Mollie West Duffy || Big Feelings

Mall is the author of the Wall Street Journal best selling book No Hard Feelings At Our most recent book with Wiz Fosseline is called Big Feelings, How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay. In this episode, I talked to Molly west Duffy about how to navigate big feelings. Our emotion phobic society has a lot of misconceptions about

dealing with difficult emotions and what they mean. According to Mollie, big feelings can lead to a deeper understanding of ourselves if we can sit with our emotions and work through them. Mollie and I share our personal experiences with anxiety and how we coped. We also touch on the topics of anger, perfectionism, social comparison, burnout, and uncertainty. I really liked this episode because I've been a longtime fan of their illustrations and

insights into human nature and human psychology. So, without further ado, I am really greatly pleased to bring you Molly west Duffy. Molly west Duffy, tell me a little bit about yourself. So, I am an expert in organizational development and leadership development. So I do consulting coaching. I worked at IDEO for many years, did research at Harvard Business School, and then co authored this book with Liz, who's my creative collaborator. Well,

this is great. You know. What I like about you is that you are able to illustrate some of the life's most existential concerns and ways that immediately are recognizable. You know, I look at you know, obviously your words are great too, but when I look at these illustrations, you make I medium like, yep, that's my day. Yes,

it's you know. I think, especially emotions can be so difficult to verbalize, and so the illustration I think really captures and helps visualize things in a very like efficient way. It's like, oh, there's a small little diagram, but that's exactly how I feel. Yeah, So who does the illustrations? Are you an artist? Yourself and Liz does the illustrations. So Liz and I both co author the book, so we each do half of the writing, and then she

does the illustrations. And it's my favorite part of collaborating with her is to, you know, the words are written, or at least in draft form, and then she goes away and does some sketches and comes back with some ideas and I love that. It's just so much fun working with her on it. And she was doing some illustrations before we started working together around She's an economist, that's what her degree is in, and so she did a couple of illustrations around like fourteen Ways an Economists says,

I love you. So that's the type of work that she was doing. And then we were introduced by mutual friends when we both lived in New York, and I said, you know, I'm doing some writing. I would love to have you illustrate some of my writing because I really love it. And then we started writing together and we wrote an article. So Susan Kane has been we've been big fans of hers, and she's been so supportive of our work, and we did a piece for her platform.

For a while she was running the Quiet Revolution platform, and we did a piece that was called six Illustrations that show what it's like to be in an introvert's head, and that piece went viral if so many people thought, oh, like, this is exactly how it feels, and this is helpful for my partner to understand, like if my partner's an extrovert, to understand what it feels like to be in my head.

So got introduced to Susan, and then we wrote the first book, which came out in twenty nineteen, No Hard Feelings, and then our second book just came out this week called Big Feelings. Yeah, huge, congratulations in the book coming out. And Susan is our prior guest on the on the podcast. Oh great, I love her new book. Yeah, yeah, me too. She's a dear friend. We created actually, I created the scale for her, the Bittersweet scale that you can measure

how bitter sweet that's right. Yes. She mentioned that we had an event with her last week and she mentioned that one of the the questions that most contributed to whatever the answer was was what what whether you like gray days or not? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, fascinating, it's so fascinating. Yeah. Me and David Aiden teamed up on that. But yeah, that was super fun. What did I say that today? I'm a wild introvert is what I called myself. I'm

an introvert who scores high and openness to experience interesting. Okay, And that resonated with a lot of people. A lot of people seem to like to think of themselves as wild introverts too, so I like that. Yeah. So this book almost didn't happen, right, There was a lot of things. It seems like a lot of forces that were working against it, right, that's right. Talk a little bit about that. Yeah.

So we first came up with this idea and pitched it to our editors in January of twenty twenty for the pandemic, and they said, Okay, you know, we think it's an interesting idea, but there's not really going to be a big audience for people who want to read about difficult emotions. So we said okay. And then in June of twenty twenty, after the pandemic started, they came back to us and they said, actually, everyone is dealing

with big emotions. That's all that they're dealing with right now, and we'd like to buy that book and we love our editors and our publicists. So I say that with a grain of results. And what's interesting about that is that there's a bunch of books that are coming out

now on similar topics. So we talked about Susan Kine's Bittersweet, Dan Pink's book on Regret, A Brown's book, and all of them dealing with sort of, you know, emotions that we've traditionally labeled as bad or negative, but what can we learn from them? How do we move through them? So I think that's just and these books must have been started before the pandemic just because of the publishing

cycle is so long. So I just think it's really interesting that we're having these conversations now and I think people are open to them more so than they were because of the pandemic. Yeah, oh absolutely. I mean, get a really profound line in there was like we basically wrote this book to convince ourselves we're okay. That was a really like vulnerable thing to say. When I read that line, that was really honest. Yeah, we tried, we

challenged ourselves to be really honest. And I think part of that was so when Liz and I, when our first book came out, it was called big field. Sorry, it's called no hard feelings. And then we were like, actually, there are some really hard feelings. And we both went through difficult times after the first book came out. I went through a period of deep depression and despair. List

dealt with a lot of grief. We both dealt with burnout and during that time, was what helped me the most was reading books where other people were honest about how hard it was and weren't trying to wrap things up with like a neat bow at the end of it.

