Lori Gottlieb || Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, which is currently being adapted as a television series with Eva Longoria. I think that's how you pronounce her name. In addition to our Critical Practice, she writes The Atlantic's weekly Dear Therapist advice column and contributes regularly to The New York Times and many other publications. She's also a sought after expert in media such as The Today Show, Good Morning America,

the CBS Early Show, CNN, and NPR's Fresh Air. Worry. This is amazing to talk to you today. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. I don't think I've ever opened up the podcast by saying amazing talking to you today. I was just saying nice chatting with you today. You know, So this is I really mean it. I really mean it. Your book is terrific. It is. I finished it last night. Finally finished it last night. I've been like chipping away at it for like a

while because life keeps getting in the way. So how you wrapped everything up? I was in tears and I can't imagine, like how someone could be human and read your book and not be in tears by the by the end of your book, Yeah, you know, I really wanted people to have the experience that I had when I was seeing these patients, and so I hope that people feel a lot when they're reading the book. Oh I felt quite a bit. In fact, I saw I read. I finished the book right before I went to sleep,

and my dreams last night were so weird. I feel like they were like like partly tied to the stories in your book and partly tied to like my mom. Like I was like, I woke up this morning, I was like, Mom, I miss you, you know, like she's she's still she's still alive. I was like, I want to see you every day, And I'm like, where did that come from? I thought I didn't like my mom. No, I'm joking. I love my mom. She's going you know now,

I know, I know, and I love her. I love her, but but I've been trying to put my distance but between me and her a little bit because she's a very overprotective Jewish mother. But and still is, you know. But but just reading your book, I was just like, it made me want to like hold on to time as much as possible. It's always something I've had an

issue with anyway. It's like the idea of time passing by has always I've always been erotic about that, ever since I was actually counseling as a little kid over that because it freaked me out. But especially after reading your book now as well, it's like it's heightened my appreciation of everyone in my life. Yeah. I think most people don't think about that until they get to a certain age. And you know, so in the book, I follow these four very different patients and then I'm the

fifth patient. And I think that woven throughout all of our stories is this question of how do we want to spend our time. You know, are we being intentional about how we're spending our time or are we just squandering it away? And you know, I hope that you know when you read the book that it made you. It didn't scare you, but that it made you be more aware of you know, what am I doing with

my life? It did absolutely, It didn't scare me, No, it it just made me appreciate, just have more gratitude. Your book remind you remind me kind of like a modern day or irving y'allom a bit. I mean, I don't think there'sn't been anyone else who's done what he's done since you, you know, like you know, in terms of being a therapist, in writing such compelling stories about their patients, and even you know, the existential themes of your writing in particular. I don't know has he been

an influence on your work? He has, definitely. I first read him when I was in medical school at Stanford and he of course was at Stanford, and he can you read it. Pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everyone off is a piece of cake. Absolutely. Absolutely, If I had a cup, I would be drinking to that too. So so I you know, I corresponded with him a little bit and met with him when I was at

Stanford briefly, and that was a million years ago. And then I reconnected with him when I wrote this book. And I was really nervous giving this book to him, because you know, he's such a master at bringing people into the therapy room in a way that's universal that it doesn't feel like it's about therapy, but it feels like it's about the human condition. And he was so

lovely and such a fan the book. And I actually was supposed to do an event with him in the Bay Area when I was on book tour and he became ill and couldn't do the event, and his son, who's also a psychotherapist, Victor, did the event with me. And it meant so much to me to have the Yallams, you know, supporting this absolutely, and now you have Kaufman supporting it. You're your maid. I know that was that was like the icing on the cake when and I got Coughlin supporting it. But no, I'm such a big

fan of Yaolm's work as well. I reached out to him a couple of years ago. I was in San Francisco. I was like, Hey, can I come over your house and talk to you? And he's like sure, and like I spent an afternoon with him, and like we talked about so much. He turned out he was friends with Rold May. He was one of my favorite psychotherapists, and he was at he was on roll May's deathbed. You that, yeah, well I did, because roll O May was was his

therapist at one point. Exactly, that's exactly, yeah. Yeah, But he's so generous in that way, you know, to say to somebody, yeah, just come over. And and you know, he thinks about the world in a way that I think he tries to encourage everybody else to, which is to really consider, you know, what do you want to do with your time on this planet? Yeah, And he talks about these fundamental themes of human existence. And your

book is full of those themes. And if you see enough patients, you'll just like it's basically like doing like a subjective factor analysis, you know, it's like non objective factor analysis, but subjectively you start to notice, like there's these groupings, like these things keep coming all over over. We all think we're like so unique, you know, and like our problems are so I'm the only one, you know, suffering with guilt or redemption meaning mortality, loneliness, love, you know.

But you know, you see enough patients you start to see these themes over and over again. How does that impact sort of your own life, you know, and thinking about these themes and how they play on your own life. Yeah, it's such a such a great point because I think that we all know that everybody else experiences heartbreak and grief and loss and you know, great joy and you know, all of those things, but when it happens to us, we think that ours is particularly unique, that no one

has experienced it in exactly the same way. So, you know, the book opens with me going through this breakup, and of course I feel like, well, you know, it's very specific to me, you know, and I know intellectually that so many other people have experienced something like this, but the way that it happened, what you know, in the play by play that I keep giving my therapist, I really want him to understand my unique experience. And what you see as a therapist is that we're all more

the same than we are different. And I think that there are so many times that we feel isolated in our experiences because we don't realize how connected our experiences are to everybody else's. And I think that when you know the title of the books, maybe you should talk to someone. And I don't necessarily mean maybe you should talk to a therapist. I mean maybe we need to talk to each other more because we do feel so

alone in our experience. And the more that we could talk to people and really talk to people, the more we'll realize that, oh, you know, other people have experienced exactly this. We were having this conversation. I was having

this conversation with my students just yesterday. I have a large lecture hall and I just put up a poll a students can do anonymously with their self with their cell phones, and I just put up the question are you lonely and yet yes or no. What I wanted to do is for them to all see just how lonely everyone else was in the classroom. Now. I was praying that I would get a good number on the

yes and yeah. I mean, just to make it worth the point, although if it wasn't, then I actually would be good for good for the students if they weren't with But anyway, it came out about thirty three percent said yes, And I said, you know, like that's really telling. Like just think on this campus, one out of every three people that you walk past in this campus has the experience of I am lonely, and no one's smiling

each other, no one's you know. I tried to experiment yesterday where I try to smile at everyone that I passed. Do you try you know, don't ever try that? In New York City. They think that something is wrong with you. Yeah, yeah, they think I'm ready for the mental institution. Yeah. Yeah.

