Why Success Never Feels Like Enough | Dr. Marisa Franco

27:30It's going to be okay, AJ. It's not a big deal. It's just a permission slip. You can think about all the ways that when someone is having an emotional reaction, your first reaction to that emotional reaction is to try to dismiss its impact or make it smaller or make it feel less negative than it might be for the person who's experiencing it. But of course, that does the opposite. It often disconnects us more. Like I'm feeling the strong emotion and someone else is telling me, oh, it's just a permission slip. It's not a big deal. Yeah, exactly. Like I think what I'm going for in this book is that we need to just be able to tell the truth.

28:06Like when that's happened to us so much, it starts happening internally where you no longer know what your own thinking and feeling because you're pushing away and suppressing it Just like someone taught you to do. And, you know, for me, it's been really a process of welcoming emotions. And it's AJ, it's even ones that I wish weren't there that I don't want to feel that don't feel particularly rational. Right. Like, you know, I'll give an example. I had a friend and I was trying to get close to them and hang out with them. And it was hard to get on their calendar. I eventually did. They had an injury and they had to take care of themselves.

28:41So they had to cancel our ultimate hangout. what did I want to feel? Compassionate care for them. Take care of yourself. What did I feel? I feel kind of rejected. I've been trying to connect with you for so long and it's not working out. And past me would have been like, no, I shouldn't feel rejected. Be a good friend. Just say the right thing. But current me is like, let me take a moment with that rejection. Like, it's okay. I feel, let me label that. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. It's okay that you feel this way. You're loved. You're loved. You're loved. Right? Like doing that kind of mini memory reconsolidation because I'm sure it comes from a deeper place for me.

29:14And then when I do that, I am able to say, take care of yourself. I hope you're okay. In a way that feels actually genuine and not like I had to force myself, jerk myself to that place before I was there. And so I think there's this big misconception, I'm sure you know, AJ, that like people think that to be a good person is to push away or discount the emotions that are there. But in fact, that's what makes those emotions hijack us. We can only regulate the emotions we are willing to acknowledge. And me acknowledging I felt rejected, even if I felt like I shouldn't, allows me to come to peace so that I can then actually attune to the person in front of me.

29:53Well, what I think you're talking about, many of our audience will label as mastering their emotions, right? Like, I just shove that negative emotion of rejection aside and I just can wish my friend well and I'll deal with that later or like it didn't impact me, but it does. In many ways, it'll leak out in other ways that we weren't expecting. And it'll be even harder for us to process versus having this practice of recognizing it and not looking at it as something you should master or shove to the side. Right. It's just there. It's okay. Let's just tell the truth. And actually in this book, it's funny because I wrote my first book, Platonic, on being a securely attached friend.

30:30And I'm critical of not attachment theory, but the way that it's used in that secure attachment has become the status symbol. And it feels like we all want to be secure and have to be secure and put that on our profiles and tell people how secure we are. And then what happens when I feel anxious? I'm like, push that away. I'm supposed to be secure. So now I'm presenting to you as if what I am supposed to be rather than the authenticity of what I actually am. And secure attachment is being used to alienate me from myself. And so what I extend say is there's no hierarchy of attachment. It's just about where you are.

31:05And if you're anxious and you acknowledge that and you feel that, you can actually soothe the anxiety and the ways that a lot of influencers are like, you shouldn't be anxious because your crush didn't text you and a secure person like, you know, never has any doubts of themselves. It's like, not only are you anxious, now you're also ashamed of yourself for being anxious. And so actual healing is let's now be vulnerable about just how insecure we are, because only from that place can we care for, have compassion and ultimately heal our insecurities. What is often easier in this situation is to label ourselves than it is to actually work on ourselves.

31:44So it's easier to say, I'm secure attached like it's a destination and not recognize that there are different relationship dynamics that will come up in our life that lead to us feeling anxious or lead to us feeling avoided. There's not one label for every relationship in our life. And you might be in a very stable, healthy relationship right now where you feel secure, but recognize that this is something we're working on through our whole life, just like self-worth and self-esteem. It's not, okay, I have high self-esteem. I don't have to worry about that. Let me just focus on everything else that's on my plate.

32:16Yes, that is the paradox of self-worth. People that truly have high self-worth can admit when they don't. And they can say, hey, I'm feeling a little insecure right now. I'm feeling a bit vulnerable. This is hard for me. I could use some support. I'm going to offer myself from support. Whereas people that have the better than kind of highs, they never admit when they're vulnerable. They never admit when they feel less than or they feel weak. And it's that agility of being with where you are that marks true having true self-worth is that I'm I'm going to feel low. I'm going to feel insecure, but I have high regard for myself no matter where I'm at.

