The 7 Ways You SELF-SABOTAGE & How To Transform It Into SELF-IMPROVEMENT | Dr. Ramani

I thought a really nice place to start would be around self-sabotage number one it's not something I've really spoken about much before on my show but I think the second point is that I see this in practice many people want to make changes in their life they know what they should be doing you know I I want to get up earlier to meditate I want to eat better I want to find time to exercise yet despite the best intentions they don't actually manage to follow through yeah is this something you've seen and maybe you could talk about you know what's going on here basically absolutely all the time and I think that what ends up happening is that people will like you said especially it's in we're talking it's the beginning of the year they set a lot of they'll set goals they don't see the goals through and that almost results in more distress and so getting to the core of self-sabotage is so essential and the challenge with self-sabotage is it's so multifaceted right I mean it has it's it like all like any issue relevant to mental health it sits on a spectrum right it's not an it's not like you're a self-sabotager and I'm not it's not an either or it's not a black or white you know it's some level self-sabotage is something we definitely see as part of mental health issues like depression that a person for example who's depressed will have the thought of I'm never going to amount to anything or I have no hope in the future and so in a way that belief can drive Behavior so that's one sort of compartment of self-sabotage another way self-sabotage shows up is not again we don't want to simplify it it's not like somebody says wakes up one morning and says I'm going to ruin everything I did today it's very subtle and so what we sort of classically see in the self-sabotage universe is stuff like procrastination social comparison um taking on too much um it's it's behaviors that almost set a person up to not be able to succeed so it would be a person I'll give an example because I was a university Professor for a very long time I would see students who are working full-time and then they would sign up for six classes and I'd say this is not possible you know they say I want to graduate early and I'll say everything's going to implode you'll feel like a failure as a student you're going to feel like a failure as an employee many of them had other responsibilities too and yet the big goal of I want to finish school in the allotted amount of time or you know that it was it was this almost a sort of a self-sabotaging level of grandiosity and so we'd have to bring them down and say it's okay to take five or six years to graduate from college but if you're going to work full-time let's set this up differently so there's sort of different issues around self-sabotage which is sort of what is the core more of it what might be driving it then there are the sort of foreshadowing behaviors like procrastination social comparison a great example would be going on social media it's that that actually is a form of self-sabotage a person will give you an example wrong in and personal it's we'll want to lose weight okay and they'll go on social media ostensibly for inspiration and look at these people who have these dramatic weight loss stories even their friends who are getting up every morning and doing some CrossFit and then they're showing their smoothie they made for breakfast and then this person simply isn't able to do that for whatever their reasons are they may be very real practical reasons but as they see their friends success on social media at Weight Loss or even parenting is another great example a person might be a parent of young children and feel like I'm failing at this every day and yet they see their friend with their perfectly quaffed children and saying I'm a failure and so looking at that will make a a person say I don't even know why I should try that's another example of self-sabotage so and then there's obviously the self-sabotage behaviors of not doing procrastinating because a person feels too overwhelmed so it's a complicated Behavior yeah it's really interesting um I think that example around weight loss and as you say going on for inadverted Commerce inspiration but without realizing it actually is probably making that goal a lot harder to achieve because if how one is going to feel or one potentially could feel afterwards let's go through some of these in a bit of detail you mentioned procrastination okay this is something I think everyone I think honestly absolutely at some point has experience and as you say these things are on a Continuum so a bit of procrastination I think we all do at certain times but for some people it's really quite paralyzing isn't it inability to make a decision is keeping them stuck in their lives so what you know what are some things we can think about if we're suffering from procrastination so procrastination is a big one right because it links very much to anxiety okay it links to another self-sabotaging pattern of perfectionism which is a huge self-sabotage issue right and it is also again the taking on of too much so when a person procrastinates what you have to remember is we as human beings rarely do something unless it's rewarding that's how people are we are we are ultimately really really smart and angsty rats in a maze you know we we do things that feel good our feel right or feel better and to that end human beings like all pretty much like all life forms avoid pain so procrastination is a form of avoiding pain now you might say what pain is someone avoiding by putting something off because that task that task may bring up feelings of inferiority that task may bring up feelings of incompetence of um insecurity of having to face down an uncomfortable truth any number of things that that task that thing that needs to get done represents so what better way to avoid the pain than to not engage in the task okay so now the task isn't getting done for the moment you're relieved right I'm going to give you the tiniest simplest example because it happened to me an hour ago I set my alarm for 5 45 this morning so I'd be able to get up take a shower put my face on be in front of you but I had worked late last night and when I woke up and it's still dark right so I was like oh I want to get out of bed so I procrastinate 15 minutes 15 minutes more now it's 6 25 I'm reading reading the news reading a book anything to get out it's very cold for La here so I get out of bed at 6 25. now I have 20 minutes to get ready right scrambling into the shower throwing on a face my bathroom's a mess the cat's food is everywhere right did and and I was like oh I want to be really prepared for this and ultimately yes I was at 6 59 setting up my zoom but that's not how I wanted to show up now that's a small example but why didn't I get out of bed not because I wanted to ruin talking to you today but because it felt good to stay in that bed it was warm it was do you see what I'm saying I was avoiding the pain that's simple now take that to anything else studying cooking meal prep um exercising so I always will tell people that the most important thing to do is take a task and chop it up chop it up into manageable chunks one way to do that is time I'll tell people set an alarm you have to do whatever this thing is for 15 minutes and 15 minutes that alarm is going to go off and you can stop doing the task in a majority of cases a person's like okay 15 minutes I can do it I would say probably 60 70 percent of people will keep going they're like okay well I'm doing it now yeah and they'll turn off the alarm and they'll keep going there is a subset that'll say okay the 15's done I'm out of this task but most people will see it through further it can also be taking it and breaking it into component pieces I'm just going to chop the carrots first and then I'm going to take a break whatever it may be I'm not going to start I'm not going to go and run 5K the first day I work out the first day I might do 10 minutes on a treadmill what we're doing is trying to create habit versus doing taking on these enormous tasks and I think the enormity of the task is also part of the issue is that okay okay a person saying I have to study for the exam well what does that mean you know does that mean you have to read this chapter make an outline um uh take a sample test break down the big amorphous goal or task into its component processes but that's practical on the other side of this is the management of the anxiety and that's a deeper dive now ideally if a person's in therapy they could talk with a therapist about what they're actually anxious about for a person's not in therapy and this is not causing them significant distress they can sit down and ask themselves a question you're procrastinating what are you afraid of okay and that's the question of what because that's what what is the pain that's being brought out by this task because you're avoiding it and you're avoiding this because it's uncomfortable and to really do a deep dive into what that discomfort is and to start to sort of take apart some of those beliefs because in understanding that the procrastination can lose some of its power yeah it's it's so beautiful the way you break that down so much for me there to reflect on the first thing is that it kind of makes sense that we would procrastinate because we're trying to avoid discomfort or pain as you say you know it may be inferiority incompetent uncomfortable truths whatever it might be you know we're human of course we have a bias to wanting to avoid that so I guess we can be compassionate to ourselves about that second thing was is that when he talks about breaking it down into manageable chunks well that's kind of what all the best behavioral change science shows us as well if we want to make a change you've got to you know you've got to start really really small and one thing that came up for me as you were describing that is something I have spoken about on the show before is something my wife and I try and do every evening which is what we call the five minute tea ritual and the goal is simply that you know people these days are so busy juggling were childcare elderly parents whatever it might be it's very easy to be in the same physical space but not actually spent meaningful time together so we have this thing where once our children are in beds we'll come to the kitchen and it's five minutes we say the the requirement is for five minutes we sit down over a cup of mint tea or whatever it might be and catch up with each other now when we do it regularly our relationship is immeasurably better there's more connection more intimacy everything is better and when we think we're too busy to do it little niggles and problems start to build up and it's what's incredible and what what I think relates to what you just said is if you say for example I need to spend more time with my partner or my flatmate or whatever it might be and you say it's got to be an hour I don't have time but because it's five minutes it's not as if at five minutes we go hey babe you know you're done now you you've had your five minutes no right some days when we're busy it will just be five minutes but often before you know it it's 15 minutes 20 minutes could be an hour so I think just a couple of obsessions From Me based upon what you were saying there I think about procrastination yeah it is I mean they're well a part of that what you're also talking about is intention and you know in in procrastination sits alongside avoidance and also sits alongside intention right because it could very well be that you and your wife could say okay let's not do it tonight let's put it off tomorrow we'll do 10 minutes tomorrow and it doesn't work that way right some things do need to be touchstones every single day they need to be things we do every day and we do and everyone will say no I'm not able to learn a habit I say the hell you're not you brush your teeth every day it's not like you say I'm gonna brush my teeth on Friday five times as long to make up for the other days all of us get up in the morning we do our thing we brush our teeth there's things we are and that's not it's not even like doing other things like drinking water that is a bodily function we have to do brushing our teeth if we want to view it as it's an optional Behavior yet everyone managed to get that habit on board and when we think of it everything is like brushing teeth the thing is we don't feel secure about brushing our teeth yeah we do feel insecure about other things and so I think that that's why it's about drilling down and what you're talking about too is if there ever was a point when you or your wife were saying well I don't want to do tea tonight that would speak to a larger issue what are you afraid of maybe there was something you didn't want to talk about with each other like what were you avoiding that avoidance piece which is the core of anxiety what are you trying to avoid because all of anxiety is about avoidance nobody wants to feel uncomfortable why aren't you making that phone call why aren't you answering that email why haven't you returned that text message I was working with somebody recently who really struggles with social anxiety and one of their biggest struggles was returning text messages and emails in a timely manner and it was causing problems for this person right it was resulting in disrupted social events it was leaving this person social people on this person social Network we're starting to sort of split away from them they were screwing up job opportunities by not returning emails and even paying bills like so there's a lot of things happening and when we came to the core of it what happened was