1
SPEAKER_01
 people coming at me and being like, this is harmful.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I'm also really ready for the pearl in that feedback.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, anytime somebody is like, this is harmful.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Often there's a seed of truth to that, and I learn from it, but it's still, I lose sleep for a few days.
1
SPEAKER_00
But you create context before everything and say, like, this is not the only solution.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, here's the research that's showing this, and here it's worked for people I've worked with, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
You're not just like, this is the only way.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, maybe I need that disclaimer at the top of every page.
1
SPEAKER_00
I know the feeling, but I think if you have that, at least the context setting before each one of the controversial,
1
SPEAKER_00
 I guess, topics.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's interesting, I was, and I don't know if this will resonate in any way, but I took a year of public speaking class like 13 years ago, 14 years ago.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was terrified of speaking in front of two, three, five people.
1
SPEAKER_00
I could not stand up in front of a small group and speak for a minute without being nervous.
1
SPEAKER_00
I could not speak in front of a large group without being nervous.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was just a nervous thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
 I met a professional speaker who gave me some like mentorship and he's like you need to join Toastmasters and go every single week Until you're not afraid anymore to stand in front of a group of peers that are there to give you positive feedback Yeah, so you can take on the negative, you know the critics and so I did that and
1
SPEAKER_00
 And it helped tremendously.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then I went and started speaking, like my brand started to build and I started to build an audience or whatever.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so I started getting paid speaking gigs for years and on bigger and bigger stages.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was probably seven years in to speaking, like getting paid a lot of money to like speak in front of audiences.
1
SPEAKER_00
I remember still feeling like insecure and nervous within like 24 hours or the day of.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And I remember calling my coach at the time and saying, I don't know why I'm still nervous.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, I shouldn't be nervous anymore.
1
SPEAKER_00
I've been training for like a decade now.
1
SPEAKER_00
I've been doing this.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is the thing I do.
1
SPEAKER_00
Why am I still nervous?
1
SPEAKER_00
And he said, because you're still worried about what people think about you.
1
SPEAKER_00
You're still thinking about, are they going to judge me?
1
SPEAKER_00
 The insecurity and fear of other people's opinions is making you nervous.
1
SPEAKER_00
Know that they are going to judge you.
1
SPEAKER_00
They're going to criticize you.
1
SPEAKER_00
Know that you're gonna mess up.
1
SPEAKER_00
You're not gonna say the joke the right way.
1
SPEAKER_00
You're gonna forget a line you wanted to say in your speech and stop thinking about you being perfect and start focusing on service of other people.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And I think as you go into this launch thinking about I know the book is not 100% perfect, it could always be improved and maybe this and this but if it continues to serve people then that's what matters.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I think if you do that, don't even put anything on you.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is done.
1
SPEAKER_00
You've made it.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's out there.
1
SPEAKER_00
The whole intention is to serve and help people.
1
SPEAKER_00
It doesn't matter what they say about it.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
1
SPEAKER_01
 It absolutely does resonate.
1
SPEAKER_01
I needed that.
1
SPEAKER_01
There's this one other caveat I'll put out there, which is as a physician, I feel like training to become a medical doctor, you sort of get really trained to be judicious and be cautious and think about harm.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's like first do no harm.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think you can,
1
SPEAKER_01
 You can play it safe.
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, this is really at the heart of the book, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
I think that in certain ways Conventional psychiatry as it stands right now is actually doing some harm sometimes in actively intervening in a way that's harmful sometimes in lack of helping people in ways that we need and So this book is really intended to improve upon that and to do less harm help people where they need it but there are unintended consequences always and there are just pockets of this where
1
SPEAKER_01
 if I could hold the hand of every reader and watch where they take something just a little too far or just a little subtle misstep here or there, I'd be like, no, no, no, no, no.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is what you really meant.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like eat well but not orthorexia well, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
And so I think that there's potential to cause harm and that's where I really lose sleep.
1
SPEAKER_00
What's the most controversial thing in here?
1
SPEAKER_00
 You're my, what are you the most anxious about in your Anatomy of Anxiety book?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, there's two.
1
SPEAKER_01
No, there's three.
1
SPEAKER_01
So we can go in whichever direction you said.
1
SPEAKER_01
One is just my attitude towards psych meds.
1
SPEAKER_01
One is my attitude towards body positivity.
1
SPEAKER_01
 And then one is just kind of encouraging people to not be so scared of the sun.
1
SPEAKER_01
So we can go in any of those directions.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think people live in a lot of anxiety when the sun's out because of like skin cancer or like wrinkles or what is it?
1
SPEAKER_01
It's not that like fear of skin cancer and wrinkles is causing anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's that lack of sunshine because we've been so trained to fear the sun and to slather sunblock.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think lack of not just vitamin D but these other less measurable aspects of how we benefit from the sun.
1
SPEAKER_01
 is in contributing to our anxiety epidemic.
1
SPEAKER_00
Interesting.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so I'm here to just say like we can rethink that a little bit.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's not to say go whole hog in that direction.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's finding a balance.
1
SPEAKER_01
And skin is such an interesting, it's quick to evolve.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's basically if,
1
SPEAKER_01
 Populations of humans migrated from an area near the equator to an area further from the equator.
1
SPEAKER_01
Those genes that control where the melanin in our skin sits in the skin cells, it quickly changes, because there's such a delicate balance between the importance of vitamin D, which is really more of a hormone than a vitamin,
1
SPEAKER_01
 and the risk of skin cancer.
1
SPEAKER_01
And evolution's not messing around with this.
1
SPEAKER_01
It really always wants to strike the right balance.
1
SPEAKER_01
But evolution, even if it works quickly, it's still not so quick.
1
SPEAKER_01
So we're living in a moment right now where we're a little bit not striking the perfect balance, and I think a lot of us... Too extreme, right, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think if you are fair-skinned, descended from people from Northern Ireland and you're living on the equator, you wanna be more concerned about melanoma than vitamin D deficiency.
1
SPEAKER_01
 But if you're African American, you're living in Chicago, you probably wanna be more concerned with vitamin D deficiency and everything else that goes along with sun that can't just be supplemented with a vitamin D pill than worried about melanoma.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I think that this message of fear of the sun, the harmful rays of the sun, is doing many people a disservice, but perhaps most of all, people with melanated skin.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Okay.
1
SPEAKER_00
And what about body image or body positivity?
1
SPEAKER_00
Where's the anxiety lie within that?
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, we're in a beautiful moment with that movement, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
It's speaking power to diet culture and all of that sort of like patriarchal toxicity of making us kind of be at war with our own bodies and try to mold ourselves into an image that's not necessarily appropriate for our bodies.
1
SPEAKER_01
 And I love that.
1
SPEAKER_01
The spirit of that I'm all in favor of.
1
SPEAKER_01
But it still ends up being this kind of both and thing where we've swung a little too far and now what's happening is it's sort of a coddling enabling message, which is like you're addicted to that processed food.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Go treat yourself.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think what I see in my practice, I just want people to be well.
1
SPEAKER_01
And sometimes that easy food causes the hard life and someone can be like, I embrace the principles of body positivity.
1
SPEAKER_01
I eat whatever I want.
1
SPEAKER_01
I don't worry about my weight.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_01
But then, um, they're suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome or endometriosis or, um, uh, insulin resistance and everything that goes along with that, a shortened lifespan ultimately, and certainly an impact on their quality of life.
