 Oh, right. Welcome to the show, Lori. This month is Mental Health Awareness Month, and many of us are silently struggling with mental health and may not even know it. So, what are the not-so-obvious signs that maybe we should be talking with someone? Well, first of all, I think that there are so many people who come to me and they say, do you think I should talk to a therapist? And I always say that if you're asking yourself the question that you're inner therapist telling you you should be going to therapy. And I think that's because people are hesitant to go until things get really, really bad. You know, we don't do that with our physical health. So, if you break your arm, for example, you fall down, you break your arm, you're like, I'm going to go to the doctor. You don't put it on some kind of hierarchy of pain. Like, you know, I don't have stage four cancer. So, you know, I'm just going to walk around with a broken arm. But we walk around with the emotional equivalent of that all the time. And then we think I'm not going to go until, you know, I'm having the equivalent of an emotional heart attack and then I'll land in the therapist's office. And the problem with that is that, first of all, it's harder to treat because now we got to get you back to kind of where you were when you should have come in. But also, you've suffered unnecessarily for months and maybe years. It can take people so long just to make that call. There's a neat mental health men's meme that is floating around the internet. And I'm not sure if you've seen it yet, but it'll be a picture of a guy climbing Mount Everest or it'll be a guy who's remodeled like 20 cars. And the meme will say something like, men will do this rather than talk to them. Well, I'll tell you something that I noticed with Med that I see because I think that's so true. You know, men will come in and they'll say to me, you know, I've never told anyone this before. And they literally have not told anyone, not a soul. Women will come in and they'll say, you know, I've never told anyone this before, except for my mother, my sister, my best friend, right? So they've told maybe one to three people, but they feel like they haven't told anyone. And I see that all the time. I see with couples where, you know, if it's a heterosexual couple, the woman will say to her partner, you know, I just feel disconnected from you. I want you to open up to me. I want you to share your feelings with me. I want to know what's going on. And he does. And maybe he tears up a little bit. And then maybe he starts crying. Inevitably, she will look at me like a deer in headlights. Like, oh my God, what do I do? And what comes out is it's this thing of I don't feel safe when you don't open up to me because I feel disconnected and distant from you. But I don't feel safe when you're crying hysterically in front of me either. Because that is what society does to men. We want them to be vulnerable, but not too vulnerable. The other thing that's going on here with men in particular, and we just had Dr. Philip Ovedia on the show. He's a cardiologist, heart surgeon, and we were discussing preventative measures. So dieting and all the things that you could be doing so that you don't get sick. Because men typically will go to the doctor when everything is breaking, when it's well beyond where they should have been. And mental health in the same manner should be looking at things as preventative to be talking with somebody as maintenance. Because once the trauma begins, it's much more difficult to get yourself out of it. Yeah. And I think that the value of therapy is that you're talking to someone who isn't already in your life. So they have the vantage point of seeing things differently from the people who are very close to it. I feel like therapy is like getting a really good second opinion on your life from someone who's not already in your life. That's because we do something different with our friends than a therapist will do with you. So it's the difference between what is known as idiot compassion versus wise compassion. So idiot compassion is what we do with our friends. We say, listen to what happened. And this is what happened with this person. And we say, yeah, you're right. They're wrong. And we always sort of support our friends. But if you listen to your friends over time, often they'll tell the same kinds of stories about, you know, you hear these patterns. It's kind of like if a fight breaks out and every bar you're going to, maybe it's you. In idiot compassion, we don't say that because we're afraid to offend our friends. When you go to a therapist, what you get is wise compassion. And wise compassion is where we hold up a mirror to you and we help you to see something about your life and your role and what's not working that maybe you haven't been willing or able to see. And the word compassion is in there for a reason. So it's wise compassion. But it's also like a very compassionate truth bomb that you need to hear if you want things to change. It's funny that you should mention that because when my friends do tell me these stories and I start to recognize a pattern, I've learned not to just open my mouth and say what I think. I'll ask, do you want a vet or do you want feedback? And I'm going to warn you that if you're asking for feedback, you're going to get the raw truth. And sometimes they're like, yeah, let's do it. And a lot of times they're like, no, I just want a vet. That's such a great question that you ask because I think that we don't know how to listen to people. We give them what we would want in that situation and we listen to them in the way we would want to be listened to, but we don't actually know what they want. So sometimes people are coming to you, like you said, because they just want to vent. It just happened. They just want to get it off their chest. They're not ready to hear anything else. And they're not interested in that moment. But they might come back two days later and say, you know, that thing that I talked to you about the other day, I'm actually curious what you think. And you know, sometimes somebody just wants to say something, they want to hug, they want to vent. You know, sometimes they do want feedback, but if we don't ask, we don't know how we can be helpful. I think a big problem with that as well is the feedback is coming from our lived experience. And we've all experienced different trauma. We've been raised differently. We've had different opportunities or lack thereof. And oftentimes we'll just paint with the broad brush and say, well, in my experience, maybe not even say in my experience, but we'll give them advice that really only relates to us and the way we experience the world, whereas a therapist can unpack things by holding up that mirror and give you the tools you need to work through it instead of just giving the blind advice that of course a lot of our friends aren't going to listen to. They're not looking for that advice. And I've noticed myself in starting therapy that I actually communicate with my friends differently. I'm not seeking them in those moments to vent as much. And I'm actually more looking reflectively around, well, what are the patterns that I'm bringing into this relationship in the way that I communicate? What are my wants and needs now out of this relationship? And we had another recent guest on the show, Dr. Glover. And it