Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 825: Choosing Joy with Dr. Martha Beck

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Episode 825: Choosing Joy with Dr. Martha Beck · The Trauma Therapist

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Trauma Therapist Podcast. Plus listeners can listen to episodes early and ad free right
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now. Become a Plus listener by going to Apple Podcasts searching for the Trauma
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Therapist Podcast and signing up today or welcome back to the Trauma Theapist Podcast.
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My name is Gamiferson. My mission is to help Trauma therapist be their incredible
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selves, to be human, to be real, not just a clinician.
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I'm a big believer in who we are is more important than what we know,
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and this requires cultivating authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires
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intention. Can learn more about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma
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Therapist project dot com. That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get
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started, all right, Martha, here we go. So five four,
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three, two and one, our folks, welcome back to the podcast.
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Very excited to happen to my guest today, doctor Martha Beck. Doctor Beck,
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welcome, Thank you for having me. You're welcome. So. Doctor
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Beck has spent a lifetime offering powerful, practical and entertaining advice that helps people
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improve every aspect of their lives. Her written work includes several New York Times
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and international bestsellers, as well as over one hundred and fifty magazine articles.
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For the past eighteen years, doctor Beck has been a monthly columnist at Oh
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The Oprah magazine. She earned her BAMA and PhD degrees from Harvard, all
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in social sciences. For over two decades, she has been, in the
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words of USA Today, one of the best known life coaches in America.
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Martha, welcome, Thank you so much. You're welcome. Before we get
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going, share with the listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently.
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Yes, I grew up in Utah and left there at seventeen to go
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off to Harvard, which was quite a culture shock. And I presently live
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in Pennsylvania near the place where Washington crossed the Delaware that Christmas morning. Very
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cool, very cool. Yeah. So look, I mean, how did
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all this start for you? And when I say this, I mean this
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quest and correct me if I'm wrong, But this quest, this thirst for
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living our heart, living our purpose, Well, it's strange when you grew
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up in a very intense religion. I was raised very Mormon, and it's
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what's called a life world religion, like it filters into every aspect of your
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daily life. And they're always telling you what's true and how to be happy,
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and for me, it never worked. But I was constantly confronted with
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the issues life mission and you know, eternal happiness, all this stuff,
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and I thought I should be feeling this and I am not. And then
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I just got more and more anxious and depressed as I went into adolescence and
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then started to figure things out when I was a young adult, and by
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that time, I was teaching business school, and I tried to find ways
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to make my own life happier. And this kind of filtered into my teaching
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and my business schools. School students would come to my office and they never
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wanted to talk about international business management, which is what I was teaching.
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They wanted to talk about their lives and about how their lives could serve them,
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which is kind of my obsession. So I started just talking to them
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outside of class. And the next thing I knew, I was reading in
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the newspaper that I was a life coach. How so, wait a minute,
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So you jumped from adolescent angst to teaching business school. How did you?
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How did you get into teaching business school? What happened there? So
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I also grew up in a family of intellectuals. My father was a prominent
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intellectual in the Mormon community, and because of that, I was very high
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achieving, and I did go off to Harvard when I was seventeen and just
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sort of stayed there. The first degree from Harvard did not make me feel
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good, so I figured I needed more, and so I just kept going
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to Harvards like an addiction, and gradually got my PhD and started, you
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know, went off to be an assistant professor. In the meantime, I
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married, I had three children, and my second child was prenatally diagnosed with
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Down syndrome late late in the pregnancy, and that really brought me to a
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decision point. Literally, I had like two weeks legally to end the pregnancy
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or continue it. To make that decision. And although I'm very pro choice
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despite my Mormon background, by that time sort of I wasn't a good Mormon.
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Now I'm not Mormon at all, But I already loved this child,
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and I thinking, what is the criterion on which I judged the validity of
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a human life? Because everyone told me, the five doctors at the Harvard
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Medical School who did obstetrics told me it was like having a malignant tumor,
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that they had to take it out, that it would ruin my life,
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this little baby, And I remembered thinking, but I already loved this child.
