Sara Bareilles On: The Feelings You Fear Might Destroy You, What Antidepressants Actually Did to Her Creativity, and Why There's Nothing to Fix

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1:07Hello, everybody Welcome to the 10 % Happier Podcast I'm your host, Dan Harris Pop songs generally cover romantic love I recently did a search For how many songs Contain the words I want you And I think And this was a while ago I think it was like Scores if not hundreds Of songs However there are some Great pop songs That cover Weightier Heavier stuff Like grief If you think about Let it be Paul McCartney sings About his late mother Mother Mary Also artists like Beyonce say, and Kanye and Frank Ocean have written and sung about grief. And now comes my friend, Sarah Bareilles, who has recorded a whole album, which comes out today on the subject of grief.

2:00It's called Good Grief, and it is accompanied by a documentary, which is quite beautiful, and a whole tour. If you have never heard of Sarah, I don't know what's the matter with you, But if you've never heard of Sarah, she's a Grammy winning songwriter, the composer and star of Waitress on Broadway and much, much more. And a friend of mine, as I said, Sarah Bareilles. Welcome back to the show. Hello, Daniel. I sometimes ask people, especially when I have somebody on the show who I know, I ask a question that is it might seem perfunctory or tossed off, but I genuinely want to know the answer, which is how are you?

2:37What's going on? You know, I'm a little wobbly. I'm a little wobbly right now. I think being on, I had breakfast with my husband this morning, Joe, and it was occurring to me that being on the precipice of sharing this body of work to the degree that it will be shared is just a really, it's like an OD in vulnerability. vulnerability and me I love vulnerability don't get me wrong I love to cry in front of people I'm not mad about it but um it's a really tender very personal offering and so I think there is the part of me that's like oh I hope people like it you know the powerlessness of that or it's like you release this thing that you love and you hope other people are are kind to it in some way or that it means something to someone else in some way.

3:37I hear you. I hear you on the wobbliness. That seems, I mean, if you weren't, there might be a question of like sociopathology given how vulnerable you are making yourself in this like, not only in the record, but also in the documentary. But so I'll just say I'm like just one person and I'm totally biased, but I've been listening to the record and watching the documentary. Both are beautiful. you had played me a couple of songs from the record beforehand so I was a I had heard some of the work but now like listening to it in its entirety it's amazing so congratulations thank you so much I really appreciate it I think for the first time in my career in my artistic career there is a kind of integration happening between I don't feel like I'm presenting a body of work that is misaligned with what's happening in my personal life where I don't have to go and put on a dog and pony show and feel like, you know, behind the scenes, there's this other thing happening, this, you know, the grieving or the whatever it is.

4:44You know, I think in the past, it's like when it's time to release a record, it's time to go and do the song and dance thing. and this whole offering feels more like an art project it feels more integrated just as a piece of art and as a as it relates to my life so that feels great actually and I thought that that would be really scary even though I feel a little wobbly but I feel really um it's a very empowered place actually that there's not something that there's not some secret I'm keeping from everybody you know behind the work i could imagine like past past projects like girls five ever the comedy you did or waitress or whatever you you or you know in its various iterations on broadway and then there was also a movie like you're out there promoting something that's fun or or um a little bit light um and you've got some stern and drang or heavy shit happening in your personal life and you you don't it doesn't make sense to talk about that in that context oh totally i mean the first season of girls by beva i was having a full-on dissociated episode and got on lexapro for the first time like taking anti-anxiety medication for the first time and i would they would call cut on on set and i would go to my dressing room and like have full-on panic attacks and i know you get it and then i have to go and like pretend i'm happy again that is very disorienting so i feel grateful that that's not at play you know for this record of all records my gosh what do you do when you're feeling wobbly like what's your go-to you know it's really helpful to talk about it like even i was so looking forward to this podcast and this conversation with you because but i have found like i would have the expectation that we would talk about real shit on here.