32:54I think with that, oftentimes, as our listeners chase confidence as this destination, it's hard to see when it's fake and when it's real, even in ourselves. like very often we can have that other side of the mirror where it's just completely fake and we're defensive and we're doing everything we can to project this high self-worth when internally we're not feeling like that at all or feeling like an imposter. Right exactly and it's it's ironic that sometimes you know if you're faking it in a way that leads you so far from where you actually feel that ultimately you're you're only feeling worse because now you're burying the very things that need to be healed.

33:36And so I just, I'm for us telling the truth. A, like this is it, like it's okay. Like I, my own therapy, for example, I've been working on my own worth because who went, writing a book on worth is very intimidating. So I have to work on my own sense of self to be prepared to release it. But I just remember this moment where there is a part of me that felt so needy and dependent and I felt ashamed and, you know, part of me wanted to push this part away. And in my therapy, we work with the divine. And so my therapist is like, what would, if you like give this part of you up to the divine, what do you hear?

34:13And I did, I pictured like a divine force, like being alongside this insecurity. And that force said, you're perfect too. You're perfect too. You're perfect too. And in that moment, I was like, the problem was never that I'm needy or dependent. The problem is that I felt ashamed of that. And when I no longer feel ashamed of that, that needy dependent part of me finally calms down because it's received some care and compassion instead of continued internal alienation. And I think, you know, I would do this experience becoming a new dad, feeling like I was letting my family down. My work was suffering.

34:54I was letting my clients down. And I just had this crisis of my own self-worth and recognize that a lot of it was built on external validation than working on myself. And I had my best friend at the time, I was sharing this with him and he's like, just going on and on about how much he appreciates me and how much he sees in me. And of course, you know, in his mind, he's trying to get me back to that confident version of myself, but I was not ready to hear that. And that was even more difficult for me. And then after working through it, I came back and he was sharing that again, like how much he looks up to me and some of the challenges that I've faced head on and the way that I live my life.

35:33And I was ready to hear it and it felt better. So I think that's another part of this that we have to recognize that it's a dance and there's going to be moments where you're not ready to hear that and it feels really difficult. And that compliment from a friend or someone who knows you can spike your blood pressure and make you feel really tense. and then you find some other source of truth and you work through some things and then you come back to that compliment and it feels good again. And that's a part of the process. Yes, the fluidity of it. And I think I love what you're saying because it teaches us how we need to calibrate care to where we're at, both for ourselves and others.

36:07So there's a study where people did affirmations and they said, you know, I am loved. And people that had like sort of like mid-range self-esteem and higher, that made them feel better. But for people that had low self-esteem, it made them feel worse because it was like, I now recognize just how firmly rooted my poor self-esteem is because this, I'm not internalizing any of this. And it feels like I'm gaslighting myself. And so for me, like this has been a revolutionary because even with my friends, I love giving them compliments. When my friend didn't accept my compliment, I was like, I'm going to give you a compliment.

36:42You have to accept it. Right. This is my gift to you. And I realize that's not about who's the compliment for. Clearly, it's not for her if she's becoming uncomfortable and now I'm trying to force her to receive it. So now I really understand the importance of if you have friends that are struggling with self-worth, either for a moment or chronically, the importance of just witnessing and saying, hey, it's OK to feel like you do like this. These situations, they bring up a lot for people. Thank you so much for sharing with me. Tell me more about what's coming up for you. Yeah, the validation piece of that is often more impactful than the rote compliment we'll give in those moments where we're feeling someone that we really look up to, revere, care deeply about is struggling with their self-worth.

37:30Exactly. Because like I said, the problem isn't that you have an insecurity. The problem is that you feel ashamed of it. And when I'm trying to tell you, you're great, I'm sort of implying that like how you feel, how negatively you feel isn't OK. And I have to pull you out of it. And what you need is for people to the validation says there's no shame in exactly where you're at. Well, I think the challenge for a lot of us who are strivers and working on ourselves, there is a lot of external validation around. There's there's opportunity to fix your body and feel like, OK, now I'm in great shape.

