Christie Tate

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Side Podcast.
My guest today is Christie pat author of the new
bestseller Group All about how group therapy saved her life.
You can't put this book down. It's written from the
viewpoint of the patient. It's not a tone with all
the words and vulnerabilities we all have. Christie, Welcome to

(00:31):
the podcast. Thanks for having me, Bob. I'm glad to
be here. You know, too many people therapy has a
bad image. What did it take for you to cross
the threshold and actually enter therapy? Well, it's it's nothing
very laudable. I was in a lot of pain, and
I was really really afraid I was gonna die alone,
and nobody knew how much pain I was in. I

(00:53):
had I hit it really well. I was. I was
probably just depressed. And but if you're not telling anybody,
it starts to feel like there's something so so wrong.
And I was having suicidal thoughts and wondering something more
than what is life for? It was more like how
could I die? And this was so incongruous with my

(01:15):
outside life. I had just found out I was the
valedictorian of my law school. I was in the I
was the number one in my law school after the
first year, and I should have been happy, but inside
I was just like, this is this is going to
end badly and I'm seriously gonna die alone. And then
I became willing because I thought therapy would be a

(01:35):
slog and expensive and self indulgent and ultimately not work.
I didn't think it would work. Okay, let's go back
a little chapter in retrospect. Was this always your identity
to feel disconnected and alone and somewhat depressed, or was
it triggered leader in your life. I think I always

(01:55):
had seeds of it. I think I felt a little
bit like a misfit in my family. Ly, I was
moody and artsy, and my family was pretty buttoned up,
very Catholic. They loved football in Texas, and I just
didn't quite fall into step with them. And I think
it probably could have gone either way. And then when

(02:17):
I was in high school, right before high school, I
was in a traumatic accident. I was with another family
and the father that we were with he drowned on
the beach while we were in Hawaii, and I think
that was a very traumatic thing, and I think I
just buried it in my body, and that just pushed
me all the way farther from people. And I could

(02:38):
put on a good show, I could smile, I could
make good grades, but deep down inside, there was like
a bomb ticking. Is what it sort of feels like
looking back. Okay, now that you've had years of therapy
to look back on it, what about that death negatively
impact you? Obviously that's a significant thing. But why was

(02:58):
it such a traumatic eve in in your life? I
think it's because of denial. I always told myself. From
the minute we got in the car leaving the beach,
I started telling myself a story. This isn't my tragedy,
it's it wasn't my dad. My dad was at home
in Texas. This was my friend's dad. Don't be dramatic,

(03:19):
don't make this about yourself. And consequently, I was a
thirteen year old, I was two weeks actually from my
fourteenth birthday walking around with traumatic images and sights and sounds,
and I just wouldn't let myself feel one drop of
it because it didn't belong to me. And part of
that was I was just scared. It's very, very scary

(03:41):
to face death and something unexpected on a beach is
a horrible situation. So I think having the trauma and
burying it served to push me far away from people.
And what was explained to me by my therapist, who
I called Dr Rosen, was because I had unprocessed trauma,
if I got close to people, I was going to

(04:03):
feel attached and I was gonna worry about losing them,
and to me that there's just no way. And I
didn't know that was operating like subconsciously, I thought, I'm
a nice girl. Why can't I find nice friends and
a nice boyfriend? But the truth was some subconscious mechanism
was keeping me far away because I was scared I
was gonna lose them. And I hadn't even dealt with

(04:24):
how how how could you get over something like that?
Because I hadn't. Okay, so uh, this would beg the
question were these types of thoughts acceptable in your family
or did you just talk about events as opposed to feelings.
That's a good question. Generally we would talk about events,

(04:45):
and I think my parents they could see that I
was hurting. When I came home from Hawaii, I started
my freshman year. I was at an all girls, very
selective challenging school, and I would come home and I
would sleep for hours, and then I would do my
homework till like two in the morning. I just was
things were off with me, and I don't think my

(05:06):
parents had the tools. They wanted to help me, and
their way was to sort of a message of buck up,
but my mom's way of phrasing it, and my dad,
they would stand in my doorway and say, you need
to like act like a normal teenager. You need to
go to football games, you need to stop sleeping, you
need to have normal hours. And we sort of just

(05:27):
attacked like the outside without the inside, because I don't
think any of us we just didn't have the tools.
We had no idea how to begin to unravel what
I'd experienced. And even before then, I have my eating
disorder had already developed, like two years before I was bliming,
and that was a secret, so my parents didn't even
know about that. So there was a lot kind of

(05:50):
crashing in on me during a pretty formative era of
my life. I'm interested, what was your relationship with your
friend and her family subsequent to her father passing away. Yeah,
that's a good question. So we stayed really close, right
at the beginning the beginning of high school. I went
over to her house every weekend. My parents brought them food.

(06:13):
We really were sort of on a sort of a
grief a grief huddle, the my myself with their family,
and then slowly we it was like we had that
trauma bond that was so intense, and then slowly we
had different ways of coping. And my way of coping
was to sort of like buck up, get good grades

(06:34):
and just dive into perfectionism and achievement. And my friend
that I was with, she had a different experience, and
she ended up leaving our high school and her herd.
Her journey was very different than mine. She ended up
sort of cutting ties with all of us because she
needed to do her healing in a more isolated way.

(06:55):
And we didn't we lost touch until I until this
book came out. Actually, that was the next question, So
you reconnected. What were her feelings about you telling her
story in the book? Oh, my gosh, I was. It
was the thing I was the most afraid about. That's
how persistent the idea in my head was, I can't
steal this story from my friend and her brother and

(07:17):
their family. And of course Intellectually, I knew my grappling
with death and grief, and this event in Hawaii was
a huge part of my therapy. But I still that
that pernicious idea that I was borrowing their their story
from my own. It persisted, and when the right before

(07:38):
the book came out, I reached out to her and
to her brother and we were all three on the
beach together when her dad drowned, and I sent them
a copy and I let them know what their father
meant to me, what their family meant to me, and
they just they had totally taken me in. We've gone
on another trip together, and they were a family who

(07:58):
just accepted me, and I wanted them to know that
that love and what what the acceptance from another family
can mean to an awkward kid can be totally life altering,
and that I certainly wish that her father hadn't died
and we hadn't gone through that. But I don't regret
being being one of the witnesses. I don't regret the love.

(08:21):
And part of the cost of that was I was
there when a horrible thing happened. Okay, just to clarify,
you went on another trip while you were still in
high school or since you've reconnected. I'm sorry. We went
on a trip before we went to Hawaii the spring
bright before we've gone on a ski trip together, and
so I felt very I felt just accepted and unfolded

(08:42):
into their family in a way that was just remarkable.
And really it really did a lot for me because
I didn't feel that same kind of love and acceptance
in my family for whatever reason, and it was really
a wonderful thing to land there. Okay, Now you talked
about in high school subsequent to this tragic event me

(09:03):
having perfectionist tendencies in retrospect, were those always there or
was it black and white? After this event? Then you
became a perfectionist. I would have told you that I've
always been like this, but recently my mother sent me
all my old report cards, like from first and second grade,
and I have this idea that I was always like

(09:24):
a straight A student, like real diligent. Not true, not
true at all. In second, third and up through fifth grade,
I had lots of bees, which is funny because when
I look at it now, when by the time I
got to high school, a B was anathema to me,
A bee was a failure. So I think that supports

(09:44):
the theory that there was something about that trauma that
happened right before high school that just turned all my screws,
and getting a bee was just absolutely devastating to me,
and I worked really hard not to ever have one
high school, college, graduate school, and then in law school. Okay,
you know, since you're so honest in the book, you

(10:08):
talk about your own physicality, you talk about your own
sexual experiences, so certainly there's a lot of opening as
a result of years of therapy. But you do say
that you did have relationships, you did have sex in
high school, and so that seems to be at odds.

(10:28):
How do you explain that? You mean, how how it's
not the case that I had no experiences until I
got into therapy. And well, I guess what I'm saying
is to the if you look at it just on
a factual basis, you're saying that you are inexperienced sexually,
you're not feeling sexually, but statistically, you had had sex,

(10:51):
you had relationships. So how do you explain the fact
that you did have those? Oh, sure in high school.
That's when I senior year of high school was when
I first became sexually active. I had a boyfriend, and
the whole thing, the whole relationship, from the very first day,
it was just laced with betrayal and high school drama,

(11:12):
and he was always cheating on me. And so while
yes I did have those physical experiences, I felt like
I had to have sex with him or he wouldn't
be my boyfriend, which is a really tricky way to
go into a relationship and not so great and myself
esteem and my sense of myself as as being someone

(11:32):
who was allowed to pick a partner or pick a boyfriend.
It didn't that would have never occurred to me. I
had to take whoever liked me, and this kid liked me,
and even though he cheated on me, I had to
just figure out it seemed like it was my problem,
not his. In other words, I remember thinking senior year
around prom time, well, if I lose some weight, if

(11:54):
I go tanning, if I toss up my big Texas hair,
then he'll stay with me and be faithful. It became
my problem to solve his cheating, and that was like
not very satisfying. We'll say that, Okay. One thing you
emphasize in the book is that men were not hitting

(12:16):
on you, and you did not feel attractive. You would
go out with your friends and men would interact with them,
but not you. In retrospect, with all this insight from therapy,
what do you think was going on there? What I
think is that I would go out with my friends,
and I think I put out a vibe that basically

(12:38):
said don't touch me, don't talk to me, don't look
at me. And it was totally subconscious because I'd be
with my friends, I'd be dressed up, i'd wear lipstick.
I there was nothing physically wrong with me. There was
no reason I don't I wasn't aware of sitting there
with a scowl on my face. But I think that
all the all the subconscious layers of unresolved grief and

(13:01):
spear of attachment, all the things I hadn't learned how
to do in high school and through college, I think
I ultimately just put out a vibe. It was like
almost like an invisible fence, like just don't don't go
there when it comes to me and when I look
back and I think about nights at these bars in college,
or when my roommate from college and I at the end,

(13:23):
we traveled through Europe, everywhere we went. These men loved her,
and I couldn't. None of them would pay any attention
to me. And when I think about it, I don't
have a single memory of looking any of them in
the eye. I think I was really, really, really shut
down and really repressed, to the point where I couldn't
even look a strange Swiss guy in the eye just

(13:46):
to say hello, Okay, you mentioned your boliemia. Can you
tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, So
I started throwing up and engaging in all kinds of
beliemic shenanigans. When I start it, I started seventh grade.
It was March of seventh grade, so I was like thirteen. Now,

(14:06):
you say you went to a girls high school? Was
it a girls junior high to middle? In middle school?
There were boys there and then they separated. We separated
at high school, and so it was the first time
I did it. I remember, I remember feeling I probably
wouldn't have used the word pressure, But what I was
aware of is cheerleading tryouts were coming up. This was

(14:27):
seventh grade. It was you know, it's Texas. If you're
not going to make the cheerleading squad, that's a real problem.
So cheerleading. I was also very into ballet, where, of
course the standards of having a body the minute you
get breasts, you can't be a star ballerina, and I didn't.
I was always I was not obese. I was not
an obese child, but I was chubby and fleshier then

(14:51):
I wanted to be. I wanted to be a bony ballerina.
I wanted to be like Kate Moss, and that would
have been enormously unhealthy for me and my body type,
maybe even for k Moss. But so I remember thinking, well,
I can't control my appetites. But I had read little
teen books about believing gymnasts and seen some ABC after

(15:13):
school specials, and I was like, well, I'm gonna try it.
That'll that fixes the problem. If I can't control my appetite,
I'll just control what happens when I've lost control with
my appetite. And it felt like this is a pretty
good idea. But on some level I knew it was
very messed up because it was total secret. I didn't
tell anybody. I knew not to say. Oh, I discovered
this great trick for losing weight. But that started in

(15:36):
seventh grade. Okay, A couple of things. In retrospect. Do
you believe same sex education like you had in high
school good thing, bad thing, good for you, not good
for you. I think it was good for me. I
think that I'm really torn. Here's the here's what I
believe were the pros. The pros were it really really

(16:00):
really cemented my own idea of myself as a feminist.
And when you go to an all girl high school,
there's no pretending to be dumb, because you don't want
the boy next to you to think you're like a
buzz kill or not girlfriend material if you're acing physics.
So everybody worked really hard. The downside of that is
there's a lot of pressure. But also and an all

(16:22):
girls high school, every leadership position is held by a
woman or a young girl, right, every every student council member,
and all the ideas that are generated about what we're
gonna do here, it was all girls. So I think
that that really instilled in me something really important about
understanding who can be in charge, who can run the show.

