggling with these feelings. So I do want to give a trigger warning. We do talk about suicidal thoughts and suicidal ideations a bit after, I would say the 35
minute mark, That's not accurate. 100% because I am going to add the ads in this intro and so if you listen to after the 35 minute, Mark, if you that is a trigger point for you, just be aware of that up until that totally fine. We talked about all these other. ER topics but I would cut it off around there after we talked about regret. So that is your point to stop listening.
If that is something that hits home for you, listen, Molly, do mention this in the episode, but their website is Liz and Molly.com allies, eand mmol/l IE.com, and their Instagram is the same. So at listen, Molly and Liz as a phenomenal illustrator, she is so talented with creating Graphics that accompany these really difficult to address topics. Like Burnout and overwhelm and
relationships and anxiety. So if you were looking for some amazing drawings, in your Instagram feed that are mental health-related, I highly recommend following her, and there's a ton of them in the book as well. So loved that so much, I always love when books have charts and graphs to explain things Atomic habits, does that, and it's great. So that's the intro for this
week. We're just going to dive in because this conversation is a great one and I'm so happy that listen Molly reached out and came in the podcast. So with that, make sure to subscribe. Is that you don't miss next week's episode. Thank you for listening and let's dive in. Thank you guys so much for joining me today and she persisted, I'm so excited to have you on the show and dive
into all things emotions. It's something I'm super passionate about and really doing the emotion education and understanding what happens when emotions arise, why they arise the functions that they're surveying and really just doing that education piece was a game-changer for me and navigating those big heavy emotion. So I'm so excited to bring this conversation to my audience. Thank you for having Be here, of course.
So before we get started, I would love for you guys to share with listeners just a little bit about their your book where they can get it. The process that would into writing that as a little bit of a foundation so that they know where they can dive into. So much more depth on this conversation, I can start and lose can jump in. So, we wrote this book, it's called Big feelings.
How to be okay? When things are not okay, it came out at the end of April and we had published our first book called know, Hard feelings, which is all about emotions at work and that came out in February 2019. And after we wrote that book, we realized actually there are some really hard feelings. We both went through really difficult moments in our lives, which we can talk more about and we wanted to understand how do you work through these big
feelings. You are really honest in the book that there's not like a magical checklist or a shortcut that you can indeed work through them. And so we share our stories, we share some of our readers stories and we talked, Experts, you can find it on Amazon, you can find it on Bookshop. Dot-org and we are Liz, and Molly mmol/l. IE. We are on Instagram at Liz and Molly and our website is Liz and Molly dot-coms. You can find the book there as
well, amazing. So you guys outline seven different emotions that can be especially difficult to navigate that you've learned both from your own experiences. And in all this research, you did for this book, I would love to kind of break those down and talk about why those Motion. Specifically can be so difficult difficult to navigate how you can be more effective and educated. When navigating those, I'd also touching on your own experiences
there. So, we started out with many more than 7, but we kind of came up. I think it was a list of maybe 10 to 12 initially. And again, this is based on Molly and my experiences just things that we had grappled with.
And then we started turning to readers who would read our first book, and our audience on Instagram, and people who read our newsletters Just to really serve a them and start talking to them about which of these also resonate with you because we wanted the book to be broadly useful and also keeping in mind Molly and I are two white women kind of both of them, California. So we just we wanted to make sure we were hearing from a range of people.
And what we found that was interesting was the, the seven that we ended up with which include things like burnout uncertainty, comparison, despair really seems to invoke the biggest responses from people and we've gotten questions around like comparison is not really an emotion.
That's necessarily a feeling but was interesting is when we asked people about Envy which is the emotion, that comparison creates they didn't have a strong of a response, but then when we said things like, well, do you compare yourself people?
There was this overwhelming outpouring of like yes, this is I struggle with this so much so think it speaks to how often we In such an emotion phobic society that even if we can identify the behavior that we are engaging and we still are a little removed from the emotion that that behavior leads us to
feel. So we really wanted to meet people where they were, which is also why we chose words like perfectionism uncertainty, as opposed to, you know, fear of failure or anxiety, which are truly the emotion. So that's a little behind why we ended up with those seven that are in the book. Yeah I think it's really interesting and even just identifying In those at face value, what you're experiencing can be really powerful.
I think what you're talking about with people having that really emotional response, when you name, what they're experiencing shows, how effective that can be and becoming in touch with the emotion when you're trying to suppress and avoid and not totally address what you're navigating. And I remember at many points, during my mental health Journey, what I was working on was just acknowledging, like, what emotion was coming up and trying to look internally being like, okay.
Is this like apprehension or is this anxiety? And Really getting very specific. Because once you know what you're actually experiencing, it's a lot easy to address it and work through it. Starting off. I think with burnout as a great one that I think a lot of people are experiencing right now. We are sort of like, still in this weird limbo period with covid, burn out with something that many, many people have experienced. Why is that so difficult to
emotionally navigate? And why is that one of the things that you chose to highlight or not? Is something we hear about all the time and yet it can be really difficult. To recognize in ourselves. The reason for that is that a dangerous aspect of burnout is that at affects our own self-awareness so it can actually feel really good to be on the verge of burnout.