You know. It's interesting because they think that no matter what people come in with, there is this kind of loneliness in the background, even if they're surrounded by people, even if they you know, have families and friends and all of those things. I think that we're so disconnected in so many ways that we don't realize how lonely we are. Just for the simple act of sitting face to face with another person uninterrupted, like you do in

therapy for fifty minutes. But people don't do that outside because they've got something pinging or dinging or vibrating or ringing, and they're always distracted and there's there's something so you know, connecting, I think, and it feels so good to be able to sit with someone face to face in the same physical space, not mediated by a screen or FaceTime, and really just sit there without any interruptions. We have so few opportunities for that nowadays. Oh my gosh, so few opportunities.

And not just I mean I feel like we I have the opportunities, but my I'm addicted, like like like, there's there's the two issues. There's the opportunity, but then there's like, you know, yeah, the phones there, and I have the opportunity not to look at it, but I gotta look at it. Oh my god, I gotta do what. I gotta know what they said on Twitter? Did they like my post? One of my colleagues calls the internet the most effective short term non prescription painkiller out there,

and I think that that's so true. When you talk about addiction, it's addiction is a way to THEMB right, it's way to not feel. And so that's what the internet does. What our phones do for us. It's it's oh, I'm having a feeling. Oh let's see what's on Twitter. Oh I'm having a feeling. Let me just you know,

scroll through my phone. But it's just it's so isn't scary to think that, Like, like I'm addicted, but because it's so normalized like some certain addictions, I feel like I'm more normalized than others, you know what I'm saying, Like we're all like, yeah, what is like it's perfectly normal that we're all in the elevator together and we're all looking at our phones and you know, like it's perfectly like it's it. So there's certain things that but yeah,

but it's I just want to scream and everything. You're all addicted like like to like, it's no different than being addicted to like chocolate, you know, or anything. Right, It's it's it's not And I think that that people don't realize it, so they feel this loneliness, and especially couples. You know, I see a lot of couples in my practice and they'll come in and they'll they'll talk about, you know, not like feeling like something is missing, something's

not there. And then when I get into their lives, you know, you find out that like there are ones person's on the iPad and the other person's watching the show, and the other person is scrolling through the phone and it's like they really they might be in the same room, they might be next to each other and even touching each other, but like you know, there's there's there's something else there that gets between them, and that's when you

realize it's an addiction where you can't let it go. Yeah. Absolutely, So just just talking like at a metal level about your book, because I know not everyone has read it. I don't know if you knew that, but not everyone in the world has read it. Kidding, it seems like it's so disappointing. I don't I don't know how to

handle that news. It seems like it so even my you know, my new therapist that I'm just starting to see who I had to change my appointment today because I was like, I have a podcast chat with the Worriy Gottlie. First She's like, oh my god, you have a chat with Wriy Gottlie. She's famous. Anyway, I mean everyone, I feel like everyone has. It feels like everyone has read your book. I mean people love it. Like, Like, now,

how does this not go to your head? Like you seem like such a grounded, you know, humility, you know, like like for a book to become a bestseller for a writer. Do you have any tips on how to still stay grounded? I think that's an important tip in itself for people to know. Well. You know, it's funny, and I talk about this in the book that I wasn't supposed to be writing this book, and so there was a long saga that led up to it. You know, I had written this piece for The Atlantic called how

to Land Your Kid in Therapy? Why are obsession with our kids happiness might be dooming them to unhappy adulthoods? And that piece went crazy viral, and publishers wanted me to write that book. And I talk about in my book and maybe shut someone. I talk about how they offered me this like ridiculous amount of money, like amount of money I'd never seen on paper before with my name associated with it. And I said no. I said no,

and everyone thought I was insane. But I just felt like I was starting out as a therapist and I wanted to write something I didn't want to write a book about, you know that. I felt like there were a lot of books out there that talked about overparenting, and I felt like the world needed something else at that moment, and I didn't know what it was. And

I thought, I want to write about the adults. And they're like, oh, you want to write a happiness book, and I'm like no. But it ended up being sort of this happiness book, and so I couldn't write it, and I like had writer's black. I didn't feel connected to the material at all. I felt it was, you know, beside the point. I feel like happiness as a byproduct of living your life in a fulfilling way, in a meaningful way, is great, but happiness as a goal in

and of itself is kind of a disaster. And that wasn't the book I wanted to write. So I ended up canceling that book, and I didn't think I was going to write another book. And then one day I decided I just want to bring people into the therapy room. That's the experience that I wanted them to have. I wanted to write about the human condition, and so I thought, like three people would write this book. This was not

the reception of, you know, like the parenting book. So when I turned in my first draft to my editor, you know, she was like, oh, we really like this. We think a lot of people are going to read it. And I thought oh god, I should clean myself up. I shouldn't, like, because I really didn't think anyone was going to read this. But I didn't clean myself up. And I think that's why so many people have read it.

