June 5, 2025 • 48 mins
Adulting' is the idea that being an adult is something you do, not something you are, and some younger people are having trouble handling the requirements. Liana talks about facing the challenges, real and imagined, for grown-ups who haven't grown-up.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The views expressed in the following program are those of
the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of
SAGA nine sixty AM or its management.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot CA. Hello listeners
around the world on radio, streaming and podcast services, This
is just not therapy. I'm Leanna Kerzner, and I am
(00:29):
not a therapist, but I am your source for navigating
the madness of mental health using my top ten sayings
for going good crazy. This week, we're going to talk
about adulting. Apparently people of all ages don't know how
to do it now. Right off the bat, this isn't
going to be a there is Good Today episode. I
know people in their fifties who still behave like children.
(00:52):
We talk about adulting as a series of tasks or
some sort of sacred knowledge of how to do things
that just somehow appear in your brain when you turn eighteen.
But adulting is really about having dignity, emotional regulation, and
well knowing what to do when you don't know what
to do. Let's start with that last one first, because,
(01:14):
let's face it, in the age of absolutely everything being
on YouTube or TikTok, the idea that people don't know
how to do personal grooming or things like laundry because
their parents never taught them doesn't really pass the BS test.
Perhaps their parents didn't insist on them doing it, so
they never got in the habit of doing it. That's fair.
(01:35):
But I was never taught how to make a curry
or Coocasian noodles. I learned. Yes, being raised in a
pressure cooker where mistakes were treated as the worst thing
in the world made that more difficult. But let me
tell you, being self sufficient with stuff like this is
pretty great for your confidence, especially in a world where
people are rather open about how worthless women in our
(01:59):
forties are us. We're spending a lot of money still
trying to look twenty. I read green that ish. Yeah,
people don't find me handsome, they can still find me handy,
And I didn't bring up that tangent out of nowhere.
A serious mark of non adult is someone obsessed with
people's looks, fertility pronouns, bathroom habits, or anything else that
(02:22):
reduces a person to a collection of body parts. People
aren't just gam meats. For God's sakes, grow up, happy bride.
Three major skills that are required for successful adulting are
learning how to be embarrassed, learning how to be confused,
and learning how to be afraid. No, really, you get
passibly decent at these things, you'll be able to successfully adult.
(02:46):
Oh add learning how to be disappointed to that list.
If you're coming at things from a childish perspective, the
minute you feel embarrassed, confused, afraid, or disappointed, you erupt
and insist someone fixed things immediately, or you run away
with that explanation. If you're adulting, you can accept your
feeling a negative emotion, process it in a reasonable amount
(03:09):
of time, and get back on track. Basically, stop being
embarrassed or disappointed or afraid or whatever that you don't
know how to cook, do laundry, get your snow tires changed,
or do your taxes, and seek out someone who can
teach you. It's fine to not know things. You didn't
(03:31):
know how to use your phone at one point right,
or a computer. These are more complicated things to learn
than reading laundry labels. Again, it's okay to not know
things it's okay to make mistakes. No, really, Now, I've
been told by those who struggle with adulting that they've
(03:52):
been conditioned to believe that's not so that it's not
okay to make mistakes. It's not okay to know things
people have told me about, things like you should know
this thinking and good kids syndrome. Basically, people under thirty
five were raised in an environment where they were made
to feel like an annoyance when they didn't know how
(04:14):
to do something. You should know this by now was
apparently a mantra preached at children of the nineteen nineties,
but they didn't know it, and it apparently led to
a shame spiral that's lasted decades. And okay, you know
that's a good reason. But is it possible to change
that internal narrative? Yes, absolutely right. There comes a point
(04:38):
in time where everyone disappoints their parents, but you have
to live for you, and they can't do it for
you forever, as much as they might try. Top ten phrase,
don't let problems that aren't your fault lead to mistakes
that are. Let's face it, in the short term, it's
(04:58):
easier to take life andre home to your mother instead
of doing it yourself. But at some point you need
to stop being afraid of adulthood, or resenting adulthood, or
insisting you don't have time for adulthood, and just adult.
The whole idea of adulting is something you do instead
of something you are. Some people hate this, but personally,
(05:20):
I think it's pretty great because it is active. You
don't get anywhere if you're too afraid to do anything.
Facing fear is a skill that involves multiple parts recognizing
you're afraid, deciding whether it's a valid fear, then deciding
what to do about it, and a lot of people
skip at least one of those steps. So let's talk
(05:41):
about that after the break. Do you have a story
you think would be good for the show? Are you
interested in sponsoring the show? Leanna at not Therapyshow dot com.
Not therapyshow dot com is the website at not Therapy
Show on social media. Yeah, I'm afraid of going too
late in the first second like I did last week,
(06:01):
so I'm going to break early this time so we
can further our conversation about adulting. It's not about cooking
and laundry. It's about a lot of internal stuff. When
we come back on It's Not.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Therapy, No Radio, No Problem. Stream is live on SAGA
nine sixty am dot C.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot CA. We're back
in It's Not Therapy. I'm still Leanna Kerzner. I'm still
not a therapist. We are still talking about adulting. What
(06:50):
is it exactly and how do you do it? This
episode was inspired by the fact that certain colleges and
universities are doing online core versus in adulting for their students,
but they're not really getting in the nuts and bolts
of it. Before the Break, we talked about what adulting
actually is, as opposed to what people think it's about.
(07:13):
Adulting now isn't about knowing how to cook or do
laundry or boograss or any of that stuff. Adulting is
the ability to regulate your emotions, carrying yourself with a
certain amount of dignity, and independent problem solving and fear,
which we touched on before the Break interferes with all
these things. If you don't learn how to recognize, and
(07:36):
process it. A lot of people have a relationship to
fear with no nuance. Either they don't admit anything scares them,
or they insist everything must stop if they're afraid. People
like yep, I know both of those types of people. Right,
Neither option is really conducive to adulting. Everyone is scared sometimes,
(08:03):
and if you're not feeling your fear, it is owning you.
And everything doesn't just stop every time you get scared.
Deciding what to do about being afraid is a major
pillar of adulting. So most people just don't do adulting
because it's hard and you don't get immediate rewards of
(08:26):
attention or a pat on the head for it. Right,
putting fear in its proper place requires you to know
what your core values are, which is why I say
top ten phrase core values are more important relationships than
common interests. Again, a lot of people don't like thinking
(08:46):
about subjects like this, Things like core values putting fear
in its proper place because it means making choices and
sometimes doing hard things. So people get into a loop
where people expect them to either blow up or freak
out when they're frightened, and they train the people around
them to enable their fear responses instead of learning a
(09:09):
better way to handle it. And here's the motivation for
learning a better way to handle it. It does wonders
for your confidence when you can do something hard. You know,
I won't say it's the greatest feeling in the world,
not right away, but later on you can go you
(09:32):
know what. I've done hard things before, didn't always work out,
but I survived, and I'll do it again. Every time
I do one of these shows. I'm a bit of fright.
This is deeply personal stuff. It's tough to talk about.
There's a lot of cruel people out there, and some
people think this song is about them. So people said
(09:55):
nastiness via the contact form on the website. So send
me some nice stuff on the contact forum on the
website if you think of it, because yeah, the negatives
tend to motivate people a lot more than the positives.
But I keep doing this show because of those people
that say, you know, it's helpful. I really like that show.
It's compassionate and good. But also I believe in doing
(10:18):
what I can to get the best mental health information
possible out there. And of course it's not gonna be perfect,
I make mistakes, things change. I try to offer a
plurality of views. That's why I have guests on because
nothing is gonna work for everybody. We know that, and
(10:39):
so some people are gonna go you're dead wrong, just
because you know they lack the perspectives of other people.
Of course, there are risks to manage in something like this, right,
Trying to ignore that being fearless would be being reckless.
That wouldn't do any good. There's a certain point where
(11:01):
if I'm really dreading something, every time I do it,
I realize something has to change. And there were periods
with this program where it was too hard, people were
too mean, and people were going out of their way.
I mean, they still are, but I've gotten used to it.
