October 4, 2021 • 27 mins
This week Kat (@kat.defatta) is going solo for a conversation about the juxtaposition of joy. If you have ever been someone who becomes anxious when things start to align in your life, this one is for you. Kat explains why joy is surprisingly the most terrifying feeling that humans experience. And thanks to Brene Brown, we have some ways to combat this reflex in order to savor the goodness in our lives.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi guys, and welcome back to You Need Therapy. My
name is Cat and it's a really good day to
be here. You're getting a full episode of Just Cat.
Before we get started, a quick reminder that although I'm
a therapist, this podcast is not therapy or a substitute
for therapy. But it might, however, encourage you to go
(00:31):
to therapy, which I think is pretty cool, pretty exciting.
So if you've been around for a while, you probably
know a good bit ish about me, and if you're new, welcome.
I'm really happy you're here. Even though I don't exactly
know who's here, I'm happy that you are, and I
want to introduce myself a little bit. I think this
(00:53):
is an important thing to do because I created this
podcast to help us get thinking and talking about the
stuff that kind of scares us in our lives, and
you know, I think we needed to build a little
trust before we have a lot of those conversations. So
I want you to be able to kind of know
who's talking to you. And I don't want you to
blindly take what I say as gold. I don't want that.
(01:14):
I don't want that for my clients. They don't want
that for people in my life. I definitely don't want
that from you, guys, because one what I say is
not goals. I do say you some great things sometimes,
but like sometimes I can't be wrong, um And I
want you to be able to wonder and be curious
about that stuff and to this podcast is something that
I want to help encourage you to find your strength
(01:35):
rather than rely on other people to help you feel
or no things like I want it to build you
up rather than like build whoever's talking up. So my
name is Cat. I have a license therapist, and I
live in Nashville, lived here for a really long time,
and I own a small group private practice called Three
Courts Therapy. Shout out to my girls Janie and Stacy.
(01:56):
They are two therapists that work with me. And if
y'all are in Tennessee and need a good therapist, you
can visit our website Three Courts Therapy dot com and
send us a message and we can hook you up
with a good therapist if you live in Tennessee. Otherwise
we cannot work with you, bummer, but we got to
follow the law. I also am more than my job.
(02:18):
I'm a really curious human. I I love, love, love, love,
love to learn, and I loved the question. I love
to wonder and I love to think. And I got
my degree, my graduate degree at Vanderbilt a while ago,
I don't know how many years ago, And I often
wish I could go back and sit in some of
my classes again with the life experience that I have now,
(02:39):
because I'm like, I love to learn. I'm like, I
wonder what it would be like if I could go
back with the human I am now and see how
I would learn and pick up and absorb things differently.
I just want to know what would be different, what
would I hear different, what would I soak in more?
Because back then, like in grad school, I was fighting
a lot of stuff. I was fighting remnants of a
neating disorder for the majority of the time, I was
(03:00):
fighting a raging exercise addiction, and I was fighting a
lot of anxiety that I actually didn't know existed. And
with that, with the learner I am and the wonderer,
I also am a planner. But I'm not the kind
of planner that you might be thinking of. I'm very disorganized,
making itineraries and schedules. That kind of stuff like stresses
(03:21):
me out, Like I cannot. I mean, I'll do what
I have to, but that's not the kind of planning.
I like to plan things to look forward to, so
I always have something on the schedule, and you know, honestly,
often the looking forward to it part beats the actual
thing I planned. Sometimes I plan so I don't have
to worry. And I used to worry a lot, like
a lot, a lot, a lot. I worried what people
(03:43):
thought of me. I worried about how things would go.
I worried about where my life was going to take me.
I worried about the freaking seam of my stock not
lining up properly, and honestly, I still worry about that,
and I dealt with my worry by trying to plan.
This is a true story. I don't know if I've
said this before and hear it. When I was a
little exchanged the same pair of tennis shoes like seven times,
(04:03):
I don't think it was actually seven, but a lot
of times because I was worried about the fact that
they didn't fit right, like which felt better like I
couldn't even figure it out. And as a therapist, I
often sit with a lot of people who worry as well,
and I share some of my experience, not only because
this is a nice segue into where we're going today,
(04:23):
but because I want to bring the humanness into the
conversation we're about to have. Worrying is a thing that
we do. Not all of us, but a lot of
us do it. And like I think everybody at some
point has worried about something. Now, while it definitely doesn't
mean something's wrong with you if you worry a lot,
and if you're really anxious and all that, it also
doesn't have to be this way. But in order for
(04:44):
us to shift things, we need to uncover what it
is we get out of worrying, Like, what do we
get out of this? And don't even say in your head,
I get nothing, because if you got absolutely nothing from it,
you wouldn't do it. We don't do anything for no reason.
It might not make a lot of sense, but you
get something. Now. What I have found to be very, very,
very interesting is that a lot of people who are
(05:06):
doing all of this worrying actually have really great lives,
Like their lives are kind of going well. A lot
of life's greatest warriors aren't the ones who are in
the midst of chaos and the most setbacks and tragedy.
A lot of life's great warriors are people who kind
of have the things that they have wanted, which sounds weird,
and maybe it sounds like you. If it sounds like you,
(05:27):
then get excited because that is what we're gonna be
talking about. So we're gonna jump right into it. I
bet some of you guys have, well probably all of you,
I would think, um have heard the phrase I'm waiting
for the other shoe to drop. I cannot tell you
how many times this has been said in my office
of somebody sitting on my couch and being like, it's
just like this is happening, this is happening, and these
(05:48):
are all going great, and I'm just waiting for something
bad to happen, just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And before we get into that, let's talk about what
does that phrase even mean, Like, where does that come from?
What does that mean? Like the shooter drop, And it
means that you're waiting for an unexpected like inevitable, bad
thing to happen. And it comes from which I thought,
this is interesting. It comes from back in like the
(06:09):
late nineteen early twentieth century, how like apartments were in
New York City, I guess. They were really thin, and
the bedrooms were all located like right above each other.
So where your apartment is you're seeling, is somebody else's bedroom.