1
SPEAKER_01
 And that's where I think we're getting it just slightly wrong is that this was all supposed to be about living a fulfilling life.
1
SPEAKER_01
And we need to figure out how much effort do you put in.
1
SPEAKER_01
And for some of us who are really out of balance, we actually have to put a decent amount of effort into creating enough physical health and balance that our physical health can recede into the background.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it just creates the foundation for our fulfilling life.
1
SPEAKER_01
 And for some people, they're too all in on that, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
And then the meal prep and the obsessive and the skipping meals with friends and socially isolating, it becomes a part-time job and it's the self-care itself that stands in the way of the fulfilling life.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think in body positivity movement right now, it's actually the cavalier attitude towards it doesn't matter, eat whatever you want, that's actually getting in the way of the fulfilling life.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so, and I think that it's speaking truth to the patriarchy
1
SPEAKER_01
 But in the process, it's sort of actually being the biggest champion to the processed food industry.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I hear you there What was the first one you said the first one was psych meds like man.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that's a big one So what I mean you say is psychedelics there's a lot of these research coming out saying the benefits of psychedelics being used for treatment and
1
SPEAKER_00
 some relaxing of the stress and anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's funny, I was just watching a video of this popular YouTuber who was smoking marijuana for a year and decided two weeks ago to go off marijuana.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he was like, it's probably the hardest thing I've ever done is to have the withdrawals from just marijuana.
1
SPEAKER_00
This isn't some like,
1
SPEAKER_00
 hard narcotic or something, which is probably even harder to get off of like heroin or something.
1
SPEAKER_00
But he was like, I'm the most irritable person.
1
SPEAKER_00
He was like, I'm apologizing to all his friends.
1
SPEAKER_00
He's like, I'm so sorry.
1
SPEAKER_00
I've been so angry and short-tempered and this and this.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I don't know how much longer it's gonna take.
1
SPEAKER_00
But it's been a couple, two or three weeks, and he's like, it's, I feel like a mess.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And I'm like, so what is the balance?
1
SPEAKER_00
Should we be, is there other ways to get to that place without needing these things?
1
SPEAKER_00
Because then they can become addictive and needing them all the time.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, it's giving me release.
1
SPEAKER_00
Let me just stay on them.
1
SPEAKER_01
Cannabis itself is a really tricky one because it's one where there's absolutely no one size fits all approach.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I see people who it enhances, like they go deeper into their life.
1
SPEAKER_01
They get more mindful with it.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Intention to it.
1
SPEAKER_01
They make it sacred.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's seldom, you know It's more of like a once a week or less often thing and for some of my patients It's allowed them to go through menstrual cramps without taking other medications or you know So there's it can be a better sleep aid it can prevent some you know If it's ends up meaning that you don't drink as much maybe there's fewer traffic fatalities or less domestic violence So it has its place
1
SPEAKER_01
 But I tend to think that anybody who's smoking daily, it's not serving them.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it ends up numbing us out and taking us out of our lives.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then I see it impacting happiness and anxiety levels.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it is tough to quit.
1
SPEAKER_01
And in not quite the same physiologic dependence way as like, say, heroin, but it has a way of insidiously getting in and
1
SPEAKER_01
 It's sort of this vine that kind of grows around our life, and then it's hard to extract ourselves from it.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I have the utmost sympathy for anybody struggling with that.
1
SPEAKER_01
But I just encourage everyone to be really intentional about how do you come to this substance?
1
SPEAKER_01
Is it bringing you deeper into your experience?
1
SPEAKER_01
Is it checking you out?
1
SPEAKER_00
And what is the root cause of most people needing to take a substance?
1
SPEAKER_00
 Like what's the root on why someone has gotten to the point of like, I need to take this to feel better.
1
SPEAKER_00
How can they just get to the root and feel better?
1
SPEAKER_01
Here's a rough draft thought, is I think that human beings have certain fundamental human needs.
1
SPEAKER_01
 They're not high-tech, but they're not how our modern life is structured.
1
SPEAKER_01
We have need for connection and community.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think we have need for nature.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think we have some degree of need for meaning and purpose in our lives, and that can take the form of spirituality.
1
SPEAKER_01
It doesn't have to.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think that we actually need to be
1
SPEAKER_01
 nourished and that has so many different dimensions.
1
SPEAKER_01
We need good water, we need what we get from sunshine, we need nourishing food and so I think we live right now like it's booze and it's social media and it's devices and it's social isolation and we're worker bees in these inhumane working conditions and basically
1
SPEAKER_01
 We're not only not getting these needs met, but then we're sort of getting assaulted with all these things that just leave our nervous system totally frayed.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so it's understandable that we're reaching for something.
1
SPEAKER_01
Most things we get addicted to, it kind of gives us that original grounding, connected feeling of you're safe.
1
SPEAKER_01
I always think about breastfeeding.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think so much of addiction is like, how do you feel like a babe?
1
SPEAKER_01
 nursing in your mother's arms, getting your need for nourishment, getting that little opiate hit that actually happens in breast milk, feeling safe, feeling protected, feeling loved.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think so much of us are trying to get back to that feeling, and we need it all the more when we're really not getting that feeling, getting that need met.
1
SPEAKER_00
 A holistic, that's what you're talking about, the holistic approach to psychiatry, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Not the traditional approach, but the holistic approach.
1
SPEAKER_00
What's the difference between what you call true anxiety and false anxiety?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so in my training, it was the DSM, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, and it's like, here are the diagnoses.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is it generalized anxiety disorder?
1
SPEAKER_01
Is it panic disorder with or without agoraphobia?
1
SPEAKER_01
And always in medicine, you're thinking, how does this change management?
1
SPEAKER_01
 And that categorization and classification, I've realized in the way I approach mental health and anxiety in particular, doesn't change my management at all.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's really designed to kind of gatekeep.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, it's a little bit here to sway you.
1
SPEAKER_01
Maybe if it's panic, you go towards CBT.
1
SPEAKER_01
If it's generalized anxiety disorder, if you meet the threshold, if you have enough symptoms that you qualify for a diagnosis of clinical anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_01
 then you've unlocked medication.
1
SPEAKER_01
And since I'm not doing a lot of prescribing of medication, I have no need to gatekeep.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so if someone comes in and tells me they have this subjective experience of anxiety, like, done.
1
SPEAKER_01
There's our diagnosis for the foreseeable future.
1
SPEAKER_01
And there's nothing I need to gatekeep because there's no risk in anything I'm gonna be recommending.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I see a classification system that makes a lot more sense as false anxiety and true anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_01
False anxiety is our avoidable,
1
SPEAKER_01
 unnecessary, preventable anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_01
That term false can be triggering for some people, because it feels invalidating.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's like, what are you talking about, false anxiety?
1
SPEAKER_01
It feels quite real.
1
SPEAKER_01
And the suffering and the experience of it is no less real, but false speaks to the fact that there is a path out that's relatively straightforward.
1
SPEAKER_01
And this has to do with the ways our physical body gets out of balance, whether it's from a blood sugar crash, we're inflamed, we're chronically sleep deprived,
1
SPEAKER_01
 We're micronutrient deficient.
1
SPEAKER_01
Maybe we're drinking too much strong coffee that day.
1
SPEAKER_01
Maybe we're coming down from alcohol every day and our GABA's getting converted into glutamate.
