The Secret to Living Guilt-Free | Dr Jennifer Reid | The Art of Charm

setting an identity, maybe one that at some point in your life was adaptive for you, was helpful for you, let's say people pleaser, was helpful for you when you were younger because it helped you to calm down a pretty volatile environment in your home. It's just that when you pull it forward into the here and now and try and apply it in every situation, pulling some old plans for an old house and bringing them forward to your new condo and thinking this should work just as well. Of course, it doesn't. We can change that. That's that's not static. That is dynamic. [music] >> Well, welcome to the show. It's great to have you. >> Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. >> Likewise. I think many of our audience members, myself included, have challenging relationships with guilt. And I'd love to hear what your relationship was like when you started this work and this project and how it's changed. >> I was hearing it in my practice as a psychiatrist a ton um from men and women. I work with a lot of healthcare providers so I think they get a really healthy dose of it um sort of taught to them along the way. But for me it was my own guilt as well. It was this sense of I'm always behind. I'm never quite measuring up. I I need to be doing more. if I feel like I need to rest then I'm missing out on productivity just this sort of constant churn and I wanted to figure out you know why is this happening how can I speak about it with patients in session in a way that's they can understand they can apply in their own life and so that's sort of what prompted starting to write about it research it because it was a little nebulous I didn't find much out there I always ask about guilt as one of the core symptoms of major depression but like there really wasn't much for me to refer to if they did endorse it All right. Yeah, I have a ton of guilt. Now what? I'm not sure. >> I know for myself, guilt was a tool often times that my family used to get me to do things, to get me to act certain ways, and that of course created some maladaptive responses in adult life and not necessarily recognizing its own role in some of my behaviors. I know for some of our clients, they argue, well, guilt is just a sign that I care. Like, I I care, therefore, I feel guilty. >> I love that. that I mean you jump right to the point of of one of the stickiest aspects of guilt which is that it has become conflated with care. This idea that if someone else that I you know love is struggling I should feel guilty because that means I care. But what guilt tells us is that I've done something wrong. Right? Guilt is adaptive. It's a healthy and useful emotion when it tells us we've done something wrong. When we really have when there's something maybe we missed or forgot or said something hurtful. It tells us, "Look, you got this wrong. It's uncomfortable." And it pushes us to try and make up for it, apologize, repair. But unfortunately, when we're using it to show that we care, we're always telling ourselves we've done something wrong. And maybe that's not the case. Maybe it's someone we really we really love. Something's happened to them. We care about them, but that doesn't mean we have to take responsibility for their experience. If that's your instinct in these situations, then it can be something that is all-consuming. I mean, there's so many instances where the people in our life are going through things and if we take on not only our own guilt, but their guilt, of course, it's going to lead to inaction, it's going to lead to inadequacy. It's going to lead to an immense amount of self-doubt and self-criticism. >> It is because I can't control someone else's emotions. Even as a psychiatrist with years of training, I know I cannot do that, right? So I describe it as sort of this hyperaccountability expectation. And if our guilt lives in the space between our expectations and what we see that we're actually doing, which are perceived reality I call it. Meaning it may not be the actual reality but what we notice. Then this expectation of hyperaccountability for other people's experiences, emotions just keeps us constantly trapped in guilt, like drowning in guilt. Oftentimes it shows up in romantic relationships really clearly for us where we feel like we have to be the adult and mother or take care of the other person in the situation that they're going through when in actuality we have no responsibility or role in in what they're feeling like life is messy but it can feel difficult when the people we really care about are going through difficult periods challenges >> it can and guilt can give us this illusion of control right like oh if they're going through that, but it's my responsibility that I'm I can just fix it. I'll be better. I'll do more. And so, it does protect us from this feeling of helplessness. There's almost nothing worse than someone you care about hurting and you're helpless to fix it or to have prevented it in the first place. But that's the reality of of the vulnerability of of caring for someone else. >> Now, the book is guiltree. What does it mean to be guiltree? Sounds impossible. [laughter] Well, I think it's sort of like if you compare it with anxiety, right? There are some situations where anxiety is warranted. If we really are under threat, we need to protect ourselves. And there are situations where guilt is appropriate, where we have done something that went against our values or hurt hurt someone that we care about. And for us to move toward them and repair is part of what has allowed us to really thrive as a species that we've worked in community. We've collaborated with each other in this way. So having absolutely zero adaptive guilt is actually bad, right? Like it's saying, "I hurt you. I don't feel anything." You can see how that would fracture any relationship, right? The breakups certainly have happened where it's like you hurt my feelings and you didn't seem to care at all. You didn't have any guilt about that. The guilt-free idea is how do we remove this sort of overlay, this maladaptive, constant generalized guilt that so many of us experience. certainly see it in caretakers across the board, whether it's parents, healthcare providers, maybe you're caring for an aging parent, right? These sort of areas, we can have so much guilt because we're chasing enough and enough has no clear definition. We just keep resetting it often further and further away, right? Moving the goalpost, if you will, on what it means to do enough. And I think that's what's keeping us in this position. >> In many of those situations, especially when it's a loved one or someone who took care of us, raised us, we feel this debt of gratitude in everything that they did in service of us, being able to achieve our goals and put us in places that allowed us to succeed. And therefore, we will carry that burden into, well, I owe this person this immense amount. And the guilt that comes with that can be overbearing, can be really difficult and challenging for us to handle. >> It can. I mean, as you pointed out, if you've been raised in a situation where guilt was used to manipulate by others, you're really it pushes you away from them, right? If someone's using guilt on you, it's very uncomfortable and you really don't want to spend more time with that person. It's it sort of disconnects us from them. So we really have to be careful that we're not using that in our relationships, but also that we're not using it against ourselves, right? Saying, you know what, a a good daughter, for example, if I have aging