Psychotherapist Shows HACKS on How to Change Your LIFE by Changing Your LIFE STORY | Lori Gottlieb

Today, on Women of Impact,

psychotherapist

Dr. Laurie Gottlieb reveals the honest truth of what's really holding us back in

life

. The most important thing is that you have to give up the hope of having had a better childhood. She is the New York Times bestselling author of "Maybe You Should Talk." to someone to whom she explains why we can't escape our own emotional cells. Just when we feel pain, we do something that will make us suffer instead of something that will help us endure the pain and get over it. a more healing type of process and shares powerful tips on how to accept

your

envy follow

your

envy tells you what you want gives you a sense of your desire it's like women have so much trouble recognizing their desires so men prepare for a mind blowing experience dose of reality with no bs doctor and

psychotherapist

laurie

gottlieb

you literally gave me chills welcome to women of impact welcome laurie to the show well thank you I'm so excited to have you here I have so much to talk about and where I'm.

I think what I want to start with is talking about the unreliable narrator because I think that really sets the stage for where we're going to go in the discussion, so you know my book, maybe you should talk to someone. It's the

story

of Four of my therapy patients as I help them with their struggles and there is a fifth patient and the fifth patient is me as I go to my own therapist to deal with my own struggle and one of the threads throughout the book is this idea of ​​unreliable narrators. that when people come to therapy they tell you the

story

of what's going on and they're one hundred percent sure that their version of the story is the accurate version of the story, now it's accurate in terms of their perspective, but it's not necessarily the full version. story and I think where people get stuck and why sometimes they feel like you know they don't know where to go or they feel like something's not working is because they're missing out on whole parts of the story and it's almost like I feel like my job as a therapist is being an editor and helping people edit these flawed narratives that they come with, so, um, break that down for me, so what are the things that, um, if I'm listening to you right now?

I'm okay, yes I get it, maybe my story is just one perspective, how do we start to

change

that? What does that first step look like? Well, first I think there's a misconception that I think people feel like it's coming. to therapy to know themselves and I feel that people come to therapy to reach the unknown and by that I mean to let go of those limiting stories that they carry with them and that prevent them from truly living their lives, etc. People come with stories like I'm not lovable or I can't trust anyone. um, you know, nothing will work for me, whatever their story is, and that's a story that they learned a long time ago and that they still carry with them and it impacts every choice and decision behavior that happens throughout the day, um, and that's why I think that's really important, it's in some way not knowing yourself as part of editing that narrative, other times people have part of a story, like I see couples a lot in therapy and you.

I heard one person in the couple tell one side of the story and another person in the couple tell another side of the story and they were the exact same incident but they saw it from completely different perspectives and I think that's where people can really grow and

change

. . and to communicate better is to understand and be curious about the other person's part of the story, the other person's perspective, many times we make assumptions about why someone acted a certain way, told us something or did something and we are completely wrong, if God. That's so true, and even knowing that there's such a big gap between knowing something and then how you feel, because I find myself every time I try to make a change, when I have a problem, I know I've read it. the books that I've done, you know, the homework, so to speak, I've spent years working on myself, but in those moments the feeling overtakes it, the feeling takes over, so um and I go on a date where You say I know people often create flawed narratives to feel better in the moment even though it makes them feel worse over time, but also this is something you were saying about being in your own therapy session, but I also know that your boyfriend is a fucking selfish sociopath.

I'm in the space of not knowing and not knowing, love, I laughed a lot and it's because you're a therapist that it carries so much weight, so how do you know yourself to divide those two so that one doesn't influence? the other one, then there's this great quote from the book too and I put in the book that someone else said that perception is the greatest prize of therapy and I love that because I think people think they're going to come. They go to therapy to understand why they do what they do and then they get an idea, but if they don't make changes, the idea is useless and I really feel like most of the therapy takes place between sessions, which means that when you come In therapy you learn something about your role in what is not working and just because you have the idea doesn't mean that nothing is going to change, so you have to change your behavior, so, for example, someone might say to me: "Well, during the end week I got into this fight with my partner. and I realized exactly why I got it this time and I'll say, well, did you do anything different? and they'll look at me like, well, no, but I got it, well, that's the first step, but now, next weekend, if you get into another one. disagreement you are going to do something different with that knowledge you have to use the perception otherwise you just come and talk about things every week but you are not really moving forward and I think that difference that you said about me being aware that I had a role in this relationship which doesn't work in the book um and then I also feel like you know all your friends are saying oh he's such an idiot I can't believe he did that and that's the difference between idiotic compassion and what shin and so idiotic compassion is what we do with our friends they say listen what my boss my partner my mother my brother my friend did and we said yes you know you're right, they're wrong I can't I think they did that, that's terrible, we just blindly support our friend, that It's idiotic compassion, because if you listen to your friend over time, they probably have similar types of things they've been telling you, maybe different characters, maybe the same person, but you.