To just make me into this evil thing who hate
(11:21):
who is using people. It's all nonsense, right, But it
was really scary when people just kept saying untrue things
online and wouldn't stop. Right. I had to decide what
I wanted to do about it. I don't expect other
people to solve my problems for me. It's great when
(11:44):
people help, but I'm responsible for me. And if you
hear a strange noise in the background. That is one
of my cats snoring sounds a bit like a monster
farting a tiny monster. Okay, we love the tiny monsters. Okay,
getting back to this idea of I'm responsible for me,
(12:05):
you're responsible for you. Believe it or not, this is
an offensive concept to a lot of people, the idea
that I'm responsible for me, they're responsible for them. I
don't make anyone do anything. So if I'm feeling afraid
of someone, what the heck is actually going on? There?
Is there really a risk? Can they do something to me?
(12:28):
Why am I submitting myself to that? We're supposed to
live in a free and fair society, right, So what's
going on? Usually some sort of social programming that I
can choose to break, some fear of an emotional consequence.
That is it really worse than current circumstances. Yeah, sure,
(12:53):
there's consequences to everything. Making choices and accepting consequences is
peak adulting. Those consequences are what terrify some people so
much that they'd rather not adult. And maybe that's easier
in the short term, sure, but it's not better. What
that means is you're gonna continually compromise those core values
(13:18):
sometimes because you don't know what they are, and you know,
because you're constantly compromising your core values, you're constantly feeling
miserable and full of shame. It is possible to be
happy and adulting is the way to happiness. No, really,
I've talked about happy math on the show before, but
(13:40):
what it really is, you know, this is how it's done.
Is this thing making me miserable? Is the misery getting
me anywhere? If it's not, why am I doing this?
Then how could I do it differently in a way
that is slightly happier? Right? That? Happiness, the little tiny bits,
the little improvements do add up to happiness. It's not this, Oh,
(14:06):
I'm gonna get this one big goal and I'm gonna
have this one big success and just coast on that
for the rest of my life. That isn't how it works.
It's little happy credits that you add up, you know,
month to month, week to week, day to day, hour
by hour, even minute by minute. Do something to make
(14:27):
yourself happy right now, like me continuing to listen to
my cats. No, it's a very weird noise. Ah, the
joys of recording from home? Yeah, okay, People talk about
responsibilities and whatnot somebody would be that's not very professional,
that's not very Pitcher Metcher. Yeah, here's the thing. Most
(14:49):
people live lives of angry misery because they can't be
themselves and they don't truly accept responsibility for their choices.
Life is too short to spend around terrible people. Yet
so many people do it. You know, getting back to
the housework and laundry. If there isn't a single person
(15:13):
in your social circle that you feel comfortable enough to
ask how to do that stuff, what the heck is
going on in your life? Not one person the concept?
You know, when you think about it that way, it
defies belief right, an entire generation of people without basic
adult life skills. It's not shrewe. You know, young adults,
(15:39):
plenty of young adults know how to do this stuff.
I've seen it with my own eyes. You know, if
your kid keeps bringing their laundry over to your house
and you don't like it, instead of going kids today,
how about suggesting that you show them how to do
it so they can do it for themselves, instead of
you doing it for them. You know, I grew up
(16:02):
with Jane Finch. Basic life skills like cooking, and learning
how to do like how to start a fire, how
to navigate the wilderness, stuff like that, like zombie apocalypse
survival stuff. This was taught to us to help us
with our self esteem. We were told it builds character.
(16:23):
So if you're you know, if you own your home
and you've got two cars minimum in that garage and
your kid can't do laundry, help them learn. Yeah, this
all might involve a bit of adulting on your own part, right,
that part of you that needs to be needed, you know,
(16:45):
So you're content for your adult kids to not be
self sufficient while you complain about it but don't do
anything about it. Yeah, that's not a terribly adult part
of yourself. See Also, the husband you complain about your
friends is an a day kid. You're not being an adult yourself. There,
(17:06):
really happy math? Do you really not like it? Okay?
Do you really not like that your husband acts like
a big kid? Well? If not, if it's just performative,
stop complaining about your man behind his back. Okay. If
it does really bother you, why aren't you doing something
(17:29):
about it? You don't have to get mad at the guy.
Just stop doing the things that you think they should
be doing. You know, tell them, hey, I need more help,
I'm overwhelmed. Own that and say I'd really appreciate it
if you could. Then, you know, insert chore here, insert
the thing that will really help you out. Trust me.
(17:54):
Men like to be useful. Usually they like to be helpful.
Oh but he won't do it, is what I hear.
And yet you hear. You can tell the particular type
of person that's saying this, right, he won't do it.
He'll say he will, but he won't. And yeah, yeah,
you're right, he won't. At first, he won't. And there
(18:16):
are reasons for that. Okay, Typically raised men, I won't
say all them. Men are raised in a typical traditional way.
They're raised to treat housework as something that you're helping with,
something you do occasionally right, which means it's usually an
absolute emergency when it's time to clean up, instead of
(18:38):
an ongoing thing. Men can just if something sits there
long enough, if a piece of clutter can sit there
long enough, they don't see it anymore. Some women too.
I realized I did this with certain things. But yeah,
if you want to change the behavior of you know,
the typical man in your life, your usual standards of
(19:00):
order and cleanliness are going to slip temporarily. But if
you give him a chance and keep saying it would
really help me out if he'll eventually get it. See
how it just went from noble suffering, Oh my husband
is like another kid, right, How it went from that
(19:22):
noble suffering, that performative Oh, we have it so hard, ladies,
right to owning your part in it and doesn't feel
that fun, Like, oh, I feel rebuked like that. That's
uncalled for. That's uncalled for. I was just expressing how
you how I felt. Now you were complaining about your
husband and recognizing that is adulting. And again, it may
(19:44):
not feel great right now because you just got called out,
but in the short term, you're gonna be less tired,
have more energy, and more time to do the things
that you want to do. Right, you may understand more
the wonder the happy math of having your own things
(20:05):
that you do on your own that are just yours
and protected and not something you're doing as a parent
or a couple or a friend all of the time. Similarly, guys,
I wasn't just I wasn't just going for the ladies.
And I know this is heteronormative on Pride Month. But like, okay,
this is about the gender of your partner, not about
(20:26):
your gender. Okay, So if you've got a wife, man
or a lady's you know, does she nag and salt
your video games? Do other things like that that lead
you to feel disrespected? Get passive? Aggressive? You know? Have
you told her in a non confrontational moment, not nagging back,
(20:51):
just be vulnerable. How that makes you feel? Have you
or do you just withdrawal, shut down stone wall? Maybe
begrudgingly just do what she wants instead of talking about it, like,
uh huh a grown up? But she doesn't understand, You're right,
(21:12):
she doesn't. She doesn't understand typical women, women who are
taught to girl properly. I felt hard at this, but
even this, this slipped through a little bit, and I
had to catch myself with it because girling learning how
to woman. You're taught that if you love someone, you
(21:34):
put their needs before your own. And that's wrong actually,
But it takes time for someone who was raised that
way to realize that not being able to read your
mind doesn't mean they don't love you. Right, just because
you can't read her mind doesn't mean you don't love her.
(21:57):
You know that problem is she doesn't. Right, consider this
flip the script empathy exercise. Okay, what did I just
tell you? Right, if you love someone, you put their
needs before your own. That's what she's doing. She's putting
your needs before hers. And if you don't want that,
(22:20):
be clear, ask her what's going on? Not in a
frustrated way, trust me, guide coded people. Seventy percent of
all of your emotional responses look like frustration to women. Okay,
and guess what that's communicating you feel about that woman
that primarily she irritates you. So if you're getting the
(22:43):
you don't care thing, not express the best way, But
that's coming from a place of hurt. Think about the
last three exchanges when you tried to say something was
bothering you, Were you vulnerable? Did you show up with
your primary emotion or did you wrap that in armor
of frustration because that was safer? That second thing is
(23:09):
not adulting? Why? But that's tough guy, Right, I'm strong,
I'm a man, you know what. There's a time and
place for that, and that maybe what she was attracted
to in the short term, But the truth is that
that is not a relationship dynamic that's gonna go anywhere good, Right,
(23:31):
So work on understanding and communicating what's beneath that frustration.
Pick up a few of these romanticy books, like A
Court of Thorn and Roses. Read the first two books
of that, right, Read a Court of Thorn and Roses.
Read A Court of mis and Fury. And notice that
all these guys who are like real jerks at first,
you know, and then they soften up and they're vulnerable.
That's what the move. It is what looking were right,
(23:52):
or just watch Beauty and the Beast. It's much shorter. Right, Well,
that's embarrassing though. That's vulnerable. What if it doesn't work?
