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Hey, everyone, welcome back to you on purpose, and I'm on the health podcast in the world, thanks to each and every one of you. Now, today, what you're going to hear is a conversation between me and Laurie Gottlieb. Now, she's been a family and relationship therapist for decades, and she was also a guest on the show. But today we have a conversation about mental health and relationships. So if you've been having any relationship issues lately, if you feel like you're spending more time with your partner than ever before because of lockdown, if you feel like you need to understand how to manage your mental health in relationships and know when therapy is right for you, when coaching is right for you, then this is the conversation you want to listen to.

I think you're going to really enjoy this one. Let me know what you learn from it. Tag me and Laurie on Instagram. I can't wait for you to listen to this conversation.

Hey, welcome to day two of our online mental health festival, QIO, which is all about helping elevate awareness and learning about mental health, mental health day, World Mental Health Day was the Saturday that just went. And I thought to myself, why just talk about mental health for one day? Let's talk about it for a whole week. So every single day I'm jumping on with my friends to talk to you about. Yesterday, we had the incredible Mago and today we have some of an incredible expert, the one and only Laurie Gottlieb.

If you've not read a book, maybe you should talk to someone. Please check it out and I'm going to bring her out. But I'm excited for day to to talk about mental health and relationships. So thank you so much for being here. Just waiting for Laurie to connect.

Hey, Larry, how's it going? Hi, how are you? I'm really good. I'm really good. Thank you so much for tuning in. Of course, it's so good to see you again. And everyone, this is my amazing friend, Lori Gottlieb, who's an incredible, incredible psychiatrist and has an amazing book called Maybe You Should Talk To Someone If you've not read it, I highly recommend it. We had Laurie on the podcast. Her episode was one of our most popular episodes this year, so I highly recommend listening to it.

But, Laurie, thank you for doing this for us and my pleasure. Happy to chat with you. I know this week was all about, you know, obviously Saturday was World Mental Health Day and I really wanted to do something. But what I realized was I was like, well, why are we talking about mental health just for just one day? We should talk about it every day. And we should be thinking about this every day. And you've been working.

And what I love about your expertise is you've been working with relationship people in relationships, couples, individuals for four decades now. And what I love about that is sometimes relationships have such a big, important impact on our mental health. And so why don't you start off by just telling the community here what you've been doing in your career and how that is linked to mental health? I think that would be really useful for everyone in the background. Yeah, well, I think like you, I mean, my mission is really to help people to focus on their emotional health and to realize its importance.

Right. And so what I really want to do as a therapist is democratize therapy. I want to bring it to everybody so that everybody has it accessible to them. So through my book, maybe you should talk to someone through my weekly column at The Atlantic, your therapist through my podcast that your therapist podcast through my TED talk. I just like you. I just want to make people aware of how important this is and to give them tools, because a lot of people will say, OK, I know that it's important, but what do I do?

What steps do I take? And when you talk about relationship, I think that's one of the first things is one of the first things I say to people when they come to me is how is your life people who are the people in your life and what is the quality of those relationships? I love that. I love that. And yes, if you don't listen to Laurie's podcast as well, I highly recommend it to a therapist. But the the part of that that I want to start with, Laurie, is and I love that question.

You said, like, you know who the people in your life. How do people I think this is the number one question I always get asked is, gee, I'm just surrounded by negative people and, you know, how do I create distance from them? I live with them. What do you have to say to people who come at it from that perspective and feel that what what is the kind of journey that a therapist takes you on when when that's the thing that you're hearing?

Yeah.

So first of all, the people that we surround ourselves is so important because what is contagious is mood. So if there is if you are surrounded by people who are always talking about negative things, who are always bringing you down, who always when you talk to them, you feel worse than before you talk to them. Right. Or just people who are always looking at you like bad things, not only about about themselves, the world, but about other people.

Right. You are going to start acting that way. You won't even notice it. It's a slow transition and all of a sudden you've become a negative person. And so I'm not saying, like always look on the bright side and just pretend nothing is wrong in the world. What I'm saying is that people who are are making a difference in the world and who are taking care of their emotional health. And those two go hand in hand because purpose, like you say in your book title, in your subtitle purpose is really important.

So if you think about it, what can you if you don't like something that's going on instead of complaining about it, what are you doing to take action about it, whether it's something in your own life, like I'm anxious or I'm depressed. What are you doing to get help for that? If there's something in your relationship that's not working, how are you talking to that person about it? What are you doing to make it better? If there's something in the greater world that you feel like that's not fair, I want to change that.