And so it was like a thing where you would
hear somebody like take off their shoe, and then once
you heard them clunk one shoe down, you you're like, oh,
(06:32):
waiting for the other one, and the other one falls
down and you're like, okay, one means another, I guess,
so it's an inevitable thing that's going to happen. Basically, Now,
when I think about this experience, I think about like
just being on the on edge, like on the edge
of my seat, you know, and like just sitting and
and worrying and playing out like a bad scenario. Bad scenarios.
(06:53):
You're creating them in your head and you're like hurting
your own feelings. Like that's what the experience reminds me of.
It's not an exceptionally good experience to be in or have.
So the question would be like why do we do this,
Why do we tend to feel this way when things
are going okay, especially and why do we feel the
need to brace ourselves for like a fall, when technically
(07:16):
we're balanced and technically we're on solid ground. If everything's okay,
why can't we not do this? And when we do it,
why can't we just make it go away? Another way
to put that would just be like why is it
so hard to sit in the goodness of life? Pretty
simple but weird question. Weird question that like why do
we even have to ask that? So if we come
(07:39):
back to a phrase that I've mentioned before on here
called second dary gain, it will help explain a little bit.
A second day gain is when we're doing something that
like doesn't actually make sense or help us, but like
we get something out of it, so you know how
earlier it's like, don't say you don't get anything out
of it, because you do, you do. So this explains
why we do do things that in the aftermath it
(08:01):
cause us more pain. But in like the here and now,
they might like solve an issue, but maybe not really
like acting in our addiction or continuing to not follow
through with boundaries you've set, Like have you ever asked yourself,
like why do I keep doing this because it's helping?
With something like whether it's actually helping or not. It's
helping with something, so maybe you don't have to feel
that uncomfortable feeling, but then you also don't have the
(08:22):
relationships you want in your life, you know. So when
it comes to this stuff, by creating a narrative around
something bad happening, we're kind of metaphorically bracing ourselves from
a fall. Right. We think we're helping because in our
brains and our bodies, it won't stay like this forever, Like,
it's not going to stay good forever. So we better
suit up and we better prepare. Burnet Brown, who is incredible, Um,
(08:44):
she's written and spoken and talked about this a lot.
She caused this whole experience for Voting Joy, and she
describes it as a way to suit up and protect
ourselves from vulnerability. So before we explain this for Voting Joy,
let's talk about vulnerability. What is that? Like? Hear it
all the time? What's what is vulnerability? Really? I bet
some of you guys, when you even heard that word
(09:05):
in your head, you're like, Oh, I love vulnerability. Vulnerability
is awesome. And then some of you guys are like,
I don't do that. It's a hot topic. It's somewhat trendy.
It's a trendy word. We use it all the time.
We talked about all the time. Do we really know
what we're talking about? I don't know, but we're going
to talk about that now. Vulnerability is something that historically
has been seen and talked about as a weakness, but
(09:26):
it is now highly highly, highly regarded, at least in
my field and in the field of relationships, as one
of the biggest strengths within the human condition. It's something
that we also want in other people, and we think
it's awesome, awesome in other people, but we're afraid to
experience it and show ourselves. And it's an ability to
be uncertain and honest. It leads us to the largest
(09:48):
and most important healing agent, which is human connection. Like
it leads us to connection and allows real connection to happen.
Without vulnerability, there isn't any connection. But we don't like it.
We don't like vulnerability because it's it's uncertain It is uncertainty.
We like things that are black and white and just
is what it is. However, living in the black and
white limits us. What it limits is the fullness of
(10:11):
the most important experiences that are actually like covered and uncertainty,
like love, like belonging, like trust, like joy, and even
things like creativity like those are all things that if
you ask about what you really wanted of life, they
want those things, but those are covered covered, covered in uncertainty,
which is covered in vulnerability. So back to foreboding joy,
(10:34):
What would you think? What would you say if I
told you that one of the or the most terrifying
emotions that we can feel is joy. Would that surprise you?
Would you believe that? Because I hope so I hope
it probably surprises you, But I hope you believe it
because that is true. Berne Brown actually says this too,
and she says that joy is one of the most
difficult feelings for us to allow ourselves to feel because
(10:56):
it automatically makes us incredibly vulnerable. Right, So, when we
ourselves to feel joy, we become vulnerable to the possibility
of that being taken away or not feeling that anymore.
We're vulnerable to the fact that our hearts might be broken,
or our hopes get let down or any of that.
And a lot of our feelings that we experience we
(11:18):
intrinsically want to go away, right, like anger, fear, sadness,
we don't really get nervous that will lose these feelings
because they don't feel good. But joy feels good and
we want to keep that. But when we have it,
then we recognize that, oh, this could go away, and
so we do this thing. So when you have trouble
tolerating the vulnerability of that joy, what you do is
(11:39):
you start to do this thing called like dress rehearse tragedy.
If you haven't heard of that dress. Rehearsing tragedy is
imagining something bad it's going to happen when in reality
nothing's wrong. Like nothing is wrong. This is when we're
doing that thing about waiting for that shoot a job.
It's creating stories in your head. Now the idea behind
it makes sense right, like you're getting yourself prepared. The
(12:02):
problem is there's nothing to prepare for. And what you
end up doing is you just lose a lot of
precious time and experience feeling the joy that you want
so bad and you don't want to go away. During
her research, Berne talked about people that she found who
did have an ability to like really sit and experience
and and and feel their joy. And what is interesting
(12:25):
is what they did is not that like eye opening
or like jaw dropping. She said that the people that
could really experience and have the capacity for joy when
they felt joy, instead of going into this like dress
rehearsing of tragedy and practicing disaster, they just used it
as a reminder that they need to practice gratitude, which
gratitude is a practice, not a feeling. And we're going
(12:47):
to talk about that in a second. So another question,
and I don't know if I fully answered this yet,
is like why do we need to do this? Like
why do we That's great for those people that can
practice the gratitude, but like why do the people that
do the practice the disaster or why do they feel
like they need to do that? Like did we were
were born that way? Like why would we need to
protect ourselves here? Like why is the vulnerability so hard?
