Why Feeling Insecure Doesn’t Mean You’re Back at the Beginning | Dr. Marisa G. Franco

0:00Feelings, they just exist and it's what we do with them that determines whether our negative feelings manifest in ways that cause other people harm. It's not the existence of those feelings that's the problem in itself. Welcome to the One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

1:06Most of the time, I'm a reasonably secure person. And I know that because I remember what I used to be like. But if something hits hard enough, it all goes away. I'm not talking about getting a little rattled. I feel like I'm back at the beginning, feeling things I haven't felt in years. And that used to discourage me. Did I do all this work for nothing? And a therapist finally explained it to me. He said that my window of tolerance is much wider than it used to be, but it is not infinite. Dr. Murseji Franco has a word for this. Secure-ish. The people who feel the most secure, she says, are the ones who can admit when they don't. Her new book is called Worth. I'm Eric Zimmer and this is the One You Feed. Back to school mornings can feel like a group project you somehow got assigned by yourself. Smartypants Vitamins is one easy win. While you're finding shoes, packing lunches, trying to remember if today is the day they need that poster board, Smartypants Kids plus multi-anomagus supports brain health and delivers 33% more nutrients than the next leading product.

2:14No wonder it's the number one best-selling kids gummy multivitamin. Shop Smartypants Vitamins at Amazon Target or Walmart. When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's fall drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy to layer styles meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon fall lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in store and on Lululemon.com now. Hi Marissa, welcome back. Hi Eric, thank you so much for having me back. I'm terrible with time, so I don't know when we last talked, but it's been several years and in the interim you've written a new book which is called Worth, the new science of self-esteem and secure attachment, which we're going to get into in a minute but we'll start in the way that we always do which is with the parable.

3:14And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, they think about it for a second, they look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you and your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, it's such a deep profound parable. And what I like about it is it really normalizes the wolves within all of us. And it allows us to acknowledge that all of us are greedy sometimes or antagonistic sometimes or maybe aggressive sometimes and that doesn't mean that you're less of a person or something is wrong with you. And I think a lot of worth is about acknowledging the feelings we'd rather not feel and normalizing that they're within us and learning what to do with that.

4:25And not just trying to shame ourselves or suppress them. And yeah, it's just embracing everything that's happening in our inner world. Yeah, you use a term in your book psychic multiplicity. And I use a similar term in my book I call it motivational complexity. But the essence is yes, there are all these competing things going on inside of us, which is just natural normal, which is why I've always been drawn to the parable because it oversimplifies it. But it does point to, you know, there's just this essential being pulled in multiple directions. And I was just saying to somebody yesterday, but it would be so much easier if we just wanted one thing. Right. It's just be so much easier if all of the inside of me could just all agree like this is it. This is this is what we're doing. But working with all those different. I mean to use IFS language pieces. I don't know what to call it. I don't think it really matters so much is that we recognize this.

5:26It's just pull inside of us in different directions or we feel multiple thing. We could say it lots of different ways. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think sometimes in our society, it feels like being a good person means only feeling good, right? Only feeling the desire to be kind, to be generous. It the level of like your own internal world. If you don't feel that desire all the time, then it can feel like particularly for people socializes woman, like something's wrong with you or you're bad. And we use our feelings as an indictment of who we are. But feelings, they just exist. And it's what we do with them that determines whether our negative feelings manifest in ways that cause other people harm. It's not the existence of those feelings. That's the problem in itself. Right, right. It is all what happens with the feeling and how do you learn to work with the feelings that you have in a skillful way so that your life goes in the direction that you want it to go. Yeah, absolutely.

6:26So tell me about worth. What led you to start looking into this idea of worth and what does that word mean to you? Two big questions. Okay, so when I wrote my book, Potonek, which is on being a securely attached friend, I had someone who said, but it's really nice to know all these secure strategies, but it doesn't mean that I actually feel secure deep down. And I was sort of like, yeah, like what does that work mean to like actually feel secure at the level of your nervous system rather than just saying using the I feel statements and saying all the right things. And could I write something that allowed us to internalize a deeper sense of security rather than have these tools to spout off that make it really sound like we're secure and are valuable and helpful and help our relationships. But, but I don't want us to alienate ourselves to sound secure in the world. So that's why I was motivated to write the book. I mean simultaneously I came across a psychology theory that was the one that got away, self verification theory, which is this idea that we affiliate with people that reflect our sense of self back to us.