I'm starting to notice a pattern, right, they could have a role in this too, even if it's how they respond to something, and it's like a fight breaks out in every bar, maybe it's you, we're not telling. that for our friends, when you go to therapy, you gain wise compassion, that is, we show you a mirror and help you see something about yourself that maybe you haven't wanted to or haven't been able to see and that's where you can start to see . look at the story a little closer, we don't do that with idiotic compassion, that's incredible, so you advise people to sit down and say, it seems like they almost relate and say, okay, this person is an idiotic person with compassion, this person that you know as um and In fact, I say that because knowing who you should turn to and when and at what time will be very important during these times when you feel vulnerable.

Well, I should say one more thing about idiot compassion, which is that, first of all, there are very problematic people in people's lives, so I don't deny that you know it's like we always say that before we diagnose someone with depression, make sure he's not around the right people, because of course you'll get depressed if you do. You're surrounded by people, okay, so we understand that it's not that there aren't difficult and problematic people in your

life

, but how you respond to those people in the first place, why are you in a relationship with that person? relationship with that person instead of just complaining about that person every week, so that's a question, what are you doing there? and then the other question is if you don't need to be in a relationship with that person, you know why you don't leave.

And if it's someone you want to be in a relationship with for various reasons, what are you going to do to respond differently? What are you doing that maybe causes this other person to start acting like a person around you? I'm not blaming the person I say, notice this is a dynamic, it's a dance you do with another person, notice what your dance steps are and maybe if you change your dance steps the other person will be forced to change your dance. steps too or they will just fall down on the dance floor. I love that analogy that's so cool, so let's talk about change because I actually heard it was super powerful.

Explain to me why people don't like change. I actually heard you say what change represents and I've never heard anyone put it in this term, so it really struck me if you could break it down, that would be great. The complicated thing about change is that people think. that if you're going to make a positive change it's going to be easy because it's positive so I'm going to do this thing that's really good for me I'm going to leave this relationship I'm going to eat better I'm going to do something that's healthy for me. I'm going to change jobs, whatever it is, and that's going to be easy because I'm looking forward to it.

The problem with change is that change involves loss and what is lost is the familiar. you lose what you already know and even if the familiar is unpleasant or even miserable at least it is what you know and when you have to make a change you enter a place of uncertainty humans do not usually do well with uncertainty, we become very afraid to which we don't know so it's really about taking this leap of faith so there's a chapter and maybe you should talk to someone called how humans change and it

shows

that we actually go through a series of steps before we take the decision. change and then there is a step after we make the change, which starts with pre-contemplation where you don't even know you are thinking about making a change, it is completely unconscious to you and then there is contemplation where you start thinking about. about it, but you're not ready to do anything and then there's preparation where you start preparing to make the change, what am I going to have to do to make this change? and both are preparing logistically but also emotionally, then there is action. where the change is made and that is not the last step, but actually the first step because the next step is the important step and that is called maintenance, how is the change maintained?

And the thing about maintenance is that a lot of people think. that if they make a mistake and you make a mistake in maintenance, by the way, change is not linear, so you say you know you're going to call that boyfriend at three in the morning even though you told yourself you wouldn't, um, you know. you're going to eat what you said you weren't going to eat you're not going to exercise you're going to know not to do what you told yourself you were going to do um that's normal that's to be expected because change is really difficult and so maintenance is about knowing that it's built into that, that maybe you know that you're going to regress sometimes and you're going to be very kind to yourself, you're going to have a lot of self-compassion and I'm just going to get back to normal the next day and that's to be expected and the People usually what happens is they go back and say oh I failed, forget it, I can't do this and then they don't make the change, this is why New Year's resolutions tend to not work because that's what people do with their goals. new Year's resolutions.

First of all, they don't go through all the stages of change and then when they get to maintenance, the moment they make a mistake, they say, well, that wasn't like that. work, so forget God, that collapse was as powerful as you described it, it really seemed like it was an iceberg, where it's like before you even look, you need to do all this work underneath and people think it's okay tomorrow based exactly in what you were. What it says about New Year's resolutions is that you wake up on January 1st and go, now I'm going to change, you haven't laid all the foundations, that's when you fail because it will be inevitable, anything you try to be new will take you until At some point failing is how you learn, but if you haven't prepared yourself then that failure keeps you depressed and I loved, I loved what you said about basically change represents it can represent failure, rejection, betrayal, the unknown and all these words, even just saying them out loud people fear, well I was even going to say when you said the word failure, I cringed a little because I don't consider that failure, so I consider success to be part of the process that goes through the process. , so people need to do it.

Reframe it because that's not failure at all, the fact that you're making the change and you were very human and it was hard at times, you're still on the path to success, yes, God, and it really comes down to where. We start with perspective because I really believe that if you see it as a failure it will make you feel a certain way and the best thing I always go to is Edison, where it took him like 10,000 tries to make the light bulb. and someone said to him oh do you know how you didn't get your spirit down when you had ten thousand failures and he says it wasn't ten thousand failures, it was ten thousand lessons and now every time I say, oh my god, you failed Lisa, oh God?

