In some kind of spiritual movements or wellness movements. We tend to kind of exalt the person who has overcome the obstacle and forget that there's going to be more obstacles.
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Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is doctor Pooja Luschman, a board certified psychiatrist and author specializing in women's health and clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at George Washington University. She's a leading voice at the intersection of mental health and gender focused on helping women and other marginalized communities escape the tyranny of foe self care.
She maintains an active private practice where she treats women struggling with burnout, perfectionism, disillusionment, as well as clinical conditions like depression and anxiety. Pooja is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and often goes viral on Instagram. Today, Eric and Poja discuss her book Real Self Care, A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness. Crystals, cleanses and bubble bats not included.
Hi Pooja, Welcome to the show.
Hi Eric, Thank you so much for having me.
Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on. We're going to be discussing your book, Real Self Care, A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness, and in parentheses, crystals, cleanses and bubble baths not included. So we'll be talking about that, and I think there's so much great material in there. But before we get there, we'll start like we always
do with the Parable and the Parable. There's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and think about it for a second and look up at their grandparent and they say, well,
which one wins? And the grandparent says the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
I love the parable.
I think that it applies in so many different contexts, and as a psychiatrist, one of the ways that it speaks to me is that it calls our attention to our internal worlds, and it calls our attention to the agency that we have. There is so much, obviously that's out of our control, given the socio political contexts that we live in and global events that are kind of always taking place, and our internal worlds.
We get to decide what.
We give our attention to internally and externally. And the parable to me is really that's what it's about. That you can exert choice, you can exert agency, and in doing that, it's kind of radical, right and sort of even recognizing that it's powerful.
I love the way you frame that up. And I'd love to start by heading into talking about real self care. What's the difference between real self care and what you call faux self care.
I wanted to set up this framework in a way that called to attention the wellness industry for starters and That's why, you know one of the subtitles Crystals, Cleanses and bubble bats not included, because in my practice, I see patients come in all the time and they say, you know, doctor Luxman, I'm stressed out, I'm burnt out, I'm not sleeping well, I'm not eating well, and I feel like it's my fault because I have this meditation app on my phone that I know I'm supposed to
be using, but by the end of the day, the last thing I want to do is meditate. And you know, I've said over and over you can't meditate your way out of a forty hour work week without childcare. Like, that's not how wellness works. And when we focus on things that are sort of commodified, when we focus on what you can buy, it really takes away from the true meaning of well being. So when I say faux self care, what I mean is it's the juice cleanse, it's the bubble bath.
It is also the yoga or the meditation.
And I know that there's folks that are listening that are like, hey, wait a second, Pooja, yoga really works, meditation really helps me. And I'm not saying that that they're bad. What I'm saying is that the actual real self care is the internal process that you take to
get to the thing. So you can imagine one person is at a yoga class and they're on their mat, totally in their head, comparing themselves to the person next to them that's doing a headstand and they can't do a headstand, and maybe they're not wearing the right Lululemon leggings.
And that's their yoga class versus somebody else who's gone through the principles of real self care, set boundaries, understood how to apply self compassion to that inner critic in their head, really understood their values and why yoga is so important, and what it means for them to be at yoga once or twice a week, and how that is actually an exertion of power. That person is actually fully present in the yoga class and able to really
kind of take it in. But on the surface, both of those are I went to a yoga class, right, That's what I'm kind of trying to explain here, And I will say it is a little bit abstract. You know, the principles of real self care. There's four principles. Boundaries, compassion, values, power. They're all internal, right. Part of the framework too is that I can't actually tell you what your real self
care is, like, what your tool is. You have to work through the principles yourself because it's different for everybody.
Right.
For one person it might be yoga. For another person that week, it might be I'm going to actually go out to dinner with my close friend. For another person, it might be actually, what I'm really avoiding is doing my taxes, and I mean to sit down and do my taxes, right, So it's always changing as well.
Yeah, yeah, And I've heard you talk about this in a sense of, you know, real self care is a principle or a set of principles, not tools. Now, there are tools that we can use, and I think your yoga class example is a great one, you know, the obvious one being a hammer. Right, A hammer could drive in a nail. I could also smash ten windows with it if I wanted, right, Like, the tool is sort of only as effective as the way in which it's used, in the circumstances in which it's used, and why it
is used. And I think that's what you're kind of aiming at, is this deeper internal sense of what really matters to me, and am I living my life that way? I mean, to me, that's the foundation of any kind of good life. You know, it's not even just self care, it's just a good life is about knowing what matters to us and aligning ourselves with that, and the situations, the power structures that we find ourselves in often make that very difficult to do.
Yeah, I completely agree with you, Eric, and I think that it all comes back down to values, and we can talk a little bit about what values means and kind of how to get there.
But like you said, it, it's actually hard, it's actually.
Radical, because so much of our external world and the way that we live our lives in this kind of very productivity oriented culture is actually pushing against that is push you against your own unique sort of preferences and quirks and things that actually bring you joy and are telling you, well, no, actually, you know you should just have an example in the book of a patient who was reading in her kitchen and was like, you know, everyone's telling me to like get beige, right, beige with
everything because that the resale value. And then she's I hate beige. You know, you know that's kind of It seems like a silly example, but it's actually those are the types of decisions that can be really empowering.
I think about these ideas a lot, like what does it actually mean to be well? And how do people become well? And how do they heal? You know, with my own addictionarycover and depression recovery. And you know, there's an idea that I talk about often. It's not my idea.