It might not right. You're responsible for you, you're not
responsible for other people, and you can't control their reactions.
(24:13):
That's what I mean by top ten phrase. Be the
hero of your own story, not anyone Else's those superhero
comic books of back in the day, spider Man, Superman,
you know, not Batman. People think of Badman. Oh he's
all these women, you know, iron Man as all these women,
(24:34):
but they're not committed relationships. You look at the good guys, right,
the really good guys, the guys who have the stuff together,
like Peter Parker Clark Kent' those women. It didn't work
right away. They didn't give Mary Jane and uh Lois
Lane well that rhymes, they didn't give those guys the
(24:55):
time of day at first. You can't make someone feel
a certain way towards you. You can only do your
best to be kind and decent and hope that they
see that and appreciate that. And someone may still end
up believing or the Antichrist because they're utterly incapable of
(25:16):
admitting really that they did anything wrong. But even when
that happens, you know, you know, deep in your heart
of hearts that you were kind and decent, you were considerate,
you tried right. And if the other person is putting
a bunch of negative intentions on you that you did not,
(25:41):
you didn't have if two choice is then adulting right.
You can try to make them see that that wasn't
your intentions and get really frustrated and lash out and
freak out when they don't, or you can just state
like that was not my intention and leave it there
because you know, right, Because some people they say all the.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Right emotional things right, like I'm willing to apologize if
I did something wrong. Right, You'll notice that some people
they actually will apologize. Some people they never do. They
say they're willing to apologize, but they never actually do it.
These people, they'll be adamant that you don't understand them.
(26:27):
They'll tell you at length everything you're doing wrong because
they're deflecting and projecting right. They don't set an example
by being the bigger person, being the adult and putting
you first. These are people who are not emotional adults.
Maybe not all the time, but certainly not in that
(26:47):
moment right. And if people never inhabit the activity of adulting,
quite frankly, you may be better off without that person.
You know, they're never really going to be a good
networking contact because they're only going to put you in
contact with similarly immature, irresponsible, you know, user people. They
(27:12):
certainly won't be a good friend because their definition of
a good friend is completely different than yours. These are
people who absolutely do not know how to get their
own emotional needs met.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
These are people who have tantrums and expect other people
to service their needs. And this is another part of
adulting that's poorly understood. What does it mean to meet
your own emotional needs. Let's take a break and get
into that. Questions, comments, concerns Leanna at not Therapyshow dot com,
Not Therapy Show dot com as the website at Not
(27:46):
Therapy Show on social media. We'll be back with more
on what adulting really is, what's underlying all the chores
and responsibilities on It's Not Therapy.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Stream us Life at SAGA.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot ca. We're back
in It's not therapy. I'm still in a cursonor I'm
still not a therapist. We're still talking about adulting. What
(28:24):
it really is. It's not just doing laundry and getting
oil changes. Let's face it, a lot of people can't
afford a car these days. These things, these chores, these
day to days, they're an extension of effective emotional regulation
and time management. And let's face it, modern schooling doesn't
teach either terribly well. Modern schooling rewards working yourself into
(28:45):
illness and exhaustion, confusing discipline and self punishment, and then
gives you breaks just long enough for you to get
maybe eighty percent of your straight back, just to do
it all over again next semester. It is a god
awful system in need of reform. It teaches the opposite
of checking in with yourself, recognizing how you're feeling mentally, physically,
(29:06):
and emotionally, and making the necessary adjustments to meet your
own emotional needs. And the concept of meeting your emotional needs,
this is a concept that is presented very badly, and
so people can have something of a trauma response to
hearing this. Right, I feel you. I have had this
(29:30):
weaponized against me. Okay, some people, even some mental health professionals,
don't really understand meeting your emotional your own emotional needs.
It's one of those things where it's like muscle memory.
You know it once it clicks, once you feel emotionally fulfilled,
you're like, oh, this is what it feels like, and
(29:52):
then you kind of know how to get back to it.
But you know, when when we're kids, when we're not adults,
we are dependent on other people for our sense of
self to let us know if we're doing well or
if we're doing right wrong right. Our entire self concept
is built on the approval of adults. Right, and so
(30:16):
we get into adulthood with this weird double edged sword, right,
because you know, we need a certain amount of friendship, companionship.
Some people think sex is an emotional need. It's the connection.
If you're truly talking emotion, right, If you just want
that physical gratification, now, that's hedonism, that's not that's not
(30:41):
emotion right. These people think that because emotional needs do
involve other people, that other people are required to meet
their emotional needs, and if their emotional needs are not
met by that person, then that person is abusing them, right, right,
And that's it's not that simple between two adults, right.
(31:04):
Adults are expected to self soothe to an extent. You're
you're expected to know when you're getting overwhelmed, and you know,
say hey, I need it to slow down. If it's
not slowing down enough to say stop, if people don't
respect stop, walk away. This is something I know is
(31:27):
hard if you're raising an abusive environment. It is an
important skill to learn. There's a huge difference between someone
not wanting to make things worse, someone wanting to help
you feel better, and you expecting or feeling entitled to
another person putting your emotional needs first, or worse, expecting
(31:48):
them to appease you. If that person knows that expectation
that they work as you know, an entertainment committee for you,
you're not giving any space to want to do that
because under current circumstances, they need to or else. And
(32:09):
a lot of what I learned with this, really that
idea of emotional needs came from dealing with people with
various personality disorders. Now, big disclaimer here, not all personality
disorders are created equal, you know, obviously, and everything manifests.
People are individuals and a diagnosis doesn't change the fact
(32:29):
that every person as an individual. But setting boundaries and
meeting your own emotional needs is essential to dealing with
people with these conditions. Because what the well meaning mental
health experts on this don't tend to get into is
spending a lot of time with someone with a personality
(32:50):
disorder involves a lot of failure, very painful failures, right,
And so having other ways to get the emotional needs
met that in a non destructive way, right, because that's
the the you know, the damage to your life is
the definition of a personality disorder. So you know, getting
(33:11):
your emotional needs met in a healthy way and setting
those boundaries. It's essential. Now, you know, there's the big
media sensationalized cluster B personality disorders. I'm going to get
to those last. I want to get to you know,
group A and C disorders because they get a lot
less attention. But you know, if someone has avoidant personality disorder,
(33:39):
that person, by the nature of those conditions, is sometimes
going to leave you hanging in social situations. Right, That's
something you have to factor into your planning. When you
plan to go somewhere with someone with AvPD, you know
there is a very good chance they may bee I'll
at the last minute. So if you absolutely must go,
(34:00):
don't make them their right you're right, okay, But if
you absolutely must go, make it clear in advance in
a non confrontational way that like, look, I understand these
are difficult for you, So let's just do it so
that if you're not feeling up to it and six
o'clock rolls around, okay, I'm gonna go myself. Okay, it's good.
(34:21):
Don't rely on someone like that to be your wingman,
to say the least. Here's the thing about that. It's good.
Part it actually has to be good. You have to
emotionally prepare yourself to be okay with possibly going alone. Right.
You can't say okay and secretly be mad. That's not
(34:42):
fair to them. They're gonna find out and then that's
gonna just yeah, that's that's part of the fear of
that condition. Right. The less pressure, the less social pressure
you put on someone with a woiden personality disorder, the
more likely they'll be a successful social situation. Right. This
is hard, but it is doable. It involves a lot
(35:05):
of advanced planning, not setting unrealistic expectations on that person,
but also yourself. Now, someone with a group a personality disorder,
like say schizotypical disorder, well, those people are gonna have
a lot of intrusive thoughts and a lot of fears
regarding other people. They'll have moments where they're untrusting, they'll
(35:27):
regress seemingly without warning. They'll be super communicative one week
and say almost nothing the next. And it's very important
to set and keep checking in with your own internal
boundaries so these ebbs and flows don't don't hurt a lot, right,
(35:48):
setting appropriate expectations and making sure that well, first of
all that you're not being too dismissive of people with
these conditions, that that seems to be the path to
success in a very tricky diagnosis. You know, people with
these group A personality disorders sometimes they're thinking gets a
(36:09):
little magical. But even if the scenario the describing seems
far fetched or impossible, their feelings are still real and
you have to be in touch with your own feelings
to empathize without getting enmeshed. And you're gonna be frustrated sometimes,
(36:29):
you're gonna be hurt sometimes. And the problem with the
way the mental health industry approaches the loved ones of
people with these conditions is the focus is so much
on what you have to do with the people with
the diagnosis that they don't balance this out with look,
you're not gonna get it right all the time. You
(36:51):
don't have to be perfect. Nobody's perfect. There's a balance.
