Kelly Carlin || The Human Path Toward Wholeness

great joy in seeing others live full, authentic lives. We also touch on the topics of parenting, depth, psychology, social justice, interconnectivity, and comedy. It was particularly interesting talking to Kelly about how her father, George Carlin, would react to many of the debates and political divides that are going on in the world today. And now I bring you Kelly Carlin. Kelly, it's so great to chat with you today in the Psychology Podcast. It's about time. We've only been trying to

do this for like, I don't know, probably five years. Yeah, it's been a while, and I keep seeing you on Twitter and I love the stuff you're putting out there. And I'm really looking forward to shining a spotlight on you today. Thank you. You've lived quite an interesting life so far. Yeah, yeah, I would say so for sure. Lots of like twists and turns and you know plot, you know, unaspected. It's been a good, full life so far.

I'd like more of it. I'm not done with it, but just in case anyone's listening, but yeah, no, I've I've had a lot of amazing, exciting things and a lot of times and years where it was difficult and hard and weird and all of that. But I feel very grateful for where I am in my life right now. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I'm glad to hear that. I really I'm glad to hear that. So for people who are wondering if there's any connection to the comedian George Carlin, yes, you are

his daughter, right, Yes, yeah, that can be confirmed. That can be confirmed. And I was ring something interesting because an interesting article, because he had a bit in his nineteen nine n eighteen HBO special you were all diseased.

He had a bit about coddling, you know, and when I was ringing this article, you kind of had remarked that what your childhood with him was the opposite of coddling, even maybe to a degree where it's maybe there's a balance that needs to be struck, right, you have like extreme calling on the one end, but then you know, you kind of talked in a little bit about your own childhood, which might be an extreme on another end.

Is that right? It's complicated, and you did a whole you wrote a book about it, right, Yeah, I did a solo show about my life with my parents and all of that. But I mean my dad coddled me in lots of ways, and then in other ways, I was a typical gen xer my parents. I was like I was raised by wolves, you know, I mean those of us who were born in the early and mid and late sixties, our parents weren't parenting. Wasn't a lot

of parenting going on. There wasn't some ways, but for the most part they were being out being adolescents when they should have been being parents. And so there was a lot of having to grow up fast and being the only adult in the room sometimes and being parentified and all of that stuff. And yet at the same time, my dad always rescued me financially and always rescued me in other ways, so I never had to kind of learn how to live with adult consequences in other areas

of my life. So you know, none of these things are that simple and that easy to explain. But I mean, the good news is was that I knew I was loved, I knew I was cherished, I knew I was respected in many ways. And my mother had really serious addiction is she when I was a kid growing up, and she got sober when I was around twelve. So once she got sober, our family life changed a lot. And my dad had certainly his own addiction issues also, but my mother was a drinker. She was an alcoholic, so

that was really tough. But yeah, you know, parents are you know, parents are people doing the best they could. And my dad always was looking out for me and always worried about me and felt really guilty about those crazy years where he and my mom really kind of went off the deep end with drugs and alcohol. But at the same time, it was the era you know, we were really all of my friends parents, We were

all left to our own devices. Yeah, well, yeah, I know you're deeply interested in psychology, and yeah, I've got my master's in YUNGI and dep psychology. Yeah, and I love and I love we could really nerd out about that, for sure, I certainly could, I hope. So part of my own interest in psychology certainly came from family discord, as this is apparently the first time I ever talked.

My mom and my grandmom were arguing in the front seat of the car in one of their usual arguments, heated fights, you know, and I said, both of you, just shut up, grandmam, this is what my mom's trying to say. And I did all that and said, Mom, this is what my grandmom's trying to say, et cetera, et cetera. And they just they were like Joel dropped, like I think I was seven years older. They looked in the the backseat of the car and they're like,

what is going on here? You know? So I feel like being the peacemaker for me and I don't know. I just I bring this up to see if you resonate at all with This kind of led to a real deep interest in human psychology because I felt like I had to be a peace caper peacekeeper in a big way as a child myself. Yeah, I was definitely the peacekeeper in the family one hundred percent. I was an only child, and then my parents argued a lot

during those addictive years. So yeah, no, I was that was my main role, was the peacekeeper and always trying to figure out how to calm people down and sort things out between them, and you know, getting triangulated because

of that. And that's the parentification of the child was what happens, Suddenly we're in their business and sorry and so yeah, and when that happens, what happens to the kid is that all of your relationship with your own needs and your own desires and your own ones, all of the psychic energy you would normally spend on that part of your development gets stunted or gets put somewhere in a closet inside of you, and so you end up kind of coming out as an adult or even

as a young adult, with not really knowing what you want.