It comes from the Buddhist concept of refuge, right, Refuge being a place that you go when things are difficult, and we talk about true and false refuges, right, and that is like, you know, a false refuge is maybe zoning out all the time to Netflix versus engaging in
your life. A true refuge might be something like more like yoga or meditation or But you're talking about an even deeper level than that, right, Like, it's one thing to move to spend less of our time on the false refuges, the things that don't actually rejuvenate us, refresh us, make us feel better, and spend more on things that do. But you're talking about an even deeper level where we're making really difficult decisions about how and where we spend
our time. And that can be really difficult to do. My experience is that's really difficult for people to do when they're already overwhelmed. So let's talk a little bit about, you know, the person who's like, I'm already drowning. How do I start to implement deeper principle based things which seem like they are going to take a lot more time and energy. How do you approach that with someone?
Yeah, and I really appreciate you bringing that up, because it's true that so many folks really kind of feel like they're in that drowning place. And I will be totally honest. I have a little kid, a toddler, I have a demanding career, My partner has a demanding career. I sometimes feel like I'm drowning to you and all
of it. So it's not right, it's and I also want to pull back and just also know that the whole framework of real self care is based on the idea of the concept of you demonic well being, which is probably not new to you or to your listeners, but just as a recap, you Demonic well being says that a well lived life is one in which your activities and your behaviors are aligned with what's most important
to you, with your purpose. And there's tons of research out there that shows that folks who are able to identify and name their values and their purpose and feel that their life is for the most part aligned with those things, not one hundred percent, because no one's perfect, but right mostly in that direction, they have better mental health outcomes. They have better physical health outcome. And this
is in contrast to hedonic well being. Hedonic well being you can kind of think of it as the pursuit of pleasure or the absence of suffering. That's kind of like the treat yourself sort of mentality, which I think that's what we're kind of referencing a little bit too, because when you're drowning, you just kind of feel like, well, you know what, I just need to get that, you know, six hundred calorie Starbucks latte that's actually a milkshake because I deserve it, right.
I just need to escape. I need to watch six hours of Netflix.
Right. So, the reason that the first principle of real self care is boundaries is because you can't even actually get to the values part until you start to make some space for yourself and you start to energetically really consider what it means to take up space and how to sort of take some stuff off of your plate.
The boundaries piece is probably the hardest piece to this whole process, and that's the reason and that it's the first one, and it's also the reason that the four principles are sort of it's a circular process.
It's not just like linear.
It's like you're always kind of basically coming back to boundaries because if there was one mental health skill, to learn, boundaries is the one, and to get back to your question of like how to actually do it. So folks might be kind of rolling their eyes a little bit because I will acknowledge that, you know, basically every therapist on Instagram is talking about boundaries at this point, so it could be a little bit sort of cliche. But
my take on boundaries is a little bit different. So I think of boundaries as the pause, not saying no, but it's the pause that is the boundary. And this was kind of an AHA moment for me Back in twenty sixteen when I just graduated residency from George Washington University. My mentor took me out for lunch and it was my first day on the faculty and I was like bright eyed and bushy tailed, and she was like, Pooja,
I have one piece of advice for you. And I thought it was going to be some sort of like clinical pearl about how to dose ssrrise or like sail lize or something, and she was like, no, Puja, you don't need to answer your phone. You can let it go to voicemail, listen to what they want, decide, and
then respond. And that's when I was like, Oh, it's the pause, and then you can choose yes, no, or negotiate, because the truth is there is always a cost to know yeah, and that costs might be financial, it might be emotional, interpersonal. But we can't pretend that no is accessible to everyone all the time.
Right right, That pause is so important. I had a coaching client once where you know, we had to set up a new rule, and the rule was that anytime anybody asked them to do anything, they had to say, that's a really interesting opportunity. Let me get back to you. Even if inside they were screaming yes, yes, yes, yes, I want to do it, the answer was always for this person, thanks for the invitation to do that. Let
me think about it. Because part of what happens, and I know I do this is I get asked to do something, and I evaluate that thing on its own individual merit. I'm like, oh, that does sound really cool, and I'll say yes, but does it sound cool when I consider it in the context of everything else that's
going on in my life? I need a pause to be able to do that, you know, And this person we just found like that was the rule we had to set so that they could come back and go, all right, let me have a few minutes to actually think about this, when is it? What else is going
on that week? That sort of thing. So I think that pause is so critical, and I love the idea that a boundary isn't always no, right, that a boundary could be yes, could be no, could be negotiate, But the critical thing is taking the time to contemplate the decision yes.
Yeah. And you know it's funny, this isn't my therapy session. I have my own therapist too, but I'm totally going through that right now with writing a book and all of the influx of demands that have common opportunities in this new kind of phase of my career where I really love seeing patients. I love working with people one
on one. I also love writing, and now, all of a sudden, my weeks, I don't have time to write anymore, and so I'm going through my own round of real self care where I'm like, hey, wait, what happened here? How do I get back to the things I actually really enjoy? I do enjoy these conversations too, for sure, but it's like, you have to really be selective and understand,
like you said, the context. And I share that story and my own personal experience because I think it's important for folks to understand that this is always a work in progress. And with every new season of your life, whether it's a new whether it's a promotion you get, whether it's you know, a new baby, whether it's going through divorce or illness, you're going to have to relearn the skill set because it's again, it's a new context. You don't know yet what all of the data points are.
So it doesn't mean that you've failed. It doesn't mean that you don't know how to set boundaries. It just means that you're just developing the same muscle in a new context.
Yeah. Absolutely, so I would love to maybe for a moment, go back to a little bit on the faux self care side. I wonder if you could share with me what you mean when you use the phrase the tyranny of self care.
