Therapist REVEALS How To LET GO, MOVE ON & HEAL From A Toxic Relationship! | Lori Gottlieb

If you truly forgive that person great but that's not necessarily the goal it doesn't make you less of a person it doesn't make you less evolved because you can have compassion but not forgiveness this is why people don't change because they say let's say we've gone through a breakup and you're like man I feel wounded from this previous relationship where there was a lot of hurts and pains that Just you know didn't feel good what would be the process that you would recommend for someone while they're single to really grieve heal forgive process in order

to set themselves up to being the best person they can be when they're in that next relationship well first of all you've used the word forgiveness a little bit so I just want to talk about that for a second so I think there's this idea that if we Forgive someone that we will be set free in some way and I don't think that's always the case we have this expression forced forgiveness which is like you know you don't actually forgive the person whether it's a parent or an ex or you know someone who really wounded

you you don't have to forgive them and I think with parents it's easy to say I can have compassion for them now as an adult because I see what their life was like or I see what their struggles were I see that they had mental health issues or whatever it is or I see how hard their upbringing was but I don't necessarily forgive what they took from me in their childhood or how they treated me so you're saying it's sometimes it's good not to forgive it's okay I'm saying I'm saying if you truly forgive that

person great but that's not necessarily the goal it doesn't make you less of a person it doesn't make you less evolved because You can have compassion but not forgiveness and the same with an ex if someone really hurt you maybe you can have compassion for the woundedness in them that made them treat you in that way but you don't necessarily have to forgive them in fact I think that can do more damage than good when you tell yourself that you forgive someone when you actually don't that Force forgiveness can be a trap and it can

Leave you in a stuck position for much longer than you would be if you just acknowledge that I don't actually forgive them I can see that they were wounded I'm not going to put myself in that position I'm going to choose a different kind of partner next time right I'm not gonna I don't need to beat myself up or hold a grudge anymore but I don't want to forgive is there a way to like not hurt yourself and still not forgive well why am I why is so much of My emotional real estate going in

that direction you know it's like we only have so much emotional real estate how much time are you thinking about thinking of this other person we had this again I keep talking about the podcast because these are such common issues that on the dear therapist podcast we had this this woman come on and she was spending so much emotional real estate on this person who this person who had treated her badly and and And we were like you were spending so so much time on this that you are not even available for another person right

now you are not available you won't even think about people who are who are it's kind of like I use this analogy to dry well that there are people who they keep going back to the dry well they know there's no water there they know that there's like an emotional void there and they keep going back every day expecting that there's going to be water there Just thinking about it yeah like thinking like I'm going to keep trying to get this like this time you're going to be emotionally if the person has never been emotionally

there for you in the way that you want what should they do just move on so it's like go where the water is go to a different well and they don't they're so focused on but I want water from that well I want it from this particular well dry well yeah yeah it's like you're Never gonna get water that well is dry go where the water is psychologically why do we fixate on that sometimes because they they had to dry well somewhere in their lives and they think I'm going to now we call this repetition

compulsion Freud called it repetition compulsion and I'm not all on board with Freud but but there are certain things that that he wrote about that actually do play out that I see all the time and one of them is we say this time I'm Going to choose a partner who is exactly like that person who didn't meet my needs we don't do that consciously right in fact they look very different we think aha I won because I chose someone very different but then when you get into relationship with them you see they're also not emotionally

available or they also have an anger issue or they also are withholding or whatever it is and so then we say unconsciously but this time I'm going to win this time I'm Going I couldn't get my parent to do it but I'm going to get them because sometimes they can be so loving and kind and all these other things so this time I'm going to get them to do that but you won't again we don't change another person you can only change yourself in that case the change might be I'm going to go where the

water is I'm going to choose differently I'm going to go where the water is and I'm going to look at why I don't go where the water is Because so many times people don't see that they are literally surrounded by water but they don't take it they won't drink it to them it's almost like water is the water is the poison even though the poison is the dry well why is that because they don't know that it's safe they've never experience it feels so foreign to them it's like it's like it's kind of like you

are in this war zone and we're gonna fly you right your whole life and we're going to fly you into a Safe territory and you land in the safe territory but you've never been in a safe territory before so they speak a different language and they drive on the other side of the street and they have different systems and and they wear different clothes and you're like this feels really uncomfortable because I've never been in a place like this even though it's really warm and safe and the people are really nice there but you're like

I don't know all I know is the Familiar this is why people don't change because they say I would rather be in something that is familiar to me because at least I know it that to go in this situation where I don't know the customs and the language and I don't know how to be around people who are kind to me I don't know what how to be in those situations this is so relevant to me right now because my my girlfriend uh we started dating and uh within the first couple months ago this is

really Weird this is really weird it's and I go I don't know what it is it just something feels weird there's nothing wrong it just feels weird because it's so healthy I go it's so healthy that I just never experienced this and it's so foreign but I know this is so much healthier than anything I've ever experienced and I'm like I just needed to communicate and I was telling my therapist I was like I don't know what it is it's just so healthy it Just feels good it feels good you know just like but it's

just it's just different it's just like this is it's just it's just weird to the mind right and you and you have to get used to it gotta get used to it like wait there's peace wait a minute there's not bombs going off everywhere like okay yeah there's peace I'm not gonna get exploded on you know it's like it sound it it's like a process of like learning how To adapt to a healthy environment right at least it has been for me yeah and for people who grew up that way that is what they seek

and that feels good to them and when someone isn't good to them they get out of that very they're aware of it and they say they say so the way you feel in a healthy relationship is how they feel in an unhealthy relationship right they feel like really on edge and they're not gonna stick around the the goal here for you is to say wait a Minute this is actually safe don't sabotage and to not let your fear yeah yeah yeah it's uh it's weird I don't know it's just really weird there's a word cherophobia

which means fear of Joy so Cheryl means fear and phobia I'm sorry tarot means joy and phobia means fear and people who grew up in those environments that didn't feel safe often struggle with cherophobia because when they feel Joy they don't trust it like maybe sometimes their parents were there For them and then oh my depressed mom would go back into her room again and you know I couldn't trust it like it felt so good to have a mom but then she's gone again right so then when they grow up and then they meet someone

who's there and really available to them they think uh oh the other shoe's gonna drop eventually they're going to do something right I cannot trust this peace this healthiness This Joy so what should someone do when they're in that Situation where it's like wow there's a healthy environment but maybe they're in a previous relationship where it felt healthy for six months or a year and then something switches in the relationship and it's not healthy but you stick to whatever pattern you had before what should they do in that speaking to myself what should I do

you know or someone like me when they're in a healthy environment when they've got an Amazing partner that's when you have to realize that the war is over oh my gosh so you know you're not in the war zone the war is over and it's like PTSD it is it really is and so you have to look around and you have to ground yourself you can put your feet on the floor you can breathe you kind of have to orient yourself to your environment say hey it's peace time the war is over yeah and and

not conflate your past with the present so People are time traveling what they're doing in that moment they're saying wait a minute you know like I I put them in the war I've got to be hyper vigilant yelled at or exploded on or whatever I'm gonna step on a bomb yeah yeah yeah and also something happens in those relationships like a healthy relationship doesn't mean that there's no conflict or that you don't disagree or whatever it is it's that it's going to be handled really Differently it's hey let's talk it's all good let's figure it

out it's okay it's not again rupture and repair how do we repair and so it's not like oh there's a rupture that's the end of our relationship if there's a rupture and we're going to have lots of them in the course of our relationship so let's see how we repair things together let's see how we work as a team man that's powerful what would you say Uh if someone's getting into a relationship a new relationship when would they know what would the signs be that this is a the environment of a really great match for

both of you what would that environment look like or those things happening look like or feel like it depends who you are so if you're someone again who grew up with you know what we call secure attachment then what looks good to you is what you Saw growing up that you guys you know you might have disagreements but there's a there's a lot of Goodwill you know there's that the gottmans who are these marital researchers they always said you need you know we talk about the Goodwill bank that you need to put five deposits into

the Goodwill bank for every one withdrawal that you make so you know do you have that five to one ratio are there like five positive interactions between the two of you for every sort of Difficult interaction because if it's difficult and one positive the relationship's not gonna work it's it's it's well again it's not going to work but if you grew up again with with this other kind of modeling um attachment or insecure attachments secure attachment is what you want you want secure attachment right insecure attachment is as you grew up you grew up with

you know different there are different versions of it um you've got Too much of something not enough of the other thing whatever it is but it but in a way that was exaggerated in a way that it really affected you so you know we talk about the good enough parent like no parent is perfect um so it's more about being the good enough parent that's secure attachment but if there was you know like a constancy to the enmeshment or the or the withdrawal or the neglect or the chaos or the anger or whatever it was

Um or the you know the parent who was really inconsistent which is really confusing for kids like one minute the parent is like this the next minute the parents is like that so they're more insecure attachment right right and then so then if you're in that relationship that might feel normal to you as an adult was that healthy no of course not I mean so when do you know you have a healthy match what does that look like right so so you know it's it's I think You have to you have to say like what

is the what is the quality of of this relationship on a daily basis what does it look like on a daily basis and sometimes it helps people to keep a journal we had this woman on the podcast she was in this relationship and it was really really dysfunctional and guy and I were like you know it was so apparent and and I think to the listeners too you and Kai and I were saying to her listen you keep justifying his behavior you Know you keep saying oh but then he's also like this so you know

there was no Reality Checking we said we want you to actually keep a journal every day we want you to write down like what is going what's what are the deposits in the bank what are the withdrawals from the bank and she kept the journal and it was very eye-opening performance of all the things yeah right because it was kind of like you know you can you can justify anything in your Head but when it's all there on the page he said is this the kind of relationship that I want [Music] and then you have

to do the work of why why am I attracted to this why am I in this why do I stay yeah why do you think people stay in something like that where they they have pages of pages daily of things that like are around neglect and you know frustration as opposed to an Environment quality of peace and abundance you have to remember too that that change doesn't happen just because you have an Insight so you know if it did it would be so easy this isn't good for me but I'm not going to change though

yeah um well people you know it's like this is my New Year's resolutions don't work too because you know it's not like you just the Nike thing like just do it um change goes through this process so You there's a there's actually a chapter and maybe you should talk to someone called how humans change and it starts with um pre-contemplation where you don't even know that you're thinking about making a change like maybe I'm going to leave this relationship someday you don't even know you're thinking that that's pre-contemplation contemplation as you're thinking about it but

you're not ready to do it Um then there's the preparation stage and in preparation you're actually thinking about what would that look like let me look at apartments an idea I'm leaving tomorrow but here's the thing about the stages of change so so there's there's the preparation then there's action where you make the change like you actually leave that's not where it ends maintenance is the next phase because you might want to go back right right it's that 3am of a soul right Where you're like oh I'm so lonely and oh he's texting me and

you know whatever um maintenance is how do you maintain the change and the big misconception people have about maintenance is that you make the change and you're going to maintain it and if you slip up like you know you you give in at 3am and you're like oh yeah I know yeah or or you know like oh you know I'm gonna eat healthy and then oh no you didn't eat healthy for one day oh I failed no built into The maintenance phases that you're going to slip back that's human and you have to have so

much self-compassion in the maintenance phase and people think oh five self-compassion then I'm not holding myself accountable that's not true because nobody has ever succeeded at something through self-flagellation at least in the long term self-flagellation is where you're like you know oh you're so terrible you're Bravo think if your kid came home and Was like oh I really you know I did really badly on that test and you said that's terrible that's awful you know like are they gonna do better on the next test are you going to say oh let's see what didn't work

let's see what you didn't understand it's okay let's see what you can do maybe you need to study differently or let's see what happened um if you slip back which you will you have to be really kind to yourself and say okay let me let me try to check in With myself what happened oh my mother called in that triggered me or oh I'm really worried about this thing about work and you know and and I was feeling a secret or I'm just really lonely and I didn't have a better coping strategy for being lonely

so next time when I'm lonely at 3am I'm gonna do this instead right and you're really kind to yourself and then the next time you do it differently before the interview continues if you feel like you're not Living your most authentic life not leaning into your purpose and not living the life that your future self would be extremely proud of I've written a new book called The greatness mindset and I think you're gonna love this through powerful stories science back strategies and step-by-step Guidance the greatness mindset will help you overcome all the different challenges in

your life to design the life of your dreams and then turn it into your reality make sure to Click the link below in the description to get your copy today okay let's get back to this video how much does shame shape our stories oh so much I think that you know as humans we want to belong and what shame is about is I'm not going to belong I'm not going to be loved the greatest human need is you know how can we love and be loved and when you feel like there's something I did that

people will look upon badly they might not like me if I tell them This that's just you know wired into us it's like the ego death to us it's like the emotional death if like if no someone knew this about us they would not love me and I would emotionally die and I would be alone and I'll be alone yeah yeah and we need other people I fell in this way for many years where I opened up about sexual abuse about seven years ago and for 25 years no one knew because I was so ashamed

And I felt like if anyone knew how could they possibly love me yeah or accept me or how would anyone want to date me or my family how would they not disown me these were the stories that I was writing I was a bad editor yeah how does someone who's done something that they're not proud of in the past who's had something done to them that they're not proud of whatever they've been in a situation that they feel shame around how does someone start to process That shame to heal so that doesn't continue to run

their life and keep them imprisoned yeah well I think they do what you did which is you started talking about it and I think you have to choose your audience yeah which is really important especially as you're just starting out so you want to make sure that don't tell your abuser who's the toxic relationship who's yet well you know I think you have to really choose someone who's safe and and if you Don't have those people you know I think a therapist is a really good place to start but I I do think that it's

harder for men to talk about anything whether it's sexual abuse or even you know just sort of like the anything they feel vulnerable about and so men will come into my office and they will say to me at some point you know I've never told anyone this before and then do women say that yes so so here's the thing women will say that they'll say I've never Told anyone this before except for my mother my sister and my best friend right you're the only one right right I told my book club I told you know

whatever it is they've told like a few people but they feel like because women it's acceptable for women to talk about these things and so they feel like they haven't told anyone because they still feel like there's some degree of privacy around it men literally have told no one no one And they might even if they have like a great partner and they have close friends you know they have a great family whatever it is they feel like I cannot tell anyone because vulnerability for men in our culture is not okay even though we say

that so this is you know women say I wish you would open up I wish right so here I wish she would cry and be more sensitive but then when they are they're like I I need to be strong right now right so this is exactly what Happens in couples therapy so I'll have two people sitting on the couch and I have a couple and say it's a heterosexual couple and the woman says to the man like I really want to get to know you I feel like we would connect so much more if it

would just open up to me I want to know what's going on inside there right and he does and let's say he tears up let's say he actually starts crying in a way where like his body is convulsing right she looks at me like Deer in headlights she's so profoundly uncomfortable and this is the thing that she was asking for so so what she'll say is I don't feel safe when you don't open up to me and I don't feel safe When You're vulnerable with me it's like there's a there's like it's a Goldilocks it's

like not too much not not too little but right in the middle that's how vulnerable you can be with me I've been saying this for a long time That I feel like this is one of the the main things that hurts all the intimate relationships yes when a person doesn't feel safe to share their emotions to the person that says they love them the most and actually makes them wrong for it or makes them less than or retracts their love when they're vulnerable so I don't know the solution for this besides saying this all the

time and by besides saying ladies like if you want a Vulnerable man who's emotional you have to accept him when he's emotional well not just accept but Embrace I mean that's courage encouragement because it's so much harder for a man in general in our society to be vulnerable based on what we've grown up with and based on what we see that if you're not encouraging it consistently and and celebrating it almost why would you expect them to keep opening up when they have something they want to share if You're going to make them wrong for

it well right so that's exactly what happens there's a there's somebody I write about in the book who um you know there's this tragedy that happens in the family and he feels like he has to be the rock for the family right my wife she can cry about this she can be sad about this but if I break down I'm the thing holding everything up and that was just not true actually that was the thing that was making their Marriage not work that was making him feel anxious and not sleep and and not function well

right and that was the thing that got his wife to it at a certain point saying like I can't be in this marriage if we can't connect but he thought he had to be the rock for the whole family he could not feel his feelings and instead what happened was when he finally said no actually this is tearing me apart too that's when they started Healing that's when they started getting close to each other again what advice would you have to any woman entering a relationship a new relationship with a male partner I would say