And so we were hesitant, like, Okay, we're really going to write like a self help book because the first book had put more of a business book, and we said, if we're going to do this, we want to be really honest about how hard these things are and that we don't have all the answers and there's not like a ten step checklist to take to move through these things, like they take time and working with therapists and sometimes medication and lots of crying and you know, reaching out

to friends and support. And so that was the impetus for it and our readership, our audience was really open with us. We asked them to share their own stories of what it had been like for them to move through through big feelings, and so it was it was sort of this process of like while we were writing, I wouldn't say that we were like done experiencing those emotions. Right, we're humans, like we're all going to continue feeling all these emotions, but also trying to give language to what

did help us move through them even though we weren't done. Yeah, you say, in our disconnected and emotion phobic society, many of us don't know how to talk about what we're going through muscle less handle it. In that one sentence, you capture a lot there. There's three components of that sentence. That's sometime, there's a lot, there's a lot there. Okay, So one an we live in an emotion phobic society. You couldn't be more right. I mean that is that

was that even that's profound. I feel like, you know, like I've never quite heard that phrase before, but we are kind of emotion phob because like when people ask me like how you doing, and if I'm like, well, not good, you know, they're like, okay, how can I say? It's like do you not hear? I just head not good, you know, like you know, like we only want to

deal with it. A second component is that wests don't know how to talk about what we're going through and so we don't have like a language that is like normalized to talk about it. And the third component is that we don't know how to handle it, which is really you know, what the book is really about, Ray is is how to handle the big feelings. So yeah, out there. Yeah. So again this comes from personal experience.

Liz and I both I think found that there were people who we could share what was really going on and how we were really feeling, and those were the anomalies. Like most people that we talked to on a day to day basis, work, friends, even family members, it's like, yeah, I don't know how much I can share with you, and I think that says a lot about our society. I think at the same time, we have learned growing up that there are certain emotions that we shouldn't be feeling,

and so there's a lot of shame around them. So it feels like we blame ourselves when things are not going well, and we think no one, you know, no one else is experiencing these things. That's a big misconception is we all feel like, you know, no one else is feeling despair as badly as I am, or no one else is feeling regret or envy as badly as I am, and so I better keep that bottled up, because what does it say about me to be experiencing

an emotion that strongly? And you know, once you start opening up a little bit in safe spaces, and we talk in the book about how like you do have to be careful about who you talk to in the beginning, because people can say the wrong thing and make you feel like, not ashamed, but make you feel that it's uncomfortable for them to hear about what you're saying. And so finding people who have been through similar circumstances and are really just there to listen can be a really

important first step. Those people are not always who you think they are. I was very surprised about the people who came out of the woodwork who I could have hard conversations with, and people who are longtime good friends who I couldn't have those conversations with. So you just

never know, Yeah, you never know. I love that because we can prejudge people really quickly as being oh that person couldn't possibly share are my experience, you know, And I think that's a big part of the problem in the world today, right, Yeah, all that person's are Republican. They would never be able to know what pain well, how would they know what pain feels like they're a Republican.

It's like, no, they're human too exactly, or they're a total Like many of the people who I really connected with were decades older than me, and I didn't feel like, oh, we have a lot in common, but they were so helpful to me. I think there's something about people who have lived, you know, many, many decades of their lives, like have been through a lot more than those of us who are younger. I wouldn't have said, oh, this

person is my good friend. But now I have some good friends who are in their you know, sixties, even in their nineties, who are so helpful to me. I need a friend in their nineties. Feel like everyone needs a friend of their nineties. Yes, everyone could use a friend of their nights and the and everyone in their nineties could use a friend. Yes, let's exactly. Let's be honest. Let's be honest. Yeah, yeah, I do wonder like do you walk around and start to think like your cartoons,

Like is that helpful for you psychologically? Like I find humors my number one character strength, and it's my number one thing that protects me from going insane. If I didn't have humor, I would go insane on a minute by minute basis. So I'm just wondering, like, do you start to after a while, like just think in terms of like funny ven diagrams and funny you know, like

charts and things. I will text Liz sometimes and I'll say, you know, this thing just happened to me, and like, let me extrapolate a little bit from this event that happened to like how I'm thinking about it in terms of an illustration that she might do. She carries a notebook around with her where she jots down like we'reds phrases, images, situations, like she has a sketch book and her process is really interesting for them. How that translates into the final

illustrations that you see. I think she does such a good job. Like the one that I'm thinking of that that came up in the book was a colleague said to me. This is in the Burnout chapter. Our colleague said to me once Molly, no one else is going to draw your lines for you. You have to draw

your lines for yourself. So in a workplace context, we keep thinking that, like our boss will know that we're overworked, or our partner will say like, hey, you know, maybe you want to consider setting up different boundaries with your team. And the truth is that no one else knows how stressed or burnt out you are, and so you really, unfortunately, are the only one who can do that for yourself.