(13:10):
Like all of that one because of life? Because we
experienced life. No, we weren't born that way, but a
lot of us have had experiences when life has really
let us down, and it makes sense to not want
to feel that again. It want it makes sense to
not have to want to go through those experiences again
or want to be better prepared for those experiences. So
(13:34):
let's talk about attachment and relationships for a second. In
modern attachment and modern adult attachment, which there's plenty of
podcasts on that, and you need therapy catalog. If you
just type and you need therapy attachment, you'll find them
and you can dig deeper into this stuff. But in
modern adult attachment, we have these two main insecure attachment styles.
One is anxious and one is avoiding. In a nutshell,
(13:55):
the human with the anxious attachment is someone who has
experienced hope and then lost it over over and over
and over again, so they know hope is real, but
then it goes away. But then they know it's real,
then it goes away. They know it's real, it goes away.
Someone who has an avoidant attachment is someone who just
like I didn't really have the experience of hope, like
it's been shut down. So then they shut down and
they kind of numb out. They don't do vulnerability like
(14:18):
at all, So their experience of this will look more
like avoiding the experiences in life that would offer them
the great joy, because when they get a taste of it,
they back off because then they realize that like, oh
that comes with that, I don't want it, so I'm
going to back away. The fear of abandonment and rejection,
all that stuff trumps everything else. So I'm not willing
to risk that because I don't really see the point.
(14:40):
Because hope is not a thing. An anxiously attached human
is going to taste the joy and then freaking panic
about it going away. So how do we end up
with an anxious attachment? Like I said, they have these
experiences that show up and show us hope, and then
they get taken away over and over and over again.
(15:01):
So our anxious behavior pops up as a way to
avoid the removal of the hope. Why no, hope, Hope
is real. Hope is here. I know it's going to
go away, So how do I hold onto it as
tight as possible so it doesn't So we dress, rehearse
scenarios that we think may help us deal with the inevitable.
How am I better prepare for the fall so it
doesn't hurt? Or so maybe I can avoid the fall
(15:23):
this time? So that's what they're doing now, an avoidant.
They lost the hope. So rather than dress rehearse as
a way to prepare as a means to to save
and savor the joy. They're more prone to like dress,
rehearse as a way to just kill the joy because
it's going to be gone anyway, so like, let's not
get our hopes up. Like it's almost like they don't
(15:44):
even believe it. It's like, yeah, it's not that great.
I don't know why this popped into my head, but
I'm thinking about crumble cookies as always, and I'm like
gonna avoid this is not like an actual clinical like example.
This is just like a picture of it, but like
an avoidantly attached person Like those are the kind of
people who, like if you're like eating this crumbled cookie
and it's like the best cookie even you're like, oh
my gosh, this is so good, and they're like, I mean,
it's not that great. She's just a cookie. It's like
(16:06):
their capacity to get excited is different, because like what
if they're like, oh my gosh, I can't wait to
taste this cookie and then they don't really like it
not worth it, not worth getting your hopes up. So
let's talk about like an example of dating, because like
that might be more helpful than my crumbled cookies example.
But think about dating. Have you ever had an experience
where you went on a date and it was just
(16:27):
the best, best, best ever, right, Like it's so much
fun and you really enjoyed yourself. Yet your next thought
is this isn't gonna last, or well, anyone can have
a good first date, doesn't really mean anything or anything
along those lines. Like that kind of stuff. You're kind
of preparing yourself to get let down. Someone with a
more anxious attachment is going to be the person who
(16:48):
like texts that human a million times and like, can't
just let them text them. They have to like I
have to make sure they're gonna text me, So I'm
just gonna text them first, and them going to text
them after I text them first because they didn't respond
to me. You have to make sure that they got
my text. That's an exaggeration, but that's the anxious person
where they're going to talk to their friends over and
over and over and over and analyze and over analyze
every single behavior and you know what, they missed the
(17:10):
part where they had a lot of fun because they're
so worried that they won't get to have a lot
of fun again. But that's going to get shut down.
So it's like, maybe if I analyze this enough, I
can like find a way to save it or hold
onto it or anything like that. Well, the person with
a more avoidant leaning attachment style is going to be like,
I'm not getting my hopes up because like, yeah, I
(17:30):
had a good time, but like it never works out.
They're the kind of people that are like all men
suck if they're into men, or all women suck, or
you know, relationship is not that great anyway, Like they're
gonna just like it's like a kill joy. Literally, Now
those are extremes. Those are two extremes, But I thought
it was worth mentioning a little bit today even though
somebody with a secure attachment can also be involved in
(17:52):
this experience of for voting joy just because of like
our culture and just because like, you don't have to
fully lean one way to have some kind of anxiety.
Please please hear that very loudly. You don't have to
have an insecure attachment to have anxiety. Those aren't like
one and the same, and overall, the reason I wanted
to talk about this and create a whole episode about
(18:13):
this is because this is something that we do because
it offers us a secondary gain. But I would like
to just say very loudly. The issue here is that
the secondary gain isn't that great. It's really not, and
we need to notice that awareness is the first step.
So this information isn't going to change your life, but
(18:35):
the awareness is the first step for you to be
able to change some of this behavior. When we prepare
for things that aren't actually happening right now, what we're
doing is we're stealing the opportunity to be present, and
basically we're stealing the opportunity from ourselves to be joyful.
We lose moments, like, we actually lose moments of our life.
The thing is, we cannot avoid a lot of the
(18:55):
tragedy that we dress rehearse. We cannot predict the future.
If it's going to happened, it's going to happen, and
thinking about it ahead of time doesn't actually better prepare us,
Like it doesn't actually make the fall less hard, It
just makes us live in the fall longer, Like we're
kind of like spreading that out. We're just spreading the
fall out longer. It's like in slow motion versus like
(19:16):
I fell, Now I have to get up. It's like
slow motion and then like slow motion for me to
get back up. To. So what we're doing might give
us an idea that we are helping, right, it might
and for and for some people, it might take away
the experience of having to actually lose the joy. But
(19:39):
then what you're also doing is you're not allowing yourself
to experience the joy. So what's the point. We can't
selectively numb emotions. We've learned that we can't do that.
And so if we're not willing to experience like ick,
sadness and fear and rejection and all that, then we're
not going to be able to experience the things that
we really really want, like true connection and true relationships.