You know, it's been like twenty odd weeks on the New York Times list at this point, and it's amazing to me that so many people are reading it. But I think that the reason they're reading it is because it's so real. You know, nobody's cleaned up in there, and so it doesn't go to my head because I feel like, this is what I wanted to do. I

wanted to offer this experience to people. And it's so gratifying that so many people they say, like, you know, they're dog earing it and highlighting it and pinning up quotes, and I feel like that's so gratifying. It's not it's not about how many people are reading the book. It's about the impact that it's having on the people who do. I love that so much, and that's such a great

attitude to have for a book. You know, being a fellow psychologist and reading your book, it's like automatic can help. But you you know, as I'm reading it, like its people say like, is there a switch? Can you just turn it all on? Like like, I can try, but it's but I still can't fully Like when I even you know, when I go on dates, you know, people like, oh, are you analyzing me right now? I'm like no, but like subconsciously it's like I can't. I can't help it.

I can't help it. But so, uh, do you want to know some things I observed about you as reading? I'm curious, So so just uh, just to start, I was really quite blown away, and I would say touched by how deeply you find meaning in almost anything. You know, even the slightest, slightest thing. You're you're searching, what is the meaning of this? What is the what is what is the pattern here? What you know? You're you're you're

such a deep, deep thinker. Now, now the tright thing would be like, well, you're trained do those like psychotherapists to do that? But I don't think that's quite right. I mean I think that that's probably part of your personality as well, that you in your in your in your life are just like I mean, the extent to which you just think so many different angles about a person's life and things has that always been part of

your your characteristics? You know, I was a competitive chess player growing up, and I think one thing you do when you're playing chess is you think several moves ahead. And I think that that's what you do as a therapist, too, is that you're thinking, Okay, if I make this move, let me see what the what the person is going to do in response to my move, and you might need to adjust, right, But you're always kind of planning your moves and then adjusting based on what the other

person does with it. And I think that's that's part of what you have to do. And I think that you know, when you talk about finding meaning and things, you know, my whole kind of nonlinear very circuit is trajectory to becoming a therapist. I write about in the book I I never thought I would be a therapist. It never occurred to me. I started off working in film, and then I moved over and I was a network executive at NBC, and then I was working on er and that made me want to go to medical school.

And then I wanted to be a journalist because I wanted to get inside people's stories in a different way. And then I became a therapist, and so you know, I think I always just followed something that really excited me. And I feel like sometimes we're so afraid to do something that excites us because it's inconvenient or risky. And my philosophy has always been, you know, for better or worse, by the way, has always been I want to follow the excitement. Take me there. Yeah, well that's very that's

very clear. You're but you're you're such a j exposition of things that you know, you're you're an excellent writer. Obviously the story part is part of it. Your excellent

sort of communicator captured. But you also have this like kind of absurd like sense of humor, like you sort of you can see a sense of humor in things as well, right, Like that's not just the meaning of things, but like like humans we are, I mean I feel like I have that too, you know, like like I feel like humans, like we're ridiculous and and we don't realize how ridiculous we are till we like kind of

see someone else do the same thing we're doing. And I like, like, I think being a psychologist, especially a clinical psychologist, having a private practice or a practice of some sort and seeing patients in a way is very healing to the psychotherapist itself in itself itself, because you start to see, oh, you know, like I've been really ridiculous and worrying about this myself, you know, like you

kind of see it as at a distance. Yeah, I mean, I say, you know, I talk about how we're mirrors for each other, so we're not doing therapy for ourselves when we're helping somebody else as a therapist, But you can't help but think about the things that somebody is talking about as it relates to your own life, you know.

And I think that our patients open us up to lots of questions that we need to explore for ourselves, and they show us what our sort of areas of challenge are in the ways that we react to them, in the ways that we think about what they're talking about. And you know, when you talk about sort of humans

are ridiculous, you know, we're all ridiculous. And I think that going back to that sort of loneliness theme, that we feel so alone in our ridiculousness, but we also all have blind spots, and I think one of the things that a therapist can do for people is to hold up a mirror to them and to help them to see their reflection in a way that they haven't already seen it, and that helps them to see this pattern. You know, why do I keep doing the same thing

over and over? That's going to guarantee my own unhappiness? What is that pattern? What is that blind spot? And once you can see those things, you can make different choices. Yeah. Absolutely, And you're giving free advice to our listeners right now.

That's very very generous of you, very generous. So you said something in the book, one of the themes in your book that I just have been contemplating because I agree with it, but I also think there's some deeper implications than even you may realize or as you present it in the book. You say that there's no hierarchy of pain, that suffering shouldn't be ranked. That's right. Elaborate a little bit, then, can we think we talk about it a little bit? Yeah, I think that's so important.

I feel like so many people minimize there are whatever their emotional struggles are. So you know, I think like if something feels off with our bodies, like you're having chest pain, you'll probably go to the cardiologists before you're having a massive heart attack. But if something feels off emotionally, often we say things like, oh, it's really not that bad, or I'll just power through, or I have so many other things in my life, or look at all the

people who are really suffering, you know. So we feel like it's on this hierarchy. And then people don't really get help until they're having the equivalent of an emotional heart attack, they're having a crisis. And why, you know, we don't do that with our health. We don't wait until we're like on our deathbed to go get help. So I feel like people don't realize that you don't have to struggle so much, you don't have to suffer

so much that our emotional health matters. It matters, probably more than anything else in terms of the quality not only of our lives, but the quality of the lives of the people who interact with us, our families, our friends, are co workers, and so, you know, I think the couples do this a lot. They compete with pain, like, oh, I'm so exhaust you're supcially when't have kids, right, you know, I'm so exhausted, And I did this, and I did that and my pain is bigger than yours, so you

need to do this for me. And it's not a competition's room for both of your struggles. And I think people yeah, and so I think people like they compete or you know, so that's say they try to either up their pain on the hierarchy or they minimize it and they and they don't get help. And I think those are the two things. And why do we even have to rank our pain? I don't think pain should be ranked. Pain is pain. Well, I love I love that point, but there's such deep applications of that for