this this person then recognized I actually don't know what to say I feel like I'm I'm hugging up people's time it was again it was a very classically socially anxious sort of framework and then in not answering these messages for so long this person actually did actually have a true mess on their hands now it wasn't a mess two months before it was a mess now when we were working on it and so then it became that Slow Burn of once an hour returning a text and then once the person started doing one they returned others it wasn't easy because some people said you know we were hurt you didn't respond to our messages but when this person understood and was able to see in some ways the kind of the Distortion of their belief that you know that they were using a people's time they reached out to you why wouldn't they want to hear back from you but that went to again a deeper core insecurity this person had and that that ended up becoming the work of therapy yeah I really love this it's really trying to dig into to the root cause what's really going on here let's not overly focus on the procrastination necessarily it's like what does that tell us what is that teaching us about what's really going on so I think that's a that's a really great example okay so procrastination is one way in which people uh self-sabotage I think the other one you've already mentioned is comparing ourselves to others right so I imagine comparing ourselves to others was also a problem 20 years ago pre-social media but I suspect it's got immeasurably worse I I've had a tremendous privilege of training and practicing as a therapist before there was ever social media okay and and that and now I'm practicing with it and I have to tell you those of us who have been in this game long enough to understand those bookends it's like the difference between living in a life than an asteroid hits the Earth and then living in a new life like it was and it wasn't overnight but when I think back to the sorts of the ways we were grappling with some of these issues you're absolutely right social comparison has always been an issue before it might have been the person compared themselves to their neighbor and the neighbor's new car or a cousin in the cousin's new job or a classmate or a friend but now though the focus of comparison is everybody in the world that you might identify with that's why I gave the example of mothers of small children that even if a mother with a small child you might live in Los Angeles and the mother of that small child might live in Boston you identify with them as being a mother of a small child much like you would a friend with a small child the difference is this is a very different person than you and yet your comparison comparing yourself to them on that one key similarity right and so what this has done is it has caused a tremendous Distortion and a tremendous anxiety but there is a little bit of good news and this some of this goes to this some of this work on digital natives versus digital immigrants and if you talk to adolescents and people who've pretty much grown up in the social media era so it has it's sort of been around since they were children they're actually a bit more circumspect than you'd think I'm the parent of two an adolescent and the young adult and I'm thinking oh my gosh it's going to be distorted it certainly distorted a little but they are also saying yeah no I get it they're doing this they're this they they unders they're a little bit aware of some of the manipulations that happen on social media which I actually think at a certain age group that didn't grow up with it there's a greater vulnerability but all of that said whether the social comparison is happening in an online space in your own peer group in your family group in your community it re what it does it sets up sort of a you're you're Now using the barometer as something outside of yourself human beings are a social species we are going to use other people as sort of a touchstone but when we over rely on that then what ends up happening is we start living in service to what we think the world wants us to look like the world expects us to do what we think the world is telling us for example good parenting is instead of sort of saying when this is my family these are my children this is what works for us even if it may not be what works in the world and I think that that the ability to sort of separate oneself and identity from what the world is demanding from them that's a really that's a kind of a tall order but when people try to do what they think the world wants right I have to take the vacation to this place and stay in this hotel and do this activity because this is what looks good I'm like is that the vacation you really want to take and then that's almost a self-sabotage of the the precious amount of vacation time they have that now they've tried to go and do what they think someone else wants them to do and they've lost a really important restorative recreational time it can be it can apply to anything but the level of social comparison people are engaging in is really resulting in a lot of distress and in all ways instead of people saying what matters to me it may not be the same as what sort of I'm being told Matters To The World At Large I mean firstly I'm pleased to hear what you said about the digital natives yeah you know it's something I'm noticing as well I my kids are 12 and 10 at the moment yeah so they really are natives yes but I I wonder actually if it's people in their 40s and 50s who might be the worst yeah like because we didn't grow up with that and then I remember when Facebook came out in I don't know 2005 2007 and it was just incredible what you could share with your friends and he could stay in touch with and then within two years you've got like 2 000 friends it's like that's ridiculous I don't know these 2 000 people they're not real friends um so I think I think that's that's really interesting but you know Dr Romney what can people actually do because it's easy to say to people don't compare right it's not good for you we all know when we compare too much like it doesn't feel good yeah these platforms are so I don't know that they're so tempting for so many of us what do you practically do with people who are falling into that trap yeah it's it's a tough one because I think that in some ways when you're younger you are more impressionable I think that social pressures matter more when you're younger which actually makes sense in terms of because that's what a time when people are starting a career choosing a partner all of that as you get older I think that the um the kind of The Stereotype of the older person is like I don't care what other people think of me there is some truth to that and so I I think that the place to begin is not to tell people to not socially compare but to actually drill down into themselves and very intentionally honestly even once a day to ask themselves a question who am I what do I stand for what am I about it they seem like such simple questions you can do them while you're sitting on a bus on a Subway in the car taking a walk look who are you like what what what is what is your you you know what what what matters to you and all of a sudden it doesn't matter it doesn't matter if you're trying to shoot for something extraordinary or ordinary or everything in the middle when you do that you may catch yourself and saying I was so it's really sort of the model of keeping up with the Joneses I was so focused on keeping up with the Joneses that I actually what I'm about is a person might say I'm about family and actually I don't really care that I have a big car if I have if I'm able to get home by 4 30 and spend time with my children someone else will say I'm a teacher and I'm really about teaching and yeah maybe I'm not doing this and this or whatever but that's what I that's what I've signed up to do or whatever it is a person does I'm a Storyteller whatever uh you know and it's funny I I can only give this to a personal example but I was recently in a situation where I was being told you're not doing enough of this Romney and you're not doing enough of that and you could be doing this and you could be doing that and actually was really anxious about it in the last few days and when I woke up this morning my procrastinated brush I did in the shower reflect on this idea of how many what are you about like what what is it you set out to do and when I did that it became a recalibration of yeah actually you are doing what you set out to do perhaps if you did what these other people were doing you'd make more money you'd have more notoriety but I'm like do you need those things I'm like anyone wants a little more money but they have more money more headaches I'm able to pay my mortgage I'm I've got a car I've got food in the house and so I thought before you get pulled in that direction pay attention to whether you're living in alignment and I actually don't think a lot of people have ever asked themselves that question of who are you and what are you about because the more of that you do it does create a little distance between yourself and the social media and you're able to say ah I see that this person is doing this and that's great I'm happy that they're doing X Y or Z I'm doing what I want to do and then all of a sudden you're able to actually occupy more of a co-located space of they're doing that that's different than me sometimes we may even wonder if I had taken that path or what would this be like but then also I I even with my own clients I'll say let's do a little bit of guided imagery work work it as a mental experiment take it out in your mind if you had those other things like if even if I'm saying well if I had more notoriety or more money then how would that pull me off my original Mission what would my day-to-day life look like is that what I really want you know the old adage goes be careful what you wish for you might get it and so I think that that kind of mental work on one's self we are so focused on other other what do I look like to the world that many people aren't asking themselves a simple existential question of what are you about and then once you start doing that and you become your reference point even when you get pulled and we all do like that person's got it together whoa that's a really nice house or how do you have so much time to travel do you then start seeing yourself within the context of your own life what you stand for what you are about that that I think is something that people aren't doing enough and that instead and then if you want to look at social media you'll be potentially looking at it through new eyes yeah it's so powerful because it's in some ways which way do you want to tackle the problem from and one way you could say okay I'm gonna stay not knowing myself with all my insecurities and I'm gonna get tugged every time I go on social media I'm gonna get pulled thinking I need to do that I need to do that oh I'm not as good looking as them or I don't have as much time or have a nice holiday as them or whatever it might be or because that's a that's a that's an unwinnable battle if you haven't done the inner work whereas what you're proposing is actually if you bolster up yourself your own self-esteem figure out who you are living with you know live in alignment with your own values then you almost insulate yourself and your being so that you are more bulletproof and resilient I guess and less likely to be pulled by comparison I mean that certainly as you were saying that I was just I was playing with that sort of tug of war in my head thinking a much more sustainable and probably successful way to not suffer with problems with comparison is to do the inner work isn't it mm-hmm always because and I think the inner work does become and even with these other things we're talking about what is it you're trying to fear what is it I mean what is it you fear what are you trying to avoid that this is reflecting on yourself yes you're within a larger system and you may even say I feel the pressure because it's coming from my family it's coming from my partner you know you'll reflect where these external pressures are coming from but it's also then bringing yourself back to and what do I want this life to look like you know I was speaking with somebody who actually said um they were talking to me they said well you I work a lot I work seven days a week I have zero work-life balance and and I'm very I know why that is there's certain things I want to get off the ground there's certain messages I want to get to the world and I was talking with somebody who very much has made their lives a nine to five right five o'clock they're done and they do not think about work the next day until they clock in at nine o'clock and they were very clear on who they were they're like I love spending time with my family and in my home and I like reading books in the evening and you know they were talking about someone they said I've had mental health struggles in the past and pushing myself to a stressful Point actually really harms my depression and so and they're fine they've they've done they don't live in a palace they um they definitely are a little they're financially cautious but this person had done the work to say I know myself and you know they said that I'd love to have some of the things you have but it's not so important that I know also I like having my evenings and my weekends to myself and I I actually really admire that the assuredness of this yeah this person they said yeah sure again I would love a new car I'm not saying that this person wasn't they weren't like an aesthetic or like a monk they were someone was like yeah I'd like those things but what's more important to me is this time