Psychotherapist's Hacks on How to Change Your Life | Lori Gottlieb on Impact Theory

[Music] hey everybody welcome to another episode of impact theory i am here with lori gottlieb lori welcome to the show oh thanks so much so nice to be here absolutely uh i was blown away by your book i was moved emotionally deeply i cannot remember the last book that had me like that sort of raw and emotional um and i was very taken by surprise as a therapist what why isn't this book more pedagogical why did you like really dive into this sort of human side of everything yeah so in the book i followed the lives of four of my patients and there's a fifth patient that i follow who's me as i go through something in life and then go to my own therapist and i really wanted to tell stories because i feel like we see ourselves reflected most clearly through the lens of other people's stories and so i feel like you know if someone says to you you do this or you're like this or this is the thing that's keeping you stuck we say i'm not like that i don't do that but when you read people's stories you see yourself reflected in them and then you say oh yeah that's me there were so i think it's just so much more powerful yeah i i would agree with that very much so and there were two things in the book that really hit me one you just mentioned so this notion of getting unstuck and being there and going through you as you pull yourself out and you know begin to change your own self-narrative and the way that you're looking at boyfriend and you know everything that shook down there um and then the other is death and that was really powerful and we'll get into that in a second but i want to start with this notion of getting unstuck so is that a core like if you reading the book i felt like that was a core part of what therapy can help with is people get very rigid in terms of how they view themselves the narrative that they're telling themselves and therapy is sort of slow about slowly reshaping that into something more useful does that feel accurate yeah absolutely um i did a ted talk about this recently about how we're all unreliable narrators so when people come to therapy they come in they have a story they're very sure that this is a very accurate version of the story but it's a version of the story and there's so much more to the story and the reason that they're stuck is because there's something faulty about their narrative there's something about their narrative that they're not able to see they can't get to the next chapter they're like stuck in this chapter and so i feel like my job as a therapist is almost to be an editor where i help people to revise the story the faulty narrative that they came in with so that they can move forward and if you don't do that revision you're just going to keep going in circles and never move forward how malleable is our personality like some of the people that you um you catalog in the book especially john when you first begin talking about him it's like whoa is this guy really going to be able to have because he felt like such an archetype it felt like that hollywood executive that we've been told so much about in countless movies and tv shows and i just was sort of waiting with baited breath to see if he was actually going to be able to make that change so in general how malleable do you think our personalities really are yeah i mean i think that we're born with a certain temperament but i think that there's so much room for change and that's where people don't realize how much agency they have over their own lives they kind of feel like well this is just how it is or this is the way i am but no you're actually making choices every moment of every day we all make choices and sometimes we make choices that don't serve us and so examples of the kind of choices people are making sure uh you know the whole like well you know we call them help rejecting complainers right we all know people like this so the people who are like you know well yeah i really hate my job but i can't switch jobs because and every time you give them a suggestion they're like yeah i can't do that because this or that or the other thing right or yeah i'm not in the right relationship but i can't you know i can't get out of it because or you know whatever it might be um we make choices all the time about what we want to do even even things like you know i really want this or that or the other thing in my life and so we say well here are some steps you can take well i can't do that right so what is that what is that about and that that's the stuckness that i'm talking about do you confront that head-on like when somebody walks it so here would be my temptation as a therapist to be like all right let me let me just give you sort of why people come to me they come to me because they're stuck their narrative is not working let give me your narrative let's hear what it is and then we'll massage it and you know we'll be out in 45 minutes um that very much does not strike me as the approach that you took in the book and i'm guessing is not what you take in your practice why not and what is the approach that you take well i think the first thing is that when people come in they want something to change that's why they made that call usually what they want to change is someone else or something else and so they don't realize you know wait a minute i'm gonna have to do some heavy lifting here um and so it's not just like you come to therapy you download the problem of the week the therapist says yeah that's right that was terrible you know these people are terrible and you leave it's what is your role in this what is not working about this how are you contributing to what's not working and that's not to say that there aren't difficult circumstances of course or difficult people out in the world that impact what's going on in this person's life um i remember when i was training one of my clinical supervisors said before diagnosing someone with depression make sure they aren't surrounded by [ __ ] right so so it's like yeah you might be surrounded by [ __ ] in your family or whatever at work who knows um but then what is your response and how are you you know what are you doing with what's going on do you need to stay in this relationship