political issues. So I was wondering just how you contemplated and how you square that away with the social justice movement, which is, you know, as a professor at Barnard College, like I'm a meshed in this world, you know, but there's a certainly language as well, so white privilege. You know, if you're in the privileged class, I think they do kind of rank. There is kind of a hierarchivet pain. So if you're in a more if you're in a quote appressed group, your pain is worse than if you're

in a privileged group. It sort of feels that way, that kind of discussion occurs, and I was wondering if you've linked that at all to your idea. I think what gets lost in those conversations is that we all want to be on a human level understood, and so I think for people who have not had privilege, they feel like they haven't been heard, they haven't been seen, their pain has been invisible, and so they feel like,

you really need to see my pain. And then what happens is for people who have had privilege and they do struggle and they do have pain, that that it feels like you don't get to do that, you don't get to be seen or heard because you've ignored our pain and struggle for so long. And my feeling about that is that everybody's pain and struggle and experience needs to be heard and needs to be worthy of being heard. That I feel like silencing anyone is just dangerous. Well here, here, here, here,

I agree. So I've just been thinking just so much lately about like how we can have a healthy social justice movement that is not premised on on psychological principles that are not going to be conducive to growth, you know, for anyone, you know, But that kind of will uplift all groups, and it's it's just I'm just think it's been on my mind a lot. Laiasa, thanks for talking

about that with me. Yeah, well, I feel a person a personal example of that, which is that in the book I, one of the people that I see is this young woman who is in her early thirties and she had just gotten married, and she comes back from her honeymoon, she discovers she has cancer. Ultimately, she discovers

she has terminal cancer. And I always wondered, you know, would I go from seeing her to someone who's like my husband doesn't initiate sex, you know, and would I be able to kind of, you know, give this person, you know, like not minimize this person's pain. In my head, because I just came off of the session of this young woman in her thirties who's dying, and I really, you know, it really was not a problem at all. And I realized this because I think that underneath our

struggles are very similar kinds of things. Of course, I'm not comparing this person who's dying to this person whose husand wouldn't initiate sex. But I think that's the point, is that everybody is struggling with something, and there's great pain in feeling rejected and feeling like the person that you love doesn't love you, in feeling unlovable, that's incredibly painful. And so I didn't need to compare it to the pain of this other woman. I just needed to take

her pain for what it was. Yeah, that's I love that. I love that you did that, and that you also acknowledged that your gut reaction was want to say, look, I just saw someone who's dying like any chill, But I love that you acknowledged that you had that urge, but then you were still able to kind of override it and think about the greater humanity or the common humanity in it. Wonderful. So, look, why is it so hard for us to change when we really know what's

good for us? Like, it's not that complicated, like your broccoli? You know, you have your broccoli or you got your pizza. Is it rocket science that you like, if you choose the broccoli, you'll be healthier. You know, we get it, you know, but we I choose the pizza almost all

the time. So what's wrong with us? You know? It's interesting because change, even really positive change, like a job promotion, or you know, moving to a new city that's going to be have more opportunities for you, or getting married to the person you love, or having a baby and you really wanted a baby. All of those changes involve loss, and so I think we forget about that, that that we have to give up the thing that we've been holding onto for so long, even if the thing we

were holding on to is miserable. You know, it's why people stay in bad relationships for so long, because you know, even if the relationship is making you miserable, at least it's familiar. You know what it is, it's home. And if you leave and you go somewhere new, there's the uncertainty of what's that going to be like. You know exactly what it's going to be like in your current relationship. You know what the arguments are going to be about, you know what the eye roll is going to look like.

You know, you know, you know what the pain is going to be like. But if you go into this new experience, you don't know what it's going to be

like yet. What if it's what if it's worse? You know, what if what humans don't do well with uncertainty and when we change especially, Yeah, we have to, we have to face uncertainty, right, And I think also that you know, there are lots of times when something is good for us, like you get the broccoli and the pizza example, something is good for us, and yet part of us doesn't

want to be good to ourselves and we don't realize that. No. There you know, there's for people who have had trauma, there's almost like you're so uncomfortable with the healthy decision that like you're averse to it. We right, if there's something that feels almost wrong about it and it's not conscious, like you're not thinking this, it's not in your awareness.

But sometimes doing good things for yourself it feels you you sabotage yourself because you don't feel deep down that you deserve to do that, and you don't know how to handle it, Like what would it even feel like to be kind to myself? There was one there was one patient I had who you know, and so many of us, trauma or not, are so unkind to ourselves. Just what we say, like you're such an idiot, or you look terrible, or you know that will never work

out for you, you know, whatever, it is. I had somebody write down everything she said, you know, kind of in her head and bring it back the next session. And she came back and she said, I can't read this to you. I am such a bully to myself, Like I'm embarrassed to read this to you. And she realized, you know, all of the things that she would say to ourselves, she would never say to a friend in the same situation. You would never You wouldn't have any friends if you said that. So I think we don't

realize how unkind we can be to ourselves. And that's part of why we don't make positive changes for ourselves because we don't. We don't let ourselves be happy. A lot of people in the self compassion movement treat they kind of define self compassion is treating yourself like you would treat a good friend. But I have a spin on that. Do you want to hear my spin? Yeah,

because people can be can be cruel to us. So for instance, like if you you might have grown up with a parent and your parent might have said you're a loser, You're you're horrible. So I think self compassion is allowing yourself to treat yourself kinder than other people treat you, you know, like as well, like there's another aspect of it. Yeah, I don't think it's about treating yourself the way other people might treat you, because that's out of your control. I think what's in your control

is how you treat other people. So I would say self compassion is about treating yourself the way you treat other people that you care about. But what if you're an asshole and you just don't treat anyone well, Well, I think that's part of what therapy helps you do, is it helps you to have a better relationship with yourself so that you can have a better relationship with

other people, you know. I always say that that insight is the booby prize of therapy, that you can have all the insight in the world, but if you don't actually make changes out in the world, the insight is useless. So if you say, yeah, I know that, you know I treat people a certain way, Now I know why it was because this happened in my history, it doesn't that you know that if you still go out in your an asshole, right, So it's about what are you

going to do now that you have that information? How are you going to make those behavioral changes? And they're small changes, they're very small, because it's those small steps that add up to really large change over time. And so I think that people think they need to like change overnight. No, you won't be able to do that. You will fail. So I don't want to set people up for failure. I want them to make one small change. When you're about to say that thing that you say,