parents, a good daughter in order to show that she's perfectly grateful, would live near her parents, would visit them every day, would make sure they're never feeling lonely. Like all these expectations you can see that really aren't reasonable, right? You can be a very loving and grateful adult child and not meet all of those sort of perfect criteria, but we can wrap ourselves up in not saying I need to do all of these things. It's either perfection or failure. And there's so much room in the middle of that to share gratitude, to have connection, to show love, and not feel like you need to ride this line of perfection in order to show those things. in that situation where we're wrestling with this, but the other person has those expectations, how do we start to unravel that and have a conversation to get to a place where we can actually work through it meaningfully? Because I know for a lot of people it's like, yeah, I hear what you're saying, but also those expectations are coming from someplace. like my parents really feel it's necessary for me to be with them, to be next to them, to be in their life and doing all of these things because of all the things they did for me. >> Yeah, it's so hard even that's coming directly from them. Absolutely. This is where I would talk about boundaries because I think that rather than boundaries as a a wall between us and those we care about, I see it as it's sort of the protective scaffolding. It allows us to move toward each other. And so communication with others and again we can't control how they respond. But what we can communicate is a deep love and gratitude and saying here are the ways that I can really connect with you. I want to try and connect with you because I love you. Here are some different ways that I can do that. That's what a boundary says. It says this is the time and energy that I really want to devote to our relationship. And being able to communicate that gives them the opportunity to say, "Okay, we we see that. We want that. We like that. How do we how do we work together? How do we facilitate?" If you're in a relationship where there's very little room for compromise from that other individual, that makes it that much harder, right? People just blow through our boundaries. Another thing that's important to work on around guilt is allowing disappointment and allowing it in others and knowing that even if we are a very very loving, caring person, we still are going to create disappointment in other people because we can't be everywhere at once. Right? I'm talking [clears throat] with you so I can't be playing chess with my son as I he told him just before we started. >> We create disappointment because we're human and the only way to not disappoint others is to have no one in your life. And we know how damaging that can be. So practicing the idea that disappointment is a human emotion. It's a signal like any other emotion, but it's not dangerous. It doesn't last forever. It's not going to fracture a relationship. Right? These are the things we need to practice because if we're, you know, bending over backwards trying not to ever disappoint anyone else, mostly we disappoint ourselves and we live in this constant guilt. >> A big part of that then is this self-criticism. And many high performers will argue, okay, well, the self-criticism keeps me sharp. It keeps me motivated. It keeps me working towards my goals. And they can have difficulty in seeing where that self-criticism actually hinders them and creates blind spots and guilt that they're struggling to deal with, anxiety and burnout that they're feeling because of it. That's another use of guilt that we all do, which is using it as motivation, right? This this idea we tell ourselves, if I don't feel guilty, I'm just going to crawl under the covers and I'm never coming out. never going to the gym again. I'm gonna just only eat Cheetos for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I do like Cheetos. >> Yeah, sounds good. >> Yeah, right. >> But I think that that is a threat that we do utilize because the idea that only guilt is motivating is wrong for a number of reasons. Number one, research suggests things like self-compassion are actually more likely to motivate us to make desired changes, to move toward goals. Also, when we're using guilt to motivate, we're forcing ourselves to sort of start from behind because what does guilt say? It says you've done something wrong. So, we're saying I tell myself I've done something wrong in order to get myself to do something. So, I joke that like Nike's motto of just do it. Is that for a reason? It's not I can't believe I didn't do that already. I'm such a piece of whatever. Right. >> Right. >> Because that is demoralizing. It's like a coach yelling things like this at you doesn't necessarily motivate. I think that's a pretty old school version of motivation, but we can make that change or at least start pushing back on that change within ourselves. >> What are some of the signs that guilt is running more of our life than it should or that we might be using it in ways that hinder us? Well, even just the way that we I mean when we're paying attention to our own thoughts, which is harder than it sounds because we're in an attention economy and everyone is paying top dollar for our attention. So turning it inward toward ourselves as I would ask someone to do in therapy is really hard. It takes the courage to say I deserve this time and I think something better is on the other side of it. Right? So, when we're paying attention to our thoughts, watching for those really critical thoughts, watching for hyperbole, always never, I never get this right, I always do it this way, how come I can never, etc. Shoulds, you know, everyone's talking about shoulds and how they're not good for you. But really, should is outsourcing that motivation or that influence because when you say I should, like according to who? There's a goldfinch outside my house. It's bright yellow. It's so pretty. So when you're outsourcing that you're giving control to someone else. So if you really want to be a high achiever, you really want to be engaged, you want to make these changes, things should take that control and it places over here in whoever I guess it's crowdsourcing the idea of what makes a good you know professional, a good leader, a good innovator, entrepreneur and I think that is taking the control away from ourselves needlessly and keeping us in this place of guilt. What can trip up a lot of us is that especially as a high achiever there is a lot of external validation that comes from that that sense of accomplishment that our family shares with us or the people we care about celebrate us for and that can also feel very motivating and but it creates these expectations then where it's like okay well that's where the should is coming from I should be doing this because I know other people are going to celebrate me for me they're going to feel better about me for doing that they're going to share with their friends and talk about me and brag about me because of it. Therefore, I should be doing this to live up to their expectations. >> This comes up so often and when I'm working with someone who that has been their driving force their entire lives that I am searching for this external validation and when I get it, I feel okay about myself. The trouble is it's it's really temporary and it's a it's fairly, you know, it's lacking in that depth of what is my intrinsic motivation. When we've done these these studies, psychological studies, the idea of extrinic exttrinsic validation or you know extrinsic motivation