How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb

27:34Like they're kind of scary at some level. It's your profession after all. But I did the same thing in a lot of my relationships. The lovely people in some cases, some cases not, but in most cases, fortunately for me, lovely people, but there was this sense that like if something felt like a little bit of an upstate, kind of like a bit more of autonomic arousal or a lot more autonomic arousal that it had this kind of magnetic quality to it. Whereas I think, and I'm not joking or lying here, I think owning a bulldog taught me how to really save or relax. I'm not saying this just to highlight like Costello again, I mean, I observed his relationship to the world and the Bulldogs contract with its owner is an amazing one that I think I learned a lot from.

28:23The contract is I will die for you. I will literally give up my life to protect you, Andrew. But if that's not on the line, I'm not gonna do anything. Yeah. We're just gonna sit here and enjoy the sunshine. Right. We're just gonna breathe and we're gonna eat food. Right. Friends are coming over and I'll get excited. And I'm not trying to make too much of this. I really noticed, I was like, wow, he needs so little to be blissful. And yet I know that if push came to shove, like he's on my side, we've got each other's backs. As opposed to, let's talk about a more human contract of this picture or story of a couple that they have about themselves.

29:06Ride or die is something people say a lot nowadays. It's beautiful concept, right? Loyalty. Like you're in it together no matter what. But there's a calm version of that, like ride or die. And then there's like ride or die. Like we'll take on anything. We'll bring in chaos. We'll be the chaos and we just don't quit. Very different activation states. Oh, absolutely. And it took me 49 years to learn this. I see it in professional relationships too. People want the exciting thing, the big build. And then they're like it's the chaos of like, oh, this founder left in this person. And it's like, well, of course it started in drama.

29:39Alma, it's gonna end in drama. Does this some of this resonate? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, two things. One is that there's this concept of charaphobia, which is kind of fear of joy. And so so many people, because they grew up in a way where whenever, let's say the parent was reliable in moments, right? Like at certain times, and then they were unreliable or they were really calm, but then they would blow up. And you never knew what was gonna happen. It was like you were walking on eggshells the whole time, right? So you're very afraid of anything that goes well, you think the other shoe is going to drop.

30:12Like at any moment. So you don't want to pick something that, again, outside of your awareness, like you don't pick the calm partner because it feels too good, like something's gonna go wrong. So I'll pick the volatile partner because I'm prepared for that level of volatility, right? And so people sabotage all the time whether it's about a job or a partner or whatever they want, they think, I am not going to go there because it's not safe to feel joy. Because something will go wrong and I will be crushed and it will be harder to have the experience of joy and to have it crushed than to never feel the joy.

30:54So there was a woman that I wrote about in my book who she wouldn't let herself feel any joy or get excited about a partner or excited about She wanted to be an artist and doing her art and things were going really well. And then she'd self -sabotage. It's like, you can't fire me, I quit, right? It's like, I'm going to create the bad thing to happen to myself because if it happens from the universe, it's going to feel even worse. So I think we need to kind of really be aware there are lots of people out there who are terrified of good things happening, even though they say they desperately want good things to happen.

31:29And so they make bad things happen or they make sure good things don't happen to them because it feels so uncomfortable to sit in that space of The other she's gonna drop at any moment and I can't deal with that But the other thing I want to say about this this slow burn type of thing is there was a study that was done that I wrote about one of my books Where they did a longitudinal study and they looked at people over 20 years and they followed up with them every five years from the first date to where they are later and And they had them instead of like historically saying, you know, when you ask people in relationships and you say, what was it like when you first met?

32:03And they'll tell you some story, but it's retrospective. It's not like you weren't there at the time. You're sort of telling it through the lens of where you are now. What was great about this study was people wrote down at the time. Here's what? Here's how I feel. So people who were, let's say, got married and were happy would say almost unilaterally. Like, there was so much chemistry. We had such a good time on the first date. It was amazing. Whereas at the time they might have said, like, yeah, it was okay. Maybe I'll see this person again. Fine. Like, no butterflies or, you know, whatever.

32:36But that's not the story. They're telling themselves about it. Now, people who either are unhappily together or no longer together would say, yeah, there was nothing there. There was no chemistry. I didn't really like the person. But at the time they might have said, like, wow, I'm really interested in this person. it was like we had so much chemistry. So we change our stories based on our present experience. And we think we're telling an accurate version of what actually happened. And the reason I bring this up is because since people who are sort of happy couples tell these stories to other people, we think in our culture that if you go on a first date and you don't have that immediate spark that it's not worth it.

33:18Like don't go on a second date. And what happens is sometimes a lot of the time when you have that immediate spark, it doesn't mean what you think it means. It's not that a spark is bad. It means that you really need to see what it means. And it's not that not having a spark is bad. If you go on a date and you feel like I, it was a nice conversation and I had a good enough time, go spend another hour with this person. Just go on another date with them and see what happens. But we don't do that because we have the solution that you can just go back on an app where there's so many people out there And so we try to optimize as opposed to saying what would it be like I had I had I felt good when I was with this person I didn't feel that rush But I felt pretty good.

34:04So I think I'll go see what that's like again And that should be our bar. Not like do I feel this rush? Do I feel like this is amazing? But did I have a good enough time? Sure, let me go see what that's like. Yeah, one certainly wouldn't want to be bored in somebody else's presence, but calm seems like a good touch point. Yes. To look for as opposed to this activation state. You know, maybe it's the neurobiologist in me and I'm guilty of also working on this autonomic arousal thing for so many years. This seesaw in us of being like up states that can either be stress or bliss and down states, which can either be depression and fatigue or it can just be like pleasant relaxation.

34:48The label becomes critical, right? Alert and stress versus alert and elated is the same level of alertness to very different things. same, you know, depressed versus peaceful when relax at, you know, and looking for, or trying to figure out what sorts of interactions bring about that, that kind of even seesaw that might be best, not one or the other, maybe a little airing even a little bit more towards peace. Yes. And when I see couples who come in and they've been married for a long time now, and they say, you know, well, I'll say, what is the origin story? How did you meet? What was that like?

35:26What were you attracted to in the other person? And so often I'll hear words like it was so exciting. I found this person so excited. And it's like that's the very thing that what you thought was excitement was actually volatility, or was actually sort of anxiety as opposed to that sense of you can be calm and feel excited about the other person. So we're talking about a neurological state, right? Your nervous system, and then we're talking about your interpretation of what that means. So sometimes calmness is exciting. Sometimes excitement is anxiety -provoking. And so you have to be able to tell the difference between the two.

36:10I'll just say yes and yes to both those statements. I think I think peace is, It's not everything, but it's necessary, but not sufficient. As we say, if I may, I'd like to get a little deep in abstract along this dimension of why people are so much more willing to stay in a state that doesn't feel good versus this risk, the unknown and the opportunity to win in relationship in life, in career, et cetera, because I do believe that. I happen to be reading, it's a hard book, a genuinely difficult book, but I'm really enjoying it. I'm reading Ernst Becker's, The Denial of Death. I highly recommend it to everyone.

37:00One of Pulitzer, after all, he don't need my endorsement. And, you know, I mean, the central thesis of the book, right, is that we're a weird species because we understand that we're going to die at some point. We're all going to die. And that humans go through these very complicated gymnastics related to ego and symbols and we create notions of meaning and story to try and distract us basically from this really scary reality. It's terrifying, right? It's terrifying. Nobody really understands or knows what happens next. We can't be sure. And I have this idea in mind as you're telling me that indeed people are willing to stay in a set of circumstances that don't work for them.

37:40Even ruminating on the mistakes that got them there for a very long time. Willingly, when all they need to do is make some new choices that they're fully capable of making. And I wonder whether or not it's because they're alive now. They know they're quote unquote safe now. like they're not dead. I mean the number of people I know who stayed in circumstances that didn't work for them for so long professionally, relationally. It's like how do they do that? And I understand sometimes there's kids sometimes there's financial issues but there's it's always the case that they've eventually gotten out thank goodness and they always say I wish I had done it so much earlier and I wonder whether or not as a biological and psychological being we do this because is we're thinking, well, I'm alive now, I'm breathing now, I'm, quote unquote, safe now, but I don't know what's gonna happen if I make this other choice.

38:34Like it defies logic, but at the same time, if one just assumes that our biggest fear, deep down and our unconscious is fear of death, we'll pretty much stay anywhere where we're continuing to be alive and not like in the moment of fearing death. I'm sorry to get a little philosophical here, but I think this unconscious thing, when we make a lot has been made of it, the word means, okay, well, it's happening, but we don't know what's happening, but like, what are we really afraid of? And I do think ultimately we're all just really afraid of death. I don't think we're afraid of death. I think we're afraid of not having lived.

39:08So what I mean by that is I think we deny death. We're all sort of death deniers, like we know it's out there somewhere, but we don't know when or how it's going to happen. And so we just pretend because there's no real, no pun intended, but deadline, right? And so we just think sort of we know intellectually we don't have forever, but we kind of think we do. And so when you think about sort of the stages of psychosocial development, you know, you start with, you know, these conflicts that you have to work through at every stage of life. And sort of the one where your sort of last stage is integrity versus despair.

39:43So integrity is if you have lived a life where you don't have a lot of regret, You feel like you lived the kind of life that you wanted, you accomplished the things that you wanted to accomplish for the most part, whether that's relationally, professionally, use a combination there. You have a sense of integrity at the end of your life. If you didn't, you have this sense of despair. People who work through that and have integrity are not afraid of death. The people who are in despair are very afraid of death because they have so many regrets and they can't go back, you don't get a redo. And so I like to, in psychotherapy, really remind people that they need to keep death, awareness, sitting on one shoulder, not to be morbid, but to actually make you live more fully.

40:32If you are aware of death, if you really look death right in the eye, you have more intentionality when you wake up every day. You say, I don't have forever. So it's not like some time in the future, I might die. It's like you could die today tomorrow. You know anything could happen. And I think you know when I sigh right about this in my book where I was seeing this woman who was in her early 30s and she was diagnosed with cancer and Everyone thought she was gonna be fine and then there was this sort of rare recurrence and When she was newly married and her whole life was like Turned upside down and she really made me as the therapist look death in the eye in that way You know how like you want to say something like you know she was talking about the things that people would say to her because we all have this Death denial and they would say did you get a second opinion as if no she's not gonna get a second opinion about whether she's gonna die right You know they'll say things like well these experimental treatments might work you know anything to deny the reality that She was going to die and very soon and nobody wanted to sit with her in that and it was my job to do that even her husband had had trouble sort of sitting with her in that in the beginning, right?

41:50And there was this one moment, this beautiful moment between them that she came in and told me about where he was like, you know, doing something and trying to relax and he was a great, like incredibly supportive of her. And she came in and said, hey, there's this thing and I read about this and I want to talk to you about this and and he said like can't we just have one night off from cancer and she said I don't get any nights off from cancer. There's no nights off, right? And I understand both perspectives on that but it brought up this beautiful conversation between them that really helped them to think about how much do we let death in and how much do we let sort of life or whatever's left in.

42:36And how do we let death inform the aliveness that we still have? So I think it's really important that when why do people stay in relationships too long? Why do they stay in jobs too long? Why do they make choices that are not serving them and that they will later regret? It's because they are in full -blown death denial. And I think when people really acknowledge their mortality, It's one of the most healthy, invigorating things that they can bring into their lives. When people say, what is the opposite of depression? It's not happiness, it's vitality. And where do we get vitality from knowing that we have a limited time here?

43:18And we get to choose how we spend it. I agree 100%. This is something I think about constantly, although I've never looked at it through the lens that you just presented it. And I love what I just learned from you, which is that vitality is the state, the state of being vitality is so key. I think about death probably more than I should, because for a kid who wasn't from the inner city or in the military, I've just had a lot of friends die, a lot of suicides, a lot of drug stuff, unfortunately. and all three of my scientific advisors, suicide cancer, cancer. I was very close with all of them. And I got to take a bite of the second one.

44:05That was a rough conversation. Anyone that's ever had a conversation with somebody where it's a goodbye conversation. I had to do the like, this is it. And it was brutal, but I don't want to well up. I've cried before in this podcast. I don't feel like doing it today. I don't have a problem crying from time to time on camera. but I don't want the plot line here to shift too much. But I started after that conversation to adopt a practice. I do this yoga knee -dra, non -sleep deep resting every day for about 10 to 30 minutes. And there's this moment right at the beginning. I'm supposed to take a deep breath and then a long exhale to relax your body and then you go into listening to the script.

44:48And ever since that conversation, I've insisted on doing that. And as I do it, I remind myself, this is if I'm awake, or if it's not an accident that happens very fast This is probably what it's gonna feel like to like die And so just trying to like I'm sorry. I like this idea of reading myself for death every day Um as a means to access what you're talking about which is it trying to live better? Right again, not to be more, but just try to like yes I'm like a biological vessel at some point my body my brain or both will just give out or bullet bus or cancer is kind of what I always say, something will take me out, and there'll be this final, and that's it.

45:29And the closer that I feel like that we can get to that understanding and be like, okay, super scary, and I'm not there now. So I'm gonna go back into the world and do the best I can. And it doesn't have to be scary. It sounds like you're aiming toward an acceptance of death, Which is I think the way that we get motivated to live. So it's not fear of death. That's not what I'm suggesting at all. I don't think we should be afraid of death. I think we should say, we get this precious time. However long we get, everybody gets their own amount of time in this life. And so it's an acceptance of that.

46:07It's not a fear of that. And I think about how when people are afraid of death, they do things that are counterproductive. Like a lot of affairs happen in the wake of a death. So, a parent dies. And somebody then feels like, oh, I don't have a lot of time left. Am I really happy in this relationship? Am I really alive? Am I really living? And then they go and do something like have an affair. Because they want that sense of vitality, because they're doing it out of fear, not out of, oh, I accept that death is a part of our existence. And if I'm not feeling alive, is it because of my relationship or my marriage?

46:45or is it because I am not actively doing things in my life to create that sense of vitality? So very often in the wake of some kind of brush with death, like some kind of closeness, like maybe you had a brush with death or maybe a parent died or someone close to you died or a friend or a sibling. So often people act out and they do these things to create this sense of, I'm alive as opposed to saying, wait, what do I need to look at in my life that will make me feel more alive that is not self -sabotaging? I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens.

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50:27Again, that's DavidProtein .com slash Huberman. So much to go into here. This thing about vitality is so key. A friend recently said to me something, he was talking about how gosh, there's like these certain interactions in life that are like, I feel like they like pull me in, I don't like them. And then it just like really takes away from what I know I should be doing. And he said, you know, you have to do things that energize you. And immediately I thought, yes, and be very careful about the things that activate. Oh, it's like there's this difference between activation and being activated versus being energized.

51:10I mean, it's a little bit semantic, right? But I feel like something that energizes me is like I love cephalopods. I used to have cuttlefish in my lab. I love octopuses, and by the way, it's octopuses as the plural folks. Not octopi, we'd go into a whole thing here, but I won't. And, you know, looking at one of those guys or gals solving a puzzle, they just energizes me. In a way, I feel it in my body. It's energy that I can use for other things. It's, you know, it's like an inspiration for me. And there are many other things that do that. And then there are things that activate us, like where we, it's like a stress response.