And so anyways, I was telling her this story and then one of the illustrations that came up in the book is lines to Draw, And it's like, you know, a pen drawing a line. It's several different lines and one of them says boundaries, and when of them says something else, And so it's that's what I mean. It's so fun to have these conversations or phrases come to life and illustrations. Yeah, for sure. And so is Liz doing any of the interviews as well? Or has she

kind of like deemed you the spokesperson. We are doing lots of them, we are splitting them up, so she's doing some of them, I'm doing some of them. We're doing some of them together launching a book. It's it's nice to have a partner in crime because there's so much to do. Our book came out just this past Tuesday, so there's there's a lot of things going on. But yeah, she she does and interviews as well. Cool, cool, Please do me a favorite. Tell her I said hi, and

that I think she's doing great. I will I won't listen to this episode, but you know, I want her to know that I'm rooting for her and you. I want her to know, thank you, thank you, Scott. I will good, thank you, thank you. So what are some pervasive and harmful myths about big Yes, so I mentioned one of them so far, which is that we think that our big feelings are bigger than anyone else's big feelings.

And again that's because we don't often talk about them, so how would we know that someone else is going through a difficult time. The second, and I also sort of mentioned this, is that big feelings are negative. And again I think when we hear words like anger, regret,

we think, oh, those are bad. And one of the things that when we talked with many psychologists like yourself or the book, that was one of their big messages is that the first step in working through big feelings is trying to not see them or label them as necessarily negative or positive. Now, they at times can feel really bad, and like I want to emphasize that, they can feel unbearable at times, but when we take the time to understand them, they can help us. There's a

message that they're sending us. So anger can help us advocate for things that we care about, and regret can help us understand what we want to make differently moving forward.

Envy can help us identify things that we want. So Liz tells this great story about how she had a friend of a friend who had just been promoted to a manager at Google and she was leading a team of like two hundred people, and she was like, man, like, I kind of want that job, And so she dug into that a little bit more like why am I

feeling envious of this person? And what she realized was it wasn't that she wanted to be a manager of two hundred people, because Liz is truly an artist and likes to have lots of heads down time and alone time, and like having back to back days of meetings would be her nightmare. But she was like there's something there, like why am I feeling jealous of this person? And she realized was that there was some status attached to that. So it was like society looks at oh, you're a

manager of two hundred people. That means you know, you're important, your work is meaningful. And so she thought, well, how else can I give myself that feeling work is important and meaningful? And there's other ways that I can do that.

And then, you know, the last myth that we talk about with big feelings is that when people say you know you can you can just think on the positive side, or that somehow you should be strong enough to think your way out of difficult emotions, and thinking differently is not something that people always have the capacity to do when they are in the middle of feeling a big feeling.

Life is really hard and sometimes we go through really hard moments, and so it's okay, you know, it's okay to fall apart for a bit and feel like, you know, I don't know how to change how I'm thinking about this. I can't just think my way out of it. And trying to reach out for support, therapy, friends, family, support groups, all of these things, and also just acknowledging that structural

forces matter. So, you know, we talk about burnout, and people who are underrepresented in workplaces are definitely more likely to experience burnout because of the structural forces that are against them. And so, you know, we really shouldn't be saying like, oh, you should just be resilient in this situation when everything is stacked against you. What are some

of those structural forces that are stacked against them. Yeah, So there's a lot of research around emotional labor, and emotional labor is when we have to do surface acting

to hide our true feelings. And so the most common example of this is in like a customer service setting or in a healthcare setting where we're dealing with clients or patients and if we are feeling something, it's not appropriate in that setting to share, Oh, I'm also feeling really sad or I'm feeling really frustrated right now because

of the role that we're in. And so there's good research that shows that even outside of those settings, women, people of color, minorities have to do, or feel that they have to do more surface acting, more emotional labor in terms of hiding how they're really feeling. And you know, we could talk about, you know, the workplace and how

it's designed. But for for many decades of the workplace there there wasn't really room for people who didn't look like the model of the person at work, which is tended to be a middle aged white man, and especially there wasn't room for those people sharing their feelings. And so that then leads to again, like, I think the work world is changing for the better, but I think there's still some leftover norms that we have that that do make it more likely for like I said, women,

people of color, minorities in many different ways to burn out. Yeah, and and things are thankfully changing quite dramatically, and there's you know a lot of diversity initiatives that in most workplaces. I think it's it's really important to set up safe spaces to talk about these things and make sure that there's you know, people who there's a lot of people

who are trained as facilitated to do this work. I'm not a diversity and inclusion expert, but there are lots of them, and I'm really glad that workplaces are bringing more of them in because we really need their expertise. I'm really glad you're also writing a lot about psychology, and you don't ignore structural factors. So I'm glad that you do that. You know, not everyone does that or focuses on that, or even acknowledges that. Within the psychology community.

