Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Christie Tate

Transcript

Christie Tate · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Side Podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Christie pat author of the new
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: bestseller Group All about how group therapy saved her life.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: You can't put this book down. It's written from the
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: viewpoint of the patient. It's not a tone with all
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the words and vulnerabilities we all have. Christie, Welcome to
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the podcast. Thanks for having me, Bob. I'm glad to
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: be here. You know, too many people therapy has a
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: bad image. What did it take for you to cross
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the threshold and actually enter therapy? Well, it's it's nothing
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: very laudable. I was in a lot of pain, and
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I was really really afraid I was gonna die alone,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: and nobody knew how much pain I was in. I
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: had I hit it really well. I was. I was
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: probably just depressed. And but if you're not telling anybody,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: it starts to feel like there's something so so wrong.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: And I was having suicidal thoughts and wondering something more
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: than what is life for? It was more like how
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: could I die? And this was so incongruous with my
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: outside life. I had just found out I was the
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: valedictorian of my law school. I was in the I
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: was the number one in my law school after the
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: first year, and I should have been happy, but inside
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: I was just like, this is this is going to
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: end badly and I'm seriously gonna die alone. And then
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I became willing because I thought therapy would be a
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: slog and expensive and self indulgent and ultimately not work.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: I didn't think it would work. Okay, let's go back
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: a little chapter in retrospect. Was this always your identity
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: to feel disconnected and alone and somewhat depressed, or was
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: it triggered leader in your life. I think I always
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: had seeds of it. I think I felt a little
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: bit like a misfit in my family. Ly, I was
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: moody and artsy, and my family was pretty buttoned up,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: very Catholic. They loved football in Texas, and I just
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: didn't quite fall into step with them. And I think
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: it probably could have gone either way. And then when
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I was in high school, right before high school, I
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: was in a traumatic accident. I was with another family
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: and the father that we were with he drowned on
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: the beach while we were in Hawaii, and I think
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: that was a very traumatic thing, and I think I
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: just buried it in my body, and that just pushed
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: me all the way farther from people. And I could
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: put on a good show, I could smile, I could
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: make good grades, but deep down inside, there was like
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: a bomb ticking. Is what it sort of feels like
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: looking back. Okay, now that you've had years of therapy
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: to look back on it, what about that death negatively
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: impact you? Obviously that's a significant thing. But why was
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: it such a traumatic eve in in your life? I
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: think it's because of denial. I always told myself. From
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: the minute we got in the car leaving the beach,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: I started telling myself a story. This isn't my tragedy,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: it's it wasn't my dad. My dad was at home
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: in Texas. This was my friend's dad. Don't be dramatic,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: don't make this about yourself. And consequently, I was a
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: thirteen year old, I was two weeks actually from my
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: fourteenth birthday walking around with traumatic images and sights and sounds,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: and I just wouldn't let myself feel one drop of
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: it because it didn't belong to me. And part of
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: that was I was just scared. It's very, very scary
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: to face death and something unexpected on a beach is
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: a horrible situation. So I think having the trauma and
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: burying it served to push me far away from people.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: And what was explained to me by my therapist, who
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I called Dr Rosen, was because I had unprocessed trauma,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: if I got close to people, I was going to
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: feel attached and I was gonna worry about losing them,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: and to me that there's just no way. And I
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: didn't know that was operating like subconsciously, I thought, I'm
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: a nice girl. Why can't I find nice friends and
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: a nice boyfriend? But the truth was some subconscious mechanism
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: was keeping me far away because I was scared I
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: was gonna lose them. And I hadn't even dealt with
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: how how how could you get over something like that?
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Because I hadn't. Okay, so uh, this would beg the
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: question were these types of thoughts acceptable in your family
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: or did you just talk about events as opposed to feelings.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: That's a good question. Generally we would talk about events,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: and I think my parents they could see that I
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: was hurting. When I came home from Hawaii, I started
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: my freshman year. I was at an all girls, very
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: selective challenging school, and I would come home and I
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: would sleep for hours, and then I would do my
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: homework till like two in the morning. I just was
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: things were off with me, and I don't think my
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: parents had the tools. They wanted to help me, and
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: their way was to sort of a message of buck up,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: but my mom's way of phrasing it, and my dad,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: they would stand in my doorway and say, you need
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: to like act like a normal teenager. You need to
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: go to football games, you need to stop sleeping, you
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: need to have normal hours. And we sort of just
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: attacked like the outside without the inside, because I don't
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: think any of us we just didn't have the tools.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: We had no idea how to begin to unravel what
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: I'd experienced. And even before then, I have my eating
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: disorder had already developed, like two years before I was bliming,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: and that was a secret, so my parents didn't even
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: know about that. So there was a lot kind of
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: crashing in on me during a pretty formative era of
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: my life. I'm interested, what was your relationship with your
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: friend and her family subsequent to her father passing away. Yeah,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: that's a good question. So we stayed really close, right
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: at the beginning the beginning of high school. I went
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: over to her house every weekend. My parents brought them food.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: We really were sort of on a sort of a
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: grief a grief huddle, the my myself with their family,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: and then slowly we it was like we had that
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: trauma bond that was so intense, and then slowly we
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: had different ways of coping. And my way of coping
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: was to sort of like buck up, get good grades
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: and just dive into perfectionism and achievement. And my friend
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: that I was with, she had a different experience, and
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: she ended up leaving our high school and her herd.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Her journey was very different than mine. She ended up
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: sort of cutting ties with all of us because she
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: needed to do her healing in a more isolated way.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: And we didn't we lost touch until I until this
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: book came out. Actually, that was the next question, So
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: you reconnected. What were her feelings about you telling her
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: story in the book? Oh, my gosh, I was. It
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: was the thing I was the most afraid about. That's
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: how persistent the idea in my head was, I can't
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: steal this story from my friend and her brother and
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: their family. And of course Intellectually, I knew my grappling
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: with death and grief, and this event in Hawaii was
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: a huge part of my therapy. But I still that
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: that pernicious idea that I was borrowing their their story
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: from my own. It persisted, and when the right before
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: the book came out, I reached out to her and
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: to her brother and we were all three on the
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: beach together when her dad drowned, and I sent them
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: a copy and I let them know what their father
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: meant to me, what their family meant to me, and
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: they just they had totally taken me in. We've gone
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: on another trip together, and they were a family who
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: just accepted me, and I wanted them to know that
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: that love and what what the acceptance from another family
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: can mean to an awkward kid can be totally life altering,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: and that I certainly wish that her father hadn't died
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: and we hadn't gone through that. But I don't regret
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: being being one of the witnesses. I don't regret the love.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: And part of the cost of that was I was
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: there when a horrible thing happened. Okay, just to clarify,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: you went on another trip while you were still in
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: high school or since you've reconnected. I'm sorry. We went
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: on a trip before we went to Hawaii the spring
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: bright before we've gone on a ski trip together, and
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: so I felt very I felt just accepted and unfolded
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: into their family in a way that was just remarkable.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: And really it really did a lot for me because
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: I didn't feel that same kind of love and acceptance
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: in my family for whatever reason, and it was really
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: a wonderful thing to land there. Okay, Now you talked
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: about in high school subsequent to this tragic event me
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: having perfectionist tendencies in retrospect, were those always there or
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: was it black and white? After this event? Then you
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: became a perfectionist. I would have told you that I've
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: always been like this, but recently my mother sent me
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: all my old report cards, like from first and second grade,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: and I have this idea that I was always like
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: a straight A student, like real diligent. Not true, not
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: true at all. In second, third and up through fifth grade,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: I had lots of bees, which is funny because when
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: I look at it now, when by the time I
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: got to high school, a B was anathema to me,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: A bee was a failure. So I think that supports
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: the theory that there was something about that trauma that
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: happened right before high school that just turned all my screws,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: and getting a bee was just absolutely devastating to me,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: and I worked really hard not to ever have one
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: high school, college, graduate school, and then in law school. Okay,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: you know, since you're so honest in the book, you
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: talk about your own physicality, you talk about your own
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: sexual experiences, so certainly there's a lot of opening as
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: a result of years of therapy. But you do say
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: that you did have relationships, you did have sex in
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: high school, and so that seems to be at odds.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: How do you explain that? You mean, how how it's
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: not the case that I had no experiences until I
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: got into therapy. And well, I guess what I'm saying
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: is to the if you look at it just on
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: a factual basis, you're saying that you are inexperienced sexually,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: you're not feeling sexually, but statistically, you had had sex,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: you had relationships. So how do you explain the fact
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: that you did have those? Oh, sure in high school.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: That's when I senior year of high school was when
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: I first became sexually active. I had a boyfriend, and
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: the whole thing, the whole relationship, from the very first day,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: it was just laced with betrayal and high school drama,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: and he was always cheating on me. And so while
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: yes I did have those physical experiences, I felt like
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: I had to have sex with him or he wouldn't
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: be my boyfriend, which is a really tricky way to
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: go into a relationship and not so great and myself
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: esteem and my sense of myself as as being someone
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: who was allowed to pick a partner or pick a boyfriend.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: It didn't that would have never occurred to me. I
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: had to take whoever liked me, and this kid liked me,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: and even though he cheated on me, I had to
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: just figure out it seemed like it was my problem,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: not his. In other words, I remember thinking senior year
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: around prom time, well, if I lose some weight, if
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: I go tanning, if I toss up my big Texas hair,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: then he'll stay with me and be faithful. It became
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: my problem to solve his cheating, and that was like
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: not very satisfying. We'll say that, Okay. One thing you
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: emphasize in the book is that men were not hitting
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: on you, and you did not feel attractive. You would
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: go out with your friends and men would interact with them,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: but not you. In retrospect, with all this insight from therapy,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: what do you think was going on there? What I
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: think is that I would go out with my friends,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: and I think I put out a vibe that basically
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: said don't touch me, don't talk to me, don't look
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: at me. And it was totally subconscious because I'd be
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: with my friends, I'd be dressed up, i'd wear lipstick.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: I there was nothing physically wrong with me. There was
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: no reason I don't I wasn't aware of sitting there
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: with a scowl on my face. But I think that
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: all the all the subconscious layers of unresolved grief and
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: spear of attachment, all the things I hadn't learned how
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: to do in high school and through college, I think
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: I ultimately just put out a vibe. It was like
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: almost like an invisible fence, like just don't don't go
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: there when it comes to me and when I look
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: back and I think about nights at these bars in college,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: or when my roommate from college and I at the end,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: we traveled through Europe, everywhere we went. These men loved her,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: and I couldn't. None of them would pay any attention
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: to me. And when I think about it, I don't
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: have a single memory of looking any of them in
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: the eye. I think I was really, really, really shut
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: down and really repressed, to the point where I couldn't
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: even look a strange Swiss guy in the eye just
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: to say hello, Okay, you mentioned your boliemia. Can you
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, So
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: I started throwing up and engaging in all kinds of
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: beliemic shenanigans. When I start it, I started seventh grade.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: It was March of seventh grade, so I was like thirteen. Now,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: you say you went to a girls high school? Was
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: it a girls junior high to middle? In middle school?