(16:46):
I mean, that's great for a young feminist, that was awesome.
But by the time I got to college and I
went to a giant state school Texas, A and M.
There were boys everywhere. I hadn't sat next to a
boy in math class since I was thirteen years old,
and I didn't know how to be just friends. I
didn't know how they just like, go have a meal
with a boy. Everything was the date felt like a date,

(17:07):
and I just I it took me a long time
to find some ease in friendships with boys because we
I didn't have access to them all day long, all
through high school. Okay, Now, one point you make in
the book was you had a dream to go to
an Ivy League school, but you ended up going to
a state school for financial reasons. To what degree did

(17:30):
that negatively impact you and possibly still negative impactly? Um,
you know, I thought, I've had some I've had some lingering,
like longing for a different kind of college experience. It
sounds ridiculous because I'm forty seven years old. And one
thing I did for myself was when I finished with

(17:52):
my undergraduate degree, I thought to myself, I mean, I
don't know what you do with an English degree. That
was one of the things I thought. And the next
one was, if you're gonna walk around being resentful about
where you went to college, do something about it. So
I did have I got a master's at the University
of Chicago, which is not Ivy League, but it was
close enough and had the Gothic walls, it had the

(18:13):
harsh winters, and had the really smart people. So I
went and did that sort of as an amends to myself.
And luckily now I've I've done enough in my life
that no one cares where I went to college. But
it is part of my story in that I remember
that longing and it's it's something that I still think
about from time to time. Okay, this is glossed over

(18:35):
in the book. So you went immediately from college to
graduate school where you off and your graduate degree is
in what my graduate degree from the University of Chicago
is in humanities. So, first of all, for those people
don't know, Universe Chicago and we can define what an
Ivy League schools, but certainly elite, unbelievable and I've actually

(18:58):
been there. But since you were going for humanities, you said,
what would I do with an English degree? What was
your plan? What to do with the humanities degree? That
is such a good question. That's where my parents were
like humanities, Um what And my thought was I'll do this.
It was a one year terminal Masters, and I thought, well,

(19:18):
I'm gonna go. I'm gonna dabble in all the humanities
and figure out which way to go for a PhD.
And at the end of the program, all of the
members of my my class there was like maybe twenty
seven of us in the Humanities department for that year.
Everybody was either going to become a teacher or a lawyer.
And I still wasn't sure, so I took more time off.

(19:41):
I just went. By the time I got to the
University of Chicago, I knew so many people who were
all a b D all but dissertation, and they looked
really smart and really unhappy, like really unhappy, and I
was like, I was worried that the pH d route
was going to be really lonely and that no one
would ever read it. Who's gonna read my PhD? I
couldn't picture it. I knew someone who was doing like

(20:02):
images of women and chessboards and medieval literature, and I
was like, this is what I'm gonna do with my life,
and it just didn't feel right. So I kind of
wandered for a couple of years after that until I
too settled on law school. Okay, just because you bring
up debt in the book, did you have a debt
from the University of Chicago? Yes, I did, and that

(20:24):
was a very sobering experience. You know, you differ for
the song. I was able to defer for the summer
for some reason because I didn't have a job. And
then once, you know, I get a job, I got
a I got an apartment and I was living a
whole Mary Tyler more in the city thing. And then
that that first bill comes and like, please remit your payment.
It was like four hundred and twenty three dollars, which

(20:45):
was insane. That was like half of my first paycheck.
And it was very, very sobering, and I thought it
was worth it. But it's it's I really feel for
people who are struggling with student debt. It's it's not
a joke. Okay, So many years did you take off
from between graduate school and law school between? I graduated

(21:05):
from the UFC and nine and then I matriculated in
law school in two thousand. Then what do you do
for the two years in between? I went to d C.
I moved with some friends to a group home in Washington,
d C. And I took a job. We called it
a mix job because it was not a career position.

(21:25):
And I worked for a company that helped law firms
retrieve legal documents from recalcitrant judges. It was it was
just like sitting on the phone all day trying to
find documents back. This is before the internet was Could
you could do it? All? Right? And then I moved
back to Chicago, UM and I was I worked for
the University of Chicago as an administrative assistant with a

(21:48):
master's degree, still thinking I don't know. I wasn't ready
to let go of the PhD. And I needed one
more year. I worked for a professor who was a
PhD and statistician, and that killed the h D dream
killed it dead. And then I went to law school.
How did you decide to go to law school? Well,
I was when I was working at the UFC. There

(22:10):
was a woman there who I just I loved her.
She was a little bit younger than I was, so
she was I was probably twenty five and she was
twenty four, and she was married, and she was smart,
and she was studying for the l set and she
was gonna go to law school. And she just she
had this plan and it looked so appealing to me.
And around that time, I had a boyfriend and we

(22:30):
broke up and I was so devastated and I was like,
I need a plan, I need something to do. And
I had that kind of feeling around the breakup where
where I was convinced this is where I started realizing
I may die alone because the relationship fell apart and
I couldn't imagine how I could fix whatever inside of
me had made that relationship go wrong, or picking a

(22:52):
person who wasn't right for me. And I was like, well,
if I'm never going to have a good personal relationship,
if I'm never going to be able to get the
for the romance part of my life in order, then
I'll go to law school because it will give me
so much to do. I'll just grind myself into the
ground and it won't matter that I don't have a
boyfriend and now at least have money and social power

(23:14):
and people will at least be like, well, she's got
this great job. And it was like a consolation prize decision. Okay,
because it also comes up in the book you talk
about the status of your law school and the ability
to get a job subsequent graduation. How did you feel
about the law school you went to. Was that the
one you chose or did you try to get Did
you apply to a Smoker's board of law schools? What

(23:37):
was your comfort level there? Oh? My god. I dreamed
of going to Northwestern Law School in Chicago or the UFC,
and I also knew I didn't have the els AT
score for it at that time. I don't know if
it's still like that, but at the time I was applying,
which would have been the els AT score was everything.

(23:57):
And I'm a hustler and I'm a beast when it
comes to making good grades. But I can't do those
tests in a way that would get me into a
school of my dreams. So I sort of had to
decide how I was going to proceed with this. And
one of the things I decided was, Okay, if I
just get in somewhere, the deal is, I just have
to be the best there is. I just have to

(24:18):
I have to be number one in my class, or
at least I didn't think number one. That's not true.
I thought I have to be in the top ten percent.
If I'm going to be at one of these law schools.
That's not top tier. Okay, you do end up number one.
I have to ask how that happens. Are you that smart?
Are you that hard of worker? Is the competition not

(24:39):
as stiff or all of those things? Give me your take.
My take on it is number one. I had come
out of the graduate program that I've done at the
University of Chicago. It was so hard and so intense,
in part because I'd come from Texas a and then
which is not it would just it, frankly, isn't as

(24:59):
rigorous as what was going on at the UFC. I
was plopped from Texas into Chicago all of a sudden,
like one week's reading would be for one class would
be like four or five scholarly articles plus Uncle Tom's Cabin,
which is a nine hundred and seven page book, And
that was one class, and I was taking three, and

(25:20):
I was I almost drowned, like in the in the
pursuit of just trying to get it all straight. And
I didn't feel like I was very good at what
was happening in graduate school. So by the time I
got to law school, I was like so well trained
on reading a ton and just working really hard and that.
The thing about law school as it was taught at Loyola,

(25:42):
it was all black letter a lot. If you memorize it,
you've got it. And so I didn't have to like
make up theories about Lakhanian mirror stage in Uncle Tom's cabin.
I had to memorize what's the rule of perpetuities? How
would you apply it? And I could wrap my hands
all the way around it, and I think that And
also I just that's all I did. I did not

(26:02):
do one. I said no, no, no to social things,
and it's I didn't have a life. I just studied. Okay.
The book opens with you with a moment of existential angst,
which is really I've never seen it described as well,

(26:22):
we're on paper, you're at the peak of your life,
and emotionally you're crashing. This is before you start therapy.
Can you tell us about what you were feeling? Then? Yeah,
I remember that day so vividly, the day before the
real loud crisis in my head became full blown and
not just a low grade drum. I had gone up

(26:43):
to school, you could go. It was during the summer,
so I was working at a like a lof term
as an intern, and you can go up to school.
You go to the burst's office, you give them your
I D. And they give you a card and tells
you your class rank. And I have this little white
card and it says number one out of two seventy
two out of one seventy two. And I felt this
moment of like shock and euphoria, like oh my God,

(27:05):
like oh my God, like all the ramifications of that,
all my hard work paid off, and I can work
anywhere I want in the city and maybe even in
a different city. And I felt euphoria. By the time
I had taken the elevator down and walked to the sidewalk,
I felt I had suicidal ideation, like, well, you did it, Toots,
But that's all you're gonna get. You can work really,

(27:27):
really hard, and you can ace all these exams whatever,
but you can't have a best friend, and you can't
have people over to your house, and you have no
idea how to have a boyfriend, and you never will.
And that the thought of all of that made the
victory of the valid potential Valectorian. It made it feel

(27:47):
so hollow and so fraudulent in some way, because I
had done it to hide and so I think that
I I think that. So then the next day what
happened was I is driving around and it was just
like getting louder and louder, like your number one, You're
totally alone. And I knew that those were linked, and

(28:07):
no one else in the world knew that the way
that I knew it in my bones, and I just thought,
am I going to kill myself? Should I kill mice?
I was like, wait, should I? Is someone in my position,
like I'm I'm having the Socratic method with myself, right,
Is someone in my position who's just gonna work hard
to make money for some corporation, doesn't have any idea

(28:30):
what her two hearts desires are? Is that a person
who should kill herself? And when I had that question,
I was like, oh my god, I'm in trouble. I'm
thinking I just I should die it just I could.
I could see the disparity, and I was so I
was so clueless about how to pull out of the

(28:50):
despair that I was in, and I could imagine it
going lower and lower and lower. And that's a person
that I'm grateful that the pain was so scary that
it made me willing to check out some therapy. Okay,
I just want to say, because people tend to paint
with a broad brush, and once you dig deep, the
reality is a little bit different. You did not. Let's

(29:12):
go back to subsequent to this traumatic event, just before
high school. You essentially never had a close friend. You
didn't have people come over, you didn't have your group,
you were isolated. That's a good point in high school.
I had so high school's right after the events of
of Hawaii, the traumatic event, and I did. I had

(29:32):
close friends, but I couldn't hold on. I could, you know,
go with the crew and we go to the park
and we'd underage drink and I'd go to the dance
with my friends. But I felt like I was very
far away, if that makes any sense. I felt like
the whole me wasn't there. And maybe that's because I

(29:53):
had the sense of I had all these secrets. I
had a secret eating disorder, I had a secret I
had a sense that I could never talk about Hawaii.
I could never say I was scared. I could never
admit to all the wonderful, bubbly Catholic girls that I
was in school with, I couldn't admit to them that,
like I think I may be not believing in God
right now. Um, so I had the sense of partners

(30:16):
because of all the things I held back. But I
did I did have friends like I. They loved me,
but there was a part of me that they couldn't reach.
And I got more and more isolated as the years
went by. And in college I had I had a
very close best friend and we ran around together and
it's and and then she was able to transition into

(30:37):
adulthood and I'm still going to school. And once I
got once I moved from Texas to Chicago, so by
then I was twenty two. I just didn't know. I
was so shut down. I could do small talk and
I could chit chat with people and fairly extroverted. That's
always been true. But in terms of being a true

(30:58):
person who could be vulnerable and do the things of
a friendship, I just didn't have it in me anymore.
I didn't know how to do it. So common int
with all these experiences, you're going to overreaters, anonymous or
whatever by the exact a group as you can tell me,
tell me when you started that and what that was.
Experience was like, yeah, so that actually saved my life.

