May 25, 2022 • 65 mins
Jen talks to Judy Gold about growing up with undiagnosed anxious parents, being an anxious mom, the anxiety that being gay and closeted as a teenager caused, the lingering anxieties from being bullied and how to handle bad days.
Judy Gold is a stand-up comedian, star of critically acclaimed one woman hit Off-Broadway show. She's the author of "Yes I Can Say That: When They Come For The Comedians We're All In Trouble" and host of the mental-health-positive-podcast Kill Me Now. Judy has acted in many TV shows - most recently on FX's Better Things and in the upcoming Showtime Series FLOTUS.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the Anxiety Bites podcast and I am your host,
Jen Kirkman. Welcome to another episode of Anxiety Bites. I'm
your host Jen Kirkman. Today I'm talking to my friend
Judy Gold. Judy Gold is a hilarious comedian, just an actress.
I'll get into all of that in a moment now.
As you know, this is a podcast about anxiety hosted
(00:32):
by a comedian, but I don't mean it to be
a comedy podcast. I certainly didn't want it to be.
I interview comedians with anxiety, but I have had a few.
On this season. Judy will be the final comedian in
my three comedian series. I talked to my friend Andy
Keindler and Chelsea Handler as well. But I've known Judy
a long time, and you know, it's just it wasn't
(00:55):
until maybe a few years ago when we talked about it,
or I don't remember. I mean maybe not just a
few years ago, but within the last ten years where
I realized she had anxiety and depression. And it's I
don't know why I didn't think that, because I'm not
saying every comedian has that, but I've again known her
(01:16):
for a long time, and I'm sure she talks about
her anxiety on stage. She's just such a big presence
in that she's and I mean, this is the best
of ways. She's loud, and she's funny, and she's confident,
or at least she's doing a damn good job pretending
to be confident. But I've watched her work as a
stand up since I moved to New York, and was
(01:37):
this shaky little thing trying to act like I was confident,
And and I really looked up to Judy, And I
know if she were listening to this, she's going to
be like, you're making me sound old. But Judy was
always very kind to me. And you know, I'm honestly
like a lot of times people with anxiety or depression there,
they're not always just kind to people. You know, a
(01:59):
lot of times you in your own head or yourself
medicating with alcolors something, and then that changes your behavior,
or you're really withdrawn and shy, or you're depressed and
sort of just over it. And and I never experienced
that with her. So it's not like I was shocked
when I found out she had depression and anxiety. I
just went, oh, oh, that's right. Yet another reminder that
(02:22):
you never can tell you can't judge it by someone
who doesn't seem freaked out to be on a stage.
I mean that that's a job. You know, I'm not
freaked out to be on stage, but I don't necessarily
like I don't know, driving over a bridge to get there. Anyway.
Every once in a while, I like to do an
episode where it's conversational, where you know, we're not talking
(02:42):
to a neuroscientist or a therapist or someone who can
explain why everything comes together and forms anxiety, but rather
more of an experiential thing. You know, someone who's saying, oh, well,
I grew up this way and I didn't realize until
later that this was that, and that was this, and
that affects this, and you know, there's this um thing.
(03:03):
I think that happens when when you talk to a
lot of smart people, if you're listening and you're thinking, oh, okay,
I guess god, if I had known this sooner, and
then maybe I could have started to get better quicker.
And I just don't think it totally works that way.
I think you just have to live your life, live
your experiences, and sort of slowly go through life and
(03:24):
try and fail at different things, whether it's some kind
of social life, work life, and then start to realize
what your pathology is or what your habits are, and
realize are these mine or these maladaptive things that I
learned from my parents? Okay, now I have to trade
them in for some new tools. I do think that
knowledge is power, but knowledge is not everything. You just
(03:46):
kind of have to live and see and experience. And
so Judy and I are all over the place, you know,
we we both have a d H D. And as
Judy says, she's a d D D D D D
D D. Like we're all over the place. We're talking
everything from you know, the generational trauma she experienced too
when she came out at the closet, and you know
(04:08):
what society was like back then? Oh my god, she's
so old. Did I mentioned what society was like? How
how different you know it is now? What it's like
being a mom, what it's like being someone who had
a very anxious mom, who never got treated for anxiety?
How do you break the cycle? Do you break the cycle?
And then what does she do now? Um too kind
(04:30):
of keep the maladaptive behaviors at bay? What does what
does she do to self soothe? And you're going to
not be surprised that it's the thing that everybody says
that we need to do, which is connection with others, breathing, meditating.
I mean, I hate to say it. I could do
a hundred more of these episodes and we're just going
(04:50):
to keep coming back to those basics, right, But it
was really fun to talk to Judy, and I think
she's a great example of just keep walking through whatever
you're going through. Your going to come out the other
side stronger and smarter. And if you can be as
funny as Judy while you're doing it, then you've really
you've really won the mental health battle. So without further ado,
(05:14):
I hope you just have a fun time listening to
me talk with Judy and we talk about bullying, which
is something that I haven't really talked about on this
podcast before. There is an upcoming episode where I get
into um bullying a little bit deeper, talking to a
therapist and author about you know, why why does it
(05:35):
stay with us when we know we don't actually you know,
we don't actually absorb the opinions of bullies that were
mean to us as kids. I mean, maybe we did
as a kid, but as an adult, we we know better.
We don't care. We might even see these people on Facebook.
You know, they seem to have forgotten the whole thing,
and uh so what does that mean? It stays with
(05:57):
us so that I'll be talking about that in a
future episode, but for now, it's a duty. And I
kind of talking about how bullying shaped us in a
way where there's this anxiety that comes from not being
able to control others in that sense of how do
you get to act like this and and like no
one's gonna do anything about this, and and then just
(06:19):
even growing up and seeing these people, like I said
earlier on Facebook and going so you just get to
have bullied someone in your whole life and then that's it.
I mean, not even an apology would do. It's like
you almost want these people to like have to sit
down to their family and go Okay. When I was younger,
I did this, I just judy and I realized that
one thing we have in common that came from being
(06:41):
anxious people and people who maybe felt misunderstood or picked on,
was the sense of justice. I think I talked about
it with my other friend Andy Killer. Maybe this somehow
goes hand in hand with being a comedian. I'm not sure,
but we just want to make things right that aren't
in our lives and in the war old and when
we can't, it's like we don't except that we can't
(07:06):
control the bigger things in life. You know, it's so
endlessly frustrating. So people like us, and if you're like us,
you really need to find ways to self soothe and
of course laugh. So again, so excited to have Judy
on this show. And I will stop talking so that
you can go listen to her. But let me just
tell you a little more about Judy Gold. She's a
(07:29):
stand up comedian obviously, as I said, she started in
critically acclaimed one woman hit off Broadway shows. She's the
author of Yes I Can Say That When they come
for the Comedians were all in Trouble. It's a great
book she wrote years and years ago. Um that sort
of predicted where we are today in many ways about
(07:50):
you know, debates about what we can and can't joke about.
And she is the host of the very funny podcast
Kill Me Now, where she always asks her guests if
they're on any kind of mental health medication. Judy has
acted in so many TV shows. Most recently she was
on FX is Better Things, and she's in the new
Showtime series Flotus. So let's go to my conversation. Oh
(08:17):
my god, oh my god, oh my god. What is it?
I have this new Bluetooth speaker that I play music
out of and it is just talking to me and
I don't like it at all, and if I okay anyway,
but I'm not going to edit that out because I
think it's funny. So without further ado, my conversation with Judy.
(08:37):
And you know, you wish you had been there when
we were just setting up and she's like yelling funk
while she's setting up her mic. It was delightful, but
you don't get to hear it, but you get to
hear about it. But now you get to hear me
and Judy. Judy and me, you get what I'm saying.
Don't criticize my grammar. You just you know where a
(09:01):
lot of your anxiety comes from. Spill it. Well, first
of all, I think it's genetic. Um, I'm predisposed. I
think a lot of Jews are predisposed to anxiety because
of being kicked out of every country. So you know,
this idea of the Jewish the anxious Jewish mother, Uh,
(09:24):
you know, is all based on trauma of you know,
knock knock, get out heat, you get out of your dead. Um.
So I know that a lot of my I had
had a very anxious mother and very o c D
(09:44):
father and an anxious father might so I believe that
my anxiety. First of all, my father lived through the Depression.
He was born in nineteen sixteen and remembers people we'll
remember and he's dead. Uh, people like committing suicide. Fuck,
I turned this off, you funk. Sorry. Oh, it wouldn't
(10:10):
be an interview with you without that. I'm keeping on it. Yeah, sorry. Uh.
So he he remembered that anxiety from you know, the
like literally the depression. Um. He was I guess, you know,
thirteen years old, so very impressionable age. Now, my mother
(10:32):
grew up on the Upper West Side and she um
had a brother and a sister. She was the eldest,
and then her brother was two years younger, and then
her sisters seven years younger. And one day in June
I think it was the last day of school. Actually,
(10:54):
she was walking home from she went to UM Julia
Richmond High School on the East Side, and Betty Persky
was in her class. Lauren Call's real name. Oh my god,
I never knew that. Yes, and cousin of Sam Schmo
Perez who was the Prime Minister of Israel. Okay, fascinating.
(11:15):
So you get a lot of Jewish information. This is great.
So she's walking home and uh, she bumps into one
of her cousins. A lot of us grew up my
family very New York Upper West Side. And so she
bumps into one of her cousins and they walk home together.
And as she gets at off the bus or the subway, whatever,
(11:36):
she sees her uncle standing on the corner and he
tells the cousin to go home and brings my mother
upstairs to tell her that her brother. She walks into
this house and her younger brother and everyone is just
sitting um. And her younger brother, who went to Bronx
(12:00):
Bian's Brooklyn Tech, was playing ball outside on They lived
on ninety four West eighty nine Street nine and the
doorman came out and said, told these kids, you can't
play ball here. And uh, my uncle, my mother's brother,
had his jacket on the hood of a car, and
(12:23):
the doorman or the elevator operator grabbed his jacket and
he and Stewart, my uncle, ran and he and the
elevator upper ran back into the lobby and was like
playing keepaway with the jacket, and Stewart reached for his
jacket and um, the doorman slash elevator opera, I don't
(12:47):
know what it was, pushed him and he fell back
and hit his head on the marble floor and died. Oh,
and I have to tell you I grew up in
a house where if I was five minutes late, Um,
I remember my father even taking the train to go
(13:08):
to work and come home. Um, my mother was a wreck.
Every time I left, I had to leave the name number,
you know, when I was coming home. You know. So
what happened was this huge tragedy happened? And how old
was your mom when this happened? It up ended all
of her plans of going to college. She ended up
(13:30):
just going to you know, junior college. Her younger sister,
who still live, my aunt Joan, you know, told me that,
you know, she felt so guilty because she had just
had pneumonia and they had just come out with antibiotics,
and she she lived, but she thought she was the
one that was supposed to die. My mother and my
(13:51):
and her sister both made a pack. They would have
three children each, so in so there was always one
left in case something, I mean, And no one ever
talked about it. So I didn't even know until I
was eighteen and I was visiting my grandmother and I
saw the obituary in one of her drawers. Um, so
(14:17):
this trauma and no one talked about things, then that's
the whole thing there was. There was no therapy, there
was no They they moved to a smaller apartment with
one less bedroom, and then they moved out of the
building two first Street. Um, I guess it was too
painful to even be in. So that trauma. Are those
(14:44):
two traumas I think um really made or affected the
way my parents parented. And you know, and the fact
that we didn't know that it was like, what's the
big fucking deal. I'm ten minut It is late. You
know What's so interesting because now, okay, so there's generational trauma.