(20:03):
So what's the solution, because you know, don't just throw
this information at you. What's the solution? So the solution
is a practice because, like I said, information doesn't change
our lives. It helps us change our lives. So the
solution is a practice, and the practice involves gratitude and mindfulness.
So when we start to get afraid of what may happen,
(20:24):
we bring ourselves back to what is happening. Right, So
when we start to get afraid of what may happen,
we start to do that thing where we're creating scenarios
and we're taking ourselves out of what we're experiencing now
that actually is really good. We bring ourselves back to
what is happening. You went on a date and it
went well, okay, Well that's where we are. That's all
you need to know. Whether you end it in your
(20:46):
head now or it ends later, you're not technically avoiding
the sadness of it ending, but you are avoiding the
ability to be in the goodness of your life now.
You had a good date. And I'm using this dating example,
but it could be literally anything, literally anything, And listen,
I get it. I really do get it. And it's
not lost on me that it's easier for me to
(21:07):
say a lot of this stuff than it is to
actually experience it. So I get it. Pain is painful,
and I don't want my heartbroken ever again. I really
don't want that. If I could choose, I'd be like, hey, yeah,
can we not do that again? And if I want
the kind of relationship that I know my heart was
built and woven for, I have got to be willing
to experience pain. I have to. That's a non negotiable.
(21:30):
And I want you guys to really hear that, because
I'm a human. I am a human being, and I
get really sad and I feel a lot of pain
in my life as well. I do like I'm not
saying these things. Why I'm saying them easier than experiencing them,
But I'm not saying them not knowing what it's like.
I don't know your life. I don't know your exact
(21:53):
life experiences. But I have had moments where I'm like,
oh my gosh, this is the worst thing ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,
ever ever. I don't want this ever again. And I've
said to myself after a breakup, like I'm not dating
ever again because I don't ever want to feel like this.
I said that multiple times, and then I come out
of that emotional decision and I remind myself that, like,
(22:14):
oh what I want, Trump's what I don't want. I
want a relationship, a real relationship that I was meant for,
more than I don't want to feel that sadness. So
this is a non negotiable. They come together. The risk
comes there, like the risk is part of it. No
one who is not in an authentic relationship with another
human or other humans has managed to avoid pain like nobody,
(22:36):
And if anybody says that they have, and like, I
don't know what their definition of authentic relationship actually is.
So this might sound like anticlimactic or too simple as
we're talking about like gratitude as a solution, but I
think that something that we do is we just over
complicate our needs too often. And going back to what
I said in the very beginning about us talking about
(22:58):
gratitude being a practice, Gratitude is a practice, not a feeling.
It is a practice that breeds joy. Right, if we
want more joy, we practice gratitude. So practicing gratitude is
something that grows and breeds and feeds our joy. The
solution to foreboding joy practicing gratitude and being mindfully present
(23:21):
and honestly, what would life look like like? What would
your life look like if you spent more time being
grateful for the things that you have now then worried
about not having them later? Like, what would life look like?
You would probably have more joy in your life. Doesn't
mean we're taking away any of your pain, but you
would have more joy. And you know what I would
choose that we can't avoid shoes dropping, Like I said,
(23:42):
they will drop. Bad things will happen, And I'm not
saying that the more gratitude you practice, the less best
stuff will happen. I'm not saying that at all. I'm
saying that refusing to acknowledge the good doesn't make the
bad easier to handle. It just makes it worse, actually,
because it takes the important, real moments that you want
to be in and that you're excited about and that
(24:03):
feel good. You're taking those away from your life. So,
in conclusion, if you're somebody who has said that stuff
like things are going great, waiting for something bad to happen,
welcome this into your life. Welcome some pauses where you're like, oh,
things are going great. I'm really glad. Things are going great.
Things are going great. Wow, things are going great. Like
(24:26):
notice that sit in that. And again, it's a practice,
so it's going to take some time for your mind
not to automatically wonder into like when is something horrible
gonna happen? When am I going to lose everything? Honestly,
is that really important right now? Because if in the
reality we can't change it, why don't we pay more
attention to the fact that we have it now? If
you want to learn more about this, if you want
(24:47):
to hear more. I'm sure you could just do a
Google search with for voting Joy and Burnee Brown. I'm
sure she has plenty of whether their videos or articles
written about it. She talks about it in her books,
specifically Daring Greatly, which is a great eight book to
start reading. If you're like I want to do some introspection.
I want more than just podcasts. I want to read
some good like really good literature by really smart people
(25:09):
and credential people. Burnet Brown is a great place to start,
and Darren Greatly is a great place to start. That
book is incredible. But I hope this was helpful with anything.
I hope that this like conversation just help you feel
less alone, because I think a lot of people when
I hear them say that, like I'm just why do
I do this? Like I'm just waiting for something bad
to happen. A lot of us do it, and why
(25:31):
you do it makes sense. But just because it makes
sense doesn't mean it's actually helpful and useful. So take
with that and do as you please. I'm glad you
were here today. I'm glad you're here for this conversation.
I'm glad I got to do some one on one
with you, guys. I hope you enjoyed it. Now if
you have not heard this awesome news, I am now
(25:51):
starting to do one of Amy Brown's podcast episodes with
her every week. So she has a podcast called four
Things with Amy Brown. I know most of you probably
listened to it, and she does two episodes a week.
One is her four Things on Thursdays, where she'll go
through four things, whether it's with her or a guest.
And then her Tuesday episode has historically been her answering
(26:14):
emails that you guys send to her, and we are
transitioning that Tuesday episode into a space where we just
get to talk. And right now we're calling it Amy
and Cat chit Chats, but we're work shopping it. So
if you have any ideas, let us know. But we're
going to do things like answer emails or just talk
about things that like we think about throughout the week.
And we love doing episodes together and so we're like,
(26:36):
why don't we make this a thing because it's just
a space where you get to hear like two friends
talking about things that matter and sometimes maybe I don't know,
they might not matter to you, but it mattered to us.
So I'm really excited about it, and I hope you
guys are excited too. So Four Things with Amy Brown.
Go subscribe to that podcast. If you don't already, you
don't already subscribe to this one, do that as well,
(26:57):
and you can rate it and review it and that
would be awesome. We would love that, And I think
that does it for me today. So I hope you
guys have the day in the week you need to have.