(31:20):
At the time I was in college. I was a sophomore,
and all the pressures of I had to get a
four point oh so far I had a four point
oh in college, and now I'm starting my sophomore year
and there's a lot of drinking and I'm I'm not
great with that. I just felt really uncomfortable. I was

(31:40):
scared of getting fat and drinking in Bolimia are a
really bad We're a bad combination for me. Maybe it
works for other people. Um, And so I got really
scared because I was starting to not be able to
hold onto everything. I was starting to binge during the
day and I used to just binge at night. And
I skipped a class. I skipped an English class, which

(32:03):
never in my life, never never had I ever skipped class,
certainly not my beloved literature class. And I realized I
turned in a paper. Then I was writing a paper
after I skipped class, and it was terrible, and I
was like, I didn't I didn't have the energy to
make it right. And I just kept binging. And I
went to get rid of the food and I fainted

(32:25):
in the shower and I was like, oh my god.
I was nineteen, and I thought I'm going to die
doing this. I'm a very dramatic person, but I was like,
I was like, this is dangerous. This is very dangerous.
And a friend of mine in high school had gotten
into a twelve step program for alcoholism, and she suggested
that I go to the one for eaters. And I

(32:46):
was like, but I'm not fat. I thought I had
to wait until I was obetes. I didn't even know,
and she said, why don't you just check it out.
People who are believe it can go too. And so
then I started going to meetings, which was great because
they taught me, they gave me some skills. I work steps,
I had a sponsor, I got the coins and that
stuff is all really great. But I also treated it

(33:06):
like a secret. I didn't tell my roommate knew because
she's like, where are you going on a ninth at
nine thirty on Saturday morning? Every Saturday morning. So I
told my roommate, but I never wanted to talk about it,
and it just became another way I had a secret
from the world. I exchanged the Bolivia for the meetings
as a secret. Okay, but in the when you go
through the steps, don't you have to make amends to

(33:28):
people and therefore interact and reveal that you're in the group. Yes,
and I did make a mint, so I made him
in my roommate. Um, bless her heart. I stole so
much food from her. So I had definitely made amends
to her and to my family. And there were you know,
there was some uh friends on there too, and I
definitely told them. But by then, like when I had

(33:49):
to go back to my high school. I went back
to my high school because I'd stolen money when I
was a junior and I was in charge of the
parking lot fees and I just took some money and
of course I had I took a check and I
had interests and I walked in the building. I'm now
I'm probably right before I moved to Chicago, and I
ran into my trigonometry teacher and I was like, I

(34:10):
just blurted. I was like, I'm the I'm a member
of a twelve step program, and in order to stay sober,
I have to give you this money because I stole it.
And she was like, uh, let me take you to
the office. And she's like, I don't know what to
do with this money. Um, So I did do that.
But I think that I, you know, I wasn't open.
It wasn't Nobody ever asked me a follow up question
like how are you doing? Do you still go to meetings?

(34:32):
I think I just blurted it out and then went
back behind the curtain because I didn't. I was ashamed.
I was super ashamed of what I'd done, of being
a being nineteen years old and going to twelve Step
meetings like some old dude from a A on TV.
And I kept it still very guarded and very under wraps. Okay,

(34:54):
now it's through oh A that you ultimately connect with
the therapist. Can you tell sad story? Yeah? So two
pieces of that. Number one is the summer. So after
I find out my class rank, I'm starting to sort
of like Frey at the edges emotionally, and I'd go
to my meetings, my little twelve Step meetings, and I

(35:16):
would just cry and people say are you okay? And
I'd be like, yeah, I'm fine, just kind of like
I don't even know what to say. What do I say?
I'm I'm first in my law school class, and I
kind of want to die it just I didn't know
how to do that. And people started recommending their therapists
to me, and I was like, I'm not going to therapy.
I don't have any money, first of all. And then

(35:37):
finally this woman was like, please come to dinner with me,
and I didn't want to go. I was like, that
was not something I didn't do. The fellowshipping very well.
I didn't want to do that, and so I went
to dinner with her and she just looked, you know,
like when you run into someone who something's changed. Like
I was like, did you fall in love? Are you pregnant?
What's going on here? She's wearing lip glass and her

(35:58):
eyes are bright, and she just seemed lighter. And she said, oh,
it's my new therapist. And I was like, oh, here
we go again. And she didn't even really She said,
you know, he could really help you, and I was
like yeah, yeah, yeah, and she said, well he does
groups and they're really cheap. And I just seized on
the word cheap and I said, what do you mean cheap?
And she's like, it's like one third the cost of

(36:19):
an individual. And she started telling me about her group.
But really what sold me was what I saw in
her eyes and what I could see about her being
because everyone had everyone loves their therapist and wants you
to go see their therapists. But I saw something in her.
Plus it was cheap, and so that sort of convinced me.
And then when I went to my first meeting, I mean,

(36:40):
I went ahead and called him because I thought, well, okay. Oh. Also,
she told me right before we left, like you're standing
at the the exit of a restaurant, She's gonna go
one way and I go to the other. Off the
top of her head, I don't even know what made
her said say this. She said, Oh, he's really happy.
He just got remarried, and he smiles all the time.

(37:00):
And something about that just so captivated my imagination, like remarried,
he knows what it's like to lose love and a divorce,
and he smiles. And I just became convinced that this
therapist could help me. So I made an appointment and
I go see him, and I sit down for my
first appointment, and I knew him. I had seen him
in meetings meeting meetings when I was in graduate school,

(37:24):
and I immediately thought, oh, my god, he's gonna tell
me he can't be my therapist because he knows me
from meetings. But he didn't actually recognize me, and by
the time I told him where we've been, he said,
that's not a reason for us not to work together. Okay,
And you saw him three times before you went to
the group which we inspired, you know, in that prep

(37:46):
of three times. Oh my gosh. He was so weird.
He was so weird, he was so confident. I would
tell him two little lines about like a relationship i'd
have like the guy that I dated in high school
who did on me a lot and smoked a ton
of pot, and he would so then he just said, oh,
you like addicts, you love alcoholics, And I thought, well,

(38:09):
I don't know. That seems sort of aggressive. Um. I
didn't disagree, but I thought that he was being pretty
forward and pretty copy um. And part of me didn't
like that, and part of me loved it, like I
felt so seen, and the fact that he could pick
up on the patterns in my life helped me know

(38:30):
that I was kind of a type in some way,
that he'd seen women or men like me, and that
he he had my number. I knew that when I
mentioned I was first in my class and that I
have I was BLIEMI recovering Beliem it. He just seemed
to be He just kind of looked at me like, ah, okay, okay,
so what do you want? He just kept asking me
what do you want? What do you want? And what

(38:52):
I really wanted was the way that I phrased it
back then, was I wanted to be a real person.
I wanted to like exhale around other people and not
constantly be striving to make them happy or get the
good grade or be the best. I wanted to just
be a person. I wanted friends to just stop by
my house and me not put any makeup on or

(39:14):
do anything. I just wanted ease and casualness and real
deep attachments. And I really wanted a boyfriend. And I
told him all that, and then he kept saying, what else,
what else? And I was almost annoyed because I was like, listen,
Mr Perfect, And I could see his degrees on the wall,

(39:34):
and they were fancy. They were Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, Harvard.
I was like, listen, Harvard, if you deliver on those things,
then we can talk about what else. But I didn't
have this bucket list full of I want to be
a poet, I want to travel the world. I didn't
have any of that. Let's deal with the basics here.
So I was intrigued by his confidence about what he

(39:56):
saw in me. And then at the end of the
first session, he said, I can get you where. We
can get you where you want to go. If you
join a group and you disclosed to the group every
aspect of your relationship, life, every aspect of love, friendship,
all of it. If you can turn it over to

(40:16):
the group and commit to the group, we can get you.
We can get you married, we can get you friends.
You want babies, it's like babies, Like, let's just get
me a hygienic boyfriend. I was not there yet, but
he was really I thought it was really overpromising to
be frank. Okay, so you show up for the first
day at the group. What's your experience? Oh my god,

(40:39):
Oh my god. Well I was really happy that right
before my last that that third session when he's Dr
Rosen is like, and that's not his real name. Everyone
thinks it is. It's not that last session, Like, with
two seconds to go, I had the wherewithal to say, wait, wait,
what's going to happen to me when I start group?
And he did that. I'm so glad you asked, and

(41:01):
he said, every single one of your secrets is going
to come out. And I felt like someone had just
like shot an arrow through my heart like terror. I
didn't even I didn't have in mind like what secret
it was. But I was like, oh, oh my god,
so afraid. And so then I go into my first session.
And this will tell you something about how little, how

(41:24):
few boundaries I had. The first thing that someone says
to me, a man in the group across the circle
from me says, top or bottom, I know he's talking
about sex, and I it didn't even occur to me
to to say, why are you asking that? Or I
don't have to answer that, or who are you or

(41:44):
why don't you go first? I was just like, uh okay,
uh top, Like I did not know that. I think
that says everything about my state of mind and my
state of people pleasing, because I was like, you want
to know, I'll tell you anything you want to know.
And all these years later, I still go to group.
I've seen people come in, men and women deal with

(42:07):
that kind of hazing, as I call it, in so
many different ways, and I just didn't. I did. I
did my thing, which was try to deliver and I've
seen other people say I'm not going there with you.
I'll tell you later or maybe or we've got to
do some more work before I tell you how I
want to have sex. So it was like from the
very first second, it was like go time. Okay, there's

(42:31):
a lot of stuff you reveal, so for people who
haven't read the book and maybe sound like I'm really
digging deep, but it's right there in the book. One
there's a focus on your breasts and that they are large,
and you say a couple of things, one that you
were brought to sleep, be that you wear two bras,
and this comes up in therapy, So what's going on there?

(42:54):
I that that that absolutely did happen. We still talk
about breasts all the time, which to me, I would
never be comfortable doing the work I needed to do
around my breasts and how I feel about them and
what they mean to me and what they mean to culture,
and what they mean to my lovers or my children
or anybody else. I would never be able to do

(43:15):
that work. If I was not in a group with
other women, I would not be able to sit across
from an authority figure like a therapist and just talk freely.
I just don't. I can't imagine it. Maybe I could,
I can't imagine it. But because I go to group
where there's three or four or five other women in
the circle, and all of us have different relationship to

(43:37):
our breasts, right, it happens to be My story is
that little Christie Ballerina in me is so sad that
I have breasts and I don't have the super flat chest.
It's like I always think of that as like, that's
my anorexia talking the part of me that like I
just want that bony, flat Margot Fontaine Ballerina chest and
that's not what I have. I have like double ds.

