January 23, 2024 • 45 mins
Why are you smiling???
We hear your comments loud and clear. It's time to address the awkward smiling, the nervous laughter, that uncomfortable grin. Dr. Hillary Goldsher has the answer to why this is happening.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
This is Rachel Go's Rogue. Hey guys, it's Rachel Savannah
Lovis from Rachel Goes Rogue. I'm so excited for today
because I get to have a clinical psychologist on to
join me, and I just want to go deeper on
the psychology behind why I smile when I'm talking about
(00:29):
things that make me feel so uncomfortable, because it seems counterintuitive.
I just want to read a few of the comments
that you guys left on the Rachel Goes Rogue podcast Instagram.
Just a note, please work on the smiling. I'm sure
it's out of nervousness and anxiety. Is speaking about hard topics,
(00:49):
but this video comes across non remorseful. Just an opinion.
I hear you. I know she has anxiety, but she
has to learn to wipe the smile off her face.
True evil smiling. Wow. I tried saying what she said
and smile at the same time, and it just felt strange.
(01:10):
How does she not see that as abnormal? I don't
understand how she could be smiling the whole time she's
talking about this so weird. Well, that's the feedback that
I got from you guys, and I agree, like I
listening back hearing me laugh about especially the Graham situation
(01:31):
for me, like, that's not a funny thing, and I
want to know why, Like what is this thing that
my body does without me even knowing? Honestly, I'm excited
to have a professional tell me why this is happening, because, yeah,
it's not normal. The average person isn't smiling through their
(01:55):
most painful traumatic memories. So I hope you can get
to the bottom of it. Let's bring doctor goldshare on. Hi,
doctor gold share me.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Rachel. How are you?
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I'm well, how are you good? Nice to meet you,
Nice to meet you too. Thanks for joining me today, Cours.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
First of all, take a deep breath. I think this
is going to be a really really good experience for
you and for your listeners, because you're talking about something
that is ubiquitous and super relatable in the sense that
a lot of people adopt behaviors and mannerisms and ways
(02:39):
of moving through space when they're talking about tricky things
and difficult material People smile, people laugh, People drink too much,
eat too much, eat too little, work too much, work
too little right. People do lots of things when they're
faced with taking on really hard stuff, and that part's
really relatable, and it's really not until we get to
(03:02):
make friends, so to speak, with the dynamics that are
going on within us internally in terms of understanding how
we're moving through space and those really difficult moments that
we can start to shift and change and grow and
better understand ourselves and impact people around us more positively
and just understand ourselves more thoroughly. So I just want
(03:23):
to like start by saying that your specific situation is
notable and a lot of people have a lot of
thoughts and opinions on it, but what we're talking about
at the root of it is really relatable. So I
just want you to sort of take a deep breath
around that. It's to respond in ways that are avoidant
(03:46):
or dismissive in the face of hard stuff is really human.
So I just want to I just want to start there.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Thank you, and yeah, thanks for recognizing all of that.
And obviously it's I'm getting a lot of feedback from
people saying I'm smiling too much. I'm laughing through the
things that are more of a serious topic. And as
I'm describing these things and recounting these memories, I'm not like,
(04:19):
I don't think it's funny and I don't enjoy it,
and so I feel like the messaging maybe getting lost
a little bit. But then when I talk to my
family and I talk to my close friends, I have
more of a serious demeanor and like, I'm not smiling
(04:40):
through it. So I'm wondering, like, is it just me
knowing that this is being broadcast to a lot of
people listening?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean what is before? I give my
perspective and it's layered and nuanced, But what are your
you sort of started to say it, but what are
your initial thoughts or hypotheses about why, like about what's happening.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So my hypothesis is that I had to modify my
behavior as a child to appease the people around me,
and that's how I got the positive attention that I
received being happy, like I'm good over here, Like if
(05:29):
I put on a happy face, then you don't have
to worry about me and it's all good.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Well, this is super insightful. That's that's a really good
hypothesis and a really good place to start. I mean,
what you're talking about is being reinforced for emotional regulation, right,
being reforced for not being problematic? For not having out
of control feelings or requests or needs, and for showing
(05:57):
up okay, and maybe even a step beyond that, showing
up happy, showing up as the pleaser, as the easy kid,
as the one that was okay. So that was your
probably unspoken but assigned role, and you came to know
this is how I have value, This is how I
take up space in this family dynamic. This is how
(06:18):
I show up to get lost exactly. And that's a
pretty intense set of messages, right, And even though you're
at this moment able to articulate it well, which is
a great first step, right to have the insight and
understand what your family dynamics are, just because we come
to understand it, we aren't usually able to just erase
(06:38):
it and never exhibit those behaviors again. In fact, in
particularly in situations, particularly where there's stress and duress, it
comes out again, right, And we may know it at
the time, we may not know it at the time,
we may understand it in retrospect, but we're vulnerable. So
I imagine as you move through the world as an adult,
(06:59):
when things are stressful, you might return to that old,
comfortable way of being. And I put that in quotes
very deliberately. Right, it's comfortable sense that it makes you
feel like, ah, this is how I have value, This
is how I noticehowup when things are hard. But I
put it in quotes because it doesn't work as well
as it did when you're.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
A kid, right, right, it doesn't work for me any longer.
In fact, it's more of a I see it as
like a protection for myself. And in the trauma therapy
center that I spent ninety days learning and doing intense therapy,
there's a term called wall of pleasant and it's a
(07:38):
wall that you have up which keeps you from being
intimate with other people, and therefore you're not as relational
and people can't connect to you on a deeper level.
And so I recognize that, like I have that wall
of pleasant that I can't seem to help but to
(07:59):
come up. And so what are the ways that you
can help me or other people who experience that kind
of maybe approach it and intentionally work on it.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yes, yes, I love that term well pleasant. I haven't
heard of that, and I think that's such a good
descriptor of the dynamic that happens for a lot of
people when tough stuff comes up to sort of abandon
our mind and our hearts that even like our soul
and sort of show up in this more robotic way,
(08:39):
and it ends up sometimes hurting others, and certainly it
ends up hurting ourselves. We feel a huge disconnect between
what we're feeling inside and how we're moving through the world.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
That's so true, Like sometimes I can't figure out how
I'm actually feeling.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
H that's right, that's right, because there's this huge disconnect
between this automatic response you have of sort of being
the pleasant to use your wall of pleasant analogy, right,
the pleasant good girl, and how you're actually feeling inside,
which could be like scared, chaotic, anxious, depressed, And if
you're organically dedicated to the former, you are going to
(09:16):
have a really hard time figuring out how you're feeling
in the movement. So that leads to all sorts of confusion,
and I imagine oftentimes that's what the public is seeing
in these snippets of you talking about these issues, is
this wall of pleasant and some confusion around how you
are actually feeling in the moment, and so people sense
(09:36):
that or feel that or experience it. So I think
it's a good thing to lean into it, like you
are in this moment that like, yeah, maybe I don't
know how I'm feeling, and so maybe it's coming off
as not being a match to the topic or the
subject at hand, and that can be disarming for people
who are witnessed to it, and certainly disarming for yourself
as well when you back on I mean, unfortunately you
(09:59):
have the public like aspect of it. So maybe you're
looking back on a clip of yourself and you see
the dissonance, or maybe you're just hearing the feedback right,
So that creates a lot of confusion. So you asked
a question I don't want to miss, which is like, well, okay,
what am I supposed to do about it? So I
think what you're doing right now is the beginning of
what you can do about it. I love the idea.
(10:22):
I use this often that inside alone is not enough.
Inside alone is not enough. To say that more than once,
because therapy is steeped in a lot of insight, we
get to recognize things about ourselves that we didn't previously
have knowledge about, right, and once we get that, that
can be life changing. However, that alone is not enough.
(10:42):
We have to intervene in the moments when things get tricky.