God, I can't believe youdone that. I immediately realized that I said that and then I change those words in that language to say: oh great, you just learned something, what have you learned? That empowers me instead of diminishing me, yes, and every time. you learn something like, well, what happened here that made me make that call or what happened here that made me do this or that, so you learned something about yourself. I felt anxious about what was going on and I think, in general, the reason why we can do it. Change has a lot to do with anxiety and anxiety is almost like when you enter a place of uncertainty, you are in a foreign land you have never been to, you don't know the customs you don't know. you know the language you don't understand, you know all that, you don't know where the landmarks are, all the familiar things of home to you, even again, if home was terrible, it was still your home, so all the points Family references are not there. and you have to navigate this new place and it's a healthier place, it's a better place, but it's not familiar yet so of course it's going to make you anxious, yes, that's right, and as you're saying all this, you know when the people feel pain.

You usually know, move away from pain, move towards pleasure, that's why most of us love ice cream and hate going to the gym. It's like damn ice cream tastes delicious and the gym can be really painful sometimes, but I actually love it. To quote you on this, it was so powerful, it was um, there's a difference between pain and suffering. You will have to feel the pain. Everyone feels pain sometimes, but you don't have to suffer so much. You are not choosing. the pain, but you choose the suffering, tell me about that, yeah, that came out of a session with my own therapist where I was really struggling with this breakup and I was Googling my ex and I was making up all these stories about what I saw it online like you know he posted a photo of a salad at a restaurant and I was like, how can he even eat at a restaurant?

How can he even survive and breathe without me? It didn't mean anything to him, did it? This way of thinking so irrational, but Of course you know that's what happens when you're grieving and that's what happens when you know it's a loss um and then you know my therapist told me listen, you're going to have to feel. pain but you are like that google stocking, you are creating your own suffering and many times what we do is when we feel pain we do something that will make us suffer instead of something that will help us sit with the pain and move forward in a It's a type of process more healing.

What is happening there? Why do we do that? Because when I was younger, definitely, if I was sad or if my boyfriend was bothering me, I would go and listen to the saddest music he could, that made me feel worse. about me, I would call friends who say, oh my God, what do you know, and there's a certain weirdness of satisfaction in leaning into it, but what's going on there, why do we do it and then how do we like it, you said. I said the steps, but how do we force ourselves to stop? Because it feels good to do temporarily well and what it is is a distraction from feeling the pain, so even though you're making yourself feel more pain, it's a distraction and then you know and We do this all the time with our feelings, we try to numb them, people numb their feelings even with drama, you know, like listening to those songs or creating drama in your relationship so you don't have to.

Talk about what's going on between the two of you in a relationship. You know, I see those very volatile couples a lot in therapy. The drama is there, so you don't have to talk about what's not working so you can know. talking about the hardest things they don't want to do, how we often numb our feelings with too much food or too much wine, you know, mindless internet surfing where you tell yourself what just happened for the last three hours. You know we've all been there, so the thing is, numbness isn't the absence of feelings. Numbness is a feeling of being overwhelmed by too many feelings, so when you try to numb your feelings it means I'm feeling too much.

Right now when I feel overwhelmed, I feel overwhelmed and we try to numb them, but the problem with that is that when you try to suppress your feelings, they don't go away, in fact, they get bigger because they need air and that's why you go out and you know insomnia. and all these kinds of maladaptive behaviors and self-sabotage and stagnation in relational difficulties with a bad temper, you know when something happens, people will tell you because they will see that something is not right with you and that's because you don't really allow yourself to feel your feelings because When you feel your feelings now you can deal with them.

I always say that feelings are like a compass, they tell us which direction to go, so if you feel sad, that tells you. Well, wait, what doesn't work, that makes me sad or you feel angry. Did someone cross a line that didn't make me feel good? Did I feel hurt? Did I feel misunderstood? Do I feel invisible? Do you know if? you feel anxious what it's not what makes me anxious what doesn't work in my life and then you can do something with it it's like a road map they even envy people especially women they feel like envy is so taboo i feel like Envy is a big point on the compass because I always tell people to follow your envy, it tells you what you want, it gives you insight into your desire, it's like women have so much trouble recognizing their desires, you know, sometimes we can say that I deserve it, which is different. of the desire that I deserve is almost angry as if I were to tell you that I deserve this desire is from a place of that fire in the belly that right passion and then with envy people say oh I don't want to be envious of her well no no no that's it cool that you're envious because she's telling you that you have a desire for something more in your life maybe you want what she has but maybe you want your own version of that and then what can you do to go about getting it so I think everyone our feelings are very useful, there are no bad feelings, they are all extremely useful when I heard you talk about envy and I thought it's very powerful because, especially in these times, there are a lot of people talking about you, you know, always just loving yourself , you know, not engaging in negative emotions or negative feelings like envy and jealousy and things like that, but when I heard you say no, no, this can really teach you something.