Like I'm getting things done, I'm crossing things off my list, you know, in the context of being at school you're like okay I'm in finals but everyone else is in finals. We're all in it together. And it's only, you know, after we get sick or after we come up for air or something else gets added on to our plate that we really hit that Wall and we lose
the adrenaline. And, you know, I remember this after, you know, periods of burnout, especially in school where I was, so glad to have something like a summer break, but we need that. If we don't have that and we don't say, okay, I'm going to give myself some time after finals and go directly into a really intense job. We end up not being able to actually like let the stress out of our system. So there's there's research that shows. It's really important to let
that stress. Cycle fully happen. It's natural for us to go through periods of stress, but we need to then return to that rest and digest part of the cycle. And a lot of times, we force ourselves to skip that. So, the number one thing you can do is look out for the early warning signs and the one that I'll share first because I think it really helps. People think about this in a new way, is sometimes it can feel like you would like to get sick, not like covid sick, but just
like have a cold. So you are forced to shut down Because it's so hard to force yourself to take a break and when you're in a place where you're like, wanting to be sick, that's not super healthy. But some of the other things are that you feel that everything is overwhelming, even things like going to the grocery store, you find people really irritating. You're saying yes, to things that you should be saying no to.
And so if we don't recognize these early warning signs, and they're hard to recognize, right? Because it's not, you know, they're not things that we have to recognize. That's when we Get in trouble. And we spoke with somebody who is an expert on helping people
recover from burnout. And one of the things that he shared was he said sometimes, life Taps you on the shoulder with a feather and sometimes it runs you over with the truck and we need to learn to listen to it when Taps you on the shoulder with a feather. So that's that's part of something that that Liz and I have both worked on getting better at. I think we still, it's still really difficult and we both have gone through periods of
burnout. Yeah. Elizabeth you mentioned another one of the difficult emotions of sorts to work through his perfectionism and I think that is something that really goes hand in hand with with burnout and I've noticed from my own experience, my friends and peers that do have those perfectionistic. Tendencies are the ones that have voiced feeling burnout and being more prone to that towards the end of the semester, the end of the year during a stressful period.
What are what's your advice? They're like, is the the goal to become on the other end of the spectrum? Like a Buddha, not be a perfectionist. Stories it just like coping through that emotion, giving yourself more grace. What's your advice? Yes, I think it's really important for us to clarify that a lot of people who are perfectionist, don't identify as perfectionist because they think they're so far from perfect. That there's no way that this could describe them and
perfectionism. Sometimes people have a hard time distinguishing between perfectionism and being a healthy striver. So healthy striving is like I want to get 100% on this final. All I got a 96 percent, I feel really good about that perfectionism is I got a 96 percent and I'm going to beat myself up for that one question, I got wrong and I'm going to, like, just obsessed over it and feel terrible about myself. So, perfectionism is really
about a fear of failure. It's not, it's actually not moving towards quote-unquote Perfection. Because that's like, if I asked you what your perfect day is, it would probably be different than what my perfect day is. So it's very subjective. So I think I think the first thing is really to understand that perfectionism is not helping you move towards your goals. It's actually holding you back because it makes you so anxious and Afraid. And it's this like scarcity
mindset. Where you think this is the only opportunity I'll ever have. I need to do this, I need to keep pushing myself and that's just not the way life works. So if you could, as you said, give yourself more grace, give yourself the brakes that you need. You'll actually be more successful. Awful in the long run and it is some of it takes this belief that there will be cool opportunities for you beyond the one that's currently in front of you.
And then a very specific thing that I found really helpful is starting to identify when you find yourself using the words always and never. So I like so often will find myself thinking, you know, a good manager. Good employee is never late to a meeting or Always has the answers and the world is just not. That's those extremes are not helpful, like a good student doesn't always get 100% adjust, you know? Like sometimes I have a bad day, sometimes they just don't do
well on the exam. So moving away from seeing the world and these like black-and-white extremes and instead saying, I'm going to give myself Grace. I did the best I can, there's still opportunities for me to improve but this one moment doesn't Define my holes. Self worth it doesn't Define who I am forever. Yeah, comparison. I feel like that's one of the biggest Buzz words right now. The number of times I've seen comparison is the thief of Joy on my Instagram feed this week.
I couldn't even tell you, but it's me that so many of us struggle with and I think that is partially our society. It's partially like that perfectionist mindset that we do. Many of us hold ourselves to and it is so difficult to work through because it does bring out all these other emotions whether it's like jealousy or anger sadness, A skilled. All of these things can come from jealousy. And we we did touch help touch on how it brings up and me as well.
But why is comparison something that is so difficult to work through and to move away from comparison is a little bit hard wired into us. So I think we can start there. It's we think that oh you know we'll get off social media and we'll be free of comparison. But unless you're living, you know, Off the Grid you will always be able to be in contact with someone whether you're getting a text message.
Message from someone or running it into them at the store or seeing them online and your class. And so we we can't say to ourselves. The goal is to just stop comparison and actually comparison helps us figure out who we are so it can be helpful to us. We're not the only species who
are Guided by comparison. There's really interesting research with monkeys where if the monkeys are together and they're getting fed and one monkey gets a better piece of food than the other, the others are really unhappy.
So this is this is really hard hardwired, so a couple things There is this idea that we should compare ourselves less to other people and we want to challenge that and say actually you should compare yourself more but thinking, but think more broadly about who that group is, who you are comparing yourself to. So a lot of times we were only engaging in upwards comparison, which is comparing ourselves to people who we believe are better or have something better than us
in some way and we're not comparing ourselves to people who don't have what we have. There's also something about, you know, Listening to what those those triggers are. So if we say I'm, you know, I shouldn't be feeling jealous. I shouldn't be feeling envious of this person. When we shut that down. We're actually not learning from whatever that is, which can help us.