Otherwise we just have the knowledge to talk about before
or after, but the behavior remains the same or not
changed in a significant way. So what you've already started
to do today in our conversation, I'm going to suggest
that you borrow from meaning that when you find yourself
(11:03):
in situations where you're tasked to talk about tricky stuff,
you know, whether it's publicly like you're doing in your
podcast or just with your buddies or in your therapeutic setting,
et cetera, that you start to narrate out loud what's
happening for you or what you know often happens for you.
Right so the next time you're asked a question about
(11:24):
this whole situation you are in, or in the dynamics
in your life that are tricky, that you start by
saying some version of, like, you know, it's always hard
when I talk out loud about stuff that's tricky. I
sometimes smile about it, I sometimes laugh about it. I
sometimes can't sink into the feelings that I really feel
(11:45):
about that. That so you may see that right now
I'm going to do my best to stay really connected
to the actual feelings I have about it, but you
may see me like flow in and out of it.
It's something I'm working on, It's something I know about myself.
It's something you know I'm taking looking on and trying
to interrupt that first will inform listeners and whether you're
(12:07):
talking about your public listeners or just your private crew,
you know that you're aware that that's happening, and that
it might feel strange to witness. And it also brings
a certain level of accountability to you internally and externally
that like, I know this is happening, and I've known it.
Sounds like in your work, in your your trauma work,
(12:28):
that you came to understand this about yourself. This isn't
like new news, but you're bringing a certain level of
accountability to it by saying it out loud to the
people who are in relation with you, who are in
dialogue with you. What do you think about that? I'm
curious if you imagined yourself doing that. What that brings up.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
When I am telling a story, it's and I'm thinking
of the next thing that I want to say as
well to get my point across. I let's see fe
like when I address how I'm feeling in this moment,
it may take my focus away from what story I'm
(13:10):
trying to convey, and so then it becomes like this
juggling act.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Yeah yeah, yeah, So it brings up a certain level
of anxiety for you that like, uh, oh, I'm going
to lose my train of thought and I'm going to
get sort of buried in all the dynamics you just
described and just just lose my way, which does not
sound pleasant, and I'm sure it does not sort of
promote what I'm suggesting automatically, but I would say this,
(13:37):
I would say is you're on the journey to reconcile
what we're talking about, you know, the difference between what
you're actually feeling inside and how you're able to talk
about it. And that's really what we're talking about. That
accepting I don't know, the messy middle is a critical
piece of that. And that's what you're describing. You're talking
about the messy middle, which is like, if I do that,
(13:59):
I might lose my place, literally forget what I'm saying,
and come off as more confused than I originally sounded,
you know, before I got speedback, and I maybe and
that's hard and not pleasant. And something that we don't
naturally feel ourselves draw into. But I would argue it's
really the space where change occurs, and maybe not immediately,
(14:21):
maybe not right away. That's why we call it the
messy middle. Is you have to be like awkward and
strange and weird and anxious, and I'm sure to kind
of build a muscle to sit in all of those
differing truths at one time. And I take seriously what
you said, and I would argue still that even given
all those truths, all the more reason to sit in it. So,
(14:43):
you know, to kind of back up on what we
were saying that you would take the risk of saying, like,
I'm going to mention out loud here that when I
start talking about hard things, I sometimes smile, I sometimes laugh.
My real feelings inside are not reflected in how I
show up, and I just want to say that out loud,
and I do my bad to stay grounded in my feelings,
but I may lose my way here and then acknowledging further, Wow,
(15:07):
I've now lost my train to flot Like, can you
repeat the question? Can we start over right? That you
just stay really real in what you're experiencing moment to moment.
And I say this with a lot of gravity because
what I'm suggesting that you do is not easy. All
(15:27):
of us understand if we take a moment that sitting
in one's true feelings while being witnessed, whether it's publicly
or you know, with our group, is super vulnerable, super
super super vulnerable. So I don't say this casually, and
it's probably not something that just happens automatically because we're
having this conversation. It's something that you really have to
(15:50):
work at and really have to accept the vulnerability around
it and accept like the root of it, the base
of it, which is that that's where change happens, when
we get real, get raw, when we get messy, and
when instead of being in the feeling, because that I
think is part of what's going on with you is
that you're so in the feeling you can't change it
or shift it or acknowledge it. You're just in it.
(16:12):
You go on the right of it, and then later
people are like, you did this, you did that, or
you watch and you're like, oh, I guess I did
do that or did that. But what I'm trying to
help you and other listeners consider is that when you
step out of the feeling that takes a lot of mindfulness,
a lot of strength, a lot of vulnerability, and narrate it.
We have an opportunity to make different choices and to
(16:34):
expand it and grow.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah. Well, right now I'm feeling emotional because it's scary
to be vulnerable and speaking on these things that are
so personal and close to my heart and figuring out
(16:59):
myself on this journey with other people listening in and critiquing.
And I used to have this huge block in my
life that I didn't want to do anything wrong because
I didn't want anybody to perceive me as something that
(17:19):
I wasn't. I'm grateful for the experiences that I had
so that I can be stronger and have this thicker
skin and know myself better. And I'm still wrapping my
head around my own self worth and practicing these daily
(17:40):
affirmations so that I don't fall back into these patterns
of seeking out validation from other people to make me
feel worthy within myself.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Oh, You've said so much and you did a really
good job. So I love that you started with saying
I'm a feeling emotional and I'm feeling vulnerable and I
have a lot to say about a number of things
you just outlined, but just to stick with that for
a moment, can you say a bit more? You did,
but can you say even more about the emotion what's
(18:15):
coming up right now?
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Specifically physically, my heart is beating well, obviously we're living beings,
but I can feel it in my body and sometimes
I'll have a shortness of breath if I'm feeling anxious
or overthinking. When I am in that emotional feeling all
(18:40):
like I don't know, my throat tightens up a little
bit and my eyes start glistening with some tears, and
it's a warmer feeling in my body, like I'm okay,
and I'm just human, and I think sharing these things
(19:05):
about myself, I'd imagine that a lot of other people
deal with these things too, And so that's giving me
the strength to be courageous and speak out on these things.
And there's that sense of like purpose.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
There yes so many things going on and just moments,
it's incredible. So what you're talking about, it's so valuable.
So I'm going to expand on it for a moment.
I mean, you just describe symptoms of anxiety, physical symptoms
of anxiety the end you started talking about something else.
We'll take that on. But it's so powerful to say
that out loud. So many people deal with anxiety and
(19:47):
experience it physically in their body through chest tightness, through
shortness of breath, through eyes listening, right through the throat tightening.
And it's scary and it can feel out of control.
And our response often to that is to do something
to make it go away because it's so uncomfortable, right,
(20:10):
And so I want to highlight both that what happens
to people with anxiety when they feel in their body
is that our body goes into it's like a false alarm.
Our body sets off the fight or flight system, right,
and our body starts to respond as if we need
to either fight or flight, And so cortisol starts going
(20:31):
through our body, adrenaline starts going through our body, and
it causes some of the symptoms and others that you described.
And even though you and I are talking about tricky stuff,
you're not actually in a fight or flight situation, right.
That's why I call it a false alarm. It's like
our body really reacts as if we need to protect ourselves,
but really we're o good. So it's a helpful thing
to remember when we have physical anxiety that it's really
(20:54):
sort of a false alarm in terms of the intensity
of the healings and probably what happens to you and
to many when we get those feelings, as I alluded
to you before, they're so uncomfortable that we want to
do things to make them go away. And smiling or laughing,
for example, are things that actually start to inform our
body that no, no, no, we're okay and starts to
(21:16):
make some of those symptoms dissipate. So it's not surprising
that you and others would adapt behaviors that attempt to
combat these physical discomforts.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Now it makes so much sense. Yeah, and I've learned
to like your energy needs to escape your body. That's
why exercising is so important every day. And so if
you think about the physiology of your body and the
energy that it takes to laugh, that is a way
(21:49):
for your body to expel this energy that's trapped within you.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yes, yes, yes, which leads me to such an important
I think next point. We have to get those feelings
out right, the anxiety and the fear and the worry
and the self loathing, whatever's coming up. If it doesn't
come out, it gets trapped inside our body. It gets stuck.
