Lori Gottlieb and Guy Winch || Dear Therapists

popular Dear Therapist podcast, produced by Katie Kirk. She contributes regulary to The New York Times and many other publications, and in twenty nineteen, her TED talk was one of the top ten motes watched of the year. A member of the Advisory Council for Bring Change to Mind, she's a sought after expert in media such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS, This Morning, CNN, and MPR's Fresh Air.

Now Up is Guy Wench, internationally renowned psychologist who advocates for integrating the science of emotional health into our daily lives. His science based self help books have been translated into twenty seven languages, and his three TED talks have garnered over twenty five million views. He writes Dear Guy for ted dot com, the Squeaky Wheel blog for Psychology Today dot com, and is the co host with Worri Gottlieb of the Dear Therapist podcast. Guys, thanks so much for

talking with me today to superstar therapists. Well, thank you so much for having us. Thank you for having me. My pleasure. I tried to do a little bit of that Chicago Bulls intro. It didn't quite land. You know, No, I don't know what it sounds like, so starting center for the Chicago Bulls. Next up is guy went anyway to make it work? You do? You do? I realized that immediately after I did it, But anyway, look so

great to chat with you guys today. You have this really successful podcast that you both do together, but you're all both individually truly uh successful therapist, and I would like to know how you two found each other and how you came up with the idea for the really innovative show that you're doing today. Laurie, do you want

to Okay? Laurie and I met at a conference two summers ago, and we were on a panel together, and we had known of each other's work, and Laurie said to me, Hey, I'm going to be doing this advice podcast, and you have an advice callum and I an advice column, and I you have tech talks, and I'm going to do a tech talk. Maybe we should do it together. And we had just been on the panel, and my impression from the panel was, Wow, that we really think alike And you don't always think that when you're on

a panel with people. You often think, get me out of this room very quickly. So we really think alike was great and we decided to do it from that point and we started working on it soon if thereafter. It was it was almost like a shotgun marriage. It was one of these random, spontaneous things where we just sort of had this mind meld around how we wanted

to help people. And I think we both had this goal of democratizing therapy because we both felt like not everybody can go to therapy or wants to go to therapy, but there's so much that people can learn from the experience of what I like to say is getting a really good second opinion on your life from someone who's

not already in your life. And so here on the podcast, I feel like what we're doing is we're giving people the benefit of a therapy session, which is you know, obviously these aren't our patients, but people who write in and people can hear what actually sounds like to sit with not just one, but two therapists at the same time. And what we wanted to do in the end was to give people something even more than the session would provide.

So we give people concrete, actionable advice at the end of the session, which we don't normally do in the same way in the therapy room. And the guest on our show has a week to actually execute the advice, and then they come back and they tell us what happened,

did the advice work, what happened, how? Why? And I think that's another place where people can grow because even if you didn't have the exact same issue as the person on that week's episode, often there will be nuggets of advice that you could apply to your own life. Did you want to add anything to that guy? You don't have to, Oh yeah, and I will, I will

add this. The thing that I didn't think, sir, I'll say differently, The thing that I think was most scary for me and maybe the Laurie as well, was that we didn't really know each other Laurie said, it was a short down marriage. It was we had met that one time and from there we are doing conjoint therapy and we do not discuss the cases ahead of time. I have no idea what she's thinking. She has, there's

no idea what I'm thinking. I don't know where she wants to go in the session, neither does she know

where I want to go. And we're taping it live, so we have to figure that all out in flight, and that can go all kinds of ways, including smash into the ground, you know, And so it was a little scary when we started, but truly, I'll tell you, within five minutes of our first episode when we were taping, we just fell into this groove where we kind of we know where the other person wants to go because we know what the roads are, we can tell and we just fell into this groove of being able to

really in tandem like work off one another. I think so well. And again we met in person once. That's it, and so that worked out very fortunately. I think that's wonderful. Yeah, there are a lot of unique features of the show. One is I noticed, do you give your guest actionable homework? Each week, right, and then you have them report back and tell you what happened? Why do you guys decide

to do that? And how do you just? How do you is the kind of homework you give them, the kind that you would give your patience in your own private practice. Yeah, but not in an overloaded way. Sometimes they are five parts to the homer. Can they give it after one session? That would be a little you know,

a little intense for sure psychotherapy. But to me, the thing I always found slightly annoying about advice, and I write an advice column, so even about my own is that I'm writing these letters, I'm responding to them, but I don't know what happened, even as a person who's giving the advice I'm Sometimes people will write and say, oh, this is what happened, and even then it's an email, so it's not really I can't tell tonality. I don't really know how they felt or whether they were emotional.