1
SPEAKER_01
We can talk about the neuroscience of that.
1
SPEAKER_01
But so there's all of these just seemingly benign aspects of modern life that are tipping our body into a stress response.
1
SPEAKER_00
That if you just, okay, don't drink, or cut up the coffee, get eight hours of sleep, do this, you'll probably have less anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_01
 We avoid a lot of anxiety that way.
1
SPEAKER_01
So we trip ourselves into these stress responses, and it's really mundane stuff, but that stress response feels synonymous with anxiety and panic.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so I think false anxiety is something to just take stock of, do an inventory of all the ways that you might be getting physically out of balance, see what you can do to shift things gently back into balance, and then walk out of that less anxious.
1
SPEAKER_01
 And then what remains after you've really taken care of a lot of that false anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_01
 is our true anxiety, and that's purposeful anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that's not something to medicate away.
1
SPEAKER_01
We couldn't if we wanted to.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's not a nuisance.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's not something to pathologize.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's something to really slow down and embrace and honor and heed.
1
SPEAKER_00
And... What are some of the main true anxiety things that people go through?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, everyone's a little different.
1
SPEAKER_01
Some people, it's more like a communication from our body, from our inner knowing that's telling us something's really not right here.
1
SPEAKER_01
Pay attention to this.
1
SPEAKER_01
 And it could be a relationship that we're in.
1
SPEAKER_01
It could be something to do with our work life.
1
SPEAKER_01
It could have something to do with our community or the world around us.
1
SPEAKER_01
Some people feel true anxiety on a very global scale, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Like people that their life mission is around climate change or is around, you know, you name it.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like any of these big things where we need more people sort of.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Shouting from the rooftops like we need to make changes here and some people's true anxiety just speaks to like they need to call their grandma more often and so it's really just something to slow down and listen to and it's here to tell us like Look at this problem.
1
SPEAKER_01
The anxiety itself is not the problem there it's really just the body sort of like putting up a flare and saying like please slow down and take a look at this and
1
SPEAKER_01
 And then once we have listened to it, honored it, heeded that message, and taken some steps accordingly, it really transmutes that feeling.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's not an uncomfortable anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's like a feeling of purpose, which is a very different kind of charge.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Would you say there's a framework of figuring out what anxiety you have or how to know where your anxiety is coming from?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so I say low-hanging fruit first.
1
SPEAKER_01
You start with a false anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_01
You kind of just figure out where you're out of balance.
1
SPEAKER_00
Take inventory.
1
SPEAKER_00
Okay, I get four hours of sleep a night.
1
SPEAKER_00
That could be it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I drink five cups of coffee a day.
1
SPEAKER_00
Something to look at.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Yeah, whatever, I'm eating processed foods all day.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you start to take inventory of these things and say, okay, I'm only gonna have one cup of coffee or whatever it is, sleep seven, eight hours, and then see how I feel after a week of doing these action steps.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then also taking anxiety, but how do you, or taking inventory of the true anxiety, how do you really take inventory of that when it's more of the inner knowing, you know, intuition, listening to your intuition?
1
SPEAKER_01
 It's trickier.
1
SPEAKER_00
If you're so anxious, it might be loud to listen to it, you know?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, psychedelics have a role in this, but it doesn't always have to be that.
1
SPEAKER_01
But anything that actually lets us
1
SPEAKER_01
 bring reverence to the act of I'm slowing down, I'm listening to what's alive in me, in my heart, in my unconscious, and basically I'm really exploring that and I'm open to that message.
1
SPEAKER_01
And in our daily lives, most of us steamroll over that, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Some people have a journaling practice or a meditation practice.
1
SPEAKER_01
 but we need to slow down and listen.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so, yeah, I think it's harder to make a formula for it, because we're all a little bit different, but many of us are caught up in our, you know, this is our capitalist society where time is the commodity and we're just hustling and grinding and going, going, going, and that's not compatible with having a good relationship with our true anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_01
We need more spaciousness in our lives.
1
SPEAKER_00
 So you did 12 years of schooling, and then you've been a psychiatrist for 10 years.
1
SPEAKER_00
What would you say are the three greatest lessons you've learned in the last, I guess, 20 plus years of studying and practicing this work?
1
SPEAKER_01
 It's number one most important, it's the humility.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's to never get dogmatic.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I have learned that lesson so many times.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like any time I get confident of like, okay, I've figured it out, I understand, I take a functional medicine approach to psychiatry, I'm solving everyone's life in this way, and then...
1
SPEAKER_01
 And then I'll have a patient whose experience just totally kicks me in the teeth.
1
SPEAKER_00
And did it work for whatever you share with them?
1
SPEAKER_01
Didn't work had to be the opposite approach.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so, you know, I guess it took 50 of those times to just be like, no dogma here.
1
SPEAKER_01
Um, always approach every single patient.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like it's a brand new experiments and there's learnings I bring to it, but I'm really open to understanding.
1
SPEAKER_01
 how individual it is each time.
1
SPEAKER_01
Let's call this in my process of kind of unlearning the miseducation from my conventional training and I'm really in a debt of gratitude to my conventional training.
1
SPEAKER_01
I am so grateful to
1
SPEAKER_01
 Be a mechanic who understands when I lift up the hood of the body.
1
SPEAKER_01
I know what everything is and how it functions Yeah, I wanted that education.
1
SPEAKER_01
I knew it since I was a kid I wanted to understand the body because I wanted to be able to fix my own car basically And now I fix other people's cars and that's great too.
1
SPEAKER_01
I love it.
1
SPEAKER_01
I find it satisfying work but
1
SPEAKER_01
 I did need to unlearn certain things.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I remember one day I was in the OR on my surgery rotation and we're sitting over an appendectomy.
1
SPEAKER_01
We're kind of like in the process, it's a few hours surgery.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I'm thinking like, well, this guy who's done nothing but like appendectomies and removing people's gallbladders for the last 15 years of his life has probably given this some thought.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I was like, why do you think people get appendicitis?
1
SPEAKER_01
 And his response was, we don't ask why, we just cut.
1
SPEAKER_01
And as a Jewish New Yorker, I was like, all I do is ask why.
1
SPEAKER_01
That's all I'm interested in is why, how.
1
SPEAKER_01
Because it's that idea of going upstream rather than just pulling people out of the river.
1
SPEAKER_01
Who's throwing them in?
1
SPEAKER_01
What's happening here?
1
SPEAKER_01
 And I believe that the body generally works, you know, menopause is kind of not awesome and knee joints are not amazingly well designed, but most of the time the body's pretty well designed.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so I feel like things don't have to happen, they're happening because
1
SPEAKER_01
 a genetic predisposition and environmental trigger.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then here we are.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so I just realized that conventional medicine is not that interested in the why.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so that's why I didn't really fit in, like in that model and functional medicine for me was like, it was mind blowing to realize that, oh yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
You want to do root cause resolution rather than symptom suppression.
1
SPEAKER_01
 And once I saw that, I could never unsee that.
1
SPEAKER_01
And now it seems crazy to me, the idea of approaching a problem from, well, let's suppress this symptom and then problem solved, not at all.
1
SPEAKER_01
And heartburn is a really interesting example where it's like, okay, you have heartburn.
1
SPEAKER_01
So in conventional medicine, we'll give an antacid.