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: There were boys there and then they separated. We separated
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: at high school, and so it was the first time
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: I did it. I remember, I remember feeling I probably
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have used the word pressure, But what I was
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: aware of is cheerleading tryouts were coming up. This was
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: seventh grade. It was you know, it's Texas. If you're
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: not going to make the cheerleading squad, that's a real problem.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: So cheerleading. I was also very into ballet, where, of
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: course the standards of having a body the minute you
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: get breasts, you can't be a star ballerina, and I didn't.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: I was always I was not obese. I was not
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: an obese child, but I was chubby and fleshier then
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be. I wanted to be a bony ballerina.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be like Kate Moss, and that would
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: have been enormously unhealthy for me and my body type,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: maybe even for k Moss. But so I remember thinking, well,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: I can't control my appetites. But I had read little
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: teen books about believing gymnasts and seen some ABC after
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: school specials, and I was like, well, I'm gonna try it.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: That'll that fixes the problem. If I can't control my appetite,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: I'll just control what happens when I've lost control with
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: my appetite. And it felt like this is a pretty
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: good idea. But on some level I knew it was
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: very messed up because it was total secret. I didn't
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: tell anybody. I knew not to say. Oh, I discovered
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: this great trick for losing weight. But that started in
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: seventh grade. Okay, A couple of things. In retrospect. Do
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: you believe same sex education like you had in high
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: school good thing, bad thing, good for you, not good
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: for you. I think it was good for me. I
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: think that I'm really torn. Here's the here's what I
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: believe were the pros. The pros were it really really
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: really cemented my own idea of myself as a feminist.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: And when you go to an all girl high school,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: there's no pretending to be dumb, because you don't want
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: the boy next to you to think you're like a
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: buzz kill or not girlfriend material if you're acing physics.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: So everybody worked really hard. The downside of that is
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of pressure. But also and an all
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: girls high school, every leadership position is held by a
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: woman or a young girl, right, every every student council member,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: and all the ideas that are generated about what we're
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: gonna do here, it was all girls. So I think
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: that that really instilled in me something really important about
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: understanding who can be in charge, who can run the show.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's great for a young feminist, that was awesome.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: But by the time I got to college and I
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: went to a giant state school Texas, A and M.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: There were boys everywhere. I hadn't sat next to a
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: boy in math class since I was thirteen years old,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: and I didn't know how to be just friends. I
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: didn't know how they just like, go have a meal
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: with a boy. Everything was the date felt like a date,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: and I just I it took me a long time
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: to find some ease in friendships with boys because we
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: I didn't have access to them all day long, all
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: through high school. Okay, Now, one point you make in
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: the book was you had a dream to go to
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: an Ivy League school, but you ended up going to
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: a state school for financial reasons. To what degree did
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: that negatively impact you and possibly still negative impactly? Um,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: you know, I thought, I've had some I've had some lingering,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: like longing for a different kind of college experience. It
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: sounds ridiculous because I'm forty seven years old. And one
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: thing I did for myself was when I finished with
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: my undergraduate degree, I thought to myself, I mean, I
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: don't know what you do with an English degree. That
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: was one of the things I thought. And the next
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: one was, if you're gonna walk around being resentful about
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: where you went to college, do something about it. So
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: I did have I got a master's at the University
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: of Chicago, which is not Ivy League, but it was
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: close enough and had the Gothic walls, it had the
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: harsh winters, and had the really smart people. So I
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: went and did that sort of as an amends to myself.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: And luckily now I've I've done enough in my life
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: that no one cares where I went to college. But
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: it is part of my story in that I remember
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: that longing and it's it's something that I still think
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: about from time to time. Okay, this is glossed over
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: in the book. So you went immediately from college to
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: graduate school where you off and your graduate degree is
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: in what my graduate degree from the University of Chicago
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: is in humanities. So, first of all, for those people
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: don't know, Universe Chicago and we can define what an
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Ivy League schools, but certainly elite, unbelievable and I've actually
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: been there. But since you were going for humanities, you said,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: what would I do with an English degree? What was
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: your plan? What to do with the humanities degree? That
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: is such a good question. That's where my parents were
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: like humanities, Um what And my thought was I'll do this.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: It was a one year terminal Masters, and I thought, well,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go. I'm gonna dabble in all the humanities
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: and figure out which way to go for a PhD.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: And at the end of the program, all of the
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: members of my my class there was like maybe twenty
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: seven of us in the Humanities department for that year.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Everybody was either going to become a teacher or a lawyer.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: And I still wasn't sure, so I took more time off.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: I just went. By the time I got to the
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: University of Chicago, I knew so many people who were
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: all a b D all but dissertation, and they looked
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: really smart and really unhappy, like really unhappy, and I
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: was like, I was worried that the pH d route
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: was going to be really lonely and that no one
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: would ever read it. Who's gonna read my PhD? I
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: couldn't picture it. I knew someone who was doing like
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: images of women and chessboards and medieval literature, and I
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: was like, this is what I'm gonna do with my life,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: and it just didn't feel right. So I kind of
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: wandered for a couple of years after that until I
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: too settled on law school. Okay, just because you bring
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: up debt in the book, did you have a debt
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: from the University of Chicago? Yes, I did, and that
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: was a very sobering experience. You know, you differ for
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: the song. I was able to defer for the summer
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: for some reason because I didn't have a job. And
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: then once, you know, I get a job, I got
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: a I got an apartment and I was living a
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: whole Mary Tyler more in the city thing. And then
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: that that first bill comes and like, please remit your payment.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: It was like four hundred and twenty three dollars, which
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: was insane. That was like half of my first paycheck.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: And it was very, very sobering, and I thought it
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: was worth it. But it's it's I really feel for
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: people who are struggling with student debt. It's it's not
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: a joke. Okay, So many years did you take off
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: from between graduate school and law school between? I graduated
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: from the UFC and nine and then I matriculated in
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: law school in two thousand. Then what do you do
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: for the two years in between? I went to d C.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: I moved with some friends to a group home in Washington,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: d C. And I took a job. We called it
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: a mix job because it was not a career position.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: And I worked for a company that helped law firms
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: retrieve legal documents from recalcitrant judges. It was it was
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: just like sitting on the phone all day trying to
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: find documents back. This is before the internet was Could
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: you could do it? All? Right? And then I moved
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: back to Chicago, UM and I was I worked for
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: the University of Chicago as an administrative assistant with a
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: master's degree, still thinking I don't know. I wasn't ready
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: to let go of the PhD. And I needed one
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: more year. I worked for a professor who was a
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: PhD and statistician, and that killed the h D dream
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: killed it dead. And then I went to law school.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: How did you decide to go to law school? Well,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: I was when I was working at the UFC. There
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: was a woman there who I just I loved her.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: She was a little bit younger than I was, so
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: she was I was probably twenty five and she was
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: twenty four, and she was married, and she was smart,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: and she was studying for the l set and she
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: was gonna go to law school. And she just she
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: had this plan and it looked so appealing to me.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: And around that time, I had a boyfriend and we
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: broke up and I was so devastated and I was like,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: I need a plan, I need something to do. And
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: I had that kind of feeling around the breakup where
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: where I was convinced this is where I started realizing
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: I may die alone because the relationship fell apart and
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: I couldn't imagine how I could fix whatever inside of
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: me had made that relationship go wrong, or picking a
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: person who wasn't right for me. And I was like, well,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: if I'm never going to have a good personal relationship,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: if I'm never going to be able to get the
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: for the romance part of my life in order, then
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: I'll go to law school because it will give me
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: so much to do. I'll just grind myself into the
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: ground and it won't matter that I don't have a
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: boyfriend and now at least have money and social power
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: and people will at least be like, well, she's got
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: this great job. And it was like a consolation prize decision. Okay,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: because it also comes up in the book you talk
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: about the status of your law school and the ability
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: to get a job subsequent graduation. How did you feel
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: about the law school you went to. Was that the
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: one you chose or did you try to get Did
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: you apply to a Smoker's board of law schools? What
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: was your comfort level there? Oh? My god. I dreamed
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: of going to Northwestern Law School in Chicago or the UFC,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: and I also knew I didn't have the els AT
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: score for it at that time. I don't know if
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: it's still like that, but at the time I was applying,
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: which would have been the els AT score was everything.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: And I'm a hustler and I'm a beast when it
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: comes to making good grades. But I can't do those
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: tests in a way that would get me into a
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: school of my dreams. So I sort of had to
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: decide how I was going to proceed with this. And
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: one of the things I decided was, Okay, if I
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: just get in somewhere, the deal is, I just have
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: to be the best there is. I just have to
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: I have to be number one in my class, or
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: at least I didn't think number one. That's not true.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: I thought I have to be in the top ten percent.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: If I'm going to be at one of these law schools.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: That's not top tier. Okay, you do end up number one.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: I have to ask how that happens. Are you that smart?
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Are you that hard of worker? Is the competition not
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: as stiff or all of those things? Give me your take.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: My take on it is number one. I had come
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: out of the graduate program that I've done at the
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: University of Chicago. It was so hard and so intense,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: in part because I'd come from Texas a and then
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: which is not it would just it, frankly, isn't as
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: rigorous as what was going on at the UFC. I
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: was plopped from Texas into Chicago all of a sudden,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: like one week's reading would be for one class would
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: be like four or five scholarly articles plus Uncle Tom's Cabin,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: which is a nine hundred and seven page book, And
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: that was one class, and I was taking three, and
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: I was I almost drowned, like in the in the
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: pursuit of just trying to get it all straight. And
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: I didn't feel like I was very good at what
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: was happening in graduate school. So by the time I
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: got to law school, I was like so well trained
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: on reading a ton and just working really hard and that.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: The thing about law school as it was taught at Loyola,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: it was all black letter a lot. If you memorize it,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: you've got it. And so I didn't have to like
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: make up theories about Lakhanian mirror stage in Uncle Tom's cabin.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: I had to memorize what's the rule of perpetuities? How
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: would you apply it? And I could wrap my hands
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: all the way around it, and I think that And
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: also I just that's all I did. I did not
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: do one. I said no, no, no to social things,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: and it's I didn't have a life. I just studied. Okay.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: The book opens with you with a moment of existential angst,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: which is really I've never seen it described as well,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: we're on paper, you're at the peak of your life,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: and emotionally you're crashing. This is before you start therapy.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Can you tell us about what you were feeling? Then? Yeah,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: I remember that day so vividly, the day before the
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: real loud crisis in my head became full blown and
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: not just a low grade drum. I had gone up
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: to school, you could go. It was during the summer,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: so I was working at a like a lof term
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: as an intern, and you can go up to school.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: You go to the burst's office, you give them your
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: I D. And they give you a card and tells
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: you your class rank. And I have this little white
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: card and it says number one out of two seventy
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: two out of one seventy two. And I felt this
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: moment of like shock and euphoria, like oh my God,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: like oh my God, like all the ramifications of that,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: all my hard work paid off, and I can work
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: anywhere I want in the city and maybe even in
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: a different city. And I felt euphoria. By the time
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: I had taken the elevator down and walked to the sidewalk,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: I felt I had suicidal ideation, like, well, you did it, Toots,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: But that's all you're gonna get. You can work really,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: really hard, and you can ace all these exams whatever,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: but you can't have a best friend, and you can't
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: have people over to your house, and you have no
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: idea how to have a boyfriend, and you never will.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: And that the thought of all of that made the
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: victory of the valid potential Valectorian. It made it feel
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: so hollow and so fraudulent in some way, because I
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: had done it to hide and so I think that
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: I I think that. So then the next day what
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: happened was I is driving around and it was just
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: like getting louder and louder, like your number one, You're
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: totally alone. And I knew that those were linked, and
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: no one else in the world knew that the way
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: that I knew it in my bones, and I just thought,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: am I going to kill myself? Should I kill mice?