6:39But I have found that because the material on the record, it hits certain themes that generally the conversations have been really beautiful and kind of deep and a little bit emotionally charged. Like, you know, the interviewers might have a story about grief or loss or infertility or something. And I have found kind of overall, it's been really beautiful. so I don't know what I'm scared about it's kind of been I like the the data doesn't support me being scared about how this is gonna go I should just relax it's funny the the the release itself the press tour could actually be the solution to the problem which is also the release itself yes I think that's all the medicine yeah one of my favorite expressions is never worry alone and like promoting this work is kind of like never worrying alone like you're going to be worrying aloud and I think that that's where the wisdom you know comes from sharing with other people and then just those little points of connection and always I mean this is always the case or at least it has been in my experience is that when you put name to the feelings those like the feelings of dread or the wobbliness or whatever it might be, the more you're just sort of making it real and something you're actually relating to, the less power it has.

8:05And so it's helpful, I think, to just be in conversation with it and about it. One of the venerable therapy cliches, which I happen to think is true, is, you know, name it to tame it. I came up with that.

8:22did you invent that was my move on this press tour is just to lay claim to like a bunch of random yeah it's like yeah that's mine

8:35yeah i do i think that is powerful and i think it's really true it's like it just is helpful to name it so let's talk about the record um okay good grief is not i mean it is a play on words but but you're actually kind of playing it straight. I think you mean that there is a good version of grief and there's goodness in grief itself. You know, the double meaning is helpful. It's like the exhaustion, the expression that, it's something my mom actually says all the time, oh, good grief, good grief. And I always feel so old-fashioned when it comes, but it does come out of my mouth when it's like, oh, you drop something, oh, good grief.

9:15Yeah, I really, my experience with grief, has been just utterly transformative. And even though there are things about the circumstances that the grief is born out of that I wish I could change, for example, I have two friends who passed away that I would love to still be on this earth with, but the experience of the grief has been so life-changing for me that I actually just feel really grateful for what has felt like a kind of miracle of walking through a tremendous amount of pain and loss, but really seeing just how much awe and mystery and what is life-affirming about death and just how complex the experience of loss can be.

10:15So in some ways, I wouldn't change it. Of course, I wish I had many friends, but I feel like I'm more the person that I'm meant to become because of losing them. And yeah, so I really thank them for what has changed in me, in my grief. What is the mechanism by which grief changes you. Andrea Gibson is this wonderful poet that I was involved with this documentary about their life called Come See Me in the Good Light. And one of the things Andrea says is that grief is a shortcut to the truth. And I think it's so tenderizing and it's so overwhelming that there's a kind of rawness about your expression that just comes to the surface.

11:03It's sort of like an impulsivity that gets released because you're sort of wrung out. And so I think that grief can bring you a kind of presence. There's like a presence to the present moment, an awakeness, an awareness of the present moment because the experience is so big and so overwhelming. I suppose I could see that going in another way where it could also feel very disorienting. But in my experience, it has been a reminder and the lesson is to stay really awake and aware of what is actually in front of you. This idea that we're not promised another day brings you to a sense of gratitude for the day you do have, which is the only day you have, which is the one you're in, in all of this, of course, being stuff that gets talked about so much in meditation practice.

12:05You know, just this moment, this breath, this, which I sort of love that it all orbits each other. Yeah, I was just going to go there because I know you have imbibed no small amount of Buddhism. And because I've been in the room with you while it's happened, listening to the same teachers, You know, and Joseph Goldstein, who's a meditation teacher for both of us, you know, he often quotes this expression from the Buddha, the words are becoming otherwise. Everything is always becoming otherwise. Everything's always changing. And grief as, you know, losing someone, as horrifying as that is, it does put you in touch with this non-negotiable truth.

12:52I don't know how you really wrap your arms around that unless you lose someone. Because we just live in a culture, I mean, globally. We live in denial that we're going to die. Of course we do. It's so understandable. Because if you sat around and thought about the fact that you're going to die all the time, it just seems so depressing and miserable. But I think that the privilege and the honor of witnessing someone sort of walking to the end of their days, yeah, I am a different person because of that. the bravery, the honesty, the generosity that came out of that, the surrender, the surrender of, it is out of our control.

13:46This life is out of our control. That is wild to really wrap your brain around. The trick in my experience is remembering or not forgetting because you can have this experience of watching somebody walk to the end of their day. So use your, your expression. And And then I have found that it's pretty easy to get pulled back into like distraction and persona and all the other forms of bullshit that I personally am capable of. And I mean, maybe making this record for you is a way of not forgetting. So much of this record felt like it kind of arrived from somewhere. It felt like a sort of transmission.

