Welcome to The Laverne Cox Show, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. Hello, Hello, hello, everyone, and welcome to season two of The Laverne Cox Show.
We are back. We're back. It's been a minute.
I'm sorry it took me so long, but girlfriend's been busy. She's been booked and busy. As the kids say that, it was so important for me to do another season, and I am so excited. So this season, the second season of The Laverne Cox Show, we're doing things a little differently. We're going to have some episodes where I just talk to you about what's going on with me,
where I'm at, what we're doing. And we thought the first stream of consciousness, if we've want to be James James Joyce about it, I wanted to talk about how I'm approaching this podcast differently and overall, how I'm approaching life differently. We wrapped the first season of the podcast at the end of twenty twenty one, and then I started a new job as the host of EA's Red Carpet and that was really different and it's turned out
to be a tremendous amount of fun. And then we did an interview show called if We're Being Honest that was part of my deal with E and had a lot of fun with that. Ended a bunch of other things in twenty twenty two, like having a Mattel Barbie doll created in my image that premiered to coincide with me turning fifty the Big five. Oh, I turned fifty years old in twenty twenty two. Of all the things that happened in twenty twenty two, that was like, I don't even know how to say accept.
I went in.
I was like, I'm gonna be like.
Happy and proud and evolved and like go into fifty guns blazon and I did and we had like a I don't usually do birthday parties, and I had a big fiftieth birthday party that was Barbie themed and we recreated my Barbie outfit life size, and I invited my friends and my mom was there and my boyfriend and it was great and there was so much love, and I was feeling really positive about turning fifty, or so I thought, And about three weeks late and not even a full month later, I kind of had a bit
of a breakdown, meltdown, spiritual awakening I love you know, reference Berne A. Brown a lot, and she talks about having like a breakdown slash spiritual awakening. I don't know how spiritual awakening it was, but it definitely was a breakdown meltdown where I kind of just lost it and I had to kind of go away.
For a little bit.
I had to like just like stop for a minute and get myself together. And sometimes we have to just acknowledge that everything has kind of fallen apart and we have to put ourselves back together again. And that happened about three weeks a month after I turned fifty, and I.
Had to, you know, cancel some things.
And there's so many things around that, and have a lot of guilt around that, and I'm like that part of the reason, like it's been a year since we had the podcast. I mean it took like a month off, but I also had tons of other obligations, right, So I'm really busy. I have a really big life, and I'm really grateful for it. It's everything I've dreamed of. But with a big life comes a tremendous amount of pressure.
So there's pressure that I put on myself to deliver and to prepare and it can sometimes be an unhealthy perfectionism. Again to reference Brene Around Brene distinguishes between perfectionism and healthy striving. She says that like perfectionism is when you want to do everything perfectly to shield yourself from shame, blame and judgment, and healthy striving is showing up, allowing yourself to be seen doing your very best and knowing
that that's enough. And a lot of the way that I've worked throughout my life, and I've been aware of this for a long time, but it's like the story that I have told myself my whole life is that I'm black, I'm trans I'm a woman. I have to work four times as hard as everybody else.
I have to be prepared. I can't make a mistake.
And even though I've known intellectually that this is a tragic, deeply unhealthy, problematic story, to tell myself walking that path, knowing and having it really be embodied right. And that's what's been the difference too. With sematic therapy I've been
doing since twenty sixteen. If you recall, in the first season of this podcast, I spoke with my therapist Jennifer burdon Flier two different podcasts about the trauma resiliency somatic therapy work that I do, and it's really about landing in the body right that eighty percent of our information comes from the body to the head and twenty percent from the head to the body, right, so our body
keeps the score all that you know. It's like, even though intellectually I know that I can't continue to tell myself the story that I can't make a mistake, I can't fuck up because of all these identity things like having my body know it, having my nervous system know it, and having my nervous system fire and wire in different ways so that the default setting right when there's pressure, when there's stress, is like to tell myself that story and freak myself out and release a lot of adrenaline,
a lot of cortisol and deplete myself that after fifty years, that just doesn't work anymore. It's not sustainable in terms of overall health. If we remember the first season, this podcast was so much about me trying to get myself together, like so many of the guests I had on those guests were about me trying to work through my shit.