7:38And practically that means that people with low self esteem report preferring to interact with people that see them more negatively because if someone sees them too positively, they're like it's only a matter of time to figure out who I really am. And there's all of this anxiety. And so after writing a book on friendship, I realized, wow, there's internal work we need to do so that healthy relationships aren't threatening for us so that we can learn to tolerate them. And so I wanted to write the word to figure out the answer to these two questions. What's the internal work that we need to do to feel secure and to feel like we can be in secure relationship with other people. And so do you have a definition of worth? Yeah, so this was a big dilemma for me. So I'm reading all the research on self esteem and self esteem typically defined as someone who feels good about themselves, but I realize while reading this research that there's two different types of high self esteem. There's people who say they feel good about themselves and they treat everyone else horribly. Their profile is they tend to be defensive, they tend to be antagonistic towards others, they tend to shame other people, they tend to try to act superior versus this other type of high self esteem where they're kind and they're compassionate and they don't have to be better than everyone and they see the humanity and everybody.

8:58And so I'm like, I can't just define worth is feeling good about yourself because I can lead people to the type of high self esteem that comes at everyone else's expense. And I'm trying to figure out what is the difference between these two types of high self esteem. So I'm talking to my colleague Beth and she seems to have the sort of more positive type of high self esteem and she says, I'm trying to think about when I feel defensive and it's usually because I feel ashamed of myself. And in that process, I realize that like the two wolves, right, it's not that these people, these compassionate people with high self esteem, they never feel defensive or antagonistic or angry or the need to put people down, but it's that they notice that that's happening so that urge doesn't hijack them. And so I define self worth as really treating your internal world like it matters, embracing, feeling, acknowledging all of the feelings that are within you because when you do so, when you treat each feeling like it matters, it culminates in you feeling like you matter as a person.

10:10That's a really interesting way to think of it, not that my worth comes from treating myself as if I'm worthwhile, mainly the feelings that are inside me. Is that a short summary of what you just said? Yes, yes, it's quite revelatory. I think in practice, I interviewed people that were secure and one Dr. Skyler Jackson, he said he would wave his hand over his day to see where his emotional energy lies. And that was beautiful to me because I was like, Eric, I'm used to feeling a feeling when it's hitting me over the head. I am not used to trying to find my own triggers because that's a part of myself that's too precious for me to let go and let pass. And so it's been the worth practice for me has been noticing when I have a feeling I don't want to feel and I don't think I should feel and how quickly I try to push that away. And instead, shining a light on it. So just an example, I have this friend, I really like them trying to hang out with them a bunch, continued to like not work out.

11:15They weren't available for the plans. I started to feel like, man, this is one sided. There's not reciprocity here, the sex, I really like this person. Finally, we get something on the calendar. They have an injury. They have to cancel. What I want to feel, Eric, is compassion and care. This person has to take care of themselves. What I do feel is kind of rejected. And I know I notice how quickly I'm trying to send this, oh my gosh, of course, of course, be okay. And in that moment of urgency, I realize urgency is a sign there's a feeling that I'm trying not to feel. So I slow down and I notice that I feel kind of rejected and I'm curious about that and I'm acknowledging that and I'm feeling that I feel the sort of pressure in my chest and I put my hand in my chest and I say, it's okay to feel rejected. I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. And that rejection moves through me so that now I can send this text to my friend and say, please take care of yourself like I want you to be okay. And it comes from an actual genuine place that doesn't require me to abandon myself. And you can see how if I continue to push away my feelings over time, even if there are feelings I'd rather not feel, eventually there would be this amorphous feeling of resentment or antagonism towards this friend because I've tried to abandon all of these feelings and then they only get stronger.

12:35How when we engage in this practice like these people with high self esteem that are compassionate towards others of attending to our feelings over and over and over again, we are able to regulate them because we can only regulate what we are willing to acknowledge and that gives us more space to have compassion and love for other people. I win them all, We are open to a solution and we are open to a solution, because we want to protect these people, and it doesn't allow us to have compassion for others as we are seeking back. Asoms announced in the post this article presナ it can get along with them, so they are very limited to our We are open to it So they are 60000 to us and we can call them all, we will love the over and over and I'll wear the same thing again and again and again. And this

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14:44restaurant right next to my high school and I was there every single morning before class because I was obsessed with cinnamon toast that they had. I never got tired of it. So when kachava came out with cinnamon French toast flavor I was going to try it no matter what and it is delicious. It tastes like the thing I remember and it's made with real cinnamon bark which is probably why I love kachava because with two scoops I get complete nutrition that my body needs. 25 grams of protein lots of fiber greens and so much more there's no artificial flavors colors or sweeteners. It tends to be the perfect mid afternoon pick me up and it tides me over to dinner. Treat yourself to a childhood favorite. Go to kachava.com and use code feed for 15% off your first order. That's kachava.com code feed. That's k a c h a v a dot com code feed. Last night I was watching a video on playing classical guitar a friend of mine