I will be back tomorrow with Amy on her podcast
and Wednesday for Couch Talks.
Hi guys, and welcome back to You Need Therapy. My
name is Cat and it's a really good day to
be here. You're getting a full episode of Just Cat.
Before we get started, a quick reminder that although I'm
a therapist, this podcast is not therapy or a substitute
for therapy. But it might, however, encourage you to go
(00:31):
to therapy, which I think is pretty cool, pretty exciting.
So if you've been around for a while, you probably
know a good bit ish about me, and if you're new, welcome.
I'm really happy you're here. Even though I don't exactly
know who's here, I'm happy that you are, and I
want to introduce myself a little bit. I think this
(00:53):
is an important thing to do because I created this
podcast to help us get thinking and talking about the
stuff that kind of scares us in our lives, and
you know, I think we needed to build a little
trust before we have a lot of those conversations. So
I want you to be able to kind of know
who's talking to you. And I don't want you to
blindly take what I say as gold. I don't want that.
(01:14):
I don't want that for my clients. They don't want
that for people in my life. I definitely don't want
that from you, guys, because one what I say is
not goals. I do say you some great things sometimes,
but like sometimes I can't be wrong, um And I
want you to be able to wonder and be curious
about that stuff and to this podcast is something that
I want to help encourage you to find your strength
(01:35):
rather than rely on other people to help you feel
or no things like I want it to build you
up rather than like build whoever's talking up. So my
name is Cat. I have a license therapist, and I
live in Nashville, lived here for a really long time,
and I own a small group private practice called Three
Courts Therapy. Shout out to my girls Janie and Stacy.
(01:56):
They are two therapists that work with me. And if
y'all are in Tennessee and need a good therapist, you
can visit our website Three Courts Therapy dot com and
send us a message and we can hook you up
with a good therapist if you live in Tennessee. Otherwise
we cannot work with you, bummer, but we got to
follow the law. I also am more than my job.
(02:18):
I'm a really curious human. I I love, love, love, love,
love to learn, and I loved the question. I love
to wonder and I love to think. And I got
my degree, my graduate degree at Vanderbilt a while ago,
I don't know how many years ago, And I often
wish I could go back and sit in some of
my classes again with the life experience that I have now,
(02:39):
because I'm like, I love to learn. I'm like, I
wonder what it would be like if I could go
back with the human I am now and see how
I would learn and pick up and absorb things differently.
I just want to know what would be different, what
would I hear different, what would I soak in more?
Because back then, like in grad school, I was fighting
a lot of stuff. I was fighting remnants of a
neating disorder for the majority of the time, I was
(03:00):
fighting a raging exercise addiction, and I was fighting a
lot of anxiety that I actually didn't know existed. And
with that, with the learner I am and the wonderer,
I also am a planner. But I'm not the kind
of planner that you might be thinking of. I'm very disorganized,
making itineraries and schedules. That kind of stuff like stresses
(03:21):
me out, Like I cannot. I mean, I'll do what
I have to, but that's not the kind of planning.
I like to plan things to look forward to, so
I always have something on the schedule, and you know, honestly,
often the looking forward to it part beats the actual
thing I planned. Sometimes I plan so I don't have
to worry. And I used to worry a lot, like
a lot, a lot, a lot. I worried what people
(03:43):
thought of me. I worried about how things would go.
I worried about where my life was going to take me.
I worried about the freaking seam of my stock not
lining up properly, and honestly, I still worry about that,
and I dealt with my worry by trying to plan.
This is a true story. I don't know if I've
said this before and hear it. When I was a
little exchanged the same pair of tennis shoes like seven times,
(04:03):
I don't think it was actually seven, but a lot
of times because I was worried about the fact that
they didn't fit right, like which felt better like I
couldn't even figure it out. And as a therapist, I
often sit with a lot of people who worry as well,
and I share some of my experience, not only because
this is a nice segue into where we're going today,
(04:23):
but because I want to bring the humanness into the
conversation we're about to have. Worrying is a thing that
we do. Not all of us, but a lot of
us do it. And like I think everybody at some
point has worried about something. Now, while it definitely doesn't
mean something's wrong with you if you worry a lot,
and if you're really anxious and all that, it also
doesn't have to be this way. But in order for
(04:44):
us to shift things, we need to uncover what it
is we get out of worrying, Like, what do we
get out of this? And don't even say in your head,
I get nothing, because if you got absolutely nothing from it,
you wouldn't do it. We don't do anything for no reason.
It might not make a lot of sense, but you
get something. Now. What I have found to be very, very,
very interesting is that a lot of people who are
(05:06):
doing all of this worrying actually have really great lives,
Like their lives are kind of going well. A lot
of life's greatest warriors aren't the ones who are in
the midst of chaos and the most setbacks and tragedy.
A lot of life's great warriors are people who kind
of have the things that they have wanted, which sounds weird,
and maybe it sounds like you. If it sounds like you,
(05:27):
then get excited because that is what we're gonna be
talking about. So we're gonna jump right into it. I
bet some of you guys have, well probably all of you,
I would think, um have heard the phrase I'm waiting
for the other shoe to drop. I cannot tell you
how many times this has been said in my office
of somebody sitting on my couch and being like, it's
just like this is happening, this is happening, and these
(05:48):
are all going great, and I'm just waiting for something
bad to happen, just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And before we get into that, let's talk about what
does that phrase even mean, Like, where does that come from?
What does that mean? Like the shooter drop, And it
means that you're waiting for an unexpected like inevitable, bad
thing to happen. And it comes from which I thought,
this is interesting. It comes from back in like the
(06:09):
late nineteen early twentieth century, how like apartments were in
New York City, I guess. They were really thin, and
the bedrooms were all located like right above each other.
So where your apartment is you're seeling, is somebody else's bedroom.
And so it was like a thing where you would
hear somebody like take off their shoe, and then once
you heard them clunk one shoe down, you you're like, oh,
(06:32):
waiting for the other one, and the other one falls
down and you're like, okay, one means another, I guess,
so it's an inevitable thing that's going to happen. Basically, Now,
when I think about this experience, I think about like
just being on the on edge, like on the edge
of my seat, you know, and like just sitting and
and worrying and playing out like a bad scenario. Bad scenarios.