At least that's how it showed up for me, really confused about who I was and what I wanted and even my own preferences and my own desires, you know, And really that took me pretty much in my thirties is when I really started to discover that for myself, when I felt super safe in the world and was no longer In my twenties, I ended up being with a guy and marrying a guy who I just was replicated my family dynamics, which was he was a narcissist and crazy, and all of my whole job was to

figure out what he needed and wanted in every single moment. Scanning as they call it, Yes, total scanning. Yes, percent it's exhausting. It really, it truly is exhausting, and you almost start to when you're a child, you get certain expectations and assumptions about the world, and so you start to think, oh, that's normal this kind of discord right then, and then it feels normal in a relationship. No, I

totally get it. There's one story I read, if you feel comfortable sharing, I thought I was really fascinating about how there was such an intense moment you decided to create like a pact or like have a like a certain just to have some peace for a second. It was a un peace treaty, though I didn't call it that in the moment, but that's certainly what it was like.

But yeah, we were in Hawaii and my parents were we were on vacation, like our first big Hawaiian vacation, and my parents just were arguing the entire time and doing drugs and drinking and everything. And I finally revealed

to them the effect. I mean, it had been years that they'd been kind of going at this, and I think I think it was around ten years old at this point, and I just finally let them see how much the toll it was taking on me emotionally, and I like let myself finally crack and scream and yell and cry and fall apart basically, and like that stopped them in their tracks and got enough attention from them.

And then I sat down and, like you said, just continued my role, which is all right, let's let's keep this going exactly. I wrote out, like I, Brenda and George Carlin will not drink alcohol or snort cocaine for the duration of the vacation, you know, and made them sign it at the end, you know, at the bottom

of the document and all of that. And twenty minutes later, my dad went in the bathroom and my mom accused him of boguarding the blow and then she marched down to the bar and I walked out and hung out with this girl who rented all the Snorkel equipment all week and tried to stay away from them as much as possible. But yeah, I mean that was like a

real manifestation of that behavior. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I'm wondering, you know, not only interested in psychology with House and this maybe informed your own interest in comedy because you're a comedian. You're a comedian period, right, you're comedian rights, I don't consider it, okay. I don't do stand up, certainly, I'm not interested in a comedic. I don't have a comedic career. It's not what I do. I'm a storyteller. I have comedy in my jeans. I have good timing,

I can tell a joke. I'm not very good at telling joke jokes, but but yeah, I mean I know how to improv with people and stuff like that, but that's not my career. No, I'm not a comedian. Okay. So at the very least, I think I can say with a good degree of accuracy that you are all

around comedy. You know, like you so you're serious excent you have a serious XCM podcast where you interview legendary comedians, right, so you're in touch with that and you did your You did a one woman show right called a Carl and Home Companion, Yes, I did. It was storytelling, kind of a La Spaulding Gray. So it was a lot of pathos and some definitely some humor too, But it wasn't a stand up show by any stretch of the imagination. It was really a storytelling solo show. I gotcha. Well,

you're an officient auto of comedy. Do you like comedy? Do you hate comedy? I don't. I don't think. I'm not a comedy geek. I'm not an officient you know, I didn't really My dad was in the business. I watched Desan l as a kid. I loved Lily Tomlin, Carol Burnett, The New Hearts. You know. I grew up on sitcoms and variety show comedy. I aspired as a kid.

I wanted to be someone like Lily Tomlin or cal Burnett and do sketch Comedy wasn't in the cards for me for a lot of reasons, mainly because of my mental health and just the direction my twenties went and everything like that. But that was a dream of mine. If I was going to be in showbiz, it would been that really didn't meet a lot of comedians or any royal comedians until after my dad died. I mean, like the week my dad died and people were calling me up and talking to me and kind of taking

me in, which was very sweet of them. Bellzer and Lewis Black and Gary Shandling and Paul Ravenza and Rick Overton ended up becoming very close with Gary Shanling and still I'm very close with Lewis Black. Gary became like a mentor in life for me and really helped me get the courage to use my voice and find it on and do my solo show. We also shared our a deep love of psychology and a spiritual path. Both

of us are practicing Zen Buddhists. So but yeah, you know, I just I'm not a person who like waits for the someone's new special or anything like that. I think because my dad was in the business, it just didn't It just wasn't a thing for me. I think it I just being a stand up comedian is it takes a very certain type of personality and a certain drive and a type of person who really needs to be seen and heard a lot and has a lot to say in that particular way to the world. I mean,

I have a lot to say. I consider myself a thinker and a communicator like my dad. But I don't have a desire to be on stage six nights a week like most stand ups do. I mean they have such a hunger for an audience. I found that I'm much more introverted than that. Actually, my dad was pretty introverted to actually, but he really really needed needed that audience connection and approval and all of that all the time.

So I I am I. You know, I kind of became part of the comedy world after my dad died due to my dad's legacy and due to the people I started hanging out with, and they really did embrace me. I mean, I don't know what I would have done if without having you know, Gary and Louis and Paul Pravenza and people like that really kind of take me into their into their family. I mean that's really what it felt like. I felt like the family of comedy

really took me in. But it's you know, it's not it's not my life, it's not it's not my path, but it is it is in my bones. I mean genetically, I am a funny person. So what the heck would be very funny today, but generally, I mean, I just I love shooting this shit with comics. I love making people laugh, but in a very casual fun way. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. You said that your father was an introvert. What other ways was there a kind of split between

his public performances? Was he hilarious just in just casual conversation. He considered himself more of a writer than anything else, so he had more of a writer's personality. He was always going into his office and writing and disappearing like my whole life, that's what my dad did. He was always in his office working. He was not a person who was on around people at all. Did not want to be the center of attention. Did never wanted to be the life of the party. Not that guy at all.