Yeah, that came to me actually in the context of my experience as a healthcare worker, as a physician. So as many folks know, whatever side of healthcare you're on, whether it's the clinician provider side or the patient side, healthcare in America is broken, and especially mental health services. It's so hard to find affordable, accessible care. And so what I was seeing, I mean, even starting in like the twenty tens, was everybody was burnt out. I was
burnt out as a resident. But the answer that the hospital systems and kind of the higher ups we're giving is like, well, you know, learn how to meditate, you know, resilience training, you know, here's your yoga class.
But it was like they.
Weren't doing anything to actually fix the structural issues. So making sure that there's like adequate paid leave, making sure that people can have you know, a certain number of sick days, all of those kind of systemic supports were not there, and instead they were putting the onus on the individual to meditate or to do yoga, or to lose weight or whatever the.
Thing might be.
And so that's what I mean when I'm pointing to the tyranny, like it's sort of it's another way that greedy capitalism. I just came to learn that term. Greedy capitalism, you know, exonerates the system and puts the onus of
responsibility on the individual. And then you feel bad because you know, like I was saying earlier, with like the meditation app where you go through your whole day and you're working like triple shifts, but then you feel like, oh, well, if only I took the time to meditate, I'd be able to fix all these problems. And that's not to say that meditation or any of these individual choices. It's
not that we don't have agency. We certainly do. But I think, you know, I come from a framework of the dialectic it's both end, right, we need both the systemic change and we need to be able to exert our own agency, and you can't have one without the other.
Yeah, So talk to me a little bit about that idea of the both and of individual change and systemic change, because this, I think is a really concept. I find really interesting to think about and often difficult to put into practice right because on one hand, we recognize that the individual solutions are not sufficient, and yet we can't snap our fingers and have the world be different than it is right now, and so we are then often
back to individual solutions. And even in this role, I think about how many of my conversations should be about the individual ways of dealing with life circumstances versus the systemic and I'll be honest, I lean towards the individual because it's where I feel like I have the most
to offer. And yet there is the systemic side. And what I have seen happen in a lot of what I would consider the wellness movement the self care movement, is this idea of it becomes very individualized, and it can become very self absorbed, and where all my energy is going into I'm going to get better, And then that's often talked about like, well, once I'm better, then I can contribute to the world, and I think that's
a false choice because that often doesn't come. I mean, my first introduction to wellness and healing and all that in any real way was a twelve step program, and right from day one, we were encouraged to be helping other people right working on the collective whole, and ourselves were joined together. And I'm just curious how you think about that, you know, the individual versus the collective or the systemic change. And I think the way you do think about it is different than a lot of ways
I've heard it articulated. So I'd love to get your thoughts on that. There's a long question.
I love long questions.
I appreciate you saying that you lean more towards the individual side, because I hold that bias too. You know, I'm a psychiatrist. I work with people one on one and that's where I feel like I can be the most helpful as well.
And part of what.
Like my own real self care process, like part of what rejuvenates me is using my voice to advocate for the structural changes and for my patients, and you know, kind of hopefully moving the conversation to a different place.
So I did.
I actually had a conversation a few months ago for the Ezra Kline Show with Tressy Mcmillancottam, who's a sociologist and amazing powerhouse. She's a sociologist, so she comes from the complete other side.
And I was a little.
Nervous because I was like, oh gosh, I'm gonna have to really prove to her, you know, because the reality is the examples that I give in the book of Let's say, a woman who a patient, who is you know, going through the boundaries, the compassion, the values, and works up the strength to have a hard conversation with her partner about the fact that after having you know, two kids, for the third she really wants him to ask for having a paternity leave, right, and that leads to him
asking and his company saying yes, and that change goes on to impact everybody else.
That's rare, right, Like a lot of employees would say no.
And that's true that this isn't every situation or every circumstance. But my take on this is that if wellness and self care stays commercial, if it stays commodified, then we don't even have a chance of getting to collective change. Whereas if we start conversing about self care as an internal process, as a personal process, then at least we have a chance of getting to that collective change.
You know.
I think of this as the dialectic that we discuss which isn't my concept that comes from dialectical behavior therapy Marshall Lenihan's work of you know, being able to hold to opposing truths at the same time, and I think that change is always so much slower than we want it to be. One of the things that gives me hope and that helps me stay in the fight, really, because I think that's what it is right, staying in the fight and continuing to have these conversations and reflect
and think about your choices. Is I'm actually the first generation of women on my mom's maternal side to go to graduate school, to get a doctorate, to work professionally outside the home. That's just one generation and those types of changes like that's that's a big deal. Yeah, that's a big deal, and yes it's it takes a long time. But I think that probably most listeners can look back at their family tree, their family history and see in one or two generations how much has changed and how
much is different. Collectively.
Yeah, I think being able to hold the opposites there is really important in this area because it's both at the same time. The little things that we do, like you being the first person in your family to do X, Y, and Z is like a really big deal and progress is being made. I mean, I can't help but look around at certain aspects of society and be like, wow, the progress is tremendous and there's a long way to go.
Like I often think about, like gay rights, right. Gay rights from when I was an eighteen year old to where they are today is a night and day proposition difference. It is an order of magnitude difference. And at the exact same time, there is some gay child being bullied somewhere in some small town in Missouri. Right, both those things are true. We've made a ton of progress and
we've got a long way to go. But I feel like it's so important to grasp both of those things because, at least for me, if I don't acknowledge and see the progress, it doesn't give me much hope to continue to try and do things differently. But if all I do is get into a Pollyanna everything has gotten better phase, then I'm not continuing to advocate for changes that need to occur.