So it was both very important for us to add that piece at the end of we want to hear back, we want to hear how that went, because to me, that's the completion of the story. That's the closure that you want after you hear a whole session with someone. I think the common thread in all of the letters that we get, and I feel like it's almost like a textonomy of, you know, modern day problems in the

sense of what are people actually struggling with today. And when you get thousands of letters between our columns and our podcasts and so, you're really seeing this collection of what people are dealing with on a daily basis, and you can start to see some themes, you know, that

people are dealing with. And I think what happens is that when we write our advice columns, like Guy said, sometimes people will write to us after and say, here's what happened, you know, just personally, but we don't get to share that with our readers. And I think what you hear on the on the Dear Therapist podcast is that sometimes people follow our advice exactly. Sometimes people then

take it and make it their own. And that's when it's really useful when they say, oh, that gave me an idea, and then I went off and I did this other thing as well, and we're shocked. We can't believe how much they changed or shifted their perspective or they actually did something very concrete that for years they couldn't get themselves to do, and they did it after one conversation. And so I think that what we're trying to show people is that people know what they need

to do. Sometimes they just need someone to help them understand why they're resisting doing what they already know they need to do. And what we really do on the podcast is we help people to see what are the blocks, what's getting in your way? Why are you self sabotaging? Why are you doing the exact opposite of the thing that you know will bring you the kind of freedom that you're looking for, the kind of piece that you're

looking for. Do you guys? Ever, I'm sure you disagree sometimes, and what is the best course of action for there is? I'm curious if your disagreements ever fall along like different psychotherapy orientation lines. I've just been That's my nerdy question for you too, because I'm curious, first of all, what are both of your you know, would you say your orientations are. I'm sure you're bringing a lot of stuff,

but what do you like to focus on? And then and then are your disagreements several along those kinds of lines? I would say I would say, I'll be curious to hear what you have to say about this guy, But I would say that guy is very, very compassionate to the the person on the show. Right. We call them fellow travelers based on Irviolum's view that we're all more similarly all different. Yeah, yeah, and so and so we

you know, we we consider them our fellow travelers. And and the people who come on the show, I think, you know, often Guy will will be really really compassionate and and he'll almost sort of take their side. But I know what he's doing, Like, I know that he's he's trying to get them to a new place, and I tend to kind of sometimes feel like, well, I want them to see this thing right away, so I'm kind of gonna go there. And so sometimes we sort of like have a different way of getting in there.

And then there'll be other times where it's flipped where Guy will like really want to get in there and I'm going to step back a little bit. And I think that's the benefit by the way of having two therapists on is like if somebody's going too fast or somebody's you know, find needing to find a different way in one person can take on one role and the other person can take on another role. I would say in terms of theoretical orientation, I have a very eclectic

theoretical orientation. I do a lot with attachment, so that's a that's a big part of how I sort of conceptualize somebody's issue. I think the culture is really important to look at. I think that therapists don't look enough at situational factors, circumstantial factors, race, ethnicity, background, and I think I look at this this question of agency. You know, how do people lose their their sense of agency? What

makes them think that they're trapped? For me, I got my PhD at NYU, and it was a very psychoanalytically oriented program, devout in certain ways, so much so, for example, that when my patients would say where are you from? Because I have a bit of an accent, I was told I'm not supposed to say where I'm from, and I'm introducing extraneous material into the therapy, I should explore what the fantasies are about where I'm from, which I had a trouble with because my accent might be hard

to place. It was pronounced French or German, that wouldn't be a question. So just because it's a little hard to place, I didn't And I also didn't see why I needed to make myself the focus of that session. That wasn't necessarily a transference issue. It was truly just a simple question like, oh, I can't place the accent.

People ask me that all the time and when I'm told, And so at my schooling we were exposed to a couple of different orientations, but they were pretty psychodynamic and psychoanalytic. They were quite devout. And when I'm told you must believe in this, then my natural rebellious tendency is to say, in fact, I'm going to go and explore it. Else I can believe in other than that. And so I spent my pH d really trying to explore other modalities.

Significantly among them were couples and family and systems therapy and some CBT and some other kinds of approaches narrative therapy, etc. And so I feel that I'm eclectic in the sense that there is no one style of therapy that's good for everyone. People's circumstance changes, why they come to therapy changes, how long they want to be in therapy changes, and each of those considerations can dictate what the tools are

that you get to choose as a therapist. And so for me, as long as the therapist has tools from which to choose, then they can adapt that to the needs of the patient that they have. I was just going to say, I think that's such a great point because if you listen to the podcast, you hear that we sound different as therapists in different episodes depending on

what the person is coming to us for. And so there are times when we'll take an approach that sounds like, oh, they're those kinds of therapists, and then in a different episode you'll hear us and we sound very different. So I think what guys saying is really true that you have to adapt what you're doing for the person who's

right in front of you. Yeah, I mean, as you're describing the merits of two therapists at one time, I actually think maybe we should start a new psychotherapy technique that involves two therapists with a peach patient, like in

Realize we actually did that in my training. So when I was I did a specialization in couples when I was training, and I see a lot of couples in my practice, and in fact, we have couples in season two that we're taping right now of the podcast, we have several epis coles, and in season one too, that's right, and in season two we have When I say couples, I mean that broadly, so not just romantic couples, but also we have a mother and an adult daughter, you know,

different kinds of couples. But what I was going to say is when I was training for the specialization in couples, we had two therapists in the room. So it was me as the junior therapist at the time, and then a senior couple's therapists, and we would do couples therapy in the room together. That was how I learned, and I thought it was so useful for the couple, not just for me as somebody who was learning, but for

the couple because they got these two perspectives. And I think what they get with two therapists on our podcast is they get those two perspectives. Guy and I might know we're trying to get to the same place, but we may have very different ways of getting there, and so we kind of tag team. I wish everybody could have the benefit of two therapists in the room when they go to therapy. It's totally impractical, but it's totally impractical,

but I think it's really useful. When I trained in couples in family therapy, I trained with with Salvador mi Nucin, who you know, originated systems, and the training, even in graduate school before I worked with sal was through one way mirrors. In other words, the supervisor the rest of the team would sit behind the mirror. The patients, to be clear, knew that there was a team that was observing them. That wasn't some CIA situation, it wasn't Clandestein.