15:46loaned me his classical guitar and I'd been kind of playing around with it. I was watching this video and he was teaching how to learn a piece and the tiny steps he was going through. I was like I never thought of like breaking it down like that far like that basic and then I was reading a Zen book this morning and the author was saying the exact same thing like back to basics like the smallest little things and I got me thinking I was like well what is the basic what are the basics of living a life that feels better to you and is better in the world and I was like I think one of the basics one of the fundamental building blocks is awareness. Like awareness of what we are actually feeling. I moved through that stuff really fast. I had a moment just now as I was about five minutes before the interview where I did something on my computer. I got up and as I was starting to get up and go around the corner my brain said to me I'm sad and I was like well

16:52what what is this like normally I just kind of just go on but I was like what actually is going on here like how do I even know that I'm sad right that's a question I love to ask how do I know that and what I realized was I wasn't sad I had just on the computer realize that I was going to need to change where the company is registered and our insurance when I moved to Georgia what I was feeling was mildly overwhelmed that's it and again it's not like I stopped and sat down I just did this as I kind of walked up the stairs but I just gave it a little bit more attention like what's really happening here and that that basic building block of awareness or attention and you know I think sometimes when we talk about doing the stuff we're talking about it sounds like I need to sit down and process my feelings for an hour and as they said years ago ain't nobody got time for that right in a lot of cases but we can do this just in the course of our day yeah yeah I love that example I love what you're

17:56saying about like the building blocks right because getting really like tiny about it into the minutia of it because I really think Eric that like for me the fact that I had to push away that feeling of rejection so quickly means that it is a feeling for me that has been shamed in the past right an attachment figure has told me that this wasn't okay to the extent that I'm not even letting it materialize because of how negative I associate it with and so how profound is it to let myself finally digest a feeling I haven't digested my entire life that continues to show itself and crop up until I'm willing to finally digest it and for so many of us because it can happen in such a flash and move to quickly and we're so used to pushing on to the next thing and there's stuff there and there's shame there and we could never show this feeling to people that we loved right it's just so easy to go on autopilot and

18:57not do that but it is a revelatory practice that takes a moment and that what you did in that moment like that is the practice of worth that is it to just even if it's a passing feeling to still act like it matters and it's worthy of some attention it's worthy of some exploration and some care there's a curiosity because I was like what just happened like what happened for me sitting there to all of a sudden me saying I feel sad and it's a common enough thing right there are certain phrases that just kind of pop in my head something like that that I always find our worth examining because I'm like well what what actually am I saying because I feel like my brain always takes a shorthand like it just it throws up some word but that word is often not the the correct word it's just an old pattern so I want to ask a question about this like with your friend yeah there's two things going on there at least if I were diagnosing myself in that

19:59situation there would be one which part of me would go I know this isn't about me I intellectually would be able to find my way through to go okay this isn't about me which then ideally would allow the feeling to resolve yeah and I think there is value sometimes in when we see the reality the truth but also then that is a way of shortcutting emotion and I feel like there's a place for both but I'm always trying to figure out like what's the order of operations here yeah well I think related to your point Eric what I don't want people to take away from this right is me being like I feel rejected let me text my friend and say hey you're a bad friend you keep rejecting me right because that's not attuning to my feelings of rejection right that's a very shallow attunement that is just being at like acknowledgement but not actually going through the actual end of

20:59the feeling and I think in the United States I see so much of this right people's anger they don't sit with that anger they don't tolerate it until it tells you what's actually at the end of that and so their anger might manifest as a sense of superiority towards others putting other people down wanting to humiliate other people having less compassion for them right and so it's important to recognize that this process of attunement is going to the end it's not just like that's there let me do something about it it's not a state of reactivity it's actually a I can tolerate this feeling until it begins to receive to receive and to show itself more deeply and so at the end of that feeling of rejection at the end of me tolering that feeling of rejection is that I feel less rejected right and so I no longer have the need to be reactive towards my friend or to try to put my own well-being above theirs even when they're in a vulnerable moment and for me obviously I know until actually that I don't want to prioritize my own discomfort over my friend in a vulnerable moment and I think for the longest time I thought the way to get there was to

22:03just suppress my own discomfort but now I'm realizing the revelation that actually if I acknowledge my own discomfort I get there in a more whole-hearted way it doesn't feel like coercive it doesn't feel like abandoning myself it doesn't feel like people pleasing it feels like I can have more genuine care and concern for the people that I love because I loved myself first and so that is really the purpose and sometimes Eric maybe people can bridge the intellectual and the emotional right maybe that they do get there and it's really about you being able to pay attention to is this actually working for me in a way that feels aligned or does it feel like I'm like alienating myself by trying to get myself there and so I can't say that for any of us but we can only say it for ourselves based off of our internal experience of how that tends to resonate for us. Yeah and my experience is absolutely there is a time for both I was I was fighting with my washer and dryer this morning because I