Yeah, I completely agree, And I was just thinking back to a experience that I had at Esslin. I mean, I write about this in the book. Actually I went to Essln. It was in I think it was like twenty eighteen, and I was burnt out as a psychiatrist. I went like, very seriously, like I was going to get these deep questions answered. It was like this mindful movement weak. And it was a lot of money. You know,
it's expensive. Esslin is not cheap. And I remember when I was there, there was this couple they were in their sixties I think, and we were eating lunch together and they're like, oh, yeah, we come here once a year for our vacation. We're here on vacation. And I was so insulted. I was like, this is in a vacation. You know, this is serious work. And you know this
was after Trump had been elected. As I reflected more on this, I think they were more right than I was in terms of thinking about it actually as a vacation, as a refuge, as a way to get away. It was probably more accurate than the pressure that I was putting on myself for that week of time.
And one of the things that stuck.
Out to me while I was there is that nobody was actually talking about Trump there. It was totally this internal spiritual woo woo place, a lot of wealthy white folks, right, And the absence of any of that discussion about social determinants of health, about identity and race and privilege, it was glaring. So I think even actually just bringing it into the room, just bringing it into the room and like having it be part of the conversation in the
wellness space, that in itself is powerful. Like we all know that change takes a long time and it's hard, and I don't think anyone's expecting, you know, their meditation teacher to be able to solve, you know, the mortgage crisis, right, No one has that expectation, right, But at least to be aware and to bring that into your framework of how you're teaching and how you're presenting information, I think goes a really long way.
I had a conversation recently with padreg Otama or Tuma, I never know how to say his name. He's a poet. He runs a podcast with the On Being Network called on Poetry, and he had a section and we got into this conversation and I'd never thought of it this way, but I think it ties a little bit into what you're saying, which is he talks about in any sort
of church movement or an AA movement or anything. There's a lot put on the testimony, meaning somebody saying like I was this broken person, or and I did this, or I was having a lot of problems with depression and then I took ketamine and suddenly I'm better. Or I meditate and it makes me feel X, Y or z,
and those are useful things. But what happens for the people who are sitting there who that's not happening for for the person who is the meditation teacher is going on and on about how much meditation has changed their life, or one of their students is talking about and somebody else is sitting there, going, well, I meditate twenty minutes every day and my life is still a mess. Like what about that? So like what does that do to people? And I think it ties to what you were just saying.
If we're not talking about the social determinants of wellness, if we're not taking into consideration the context of which people's lives are, these ideas can actually become and I think this is what talking about with the tyranny of self care. These ideas can become ways that we feel worse about ourselves or cause us to disengage from potentially helpful modalities at all because we feel like we're not being understood by them.
Yeah, that's such a great point, and it's interesting. As you were talking, I was also thinking. My mind went to the person giving the testimony and what happens to that person when understandably something traumatic happens in their life, right, and they stop meditating, or maybe they are still meditating, but it doesn't work like it used to, and then where do you go from there? And I think for me that's why with real self care, it was so important to frame it as it's not an outcome, it's
not a destination. Yes, it's a continuous process. And I think you could probably say that the same about you know, whether you call it activism or organizing or whatever term you use for moving our society to a more progressive place. That it's I think just because of the nature of how deeply inequitable our society is and then the roots on which we were built. I don't think it's a destination. I think it's like we just always have to keep going and it's kind of an in some sense, it's
a little aspirational. So to me, progress is actually staying in it, right, like staying in the game, and like continuing to come back to that work even when you have moments of burning out, even when you have times where you're like, you know what, Yes, I did just order something on Amazon, even though I know I should be supporting the small businesses down the street, and right, like not beating yourself up too much, just being like, Okay, well next week, you know, I try again. Yeah, that's
I think how we have to think about success. And in my mind, I think there's a connection there with the testimony and the ways in which, in some kind of spiritual movements or wellness movements, we tend to kind of exalt the person who has overcome the obstacle, yes, and forget that there's going to be more obstacles.
Yeah, my life is a testament to that, right. I mean, like, you know, I got sober at twenty four from heroin addiction. You know, stayed sober eight years, then start drinking again, so it was like what now, like all that's out the window, and then you know, get sober again and depression and you probably run into this a little bit too.
I think one of the other elements that gets into this if you're the sort of person who helps others to any degree, you suddenly are worried about when you're not doing great, Like is everything I teach people bs.
Yep, yep, right, yeah.
You know, I've evolved with that over the years where I'm like, well, no, of course it's not, you know, because I'm just a human and I have difficult times, and I cope with those difficult times way better than I used to. Doesn't mean I cope with them perfectly, you know, doesn't mean that I don't make mistakes, doesn't mean that I don't do all that stuff, but do
it a little bit better than I used to. But you know, ten years ago when we started this show, I can't remember the exact phrase, but I wrote out a little introduction for the show, and listeners can probably tell you exactly what it is because it plays at the beginning of every episode. I just don't listen to it, But it was something along the lines of living a good life takes consistent, creative and constant effort, meaning like
this never ends. You know. It's not like you're going to just listen to just the right conversation on a podcast or go to just the right weekend you know retreat or week long retreat, and then it's over, you know, and you're suddenly well for good, Like that's not how life works.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm just nodding my head because I just agree so fferently. And I hate that we live in a culture that like exalts or you know, kind of puts on the pedestal that it's better for it to just be neatly tied into a bow, you know, kind of
because I think it's so much more interesting too. You know, I would say people, I do therapy with my patients as well as prescribe medications, and that's relatively unusual for a psychiatrist, but I say it's because like there'd be so much more fun for me, like writing prescriptions like that's fine, that's like, you know, that's but the therapy piece is like getting to be with somebody on their journey,
like that is That's just such an honor. And I gained so much from that too, in terms of just the privilege of being there.
