February 18, 2025 • 43 mins
Hey, Fellow Travelers. This week, we’re bringing you a live episode in partnership with Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia. First we’ll take you behind the scenes of the podcast, then we’ll answer a few listener letters about everything from family boundaries and avoidance to exes and fear of commitment… and offer our advice on the spot!
If you have a dilemma you’d like to discuss with us—big or small—email us at LoriAndGuy@iHeartMedia.com.
Follow us both online:
LoriGottlieb.com and on Twitter @LoriGottlieb1 and Instagram @lorigottlieb_author
GuyWinch.com and on Twitter @GuyWinch and Instagram @Guy Winch
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, fellow travelers. I'm Lari Gottlieb. I'm the author of
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and I write the
Dear Therapist's Advice column for The Atlantic.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And I'm Guy Wench. I'm the author of Emotional First Aid,
and I write the Dear Guy Advice column for TED.
And this is Dear Therapists.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Each week we invite you into a session so you
can learn more about yourself by hearing how we help
other people come to understand themselves better and make changes
in their lives.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
So sit back and welcome to today's session.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
First, a quick note, Dear Therapist is for informational purposes only.
It does not constitute medical or psychological advice and is
not a substitute for professional healthcare advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Always seek the advice of your physician, mental health professional,
or other qualified health provider with any questions you may
have regarding a medical or psychological condition. By submitting a letter,
(00:54):
you are agreeing to let iHeartMedia use it in part
or in full, and we may edit it for length
and clarity. In the sessions you'll hear. All names have
been changed for the privacy of our fellow travelers.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Hey Guy, Hey Laurie. So today we're going to do
something a little bit different.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Recently we did a live event where we got to
share how we do these your therapist sessions every week
and what we're really thinking when we're trying to help
all of you through the issues that you bring us.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
We also dipped into our mailbox and gave advice to
some letters you sent us. So this week here's a
treat Deotherapists Live. You're listening to Deotherapists from iHeartRadio. We'll
be back after a quick break.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
I'm Lori Gottlieb and I'm.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Guy Wench, and this is Deotherapists.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
My name is Janet Gattis. I am the owner and
founder of Avid Bookshop here in Athens, Georgia. Welcome, good evening,
and welcome to our very special event with Guy Wench
and Laurie Gottlieb from the podcast Dear Therapists. Both of
these people are stellar therapists, hosts of their own podcast,
(02:14):
and have written multiple books.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
First off, I.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Am so excited that the new season of Dear Therapists
just launched. As of yesterday, already heard the episode twice
and as with every other episode of the show that
I've heard. I'm really curious to know sort of the
background of how you to process the number of letters
you get, how many letters you get, and how you
choose ultimately what gets on the show. Would you guys
(02:41):
answer that for us?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Well, first of all, just thank you for doing this
and having us. We were so excited to have this conversation,
especially launch week. We get so many letters, and going
into season two, one of the things we've always said
is what made season one so great, or the quality
of the letters that we got from people all over
(03:05):
the world. We wish we could do all of them.
It would be great. We would just have a million episodes,
But we really pick letters that we feel have some
universal quality to them. So while each letter is very
specific to a situation, like in the first episode it
was about Instagram cheating, it really was about so many
other things and I think you'll find that in every
(03:26):
single episode. The one thing that's interesting about it is
that we don't actually discuss the letters. So even though
we will choose letters, we don't actually know before we
start talking on that episode what we're going to be
talking about. We don't say we think this might happen
in this episode, or let's discuss how we think about
this letter.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
We don't do any of that.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
We act like someone has just walked into our therapy
room and we're hearing this for the very first time.
And I think that's what makes the show so dynamic
is that it's not scripted. There's no agenda that we
have in mind beforehand. We're just like, here's the letter.
We have no idea what's going to happen. The audience
has no idea what's going to happen, and here we go.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
And by the way, that's what makes it scary also
for us, you know, a therapist, because we're there, we
really don't know what the other person is thinking. We
don't know where it's going to go. The actual session
might go in a very different direction.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Oh my gosh, that's exciting. Had either of you done
sort of therapy with a therapeutic partner before, Like, how
did you go about knowing who's going to speak when
and what kind of feedback you would give in tandem?
Speaker 2 (04:29):
We don't. That's what's.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
We don't at all.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
I mean, but I think that that's what's so great
is that when so what a lot of people might
not know is that when therapists train, often you get
feedback in a certain way on your session, So some
people might be behind a one way mirror, or you
tape your sessions and record them and you bring them
to your supervisor. All of this, of course with the
consent of the client, but once you're in private practice,
(04:59):
you don't get that anyway. Really, And one of the
things that's so interesting about working with Guy is to
see how he works. He makes me a better therapist.
I think watching a direction he goes, or where I
might get stuck somewhere, He'll jump in, and vice versa.
I think if he is sort of going somewhere and
the person is stuck there, I'll jump in. And so
we really tag team really well. Even though we can't
(05:21):
read each other's minds. Even if sometimes I think where
is he going with this, I'm confident that wherever he's
going is too an important place.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
And I can say that I've many times over this
past you know, a year and a half since we
started working together, in my own sessions that I do
in my own private practice, I'll get to a moment
where I literally say to myself in my head, I'm
going to do a lor here, and then I do
a thing that I think Lauri would do because I
was I think that's a good place, and she does
(05:49):
that thing. Well, I'm going to do Lauri here, and
I have that in my head. Many times I'm like, yep,
thank for a LORI right there. That's great.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
One thing that I find really out about it is
that I was just texting a friend about this last night,
about recommending episodes of season one for her, and one
of the things I pointed out was that even if
the name of the episode and the description sound like
this person, I don't have any strange daughter, I don't
have any kids at all, I'm not going to get
a lot out of this episode. Every single episode there
(06:20):
are these gems and takeaways that are impacting me, a single,
forty one year old woman who doesn't have any kids.
So it's just really interesting to me how you can
tell very much that you too are hyper focused on
the client in the virtual room, yet so many of
the things that you share are really applicable to so
many of us. And that brings me to a question
(06:43):
about sort of how the pandemic has affected the sorts
of therapy you do in dear therapists or in your
private practices. I know that the show launched sort of
as COVID was a thing in the world, but how
have you noticed the nature of people's concerns or worries
letters shift over the last year or so.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Well, I just want to say before we talk about
COVID that what you were saying earlier about how applicable
each episode is to everyone, because relationships are relationships in
the world. Whether it's relationship to self, relationship to friends,
to family, to siblings, to romantic partners, to bosses to coworkers,
they're all relationships. And so I remember in season one,
(07:25):
early on, we had a couple on and this was
a married couple, they had kids, they'd been married for
a while, and this young woman in her early twenties
wrote in and she said, I'm not married yet, I
don't have kids yet, but I use the advice with
my boss at work and it was amazing. And so
I think that that's the kind of response that we've
been getting all through season one and we hope to
(07:46):
continue through season two. Is that even if you look
at the title of the episode and you say, well,
that's not my situation, I would really encourage people to
listen to the episodes because our goal in putting them
out there is to make these sessions accessible to everyone.
Not everybody can or wants to go to a therapist,
but you can get so much out of one conversation
(08:06):
if you see yourself in some element of the struggle,
and a lot of it is the things that you
can use in your daily life, no matter who you are,
how old you are, what your situation is, and that's
what we love about the show.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And as therapists, we're trained to ask questions such as, so,
why are you doing the thing that you're doing, or
what are you hoping to achieve? Or how did that
get set up for you in your earlier relationships or
in your childhood, And then that is crafted around a
specific issue perhaps, but the question is relevant in a
much more general way, and people hear that and they're
(08:41):
asking ourselves that question in the context of their own lives.
And that's why you can learn a lot from it,
because it's really about how to think about yourself, how
to think about your situation, how to think about your patterns,
how to think about the impact of earlier experiences, And
that's generalized as to everyone.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Truly, So thinking keeping all that in mind, does that
mean that maybe COVID era letters maybe weren't all that
different at heart from what you had been getting previously.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
I think they weren't that different. I mean many of
them touched on how COVID was impacting these people, whether
it was in a marriage, or we had a teacher
who couldn't be with her students and how that was
impacting her. Whatever people were going through before the pandemic
was amplified. So if they were, if a relationship was
very strong, it got stronger. If a relationship was struggling,
(09:33):
or things were not discussed. This really came to light
during COVID. Really, what we're dealing with is just the
human condition. And yes, there are going to be big
events like COVID or you know, other things that happened,
But really what we're dealing with is how do we
deal with the daily stuff of life.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
And speaking of people's personal stories, both of you in
your talks and your books and occasionally in interviews I've
I heard you'll reveal personal things about your own lives.