1
SPEAKER_01
We'll say, let's just make less stomach acid and then it won't bubble up into esophagus and it won't burn and problem solved.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Just don't eat the bad foods that are causing this, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Heartburn in particular is an interesting one where not only does that of course not solve the fundamental root cause of the problem, but it actually contributes to it in some cases.
1
SPEAKER_01
Heartburn is usually due to some degree of increased intra-abdominal pressure.
1
SPEAKER_01
So are you pregnant?
1
SPEAKER_01
Are you obese?
1
SPEAKER_01
These are reasons you might be sort of upward pushing motion.
1
SPEAKER_01
 but sometimes it's something called SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, and you just have too much of the wrong bacteria where it doesn't belong in the small intestine.
1
SPEAKER_01
Taking antacids suppresses our stomach acid, and our stomach acid's actually pretty critical to dealing with the bacteria we ingest and getting in, and so now you've just... So if you're killing that, then it's affecting... You've exacerbated the original problem.
1
SPEAKER_01
 And so functional medicine is asking, well, why is the acid getting into your esophagus?
1
SPEAKER_01
And okay, why?
1
SPEAKER_01
Increased abdominal pressure.
1
SPEAKER_01
So why increased abdominal pressure?
1
SPEAKER_01
And why don't we address that at the root rather than suppressing the symptom and potentially even exacerbating the original problem?
1
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so that was number two.
1
SPEAKER_00
What was the third thing?
1
SPEAKER_01
What are we even listing right now?
1
SPEAKER_00
That was the three biggest things you've learned in 20 plus years of school and... Yeah, a third learning.
1
SPEAKER_01
 There's something bubbling in my mind right now around love, but I'm not really sure what the answer is.
1
SPEAKER_01
But I think that when I was applying to join the Columbia Center for Psychoanalysis, I wrote my essay about like, I love my patients, which in psychiatry is a big no-no.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so, you know, it's sort of like boundaries, boundaries, professional, neutral, all this kind of stuff.
1
SPEAKER_01
So that didn't really sit well.
1
SPEAKER_01
It wasn't received well.
1
SPEAKER_01
 So, but it's actually, you have to know your audience.
1
SPEAKER_01
Psychoanalysts didn't want to read an essay about loving your patients.
1
SPEAKER_01
But what I realize now is that this work that I do, it's sacred.
1
SPEAKER_01
And when I have a relationship with a patient,
1
SPEAKER_01
 They matter to me.
1
SPEAKER_01
I matter to them.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's a real relationship in both of our lives.
1
SPEAKER_01
It follows a different contract than other relationships.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's not family, it's not a friendship.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's a different kind of, it's totally sacred.
1
SPEAKER_01
And to just show up to that, more and more bringing the utmost meticulous integrity to it and to just completely honor that someone is entrusting me.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that's sometimes heavy.
1
SPEAKER_01
Because first, do no harm.
1
SPEAKER_01
And you want to help.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Sometimes you're dabbling in unknowns and gray areas.
1
SPEAKER_00
And people are probably sharing things with you they've never shared with anyone, too.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it's an honor.
1
SPEAKER_00
Even their spouses, their family, they're telling you stuff they've never told anyone.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's a privilege.
1
SPEAKER_01
I hold it so sacred, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's crazy.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so they really matter to me, and I dare say I love my patients, and that's part of what makes my job fulfilling.
1
SPEAKER_00
I feel like when you bring love to a session as a therapist,
1
SPEAKER_00
 you allow for healing, the environment of healing to occur faster, I think.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because if closed bitumen, like this clinical, like not showing that much love, even the energy of love you can feel, versus someone just listening to you and asking questions.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I feel like it's almost a responsibility to help someone heal faster, to open your heart to being curious about your patient, or maybe not loving them, but having love for them in some way.
1
SPEAKER_01
 I think that's very astute, and I think that what I really think I'm doing in a session with a patient, it's like there's two valences, and up here, we're talking.
1
SPEAKER_01
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, here's what's on my mind, here's what I think about that, here's the ailment in my physical body, here's the functional medicine solution to that.
1
SPEAKER_01
But that's a distraction, and what's really happening is, it's underneath, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
There's this energy exchange valence happening down here,
1
SPEAKER_01
 where it's, you know, I jokingly refer to it as witchcraft, but like I just am basically trying to certainly be in a vibration of love, because that's a more healing vibration, but also I am channeling something that is far bigger than me.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think that like, you know, it goes in the humility category, but basically I don't think I'm doing all that much.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think I have learned how to make myself
1
SPEAKER_01
 be a channel or a portal to very powerful energies in the universe that move through me and help heal my patients.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I maybe sort of direct that energy a little bit.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that's something that I'm still relatively novice at, but that's really what I've come to do most of all.
1
SPEAKER_00
 How do you deal with the anxiety of talking to a bunch of people who are stressed out or dealing with pain, you know, three, four, five, seven clients a day or however many it is?
1
SPEAKER_00
How do you then not bring that with you and carry the pain and stress and anxiety with you?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, this is what's so broken about our modern medical system where, you know, a physician is a provider and sort of like patients are like coming through on a conveyor belt and it's just like, see a patient, churn it out.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Prescribed meds and what I've realized is that to do this work.
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, I'm not seeing seven or eight patients a day I've seen like two three and then there's a big regrouping energetically that happens afterward and I integrate and I process it I do weird hippie clearing practices and like I need to reset my energy to show up a hundred percent for the next person Yeah, and for your Your your kid your husband like your friends family.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's very inefficient, but it's the only way I know how to do it.
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, I
1
SPEAKER_00
 I feel like it'd be so interesting to be a therapist because, especially if you're very empathetic, because you give your whole heart and soul to the person for however long you're with them.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And it's harder to compartmentalize and just shift right into the next thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
Five minutes later, okay, on to the next thing, and someone's just telling me about being, all this trauma, and oh, I just compartmentalize it.
1
SPEAKER_00
What happens when we compartmentalize things in our life in general, and we don't fully allow them to come in and out and flow?
1
SPEAKER_01
 I love the way Chinese medicine thinks about these things.
1
SPEAKER_01
They really understand that it's this interconnected web and there's energy flowing in between, chi flowing.
1
SPEAKER_01
If you compartmentalize or if you push trauma like a bunch of junk into a closet and then close the door and stuff it all in there, it just creates this blockade in the
2
SPEAKER_01
 energy flow, so then your chi is sort of flowing and then it like hits the blockade and it's like, eh, what do we do here?
2
SPEAKER_01
And that stagnation, it creates pain, it creates symptoms, it creates illness, and so really anywhere where we have that kind of blockade, we actually need to work on taking away the blockade.
2
SPEAKER_01
Can we let the energy flow freely everywhere?
2
SPEAKER_01
I think compartmentalization can be helpful in discrete, short-term circumstances, but I think overall we need to integrate and let it all be interconnected.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right, interesting.
2
SPEAKER_00
 So you may need to compartmentalize to get into the next thing during the day, but then eventually you have to learn how to let it flow.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think so.
2
SPEAKER_00
Some way.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think so.
2
SPEAKER_00
 What do you think should people be thinking about if they realize there's some type of pain, there's some type of anxiety?
2
SPEAKER_00
Maybe, for me, I felt like this heart palpitations at times, like the anxiety would boil up into physical pain in my chest or my throat when I knew that I was out of integrity with my boundaries or out of alignment with who I am, with my vision, mostly in relationships.
