Margaret Cho: Remove Your Investment in Pain

i played kim jong-il and kim jong-un and 30 rock it took me less time to transform myself into kim jong-il than it did to me as myself hi i'm mayan bialik and welcome to my breakdown this is the place where we break things down so you don't have to it's mine be alex breakdown she's gonna break it down for you because you know she knows a thing or two so now she's gonna break down she's a breakdown she's gonna break it down we have a very emotional episode today i cried a couple times but before we get into who made me cry the person who makes me cry the most jonathan cohen that's the exact intro i was writing in my head as you were talking i was gonna cut it and i'm like okay if she doesn't introduce me right away i'm going to say the person who makes me cry the most here i am jonathan we have a very very exciting guest today um someone that i've admired for a long time and have been able to kind of bump shoulders with a few times because we have some some acquaintances friends in common is it someone who vogue calls the top nine female comics of all time i would venture to say yes we're talking to margaret cho producer valerie said this episode is all the things it just has everything in it like when i was reading the research i was like oh that's a topic i mean every paragraph her life you know and if you if you don't know who she is if you're not familiar with her this is a stellar episode in terms of content about body image identity dissociation um addiction if you do know who she is this is also a stellar episode because i mean even i didn't realize i mean i've seen her comedy where she does talk about a lot of these things about bisexuality i mean her discussion of sexuality was so frank so interesting i cannot wait for people to hear this so i'll be brief um but there's so many things about her and her journey that are kind of like all related but could each be their own separate episode um yeah i'm just very excited she um she's also on the flight attendant she has a recurring role that's the kaylee cuoco show um she's on tour she has a movie coming out june 3rd what else was i going to say about fire island fire island which she describes as a korean gay pride and prejudice that is how she describes it um and i'm just uh also a guest cats so many cats she also has a guest spot on hacks she's a guest on hacks have you seen that no but so funny hairless cats her house is an unbelievable like yeah it's a cat playground like i've never seen no like the floor is literally carpeted with fabric for cats to scratch i mean like outdoor play area was like no it's unbelievable no but it's just like it's it's a it's a paradise for cats and there's like design sections there's names there's areas japanese sections i think she actually threw the gauntlet down and was like you don't love cats as much as i do you're not serious about she's right yeah i want to love them as much as she does you need to up your game my i do not think my house needs more cat things i mean based on her house your cat doesn't your house doesn't even have any cash my cats shouldn't know what goes on at her house they will they will not want to live here they will pack their bags right away uh with that let's welcome the incredible margaret cho to the breakdown break it down so the house has always sort of been like kind of it just works for cats so you know it's always this is their little um pagoda yeah that's a very nice pagoda and then they have i mean it's just a good place for cats so but you know there's a lot of coyotes and stuff right so then we have a mid-century [Music] so did you just say cation catio yes that's my favorite century for cadiz that is my favorite century for catios as well they have their little ramp wait so it's enclosed yeah this helps it's enclosed and then there's there's two sides so there's a there's a little like a tunnel that goes under this deck that um goes to the other side super into this and then you can sit out there and they can play and you can be out there because what with my hairless he wanted to be near me all the time it's like a thing kitty they like different ethnic foods they like different asian foods oh lucia wants to get in on it so this is their mount fuji right and there's this is their izakaya and this is their chinese castle it's amazing it i mean everything's amazing i mean this is the best cat house i think i've ever seen i mean the real question margaret is when can i move in yeah any time wait is that a cherry blossom tree yeah this is their cherry blossom um their scratches they have a couple of these they have some like futons yep and they have their gym they eat on the dining room table which i've never used this table so this is perfect and so usually there's like dif there's only a few games out today they have their scratching bar so all the different textures and then they have uh there's three bird feeders out today there's no birds oh that's great do you have any chattering cats that when they see birds they make that weird sound yeah they all chatter oh that's amazing but they chatter scene they seem to chatter more at the television when i turn on cat tv and then they really will uh run at the tv yeah and um try to get the birds on the tv as opposed to the uh birds in lights i i'm very into all of this right now margaret cho welcome to our breakdown it is such a pleasure to get to talk to you i'm such a long time fan this is really exciting i'm okay i might cry a little bit we've crossed paths because we have uh eliza schlesinger and other kind of comedian hangouts that we've um well i i hang on the edges of a lot of eliza's things and get to observe all these incredible um people in particular female comedians that i've loved i've been um a very large fan of yours for quite some time and i hope i didn't fangirl out when i've interacted with you before but the thing that i'm most excited about is that this episode of our podcast may end my career or not because the thing about margaret cho is that almost every single thing that you have said that is like either like controversial or blah blah i have wanted to say or i've said i love it i love you that's so great i grew up in los angeles going to public school in the late 70s early 80s and all of the students in my class were from korea i grew up with a tremendous amount of korean kids mexican kids kids from mexico no one else really talked about koreans except in my public school like it wasn't in the media like it wasn't so when when you kind of came into my sort of consciousness i was like look it's a person talking about this population of people that i don't you never really talk about or hear about so i had such right such respect for also the consciousness you brought to your identity and and i just i love how you articulate so many things about the female experience that's complicated and layered and i'm just a very very big fan and just really excited also to have you on a podcast where we talk about mental health because so many of the things that you have encountered lead to a life that is indeed not simple it is not simple to exist in the kind of multiple identities that you have chosen to live in and also be so honest about publicly so i'm very excited i want to talk about all the things also did you know i have a show where i own a cat cafe yes yes because like i'm spent with leslie so i love i love i love the show and i want to be on the show i feel like i could be a good purveyor of cat things i don't know why this hasn't happened yet i don't even i mean we'll make it happen oh my gosh i just i had no idea i'm this is gonna sound really lame but i'm one of those cat people who like i think other people think i'm a crazy cat lady but i really like just to see the space that you have set up that looks like such a wonderful place to exist if you are a cat person like that's amazing to me oh yes yes i love it i mean i think that cats are so important to life i've always loved them and the uh pandemic was the one time where i was off the road for long enough but i could actually consider having cats and now when i do go back on the road i have somebody come and live here yeah but it's a really great thing to have um a place where cats are really spoiled and i feel like there's room for other cats it's kitten season and i mean you know this house could probably sustain a good couple of litters so i think that you know rescue cats are really i mean i'm usually rescuing dogs so i've rescued dogs for about 30 years and all the dogs i've had have been pretty big so i never thought i could have cats too so but she's so my dog is so small and the cats are actually bigger than her so it works out very well this is lucia oh my god it's like a cat she's a little cat dog it's a chihuahua she's a chihuahua