How do you decide what you want to reveal to
an audience where you don't know who's there, and how
do you sort of ride the line of being someone
(10:12):
like I'd never met you until today, but I trust
you both very much. But until you saw my face,
you would never have known who I was passing you
on the street. How do you balance that role of
where people feel like they know you, but you really
are still just a therapist to them, Like, how does
that play out in your careers in different aspects.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
It's funny because in Maybe You Should talk to Someone.
In my most recent book, I follow the lives of
four very different patients, and then there's a fifth patient
in the book who is me as I go through
my own therapy with my therapist, and I say at
the beginning of the book that my greatest credential is
that I am a card caring member of the human race.
That I know what it's like to be a person
(10:51):
in the world, and I didn't want to present myself
as sort of the expert up on high. And I
feel like that translates over into the podcast, because you know,
we're sitting here talking about our personal lives in the podcast,
but we use our personal experience to connect with people
on a very human level. We obviously are using our
training and our expertise and everything that we have learned
(11:14):
as therapists, but we're also relating to people just human
to human, and I think that's what makes the episode
so compelling, and I think that's what makes therapy so compelling.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
It's an interesting thing. People will come up to me
sometimes will recognize me from either Ted Talks or the
podcast or writing or different things, and they will come
up to me as if, as you said, is if
they know me when I don't know them, and this
in essence, they don't really know me. But it's there's
something that I So far in my experience, people have
(11:44):
been very respectful. They feel a certain affinity, a certain
fondness because if they heard something it might have touched
them or it might have resonated with them. We've been
very fortunate in that way. At the second speak to
my experience that when that does happen, when I do
pass people in the street and they stop me, or
in a restaurant, an airport, once in the gym in
the shadow but that's a different one, and.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
In the broad department of a department store just like why.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
But thankfully it's been friendly and so those are okay,
Oh my gosh, it's funny.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah, and maybe you should talk to someone.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
I say that therapists are like Dalist celebrities, you know,
it's kind of like the only people to whom they are, they're.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Like, oh my gosh, you know who that is? Who
I just saw in the restaurant.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Is the people who have come to see us, right,
or the people who maybe read our books or listen
to podcast.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
I don't you know.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Obviously from the podcast you don't see us, so you
only hear our voices. But I've actually had people recognize
my voice from across a restaurant.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Maybe I'm just a loud talker. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
But like guys said, I think people, I think they
feel a connection because they've been moved very personally in
these very intimate conversations by something that we've put out there.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
And so that's I think incredibly meaningful to us.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
We appreciate the fact that we have touched somebody's life
in that way.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
That's beautiful.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
And speaking of that again, writing the line between really
knowing someone versus only interacting with them. On this one episode,
I've been really curious about the letter writers who end
up being featured on the show. What is that the
vetting process like in order to figure out if yes,
this is the letter writer we want, and then what
(13:27):
kind of conversations and things do they need to keep
in mind when they are putting their voices out there,
even if they are kind of masking identifying details.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
What people need to know, especially people who are writing
in is that, as in a therapy session, you can
come with issue A, but everything has to be on
the table because if we think issue A is related
to other things, we want to be able to explore
those things and we want to be able to ask
questions about those things. And therapy is a very non
linear process. Its zigzags all over the place because connections
(13:59):
are made in patents identified by doing that, and that's
kind of what we do within the podcast, And so
we edit out any identifying information, So people use pseudonyms
in that way. I think people can remain anonymous, but
they have to be able to truly open their hearts
as you do when you go to therapy.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
I really appreciate how in the shows we can't see
you two or the person you're speaking with, but you
both do a really good job of saying like, I
see your eyes are filling with tears, or you looked
away from us just then. But yeah, I just really
love those moments where you kind of let us have
a peek into what's going on for that client.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
We say that as much for the audience as we
do for the person that we're talking to. So sometimes
people don't even realize that they're tearing up, so we
want to have them slow down in that moment. Say
I notice that you're tearing up. What are you feeling
right now? What just came up for you? Because people
will just go right over that because they don't want
they don't want to notice that, and we want to
(15:03):
slow them down so that they do notice it. So
because something important just happened there. If they smile, sometimes
people don't even notice that they experienced joy or that something,
you know, something really resonated with them. So say, I
noticed you smiling there, so I think that that resonated
with you. So it's for both. It's actually what we
would do in a regular therapy session too.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
I like that a lot.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
I know, even in I won't spoil it for anyone
who's not already heard the first episode of season two
there's a moment there where I was surprised by what
you observed in the letter writer, and I hadn't expected
you to say you saw on her face what you saw,
And that was kind of a fascinating moment to hear
her saying, kind of reflect on what you're bringing up.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
I really appreciated that.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
My mom is here at this event too, and she
and I listened to on season one, Jeff's critical parents
on the way back from a road trip, and I
very am, very thankful I have great parents who are
not critical of me and are positive. But it was
fascinating to listen into that with her. And then afterward
I realized that that storyline echoed in several loved ones
(16:07):
in my life, so I was able to send that
episode to them. But I think that one in particular,
I remember hearing the moments where you're pointing out how
he's reacting in the moment. I think you also do
such a great job for the audience. I know it's
for the client, but it helps us a lot when
you kind of catch like the tone someone's using with himself,
or the way that he's speaking about a certain scenario,
(16:29):
and how the roles are changing. I just find it
so fascinating. So a lot of all of us are
made up of stories. And Guy and I were talking
a little bit before we started recording about how he
worked as a bookseller. I think as an adolescent. Laurie
has done a thing that we linked to on our
Instagram a couple weeks ago written an article on bibliotherapy,
(16:50):
which is the process of using books and the written
word to help people get better in touch with themselves
and their emotions. Can you talk a little bit about
some books that you have recommended for particular clients and
why it's.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Really wonderful When you have a book in mind that
you think would be really useful for a specific person,
it always feels like, oh, I have the perfect thing
for you. One book that I recommend a lot to
expecting parents who are expecting for the first time is
a book called Welcome to the Club one hundred Parenting
(17:24):
Milestones You Never saw coming. It's by a comic called
Rakeldia Piece. She's actually an Emmy Award winning writer. But
it's a wonderful book because it's hilarious, but it's about
everything that goes wrong, and the idea there is that
parents are so terrified to bring home this baby for
(17:48):
the first time, and they think that anytime they do
something wrong, it's terrible, and they don't realize that everyone
goes through it, and all parents make all these mistakes,
and in the humor it normalizes, it humanizes, and I
find that people when they read that, it just lows
their anxiety tremendously by the humor of it. So that's
one book I love recommending.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I actually never thought I would become a therapist growing up,
but I was an avid reader. And how this relates
to your question is that I always found that novels
were the really good ones, the ones that I would
think about, the ones I would reread at different stages
of my life, really had these deep psychological truths embedded
(18:32):
in them. And that's what made for the kinds of
characters that really lived inside of you. And I think
when you're reading a novel and you have those moments
of that's me, I see myself. I'm not alone, and
you think you were the only person who felt that,
did that, thought that, and this character does things, says
the same things.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
It's such an amazing moment of connection.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
And that's what books have always been for me, and
so later when I became a therapist, I was always
recommending books. Even in my training when they said, oh,
don't recommend books. You can't do that because you're supposed
to be very neutral, and I was always like, are
you crazy, Like you know, books are therapy, and that's
why I wrote that New York Times piece about bibliotherapy.
So I really tailor my book suggestions to the particular person.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
It's something that comes up in the moment where.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
You know, I'm like an encyclopedia with books, and so
someone says the thing, I'm like, wait a minute, stop,
if there's this book you have to read. So for me,
it's less nonfiction than it is great novels. But I
will recommend nonfiction if there's something particular, like someone's struggling with,
you know, some of the themes even that we see
on the podcast, but also in the therapy room, estrangement
partners who maybe have some characteristics of personality disorders, or
(19:45):
family members who do books about In fact, guy just
recommended a great book on We just taped an episode
for season two where he recommended a book on anxiety
to the person and she found it so useful even
just starting the book that first week. So books can
be incredibly healing and informative at the same time.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
By the way, the book the Loid just Reference is
called The Anxiety Toolkit by Alice Boyce. I also get
a lot of recommendations from my patients because they will
come in and they're like, oh my god, I read
something and it was so helpful, and I'm like, tell
me what it is, and I'll write it down and
I'll check it out, and it's very useful in general.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I had that experience with maybe you should talk to someone,
where interestingly, a lot of therapists did not know about
it at the beginning. It was general public kind of book,
and so many therapists said, I heard about your book
because a client brought it in and they were talking
about it, and I had to read it because they
kept talking about it every week, and so it didn't
go from therapist to client. It went from client to therapist.
(20:46):
So guys write books do go in the opposite direction.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
That's funny. Yeah, I'm a huge fiction reader, and I
remember for a while in my mid twenties when I
wasn't sure what my career was going to be. I
was like am I do. I want to be a
therapist because that's what I love the most about reading novels.