(06:53):
You're creating them in your head and you're like hurting
your own feelings. Like that's what the experience reminds me of.
It's not an exceptionally good experience to be in or have.
So the question would be like why do we do this,
Why do we tend to feel this way when things
are going okay, especially and why do we feel the
need to brace ourselves for like a fall, when technically
(07:16):
we're balanced and technically we're on solid ground. If everything's okay,
why can't we not do this? And when we do it,
why can't we just make it go away? Another way
to put that would just be like why is it
so hard to sit in the goodness of life? Pretty
simple but weird question. Weird question that like why do
we even have to ask that? So if we come
(07:39):
back to a phrase that I've mentioned before on here
called second dary gain, it will help explain a little bit.
A second day gain is when we're doing something that
like doesn't actually make sense or help us, but like
we get something out of it, so you know how
earlier it's like, don't say you don't get anything out
of it, because you do, you do. So this explains
why we do do things that in the aftermath it
(08:01):
cause us more pain. But in like the here and now,
they might like solve an issue, but maybe not really
like acting in our addiction or continuing to not follow
through with boundaries you've set, Like have you ever asked yourself,
like why do I keep doing this because it's helping?
With something like whether it's actually helping or not. It's
helping with something, so maybe you don't have to feel
that uncomfortable feeling, but then you also don't have the
(08:22):
relationships you want in your life, you know. So when
it comes to this stuff, by creating a narrative around
something bad happening, we're kind of metaphorically bracing ourselves from
a fall. Right. We think we're helping because in our
brains and our bodies, it won't stay like this forever, Like,
it's not going to stay good forever. So we better
suit up and we better prepare. Burnet Brown, who is incredible, Um,
(08:44):
she's written and spoken and talked about this a lot.
She caused this whole experience for Voting Joy, and she
describes it as a way to suit up and protect
ourselves from vulnerability. So before we explain this for Voting Joy,
let's talk about vulnerability. What is that? Like? Hear it
all the time? What's what is vulnerability? Really? I bet
some of you guys, when you even heard that word
(09:05):
in your head, you're like, Oh, I love vulnerability. Vulnerability
is awesome. And then some of you guys are like,
I don't do that. It's a hot topic. It's somewhat trendy.
It's a trendy word. We use it all the time.
We talked about all the time. Do we really know
what we're talking about? I don't know, but we're going
to talk about that now. Vulnerability is something that historically
has been seen and talked about as a weakness, but
(09:26):
it is now highly highly, highly regarded, at least in
my field and in the field of relationships, as one
of the biggest strengths within the human condition. It's something
that we also want in other people, and we think
it's awesome, awesome in other people, but we're afraid to
experience it and show ourselves. And it's an ability to
be uncertain and honest. It leads us to the largest
(09:48):
and most important healing agent, which is human connection. Like
it leads us to connection and allows real connection to happen.
Without vulnerability, there isn't any connection. But we don't like it.
We don't like vulnerability because it's it's uncertain It is uncertainty.
We like things that are black and white and just
is what it is. However, living in the black and
white limits us. What it limits is the fullness of
(10:11):
the most important experiences that are actually like covered and uncertainty,
like love, like belonging, like trust, like joy, and even
things like creativity like those are all things that if
you ask about what you really wanted of life, they
want those things, but those are covered covered, covered in uncertainty,
which is covered in vulnerability. So back to foreboding joy,
(10:34):
What would you think? What would you say if I
told you that one of the or the most terrifying
emotions that we can feel is joy. Would that surprise you?
Would you believe that? Because I hope so I hope
it probably surprises you, But I hope you believe it
because that is true. Berne Brown actually says this too,
and she says that joy is one of the most
difficult feelings for us to allow ourselves to feel because
(10:56):
it automatically makes us incredibly vulnerable. Right, So, when we
ourselves to feel joy, we become vulnerable to the possibility
of that being taken away or not feeling that anymore.
We're vulnerable to the fact that our hearts might be broken,
or our hopes get let down or any of that.
And a lot of our feelings that we experience we
(11:18):
intrinsically want to go away, right, like anger, fear, sadness,
we don't really get nervous that will lose these feelings
because they don't feel good. But joy feels good and
we want to keep that. But when we have it,
then we recognize that, oh, this could go away, and
so we do this thing. So when you have trouble
tolerating the vulnerability of that joy, what you do is
(11:39):
you start to do this thing called like dress rehearse tragedy.
If you haven't heard of that dress. Rehearsing tragedy is
imagining something bad it's going to happen when in reality
nothing's wrong. Like nothing is wrong. This is when we're
doing that thing about waiting for that shoot a job.
It's creating stories in your head. Now the idea behind
it makes sense right, like you're getting yourself prepared. The
(12:02):
problem is there's nothing to prepare for. And what you
end up doing is you just lose a lot of
precious time and experience feeling the joy that you want
so bad and you don't want to go away. During
her research, Berne talked about people that she found who
did have an ability to like really sit and experience
and and and feel their joy. And what is interesting
(12:25):
is what they did is not that like eye opening
or like jaw dropping. She said that the people that
could really experience and have the capacity for joy when
they felt joy, instead of going into this like dress
rehearsing of tragedy and practicing disaster, they just used it
as a reminder that they need to practice gratitude, which
gratitude is a practice, not a feeling. And we're going
(12:47):
to talk about that in a second. So another question,
and I don't know if I fully answered this yet,
is like why do we need to do this? Like
why do we That's great for those people that can
practice the gratitude, but like why do the people that
do the practice the disaster or why do they feel
like they need to do that? Like did we were
were born that way? Like why would we need to
protect ourselves here? Like why is the vulnerability so hard?
(13:10):
Like all of that one because of life? Because we
experienced life. No, we weren't born that way, but a
lot of us have had experiences when life has really
let us down, and it makes sense to not want
to feel that again. It want it makes sense to
not have to want to go through those experiences again
or want to be better prepared for those experiences. So
(13:34):
let's talk about attachment and relationships for a second. In
modern attachment and modern adult attachment, which there's plenty of
podcasts on that, and you need therapy catalog. If you
just type and you need therapy attachment, you'll find them
and you can dig deeper into this stuff. But in
modern adult attachment, we have these two main insecure attachment styles.