23:06couldn't get the thing to move back into place it sort of rocked itself off the axis and I'm in a little closet trying to do it and things are falling down and I'm starting to get kind of you know I'm getting pretty frustrated and in those moments I just kind of ask myself like is this going to matter in like five hours or five days and I can know it's not going to matter and I just relax right I don't need to internalize and feel the anger and let it run through me I just need to see like okay this is a reaction that isn't necessary right but that's a pretty small example when we start to get to things like feelings of rejection or abandonment but the deeper stuff yeah that at least for me that's where it tends to make more sense for me to go I know how I talk myself through this so I don't feel it but I keep feeling it so maybe that's not working yeah like it just keeps coming back around yeah I like that

24:06differentiator like it matters like how deeply rooted this is right is this a moment of hassle or is it something that has an entire history to it an entire thread a lifelong thread to it right as like determining whether the kind of in the moment reframe will be helpful or maybe there needs to be some deeper exploration that would help yeah and I think sometimes even that minor irritation is worth seeing it's like am I getting way been out of shape about things that normally don't bother me like am I ready to murder someone because of this dryer like am I still angry like three hours later well maybe a reflection of something else it's almost like I feel like we're talking about like CBT right like when does the CBT get helpful or when does it feel like gaslighting and validation that is 100% what we're talking about it is essentially that it's like CBT is an incredibly useful tool seeing things clearly is an incredibly useful tool but it's not the only tool because we all

25:08know that you can intellectually know something and you're feeling doesn't change at all exactly yeah and I think there's this concept in psychology called equi-finality which is like different paths to the same outcome right like that say again equi-finality different paths to the same outcome and so perhaps you get to the state of internal clarity or alignment with the present moment by reframing or perhaps you get to it by exploration and both can lead you to that place I'm a equi-finalityist I think oh are you I think so yeah I mean because I am that you know deep believer in multiple ways multiple methods that what works for me may not work for you or what works for me today may not work for me a year from now and having a variety of tools that you can try out is important it's why I'm always so suspicious of simple advice because I'm like well it doesn't work that way so yeah I'm right there with you I mean I think I want people to take this book and all the exercise in it and like be conscious

26:13while they go through it and does this work for me how's this affecting me am I feeling better am I feeling worse is this too overwhelming is a so a challenge that I can get through right to stay conscious while you're getting advice from any of us because you know research in a way it's very helpful but it also can be a bit of a stereotype because it's not like I'm like this works for every single last person so still validate that your own uniqueness as you receive what we're saying today so there's more to your book than just feel your feelings right we've said sort of what worth is worth is the ability to allow all those feelings to be there attend to them in a way as if they are worthwhile yeah but one of the problems with I think with worth though and self esteem is there's often a comparison to other things it's relative right it's like what's a dollar worth well a dollar is worth I don't know one stick a candy right we're always trying to make equivalents out of things are trying to compare things what

27:13have you learned about being able to do less of that and allow that worth to emerge from within yeah what you're saying reminds me of this conversation I had with my friend Steven Roberts who's also a psychology professor and he was like from what you're saying worth worthiness that sounds like you're still evaluating yourself seems like you're recommending people get beyond self evaluation and it was like yeah like the point is not to say I am worthy the point is to just say I am the point is to get to a place where you're expressing yourself and who you are and that voice that's always evaluating and comparing yourself to something is not the primary voice and so I think that the ultimate end of worthiness is actually to simply be present and to be living in the present and that is why the book is about going back to the past because if we

28:16have it process the past then that past continues to impose itself on how we're experiencing the present moment and that's really what low self worth low self esteem is right like it's a theory of self that people are going to reject you or harm you because you have memories are the database of self esteem as researchers put it you have memories where you've been bullied neglected rejected harmed and memories don't just record the past they predict the future and so part of you thinks that's going to happen again and that's why it's so beneficial to have these insecurities because you don't elevate your sense of self so high so when that happens as your brain is inevitably convinced that it will you're going to fall and decline more precipitously in your sense of self when it does and that's why it's really protective that's why it's so hard to change low self esteem because it feels like this is what is keeping us