was wildly popular with our audience, one of the highest downloaded shows recently. And we talked about being a people pleaser. And I think a lot of people in our audience are starting to recognize this pattern in themselves. And for whatever reason, the pandemic might have brought some clarity around these relationships and the way we're showing up. And I'd love to unpack this and give some advice to those in our audience who are struggling with this pattern that they've now recognized of putting others wants and needs ahead of their own, maybe to a point, even as myself, of not even recognizing your own wants and needs in your relationships. Well, that's exactly what people pleasing is. In fact, I put something up on social media that got shared everywhere, because I think it's so common that what people are doing when they're people pleasing is I always say the question to ask yourself is who taught you that their needs were more important than yours? Because that's exactly what people pleasing is. It's that you were taught early on that somebody else's comfort was more important than your comfort. And then you go into adulthood and you are always wanting to take care of somebody else's comfort over your own. That's what people pleasing is. It's not like I'm really altruistic and I like to help people. It's I have this pattern of being terrified of not taking care of somebody else's comfort because I was taught that their comfort is so much more important than mine. That's so true. And when I think about the patterns in my life of showing up for others and then not even feeling comfortable asking when I need someone else to show up for me, when I need that back. And there's this unwritten covert contract that ends up happening where we're showing up in a certain way. We're creating these expectations that our friends and connections can't meet because we're not communicating what exactly we need from the relationship. And of course we're also training them to come to us anytime they need something because we're always available. Their comforts first will drop everything for them to make them feel comfortable. Well, we're not just training them. It's that they have radar for people who are people pleasers and people pleasers have radar for people who need to find people pleasers in their lives. And that's where we say we have this saying we marry our unfinished business. That's how we find our relationships is whatever our unfinished business is, we have radar for the person who's going to be exactly like the person who didn't meet our needs when we were younger. They look different when we first meet them. We think, ah, look at you, you're different. But our unconscious is saying, oh, you look familiar, come closer. And so that's what quote unquote chemistry is in the beginning. If you again, this is unprocessed if you haven't worked it out. So there's healthy chemistry and unhealthy chemistry. But the unhealthy chemistry is you're unconscious saying, yeah, you look familiar, come closer. And then that person will hurt you in exactly the same ways that you were hurt when you were younger. You will play out the same patterns with them. This is why it's so difficult because those patterns are so familiar. So they're normalized for you when outside observers are like you're in a toxic relationship and you're like, how can that be? We're so perfect. We're in love. Right. So the thing about familiarity is that it's comfortable. And that's why change is so hard because even if the familiar is miserable, at least it's what we know. And we don't do well with uncertainty and we don't do well with sort of like this idea of I know what it's like to be in this dysfunctional dynamic. And even though I don't like it and it makes me miserable and it's very unpleasant, at least I know what it is. If I do something else, I'm lost. I don't know how to be. And so that's why people stay in things for so long because it's like, oh, this is home. And there's this draw, again, outside of our awareness unconsciously, there's this draw toward this feels like home. I recognize this. Now, what are these stories exactly? I know you have a wildly famous TED talk around the stories we tell ourselves. And some in our audience may not even be familiar with this idea of stories that we tell ourselves. So I'd love to unpack that a little bit more and help our audience members identify some of these stories that maybe they're telling themselves that are holding them back. Yeah, that's so important. That's really what we do in therapy. I think of myself more as an editor than a therapist when I'm sitting in the therapist chair, because I feel like people come in with a faulty narrative. That's why something they're stuck somehow, something's not working. They keep repeating the same patterns over and over. So there's no sort of forward progress. They're not really the protagonist in their own story. And they come in with these faulty narratives, and I'm there to help them edit their stories. So sometimes people are carrying around stories that they learned very early on things like I'm unlovable, or I can't trust anyone, or nothing ever works out for me, or whatever the story is. Sometimes you see the narcissism side of that, which is nobody's good enough for me. You see both sides of that. When you start really looking at the story, when people come in, first of all, we're all unreliable narrators, all of us, every single one of us, because we are telling a story through our subjective lens. When we tell a story often, especially to your friends or to a therapist, we're gunning for them to validate our version of the story. We don't want them to say, well, wait a minute, what about this? What about the other person's perspective here? We emphasize certain parts of the story. We leave out certain parts of the story. We minimize certain parts of the story. Who are the supporting characters? Who are the main characters? Who are the victims? Who are the heroes? When you start really looking at that, the entire story can change, and that's where freedom comes in. When you liberate yourself from the tyranny of a faulty narrative, you can see that in my book. And maybe you should talk to someone, every single person in the book, I follow the lives of four very different patients, and then I'm the fifth patient in the book, and you see me go to my therapist, all five of us come in with a story that is very different from the story we leave with. That editing piece is so crucial to breaking these patterns because we're driven to live out the narrative repetitively. And if that's our vantage point, then it's going to continue happening in our lives. And we all have that friend that we could see their narrative very clearly. Like the friend who's constantly jumping from partner to partner but can't find the right one, living out that narcissistic story. But it's often really tough to find our own narrative because we're so used to sharing it with others. That view points become so clear to us. And the unpacking of that narrative really, as you said, gives you the freedom then to move on to live your life more fully. Right. And so much of the time what is holding us back is this story that we're locked into on my podcast, The Deer Therapist podcast, we do sessions with people. And you can see that even in one session, someone will come in with this story that