Make decisions. So we have the example in the book, Gretchen Rubin who is the author of a book called The Happiness Project. She was a lawyer. She went to law school. And then after she went to law school, she had a really prestigious career she clerked for the Supreme Court, and then she was looking through her law schools. No magazine one day and she realized that the people who she was most envious of were not lawyers, they were writers. They were lawyers who became
writers. And so, she said that's really interesting. I think I should become a writer and if she had to shut that down and said, I shouldn't be thinking that, you know, I need to move on to wouldn't have gotten that. So, asking yourself, what do they have? That makes me feel less than is there a way that I can get that? And maybe it's not that exact thing. Maybe it's telling yourself.
Oh, there's a piece of that, that I that I want and Liz Liz has a great story up at this from her own career that I'll let her share. Yeah, I had a friend who are like, a friend of a friend who got a promotion and she start. I think she started managing, like, 200 people this enormous department, and I Molly, and I are both proud introverts, but I just like hate being in back-to-back meetings. It's very stressful to me. It's just not my ideal day.
The idea. Having 200 people and their families depend on me is incredibly anxiety-inducing and so it's just like I've never aspired to like lead 200 people and yet, when I heard about this promotion, I was I was just so jealous and I didn't understand where that was coming from because I was like, this is I know this is not who I want to be like, do I know myself at all? Like should I change my whole career? It's good. It's like my knot on each other,
right? And I went to bed that night, this is my advice to everyone is like just sleep on it, just go to bed, see how you feel in the morning? And when I woke up the next morning, I realized that. No, I didn't want that job. But I did feel kind of stagnant in my own career and I just, I kind of wanted to have something exciting to tell the world that was happening to me.
And so what that allowed me to do was figure out okay, like what in my life, could I have a conversation with my manager about a new exciting? Should I try to push myself to learn something new? Just how can I put some more excitement into my own life and feel like I'm making progress? But I don't like my personality has not changed and I certainly don't need to frantically start applying to these like jobs that I will passionately hate if I actually got them.
Yeah. No I think that's interesting. And I think I'm so I'm very indecisive but once I also like to make decisions so I'm like I want to be in control but I don't really always know what I want and so it makes me Gov like the age-old question of like, okay, what are we doing for dinner, like which restaurant you want to go to?
And one of my friends and I were talking about this like a week ago and she was like, okay we're going to make the decision and then if you have an emotion about it you know what you want. And it's the best trick because you immediately Rod like okay this is fine or you beg. No I actually don't want so like looping someone and be like okay make this decision for me and then I'm going to see how I feel about.
It can be really helpful in getting in touch with those emotions that can come with comparison but they're kind of hard to like feel out. Exactly what they are. This week's episode is brought to you by saqqara, saqqara is a nutrition company that focuses on overall, Wellness, starting with what you eat. They offer organic plant-based, gluten-free non-GMO, all of the things meal, delivery service to
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So it's very similar to this restaurant on certain, see unknown. Let's dive into that uncertainty is a huge thing and I think it's one of what I could identify as one of the most uncomfortable emotions that I feel and like internally, like I like being in control being out of control is something that is very anxiety-provoking. Why is uncertainty? So difficult for people to deal with and how have you guys recommended that people navigate
that? Yeah. So, Humans are hard-wired to hate uncertainty, like there's research that shows we would rather know that something bad is going to happen tomorrow at 1 p.m. that have like a maybe that they may be happen, even though that's sort of a better scenario. Yeah. So one of the things that you just touched on is we often in the face of uncertainty, we feel like we want to control
everything. So we start doing what psychologists call anxious fixing and this was like my life for Once before I figured out what was going on and I would wake up and feel just anxiety about the future and I would just do stuff. I would vacuum the floor, I would do the dishwasher I would, whatever like do my email, I would respond to every message on every social media platform and just like work myself into this frenzy because I could
control everything. And at the end of the day, what I found was that I had done all this stuff but I didn't feel better. I felt worse actually felt burnt out and part of That was because I had worked myself into exhaustion without ever addressing the source of my anxiety. So, I think it's really important to kind of suffer through the moment of realizing that you cannot control the future.
And that it's like, okay, I'm going to sit with this anxiety instead of running myself into the ground and I'm going to really try to figure out like what am I actually afraid of happening because often we just push that aside and aside but when we really could confront our fears, we can start to
figure out a path forward. We can sometimes they don't even seem like they're that scary but it allows us to at least start to take actions that help us address those needs as opposed to like, you know, organizing your bookshelf 15 times which is not really good to put for you and it feels good in the moment.
And then one last thing that I'll share, I think it's such a powerful phrase that has been really comforting to me over the past couple of years is I'm a person learning to so let's say that you are taking a new class or something. Instead of saying like I need to know everything, I have to get an A I have to have a good answer to every question. Just like I'm a person learning to do well in this class or to
participate in conversations. I'm a person learning to make new friends because it allows you to give yourself more grace and see yourself as someone who can improve. Who should just be open? A feedback as opposed to this like very perfectionist mindset of I need to have everything figured out right now which is just a completely unrealistic
expectation to set for yourself. Yeah I think that's so true and I love what you mentioned about sitting with like the in certainty because until you accept that the uncertainty is happening and then kind of unpack like why that's so scary. You're like, forcing yourself to be uncertain about the uncertainty. And then you're, yeah, it's so much Worse. There's this skill in DBT, dialectical behavioral therapy called Copa had, and it's where you like, imagine the worst case possible scenario.
