How to Get Over Yourself with Dr. Mark Epstein

Mark Epstein, M.D. is a psychiatrist who has written numerous books about the integration of the Buddha's teachings into psychotherapy. He joins Kate and Oliver this week to discuss trauma, meditation, the ego, and how we can all get over ourselves.

Executive Producers: Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson

Produced by Allison Bresnick

Edited by Josh Windisch

Music by Mark Hudson

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
I am Kate Hudson and my name is Oliver Hudson.
We wanted to do something that highlighted our relationships and
what it's like to be siblings. We are a sibling. Railvalry. No, no, sibling.
You don't do that with your mouth, ravelry. That's good.

(00:39):
Today we have on psychotherapist Mark Epstein, doctor Mark Epstein,
who is known for lucidly mapping the ways in which
Buddhism can enrich Western approaches to psychology. And I absolutely,
oh yeah, this was just it's funny timing. Timing is
a funny thing, this this interview, and it come in

(01:00):
a better time for me. I feel good, I felt great.
I felt I felt a kind of shitty going into it.
And now I'm ready. What is your what is you
do doing? Danny Fujikawa is on a chair. Oh, he's
jumping up. He's trying to see. We had this crazy
thing happening where we were on this call. Is a
bird flew into the window. It was very sad, and

(01:23):
the bird flew into the window and then was paralyzed.
What are you doing, honey? And now Danny's trying to look.
I believe I've seen this bird up on one of
outside the house. It built a nest. I'm afraid that
it's the mom. The irony is as we were literally
talking about trauma, and we also were talking about Buddha
who lost his mother at one week, right, and then
all of a sudden, we hear a funk and this

(01:45):
bird flies into the window and I had to like
go out and it's all paralyzed. It's very sad. This
is very very sad. I'm trying to help the bird.
The bird is stunned, and then we're trying to see
if there's a nest with eggs or babies. But that's
what happened during this interview, which at the very end
of the interview, but during I mean, the irony of

(02:08):
that is it was we were talking so much about
how he integrates Buddhism into his therapy sessions. This guy
is so cool. He basically studied with all of the
people that anybody's quoting on Instagram. Yeah, they were his
like mentors and teachers who we actually hung out. Yeah,
traveled with you know, ram Das. I'm not going to

(02:31):
ruin it, but there's said something to him that I
thought was incredibly profound and awesome. The only bad thing
that came out of this is I kind of want
to him do my therapist now, but I don't know.
I don't know what you're like. Are you taking new clients?
He really is wonderful. I loved talking with him. It

(02:55):
was inspiring and I think everybody's going to really love
listening because living is and everybody has and carries trauma.
You know. He said, if it's if you're if you're
not in post traumatic, you're you're in pre traumatic, and
I thought that was a really sort of I don't know,

(03:16):
it took the pressure off of anybody who feels like
they're carrying something and maybe is apologetic about it or
feels like they shouldn't feel like they have trauma or
they shouldn't feel like they have issues because other people's
problems are worse and yah YadA. But at the end
of the day, we're all just living this. Each experience

(03:37):
is just completely different, and his approach to it, just
being so present in every person's experience or every client's
experience as their doctor sort of was a great way
to look at like it all gives you hope that
there's you can help yourself. There's a way to help yourself.
You don't have to just wallow and stay in it. Yeah,
you know, and all of his books are a great guide.

(04:00):
Yeah he is. He's got quite a few working on
a new one right now. And uh, you know, read
his books and change your life. There's my uh, there's
my books. Or you could say change your life read
his books. Yeah, okay, it could go either way. Trying
to figure out what which was a different meaning? Yeah?

(04:22):
So I I really, I really am so happy that
he came and joined us. And I hope that everybody
gets something from this and and and that everybody you know,
gets over themselves, because that's basically what this is, all right,
get over yourself yourself. I'm trying right now as you're
listening to me, and here is doctor Mark Epstein. Hi, Hi, there,

(04:49):
you're you're you know, it's it's the irony of having
you on today is amazing. Can I share with him
what just HAPs? So? Oliver? Oliver just got off of
his antidepressants and is having a hard time. Oh, we
can talk about it. I took a walk this morning
listening to your book. Well that didn't help. No, I

(05:13):
was devastated. I was like I'm so good morning. I'm
I'm gonna listen to the Doctor's book. You know, I
totally vibe with his philosophies of this integration of Western
Eastern and it's gonna be good. And then I just
it's hard to feel good doing anything, feeling good, feeling.

(05:35):
If you set feeling good up as like what you
have to be feeling, then you're just creating another thing
that you're failing at, you know, right, feeling whatever you're feeling.
If you're gonna do the meditation thing, feeling whatever you're
feeling and making room for it, really accepting, really accepting,
like including the bad feelings, that's the that's it's a

(05:58):
very it's very hard to do that. But but if
you can, if you can apply, you know, sometimes it'll
really help. I was, you know, reading all kinds of
excerpts from your books, and and one of them was
talking about you were talking about how meditation can be
seen as an escape versus like being in life is

(06:19):
escaping from life, and how we can actually use meditation differently.
You're actually dealing with what's happening versus trying to not deal.
And I think that all the time. I sometimes I
have friends who get in these like kicks, and it's like,
what are you what are you doing using this to
avoid your life? Right like the whole that's the opposite

(06:41):
of what all of this is for. But you know
enough about all of you, enough about me, and don't
mind if I don't mind if I just break down
in tears every thirty minutes or that's a good sign
in Sarah. Yes, I just want to like get right
into sort of where this journey of Buddhism and you know, psychotherapy,

(07:03):
how that all began, like where it started for you? Well,
how it really started. I'll tell you. It started in
my first year in college. So I was, you know,
eighteen years old or whatever, and I came from a secular,
you know, Jewish secular background where academia was the religion

(07:24):
of my household, you know, but no spirituality, no religion.
I wasn't interested in it. But my first year in college,
I met a girl right away the first week of
school and she was taking an Introduction to World Religion
class and I was like, introduction to world religion? You know,