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I was very, very bonded with him. I'd seen him sucking his
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finger on the ultrasound. I'd it was a hard pregnancy. I'd had trouble
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keeping him alive. And I just walked around thinking, what makes us decide
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that one life is worth living in one isn't? And I decided that my
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criterion for a life worth living was a life that contained joy. And I
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looked around me at all the people at Harvard, the students, the professors,
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and I did not see much joy. But I had heard that people
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with Down syndrome could experience joy. So I thought, let's do this thing.
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Let's find out what life is like if you live it for joy and
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for love instead of for achievement. So that really turned me around. But
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I kept getting the degrees and finished them out. But it made me think
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really differently, and that's what came out in my teaching once I became an
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assistant professor. What was it that kind of invited these students to talk thought
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about international business. But about their lives. What was it? What was
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it in you? Do you think? Well? I remember saying thinking,
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you know, they would talk about how do I get a job, and
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I'd say, well, if you don't like it, don't do it,
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and they'd be like wait what go back? Yeah, like there, and
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I would say, you know, if something makes you happy, maybe you
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could do more of that, and if it makes you unhappy, perhaps choose
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to do less of it. And they would just be like, no,
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I has ever said these things to me. They hadn't. These were high
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achieving business school students, and they had been living the no pain, no
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gain principle their whole young lives. And here I was saying, if you're
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not having fun, don't do it. You got your wild and precious life.
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You don't get to do this again. Go for the gusto. And
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that was blowing their minds. Wow. So with that, what did you
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feel when you were doing that when they were responding that way, Well,
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I've been through a few more things. I developed a lot of autoimmune diseases
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in my young adult life, and so I'd had a lot of limitation and
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a lot of chronic pain. I was almost always in pain, and in
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order to lessen the stress on my system, I did much more of more
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selecting things based on whether or not they brought me happiness than I think most
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other people did. So when I was up there talking to these students and
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when they'd come to office, what I'd see as they said, wait,
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Like I remember a Chinese student coming in and he was the one child allowed
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by his huge extended family. The government was doing the one child policy and
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he always smiled always, but through this huge smile, he told me he
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was thinking of taking his own life because he could. He had never been
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happy and couldn't stand pretending anymore, and because he was everything to his family
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and he had to be happy. And I just I would look at students
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who were much less, under much less stress than that, or I would
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look at people who were under even more stress, and I would think,
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Oh my god, we're all so lost, We are so lost. How
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did we go off our nature, away from our nature so dramatically. We're
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designed to find joy and purpose in this life. And here are all these
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kids and adults that were young adults and they'd forgotten how to feel. Meanwhile,
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I had this kid at home, this child with syndrome, who always
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did exactly what was in his whole integrity, and if he didn't want to
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do it, I took him to learn martial arts so that when kids made
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fun of him, he could beat them up. And he said, we
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got to the martial arts place, and he goes, why would I want
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to hit anyone? No, I'm not going to hit anyone. That's so
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I realized that I wanted to hit people who made fun of him. So
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I took him home, went back and signed up myself and spent eight years
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doing martial arts. Never beat anybody up, but it was nice knowing I
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could. Anyway, I just kept seeing how over the various cultures in which
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we grow up in which were socialized, pull us away from our true nature
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and make us go numb to our own feelings, and that getting back home
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was as simple as tuning back in to the bar, to the heart,
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to the soul, and allowing ourselves to go in the direction that they were
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calling us that. I want to thank you for that honest reflection on it
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was you who was feeling angry. I mean, I think a lot of
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us can really relate to that. Just as an aside what martial arts did
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you study? It was called chen tai. It's a Chinese soft I tried
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different things. I tried like paekwondo, which is very like chopping things with
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an axe, and chen tai is more like brushing things with a silk scarf,
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like something that's hit like that in taekwondo is this inia So it's really
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fun, very confidence inducing. I highly recommend it. Do you do martial
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arts? I actually studied taekwondo for a long time. Oh yeah, yeah.
