Latest / Love, Happiness and Success with Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby / Can’t Shake That Feeling? What Your Dark Emotions Are Trying to Tell You | Happiness | E551

Transcript

Can’t Shake That Feeling? What Your Dark Emotions Are Trying to Tell You | Happiness | E551 · Love, Happiness and Success with Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: If you have been feeling bad about feeling bad, you
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: are going to get so much out of today's show,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: specifically this new idea. The goal of personal development isn't
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: always to get rid of bad feelings. It's to develop
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: a different type of relationship with them.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: There's something quite beautiful and interesting about the practicality and
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: the positivity of the American psyche. But if you're someone who,
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: which is to say a human who has these experiences,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: it can also set you in an almost internal opposition
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: to yourself.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: And today we're talking about how to intentionally understand your
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: heart emotions, like when to listen to them. Also, sometimes
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: when to challenge them, put them back in their place,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: but really how to use them intentionally in order to
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: understand more about yourself.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: We want to mitigate our own pain. We want to
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: alleviate our own pain. But we also want to live
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: true and meaningful lives. So that means having pain, having envy,
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: having regret, having anger. All these things that are possessed
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: of light, of energy.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: So by the end of today's show, you are going
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: to learn so much about how things like regret, anger, jealousy,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: even boredom, even shame can reveal really important things about
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: who you are and what you need. And that is
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: so positive. And I'm glad you're here. I'm Dr. Lisa
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Marie Bobby. This is Love, Happiness, and Success. And my
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: guest today is psychotherapist and author Daniel Smith, author of
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: hard feelings, and let's just get right into it. Daniel, welcome.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I feel like there's always an origin story to this
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: kind of work that must have been personal for you.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, where did it come from, this drive to
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: do this book on the power of The relevance, the
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: value of these dark emotions that so many people would
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: rather not have in their lives.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You had mentioned a bestselling book, and that was
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: a book about anxiety, which was.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: The Monkey Mind.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: The Monkey Mind, which was many years ago now. It
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: was like, I don't know, 13 or so years ago
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: when that book came out. And that book was about
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: a single experience. I mean, a big and fundamental one, anxiety.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: But it was a memoir. And after that book came out,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: my life sort of took a turn. My marriage ended suddenly.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: My oldest child, I won't talk too much about this
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: because it's not my story, but my oldest child started
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: to go through some serious struggles that proved to be chronic.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: And so a lot of sort of, how do I
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: put this, the sort of emotional floodgates of And I
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: had devoted that book to an attempt to sort of
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: describe what it's like to go through life with a
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: body and a mind that's hardwired for anxiety. And that
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: left out a whole packet of other experiences that I
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: was also familiar with. And that now, in the wake
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: of all these difficulties, the sort of trauma of divorce,
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: the trauma of a struggling child, a sense of dislocation
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: and disorientation, a first experience of true depression, I think,
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: in my life, it became more relevant to think about
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: all those other experiences. And I keep thinking of this
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: quote from E.B. White, which I might mangle, that's something like,
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: the first person singular is the only grammatical instrument with
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: which I'm not going to cut myself. Like I seem
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: not able to write about these things without thinking about
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: them from a sort of individual standpoint. Really looking at
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: what it feels like to have these experiences. So I
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: started thinking about a book that would expand the ambit
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: of monkey mind to look at despair, envy, regret, annoyance,
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: all these things that I was familiar with. And that
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: to some extent, I even prized as a kind of,
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: I don't know, The other side of an intellectual life,
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: the other side of the life of the mind, the
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: other side of refinement. So on the one hand, they
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: seem to be a kind of aspect of sensitivity. If
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: you're a sensitive person, you're going to feel these things.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: If you're alert to the difficulties of life, you're going
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: to feel these things. I mean, this almost feels a
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: little juvenile to me, you know, the way like a
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: teenager will like being angry. There's a way in which
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: I think I held on.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Turn up the music really loud.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Life is hard. Life is difficult. There's a way
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: in which I think I held on to that as
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: I got older. But also as I got older, started
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: to feel the pain and difficulty of. It doesn't feel
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: good to feel these things. These experiences cause problems in
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: my life. These experiences may have been part of what
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: made my first wife sick. not want to be married anymore.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: It was far more complicated than that. It wasn't a
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: one-way street. But it seemed like a good time to
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: have something of a reckoning with these aspects of my
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: life that I both did not want to get rid
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: of because they were true and because there was a
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: meaning to them. But I also didn't want to simply
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: accept them in a juvenile or adolescent way. I didn't
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: want to optimize my life. in the manner of some