I want you to take ten deep breaths. That's the only thing I want you to to do. You might still say that the horrible thing, but take ten deep breaths and see what that is like. Just have some time between stimulus and response and see what happens. Right, And then the next time they might not say the thing,

and another time they might do something else. And it's about these graduated steps to changing behavior until it becomes automatic, until they relearn and they're literally rewiring their brains to do something different. And that neural pathway that used to just do the asholic thing and I just made up that word asholic, but to do that asholic thing that they normally do right, that gets rewired and they won't automatically do that anymore. Well, I do love that point

very much. I want to just elaborate on what I was trying to say as well, and see if you see any any wisdom in it at all, because it

seems like people it does. It doesn't dawn on certain people that they don't have to treat themselves as harshly as an abuser has treated them, like like you don't have to believe the words of someone else, you know, like, you know, like it's very easy, you know, when you get any kind of abusive relationship or whatever to start like believing I am scum or I am a loser, you know, but be like, you know what, you're not, like, that's that's not true, you know, like yeah, so anyway,

that's well, yeah, I think that that's you know, there's this woman in the book Rita who's her adult children won't talk to her because you know, she she grew up with a very kind of lonely, lonely, neglectful childhood, and you know, then she picked guys, you know, she picked husbands who would not who would not treat her well. But when she found somebody good, she couldn't she couldn't

rejoice in that. She was always hyper vigilant. It's like PTSD, right, Like there's a word cherophobia, which is which is fear of joy. Chero is joy, So fear of joy, and she had that like, you know, the minute she felt joy, the piano was going to fall from this guy. You know, something, something bad was going to happen. She would be punished for her joy. So for her, joy wasn't pleasure. Joy was anticipatory pain. And I think that for people who have a history of trauma that they don't know what

to do with joy. It feels anxiety provoking, it feels scary, They can't trust it. Yeah, I think it's it's easier to beat up on themselves. It's easier to just keep that monologue in their heads about like, you know, what a horrible person they are, because that's familiar and that's home. So is the process of therapy for you a process of kind of you do you try to rewire or change those pathways that make it feel familiar, and you have like like pave new pathways that are healthier that

feel familiar. Yeah, I think that, you know, the relationship that happens in therapy is so important. It's very different from going to like a dentist who is going to give you, you know, fill your cavity. And it's very specific about what's going to happen. And it doesn't matter how much you like your dentist. It's nice, but you know, you can't talk anyway because someone's in your mouth, so

you know. But when you're but when you're doing therapy, you know, study after study shows that the most important factor in the success of your therapy isn't the person's training or the modality they're using, or the number of years of experience. It's the relationship. All of those other things matter, don't get me wrong. They do matter, but

they don't matter as much as the relationship does. And so when you could go and have a relationship with somebody and be vulnerable and be authentic and show the truth of who you are and you get a very different response than you got from whomever in your history, that's life changing. And then you can translate that and and bring that out into the world. Absolutely. That's why I love, uh, you know, the Carl Rogers approach. I'm such a geek for humanistic psychology, like we got to

bring it back. But I think a lot of therapists, you know, do bring a lot of his you know, this this client centered, humanistic approach to their work because I you know, I think gone, here are the days of the brickwall therapist, the one who just kind of sits back and says, uh huh. You know, we're doing a the TV The book is being made into a TV show, and one of the things that's really important

to me is that we don't kind of therapy. Therapy and therapists, I think have been portrayed in these ways that are so cliched and so outmoded. You know, there's either like the brickwall therapist that I was just talking about, or there's the one that you saw on in treatment, you know, the hot mess, the train wreck, the therapist who you know is a mess in his or her personal life, and those don't. Neither of those reflects what therapists are really like or what therapy is really like.

I mean, we're just normal people, like everybody else. And I think that, you know, I say at the beginning of the book that my greatest credential is that I'm a card carrying member of the human race. That that allows me to help you because I know what it's like to be a person in the world. I love that, and I imagine it also it makes people feel good to kind of know that your therapist is a bit of a mess as well as I don't know, there's also a certain sense of something there shadow freuder is

that I don't know. I don't think it's been about being a mess. I think it's about the fact that life is messy, and I think it's about the fact that, you know, nobody gets through life without struggling, no matter what it looks like on social media. Right, So, you know, no matter what it looks like, we all struggle. If you are human, you struggle. Whether you acknowledge the struggle

or you don't acknowledge the struggle. How you move through the struggle, how you navigate through the world, that's going to be different, but everybody struggles. We'll speak for yourself. No, No, you're right, You're absolutely right, You're abso right. Okay. So what makes for a boring patient? So many people are worried about boring their therapists. You know, I think that what makes people boring are the people who won't let you in. They're the people who, you know, let me,

let me step back for a second. I think that when most people come to therapy for the first time, there's almost a performative aspect to it, meaning that they want the therapists to like them, they want the therapists to respect them, and they want the therapists to think that you know, I think they have a lot of shame around the fact that they're struggling, and so they want to seem a little bit more together maybe than

they really are. And I think that that gets boring after a while because what happens is you don't really get to see them. And I think what makes people, what draws people to other people is their humanity. What draws people to other people is their authenticity, is being genuine and people who kind of put up a wall like I'm going to perform for you, I'm going to entertain you, or I'm not going to really let you see me. We're just going to stay up here on

the surface. That gets boring. And so it's ironic because I think the thing that people are trying to do to get you to like them is actually causing me not to like them. Yeah, that is so true. Well, should we both reveal something to each other? That's deeply personal to overcome this. I think I was so personal in the book that you're enough, personal enough for a lifetime.