do you need to stay in these relationships can are you contributing to why this person is being an [ __ ] right are you doing something here too do you have you know the same argument over and over with your partner and you think that it's all them because part of it is you so that's what happens so when people come in it's like they want something to change and we have to help them to see well what is it that you are willing to do to change you've talked about therapy and people's need for therapy sort of breaking out ultimately into two buckets and you've got freedom and change i'm curious to hear more about that how are those the things that people get stuck on and then going back to what we were just talking about instead of saying like here tell yourself this narrative this is going to take you where you want to go you're always doing these sort of little nudges trying to get people to um maybe recognize for themselves have the epiphany and then sort of go off and change as a result of that epiphany why do people struggle so much with change change is really hard i don't think people realize how hard it is because often when they think of change they think about making positive changes and so you say to people well obviously making that change would improve your life so why is it so hard to do but then look at new year's resolutions we make those all the time that's something that might improve our lives and yet they don't tend to last and the reason is because first of all change is hard because change involves loss so even though you might be moving to something better what you do lose is you lose the familiar you lose your comfort zone and a lot of us are very worried about going into a place of uncertainty a place that we haven't been before so some of us like sort of human nature would rather stay in the familiar place even if the familiar is miserable or unpleasant than to say i'm going to risk something and go to this place that makes me really uncomfortable they can't tolerate the discomfort of the uncertainty and i think another reason that change is hard is because there's a big misconception that you make a decision to change and then you change it doesn't work like that there's a chapter and maybe you should talk to someone called how humans change and it's about all of the steps that we take before we even make the change and so there's pre-contemplation where you don't even know you're thinking about making the change there's preparation where you start preparing to make the change there's action where you're actually making the change and then the most important step in making change is maintenance the maintenance phase and the maintenance phase is once you've made the change how do you maintain the change that's where all the new year's resolutions go awry and what people don't realize about that is that you're gonna slip back and what people normally do is the minute they slip back they think well that didn't work so i'm just gonna give up you know like i'm gonna eat better and then oh look i just had two pieces of cake so forget it that diet didn't work right um no it's you have to know in the maintenance phase that you're going to slip back and then you just get right back on track how do you begin to help people get more comfortable with the willingness to change i think that it has to do with timing and dosage right so when you talk to people about change in therapy when they're telling you something that they're really upset about and i have in my mind oh here's what's going on and here's where they're going to need to change i'm not going to say that right away because they're not ready to hear it um so i might plant some seeds and so that's sort of the the timing and then the dosage is how much you know how much am i how many seeds am i going to plant in that one session and so you know i i have a quote in the book that most big transformations come about from the tiny almost imperceptible steps that we take along the way and that's what you're doing in therapy that someone doesn't necessarily realize that some change occurred in that session but by the time they come back the next week something has shifted do you have like um an informal or formal i guess list of like here are the the sort of self-realizations that people are going to need to have um so for instance i wrote out the when i was trying to teach my employees how to think in a way that would allow them to become successful i wrote the 25 beliefs that i had to adopt to go from employee to business owner and and be successful at it and so you could encounter somebody and be like okay well i get what they're tripping over i get which one of these beliefs is their biggest problem or you know where we need to start do you have sort of a rough guideline of how people need to think about themselves or how to the elements of a self-narrative that will allow them to be successful and sort of begin ticking off the boxes as we go through therapy yeah i'd love to hear what those are that you gave your employees what were some of them i i have some i'll share with you amazing so the some of the most important ones are human potential is nearly limitless you can do anything you set your mind to without limitation and then the next one is that's a lie but it's an empowering lie and another one is we do that which moves us towards our goals we don't do that which moves us away from our goals and on and on just trying to i'm trying to get people to believe that the average human is an adaptation machine that what we are literally designed to do is to acquire skills that skills themselves have utility and so if you put time and energy into getting skills you're actually going to get better at something and you've shown that in your own life you know with all the different paths that you've gone down it's pretty extraordinary how you know you've lived sort of all these different threads but pulled them together into i mean your your work is extraordinary but i think it's a result of you having gotten skills in writing and gotten skills as a therapist and gotten skills as a storyteller and now you're you know you're able to bring that together so that's basically what the beliefs are are trying to get people to understand