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: sort of Silicon Valley mogul who misreads the Stoics and
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: just wants to make everything about a kind of productivity
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: or hackiness optimization. I did not want to live that way.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: But I also didn't want to be complacent about the
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: pain and difficulty of these experiences. So I decided stupidly
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: to write a book about it, which took a very
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: long time and was... hard to think through some of
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: these different emotions. Yeah.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Well, I think it's so valuable and especially our culture where,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: you know, as an observer, what I view happening with
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: some concern, I will tell you, is that there seems
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: to be this therapy speak is very much alive in
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: our culture and this tendency to pathologize this range of
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: human emotions, the dark emotions specifically, I never refer to
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: them as negative emotions, by the way. They are dark emotions.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: They are so powerful. They are so valuable. They are instructive.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: They are illuminating. There's so much richness here. And when
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: people then attempt to classify this as being some type
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: of disorder that we need to deal with, make them
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: go away, eradicate, what I love about what you're saying
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: is that you are sort of perhaps maybe a natural
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: wiring to have these experiences be very present in your life,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: like they're close to you and maybe a way that
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: they're not for everybody. But because of that, you are
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: able to almost negotiate a different type of relationship with them.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: What I hear you say is like, when these are
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: so big, so prominent, they can kind of take over.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: That's not good. but I also don't want to get
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: rid of them. They're this important part of me. And
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: that perhaps in your book, you've created a roadmap for
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: how to do that. Is that oversimplifying or.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Am I getting it right? I think you're getting at
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: two absolutely fundamental things. One of them is the social
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: and cultural pressure and messages around these experiences. And you're
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: absolutely right that negative is a sort of dangerous or
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: tendentious word to use because it automatically sets them in
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: opposition to the positive and to the good. And this
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: is a very old sort of cultural practice, particularly in
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: the West. I think it goes back to the roots
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: of moral and ethical philosophy, but it's been sort of
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: supercharged by the rise of medical psychiatry and by a
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: kind of an American drive toward the practical, the pragmatic.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, I make fun of the sort of Silicon
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: Valley optimizers, but in fact, it's sort of rooted in
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: the American DNA. It's part of what makes the American psyche,
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: if we can use that as a concept, if that's
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: not oversimplifying. So interesting. There's something quite beautiful and interesting
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: about the practicality and the positivity of the American psyche,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: it can also set you in an almost internal opposition
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: to yourself. And the process of psychotherapy, I think, is
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: in some sense to help a person to find relationship
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: to these experiences. a relationship that is able to individuate
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: and move forward from the unspoken, sometimes almost assimilated by osmosis,
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: cultural and social and developmental forces, how we're taught to
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: live in opposition to these things, to feel oppressed by them,
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: and to step back and say, how do I want
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: to be in relationship to these experiences? Which is to say,
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: how do I want to be in relationship to myself? Yeah.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Which is, I think, a route toward self-love and to
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: some freedom.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: And it's so thorny, Lisa, because, again, these are experiences
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: that feel painful. And we want to mitigate our own pain.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: We want to alleviate our own pain. But we also
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: want to live true and meaningful lives. So that means
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: having pain, having envy, having regret, having anger, all these
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: things that are possessed of light, of energy, Energy, the.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Right way to say it.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: That's what it is. It's motivating. Yeah. Yeah. Motivating. It's
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: cut you off. I got excited about what you said.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: I want you to cut me off. Like motivating, energetic,
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: like interesting. Yeah. Part of the kind of rough and
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: tumble of intra-psychic experience, but also relational experience. Yeah. I mean,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: this comes up in therapy all the time. In fact,
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: I just got out of session where there was some
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: discussion of this. The discussion was like, is this too frictionless?
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Is this relationship in therapy that we.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Are having with.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Me, is this, should we, do we want to introduce
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: more friction into this in a way that's productive? Because
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: if everything's too rosy, it's maybe not all that indicative
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: of how your life is out in the world. Yeah.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: It's important to be true to the multiplicity of our experiences.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: I don't think there's an end I think the point
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: is the relationship. I think the point is a never-ending
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: negotiation of our relationship with, and we can talk if
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: you'd like about individual emotions, but with these emotions.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: So fascinating. And if you're open to it, maybe we
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: could even go into one of the emotions and you
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: write about many of them in your book. Would you
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: tell us a story? about your own experience of one
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: of these emotions and how you understood it and changed
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: that relationship that would illuminate what this process involves for
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: one of our friends here that's listening to us that
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: is maybe struggling with something big like regret or rage, right?