One is anxious and one is avoiding. In a nutshell,
(13:55):
the human with the anxious attachment is someone who has
experienced hope and then lost it over over and over
and over again, so they know hope is real, but
then it goes away. But then they know it's real,
then it goes away. They know it's real, it goes away.
Someone who has an avoidant attachment is someone who just
like I didn't really have the experience of hope, like
it's been shut down. So then they shut down and
they kind of numb out. They don't do vulnerability like
(14:18):
at all, So their experience of this will look more
like avoiding the experiences in life that would offer them
the great joy, because when they get a taste of it,
they back off because then they realize that like, oh
that comes with that, I don't want it, so I'm
going to back away. The fear of abandonment and rejection,
all that stuff trumps everything else. So I'm not willing
to risk that because I don't really see the point.
(14:40):
Because hope is not a thing. An anxiously attached human
is going to taste the joy and then freaking panic
about it going away. So how do we end up
with an anxious attachment? Like I said, they have these
experiences that show up and show us hope, and then
they get taken away over and over and over again.
(15:01):
So our anxious behavior pops up as a way to
avoid the removal of the hope. Why no, hope, Hope
is real. Hope is here. I know it's going to
go away, So how do I hold onto it as
tight as possible so it doesn't So we dress, rehearse
scenarios that we think may help us deal with the inevitable.
How am I better prepare for the fall so it
doesn't hurt? Or so maybe I can avoid the fall
(15:23):
this time? So that's what they're doing now, an avoidant.
They lost the hope. So rather than dress rehearse as
a way to prepare as a means to to save
and savor the joy. They're more prone to like dress,
rehearse as a way to just kill the joy because
it's going to be gone anyway, so like, let's not
get our hopes up. Like it's almost like they don't
(15:44):
even believe it. It's like, yeah, it's not that great.
I don't know why this popped into my head, but
I'm thinking about crumble cookies as always, and I'm like
gonna avoid this is not like an actual clinical like example.
This is just like a picture of it, but like
an avoidantly attached person Like those are the kind of
people who, like if you're like eating this crumbled cookie
and it's like the best cookie even you're like, oh
my gosh, this is so good, and they're like, I mean,
it's not that great. She's just a cookie. It's like
(16:06):
their capacity to get excited is different, because like what
if they're like, oh my gosh, I can't wait to
taste this cookie and then they don't really like it
not worth it, not worth getting your hopes up. So
let's talk about like an example of dating, because like
that might be more helpful than my crumbled cookies example.
But think about dating. Have you ever had an experience
where you went on a date and it was just
(16:27):
the best, best, best ever, right, Like it's so much
fun and you really enjoyed yourself. Yet your next thought
is this isn't gonna last, or well, anyone can have
a good first date, doesn't really mean anything or anything
along those lines. Like that kind of stuff. You're kind
of preparing yourself to get let down. Someone with a
more anxious attachment is going to be the person who
(16:48):
like texts that human a million times and like, can't
just let them text them. They have to like I
have to make sure they're gonna text me, So I'm
just gonna text them first, and them going to text
them after I text them first because they didn't respond
to me. You have to make sure that they got
my text. That's an exaggeration, but that's the anxious person
where they're going to talk to their friends over and
over and over and over and analyze and over analyze
every single behavior and you know what, they missed the
(17:10):
part where they had a lot of fun because they're
so worried that they won't get to have a lot
of fun again. But that's going to get shut down.
So it's like, maybe if I analyze this enough, I
can like find a way to save it or hold
onto it or anything like that. Well, the person with
a more avoidant leaning attachment style is going to be like,
I'm not getting my hopes up because like, yeah, I
(17:30):
had a good time, but like it never works out.
They're the kind of people that are like all men
suck if they're into men, or all women suck, or
you know, relationship is not that great anyway, Like they're
gonna just like it's like a kill joy. Literally, Now
those are extremes. Those are two extremes, But I thought
it was worth mentioning a little bit today even though
somebody with a secure attachment can also be involved in
(17:52):
this experience of for voting joy just because of like
our culture and just because like, you don't have to
fully lean one way to have some kind of anxiety.
Please please hear that very loudly. You don't have to
have an insecure attachment to have anxiety. Those aren't like
one and the same, and overall, the reason I wanted
to talk about this and create a whole episode about
(18:13):
this is because this is something that we do because
it offers us a secondary gain. But I would like
to just say very loudly. The issue here is that
the secondary gain isn't that great. It's really not, and
we need to notice that awareness is the first step.
So this information isn't going to change your life, but
(18:35):
the awareness is the first step for you to be
able to change some of this behavior. When we prepare
for things that aren't actually happening right now, what we're
doing is we're stealing the opportunity to be present, and
basically we're stealing the opportunity from ourselves to be joyful.
We lose moments, like, we actually lose moments of our life.
The thing is, we cannot avoid a lot of the
(18:55):
tragedy that we dress rehearse. We cannot predict the future.
If it's going to happened, it's going to happen, and
thinking about it ahead of time doesn't actually better prepare us,
Like it doesn't actually make the fall less hard, It
just makes us live in the fall longer, Like we're
kind of like spreading that out. We're just spreading the
fall out longer. It's like in slow motion versus like
(19:16):
I fell, Now I have to get up. It's like
slow motion and then like slow motion for me to
get back up. To. So what we're doing might give
us an idea that we are helping, right, it might
and for and for some people, it might take away
the experience of having to actually lose the joy. But
(19:39):
then what you're also doing is you're not allowing yourself
to experience the joy. So what's the point. We can't
selectively numb emotions. We've learned that we can't do that.
And so if we're not willing to experience like ick,
sadness and fear and rejection and all that, then we're
not going to be able to experience the things that
we really really want, like true connection and true relationships.
(20:03):
So what's the solution, because you know, don't just throw
this information at you. What's the solution? So the solution
is a practice because, like I said, information doesn't change
our lives. It helps us change our lives. So the
solution is a practice, and the practice involves gratitude and mindfulness.