51:47It's a rousal, but it's negative ailments. Right. It's draining. It's like pulling and it's taking from these things that energize us. And I feel like it's being able to notice those subtleties is hard in real time. And but I feel like vitality is about the things that energize us. Right. And so when you talk about that draining kind of activation, sometimes what we do when that happens is we go numb Right, so we don't want to feel anything. So you know, there's this great expression that the like scrolling through the internet when people mindlessly do that It's a colleague of mine said it's the most effective non -prescription pain killer out there Can you repeat that because I want people to understand this?

52:26So yeah, so it's the most effective non -prescription pain killer out there, right? And so it's interesting when you think about numbness because people think that numbness is the absence of feelings But actually numbness is the sense of being overwhelmed by too many feelings and so you're shutting down So when people say, oh, I'm numb. I'm not feeling anything Actually, you're feeling so much and you're feeling flooded. You're feeling overwhelmed and so we need to figure out What are you feeling? So it's actually a state of a rousal that you can't handle. And so then you're shutting down, but it's not that you're not having feelings.

53:07You're having so many feelings that you can't tolerate it. And that is not, you know, that is not the, you know, people say, oh, I'm feeling numb. I'm feeling nothing. No, we need to figure out what is so overwhelming to your nervous system right now. That's so important. I hope people will listen to that a hundred times because, you know, we've heard I've heard so much about dopamine hits that I think people have lost sight of the fact that when you're online and you're just awash and all this information and videos, you're not getting those hits. You're in the post dopamine hit trough and we've been there for a long period of time unless we're judicious about our use of social media an hour or three minutes or fifteen minutes, whatever it is.

53:50But hours upon hours there's no dopamine hit anymore. The peak is gone, you're in the trough and that's why it feels kind of like how did at all that time go by. The importance of this really can't be overstated. I think that we hear so much about fight or flight and the stress response that I think people forget that another component of the stress response of drama, of being a wash and all this information and movies and politics and violence and sex and all that stuff coming at us at once as we just scroll our thumbs is this thing of brachycardia. You know, there's this phenomenon where when we're stressed our heart rate actually slows down.

54:32And that's the kind of numbing and you just kind of blanking out. And I think that's a lot of what people are starting to experience with a lot of hydroma input. Yeah, I see that in couples a lot where they come in and one person is saying, you know, like, I feel nothing. I don't know what this other person so upset about, right? And then when you really get into it, it's like this person's feeling all kinds of themes. And it's really important that we understand, you know, when we are shut down versus when we are calm. Those are two very different states. Could you go into that a little bit further?

55:12Yeah, well, here's an example. So a couple comes in. Let's say it's a heterosexual couple, but it could be any couple. Often it is the woman in the couple who will say something to her partner. like I just feel like I can't reach you. I feel like we're very disconnected. I want you to tell me how you feel. And because of our cultural stigma around Ben showing emotion, he has told himself like, yeah, this bothers me or that bothers me or I'm unhappy in this way, but I don't feel anything. I'm fine. Our mayor is just good. So he doesn't even understand why he's there. And he thinks he's there for her because she insisted on it.

55:51And so when we finally get to maybe something that he's feeling and he finally does open up, it's so interesting because maybe he's sharing something very vulnerable or maybe he tears up a little bit so that you can tell like your body will tell you what you're feeling, even if you aren't aware of it, you see, okay, there's some moisture there in his eyes or maybe a tear falls or maybe he actually starts crying. And her reaction and her whole reason for bringing him in was, you know, I need you to open up to me, I want to feel connected to you. I want to understand your inner life more. Well, he does it.

56:24And she then looks at me like a deer in headlights like, oh, wow, I don't feel safe when he doesn't open up to me. But I also don't feel safe when he's being vulnerable in this way. And these are sort of gender stereotypes that we think we might not fall prey to, but we do. And so it's so interesting that often men are the ones who seem sort of numb or calm, right? Which are two, again, very different things in the relationship. But that's not really the case. It's that there's no room for him to express anything. So he has to kind of push everything down, probably, again, outside of his awareness.

57:03And then the couple feels disconnected in both of them are unhappy. This idea that more words means more emotional. I don't buy it. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's interesting because men will come in if I'm seeing them alone and they'll often say something like, I've never told anyone this before. And they literally mean I've never told anyone this before because when men hang out, they're not, it's not the same sort of level of, let's talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, right? Women will come in and say something like, I've never told anyone this before except for my mother, my sister, my best friend.

57:45Right? So they've told maybe one, two, or three people, but they feel like they haven't told anyone because for women, that's kind of not telling anyone. Now you have people concerned. So if a woman says to me, I didn't tell anyone, that means she only told four people. I don't mean secrets. I mean, like something about themselves where they feel maybe hesitant to share that or they feel ashamed about that or they're not sure about something. So you can see that difference. But I also think it happens very early. So I'm the mom of a boy. I mean, he's now a teenager. But it's interesting because when I didn't notice this till I was raising a boy, and I grew up with a brother, but I didn't notice it, that when he, let's say, he would like fall on the playground, right?

58:32And like, like two or three years old. Everybody would say to him or the boys around him, like, like, oh, it's fine, brush it off, you're good, you're good, right? Even if he was like in pain. And if a girl falls and she's in pain, that they're like, oh, honey, come here. How are you? Let's see. How are you feeling about this? Are you hurt? Are you okay? So very early on, they get these messages. Like, girls can talk about it. Boys can't talk about it. I remember when my son was, he was a basketball player and in high school. And he had, or this was in actually middle school. And in a practice he got, you know, pushed down and his arm was kind of like not right.

59:12And, you know, everyone was like, get back up. Just get, it's fine. Well, his arm was like, hang on, hanging off, right? And so, you know, I was like, no, I think he needs to go to the ER. And of course, he was mortified that I said that, but in fact, he had broken his arm. So, that's the difference. If a girl had fallen down and her arm was like that, people would say like, oh, why don't you get a checked out? So what happens when these people get into adult relationships? And this was what they were told about words and talking about things. You really see those differences. But the other thing I want to say about words is women are brought up to think that whenever you have a feeling you should share it.

59:53And my response to that is no. And people say, what do you mean you're a therapist? What do you mean don't share your feelings? You don't need to share every thought or feeling that crosses your mind unfiltered with your partner. That is not healthy communication. Healthy communication means we have filters and we get to think about, and we call it mentalizing, how will what I'm about to say land on the other person? It's not like you're regurgitating all of your thoughts onto the other person. They're just supposed to deal with them. It's about relationally thinking, how will this person respond to that?

1:00:32Not like you have to take care of their feelings, but is it kind? Is it true? Is it useful? Does it meet those three criteria? And if it doesn't, why am I talking? Why am I sharing this? You said it, not me.

1:00:51But I'll wager a theory that I think that some people when they feel something, the kind of relief that comes from evacuating that feeling or trying to evacuate it with words, feels reflexively better to them than sitting with it internally. So I think people when they feel in emotion, I think sometimes they feel like if they just talk about it or evacuate it, then it's like, get rid of it. But they forget that it has an impact. Yes. And what you're talking about is projective identification. So it projection, right, is when you're feeling angry about something. Say you had like your boss did something to you at work.

1:01:38And you know, they upset you in some way or they were, you know, unkind. and you're angry about, or they're gonna make you work all night, and you're really pissed about that, right? So you're angry, so you come home, and you end up yelling at your partner, right? So you're projecting, you're really mad at your boss, but all of a sudden you're yelling at your partner, you're angry at your partner. That's projection, you're projecting one feeling about someone onto a different person that had nothing to do with the situation. Projective identification is a psychological process where you actually insert your feeling into the other person.

1:02:16So you're angry about something that happened at work. It's not that you are now angry at your partner. It's that you make your partner angry. It's like a hot potato. Like you take your feelings and you toss them to someone else because you can't tolerate the discomfort of that feeling. So I don't want to deal with the feelings. So I'm going to say something to you that's going to make you angry, right? And now they have to hold all the anger. You feel great. You're fine because you're not holding the anger anymore. And now they're the ones who can't sleep. They're the ones who are upset. They're the ones who have to deal with what you couldn't tolerate.

1:02:50So again, we have to think about, you know, do we need to, like, why are we saying what we're saying? Can we be more intentional about how we communicate? Which doesn't mean you have to walk through a minefield. It just means that you have to be more aware of your feeling state and owning your feeling state and making sure that you aren't using other people in your environment to release your feeling state to something else. That you need to learn how you can shift your own feeling state to one feels better for you. I love that. I um, I realized recently that thinking is something that we can practice.

1:03:30I, for all the tools and protocols that you know, talked about on this podcast and elsewhere, where you know, like physiological size and morning sunlight and working out and so on to cardio and cold. And all the things I realized recently, like spending five minutes just thinking about something and really trying to work through it linearly, like a challenge, like a life challenge is so valuable. And I didn't come up with this on my own. I now have a practice of like when something feels irritating or activating. I'll just like stop, put everything away and I just sit and think like what's going on here.

1:04:12And inevitably there's some like some growth and understanding at the end of that. But it's hard work like to think like what's going on here? Am I activated because it's true? Am I activated because it's false? Am I you know like having to sort all that you might think well who has the time for this? But actually I would argue you don't have the time to not do it. I think that's the difference between reacting and responding. So often what we do is we react to something and that's not process, not thought through. And again, it doesn't have to take like you're saying. It doesn't have to take a long time to just even count to five and breathe and see, you know, because reacting, reacting means acting again.

1:04:53So you are normally when you're reacting and it's like that zero to 60, you're acting on something that happened in the past and you're layering it on to whatever's happening in the present. So you're having a big reaction to something. We like to say if it's historical, if it's hysterical, it's historical. Meaning if you're, and by hysterical, I mean if you're having a big reaction, there's probably something from your past, some reaction that is visceral to you that you're having. There's getting layered on to this current situation experience problem and you don't realize it. So that's reacting.

1:05:28You're acting again. You're acting on something that happened in the past. If it's hysterical, it's historical. Responding is I'm going to take a breath. I'm having a big reaction. I'm going to sit for a minute, again, regulating your nervous system. And now I can kind of think about this differently. So we need space between, you know, there's that famous Victor Frankl quote of, you know, between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space lies our choice in our freedom. That's a paraphrase of it, but you need that space between the stimulus, whatever the thing is that activated you and your response.

1:06:05So that's the difference between reacting and responding. I totally agree. And yet life happens in real time. I mean, parents with kids, they get a big, them up and they're working and there's stuff coming through on the phone. My question is, do you think nowadays there's too much communication bombardment through text, social media, phone and real life that we've eliminated all the space. I think what we've eliminated is there's so much more space in a face -to -face conversation. So when I have young therapy clients who are maybe in their early 20s and I had one client who was telling me this story and therapy a while ago and now I understand what this means, but this was several years ago.

1:06:53And she was telling it like this. She had her thumbs in the air and she said, and then I said, and then he said, and then I said, and I'm thinking, what is she doing? And then I realized, I said, wait, you had this conversation on text? And she said, yes, and it was really important conversation. And I said, I was trying to explain to her why they were missing certain cues. They were missing what it feels like to be in the space together. They were missing the experience of looking in each other's eyes, of seeing facial expressions in body language, and she said, oh no, but we also used emojis.

1:07:26I had to explain to her why an emoji does not replace face -to -face interaction. Face -to -face interaction slows you down, right? You can just text anything, and you don't realize there's another person at the other side of this on their phone who is reacting to your reaction. And I think that, you know, this is when we go back to comments sections. You don't realize like there's another person out there. We know that. But when there are so many times that we would have a very different kind of conversation with our partner, with family members, with friends, in our workplace, in comment sections, if we could remember that there's a human there.

1:08:08And the easiest way to do that is to see someone like this looking across the table at you. We can't always do that. But I think when you're having important conversations that we should remember, wait, this probably isn't appropriate to talk about on text, even though people think that, well, of course, it's so much more efficient. Actually, it's not because now you're going to have conflict, now you're going to have misunderstandings, and now you're going to spend all this time trying to repair the rupture that just happened because you had the conversation on text. I refuse to argue over text.

1:08:39I just won't have an argument over text. And I'll say to people, you know, because like I have a client and he's always sort of, he says, well, I just get pulled into it with my girlfriend. And I'm like, really? Does somebody have a gun to your head? Right? And this is where I think change, you know, we talk about what we want to accomplish in therapy. And it's changed. It's not just coming in and downloading the problem of the week and leaving and downloading the problem of the week again and leaving. I like to say that insight is the booby prize of therapy that you can have all the insight in the world, but if you don't make change out in the world, the insight is useless.

1:09:14So someone will say, oh, I got into that argument with my, you know, whoever, my partner over the weekend, and I'll say, well, did you do something different? They'll say, well, no, but I understand why. Great. That's good that you understand why, but you need to do something different because we're all doing this dance with someone else, right? And if you change your dance steps, some people say, I want the other person to change. And I said, well, you can't change the other person, but you can influence the other person by making changes to yourself. So if you change your dance steps, the other person will either have to change their dance steps too, because you're not doing that old dance with them anymore, or they'll leave the dance floor.

1:09:55And people are so afraid the person will leave the dance floor. And it's like, well, if they're not going to dance with you in a way that is the kind of relationship that you want, it's okay that they leave the dance floor. go find someone who will dance with you in the way you want to dance. When it comes to behavioral change, are you a fan of small one -degree turns or I'll propose it an alternative not as a counter, but just to explore next. Do you encourage your clients, do you call them patients or clients by the way? I don't think either is a good word. I think it's so interesting because I think that it's just, we're just humans and I don't mean to sound all woo -woo about this, but I really feel like the relationship that you have in that room, it's so unique and I have not figured out a way to describe it.

1:10:47I don't think client or patient quite does it, but for simplicity's sake, we use either. Okay. Thank you. I've always wondered about that. Do you recommend that your clients make specific subtle changes, behavioral changes, when they're after they have an insight, or maybe even before they have an insight. I think the reason that people have so much trouble changing is because the step that they've chosen is too big of a step to take it once, that you need small manageable steps. And I think people also forget, this is why New Year's resolutions tend not to last very long, because change is a process.

1:11:26And there's a chapter in my book called How Humans Change. And I think it's so important for people to understand that there are stages of change. And it starts with pre -contemplation, where you don't even realize that you're thinking about making a change. You think like something's not right, but I don't really need to change. Like something's just not right in the world. It's my partner. It's my child. It's my whoever, right? Then there's contemplation, which is, oh, Oh, maybe I could make a change, but I'm not quite ready to do it. And that's when people usually they come to therapy somewhere around pre -contemplation.

1:12:03There's kind of between pre -contemplation and contemplation. Like, something's not right, they come to therapy. We get them to contemplation, which is like, oh, maybe I'm contemplating making some changes. And then there's preparation, which is you're taking some steps to prepare for the change. So it's not like I'm gonna dive into the deep end of the pool. It's like, oh, maybe I need to take some swimming lessons or maybe I need to get a swimsuit or maybe I need you know Whatever it is like I need to prepare to make this change and then there's action where you actually make the change and people think That's the last step that's action.

1:12:36No the last age is maintenance and maintenance is how do you maintain the change and Maintenance does not mean that you are Perfectly maintaining the change it's more like shoots and ladders if you remember that game where like kind of you go up and then you go down. If you, you can make mistakes during this time because you're forming a new habit, you're forming a new way of being. And until it becomes familiar going back to our discussion about how the familiar feels really good to us and the unfamiliar feels really scary, the new thing will take a while to feel familiar. So let's say that you say like, I'm gonna eat healthy.