dalmatian which i don't see but she's only about five pounds the cats are about eight pounds ujju could be about 10 pounds maybe now but uh so they they all get along very well and does your dog play with the cat items because your house is just like designed to for the cat mind how does the dog interact with that environment well the dog really appreciates all of the bird feeders and um the cat toys uh he like she she tries to sort of play with them but she doesn't really understand exactly all of the cardboard scratchers or anything but sometimes she'll like lean on it and uh she definitely loves all the cat beds they have a bunch of heated cat beds there's delay on those and they have um these kinds of uh they have like a big garlic bed and then they have a big peach bed so she likes their like enclosed beds they have a little pink uh pagoda that's on um my bed and she likes to lay in there that's the hotly that's the hot spot in the house right now is everybody wants to get inside of the pink to go to bed at night i mean that's that's the story over here too does the dog ever look at the cats up on that amazing catwalk and like you could just look in her eyes and be like how do i get up there well she's um definitely not so enthused about the vertical spaces so she's not she doesn't see them as like kind of being positive i think she gets a little nervous even when she's yeah she's a dog anywhere higher than the couch yeah yeah she's truly adult vertical spaces jonathan you're very focused on the cats and dogs i'm focused on the reason that eliza has never invited me over to margaret's house is because eliza knows i would never leave margaret and mayam got married and it was because of me and it created a hollywood scandal margaret i actually just want to warn you i don't think you should have her over no i mean seriously i will be in that pagoda and i will never leave i love it i love it you gotta kiss these cats they're so you know how the i mean the peter bald i'm sure feels the same we said it was like a chamois like a fine chamois like if you had a very expensive vintage jaguar and you had that cloth that was only used for polishing the jaguar that's what my cat felt like yes look i'm gonna get attacked on the internet for what i'm about to say uh-oh when i see those cats there's a little bit of me that is frightened and i feel like i should just stay away because they have some sort of magical powers that i am not aware of then you shouldn't you shouldn't tell where i might anger and they might like cast a spell on me people used to say that about esau that he looked evil not evil just otherworldly in a way that i'm not they are they're they're otherworldly they're um canadian wait yours are canadian i think the um origin of sphinx are 1966 toronto and um they uh appeared out of um a uh sort i think it's another like recessive gene right it well yeah for peter balds it was a spontaneous mutation also you know if you take off your hat the top of your head feels a little bit like maybe that's why it freaks me out because it looks like you anyway [Music] 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the app store or google play and earn even more with five dollars worth of in-game rewards when you reach level five i mean get all the way to a thousand and then let's talk that's friends without the r best fiends [Music] i have so many questions about just how you got to be you i'm curious you grew up in san francisco yes which is just an awesome place i would imagine um full of you know so many so many kinds of people things uh opinions beliefs systems what were you like as a kid i was very shy i was very scared um i remember getting like bullied a lot as a kid because some girls had written on the bathroom walls and then like this graffiti that like bled out into this hallways in school that i was a lesbian which is true but when you're like 10 like you don't really understand like what even that means like it was very scary and so i was very withdrawn i think it made me dissociate so i have that sort of like thing of like a little bit of dissociation or i think that's what it is where i just kind of like fade back and um it's something that uh comedy really helps me with because comedy is in in a sense people are afraid to speak publicly but i'm really confident because it's the one place where you have witnesses so you don't feel like you can be um attacked or anything there's something about it that feels very safe and it's the one place that i actually don't dissociate so it's a good thing for me to be able to do so i started comedy very early at 14 and san francisco was such a big comedy city uh there's a lot of comedy happening and my favorite comedians were people like paula poundstone and of course robin williams and uh you know there was just so much going on but i started my career very early i think because of my problems connecting with other people and also even to my own point of view like the only way it made sense was through jokes and through doing stand-up comedy so do you come from a funny family were your parents immigrants were your grandparents immigrants were you long-time san francisco residents yes well my grandparents and parents are immigrants they came in 1963. so um and then my grandparents came my parents came in 1963 and my uh grandparents came a little bit after that in the early 70s and so they were funny but they didn't have a lot of self-awareness about it um but they were great propagators of cacti so they would like go and we would go to like um different parks all over and they would steal cuttings and then root them and then we had huge gardens of cacti like all over the place and my first memories are from like touching cacti because it looked soft and i would get spines all down my hands in between my fingers and i just remember them being picked out and i never learned because i kept doing it because they looked so appealing and now i have some cacti but they have no thorns but uh i like that it's i think it's called monstrose if they're not thorny who knows but it's a very um it's a very appealing um thing cactus and uh plants and so now i've sort of embraced more of my plant life and and my family's plant horticulture background and what did your folks do my parents owned a bookstore a gay bookstore called paperback traffic in san francisco because my father loves male attention he's very handsome he's still very handsome and so he uh always just would get fond over by all these men at the bookstore and this is in the 70s and so you know they're all dressed up like in like um cowboy outfits and uh it was very popular cowboy uh leather daddy outfits were very pop sailor outfits um wait so hold on one second did he did they open the gay bookstore with the express intention of him wanting to have male 1 how how does an immigrant korean couple open a gay bookstore well he really uh loved city lights so city lights is the very famous bookstore that was um uh run by the beats in san francisco in the 60s and then um so he wanted to have a place that was like a bookstore that would also have readings signings from authors um that would have events like you know poetry readings and things like that and so they purchased a gay bookstore that was uh it was just what was being sold but then my father was like really into it and there's all these painters that work there and they would paint my father and he still has the portraits hanging up was there ever like a question for your mom about like him getting all this attention and being painted uh no i guess you know it's weird because it's like um it was just something that was totally accepted it was totally like normalized like normalized gay male attention which i think is really unique i mean because koreans generally it's a pretty patriarchal culture and it's also you know uh produced traditionally very homophobic so to have that openness around being admired and not feeling like you're under threat is i think very uh progressive but um you know the the bookstore was really this place where um i think that my father could have an entry point into counter culture and artistic life which at that time was pretty much only open to white people you know so through this like marginalized communities so we always grew up sort of like in black neighborhoods in gay neighborhoods in san francisco lived there and then um stole cactus from white parks um so you started kind of exploring uh comedy as you said as a young woman did you i i i don't want to skip over this um you know the notion that being called gay when you were growing up and when i was growing up that was a general insult also for you know it's extremely unfortunate that in in many cases it had absolutely nothing to do with children even understanding gender or sexuality or anything it was considered