38:05Other people are noticing I'm in great shape. I still don't have the self-worth that I was after by that. Or getting the promotion at work or the salary bump, the title, and other people looking up to you now like, wow, you're really climbing the ranks and feeling like, well, I'm not deserving or having other internal struggles around it. And it can be a bit difficult when up until that moment, we felt like, well, that's what I needed. I needed the six pack. I needed to complete the marathon. I needed to get that promotion. and it still didn't give me the self-worth that I was after or the confidence that I was building.

38:37Yeah. In psychology, we call this the arrival fallacy, this idea that when we arrive at the thing we've always wanted, the job, the relationship, the book we wanted to write, that all of our insecurities will be behind us. But I'm sure you and I both know very successful people who are still really struggling because something external can't heal these deep wounds, you know? And like you said, like speaking to like a doctor who was in medical school, finally became a doctor and told me that he's more depressed because at least before he had this hope in front of him that when I become a doctor, I won't be struggling with my mental health anymore.

39:17And now he is that doctor and now he no longer has that hope. And it feels even worse. I mean, I'm not saying feel bad for everybody who's rich and successful, but I am saying for those of us who are waiting for that one thing to happen in our lives that will heal everything. Perhaps it's time to look more inward than outward. All right. Real talk. What are you paying for wireless right now? Whatever it is, I guarantee you're overpaying. That's the game these big carriers play. They hook you in with a deal and then the bill quietly climbs every few months. Mint Mobile doesn't do that. All of their plans right now are$15 a month, even unlimited.

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42:12I proved it to myself and others. Maybe you had some outside family pressure too around being the most advanced degree in the family or being the most successful one in the family and then not feeling it internally when you reach that destination. Exactly. And I think, AJ, so often when we don't feel it internally, I'll say in my own experience as a recovering, hyper ambitious person, that like it's I do the thing that I should do for everybody to be impressed with me. There's a momentary high. Then I forget about it. I move on with my day and there's not really a sustainable change in my sense of self or mental health.

42:50And then I'm like, all right, I guess I got to find the next thing. And then it's just like, all right, I guess I'm going to be on this hamster wheel for the rest of my life. Always hoping, always looking to the next thing and never being at peace in the moment that is. Well, I think another challenge many of us will face is just the being agreeable and easygoing to avoid conflict or avoid feeling those difficult emotions. And then something like envy pops up with someone that you're really close to. You're a friend and you are excited for them. And at the same time, you're now feeling this emotion and self-judgment tied to it.

43:27Exactly. Yeah. And that's, you know, I just want to say all of these emotions are so human. And I think this is a good time for me to talk about like, because we're talking about changing memories. And there's also something called implicit memories, which are memories you don't remember that still affect how you feel right now. And part of the reason this happens is because the part of our brain that records like conscious memory is different from the part of our brain that records the emotion of memory. That's the amygdala. And the amygdala is fully formed when we're young and before the hippocampuses.

44:01So that means when we're infants, we're kind of recording all these memories in a way that they shape how we feel in the future, even though we don't remember what happened. So if you had a parent that was cruel to you as an infant, then you're going to feel dysregulated as an adult, even if you don't remember those acts, those mean acts happening to you. But what that really means for us, right, is that if you're feeling, you know, why should I feel this jealousy? Why should I feel this envy? Why should I feel this aggression? Why should I feel this insecurity, right? Like there is a reason. You might not remember the reason, but that doesn't mean that the reason doesn't exist.

44:40Like the amygdala is really good at capturing things. Like there's even a study where people were presented with like an angry face and then a, I think it was a color or noise, but angry face and then some sort of cue. And the angry face was portrayed for like milliseconds and they didn't even know it was there. But eventually they started responding negatively to the cue because it was associated with the angry face that they didn't even perceive consciously. So this is our brain doing its work to protect us. It's going to affect our emotions. We're going to overreact. And that's OK. That's part of being human.

45:15You have messy emotions. Well, let's talk about that, because I feel like with the memory exercise we did, we definitely have those moments that, you know, we're hanging on to that are gnawing at us. But then there are other times where we will have an intense physical reaction, like sitting in a car before a hard conversation and your chest gets tight. You don't have a memory of of being in conflict or a memory of a tough conversation like this. but you're having a physical response to it. And science is great. Theory is fantastic. But like, what do we do in those moments where we're feeling it for real?

45:49Yeah, that's a great question. How do we remember what we don't remember? And then move through it in a healthy way. I would say that noticing that anxiety, that tightness in your chest, that tightness in your jaw, whatever it is, noticing that sensation is a kind of remembering, right? Because those sensations are residue of memories from the past that are being reactivated now. And so there's this theory called working memory theory, which is this idea that we can only hold so much information in our memory at a given time. And so what we can do is we focus on that trigger and we split our attention and focus on something else simultaneously.