skills have utility and you can gain new skills yeah well i mean i think i've always been interested in story in the human condition and so i just looked at it through different lenses but i think the one thing that you know when we look at you know if i could make a list i think what i would put first on that list is self-compassion so i think a lot of people don't realize that you know when i when i give talks um and i'll i'll say to people um you know show of hands who's the person that you talk to most in the course of your life um you know is it your is your partner lots of hands is it your sibling you know is it your best friend is it your parents whoever um well the person that you talk to most is yourself and what we say to ourselves isn't always kind or true or helpful and so we don't even realize that this voice is there so what happens is we are holding ourselves back because of this voice that some that we internalized from from you know a long time ago um and so i i had this therapy client who um she didn't realize how self-critical she was and so i said i want you to go home and write down listen for that voice and write down everything you say to yourself in the course of a few days and come back to me and we'll talk about it and she came back she was very skeptical and she came back and she started to read the list and she said i can't even read these things too i can't even say them out loud because i am such a bully to myself and she had no idea and so when i think about what helps people to change it's self-compassion people think that you need to self-flagellate to move forward they think like i have to be really tough on myself or i'm not going to hold myself accountable well that's just not true because what happens is when you self-flagellate you have a lot of shame you're basically shaming yourself for not being good enough but when you have self-compassion you hold yourself accountable because you can be kind and gentle to yourself so that the shame isn't there and if you can wash away the shame you can take action if you're bathed in shame you're gonna be so afraid of everything because you don't want to be further shamed by this voice in your head that's going to be like whipping you right um and so i think that one thing that i think is really important early on in therapy is to make sure that people are noticing how they talk to themselves that they're being kind and gentle with themselves so that they can hold themselves accountable to make the changes they need to make so now the question is how do you develop that self-compassion what does that look like is it self-talk is it replacing the like you write down the negative things that you say and replace each of those with something that's more affirming and gentle you know um i had this patient whose mother would always make her feel incredibly guilty about every life choice that she made and i said to her just because she sends her guilt doesn't mean you have to accept delivery and you know she can keep sending it you don't have to sign for it um and i think the same thing is true about that voice in our heads right so every time you hear it that doesn't mean that you have to let it in you don't have to invite that voice into your head so when you hear it you can kindly ask the voice to leave and you have to be really aware you know in the beginning it's really an exercise it's really i need to notice what this is you know it's just things that we say to ourselves all day like oh my god you're so stupid for like something we did that if a friend did that we would not think that person is so stupid and we would certainly never say to them you're so stupid because you did this instead of that um you know or just like we wake up and we look at ourselves in the mirror we're walking out the door and we're like god you look terrible right like if your friend looked like that you would not think that your friend looked terrible so we do it constantly it's incessant and so the first thing is like getting that under control do you um use any of the tools of like cognitive behavioral therapy to help people begin that pattern interrupt yeah i mean i use a really eclectic approach in my work most of what i do is kind of in the here and now which is what is going on right now in the room with us because in the room what we're doing is a microcosm of what goes on out there and so in the safe space of a therapy room you can do all the things you can let your freak flag fly basically you don't even know you're doing it that's what's so funny none of us do right we're just acting in ways in the world and we don't realize it and so you can really um kind of take it apart in the therapy room and then go out there and do something different so sometimes you know there will be like a very sort of cognitive sort of cbt-like exercise that i would give people to do but i'm not a cbt practitioner so what are some of the the homework assignments that you give people that so we we covered writing down your negative thoughts what are some other things you do to help people either begin to develop self-awareness or to deploy the tools that you've taught them yeah well it's so interesting because i have a podcast now um it's called dear therapist and um i have a co-therapist on it guy winch and we have to do in the span of an hour you know what we would normally do over time in the therapy room and at the end what we do is we give people actionable homework to do and so we go through a therapy session with them we give them the homework they have one week to do the homework and then they have to report back to us so there's the accountability they have to report back to us how it worked out um and and i think there's something about um having a concrete task to do that will reframe what you've been doing because usually when people come to us whatever they've been trying has not been working that's why they come to us so it's very specific it depends on what the person's situation is and where we're trying to get them there's no sort of one size fits all homework assignment are there um sort of main groupings so self-narrative seems like one that's probably going to come up a lot um another one you talk about in the book that i thought was really profound