And there was a phone and the supervisor would call in. And then I spent quite a few years supervising couples and family therapy at different hospitals in New York, and I would either call in with suggestions or walk into the room if I needed to do something very quickly

because something was going very wrong. And what I found was that and we're sitting behind with the team with two or three other people behind the mirror, and so there's a constant conversation going on, and you're constantly teaching. When you're teaching, it like this, not that this is where they should be going. Now, now this is why they're might be a problem. You don't get that an

individual therapy. When you're training, you're coming with your notes to the supervisor and saying, well, this is what happened. And what some minuchin would do is you had to either do live sessions with him there in behind the mirror or bring him videotape. And when you brought him videotape, a lot of people in our team would curate like their most magnificent moments and they would put the tape in and it would be like, oh my god, that should just take that and print it and sal every

time somebody brought a videotape he would take it. He would just fast forward randomly to a spot and say, let's look at this. And so it would be like no, no, no, we're not letting you choose the moment the supervisor gets to see. The supervisor will just find the spot and see what happens. So it kept you really, really honest. And that's the thing about this training that the couples and family training. It keeps you really honest because it's live,

people are actually watching you. There's no hiding but there's so much learning because you get called out on everything.

I love that. I remember recently I was talking to Early and you know who's sort of I think he's sort of liked the Oliver Sacks of the psychiatry world or the therapy world, and he was saying that he when he was trained, when he was training people, they decided that instead of so guy was talking about being behind the one way mirror and then talking about what was going on in the session, they decided to switch it and they had the patients then discuss how the

therapist did and the therapists would have to listen to that, and it was incredibly illuminating to hear well, what was resonating for the patients, what did not work for them, And so the therapists were actually learning from the patients as well. And I think that what I think all of this adds up to is that it's a very

collaborative process. A lot of people have this misconception that therapy is about the expert who's the therapist and who has all the knowledge, and the patient who has no knowledge and is coming in to get the expert's opinion or take on their life. And I think the guy and I come from the perspective of the person who comes into us knows a lot. They have a lot of answers. They just don't have access to those answers. And what we're doing is we're helping them to find

access to the answers that they already have. We're helping them to hear the voice inside that gets drowned out by all the noise out there, by people in their lives, by the culture, by you know, whatever is, whatever history is, still kind of care they're carrying inside of them. So I think that when we talk about people from this very human perspective, and I think this more leveling of the playing field perspective, I think that's what helps people

the most. Well, that's wonderful, you know, you this leveling the playing field. There's also something that's always struck me about when you hear enough clients, you start to hear very common issues over and over, and every single one of them thinks their issues is unique, like like they're the only one in the world who suffers from like a well sense of self worth, you know. And then sometimes I find they just feel better if you just tell them just so you know, you're the tenth person

today is to talk about low self worth. There's something kind of like relieving about that, knowing that you're part of a common humanity in some way. I was wondering if you both of you could kind of tell me some of the most recurring themes that you get in

your own practice and in your columns. One thing I will say is that I think both Laurie and I and this is definitely something that I connected with Lori even before I met her, even just reading her book, I was like, ah, yes, and her columns, because we both really believe in psycho education. We really believe in not just saying you know, you're not the first person to come into the less low self esteem, but to say, you know, yes, self is low self esteem is really common.

Here's what we know about it. Is what we know what allows that to happen. Here's what we know is not useful. Here's why negative self talk is not really helping you, even though it's extremely common. In other words, we will do a lot of education because the goal is we want people to you know, sorry, We want people to come out of the therapy process with a mantle of responsibility of continuing and being responsible for their

own emotional health going forward. So we need to give them the tools with which to do that and the understanding generally, not just of themselves, but how they fit in to the larger world. I always bring in a lot of research because I find that it's very comforting to people. So, for example, one of the things I am sensitive to as a therapist is this issue of rejection, because in the age of social media, we all experience

that a thousand times a day. If you have, you know, five hundred friends on Facebook and two of them liked your post, you feel rejected by the other four hundred and ninety eight and that can smart, you know, just

a little or a lot, depending on the circumstance. But when you hear about the studies of rejection that show that when rejection is manipulated in the lab and people go through a rejection experience and then they are told that the actual experience was rigged, that it actually didn't happen, it was confederates, it doesn't make their hurt go away. And when they go through that experience in the lab and then they're told that the person who rejected them