46:31Now, people that are familiar with forms of therapy like EMDR, you're focusing on your trigger in your body and you're watching maybe a ball or a finger move back and forth or tapping where you tap different parts of your body while also simultaneously focusing on the trigger. Or there's been all these headlines on like, play Tetris when you're traumatized. But what it's really about is taxing working memory so much that your body literally can't as vividly pull up the triggered sensation. And it starts to become more degraded. So next time you're not triggered as strongly. So in that moment, I'm in my car.

47:09I'm triggered. I don't have this memory to draw from. I should pull up my iPhone and play Tetris. one that I really love because it's just so easy to do in bed is I will start counting off like what's one plus two three three plus four seven four seven plus five you know five twelve and so I'll start counting off with plus one each time while focusing on the trigger in my body and then I'll literally start feeling it move or um or I don't know it's like weird you can kind of feel it like get less intense as as you do this sort of dual focus thing. And how often should we be doing this? Oh, it's a great practice for I will say whenever you notice yourself having a stronger emotional reaction than most people or having a very urgent emotion where you're like, I need to text them.

48:00I need to respond to my boss. Like that's a good sign that maybe there's an implicit and memory coming up and maybe tolerating and sitting with it will not only benefit you now, but in the future. But here's the thing, AJ, writing this book, interviewing people that are, I say, secure-ish because I don't want people to be fully secure and ignore the parts of themselves that aren't. Dr. Skylar Jackson, he's a professor. He would say that he would wave his hand over his day to see where his emotional energy lied. There's this way that these people that are secure, they're almost looking for their own pain so that they could offer themselves care.

48:36Like that's a part of themselves to cherish because it's a part of themselves, even their pain. And so when I kind of learned about that, that these secure people, not only are they like acknowledging their emotions, but they're also like looking for them and in a way, because they, again, they want to care for that part of them. I started to realize the moments when I'm feeling an emotion. I don't feel like I should be feeling right. Like feeling rejected at my friend who had the injury. I try to push it away so fast that I don't even know the emotions there. Like literally it's been a practice of actually being present with my own process.

49:10I would say it's like a people pleasing part of me. That's like, you shouldn't feel this way. You shouldn't feel like in an antisocial way that like I have started to try to be intentional about slowing down because to be truthful, I think that this part of me has been there my whole life that pushes away my initial reaction and tries to, you know, kind of contort my emotional world into something else. And finally, in this process of acknowledging even the microsecond that that emotion comes up, I feel like it helps me make progress for this to no longer haunt me, this kind of automatic kick the negative emotion away and like plaster a smile onto your face and your relationships.

49:50Yeah. I mean, if you've ever gardened, it feels like tending to your garden, right? If you let a weed grow and get its roots and down deep, the amount of effort it's going to take to remove that weed is far greater than just walking through your garden daily and just picking the little tiny seedlings that are popping up to tend to it. And it sounds like the secure person is doing that. It's just a bit more in tune to, hey, what's going on with me emotionally, positive, neutral, negative, however you want to label it and saying, okay, there's space for it. Let me work through it instead of, all right, let me just focus on the positive ones.

50:25Let me focus on the false bravado that provide me that positive feedback from others. Yeah, it's like, as Dr. Skylar Jackson said, he was like, what small things are actually small and what small things are big for me? And it's okay if something that appears small is big for me because it's touching on, it's attached to a whole history of things, right? It's not actually small for me. It may not be small for you, you know, when someone says you hurt their feelings, right? That that may trigger a whole lifetime of shame and reactivity and, you know, you learning that you had to be perfect in relationships to feel worthy, right?

51:04And like it starts with acknowledging that that's happening rather than being like, oh, this is what the influencer told me I should feel. So I'm going to try to plop that over my own sense of reality. Now, so much of this we've talked so far is the relationship we have with ourselves. But we also know that this comes up in our relationships with others. I've shared a couple stories, but when we think about our partner, spouse, our friends, and you wrote a book on how to be a secure friend, you know, what do we do in those moments where these triggers are coming up for the people that we care about?

51:36We might not know why. We don't know exactly why we're getting that reaction. and what we thought would be maybe a mild disagreement has now turned into something much deeper for them and a reaction much stronger than what we were expecting. You know, obviously if someone's like yelling at you or screaming at you, like setting a boundary of, okay, we got to go back to this later because I need to be, I need to be, us to communicate in a grounded way. But I think what we can do once we get to that place is really expressing curiosity and saying, it seems like what happened there, it brought up a lot for you.