Would never hang out in a diner or a deli after a show with a bunch of other comics shooting the shit, not his style. Would go back to his own room do his own thing. So very much an introvert in that way. So well, Kelly, I want to talk about you here. You're a Buddhist, right, is that right? Or you used to be? Yeah, I don't se identifies religiously as that, but I practice mindfulness and I have studied Zen Buddhism a lot and really love the perspective

and the path beautiful. Yeah, I have such a great admiration for Buddhism and also for Union. Depth psychology, which you got a master's degree in. Yeah, we got to bring that back. It's not in the public conscience of most psychologists these days, no, but it's flourishing in its own world. I mean, there's archetypal and imaginal psychology that

stands on the shoulders of Jungian psychology. There's a lot of great thinkers, James Hillman being one of them who really brought the and he didn't want to be considered the father of archetypal psychology, but that's basically who he is. And yet even though people don't talk about it. You know, depth psychology is the study of the unconscious. Freud was the first deep psychologist. Young Adler who were students of Freud's on their own paths and their own way of

talking about it into the world. But any you know, I think most people these days know about things like the hero myth and archetypes and the unconscious and the shadow aspect of personalities and all of that is Jungi and stuff. So it's pretty much in the zeitgeist without people really knowing it. And of course there's a lot

of cognitive behavioral stuff now, which is great. I mean, I had panic attack disorder, and without cognitive behavioral therapy, you know, I would wouldn't have been able to get in my car get to drive. So I love that

kind of stuff. But I'm also a person who loves transformation and the process and the human path towards wholeness that you know, That's really what Young held was that there's this wholeness, this aspect of self with a capital S, where the person's personality is just a small part of who they are, and this bigger sense of who is really you know, that thing we're always leaning into and wanting and seeking and searching. So I'm fascinated by that stuff.

I'm fascinated by the human journey healing, transformation. I think the reason I ended up, part of the reason I ended up a doing my solo show, writing a book, and getting my masters in Young in psychology is because of my always wanting to ask answer the question, which is, how did I get here, How did I? How did I become this person? What happened to me? And how can I help myself get out of my own way

in some ways? You know? So that's kind of my always, my my fascination is that, you know, how do we end up like this? You know, have you figured it out?

You kind of mentioned it a little bit earlier, you know that thing about being like age is like four to seven where we have a certain type of cognitive ability, but it's very concrete thinking, and we pretty much assess the world and decide on how the world is and the rules during those years and then we live we live by those rules the rest of our life, and they're just they're so misguided, they're so like I said,

it's such concrete, black and white thinking. Yeah, and we don't we don't question any of it until we learn to question it. So that's a lot of the work I do is helping people, ay just know that, like, hey, this is this thing you constructed. These are there. You've got a rule book in your head that's always going leafing through the pages, trying to remember the rules for

every moment, and most of those rules are bullshit. Yes, yes, you know, but to the credit of our brain, you know, it's doing the best with the information it had, you know, our brain our prediction machine. Yeah, and you know, I always like the analogy of like our brain is like a weather forecast system. When we're young, it's trying its best to kind of map and model the world and figure out, Okay, what can you expect And if your life was shitty when you're young, your brain basically starts

to cement some neurons saying life is shitty. You know, that's that's life. And I've always been fascinated the fact that fear unlearning is housed, is housed in a different brain system than fear learning, and that we kind of develop these unconscious and I think this is where, you know, depth psychology is so important. You know, the unconscious fear of learning is so predominant, and it takes active strategies to unlearn it in adulthood. It doesn't just happen automatically.

So yeah, absolutely, and that's I think that's where both come in. I think the cognitive behavioral stuff is important, but also accessing and utilizing the generative resources of the unconscious to to build ourselves from the inside. Up again and to use the deep imagination and deep play to relearn that the world is not as horrible and scary. I mean, it kind of feels like it is if you watch the especially right now, maybe, but the but the the version of it in our head isn't real.

And so it's about it is about unlearning. But I think it's also about really connecting to these generative aspects of self that you know have wisdom, and have courage and have a lot of creativity, you know, to use and to to open up those floodgates in ourselves with that stuff, to really live into our our fullness is really where my my joy and my blisses. Well, you are speaking my language. Okay, I don't know why to that accent, but you are definitely speaking my language here.

So let's well, let's talk about this the coaching work you're doing. And Women on the Verge is the name of your most recent coaching program, and so how do you bring depth psychology into this coaching program? So I bring it in by a couple of different ways. I mean, obviously it's my come from. It's it's how I look at the world. So I part of it is I start to teach people I work with a little bit how to how to understand how the unconscious runs us.