How are you getting involved in a positive way? So I think that when you're surrounded by people like that, that motivate you to act in that way, too.

Yeah, that's great advice. That that's really, really great advice. It's about being really conscious about who's around us being really intentional, about who's around us. And I think sometimes feel the people from Asia because they're like, well, gee, I married them or they're my mom or my dad. What do I do about that? What would you have to that when someone goes, Oh, but they're there in my space, they're literally still my closest family.

A lot of times people feel trapped. They feel like helpless. I can't do anything. But the thing is, we have choices all the time. So what can you do when someone's being negative around you? Do you need to stay on the call? What do you want to do in that moment? So it's kind of like when you think about we talk a lot about protecting our physical immune systems right now with like the coronavirus, for example, you have to protect your psychological immune system, too.

And so if you let these toxins in, you are going to break down and get psychologically ill. So what do you do? So you're on the phone with a family member or you're talking to a family member and they're being really negative. You know, you can change the subject. You can talk about something else. You can say, you know what? I really got to go. Let's talk later. There are all kinds of things that you can do.

And if you have a certain relationship with that person, you can also say to them, you know what, I noticed that when we talk, there's a lot of stuff that you focus on that is negative. And I acknowledge that these things are real and true. But what can we do? Let's let's let's have a different kind of conversation about it. So you're talking about these things that aren't working. Maybe I can help you. Maybe we can Brandes brainstorm together about how to make things better.

Now, sometimes you deal with the help rejecting complainer, help rejecting complainers are the people who you give them suggestions and they say, no, that won't work because or no, I do that because we all know those people who've actually been those people. Right. But you know those people, because every time you try to suggest a way out of the negativity, they reject it. They are getting something out of being negative. You don't have to join them.

That is great advice. You don't have to join them. I love that. And you're right, all of us have the opportunity to leave a room to put down our phone to say we have to go to do it in a respectful way that raises red flags. Now, what about the step further sometimes, Lauren? I'm sure you hear this in the deepest ways, and I completely appreciate that. We're very simplifying things for an Instagram conversation, because if you work with someone, you would ask them a series of questions to really dissect what this was.

So I appreciate that you're working with me to do Instagram therapy right now. But if you think about it, the point of view when someone goes, well, actually, I realize that it's not even the people that are negative and I'm negative towards myself. It's not even annoying. Like sometimes it's not even the noise outside me. It's the noise inside me that's bringing me down. Right. Sometimes the most toxic thing is the internalized voice inside of ourselves.

Most of us are so unkind to ourselves, so negative about ourselves. So, you know, it's interesting. I I'm always asking people, who's the person that you. Do most in the course of your life, and most people think of their partners, their parents or siblings, their best friends? No, we talk to ourselves more than we talk to anybody else. And we can be so unkind and not only unkind, but what we say is so untrue.

Right, to criticize ourselves. Oh, you're so stupid. Oh, you'll never get that. Oh, you're not good enough for this. Oh, you look terrible today. We just insult ourselves throughout the day without even noticing it. And we allow ourselves to be incredibly cruel to ourselves. We allow it. And so when we talk about mental health and I'm so glad you said mental, it's not mental health day or mental health week. It's mental health all the time.

We have to be aware of this voice and say, wait a minute, why am I inviting this voice into my head? Why would I allow someone to talk to me like that? And above all, why would I allowed myself to talk to myself like that? Because I know on some level that this is not true, because if this were true, everybody else would think this about me to my friends, don't think I'm stupid. My friends don't think I'm ugly.

My friends don't think that I'm not good enough. Yeah, I love that. I love that. That's really beautiful. It's really interesting. It's so funny. You said that. I said that on a keynote the other day, asked people to write down who they think is the person they talk to the most. And I ask them to write down who they think they have the best conversations with and the worst conversations with them. People always think of other people and not themselves.

So I love that you mentioned and and I and I love that we're speaking about support because a lot of people think that self talk makes them crazy. And a lot of people think that in terms of like we don't realize we're always talking to ourselves. Right. And when someone says, oh, you should talk to yourself, that's weird. That's like, you know, it's kind of a bit rude, but it's it's not because we're doing it anyway.