enough of a an insult to hurl at someone did you have any concept of your particular sexuality or was do you feel like that was completely unremoved was it completely removed from anything about you i think that i really did understand that i was different in that my relationships with my friends who were girls were so incredibly urgent i mean they are anyway when you're a kid with no matter what gender you are or what sexuality you are but for me it was like life or death and so um and i think like when you're being called gay it's kind of like that weird um i guess what it would be like almost like a thought limiting cliche like you can't say anything after that because it shuts everything down when you're a kid like if you're being called that's the end of the conversation it's almost like the sort of be-all end-all and then that sort of became the norm until i was about 17 and then everybody was gay so i uh ended up getting uh into comedy and then i you know all the women in comedy pretty much at that time anyway were lesbians and uh then there was um this uh books other other bookstore it was like a bookstore sex store it was a uh lesbian bdsm collective that i started working at i helped them open their retail store and then everybody was a lesbian and not just a lesbian but a leather lesbian so like really gay so then i went into that sort of world of gayness and then you know it was i think part of the fact that like my parents having the state bookstore helped me to feel much more comfortable as an adult being queer because i had so many examples of queerness around me um you know my father's employees were one of the early um supporters of harvey milk you know one of those groups and so that was really powerful did you come out to your parents did you come out at that time yeah so they still don't understand they they still they just kind of accept because i actually am bisexual which is something that they really have a hard time with they have they have a good understanding of lesbians they have a good understanding of straight people but they really don't understand bisexuality that to them feels really false so whenever i have um a male partner it's it's quite troubling you know they they think they really accept female partners much more readily than they do male partners i think and while we're here because you know there's obviously you know you're you're not much older than than me or than than jonathan but you're part of a very different it's a different generation of really nomenclature and and kind of understanding and and then you know jonathan and i both have teenagers which is like a whole other understanding and re-education you know of what gender and sexuality mean and um in in your own words like if you were to describe to your parents what bisexual is how do you describe it i would describe bisexuality is i'm attracted to my own gender and other gender because bisexuality is sort of an outdated term in that it kind of infers that there's only two genders which i don't believe i think gender is really infinite gender expression is really infinite so you can say that bisexuality for me exists in that i'm attracted to those who identify as female and those who don't identify as female so that's what it is it's really beautiful how you can articulate these things um um is that attraction is it sexual is it emotional is it is it all of the things is it you know because a lot of people think like oh you'd like kiss a girl at a party that doesn't make you bisexual but like what is it for you is it relationships is it is it sexual like what is the whole the whole of it it's degrees of involvement that have oddly in fact moved away from sexuality in the last few years and moved towards an emotional attachment sort of feeling like it's like i think that i've been closer to asexual now than i ever have been and moving towards that um since menopause for whatever reason it's totally um something i never expected because i thought that i would always be very um involved sexually no matter what i identified as that would be a big part of my life but for some reason the drive towards that has really gone away but my emotional attachments and my emotional relationships have gotten deeper but it is um across the board i really find uh you know different people attractive for different reasons and i um want to connect it with them romantically um in different ways uh but less sexually now so asexual but not a romantic got it no that's that's really beautiful and i have one more question then i mean this is just it's really fascinating to talk to you about this um would you say that there's a type of female interaction that you're most attracted to and a type of male interaction meaning you know are you mostly in terms of male relationships do you find that you resonate with men who are more emotional verbal um you know kind of i don't want to say feminine because i also think that's an outdated term are you attracted to women who are more again like i don't want to use the the wrong terms um but who are more um how do i say it i mean we used to say like butch and frem but i you know like i don't yeah yeah okay well i'm an old-school femme i'm an old-school femme who i love like a james dean butch i love like a rebel without a cause no matter what form that takes so i love rebellious people whoever that may be you know i find that i'm really attracted to people my own age and above and um that's something that is really clear to me i've tried to date younger people and it's just so strange i think it's so strange i really relate to age because i think with age brings a lot of diversity in your gender expression so there's more comfort in that and the more like uh joy in rebellion which i think is really special and i always think of menopause as like second puberty it's like when you really become who you're supposed to be and i really love that and is there a kind of man in particular like that that is a type for you or would that also be sort of a james dean i think it's like more um like a free thinker and um somebody who is uh just themselves you know and that is actually rare you know when you can sort of meet somebody that's sort of an original person and um so i think uh in general it it's it really varies in physical type there's no real physical type and and in a sense there's no real sort of emotional uh or mental type usually they're smart i hope so i want them to be but um because i get bored pretty fast i think and they have to love all things living so i would love a botanist i would love a veterinarian i would love any kind of um animal person plant person those are my people um why why i don't know if you can answer this but i'm curious why is it that a lot of female comedians are lesbians because female comedians don't care what men think and a lot of times that translates to being a lesbian because that's just sort of like the easiest way to sort of maybe define i don't care what men think male comedians also need to essentially not care what people think it's just like men are it's more men are like that because women are we're we're conditioned to care what other people think and take care of other people's feelings right but more men are like that i think with me male comedians always care what other male comedians think they don't care about anybody else but they do care about what other male comedians think and that's why i think male comedians are so fiercely protective of each other on social media you know if somebody tells a joke and whatever they get canceled what so but every male comedian is out front you know defending them to the death and it's really interesting like how gendered and sort of old-fashioned that world can be it's very much a brotherhood which i think is kind of like oh it they really do sort of make a union for themselves they they'll serve it's all mutiny on the bounty it's all three look at what uh elia kazan film or something well i remember eliza in one of my um i don't know if it was on our podcast but i had interviewed her years ago also and she had said like she never thought of herself as like the hot girl until she became a stand-up comedian and everybody was like oh look it's a skinny blonde straight person you know everybody got so excited and she was like i didn't even think that that was going to be a thing and then like in that community you know it very quickly becomes a thing right she's such a brady she's such a person that like lives in her brain you know she would just never think to look outside but she's actually quite a beautiful girl she's never thought to look i was on a tv show that started in 1990 when like the entire industry was just white men like that was it it was like a cadre it was just like everybody was white white men that it was so unusual to find a