Hey, this is Dana Schwartz. You may know my voice from Noble Blood, Haleywood, or stealing Superman. I'm hosting a new podcast, and we're calling it very special episodes. A very special episode is stranger than fiction.

It sounds like it should be the next season of true Detective. These canadian cops trying to solve this mystery of who spiked the chowder on the Titanic set.

Listen to very special episodes on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello, this is Susie Esman and Jeff Garland. I'm here, and we are the hosts of the history of curb your enthusiasm podcast. Now, we're going to be rewatching and talking about every single episode, and we're going to break it down and give behind the scenes knowledge that a lot of people don't know. And we're going to be joined by special guests, including Larry David and Cheryl Hines, Richard Lewis, Bob Odenkirk, and so many more. And we're going to have clips, and it's just going to be a lot of fun. So listen to the history of curb your enthusiasm on iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you happen to get your podcasts.

What up, guys?

Ola Catal, it's your girl cheekies from the cheekies and chill and dear Cheekies podcasts. And guess what? We're back for another season. Get ready for all new episodes where I'll be dishing out honest advice, discussing important topics like relationships, women's health, and spirituality. I'm sharing my experiences with you guys, and I feel that everything that I've gone through has made me a wiser person. And if I can help anyone else through my experiences, I feel like I'm living my godly purpose. Listen to cheekies and chill and your cheekies on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Rachel goes rogue.

Hey, guys, it's Rachel. Savannah Levis from Rachel goes rogue. I'm so excited for today because I get to have a clinical psychologist on to join me, and I just want to go deeper on the psychology behind why I smile when I'm talking about things that make me feel so uncomfortable, because it seems counterintuitive. I just want to read a few of the comments that you guys left on the Rachel goes rogue podcast. Instagram. Just a note, please work on the smiling. I'm sure it's out of nervousness and anxiety of speaking about hard topics, but this video comes across non remorseful. Just an opinion. I hear you. I know she has anxiety but she has to learn to wipe the smile off her face. True evil smiling.

Wow.

I tried saying what she said and smile at the same time, and it just felt strange. How does she not see that as abnormal? I don't understand how she could be smiling the whole time she's talking about this. So weird. Well, that's the feedback that I got from you guys. And I agree. Listening back, hearing me laugh about, especially the Graham situation, for me, that's not a funny thing, and I want to know why. What is this thing that my body does without me even knowing? Honestly, I'm excited to have a professional tell me why this is happening. Because, yeah, it's not normal. The average person isn't smiling through their most painful, traumatic memories. So I hope we can get to the bottom of it. Let's bring Dr. Goldshare on. Hi, Dr. Goldshare.

Hey, Rachel. How are you?

I'm well.

How are you? Good. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you, too. Thanks for joining me today.

Of course. First of all, take a deep breath. I think this is going to be a really good experience for you and for your listeners because you're talking about something that is ubiquitous and super relatable in the sense that a lot of people adopt behaviors and mannerisms and ways of moving through space when they're talking about tricky things and difficult material. People smile, people laugh, people drink too much, eat too much, eat too little, work too much, work too little. Right. People do lots of things when they're faced with taking on really hard stuff, and that part is really relatable. And it's really not until we get to make friends, so to speak, with the dynamics that are going on within us internally in terms of understanding how we're moving through space in those really difficult moments that we can start to shift and change and grow and better understand ourselves and impact people around us more positively and just understand ourselves more thoroughly. So I just want to start by saying that your specific situation is notable, and a lot of people have a lot of thoughts and opinions on it, but what we're talking about at the root of it is really relatable.

So I just want you to sort of take a deep breath around that. To respond in ways that are avoidant or dismissive in the face of hard stuff is really human. So I just want to start there. Thank you. Yeah.

Thanks for recognizing all of that. And obviously, I'm getting a lot of feedback from people saying I'm smiling too much. I'm laughing through the things that are more of a serious topic. And as I'm describing these things and recounting these memories, I don't think it's funny and I don't enjoy it. And so I feel like the messaging may be getting lost a little bit. But then when I talk to my family and I talk to my close friends, I have more of a serious demeanor, and I'm not smiling through it. So I'm wondering, is it just me knowing that this is being broadcast to a lot of people listening?