they've told us and we work with them for a session. And by the end, we've given them a new way to look at the story. We give them a homework because you have to act on it. We like to say that insight is the booby prize of therapy, that you can have all the insight in the world. But if you don't change out in the world, the insight is useless. I'll have therapy patients who will say something like, yeah, so I got in that fight with my partner again over the weekend and I understood exactly what I was doing. And I'll say, well, did you do something different? Well, no, but I understood why I do it. Well, okay, that's the first step, but you actually have to do something different with the insight. So we give people homework so that our listeners can hear what happens when you change the story and then you change your behavior. And those are the two things that move you forward. Those two things in tandem. When those patterns repeat, it reinforces them that this is normal. When you're asking them to change a behavior that might disrupt that pattern, that normalcy is now going to be gone. They're going to be entering into uncharted territories. It's going to be difficult for them to understand or how to act because it's going to be novel for them. And for a lot of people, that pattern is familiar, is the comfort in their lives? Yeah, it's almost like sometimes I always say drama can be self-soothing if that's what you grew up with. So that you know, there are people who are sort of like addicted to drama. They don't like it. They hate it. They'll cry about it. They'll complain about it. They'll say, I can't take this anymore. And yet every single relationship they get into, there's drama. And it's sort of a way to self-soothe because that feels like home again, because they don't understand what the draw is. We call this repetition compulsion. So in repetition compulsion, what happens is you find someone who will hurt you in the ways that you were hurt as a child, but your unconscious says, but this time I'm going to win because I'm an adult now. This time I'm going to get them to love me in the way I want to be loved. Of course, that will never happen in that situation. You will never win that. But that's the thing you keep trying. It's repetition compulsion because you repeat. It's a compulsion to repeat and repeat and repeat. So you can master the thing that made you feel so helpless as a child. And until you realize I got to get out of this game because I'm not going to win this game, the way that I get out of this is I stop repeating the pattern. Now the change piece, I think, is the part. Of course, the insight is great. And many of us just love getting the insight. And I've had friends go to therapy for one session and say, I'm great. And not change a single pattern because they got that insight. And it feels good to get the insight, to know yourself a little bit better, to recognize the story. But you're still having an impact on your loved ones, the people in your life who are living out this narrative with you who maybe aren't enjoying the narrative as you see it. So what are these impacts that might be a little bit invisible to us, but are definitely on our loved ones, our spouse, our partner, our super close friends and family who are experiencing this with us as we live this faulty narrative? Well, first of all, your right change is very, very hard. When I was in therapy and I write about this and maybe you should talk to someone, my therapist at one point said to me, you know, you remind me of this cartoon and it's of a prisoner shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out. But on the right and the left, it's open. No bars. So why don't we walk around those bars? That's so many of us where we feel like we're trapped in this situation. You know, this is the fault of this, that and the other thing. When we can just walk around the bars and that's because with freedom comes responsibility. So if we walk around the bars, now we are responsible for our lives. We can't blame all the other people in our lives. We are responsible for our roles, for our choices, for all of that. And that's what makes it hard to change because with that comes the responsibility that now we're going to have to step up in a way that maybe makes us feel uncomfortable. And the impact on our loved ones is that we are doing a dance with everybody that we're in relationship with. And the only way to change a pattern that you're in with someone else is to change your dance steps. And people always say couples will come in all the time and they'll say like, you know, the first session, well, this is what the other person is doing. You know, they want to, they basically, I don't need to change, but the other person needs to change. They're the problem. I always say to people before they come in for couples therapy, I have an exercise that I want them to do. And I say before you even come in, we're not going to do any therapy where you're trying to get the other person to do something differently. I want you to come in the first session and tell each other what you're going to do to make the relationship better. And if the other person, if you, you know, we can't change another person, but we can influence change in another person. In other words, if we change our dance steps, they either have to change their dance steps too, or they're going to fall flat on the dance floor. And I think that it's really important when we talk about change, like even in that relational piece, when people come in for couples therapy and they say, this is what I'm going to do to make the relationship better, it changes the entire course of how the couples therapy goes. When you're trying to change yourself and grow in the relationship and not saying, the other person has to do this, that and the other thing. That ownership piece and allowing yourself to change versus putting all the focus on the other person, when I think of that cartoon of you holding the bars, well, that's also protecting you from failure. Because once you let those bars go and you walk around and now you're free to fall flat on your face, that's even scarier. That's even harder versus you holding the bars and saying, it's this person's fault, it's that person's fault, it's my spouse's fault, why can't they pick up the laundry? Why are they always late? Blah, blah, blah. Well, you're not failing in that role. It's very easy in that narrative for you to stay the same and to not have that fall flat on your face moment. In changing the dance steps, just like learning a new dance, there are going to be some missteps. There are going to be some opportunities for you to step on each other's toes, new conflicts to arise, things not to be as harmonious that you're used to. But it's so important in that freedom to recognize that the failure is still growth, the failure is still that opportunity for you to build a deeper, better relationship with yourself and the other person. Right. And that's not to say that there aren't difficult people out there. So it's not to say that the other person isn't necessarily difficult in certain ways. We always say before diagnosing someone with depression, make sure they aren't surrounded by assholes. Because so many times people will come in, it's like, oh, I can understand why they're depressed. I mean, they're surrounded by assholes. But then the question