female people of color i mean it was it was a very different world um and so it's also really interesting you know i left the industry for 12 years and you know coming back it's a very different industry social media exists the metoo movement literally happened while i was on the big bang theory you know like there was a a tremendous reckoning you know in our industry and we're at a very different place now where you know the our our director photography on call me cat is is an asian woman you know like patty like i had i didn't even know there were female you know uh dps in television and and also an asian woman like and it's you you see this kind of diversity and yet there's still this sort of pressure on especially for women what's funny how are you allowed to be can you be feminine don't be too feminine you know like first year of call me cat i wore you know sneakers and dresses because we thought that was really cool and then it was kind of like well does she really need to wear sneakers and dresses maybe we could go for some other shoes you know and and it's kind of like that's it's that that notion of like palatability you know and and the whole purpose of our industry is to appeal right at some point for your success you have to appeal to people i'm wondering like what was that like especially for you both as a young comedian and then being on television with all of these kind of competing needs both yours and then the publics and the executives what was some of that like it was really shocking because being a stand-up comedian you could say anything do anything look like anything and it didn't matter your words were all that mattered and um then going into the world of sitcom television in the 90s was really hard because i was suddenly too fat i was suddenly uh didn't look right i suddenly had to just really do my hair i suddenly had to wear extensions i suddenly had to like do it up you know and i just never thought of myself in those terms so it was very much like being i guess like being in drag like it was very like putting on the drag of a woman like a uh which would take me hours like i remember when um even like later on uh i was comparing like i played kim jong-il and kim jong-un and 30 rock and i um it took me less time to transform myself into kim jong-il than it did to me woman as myself like and it was so shocking and terrible like like i would just rather not have to do anything so i really reject like i hate wearing makeup i hate doing anything to my hair like i hate sort of any of that stuff i do appreciate fashion and i appreciate the artistry of all of that but to me like just as a person it's just so uncomfortable and i hate like high heels and it just doesn't feel good you know like i love the idea of it but to put it on is really to me very um constrictive and a problem how did you do it at that time i just really um are disassociated i think that's where like being a sort of a victim of early trauma really resurfaced there and so when you're dissociating and then also like you uh can't always reliably dissociate so i would do a lot of drinking i would do a lot of drugs and that all was sort of to medicate my own like stress mental issues problems um and so it wasn't satisfying it wasn't even fun like i wish it could be like rock and roll and fun but it wasn't so fortunately all that is behind me but it's something that like you know you can't you you some people don't survive that you know the 90s was a really hard time i think for mental health i think a lot of mental illness was really glorified unfortunately in the culture um which all those artists i really love but at the same time self-hatred was kind of a brand you know and that um i think was really devastating to a lot of people can you give a few examples just so people because you know i was let's say i mean i was in my teens in the 90s so uh just give people a little bit of reference point for kind of the culture you were talking about the um grunge era which i love all of the music of the time um but if you look at sort of the way that uh i think um even ads like ck1 which was a very popular fragrance and it was marketed um as a kind of unisex um punk rock grunge fragrance but all of the models were so um thin and it was almost like you know like gender was really related to weight that to uh be outwardly feminine really meant it was because you carried a certain amount of weight and that gender had so much to do with the physical body being a certain size and genderlessness could only be achieved by um losing that size so that sort of like this weird way around um controlling the narrative of feminism by erasing women's bodies you know and that to me was a really um strange place to be and as a physically larger person anyway it was really terrifying to have to like not eat and i think that's where drugs really came in handy because it i didn't feel like eating after that and then um i had another very famous uh star who recommended um not eating but just drinking two shots of tequila before you went anywhere it sort of like would kill your appetite and make your stomach stick right so you couldn't eat anything um but this was probably the worst thing that you do yeah i mean i i i learned all sorts of things i mean i i did not i i did not take them on and it actually wasn't in my teen years i'm grateful i was 14 to 19 when i was on blossom we were on tv around the same time um yeah but it wasn't until big bang theory um and i'm not just talking i'm not making this like my cast members taught me this i'm saying just we would go to parties and you know i would i met a lot of people because when i was a teenager i didn't really go anywhere i wasn't part of the party group because as i think margaret could understand like i wasn't that type when people are like how did you not get caught up in drugs and alcohol i was like because no one invited me to parties that's how like simple answer um which i never talk about it's like really i no one was asking i went home and did homework um but when i was older you know and i would like have to go to parties like you learn all the things that people do like i didn't know the things that women in particular and men also like that you for three days before you don't eat before an awards show like you only drink liquid you can do like cantaloupe pureed and then like the day of you can't have anything with too many carbs because it'll make you swell up and if you have a scene where you have to even be in sleeveless like don't eat and do push-ups right before and it makes your muscles pop like just all these things that i didn't know about as a kid but they obviously have been going on forever or don't drink water that that the last day you don't drink water because you'll have you'll have water weight and it's like and also there's like certain alcohols that you can drink that have like not too many calories but also give you enough sugar so that you don't pass out like these are literally like things like to see an actress eating on television is even funny like look i mean it's it's totally revolutionary to see people eating but but also just like to not that we finally kind of figured out or to crack this idea that we can't um body shame which to me is like i still don't believe it but i'm guessing and maybe this we're entering this era where we're actually not going to body shame people but that's i think it's it's so destructive and um you know i can't believe i made it out alive but you know that that stuff is still i can't believe it's also not there i mean it's just crazy to hear both of you describe these practices that are basically how do you deprive yourself of all the nutrients and just give yourself enough so you don't pass out yeah so that you can then go get your picture taken and children and adults everywhere are then like that's what i want to aspire to not having any idea that you've done all of this crazy stuff just so that you won't pass out well i i stopped i stopped wearing spanx i don't remember how many years ago i stopped wearing spanx as a formal statement and also decided that what that meant was that an entire class of clothing was now closed off to me because the way that spanx has evolved and the way that it has shaped our culture is that everybody is expected to essentially wear the same dress so like when i was a kid or when i was a teenager even people who had certain bodies wore things that they liked and that flattered their bodies and then other people were other things now there's like there's one thing that you're all supposed to fit into so even if you're a size 22 the body shapers you know are are designed to make you look closer to what the size zero you know sample size women are wearing so when i made that decision to stop wearing spanx it's true it limited my ability to show