I do not hold the degrees that you have or
the experience, but there is such an element to working
(21:10):
in an independent bookstore where we get to know our
community members, and I and my staff are really good
at reading the emotions on someone's face and kind of
helping them figure out what the next book is it's
going to kind of help them move forward.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
That's one of the things I love about independent booksellers
is that you walk in and they know you, and
if they don't already know you, they will talk to
you until they do know you. Every book that I
have gotten as a recommendation from an independent bookstore has
always been one of the books that stays on my
bookshelf forever because I think there's that personal element. Just
like therapists can very personally suggest something, so can independent booksellers.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
You're listening to Deotherapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back after
a quick break.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
A lot of the time I've heard you recommend to
people that they write a letter or do some sort
of introspective work that requires them to do a letter
to themselves a journal entry, rewriting their own biography. How
does writing help your clients in you and how do
you use that as a tool in your therapy.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
The people who come on our show, they're not our
clients by definition, their guests on the show. Writing is
a very very powerful tool because it uses all kinds
of parts of the brain. It's not just the idea
that you have that has to be translated then into
various specific words that have to follow grammatical rules. You
need to find motor skills to type it or write it.
(22:52):
And when you're trying to get someone to think differently
about a task or to discover something about themselves, giving
them a writing task affords them a certain level of
emotional and psychological distance because by the time it gets
translated into the written word, they are experiencing what the
thought might have been very emotional and difficult. By the
(23:14):
time they write it, they have a layer of distance
from it, which gives them that little measure of objectivity,
that little different kind of perspective that will allow them
to potentially see this in a new way. So it's
a tool that therapists use literally all the time. Then
we use it in very different ways for different people
(23:34):
in different situations. We use it in the show, of course,
all the time, because it's very very useful and impactful
to really see something in a different way than you
might if you were just thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
I think what happens is people come on the show
and they'll often say, I've been dealing with this problem
for years, and they're stuck and they don't know how
to get unstuck, and you need to get them out
of whatever they're doing which hasn't been working. I think
that most people truly know what they need to do.
They just don't know what's getting in the way of
(24:05):
doing the thing that they need to do. And what
we do is we help them to do that through
these various exercises. And just because it's a writing assignment
doesn't mean it's the same. No two writing assignments are
the same, and we don't suggest a writing assignment on
every podcast, obviously, but when we do, it's very unique
to that person and their situation. There are no two
(24:28):
episodes where they have exactly the same homework assignment. I
was a competitive chess player growing up, and one of
the things that was really important was how do you
get in there, which if I make this move, they're
going to make this move, and then uh oh, I
better adjust my plan and make this move. Guy and
I are constantly thinking it's very strategic when we're doing this.
How do we get this person to the place that
(24:49):
they need to go in order to have things change
for them? Because really the show is about change and
growth and healing and transformation, and we only have one
session to do that. We want to get as far
as we can. And what we've been so surprised by
is that even with that one session, people are able
to make significant shifts in their lives. And in season
(25:10):
two we have where are They Now? Episodes where we
take the season one guest so we don't just get
the week update, but we get a year long update
and we find out where are they a year later?
Speaker 3 (25:20):
And it's been so gratifying. I don't want to spoil it.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Guys looking at me giving me the look like, don't
say it, because we have heard them now we know
where everybody is. But we are just blown away by it,
and we think people are going to be so moved
when they hear you know where people are a year
later after having just one conversation not because we're so great,
but because.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
We move them to a new place and then they
took it from there.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
That's beautiful. There's one episode in season one where you
have a letter writer explore a situation in his life
from his ex spouse's point of view, and I was
wondering if you could talk a little bit about, because
we have a lot of readers in the audience right now,
just that change of point of view and how that
(26:05):
type of exercise in particular can help shift someone's perspective.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
That was an exercise in perspective taking. That was a
person who had cheated on his wife and then left
her for that person, think a month after the birth
of their second child. And this person was actually a
good person, but they really had trouble connecting to the
(26:30):
ex wife's perspective of how their actions must have felt
to her. And when we asked about it, you could
see that there was a wish to connect, but he
couldn't articulate or see it from her perspective, and so
we literally took him through an exercise that some of
the feedback that we've gotten was, Wow, that sounded so difficult.
(26:51):
It was emotionally very challenging. Because he ritually had to
put himself in her shoes and look and see the
impact of his actions on her and tell story. The
exercise was from her point of view, from the beginning
of meeting him, through the marriage, and through the cheatings.
So it was a very difficult exercise, but he was
really gained to do it, and he was brave to
(27:12):
do it, and it was painful for him, but he
eventually got there and was able to connect with her
perspective in a way he really hadn't been able to
despite thinking about this for a very, very long time.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
This was the episode called Mike's Messy Affair, and we
really wanted to go with that letter because I think
so many people make assumptions right away. He was basically
asking what the cultural assumption was in his letter, which was,
you know, as Guy says in the episode, so this
is a tell me I'm not a scumbag letter because
he wants to know everyone thinks I'm a terrible person
(27:46):
for doing what I did, and you know, my friends
won't talk to me. Nobody will talk to me all
of this, and you know, he wanted you know, he
really was concerned about his children.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Because he didn't want to lose custody of his.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Children and all of those things. I think that when
you see the humanity in him, and when you see
him really be able to say, Okay, the reason that
I can't acknowledge how much pain I've caused is because
of how much shame I feel around having done what
I did. I wish that I had handled it differently.
I think ending the marriage was a good thing, but
(28:21):
this is, you know, his perspective. I think ending the
marriage was a good thing, but the way I did
it was a terrible thing. And for him to go
through that, and you can see, you know how much
he's struggling with it. But I also hope that people
have so much compassion for him and feel, you know,
just how human he is, and get past the what
he did and more into the where is he now
(28:43):
and what is he trying to do now?
Speaker 3 (28:44):
With all of this.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
I remember that one in particular, making note of my
own reaction to his tone, particularly at the beginning of
the episode, and I thought like, oh, Janet, you don't
have a right to judge him. But I also was like, oh,
this guy, wonder what's going to happen, and just hearing
just how his tone shifted and just the journey he
went on was fascinating to me.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
I think with Mike in the episode, he had his
own struggles too. He was so lonely in that marriage.
He did not know how to talk to his wife.
His wife didn't know how to talk with him. They
both did not know how to communicate. And that's the
part that's very relatable, is what do you do when
you've never had that model for you, You don't know
how to say how.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Just desperately lonely? You are desperately alone? You feel you know,
do you cheat?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
No?
Speaker 1 (29:34):
That's a choice, right, But he did, and now he
knows to do something different. Now he's just learning, well,
how do I communicate? What would that look like?
Speaker 2 (29:44):
I do want to add when we discussed whether we
should use that mesa for the show, one of the
things we thought about, naturally is that, yes, it sounds
terrible what he did, but he is writing to us.
He's actually asking for help in resolving that very issue
of like what is this about me? And how do
I think about this? And that's a big step forward
in terms of like, Okay, there's something to work with them,
(30:05):
because he's actually curious and he actually wants to think
about these things. So that was what allowed us to
say yes, and let's work with him.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
You can't help people who aren't curious about themselves. So
often people will come into therapy and they're very curious
about other people, like, you know, why does my husband
do this or you know all these other why does
my mother do this? As opposed to why do I
react the way they do? Or what am I doing
to contribute to the situation, or why am I in
this relationship in the first place. So when people come
(30:34):
on the show, we don't know them yet. We hope,
we cross our fingers that they're going to be very
curious that they know what the show is, because it's
a show where if you aren't curious, you're you're going
to find yourself really struggling when you get in a
room with guy and with me.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
I'm now going to pivot to something you both offered
to do, which is dive into your letter bag a
little bit and tell us about a few rights who
maybe weren't featured on the show, but you still want
to address their letters in this format. So take it away.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
I will begin and I'm gonna as we do in
the show. I'll read this one to Laurie. She will
be the next one to me. But this is a
question you get asked a lot, and I think it'd
be good to just clarify it. Dea LORII and Guy
I love the podcast and the Atlantic column. What does
fellow travelers refer to people traveling through life? I feel
like I missed the reference explanation somewhere because we always
(31:30):
welcome our listeners to as fellow travelers and our guests
as fellow travelers. So where is that from?
Speaker 1 (31:37):
So we introduced that in the trailer for season one
when we started, and we were struggling with what do
we call the people who come on the show because
they aren't our actual therapy clients and they aren't really guests,
because we feel like we get very deeply attached to
these people in the course of our session with them.
(31:59):
And I I just spontaneously said to Guy, you know
irv Yallam, the eminent psychiatrist who's really revolutionized the field
of psychiatry and therapy by being so human and so
real with people. You know, he broke down that wall
and he would call people fellow travelers. He said We're
all fellow travelers on this journey, you know, therapists and
(32:22):
patient together. We're fellow travelers trying to figure this out.