29:16safe the thing about that stuff is it seems so undoubtedly true and real always astounded by that our stories of limitation about ourselves how convinced we are so convinced that you know it's cognitive bias at work right it is the I believe it's this way so I find the examples of this thing right I mean it is it is the way we are but those stories are so pernicious and and sticky so how do we work with memory I guess one question would be how do you know that your previous events are still driving who you are I mean I guess they always are to some degree because it's impossible not to right I mean we aren't anything except a bunch of causes and conditions but one of the things about this sort of going back kind of work that I'm always curious about how do we know when our memories are doing that and how do we know when we've spent enough time back there doing this stuff

30:19yeah and that we don't get stuck in continually mmm it's a good question going backwards you know I have the answer to that but I really like what you said there's the psychoanalyst Philip Ramburg he says we don't go to therapy to deal with what happened then but what's still happening now and the truth is I mean there's a part of our brain ventramedial prefrontal cortex for the nerds out there and what it does is like it literally when we have a current experience it rummages through our past to make light of it interpret it and even trigger the same body state we felt in the past even if the past isn't reoccurring it feels in our body like it is don't you love being human so for example if you let's say had a parent who always exploded on you humiliated on you made you feel humiliated and you have a boss that offers you some constructive criticism and your brain finds a thread between those two things you will literally relive the humiliation that you felt as a kid and that's real that's really what is happening in your body

31:21that your memories are being relived within you so it's not even that we're convinced that the past is happening it we're actually experiencing the past happening again at a somatic level which is why these things are so hard to change and the ways that we know that there's a sort of a memory and fringing on our current experience is when we're reacting more strongly than the people around us we are maybe preoccupied with the feeling or emotion we can't get rid of it's we're triggered right our emotion is elevating we don't feel like we can take in new information like people are telling us well maybe it's like this or maybe your boss didn't mean it that way and we're so convinced in our sense of reality those are all just signs that it is the past infusing itself into our experience of the present

32:32it's 7.40am time for Smarty Pants Vitamins but first someone's shoes are missing a lunchbox needs packing a form needs signing when back to school feels like a hundred moving pieces Smarty Pants Vitamins is one easy part of their team Smarty Pants Kids Plus Multi and Omega's supports brain health and delivers 33% more nutrients than the next leading product no wonder it's the number one best-selling kids gummy multivitamin shops Smarty Pants Vitamins at Amazon Target or Walmart whenever fall comes back around it always feels like a fresh start this year I've been layering in some styles from the new Lulemon fall drop because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it Lulemon's fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces so I can just wake up throw on a matching set out of jacket or a fleece and head out knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me check out the new fall

33:32arrivals in store and online now at lulemon.com Hey friend before we dive back in I want you to take a second and think about what you've been listening to what's one thing that really landed and what's one tiny action you could take today to live it out those little moments of reflection that's exactly why I started Good Wolf reminders short free text messages that land in your phone once or twice a week nearly 5,000 people already get them and say the quick bursts of insight help them shift out of autopilot and stay intentional in their lives if that sounds like your kind of thing head to one you feed dot net slash SMS and sign up it's free no spam and easy to opt out of any time again that's one you feed dot net slash SMS tiny nudges real change all right back to the show and so what do we do with that so let's say we we recognize that and we have actual

34:35memories which some of us don't really have and we'll get to that in a minute but we have actual memories we're actually able to connect the dots my boss is giving me criticism and I can connect the dots to there's all these memories I have of being you know humiliated those are all triggered within me so scenario one is we can connect the dots how do we work with this yeah so it may seem tragic that I'm like well yourself worth is about your memories right because I can't change my memory like there at the past has already happened but you can kind of change the emotions in your memories and this is because like I said memories are not made to record the past they're made to predict the future so our brain allows us to kind of update them with new information each time we revisit them and so there's fascinating research studies where people go back to a negative experience so let's say in this example I see the connection between my boss and my father and his rage and I go back to the dinner table

35:37where my father is telling me you should be ashamed of yourself how could you do that you drop the fork you're such a screw up you know and I don't imagine why anyone can ever love you or whatever it is and we picture our adult self intervening in the memory maybe stepping between father and our younger self and telling our child self that this person's rage towards you has nothing to do with you is their own stuff you've never done anything wrong you've always been special you've always been enough as you are you don't have to receive this shame I am here I will protect you I am here I am here I am here we tell ourselves exactly what we need to hear and we try to visualize that as this early and vividly as we possibly can with this new intention this new outcome and I go into more detail with the exercise in the book but once people do this kind of similar to reparenting activity inner child work we've kind of heard about it in the psychology side guys they not only report fewer symptoms of