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: How does this happen? I mean, I'll just go with
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: what first comes to mind. And interestingly, it's the one
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: that people seem to gravitate to in this book more
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: readily than any other, which is boredom.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: You know what? That is not on my short list
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: of dark emotions. And I'm so excited to hear what,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: because you're right. It's like, yeah.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Sorry.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Boredom. I mean, please continue. They're a philosopher. We've talked
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: about boredom being.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Almost.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: Suicidal in its pain. How it can cause an enormous
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: amount of pain. I write about boredom and ended up
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: thinking about boredom in a way that I thought was
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: both funny and absolute true to my experience. And the
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: context is being a parent. The way in which raising
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: kids to me can be just gum-receivingly boring. The way
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: in which children who on the face of it would
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: seem to be the antithesis of boredom because they're in
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: constant motion. They're in constant development. And on the other
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: side of things, they love repetition. And your job is
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: over the course of years to teach them how to
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: use utensils and how to use a napkin, how to
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: wipe their own butt and pick up their socks and
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: I joke with my wife that if I hear the
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: word daddy one more time, it was someone else who
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: told me about an essay in which someone said that
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: the signal experience of being a parent is interruption. And
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: so there's a great deal of boredom because you can't
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: follow your own thought. You can't imagine a lot of times.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: And I struggle with this a great deal. I love
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: my children dearly and I resent them intensely. For being there.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: Can we just pause for a second? Most people don't
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: say that out loud. And I love that because that's
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: oftentimes a lived experience. I'm bored out of my mind.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: I would much rather be doing something else besides watching
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Frozen for the 19th time. And that's kind of not
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: okay to say in our culture. So thank you.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: I think that's why people have taken to it. I've
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: seen a couple really nasty comments online as well, but whatever.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: If I wanted to think about what boredom is.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Boredom is very much about repetition, the experience in which
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: the passage of time gets under your skin. But the
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: analysis of boredom that I found most meaningful was about meaning,
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: was about the relationship between what we're experiencing in the
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: world and what we find meaningful. And it struck me
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: that some of the activities in my life, if not
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: all of them, that I've found most boring, most full
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: of tedium and strain were also the experiences that I
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: found most deeply meaningful.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: Studying and writing can be extremely tedious experiences. So much
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: of writing for me is showing up waiting, watching the
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: clock tick away, hoping to feel some inspiration, reading texts,
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: trying to find something that my mind is going to
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: latch on to, reading through, if I'm writing about boredom,
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: reading all these philosophers and thinkers on boredom, being bored
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: by a lot of it, and waiting and writing sentences,
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: not doing it well, feeling like, I'm writing with oven
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: mitts on my hand, doing nothing but drinking coffee and
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: hoping that I can titrate the dose well enough to focus.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: To feel some kind of excitement.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Maybe taking a little nibble of Adderall. Psychotherapy, there's a
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: lot of time spent finding, waiting for the meaning, being there,
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: being present. Being a parent is a great deal of tedium.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: There's a great deal of watching TV. cocoa mill which
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: should be taken off the air and banished from our
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: culture but having to sit through these things having to
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: hear daddy look daddy look daddy look and what's more
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: meaningful than actually putting down your book putting down your
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: phone and being there or those moments of actual communion
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: or of language as this paltry instrument we have to
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: express and understand the deepest parts of ourselves and of
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: our lives that for which I am I am tearfully
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: grateful even as it causes me boredom a lot of
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: the time my children who I who impede me and
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: who I am for whom I'm incredibly grateful for the
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: love I feel for them and for what I learn
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: from them, for what I get to observe in them,
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: that there's a braiding together of boredom and meaning that
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: is inextricable and that, if I remember it, doesn't do
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: away with the boredom. It contextualizes it and allows me
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: to see it as something that's braided into my life
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: in a way that is just capital L life. Yeah.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: And you know, this is so interesting. And you know,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: as you're talking, I'm also considering another facet of this.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if this is true for your experience,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: but I think there's also this like manifestation of true
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: love when like in the context of parenting, you are,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: you know, needing to enter into these spaces and do
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: these things with your kids that are really boring and uncomfortable.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: But like the fact that you are doing them anyway
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: is really this expression of a commitment, this like selflessness
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: of I would actually really rather not be sitting here
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: like putting Legos together, you know, but like we do
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: it anyway. But I just to ask you, because this
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: is another thing that's coming up for me as we're talking.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Are there different orientations to this? I wonder if the
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: way we relate to dark emotions is also filtered through
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: our own meaning, our own personality, like So for example,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: when you talked about boredom actually being a expression of
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: what I care about, like when you feel bored, there's
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: a clue that something meaningful is going on. That really
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: actually surprised me because what I thought you were going
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: to say is that boredom would be a clue that
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: you're actually out of alignment with meaning, that there's a
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: gap and that we need to pay attention to that
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: to find a way to to have that feeling influence
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: us into different behaviors. So for example, when I, my
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: husband and I first had our first child, we're bored
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: out of our minds, like all the things and decided
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: to listen to that and take the show on the road.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Like we actually traveled full time for years with a
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: small child because it was interesting and it sort of
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: brought that energy back. And you know, the kid doesn't care.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: We can play Legos in a RV or in the,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: you know, living room floor of a giant house in
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: the suburbs. They don't care. And so like, how do
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: we connect the feeling to a, what would actually feel
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: better for everybody? How could we do this and have
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: a nice life that wasn't boring? And so I wonder
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: if there's just different orientations to dark emotions. And sometimes
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: there's a lean in and find the meaning versus when
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: do we let this dark emotion motivate us to find
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: a space that I almost feel like in my own life,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: dark emotions, it's like we need to take influence from
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: them because they're trying to tell us something important that
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: we need to listen to and allow ourselves to be
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: influenced by, not just kind of be tormented by a
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: dark emotion who won't let us go because we're sort
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: of pushing it away.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: I think that's so astute because a lot of the
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: writing about boredom that addresses it in the context of
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: meaning says exactly that boredom is a signal that you
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: are doing something that is not in fact meaningful to
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: you and so in that case you need to find
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: a way to realign your life or your activities so
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: that you are doing something that feels at a deeper
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: level more meaningful to you yeah and i think there's
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: a there could be a truth to that and here's
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: where the difficulty exactly lies because i And maybe also
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: where the social and cultural comes in. Because there are
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: other contexts in which if we listen to that, we're
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: actually escaping something that, if we attend, could be meaningful.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Or in which the boredom is simply baked into the
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: cake of the meaningful experience. I always think of this,
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: I write about this speech that the poet Joseph Brodsky
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: gave at Dartmouth College to these graduating seniors. in which
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: he said, you're going to go out to the world
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: and you're going to be so bored. This is in
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: the 80s. And you're going to do what people have
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: always done to escape boredom. You're going to have affairs
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: and take drugs and try to crowd your life with
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: different things. But in fact, you'll then be escaping the
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: deeper meaning of boredom. It's in a to the finite
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: in life, the fact that life consists of repetition and
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: you have to make your peace with that somehow. So
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: I don't want to think monolithically or be overly didactic
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: about that because I think you're right that the key
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: move is when you're having a difficult emotion or a
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: dark emotion is to say, what is it trying to
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: tell me? there are more ways than ever before to
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: escape boredom.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Whereas, as we all know, if you stick with boredom,
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: a lot of times that's where creativity resides. So we
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: have to ask ourselves when we're bored, is there meaning
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: on the other side of this?