2
SPEAKER_00
And abandoning myself was probably the biggest thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
 when I would abandon myself over and over again, pretty much daily, to try to please someone else, I would feel the pain.
2
SPEAKER_00
I feel the anxiety in my chest, in my throat, clenching.
2
SPEAKER_00
If someone's feeling anxious, what would be the first three things they could do, from a holistic point of view, to really start helping them to heal?
2
SPEAKER_01
 Quick 50 part answer to that.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I think that it reminds me of what you were talking about earlier with your childhood home.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I think that anybody, any child of sort of like, whether it's trauma, whether it's a divorce, anywhere where you intuited as a kid, like, this is a house of cards that might fall down and my survival would be at stake.
2
SPEAKER_01
 Or you just care about the well-being of the other people so you figured out how to be keenly attuned to other people's needs other people's triggers and To basically make sure that you're not the source of the problem You don't get to be the source of the problem.
2
SPEAKER_01
You don't get to have your meltdowns You're the source of the solution and you keep things going
2
SPEAKER_01
 calm and you just like, you know, gray rock yourself so that they can survive so that in turn you can survive so that you don't lose that fundamental hearth, your basic trust and security in the world.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so that is a reasonable coping strategy.
2
SPEAKER_01
You're not like blaming children for figuring that out.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think it's actually pretty savvy.
2
SPEAKER_01
 But then in adulthood, we need to figure out, like, okay, that was adaptive then and has now become maladaptive.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so I think that this, you know, there's no way for me to hear you describe it this way and not think about chakras, and maybe I'm going a little too hippy-dippy for your audience, but bring it.
2
SPEAKER_01
So, you know, these are energy,
2
SPEAKER_01
 Vortices in our body and I think about that.
2
SPEAKER_01
That's right.
2
SPEAKER_01
That's correct And so, you know this has to do is speaking our truth and this has to do with love and I think that the compassion also everything you know and self-love and I think that
2
SPEAKER_01
 Bringing up Marshall Rosenberg again, he has this true yes and true no paradigm where it's like we go through our life and you bump into somebody and they're like, oh, hey, I haven't seen you in 15 years, let's get coffee next Thursday.
2
SPEAKER_01
And what you feel instantly is, oh God, I'm busy, I'm stretched thin, I have no bandwidth, I'm promoting this book, any leftover time I wanna give to my own healing and spending time with my daughter and end of story, this is low priority.
2
SPEAKER_01
That's what goes through your mind very quickly.
2
SPEAKER_01
What you hear your mouth speak is,
2
SPEAKER_00
 Okay, great, let's do it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I'll see what you made happen.
2
SPEAKER_01
Your neighborhood or mine.
2
SPEAKER_01
So we're giving our false yes all the time.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the world conditions us also, I think, especially women, especially children of trauma.
2
SPEAKER_01
But basically we're conditioned constantly to people please, to not disappoint people, to solve other people's problems.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so we say yes.
2
SPEAKER_00
To be unselfish.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
And selfish is an interesting concept to unpack.
2
SPEAKER_01
 But so basically, we're giving our false yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
And every time we do that, first of all, it doesn't end well.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, we either flake at the last minute or we get stretched too thin and we are burned out.
2
SPEAKER_01
Or, you know, I love the one where it's like we go, but we resent the other person, which if you ever were like,
2
SPEAKER_00
 but you're the one who's going.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you're the one.
2
SPEAKER_00
You're resenting yourself and the other person.
2
SPEAKER_01
Own it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then if you were the person on the other side, you wouldn't want someone to say yes to you and then later resent you for it.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it's not cool.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then, but more importantly, we systematically silence our truth.
2
SPEAKER_01
 It's every time a little betrayal of the self.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so we get, you know, throat chakra imbalance from that because we just keep silencing what is actually our truth, that I think when we don't speak our truth in some form, some arena, funky things happen in the throat chakra.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so, and I think that, you know, you were saying in your relationship.
2
SPEAKER_00
The throat felt like someone was strangling me.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Different times.
2
SPEAKER_00
And again,
2
SPEAKER_00
 None of these partners were bad people.
2
SPEAKER_00
They're people, and I chose to silence myself.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don't put blame on anyone.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, you learned to silence yourself through, it was an adaptation in childhood, and now you're moving.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's crazy.
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so that was part of the explanation for the process for learning to heal yourself.
2
SPEAKER_00
Was there anything else there that you were gonna share?
2
SPEAKER_01
Remind me the way you phrased it.
2
SPEAKER_00
 First few things people should start to do if they if they're feeling stress pain anxiety on how to start really healing themselves.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so So let's get into like brass tacks.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I think that anybody who's struggling with anxiety you start with false moods and realize like
2
SPEAKER_01
 How do you do with caffeine?
2
SPEAKER_01
It's not a fun one.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don't make any friends with this one.
2
SPEAKER_01
Nobody likes this, because caffeine is like our savior and is our one true friend in the world.
2
SPEAKER_01
It's not inherently bad.
2
SPEAKER_01
Coffee has antioxidants and magnesium.
2
SPEAKER_01
It's associated with lower risk of type 2 diabetes and Parkinson's and suicide.
2
SPEAKER_01
Not inherently bad.
2
SPEAKER_01
But bio-individuality, we're all different.
2
SPEAKER_01
 And some people are rapid metabolizers and they can have the espresso after dinner and go straight to bed, no muss, no fuss.
2
SPEAKER_01
And some of us, people like me, are slow metabolizers.
2
SPEAKER_01
And if I have like a coffee at brunch, then I'm effectively on cocaine that day.
2
SPEAKER_01
Don't sleep for a week.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so basically know yourself.
2
SPEAKER_01
And even if the world is telling you coffee's great, if you're sensitive and it makes you tremulous and it makes you sort of like prone to
2
SPEAKER_01
 Spiral when something stressful happens Life is always going to show up with a stressor.
2
SPEAKER_01
So maybe it's not the right substance for you PSA don't ever go off it precipitously you always want to go off very gradually because it's a real drug with a real withdrawal so there's a
2
SPEAKER_01
 We'll have irritability and fatigue and headaches if we go off of it too quickly.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I do want to just point out, when it comes to coffee, we feel so good when we drink coffee because it's the antidote to its own withdrawal.
2
SPEAKER_01
It gets credit for relieving us from a state that it actually created originally.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so we just bear that in mind.
2
SPEAKER_01
 mind as we celebrate and like lift coffee up, but it's like, yeah, I kind of created the problem itself.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so, um, that's one thing to look at.
2
SPEAKER_01
Blood sugar is a huge thing to look at.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that's as simple as just recognizing in the modern food landscape.
2
SPEAKER_01
A lot of us are on a blood sugar rollercoaster.
2
SPEAKER_01
 because our diet is refined carbohydrates, and coffee drinks that are actually milkshakes, and rosemary all day.
2
SPEAKER_00
Breads and pastas all day, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so we are, you know, our blood sugar spikes, and then our body chases that with insulin, and then it crashes.
2
SPEAKER_01
And our body has a system of checks and balances to deal with that blood sugar crash.
2
SPEAKER_01
 We release cortisol and adrenaline.
2
SPEAKER_01
It communicates to the liver to break down our storage of glycogen or starch that it keeps there.
2
SPEAKER_01
That restores normal blood sugar, saves the day, and that's great.