from outside sources is less effective for us. It's less beneficial, less likely to push us to engage in things in a meaningful and productive way than really having it come from inside. And so often as we go through our lives reaching midlife, we may come to a point where I mean I've experienced this certainly as I was growing up. It was like how can I do really well in college to get into the right medical school, to get into the right residency, to get the right job, da da da. Then you get to midlife and you're like, what is this all for? And if I don't have that constant validation of what the next contest is or competition I could win, I feel really empty inside. And so I think that's where it really that investment in learning what drives you, what motivates you, what really feels good because otherwise you just keep again you move that goalpost. If my goal was I'm going to publish a book and then I'll be happy and feel good about myself. Well then I did and then I felt the same person I always have, right? And so that's where we can get into these really difficult midlife years of, you know, I guess talked about as midlife crisis or some of these pivots people talk about, but you have to have something inside that sets that core identity. >> What goes along with that often times for many of us is achieving those things does seem to make our loved ones happy. It does seem to make the people around us happy. They're celebrating us. They're elevating us. They're bragging about us to the people they care about. And then we feel this responsibility to keep making them happy, to be responsible for their happiness. And that's a huge weight to carry outside of realizing our own happiness and where that comes from. >> It is because again, we can't control how other people feel about us. So we might do things that we think would really impress them or make them proud and we don't get as much of that response as we expect or we become disappointed and really are only doing it for for that feeling. So again, we can get caught up in the sense of this is the only thing that brings me value. For example, I work with I've worked with a lot of students coming to, you know, Ivy League schools and thinking once they made it there, that was their identity. They had already made it, they were already successful. Maybe they were a student athlete as well and then there was an injury or they were having more trouble at school than they thought. if their entire identity was I'm successful because of X I'm in the school or I'm in the sports program there's what is left when that is is briefly or you know forever taken away right because that was their full identity and I think we have to be so careful that even though it feels good in the moment trying to make other people happy with our own choices is a recipe for future resentment and discontent >> in those scenar scenarios. Often times it feels good because other people are selecting us. The the school has selected us. We competed against others and we were chosen. And then there comes a point in life where well there aren't really as many opportunities to be chosen. And if you've put all of your worth and value on being chosen, you can then feel an immense amount of guilt when there isn't anything left to be chosen for. >> Right? As if maybe I'm doing something wrong. I need to be better. I need to do this differently because otherwise I'm a failure. Right? It's either the sort of perfect success in an ongoing repeated way or or failure and then the bottom kind of falls out in that situation. I know for a lot of our clients, guilt comes from consuming social media and seeing what other people in our life are doing and then comparing oursel to the vacations, the purchases, the things that they're celebrating, publishing a book and launching something where we feel inadequate because we're in the messy middle. We're in the part where we don't have that achievement to celebrate and get external validation for. And it can feel as you consume social media that everyone is just achieving. And the messy middle is something that only we're dealing with, >> right? We're seeing this two-dimensional projection of someone's experience. What truth is in that? It's hard to really tell. It's an image that they're projecting, right? And research suggests we do reach out or seek out comparisons more often when we're already feeling insecure or badly about ourselves. So that's this perfect storm of saying, "I'm already feeling insecure. I'm going to seek out comparison because maybe in our mind like guilt, we see it as motivating. Oh, wow. That person's doing this amazing thing that'll motivate me. I think the trouble though is who we choose to compare ourselves to. And that we don't say, "Let me look at this entire individual." Right? If you're comparing yourself to a close friend, for example, you've seen some of their tougher sides. You've seen some of their challenges. You know, they're a rich and full human who's not perfect in every single way. And so we can say, "Oh, well, yeah, they've made this amazing accomplishment at work." And also, they have these kinds of struggles. They're human. Like, I I am able to see that lens as a psychiatrist because that's what they bring up to me. >> I think it's important to know that everyone has that going on behind the scenes. So when you choose to compare yourself to some idealized version of whatever trait you might be feeling insecure about, you're setting yourself up for this perpetual feeling of further insecurity and this sense that everyone right that hyperbole everyone's doing better than me, everybody x y and z. So I really am am cautious about social media. I do think that it can can create this idea that the only movement the only trajectory for life is up up and even if you're going up in that spiral you know as people talk about with progress that I think it makes people feel guilty when they have difficult days or when they feel any emotion other than excitement and engagement and meaning. Maybe they just feel really sad or bored or tired. You know, a brand new mom with a new baby might think, "I'm only supposed to feel joyful." Well, you're also exhausted all the time. So, how can we allow that ambivalence? I think ambivalence is not something that we feature on social media. Yeah. Like, I'm in this job and I guess it's exciting, but I also kind of miss the time I had with my co-workers before because now I'm supposed to be leading them and I feel a little bit uncomfortable about that. Right. None of that nuance. When I've tried to post things online, I'm like, I can't do it. I can't do it. It's too like to have any nuance there. It gets too wordy very quickly. And I think that's what we're missing in what we see online. >> Becoming a dad and and recognizing a whole new layer to guilt in my consumption of social media and how I want to be a great dad, recognizing all the patterns that I want to change in the way that I was raised and the way that I'm raising my daughter. And I think with that came a whole extra wave of guilt because exactly what you're talking about. So much of what you consume is only one emotion. It could be a strong emotion of like this is so hard and challenging or this is so amazing. This is the best thing ever. But many of us experience it with both of those emotions at the same time. And social media doesn't capture that and it doesn't allow us to see it in that manner. So then the guilt can come. Well, how is it that I could feel this is such a blessing but at the same time this is so challenging. I'm not sleeping and and my partner and I are