And I just love that. And so we really thought
that that maybe was the best way to refer to
the people who come on and share their lives with us.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
All right, let's go to another letter, Lorie.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
This is a letter that came into our box.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
It goes like this, Dear therapists, I could really use
some help navigating my new relationship with my soon to
be stepdaughter's biomm I've been a mom of my own
two kids for twelve years and have learned a lot.
I'm feeling very confident as a mom. My fiance and
his ex have been parents for three years. I am
running into a situation where I feel like the biomm
(32:58):
is overreaching. It's interesting by the way that she calls
her the biomom as opposed to just their mom. She
wants to know how our marriage house will be set up,
what kind of bed their daughter will have, and things
like whether we have dead bolts on the exterior doors.
I feel a huge invasion by these requests. Interacting with
biomom has felt like I'm being interviewed to be a
(33:20):
babysitter and getting inspected for my safety protocols. I've tried
to assuage her fears while also establishing some healthy boundaries
of my house, my rules. But I'm wondering if you
have any advice for how to navigate conversations with biomm
that help her unclench her fists of control. Do we
try to be more open right now to establish trust, or,
(33:41):
like my instincts suggests, would that just be a precedent
of biomom having a level of control over our space,
something I was already very worried about because of the
way she talks to my fiance. He is a wonderful
father and very doting. I just wish his ex would
see that and trust him. I'm just going to start
here because I'm having a lot of counter time transference
(34:01):
with this letter. And by the way, that's a very
real thing, you know, for people who don't know. Counter
transference is the is the therapist's reaction to what the
person presents to them. And what this person is missing
is that she is not the mother of these children.
She's the mother to her own children, but she is
not the mother of her fiancee's children, and she's referring
(34:23):
to these kids' mother as the biomm not even the
sometimes she's biomm which is kind of like she wants
her out of the picture. It feels like, and my house,
my rules. No, these are not your kids. So of
course the mom wants to know are there dead bolts
on the doors? And where are they going to be sleeping?
And what's going to be happening with my children.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
The way she's.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Going about that is she's making a lot of assumptions
about her role in this blended family.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
And I will add to that again, we're not talking
to this person unpacking anything with them. But to me,
what stands out is that why is she the one
negotia with bio mom. Why isn't the father of the
children dealing with his ex wife and coming to know
agreements with his ex wife about like here's how I
want to do things, you know. So either he's not
(35:12):
stepping up the fiance or she's overstepping it's one or
the other. But the solution to it is let him
deal with BioMA.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Well, also, I don't know the bio Mom's a problem,
and I don't know what the fiance wants so nowhere
in here was my fiance also feels this is a problem.
So I have a feeling that she feels it's a problem,
but I don't have any information about does the fiance
feel it's a problem or is the fiance caught in
this untenable position of this person that I'm going to
(35:41):
Mary wants this, my ex wife wants this, and I'm
conflict avoidant, so I don't want to deal with any
of it.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Definitely the conflict avoidant, I would guess.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
But yes, yeah, But I would just say this about
blended families and gentlemen. We've had some full episodes about
blended families. We had one in season one, and we
do have another one in season two, different issues. But
I think that people have to remember that there are
many parents here. It's not that certain parents get kicked out.
That everybody is co parenting in a certain way. And
(36:12):
when people can get along and not try to control
other people and be really compassionate and emotionally generous with
one another, it's better for the kids, and it's also
better for the adults. And this whole like my house,
my Rules thing screams of just lots of issues around
control and lack of openness to what the mother of
(36:35):
these children might be experiencing and might want for her
own kids.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
And I just want to maybe generalize what I said
earlier just because I think it's applicable to many situations.
For example, you know, I hear we get a lot
of issues in the therapy, learn about this person having
a lot of trouble with their in laws when they're
talking about things with their in laws that they shouldn't
be talking about with their in laws. The spouse should
be talking with their parents about them. And when the
other person is stepping into do that communication and negotiation
(37:03):
when it's not their place to do it, things often
go awry. And it's often the issue of the person
who needs to be doing it is not stepping up
or doesn't think they should, or the other persons are
a stepping And that generalizes to all kinds of situations
where there's a third party and someone gets stuck in
the middle. It's a person who's stuck in the middle
who needs to be speaking up more, usually one way
or the other. Okay, next one, uh, Dear therapists, I'm
(37:26):
forty six years old and I'm about to move from
where I've lived for all my life and where my
kids and family are. I'm moving to Nevada because my
boyfriend of one and a half years got a job
down there and it seemed like he was the one.
So I found a job and started preparing to move
with my boyfriend. On the morning we were set to
fly to find a home, he told me he didn't
want to live with me anymore and he isn't in
(37:46):
love with me. I had already quit my job and
had accepted a job in Reno. I was devastated, but
not surprised. He had been dropping hints for weeks, and
I chose to ignore them, blaming them and anxiety and
the stress of preparing to move. The twist in the
story is that my ex boyfriend had learned I was
moving to Reno with someone new, and instead of giving up,
(38:07):
he aggressively tried to get me back. Two hours after
my breakup with my current boyfriend, I had a marriage
proposal and an invitation to visit him in New York,
where he now lives. I went to New York, but
I'm feeling completely numb. The irony is I always complained
that he was emotionally unavailable but now it's me who
has become emotionally unavailable. My decision as of right now
(38:28):
is to move to Reno on my own. I'm excited
about the job down there, and I have been desperately
wanting to leave Montana since my marriage ended. My question is,
how did that become so emotionally unavailable? My ex boyfriend
is offering everything I wanted him to when we were together,
plus a very nice life in New York. My question
is am I going through a midlife crisis? I feel
(38:49):
like Reno offers me a fresh start and maybe a
way to get back in touch with myself.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Well, this is interesting because we see this a lot,
where somebody is unavailable and then the other person becomes
unavailable and suddenly they're very available.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
All right.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
So here the person who wrote the letter that boyfriend
had been unavailable to her and then when he found
out that she was moving in with someone else, suddenly
he wants her back, and the two hours after the breakup,
there's a marriage proposal.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
All of a sudden. Move to Reno.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Explore the relationship from afar, Take lots of time she
just got out of this other relationship. Take lots of
time to see what happened with the other boyfriend, why
he's suddenly emotionally available seemingly, So would she get to
New York and find that he's not emotionally available again.
So I really feel like she has to do what
she needs to do and explore this very slowly.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
From afar, I would bet that had she decided to
go to New York and try it with this marriage proposal,
she would find that he very soon would start to
become emotionally unavailable again because there was a reason it
didn't work out the first time. I'm not hearing anything
from him about, oh, here's what would be different for
me this time. It's just wait, But I don't want
(40:06):
to lose you, so maybe we'll do this. And I
agree the advice should be go to Reno as you're
planning to do. If he's that intent, if he's that serious,
if he's that emotionally available right now, he will tolerate
the distance and welcome the relationship with enough time to
give you a sense that actually it's solid and he
means it. But in my experience, in my practice, when
(40:27):
I hear these stories all the time, it often not
always often swings right back the minute, the person says okay,
so now I'm here, and then the person goes like,
oh wait, commitment issues again, and then it.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
We have an episode in season two somebody's asking if
he should get back with his ex partner. One of
the things that's really important that we ask people to
do is to say, have they articulated what would be
different this time? Have they articulated what didn't work, what
they've learned about themselves, why they behave the way they behaved,
whether it was being emotionally distant, being emotionally clingy, being
(41:05):
emotionally abusive, not having boundaries, whatever the issues were, What is.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
Going to be different this time?
Speaker 1 (41:11):
And if nobody can articulate that on both sides, what
would be different? What have you each learned about yourselves?
And would what is the goal of getting back together?
Not just I miss you. I think that that's really important.
And here we have you know again, we don't know
any other information than what's in this letter, so on
the podcast we would really dig into this. But the
(41:32):
marriage proposal two hours after she had broken up with
the other guy is in my mind, something to be
wary of.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
Thanks. That was so much fun to get a glimpse
into some of those letters. Thank you for sharing. I
really am so thankful that you two joined us in
supported Avid Bookshop and all of us who are here.
This has been a great honor for me and for
the attendees, and I know for the people who will
listen to this podcast. So thank you so much, so
(41:59):
thank you guys, thank you Laurie.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Thank you for having us well, thank you so so
much for having us.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Next week. A woman's resentment of her financially successful brother
threatens to tear apart their relationship.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
They have a lot of freedom, they have a lot
of time to spend, they have a lot of money.
They just they have all these things and we don't
have those things. Yeah, I wish I had those things too.
I don't necessarily begrudge these people for having the thing.
What I don't like is the way that they're treating me.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Hey, fellow travelers, if you're enjoying our podcast each week,
don't forget to subscribe for free so that you don't
miss any episodes, and please help support Dear Therapists by
telling your friends about it and leaving a review on
Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Your reviews really help people to find the show.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
If you have a dilemma you'd like to discuss with us,
Big Go Smooth, email Us at LORII and Guy at
iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
Our executive producer is Noel Brown.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
We're produced and edited by Mike Johns, Josh Fisher and
Chris Childs. Our interns are Dorit Corwin and Silver Lifton.