(15:05):
Then there's nature nurture, so like we know that anxiety
comes down in our DNA, whether or not we had
a generational trauma. Then there's third they're doing everything quote wrong, right,
so they don't they never talk about the death. They
don't all so now they're passing down maladaptive behaviors. Um
so even before you find out there was a death,
(15:26):
like you're just being created in this lab of anxiety
of like you know, everything is dangerous, right, And so
I remember I grew up like five or six houses
down from my grammar school. Like I literally walked three
minutes to get to my grammar school. You could see
the you know, the state the soccer field was like
(15:51):
in my backyard. But I mean it was anyway the
minute there was any weather, right. Yeah. They used to
make announcements on the public address system. I sweart of
got the first time, like there's a snowstormer, there's gonna
be this, or there's Judith Gold. Can you please come
to the office. Your mother's here. And I'm like, oh
my god, I'm already unpopular, and now there's an announcement
(16:15):
that my mother was the first to pick us up
to you know, bring us home. Well, you know you
are a comedian, and we'll mention it a little bit.
I'm really I really hate like analyzing comedy and anxiety.
It's just so boring and nobody gets it right. But
one of my favorite routines that you do routines, one
of my eight is the one about your mother. I mean,
(16:35):
it's a classic Judith did you fall down? She's yelling
out into your answering machine. We just give us a
sense of that because it's so funny. Uh. Well, and
I have a I have a bunch of them. But
uh so my eye had. This is the eighties, um,
and I had gone pre cell phone, and I was
(16:59):
at my agent's office and I called my mother on
the phone because it was free. I used to talk
to my mother every day and and it was free
because we used to have to pay it. And you know,
she lived in New Jersey and I was in New York.
Uh that was also a sore spot with her that
she had to move to New Jersey because of my
father's job, and she hated it. But so I called
(17:20):
her in New Jersey and we're talking and my elbow
hit the you know the thing on the phone. So
we got disconnected and I didn't call her back. Um,
and I got home and I forgot to tell her
is that my agent's office. And I got home and
there was this message on my answering machine where she
is literally screaming, where are you? I'm a wreck. I
(17:45):
don't understand it. Then she's going to call the neighbor
to find out what happened to me, and she's screaming,
and then there's a pause and she says, so long.
I mean, it's so and I and I heard this,
and I thought, and I had so much material about
my anxious mother, and I think that's how I processed it,
(18:05):
probably now that I'm talking to you, the the anxiety
and um and and her over the top no, because
it was It wasn't like I had to exaggerate it.
I was just telling these stories and I thought, I
gotta play this on. No one is going to believe this.
And it became like this signature bit of mine, playing
this answering machine message. And my mother and I have
(18:28):
a bunch of them, I you know, through life, um
of the messages she left me that are so like,
there's one, okay, there's one where there was this dart man.
Some people remember this bit. There was a guy in
the subways, and I think it was in the eighties
or nineties, and he was throwing darts at women's asses,
(18:49):
and and there was like this big scare because it
was the AIDS you know crisis, So everyone was like,
oh no, what if the darts are infected? Whatever? So
it was on the front cover the paper, the dart
Man and I got home that afternoon and there was
a message from my mother on the answering machine and
it said, Judith, we're thick clothes. Uh. It's like this
(19:20):
is right now for me. See. I think anxiety is
funny because it's it's an exact like we all have.
You know, people say to comedians, so you say what
I just think? Right, So we all have exaggerated thoughts
and we worry, and that's part of our evolution. We
have to be always scanning and keeping ourselves safe. And
some of the things we have to think and do
(19:41):
in order to do that we're wrong about. And those
errors are funny. Hence I think like talking about someone's
anxious thoughts are very funny. It's just it's like if
she wasn't doing something that maybe you've even thought, it
may not even be fine. I don't know. It's it's
it's also that you know, the thing about it is
(20:01):
so over the top, but it's based in love and vulnerability. Right,
it wouldn't be funny if she was mean spirited wanted
to have a terrible life. It's like, here's this woman's
idea of loving someone to her best ability and keeping
you safe in the world, and it is just potentially
(20:22):
could actually do the exact opposite. It could make you
so crazy that you fall down, and so you're like,
oh my god, you're out of your mind. But you know, there,
I still have one on the machine about not buying
Romaine lettuce at a certain uh if you go to
this gross do not buy, you know. And it was
(20:43):
her way of, you know, sort of staying connected and
also yeah, protection and and love. I mean she never
said I love you. My parents never said I love
you or hugged me. Um, but I knew they loved me,
you know what I mean? And I knew And you know,
(21:03):
the thing that got the most um, I guess positive
reinforcement was a clever quip or sarcastic, like a funny
line or something like that. You know, they definitely appreciated
humor and sarcasm. Uh. But yeah, I mean they didn't
(21:24):
show love in those traditional ways. Uh, but I knew
I was loved. Now you're a mother, and how have you?
Have you broken the cycle? Oh? Absolutely, because I've been
in therapy for so long. But uh, well, first of all,
I recognize it like I can identify it. I've been
(21:44):
through cognitive behavioral therapy and I've been through regular therapy. Uh,
and so I at this point. Now, first of all,
if you look, you know, like I do the picking
of the cuticle thing, which is one of the most
common forms of anxiety, till my fingers bleed and I
(22:04):
stopped doing that. I mean, I've been doing that since
as far back as I can remember, and I over
exercised for many years because of the endorphins. Um. But
as a parent, I do remember the worst case scenarios,
Like I remember one time I had one of the
(22:29):
teachers or helpers at daycare pick up Henry and we
had the and he took him home and we had
the time wrong, like I thought they were coming home
at five or he thought it was seven, and I
was fucking freaking the I started walking down the street
(22:51):
like I had these scenarios that he was abducted. I'm like,
I'm calling the school. You know. It was crazy, you know,
but it's like I have to say that's not you know,
when they started driving, I'm like, I always have this
this worst case scenario thing, and I had to learn
to know that, like identify that is that real or
(23:17):
is that anxiety talking? And so that's what's so great
about cognitive behavioral therapy is that you can label the feeling.
You know, first you get the feeling of anxiety, and
then you if you just stop and say what am
I anxious about? But you know, I think the soothing
comes from, first of all, I music. I play piano. Um,
(23:40):
it's the music soothes me in a way nothing else
I can. As someone with a d D D D
H D D D D D d D that was
never diagnosed, it was diagnosed as an adult, the one
thing I can focus on is music. I can literally, um,
(24:01):
you know. Sometimes it's it's annoying because if I know,
I play a lot of classical music, and if I
know the piece, I can't focus on my writing because
I'm like, oh, I love this clarinet solo, and you know,
so I have to sort of, you know, play stuff
that I'm not that familiar with. But um, some music exercise, UM,
(24:26):
meditation and therapy and just being aware. And I realized,
you know, in high school and college, when I was
just smoking pot all the time, it was just self medicating,
of course, yeah, you know, um, but it's an awareness,
you know what I mean, Because you know, some a
(24:46):
mother who was listening and might not have anxiety might
be like, well, that's perfectly normal. I don't want my
kids to drive and you know, hit a tree. But
there's something about, Okay, look, bad things are gonna happen
everyone in this life. If I can predict it, then
I don't have to feel the feeling. There's no worse
feeling than the surprise of bad news. It's like it's
so overwhelming in the body. So it's like, let me
(25:07):
predict it. I won't have any surprise feelings. I won't
be overwhelmed. Right, the poo poo poo thing. But here's
the thing, the pooh pooh pooh like, um, well poopoo
who is a very Jewish like you don't want to
jinx it. There's this sort of mysticism like you know,
you'll say oh, and then I'll yeah, well then I'll
(25:29):
probably you know, you know, fall off the whatever the roof,
and you know, and then it's like poopoo pooh, don't
say that, don't put it out into the universe, you know.
So there's that, but then there's that other part of
it that's if you don't say it, it's gonna happen,
you know what I mean. You've got to let the
universe know you. But I always, you know, like my
(25:52):
my partner A Lisa, is very anxious, very anxious, and
it's always about plan, plan, plan, plan, plan, plan. And
when you're a mom, I think this is universal for mothers.
You realize plans are just hopes and dreams because you
don't know what the fun I can't tell you how
many times I had my full week planned out and
then I get, uh, hi, Judy, it's Nancy the nurse,
(26:17):
not an emergency, but this one fell off the thing,
or this one has a hundred and five fever, and
you just have to stop. And I think I think
that's what the pandemic did. It made people stop and
realize what the funk am I doing? All the time?
You know, because if you don't have control, you have
to you have to realize, you know, you can plan
(26:41):
it out as best you can, but it doesn't mean
it's gonna happen. We'll be right back. So taking it
back to when you were younger, because I was. You know,
it's interesting. I was bullied to and I just I
(27:01):
don't know. I didn't realize how much it affected me
truly until I was an adult in my forties and
I saw it coming out in ways where like I feel,
I'm really obsessed with justice, you know, and it could
be justice from like one mean person on the internet
to you know, Vladimir Putin, you know, and uh, and
(27:23):
everything is of equal importance and my body right, So
so take me through. Um, let's relive your bullying. It's
fun to do in the morning. But you from what
I know of my research, that you were what six
ft tall the eighth grade, and that you felt invisible
except for that part you can call people I went
to high school with. It was relentless. It was first
(27:46):
of all, I couldn't wear clothes. You know. My mother
made a lot of clothes and shoes. So there was
one store in New York that had um shoes for
people for women sized ten and above. And I was twelve.
When I was twelve, so we used to come to
the city. I was the fourth generation of my family
to go to the shoe store, and as you can imagine,
(28:07):
the shoes were not attractive. And I'm like, you know,
so first of all, I I can't find clothes and
I'm gigantic, um and you know, it's like all you
want to do is sort of blend in. But I
was taller than my teachers. I was taller than the parents.
(28:28):
I was taller than the rabbi when I got bought mitzvahed.
I mean, it's so I went through. And it's so
funny because my kids, you know, I have a son
who's six seven, and his experience opposite of mine, athletic, popular, handsome,
funny like. And I used to constantly say to my kids,
(28:52):
if anyone's getting teased, you go, you rescue them, you
stand up for them. And they're like, mommy, no one
does that in New York City and I'm like whatever.
So um. So I have to say that my entire
childhood and all through high school, every day I was
(29:13):
called bigfoot, susquatch orca um. It was constant. Even when
I was walking home from school, it was it just
never stopped. And uh, I think that I had some
sense of that of you know this. I'm gonna be
(29:35):
a star and you're all gonna be you know, like
I had some of that, but I but it was constant.
It was constant. And later in life and my mother
told me to ignore them, never pay any attention to them,
as if they don't exist. And later in life, my
therapy said, no, you should have, you know, used your
wicked sense of humor. Um, like I was feeling. But
(29:57):
if you don't have a wicked sense of humor and right, so,
but I have to say that when I moved to
New York, uh, when I was twenty one, right after college,
I wouldn't walk by a schoolyard until I was in
my thirties because I thought I would cross the street
(30:18):
i went, you know, I would hear people laughing behind me.
I was like no, please, no, please no. Um. You know,
I was so PTSDD and sometimes I was right actually
they were like, oh you know, but um, until my
kids went to school, I was very uncomfortable around you know,
(30:43):
school age children and you know adolescents and high school kids. Um.
And you know this. I hope you um, I hope
you relate to this. I recently realized that humiliation that
sense of oh god, this is so humiliating. Um, you
(31:05):
know when I feel that when I'm at an event
on the red carpet and and they're like you are, Oh,
it's so humiliating. And it's the same feeling of like
it's it's invalidating, it's it's so I don't know how,
(31:25):
you know, I feel that when I go to events
and I feel so good about myself before I leave
the house, and then I get there and I'm like, oh,
this isn't the right clothes, this is like fancy enough.
It's just like it's also yeah, it's also being a comedian.