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And then that your description is very apt, like an axe. Yeah,
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but what you're talking about here, I mean it kind of leads us
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right into your book, The Way of Integrity. Yeah, And how did
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this book come about? Well, when I was when I was twenty nine,
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you're going to hear the whole nine yards here. I was probably at
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maximum misery. I had three little kids under four, I was trying to
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finish my degree. I was sick and in pain all the time. I
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was already teaching. My husband at the time traveled all around the world,
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so I was often by myself. And when I was twenty nine, I
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just was so stressed out and so unhappy that my body kind of fell apart,
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and I also had some trauma in my background that started to surface at
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that time. And one day things got so bad that I was rushed into
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an emergency surgery, and during the surgery I had one of those experiences that
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people report with near death. I wasn't not near death, but it was
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pretty inexplicable because during this surgery I became aware and looked around the room and
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thought, that's strange because I think my eyes are closed. And then I
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sat up. That's really strange because I know I'm lying down and I kind
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of watched the surgeons working on me and it was like, U, huh,
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lay back down. I didn't know what to do. And then between
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the surgical lights, I saw this ball of light appear and it was unbelievably
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bright and incredibly incredibly beautiful, and it kind of grew and when it touched
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me, I felt this unbelievable warmth and love and peace and home and I
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just melted into it and it said, well, it kind of communicated without
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words, You're okay, You're home. This is who you've always been,
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this is what you've forgotten. And I was laughing, thinking how could I
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I mean, I wasn't laughing in my body, but my mind was laughing
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and saying, I can't believe I forgot that this is what we actually are.
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The feeling was so exquisite, and this light said to me, look,
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I'm always there with everybody, even though you can't see me. And
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you're not supposed to wait until you're dead to feel this sensation of absolute peace,
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bliss, joy. You're supposed to learn to feel this way while you're
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alive, and that's your job for the next for the rest of your life.
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So I was twenty nine. I came out of that surgery, and
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I just started doing everything that felt more light being with that light. If
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something felt less slight the light, I would not do it. I would
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just stop down in my tracks and turn and if it felt more like the
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light, I would go toward it, no matter what people thought. So
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one of the things I did was decide that I was not going to tell
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any lies for full year, not a single lie, because they told me
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the truth would set me free, and I thought, Okay, if it
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gets me toward that line, I'm going. So I didn't tell a lot
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for a whole year, and during that year, I left my my religion,
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my family of origin, my job, my marriage started, I realized
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I was gay, so that went away. I left my industry, I
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left my job, I left everything except my children. Really I left my
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home. Well. So, in other words, you also didn't live a
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lie, right, no, no, right, yeah, I tried to
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live. It's hard to live a lie if you're not telling any lies,
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right, right. But I called this my integrity cleanse. At first,
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it was just verbal. Since then, I've taken many, many, many
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integrity cleanses, and they grew and developed to the point where even a facial
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expression that is deceptive or it doesn't reflect what I'm really feeling, feels like
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a lie. So it got more scrupulous over the years. But just not
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saying any lies basically threw my whole life into a great big bonfire wow and
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sent me free. It was really true. The truth sent me free.
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But as as Ah David Wallace Foster says, David Foster Wallace says, the
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truth will set you free, but not until it's had its way with you.
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And it did. But it got me closer to the feeling of that
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light, and my depression went away, and much of my physical pain went
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away. And a new way of living a rose and a new way of
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making a living a rose. And the rest is well what you said in
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the introduction. Wow. So in a sense, that decision to not tell
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any lies, not live any lies was kind of like your north star.
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It was really simple. I mean, if this was bringing you, this
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action was not bringing you joy, Nope, you're just kind of yeah,
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do north all the time? Right right. And after I started, I'd
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written I wanted to write one book. I wanted to write a book about
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my son and about the meaning of life and how he taught it to me.
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So I did that and it succeeded. And I didn't know that if
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you write a book that is about seller, they come and ask you what
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you're going to write next. I was like, well, I'm not a
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writer, but just one book. And my editor said, well, what
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are you doing? And I said, I spent all my time with these
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students. I'm telling them all these things about life, and she said,
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well, write that down. So that was my first self help book,
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and I called it Finding your Own north Star, and it's I was thinking
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about that light that I'd seen in the surgery, but really I think that's
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within all of us all the time, and the truth takes us to it.