There's you know, personally, I don't see taking personal responsibility and self help and structural forces is like a zero sum game, right Like, I don't see them as completely what's one or the other, you know, and we only have to focus on one or the other, you know, it's the interaction that's the best. You want an environment that brings out the best in you, right like, and then you can bring your best. Yeah, So I guess

that's the way I think about it. So let's talk about uncertainty, one of my favorite topics I used to be so afraid of. I used to have generalized anxiety disorder, and so it just everywhere I went. I was like, if there was too much incertainty, I would have a meltdown. But I've gotten so much better over that. So I really liked reading your book. I wish I could read your book like ten years ago. Probably would have saved

me through a lot. But what are some of the common myths surrounding uncertainty and the anxiety causes you go through some of the myths there as well. Yeah, yeah, so we and I would love to hear, actually, how what helped you move through that? So I want to come back to that. Yeah, so there is a big myth that we can have absolute certainty, which I think the last two years have helped us move through that. Many of us have had that balloon popped, but you know,

we still were humans. We tend to not like change and dealing with uncertainty, So that's a big myth. There's also a myth that our anxiety accurately reflects the risk the actual risks, and there's really often a mismatch between how stressed we feel about something and the likelihood of

thing happening. So there's a really interesting experiment. You may know of it in the psychology field, but researchers had two groups of people and they told one group of people that they had a ninety nine percent chance of receiving a painful electric shock. It was safe, but it was painful. And they told the other group that they had a one percent chance of receiving that shock, and the two groups were willing to pay about the same

amount of money to avoid the shock. So the likelihood of getting hurt didn't really affect our level of anxiety. It was like and in some cases, like even just knowing for sure it's going to happen, like people would rather say, Okay, it's one hundred percent, I'm going to be ready for that shock, versus being told that you have, like you know, a one percent or a ten percent chance.

That's really hard for us. So I think that can be then generalized to think about, Okay, the more uncertainty we face, the worst that we feel, but that doesn't always mean that the bad thing is going to happen then.

And then you know, there's a myth around resilience, and I think, you know, we are proponents of resilience, and I mentioned it when we were talking about burnout, but you know, there's there's been a lot placed on resilience these last two years, like that's the answer for everything. You know, you're having a hard time at work, be resilient, you're struggling to try your teacher, of your kids at home,

just just be resilience. And again this goes back to like systemic problems, and there's often other things going on kind of frantic. Quickly google a research paper that's really into what you're saying. It's called the title of the paper is the Devil you Know, Neurotsism predicted Neural Response to uncertainty. It's one of my favorite papers in Psychological Science two thousand and eight by Jacob Hirsh and colleagues.

And what I really like about it is they show that people would prefer a much harsher immediate punishment, like the devily know, for a greater uncertainty that there could be something worse down the line. I love that. That's really interesting. But neuroticism moderated that. So yeah, where you score in the trade the personality trait, Neuroticism moderated the

extent to which the strength that strength. So people who are really neurotic, you know, are like, yeah, I'll take all the bad things right now if I know they'll be certainty. Yeah, let's get a mover. That's interesting COVID already. Yeah, Yeah, that's that's my bet. That was true for some people like I'll just take it now, please. So what helped you? I mean? And I'm curious because the way that you said that previously was like I used to have, and

so like what helped you move through that? Well? I do think there's something too exposure therapy. I had a book come out and suddenly I had I was on the talk circuit and I had to overcome my fear of flying. I was like, come on, Scott, like let your fear hold you back. So I started off like just doing it, like going in the flight's beginning, I got prescribed medicine as a crutch, you know, like I took I popped one xanax before before the flight, and

then I was good. But then I was like, you know what, Scott, you don't want to be having to do like reliant on xenax. It's like, you know, so what else can you do? So I took a Mindfulness Stress Biased Reduction Course NBSR eight week course and that helped a lot, actually really learning how to just sit with my thoughts and emotions and watch it go by like a cloud passing by, right, you know, that was

that was nice. So meditation helped a lot, but also exposures start but like I just kept doing it, kept going on the play after flay after flight, and you know, it extinguishes, you know, the anxiety starts to extinguish once you do get more of that certainty you know behind you. Yeah, I like yours. I like your suggestions. You say, stop and sit with uncertainty, which that that was one of

the thing. So mindfulness, Yeah, I think mindfulness is it's it's sort of the obvious thing, and it's it's honestly, there's a reason it's the first step because I think it's the hardest. We really don't like sitting with these things. And you know, I think there's another you probably will know the name of it more than I do, but I think there's another study that shows we would rather get an electric shock than sit with our own thoughts. Yeah, so I think, And there's so many varieties of that.