14:25and I think some of that is I was so raw but I also have more dead friends than I've ever had before and I'm just like thinking about where do we go what happens where are they you know like there's just a kind of that veil is thin thing it feels very real to me um and it does feel like a place to gather thoughts about this without really having any answers, but just to gather myself and put it somewhere. I do feel so grateful to have that expression, you know, available to me that I can put it in music. And that also feels like something that I can offer up, you know, to hopefully they will, it will feel comforting to other people because I know I'm not the only one holding it.

15:20That we're all, that's been another incredible gift of grief, of just seeing it is the invisible web that is in every room you'll ever be in, every street you ever walk down. People carry their loss. And most of them are never talking about it, but everybody's got it. Yes. And I think the fact that most of them are never talking about it is really painful for them, for us. And I think one of the acts of service you've done in making this record and the accompanying documentary. A few things before we hear from our sponsors. I just want to gently nudge you, if you haven't done it already, to go over to danharris.com and sign up for my new-ish meditation app, 10 % with Dan Harris.

16:01I am so proud of what we're doing over there. We've got all of these live video sessions at least once a week where you can meditate with me or one of our amazing teachers and then get your questions answered. We've also got courses from legendary teachers like Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein. We've got a growing library of guided meditations from teachers like Sharon and Joseph, but also Seven A. Selassie, Jeff Warren, and on and on. But really, the secret sauce is community. It is so hard to boot up or maintain a meditation practice, and one of the things that really helps is doing it in the carpool lane, and that's what we have set up over on the app.

16:41Go to danharris.com. There's a free 14-day trial if you want to check it out before you buy. We'll be right back after this.

16:51Just so people are familiar, and because I do want to talk about some of the messages and some of the songs, but I think there are three people you lost. There were three losses kind of in your mind as you wrote and recorded the record. you mentioned Andrea and but there were two two other people do you mind just kind of walking us through the players here all my dead friends as I joke about with my friends so many incredible dead friends um Chad Joseph is is uh the first one of my very close friends to have passed away um he was very beloved to you know my friend community I met him in college and there's a song on the record called Just a Kid that's really about Chad.

17:39Chad and I met when we both came back from our year abroad, studying abroad. He went to England. I was in Italy. And we commiserated about the fact that we got back from our entire year being gone. We went to UCLA and everyone was like, how was your summer? And we were both like, you know, I wasn't here at all last year. You haven't seen me in a year and a half. People are like, how was your summer? I'm like, oh, we're really making a big impression. But it was incredible that we were both having that experience. And then we really bonded. And he was just one of the funniest people I've ever known in my life.

18:18And so we just laughed a lot together. And we moved in. I was going to school for five years. So in my senior year, my fifth year, he was already working. And we got a little apartment together. And he was my first manager, my first road manager. He was with me as of the beginnings of my career were really taking root. Was at every show, holding the email list, sending out CDs to people. He was just an invaluable part of the beginning of my life as an artist. and really kind of sacrificed his own. He was working at a PR firm at that time and he quit his job to come with me on the road because I was so overwhelmed.

19:03And that, you know, that I sort of honor that he gave up your dream for mine is a lyric from that song. And it was just one of those pivotal moments where I'm like, I actually don't know what I would have done if he hadn't got on the plane and met me on tour, I think I would have, I really don't know what I would have done. It was life-saving. It felt life-saving in the moment. And we were just, yeah, friends were decades after that. And he died in 2020. So banner year, we all love that 2020. 20. And the other very dear friend that I lost is Gavin Creel. And he was a Broadway darling. And one of my most confusing relationships because I met him and I actually felt like I had fallen in love with him.

19:59And he's a very, very, very gay man. I was like, this is clearly not going to work out in my favor, but I really felt like I had fallen in love with his soul. and I did, I did. I fell in love with his soul and he taught me so much. He's, again, a very beloved member of the theater community and also in the West End and in London, but in New York theater, he was just one of those, oh boy, he was like a sparkler. He just, he brought light and generosity and fun and childlike joy into every room he was in. and then he was gone. It was so fast. Between his diagnosis and his death was just a few months.