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Am I trying to escape something real? Am I sort
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: of trying to get away from something that's true Or
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: do we take the show on the road as you did,
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: which seemed like the right move.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: But I think what I'm following exactly what you're saying,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: that when this experience is present, you need to try
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: really hard, like be thoughtful. What is it trying to
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: tell me? Is it saying, what are you doing with
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: your life? Go get, take the show on the road, right?
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Like do something or like, I think there's this other
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: facet of boredom, which is like almost not a test,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: but that expression again of commitment that you are choosing
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: to be in a stable long-term relationship that isn't as
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: exciting as having an affair, right? Because of that commitment
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: and that feeling bored sometimes is, as you say, baked
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: into the cake. And you're making values-based choices that make
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: space for that. Right?
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Why am I writing if it is so painful and
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: so boring and I hate it so much? Why do
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: I keep doing this? Because it's very meaningful to me.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Because I'm committed to this and I'm willing to tolerate
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: the occasional discomfort of this process because it is so
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: important to me. Yeah.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: A lot of really great thinking on boredom came out
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: of Desert Monastery.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: So boring.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: Like these dudes who went into the desert to commune
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: with God and who would be in their little huts
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: among the snakes and the scorpions. And their sort of
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: spiritual leaders would worry because these people would there be attrition.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: These guys would be like, I want to get out
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: of here.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: And get killed by a scorpion.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: And of course it was contextualized in spiritual terms and
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: like the devil entering in and so on. But in fact,
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: if you're committing yourself to a life of spirituality and
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: God and prayer, it's going to be super boring. Like
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: there's going to be a great deal of boredom in meditation.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: There's a great deal of boredom in prayer. There's a
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: great deal of distress. And boredom is a kind of,
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: agitated listlessness. It's like an agitated disconnection, which sometimes tells
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: us I need to do something else that will make
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: me feel connected. Or it tells me this is the
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: cost of connection. There is connection here, but it's not
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: going to be constant. And this is the price I pay.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: It doesn't need to be for everyone, right? I would
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: like to be married till the end. If you're married
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: to someone for decades, there's going to be repetition, familiarity, boredom.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: You're going to hear the same things over and over again.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: My wife and I joke around like one of us
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: will say something and the other one will say, ah,
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: number 14. We've heard it over and over again.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: That story.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: And that story. And yet, in that longevity, in that depth,
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: there's also great for me great meaning. People can choose
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: to live their lives in any way they want. I'm
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: speaking individually. But I'm beginning thinking to you, talking to
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: you to think about other emotions in this context as well. Yeah.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: I'd love to talk about that. And so we need
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: to take a super quick break, but I'm wondering if
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: on the other side, we could come more deeply into
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: some of them that have a lot, I think, of
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: power to either destroy potentially or motivate. So things like resentment,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: even regret. And how do we develop a different kind
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: of relationship with those? Can we talk about that on
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: the other side?