So you mentioned mindfulness based stress direction, I think is great. I have done, you know, a lot of meditation over the years for various things. Anxiety is one of them, dealing with pain is one of them, and it's been really helpful for that. So there's like a lot of flavors of that. And I encourage people, like if you if you've tried one that you didn't really like, like try a different one. Yeah. Yeah. The second one was adopt the manta. I am a person who is learning,

uh do dot dot yes. So I think we can put so much pressure on ourselves to feel like we need to have the answers right now, and we beat ourselves up when we're not perfect at something the first time. And so when we tell ourselves like I am a person who is learning to blank versus I can't do this or I need to have this all figured out, we give ourselves agency to like get better at things.

And so some of those things are like saying instead of you know, I'm a really bad parent, it's like, well, I'm a person who's learning how to care for an infant right now. I've never had to do that before. Or I don't know how to manage people. I can't do this. I'm learning how to be a great manager. I've never done this before. So I mean this connects to growth mindset and you know a lot of other pieces of psychology, but that phrase we have found helpful, awesome,

and then three translate you're into specific fears. So I didn't know this before writing this book, but the difference between anxiety and fear is that fear is about something specific. So I might have a fear of public speaking, or you had a fear of getting on an airplane, and

anxiety is something that's that's more generalized. So we are afraid of many different things happening, and it can be easier not all the time, but it can be easier to deal with things if you translate them from okay, well these ten things could happen into specific fears, and so that takes this like big, ambiguous thing and makes it something that we can actually deal with. So asking yourself,

so what am I afraid of? Like what are the There might be multiple things, what do I imagine could happen? And then how would those you know, specific things look and feel and sort of walk through the scenarios of those things. I love it well. Hopefully this is helping our listeners with their anxiety. I also really love this. When you find yourself thinking what if this doesn't work, be sure to also ask yourself what if it does? Yeah? Okay?

Separate though withins from the beyonds what does that mean? So there are things that are within our control and there are things that are beyond our control. So labeling things as something that's within or beyond can be helpful for them deciding what to do next. So the things that are within your control that you're worried about or

you have anxiety about. For the book, we interviewed somebody who's an organizational psychologist who worked with NASA, and she said that even at NASA, when they make plans, they refer to them as plans from which we deviate, and so it's a helpful reminder that, like, even the things that we feel like are within our control, there's going to be some uncertainty around and it's not our faults.

Then if things don't go exactly to plan, and the benefit of planning is really like coming together and thinking about what are we going to do next? How do we have alignment on that. The value is in the process of doing the planning, And it doesn't mean that we have to like follow the plan exactly. We can change the plan as we go forward and then for the things that are beyond your control, and this is way easier said than done, but trying to let go

of the things that you can't control. And a part of this is something that but both Lis and I do, which is a CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy technique, which is setting aside time to worry or to ruminate, and so like we often will worry at times when we can't do a lot about things. So I will often worry it like right as I'm going to bed, and that's the there's nothing I can do it. I'm about to go to bed, and so I will write down

my fears. I have a little post it next to my bed, and I'll write down, like the things that I'm worried about, and then I can I say, I'll look at them again in the morning. And I would say about half the time, when I look at them again in the morning, I say, okay, like that was a thought that I had last night at nine pm, but I'm not worried about it today now that it's daylight. And then half the time it's like, yeah, I do need to worry about that. So how can I schedule

some time to sit down and think about that. That's not right before bedtime? Really good advice. It's really hard to turn off the brain. It's so hard. Yeah, at any time, you say, design your life based on your tolerance of uncertainty. So just complete is a part of life design. So I think, what can be helpful about this is thinking about people in your life who have more or less tolerance for uncertainty and just recognizing that there is a scale around this. So we have an

assessment on our website that can help you. It's also in the book that can help you identify your tolerance for uncertainty. And again that this isn't a right or wrong thing, it's just a difference. And so, like my husband is a comedian and he loves uncertainty, like he thrives on he doesn't know what's going to happen in a comedy set or the next day, and if he did that, he would feel like his life was kind of boring. And then there are other friends who I

have who want really secure careers. They want to be government employees where they have a pension, or they want to be an academic where they get tenure. And so knowing that, like, how can we design our lives around that? And I think it's okay to admit to yourself that, like, maybe you want more stability in your life or you

want less stability in your life. These things can change over our lifetime too, So for many people they want more stability as they age, depending on what's going on if they're starting a family or those sort of things. Whereas when we're young, you know, we don't want to know what we're going to be doing for the rest of our lives. But you know, it's it's okay to recognize that, Like, hey, this job has a lot of uncertainty in it, and maybe there's a part of that

that's fun. But I am stressed out by that, and so in my next job, maybe I'm going to look for something that has a little bit less uncertainty. Good. Yeah, that's really healthy, really helpful. You how would you, because I'm curious. You said you're an introvert, a wild Yeah, what do you think? What do you think your tolerance for uncertainty is? And has it changed? I'm I'm a paradox wrapped in a paradox because I am more fearful and anxious about it before it happens, and then once

it happens, I just let loose. Right. It's like once I calm down, like once I'm on the airplane and there's nothing I can do. The door is that. They're like, the door is now shut. I'm like, oh cool, I'm good now, you know, like, no, no need to worry. It's just like it's on the way to the it's like in the line, you know, like it's like, oh, what's the unknown? So I don't know. I guess I'm a very practical paradoxical in that way because I really love having fun and I am very high openness to

experience and I do have again get wild. But you know, I feel like if there's too much unknown right right before, I'm nervous, you know. But then when it's too late, then I'm like, Okay, I'm good in advance sort of, I do it in advance. I play. I'm really into

like controlled, you know, thoughtful fun. I mean I think like rock climbers say that right, like they they plan so meticulously that, like dalx Hanold said, it would seem as though it's really scary and it is going up without a harness, you know, climbing Mount Everest without or climbing whatever the big the big mountains without without the harness and all. But he's like, you have to understand I He's like, I prepared every single like step and