(07:44):
that would have never occurred to me to take that class,
but because she was taking it, and it satisfied a requirement,
I decided I would take it too. And the whole
first semester was Eastern Religion and the second semester was
Western Religion and the easstern religion stuff. I was fascinated

(08:07):
by the dow teaching, you know. And then there's a
collection of Buddhist verse called the Damapata, which was Buddhist
instruction for householders, you know, in simple language, and that
was my favorite book and the whole course, and they
had a chapter about the mind. You know, the uncontrolled

(08:29):
mind is like a fish thrown on dry ground, flapping
all the time. And I was like, oh, that's me.
So that sort of primed me. I was the Western
religion part of the course was of a lot less
interest to me. But then everywhere I went in the
psychology department there was I walked into a graduate student

(08:55):
teaching room and the graduate student there had just come
back from India and was wearing these purple bell bottomed
pants and had this long, frizzy hair, and I was like,
he knows something, he has something that I want. That
was it was this guy. Remember his bell bottom? Yeah,
there was the purple bell bottom. Really when Corridoraly purple

(09:16):
corda I want can we find I want them? It
looked right to me at the time, was nineteen seventy two,
and he had he was a friend of ramdas As.
Little did I know he had already been in India
with Ramdas and had just come back to go to
graduate school in psychology. And I made friends with him
and was like, you know, where how can I learn

(09:38):
what you what you know? And he said, go out
to this place in Colorado called Naropa Institute that was
just starting. It was nineteen seventy four by then. And
I listened to him and went there and Ramdas, Joseph Goldstein,
Jack Cornfield, Sharon Salzburg. It was like the New York
art world and the spiritual right in the center of Mecca.

(10:03):
I thought it was Woodstock, you know, like the psychological woodstock.
It was. It was. I was too young for Woodstock,
but at least I made it to Naropa and I
just I just devoured it. I took you know, I
took meditation classes from Joseph Goldstein and Jack Cornfield. I
made friends with all of them, and I was like

(10:26):
a little puppy dog sort of, you know. They were
ten years older than I was, but they they took
me on and I ended up traveling with them in India.
I went back, went back and met all their Eastern teachers.
With them, we went to bern and Thailand and Sri
Lanka and you know, to the Dalai Lama. I traveled
all around. And then I went to medical school. So

(10:48):
I decided I had been brought up. My father was
an academic physician who wanted me to go to medical school,
and I was like, I'm never going to medical school.
But finally, after all the immersion in Eastern spirituality, I
was I had to figure out what I was going

(11:09):
to do with my life, you know, and I and
I had the idea that maybe I could blend the
Eastern stuff. I went to medical school with the idea
of becoming a psychiatrist, and so nobody else in the
class wanted to be a psychiatrist, so I sort of
had the field all of myself. So then so that started.

(11:29):
Then I was like always looking at what I learned
about psychiatry through a Buddhist lens, because I was already
So did you know that you were going to try
to integrate the two once you I had that idea. Yeah,
that was That was my motivation. And when I got
to medical school. I went to Harvard Medical School, and

(11:52):
when I got there, I freaked out because I was
surrounded by all these people who really were new science
better than I did. And the curriculum was you had
to memorize like these these big, big they called them camels.
They were big books full of information, and you had
to like swallow, digest, memorize, and spit back all this stuff.

(12:15):
And I thought this is too much for me, and
I tried to drop out and go to social work school,
but everybody looked at me like I was crazy dropping
out of Harvard Medical School. So I stayed with it.
But I did it with the idea of trying to
blend that stuff, which I started to do, you know,
once I got out of in my last year of

(12:36):
medical school. Actually I started to do that. Just for
people who don't know the difference between psychiatry and psychology
is what psychiatry means, you went to medical school, which
means you can prescribe drugs, and it means as part
of you, as part of your education, you had to

(12:57):
learn everything that you learned in medical school. So all
cancer and heart disease and emphysima. You learn about the
pathology of the human body and the human mind. And
when you finish all that, you have to do a
medical internship and then you do three years of specialty

(13:18):
training in psychiatry. So it's equivalent if you were going
to be an antithesiologist or an obstetrician or a pediatrician.
You have the same basic education and then you specialize
after you graduate from medical school. Psychology, there are various
ways to be a psychologist or a psychotherapist. You can
get a five year clinical psychology degree, or a two

(13:41):
or three year social work degree, or a PSID, which
is a PhD in education. There all these different roots
to becoming a psychologist, but the main difference is that
the psychiatrist ends up being able to prescribe and sort
of speaks the medical language a psychotherapist and a psychologist.
Is there a Is there a difference between a psychologist

(14:02):
would have a specific degree, they would have a certain
kind of training. Almost anybody can call themselves a psychotherapist,
and there are in every state, like in California, you
can be a marriage and forget what they call it
a marriage and family counselor. I think they have special
degrees in California, you know, to become a psychiatrist. I

(14:23):
could have learned everything that I needed to know as
a psychiatrist in about, you know, six months of medical school,
but instead it was four years worth of stuff. But
it ends up being useful to know. People come in there,
you know, something's wrong with them physically, and I can
understand what the issues are and what the treatments are,

(14:45):
and you know, speak to their doctors if I need to.
I thought, I knew that that was the difference, but
I didn't realize it was exactly the same amount of school.
That's intense why I decided to do the medical thing,
because if I was going to do a doctor clinical psychology,
you know, it was the same number of years and yeah,

(15:05):
and everyone told me I would have more authority in
the world if I had the medical degree, given what
I wanted to do, which was to you know, talk
about Buddhism, and that that turned out to be true.
That I think people listened to me because they saw
the Harvard Medical School thing and the MD and they thought, well,
at least we should give them a chance to write.