Special thanks to Alison Wright and to our podcast fairy
Godmother Katie Couric.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
We can't wait to see you at next week's session.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Dear Therapist is a production of iHeartRadio
Hey, fellow travelers. I'm Lari Gottlieb. I'm the author of
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and I write the
Dear Therapist's Advice column for The Atlantic.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And I'm Guy Wench. I'm the author of Emotional First Aid,
and I write the Dear Guy Advice column for TED.
And this is Dear Therapists.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Each week we invite you into a session so you
can learn more about yourself by hearing how we help
other people come to understand themselves better and make changes
in their lives.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
So sit back and welcome to today's session.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
First, a quick note, Dear Therapist is for informational purposes only.
It does not constitute medical or psychological advice and is
not a substitute for professional healthcare advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Always seek the advice of your physician, mental health professional,
or other qualified health provider with any questions you may
have regarding a medical or psychological condition. By submitting a letter,
(00:54):
you are agreeing to let iHeartMedia use it in part
or in full, and we may edit it for length
and clarity. In the sessions you'll hear. All names have
been changed for the privacy of our fellow travelers.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Hey Guy, Hey Laurie. So today we're going to do
something a little bit different.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Recently we did a live event where we got to
share how we do these your therapist sessions every week
and what we're really thinking when we're trying to help
all of you through the issues that you bring us.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
We also dipped into our mailbox and gave advice to
some letters you sent us. So this week here's a
treat Deotherapists Live. You're listening to Deotherapists from iHeartRadio. We'll
be back after a quick break.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
I'm Lori Gottlieb and I'm.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Guy Wench, and this is Deotherapists.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
My name is Janet Gattis. I am the owner and
founder of Avid Bookshop here in Athens, Georgia. Welcome, good evening,
and welcome to our very special event with Guy Wench
and Laurie Gottlieb from the podcast Dear Therapists. Both of
these people are stellar therapists, hosts of their own podcast,
(02:14):
and have written multiple books.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
First off, I.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Am so excited that the new season of Dear Therapists
just launched. As of yesterday, already heard the episode twice
and as with every other episode of the show that
I've heard. I'm really curious to know sort of the
background of how you to process the number of letters
you get, how many letters you get, and how you
choose ultimately what gets on the show. Would you guys
(02:41):
answer that for us?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Well, first of all, just thank you for doing this
and having us. We were so excited to have this conversation,
especially launch week. We get so many letters, and going
into season two, one of the things we've always said
is what made season one so great, or the quality
of the letters that we got from people all over
(03:05):
the world. We wish we could do all of them.
It would be great. We would just have a million episodes,
But we really pick letters that we feel have some
universal quality to them. So while each letter is very
specific to a situation, like in the first episode it
was about Instagram cheating, it really was about so many
other things and I think you'll find that in every
(03:26):
single episode. The one thing that's interesting about it is
that we don't actually discuss the letters. So even though
we will choose letters, we don't actually know before we
start talking on that episode what we're going to be
talking about. We don't say we think this might happen
in this episode, or let's discuss how we think about
this letter.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
We don't do any of that.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
We act like someone has just walked into our therapy
room and we're hearing this for the very first time.
And I think that's what makes the show so dynamic
is that it's not scripted. There's no agenda that we
have in mind beforehand. We're just like, here's the letter.
We have no idea what's going to happen. The audience
has no idea what's going to happen, and here we go.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
And by the way, that's what makes it scary also
for us, you know, a therapist, because we're there, we
really don't know what the other person is thinking. We
don't know where it's going to go. The actual session
might go in a very different direction.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Oh my gosh, that's exciting. Had either of you done
sort of therapy with a therapeutic partner before, Like, how
did you go about knowing who's going to speak when
and what kind of feedback you would give in tandem?
Speaker 2 (04:29):
We don't. That's what's.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
We don't at all.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
I mean, but I think that that's what's so great
is that when so what a lot of people might
not know is that when therapists train, often you get
feedback in a certain way on your session, So some
people might be behind a one way mirror, or you
tape your sessions and record them and you bring them
to your supervisor. All of this, of course with the
consent of the client, but once you're in private practice,
(04:59):
you don't get that anyway. Really, And one of the
things that's so interesting about working with Guy is to
see how he works. He makes me a better therapist.
I think watching a direction he goes, or where I
might get stuck somewhere, He'll jump in, and vice versa.
I think if he is sort of going somewhere and
the person is stuck there, I'll jump in. And so
we really tag team really well. Even though we can't
(05:21):
read each other's minds. Even if sometimes I think where
is he going with this, I'm confident that wherever he's
going is too an important place.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
And I can say that I've many times over this
past you know, a year and a half since we
started working together, in my own sessions that I do
in my own private practice, I'll get to a moment
where I literally say to myself in my head, I'm
going to do a lor here, and then I do
a thing that I think Lauri would do because I
was I think that's a good place, and she does
(05:49):
that thing. Well, I'm going to do Lauri here, and
I have that in my head. Many times I'm like, yep,
thank for a LORI right there. That's great.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
One thing that I find really out about it is
that I was just texting a friend about this last night,
about recommending episodes of season one for her, and one
of the things I pointed out was that even if
the name of the episode and the description sound like
this person, I don't have any strange daughter, I don't
have any kids at all, I'm not going to get
a lot out of this episode. Every single episode there
(06:20):
are these gems and takeaways that are impacting me, a single,
forty one year old woman who doesn't have any kids.
So it's just really interesting to me how you can
tell very much that you too are hyper focused on
the client in the virtual room, yet so many of
the things that you share are really applicable to so
many of us. And that brings me to a question
(06:43):
about sort of how the pandemic has affected the sorts
of therapy you do in dear therapists or in your
private practices. I know that the show launched sort of
as COVID was a thing in the world, but how
have you noticed the nature of people's concerns or worries
letters shift over the last year or so.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Well, I just want to say before we talk about
COVID that what you were saying earlier about how applicable
each episode is to everyone, because relationships are relationships in
the world. Whether it's relationship to self, relationship to friends,
to family, to siblings, to romantic partners, to bosses to coworkers,
they're all relationships. And so I remember in season one,
(07:25):
early on, we had a couple on and this was
a married couple, they had kids, they'd been married for
a while, and this young woman in her early twenties
wrote in and she said, I'm not married yet, I
don't have kids yet, but I use the advice with
my boss at work and it was amazing. And so
I think that that's the kind of response that we've
been getting all through season one and we hope to
(07:46):
continue through season two. Is that even if you look
at the title of the episode and you say, well,
that's not my situation, I would really encourage people to
listen to the episodes because our goal in putting them
out there is to make these sessions accessible to everyone.
Not everybody can or wants to go to a therapist,
but you can get so much out of one conversation
(08:06):
if you see yourself in some element of the struggle,
and a lot of it is the things that you
can use in your daily life, no matter who you are,
how old you are, what your situation is, and that's
what we love about the show.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And as therapists, we're trained to ask questions such as, so,
why are you doing the thing that you're doing, or
what are you hoping to achieve? Or how did that
get set up for you in your earlier relationships or
in your childhood, And then that is crafted around a
specific issue perhaps, but the question is relevant in a
much more general way, and people hear that and they're
(08:41):
asking ourselves that question in the context of their own lives.
And that's why you can learn a lot from it,
because it's really about how to think about yourself, how
to think about your situation, how to think about your patterns,
how to think about the impact of earlier experiences, And
that's generalized as to everyone.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Truly, So thinking keeping all that in mind, does that
mean that maybe COVID era letters maybe weren't all that
different at heart from what you had been getting previously.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
I think they weren't that different. I mean many of
them touched on how COVID was impacting these people, whether
it was in a marriage, or we had a teacher
who couldn't be with her students and how that was
impacting her. Whatever people were going through before the pandemic
was amplified. So if they were, if a relationship was
very strong, it got stronger. If a relationship was struggling,
(09:33):
or things were not discussed. This really came to light
during COVID. Really, what we're dealing with is just the
human condition. And yes, there are going to be big
events like COVID or you know, other things that happened,
But really what we're dealing with is how do we
deal with the daily stuff of life.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
And speaking of people's personal stories, both of you in
your talks and your books and occasionally in interviews I've
I heard you'll reveal personal things about your own lives.
How do you decide what you want to reveal to
an audience where you don't know who's there, and how
do you sort of ride the line of being someone
(10:12):
like I'd never met you until today, but I trust
you both very much. But until you saw my face,
you would never have known who I was passing you
on the street. How do you balance that role of
where people feel like they know you, but you really
are still just a therapist to them, Like, how does
that play out in your careers in different aspects.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
It's funny because in Maybe You Should talk to Someone.