and speaks to so those two books change in freedom you bring up um victor frankl and that his notion of freedom and i'm not sure entirely when you said those two buckets if you were referring to that type of freedom what did you mean by that and is is that something that comes up a lot yeah so it is it's that you know his his quote is um between stimulus and response there is a space in that space lies our choice in terms of how we respond and in that choice lies our freedom um and and i think that's what i'm talking about is that sometimes we're so reactive right so like you know someone says something or does something we make meaning of it in the moment and we impulsively react and so if you can just take a breath right just take a breath to like give yourself that space that he's talking about and in that space we can choose how do i want to respond do i want to respond in the way that i know will lead to more chaos or do i want to respond in a way that maybe will lead to something different it's kind of like especially you see this in relationships where two people they're always doing a dance with each other and you know you can you can just like if you hear their arguments or their disagreements the content might be different but the underlying way that they argue is exactly the same so it doesn't really matter you know you can just change the content up but it's the same thing and so if one person changes their dance steps one person does something different then the other person either falls flat on the dance floor or has to change his or her steps too and usually what happens is the person changes their steps too and then it's like it's it goes back and forth so now they've changed their steps so now you're going to change your steps and it just it leads to a completely different way of being but going back to your question about like other common homework assignments um another thing that's really common is asking people to perspective take so often what happens is people are very invested in their version of their story and i will have them write out the other person's version of the story like if you could forget you know forget about your version for a minute like let's just say your version is valid in the way that it is and that they have an equally valid version you don't have to agree with the points but can you get into their head imagine if they were sitting on my couch right now and telling me their version of the story what would they say and that's so eye-opening because so often we attribute all kinds of motives and intentions to other people that actually aren't there um and so if you could say oh wait the reason that they did that might have been this um you know if you can go from a place of again compassion and and really write out their version of the story you're going to learn a lot about what you were missing and there's probably some truth in there and there's probably also some some place of overlap where you both actually agree about something that you didn't even realize you agreed about when you first have them do that do you tell them hey you should be coming from a place of compassion when you try to teleport yourself into their shoes don't just give back all the same things you've already said from your side try to to really look at it with warm and loving eyes like what does that instruction sound like well i think it's more about um let's assume that this person's intentions were good that this person was acting in good faith why do you think they got so upset what would they say like what would they say was the problem here what was the thing that triggered them um and once you start doing that you know you start and we i like a lot of detail in the story you know it's like the more detail you put in the more you can kind of get into their mindset we've actually done this live on the podcast where you can hear um you know an example of someone going through this perspective taking exercise and do you find that people start usually from um like that because they're frustrated because they're upset that in the beginning they're sort of giving them negative motivations uh or something that is you know bad or broken about themselves and so that person is attacking them for that thing and that you have to move them over or is it in the specificity they cannot sort of help but steer themselves to sort of more realistic um emotions motivations well i think where people get tripped up in the exercises at the beginning where they're trying to defend themselves so it's it's hard for them to write out the other person's perspective because every time they write out well the reason this person might have done this but then oh but i had very good reasons for data um and so they're trying to defend themselves and so it's it's about you are that person while you're writing this if you were sitting on my couch your homework assignment is pretend you're that person and then come back next week as that person right so you've written out their perspective and tell me what they would say you're not here to defend yourself just tell me what they would say you learn a lot go on you learn a lot just from having to step in you you learn a lot about yourself about your assumptions about um the other person that you didn't you know you there you get a lot of warm feelings toward the other person that you didn't have before um and and i see this so much in couples when i'm seeing them in the office and you know somebody will say um you know something like well you know you never listen to me and i'll say to that person how well do you listen to them right because the other person has the same exact complaint and so you see that you actually have a lot in common usually both people feel unheard unseen alone um misrepresented right how do you begin to chip away at that ice i know a lot of what you do is couples therapy you know let's say there's like a real betrayal let's just make this nice and juicy so they come in there's been real infidelity and there is just heartbreak and ice and anger and bitterness how do you begin one do you tell people hey like maybe we should just go our separate ways at this point or do you sort of always come from a place of this can be worked through if