(43:58):
And so there's other women in my group who are
deeply ashamed, deeply ashamed that their breasts are really really small.
There's women in my group who are sad that they
were big, they had children and now they're small. And
how complicated that is and how how that's tied to
my understanding of myself as a woman, as a sexual being,

(44:21):
as someone who's safe in society or not safe based
on my breast. It's been incredible and one of the
things we excavated in the This was probably my second
year I had had an experience in high school where
I participated in this. I it was like one of
the dances, like a spring fling dance, and we were

(44:42):
out this part. I was drunk. I've been drinking proudly, Zeema,
I'm not proud of that, but that's what happened. And
I was buzzed and the boys were like paying attention
to me, and I had a strap the stress my day.
I don't know where my date was. He was somewhere off.
All the girls were off somewhere, and I somehow wandered
over to all the boy They've got their dip in
their mouth, they've got their beers, they all are dating

(45:04):
my friends. And one of them walked over and he
stuck his hand down my dress. And I remember laughing,
but also like not like just knowing like something was happening,
that the laughter was covering it like shame. It was
shame and violation, and also like I don't know how
to stop this, and somewhere inside I knew I didn't.

(45:27):
I wasn't like the other girls who had self esteem
or didn't have boys hands down their dress. Um, And
then one by one they did. I think it was
like five couple of them more than once, and I'm
just laughing, carefree. I liked the attention. I liked the
None of these boys really paid that much attention to
me was my perception, and that was something that came

(45:51):
out in group early on. And when I shared that
in group, every single woman in the group shared a
story about her breasts. Not all violations, some of them
just feelings. And I can't even tell you how much
less alone I felt, which sounds like not like that
doesn't sound like therapeutically cataclysmic, but it was. It was

(46:15):
to me. I'd never had these conversations. I never knew
I could say what had happened to me and have
like watch women's heads nodding like yeah, yeah, that happened
to me something like that. I feel that way too.
That's where I started to change and become a different
person by connecting with other people. Okay, let's get into

(46:38):
the apples. Tell us the story with the apples. Oh
my gosh. So when I started my twelve step program,
and when I was nineteen years old, I had a
sponsor and she told me she's like you. I was like,
the wisdom and twelve step program is to find a

(46:58):
sponsor asked someone who as what you want and ask
them how they got it. So I get the sponsor.
She's this nice woman, she's a housewife, she's real gentle.
She seems very sane around food. So I said, how
do you eat? I want to eat the way you eat.
And she said to me, I eat anything I want
in any quantity, at any time, any pace. But I

(47:19):
don't need any sugar, no corn, no flour. And there
was a couple of other things on there. And I
was like, Okay, that's it, and she was like yeah.
And so somehow in my brain I turned that into
I can eat. I made a list of maybe ten
foods I would let myself eat, and it was like
turkey and cabbage and cheese and fruit, and I was hungry.

(47:43):
Looking back now, I can think to myself, maybe at
night I binged on apples because my body needed more food.
I would I would drink skim milk at nights, or
I would have yogurt. But it was a very diety deprivation.
Even people who are on diets e way better than that.
But at night I would be really hungry, and I'd
be so scared that I was gonna binge on something

(48:06):
problematic like ice cream or bread or chips. So I
would buy these apples, and early on, maybe before I
left college, I would have like two apples at night,
and I remember my roommates saying, that's weird. Who eats
two apples? And I was like, leave me alone. I'm
in a program. But by the time I was living
alone in graduate school, and even when I had roommates

(48:28):
in d C and then back to living alone in Chicago,
it's just like escalated. So by the time I got
to dr Rosen at night, I would eat. I would
eat anywhere from five. One time, I ate twelve apples.
And sometimes I call my sponsor back in Texas and say,
I just ate twelve red, delicious apples that cannot be

(48:51):
sobriety or whatever, and she would say, did you pick
up your drug, which she wouldn't consider, like flour or
sugar was the drug and apples weren't. So She's like
it's fine, and I was like okay, but nobody in
my nobody else. She was like this disembodied voice back
in Texas. No one in Chicago knew I knew I
did that it was super expensive. And I remember one night.

(49:14):
It was snowing, and I still, what do I know
about snow. I'm from Texas and I get in my
car and it's eleven thirty and I'm driving to the
all night grocery store on Broadway to get more apples,
almost at midnight, and I was like, this is as crazy.
This is like those movies where someone's going out to
get cracked. It said, I'm going to get apples, and

(49:36):
that's That was one of the secrets that that last
um individual appointment when Dr Rosen was like, your secrets
were gonna come out. I remember walking down the hall
of thinking, if they find out what I eat, I
am so screwed. And they did. Ultimately, the that is
revealed and you get a prescription to make us take
uh make a call? How did it come out? And

(49:57):
then tell us about the prescription in the ultimate phone holes. Yeah,
this was that. When this session went down, I thought
that Dr Rosen was a mad genius because we were
not talking about food. We I swear we were talking
about Rory's ferret. We were not talking about food, and
out of the blue, He's like, Christie, why don't you

(50:18):
tell the group what you ate yesterday? And I was
like my whole body was like inflamed. I'm just like
I felt like sweat was pouring down. I was like,
I can't, I can't. I jumped. I had taken my
shoes off, and I jumped out of my chair and
I was like hopping around the circle like kind of
making a fist and pound punch in the air like
I can't, I can't, I can't, And everyone is like

(50:41):
what is wrong with you? And I just said I
just can't. I'll tell you anything, I just can't do it.
And then I sat down and everyone's like you have to,
Like the way that you're acting is proof you need
some help, and so, you know, I tell them the
first part. I couldn't look anybody. I like like grew
my fists into my eyes and I'm like okay, And

(51:03):
I said it real fast, like an auctioneer, like cabbage
and cheese, milk. And I got to the part where
I told them my dinner and I paused for a
long time and someone's like, what is what is the problem?
And I was like, well, there's more. And I'm sure
they were expecting like biscuits or I went out and
got more a chocolate cake and I was like, I
ate some apples, five apples, actually it was seven apples,

(51:27):
and and I just waited for like the ceiling to
fall in. And when I took my hands away from
my eyes, oh, Dr rose And said, can you open
your eyes? And I was like nope. It's like okay, well,
why don't you try or pray for the willingness? Right?
So I looked at everybody and nobody was like scorning me.
Everybody looked curious and compassionate. And somebody said, do you

(51:53):
think you're hungry? And I bat it that a way
I wasn't ready to eat differently. And then Dr Rosen's
prescription was He's had me look at another group member, Rory,
who had her own food struggles. He's like, look at Roy.
Can you call her every night and tell her what
you ate? And I was like, why don't I call
her tonight and I'll tell her what I'm gonna eat tomorrow.

(52:13):
He's like, no, no, no, no no, We're not trying
to keep you from doing anything. But at the end
of the day, tell her what you did so that
you can let go of the shame. I said, but
what if it's like ten apples every night. He's like, great,
that's what you're calling her for. It doesn't matter. And
I looked at Rory, like, why does this woman who's
a busy professional want to hear this apple monologue every night?

(52:36):
And she just said, great, sweetie, I'll tell you my
food too. And I was like, she was like, she
just doubled down on me. And I was so afraid
in the first three nights I called her At nights.
I just bawled afterwards because I was so scared of
letting go of the secret. I'm scared of change, and
I knew this was big. This was big. To tell

(52:58):
someone every day about my food. That was the river
I had never crossed before, and it was scary. It
was scary for weeks, but it was those first three
nights I was just beside myself. But it did get easier. Well,
the question, obviously is twofold one. Did you continue to
eat that volume of apples? To do eat apples at
all anymore? Um? You know the volume. The volume came down,

(53:23):
but it took about and not consciously like I would
go into group and say, well, I've been calling Rory
about my food and my apples and I'm still eating
you know, I'm still at four or five six, and
even like it doesn't matter. It's your job isn't to
fix your apples. Your job is to tell Rory what
you eat. So I'm my fine um and the volume.
I want to say it was maybe nine months before

(53:44):
it sort of came down to after dinner I'd have
two pieces of fruits, which is as my roommate in
college said, it's still weird, but within the realm and
to this day, my kids love apples and I just
can't do them. I can not apple pie maybe, but
not a straight up apple I have. I've eaten my
lifetime share and probably somebody else's lifetime share too. The doctor,

(54:14):
a typical of many therapy experiences, gives prescriptions. Could you
talk about some of the prescriptions? One is obviously called
Rory about the apple. When you're interacting with a guy
who has a boyfriend a girlfriend, could you tell what
he tells you to do there? Oh my god. When
I look back at this, I'm like, you know, I
kind of I didn't have to do everything he said.

(54:35):
But here's what Dr Rosen said. I I love this boy.
I love him so much. She's in my law school
we have like this great connection. But PSC has a
girlfriend and he's very unsuitable in so many ways, but
I just loved him, and so I knew I was
going to be going out with him in a group
of people that night. So I'm in group and I'm like, ah,
the dreamy boy, and and Dr Rosen puts on his

(54:58):
thinking face and he's thinking, and I think he's gonna
tell me something very interesting about myself or some insight,
or maybe he's gonna say I think you shouldn't go.
And then I was gonna be like, fuck you, I'm
totally going, and he didn't. He said, tonight, I want
you to be honest with the smoker. We called him
the Smoker. I said, okay, what should I tell him?

(55:20):
And he said, tell him the truth that you are
a cock teeth And everyone in my group like the
sucks in the air in the room, and I think
Rory and Carlos were both like, she can't say that,
Dr Rosen, what are you doing? And I, because of
my trying to please Noess, I'm like, I'm pissed because

(55:43):
he's given me something that I don't think I can do.
And and in the end, so we go off that night.
I go out that night with the Smoker and We're
in this cab with this other guy, and I'm thinking,
am I going to do it? And part of me
I wanted to go back to group and to show
Dr Rosen, whatever you throw at me, I will do it.
I am here to play and I had the pride

(56:07):
of that. And and plus this guy did not like me.
I mean he was not This was never gonna go anywhere,
and I was sick of that. So I lean over
and I tell him, I said, you know, I'm a
total cock tease and like and then I like look
out the window. I'm like, oh my god, what have
I done? What have I done? Like? Why am I
doing with this crazy therapist of mine? Has said? The

(56:28):
other guy in the cab was sort of like what
And the the guy that I loved, the Smoker, he
didn't really react. Um. And when I got in bed
that night, I was like, I cannot believe I did that.
But part of me too, that was part of me.
The other part of me was like I did have pride,
like that was probably an insane thing to do, and
that guy is gonna have a story about me for

(56:49):
the rest of his life if he remembers it um,
And I was like, what if he tells someone at
law school that I said that? And then I was
just like, I don't care. I'm on my side. Dr
Roe isn't is on my side. I don't know what
it's gonna take to get well. I thought he was
going to prescribe me some pills, maybe some trasdone, and
I would be out of there. And that's not how
it worked out. And I decided that this was like,

(57:13):
this is gonna sound very cheesy, but there's something like
this is fun, this is this is interesting. I'm at
least interesting now right like I've done something crazy, but
at least I'm interesting. At least I'm alive. Okay. Reading
the book, it doesn't seem like in real life you
are a cock tease? Was he just saying that to ultimately,

(57:36):
you know, challenge you or in retrospect, are you a
cock tease? Or were you? No? That is one thing
that I wish. I wish I could time travel and
go back and ask him if he knows what a
cock teas is because I was not. I was a
single woman. I was by then people knew that I
did very were well in law school because by then