I know every move I'm gonna make. It's actually just very simple for me, you know, in the moment, you know, so it's like he's planned for all as many contentiously as possible, so that in the moment itself, he can be like, well, whatever happens happens now. I bet it's it's such a great analogy. It's I really liked that. I hadn't heard that before. Cool. Yeah, have you ever heard of Alex Handld He's he's amazing. I have not, No,

I'll have to look him up. Yeah, And there's documentaries made about him and how he controls his fear, which is uh A really good uh, really good lesson for a lot of us. Yeah, let's talk about comparison. That's a big one. How do we embrace comparison because it's it doesn't seem to be going away, Like I still as much as I want to it to go away. So yeah, can you give us some advice on how it could be actually we can harness the power of it. Yes,

So in comparison. So we name this chapter comparison. But people are like, well, that's not an emotion, and that's true. The emotion is envy. But we thought that people might relate more to just the word comparison because we use it so often. So, yes, you're exactly right, comparison is

not going anywhere. And unfortunately, even if we get off social media that may be helpful, but unless we're totally off the grid, we still are going to get updates about people through you know, LinkedIn and text messages and just running into people in the grocery store, and you know, we can't we can't avoid it. So I think the first thing is to listen to some of those triggers and say, how can those be helpful for me in

figuring out what I want? So I give the example earlier of Liz listening to her feeling of like why am I jealous of this person who's a manager of two hundred people, and getting really specific with that. So, like I said, you know, she wasn't just like, oh, well, I should go apply for a job at Google. She was like, well, what is it specifically you know that they have that makes me feel less than what is this void that you know I'm trying to fill? Do

I really want what they have? You know? And in her case it was like, yes, a part of it, but I don't want the other part of it. And I think, you know, there's something called malicious envy, which is when we perceive scarcity, and in many cases there's not scarcity. So another person's ability to achieve something is actually evidence that you could achieve that too, not evidence that you can't achieve it. So again, like it's not

a zero sum game in most places. So shifting your thinking from malicious envy to what we call benign envy, which is envy that is that is not going to be harmful to us. So, you know, I'm inspired by this person, What can I learn from them? Can I go talk to them and ask them to be my mentor you know, everyone is on their own journey. I

haven't gotten there yet, but I will get there. And then I think just understanding that, like when we are comparing, we are most likely seeing someone else's highlight reel, so we are seeing the best of and in some cases not the reality. You know this perhaps all the time on social media we're not seeing we're seeing the glamorous shop, but we're not seeing everything behind the glamor as shot. And so you know, asking yourself, how do I know

that this person isn't struggling in some way? What am I proud of that doesn't show up on social media? You know, there are the things that if I posted,

others would be envious about. And again, I think when we wrote this book, Liz and I wanted to be really clear that like, yes, we wrote a best selling book, but there's also really hard parts of our lives that we went through since that book came out, like in the recent past, and you wouldn't know that from our Instagram, from our public profiles, from meeting us on a day to day basis, And so it in sharing that we

just want to like pull back the veneer a little bit. Yeah, you see some things that are a little bit counterintuitive. I mean you say, well, you say counterintuitively. Sign shows that what makes you say it right there in the beginning. Counterarly science shows that what makes us miserable isn't comparison itself. It's when we don't compare ourselves to others enough. This is about just picking a broader baseline. So we're often when we're comparing ourselves to others, we're picking like the

top ten percent of people. So we're like, I'm trying to become a good runner, Well I'm going to compare myself to somebody who's run an ultra marathon and broadening your perspective can help you understand that there's a huge swath of people and you're probably not looking at the

people who are worse than you at running. And then similarly, like comparing what we call the nitty gritty, so thinking about not only the best parts of what that person is experiencing that you want, but also the worst parts of it. So one of our readers, she's a lawyer, and she was really envious of She had other lawyer friends who had gone into corporate law and they were making like way more than was. But then when she actually dug into well what does their day to day

look like? You know, they're working like one hundred hour weeks, And when she spent some more time understanding the details, she was like, I would hate that, and she was she felt better about her career in public service. So you know, again, I think we cherry pick the good parts and we say, well I want only that. Yeah, we do, we really do. You have a whole bunch of things to help people work through it really helpful