this time with my child my children this time with my partner um we go on the weekends we have picnics we have beaches and with times at the beach and I remember thinking like hmm this person actually knows themselves better than me like why am I chasing my tail all the time and and that conversation is always has stuck with me because there was you know this this person was just so very assured and almost what we could call an ordinary life which I personally think is extraordinary because I really adore this person but they were so clear on it and I I and it was also they were also very clear of being custodians of their own mental health history that this person who's lived with depression and anxiety and it said that kind of stress is going to spin me out this is part of who I am my depression's part of who I am and I have to be careful and I really really admired that yeah when I when I hear stories like that it just really makes me pause because I do think many of us end up chasing the wrong things we um it you know that the Quest for for more More Money More status more holidays whatever it might be often if people end up there getting those things they still feel empty because actually it wasn't what they really wanted but again comparison you know this reminds me a little bit of how you finished your tedx talk which I thought was brilliant by the way um you said at the conclusion I think the very qualities associated with material success are bad for our health yeah and then you went on to say we need new metrics of success we need to reward things like authenticity compassion kindness and empathy but that's kind of it isn't it the system around us the society around us is set up to value a lot of things that just don't make us happy basically that's right that's it to make sure you're taking action after watching this video I've created a free guide to help you build healthy habits we can all make short-term change but can those changes become a fundamental part of our life often they don't and that's why in this free guide I share with you the six crucial steps you need to take that really really effective if you want to get hold of that free guide right now all you have to do is click the link in the description box below well that that it there it's set up to Value things that are going to keep commercial systems running right so you really really have to be aware of the value of compassion that's why I'm saying that knowing who you are giving you the example of that person who it's a very clear structured work hours they don't have a lot of money they do have a very loving family and the and they and they found these join these simple things that's that that came you know okay it came out some cost a person had been in therapy for a long time struggling with depression and they so they've done a lot of inner work and it is it's much easier frankly I think it's much easier to chase more money to chase for a car those are actually easier goals to chase for because they're they're sort of right there in your hand like look I got the goal there's the car in the driveway versus having to do that inner exploration and and really sitting with who you are because the fact of the matter is a lot of who we are who we want to be how we want to show up in the world is actually at odds with what we were told were supposed to be you know people were told you have to be you know I culturally grew up in a South Asian family where you have to be a doctor you have to do this you have to have a certain outcome like it was very much like there was a way you should live and as an immigrant's child I really felt that pressure to sort of deliver on the sacrifices that my parents made and I don't know that I became the right kind of doctor but I even when I I changed my program of study to study something that was more compelling to me I felt I had betrayed them that's a really heavy weight for a 23 year old woman to have had on her back and so we have to it is very I'm not saying this is easy that you just sort of sit there in low disposition and say oh no actually I want to be an artist and you run off and become an artist it's these are things that we really really have to struggle with and pull the layers off and understand the intergenerational layers that are playing out there because it's complicated I know a lot of my work ethic comes from still trying to almost sort of please and honor this cultural tradition I came from and I have to keep catching myself in that you know as a as as another as a fellow child of immigrant parents here in the UK I can resonate with so much of that you know almost word for word at times I think many of us know what that feels like it's interesting your friends who seems to really understand who they are and realizes that everything has a cost and that I'm not prepared to pay that cost anymore it sounds as though their sickness their ill health taught them some really valuable lessons and and that's a theme that often comes up on my podcast where disease or illness or adversity whatever you want to call it can end up being one of the the most powerful teachers and I say that with compassion I say that with sensitivity I'm not wishing uh bad things on anyone but when they do happen as they inevitably do in all of our Lives there's often some profound learning on the back end of that if we you know if we're fortunate enough if we've taken the time it sounds like your friend went to therapy learned a lot about themselves and what their needs is that what you've also found that when people come to you they go into your clinic they're struggling with the problem that through the process of you helping them learn about themselves that on the other side of that they have a much deeper and I guess in many ways a better understanding of what life is really about some do not all at all you know I think that this that again that's that spectrum that Continuum I think some people can get there and they come into therapy and usually people come into therapy because something's not going right very rarely to somebody say oh I want to grow more I'm going to go to therapy right it's really I'm having trouble in my marriage or I'm having trouble at work or I'm feeling really sad or I'm so anxious I can't get out of bed it's you know I'm struggling with drugs and alcohol whatever it may be those are the things that might get somebody into therapy so they're typically already in a crisis obviously the the I think therapy has sort of like it's a two-part goal if you will the first goal of therapy is to help the person cope with and get the tools with and get them out of that acute episode of distress from there is the sort of that level two where it is then continuing to practice those tools I always say that a person comes into therapy with an empty or a half empty toolbox the goal of therapy is to fill that toolbox up but also teach them how to use those tools so it once they're either in between sessions or they start weaning off the therapy or they they stop attending they're like okay I have something here I can turn to I have a different way I can talk to myself I have a breathing exercise I can I've I've thought about this issue differently whatever whatever tools and skills that they have taken out of therapy that's sort of the goal no but like I said not everyone gets there there are things that can block people in perpetuity from getting there and and that's I mean it's a tough way to live but we it's you know there's therapy is not a miracle right there has to be tremendous motivation on the part of the person coming in and it's not a magic pill it's not a surgery it is a it is a very collaborative process and if if the client is not willing to sort of almost make this some of the psychological sacrifice which is feeling uncomfortable feeling a little unsafe at times in their life like pushing themselves to the next level somebody's not willing to do that there's only so far they're gonna yeah I mean that's going to limit them so Under the Umbrella of self-sabotage we've spoken about procrastination we've spoken about comparing ourselves to others I think another way in which we often self-sabotage without realizing it is when we're surrounded by people in our lives I guess you could call them toxic people or people who aren't necessarily supporting our goals and what we actually want is this something you've seen is this would you say that this also fits Under the Umbrella or self-sabotage absolutely I mean again my expertise is in working with people who are healing from what are called narcissistic and antagonistic relationships I don't think I think this goes well beyond somebody not supporting your goals this is about people who are actually invalidating somebody else right confusing them devaluing them you know leaving them or saying to them that you are less than chronically criticizing them I think that that's actually probably the biggest self-sabotage of all is continuing to stay in those relationships and not attempting to either see them clearly or when it's impossible it's not always possible to distance or get out of them because I think that for a lot of folks they'll actually get they'll understand why they're avoiding things they'll understand why they're procrastinating they will they can even train themselves to avoid the social media but if day in and day out there's a voice in your head that is that is invalidating you that is leaving you feeling less than that is questioning you that is questioning reality you're constantly confused you're filled with self-doubt and you continue to maintain that relationship in the status quo and keep thinking well maybe I can change them maybe I can get them to notice me that is the ultimate self-sabotage because you can give so much bandwidth to those toxic relationships and just keep getting sucked deeper and deeper into another person's Vortex and like I said I know that a lot of people can't distance from a really unhealthy relationships they may be in marriages they for cultural traditional religious or reasons of finances or children they can't leave or they genuinely love the person and they say for all their toxicity there's something that matters to me here there may be maybe their family and they feel they can't step away it could be a job that they need so I'm not so arrogant as to sit here and say well the easy solution is to get out but the kind of work I do with folks is to say when something is toxic enough and it has been consistently for a long time and nothing you're doing is changing it and in fact often making it worse that there really has to be some level of radical acceptance that this isn't going to shift and realistic expectations for what you've got in front of you not saying it doesn't still sting or hurt but what may come of that is you're less likely to blame yourself for what's happening because if you're blaming yourself for what's happening your entire conception of yourself is Shifting to I'm a bad person and so these relationships really do shift how people think about themselves people do feel like I'm a bad person I'm disloyal I'm thinking all these bad thoughts about someone I'm not supposed to be thinking bad thoughts about and I have to say probably of all the causes of self-sabotage I've ever worked with clinically or run into this idea of maintaining toxic relationships and not seeing them clearly is probably one of the if not the biggest contributor so for people who are in relationships where they're having difficulties it sounds like there are a number of options right what advice do you have for people when they're not sure what to do you know should I stay in this relationship should I try and work at it um should I leave this relationship I know it's a very very difficult to give a black and white answer to that what are some of the things you would encourage people to think about when considering what they should do with the state of their relationship so yeah sit with yourself right off the bat and especially if it's again this is not a judgment you can make after knowing someone for a week or two odds are that by the time a toxic relationship is sort of taking a toll on someone they've been in it for a year or two or even 50 or 60. but is to ask yourself the question how will I proceed in this relationship if I know this person's not going to change and this circumstance is not going to change meaning the the situation the relationship how am I going to proceed because that's a very different question many people in these relationships are living on hope it's going to get better in a year it's going to get better when they finish school it's going to get better when the children move out it's going to get better when this happens when we have more money today I'm asking you if I'm telling you this relationship is not likely to change what would you do listen some people say if this is never going to change I don't want to spend another minute doing this and they may actually set on the path of of ending it some people say some people will be hit with a wave of grief saying what this is not going to change and then say I'm saying no it's not and then the next series of questions is then what do you need in life a person will say well I want someone to talk to I want people to spend time with and that might then lead people down Paths of cultivating friendships in a deeper way um joining Social Clubs becoming more involved in workplace volunteering in their Community getting involved in their spiritual Community Learning what sort of what the dance is in their relationship recognizing that this is going to sound like a strange example I always Call It The Good The Bad and The indifferent but if they're really in a toxic relationship