And I, you know, so I'm a certified life coach also, so I use some coaching language around that, like saboteurs, things like that. We work with archetypes, we work with. I do a lot of visualizations and imagery work and kind of trance imagery kind of work to help people tap into other aspects in them selves through image, you know, through images or stories. I help also people see the

narrative of their life. I find, having been a person who does storytelling about my own personal life, it really really helped me in such an incredible way to start to tell the story of my life and to piece it together and to even use myths to to kind of see like the more universal aspects of our of all of our narratives. Like everyone talks about the hero's journey all the time, there's also the heroine's journey. We do.

We do some work around the heroine's journey in Women on the Verge, which is it's a different it's a different cycle. It's it's more of a cyclical and it has to do with healing our relationship with the deep feminine and the healthy masculine. And it's not just for women, it's for everyone. So I'm fascinated by people's narratives and teaching them about their own narratives and really getting them to understand that you can write a new story for yourself.

You can you can walk away from the old story and heal it and write a new story. And so I used a different techniques and things. I do something called voice dialogue work, which is to shadow work. I work with people in dialogue with them. I teach people a lot of active imagination stuff, which is using drawing or movement and or writing in dialogue with you know, inner figures, dream figures, stuff like that. Like I said,

a lot of deep imagination, deep play stuff. So that's mostly how I use it, and I think that's kind of separates me from a lot of coaches and a lot of coaching programs where it's it's you know, it's more of structure and goal oriented. And we have that

too in Women on the Verge. We have I basically I teach them a four part process, and it's the first thing you do is you have to appraise, you have to figure out what's going on what's going on in my life right now, what's working, what's not working? What do I want? Like, this is a big question that women, a lot of women I work with have a have not learned how to answer, which is what do I want? Because women are usually outer focused or

environmental focused, or like you said earlier, the whole scanning thing. Right, we're into scanning. So I get them to turn towards themselves, figure out what they want, what they need, what's going on, how's it working, all that kind of stuff. So there's this appraising phase and then usually what comes up out of that appraising phase is that they start to realize that they they kind of know what they want, or maybe they do know what they want, but they also

know that there's something keeping them from going there. And so the next part of the process is like a discovery recovery process, and that's where we use some of the depth psychology stuff. But that's where we go in and below the consciousness. We look at our narratives, our inner narratives. We look at the stories we tell ourselves, We look at our saboteurs, you know, the rules, the

unconscious rules we all live by. Like we talked about and then once we kind of get more relationship with ourselves, are more whole, full selves, then the next part of the process is this emerging, which is like, oh, now I've got more information. Now I know more of kind of who I am. Now what do I want now? What needs to be renegotiated? And this is where renegotiating

roles in our lives and relationships are so important. And I think that's a big thing that scares people from changing, is that they think, oh, well, I've been a mother my whole life, or a wife, or a career, I've been kicking ass in a career, and we kind of have these identities that we get really latched onto, but there's like other identities inside of us that have been kind of in the background or not allowed to come

to the full table and be here. But they're they're kind of unlived lives and they're unlived selves, and there's usually that's part of that yearning and longing kind of emptiness that we have inside of us. And so I help them get in touch with those aspects of themselves and learn to yeah, you are going to tell the world that you're more than this or this or this and that is a little scary. I get it. And yes,

your relationships are going to change. And yet, like you were saying earlier, you know, this kind of idea of who we we think we need to be for the world, that if we don't continue doing that, that the world will kind of fall apart and the earth will open.

We won't tell it. It doesn't it actually doesn't. Like most people around us kind of see us more for who we really are, and you know, and some people it's like, you know, like, oh, I've always wanted to be a writer, but oh I can't tell my husband that, or my kids that, or my whatever that, you know, and then like they start to do and it's like their kids are thrilled for them, you know, or their husband thinks it's great that they're like expressing them, you know,

whatever it is. You know. And there's some cases where some people come to me and marriages do fall apart, and you know, careers are walked away from. But these are things that were happening anyway in their lives and they needed some structure and support to get through that.

I work with women who are mainly over forty and you know, are kind of in that facing that like, what is all of this about type of moment in their lives, and then out of the emerging part of the process is really the embodying phase, which is this is where the coaching really comes in. And what I love about it is and what is just so true about life is that you aren't really going to change

until you actually take action. And I know that sounds ridiculously simple and clear, but I don't think many of us really get that you don't, and that it's in the doing is where the real learning actually begins, because it's where we then were kind of all like scientists and experimenters. And it's not like it's like, oh, I've had these insights and I've had this opening and I understand more of myself. When I'm ready to go ahead,

and it's gonna unfold exactly as I think it will. No, it's gonna you're gonna step into something and you're gonna try something, and then you're gonna come back and go, hmm, what's working now, what's not working? You know, you're gonna you're gonna start assessing immediately, because that's how that's how we do life, especially when we're doing something new in life,

and and so I just love watching u this. I've had this program going for about three years now, and it's just been so amazing to watch women who are really ready for a more authentic, fulfilling version of their life and they just need community and some structure and some information and some coaching, and to watch them step out of their comfort zones and to step out of their ideas of who they think they were supposed to be.