2
SPEAKER_01
But a side effect of that is that it was a fire of alarm fire in the body.
2
SPEAKER_01
 So we're in a stress response, and that can feel synonymous with anxiety and panic, feeling easily overwhelmed, or when you're asleep, waking up throughout the middle of the night.
2
SPEAKER_01
So just keeping your blood sugar stable is a profoundly impactful change you can make.
2
SPEAKER_01
And there's the definitive solution, which is eating a blood sugar-stabilizing diet.
2
SPEAKER_01
For some people, retraining their metabolism with things like intermittent fasting.
2
SPEAKER_01
And for anybody who's just overwhelmed by that conversation,
2
SPEAKER_01
 show me somewhere easier to start, you can do something like a spoonful of almond butter or ghee or coconut oil or even a handful of nuts at regular intervals just to give you a safe D-net of blood sugar so it blunts any crash.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that's a big one.
2
SPEAKER_01
 Alcohol, nobody likes that conversation.
2
SPEAKER_01
But it's interesting the way it works.
2
SPEAKER_01
It gives us a rush of GABA, which is a neurotransmitter we're not really talking enough about.
2
SPEAKER_01
We talk about serotonin.
2
SPEAKER_01
Everybody knows about that.
2
SPEAKER_01
But GABA is the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter in our central nervous system.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it's the one that tells us it's going to be OK.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I think GABA is a
2
SPEAKER_01
 endangered species of modern life.
2
SPEAKER_01
There's so much about modern life that's an assault on our GABA, all the way from alcohol and benzodiazepines, things like Xanax and Klonopin, to the fact that when we have dysbiosis in our gut, and we've maybe lost some of the beneficial bacteria, we can lose certain bacteroides species that help us manufacture GABA.
2
SPEAKER_01
So we might even just not even have the gut bacteria to have enough of GABA in our bodies to feel calm.
2
SPEAKER_01
 So alcohol gives us a rush of GABA and then our body doesn't care whether or not we're relaxed.
2
SPEAKER_01
It just wants us to survive.
2
SPEAKER_00
So... How bad is alcohol when it comes to anxiety?
2
SPEAKER_01
 I think it's great for a couple hours, and then it's really destructive.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so I'm here to say there's no dogma, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
It's always the act of radical self-love.
2
SPEAKER_01
But I think most of us benefit from at least being informed about physiologically what's happening.
2
SPEAKER_01
Physiologically, what's happening with alcohol.
2
SPEAKER_01
 is our body sees that relaxation and thinks, this puts us at risk of not being sufficiently alert or vigilant or cautious if a threat were to occur.
2
SPEAKER_01
If a leopard comes around the corner, we're going to be too buzzed to care.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it thinks, must restore homeostasis.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it converts that GABA into a neurotransmitter called glutamate, which is excitatory.
2
SPEAKER_01
 And that's why after you've had a few drinks, that second half of the night, you're tossing and turning, you're not sleeping well, you're irritable the next day, you're picking a fight with your partner.
2
SPEAKER_01
It's the glutamate effect.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it's worth at least knowing that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then anytime you're deciding whether or not to have a drink, you just make that decision consciously from a place of self-love.
2
SPEAKER_01
Sometimes the act of self-love is to say, I'm not drinking tonight.
2
SPEAKER_01
And sometimes it's to have whiskey need.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you just have to make that choice eyes wide open.
2
SPEAKER_01
 And then let's just say there's a lot of things we can do, but nutrition is a biggie.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that gets into a whole conversation about how to strike that balance.
2
SPEAKER_01
But we right now have a conversation around nutrition that's very focused on the no's, like go gluten free and dairy free and sugar free and did you know about the industrially processed vegetable oils and those are a hidden source of inflammation.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I'm all for that conversation, I could have it all day.
2
SPEAKER_01
 But we also need to focus on deeply nourishing our bodies.
2
SPEAKER_01
We need to kind of eat the way our great-great-grandmothers ate, where there was an understanding of balance and nutrient density and how do we get sufficient healthy fats and the micronutrients like B12 and folate.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so if you wanna heal your anxiety, it's really about how do you give your body that juicy nourishment so that you have all the raw materials that allow your brain to function well.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then sleep is a big one.
2
SPEAKER_00
 Absolutely, we've had a few sleep experts on here, I love those.
2
SPEAKER_00
Radical self-love, there's also a book I think called Radical Honesty, I'm not sure if that was by a therapist as well, but like being radically honest with yourself and other people, I believe may cause a momentary feeling of stress or letdown or disappointment, but overall you'll feel proud of yourself for being honest.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's interesting, as I started dating my current girlfriend,
2
SPEAKER_00
 I, after a couple months of kind of hanging out and dating, I told her, I'm always gonna be honest with you, and you're not gonna like it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I've said this in every relationship beforehand, but no partner I've had has been able to handle my honesty.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, I don't know if you're gonna be able to handle it, because I've seen a pattern where no one's been able to handle my honesty.
2
SPEAKER_00
You're not gonna like what I have to say.
2
SPEAKER_00
You're not gonna like the things I believe.
2
SPEAKER_00
There may be certain things you don't like.
2
SPEAKER_00
 And so as she would ask me certain questions about just like life and relationships and the future, what do you believe in this and this?
2
SPEAKER_00
I go, do you want me to tell you the truth?
2
SPEAKER_00
Because I don't think you're gonna like it.
2
SPEAKER_00
She's like, yes.
2
SPEAKER_00
She's been able to hold the truth, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Which makes me trust that I can continue to be more and more honest.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I, the more radically honest I am and when you can be with someone who can receive it, then I feel like
2
SPEAKER_00
 I'm not abandoning myself, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
I'm not abandoning myself, I'm not betraying myself, because I can speak my truth and someone can receive it.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it's hard for people to receive the truth.
2
SPEAKER_00
Why is that?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think, well, let me push back a tiny bit.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don't have all the answers on this one, but I always see it in terms of the sort of
2
SPEAKER_01
 In the yogic tradition, there's the yamas and the niyamas.
2
SPEAKER_01
There's this idea of there's satya, truthfulness, but then there's also ahimsa, non-harming.
2
SPEAKER_01
Non-harming.
2
SPEAKER_01
Non-harming.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that I really think of it as like those two always need to be
2
SPEAKER_01
 you don't ever just go all into one without a dose of the other.
2
SPEAKER_00
Sure, well having some context when you're speaking the truth and not trying to be like, not being like you suck or something, but like here's my truth and being, finessing certain things, but being honest at the same time.
2
SPEAKER_01
 I think partly what's challenging about honesty is that when goals are not aligned, right?
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And part of what we're all playing at sometimes unwittingly is I want to achieve my goal and in order to get there, I need you to keep believing this thing that's not completely true.
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SPEAKER_01
 And like say in a relationship, I don't want to make any assumptions at all, but something that comes up a lot is like Somebody wants to marry the other person and if they knew that that wasn't like that we weren't marching towards that maybe this is an opportunity cost and they'd get out and start a new with somebody else and This person's like I have no idea if this is headed towards marriage.
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SPEAKER_01
I just don't know and
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SPEAKER_01
 And, but in a sense, you almost have to keep up that lie by omission to like have it continue because your goal is like, well, I don't know, but I want to keep finding out.
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SPEAKER_01
And so I think it gets so tricky, but it's something I haven't mastered.