1:13:10And that means that I'm not going to, you know, like eat an entire hog and dog or something when I'm sad. Then I'm gonna do something different. Well, sometimes when you're sad, you might do that again. But then you don't self -legulate. So it's not like, oh, it failed. So forget it. I'm not going to, like, I failed and I'm not able to make this change. No. Or you don't say, like, oh, I'm so terrible and that was awful and I'm so weak. Self -legulation is not helpful. Imagine if your kid came to you and they said, like, I did really poorly on this test. Are you going to say, you're so stupid. You know, like, what's wrong with you?

1:13:44No, you're going to say, well, let's talk about what happens. And they might say, I needed help and I was embarrassed to ask or I didn't understand it and or I didn't study I messed up I should have studied and I didn't study. Okay. Well, what are you going to do differently next time? Let's come up with a plan. So you need to have just like you have some compassion for your child and hold them accountable both It's hard to hold yourself accountable when you self -lagulate in the short term you can But it doesn't last because it feels so unpleasant. You're just sort of bathing and shame What you need is self -compassion and actually if you have more compassion for yourself, you're more able to hold yourself accountable.

1:14:24So you can say, oh, you know what happened? I was feeling really sad. I had this whole pint of hog and dyes, but it's okay that I was sad and there's another way to do this. So next time when I'm sad, I didn't have enough support. So I'm going to call a friend next time. Oh, self -compassion with accountability. Or I'm not going to keep the hog and dyes in the house. because I know that when I'm sad, I'm susceptible to that. Maybe one day I'll be able to do it, but right now, I'm not gonna keep that, but there's something else I can do, which is I really feel like I want for me self -compassion is related to, I'm gonna give myself a treat.

1:14:58So maybe my treat is I'm going to, I'm going to have like a healthy snack that I like, or maybe my treat is I'm gonna go to a movie, or whatever it is, but you have to figure out what works for you and what works for other people might not work for you. So it takes a little bit of experimenting. So maintenance is this kind of experimentation, but having self -compassion with accountability until you find a system that works for you and the new thing becomes a habit, it becomes familiar, and the thing that you used to do becomes unfamiliar and doesn't feel good anymore. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element.

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1:16:44Again, that's drinkelement .com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. Yeah, for so many years, the field of popular psychology was obsessed with how long does it take to make a change? It was like 28 days and it was like 90 years. As somebody who studies neuroplasticity, I can tell you that there's one trial learning, you'll never go back and there's stuff that takes years. It just depends on the intensity and the consequences, right? And even with consequences, I mean, anyone that seen somebody relapse from drug so many times over, it's clearly they're working with more complicated dynamics there.

1:17:22I think that this notion of reinforcing change is super key. I'm really glad you raised that. I want to ask, as a, I don't know how to phrase this, as a counterpoint or as an alternative, there we go, as an alternative to one degree shift or I'm somebody that I've always benefited from deadlines. I love deadlines. Like a deadline is how I get things done and I just, if there's a grant deadline, a paper deadline, you know, deadlines work. And even if you don't meet them, it's great to see how far off you were, you know, if you did your absolute best and the mistakes you made to lead to the place where you didn't complete things in time.

1:18:08It's just I love deadlines and I love rules. And so I've become a pretty strict rule enforcer for myself in my life. And I think one of the rules that's really helped me in recent times with these of you relationships has been no drama, just none. Like none, I don't tolerate any drama. But that's rigid, I realize, but it's helpful, far happier than I've ever been, truly, in large part because of that, like no drama. But the thing that I had to accept with a hard rule like that, is that I'm going to lose people. Like, so earlier you said, you know, that this patient client, you know, maybe he doesn't have to put up, maybe there's somebody better for him.

1:18:55There's someone else out there that you don't, that they don't have to deal with. I think that one of the things that I notice in my own past and with others that I know, struggling with a dynamic, with people, typically it's romantic relationships, but could be anything is, you have to be willing to let go. You can't like always resolve the conflict. And I find that a lot of people, maybe it's this childhood thing, they feel like they have to like remain on great terms or they have to stay friends or they have to put a bow on it. And I so admire the people in life that are like, yeah, that didn't work done.

1:19:35Because I look at the time wasted. Yes. And I think that in our desire to make everything kind of okay in the end, we burn valuable life energy and incredibly valuable time. And so some people might hear like no drama and think well you're gonna lose a bunch of people and I will. I certainly will. Or they'll rise to the occasion or whatever you want to call it. But I have a full life of many people with whom I have zero drama and wonderful relationships. So I'm full. My dance card's full. But I'd rather, I feel so firm about this, given the peace that it's brought me. And that I realized like, yeah, I may never talk to that person again.

1:20:23I might not. But at the first hint of drama, like I'm done. And I think it's because I force so much suffering on myself for so long of trying to resolve these things that clearly wouldn't work. and I don't know, I feel immense freedom from it, but I think I hear this with other people like, oh yeah, but they're gonna change, or he's gonna stop drinking, or not referring to me, I'm not a drinker, but there's a hard, I quit drinking. Didn't have a problem with it, but I just was like, I'm done with alcohol, just like that relationship's over. And they just cling to this like thing that it's gotta, like they just won't let go.

1:21:04Yeah. And I don't what is that about why why do we hold on to the thing that doesn't work even if we know we're not gonna like Staying with it. Yeah, what is the obsession? It's interesting. So I'm thinking about how when you say no drama You know, what does that actually mean and it's really important because when you look at why people who are most satisfied with their lives what is it about their lives? They're surrounded by people that they feel good about. Now, let me be clear about what that means. So, we talk about this concept of idiot compassion versus wise compassion. So, idiot compassion.

1:21:43I love that. It is only known what it means and I love it already. So, idiot compassion is what if you surround yourself with people who are only going to validate your experience, when you say no drama, that's not necessarily a great thing. So, like, for example, let's say that someone says to our friends, like, I don't understand why he broke up with me or I don't understand why this keeps happening to me. And your friends are like, no, you go girl, he's wrong, you're right, whatever. Or my partner is doing this. And we tend to kind of feel like our job as a friend is to support the position of our friends.

1:22:19That's idiot compassionate. Why is compassionate is what you get in therapy where we say, like, what might be going on here. It's kind of like if a fight breaks out in every bar you're going to, maybe it's you. We don't say that to our friends in idiot compassion. Okay? So think about that. So is it that you want no drama? I mean, you want your friends to kind of back up everything you're saying you're not going to grow as a person. You're not going to hear what you need to hear. The friends you want to surround yourself with are people who will tell you the truth in a kind, respectful way and that you're willing to hear it.

1:22:54So some Some people think that it would be drama if their friends kind of called them on their bullshit, right? That's not drama. So that's a healthy, communicative, open, honest relationship. I agree, by the way. I think that my definition of drama is when challenging things are presented in a way that's not in effort to resolve. Right. What I'm talking about is evacutive expression. I would think, you know, I mean, I'm sort of chuckling on the inside too about this thing about friends. I mean, I would say my group of friends is, they're amazing. I'm blessed with incredible friends and friendships.

1:23:32I'm so blessed. I only wish I had more time for all of them. The, we're pretty hard on each other in terms of being very blunt. Very, like, that was dumb. There's maybe more male specific kind of language. Like, that was dumb. like why to do those super stupid or yet don't be an idiot don't do it again or No, I totally disagree that that's a lot of the exchange in my friend group I would say maybe just the culture I grew up in and academia very very little validation validation isn't a big part of it But I am also surrounded by people that are very self -critical So it's sort of inherent to the way they work in their work, in their relationships, in their life, in their fitness, like pretty much everyone's pretty get after it.

1:24:19Right. What I'm talking about is when people say no drama, what they mean is don't bring anything up, right? Don't challenge anything, don't bring anything to my attention that maybe needs to be brought to my attention because I could be better in this relationship. You know, to me, I think what you're talking about is volatility, which is drama, right? Like, can you express the thing you want to express in a way that feels like an invitation or like it comes from a place of curiosity as opposed to blame? So often people will come at the person and say, you did this as opposed to, I was confused by what happened back there.

1:25:01What happened? Why did you make that choice or why what happened between us here? Can we talk about that? So you're being curious about the other person's experience as opposed to blaming the other person and assuming their intentions or why they did something or something about their character. So drama tends to be from all the assumptions. Like I know that my truth is the right story. That's how you would come at that, right? And yours you were wrong. And I think it's so interesting because people come to therapy with these faulty narratives. We're all storytellers, we all try to make sense of something.

1:25:37And we all believe that our story is the absolute accurate version of the story. And it's actually so funny when you see couples and they experienced the same, they were part of the same experience and they have wildly different versions. And then there's some part where the Venn diagram overlaps. And then finally they can see, oh, that person's not a bad person. They were coming at it because they, in their story, they believed this. And that's so important. So drama happens when assumptions are made. People characterize the other person's story as inaccurate, their own story as accurate. And then there's lots of kind of, there's no space for curiosity or connection.

1:26:19It's all rupture, no repair. As you're saying this, I realized what I mean by drama because I realize it's a very broad term. And I come from a background where my dad's from South America, my mom's from New York. So like a motive expression is not what I'm referring to, right? Like I'm people being passionate about something or even angry about something or even having a problem like, hey, that didn't feel good. That's not what I'm referring to. I realize, as you were saying, what it is that gets me. It's when that I put under the category of drama for which I have zero tolerance for, unless you can convince me otherwise.

1:26:55is when people dynamite the mind on the way out. It's, I'm telling you how much this sucks. This is how I feel or this is what you do. And then I'm inaccessible. And, you know, so they're not really interested. It's this evacutive expression or projection, as you said, that's what I'm defining as trauma. That to me is far and away different than saying, hey, listen, like this sucked, can you think about this? Can we talk about this? Andrew, you screwed up. Like, okay, great. Like, let's figure it out. Absolutely. But it's this, I'm rolling a grenade in the door and I'm out of here. Right. That to me is the one that I'm just, I'm too old for that shit.

1:27:38The silent treatment is actually incredibly aggressive and hostile. People think that the loud one is the problem in the relationship. Sometimes the silent one is the one who's the problem. You know, it's the person who smiles through everything and doesn't really say anything, but they're being so passive -aggressive, or the person who then, as you said, detonates the bomb and then goes silent, and that's their punishment, they're punishing you by not talking to you for a day or two or three. That's incredibly hostile. And the other way that people do that is you bring up something in a nice way to someone, and here's how they create drama, and but they're shutting something down, they're shutting down any possibility of communication is every time you bring up something, to them, they cry.

1:28:26Now, people don't like it when I say this. They say, as a therapist, they should be able to feel sad or hurt when someone brings up something and they should be able to cry. And I'm saying, no, sometimes crying is a manipulation. You can manipulate someone, so I'll see a couple. And one person will bring up something, let's say, you know, like, when you do this, you know, or this hurts me, or I don't like this, or I need more help with this, and the person cries. Like, you're hurting my feelings. things, this is, you know, as opposed to saying, this person is trying to communicate with you. You're going to have feelings about it, but there's a manipulative way in which people will cry every time or many times.

1:29:06And it shuts down any possibility of communication. And so we have to say, you know, what are you doing here? Every time you cry, then the other person feels like, why can't bring this up? Because I'm hurting my partner.

1:29:21And Because if I bring something up, I'm going to catch 22. If I don't bring it up, we have a problem. If I bring it up, you're going to say, I'm hurting your feelings and then I have to stop. So I have to be extra careful. And I don't know. There's no way to move forward here. So what are you doing that instance? We have to talk about the functionality of the crime. Why is it so hard for you to hear something that your partner is saying? Do you feel blamed? Do you feel shame? Shame is something that we avoid at all costs, right? No one wants to feel that. Do you feel like this person is making a global statement when they're not, that they're saying you're a bad person as opposed to what you did here was bad.

1:30:02So there's a difference between who you are and what you did. And often we paint with a big brush when we're trying to communicate with our partners, you know, like you're bad as opposed to that thing that you did, that was not good. But that thing you did was bad. But you inherently are not a bad person. And we tend to tell our partners in all kinds of ways that they're bad people when they do something that just pleases us. We have to be really careful about separating what they did from who they are. And we need to do that with ourselves. So often we do something and then we feel so much shame around what we did and we say, oh, I'm a terrible person.

1:30:40I was supposed to do it. I did something that doesn't align with who I want to be. It doesn't align with actually who I am. And that's good that you feel bad about it because if we didn't have guilt, right? So guilt is a good, positive feeling. Shame, nothing comes from shame. We just tend to sort of like retreat from shame. Guilt is great. Guilt is saying, you're not a sociopath. Guilt is saying, what I did did not align with the person that I am. So I am a good person. I did something that felt not aligned with that. And so I need to be aware that it's good that I feel good. If I didn't feel guilt, that would say something about my character.

1:31:19But the fact that I do feel guilt means that I'm willing to look at myself and I'm willing to do something different and I'm willing to make a change. And here I'm making a bunch of assumptions. I wonder if the crying is pre -programmed in some people because it's what I was able to illicit sympathy and project them, like if they didn't do it, that they'd get hit, or if they didn't do it, it would, like, the bombardment would continue. Yeah, absolutely. Everything we do is for self -preservation, and we're just not aware of it. Like, we want to avoid pain at all costs. And so, even though a lot of what we do to avoid pain creates more pain, but that's not our intent.

1:32:04So, anything that, you know, when people, There's somebody that I write about in my book who comes off as very unlikable at the beginning of the book and people say, why did you even take him into your practice? Why did you work with him? Why did you treat him? And when they get to the end of the book, not to spoil everything, but he's probably the person they love the best. And it's because I'm looking at that person's actions as they're coming from a place of he's protecting himself from pain. So he's an let anybody in. It doesn't let him have the possibility of being hurt again because it was terribly hurt.

1:32:41And so, you know, we say hurt people hurt people. What are they doing? They're protecting themselves from more pain because if they let themselves be vulnerable, they're exposed to the possibility of pain and they don't want that. Are there some people for whom therapy just ain't going to help? Yes, people who are not willing to self -reflect. And it's hard, right? I think a lot of people come to therapy and they say, I want something to change, but what they want to change is something else or someone else. And you, again, you can influence that. You can't change another person before people come to couples therapy with me.

1:33:18I ask them to each separately come up with the one thing that they want to work on about themselves. So it's not what do you want to change in your partner? It's if you were going to be the best possible version of yourself in a relationship. What is the one thing that you really want to work on in our couples work together? Well, no, I didn't want to work on things, but I really need the other person. No way to me. I won't even see them in the room until they each have a very clear sense of this is the thing that I want to work in. Now that might change over time depending on what we uncover, but they need to come in with a goal.

1:33:56Like we all know that there's something about ourselves that we could do better at in a relationship. And so what is that thing? What do you want to work on? And if the other person happens to change great, if they don't, that's good information too. But you're not coming in because you think the other person's going to change. You're coming in to grow on your own. And you're growing in the context of this relationship. But you are doing some personal growth in the couples. I happen to think couples therapy moves us along faster individually than individual therapy does. Interesting. Because in individual therapy, you're telling a story, it's your perspective.