In my most recent book, I follow the lives of
four very different patients, and then there's a fifth patient
in the book who is me as I go through
my own therapy with my therapist, and I say at
the beginning of the book that my greatest credential is
that I am a card caring member of the human race.
That I know what it's like to be a person
(10:51):
in the world, and I didn't want to present myself
as sort of the expert up on high. And I
feel like that translates over into the podcast, because you know,
we're sitting here talking about our personal lives in the podcast,
but we use our personal experience to connect with people
on a very human level. We obviously are using our
training and our expertise and everything that we have learned
(11:14):
as therapists, but we're also relating to people just human
to human, and I think that's what makes the episode
so compelling, and I think that's what makes therapy so compelling.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
It's an interesting thing. People will come up to me
sometimes will recognize me from either Ted Talks or the
podcast or writing or different things, and they will come
up to me as if, as you said, is if
they know me when I don't know them, and this
in essence, they don't really know me. But it's there's
something that I So far in my experience, people have
(11:44):
been very respectful. They feel a certain affinity, a certain
fondness because if they heard something it might have touched
them or it might have resonated with them. We've been
very fortunate in that way. At the second speak to
my experience that when that does happen, when I do
pass people in the street and they stop me, or
in a restaurant, an airport, once in the gym in
the shadow but that's a different one, and.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
In the broad department of a department store just like why.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
But thankfully it's been friendly and so those are okay,
Oh my gosh, it's funny.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah, and maybe you should talk to someone.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
I say that therapists are like Dalist celebrities, you know,
it's kind of like the only people to whom they are, they're.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Like, oh my gosh, you know who that is? Who
I just saw in the restaurant.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Is the people who have come to see us, right,
or the people who maybe read our books or listen
to podcast.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
I don't you know.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Obviously from the podcast you don't see us, so you
only hear our voices. But I've actually had people recognize
my voice from across a restaurant.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Maybe I'm just a loud talker. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
But like guys said, I think people, I think they
feel a connection because they've been moved very personally in
these very intimate conversations by something that we've put out there.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
And so that's I think incredibly meaningful to us.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
We appreciate the fact that we have touched somebody's life
in that way.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
That's beautiful.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
And speaking of that again, writing the line between really
knowing someone versus only interacting with them. On this one episode,
I've been really curious about the letter writers who end
up being featured on the show. What is that the
vetting process like in order to figure out if yes,
this is the letter writer we want, and then what
(13:27):
kind of conversations and things do they need to keep
in mind when they are putting their voices out there,
even if they are kind of masking identifying details.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
What people need to know, especially people who are writing
in is that, as in a therapy session, you can
come with issue A, but everything has to be on
the table because if we think issue A is related
to other things, we want to be able to explore
those things and we want to be able to ask
questions about those things. And therapy is a very non
linear process. Its zigzags all over the place because connections
(13:59):
are made in patents identified by doing that, and that's
kind of what we do within the podcast, And so
we edit out any identifying information, So people use pseudonyms
in that way. I think people can remain anonymous, but
they have to be able to truly open their hearts
as you do when you go to therapy.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
I really appreciate how in the shows we can't see
you two or the person you're speaking with, but you
both do a really good job of saying like, I
see your eyes are filling with tears, or you looked
away from us just then. But yeah, I just really
love those moments where you kind of let us have
a peek into what's going on for that client.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
We say that as much for the audience as we
do for the person that we're talking to. So sometimes
people don't even realize that they're tearing up, so we
want to have them slow down in that moment. Say
I notice that you're tearing up. What are you feeling
right now? What just came up for you? Because people
will just go right over that because they don't want
they don't want to notice that, and we want to
(15:03):
slow them down so that they do notice it. So
because something important just happened there. If they smile, sometimes
people don't even notice that they experienced joy or that something,
you know, something really resonated with them. So say, I
noticed you smiling there, so I think that that resonated
with you. So it's for both. It's actually what we
would do in a regular therapy session too.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
I like that a lot.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
I know, even in I won't spoil it for anyone
who's not already heard the first episode of season two
there's a moment there where I was surprised by what
you observed in the letter writer, and I hadn't expected
you to say you saw on her face what you saw,
And that was kind of a fascinating moment to hear
her saying, kind of reflect on what you're bringing up.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
I really appreciated that.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
My mom is here at this event too, and she
and I listened to on season one, Jeff's critical parents
on the way back from a road trip, and I
very am, very thankful I have great parents who are
not critical of me and are positive. But it was
fascinating to listen into that with her. And then afterward
I realized that that storyline echoed in several loved ones
(16:07):
in my life, so I was able to send that
episode to them. But I think that one in particular,
I remember hearing the moments where you're pointing out how
he's reacting in the moment. I think you also do
such a great job for the audience. I know it's
for the client, but it helps us a lot when
you kind of catch like the tone someone's using with himself,
or the way that he's speaking about a certain scenario,
(16:29):
and how the roles are changing. I just find it
so fascinating. So a lot of all of us are
made up of stories. And Guy and I were talking
a little bit before we started recording about how he
worked as a bookseller. I think as an adolescent. Laurie
has done a thing that we linked to on our
Instagram a couple weeks ago written an article on bibliotherapy,
(16:50):
which is the process of using books and the written
word to help people get better in touch with themselves
and their emotions. Can you talk a little bit about
some books that you have recommended for particular clients and
why it's.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Really wonderful When you have a book in mind that
you think would be really useful for a specific person,
it always feels like, oh, I have the perfect thing
for you. One book that I recommend a lot to
expecting parents who are expecting for the first time is
a book called Welcome to the Club one hundred Parenting
(17:24):
Milestones You Never saw coming. It's by a comic called
Rakeldia Piece. She's actually an Emmy Award winning writer. But
it's a wonderful book because it's hilarious, but it's about
everything that goes wrong, and the idea there is that
parents are so terrified to bring home this baby for
(17:48):
the first time, and they think that anytime they do
something wrong, it's terrible, and they don't realize that everyone
goes through it, and all parents make all these mistakes,
and in the humor it normalizes, it humanizes, and I
find that people when they read that, it just lows
their anxiety tremendously by the humor of it. So that's
one book I love recommending.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I actually never thought I would become a therapist growing up,
but I was an avid reader. And how this relates
to your question is that I always found that novels
were the really good ones, the ones that I would
think about, the ones I would reread at different stages
of my life, really had these deep psychological truths embedded
(18:32):
in them. And that's what made for the kinds of
characters that really lived inside of you. And I think
when you're reading a novel and you have those moments
of that's me, I see myself. I'm not alone, and
you think you were the only person who felt that,
did that, thought that, and this character does things, says
the same things.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
It's such an amazing moment of connection.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
And that's what books have always been for me, and
so later when I became a therapist, I was always
recommending books. Even in my training when they said, oh,
don't recommend books. You can't do that because you're supposed
to be very neutral, and I was always like, are
you crazy, Like you know, books are therapy, and that's
why I wrote that New York Times piece about bibliotherapy.
So I really tailor my book suggestions to the particular person.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
It's something that comes up in the moment where.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
You know, I'm like an encyclopedia with books, and so
someone says the thing, I'm like, wait a minute, stop,
if there's this book you have to read. So for me,
it's less nonfiction than it is great novels. But I
will recommend nonfiction if there's something particular, like someone's struggling with,
you know, some of the themes even that we see
on the podcast, but also in the therapy room, estrangement
partners who maybe have some characteristics of personality disorders, or
(19:45):
family members who do books about In fact, guy just
recommended a great book on We just taped an episode
for season two where he recommended a book on anxiety
to the person and she found it so useful even
just starting the book that first week. So books can
be incredibly healing and informative at the same time.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
By the way, the book the Loid just Reference is
called The Anxiety Toolkit by Alice Boyce. I also get
a lot of recommendations from my patients because they will
come in and they're like, oh my god, I read
something and it was so helpful, and I'm like, tell
me what it is, and I'll write it down and
I'll check it out, and it's very useful in general.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I had that experience with maybe you should talk to someone,
where interestingly, a lot of therapists did not know about
it at the beginning. It was general public kind of book,
and so many therapists said, I heard about your book
because a client brought it in and they were talking
about it, and I had to read it because they
kept talking about it every week, and so it didn't
go from therapist to client. It went from client to therapist.
(20:46):
So guys write books do go in the opposite direction.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
That's funny. Yeah, I'm a huge fiction reader, and I
remember for a while in my mid twenties when I
wasn't sure what my career was going to be. I
was like am I do. I want to be a
therapist because that's what I love the most about reading novels.