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SPEAKER_01
I like what Eckhart Tolle has to say about how the ego sort of like really resists honesty.
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SPEAKER_01
Like I always find that this comes up when I need to apologize for something, when I need to be accountable for when I messed up.
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SPEAKER_01
 And why is it that my ego is like dragging its heels heading towards this apology and be like, no, no, no, don't say it.
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SPEAKER_01
And then you say it and it's rupture and repair.
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And everything's better afterward and it's softer and it's more tender and you can connect and you feel like, wow, like there's a feeling of self-efficacy with it.
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SPEAKER_01
And yet somehow every time my ego is still resistant.
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SPEAKER_01
And so.
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SPEAKER_00
Cause you don't want to rupture.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
The rupture is scary.
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SPEAKER_00
It's scary.
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SPEAKER_01
 Yeah, but it almost always ends well, in the right partnership.
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SPEAKER_01
But that itself is interesting, because if the rupture doesn't go well, there's your answer, right?
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SPEAKER_01
That's a filter.
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SPEAKER_00
There's this explosion and blow up and... Right.
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SPEAKER_01
But a lot of us do carry some fear of abandonment, fear of loss, and so even if something needs to end, we still just... It's still scary.
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SPEAKER_01
We don't want it to be today.
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SPEAKER_00
I was resistant in pretty much
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SPEAKER_00
 every relationship to end things when I knew that I probably should end it.
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SPEAKER_00
I was afraid of it.
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SPEAKER_00
I was scared of it.
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SPEAKER_01
More fear of hurting the other person or just losing the person?
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SPEAKER_00
Hurting the other person.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, hurting the other person and the other person being angry at me.
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SPEAKER_01
 So even the fear of hurting another person is sometimes pure compassion for the other person's experience, and sometimes it's fear of that person having a judgment towards you.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it's both.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I have like the extremes of both.
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SPEAKER_00
But I would at least communicate, I'd be like, listen,
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SPEAKER_00
 I don't know if we're supposed to be together.
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SPEAKER_00
It wasn't like I was not saying anything but I was like, should we be together?
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SPEAKER_00
I don't know.
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SPEAKER_00
But then it would be like this anxious, sad conversation and I was like, well, actually, everything's okay.
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SPEAKER_00
And then I didn't have the courage to really say what I needed to say.
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SPEAKER_00
And so it was challenging.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, there's also this thing.
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SPEAKER_01
We have a cultural understanding that I think Hollywood informs us on this.
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SPEAKER_01
 If it's right if it's like the one that there's going to be this high chemistry experience sometimes that's true But I think sometimes high chemistry actually just belies the fact that your schemas and life traps and trauma Line up with their schemas life traps and trauma and then you sort of lock and key on the bad stuff and
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SPEAKER_01
 And it generates high chemistry.
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SPEAKER_00
That's how I felt in the previous relationships, the most previous ones.
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SPEAKER_01
And that burns very bright and then burns out.
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SPEAKER_01
And it often doesn't end, it's not pretty.
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SPEAKER_01
And in a way, sometimes the right relationship
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SPEAKER_01
 generates low chemistry initially, and we take that as an indication of like, meh, not really feeling it, let me get out.
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SPEAKER_01
But it actually could be an indication of you're showing up with healthy boundaries and a very accurate assessment of we don't yet know if this is the right relationship.
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SPEAKER_00
You just met for the first week, how are you supposed to know?
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SPEAKER_01
But there might be reason to continue to try to find out.
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SPEAKER_01
And so I think many of us actually need to decouple high chemistry from it's the one.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes, I think so too.
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SPEAKER_00
Because there's a lot of people
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SPEAKER_00
 that have high chemistry and then they end up not working out or getting a divorce or whatever.
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SPEAKER_00
So if that's not the solution, what is the solution?
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SPEAKER_00
I've always been, not always in the last year, I've realized that for me, my thesis is love is not enough.
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SPEAKER_00
That love alone is not enough, you need the right values aligned, you need the right vision aligned, and you need the right lifestyle aligned.
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SPEAKER_00
 aligned.
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SPEAKER_00
It doesn't need to be 100% perfect and everything the same, but it's got to be in alignment in those areas.
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SPEAKER_00
Otherwise, there will be some type of letdown, breakdown.
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SPEAKER_00
 you know, challenge that is unnecessary than if you were in an aligned relationship of those three things.
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SPEAKER_00
And you probably have more wisdom on this than I do, but that's just from my personal experience.
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SPEAKER_01
To me, the sine qua non, like the kind of without which not for a relationship that's worth investing in, it's for me, it's personal, but there needs to be good communication.
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SPEAKER_02
Yes.
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SPEAKER_01
And then there actually needs to be an openness to growth.
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SPEAKER_01
 And I think if you have those two things, you can take on the world.
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SPEAKER_01
Because any challenge, any difference in opinion, any stressor that's putting the relationship in a crucible, if you can communicate about it well, which is a big ask.
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SPEAKER_00
Without screaming or reacting or making someone wrong or judging.
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SPEAKER_01
All that violent communication is sort of like you, it's more like, well, here's what's alive in me.
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SPEAKER_01
Here's my experience.
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SPEAKER_00
So communicating effectively, consciously, conscious communication.
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SPEAKER_01
 which so many of us fall into what was modeled for us by our parents.
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SPEAKER_01
And we get real stuck in that, especially if we're sleep deprived or stressed or you have a kid, you know, there's so many things that make it even harder.
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SPEAKER_01
But the openness to growth, you know, I find my partner and I, maybe like we grow in this sort of like staggered way.
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SPEAKER_01
 So I went to Brazil and 11 ayahuasca ceremonies came back and I'm all wise now, young thing.
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SPEAKER_01
But a kind of like, will you come with me on this journey?
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SPEAKER_01
I think that there's something here to keep exploring.
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SPEAKER_01
And if both people are game, that you can take on the world.
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SPEAKER_00
 thing I love about my girlfriend the most is she's probably, I would consider myself very beginner's mind, like I'm always interviewing, I'm always learning, I'm always researching to try to improve and find better solutions.
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SPEAKER_00
I'd say probably, you know, I'm just committed to that.
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SPEAKER_00
My life is about learning and growth and having a beginner's mind at all stages.
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SPEAKER_00
 And she's equal, if not more than me, which is kind of like, I've never met a partner who is as hungry for growth, which gets me very excited.
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SPEAKER_00
There's almost times where I'm like, okay, we don't have to listen to the podcast right now.
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SPEAKER_00
Or we can just not take this workshop online.
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SPEAKER_00
Let's just chill out and watch TV for a second.
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SPEAKER_00
But it excites me because she wants to have that growth mentality as well, which makes me feel like, with what you're saying, the right communication and a growth mindset.
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SPEAKER_00
 is really the key to seeing if something can grow in a relationship.
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SPEAKER_01
 And I'm glad you brought up that.
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SPEAKER_01
I think that there is growth burnout sometimes.
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SPEAKER_01
Anytime you even so much as clean one dish, you need to be listening to a podcast.
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SPEAKER_00
It's like maximizing.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I think that coming back to Chinese medicine, really it's a Taoist principle, the yin and yang.
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SPEAKER_01
And we're in a moment in time in the West where we are obsessed with the yang.
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SPEAKER_01
That's the masculine doing, active sun energy, productivity.