1:34:34I have to, as the therapist, intuit what else might be going on out there. In couples therapy, I see how this person reacts with other people. Now, I can see that in the therapeutic relationship individually, like, whatever, this is a microcosm of how they interact out there. But I'm different from the people they interact with out there because of the nature of the therapeutic relationship. So they will, there will be what we call transference where they transfer some of their feelings about other people into the relationship with the therapist. And that gives me a really good idea of how they interact out there.

1:35:08Could you give me an example of transference, the positive and negative? Yeah, so let's say that I say something and it turns out that they felt criticized. Well, it could be that I said something in a critical way, maybe, entirely possible. It could be that they have kind of transferred feelings about a parent onto me if I happen to be the age of their parent, or similar to where there's enough of an age difference between us. And they heard something that was meant to be compassionate, but it was also true and something they need to look at, but they heard it as criticism. So sometimes you transfer, there's romantic transfer, and people get, you know, romantically attached to their therapist, and you have to be able to talk about that.

1:35:56Obviously, you know, you have very clear boundaries, nothing can ever happen, all that. But it's okay to bring that up. People think I'm not allowed to say that, you know, I have these feelings, and then we deal with them, and we see, you know, how we can talk through that. And it's generally not that the person wants to get with you. It's really more about like what it means to feel romantically loved or what it means to be loved in general and that they put like a romantic veneer over that. So, you know, love is so complicated and it's so multifaceted. So there's that kind of transference that happens.

1:36:33But I think with couples when I say you need to be able to work on the, you know, something that would, if you were to be the best possible version of yourself in this relationship, what would you want to work on? It might be, I need to self -regulate better. It might be, I need to be less needy of the, I need to expect, in other words, a lot of people think that their partner needs to be like everything. You need to telepathically read my mind and if you don't, you don't care. You need to intuit what I wanted to do for my birthday. And if you didn't, then you don't really know me. And I these sound like kind of extreme, almost immature examples, but these are the kinds of things that people get caught up in.

1:37:11And I'm giving kind of like the highest level of that, but they can be much more nuanced and much deeper. And so, I think that people, who cannot be helped, people who are not willing to self -reflect and look at themselves. I love that statement you made, which is if people are coming to therapy, they need to ask about the change they want to make in themselves. Yeah. And what their role is in what is not going the way they want in their lives. And this isn't about blaming them for the problem at all. It's about saying there might be some truly difficult situations out there. You might have a parent with mental health issues.

1:37:50And what are you going to do about that? You probably aren't going to change the fact that they have mental health issues. But your reaction can change. So you can do something different. We can talk about what that might look like. You cannot engage in that dance. You can set boundaries. You can, you know, there are different ways to make choices about that. There are sort of like societal things that we can't change, but like, what can you do so that you feel like you have agency in the world? Because we all have agency to some degree. So where do we find that agency as opposed to going into this like helpless, I'm the victim position?

1:38:29And people don't like to hear that they say, what are you, what are you, what kind of therapist are you calling people victims? I'm not saying people are victims, but I'm saying people have the mindset that they don't have agency and then they become victims. But when you realize that you have agency, you realize, well, there are really difficult people, things, circumstances in the world. But I get to choose how to respond to them. Going back to this thing about texting, how many of the challenges that people present to you in your office these days, um, incorporates or starts with, yeah, so I got this text versus, you know, somebody came to me or called me and we had a hard interaction or we had a conversation or something happened at work.

1:39:13I mean, how much of it is in the digital world nowadays? Yeah. So, here's what's interesting about texting is so many times people will come in and they'll say, we had this conversation on text and I'll say, can you show me the conversation? Which people think, why would you do that? Why wouldn't you want to hear the narrative from that person. Well, I just heard the narrative, but I want to see what was actually said, because they're like, oh, I don't really know. Let me read you what they said. And so, but I want to see what both parts of that were. And then the person can see, oh, here's how I contributed to that.

1:39:50Or here's a choice that I made in that moment. Again, I prefer that these conversations that people have are face -to -face conversations when they're kind of about something in the relationship. Text is great for like your daily -ness of, hey, look what I had for lunch or how you do in it or I love you or whatever, right? Or, you know, can you pick up the kid? But when you're having some kind of, you know, again, rupture or conflict between you, that's not a text conversation, but many people will do that on text. And then now we have a record. So it's not just like what my client is saying to me.

1:40:25It's like, this is how the conversation actually went down. We have a transcript of it. And it's really helpful for people to be able to look at that transcript. I agree. At the same time, I feel like breakups are much harder than they used to be because you can block someone on social media, but then the block itself becomes this. Simba, you can mute people. you can put your phone away, but unless you block their number, they can, you know, send you things. You can go back and read texts if you're an obsessive person. There are just so many venues or avenues, excuse me, for people to access our psyche when we're trying to move on.

1:41:13it. In the old days, kids, you know, you had a phone with an answering machine, you broke up, it sucked, you looked at the photos, you put the photos in a box or you burned them and you put the box in a shelf and then when you got into a new relationship, you either hid the box or you destroyed the box and you moved on. And people's phone numbers changed and it was so much easier. I noticed that one intended to just remember more good stuff because there was another stuff coming in, the bad stuff tended to dissipate, or maybe it didn't, it was just so much easier. You weren't being infiltrated by the past.

1:41:55And because of the nature of electronic stuff, I just feel like it's like the past trying to hold us back. And this is on both sides. It doesn't matter if the breakup was amicable, then you long for the person known again, or the breakup was rough, and then you're like, you re -live element. There's so many variants on this that I don't know. It just feels like breaking up already one of the hardest things. People I think don't acknowledge just how hard breakups are. Right, they don't. And I think there's this hierarchy of pain that people have about certain things. Like, well, you only dated for this amount of time.

1:42:32How can it be that painful, this amount of time after the breakup. You know, there's this hierarchy. But if it was a divorce, then people understand why a year later, you're still dealing with it. Or, you know, if you were only married for five years versus married for 20 years, like there's some hierarchy of pain that we have around things. Like it was a miscarriage, but your child, you know, your eight -year -old didn't die. You know? Sorry. I mean, that's a set. Does people say that kind of thing? No, no, they don't say it, but it's how they treat people. It's like, you had a miscarriage. like what they say is like, oh, it's okay.

1:43:05You'll get pregnant again. If your child dies, they're not like, it's okay, you'll have another child, right? But it feels the person who had a miscarriage that they lost their child. It's very, very painful. But listen to how we talk to people who have these experiences that we tend to think that some experiences are sort of higher on the hierarchy of pain than others are. And so we think like a breakup is not as bad as, like a breakup in a non -marriage or a short marriage is not as hard as a breakup with a long marriage or whatever the hierarchy is. Or even someone who, you know, it's like, well, and this is the reason that people don't actually get help for things because they think, well, you know, it's just this, it's not really that better.

1:43:49I feel kind of sad or I can't sleep or I'm having trouble in this relationship, but it's not that bad because I have a roof over my head and food on the table So I don't need to go get help. But let's say you fall and you clearly have broken your wrist. You're not going to sit there and go, I don't need to do anything about that because they don't have stage four cancer. You're going to be like, I'm going because I need to get my wrist repaired. So we treat physical health and mental health as two separate entities, one, of course, the mind and the body are all intertwined. And I think that with breakups, it's the same thing.

1:44:26it's like people think, well, it's not that big of a deal after the first X amount of time. And breakups can really mark you depending on how they went down. Like, if it was really volatile, if it was one of these things where you got no sense of, if you were cheated on, if you didn't understand why the breakup happened, like it was very surprising to you, you know, all those things. It can really be a different kind of break up than a breakup where a person, it might be very painful, but you understand sort of why the breakup is happening. It doesn't mean you don't feel the loss, but there's something different about the quality of the breakup.

1:45:11And so then people tell stories about the breakup because they didn't get the real story. So the story now becomes like you don't really understand why the person's breaking up with you because they didn't communicate during the relationship that maybe they were unhappy. And now you watch them on social media. So you're watching a story, and you have this whole story in your mind of, look at them, they're on this vacation, or they're not even like with another person. They're just like, look, they look so happy, but it's social media. Of course they look happy. People are not posting on social media.

1:45:42I'm so sad about my breakup, generally. There's a whole, like, sort of subculture of people who do that, but it's a different thing. Very generational. Yes, yes. But I mean, in general, you're having to, you sort of like, you want to move forward. But, and by the way, about grief, it's not like moving on because we're sort of shaped by every experience that we have, but it's about moving forward. So people always say about grief, you need to move on. No, you need to move forward. Let's just talk about that. So let's say you have to move forward. It's very hard to move forward when you're watching the other person's life.

1:46:18You're not moving forward at all. They're moving forward. maybe you don't really know, but why are you spending so much time watching someone else move forward? Can we focus on how you might move forward? Whatever that might look like. But it's really hard when you have this like split stream of their life is happening and your life is happening. I definitely want to talk about grief. Before we do that, I'd like to double click into this breakup thing in my observation and experience. One of the hardest things about breakups is This idea that we want to somehow come to a common narrative. And there seems to be a lot of desire to kind of understand where the other person's experience of what happened.

1:47:08And a very, I don't think it's intentional, but I think people can be somewhat destructive in a breakup by changing the whole, this notion like it was all an illusion or something, or you know where, I mean, I guess I've had enough relationships and breakups to realize that there's love that continues, there's things that you thought were love that weren't. There's love that doesn't continue and there's all sorts of shapes and forms of this stuff, But that good, well -meaning people that take divergent paths, I've learned it doesn't mean that anything else sometimes. It literally just means that.

1:47:54Right. There isn't a need to rewrite the script like it wasn't what I thought. It actually was what I thought. And then it was something different. Or it just circumstances change or things change. I'm not trying to make light of this. I mean, I argue I'm probably one of the least skilled people at breakups, although I've gotten, quote unquote, better at it. It's always super painful. Like I've never had a breakup that didn't really hurt. It doesn't matter if I left or they left, that just didn't really hurt. And I think it's this idea of like, and this is why I think it's an interesting perhaps segue to grief, is that it's almost like as something ends, we look back and we evaluate the story.

1:48:36and try and figure out was that real? Right. Was it not real? How could that have been real? And then we're here. Right? There was all this hope and expectation. And I think about this a lot. Yeah. So sometimes what the loss is about isn't so much about the other person. It's about the loss of what it feels like to be in a primary relationship. So you're losing the primary relationship and then it happens to be with this specific person. And so there were good qualities about that specific person and qualities that maybe weren't right for you. But what you're losing is the dailyness. So so much of what feels good about being in a primary relationship is, you know, you get to tell the person in the minutia of your day, the little things.

1:49:23The shared history and the shared experiences that become the shorthand and the inside jokes and the routine of, you know, you're flight landed. Who are you going to text? Oh, text your partner, right? You know, just the built -in infrastructure of being in a primary relationship and someone who knows like, what kind of pizza you like. And, you know, all those little things that come from, you know, going through daily life together and you know all the things about their families and you know all the things about the people in their lives and the people they're talking about, like this friend and this boss and whatever, their co -workers.

1:49:59So it's this whole world that's been co -created And then all of a sudden, when that person isn't there anymore, that the dailyness of your life changes drastically. Like you're not waking up with that person. You're not eating meals with that person. You're not talking about what's for dinner with that person. You're not saying, you're wondering how that thing with their sister worked out. But you don't know now because, right? And you're losing the side kind of shared people too. Like you might have liked that person's family a lot. But sometimes you stay in touch with the family, but sometimes you don't.

1:50:35So like your world changes so much in the day to day. You're not just losing that person. You're losing an entire world that you were living in. And now your world looks so different and you have nothing to replace it with yet. So it doesn't mean you have to replace it with another partner. You might replace it with things in your own life. But you just, you know, breakups tend to happen. Maybe you saw the breakup coming, but you're not really imagining what it will be like after until you're in it. You can't really really understand what it's like until you're in that breakup phase. So I think that makes it so hard because you're losing a lifestyle, right?

1:51:14Like the dailyness of your life. And you know, it's like when you're in your relationship, you're in the present, but you're also in the future. So you imagined that the present was going to be the future. And now, Mother of all plot twists, the future was just taken away along with the present. So it's not just you're losing the day to day, you're losing what you imagine next year was going to be like, in five years we're going to be like. So it's a huge thing. It's so interesting because in my most recent book it starts with my breakup and that's how I end up in therapy. And my whole thing is like, you know, the idiot compassion, oh, we were talking about with my friends.

1:51:52He's a jerk and he's terrible and you dodge to pull it. My therapist, which I thought was going to validate this position, didn't for the better. And so by the end of the book, people even write in now they're like, oh, I can't believe I call him boyfriend to the book. I can't believe he did that. I'm like, no, no, no, no, I was trying to say he's a good guy. Like, you have to understand that I was seeing this through the lens of the breakup and then over time, I see that I was responsible for this too. I had a role in this too. I chose not to see the things that I didn't want to see because I didn't want to live in that world of the breakup.

1:52:30So I think it's wanting what you were saying earlier about wanting to have a shared narrative. Like, we feel so wounded by the fact that the person, let's say that they broke up with us, or even if you break up with them, that they don't see the relationship the way you saw it. Like they had a different experience of it and you feel like well, they're not seeing it in the right way No, they're just seeing it they are seeing it in the right way from their perspective And I think that we have this way of wanting to heal the wound by they're saying oh no, no You were great in this relationship. It was me or we were both great and it just didn't work out Yes, yes, right and we so want that and and the reality is that But your partner is going to see things about you that maybe you don't agree with, or maybe they're true, and that's why they hurt.

1:53:25I always find I miss the person's smell. Yes, it's those little things, those intangibles. I think that takes the longest. Yeah. I have a really good audio memory too. I can close my eyes, I've been able to do this since I was a kid, and hear people's voices. and yeah, but like smells I think we come to expect them. And then we don't notice they're there. And then the person's gone and then we're like smells different here. So there's this theory. It's from the Gottmins who do this research on couples and they talk about the bank of goodwill that you need five deposits into the bank of goodwill for everyone with draw.

1:54:13And so we tend to, when we're in a relationship, we don't like something about something that's happening in the relationship. We think about what's not working. We're taking all these withdrawals from the bank of goodwill. But like things like smell, that's a deposit. Like, you smell so good. I really like your smell. Do we say that enough? Do we focus on the things? Like, How many deposits are we actually making so that when we do make a withdrawal, it doesn't empty the bank account? And it's usually when a breakup happens that all of a sudden we think about all those things that we didn't deposit, but now we miss.

1:54:48Right, that we're sitting in our bank account and we don't have access to that account anywhere, the accounts closed. But when the account was open, we didn't look at what we had in there. And I think that the people who are what I see with couples who are most successful are the people who do notice what's in the bank account even if they have to take a withdrawal every now and again. I've always struck by how people talk about their partners when their partners aren't around. Very important. The other day, this kid came up to me and the gym kid. He was probably in his 30s, but there I go again.

1:55:23He was a podcast fan. We were just chatting. I like to ask people like, what do you do? and I was in a tech or think, I don't recall, but, and it's like, where are you from? And he's like, he's from Brazil, cool. And then we were talking about something. He said, you know, my girlfriend, and then we got into some discussion about travel and South America or something. And then at one point, he said, oh, yeah, she's like my flower. And the way he said it, I was like, wow, that's beautiful. You know, again, half Latin. And what I haven't heard that enough. And I was like, wow. And I said, that's amazing that you just referred to her as a flower.