make sure that there's no double standard in the relationship make sure that if you want an open relationship where there's lots of trust you feel like you can come to each other with anything um you know there's this there's a Saying about like you invited the LIE which means that when you don't give people the space to talk to you about something that's difficult they will keep things secret from you they won't share with you they won't share with you and they will start keeping lots of Secrets from you and then they'll be like later

on they'll be like really this is going on in your life why didn't you tell me about this because you created a culture in which they couldn't So if you want to feel safe and secure in the relationship and you want that openness then you have to really embrace it and and make sure that you're embracing it not just with your words but with your actions so your your partner comes to you they talk to you about something and you don't try to kind of shut it down you don't get profoundly uncomfortable you you know

if you're if your friend you're like your girlfriend came to you and did that like You're your best friend you would be like oh you know however you would be to them why are you going to be different to this person who is the person that you're spending your life with why are again I want to generalize all women about why are women in general I guess uh wired that way to not feel safe when a man opens up and shares an insecurity a vulnerability of why are women wired that way we have these are

artifacts of you know a culture that taught men and Women girls and boys when they're growing up this is how you are in the world right and you see this as pair parents right so I have a son and I saw this it was profound for me to see this so when when my son got to a certain age when he was little and he would fall down and and you know he would cry or whatever it was you know everybody would be like oh honey you know at the park or whatever you know little

boys okay at a certain age I like two three four five Oh yes all of a sudden it was like girls they fall off the jungle gym everybody's their boys they're crying it's like oh it's okay Shake It Off shake it off I was horrified Shake It Off like he might even have a concussion right shake it off right I mean this is my whole childhood it's like you want to play football I mean I remember breaking my wrist in a game in high school and then just saying tape it up it was just like

my wrist was broken it's like hanging There right no it's broken I tape it up I keep playing because it's just like oh keep a plan unless you're dying I remember I broke my ribs in a game and I could not breathe and I was just laying on the ground I could not move so I had to be like taken off but you break an arm you you have I had a concussion once I just kept playing like it's just I'll just be tough right right it's hard for men make sure it makes your men

and stay accountable but it's hard for men to Who have that mindset to switch it off and then be vulnerable and then switch it back on will have to be tough and strong well so it's interesting you're using the words tough and strong because they think that what happens is that Men start to associate tough and strong with not feeling yeah like I'm not going to feel the pain of my broken wrist I'm just going to keep playing I'm not going to feel the pain of this breakup I'm not going to tell anybody about it

right About how much pain I'm in I'm not going to tell people about the pain of my sexual abuse because I'm going to be strong and what they don't realize is that strength is actually being able to talk about these things so when people make the call to come to therapy I'm looking not only for what's not working in someone's life and why they're there I want to know why now why this week or this month did they call because that to me is a sign of strength and I'm looking For their strengths as much

as what's not working so they think a lot of men think and they'll say they'll say like oh I'm so embarrassed that I'm here women tend not to say that women are like I'm so glad I'm here I've been waiting to do this right so to them it's is a sign of strength that they came because they value their health in that way men are like I can't let anybody know that I'm here like it's a weakness and I have to reframe it for them and Say no the fact that you are here is a

strength that's why I think it's really cool that Michael Phelps is talking about therapy and talking about basketball players DeMar DeRozan yeah yeah I think it's really important for for us to see models of men that we're inspired by I didn't really see that growing up of like a man that was going through challenges they went to therapy or dealt with sexual abuse and talked about an Openly I never saw that model so I just felt like oh I'm the only one dealing with this this doesn't happen but when I started to open up it's

crazy the amount of man that you mentioned like men never share even to a friend you never tell a soul where a a woman in general might share three friends before they come to the therapist and say they've never shared yeah when I opened up about sexual abuse when there were hundreds of essays from Men emailing me but also what I did it in person in kind of a private kind of group therapy session so many men came to me privately after the session and said I'm 55 years old I've got three kids and my

wife doesn't know my kids like no one knows this happened to me over and over again when I was nine more people would open up that no one knew it's like what happens to us when we have a secret around a shame that we're so ashamed of And no one knows what happens yeah when we hold that in I got the most heartbreaking letter in my advice column Mr therapist column that I write and it was from a man who was you know I think he was like in his 60s maybe he was in the

70s and he said I have the secret and nobody knows and I am so profoundly lonely I'm so profoundly lonely because he has like tons of friends you have to you know it wasn't that he was that he didn't look lonely in life he said Inside I am so lonely because I've carried this around with me for my entire life I have not told a soul and I feel like I'm pretending like I'm one person to everybody else but they don't know everything they don't know this thing that is so important to me and I

I wrote back to him and that letter got such a big response because everybody felt so much compassion for him and just wanted to say to him please talk about this please tell people who You really are please don't pretend please take the mask off yeah right I remember the same thing happened when I saw Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozan on a panel and they were talking about depression and anxiety and how much they suffered packed room right and all of these men raising their hands saying like I you need to talk about this and

you know what was you know people wanted to know about their experience and I remember DeMar DeRozan talking about Like see he was like having this anxiety attack and he was driving and he was driving to to the stadium and he saw this big billboard of him you know that he was like this guy who had it all together and he's like I'm having a panic attack in the back of the car right now and no one knows right so that's what I see in therapy with men and that's what I think in relationships we

have to be so aware that men have all this extra baggage and to really create A space for them to be who they are who they really are and not some image of what our culture thinks they need to be for someone watching or listening right now saying uh men have so much privilege men have so much rights men are you know so much fortunate opportunity like who cares if they have baggage like it doesn't matter because they've been um whatever yeah oppressing they've been uh privileged for many many years so deal with it let

me tell you something Part of toppling the patriarchy is allowing men to have feelings because it gives women more equality too so if you if you give men these privileges of and I say it's a privilege right to be able to be who you are men then have the space to make room for women it it is something that um privileges everybody when when you give permission for men to open up and not shame them or not make them wrong It actually gives you more power as well it it gives so the reason that a

lot of men there's so many I mean this is a really complicated topic but I can say that this is what I see that when men are given the permission to be vulnerable women are given the permission of power wow and that's that's so that's what happens is like you need to level things so if women want more power more say more opportunities in general is what I'm Gonna hear you say the more you Embrace men for the vulnerabilities that they have or the insecurities of the shame they have and you celebrate them for their

emotions the more they're willing to connect and open up opportunities back and also it gives women power in another sense because when emotional lives are valued okay so women it was always like oh these are women's issues right anything that was at the emotional realm these Are women's issues like but men we're talking about the really important things but women they have all these emotions right so that's not really relevant that's like they have their little things over there but now when you say wait a minute emotions are something that are powerful and they impact

not just the individual and not just the people in your family but society and culture at large right so when we start to say wait a minute Our emotional lives matter for our society then something that was considered you know a women's issue now becomes a human issue and that gives women more power that's powerful yeah let's talk about more it's that's interesting should everyone do therapy even when things are going great or you know so I'm not someone who proselytizes therapy I'm not like everyone needs to be in therapy I think therapy is like

getting A really good second opinion on your life from someone who's not in your life and that's the part that's key like someone who's not in your life because again going back to that idiot compassion and all of that but also sometimes the people in your life will say like you need to change you need to do this and it's because it will benefit them not because it'll benefit the person that they're trying to say you need to go to therapy right sure um and So I think that that it's really valuable to be able

to take off the mask to be able to say here's what's really going on and um and I don't have to worry about like the bias of this person who's in my life who might have some ulterior motives that they're not even aware of to benefit them yeah yeah should we all should we be accepting ourselves where we're at or should we be always wanting to change I think that um first of all when you Say accepting um I think that if anything we are too hard on ourselves that we aren't kind to ourselves um

and so people get really confused about this because they say well if I'm really kind to myself if I have a lot of self-compassion then I'm not gonna I'm not gonna try to grow I'm not gonna try to be better I'm not going to try I'm not going to hold myself accountable for the things that I need to change that's Not true if you self-flagellate you're going to make it so much harder to grow and change because you are going to be bathed in shame self-flagellation just makes you feel ashamed so maybe you'll like do

things but you're not going to be doing them in a way where you can really look at yourself because you're going to feel so much shame around looking at yourself that you are going to deny a lot of things you need to take responsibility for so when I talk about Kindness I talk about people will come in and they are so self-critical and they don't realize how self-critical they are so I had this patient who said who like completely had no awareness of how self-critical she was and I said I want you to write down

everything you say to yourself in the span of a few days and come back next week and let's talk about it and and I said this because when I give talks I will say to people show of Hands who's the person that you talk to most in the course of your life is it your partner lots of hands right is it your sibling is it your best friend is it your mom whatever it is ourselves we don't realize that and we don't even know that that voice is playing in the background like a bad radio

station right and it's just it's just playing all the time and it's things like oh my God you're so stupid you made that mistake or oh my God you look terrible Or you'll never be able to do that we say that to ourselves all the time or you're so awkward or you know whatever it is isn't it something like uh 60 to 80 000 thoughts a day we have and most of them are repeating thoughts and most of them are negative thoughts I believe that I believe that because I I hear that inner dialogue I

hear it in myself but I hear it in my patients right because that that is that informs why they believe what they believe and why They act the way they act and so she came back this patient who I said write down everything she came back the next week and she was like oh my God I'm such a bully to myself I had no idea she's like I can't even read this to you it is so mean because you would never say this to your partner or someone you cared about right not only because you're

it's not and you wouldn't say it's because you don't actually believe that about them So if you say to yourself oh you're so stupid you said that if your partner said that you wouldn't think oh my partner's so stupid I can't believe they said that you wouldn't judge them in that way I wonder if every parent did that exercise and did it to themselves and asked them would I say this to my kid every day and if so what type of life would they have if I always said these thoughts to them yes that's why

I say it about myself yes And I feel like a lot of parents probably are saying those thoughts to their kids in some ways which is like very critical yeah or very like degrading in certain ways when they don't achieve which repeats the cycle of them saying I'm not enough I suck I'm stupid I'll never be smart enough Whatever It Is Well it's it's the pressure sure right so it's like they might not say it that way but there's this sense of you know do better you're Not good enough so um this week I got

a letter in my dear therapist column and it was from a 14 year old girl and she said my mom is always pressuring me to get better grades to be thinner um and if I if I'm not outside exercising because she wants me to be thinner then she says I'm not studying enough but if I'm studying she says get outside you're not exercising enough and she's like I don't know how to talk to My mom about this right and and I said to the girl I said listen here's the thing your mom thinks that she's

being a good parent that's the irony of this like your mom thinks that she's trying to set you on a path to have a better life and she's showing her love this way but she's showing her love in a way that is not at all loving right and so you need to talk to her about the fact that you don't feel loved how does a 14 year old 10 year old communicate to their Parents that I'm not feeling loved without the parent reacting getting angry like how does that even yeah I can even have that

conversation so I gave her a script in the column yeah so having a script okay read your call but you can learn how to do that yeah the quality on a daily basis that's really like the main thing I'm hearing you say of like this could be a potentially healthy match if the daily quality is solid is good is Positive is inspiring right is there anything else to look for if like this could be a great match same values well yeah I mean you you people people think you know just because we're really we really

have fun together we're really attracted to each other that it's all going to work out when one person wants kids and the other person doesn't or one person wants this lifestyle and the other person doesn't yes um or this person's values are different from mine As you said um you know and and I think at the end it really comes down to the character qualities so many times people ignore the basic character qualities about a potential partner like is this person responsible do they do what they say when they say they're gonna do it um

can I trust them and I don't just mean trust in terms of what we were talking about earlier with Affairs I'm talking about can I trust that they have My back can I trust that that you know they're going to show up for me in the way that they say they will are they reliable um generosity and I'm talking about emotional generosity can they be emotionally generous in the moment with me and the number one quality by the way when you look at studies of what um what will predict whether a couple whether somebody is

a good partner in a couple is how flexible is this person Flexibility right accessibility yeah flexibility around what around everything just can you be flexible instead of like my way is the right way and that doesn't mean by the way that like you give up your sense of self that you agree with everything the other person says it's can you see another point of view can you entertain another point of view be open to it can you be open are you open yeah is your partner flexible So if they're if you feel like you're you're

a good team you got uh the the character qualities of they show up for you they're reliable you feel like you can trust them they have emotional generosity flexibility similar lifestyle and the quality on a daily basis is good then that's a pretty good mess that's what I'm hearing you say again there's those intangible qualities like look at the Goodwill Bank how's the Goodwill Bank going yes Um you know if you did the assignment that we gave this person Elena on our podcast um you know to like really keep that log of the day-to-day um

what does it look like and you have to think you know people think when they first meet someone they're thinking so much in the present instead of you know like they're like yeah well you know this person doesn't really call when they say they will or yeah this or that But it's okay because they're all these other great things and you know they're like obsessed with that person and I always say to people like is this the marriage you want um is this what you want 15 years from now is this do you want to

worry about like where why this person isn't calling me or are they going to be there or they forgot to do this or they said they were going to pick up the toilet paper but they didn't every time Um they always have an excuse they lie about the little things like you know there are those people who are like they won't just tell you yeah you know what I forgot to do that this is I I had this they had this experience with this couple where he was always coming up with excuses because he didn't

want to take responsibility for the things and they were just little lies and she's like why would you lie about these tiny little things he said I Want to be responsible instead of just right and so and so there was this one time where he was supposed to go to the market and she was always they had kids and she wanted him to get organic strawberries because she was worried about the pesticides and the little kids and he bought the regular ones and and he used to lie about it and be like oh they were

out of organic and this time he said you know what I just it totally slipped my mind it totally slipped my Mind I should have bought the organic ones and I didn't do it and she started crying she said you told me the truth like all I wanted was the truth I just wanted you to own it and acknowledge it and take responsibility he said I'll go back and I'll go exchange them right now she's like no no it's fine truth you forget next time he never forgot again wow but do you see how these

little Things in relationships can change a dynamic yes in a big way he never forgot again and she trusted him yeah what would you say are the biggest red flags then women should look for when entering a relationship well I think it's not a gendered thing you know I think I think people I think you you know you look for just how how do I feel around this person um you know do I do I feel on edge is there Something you know I think even when people are ignoring the problems there's a place of

knowing that we all have inside of us that gets drowned out by all the noise out there right the bigger voices like I really want this to work out or look at look at how great no on paper this person is or or I feel really good about myself because this person's a catch you know or whatever it is or I'm this age and I really feel like yeah you know what happens if I don't if I Give this up what if I don't find somebody those are those really loud voices there might be this

really quiet voice that says I don't think this person is the right person for me or I don't really trust this person or this person isn't really as stable as I would like or this person drinks too much or this person doesn't really emotionally regulate or this person says mean things to me and I don't like that And yeah they were drunk but I don't like it right and be aware of that yes if they continue doing this which they probably will or may are you okay with that right well if you talk to them

about it what does that look again the repair and then do they change their behavior as a result of that why if they don't change the behavior then right so you're staying right you can justify it any way you want To that voice inside of you so I think we all have this place of knowing it's not your friend's opinion like you know it's always like I think your friends have all these opinions and then we try to like crowdsource amazing you're so lucky to have this guy in your life he's a catch like what

a great guy you don't have to live that life and I think the same thing by the way going back to Affairs like people say like leave the guy like he's trash leave him and it's Like you don't have to live this person's life and this person might have really good reasons why the affair didn't break their marriage um you know so that when someone had an affair like don't go telling 12 of your friends like right away like you need to process this maybe go to a therapist process this um but don't go telling

like 12 people and don't broadcast and don't go on Social media about this because you might actually find that you love this person and want to stay with this person and that this person really is the right person for you and they will never do this again and they will not you know like they understand what happens I'm telling the world and your family and your friends they're never going to support that person in your life every time you go around for the next years you're gonna make it uncomfortable right And that's gonna be rupturing

the relationship in the future right and what feels really good in the moment is to blame your partner now yes they're responsible for having the affair but they're not necessarily responsible for all the other factors that are going into this yes interesting what are the um what are some unrealistic expectations that people should stop having how long do you have less enter your relationship Because I feel like yeah people not just women on men and men or women but people have an expectation that their Partners should be kind of like everything you know and should