you want to work through an infidelity or a series of infidelities it's so important that the person who cheated is willing to take responsibility and do the work that's necessary to repair the relationship and so you know one of the first things that i want to find out is is that what the person wants to do because if they don't or they're not willing or able to then no it's not nothing's going to happen there but often people are and i've seen so many relationships um you know where there's been this betrayal and the trauma of the betrayal um you know really thrive after they've done the work and and becomes these incredibly strong relationships and marriages i've got to know then what's the work like how do we because that's the one thing my wife and i have always said yo that is a that is a bridge too far right yeah and you know and and i think again i think that nobody imagines that they're going to do this or very few people do let's put it that way you know most people who cheat say oh my god i it goes against everything i believe in it goes against everything that i ever promised to my partner to myself um you know most people are not sort of setting out to do that and there are all these reasons that they do and so um you know i think in those cases when people are really able to examine well what happened for me why did i do that and you know to really take responsibility for what happened understand what happened so it doesn't happen again so if i'm taking responsibility for that i'm just saying hey look i let myself get into this situation i felt totally disconnect from you i didn't think you loved me anymore i didn't think you wanted no but now you're blind uh you're blaming the other person right now that's what i'm trying to figure out like how do i you did something it's not about you did something and you made me cheat right and and that's the thing where i think is it makes it really hard to repair when somebody says like yeah what i did was wrong but you know what you made me feel like this but no you didn't you know nobody made you cheat you know there are lots of ways to deal with feeling alone there are lots of ways to feel with you to deal with feeling disconnected um you know cheating shouldn't be one of them so um you know so so it's really about understanding well what else was going on and usually it has something to do with maybe how they were feeling in the now but often it's something about um how they were how they felt about themselves in the past and how that came into the relationship there's a saying that we marry our unfinished business and if you right it's true um if you don't take care of that unfinished business you are going to bring every sort of psychological obstacle that you came into the marriage with into that marriage and is going to get in the way and so cheating is often a symptom of somebody who hasn't dealt with their unfinished business oh can we get specific like what what is example like is close to common and maybe this is all just it's so unique everyone's like a snowflake but if there's any sort of typical patterns um i'm so curious to know like what what that thing is that that person then because like when i was giving you the example i didn't feel like i was blaming the other person so i realized okay that would be sort of realization number one is like you've just got to be like where is this coming from totally within myself yeah so i'd love to get an example of unfinished business that one brings into a relationship um unfinished business is somebody's parent just died and now all of a sudden they're you know they go and have an affair um there was something unresolved in their relationship with their parent um and now it's sort of like coming out in you know they're acting out in whatever way they're acting out unfinished business is i don't know how to tolerate um being alone and so when i feel alone in this relationship i have to go find it somewhere else because when i was alone when i was young um it was it was not that kind of alone where you're in the house with people that you know love you and have you in mind but i felt utterly by myself in the world and so every time i'm alone i feel that way here and i'm blaming you for that but maybe it's something that i'm carrying with me from my past because i never learned how to be with myself how much of this is and and not just infidelity but how much of like this like the need for therapy or just your everyday run-of-the-mill dysfunction is childhood dependent and how much of it just it could come anytime yeah um i see both i mean sometimes there's something that happens in the present like there's a big trauma you know somebody's uh someone close to somebody dies um you know there's um there's some kind of loss usually there's like a big loss in the present and so people come in for something like that it might be um you know the death of a child or the death of a spouse or um you know a miscarriage or you know what whatever a job loss right something like that some kind of loss um it might be you know usually there's some kind of way that they're going through the world that is not working and that's something that's longer term that's something that they came in with and usually that's because they're still kind of toggling between their childhood self and their adult self no matter how old they are they haven't really let go of whatever was holding them back in the past so it's kind of like wearing clothes that don't fit you anymore and they don't even realize they're wearing them they're wearing these childhood clothes and so and so that stuff just keeps popping up and so it creates a lot of difficulty in all kinds of you know relationships both professional and personal so staying on infidelity for a second so responsibility that that's you just because this is infidelity and death are like the sort of just earth shaking i can't imagine how hard it must be to get past either of those um so you've got taken responsibility for yourself as the person that that cheated where does forgiveness fall into this and does it i guess yeah i love that you asked about forgiveness because so there's a whole section in the book about forgiveness and um it's about this idea of there's a there's a