is, why are they choosing to surround themselves with assholes? Like why are they choosing that role? And also if they're sort of assholes that are inherently in their lives, maybe they're family members, and I'm using assholes very loosely here, if they're difficult family members that you are in relationship with, how can you respond differently? Because however you're responding right now is again doing that dance that's getting you both all caught up in the same pattern from before. So if you change your dance steps with that family member, with that difficult family member, that's going to change the dance. Your response will change the dance. We've certainly had a number of clients who, in talking about their issues and hearing them, my first thought is, have you ever thought that your social circle, you're surrounded yourself with toxic people, and they're like mind blown? Yeah. And it's like, where did you find these people? Well, I've known them since I was a kid. Well, you do understand that as a human being, you evolve and you change, and the values that you may have grown to hold dear to you are completely contradictory, separate from the values of your friends. They have the same friends at 30 some years old that you've had when you're a child. Well, of course those relationships were going to have a tendency to get toxic. People grow, people change, and you cannot change if you're holding on to the past. Well, I'll tell you something. When you surround yourself with toxic people, they don't want you to get healthy. And so what happens is like in my book, there's a young woman in her 20s, and she realizes that she does have a problem with drinking too much, and she finally decides she's going to stop drinking. And she thought it was, oh no, it's just social, I do this with all my friends, but it was really impacting her life, and it was really out of control. She decides to get sober, and her friends are like, oh, it's your birthday, come on, you come out with us, come to the bar. And she's like, no, I'm going to do this other thing. And it's kind of like in a relationship if somebody is like overweight and unhealthy and eating badly, and one person says, I'm going to get healthy. They're like, you're no fun anymore, come sit on the couch and eat chips with me. People don't want to see the other person get healthy because now they have to look at their own unhealthy behaviors, because now you're holding up a mirror for them of how they aren't healthy. They didn't have to look at it before because they were surrounding themselves with people doing the same unhealthy habits. The people they are so upset to offend with their changes are the very people they need to get arms this is wrong. Well, right. They should be supporting your growth and your change. And if they're saying, oh no, let's drag you back down into this, you're no fun anymore. What do you mean you need to get sleep? What do you mean you're being responsible? Those are the people where you have to say, wait, why are they so invested in my dysfunction? Another big part of it is in order to change in that manner, whether it's quitting drinking or another major lifestyle change, there's an identity shift. Like you become a healthy person. You're now not only making choices, but in order to stick with sobriety, your identity is now of someone who enjoys going out hiking and enjoying nature and not the things that are staying out late at the bar, eating crap food, gossiping with people. There's nothing wrong if that's what you enjoy, but that identity shift when your friends aren't willing to make that identity shift is very difficult. And I think this is something that a lot in our audience have brought up to us and I'd love to unpack is this idea of a friend breakup. And so many people are afraid of letting go of these relationships. They've identified that they're toxic. They've identified that their values have shifted. They have a new identity that they've worked on. Part of listening to the show is being into self-improven and self-development, but they still hold on to that childhood friend who wants to drag them to the bar, who wants to keep them out late, who wants to go get fast food when they're trying to be on a diet. And they're really uncertain of how to approach that conversation to have the breakup that they've experienced romantically. They've broken up with people romantically when they've recognized that's not a good fit, but socially with these friends, we still find ourselves struggling to let them go. What's your advice in that situation where it's clear if your identity is healthy and going out in the morning and enjoying a hike in the farmer's market and your friends are saying, we got to celebrate your birthday in a bar, not a good fit for your new identity? Right. You know, it's interesting. I think that childhood friends can actually be really healthy if they were healthy when you were younger. So if you're with healthy people, childhood friends can be an incredibly important part of your life, but if you're surrounded by people who are unhealthy, that's very contagious. Negativity is contagious. You know those people where you're always around them and all they do is talk about negative things? It can affect your mood so much. All the complaining, they complain, complain, complain. That affects your mood. It affects your worldview. It makes you feel like a victim because all you guys do is complain about how you're victims of everybody in the world. I think you have to really look at who you surround yourself with because the kind of air that you're breathing in is important for your health. I think what we talk about friend breakups, boundaries are important. So first you want to see, can I set boundaries with these people? Because before you go to the breakup, you want to see like, wait a minute, maybe I'm not communicating what I need here. So boundary might be, you know, I really need you to be supportive of my morning exercise. So, you know, instead of making fun of it or instead of telling me not to do it, I need you to be supportive of that. It might be, stop making fun of my new job, you know, now that I'm getting my life together. You know, all kinds of things like your quote unquote jokes about it are not funny to me. You know, there's all kinds of things that people do to kind of drag people back into the fray. So if you can set boundaries with people and if they are willing to really communicate with you around that and listen to what those boundaries are, you don't have to break up with that friend. You might have different habits, but there might be something, there might be some good aspects to that friendship. The time that you need to break up is when they're really not able to listen to what you're asking for. They can't really be there in the way that you need them to be there. That's when you say, you know what, this is not, this is not adding value to my life. This is actually, I think of people in two ways. There's high blood pressure people and low blood pressure people. High blood pressure people are the people that when you're, whenever you're around them or whenever you have an interaction with them, you know, it's like it raises your blood pressure. It's anxiety-provoking. Low blood pressure people are the people where you feel really at peace and calm. You know there's not going to be a lot of