be perfect and yeah all these things what what are some things that they could have a standard you know I want my relationship to have this standard but this expectation is unrealistic if you ask people if they have unrealistic expectations about certain things nobody thinks they do so People will say no no no no I know that they don't have to be like you know the hottest person or the most this person or they make the most money or they're the most Charming or funny or entertaining or whatever it is I know that but that's

not what their behavior says you'll find so people with unrealistic expectations are often the people who don't realize that they have them people who who actually have realistic expectations sometimes think They don't have realistic expectations it's interesting there's like sort of a lack of self-awareness there that's funny um the the unrealistic expectations have to do with um you know maybe it's like you know it could be around appearance it could be around what the other person is going to do for them when somebody isn't satisfied in their own life they somehow think it's the other

person's responsibility to make them happy to to Fill the hole to fill the Gap um you know when they're having a hard time in their life suddenly they're bored in the relationship right it's like I don't feel good about myself and oh look I wonder if maybe I'm with the wrong partner I wonder if she's the problem I wonder if he's the problem um you know I'm feeling stuck in my life oh maybe I need a new relationship as opposed to maybe there are other Things that are making you feel stuck in your life and

and this idea that I think that some of us have that we would never articulate but that your partner's there to save you you know save me from my damaged childhood save me from the other hurts in my life save me from these wounds and when there's misattunement in the relationship and there always will be so again I'm very you know suspicious of couples who say oh no we agree on everything there will be misattunement Because somebody's tired one day somebody had a bad day or you're just different people and you see the world differently

um so when there's misattunement suddenly that person becomes oh you don't understand me as opposed to wait you didn't understand that let me explain it again let me help you understand me because you you thought this but actually what I'm trying to say is this right right but then people Don't do that and so they think oh they just they just sit with it and they go my partner never understands me every time I say something my partner thinks this but I've never tried to help them to understand me they're supposed to magically intuitively be

telepathic read my mind read my mind and understand me in exactly the way that I need to be heard and seen and felt now in therapy we have this expression feeling felt that that's what you want you want to Feel felt and it's such a great feeling when it happens but even therapists will get it wrong you know sometimes I will misunderstand someone but the person doesn't like yell at me about it or they don't think like I need a new therapist because we'll repair it right there in the moment but they don't do it

with their partner they'll go home and their partner will make the same mistake I did and they will say oh I don't know if I should be With this partner he doesn't understand me and the partners like bewildered like I didn't even know that I didn't understand because you never told me I didn't understand yes so I just assumed that I was that I understood you how do we eliminate shame is it all by responsibility is it by editing our story is it by talking about our story how do we get rid of shame because

I feel like a lot of people live with minor shames over years that they never Get rid of right so let's differentiate first of all between shame and guilt because we should feel guilt if you don't feel guilty you're a sociopath okay right so we should feel guilt so shame is I am bad guilt is I did something bad so when you say you know how do we get rid of shame I think that we need to be able to say yes I did something that hurts someone else and I need to take responsibility for

That and I feel bad about that and you should right so when people people always say like you know oh you know I don't I don't want to make someone feel bad about that no they should feel bad about what they did I had a guy come on the podcast who said you know he he cheated on his wife he left her for a co-worker and he couldn't take responsibility for what he did because it would give her ammunition like if he took responsibility and said you're you Know I I did something I did something

really bad that then she would say you're right you know you did something bad yes you should feel bad you should feel bad about what you did but that doesn't mean that you as a person are bad you made a bad decision you made a bad choice you hurt someone profoundly take ownership you need to take ownership of that and the consequences of that how long do you live with that right guilt slash shame well sometimes I Will say to people um you know how long do you think the sentence should be for this crime

right is it a life sentence because then basically you self-flagellate for the rest of your life really is it a life sentence or or is there some kind of period of Reckoning where you are taking responsibility you are trying to make it up to people in whatever way you can you are trying to be a better person in the ways that you Can you have grown from this experience right okay that that might be your prison sentence but then you move on you're out of jail I don't mean you're out of jail like like you

don't remember it you can't do that again yeah you can't do it again right and and you've taken responsibility you've you've done your sentence right now but so many people want to say okay well I deserve a life sentence for this And then they don't again then they're not really living yeah it's almost like we're the best we're the worst judges to ourselves of like sentencing the punishment right like right like would a jury of your mistake and so you're going to jail for life for this action right right would a jury of your peers

give you the same sentence interesting people who really love you would a jury of peers who really love you and who think what you did is wrong give you the same Sentence is there a scenario in which we do something really bad we hurt someone we leave someone we whatever we steal lie cheat whatever it is we just want a really bad and we feel guilty and shameful is our way to eliminate shame quickly and just moved and stay in guilt for your sentence until you can move on well I think a lot of people

try to get rid of their shame through an apology and I write in the book a lot about apology because I feel like you have to Ask yourself who is this apology for so many times people apologize because they want to feel better but it actually doesn't help the other person right in fact it probably creates more pain in the other person should we not apologize if we make a mistake um no I'm not saying don't apologize but I think you have to first of all understand you know why am I apologizing what is this

apology going to accomplish how is it going to help the other person How is it going to help them not how's it going to help me how's it going to help the person how's it going to help them you know a lot of people they feel like well if I apologize then you know everybody will feel better it's almost like they want forgiveness from the other person and there's this myth in our culture that you know you should forgive people and you will feel better right no if you actually don't forgive them that's called forced

forgiveness You don't have to forgive people you can have compassion for them so someone will say like do you forgive your parents for you know some some abuse that happened and then we we almost force people like you have to forgive your parents or else you can't be free of this no you can have compassion for your parent in terms of they had an abusive childhood this is why they did what what they did but you have to forgive them if you don't actually feel that forgiveness no the Compassion in and of itself will help

you to move forward but to it's almost like like a double abuse right to say you have to forgive someone even though you don't actually feel this forgiveness I've always heard that like forgiveness is not about the other person it's about you setting yourself free from the anger resentment and pain but only if you actually feel that so you don't have to but you should get to compassion so you can set yourself Free I mean otherwise you're gonna be feeling a lot of it so so so in in the book there's this there's this mother

who has her adult children are estranged from her because of there were there were ways that she didn't protect her children from abuse from the alcoholic father right and the kids are extremely upset with her and they they suffered and still suffer in adulthood because of this um and so she kept wanting their Forgiveness and what I said to her was you know you can be the best mother now that you can be but nothing will change what happened in the past and if you expect them to forgive you for something that happened in the

past you're not being a good mother to them now what they need is they need you to take responsibility for what happened and then not to have a life sentence you know they might give you whatever sentence they want to give you but not To give yourself a life sentence and be the best mother that they need now what do they need now and that's what she did and she was giving them what they needed now and it didn't erase what happened in the past but it allowed them to have some compassion for her and

it allowed some kind of relationship to happen that was very healing for the kids because now they had a mother and whereas they didn't have a mother before because of all of this anger and Resentment if someone does something where they don't feel like what they did was wrong yes or intentionally trying to hurt someone and they actually felt like oh I wasn't trying to do something wrong or I didn't try to hurt you or but the person is so offended and so hurt and they're like I will never forgive you like how does someone

handle that yeah I think that's where the perspective Taking comes in where if you are in relationship with someone who can't perspective take enough to say um okay I can see what you're saying I can see this was your intention then that's not maybe a great relationship gotcha yeah maybe that's the right person for you how do we start to become better narrators of our past story what's a process because we all have stories that We hold on to and we imagine things in different ways we amplify or downgrade things from the past yeah how

do we learn to rewrite those so they're in our favor I think that the first thing is if you can write the story that you've been telling yourself over and over from the perspective of the other people in the story so whether that's your mom or your dad or your sibling or your partner or you know whoever it might be if you can actually Get out of your story for a minute and go into their their headspace without going back and saying like you know as you're writing the story but wait a minute there was

this other you know extenuating circumstance um and just writing it as you imagine they were doing what they were doing because of whatever reason okay not saying it's okay yeah it's not okay but this is this was what they were doing and this is why they were doing it There's no way that you can do that if you're doing it in good faith meaning you know you're not doing it to be right you're doing it because you're saying I can imagine this is what they were thinking even the guy who had the affair right if

she could rewrite that story and say oh yeah I can see how every time he tried to bring something up in our relationship I avoided it and so he felt like he had nowhere to go that doesn't excuse the affair But I can see why he felt trapped okay so if you can write it from his perspective even though what he did was you know he made it was wrong it was everybody agrees it's wrong what does that do for us that gives us compassion for that person in that moment during that story or what

does that do when we write it that way it helps us to see that um and no but I think we forget that I think that when we're really married to One story um we forget that as complicated as we are so is the other person and so if you vilify the other person you're going to be stuck in this victim position you're going to feel like a victim and you're never going to see that this person didn't try to hurt me in this way that this person did hurt me and we all agree that

I was profoundly hurt by this but the person wasn't trying to do that to me Our feelings right it's saying it's saying I'm not I wasn't necessarily a victim in this in the way that I think I am and if you can get out of the victim position and say this was really hard this was really painful this is something that has affected me and probably will affect me in lots of ways but at the same time I can understand that there was more to it and you're not holding on to that other piece of

you know I was the victim because when we Claim ourselves as the victim what happens then we feel helpless and we don't feel like we have agency in other parts of our lives that becomes our identity I was the victim then I have to protect myself all the time and every other relationship every other encounter that I have and it doesn't give us the freedom to actually be who we are we will always have that sense of I have to be extra careful here I mean what if Someone's saying well this sounds great but I

have benefited my whole life I've been a victim of parents who weren't there for me I was in foster care I was adopted I whatever I was I didn't have equal rights I didn't have these things I've been a victim of sexual abuse all these things how can you say that I haven't been a victim in my life when when these cases are all proving that I have been right the point is that um you might not have had the resources or you Know you might have been helpless as a kid right because as a

kid you are helpless but you're not a victim now and I think that's that's the difference so in your relationships now right you are not a victim because you have agency you have the ability to choose differently without cases like you know someone rapes you okay you're a victim right that you you did not have a choice there I'm talking about in your relationships when you feel really hurt by somebody And then you start to understand well the reason like in the affair there okay the reason he did this was this doesn't justify it but

it helps you to see that oh I was doing something too every time you tried to connect with me I would say you know why are you criticizing me that was what happened in this scenario yeah every time he came to me I would say why are you criticizing me and now I realize oh maybe he wasn't criticizing Me Maybe he was saying like I want to feel closer To you but I heard it as a criticism and I contributed to the dynamic in the relationship and in the marriage what he did was still wrong

but I can see that I need to learn something from this too that if I go into my next relationship as a victim I will probably feel like every time my partner comes to me and I'll say why are you criticizing me I'm gonna I'm gonna perpetuate this and I will be a victim again but I don't have to be because next time when my partner Comes to me and says hey there's this thing going on in our relationship instead of saying why are you criticizing me I might say oh tell me more about that

so what happens if we never rewrite our story from the past to have that perspective and awareness and compassion mentality if we don't rewrite our story We relive our story over and over over and over and over we are stuck it's like Groundhog Day it is so bad and everything and you see it and everything It's not just like in that particular situation it's not just like in our in your romantic relationships you'll see it at work when you're like oh what did that person mean by that oh you know you know what I mean

like like the things that you do in your relationships you do in all of your relationships wow this is fascinating what would a nighttime routine be for someone who feels trapped stuck in the process of messiness whether it be relationship work or just Inner negative thoughts what's a one to two minute routine that everyone could take at night to help let go of Shame negative thoughts mistakes they made from that day what they forgot what could we do at night so there's this thing called The Miracle question it's used in therapy oh I like this

and the Miracle question is if you could have the kind of life that you want to have what would that look like And what is keeping you from having it what is in the way right now that you can do okay so asking ourselves that question and then what journaling kind of what's get what's in the way from us right now like write down what is that what is that scenario uh-huh and what steps do I need to take to get there what is it about me that is keeping me from getting there so taking

responsibility yeah not about everybody else and this and that and Whatever what is what is it about me that is keeping me from taking that first step you know we always like to say that most big Transformations come about from the the tiny almost imperceptible steps that we take along the way so sometimes something feels really daunting because it's like oh my gosh I'd have to do all of these things if you take one step every day toward that Miracle question right you're going to get closer to it now how I mean You're sounding like

a personal growth coach over here now you sounded like someone who just coach you know this is something that I would say to people a lot like what do you want where are you at now and what's in the way yeah like what's holding you back from getting there what are the steps you need to take right well sometimes what's in the way though is this is where the sort of the therapist part comes in is there's something there's an emotional block Right so it's not just like here's the step but you have an emotional

step that you need to take what is the main emotional block that most people have a feeling of helplessness why do we feel helpless I think it's a it's something that was from from in the past right and and of course I mean they're different layers so it's not just your family it's the culture in which you grew up so Society has a lot To do with it especially right now with like political season people probably just feel like I feel helpless I can't do anything I can't make an impact there's so much division right

it's just there's so much noise there's so much chaos I feel helpless well right and I think that that in in reality a lot of people in our in our society have been helpless right I mean that's what whole black lives matter has been about that's what you know so many Movements that are happening and you know we say 2020 has been a horrible year in so many ways but it's also been a year of I think Reckoning um and so I think that a lot of people are saying you know it's not just what's

not working in my immediate family but what's not working in society and you know what do we need to do to change that if someone has been oppressed or helpless or been put down in society or a family or a situation How can they get out of the feeling of not being helpless when they have been because you have to take you know that that you aren't helpless right so there are always certain things that you can do and so you have to start taking those steps and then you have to get creative in your

thinking okay so here are the steps that I know that I can take and then what is something that's really out of the box and that's where people get Really inspired all of us right what is something that feels like impossible right what is something that's so out of the box but if I didn't have any constraints of society were different here's what I would do and you will be surprised at how creative you can be at finding a way to do some version of that what would you say is the main traits of a

narcissist um grandiosity uh really um wanting to be the center of attention This video of confidence being very easily wounded oh wait a minute you complimented this other person's whatever it is they get so wounded like well why didn't you compliment mine right yeah um oh you think that person's attractive they'll like ice you out wow that's so super jealous too or no very very but they act like they don't care oh you want to do go ahead I don't have a passive aggressive jealous or something Right yeah very passive aggressive yeah huh any other

signs that people should look out for if they're like starting to date someone they're like huh this seems very narcissistic I think that Jack Al and Hyde quality that you know one minute you're like this and the next minute you're incredibly cruel you can be incredibly warm and loving right and Incredibly cruel and the two you toggle between the two in a way that is frightening it's like a Split personality huh yeah yeah but it's not because the narcissist is doing that you reel them in the narcissist reels the person in with the charm wishing

you are the center of the universe and then oh you're too close to me so I'm Gonna Be Cruel so it's interesting so it's like if you're with someone who's showing these traits and they're just wowing you and they're so nice and loving and grandiose uh but then if you truly open up and you want To get to know their heart that's when they start to do other things or what happens then yeah yeah right either you're being too intimate with them although they want you to be somewhat in smooth them so they know how

to use it against you right but I can use the answer against you in in the moment when you are most vulnerable wow um or they don't want they don't want you to know too much about that right Well they they hide their vulnerabilities they don't know how to get authentically close to another person why does someone become a narcissist oh you know I think so many people anybody who's had experience with someone like that wants to know that and and you'll see that you know this is this is when we talk about we marry

our unfinished business right so it's it's the person who Um grew up feeling very um they didn't get their knees met they didn't get you know they they were either neglected um or they were or they grew up with a narcissistic parent so what do we do with parents who don't meet our needs on the one hand we rebel against them we say I'm not going to be like that I'm not going to choose someone like that so the narcissist doesn't choose another narcissist if the narcissist group with A narcissistic parent they don't choose another

narcissist they choose someone like the other parent who was with the narcissistic parent and then what they do is they take on the traits of the narcissistic parent now why do they do that even though they were so injured by that kind of parent it's like it's like the person who grew up with an alcoholic parent or or a person who like couldn't self-regulate why do they become the angry Yeller even though their parent Was the angry Yeller and they said I would never do that how do you get close to a parent who couldn't

get close to you you become like them that's your connection to them this is completely outside of your awareness you don't realize that but we still the wish Never Dies that we can be close to our parents wow the wish Never Dies so what do we do if we don't process this so if we process it if we process it then we know okay I have to Watch out for that I have to find another way to grieve what I didn't get growing up I have to really go through that grief process and I'm going