mother in the book and she did not protect her children from their father when they were young and they as older adults um now or young adults now but as older kids don't want to talk with her they don't want to have relationship with her and she keeps wanting their forgiveness and what i tried to explain to her was that the more she kept trying to get their forgiveness the more resentful they were going to be that she could be the mother that they needed now and see where that relationship goes without any expectation of their forgiving what happened in the past and so what ended up happening was and you know a little bit of a spoiler but what ended up happening was that um three of the children um decided that that they wanted to have a relationship with her because she was able to be the mother that they wanted now but it didn't erase their pain and they didn't forgive her they had compassion maybe for her in a new way but they didn't forgive her and so we have this saying force forgiveness that a lot of people say oh forgive the person who did x y or z to you and you will be free that's not always the case and so it it really bothers me when people are forced into this position of you know you have to forgive when they don't actually feel forgiveness so when it comes to infidelity i'm not about you know you have to forgive the person i think if anything the person who who committed the infidelity has to come to a place of peace with with themselves right it's not like your partner has to do this it's sort of like apologies i think about this a lot when i see people in therapy where you know who is the apology for so when you say i'm sorry to someone are you saying you're sorry because you'll feel better about yourself or are you saying i'm sorry because you know then you're hoping that they'll forgive you are you saying i'm sorry because you truly feel sorry and will it help the other person so sometimes you might want to say i'm sorry but the other person doesn't want to hear that from you right um so the thing about um you know when we've done something that we regret doing whether that's infidelity or something else how do we come to terms with ourselves and then let the other person come to terms with you however they want to whoo okay so rita the woman that you're talking about from the book one of the most extraordinary stories in the book absolutely gut-wrenching when she is i mean this this is a much older woman is fascinating in its own right for you know is your life ever really over as long as you've got air in your lungs i mean that's incredible and and her journey to being able to reach out without wanting to be forgiven like got it that but super powerful now let's go to a couple that is staying married and not forgiving the person who cheated that seems like a recipe for disaster from my uh naive not a therapist mind how does that work like how can you be with somebody that doesn't forgive you like i could see not forgiving the act and sort of like setting that on a shelf to the side somewhere or something but like oh god i don't think i would stay in a marriage if the if i had done something that the person couldn't forgive even if rightly so i just wouldn't want to be in that stew if that makes sense yeah i mean i guess that it depends on how you're defining forgive so i i think if you're holding a grudge no that's not going to work so you you need to come to a new place vis-a-vis the other person can you define forgiveness then yeah i mean i think forgiveness is saying like you know you gotta get out of jail free card like you know like i i forgive you um i i i'm not i i'm i'm okay with it you know i'm okay i've come to a place of sort of peace with it um i think you have to come to a place of i understand it um i understand what happened with us i understand that you did a lot of hard work and you understand more about you i had to do some work to understand more about me but that is always going to be something painful for that person and and that doesn't mean that you're going to lord it over them that doesn't mean that it's going to come up because that's not going to work meaning come up like every time you have an argument that oh and you did that thing that really hurt me we call that you know bringing out the kitchen sink it's like every time you have an argument that like you bring out like every other argument that you've ever had um but it's more about hey that was our marriage then and now we're in a new marriage and you know i i don't think you you know there are lots of people who say you know i i don't i don't forgive that but i'm i'm so in love with this person and and we both grew and we both created a new marriage together and we're stronger than ever how do people begin to build back that trust um through actions so words really don't mean a lot when it comes to trust actions over time and it takes time and so people really have to be invested if they want to rebuild after an infidelity and when you're beginning that process what like is there and i mean this i guess could go for anything it doesn't have to be infidelity but when there's that real sort of palpable coldness between two people like so i'm i'm thinking of in the book john was an extraordinary journey and i want to set aside gabe for a second because that i really want to talk about that but john just is like the coldness that had developed or the distance that it developed between he and his wife um how like what are the techniques to when two people truly want to come back together they've got a shared history they've got a shared life they've got the reasons to want to overcome that how well i think in john's case you know his whole thing was and i think a lot of men feel this way they feel like i have to be the rock right there's something that that happens there was a trauma in their lives and you know i can't fall apart because if i fall apart the whole house of cards will come down and so um you know and i i i see this so much you know with with men in my practice where um you know and and i think this has to do sort of related to infidelity too um both men and women cheat of course um but often i'll see that men aren't able to speak up um and and part of it is this you know the cultural messages