That's the big thing, you know, And that's the you know, and the reason I started this work is because that's the path my life has taken. I always had this idea of who I thought I was supposed to be. And when I started to relax and just be who I am and live the life that really feeds me, yeah, things change. Yes, Well, I'm sure you're familiar with Karen Horney and the feminist psychoanalyst, Yes, who really gave Freud to run for his money. She's like, yeah, you're crazy,

You're talking crazy talk Freud. You need some feminist psychology here. I've been trying so hard to tell people about her. I wrote an article for Scientific American called the Underappreciated Legacy of Karen Horney because she's been forgotten in the annals of the history of psychology to arge degree. That's unfair, this idea, this notion, the tyrannical shoulds, that's her phrase. And remember this. I was studying her at PACIFICA. Yeahold me about what you're talking about. And and I'm glad

that you brought this up. And then you talk about how a lot of women struggle this. Of course, obviously a lot of men struggle with the two, but yeah, you know, they're there are unique societal cultural expectations that are absolutely gendered to a certain degree in our culture, right, that need to be talking about. Yeah, absolutely, And men have their own version of this one hundred percent, I mean,

you know. And and it's funny because the and I don't know if it's a fair word to use or not, but what I really feel like I'm doing and helping women with is dismantle the inner patriarchy within them. And I know, and I know patriarchy is such a buzzword and it's it's kind of a trigger word. And it is so interesting you brought up her work because it is a tyrannical system of thought, and you know, patriarchy has that kind of bent to it, you know, in

its most extreme form. You know, I mean, you know, if you've studied any Greek or Roman history, you know women were not treated very well back then. It was like the birth of democracy, and women were like, I think, third class citizens at that point. You know, there was not a lot of a lot of respect for women in those great thinkers. So it is this dismantling of this tyrannical should system, which is I think, how I'm going to start to please do I would love that

because we did. We studied her at PACIFICA, and you know, because we're PACIFICA graduate institute where I went and got my masters, is all about Jungian and the sacred feminine and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, and we had a lot of kind of early depth psychologist stuff we studied. And yeah, absolutely, I mean, you know, once you start going down that rabbit hole, your mind will

be bolen. Because she was also one of the first humanistic thinkers in my view, she often wrote about the importance of wholeness, and she's like, how come the field of psychology is not talking about the whole personality structure, It's just speaking one part of us. And she also believed in growth. She has this quote that I love that says something to the effect of, well, we can

grow and change up until the day we die. Yeah, it's too late the day after you die, but at least well, but some people think you go on to another lifetime and you're still growing. So they're still growing. To do ghosts grow? That's actually an interesting question. I think it's open for debate. Like you never see a ghost like change, Like Casper never looks different. No he doesn't, he doesn't, but he's still maybe doing work on himself.

Who knows. There's a bit there somewhere. But anyway, anyway, I just think the more you go down that rabbit hole, and I'd be happy to load you up on I love that. That would be awesome. Yeah, so this is a direct quote from your own website. The world needs women more than ever to step up and claim their authentic power. It's time for women to get out of their own way, to step into what they truly want and who they want to be. When you commit to

big things, big things happen. My question from that is about this word authenticity, because I'm very, very interested in the definition of authenticity. Because there's various definitions in the literature. Anyway, without getting too much in the weeds about it, I just would love to hear your what that means to you. Is it like a self actualized version of authenticity? Is

that what you're kind of referring to. I'm always writing about this stuff, and my brain isn't very hooked in today to all of that, but there is something about it is for me, authenticity feels like there is a congruence between my insides and my outsides, and there's something about being free of cultural restraints or roles. Uh So

it's it's around that. There's there's this sense and it's one of those words that gets so overused and I hate to use it almost sometimes when I talk about these things, but there really is no better word for it. There is a a couple of things that that go with it. There is, first of all, knowing yourself. That that's an element to it. So knowing how you what really feeds you and what what you really feel connected to in a very somatic way, and you know that

there's it's it's it's a full body somatic. It's not just a mental or an emotional or a feeling thing. It's it's a full body, gut kind of a thing also, and and so there's this part of it's a sense of yourself, but it's also reflected in your doing in the world, and that you're doing is aligned with your values, your own personal yearning for what you want to create in the world, and that there also is a sense

of freedom of expression. You know, a lot of the women I work with and a lot of people on the planet, but especially women, you know, they always say, I just want to be free to be myself or free to express myself. So there's something that stops us. There's some fear. We talked about it earlier, right, there's some consequence that we fear is going to happen if we're in full expression, you know, really expressing our opinions, our emotions, our take on the world. And so there there,