to have that that that loss is going to live with me but it's going to live with me in a way that isn't so sharp so you really have to grieve it but if you don't grieve it you repeat it you take on the trait of one of your parents you take on their trees because that helps you feel close to them Oh I'm going to feel close to you in this way this is not in your conscious awareness wow and then people don't realize it they think oh my there's one day someone says them

you are exactly like your mom your dad and like oh my God oh my right if they're not if they if they if they can get past sort of like the narcissistic protection yeah of course this would be you can hear it I'm Not like my parents no I'm not like them at all I'm not like I'm not like them at all like if you could take a videotape of a scene from your childhood and you take a videotape of how you're acting now with your own child you would be stunned wow so how does

someone if they're okay they've realized they're maybe there's narcissistic traits or that's like full-on narcissists that they're in a Relationship with what are the next steps they should take is there a way to actually I mean you can't really change someone in a relationship what I'm hearing you say you can't no matter what you do the person's not gonna change right so do you need to change in order for them to change or is it just if you're with someone who's diagnosed narcissists there's no hope for actually healthy growth in the relationship well some Has

narcissistic traits generally doesn't come to therapy because they don't think they have a problem right they're like no I'm good right so how they come in is they're having some relational difficulty right and the relational difficulty is either they're coming in for couples therapy because the other person dragged them there yeah um you know so often we say that you know the reason that people come to therapy is to deal with the people who Won't go to therapy right and you know you're coming to therapy to deal with the person in your life who won't

come to therapy it's funny that yeah three previous relationships I was in I was like we need therapy we need to like we're getting a point where I was like somebody's not working here let's go to therapy and like try to work this through none of my partners wanted to go to therapy they resisted resisted resisted and I was like what we're not Figuring it out on our own like I'm trying you're trying it's not working let's go let's have someone look at no it's like so much resistance it's just like right and so in

that in that case I'm saying you're all narcissists but no no no no I'm not even talking about so so I I well let me differentiate so there's if you know a narcissistic person meaning diagnosed narcissistic um or even people with narcissistic traits they tend not to come on their own to Therapy unless they actually agree to come in couples and they're coming because their partner is making them come yes that's the only reason um or and and then you kind of see like how flexible are they with their story right because everybody's coming in

with their story both people yeah right um the other reason like in maybe you should talk to someone John right when I talk about him he's this guy who's in his 40s he's married he has some kids And he is incredibly insulting to me from the minute you know he walks in the door everybody else is the problem you know in fact the chapter is called idiots because he says everybody else is an idiot right why can't people why aren't people as smart as he is why aren't people as competent as he is why can't

people do things right why does he and he's like the the the beleaguered victim you see that sometimes it's so talented and smart I'm the victim Because I'm a victim of all these other people are causing so much anxiety in my life like why are they doing things the way that they should be done why are they why are they complaining about all these things not realizing that he's the one doing the complaint about everything yeah right right um you know we call it complaining from the victim position um you know or being being the

offense offend being offended by from the victim position sure everybody else is the Problem um or or the reason that people are are cruel to another person is they say you know like like I was the victim so I can hurt you twice as much ooh so if you hurt me I have a right to hurt you back right right I'm doing this to protect myself right no um so so when John came in he was you know he you know you very much say a lot of people would say I don't want to Treat

somebody like that because I don't know how much progress they're going to make because if they can't self-reflect yeah well you have to be able to see yourself what you know when in the book I talk about the difference between idiot compassion and wise compassion so idiot compassion is what we do with our friends so your friends say like listen to what my partner did or my mom or my you know my kid or my sibling or whatever it is and we say yeah that's Terrible you're right how dare they you know you're right they're

wrong it's it's just we we just back them up blindly because we think we're being supportive but if you actually listen to your friends over time you might hear that there's a pattern that they are kind of complaining about similar types of things it's kind of like if a fight breaks out and everybody you're going to maybe it's you we don't say that so in in therapy what we offer is we offer Wise compassion and why eyes compassion we hold up a mirror to you to help you to see yourself in ways that maybe you

haven't been willing or able to do and compassion is the key word here because we're doing it compassionately so someone who comes in and they're not able to self-reflect they're not able to see their reflection in the mirror and say yes oh I have a role in this too yes it's true the other person does this but I have a role in this too so when You're asking about change when people come in for couples therapy I always give them an assignment before they come in and the assignment is this because normally the first thing

that will happen if I don't is they're going to come in and they're going to name all the ways that their partner needs to change and then we get nowhere so I say to them I want you to come up with how you can make this relationship better I want you To come up with what you're going to do what are you going to be working on to make this relationship better even if your partner never changes and they each have this assignment so from day one they come in and even though they might have

a lot of reasons that you know things aren't working out that they think are are their their partner's issue um their goal in therapy is to work on the one thing or the two things or the Three things that they think they can do to make the relationship better and it changes the whole course of the couple's therapy because it's not about changing the other person the magic of this is that they say well what's the point of doing it if they're not going to change well first of all again going from the me and

the and the you to the US is things are going to go more smoothly because you're going to be doing something to improve the relationship But the other part of it is and where the magic comes in is you can't change another person but you can influence change in another person absolutely so when you do something differently you are helping the other person to change no one changes because you say I want you to change in this sweat that doesn't really happen they might do it you know they might pay lip service to it it

doesn't really last but if you start changing if you make it easier you help Them to change by making it easier for them to change so let's say they really need space give them some space let's say you know you try to control them less let's say that you don't engage in the same familiar argument over and over and over um you maybe you do something kind for them and then people say about that they say well why should I do something kind why should I go first if they would be nice to me I'll

be nice to them it Doesn't matter you need to go first because someone needs to do something someone needs to change the dynamic it's like a dance and so if you do something nice for that you might notice that they not because it's a Tit for Tat not because they're doing it because you it's because they feel safer they feel more lovely toward you yeah they feel like oh that was really nice I really liked that now I actually want to on my own volition want to do something nice For you yeah and what if

what if someone says I'm gonna I'm gonna improve all you know three five ten areas that I know can improve and after six months the other person's like yeah I deserve all these things and I'm not going to give any more then what if you keep coming back have you seen that where people come back it's like okay I've done this I did this I did this and they're still not happy and they're still upset and they're Still not shifting in certain ways well first of all I think that what they engage in then is

what I call the Pain Olympics which is like whose pain is greater yeah you know like I'm working so hard I'm working 12-hour days well I'm taking care of the kids or I'm doing this or you know like I'm doing all of this kind of Labor in the relationship and you're doing all it's there's no there's no winning the Pain Olympics like let's just say that you're both at A tent okay you both win you both are in people lose but you both lose if you keep trying to compare it the point is you're both

you're both struggling and and what's really interesting about couples is that couples don't tend to tell the other person exactly how they're struggling in a relationship instead they act it out they act out their fears or their disappointment or their hurt in other ways but they don't directly say this is how I'm struggling And so if you're in couples therapy you're going to start talking about those things and if you're you know if you're not then then you're not really doing couples therapy so you know I mean I think that your therapist will tell you

very early on like this is the work that we're doing and this is I think some people think that couples therapy as you come in you download the argument of the week or the struggle of the week you leave you come Back the next week and you download the new thing no that that's that's like talking to a friend there's no point to that what should the point of therapy be the point the point is is that you want to be doing the most of the therapy of couples therapy takes place outside of the therapy

room meaning what happens in between sessions so we came in we talked about this you learned something new about yourself you learned something new about your partner and then we always Say Insight is the booby prize of therapy that you can have all the Insight in the world but if you don't make changes out in the world between sessions the Insight is useless so then okay you have this Insight you learn something what are you going to do with that knowledge use it like why are you wasting your time and your money coming in here

every week if you're not going to use it what's the biggest challenge you've faced as a therapist And recognizing and having awareness of your own challenges whether it be relationships or career or family what's something that you've had to face that you've overcome or you're still looking to overcome I think that as a therapist one of the biggest challenges is knowing that people are coming to you because they want something to change but that they're going to have to do the work and I'm there to figure out a way to help Them to do the

work so I used to play chess as a kid I was a competitive chess player which makes me sound super nerdy and um when you're playing chess you have to think several moves ahead and my job as a therapist is to help people to see okay if I'm going to come in a certain way and help them to kind of take responsibility right and they're not having it I have to you know maybe I have to make a different move I have to come in a different way but I have to Figure out a way

to help them to see something so that they can be empowered in their own lives there's a patient that I write about in the book that I fail miserably with and I wanted to include her because I wanted to show this is what happens like you know you can see great growth and transformation in people and you can see people who just quite aren't quite ready or I wasn't able to to help them and so this is a person who had been to another Therapist before me and at first she said that the reason that

she'd come to see me was you know she just felt like she needed a new perspective that she had done whatever work she had done she needed a new perspective but no actually um basically she would tell me in various ways every week that I was not helping her and she would do you know she was saying like you know she's having all these problems with all these other people in her life and she was Doing to me the same thing that she was doing to them and I couldn't get her to see it and

we have these things called consultation groups where we bring our cases to other therapists and we talk about them and everything they suggested I would go back and try and it would not work and then I would say to her very honestly I would say you know you tell me I'm not helping you why do you come back every week right so what is it that you're getting out of coming here if I'm So useless yeah if you're making me wrong and you're being right all the time yeah right and you know if if I'm

not helping you what why are you here here um and then she'd say oh well that thing that you said that was kind of helpful right but then again I would be a miserable failure wow um and so at a certain point I just I ended treatment with her because I realized that she wasn't ready and that happened after she Said you know this never happened with my other therapist and then she said will you talk to my other therapist maybe you need more information right and so I I decided yes I will so I

got a release from her I talked to the other therapist and I didn't tell the other therapist anything that was happening in our treatment I said I just want to know a little bit about your experience with her and he told me the same thing the same exact thing had happened and I said Oh that's really interesting because that's what's happening here and I went back to her and I told her that and she was like well that's not at all what happened right so I think when you know when you talk about what is

my biggest challenge as a therapist it's working with people who aren't quite ready and so sometimes I think people aren't quite ready to make changes themselves but they're ready for change and I can work with that I can work with that but what I can't work with is someone who's not willing to see anything different from what they came in with so it's almost like if you're going to go to therapy if you want to solve a problem in your life you need to have an open mind about what the other person is going through

that you're having a problem with yep and you need to take responsibility for everything on your side of the street as well I think you need to like clear your Lane Right so I think that you know even if you're not having problems with other people per se if you're having a problem with your relationship with yourself that's going to be problematic in terms of you know there are people who are like no no I don't have any conflict with anybody everything's fine but they're incredibly lonely even though they have friends even though they might

even have a partner right but they're not really having the kind of connected Uh deep rich relationships that they want to have how do we have a better relationship with ourselves well I think that's about clearing out the muck you know that's about you know I mean the cleaning the past the pain the resentment the anger the guilt the shame like everything and what you see when you look in the mirror every day so all of that stuff you may think that that other stuff isn't there but I want to know what is it like

when you look in The mirror what do you see and if you don't see something that makes you want to go out in the world and do stuff and be close to people then there's some muck to clear out wow yeah I'm I'm a big proponent of looking in the mirror and seeing like how do you feel how do you react by looking at yourself in the eyes for five seconds do you see something you're excited about you're proud of that You're you're keeping your word to yourself and other people or are you letting yourself

and other people down yeah and when I say look in the mirror by the way I don't mean so I'm going to bring up social media for a second because you know I'm not anti-social media at all but I do think that there are certain ways that it can really make us not see ourselves clearly and so what I mean by look in the mirror is you know how people will like post a selfie and They took like 50 takes right and then they filtered it and they did whatever they did to it right and

then they'll say something like and with that picture that they've filtered a million times and it was however many takes they had they'll say like I'm going to share this thing with all of you and I'm going to be so vulnerable and first of all you're not being vulnerable because you with the picture it took like you know 30 minutes to get that picture but then They say that you know I'm going to be so vulnerable with all of you let me tell you something true vulnerability is not saying to everybody out in the world

here's what happened to me I think it's helpful for it to normalize and to destigmatize just our struggles in general but here's the real test can you not that not doing posing for that picture can you just show up looking however you look and say to the person who means the most to you or the stakes Of the highest here's the thing that I want to say I'm going to take off the mask in front of you because if I take off the mask in front of you then I'm really being vulnerable yeah and so

when we look in the mirror when I'm saying how do you feel about yourself I'm not talking about the Instagram version of yourself I'm talking about you showing up in front of the person who needs the most to you and I hope that eventually you will be the person who means the Most to you that we are the judge like there's not some jury out there that gets to decide how we feel about ourselves but then when we look in the mirror and not the the beautified version of ourselves but the real version of ourselves

the messy complicated version of ourselves the imperfect version of ourselves when we look in the mirror how do we feel about that that's that's the kind of question that I want you to ask yourself and if You can't answer that and say you know what I embrace who I am I know I have room for improvement there are things I'm not proud of but I know that I'm going to do something in the world that matters I know that I matter I know that I'm valuable then you got some stuff to work out how do

we get someone to believe that they're valuable if they've never believed it they have to come to believe it you Grew change up and in the world I think people come to believe that they're valuable when they feel connected in the world when they feel like I you know I can't emphasize enough how important relationships aren't it doesn't even have to be romantic relationships but your relationships I always say to people when they first come in I ask some version of the question how is your life peopled I don't know if that's even like a

like a word I might not even say it that way yeah like who are the people in your life what is what are the relationships like in your life and and and how nourishing are those relationships and I mean both ways nourishing how much do you nourish and how much are you being nourished yeah people can have so many people in their lives but the relationships don't matter to them in a way that they should So do we build belief in ourself through the actions and energy we give in the relationships that matter to us

we we show our value in the world right like I think that you know I we had a teacher on the podcast recently and she was talking about her students are so lonely and she is one of these people who like when she's at school she really gets involved in their lives and she's really like sort of like a surrogate parent to them and we were coming up With ways that she could really connect with them and she came up with a way where she said I asked them to do something kind for someone else

this week and they all felt so much better about themselves right when we put that energy out there when we put kindness and generosity out there that's where we feel valuable so it's not I'm so great I'm so valuable you know because I have this amount of money or this kind of success or I look This way or whatever it is that's not value the value is how am I in relationship to the world yeah how am I adding value to other people we build our belief in ourselves and our valuing ourselves through the action

and service right and and also you know are those reciprocal relationships so you know are you only giving and they're taking right because then you're gonna feel lonely as well right right so how do you know when it's reciprocal or when it's uh well you Feel it you know it I mean when it's not reciprocal that's when people say wait a minute this relationship feels off right people eventually start to say wait a minute the ratio is off here yeah how often do you think we should be doing the mirror test oh every day yeah

yeah every day just check in with yourself it's it's a few seconds actually you want to just you want to just really sit there for a minute and really see yourself You know so often we we talk a lot about how like we don't look at other people we don't actually see them because we're looking at our phones or we're distracted or whatever we actually don't look at our own faces what comes up you'll see a lot of feelings come up and so you actually try this at home look in the mirror at yourself when

you wake up in the morning before anything has happened just spend a few spend a minute spend Set your phone for like 60 seconds and actually force yourself to look at yourself for 60 seconds it will feel like a long time you'll feel like a long time and notice the feelings that come up as you're looking at yourself how do you feel do you feel Delight in yourself do you feel shame what do you feel and then create a game plan and take action on the things you don't like and improve right yeah when Do

you know that your partner understands you even if they completely disagree with you when when should someone know like okay they disagree with everything I just said but I feel felt and they understand me at least yeah because we say that expression feeling felt because you feel it so it's not it's not up here it's in here okay my partner disagrees with everything I just said but they Understand where I could be coming from if they stepped in my shoes I think it has to do with respect right you feel respected in that moment you

feel like like and and you feel loved and cared for like you and I see this very differently but I love you I care for you um I don't agree with you but I respect you as a as a human like I respect you as a person yes um I'm not gonna like cast aspersions on Your character right because of this right right like I can I can accept and acknowledge the separateness of us as two different human beings and when people get really enmeshed they have a real problem with that like someone will say