off really a lot of curves that i do have because most of those clothes would have required spanx to make it look like i don't have you know a rounded belly which is actually a normal you know physiological thing to have right absolutely but but that that then extends to hair extensions to lashes i had never tweezed my eyebrows until i came back to the industry no one was tweezing eyebrows i had normal eyebrows right and now whatever it's just like a little couple underneath because i do have a natural arch which i like very much but the notion that oh my gosh you don't tweeze your eyebrows like how could you you know like when i came back to the industry and then yeah i mean i went to a red carpet last night i didn't want to wear heels and i didn't did my legs look as good as they should no because i wore like a cool chunky boot and i didn't have any extensions in my hair i was just like i'm going to wear it up because i don't have much hair anymore that's what happens like yeah i i just um color in my scalp like yes that's a thing you we put eye shadow on my scalp now because it's supposed to be normal that i don't i'm losing hair but have to pretend like i'm not well i always like to shave my head but then you have to wear more makeup to sort of deflect that so there's something about but there's a shame in aging that i think is is really i don't know it's doing us a disservice but um i always think that there's something weird about my own appetite that's why i was um i i watched your youtube that was you were talking about crowder willie and i was so interested in that because i'm like i wonder if there's if there's a possibility that i have some i mean there isn't there's no way that i could have it but it's like i have so much in common with some of the people that i've seen that do have it you know and i wonder like is that is that kind of like strange um obsession around food some kind of like a gene mutation or gene deletion i'm i'm a member of overeaters anonymous i'm a compulsive overeater so i know that it is either genetics and environment but the solution to emotions since i'm about 40. yeah the solution is to feed it um and while it's a different mechanism let's say than prader-willi syndrome or or syndromes that actually change the the functioning of your hypothalamus and the ways that you know that you're full it's the same um you know to my understanding as alcohol it's the same as a drug addiction and you know a lot of people kind of laugh when i say like that i you know acquired you know a compulsive overeating and binging disorder at 40. it was just hiding other places before then you know it was hiding in work um i'm not a person um you know who chooses alcohol the way that i've heard it described that compulsiveness that's what it is it's whatever i'm feeling i don't wanna feel so i'm either gonna work it away drink it away eat it away you know love it away right it's definitely um that kind of unfillable whole that that's sort of the myth of this a whole that we have that to me it's really about appetite which uh when i don't control my appetite i don't really even think about it then i just eat when i'm hungry but when i'm trying to control it then i can't do anything but think about food so it's a very strange thing of like you know when you're trying to control yourself you can't it's uncontrollable margaret i'm curious to circle back to disassociation when she made me cry yeah when you made miam cry you probably didn't see it on the webcam um because we're a little farther away but i mean i i want to circle back not to get gossip but because i think there are so many people who can relate to the to this i experience and maybe don't quite understand the terminology you know so what i was hearing is that you margaret and i are the only ones who understand it in the world it's the world against us yes well there's a lot of what you were sharing that i've heard mime talk about um a lot and almost like could have been verbatim aspects of her story but when you're having to put on this outfit that is the socially accepted outfit can you you know more on a visceral level what's going on for you because this association sort of covers the entire spectrum of the experience but like if if someone doesn't understand that and they're like i don't and they might not know that they're having an experience similar to that can you like walk us through more of the you know beat by beat experience of of what's going on for you something for me is like um my my scalp really starts to sweat so anything that i would like any sort of like the eyeshadow that i put on myself was to start like really running down face and maybe rudy giuliani is disassociating when he's in that famous photo where he's just like melting but um it's kind of like when you're um in a state of panic but then the panic turns into a physical manifestation of whatever that is like so something like your head is start sweating and then you focus on that or um even if it could set off your mind into a catastrophe spin so like uh i um say i'm like you're going somewhere on a flight and it's delayed and then so it's delayed like 10 minutes and then so my catastrophe spin disassociates of like i fast forward to i've missed my second flight which means i've missed the gig i'm trying to go to which means i'm gonna get penalized that i'm gonna get sued that i'm gonna like lose my house and then you know whatever that is you know i'll have to sell my animals i'll have to uh like get rid of um cat japan town um i'd have to you know whatever that is so there's sort of like this spiral effect of one uncomfortable thing or an argument with a friend spins out into divorce lawsuit whatever there's a kind of thing of like i can't just stay in the moment of whatever's happening i have to somehow pre-feel the tragedy it's going to cause ultimately and so put myself through that which is one of the reasons that i like to watch horror films because i can really relax it's the only time that i can be calm because i don't have to catastrophize because it's happening for me in a creative uh fun way um but that's sort of an uh that's kind of my experience of disassociation is that it's like one thing that is kind of what is unplanned will set off a trigger of a million things that i have in reserve to traumatize myself so i know that that sound it sounds a little bit um a little bit big but that's really sort of what in in inevitably happens anytime there's something kind of like a problem and and also just kind of to distinguish because you know um many people have the thoughts that you're having many people for example if they're anxious or have catastrophic thinking they'll have that kind of cascade of thoughts but what margaret is specifically talking about is that those thoughts are a specific reaction to a situation that is untenable and often as as you mentioned if you have um trauma in particular you know trauma of a sexual nature you know if you have that your brain is programmed to escape and we do all sorts of elaborate things to escape and so you know um that notion that feeling of like being out of your body um if you've ever had that experience of like who am i really what's happening where am i which can happen also if you like if you smoke pot and get really paranoid um that can happen to people when they're not stoned um and that is a a kind of dissociation which you know then leads to other things that we do to compensate and i was curious how that manifested for you specifically when you had to dress up and assume the classic female gender identity you know would you sort of like go into a place where you're like kind of going through the motions and it's not really you that it's happening to like that type of almost removal of being present like what was your mindset what was your physical reaction well you definitely kind of feel like you're um somehow um cosplaying a person like you're cosplaying a woman you're you're not really there um your mind is sort of set somewhere else um or i would just focus on like a specifically uncomfortable sensation and then go to that point where i'm just going crazy like if i have um my arms are constricted like if there's like a sleeve that's too tight i will just go crazy trying to like bust the seams because i'm just so uncomfortable so it's these kinds of like physical things or if like i have shoes that are too small i just like um focus on that sensation and it just becomes unbearable so i think that's also kind of where my dissociation goes is this goes into like one physical aspect of the uncomfortability and then it almost um blows it out of proportion so that's another way that i kind of escape a situation is that i go into the pain of one part of the experience and i can't get out of it so it's a very um strange set of circumstances