was actually a member of a group, they despise. It doesn't make the hurt go away, because we are wired so strongly to experience rejection is painful that we will experience it as painful even if it wasn't real, or even if the people who rejected us the people we would never want to affiliate with. When people hear that, it starts to help them organize their own feelings about Oh, that's why I'm hurting so much that my colleagues went to lunch without me. They're not even colleagues I wanted

to go to lunch with. But now at least it's not because I'm a loser or I have this. So I think the research is really useful to bring in as well as the psycho education which involves the research, because it helped people get an angle on Earth. Oh

that's why this is happening in my head. And I think that when we talk about the common themes that come in and people feeling not just like they're not the only ones, but also when we get these common themes, people can take something from that episode and apply it to their own lives. We've had We've had an interesting one was we did one We did one that was about a breakup and it was a really painful breakup. And the person said, I used that advice at work

in my career. And that's the kind of thing where we feel like these themes are so universal. We get so many letters about, you know, heartbreak, about relational difficulties, about questions about am I with the right person? About questions about is the other person crazy? Or am I crazy? We get we get a lot of questions about family. You know, how much do I forgive? Where are my boundaries? You know? What is my role at this time in

life with my parents, with my children? You know? What do I do about the fact that my child is doing this thing that you know makes me wonder about whether they can be happy doing this thing? All kinds of you know, I mean, you know, it's like it's family relationships. I think ultimately all the questions sort of come down to how can I love and be loved? If you go to the core of all of the questions, wow, in terms of love as part of that accepted, how

can I be accepted? I will say that it's I would expand love beyond romantic love, of course, because for me, one of the themes that I'm seeing more and more and more in recent years. And I'm seeing it in my practice, but I'm seeing it in the letters we get, the advice cools and in a lot of interactions. Is

this feeling of disconnection of loneliness that people have today. Now, obviously the pandemic did not help that situation, but you know, the American Psychological Association in twenty seventeen put out a press release declaring loneliness to be a public health crisis because of the impact it has on physical health and longevity, which is, you know, the equivalent of smoking fifteen cigarettes to day. That's how much chronic lonliness impacts your health.

And so I hear a lot about disconnection. And the loneliest cohort are not the elderly. Maybe they used to be, but today it's the eighteen to twenty four year olds. They are the loneliest code. And this is true the world over, not just in the US. And that means and because young people are and truly because of social media, because everyone looks so happy on social media, even they look happy on their own social media, but they know

they're not when they're not taking those pictures. But when you have so many people, you're connected to and you don't feel seen by any of them, and you don't feel really cared for by any of them. They're all superficial or they don't seem to be actually in touch and engaged. It can be extremely, extremely painful. And I think that loneliness is one of the biggest themes that

I see in my work right now. And I want to just say about loneliness that I think when Guy was saying that there are all these people who are maybe following them, but they don't really feel seen, truly seen by anybody. I think that we have this idea about vulnerability in our culture now, which is that everybody understands that it's important to talk to someone, it's important

to be open with people. It's important to have people with whom you can be yourself, you can show the truth of who you are, which is what we call being vulnerable. But what we see on social media is you have people post and they'll say, you know, I've never told anyone this before. They're on Instagram and I'm going to tell all of you guys, all of my

followers that I've never met in real life. You know, some of them might maybe I have, but you know I'm going to tell all of you this very vulnerable thing, and they say something about their life and they get tons of likes and comments and people are so supportive and oh my gosh, you're so brave because you were so vulnerable. That is not true vulnerability. True vulnerability is sitting face to face with someone in real life, in your life who matters to you, where the stakes are high.

You matter to them, they matter to you, and that's where you show up. That's where you're present. People aren't doing that. Instead, they're saying, hey, I'm going to reveal this very personal thing about myself, but it's curated because it's on social media and they know they're going to get a lot of likes for it. So I think that leaves people even lonelier because they feel like, well, I opened myself up, and why don't I feel filled up by that? You don't feel filled up by that?

Because it's empty, it feels one way, doesn't feel like a mutual relatedness to it. Well, you know something that struck me in reading all the positive reviews of your podcast, which I'm sure you guys, I hope you read your reviews. They're pretty good. They're pretty good. A lot of people say that they felt like they got a free therapy session. Even though they didn't necessarily share the same problem you tackled, they could still resonate, you know, with a lot of

the issues. And I think there's something that's maybe even your show itself is making people feel less lonely just by listening to it and hearing that others are are suffering too. I think you'll write, though, Scott, what you said about it needs to be connected, right, and so yes, I think people might feel less lonely in the sense of Okay, it's not just me. But if they then use that to reach out and to connect to someone else so they know might be feeding that way, then great.