It's like you can do you know, the Tonight Show
or the Late Show and have a great set, and
(31:48):
then the next week you're standing in front of twelve
people in a basement, you know, right, So it's very humbling.
But I remember when I really wanted to be drum
major and uh in order to be drum major, and
I was perfect because I was a musician, nerd band,
nerd and uh and I was tall, so you know,
(32:12):
And I remember we had these auditions for drum major
and you had the principle was there, and I think
the superintendent in the head of the music whatever, and
you had to conduct the star Spangled banner. And when
you conduct, you do this upbeat that means instruments to
the mouth, and then as you're going down, there's this
period of going to the downbeat. And once you hit
(32:34):
the bottom is when the music begins. So it's like
up and then uh whatever. And I did the up
and as I was coming down, someone yelled sasquatch, and
I had to continue to conduct that piece, uh in
(32:55):
front of the heads of the school after, you know,
and it was just and it's just you remember these
horrible I'm sure that person doesn't remember. Well, Okay, so
this is what I want to talk about. Three points
to make about bullying, but I want to get into
how it felt in your body, and I want to
talk about the cruelty of it. This is what I
don't understand. The people who have been bullied grow up
(33:19):
into being grown adults who can't walk by a playground
or still feel this way about whatever. And it caught.
I mean, it's causes some kind of mental illness in
the bullied person. Why isn't the bullier like they seem
to get off scott free. I remember this boy right,
this boy who bullied me there on Facebook, they have
(33:39):
families and it's like, do you know that you were
sociopathically violent to a child and that just goes away
and that's just okay. I don't I literally want a
doctor to explain this to me, like what happens in
their brain that that just magically disappears, because to me,
that's that's so. I would be very worried if my
(34:01):
kid was beating up girls. That's he's stipping me. Boys
would beat me up, like that's insane. But I don't
I know that they that they don't remember that they
they don't have any idea the effect this had. I mean,
it's definitely. I have to tell you, if someone says bigfoot,
(34:25):
even in a conversation, I still it's like, oh ping,
you know, I get pinged sasquatch Bigfoot, Like it's still
I mean to hear it every fucking day of your
life for years, as you're walking down the hall and
we didn't have headphones where we could, I had to
purposely act like, oh right, I forgot something in the
(34:46):
other hallway. I'm gonna walk the opposite direction. But yes,
it's so interesting that you know, I remember before my
mother died. Uh, and she really well in this. She
loved like, you're gonna show them, you know, and oh,
(35:07):
I have the best story. I have the best story
for you. So uh. But I remember the like the
day my mother the day before my mother died, two
days before, I was visiting her and uh, I said, oh,
guess who tried to friend me on Facebook? And it
made her so happy? And it's like, do you realize
how fucking nasty in that's so? Yeah? Yeah, but here's
(35:31):
the best part this. I told this at her funeral,
you know. Uh. When I did Questions for a Jewish Mother,
I had a rave review in the New York Times
and it ran for years off Broadway and then it
toured and it was, Um, it was a great show,
great show. And I had this rave review in the
New York Times and in this my home paper in
(35:54):
New Jersey, the Star Ledger, which is now called something
Else New Jersey dot com. So anyway, that reviewer gave
me a terrible review. Uh and not and not not
worthy of a terror. I mean it really was. It's
a great show, um. And he gave me a bad review.
(36:16):
And at the bottom pre of course, pre cell phone,
pre computer, pre email. Um, he had for any comments
or questions, you can write to me at or call
me at. So I'm at a photo shoot and the
publicist for the show runs up to me and it's like, Judy,
I have to talk to you. I have to talk
(36:36):
to him, Like what's going on? She said, your mother
apparently left a message for the reviewer at the Star Ledger. Um,
you know your mother. If you get a not a
great review, your mother can't call them. And and I said,
oh my god, I'm so sorry. Again again never says
(36:56):
I love you, but calls you know what I mean?
And so, uh, I called my mother and I said, Mom,
you can't if I get a bad review, you can't
call the reviewer. And she said, well, Judith, actually he
wrote his review and then put his phone number about
(37:16):
any comments or questions. So I heard what he had
to say, and now he can hear what I have
to say. And um, and I said, he's not gonna
He was afraid to call her back. He was afraid
of her. And the next one person show I did,
he actually gave me a good review. Um, but it
(37:37):
was the It's the ultimate Jewish mother And she was right.
How do you argue with that. She's not don't leave
your she said, don't leave your phone number for you
don't want to hear my comment. I had to listen
to you what your thoughts were. You can listen to mine.
We'll continue the interview on the flip side of a
quick message from our sponsors. You know, I was thinking
(38:05):
about like going back to the justice thing, and it
sounds like your mom and a sense of justice when
people writing letters. Let I am writing to the president,
and my kids make fun of me all the time.
I'm like, you're not eating a chick flake, You're not
doing this, You're not end I That is definitely passed
down from Yes, absolutely always writing a letter to the
(38:27):
top person. Yeah. Well, it's funny because like the thing
that bothered me about being bullied and maybe, you know,
someone could say you're just intellectualizing it so you don't
feel their feelings. Sure, but it was less, oh my god,
you're hurting me because I actually had this really good
sense of self and they bullied me because I was
acting funny and siddy. I didn't act funny as a defense. Um,
(38:49):
I thought I I was I thought I was nailing
it in life. I thought it was so creative and
coming to school, like I came to school dressed as
Mozart once, no change of clothes, and I was just like,
this is a great idea. Yeah, and you know my
parents encouraged it. Yeah, my mom, friends friends, Yeah. And
so when kids are making fun of it, there was
part of me that felt sad, but more like, huh, okay,
(39:12):
why I did not see this coming? And then that
would happen over and over. But how can people be
so cruel? If I saw some wondrous as Mozart and
I didn't like that, I'd probably be like weird, but
I'd move on. And I didn't understand. It showed me
that there are just cruel people in the world, and
I couldn't handle knowing that. But it's also like they
(39:36):
would never think of doing that. They probably didn't even
know who Mozart was, and they're like, you know, you
should be and not being like everyone else is the
greatest gift in the world, you know. I remember years
ago they asked me to talk to tall teens. How cute? Yeah,
And they were all these kids in high school who
(39:58):
were really tall and not athletic, and they asked if
the parents they didn't want their mothers there, their parents there,
the kids and because only someone who And I was like, look,
these people, high school is their peak. You know, this
(40:19):
is it. They have four years. You're gonna get it.
I promise you, you're gonna get out. Like the night
before I was going away to college, I was so
anxious that I was going to be living in a
dorm that I couldn't even because at least I had
my room in my house and where I could go.
You now not get teased. Um, I thought, oh god,
(40:43):
now I'm gonna live on the floor and it's like,
I'm not even able to walk out of my room.
It's just gonna be constant. And my guidance counselor had
to come over the night before I was leaving to
tell me it was you know, I was so anxious.
I was like, oh, god, now you live in school,
so there's no respite, and uh, it's that was it.
(41:04):
And I was always really funny, but and only the
people that I was friends with knew I was funny.
But thank god he came over, and the next day
my whole life was changed because no one gave a
ship and they thought I was pretty and tall and skinny,
and you know, wow, it's it is literally a moment
like that that can change. And I know that you. Um,
(41:26):
so you went to therapy, right did you go for
the first time at the eighteen and you you realize
you were gay and you confess. I told my therapist.
I said, yeah, do you did you know the story?
I knew that you you told your therapists. And then
the therapist was like, okay, also, I'm leaving being a
therapist or moving something. Yeah, I said to her. I
(41:48):
was like, all right, I gotta tell her because I'm
just sitting here like going around, and I said, I
think I might be. You know, I have to tell you.
I remember I've prefaced it with okay because I had
built up the confidence. I'm gonna tell her today. So
I went in. I was like, okay, I just want
to say I have to tell you something. She goes, well,
I have to tell you something to you go first,
(42:09):
and I tell her I think I'm gay. I mean,
I knew I was gay when it was like three whatever,
And and that's another anxiety thing, like can you imagine
hiding that whole thing? And so I said I think
I'm gay, and she said, and I said, what do
you have to tell me? She said, I'm moving to
Florida and today's our last session. I was like, oh wow,
(42:32):
typical Judy Gold, typical j J. Well, I know that
it said here, Um, it said here, Liza, I didn't
take my own notes that you had a breakup and
you were so sad about your breakup, but you can
tell anyone because you were still I remember I had Yes,
I had a girlfriend ish you know, in high school,
(42:54):
uh and college, you know, beginning college. And it broke
up and I never told. No one knew. It was like, um,
you're in this. I mean it was high school whatever,
whatever it was, you know. To me, I'm you know,
we're performers, were artists. Everything is heightened, every feeling is
(43:17):
heightened to the m degree. And we broke up, but
no one knew I was gay or that we had
been fooling around. You know. Oh god, I was so skinny. Um,
and I basically got like a bleeding peptic ulcer, you know. Um,
(43:39):
you know, holding every feeling in did you feel it
in your body in the sense that you were actually
feeling anxiety about being in the closet or what did
it feeling. It's like you're so uncomfortable because you're playing
a character, like you're you know what I mean. So
it's like here I am at this frat or this
(44:01):
party or you know whatever, and everyone I know is straight.
It turns out between my junior and senior year in college,
it was my father called it the summer of forty two. Um,
I lived on campus and all of my friends sort
of came out of the closet, which was I was like,
(44:22):
you're gay too, Oh my god, you know, but I'm
living in a dorm. First of all, you live in
a straight world. And even like that's why they don't
say gay thing. It's like no one said gay when
I was, you know, and you don't say right. But
(44:43):
it was also like and we're all gay, so we
that doesn't work. Um, But it's being in the closet
is the most painful, um because everyone zooms you're someone
you're not and you have to sort of play along
(45:06):
and oh my god. It's so funny because I remember
this guy Scott, who I really liked him, and I
used to go visit him and his frat um and
he had pot all the time, so um, and he
was tall, and you know, it was always like, oh,
look at that tall one. You know, my mother was like,
and I'm like, oh god, tall men hate tall women.
(45:29):
They want short women. Short guys love tall women. Short
guys who are confident and you know, love tall women.
So anyway, I remember this guy Scott, and I uh,
I was friends with him, and I know he wanted
to date me, and you know, it's just it was unnatural.
And I had a boyfriend in college too, who um,
(45:51):
and you weren't bisexual, you were just trying to I
here's the thing. This is what's so interesting. Oh you're
gonna love this is that my generation of gay it
was such a horrible, horrible hard life that you had
to try to be Can I at least try and
and be straight because life will be so much easier.
(46:13):
I think a lot of people in my generation did that,
and it was so unnatural for me. It was literally unnatural.
I had this boyfriend and he was lived in my
dorm and I was like, no, I'm not, I mean
lived downstairs and I wouldn't sleep in his room. Well
I was like, I can't. And I felt even even
having sex was like I felt like I was being
(46:36):
assaulted because I was like this, I hate this. I
hate it so much. Um talk about anxiety and uh,
and so I don't know if you know this. There's
this term in the gay community called gold star. I do, yes, Okay,
do you know that what the platinum means? No? I know,
gold star means you are a lesbian has never had
(46:59):
or a gay man, has never had straight sex with
the opposite sex. What's platinum? There? There's a term platinum
that is so offensive to women. I can't even believe.