It was like, my God, it's so powerful, but how can you keep sitting in it without feeling bad? So, for example, let's take jealousy. Jealousy can be difficult, it can be detrimental to your own self-esteem, especially if you're talking about a romantic relationship, so how would you address that without it being detrimental to your self-esteem and continue with the goal of um, I'm using this to improve my relationship? Yes, there are no bad feelings, there are unfortunate ways we can deal with them so there are healthy ways to deal with them and unhealthy ways to deal with them so an unhealthy way would be I'm feeling this envy and now I'm going to self-flagellate. , I'm going to tell myself that I'm unworthy, I'm never going to get what I want, I don't deserve it, you know all those thought processes that follow or you can take the envy and say wow, I could really do something like that.

Or I could do my own version of that or wouldn't it be exciting if I sat down and made a list of all the things I want and made some notes about who I can talk to or where I can get support? this or how can I get guidance on this and what are some things I can research on the internet on how I can get closer to getting something like this for myself. I love it, because it is very difficult, they have taught us that. feel envy feel jealousy like there's almost some shame that you bring on yourself for feeling good in the first place and I think what people do is like bathe in shame, you know, they take a bath of shame, they just sit there and wallow in shame and instead of saying wait a minute, why am I ashamed of the fact that I'm not there yet? why should you be ashamed of that?

And I think I think we judge ourselves so much. In this comparative process, right, and I think the problem with comparison is that you have one of two outcomes, one of the outcomes is you and I'm talking about social media in particular when you see things on social media and you start to feel that comparison. which we all do, sometimes what you do is say oh, well you know I'm better than that, so that's a response is like, oh, well, you know this or that was more successful than that, so at the same time the less I am is okay, right, which is like this place of narcissism, it's almost not, it's not a true sense of self-worth, um and then the other thing that we do and the most common thing that we do is, oh my gosh, I'm not. good enough, you know, like me.

I will never have anything like that. Know? I don't measure up so you are inferior or superior and that just doesn't help with comparison and I think with comparison the person we need to compare ourselves to ourselves and so it's what I'm doing today that has gotten me somewhere. beyond where you were yesterday and if you compare yourself, compare yourself to who you were yesterday or what you did yesterday to move forward, that is the comparison you need. If you see that you're falling short, that's a good sign for you that maybe I need to be more intentional, maybe I need maybe I need support, maybe I'm having trouble doing this on my own.

I think a lot of people assume so. We're supposed to know how to do things on our own when we really need other people to help guide us to exchange ideas and encourage us when we feel like you know it's us. We are stuck, we need other people, we need a team. I'm so glad you said that because that's really important, really powerful, but as you were saying that, part of me was thinking, "Oh, I have a lot of women reaching out to me." and I say Lisa, I used to be confident and now I'm not, and it's the fact that they used to be confident and now that makes them feel worse about themselves, well, I think the question is what has changed and I think if you were to ask them how They spend their time during the day, I don't think people are aware of what they do minute by minute, hour by hour during the day, and you can see that a lot of people do things that are really I'm going to inspire those questions, you know, from in a way that it becomes overloaded, because they spend a lot of time on social media, I mean, a lot of time and they don't even realize it, so instead of doing something that helps them move. they move forward the way they want, they just scroll through and feed all those questions that they have about themselves when you're very intentional about your day when you wake up and I always recommend People the night before think about when you end your day right before you close. , you know, and maybe you're going to do something else and I really want people to have a separation between their work life and some free time, etc. at the end of the day it shouldn't be 9 p.m. should be a decent hour um you know make it a ritual of this is what I accomplished today just so you can really see it right there this is what I accomplished it could be something small like I make sure I eat lunch today because I normally don't I had realized and skipped that or went for a walk today or accomplished this for this goal I have professionally, whatever it is. um here's one thing that I accomplished today or maybe you have more than one, but I hope you have one and um and then this is what I want to accomplish tomorrow and it should be very realistic, it shouldn't be a list of 10 things and then just you move them every day to the next day and they never get accomplished and you feel terrible, it's like here's one concrete thing that I'm really excited to do and I know I have to do tomorrow and then at the end of each day you know what you've done, you know what you have to do and you wake up with intention, so it gives you confidence, it gives you the feeling that I'm a competent person, I'm capable and I can, um, and I also believe. it gives you purpose and meaning and if you have meaning, purpose and connection, that's where you will have the kind of life you want to have.

I love it because what you're talking about is that transformation exists by doing one small thing. at the same time and I'm part of your book where you talk about when you broke up with your boyfriend for the first time and how much that broke you, that for you it was like it's okay, it just has to be one thing after another, it's like Today I'm going to get out of bed now I just need to put my shoes on and then I just need to feed my son like with all these steps you end up going from one thing to another instead of being so great, right? and I think most people don't realize that most great transformations come from these small, almost imperceptible steps that we take along the way and it's one foot in front of the other, that's it, it's one step and then you take another. step and then you take another step and I think people get overwhelmed because they imagine that the way you make a big change is by making a big change, no, it's tiny. steps and that's why I wrote that maybe you should talk to someone because I wanted people to see what this process is like.