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: I was like, wait, should I? Is someone in my position,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: like I'm I'm having the Socratic method with myself, right,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Is someone in my position who's just gonna work hard
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: to make money for some corporation, doesn't have any idea
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: what her two hearts desires are? Is that a person
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: who should kill herself? And when I had that question,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, I'm in trouble. I'm
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: thinking I just I should die it just I could.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: I could see the disparity, and I was so I
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: was so clueless about how to pull out of the
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: despair that I was in, and I could imagine it
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: going lower and lower and lower. And that's a person
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: that I'm grateful that the pain was so scary that
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: it made me willing to check out some therapy. Okay,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: I just want to say, because people tend to paint
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: with a broad brush, and once you dig deep, the
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: reality is a little bit different. You did not. Let's
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: go back to subsequent to this traumatic event, just before
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: high school. You essentially never had a close friend. You
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: didn't have people come over, you didn't have your group,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: you were isolated. That's a good point in high school.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: I had so high school's right after the events of
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: of Hawaii, the traumatic event, and I did. I had
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: close friends, but I couldn't hold on. I could, you know,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: go with the crew and we go to the park
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: and we'd underage drink and I'd go to the dance
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: with my friends. But I felt like I was very
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: far away, if that makes any sense. I felt like
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: the whole me wasn't there. And maybe that's because I
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: had the sense of I had all these secrets. I
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: had a secret eating disorder, I had a secret I
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: had a sense that I could never talk about Hawaii.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: I could never say I was scared. I could never
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: admit to all the wonderful, bubbly Catholic girls that I
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: was in school with, I couldn't admit to them that,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: like I think I may be not believing in God
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: right now. Um, so I had the sense of partners
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: because of all the things I held back. But I
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: did I did have friends like I. They loved me,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: but there was a part of me that they couldn't reach.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: And I got more and more isolated as the years
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: went by. And in college I had I had a
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: very close best friend and we ran around together and
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: it's and and then she was able to transition into
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: adulthood and I'm still going to school. And once I
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: got once I moved from Texas to Chicago, so by
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: then I was twenty two. I just didn't know. I
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: was so shut down. I could do small talk and
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: I could chit chat with people and fairly extroverted. That's
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: always been true. But in terms of being a true
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: person who could be vulnerable and do the things of
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: a friendship, I just didn't have it in me anymore.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: I didn't know how to do it. So common int
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: with all these experiences, you're going to overreaters, anonymous or
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: whatever by the exact a group as you can tell me,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: tell me when you started that and what that was.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Experience was like, yeah, so that actually saved my life.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: At the time I was in college. I was a sophomore,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: and all the pressures of I had to get a
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: four point oh so far I had a four point
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: oh in college, and now I'm starting my sophomore year
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: and there's a lot of drinking and I'm I'm not
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: great with that. I just felt really uncomfortable. I was
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: scared of getting fat and drinking in Bolimia are a
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: really bad We're a bad combination for me. Maybe it
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: works for other people. Um, And so I got really
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: scared because I was starting to not be able to
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: hold onto everything. I was starting to binge during the
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: day and I used to just binge at night. And
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: I skipped a class. I skipped an English class, which
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: never in my life, never never had I ever skipped class,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: certainly not my beloved literature class. And I realized I
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: turned in a paper. Then I was writing a paper
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: after I skipped class, and it was terrible, and I
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: was like, I didn't I didn't have the energy to
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: make it right. And I just kept binging. And I
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: went to get rid of the food and I fainted
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: in the shower and I was like, oh my god.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: I was nineteen, and I thought I'm going to die
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: doing this. I'm a very dramatic person, but I was like,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: I was like, this is dangerous. This is very dangerous.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: And a friend of mine in high school had gotten
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: into a twelve step program for alcoholism, and she suggested
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: that I go to the one for eaters. And I
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: was like, but I'm not fat. I thought I had
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: to wait until I was obetes. I didn't even know,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: and she said, why don't you just check it out.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: People who are believe it can go too. And so
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: then I started going to meetings, which was great because
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: they taught me, they gave me some skills. I work steps,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: I had a sponsor, I got the coins and that
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: stuff is all really great. But I also treated it
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: like a secret. I didn't tell my roommate knew because
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: she's like, where are you going on a ninth at
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: nine thirty on Saturday morning? Every Saturday morning. So I
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: told my roommate, but I never wanted to talk about it,
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: and it just became another way I had a secret
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: from the world. I exchanged the Bolivia for the meetings
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: as a secret. Okay, but in the when you go
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: through the steps, don't you have to make amends to
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: people and therefore interact and reveal that you're in the group. Yes,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: and I did make a mint, so I made him
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: in my roommate. Um, bless her heart. I stole so
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: much food from her. So I had definitely made amends
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: to her and to my family. And there were you know,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: there was some uh friends on there too, and I
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: definitely told them. But by then, like when I had
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: to go back to my high school. I went back
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: to my high school because I'd stolen money when I
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: was a junior and I was in charge of the
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: parking lot fees and I just took some money and
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: of course I had I took a check and I
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: had interests and I walked in the building. I'm now
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: I'm probably right before I moved to Chicago, and I
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: ran into my trigonometry teacher and I was like, I
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: just blurted. I was like, I'm the I'm a member
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: of a twelve step program, and in order to stay sober,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: I have to give you this money because I stole it.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: And she was like, uh, let me take you to
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: the office. And she's like, I don't know what to
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: do with this money. Um, So I did do that.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: But I think that I, you know, I wasn't open.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: It wasn't Nobody ever asked me a follow up question
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: like how are you doing? Do you still go to meetings?
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: I think I just blurted it out and then went
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: back behind the curtain because I didn't. I was ashamed.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: I was super ashamed of what I'd done, of being
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: a being nineteen years old and going to twelve Step
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: meetings like some old dude from a A on TV.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: And I kept it still very guarded and very under wraps. Okay,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: now it's through oh A that you ultimately connect with
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: the therapist. Can you tell sad story? Yeah? So two
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: pieces of that. Number one is the summer. So after
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: I find out my class rank, I'm starting to sort
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: of like Frey at the edges emotionally, and I'd go
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: to my meetings, my little twelve Step meetings, and I
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: would just cry and people say are you okay? And
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: I'd be like, yeah, I'm fine, just kind of like
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: I don't even know what to say. What do I say?
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm first in my law school class, and I
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: kind of want to die it just I didn't know
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: how to do that. And people started recommending their therapists
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: to me, and I was like, I'm not going to therapy.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: I don't have any money, first of all. And then
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: finally this woman was like, please come to dinner with me,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: and I didn't want to go. I was like, that
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: was not something I didn't do. The fellowshipping very well.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to do that, and so I went
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: to dinner with her and she just looked, you know,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: like when you run into someone who something's changed. Like
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: I was like, did you fall in love? Are you pregnant?
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: What's going on here? She's wearing lip glass and her
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: eyes are bright, and she just seemed lighter. And she said, oh,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: it's my new therapist. And I was like, oh, here
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: we go again. And she didn't even really She said,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: you know, he could really help you, and I was
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, yeah, and she said, well he does
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: groups and they're really cheap. And I just seized on
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: the word cheap and I said, what do you mean cheap?
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: And she's like, it's like one third the cost of
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: an individual. And she started telling me about her group.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: But really what sold me was what I saw in
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: her eyes and what I could see about her being
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: because everyone had everyone loves their therapist and wants you
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: to go see their therapists. But I saw something in her.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: Plus it was cheap, and so that sort of convinced me.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: And then when I went to my first meeting, I mean,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: I went ahead and called him because I thought, well, okay. Oh. Also,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: she told me right before we left, like you're standing
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: at the the exit of a restaurant, She's gonna go
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: one way and I go to the other. Off the
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: top of her head, I don't even know what made
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: her said say this. She said, Oh, he's really happy.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: He just got remarried, and he smiles all the time.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: And something about that just so captivated my imagination, like remarried,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: he knows what it's like to lose love and a divorce,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: and he smiles. And I just became convinced that this
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: therapist could help me. So I made an appointment and
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: I go see him, and I sit down for my
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: first appointment, and I knew him. I had seen him
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: in meetings meeting meetings when I was in graduate school,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: and I immediately thought, oh, my god, he's gonna tell
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: me he can't be my therapist because he knows me
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: from meetings. But he didn't actually recognize me, and by
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: the time I told him where we've been, he said,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: that's not a reason for us not to work together. Okay,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: And you saw him three times before you went to
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: the group which we inspired, you know, in that prep
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: of three times. Oh my gosh. He was so weird.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: He was so weird, he was so confident. I would
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: tell him two little lines about like a relationship i'd
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: have like the guy that I dated in high school
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: who did on me a lot and smoked a ton
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: of pot, and he would so then he just said, oh,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: you like addicts, you love alcoholics, And I thought, well,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: I don't know. That seems sort of aggressive. Um. I
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: didn't disagree, but I thought that he was being pretty
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: forward and pretty copy um. And part of me didn't
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: like that, and part of me loved it, like I
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: felt so seen, and the fact that he could pick
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: up on the patterns in my life helped me know
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: that I was kind of a type in some way,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: that he'd seen women or men like me, and that
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: he he had my number. I knew that when I
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: mentioned I was first in my class and that I
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: have I was BLIEMI recovering Beliem it. He just seemed
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: to be He just kind of looked at me like, ah, okay, okay,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: so what do you want? He just kept asking me
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: what do you want? What do you want? And what
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: I really wanted was the way that I phrased it
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: back then, was I wanted to be a real person.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: I wanted to like exhale around other people and not
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: constantly be striving to make them happy or get the
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: good grade or be the best. I wanted to just
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: be a person. I wanted friends to just stop by
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: my house and me not put any makeup on or
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: do anything. I just wanted ease and casualness and real
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: deep attachments. And I really wanted a boyfriend. And I
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: told him all that, and then he kept saying, what else,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: what else? And I was almost annoyed because I was like, listen,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Mr Perfect, And I could see his degrees on the wall,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: and they were fancy. They were Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, Harvard.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: I was like, listen, Harvard, if you deliver on those things,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: then we can talk about what else. But I didn't
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: have this bucket list full of I want to be
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: a poet, I want to travel the world. I didn't
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: have any of that. Let's deal with the basics here.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: So I was intrigued by his confidence about what he
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: saw in me. And then at the end of the
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: first session, he said, I can get you where. We
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: can get you where you want to go. If you
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: join a group and you disclosed to the group every
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: aspect of your relationship, life, every aspect of love, friendship,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: all of it. If you can turn it over to
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: the group and commit to the group, we can get you.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: We can get you married, we can get you friends.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: You want babies, it's like babies, Like, let's just get
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: me a hygienic boyfriend. I was not there yet, but
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: he was really I thought it was really overpromising to
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: be frank. Okay, so you show up for the first
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: day at the group. What's your experience? Oh my god,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: Oh my god. Well I was really happy that right
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: before my last that that third session when he's Dr
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: Rosen is like, and that's not his real name. Everyone
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: thinks it is. It's not that last session, Like, with
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: two seconds to go, I had the wherewithal to say, wait, wait,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: what's going to happen to me when I start group?
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: And he did that. I'm so glad you asked, and
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: he said, every single one of your secrets is going
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: to come out. And I felt like someone had just
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: like shot an arrow through my heart like terror. I
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: didn't even I didn't have in mind like what secret
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: it was. But I was like, oh, oh my god,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: so afraid. And so then I go into my first session.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: And this will tell you something about how little, how
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: few boundaries I had. The first thing that someone says
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: to me, a man in the group across the circle
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: from me says, top or bottom, I know he's talking
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: about sex, and I it didn't even occur to me
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: to to say, why are you asking that? Or I
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: don't have to answer that, or who are you or
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: why don't you go first? I was just like, uh okay,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: uh top, Like I did not know that. I think
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: that says everything about my state of mind and my
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: state of people pleasing, because I was like, you want
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: to know, I'll tell you anything you want to know.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: And all these years later, I still go to group.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: I've seen people come in, men and women deal with
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: that kind of hazing, as I call it, in so
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: many different ways, and I just didn't. I did. I
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: did my thing, which was try to deliver and I've
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: seen other people say I'm not going there with you.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you later or maybe or we've got to
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: do some more work before I tell you how I
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: want to have sex. So it was like from the
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: very first second, it was like go time. Okay, there's
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of stuff you reveal, so for people who
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: haven't read the book and maybe sound like I'm really
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: digging deep, but it's right there in the book. One
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: there's a focus on your breasts and that they are large,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: and you say a couple of things, one that you
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: were brought to sleep, be that you wear two bras,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: and this comes up in therapy, So what's going on there?