(15:27):
When you were seeing all of this sort of medical
jargon through a Buddhist I in college, were you did
you bring that into the classroom, Like, did you ever
challenge teachers about these? Well? In college, the I was.
I really studied more Buddhism than I did psychology because

(15:49):
I found all these uh, sort of undercover Buddhists who
were already graduate students and young teachers, you know, at
Harvard in medical school and in my really in my residency,
because I had to do these three years of training
as a psychiatrist where being supervised by all these senior

(16:12):
years in those days psychoanalysts, you know, sort of scary
psychoanalytic types. And I had a friend in Boston who
was a Sufi psychiatrist, I think he was the only
Sufi psychiatrist in America at the time, who told me
when I went to do my residency, I was studying
under this guy named Otto Kernberg, who was a very

(16:33):
fierce He had a very fierce reputation. My Sufi psychiatrist's
friend said, if you tell Otto Kernberg what you're interested in,
he will eat you alive. So I very diligently kept
my all my Buddhist leanings very quiet while I did
my training. And then I had Auto Kermberg as a supervisor,

(16:54):
and I liked him. He really helped me with my patients,
and I started to dive you know, oh, actually I'm
interested in this Buddhist stuff. Then it turned out all
the psychiatrists who were working at this hospital, they were
all open to it and interested in it. And I
had been keeping it in the closet, you know, for
no good reason. It was starting to it was starting

(17:17):
to come out of the counterculture into the mainstream in
those years in the eighties. Yeah, we know that a
lot of the practices that exist in Buddhism are actually
good for our brains and can help expand our awareness
and our consciousness and all of this. How do you
connect that to a patient? Well, okay, so here's the thing.

(17:39):
So I was around in all those early years. I
was around all the people who did the groundbreaking work
about how meditation is good for your brain and good
for your blood pressure, and you know, trying to investigate
research wise what happens in the brain when you're meditating,
you know, And I was, I was in sit in that,

(18:00):
but I wasn't so interested in that that that's how
I wanted to make my career. I really wanted to
be a psychotherapist and work one on one with people.
So I took the route personally of learning what I
could really learn about being a good therapist, not worrying
about teaching patients' mindfulness or getting them to lower their

(18:24):
blood pressure by five points, you know, by doing the
relaxation response. I really wanted to be, you know, like
what makes a therapist a good therapist? So I did
my best to become a good therapist, and in doing that,
I kept the Buddhist thing quiet, you know, I kept

(18:44):
it inside. I figured if if it was really doing
anything for me personally, it should come through in the
way that I am in life. You know, my family,
We could talk to it another time, but at least
in office, one on one with people, it should come
through in some way. And for twenty years, twenty five

(19:07):
years or so, that's how I operated, and I didn't
talk about it that much. If someone was interested, if
I knew they were interested, I would tell them where
I go on retreat and who you know, Joseph Goldstein,
Jack Cornfield, Sharon Salzburg, the good teachers. They could go
learn more and then we could talk about what their
experience was. And the past ten years or so, I've

(19:30):
gotten a little freer about okay, we could actually talk
about spiritual stuff. The line between the emotional and the
spiritual and the psychological all started to blur. So I
think a good psychotherapy it is like a good meditation.
It's like a two person meditation where we're really using

(19:54):
whatever is happening in the moment, in the relationship, in
the conversation in the room. We're really using that to
free ourselves as best as we can from the preconceptions,
you know, that we've brought into the room, from the
feelings that we might have that we're what we're remembering,

(20:14):
or what we're feeling is wrong or bad or shameful,
you know, to allow all that stuff to come up
and then to expose it, to hold it in the
field of awareness, like we learned to do in meditation.
So lately I've been thinking, oh, maybe there's some kind

(20:34):
of you could almost call it a transmission, although that's getting,
you know, pushing it a little bit, but maybe there's
some kind of experience that people can have in psychotherapy
that's analogous to what they experience in meditation. Well, do
you think there's a natural synergy just just overall? I mean,
forget about sort of the evolution, because it seems like

(20:56):
there's been an evolution to blur the lines right years ago,
maybe it wasn't like that. But do you think there's
a natural synergy between that Buddhist spirituality and psychotherapy. I
think there can be, depending on the on the mind
of the psychotherapist. Like I had a conversation that always

(21:17):
stayed with me with Ramdas who you know who he was?
He just died last year. He was Richard Albert. He
was with Timothy Leary, LSD and so on. Then he
went to India became Ramdas. He was an early teacher
of mine, and then I stayed in contact with him
over the years. So twenty years into my training as

(21:39):
a psychiatrist, I went to visit him in California. He'd
had his stroke and I hadn't seen him in twenty years,
and he was sort of making fun of me, and oh,
are you a Buddhist psychiatrist now you know? And I
sort of sheepishly said I guess so. And he said, well,
do you see your patients as already free and he'd
had a stroke, so we had to He said it

(22:00):
very slowly. Do you see them, you know, as already free?
And that thought went really deep into me, you know,
because that's where the synergy might be, because I think
I do you know, like especially if there're synergy with
the person, you know, like when you when you when

(22:21):
you make a new friend and already you feel a
kind of resonance. Whi's like that with the patients. So
being able to see them even if they're upset or
going through something bad or you know, to see there
you could call it their Buddha nature or their or
just their soul or their specialness, you know, or their love.

(22:44):
To see that from the start and to know that
everything we're talking about is we're trying to part the
you know, part the curtains in order to let that emerge.
I think I'm operating like that. Well, that's a really
it's a really amazing thing to say. I mean, that's
like so it's incredible. But you know, I think a
lot of times people do enter therapy because they feel

(23:07):
stuck or they feel stifled, they feel lack of that
kind of freedom. Like I always say, people say, what
is happiness or you know, I get asked these crazy
questions as if I have the answer. You know, it's
like you're supposed to right, right, yeah, But for me,
like real happiness is liberation, is freedom from oneself from oneself? Yeah,

(23:29):
and one thousand percent, you know, when you feel that
kind of like liberation of whether it be fear or
how people, how you feel that you are being seen
or that you see yourself or other you know, in
that is is this sort of like this pure feeling
of freedom. It's when you're listening to the driving song,

(23:52):
Like you're in your car and there's a song on
and you feel the sort of like there's no weight
on your shoulder and like you're hairs the wind and
you're like right now, everything feels perfect, you know, And
that to me is freedom. And then the question is
is then you have to meet all these challenging obstacles

(24:15):
and egos and connections, and that can just really fuck
up that freedom. And so how you handle that becomes
I think such a huge part of your own well being.
I guess the question is how can you live in
a SOB convertible going down the pch on a seventy
five degree Summer day all night listening to Little Pink House,