I'll say listen if something really good happened to you can you please take that to a really supportive friend first like you got the promotion tell your friends tell someone you know is going to be so happy for you get that good energy and then when you tell that person who traditionally invalidates you and they're like oh did that promotion of yours come with more money or something cynical like that you've already gotten those good feelings it's not I'm not saying it's not gonna hurt but at least it doesn't deflate your balloon right out the gate the same thing with bad news I'll often say to folks like this person who's very toxic for whatever reason they are may not be able to be there the way for you and show up the way you need them to if you're going through something hard same thing let's say you find out I don't know you get a medical diagnosis or you get a bad news on a loan I don't know so whatever is the bad news you take it to someone else and say I got this bad news today can I talk it out with you you'll talk it out with somebody you care about who cares about you for some people that might be therapy actually and then when they have to talk with the toxic person about the bad news they've already sort of approached it from a place of empathy and and were held held for a minute the problem may still be the problem they may still need to figure it out with the narcissistic person I don't know whether a toxic person the refrigerator is broken but at least there was some empathy so what's left to talk about in different stuff the weather the neighbor's new window um and people say well that's not really a relationship I'm like yeah no it wasn't before the difference was you were trying to make it into one and so some people may write this off as cynical I don't think it's cynical for a person to try to protect themselves sometimes these are these are family relationships like it could be it could be a person's mother yeah her father or sibling right so they'll and and so maybe they're having a different kind of daily contact with them but it's the same thing a person will say I just want my parent to be happy for me and it is painful for me to say and they're never going to be the way you want them to and that is then doing the grief work of grieving not having had that kind of Parental relationship because the only thing more painful than having to grieve it is to go in every single day and get hurt and be reminded and try to make it into something it's not and so as a person Grieves that then there is an acceptance and you recognize okay I have some chosen family I have people who are my supporters and have my back and this is my story it doesn't mean I'm divorcing my parents I may still have contact with them but instead of trying to get them to notice me like an attention seeking five-year-old that they're not interested in I'm an adult I know I have put important places and people in my life who do understand me and I will show up and and have whatever sort of maybe more superficial relationship with these people but now there's a little more of a sense of command but it does mean you do have to process that grief because there can be a lot of it when you recognize that these really important relationships are not what you'd hoped they would be I mean if you're stuck in a relationship with whatever soul and it's that you say you're hoping every time it's going to be different and you're getting upset every time you've given your power away to that other person you know you are like a little puppet on a string like on the off chance that they treat you well or they they behave in a way that you want them to behave okay great you may have a good day but like you're not really in control of your life at that point so what I hear is you give some really quite profound advice on relationships there is you know you're really adding some Nuance to it you almost you know in some ways you're actually and there's an irony that you're in La as we have this conversation you're in some ways shattering the myth of the Hollywood romantic relationship right yeah yeah I call myself the fairy tale killer I'm like no no no no yeah but it's true because I think you know buying into that story like many of us do growing up that we're gonna just meet the one and fall in love get married and then life is going to be roses and you know whatever else every single day that's not reality that is just not how it goes down but again if you think it is you keep thinking that you're failing because you're not meeting this fictional reality and right and at this why the point that and I wonder where you think this fits in here in the west at least we're becoming more and more individualistic aren't we we're living in nuclear families we're often away from Friends tribe family we've moved away for work and it's really interesting in these kind of settings we often put a huge amount of pressure on our partners to be everything to be yeah the the romance the the confidants the you know the great parent the friend whatever it might be and and so yes there can be some very abusive relationships I understand that where the best thing might be to leave of course but maybe you could comment on some of these themes that I brought up and how that relates to what you've just been talking about right so there's sort of two pieces to this right so there is first of all there is the unrealistic expectation of what a relationship can be in our life because we can harm even a healthy relationship with those expectations this kind of fantasy that a a an intimate partnership is all things to us is our best friend is our hiking partner is our sex partner is our everything partner it's unrealistic we've never run ourselves like that as human beings I mean really when you think of what that intimate relationship was it was like get in there have some kids make sure everyone gets fed but you were we were living in these larger social systems right the Industrial Revolution brought us down to this bizarre nuclear family but this idea of people being a One-Stop shop that is not realistic and every so often I will see a relationship where that happens but that's definitely more exception than rule but that said that's that's one piece of it and then then we have the second piece which is that social comparison we're looking around and people are again maybe posting about relationships that are just so happy in all of this and it seems like everything's perfect a lot of that is fictionalized just for whatever whatever they're selling or whatever point of view they're trying to push forth but then there's this third piece which is when you have a relationship where the Dynamics are actually and genuinely unhealthy there's chronic and value invalidation manipulation um entitlement uh dysregulated anger um betrayal deceit like it's not good it is not healthy that becomes an entire other game right where a person may still really feel stuck in that structure they may justify the person's Behavior they may keep trying to change themselves trying to change the other person keep running on this hope it's going to get better it's going to get better and it doesn't right that's a different that's a slightly different issue that and that gets sometimes even to issues around trauma and and not being able to break out of intergenerational cycles of relationships being about being about invalidation but I think all of this though goes back to that original point I made which is around expectations and the bigger the gap between our expectations and what our lives actually are the greater the distress so when our if our expectations are this and our actual life is this that's a lot of distress the more we bring the two together and that's not about lowering expectations per se but it's really about looking at again reflecting on oneself like what is it I want what is this life about for me but I do think that it becomes two different conversations when it becomes whether it's a person expecting too much of one relationship and even that idea of a happily ever after is just going to come it it's it's not just going to come I think that life has become a rather complicated space people are living a very long time I think people underestimate how much pressure for example children are on a relationship there's interesting data that shows marital satisfaction plummets to its lowest when people have children who are around five years old and it really makes sense because those have been tough years of sleeplessness and uncertainty and people's attentions being divided and maybe less intimacy and less flexibility and so that that this idea of like now we have kids and it's going to be even better I'm like oh now that you have kids it's about to get a lot harder and I can say that as somebody who's worked with couples and worked with them and watched the difference between before and after kids it was very rarely pretty unless these were incredibly well-resourced people who really weren't raising their own children you know and then that's a different story you see what I'm saying so it's a I'm that that these these scripts around expectation and how things are supposed to be and all of that get complicated but then when you throw in there that you're in a relationship with somebody who actually this relationship is psychologically harming you because of their behavior and yet you don't understand that like we're not taught what's psychologically unhealthy Behavior looks like that a lot of people then immediately will blame themselves and say this has got to be something I'm doing because I actually liked this person at one time so it's got to be me and and then they'll keep trying to like really destroy themselves in the process of trying to make this thing work what did you see after March 2020 when there were lots of lockdowns uh across the world and specifically in relation to relationships whereby what I observed is a lot of people who you know had a system uh they'd go to work they'd spend this amount of time with their partner they'd have this hobby that they do without realizing it they had created a life where they had different relationships for different things whereas when suddenly all those things got shut down of course depending on where you're living in the world and what the restrictions were people were often spending a huge amount of time with the same person the person potentially that you know they love and they really liked but they thought I kind of liked it when we had this pace to our life not what I'm spending seven days a week 12 14 hours a day you know how you know how did this change for you did did you see this sort of coming into your practice or certainly playing a part there absolutely I I have to tell you I know a very few Intimate Relationships that did not take a hit I think the pandemic did more harm than good to Intimate Relationships or to close relationship there's no two ways about it remember couples who had a group I mean if some relate many relationships are not meant for 24 7 consumption they're not they worked because these two people were apart eight ten twelve hours a day but that idea of constantly being in each other's space it didn't work and you know at the most extreme version of this who and other other agencies there's data that came out of the UK out of the United States rates of domestic violence skyrocketed and so that was already one sort of canary in the coal mine that this was a problem that these were likely that the separation of time and space between these two people may have dropped that likelihood of of violence because they just simply weren't together as much um the frustration the anger the financial issues the fear all of that really really kind of multiplied but the fact of the matter is is that by and large the the pressures of the pandemic the shifts and the shift in how time was spent another thing that happened that was interesting too was the way socializing happened changed it became came that the family whatever whoever you were sort of locked down with became sort of the sole social space as it were and so people were now again putting a they were putting pressure on a relationship the only way I can liken it is you have your car in your garage your car is probably not designed to be driven a hundred thousand miles a year it's gonna conk out relationships aren't meant to be driven 24 hours a day either and that's what the pandemic did people were looking to the person to be their therapist to their what are we having for lunch breakfast dinner like oh my gosh I haven't eaten lunch with this person in three years and now all of a sudden we're eating all these meals together and and people were actually sadly more than a few people were learning I don't really like this person I like them for three hours a day I don't like them 24 hours a day it didn't mean the marriages and the relationships were done it meant that we were really learning how these people sort of consumed these relationships how they were in these relationships and some of us are I mean listen as a naturally introverted person I don't like being around people all the time and so now this idea of having to be with people all the time because I was locked in with them like where can I I'm in California with great weather like I'm gonna go outside for a little while but I think people also found their limits being stretched in terms of what they how they choose to be social people but relationships took a hit and if people were in any kind of relationship that had any sort of toxic underbelly to it forget about it those relationships blew up because that kind of pressure and uncertainty took people with those more antagonistic personality Styles and they could not cope