And what did I want to say?
You know, I share in the book and the introduction my own kind of tumultuous history, which about a decade ago more than a decade ago. At this time, I left medicine, blew up my marriage, moved into a wellness commune that was focused on sexuality and spirituality and meditation, and I was with that group for two years and then ultimately left and had to kind of rebuild my
life and come back to medicine. And part of what led me there was the false belief that there's just like one answer and that there's just like this one thing that will fix everything, and also the belief that it's outside of you if somebody else knows, whether it's you know, the meditation teacher, the podcast hosts the psychiatrist right like, it really isn't unfortunately, like the reality is for real well being, it's something that you have to
work at every single day for the rest of your life, and ultimately it does have to come from you. And that's you know, and maybe that's depressing, but I think that's hopeful actually because that gives you back the agency.
Yeah, I was going to say it. On one glance, it can feel overwhelming, particularly if you're in a very difficult spot and you're like, it's always going to feel like this. No that I don't think that's what we're saying. I think we're saying that there's no destination, you know, I think it's absolutely true. And I think part of the problem too, is the way that wellness has become commoditized and commercial. And I'm part of that, right, Like I have a podcast and we get advertising in order
to run the podcast. I teach courses, right, and I have to market those courses right. And I'm always really struggling with like the sort of marketing that will actually entice somebody into doing the course versus going over the top or you know, I've often said, like you could boil my entire philosophy down to like I'll teach you how to not make things worse. I'm like, that just doesn't sell. Like nobody's gonna buy that. It's a tremendously useful skill actually if you have it, you know. But
I wrestle with this in my own way. And I mean, you know, anybody who writes a book, right, you've got you're getting blurbs on the book that are just over the top, right, They're just like, you know, we want those blurbs because that's what's going to sell the book. And I just find it it's a complicated relationship to have to be both critiquing that space and be in it.
Yeah, it feels like you've been in my brain for the past year, so as I launched a self help book. And but you know, what I would say is that the way that I handle this is to be transparent, you know, and to acknowledge like that I do wrestle with it, and that I do not to pretend that it's not there those contradictions, but to really.
Bring it into the room.
And I think that humanizes the quote unquote experts. I think that it also gives people who are looking for a structure right, because we can't give answers, but we can provide a structure, right.
People that are looking for a structure, it.
Helps them to be as they're choosing sort of what they put in their ears, right, who's on their feed when they're scrolling, you know. As a physician, I think that I've come to the where I've landed is that when when doctors are not in these spaces, then the void gets filled with a lot of junk. And so it is actually important for folks who are coming with integrity and do have training and background and knowledge too.
I guess do the messy work of figuring out how to be there as opposed to kind of staying up on this high horse and kind of being like, well, that's beneath me, you know.
Yeah, let's get into the principles a little bit more and maybe we can give some tools for people to use. Again, real self care is not about a tool but some practices and different things. And so I'd love to just have you sort of reiterate the four principles of self care again. Let's go into those a little more deep.
Yeah, so there's four boundaries, compassion, values, and power. You could kind of distill it down to, because I know everyone likes, you know, just a list, do less things, be nice to yourself, spend your time on what really matters. That's the hardest one, and either give back or ask
for help. And you know, we talked a little bit about boundaries and how my conceptual boundaries is the pause, right, And you can think of that on the micro level, you know, when an email comes in from your boss or.
Your kid's school asks for you.
To join a committee, or you can also think of it on the macro level of like, you know, what do I want my career to be where do I want to live, do I want to have children or not? Like those are big, big life decisions that you can take a pause or you should take a pause. You shouldn't just kind of continue on the path of what you think you're supposed to have your life look like and then end up doing what I did, which I would not advise, blowing it up. And you know, right,
so's there's kind of two levels to that. Compassion is the next principle because obviously, as soon as you start setting limits with people in your life, everyone's going to be mad at you and have feelings, and then you're going to feel guilty. And so because in my clinical practice, I work with women, mostly mothers, pregnant and postpartum folks, you know, the number one complaint I get is sort of like, okay, doctor Leuchman, I'm saying, no, I'm setting boundaries,
but like I feel so guilty. I feel so guilty, you know. And the way that I work with this comes from acceptance and Commitment therapy ACT. It takes a lot from Buddhist philosophy, which is like, you know, yeah, you feel guilty, Like yes, we can't change our feelings. That's not how feelings work. It doesn't work to try and run away from the guilt or to turn the
guilt off. And so I think of guilt as actually a manifestation of all of these external social constructs and contradictory expectations that are put in particular on women, but not only women, because I know men experience this in different ways too. But when you're told that you have to be in two places at once in order to be a good mom, like that doesn't make sense. You can't do that, there's no right choice, and so our brain takes that conflict and makes us the bad guy,
and that's guilt. So one helpful kind of metaphor that I use is to think of guilt as if it's a broken check engine light on your car dashboard. So you know, like if you've taken your car to get serviced and the oil change and everything, everything's good, but then there's like a light on the dash that keeps going off. It doesn't actually give you any meaningful information it's broken, but it's just going off. That's what guilt is.
You don't have to set your moral compass according to the guilts, like you can just sort of let it be in the background.