20:44So it was a really disorienting... I was saying to someone, he feels like a dream. It was like the experience of him was so profound. And then it's like as surreal to me that he ever happened as it is that he's gone. It's a very strange experience because he wasn't in my life for, you know, 40 years. He was like, I got like 10 years with this guy. I mean, and I wish we would have grown old together, but what an amazing gift of a life. And Andrea, like surprisingly, really, they feel like a little trinity to me. There's a little trifecta of them. And they all have this, for those who are not familiar with Andrea Gibson's work, they were the poet laureate of Colorado unbelievable writer just one of the most profound thinkers when I think of Andrea's work I really I refer to them as a prophet I really think it's like spiritual guidance that I get from Andrea's work Andrea dealt with a lot of years of suicidality and major major depression and they talked about when they got their cancer diagnosis they went into this state of rapture and they for like two years they were in love with life and it was this strange thing they were always afraid of getting sick always like super hypochondriac and really afraid of getting sick and also had crazy depression and then got sick and it was like the greatest gift that ever happened to their life but this film about Andrea's life Come See Me in the Good Light is a really extraordinary so funny you wouldn't think that a queer poet's cancer journey would be like a great watch but it really really is it is so life affirming but the three of them those three people really carry a kind of magic each one of them carried a kind of magic that I almost can't believe was real and it just makes me want to live in their honor to the degree that I can.

23:03You talk about all of them when there's a real sparkle in your eye while you're doing it. And yet, if I understand correctly, when you were really going through it, there were times where you thought the grief would eat you alive. Yeah. It felt akin to when I would go into really deep anxious. like I had like my hurricane of anxiety, depression. It was almost like the feeling is too big to hold. Like I actually had the physical sensation of like, I'm gonna dissolve into this bigger experience. And the wonderful insanity of those kinds of experiences is that the truth is, is you don't dissolve.

23:53If you can just stay, you will survive. It is painful, but the grief won't eat you alive. It won't. And the more you allow it to be, the less power it has over you. I think that's true. But yeah, I remember being upstate and calling my husband and just being like, it's making me terrible. I didn't want to go to sleep. I was afraid. I didn't want to turn the TV off. And I was just really afraid of my grief. And it was, but it won't ultimately make you dissolve what you discover is that like there is no bottom to any of it it's just that incredible free fall that we're in the groundlessness that gets discussed so often the surrender that is necessary in order to relate to what is actually happening yeah i'm sorry it was so hard and and i feel like um what you're describing and displaying here is is courage to just sit with it to feel what you don't think you can take i feel really lucky to have discovered another one of my great discoveries i discovered lexapro which was really helpful for the world.

25:35But I, oh my God, I don't know what I would do without these other resources. Like, you know, I'm someone who takes medication, but I also am a meditator. I am in therapy very regularly. You know, I use the tools at my disposal to manage what sometimes feels unmanageable. And it's not linear. It's not always pretty. It's better than the alternative, which for me was always like a kind of a frozen fearful state which I don't I don't I don't experience that nearly as often as I used to let's talk about Lexapro so if I understand correct just for people who don't know Lexapro is an antidepressant um uh I have I just want to be super clear to you and to everybody else I take an antidepressant and have for decades so I'm not asking these questions from a standpoint of unfamiliarity or judgment.

26:32When you started taking it, if memory serves, you had some resistance that it might like fuck up your art. I had so much resistance. It was more than fuck up my art. It was like, who am I if I can't handle my life? Who am I if I'm trying to suppress or put distance between what is clearly a very natural state of being? I mean, And I've always been someone, I don't even like taking aspirin. Like, I'm just like, I like to know what my body is feeling. And I think that my deepest fear around taking medication was that something would feel, some part, essential part of myself would feel suppressed, that I would feel distance.

27:15And I actually, and I talk about this a lot, is that what I experienced being on medication to feel like is it was a return to myself, that I started recognizing myself again rather than who I had started living with and making, you know, and being around all the time, which was a very fearful, kind of paranoid, depressed, anxious person who was having ruminating thoughts, who was fixating on weird problems, just like terrible sleep. You know, it was just like not a good quality of life. The quality of my life is so much better on medication. And if I'm honest, I still have that. I'm curious to ask you this question.