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: I would love to.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: You guys, we're back with Daniel Smith, psychotherapist and author
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: of the new book, Hard Feelings. And as promised, now
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: we're going to dive into some very dark emotions, Daniel.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Maybe we could even start with anger, one that people
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: routinely experience that is also oftentimes very uncomfortable. It can
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: be destructive. It can also be very generative. Take us
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: into what you've learned about anger.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: It's funny because in a way, Lisa, I think anger
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: is almost too easy. You know, I didn't, anger is
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: not one of the full chapters that I do write
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: about anger, but in a different context. But I think
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: because anger in a way, anger felt quite big and,
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: and as often, I mean, it takes on so many
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: different contexts, including political. And, and I, when I say
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: anger is a little easier in a sense, it's because
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: I have no, problem whatsoever seeing the positive side of anger.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: Anger is so clearly to me motivating, a sign that
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: there's some felt injustice, some requirement toward reparation or some
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: sort of repair work. And, you know, we could think
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: about this in the context of being a parent. When
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: a child is angry, I find it actually quite easy
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: to deal with a lot of the time because it's clear.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: And if some injury felt or real, whatever that means,
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: has been experienced by that person. So that if I
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: could redirect, I hope you don't mind my doing this.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: I kind of wanted to think about regret.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: Okay. And the reason I was thinking about regret when
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: we're talking about boredom is because regret is the emotion
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: to me that I had the hardest time seeing as
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: valuable at all.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Regret is the hardest.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: It was so hard for me to see the value
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: of regret. Excuse me, is regret feels like simply a
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: desire for a rewind button, for a time machine. Yeah,
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: just for a do-over, like a mulligan. And how is
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: that anything other than a kind of cognitive or evolutionary flaw.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: And so when we were talking about boredom and meaning,
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: I found my mind going to regret and time. If
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: what we want to do when we have a dark
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: emotion is say, what is it telling me? Then for
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: me anyway, regret is saying, It is so hard to
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: live in a life where I have to make decisions
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: moment to moment and in a state of imperfect understanding
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: of myself and of the world. I am going to
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: make decisions. I'm going to be forced to make decisions
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: under duress, not knowing my own unconscious motivations, my own
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: drives fully. not knowing other people's motivations fully, knowing later
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: on better than I know now. And that is going
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: to be a source of enduring confusion and pain. You
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: can't go back, but says something real and true about
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: what it is to be alive. Yeah. That if we ignore,
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: we're ignoring to use a kind of old phrase, people
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: don't use much anymore, the human condition. Right. Because you
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: were helping me to understand the way in which we
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: need to think of our relationship to these experiences. Exactly.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: And that regret too, you know, I love the way
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: you were talking about the relationship between that and time
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: and how it's very easy to just fall into this
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: sea of despair because you can't go back.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: But I think, you know, for me, what I have
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: done in my own life, and I've certainly experienced my regret,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: but also with clients who feel like it's over, it's gone,
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: it's in the past is what is it telling you again? Like,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: what do you care about? You know, like I could
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: go back and fill in that blank, you know, X, Y, Z,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: whatever it is. But then why? What about that was
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: important to you? What would it have changed? And what
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: would that mean, right? And so that we can be
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: informed by, all right, so if this is true, what
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: does this mean about how I need to live? And
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: if we don't have that experience, we don't have visibility.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: It's what we care about, right? So that we can
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: make better choices going forward. And I think that has
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: been so valuable for me in my life. And certainly,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: you know, there are some things that, is it regret
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: or really is it grief? I mean, like that can
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: be a complex thing, but I think that with regret,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: there's always this, if you really listen to it, there
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: could be redemption there, even if you think it's over.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean, one way I interpret what you're saying
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: is that there's often an intimate relationship between regret and fear.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: That we think back to something that we wish we
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: had done and tell ourselves the door is closed. It's
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: too late. I'm too old. Exactly. And if we stop,
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: but if we continue on, it's often telling me, I'm
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: still scared to act. I'm still scared of acting in
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: a way that's creative, that's bold, that doesn't have the
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: stamp of approval of some authority. And I could restrict
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: my vision of that to the past and grieve for
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: what I didn't do. Or I could return to the
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: present and say, well, what is it that I'm afraid of?
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: That the regret itself can be a kind of signal
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: to return. And it's a complex operation. It's a difficult operation.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: And as you say, like, is it regret? Is it grief?
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Is it both? What are we lamenting? There's something quite
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: compulsive about regret because it's a kind of escape hatch
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: from the present. We're often uncomfortable with our current circumstances.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: And so we say, why am I uncomfortable? It's because
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: I chose the wrong path. And under the right guidance,
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: either personal or therapeutic or intimate, it can help us
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: to sort of stay with that and return to it,
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: to return to what we're afraid of now, what's making
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: us uncomfortable right now, and how can we still live.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: And that's scary. Really, I can feel myself getting scared
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: thinking about it.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: I have to ask, what's coming up for you right now?
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: It's a fear. Well, I mean, I think back to
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: things in my life that I did or did not do.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: jobs that I didn't take.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: Would you be open to sharing an example?
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: It's funny, I often think of an opportunity I was
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: given in my early 20s when I was working at
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: a magazine. And I left that. I said no to
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: the opportunity in a way that felt logical to me
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: at the moment. And went on to write. But in fact,
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: I look at it now and I often think, if
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: I had taken that path, I would have had a
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: career in editing that would have brought me more financial stability,
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: more existential stability. Writing is a difficult situation, more savings,
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: just more stability in general. And it's an absolute counterfactual.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: because I have no idea what would have happened. But
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: it's a place I go. My wife would say, your
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: tongue goes to that canker sore.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: That like torture myself.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like I could have saved myself a lot of
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: strain and difficulty. Now, there's a great deal of arrogance
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: in that, as I say, because you can't replay the tape.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: What am I doing when in a way I'm maybe
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: reproaching myself for what I feel to be a continued
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: fear or lack of boldness in my life now. And
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: distracting myself from attending to that with real honesty and
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: should I say courage, right?