and in the face of that lack of coping they took it out on their family members and those folks suffered immeasurably during the pandemic another way I think people self-sabotage is with the voice inside their heads the negative thoughts the negative voice basically that's just saying what could go wrong and all these sort of things that many people struggle with how would you encourage people to think about that if that's what's keeping them stuck in their lives also there's some interesting work on this you know there's work in models like internal family systems therapies and and even self-compassion work that talk about the inner critic right and even trauma therapists talk about this idea of the inner critic if you want to view that inner critic as being responsible for a lot of these negative voices you're never going to be you're never going to be able to make it you're never going to find another job you're a loser you know you are never going to be able to support your family those you know those kinds of negative thoughts right that's the inner critic the inner critic is something that we almost want to just sort of you know strangle like shut up why are you doing this to me but one thing that has been suggested by people who do this work for example this internal family systems work is some of this idea that this inner critic actually evolved to protect us it protects us from for example our um our fear of failure right well if somebody's like why even bother trying you're such a loser it's a cruel way to say it but what the inner critic may be trying to protect us from is this much larger catastrophic experience of failure right but that's not the right way to do it but what the inner critic is isn't the internalized voices we've heard all our lives and so they get transformed into this sort of and sometimes they're trying to keep us safe like why would you try that new job you're perfectly fine in this town it's that sense of keeping the person safe when people have been through any kind of trauma safety is everything and our sympathetic nervous systems evolve to keep us safe which means we tend to be a bit more Vigilant even when things are safe because if you've been through trauma you've been through tremendous danger you want to stay safe the inner critic is doing all of that when you look at Dr Kristen Neff and other people's work on self-compassion it becomes a really interesting offset to that because I think a lot of time is wasted in talking about self-love like tell yourself how beautiful and wonderful you are I'm like oh my gosh I'm not there I just want to not be mean to myself and that's where self-compassion comes in and it's con it consists of things like being kinder to yourself being more forgiving to yourself no longer judging yourself as much recognizing that you're not the only person who's going through this there's lots of people who are in the same situation you're not the one outlier that's so strange and also not getting over identified with your feelings like thinking like it's always going to be this terrible versus like okay things aren't that good right now I guess they could be better in the future like holding a possum a curious possibility for the idea that things could change it's just sort of being a little nicer to yourself and almost like sort of creating an inner compassionate friend to sort of offset that inner critic but it can help to think of your inner critic as like oh I see what you're doing inner critic you're trying to protect me from looking foolish and then that higher level is to say you know what if I look foolish it's not the end of the world I'll be okay but I think what happens is we as inner critical voices we take them in as truths yeah but if we could view them as a form of protection that I see what's happening my psyche my intra-psychic apparatus is trying to protect me from a fall almost like an overly solicitous controlling mothers like don't get on the slide don't get on the swing you might hurt your knee that's in a way what that inner critic is trying to do to which you have to say I got this and if I fall off the slide I'll just bandage my knee I'll be fine and so we almost have to be the grown-up in the face of this rather infantilizing inner voice yeah it's it's a bit like what you said about procrastination it's telling us something right that inner voice is telling us something like instead of getting caught up in it I go oh it's saying that again you know I'm not going to do this it's like well where's that come from why is it there what is it protecting me from right you mentioned uh internal family systems I spoke to Dick Schwartz on on the show last year and the reason I wanted to speak to him is because internal family systems or IFS has been transformative for me it's for many people for many people it has been absolutely phenomenal you mentioned a lot of the um beliefs we take on as you know children of Indian immigrants you in America and me in the UK and you know where our self-worth comes from and the competitiveness and you know that this sort of need to be successful because that's kind of what is valued and you can think about this stuff all you want but I found the process of ifs helped me go in and change the story you know the original story where that came from it's going back in there and changing that and it's been phenomenal for me in in your view you know what do you think of internal family systems and for people who are struggling with that negative voice you know what other kind of modalities do you recommend to them yeah I mean I think that I I'm not a certified ifs provider I've worked I've worked with clients who have and friends my friends have I used ifs and people have found it to be incredibly incredibly useful so I I think that there's I mean I I recommend it to people who want to explore that and can find a practitioner who can do that kind of work and so but that idea of are there other models that help people sort of detach from these voices I think another really powerful model is something called acceptance and commitment therapy it was a model developed by someone named Dr Stephen Hayes and I like acceptance and commitment therapy because it really finds that sweet spot between cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness and and some of the work we see done in dialectical behavior therapy around acceptance and so it takes in all of that and again I'm also not a certified um acceptance and commitment therapy provider but certainly I I have I bring some of the techniques into my work with clients but it's really again it comes back to that idea of over identification and uh Dr Hayes talks about something about called cognitive diffusion where you we're often like sort of fused with our thoughts our thoughts become literal reality rather than just thoughts and giving you know and encouraging people to diffuse from those thoughts so they don't become so real and and they just become one of another one of many options okay I have the thought this is happening instead of saying I think I'm I think I'm stupid and a failure Hayes would even suggest a switching language where you might say something of I have the thought that I'm stupid and a failure it's such a tiny little linguistic switch but then you're like which means there's another possibility right it opens it up and that's these kinds of techniques are sort of opening us up making us more Curious to not saying I am this versus I could be this I could also could be that and and and to do this work of acceptance and recognizing that yeah there I mean life is hard and there are hard moments but they don't Define it it is that idea that things are kind of I always view it as like those restaurants where this food just keeps going by you could take off the little trades it's like a conveyor that something else is going to come by and so I think models like that that also bring in a lot of mindful awareness that thoughts come thoughts go feelings come feelings go and our fear of feeling often means that we detach ourselves from our feelings so we can feel safer I mean one of the things that seeing someone like you in clinic or seeing a therapist gives people is perspective it helps them step outside of their life to actually look at what's going on and I think I've heard you talk about a process called whiteboarding is it is that what you use with clients sometimes I have yes I mean but I think with whiteboarding it's probably giving it more of a technique name than it deserves you can do with a piece of paper which is really laying things out diagrammatically sometimes just seeing your stuff written out you're like oh I see the train there I see where this is coming from it's not because the more we make things identity so in other words if you make a failure your identity when I failure is even a strong word a mistake if you make a mistake your identity oh I am the I'm the disorganized foolish person who can't keep anything in the right place and is never going to succeed versus you know where what what is that voice protecting you against where did that come from you sort of snake through the origins of that and then you start to recognize that that voice often isn't your own again it's internalized from other places it's serving to protect you it might even be helping you avoid something else but too often we let all of that simply become our identity and that this idea of sort of whiteboarding it and putting it outside of you and then showing that this is coming from here is there a different kind of response you could have that that allows people to just sort of lay it all out and then even erase things and say okay I could try it this way or I didn't even realize that this was I was internalizing this from my father or something like that that there is a way to sort of do this by laying it out but you're absolutely right therapy is a perspective inducing place and when done right the therapist will again not only bring empathy and compassion and respect but also I I am I don't practice psychoanalytically I practice very humanistically so I'm very much present with my own emotions in the room so when a client shares with me that they've had some kind of particularly invalidating experience you'll see it on my face I know I might say something like ouch like that that must have hurt or did that hurt you and they'll say oh you know it did hurt me I thought I was just being too sensitive and in that moment when I'm saying I'm just hearing a story as a third person and I could feel that hurt and there now that saying oh it was okay to be hurt like I'm not weird for that that now what's happening is they're having the opportunity to have validation for very real emotions that they're experiencing especially for people and really antagonistic toxic relationships who have been told over and over again you're a drama you're being ridiculous you have no right to feel that way and so when someone's saying gosh that was hurtful they're saying oh my gosh my emotions do have validity you have no idea how powerful that is because all of a sudden now a person's giving their feelings permission something they were told to cut off a long time ago trying to get this heightened perspective on our life of course can be done in many different ways we're about to therapy there's a technique called whiteboarding what is your perspective on things like journaling or meditation because these things can be fantastic can't they where people can do these things for themselves and maybe get some learnings and some insights about their life if they just take a pause take a bit of time to step outside so they can reflect back uh absolutely I'm a big fan of journaling and whatever way people want to journal I think that they the traditional conception of journaling is you have a book and a pen and you write in it if that's that's traditional and that's what a lot of people have argued is the best old school way to do it but some people say I like to type my journal some people say I like to speak my journal my great however you're doing it that's great the advantage of writing it is you can see it and sometimes look for patterns um I actually have a healing program for people who have been an antagonistic relationships and as part of that program I give them three Journal prompts a week for them to work on to reflect on whatever theme we're working on in a given month so I think that the beauty of journaling is again it it continues the work of therapy it keeps people it's not like people should only be self-reflective for an hour a week or an hour a month or however off often they go to therapy but it pushes a person to do that to be reflective to recognize they have a private space to write down feelings that could be uncomfortable that they're struggling with to give themselves a different kind of perspective so I actually think that journaling is a very powerful technique I think meditation can be useful too I think the challenge with meditation is people feel overwhelmed by it they feel like I don't I don't want to sit for an hour and a half someplace in silence and then again it's almost like those successive approximations I say you don't need to why don't to try five minutes and and even in those five minutes it could even be a mindful meditation well I'll start small with clients I'll say let's just do a sensory kind of meditation look around you just sort of pick out five things you see and maybe even you know think about the colors of those five things and then four things you can hear and you know and three things you know something else you can the touch or whatever but like stay in sensation and when people do that they get they can kind of get lost in that I'll often say also work with