(24:39):
right or Boys or Boys of Summer by Don Henley. Yeah, Africa.
How do we achieve that? That's been That's been my
every book I've written has been trying to get at
at exactly that question. The very first meditation retreat that

(25:01):
I ever went on. You know, I've over the years,
I've tried to do one of these two week silent
retreats every year, although when we had children, I went
for eleven years without ever going. But the very first
one that I ever went on, where all you do
is you sit quietly, hour by hour, trying to pay

(25:21):
attention to the sensation of the breath going in the
nostrils and the breath coming out the nostrils, and the
lips touching and so on, you know, practicing mindfulness, the
first retreat I ever did. After about five days of
doing that, suddenly I was absolutely you know, filled with love,

(25:42):
just like in a way like and I was not.
I had not at that point, I had never really
been in love. You know. It wasn't like a familiar feeling.
But first my body started to like quiver and I
felt very light, you know, more lightness than happiness. But
and then I was just filled with like waves of love.

(26:03):
It's never happened again, and I've gone on a lot
of retreats like where is it? Where is it? Where
is it? But but it made a deep impression. I
think it was the equivalent of the sab Run Highway.
And it goes to that, do you see your patience

(26:24):
as already free? Because having the sense that, oh there's
something something about myself. I didn't know, like I'm really
capable of this kind of freedom. You know, were you
trying to have you been trying to find that? I mean,
I know, No, I didn't know it was there. No,
I'm saying, I'm saying after you felt that, and you're
saying I had never really got back to that place.

(26:47):
You know, I've never gotten back to it in the
intensity with which it took me the first time. But
it but it became But I could see, oh, this
is this is an essential aspect of my being, and
so I can feel it. I remember when my daughter,

(27:13):
who's now thirty four, when she was born. A couple
of months later, we went to visit a couple of
friends in the country, and we didn't have a crib
for her. So we made a bed in a drawer
and she slept in a drawer. And it was like
two months after she was born, three months something like that,
and we got a little stone, which I hadn't been doing.

(27:34):
And suddenly I was with my daughter and I saw
her looking at me with love like until then I
had only been seeing her like this is just the baby.
You know. We have to take care of the baby,
like how to get changed, the diaper and everything. But
to experience that, oh, that love is there, you know,
was there in her from the beginning, you know, and

(27:57):
my ego was closing my itself off to it, you know,
trying to be the capable, responsible, you know, sort of
obnoxious father person, husband and father. But there it was again,
you know. So I think it's there. It's knowing that
it's there and then letting it being surprised by it.

(28:17):
And it's interesting you say that I can relate in
the way. I'm not going to get into because I've
talked about a thousand times on this podcast. But I
went to this place called the Hoffmann Institute. I'm not
sure you've heard of it. I know that we're going
to cut the we're going to go because I've talked
about it too much, right, But I I really it
was an incredible it will be. It was an incredible
experience for me, But you leave there. But I left

(28:47):
there floating in a place that I didn't even know existed,
and I was almost seeing things, you know, in a
psychic sense in a way, and coincidences were no longer coincidences.
It just was like part of my entire world. That
honeymoon phase sort of you know, drifts off and you

(29:07):
wonder if you can ever reach that again, and it's
almost depressing that shit. I was so it was. I
was so capable of living in this space for like
at least two or three months after and then it fade.
It sort of faded away, but I feel like it stuck.
I just don't live in The Buddhist thing is all
about integrating it. How do you How do you integrate that?

(29:28):
That's why they frame it all is the eightfold path.
You know, it's not just about meditation, it's also about livelihood.
It's also about the way you speak to yourself and
to others. It's you know, it's how you look at
the world. It's how you think about the world that
you know that really helped me because I had those
early you know, I was floating also and where you know, oh,

(29:52):
this is the point, you know like maybe maybe uh,
I'm enlightened, you know, go running to the teacher. But but
but it's really about integrating into every you know, into
your family life, into your personal life, into your work life.
How to how to keep that, how to make it relevant,

(30:15):
you know, because there are a lot of very accomplished
Hoffmann Institute a therapists or Buddhist meditators. You know, they
get they get very high in their environment, but then
they're you know, lousy to be around. Where do birds die? Well,

(30:40):
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(32:59):
course Light. There's only one beer out there that's literally
made to chill, Oliver, and that is cores Light. The
mountains on the bottles, they turn blue when your beer
is cold. That's when you know it's time to chill.
You got to hit the reset button, open up a
course light, and boom, it's mountain cold refreshment. I need

(33:20):
a little bit of mountain cold refreshment right now. Summer
is around the corner and it's a Corse Light summer.
We go to Colorado during the summer and we stay
there for the for the for three four months at
least I do. And if there is not cors Light
that is constantly chilling in my cool er, something is wrong.
I'm dreaming of a Corps light on a mountain right now.

(33:43):
Cors Light is the one that we choose when we
need to unwind. So when you want to hit reset,
reach for the beer that is made to chill. Get
course Light in the New Look, delivered straight to your
door with Drizzly or Instacart Celebrate Responsibly Cors Brewing Company,
Golden Colorado. You know, I made a whole thing out

(34:07):
of the fact that the Buddha had no relationship with
his mother because his mother died when he was a
week old. And I and I was like, you know,
as a as a psycho, a psychotherapist, why why is
that story in the Buddha in the you know, in
the myth if it's you know, of the Buddha, why

(34:28):
does his mother die when he's a week old? And
I was determined to make something out of that, Like
I was going to like Eric Erickson with Luther or Gandhi,
you know, I wanted to do like a psycho biography.
And I'll try not to talk too long about this,
but I went on one of these retreats. Uh. They

(34:49):
have a little library at these retreat centers that are
filled with just Buddhist books and you're not supposed to
read or write or anything. But I always sneak into
the library for half an hour, uh, and pull a
book off the shelf at random to see what, you know,
maybe the universe will give me a teaching. So right
when I was thinking about this, I went into the

(35:09):
library five days into my retreat. And the Buddhist Sutras
are like the Encyclopedia Britannica. They take up a whole shelf,
you know. So I picked one volume out at random
and opened it up at random, and I opened to
the only place in the whole Encyclopedia Britannica where they
talk about the death of the buddhast mother and and