So when we start to get afraid of what may happen,
(20:24):
we bring ourselves back to what is happening. Right, So
when we start to get afraid of what may happen,
we start to do that thing where we're creating scenarios
and we're taking ourselves out of what we're experiencing now
that actually is really good. We bring ourselves back to
what is happening. You went on a date and it
went well, okay, Well that's where we are. That's all
you need to know. Whether you end it in your
(20:46):
head now or it ends later, you're not technically avoiding
the sadness of it ending, but you are avoiding the
ability to be in the goodness of your life now.
You had a good date. And I'm using this dating example,
but it could be literally anything, literally anything, And listen,
I get it. I really do get it. And it's
not lost on me that it's easier for me to
(21:07):
say a lot of this stuff than it is to
actually experience it. So I get it. Pain is painful,
and I don't want my heartbroken ever again. I really
don't want that. If I could choose, I'd be like, hey, yeah,
can we not do that again? And if I want
the kind of relationship that I know my heart was
built and woven for, I have got to be willing
to experience pain. I have to. That's a non negotiable.
(21:30):
And I want you guys to really hear that, because
I'm a human. I am a human being, and I
get really sad and I feel a lot of pain
in my life as well. I do like I'm not
saying these things. Why I'm saying them easier than experiencing them,
But I'm not saying them not knowing what it's like.
I don't know your life. I don't know your exact
(21:53):
life experiences. But I have had moments where I'm like,
oh my gosh, this is the worst thing ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,
ever ever. I don't want this ever again. And I've
said to myself after a breakup, like I'm not dating
ever again because I don't ever want to feel like this.
I said that multiple times, and then I come out
of that emotional decision and I remind myself that, like,
(22:14):
oh what I want, Trump's what I don't want. I
want a relationship, a real relationship that I was meant for,
more than I don't want to feel that sadness. So
this is a non negotiable. They come together. The risk
comes there, like the risk is part of it. No
one who is not in an authentic relationship with another
human or other humans has managed to avoid pain like nobody,
(22:36):
And if anybody says that they have, and like, I
don't know what their definition of authentic relationship actually is.
So this might sound like anticlimactic or too simple as
we're talking about like gratitude as a solution, but I
think that something that we do is we just over
complicate our needs too often. And going back to what
I said in the very beginning about us talking about
(22:58):
gratitude being a practice, Gratitude is a practice, not a feeling.
It is a practice that breeds joy. Right, if we
want more joy, we practice gratitude. So practicing gratitude is
something that grows and breeds and feeds our joy. The
solution to foreboding joy practicing gratitude and being mindfully present
(23:21):
and honestly, what would life look like like? What would
your life look like if you spent more time being
grateful for the things that you have now then worried
about not having them later? Like, what would life look like?
You would probably have more joy in your life. Doesn't
mean we're taking away any of your pain, but you
would have more joy. And you know what I would
choose that we can't avoid shoes dropping, Like I said,
(23:42):
they will drop. Bad things will happen, And I'm not
saying that the more gratitude you practice, the less best
stuff will happen. I'm not saying that at all. I'm
saying that refusing to acknowledge the good doesn't make the
bad easier to handle. It just makes it worse, actually,
because it takes the important, real moments that you want
to be in and that you're excited about and that
(24:03):
feel good. You're taking those away from your life. So,
in conclusion, if you're somebody who has said that stuff
like things are going great, waiting for something bad to happen,
welcome this into your life. Welcome some pauses where you're like, oh,
things are going great. I'm really glad. Things are going great.
Things are going great. Wow, things are going great. Like
(24:26):
notice that sit in that. And again, it's a practice,
so it's going to take some time for your mind
not to automatically wonder into like when is something horrible
gonna happen? When am I going to lose everything? Honestly,
is that really important right now? Because if in the
reality we can't change it, why don't we pay more
attention to the fact that we have it now? If
you want to learn more about this, if you want
(24:47):
to hear more. I'm sure you could just do a
Google search with for voting Joy and Burnee Brown. I'm
sure she has plenty of whether their videos or articles
written about it. She talks about it in her books,
specifically Daring Greatly, which is a great eight book to
start reading. If you're like I want to do some introspection.
I want more than just podcasts. I want to read
some good like really good literature by really smart people
(25:09):
and credential people. Burnet Brown is a great place to start,
and Darren Greatly is a great place to start. That
book is incredible. But I hope this was helpful with anything.
I hope that this like conversation just help you feel
less alone, because I think a lot of people when
I hear them say that, like I'm just why do
I do this? Like I'm just waiting for something bad
to happen. A lot of us do it, and why
(25:31):
you do it makes sense. But just because it makes
sense doesn't mean it's actually helpful and useful. So take
with that and do as you please. I'm glad you
were here today. I'm glad you're here for this conversation.
I'm glad I got to do some one on one
with you, guys. I hope you enjoyed it. Now if
you have not heard this awesome news, I am now
(25:51):
starting to do one of Amy Brown's podcast episodes with
her every week. So she has a podcast called four
Things with Amy Brown. I know most of you probably
listened to it, and she does two episodes a week.
One is her four Things on Thursdays, where she'll go
through four things, whether it's with her or a guest.
And then her Tuesday episode has historically been her answering
(26:14):
emails that you guys send to her, and we are
transitioning that Tuesday episode into a space where we just
get to talk. And right now we're calling it Amy
and Cat chit Chats, but we're work shopping it. So
if you have any ideas, let us know. But we're
going to do things like answer emails or just talk
about things that like we think about throughout the week.
And we love doing episodes together and so we're like,
(26:36):
why don't we make this a thing because it's just
a space where you get to hear like two friends
talking about things that matter and sometimes maybe I don't know,
they might not matter to you, but it mattered to us.
So I'm really excited about it, and I hope you
guys are excited too. So Four Things with Amy Brown.
Go subscribe to that podcast. If you don't already, you
don't already subscribe to this one, do that as well,
(26:57):
and you can rate it and review it and that
would be awesome. We would love that, And I think
that does it for me today. So I hope you
guys have the day in the week you need to have.
I will be back tomorrow with Amy on her podcast
and Wednesday for Couch Talks.
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