Platinum is a gay man who is gold star but
is the product of a C section, so had never
(47:21):
even gone through a vagina. It has never gone in
or come out come out of a vagina, has never
had any contact with a vagina. That's called platinum. Ridiculous
and funny. Yeah, you know. And also it's like, first
of all, what else do teenagers talk about except I
have a crush on this person. I so you missed
an entire developmental stage of your fucking life by having
(47:44):
to keep your everything and quiet. May not grow in
a brain chemistry? Oh please? It was awful. And yeah,
and then I remember, you know, coming out and admitting
and finally talking about it. I'm telling you, it was
like an out of body experience. I was like, I
(48:05):
felt like I was looking at myself from above, finally,
you know, letting go of this. And you know, you
just didn't know, you know, you would play this character
for so long. I remember when I came out to
my sister in therapy and then she freaked out because
(48:28):
she had no idea. First of all, I'm dressing as
a boy, um my entire like up until like six
or seven years old, like everyone, you know, no one
was surprised. I made everyone call me Robert or Ringo
was a kid. My cousin still calls me Robert um.
(48:50):
And you know, my sister said to me, I need
to process this because you're not the person I thought
you were, and I need to greet you that person.
And I'm like, oh my god, really, um, you know,
I have so many friends. I played tennis and I'm
in Provincetown. I played doubles, and there's so many of
(49:12):
these women who were eighty in their late seventies, who
were married, they have kids, they have grandkids, and they're
finally living their authentic life and so happy. And the
fact that they had. I mean, I'm glad they have
kids and grandkids, but the fact that they put their
life aside because they would have had nothing that you know,
(49:36):
old maid, um spinster. Uh, it's just you know, you're
playing this character and then all of a sudden you
don't have to hide anymore. It's the greatest feeling in
the entire But I'm telling you the constant Uh, you know,
(49:56):
you get you're with people and you're hearing them say
shit about people or talk about oh my god, don't
you want to have and you're like, it's just like
you know, that feeling in the top of your stomach
of oh god, here we go. Gotta play this fucking
game and it's not comfortable. And that's why you know
(50:18):
you have to be out and proud. Anxiety Bites will
be right back after a quick little message from one
of our sponsors. Okay, so here you are bullied in
the closet. Now you're getting older, you're growing up, you're
(50:39):
coming into your own. When did you start going to therapy?
And who put a name to the word anxiety to
you for the first time? Was it a therapist? Oh
that's interesting, I mean, I hate I hate the first time,
biggest moment questions because who the funk knows, but was
there like a period in your life? Yeah? So I
went to this the first therapist to move to Florida,
(51:00):
m and then, um, she said to me at eighteen,
I think you should go to an analyst, a psycho analyst,
because I think you're more complicated than just like a
social worker. I went to the Jewish Family Services because
I said to my mother, I want to go to
therapy and she's like, I will go to the Jewish
(51:20):
Family Savors. And uh. I went to this analyst and
I remember, oh, he was so bad because they don't
say anything, you know. And I'm eighteen nineteen and I'm
going to this analyst and I cut my hair short
and I remember going in and he's like, why did
you cut your hair short? And I'm like, I'm not
(51:43):
fucking telling you anything. Like I had him and it
was in his house and I was it was this cow.
I know. I wasn't ready for that. And then I
fell in love with another straight you know, it's just
awful because no one's out and you fall in love
with these these these straight women. And I went to
(52:08):
Pure counseling and counseling at college, and I just kept
seeking out counseling. But I think, you know, once I
went to I moved to New York, I had all
this stuff done and I was always diagnosed with general
anxiety disorder, you know, on my my health insurance and stuff.
(52:29):
And uh, I had a nervous breakdown slash clinical depression
in two thousand ten. And I had never I had
diurnal depression, so during the day I could not function
at all. At night, when the sun went down, um,
(52:52):
I would it would lift and I could probably have
like a protein chick again, so thick. But I really
threw that emotional breakdown that I always have a hard
time during the day. You know that the anxiety is
worse during the day, and when the sun goes down,
(53:12):
I feel at peace. And if I go back, I
remember now that I'm so aware of it, the alarm
going off in the morning and oh no, you know,
to wake up as a kid and be like fuck,
I gotta go get teased all day fucking long. You know.
Um oh, I didn't even know about this kind of
depression diurnal. So Williams. Stry On had um nocturnal depression,
(53:39):
and I had it during the day and I still
have trouble sleeping a little because if I let myself think,
the breathing exercises are great. Tell us what you do.
What's your breathing exercise for anxiety, so you know, mindful breathing,
focusing on that breath and and being I mean, it
(54:01):
takes so much practice and having those thoughts come into
your head, identifying them and saying but by now, but
by now. But it's like you have to learn to
identify it, what's real, what's not real. So I'll start
with the breath. And if I have a bad meditation day,
I just give myself a break. But it's like, go
(54:22):
back to the breath, Go back to the breath. I
have lists. I write lists all the time because that
helps with my anxiety. Like all this stuff. I'm like,
oh God, you have to do this, you have to
do that. So I write it down and then I
can let it go. So I do. I have all
these tricks that I do. Work, exercise very important. Um
(54:46):
also that feeling. That's why I loved quarantine, you know,
because I loved it so much. I was like, no pressure,
no one's doing anything that that feeling of having no control,
that feeling when the nurse called and I was like, sorry,
I got to take care of my kid. Like I
loved that. I think that people don't understand that like
(55:12):
it is exercise is mindfulness exercises. They want like one
answer and they want some kind of oh no that
you know. I feel like when people write to me
and they go, well, no, no, that stuff doesn't work
for me because I have it really bad, and I'm like, no,
it doesn't work. Work you have to practice, yea. And
there are some days where I'm like nothing's gonna I'm
(55:35):
in a bad place, and I will text Gary Gulman
or all text another person and I know deals with
this stuff and just say I'm having a And I
know now because I'm fifty nine years old, it's gonna pass.
But when I was in that clinical depression where I
could not speak, if someone said go get a quart
(55:56):
of milk. This is someone since I'm in my early
twenty traveling all over the fucking country by myself, you know,
doing you know, if someone said go get a cord
of milk at the store, I would have been like,
you know, it was horrible, and I couldn't speak, and
I realized, oh, this is why people commits or you
(56:16):
take their own lots so segments with but um, this
is why you know people harm themselves. But I never
wanted to. I never did it. I had kids, but
I knew that feeling and it changed me as a person.
Um because my also, if you went to the doctor
(56:37):
and you took my blood, my blood work was completely
different than when I wasn't depressed. Oh really, what does
it affect? Does it change like immune white bloodstion of
certain vitamins. It was very chemical and so you have
to realize it is an illness. And I hate the
fucking stigma. UM. And I have to say, like on
(57:01):
those days when it's I'm like, oh boy, I'll call
a Lisa and I'll say, yeah, I'll have it very bad,
and she will be like, Okay, you know, you gotta
reach out. You gotta reach out because there's other people
who are in the same situation who have you know.
And the I think the worst part of being a
(57:22):
uh AN artist and having depression is that we're so
in tune with our feelings and we have such strong
feelings that if we really think hard about it, we
could go back to that feeling, you know, and so
that fear of it happening again. If if I actually
(57:44):
sat here and thought about it, I can really sort
of gathered all that horrible shit and start feeling like
that again. And I don't want to, but I live
in fear that it will happen again. Although I've taken
some medical tests and they say it's it's you know,
(58:06):
they took my DNA and RNA and p n A whatever.
But you know that to your point, that is perfect
proof that getting help getting better. If it's medication, you
need therapy, Uh, you will not lose your unique thing
that makes you an artist. If you think you need
your refresh anxiety, be an artist. No, you can call
it up any time that you might need it for
(58:27):
an acting scene or you know. Yeah. And it's also
I remember when they first wanted me to go on ANTIS, like, no,
I'm not gonna be funny, but I couldn't take it anymore.
Like the amount of time I spent in my apartment
just being anxious, just sitting there, not being able to
get anything done, just with my head, with my thoughts.
(58:51):
You know, I wasted. I would have I would have
years I would definitely have at least a year of
doing nothing of the time that I spent picking my cuticles, worrying, worrying, worrying, worrying. Um,
and now because of therapy, because of meditation. I mean,
everyone has their thing that that can work if you
(59:15):
just allow it to work and you practice practice, and
if days it doesn't work, it does not mean to break.
Give yourself a break and don't assume it means anything,
and reach out and reach out. Yeah, I hope you
had fun hanging out with me and Judy. Judy and me.
(59:37):
Oh my god, here I am again with that. Let's
just go over some of the takeaways from my conversation
with Judy Gold and don't forget. If you want to
send an email to the show, please do so. Anxiety
Bites weekly at gmail dot com. I don't think I
won't be doing another fully only listener email episode, but
(01:00:02):
um sort of scattered throughout episodes coming up, I will
read a few emails that I think are pertinent, So
please do that. Please give the show five stars. Can
do that on Spotify and Apple podcasts. If you don't
want to write a review, that's okay, but five stars
really helps pushes the algorithm up, makes more people find
(01:00:23):
the podcast. More people that find the podcast, Well, maybe
I could get to do more episodes after season one,
and the more people are getting help for their anxiety,
and that's always a good thing. That makes your life
and my life better. All right. My takeaways from my
chat with Judy Gould, Most importantly, Lauren but Caall's real
name is Betty Purskey or Perky. I think it was Persky.
(01:00:47):
Judy believes that one of her mother's symptoms of anxiety,
like the constant worrying about Judy's whereabouts, was although it
was anxiety and very intrusive, it was based in love
and vulnerability. Judy leaves that her anxiety came from a
combination of genetically being Jewish, the generational trauma, as well
(01:01:08):
as her father having an undiagnosed o c D and
her mother having suffered a trauma of losing her brother
at an early age and never discussing it. Cognitive behavior
therapy is what ultimately helped Judy the most with her
anxiety disorders. For her, it's the act of labeling the
(01:01:28):
feeling and being able to stop in the moment and
ask yourself, what am I actually anxious about. For Judy,
music is a non clinical way of self soothing and
one thing that Judy finds she has an easy time
concentrating on despite having a d h D. As a mom,
Judy has learned that she has to accept that plans
(01:01:50):
are just hopes and dreams because you never know what's
going to happen. You have no control. You can plan,
but that doesn't mean it's going to actually happen. Judy
was bullied in school for being tall, and she does
still feel a PTSD trauma response in her body when
she hears words like big voters, sasquatch, or even walks
(01:02:13):
by you know, a playground with middle school or teenagers.
Judy's advice to anyone in high school being bullied is
to keep in mind that the bullies are at their
peak right now in high school. When they leave high
school without their little group of people validating them, their
lives may fall apart. Whereas Judy's began. Judy got a
(01:02:35):
peptic ulcer from being in the closet and holding in
her feelings when she broke up with her first girlfriend,
and so it stresses the importance of having someone to
talk to if you have anxiety if you feel like
you are hiding something from others, whether it's that you
are in the closet, or that you're just swallowing your feelings,
(01:02:55):
afraid to feel them because they scare you, or just
afraid that they're not normal. Another thing that contributed to
Judy's anxiety was the uncomfortability of her whole life being
in the closet. It was less of fear of people
finding out, but more how it felt to play along
with who everyone assumed. She was just not getting to
live her authentic life. Judy had a nervous breakdown with
(01:03:18):
clinical depression in and was diagnosed with diurnal depression. She
could only function after sundown. She's doing much better now,
but has worries you know what if it comes back
and for her staying connected to friends and doing her
daily cognitive behavioral therapy exercises keeps her on the up
and up. Judy does breathing exercises for anxiety. She practices
(01:03:43):
identifying the thoughts in her head and saying by to
them as she refocuses on the feeling of her breath.
When Judy has a bad meditation day, she gives herself
a break, writing lists helps calm Judy down and she
gets the anxiety of what she has to do out
of her brain and onto the paper. Exercise is really
(01:04:05):
important to duty for staving off anxiety. Exercise does create endorphins, which,
when used responsibly, I mean, there's exercise addiction, but that's
what we're talking about, but when used responsibly, can actually
flush a lot of the anxiety out of our body.