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: And also forgiveness. Like it's so easy to exoriate ourselves
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: and it's so hard to forgive the self, for making
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: decisions with incomplete self-understanding, for living. And so that regret
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: can be the canker sore you return to, or it
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: can be a reminder to forget the way that if
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: you're meditating and find yourself distracted, you just return to
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: the breath.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: that's where I try to go with regret.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But you're saying something that I think is so
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: interesting and what you shared, it's like your subconscious mind
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: is bringing you This particular, when you think about all
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: the different choices we've made in our lives, right? Like
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: all of the different little pathways and how things could
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: have unfolded. But it's almost like there's this process, like
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: when you have a dream that is like, you know,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: a powerful dream with a lot of symbolism, like you're
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: dreaming about a specific thing. Maybe you're dreaming about it
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: over and over because there's some type of unfinished business,
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: because that particular symbol really does mean something. It's worthy
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: of attention. And so if there's that one thing that
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: keeps coming back that it is a signal that some
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: part of you needs you to know that this is
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: informing something about your present. This is why it's coming back.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: What you're saying is that that's what is the work
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: that I need to do around this? Is it that
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: I am needing to be more courageous? Do I need
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: to grieve? Do I need to forgive myself?
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: What is it?
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: But it requires this exploration. And we need to take
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: another quick break, Daniel, but I just, I want to
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: just share, like, before we started officially, like, chatting for
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: our interview, we were talking about the fact that a
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: lot of your work, there is not a so do
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: these three things and it's going to transform your life.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Like there are not these easy, quick takeaways. What you
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: are doing is like, and in this conversation, we're sort
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: of opening the door to what is really a deeper process.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: Like everything we're talking about is like an entry point
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: to exploration. And there is not one answer or one
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: outcome or one strategy. It is an invitation. Is that
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: the way that you see this?
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: It's the way I want people to, to read it.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: That's the way I approached it personally. I'm skeptical of
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: anything that closes a door. And I want there to
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: be a kind of wholism in the way we live
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: our lives. And I get very antsy when I hear
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: even good-natured sort of rhetorical moves toward optimizations or fixes
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: because I know that on the other side of that
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: can be a kind of feeling bad about feeling bad.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: And I want the door to be open to sort
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: of look at the shadows and to have a relationship
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: with them as we've been saying.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: Okay. So then in that spirit, we are in total alignment.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: The shadows need to be welcomed and part of the experience,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: part of the conversation to have a relationship with it.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: And on the other side of this break, I'd also
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: love for you, if this is okay, to share your
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: thoughts or perspective, you know, as a psychotherapist and part
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: of what we do is clinical mental health treatment, where
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: the shadows, if you will, have actually turned into monsters
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: and They are not productive. There's clinical mental health stuff
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: that is crowding someone's mind and ability to function. And
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: we do actually have to push them back and make
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: them smaller, right? And so then, you know, the idea
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: around when do we listen and obey versus when are
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: we like, yeah, not today. You get back in your
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: place because that needs to be part of it.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. I would love to talk about that.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: You guys, we're back with my very special guest, Daniel Smith,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: a psychotherapist and author of a new book called Hard Feelings,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: which is all about how to develop a new kind
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: of relationship with dark emotions. So Daniel, right before we
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: paused for this break, I invited you to think about
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: this idea of balance between having a positive productive relationship
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: with dark emotions that are such powerful allies as we
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: move through the world and understand ourselves and what we
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: care about. We cannot live without them. We do actually
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: need to push them back. One might even make an
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: argument that could be true. Toxic positivity can eclipse the sun,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: and we're actually not having a whole experience when that happens.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: But I think clinical mental health stuff is when clinical depression...
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: which feels an awful lot like grief and regret and
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: shame and anger and all the things is like actually
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: a problem. How do you sort through that? I mean,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: as a therapist.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: And, you know, I've been doing this work for four
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: or five years now, so I'm still at an early stage.
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot of, I think there's a lot
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: of active for me thinking through and supervision on this
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: very subject that, you know, two, two particular things. emotions
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: and experiences come to mind. One of them is shame
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: and one of them is anger. Because if someone's coming
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: in who's displaying a great deal of anger in their lives,
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: I'm learning to be sensitive to the ways in which
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: you provide a kind of empathic frame for that. You're angry.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: You're having angry experiences. Let's talk about that. And the
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: ways in which empathy can be reinforcing of something that's dangerous.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: Yes. Say more about that.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, if someone is, you know, acting out
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: in an angry way in the workplace or at home
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: and putting others at risk or putting their own lives
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: at risk or their own well-being at risk, simply saying
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: clearly that is not OK. This is a problem. And
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: I'm going to say to you as your therapist, this
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: is a problem. We're going to address the difficult. We
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: need to stop and think about strategies to reduce the
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: amount of anger in your life. Or at least find
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: strategies for you to cope with the anger in the moment.