people on the Fine Art of description so like to sit in front of something anything it could be it could even be that they're the smallest sliver of window but to describe everything they're seeing in a room and then to get lost in that to pull them out of their minds because that can also snap out of snap people out of those sort of thought and feeling Loops yeah I think that's a really great example sorry to interrupt if you are enjoying this content there's loads more just like it on my channel so please do take a moment to press subscribe hit the notification Bell and now back to the conversation for someone who's skeptical who's hearing that and going okay Dr Romney um I can sit there for a few minutes and I can tell you or tell myself or write down five things that I'm seeing and four things that I can touch or whatever it might be what's that really gonna do for me how's that going to help me in my life what would you say to them it's it's it's breaking you out of it's it's taking you out of a like off of a treadmill in a way it is it's it's clearing out the mind in its Essence like I'd say to someone you have a trash can in your house why don't you just why don't you just keep filling it and never take it out to the larger bin in the street just keep filling it up and they're like that's gross there'll be trash everywhere I'm like yeah that gets real messy doesn't it but you do take that trash out I said this is taking the trash out and once I put it like that I'm like it's just getting stuff out they're like okay I can see that and that that those kinds of sort of accessible metaphors can help too you mentioned your online program how can people find that if they're interested so if you if the the the design of the program is that people who are experiencing toxic difficult antagonistic narcissistic relationships often aren't able to get the kind of therapeutic care that they need or they need something that's an adjunct to therapy this program is not meant to be therapy it is very much an educational program where people learn about the themes of these relationships and again do Journal prompts have workshops have q a sessions have a moderated uh Safe Community platform all of that information is available on my website which is dromoney.com it's d-o-c-t-o-r and then r-a-m-a-n-i.com and then if you go there you'll find that that all that information is there for how to enroll and what's included and you know what to expect and that becomes a real Touchstone for people they'll say oh now I understand what this Dynamic is what that Dynamic is is really trying it's a place to sort of try to help people you know again encourage therapy where it's going to be necessary but also understand the terminology and to understand what's happening to them to their psyches to what to expect in these relationships what you know how people are so filled with self-doubt self-blame and it's a place to really validate what happens in those experiences and get your questions answered yeah I mean I've no doubt your online program will be super helpful for so many people I mean I've seen what happens on your YouTube channel you've really struck a chord of people which is why I think so many people are consuming that content they're leaving such wonderful comments there which really to me you know it's been fun spending a lot of time there over the past few days uh researching for this conversation and you know the comments are just wonderful to read in terms of you're just shining a light on issues that people didn't have a voice they didn't have a way to communicate they didn't know what was going on until they saw some of your videos so yeah I think the content you're putting out is fantastic um perfectionism right that's another way we self-sabotage isn't it I wonder if you could speak to that a little bit please perfectionism is is it is a particularly nasty part of the self-sabotage cycle because it's a it's setting a bar you will never reach nobody nothing is perfect right so just by Stan setting a perfectionistic standard you've already lost right so you'll never you'll never get the you never get the thesis written you'll never get the dinner made properly nothing's ever going to be enough and some people believe perfectionism is a defense right it can be a defense of allowing a person to live in sort of in an idealized state if I'm if I can say I'm going to try to make it perfect then in a way I'm aspiring to be perfect so on an unhealthy side it can be part of a grandiose defense of like I'm trying to be perfect which means it's possible to be perfect but then on the other the perfectionism means that people never get anything done it can stop things from getting done the perfectionism can also be part of what we're just now talking about a part of being in a very toxic antagonistic unhealthy relationship because the belief then becomes is if I'm perfect then this relationship would work out if I could keep the house perfectly clean and the dinner comes out perfectly and I go to work perfectly and succeed and make money then I will be lovable so the perfectionism in a sort of Twisted way gets connected to love I will be lovable if I do everything just right because it's impossible to be perfect people who are high in perfectionism really do exhaust themselves because it can't be done and in the case of more toxic people who attempt to be perfectionistic they'll often rage at the world because they can't be perfect and they'll blame other people for not being able to achieve that so it's a really really Insidious kind of a dynamic and I think unfortunately we're talking about social comparison the way the world is set up these days you could be a perfect parent and a perfect worker and have a perfect house in your your refrigerator can be perfectly organized and you can have a perfect wardrobe and a perfect body like that those are always being touted as possible standards and so because it's like well I could have a better body I could have a more organized refrigerator I could have a whatever cleaner house or a more successful career people are always pushing themselves perfectionism what it does is it pushes people out of the moment you're never staying present in a moment because there's always something else you could be doing because there's no way to achieve that state you're you're running after a constantly moving goal post you're never going to reach it yeah you know the way I've seen it with patients is I don't know something as simple as yeah doc I I wanna I'm gonna start running yeah I think that's gonna be really good for me and two months later they still haven't done anything because they're still researching the best shoe or the right running gear or the correct type of workout to do when just go for a 10 minute run around the block is probably the best thing they could do to get started so I see this very much you know through the lens of Health when people are trying to engage in health promotion behaviors I think they do self-sabotage with this perfectionist ideal this unattainable ideal what's the solution for that person or what's you know it's not easy to just click your fingers and go oh I'm not going to be a perfectionist anymore I think it's often it signifies something deeper underneath but for someone who that resonates with how can they start to go how can they start to think about it how can they start to try and change it well part of it is the tolerance of the discomfort of not being perfect does that make sense is that the idea of things not being perfect can literally bring up anxiety in in a person so in a way you'd almost use some of the principles we'd see in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder that idea of exposure with response prevention which is be in imperfection for a minute like we're just gonna hand that in like that we're just going to um we're going to have people over and yeah there's still going to be some laundry in the corner let's see how that feels and personal say I feel like I'm actually about to have a panic attack but say okay we're still going to do it the world nothing you're not gonna you're gonna be fine even if you have a panic attack it'll be fine and then afterwards say what was that like and because again what is it with the OCD that people engage in the exposure they recognize they're exposed to whatever the thing that they're afraid of without being able to do their compulsive behavior and they're still standing when it's over they're very uncomfortable but they're still standing there like okay you're right nothing terrible happened and it's that idea of nothing terrible happens when the per perfect thing doesn't happen this goes back to your earlier point of why in the case of things like illness or other sort of really bad things that befall a person why we sometimes see a correction that actually pushes back on Perfection when the whole world kind of comes crashing down on you right people are getting sick and jobs are getting lost and people are might even be losing their homes Perfection kind of you're just trying to stay alive and those moments of survival can just be where some of that stuff almost kind of gets broken off and it just kind of goes away but it is just the the the tolerating that discomfort it's not easy to do because people are never going to run into discomfort is definitely one piece of it I think another is also for people to get perspective and hearing the truth from other people no I hate to say it we live in a world where a lot of people aren't telling the truth of their lives and they're like I've got it all figured out I'm happily married and I have a beautiful home and I run every day and I do this and I do that and I'll tell you that one thing I'm very transparent about is what an absolute mess I am with people I don't mean that in a disparaging way to myself but like I am highly disorganized I struggle with certain kinds of relationships I think that when we can hear people really be open and honest I think this idea of the therapist of having it all together it's a very very very dangerous Trope like I'm somebody who has had a lot of issues with talk toxic relationships in my life I and I've had actually experienced trauma and I see how like you know these little things about myself I was telling someone the other day I can never sit in the middle of an auditorium I always have to sit on the end or I will sit on the floor because I've I have panicky thoughts when I can't get out of a space quickly because of my own trauma history and so I'm the the kind of bizarre looking woman who's like I don't care if I can't hear or see but I'm on the aisle now so I'm okay and so I think that when we start hearing other people's stuff yeah especially people that we might value or admire all of a sudden it humanizes this idea that nobody's really perfect and I think that we live in a world where we've almost fetishized people who seem to have it all together right and it doesn't people don't feel good when they see that it's not that they want other people to be suffering but nobody's got it all together and I think sadly social media does fetishize these people who seemingly have it all together and I can guarantee you they don't so that's another piece of this too is recognizing that nobody does that's that common Humanity that's such an essential part of self-compassion you sharing that was really powerful I think the more people who share the realness the things that they're struggling with not over sharing which of course can be problematic but just sharing some of those things I think it helps the world would actually be a more compassionate Place absolutely because that story there about um you and the auditorium you won't sit in the middle it has to be the IL or your B on the stairs right on the stairs or I'll leave or you'll leave that means that anyone who's heard that next time let's say they go to the theater or a concert or a lecture and they see someone doing that instead of getting irritated and thinking that person's being obstructive and right exactly there's something there's something oh wait a minute Dr Romney said that she does that because she doesn't like being enclosed or whatever the reason might be so it actually has that secondary benefit where it helps all of us just go oh I wanted that's going on for that person maybe I'll approach that with a bit more kindness and empathy so I I I love that I really really like that and also for themselves they may say I am the person who has to sit in the aisle for whatever reason could even be a health reason right and and I'm obstructing the aisle and I feel really bad about that and and so that all of a sudden that they're saying okay that this is not like it's okay to be the person who sits on the aisle like that there's not that not I'm not being obstructive or difficult like it's okay and I'll get up or maybe I'll show up you know a reserve a seat in advance I'll show up early to make sure I get the seat on the aisle you know that's how that how important that is for me especially if it's something that is important for me to go to so I think that that's the piece that um anything that can foster that compassion but above all else that none of us are perfect right all of us have a thing as it were and I think that what we try to do too much is we try to create the mythology of people who don't have people who have no thing right right and it's a it's a dangerous Trope because it does it it Fosters that sense of it can be perfect I even think that just sort of what we see in terms of filters you know filters that are used on photos on Instagram and all of that the image filters and I'm like my person doesn't have a flaw on their face so you know they obviously have filters and the