But tell us about when do you know you need to see a therapist or get therapy? Like, what are the signs for someone? Because I feel no one ever talks about that. How do you know? Well, they don't they don't talk about that. And it's funny because if you said to somebody, what are the signs that you should go see a doctor for something like a physical ailment? Well, the sign is something doesn't feel right.

Something feels off in your body. You say, I'm going to go get this checked out. Right. So nobody questions that. But people say, well, what do you do when something feels off emotionally? Well, you go and you get help for it. Right. But I think that there's some reason that people think that it has to be really, really, really bad. You have to be, like, emotionally dying before you go see a therapist, whereas people don't think that it's kind of like if you broke your arm, nobody's saying like, oh, but I don't have cancer.

So I it's not bad enough. I'm not going to go to the doctor, get cast. Yeah. That's what we do with our emotional health. We say, well, yeah, I'm anxious or I'm feeling sad or I'm I can't really function well. I'm having trouble in my relationships, but it's not that bad compared to whatever people compare it to. So I'm not going to get help for this. And then people come to my office when they're having the equivalent of an emotional heart attack like they are really, really in crisis.

And at that point, they've suffered unnecessarily for a long time. And it's harder to treat because you could have come when it was just beginning. Right. And so I think that a lot of people say, well, you know, it's a sign of of weakness that I have to go get help for this. Nobody says it's a sign of weakness to go get a cast for your arm. And so I think it's a sign of strength because what happens is when you say, I want to go get help for this, you're saying I value myself.

And I tell you the lives of the people around me, too, because our emotional health effects the emotional health of everybody around us.

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I love that example of like if you injured your arm and you need a cost, you can go, oh, well, I don't have cancer. And I think sometimes with our mind, we we got to keep pushing it, like postponing it and delaying it. And then, like you said, people are walking in with a real, like, panic attack or a genuine plea because we just let it build so much. What about someone who has someone in their life who's always told them that mental health is not real?

Or so I'm sure you face that, Loreal, you know, someone just like, oh, it's all in your mind. Don't worry about it. Like, you will be fine or, you know, all that you know, there's there's a bit of that not skepticism about therapy, but I mean, like, people don't really I feel like a lot of people don't understand that mental health is real. People are like, oh, I don't need mental health.

I've been fine my whole life, so, you know, I'm OK. How have you helped people deal with people who have that in their life? You know, it's really interesting. I think that people have that misconception because people aren't talking about going to therapy. So if you see the people who seem the most functional, right. So the people who are the most successful, the people who are really doing things in the world and in meaningful ways and they feel whole right everywhere.

I went on book tour for maybe to talk to someone before I went on stage, the person who was interviewing me. And these were like celebrities and people who are extremely successful in all realms of of the world. They would say, you know what, I just wanna let you know that I'm in therapy. I may or may not talk about it during our conversation. And inevitably they did. But and everybody was like, really, that person's in therapy.

And I think that changes the mindset about, you know, whether it's real or not, whether it can really help or not. So there's that. And then I also think that it's important that people understand that depression is real, OK, anxiety is real. Grief and loss are real. They aren't just like you can just flip the switch and something happens, just like if you have diabetes, you need insulin. Right. So these are these are real phenomena.

And I think that for people who don't understand, it's a matter of education. It's just show them an article about it. Just send them a link to something. Right. Send them something that that shows other people's experiences. And I would say ultimately, at the end of the day, nobody gets to live your life for you. So if you are struggling, go get help. It doesn't matter what other people think because they aren't living your life.

Why do you want to suffer based on what somebody else says about whether what you're experiencing needs some kind of threshold for them, you know, in your place of knowing that you need help, go get help. Please don't wait. How do you actually go about finding the right therapist for you? Affordability is one thing, but the other thing is just finding the right person, because, again, that's another relationship, right? It is a relationship.

And it's not like going to the dentist. Right. This is a relationship where you're coming in. You are showing the truth of who you are. You are taking off the mask. You are doing all of the things that I think are very hard to do, which is to be authentic, be vulnerable and also be accountable, because you're going to be asked to really look at yourself and and you're going to be shown a lot of choices that you think you don't have, but you're going to have to act on them.

And so I think the relationship and the trust in that relationship is so important. So what I always say to people about finding a therapist is that, first of all, ask somebody. Right, so you can always ask someone, don't ask the person who who doesn't who you don't feel like they have their life together. The person who's always like, yeah, I go to therapy and basically they haven't changed up. Look at the person you see that person's really changed.