drama. You know you can be vulnerable with them and they're going to be very respectful of your vulnerability. You know you can open up to them and they can open up to you. You just feel very calm around them. If you're around a lot of high blood pressure people, that might be a sign. I need to try to set boundaries with them and if that doesn't work, then maybe I need to distance myself. I think that the challenge is, we've talked a lot about boundaries on the show. Once the boundary has been set and they refuse to follow it, we still feel this, especially if we have that people pleasing need to look at their wants and needs and be like, well, I'm not ready for the conflict of truly breaking up with someone. How do I enter that conversation if I've identified that? They're just not respecting my boundaries. I've said, hey, I don't want to gossip. I love spending time with you, but I'd rather focus on the positives in our life. I don't really want to whine and complain. I'm not that into the news anymore because it does provoke these negative emotions. I'd rather not talk about Twitter wars and they're still not acknowledging that boundary, accepting it in the time that you spend together. Initiating that conversation and starting the breakup, I've talked to so many of our clients who know it romantically are like, you know what, this person's not for me. Hey, it's not working. Fine. Move on. But they still find themselves in this situation where they don't know what the unknown of having no friends are starting over searching out people that have this new identity that they want to be a part of this new tribe that they value. They come to us for those skills to meet new people. In turn, because they feel like they're going to be alone, they end up allowing those boundaries to be breached. That conversation of the friend breakup of I need some time, some space is just more difficult in the social realm for them. Right. Well, I think there are two components to setting a boundary. The first component is identifying what you need and then communicating that to the person. The most important part of setting a boundary is maintaining the boundary. Just because you said it doesn't mean that it's going to be respected. And by the way, I should say this, a boundary is something that you set with yourself, not with another person. That's a big misconception about boundaries. You can't control what they're going to do, but you have a boundary with yourself. If this person does acts that I've asked them not to do, then I know what I'm going to do. So it's a boundary you have with yourself. So it's very, you have so much agency with boundaries. People feel like, well, if they don't respect my boundary, then I'm helpless. No, because you know, you've set a boundary with yourself. So if you set a boundary with someone, so we just had this in the podcast, somebody was dating someone, the person lied to him and his boundary was, you know, I don't tolerate lies. Well, the person lied again, and he tolerated the lie. And he's like, he doesn't respect my boundaries. Well, you know, this is, you don't respect your boundaries. That's the problem. You don't respect your boundaries. You are giving the message that, look, I don't want you to lie, but if you do, I'm going to tolerate it. That's the message. No matter what your words are, that's the message in your behavior. So maintaining the boundary means that we had another person in the podcast, his boss would text him, you know, after hours, and he was like, I don't want to text with her all the time after hours about this, that and the other thing that could be taken care of at work. And I've told her not to text me with these questions that can wait till the next day, and she still does that. And so maintaining the boundary was he didn't respond to her text when he set the boundary. And then he didn't respond to her text. And she kept texting and he didn't respond. And then one day at work, she said, I wanted to text you about this thing last night, but I know you don't like that. So I didn't text you. So you see how maintenance is so important that you have to be consistent every single time. Always. And when we understand and we learn that somebody is easy to push around due to weak boundaries, that's how they're seen. We can't help but lose respect for those people and treat them in a certain manner once that happens. And that's why it is so difficult for them to, to stand their ground because it's going to be new. They're unsure of what's going to take place. However, my favorite thing is when our listeners write us our clients right, let us know when they saw that need, they've identified it, they drew it, and then they stuck to it for the first time. And that liberating feeling that the whole world didn't explode or their whole friend group didn't fall apart and betray them due to them sticking of their ground, their boundaries. And then the other part that I love about this, I said, and now the person, the person that you've set this boundary with when you stuck to it, you adhere to it and they were mad. They are going to do one of two things now. They are now going to see you as this person that they don't like because they can't get from you what they always could in the past, or they will have found a new view you with a newfound respect. And that newfound respect, you're going to have to give that a few days, maybe even a week for them to come around to what had just happened and who you are now and give it that, that time. I call it emotional theater anytime anyone gets upset. It's our emotions are driving everything. You just have to sit back and watch it all take place. But they feel so empowered. And then it's like, they're looking for the next person that they could show their newfound strength to. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. It's really interesting when someone feels like they can't tolerate the other person's upsetness with their boundary. So, you know, they set the boundary, they feel really good about it. And then the other person gets upset because of course, you're changing the rules. It's almost like the person who can't accept the boundary is really regressed. They're really young at that point because it's like when you say to a young child, like, no, you can't have a second cookie. But they're like, but I always got a second cookie. You always gave me a second cookie, right? And it's like, no, now you can have one. It takes a little recalibration. Like they have to realize, wait a minute, there's a rule here and I need to respect it. And the people who cannot respect your boundaries, you know, that's information. So, people are like, what if they don't respect my boundary? I'm like, that's fantastic because now you have information that's going to be really useful for you. Now you can make choices about what you want to do with that relationship. Before you were just being resentful and doing whatever they wanted you to do, right? And now you have this great information. Use it like a compass. Let it guide you. The tricky part in a lot of ways in these situations is in a romantic relationship, unless you've really been together for a while, your social groups don't really intertwine as much, right? So, a breakup is a little bit cleaner in a lot of romantic settings. Hey, this isn't working for me. Okay, I'll get my stuff and you can