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: I that that that absolutely did happen. We still talk
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: about breasts all the time, which to me, I would
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: never be comfortable doing the work I needed to do
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: around my breasts and how I feel about them and
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: what they mean to me and what they mean to culture,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: and what they mean to my lovers or my children
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: or anybody else. I would never be able to do
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: that work. If I was not in a group with
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: other women, I would not be able to sit across
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: from an authority figure like a therapist and just talk freely.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: I just don't. I can't imagine it. Maybe I could,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine it. But because I go to group
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: where there's three or four or five other women in
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: the circle, and all of us have different relationship to
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: our breasts, right, it happens to be My story is
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: that little Christie Ballerina in me is so sad that
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: I have breasts and I don't have the super flat chest.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: It's like I always think of that as like, that's
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: my anorexia talking the part of me that like I
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: just want that bony, flat Margot Fontaine Ballerina chest and
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: that's not what I have. I have like double ds.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: And so there's other women in my group who are
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: deeply ashamed, deeply ashamed that their breasts are really really small.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: There's women in my group who are sad that they
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: were big, they had children and now they're small. And
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: how complicated that is and how how that's tied to
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: my understanding of myself as a woman, as a sexual being,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: as someone who's safe in society or not safe based
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: on my breast. It's been incredible and one of the
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: things we excavated in the This was probably my second
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: year I had had an experience in high school where
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: I participated in this. I it was like one of
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: the dances, like a spring fling dance, and we were
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: out this part. I was drunk. I've been drinking proudly, Zeema,
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: I'm not proud of that, but that's what happened. And
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: I was buzzed and the boys were like paying attention
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: to me, and I had a strap the stress my day.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know where my date was. He was somewhere off.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: All the girls were off somewhere, and I somehow wandered
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: over to all the boy They've got their dip in
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: their mouth, they've got their beers, they all are dating
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: my friends. And one of them walked over and he
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: stuck his hand down my dress. And I remember laughing,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: but also like not like just knowing like something was happening,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: that the laughter was covering it like shame. It was
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: shame and violation, and also like I don't know how
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: to stop this, and somewhere inside I knew I didn't.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: I wasn't like the other girls who had self esteem
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: or didn't have boys hands down their dress. Um, And
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: then one by one they did. I think it was
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: like five couple of them more than once, and I'm
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: just laughing, carefree. I liked the attention. I liked the
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: None of these boys really paid that much attention to
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: me was my perception, and that was something that came
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: out in group early on. And when I shared that
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: in group, every single woman in the group shared a
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: story about her breasts. Not all violations, some of them
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: just feelings. And I can't even tell you how much
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: less alone I felt, which sounds like not like that
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: doesn't sound like therapeutically cataclysmic, but it was. It was
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: to me. I'd never had these conversations. I never knew
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: I could say what had happened to me and have
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: like watch women's heads nodding like yeah, yeah, that happened
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: to me something like that. I feel that way too.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: That's where I started to change and become a different
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: person by connecting with other people. Okay, let's get into
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: the apples. Tell us the story with the apples. Oh
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: my gosh. So when I started my twelve step program,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: and when I was nineteen years old, I had a
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: sponsor and she told me she's like you. I was like,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: the wisdom and twelve step program is to find a
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: sponsor asked someone who as what you want and ask
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: them how they got it. So I get the sponsor.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: She's this nice woman, she's a housewife, she's real gentle.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: She seems very sane around food. So I said, how
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: do you eat? I want to eat the way you eat.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: And she said to me, I eat anything I want
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: in any quantity, at any time, any pace. But I
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: don't need any sugar, no corn, no flour. And there
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: was a couple of other things on there. And I
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: was like, Okay, that's it, and she was like yeah.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: And so somehow in my brain I turned that into
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: I can eat. I made a list of maybe ten
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: foods I would let myself eat, and it was like
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: turkey and cabbage and cheese and fruit, and I was hungry.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: Looking back now, I can think to myself, maybe at
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: night I binged on apples because my body needed more food.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: I would I would drink skim milk at nights, or
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: I would have yogurt. But it was a very diety deprivation.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: Even people who are on diets e way better than that.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: But at night I would be really hungry, and I'd
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: be so scared that I was gonna binge on something
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: problematic like ice cream or bread or chips. So I
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: would buy these apples, and early on, maybe before I
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: left college, I would have like two apples at night,
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: and I remember my roommates saying, that's weird. Who eats
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: two apples? And I was like, leave me alone. I'm
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: in a program. But by the time I was living
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: alone in graduate school, and even when I had roommates
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: in d C and then back to living alone in Chicago,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: it's just like escalated. So by the time I got
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: to dr Rosen at night, I would eat. I would
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: eat anywhere from five. One time, I ate twelve apples.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: And sometimes I call my sponsor back in Texas and say,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: I just ate twelve red, delicious apples that cannot be
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: sobriety or whatever, and she would say, did you pick
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: up your drug, which she wouldn't consider, like flour or
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: sugar was the drug and apples weren't. So She's like
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: it's fine, and I was like okay, but nobody in
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: my nobody else. She was like this disembodied voice back
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: in Texas. No one in Chicago knew I knew I
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: did that it was super expensive. And I remember one night.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: It was snowing, and I still, what do I know
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: about snow. I'm from Texas and I get in my
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: car and it's eleven thirty and I'm driving to the
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: all night grocery store on Broadway to get more apples,
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: almost at midnight, and I was like, this is as crazy.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: This is like those movies where someone's going out to
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: get cracked. It said, I'm going to get apples, and
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: that's That was one of the secrets that that last
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: um individual appointment when Dr Rosen was like, your secrets
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: were gonna come out. I remember walking down the hall
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: of thinking, if they find out what I eat, I
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: am so screwed. And they did. Ultimately, the that is
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: revealed and you get a prescription to make us take
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: uh make a call? How did it come out? And
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: then tell us about the prescription in the ultimate phone holes. Yeah,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: this was that. When this session went down, I thought
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: that Dr Rosen was a mad genius because we were
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: not talking about food. We I swear we were talking
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: about Rory's ferret. We were not talking about food, and
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: out of the blue, He's like, Christie, why don't you
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: tell the group what you ate yesterday? And I was
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: like my whole body was like inflamed. I'm just like
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: I felt like sweat was pouring down. I was like,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: I can't, I can't. I jumped. I had taken my
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: shoes off, and I jumped out of my chair and
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: I was like hopping around the circle like kind of
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: making a fist and pound punch in the air like
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: I can't, I can't, I can't, And everyone is like
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: what is wrong with you? And I just said I
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: just can't. I'll tell you anything, I just can't do it.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: And then I sat down and everyone's like you have to,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: Like the way that you're acting is proof you need
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: some help, and so, you know, I tell them the
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: first part. I couldn't look anybody. I like like grew
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: my fists into my eyes and I'm like okay, And
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: I said it real fast, like an auctioneer, like cabbage
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: and cheese, milk. And I got to the part where
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: I told them my dinner and I paused for a
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: long time and someone's like, what is what is the problem?
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: And I was like, well, there's more. And I'm sure
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: they were expecting like biscuits or I went out and
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: got more a chocolate cake and I was like, I
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: ate some apples, five apples, actually it was seven apples,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: and and I just waited for like the ceiling to
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: fall in. And when I took my hands away from
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: my eyes, oh, Dr rose And said, can you open
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: your eyes? And I was like nope. It's like okay, well,
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: why don't you try or pray for the willingness? Right?
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: So I looked at everybody and nobody was like scorning me.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Everybody looked curious and compassionate. And somebody said, do you
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: think you're hungry? And I bat it that a way
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: I wasn't ready to eat differently. And then Dr Rosen's
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: prescription was He's had me look at another group member, Rory,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: who had her own food struggles. He's like, look at Roy.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: Can you call her every night and tell her what
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: you ate? And I was like, why don't I call
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: her tonight and I'll tell her what I'm gonna eat tomorrow.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: He's like, no, no, no, no no, We're not trying
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: to keep you from doing anything. But at the end
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: of the day, tell her what you did so that
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: you can let go of the shame. I said, but
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: what if it's like ten apples every night. He's like, great,
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: that's what you're calling her for. It doesn't matter. And
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: I looked at Rory, like, why does this woman who's
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: a busy professional want to hear this apple monologue every night?
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: And she just said, great, sweetie, I'll tell you my
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: food too. And I was like, she was like, she
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: just doubled down on me. And I was so afraid
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: in the first three nights I called her At nights.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: I just bawled afterwards because I was so scared of
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: letting go of the secret. I'm scared of change, and
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: I knew this was big. This was big. To tell
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: someone every day about my food. That was the river
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: I had never crossed before, and it was scary. It
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: was scary for weeks, but it was those first three
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: nights I was just beside myself. But it did get easier. Well,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: the question, obviously is twofold one. Did you continue to
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: eat that volume of apples? To do eat apples at
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: all anymore? Um? You know the volume. The volume came down,
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: but it took about and not consciously like I would
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: go into group and say, well, I've been calling Rory
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: about my food and my apples and I'm still eating
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm still at four or five six, and
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: even like it doesn't matter. It's your job isn't to
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: fix your apples. Your job is to tell Rory what
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: you eat. So I'm my fine um and the volume.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: I want to say it was maybe nine months before
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: it sort of came down to after dinner I'd have
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: two pieces of fruits, which is as my roommate in
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: college said, it's still weird, but within the realm and
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: to this day, my kids love apples and I just
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: can't do them. I can not apple pie maybe, but
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: not a straight up apple I have. I've eaten my
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: lifetime share and probably somebody else's lifetime share too. The doctor,
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: a typical of many therapy experiences, gives prescriptions. Could you
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: talk about some of the prescriptions? One is obviously called
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: Rory about the apple. When you're interacting with a guy
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: who has a boyfriend a girlfriend, could you tell what
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: he tells you to do there? Oh my god. When
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: I look back at this, I'm like, you know, I
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: kind of I didn't have to do everything he said.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: But here's what Dr Rosen said. I I love this boy.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: I love him so much. She's in my law school
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: we have like this great connection. But PSC has a
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: girlfriend and he's very unsuitable in so many ways, but
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: I just loved him, and so I knew I was
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: going to be going out with him in a group
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: of people that night. So I'm in group and I'm like, ah,
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: the dreamy boy, and and Dr Rosen puts on his
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: thinking face and he's thinking, and I think he's gonna
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: tell me something very interesting about myself or some insight,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: or maybe he's gonna say I think you shouldn't go.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: And then I was gonna be like, fuck you, I'm
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: totally going, and he didn't. He said, tonight, I want
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: you to be honest with the smoker. We called him
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: the Smoker. I said, okay, what should I tell him?
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: And he said, tell him the truth that you are
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: a cock teeth And everyone in my group like the
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: sucks in the air in the room, and I think
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: Rory and Carlos were both like, she can't say that,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: Dr Rosen, what are you doing? And I, because of
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: my trying to please Noess, I'm like, I'm pissed because
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: he's given me something that I don't think I can do.
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: And and in the end, so we go off that night.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: I go out that night with the Smoker and We're
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: in this cab with this other guy, and I'm thinking,
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: am I going to do it? And part of me
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: I wanted to go back to group and to show
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: Dr Rosen, whatever you throw at me, I will do it.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: I am here to play and I had the pride
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: of that. And and plus this guy did not like me.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: I mean he was not This was never gonna go anywhere,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: and I was sick of that. So I lean over
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: and I tell him, I said, you know, I'm a
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: total cock tease and like and then I like look
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: out the window. I'm like, oh my god, what have
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: I done? What have I done? Like? Why am I
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: doing with this crazy therapist of mine? Has said? The
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: other guy in the cab was sort of like what
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: And the the guy that I loved, the Smoker, he
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: didn't really react. Um. And when I got in bed
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: that night, I was like, I cannot believe I did that.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: But part of me too, that was part of me.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: The other part of me was like I did have pride,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: like that was probably an insane thing to do, and
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: that guy is gonna have a story about me for
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: the rest of his life if he remembers it um,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: And I was like, what if he tells someone at
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: law school that I said that? And then I was
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: just like, I don't care. I'm on my side. Dr
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: Roe isn't is on my side. I don't know what
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: it's gonna take to get well. I thought he was
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: going to prescribe me some pills, maybe some trasdone, and
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: I would be out of there. And that's not how
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: it worked out. And I decided that this was like,
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: this is gonna sound very cheesy, but there's something like
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: this is fun, this is this is interesting. I'm at
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: least interesting now right like I've done something crazy, but
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: at least I'm interesting. At least I'm alive. Okay. Reading
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: the book, it doesn't seem like in real life you
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: are a cock tease? Was he just saying that to ultimately,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: you know, challenge you or in retrospect, are you a
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: cock tease? Or were you? No? That is one thing
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: that I wish. I wish I could time travel and
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: go back and ask him if he knows what a
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: cock teas is because I was not. I was a
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: single woman. I was by then people knew that I
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: did very were well in law school because by then
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: everyone knew I don't know how, but it was people
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: knew I was the top spot, right. So so I
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: had a reputation as a smart girl and a driven girl.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: And that's fine. But but when I think about like,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: I don't I and then my heart of hearts, I
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: think that Dr Ross doesn't know what a cock tease is,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: and I think he just gave me something provocative to say.