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And I ended up writing several self help books, and the most recent
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is called The Way of Integrity, meaning integrity just means being whole and undivided.
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And what does that mean? What does that mean? Well, I've
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been talking about how we follow our socialization away from our true nature. Basically,
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every baby is born knowing exactly the truth about his or her or their
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own life, right, they know what they are. Before we can even
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speak, we start to notice that certain actions are reinforced in different ways by
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the people around us, negatively positively, And before we can even talk,
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we sell ourselves out hard to go and do what people want right, because
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we have to to survive. So my old Chinese student started smiling instead of
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crying when he was tiny. By the time I met him, he didn't
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remember what it felt like to be genuinely happy. He'd been divided from himself
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for so long that his mind was stuck in a socialized compartment that didn't even
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communicate with what he was really feeling. So he was not in integrity.
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He was in duplicity. And that's not because it was a bad person.
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It's because he was a good person. He was trying so hard to be
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good. But to get integrity, get our integrity back, we have to
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stop selling out our true nature. We have to know what we really feel
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and well, as I said in the book, know what you really know,
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feel what you really feel, say what you really mean, and do
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what you really want. It's radical. So give me. I want to
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dial in on this because this is really inspiring for me because I feel like
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I could use a good I mean, I'm sure a lot many of us
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could, but I could use a really hefty dose of this. Break the
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step. What might this look like for me in the morning? Okay,
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the first question I always ask I when I'm speaking to large groups, I'll
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stop right in the middle of his speech and say, just a second,
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I just want to check and make sure everyone's comfortable, physically comfortable. Are
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you comfortable? And then the audience looks kind of nervous and they're like,
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yeah, we're fine, and I'm like, no, tell me, are
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you really comfortable, and they're like, yes, just talk. So then
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I say, if you were home alone right now, how many of you
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would be sitting in exactly the poosition you're in at this moment, and no
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one raises a hand, and then I say why not? And they sit
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and think and it's actually, these are brilliant people and they have to really
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ponder this. And then they're like, oh, it's not really all that
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comfortable, and that, I tell them is not a problem. We can
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tolerate huge discomfort where brave, we're hearty good. But they all looked at
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me in clear daylight and lied to my face and said they were comfortable while
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knowing they weren't comfortable at another level. So the first question I would ask
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you is, right now, sitting in your chair, wherever you are in
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the world, and also situated in your relationships and your profession and all the
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things that you do every day, are you comfortable? No? Wow?
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I mean bruh. I mean on the continuum of hell yes, the hell
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no, it's more hell me oh wow. So then you start saying,
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okay. I always tell coaches when I train them, just find the place
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of least satisfaction, because that's the place where we can often create the biggest
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positive change. So you just say, which of what part of your life
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is most uncomfortable, and you don't have to say it right now here,
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but yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, I mean I won't get into
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it, but right sure. And you know, for some people it's a
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relationship. For some people it's their job. For some people it's the place
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they're living. But whatever's most Yeah, a lot of people don't have anything
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in their lives that's really comfortable. So you start like altering course in the
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in the way of integrity, I call it making one degree turns. So
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if you turn, if you're on an airplane, and you turn the plane
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half a degree or a degree north every fifteen minutes or so, you won't
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even notice the plane turning. But over time you're going to end up in
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a completely different place. So you find the place where you're most uncomfortable and
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you make whatever little shift you can to be more comfortable. It's not really
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complex, and you take these tiny little steps and your life starts going in
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a very different direction. And one day the tiny little step you take might
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be jumping off a cliff. It might be okay, this marriage is over,
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or I'm moving. This is you know, whatever, big binary changes.
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I'm going to have a baby, I'm going to buy a dog,
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which it is, and it's a big step, but it's a little step.
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It's been based on hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tiny course adjustments until
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you're sure, you know that this is the next place that will make you
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more comfortable, more joyful, more purposeful, and you just keep doing it.