It stays there, and it shows up as symptoms. Whether
(22:17):
the symptoms are additional anxiety, later difficulty sleeping, irritability, eating
too much, too little, etc. It shows up as symptoms
if we don't find a safe space to let our
tricky feelings out. And so what you were just suggesting
is that the laugh is like a conduit to getting
some of that energy out. Is so right. It's just
(22:38):
that it's only halfway there, right, It gets some of
the energy out, but not the quote right energy out.
But your impulse is totally correct, which is that if
we let those feelings stay stuck in our body, that's
what happens. They stay stuck and it doesn't feel good
over time. There's no escaping that. I often say to clients,
like if it were true that we could just push
(22:59):
down feelings, suppress them and be fine, I'd be all
for it, Like I'm into that. That sounds cool to me.
It just doesn't work. They get stuck in our body.
They have to come out in a safe way with
safe people, and in a practiced way. We have to
build a muscle for it so replacing your note, maybe
not replacing expanding your notion that it's maybe not the
(23:22):
laugh that does the trick, but it's the actual divulgence
of like, this is what's happening to me, This is
what I'm scared of in this moment, or even in retrospect,
this is what was happening. That's what I was scared
of in that moment. Is a very useful purge of emotion.
That is the only road to healing. And so your
(23:43):
impulse is totally right, and maybe that will help you
and others over time. Is that my impulse is to laugh.
My impulse is to smile, and nothing like that or
wrong about that. Objectively, it's just not useful. It doesn't
get the actual feelings out, and I suppose if we're
considering the reaction of witnesses, it feels confusing to others, right,
(24:07):
It doesn't feel like I'm atched to what the topic is,
which can be alienating over time, like personally in your world.
And then I guess professionally as you have folks listening
to you, but I agree with you, and maybe that
supports the notion what we were talking about before that like, yes,
something wants to come out. I just want to be
a little more directive about what comes out. And if
(24:29):
the first thing that comes out is a laugh, it'll
happen again, Rachel. It's not not going to happen right
if the first that comes out as a laugh or
a smile, that you can catch yourself in the moment,
or catch yourself an hour later or a day later
and say, I know what happened there. I did that
thing again. You know, my core wound came up. I
fell into that pleasing young girl. I got scared of
(24:51):
my own vulnerability and anxiety, fear human and I did
what I've been doing since I was a little girl.
But I really wanted to do this, and so this
is how I now talk about this situation. You don't
need to get it perfect every time.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
I think it's really cool though, like being so vulnerable
and putting myself out there and getting this feedback from
listeners who care. There's this piece of accountability where now
I really have to watch myself back and listen to
myself back and hear all the times that I laugh
(25:37):
when I'm uncomfortable. And already from the first episode that
I released to the second episode, I noticed a huge
difference in how many times that I laughed, And so
I feel like it's a beautiful thing to be able
to do what I'm doing now in my life because
(25:57):
this is it's developing me into the person that I
want to become. And this is the challenge. This is
like the journey, and other people get to join in,
which I think is really cool.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
That's right. This is proper healing. This is proper healing
and real healing and real growth. As I said before,
but it's so worth repeating. Is messy. It's messy. Nobody
goes from identifying a core wound, a problematic behavior, a
trauma and then pivots to the other side of total
(26:37):
understanding and grace. Right, Nobody does that. It takes a
lot of hard work where we're back and forth, and
as I said, we're messy, and we repeat the same
behaviors and then we do a little better, and then
we repeat the same behaviors. That's how we move through
trauma and how we grow. So I totally agree with
what you just said. I'm just adding to it. I
(26:57):
think you're right. It's pretty amazing to put yourself out
there and have people be able to witness not just
the growth, but the messy stuff, because we all attempt
to do better and then witness ourselves not doing better
and either discover that ourselves or have other people kill us.
That feedback that's painful, That can bring about feelings of shame, right,
that's hard. And so you're holding that up for all
(27:21):
of us to witness and to think about with regards
to ourselves or people that we love. It's the only
way to grow is to have messy stuff in the
in between, the only way. And I didn't want to
miss what you said before. I'm kind of pivoting, but
what you said before about your experience being so grounded
and based in pleasing others and then going to the
(27:44):
other side where you were hyper focused on your own
needs and sort of justifying the pursuit of those And
first of all, great insight, and I'm sure there are
others that can relate, and that's useful to help put
in contact you move through that situation. And also I
just wanted to provide this insight that paradoxley, the very
(28:06):
extreme sets of behavior is very different. Obviously paradoxley, they're
really coming from the same place, which is an absence
of relationship with your own true, tricky feelings. You know,
the very thing that we're talking about, right, is that
the hyper pleasing behavior obviously guided you to not deeply
(28:29):
consider what you were feeling and what you needed and
how others around you were impacting you. It guided you
to just be vigilant about your surroundings and try to
adapt and adopt what you felt other people wanted or
needed from you. Right, And then the other side of
it is not dissimilar because you're still not really considering
(28:50):
your nuanced, actual feelings. You are only focusing on sort
of your you know, your your drives, your hyper drives,
like I want connection, I want sex, I want attention,
on validation, et cetera. But you're not really considering your
nuanced feelings around, like I really feel inside about how
I'm moving through the world, how I'm impacting other people,
(29:12):
What do I really want right now? How do I
want my life to be, how do I want my
life to unfold? It's still an absence of connection with
your actual feelings. The behaviors are quite different, but the
root of it is not just similar, And so it
all brings us back to the thing we've been talking
about today with you in particular, and I think with
many others that this getting to know and lingering in
(29:35):
your nuanced, complex, messy feelings is really the ingredient needed
to show up in the world in a way that's
more commiserate with how we're feeling inside. Beautifully stated, Yeah, yeah,
So it must be strange to reflect on those two
(29:57):
extremes of yourself.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
In the meadows we learn, and they have a really
big codependency structure there. And so a piece of that
is being needless, wantless and not knowing what your needs are.
And then the other side of that is knowing what
your needs are but not asking for them because if
(30:19):
you ask for them, you feel like you're a burden. Yes,
And so I've recognized those things in myself, and especially
as I'm talking about my experience and reflecting all my
actions through this past season, I noticed that I felt
(30:40):
the most worthy when I was needed for someone else,
and I wasn't able to really internalize my own needs
and my own wants or prioritize those because how I
was saying before, like, okay, other extreme and I was
(31:02):
just focusing on myself. I was still compromising my own
wants and my own needs by hiding this relationship and
letting somebody else take control of that and suppressing what
I really wanted and needed.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yes, yes, you were hyper centering the need for validation,
which was a pivot for you in terms of being
at least in touch that you with the fact you
had a need to be in connection, to be validated,
to feel worthy, to feel loved. Right, So that was
different for you in that sense because the way you're
(31:42):
describing it, prior you had really focused on external pleasing
of others. So you were guided by this sort of
quote new principle of like, I want to be in connection,
I want to be validated if they need. But you're
so right in now understanding that it ended up violating
your personal edict anyway, because you lost touch with what
(32:05):
was right for you, what was moral for you, and
how you as a person as a whole want to
move through the world.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Right exactly.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Yeah, So it's such such a painful lesson obviously, but
I assume a relatable one. There are lots of us
that due to a need for validation, which often comes
out in romantic relationships with the most intensity, that we
abandon other responsibilities in our life, I mean concrete and
(32:38):
otherwise right, like focus on work, focus on family, focus
on friends, but other more moral responsibilities like to show
up in the world and what values are we going
to uphold? And it sounded like for you, those things
all sort of became abandoned to experience that feeling of
validation and being needed by someone, and those are I mean, look,
(33:00):
those are core, that's pre core stuff. As humans we
all deal with. We all want to feel wanted and
needed and validated, and that's not going away, and we
don't want it to. It's one of the things that
sort of infuses color and meaning into our lives is
to be loved and to love others. So we don't
want to set that aside completely, but we do want
(33:21):
to center sort of our own value that comes from
within before we can really give ourselves paradoxly more fully
to a love relationship. The more we are centered and
sort of grounded in our own value, the more we
can give ourselves more fully and with more abandoned and
a love relationship that's like paradoxical. But if you don't
(33:44):
have that, it sounded like you didn't at that time.