that sort of leads me to that but it's a you know it's it's like you try to get relief somehow and that's where drugs would come in or um alcohol would come in or food would come in that those kinds of things can help me get almost back into my body which is an odd thing if you're like thinking about drugs that sort of would move you out but it's like um one of the things that i loved about taking opiates is that it really uh didn't take away the pain but it keep me from caring about the pain which i think is the effect of most pain killers is that they don't kill the pain but they uh kill your um investment in pain and that's really what the uh what what people are after you know because you still feel pain you can't get rid of that but you can remove your investment from it i find that um now meditation suits that now um doing all of my plant chores and my cat chores and my dog tours when you're playing an identity that isn't core to your own identity obviously that causes an enormous amount of tension and i get violent what happens so you have the reaction you get violent since i'm a teenager yeah margaret is talks about like the fixation on a certain experience and that sort of channels that reaction or or reaction what happens or do you know what happens to the identity that is yours when you're forced i don't know it's covered up with so much food i can't tell yeah i mean it's so it's so deep in there i mean that's what i think is so great about acting is that we can bring up these uh kinds of dissociative feelings when we're in an actor mode so when you're acting there's something really great about that because we can use all of this stuff this sort of grand imagination that we use to sort of cope with life itself and pull that into what is art which i think is really powerful i now can name what happened when i was a teenager i didn't know then why like i mean part of it was social anxiety part of it was kind of what margaret is describing it was uh something was very very deeply wrong and i didn't want to go i didn't want to do the thing i you know i didn't want that makeup on my face and i would tear it off and like i would pull up my hair you know like i but i didn't know what it was i just like i i just lived like that i just kept living like that for like oh another 30 years and you know i've been in therapy since i'm 17 like i don't know if people understand when they say like why are you still in therapy because it took that long people for me to get to what was going on then i wish it happened quicker it didn't and for me my path was not opiates it was not alcohol i mean it was many other things it was unavailable men it was food it was work like name the thing and i stuffed that god-shaped hole with that too but that's kind of still this process of where does that person go and i'm trying to connect it to you know people who are not actors but have a similar experience when you enter a situation that has expectations of you that are not you and you try to fit those expectations and you give up aspects of yourself in order to do that to make things easier or to play a role or to for whatever reason right you know what i think about is although it's not the same thing and i'm not necessarily saying this is a conversation about homosexuality but when you hear about people who live their whole lives knowing they're gay and having to pretend that they're straight it's like yeah you you shove it down you put it away you know and then you hear that when when these people are finally free it's like they're free but the damage has been done you know and again i'm not comparing th this to that because not all of this is about you know gender sexuality whatever the expectations are whatever the expectation is don't be an artist don't do this as a career don't date that person don't be interested in that's why we're all messed up did we just figure it out this is why everyone's a mess well we're not allowed to be authentic and when you're and then then a big part of dissociation too is not knowing like not even knowing what you want to do because you've pushed it down so far so i think that's for a lot of um you know like i think my understanding from my life like i just didn't understand what i wanted out of life and kind of was going through the motions fortunately it was like kind of good motions that i went in in the most part but um and i was able to enact and sort of like be in this comedic life like artistic life stand-up comedy life early enough where just the trajectory of it and the momentum kept moving me forward how long was opiates the answer for you i mean you're you're more recently sober correct yes so opiates probably i guess off and on um which uh they were the answer for maybe 30 years wow um so you know you build and you build a relationship with it and then you tear it down it's not sustainable because chemically those things are really just destructive i mean it it's so it's almost not even the opiates it's that all of the stuff that's in there it's whatever the acidominophen it's all of the other stuff and then the lifestyle it's just gross like it's just horrible and now it's totally deadly with fentanyl and everything um you just can't possibly uh it's really it that's that's the most heartbreaking thing of um you know being an ex drug addict is that either all the people who don't make it you know what were you being prescribed opiates for oh anything um anything and everything i mean it's the thing is is that that kind of stuff you could get so easily um you wouldn't even necessarily need to i mean there's so many doctors that would just prescribe just very very irresponsibly and i mean i think even now like where i to approach like surgery i would really try to like look at other options i just don't want to have to deal with that in my system again and sort of knowing what that is you know i wish i could be opiate naive but unfortunately i'm just not and what was what was getting sober like i mean you you've been very very honest you know i mean really really honest and raw um about what actually getting sober was like it was a real i don't want to say retreat um but it was i mean you you really did it old school oh well i was institutionalized for quite a long time i think that's the best way to do it because then you're just like i did it like in a very uh i went to rock hudson's old compound which um at night i would really like dream about rock hudson and david niven running around in caftans because they're sort of like haunting me but helping me you know they had very very lavish cocktail parties there and uh so this is sort of like i mean i think that for me that was really perfect of course at that particular facility um there weren't that many people that went but about 16 people died we lose another person from that facility every couple of months because just the rates of survival from drinking and using drugs it's not very high you know when you're in a facility like that it is a lot like being in hospice because people who are um going uh into treatment really don't have any of their options you know and it was medically supervised but it was also there was a lot of clinicians there was a lot of therapists there were a lot of different kinds of therapy i discovered emdr which i really liked that was the kind of therapy that helped me probably the most because it was so there's something so secular about it and it was just all like lights and vibration and movement that really pulled me out of disassociating disassociating and also shame spiral panic style catastrophic thinking that really helped me so much so i'm still very connected with that community and you know i love therapy i think it's really really important but uh i i really do a lot in my life to combat any kind of return to that sort of thing and i think uh thank you for um you know for sharing also so specifically because you know i think a lot of this gets like oh they went to rehab or like oh they got sober and you know the the that kind of like hospice metaphor as it were you know we talk about this a lot you know the the problem that people who are addicts have is not the thing that they're using the problem is that existing without it feels completely unbearable so you don't just go into you you don't just take away the thing and okay now you do your life and we'll make sure you don't have access to it and that's why people go to rehab that's not what happens in institutions and in rehab what happens is they they the facility hopefully a good one is designed to flood you with alternative ways of thinking so that you can deal with the emotions that normally would lead you to use right it's so important it's like you you really need the tools to learn how to live and you know uh there was gardening and cooking classes where i was