Yeah. What is? Before I give my perspective. And it's layered and nuanced, but you sort of started to say it. But what are your initial thoughts or hypotheses about why? Like, about what's happening?

So my hypothesis is that I had to modify my behavior as a child to appease the people around me, and that's how I got the positive attention that I received. Being happy, like, I'm good over here. If I put on a happy face, then you don't have to worry about me, and it's all good.

Well, this is super insightful. That's a really good hypothesis and a really good place to start. I mean, what you're talking about is being reinforced for emotional regulation, right? Being reinforced for not being problematic, for not having out of control feelings or requests or needs, and for showing up. Okay. And maybe even a step beyond that, showing up happy, showing up as the pleaser, as the easy kid, as the one that was okay. So that was your probably unspoken but assigned role, and you came to know, this is how I have value. This is how I take up space in this family dynamic. This is how I show up to get love.

Exactly.

And that's a pretty intense set of messages. Right. And even though you're at this moment able to articulate it well, which is a great first step. Right. To have the insight and understand what your family dynamics are. Just because we come to understand it, we aren't usually able to just erase it and never exhibit those behaviors again. In fact, in situations, particularly where there's stress and duress, it comes out again. Right. And we may know it at the time, we may not know it at the time. We may understand it in retrospect, but we're vulnerable. So I imagine as you move through the world as an adult, when things are stressful, you might return to that old, comfortable way of being. And I put that in quotes very deliberately. Right. It's comfortable sense that it makes you feel like, this is how I have value, this is how I know to show up when things are hard. But I put it in quotes because it doesn't work as well as it did when you were a kid. Right, right.

It doesn't work for me any longer. In fact, I see it as, like, a protection for myself. And in the trauma therapy center that I spent 90 days learning and doing intense therapy. There's a term called wall of pleasant. And it's a wall that you have up which keeps you from being intimate with other people. And therefore, you're not as relational. And people can't connect to you on a deeper level. And so I recognize that I have that wall of pleasant that I can't seem to help but to come up. And so what are the ways that you can help me or other people who experience that kind of maybe approach it and intentionally work on it?

Yes. I love that term. Walt pleasant. I haven't heard of that. And I think that's such a good descriptor of the dynamic that happens for a lot of people. When tough stuff comes up to sort of abandon our mind and our hearts and even, like, our soul and sort of show up in this more robotic, rote way. And it ends up sometimes hurting others. And certainly it ends up hurting ourselves. We feel a huge disconnect between what we're feeling inside and how we're moving through the world.

That's so true. Sometimes I can't figure out how I'm actually feeling.

That's right. Because there's this huge disconnect between this automatic response you have of sort of being the pleasant, to use your wall of pleasant analogy. Right. The pleasant good girl. And how you're actually feeling inside. Which could be like, scared, chaotic, anxious, depressed. And if you're organically dedicated to the former, you are going to have a really hard time figuring out how you're feeling in the moment. So that leads to all sorts of confusion. And I imagine oftentimes that's what the public is seeing in these snippets of you talking about these issues is this wall of pleasant and some confusion around how you are actually feeling in the moment. And so people sense that or feel that or experience it. So I think it's a good thing to lean into it like you are in this moment. That, yeah, maybe I don't know how I'm feeling. And so maybe it's coming off as not being a match to the topic or the subject at hand. And that can be disarming for people who are witness to it. And certainly disarming for yourself as well when you back on. I mean, unfortunately, you have the public aspect of it.

So maybe you're looking back on a clip of yourself and you see the dissonance, or maybe you're just hearing the feedback. Right. So that creates a lot of confusion. So you asked a question I don't want to miss, which is like, well, okay, what am I supposed to do about it? So I think what you're doing right now is the beginning of what you can do about it. I love the idea. I use this often, that insight alone is not enough. Insight alone is not enough. I say that more than once because therapy is steeped in a lot of insight. We get to recognize things about ourselves that we didn't previously have knowledge about. Right. And once we get that, that can be life changing. However, that alone is not enough. We have to intervene in the moments when things get tricky. Otherwise, we just have the knowledge to talk about before or after, but the behavior remains the same or not changed in a significant way. So what you've already started to do today in our conversation, I'm going to suggest that you borrow from, meaning that when you find yourself in situations where you're tasked to talk about tricky stuff, whether it's publicly, like you're doing in your podcast or just with your buddies or in your therapeutic setting, et cetera, that you start to narrate out loud what's happening for you or what you know often happens for you.