both move back to your social circle. In these situations where we've drawn a boundary in our social circle, this person is clearly in our social circle. Other people don't have an issue with this or their boundaries are not being breached, but this person wants to make us the bad guy, gaslight us and point out that we're now enforcing this boundary. That's, of course, a change that they're not ready to make. They're not ready to lose that narrative. They're not ready to do all this work that we're talking about. How do we approach that conversation where we know that this person is still going to be in our life as long as we're in this social circle? And many in our audience have wrote us this exact thing like, there's this one person, there's this one asshole in my friend group, and he ain't leaving because the other friends really enjoy him or she ain't leaving because the other friends really enjoy them. But all they do when we're together is provoke me, breach my boundaries, do things that I don't think are healthy for me. How do we breach that conversation with someone who is going to be there in our life if we want to maintain the larger friend group that we're in? Again, you need to be gracious always, even if they weren't going to be in your friend group. I just think respect and grace are really important even when you're breaking up with someone or you're distancing yourself from someone. By the way, I don't think you need to make grand proclamations either. Some people think that you need to like have the breakup conversation with your friend and you don't necessarily need to do that. You can simply not be available. You can simply choose not to go to certain things that they invite you to if you don't want to go to them. I don't mean if you're in a friend group, avoid all of the social things that you want to go to. But I mean that if you don't want to spend a lot of time with this person, you don't have to spend a lot of time with this person, certainly one on one. And if they're in the group, then it's up to you. You say, you know, people say, that person triggers me or they provoked me. Well, you let them trigger you, you let them provoke you. You have to make a choice that this person is going to say things. I'm going to react. My body will react to it and I'm going to take 10 deep breaths and I'm going to center myself. And I'm going to remember I am so happy that I've distanced myself from this person because I feel so much healthier that I am not responding in that dysfunctional way that I used to respond. It's perfect. And it is again, taking back your agency, right? Because when you start saying this person triggered me or it's this person, you're grabbing right back onto those prison bars and not allowing yourself the opportunity to have the freedom of not spending time with that person or not letting that be your trigger. Right. And you have to remember that whenever you're having a reaction to something, it's often about people who aren't even in the room. So we see this in couples therapy all the time that someone's having a very big reaction to something their partner said or did. And I can see why they had that reaction, but it was so big. And so if it's that big, it's probably about other ghosts in the room, like people from your past. When have you felt that way before? When have you felt devalued, unheard, misunderstood, mischaracterized, whatever the thing is that just got triggered in you? That's probably pretty historical. So there's the historical people who are floating around in the room that you can't see. And then there's the person right in front of you. So if you're having this really big reaction, you're enraged, whatever it is, just know that it's partly about that person, but it's partly about other stuff. And you need to just breathe and be present and be in the moment and go to therapy and figure that out. Now, what I really appreciated about the book is you were one of the patients. And I know Johnny and I sharing our journey with therapy and bringing on Better Help as a sponsor. A lot in our audience have reached out and said, you know, wow, I can't believe you guys are in therapy and talking about it. And, you know, we have all these therapists come on the show. And of course, we're learning all these great tools, but I still benefited from going to therapy. And your story in the book, I thought was incredibly relatable in that many in our audience would put a therapist as well, why would you need therapy? Like you've studied all of this, you must have it mastered. So I'd love if you could just share with our audience a little bit of your journey through therapy and what you've learned about yourself as a therapist. Right. Well, I say at the beginning of the book that my greatest credential is that I'm a card-carrying member of the human race, that, you know, I know what it's like to be a person in the world. And if you're a person in the world, you will, at some point or another, struggle in some way. I felt like it was really important to show me in therapy and not just be sort of the expert up on high and show me as a therapist with the patients that I share in the book. I feel like therapy is so important. I mean, as a therapist, I think it's important because you're forced to ask yourself all of the questions that your patients are asking themselves. And if you can't answer them for yourself, you won't be able to help your patients answer them for themselves. One of the things that I think when we talk about holding up a mirror, yes, we hold up a mirror to our patients, but they hold up a mirror to us. Anything that they're dealing with that we think, oh, wow, I haven't really dealt with that or I haven't really thought about that in my own life. I need to go do that with my own therapist. But I also just think that therapy is a really safe space to talk about anything that you want to talk about, where you know that you're going to be heard, the person is going to be present with you. And they're going again to very gently say, I'm noticing that here's what you're doing in this situation. And that there might be a better path. There might be another way. And we're trained to do that in a way that your friends just aren't. They might have good suggestions, but it's almost like when your friends are giving you suggestions, it's almost like they're trying to give you a map to a place that they've never been. It's not their life. They're not going to understand that. As a therapist, I'm not giving them advice. I feel like everybody comes in knowing exactly what they need to know. They just can't access it because they get talked out of it. They don't know how to access their feelings. Society says something that is a message that has kept them from knowing something that they know deep down already. So people have answers. They just need to learn how to access them. And I think my job as a therapist is to help them to access those answers. I think it's also important for them to be able to articulate these views and hear themselves say it to somebody else because you're now choosing the words that you're using to describe this experience. And those words are incredibly important. When you're not vocalizing it, it's just rolling around in your head. And when it's rolling around in your head, the only other person that you're battling is the worst aspects of yourself. Like