And we post all shows on social media, they can reach out, you know. I mean, I remember I did this interview once and it was people were sending in pictures via the show's Facebook page, right, so it's Facebook, their names are there. And one person said to me, but you don't understand I feel this way and I don't know anyone else who feels like me. And I'm like, we just got fifty questions about from people who feel like you and that they are on Facebook. You could

reach out to twenty of them. You could say, hey, An, if you're fifty people, do you want to contact me? I'd love to talk. It's that thing that when we feel lonely, when we feel disconnected, it comes with a huge psychological whammy of this self fulfilling prophecy in which we are so convinced that people won't be responsive to us, that people aren't truly interested, that we don't reach out, or we reach out in such ways that is going

to turn people off. And that's the real problem with loneliness. It really gets you to be so risk averse and so self protective. You're not being authentic, certainly not being vulnerable. And it comes across in a way that people don't feel it vulnerable. They feel it's agenda driven, or they feel it's too desperate, or they feel us to self apologetical,

whatever it is. And that's the trap of it, to be able to reconnect to your authentic self in the way that you can take the risk and truly be you, rather than bring too much of that pain to the encounter. One of the paradoxes I think that guys talking about is that there's this distortion of ourselves when we feel lonely. It is the way that depression distorts are thinking same with loneliness, and of course loneliness and depression often go together.

And during the pandemic, it's interesting because when I was seeing patients, especially during the real beginning of lockdown, the people who were living alone, who were single or you know, didn't have anybody else living with them, would say, I'm so lonely, and I don't want to reach out to my friends who are married or have kids, who are living with families or you know, other people because they have so much on their plates. They're juggling so much.

I don't want to bother them. And then I would have sessions with those people who were married with kids or whatever, and they would say, I don't know why my friends aren't calling me. I don't know where they are, I don't know what happened to them, and you know, they're like, I just I need to talk to someone who's not in my family, like I miss my friendships.

And so a PSA to all the single people out there, which I which I put out widely at the time, and I and I hope people still listen to this is please don't make assumptions about who wants to hear from you and who doesn't want to hear from you. So when these people started reaching out to their friends, who you know, were busy with families, those friends were so relieved. They said, I missed you. Tell me what's

going on. You know, nothing's going on here. It's the same old, same old with you know, the partner or the kids or whatever. And they're really they really miss those friendships. And so I think that loneliness can distort, and it can can cause people to make assumptions and then start isolating even more, and that just exacerbates the loneliness. Such good advice, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's got There's one other aspect of this I want to bring up, and

it's a city one in a way. But it's about how we connect and how we communicate these days, which is electronically. And people know this, but they always forget it that there is no tonality in electronic communication. What you intended is not necessarily that's true in any communication, but certainly in electronic communication, what you intended is not

necessarily what the recipient of that message is going to read. So, for example, you might think of your friend and think, oh my god, I haven't seen them for so long. When you write them and you go, I haven't seen you in four weeks, I haven't spoken to you in four weeks, and you're thinking. You're saying that with a smile, and now you're thinking of them. They might read that as I haven't seen you in four weeks as accusatory, and that happens all the time. Electronic communications because of

the lack of tonality, get misinterpreted all the time. And what I say to people, I say this, I say, first of all, use an emoji and a smiley face after things people say really am like, yes, twelve years of schooling, this is what I happened, elogi. But it's really useful. And the smiley face because it's clear that you mean that loving me, and it makes a difference.

And if you think, no, they'll get it, No, they won't because if they just stub their toe before they got that message, they're not going to read it that way. Even if they know that you care about them, they're going to read it as accusatory and they'll go, you know, screw you. There's a story, and maybe you should talk to someone in my book where one of the stories that I share is this young woman in her twenties

who's dating and she keeps dating the wrong men. She keeps like hooking up with the wrong guys, and then she starts hooking up with someone from the waiting room. Not in the waiting room, but they meet in the waiting room. It did not help soap office. And at one point she's telling me about something that happened with this guy that she liked, and she's got her thumbs in the air like this. She's like, and then I said, and then he said, and then I said, and I'm like,

what is she doing? And then I realized. I said, wait a minute. You had this conversation on text and she said yeah. And then I tried to explain to her that you can't read body language, you can't feel sort of the energy in the room, and she said, oh no, no no. We also used emojis. And so while I agree with Guy's advice about, you know, the emoji, I strongly encourage people to actually pick up a phone. I think it's so important that we really lose an

entire dimension. It's why before the pandemic, a colleague had said that doing therapy online was like doing therapy with a condomant, because because it's just there's no substitute for the what it feels like to be in the same physical space as another human being. There's just nothing that can replace that. And I think we've all noticed that during the pandemic. Finally people have said, wait a minute,

there really is a difference. And so I hope that people take with them from that the idea that maybe I should call my friends sometimes, maybe I should FaceTime them when I you know, until it's safe, and then maybe when it is safe, we should actually get together in person, because an entire dimension of the relationship is lost if you don't do that. Absolutely. So, yeah, my faces are not a panacea that that's true, but you know you is there is there can we reverse what

you said? Are not reverse? But but are there any potential benefits of doing it online versus in person? As you know, you talked about the disadvantages, but are there any context in which it actually could be better online? I would say, we have this couple on for season two. By couple, I mean mother daughter couple, And without giving away any spoilers, here, guys looking at me like, wait, don't tell them. We're not giving away anything that happens

in that episode. In very general terms, the mother has a lot of trouble. So this is like a grown daughter and her mother, and they have a long history of difficulty, and the mother, when she actually sits back and reflects, can give her daughter exactly the kind of mirroring and understanding and compassion that the daughter needs. But in the moment, the mother feels so accused by the daughter, she feels so wounded. She hears the daughter's requests as judgment,

and so then she defends herself. She sets up this entire defense, and the daughter feels completely unseen, unheard, uncared about. And so I think in that case, that's a great example.