So let me ask you a question about that, because this ties to another concept that comes up that you talk about later on under values, and it's this idea of the shoulds, right, I should do this, I should do that right, which is associated with there's a guilt element of that right. And there are certainly ways in which we are absorbing these shoulds from the outside world
and they're making us feel guilty. But I found in my life that guilt is often also the way in which I recognize when I'm not living according to my values. So how do you tell the difference between the guilt that is sort of being put upon you that you just need to sort of ignore, like the broken engine light, like just kind of okay, it's there, I'm gonna let
it be. There are the feelings there. I'm just but I'm still going to proceed in this direction versus a sign that I'm not living according to what I value. And this is where the should gets really interesting because we've got you know, it's become a big thing like don't should on yourself, don't should on yourself. But a lot of times for me, my values end up almost being a should. Let me say that a different way.
It's very difficult for me to tweeze out what is a externally given should that I don't want to live into anymore, and what is an actual internal should that I actually know and believe, and tweezing that apart sometimes feels nearly possible because we are conditioned at every level
all the way through our being. I'm just kind of curious how you think about those different things, because to me, it's more complex than just saying I'm going to ignore the shoulds and ignore the guilt, because there are times that those things are actually to me ways of being an indicator that I'm off track.
This is a great question.
There is a difference in how the guilt presents itself when it's coming from the culture and the expectations of an external environment versus when it's more based on an internal kind of conflict, And of course there can be
overlap right right at times. I think that from what I've seen is that when it's externally based, there's more of an urgency, like that feeling, or like the voice, or however your internal dialogue or narrative works like it just it comes really quickly and then there's like a panic to it, and it usually has sort of like
the same quality over a variety of different situations. So whether we're talking about like things in your personal life with your partner, or whether we're talking about something that's going on in your work life with your boss, like, there might be a similar tone to the narrative, or there's like just a generally a more urgent sort of feel and a consistent voice, whereas the more internally based feedback maybe we could call it, I think, is like softer.
It doesn't have as much of like a panicked urgency. Like it's more like you're reflecting and you're thinking, and you're kind of like hmm, oh okay, let me you know, let me go there, let me let myself sort of like go there and explore that, whereas the external voice is like it's not about like go there and explore that.
It's like it's shouting at you.
Yeah, that's interesting.
And they might be mixed too, like right, there can be times where they're mixed, and then that's where.
It's helpful to have a therapist or a coach.
Or you know, somebody that can be an external, supportive, validating, non judgmental person to be able to tease things apart.
With I'm trying to feel into that experience. And I think you're actually right to some degree that the guilt that comes from disappointing someone else does feel more panicky. Like I've said before on the show, in my life, I have noticed like a particular voice that will show up for years. It was I need a drink, I need a drink, I need a drink, even after I was sober, and then it transformed from that into what does not sound better, which is I wish I was dead.
I wish I was dead. I wish I was dead. But what I realized when I started to really look at that, I noticed where it most often came up, And it most often came up when I was in a situation where I was going to have to disappoint someone, primarily when I was in a situation where there was no way not to disappoint someone, you know, like the decision I'm going to make is either going to make my wife happy and my son unhappy, and that caused in me a sense of despair that isn't the same
as when I am feeling internally off track. The phrase I wish I was dead, right, is so over the top urgent feeling in comparison, And that's where it came up in me. You know, it comes up in those circumstances. And you know, I love what you said about a mother who can't be in two places at once. Ginny and I had a similar experience recently. I talked about this at great length on another episode, and I don't know where they come out in relation to each other,
but an insight I had. But my mom was in Columbus and was having some health challenges. Her mom was in Georgia and was battling dementia. And we went back and forth between the two, and I realized, you know, I was carrying this weight that like, when I'm in Georgia, my mom's not happy, and when I'm in Ohio, her mom's not happy. And I was carrying that emotional weight until I realized one day, like, oh wait, it is literally impossible to make them both happy, Like it can't
be done right. All of a sudden, there was a freedom there for me in that, and so I think that was a way of resolving that conundrum. But I think what you just said really makes a lot of sense to me about the tone and the urgency of quote unquote that guilt.
Thank you, And you know what you just said too about like it's literally impossible for me to act in a way that will have both of them feel happy at the same time. And you said that gave you freedom, and I think or a sense of freedom, and like, one of the ways that I think about that, I think it's a similar thing is that it's not yours, That it's not your feeling. The weight of it that
you were carrying around was not yours to carry. Yeah, And so maybe that's one of the ways where when I'm talking about like internal versus external, that's a way that it's maybe a little bit of a semantic thing too. But I think you know, what we're describing here is
the whole point of real self care. And my hope for real self care is that it invites these deeper conversations in ourselves and with others where we can reflect on how we manage our time, how we think about the expectations that are put on us and that we have of ourselves, and kind of tease apart all these different threads because the answer is again, like they're different for everyone, and they're not easy to come to in that you do have to wrestle with it. You do
have to kind of work with it. It's not the same as just kind of saying, Okay, well, you know, here's the exercise plan, here's the right you know, here's the ten step like skincare routine.
You know.
Yeah, And I think the other thing about this idea of boundaries is that we get the idea that sort of once we set them or establish them, they're sort of in place, right, And life is a lot more dynamic than that, Right, Like, I may set a boundary which is I'm going to take very good care of my physical health and the way I'm going to do it as X, Y and Z, and that is my
boundary and it's my value. And then there can be a circumstance in which another value of mine, say my dog's well being, there's a crisis, and that then all of a sudden needs to supplant the boundary that I just set around around this thing. Right, Like, it's not so easy as like you just line your values up one through five and then you just kind of have your marching orders. Because life doesn't work that way, you know, life is always throwing different circumstances at us. You know,
there's this idea in habit creation. You know, our cultures become so obsessed with the idea of habits. I mean, I talk a lot about behavior change, and I think they're important, But the key thing in there is that habits only form in a stable context, and most of us don't have stable contexts as our lives. If you're a parent, you do not have a stable context, right.