Brene Brown calls the voices in your mind, like the gremlins. Well, you're arguing with the gremlins and the gremlins in your head, that's like wrestling an alligator in the swamp. You're in its territory. You're not going to win that battle. But when you're in an office or in therapy or on a call, you're choosing your words, the gremlins are now cast aside. It is you understanding what is going on and then getting real-time feedback from an objective person who's hearing these things come up. And I think the problem with the gremlins is that they're very, very loud. And there's another voice that's quieter. There's a quieter voice that gets drowned out by the gremlins. And that voice is the voice of knowing. And it's very quiet. It's barely audible. And when you can talk about these things and you can separate the gremlins from that voice and you let that voice get amplified and you let the gremlins quiet down a little bit, I always call it the circus in our heads. So, you know, it's like there's the circus going on in our heads. And when the circus is going on, you can't hear anything. It's so loud. So, I think that once people can hear and articulate, you know, all of this stuff that has been drowned out by the gremlins, it's different. Also, a lot of people say, I never said that out loud before and it becomes real. It's almost like the thing wasn't real until it came out into the world and it was said. And now it's out there and it's sitting in the space between you and another person. It's almost like I am a witness as a therapist. I'm a witness that that thing came out and they had a witness for that. And I feel like as a therapist, I'm both a witness and a guide. So, I'm a witness to what is coming out and then I'm a guide to what do we do with that now that it's there. And I think there's something so empowering about something being real because you spoke it. Absolutely agree. And one of the big lessons that we teach all of our clients is just the act of journaling. If you aren't going to go see a therapist and speak it to others, just writing it down to yourself to read later. And how many times have I gone back and reflected at my journal and said, wow, I can't believe I thought that or, oh my god, my perspective has shifted so much. But it was put, again, outside of me, outside of my head, outside of that circus. And when you think about the map, I love that analogy because our friends, often when they're giving us the map, they're so focused on the destination. Like if you could just get to here, all these things would be solved. Can't you see like this is where you want to be? This is the destination. My experience with therapy has been more of the illumination of, hey, there's another path. It's not the destination, but there's a choice in front of you. Do you realize that there's a choice? Many of us have the gremlins hiding that choice. It's dark. It's not even clear to us. And in therapy, I've realized, oh, well, this is a decision point. And what happens if I take this other path? Oh, I'm a step closer to the destination that my friends have been telling me about. And now I feel, again, in me making the choice that this is a change that I could make versus, hey, you should be this or you should be that, which we'll hear in the advice from our friends, which is just a lot more difficult for us to grasp when we're in it, when we're feeling those negative voices that gremlin or experiencing the patterns in our loved ones or family or spouse or significant other that feel triggering in that moment that our friends don't have any context for. They're not in the room. They're not experiencing that in that moment. Well, that's right. I mean, I think that people assume that they know what's best for somebody else because that's what they would do. And that might be best for them, but it might not be best for the person that they're talking to. We all get one life to live. It is a unique life and nobody knows what is best for you. Nobody knows better than you do. You just might not be able to access it yet. And I think that's the problem when people are saying like, oh, here's what you should do. Here's what you should do. And what therapy is about is, let's listen to what's keeping you from knowing what you should do. Now, an area I'd love to cover with our audience because it does come up a lot is finding the right person for you, significant other spouse. So I know many, especially in today's world, are confronted with endless opportunities. We talked about the apps before on the show and how it feels like the next perfect person is just around the corner. So we delay commitment. We delay picking the person in front of us that we're experiencing with or they're just not quite perfect. So, okay, let me find someone else. What is your advice for those in our audience who are struggling on this dating hamster wheel as Johnny and I like to call where they're just continuing to chase the new experience, the next perfect opportunity, and not actually committing to those people who might actually be great opportunities for them? I think one of the problems with dating is that people don't take the time to get to know a person well enough to see whether or not they want to be with them. So it feels like it feels like a shopping expedition. And there's this Barry Schwartz who wrote The Paradox of Choice writes about the difference between satisficers and maximizers. That's what happens with dating. So most people are maximizers. The maximizers are the people like if it was shopping for, let's say, a sweater. Actually, the satisficer, I'll tell you first. The satisficer is the person who would go into a store, see a sweater that they like, try it on. It's cute, great, right price, good, great, buy it, totally happy with it. The maximizer goes in, sees that same sweater, likes it, tries it on, cute, right price, great, except maybe there's something better at the next store. So I'm going to put this one under all the other sweaters so no one takes it. Then I'm going to go to the next store and, oh, look at that. Oh, what about this one? This one, the price is slightly better or I like this slightly more about it. And, you know, they keep going and maybe they do this five different times. You know the people who like shop online for all different things and they just right. So when the maximizer finally buys the thing that they buy, they're less happy with it than the satisficer was with what they bought. They're less happy with it because all of the energy that went into maximizing, they feel like it has to be absolutely perfect. And when it isn't because nothing is, they're going to be disappointed. The satisficer said, I want to think that I'm happy with and being happy with it is great. The maximizer says it has to be the absolute best. So when you look at dating apps, they really play on that. They play on that dynamic of, hey, I went out with this person. We had a good time. I hear this all the time in therapy. Someone will come in. I went out on this date. I met this person. We had a really good time. It was fun. I don't know. I didn't feel like butterflies. It was really fun. But I don't know. I'm going to keep looking. And I'm like, go on a second date. Spend one hour. Invest one more hour of having another good time. And if it's not a good time, then there's more information for you. But if you keep having