Right. So the next time you're asked a question about this whole situation you are in or in the dynamics in your life that are tricky, that you start by saying some version of like, you know, it's always hard when I talk out loud about stuff that's tricky. I sometimes smile about it, I sometimes laugh about it. I sometimes can't sink into the feelings that I really feel about that. So you may see that right now I'm going to do my best to stay really connected to the actual feelings I have about it. But you may see me flow in and out of it. It's something I'm working on. It's something I know about myself. It's something I'm taking on and trying to interrupt that first will inform listeners, and whether you're talking about your public listeners or just your private crew, that you're aware that that's happening and that it might feel strange to witness. And it also brings a certain level of accountability to you internally and externally, that I know this is happening and I've known. It sounds like in your work, in your trauma work, that you came to understand this about yourself this isn't like new news, but you're bringing a certain level of accountability to it by saying it out loud to the people who are in relation with you, who are in dialog with you.

What do you think about that? I'm curious if you imagined yourself doing.

That, what that brings up when I am telling a story and I'm thinking of the next thing that I want to say as well to get my point across. Let's see. I feel like when I address how I'm feeling in this moment, it may take my focus away from what story I'm trying to convey. And so then it becomes like this juggling act.

Yeah. So it brings up a certain level of anxiety for you that, like, going to lose my train of thought and I'm going to get sort of buried in all the dynamics you just described and just lose my way, which does not sound pleasant and I'm sure does not sort of provoke what I'm suggesting automatically. But I would say this. I would say as you're on the journey to reconcile what we're talking about, the difference between what you're actually feeling inside and how you're able to talk about it, that's really what we're talking about. That accepting, I don't know. The messy middle is a critical piece of that. And that's what you're describing. You're talking about the messy middle, which is like, if I do that, I might lose my place. Literally forget what I'm saying and come off as more confused than I originally sounded before I got feedback, maybe. And that's hard and not pleasant and something that we don't naturally feel ourselves drawn to. But I would argue it's really the space where change occurs and maybe not immediately, maybe not right away. That's why we call it the messy middle, is you have to be like, awkward and strange and weird and anxious and unsure to kind of build a muscle to sit in all of those differing truths at one time.

And I take seriously what you said. And I would argue still that even given all those truths, all the more reason to sit in it. So to kind of back up on what we were saying that you would take the risk of saying, like, I'm going to mention out loud here that when I start talking about hard things, I sometimes smile, I sometimes laugh. My real feelings inside are not reflected in how I show up. And I just want to say that out loud. I'm going to do my best to stay grounded in my feelings, but I may lose my way here and then acknowledging further. Wow, I've now lost my train of thought. Like, can you repeat the question? Can we start over? Right. That you just stay really real in what you're experiencing, moment to moment. And I say this with a lot of gravity, because what I'm suggesting that you do is not easy. All of us understand, if we take a moment, that sitting in one's true feelings while being witnessed, whether it's publicly or with our group, is super vulnerable. Super vulnerable. So I don't say this casually, and it's probably not something that just happens automatically because we're having this conversation.

It's something that you really have to work at and really have to accept the vulnerability around it and accept the root of it, the base of it, which is that that's where change happens. When we get real, when we get raw, when we get messy, and when instead of being in the feeling, because that, I think, is part of what's going on with you, is that you're so in the feeling, you can't change it or shift it or acknowledge it. You're just in it. You go on the ride of it, and then later, people are like, you did this, you did that. Or you watch and you're like, oh, I guess I did do that or did that. But what I'm trying to help you and other listeners consider is that when you step out of the feeling, that takes a lot of mindfulness, a lot of strength, a lot of vulnerability and narrate it. We have an opportunity to make different choices and to expand and to grow. Yeah.

Well, right now I'm feeling emotional because it's scary to be vulnerable and.

Speaking.

On these things that are so personal and close to my heart and figuring out myself on this journey with other people, listening in and critiquing. And I used to have this huge block in my life that I didn't want to do anything wrong because I didn't want anybody to perceive me as something that I wasn't. I'm grateful for the experiences that I had so that I can be stronger and have this thicker skin and know myself better. And I'm still wrapping my head around my own self worth and practicing these daily affirmations so that I don't fall back into these patterns of seeking out validation from other people to make me feel worthy within myself.