If you have a career on top of it, you probably your career doesn't give you a stable context either, because some weeks you can leave every day at five, and other weeks you know, you've got some big thing and you're like, oh, there's an emergency. I got to be here till nine, you know. And so with the context always shifting, our boundaries also have to be shifting. And that's why I love the idea that you have of the pause.
Yes, yes, right, the.
Pause of Okay, Given all all the circumstances that are at play, right now, what's the right wise response for me? Yeah, to allocate my time, because that's often what we're talking about here, right, We're talking about a time allocation, you know, where I spend my time.
Yes, and the flexibility right when you kind of think of it as like just a rigid thing, that's actually not helpful, Like we need to be able to cultivate that flexibility. And I think this is probably a nice place to talk about values too, because I think that values, you know, it's the crux of all of this. And the reason that values isn't the first principle is that because you actually do need to get some understanding of the boundaries and the compassion before you come to values.
I think one of the things that I've noticed with my patients is that when I ask them about their values, like when I say, like, well, what really matters to you? What do you really care about? What's most important? I get one of two responses. Either I get like a very stock answer like you know, well my kids, you know, or or my parents, which is that's that's not helpful, because we all value our children, we all value our families.
Right. And the other piece of that too is a value.
It needs to be like an adverb or an adjective like it's supposed to be a quality because you can embody the value as you're moving towards the goal right, it's not static again, pointing to that flexibility. The other interesting response I get is actually anger because people are like, well, I don't have time to think about that, Like I'm worrying about like what's for dinner tonight and who's going to pick up Johnny from soccer practice?
And like who has time?
Right? Which is true, And it's worthwhile to make time because this is the type of inner work that is an investment. Yea, it reaps the rewards. So one of the exercises that I have in real self care for values and I really love it a lot, and it comes from acceptance and commitment therapies. And it's silly, but it's silly for a reason, because I think you do have to sort of like shake things up for people to not be so worried about the shoulds with values.
So imagine you have two hundred dollars to throw a dinner party. What is that dinner party going to look like? And you kind of just let your mind go with it, you know, is it going to be are we gonna be outside in the park, Is my friend who plays in a band going to come play?
Is it going to be a pot luck?
And like everybody brings their favorite dish from the last state or country that they visited, or maybe your mind goes through like you know, sitting down at a table and the color scheme for the place mats. And it's so easy, in that little activity or exercise to understand that every single person is going to have a completely different dinner party. There's no best or right dinner party. It really is like, it's your preference, it's what you
care about. And then from there then you pull out the adjectives and the adverbs, and you know, for one person, it might be like I want to look around and see everybody in like really deep conversation, and maybe the value is like connection or like intimacy or something like that.
But maybe for somebody else it's like I want to see everybody dancing, and maybe it's like physicality or like embodiment, right, And you play with that because, like what you were saying, in different seasons of your life, the values are always changing. You have to be flexible with it. But I share that because I think it's a nice introductory way for folks that are wanting to, you know, take some of this work and try and implement it in their lives
right away. You can do that, and then you can play around with it and see like, Okay, how do I incorporate that value into my week? How do I take whatever values came out from there? And how do I actually put that into my yoga class, or how do I put it into I'm training for a marathon, how do I put that into my training? You can take that and put it anywhere in your life.
I love that. I love that exercise. I mean, I've interviewed both Stephen Hayes and Russ Harris and ask them like, what do you think is the best tool for creating values and all that? But I've never heard that one. And I love that idea because it does show how different it is. And you know, I think values work for me is often overwhelming because you know, there's a big list of values and I'm like, well, yeah, I
mean I all found good. I agree with all those things, right, And so I think that values work is difficult for people because you know, you do have to really contemplate fairly deeply, and it causes you to recognize that you can't value everything in the same way that contemplating your time how you spend your time deeply causes you to confront a very similar fact, which is I can't do all the things I want to do, so I have
to decide. And you know, anytime we make a decision about choosing one thing, we're not choosing other things, and that could be deeply uncomfortable. And then the other thing of values I think is so interesting is that sometimes living according to your values is actually a drag, you know, Like we talk about it as if you know, living according to your values and it's all going to be wonderful.
Sometimes that kind of sucks, right, Like Ginny and I both had a value of taking care of our mother, right, and that caused us to live through a season of life that we did a lot of things we didn't particularly want to do if I was just choosing what makes me happy, but were about what we valued, you know. And so but I'm a huge proponent of values and
reflecting more deeply, because again, you can't. And I think this is where I think your framework of these four are sort of interdependent or circular, right, Like, maybe I start with boundaries to clear out a little bit of space, right, but after I do my values work, I may come back and change those boundaries because I'm like, oh wait a second, Now I totally see what I value in
a different way than I did before. It often seems like boundaries work is, at least in the beginning, a little messy, and then can get refined over time.
Yes, yes, And you know, I was just thinking as you were talking, and you're sharing the example of with you and Genny and your aging parents, Like the crux of why you're able to feel the way you do about it now is because you could make meaning, yes, of the time and energy that you spent, because you named your values and you were very clear and reflecting
on that meaning. And I think this is important because I think that many folks are living lives aligned to their values, they just haven't taken the step to name it and understand the meaning. Yes, it is an extra step, it takes time, but once you do it, it gives you a better understanding of why you're doing what. Yeah, gosh, it really it sucks that I have to drive my kid thirty minutes to soccer practice, you know, every other day.