not connecting like we were previously. >> Yeah. Because when you think about those expectations, I mean, it shapes our parenting roles so deeply because over time, the roles as parents that are expected to carry, the things we're expected to do, the way we're supposed to show up with our child, they're shaped by the culture, the time that we live in. And I think that we are still trying to figure out I think men are trying to figure out what does it mean to be a good dad today. What are the images from previous that I want to bring into my parenting and what are the ideas and limitations that I don't want to bring in? And I think it can be very hard when you're getting so many messages online like you said lacking any nuance. this is the way to do it because we wouldn't have a 100,000 parenting books if there were really truly one perfect way and if you have a second child they're totally different so you think you've written your own playbook and then you have to throw that out the window so I think setting expectations as parents I've heard seen people write about really trying to set them very basic very low literally I'm here I love my children I'm here to listen to them these are the values I really want to use and I have to let go of this idea of perfection in so many other parts of parenthood. >> Another big struggle especially around the parenthood piece is just the nature nurture component. And I feel like so much of what we're consuming on social media and we're reading and parenting books focuses so much on the nurture and what we can do and the outsiz impact that we have. And then we can feel with the imperfection of how we're showing up daytoday or how we're struggling with the changes at work and trying to adapt that well we're not being the perfect parent based on the book or the podcast we listen to. We're we're making mistakes and we're having moments where we overreact or we aren't showing up in the way that we had hoped when we got the news that we were pregnant and we were excited to start a family. And the guilt that can also come then from the generational differences. So when I talk to my family, the choices they made are way different than what the books are telling me now and the way that I want to approach it. But that guilt can come up like, "Oh, I'm I'm not a good parent in their eyes because I'm not making the same choices." >> Part of what I see is this increasing guilt and this increasing focus on trying to get everything right as parents in modern times is that it's a reaction to sort of increasing levels of insecurity. And that frankly with our globalized media, including social media, but many other sources, we can see so many different things going on in this world, including really scary, really awful, really difficult images. And I think when we feel that uncertainty, one way of trying to get control is to say, okay, in my parenting, I'm going to get everything right. Because then that guarantees that I'm going to have a happy, healthy, successful child. And I think if we step away from that guilt and that constant attempt to do it perfectly, we again have to accept that we we don't have control over those things. We can do the best thing. We can do the best work possible. We can show up the way we want to and things may not work out the way we want. That's true of any relationship that we're in. And that is a really hard emotion to sit in, especially as a parent. I didn't have nearly as much anxiety until I had child and then I was like, wait, I have to let this being go out into the world and I can't control their every single move. Well, no. Especially when they're teenagers and you're like, this is impossible. So, I think that's part of this this intense focus on how do I get everything right? Because we want to control something that's really out of our hands. In my experience and working mostly with men in our coaching and then also in my male relationships, I think competition also becomes a part of it that's woven into our story of how do we measure up and we do want to be showing up as the perfect dad, as the one who's prepared, who's put in all the effort, who's read everything and made sure that they're handling not only work but then also fatherhood. And I think with that comes this mask that we bring into our relationships and that lack of vulnerability that harms us on the guilt side of things because then we feel guilty when we aren't showing up as vulnerable and we're forcing other people to be more shallow in the way that they show up to us because they don't feel comfortable being vulnerable in their relationship with us and it could be a really slippery slope. I think that's really true. And I think that when we think about society's expectations for what a man's role might be or what we believe is okay for men to feel and express, vulnerability, fear, uncertainty, a need for reassurance or or attention, those aren't necessarily things we allow men to to need without sort of judgment or kind of giving them a little side eye. And I think what that does, like you're saying, is it forces you as men to show up in this way that is stoic and I've got this figured out and then doing it all right. And I think I remember like a mommy and me class I went to first early after having a baby. And all the moms were just like, "Everything is so wonderful. Baby latched right away. He's growing. He's sleeping through the night." I mean, who knows what they really were. >> Sleep. Yeah. >> Right. But I felt just terrible. And what I did is I had to find my people where we could get really real about it. And I think women maybe are given more latitude to do that, to have friendships where we really call and we talk for an hour about like, "Oh my god, can you believe this happened? This was awful." Or this I'm so frustrated or I'm exhausted. And men, I think some have friendships where they allow that. But I think more often we need to give men the latitude to express all of these human emotions, right? It's not that only women have these and men are just fine. Like men of course have any of these emotions including guilt, but they maybe don't feel as as safe or as able to authentically express that even if it's not to everybody blasting on social media. Maybe it's to a close friend or a family member that you really trust that you can be real with because otherwise you're sort of hiding behind this this idealized version of yourself and then shame can come in, right? Because it's like well I'm not any of those things. I'm actually inherently this flawed person and shame can be really toxic. So, one thing that my wife and I joke about is, you know, in sleep being one of them is like, "Oh, we got a different model." And I think that's also what's really challenging. Like, two dads can be great friends and and be really conscious of wanting to be vulnerable and share and have a deep relationship and fatherhood and have two entirely different experiences on what it's like to care for their child. And I have friends who had kids who are amazing sleepers and we're sleeping through the night immediately and you know we're a year and a half in and it's just not been that situation for us. But I also feel uh a sense of shame and guilt around like well I don't want to keep talking about how I'm not sleeping like they clearly got through it and they've moved on or that's a different experience for them. And that can also create distance and and that need to not be as vulnerable. I don't want to sound like a broken record or I don't want to make it all about my experience that is different than your experience in