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When you were doing this, I mean, there's no doubt this is
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somewhat simple, but it ain't easy. No, you're excited. There a
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lot of friggin courage to do this. Yeah, because we have, because
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we had to look at ourselves and what the hell we're doing. And when
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you were doing this, I'm sure there were moments or periods of time or
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actions that you were thinking about taking and didn't want to take, where you
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were like, I don't know if I can do this. Can you share
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one of those? Well? I wrote a book about leaving Mormonism and about
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my family a little bit and the strangeness of my childhood because my father was
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the foremost defender, intellectual defender of Mormonism, but he also did a lot
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of things that were not moral, and I mean I think he was trying
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his best, but his best was really raw, not great. Anyway,
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it influenced not only my family but the entire religion, and I waited ten
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years between the thinking I really need to tell this to the world and actually
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doing it. And by the time I did it, I mean, if
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you're raised around religious zealous you know they can get pretty scary. So by
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the time I was ready to write it, I tripled my life insurance.
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I tried to make sure my kids were taken care of because I was fairly
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certain I would be killed. And I got a lot of death threats when
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the book, when the galleys were released, and I had at one point
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I had five lawyers and two detectives trying to keep up with all the craziness,
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and I didn't have that kind of money to be paying these people.
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So I knew it would be a big, a big deal, and I
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thought I might not live through it. But I also knew that if I
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had not said anything I would talk about not comfortable, I would have been
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doing violence to my entire to my integrity, to my psyche, to my
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soul. I couldn't not do it, but it took a long time to
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get the courage to do it. Why. I mean, as we kind
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of wind down here, why and this is seems like a simple question,
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but why are we not living in integrity? Two reasons, and you are
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all over both of them. The first one is trauma. Things happen to
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us that are very painful, and we associate those with various things that happened
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to us, and then we're afraid of those things, and it keeps us
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from following our joy because we're too busy avoiding pain. But I would say,
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by far the biggest reason is not trauma, but simply socialization. We're
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taught what people want us to be, and we want so much to be
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loved and included that we are willing to leave ourselves to be with the people
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around us, to connect with the people around us, which is ironic because
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many of them are divorced from their own integrity, and everybody's living a kind
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of socialized dance that has nothing to do with the truth of their hearts and
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souls. So yeah, we're all doing that dance, and it's there's really
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not much point in it when you start to sit and think, this is
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your one wild and precious life, What do you want? How do you
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want to spend it? You know, it's interesting that I'm talking to you
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right now because yes, this book, this podcast, is you know,
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the trauma therapist whatever. But so much of what I've learned in doing this
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is the importance of integrity, the importance of authenticity, and how so challenged,
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so very challenging it is for us, for many of us, right
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to live that. Yeah, And when I hear you talk, I'm like,
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it's so inspiring, you know, and I can't I mean, I
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sound like some cliched podcast hosts, but I can't wait to go get this
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book because I'm seriously, I'm like sick of you know, just following along
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and not feeling that joy. Yeah. Yeah, That's the thing is,
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we have one great, unfailing ally and its name is suffering. If we
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do not live in our structural integrity, like a plane needs to be in
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structural integrity to fly. It's not about morality, it's just about how things
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work. If we don't live in our own integrity, we suffer. Things
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feel terrible. First our moods and then our bodies break down, then our
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relationships and our ability to focus. Mentally, everything breaks down to say stop,
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go back to the place where you knew what was comfortable and what wasn't,
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what brought you joy and what didn't and choose your joy this time,
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and then the suffering will will go away and say that's exactly what I wanted,
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and you'll say, thank you so much, suffering for forcing me to
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do this. Martha, I am so glad you came on this podcast today.
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How do people get in touch with you? What's the best way,
27:32
Martha back dot com. I have a website. I don't usually go there,
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don't know what it's like, but good people mind it and you can
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find me through that. We'll have it. We'll have it linked up here
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at the show notes page. Thank you so much. Pleasure meeting you really
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so friggin inspiring and you welcome back anytime. Oh, the pleasure is all
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mine. Keep doing your wonderful, wonderful work in the world, and I'd
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be honored to come back. Awesome, all right, take care well,
27:56
bye bye. Apple is in keep day at day often keep rounding