And the Nadingburg Harris episode where we talked about asis adverse childhood experiences and how big doses of adversity in childhood basically constantly living in survival mode, in flight or freeze mode, how that can have negative health consequences throughout our lives and if we don't figure out a way to live differently that like that toxic stress can kill us us literally And so knowing that and absorbing all that information, continuing my somatic therapy, trying to have the
resources and the tools that I've been learning, like trying to like have them make a difference in how I live my life on a day to day basis. Is the work, and so much of where I'm at now is like, Okay, how do I just let shit go and quiet thoughts. We can think something and it can
completely shift our nervous system. I can think a thought about all the things I have to do next week, or like the show have to go and shoot in Savannah and all the podcast episodes we have to do, and the other show that I have to shoot and this other project that I have going. When I start thinking about all that stuff, I feel my nervous system ramp up.
I have to stop myself.
And this is the thing that my therapist tells me that I'm getting better at that. I'm tracking what is going on my body. If you remember, tracking is one of the tools of the community Resiliency model, one of those six tools we talked about in that episode Go reference the episodes with Jennifer Burned Flyer that I have to track and know what's going on in my body and feeling myself the ramp up, my brain becoming flooded with thoughts, worry, anxiety, and the anxiety feels like there's
so much to do. I can never get it done. I'm going to fail, I'm going to suck. Like it just happened. Before I went on to record this, I felt myself ramping up.
And I'm like, okay, girl, no, don't do it. Let it go.
What's right in front of me, and trying to focus on that and bringing the noise down, And I think like the work is to quiet those thoughts as much as possible, or try to let them just sort of pass through me. Feelings aren't facts and thoughts aren't commands, So trying to just kind of clear my mind because it really feels like all those thoughts are just not useful.
I had this moment in my journey, like maybe six months ago, four months ago, however long ago with something that I read years ago, just finally clicked in around thoughts and just like, these thoughts are not serving me and they are actually bumping me out of my resilient zone. So I'm being bumped out of my resilient zone into high zone constantly with my own thoughts. So wipe my
brain thoughts and just like the consciousness. I actually, in preparation for the podcast that I just did with Glennon Doyle, she had an episode of her podcast We Can Do Hard Things with Doctor Becky and they were sort of talking about thoughts and how the three rings circus and I talk about this with Glennon Doyle in the podcast.
But the three rings a of like what it means to be human and the three ring circuits's thoughts, emotions, and then like everything else that's happening in the outside world. Lennon was sort of talking about like this one side of her that thinks one way, on the other side that thinks another.
Way, sort of fighting each other.
All of it's like not really helping her, but then like she's watching herself. That part of herself that watches herself understand this as an outside world, that part of herself is a soul or pure consciousness, and I love the idea of that being pure consciousness. And in transcendental meditation, there's an idea around getting to sort of pure consciousness, right, like having the mind just be quieted and getting into the space of pure consciousness so we sort of observe.
It really actually sort of reminds me of Neo. I didn't think I'd be talking about the matrix, but like that moment when Neo realizes he's the one, that he's the chosen one, he like begins to like observe. He moves every every kind of slows down around him, and then he can see the bullets coming, he can see the punch is coming, and then he can dodge them.
It's this peaceful, calm state of pure consciousness. That's what it sort of feels like when I'm in that place where I kind of let the thoughts go, allow myself to have feelings, but not let those feelings bump me out of my resilient zone. The idea is that we widen the resilient zone, right, so that it's wider and so my capacity for life or emotion for the hard
things gets bigger because my resilient zone gets bigger. And it's so interesting because when I think about it, I think about something I know I probably said a rezillion times in the first season of the show, something a therapist said to me years ago, Carolyn Irlick, and she said that we're not living in reality when we're ruminating on the past, making positive or negative predictions of the future, and reading people's minds. Our work is to stay present, curious,
and non judgmental. Really, so much of the ramping for me is like the anxiety about the future. I'm not going to be enough, I'm going to fail. Fear of failure is huge for me. A fear of just being bad at what I do is just it can overtake me. And the Red Carpet brought up a lot of that. The first season of this podcast brought up a lot
of that for me. The way I prepare for the first season this podcast, I read everything, watched everything, try to just be over prepared and know the guests work better than they did, you know, and I love being prepared, But the way I did it was coming from a place of scarcity and from I have to work harder because of I'm black, I'm trans on whatever, and not coming from a place of joy. And one of the best gifts my boyfriend, my current boyfriend gives to me.
A lot of gifts he gives to me, but he like says, babe, have fun, have fun. What's the point if you're not having fun? And what I learned early on as an artist, like studying classical ballet as a kid and studying acting and performing growing up, is that
you have to enjoy the process. So that I in the preparation for the podcast or for Red Carpet when I the first few Red Carpets, was like overload, Like we have a list of people who are going to be at the event, who we may be interviewing, so we prepare for anything and everything.
So we have a question session.