I think it's it's connected. So and that expression is so much right, it's kind of our portal from this inner life to the shared collective space. And so there's there's a sense of being able to be ourselves while

in a collective space. And I you know, and I think I think about young people these days, and I think a lot about how the world is around race and gender, those two things in particular, the language that's going on right now, and the big push culturally on the edges of this conversation, which sometimes feels necessary, other times it feels oppressive too much, you know, wherever you

are on the spectrum of this conversation. But I think the impetus to all of this is is that people just want to be free, to be themselves and to feel safe being themselves in the world. And I think what people call the patriarchy, if that right, whatever that system is that we're all pushing up against, whether it's white supremacy or patriarchy or whatever it is, is that it is this system that, for power reasons, kept people

from not being their authentic selves. Likes like, you have to play a role inside of my system, and here's your menu. You get four choices over here, and you get five choices over here, pick and be happy. And I really feel like humanity is pushing up some sort of against some possibly evolutionary consciousness space by opening up more options for all of this. These are the millions of ways that people humans can show up on Earth. Now. I mean, you just look at the gender names for people,

the fluidity of those words. I really do feel like, you know, as opposed to some sort of I think it's both, but I think it's part of it's this kind of interesting human evolution of consciousness moment. And I think it also is a social justice issue. For sure. It's both things, and I think they just show up

in the culture. I think that maybe the human evolutionary push shows up as a social justice issue because now we're having to fight up against infrastructure and institutions and ways of thinking and you know, things like that, and because that's the evidence of it in our culture. But I think all of us are just looking to be ourselves and to be loved as ourselves. In the end, yeah, we complicated, But when you get right down to it, yeah,

I think so well. I recently had one of my favorite podcast episodes ever was with Isaac Priletenski, who I recently had just a couple episodes ago, which I really highly recommend you listen to because I think you'll really resonate deeply with it. It's on the need to matter, he argues. He argues that is such a fundamental human need,

need that pervades so much of what we do. But his perspective, particularly that what I like about it is that and actually what makes him a standout in the field of positive psychologies that he believes in fairness and wellness for everyone, and he says, no well being without fairness. He's this whole a big believer in fairness. He's a whole model about this, and I think you're going to

resonate deeply with it. So I'm just trying to think through you know, you say it's the need to be oneself, but I think that maybe we can even just go a little even deeper than that. You know, it's not just because we don't want just want to be any part of ourselves, right, It's not like right, you know, I just want to be Why can't people just let me be my you know, schwabby, you know, pizza, liking Netflix,

watching self. No, it's they want the part of me that they can have a unique significance in the world. Is being inhibited, is being oppressed, And my gosh, there's no denying that through the course of human history, lots of people have been left out of the table who could have contributed amazing, amazing things and could have mattered

to human history in such important ways. There's no denying that. Yeah, And you know it's so interesting too because some women I work with and it's just I've learned a lot in offering this space and having a lot of conversations with women about what they do want. And there are some women who and there's men too, but I work with women right now who they do want to matter

and they're mattering. Is a big societal one, you know, like they really want to make women feel safer in the world, or you know, I mean I work with some leaders, women who like do nonprofits and things like that, you know, or entrepreneurs, and then there's others who want to just offer a space that's full of light and

love to everyone around them. And it can be the smallest space like a dinner, you know, like like cooking dinner for their family or or whatever it is, or working in their garden and their you know, the beauty,

or working in a community guard. And so I think what happens sometimes and I say, you know that it's important that there's this thing that we all want to express something into the world, and it doesn't have you don't have to be Oprah like that's fine, Like, it doesn't have to be this big thing because it is

always the human to human connection moment. That that's how we make it difference in the world is the impact our presence has on our environment and those around us, and that that you can create an enormous amount of change and ripple effect in the world by just treating people with kindness truly, you know, because you never know who's having a bad day, and you know what, you never know what moment could really shift a person's life. So true, Yeah, I just but and it is interesting,

this thing about mattering. You know, it is such a conundrum for us humans, right because we do matter in some ways. We've shaped this planet, We've changed the nature of natural order on this planet. So clearly we have an impact on our environment and clearly our interactions do matter with us. And yet that's always the big question is you know, what is our purpose? What do we matter?

In the end? You know, where we all become, We all become you know, loamy soil in the end basically, which is a beautiful thing I think, you know, because we are part of this incredible life cycle here on Earth. So yeah, and it's this, it's this real you know, there's always that narcissistic part of it, the mattering part, you know, and you have to like, okay, well is it that part of it or with that? Oh yeah, just you know, Isaac has part of his theory is

that some people matter too much. We know, we had this whole we had this whole discussion and he he absolutely his in his theory. He believes some people matter too little in our society, but he thinks some people matter too much. Yea and uh. And we had a whole conversation about surrounding that idea and he said, oh, I can't wait to listen to it, love it. Oh

my god. I just adore him, and I whatever I can do to kind of shine a spotlight on some of these people who as well known, but they're in there because they're in the trenches doing the work, you know, they're not like out there like on Twitter every day like yelling. But yeah, his work is so great, and yeah, he says some people are just taking up too much space because they're and they're not letting others have any space.