36:40trauma they also report higher self-esteem and they also show changes in their hippocampus which is the part of their brain that records the memory so the basic idea here then is that when we quote unquote retrieve a memory we can alter it and have it be put back in a different way right which is happening anyway right our memories I think the science seems fairly clear that when we retrieve a memory and like a book at the library that you check out and it goes right back in I mean or maybe it is like a book in a library because if you paid close attention you'd be like oh now the spines a little bit more broken and Eric folded down thirty three of the pages and it's actually the spilled coffee on page 40 and it goes back and that's more what memory is like it's not this pristine I pull it out I put it back it's when I pull it out it gets messed with and what

37:42you're saying is I can mess with it intentionally with a positively positive miss let's make a positive mess of our memories and that's what therapy is right Eric like you're going back to that memory with now you have this anchored person telling you a new interpretation of this negative experience you went through right like therapy is kind of like memory reconciliation and is that what this is called memory reconciliation yes this is the theory that I'm pulling from for the entire book practices to reconciled or change memories that are shaping your sense of self now does often I do this a timer to and that memory is changed is this like I'm going to be doing this for three years I mean like it's complicated it's complicated so there's this researcher who talks about something called a coex with is basically it's a series of memories that have the same emotional valence and they got stored in the same place that's kind of his theory this is based on the research on psychedelics and so the idea is that often when we're

38:43adults it's say I have an unworthiness coex the way that this moment where I feel unworthier maybe a friend rejects me is based on not this just this moment but the culmination of all of the moments that have that same emotional balance it's like all of my unworthiness memories hit me at once and so I have to go back multiple times each time releasing a little bit of this unworthiness right because it's usually repeated memory particularly if it's childhood right we often get treated the same ways over and over again by our parents but the other thing Eric is that sometimes we might have memories that are harmful but we also have memories that when we tried to speak about the harm things got worse and so there's a part of us that's blocking us from being able to fully access and reconcilenate this memory right it's not the emotion of it isn't on the surface we can't even access the emotion of it and interestingly in the research on PTSD and who develops the most severe symptoms it's the people that

39:49dissociate at the time of the trauma all of that memory the emotion is really stuck and caught within them because they couldn't express any of it at the time and so it's complicated and that's why I wrote a whole book on it right I go into all of these different strategies of you might have to first work with the part of yourself that's resisting you might have to first work on reconnecting to your body so you can even access some of these emotions that are there for some of us maybe it's on the surface but it is a sort of deep nuanced unique practice for each of us there are some of us who have almost no memory yeah and part of me is tempted to say well the fact that I have zero memory of childhood means that something really bad happened and I repressed it all but I don't remember episodic things in general I just don't have a brain that works like that generally yeah I really you know I feel like 80% of my life is missing but particularly as a child there is very little there so all the work that I've done on this stuff has been I would say inferred yep it's been an inferred I

40:56suppose that I'm looking at what happened now I'm looking at what my siblings say I'm looking at what other people say I'm inferring but what's the process for I just don't have these memories yeah I know I'm over reacting like okay why am I overreacting to this yeah so there's something called implicit memory which are experiences we've had that continue to affect our sense of self and our emotions but that we don't actually remember and so a fascinating study that really showcases implicit memory people were shown a blue slide and then a loud noise plays and a blue slide and then a loud noise played and a blue slide and a loud noise played and people that damage their hippocampus which is the part of the brain that records the memory you might ask them hey what color was that slide associated with the noise and they would say bring yellow I don't know but if you show them the blue slide they would start sweating and so a part of them still remembered something in their body still remembered even though

42:00they don't actually remember the event and that's because the amygdala is the part of our brain that encodes the emotion of the memory and the amygdala is the part of our brain that's making us overreact in the current moment and drawing connections between the past and the present in a way that aren't completely conscious to us at all and we know we are experiencing an implicit memory because of how we feel because we're feeling that strong reaction and at the level of our body we can feel our heartbeat really quickly or our throat close up or our jaw gets really tight or whatever it is that's a sign that there's something that happened that you don't remember that is still shaping your reaction to reality now how you feel about yourself and how you feel about the world around you okay so what do you do with that then yeah how do you how do you work with implicit memories that you suspect are there I think what you're

43:01saying is that the link to the amygdala still works but the link to consciousness doesn't I'm vastly oversimplifying that's the essence of it right yeah Eric yeah so there's two different strategies I talk about in the book the first I draw from trauma expert Peter Levine and he notices that when a tiger catches an impala the impala gets away and the impala is now trotting away merrily and it doesn't have any symptoms of trauma it doesn't freeze randomly it doesn't get aggressive towards the other impala and he's like why do these wild animals not to traumatize like we see in humans and he notices that after the impala got captured it shook and shook and shook as if it had been electrocuted right and he theorizes that this trauma is really just excess energy in our bodies and when we can release that energy then it no longer continues to shape our sense of self our safe sense of safety in the world and so fascinating research this is mostly with rats at this point finds that when