That message often doesn't get across to the families and
other loved ones of somebody with these serious mental health conditions,
and it doesn't help, you know. And of course, like
I said, I left the sensational ones, the cluster B
(37:12):
personality disorders right, the ones in media loves to sensationalize.
There's so many tiktoks on you know, narcissism, borderline, histrionic,
antisocial personality disorder. Okay, no joke. These are roller coaster
conditions and at some point, real talk, if you're remotely
(37:32):
close to anyone with these conditions, they will blame you
for things that are absolutely not your fault and sometimes
didn't even happen. It's a marker of the disorder that
the instability in relationships is there for a reason. Some people,
(37:54):
it's very surface. You know, Narcissists don't really feel they
feel a sense of possession, or they may see somebody
as an extension of themselves, but that deep social connection
not there. Right. Borderline people deep connection on the short term,
but very unstable relationships. Right. Here's the thing that the
(38:15):
descriptions of these conditions don't tell you and make it
even more painful most of the time, especially if somebody
has done extensive therapy with you know, say they have BPD.
That person with BPD is not like this. They're not
a collection of symptoms. They're rationable, rationable, rational, reasonable, even kind. Right.
(38:40):
The problem is when they're not look out, and it's
really hard if you have no experience with that. The
emotional title waves, the emotional roller coasters. It's like what
did I do? You feel intense guilt, you feel fear,
and it is a journey to set boundaries and meet
(39:06):
your own emotional needs in a way that again isn't destructive,
because the whole point of it being a disorder is
that the copes are destructive. And again the professional advice
regarding this stuff, what they don't tell you is it
really only works maybe thirty percent of the time. It
(39:28):
is infuriating, and it just it just exhausts your distress tolerance.
The reason they don't tell you is, you know, if
if you were told at the very beginning, like, yeah,
these things I'm going to teach you how to do,
they don't work more than they do, but sometimes they
do work, so keep trying. Right, who's going to sign
up for that, right? There's a lot of guilt that
(39:52):
comes with dealing with loved ones with these mental health
conditions and well meaning professionals, and like I said, they
do it for a reason because they want you to
at least try. They want you to stick around for
a little longer. They tend to make it seem much
easier or simple or successful than it actually is. They'll
(40:13):
say things like, I know it's the last thing you
feel like doing, but and that's that's the thing, right,
That's where your own emotional boundaries and your own emotional
needs come into play, because only you can decide how
much time you're willing to spend doing the last thing
(40:35):
you feel like doing in that moment. And that that
is the truth of dealing with people with these you know,
cluster be conditions and you're not gonna you know it
that I know it's the last thing you feel like doing.
But it's really easy to let boundaries slip in that mindset,
(41:02):
especially when the high conflict person is actively lashing out
and pushing every button you have, you know, or they're
giving you the silent treatment, but then talking to third
parties about you. So people are talking they know you're
talking about you, but they're not talking to you, and
the other parties are, Oh, they're so upset, they feel
so bad, they're hurting so badly, they're crying, they can't
(41:24):
get out of bed. As if that's your responsibility or
your fault, that is not helping. Here's the truth, and
this is gonna sound callous at first, but hear me out. Okay,
if you're not prepared to walk away, like really prepared
to walk away, you can't enforce your boundaries. You're gonna
(41:46):
feel coerced and abused, you know. And I tell you,
the profoundly mentally ill person does not mean to even
though their behavior is inherent currently manipulative, abusive. Sometimes that's
why it's mental illness, right, And that hurts. And you know,
(42:10):
people with a symptom of impulsivity, you know, they don't
have that Hey, maybe I shouldn't do this. They'll say
and do thoughtless, hurtful things, and there will be an
empathy deficit because they think it's just them being honest.
It's just the way they talk. Right now, when they've
calmed down, it's important that they care that what they
(42:33):
did hurt you. If they don't, you have the right
to walk away, right. That's true of anybody. It's one
thing that you know, Okay, they have an illness, you
accept that. But the caring, the putting the work in,
has to go both ways. You know. If they continue
(42:54):
to keep trying to make it about how horrible you are,
well you're supposed to go, oh, I understand how you feel.
That's not realistic, right. The problem is that the best
practice on this is deal with their feelings, and when
they're just firing accusations at you, you don't you don't
(43:15):
know what those feelings are, and so you try to
do what the doctors tell you and say, I understand
that you're frustrated.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
I'm not frustrated.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
How dare you tell me I'm frustrated? Well, what are you?
I'm upset? Yeah, okay, I understand you're upset, do you
This may sound so familiar, it's triggering. Right, you have
the right to walk away. You have the right to go.
You know what, This person isn't worth it anymore. I repeat,
(43:45):
you have the right to walk away. If you don't
assert this in yourself, if you don't truly believe this,
you're going to come at things from a place of
feeling trapped. And if you feel trapped, you cannot maintain
the requ with sit outward calm. It's the last thing
in the world you're gonna want to do. But here's
(44:06):
the thing. You're probably not gonna be able to do
it anyway, especially if somebody is bombarding you with lengthy
texts or private messages at three o'clock in the morning, right,
you'll lose it. You're three o'clock in the morning, you're
trying to sleep. Right, even if you turn the buzzer
off your phone, it's like blink blink light light. Right,
even on sleep mode, that light comes on. You have
(44:28):
to turn the phone upside down right, and then the
other person will go, hawai, you frightened me, or they'll
criticize you because you lost your ish right and you
know what, they probably are right, but you're not to
blame for that. You may have been the inspiration for it,
but you are not to blame for it. Meeting your
(44:50):
own emotional needs is about separating yourself from that other
person's intense emotional title waves and recognizing that if you
need in stability and someone who will listen and validate you, well,
that person who's just looking to say how terrible you
are in that moment isn't that person, Which means if
(45:11):
that's what you need in that moment, you need to
get space from that person and find a friendly ear
or possibly a crisis line three o'clock in the morning
things in general, I have a rule I don't do
stuff past it used to be midnight, that it became
eleven o'clock, then it became ten o'clock. It's down to
like nine at this point. If people hit me with
(45:35):
something after nine pm, not tonight, Satan. If you can't
get someone to look you in the eye when things
are calm again and find something they can do to
work with you to do things differently, they're not going
to as much as you want them to. Meeting your
(45:57):
own emotional needs means recognizing that and either living with
the fact that you're not gonna get what you wanted
from that relationship or getting distance from that person and
working to find someone who can, you know, honor agreements.
Meeting your own emotional needs means recognizing the reality isn't
a bad place if you choose to live in it
and accept it. Now, non adult people, well, you know,
(46:21):
thank your satan for deciding you are not going to
engage in the drama. They're not accountable and them saying
something doesn't make it true. And it's very easy to
fall into the trap of being terrified of the consequences
of people not liking you. And this is the final
component of adulting, and this is a part I believe
more than anything, younger people are less prepared for than
(46:43):
older folks because they weren't given the tools. And I
don't have much time, so I'm gonna go to my
last break. Come back at this real quick questions, comments, concerns.
Leanna at notthapyshow dot com. Not therapyshow dot com is
the wise site at not therapy show on social media.
Back one minute on the last thing about adult saying
that you're gonna do this week on It's Not Therapy.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
No Radio, No Problem. Stream is live on SAGA ninety
sixty am dot C.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot CA. We're back in.
It's a therapy. I'm still in a cursoner. I'm still
a therapist. We still only have one minute. Oh my god. Okay,
(47:33):
So the thing I said young people don't have. They
don't have the resilience to deal with people not liking them.
They were raised differently than us older folks, and they
do not have the life experience to know it's gonna
be okay. So if you're dealing with a young person
terrified of ostracization, cancelation, or all that good stuff, that's
(47:57):
the most powerful thing you can say to them. It's
gonna be okay. And if they say no, it's not,
keep talking to them, keep listening, empathize with them, give
them that twenty minutes, and if you gotta go, set
up a new time to talk so they know when
it's gonna happen, they can hang on. And I am
(48:18):
out of time, so I'll have to talk to you
next week. Leanna at Nottherapyshow dot com, not therapyshow dot com.