Judy keeps in mind when she's in her anxiety or
(01:04:27):
her depression that it will pass. It always has. But
in those moments she reaches out to friends who understand her.
It's important to reach out and stay connected. And I
hope you will stay connected with this podcast Anxiety Bites.
What a segue that was. And don't forget Anxiety Bites,
but You're in control. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
(01:04:54):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
This is the Anxiety Bites podcast and I am your host,
Jen Kirkman. Welcome to another episode of Anxiety Bites. I'm
your host Jen Kirkman. Today I'm talking to my friend
Judy Gold. Judy Gold is a hilarious comedian, just an actress.
I'll get into all of that in a moment now.
As you know, this is a podcast about anxiety hosted
(00:32):
by a comedian, but I don't mean it to be
a comedy podcast. I certainly didn't want it to be.
I interview comedians with anxiety, but I have had a few.
On this season. Judy will be the final comedian in
my three comedian series. I talked to my friend Andy
Keindler and Chelsea Handler as well. But I've known Judy
a long time, and you know, it's just it wasn't
(00:55):
until maybe a few years ago when we talked about it,
or I don't remember. I mean maybe not just a
few years ago, but within the last ten years where
I realized she had anxiety and depression. And it's I
don't know why I didn't think that, because I'm not
saying every comedian has that, but I've again known her
(01:16):
for a long time, and I'm sure she talks about
her anxiety on stage. She's just such a big presence
in that she's and I mean, this is the best
of ways. She's loud, and she's funny, and she's confident,
or at least she's doing a damn good job pretending
to be confident. But I've watched her work as a
stand up since I moved to New York, and was
(01:37):
this shaky little thing trying to act like I was confident,
And and I really looked up to Judy, And I
know if she were listening to this, she's going to
be like, you're making me sound old. But Judy was
always very kind to me. And you know, I'm honestly
like a lot of times people with anxiety or depression there,
they're not always just kind to people. You know, a
(01:59):
lot of times you in your own head or yourself
medicating with alcolors something, and then that changes your behavior,
or you're really withdrawn and shy, or you're depressed and
sort of just over it. And and I never experienced
that with her. So it's not like I was shocked
when I found out she had depression and anxiety. I
just went, oh, oh, that's right. Yet another reminder that
(02:22):
you never can tell you can't judge it by someone
who doesn't seem freaked out to be on a stage.
I mean that that's a job. You know, I'm not
freaked out to be on stage, but I don't necessarily
like I don't know, driving over a bridge to get there. Anyway.
Every once in a while, I like to do an
episode where it's conversational, where you know, we're not talking
(02:42):
to a neuroscientist or a therapist or someone who can
explain why everything comes together and forms anxiety, but rather
more of an experiential thing. You know, someone who's saying, oh, well,
I grew up this way and I didn't realize until
later that this was that, and that was this, and
that affects this, and you know, there's this um thing.
(03:03):
I think that happens when when you talk to a
lot of smart people, if you're listening and you're thinking, oh, okay,
I guess god, if I had known this sooner, and
then maybe I could have started to get better quicker.
And I just don't think it totally works that way.
I think you just have to live your life, live
your experiences, and sort of slowly go through life and
(03:24):
try and fail at different things, whether it's some kind
of social life, work life, and then start to realize
what your pathology is or what your habits are, and
realize are these mine or these maladaptive things that I
learned from my parents? Okay, now I have to trade
them in for some new tools. I do think that
knowledge is power, but knowledge is not everything. You just
(03:46):
kind of have to live and see and experience. And
so Judy and I are all over the place, you know,
we we both have a d H D. And as
Judy says, she's a d D D D D D
D D. Like we're all over the place. We're talking
everything from you know, the generational trauma she experienced too
when she came out at the closet, and you know
(04:08):
what society was like back then? Oh my god, she's
so old. Did I mentioned what society was like? How
how different you know it is now? What it's like
being a mom, what it's like being someone who had
a very anxious mom, who never got treated for anxiety?
How do you break the cycle? Do you break the cycle?
And then what does she do now? Um too kind
(04:30):
of keep the maladaptive behaviors at bay? What does what
does she do to self soothe? And you're going to
not be surprised that it's the thing that everybody says
that we need to do, which is connection with others, breathing, meditating.
I mean, I hate to say it. I could do
a hundred more of these episodes and we're just going
(04:50):
to keep coming back to those basics, right, But it
was really fun to talk to Judy, and I think
she's a great example of just keep walking through whatever
you're going through. Your going to come out the other
side stronger and smarter. And if you can be as
funny as Judy while you're doing it, then you've really
you've really won the mental health battle. So without further ado,
(05:14):
I hope you just have a fun time listening to
me talk with Judy and we talk about bullying, which
is something that I haven't really talked about on this
podcast before. There is an upcoming episode where I get
into um bullying a little bit deeper, talking to a
therapist and author about you know, why why does it
(05:35):
stay with us when we know we don't actually you know,
we don't actually absorb the opinions of bullies that were
mean to us as kids. I mean, maybe we did
as a kid, but as an adult, we we know better.
We don't care. We might even see these people on Facebook.
You know, they seem to have forgotten the whole thing,
and uh so what does that mean? It stays with
(05:57):
us so that I'll be talking about that in a
future episode, but for now, it's a duty. And I
kind of talking about how bullying shaped us in a
way where there's this anxiety that comes from not being
able to control others in that sense of how do
you get to act like this and and like no
one's gonna do anything about this, and and then just
(06:19):
even growing up and seeing these people, like I said
earlier on Facebook and going so you just get to
have bullied someone in your whole life and then that's it.
I mean, not even an apology would do. It's like
you almost want these people to like have to sit
down to their family and go Okay. When I was younger,
I did this, I just judy and I realized that
one thing we have in common that came from being
(06:41):
anxious people and people who maybe felt misunderstood or picked on,
was the sense of justice. I think I talked about
it with my other friend Andy Killer. Maybe this somehow
goes hand in hand with being a comedian. I'm not sure,
but we just want to make things right that aren't
in our lives and in the war old and when
we can't, it's like we don't except that we can't
(07:06):
control the bigger things in life. You know, it's so
endlessly frustrating. So people like us, and if you're like us,
you really need to find ways to self soothe and
of course laugh. So again, so excited to have Judy
on this show. And I will stop talking so that
you can go listen to her. But let me just
tell you a little more about Judy Gold. She's a
(07:29):
stand up comedian obviously, as I said, she started in
critically acclaimed one woman hit off Broadway shows. She's the
author of Yes I Can Say That When they come
for the Comedians were all in Trouble. It's a great
book she wrote years and years ago. Um that sort
of predicted where we are today in many ways about
(07:50):
you know, debates about what we can and can't joke about.
And she is the host of the very funny podcast
Kill Me Now, where she always asks her guests if
they're on any kind of mental health medication. Judy has
acted in so many TV shows. Most recently she was
on FX is Better Things, and she's in the new
Showtime series Flotus. So let's go to my conversation. Oh
(08:17):
my god, oh my god, oh my god. What is it?
I have this new Bluetooth speaker that I play music
out of and it is just talking to me and
I don't like it at all, and if I okay anyway,
but I'm not going to edit that out because I
think it's funny. So without further ado, my conversation with Judy.
(08:37):
And you know, you wish you had been there when
we were just setting up and she's like yelling funk
while she's setting up her mic. It was delightful, but
you don't get to hear it, but you get to
hear about it. But now you get to hear me
and Judy. Judy and me, you get what I'm saying.
Don't criticize my grammar. You just you know where a
(09:01):
lot of your anxiety comes from. Spill it. Well, first
of all, I think it's genetic. Um, I'm predisposed. I
think a lot of Jews are predisposed to anxiety because
of being kicked out of every country. So you know,
this idea of the Jewish the anxious Jewish mother, Uh,
(09:24):
you know, is all based on trauma of you know,
knock knock, get out heat, you get out of your dead. Um.
So I know that a lot of my I had
had a very anxious mother and very o c D
(09:44):
father and an anxious father might so I believe that
my anxiety. First of all, my father lived through the Depression.
He was born in nineteen sixteen and remembers people we'll
remember and he's dead. Uh, people like committing suicide. Fuck,
I turned this off, you funk. Sorry. Oh, it wouldn't
(10:10):
be an interview with you without that. I'm keeping on it. Yeah, sorry. Uh.
So he he remembered that anxiety from you know, the
like literally the depression. Um. He was I guess, you know,
thirteen years old, so very impressionable age. Now, my mother
(10:32):
grew up on the Upper West Side and she um
had a brother and a sister. She was the eldest,
and then her brother was two years younger, and then
her sisters seven years younger. And one day in June
I think it was the last day of school. Actually,
(10:54):
she was walking home from she went to UM Julia
Richmond High School on the East Side, and Betty Persky
was in her class. Lauren Call's real name. Oh my god,
I never knew that. Yes, and cousin of Sam Schmo
Perez who was the Prime Minister of Israel. Okay, fascinating.
(11:15):
So you get a lot of Jewish information. This is great.
So she's walking home and uh, she bumps into one
of her cousins. A lot of us grew up my
family very New York Upper West Side. And so she
bumps into one of her cousins and they walk home together.
And as she gets at off the bus or the subway, whatever,
(11:36):
she sees her uncle standing on the corner and he
tells the cousin to go home and brings my mother
upstairs to tell her that her brother. She walks into
this house and her younger brother and everyone is just
sitting um. And her younger brother, who went to Bronx
(12:00):
Bian's Brooklyn Tech, was playing ball outside on They lived
on ninety four West eighty nine Street nine and the
doorman came out and said, told these kids, you can't
play ball here. And uh, my uncle, my mother's brother,
had his jacket on the hood of a car, and
(12:23):
the doorman or the elevator operator grabbed his jacket and
he and Stewart, my uncle, ran and he and the
elevator upper ran back into the lobby and was like
playing keepaway with the jacket, and Stewart reached for his
jacket and um, the doorman slash elevator opera, I don't
(12:47):
know what it was, pushed him and he fell back
and hit his head on the marble floor and died. Oh,
and I have to tell you I grew up in
a house where if I was five minutes late, Um,
I remember my father even taking the train to go
(13:08):
to work and come home. Um, my mother was a wreck.
Every time I left, I had to leave the name number,
you know, when I was coming home. You know. So
what happened was this huge tragedy happened? And how old
was your mom when this happened? It up ended all
of her plans of going to college. She ended up
(13:30):
just going to you know, junior college. Her younger sister,
who still live, my aunt Joan, you know, told me that,
you know, she felt so guilty because she had just
had pneumonia and they had just come out with antibiotics,
and she she lived, but she thought she was the
one that was supposed to die. My mother and my
(13:51):
and her sister both made a pack. They would have
three children each, so in so there was always one
left in case something, I mean, And no one ever
talked about it. So I didn't even know until I
was eighteen and I was visiting my grandmother and I
saw the obituary in one of her drawers. Um, so
(14:17):
this trauma and no one talked about things, then that's
the whole thing there was. There was no therapy, there
was no They they moved to a smaller apartment with
one less bedroom, and then they moved out of the
building two first Street. Um, I guess it was too
painful to even be in. So that trauma. Are those
(14:44):
two traumas I think um really made or affected the
way my parents parented. And you know, and the fact
that we didn't know that it was like, what's the
big fucking deal. I'm ten minut It is late. You
know What's so interesting because now, okay, so there's generational trauma.