44:04you shock these rats or rat rat trauma right and they're able to fight or flee then even if they got the same amount of shock they don't exhibit as many health issues as those rats that were not able to fight or flee because they release the energy of the trauma in our particular way and so his form of therapy is called somatic experiencing and it involves going back to the sensations in your body feeling them acknowledging them and literally tracking them that you'll actually feel those sensations move through your body you'll feel that energy begin to move through your body and so it's getting into to wear these implicit memories actually manifest and giving them space to move through you like what happens with the Impala but what are frustrating prefrontal cortex stopped us from being able to complete so that's one of the strategies so let's spend another minute here on implicit memory because there's another approach that you have in the book yeah so there's this thing called

45:05working memory theory and the idea is that we can only hold so much information in our brain at the same time and if we try to focus on a trigger a sensation right that's a representation of implicit memory and something else and we try to multitask and simultaneously focus on that trigger and something else we actually degrade the trigger because we can't fully access it when we're accessing this something else and so that is the crux of forms of therapy like EMDR right where you're feeling that lump in your throat and you're focusing on your therapist and a ball moving back and forth or their finger moving back and forth that sort of multitasking actually degrades the trigger now you don't feel that you know that lump in your throat begins to soften or forms if there would be like tapping different parts of your body while focusing on the trigger even like counting off by fours is a way that people do this work of multitasking with memory so they then degrade the memory and even research finds you play Tetris and you focus on that sensation that trigger sensation

46:07and afterward people report decreased symptoms of trauma and so there's all these interesting ways we can use our glitchy brains to try to heal some of our memories okay so let's take this with Tetris I want to go back to tap in in a second also but with Tetris so I have an implicit memory meaning I don't know the memory but I've identified a sensation right that's how I know that there's something here yeah so I am both trying to pay attention to the sensation and play Tetris at the same time you are trying your best to multitask and you are going to fail at it and that is going to what's gonna lead to your own healing interesting and so what will happen then is that feeling the thing that's triggering that feeling will diminish because it doesn't have enough attention it doesn't have enough juice to fully rev up the memory and so you get sort of a half hashed version and that's what then stays with you interesting I know right it's like wow we can use our flaws for our own

47:08benefit there you go next time you're zoning out just try and also bring up a difficult memory at the same time there you go I do it in the morning I'll just like count off by sixes or something while focusing on a trigger let's go back to tapping because you write about being kind of skeptical of tapping in the book and yet then you also write about benefit of it so what is tapping yeah so tapping is a therapeutic practice where you tap different parts of your body while focusing on a trigger and you might also have a statement like I am safe I am safe I am safe while you're doing it and the research does find that it is effective at reducing depression decreasing cortisol reducing symptoms of trauma but I tried to figure out the mechanism why does tapping work and the mechanism was sort of like oh there's these meridians along the points that you're tapping and they're able they're kind of like these I guess channels to like deactivate like you're a megged like these were sort of the some of the

48:11things that were thrown around but it didn't seem to sort of hash out in the research and I'm like all of these things are the same right all of these different methods that have been effective and so I used kind of my extrapolation was that working memory theory can undergird all of these practices that have been found to be effective because they all involve focusing on the trigger while simultaneously focusing on something else at the same time interesting have been paying a little bit more attention to acupuncture recently which again if you look at some of the evidence there's evidence for it but then you're like are there actually these meridians of energy flowing through your I mean I don't know I just I find it sort of odd that we wouldn't have found them but I mean at the same time when you look at science it's just one long story of we were wrong I mean I mean to a certain degree right I mean we were more right than we used to be but now we're more you know what I mean it's

49:12and there's so much that I often try and think about like what is it that we all collectively believe today even those of us in the psychology space all that what is it that we believe that is just we're gonna look back and be like how how did you think that the earth was flat I mean I wish I knew it's just I find it an interesting mind exercise yeah that's an interesting question I think that speaks to my own like evolution with attachment theory because my first book was on how to be a securely attached friend but since then I really been really reflecting on how in the zeitgeist attachment theory has been used to shame people right I've been in relationships where it's like that was an avoidant behavior or yeah you're just like you don't want to admit that part of use avoidant or anxious because you know it's bad and it's high status and there's this hierarchy of attachment styles that to me is recreating the problem because if we are now neglecting the parts of ourselves that are anxious shaming the parts of ourselves that are avoidant we are reenacting on ourselves the same harm that made us insecure in the first place so in this book I