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SPEAKER_01
And we really devalue the yin.
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SPEAKER_01
 And that's this more feminine, receiving, non-doing, resting, moon energy.
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SPEAKER_01
And even when we're into yin, sometimes it's actually in service of yang.
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SPEAKER_01
It's like, I'm gonna meditate so I can be more productive.
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SPEAKER_01
And it's like, no, that's yang in yin's clothing.
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SPEAKER_01
And I think that we do actually need to find balance.
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SPEAKER_01
And it's important to recognize since we're living in such a cultural obsession with yang, most of the time the balance is actually towards more yin.
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SPEAKER_01
 And so sometimes you do dishes in silence.
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SPEAKER_01
Sometimes you take a car in and it's just music.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, nothing.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, nothing.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that's interesting.
2
SPEAKER_01
 Can I do one detour back to psych meds?
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SPEAKER_01
Cause I feel, I feel like a incomplete on, I was just like, I have a controversial view on psych meds and I just left it at that.
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SPEAKER_01
I think that it's quite likely that many people watching listening right now take a psychiatric medication.
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SPEAKER_01
So it's so important for me to represent them and basically say my approach here is not against psychiatric medications.
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SPEAKER_01
 I think that I've had patients helped by them.
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SPEAKER_01
I start patients on psychiatric medications from time to time.
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SPEAKER_01
Like there's no dogma against that.
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SPEAKER_01
But I think 99.9% of psychiatrists, that's their main tool.
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SPEAKER_00
It's just saying, okay, you've got this challenge.
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SPEAKER_00
Let's just prescribe you something.
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SPEAKER_01
And sometimes it goes well and that's great.
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SPEAKER_01
And if it's gone well for you and you're like, this has helped me.
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SPEAKER_01
There's no shame in that.
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SPEAKER_01
Don't need to overthink that or look back.
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SPEAKER_01
Like consider yourself one of the lucky ones and go forth.
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SPEAKER_01
 But I think that I'm here to say I'm aware of the many I would say millions of people who have not been sufficiently helped by mental health as it stands whether they started a med and it helped initially and then the effect waned or they've tried every medication and nothing really helped or they're on something and
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SPEAKER_01
 and they have to get off of it for one reason or another, another medication contraindication or family planning considerations, and they're struggling to get off.
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SPEAKER_01
So there's a lot of people whose needs aren't being met by psychiatry as it stands.
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SPEAKER_01
And for them, I'm here to say, there's reason to be hopeful.
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SPEAKER_01
There's so many other ways to ascend this mountain.
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SPEAKER_01
And so there's nothing against psych meds here, but if it hasn't been the solution for you,
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SPEAKER_01
 Come on this journey with me.
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SPEAKER_01
There's so many other things we can do to get you to a place where you feel well Where you're able to achieve a fulfilling life.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah What's the prescription you need to give yourself for this next year?
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SPEAKER_00
Is it do nothing and rest more is it take on something as I look into something and pull back the curtain what's the
2
SPEAKER_01
 Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
So a big part of it is slowing down and spaciousness.
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SPEAKER_01
I want to just fully savor this precious moment with my daughter who's six right now.
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SPEAKER_01
And it's just, this is, this is it.
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SPEAKER_01
Like this is the main course and it's as good as it's ever going to be.
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SPEAKER_01
I feel like at a certain point she's a teenager and we look at all these people who have complicated relationships with their parents.
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SPEAKER_01
I see that through such a different lens now that I am a parent, I'm like, Oh no,
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SPEAKER_01
 Like I'm going to be the parent and this is the most important person in the world to me.
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SPEAKER_01
Are we going to have a good relationship?
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SPEAKER_01
So I really want to slow down and be present for that as much as possible.
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SPEAKER_01
And I think what you brought up around releasing whatever pushback I get on the book, whether
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SPEAKER_01
 Sometimes it'll just be like angry people being angry, haters hating.
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SPEAKER_01
And that's easier to release, but still gets me off balance.
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SPEAKER_01
But sometimes it's really useful feedback that still hurts to hear.
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SPEAKER_01
And I think to be able to take that and integrate the pearl buried in the feedback,
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SPEAKER_01
 but to not need to feel like what's happening here has anything to do with how people evaluate me, that I have put a labor of love, a decade of practice, a lot of perspectives, insights, and learnings, and put it out into the world and hopefully help some people, and that that's enough and I can let it be at that.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that's great.
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SPEAKER_00
How can we turn anxiety into a superpower?
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SPEAKER_01
 Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
So we have such a cultural attitude towards like, don't be so sensitive.
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SPEAKER_01
And you know, it's like, whether you can't tolerate gluten or crowds or loud noises, you know, we, we, we shame ourselves for that.
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SPEAKER_01
I'm so sensitive.
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SPEAKER_01
Um, if you're sensitive in one way, you're sensitive in every sense of the word in my book.
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SPEAKER_01
 And that's an obvious superpower.
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SPEAKER_01
Like the same people that can't handle gluten in crowds are also really attuned to other people.
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SPEAKER_01
They're sensitive to other people's needs.
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SPEAKER_01
They're the ones that pick up on the body language and the micro expressions and realize like someone's not feeling heard or someone's not getting their needs met.
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SPEAKER_01
And I think that they're intuitive and we need that so sorely right now in the world.
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SPEAKER_01
We need people with their finger on the pulse who can sense like here's how we as
2
SPEAKER_01
 a species need a course correction.
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SPEAKER_01
And so I think we all need to not be shaming the sensitive folks or the anxious folks for being too sensitive.
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SPEAKER_01
I think we need to shut up and listen to what they have to say because I think that they're here in a sort of prophetic capacity.
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SPEAKER_00
 I love this.
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SPEAKER_00
I hope people get the book, The Anatomy of Anxiety, Understanding and Overcoming the Body's Fear Response.
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SPEAKER_00
I think this type of work is some of the most important work we all should be learning throughout the rest of our lives.
2
SPEAKER_00
At different seasons of life, we're going to be dealing with different stresses and anxieties.
2
SPEAKER_00
And what would you say is the root cause of all fear?
2
SPEAKER_01
 So, ostensibly, it's the fear of death and of losing the people we love, but I think maybe, and I'm not saying I'm certain about this, but I'm increasingly curious about the fact that that ostensible ultimate fear
2
SPEAKER_01
 is an illusion and that- A fear of death and losing someone?
2
SPEAKER_01
That might not be the whole story of what's happening here with existence.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don't know, but I get a lot of meaning and comfort from the idea that there might be something just slightly less comprehensible happening.
2
SPEAKER_01
Less, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
 Overcoming the body's fear response.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's hard to create a meaningful life consistently when we're in an anxious state, in a fear state.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's much easier to feel and create a loving environment and relationship from a place of love and peace than fear, stress, and anxiety.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I think it's something we all want to get back to if we're not there right now or want to stay in in that state as much as possible.
2
SPEAKER_00
 So make sure you guys pick up a copy of The Anatomy of Anxiety.
2
SPEAKER_00
I highly recommend this.
2
SPEAKER_00
Powerful stuff from Ellen Fora.
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SPEAKER_00
A couple final questions for you.
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SPEAKER_00
Where can we go and support you?
2
SPEAKER_00
Where can we follow you?
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SPEAKER_00
Where can we support you the most?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so I'm at Ellen Fora MD on the various social platforms.