At not Therapy Show, You're crazy is only a problem
if it's hurting you. Talk next time.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
Stream us live at SAGA nine six am dot co
The views expressed in the following program are those of
the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of
SAGA nine sixty AM or its management.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot CA. Hello listeners
around the world on radio, streaming and podcast services, This
is just not therapy. I'm Leanna Kerzner, and I am
(00:29):
not a therapist, but I am your source for navigating
the madness of mental health using my top ten sayings
for going good crazy. This week, we're going to talk
about adulting. Apparently people of all ages don't know how
to do it now. Right off the bat, this isn't
going to be a there is Good Today episode. I
know people in their fifties who still behave like children.
(00:52):
We talk about adulting as a series of tasks or
some sort of sacred knowledge of how to do things
that just somehow appear in your brain when you turn eighteen.
But adulting is really about having dignity, emotional regulation, and
well knowing what to do when you don't know what
to do. Let's start with that last one first, because,
(01:14):
let's face it, in the age of absolutely everything being
on YouTube or TikTok, the idea that people don't know
how to do personal grooming or things like laundry because
their parents never taught them doesn't really pass the BS test.
Perhaps their parents didn't insist on them doing it, so
they never got in the habit of doing it. That's fair.
(01:35):
But I was never taught how to make a curry
or Coocasian noodles. I learned. Yes, being raised in a
pressure cooker where mistakes were treated as the worst thing
in the world made that more difficult. But let me
tell you, being self sufficient with stuff like this is
pretty great for your confidence, especially in a world where
people are rather open about how worthless women in our
(01:59):
forties are us. We're spending a lot of money still
trying to look twenty. I read green that ish. Yeah,
people don't find me handsome, they can still find me handy,
And I didn't bring up that tangent out of nowhere.
A serious mark of non adult is someone obsessed with
people's looks, fertility pronouns, bathroom habits, or anything else that
(02:22):
reduces a person to a collection of body parts. People
aren't just gam meats. For God's sakes, grow up, happy bride.
Three major skills that are required for successful adulting are
learning how to be embarrassed, learning how to be confused,
and learning how to be afraid. No, really, you get
passibly decent at these things, you'll be able to successfully adult.
(02:46):
Oh add learning how to be disappointed to that list.
If you're coming at things from a childish perspective, the
minute you feel embarrassed, confused, afraid, or disappointed, you erupt
and insist someone fixed things immediately, or you run away
with that explanation. If you're adulting, you can accept your
feeling a negative emotion, process it in a reasonable amount
(03:09):
of time, and get back on track. Basically, stop being
embarrassed or disappointed or afraid or whatever that you don't
know how to cook, do laundry, get your snow tires changed,
or do your taxes, and seek out someone who can
teach you. It's fine to not know things. You didn't
(03:31):
know how to use your phone at one point right,
or a computer. These are more complicated things to learn
than reading laundry labels. Again, it's okay to not know
things it's okay to make mistakes. No, really, Now, I've
been told by those who struggle with adulting that they've
(03:52):
been conditioned to believe that's not so that it's not
okay to make mistakes. It's not okay to know things
people have told me about, things like you should know
this thinking and good kids syndrome. Basically, people under thirty
five were raised in an environment where they were made
to feel like an annoyance when they didn't know how
(04:14):
to do something. You should know this by now was
apparently a mantra preached at children of the nineteen nineties,
but they didn't know it, and it apparently led to
a shame spiral that's lasted decades. And okay, you know
that's a good reason. But is it possible to change
that internal narrative? Yes, absolutely right. There comes a point
(04:38):
in time where everyone disappoints their parents, but you have
to live for you, and they can't do it for
you forever, as much as they might try. Top ten phrase,
don't let problems that aren't your fault lead to mistakes
that are. Let's face it, in the short term, it's
(04:58):
easier to take life andre home to your mother instead
of doing it yourself. But at some point you need
to stop being afraid of adulthood, or resenting adulthood, or
insisting you don't have time for adulthood, and just adult.
The whole idea of adulting is something you do instead
of something you are. Some people hate this, but personally,
(05:20):
I think it's pretty great because it is active. You
don't get anywhere if you're too afraid to do anything.
Facing fear is a skill that involves multiple parts recognizing
you're afraid, deciding whether it's a valid fear, then deciding
what to do about it, and a lot of people
skip at least one of those steps. So let's talk
(05:41):
about that after the break. Do you have a story
you think would be good for the show? Are you
interested in sponsoring the show? Leanna at not Therapyshow dot com.
Not therapyshow dot com is the website at not Therapy
Show on social media. Yeah, I'm afraid of going too
late in the first second like I did last week,
(06:01):
so I'm going to break early this time so we
can further our conversation about adulting. It's not about cooking
and laundry. It's about a lot of internal stuff. When
we come back on It's Not.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Therapy, No Radio, No Problem. Stream is live on SAGA
nine sixty am dot C.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot CA. We're back
in It's Not Therapy. I'm still Leanna Kerzner. I'm still
not a therapist. We are still talking about adulting. What
(06:50):
is it exactly and how do you do it? This
episode was inspired by the fact that certain colleges and
universities are doing online core versus in adulting for their students,
but they're not really getting in the nuts and bolts
of it. Before the Break, we talked about what adulting
actually is, as opposed to what people think it's about.
(07:13):
Adulting now isn't about knowing how to cook or do
laundry or boograss or any of that stuff. Adulting is
the ability to regulate your emotions, carrying yourself with a
certain amount of dignity, and independent problem solving and fear,
which we touched on before the Break interferes with all
these things. If you don't learn how to recognize, and
(07:36):
process it. A lot of people have a relationship to
fear with no nuance. Either they don't admit anything scares them,
or they insist everything must stop if they're afraid. People
like yep, I know both of those types of people. Right,
Neither option is really conducive to adulting. Everyone is scared sometimes,
(08:03):
and if you're not feeling your fear, it is owning you.
And everything doesn't just stop every time you get scared.
Deciding what to do about being afraid is a major
pillar of adulting. So most people just don't do adulting
because it's hard and you don't get immediate rewards of
(08:26):
attention or a pat on the head for it. Right,
putting fear in its proper place requires you to know
what your core values are, which is why I say
top ten phrase core values are more important relationships than
common interests. Again, a lot of people don't like thinking
(08:46):
about subjects like this, Things like core values putting fear
in its proper place because it means making choices and
sometimes doing hard things. So people get into a loop
where people expect them to either blow up or freak
out when they're frightened, and they train the people around
them to enable their fear responses instead of learning a
(09:09):
better way to handle it. And here's the motivation for
learning a better way to handle it. It does wonders
for your confidence when you can do something hard. You know,
I won't say it's the greatest feeling in the world,
not right away, but later on you can go you
(09:32):
know what. I've done hard things before, didn't always work out,
but I survived, and I'll do it again. Every time
I do one of these shows. I'm a bit of fright.
This is deeply personal stuff. It's tough to talk about.
There's a lot of cruel people out there, and some
people think this song is about them. So people said
(09:55):
nastiness via the contact form on the website. So send
me some nice stuff on the contact forum on the
website if you think of it, because yeah, the negatives
tend to motivate people a lot more than the positives.
But I keep doing this show because of those people
that say, you know, it's helpful. I really like that show.
It's compassionate and good. But also I believe in doing
(10:18):
what I can to get the best mental health information
possible out there. And of course it's not gonna be perfect,
I make mistakes, things change. I try to offer a
plurality of views. That's why I have guests on because
nothing is gonna work for everybody. We know that, and
(10:39):
so some people are gonna go you're dead wrong, just
because you know they lack the perspectives of other people.
Of course, there are risks to manage in something like this, right,
Trying to ignore that being fearless would be being reckless.
That wouldn't do any good. There's a certain point where
(11:01):
if I'm really dreading something, every time I do it,
I realize something has to change. And there were periods
with this program where it was too hard, people were
too mean, and people were going out of their way.
I mean, they still are, but I've gotten used to it.
To just make me into this evil thing who hate
(11:21):
who is using people. It's all nonsense, right, But it
was really scary when people just kept saying untrue things
online and wouldn't stop. Right. I had to decide what
I wanted to do about it. I don't expect other
people to solve my problems for me. It's great when
(11:44):
people help, but I'm responsible for me. And if you
hear a strange noise in the background. That is one
of my cats snoring sounds a bit like a monster
farting a tiny monster. Okay, we love the tiny monsters. Okay,
getting back to this idea of I'm responsible for me,
(12:05):
you're responsible for you. Believe it or not, this is
an offensive concept to a lot of people, the idea
that I'm responsible for me, they're responsible for them. I
don't make anyone do anything. So if I'm feeling afraid
of someone, what the heck is actually going on? There?