(15:05):
Then there's nature nurture, so like we know that anxiety
comes down in our DNA, whether or not we had
a generational trauma. Then there's third they're doing everything quote wrong, right,
so they don't they never talk about the death. They
don't all so now they're passing down maladaptive behaviors. Um
so even before you find out there was a death,
(15:26):
like you're just being created in this lab of anxiety
of like you know, everything is dangerous, right, And so
I remember I grew up like five or six houses
down from my grammar school. Like I literally walked three
minutes to get to my grammar school. You could see
the you know, the state the soccer field was like
(15:51):
in my backyard. But I mean it was anyway the
minute there was any weather, right. Yeah. They used to
make announcements on the public address system. I sweart of
got the first time, like there's a snowstormer, there's gonna
be this, or there's Judith Gold. Can you please come
to the office. Your mother's here. And I'm like, oh
my god, I'm already unpopular, and now there's an announcement
(16:15):
that my mother was the first to pick us up
to you know, bring us home. Well, you know you
are a comedian, and we'll mention it a little bit.
I'm really I really hate like analyzing comedy and anxiety.
It's just so boring and nobody gets it right. But
one of my favorite routines that you do routines, one
of my eight is the one about your mother. I mean,
(16:35):
it's a classic Judith did you fall down? She's yelling
out into your answering machine. We just give us a
sense of that because it's so funny. Uh. Well, and
I have a I have a bunch of them. But
uh so my eye had. This is the eighties, um,
and I had gone pre cell phone, and I was
(16:59):
at my agent's office and I called my mother on
the phone because it was free. I used to talk
to my mother every day and and it was free
because we used to have to pay it. And you know,
she lived in New Jersey and I was in New York.
Uh that was also a sore spot with her that
she had to move to New Jersey because of my
father's job, and she hated it. But so I called
(17:20):
her in New Jersey and we're talking and my elbow
hit the you know the thing on the phone. So
we got disconnected and I didn't call her back. Um,
and I got home and I forgot to tell her
is that my agent's office. And I got home and
there was this message on my answering machine where she
is literally screaming, where are you? I'm a wreck. I
(17:45):
don't understand it. Then she's going to call the neighbor
to find out what happened to me, and she's screaming,
and then there's a pause and she says, so long.
I mean, it's so and I and I heard this,
and I thought, and I had so much material about
my anxious mother, and I think that's how I processed it,
(18:05):
probably now that I'm talking to you, the the anxiety
and um and and her over the top no, because
it was It wasn't like I had to exaggerate it.
I was just telling these stories and I thought, I
gotta play this on. No one is going to believe this.
And it became like this signature bit of mine, playing
this answering machine message. And my mother and I have
(18:28):
a bunch of them, I you know, through life, um
of the messages she left me that are so like,
there's one, okay, there's one where there was this dart man.
Some people remember this bit. There was a guy in
the subways, and I think it was in the eighties
or nineties, and he was throwing darts at women's asses,
(18:49):
and and there was like this big scare because it
was the AIDS you know crisis, So everyone was like,
oh no, what if the darts are infected? Whatever? So
it was on the front cover the paper, the dart
Man and I got home that afternoon and there was
a message from my mother on the answering machine and
it said, Judith, we're thick clothes. Uh. It's like this
(19:20):
is right now for me. See. I think anxiety is
funny because it's it's an exact like we all have.
You know, people say to comedians, so you say what
I just think? Right, So we all have exaggerated thoughts
and we worry, and that's part of our evolution. We
have to be always scanning and keeping ourselves safe. And
some of the things we have to think and do
(19:41):
in order to do that we're wrong about. And those
errors are funny. Hence I think like talking about someone's
anxious thoughts are very funny. It's just it's like if
she wasn't doing something that maybe you've even thought, it
may not even be fine. I don't know. It's it's
it's also that you know, the thing about it is
(20:01):
so over the top, but it's based in love and vulnerability. Right,
it wouldn't be funny if she was mean spirited wanted
to have a terrible life. It's like, here's this woman's
idea of loving someone to her best ability and keeping
you safe in the world, and it is just potentially
(20:22):
could actually do the exact opposite. It could make you
so crazy that you fall down, and so you're like,
oh my god, you're out of your mind. But you know, there,
I still have one on the machine about not buying
Romaine lettuce at a certain uh if you go to
this gross do not buy, you know. And it was
(20:43):
her way of, you know, sort of staying connected and
also yeah, protection and and love. I mean she never
said I love you. My parents never said I love
you or hugged me. Um, but I knew they loved me,
you know what I mean? And I knew And you know,
(21:03):
the thing that got the most um, I guess positive
reinforcement was a clever quip or sarcastic, like a funny
line or something like that. You know, they definitely appreciated
humor and sarcasm. Uh. But yeah, I mean they didn't
(21:24):
show love in those traditional ways. Uh, but I knew
I was loved. Now you're a mother, and how have you?
Have you broken the cycle? Oh? Absolutely, because I've been
in therapy for so long. But uh, well, first of all,
I recognize it like I can identify it. I've been
(21:44):
through cognitive behavioral therapy and I've been through regular therapy. Uh,
and so I at this point. Now, first of all,
if you look, you know, like I do the picking
of the cuticle thing, which is one of the most
common forms of anxiety, till my fingers bleed and I
(22:04):
stopped doing that. I mean, I've been doing that since
as far back as I can remember, and I over
exercised for many years because of the endorphins. Um. But
as a parent, I do remember the worst case scenarios,
Like I remember one time I had one of the
(22:29):
teachers or helpers at daycare pick up Henry and we
had the and he took him home and we had
the time wrong, like I thought they were coming home
at five or he thought it was seven, and I
was fucking freaking the I started walking down the street
(22:51):
like I had these scenarios that he was abducted. I'm like,
I'm calling the school. You know. It was crazy, you know,
but it's like I have to say that's not you know,
when they started driving, I'm like, I always have this
this worst case scenario thing, and I had to learn
to know that, like identify that is that real or
(23:17):
is that anxiety talking? And so that's what's so great
about cognitive behavioral therapy is that you can label the feeling.
You know, first you get the feeling of anxiety, and
then you if you just stop and say what am
I anxious about? But you know, I think the soothing
comes from, first of all, I music. I play piano. Um,
(23:40):
it's the music soothes me in a way nothing else
I can. As someone with a d D D D
H D D D D D d D that was
never diagnosed, it was diagnosed as an adult, the one
thing I can focus on is music. I can literally, um,
(24:01):
you know. Sometimes it's it's annoying because if I know,
I play a lot of classical music, and if I
know the piece, I can't focus on my writing because
I'm like, oh, I love this clarinet solo, and you know,
so I have to sort of, you know, play stuff
that I'm not that familiar with. But um, some music exercise, UM,
(24:26):
meditation and therapy and just being aware. And I realized,
you know, in high school and college, when I was
just smoking pot all the time, it was just self medicating,
of course, yeah, you know, um, but it's an awareness,
you know what I mean, Because you know, some a
(24:46):
mother who was listening and might not have anxiety might
be like, well, that's perfectly normal. I don't want my
kids to drive and you know, hit a tree. But
there's something about, Okay, look, bad things are gonna happen
everyone in this life. If I can predict it, then
I don't have to feel the feeling. There's no worse
feeling than the surprise of bad news. It's like it's
so overwhelming in the body. So it's like, let me
(25:07):
predict it. I won't have any surprise feelings. I won't
be overwhelmed. Right, the poo poo poo thing. But here's
the thing, the pooh pooh pooh like, um, well poopoo
who is a very Jewish like you don't want to
jinx it. There's this sort of mysticism like you know,
you'll say oh, and then I'll yeah, well then I'll
(25:29):
probably you know, you know, fall off the whatever the roof,
and you know, and then it's like poopoo pooh, don't
say that, don't put it out into the universe, you know.
So there's that, but then there's that other part of
it that's if you don't say it, it's gonna happen,
you know what I mean. You've got to let the
universe know you. But I always, you know, like my
(25:52):
my partner A Lisa, is very anxious, very anxious, and
it's always about plan, plan, plan, plan, plan, plan. And
when you're a mom, I think this is universal for mothers.
You realize plans are just hopes and dreams because you
don't know what the fun I can't tell you how
many times I had my full week planned out and
then I get, uh, hi, Judy, it's Nancy the nurse,
(26:17):
not an emergency, but this one fell off the thing,
or this one has a hundred and five fever, and
you just have to stop. And I think I think
that's what the pandemic did. It made people stop and
realize what the funk am I doing? All the time?
You know, because if you don't have control, you have
to you have to realize, you know, you can plan
(26:41):
it out as best you can, but it doesn't mean
it's gonna happen. We'll be right back. So taking it
back to when you were younger, because I was. You know,
it's interesting. I was bullied to and I just I
(27:01):
don't know. I didn't realize how much it affected me
truly until I was an adult in my forties and
I saw it coming out in ways where like I feel,
I'm really obsessed with justice, you know, and it could
be justice from like one mean person on the internet
to you know, Vladimir Putin, you know, and uh, and
(27:23):
everything is of equal importance and my body right, So
so take me through. Um, let's relive your bullying. It's
fun to do in the morning. But you from what
I know of my research, that you were what six
ft tall the eighth grade, and that you felt invisible
except for that part you can call people I went
to high school with. It was relentless. It was first
(27:46):
of all, I couldn't wear clothes. You know. My mother
made a lot of clothes and shoes. So there was
one store in New York that had um shoes for
people for women sized ten and above. And I was twelve.
When I was twelve, so we used to come to
the city. I was the fourth generation of my family
to go to the shoe store, and as you can imagine,
(28:07):
the shoes were not attractive. And I'm like, you know,
so first of all, I I can't find clothes and
I'm gigantic, um and you know, it's like all you
want to do is sort of blend in. But I
was taller than my teachers. I was taller than the parents.
(28:28):
I was taller than the rabbi when I got bought mitzvahed.
I mean, it's so I went through. And it's so
funny because my kids, you know, I have a son
who's six seven, and his experience opposite of mine, athletic, popular, handsome,
funny like. And I used to constantly say to my kids,
(28:52):
if anyone's getting teased, you go, you rescue them, you
stand up for them. And they're like, mommy, no one
does that in New York City and I'm like whatever.
So um. So I have to say that my entire
childhood and all through high school, every day I was
(29:13):
called bigfoot, susquatch orca um. It was constant. Even when
I was walking home from school, it was it just
never stopped. And uh, I think that I had some
sense of that of you know this. I'm gonna be
(29:35):
a star and you're all gonna be you know, like
I had some of that, but I but it was constant.
It was constant. And later in life and my mother
told me to ignore them, never pay any attention to them,
as if they don't exist. And later in life, my
therapy said, no, you should have, you know, used your
wicked sense of humor. Um, like I was feeling. But
(29:57):
if you don't have a wicked sense of humor and right, so,
but I have to say that when I moved to
New York, uh, when I was twenty one, right after college,
I wouldn't walk by a schoolyard until I was in
my thirties because I thought I would cross the street
(30:18):
i went, you know, I would hear people laughing behind me.
I was like no, please, no, please no. Um. You know,
I was so PTSDD and sometimes I was right actually
they were like, oh you know, but um, until my
kids went to school, I was very uncomfortable around you know,
(30:43):
school age children and you know adolescents and high school kids. Um.
And you know this. I hope you um, I hope
you relate to this. I recently realized that humiliation that
sense of oh god, this is so humiliating. Um, you
(31:05):
know when I feel that when I'm at an event
on the red carpet and and they're like you are, Oh,
it's so humiliating. And it's the same feeling of like
it's it's invalidating, it's it's so I don't know how,
(31:25):
you know, I feel that when I go to events
and I feel so good about myself before I leave
the house, and then I get there and I'm like, oh,
this isn't the right clothes, this is like fancy enough.
It's just like it's also yeah, it's also being a comedian.
It's like you can do you know, the Tonight Show
or the Late Show and have a great set, and
(31:48):
then the next week you're standing in front of twelve
people in a basement, you know, right, So it's very humbling.