And I completely agree with that. But god knows, we just spent four years yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah with someone who sucked the air out of every molecule. Yeah, it's like if you turned on the news, you would think nothing else in the world is happening, right, true, and something about that person. Yeah, and then the cosmic thing that I think about that all the time, you know. I was just thinking the other day about like just just doing the thought experiment, like what if humans live

in other two thousand years let's say three thousand years. Now, let's go ten thousand, long enough for human evolution to have a process on it, right, and that it turns out that in the grand scheme of things, we're like a really poor version of humans. Like, yeah, I just this is how my mind works, you know, like like you know, you know how we have like like robots a on a wine, you know, and then you're like

that was robot version two point zero. You know, Yeah, what if like fifty thousand years from now, there are humans that look at us and they're like, what a failed you know part of the line that human was And here we are thinking we're all these so significant you know, we matter, matter, I matter. But like in the fifty thousand years from now, they're like it's so funny they thought they mattered. They were like you know, in the conveyor belt. They were like version three point

zero of humans. Yeah, but you can't. You can't get to the fifty thousand year old human without us. What a good point, you know, even if they learned the lesson, right, even if it learns the lesson to a lot of our traits. Yeah, one can only hope that, you know, our species figures out how to deal with our greed, you know. I mean, I really feel like that's the downfall of our species, is this inability to see how interconnected we really are. And what's exciting about these days,

even though it's terrifying with climate crisis. I mean, I remember twenty twenty four years ago when I started studying with Tick not Hahn mindfulness, Zen, Buddhism and all that stuff, and he used the word inter being and interdependence, which are terms that the Buddha was using twenty six hundred years ago, which is, we are all interconnected, and every indigenous people understand that, all of them understand that we moderns somehow forgot it in this modern brain of ours,

with this age of enlightenment, you know, which is yay for the age of enlightenment. Trust me, I'm all about that. And yet we kind of threw the baby out with the bath water a little bit, and so we are really now seeing that, oh, we are all interdependent. We are. The environment is not something separate from us. We are

the environment. And so it's exciting that we are as a nation because I remember twenty years ago thinking, oh my god, if if the word inner deependence could be used in the White House, I think we're going to be Okay. Well, it's being used now around climate policy and stuff and really an understanding of how it all works. So I'm hoping that we are evolving even right now a little bit. You know, I'm a big Ken Wilber

integral thinker person. I love that kind of stuff, and I really do see this other kind of integral, third tier thinking kind of coming online a little bit, you know. I mean, we're all in a big culture wars over all the other stuff. But I think we're you know, we're doing it a little bit. We'll see. But there is this human greed thing that's still in the way. It's a bit of a bitch a narcissism and yeah, I mean I think they're connected, don't you, yeah, very much.

What ever it is, we need some more transcendence around. I think we can all agree on that we do. We need grounded transcendence, though we don't need spiritual bypass transcendence. Paul Williah, I call it healthy transcendence in my book. But I love it, and I distinguish that from spiritual narcissism, yes, where we're just going to all leave our bodies and

all pretend it's all white, light and angels. I mean, that's why I'm a deep psychologist, because I love the shadow, because I know that the good, juicy, cathonic part of existence. You can only live a full life by digging downward and bringing it to include into who you are. And

you need both. You need light and dark obviously. But those who just want to, you know, go around or move over or jump jump jump around things and not through things, they'll get some temporary relief, for sure, But the demons are going to still come knock it on the door, oh for sure. Oh show, well, show, let's kind of end our interview today talking about some of your exciting projects that you're up to. We already talked

about obviously about the coaching one that's very exciting. But you also have the Kelly Carlin Show on siris XM. Can you tell us a little about that. I love that because I get to have deep, meaningful conversation with people who I think. I mean, I think comedians are probably some of the smartest people on the planet. They're just thinkers. They have to be in order to do comedy.

You have to be able to have like a meta view and the micro view and be able to just kind of go back and forth between those two worlds. And so I love talking to comedians and I love kind of bringing this kind of a space to them, Like we talk about all sorts of things in those conversations, and so it's very fulfilling for me. And so that's what I do. I have it. It's like once a month on Sirius XM, and I've gotten to talk to

some amazing people. I'm just in awe of the people I've gotten to talk to, like Carl Reiner and Jonathan Winters and Eddie Hazard and you know, and dozens and dozens of people I've talked to. So I've just I feel so honored that I get to have those conversations with them. Yeah, it's wonderful. It's such a great show. And I just want to add some of the other people that stuck out to me. Guess you've had so

Robin Williams, what was it like talking to Robin Williams. Robin, he came and saw an early version of my One Woman Show, and he was so sweet. He would text me every few days because I was just learning how to be on stage and do some acting, and so he was really checking in on me with that, you know, and talk about a person who you just he brings out the funny in everyone around you because he's like he opens the sandbox and you get to jump in

and play. Like I remember the first time I hung out with him, within ten minutes, he and Rick Overton and I were like doing an improv about seals and all this kind of stuff, and I thought, oh my god, I'm improving with amazing. It's so much fun because he just plays and he grabs your thing and then he takes it up here and then you grab it and everything. So Robin just another deep thinker, deep feeler, and just was so so heartbroken by how all of that ended.