52:09I'd love to learn more about what that is. The more that we can encourage people to tell the truth and share and even normalizing, you know, this, it might, whatever you feel is okay. And it's normal for us to have reactions to things that we don't want to have, but that doesn't mean those reactions aren't real. And I'm still going to be here to hear them and understand what you might need, right? Like we need to encourage truth telling in our relationships. And AJ, that's really hard because sometimes that truth telling might be your partner feeling like disconnected or your partner feeling like they want to withdraw or they want to pull away.

52:47But like the second that they verbalize that is the second that they no longer feel as strongly in that way. Right. This is particularly for like more avoidantly attached folks. What tends to really help is when they express that urge to withdraw. They express that fear of intimacy. They express that there's a lot of shame there for them when you try to touch on these sort of personal things for them. And so it's just about, and that's really our own work, being able to sit with people telling us the truth, even when the truth might kind of hurt us or make us feel a little bit rejected. But ultimately, the only way to move forward is if we tell the truth.

53:24And I think so many couples, I don't know if you've seen the movie The Invite, it was great. It just really displayed this so well. they're in cycles of conflict because nobody is telling the truth that I feel like a failure. I feel less than I feel ashamed and then I want to withdraw. And so it manifests is all this nitpicking currently and all of these like bickering because we're not actually telling able to share the root issue that is happening within us. Yeah. And I think oftentimes it's easy for the other person to go back to, well, this is small, But if you're feeling it, if you're experiencing that and that urge to withdraw or that urge of shame and guilt around being perceived a certain way, being labeled by someone you care deeply about as something you don't want to be labeled as or want them to feel about you, it isn't small.

54:11So on the outside, yeah, it's bickering, it's small things leading to big fights, but that reaction, I think, takes a lot for us, especially even myself, recognizing I'm a people pleaser, to shift away from managing someone else's own perceptions of my emotional state to like really investigating their emotional state, what's going on for them and being able to sit with their emotional state, less so worried about managing my own. Yeah, exactly. I think you're putting it so well. And like it's human for small things to be big for you, right? Like, and we don't have to judge anybody else by the litmus test of what we think is big or small.

54:49We need to be able to trust people in our lives to tell us what is big for them. Because again, you can only move forward from the truth. And if you're not telling the truth, things are going to come out sideways. And I saw this with people I interviewed for the book, like parents, for example, this father who felt inferior as a father and his kid would cry and his kid would cry and try to comfort a kid would cry, try to comfort a kid would cry, try to comfort him. So much of those like sort of unprocessed feelings of inferiority came up. And to push those away, he started yelling at his kid to the extent that it frightens his wife, to the extent that his kid doesn't call him dad again after that experience.

55:29Right. And what's going on for him is like those feelings of inferiority sit with them, allow them, care for yourself in them. Because when you don't, they particularly will come out in the people that have less power than you, where you feel like there's less repercussions. And so it's a work in relationships that are horizontal, but also when we have more power, it's just such important work for us to be able to do this self-attunement to protect the people that are under us. Well, I think another dynamic that has become popularized is cutting off family members, cutting off relationships, friends or romantic.

56:10If I label myself as secure, then it's like I want to push away anyone who's avoidant or the sign that they're avoidant. I got to cut them out of my life. And instead, we actually need to be creating safety for them to process through those emotions and work through it instead of just cutting them out, saying, oh, I'm secure. So I don't have time for someone who's avoidant or I don't have time, you know. And I think that's where this attachment theory and the labeling can really create difficulty in our relationship building efforts. Yeah, it really causes us to not humanize each other and to judge each other.

56:44And like I think attachment theory, like I said, it's a very science-backed theory. I don't have issues with the theory. I just have a lot of issues with the way it's being applied. Like I think when people name themselves as insecure, we shouldn't be like get it together and get secure. Maybe your insecurity tells you what you need in this connection. If you're more anxious, you might need more reliability. You might need more responsiveness. You might need someone who reassures you more, right? Or if you're avoidant, you might need someone who gives you more space and allows you to come back and welcomes you back.