Oh, you've said so much, and you did a really good job. So I love that you started with saying, I'm feeling emotional and I'm feeling vulnerable. And I have a lot to say about a number of things you just outlined. But just to stick with that for a moment, can you say a bit more? You did, but can you say even more about the emotion, what's coming up right now, specifically physically?

My heart is beating. Well, obviously, we're living beings, but I can feel it in my body. And sometimes I'll have a shortness of breath if I'm feeling anxious or overthinking. When I am in that emotional feeling. I don't know, my throat tightens up a little bit and my eyes start glistening with some tears. And it's a warmer feeling in my body, like I'm okay and I'm just human. And I think sharing these things about myself, I'd imagine that a lot of other people deal with these things, too. And so that's giving me the strength to be courageous and speak out on these things. And there's that sense of purpose there.

Yes. So many things going on in just moments. It's incredible. So what you're talking about is so valuable. So I'm going to expand on it for a moment. You just described symptoms of anxiety, physical symptoms of anxiety. The end, you started talking about something else. We'll take that on. But it's so powerful to say that out loud. So many people deal with anxiety and experience it physically in their body through chest tightness, through shortness of breath, through eyes glistening, right through the throat tightening. And it's scary. And it can feel out of control. And our response often to that is to do something to make it go away because it's so uncomfortable. Right. And so I want to highlight both that what happens to people with anxiety when they feel in their body is that our body goes into. It's like a false alarm. Our body sets off the fight or flight system, right. And our body starts to respond as if we need to either fight or flight. And so cortisol starts going through our body. Adrenaline starts going through our body, and it causes some of the symptoms and others that you described.

And even though you and I are talking about tricky stuff, you're not actually in a fight or flight situation. Right. That's why I call it a false alarm. It's like our body really reacts as if we need to protect ourselves, but really we're okay. So it's a helpful thing to remember when we have physical anxiety that it's really sort of a false alarm in terms of the intensity of the feelings and probably what happens to you and to many when we get those feelings, as I alluded to before, they're so uncomfortable, that we want to do things to make them go away. And smiling or laughing, for example, are things that actually start to inform our body that, no, we're okay, and starts to make some of those symptoms dissipate. So it's not surprising that you and others would adopt behaviors that attempt to combat these physical discomforts.

That makes so much sense. Yeah. And I've learned, too, like, your energy needs to escape your body. That's why exercising is so important every day. And so if you think about the physiology of your body and the energy that it takes to laugh, that is a way for your body to expel this energy that's trapped within you.

Yes. Which leads me to such an important, I think, next point, we have to get those feelings out, right? The anxiety and the fear and the worry and the self loathing. Whatever's coming up, if it doesn't come out, it gets trapped inside our body. It gets stuck, it stays there, and it shows up as symptoms. Whether the symptoms are additional anxiety later, difficulty sleeping, irritability, eating too much, too little, et cetera, it shows up as symptoms if we don't find a safe space to let our tricky feelings out. And so what you were just suggesting is that the laugh is like a conduit to getting some of that energy out is so right. It's just that it's only halfway there. Right. It gets some of the energy out, but not the quote. Right, energy out, but your impulse is totally correct, which is that if we let those feelings stay stuck in our bodies, that's what happens. They stay stuck, and it doesn't feel good over time. There's no escaping that. I often say to clients, like, if it were true that we could just push down feelings, suppress them, and be fine, I'd be all for it.

Like, I'm into that. That sounds cool to me. Just doesn't work. They get stuck in our body. They have to come out in a safe way with people and in a practiced way, we have to build a muscle for it. So replacing your note, maybe not replacing, expanding your notion that it's maybe not the laugh that does the trick, but it's the actual divulgence of, like, this is what's happening to me. This is what I'm scared of in this moment, or even in retrospect, this is what was happening to me. That's what I was scared of in that moment, is a very useful purge of emotion that is the only road to healing. And so your impulse is totally right, and maybe that will help you and others over time is that my impulse is to laugh. My impulse is to smile. Nothing like that. Or wrong about that objectively. It's just not useful. It doesn't get the actual feelings out. And I suppose if we're considering the reaction of witnesses, it feels confusing to others. Right. It doesn't feel like a match to what the topic is, which can be alienating over time, like personally in your world.