that are really helpful. I won't go through all of them, but I'll name one that I think is just so spot on. Avoid comparison hot beds when you're feeling blue. I find if I'm in a particular mood and then I get like an email from like my biggest competitor. I'm like, I'll be even particularly not happy with that person. But it's like other days I don't really even mind it, you know, it's like, oh whatever, So yeah, I really

like that one avoid you know, your mood matters this equation. Yes, yeah, And there's so there's research from Facebook that shows that people spend two hundred and twenty five percent more time on the platform after they have had a breakup. And it's like, oh, that's exactly the wrong time. That's when we're going to be feeling the lowest, and that's that's really not going to help. So I think, like I

had to do this. There was a you know, a period of why was going through deep depression and I was like, I if I'm having a good day, which honestly was like once a month at that point, Like sure, I could open up the Instagram app and I could check on like how a close friend was doing, to see about their travels or something like that. But the rest of the days, I was like, I know, how this is going to make me feel and it's just not helpful for where I am because I'm so low

right now. And it's hard because it's it's such a it's a habit and we do this habitually, but just trying to be kinder to yourself and not doing that to yourself it's like, you know, sticky, Like it's like throwing acid on a wound. It's like you don't need that right now. Yeah. Yeah, Well I'm curious, like you you lifted yourself up from a deep depression. What are some things that you found were most helpful for you, particularly the kind of things you talk about in this book.

Which ones would you say were helpful for you in that case? Yeah, so definitely working with a therapist. I think it's it's hard sometimes we go to therapists like during moments of crisis. So you know, it's like when you're working with a therapist for a long time, you know, and then you go into crisis mode, they sort of

already know you and can help you with that. But in my case, I had just moved from New York to LA and I had to find a new therapist because of you know, state insurance lines, and so I sort of came to my therapist, and I was like, in such a crisis, and you know, it's like, well, I just met this person, Like how are they gonna like help me immediately fix it? Even though I like really was in a dark place and I was like,

I want these feelings to go away. So I just had to recognize that it was going to take some time. Medication definitely helped. I was say, medication helped pull me out of a space where I couldn't do therapy and like take the action and do the self reflection that I needed to a place where I could start to do that deeper work. For a long time, honestly, Scott, it was just about chunking time and getting through days.

So it was like, yeah, I have four hours left until I can go to bed, and I will feel better once I go to bed. Can I make it through four hours until eight o'clock when I can go to bed. Yes, I can make it through four hours. I mean it's literally that that level. It was reaching

out to friends who get it. So it was again I mentioned this in the beginning, but finding people who weren't going to be afraid of or uncomfortable by the things that I was about to share, and I talk in the book I had suicidal thoughts and it wasn't that I wanted to act on those things. It was just like I was in a lot of pain and I didn't want to keep being in pain. And there were a few friends who opened up and said, you know, I've had those thoughts in the past, and I know

how hard they are, and I'm here. I had one friend who texted me every single day, how are you doing? I just I'm checking in. You know. I had friends who would call like weekly to check in. And if you don't have friends, finding there's so many great support groups online for whatever it is that you're working through, whether that's physical or mental pain, and connecting with those people.

And then, you know, I think a big piece of this is just accepting, like I said, that there's no shortcut, and when you're feeling that bad, it's like, there's got to be a short cut. I can't how can I possibly survive feeling this bad? But that over time for me, the darkest thoughts, it went from like multiple times a day to once a day to you know, a couple times a week to once a week, and like literally it was like that slow, but it did trend upward, and so I just had to hang in there to

see that trend line. And it took months, but you know, eventually got there. That is hopeful for people to know, you know that there's a way out, And I think, just to share one more thing, I think again, I was looking during that time. I was looking for stories of people who had had really dark thoughts who made

it out the other side. And I have to say, there aren't that many stories of those, and I think it's it's much more common than we think about, and it's there's there are lots of stories of people acting on those thoughts, which is tragic. And I'm glad that there are stories about those things because those stories are important too. But I wanted to share how bad it was and yet that I was also able to work through it, because I in the beginning and middle of it,

I didn't know. I was sort of like, how can I come out the other side of this? I feel like I'm going crazy, I'm going insane, and you know, really my therapist was the one who was like, this is more common than you think, and like you can come out the other side of it. But I just want people to know it's possible and that there are examples out there. Yeah. I want our listeners to hear that too. Yeah, so important. You actually just also just made me think of a book title. Someday, I want

to write a book called dark Thoughts. Would that be interesting? Will that be an interesting book? You know, A chapter in suicide, a chapter and homicidal thoughts, you know, like I want to call my mother, you know, or the chapter on like you know, like I don't know whatever. Yes, yeah, yeah,

that's yeah. Just to pause on that. I mean, I think we use that word because it can be hard to say I'm having suicidal thoughts, because that is something that's deeply shameful, and you know, again as something we don't talk about it, and so that we I use that phrase many times of having dark thoughts, of having dark thoughts. But you're right, I hadn't even thought about it in terms of homicidal thoughts, and I think many

people have them. And also they are not they pass they can pass road y. Have you heard of road rage? A lot of people have lots, you know, in the moment, like you know, this person caught me off, cut me off, I'm gonna cut them. You know, it's just like calm down, calm down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway, yeah, or catastrophic thinking is another example. Oh yeah for sure. Sure, yeah, we write that book someday. Yeah, she just gave me a book idea. We don't have time to go through

all the big emotions. So I definitely like want to direct our listeners to your book. Maybe we can cover one more, you know, to have nice balance. Three. Three seems good that we cover what's cover? Like on offence between anger and perfectionism? Can you quickly cover anger and perfectionism? Can you do both? Sure? All right, I'll try my bed.