1:56:00He goes, yes, she's just, she's like the flower in my life. And I was like, wow. Like, you don't hear that often. I also don't get into conversations like this very often. But somehow he just shared that spontaneously. And she wasn't there to hear it. I can't remember the guy's name, forgive me. She'll never know that he referred to her that way. It was really beautiful. And there are certain people, like I heard, Rogan one day talking about his wife on a podcast. He was like, she's just so nice. Like he just, the appreciation he has for her in the small details of how he refers to her. And those are just two examples.

1:56:42And then I could give a bunch of negative examples about people, gosh, I don't wanna put it on one or the other side of the male female dynamic. But like, but when people say like, oh yeah, like they're a pain in my ass or like the Referring to people as they're old lady or their old man like that's that's an interesting But kind of in my mind not the sweetest way maybe it could be maybe it depends on the tone Anyway, I'm casting a lot of Shadows and light where we're perhaps I shouldn't but that interaction was delightful and I thought awesome for him and awesome for her That's why I often start a couple session with how did you meet?

1:57:20because usually when people come to couples therapy, they think the first thing that's gonna happen is you're gonna say, so what's going on, what's not, you know, then they'll start with the problem. And then they're like in that withdrawal from the bank account space. So I like to say, well, tell me how you met and immediately usually there's like, oh, and they have this great story, right? And they remember what they love about the other person. So we start with that. And you can see them sort of remembering who the person is that they fell in love with. Like, oh, I thought he was so cute or, you know, oh, it was just really, we were friends for a year and I didn't know if he liked me and then this happened and then I really admired this about him or her, right?

1:58:04And so they start in this different space and I think about it like, it was gonna sound like a weird metaphor but you think about like non -stick pans versus like, you know, a regular pan that you have to put something in so that the stuff doesn't stick to it. When I think about like there are people for whom the good stuff, they're like Teflon pans. The good stuff doesn't stick. But the bad stuff about the other person sticks like a non -state, like a pan that sticks, right? So it's like you think about like what is sticking about your partner when you think about like what they're putting in the pan, right?

1:58:39Like are you in a Teflon pan for good things or are you in a different kind of pan for good things? because you have to think like, what am I focusing on? Where does my attention go? And so, you know, why are you focusing on the things that are upsetting you so much? And, you know, there are certain things that you're never gonna change about your partner. Like, your partner, we don't get to order up our partners all at card. We don't get to say like, I'll take these qualities of my partner, but I'll take this thing that I don't like about them on the side. You don't get to do that. People come, there are no substitutions.

1:59:11They come as a whole, that's it. that's what's offered on the menu. And so people think, well, I can change the thing that I don't like and I can make that person all a cart. You can't do that. You can't order them up that way. So there are always gonna be things that irritate you or there are suboptimal in a perfect world about your partner. Are you gonna focus on that? Or are you gonna focus on the things that you really love about your partner? There's a saying from 12 Step, which is identified, don't compare, which is, because you'll hear people outside of 12 -step talking about, for instance, you know, like, you know, well, he's this, this, and this, and ambitious, and this, and that, but he's like kind of emotionally unavailable, but he's more available, and people will talk about male or female partners, right?

2:00:02Or potential partners, like, where people that they're dating, as if you could clooch together the best of all people, and get this, like, perfect tapestry of the person that's got all the features you want. Because, yeah, some people are a little more easy going like hearted and sometimes not always less ambitious. Those things in my experience tend to correlate not always. Some people are super hard driving, they get it done and they have the capacity to be immense providers but they have less time and sometimes they're not as emotionally available. Again, stereotyping like crazy here. But people get this idea that they're sort of like, through the comparison they can arrive at the perfect person.

2:00:41When, in fact, I think appreciation, not being tough on about the positive stuff comes from kind of shutting out the idea that there's an alternative. But of course, you don't want to end up in a situation where the person is not truly not good for you, right? Well, right, that's not what I'm talking about. Right, I don't think you are. But yeah, with that caveat, I think that accepting that people are complicated and there is no clinging together of people, at some point you make a choice. And this is when people cheat, what often happens is there's a, there's a specific quality about their partner maybe.

2:01:15Sometimes it has nothing to do with your partner by the way. And I think this is so important to talk about when we talk about infidelity. That often it really has nothing to do with the partner. That somebody is expecting their partner again going back to vitality and aliveness to provide that for them. And if the partner doesn't provide that for them, but your partner shouldn't be providing that for you, they're additive, they're not providing a lack or deficit in you. That sometimes that's why people cheat, but other times they say like, there's this quality about my partner that is really, you know, like, I don't like it.

2:01:49Like, let's take, for example, I wish that my partner were more, let's say, ambitious. So they go and they like cheat with someone is more ambitious, but then the person isn't loving or isn't communicative or isn't, you know, whatever the other good qualities that that the partner they have has. So they think that by replacing this one trait that the other person's gonna have all the other great traits that the existing partner already has. And generally you're trading like one set of problems or another set of problems. So it's interesting that people think like, I can fix this problem because this person has that thing that I really want.

2:02:26Now, if your partner doesn't have any of that, like it's a degree, it's on a spectrum. So is your partner not ambitious at all? or is your partner ambitious about different kinds of things? Like they want to be a really good parent, and they're really invested in that, or they want to do something like philanthropic, and they're really invested in that, but it doesn't pay a lot. So what are they, what energizes them? Where's their purpose? Where's their meaning? You know, there's different kinds of ambitious. I feel like placing one's attention on the good things as much as possible, and really letting those fill us up as much as possible is really key.

2:03:07I didn't say this, I borrowed this, but that two of the most dangerous words in the English language are if only, this idea, if only this, because for two reasons one is very unlikely that if only comes true, but the other one is it takes our attention away from seeing what's there. Right, so I like to say it's the difference between the what if and the what is and people who focus too much on the what if what if this they lose sight of what is and usually they're so much good That's that they really don't want to give up in the what is so if you're gonna keep focusing on the what if you can You blind yourself to the what is and I think the what if is a big trap This episode is brought to you by LifeLock.

2:03:56Between two factor authentication, strong passwords, and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it, and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40 % your first year. Visit LifeLock .com slash podcast for 40 % off terms apply. Yeah, I think this notion of attention and appreciation just seems so fundamental. It's kind of like think of it. So I am sort of an amateur photographer and I think about it like you can take a picture of you can like focus on the same subject.

2:04:40You can focus on one part of it where you can just smooth the camera slightly and then is the same thing that I'm taking a picture of, right? So I always say to people, like, can you, your focus is always on this, can you, like, move the camera slightly and focus, you know, find a different part to focus the camera on. If you're always focusing on something that makes you unhappy, you're gonna be unhappy. So why don't you just move the camera and focus on the other things? You get to choose. People think they have no choice in the matter, right? Like, well, my brain just goes there. My mind just goes there.

2:05:14It's like, no, you get to choose. what you put your attention on, you actually have a choice. What I love about what's coming through here is that you emphasize the role of these unconscious processes. We default to people that aren't healthy for us sometimes, not always. And yet you also emphasize that we have a lot of agency. These days it seems like there's a default toward looking outward. You know, for all that's been said about meditation and reflection and journaling on this podcast and others like we all know these tools are available. They basically just take time. I mean, with meditation, you don't even need a pen and paper.

2:05:55But we tend to look outward for answers. Do you ever give homework to your patients to just like think or journal or is there work tend to be more behavioral? You know, it's kind of like I feel like the work that we do in the room is about understanding and, you know, and understanding sort of like where the gap is between what we say we want and what we actually do. So usually there is, it's all about what is in that gap, what is getting in the way, because we're very clear by the way about what we want, usually. And then there's like some gap between our behavior that isn't moving in that direction.

2:06:38In fact, it moves us often, either keeps us stuck or moves us in the opposite direction. So it's kind of out in the world between sessions. We're working on the behavior around what is getting in the way in that gap. And then we're doing kind of the thinking and the feeling in the session. I don't mean that people aren't thinking and feeling outside of session. It means they're using their feelings and their thoughts differently. They're taking different actions with the feelings and thoughts outside of the session. Do you ever tell people whatever whenever you think that just do the opposite?

2:07:12So it's really funny because so many people say like your gut knows, right? Like listen to your gut and for some people because it's historical, right? Like what's in their gut? It's like no, no, no, don't listen to your gut and it sounds really strange for a therapist to say to somebody, no, don't listen to your gut. But sometimes you literally have to say to people whatever your first instinct is there, do the opposite. Do the thing that feels uncomfortable. Because your gut is what feels comfortable. And the thing that feels comfortable again is the familiar and the familiar isn't necessarily the thing that is going to lead you to where you want to go.

2:07:46So it's not like I want people to second -guess themselves or not trust themselves. It's that sometimes you have to learn how to hear that very, very quiet voice inside you because your gut is the louder one, right? Your gut is your first instinct. And it's kind of the pre -programmed, the pattern, the automatic response. Like if you think when we talk about sort of like neurological pathways, there's just like freeway that's been built with this one response. Like here's the input, right? And here's the map that follows. Like this person did this and you're going to like travel down that freeway because that's been the well paved road because you've done it a million times.

2:08:21It doesn't really work out for you. I want people to create kind of side roads and different roads and let's take a different path. and let's kind of dig out a new road, right? That now, so your first instinct is still gonna be like, let's get on the freeway. And I'm like, no, let's take a side road. Let's do something a little bit different. Let's take a different path. And let's, that path will now become the new freeway because you're gonna keep going down. You know, we're gonna dig out that path. The freeway is gonna not be traffic -dome. We're gonna shut down that freeway eventually. And you're gonna have a new freeway that's your automatic path.

2:08:54So right now you've gotta do the opposite to build this new freeway. I just mixed 20 metaphors. But the point is that sometimes your gut is just taking you down a well -trodden path that is not the best path for you. There's a great line in that movie, High Fidelity, based on the Nick Horn's novel, which I also highly recommend where it's like, you know, people tell me that we should listen to our gut. Well, after 30 years, I've come to the conclusion that my gut has shit for brains. You know, he's just realizing that his reflex on what to do with, you know, his relationship life is as completely off.

2:09:33Some people will hear what we're talking about right now and we'll say, yeah, but my gut also tells me when I'm in danger. We're obviously not talking about when you can sense danger. So here's the thing. So what feels dangerous sometimes? So your gut is trying to protect you. So what feels dangerous is going into this new situation because it's uncomfortable to do something different. So your gut is saying, oh, let's do the comfortable thing that we've always done. Even if the comfortable thing makes you miserable. Let's do the comfortable thing that we've always done because it feels very dangerous to try this new thing.

2:10:10But sometimes doing the thing that feels dangerous is actually less dangerous. So in other In other words, people say a lot of times people say, I don't want to take a risk. It's too risky. But sometimes the safest thing you can do is to take a risk. Doing the safe thing is actually, you know, you say it's too risky. The safest thing you can do is to take a risk because it's going to lead you closer to what you want to accomplish or the thing that you're trying to get toward. I completely agree. I also in my life I've had the experience I've taken big risks with my career multiple times and it's always worked out.

2:10:52Thank goodness. A lot of my teen years and 20s and 30s were spent learning to overcome the adrenaline response and I learned to take progressively more and more risk and ended up having a air failure, scuba diving, KJX diving with great white sharks. I don't say this to sound tough. I say because it's like, what was I thinking? I took it too far. So I think learning to overcome the adrenaline response and be calm in adrenaline, I think, has its value. I also took tremendous risk in my personal life getting involved with people I never should have gotten involved with. And I blame myself. I don't blame them.

2:11:36Right? I mean, I was in a choice. So I can imagine that some people are so averse to danger that they don't put themselves in the circumstances in which they could really come to thrive. and some people are just wired to go into the fire to the point where it's destructive, either with physical pursuits or in romantic relationships. I'll take it outside my own story. I'm a friend, a dear friend who was in an incredibly physically abusive relationship number 12. And she eventually came to the conclusion that her threat sensing threshold was just way too high. Did some really good work to understand why that was and realized that her fear response didn't kick in until it was like a nine alarm fire.

2:12:28And so, you know, she needed to listen to that, as you mentioned, that like super quiet whisper early on because anyone else who didn't have her history, which is sadly a very, very challenging history in her family would have immediately been like, yeah, I'm out, but she was like, this is normal. Yeah, when I was in medical school, I remember the people who wanted to work in the ER were like, I wanna do emergency medicine, were people often who grew up in environments where danger was a part of it, right? So they're used to that and it doesn't really strike them as like, their sense of danger, their barometer is different from maybe a different person.

2:13:16I think of it as like a thermostat. When you think about like, let's say you want to set your thermostat at like 72 degrees, right? Some people, their thermostat is off because in their house, like they did the slightest thing and their parents treated it like it was a huge horrible mistake and they're bad and it was an emergency, right? So they don't know how to calibrate. Like what does 72 actually feel like? Or the opposite, like some big thing happened and the appearance underreacted. And so they don't really know kind of like, what does 72 feel like? I don't really know what that like good temperature is like.

2:13:55So I think that there's a lot of people who stay in situations that are like, it's like other people would say, whoa, it's like 100 degrees in here, get out, There's a fire, right? And this person's like, no, it just feels like 72. They don't know. And so it's really about recalibrating. And I think when we talk about risk and danger, you have to learn how to calibrate your own thermostat. And I think that that's really important. We talk about the difference between productive anxiety and unproductive anxiety. So unproductive anxiety is, there's some kind of danger. And I'm going to ruminate and ruminate and ruminate.

2:14:35And I'm thinking about it all the time. And somehow that's going to keep me safe because I'm thinking about it. And then there's productive anxiety, which is, oh, it's good that I sense the danger because I'm going to do something about this. Like I have a plan for how to deal with this. So it might be, I'm in this relationship and it just doesn't feel right. But and this person is is acting this way toward me. And I know I shouldn't be treated this way, but I don't know. Maybe it's okay. And that's not productive. That's just anxiety. You're just circling, ruminating. Productive anxiety would be like, something's wrong.

2:15:08Like, I shouldn't be treated this way. So my plan is, I'm going to try to talk to my partner about this. And we're going to go to therapy about this and see if it improves. And if it doesn't, I'm going to leave to find a different relationship. You're right. You want to sense danger. But the question is, is it productive or is it unproductive? What do we do with it? So people when I say like trust your gut but somebody might say, well, my gut is that like when things are really unpleasant, you stick with it because my parents stuck with my other parent when things are really unpleasant. And that's what you do, right?

2:15:40So that doesn't make sense. So I think that do the opposite in that case. It's like, oh, you think you're supposed to stay in this case because your parents did, like, do the opposite. See what happens if you do something different. We hear that there's value to being able to be on one's own. Like, you know, some people seem to always need to be in a relationship. And some people probably don't. But do you think there's value to people really understanding themselves first? I know some couples that got together in like their first year of college that are still together. They have kids now in college, which is a trip.

2:16:22And they seem super happy. They are super happy from what I know. And I know people that have had many relationships and then find somebody and some people take time on their own, some people don't. How important is this notion about knowing oneself really? Yeah. So when you look at what are the factors that determine the success of a relationship or a marriage, emotional maturity is number one. Number two, by the way, is flexibility. That being with someone incredibly rigid is very hard. Defined rigid. Rigid is things have to be this way. In the practical space, like toothpaste has to be on the right, not on the left, can't they?