And when you hear the episode, there's much more to it, obviously, But when you hear the episode and you see the homework and how well that worked out, you can see that the homework we gave them had to do with the mother being able to write something to the daughter so that it was reflected on, it was digested, it was thought through, and she wasn't setting up her defense in that so first we had her right, I think, like the defense right, here's the defense, and then we

had her not send that part and write the rest of it. And in season one there's an episode it's called Mike's Messy Affair, and it's about this guy who had an affair while his wife was pregnant with their second child and then told her or it was discovered, I guess. And did he tell her I can't remember. I think he told her a few weeks after. He told her a few weeks after they had the baby. And he comes off in the beginning, is very unempathic,

very unsympathetic to his wife and what had happened. And we do an exercise in that episode of perspective taking, and it takes a lot to get him there, but he gets there, and it's a really beautiful shift that he makes from this person who seems like completely unopened because of his shame and his guilt, to considering how much damage he has caused, to really being able to take her perspective and tell the story entirely from her perspective.

And so we did something similar with him where we had him write something that included all the stuff that we don't want him to say to her, but that he needs for himself. So that he doesn't just drown in shame. And then we had him take that part out, and what he did in the homework was he didn't even do that part because he said I didn't need to. After that session, I felt like I understood it and I got it was very cathartic, and I didn't even

need to write that part down and discard it. I had already done that in the session with you, and we were just so proud of him. I can tell you, Scott in my practice, and I've also written an article I think for Today about it, and I think the article was like why some couples should fight via email we'll text, And I think that that is useful for couples who get too inflamed too quickly. When it goes

from zero to name calling with them to sentences. Then those are not you know, they often they just cannot argue and it's going to take them. Yes, we can teach them some tools, it will take them a while to really use them because one will use it once, the other won't, so they'll stop and the the other one

do it once they didn't the other won't. I mean, it just it's it's it's difficult it takes a while to get the couples there, but when you can, and I say that the whole rule is you write what you write, you wait one minute, and then you read it, and then you make sure that you modify it so it's easier for the other person to hear. You cannot take back what you say and do that, but you

can in writing. And I think so for some people who can you know, have a little bit of a hair trigger temper, or who just whose relationship and who's just a style of communication it's really combustible. It can be useful to use you know, online text emails, whatever it is, but really to slow things down, we always say the couples, before you speak, ask yourself, how will what I'm about to say be received by the other person?

How will it land on that? And some people cannot do that in the moment, and that's where stepping back and reflecting and writing something down and making sure that it's something that will land on them in a way that will be useful to the two of you. That's a situation where that works. In general, we like face to face communication, but again, like I was saying, until

a couple is there, sometimes that's very helpful. How can you guys apply these techniques to heal the world not just individuals, because you know there's the political discourse in this country in America. Is you hear a lot of this just name call it. I mean, what you all are describing is like, I'm a good That sounds like a lot of the public discourse we're having right now in politics and a lot of things that people don't

agree with each other. Do you think we can apply some of these tools more large to kind of help even groups heal that are groups that view each other

as the group out group. Yes, I mean I think, and I've spoken about this and I've written about this, but I think that we both think, and we both said on the show numerous times to numerous people, that your goal here, especially when we have two people on it's a couple of other daughter or whatever the combination, your goal is to understand the other person, not to prepare your rebuttal, not to figure out how you can, you know, respond, but to understand them. See arguments as

having two parts. In the first part, there's the discovery stage. All you're trying to do is understand the other person, and that means you're not making any statements, You're just asking questions. And I think if people did that, you know, if people on two sides of the political divide, for example, decided that rather than just arguing their points, which I assure you will be an argument that's not going to yield any new information for either of them because they've

heard it before, They've said it before thousand times. If they really just became curious about why does this person think this, why do they believe this? Let me ask them, Let me ask them how they feel about it, what they think about it, where else that resonates in their lives, how long they've thought it, What is that based on how they feel about those things? What are the values

that it? If they ask a lot of questions, then you will find that there's much more overlap because a lot of the times when the people get to the value is actually their values their goals. Even if, for example, wanting America to be the best country it can be, or wanting any country to be the best country it can be, or whatever, there's overlap and where you want to get to. Ultimately you're just disagreeing about the journey, But even that understanding would do a lot to bridge

some of the divides that we have. And I think what you're saying, Guy about curiosity is key, and what we're trying to do on the podcast is model curiosity. So you can see sometimes at the beginning we don't necessarily agree with what someone is telling us. In fact, we see it sometimes is quite distorted, but we're not saying uh uh ah, that's really distorted at least in

the first half of the show. Right later we'll kind of help them to ask themselves some of these questions, but we're modeling that curiosity and we're asking the questions. And so it's really about asking the right questions from a genuine place of curiosity, not from a place of gatcha, not from a place of let me show you, let me try to catch you in some inconsistency, but to say, I'm really curious about this. I really want to understand more about why you think that, or where that thought,

where that belief comes from. Tell me more about that. And if you just keep going through that process with them, you're going to learn so much about the person and find those places of commonality even if you don't see it at first. And then they're going to start ask getting curious about themselves. A lot of times people come in and they're not that curious about themselves. They're very curious about other people, like why does my husband do this?