And you like fully walkthrough and mentally cope through and give yourself a plan for how you're going to navigate that. And it's one of my favorite things to share in the podcast. Because if you are uncertain about like college admissions, for example, and you're like, okay worst-case scenario, I don't get in anywhere. It's like okay, you go to Community College, you can work really hard. Transfer to an amazing school and how are you going to deal
with opening? Those rejection, letters? What emotions are going to come up? How are you going to cope with it the night of the day after? What stops you going to take? And you're no longer uncertain about how things are going to proceed. And so it's really an amazing skill and it's something that can be so helpful, navigating that uncertainty, because you take the power away from the unknown. And yeah, I'm probably not going to get into no colleges.
You're probably not going to have to go down that route but Does happen, you know exactly how you're going to deal with it? Hmm, I love that. And I think, you know, say to you, you do such a great job, talking about this and I know you have other episodes on your podcast for you, you do share your story of, you know, having anxiety and those tools are so, so helpful, another tool I want to share is just having an understanding of your own
tolerance for uncertainty. So many people have actually different tolerances for uncertainty. And I think sometimes our society Arises people who are like I can tolerate any amount of uncertainty. My husband, who I met in college, you know, he loves variety and he's dying. He's never wants to know what's happening in the future, and I'm a little bit different on that Spectrum, but we have an assessment on our website and in our book and they can help you understand your own uncertainty
tolerance profile. But I think it's okay to say to yourself. You know, I'm dealing with a lot of uncertainty. Are there ways that I can add more Certainty into my life because that is something that I value. And even you know, if you're waiting for colleges to get back to your you're applying to jobs, you know, these moments where you can't add, you know, necessarily you can't know what's going to happen. Maybe there are other ways to add more certainty in your life
by saying. Okay, I'm gonna like eat the same thing for breakfast every morning because that's going to be a grounding moment in my day when everything else is up in the air. And also just to know that like how much uncertainty you want can change over the course of your life. So so I remember in high school it was like I just really wanted to know you know what my future look like and I wanted that certainty.
Where was he going to college? What was I going to do with my life be like what was I gonna end up with?
You know it's like you want answers to all these questions and then I feel like in your 20s, there's a period where you're like, I don't want to know what I'm going to do for the rest of my life, because I want to do everything and I don't want to shut down all these possibilities and then, you know, now, Liz and I are in our 30s and it's like, well, it is sort of nice to have some some certainty. Because you're having to set up and pay for your retirement and
all these things. So it will shift and there's going to be moments when you want more on less certainty. Yeah. I think that's such a great reminder and it's something that is really helpful to be mindful of because again, you can go into these situations and know like what your point is where you're like. Okay, I got to cope with this emotion before it gets any bigger, and that's different for everyone. I think another emotion that's also very subjective and can be
so all over the place. Depending on who you are and the situation you're in is anger and it's I a lot of the times. Do you think that's like the biggest emotion? Because it's a lot of the times an external motion. It's one, you see in Conflict. It's when you see in interactions with other people, where is like comparison. It's very internal burn out a lot of the times you don't have like a physical representation of that.
Whereas anger, we see a lot, especially and teens and younger people and in adults as well, why is that? Such an like overwhelming Experience. I know there's so many evolutionary reasons for that. But what are your guys thoughts there? Yeah, so I mean, anger is again, this is a hardwired emotion and it does help us advocate for things that we care about.
So I think we're taught that anger is just like, you know, oh, I'm frustrated at someone else, but there's a reason that you're frustrated about someone else in your having a biological reaction. So where it's like something has been violated. Either you have been violated or something that you really care about has been violated and there are, I believe secondary emotion.
Yes, exactly, exactly. So, there's probably even some fear there, you know, underneath that anger, there's fear of something being taken away or something bad happening when you're in the moment with anger, is really important to give yourself a little bit of space to identify what those deeper May emotions are, which usually means not like immediately.
Acting. And so you can say something like I'm having a strong reaction right now and I need to take some time before I respond to you, but it is really important to follow up with the person to come back to the maybe that's ten minutes later, maybe it's the next day and say, you know, let me talk to you about what was going on there, why? I was feeling angry but but talking about it in a way that's
not getting emotional. So we need to learn how to talk about our emotions without yelling or getting emotional about them, which is like lengthening that time between the the Sure. And the response but for for many women and people identifying as women we have been socialized to say, okay, I'm just going to suppress that and I'm not going to come back to that because that's not an emotion that I'm supposed to feel.
But we look again, we lose we lose out on all that data about there was something that felt violated and that's something that we need to pay attention to. I think there's also, you know, sometimes we feel like we want to vent about something and that's a good way to deal with
the anger. It's like, oh, I'm so angry At this person because she did this and you don't tell the person directly but then you go off to another friend and you like vent about it and sometimes hunting can make us feel better. But often it just leads to sort of what the chronic rehashing of the situation without actually changing the situation because you're not talking to the person directly about it. And it can be difficult for the the other person to just listen
to you vent. I mean, that's an emotionally, that's emotional laborers, listening to someone, I'll spend. And so instead of venting We like to say, you know, how can you go back to the person of the situation that caused the anger and try to deal with the root cause of that? And again, that anger is going to be fuel for you to go do that. It's like, it doesn't feel good, but it's telling you something needs to change. Yeah, yeah.