57:13And you can also check in with yourself as to whether you can provide that or not without dysregulating yourself. But like when someone tells us the truth about their insecurities, that's our opportunity to figure out how to care for them given those insecurities. So let's talk about that and close that loop. So we have someone in our life right now who is going through that loop and feeling avoidant and just overwhelmed by the insecurity, maybe not ready to process it in the moment. But for us, it seems small. So we want to support them. We care deeply about them. How can we revisit that? And what are some ways that we can work through that if we care deeply about the relationship?

57:51Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I would start by saying like, like, I think avoidance, obviously, they have a lot of shame over whatever they're feeling. And that's why they decide to withdraw instead. And so offering the disclaimer that like, hey, I know you're overwhelmed and you're probably feeling a lot and totally makes sense for a lot of feelings to come up in this situation. And I want you to know that if you if you need someone to talk, I am here and I am available. But also, if you need space, take it. And when you're ready to come back, I will also be here for you. I love that. And I think the more we can offer that to people in our life, the more we can get to that authentic place where we don't have to feel like we're wearing a mask or pretending that we're more secure and more confident than we are.

58:33Yeah, to be human is to be like a little insecure. It's okay. So in all the research for this book, what have you taken personally from the latest science on self-worth and attachment? How has it changed your life? I literally have a practice every morning before I get out of bed of like attuning to any pain that I have. I had a friendship that made me feel more anxiously attached. And when you're anxious, you just want to control the other person because it feels like your sense of self depends on how they treat you. So it's like, I need you to do this so that I can feel good, right? And learning that instead of exerting control in that situation, I really had to just feel that anxiety and breathe and notice that anxiety and breathe and notice my anxiety, put my hand on my chest and say, hey, you're okay.

59:20You're okay. I love you. I love you. I love you. I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. AJ, I literally did that for an hour. And it made such a difference. I just felt so much more at ease in the connection and just like, I don't know, like perceiving things in a lot more grounded way, you know, less triggered. And so it's that practice of realizing, because I think often we might try to control our environments. Like I can't talk to this person, I can't be around them as a way to control our feelings because I don't want to feel upset or angry or anxious or jealous. But realizing that you have an alternative, which is to actually feel those feelings and allow those feelings and confront those feelings and care for yourself through those feelings.

1:00:03And then you don't need to control the environment as much. And it feels so freeing to feel like I can embrace and be a container for any negative emotions that come up in me. There's just nothing that I need to avoid or run away from. Like, I'm just here for myself. Like, whatever happens, I'm going to just be here for myself. And that's, and I don't know, it's just, it's, my mental health is, it's just gotten so much better from this whole thing. Yeah, it sounds wonderful as a practice, but then also recognizing the impact it has on the people in your life too, right? Because those other behaviors of withdrawing or having a difficult emotion and then you reacting more negatively or pulling away or not being as engaged can damage the relationship and what's going on for them.

1:00:55Yeah. So I literally had a conversation with another friend who did have the situation where it's something that she felt was small, but she felt triggered by. And I could say to that friend, if it's big for you, then it's big. Like, that's what matters. And I appreciate your bravery with like coming up and telling me about this. And to be honest, before, I might have gotten more triggered by that. I might have felt like she's telling me I'm bad, I'm wrong, and I feel upset. But really being able to confront that shame inside of me means that it comes up less in my relationships. And again, I feel less need to control another person's emotional reaction.

1:01:29So I just it's honestly changed my life. It's made me feel more like I'm living in the present, which I ultimately think self-worth is instead of living in the past memories, imposing themselves onto now that my emotional reactions are more calibrated to what's actually happening. Not all the time. You know, this is an ongoing practice, but definitely more so. And I feel more like myself. I feel like I have more vitality in my life. I feel like my connections are more authentic. And, you know, I'm still a work in progress. I'm still working on it. You know, tomorrow I might be more anxious. The next day I might be more avoidant, but I'm not going to abandon myself when I am.

1:02:06I'm going to like look at that too and explore those parts of me too. I love that. And thank you so much for joining us today and sharing all this great science and tools and putting me through the exercise for our audience too is really insightful. I appreciate it. Yeah, it was my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me and I hope you all enjoy Worth and there's exercises in it that really help you too. Wonderful. Where can our audience find out more about the book and your work? Yeah, so you can get Worth, The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment. Wherever books are sold, you can get a signed copy if you order it from Lost City Books in DC.

1:02:38I'm on Instagram at DrMarissaGFranco. That's D-R-M-A-R-I-S-A-G-F-R-A-N-C-O. On my website, drmarissagfranco.com, you can sign up for a list of practices to work on your worth or reach out for speaking events on Self Worth Network. Thank you so much. My pleasure.