Wow. I've seen that person really shift. I've seen some transformation in this person seeing the person. What's going on with you? Do you have a therapist by any chance? Right. That's the person who's going to if if they have a therapist, I'll share it with you. If they don't want to share their therapist with you, their therapist can often give you a good referral. So a lot of times my patients will say to me, my friend wants to go to therapy, who can I refer them to?

And I will give them a good referral. So word of mouth is great. And that way you can go on Psychology Today online and look up therapist and you can see different things about them. But ultimately, remember this, that when you go in for a first session, so you so you find someone, they look good online or somebody give you a recommendation when you go in, it's a consultation and you're there to see how do I feel.

Check in with yourself. How do I feel talking to this person? Do I feel understood? Do I feel like this person is asking the right questions? Do I feel comfortable in this space? It's a vibe. And if you do feel good, go back for a second session and it'll take you a few sessions to really get a sense of how do I feel with this person? And at that point, you'll know whether it's the right person.

And if it's not, here's my suggestion. Don't go to the person. Say to the person, hey, for whatever reason, I'm not sure. I'm just not feeling like maybe this is the right thing. And you talk about it with the person and we welcome those conversations. And what's great about the therapy room is we are is the one place, I think, where you can talk about literally anything. And it is. And the therapist will probably say, hey, why don't you try this call or here's a suggestion for you or here's what I noticed, and that feedback will be so good for you and it teaches you out in the world.

How do you have a hard conversation? That's brilliant. That's such great advice. And and it really has to be personal. It really has to be someone that that you connect with. And going back a few questions I was just going to say to her, unlike what Laurie said and it just triggered in my mind, is, you know, hearing people talk about their mental health journey helps people that may be skeptical and on and on purpose on our podcast.

And and I'm sure Lori's got several stories as well, she says. But even in her book, where she gives examples of people we've had so many people on on purpose, the podcast talk about their mental health journeys and people said that to their friend. And they're like, oh, my gosh, I never realized the celebrity or this musician, this person has had this. That's a really great way. And one of the other things that I'm seeing from your guys questions that I want to ask Laurie, you know, where's it gone?

There you go. So this is really a Maragos. People sometimes associate having therapy with failing at life. I completely agree. Like, we see it as a weakness when actually it's actually good training. And I just want to address that for a second. Like, if you have a therapist, that does not mean you are failing at life. Right. And when you are surprised that someone's in therapy, it means you only think you better be if things are going really wrong.

That's not the case as we've been addressing. Therapy is for you to stay proactive about your mental well-being, whatever your therapy practices, whether it's with a therapist or you think online therapy or whatever way in which you are able to find it for yourself, being in therapy is not a weakness or a failure.

One way to look at it, I think, is therapy is like getting a really good second opinion on your life from someone who isn't in your life, in every other realm. We will get a second opinion, right. We will say, oh, hey, I want to know about this or what do you think about this from people that we respect? And so I think the thing about therapy is that we all have blind spots. And if you can talk to your friends about things, but often your friends have blind spots about you because they're so close to you.

And when you go to a therapist, you have someone who can see you in a way that maybe other people can't, they will hold up a mirror to you in a compassionate way, but also in a way that's going to help you see something that you haven't seen. So a lot of times we're stuck in these patterns. And what a therapist will do is say, here's this pattern, that it affects your personal life, your professional life, your internal life.

Right. And when you understand that pattern, everything opens up. So that's why the people who are doing the best in life are people who often have been to therapy.

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Laurie, tell me when you think a couple should go to therapy together, because that's obviously been a huge part of your work and I feel like, you know what I mean when I say I'm a coach. So I do coaching, which is obviously very different from therapy. But when I'm coaching someone and if I'm recommending them to go to therapy, often what happens is like one person in the relationship wants to go to a therapist and the other. Well, you've seen this a million times.

So what do you do in that situation? When is the right time for a couple to go to therapy? And when you have one person was going to therapist, the other person doesn't. How do you manage them? So when people want to come to therapy and often you're right, it's the case that maybe sometimes one person does and the other person is the reason the other person does want it comes because of fear. They're worried that if we go in and start talking about our relationship, we're going to find things wrong with it.

And the opposite actually happens. If you go in and start talking about your relationship, it's going to get stronger. The infrastructure, the foundation, the ways of communicating, the ways of getting through the hard things, because there are always hard things. You learn a new way to talk to each other. You learn a new way to see each other. You learn a new way to see yourself. You get rid of the projections of, oh, this person did that because, well, you don't know why they did it.