(57:57):
everyone knew I don't know how, but it was people
knew I was the top spot, right. So so I
had a reputation as a smart girl and a driven girl.
And that's fine. But but when I think about like,
I don't I and then my heart of hearts, I
think that Dr Ross doesn't know what a cock tease is,

(58:17):
and I think he just gave me something provocative to say.
I mean, I do think maybe that's unfair. I mean,
that's too harsh. What I did have a pattern of
doing was chasing unavailable men, and he was just the
next and the Smoker was the next in line. He
had a girlfriend he was really loved and she was
so beautiful, and so I think that he was trying

(58:38):
to break that pattern. But I do think often of
that word cock tease. I wasn't. I don't. My understanding
of the word is I was just a nice girl
who I gave him my notes. At this guy at
the Smoker, I gave him my notes. Sometimes we'd have lunch.
I mean, I'm a chatty person, so we would like
make fun of our teachers. There was a girl in
our law school class who would bring her money. We

(59:00):
would talk about the bunny girl, and none of this
seems like salacious. So I don't know why that word,
And I wish I could go back and excavate that
and figure out why that word if it just seemed
provocative and or if he was just like saying if
I would do it? Okay, The word in the group
is is if you're really doing well, you'll graduate to

(59:23):
have a second group and your goal, your goal is
to qualify for a second group. One tell us about
your desire to do that too. Aren't you thinking on
some level this is gonna be more money and you know,
we'll just sort of leave it at that. Yeah, so
what's going on there? Yeah, they're definitely And certainly my

(59:45):
experiencing group is different from my groupmates. But I was
watching and there were people in my group, but when
I started, three of the group members were in other groups,
and I was sort of like, huh, you get to
home twice it felt like they'd been anointed and they
were chosen. Like that's a real big trigger for me,

(01:00:06):
the idea that you have someone has been chosen for
something that I haven't been chosen for. That will get
me every time. And so while while I'm in my
first year, wrapping up my first year, one of the
guys in the group, Carlos Dr Rosen, has this intense
conversation with him and invites him, invites him to join
a second group, and I'm like, huh. It felt like

(01:00:27):
he was going to be laughing me, and he was
more beloved, and I just lost my mind, Like why
don't you offer me this like deluxe treatment? It felt
I wasn't really thinking about what the logistics of that
would be or what it really meant. Um. I just wanted.
I wanted all the opportunities that everybody else got. It

(01:00:49):
was like super greedy like that. And by the time
he offered it to me, there was a point at
which he thought I was ready. Oh yeah. It was
right after I had a sex dream of about Dr Rosen,
or actually it wasn't about Dr Rosen. I had a
very satisfying sex dream, one of my first ever about
Luther Vandross who Because of that dream, I will love

(01:01:11):
forever And I go to group and I talk about
it because I see it as a symbol of my
burgeoning sexuality. My repression is going to fall away. Look
what Luther and I did, and I was so proud
of myself. And at the end of the dream, Dr
Rosen says, oh, that dreams about me, and I was like,
I was so offended. I was like, don't ruin my dream.

(01:01:32):
And so then we we go around and round about
this dream and whether it's about him. I didn't know
that Freudian people or therapists always think their dreams are
always about them, um, And I didn't really. I was
just mad. And then at the end when I finally
accepted out, like, fine, Dr Rosen, I wish you would
go down on me. I just gave into it. Then
he proclaims I was ready for a second group. So

(01:01:54):
then I was like, oh, you tricked me. You tricked me.
But by the time he offered that, I had had
an internship with a law firm where I got paid
like big law firm books. So I had that cash
just waiting around to just double up on my therapy. Okay,
what is different about the second group from the first?

(01:02:16):
Oh my god, the second group was so scary. It
was so scary. It was all women. And when I started,
one of the things Dr Rosen said to me was
I went to my first group and it was like scary.
There was a woman in there who was like a
buddy of mine from from the twelve step program, and
she already like I knew her in in our relationship,

(01:02:38):
and then I get there and she's like already friends
with everyone in the group, and I felt like I
had intruded. I had a sense she didn't really want
me there. And the women were just larger than life.
They were incredible and complex and loud, and they got
into a fight and they talked about sex I'd never
heard of, and I was I felt like I was

(01:03:00):
a little bitty kid, like a four year old who
was sitting at the table with the adults. And I
didn't know what I had done, and I wasn't expecting
it at all. I thought it was gonna be this
cozy women like a womb, and it was not like
that at all. And I wanted to leave from the
second I got in there. And one of the things

(01:03:20):
that I thought was, why is this so different? And
Dr Rosen said to me when I went back to
my when I went to the next week, I went
to my former group, and I was like, that sucked.
I didn't like that for one second. And Dr Rosen
said to me, I think you have more problems with
women than you do with men. And I protested that vehemently.

(01:03:41):
I was like, are you kidding? Look at the way
these men treat me, look at what I've done, blah
blah blah. And he just like sat there, like I
think what I think. You can you think what you think.
But that's that's my take on you. And it's taken
me about fifteen years to realize. I think that he
was right. I think that he was right. Okay. One

(01:04:01):
thing you mentioned, and it's really very interesting in the
book is being a people pleaser. You tell us about
being a people pleaser, where that came from and how
you made progress there. Yeah, I I wonder where that
came from. I think it's it's some of its culture.
Some of it is kept Texas Catholic. Being a girl

(01:04:22):
and being a pleaser. There's so many affirmations you get
from the world by being a pleaser. People like people
who are trying to please them. My teachers loved me,
my friends who were the recipients of me trying to
please them. You know, I was always the designated driver
I you know, I would volunteer for things, thinking well,
if I'm the designated driver, then I get to go

(01:04:43):
to the party and they can't leave me behind. I
was always motivated by this fear of abandonment, and so
it's like over functioning and a lot of relationships. And
one thing I loved about when I got to group,
it was so obvious from that first day when I'm
just trying to be the valedictorian group therapy and answering
questions about my sex life with total strangers who were men,

(01:05:04):
and I think I was I thought that when you
went to therapy you had to do pure excavation. What
does your dad do, what does your mom do? How
did this impact you? And we do a little bit
of that, but what what happens most often and probably
seventy five percent of the time, we look at the

(01:05:25):
relationships that we're having in the group in the moment
with Dr Rosen and our peer groupmates, and it all
comes out right there, so it doesn't really matter as
much like, well, it was your mother's Swedish background part
of the reason why you can't spend a penny, maybe,
but what what about now? And so we would get
into group and I remember one time I had a

(01:05:47):
huge fight with Carlos. He had asked me to help him.
He was doing something at home, like something decorating, and
I had a law school exam the next day and
I didn't want to go help him, but I went anyway.
And I was so resentful and I was so mad
and didn't he know how to test? And why didn't he?
So we go into group and I'm getting ready to

(01:06:07):
open my mouth to say I was so resentful that
I did that just to please him, just because he's
my friend, and I thought he wouldn't love me if
I said no, and he Carlos opened his mouth and said,
you know, Christie came over to help decorate, and she
really fucked up the wreaths and I was like, excuse me,
and we were I was so mad. I was like,

(01:06:29):
what are you talking about? And he was they were
having a party and they we were stringing these like
ribbons on a wreath and I guess I didn't do
it right. He was like, I thought you were in
a sorority. I thought you could do stuff like that.
And I was like, wait a minute, no, I'm mad
at you because I didn't want to be there. I
had a test. I had a crim log exam, and
so we got to tease it out right there like

(01:06:49):
all like I didn't really want to be there. I
didn't set the boundary. I didn't do what I wanted.
So when I went there and I did a sort
of subpar job, and and I could have avoided all
of if I had just said, this weekend doesn't work,
I'm happy to help you and my exams are over,
because I would have been. But I was always so
afraid if I ever said no, I would never get
another invitation, and not only that, then he would like

(01:07:11):
stop being my friend, which is so immature, But that
was me, at age, with a year of therapy under
my belt, going to do these wreaths when I had
a legit reason to say I can't do it today.
Can we find some other time for me to help
you decorate your house? It's crazy? Okay, you're very analytic. Uh,
bubbly's got a bad connotation. But let's just say you're

(01:07:34):
upbeat and you were very articulate. What would be the
difference between the conversation you and me are having pre
therapy and now we just wouldn't have this conversation. What
I think I was so good at before therapy, was
not seeing opportunities, so I would never have to step

(01:07:55):
up like I would have. I would have never written
a book. I would have just never I could I could.
I had blinders on and I didn't see opportunities professional
personal We just would we just it would have been
impossible for us to have this conversation. I just would
have blocked the opportunity. But long before we'd ever sit

(01:08:15):
down together. But you mentioned that you were chatty with
the smoker where you did you have the same personality
now just different content or have you become more valuable
as a result of therapy. I've definitely become more valuable, definitely,
But some of it, I mean, I've always been sassy,
and when I think back to my lunches with the smoker,

(01:08:36):
I think about, like how I tried to connect with him,
and most of what I recall was bringing to bear
my sass and my analytics to really like make fun
of other people, including myself. So there's a ton of
self denigration. And I would I would tell him like
I would maybe by then by I was dating a

(01:08:57):
little bit, like going on blind dates, and they were
always they were fine in the in the real world, honestly,
they were just fine. They weren't love connections. But I
would like play it up and I would tell him
about these guys and it was so maybe that is why,
maybe that's why Dr Rosen called me a cock tease,
because I would, you know, we would play out these

(01:09:18):
conversations that I was always the butt of the joke.
I was always the poor smart girl who's dating dating
the boy who's doesn't have a wallet or camp pay
his rent. And it was just sort of like, not fully,
I wasn't owning any of my competence or my for
my full self. You know. It was like I was

(01:09:39):
sort of playing at jackass because I thought it was entertaining,
and I'm sure it was. I mean, there's there's plenty
of that to do, but there's it was my only mode. Okay,
As a result of therapy, you end up having relationships
to use. You use the vernacular, so I'll repeat it.
You have a relationship, extended relationship, and then you ended

(01:09:59):
by saying you're no longer gonna suck dirty dick. Tell
us about that relationship and your revelations there. Yeah, I
think about that a lot, and I think about like
my I think about when I think about what I
put up with in relationships, what I thought I had
to do to be a person deserving of relationships, I

(01:10:21):
think about that exact thing, and I think about, you know,
I had a boyfriend and I loved him. I did
love him, and he did love me, and we were
really ill suited for each other, in part because he
didn't want to be in a relationship and I desperately
wanted a boyfriend. I wanted the works, I wanted brunch,

(01:10:42):
I wanted regular sex, I wanted presents on birthdays, and
he just wanted to play video asky video games. And
I kept thinking, as is my way, If I just
do it right, if I could help him snap out
of his bunk, or if I I could get him
to go to more of his a A meeting, will
He'll be this boy of my dreams. And it just

(01:11:04):
it wasn't the case. And when he got really really depressed,
like I am not proud of this, but I watched
him like wake up in the morning, drink a cup
of black coffee, didn't even have a toothbrush, don't know
where the toothbrush went. The cat, his cat would like
defecate in the living room. It just languished there and

(01:11:26):
I'm there, right, I'm watching all of this. I'm I'm
making judgments and thinking what am I doing here? Like?
Why is this what I think I deserve? What am
I doing? And there was one night where I thought, oh,
I know how I can fix this. I'm gonna I'm
gonna give him pleasure. And he hadn't showered in days,

(01:11:46):
and you know, a body isn't A body that hasn't
been showered has a lot of issues and you probably
don't want to be that close to it. But I
just was like gung ho, and that was really, like
you know they say in the pro the twelve stepper,
like that was a bottom. That was definitely a bottom.
By the time I went to group and reported the
first group, I was too scared to tell him because

(01:12:08):
if you say that out loud, I I gave my
boyfriend a blowjob when I didn't want to, when his
body was unwashed, and he didn't seem all that into it,
and my pure motive was to snap him out of depression.
You can't say that in therapy and not have someone
you know give you a side i and maybe suggest
you take different action. And so in the afternoon group

(01:12:30):
with the ladies, I told them about it, and they
did react as you would imagine, like, oh my god,
you have to stop. And it was that that helped
me let go of the relationship to like that very
basic thing that's like on like sex in the city, right,
the lesson over and over again, it's better to be
alone than in a bad relationship. But I had to
test that theory so many times and in so many ways.