28:10There's a part of me that's like, am I ever going to get like enlightened enough to get off meds? Do you think about that? I think about it quite a bit. Not only am I ever going to get enlightened enough to get off meds, but, you know, they didn't have meds until recently. And so am I just a wuss for not being able to manage what people have managed for millennia? But I think what I've come to is a different POV. I'd be curious about yours. But like I use a telephone and I go to the dentist and I drive a car, all relatively recent discoveries. And so why would I not avail myself of these new technologies which can relieve suffering?

28:55In my conversations with Joseph Goldstein, his point of view is like you should definitely avail yourself of it if you need it. You know, like we all have different nervous systems and brain chemistry. And if there's medicine that can treat that to to do exactly what you describe, which is to I sometimes when when I'm not on the medication or under medicated, it feels like somebody's pulled the fire alarm in my nervous system. Yeah, nothing fucking good is going to happen in that state. And and so if if if you can medicate for it, go for it. And I'll just tell you one little story and I'm talking too much.

29:33But right before a dinner that I think you were at a couple of months ago, I can't remember if you were there or not, but you were invited. I made a really big impression. Yeah. It was like when you were in Italy for a year and I didn't notice, you know. It's okay. It's okay. It's kind of my plate. You were definitely invited. It was a dinner with a bunch of people that you know. Joseph was staying at our house for a couple of days. And right before we were supposed to leave for this dinner, I had a really, really stressful phone call and my wife was worried about me and she told Joseph and I stepped out of a meeting and Joseph and my wife were both like, we think you should take a Klonopin.

30:18I love it so much. that's a long way of saying you know i do think there's i think there's a pretty good case to be made for medication if done wisely i deeply agree i just was off it mostly because i was if i'm honest lazy that i just didn't want to make a follow-up appointment with my psychiatrist i see my therapist almost weekly but um i gotta you know i'm making another appointment i gotta go to the pharmacy and get so i was like rationing my meds because i was like getting to the end of my bottle of Lexapro. And then I'm just like, I watch the panic level start to rise, just like you're saying, where it's just like my state of agita is just increasing and increasing.

31:04And I'm just watching myself become a little less capable of coping. Things knock me over just a little more easily. And I'm like, why am I doing that? What is the point? You know, I think it is, if it's a tool that betters your quality of life and makes you more readily available to do the things you do, which I know that for me, it does matter to me to be of service in this life. And I know I can't be of service if I am so distracted by my own, whatever, you name it. So it's helpful for me to get out of my own way so I can go be in my life in a way that I think is helpful. What is service if not enlightenment?

31:49And so what the medication is allowing. It's not the wrong formulation of the question is, will I ever get sufficiently enlightened that I don't need the medication? It's if I don't have the medication, will I ever achieve any degree of enlightenment at all? Yeah, totally. Totally. So just jumping on the timeline there, you made a reference of going off of it. So if memory serves, you were kind of on for a couple of years and then off right around the time that you recorded this record, not because you, as you just described, not because you made some affirmative decision to go off of it, but because you were procrastinating or something.

32:27And then you went back on more recently. Is that correct timeline? Going off of it wasn't while I was making the record it was just actually just a couple months ago oh yeah so kind of just letting it I did try one other time though maybe you're remembering a conversation we had yeah I did try one other time to get off of it and it was just it did not work and I think there was a part of me I think it was about a year in um there's a part of me that just wanted to know like what's in there and turns out, yeah, pretty uncomfortable stuff. So your initial fear was that if you're on medication, it would block your ability to make art.

33:10You hadn't made much music for a while until this record. There was like a four or five, maybe longer year interregnum. And you said that the well had run dry, I think. So, yeah, how do you explain all of that? I really experienced 2020 as like a before and after. I think I was stunned into silence, quite honestly. Like I was so overwhelmed by what we were watching happen with the world and politically. And I think the, and so much what felt like cruelty. and I was just stunned. I had nothing to say about it. I couldn't metabolize the experience enough to make anything out of it. And I remember feeling sort of jealous of artist friends who were like making, they were doing online concerts and doing things and I just had nothing to say.