(35:32):
it says, oh, she knew that when he was twenty
nine he was going to abandon the family and it
was going to cause her so much pain. So to
save her that pain, she decided to die when he
was a week old. And so I thought, well, that's
kind of a rationalization. But my theory was that the

(35:59):
that sense that a lot of us have developmentally of
not being loved enough by our one parent or both parents,
or if if one of them dies or leaves or
is alcoholic or depressed or whatever, many people are left
with some kind of residual sense of what, you know,

(36:21):
what was wrong with me, that I wasn't seen or
heard or loved or held or felt, you know enough.
So that a kind of developmental trauma that the Buddha
must have also been feeling. And so I think the
buddhas whole enlightenment thing like that, he's searching for that,

(36:44):
in his case, maternal love, you know that he was
wanting from the outside, but he had to find eventually
that it was in him already, you know, maybe from
that first week of life, or just because we all
are inherently ball of that kind of love. But anyway,
that's helped me a lot clinically with my patients and

(37:05):
so on. What about ego? Ego? Yeah, yeah, just give
us the just a brief on that crazy word, because
it's good, it's bad, it's negative. I mean, what what
what are we talking about? And I to say that
your book it's advice, not given a guide to getting
over yourself? Right, yes, And that's a lot about focus

(37:26):
on the ego, isn't it that that became focused on
the ego once I got the subtitle of a guide
to getting over yourself to try to explain what I
was talking about, well, I mean sorry, And then I'll
let you go, but I suck. What I feel like
I have to fucking do personally bringing you back to
me and everything else is just get over your good
over your fucking self. It's You're not that important, I

(37:46):
mean in that sense of the word. You know what
I mean. It's like, do something so delicate thing because
you are that important, right you know, you individual you
specifically Oliver, are that important? In fact, start crying. I
got hold of da You're not just your ego though,

(38:07):
So so where how does the ego fit in? We
all need our egos. The ego is a necessary adjustment
in order to cope with being a person in the world.
It starts to emerge around the age of three or
four or five, when the mind realizes that, oh, I'm

(38:28):
a separate person, you know, and I have to cope
with going to sleep at night and being hungry and
being alone, and my parents are expecting all this stuff
from me, and I have to like toilet training, like
really I have to do this, and eating the food

(38:49):
you know that doesn't smell good, and then going to
school and dealing with other kids and making fun of me,
you know. So the ego is like a defensive organization
that comes into being to help us. It's there to
help us, and we all need it. If you try
to get rid of your ego too quickly, like with
psychedelic drugs or too many retreats or whatever, you just

(39:14):
get psychotic. And the definition of psychotic is not enough ego,
you know. Or people with add they talk about a
lack of executive function, you know, the ability to organize
yourself to like do your homework or take out the
garbage or pay the bills. That's all ego. So we
all need the ego, but too much ego, you know.

(39:36):
The ego is about controlling the environment, ourselves and as
much as possible the outside world so that we can survive.
But the ego kind of gets a hold of us
and we think that's all there is to life, and
we think that we should be able to control everything,
even that which can't be controlled, you know. So the

(39:59):
ego has to learn, once it's established enough, it has
to learn also how to let go, you know. It
has to learn when to be helpful, you know, but
also when to let go. So but it's really we
have to learn when to deploy the ego, you know,

(40:22):
and when to allow other qualities that are inherent to
our being to take priority. That's such an interesting thing
because you would think, like, you know, I sometimes struggle
with that meaning that you have, like especially I think
being female, when things feel out of control, I have

(40:45):
an instinct to take control right and then be seen
as controlling, you know, so like when do you let
something go? When do you actually sit back and go,
this isn't going to serve me or them? What is
the balance? Find that balance? That's that's where your own
intelligence is really necessary. And that's why the eightfold path,

(41:09):
you know, try in a Buddhist way, tries to spell out, oh, yeah,
we need all of these qualities in order to walk
this balance. So absolutely, in that role you have to
be able to step in, Yeah, step in with too
much ego or too much attachment to being right or
getting everything under control, then you'll be experienced as too

(41:32):
rigid or too controlling or too you know, like too
much like Scott rudin throwing things. But if you if
you come in you know, just doing what needs to
be done, like in Zen it's all about you know,
washing the bulls and weeding the weeds and soon, So

(41:55):
if you come in, and in psychotherapy it's very similar
when do you do when do you say something, and
when do you not? So if you if you come in,
you know, with the right kind of balance, with the
right touch, then you can get a lot done and
people will still respect you, you know, and then you

(42:17):
and you can sense when when to when to let go.
So it's that balance between applying your will, applying your
agency and then stepping back, and even in meditation that
we have to do that, like you have to deploy
your ego in order to meditate, you know, otherwise you

(42:37):
just be sitting there, you know. But at a certain point,
once it's once you're established in your meditation, then it's
all about sitting back and just allowing the movie to unfold.
I know what, it's so crazy, like who the hell
are we? You know, like we don't have to know
are we are conscious? What is our consciousness? Like? Am

(42:59):
I myself right now? Or am I the voice that
is constantly talking to me, you know and explaining things
or you know who? Who? Who the fuck are we really?
I mean it's I know, I always say, but before
before my therapy and before meditation, I didn't know who

(43:20):
I was and it was and I was a mess
and after it all, I still don't know who I am.
But it's okay. Well you wrote it. You wrote about
like not how to not be a prisoner of your ego?
Like what does that mean for you as a doctor?
Like how how can someone out there not be a
prisoner to their ego? Well? I think Oliver was getting

(43:40):
at it a minute ago when you were saying, who
am I? You know? Am I these? Uh? Am I
the voice in my head that's saying all of this stuff?
Or am I the awareness of that voice in my
head that's saying all of that stuff? Or am I
in you know, am I somewhere else in my body?
While this is going on, Most people I think are

(44:01):
really identified with that voice in their head, which is
them to some degree. It's the them that they probably
know the best and might also be quite ashamed of,
but it's not the totality of who they are. So
the the big revelation coming out of meditation, and I

(44:21):
think it can come from psychotherapy also, is that the
witnessing element, you know, the awareness of like you're thinking
all those thoughts, but you're also aware that you're thinking
all those thoughts and the awareness can't be the same
as the thinker, you know. Like that was my first
book was Thoughts without a Thinker, you know. So the

(44:43):
thoughts are going on, they happen by themselves in some way.
That's really us, you know, neurotic mess that we are.
And yet at the same time we can cultivate this
other thing, which is the witness consciousness, you know. Or
so you can think about as coming from your head

(45:04):
as like you're watching or listening or seeing, but you
could think of it also as coming from your heart
as the way a mother holds a baby, you know,
like you're creating a holding environment for your mind or
for your feelings when they're difficult, for your feelings, so
that you're you're holding with that kind of loving awareness.