2:17:00And emotionally rigid. Like this is wrong, this is right. This is the way you do it. This is not the way you do it. You know, you behave this way, you don't behave this way. As opposed to people of different personalities, they have different ways of pleading. And yes, the rigidity around sort of like the household, of course, too. But just a rigid personality, you know, like, I can't leave it this time. I have to leave it this time. We have to be here now, you know, like, whatever we can't. There's no flexibility around anything or even flexibility around plans. Like when you get married, you don't know what five years, ten years down the line is going to be like, are you flexible with how you're moving in whatever direction?

2:17:38The other person is moving in whatever direction. Like, if you need things to be static, that's very rigid. And it's hard because people are not static. There are things about their core personality that tend to be static, but people evolve. And so you have to leave room for the evolution of their three entities. There's you, there's the other person, and there's the relationship. And all three of those entities are going to evolve over time. And if you don't have flexibility and you insist that they stay exactly the same, that's going to be problematic. going back to whether somebody needs to spend time alone before they get into a relationship or how much you need to know yourself before you get into a relationship.

2:18:17I think people have this misconception that they have to be fully formed and then before they can get into a relationship and the thing is that you grow in connection with others and so people you're saying you're so surprised that these people met in college and you know they've been together all this time and of course they were so young. Oh no I'm not surprised. Okay. No No, no, no, I'm envious. Okay. Because they, in a, in a, in a lightweight, because they got their first jobs in parallel. They, they, sadly, their parents passed away in parallel. They, they went through a number of life evolutions together.

2:18:51Yeah. Their life story is a commingled story. Yes. You know, it reminds me of, I had a therapy client who was divorced and she was talking about dating again and she met someone great. And she said, I love this person so much and this person is actually a much better person for me, but there's a sadness that she said he will never have met my parents because they had died. He will not know like all these things about who I was when I was 25 or 35 or you know, what it was like when I went through this particular thing in life or you know, again, like the you know, wasn't there with with the birth of our children.

2:19:32didn't know our kids at that age. So it's true that there's something very important about having a shared history. It's not end -all -be -all. She's happier in that second marriage. But there is something to be said about people think, well, I have to wait until I'm at this point before I can seriously consider dating someone who might become my life partner. And I think that you grow in connection with people or people say, you know, like, I'm not ready to be in a relationship because I don't know enough about myself. You're gonna learn so much more about yourself when you are with someone because you're forced to, someone's holding up a mirror to you.

2:20:12It's like how I say that, you know, I was saying earlier that when I see couples, people grow individually so much faster because they're in relationship with someone and really having that mirror held up to them. I mean, you can sit there and think like by yourself until you turn blue in the face, but the reality is, no one's giving you feedback. You're not interacting. You're not pushing up against anything. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, certainly most of my evolution has been in relation to other things and not just romantic relationships. I mean, like jobs that didn't feel right, that I eventually moved on to a different job.

2:20:48Like you just learned so much based also on what didn't work. I mean, there's real information there. I definitely want to go back to grief and talk about loss, but I feel like there's a hatch that we opened earlier that I'd like to peer into for a bit, which is this male -female distinction dynamic that nowadays is very prominent, especially in, I would say, people like 40 and younger. It's so different now in terms of the dynamics of what boys and men hear about boys and men generally, what girls and women hear about girls generally and therefore how like we think about ourselves. But you have a son.

2:21:36What do you think are some of the positive things that have evolved in this kind of landscape?

2:21:47And then what do but also just relationship to self. I think romantically, it's very hard for young people like in their teens and early 20s, because they don't have an infrastructure around romantic relationships. There's not the typical kind of courting because it feels kind of old. Guys don't ask girls out on dates anymore. They do, but they don't really know how How are they doing on text? As opposed to just like, there's something really profound about having to call someone on the phone and ask them out on a date. You grow so much as a person by doing that and it kind of sets the stage for the relationship as well.

2:22:34Or asking someone out in person. It's hard. You're really vulnerable. So it's easy to kind of avoid vulnerability because you can do so many things on text. and pretend that it's not a vulnerable act. And people don't necessarily even call it a date. You know, it's like, hey, you want to hang out. Which is just kind of the language around it. So there's not sort of like the structure of we're going on a date. That's much less common. Whereas in your era and my era, it was much more like you knew when you were being asked on a date. It was not so ambiguous. And I think social media makes it really hard because, you know, any misstep, someone's going to post about it potentially or they've got you on video or things that are really embarrassing or scary when you're first getting into a relationship with someone, you know, that could become, if you're with the wrong person who's emotionally immature and many young people, you know, they're learning and growing, they do all kinds of things that humiliate the other person.

2:23:40Here's a list of someone's red flags that I'm going to share with everybody. Can you imagine? And it's on social media. So teens are doing this, people have to join us. Yes, yes. Or can you believe someone, information that should remain private does not remain private. I'm not talking about things that are bad that someone did that are like need to be reported. I'm talking about embarrassing things where someone was socially unskilled. Her breath was bad. His, his, his, he smelled bad. That kind of thing. Yeah, anything like, or, you know, this is, this is what, or this is what he did on the date that was, you know, embarrassing.

2:24:20You know, he did this weird impression, or, you know, whatever it is. But also just like sexual encounters, or, you know, like nothing feels totally private. Like you just the level of trust that you have to have in your partner now that was just taken for granted. Like sure, people might have said something to their best friend, but they also had better boundaries around that. Like you kind of knew in our society what was private and what was not. And because people grow up on social media, they don't really have experience with this sort of, there's a private sphere and there's a public sphere.

2:24:55So it's all kind of blurred. And they don't really learn like what is private and what is not. And I think it's really nerve -wracking for people so people don't take, we're talking about risk, people don't take risks in relationships, they don't, they aren't really vulnerable because they're afraid that, you know, they will be humiliated. So what do you think the need is to, um, to share that with the world? Is it because then they don't have to acknowledge that it might have been at least in part them? Like, like if you paint red flags on somebody, then it can't, then you're, the person painting is not the one under scrutiny, right?

2:25:31I think they just feel hurt and they want to feel and so they feel like a dip in their self -esteem and they want to feel validated and of course if they make this list their friends are going to say yeah you dodged a bullet this person wasn't right for you you deserve better and then they feel better about it but you don't grow from that so the thing is that But if you can sit with that really hurts and this isn't, and like this person is not the arbiter of myself worth, whoever broke up with me and for whatever reason, you know, just because someone doesn't value you doesn't mean you don't have value.

2:26:12And you think that's a really important lesson for people to learn. So you know, if I took like a, some gold, right, like a brick of gold and, you know, and someone said, like, I don't like that. I like silver or I like whatever I like, right? Just what mean the gold inherently lost value? It means that for that person, that block of gold didn't have value, but the gold has the same amount of value that it had. And I think that we tend to kind of consider somebody else's opinion of us to be the arbiter of our worth. And it's not like your worth is stable. And people, some people will value it, some people won't find the people who value it.

2:26:53Because those are the people that you want to be with. But it doesn't mean that you have less value because somebody doesn't value it or you have more value because someone does value it. You have the same amount of value either way. But I think young people are not, you know, it always hurts. We talked about breakups earlier, they always hurt. And especially when you're young and you don't have experience, but my concern is that they're not getting the experience of kind of sitting with it. And yes, you want to have your friends support you and all of that. But I think once you start posting about it or once you start kind of vilifying the other person, you're not learning the lesson.

2:27:30You're not learning how to deal with loss. In your adult clients, how much of the struggle that you hear about in terms of romantic relationships relates to, again, online aspects like apps and things like that. Do you think they facilitated things or made them relationships more challenging? Well, I think what the apps do is there's a phenomenon that Barry Schwartz talks about in his book, The Paradox of Choice. And it's the idea that the more choice we have, the less happy we are. So you need some choice, but it's kind of like think of like a fishbowl in aquarium and an ocean. Fishbowl is not enough choice.

2:28:12Just too constrained. Ocean too much choice. You're like, like, yeah, there's no direction. Oh my gosh, the aquarium is perfect. It's a certain amount of choice, but it's manageable. You don't get flooded, you don't get overwhelmed. So they did these experiments where like you'd be able to test out like we have this new jam and we have 10 different flavors and which one do you like best and which one are you gonna pick? People would get so overwhelmed, they didn't even wanna try that. They're like, it's too much. Or we have two flavors, which one do you like better, right? manageable. So there are people who are what we call status -ficers and people who are maximizers.

2:28:52So, status -ficers, well let me tell you about maximizers first. Maximizers are people, let's say you want to buy a sweater, okay? You go into the store, you find a sweater that you like. It's the right material, it's the right price, it fits you well, it's the right color, it's good. Great. The maximizer says, but maybe I can find something better. So I'm going to take that sweater and I'm going to put it on bottom of the pile so that nobody buys it. I'm going to go to the store next door and I'm going to see if they have something better. Maybe something's on sale. Maybe it's slightly higher end material, whatever it is, right?

2:29:27But they keep going to stores and they keep doing this and then they think, oh, well, I found the greatest sweater ever and I'm going to get that one. Guess what? They are less satisfied with that purchase than the person who the satisfies or who would have bought that first sweater in that first store and would have been super happy with that sweater. It's all opportunity cost. Okay. Because all of the energy, the emotional and cognitive energy that went into maximizing something for what kind of benefit, like what percent benefit, not much compared to the amount of energy that they spent trying to maximize.

2:30:05They're never satisfied because even when they get that great product, something better is going to come out. There's going to be a new color that comes out like two weeks later that was in none of the stores. So you're always kind of looking over if you're a maximizer. You're always kind of looking over your shoulder for like, what if something better is out there in dating? That's what the apps are like. You go out with someone, you have a good time, you think, well, no butterflies, you know, no sparks, pretty good time. But I don't know. I can go back on the apps. You go back on the apps. Look at all the people there.

2:30:38Maybe they're better on this dimension. or that dimension. And so what it does is it turns everyone into maximizers because there's an illusion of choice. Like not everybody you see is going to be better. And again, we don't get the all -acart option with people. So there will be different dimensions in which people are more aligned with what you're looking for. But no one's going to be like perfect, right? So why are we looking for perfection? Why don't we look for? And by the way, the status facers are not settling. This isn't about like, yeah, I'll just settle for a second. It's like, that sweater was great.

2:31:10You liked everything about it. You don't need to look for anything more. Will there be, if you pick a partner, will there be someone more attractive? Of course. Will there be someone less attractive? Of course, right? And by the way, if we treat dating like shopping, we forget that in shopping, we're the choosers, but in dating, someone has to choose us too. And we, by the way, are not perfect. So an exercise that I like to do with clients is I want you to write down all the reasons that it would be difficult to date you. So instead of making a list of all the qualities you want in a partner like the partner has to be this, they have to be that, they have to, you know, have these interests, they have to have this amount of ambition, they have to look a certain way, they have to have these interests, whatever it is.

2:31:56I want you to write down everything that would make it difficult. What a great exercise. To be with you. And some people, it's kind of like in a job interview when they say, what are your weaknesses and we tend to say things that sound positive? You know, like my weaknesses that I work too hard, but I'm too dedicated. That I can't, you know, let's go. This is not an answer. It's a non, right? So you have to be scrupulously honest with yourself. So what makes it hard to be with you? And if you're really honest with yourself, suddenly you're less of a maximizer, right? Because suddenly you're like, oh, someone is thinking about the things that, you know, they're looking at me holistically as well.

2:32:38And overall, I'm a pretty good package. But there are things that, you know, maybe they could maximize if they really wanted to, but then they're going to have to give up some other qualities that I have that the other person might not have. So I think it's really important not to think about dating as shopping. And I think that people who grew up on apps tend to treat dating like shopping and they don't sit there and make the list of, oh, I can be this way. And that makes it hard for someone to be with me. And you could name a million reasons. Oh, and by the way, I tell them that for all the traits you're looking for, however, whatever that number is, because they tend to have a lot, right?

2:33:14It's not just like I need these three things. It's like I need these 20 things, right? The list. So I said, for every quality that you're looking for, whatever number that is, if it's 20, you need to name 20 things that make it hard to be with you. So it can't be like there are two things that make it hard to be with you, but you have a list of 20 things that you want. Do you think that after people make that list that they might take a look at that list and make some effort to like reduce or eliminate some things from that list? Is that good self work? Like if somebody is super rigid about punctuality, anyone that knows me clearly, that's not me, like I know some people that are so rigid about that.

2:33:57Let's say someone identifies that is one of the things that can be really difficult. Like they get really upset if somebody's five minutes late. I've interacted with these people. You're very difficult to be around. As an academic, everything starts 10 minutes late. We end late. That's how it works. But should they try to resolve that or reduce that, that feature or should they look at the list and say, you know what? Like, I'm not going to change that. I mean, this thing, well, I should probably change that. What else can the list do for people? Okay, so relationships are like cement. So when you're first putting down, right, the cement, it's wet and it's malleable.

2:34:35When it dries, it's very hard to then, now you have to like dig it up. So let's say that punctuality is really important for someone and they think, well, I don't want to rock the boat. It's the beginning of the relationship. So yeah, this person comes late all the time, but I'm gonna say nothing about it and I'm gonna be cool with that. Even though I'm not and I'm sitting there seething every time they come late, right? And it's kind of like in the first three months of a relationship, I think it was Chris Rock who said this in the first three months of a relationship, you're not you, you're the ambassador of you.

2:35:04So sometimes people will, you know, who really are not punctual, will be punctual and then they'll change, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about someone who, you know, someone has, they're just not a punctual person like you're saying you are. So if you're dating someone and that person is telling themselves, like I'm not gonna bring it up, I don't want to rock the boat. It's early in the relationship. The cement is wet. This is when you need to bring it up So because if you don't what happens is it's like six months down the line the person is like I can't believe you're late What just how you know why are you you're always late?

2:35:36You don't prioritize me It's like the person's like I'm this is the first time hearing about this like the person has had a no opportunity to change it If they want to but be no opportunity to explain so it might be that has happened with one of my therapy clients. The person was always late, but it was because he was trying to please her because she wanted to have dinner. He knew that she liked to eat on the earlier side. He worked really late. So he was trying to kind of like get his work done and get there and he was always late because he was trying to like be there when she wanted to have dinner.

2:36:12So he said like, I'm late because I do prioritize you. I'm actually leaving work early to be with you, but I should have just said I can't be here at this time. That's what I should have said, and I was worried you would get mad because it would be too late for you. So you see the assumption that she made was you don't care about me. I'm not important to you. Your work is more important. And he's saying, no, I actually was leaving work to be with you. And I still couldn't get there on time. So we need to figure out how to work this out. Like, can we have dinner later? because I'm just gonna be late if we do it earlier and what can we work out.

2:36:49So that's an example of if you just bring it up early, you don't build up all these stories about the other person, this person doesn't care, they don't prioritize me, whatever the story is that you're making about that person. And you have a chance to see, is the person willing to do something about it? Or if they're not, are you willing to be flexible and say, you know, this person, they just run late. And I like so many other things about them and I'm going to adjust to the fact that this is one thing that in a perfect world I would like them to be more punctual, but there's so many great things that this is one thing that I'm gonna adjust to Weaving this with what we were talking about earlier about gut sense and the validity or lack of validity of gut sense I certainly have had the experience and I know many other people have that after a relationship ends or when it's ending They think back and they go, you know, there was that thing at the beginning.