that they get so men will come in and they'll say to me like you know i've never told anyone this before and women will come in and they'll say i've never told anyone this before except for my mother my sister my best friend right so they've told some people but it feels like they haven't told anyone so in couples when like let's say it's a heterosexual couple and the woman will say to the man like you know i really want to get to know you i feel like there's this distance between us i feel like you don't share your inner life with me and so then he does and he starts to open up and he starts crying and he starts really crying and often she will look at me like deer in headlights like i don't know what to do i'm so uncomfortable with this even though it's what she asked for it's like i don't feel safe when you don't open up to me and i don't feel safe when you open up too much to me when you start crying you know and and i start to feel unsafe it's like goldilocks it's like not too much not too you know like like not too little like there's just sort of this right amount of of emotion that a man can share and so i i hope that that's changing in our culture because i think both men and women would be much happier if we could all walk the walk which is um you know if you say you want men to be vulnerable give them the space to be vulnerable where do you think we bump up against um nature on that one and i i am well aware that trying to tease out nature and nurture is you know in any sort of delineated perfect line is is impossible um but i i will say i believe and i'd be very curious to hear what you think that so science points that we are roughly 50 hardwired and 50 malleable and if that's true i would say that certainly some of that hardwiring has to do with our sex and like when you tell the story that um you know guys will say oh i've never told anybody this and girls are like oh i've never told anybody but like i don't i don't feel and i could be totally wrong i'm willing to accept that i don't feel like i'm i feel that way no one ever told me not to cry in fact my mom always encouraged it um but i would there are many things that like anxiety for instance it took me so long to tell my wife that i felt anxious and some of that for sure is like i wanted to be tough but also like when i say when i got around guys that that were tough for the first time in my life i took to that like a fish to water like i've been waiting for it my whole life like there was something that spoke to me in a way that being you know very well raised i would say by my mother to be open and vulnerable and all that it didn't have that like glowing orb of resonance that it had when i finally got around guys that were a little bit more rough and tumble and that like where the where the sexes begin to differ seems important enough at least as a person to reflect on yourself like where what lane would i feel more comfortable in and so i'm curious like how that plays out if you think that there really is like in this particular example i've heard you talk about this before and i'm so glad you brought it up now i'm so curious to to get your answer on whether you think like there is just a certain amount of like women will have some kind of reaction if the guy doesn't have a certain amount of stoicism nobody wants to be dating a rock but like a certain amount of stoicism like if somebody rolled up and was physically threatening that the guy isn't going to crumble yeah i mean i think these are these are sort of like cultural expectations that we have with no biological imperative oh i don't know i don't know but i can but i can tell you that when men do come in my office and they do open up the the kinds of things that they think about that they worry about that they feel are very similar to the kind of things that women think about and worry about and feel you know what does it mean to you know what does it mean to be loved what does it mean to love what does it mean to be accepted um what does it mean to be a good parent what does it mean to be a good you know son or daughter right um people have the same concerns about life you know what does it mean to to succeed all of those questions um what does it mean to be a good friend so i i think we just don't give men the space to talk about some of these things i'm not saying that men and women are are wired exactly the same thing they're exactly alike but i will say that there's so much more commonality and that when people can be open to that commonality i think that the relationships are much richer i wish that we had seven hours there are so many things to to go down with you one thing i would stab myself in the face if we didn't have plenty plenty of time to talk about is gabe trauma tell people the the john and gabe what their relationship was and how it came out and then i was going to ask if you saw it coming yeah so um so not to create a whole spoiler in the book but um for those people who haven't read it but uh john is this person who when i first meet him he is incredibly successful in his work he works in hollywood and uh he he's very unlikable he's very abrasive he thinks he's better than everybody else um he's having trouble sleeping he's having trouble with his wife and uh he kind of feels like everybody is an idiot and he knows better and um and and i you know people said to me like why would you treat him why would you see this person when he was so insulting to you from day one and it's because i think that people's behavior speaks the unspeakable and he definitely you know when you talk about gabe that was the unspeakable so there was something that had happened in his life that he had talked to nobody about and he also had some sort of stuff from his childhood you know that that you know he lost his mother when when he was young and um and so it was really about just you know i knew i was gonna have to figure out what was what was the source of his pain because people act a certain way because they have to keep you at a distance so that you can't see their pain so if he could keep everybody at bay with his obnoxious behavior then nobody could get close to him and nobody could see his pain and you know when i found out what it was and it was it was you know i i