(45:28):
And I think the Buddhist things helped a lot by
bringing in a bit of that loving awareness aspect to it,
because otherwise it can get a little bit dissociative, if
it can get a little bit dry, yeah, because to
simplify it too is difficult because it can get overwhelming,
you know, just this idea of these sort of different

(45:50):
personalities that you that you're fighting every day. How do
we quiet that down. What do we need to do
to sort of at least let go or get over
or get over exactly, you know, But it's it's it's simple,
but not simplistic. I used to go the therapist that
I used to go to, I would I would often

(46:12):
start with what, you know, like, part of me is upset,
part of me feels this, but part of me feels that,
which goes to your point of all that who are
we and where all these different? And he would always
say to me, he would say, you don't have parts mark,
you know, which always like sort of shook me and
I and I do that now to my patients. Whenever

(46:33):
I noticed the language that we used to talk about
our experience is very important. But the dividing yourself up
into parts, that's a dissociative thing, like you know, so
when he would say to me, you know, there's only
one of you that you know, Oh, I'm all of this,
you know, you know, it's I'm the thoughts and I'm

(46:55):
the awareness and I'm you know, it's weird too, I've
got so many people do that. You want to disassociate
from negative or positive, you know, you want to compartmentalize
certain things well, it's also frustrating because it's like I
feel like I know my essence, but it's impossible to

(47:16):
get to it. That's that's you know, that's a profound
Buddhist teaching, Okay that they talk about it. It's like
a dog chasing its own tail. And you go thermonu.

(47:37):
So you go in a circle. You know, I know
my essence, but I can't find it. But I can
feel it, but I can almost and you create like
a whirlpool in your mind, you know, uh that ultimately
creates enough agitation and confusion that it burst. Well yeah
you birth. Yeah. I was like, oh yeah, yeah, that's

(48:03):
so interesting. You know, I had this thing, you know, recently.
Like for me, it's also kind of when life becomes
a lot of the same thing, and it's the same
kind of concept of chasing, you know, but for me,
it's like not my own tail. It's like all these tales,
you know. It's like I'm you know, it's like this
one over here, and then there's this one there's and

(48:25):
I'm finally like I want to quit. I want to
sell my house, I want to move. I want to
just break out of this whatever this cycle is. I
do I get what that feeling is, and I sometimes
want I think it's a very very common thing, especially
at our age. But like I I would I would

(48:46):
also think that like we're responsible for our own trappings, right,
Like we've created this experience, and do you just listen
to those things like should I should we like? Should
we act on this and actually just bail? You know?
Sometimes you need an awakening, you know. Oh, and this

(49:09):
is this is where I was going with that. You know,
some people, and I wonder if you I think about
it sometimes with the tara, like the white Tara, the
red Tara, you know. And I'm very I'm fire right,
and I know that sometimes I have to balance whatever
that is, but like everybody comes at these things in
different ways. I'm like an explosion of fire, you know.

(49:32):
And and when you're working with patients, do you ever
kind of see them energetically as you know, an element
or oh, I see them energetically as pure expressions of
themselves absolutely, which which I think that's what those tara,
that's what all those things are, you know, white Tara

(49:54):
read they're pure expressions of energy, and we're all we
all are pure expressions of something. So then what do
you do when you're feeling like so much heat? Is
that your is that my ego? That's probably not your ego,
that's probably your essence. But but how you're relating, how

(50:15):
you're relating to your to your heat, is really important,
you know, because that the only thing we really have
any ultimate control over is how we relate to whatever
is happening to us, you know, either in us or
to us. So you could relate, you could relate to

(50:37):
it of like this is too scary, I have all
of this heat or or or I'm going to burn
everything down, you know. Uh. But so finding that uh
where you know, where you're that balance between giving it
full rain and holding it compassion and that lay you know,

(51:01):
like that that sort of becomes the work. I think.
I think we're in a really interesting time and I
don't want to forget this because there's so much there's
so much happening in the world. People are so connected
to negative stories and you know, terrible things that have
not only happening now but have been happening for forever.
But what I'm finding is this sort of it's like

(51:24):
it's like I want to shut it all off, and
I think they might be Maybe there's a lot of
people who feel the same way. It's like, you feel
like we need to be involved. It's important to be
involved in all of the issues that are going on
in the world. And at the same time, it's so
overwhelming that you just want to turn it off and
not listen to it. And then and then you you

(51:44):
want to speak out about your feelings about things or life,
or your how you feel about one particular situation or thing.
I think people are finding it hard to know where
they belong and how to actually use their voice, and
are feeling a little bit stifled if they're not these
like super loud people, you know. And I wonder like

(52:08):
if you were talking to someone like I was feeling
that way the other day. I was thinking, you know,
I have so many things I want to say, and
I don't say. I have so much anxiety speaking up
about anything that I feel strongly about. Are we living
in a time where it's like, good feel anxiety and
don't talk or do you think there's a way to
be able to kind of just balance that out, you know?