2:37:46And I knew it then, but I pushed it aside. Like, is that just a story we tell ourselves? I think that the most important question to ask yourself after you go on a first date or a second date or a third date is, how do I feel when I'm with this person? Because all the other stuff is just kind of like a cognitive exercise, right? Like, so one of my clients, she was said to herself, like, I don't want to date any. She was in her early 30s and she said, I don't, I want to have kids with a partner. I'm 31 years old. I don't want to date anyone. I'll date someone who's divorced, but I won't date someone who has kids.

2:38:29She met someone online. It didn't have the kid question in that particular app that she was using. She went to meet him on the first date. She's having such a good time and it comes up that he has a kid and She was having such a good time that she really debated like should I go out with him again? Should not go out with him again. This is not what I want. I don't want to deal with that. It's too messy and it's not what I imagined if she had known on that dating app that He had you know, it had asked if he had kids and he had put that she would never have met him That is her husband. She is so happy.

2:39:07I mean, they've been married now for like 15 years. They have kids together. They have the other kid. She's so happy. So I think that when we make that list that you said like, do you should you take things off the list? I think that you need to have flexibility about things that may not matter, but you have to be very inflexible about the things that do matter. So character qualities, they matter, values that align, that matters. So those are things that don't be flexible on that. So I just want to make sure I understand. So we're talking about two different lists here. One is a list about a features about the other person.

2:39:45This is what I hear as like the list. The number of times that friends are like, you have to make a list. I've never get around to making a list. But I like this other list that you described, which are all the things about ourselves that would make us difficult to be with, which list or both do we need to have rigidity versus flexibility on? I'm saying that when we think of that list, and by the way, a lot of people don't sit there and write a list, but they have it in their head. You know, there's this process of I know what I'm looking for, or whatever, or some people say, like, I know it when I see it, but there's really a list in there, because you know what you're looking for, and it matches this list in your head.

2:40:20So on that list, I'm saying you need to put more things like character qualities, are they honest? Are they reliable? Can I trust them? Do we have the same kind of vision of the kind of life that we want to lead? You know, where are we aligned on those important things? Because those things are, those are sort of hard to bridge those gaps. You know, like they're just going to keep coming up and, and be very difficult to deal with. Things like, do we have to have all the same interest? No. Do we, does the person have kids or not? Well, you may not be the ideal choice, but look what happened to this other person.

2:41:01Like, you don't know. I think that question that I'm going back to of, how does this person make me feel if the character qualities are there? Because sometimes people who don't have the character qualities that you want are very charming and they can make you feel great. But if they have the character qualities, do I feel calm around this person? Going back to this idea of peace and calm. I like this idea somebody had mentioned that I love this metaphor of being able to bring your rough drafts to the other person, meaning that you don't have to be on all the time with this person. That you can bring sort of the rough draft of yourself, of this idea, of, you know, you're kind of imperfect draft.

2:41:45and they collaborate with you on that. And I think that's so beautiful, right? Like, you can be, what it means is you can be yourself. And yourself doesn't mean I can act in any way I want. I can have no boundaries. I can be abusive. No, that's not the rough draft. But it's kind of like, I am working this through. I'm trying to understand this. I'm not perfect. Sometimes I will make mistakes. And can you be comfortable enough around each other to hold yourself accountable? but still feel loved by the other person. I love, love, love the criteria for lack of a better word of how do I feel when I'm around this person?

2:42:24Yeah. Peace being an anchor point or a place to look for. And when I say how, I mean, do you feel calm? Do you feel content? And so calmness is different from sort of the activation. Contentment is different from like out of your mind happy. Of course in the beginning and hopefully throughout the relationship there will be times when you feel this like incredible energy around happiness and joy and being around the other person. But most of the time what you're going to feel around your partner is a sense of safety, a safe place to land, contentment. I enjoy this person's sense of humor. I enjoy sitting with them even through our silences.

2:43:12I enjoy like sitting on the couch and watching a show with them. I enjoy basically doing anything with them just because I like their presence. That's what I mean. Like how do you feel? Does their presence feel additive to you? Does it feel like you and just are happier with their presence than you would be without their presence? And sometimes people feel like, oh, we have such a strong relationship or so drawn to each other, but what you're drawn to is when you're with each other, the presence is volatile. It's either like the high highs and the low lows. And that's not, you know, I'm talking about that sense of contentment just being in the other person's presence, the dailiness of it.

2:43:54There's so much made of these love languages, like their acts of service. and I like, you know, gifts, you know, all that kind of stuff. You know, I've heard it said, you know, what's your love language and someone, you know, I'm just saying, all of them, you know, that person was me, all of them, who doesn't like all of those, you know, both, you know, I like to think I offer them too, you know, you know, who doesn't like all of those things, but I realize that some people place more value on certain gestures and expressions. And I think that's all fine and good. What I love about what you're saying, however, is that it's more of like a, no, we're sounding woo.

2:44:38But it's more of like an energetic match. This feeling of safety. You know, the word peace to me just like holds so much value these days. I feel like the two things that have come to really value more and more are peace and self -respect. Because it's hard to have peace without self -respect. Yeah. Certainly hard to have self -respect without peace. Now sometimes lack of peace can be from external things, but then we have to ask ourselves, like, do we have any control over these external things? Yeah, I'm curious what your reflections are on, like, energy, like an energy match. So, instead of love languages, I look at it as understanding each other's operating instructions.

2:45:19We don't get a manual, like when you get it by a car, a piece of technology, right? It comes with operating instructions. So you know exactly how it works. Like don't push this button, do push this button. This makes it run more smoothly. This will destroy it. Right? So you understand those things. So we don't know that about the other person. Like we make so many assumptions. You know, if this person is coming to me to talk about this, here's what I would want in that situation. So we do that and the person's like, no, no, no, no, no, I came to talk to you about it. I just wanted to vent. I don't, I didn't come for you to fix it.

2:45:52Right? But maybe you like it when people fix it. So you have to learn the other person's operating instructions. So we talk about this idea of love languages people like all those things as you said operating instructions is something so much deeper and more intimate which is I understand that being late means this to you. I understand that it helps you when you're anxious if my voice gets quieter. instead of, you know, I understand that you need a hug in this moment. I understand that when we're going on a trip, you like to pack this way and I like to pack this way and let's do it our own ways, right?

2:46:36But, or, you know, just like, I understand these things about you and you understand these things about me and so if we understand them, we know how the other person operates and we're going to operate ourselves with an eye toward that. And there's something so loving about understanding somebody's operating instructions and honoring them. And we don't try to figure out the other person. We try to think like, why are they acting that way? We don't get curious and ask, hey, why are you acting that way? What's going on? And you learn that, oh, well, this is why. And then now you know that in those situations, here's how they can go more smoothly.

2:47:12I rarely ask guests on this podcast to editorialize about other guests, but here it feels appropriate. Bill Eddie was on this podcast. He's a therapist and lawyer and he wrote the book. I think it was like five types of people that will ruin your life. And one of the cardinal features of a person that he claim will ruin your life is somebody, one of the early warning signs. Let's not say cardinal features, but is somebody who has a story about their past failures that's always about how they were wronged by somebody else. Yes. Like the victim stands. Like there's no other word for it. People who are constantly talking about how they were a victim of somebody else.

2:47:56There is a word for it. It's called help rejecting complainers. Help rejecting complainers. So a help rejecting complainer is a person who is always telling you, you know, this went wrong and it was somebody else's fault. and they're seemingly coming to you for advice or guidance. And no matter what you say, like how about this, or have you tried this, or have you thought about this? No, that won't work because no, I've tried that, that's not gonna help. No, cause people are like this and that won't help. So they don't actually want help. It serves them in some way to be, to complain and be the victim and be wronged.

2:48:36And so it's almost like, you know, that makes them feel better. They don't want to look at themselves. They don't want to look at their role and things. So beware of help rejecting complainers because they're always going to come to you and you're going to first feel bad for them. You're going to be like, wow, they've really had a hard time. Wow. I wonder if I could help them this way. And then you start to realize they don't want help. They don't want to be helped. They will reject any help that comes their way because if they get help they can't complain anymore I'm guessing you see this sometimes in therapy.

2:49:10Oh, and in the world. Yeah We've been making a fair number of assumptions about relationships structure There's so many different permutations these days that we don't have to explore them all but Do you think that some people are just not well suited for Romantic relationships? I've known a few people in my lifetime, a former advisor who he passed away, as I mentioned earlier, but who had tried romantic relationships and decided they weren't for him. Most everyone I know in my life is either partnered or, yeah, pretty much. Thank goodness happily so. But are there people for whom like they just opt out of the game for reasons that are healthy as opposed to fear of rejection or otherwise.

2:50:06I think that we are wired to want to love and be loved. Whatever that means, there's all kinds of love, there's all kinds of ways to love. I think that people don't know how to love and be loved if they haven't seen it. So, generally you learn that because you've had it modeled for you or if you haven't had it modeled for you by trial and error, start to learn these things, maybe you go to therapy and you learn more about it. But I think no matter what people come to therapy for, no matter what we call the presenting problem, they're coming because whatever they want to say it is, deep down, something got kind of ruptured in the love or being loved area of their life.

2:50:52And really that's the core of it, and we have to solve that problem so that the problem they came in for, you know, it's kind of like you're dealing with content, which is like, here's the problem and process, which is what's going on underneath. And if we can solve the process, then you solve content in multiple areas of your life. It's not just this one problem that you came in with, but generally, if you learn at the core, what the issue is that gets in the kind of lover -be -loved area, you learn how to navigate through the world differently in your professional life, in your romantic life, in your platonic friendship, life, in your family life.

2:51:31So it's not just therapy isn't just about solving like that one -discreet problem. Sometimes it is, but many times it's about, if we can get to the deeper process issue, then you will solve so many different problems simultaneously. Throughout today's conversation, I feel like what seems to be in contrast is our stories about ourselves and other people and life versus just really being present. This image of the Teflon pan is really looping in my head because this idea that positive thing happens, it slips right off. Negative things sticks. What does that mean? It's like we create a story about the negative thing and that the story about the positive thing was a very brief story.

2:52:20It was like one of those three sentence poems or something and then it's gone. Versus presence, like the more presence we can bring to something, the more positive, meaningful experience we can extract from it. I really believe this. I learned this in science actually because I had an absolutely spectacular neuroanatomy professor when I was an undergraduate and he said, when you look down the microscope, if you're looking for something, you'll find it. But you're gonna miss all this context of like the inputs to that structure and you lose the pattern recognition That's gonna serve you going forward.

2:52:56So I learned I had this but I had so much time back then I would just sit at night as a graduate student after I left You know my undergrad and went on to a lot And I would just like stare at brain tissue and you you learn that and and About it in conscious and unconscious ways and then later when you're doing an experiment and you see things like, oh, you know, there's a deficit here. There's a real effect here. And you learn that through presence, you're experiencing so much differently than if you go looking for something in science. If you go looking for something, it's actually bad science.

2:53:32And I've tried to transport that onto relationship in some ways, like in relation to things and people and dogs and all the things in life if you're really present. And like the story's writing itself, but you're not scripting it out. I don't know, I don't think I have a language for this. Rick Rubens talked a little bit about this in his book, The Creative Act. Like we need to be on the front end of the vehicle, experiencing space and time as it's happening, as opposed to sitting next to it or in it and kind of creating a narrative about what's happening around us. Does that make sense? Right, so most of us, all of us, are myself included, you, all of us, were unreliable narrators, because we're only telling the story through our own lens.

2:54:15And so it's really important for people to kind of be expansive about what the story might be, about themselves, like someone might have a story, I'm unlovable, or I can't trust anyone, or nothing will ever work out for me. That's their story that they're carrying around from childhood, or from some experience that they had in life. And they don't realize that they're carrying that story around. So everything that they experience is viewed through that lens. And so, of course, they're not finding people they trust because their whole world view is, I can't trust anyone. Even the person might be trustworthy.

2:54:52Or they feel unlovable. So of course, they can't take in the love that they're getting because, again, what are they paying attention to? This predominant storyline. So they need to rewrite the story. I created this workbook that's like a step -by -step guide. I'm not sort of doing this to plug the workbook. I'm saying it's a very methodical process. You have to break down the story. And my background is that, you know, I come from a writing background. So I feel like I'm almost like an editor in the therapy room when people come in and they bring this story. And my job is to help them edit the story so that this faulty narrative that was never true or someone, you know, whoever told them that story, whether they explicitly said you're not levable or showed them through their actions that they then felt not levable, that story was told by another narrator.

2:55:44So that narrator was unreliable, gave you this story that now you take as gospel and you move through life with that story. So let's examine that story and can we look for examples of counter examples, of when that story is not true? because generally there are stories of you being lovable. There are stories of people being trustworthy. There are stories of things working out for you. So we have to really rewrite those narratives and say, you know, what is true and what is an artifact of somebody else's story that we're carrying around and why are we like writing the next chapter with somebody else's narrative that we never owned anyway?

2:56:25Yeah, it seems that like one of the challenges of being human is unless somebody is a narcissist where they basically dismiss anything that doesn't make them feel good, in which case they miss out on so much of life and everyone can't stand them anyway. If you're a permeable person like you you're paying attention to what people say, you're trying to integrate that, you're trying to do better, be better. The hard part is being semi -permeable. You have to know what to let in, what to reject, what to accept, what to work on. I mean, it's a challenging thing, this process of being a person in relation to others, right?

2:57:01Well, right. And again, the story, think about like how much we tell stories about ourselves and other people that example I gave you earlier about the person who said, well, he doesn't prioritize me because he comes late and work is more important to him. And in fact, he was prioritizing her. So we tell all kinds of stories and we make meaning of interactions with people. And generally we don't have enough information and we need to say can we expand this story? What would that story look like if I got curious and asked more about it? Or even just things that happen in our own lives? Can I examine that story for myself?

2:57:38Is that the story I want to tell myself about that experience that didn't go the way I wanted? Or can I look at it a different way? Like, am I a failure or am I actually growing? Right? You can look at the same story the same way. I'm a failure. That didn't work out. or, oh, that's really interesting. I learned something really important. And I'm really a courageous person for trying that. And now I learned something totally different experiences of the same event. And I think sometimes the way we get to that story in the moment is to look at our senses. So we have five senses. We don't tend to pay much attention to them.

2:58:13We just think through everything. So can you say in a moment, right, like even about your partner when you're upset with your partner? Can you say like with each sense like here's one thing I see about my partner that I really like Even though I'm upset about something they just did right here's something I like the tone of their voice Or I like the way they laugh You know, I like the way they smell You know whatever it is You know, I like the way you can just reach out by the way touch is so important what I have couples do sometimes when things are getting a little bit escalated in the therapy room is I'll say, can you take each other's hands right now?

2:58:54And it's the last thing I want to do in that moment. I'll say, can you just take each other's hands? Calmness, right? Their nervous system is calming down. And all of a sudden they feel, oh yeah, I forgot what that touch feels like. And you feel connected now. So can we use our other senses sometimes when we get really in our head and use it to kind of expand the story and connect and whether it's connecting with yourself. Sometimes you don't with anxiety. We do that. You know, something I can see here, taste, touch, smell. We can do that with a partner too. I feel like the whole landscape around relationships has changed so much in the last 20, 30 years.