I think it's also, it's, you know, there's I found myself in situations to wear first. I think it's just to emphasize Molly's Point. Like, it's so important to recognize your anger. I think a lot like a lot of people we I was like, oh, I just don't get angry and then we would talk them that scenarios and they would be like, oh yeah, that was a violation or you bring right. They listen to them this for anchoring. Yeah. Totally.
This every single day, but they just don't want to self-identify as an angry person. Because again, it's such a stigmatized emotion, especially for women or people identify as
women. And so, I think it's just like, just letting yourself be okay with that feeling and sitting with it and then also, you know, unfortunately there There are going to be circumstances where it's actually not the best thing for you to go talk to that person directly, or you have talked to them, and they just don't care and that's sort of like a terrible but realistic part of life. And so, then the question is, like, what do I need for myself
in this moment? And maybe it's, I just need to draw a boundary around this person, so I think it's also important to be out kind of recognized If you try to make things better and they don't get better and you find yourself, still angry seeing like ways to indirectly meet the need that you have. And again, that might be like, putting yourself in a different situation cutting someone out for a while. At least I think those are really important steps to to have to like just set those
boundaries for yourself. Yeah. The the Common Thread that I think we keep coming back to is that like these emotions are all trying to tell you something like with anger. It's that there there is that Primary Emotion that is secondarily making you angry like there's that need to change something whether there is fear underneath whether it's insecurity or sadness. Anger is trying to get you to change the situation comparison. You feel again that you wish something was different
uncertainty. There's a fear that you're really worried about potentially happening. It's we I feel like we forget that that emotions are trying to tell us things like we just It's part of Being Human, but they really do serve a purpose and if we listen to them, it can be really effective. And it can also be a lot less uncomfortable to experience them. Yeah under prison yeah the second-to-last emotion experience that you guys. Outline is Regret.
I feel like it's one of those that really goes hand in hand with rumination a lot of the times. And I is that one of the reasons why it's such an uncomfortable motion to experience. Or are there other things that came into play? When you guys were researching and exploring regret? Yeah, regret is extremely painful especially in the scenarios where you can't change the situation, right? So there's like I regret kind of being rude to my husband or whatever, but then you know,
there's like a 99.9% chance. I can just apologize and make it better but there's like I regret not telling my loved one that I lost something and I'd there just no way to fix that. And so I think it can be this like, extremely painful. Ocean, which is also why we often try to run from it. And it's interesting to watch those, you know, I think we were all familiar with the like hashtag.
No. Regrets live a life of No Regrets. And it's important to say you will have regrets because you can only live one life. So if you let's say you're choosing between two amazing colleges, it's totally normal. You have to pick one and then you might think from time to time. Like, what if I gone to the other one, especially like on days, when You're struggling or when things aren't so great.
So just the fact that we have to pick a path for ourselves means, you're going to have regret, they're not inherently bad and so even though they're painful they also really helped us make meeting in the future. So for example, I share a story in the book where my grandma died when I was in my 20s and my parents are immigrants. And so I just went to my grandma's house, a lot growing up and it was kind of this connection to the Extended family that I didn't know that.
Well, I'm the only one in the US and when she died, my mom asked me if I would go with her to clean out my grandma's house and kind of like help sell it. And I don't know, I just like didn't go. I was like I can't get on an international flight right now. I have so much going on at work and that is like thinking about my mom alone and that house is like horrendous for me. Like I just feel so much shame
for having made that decision. Yeah, but sitting with that and realizing how much I regretted it a year ago. My dad was having heart problems. I just dropped everything and immediately went home because I was like, I never, ever want to regret putting work over family again. And so, I wish that I had made a different decision, right? Like I wish that I hadn't learned this painful lesson and yet it really does. There's also anger in there at myself, like it does give me the
strength. Now, when the people I love need me, I'm just This is the priority. This is what I will always pick because I don't want to experience that regret again. One, one thing I want to share about regret is that I think sometimes we blame ourselves because we think why didn't I make a different decision than?
And for the most part we made the best decision that we could there are times when we talk in the book about different types of regret and sometimes we do something called self-sabotage regret which is where we know in the moment that we shouldn't be making this decision, but we do anyways. But for the most part, it's sort of a like you didn't know in
some way. And now you do, you know, I Think about this, we've talked about choosing colleges a couple times on this and I think, you know, I am very happy with the decision that I made. I met my husband in college. I've met many wonderful friends. I think in many ways though, choosing to go to college on a on the different coasts from where I grew up, made my life, more complicated, it meant that I was further away from my family.
I stayed further away from my family and I, you know, my life is more complicated than it would be. If I had just never left my home City and I was talking to my
sister about that. One day and she said but you like you know you wouldn't be you if you hadn't made that decision and like you know, you made that decision because you wanted adventure and you wanted something different and so like, you know, that was a decision that you made it 17, that was the best decision for you, then and of course, you could have a
different life. But it's like reminding yourself that, you know, you weren't trying to, to cause yourself pain, or make things more complicated, you are. Weighing the costs and the benefits and you are making the best decision in the moment. And No, 10 years later you're going to see things that you didn't see then that can be helpful to to then decide. You know what do you want to do
about it now? So you know tool is this point I can see I can look at that regret and say well maybe I want to live closer to my family now and I did two years ago. I moved to be closer to my family. Maybe I want to simplify my life in ways that I can now rather than saying you know, I never should have gone to school and on the opposite Coast for my family because there's no way that I can change that. Yeah, it's interesting.