But yeah, hell, I would have loved to have had been able to have a talk with him. Oh yeah, psychological. We're so open about all of it, to talk about all of it. Yeah, another person I thought was really interesting. You'd wear it out. Yankovic. I grew up with him, you know, we do. Yeah, he's also he's really silly and funny. Yeah, and lovely. And with all these people, you know, they've got the silly side. But we'd also you know, I love I kind of have this kind

of thing that I just that's who I am. We just kind of go deep real quick. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's what you do. It's little Blue. It's wonderful. I'm telling me about the National Comedy Center. Work you do. So there's this place in Jamestown, New York, where Lucille Ball was born and raised, and Lucy always wanted to have some sort of institution that would honor the art of comedy and tell the story of comedy. And four years ago, a few years before that, but four years ago,

we opened up the center. I donated ninety percent of my dad's archives to the National Comedy Center. And it is an holy interactive space. You go in, you go to a kiosk, you check your favorite comedians, movies, comedies, TV shows, all this kind of stuff. Out comes a bracelet with a little computer chip on it that holds your sense of humor. And then as you go through the exhibits, they're all interactive, all audio visual stuff. You tell the exhibit who your what your sense of humor is.

You just hit it on the thing and it brings up all the things that you love and things that are on the edges of who are of who you love and all that kind of stuff. It's takes about three hours to kind of skim the surface of it. You're laughing the entire time. I highly recommend going for a three day weekend and really deep diving into it. They've got a permanent exhibit of my dad's stuff, so if you're a George Carlin fan, you can geek out on all of my dad's handwritten notes and calendars and

interviews and all sorts of things. But it's got every genre of comedy, sitcom and movies, and it's got comedy karaoke and Lenny Bruce's Trench Code, and I mean, it's just it's it's a kind of a perfect place on earth, and every single big celebrity who's come through Jamestown or the Lucy Fest there. Every year goes through it and they their mind is blown. And my hero, one of my heroes, is Lily Tomlin, and she came and performed at Lucy Fest and walked through the museum and was speechless.

She was so and of of what we had done. Well, I'm definitely gonna have to check that out. You have to come check it out. It's awesome. I agree. I agree, that's a tyrannical should that I did. I yes, happened. You're also executive producing an HBO documentary on your dad, which is directed by Judd Apatow next summer. Is that right? Yeah, coming out next summer. Yeah, we uh inked the deal right before the pandemic started. But yeah, it's going to

be a two parter. As you know, jud did an amazing documentary on Gary who was a dear friend of his, Gary Shandling, so we were really excited to have jud come on board. He kind of ticked a lot of boxes for us, and his team of people are amazing. And yeah, it'll be a two parter on HBO and we're hoping to launch it and I think in May, which is my dad's May or August. We're not quite sure yet, hoping to have some special events in New York City and so, yeah, well I'm definitely looking forward

to that. I want to ask you one question. I asked people on Twitter any questions for Kelly, and there was one question. I thought it would be interesting one to ask you. What aspects of today's world do you think would irk your dad the most? This person wrote, he often comes to mind when thinking of social commentators who are missed at this moment in history. Yeah, it's jeez,

you know, everyone misses my dad right now. I think my dad would be most irked by people who got fooled by Donald Trump and just really let themselves be hoodwinked by the most greedy, narcissistic human in America. He would have some funny bits about Trump, right Yeah. You know, my dad attacked white businessmen a lot in his material, and people seem to kind of miss that. But he had a real disdain for white male business people in America.

I mean, those are the true owners of America. And he was you know, my dad grew up in Irish Harlem, they used to call it. He let me right next to Spanish and black Harlem, and he grew up on those streets, and from day one in my life, my dad taught me how how screwed over brown people are everywhere, but especially in America, starting with the native population, the indigenous people. So, you know, and of course he'd hate

the PC stuff going on. He'd probably have something to say about all the genders and all that kind of stuff. But my dad really respected underdogs, and in our culture, my dad really was a person who always spoke out and fought for the underdog and really did not like

people who comedians who punched down. So but you know, it's a more complicated landscape these days, and I think some of those people who are on the very left and are very politically correct would go after my dad right now, and I think he'd probably go after them because he always went after political correctness. He felt it was a real detriment to human evolution to he didn't think less speech was really going to create more freedom. That was his main stance around that. So, but you know,

it's complicated times. It sure is. Well thanks for being on my podcast today to kind of navigate some of this complication. And I'm a fan of George Carlin but I'm also a fan of Kelly Carlin. I must say, so, all the best with this programer're doing, and I'll put a link in the show notes to the course. Are you giving people discount? Is that right with? Yeah? No, the year long program is the coaching program. But I've

got some other stuff coming up. I have a day long end a year thing I'm doing, and then in January, I'm launching a twelve week course. So I'll definitely send you some links for all of that. All the links yep, and we'll put up some special links for your viewers for sure and your listeners. Cool. Thanks Kelly for being on the Psychology Podcast. Thanks for having me, Thanks for

listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at thusycology podcast dot com. We're on our YouTube page the Psychology Podcast. We also put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.