I don't understand why he does this? And we want them to get curious about Let's get curious about you and what happens with you. And the more curious you get about yourself, the more capacity you'll have to be curious about someone else. Yeah, I'm just imagining like bringing in like Antifa and Proud Boys in the same room and having them practice these techniques with each other, Like is that possible? Like what I'm taking the most extreme example,

because when you it's easier said than done. Sometimes, when when someone feels like their whole identity is thread end and that there's a fundamental conflict, not just in terms of you know, there's something a deeper conflict in terms of like, well, this person's actually against me because of the car of my skin or against me because of my identity, you know. And so when when when emotions are turbo charged, how do we lower the temperature? I

think it's it's really tricky territory. And I love what you all are saying, you know, but you understand what I'm saying to you. Yeah, And I think that you have a very very good point. But I think even within what you said, right, I mean, if you had Proud Boys and Antifa come in, then they would each agree from a very different perspective. They would each agree that what they're doing is trying to advance the nature of this country or trying to really make sure that

their identity doesn't get erased or dismissed. Both sides feel that their identity is being threatened now for very different reasons, in very different ways, and there's very big differences between them. But even if both people could come to a recognition that that's what you're both really kind of fighting about, that's something you actually share, then it starts to create some bonds between them, some connective tissue that can be

built upon. But you have to find those commonalities even in the passion of what the purpose is that you're trying to accomplish, And sometimes you can have the same purpose and the same passion trying to get there in different ways. Are trying to get someone slightly different but with the same purpose intended And seeing that, oh, you know, they're like me, but just in a different way, a very very different way. That can start to get people to like, huh, maybe we do have some things in common.

Maybe we're not entirely one hundred and eighty percent different. And I think too, that when an idea becomes an identity, that usually stems from somebody feeling like nobody really saw them, nobody really understood them, and so the idea stands in for the identity. So you're going to see me because I have this idea, and I'm going to have all these people around me who share this idea, and that's how I'm going to be seen. And I think that ultimately what people want is they want people to to

value them, to see them, to hear them. And sometimes if they can be seen or heard or valued in a different way, the idea becomes less important to them, It becomes it becomes less entwined with their identity. And I think some of that has to do with self compassion as well, because I think that when you have compassion for yourself, you have more compassion for others. And a lot of people who get very wrapped up in

a particular idea don't like themselves very much. They don't feel like they have a lot to offer except for this one cause or this one idea. So I think it's really important to say, well, what else is going on? Where were they not seen or heard? You know? How do they feel about themselves? Wow? That's really profound. Were you always have this way of cutting right to the heart of a matter? And you know, just really really insightful.

You know, my own orientation in psychology, you know that is a humanistic orientation, so, you know, a big fan of like Carl Rogers, and the notion of unconditional positive regard, which I don't think is entirely different from some of the aproach you know, active listening approach that Carl Rogers talked about as well. I think is relevant here to the things you both are saying in your own episodes. How do you practice unconditional positive regarded and try not

to judge? Like I'll give you an example of listening to Mike's messy affair, you know, I mean he's talking over here talking about having an affair with his wife when his wife is pregnant and then leaving her for

another woman weeks after the baby is born. How do you both just like listen to that and be like, oh, okay, I'm curious, that's very interesting, very you know, how do you practice that in you know, in your own your goal as a therapist is to understand the person, and the only way you can do that is to really have empathy for them, is to really try and get

their perspective and see the world from their perspective. And I find people sometime said to me like, well, what if you have to work with somebody who you don't like Mike. You know, it's been so rare over my career really disliked someone, because when you really try and understand someone, when you really try and see the world through their eyes, you can't help but liking them because you get them in a certain way, and that's your job.

And I think that once you try and see the world through their eyes, there's no judgment in what that perception is. It's just how they see the world. Once you understand it, then you can start to dismantle some of the roadblocks or to challenge some of the systems and the beliefs that things are based upon. But you do that from the place of you get how they feel, and you get how they think and you get why in part they feel and think those ways, and that

engenders a certain fondness for the other person. Understanding always brings people closer. In a therapist, when we try and understand people, you know, that has a humanist assumption embedded baked in, and that is that you will be able to understand them because they're human, that you will be able to get their perspective, and you will be able to see the world through their eyes, because that's the humanist assumption there, that we can all that we all

share that basic DNA. Yes, yes, you said about common find the common ground. You know, they also to find the common humanity, you know, find the common basic needs. Yeah, sorry, worry, I saw you were about to talk, but I got excited. Yeah. No, I was excited too, because I think that's exactly what we're trying to do. And one of the things I think that people could take away from the podcast as