You really your feet aren't on the ground, right, You
really can be led into places that you don't even
realize you're going. So it sounds like that's part of
what happened to you.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
I wanted to ask because my relationship with my ex,
the first relationship that I had on this show, was
a very volatile situation to be in, and I noticed
patterns of codependency coming up for me in that relationship
(34:31):
where I almost kind of lost myself. So, because that
relationship was so unhealthy, do you think the unresolved feelings
in that relationship carried over into the new relationship that
I was in.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yes, of course, when we have unprocessed trauma stuck in
our body and in our minds and in our heart
and in our soul, it's not a guess, it's not
a hypothesis. It's going to impact significantly how we move
through the world and certainly how we move through our
next relationship if the trauma is relationship based. In most
(35:14):
traumas are, but I mean particularly if it was a
romantic relationship, so to the extent that there was confusion
and anxiety and shame and guilt and resentment and fear
and embarrassment and all the potential dynamics associated with an unhealthy,
(35:35):
toxic relationship stuck in your body. It's going to come
out as symptoms as we were talking about before, and
so as it relates to being in a new relationship,
it's going to impact how we show up, how we
choose to move through it. And it probably takes one
of two pass Either we show up with a certain
(35:56):
level of passivity for fear of repeating the trauma or
inviting that same anger or shame cycle, or we show
up with a certain level of aggression or intense self
advocacy get me before they get me kind of thing,
(36:19):
and we may visit both extremes during it. So there's
no question it's one of the reasons that taking the time,
I mean, I can't over emphasize this. I almost feel
like I'm saying it in a cliche way. Taking the
time to process intense trauma is not just a good idea,
it's critical, it's mandatory, or we will continue to sort
(36:40):
of create collateral damage because it's on board and it's
leading us rather than us processing it and choosing how
we are going to move forward with it after we've
integrated it.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
I think you listed all of those things, and one
of them that came to mind for me was self sabotage.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Yes, yes, that's right. Well, if we already feel damage
and confused, and I'm certain right, we overidentify with that
as who we are and all that we can create,
and so we find ways to bring it back to
that baseline over and over again, the last we explore
(37:20):
the trauma. Otherwise it's an almost certain path.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
You said something very interesting with the validation coming up
in our love relationships and going forward, realizing that through
my therapy process, I'm not dating for a year, and
in doing that, I'm just focusing on myself and after
(37:47):
this talk, focusing on my emotions that come up for me,
like what are my own needs that I need met,
and not adding an additional person into the equation, so
that it is just focused on me and other people
as well, like my friends and family and the people
(38:08):
that are in my inner circle that are safe friends.
But in doing a full year of not dating, I
feel like that's that's the game plan going forward. It
made me think since you said we seek validation in
our love relationships, I could see how we could also
(38:29):
seek validation in our professional work career life as well.
I think maybe the entertainment industry as a whole is
a magnet for people who are seeking that external validation.
And so could you speak on that.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Yeah, yeah, you brought up so many good points. I mean,
I oftentimes, you know, so clinically speaking, the intent city
of the need for validation shows up the most in
love relationships, but you are absolutely right, it shows up
in all relationships, familial and friendships and professionally. Totally right.
(39:12):
And I think it seems by definition to be likely
true that when someone chooses the entertainment industry, they at
minimum are not shying away from the validation that comes
from being in that kind of position, and likely in
many situations feel a level of sort of groundedness and
(39:36):
satisfaction and value by getting that feedback. Right, that's a
good hypothesis, and I'm sure there's exceptions, but it's a
good hypothesis that those who are in the entertainment industry
benefit from that some standpoint, and perhaps there's a continuum,
I'm sure, And I think that's a really important thing
(39:57):
for you to think about, and those that are in
the entertainment industry to sort of curate as much groundedness
around that because it's seductive, right, it's compelling. You have
feedback coming from the public certainly that's supportive and loving
and full of admiration. And even the so called negative
(40:18):
feedback or hate can also be seductive because it brings
along a certain level of drama and self focus. So
the whole thing can be just a huge feedback loop
that has positive and negative aspects, but is addictive.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Very interesting, And one of my hesitations during this podcast too,
was am I just repeating another cycle?
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Like?
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Am I just inserting myself back into this validation circle?
So that is a concern of mine because I do
feel like I feel a sense of value and purpose
when I do get feedback from other people who have
dealt with toxic narcissistic relationships and know the trauma bond
(41:05):
that I've experienced through my relationships and through the show.
And so I think it's that sense of community and
connectedness that is the underlying motivator with that. So I'm
not sure, you know, like, is it a good thing?
Is it a bad thing? Could it be a bit
of both.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
I'm so glad you brought that up, because you're doing
what I was talking about the beginning, which is making
like a process comment that like, I'm sitting here thinking
about is this a good thing or a bad thing?
Am I just inserting myself back into that seductive feedback
loop that we were just talking about. And here's my answer.
I think I say this all the time. Two things
can be true at the same time. You should be
(41:49):
brutally introspective about that. Is there a part that is
related to the seductiveness of the public feedback and admiration? Probably? Probably?
And the closer you stay to that truth, the more
you can manage its impact. Right, it sounds very human
to me to be in a public position and to
(42:11):
feel the energy. That sounds very human to me. I
don't know how you turn that off completely. So I
would make better friends with that that like, Yeah, there's
a part of me that likes the energy, likes the feedback,
likes the feedback loop of engagement, and to be a
version of at the center of it, Like, there's a
pardon me that likes that, And I think that's okay.
(42:33):
The point is is being able to recognize where that
begins and we begin, and that ends and we end, right,
that you aren't so merged with it, that your value
is derived from it, and that you lose yourself in it,
so being able to keep it separate in your mind
that like, yep, that's a fun arena I sometimes engage
(42:53):
in and enjoy. I don't overdefine myself by it. And
when I say fun, I just mean the part of
it that is around the admiration of this sduction that
we're talking about. Obviously, the part where you are adding
value by having conversations like this is more purposeful and
has more meaning and there's a truth to it. I'm
certain people will listen to this and other podcasts talking
(43:15):
about mental health and feel impacted by it, and you
and others engaging in that kind of dialogue should fel
good about it. I think it's a wonderful thing to
promote real, raw, honest conversations about hard stuff. Internally, we
don't talk about it enough, right, But I think you
just really getting honest with yourself about how much my
(43:37):
engaging in this. Where's my validation coming from? Yes, part
of this does feel really good and cool. Great, I'm
going to set that aside. I'm going to compartmentalize. I'm
going to get back to who I am, who I
want to be what my insecurities are, what my fears are,
or how I want to grow, etc. That you don't
overly merge with it, you don't over identify with it.
It's like a full time job to keep creating that separation,
(44:02):
so I wouldn't lose sight of it, and I also
would embrace it, if that makes sense, because it's part
of your world and you want to build, You want
to make choices about your relationship with it, not have
it happen to you.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Yes, thank you so much for joining me today and
giving your insight on all of this and being so
open to what I have to say. And I really
appreciate the encouragement going forward, and obviously I appreciate your
validation in me expressing how I've reflected on my actions
(44:38):
and how I'm going forward to make better choices for myself.