like stationed for a while so that helped me i i've been um you know very invested in clay pot cookery we don't use knives we use mortars and pestles here there's a lot of like crushing of chilies and spices so um it's a very i think when you learn how to sort of like make meditation your whole life and put it into like cooking and eating and all that it really helps you know like i i feel like my life is so enriched but i needed those tools because i just was living the wrong way dumb question but i'm sure you'll understand i don't mean it to sound dumb are you better i'm way better i'm so better because i uh lay in bed with four beautiful animals i have um a bog of carnivorous plants outside which are thriving off of all of these beautiful flies that they're catching i mean it's really incredible so carnivorous plants are kind of like on the cusp of pet and plant so i found my perfect outdoor garden and um you know everything with their mid-century catio this little kitty kitty-sized dog in my lap i'm so good i'm like so best better best the only thing that could make it better if i could be on call me cat well you're you're on um you have a recurring role on flight attendant with kaylee cuoco so we have to like we have to fight over the margaret cho of it i love it i love her and i love that show and um actually that show does a really great job in explaining um so disassociation and also alcoholism and drug addiction how does it work when you're on the road because your home is clearly this huge area of support and meditative but you know then people talk about the work and the hustle and being out there touring it's totally a different energy i love working i mean i think working for me is really um very in in a sense another addiction for sure but it's a it's an addiction that i can really um kind of manage and get a lot of joy from and you know i'm very connected with my home and and and that like i can um check in you know i have somebody here that is like taking care of the animals taking care of the plants and then i feel very free going and um i just love what i do i love that i get to do what i do and the acting also acting roles have really shifted so there's a lot more diversity there so i feel very grateful about that and that's so exciting and i love doing stand-up comedy so that part of my life is really joyful and i've seen you uh it was before covid i saw um a set that you did and i mean it's um it's ridiculously relevant and hilarious and incredible and i think um i'm on the cusp of cutting my hair off and so you have some particular themes around hair um that um i've been holding with me and uh maybe we should just cut it on the air just to a podcast episode we can just cut it i mean i think it's so um freeing to have uh short hair i love having a bald head the only problem is that i do get very cold and then my cats and dog really love to um run around in my hair and um then like uh who do what he does is he likes to grab my eyelashes when i'm sleeping and puts them up like he's lifting a car hood like he's megan fox in transformer and shia labeouf is right there something very specific certain cats are really really into eyelids um not cool um margaret it has been such a delight to talk to you and just um so touching to hear um not only where you've been but where you are now it's really really inspiring and um i just i cannot say enough incredible things about this woman well i love you fire island uh it's coming out june 3rd is that right june 3rd on hulu it starts the incredible joel kim booster and bow and yang and we had a great time filming it and um it's a gay asian uh reimagining of pride and prejudice i love it um i love it it's really it's a great film and i love all of those beautiful guys so much and we had such a fun time making it and also are you currently touring or you will be touring i am currently i'm currently touring um this week is a big week uh so i'll see eliza tonight actually we're doing the um jane fonda lily tomlin uh comedy extravaganza yeah and i'm missing her show because it's uh this friday night but i'll have to uh try and come see you i would love to see you um i would love to see you awesome i would love it all right thank you so much and uh enjoy all your babies thank you we'll we'll see you soon [Music] that's a woman who's lived life all the things all the things also it's like from such a young age to be you know in the world in the career that you end up staying in you know it's so interesting that like she was like a shy kid you know and then like became a comedian because like it was a safe place to hide and then like that's her life there you go like that's your life the idea that being a stand-up was safe because there are witnesses i still don't understand that i mean that's terrifying to me i used them on a stage i used to think like that i want to have a conversation when there's a camera rolling in an interview setting because there's a transcript and that people can't that's because you're god you want everyone to like join your cult 100 opposite i don't want to be gaslit after about what the interaction was we could go back and look at the tape to see what i said your lens of looking and listening to yourself is also let's talk about your pants okay i bought jonathan a pair of pants yes you did and i love them that's great so you went to the store and you returned them for a bigger size which completely your prerogative exchanged so when i said to you this is just this is a demonstration of the lens okay when i said to you so those actually aren't the pants that i got you know what it is that's not the first thing you said to me you said are those the pants that i got you and i said yes i know number one that you have like this very like it's very important to you that you picked out something that i like so now you went and returned it but i i didn't return it because i didn't like it which is what i knew you were at but hold on right i knew you were like did mime pick something that jonathan was like oh wow i know you love it i really like jonathan really likes us so i said yeah they are the exact pants which they're not the exact fans actually i didn't say that i said yes they're the pants and you said and but i added i didn't lie to you and then i added that i returned them for a different size right exchange them actually that's what i said right and then you said so they're not the same pants i said they're the same pants they're the same style they're the same color they're not the same fabric so then i they are not the exact pair that you gave me but they're the same pants if byron katie were to say is it true those are the same pants they are the same pants they are not the exact same pair that you handed me but they are the same pants one of my problems with jonathan is he redefines words and concepts to benefit him let's take a poll so if we were to videotape you talking about anything so that you could have evidence that people misunderstood you you would still think it was their problem not yours correct on at bialic breakdown are those the same pants are they the same pants they're the same color they're the same style they're the same fabric they have they're from the same store they happen to be a different size which fits me better the truth is i also wouldn't have even bought you those pants if i knew there was a store two blocks away i was out of this city i was like there's a store of his favorite clothing i'm gonna get him some stuff and there's a store right here which made it really convenient to just make sure i got exactly what i needed i don't know how this has anything to do with margaret no because we were we were talking about no we were talking about lenses you know and we were talking about witnessing um and oh yeah and i do think that so now we have an objective reality of the conversation we had because we are recording and we can take it to people who can help us decipher who's not necessarily right or wrong but you know where the communication can be strengthened but let's get back to margaret um you know there was not enough time you know to talk about all the things i wanted to talk about with her um you know she she mentioned not in passing but she mentioned she's a survivor of of um of sexual abuse assault um and and trauma from her childhood and um you know i also think that's for her to say like think how long it took for her you know to get to the place where she's at now you know i it's just like it it kind of it kind of freaked me out a little bit like everybody's just on that journey and even if you didn't have trauma right we're all just like on this journey from whatever we came from to wherever we're trying to get to and yes some people get to whatever that place is quicker faster easier you know when i i i meet people who have