2:59:35It seems like in some ways for the better, like there's a lot more discussion about the sorts of things that you're explaining and better understanding of self, how to show up better, better choice making, and so on. I was thinking about the, at the same time, this example you mentioned before, like someone in their teens or 20s will, a couple will break up and then somebody's posting all these things about them. That kind of quote unquote feedback, because it's not really feedback, it's more signaling and posturing about what they aren't as opposed to what the other person is, has got to create pretty detrimental stories in the person that it's about, right?

3:00:17Because they have the choice of either believing those things or disbelieving them. But it's not really an opportunity for growth in the same way that sitting down with somebody and saying, like, hey, these were some things that you did well and hear some things that didn't go well. And I guess how much of the story for men and women, young men and women nowadays and older, do you think like it's being written through the like what we hear about the opposite sex? Right? Like like in the last I would say 10, 15 years, it hasn't really been a moment of really trying to prop young boys up and men of it's like, like, male -ness is great.

3:01:05Like, that's not something you hear very often. Yeah. And I certainly understand why there was a need and an effort to balance opportunities, right? But a lot of young guys grew up hearing that male -ness, having a Y chromosome is a bad thing that testosterone is bad or something like that. You know, and I've been asked to comments on this more and more recently in the press. And, you know, I only know my experience and what I I observe, but I mean, you take any group and tell them that they're bad. And that hasn't really worked out well for any group and then it or for society. When my son was in preschool, there was a shirt that girls would wear, little, you know, preschool girls.

3:01:48And it said, boys are stupid, let's throw rocks at them. And it was supposed to be somehow girl power, empowering, but you don't empower by putting down another group. right? You lift up, but you don't bring down. And my son was so confused by that. I remember he was like, why? What does that mean? And can you imagine if some boy showed up at preschool that said girls are stupid, let's throw rocks at them? He'd be in a different preschool pretty quick. right? I mean, you know, it's so I think it's interesting to think about how it became that it's very hard for young men to navigate what is masculinity in a positive way look like.

3:02:40And they get all kinds of messages, you know, all men are bad, men should be more like women, men, men need to be this way or that way, but know if they are more communicative than they're weak, but if they aren't communicative, there's no kind of right way to be. And I think it's very confusing for you, and if a young, like a teenager or someone in college wants to kiss a girl, right? Like on a date. And they don't do it because like it for, like they don't know what to do. Like do I need to say can I kiss you, right? Which feels a little bit like, takes away from the moment. But at the same time, they don't want to assume that she wants to be kissed.

3:03:29But like it seems pretty obvious to him that like they're standing out in front of their cars in front of the restaurant. And like maybe she wants a good night. It's just so confusing. And I think that there's definitely, I think, a positive correction in what we call toxic masculinity, the ways that men didn't really assume the personhood of women. But I also think that it's gotten to a place where it's so confusing for both young men and young women to understand sort of how can we be with each other? or how can we relate to each other, where we won't be criticized, canceled. We don't know what's right.

3:04:15Like, is it, do I put myself out there? Do I not put myself out there? Will I get in trouble? And so, obviously, it's a good thing that people are having conversations and there's more communication around like, what is okay, what do you want? Is this okay? But at a certain level, it becomes people are afraid to do anything. Yeah, talk about lack of presence. It sounds like they have to write the story all the way to the 10 different outcomes for a given action, you know, evaluating if then they're no longer reading the other person's signals. I mean, it sounds incredibly complicated. Right. It is very complicated.

3:04:53I think there's progress, too. I mean, I think it's much better than having these situations where men just assumed like it was okay to do certain things, whether, you know, the woman consented or not. But I also feel like the education that they're getting around this, which again is, again, it's so complicated because it's positive that they're getting this education, but they don't know what it looks like in practice because the way that, you know, even when you think of like corporate training and you have to watch those videos, right? And, you know, what is okay and what is not okay? They give the most obvious examples of what is not okay.

3:05:27But then there's just sort of like how, like say you're at work and there's someone that you're a woman and you're at work and there's a guy that you're attracted to. Because a lot of people meet at work, right? Because it's hard and where do you meet people when you're an adult? Where do you spend all your time? You spend a lot of your days, five days a week at work. So you might meet someone through work and then there's this sort of, and maybe it's not someone you directly report to or reports to you. They're in like a different department. There's like a cute guy. What do you do? People don't know.

3:05:57So women are confused too. What is okay? What is not okay? in the ways that organically people used to be able to say like, hey, that guy, you know, I'm gonna go talk to him, right? But people don't know what to do. Wow, tricky landscape, but you're offering tools for people at least, not at least, but to communicate better and certainly to understand themselves better so they know what they're bringing to the table. Well, I think that it's about understanding that whatever we see in TVs and movies, It doesn't look like that. There's always like, somebody doesn't know what to do in a certain moment or something doesn't go the way that you imagine it will go or sexes can be ridiculous at times.

3:06:40And all these weird things happen. I don't mean not consent. I'm talking about like, it just, it doesn't look like it does in the movies all the time. Well, and sometimes there's great chemistry and guess what? Sometimes there's not. Like, this chemistry thing is a real thing. and sometimes it develops over time and sometimes it doesn't. The idea that there wouldn't be much room for healthy exploration, error and adventure. It breaks my heart. I guess that's what I was referring to about things. But young people are smart, they can figure it out. And they also like to throw off the kind of like rules and standards of the adult generation.

3:07:21so that I trust they'll come up with with a better alternative for themselves, right? I want to make sure that I ask you about grief. When a client is grieving, a breakup or a loss of some sort, do you tell them to feel their feelings or do you tell them to compartmentalize and only feel their feelings? Certain times a day or do you ever have to say, hey listen, it's time to to bury this thing. I'm laughing because there's no one way to grieve a loss. And even the same loss, like, you know, siblings can lose a parent, and they'll have very different ways of grieving the loss of the exact same person.

3:08:09You know, there's just no right way or one way. And I think you really have to honor that person's process. And what I mean by that is it doesn't mean sort of, you know, just spend the rest of your life, like dwelling and not living, right? But I think people have this misconception about grief that somehow you're going to get over it. And often we carry those losses with us throughout our lives. Like, you lose someone important to you. You're gonna feel that loss. And you might feel it in different ways at different times if someone was important to you and you lost that person and you hadn't thought about them in a while and then you're in an elevator and you hear this music, this song, and all of a sudden, it's like someone just stuck a knife in your heart, even though you were doing fine.

3:09:02So, people, you know, I think that we are the accumulation of all the different people who have been in our lives for better or worse. And everybody makes some kind of impression on us that sticks with us. So I think it's really important for people to understand what the loss is about because the loss can represent lots of different things. You lose a parent, maybe it's the loss of your youth. You're like, oh no, I'm now the older generation. So part of it is the parent, part of it is this kind of I'm closer to death and what does that mean? You know, you lose a marriage and It couldn't mean oh look just like my parents.

3:09:45They got divorced and I failed even though that's not necessarily the meaning of it So we make meaning of the loss too. So it's what does this loss mean to you? How do you make sense of it? How do you Sit with the loss and then how do you again not move on but move forward? I love that concept. We integrate the things better for better worse into us, but moving forward is something I think everyone would probably want, one would hope. Yeah. I know you're not here to promote anything, but you caught my attention with this workbook because I think I and a number of people probably want to think about how to put some of this into action.

3:10:34And you've given us a lot of great tools to do that and a lot of different ways to think about things. I certainly am taking notes. Can you tell me about the notebook and what the notebook is and what who can make use of it? By the way, folks, this wasn't preceded into the conversation. We'll talk about the notebook. I just want to know for people who want to understand how to do good work. It sounds like a great tool. Right. So the workbook came about because I wrote this book called maybe you should talk to someone and it's the stories of it's my story going to therapy. And then it's the story of these four other patients that I had and when I working with them and and people said, wow, there was so much that made me think or feel or resonate with, but I need some structured, like, sort of a step -by -step guide to how I can make those kinds of changes too, and maybe they don't have access to therapy, or they don't want to go to therapy, they want to work on it in a different way.

3:11:35And I really wanted, I feel like therapy is this thing where certain people, you know, sort of like one -on -one, or if you have a couple, it's like, you know, three people in the room. And how do you bring that out so other people can use those tools? So I created basically a workbook that's a companion to maybe you should talk to someone and it's I really focused on stories because I feel like The narratives that we carry around shape so much of how we think feel and act every day So it's it's a it's a guide that really it's what I would do with someone in the therapy room if I were helping them To rewrite their story and to look at is this a faulty narrative?

3:12:11What does this look like? What are the true stories? What resonates with me now? this part of my life, where do these stories come from? Who told me these stories? Can I try this out in real life? Here's an exercise to do this week. So I think that more of us sometimes need that kind of guidance. It's one thing to theoretically think about something. And as a therapist, I'm just very direct and active anyway. As I said, the insight is the booby -price of therapy that I want people to have more than insight. I want them to have a plan with action. And I want them to have small manageable steps.

3:12:43Because I feel like if you get overwhelmed and the step is too big. That's really the only reason that people don't succeed at a change they want to make. It's that you need the steps to be manageable. So I really break it down for people, you know, how can we do this? It's kind of like weekly therapy. It's like how can we do this this week and work on that and then you can kind of reflect on it and there's all these different exercises that take you at the pace that works for you. It's great. I'm a huge fan of workbooks and online courses. I'm taking an online course right now just for my own enrichment.

3:13:17I'm going to get your notebook. I think it's a fabulous idea. I think there's so many books about the changes we can make and in any domain of health, wellness, psychology, fitness, whatever. And we read it, we might incorporate one or two little snippets and then it goes on the shelf and then we're proud to have it on our shelf because it says something about how we view life and it's cool to see those books elsewhere. And all that's wonderful. But I think workbooks are like a real thing. So we'll put a link to that again. This came up spontaneously, but I know a number of people want to know that I have one more question.

3:13:58We write this column. Is it a weekly column? Every two weeks I write, ask that they're a pissed yeah. Are there things thematically that are coming up more these days, like you're getting a thousand letters about blank and then two about something else. I mean, what, where are things batching these days? And there can be more than one bin, excuse me, bin to how it's batching. Yeah. So I think the same things come up. I've been doing this for so many years. I wrote it for six years at the Atlantic and I'm writing at the New York Times. And it's interesting because people talk about the same issues differently, but it's the same issue.

3:14:38So someone might say, you know, a lot comes up around, should I cut off this person? Whether that's a family member or a friend, you know, should I, you know, this person did this and boundaries are a big thing. And everyone thinks everyone's a narcissist, which they're not. Everyone thinks everyone is, you know, gaslighting them, which generally they're not. It's all dope, I mean. I'm just, I'm just kind of these by the, yeah. But I mean, like the language is different, is what I'm saying. But I think that what they're really struggling with, and what we all struggle with are, you know, relating.

3:15:09It's hard. Humans are unpredictable. Humans are, well, in some ways they're very predictable. But I think they're hard for another person to understand in that way, going back to the operating instructions that sometimes you think, this is going to be the expected response, and you get something completely different. They can't understand why a friend or a family member or a coworker or whatever would do or say or think something. I think at the end of the day people really know what the answer to the question is, but they want permission. So so many times people say like, you know, what do you think about this or I really want to do this, but the people in my family think this.

3:15:50And so they're almost asking for permission that it's okay to want something. It's okay. We are so cautious about desire in our culture. Sometimes we think that if I have a desire, it's indulgent. As opposed to, you should have desires. Live a big life. I always say to people, when you're making a decision, choose the bigger life. That's how you make the decision. And I heard that somewhere, it's not mine originally, but I think it's so true that, you know, it's okay to have these desires. But then we get these messages from our culture or our friend group or our families that no, no, no, it's not okay.

3:16:35And so a lot of people want permission and it's okay that you don't want to go to medical school. You know, it's okay. You know, it's okay that you don't want to have children. That's okay. You know, so I think sometimes people want permission, but I think what they're really, I think most of the letters are about, I'm having trouble relating, and I don't know if I'm crazy, they're crazy, what's happening, and so they need sort of that person who's going to zoom out and see it from a more objective place, and help them to see, again, going back to narrative, both sides of the narrative. So I'm not just in my column, I don't just say, here's what you should do, I do do that.

3:17:14But I first say I want you to have some context around this. So here's how you're thinking about it And that's understandable here's the other side of the story that you're not really paying attention to now that you have this wider lens Here's how I think this might be managed Love it. I love this concept of make the choice that is going to bring the bigger life Yeah, because as you pointed out so easy for people to stay stuck in what is unpleasant, but hasn't killed them yet. Or they're waiting for something. Like, I will buy a house when. I will look for a partner when, as if there are these prerequisites that need to happen, because that's the conventional view of the order in which you should live your life.

3:18:04You know, like, I won't buy a house until I'm married, as opposed to why? Why can't you buy a house that you like if you have the money to do that, right? You know, why do you have to wait for marriage for that? Or I won't look for a partner until I have this kind of job. You know, that you have to have all these little pieces in this order and there are so many different ways to live your life. And sometimes, by the way, you might want to live your life in that conventional order, but it just doesn't work out that way for you. So you might have to switch up the order, and that's okay. I love a vote in favor of people enjoying their life more.

3:18:37and hopefully deriving more self -respect by doing it. You know, this is a set of system of like we're not, we're going to deprive ourselves of things in order to respect ourselves. You know, even though I value discipline and I think learning to enjoy life is also important. Right, and I think that, you know, when we talk about, we're not talking about hedonism, we're talking about reflecting on what will make a meaningful, purposeful life for you and then being very intentional about going after that goal. So much here. Laurie, thank you so much for the work you do with your patients, slash clients, slash we don't have a better word for it.

3:19:25And also your willingness to get out and teach and literally every two weeks, you know, field questions from the general public, it's not easy to do, I imagine, and clearly you're thinking about things past, present, and future, and people really need these tools, and not everyone will make it into your office, unfortunately, and have the experience of working one -on -one with you. But I think the workbook, I'm so glad that came up so that people have an opportunity to put these things into action, and you've given us a ton to work with here. I listed out many things. I won't list them out here.

3:20:03We'll timestamp this episode in detail so people can go back and find them. But yeah, I've learned a ton. I'm going to put this to action. And hopefully you'll come back again and talk with us about what's new because I know this is an evolving field and there's the landscape of society changes. We're going to need new tools. But it sounds like the fundamentals are really in there. It involves self -reflection. I love this thing about a list of the things that make us difficult to be with as opposed to the list of the things we want in other people. And that Teflon pan is something I'm going to think about a lot.

3:20:37Yeah. Well, thanks so much for this conversation. I love having these longer conversations and really exploring what it means to be human. Thank you. You've certainly enriched my thinking about it. And I'm sure everyone listening as well. Thanks so much. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Laurie Gottlid. I hope you found it to be as interesting and actionable as I did. To learn more about Lori Gottlib's work and to find links to her excellent book and other resources, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from Endor and enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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3:21:38I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols in Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years and that's based based on more than 30 years of research and experience. It covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise to stress control protocols related to focus and motivation. Of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by PreSail at ProtocolsBook .com. There you can find links to various vendors.

3:22:13You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science -related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. And if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter, the neural network newsletter is a zero -cost monthly newsletter that includes podcasts, some of which are as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three -page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.

3:22:58We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to HubermanLab .com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter, and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Laurie Gottlimm. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.