wasn't expecting what it was um you know it was it was really traumatic for him and um and he'd been carrying this around for years and he talked to nobody about it because he felt like he had to be the strong person in the family he had to be the person who couldn't you know what he called it falling apart right um and and what he came to learn was that it actually weakens people so when you when you think you're being strong by pushing down your feelings you're actually you know your psychological immune system is like in overload and you're you become incredibly shut down and you can't really live you're like alive but dead you're alive you're going through the motions but you're not living at all and so it was once he was able to feel the pain and experience the pain and share that um he was able to live again and so it's like sort of you know counterintuitive we think oh i i will die if i feel this kind of pain no you will die if you don't feel this kind of pain yeah that was so well articulated in the book and lori i have to imagine people lavish you with praise for how well the book is written because the book is written freakishly well the way that you interweave the stories um i i was truly moved and for people that watch my podcast that they will sense my sincerity to my toes um it was just handled so so well with the way that you're sort of parallel tracking the different lessons and how what you needed to learn in therapy is tied to the people that you're being a therapist for and like the way that the the different realizations begin to unlock things in your life and their life and oh man it was just absolutely crazy and like trump childhood and trauma freak me out childhood freaks me out because i don't like that you can't undo something that there's this magical period in your childhood and if that's [ __ ] up like hey sorry it's just like you're in trouble for the rest of your life well no so i have a really different view of that so i think that a lot of people yeah well yes because that was such a grim view of life um you know some people feel like they get into young adulthood and they feel like they want to redo they want to redo on their childhoods and you can't move forward until you accept the fact that you don't get to get you don't get a redo on your childhood and if you can live with that loss right i don't get a redo on my childhood but here's what i get i get the freedom of adulthood and you will not be free in adulthood if you are holding on to this hope for a better past you cannot move forward to a better future if you are holding on to the hope for a better past so that's the work of therapy the work of therapy is you're not going to get a redo how do we deal with that loss and then how do you use the freedom that you have now to create the kind of present and future that you want that you didn't get to have so how do you deal with that loss do you just have people reframe it is it focusing them on what they could have if they were willing to let go is letting go the right word like what is that well i think there's this fantasy there's this fantasy of you know if my past had been this way then everything would have worked out perfectly and i think it's helping people to see a more balanced view of their lives um and i think it's also to help them see the you know what they have learned from the experiences that they've had so they can integrate that experience into their lives so you know when we talk about moving forward from the past we're not talking about um you know forgetting it happened or pretending it didn't happen or saying i don't feel pain around that because you will but it's more about how do i integrate that experience into my life so that i don't compartmentalize it and comes out in all these unconscious ways that where i self-sabotage left and right because that's what people do when they're not integrating the experience into their lives they self-sabotage in all kinds of ways but how do i integrate that into the experience of my life so that i can make some kind of peace with it even though it will be painful and then move forward so that i can taste the freedom that i never had thank you so much for coming on the show when where can people find out more about you you've got so much going on oh well first of all i'm so glad the book resonated with you in that way um you know so many people have talked about how even though their situations might not look anything like the people in the book and that's why i picked those people specifically because it seems like all five of us are so different from one another and maybe even from the reader but we can all see ourselves in every single one of those five um so people can get the book anywhere they get their books um you know independent bookstores amazon barnes noble wherever and people can watch my ted talk at ted.com they can listen to the new podcast called dear therapists on apple podcasts or anywhere they get their podcasts they can read my weekly atlantic column dear therapist and they can follow me on instagram twitter um you know wherever they feel like uh catching up with what i'm up to very cool well thank you again lori so much for coming on the show it's amazing i will definitely continue drinking deeply of your world i think it's really really extraordinary i look forward to seeing what you do next and speaking of things that are next boys and girls if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care the word dharma means a lot of things and it's always hard to translate ancient sanskrit words into modern day english but the closest two definitions are your true nature and your eternal purpose

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 204,475

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, talk show, interview, motivational speech, Lori Gottlieb, IT, therapy, Maybe You Should Talk To Someone, unstuck, get unstuck, change, change your life, achieve change, accomplish change, how to change, move towards change, healing, psychiatry, self compassion, self-compassion, cognitive therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, freedom, perspectives, motives

Id: HKZa9rQxjts

Length: 49min 22sec (2962 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 17 2020