And I think my listeners will benefit from this conversation too,
So thank you so much, Doctor Goldsher.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
You're welcome. It was my pleasure to be with you.
This is Rachel Go's Rogue. Hey guys, it's Rachel Savannah
Lovis from Rachel Goes Rogue. I'm so excited for today
because I get to have a clinical psychologist on to
join me, and I just want to go deeper on
the psychology behind why I smile when I'm talking about
(00:29):
things that make me feel so uncomfortable, because it seems counterintuitive.
I just want to read a few of the comments
that you guys left on the Rachel Goes Rogue podcast Instagram.
Just a note, please work on the smiling. I'm sure
it's out of nervousness and anxiety. Is speaking about hard topics,
(00:49):
but this video comes across non remorseful. Just an opinion.
I hear you. I know she has anxiety, but she
has to learn to wipe the smile off her face.
True evil smiling. Wow. I tried saying what she said
and smile at the same time, and it just felt strange.
(01:10):
How does she not see that as abnormal? I don't
understand how she could be smiling the whole time she's
talking about this so weird. Well, that's the feedback that
I got from you guys, and I agree, like I
listening back hearing me laugh about especially the Graham situation
(01:31):
for me, like, that's not a funny thing, and I
want to know why, Like what is this thing that
my body does without me even knowing? Honestly, I'm excited
to have a professional tell me why this is happening, because, yeah,
it's not normal. The average person isn't smiling through their
(01:55):
most painful traumatic memories. So I hope you can get
to the bottom of it. Let's bring doctor goldshare on. Hi,
doctor gold share me.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Rachel. How are you?
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I'm well, how are you good? Nice to meet you,
Nice to meet you too. Thanks for joining me today, Cours.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
First of all, take a deep breath. I think this
is going to be a really really good experience for
you and for your listeners, because you're talking about something
that is ubiquitous and super relatable in the sense that
a lot of people adopt behaviors and mannerisms and ways
(02:39):
of moving through space when they're talking about tricky things
and difficult material People smile, people laugh, People drink too much,
eat too much, eat too little, work too much, work
too little right. People do lots of things when they're
faced with taking on really hard stuff, and that part's
really relatable, and it's really not until we get to
(03:02):
make friends, so to speak, with the dynamics that are
going on within us internally in terms of understanding how
we're moving through space and those really difficult moments that
we can start to shift and change and grow and
better understand ourselves and impact people around us more positively
and just understand ourselves more thoroughly. So I just want
(03:23):
to like start by saying that your specific situation is
notable and a lot of people have a lot of
thoughts and opinions on it, but what we're talking about
at the root of it is really relatable. So I
just want you to sort of take a deep breath
around that. It's to respond in ways that are avoidant
(03:46):
or dismissive in the face of hard stuff is really human.
So I just want to I just want to start there.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Thank you, and yeah, thanks for recognizing all of that.
And obviously it's I'm getting a lot of feedback from
people saying I'm smiling too much. I'm laughing through the
things that are more of a serious topic. And as
I'm describing these things and recounting these memories, I'm not like,
(04:19):
I don't think it's funny and I don't enjoy it,
and so I feel like the messaging maybe getting lost
a little bit. But then when I talk to my
family and I talk to my close friends, I have
more of a serious demeanor and like, I'm not smiling
(04:40):
through it. So I'm wondering, like, is it just me
knowing that this is being broadcast to a lot of
people listening?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean what is before? I give my
perspective and it's layered and nuanced, But what are your
you sort of started to say it, but what are
your initial thoughts or hypotheses about why, like about what's happening.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So my hypothesis is that I had to modify my
behavior as a child to appease the people around me,
and that's how I got the positive attention that I
received being happy, like I'm good over here, Like if
(05:29):
I put on a happy face, then you don't have
to worry about me and it's all good.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Well, this is super insightful. That's that's a really good
hypothesis and a really good place to start. I mean,
what you're talking about is being reinforced for emotional regulation, right,
being reforced for not being problematic? For not having out
of control feelings or requests or needs, and for showing
(05:57):
up okay, and maybe even a step beyond that, showing
up happy, showing up as the pleaser, as the easy kid,
as the one that was okay. So that was your
probably unspoken but assigned role, and you came to know
this is how I have value, This is how I
take up space in this family dynamic. This is how
(06:18):
I show up to get lost exactly. And that's a
pretty intense set of messages, right, And even though you're
at this moment able to articulate it well, which is
a great first step, right to have the insight and
understand what your family dynamics are, just because we come
to understand it, we aren't usually able to just erase
(06:38):
it and never exhibit those behaviors again. In fact, in
particularly in situations, particularly where there's stress and duress, it
comes out again, right, And we may know it at
the time, we may not know it at the time,
we may understand it in retrospect, but we're vulnerable. So
I imagine as you move through the world as an adult,
(06:59):
when things are stressful, you might return to that old,
comfortable way of being. And I put that in quotes
very deliberately. Right, it's comfortable sense that it makes you
feel like, ah, this is how I have value, This
is how I noticehowup when things are hard. But I
put it in quotes because it doesn't work as well
as it did when you're.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
A kid, right, right, it doesn't work for me any longer.
In fact, it's more of a I see it as
like a protection for myself. And in the trauma therapy
center that I spent ninety days learning and doing intense therapy,
there's a term called wall of pleasant and it's a
(07:38):
wall that you have up which keeps you from being
intimate with other people, and therefore you're not as relational
and people can't connect to you on a deeper level.
And so I recognize that, like I have that wall
of pleasant that I can't seem to help but to
(07:59):
come up. And so what are the ways that you
can help me or other people who experience that kind
of maybe approach it and intentionally work on it.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yes, yes, I love that term well pleasant. I haven't
heard of that, and I think that's such a good
descriptor of the dynamic that happens for a lot of
people when tough stuff comes up to sort of abandon
our mind and our hearts that even like our soul
and sort of show up in this more robotic way,
(08:39):
and it ends up sometimes hurting others, and certainly it
ends up hurting ourselves. We feel a huge disconnect between
what we're feeling inside and how we're moving through the world.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
That's so true, Like sometimes I can't figure out how
I'm actually feeling.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
H that's right, that's right, because there's this huge disconnect
between this automatic response you have of sort of being
the pleasant to use your wall of pleasant analogy, right,
the pleasant good girl, and how you're actually feeling inside,
which could be like scared, chaotic, anxious, depressed, And if
you're organically dedicated to the former, you are going to
(09:16):
have a really hard time figuring out how you're feeling
in the movement. So that leads to all sorts of confusion,
and I imagine oftentimes that's what the public is seeing
in these snippets of you talking about these issues, is
this wall of pleasant and some confusion around how you
are actually feeling in the moment, and so people sense
(09:36):
that or feel that or experience it. So I think
it's a good thing to lean into it, like you
are in this moment that like, yeah, maybe I don't
know how I'm feeling, and so maybe it's coming off
as not being a match to the topic or the
subject at hand, and that can be disarming for people
who are witnessed to it, and certainly disarming for yourself
as well when you back on I mean, unfortunately you
(09:59):
have the public like aspect of it. So maybe you're
looking back on a clip of yourself and you see
the dissonance, or maybe you're just hearing the feedback right,
So that creates a lot of confusion. So you asked
a question I don't want to miss, which is like, well, okay,
what am I supposed to do about it? So I
think what you're doing right now is the beginning of
what you can do about it. I love the idea.
(10:22):
I use this often that inside alone is not enough.
Inside alone is not enough. To say that more than once,
because therapy is steeped in a lot of insight, we
get to recognize things about ourselves that we didn't previously
have knowledge about, right, and once we get that, that
can be life changing. However, that alone is not enough.
(10:42):
We have to intervene in the moments when things get tricky.