Yeah yeah, no, you really were. I mean yeah, like I, for lack of a better term, like mad props to you, you know, like for putting so much of that out there, Like I've put my own personal story out there as well, and being a special ed as a kid. And it's like you think it's going to be this horror terrifying thing and then you do find it actually is the

thing that that people like about you. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean that that that that gave you, I think so much more credibility right to to be able to say and here's my story. And I think that ultimately that's what we all want, is to say, you know, this is my story, here's who I am, and can you can you see me? Can you understand me? You know?

So I let it rip in the book. I sort did, and you know, and I and I think that that I wanted people to see that you can be a very capable, competent clinician and you know, or it doesn't even have to be a therapist, like you can be a really capable, competent person in the world and also struggle and they're both true. Yeah, there's this you just

made me think. Like like Abraham Maso said that one of the characteristics of self actualizing people was dichotomy transcendence, And it seems like a lot of work in psychotherapy is like helping patients transcend these kind of like rigid dichotomies they have that either they're an evil person or they're a good person, or either they're you know, the world is either this or that. And that was another

thing that you just another dichotomy you just transcended. Just now. Well, I'll tell you that when people come in, I would say a lot of people come in and they say they want to change, but what they really want is they want someone else to change because that other person.

They can't hold the dichotomy that they have a role in what's going on in this relationship, right, whether it's with their child, whether it's with their partner, whether it's with their parents or you know, sibling, whatever it is, they can't hold the fact that the other person has a role in it. But so do they And I see that in couples a lot to this dichotomy of here's the story. I have the true version, right, my partner has some other version that really there's a lot

of gaps in it. But the fact is, like, just because you see the same story from different perspectives doesn't mean that one or the other isn't true. They're both true from that person's perspective. Yeah, let me let me, let me let me process what you just said there, because so isn't there is there a scientific, generalizable, objective truth though as well the lies kind of above both

of them. I think there's a truth in terms of facts, right, like right, you were late, you weren't late, right, you know, those kinds of things. But I think people try to argue with each other's feelings. They try to say, how can you be angry about that? Or how can you be upset about that? Or no, you know you you thought this. You know. It's like, no, you can't really

argue with somebody else's feelings. You can, you can, you know, you can argue, you can disagree with what they want, why they're disappointed in you, You can disagree with that. But to try to convince them not to feel disappointment is you're arguing with something they feel and you can't change that. You can talk about the relationship differently. So I think, you know, when talk about is there like

an objective truth? There are there are sort of facts, and then there are feelings, and you can't really argue with the feelings. You can work with the feelings, you can do something with the feelings. Well, Ben Shapiro says, my facts don't care about your feelings. But anyway, that's true. That is absolutely true. That's right. But also sometimes feelings don't care about the facts. Wow, you don't hear that

reverse too much. You don't hear that part. It is a staple of couple's therapy because and I'll tell you there's like a gender difference there too to be you know, very you know, to generalize that sometimes if it's a heterosexual couple, the man and the couple will very much try to argue with the facts, right or will he will? He will try to like stick to like the facts, and the female partner is like arguing with the facts and he gets like infuriated by this, and so you know,

you have to kind of reframe. I always say to people come to couple's therapy before they even step foot in the office, I say, what I want you to do before you come in is I want you to think about your goals for yourself. I don't want you to think about what you want the partner to do. I don't want you to think about anything that you want the partner to change. I want you to think about what you want to change to make this a

better relationship. And if they're always focused in that way, they're not going to start arguing so much about the facts and the feelings and this and that, because they're going to focus on you are responsible for your feelings in your facts, not the other person's. I love that. Like that, that element of responsibility seems to be a big, a big part of the therapeutic process. Yeah, do you want to follo up on that? Yeah, no, it is.

I mean I think that's that's such a theme in the book, is that we need to take responsibility for our own lives since it's so much easier. And you know, I say this from personal experience in the book and in life, that it's so much easier to blame somebody else. It's so much easier to blame another person or our circumstances or the world or the culture or whatever it is. And I'm not saying that those that those aren't valid stressors in our lives, but also we have choices about

how we respond to them. We have, Yeah, the Victor Frankel, right, Yeah, Well you sound like you're a good therapist. I just got to say, thank you. You sound like you're a good therapist. I kind of want therapy from you. No, So do you have a lot of clients right now? So you know, it's funny because I was really a lot of people said to me, what do you think will happen to your practice when you reveal so much

about yourself so publicly in this book? And I I had a full practice before the book came out, So my hope wasn't that I would get more patients, but my hope was that people wouldn't leave in droves. Oh wow, really okay. And it was really interesting because the the response. You know, I didn't tell people that I had a book coming out, but I did say I'm going to be away for this amount of time and I didn't say why. And it was the most amount of I took.

I took four weeks off, which I've never done. I don't even think I've ever taken more than one week off, and so, you know, nobody asked. I said, I'm going

to be a way for you know, these dates. And when I came back, some people came in and they sat on my couch and they said, so I read your book, right, And we had such really rich, deep conversations not about me, but about them and about their experience, and about our relationship, as you know, and what it meant to them, and and what was working for them and what was not working for them, and you know, just it gave them permission to kind of open up

that conversation about the two of us, which I think is really important to have in any therapeutic relationship. And then there were other people who to this day, you know, have not said a word. And I find it, you know, I don't know whether they just don't know about the book, but I find that a little bit questionable. I think if they are coming to me, they probably know that I've written this book at this point, and they haven't brought it up. So so there's there's both sides of that.