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, I do think maybe that's unfair. I mean,
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: that's too harsh. What I did have a pattern of
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: doing was chasing unavailable men, and he was just the
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: next and the Smoker was the next in line. He
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: had a girlfriend he was really loved and she was
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: so beautiful, and so I think that he was trying
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: to break that pattern. But I do think often of
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: that word cock tease. I wasn't. I don't. My understanding
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: of the word is I was just a nice girl
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: who I gave him my notes. At this guy at
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: the Smoker, I gave him my notes. Sometimes we'd have lunch.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a chatty person, so we would like
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: make fun of our teachers. There was a girl in
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: our law school class who would bring her money. We
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: would talk about the bunny girl, and none of this
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: seems like salacious. So I don't know why that word,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: And I wish I could go back and excavate that
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: and figure out why that word if it just seemed
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: provocative and or if he was just like saying if
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: I would do it? Okay, The word in the group
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: is is if you're really doing well, you'll graduate to
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: have a second group and your goal, your goal is
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: to qualify for a second group. One tell us about
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: your desire to do that too. Aren't you thinking on
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: some level this is gonna be more money and you know,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: we'll just sort of leave it at that. Yeah, so
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: what's going on there? Yeah, they're definitely And certainly my
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: experiencing group is different from my groupmates. But I was
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: watching and there were people in my group, but when
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: I started, three of the group members were in other groups,
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: and I was sort of like, huh, you get to
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: home twice it felt like they'd been anointed and they
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: were chosen. Like that's a real big trigger for me,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: the idea that you have someone has been chosen for
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: something that I haven't been chosen for. That will get
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: me every time. And so while while I'm in my
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: first year, wrapping up my first year, one of the
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: guys in the group, Carlos Dr Rosen, has this intense
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: conversation with him and invites him, invites him to join
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: a second group, and I'm like, huh. It felt like
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: he was going to be laughing me, and he was
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: more beloved, and I just lost my mind, Like why
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: don't you offer me this like deluxe treatment? It felt
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: I wasn't really thinking about what the logistics of that
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: would be or what it really meant. Um. I just wanted.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: I wanted all the opportunities that everybody else got. It
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: was like super greedy like that. And by the time
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: he offered it to me, there was a point at
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: which he thought I was ready. Oh yeah. It was
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: right after I had a sex dream of about Dr Rosen,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: or actually it wasn't about Dr Rosen. I had a
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: very satisfying sex dream, one of my first ever about
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: Luther Vandross who Because of that dream, I will love
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: forever And I go to group and I talk about
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: it because I see it as a symbol of my
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: burgeoning sexuality. My repression is going to fall away. Look
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: what Luther and I did, and I was so proud
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: of myself. And at the end of the dream, Dr
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: Rosen says, oh, that dreams about me, and I was like,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: I was so offended. I was like, don't ruin my dream.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: And so then we we go around and round about
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: this dream and whether it's about him. I didn't know
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: that Freudian people or therapists always think their dreams are
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: always about them, um, And I didn't really. I was
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: just mad. And then at the end when I finally
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: accepted out, like, fine, Dr Rosen, I wish you would
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: go down on me. I just gave into it. Then
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: he proclaims I was ready for a second group. So
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: then I was like, oh, you tricked me. You tricked me.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: But by the time he offered that, I had had
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: an internship with a law firm where I got paid
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: like big law firm books. So I had that cash
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: just waiting around to just double up on my therapy. Okay,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: what is different about the second group from the first?
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, the second group was so scary. It
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: was so scary. It was all women. And when I started,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: one of the things Dr Rosen said to me was
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: I went to my first group and it was like scary.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: There was a woman in there who was like a
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: buddy of mine from from the twelve step program, and
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: she already like I knew her in in our relationship,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: and then I get there and she's like already friends
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: with everyone in the group, and I felt like I
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: had intruded. I had a sense she didn't really want
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: me there. And the women were just larger than life.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: They were incredible and complex and loud, and they got
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: into a fight and they talked about sex I'd never
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: heard of, and I was I felt like I was
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: a little bitty kid, like a four year old who
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: was sitting at the table with the adults. And I
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: didn't know what I had done, and I wasn't expecting
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: it at all. I thought it was gonna be this
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: cozy women like a womb, and it was not like
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: that at all. And I wanted to leave from the
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: second I got in there. And one of the things
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: that I thought was, why is this so different? And
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: Dr Rosen said to me when I went back to
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: my when I went to the next week, I went
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: to my former group, and I was like, that sucked.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: I didn't like that for one second. And Dr Rosen
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: said to me, I think you have more problems with
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: women than you do with men. And I protested that vehemently.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: I was like, are you kidding? Look at the way
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: these men treat me, look at what I've done, blah
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: blah blah. And he just like sat there, like I
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: think what I think. You can you think what you think.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: But that's that's my take on you. And it's taken
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: me about fifteen years to realize. I think that he
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: was right. I think that he was right. Okay. One
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: thing you mentioned, and it's really very interesting in the
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: book is being a people pleaser. You tell us about
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: being a people pleaser, where that came from and how
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: you made progress there. Yeah, I I wonder where that
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: came from. I think it's it's some of its culture.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: Some of it is kept Texas Catholic. Being a girl
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: and being a pleaser. There's so many affirmations you get
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: from the world by being a pleaser. People like people
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: who are trying to please them. My teachers loved me,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: my friends who were the recipients of me trying to
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: please them. You know, I was always the designated driver
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: I you know, I would volunteer for things, thinking well,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: if I'm the designated driver, then I get to go
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: to the party and they can't leave me behind. I
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: was always motivated by this fear of abandonment, and so
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: it's like over functioning and a lot of relationships. And
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: one thing I loved about when I got to group,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: it was so obvious from that first day when I'm
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: just trying to be the valedictorian group therapy and answering
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: questions about my sex life with total strangers who were men,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: and I think I was I thought that when you
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: went to therapy you had to do pure excavation. What
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: does your dad do, what does your mom do? How
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: did this impact you? And we do a little bit
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: of that, but what what happens most often and probably
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: seventy five percent of the time, we look at the
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: relationships that we're having in the group in the moment
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: with Dr Rosen and our peer groupmates, and it all
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: comes out right there, so it doesn't really matter as
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: much like, well, it was your mother's Swedish background part
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: of the reason why you can't spend a penny, maybe,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: but what what about now? And so we would get
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: into group and I remember one time I had a
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: huge fight with Carlos. He had asked me to help him.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: He was doing something at home, like something decorating, and
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: I had a law school exam the next day and
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to go help him, but I went anyway.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: And I was so resentful and I was so mad
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: and didn't he know how to test? And why didn't he?
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: So we go into group and I'm getting ready to
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: open my mouth to say I was so resentful that
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: I did that just to please him, just because he's
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: my friend, and I thought he wouldn't love me if
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: I said no, and he Carlos opened his mouth and said,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: you know, Christie came over to help decorate, and she
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: really fucked up the wreaths and I was like, excuse me,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: and we were I was so mad. I was like,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: what are you talking about? And he was they were
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: having a party and they we were stringing these like
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: ribbons on a wreath and I guess I didn't do
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: it right. He was like, I thought you were in
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: a sorority. I thought you could do stuff like that.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: And I was like, wait a minute, no, I'm mad
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: at you because I didn't want to be there. I
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: had a test. I had a crim log exam, and
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: so we got to tease it out right there like
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: all like I didn't really want to be there. I
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: didn't set the boundary. I didn't do what I wanted.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: So when I went there and I did a sort
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: of subpar job, and and I could have avoided all
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: of if I had just said, this weekend doesn't work,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: I'm happy to help you and my exams are over,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: because I would have been. But I was always so
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: afraid if I ever said no, I would never get
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: another invitation, and not only that, then he would like
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: stop being my friend, which is so immature, But that
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: was me, at age, with a year of therapy under
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: my belt, going to do these wreaths when I had
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: a legit reason to say I can't do it today.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: Can we find some other time for me to help
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: you decorate your house? It's crazy? Okay, you're very analytic. Uh,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: bubbly's got a bad connotation. But let's just say you're
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: upbeat and you were very articulate. What would be the
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: difference between the conversation you and me are having pre
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: therapy and now we just wouldn't have this conversation. What
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: I think I was so good at before therapy, was
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: not seeing opportunities, so I would never have to step
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: up like I would have. I would have never written
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: a book. I would have just never I could I could.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: I had blinders on and I didn't see opportunities professional
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: personal We just would we just it would have been
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: impossible for us to have this conversation. I just would
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: have blocked the opportunity. But long before we'd ever sit
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: down together. But you mentioned that you were chatty with
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: the smoker where you did you have the same personality
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: now just different content or have you become more valuable
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: as a result of therapy. I've definitely become more valuable, definitely,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: But some of it, I mean, I've always been sassy,
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: and when I think back to my lunches with the smoker,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: I think about, like how I tried to connect with him,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: and most of what I recall was bringing to bear
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: my sass and my analytics to really like make fun
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: of other people, including myself. So there's a ton of
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: self denigration. And I would I would tell him like
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: I would maybe by then by I was dating a
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: little bit, like going on blind dates, and they were
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: always they were fine in the in the real world, honestly,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: they were just fine. They weren't love connections. But I
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: would like play it up and I would tell him
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: about these guys and it was so maybe that is why,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: maybe that's why Dr Rosen called me a cock tease,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: because I would, you know, we would play out these
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: conversations that I was always the butt of the joke.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: I was always the poor smart girl who's dating dating
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: the boy who's doesn't have a wallet or camp pay
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: his rent. And it was just sort of like, not fully,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: I wasn't owning any of my competence or my for
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: my full self. You know. It was like I was
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: sort of playing at jackass because I thought it was entertaining,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: and I'm sure it was. I mean, there's there's plenty
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: of that to do, but there's it was my only mode. Okay,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: As a result of therapy, you end up having relationships
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: to use. You use the vernacular, so I'll repeat it.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: You have a relationship, extended relationship, and then you ended
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: by saying you're no longer gonna suck dirty dick. Tell
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: us about that relationship and your revelations there. Yeah, I
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: think about that a lot, and I think about like
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: my I think about when I think about what I
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: put up with in relationships, what I thought I had
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: to do to be a person deserving of relationships, I
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: think about that exact thing, and I think about, you know,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: I had a boyfriend and I loved him. I did
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: love him, and he did love me, and we were
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: really ill suited for each other, in part because he
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: didn't want to be in a relationship and I desperately
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: wanted a boyfriend. I wanted the works, I wanted brunch,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: I wanted regular sex, I wanted presents on birthdays, and
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: he just wanted to play video asky video games. And
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: I kept thinking, as is my way, If I just
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: do it right, if I could help him snap out
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: of his bunk, or if I I could get him
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: to go to more of his a A meeting, will
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: He'll be this boy of my dreams. And it just
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: it wasn't the case. And when he got really really depressed,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: like I am not proud of this, but I watched
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: him like wake up in the morning, drink a cup
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: of black coffee, didn't even have a toothbrush, don't know
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: where the toothbrush went. The cat, his cat would like
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: defecate in the living room. It just languished there and
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: I'm there, right, I'm watching all of this. I'm I'm
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: making judgments and thinking what am I doing here? Like?