(52:30):
Like for me, like I can't quite I feel like
something's missing because I don't feel comfortable speaking outwardly about
certain things, you know, I think I think it is
a time where speaking out is so fraud that everyone
has to be very self conscious, you know, because of

(52:53):
the social media thing that immediately whatever you say say
is refracted and refracted and refracted in this way that
shows how we're all connected, but maybe also how we're
all entangling ourselves with each other, you know. So I
think the way that all of the world's problems are

(53:14):
at our immediate on our screens, at our feet, immediately available,
like we're feeling everything and feeling like we have to
respond to everything. So that's too much for anybody. Well
in your practice, I mean, have you noticed just over
the years they have more of a heightened anxiety overall,

(53:34):
just generally speaking, you know, with your not really no,
you haven't. There's been an anxiety. There's there's always anxiety.
I think it's just like how does the anxiety get
expressed and what is it expressed around? So I think this,
you know, this whole pandemic time, coupled with the social

(53:55):
awareness that's been going on, has really thrust people that
you know into themselves, like we're a lot of self examination.
It's a really internal time at the same time that
time is kind of going in circles instead of in
a straight line because we're you know, so so I
think there's a lot of confusion about where where speech,

(54:20):
you know, what is right speech. You also said that
people have a hard time in one of your books
actually being with themselves, So you know, then we're you know,
it's like coupled with everything that's going on the world
social media, but then actually being forced to be with themselves, Like, yeah,

(54:40):
I guess it would turn into a very reflective or
destructive time for people to be destructive. That's one of
the nice things about therapy, I think is that it's
a you know, an intimate conversation that is protected, you know,
so people can work out, they can work out their
thoughts in a safe way instead of instead of working

(55:01):
their thoughts out and you know, on on Instagram, where
they're going to be called out, you know, for those attempts. So, yeah,
you said, I was just looking at this quote. In
resisting trauma and in defending ourselves from feeling its full impact,
we deprive ourselves of its truth. I love that, but

(55:24):
I'd love for you to expand on it a little
bit because I think there's so many people. Everyone experiences
trauma in some way. Yeah, well, I've been I've been
saying if we're if you don't suffer from post traumatic
stress syndrome, that you suffer from pre traumatic stress. Because
the underlying potential for trauma, you know, old age, illness, death,

(55:48):
separation from those we care about, loss, that that potential
is inherent in life. So and we all know it,
even though where the ego defends against it by trying
to control, like we were talking about, but underneath that,
we all know it and we're sort of scared. And
the pandemic has brought that on. So you know that

(56:09):
what you were quoting, Kate came from you know, seven
or eight years ago when I was trying to figure
out what is trauma. Now we're all living it, really,
you know. So the idea that it's over over there,
happening to other people, or it might happen to us sometimes,
actually it's happening right now. Everyone can feel it, but

(56:31):
we don't want to feel it because it's scary, and
we would rather that the trauma was happening somewhere else
and then we could feel sorry for the people who
were victims. Of it for a little bit and maybe
send some money or some compassion or some love. But
then there's a sort of rush to normal where we

(56:51):
think we should be able to live without trauma. You know.
So that thing that you read where that was coming
from my experience as the therapist, you know, helping trying
to help people who have had terrible losses, the you know,
where a child has been killed or parents die early

(57:13):
or whatever. The you know, the social pressure is really
like aren't you over it yet? You know, like go
through the five stages of Elizabeth Kobler Ross grief, you know, denial, anger, acceptance, bargaining, whatever,
and then be done with it and get back to yourself.
And that never seemed fair to me. It seems more

(57:37):
like we have to come to terms with trauma as
an inevitable component of this life that we're all living,
and some kind of grief and love are connected. So
if we're if we're pushing the mourning or the grief

(57:59):
or the sadness away, we're also pushing the love away,
and then we're creating a much more constrained, claustrophobic way
of living. So I'm trying to say that it's safe
to feel the difficult stuff, and that in feeling the
difficult stuff, we also can feel the good stuff. Yeah,

(58:20):
if you were to give advice to people listening about
how to deal with whatever life is throwing at them,
if you had, like, you know, like, what would be
the first thing you would say to someone who's like,
I have all this Like I just have all this
trauma or I have all this stuff happening, Like what

(58:40):
would be the first tool you would give them? The
first thing I would do would just be to say, like,
tell me everything, you know, get it, put it into words,
you know, like I'm I'm thinking when we're now that
we're talking. One of the patients who taught me the
most about dealing with trauma came to me after the

(59:03):
tsunami in two thousand and four, whenever it was, and
she had lost her whole family, her parents and her
husband and her children. They were vacationing at an eco
resort and the tsunami, the wave came and swept them
all away, and she survived by clinging to a tree branch,
but everyone else died, and she ended up in my office,

(59:27):
and I really didn't know how I was going to
help her, but in the office. You know, I have
two children, and she had two children, and whether the
children were alive or dead, I know what it's like
to have children. And so I just made her tell
me about her children, you know, and she hadn't been
because they died and been so traumatic. You know, she'd

(59:49):
been like having to keep them away. You know. That's
the tendency, you know, the dissociative tendency. And so the
first thing I said, then, what you know, like tell
me about them, and and that you know, that was
so so beautiful because the love is all They were

(01:00:10):
still there, you know, so I couldn't. So again, you know,
how do you how do you go on from so?
I mean how the is that just the will to live?
Is that just primal something that takes over in your
body chemically where it's like, you know, I've got to
move forward because that's so devastating. I don't think the

(01:00:30):
moving forward isn't that. It wasn't about moving forward. It
was really about being being in the present. Uh So
the love was still there, that was the key thing.
The feelings were still there, they were still part of her,
you know, so in spiritual I mean, was not not

(01:00:51):
before all this happened. She wrote a book about it.
She wrote a beautiful book that's just called Wave if
anybody wants to Yeah, the Times picked it as the
best book a few years. And she found meditation, I mean,
did she find no meditation wasn't the biggest part of it.
I mean, if you expand your definition of meditation to

(01:01:11):
include the therapy and and then her own writing. I
got her to write stuff that she would bring to me,
and it turned into a beautiful book, you know, but
putting words on the feelings that the tender. I mean,
that's an extreme example of trauma. You know, like almost
no one could, you know. But the way that one

(01:01:34):
deals with any trauma, even COVID, you know, is to
do something of the same thing, to like try to
close yourself off from the pain of it in order
to keep going, so that the keeping going isn't really
the point. It's it's like you keep going with like
a you know, limping along. That's what I wanted her