fatherhood. And I think that range often times um can be difficult because many of of us as men we try to like >> get together in what is that band where we're all experiencing the same thing. Maybe it's around an activity or a sport we love and and share the camaraderie aspect. And then parenthood is just one of those situations where we could be on two entirely different timelines even if we had kids at exactly the same time and they're the same age. >> And I think finding a way to separate from that. So for example, [clears throat] I have two boys and they are vastly different boys. The first one was a good sleeper and he was a pretty chill kid and I could take him anywhere and he would just sort of fall asleep in his car seat. Well, second boy was not like that. And I think you recognize how little control you have over either of those things. They do come out with their own temperament. I think so that can give you that that visibility if there's a way to extract pull back on that responsibility because I think our idea of responsibility as parents as you know in so many roles expands far out beyond our control. So our responsibility is way out here and our control is really right in here. So if we can find a way to bring that responsibility circle in in in in just say yeah we did get a different model and we're doing our best that we can as opposed to absorbing that internalizing that as a failure right that you and your wife are on the same team and trying to manage sleep challenges as opposed to we're doing something wrong and then the sleep is not following right >> so it's recognizing what is my circle of control and can I try and match my responsibility circle, even my own thinking to sort of match that so I'm not living in this guilt over failing at something I don't have control over, which is a pretty tough place. I think another triggering word for many of us is balance and then feeling that because we lack balance there's something wrong with us and the guilt that then comes from it because it can seem like everyone else has mastered balance and they've figured out how to achieve everything that they want personally, professionally, etc. >> Yeah. Yeah. Balance is one of those things that can be sort of weaponized against us, right? this idea, if you think about it, right, that we can never truly know a particle's location and speed at the same time. And I think the idea that balance is ever something that's static is really putting us in this remarkably difficult place because there truly is no absolute balance, right? Like the example is someone who's in the workplace is very assertive. They're leading a team. They're doing things quickly. They're calling things out. The team knows that we're just going to get things done. I'm not going to soft shoe it very much. This is how we work. This is the office culture. Boom, boom, boom. And then they finish work for the day. And they come home and all of a sudden they have to just like rewire their entire personality, right? And so be like be listening and take time and not try to fix it right away and and just be compat. I mean, it's it's expecting I think absolutely unreasonable amounts of sort of frame shifting there. And I think a just recognizing how hard that is and that it's not going to be a beautifully smooth course. I have worked with people who've literally found ways to kind of take a minute in between when they can before returning home, right? How do I take a minute to just like decompress and not expect myself to be the perfect perfect person in each of these very very different environments asking very different things of me because that's again setting us up for this perceived failure as opposed to I'm just a human being. I can't sort of code shift that quickly. And so having that communication maybe with your partner at home, you know, sometimes one of us, my husband and I will come home in a terrible mood. And we'll just be like, "Oh, we just want to just yell at each other, but we're like, "No, it's just been a terrible day. Just give me 10 minutes." >> Right? >> That feels a lot different, doesn't it, than someone coming home and like telling you off right away because they don't know where to put that. So, I just think balance is a really brutal brutal one because what would be a better word? Maybe we can come up today with a better word than balance. Maybe it's I don't know, flexibility. Maybe it's a willingness to try. Right. I mean, just the idea I think it's balance or having it all is keeping us trapped. >> Yeah. I I I think of it almost more like juggling, right? And and while we're juggling, something might be in our hands, something's in the air, and and we just keep it moving. And I think many of us when we think about balance, we're we're looking at it from a 2D perspective where yes, if we look at it, it looks like balance, but if we zoom out to 3D, there's probably something else. Some other ball that might be dropping or another ball that's about to be in the air, but isn't. And I think as you start to have that perspective and recognize, okay, well then if that's what balance really is based on social media or other people's share, then I don't have to be so hard on myself and I can recognize that yeah, those two things that really matter to me are in proportion, but there's a third thing that's just dropping off right now and that's the chapter I'm in. That's the phase I'm going through and that's okay, too. >> Right? that when you're seeing it on social media, just like sort of some of these classic typically it was men, but men in literature who people saw as just they just were so prolific in the work that they were doing, but actually had a lot of support, whether it was coming from a financially secure family or having a partner that helped them, right? There's these things behind the scenes and that's still the case in social media when someone's projecting balance and they're like, I wake up at this hour and I do this workout and then I take this supplement and then I do this You're like, well, what happens if like a kid gets sick at school or daycare? How what happens to your perfect schedule there? And I think again, it's that nuance. It's those aspects that are not in our control that really make life what it is, the richness of it, but also, you know, the difficulty. I think for many of our audience members, they're very analytical. They work in careers that are very cerebral and their critical thinking, decision making, weighing different options is validated through how they're paid, how they're promoted, what their compensation structure is. So, I'd love to give them your guilt equation so we can start to analyze and and work through this if we're now recognizing that guilt has been something that's been tripping us up. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I love the idea of a guilt equation because I think math is so wonderful because it's subjective like 1 plus 1 equals 2. You have an answer. I could never handle comparative literature courses because I just struggled with all the interpretation, you know. So math so the guilt equation is just this that guilt equals our expectations of ourselves in that role minus our perceived reality. So expectations minus perceived reality mean perceived reality is really what am I noticing that I'm doing right now? Right? If my expectation is I'm only a good dad if my one and a half-year-old is sleeping seven hours a night and anything short of that if that's not exactly what's happening that's not being a good dad right that if you have this narrow threshold for what is good but on the perceived reality side also to continue with the example and I hope that's okay if you're you're you're describing what are the different ways that you are being a good dad even if your baby's sleeping 6 hours then wakes up or sleeps two and then wakes up right you have a safe envir environment for them. You're taking them to doctor's appointments. You're giving them nutritious food du right all the different things and ways that you're showing up in that role that we sometimes will dismiss. And I think people who are really actionoriented will very much say what's the problem we need to solve here because I'm going to just ignore all the things that are going right because they're doing great over here and I'm just going to focus on that. But I think we do need to put some attention on the ways that we're contributing on the things that are going well because truly where we focus our attention is what life looks like to us. That is our life where your attention is. So I think not giving any attention to the ways you're doing well >> and only trying to meet some certain expectation of what success for example looks like because success to be defined in some only singular way like it's climbing some hierarchy. it's a certain amount of money. It's a certain title. Maybe people think it's going to be a certain feeling and they chase that to the end of their life and never find it even though they they end up with billions of dollars. I think we also have to be careful about what does success look like and how can we manage our guilt moving towards something we want. >> And I think that does open the door for self-compassion. And I think that really is is kind of the first opening for many of our high performers and super analytical people. They feel like, well, self-compassion is maybe going easy on myself or or letting myself off the hook. And that can feel really difficult like, well, I don't want to slip. I don't want to lower my expectations. That doesn't feel good to me. And I think instead, if we actually look at, well, we're not lowering expectations. are taking a more holistic look at those expectations and recognizing well there are a lot of other expectations that I am meeting like I am showing up in other ways. Maybe I'm sleepd deprived because of the lack of sleep or or maybe at work I I didn't speak up in the meeting but I prepared the deck and I stayed up all night to make sure that all the team members had what they needed. So those are other expectations that I am meeting to manage the guilt equation more effectively. >> Right. And I think it's also our idea about what self-compassion means. I think many people think it means I'm only going to focus on things I'm doing well and the opposite of what I just described, right? But self-compassion really has three key components. Yes, it is self-kindness. It's treating oneself with kindness. That's not saying I can do whatever I want and I'm not going to be upset. Like I'm treating myself with kindness and I'm also I'm part of a common humanity. I'm part of this community of people who have similar feelings, who go through similar challenges. And lastly, it involves mindfulness. Really noticing what I'm feeling in this moment, which again in distraction, attention economy, that's really hard. The thing about self-compassion is that it allows us to be more honest with ourselves about things that are going well and things that aren't going as well because we're kind of creating a safe environment where our brain can say, "Okay, I'm open to hearing it." Right? Like truly someone who you know is going to give constructive criticism, you're much more open to that conversation than someone who thinks they're giving it but may they just make you feel like a you know piece of whatever because their criticism is just really harsh. So you're creating sort of this constructive exploration of your own feelings and that might say to you I want to do better at this. I want to grow in this way. I want to go after this goal. It isn't that self-compassion says you're good enough as you are. don't change. It's saying what actually is true for me and what do I want? >> I think for me the first eye opening part of recognizing expectations was in one of my first therapy sessions where my therapist said, "Hm, sounds like some expectations there that are unmet." And I didn't even recognize how much expectation was coming into play in a lot of the covert contracts. the way I was showing up people pleasing, the way I was putting other people's emotions ahead of my own and then feeling the guilt around it. How do we start to untangle expectations if for many of us listening they're invisible right now? We haven't really wrestled with them, >> right? Well, that's why noticing I mean when a guilty thought shows up, oh, I can't believe I didn't do X or I should have done X. We can plug in that guilt equation because it works across different contexts and different roles and we can say what? Let me think about this is the thought I just had. So if my guilty thought is I should be playing chess with my kid right now. I'm not a good mom. Okay, let's think about that. Let's explore the expectation. The expectation is that a good mom would do what? She would never tell her son she couldn't play a game with them. She would never tell him that there's anything more important than him in that moment. Well, of course, that's not the case. There are going to be situations. We all have to live life. We have to go to the doctor. We have to use the bathroom. don't have you. And so I think it's recognizing figuring out what that expectation is, which is really what is the story we're telling oursel here. That's really all it is. And then thinking who is the author of the story, >> right? >> Was that shaped by how my own father showed up or by how I used to think that this is how I was going to look because it was the opposite of my own father? Is it some crowdsourcing from social media about what a good dad is? What is it? Who's writing that story? And if it's not the author we want, we have the opportunity to rewrite it. Is really these guilty thoughts can be a rough draft, right? As I'm sure you learned in therapy, we are not our thoughts. We're not our guilty thoughts. We're not our anxious thoughts. We can rewrite those. And I think recognizing the story we're telling oursel gives us a ton of power because we need to tell a story that aligns with our values, our goals, like who we actually want to be, not some idea of who we should be. Well, I think the struggle is when those thoughts have such a strong emotion tied to them like an anger, a resentment, something that's goes beyond just a feeling like I I should be a better caretaker or I should be a perfect dad. But the emotion tied to it then can almost overwhelm us in that moment and be challenging for us to then start to dig into, okay, well, what's the underlying expectation when I'm feeling this intense emotion triggering it? M right and I think what we can do is maybe protect oursel with other emotions. We can say we can feel guilty for feeling angry and try and shut it down. Right. But again any of these emotions even really strong ones like all the emotions teenagers have they really are signals right that something something is signaling to us this is creating this feeling. And I think a healthy curiosity towards oneself allowing these emotions to just be present. I think there's a fear that they will last forever, that they will totally take us over. I think grief is one of those that people really try to avoid because it feels like it's just going to come and take