(01:12:53):
You reference yourself is frigid? Uh were you? I think? So?
I think that I was scared. I think I don't
know what that Maybe that's not totally the right word.
But when I think about who I chose, I chose
a man who did not want to have sex. That

(01:13:15):
tells me that if I take the focus off him
and put it on myself, I chose a man who
didn't want to have sex. That tells me I don't
want to have sex. And I watched my once I
got closer to people, and I'm having relationships with people
in group, and I got a roommate, which was amazing,
and this wonderful woman from law school, and I'm able

(01:13:36):
to like participate more in the social world of my
law school classmates, and they're talking about they're wonderful getaways
with their boyfriends, and I can tell they're talking about
having hot sex, and I'm just like, oh, really, I
watched my boyfriend play computer games and I slept like
in head to toe flannel. I really do think that

(01:13:58):
there was a frigid be born of repression and I
just didn't have I hadn't come, I hadn't grown up,
and I hadn't learned how to do a relationship in
the way that I needed in order to be sexually
expressive and have a sex life that made some kind
of sense. Tell us about opera boy? Do you mean

(01:14:21):
the one I married? No? No, wasn't there a guy
his family was connected so that he could have really
good tickets? Yes? Yes, yes, Oh my gosh. Um that
so that relationship. You know, by then, each relationship I
had a harder time. I mean, each relationship got better.

(01:14:42):
I will say that each one got better, which is
exactly what should happen. And I was always very invested
in well, I'm recovered and I'm in therapy, so I
deserve a good relationship. So I started dating this young
man and he was sweet and kind and very well
connected and very wealthy, and that was a step up

(01:15:06):
because I had paid rent for my last boyfriend. And
what was strange about our relationship There were several things,
but one was there was no easy communication. For all
that I've learned by then, I've been in therapy, I
mean almost four years, and I've learned how to go
and do things and emote and have relationships. And here

(01:15:26):
comes this guy, and I felt like he was so respectable.
He was another one who had impressive credentials, and I
felt like I had just go along with what he
was doing, and like we had a we had a
situation where this is the best example. When we would
be intimate, he would always have to flip me over
so he couldn't look at my face. I don't know

(01:15:48):
what was going on. And what's really cringey about that
whole thing is I never asked. I never had a
sense of my own voice. And I remember I would
be in his bedroom with my face and his pillow
because he flipped me over, and I'm like, I don't
want to be doing this I and well, maybe I do,
but I at least want to know what's happening and

(01:16:09):
why aren't we talking about it, and I couldn't believe that.
I couldn't use my voice just to say like, hey,
what's this about for you? Or this is kind of
hot maybe, but what's what is this about? Do we
always have to have sex this way? I didn't say
any of that, and it made me feel like, the
hell is all this therapy for it? This is what

(01:16:29):
my sex life is? And I hung on here we
go again because I didn't want to be alone because
now now I'm thirty four and that's even older than
when I was thirty and doing dumb things with men,
and it just felt like every time I felt like,
this is my last chance, and if I can't make
it work, there's no other men. It's not like I
lived in a teeny tiny Mayberry. I lived in Chicago.

(01:16:52):
There were men everywhere. But I just had this terrible
kernel belief that this was my last chance and if
I didn't make it work, it was because I hadn't
worked hard enough. Okay, talking about the end of that relationship,
Oh my god, this was so dark, and it seems
like when I was writing it, I was like, this
seems like it's not real. But we're at this fancy

(01:17:15):
club in Chicago, and or we're walking into the health
club and his friend stops us in the parking lot.
He like, it seems like you know people who you know.
He was a doctor, So all these doctors all know
each other and they're all at the same places, and
so they're these guys are chatting and they're talking about
stocks and whatever, hospital politics, and all of a sudden,

(01:17:37):
the friend asked my boyfriend like, oh, tell me about
your upcoming trip. And I'm like, what trip? And it
turns out he had this whole trip planned that this
friend knew about with another woman. And I'm like, this
can't be. Is that his sister? Like you know you do?
All those things were like how thick is my denial?
It's so thick. I was like, well, maybe he's going
with his sister. Well maybe that's part of a bus

(01:18:00):
this thing to Cancun, and that's not where that's that's
not the case. And when I find it's like it
was snowing and it was like January, and I was
just like, I give it, I give up. This is done.
We're done. And I just like walked back to my
car tell us who he was going with. That was
a key element yeah, yeah, yeah. He was going with

(01:18:22):
this like super hot, like hot in a way like
I'm fine whatever, Maybe I'm hot, maybe I'm not. But
this one who was like New York, she was super chic.
They all knew her. She was one of those you
know that there's always a woman who's in the boys circle,
who's like everybody loves her, like she's cool as hell.

(01:18:42):
And she's also she had this great hair, and she
had this funky eyeglass company, and I'm just like, I
cannot compete with that. And they were going to go
off to Cancun and we give him if I just
turned around, I get in my car, and he he
was sort of like, what's wrong, Like hmmm. I mean,
there were so many clues leading up to this that

(01:19:04):
I mean, I can't even hardly blame this guy because
look at me, Look how I look what I took.
Look how I trained this guy to think I would
be cool. I'd be totally cool with this, and needless
to say, I'm proud to report I was not, and
we did. We did break up that weekend. I think
that was the first that's one of my only I
initiated the breakup, Thank god, you know, I have to

(01:19:26):
ask you may or may not know what ended up
happening with that guy and that woman. Did they would
get together? Did he ever get married? You know? I
heard a couple of years ago I was that I
was listening to a band in Hyde Park and someone said, oh,
you used to date so and so and I was
like yeah, and they were like, oh, yeah, he just
recently got married and he moved to a different part

(01:19:46):
of town. And I was like huh. And I was like,
you know, you don't want to act too interested when
you hear about your ex, like oh, who did he marry?
And Um, this person didn't know. They just heard the
fact of his marriage. And I'll confess I googled it
to try to find out. But I don't know, but
I certainly wish him well. And um when I when
the book was being published, my husband said, oh no,

(01:20:09):
what if his wife reads this and figures out it's him?
I was like, how would she do that? She was like, well,
what if he flips her? I'm like that was his
problem that and it's her problem, is not my problem. Okay.
How many years after you start therapy do you start
to date your husband? Okay? So I started therapy August

(01:20:32):
of two thousand one, and I started dating my husband
in March of two thousand seven. Okay, that's a long time.
How did you ultimately connect with him and why did
that work as opposed to the previous relationships. Oh my gosh.
So we worked at the same law firm, and when
I first met him, we were paired up as like
associates who were supposed to shepherd the summer interns. So

(01:20:55):
what that means is we had this unlimited budget to
go do stuff with these young Harvard and UFC and
you know, these young kids. So we'd like have to
organize dinners and we went to this shop and or
this diner in Chicago that only sold cereal, and so
what we spent a lot of time together and that summer.

(01:21:15):
I thought he was interesting. He was single, and there
weren't that many single people in our firm. Everybody's like
hooked up or married or whatever. So I'm always like,
I was always trying to make myself like the single guys.
But I thought he was real boring. He seemed to
talk about golf a lot, and he didn't have a TV,
and he didn't have a car, and I was like
what is this? What? What? Like I I didn't get

(01:21:36):
what he was doing. And then we went to that
we went to one of those places. We took all
the summer associates to that place. You know, it's like
a Brazilian steakhouse where there's just like meat. We're there
and he told this crazy like I thought of him
as like super buttoned up conservative. He was from l
a Um and so I just I couldn't quite get

(01:21:56):
a beat on him. And he told this crazy story
about his dad's colon oskar Be and the shaving thing.
And I was like, huh, Like he was like a
little edgier than I thought he would have like a
story and it was like really funny, and it's such
a dry since if he like, I'm more of a slapstick,
say something outrageous and he just like deadpand it and
I was like huh. And so that nothing really ever

(01:22:18):
came with that, although he did ask me to dinner
shortly thereafter that I was dating. I was dating the Flipper,
and I was like, oh, I said yes to my husband.
He wasn't my husband yet, right, So I say yes
to John, thinking oh, this is gonna make the Flipper
feel like, oh, I'm hot, he's gonna want to be
with me. Maybe I will want to look at me
when we have sex because I'm going on a date
with another guy that didn't happen. And then I broke

(01:22:41):
the date with John because the Flipper didn't care, and
so John and I mean, the Flipper and I broke up.
Oh no, before that, John invited me to the opera
with a group of people, and I was like, all right,
I'll go to the opera. It's January and Chicago. And
I went to tell the Flipper, thinking he's not gonna care,
and he didn't really care, but he did bite me
to see the exact same opera from his parents, like

(01:23:04):
third row seats, two days before John and I were
going to go. So I was like, that's interesting, Maybe
he does care, Like that's what that's recounted for love
in that relationship. And so I went to the opera
twice that week, same opera, two different seats, and and
then when the Flipper and I broke up, I was
just like, what about that guy John, Like maybe he's

(01:23:26):
not so boring, and also maybe boring is okay? Like
I had enough drama. I didn't need super flashy or
fancy like what. It was just a nice guy and
I we hung out one night with other people from
the law firm, and he just had this like quiet
confidence and every question I asked him he answered thoughtfully

(01:23:48):
like and I was throwing real random stuff at him,
like what's your religion? He was like Jewish. I mean,
I was raised Jewish and this is in the middle
of the House of Blues, And so I just was
impressed by his candor and his sort of there's just
no fluff about him. And then I think I think
at that point, I was just so tired of all

(01:24:09):
my shenanigans and all the dumb things I'd done that
I was just ready just to shoot it straight. And
I think I drew him to me and and it
just sort of worked. I've done I've done enough work
to know I'm not hiding. I'm not pretending. I'm certainly
not going to tell you I'm not in therapy. We're
just gonna we're just this is who I am, and
like it or lump it because I'm not doing this.

(01:24:29):
I'm not doing this not have a voice thing like
ever again, Okay, h is he boring? Um? Is he No,
I don't think. So it's funny when I say Dr
Rosen's theory is if you're bored, it's a synonym for lonely.

(01:24:50):
So now when I think, I put that through my filter,
like I'm not bored with John, like he's I like
his mind, I like how he thinks. He thinks so
differently from the way that I do. So if we
spend time together, um, which we do because we're married
and we're raising children, I find him. I find him
dynamic because he's not doing anything the way that I

(01:25:13):
would or mostly the way I want him to. But
I do not find him boring. Okay. One of the
big points in the book is feeling good about about
yourself to ultimately try to get a job. It's scadding,
and you do. Now. I'm certainly where the firm because
a good friend with Jason Flam's father's Joe Flam. Okay,

(01:25:34):
but at this point you no longer work. It's scadden, correct,
So I'm interested being an attorney myself. I haven't practiced
for decades, but you know, you ultimately achieve the goal
you set right after graduate school. Where are you at
with practicing law today? Today? I'm a government lawyer. I

(01:25:56):
work full time and it's after you know. It's a
similar thing where once I left the University of Chicago
studying humanities, by the time I got to Loyola, it
felt like kind of not a walk in the park.
That's overstating it, but it was like, very straightforward, what
we're supposed here to do. I have that similar feeling
about starting my career at scant where it was just

(01:26:18):
so much coming at me and just thrown into the
fire and hours and hours and hours of work, some
of it boring, some of a document review, but just
really just thrown in the deep end. And now as
a government lawyer, it's like, oh, I understand what we're
doing here. I'm supposed to do my job. I plug in,
I do it, I go home. It's legit nine to five,

(01:26:39):
which is awesome. Now it's it's not it's not sexy.
It's not on the cover of the Wall Street Journal.
But it works for me and it allows me to
mother and to write and to you know, have dinner
with my family every night. And how did it end
its Scatton I had. I left there right in the session.