Is there really a risk? Can they do something to me?
(12:28):
Why am I submitting myself to that? We're supposed to
live in a free and fair society, right, So what's
going on? Usually some sort of social programming that I
can choose to break, some fear of an emotional consequence.
That is it really worse than current circumstances. Yeah, sure,
(12:53):
there's consequences to everything. Making choices and accepting consequences is
peak adulting. Those consequences are what terrify some people so
much that they'd rather not adult. And maybe that's easier
in the short term, sure, but it's not better. What
that means is you're gonna continually compromise those core values
(13:18):
sometimes because you don't know what they are, and you know,
because you're constantly compromising your core values, you're constantly feeling
miserable and full of shame. It is possible to be
happy and adulting is the way to happiness. No, really,
I've talked about happy math on the show before, but
(13:40):
what it really is, you know, this is how it's done.
Is this thing making me miserable? Is the misery getting
me anywhere? If it's not, why am I doing this?
Then how could I do it differently in a way
that is slightly happier? Right? That? Happiness, the little tiny bits,
the little improvements do add up to happiness. It's not this, Oh,
(14:06):
I'm gonna get this one big goal and I'm gonna
have this one big success and just coast on that
for the rest of my life. That isn't how it works.
It's little happy credits that you add up, you know,
month to month, week to week, day to day, hour
by hour, even minute by minute. Do something to make
(14:27):
yourself happy right now, like me continuing to listen to
my cats. No, it's a very weird noise. Ah, the
joys of recording from home? Yeah, okay, People talk about
responsibilities and whatnot somebody would be that's not very professional,
that's not very Pitcher Metcher. Yeah, here's the thing. Most
(14:49):
people live lives of angry misery because they can't be
themselves and they don't truly accept responsibility for their choices.
Life is too short to spend around terrible people. Yet
so many people do it. You know, getting back to
the housework and laundry. If there isn't a single person
(15:13):
in your social circle that you feel comfortable enough to
ask how to do that stuff, what the heck is
going on in your life? Not one person the concept?
You know, when you think about it that way, it
defies belief right, an entire generation of people without basic
adult life skills. It's not shrewe. You know, young adults,
(15:39):
plenty of young adults know how to do this stuff.
I've seen it with my own eyes. You know, if
your kid keeps bringing their laundry over to your house
and you don't like it, instead of going kids today,
how about suggesting that you show them how to do
it so they can do it for themselves, instead of
you doing it for them. You know, I grew up
(16:02):
with Jane Finch. Basic life skills like cooking, and learning
how to do like how to start a fire, how
to navigate the wilderness, stuff like that, like zombie apocalypse
survival stuff. This was taught to us to help us
with our self esteem. We were told it builds character.
(16:23):
So if you're you know, if you own your home
and you've got two cars minimum in that garage and
your kid can't do laundry, help them learn. Yeah, this
all might involve a bit of adulting on your own part, right,
that part of you that needs to be needed, you know,
(16:45):
So you're content for your adult kids to not be
self sufficient while you complain about it but don't do
anything about it. Yeah, that's not a terribly adult part
of yourself. See Also, the husband you complain about your
friends is an a day kid. You're not being an adult yourself. There,
(17:06):
really happy math? Do you really not like it? Okay?
Do you really not like that your husband acts like
a big kid? Well? If not, if it's just performative,
stop complaining about your man behind his back. Okay. If
it does really bother you, why aren't you doing something
(17:29):
about it? You don't have to get mad at the guy.
Just stop doing the things that you think they should
be doing. You know, tell them, hey, I need more help,
I'm overwhelmed. Own that and say I'd really appreciate it
if you could. Then, you know, insert chore here, insert
the thing that will really help you out. Trust me.
(17:54):
Men like to be useful. Usually they like to be helpful.
Oh but he won't do it, is what I hear.
And yet you hear. You can tell the particular type
of person that's saying this, right, he won't do it.
He'll say he will, but he won't. And yeah, yeah,
you're right, he won't. At first, he won't. And there
(18:16):
are reasons for that. Okay, Typically raised men, I won't
say all them. Men are raised in a typical traditional way.
They're raised to treat housework as something that you're helping with,
something you do occasionally right, which means it's usually an
absolute emergency when it's time to clean up, instead of
(18:38):
an ongoing thing. Men can just if something sits there
long enough, if a piece of clutter can sit there
long enough, they don't see it anymore. Some women too.
I realized I did this with certain things. But yeah,
if you want to change the behavior of you know,
the typical man in your life, your usual standards of
(19:00):
order and cleanliness are going to slip temporarily. But if
you give him a chance and keep saying it would
really help me out if he'll eventually get it. See
how it just went from noble suffering, Oh my husband
is like another kid, right, How it went from that
(19:22):
noble suffering, that performative Oh, we have it so hard, ladies,
right to owning your part in it and doesn't feel
that fun, Like, oh, I feel rebuked like that. That's
uncalled for. That's uncalled for. I was just expressing how
you how I felt. Now you were complaining about your
husband and recognizing that is adulting. And again, it may
(19:44):
not feel great right now because you just got called out,
but in the short term, you're gonna be less tired,
have more energy, and more time to do the things
that you want to do. Right, you may understand more
the wonder the happy math of having your own things
(20:05):
that you do on your own that are just yours
and protected and not something you're doing as a parent
or a couple or a friend all of the time. Similarly, guys,
I wasn't just I wasn't just going for the ladies.
And I know this is heteronormative on Pride Month. But like, okay,
this is about the gender of your partner, not about
(20:26):
your gender. Okay, So if you've got a wife, man
or a lady's you know, does she nag and salt
your video games? Do other things like that that lead
you to feel disrespected? Get passive? Aggressive? You know? Have
you told her in a non confrontational moment, not nagging back,
(20:51):
just be vulnerable. How that makes you feel? Have you
or do you just withdrawal, shut down stone wall? Maybe
begrudgingly just do what she wants instead of talking about it, like,
uh huh a grown up? But she doesn't understand, You're right,
(21:12):
she doesn't. She doesn't understand typical women, women who are
taught to girl properly. I felt hard at this, but
even this, this slipped through a little bit, and I
had to catch myself with it because girling learning how
to woman. You're taught that if you love someone, you
(21:34):
put their needs before your own. And that's wrong actually,
But it takes time for someone who was raised that
way to realize that not being able to read your
mind doesn't mean they don't love you. Right, just because
you can't read her mind doesn't mean you don't love her.
(21:57):
You know that problem is she doesn't. Right, consider this
flip the script empathy exercise. Okay, what did I just
tell you? Right, if you love someone, you put their
needs before your own. That's what she's doing. She's putting
your needs before hers. And if you don't want that,
(22:20):
be clear, ask her what's going on? Not in a
frustrated way, trust me, guide coded people. Seventy percent of
all of your emotional responses look like frustration to women. Okay,
and guess what that's communicating you feel about that woman
that primarily she irritates you. So if you're getting the
(22:43):
you don't care thing, not express the best way, But
that's coming from a place of hurt. Think about the
last three exchanges when you tried to say something was
bothering you, Were you vulnerable? Did you show up with
your primary emotion or did you wrap that in armor
of frustration because that was safer? That second thing is
(23:09):
not adulting? Why? But that's tough guy, Right, I'm strong,
I'm a man, you know what. There's a time and
place for that, and that maybe what she was attracted
to in the short term, But the truth is that
that is not a relationship dynamic that's gonna go anywhere good, Right,
(23:31):
So work on understanding and communicating what's beneath that frustration.
Pick up a few of these romanticy books, like A
Court of Thorn and Roses. Read the first two books
of that, right, Read a Court of Thorn and Roses.
Read A Court of mis and Fury. And notice that
all these guys who are like real jerks at first,
you know, and then they soften up and they're vulnerable.
That's what the move. It is what looking were right,
(23:52):
or just watch Beauty and the Beast. It's much shorter. Right, Well,
that's embarrassing though. That's vulnerable. What if it doesn't work?
It might not right. You're responsible for you, you're not
responsible for other people, and you can't control their reactions.