my friend did this can you believe that my friend did this and her partner will say like yeah well but I can kind of see because you also did this and she's like how can you take her side I'm not taking her Side I'm just giving you a perspective I see it a little bit differently I can see why you felt though I can see why you feel hurt I can see both and and if you can't accept the both and about yourself and your partner then you're gonna end up feeling very alone see it's

almost like you need to be flexible in their communication as well and and them not siding with you on everything but saying okay I understand where you come from and I see this Perspective I just see it differently yeah so having the flexibility to be okay with that also like I can hold before yeah you can hold both and I can hold and hold both and care deeply about it doesn't necessarily mean we have the same perspective on every single thing yeah um the beginning of this year I had um I started seeing a therapist

in a Previous relationship and the therapist had me just working on my own healing stuff that's like healing stuff that I was going through she had me put a photo of myself around five or six years old on my phone so I see it so I still have this up where I just constantly remind myself like you're safe you're okay I got your back where we you know we're healing together things like that it's been a beautiful Journey for me to like work on inner child healing and just Kind of the memories of the past

and um I'm curious about just like the consistency of healing in a relationship and because I heard you say that like it's hard to fully heal alone we almost need a mirror to be able to practice and integrate this is what I want to think I'm going to say right it's like you need to have someone where you can practice it coming up if you're in a Vacuum you're not going to be triggered right right it's like can you show up differently in the future and not repeat the past what is the thing people usually

need to heal is it something from childhood is it something from previous relationship is it their whole life it can be can be anything from you know there's different we use the word trauma a lot and people say oh you know trauma is trauma is something big like someone died in a car Crash or you were in the war or you know um systemic racism right all traumas that people accept as trauma think about though the daily trauma the little the little T's but they're Big T's because the trauma might have happened to you once

like you've got in this bad accident and you're traumatized by that or you know whatever it might be the the dailiness of a parent saying you're stupid what's wrong with you you're so stupid right we have someone on our Podcast like that um and um and he you know when we we really like got him through that in that hour of of going through a way to think about it differently and he he needed to understand like this was real trauma right and he knew that right he knew that but he kind of felt almost

like like nah it's not really that bad or something else right right right but you know just like you're worthless you're stupid what's wrong with you all those Things and think about the number of times that that happened if you add all those up I mean that's trauma so when you talk about when you talk about the inner child and I love what your therapist had you do um it's really important that we are able now we weren't then able to be that adult for our inner child but now we are so don't expect your

partner to be that that you have to be that for yourself and then your partner is there because You're not in that toxic environment anymore right so it makes it safe for you it makes it safe for you as the adult it makes it safe for you as the child and at any given moment by the way a different age of us will be exposed so like you know you go home for Thanksgiving you're 12. um you know with your siblings or whatever it is right um you know something happens with your partner that just

feels very similar to You of of some feeling you had when you were five you're five you're gonna act like you're five um you know there are times when you act your age so you don't know like so I always say to people like when couples are getting at it in couples therapy I'm like how old are you right now I will say that to them and they'll step back for a second and go oh I know exactly how old I am I'm eight I'm 16. So you mean how old are you emotionally reacting yes

yes right now right now physically yes that's what I meant that so they're they're doing something something's happening for them and they're not able to kind of I can see them regressing and their partner's getting really frustrated and you're watching this happen and I just say how old are you right now and if they can just step back and they they have so much compassion for that Kid that they are at 8 or 12 or 16 or whatever they are and so does their partner by the way when their partner says oh you look like

a grown man but with that eight-year-old and they don't mean it in a pejorative way they don't mean it they're not judging their partner they become really compassionate like oh that eight-year-old and they move toward their partner like I can see that so the partner isn't healing the eight-year-old but the partner is is Creating this environment that lets the eight-year-old do that lets the adult do the work for the eight-year-old there what should the adult be saying or doing for the younger version of themselves that is having an emotional Human Experience that is not their

age in this moment what's the conversation or the it's exactly what they wished at age eight that that someone would have said to them we all know what that is we all Know what we wanted to hear because it's about it you look at other people's parents and you say oh that interaction you know like you can see what it what you would like it look like my parents were like that you know yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so saying that out loud internally to your 8 12 16 year old self right right and that's

really kind have you ever noticed how unkind we can be to ourselves have you ever noticed my entire childhood is Pretty much unkind right to myself right and and but we carry that into our adulthoods and so um I I had this this patient who was like so self-critical and she did not realize it and you have to realize I said to her this that the person we talked to most in the course of Our Lives is ourselves yes and what we say to ourselves isn't always Kinder tour useful I say that all the time

to people I will say that telling blue in the face Because people don't get it until they try this exercise which is what I had her do I said I want you to write down everything you say to yourself over the course of a few days and then when you come back next week we're going to talk about it and so she did the assignment she was very skeptical she's like I'm not that I'm not that I'm not like not that like every thought that comes to you yeah yeah like everything like when you hear

it's like this radio stations Playing in the background that you think you're not hearing because it's just like playing in the background or like a TV show that you have on in the background right you're like I'm not really paying attention to it I'm doing other things but no you hear it and so she came back and she starts to read this and she said I can't even read this I am such a bully to myself wow and they were little things she would do in the course of a day like she was typing an

Email and she made a typo and the voice in her head said you're so stupid like it was spontaneous and she would not have paid attention to that before like she didn't know she was saying that or she passed her reflection in a mirror and she's like God you look terrible now if your friend or someone you cared about made that typo or looked however she looked that day you would not truly think that person is stupid or that they look terrible they're thinking like oh You know like they made a typo it's like there's

no emotional generosity toward oneself yes so what should we be doing I'm so and so it's starting to notice how do you talk to yourself you know like whose voice is that it's not yours we are not born with that voice so that voice came from people who raised you it came from the culture it came from you know the people around you it came from whatever we're being told it's external is the point it's external to you it is Not of you so we need to listen to that voice inside of us that is

of us and we will be so much Kinder not only to ourselves but to other people because as we always know like the biggest Bullies Are you know twice as mean to themselves right yeah so when you think about like the environment I talked about the biosphere before like the the ecosystem in your relationship that's the ecosystem in your home we saw during Covet right where everybody was like in the same contained space and we were all worried about the contagion of the virus and I said to people I want you to look at the

contagion of mood look at the contagion of anxiety if someone is anxious or someone's in a crabby mood or someone is being unkind everybody's going to be crabby or anxious or or unkind yes right because it's so contagious so when a partner is coming from that space of angry upset or Negative mood what should be done in order to try to shift that energy without rushing them along but without allowing it to be going on for so long that it's just like sucking up all the air in the energy of the atmosphere what what should

happen next right I mean it depends what they're going through if they're if they're going through something that's kind of like a like they're grieving something or there's a Loss the worst thing you can do is Rush their Wellness we call that actually rushed Wellness where you are trying to kind of oh well it's been a year shouldn't you be over this it's like but the person's still dead yeah you know it's like it's like what does that even mean um you know so so how are they grieving what is their grieving process look like

what kind of support are they getting are they able to talk about it do they have a therapist do they have a Grief group um you know what are they doing in their lives to go through this process how can you support them in it um so so there's that but I think if you know if people are just being crabby or they're just being unkind because they're worried about a promotion at work or or um you know someone they're their their brother said something mean to them or you know whatever happened and they take

It out on you that's when you've got to say wait a minute what's going on here right let's talk about what you're upset about right before it gets to that point um you know and if someone's really anxious all the time it's like what are you doing to let's talk about the anxiety in the household because it's really contagious like I can support you in certain ways but you might need to get a different kind of support maybe It's medication maybe it's a therapist maybe it's you know why don't you explore some options sure if

someone is bringing in this contagious energy from a previous relationship you know they're they're recalling events from the previous relationship they're talking about the previous relationship they're in fear on things that happen they don't want to re occur in this current relationship how important is it to let the past be In the past and not bring it up or how do we not ruin the current relationship by talking about the past relationships what is that balance it's like well here's what's happened in my previous relationships but not talking about it all the time right so

that's called punishing then punishing your partner for the crimes of some for someone else's crimes yeah you don't want to punish your partner for someone else's crime so your other partner previous Partner treated you a certain way and then you don't trust your partner you know you're you're like why are you looking through my phone oh well because in my last relationship this happened and so I want to make sure it's not going to happen to me again but I didn't do that to you right and I don't like people looking through my phone if

there's a difference between secrecy and privacy we all need privacy in relationships yes we all need privacy so Secrecy is something like you know Carl Yoon called Secrets um uh it was like like emotional poison or something like that it was you know it's it's it's a poison um when you keep secrets that's different from privacy privacy is we're allowed to think things and feel things we don't need to share every thought or feeling that comes across our frontal lobes right we don't you know or anywhere in our brain or in our heart we Don't

need to share everything right so it's not like you have an x-ray of the other person um so what I was in this relationship that I'm talking about she was she was like what but but you know that I have these trust issues and he said if I'm not breaking your trust I didn't but I'm not I'm not doing anything to break your trust and you know and and by the way let's redefine trust so a really good redefinition of trust is Um that you are okay with what you don't know that you feel safe

with what you don't know right then you really trust someone if you can feel safe with what you don't know that's trust what she was confusing was she was saying I will trust you if I know everything no no no no trust is going to be if you don't know everything and you feel safe yes how does someone get to that place where they have no reason to mistrust someone you know they're everything they say They're doing they're backing up you know maybe you checked their phone because you thought something and then you didn't see

it and everything was fine like how do you get to a place of just accepting their word and trusting them right so it's within reason so if someone says you know what I have a sensitivity around if I text you and I don't hear back for you know five hours um and I know and you're in town and You're at work and things are normal or whatever right your phone is near you yeah yeah and I know you keep your phone by you all the time that's going to make that's gonna trigger me and so

then you want to make sure that you respond to the person in a timely manner but that doesn't mean like you have 30 seconds so it has to be reasonable right you have 30 seconds or else I'm gonna like you know I'm off to the races um you know those kinds of things what Does it mean what is what do you mutually agree on like how often do we need to be in contact what does it mean to be in contact um and and what feels good to both of us because it's not going to

work if it doesn't feel good for both of you both it's one of those good for one and the other person feels like ah I'm constantly having to do something I don't want to do right that's not good right and then what the person does is They become untrustworthy because they don't want to report in and so then they start hiding things just because they weren't given enough space it's kind of like I use this analogy with parenting but I think it works in relationships too which is the aquarium so it's like you don't want

to be so confined that you feel like you're in a fishbowl but you don't want the boundaries to be so loose that you're like in the ocean you want to be in an aquarium with your Partner which is that like we're in a safe contained space but we both have enough room to swim around I've got some Darkness over here I can just chill and I can go and they yeah exactly I'm still in the bubble but yeah you know let me just be alone for a minute yeah yeah the question I get the most

as a therapist is how can I be in less pain people don't ask it like that but I think that's what people are doing when they first come in you know basically when People come in they want something to change that's why they made the appointment but usually what they want to change is someone else or something else right like I want them to exchange yes yes how do you get how do you get that person to change and I think what they come to realize is that they're going to have to make changes but

okay so people come in because they're in pain and they want the pain to go away yeah and they try and maybe They've tried something else it didn't work and you're like uh talk medicine right without having to take a pill how can I relieve this pain this suffering this problem but the problem what I'm hearing you say is never about another person it's always with them well not always I think that relationally a lot of people don't realize that even if the other person is problematic so right when I was training One of my

clinical supervisors once said before diagnosing someone with depression make sure they aren't surrounded by right right so you know it's not like there aren't problematic people out there their environment right but then what is your response to that and I think that people don't realize how much agency they have they don't realize that they can choose their response to their circumstances they could choose their response to the People around them and I'm not saying that there aren't incredibly daunting circumstances right now in the world for example um but then how do you respond you know

what are you going to do about it and I think that's where people get stuck and you talk I love your Ted talk because you talk about rewriting your story from the past and I believe that we we hold on to our stories and we can we probably continue to write them in a more Powerful way that keeps us trapped or traumatized when is that fair to say that something happens in our past we hold on to the story daily or whenever we're triggered and it's like amplifies a story in our minds well it does

and and the problem is that often whatever that version of the story is we carry with us and we never revise it and so you create a story when you're younger for example about something that happened in your life and then as an Adult you've never looked at that story through the adult lens you're still looking at it through the childhood lens and so that's why I say that when people come in that we're all unreliable narrators yes that we all tell a story through you know this lens and and the thing is these are

usually faulty narratives so there's a there's a broader version of this story that people haven't looked looked at and so I feel like in a lot of ways what I do as A therapist is I act as an editor and I have of course a writing background and so I help people to revise their stories because the reason they can't move forward in the story The reason they can't get to the next chapter is because of something is wrong with the story they are stuck and so it's almost like I'm helping them with writer's block

I mean for me life is an interpretation yes right there's an instance that happens and we can interpret it as good Or bad or we can interpret it as this is a neutral event and I'm going to make the most of this is that is that fair to say yeah absolutely and also what how we attribute other people's parts of the story right so who are the villains and the heroes in the story um you know I talk in the book about the difference between idiot compassion and wise compassion and idiot compassion is what our

friends do they back up our Story no matter what we say this happened this happened with my boss this happened with my partner this happened with my parent right this happened with my best friend and we say yeah that was terrible you screw them they're a jerk you know that's awful you're right there Ron don't let anyone treat you that way that's what we do and if you've listened to your friend's stories you start to realize over time that even though the situation and the names might be Different the kind of story they're telling is

similar it's kind of like if a fight breaks out and everybody you're going to maybe it's you yeah exactly we don't say that that's idiot Compassion maybe compassion is where we as friends say yeah you're the best person in the world this person's horrible yeah leave them or let them go yeah about them like they're so bad at what they did there's always two sides of every story well right and so the value Of therapy is that we offer wise compassion hold up a mirror to you and help you to see yourself in a way

that maybe you haven't been willing or able to do and that's where the other version of the story comes in so how do we have wise compassion for our friends when they're like she cheated on me he left me they had an affair uh whatever yeah how do we change our story and also show compassion that We're there for our friend not making when they're in a vulnerable place not making the other person right or wrong yeah being there for them and also kind of giving them some tough love I guess I wouldn't call it

tough love I would just call it reality love love it's love it's much more loving to be truthful in a compassionate way so I I sometimes call them compassionate truth bombs yeah because we need to hear Them but how do we do it it has to do with timing and dosage so the timing is when they're really raw when something just happened you know now's not the time to say you know this has happened with your last three boyfriends right maybe you're the problem here right have you noticed that going through people's phones is not

working well for you you know we are not going to say that maybe in that moment so so that that's our timing and then The dosage is how much are you going to say in a particular moment and in a particular conversation it doesn't all have to happen in one conversation so I think that that has to do with being a good listener and a lot of us don't know how to listen and I think it's really helpful I see a lot of couples in my practice too and if you can say to the person

when they come to you with something how can I be helpful in this conversation right now I know you're Really hurting do you want to just vent do you want to hug do you want me to help problem solve with you um do you want do you want my honest opinion or do you want me to hold off and we can have that conversation another time let them tell you what they want so you can give them something that is helpful to them in that moment and then in another conversation you might be able to

offer them something more when they're not completely raw or Broken yes so what is that specific question when anyone's coming to you with a challenge or a complaint or hurt what's the question you should ask them how can I be helpful to you right now I know you're really hurting what does that do for the person who's hurting when they hear that it helped him to reflect on oh wait what do I need right am I just going to download all of this stuff and then I'm not going to feel any different at the End

or or is there something else that I want right now and maybe downloading it will make them feel different just make them feel seen and understood and heard which is important or maybe they want something else but let them tell you and I think the other thing is these three words that are really helpful when they're talking to you are tell me more so instead of saying you know when they when they say like oh here's what's going on and we say oh well we try to Cheer them up like you know here's what you

can do we try to fix it we try to cheer them up we try to make them make it seem like it's not so bad whatever we do instead just say tell me more we do this with our kids I can say as a parent we do this all the time right so your kid comes to you and says you know I'm really sad about this or I'm really worried about this we say oh don't worry no it's not a problem we say oh don't be sad right go Have ice cream right exactly but the