Resting and I really like that. You highlighted how you can get a motion. Allows you to understand really where your values and priorities lie and make decisions going forward. But it's also I think a really painful emotion because while anger is urging you to make a decision to decrease the emotional intensity that you're currently feeling with regret, you're having an emotion that something about something that's already happened. Like you can't change that experience.
You can't change the decision that you've made and with that comes a lot of helplessness and That's something that's really difficult and I think that makes regret and guilt. So, so painful and really overwhelming because you do have that helplessness that uncertainty which I think a lot of the times going right into the next emotion, you guys outlined can lead to despair because you're like, what do I do? How can I move forward?
I just you you again are really in that like helpless victim had space with a lot of the times, is kind of where you you need to sit for a bit before moving forward to Molly, I know you. Mentioned in the book and also when we were talking before this recording about your experiences with Despair and I think a lot of the times it goes hand-in-hand with experiencing depression and so I'd love to hear your experience there and the Insight that you gained from.
Navigating that yes, I'm happy to share and I will give a little warning. I'm going to talk about Suicidal Thoughts. So despair is actually the most recently defined emotion that we talk about in the book. It was not clinically defined until 2020 out. Really and the there seven indicators, it's feeling hopeless, having low self-esteem feeling, unloved, whirring frequently, loneliness helplessness, and feeling sorry
for oneself. And some of those indicators do overlap with the diagnostic criteria for major depression or generalized, anxiety disorder. But the last three so loneliness, helplessness feeling, sorry for oneself. Those are not symptoms of any other specific psychiatric Disorder. So in other words just bear it.
Volvo's feeling depressed and anxious but piling on feeling hopeless and unloved and helpless, and sorry for yourself and that really pushes it over into the intensity of Despair and fall of 2019. If I had looked at that list, if that list had existed, which it didn't, I would have checked off all seven of those indicators and you know what got me there. I had, you know, I had no history of depression. I was 32 at the time and I was a pretty upbeat person and I lot
of things happen. I had been dealing. With chronic pain for months, I had an experimental procedure done that made the pain worse. Doctors didn't believe that I was in pain. I just moved from New York to LA. I was feeling really lonely and no friends, my husband and I were ready to start trying to have a kid but my period of gone away because of stress. So it was possible to get pregnant and I wasn't sleeping at all. And I just I said I can't go on
my life is too painful. I don't want to keep living. I didn't particularly want to kill myself but I just really didn't want to be alive anymore. And those thoughts were extremely scary because I had no idea what to do with them. I knew that sharing them with other people. I thought would be really dangerous because I, you know, I never discuss these things with other people.
And and what I what I wanted was more stories of people who had had suicidal thoughts and had worked through them because I think there's a lot of stories that we hear about in the media of people having suicidal thoughts and acting on them and I'm glad that those stories exist. Because it's really important to share those as well as painful
as they are. But I think, you know, there's there needs to be more stories of people having these thoughts and being able eventually to go through periods where they don't have those thoughts anymore or they don't have those thoughts as frequently. So they're not disrupting their
lives as much as they were. And it's difficult for me to share this, you know, especially thinking about, you know, like my cousins hearing, you know this story but for me working through It was really about finding, the right medication, which was helpful meeting with a therapist I've met with a
therapist, like twice a week. I mean, I really needed to talk to someone that that much and then slowly opening up to my husband and my friends about what I was feeling and having them be able to say like, okay, you know, we hear that, those are scary emotions but we're here for you and, you know, that's okay. It's okay. That you're having those thoughts, it's not okay that you act on those thoughts, but it's okay. They were having those thoughts and it was a very slow.
Process. And I talked about this in the book it started with with really like chunking time and this is true for a lot of the emotions in the book like all you have to do is get through the now so it wasn't even about getting through the day. It was like okay it's 4 p.m. I can go to bed at eight pm. Can I get through the next four hours? Yes, I can be awake for another four hours and then slowly starting to do things again. So there were days and weeks where I like you know I couldn't
do anything. I just didn't want to get out of bed and then it was like, Okay. You know, I went to the drugstore and previous version of Molly, would be like, okay, that's all you did today. You went to the drugstore like compared to what you used to be able to do. It was like no. Like that's a very small thing that I did and I did go to the drugstore and collecting those things over time and it's falling into despair. Feels like falling into a bottomless pit.
And it's like, well, how deep am I going to go? I have no idea how deep I'm going to go and that's really scary coming out of it is like throwing.
It's a climbing a wall and it's like throwing a pick against the All and it's like, maybe not that pot high above you, but it's one pic and then, like, slowly and slowly working your way up. And for me, the thoughts, then, you know, went from being like, multiple times a day to, you know, once a day then to, once a week and, you know, they just, it's very, very slowly got better over time. Yeah. This week's episode is sponsored
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You persist it. Again, that is teen counseling.com. She persisted to find a therapist today. I remember a lot of the same experiences and in the same process of working out of, or working to get out of that pit of despair and suicidality. And it's something that's very difficult to do because you've almost labeled that as your go-to kill or alternative. Like I remember being in the headspace where it was like, everything sucks. But there's always this option.