I do not hold the degrees that you have or
the experience, but there is such an element to working
(21:10):
in an independent bookstore where we get to know our
community members, and I and my staff are really good
at reading the emotions on someone's face and kind of
helping them figure out what the next book is it's
going to kind of help them move forward.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
That's one of the things I love about independent booksellers
is that you walk in and they know you, and
if they don't already know you, they will talk to
you until they do know you. Every book that I
have gotten as a recommendation from an independent bookstore has
always been one of the books that stays on my
bookshelf forever because I think there's that personal element. Just
like therapists can very personally suggest something, so can independent booksellers.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
You're listening to Deotherapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back after
a quick break.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
A lot of the time I've heard you recommend to
people that they write a letter or do some sort
of introspective work that requires them to do a letter
to themselves a journal entry, rewriting their own biography. How
does writing help your clients in you and how do
you use that as a tool in your therapy.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
The people who come on our show, they're not our
clients by definition, their guests on the show. Writing is
a very very powerful tool because it uses all kinds
of parts of the brain. It's not just the idea
that you have that has to be translated then into
various specific words that have to follow grammatical rules. You
need to find motor skills to type it or write it.
(22:52):
And when you're trying to get someone to think differently
about a task or to discover something about themselves, giving
them a writing task affords them a certain level of
emotional and psychological distance because by the time it gets
translated into the written word, they are experiencing what the
thought might have been very emotional and difficult. By the
(23:14):
time they write it, they have a layer of distance
from it, which gives them that little measure of objectivity,
that little different kind of perspective that will allow them
to potentially see this in a new way. So it's
a tool that therapists use literally all the time. Then
we use it in very different ways for different people
(23:34):
in different situations. We use it in the show, of course,
all the time, because it's very very useful and impactful
to really see something in a different way than you
might if you were just thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
I think what happens is people come on the show
and they'll often say, I've been dealing with this problem
for years, and they're stuck and they don't know how
to get unstuck, and you need to get them out
of whatever they're doing which hasn't been working. I think
that most people truly know what they need to do.
They just don't know what's getting in the way of
(24:05):
doing the thing that they need to do. And what
we do is we help them to do that through
these various exercises. And just because it's a writing assignment
doesn't mean it's the same. No two writing assignments are
the same, and we don't suggest a writing assignment on
every podcast, obviously, but when we do, it's very unique
to that person and their situation. There are no two
(24:28):
episodes where they have exactly the same homework assignment. I
was a competitive chess player growing up, and one of
the things that was really important was how do you
get in there, which if I make this move, they're
going to make this move, and then uh oh, I
better adjust my plan and make this move. Guy and
I are constantly thinking it's very strategic when we're doing this.
How do we get this person to the place that
(24:49):
they need to go in order to have things change
for them? Because really the show is about change and
growth and healing and transformation, and we only have one
session to do that. We want to get as far
as we can. And what we've been so surprised by
is that even with that one session, people are able
to make significant shifts in their lives. And in season
(25:10):
two we have where are They Now? Episodes where we
take the season one guest so we don't just get
the week update, but we get a year long update
and we find out where are they a year later?
Speaker 3 (25:20):
And it's been so gratifying. I don't want to spoil it.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Guys looking at me giving me the look like, don't
say it, because we have heard them now we know
where everybody is. But we are just blown away by it,
and we think people are going to be so moved
when they hear you know where people are a year
later after having just one conversation not because we're so great,
but because.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
We move them to a new place and then they
took it from there.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
That's beautiful. There's one episode in season one where you
have a letter writer explore a situation in his life
from his ex spouse's point of view, and I was
wondering if you could talk a little bit about, because
we have a lot of readers in the audience right now,
just that change of point of view and how that
(26:05):
type of exercise in particular can help shift someone's perspective.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
That was an exercise in perspective taking. That was a
person who had cheated on his wife and then left
her for that person, think a month after the birth
of their second child. And this person was actually a
good person, but they really had trouble connecting to the
(26:30):
ex wife's perspective of how their actions must have felt
to her. And when we asked about it, you could
see that there was a wish to connect, but he
couldn't articulate or see it from her perspective, and so
we literally took him through an exercise that some of
the feedback that we've gotten was, Wow, that sounded so difficult.
(26:51):
It was emotionally very challenging. Because he ritually had to
put himself in her shoes and look and see the
impact of his actions on her and tell story. The
exercise was from her point of view, from the beginning
of meeting him, through the marriage, and through the cheatings.
So it was a very difficult exercise, but he was
really gained to do it, and he was brave to
(27:12):
do it, and it was painful for him, but he
eventually got there and was able to connect with her
perspective in a way he really hadn't been able to
despite thinking about this for a very, very long time.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
This was the episode called Mike's Messy Affair, and we
really wanted to go with that letter because I think
so many people make assumptions right away. He was basically
asking what the cultural assumption was in his letter, which was,
you know, as Guy says in the episode, so this
is a tell me I'm not a scumbag letter because
he wants to know everyone thinks I'm a terrible person
(27:46):
for doing what I did, and you know, my friends
won't talk to me. Nobody will talk to me all
of this, and you know, he wanted you know, he
really was concerned about his children.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Because he didn't want to lose custody of his.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Children and all of those things. I think that when
you see the humanity in him, and when you see
him really be able to say, Okay, the reason that
I can't acknowledge how much pain I've caused is because
of how much shame I feel around having done what
I did. I wish that I had handled it differently.
I think ending the marriage was a good thing, but
(28:21):
this is, you know, his perspective. I think ending the
marriage was a good thing, but the way I did
it was a terrible thing. And for him to go
through that, and you can see, you know how much
he's struggling with it. But I also hope that people
have so much compassion for him and feel, you know,
just how human he is, and get past the what
he did and more into the where is he now
(28:43):
and what is he trying to do now?
Speaker 3 (28:44):
With all of this.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
I remember that one in particular, making note of my
own reaction to his tone, particularly at the beginning of
the episode, and I thought like, oh, Janet, you don't
have a right to judge him. But I also was like, oh,
this guy, wonder what's going to happen, and just hearing
just how his tone shifted and just the journey he
went on was fascinating to me.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
I think with Mike in the episode, he had his
own struggles too. He was so lonely in that marriage.
He did not know how to talk to his wife.
His wife didn't know how to talk with him. They
both did not know how to communicate. And that's the
part that's very relatable, is what do you do when
you've never had that model for you, You don't know
how to say how.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Just desperately lonely? You are desperately alone? You feel you know,
do you cheat?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
No?
Speaker 1 (29:34):
That's a choice, right, But he did, and now he
knows to do something different. Now he's just learning, well,
how do I communicate? What would that look like?
Speaker 2 (29:44):
I do want to add when we discussed whether we
should use that mesa for the show, one of the
things we thought about, naturally is that, yes, it sounds
terrible what he did, but he is writing to us.
He's actually asking for help in resolving that very issue
of like what is this about me? And how do
I think about this? And that's a big step forward
in terms of like, Okay, there's something to work with them,
(30:05):
because he's actually curious and he actually wants to think
about these things. So that was what allowed us to
say yes, and let's work with him.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
You can't help people who aren't curious about themselves. So
often people will come into therapy and they're very curious
about other people, like, you know, why does my husband
do this or you know all these other why does
my mother do this? As opposed to why do I
react the way they do? Or what am I doing
to contribute to the situation, or why am I in
this relationship in the first place. So when people come
(30:34):
on the show, we don't know them yet. We hope,
we cross our fingers that they're going to be very
curious that they know what the show is, because it's
a show where if you aren't curious, you're you're going
to find yourself really struggling when you get in a
room with guy and with me.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
I'm now going to pivot to something you both offered
to do, which is dive into your letter bag a
little bit and tell us about a few rights who
maybe weren't featured on the show, but you still want
to address their letters in this format. So take it away.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
I will begin and I'm gonna as we do in
the show. I'll read this one to Laurie. She will
be the next one to me. But this is a
question you get asked a lot, and I think it'd
be good to just clarify it. Dea LORII and Guy
I love the podcast and the Atlantic column. What does
fellow travelers refer to people traveling through life? I feel
like I missed the reference explanation somewhere because we always
(31:30):
welcome our listeners to as fellow travelers and our guests
as fellow travelers. So where is that from?
Speaker 1 (31:37):
So we introduced that in the trailer for season one
when we started, and we were struggling with what do
we call the people who come on the show because
they aren't our actual therapy clients and they aren't really guests,
because we feel like we get very deeply attached to
these people in the course of our session with them.
(31:59):
And I I just spontaneously said to Guy, you know
irv Yallam, the eminent psychiatrist who's really revolutionized the field
of psychiatry and therapy by being so human and so
real with people. You know, he broke down that wall
and he would call people fellow travelers. He said We're
all fellow travelers on this journey, you know, therapists and
(32:22):
patient together. We're fellow travelers trying to figure this out.
And I just love that. And so we really thought
that that maybe was the best way to refer to
the people who come on and share their lives with us.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
All right, let's go to another letter, Lorie.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
This is a letter that came into our box.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
It goes like this, Dear therapists, I could really use
some help navigating my new relationship with my soon to
be stepdaughter's biomm I've been a mom of my own
two kids for twelve years and have learned a lot.