50:16say maybe we don't try to be secure but secure-ish so that there's always room for us to acknowledge and care for the parts of ourselves that don't feel that way yeah I like that word secure-ish and I also can see luckily I'm not in the dating world so I'm not having to put that I have the attachment style of being disorganized which is like all of it depending on the time but I think secure-ish is a good word because I've had experiences where I generally feel like certainly compared to what I used to be that I'm a generally secure in-life kind of person yeah but I've had experiences when they are intense enough that it's like nope right nope and originally I got really discouraged by those right I'd be like if I done all this work for nothing yeah and I had a therapist who'd help me understand it really well which is that it's the term that often uses like window of tolerance my window of tolerance

51:18is so much bigger than it used to be there's so much more that I can handle in a effective and wise way but that window of tolerance is not infinite yes exactly it has its limits yeah and when those limits are broached my experience has been it's almost as if I was back to the beginning yes yes it's really wild when it happens because I'm like it is so different than how I normally feel and I'm like what on earth is happening yes that it's this extreme yeah I really relate to that and relate to feeling unsettled when I am met with my own insecurities for a long time but now understanding that like the people that feel the most secure are actually the ones that can admit when they don't feel secure right because again we can only regulate what we're willing to acknowledge and the people that are like I'm perfect I never feel insecure right they're not actually connecting to their internal experience or or they have this internal sense of shame that

52:22if I'm insecure that's bad that's negative versus my goal is simply to express where I am it's not to feel like I have to be a particular place to be worthy and so really realizing that the paradox of security is that you can fluidly move through insecurity rather than seeing it as a failure because I've also been through you know I talked about this friend is one of the sort of linchpin of our conversation that I was feeling more anxiously attached in that friendship and what I could do or maybe what a past me would do before I wrote this book was to be like no I'm secure so I'm going to ignore the fact that I am feeling anxious and I'm just going to say the secure thing right and I am just going to become a black box to myself in the service at the sort of sacrificial god of security but now it being like I just want to be what's real and what's real is in this moment in this relationship I'm feeling anxious and what that how that liberates me is now I can care for that part of me and I can only care about it when it materializes

53:24I can't heal my anxious part when I'm not in a condition that's making me anxious and so maybe in a way this is actually an opportunity for me to heal a part of myself that was struggling that I typically don't have access to as we wrap up take one thing from today and ask yourself how will I practice this before the end of the day for another general nudge join Good Wolf reminders text list it's a short message or two each week packed with guest wisdom and a soft push towards action nearly 5,000 listeners are already loving it sign up free at 1ufeed.net slash SMS no noise no spam just steady encouragement to feed your Good Wolf to me the ultimate sort of security comes from all this can happen inside of me all of it and I have the resources ultimately to meet it right it's not security that like bad things aren't going to happen or security that I'm not going

54:25to feel awful right it's just a sense of like okay it at some deeper level I will find the resources to meet this I mean I may not meet it well I'm not even saying that I'm not saying like I'm going to handle every situation in life with grace yeah it's not that it's just maybe I've said this before I think like the thing about like the sobriety for people that I think ultimately like sobriety becomes more stable when you go whatever I feel I can feel yes without doing that we are having conversation on sobriety right now yes for me it's the okay I can feel whatever I have to feel yes yes and that's the security that's the security it is like I am a container for everything I am I'm not trying to short circuit I'm not trying to run away from I'm not trying to suppress like whatever comes up is okay and how this manifested in my own therapy because I actually

55:26dedicated this book to my therapist thanks Alyssa was there was a part of me that was feeling insecure dependent on other people's validation and shame that came with that for me this part that felt so untethered and in my own therapy and I really consider this book it's so scientific but it also is a bit spiritual my therapist we work with the divine and she said give this part of you up to the divine what does the divine say and when I gave this part of me up to the divine what I heard was that part of you is perfect too that part of you is perfect too and what I realized was the problem wasn't that there was this part of me that was dependent and needy the problem was that I shamed that part of me that I didn't allow it that I didn't embrace it that I didn't accept it as part of the human experience to have weakness and to have frailty and there's this great disability activist and she says like when we perceive of wellness as the default we perceive as care

56:26as an act that's temporary and finite right and when we're allowed to fully embrace that as human beings were vulnerable and we're frail and that means our care is lifelong and something we always need to access it and give ourselves then we can move towards worthiness well that is a beautiful note to wrap up on I really love everything you just said there it's a wonderful book well of links in the show notes to where people can get it and thank you so much for coming on it's been a pleasure to talk again my pleasure so good to see you Eric thank you so much for listening to the show if you found this conversation helpful inspiring or thought-provoking I'd love for you to share it with a friend sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do we don't have a big budget and I'm certainly not a celebrity but we have something even better and that's you just hit the share button on your podcast app or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it your support means the world and together we can spread wisdom

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