But if you come to therapy, you find out, whoa, I'm making up a lot of stories in my head about my partner that just aren't true. You learn about gratitude. You learn about appreciation. You learn about kindness. You learn about generosity. So we don't get taught this growing up. And so what happens is people get into relationships and they think, what, you just all go smoothly. We should never have any difficulty. And then they have difficulty and they get worried.

What does this mean? So go to therapy, learn about yourselves, learn about each other, and your relationship will be stronger. What I do when somebody is worried about it is I say to the person who's worried about it, what is your goal for coming in? What do you want to accomplish here? Right. And the person say, well, I want this. I want things to go more smoothly. Well, then I will talk to them about what they can do personally to make that happen.

And usually they'll come in for the first session. And once they get there and they see that it's not a session about arguing, but it's a session about really love and coming together. They love it and they want to come back.

Yeah, that's what I love about all these practices, is that it also gets you to the truth quicker. Yes. Even if the answer is that you may have to go our separate ways and that's just your truth. That's a better answer than falsely forcing yourself to stay without having had the therapy right leg in the sense of it's not that it's not about saving something that doesn't work.

It's about being honest and helping both people be honest. Yeah. And I would say there's this misconception that couples therapy is about for people on the last leg. That's that's not a lot of people will come to me as they're about to get married and they're completely in love and they're saying we just want to learn the skills of how do we talk about the hard things in life? How do we talk about money and in-laws and sex and who's going to work and who's going to take care of the kids and all of these things that people don't know how to talk about.

How do how can we be more vulnerable with each other? How can we be more supportive of each other? So they want to go in from a place of strength. And you're right, there are some relationships that get to a place where it's not viable. And what happens is people pretend that they don't need someone to help them with that and they let it go a decade or more, living miserably when it would be so much better. As painful as it is to say, let's talk about the truth of what's going on between us and maybe we won't get these ten years back in life, we only get one life.

So let's make sure that we're even as painful as it is. Let's make sure that we're doing what's right for both of us. I love that, Larry. For the last question, what is your one tip for mental health for people today that they can practice your one take away from what you recommend to people to do today as part of this week after we're doing? I would say the one thing is what we touched on earlier, which is when you notice yourself being unkind to yourself, I want you to give yourself a compliment.

And I don't mean a fake compliment. I want you to really appreciate how well you're doing today, because no matter what, you're not getting done, no matter what things you wish you had done differently, no matter what you think, you've failed that today. You've done one good thing, I'm sure, of one thing that has been helpful. And and I would say it even if the one thing is I'm going to turn it around and be kind to myself right now, give yourself credit for stopping yourself from being cruel to yourself and just being yourself right now.

That in itself is an accomplishment.

I love the amazing. Thank you so much, Larry. For anyone who doesn't follow Larry, please don't follow. This is going to live on my TV as well as if you've enjoyed this conversation, you can watch it back. You can share it with a friend if there's been any advice in here. And please, please, please go and check on his book. Maybe you should talk to someone. It's amazing. And, of course, go and listen to our podcast and.

To find all of that when you go and follow her Instagram. Laurie, thank you for doing this. Thank you, Jay. Have a great day. I love doing stuff with you and I love that we've been doing so much together recently. And I think on our podcast.

Yes, I did. And I'm so looking forward to just seeing you again after all this. I really want to catch up with you. So thank you, as always, for everything. And hope you enjoyed this, too.

Hey, everyone, thank you so much for listening to this conversation. I hope you found it as insightful as I did and you picked up some really actionable takeaways that you can practice in your life moving forward. Make sure you tag me and Laurie on Instagram to let us know what you learned and what you took away. And I thank you so much for being part of the on purpose community. Thank you so much. Have an awesome, awesome week.

And don't forget him. Look out for episodes next Monday and next Friday.

This podcast was produced by Dust Light Productions, our executive producer from Dust lt is Michelle Yousef. Our senior producer is Julianna Bradley. Our associate producer is Jacqueline Castillo. Valentino Rivera is our engineer. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions and special thanks to Rachel Garcia, the dust like development and operations coordinator. Hey, my name is Rob Dayal, and if you're looking to master your mind by learning how it works, then subscribe to the Mind Set Mentor podcast.

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