over my day and I'm not going to be able to function. I think realizing that we are more resilient in the face of difficult emotions than we think we are, right? It's when we try to suppress them, ignore them, hide them, you know, shift them onto someone else, that's really when they're causing problems. But when they're just a feeling we're having, that's very different than acting on them. So, how do we begin to just allow those feelings to to be there for a minute and not try to usher them away so quickly? >> I know we ask a lot of our clients how they would rate themselves, introvert, extrovert, ambbervert, and we find a lot of them will self-label as introvert and because of that take on this identity of, well, I can't speak up. I I can't have great relationships. I can't connect to many people. I have to do one-on-one or I I don't perform well in groups. And unfortunately, that labeling creates an identity that then can create expectations that create guilt. And it can be really challenging to break through once it's reached the identity because those expectations now are also reinforced by the people around us. It's like, oh yeah, AJ's my introverted friend. So then I try to be extroverted or speak up or say something and it's like it's uncomfortable for other people because they've also labeled me and put me in that box, [clears throat] >> right? And we can carry these labels from childhood even, right? We were always seen as X, Y, or Z. And it's funny, right? Like I love a good Buzzfeed quiz as much as anyone, but I think we have this real desire to put ourselves in a particular slot and say this is me because we want to feel seen. We want to understand ourselves. But I think that, you know, when Carl Jung was coming up with introversion and extroversion, this idea that it would be a singular label for someone that they would carry with them the rest of their life in every context, he probably would have said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, hold up a minute. This these are some ideas I'm coming up with." And so, I think you're right. I think setting an identity maybe one that at some point in your life was adaptive for you was helpful for you whether or not it's introversion extroversion but let's say people pleaser was helpful for you when you were younger because it helped you to calm down a pretty volatile environment in your home. It's just that when you pull it forward into the here and now and try and apply it in every situation. pulling some old plans for an old house and bringing them forward to your new condo and thinking this should work just as well. Of course, it doesn't. And so that's where we can start. We can we can change that. That's that's not static. That is dynamic. Some of it is just really like exposure therapy like we might do in social anxiety, which is experimenting with speaking up a bit more, experimenting with saying, "I can tain multitudes." Like, you wouldn't believe it, guys. It's like I can do a one-on-one, but also I can get up on stage and speak to a hundred people. I think we have to keep pushing those boundaries within ourselves and know that it might take others a little time to catch up, but that's okay. They don't get to define us in this particular place. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I I think a big part of what we've experienced in in our coaching with a lot of those participants you self-labeled as introvert, you know, different environment surrounded by other people who are working on similar goals. They'll react completely differently than what they would react in a group setting at work or maybe how they acted in college or in middle school when they were labeled the quiet one or the introverted one. >> Yeah. I think it's giving yourself room to grow, which may seem like, of course, but I think it can be really hard because you think, well, this is how people see me and this is why people like me. This is why people want to spend time with me, right? Someone who's struggling with addiction and is able to become sober struggles because, well, who's going to want to spend time with me? I'm not as fun or I'm not as engaging or I don't want to do the same things. Right? So, it's some trust in yourself and that future you is going to have aspects that other people will still love and be interested in and that you have that space to really push back on some of those limiting labels >> when it comes to a lot especially around work for our clients. a lot of and even the social media piece we touched on status signaling trying to showcase things that allow us to compare ourselves to others stack up drives a lot of our behaviors maybe outside of our character outside of how we actually want to show up but we that need to compete can feel overwhelming and then I've heard even in my own thoughts and expectations like why did I say that or or or I'll feel guilty then for for showing that side of myself and it can be harder especially in higher stakes environments, larger group environments where it feels like well that's the norm therefore I have to behave that way >> right that this is when I'm in this particular culture this is a sign of leadership this is a sign of someone who's going to be in the sort of alpha position which goes way way way back evolutionarily right that that really is within us that desire for competition is so that we can sort of pass along among our genes, right? That is really at the absolute core. I think when we're feeling that way, again, recognizing when we're feeling most insecure and those people who are most insecure might be the most likely to sort of shout from the rooftops about some of these things, but inside they may feel very differently. And again, I see that lens because I'm a psychiatrist and they come into my office. But I think the more we're really in tune with what are the things that we really value in ourselves and what is it that you know I often will think about I compare myself to like a younger version of myself. What would she think of what I'm doing here? Would she be proud of some of these choices I'm making? And what would a future self say in these circumstances? Because I think we get so wrapped up in being better than what's right next to us, we lose track of kind of our actual like life story. How do we want that to look? Knowing that that pull to competition, that pull to be better than as opposed to better with is one that really can separate us from ourselves and from those we really care about. On my own personal journey, I think a lot of what I believed masculinity was was downplaying my emotions, hiding my emotions, especially around other men, and not allowing them to showcase behaviors that feel uncomfortable or could make me seem weak or make me seem less masculine. And because of that, I found myself I found myself in a lot of relationships that were surface level where I didn't feel comfortable sharing those emotions or I would only mirror the emotions that my other friends were sharing. Like if if they're super happy, then I can only show up as happy. I can't show the harder emotions that I'm feeling. And then with that comes guilt. And I've started to do men's work and get in groups and and work around, okay, getting more in touch with my emotions and being comfortable sharing those emotions. Even if everyone else in the group is having a great time and I'm struggling or everyone in the group is struggling and I'm I want to celebrate something, getting comfortable with that. But guilt is, I think, a big driving force for a lot of our male clients around, well, I feel guilty that I I'm