I wanted to take people behind the curtain into the therapy room with me so they could see how these occur.changes. Look at the little steps, the heroic moments where you could have gone left but you went right and that was a big deal, because for the first time you were finally able to do that, you were able to break that pattern even once, um, and so on. believe. You see, everyone in the book, including myself, went through these incredible transformations and they are not unusual. It's not that I chose, you know, the four best cases.

I could have chosen anyone because that's what it means to be human. You, you're kind of floundering, um, you're scared, you're stuck and then you make a little change, you take a little step, you take another step, you go back five steps, you go one step forward and then you finally get to where you want. be and you continue taking steps. I'm really glad you said that because I think if we think about it as a linear path, meaning one foot in one step in front of the other, I'm never going to go backwards, but I'm going to go backwards. to what we were saying before about failure, it just puts you off, but knowing that that's going to be one step forward and three steps back, and you even said about habit and I heard you say let's replace a vicious cycle with a virtuous one that really Hit me, talk to me a little bit about that and then how do we do it really well?

I think that goes back to the kind of things that we do when we start to feel an uncomfortable feeling and then we do something that's really unhealthy for us, um, and then can you do something that's healthy for you to change the circle? The vicious cycle is that I'm going to keep googling my boyfriend, um, you know, whatever it is, whatever it is, um and I think that when you do something healthy instead, okay, when I feel like Google stock, my boyfriend, I'm going to call a friend, I'm going to go for a walk, I'm going to read a book, I'm going to do something.

That feels good that won't make me feel worse and I also want to say something about these little steps. I have this podcast called Dear Therapists and this is an opportunity for people to hear what a therapy session really sounds like. People come, if they get two therapists, it's me and my co-host and we, you know, do a therapy session with someone and at the end we give them concrete and practical advice, it's a task they have for a week. do it and then they report back to us and tell us how it went and the good thing about that is that you can see that even after one session people can make significant changes because they are taking those steps and they just needed a witness and a guide because they have the answers, They know what they need to do but they can't listen to themselves, so we reflect and we help them see a new perspective, we help them rewrite their story, and then we give them these things that they really know. what they have to do sometimes it's one thing sometimes it's three things and they do it and they report and each person has made a change that for years they couldn't make like if they had gone to therapy before or talked to You know whatever, you know what They've done all kinds of things that they feel like they should have done and I think part of that is that people, when they write to us, know what our agenda is and so they're ready to make those changes in some way, but I think that it's really encouraging for anyone listening that even after one session they can take those steps and start making these changes.

Yeah, I love that and it's just as powerful as you said people. I can be struggling with something for years and I usually think people think about what's wrong with me, like why can't I get over it, and having the right tools and guidance, like the right person you know. a compass, I love those analogies because I always think what my north star is and how the hell do I get there, so if my north star is getting over this relationship or getting over my partner's cheating or whatever, I know I need a star from the north and now I need the road map on how to get there, otherwise I will never know where it is, I just don't know how to follow the steps to achieve my destination right. and that's why you know that having that other perspective really helps.

I always say that therapy is like getting a really good second opinion about your life from someone who isn't in your life yet and then isn't in your life. It's very important because this person can see you much more clearly than people who are too close and you are too close to yourself to see it and then the people close to you are too close to you to see it so it's like you're looking at a map and you're too close you can't see the big picture you can't see all the other streets you can't see anything but that little thing that you're zooming in on and a therapist is already they're far away because they have this right distance so I think it's very helpful to be able to go talk to someone who isn't in your life yet um yeah that's true and you even said that most of us know that our past can keep us stuck, it can hold us back but so can our future so talk to me That's because, again, I've never heard anyone talk about how our future holds us back, so in the breakup example, I think when people walk by and no matter what it is, they say they've had an abortion. spontaneous, they say they're trying to get pregnant and they can't have a baby, not only are they dealing with what's happening in the present but they're dealing with the idea of ​​the future that they had created around that, oh, here I am like mother or, oh, here I am married to this person or if it was a professional thing, you know, they have this idea of ​​here I am with this and then something collapses into the present, well, it's not. just the present that collapses is the whole future that you built in your mind around what this would be like and there's real pain and loss around that, so people say, well, I don't understand that this person died a long time ago, right? you know why?

Are you still dealing with this or is this relationship over or is your marriage over? You know, two years ago, why are they still like this? Because his entire future has also been lost, it wasn't just the loss of that person, it wasn't just the loss. of the day-to-day companionship wasn't just the loss of having someone who really knows you, it was the loss of and here was the whole future as it was presented and now it's like the mother of all plot twists now that there's just blank in the future, you don't know what the future is, it's not written and again we're back to uncertainty and change, that can be incredibly scary, not knowing what it looks like now of course we don't really know Even when you think you know what your future will be like, you don't actually know it's an illusion, but it's a comforting illusion, true, that gets most of us through our days, but then when the illusion really is that they strip you of that illusion, suddenly you begin. get really scared and you're grieving the loss because it was something you were really looking forward to hmm yeah so what's keeping us going?