This is always either Behavior. I could engage in, or a mental spot that I can sit in and get some kind of relief emotionally. And so, it was my go-to way to relieve the distress that I was experiencing. Whether that was depression anxiety, these other large emotions, and I had to get to a point after slowly starting to like decrease the Intensity and frequency of those Suicidal Thoughts of being like, okay.
But this is no longer an option like yes for a while I survived by having this as the plan B. This was on the black back burner. This is the only way I was making it through these intense feelings. But now I'm at a point where that can't be an option because I have to get to the point where I my life worth living was not having suicide be on the back burner that's not wasn't the end goal, that's not where I wanted to be and so at some point I just had to kind of make that decision.
And allow myself to explore other routes of coping, whether it was a distraction or asking for help or venting or talking through things and taking away that safety blanket that for so long had allowed me to to work through the distress that had Arisen. Mmm Sadie. That's such a good way of describing it that that so true that safety blanket. Because it's like, yeah, it's
like, it's a learned habit. And it's like a safe space, not a safe space but it's a comforting space for your mind to go to When things are going bad and you're just like, well, you know, I could always not be here and it does it takes a while and it, you know, the interesting thing is like there's not a clear Line in the Sand where it's like suddenly you don't feel like that anymore and I think when you're in that you want that because you're just like these thoughts are so
bad. I either don't want to you know, I just don't want to be here anymore. So I'm not thinking them or just want to be out of this completely because this is just so hard. It's those hats are so distracting. Because you have them, you're like, okay. Well, you know, at least I could do this and then you're like, but then I'm having these thoughts again and what is that
telling me about it? And it really is, it's a slow process and it it doesn't happen overnight, but you are right that eventually, you realize, oh, I haven't had those thoughts in a while and then sometimes they do come back. I think, once you my therapist, put it as, like, looking over the edge and deciding that actually, you don't want to go there, but it's okay. Like sometimes we do have to look over the edge and even today, you know, it's not that I
never have. Thoughts? But I have those thoughts and I say, huh? Like that's interesting because that no longer feels as appealing. I know that that's there because I've gone there and, you know, I've made my made myself think about that as an option, which I hadn't done for the first 32 years of my life. But you're slowly slowly slowly, you do make your life better to the point where that doesn't feel like the automatic comforting.
Place your dough and you're like no I do want to be here. It's like your life. If is no longer a place that you want to leave, it's at the place where you want to stay. And so it's like first navigating those thoughts because the thoughts are making your life worse and then it's creating a life that discourages the thoughts because you really do enjoy it. And it allows you to feel better and creating that life may not be going back to the life that
you have previously. Yeah, so I think that's another thing. We were sort of like, well I just want to get back to like before I had these thoughts will most likely your life is going to Look pretty different than it was before for a good reason because whatever was happening there wasn't working and it just led to the despair. Yeah, so it does require re-crafting your life and for
some of that it's acceptance. So I had to go through a journey of just accepting some of the pain or how long it was going to take in physical therapy to work through the pain even though that. But but I did get there and so rebuilding an acceptance means that that that life after that is is going to look different. So when someone comes to you, with these really big overwhelming things, whether it's struggling with suicidality, whether it's struggling with despair burnout comparison.
How do you guys recommend that people respond? Is it validating? Is it just creating space? I think a lot of us just want to problem solve and throw advice at it. What is your guys's advice there? How through the research that you did for your book? How would you recommend that people support others who are navigating these really tough emotions? Yeah, I think I want to call out something when it comes to despair.
That I actually learned from Molly of all we were writing this book together which was she shared a story where someone said their therapist and Molly correct me. If I'm getting this wrong just said to them. Like if you were gone I would miss you and I think that's just like such a knife to your point. I think we often try to jump to problem solving or there's often this tendency to be like I'm going to fix this, you know, like your life, isn't that bad?
Like look at this. Like look at the bright side. Your you have all. These Privileges and what we don't realize that that does is like really just minimizes someone's emotions. And so I think the biggest thing is just like creating space for them and saying like I hear you I acknowledge you like I love you, I'm here for you. If you did something really drastic I would miss you. I think just like that has stuck with me for a long time and then
this. So when I was, when my father-in-law was dying, I also found that a lot of people that I knew loved me and cared about me, didn't know how to show up for me and I just didn't have, like, I had no energy to help them show up for me, and so they would kind of like, send me a text and be like, let me know if you need anything and I just like I do I do not have the time to figure out like what I need from you right now and then one of my friends who had gone
through something really similar sent me this text, it was like, Hey I'm thinking of you here are Oh three things. You just text me 1 2 or 3 and I will do them for you one. I will get you food at your apartment too. You can call me and I'll pick up the phone right away and I will
just listen and three. I will like send you something to distract you like a funny joke and like whenever you need me to, as soon as I can, I will try to respond with these things and I thought that like she just got it. Like she just totally understood that.
I didn't have the capacity to come up with those things, but it was just like I don't even think I ended up texting her that much, but it just like knowing sometimes at night, when I couldn't sleep that like I had someone to text 22 that she would like immediately respond made me feel so much better and I think it was just the, like, really trying to see it from my perspective and not, it wasn't the fixing. It was just like, I'm just going to be here for you.
Here are three ways for me to do that. That you don't have to call, you don't have to like creatively come up with a full way for me to show up for you. I found was like, so, so helpful. And then, yeah, I'll hand it to Molly because I think she also has great advice here. I think checking in constantly.