I'm putting my emotions on someone else. I'm I'm showing emotions that make me less masculine or or make me seen as weak, [clears throat] >> right? I mean, the expectation about what is masculine, right, is just going through such upheaval. I think there's so much change. I mean, I grew up in the upper Midwest where the stoicism among the farmers there was sort of legendary in that you didn't show any emotion. And I think that imagining the cost of that, thinking about the cost of that in not having the capacity or ability to share any of that, this comes up a lot. I feel like when I've worked with people, I worked in a cancer center and there was this fear that if I talk about how I'm feeling, really feeling, which is scared and physically really uncomfortable and, you know, angry, that that's going to burden others and I'm just going to hurt them. So, I need to just be quiet or else they would come talk to me about it, which was good to have that outlet. But I do think that remembering that it is the interpersonal dynamic that you're working with here and you having a time where you feel comfortable and safe sharing those emotions even when someone else might not be in that same place is creating a culture, a mini culture there where they could do the same in response. And one [snorts] way I kind of like to tap into that there's a self-compassion exercise which is basically thinking in this situation the way I'm talking to myself is here probably really critical. How would I talk to a friend who was going through this experience? So if you had a friend come into your group, everyone was having a great time but he was really struggling. What would you say to yourself if you were him, right? Oh, I need to just keep my mouth shut, not tell I'm going to make everyone worse. Well, what would you as a friend say to him? And like as you can imagine, it sounds really simple, but it really is a powerful way to remove some of that internal baggage of my own identity and how I'm supposed to think and feel and just bring up compassion to someone else. Yeah, buddy. You're having that kind of day. You've had a really difficult time. It's understandable you're feeling this way. Is there anything we can do to help or would you rather we did just keep it light? >> You know what I mean? Right. So knowing there are other people involved, it's like in a marriage, right? You know, there's going to be eb and flows. I am not a huge fan of the summer. It's hot. I just feel kind of tired all the time. I'm not jazzed. My husband loves it. But in the winter, he's like, "This is the worst." So we there's es and flows. When do we need more support? When do we need less? And that we this is a long journey that we're going through together with partners or our friends. >> Yeah. And I think what goes along with that is the duality or or just feeling multitudes of emotions at the same time. I think it's very easy for us to quickly label, okay, well AJ's just in a great mood, so I don't want to burden him with, you know, what I'm going through. When in actuality, like even though outwardly I could have a great mood, I could also be feeling frustration. I could also be feeling emotions that you might label differently. And I think it's okay. Like that messiness is a big part of the work that we do with our clients is recognizing the vulnerability and then the connection that lives in that messiness instead of trying to project or portray a stoicism or only positive or I'm perfect or I have status and therefore you should respect me or feel a certain way about me. That of course when we act in that we push people away and we create a lot of space for that guilt and shame to follow. Right? And it's it's giving other people the benefit of of thinking they have the capacity to handle what you're feeling that day. That even if they're in a good mood, they have the capacity to hear you out when you talk about something that's really difficult for you. Right? It's really putting faith in those other people that you can be human and they will stay put and they will still show up as humans themselves. >> So, in a moment where we've recognized, okay, I have these expectations. I've I've understood the guilt equation. Guilt is coming up for me. What can we do in those moments to start to work backwards and not allow it to overwhelm us or keep us from our goals, what we care about, the relationships that matter. >> Well, even I was reading this this book a peer of mine wrote about OCD and anxiety. And it's not so much that the thoughts arise, it's how what meaning we give to them. So in OCD, if you have a thought that feel like an intrusive thought that feels very dangerous and then you're telling yourself that means that something's wrong with you, right? That you're somehow flawed. That's what gives it the power. And I think the same thing is true of guilty thoughts that when we have a guilty thought, we can say to ourselves, there goes that guilty thought, right? There goes that part of my brain that has these expectations that are just unreachable. Like however we can be able to label that. It's not so much that we can make it go away or suppress it, right? The research on don't think about X. Well, that's immediately what pops into our head, but that we don't let it guide our next steps, right? We can feel it. We can feel anger. We can feel guilt. We can feel disappointment. We have to decide then whether or not that's going to guide our next decision. And when we make decisions based on guilt, that's what leads to things like resentment or overwhelm. We stretch ourselves too thin. We do things that really don't align with what's meaningful to us. What other things can we use to make those decisions? Right? Things that I really want, that I need, that I desire, that align with my values, that create the growth I want to create. That's what we're trying to make decisions based on. So, it's not that the guilts ne guilt never shows up or that we can just hide that guilty thought right away. In fact, just the opposite. We acknowledge it. If anyone's tried to do meditation, I have tried a million times to do meditation. I find it very difficult. [laughter] My brain [clears throat] is just all over. But that's what we're supposed to do is recognize and and say, "Hey, here's this thought. I'm just going to I'm going to let it pass through. I'm going to move on to whatever's next in my day." And I think that is it's so powerful. It sounds passive, but it's not actually. It's ability to not let those guilty thoughts hijack our decision system that we have other re other ways to make that decision. >> It's really well put and I I'm happy that we are ending on that because I think the recognition and understanding the equation now and understand it's okay. It's what happens after and you have agency in that. you can create the space and the reaction thereafter. Once you start to recognize, okay, guilt is running this life or this pattern is coming up again and again in these situations. Oh, okay, I can unpack where the guilt's coming from. What's the expectation I'm putting on myself? And oh, it's actually not as important of an expectation as I thought. It was something someone else put on me and I've just been carrying. [clears throat] >> Right. And I can choose whether to continue to do so. Maybe I won't. Thank you so much for joining me today. Where can our audience find out more about your book and the work you do? >> They can check out my website. It's just jenniferreedmd.com or mindofherone.com. They both will take you to the same spot. >> Thank you again. >> Thanks for having me. [music]