Otherwise we just have the knowledge to talk about before
or after, but the behavior remains the same or not
changed in a significant way. So what you've already started
to do today in our conversation, I'm going to suggest
that you borrow from meaning that when you find yourself
(11:03):
in situations where you're tasked to talk about tricky stuff,
you know, whether it's publicly like you're doing in your
podcast or just with your buddies or in your therapeutic setting,
et cetera, that you start to narrate out loud what's
happening for you or what you know often happens for you.
Right so the next time you're asked a question about
(11:24):
this whole situation you are in, or in the dynamics
in your life that are tricky, that you start by
saying some version of, like, you know, it's always hard
when I talk out loud about stuff that's tricky. I
sometimes smile about it, I sometimes laugh about it. I
sometimes can't sink into the feelings that I really feel
(11:45):
about that. That so you may see that right now
I'm going to do my best to stay really connected
to the actual feelings I have about it, but you
may see me like flow in and out of it.
It's something I'm working on, It's something I know about myself.
It's something you know I'm taking looking on and trying
to interrupt that first will inform listeners and whether you're
(12:07):
talking about your public listeners or just your private crew,
you know that you're aware that that's happening, and that
it might feel strange to witness. And it also brings
a certain level of accountability to you internally and externally
that like, I know this is happening, and I've known it.
Sounds like in your work, in your your trauma work,
(12:28):
that you came to understand this about yourself. This isn't
like new news, but you're bringing a certain level of
accountability to it by saying it out loud to the
people who are in relation with you, who are in
dialogue with you. What do you think about that? I'm
curious if you imagined yourself doing that. What that brings up.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
When I am telling a story, it's and I'm thinking
of the next thing that I want to say as
well to get my point across. I let's see fe
like when I address how I'm feeling in this moment,
it may take my focus away from what story I'm
(13:10):
trying to convey, and so then it becomes like this
juggling act.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Yeah yeah, yeah, So it brings up a certain level
of anxiety for you that like, uh, oh, I'm going
to lose my train of thought and I'm going to
get sort of buried in all the dynamics you just
described and just just lose my way, which does not
sound pleasant, and I'm sure it does not sort of
promote what I'm suggesting automatically, but I would say this,
(13:37):
I would say is you're on the journey to reconcile
what we're talking about, you know, the difference between what
you're actually feeling inside and how you're able to talk
about it. And that's really what we're talking about. That
accepting I don't know, the messy middle is a critical
piece of that. And that's what you're describing. You're talking
about the messy middle, which is like, if I do that,
(13:59):
I might lose my place, literally forget what I'm saying,
and come off as more confused than I originally sounded,
you know, before I got speedback, and I maybe and
that's hard and not pleasant. And something that we don't
naturally feel ourselves draw into. But I would argue it's
really the space where change occurs, and maybe not immediately,
(14:21):
maybe not right away. That's why we call it the
messy middle. Is you have to be like awkward and
strange and weird and anxious, and I'm sure to kind
of build a muscle to sit in all of those
differing truths at one time. And I take seriously what
you said, and I would argue still that even given
all those truths, all the more reason to sit in it. So,
(14:43):
you know, to kind of back up on what we
were saying that you would take the risk of saying, like,
I'm going to mention out loud here that when I
start talking about hard things, I sometimes smile, I sometimes laugh.
My real feelings inside are not reflected in how I
show up, and I just want to say that out loud,
and I do my bad to stay grounded in my feelings,
but I may lose my way here and then acknowledging further, Wow,
(15:07):
I've now lost my train to flot Like, can you
repeat the question? Can we start over right? That you
just stay really real in what you're experiencing moment to moment.
And I say this with a lot of gravity because
what I'm suggesting that you do is not easy. All
(15:27):
of us understand if we take a moment that sitting
in one's true feelings while being witnessed, whether it's publicly
or you know, with our group, is super vulnerable, super
super super vulnerable. So I don't say this casually, and
it's probably not something that just happens automatically because we're
having this conversation. It's something that you really have to
(15:50):
work at and really have to accept the vulnerability around
it and accept like the root of it, the base
of it, which is that that's where change happens, when
we get real, get raw, when we get messy, and
when instead of being in the feeling, because that I
think is part of what's going on with you is
that you're so in the feeling you can't change it
or shift it or acknowledge it. You're just in it.
(16:12):
You go on the right of it, and then later
people are like, you did this, you did that, or
you watch and you're like, oh, I guess I did
do that or did that. But what I'm trying to
help you and other listeners consider is that when you
step out of the feeling that takes a lot of mindfulness,
a lot of strength, a lot of vulnerability, and narrate it.
We have an opportunity to make different choices and to
(16:34):
expand it and grow.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah. Well, right now I'm feeling emotional because it's scary
to be vulnerable and speaking on these things that are
so personal and close to my heart and figuring out
(16:59):
myself on this journey with other people listening in and critiquing.
And I used to have this huge block in my
life that I didn't want to do anything wrong because
I didn't want anybody to perceive me as something that
(17:19):
I wasn't. I'm grateful for the experiences that I had
so that I can be stronger and have this thicker
skin and know myself better. And I'm still wrapping my
head around my own self worth and practicing these daily
(17:40):
affirmations so that I don't fall back into these patterns
of seeking out validation from other people to make me
feel worthy within myself.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Oh, You've said so much and you did a really
good job. So I love that you started with saying
I'm a feeling emotional and I'm feeling vulnerable and I
have a lot to say about a number of things
you just outlined, but just to stick with that for
a moment, can you say a bit more? You did,
but can you say even more about the emotion what's
(18:15):
coming up right now?
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Specifically physically, my heart is beating well, obviously we're living beings,
but I can feel it in my body and sometimes
I'll have a shortness of breath if I'm feeling anxious
or overthinking. When I am in that emotional feeling all
(18:40):
like I don't know, my throat tightens up a little
bit and my eyes start glistening with some tears, and
it's a warmer feeling in my body, like I'm okay,
and I'm just human, and I think sharing these things
(19:05):
about myself, I'd imagine that a lot of other people
deal with these things too, And so that's giving me
the strength to be courageous and speak out on these things.
And there's that sense of like purpose.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
There yes so many things going on and just moments,
it's incredible. So what you're talking about, it's so valuable.
So I'm going to expand on it for a moment.
I mean, you just describe symptoms of anxiety, physical symptoms
of anxiety the end you started talking about something else.
We'll take that on. But it's so powerful to say
that out loud. So many people deal with anxiety and
(19:47):
experience it physically in their body through chest tightness, through
shortness of breath, through eyes listening, right through the throat tightening.
And it's scary and it can feel out of control.
And our response often to that is to do something
to make it go away because it's so uncomfortable, right,
(20:10):
And so I want to highlight both that what happens
to people with anxiety when they feel in their body
is that our body goes into it's like a false alarm.
Our body sets off the fight or flight system, right,
and our body starts to respond as if we need
to either fight or flight, And so cortisol starts going
(20:31):
through our body, adrenaline starts going through our body, and
it causes some of the symptoms and others that you described.
And even though you and I are talking about tricky stuff,
you're not actually in a fight or flight situation, right.
That's why I call it a false alarm. It's like
our body really reacts as if we need to protect ourselves,
but really we're o good. So it's a helpful thing
to remember when we have physical anxiety that it's really
(20:54):
sort of a false alarm in terms of the intensity
of the healings and probably what happens to you and
to many when we get those feelings, as I alluded
to you before, they're so uncomfortable that we want to
do things to make them go away. And smiling or laughing,
for example, are things that actually start to inform our
body that no, no, no, we're okay and starts to
(21:16):
make some of those symptoms dissipate. So it's not surprising
that you and others would adapt behaviors that attempt to
combat these physical discomforts.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Now it makes so much sense. Yeah, and I've learned
to like your energy needs to escape your body. That's
why exercising is so important every day. And so if
you think about the physiology of your body and the
energy that it takes to laugh, that is a way
(21:49):
for your body to expel this energy that's trapped within you.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yes, yes, yes, which leads me to such an important
I think next point. We have to get those feelings
out right, the anxiety and the fear and the worry
and the self loathing, whatever's coming up. If it doesn't
come out, it gets trapped inside our body. It gets stuck.