like very easy first marriages and they're married forever and like everything and of course there's problems and stuff but i'm always like oh that wasn't my path that wasn't my story or you know and people might look at me and say like oh she had success as an actor early and then her career was set like we're all just like on that journey and just to think also that you know margaret is she's a grown woman who's still you know for 30 years had an addiction you know that was also able to be kind of hidden you know like in public view um and just to think of where she's landed with her sobriety and just how hard that work is that she's done i think about that image of the sleeve being too tight and her just like moving the arm yeah trying to escape and for me there's a visceral tension there of the things that are just not right with us that were so many of us in these situations and we don't feel okay and also there's not there's not one solution you know if there was we'd all be doing it we would have figured it out meaning you can't just say like throw throw zoloft at that problem which is kind of what a lot of the 80s and 90s were like it was like oh someone's reporting they're not happy here like every doctor was like here take this and then for some people it worked and for other people it made them worse and for another portion of people it was like this does nothing i don't trust medication and that's the end of that story right and then for some people like get into therapy but that only works if you work it same thing with 12-step programs that's why there's that slogan works if you work it but where we got to in that uh conversation was a lot of people don't even know what they want at the end of her story she was like oh she said that's part of the dissociation is like not even knowing oh i've been there and i actually think that that there are many ways in which today's society that's harder to know what you want because you're sold all these visions for what your life there's also there's so many choices there's a lot of choices everyone's told they can do anything which is also not true but like you scroll on instagram you're like my life will be super happy if i live in a van i have not scrolled on instagram and no i had to stop because yes everything everything i found a way and maybe this is just my sickness i found a way to make everything look better meaning than what i'm experiencing well this is and so people don't have any yeah ability to connect in what even if it wasn't good i was like but she has bet her hair is better you know what i mean like that's sick you're like oh my relationship will be perfect if i'm dating someone like that looks like that those two people look really good all right or i'll be really happy when i go on that beach vacation and i want to like live a life on the beach we'd like to think we're not that impressionable but we totally are we totally are what is difficult is that it disconnects us from the process of figuring out actually what makes me happy maybe it is beach maybe like i need to be by the beach and that's what will really make me happy but you won't understand that by looking at pictures of it versus going in experiencing it firsthand i mean you know as byron katie told us looking outside of yourself for anything is is destined to make you unhappy like how about that folks how about that i mean i don't even know what to do with that because it eliminates the majority of the way we spend our time it eliminates the majority of the decisions we make i mean honestly we look for external validation which shoes should i get advice totally look for magazines of what i should wear we don't even think about what's comfortable what do i feel good in we just think about oh how is this outfit gonna look well and it's funny because i i've run into this i run into this a lot when i talk to people who are like looking to buy a house and you know i don't know if it's just if it's just my personality or if it's the way i was raised you know i i grew up in in a crummy rental until i was 15 and my brother was 19. and it was you know with all due respect to our landlord mr hoffman it was not a it was it was a crummy it was crummy just practically speaking in terms of like things didn't work and like things caused injury and like we had to hold the windows up with like a piece of landlord he was not whatever he had his own mishigas but so did we so for me i have very and i don't maybe this isn't i'm sure somebody could grow up like me and have a completely different perspective maybe my brother has a totally different perspective i don't really care about where i live and by that i mean you could take me to almost any house and i will find a way if you told me i had to live in that house i would make it work i'm just saying like in terms of like aesthetics or like you know i could really make i know you can and i talked to you about this and i'm like well what about the light what about the direction what about the noise oh god no no i i don't and i and and again it may just be me but it's very interesting because then there are certain things that i'm excessively persnickety about like why don't you tell people when i'm excessively persnickety i don't know i mean you're you don't like anything being late i almost lost my mind when that premier i went to start i mean i oh if something is scheduled at a certain time it better start off i was afraid i would have to wait in the lobby i could not be contained in that chair but that's a different story but we're just making great content of just the two of us talking i guess or maybe i think it's great and it's not what else are you well what i was saying is that there it's not like i'm an anything goes person you know i'm not i like things on time i i like things in a certain amount of order um i i don't like spontaneity i don't love chaos you know so it's not like i'm like a anything goes person but when it comes to like a home and things like that in terms of decision making i i don't that's not a place that i have conflict no i don't i don't think about that when i met you your towels didn't absorb any water we realized that the eczema on my face that i've been having of late has been caused by i use rewashable makeup remover pads of course they are so old that they are basically like pumice and i wasn't even processing that i mean this is i need to tell my somatic therapist about this i've basically been scraping my face you look so disgusted i've been scraping my face it's been painful because there's they've been washed for years they're they're not soft anymore the look on my face is because like and i have the cost of replacing those i had an here's the sickest part jonathan cohen i had a brand new pack that's just sitting there sitting it's not a cause it's my very well organized sink you know shelving and you're just saving them for a rainy day but this is i went to the doctor i have consulted with two different makeup artists who are aestheticians and finally sasha my my my prime gal was like are those the ones you've been using for years yes she's like that's damaging your skin i mean i have very sensitive skin i mean this is a part of your job you you have to be on television your face i'm literally scraping my and not it's a work asset i just like i just put on the ozark and start rubbing my face you know to remove the makeup i mean now we have a problem i'm not allowed to do anything i i'm not allowed to do two things at once ever again the doing the two things at once ties back to margaret because she was talking about mordor and pestling and this notion of making life a meditation love that is literally slowing down when you have the type of somatic trauma that she talks about when your nervous system is on high alert and she talks about only being able to relax in horror movies because she knows that the scary thing is coming instead of having to imagine what the scary thing is about to be the only way to really address that is to slow down to the point where you're stopping the cycle of reactivity is it mindfulness it is like it's slowing down to cook to garden those things it's being really present in whatever activity that you're doing and like if you're chopping it's noticing the chop it's feeling the food it's you know seeing how the knife is you have to have time for that yes and it's to make sense well this took a turn or seven from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have we'll see you next time it's my ambiance breakdown she's gonna break it down for you she's got a neuroscience phd or two non-fiction and break it down

Channel: Mayim Bialik

Views: 63,466

Keywords: mayim bialik, big bang theory, amy farrah fowler, mayim, celebrity news

Id: F3cXLrgmeZ8

Length: 82min 1sec (4921 seconds)

Published: Tue May 31 2022