a good time with this person, why don't you get to know them a little bit? When it comes to attraction, when it happens, it blindsides you. A lot of times you're not expecting it to happen. Just for instance, a silly story. I had remembered there was a girl that I was really interested in in my 20s, early 20s. And I didn't seem to get the time of day from her. I couldn't get her attention much. For whatever reason, I had gotten into a scuffle at a bar and managed to get a black eye. I got a nice Shiner. It just so happens. But that Shiner is what got her interested in me. I remember talking, she's like, you know, I had seen you around. I didn't think anything of you. But when I saw you at this Shiner, I was instantly attracted. And she's like, I couldn't figure it out. But and that's when we started dating. I mean, it's these type of things where you don't know who you're on a first date with. And the games that are being played at a psychological level on each other and ourselves on a first date, it has the circus in full effect in our minds to be able to find the beautiful things about the person that we're with. Well, you know, they've done these studies where they they were longitudinal studies and they said to people, they interviewed them at the time of meeting someone and then they followed them for 20 years. And what they found and they would interview them every five years. And what they found was that the people who didn't stay together, the people who got divorced or, you know, had just it didn't work out. So many of them said it was love at first sight, like at the time, at the time, it's like, oh, you know, it was love at first sight that that was what they said at the time. Later when they tell the stories, they're like, Oh, I didn't even like him on the first date. That is just not true because they have the data from what they said at the time. So you see how our stories change. What they found is that the people who actually were so happy after 20 years, they would say, Oh, yeah, I really liked him that first date. At the time they were like, yeah, I'm not sure I'm going to go on a second date. So, so it's really funny how we revise those stories. And I think the problem is in our culture, we think the story has to be, I was so into this person from the first minute. And so many of the stories where people are madly in love, super happy, were not those stories. And then people don't remember that and they keep looking for that on a first date. And sometimes it happens, but often more often than not, that's not what happens in terms of people who are really happy together for the long term. In putting together our wedding website, you put a page together of how you met. And of course, we read plenty of them from other wedding websites. And it is very romanticized. We hold out this vision that the first meeting, there's just butterflies and rainbows and you can't get over this person and you're enraptured with them. And then when we actually talk to our parents who've been together 30, 40 years and they tell the story that's not on the wedding website, it's like, yeah, I wasn't sure I'd go on a second date and he kept trying or she kept trying. And I thought, you know what? And sure enough, that chemistry lasted. And I think so much of this having tons of options available, just one more swipe to find that butterfly effect that we're chasing and romanticize the wedding website story that we're going to tell leads us to partners that really aren't healthy for us. Because just because someone evokes butterflies on the first date doesn't mean that they're a good fit long term for you either. Right. And I think that we don't look for the right qualities. So if butterflies is your criterion that this is what I need on a first date, but then people will be like, I'm obsessed with this guy, but he never calls me, but I love him. And you're like, wait a minute, what do you love about him exactly? Oh my God, like we have amazing chemistry. It's amazing when we're together. But when we're not together, I'm always wondering where he is or I'm always wondering if he's into me or you know, like he's not reliable. So you love what? So I think that we don't value enough qualities like the character qualities, flexibility, emotional stability, way high up there, emotional stability, we do not value that ability to connect, ability to be present, ability to be vulnerable, ability to be responsive, compassion, empathy. We don't value those enough. And you can't know that on a first date about someone. Like you really have to get to know them a little bit before you can get inklings of what capacity they have for a satisfying relationship with you. And so I think that we don't even have that in, you know, like on the list in our head. And we will say we don't have a list, but trust me, like everyone has this kind of list. And I think we need to get rid of the list. Look at the human being sitting in front of you and say, how do I feel when I'm around this person? That's the number one question you should ask on a first date. How do I feel when I'm around this person? Do I feel calm? Do I feel happy? Do I feel seen? Do I feel understood? Do I have fun with this person? That's enough for a second date right there. Beautiful advice. Thank you for sharing with those in our audience who are single and needed to hear that. And I know myself, all of those traits, it took years and years to start to recognize that that's what I should be looking for versus the butterflies and the instant attraction. I think attraction is multifaceted. So there's so much that goes into attraction. It has so many levels and you start to discover those levels the more you get to know someone. Someone that you thought was incredibly hot can become very unattractive when their personality gets very unattractive. You can be like, I feel nothing for this person now, whereas before, I thought they were so hot. And the opposite is true too, that someone where you were like, yeah, you know, they're cute, but not, not, and I'm not like, you know, having all the butterflies, you will probably, if you have, if you really have this other connection with them, you will probably get lots of butterflies and people don't think long term. They don't think, what is this going to be like decades from now when our appearance changes, when all of our hormones change, when we're in different life stages? What will that be like? They just think of it as what is like in the moment and it's very short sighted. Or even what would it be like to travel together to live together? You know, what are there to have dinner with this person every night? And do I like talking to this person? Do we enjoy sharing our days with each other? Exactly. We love asking every guest what their X factor is. What is it that you think makes you unique and extraordinary, Laurie? I would say my curiosity. I think my curiosity is, you know, as a writer, as a therapist, as a human out in the world, as a journalist, I've always been incredibly curious about other people. And it's how I learn about the world and it's how I learn about myself. Well, thank you so much for joining us. We have your book, your podcast, everything linked in the show notes for our audience. Is there anything else you'd like to share? No, just it was great chatting with you guys. Thank you, Laurie. Really a big fan. Thank you.