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: Why is this what I think I deserve? What am
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: I doing? And there was one night where I thought, oh,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: I know how I can fix this. I'm gonna I'm
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: gonna give him pleasure. And he hadn't showered in days,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: and you know, a body isn't A body that hasn't
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: been showered has a lot of issues and you probably
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: don't want to be that close to it. But I
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: just was like gung ho, and that was really, like
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: you know they say in the pro the twelve stepper,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: like that was a bottom. That was definitely a bottom.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: By the time I went to group and reported the
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: first group, I was too scared to tell him because
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: if you say that out loud, I I gave my
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: boyfriend a blowjob when I didn't want to, when his
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: body was unwashed, and he didn't seem all that into it,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: and my pure motive was to snap him out of depression.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: You can't say that in therapy and not have someone
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: you know give you a side i and maybe suggest
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: you take different action. And so in the afternoon group
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: with the ladies, I told them about it, and they
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: did react as you would imagine, like, oh my god,
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: you have to stop. And it was that that helped
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: me let go of the relationship to like that very
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: basic thing that's like on like sex in the city, right,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: the lesson over and over again, it's better to be
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: alone than in a bad relationship. But I had to
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: test that theory so many times and in so many ways.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: You reference yourself is frigid? Uh were you? I think? So?
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: I think that I was scared. I think I don't
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: know what that Maybe that's not totally the right word.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: But when I think about who I chose, I chose
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: a man who did not want to have sex. That
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: tells me that if I take the focus off him
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: and put it on myself, I chose a man who
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: didn't want to have sex. That tells me I don't
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: want to have sex. And I watched my once I
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: got closer to people, and I'm having relationships with people
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: in group, and I got a roommate, which was amazing,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: and this wonderful woman from law school, and I'm able
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: to like participate more in the social world of my
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: law school classmates, and they're talking about they're wonderful getaways
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: with their boyfriends, and I can tell they're talking about
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: having hot sex, and I'm just like, oh, really, I
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: watched my boyfriend play computer games and I slept like
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: in head to toe flannel. I really do think that
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: there was a frigid be born of repression and I
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: just didn't have I hadn't come, I hadn't grown up,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: and I hadn't learned how to do a relationship in
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: the way that I needed in order to be sexually
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: expressive and have a sex life that made some kind
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: of sense. Tell us about opera boy? Do you mean
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: the one I married? No? No, wasn't there a guy
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: his family was connected so that he could have really
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: good tickets? Yes? Yes, yes, Oh my gosh. Um that
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: so that relationship. You know, by then, each relationship I
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: had a harder time. I mean, each relationship got better.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: I will say that each one got better, which is
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: exactly what should happen. And I was always very invested
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: in well, I'm recovered and I'm in therapy, so I
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: deserve a good relationship. So I started dating this young
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: man and he was sweet and kind and very well
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: connected and very wealthy, and that was a step up
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: because I had paid rent for my last boyfriend. And
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: what was strange about our relationship There were several things,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: but one was there was no easy communication. For all
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: that I've learned by then, I've been in therapy, I
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: mean almost four years, and I've learned how to go
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: and do things and emote and have relationships. And here
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: comes this guy, and I felt like he was so respectable.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: He was another one who had impressive credentials, and I
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: felt like I had just go along with what he
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: was doing, and like we had a we had a
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: situation where this is the best example. When we would
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: be intimate, he would always have to flip me over
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: so he couldn't look at my face. I don't know
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: what was going on. And what's really cringey about that
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: whole thing is I never asked. I never had a
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: sense of my own voice. And I remember I would
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: be in his bedroom with my face and his pillow
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: because he flipped me over, and I'm like, I don't
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: want to be doing this I and well, maybe I do,
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: but I at least want to know what's happening and
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: why aren't we talking about it, and I couldn't believe that.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: I couldn't use my voice just to say like, hey,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: what's this about for you? Or this is kind of
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: hot maybe, but what's what is this about? Do we
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: always have to have sex this way? I didn't say
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: any of that, and it made me feel like, the
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: hell is all this therapy for it? This is what
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: my sex life is? And I hung on here we
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: go again because I didn't want to be alone because
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: now now I'm thirty four and that's even older than
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: when I was thirty and doing dumb things with men,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: and it just felt like every time I felt like,
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: this is my last chance, and if I can't make
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: it work, there's no other men. It's not like I
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: lived in a teeny tiny Mayberry. I lived in Chicago.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: There were men everywhere. But I just had this terrible
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: kernel belief that this was my last chance and if
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: I didn't make it work, it was because I hadn't
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: worked hard enough. Okay, talking about the end of that relationship,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, this was so dark, and it seems
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: like when I was writing it, I was like, this
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: seems like it's not real. But we're at this fancy
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: club in Chicago, and or we're walking into the health
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: club and his friend stops us in the parking lot.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: He like, it seems like you know people who you know.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: He was a doctor, So all these doctors all know
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: each other and they're all at the same places, and
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: so they're these guys are chatting and they're talking about
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: stocks and whatever, hospital politics, and all of a sudden,
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: the friend asked my boyfriend like, oh, tell me about
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: your upcoming trip. And I'm like, what trip? And it
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: turns out he had this whole trip planned that this
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: friend knew about with another woman. And I'm like, this
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: can't be. Is that his sister? Like you know you do?
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: All those things were like how thick is my denial?
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: It's so thick. I was like, well, maybe he's going
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: with his sister. Well maybe that's part of a bus
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: this thing to Cancun, and that's not where that's that's
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: not the case. And when I find it's like it
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: was snowing and it was like January, and I was
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: just like, I give it, I give up. This is done.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: We're done. And I just like walked back to my
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: car tell us who he was going with. That was
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: a key element yeah, yeah, yeah. He was going with
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: this like super hot, like hot in a way like
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: I'm fine whatever, Maybe I'm hot, maybe I'm not. But
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: this one who was like New York, she was super chic.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: They all knew her. She was one of those you
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: know that there's always a woman who's in the boys circle,
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: who's like everybody loves her, like she's cool as hell.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: And she's also she had this great hair, and she
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: had this funky eyeglass company, and I'm just like, I
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: cannot compete with that. And they were going to go
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: off to Cancun and we give him if I just
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: turned around, I get in my car, and he he
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: was sort of like, what's wrong, Like hmmm. I mean,
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: there were so many clues leading up to this that
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, I can't even hardly blame this guy because
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: look at me, Look how I look what I took.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: Look how I trained this guy to think I would
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: be cool. I'd be totally cool with this, and needless
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: to say, I'm proud to report I was not, and
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: we did. We did break up that weekend. I think
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: that was the first that's one of my only I
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: initiated the breakup, Thank god, you know, I have to
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: ask you may or may not know what ended up
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: happening with that guy and that woman. Did they would
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: get together? Did he ever get married? You know? I
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: heard a couple of years ago I was that I
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: was listening to a band in Hyde Park and someone said, oh,
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: you used to date so and so and I was
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: like yeah, and they were like, oh, yeah, he just
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: recently got married and he moved to a different part
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: of town. And I was like huh. And I was like,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: you know, you don't want to act too interested when
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: you hear about your ex, like oh, who did he marry?
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: And Um, this person didn't know. They just heard the
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: fact of his marriage. And I'll confess I googled it
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: to try to find out. But I don't know, but
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: I certainly wish him well. And um when I when
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: the book was being published, my husband said, oh no,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: what if his wife reads this and figures out it's him?
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: I was like, how would she do that? She was like, well,
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: what if he flips her? I'm like that was his
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: problem that and it's her problem, is not my problem. Okay.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: How many years after you start therapy do you start
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: to date your husband? Okay? So I started therapy August
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: of two thousand one, and I started dating my husband
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: in March of two thousand seven. Okay, that's a long time.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: How did you ultimately connect with him and why did
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: that work as opposed to the previous relationships. Oh my gosh.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: So we worked at the same law firm, and when
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: I first met him, we were paired up as like
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: associates who were supposed to shepherd the summer interns. So
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: what that means is we had this unlimited budget to
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: go do stuff with these young Harvard and UFC and
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: you know, these young kids. So we'd like have to
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: organize dinners and we went to this shop and or
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: this diner in Chicago that only sold cereal, and so
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: what we spent a lot of time together and that summer.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: I thought he was interesting. He was single, and there
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: weren't that many single people in our firm. Everybody's like
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: hooked up or married or whatever. So I'm always like,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: I was always trying to make myself like the single guys.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: But I thought he was real boring. He seemed to
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: talk about golf a lot, and he didn't have a TV,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: and he didn't have a car, and I was like
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: what is this? What? What? Like I I didn't get
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: what he was doing. And then we went to that
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: we went to one of those places. We took all
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: the summer associates to that place. You know, it's like
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: a Brazilian steakhouse where there's just like meat. We're there
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: and he told this crazy like I thought of him
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: as like super buttoned up conservative. He was from l
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: a Um and so I just I couldn't quite get
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: a beat on him. And he told this crazy story
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: about his dad's colon oskar Be and the shaving thing.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: And I was like, huh, Like he was like a
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: little edgier than I thought he would have like a
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: story and it was like really funny, and it's such
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: a dry since if he like, I'm more of a slapstick,
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: say something outrageous and he just like deadpand it and
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: I was like huh. And so that nothing really ever
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: came with that, although he did ask me to dinner
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: shortly thereafter that I was dating. I was dating the Flipper,
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, I said yes to my husband.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: He wasn't my husband yet, right, So I say yes
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: to John, thinking oh, this is gonna make the Flipper
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: feel like, oh, I'm hot, he's gonna want to be
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: with me. Maybe I will want to look at me
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: when we have sex because I'm going on a date
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: with another guy that didn't happen. And then I broke
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: the date with John because the Flipper didn't care, and
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: so John and I mean, the Flipper and I broke up.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: Oh no, before that, John invited me to the opera
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: with a group of people, and I was like, all right,
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: I'll go to the opera. It's January and Chicago. And
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: I went to tell the Flipper, thinking he's not gonna care,
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: and he didn't really care, but he did bite me
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: to see the exact same opera from his parents, like
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: third row seats, two days before John and I were
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: going to go. So I was like, that's interesting, Maybe
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: he does care, Like that's what that's recounted for love
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: in that relationship. And so I went to the opera
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: twice that week, same opera, two different seats, and and
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: then when the Flipper and I broke up, I was
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: just like, what about that guy John, Like maybe he's
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: not so boring, and also maybe boring is okay? Like
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: I had enough drama. I didn't need super flashy or
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: fancy like what. It was just a nice guy and
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: I we hung out one night with other people from
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: the law firm, and he just had this like quiet
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: confidence and every question I asked him he answered thoughtfully
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: like and I was throwing real random stuff at him,
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: like what's your religion? He was like Jewish. I mean,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: I was raised Jewish and this is in the middle
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: of the House of Blues, And so I just was
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: impressed by his candor and his sort of there's just
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: no fluff about him. And then I think I think
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: at that point, I was just so tired of all
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: my shenanigans and all the dumb things I'd done that
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: I was just ready just to shoot it straight. And
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: I think I drew him to me and and it
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: just sort of worked. I've done I've done enough work
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: to know I'm not hiding. I'm not pretending. I'm certainly
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: not going to tell you I'm not in therapy. We're
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: just gonna we're just this is who I am, and
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: like it or lump it because I'm not doing this.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: I'm not doing this not have a voice thing like
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: ever again, Okay, h is he boring? Um? Is he No,
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: I don't think. So it's funny when I say Dr
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: Rosen's theory is if you're bored, it's a synonym for lonely.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: So now when I think, I put that through my filter,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: like I'm not bored with John, like he's I like
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: his mind, I like how he thinks. He thinks so
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: differently from the way that I do. So if we
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: spend time together, um, which we do because we're married
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: and we're raising children, I find him. I find him
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: dynamic because he's not doing anything the way that I
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: would or mostly the way I want him to. But
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: I do not find him boring. Okay. One of the
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: big points in the book is feeling good about about
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: yourself to ultimately try to get a job. It's scadding,
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: and you do. Now. I'm certainly where the firm because
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: a good friend with Jason Flam's father's Joe Flam. Okay,
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: but at this point you no longer work. It's scadden, correct,
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: So I'm interested being an attorney myself. I haven't practiced
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: for decades, but you know, you ultimately achieve the goal
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: you set right after graduate school. Where are you at
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: with practicing law today? Today? I'm a government lawyer. I
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: work full time and it's after you know. It's a
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: similar thing where once I left the University of Chicago
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: studying humanities, by the time I got to Loyola, it