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: Because otherwise, this is the road you're going down. Yeah.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: And these are the dangers to yourself and to your
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: loved ones. You are going to make the decisions. I
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: can't make these decisions for you, but I'm going to
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: tell you that it's not okay. We will address this.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: I am not judging you. I am being honest with you.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: And that can be difficult to negotiate. Borderline and narcissism,
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: sociopathy are particularly good at those kinds of boundaries and
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: being very clear about.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: Somebody with narcissism, for example, may feel very upset with
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: others for not conforming to their expectations or whatever it
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: should be in a way that is not productive, it's destructive,
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: and it is not actually something that's indulged. The reason
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: why they are angry in the first place is coming
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: from this wounded space that we need to attend to
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: the wound, right? But we don't let anger run that show.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: Maybe what we're talking about are emotions in which they've either,
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: because of the nature of the emotion itself or because
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: of the volume of the emotion at that time, shut
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: down the kind of more fulsome and complicated relationship of
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: discussion and dialogue that we want to have, in which
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: there's a kind of flattening. And that's often true of anger.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: The emotion that I think it's most true of and
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: that I have complicated thoughts about is shame which is
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: in a way the kind of master emotion here because
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: shame in itself is totalizing shame is flat shame says
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: there's something wrong with me i am bad i am
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: wrong shame shame wants to actually shut down the conversation
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: and we could be attentive to the origins of that
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: shame But as a therapist and as someone in therapy
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: who has been in therapy, you also don't want an indulgence,
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: an overindulgence of that shame.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: Because that shame is quite stupid. It's not productive.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: It's usually not reality-based either. Guilt is reality-based.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: Guilt is reality-based. You know, like envy, regret, these things,
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: one could negotiate a little more with them. Yeah. But
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: shame is, it's authoritarian. It's dictatorial. It's big brother. And
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: does require a little bit more. Sternness isn't right because
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: that can reify the shame and redouble it. But in attendance,
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: a naming. A kind of like constant naming of that
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: is shame. That is shame. So that you know. That
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: what the shame is saying is not reality. That the
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: shame is a kind of blanket statement. I've been reading
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: the philosopher Jonathan Lear, who died recently. He was a
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: philosopher who was an expert on Aristotle, who went back
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: and became a psychoanalyst and wrote a lot about psychoanalysis.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: And I was reading a book of his from 1990
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: called Love and Its Place in Nature. And he's, in
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: the introduction, he was talking about medication. So it was 1990,
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: and he was saying that he doesn't have anything against medication,
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: but he wants to criticize a way of thinking about
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: medication as the end and not the beginning. That when
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: you reach a, you know, if you've entered into a depression,
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: or if you've had a psychotic episode, medication can do
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: a very good job of bringing you out, of bringing
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: the floor back up.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: Exactly, yeah.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: But do you take that once the floor comes back up,
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: once you've removed, you've sort of gotten out of that
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: state and you know it when you feel it, does
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: that end the discussion or does that begin the discussion?
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: And I think the proper way to think about it
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: is that then provides the opportunity to think in a
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: more fertile way about how you feel and how you think.
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: And what he worries about and what I worry about
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: is a culture that sees psychiatry, psychiatric interventions as the
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: kind of the patch in the end and not as
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: the beginning.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: But let's just say this out loud very, very explicitly.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: And I just want to reinforce that I've experienced this
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: so many times in my own work as a psychologist.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: It is only when psychiatric symptoms are managed that deeper
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: growth work can even begin. I'm not trying to do
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: insight-oriented anything or like, you know, let's change and develop
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: and grow. When someone is in this pit, it's like
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: it is the beginning.
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: You have to be attentive to when the symptoms have
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: gotten too strong. Exactly. And then work on reducing the
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: symptoms before you can do any of the insight, the
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: deep work.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: And the pieces, what we're talking about, and I love this.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: So we just did an exploration of like what dark
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: emotions look like in clinical like verses and we, it's
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: like moving into that growth work when it is having
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: normal and expected dark emotions that are growth and development promoting.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like a different, we need to be
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: aware of like where we are and like continue.
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: Sometimes the we take over the garden. For sure. We
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: start working on them first. And then, yeah, and some patience.
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, patience is not, I wanted to write about it.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: It might be the next thing I write about. Okay.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: But it's an, it's a vital part of this.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So then one last thing before we go,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: if it's okay to ask one more thing, and I
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: know you need to run out of here, but one
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: of the things that's been coming up for me as
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: we've been talking, Daniel, is the importance of personality in
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: this conversation and these hardwired personalities and orientations that are
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: actually oftentimes very biologically based in people. So I'm thinking
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: right now of the, I don't know if you're familiar,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: but like the orchid and the dandelion would be broad strokes,
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: personality types, or, or like, I don't know if you're
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: familiar with Enneagram theory of personality that does have quite
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: a bit of research and like, you know, big five
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: personality thinking about, uh, you know, like a, an Enneagram
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: four type orchid personality that really does experience emotions much
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: more strongly than and vividly and in this powerful way,
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: then other personality types might. I think that other people
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: do not have the same experience of emotionality as very
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: kind of like emotionally sensitive people do. It's that you're
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: one of them, obviously, right? My husband is another actually.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: And so, and maybe this is outside the scope of
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: this conversation, but I'm just thinking, you know, relationally, My
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: own personality orientation, it's very easy for me to be like, okay,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: move on, right?
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: Like, I don't like this. Let's do something different, right?