Let's say it's a relationship, so you had a vision of the person. I was with who I am now he was going to be my future I imagined he was going to be my husband I was going to have children with them we were going to grow old together and that is why some people stay in relationships where they are not happy because there are so many reasons why the ones that people do and that is one of them: they feel that they do not want to let go of this future that they have imagined with this person that they do not want. start over and say okay I have to erase all that and now I'm going to have to start over I don't know when and if I'm going to find the person I don't know what this is going to be like I don't know what the future holds and so Again, people prefer to hold on, sometimes not in the long term.

Eventually people start to realize that this doesn't work, but at that point they get really scared and say I'd rather stick with the familiar. I prefer to stick with what I know even if it doesn't really work and people eventually reach a point where you know they've wasted years, even though you know they've wasted a lot of time because of their fear. and that also alters their future because their future could have been different if they had left the relationship at the time when they knew it wasn't working. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you because you even said that most people come to that conclusion eventually.

It just takes them too long, how can we stop that truck from spending 5, 10, 15 years with someone they really know they'll never break up with? So there is this thing: we got married with our unfinished business and I could say we dated. our unfinished business too, which is that we think that when we meet someone, that person is going to be the person we are really attracted to if we have not processed these unfinished business, that's why I say unfinished business, we have this idea that we know someone, we feel a strong attraction to that person and we believe that this person is going to be very different from that person from my childhood that maybe you know hurt me in some way or that this person didn't meet my needs. somehow and now this person is going to be different, this new person is going to be different from the adults in my life who still couldn't meet my needs, if you have this unfinished business, what your unconscious does is your unconscious.

It says you look familiar, come closer, right, and we don't even know what's happening because the person we think of is very different, but it's not there in essence, like you have a father who is hiding from you in some way or, you know, what was. I wasn't really emotionally present, this couple may seem very emotionally present, but in fact, once you get to know them, there are ways they won't be. If you grew up with a parent who had an addiction, you're probably going to end up in some way attracted to someone who has some kind of addiction maybe it's a different kind of addiction than what your parents had, but something like that replicates um and I don't think even We don't even realize that's happening and then you get into the relationship and say, wait a minute, this really sounds familiar to me, why is this happening?

I thought this person was so different, why do I feel the way I felt as a child in this relationship? Why does all this come up again? I don't think this is happening again and then we start thinking maybe it's me, maybe I'm not lovable, well no, it's not that you're not lovable, but it's you and this is who. It's going to say, you're gravitating towards that guy. of people, so in the book there is a woman I call charlotte and she is a young woman in her 20s who keeps hanging out with the wrong guys, including eventually one from the waiting room, and I know right away that he is going to be a bad news because she has a radar for these men who won't be able to give her the kind of loving relationship that she wants and, and you know, when she starts dealing with problems with her father and mother, she starts to feel attracted to different types of guys, What happens is when they haven't processed all of this, they're only attracted to people who are going to hurt them again, and what happens is she would date people who, you know, would be great partners, great potential. partners for her and she was like, yeah, he was a great guy, but I don't know, I just didn't feel the chemistry with him, well, you didn't feel the chemistry because that's why we were attracted to each other. to people who are similar to the people who hurt us is because we have this idea called repetition compulsion that this time I'm going to win, this time I'm going to get all those things that I didn't get as your child that is similar but like I'm an adult I have more control, you don't really have it because you can't control the other person, so the idea again is completely outside of our consciousness that this time I'm going to go. redo my childhood and I'm going to get what I want from this very withholding person, except you're not because you're with a very withholding person, or I'm going to get what I want from this. very untrustworthy person, but you are not because this person is not very trustworthy, you cannot change him, but we have this fantasy and it is the lack of power and control that we had when we were children, so as an adult you think that I am I'm going to change them , you know those people who say, yeah, this person has problems, but I can change them because they love me so much and I know that they really want to change and I'm going to be a really good influence on them and a really healthy influence on them.

I'm going to help them change. No, you will not meet a healthy person. Be a healthy person. Meet a healthy person. That will be a healthy relationship. God, yeah, it's so true, so I don't know. Yes I've been with my husband now we've been together for over 20 years we've been married for It's been 19 years and people keep saying what's the secret what's the secret and every time I want to give a lot of advice it all boils down to selection issues. Yes, I just did an interview with someone who is about to turn 90 years old. and he was married, his wife just died and he was married for 60 years and more than 60 years actually and someone told him in the chat, you know what the secret is to a happy marriage because they were completely in love with each other. other. all this time and he said his wife's name was maryland, he said to marry someone like maryland and i think what you're saying exactly is that it matters who you marry and a lot of times people don't look for the qualities that they're going to know. important in a happy, long-lasting love relationship and those are the character qualities you know, then someone will say I get thisIn therapy all the time, someone will come and say I have a huge crush on him and I don't.