My first question session for e was like five and a half hours, Like I shit you not for the people stories of Wars in twenty twenty one, it was five and a half hours on a zoom and we went through potential questions for every person who's going to be walking the Red carpet. We have a great team. It didn't thieves who like preps me really well, but like I need to have seen at least an episode
of their TV show. If they're on a TV show, reality show in People's Choice Awards, is music, it's reality TV, it's movies, and so ideally I want to have watched interviews that the person has done before and just have a sense of the work and the person that I'm interviewing. And so beyond that five and a half hour question session, there's like me watching Kobe's a Master television and film
and listening to songs. And I still do that, But the first few Red Carpets, I was still in that like stressed out prep mode where I just would work myself up into a frenzy of anxiety and preparation instead of finding the joy in it. This is a good time to take a little break. We'll be right back though, Okay, we're back. So where I'm at today and as I approached all of the work I do now is that I am trying to find the joy and the happiness and the preparation and getting to a point where it's
good enough. So that's how I'm trying to approach the second season of The Liver and Cock show and this new season of my life where yes I do want to be prepared and yes I'm going to do my work, but I have to at a certain point just have to like trust that I'm prepared enough and not but myself into kai zone where I'm in a fight flight or freeze that is just not useful anymore.
And my body just feels it.
When you have been in a constant state of fight flight or freeze for fifty years. I've just been exhausted for years, like physically exhausted for years, and I've worked with my doctors and therapists to get enough sleep and diet and whatever, but like so much of it is like not stressing myself out every single day in this like rat race that I've created for myself around scarcity of me not being enough. I'm trying to a day at a time find joy in the work that I do,
find joy in the preparation. I know I've said this before, but my prayer to myself and it's like I have to remind myself every day throughout the day my prayer, God, give me permission to do this imperfectly and allow me to be of service. I've been saying that prayer since I think twenty thirteen. Oh my god, it's twenty twenty thirty. Yeah, I've been saying their prayer to myself for ten years now.
The work is to fire and wire differently, to reference what the language that doctor Joe Despenza would use, to create new neuro transmitters in my nervous system so that there's new pathways that are more resilient. That is the work, and so I have to practice that and it has to be embodied. It has to land in my body so that the old wiring of like stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, I'm not enough, and trying to listen to my body and what my body needs and letting it all go.
Find joy in the moment. Sometimes I have to check out, and I love seam ripping. I'll explain later. Sometimes it's bedging out on television thankfully. A lot of times it's just being in the arms of my beautiful boyfriend, that coregular that happens, and just being in such gratitude that I have the life right that I have the life that I've always dreamed of. It's like, Okay, I have worked so hard for so long and I am literally living my dreams, but I am like putting so much
pressure on myself that I can't enjoy it. And I have to say there was a shift at the Emmys last year. I was like, Okay, I'm doing this differently. I need to enjoy this. I'm going to watch the TV shows. I'm going to do my interview, watch the interviews. I'm going to read interviews. I'm going to do all my prep and background, but I'm going to do it with joy and I'm going to have fun with this. I'm going to have fun with the process. Oh my god.
It was just it was night and day in terms of like how I went in, Like before I would go in with all this anxiety and stress, and then like I would live in the moment and then like you know, once you're live on.
TV, like you just have to jump and it is what it is.
And I think after so many years of doing this, it goes and I and I not bad at what I do because part of it is just like the ten thousand hours I probably have, Like I have way more than ten thousand hours in what I do. But it was so beautiful to like have my preparation, be joyous and step onto the red carpet with Joy and step into the interviews for if We're being honest with Joy, and that's I've been proceeding with the second season of
this podcast. So it might I have anxiety that it might feel less in depth or less nuanced or less researched, but it has to be enough because I'm enough, And so much of what I love about this podcast is me being on a search for healing, in search of like better tools to live my life, to be a better version of myself, a more healed version of myself. That is still my work every year day, but I want to have a lot more fun with it. So we're gonna have a lot more fun in season two
of The Liver and Cock Show. Even when the topics are hard, We're gonna laugh. We're gonna have fun because I have to. It's time. I'm fifty years old. It's now or never, okay? And what else is true?
Okay?
So you know I end every podcast with the question, what else is true for me in this moment today?
What else is true?
Is this breath and that I can slow myself down and I am surrounded by beauty and things that bring me joy in this home I'm in right now and in my life with the people and the work that I do, I'm surrounded by joy and beauty that is so true and it's so amazing. Thank you so much for listening to The Laverne Cox Show. Please rate reviews, subscribe,
tell everybody you know. You can follow me on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok at Laverne Cox and on Facebook at Laverne Cox for Real and until next time, stay in the love. The Laverne Cox Show is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.