thing is that then you get the message as a kid that like oh wait I I'm not supposed to feel this and really what it is is we get uncomfortable as parents with our kids feelings because we can't we are uncomfortable feelings we grew up in a way where feelings were messy feelings were uncomfortable feelings were something that you know was they were going to be Trouble yeah as opposed to feelings stop crying yes as opposed to just you know let's feelings are actually a great thing people say oh there are these negative feelings like

sadness anxiety anger whatever you even Envy I always say feelings are like a compass they tell us what direction to go in so with Envy for example I say follow your Envy it tells you what you want if you are feeling Envy that's great because it says what do I desire it puts you in Touch with your desire what is it that I desire and what steps can I take to get something like that in my own life if you're feeling sad if you're feeling anxious what is not working right now that you can look

at if you stuff down that feeling if you pretend it's not there it just gets bigger and here's what happens it doesn't go away it comes out in too much food alcohol drugs insomnia a short temperedness inability To function distractibility that mindless scrolling we all do through the internet um a colleague of mine said that the internet was like the most effective short-term non-prescription painkiller out there wow right and so what happens is your feelings are still there but you're not dealing with that what happens when we never deal with our emotions or feelings well

you first of all get sick Everything everything right so we have just like we have a physical immune system we have a psychological immune system and we have to take care of our psychological immune system so it's just like you know what do you do to keep healthy with your body like you're going to eat right you're going to exercise um you know you're going to do all the things that you want to do to take care of yourself you're going to get enough Sleep those things also help your psychological immune system they're not totally

separate the Mind Body Connection is profound but at the same time you know are you going to be around people who don't nourish you that's that that's going to hurt your psychological immune system that's going to make you sick are you going to stuff down your feelings that's going to make you sick and so how do we take care of ourselves and part of it is instead of trying to Numb out your feelings because numbness isn't the absence of feelings numbness is a state of being overwhelmed by too many feelings wow and then not only

do you not experience the feelings that you don't want to experience but you don't experience the other feelings you mute one feeling you mute the others you mute the pain you mute the joy so you're living in this state where you don't actually get to feel the range of feelings that make us human What is that state called sick I was going to say dead I mean I I feel like you can be alive but not living and that's what happens to people is that they're alive they're going through the motions they wake up every

day but they're not really living their lives what's an assessment we could take for ourselves if someone's listening or watching to ask themselves how alive or how dead they are and if the people in Their life closest are actually good for them or are hurting their psychological States right is there a a questionnaire we could take like just off the cuff is there an assessment is there a few things we could ask ourselves yeah I mean I think that it has to do with a sense of Vitality right which of course like Vitality the word

like life is right in there when you wake up in the morning are you excited about what you're doing Is there meaning in what you're doing do you feel connected to how you're spending your days because at the end of your life are you going to look back and say what did I do that was meaningful you know and maybe you should talk to someone in my book I there's a woman that I treat she's this young woman who goes on her honeymoon she's newly married she comes back and she has cancer and she says

to me at one point she says why do we need a terminal Diagnosis a couple wake-up call why do we need a terminal diagnosis to live our lives with intention why do we need why do we need that to really pay attention and I think that if we can keep the awareness of death on sitting on one shoulder and I don't mean in a morbid way or in a creepy way um it's it's not depressing it's actually again going back to Vitality it helps us feel alive because life has 100 mortality rate and that's not

for other People we like to believe that right and so the thing is that if we know that we have a limited time here I think we would pay more attention to what we're actually doing every day why is it so hard for people to pay attention and fear and but they're they're like they feel like they're stuck sometimes for years right it's like I stay stuck in a relationship that's I know it's not right for me for years I stay in a depressed state for years I you know I Stay in a job that

I hate for years it's all based on fear well I think it is fear um you know I think it's fear of uncertainty this is going to sound strange but change is really hard because we cling to something that's familiar to us so even though we may know oh this would help me this would be a good change for me um we don't do it because it's unfamiliar and so if you grew up with a lot of chaos if you grew up feeling sad All the time or anxious all the time that feels like home

to you even if it's unpleasant or even miserable and she'll keep finding chaotic right recreating it yeah and so and so you know it was funny because because my own therapist gave me this great analogy who said to me he said you remind me of this cartoon and it's of a prisoner shaking the bars desperately trying to get out but on the right and the left it's open right no bar so basically the prisoner is not in Jail and that's what so many of us are like we feel we're not in jail we can change

we can just walk around the bars but why don't we because with freedom the freedom to walk around the bars comes responsibility and if we're responsible for our own lives that scares us we feel like oh I don't know if I can do that I don't know if I'm competent enough to do that or now I'm to blame if things don't go right I can't blame it on everything else Is this one of the reasons why inmates after a long time being in prison who get out go back into prison because they feel like they

need to be back in that environment are there other reasons I think there are other reasons I think we don't give people the support when they come out um you know they the mental health issues that they needed to be treated for were whenever you know they never got that support then they come out and And they're back in the same situation where they don't have that Community Support why is it so hard for us to take responsibility for our own happiness I think that if you grew up in a household where you were seen

and heard and understood those are the people who do take responsibility for their own happiness I think for people who felt like they were ripped off in their childhoods there's a part of them that's Still in a fight there's a part of them that still wants that redo and so it's kind of like they're not aware of this but what they're saying is basically I will not change Mom and Dad until you give me the things that I did not get in childhood so they'll go find a partner that emulates their environment from Mom and

Dad and try to change them so they well well right this is this is the irony of relationship right for those people who have not sort of worked Through it um this is so just so common and I think all of us have this peace in us right because nobody had a perfect childhood so you what happens is people say okay when I'm an adult I'm going to pick a partner who really makes me feel nourished who really gives me all those things that I did not get growing up but what they don't realize is

unconsciously they have this radar for the people who are go who look very different from Their parents on the surface but then once they get into that relationship it's kind of like uh oh this feels familiar right and so what they did was their unconscious said when they were picking their partner hey you look familiar come closer even though in consciously they thought oh you're totally different from my parents I'm gonna this is gonna work out great but no they have radar for that if they haven't worked out the stuff that's sort Of their unfinished

business there's this saying we marry our unfinished business we actually do marry our unfinished business so that is why it is so important as an adult to take responsibility and say you know what I'm going to have to grieve this loss of what I didn't get and I'm going to have to work through this and assess where I am as an adult so that I pick people and surround myself with people who are Healthy for me what if you've chosen someone that you love deeply but it's unconsciously your unfinished business is that the wrong person

for you once you realize oh they're never going to change or is that a point for us to reflect back and say actually I need to heal the past accept this person for who they are and be willing to flow within this relationship well what happens is so you married your unfinished business but so did they and so if you can both Recognize that if you realize hey wait we have a lot of conflict in our relationship or we're really avoidant in our relationship or we don't feel connected in the way we want to feel

connected that's a great opportunity for both of you to work out your unfinished business to heal together right and so that relationship could Thrive if you both are willing to look in the mirror at yourselves and do the work yes that could be a really beautiful relationship And it can be very healing for both of you in fact it could potentially be the strongest bond ever if you both were able to go through that yeah but if you're unwilling to go through that then what you're going to be both people right well both people have

to be willing I mean that's the thing so it's like you may wake up one day and say oh wait a minute I have all this unfinished business and then your partner says yeah it's all you you're the problem in the Relationship you know it's kind of like in couples therapy so often I'll see something like someone will say like you never listen to me and I'll say how well do you listen to them right right it's always like you're just yelling at someone all day are they going to want to listen to you right

right so you know there's this dance that we do in relationship and what happens is people are doing these dance steps and people become very they become very ingrained It's like oh here we go you can you can script out people's arguments you know exactly what they're going to do one thing and then it goes back into the different things that you're like and you know exactly how it's going to go and who's going to feel what and who's going to accuse the other person of what um and that's the dance and so if one

person changes their dance steps the other person either is going to fall flat on the dance floor or they're gonna Have to change their steps too if they want to keep dancing and usually so we always say you can't change another person but you can influence another person how by changing your dance steps so so for example we like to say Insight is the booby prize of therapy meaning you can people will come and they'll be like oh now I understand why I keep getting into that argument with my partner and so then they go

home and they come back the next week and I'll Say well did you do something different when you got in that argument well no but I understand why I didn't so you have to be both vulnerable and accountable when you come to therapy how do we fight better when we are in constant repeat pattern every month throughout or every week it becomes an argument around something for whatever reason yeah it's a pattern yeah couples start to notice it how does one person or both people recognize and say okay I'm gonna change my dance steps and

I'm going to fight or dance better yeah the first thing is to notice notice sort of what what do you own in this what is your reaction so we have a choice every time someone presents us with something there's a there's a great quote in the books of Victor Frankel quote where he says between stimulus and response there is a space and in that space lies our freedom to choose between stimulus and response so between an action happening And your response to the action so your partner says something it's a window of opportunity yes there's

that space usually that space for us will look like a breath the breath is everything the breath really like you don't breathe you're screwed if you need to take the breath or you will just respond it's it's sort of like we have this these neural Pathways that are wired right and someone says something and you react not just to what that person in front of you Is saying but it goes back to something that reminds you of something from a long time ago people who aren't even in the room are in that moment with you

and so that's that neural pathway and so what you need to do is you need to take a breath it's like a big stop sign on that on that road that that's your neural path so hold up the stops and you can even picture a stop sign in your mind stop breathe now you get to choose how do I want to respond to this do I Want to respond in the way I've responded the last gazillion times which has not worked out well or do I want to try something different so that's part one part

two is perspective taking a lot of people who are in really highly conflictual relationships have trouble with perspective taking they can't imagine that the other person has a valid perspective now you might not agree with every piece of how they view this But there's some overlap between how this person views it and how you view it but you are not willing to see that and so I have this new podcast called dear therapist and on the podcast so much of what we do is we help people to take the perspective of the other person there's

something that that you are not seeing right now why is that so hard for people to see someone else's perspective well two things one is because um you know that that unreliable Narrator thing that we think that that we are right and we don't want to be told and so we what we hear when we say there's another perspective we're not saying you're wrong we're saying there's more to the story so there's a difference between their their perspective is valid as well is not saying your version is wrong we're saying there's more so people hear

it though as you are wrong and the other part of it is that There's a lot of Shame that people are sticking to a certain story because if they allow that other part of the story to come in the part that they're responsible for will probably come up and they feel a lot of Shame so when I see individuals in therapy they come in and they tell me a story and they leave out the parts that they are embarrassed about the parts that they feel like that was not my finest moment like what give me

an example like well I screamed back All right yeah yeah like you know here's what happened or here's here's this is this is the situation in my my partner did this or my mother did this or my child did this or my boss did this whatever and they don't tell you these other details and they sort of trickle out later on yeah and they're very relevant to the story right but that's shame right and so you know that's why the therapeutic relationship is so important because you get to a point Where you really trust the

therapist and you're able to be really honest um about what happened I think it is complicated because no one teaches us how to love and be loved so you either get that modeling growing up or sometimes you don't get the best modeling growing up but people don't really talk about it in the way that I think people would need and so I think one of the problems is that people both want closeness and they fear closeness at the exact same time Right and so people kind of walk on that tightrope and a lot of people

get tangled up in that Paradox why do we want it so bad and what is the thing we fear about it so much well the thing we fear is is that it's going to wound us right so I mean love has the power to wound but it also has a power to heal so that's why we have that Paradox because we want it but we're a little bit afraid of what might happen and by the way if you sign up for this you will get hurt That just that's just part of the deal even with

someone who really cares about you even in a really loving relationship at times you will hurt each other but then why how do you repair it well is there a way to get into relationship without hurting each other um no because people are human right and you know when I'm talking about hurting there's different degrees of hurting you know hurting could be you didn't understand me and I felt really hurt by That right hurting could be something much more you know delicate right yeah so there's something those are very different things um you know but

I think I think what happens is people need to learn what we call rupture and repair so there's a rupture something half happens between you and then how do you repair it there will always be ruptures really um and and so you know how do you how do you guys repair it together that's the Biggest predictor of whether a relationship is going to be successful and people are going to be happy in it your ability to repair to repair with each other yeah what is um okay first off how do we get to a place

where we have less ruptures to where it's like once a year once every six months as opposed to like every other day a little micro rupture is that even possible yeah so I I think that the the reason That people have ruptures is because they they don't feel like they under they are understood okay um I remember one of the most formative things that happened for me was very early on when I started seeing couples I had this couple come in and I remember that they were there's a lot of tension between them and the

woman said to her husband she said you know what three words I really want to hear from you and he said what do you think I love you I Love you right and she said no the three words I want to hear are I understand you and I just sort of sat there in my seat and thought I understand you that understanding someone is a way of showing love really making the effort to really listen to them to hear their point of view and this is where as a couple's therapist the idea of separate realities

comes in okay separate realities is we have to acknowledge that you are going to view Things through your own lens and both of them are right both of them are valid and what people get into trouble is they try to convince the other person that their reality is right yes so you see this for example take an example of a parent and an adult child and you have the parent who you know the adult child comes to them and says I feel like you really favored my sibling growing up and the parent says that's not

true we love you both equally we Were there for you and they hear it as an accusation so you have a choice in that moment you can say okay I'm going to defend myself against this accusation and what the parent hears is you were a bad parent that's not what the kid is saying the kid is saying um you weren't there for me in the ways that I needed you to be sometimes yes sometimes sometimes it's not black or white it's not all or nothing it's not good or bad it just is In that messy

middle right and so you can say I'm going to try to understand your reality even though there's a gap between my what I intended and what you experienced that's okay that there's a gap right so where romantic couples get into it is the same thing there's a gap between my intention and your experience of me right and I'm going to make you believe that my intention trumps your experience of me right but my attention was good I meant to say it this way I Meant for you to be understood but the other person's like well

that's not what I felt well what happens is so so you see this in therapy right so somebody says well that's not what I intended and I will say to them it doesn't matter that that's what you intended it did it had that effect right right so how does someone change their way of being or their intention or their actions so that the other person feels accepted or heard or seen or understood or loved in That moment question we don't ask ourselves in now is what I'm about to do or say going to be experienced

by the person I love man you really got to get into the head and the the heart of the other person with how you just interact in that sphere of influence right right and I think people say oh that's so much work and it shouldn't be that that hard and that's too much effort but once you start to going back to I understand you Once you start to understand them it becomes very easy you see it's kind of like they are giving you their owner's manual they are giving you the operating instructions but if you

don't read it then you're gonna keep making the same mistakes over and over they're saying here let me tell you what happens for me when you do that let me tell you what happens for me when you say that and if you ignore the operating instructions you're going to Keep getting into accidents what are the operating instructions is completely against who you are like you're I don't know let's just say your love language is you like giving physical touch but the other person likes receiving gifts or acts of service for example and you're like this

is draining for me to do this thing that the person wants or feels loved by it feels like so much effort and work is there a way to make it so that your strength is Actually something they love Yeah well let's let's turn this around so if if your partner said to you it's too draining for me to actually love you in the way you like to be loved yeah it sounds crazy right it's too draining for me to make the effort to show you love in the way that makes you feel good then why

do we do it is it because we feel like we that's how we want to live our lives or why do we do those things right because we aren't We're paying attention to our needs and we're not paying attention to the other person's needs and this is the primary problem in most relationships whether there are romantic relationships friendships siblings work whatever it is is that people think about the me or the you like am I the problem are you the problem as opposed to we have a problem the US right we have a problem I

had this I had this couple in therapy Um he had had an affair and they both wanted to repair the marriage okay so they were both interested in that so there was a rupture there was a rupture and a big rupture right Affairs are these incredibly painful betrayals and he was all in in wanting to repair this and he took ownership he said I'm sorry I want to make this work she said okay I want to figure out how to how to accept this apology and forgive and move on I want to figure out what

what do we Do is it who are we as a couple now what does this mean how do we move forward and he was not a person who was used to opening up and a lot of men experienced this they don't know how to be vulnerable they're afraid to be vulnerable and so many men will come in by the way to buy practice and they'll say I've never told anyone this before they've literally never told anyone women come in they say I've never told anyone this Before except for my mother my sister my best friend

right so they feel like they haven't told anyone but they actually have so he's he opens up for the first time and he says it was almost like a whisper he could barely say it and he said I'm so lonely wow in the relationship in the relationship just in general like he didn't even know just I'm lonely he's not blaming her for the loneliness by the way he's just saying I'm so lonely and it was almost like he Had gone in ripped his heart out extended it to her on an outstretched hand and here's his