It stays there, and it shows up as symptoms. Whether
(22:17):
the symptoms are additional anxiety, later difficulty sleeping, irritability, eating
too much, too little, etc. It shows up as symptoms
if we don't find a safe space to let our
tricky feelings out. And so what you were just suggesting
is that the laugh is like a conduit to getting
some of that energy out. Is so right. It's just
(22:38):
that it's only halfway there, right, It gets some of
the energy out, but not the quote right energy out.
But your impulse is totally correct, which is that if
we let those feelings stay stuck in our body, that's
what happens. They stay stuck and it doesn't feel good
over time. There's no escaping that. I often say to clients,
like if it were true that we could just push
(22:59):
down feelings, suppress them and be fine, I'd be all
for it, Like I'm into that. That sounds cool to me.
It just doesn't work. They get stuck in our body.
They have to come out in a safe way with
safe people, and in a practiced way. We have to
build a muscle for it so replacing your note, maybe
not replacing expanding your notion that it's maybe not the
(23:22):
laugh that does the trick, but it's the actual divulgence
of like, this is what's happening to me, This is
what I'm scared of in this moment, or even in retrospect,
this is what was happening. That's what I was scared
of in that moment. Is a very useful purge of emotion.
That is the only road to healing. And so your
(23:43):
impulse is totally right, and maybe that will help you
and others over time. Is that my impulse is to laugh.
My impulse is to smile, and nothing like that or
wrong about that. Objectively, it's just not useful. It doesn't
get the actual feelings out, and I suppose if we're
considering the reaction of witnesses, it feels confusing to others, right,
(24:07):
It doesn't feel like I'm atched to what the topic is,
which can be alienating over time, like personally in your world.
And then I guess professionally as you have folks listening
to you, but I agree with you, and maybe that
supports the notion what we were talking about before that like, yes,
something wants to come out. I just want to be
a little more directive about what comes out. And if
(24:29):
the first thing that comes out is a laugh, it'll
happen again, Rachel. It's not not going to happen right
if the first that comes out as a laugh or
a smile, that you can catch yourself in the moment,
or catch yourself an hour later or a day later
and say, I know what happened there. I did that
thing again. You know, my core wound came up. I
fell into that pleasing young girl. I got scared of
(24:51):
my own vulnerability and anxiety, fear human and I did
what I've been doing since I was a little girl.
But I really wanted to do this, and so this
is how I now talk about this situation. You don't
need to get it perfect every time.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
I think it's really cool though, like being so vulnerable
and putting myself out there and getting this feedback from
listeners who care. There's this piece of accountability where now
I really have to watch myself back and listen to
myself back and hear all the times that I laugh
(25:37):
when I'm uncomfortable. And already from the first episode that
I released to the second episode, I noticed a huge
difference in how many times that I laughed, And so
I feel like it's a beautiful thing to be able
to do what I'm doing now in my life because
(25:57):
this is it's developing me into the person that I
want to become. And this is the challenge. This is
like the journey, and other people get to join in,
which I think is really cool.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
That's right. This is proper healing. This is proper healing
and real healing and real growth. As I said before,
but it's so worth repeating. Is messy. It's messy. Nobody
goes from identifying a core wound, a problematic behavior, a
trauma and then pivots to the other side of total
(26:37):
understanding and grace. Right, Nobody does that. It takes a
lot of hard work where we're back and forth, and
as I said, we're messy, and we repeat the same
behaviors and then we do a little better, and then
we repeat the same behaviors. That's how we move through
trauma and how we grow. So I totally agree with
what you just said. I'm just adding to it. I
(26:57):
think you're right. It's pretty amazing to put yourself out
there and have people be able to witness not just
the growth, but the messy stuff, because we all attempt
to do better and then witness ourselves not doing better
and either discover that ourselves or have other people kill us.
That feedback that's painful, That can bring about feelings of shame, right,
that's hard. And so you're holding that up for all
(27:21):
of us to witness and to think about with regards
to ourselves or people that we love. It's the only
way to grow is to have messy stuff in the
in between, the only way. And I didn't want to
miss what you said before. I'm kind of pivoting, but
what you said before about your experience being so grounded
and based in pleasing others and then going to the
(27:44):
other side where you were hyper focused on your own
needs and sort of justifying the pursuit of those And
first of all, great insight, and I'm sure there are
others that can relate, and that's useful to help put
in contact you move through that situation. And also I
just wanted to provide this insight that paradoxley, the very
(28:06):
extreme sets of behavior is very different. Obviously paradoxley, they're
really coming from the same place, which is an absence
of relationship with your own true, tricky feelings. You know,
the very thing that we're talking about, right, is that
the hyper pleasing behavior obviously guided you to not deeply
(28:29):
consider what you were feeling and what you needed and
how others around you were impacting you. It guided you
to just be vigilant about your surroundings and try to
adapt and adopt what you felt other people wanted or
needed from you. Right, And then the other side of
it is not dissimilar because you're still not really considering
(28:50):
your nuanced, actual feelings. You are only focusing on sort
of your you know, your your drives, your hyper drives,
like I want connection, I want sex, I want attention,
on validation, et cetera. But you're not really considering your
nuanced feelings around, like I really feel inside about how
I'm moving through the world, how I'm impacting other people,
(29:12):
What do I really want right now? How do I
want my life to be, how do I want my
life to unfold? It's still an absence of connection with
your actual feelings. The behaviors are quite different, but the
root of it is not just similar, And so it
all brings us back to the thing we've been talking
about today with you in particular, and I think with
many others that this getting to know and lingering in
(29:35):
your nuanced, complex, messy feelings is really the ingredient needed
to show up in the world in a way that's
more commiserate with how we're feeling inside. Beautifully stated, Yeah, yeah,
So it must be strange to reflect on those two
(29:57):
extremes of yourself.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
In the meadows we learn, and they have a really
big codependency structure there. And so a piece of that
is being needless, wantless and not knowing what your needs are.
And then the other side of that is knowing what
your needs are but not asking for them because if
(30:19):
you ask for them, you feel like you're a burden. Yes,
And so I've recognized those things in myself, and especially
as I'm talking about my experience and reflecting all my
actions through this past season, I noticed that I felt
(30:40):
the most worthy when I was needed for someone else,
and I wasn't able to really internalize my own needs
and my own wants or prioritize those because how I
was saying before, like, okay, other extreme and I was
(31:02):
just focusing on myself. I was still compromising my own
wants and my own needs by hiding this relationship and
letting somebody else take control of that and suppressing what
I really wanted and needed.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yes, yes, you were hyper centering the need for validation,
which was a pivot for you in terms of being
at least in touch that you with the fact you
had a need to be in connection, to be validated,
to feel worthy, to feel loved. Right, So that was
different for you in that sense because the way you're
(31:42):
describing it, prior you had really focused on external pleasing
of others. So you were guided by this sort of
quote new principle of like, I want to be in connection,
I want to be validated if they need. But you're
so right in now understanding that it ended up violating
your personal edict anyway, because you lost touch with what
(32:05):
was right for you, what was moral for you, and
how you as a person as a whole want to
move through the world.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Right exactly.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Yeah, So it's such such a painful lesson obviously, but
I assume a relatable one. There are lots of us
that due to a need for validation, which often comes
out in romantic relationships with the most intensity, that we
abandon other responsibilities in our life, I mean concrete and
(32:38):
otherwise right, like focus on work, focus on family, focus
on friends, but other more moral responsibilities like to show
up in the world and what values are we going
to uphold? And it sounded like for you, those things
all sort of became abandoned to experience that feeling of
validation and being needed by someone, and those are I mean, look,
(33:00):
those are core, that's pre core stuff. As humans we
all deal with. We all want to feel wanted and
needed and validated, and that's not going away, and we
don't want it to. It's one of the things that
sort of infuses color and meaning into our lives is
to be loved and to love others. So we don't
want to set that aside completely, but we do want
(33:21):
to center sort of our own value that comes from
within before we can really give ourselves paradoxly more fully
to a love relationship. The more we are centered and
sort of grounded in our own value, the more we
can give ourselves more fully and with more abandoned and
a love relationship that's like paradoxical. But if you don't
(33:44):
have that, it sounded like you didn't at that time.