(24:13):
That's what I mean by top ten phrase. Be the
hero of your own story, not anyone Else's those superhero
comic books of back in the day, spider Man, Superman,
you know, not Batman. People think of Badman. Oh he's
all these women, you know, iron Man as all these women,
(24:34):
but they're not committed relationships. You look at the good guys, right,
the really good guys, the guys who have the stuff together,
like Peter Parker Clark Kent' those women. It didn't work
right away. They didn't give Mary Jane and uh Lois
Lane well that rhymes, they didn't give those guys the
(24:55):
time of day at first. You can't make someone feel
a certain way towards you. You can only do your
best to be kind and decent and hope that they
see that and appreciate that. And someone may still end
up believing or the Antichrist because they're utterly incapable of
(25:16):
admitting really that they did anything wrong. But even when
that happens, you know, you know, deep in your heart
of hearts that you were kind and decent, you were considerate,
you tried right. And if the other person is putting
a bunch of negative intentions on you that you did not,
(25:41):
you didn't have if two choice is then adulting right.
You can try to make them see that that wasn't
your intentions and get really frustrated and lash out and
freak out when they don't, or you can just state
like that was not my intention and leave it there
because you know, right, Because some people they say all the.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Right emotional things right, like I'm willing to apologize if
I did something wrong. Right, You'll notice that some people
they actually will apologize. Some people they never do. They
say they're willing to apologize, but they never actually do it.
These people, they'll be adamant that you don't understand them.
(26:27):
They'll tell you at length everything you're doing wrong because
they're deflecting and projecting right. They don't set an example
by being the bigger person, being the adult and putting
you first. These are people who are not emotional adults.
Maybe not all the time, but certainly not in that
(26:47):
moment right. And if people never inhabit the activity of adulting,
quite frankly, you may be better off without that person.
You know, they're never really going to be a good
networking contact because they're only going to put you in
contact with similarly immature, irresponsible, you know, user people. They
(27:12):
certainly won't be a good friend because their definition of
a good friend is completely different than yours. These are
people who absolutely do not know how to get their
own emotional needs met.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
These are people who have tantrums and expect other people
to service their needs. And this is another part of
adulting that's poorly understood. What does it mean to meet
your own emotional needs. Let's take a break and get
into that. Questions, comments, concerns Leanna at not Therapyshow dot com,
Not Therapy Show dot com as the website at Not
(27:46):
Therapy Show on social media. We'll be back with more
on what adulting really is, what's underlying all the chores
and responsibilities on It's Not Therapy.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Stream us Life at SAGA.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot ca. We're back
in It's not therapy. I'm still in a cursonor I'm
still not a therapist. We're still talking about adulting. What
(28:24):
it really is. It's not just doing laundry and getting
oil changes. Let's face it, a lot of people can't
afford a car these days. These things, these chores, these
day to days, they're an extension of effective emotional regulation
and time management. And let's face it, modern schooling doesn't
teach either terribly well. Modern schooling rewards working yourself into
(28:45):
illness and exhaustion, confusing discipline and self punishment, and then
gives you breaks just long enough for you to get
maybe eighty percent of your straight back, just to do
it all over again next semester. It is a god
awful system in need of reform. It teaches the opposite
of checking in with yourself, recognizing how you're feeling mentally, physically,
(29:06):
and emotionally, and making the necessary adjustments to meet your
own emotional needs. And the concept of meeting your emotional needs,
this is a concept that is presented very badly, and
so people can have something of a trauma response to
hearing this. Right, I feel you. I have had this
(29:30):
weaponized against me. Okay, some people, even some mental health professionals,
don't really understand meeting your emotional your own emotional needs.
It's one of those things where it's like muscle memory.
You know it once it clicks, once you feel emotionally fulfilled,
you're like, oh, this is what it feels like, and
(29:52):
then you kind of know how to get back to it.
But you know, when when we're kids, when we're not adults,
we are dependent on other people for our sense of
self to let us know if we're doing well or
if we're doing right wrong right. Our entire self concept
is built on the approval of adults. Right, and so
(30:16):
we get into adulthood with this weird double edged sword, right,
because you know, we need a certain amount of friendship, companionship.
Some people think sex is an emotional need. It's the connection.
If you're truly talking emotion, right, If you just want
that physical gratification, now, that's hedonism, that's not that's not
(30:41):
emotion right. These people think that because emotional needs do
involve other people, that other people are required to meet
their emotional needs, and if their emotional needs are not
met by that person, then that person is abusing them, right, right,
And that's it's not that simple between two adults, right.
(31:04):
Adults are expected to self soothe to an extent. You're
you're expected to know when you're getting overwhelmed, and you know,
say hey, I need it to slow down. If it's
not slowing down enough to say stop, if people don't
respect stop, walk away. This is something I know is
(31:27):
hard if you're raising an abusive environment. It is an
important skill to learn. There's a huge difference between someone
not wanting to make things worse, someone wanting to help
you feel better, and you expecting or feeling entitled to
another person putting your emotional needs first, or worse, expecting
(31:48):
them to appease you. If that person knows that expectation
that they work as you know, an entertainment committee for you,
you're not giving any space to want to do that
because under current circumstances, they need to or else. And
(32:09):
a lot of what I learned with this, really that
idea of emotional needs came from dealing with people with
various personality disorders. Now, big disclaimer here, not all personality
disorders are created equal, you know, obviously, and everything manifests.
People are individuals and a diagnosis doesn't change the fact
(32:29):
that every person as an individual. But setting boundaries and
meeting your own emotional needs is essential to dealing with
people with these conditions. Because what the well meaning mental
health experts on this don't tend to get into is
spending a lot of time with someone with a personality
(32:50):
disorder involves a lot of failure, very painful failures, right,
And so having other ways to get the emotional needs
met that in a non destructive way, right, because that's
the the you know, the damage to your life is
the definition of a personality disorder. So you know, getting
(33:11):
your emotional needs met in a healthy way and setting
those boundaries. It's essential. Now, you know, there's the big
media sensationalized cluster B personality disorders. I'm going to get
to those last. I want to get to you know,
group A and C disorders because they get a lot
less attention. But you know, if someone has avoidant personality disorder,
(33:39):
that person, by the nature of those conditions, is sometimes
going to leave you hanging in social situations. Right, That's
something you have to factor into your planning. When you
plan to go somewhere with someone with AvPD, you know
there is a very good chance they may bee I'll
at the last minute. So if you absolutely must go,
(34:00):
don't make them their right you're right, okay, But if
you absolutely must go, make it clear in advance in
a non confrontational way that like, look, I understand these
are difficult for you, So let's just do it so
that if you're not feeling up to it and six
o'clock rolls around, okay, I'm gonna go myself. Okay, it's good.
(34:21):
Don't rely on someone like that to be your wingman,
to say the least. Here's the thing about that. It's good.
Part it actually has to be good. You have to
emotionally prepare yourself to be okay with possibly going alone. Right.
You can't say okay and secretly be mad. That's not
(34:42):
fair to them. They're gonna find out and then that's
gonna just yeah, that's that's part of the fear of
that condition. Right. The less pressure, the less social pressure
you put on someone with a woiden personality disorder, the
more likely they'll be a successful social situation. Right. This
is hard, but it is doable. It involves a lot
(35:05):
of advanced planning, not setting unrealistic expectations on that person,
but also yourself. Now, someone with a group a personality disorder,
like say schizotypical disorder, well, those people are gonna have
a lot of intrusive thoughts and a lot of fears
regarding other people. They'll have moments where they're untrusting, they'll
(35:27):
regress seemingly without warning. They'll be super communicative one week
and say almost nothing the next. And it's very important
to set and keep checking in with your own internal
boundaries so these ebbs and flows don't don't hurt a lot, right,
(35:48):
setting appropriate expectations and making sure that well, first of
all that you're not being too dismissive of people with
these conditions, that that seems to be the path to
success in a very tricky diagnosis. You know, people with
these group A personality disorders sometimes they're thinking gets a
(36:09):
little magical. But even if the scenario the describing seems
far fetched or impossible, their feelings are still real and
you have to be in touch with your own feelings
to empathize without getting enmeshed. And you're gonna be frustrated sometimes,
(36:29):
you're gonna be hurt sometimes. And the problem with the
way the mental health industry approaches the loved ones of
people with these conditions is the focus is so much
on what you have to do with the people with
the diagnosis that they don't balance this out with look,
you're not gonna get it right all the time. You
(36:51):
don't have to be perfect. Nobody's perfect. There's a balance.