But I remember when I really wanted to be drum
major and uh in order to be drum major, and
I was perfect because I was a musician, nerd band,
nerd and uh and I was tall, so you know,
(32:12):
And I remember we had these auditions for drum major
and you had the principle was there, and I think
the superintendent in the head of the music whatever, and
you had to conduct the star Spangled banner. And when
you conduct, you do this upbeat that means instruments to
the mouth, and then as you're going down, there's this
period of going to the downbeat. And once you hit
(32:34):
the bottom is when the music begins. So it's like
up and then uh whatever. And I did the up
and as I was coming down, someone yelled sasquatch, and
I had to continue to conduct that piece, uh in
(32:55):
front of the heads of the school after, you know,
and it was just and it's just you remember these
horrible I'm sure that person doesn't remember. Well, Okay, so
this is what I want to talk about. Three points
to make about bullying, but I want to get into
how it felt in your body, and I want to
talk about the cruelty of it. This is what I
don't understand. The people who have been bullied grow up
(33:19):
into being grown adults who can't walk by a playground
or still feel this way about whatever. And it caught.
I mean, it's causes some kind of mental illness in
the bullied person. Why isn't the bullier like they seem
to get off scott free. I remember this boy right,
this boy who bullied me there on Facebook, they have
(33:39):
families and it's like, do you know that you were
sociopathically violent to a child and that just goes away
and that's just okay. I don't I literally want a
doctor to explain this to me, like what happens in
their brain that that just magically disappears, because to me,
that's that's so. I would be very worried if my
(34:01):
kid was beating up girls. That's he's stipping me. Boys
would beat me up, like that's insane. But I don't
I know that they that they don't remember that they
they don't have any idea the effect this had. I mean,
it's definitely. I have to tell you, if someone says bigfoot,
(34:25):
even in a conversation, I still it's like, oh ping,
you know, I get pinged sasquatch Bigfoot, Like it's still
I mean to hear it every fucking day of your
life for years, as you're walking down the hall and
we didn't have headphones where we could, I had to
purposely act like, oh right, I forgot something in the
(34:46):
other hallway. I'm gonna walk the opposite direction. But yes,
it's so interesting that you know, I remember before my
mother died. Uh, and she really well in this. She
loved like, you're gonna show them, you know, and oh,
(35:07):
I have the best story. I have the best story
for you. So uh. But I remember the like the
day my mother the day before my mother died, two
days before, I was visiting her and uh, I said, oh,
guess who tried to friend me on Facebook? And it
made her so happy? And it's like, do you realize
how fucking nasty in that's so? Yeah? Yeah, but here's
(35:31):
the best part this. I told this at her funeral,
you know. Uh. When I did Questions for a Jewish Mother,
I had a rave review in the New York Times
and it ran for years off Broadway and then it
toured and it was, Um, it was a great show,
great show. And I had this rave review in the
New York Times and in this my home paper in
(35:54):
New Jersey, the Star Ledger, which is now called something
Else New Jersey dot com. So anyway, that reviewer gave
me a terrible review. Uh and not and not not
worthy of a terror. I mean it really was. It's
a great show, um. And he gave me a bad review.
(36:16):
And at the bottom pre of course, pre cell phone,
pre computer, pre email. Um, he had for any comments
or questions, you can write to me at or call
me at. So I'm at a photo shoot and the
publicist for the show runs up to me and it's like, Judy,
I have to talk to you. I have to talk
(36:36):
to him, Like what's going on? She said, your mother
apparently left a message for the reviewer at the Star Ledger. Um,
you know your mother. If you get a not a
great review, your mother can't call them. And and I said,
oh my god, I'm so sorry. Again again never says
(36:56):
I love you, but calls you know what I mean?
And so, uh, I called my mother and I said, Mom,
you can't if I get a bad review, you can't
call the reviewer. And she said, well, Judith, actually he
wrote his review and then put his phone number about
(37:16):
any comments or questions. So I heard what he had
to say, and now he can hear what I have
to say. And um, and I said, he's not gonna
He was afraid to call her back. He was afraid
of her. And the next one person show I did,
he actually gave me a good review. Um, but it
(37:37):
was the It's the ultimate Jewish mother And she was right.
How do you argue with that. She's not don't leave
your she said, don't leave your phone number for you
don't want to hear my comment. I had to listen
to you what your thoughts were. You can listen to mine.
We'll continue the interview on the flip side of a
quick message from our sponsors. You know, I was thinking
(38:05):
about like going back to the justice thing, and it
sounds like your mom and a sense of justice when
people writing letters. Let I am writing to the president,
and my kids make fun of me all the time.
I'm like, you're not eating a chick flake, You're not
doing this, You're not end I That is definitely passed
down from Yes, absolutely always writing a letter to the
(38:27):
top person. Yeah. Well, it's funny because like the thing
that bothered me about being bullied and maybe, you know,
someone could say you're just intellectualizing it so you don't
feel their feelings. Sure, but it was less, oh my god,
you're hurting me because I actually had this really good
sense of self and they bullied me because I was
acting funny and siddy. I didn't act funny as a defense. Um,
(38:49):
I thought I I was I thought I was nailing
it in life. I thought it was so creative and
coming to school, like I came to school dressed as
Mozart once, no change of clothes, and I was just like,
this is a great idea. Yeah, and you know my
parents encouraged it. Yeah, my mom, friends friends, Yeah. And
so when kids are making fun of it, there was
part of me that felt sad, but more like, huh, okay,
(39:12):
why I did not see this coming? And then that
would happen over and over. But how can people be
so cruel? If I saw some wondrous as Mozart and
I didn't like that, I'd probably be like weird, but
I'd move on. And I didn't understand. It showed me
that there are just cruel people in the world, and
I couldn't handle knowing that. But it's also like they
(39:36):
would never think of doing that. They probably didn't even
know who Mozart was, and they're like, you know, you
should be and not being like everyone else is the
greatest gift in the world, you know. I remember years
ago they asked me to talk to tall teens. How cute? Yeah,
And they were all these kids in high school who
(39:58):
were really tall and not athletic, and they asked if
the parents they didn't want their mothers there, their parents there,
the kids and because only someone who And I was like, look,
these people, high school is their peak. You know, this
(40:19):
is it. They have four years. You're gonna get it.
I promise you, you're gonna get out. Like the night
before I was going away to college, I was so
anxious that I was going to be living in a
dorm that I couldn't even because at least I had
my room in my house and where I could go.
You now not get teased. Um, I thought, oh god,
(40:43):
now I'm gonna live on the floor and it's like,
I'm not even able to walk out of my room.
It's just gonna be constant. And my guidance counselor had
to come over the night before I was leaving to
tell me it was you know, I was so anxious.
I was like, oh, god, now you live in school,
so there's no respite, and uh, it's that was it.
(41:04):
And I was always really funny, but and only the
people that I was friends with knew I was funny.
But thank god he came over, and the next day
my whole life was changed because no one gave a
ship and they thought I was pretty and tall and skinny,
and you know, wow, it's it is literally a moment
like that that can change. And I know that you. Um,
(41:26):
so you went to therapy, right did you go for
the first time at the eighteen and you you realize
you were gay and you confess. I told my therapist.
I said, yeah, do you did you know the story?
I knew that you you told your therapists. And then
the therapist was like, okay, also, I'm leaving being a
therapist or moving something. Yeah, I said to her. I
(41:48):
was like, all right, I gotta tell her because I'm
just sitting here like going around, and I said, I
think I might be. You know, I have to tell you.
I remember I've prefaced it with okay because I had
built up the confidence. I'm gonna tell her today. So
I went in. I was like, okay, I just want
to say I have to tell you something. She goes, well,
I have to tell you something to you go first,
(42:09):
and I tell her I think I'm gay. I mean,
I knew I was gay when it was like three whatever,
And and that's another anxiety thing, like can you imagine
hiding that whole thing? And so I said I think
I'm gay, and she said, and I said, what do
you have to tell me? She said, I'm moving to
Florida and today's our last session. I was like, oh wow,
(42:32):
typical Judy Gold, typical j J. Well, I know that
it said here, Um, it said here, Liza, I didn't
take my own notes that you had a breakup and
you were so sad about your breakup, but you can
tell anyone because you were still I remember I had Yes,
I had a girlfriend ish you know, in high school,
(42:54):
uh and college, you know, beginning college. And it broke
up and I never told. No one knew. It was like, um,
you're in this. I mean it was high school whatever,
whatever it was, you know. To me, I'm you know,
we're performers, were artists. Everything is heightened, every feeling is
(43:17):
heightened to the m degree. And we broke up, but
no one knew I was gay or that we had
been fooling around. You know. Oh god, I was so skinny. Um,
and I basically got like a bleeding peptic ulcer, you know. Um,
(43:39):
you know, holding every feeling in did you feel it
in your body in the sense that you were actually
feeling anxiety about being in the closet or what did
it feeling. It's like you're so uncomfortable because you're playing
a character, like you're you know what I mean. So
it's like here I am at this frat or this
(44:01):
party or you know whatever, and everyone I know is straight.
It turns out between my junior and senior year in college,
it was my father called it the summer of forty two. Um,
I lived on campus and all of my friends sort
of came out of the closet, which was I was like,
(44:22):
you're gay too, Oh my god, you know, but I'm
living in a dorm. First of all, you live in
a straight world. And even like that's why they don't
say gay thing. It's like no one said gay when
I was, you know, and you don't say right. But
(44:43):
it was also like and we're all gay, so we
that doesn't work. Um, But it's being in the closet
is the most painful, um because everyone zooms you're someone
you're not and you have to sort of play along
(45:06):
and oh my god. It's so funny because I remember
this guy Scott, who I really liked him, and I
used to go visit him and his frat um and
he had pot all the time, so um, and he
was tall, and you know, it was always like, oh,
look at that tall one. You know, my mother was like,
and I'm like, oh god, tall men hate tall women.
(45:29):
They want short women. Short guys love tall women. Short
guys who are confident and you know, love tall women.
So anyway, I remember this guy Scott, and I uh,
I was friends with him, and I know he wanted
to date me, and you know, it's just it was unnatural.
And I had a boyfriend in college too, who um,
(45:51):
and you weren't bisexual, you were just trying to I
here's the thing. This is what's so interesting. Oh you're
gonna love this is that my generation of gay it
was such a horrible, horrible hard life that you had
to try to be Can I at least try and
and be straight because life will be so much easier.
(46:13):
I think a lot of people in my generation did that,
and it was so unnatural for me. It was literally unnatural.
I had this boyfriend and he was lived in my
dorm and I was like, no, I'm not, I mean
lived downstairs and I wouldn't sleep in his room. Well
I was like, I can't. And I felt even even
having sex was like I felt like I was being
(46:36):
assaulted because I was like this, I hate this. I
hate it so much. Um talk about anxiety and uh,
and so I don't know if you know this. There's
this term in the gay community called gold star. I do, yes, Okay,
do you know that what the platinum means? No? I know,
gold star means you are a lesbian has never had
(46:59):
or a gay man, has never had straight sex with
the opposite sex. What's platinum? There? There's a term platinum
that is so offensive to women. I can't even believe.
Platinum is a gay man who is gold star but
is the product of a C section, so had never
(47:21):
even gone through a vagina. It has never gone in
or come out come out of a vagina, has never
had any contact with a vagina. That's called platinum. Ridiculous
and funny. Yeah, you know. And also it's like, first
of all, what else do teenagers talk about except I
have a crush on this person. I so you missed
an entire developmental stage of your fucking life by having
(47:44):
to keep your everything and quiet. May not grow in
a brain chemistry? Oh please? It was awful. And yeah,
and then I remember, you know, coming out and admitting
and finally talking about it. I'm telling you, it was
like an out of body experience. I was like, I
(48:05):
felt like I was looking at myself from above, finally,
you know, letting go of this. And you know, you
just didn't know, you know, you would play this character
for so long. I remember when I came out to
my sister in therapy and then she freaked out because
(48:28):
she had no idea. First of all, I'm dressing as
a boy, um my entire like up until like six
or seven years old, like everyone, you know, no one
was surprised. I made everyone call me Robert or Ringo
was a kid. My cousin still calls me Robert um.