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: felt like kind of not a walk in the park.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: That's overstating it, but it was like, very straightforward, what
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: we're supposed here to do. I have that similar feeling
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: about starting my career at scant where it was just
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: so much coming at me and just thrown into the
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: fire and hours and hours and hours of work, some
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: of it boring, some of a document review, but just
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: really just thrown in the deep end. And now as
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: a government lawyer, it's like, oh, I understand what we're
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: doing here. I'm supposed to do my job. I plug in,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: I do it, I go home. It's legit nine to five,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: which is awesome. Now it's it's not it's not sexy.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: It's not on the cover of the Wall Street Journal.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: But it works for me and it allows me to
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: mother and to write and to you know, have dinner
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: with my family every night. And how did it end
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: its Scatton I had. I left there right in the session.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: I had my first child, and it was So I
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: had my first child in two thousand nine, and things
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: were so grim, and I came back from my maternity
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: leave and I was working four days a week, which
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: was offered by the firm, and a couple other women
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: did it. But I could see the riding on the wall,
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: which was there wasn't a lot of work to go around,
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: like all the credit markets were tight, and so none
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: of our clients wanted anything. They didn't want us to
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: do anything, and I was doing a ton of pro
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: bono work, and I could just tell I was at
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: a disadvantage because I had been gone from eternity leave
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: and then I came back and I was part time,
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: and once things got cranking again, I wasn't gonna be
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: anybody's go to. I wasn't. I just I had I
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: always say I had fallen through the cracks um and
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: if I had come back full bore in a different economy,
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: it might have gone differently. But I could see the
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: writing on the wall. So then I just that's when
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: I said I should get out before before everything dry
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: drives up. So I went to a smaller firm for
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: a little while, and then eventually transition to governments you
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: like practicing law. Well, no, I feel like I'm supposed
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: to say yes. But the truth is there's I like.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: I like. I like the part of law that it's
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: telling a story. I believe in storytelling. I love storytelling.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: It's my favorite thing. And whenever you're writing a brief,
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: you're telling a story to the court, right your version
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: of events. I like that. There's so much more to
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: the practice of law. There's so much fighting, there's so
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: much haggling, there's so much bureaucracy. That part I don't like,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: and that's more than six of my job. So and
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: I don't like the other thing that I have found
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: I have so little tolerance for. And this makes me
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: think I must not like being a lawyer. Is I
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: don't like dealing with all like courts where if your
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: font size isn't right, your brief is rejected, or if
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: you don't if you were two hours late. I mean, fine,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: I'm all for deadlines, but like, there's so much pickyune
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: and judges have so much power over litigants and attorneys,
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: the fiefdoms and the egos that are involved. If you
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: don't like ego, you're in trouble. If you're a lawyer. Okay,
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: let's use the example of a more Towels. He was
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: a banker. His college professor, Yale said you should be right,
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: said no, no, I gotta go for the money. Then
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: he ultimately writes two books which are mega successful. So, hey,
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: has the book reached or exceeded your expectations and will
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: disaffect a future career plan? The book has done so
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: much more than I would have expected. I had no idea.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: I had no idea what it meant to be the
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: first to tell a version of a therapy story. Like
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: the part of what I think the appeal of my
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: book is nobody knows anything about group therapy. They just don't,
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: So it's the first. And that I didn't know the
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: power of that. I thought it was. I don't know
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: what I thought, but I I didn't realize the power
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: of that. And to have Reese Witherspoon endorsed my book
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: and put her sticker on it catapulted this book so
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: far beyond my my wildest dreams that I I hardly
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: can believe it's even happening. And when I think about
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: I keep saying to my husband, I was like, am
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: I supposed to quit my job? Am I supposed to
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: be writing full time? And you know, he's he's like
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: the guy who's like, well, let's look at the spreadsheets.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: Let's think about this, you know. And I'm sort of like,
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: my gut, my gut is telling me maybe we're moving
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: in that direction. But I don't think it's not a
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: foregone conclusion because you know, I carry the benefits. My
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: kids need braces. You know. I don't take for granted
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: that I have a decent, steady job that I like
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: to point out to myself when I'm like, oh, I'm
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: squandering my potential, Like what if you know, I'm working
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: on a brief for work and I'm like, oh, I
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: should be writing a novel or doing my next thing.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: But the truth is I wrote group while I had
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: this full time job. So maybe it's part of the
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: secret sauce, and maybe it will preclude me. There may
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: be something for me as a writer about the compression
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: of time. The fact that I don't have as much
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: may make me a better writer. I don't know. It's
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: up in the air. Okay, you say you're the one
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: carrying the benefits. What's your husband doing? So he's still
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: at scadding, But what is he doing. He left scadding.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: He works for a company. We just the federal benefits
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: felt like they were too good to pass up, and
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: so I've I've carried us all. But he does have
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: a job. He's he's a gainfully employed person. But is
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: he a lawyer still? Uh No, he works more on
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: the business side. He had gotten a j D m
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: B A and he likes the NBA side of that
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: much more than the j D because he's a smart man. Okay,
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: on the first night of Hanukkah is when we're recording this,
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: you're raising your kids Jewish. We do both. We have
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: both traditions and um so we get to do all
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: John's families obviously Jewish, and we've got all the Hanaka
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: stuff ready to go. And I personally love that. I
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: don't have any bags around Judaism, and I love you know,
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: all the symbolism isn't fraught for me because nobody shoved
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: it down my throat. So I'm way more pro Jewish.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: But the kids also like Christmas and my family has Christmas,
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: so we just do it all. Okay, So you went
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: to therapy, you still go to therapy. At this point,
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: it's got to be like eighteen years, seventeen years, and
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: at one point you were going three times a week.
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: What do I know is a heavy therapy goer to
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: begin with, there's a lot of negative judgment on the exterior, Hey,
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: why are you going? Be you can talk to your friends,
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: see you have to stop? Have you experienced that NonStop?
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: Especially now, people say to me, wait, you went because
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: you wanted relationship ships and you got them, so why
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: on earth are you still going? And people love to
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: focus on the money I'm putting in Dr Rosen's pocket,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: which I guess I get, but that also like obliterates me.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: It oblorates what I've gotten, what I've decided works for me.
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: And when I think about it, to me, I'm like,
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: that's the best argument for staying. Because I had a
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: certain set of desires and un unmet longings when I started, right,
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: I'm still a person with longings. There's lots of things
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: I want, so I don't need group now to get
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: those things. And when I think about people have also
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: asked me all through this talking about the book, well
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: are your groupmates your friends? Are they do you consider
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: them friends? And that's a really interesting question, And where
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: I come down on that is, they're They're like a
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: third category that doesn't I don't have language for it.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: They're more than friends. I'm friendly with them, I travel
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: with them sometimes, I take walks with them, whatever, have coffee,
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: do things outside of group. But they're more than friends
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: because they've seen me at my worst and they have
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: we have this tie, and so it's deeper than a friendship.
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: And I love my friends and I can tell them anything,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: but it's not the same. They haven't seen me interact
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: in a sort of a close fish fowl like experiment.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: They haven't seen me do this process and deal with
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: Dr Rosen in real time. And that intimacy that's built
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: up over time, that's something way deeper than friendship. And
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, because I've been continuously going,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know how you keep that going. I believe
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: I'm capable of deep intimacy inside and outside of group,
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: but I don't. I don't know how you keep that
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: going without the support of a group to sort of
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: go process all that. I've never done it. Okay, And
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: at this point is who is one of your goals?
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: Do you have close friends? Can people come to your house? Yes,
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: I'm so happy to say that that is the case.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: There are if my doorbell rings, I it has happened
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: where someone stopped by. A couple of my groupmates actually
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: very randomly lived nearby. They'll stop by and they'll bring me.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: The other day, someone brought me a copy of a
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: like at Chicago Tribune article because my book was in there.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: So like, I thought you'd want this, I'm like, open
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: the door. I mean, the pandemic is a problem because
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: I can't invite people in. But there's the openness in
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: me that I know that they're my people and I
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: can be I can come right up close to them
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: with my full self, and they've done the same for me,
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: and that is that is worth every penny I've paid.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: I don't care how rich Dr Rosen gets. I have
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: my friends, I have my life, I have my people.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: That's what I wanted. Okay, So how many times a
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: week do you go now pre pandemic which has changed everything? Right?
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: We so we I zoom in for twice a week.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: I'm in one group that meets twice a week and
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: we zoom in now. Okay, and are these the same
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: players that they started out or what degree are you
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: the life, and everybody else is new. Interestingly, in my group,
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: I am not the lifer. I'm about the mid I'm
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: the midlifer. There are four members, four members who were
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: there before I got there, and one of them is
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: a charter member. Started in the eighties and this group
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: or maybe it's ninety one. Maybe it's ninety one. Um
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: and so it's a very stable group. That being said,
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: people do move around. We had one member quit. We
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: had a group member die, which was really terrible and
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: really moving and an unbelievable experience. UM So people do
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: come in and out. But for the most part, the
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: core of like the there's four or five of us
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: who are sort of like where the where the pillars there?
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: And then okay, this begs the question was this is
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: this the initial group or was this the woman's group? Uh?
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: Is it half and half? Or how did it in
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: with one of the groups? Right? So I this is
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: the third group is in the book in part three.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: It's the third group that I joined that meets twice
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: a week. There's one woman who was also in my
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: very first group, and I'm no longer I let go
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: of the women's group when I joined the twice weekly group,
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: and then once I had my baby. When I had
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: my first baby and went back to scadding to work,
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: I dropped the the Um, the original group, because I
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: just couldn't imagine having a baby and going to group
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: through times a week and working. Even I had to
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: cry uncle on that. So I've been going since since
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: two thousand ten, I've been going just to my twice
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: weekly group. And is your husband before you met him,
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: he'd been in therapy and subsequent theater as he had
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: any therapy, you know what he did some before we met,
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: and you know he it sounds like from his reports
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: he had a very positive experience, and he's he's always
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: supported me, but it's my thing, and he doesn't. I
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: am happy that he would never be the kind of
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: person who's like, well, I guess I gotta go to
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: At that being said, I think if I ever approached him,
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: it was like, I think we should go together, like
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: if something came up intractable in our marriage, or that
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: it seemed clear we needed some support. I have no
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: doubt he would be along for the game for that,
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: maybe even suggested himself, but he's not felt the need
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: since since we've been married. Okay, but I've had relationships
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: and I've had a lot of therapy. Well you're interacting
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: with somebody who say, man, they need therapy. Yes, well
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: that too, Like there are you know, that's true, there are.
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: And certainly I'm a person who has a tool, and
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: I think everybody's problem. You know, I have a hammer.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: I think everybody's got a nail or whatever that's saying.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: Is so a lot of times when I'll see, you know,
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: John struggling with something at work or with the kids
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: or I mean he's a very self reliance, very composed person.
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: But every now and then I'll think that would be
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: awesome if you could just if you had a group
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: or you could go and work on that, it would
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, I have a I believe in group, right.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: I believe that catapults me and I've seen it catapult
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: me from one place to another. And I think, God,
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: what if John could do that and he could work
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: out this issue? And every now and then I say
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: that to him. But that's so so unpleasant for your
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: spouse to push therapy on you, Like I don't really
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: think it's holding him back, and he's certainly I'm either
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: living I'm either a living testament to therapy or I'm
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: not There's nothing I can say that would be more
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: compelling than what's happened in my life. So Dr Rosen uh,
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: he is an m D. He is a psychiatrist, which
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: begs a question. Has he ever prescribed medication for you
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: or other people in the group. Yeah, I've seen him
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: prescribe medication. I first got medication after I had my
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: babies and I was suffering with postpartum depression, and he
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: did prescribe drugs for me, and I used them to
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: get through that initial period of just I don't know,
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: getting through that early baby stage. Yeah, he definitely, and
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: I've seen him do it for other people as well.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: How does this change? How's your therapy experience change your
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: relationship with your family? Yeah? You know, I think that
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: when my experience of being in therapy is that I
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: became unthawed and I became realer and more of who
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: I was, and that affected every single one of my relationships.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: And I think I learned how does that boundaries and
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: speak up for myself? And so I learned how like
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: with my siblings, we used to, you know, whenever siblings
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: would talk, and we'd figure out what were you getting
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: mom and Dad for Christmas? And I used to just
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: go along with what everybody else said, but I think
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: I learned how and none of this was like super dramatic,
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: but I was like, I have an idea, why don't
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: we do this? Why don't we send them to Marfa?