(01:27:00):
I had my first child, and it was So I
had my first child in two thousand nine, and things
were so grim, and I came back from my maternity
leave and I was working four days a week, which
was offered by the firm, and a couple other women
did it. But I could see the riding on the wall,
which was there wasn't a lot of work to go around,
like all the credit markets were tight, and so none

(01:27:22):
of our clients wanted anything. They didn't want us to
do anything, and I was doing a ton of pro
bono work, and I could just tell I was at
a disadvantage because I had been gone from eternity leave
and then I came back and I was part time,
and once things got cranking again, I wasn't gonna be
anybody's go to. I wasn't. I just I had I

(01:27:42):
always say I had fallen through the cracks um and
if I had come back full bore in a different economy,
it might have gone differently. But I could see the
writing on the wall. So then I just that's when
I said I should get out before before everything dry
drives up. So I went to a smaller firm for
a little while, and then eventually transition to governments you

(01:28:03):
like practicing law. Well, no, I feel like I'm supposed
to say yes. But the truth is there's I like.
I like. I like the part of law that it's
telling a story. I believe in storytelling. I love storytelling.
It's my favorite thing. And whenever you're writing a brief,

(01:28:25):
you're telling a story to the court, right your version
of events. I like that. There's so much more to
the practice of law. There's so much fighting, there's so
much haggling, there's so much bureaucracy. That part I don't like,
and that's more than six of my job. So and
I don't like the other thing that I have found
I have so little tolerance for. And this makes me

(01:28:47):
think I must not like being a lawyer. Is I
don't like dealing with all like courts where if your
font size isn't right, your brief is rejected, or if
you don't if you were two hours late. I mean, fine,
I'm all for deadlines, but like, there's so much pickyune
and judges have so much power over litigants and attorneys,

(01:29:10):
the fiefdoms and the egos that are involved. If you
don't like ego, you're in trouble. If you're a lawyer. Okay,
let's use the example of a more Towels. He was
a banker. His college professor, Yale said you should be right,
said no, no, I gotta go for the money. Then
he ultimately writes two books which are mega successful. So, hey,

(01:29:33):
has the book reached or exceeded your expectations and will
disaffect a future career plan? The book has done so
much more than I would have expected. I had no idea.
I had no idea what it meant to be the
first to tell a version of a therapy story. Like

(01:29:54):
the part of what I think the appeal of my
book is nobody knows anything about group therapy. They just don't,
So it's the first. And that I didn't know the
power of that. I thought it was. I don't know
what I thought, but I I didn't realize the power
of that. And to have Reese Witherspoon endorsed my book
and put her sticker on it catapulted this book so

(01:30:16):
far beyond my my wildest dreams that I I hardly
can believe it's even happening. And when I think about
I keep saying to my husband, I was like, am
I supposed to quit my job? Am I supposed to
be writing full time? And you know, he's he's like
the guy who's like, well, let's look at the spreadsheets.
Let's think about this, you know. And I'm sort of like,

(01:30:36):
my gut, my gut is telling me maybe we're moving
in that direction. But I don't think it's not a
foregone conclusion because you know, I carry the benefits. My
kids need braces. You know. I don't take for granted
that I have a decent, steady job that I like
to point out to myself when I'm like, oh, I'm
squandering my potential, Like what if you know, I'm working

(01:30:57):
on a brief for work and I'm like, oh, I
should be writing a novel or doing my next thing.
But the truth is I wrote group while I had
this full time job. So maybe it's part of the
secret sauce, and maybe it will preclude me. There may
be something for me as a writer about the compression
of time. The fact that I don't have as much
may make me a better writer. I don't know. It's

(01:31:20):
up in the air. Okay, you say you're the one
carrying the benefits. What's your husband doing? So he's still
at scadding, But what is he doing. He left scadding.
He works for a company. We just the federal benefits
felt like they were too good to pass up, and
so I've I've carried us all. But he does have
a job. He's he's a gainfully employed person. But is

(01:31:40):
he a lawyer still? Uh No, he works more on
the business side. He had gotten a j D m
B A and he likes the NBA side of that
much more than the j D because he's a smart man. Okay,
on the first night of Hanukkah is when we're recording this,
you're raising your kids Jewish. We do both. We have
both traditions and um so we get to do all

(01:32:03):
John's families obviously Jewish, and we've got all the Hanaka
stuff ready to go. And I personally love that. I
don't have any bags around Judaism, and I love you know,
all the symbolism isn't fraught for me because nobody shoved
it down my throat. So I'm way more pro Jewish.
But the kids also like Christmas and my family has Christmas,
so we just do it all. Okay, So you went

(01:32:27):
to therapy, you still go to therapy. At this point,
it's got to be like eighteen years, seventeen years, and
at one point you were going three times a week.
What do I know is a heavy therapy goer to
begin with, there's a lot of negative judgment on the exterior, Hey,
why are you going? Be you can talk to your friends,

(01:32:49):
see you have to stop? Have you experienced that NonStop?
Especially now, people say to me, wait, you went because
you wanted relationship ships and you got them, so why
on earth are you still going? And people love to
focus on the money I'm putting in Dr Rosen's pocket,
which I guess I get, but that also like obliterates me.

(01:33:13):
It oblorates what I've gotten, what I've decided works for me.
And when I think about it, to me, I'm like,
that's the best argument for staying. Because I had a
certain set of desires and un unmet longings when I started, right,
I'm still a person with longings. There's lots of things
I want, so I don't need group now to get

(01:33:35):
those things. And when I think about people have also
asked me all through this talking about the book, well
are your groupmates your friends? Are they do you consider
them friends? And that's a really interesting question, And where
I come down on that is, they're They're like a
third category that doesn't I don't have language for it.

(01:33:56):
They're more than friends. I'm friendly with them, I travel
with them sometimes, I take walks with them, whatever, have coffee,
do things outside of group. But they're more than friends
because they've seen me at my worst and they have
we have this tie, and so it's deeper than a friendship.
And I love my friends and I can tell them anything,
but it's not the same. They haven't seen me interact

(01:34:19):
in a sort of a close fish fowl like experiment.
They haven't seen me do this process and deal with
Dr Rosen in real time. And that intimacy that's built
up over time, that's something way deeper than friendship. And
I don't know. I mean, because I've been continuously going,
I don't know how you keep that going. I believe

(01:34:39):
I'm capable of deep intimacy inside and outside of group,
but I don't. I don't know how you keep that
going without the support of a group to sort of
go process all that. I've never done it. Okay, And
at this point is who is one of your goals?
Do you have close friends? Can people come to your house? Yes,
I'm so happy to say that that is the case.

(01:35:03):
There are if my doorbell rings, I it has happened
where someone stopped by. A couple of my groupmates actually
very randomly lived nearby. They'll stop by and they'll bring me.
The other day, someone brought me a copy of a
like at Chicago Tribune article because my book was in there.
So like, I thought you'd want this, I'm like, open
the door. I mean, the pandemic is a problem because

(01:35:23):
I can't invite people in. But there's the openness in
me that I know that they're my people and I
can be I can come right up close to them
with my full self, and they've done the same for me,
and that is that is worth every penny I've paid.
I don't care how rich Dr Rosen gets. I have
my friends, I have my life, I have my people.

(01:35:45):
That's what I wanted. Okay, So how many times a
week do you go now pre pandemic which has changed everything? Right?
We so we I zoom in for twice a week.
I'm in one group that meets twice a week and
we zoom in now. Okay, and are these the same
players that they started out or what degree are you
the life, and everybody else is new. Interestingly, in my group,

(01:36:08):
I am not the lifer. I'm about the mid I'm
the midlifer. There are four members, four members who were
there before I got there, and one of them is
a charter member. Started in the eighties and this group
or maybe it's ninety one. Maybe it's ninety one. Um
and so it's a very stable group. That being said,
people do move around. We had one member quit. We

(01:36:32):
had a group member die, which was really terrible and
really moving and an unbelievable experience. UM So people do
come in and out. But for the most part, the
core of like the there's four or five of us
who are sort of like where the where the pillars there?
And then okay, this begs the question was this is
this the initial group or was this the woman's group? Uh?

(01:36:53):
Is it half and half? Or how did it in
with one of the groups? Right? So I this is
the third group is in the book in part three.
It's the third group that I joined that meets twice
a week. There's one woman who was also in my
very first group, and I'm no longer I let go
of the women's group when I joined the twice weekly group,
and then once I had my baby. When I had

(01:37:15):
my first baby and went back to scadding to work,
I dropped the the Um, the original group, because I
just couldn't imagine having a baby and going to group
through times a week and working. Even I had to
cry uncle on that. So I've been going since since
two thousand ten, I've been going just to my twice
weekly group. And is your husband before you met him,

(01:37:37):
he'd been in therapy and subsequent theater as he had
any therapy, you know what he did some before we met,
and you know he it sounds like from his reports
he had a very positive experience, and he's he's always
supported me, but it's my thing, and he doesn't. I
am happy that he would never be the kind of
person who's like, well, I guess I gotta go to

(01:37:59):
At that being said, I think if I ever approached him,
it was like, I think we should go together, like
if something came up intractable in our marriage, or that
it seemed clear we needed some support. I have no
doubt he would be along for the game for that,
maybe even suggested himself, but he's not felt the need
since since we've been married. Okay, but I've had relationships

(01:38:20):
and I've had a lot of therapy. Well you're interacting
with somebody who say, man, they need therapy. Yes, well
that too, Like there are you know, that's true, there are.
And certainly I'm a person who has a tool, and
I think everybody's problem. You know, I have a hammer.
I think everybody's got a nail or whatever that's saying.
Is so a lot of times when I'll see, you know,

(01:38:42):
John struggling with something at work or with the kids
or I mean he's a very self reliance, very composed person.
But every now and then I'll think that would be
awesome if you could just if you had a group
or you could go and work on that, it would
I mean, I have a I believe in group, right.
I believe that catapults me and I've seen it catapult

(01:39:02):
me from one place to another. And I think, God,
what if John could do that and he could work
out this issue? And every now and then I say
that to him. But that's so so unpleasant for your
spouse to push therapy on you, Like I don't really
think it's holding him back, and he's certainly I'm either
living I'm either a living testament to therapy or I'm

(01:39:23):
not There's nothing I can say that would be more
compelling than what's happened in my life. So Dr Rosen uh,
he is an m D. He is a psychiatrist, which
begs a question. Has he ever prescribed medication for you
or other people in the group. Yeah, I've seen him
prescribe medication. I first got medication after I had my

(01:39:44):
babies and I was suffering with postpartum depression, and he
did prescribe drugs for me, and I used them to
get through that initial period of just I don't know,
getting through that early baby stage. Yeah, he definitely, and
I've seen him do it for other people as well.
How does this change? How's your therapy experience change your
relationship with your family? Yeah? You know, I think that

(01:40:08):
when my experience of being in therapy is that I
became unthawed and I became realer and more of who
I was, and that affected every single one of my relationships.
And I think I learned how does that boundaries and
speak up for myself? And so I learned how like
with my siblings, we used to, you know, whenever siblings
would talk, and we'd figure out what were you getting

(01:40:28):
mom and Dad for Christmas? And I used to just
go along with what everybody else said, but I think
I learned how and none of this was like super dramatic,
but I was like, I have an idea, why don't
we do this? Why don't we send them to Marfa?
Or why don't we send them to Vegas? Or just
just having a voice in all my relationships, And it
was mostly positive. I didn't have an experience where like

(01:40:50):
I got into therapy and I lost my family of origin.
Like I think I just became more myself and gave
more of myself to them. And do they judge you
for being in therapies? A lot of people say your therapy,
you're less than sure. I think they're well, here's the
thing my family is, So what's the word private or reserved?