(48:50):
And you know, my sister said to me, I need
to process this because you're not the person I thought
you were, and I need to greet you that person.
And I'm like, oh my god, really, um, you know,
I have so many friends. I played tennis and I'm
in Provincetown. I played doubles, and there's so many of
(49:12):
these women who were eighty in their late seventies, who
were married, they have kids, they have grandkids, and they're
finally living their authentic life and so happy. And the
fact that they had. I mean, I'm glad they have
kids and grandkids, but the fact that they put their
life aside because they would have had nothing that you know,
(49:36):
old maid, um spinster. Uh, it's just you know, you're
playing this character and then all of a sudden you
don't have to hide anymore. It's the greatest feeling in
the entire But I'm telling you the constant Uh, you know,
(49:56):
you get you're with people and you're hearing them say
shit about people or talk about oh my god, don't
you want to have and you're like, it's just like
you know, that feeling in the top of your stomach
of oh god, here we go. Gotta play this fucking
game and it's not comfortable. And that's why you know
(50:18):
you have to be out and proud. Anxiety Bites will
be right back after a quick little message from one
of our sponsors. Okay, so here you are bullied in
the closet. Now you're getting older, you're growing up, you're
(50:39):
coming into your own. When did you start going to therapy?
And who put a name to the word anxiety to
you for the first time? Was it a therapist? Oh
that's interesting, I mean, I hate I hate the first time,
biggest moment questions because who the funk knows, but was
there like a period in your life? Yeah? So I
went to this the first therapist to move to Florida,
(51:00):
m and then, um, she said to me at eighteen,
I think you should go to an analyst, a psycho analyst,
because I think you're more complicated than just like a
social worker. I went to the Jewish Family Services because
I said to my mother, I want to go to
therapy and she's like, I will go to the Jewish
(51:20):
Family Savors. And uh. I went to this analyst and
I remember, oh, he was so bad because they don't
say anything, you know. And I'm eighteen nineteen and I'm
going to this analyst and I cut my hair short
and I remember going in and he's like, why did
you cut your hair short? And I'm like, I'm not
(51:43):
fucking telling you anything. Like I had him and it
was in his house and I was it was this cow.
I know. I wasn't ready for that. And then I
fell in love with another straight you know, it's just
awful because no one's out and you fall in love
with these these these straight women. And I went to
(52:08):
Pure counseling and counseling at college, and I just kept
seeking out counseling. But I think, you know, once I
went to I moved to New York, I had all
this stuff done and I was always diagnosed with general
anxiety disorder, you know, on my my health insurance and stuff.
(52:29):
And uh, I had a nervous breakdown slash clinical depression
in two thousand ten. And I had never I had
diurnal depression, so during the day I could not function
at all. At night, when the sun went down, um,
(52:52):
I would it would lift and I could probably have
like a protein chick again, so thick. But I really
threw that emotional breakdown that I always have a hard
time during the day. You know that the anxiety is
worse during the day, and when the sun goes down,
(53:12):
I feel at peace. And if I go back, I
remember now that I'm so aware of it, the alarm
going off in the morning and oh no, you know,
to wake up as a kid and be like fuck,
I gotta go get teased all day fucking long. You know.
Um oh, I didn't even know about this kind of
depression diurnal. So Williams. Stry On had um nocturnal depression,
(53:39):
and I had it during the day and I still
have trouble sleeping a little because if I let myself think,
the breathing exercises are great. Tell us what you do.
What's your breathing exercise for anxiety, so you know, mindful breathing,
focusing on that breath and and being I mean, it
(54:01):
takes so much practice and having those thoughts come into
your head, identifying them and saying but by now, but
by now. But it's like you have to learn to
identify it, what's real, what's not real. So I'll start
with the breath. And if I have a bad meditation day,
I just give myself a break. But it's like, go
(54:22):
back to the breath, Go back to the breath. I
have lists. I write lists all the time because that
helps with my anxiety. Like all this stuff. I'm like,
oh God, you have to do this, you have to
do that. So I write it down and then I
can let it go. So I do. I have all
these tricks that I do. Work, exercise very important. Um
(54:46):
also that feeling. That's why I loved quarantine, you know,
because I loved it so much. I was like, no pressure,
no one's doing anything that that feeling of having no control,
that feeling when the nurse called and I was like, sorry,
I got to take care of my kid. Like I
loved that. I think that people don't understand that like
(55:12):
it is exercise is mindfulness exercises. They want like one
answer and they want some kind of oh no that
you know. I feel like when people write to me
and they go, well, no, no, that stuff doesn't work
for me because I have it really bad, and I'm like, no,
it doesn't work. Work you have to practice, yea. And
there are some days where I'm like nothing's gonna I'm
(55:35):
in a bad place, and I will text Gary Gulman
or all text another person and I know deals with
this stuff and just say I'm having a And I
know now because I'm fifty nine years old, it's gonna pass.
But when I was in that clinical depression where I
could not speak, if someone said go get a quart
(55:56):
of milk. This is someone since I'm in my early
twenty traveling all over the fucking country by myself, you know,
doing you know, if someone said go get a cord
of milk at the store, I would have been like,
you know, it was horrible, and I couldn't speak, and
I realized, oh, this is why people commits or you
(56:16):
take their own lots so segments with but um, this
is why you know people harm themselves. But I never
wanted to. I never did it. I had kids, but
I knew that feeling and it changed me as a person.
Um because my also, if you went to the doctor
(56:37):
and you took my blood, my blood work was completely
different than when I wasn't depressed. Oh really, what does
it affect? Does it change like immune white bloodstion of
certain vitamins. It was very chemical and so you have
to realize it is an illness. And I hate the
fucking stigma. UM. And I have to say, like on
(57:01):
those days when it's I'm like, oh boy, I'll call
a Lisa and I'll say, yeah, I'll have it very bad,
and she will be like, Okay, you know, you gotta
reach out. You gotta reach out because there's other people
who are in the same situation who have you know.
And the I think the worst part of being a
(57:22):
uh AN artist and having depression is that we're so
in tune with our feelings and we have such strong
feelings that if we really think hard about it, we
could go back to that feeling, you know, and so
that fear of it happening again. If if I actually
(57:44):
sat here and thought about it, I can really sort
of gathered all that horrible shit and start feeling like
that again. And I don't want to, but I live
in fear that it will happen again. Although I've taken
some medical tests and they say it's it's you know,
(58:06):
they took my DNA and RNA and p n A whatever.
But you know that to your point, that is perfect
proof that getting help getting better. If it's medication, you
need therapy, Uh, you will not lose your unique thing
that makes you an artist. If you think you need
your refresh anxiety, be an artist. No, you can call
it up any time that you might need it for
(58:27):
an acting scene or you know. Yeah. And it's also
I remember when they first wanted me to go on ANTIS, like, no,
I'm not gonna be funny, but I couldn't take it anymore.
Like the amount of time I spent in my apartment
just being anxious, just sitting there, not being able to
get anything done, just with my head, with my thoughts.
(58:51):
You know, I wasted. I would have I would have
years I would definitely have at least a year of
doing nothing of the time that I spent picking my cuticles, worrying, worrying, worrying, worrying. Um,
and now because of therapy, because of meditation. I mean,
everyone has their thing that that can work if you
(59:15):
just allow it to work and you practice practice, and
if days it doesn't work, it does not mean to break.
Give yourself a break and don't assume it means anything,
and reach out and reach out. Yeah, I hope you
had fun hanging out with me and Judy. Judy and me.
(59:37):
Oh my god, here I am again with that. Let's
just go over some of the takeaways from my conversation
with Judy Gold and don't forget. If you want to
send an email to the show, please do so. Anxiety
Bites weekly at gmail dot com. I don't think I
won't be doing another fully only listener email episode, but
(01:00:02):
um sort of scattered throughout episodes coming up, I will
read a few emails that I think are pertinent, So
please do that. Please give the show five stars. Can
do that on Spotify and Apple podcasts. If you don't
want to write a review, that's okay, but five stars
really helps pushes the algorithm up, makes more people find
(01:00:23):
the podcast. More people that find the podcast, Well, maybe
I could get to do more episodes after season one,
and the more people are getting help for their anxiety,
and that's always a good thing. That makes your life
and my life better. All right. My takeaways from my
chat with Judy Gould, Most importantly, Lauren but Caall's real
name is Betty Purskey or Perky. I think it was Persky.
(01:00:47):
Judy believes that one of her mother's symptoms of anxiety,
like the constant worrying about Judy's whereabouts, was although it
was anxiety and very intrusive, it was based in love
and vulnerability. Judy leaves that her anxiety came from a
combination of genetically being Jewish, the generational trauma, as well
(01:01:08):
as her father having an undiagnosed o c D and
her mother having suffered a trauma of losing her brother
at an early age and never discussing it. Cognitive behavior
therapy is what ultimately helped Judy the most with her
anxiety disorders. For her, it's the act of labeling the
(01:01:28):
feeling and being able to stop in the moment and
ask yourself, what am I actually anxious about. For Judy,
music is a non clinical way of self soothing and
one thing that Judy finds she has an easy time
concentrating on despite having a d h D. As a mom,
Judy has learned that she has to accept that plans
(01:01:50):
are just hopes and dreams because you never know what's
going to happen. You have no control. You can plan,
but that doesn't mean it's going to actually happen. Judy
was bullied in school for being tall, and she does
still feel a PTSD trauma response in her body when
she hears words like big voters, sasquatch, or even walks
(01:02:13):
by you know, a playground with middle school or teenagers.
Judy's advice to anyone in high school being bullied is
to keep in mind that the bullies are at their
peak right now in high school. When they leave high
school without their little group of people validating them, their
lives may fall apart. Whereas Judy's began. Judy got a
(01:02:35):
peptic ulcer from being in the closet and holding in
her feelings when she broke up with her first girlfriend,
and so it stresses the importance of having someone to
talk to if you have anxiety if you feel like
you are hiding something from others, whether it's that you
are in the closet, or that you're just swallowing your feelings,
(01:02:55):
afraid to feel them because they scare you, or just
afraid that they're not normal. Another thing that contributed to
Judy's anxiety was the uncomfortability of her whole life being
in the closet. It was less of fear of people
finding out, but more how it felt to play along
with who everyone assumed. She was just not getting to
live her authentic life. Judy had a nervous breakdown with
(01:03:18):
clinical depression in and was diagnosed with diurnal depression. She
could only function after sundown. She's doing much better now,
but has worries you know what if it comes back
and for her staying connected to friends and doing her
daily cognitive behavioral therapy exercises keeps her on the up
and up. Judy does breathing exercises for anxiety. She practices
(01:03:43):
identifying the thoughts in her head and saying by to
them as she refocuses on the feeling of her breath.
When Judy has a bad meditation day, she gives herself
a break, writing lists helps calm Judy down and she
gets the anxiety of what she has to do out
of her brain and onto the paper. Exercise is really
(01:04:05):
important to duty for staving off anxiety. Exercise does create endorphins, which,
when used responsibly, I mean, there's exercise addiction, but that's
what we're talking about, but when used responsibly, can actually
flush a lot of the anxiety out of our body.
Judy keeps in mind when she's in her anxiety or
(01:04:27):
her depression that it will pass. It always has. But
in those moments she reaches out to friends who understand her.
It's important to reach out and stay connected. And I
hope you will stay connected with this podcast Anxiety Bites.
What a segue that was. And don't forget Anxiety Bites,
but You're in control. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
(01:04:54):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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