That message often doesn't get across to the families and
other loved ones of somebody with these serious mental health conditions,
and it doesn't help, you know. And of course, like
I said, I left the sensational ones, the cluster B
(37:12):
personality disorders right, the ones in media loves to sensationalize.
There's so many tiktoks on you know, narcissism, borderline, histrionic,
antisocial personality disorder. Okay, no joke. These are roller coaster
conditions and at some point, real talk, if you're remotely
(37:32):
close to anyone with these conditions, they will blame you
for things that are absolutely not your fault and sometimes
didn't even happen. It's a marker of the disorder that
the instability in relationships is there for a reason. Some people,
(37:54):
it's very surface. You know, Narcissists don't really feel they
feel a sense of possession, or they may see somebody
as an extension of themselves, but that deep social connection
not there. Right. Borderline people deep connection on the short term,
but very unstable relationships. Right. Here's the thing that the
(38:15):
descriptions of these conditions don't tell you and make it
even more painful most of the time, especially if somebody
has done extensive therapy with you know, say they have BPD.
That person with BPD is not like this. They're not
a collection of symptoms. They're rationable, rationable, rational, reasonable, even kind. Right.
(38:40):
The problem is when they're not look out, and it's
really hard if you have no experience with that. The
emotional title waves, the emotional roller coasters. It's like what
did I do? You feel intense guilt, you feel fear,
and it is a journey to set boundaries and meet
(39:06):
your own emotional needs in a way that again isn't destructive,
because the whole point of it being a disorder is
that the copes are destructive. And again the professional advice
regarding this stuff, what they don't tell you is it
really only works maybe thirty percent of the time. It
(39:28):
is infuriating, and it just it just exhausts your distress tolerance.
The reason they don't tell you is, you know, if
if you were told at the very beginning, like, yeah,
these things I'm going to teach you how to do,
they don't work more than they do, but sometimes they
do work, so keep trying. Right, who's going to sign
up for that, right? There's a lot of guilt that
(39:52):
comes with dealing with loved ones with these mental health
conditions and well meaning professionals, and like I said, they
do it for a reason because they want you to
at least try. They want you to stick around for
a little longer. They tend to make it seem much
easier or simple or successful than it actually is. They'll
(40:13):
say things like, I know it's the last thing you
feel like doing, but and that's that's the thing, right,
That's where your own emotional boundaries and your own emotional
needs come into play, because only you can decide how
much time you're willing to spend doing the last thing
(40:35):
you feel like doing in that moment. And that that
is the truth of dealing with people with these you know,
cluster be conditions and you're not gonna you know it
that I know it's the last thing you feel like doing.
But it's really easy to let boundaries slip in that mindset,
(41:02):
especially when the high conflict person is actively lashing out
and pushing every button you have, you know, or they're
giving you the silent treatment, but then talking to third
parties about you. So people are talking they know you're
talking about you, but they're not talking to you, and
the other parties are, Oh, they're so upset, they feel
so bad, they're hurting so badly, they're crying, they can't
(41:24):
get out of bed. As if that's your responsibility or
your fault, that is not helping. Here's the truth, and
this is gonna sound callous at first, but hear me out. Okay,
if you're not prepared to walk away, like really prepared
to walk away, you can't enforce your boundaries. You're gonna
(41:46):
feel coerced and abused, you know. And I tell you,
the profoundly mentally ill person does not mean to even
though their behavior is inherent currently manipulative, abusive. Sometimes that's
why it's mental illness, right, And that hurts. And you know,
(42:10):
people with a symptom of impulsivity, you know, they don't
have that Hey, maybe I shouldn't do this. They'll say
and do thoughtless, hurtful things, and there will be an
empathy deficit because they think it's just them being honest.
It's just the way they talk. Right now, when they've
calmed down, it's important that they care that what they
(42:33):
did hurt you. If they don't, you have the right
to walk away, right. That's true of anybody. It's one
thing that you know, Okay, they have an illness, you
accept that. But the caring, the putting the work in,
has to go both ways. You know. If they continue
(42:54):
to keep trying to make it about how horrible you are,
well you're supposed to go, oh, I understand how you feel.
That's not realistic, right. The problem is that the best
practice on this is deal with their feelings, and when
they're just firing accusations at you, you don't you don't
(43:15):
know what those feelings are, and so you try to
do what the doctors tell you and say, I understand
that you're frustrated.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
I'm not frustrated.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
How dare you tell me I'm frustrated? Well, what are you?
I'm upset? Yeah, okay, I understand you're upset, do you
This may sound so familiar, it's triggering. Right, you have
the right to walk away. You have the right to go.
You know what, This person isn't worth it anymore. I repeat,
(43:45):
you have the right to walk away. If you don't
assert this in yourself, if you don't truly believe this,
you're going to come at things from a place of
feeling trapped. And if you feel trapped, you cannot maintain
the requ with sit outward calm. It's the last thing
in the world you're gonna want to do. But here's
(44:06):
the thing. You're probably not gonna be able to do
it anyway, especially if somebody is bombarding you with lengthy
texts or private messages at three o'clock in the morning, right,
you'll lose it. You're three o'clock in the morning, you're
trying to sleep. Right, even if you turn the buzzer
off your phone, it's like blink blink light light. Right,
even on sleep mode, that light comes on. You have
(44:28):
to turn the phone upside down right, and then the
other person will go, hawai, you frightened me, or they'll
criticize you because you lost your ish right and you
know what, they probably are right, but you're not to
blame for that. You may have been the inspiration for it,
but you are not to blame for it. Meeting your
(44:50):
own emotional needs is about separating yourself from that other
person's intense emotional title waves and recognizing that if you
need in stability and someone who will listen and validate you, well,
that person who's just looking to say how terrible you
are in that moment isn't that person, Which means if
(45:11):
that's what you need in that moment, you need to
get space from that person and find a friendly ear
or possibly a crisis line three o'clock in the morning
things in general, I have a rule I don't do
stuff past it used to be midnight, that it became
eleven o'clock, then it became ten o'clock. It's down to
like nine at this point. If people hit me with
(45:35):
something after nine pm, not tonight, Satan. If you can't
get someone to look you in the eye when things
are calm again and find something they can do to
work with you to do things differently, they're not going
to as much as you want them to. Meeting your
(45:57):
own emotional needs means recognizing that and either living with
the fact that you're not gonna get what you wanted
from that relationship or getting distance from that person and
working to find someone who can, you know, honor agreements.
Meeting your own emotional needs means recognizing the reality isn't
a bad place if you choose to live in it
and accept it. Now, non adult people, well, you know,
(46:21):
thank your satan for deciding you are not going to
engage in the drama. They're not accountable and them saying
something doesn't make it true. And it's very easy to
fall into the trap of being terrified of the consequences
of people not liking you. And this is the final
component of adulting, and this is a part I believe
more than anything, younger people are less prepared for than
(46:43):
older folks because they weren't given the tools. And I
don't have much time, so I'm gonna go to my
last break. Come back at this real quick questions, comments, concerns.
Leanna at notthapyshow dot com. Not therapyshow dot com is
the wise site at not therapy show on social media.
Back one minute on the last thing about adult saying
that you're gonna do this week on It's Not Therapy.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
No Radio, No Problem. Stream is live on SAGA ninety
sixty am dot C.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot CA. We're back in.
It's a therapy. I'm still in a cursoner. I'm still
a therapist. We still only have one minute. Oh my god. Okay,
(47:33):
So the thing I said young people don't have. They
don't have the resilience to deal with people not liking them.
They were raised differently than us older folks, and they
do not have the life experience to know it's gonna
be okay. So if you're dealing with a young person
terrified of ostracization, cancelation, or all that good stuff, that's
(47:57):
the most powerful thing you can say to them. It's
gonna be okay. And if they say no, it's not,
keep talking to them, keep listening, empathize with them, give
them that twenty minutes, and if you gotta go, set
up a new time to talk so they know when
it's gonna happen, they can hang on. And I am
(48:18):
out of time, so I'll have to talk to you
next week. Leanna at Nottherapyshow dot com, not therapyshow dot com.
At not Therapy Show, You're crazy is only a problem
if it's hurting you. Talk next time.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
Stream us live at SAGA nine six am dot co
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