But then you think, like.
Actually, this soccer team is something that I know he loves and is giving him just such an amazing experience of like middle school or whatever. Right, and then when you name that, it reminds you of the why.
Yeah, I could not agree more with what you just said, which is that I do think a lot of people I don't know if I'll say most people doesn't even matter, are living according to their values and they're not connecting the dots. So I use the exact same example you just did, which is, you know, taking my son to soccer practice. Right, I would get into this. I have to take in a soccer practice. I have to take in me soccer practice, and then realizing like, no, actually
I do not, so why am I doing it? Okay, Now I'm connecting to why this thing matters? You know, in my Spiritual Habits program, I talk about generosity, and I'm like, one way to take this lesson is you need to do more. But the other way to take it is you could look at the ways in your life that you actually already are a generous person and connect to those you know, connect to the meaning that being a good parent is right. We just get on autopilot and it just becomes something we keep thinking I
have to do. I'm trapped by. But when we reflect on what really matters. We're suddenly like, oh, these things are what really matters. It's just they're not always as fun as I might like them to be. But you know, making meaning does require that connection that you're talking about. Makes me think of another part in the book that you talk about, and I want to see if I
could find it here. You're talking about being too goal focused, and you say, when you're too goal focused, you spend too much time in the problem solving part of your brain and you miss out on the good feelings that come when you achieve your goals. And you said, I think of gratitude not as counting your blessings, but as
a form of digestion. Right, talk a little bit about digesting good experiences, because I think it applies to what we're talking about here too, which is digesting the meaning that our lives actually hold.
Yes.
So this comes from again sort of the Buddhist framework of the hungry ghost, those beings inside of us that have those thin necks but big, big bellies, and so you're just taking in all these experiences, but they're getting stuck. You're not actually digesting the nutrients. So that is one of the way that I connect to gratitude, because I find like the gratitude lists and things like that to be a little bit tyrannical, like another thing I beat myself up over because I haven't done it right at
the end of the day. So instead thinking of it as looking at what you have and actually being present for it and allowing yourself to fully have it. You know, I was listening to an episode that you did with Greg McCune, I think it was a while ago, and he talked about, you know, the way to have more is not to try and get more, but to actually
have the things that are already in your life. And I think that's a similar ethos right where you actually engage and are present and enjoy what is already there. The reason that I like digestion, I guess is because
it's calls to mind actually taking in the nutrients. And you know, it's funny because I think I'm living that right now with you know, having my first book out and all of the things that have come with it that are so great, but also like having to really do some internal work to be present and to allow myself to have it and to give myself that, especially if you're somebody who's you know, admittedly an overachiever and a type a person. It's like so easy to just
run to the next thing. That's not real self care, right, you have to stay.
In what you have.
I was also thinking that this is a great segue into power, the last principle. We're talking about meaning and actually like naming these connections. And as I was researching for the book and looking at the origins of self care, one of the things that came out is there's actually
two parallel origins. There's people in medical community, actually psychiatrists started using self care as a term to refer to like exercise and diet and things like picking out your clothes that folks who are unlocked psych units could do as like places they actually had choices while being you know, in voluntarily committed. But then the other side there was Audrey Lord and Belle Hooks, the black queer activists and thinkers who were talking about self care as self preservation,
especially for marginalized groups. And so with power as the last principle, what I'm trying to do is like bring this back to the boundaries, the compassion, the actually aligning and acting according to your values. Is that's a way that we take our energy back. That's a way that we actually live some form of resistance against a society that's sort of constantly trying to extract, extract, extract anyway.
And so I was actually in Saint Paul at McCallister University on my book tour, talking to a group of higher education professionals, and there was a woman there, a professor. She's gay, and she taught queer literature at McAllister. And she said, Pooja, you know, I've read your book and I really resonate with things you're talking about.
But how do I deal with the rage?
Like, how do I deal with the fact that there's so much that is unfair and there's so much that's out of my control. And I have students who are gay who come into my office crying and who at times, are you know, suicidal. Like that's the level that I'm dealing with, and I feel like I'm not doing enough. And so we chatted and we talked a little bit more, and she remembered that she writes young adult queer sci fi novels for fun on the side. She had forgotten
about this. Right, she takes all of her rage and she puts it into these books and she self publishes them and you know, they're on Amazon. And that's what she does with the rage. She puts it back into the community and creates something that is meaningful for young people.
And just by naming that and making that connection, she felt a level of kind of freedom, like a little weight was lifted, like, oh, oh, I am doing something that this is my way, Like maybe I'm not holding a picket sign, maybe I'm not running for political office, but I'm doing this.
Yeah. Yeah, that is a great, great example. And we are at the end of time. We're actually even over the end of time, which is fine because I've loved this conversation. You and I are going to talk briefly in the post show conversation. I would love to talk about the real self care thermometer. How do I know how I'm doing here? And we're going to talk about
that in the post show conversation Listeners. If you'd like access to the post show conversation to ad free episodes and the pleasure of supporting a show that really does need your support, you can go to one ufeed dot net slash join Whoja. Thank you so much for coming on. This has been a great conversation. I feel like I just sort of abruptly ended it, but I've been trying to find a way to end it for like twenty minutes, and I'm like, I gotta hear that. I gotta hear that.
So this has been really enjoyable.
It's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me Eric.
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