I know why he just doesn't call when he says he will, but I'm so in love with him that you think you're going to be happy your entire life being with this untrustworthy, untrustworthy person. keeps his word, who leaves you feeling anxious and abandoned all the time, so you love, what, what, what do you love, um and again, that's the recap of childhood things, so I think when we say what is the love, that is a very good question. What does it mean to love someone and what does it mean to be affectionate with someone? Love as a verb is this person you meet when he says he loves you or she says he loves you.

What does that mean to that person because he's not? Acting in a loving way towards you is not loving to say I'll be home at this time and then just call you two hours later and say "sorry, I lost track of time" on a regular basis, that's not acting in a respectful way. loving way so what does love mean? You say you love this person, are you being loving towards them? Are you replicating them in your adulthood? How do you prevent them from replicating that in adulthood? Do you like to make a list of all the things that hurt you when you were a child?

How can you start doing that? The most important thing is that you have to give up the hope of having had a better childhood so when you finally say to yourself I'm going to grieve this loss I'm going to give up the hope of having had a better childhood I can't I can't remake my childhood. I can't remake it with all these adults. I can't make anyone else better for me than my childhood was what it was. I'm going to have to grieve that loss and when you start. To grieve that loss, you will notice many healthy people come into your life and you will begin to discover that you will have healthy relationships as an adult.

Yes, God, it is very true. In fact, I recently thanked my dad because my husband works all the time. he's a workhorse he's just me from Monday to Friday we barely see each other it's the relationship that we've decided on it's a relationship the um the day to day that we've agreed on so we're all very aligned but a lot of people ask you, do you know how do you handle it? Do you know that your husband works so much? Don't you ever feel neglected like God? If I was in your position, I couldn't do it and I started looking back at my past because I thought, yeah, why doesn't it bother me that I work so hard?

I looked back and thought my dad worked so hard. Sometimes he went on business trips for more than a month, but I always felt loved and when I was with Him I always felt like the most special person in his life and that's why with Tom he does exactly the same, I feel absolute joy. because of the time I spend with him and we are connected, but my father almost trained me not to do it. I necessarily look for affection from day to day and so I can see how our past, if it has been a wound, can really negatively affect the person we choose but also the other side for me where I love the relationship I have with my husband because of how it was when was younger, well that's true, if you had grown up with a father who was gone for long periods of time and you didn't feel loved, you would probably bring those feelings into this marriage, but because you had a very different experience, you love, it feels different for you, so you know you can hold that and you can be sure that he really loves me and I think there's a phrase that I love, which is: does the person have you in mind? because they're not there, they probably somehow communicate with each other, even when they're apart, that they have the other person in mind and I think if they know it, it's like the other person is holding them and helping them emotionally and I think that your father somehow managed to do that for you that you were emotionally hugged that you knew he didn't forget about you when he left that he had you on his mind and that you were being emotionally hugged and I imagine that happens between you and Tom, yeah, I really want to talk about the goldilocks effects of how women show up on your couch with their partner and you know, very typically, I think it's no surprise to anyone that most of us initially point to the other person and say "well." .

They're not doing this, they're not doing that, but sometimes you can notice the Goldilocks effects. If you could break it down, that would be great, so you said well, it's interesting, I think when I see couples a lot, something like that. this will happen and I and this will happen and I'm going to talk about a heterosexual couple but it happens in all couples um and it has to do with these kinds of cultural expectations and what we think relationships are supposed to be like. being and then all these prejudices that we have that we don't realize that we have this little kind of be careful what you wish for and very often what I see is a couple will come in and say that. the woman says to her husband you know, I just feel like we're not connected I feel like I want to know more about your inner life I want you to share with me I feel like you're not, you're not really opening up to me and then she does it in the therapy room , you open up to her and let's say maybe she starts to cry a little or sheds a tear and or maybe she cries a lot, she'll look at me like a deer in the headlights like, oh God.

Oh my gosh, wait, wait, wait, stop, you know, she won't necessarily say this, I just see this, she freezes, it's like that, you know, fight, flight, freeze, she'll freeze and she just won't know what to do with it because it's and then when we. She talks about it, what she will articulate is something like this. I didn't feel safe when you weren't opening up to me, but I also don't feel safe when you're so vulnerable with me, so it's like what she does. he does it with that right and I think this can be applied to any situation where I think sometimes we don't know how to keep someone in their vulnerability and that really comes down to whether it's a friendship, whether it's a family relationship, whether it's In a romantic relationship we need to understand what it means to help someone feel meaningful and a lot of times what happens is we have this need like I need you to get closer to me instead of saying how can we get closer to each other.