heart sitting there and she says I feel exactly the same way wow and I thought oh there's this bridge there's this bridge now between them right but then she adds but I didn't do what you did right in other words I was lonely too but I didn't cheat I'm a better person and what I said to them was I said listen you can go to this place of Who's morally Superior um who's right and wrong and who's more injured right here you can go to the place of like casting someone you can cast each other

in a role of who's the villain and who's the victim or you can say it's not a him problem or a me problem it's an us problem our there's a loneliness in our relationship and how do we as a team deal with it because we both we have the problem in the relationship Relationships are like biospheres they're like ecosystems so what you put into the relationship is the air that you're both breathing someone says like oh yeah I I yelled in the relationship but you know but she like iced me out it's like look at

the environment look at the toxic air that you're both breathing if you yell she'll ice you out if you ice him out he's gonna yell right right like this is the this is the air you can't put toxic put toxicity out There and then expect that things are going to be okay that things are going to be healthy right so how what was the homework for that couple on how to repair and what was the prescription I guess the therapeutic prescription yeah well for them it would from the US perspective is we have an issue

that we're trying to solve we want to solve this loneliness thing in our marriage people think people are so self-interested in relationships without Realizing it and we all do this um you know we think like in the moment I'm gonna do this thing right and we don't think about how is that going to affect the couple it's going to be good for me so we're going to do it I'm going to say this thing because I have to get it off my chest um you know I'm I'm gonna keep this secret because it'll be better

for me no what's what's better for the relationship and we don't tend to think About that so for them it was about um remembering that if the thing that you're about to do is good for the relationship it's going to be good for you we forget that we think it's the opposite you know it's like if it's good for me it'll be good for for him or her too or them too no um if it's good for the relationship it's good for everybody does that mean certain things you shouldn't say then Yeah like well I

didn't do that like yeah I'm lonely too but I didn't cheat yeah right it's like yeah I'm lonely too that's that's the moment of connection right there I'm lonely too and what he did in that moment before she made that comment he reached toward her he teared up yeah it was beautiful he teared up and he and he moved toward her and he took her hand and then she says but I didn't do it oh dagger right right to your heart yeah you're already wounded You're both wounded right and so people put up their swords

to protect themselves and what they don't realize is that they're actually going to make themselves feel lonelier you keep that sword up you're gonna be very alone you're gonna feel very disconnected from your partner that takes a level of what just emotional intelligence awareness peace what does that take in order to like not say that final thing or you know try to One-up the other person in a relationship what does that take right well the reason that we do that is because there's what's happening between you and your partner in the moment you know he

cheated she's very injured by that that makes sense they've talked about it a lot at this point um they'll talk about it more it will be ongoing um but then there's sort of you know the unfinished business we have this saying We marry our unfinished business and what we mean by that is if I see a couple um you know show me tell me how you were loved as a child and I will tell you how you're loved now right how you love now tell me who who you love now and I'll tell you who

loved you as a child really is there a way to break that cycle though yes yes so that's where the awareness comes yes so the unfinished business so part of it is She had she grew up in a family where her father was cheating her mother knew nobody said anything um so now you know she's got all of that on top of you know the crimes of her father in her mind are now the crimes of her husband and and they're very different people you know her husband was a very different person from her father

but she could not separate the two of them right what do you see is the biggest problem In relationships you work with a lot of couples as well as non-couples but what is the biggest theme of why people struggle in Intimate Relationships well I think right now and I think this applies more generally too is often in relationships there's sort of like this hierarchy of pain right what do you mean by that what I mean by that is like okay so um you know someone will say like here's Let's take it into marriage right so

someone will say like you know I feel I feel so neglected right I feel so neglected in this marriage or you know and I'm the one who's like but I take the kids all day but I make the money but I you know I'm the one who always gives the hugs or always initiates sex or always this right and just like this hierarchy of like you know whose pain is greater and that gets to be addressed and the other person doesn't there's no Room for the other person's pain because it's like but I'm the one

who's in who's you know in immense pain my pain is so much worse than yours comparing pain right right comparative pain right and there's no hierarchy of pain pain is pain we but we do this we do this with ourselves too where we minimize our pain like sometimes people will say you know I'm not going to go to therapy because you know other people have it worse and that's a message that they got growing Up that they needed to minimize their pain we don't do this with our physical health right so with our physical health

we don't say like I broke my wrist for example but somebody else has cancer so I'm just gonna I'm not I'm not gonna go do it I have it so much better than them so I'm not going to deal with it right we don't do that but you know we do that emotionally we say like yeah I'm feeling sad or I'm anxious or I'm having trouble in my relationship but you know other People have it so much worse so I'm not going to go so people don't land in my office until they're having the equivalent

of like an emotional heart attack right yeah emotional trauma is like some big event or like their marriage is falling apart or they lost their job or they had a miscarriage or you know like something big happened as opposed to like you know maybe they had the miscarriage but they didn't talk about like all the pain they were going Through and trying to get pregnant and all the fertility issues it's like yeah well it's not that bad right you know or or whatever it is you know or it's like someone will be like yeah I

had a breakup but it wasn't a divorce so like it's not that bad yeah there are no kids it's not that bad right but it's still painful yes yeah so the biggest challenge in relationships is hierarchy comparison of pain within the relationship why is that a big challenge Um because then in addition um and then it's kind of like well you need to do this thing to minimize my pain as opposed to what can we do together to say you know here are the things that here are some of the things that hear how your

needs are not being met here how my needs are not being met and what can we do to help each other we don't think about that it's like you need to do this for me Why do we always want the other person to do something for us to make us feel better as opposed to going back to what you say is responsibility how can I show up differently how can I give differently well what happens is people say you have to do this for me if you do this then I'll do that and they don't

they don't you know they're saying like well the reason that we're not having sex is because you don't help me with the dishes or you Don't give me enough affection or whatever it's just like and so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do this I'm not gonna give you affection or I'm not going to have sex with you or I'm not going to do the dishes until you do the thing that I want as opposed to why don't you just do the nice thing you know why don't you just do the nice thing and you'll

find that other people want to do nice things for you too yeah it's not like you have the other person Has to go first every time be the person you want to be in the relationship and then see what the other person is capable of doing if you're being the person you want to be in the relationship and the other person isn't okay that's a problem but if you're being the person you want to be in the relationship and then you notice oh they're being the person they want to be in the relationship to because

they're not Feeling so much resentment all the time and what if after six months of this it's a one-sided relationship okay so here's the thing when people come to couples therapy before they even step foot in my office I tell them you need to figure out before you come in here what is it that you are going to do you each of you individually to make this relationship better just from the start before you come in and the first thing we talk about when they come in is each Person says what they are going to

do to make the relationship better so it's not oh my partner needs to do this it's here's what I need to do to regardless of what my partner does that's good here's what I need to do to make the relationship better and so we have these for something very specific it's not just like I'm going to be nicer you know like it's something very specific about you know like you you know depending on what's going on in their relationship Sure and they have to do that right and then we come up with more goals for

each person and what they find is that every time they set a goal for themselves the other person wants to be better too so each person is setting a goal and it's almost like if there's any competition they're competing for who's going to be better in the relationship that's interesting and you find that that that's where emotional generosity comes in where people start to see the good Sides of the other person yeah from your experience what are the three to five things that the greatest relationships all have flexibility is a big one so I mean

there are studies and I can tell you what the studies say but I see this born out just in in my office as well if you are a flexible person your relationship is going to have a much better chance of weathering um the vicissitudes of life than if you're a really rigid person so Flexibility is a big one emotional stability you know you're with someone who hasn't kind of worked out their stuff they're going to be fighting with not just you but lots of other people from the past in the room every time something comes

up you know there's this there's this rule the gottmans have this rule of five positive things for every one negative thing that is said that's the ratio I look at at it like a bank account right it's like you have to make Five deposits into the bank account before you can withdraw something and you can see that with your kids too by the way like five positive things five positive interactions for everyone negative interaction you're a good enough parent are you saying five things first before you say something no no no no it doesn't have

to be first no no in general like if you look at the ratio right it's like you have to you have to have like five deposits in the bank for Everyone withdrawal so you know because nobody's perfect in relationship right so you have to have five positive interactions for everyone negative interaction that you have yeah and that's what the government's found that's that's what their studies show because if it's the other way if it's five negative and you know one little positive thing every once in a while it's gonna be emotionally draining right because you're

not gonna you're not Gonna really notice that positive thing because everything is clouded by all the negativity I'm wrong of this I'm not enough yeah okay that's number three are there a couple more you you have or ability for yourself is really important even if the action that happened was wrong and bad times responsibility for how you respond to what happened take responsibility for your response yes Is there one more any chance you know what yes I would say that emotions in a household are contagious and if you are anxious all the time if you

come home at the end of the day and you're critical of everything that happens and you're complaining all the time um if you are if you are depressed and you're not getting treatment for it um the mood of a house is contagious and so really be aware that what is Going on inside of you is affecting everyone around you what do you think would make you you're already an exceptional therapist you've got this amazing column you've got a podcast dear therapist with my friend guy winch he's got this New York time bestseller maybe you should

talk to someone which is amazing what would make you a better therapist you're already great but what's oh no I mean I think there's I I think that We're always growing as therapists I mean and maybe you should talk to someone the reason that I wanted to show you know I followed these four patients and then the fifth patient is me as I go to therapy and you can see that I steal things from my therapist all the time like he does something and I think wow that is really good that was really effective and

I will literally drive from his office to my office do it on the next five patients right I mean you Can see that happening in the book and and I think that you know while I make it my own right because I think authenticity is really what helps us connect with our patients um you know I say at the very beginning of maybe you should talk to someone that my most significant credential is that I'm a card carrying member of the human race that I bring my Humanity into the room all the time I don't

mean my personal life but I bring my my Authenticity my personality um into the room and I think that as a therapist you know when you're training to be a therapist it's almost like if you want to be like a great pianist you have to learn the scales perfectly and then you can improvise right same thing with with therapeutic training like you learn all the techniques you learn all the theories you learn how to be with patients but once you really perfect that you do that in you know the first Several years right then you

can start to improvise and I think you learn so much as you're improvising you get better every year I think every you know every week I probably get better as a therapist because you're learning um you know your patients hold up a mirror to you as much as you hold up a mirror to them wow so you're still a practicing therapist you do you have clients come in person or I guess well now resume yeah you've got your podcast uh gear Therapists which you guys do weekly is that right yeah every Thursday the podcast drops

every Thursday and give us a scenario of what that is it's a caller it's a yeah I know it's great because you know what we're trying to do is democratize therapy we feel like a lot of people maybe don't know what therapy is they have lot of misconceptions about it they don't have access for all kinds of reasons you know financially logistically and so just like in the Book I wanted to show what therapy really is and and how it can be helpful in the podcast you know someone writes in their problem then guy and

I talk about it you hear like two therapists discussing everyday problems and and it's a different perspective because you normally don't get to hear how therapists might talk about your problem and then we bring the person on we have a session and then we have a session that's pretty cool and so then We have a session with them and we and what's interesting are you talking about this behind the scenes once they listen to podcasts yes but they don't get to hear it beforehand um because we're sort of talking about it like okay this is

how we think about the problem and then we have a session with them and we have an hour to move them to a new place because what's unique about the podcast is we give them specific Actionable advice at the end of the podcast that then they have one week to try out and then they have to tell us how it went we have homework they have homework and they have to and they have to report back and you hear it all in one episode so you hear what happened um and what's been great about the

podcast is that everybody is doing their homework and they're telling us this is what I did and what's really great is When you know during the session it's maybe a hard session right and then you think yeah and we make predictions by the way so at the end of the session we like they go off they go do their homework but guy and I make predictions like do we think they're going to do it what do we think is going to be in the way of they're doing it um and they come back and they

tell us what happened and then we talk about you know did they do it did it work did it Not work and why so I think we can learn a lot about that piece of not just here's the advice but why did it work or Why didn't it work I think it's brilliant I really love uh Esther Perez yeah couples therapy uh show where should we begin so I'm assuming that's what we do yes yeah it's just as powerful but it's two heads and guys co-therapist yeah a guy's an amazing individual a great wise uh

person to bring on so I think that's Great you guys are doing it I've got a couple final questions for you but I want to make sure people get your book uh maybe you should talk to someone you can check it out online anywhere books are sold you can check out the podcast dear therapists it's on Apple and Spotify and all those places you're also on social media Lori Gottlieb underscore author on Instagram Lori godlib uh one on Twitter and golly Lauri on Facebook where are you most active Um probably Instagram and Twitter okay so

Instagram and Twitter we'll have all this linked up in the show notes uh this question I ask everyone at the end is called the three truce so I want to imagine it's your last day on Earth and you've accomplished everything you want to accomplish you've got the family you want the relationship you've got the practice you want you've written all the books everything but for whatever reason everything You've created has to go with you to the next place wherever that is once you die and uh we don't have access to your TED Talks your books

nothing all your great wisdom's gone but you get to leave behind three things you know to be true that you would share with the world three lessons you've learned through your life for therapy or experience this is all we would have to remember you buy these three lessons okay what would you say are your three truths I would say Um there's nothing more important than kindness to yourself and to other people I would say remember that human beings are ridiculous um because that allows us to while we need to take our Our Lives seriously we

don't need to take ourselves so seriously and I would say that we all have a place of knowing inside of us that we don't often listen to and it's Very quiet because it gets drowned out by all of the other voices that are much louder and if you can get quiet with yourself you will hear the voice from that place of knowing and that should be your North Star yeah it's really hard to get quiet so much noise well listen I as you know from maybe you should talk to someone I switched careers a million

times [Music] Um and it led me to this hybrid career that embodies all of the different pieces of what I did from working in like a Hollywood writer right I was I was I was an executive at NBC working on like friends in ER I left to go to medical school I left medical school to become a journalist I love journalism to become a therapist and all of it had to do with story in The Human Condition every single thing I did it was just experiencing it through a different lens And everyone thought I was

crazy every time I would make one of these changes well you know they'd uh oh that's not practical or that's not this or it's not that and you know I think when you start second guessing yourself because other people aren't going to live your life only you get to live your life so why do you want to live your life based on other people's ideas right and so I really had to be in that place of knowing that I didn't know exactly where It would lead because there were all these places where I ended up

leaving them to do something else but I was going in the right direction and so I think it's so important that's like when you think about what are you going to leave behind what are these truths I think about what I want my son to hold true to him to hold dear to him as he goes through life and I want him to hear that place of knowing and not get talked out of the life that he wants To live that's inspiring story and I gotta acknowledge you Lori for constantly listening to your your truth

and even when you said I'm investing in medical school and I'm invested in this career for years you said you know what it's not exactly what I want to do but but it's closer it's closer and it helped me to learn a lot of things I'm going to make the most of this and go to the next thing and maybe this is what you do for A while and maybe this evolves into something else in three to five years or ten years and this will be part of your story for the next chapter so I

acknowledge you for constantly thinking about Humanity on how you can tell better stories and help us learn how to tell our own stories better through your experiences and all these different things you've done the way the work you do here in your book your podcast your Ted Talk your column Is truly changing lives and I acknowledge you for showing up with a big heart every day and and helping Humanity the difference between secrecy and privacy in a relationship um what's what do we need and should everyone have access to someone's passwords and phones and at

all the time or no I mean you know I think that people have to agree again but I I think this idea that um you know like you can Look at my phone whenever you want we should feel we'll feel very intrude well but it feels very interesting I don't even I'm saying I don't think that that's I don't think that person has the definition of trust that I'm talking about which again is that I feel safe with what I don't know right um meaning I know that you're not doing anything to betray me so