kinds of procedures people have to transform their appearance I I'm a firm believer that I don't judge anyone who's going to if this helps a person feel like I'm more in my body to change how I appearance and you do you however what it does do though is it sets up this sense of perfectionism for others like look they have the perfect ABS they have the perfect this they have the perfect that and and I think that again we fetishize that and it you know again it relates to economics and all of that is if you can keep setting perfectionism as standard people are going to keep spending money and that and actually in some ways letting people know like yeah you're kind of being a shill for an economic system every time you fall into that people like oh I don't want to be that it's like then don't try to be a perfectionist yeah I think this you know social media it's just inbuilt to the nature of it I I think it's almost I don't know we too doomsday and call it a losing battle but you know it was there was some optimism at the start when you mentioned how the digital natives that Generation Now perhaps some of them at least are getting the potential downsides of these platforms but I think it's called perfectionist presentation you know we that's what we Post online generally we don't post the you know the part of Dirty Laundry that needs to be done or the fact that the washing basket hasn't been emptied in two weeks or the fact that your fridge is messy because you know who wants to really see that who wants to share that who wants to really see that so we can rationally know that what we're seeing from anyone who we follow is just a sliver a narrow so that if they're right off their life right but I don't think that rational side of us is enough I think right our brain is just absorbing these images that everyone else has got it together in a way that we don't they're all doing exciting things they're all going seeing amazing sunsets every day you know to the point where you may have just been on holiday and had a wonderful holiday and then you come back first day at work well you know what someone else is going to be on holiday now but you feel bad because you're seeing that's why I think it's I think it's a really tricky one that we're gonna have to wrestle with as a society going forward how do we manage this I don't think it's a simple fix no um it's not two other things Dr Romney I've heard you talk about um relating to self-sabotage is when we're overly invested in a specific outcome and when we pathologize our own needs I wonder if you could speak to those two things and how they relate to self-sabotage so it's this idea of if I can get this if I can just get into this University my life is going to be perfect if I can just get that wedding venue then everything in my life will be great if I got that car then I know I'll always be fine right so a person attaches their sense of well-being to some form of an external outcome achievement or something like that that is a slippery slope you go back to that idea of giving your power away now you're really literally hinging your entire well-being on something a that's not within your control and B is really fleeting and what then ends up happening is the person does get into the university maybe does get the place they want to have their party and then it's done and there's a real sense of okay now what right so now they might start chasing another carrot or that thing doesn't happen and a person falls into a depression of like well I didn't get this thing so I'm never ever going to come back from this and so I think that that getting too linked to a goal versus that you know these are these are the uh there's our very various options I work um I A friend of mine a guy named Matthew Hussey who gives a lot of dating advice he said something so beautiful to me the other day he said you have to fall in love with your plan B and I loved when he said that because I would argue that you not only have to fall in love with your plan B you pretty much need to have a pretty good crush on your plan C and D and kind of like your plan e because I think what happens then is that we we are opening ourselves up to option right the more rigid someone is the less healthy they are sort of a basic premise of Personality right the more rigid the personality style the less healthy the person is because they lack that Flex ability to kind of go when things don't work out and so antagonistic personalities are interesting because they're incredibly rigid and unyielding that unyieldingness not only makes it unhealthy for the person who has it it makes it unhealthy for other people I always say it's like a tree you know like you'll see palm trees they have these really elastic kinds of trunks and so in the wind they can go like this but then you have like the Mighty Oak tree that with a big wind the whole thing breaks because it's a rather rigid kind of tree trunk and so that rigidity is not good and so that idea of like not only falling in love with your plan B but like I said having a crush on your plan C and D is a way of saying that okay I'd love it if I got into this we're going to have things we prefer I'd love it if I got into this University I'd love it if I got this job but I absolutely could see really enjoying also that job like it's creating the openness of possibility and I think that the um they all are nothing thinking is never good and that's what that is It's All or Nothing thinking so it's I I'll often do sort of um guided imagery or envisioning work with clients where I'll say okay just close your eyes let's let's play out plan B right now forget plan a we know you're gonna love right let's talk about Plan B and then really closing your eyes and say can I want you to imagine walking in the door there I want you to imagine moving into there and then the same thing with plan C like Envision those things and help people sort of almost sort of pay attention to some of the feeling and things that would come that would come of that and so I do believe that it's sort of fostering that kind of flexibility but that concept like I said Matthew's concept of falling in love with your plan B could really be is is a um is a very useful yeah kind of a tool I think with with relation to health let's say weight loss for example something that many people are always you know struggling with or there's many people who sort of dip in and out of trying to lose weight and there's there's often this thing that when I lose weight when I lose this amount of weight I'll be happy and I think this really fits into what you're talking about you know absolutely absolutely they'll only be happy when that outcome occurs which is again very rigid because what if you get 90 of the way there what if you have brought into your life three or four beautiful practices that are giving you more energy more Vitality your relationships are better but yeah you didn't quite meet that goal that may have been unrealistic anyway and everything starts to fall down so so I think this has so much crossover for so many different things and it's even bigger than that because we know the biggest predictor of um Eating Disorders is dieting and when you think about that number sometimes people will get so focused I need to hit this weight number right that that actually people will get themselves into very disordered sometimes even dangerous eating patterns and I have worked with numerous clients who'll say once I lose 60 pounds my life is going to change then they lose 60 pounds pounds and nothing changes because they have done no inner work it was always been about the food restriction the excessive exercise all these things they were doing they get the 60 pounds off they're actually no longer an interesting person because all they do is be obsessive about food and exercise so they're not meeting the love of their life they're not getting their dream job because they've actually become so caught up in and over identified with that goal that they're they'll actually say that that was one of I would not when I was thin it was actually one of the worst times of my life or I was really drawing terrible people they were drawing people into their lives who were drawn only to their appearance they were not good people and so then they then they got themselves into this really horrific Loop of saying if I gain even a pound I'm gonna lose this relationship in this lifestyle and I mean to sometimes even to tragic consequence so it's um it's a real problem pathologizing your own needs what does that mean how do we do that what is the problem with doing that and how can we change it it's huge you know someone was um asking me like if you could have people just learned one thing in the world I would say to find a healthy way to express their needs this is something that's often a very ancient problem for many people even in childhood they may have been shamed um for expressing their needs or being told that they're being impertinent for expressing their needs and I mean I mean realistic needs I mean I'm not saying like I need someone to bring a private jet to me so I can go to a theme park I don't mean that it's like a person who's saying that I I need I know I mean I need something you know whether it's something related to nourishment or something relationally or just wanting to be closer or wanting more time that to make a need known in an appropriate aware way you can't just come barreling in and demand anything you want is a really hard thing for a lot of people and so what happens is especially if their needs were shamed when they were younger that can then result in a person feeling that their needs are a problem when they're an adult they ask they feel either that they don't have permission to ask for anything or if they do they're being demanding they're being needy and if they're in a toxic relationship they're being told that they're being demanding and being needy if you even think about how people date a lot of sort of the rules and rubrics about dating are very much about like don't respond too soon don't let them know you're really interested like well I am interested why wouldn't I want to tell them that and like no no you don't want to give it up so it's like even how we suggest people get into relationships can be very sort of you know sort of opaque and confusing and you people are often socialized like to not even ask for what they might need in the workplace or they'd be afraid of if you ask for too much they may let you go or something like that and it goes on and on and on so what happens is that people don't learn to express their needs directly in a healthy way but what they may learn is to express those needs in an unhealthy kind of passive aggressive or manipulative way which isn't good for relationships they may not learn to express them at all don't get their needs met and then they may suffer from that um and and so it is and ultimately it's thinking well I'm I'm needy or this is ridiculous that I need this or I'm being lazy if I do this like a person saying that I want to just take a few hours on the weekend and whatever do something fun and thinking oh that's not very I should I should be cleaning the house instead then that's another form of pathologizing One's Own needs like the need just simply to have some down time so I think that that that messaging that people get and again it often starts quite young to if we don't break out of that then we often don't give ourselves we don't nourish ourselves with what we need which like I said maybe down time maybe a day off maybe um spending you know going to therapy whatever it may be that when people don't getting what you need out of a relationship you know that people don't get those things it really can be it can really be bad for them and I'm even going to push it further because where it can even start to get dangerous is when people ignore their needs for long enough they literally start to ignore their bodies and people may actually ignore symptoms on their bodies they may put off getting preventative health care they may say oh I I don't want to make the appointment I'm being that's a little dramatic going to the doctor for this and then may have found out that this is something that they should have absolutely seen and communicated with a health care provider about so that not that pathologizing one's needs isn't simply somebody pathologizing the need for a you know a few hours off um or just wanting to take an afternoon to themselves it could actually be for very much more severe things like Health crises yeah really really helpful I think we've done really hopefully useful Deep dive for people on self-sabotage and I think it was about seven ways there that we covered which you know I'd be surprised if everyone doesn't at least connect with one of them at some point in their life right we're all human we all fall into these traps and patterns from time to time um as we sort of head towards the end of our conversation I wanted to ask you about raising children you've been in practice for decades now for many many years and what I'm interested in is you've seen a lot of adults who are struggling with various aspects of their life and a lot of those aspects that they're struggling with May in some way be related to their childhoods so given what you've seen what have you learned is the most important thing or some of the most important things that we can do as parents for our kids to prevent them being those adults who show up needing help in the future I think Denver won going back to that perfectionism is we may not make the mistakes our parents made we're going to make new mistakes and so that you know that if we look at winnicott's work you know he's an object relations theorist we look at when a