But if they read your book, wouldn't they know that how cathartic it is to reveal that you like, know something about someone and you didn't, like you were with Wendell, and you're like, you say, you make it clear, so cathartic,

like admitting that you know, you know. I googled stocked stocked my therapist one night, and then I was editing myself in the therapy room, and then finally I came clean and yeah, you know, but I still think that there's a you know, how people interact in the therapy room is a microcosm of how people interact out in the world. And for people who may be more avoidant or people who don't know how to bring something up, you know, they're going to do the same thing in

the therapy room. So it's it's it. I think it depends on that person's character, logical makeup in terms of how they respond to the fact that their therapist has put so much personal information out there about herself. Yeah, for sure, Yeah I would. I was I was predicting that you would just get so many more patient like people wanting to work with you after reading your book. Yeah. No,

I'm actually expanding my practice. Cool, because you know, I think there are a lot of people who really want to come see someone, and I think the book has inspired a lot of people to come see someone. So, you know, I either refer people to other people or I'm trying to expand my practice to bring in more therapists to my practice to accommodate people who want to come, because I don't want to turn people away. That's what

That's great. Well, so I wanted to ask you, is there a common myth about therapy that you'd like to dispel? How much time do you? I know, I don't, I asked that, like, but obviously there's so many I would say. I would say the main one that I think people have is that you come to therapy, you're going I think people are afraid to come to therapy for this reason that they think if they come to therapy, they're going to talk about their childhood at nauseum and they're

never going to leave. That that's sort of like the stereotype of therapy is that all you do is talk about your painful childhood and you're never going to leave, and you're going to come back every week and you know, just download the story of the week, and that's therapy. That's not at all with therapy as and in fact, therapy, of course we talk about how your past informs the present, but we're very much focused on the present in the future. And I think that people don't realize that at all.

It sounds counterintuitive to them. They think it's about sort of working through your past. And what I think most therapists nowadays do is they want to say, how is something that you're carrying around, like clothing that no longer fits. How is wearing that clothing impacting the way you present yourself in the world. And so we really focus on how what they're doing now is maybe not serving them. It maybe served them when they were younger, but now

it doesn't serve them anymore. And then also thinking about how the present informs the future. So what you do now informs what your future is going to look like. So we really want to be mindful of what you're doing now because it will affect the different directions that your future can go. And I think people don't realize

that that's what we're talking about in therapy. And the other thing I think people don't realize is that we very much are aware of if someone comes in and they're not really work work, or they're not or they're just sort of, you know, talking about the anecdote of the week. I want to know are they done or are they not talking about what they really need to be talking about. But I don't want to keep them there if I'm wasting their time. You you are so perceptive,

Like you're so perceptive. But yeah, you're like a chess player too, though, Like it's not just the you're perceptive, You're you're you're like automatically are constantly thinking of yeah, like you said earlier, like the next step down the line, or what is the meaning here? What do you do you ever? Just like let go and just like not think like can you shut it off? Ever? Oh? All

the time? I mean I think I think that that's why as a therapist, and I know so many therapists feel this way that you know, you limit the number of people you can see in a row, for example, because more than I think, so many jobs maybe being a surgeon, you have to have this kind of focus of course, right, But I think like when I'm doing my writing, for example, I don't have this kind of focus at all because I can be like, oh I'm hungry, let me go in the other room, or let me

think about these three emails I need to return or you know, whatever it is. You can't do that. When you're doing therapy with someone, You're hyper focused on what's going on in the room, on every aspect of what's going on in the room, whether it's body language or energy in the room, or a look or a facial

expression or a pause. You're really focused on you know, I always say I'm listening for the music under the lyrics, that the lyrics are what they're talking about, but I'm also focused on the music, is what is the underlying sort of struggle or pattern or what else are they communicating to me that's not through their words. And so you have to be really really focused to do that. And so we can't see that many people in a row without a break. Whereas when I'm writing My God,

my mind is, you know, in five different directions. Absolutely, And I also occur to me, I mean, how not just your thinking, but it would ring the book. Just how deeply you feel a thing and how much empathy you have your patients comes through so clearly in your book. And you know, a real thing in this profession is empathy burnout or compassion fatigue or what people call it different things. Do you do you do you ever feel

empathy burnout? I think I'm very careful to protect myself from it, and if I feel that, I'm you know, veering in that direction. I think that, you know, all therapists,

I think I have a consultation group. I think a lot of people do consultation groups where we talk about our cases every week with other therapists, but we also talk about if we're feeling burned out, and what do we do and how do we practice self care and what do we need to do to make sure that every person who comes to us is getting, you know, the best version of us. But of course there are times when you know, I've had a session and I leave that session and I think that was not my

finest hour, you know, because I'm human. But then the next week and then I say, okay, now what do I need to focus on with this person next week? Because I wasn't as presence as I needed to be. I love that. Wait, I'm gonna can I adapt that in my own personal life the phrase you know what,

that wasn't my finest hour? Like I was giving a lecture yesterday to my students and I was like I told my tas afterwards, I was like, I feel like a dork today, Like I just felt like I'm I felt old, like I was making jokes about like social media and stuff, but I didn't like I wasn't up on things, and I felt like I just felt like such a dork. But then I was like, you know whatever, that just wasn't my finest, Like like, now that's going to be my new catch phrase. I can I love it. Yeah,

you can have it. I don't even know where it's from, but I feel like, well, I don't want to like own it, but I'm just saying, you know, it seems so helpful. Borrow it, bar it just seems so helpful, share it, share it? How about share it? Yeah, but I think we need that. That goes back to sort of the self compassion is you don't beat yourself up

when that happened. You say, you know what, I didn't get enough sleep last night, or my father's in the hospital, or you know, whenever it is, and that's what happened, and so then you you address it the next time. I love that. By the way, I could see you being a really good lawyer as well. Like I I