You really your feet aren't on the ground, right, You
really can be led into places that you don't even
realize you're going. So it sounds like that's part of
what happened to you.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
I wanted to ask because my relationship with my ex,
the first relationship that I had on this show, was
a very volatile situation to be in, and I noticed
patterns of codependency coming up for me in that relationship
(34:31):
where I almost kind of lost myself. So, because that
relationship was so unhealthy, do you think the unresolved feelings
in that relationship carried over into the new relationship that
I was in.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yes, of course, when we have unprocessed trauma stuck in
our body and in our minds and in our heart
and in our soul, it's not a guess, it's not
a hypothesis. It's going to impact significantly how we move
through the world and certainly how we move through our
next relationship if the trauma is relationship based. In most
(35:14):
traumas are, but I mean particularly if it was a
romantic relationship, so to the extent that there was confusion
and anxiety and shame and guilt and resentment and fear
and embarrassment and all the potential dynamics associated with an unhealthy,
(35:35):
toxic relationship stuck in your body. It's going to come
out as symptoms as we were talking about before, and
so as it relates to being in a new relationship,
it's going to impact how we show up, how we
choose to move through it. And it probably takes one
of two pass Either we show up with a certain
(35:56):
level of passivity for fear of repeating the trauma or
inviting that same anger or shame cycle, or we show
up with a certain level of aggression or intense self
advocacy get me before they get me kind of thing,
(36:19):
and we may visit both extremes during it. So there's
no question it's one of the reasons that taking the time,
I mean, I can't over emphasize this. I almost feel
like I'm saying it in a cliche way. Taking the
time to process intense trauma is not just a good idea,
it's critical, it's mandatory, or we will continue to sort
(36:40):
of create collateral damage because it's on board and it's
leading us rather than us processing it and choosing how
we are going to move forward with it after we've
integrated it.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
I think you listed all of those things, and one
of them that came to mind for me was self sabotage.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Yes, yes, that's right. Well, if we already feel damage
and confused, and I'm certain right, we overidentify with that
as who we are and all that we can create,
and so we find ways to bring it back to
that baseline over and over again, the last we explore
(37:20):
the trauma. Otherwise it's an almost certain path.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
You said something very interesting with the validation coming up
in our love relationships and going forward, realizing that through
my therapy process, I'm not dating for a year, and
in doing that, I'm just focusing on myself and after
(37:47):
this talk, focusing on my emotions that come up for me,
like what are my own needs that I need met,
and not adding an additional person into the equation, so
that it is just focused on me and other people
as well, like my friends and family and the people
(38:08):
that are in my inner circle that are safe friends.
But in doing a full year of not dating, I
feel like that's that's the game plan going forward. It
made me think since you said we seek validation in
our love relationships, I could see how we could also
(38:29):
seek validation in our professional work career life as well.
I think maybe the entertainment industry as a whole is
a magnet for people who are seeking that external validation.
And so could you speak on that.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Yeah, yeah, you brought up so many good points. I mean,
I oftentimes, you know, so clinically speaking, the intent city
of the need for validation shows up the most in
love relationships, but you are absolutely right, it shows up
in all relationships, familial and friendships and professionally. Totally right.
(39:12):
And I think it seems by definition to be likely
true that when someone chooses the entertainment industry, they at
minimum are not shying away from the validation that comes
from being in that kind of position, and likely in
many situations feel a level of sort of groundedness and
(39:36):
satisfaction and value by getting that feedback. Right, that's a
good hypothesis, and I'm sure there's exceptions, but it's a
good hypothesis that those who are in the entertainment industry
benefit from that some standpoint, and perhaps there's a continuum,
I'm sure, And I think that's a really important thing
(39:57):
for you to think about, and those that are in
the entertainment industry to sort of curate as much groundedness
around that because it's seductive, right, it's compelling. You have
feedback coming from the public certainly that's supportive and loving
and full of admiration. And even the so called negative
(40:18):
feedback or hate can also be seductive because it brings
along a certain level of drama and self focus. So
the whole thing can be just a huge feedback loop
that has positive and negative aspects, but is addictive.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Very interesting, And one of my hesitations during this podcast too,
was am I just repeating another cycle?
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Like?
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Am I just inserting myself back into this validation circle?
So that is a concern of mine because I do
feel like I feel a sense of value and purpose
when I do get feedback from other people who have
dealt with toxic narcissistic relationships and know the trauma bond
(41:05):
that I've experienced through my relationships and through the show.
And so I think it's that sense of community and
connectedness that is the underlying motivator with that. So I'm
not sure, you know, like, is it a good thing?
Is it a bad thing? Could it be a bit
of both.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
I'm so glad you brought that up, because you're doing
what I was talking about the beginning, which is making
like a process comment that like, I'm sitting here thinking
about is this a good thing or a bad thing?
Am I just inserting myself back into that seductive feedback
loop that we were just talking about. And here's my answer.
I think I say this all the time. Two things
can be true at the same time. You should be
(41:49):
brutally introspective about that. Is there a part that is
related to the seductiveness of the public feedback and admiration? Probably? Probably?
And the closer you stay to that truth, the more
you can manage its impact. Right, it sounds very human
to me to be in a public position and to
(42:11):
feel the energy. That sounds very human to me. I
don't know how you turn that off completely. So I
would make better friends with that that like, Yeah, there's
a part of me that likes the energy, likes the feedback,
likes the feedback loop of engagement, and to be a
version of at the center of it, Like, there's a
pardon me that likes that, And I think that's okay.
(42:33):
The point is is being able to recognize where that
begins and we begin, and that ends and we end, right,
that you aren't so merged with it, that your value
is derived from it, and that you lose yourself in it,
so being able to keep it separate in your mind
that like, yep, that's a fun arena I sometimes engage
(42:53):
in and enjoy. I don't overdefine myself by it. And
when I say fun, I just mean the part of
it that is around the admiration of this sduction that
we're talking about. Obviously, the part where you are adding
value by having conversations like this is more purposeful and
has more meaning and there's a truth to it. I'm
certain people will listen to this and other podcasts talking
(43:15):
about mental health and feel impacted by it, and you
and others engaging in that kind of dialogue should fel
good about it. I think it's a wonderful thing to
promote real, raw, honest conversations about hard stuff. Internally, we
don't talk about it enough, right, But I think you
just really getting honest with yourself about how much my
(43:37):
engaging in this. Where's my validation coming from? Yes, part
of this does feel really good and cool. Great, I'm
going to set that aside. I'm going to compartmentalize. I'm
going to get back to who I am, who I
want to be what my insecurities are, what my fears are,
or how I want to grow, etc. That you don't
overly merge with it, you don't over identify with it.
It's like a full time job to keep creating that separation,
(44:02):
so I wouldn't lose sight of it, and I also
would embrace it, if that makes sense, because it's part
of your world and you want to build, You want
to make choices about your relationship with it, not have
it happen to you.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Yes, thank you so much for joining me today and
giving your insight on all of this and being so
open to what I have to say. And I really
appreciate the encouragement going forward, and obviously I appreciate your
validation in me expressing how I've reflected on my actions
(44:38):
and how I'm going forward to make better choices for myself.
And I think my listeners will benefit from this conversation too,
So thank you so much, Doctor Goldsher.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
You're welcome. It was my pleasure to be with you.
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