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: And I sometimes need to, like, stay in the place. Like, no,
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: what is this trying to tell me? To go a
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: little bit deeper where my husband is, like, very, like, no,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: let's stay here. Like, it cannot cause a rift, I think,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: in relationships. relationships where one person is really comfortable and
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: in the space and wants to be in the space
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: like no let's stay here let's listen to these things
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: to talk about these things more directly versus somebody who
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: either is uncomfortable with it but honestly more commonly can't
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: it's I don't want to use the phrase mind blindness
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: but they just there's just this like dandelion quality where
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: they don't register the same it's almost like colors on
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: a spectrum when people see more vividly than others. Do
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: you know what I'm trying to say?
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: I do know what you're trying to say. I mean,
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: the question is, what problems does it create? And how
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: do you negotiate? I think what you're asking is, relationally,
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: how do you deal when you have two different personality styles?
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: Because the one thing you don't want to be with
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: respect to any of this is normative.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, obviously I prize death and a sort of
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: intensity of emotion and in large part because that's my experience.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: But finding some common ground, I don't know. I don't
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: have an easy answer for this, Lisa.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: There are no easy answers.
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: I was just curious, right?
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: And just that there's different orientations to this and maybe
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: even it's just as simple as making space if you're
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: with somebody that's different from you. Because I think it
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: can be easy to like judge or criticize people for
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: having a different experience with regards to dark emotions or
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: a different type of relationship with them.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: And then we all have to find our own way.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: Here's how I'll tie this together. The signal virtue for me,
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: both in these individual emotions and in what you're talking about,
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: the sort of interpersonal, is curiosity. That if you stay as...
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: firmly as you can within reason in a place of
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: curiosity it's going to stand you in good stead that
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: you will have no choice but to think more deeply
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: and more compassionately about where the other person's coming from
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: what their relationship to the emotion is and you will
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: be able to think more deeply about your own relationship
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: to emotion in general and to these emotions so that
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: You can actually reduce a great deal of strain simply
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: by remaining in a state of curiosity. That curiosity may
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: lead you to the realization that you want to be
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: in relationship with people who are more aligned with your
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: Enneagram type. Whatever. But I'm not sure. Yeah.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: Daniel Smith, congratulations on the new book, Hard Feelings. Tell
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: people where they can find your book, learn more about you,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: your work, connect with you. Maybe talk about this stuff
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: with you in there.
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: My website is smithmhc.com, smithmhc.com. The book is called Hard Feelings,
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: and they can look for it wherever fine books are sold. Amazing.
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Lisa. I appreciate it.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: So what a good conversation. I don't know about you,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: but for me, you know, the big headline takeaway here
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: in speaking with Daniel is really, again, how do we
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: learn to appreciate, not just tolerate, but appreciate all the
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: wisdom that comes from our dark emotions. And instead of
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: trying to make ourselves feel better, focus more on seeking
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: to understand. Because like what we talked about today, Sometimes
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: all the things, even boredom, even shame, even the stuff
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: that we conceptualize as being bad is so helpful to
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: us if we allow it to speak to us. And
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: if we can take information from it, it points us
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: towards meaning, right? Even regret can point us in the
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: direction of not just our values, but what do we
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: want to do differently next time? Anger can point towards
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: something that might need repair, might need protection. And those
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: are all really positive. Guilt is such a positive emotion.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: I had a phenomenal conversation with a psychologist who wrote
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: a whole book on how we can use feelings of
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: guilt to strengthen our relationships. And scroll back in my
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: feed to check out that one. And it is also
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: true that for many of us, and I would probably
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: put myself in this camp, that feeling our feelings is
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: not always the easiest thing, right? Especially if you tend
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: to be a more intellectual person or a more action
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: oriented person, like check, check both of those boxes for me,
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: but that it's really a mistake to do so much glossing,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: so much activity, so much thinking that you really become
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: disconnected from what's going on inside. And many times for
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: people like us can benefit from having a dedicated space
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: to talk about how we feel. have somebody asking us
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: questions about how we feel that we might not consider previously,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: and really sort of being held in that experiential environment
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: where you can dig in a little bit deeper and
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: make those internal connections. That is not just something that
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: happens in therapy, by the way. That is also one
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: of the active ingredients in a positive, meaningful, and powerful
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: coaching process. And that is exactly what the clinicians, therapists,
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: and coaches on my team here at Growing Self do
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: all day long with people just like you and me.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: And so if you've been thinking about talking to someone
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: as a means of getting more deeply into contact with yourself,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: you are so invited. The first step is to schedule
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: a consultation meeting. So you can come to growingself.com. There's
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: a big get connected button. Just tap that button, answer
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: a few quick questions, and we'll be able to help
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: you book a an appointment with a professional therapist on
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: my team here at Growing Self, who also does evidence-based
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: coaching to meet with you and begin the process of
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: understanding how you feel, especially the hard parts. And then
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: how are we going to use that in order to
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: gain deeper understanding of who you are, what you care about,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: what's important, what you want, and then ultimately design the
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: staircase that will move you towards attaining that, not in
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: spite of your feelings, but because of them. So growingself.com
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: if you'd like to check that out. Thanks again for
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: spending this time with me. And thanks again, too, for thinking,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: you know, who else in my life needs to hear
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: this forwarded to them. And otherwise, I'll be back in
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: touch with you soon with another episode of love, happiness
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: and success.