well is that humanistic perspective in their own relationships. So a lot of times we have forgotten that the other person that we're dealing with is a struggling human being, and we get very rigid in our ideas about them. We get very rigid in our responses to them, and what we're trying to model these in these episodes is that no matter what the other person is coming at you with, that they're doing it for a reason. Usually

it's too psychological. We protect themselves and we forget about that that there's some struggle going on for them that is making them do or act or say, and you know,

the things in a certain way we have. We have sort of the flip side of the Mike's Messi Affair episode in season one where a man comes to us because his wife had an affair and he wants the marriage to work, and at first she comes back to him and says, I want the marriage to work, But she comes back really for reasons that don't seem strong enough to us, to us to us, yes, he's very much in denial. And you know, it's one of those things where you know, we might say, Wow, this guy

really can't see it. He really cannot see what's going on here. And it's so hard to kind of pierce the veil of denial with him because we know we're going to hurt him when we do. We know that that is going to cause him immense pain. But we think it's going to cause him more pain to live in this fantasy world, and then you know, really really get hurt the longer he remains in the fantasy world.

And I think again that's sort of the flip side of how do you talk to somebody knowing that they can't quite see something that they really really need to see and in this case, it's really going to hurt them when they see it. Is there, you know, just a final parting words? Or are there any other things you hope that listeners get from listening to the podcast. I hope that they get a sense of being kinder to themselves for who they are, that maybe they won't

be so hard on themselves. You know, when I give talks, I always say to people, who is the person that you talk to most in the course of your life? And I'll say from the stage and I'll say show of hands, right, so I'll say, you know, is it your partner, lots of hands? Is it your sibling, is it your best friend? Is it your parents? Is it your adult child? Who's the person that you talk to

most in the course of your life? Lots of hands for those, but the person that we talk to most in the course of our lives is ourselves, and what we say to ourselves isn't always kind or true or useful. And I had a therapy client who was so self critical and did not realize it. And I said to her, listen, I want you to go home and write down everything that you say to yourself over the course of a few days, and then come back and we'll talk about it.

And so she comes back the next week. She's dutifully done the assignment. It's all in her phone. She starts to read it and she says, I can't even read this. I am such a bully to myself. And they were little things like she made a typo in an email, and she said to herself, you're so stupid. We don't even realize that we're talking to ourselves that way. She passed her reflection in a mirror and she said, God, you look terrible, right, And she, of course did not

look terrible. We wouldn't say that to a friend, not because we're trying to sugarcoat or be kind to her friend. We just literally would not think our friend was stupid for making a typo or look terrible the way that she had looked that day. And so I think that it's really important that we ask ourselves, is it kind? Is it true? Is it useful? And one of the things we hope that our podcast does is to help people to be a little more self compassionate with themselves.

For me, I mean, I'll tell you this, when I always knew I wanted to become a psychologist. And when people say, well, why did you choose psychology? My response is always why would you not? I mean, you have a mind, you have feelings, you have thoughts. That's what psychology is. It applies to everyone. How could you possibly not be interested in what's going on up there? How could you not be interested in what motivates you, what allows you to feel the way you do, what blocks you?

What stimis you, what advances you? How is that not fascinating you? That's you, and it's your relationships? How are you not captivated? And because to me it was so obvious that, God, this is the most fascinating thing. Everyone should be able to connect to it. And clearly not everyone chooses to become a therapist or a psychologist or

someone who deals with the mind. But I hope that listening to our podcast will make people curious about their own minds will make them interested in like maybe I need to get under the hood just a bit and think it just a bit. And because people don't, people don't actually even ask themselves questions sometimes that just are so much of them. They just do what they do.

But you know, it's not thought through, it's not mindful, and it's also they don't understand that there are actually we know so much more now than we did fifty years ago, one hundred years ago. There's actually a science there that can be utilized to advance your knowledge, to increase your emotional health, to increase your functioning, to increase

everything that you do, your happiness, your life satisfaction. So to me, it gets people interested in themselves, in why they do the way they do, and in their relationships, that would be great. And I would say to that, I hope that it helps people to ask the right questions, the important questions. So when we talk about getting people to focus on themselves, we don't mean in a way

that is navel gazing. We mean in a way that is really open and curious, and they're asking the questions that they have been afraid to ask but need to ask. Love it. Thanks both of you so much for coming on the Psychology Podcast. This was a really real nice

melding of the psychology nerds minds. I mean, you're on the Psychology Podcast, like, and we all three of us have this unabiding passion for the human mind, but making the human mind heal it, heal it as well, not just understand it, right, Like, we're both interested in both of those dualities. So it was a real treat for me to have you on. And I just want to congratulate you again on the success of your show and I wish it well. Thank you, Scot. We love your podcast.

I think it's so great because you know, you've been doing this way longer than us sometimes of podcasting and bringing this science and bringing the knowledge to so many people, and I think you do such an important thing by doing that. So it's an honor for me and for us to be on the podcasting too and to help you with that mission. Yeah, well, thank you so much for having us. We love these conversations and we listen every week, so thank you for having us. Thank you.

I'm glad we could make it happen. 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 the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology podcast dot com. Also, if you'd prefer a completely ad free experience, you can

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