So I had a friend who, when I opened up to her, you know, I said, I'm feeling like, I don't want to live anymore and she then, you know, she was still on the phone with me, but then she texted me every day should just end. It wasn't didn't require response, but it's just like, you know, checking in, she would tell me something about what was
going on with her. Or, you know, it was really thoughtful and its people who don't always expect who call and check in, and it doesn't need to be a big thing. But it really His help in these moments. Yeah, I really like what both you guys highlighted where it's like, not necessarily expecting the response or the reciprocation from the person. I remember my grandmother had pancreatic cancer and she got into remission and really did. The did the full circle thing recovered?
But when she was initially going through chemo and have the Whipple all of her neighbors and friends, and family members were like dropping off meals and writing letters and texting and calling. And I remember her saying years after the fact that that was so exhausting and almost the opposite of what was helpful because they would drop off a meal and the person was like, oh this will be so helpful.
I am giving her one last thing to do, but the way she saw that was like, no, but I have to clean the Tupperware and return it to this person and say, thank you, or they would call and she
big. Now, I have 45 people to call back or they would write a letter and she's like, now, I have to go to the Post Office and add a stamp and mail this to the person and it's like Maybe going into it you're like no, I don't expect a response but when you don't say that and make it very clear like especially when that person is so prone to feeling overwhelmed. And again in despair it can seem
really overwhelming to them. Same thing with like when people a drop by and she'd be like I have to get off of the couch, I have to go and offer them a Pepperidge and make them feel at home. And all I want to do is just sit here and recover and relax. And so I think making it abundantly clear that you're just There and that they don't need to do anything in return or as a response. And I really do love what you said.
Elizabeth that Molly said when she was struggling which is to say I would miss you that was all I wanted to hear from everyone. It was like I remember wishing someone would say that when I was going through that low point in having those thoughts and so I think any of those things that you guys mentioned would be hugely appreciated and just very beneficial to the relationship. If someone does come to you with one of these big overwhelming things A point.
Well, I know this conversation is going to help so many people and I these are things that all of us. I feel like navigate at some point. We all experienced these spectrum of emotions and I feel like this gives a lot of ways to cope through these things. And your book just has so many helpful resources to continue this conversation and it breaks it down so well. Like even the charts and the graphs in the picture is just amazingly verbalized and just explain these Motions and an
amazing way. So I highly recommend everyone check that out to wrap things up, once again, working people get the book and follow along with you too. Well, again, thank you for having us and people can find the book. It's called Big feelings, how to be okay, when things are not okay. And you can find it on Amazon book, shop out org, your local bookstore. We are Liz and Molly with mmol/l. Ie with me, if you find us on Instagram and our website is Liz and Molly.com.
And again, we really love your podcast. We really like what you're doing is but especially for this audience and thank you for sharing your story with world. Yeah. Thank you both and everything will be LinkedIn Today, Show notes. So you guys can get their new book and their first book and continue to follow along and Clem. Lot, of course, thank you guys. This week's DVT scale is the
Copa head scale. The Copa had scale is part of the emotion regulation module and the goal of this scale is to reduce stress by preparing, in advance, for a emotionally overwhelming stressful, new situation. So there are five steps to this. The first is that you described the situation that is likely to prompt uncomfortable emotions. So maybe it is the first day of school. So, you are anxious about meeting new people or making new
friends or introducing yourself. You are going to check the facts about what is accurate, what is likely to happen? And be very specific and describing the situation. Make sure you know the who, what, when, where why and put names the emotions and actions that are likely to interfere with you using skills. Are you anxious? Are you overwhelmed? Are you feeling alone? Own and isolated. What is going to get in the way
of you being effective? Second, you are going to decide what coping or problem-solving skills. You were going to use if those emotions arise. So be specific and write down in detail. How you're going to cope with the situation, your emotions and then your action urges. So if you feel anxious or you're going to do deep breathing, are you going to go to the bathroom and drink some water? You can use an affirmation. Are you going to count things around the room?
What skills you going to use to Target each emotion? Third. You are going to imagine the situation that you've outlined in your mind is vividly as possible. Imagine yourself in the situation, imagine watching the situation and then the fourth step is to in that imagined situation, rehearse coping
effectively. So imagine exactly what you would do actions thoughts what you would say, how you would say it how you would cope with a new problem if that comes up and really make sure to use these coping skills and your imagined worst case scenario. So First day of school. And you're like, I'm worried, I'm gonna fall down the stairs in front of everyone. Okay. What would you do? You would get up. Would you leave the situation? Would you laugh it off?
Exactly what you would do to handle that? And the last thing is to do a little bit of relaxation and calm down after going through the anxiety of rehearsing the situation to get back to your Baseline. So self-care distraction accumulating positives. Just bring yourself back to a good headspace. So that is the Copa had scale as mentioned in this week's episode and then a little bit more in-depth here at the end.
If you use the code but head to go out, make sure to send me a DM telling me how you used it. I'd love to hear about you guys using your DBT scales. So with that. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of she persisted. If you enjoyed make sure to share with a friend or family
member. It really helps out the podcast and if you haven't already leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify, you can also make sure to follow along at at she persisted podcast on both Instagram and Tick-Tock and check out all the bonus. His content and information on my website, she persisted podcast.com, thanks for supporting, keep persisting and I'll see you next week.
His content and information on my website, she persisted podcast.com, thanks for supporting, keep persisting and I'll see you next week.