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: Or why don't we send them to Vegas? Or just
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: just having a voice in all my relationships, And it
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: was mostly positive. I didn't have an experience where like
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: I got into therapy and I lost my family of origin.
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: Like I think I just became more myself and gave
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: more of myself to them. And do they judge you
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: for being in therapies? A lot of people say your therapy,
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: you're less than sure. I think they're well, here's the
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: thing my family is, So what's the word private or reserved?
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: I have no idea if they're judging me, We're not open.
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: We're not open at all. I am because I'm just
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: like all over the place. But that's an important value
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: to me. I have no idea what my parents think,
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: or my brother or my sister. They've never told me.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: We don't have the kind of relationship where that kind
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: of sharing is even on the table, so I can.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: You know, sometimes I think they must think I'm crazy, um,
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: and sometimes I'm like maybe they admire me, Like I
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: I really, I honestly have no idea. So how much
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: do you pay for one session? Today? One session is
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: nine bucks? Okay? Now you make the point in the
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: book when you start, you're in law school, you're borrowing
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: the money for law school, and then you borrow the
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: money to go to therapy. That must have have been
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: a big step. How to to take that stuff? Yeah,
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: I think I just once I I went, I knew
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: I could afford the first meeting. The first meeting was
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: at the time it was seventy bucks. I'm like, all right,
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: I'll go. Maybe he can tell me. I don't know,
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: I'll just go. And it wasn't like I committed for
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: a long term. But then once I understood group would
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: be seventy bucks a session, maybe it was even sixty five.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: I think it might have been sixty five. And once
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: I understood the cost and it was gonna be monthly,
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: and I was like, I was curious, and he promised
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: me that he could change my life, and I just
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: felt like, well, what do I do? Oh? And I
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: asked him. I said to Dr ros I was like,
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: how am I gonna pay for this? And he said, well,
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: you're a law students and I was like yeah. He said,
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: I know other patients of mine who have talked to
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: their their institutions and there's like sometimes there's health care loans.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: I don't even know. I mean, I get why he
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: knew that, but like, I'm glad I asked because I
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: went to talk to the dean of my school and
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: then there was a way to get a private loan
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: to cover healthcare expenses. And that's exactly what I did,
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: and best money I ever spent, ever borrowed and then spent. Okay,
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: you made the point earlier that everyone loves their therapist,
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: and I certainly know from experiences there's a better therapist
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: and worst therapist, and there's a fit. So my question,
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: are you now like those people? My therapist is the best?
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: Group is the best? And to what degree are you
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: saying that? And to what degree are your proselytizer, Hey,
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: come into my group where you should be in a group.
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, no, no, no, no. I did early
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: on recommend Dr Rosen, like just so convinced that this
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: these people and their issues with deprivation and intimacy. They're
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: perfect for group, and I would give them Dr Rosen's
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: number and they would they would have one conversation and
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: they would just be just it's not for me. They
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: didn't like him. One of them saw him one time
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: was like m hmmm, and I was so it like
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: offended me, or offend is not the right word. I
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: felt so like, oh, like, you don't love it like
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: I do. And I just decided. Then this was years ago,
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: this might have been two thousand two. I was like,
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: this is not for everyone. I don't know what anybody needs.
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: It is a real scary proposition to say, hey, come
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: do your therapy in a circle with six strangers. That's
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: that is not for everybody. That is not everybody's cup
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: of tea. I have I certainly have made it clear
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: that like, I enjoy what happens in my therapy, but
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: I haven't recommended him in years and years and I'm
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: not starting now. Then, when you did recommend him, were
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: you comfortable hypothetically that someone might be in your group
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: or was the rule that you can see Dr Rosa
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: but not in my group. Oh my god, yes, you're right.
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: I there were people who I was like, Oh, no,
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: if this skinny ass bitch comes into my group, We're
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: gonna have such a problem because I'll be so jealous
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: of her that what I do think that some of
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: that calculus early on was thinking, Oh, if some really
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: pretty girl comes into group and he's younger than I am,
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: and just that would just get very complicated. So that's
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: probably another reason I hadn't really totally consciously thought of that.
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: But I don't want some of these jokers showing up
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: in my group, and I don't get to say, Okay,
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: there's another thing you bring up in the book. Your
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: anger where you're throwing and breaking dishes. Was that situational
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: or did you have underlying anger issues that Dr Rosen
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: in the group helped you with. I think both. I
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: think it was situational and I think I had pent up.
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: When I look back now and think about what Bulimia
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: really was, I think it was rage and like, that's
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: such a violent thing to do, to make yourself throw up,
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: And I think, oh, in my mind, I feel like
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: that's rage. And so I think all my life I
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: had swallowed anger. I had the idea that good girls
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: aren't angry. And don't make mom and dad mad, and
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: try to be a good girl. And I had all these,
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: all these reasons not to feel anger. And I think
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of women have it, and since being in group,
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: I've learned a lot of men have it too. It's
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: very hard to know what to do with anger. I
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: had no idea, and so by the time I got
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: to group, and I had all this support and feelings
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: were encouraged and celebrated and lauded by the time I
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: got there and some of it eked out. Then I
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: just couldn't stop the flood, which is a really great thing,
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: but really terrifying. It was very explosive. Okay, so now
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: your book is both published and successful. The nature of
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: having a project with a company is they set up interviews.
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: As something becomes successful, there's further interactions. Some is just
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: hit and run. You get a one three minute segment
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: on TV. Forget that. Generally speaking, the people you've been
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: interacting with promoting the book, do they get you or it?
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: Do they want to go deep? Did they not understand it?
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: You know what, that's a great question what I learned
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: early on. I remember talking about this in group. I
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, my God, everyone has their own agenda.
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: Everyone in the group is laughing like yeah, Like some
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: people when I talked to them about the book, maybe
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: we'll talk for thirty minutes, and they seem to just
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: think it's a book about eating disorders. And I'm fine
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: to go there. There's plenty and there's plenty of material,
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: but I don't think of it as an eating disorder book. Um.
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: And then I always talk to someone else and they
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: would they wanted to talk all about privacy and privacy
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: and privacy because they were interested in all the complicated
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: privacy parts. And so I do think that people people
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: are obviously projecting into any book they read, but certainly
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: something about therapy. People who have had therapy, people have
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: such strong feelings about therapy and their therapists. I think
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: it might make this book a little bit right for
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: lots of extra projection and a lot. A lot of
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: times I get questions where the person seems to already
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: know the answer, and I can tell they're just not quite,
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: like when they're asking me about, oh, you wrote all
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: about your groupmates, and I was like, well, actually I
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: didn't write all about my groupmates. I wrote about I
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: didn't use composite characters. But I used my groupmates. But
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: I didn't tell why they were in therapy or what
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: they were doing. I said what they did for me
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: in my story, and that maybe that's obscured in the
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: in the narrative, but to those people, I'm just like, no, No,
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: that's not anybody's real name, and that's not their story.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: It's my story and what they gave me. And have
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: you heard from readers. Yeah, I've heard from readers, and
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: I'm really so moved. I'm a huge reader myself, and
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: I've only reached out, like I've sent three tweets thanking
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: authors for their for their work. I've never written long
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: letters or d m s or whatever to authors, and
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: people have really told me really beautiful things about their
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: own life and what my story mento them. And it
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: has bowled me over. And I feel really lucky and
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: really humble that that that it could omit this to somebody.
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: And has your success change your personal interactions? Once again,
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: it's covid era with the outside, and has it changed
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: your interactions with the group, because it obviously is. Having
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: a success would, and a public success would affect people's
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: perception of your status in addition, your own personal assessment
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: of your status. Yeah, I think that the outside of group,
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: I have no idea because I never see anybody, although
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: I have. You know, sometimes my friends will text me
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: and they'll say, oh, I don't want to bother you.
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: I know you're busy being famous, like or they're like,
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: I saw a picture of Reef Witherspoon holding your book,
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: Sorry to bother you, And I'm like, no, I still
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: want to hear about the construction of your mudroom or
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: what kind of cookies you're making to get through covid um.
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: But that's been like little tiny ripples um. But in group,
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: it's been very interesting because I all the issues that
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: I'm bringing these days really are related to the book,
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: like oh my gosh, some trolls that x y Z
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: to me, or I'm going on Canadian television tomorrow. And
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: I keep thinking that the group is going to have
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: a backlash, like oh my god, shut up about your book,
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: but they just continue to be like study and loving
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: and um. The book is now a part of our
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: group because it has affected all of us, and I'm
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: the mouthpiece for this process that we're still engaged in.
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: And it's been really and they've all read the book,
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: and they've known about it since I started writing it
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: five years ago. So in some ways it feels like
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: a group project, and it's it's as much a part
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: of our group and the the fabric of the group
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: as members who have left that we still talk about
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: or things that have happened. It's like an artifact from
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: and of the group. And what did Dr Rosen say
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: out the book? If anything, he said, he's always been
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: very encouraging. One of the first things I said was, well,
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: I should do some research on like the history of
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: group therapy and I don't know theoretic underpinnings of what
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: we do here. And he was like, don't do that,
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: and I was like why. It's like, just tell your story.
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: Tell your story and don't try to be a scientist
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: about it, which I think was very good advice. That's
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: one of the great things about the book. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: Like I what would it would just be so different
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: and that's not my lane anyway, and when so he
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: read it all along, and I asked him to read
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: it when we sold it, and I said, can you
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: please read this as the therapist of all the characters
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: in the book to be sure that I haven't crossed
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: a line or just protect your patients and what I've
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: done in this book. And so he did that reading
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: for me, and he gave me a couple of pieces
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: of feedback. Interestingly, none of them about my groupmates, um,
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: two of them. Like one of them just about my parents,
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: like are you sure you want to say you live
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: in Dallas? I'm like, okay, why why? Who do who cares?
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: I'm not from Houston? And so then, um, when the
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: book was coming out some one day, so this would
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: have been like in August. The book came out in October.
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: One of the groupmates said, hey, Christie, asked Dr Rose
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: and how he feels about your book? And I was like, oh,
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: so I was like, how do you feel about my book?
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: And he he did his like therapeutic sighing and like
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: I feel I feel happy, I feel grateful, and I
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: feel proud. And that was like, that was like a
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: really great moment. I was really glad that my groupmate
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: prompted me. And somebody said, asked him how he feels,
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: like what if this becomes a movie? Asked him how
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: he feels about that? So like, okay, how do you
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: feel about the prospect of this ever being a movie.
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, this isn't all theoretical, right, And he said
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: I feel happy and I feel scared. So I was like,
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: me too. And since it's a line with Wes Witherspoon, uh,
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: traditionally she makes movies. Will there be a potential movies
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: or a movie in development? There's not a movie in development.
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: But I certainly feel like, you know, this has already
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: shot me into the solar system beyond my dreams. As
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: I said, so, I'm like every now and then, I'm
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: like I let myself dream, like, ah, wow, well who
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: could play me? I was on some webinar and someone
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: was like, everybody hood in the chat who you think
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: could play Christie? And people were saying like Sandra Bullock
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: and Julia Roberts, And I was like, that's so fun
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: to think about, Like I think, I think seven year
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: old Who's lost is not the best role for Julia Roberts,
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: but it's fun to dream about. Okay, Christie, this has
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: been wonderful. I could talk to you for days more.
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: These are the real issues as opposed to you know,
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: possessions or status, etcetera. So thanks so much for coming up.
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: Thanks for everything I appreciate being here. Okay, till next time.
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: This is Bob left six