I'm feeling very confident as a mom. My fiance and
his ex have been parents for three years. I am
running into a situation where I feel like the biomm
(32:58):
is overreaching. It's interesting by the way that she calls
her the biomom as opposed to just their mom. She
wants to know how our marriage house will be set up,
what kind of bed their daughter will have, and things
like whether we have dead bolts on the exterior doors.
I feel a huge invasion by these requests. Interacting with
biomom has felt like I'm being interviewed to be a
(33:20):
babysitter and getting inspected for my safety protocols. I've tried
to assuage her fears while also establishing some healthy boundaries
of my house, my rules. But I'm wondering if you
have any advice for how to navigate conversations with biomm
that help her unclench her fists of control. Do we
try to be more open right now to establish trust, or,
(33:41):
like my instincts suggests, would that just be a precedent
of biomom having a level of control over our space,
something I was already very worried about because of the
way she talks to my fiance. He is a wonderful
father and very doting. I just wish his ex would
see that and trust him. I'm just going to start
here because I'm having a lot of counter time transference
(34:01):
with this letter. And by the way, that's a very
real thing, you know, for people who don't know. Counter
transference is the is the therapist's reaction to what the
person presents to them. And what this person is missing
is that she is not the mother of these children.
She's the mother to her own children, but she is
not the mother of her fiancee's children, and she's referring
(34:23):
to these kids' mother as the biomm not even the
sometimes she's biomm which is kind of like she wants
her out of the picture. It feels like, and my house,
my rules. No, these are not your kids. So of
course the mom wants to know are there dead bolts
on the doors? And where are they going to be sleeping?
And what's going to be happening with my children.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
The way she's.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Going about that is she's making a lot of assumptions
about her role in this blended family.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
And I will add to that again, we're not talking
to this person unpacking anything with them. But to me,
what stands out is that why is she the one
negotia with bio mom. Why isn't the father of the
children dealing with his ex wife and coming to know
agreements with his ex wife about like here's how I
want to do things, you know. So either he's not
(35:12):
stepping up the fiance or she's overstepping it's one or
the other. But the solution to it is let him
deal with BioMA.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Well, also, I don't know the bio Mom's a problem,
and I don't know what the fiance wants so nowhere
in here was my fiance also feels this is a problem.
So I have a feeling that she feels it's a problem,
but I don't have any information about does the fiance
feel it's a problem or is the fiance caught in
this untenable position of this person that I'm going to
(35:41):
Mary wants this, my ex wife wants this, and I'm
conflict avoidant, so I don't want to deal with any
of it.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Definitely the conflict avoidant, I would guess.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
But yes, yeah, But I would just say this about
blended families and gentlemen. We've had some full episodes about
blended families. We had one in season one, and we
do have another one in season two, different issues. But
I think that people have to remember that there are
many parents here. It's not that certain parents get kicked out.
That everybody is co parenting in a certain way. And
(36:12):
when people can get along and not try to control
other people and be really compassionate and emotionally generous with
one another, it's better for the kids, and it's also
better for the adults. And this whole like my house,
my Rules thing screams of just lots of issues around
control and lack of openness to what the mother of
(36:35):
these children might be experiencing and might want for her
own kids.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
And I just want to maybe generalize what I said
earlier just because I think it's applicable to many situations.
For example, you know, I hear we get a lot
of issues in the therapy, learn about this person having
a lot of trouble with their in laws when they're
talking about things with their in laws that they shouldn't
be talking about with their in laws. The spouse should
be talking with their parents about them. And when the
other person is stepping into do that communication and negotiation
(37:03):
when it's not their place to do it, things often
go awry. And it's often the issue of the person
who needs to be doing it is not stepping up
or doesn't think they should, or the other persons are
a stepping And that generalizes to all kinds of situations
where there's a third party and someone gets stuck in
the middle. It's a person who's stuck in the middle
who needs to be speaking up more, usually one way
or the other. Okay, next one, uh, Dear therapists, I'm
(37:26):
forty six years old and I'm about to move from
where I've lived for all my life and where my
kids and family are. I'm moving to Nevada because my
boyfriend of one and a half years got a job
down there and it seemed like he was the one.
So I found a job and started preparing to move
with my boyfriend. On the morning we were set to
fly to find a home, he told me he didn't
want to live with me anymore and he isn't in
(37:46):
love with me. I had already quit my job and
had accepted a job in Reno. I was devastated, but
not surprised. He had been dropping hints for weeks, and
I chose to ignore them, blaming them and anxiety and
the stress of preparing to move. The twist in the
story is that my ex boyfriend had learned I was
moving to Reno with someone new, and instead of giving up,
(38:07):
he aggressively tried to get me back. Two hours after
my breakup with my current boyfriend, I had a marriage
proposal and an invitation to visit him in New York,
where he now lives. I went to New York, but
I'm feeling completely numb. The irony is I always complained
that he was emotionally unavailable but now it's me who
has become emotionally unavailable. My decision as of right now
(38:28):
is to move to Reno on my own. I'm excited
about the job down there, and I have been desperately
wanting to leave Montana since my marriage ended. My question is,
how did that become so emotionally unavailable? My ex boyfriend
is offering everything I wanted him to when we were together,
plus a very nice life in New York. My question
is am I going through a midlife crisis? I feel
(38:49):
like Reno offers me a fresh start and maybe a
way to get back in touch with myself.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Well, this is interesting because we see this a lot,
where somebody is unavailable and then the other person becomes
unavailable and suddenly they're very available.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
All right.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
So here the person who wrote the letter that boyfriend
had been unavailable to her and then when he found
out that she was moving in with someone else, suddenly
he wants her back, and the two hours after the breakup,
there's a marriage proposal.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
All of a sudden. Move to Reno.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Explore the relationship from afar, Take lots of time she
just got out of this other relationship. Take lots of
time to see what happened with the other boyfriend, why
he's suddenly emotionally available seemingly, So would she get to
New York and find that he's not emotionally available again.
So I really feel like she has to do what
she needs to do and explore this very slowly.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
From afar, I would bet that had she decided to
go to New York and try it with this marriage proposal,
she would find that he very soon would start to
become emotionally unavailable again because there was a reason it
didn't work out the first time. I'm not hearing anything
from him about, oh, here's what would be different for
me this time. It's just wait, But I don't want
(40:06):
to lose you, so maybe we'll do this. And I
agree the advice should be go to Reno as you're
planning to do. If he's that intent, if he's that serious,
if he's that emotionally available right now, he will tolerate
the distance and welcome the relationship with enough time to
give you a sense that actually it's solid and he
means it. But in my experience, in my practice, when
(40:27):
I hear these stories all the time, it often not
always often swings right back the minute, the person says okay,
so now I'm here, and then the person goes like,
oh wait, commitment issues again, and then it.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
We have an episode in season two somebody's asking if
he should get back with his ex partner. One of
the things that's really important that we ask people to
do is to say, have they articulated what would be
different this time? Have they articulated what didn't work, what
they've learned about themselves, why they behave the way they behaved,
whether it was being emotionally distant, being emotionally clingy, being
(41:05):
emotionally abusive, not having boundaries, whatever the issues were, What is.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
Going to be different this time?
Speaker 1 (41:11):
And if nobody can articulate that on both sides, what
would be different? What have you each learned about yourselves?
And would what is the goal of getting back together?
Not just I miss you. I think that that's really important.
And here we have you know again, we don't know
any other information than what's in this letter, so on
the podcast we would really dig into this. But the
(41:32):
marriage proposal two hours after she had broken up with
the other guy is in my mind, something to be
wary of.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
Thanks. That was so much fun to get a glimpse
into some of those letters. Thank you for sharing. I
really am so thankful that you two joined us in
supported Avid Bookshop and all of us who are here.
This has been a great honor for me and for
the attendees, and I know for the people who will
listen to this podcast. So thank you so much, so
(41:59):
thank you guys, thank you Laurie.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Thank you for having us well, thank you so so
much for having us.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Next week. A woman's resentment of her financially successful brother
threatens to tear apart their relationship.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
They have a lot of freedom, they have a lot
of time to spend, they have a lot of money.
They just they have all these things and we don't
have those things. Yeah, I wish I had those things too.
I don't necessarily begrudge these people for having the thing.
What I don't like is the way that they're treating me.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Hey, fellow travelers, if you're enjoying our podcast each week,
don't forget to subscribe for free so that you don't
miss any episodes, and please help support Dear Therapists by
telling your friends about it and leaving a review on
Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Your reviews really help people to find the show.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
If you have a dilemma you'd like to discuss with us,
Big Go Smooth, email Us at LORII and Guy at
iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
Our executive producer is Noel Brown.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
We're produced and edited by Mike Johns, Josh Fisher and
Chris Childs. Our interns are Dorit Corwin and Silver Lifton.
Special thanks to Alison Wright and to our podcast fairy
Godmother Katie Couric.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
We can't wait to see you at next week's session.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Dear Therapist is a production of iHeartRadio
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