(01:41:13):
I have no idea if they're judging me, We're not open.
We're not open at all. I am because I'm just
like all over the place. But that's an important value
to me. I have no idea what my parents think,
or my brother or my sister. They've never told me.
We don't have the kind of relationship where that kind
of sharing is even on the table, so I can.
You know, sometimes I think they must think I'm crazy, um,

(01:41:36):
and sometimes I'm like maybe they admire me, Like I
I really, I honestly have no idea. So how much
do you pay for one session? Today? One session is
nine bucks? Okay? Now you make the point in the
book when you start, you're in law school, you're borrowing
the money for law school, and then you borrow the
money to go to therapy. That must have have been

(01:41:58):
a big step. How to to take that stuff? Yeah,
I think I just once I I went, I knew
I could afford the first meeting. The first meeting was
at the time it was seventy bucks. I'm like, all right,
I'll go. Maybe he can tell me. I don't know,
I'll just go. And it wasn't like I committed for
a long term. But then once I understood group would

(01:42:19):
be seventy bucks a session, maybe it was even sixty five.
I think it might have been sixty five. And once
I understood the cost and it was gonna be monthly,
and I was like, I was curious, and he promised
me that he could change my life, and I just
felt like, well, what do I do? Oh? And I
asked him. I said to Dr ros I was like,
how am I gonna pay for this? And he said, well,
you're a law students and I was like yeah. He said,

(01:42:41):
I know other patients of mine who have talked to
their their institutions and there's like sometimes there's health care loans.
I don't even know. I mean, I get why he
knew that, but like, I'm glad I asked because I
went to talk to the dean of my school and
then there was a way to get a private loan
to cover healthcare expenses. And that's exactly what I did,

(01:43:03):
and best money I ever spent, ever borrowed and then spent. Okay,
you made the point earlier that everyone loves their therapist,
and I certainly know from experiences there's a better therapist
and worst therapist, and there's a fit. So my question,
are you now like those people? My therapist is the best?

(01:43:23):
Group is the best? And to what degree are you
saying that? And to what degree are your proselytizer, Hey,
come into my group where you should be in a group.
Oh my god, no, no, no, no. I did early
on recommend Dr Rosen, like just so convinced that this
these people and their issues with deprivation and intimacy. They're

(01:43:45):
perfect for group, and I would give them Dr Rosen's
number and they would they would have one conversation and
they would just be just it's not for me. They
didn't like him. One of them saw him one time
was like m hmmm, and I was so it like
offended me, or offend is not the right word. I
felt so like, oh, like, you don't love it like
I do. And I just decided. Then this was years ago,

(01:44:08):
this might have been two thousand two. I was like,
this is not for everyone. I don't know what anybody needs.
It is a real scary proposition to say, hey, come
do your therapy in a circle with six strangers. That's
that is not for everybody. That is not everybody's cup
of tea. I have I certainly have made it clear
that like, I enjoy what happens in my therapy, but

(01:44:29):
I haven't recommended him in years and years and I'm
not starting now. Then, when you did recommend him, were
you comfortable hypothetically that someone might be in your group
or was the rule that you can see Dr Rosa
but not in my group. Oh my god, yes, you're right.
I there were people who I was like, Oh, no,
if this skinny ass bitch comes into my group, We're

(01:44:51):
gonna have such a problem because I'll be so jealous
of her that what I do think that some of
that calculus early on was thinking, Oh, if some really
pretty girl comes into group and he's younger than I am,
and just that would just get very complicated. So that's
probably another reason I hadn't really totally consciously thought of that.
But I don't want some of these jokers showing up

(01:45:12):
in my group, and I don't get to say, Okay,
there's another thing you bring up in the book. Your
anger where you're throwing and breaking dishes. Was that situational
or did you have underlying anger issues that Dr Rosen
in the group helped you with. I think both. I
think it was situational and I think I had pent up.

(01:45:34):
When I look back now and think about what Bulimia
really was, I think it was rage and like, that's
such a violent thing to do, to make yourself throw up,
And I think, oh, in my mind, I feel like
that's rage. And so I think all my life I
had swallowed anger. I had the idea that good girls
aren't angry. And don't make mom and dad mad, and

(01:45:58):
try to be a good girl. And I had all these,
all these reasons not to feel anger. And I think
a lot of women have it, and since being in group,
I've learned a lot of men have it too. It's
very hard to know what to do with anger. I
had no idea, and so by the time I got
to group, and I had all this support and feelings
were encouraged and celebrated and lauded by the time I

(01:46:21):
got there and some of it eked out. Then I
just couldn't stop the flood, which is a really great thing,
but really terrifying. It was very explosive. Okay, so now
your book is both published and successful. The nature of
having a project with a company is they set up interviews.
As something becomes successful, there's further interactions. Some is just

(01:46:43):
hit and run. You get a one three minute segment
on TV. Forget that. Generally speaking, the people you've been
interacting with promoting the book, do they get you or it?
Do they want to go deep? Did they not understand it?
You know what, that's a great question what I learned
early on. I remember talking about this in group. I

(01:47:04):
was like, oh, my God, everyone has their own agenda.
Everyone in the group is laughing like yeah, Like some
people when I talked to them about the book, maybe
we'll talk for thirty minutes, and they seem to just
think it's a book about eating disorders. And I'm fine
to go there. There's plenty and there's plenty of material,
but I don't think of it as an eating disorder book. Um.

(01:47:25):
And then I always talk to someone else and they
would they wanted to talk all about privacy and privacy
and privacy because they were interested in all the complicated
privacy parts. And so I do think that people people
are obviously projecting into any book they read, but certainly
something about therapy. People who have had therapy, people have

(01:47:46):
such strong feelings about therapy and their therapists. I think
it might make this book a little bit right for
lots of extra projection and a lot. A lot of
times I get questions where the person seems to already
know the answer, and I can tell they're just not quite,
like when they're asking me about, oh, you wrote all
about your groupmates, and I was like, well, actually I

(01:48:09):
didn't write all about my groupmates. I wrote about I
didn't use composite characters. But I used my groupmates. But
I didn't tell why they were in therapy or what
they were doing. I said what they did for me
in my story, and that maybe that's obscured in the
in the narrative, but to those people, I'm just like, no, No,
that's not anybody's real name, and that's not their story.

(01:48:30):
It's my story and what they gave me. And have
you heard from readers. Yeah, I've heard from readers, and
I'm really so moved. I'm a huge reader myself, and
I've only reached out, like I've sent three tweets thanking
authors for their for their work. I've never written long
letters or d m s or whatever to authors, and

(01:48:54):
people have really told me really beautiful things about their
own life and what my story mento them. And it
has bowled me over. And I feel really lucky and
really humble that that that it could omit this to somebody.
And has your success change your personal interactions? Once again,
it's covid era with the outside, and has it changed

(01:49:16):
your interactions with the group, because it obviously is. Having
a success would, and a public success would affect people's
perception of your status in addition, your own personal assessment
of your status. Yeah, I think that the outside of group,
I have no idea because I never see anybody, although

(01:49:36):
I have. You know, sometimes my friends will text me
and they'll say, oh, I don't want to bother you.
I know you're busy being famous, like or they're like,
I saw a picture of Reef Witherspoon holding your book,
Sorry to bother you, And I'm like, no, I still
want to hear about the construction of your mudroom or
what kind of cookies you're making to get through covid um.

(01:49:56):
But that's been like little tiny ripples um. But in group,
it's been very interesting because I all the issues that
I'm bringing these days really are related to the book,
like oh my gosh, some trolls that x y Z
to me, or I'm going on Canadian television tomorrow. And
I keep thinking that the group is going to have

(01:50:18):
a backlash, like oh my god, shut up about your book,
but they just continue to be like study and loving
and um. The book is now a part of our
group because it has affected all of us, and I'm
the mouthpiece for this process that we're still engaged in.
And it's been really and they've all read the book,
and they've known about it since I started writing it

(01:50:40):
five years ago. So in some ways it feels like
a group project, and it's it's as much a part
of our group and the the fabric of the group
as members who have left that we still talk about
or things that have happened. It's like an artifact from
and of the group. And what did Dr Rosen say
out the book? If anything, he said, he's always been

(01:51:04):
very encouraging. One of the first things I said was, well,
I should do some research on like the history of
group therapy and I don't know theoretic underpinnings of what
we do here. And he was like, don't do that,
and I was like why. It's like, just tell your story.
Tell your story and don't try to be a scientist
about it, which I think was very good advice. That's

(01:51:24):
one of the great things about the book. Yeah, yeah,
Like I what would it would just be so different
and that's not my lane anyway, and when so he
read it all along, and I asked him to read
it when we sold it, and I said, can you
please read this as the therapist of all the characters
in the book to be sure that I haven't crossed
a line or just protect your patients and what I've

(01:51:46):
done in this book. And so he did that reading
for me, and he gave me a couple of pieces
of feedback. Interestingly, none of them about my groupmates, um,
two of them. Like one of them just about my parents,
like are you sure you want to say you live
in Dallas? I'm like, okay, why why? Who do who cares?
I'm not from Houston? And so then, um, when the

(01:52:07):
book was coming out some one day, so this would
have been like in August. The book came out in October.
One of the groupmates said, hey, Christie, asked Dr Rose
and how he feels about your book? And I was like, oh,
so I was like, how do you feel about my book?
And he he did his like therapeutic sighing and like
I feel I feel happy, I feel grateful, and I

(01:52:29):
feel proud. And that was like, that was like a
really great moment. I was really glad that my groupmate
prompted me. And somebody said, asked him how he feels,
like what if this becomes a movie? Asked him how
he feels about that? So like, okay, how do you
feel about the prospect of this ever being a movie.
I mean, this isn't all theoretical, right, And he said
I feel happy and I feel scared. So I was like,

(01:52:53):
me too. And since it's a line with Wes Witherspoon, uh,
traditionally she makes movies. Will there be a potential movies
or a movie in development? There's not a movie in development.
But I certainly feel like, you know, this has already
shot me into the solar system beyond my dreams. As
I said, so, I'm like every now and then, I'm

(01:53:14):
like I let myself dream, like, ah, wow, well who
could play me? I was on some webinar and someone
was like, everybody hood in the chat who you think
could play Christie? And people were saying like Sandra Bullock
and Julia Roberts, And I was like, that's so fun
to think about, Like I think, I think seven year
old Who's lost is not the best role for Julia Roberts,

(01:53:34):
but it's fun to dream about. Okay, Christie, this has
been wonderful. I could talk to you for days more.
These are the real issues as opposed to you know,
possessions or status, etcetera. So thanks so much for coming up.
Thanks for everything I appreciate being here. Okay, till next time.
This is Bob left six

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Bob Lefsetz

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