feel like a lawyer. No, I feel like you would hate it too, But I think you'd actually be a really like a really quite special lawyer because I could actually I see this certain element in you where you like you really are kind of a versed to bullshit, Like there's there's another side of you that I that's very clear to me, that like you're always and you're

also a very good bullshit detector. I get the sense you know that like it like like automatically like like you're like no, like that that's not true the therapist, right right, right, right right, No, No, you're not You're not You're not much. I'm very much like I want, you know, I always said I want to hold people accountable. So I feel like when you come to therapy, you need to be vulnerable and accountable. And and if I'm not holding you accountable, then I'm not doing you a

service in here. Yeah, and that's what makes you a terrific therapist as well. By the way, you know, you understand I'm not saying like you should have been. I'm saying I could see you, do you know. I have this like image of you with like someone on the witness stand and you're like cross examining them and they just like crack immediately under with you because like, do you know what I mean? Right? So you know, I

was a journalist. I still am a journalist, so you know after all those years of journalism where part of what you're doing is you're getting inside a story, right, and you really want to find the story and it's not well, I was gonna say it's not manipulative, but it is manipulative, but not in a negative way. So you're actually trying to help somebody to open up to you and because that's the interesting story, and they don't

realize that's the interesting story. And I think that that's what you do as a therapist, is you try to help people to get to the interesting part of the story, the part that matters. And I think that, you know, when you're a lawyer, you're trying to do the same thing, which is except you have an ulterior motive, but you're trying to get them to talk about this part of

the story. And so you know, and I think it's, you know, how do you get people to talk to you about what you want them to open up about. But I think you know the goal and the motive of the lawyer is very different from the goal and the motive of the ory, and that's why that's precisely why you wouldn't enjoy it, because of the motive behind it.

But I still think you'd be good at it, you know, like I think within four seconds four minutes that you know, even the person who did the worst crimes, like, no, I didn't do it all, but you would, like you would get beneath the surface somehow and they'd be like, Okay, I admit it. Worried. Well, you know, what you do in therapy is a lot of times you call people on their contradictions. So somebody will say, yeah, I you know, I I wish that I could stop this affair, right,

I wish I could stop this affair. And on the other hand, they keep doing it, you know, so it's like I love I love my partner, and I know I'm tearing up my family doing this, but I wish I could stop. And so you know, what are the contradictions? What are the two get like each of those pieces of that person to say out loud their piece and they can argue with each other. And it's so interesting to hear that we all have these these parts of ourselves.

So we go back to going back to the dichotomy that there's a part of us that want something and there's a part of us that gets in the way of the thing that we want. And how the story of my life, right, and how do you get those two parts of yourself to talk to each other? And once they can talk to each other, that's when something

moves forward. It's so true. And I had a lot of insights reading your book, and one is you know, personal insights, And one was just clearly the fact that like I get in my own way, like I would be so much better off in so many ways if I just didn't do things as opposed to if I did something more, If that made any sense, right, right, Yeah, Sometimes we like think that we need to do something

in cases where not doing something is the better decision. Yeah, Like with like you know, like on dates and stuff. I think sometimes, you know, I would have been so much smoother if I just didn't say those forty things I said, you know, and that's it. Just change nothing else, but just eradicate those forty things, right, And that's anxiety. Usually we take action, and when we take sort of extraneous action or action that sabotages ourselves. We do it

because out of anxiety a lot of the time. Well that's something I struggle with my whole life. But you know, final lastly, I do want to point out that you have a column. You write it. I mean you do, you do. You're a busy person, so you write this

dear therapist column which I love. Thank you, I love this advice you gave to this woman once and you just like, I mean, you were such a some The thing I like about you, by the way, is that you are such a sharp shooter, like I tend to gravitate towards those kinds of people in any way, probably just like it's just a value of mine as well.

So and you find that by being that that level of honesty with like, you know, calling people on their contradictions as you put it, people respond to that positively because they know that you're doing it from a place of wanting to help them, right. And I think it's

a relief to be called on your contradictions. Yeah, because I think that when you have these two parts of yourself that are fighting with each other, it creates a lot of anxiety and a lot of stress, and it takes a lot of emotional real estate to do that, you know, It's like takes up so much emotional real estate, even if it's sort of under the surface. And I think once you give those contradictions some air, you know, it's like you can breathe easier too. They need air,

Our feelings need air. We always say that, you know. I think so many people come into therapy and they're like, help me not to feel, help me not to feel so anxious, help me not to feel so sad, help me not to feel whatever it is. And it's like, if you suppress one feeling, you suppress the others. And what happens is the way that they suppress them is they go into a state of numbness. And numbness isn't nothingness. Numbness is isn't like a lack of feelings. Numbness is

a state of being overwhelmed by too many feelings. And so when you are numb, you're just you're like on overload and you just shut down and you can't function in that state. So I think in my call of what I try to do with people is I try to say listen, I try to hold up that mirror and I try to say, here's what you're telling me in your letter, and if you came to me as a therapist, here's what I might not say in that very first session, but here's what I would be thinking.

And I just lay it all out there for them. And I think that that's really helpful, you know. And it's not so much like no, don't talk to your mother in law, you know, it's not that. It's I want you to see your own role in this, and I want you to see the choices that you have. I want you to see your agency. And pretty much every letter, every answer that I write is about here's what you're not seeing in terms of your agency and what is under your control and what you can do well.

I want to end on that note because it's so empowering and it's also so human. So thank you so much, Laurie for all the work you've done and for writing such a terrific, terrific book that gives a window an insight into the life, the real life experience of a wonderful therapist such as yourself. Thank you well, Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure to do this. Likewise, 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, please add a reading and review of the podcast on iTunes and subscribe to the Psychology Podcast YouTube channel, as we're really trying to increase our viewership on YouTube. In fact, many of these episodes are in video for I'm Out on YouTube, so you'll definitely want

to check out that channel. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the podcast and tuda in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.