What's that? What do you need from me as a listener? Yes, there is something about being seen and heard that is extremely powerful and I have even heard you say that that can be even more powerful sometimes than I love you. Yes actually. I had this couple where one person said to the other you know what three words would mean the most to me and the other person said I love you and this first person said I don't understand you those three words I understand you we have this deep thing Human beings need to be understood and it's so when we listen again, I think a lot of times people come to us and want to talk to us about something, people close to us, and one thing that happens is we give them what we think. what they need at that moment based on what we might need at that moment, but we don't ask them like you know how can I help right now, how can I be here for you, maybe they just want to vent because what just happened and They're not ready to hear anything else right now.

Maybe they just want to be understood. Maybe they just want to hug. Maybe they want to know how you think about it or what your thoughts are. Maybe they want you to think of solutions, but I don't know, unless. you ask them. A lot of times people make mistakes because they think I was very supportive of this person and they got mad at me and I don't understand why or they felt like I wasn't listening to them, but I was totally listening, in fact I even gave them three solutions and it's like I'm not listening. You'll ask them what they want right now, and by the way, just because someone comes to you with something doesn't mean that's the only conversation. about it, then there's a conversation maybe a week later or two days later or a month later, the conversation comes up again and maybe this time they need something different than what they needed the first time, so how do you like to go back to the the goldilocks effect you think you know what you want and you think it's okay I want you to listen or I want you to talk I want you to share and then in those moments it becomes like oh god I actually don't know what to do um how do you know? so or is it just like a test and see why say even tell someone hey, I really need you to listen to me so you can interpret every time I talk to you?

Now all I want you to do is listen, but sometimes you want someone to listen to you sometimes you want someone to give you advice sometimes you want the person to share with you sometimes you don't really want the person to share sometimes you want the person to share with you partner cry sometimes they make her cry it makes you extremely uncomfortable um so you just have to deal with the good, the bad, the ugly, everything that comes with it? No, I think you have to communicate what you need and I think we don't know how to do that, we didn't grow up learning. how to do that actually so many times when I think about you know I'm a parent and I think about other parents so many times when our kids come to us with something like look what happened today I have to tell you what happened today and they're really upset about something our instinct.

It's because we are uncomfortable with their discomfort we can't stand their pain we want to take away their pain when they don't really need it they really want someone to sit with them in the feeling they are having can you sit with me in my sadness? Can you sit with me in my anxiety? Can you sit with me in my anger so I can understand this? um, but what parents do is they say well you should do this tomorrow or you should try this or oh my gosh that's terrible and I'm going to call the school and you know whatever instead of just saying three words that they tell me. more if you're coming from a place of curiosity then your child is telling you that something like this happened and this person didn't sit with me at lunch and you know this happened oh wow tell me more, I was really upset because blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know and you can.

Saying that sounds really hard because it is, you're not doing it like you can actually get into the space, can you put yourself in the other person's shoes and just be in their place and not in your space, which is, oh God? God, how can I make my son happy? Let's go get some ice cream. And you have the things we do to try to distract them. Let's distract them from their feelings. Look here, look here, look here, right, yeah, um, instead of just. sit with this like everything is okay and what you are doing is sending a signal to your child that everything will be okay, we can sit in these feelings and you are not going to drown in it, I love that, but what if, Let's say, your partner in this situation when you're on the couch and you say hey, you know, share with me and they share and then you're the deer in the headlights?

Do you force yourself to say oh? Gosh, tell me more like in those situations, how do you almost train the person well with deer and headlights? In this case, like when you know when it happens in the therapy office. I want to know why that person became as anxious as he did. that person so anxious so if you can ask yourself why this makes me so anxious this is a person that I love is telling me about a difficult experience what awaits me about my own history and my own past what is he doing It's hard for me to tolerate the someone's discomfort and it may be that you learned as a child that discomfort is bad and that we get rid of it immediately.

You learn that when your parents experience discomfort, it would escalate into something or you would. blame you for something or everything would change and suddenly it would be your fault you know what is happening to you why it is difficult to listen to something that is difficult for another person are you projecting something about another person from the past into the future? person sitting right in front of you, boom,

lori

, honestly, I could talk to you for so long, your book is freaking amazing. Please tell everyone where they can find your book and where they can follow you and everything you're up to.

Yes. You may find that perhaps you should talk to someone wherever you buy your books online at bookstores where you prefer. You can listen to my podcast. It's called Dear Therapists. And they can get it wherever they listen to their podcasts. You can read my Atlantic column. It's called Dear Therapist and you can listen to my Ted Talk at ted.com and you can find me at

lori

egotleep.com or on the different social platforms guys, guys, guys, I tell you that you should go see this one. woman when I started reading. her book i make an audible i couldn't get my airpods out i was absolutely obsessed with her story the way she presents the book is incredibly amazing so literally go check it out check out the book and if you're not following me follow me on lisa billy and if you're not subscribed, guys, click the subscribe button down there and until next time be the hero of your own life.

What's up, guys? Thank you very much for watching this video if you wish. another dose of rudeness, make sure to check out this video right here because I know you like it, but hey, while you're here guys, you can also click the subscribe button down there so you don't miss any future episodes and of course , until Next time be the hero of your own life. Peace.