I don't need to look if someone gives you reason to look that's a completely different thing you Know if someone's if someone gives you any kind of Reason um that's that's that's like a completely different kind of conversation that you have sure but if this person has been trustworthy to your knowledge um you know this idea that like we need to know everything about each other by the way you want to kill sex in a relationship know every single thing about each other you will kill the Erotic energy right in the relationship it's a mystery

right you need yeah you need some separateness you need some differentiation between you are you and I am I and we are different people and if you know every single thing about that person there's no Gap to bridge what what happens with the erotic energy is like we want to bridge this Gap we want connection right we've been apart we want to connect if you've been fused It's kind of like oh wait actually I want space right you need space you need space yeah it's the mystery that brought you together in the first place that

made you attracted to each other you know it's like if you know everything all the time it's hard to keep that going you need that space how much space do you feel like you need in a relationship to make it like still feel that sexual Attraction and chemistry it's every everybody's like wait a minute this this that's their their body is telling them something you feel all these things in your body so a lot of people say how will I know like as if it's an intellectual thing and I always say your body will tell

you you know when you recoil from that person you know when you feel like oh I hear their voice and they've just walked in the door and I'm not ready for this you know it's not Even like like something that goes it's like you feel it in your body did you just tense up did you feel it in your stomach like what just happened did your breathing change right what should you do in that space where you're not like I want to leave this relationship but I just need space and and create a conversation where

it's safe to say that audience and presentation so so choose your audience well do you have a partner Who can hear what you're saying and not not hear it as a rejection take it personally because you know a lot of what people call complaints are actually compliments and what I mean is don't talk about this and maybe you should talk to someone is that when someone is complaining about something they're basically saying I want to get I want to have a better relationship they're not saying to you I want to break up with you they

would just say I Want to break up with you so when they're saying like hey I want to come to you with this like I need more space I'm saying that because I want to be in this relationship I value this relationship I love you I care about you and what's not working for me is that sometimes I need some space after work or I need some time to myself on the weekends I don't want to do every activity together or I need to go out with my friends or whatever it is and And that's

what's going to help me in this relationship because I want to be with you I can't I won't be able to be with you if I don't have some kind of if we don't work out something around the space so it's a compliment I see like I love you enough I care about this relation enough to Brit this relationship enough to bring this up with you if I didn't care I wouldn't bring it up I'd just leave And how toxic is it in your opinion to think that the partner is supposed to make you happy

um the the thing is even if you don't call it toxic it's just dangerous okay why because because they can't they can't make you fundamentally happy they can bring you Joy it's it's you know it's a great joy to be with someone whose company you really enjoy of course um but they can't heal those wounds for You they can't take away the hurts they can't repair everything that happened for you in your life they can't do that you're going to have to do that for yourself again they can provide that sort of containing warm holding

environment in which you feel safe enough to do that but they can't do it for you right and when you depend on someone else you're talking about expectations earlier when you depend on someone else to do that For you they will inevitably fail because hashtag human right right because they are human yeah um they can't they can't do that so don't have an expectation that you meet this guy or this girl or whatever and they're going to make me happy they should be able to add to my joy be additive yes they're gonna they're gonna

your quality of life will be greatly enhanced if you have a good relationship right okay but you got to focus on your your own happiness but But in terms of you know those things where they're going to be Miss attuned to you sometimes they're going to upset you sometimes they're going to do things that you think how could the person I love me make that choice right um you know they're not going to be some like you know magical fairy person yes and what about the online world how have you seen this as a therapist

the online world uh supported or hurt relationships You know is online dating in it overall have you seen it be a positive thing and also it's just social media hurtful or helpful when in a relationship with someone and I would say to both social media and online dating both and yes um I think that online dating makes it possible for people to meet who ordinarily would not meet but that's really all it does so it's not like you know it's like we used to meet people in a much more organic Way but we don't do

that anymore so now you can meet people and it makes it a lot easier the downside of that is that there's this illusion with uh online dating and apps that you know you go out on a date I hear this all the type of people they went out on a date they had a good time no butterflies but it was they had a really good time like they spent three hours there like they you know they had a pretty good time um but yeah no you know I don't know I Just didn't feel like the

chemistry or I don't know or whatever it was and so you know but there's this other guy you know whatever so then they like keep going through the apps as opposed to why wouldn't you go on a second date with that person that you just had a pretty good three hours with like spend another two or three hours with that person even spend one hour and you do it do coffee so you can get out you know easily if you want to Um but you had a pretty good time and I think people think that

like it's Gotta all be there right away and actually they did these studies where they followed couples over 20 years this longitudinal study and what they did was they didn't do reporting where you look back and you say what was your first date like they actually did reporting at the time so they got all of these reports you know they followed them every five years and they would Interview them and the people who were happy 20 years later when they recalled their first date they would say oh yeah I was so into him I was

so into her it was amazing right in those reports often they would find what they reported at the time was really nice person you know like yeah I know I had a good time like like there wasn't like this magnetic attraction of the butterflies and sometimes there was but in more cases than not there wasn't Really and then when you looked at people who were like divorced or really unhappy but still married and you asked them about their chemistry I didn't I didn't really like him that much they've revised the story but when you go

back to what they actually said at the time they were like you know lots of chemistry so in other words our opinions about people change the more we get to know them and so if you go out with somebody once twice three times right And you had a pretty good time that first time go out with them again like why wouldn't you go out with them twice or three times um and see what happens people won't do that and they keep like cycling and juggling all these different people like maybe the next person will be

you know like I'll feel more attraction to but maybe that person you don't have as much kind of emotional chemistry with right um you know so then that person's ruled Out um you know you didn't have enough in common or whatever it is sure um so like at what point or it's like musical chairs like at what point are you gonna sit down because the chairs are going to get filled well I think you hear people say you know don't settle but it's like how do you know when you've not settled right and you've found

a great match but it's well so so the thing is I you do you never want to feel like you're with A person where you settled and you don't want to feel settled for but I think again going back to defining things what does settling mean so so there was this there was a study that was in one of my earlier books where men and women were asked you know what would it what would it take to get a second date like what what qualities would a person need to have so men named three things

that a person would have to have for them to want to go on a second date with that Person and they said she has to to be attractive enough and they did not mean like she has to look like a supermodel they meant like I think she's cute that's all I think she's cute like they know you know they know that they're not like a supermodel um themselves um she has to be easy to talk to and she has to be kind like she can't be like oh you know mean to the waiter or you

know like kind of entitled or whatever you Know just like she has to like seem like a really nice person sure okay that person gets a second date women named 100 things so from three to one hundred one hundred things that would not get a guy a second day and they were you know these like really really picky things he was this or that and the other thing like you know oh he wore khakis and and you know like just really ridiculous I didn't like like you know or his hairstyles his hairstyler he did this

Like really like by the way people are nervous on first dates they do yeah they're sweaty people can get nervous they might be like maybe they were a little bit overly animated because they were trying to impress you me maybe they you know they were just like trying to entertain you and it was a little too much but like overall you had a good time and overall you there were these there was enough there that maybe you'd go on a second date and if they they're That way on the second date then no don't go

on the third date right but I think we have to we have to kind of remember that like it's a process and so many people want immediate gratification they want like that story of like we met it was immediate explosive and chemistry and right and so when someone feels this like instant attraction and explosive chemistry and like finishing of each other's sentences or whatever this is these butterflies the whole time I Couldn't stop thinking about them all week it was what I'm hearing you say is that sometimes or most of the time like 20 years

later those don't work out so they can work out but but some and it depends where you are in your own healing yes um sometimes what your unconscious is doing is saying oh you look familiar that's familiar I'm closer right you look familiar like it's like this and His unconscious and her unconscious like and them and you know whoever you're dating right this works in this is not gendered at all this works no matter who your partner is and who you are right that if something feels familiar to you in this very you know unconscious

way and you haven't worked that stuff out the unfinished business you're going to be like yeah this feels really familiar but it feels so good right come closer it feels so familiar to me if something Feels unfamiliar but it feels good is that a sign that that's you and your girlfriend yeah is it like oh maybe you're like you're choosing something different and you're experiencing something different is that something that people should keep exploring or what do you think yeah yeah absolutely if it feels better right it feels good again keep that journal look at

the look at the bank account that you guys are creating together your joint bank Account are there five deposits for one withdrawal right right um you're experiencing that right now it's unfamiliar but it feels healthy it feels good yeah yeah man what else do you see right now that people are really struggling with when you're doing therapy with them or just the the emails the calls coming in for the the podcast you guys are doing what's kind of a common theme of right now Um I would say connection I think people are lacking the connection

people are lacking connection or they they want to learn how to better connect so they have someone that that they want to connect with but they're bungling it up in all kinds of ways that's sort of what happens on our podcast every week they're bundling it up they're they're buggling it yeah what does that mean um you know it's like they they they want to have this healthy relationship And they're afraid to have the conversations they don't know how to have the conversations um they're doing things they know they shouldn't be doing um they don't

see their own role in it you know all of those things but again I think you know I think that that it's so relatable because we all act this way we all have our blind spots we all think that we're extremely self-aware and you can't see what you don't know You don't it's like you don't know what you don't know right right what's someone what's something we should do on a weekly basis to check in with our partner to make sure we're cultivating that connection is it a question hey every Sunday we're going to have

this 10-minute conversation what should we talk about or I I notice as a therapist that people talk more about what they don't want than what they do want with their Partners so they'll say like I don't like it when you do this or I wish you wouldn't do this as opposed to I really like when you do that I felt great when this happened I want more of that or I like that just appreciating that right if you're always telling people what you don't like about them it's hard for them to see what you do

like about them so I think that people need to spend More time telling the other person what they do want you know when we talk about complaints as compliments um you can say to somebody we say you feel like your partner isn't being affectionate enough with you right you can say like you never kiss me when you come in the door or you don't hug me enough or you can say I really love it when you come here and you kiss me as opposed to being like uh this wasn't making them defensive by saying you're

Not doing this enough and they're like what do you mean I was just doing this earlier and I did this before and you don't you're not appreciating it but when you show up you said appreciation I really appreciate it when you do this right it's going to make you want to hopefully do it more right and also not arguing with people's feelings like like I can see the other side of that where someone says to someone you know I really like it when you hug me when you Come in and and then you know maybe

it's a guy who says to her like but I do I hug you all the time right and she's just like okay now we're gonna fight over the content which is like how many times do you actually hug me and when was the last time you hugged me which is different which is just like oh oh you know to register for yourself oh she feels like I don't hug her enough so it doesn't matter whether I do or I don't the point is she feels like I don't so I'm going to make a conscious effort

to make sure that maybe when we're watching TV together I'm going to put my arm around her right right instead of arguing about but I just hugged you yesterday you know when I came home and I had you the day before and I'm sure that I hug you every day don't argue about it just be like oh noted all right I'll give you a hug later yeah yeah what would you say you know obviously you're you work with a Lot of couples that are experiencing some type of problems right most of them they'll come into

you and say everything's amazing we're just here to like just make sure it's still amazing you know which I think it's actually I think it'd be healthy for relationships too you know get into therapy sooner when things are actually good for like just a checkup every now and then and say hey how can we keep cultivating this but I'm curious from the relationships You've seen that have been thriving like pretty healthy happy thriving like it seems really good what would you say those key things that they all have in common kindness yeah kindnesses they're there

they live there you know people will remember by the way um you know I remember three years ago yeah I remember I remember when you said that thing I remember how it felt in my Body um so kindness is is especially important and I would also say there are all these cultural norms that we have to get rid of like I had this couple where um you know it was a heterosexual couple and she said to her to her husband I just I feel I want to get closer to you I feel like you know

I want to know what's going on with you I wish you would share more with me about your inner life I feel like there's this Distance between us and he was like this guy's guy right and finally finally he um he opens up to her and he he gets a little tear and I see her body I'm watching her and she's sort of she's there with him right and then he starts crying he starts talking about something really difficult he he has been holding in for a really long time and she on the one hand

feels so much compassion for him and on the other hand she's terrified because you know she Kind of looks at me like what do I do now um and so it's this interesting thing in our culture about safety with men and vulnerability because on the one hand she's saying to him I don't feel safe when you don't share with me I feel distance from you I feel separated from you I feel disconnected from you I don't feel safe in our relationship when you're over there and I'm over here and we are not needing but on

the other hand If you start crying in front of me like that and you really are vulnerable and you let down your guard like that I also don't feel safe not because of anything you did wrong but because I've been told by society that you are weak when you do that right like I feel like you are that now not my rock and you are now strong you are not strong for me and I didn't even realize I had those perceptions I didn't realize that that's how I grew up but that's what Society has been

telling Me that when a man cries like that in front of me that he's weak and now I don't feel safe and that somehow as a woman I'm weak if I don't have a man to be strong for me so we had to talk about all of these all of these ideas that have been you know we've been brainwashed yes and so then we have to like do the unbrained washing and then they can actually come closer to each other and he didn't have to be the rock all the time and she didn't Have to

feel like you have to save me all the time I'm so happy you said this Lori because I wrote a book about this a few years back to the mask of masculinity and I went on tour I don't know if I told you this before but I went on tour to talk about this and the rooms were typically 50 50 men and women who were in the rooms and I would say this exact thing that like women would say well I wish my my Partner or my husband were were more sensitive or emotional or vulnerable

and open up and I'd say well you've got to learn to be there and be able to handle it because I've talked to so many men who say you know what my wife keeps telling me they want to do this and I finally do it and then they're like well I need you to be strong now I don't feel safe exactly what you said I was like I'm so glad you said this from a therapist point of view and not just you Know a guy saying this but I'm so glad you're saying this and that

you've witnessed this with your your couples that have come in and you've actually seen this well because I feel like it's it's so hard for men to want to express their vulnerabilities and if they don't and I had a previous girlfriend that I would cry in front of that I would show you know my vulnerabilities and was freely doing it I never held back because I was Comfortable doing it myself in certain moments you know when I'd see something on TV or a movie or a sensitive thing I'd show motion and it's like she couldn't

handle it it's like she could not handle it and she was like crying his weakness and she didn't cry in front of me and I was just like man you're never gonna have respect for me if you think I'm weak for showing vulnerabilities and then why would I Want to be vulnerable around you if you're going to disrespect me I'm going to want to gain your respect and I'm going to want to get harder and have a wall which luckily I didn't do but it's like in general a lot of men do that well what

you're doing is you're being really courageous right so I think it takes an incredible Act of Bravery to say to somebody this is who I am yeah and so and she's saying oh that makes you weak no it makes you strong that's Why I said it's like it's like it's like you you are so okay with yourself yeah I don't care if you make fun of me I'm still gonna do it this is me and I'm gonna show up and I'm going to share with you and I'm going to be in this relationship um it's

so interesting that you say that so I'm raising a boy and I noticed this um because during covid um you know everyone was saying talk to your teenagers talk to your kids about What they're experiencing a lot of them are anxious and depressed and all these things are happening and my son one day said to me he said you know that's really easy for people to say but boys don't talk about this stuff and I said and I said yeah what what do you think makes it so hard and we had a little chat about

it and we actually put it on Instagram because I thought it was really important and all these people responded to it so he started then he Wrote an article I saw yesterday he wrote he wrote an article for Time Magazine but he um he started this thing called talk with Zach on Instagram and he just wants to model that like for boys and men that like you can talk about what you're feeling you can be vulnerable but not only can you but you should because you want to be a whole human being and I think

that it's been really interesting because it's opened up the eyes of women and girls yes That's beautiful you know it's like it's like I have so many men who come to me for therapy and they say I can talk to my guy for people think that your guy friends will make fun of you if you open up to them they won't actually the people who are who I'm most afraid to talk to they'll say girlfriend is my girlfriend my wife right like my sister like these are the people who like but your girlfriend or your

wife especially because they depend on you in this way Absolutely they tell you to be the rock because they may not be the emotionally stable person majority of the time maybe they are or not but the problem is though like so John in my book he's one of these people who would like hold it all in right and then there's this this tragic thing that happens in in his marriage and he and his wife are both grieving and he says I had to be the rock like I couldn't cry and he's the one who has

insomnia he's having Nightmares but he can't talk about any of it she's the one who always cries all the time and I said maybe she's crying for both of you and it just stopped him in his tracks maybe she's crying for both of you and when he was able to start talking about what had happened and this loss that they'd had in their marriage and their family their marriage completely changed it transformed right because he didn't have to be he thought she didn't Tell him you have to be the strong one for me it was

something that he just took in from the culture and when he was able to share in the grief and the laws and they were able to kind of do this together it was a game changer the Temptation is I'm going to throw myself into your relationship as a palette cleanser I'm like you know what sit with that dirty palette for a minute because you need to do this work in you because I think the challenge is is that when People get into narcissistic relationships or antagonistic or toxic relationships they don't know what they're dealing with