card's work he talked about the good enough parents right good enough mother but good enough parent and the good enough parent makes just enough mistakes that the child has to figure some of this stuff out on their own you don't want to respond to the child's every knee the kid's got to figure some stuff out on their own it's a balancing act right you don't you want to be responsive enough that the child believes that they have a secure base that they learn to regulate that they feel safe in the world but not so much that they feel hovered over and don't ever get to make a mistake on their own that they can solve and resolve and regulate and soothe themselves you want the child to learn how to self-soothe and so I think that what we need to understand is that all of us all any of us can do is be that good enough parent but in our Terror of not wanting to repeat the patterns that our own parents committed we may rather unseeingly walk into a whole new set of mistakes and it's basically there's a real risk of over correction I can say very frankly I did that you know my you know it was very difficult for my parents they were immigrants they got a lot of stuff wrong it harmed me I had to know two ways about it um the fact and and I understand that I'm able to see that in a very circumspect context but in my Zeal to avoid what they did wrong I got to make a whole new series of mistakes and so I I think that if I were to go backwards I mean I think in some ways the best way I could get parenting advice is to look back at what I didn't get right and I understand some of it was circumstantial I I've been divorced and I know that that took its own toll on my children and I certainly can't sit here and say well I wish I had been better at you know choosing a more compatible partner with me so I didn't do that I did and and so it is but I think that um that to be mindful and present with children to the degree you possibly can I mean listen if dinner is burning and there's someone at the front door and all of that we can't always be but there are moments we can be you know to really allow that child to feel heard and seen and recognized so that they go into adulthood believing that they're worthy of being heard and seen and recognized right and so that that is something that I think is so crucial and I also think another crucial thing is allowing children to experience disappointment we are in an era of bubble wrapping children so they never have to have anything bad happen and they always need to be comfortable and that's also a real mistake too because the incapacity to self-regulate is a real is a real problem and when people can't self-regulate they're at risk for using drugs and alcohol using food and using things external to them to soothe and it's to leave a child feeling that they're secure and safe enough in the world and can trust themselves enough to sort of regulate themselves you know in in that moment but you know like I said I got I remember willing to Hazard that I maybe I was about 50 50 I got as many things right as I did wrong I'm not I'm definitely not going to give myself the more right than wrong my children could answer that question better um but like I said we have to be I think my biggest mistake was in my over correction that's where I made a lot of my mistakes I'm like I'm absolutely not going to do it my parents did but in doing that I created new mistakes it was almost like I put when you get surgery on one leg you put too much weight on the other leg and then you screw up the other leg that's what I did yeah I think many of us fall into that over correction trap yeah one final thoughts I wanted to discuss with you is something that I heard you say once that I've been thinking a lot about over the past few days and it's when you said that you really want us as a society to challenge the idea that mental illness is a disability what exactly do you mean by that well I mean I think that it's a we're back to that issue of a Continuum right that um I think that I I struggle with even with the construct of mental illness is in the sense that what I use as a barometer is how a person is feeling in the world and how they're functioning in the world and I don't mean functioning in terms of earning money and all of that I mean like maintaining relationships and and feeling purposeful and meaningful and all of that those are the things that I would look for in a person in our Zeal to give it a name right to call it bipolar disorder or depression and all of that we kind of get lost in that labeling and then we limit people right um he's depressed so we may not be able to do as much he's anxious I mean and and we know this to not be true that people with a wide range of mental illnesses and mental health issues are actually contributing in many ways now when we get into the ear area of severe psychotic mental illness schizophrenia would be an example there we do see impairments that would make it difficult for a person to function in the world so that might fall more under a person being differently abled right there may be things that might be more challenging but even there I mean I think the Innovative work and people working with people with severe psychiatric illness including psychotic illness is still meeting a person from a compassionate place on how can we then given some of the limitations of of the symptomatology they're experiencing still allow them to achieve as much potential as possible and help them be as safe in the world as possible because for individuals who are living with psychotic illness the world can feel like an incredibly unsafe place especially if they're not getting adequate treatment but I think that it's a um we don't Accord we don't Accord people who are going through experiences of of mental distress and anguish and despair and the sorts of at times functional limitations that can come from that and certainly subjective distress that comes from that we still view it very suspiciously and we view these people as not being able to again like I said function well which which is completely untrue because if you look at the rates of what mental illness epidemiology is somewhere anywhere between 10 to 20 percent of the population depending on whose numbers you're looking at that would mean if you work with five if you work with ten people one to two of them is living with uh you know significant mental health issues right and if they if you're looking around saying well everyone seems to be doing well then I don't know who that is you don't know who that is and so again I I even I don't like the term disability I I really am focused on people who bring different abilities and I mean if the risk of sounding too I mean socio-political I really do get exhausted with people thinking that the measure of a person is how they can contribute to the economy and that that's how we sometimes designate whether or not somebody has ability and I don't think that that's what ability is I think it is about being a a good compassionate respectful human being who's sort of part of this ecosystem of the world and not just that they can make money from people and make money to make other people money so I think that that's sort of a bias I have in this space but I I you know I think that we are um we're working on models of diagnosis and mental illness that we're conceived of by a very small group of people in a room and you know if you look at how the DSM was originally written these were very privileged white men who sat in a room in New York City and most of them were psychoanalysts and they started drawing down what they thought were these sort of mental health conditions and that became the core of what is still the DSM yeah and while there is a little bit more research on biology and and culture and all that at the end of the day this is what a group of privileged white men in the 1950s sat in an office in New York the very office I've laid eyes on and came up with this stuff and and I think in that way there is a very colonizing influence of how all of this works we do not account for different perspectives we do not account for different abilities and I think that other Industries like Pharmaceuticals have really gotten their hands in there so I think that they're we are getting to the point where there needs to be a real I don't want to say Revolution but maybe Renaissance would be a nicer word of like taking some of this apart and I have to say the ICD the international classification of diseases from from the World Health Organization they're making changes that I actually think are a little bit more forward-thinking but I still think we're stuck in a framework that was dictated by a very narrow band of human beings too long ago uh so much there to unpick I think we're gonna have to save that for our second conversation which I I truly hope we have at some point it's been such a joy speaking to you it really has um this podcast is called feel better live more when we feel better in ourselves we get more more out of our lives for anyone who's listening or watching who feels a little bit lost in their life a little bit stuck maybe it's a relationship that they're struggling with maybe they're procrastinating and they can't seem to make any changes have you got any final words of inspiration or wisdom for them I'd say this I think a lot of because so many of us work on computers not all of us but many of us do lift your eyes and that lifts your eyes as a metaphor not just even lifting your eyes off a computer but lifting your eyes out of your life for a minute right get a different view change things up step outside even if it's winter time sometimes that wish of cold air can sort of change your perspective the other thing I'm going to say is break things down really break them down because I think the more you say like I am never going to get this house clean I'll say start with a drawer just clean one drawer out and if you want to keep going keep going but if not you got one thing done whether you break things down by Time by task um I I'll say people to people do the easiest thing first because that builds efficacy like oh okay look at that I'm I paid those three bills okay let's go on to the next thing like start with the easier thing develop that sense of like I'm getting some things done and go from there also the other thing I'd suggest to people is then there's there was actually an interesting article in the New York Times about how messiness like having a messy environment is actually associated with mental health issues and I think it's also associated with procrastination now I understand some people say well actually clean to procrastinate I do get that and that that's a subset of folks but there's something about a messy space that can make it hard to get going and cleaning something up is often a little bit easier than some of the other things we need to do so maybe take that on say okay this is the area I'm going to work in so let me make this tidy so I can work in this space that could be another thing that you do and then have some clear rewards say if I work for two hours one hour three hours whatever 15 minutes at the end of that I'm going to allow myself to whatever that two is I'm going to take a walk I'm going to allow myself to play one game on my phone I'm going to play with my dog I'm going to call a friend give yourself little meaningful rewards that actually feel good so that they're both in it again like I said we we are existential rats in a maze we always need some cheese to be hunted for so figure out what your cheese is give yourself of those rewards because they think that that can also feel like okay I did this and now I'm doing this other thing and this is my reward and so I'm going to keep going you associate accomplish the tax task accomplishment or getting things done think getting things done with a meaningful reward yeah love that fantastic advice I know you've got two books out at the moment should I stay or should I go don't you know who I am we've mentioned your online membership Community yeah you've also got a quite wonderful YouTube channel uh anywhere else you'd want people to to go to to check out your work yeah you can check you know we have oh we're on all social media Dr Romney doc t-o-r Romney r-a-m-a-n-i go to my website that's probably where you find everything in one place if you are trying to heal from a toxic relationship and just sort of want more information you could join that healing program you can go check out YouTube if you want basic info and I haven't new book coming out in February 2024 so I hope we talk right before that so I could remind everyone of that and let them know how that's um how that's shaping up 100 that's an open invitation to look that's we'll get that in the diary thank you for coming on the show I appreciate that thank you so much for having me thank you if you enjoyed that conversation I think you are really going to enjoy this one all about addiction trauma and why so many of us feel lost addiction is the most human thing there is all addictions to attempts to gain pain relief emotional pain relief or something or another then this whole society is so expert at selling us stuff to fill those holes temporarily this is the whole ethic of this culture

Channel: Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Views: 270,849

Keywords: the4pillarplan, thestresssolution, feelbetterin5, wellness, drchatterjee, feelbetterlivemore, ranganchatterjee, 4pillars, drchatterjee podcast, health tips, nutrition tips, health hacks, live longer, age in reverse, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, motivation, inspiration, health interview

Id: iRTVWRqjTNw

Length: 112min 32sec (6752 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 01 2023