So so anger anger is something that, again society tells us is bad to feel, especially women or people identifying as women have been raised in our society to think that that's not an appropriate emotion to share, especially at work with colleagues. And yet anger can be a great sign that we care deeply about something or something that

we care about has been violated. So like in my coaching work, I help people think about, Okay, so you're really angry at this person, beyond that, underneath that, what are you feeling? And sometimes it's about that like caring and I say, well, that's actually like good, like you care a lot about this company here, you feel a lot, you care a lot about this team, and they've been violated, and so how do we actually like listen to that and what can you do to help protect your team?

That's not just like yelling. It's also can be a sign of fear. So fear that something. We get angry when we fear that something bad has happened or will happen. And so again it's like, okay, so that's fear. Let me recognize that that's fear. Anger is something that is hard for those around us to hear, especially when we've

been raised in environments where anger is dangerous. Many people in our family lives that has been true, and so anger is one of these ones where we really have to sit with it and translate it for those around us. Which doesn't mean that you're not allowed to get angry. Of course, we all get angry, but it's about lengthening the space between the trigger and the response and being able to come back and say, you know, I was

having a really strong reaction to that. Let me talk to you about what I was feeling and why that reaction was triggered. So that's a phrase that we recommend. I'm having a strong reaction right now, and sometimes you need to step away to go handle that and come back. Perfectionism, that's just yeah. So perfectionism is really interesting. Some people identify with the phrase perfectionism and some people don't because they think of it as like color coded folders, and

they're like, why I don't do that. I'm not a perfectionist. But perfectionism can show up in many different ways that are not color coded folders. And we can have perfectionist tendencies in different parts of our lives. So we can be a perfectionist in our work life but not in our home life, and vice versa, and so it can be hard for people to recognize. I think the biggest thing that I want to share about perfectionism is that it may not be as helpful to us as we

think that it is. So we interviewed another A therapist for the book, and she said that a lot of her Type A clients feel like if they stop their perfectionist tendencies, everything's going to fall apart. They're going to get immediately fired from their job, They're going to become a couch potato, and so it's this very black and white thinking about these tendencies are the sole thing that is helping me hold onto my success, and if I let go of them, the whole house of cards is

going to fall down. And so what the therapist said was, you know, recognizing that the reason for your success, I mean, there may be a part of it that's because of your perfectionism, but that's certainly not all of the reason for your success, and that a lot of it is about you being a good person or a good listener or good teammate, and you doing the perfectly and everything doesn't always matter. And in some cases, in a workplace context,

perfectionism can actually be detrimental to those around us. Many of us have worked with people where we're like, okay, you got it ninety percent of the way there. That's good enough for what we need. We need to move on because there's other things that we need to do as a team. And when you're working with somebody who's like, no, I have to get it to one hundred percent, it's it's sort of selfish in a way. They're like, I know, I need to know finish this and make it look perfect.

Because I need that for myself. Maybe the team doesn't need that, so those reframes can be helpful. Yeah yeah, oh man, people right now. People are suffering right now obviously, And I really liked how you broad in the ending post traumatic growth. That's actually the topic of my book coming out this year. I didn't know that. Okay, great, the title of the book is Choose growth, but this is I'm just so glad that you talk about this, and just to tire everything together, today, we cause ourself

additional suffering. We have we suffer, but then there's lots of ways we cause ourselves additional suffering. Perfectionism is one of them, right, and then a lot of other things are part of it. So I really love how you kind of tie that a lot of that together in your book at the ending there and the conclusion. Thank you. Well,

I'm very excited to read about the book again. That was something that I didn't know about before writing and stumbled across it in research, and it helped give a name to some of the things that I had experienced. So while I never would want to go through despair or recommend that to anyone, there are pieces of myself that are new that came out of that experience, that where I can be more compassionate, pathetic and less judgmental.

And that is a self re lining to that. And with each of these emotions that we talk about, there's usually something that you can get out of that. And so I'm really god and I look forward to reading that. Thanks Molly. But in the meantime, everyone should run out and get your book Big Feelings. It is really really good. It is scientifically sound, which I liked, and it's funny. It's funny and it's human. Molly. I really appreciate you chatting with me today and I wish you all the

best with the success of your book. Thank you, Scott. Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed our conversation me too. 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 thus Psychology podcast dot com. We're on our YouTube page, The Psychology Podcast. We also put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page

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