(01:01:56):
to be able to keep going with her whole vitality,
you know, So that meant really look dealing with what happened.
Do you find that there are instances where people are
using psychotherapy or meditation, not in the best way, and
to sort of, you know, actually hide from themselves in

(01:02:17):
a way, you know, or they they crossed the line
of half the people you meet on yoga retreats. That's
what I'm saying, because I know some people were's like, Okay,
on paper, it looks like you're doing great, but you're
actually not really present. We'll use anything. Oh no, Oh god,

(01:02:40):
I don't know if this is a sign. Oh no,
the bird just flew into the glass window and that's
that's the end of it. Oh really wow, Okay, well,
I gotta we gotta psychoanalyze this. It's a sign. It's
a sign. Sometimes it's a sign. Well, okay, where were

(01:03:01):
we talking about trauma the window life? No, we were
also we were also just discussing whether or not you know,
people can use it as a crutch. Yeah, meditation, therapy,
that's where you were. Yes, people will use anything, that's

(01:03:23):
what That's what I was saying that you know, they
use alcohol, they use drugs, they'll use yoga, they'll use therapy.
The the the ego wants to protect itself and there's
a big effort to hide from what we're ashamed of
or what we're disturbed by or what's difficult to feel. So,
you know, it's very understandable. But the book that you're writing,

(01:03:46):
your new book, are you talking about this at all yet?
Can you share with us a little bit what you're
working on now? My my new book I'm calling The
Zen of Therapy, Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life. And
for a year, without knowing what I was writing about
or what the next book was going to be, I
tried to record one therapy session a week, not tape record,

(01:04:11):
but write down afterwards. One session where I thought the
Buddhist influence was most obvious, because I was I'm still
trying to tease that, like what am I really? Am
I doing anything that's different from any other therapists? And
what's the Buddhist element and so on? So I thought, okay,
let's I'll just you know, show my hand, you know.

(01:04:32):
So for a year I did this, but I couldn't.
I had to force myself to do it. I don't
usually take a lot of notes in my sessions, and
then I didn't read it over for the whole year
until it was done. And then I had this like
pile of stuff different patients you know, and it was
pretty interesting, and I showed it to my editor and
she thought there might be something there, but that I

(01:04:53):
should write like a reflection or a commentary after each
session two highlight what it is I thought was happening.
So I did all that during the past year, and
I think it ended up showing that, yes, kind of
what we were talking about at the beginning of the hour,
that there's some way that the therapy moves towards giving

(01:05:18):
people a sense of being rather than doing you know
that that that that taps them into something deeper in themselves,
hopefully if I'm if I'm doing anything to part the
ways of the ego. So I was trying to demonstrate
that that's so nice. Okay, Buddhist meditation. You've met some

(01:05:40):
of the great philosophers, teachers, meditators. You're you're a Harvard
medical graduate, right, so what what's your problem? You know
what I mean? Like what happened? Well? Do you have
do you have moments in your life where you're like,
I can't get out of this fucking rut. I know
all the tools, because I literally am the tools, but

(01:06:01):
you want to come inside my mind? Yes, this is
what I'm saying like, how like do you have the
moments or where you're like a week and it's just
like I just God, damn it, I don't know. I
can't get out of my head. Oh what dorive? The
moments I have. My life is about getting out of
my head. What I like about being a therapist is that,

(01:06:22):
and I do talk about this in the book. What
I think what I like so much about being a
therapist is that when I'm being a therapist, I'm really
not thinking about myself and it's such a relief, you know.
And I think the meditation has helped me with that.
When I'm with somebody as their therapist. I mean I
talk a lot as a therapist. I'm not like quiet

(01:06:44):
and you know, just listening and stuff. But I'm really
not self obsessed, you know. I'm really about like, oh,
I want to I want to get to that essential
you you know, and that's so fun. That's like drive
down the highway and the sob you know. And I
can do it for seven eight hours a day. So

(01:07:08):
after that, I just want to watch TV or something
you do you do, right? You watch a lot before
we go, just just for those listening who maybe want
to get into meditation. You know, do you have any
do you have any sort of references of how to start,
because there's so many different ways to do it. There's
so many different kinds of meditation, you know, mindful meditation, T,

(01:07:32):
you know TM, Like, what, how does one get started
without feeling overwhelmed? Well? I can. I can tell people
how to get started with the people that I got started,
you know, which, which I'll be happy to do. But
but I think it's important to know that one, meditation

(01:07:53):
isn't for everybody. Uh, some people really need just to
be moving around and in their bodies and working or
working out or whatever. And two there's so many different
kinds of meditation, so many ways in, and it really
doesn't matter. It's whatever feels right to you. So I
don't you know, there's a lot of Charlatan's out there,
so you want to try to stay away from the

(01:08:14):
ones who demand all your money. But there's there are
many good ways in. But this friend of mine, newscaster
named Dan Harris, you guys might know him a little bit.
He was a newscaster on ABC until he had a
panic attack when he came back from Iraq, and then

(01:08:34):
his wife made him seek me out as a friend,
not as a therapist, and I led him to my
Buddhist teachers and he got really into it. And he
has a podcast and an app called ten percent Happier,
and he got my he got Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzburg,

(01:08:55):
a lot of the teachers that I respect the most
to come into the studio and record beginning meditation instruction.
So I think that's that's an incredible way in because
those instructions are very, very very very on point. But
that's just one one approach. Excellent. Well, thank you, thank you, welcome,

(01:09:21):
appreciate it. And I think now more than ever, I mean,
people are going to really resonate with this episode. And
I'm so grateful that you joined us, so thank you
so much. I'm going to go tend to that good bird.
I'm so sorry about the bird. I say, it's sometimes
a sign from the other side, you know, when a
when a bird flies into your house. Oh really, yeah,
there you go. I believe it, Yeah, I believe it.

(01:09:45):
What if it crashes into the window. Another sibling, Revelry
is executive produced by Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson. Producer
is Alison President. Editor is Josh Wendish. Music by Mark
Hudson aka Uncle Mark. If you want to show us
some love, rate the show and leave us a review.

(01:10:07):
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