And then, I guess, professionally, as you have folks listening to you. But I agree with you. And maybe that supports the notion of what we were talking about before that. Yes, something wants to come out. I just want to be a little more directive about what comes out. And if the first thing that comes out is a laugh, it'll happen again. Rachel, it's not going to happen. Right. If the first that comes out is a laugh or a smile that you can catch yourself in the moment or catch yourself an hour later or a day later and say, I know what happened there. I did that thing again. My core wound came up. I fell into that pleasing young girl. I got scared of my own vulnerability and anxiety. Fear, human. And I did what I've been doing since I was a little girl. But I really wanted to do this. And so this is how I now want to talk about this situation. You don't need to get it perfect every time you.

Hi, I'm Susie Esman.

And I am Jeff Garland.

Yes, you are.

And we are the hosts of the history of Curb your enthusiasm podcast. We're going to watch every single episode. It's 122, including the pilot, and we're going to break them down.

By the way, most of these episodes I have not seen for 20 years.

Yeah, me too. We're going to have guest stars and people that are very important to the show, like Larry David.

I did once try and stop a woman who was about to get hit by a car. I screamed out, watch out. And she said, don't you tell me what to do.

And Cheryl Hines, why can't you just.

Lighten up and have a good time?

And Richard Lewis, how am I going.

To tell him I'm going to leave now?

Can you do it on the phone? Do you have do it in person? What's canceling cable? You have to go in. He's a human being. He's helped you.

And then we're going to have behind the scenes information. Tidbit.

Yes, Tidbit is a great word.

Anyway, we're both a wealth of knowledge about this show because we've been doing it for 23 years. So subscribe now and you could listen to the history of Kerber enthusiasm on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you happen to get your podcasts.

Hey, this is Danish Schwartz. You may know my voice from noble blood, Haleywood, or stealing Superman. I'm hosting a new podcast, and we're calling it very special episodes.

One week, we'll be on the case with special agents from NASA as they crack down on black market moon rocks.

H. Ross Pro is on the other side, and he goes, hello, Joe. How can I help you? I said, Mr. Perot, what we need is $5 million to get back a moon rock.

Another week, we'll unravel a mystery.

It sounds like it should be the next season of true detective or something. These canadian cops trying to solve this 25 year old mystery of who spiked the chowder on the Titanic set.

A very special episode is stranger than fiction. It's normal. People plop down in extraordinary circumstances. It's a story where you say, this should be a movie. Listen to very special episodes on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What up, guys? Ola Ketal. It's your girl. Cheekies from the cheekies and chill. And dear Cheekies podcasts. You've been with me for season one and two, and now I'm back with season three. I am so excited. You guys get ready for all new episodes where I'll be dishing out honest advice and discussing important topics like relationships, women's health, and spirituality. For a long time, I was afraid of falling in love, so I had to. And this is a mantra of mine, or an affirmation every morning where I tell myself it is safe for me.

To love and to be loved.

I've heard this a lot. That people think that I'm conceited, that I'm a mamona, and a mamona means that you just think you're better than everyone else. I don't know if it's because of how I act in my videos. Sometimes I'm like, I'm a baddie. I don't know what it is, but I'm chill. It's cheekies and chill.

Hello.

Listen to cheekies and chill and dear cheekies as part of the Kultura podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I think it's really cool, though, like, being so vulnerable and putting myself out there and getting this feedback from listeners who care. There's this piece of accountability where now I really have to watch myself back and listen to myself back and hear all the times that I laugh when I'm uncomfortable. And already from the first episode that I released to the second episode, I noticed a huge difference in how many times that I laughed. And so I feel like it's a beautiful thing to be able to do what I'm doing now in my life because it's developing me into the person that I want to become. And this is the challenge. This is like the journey and other people get to join in, which I think is really cool.

That's right. This is proper healing. This is proper healing and real healing and real growth, as I said before. But it's so worth repeating. Is messy. It's messy. Nobody goes from identifying a core wound, a problematic behavior, a trauma, and then pivots to the other side of total understanding and grace. Right. Nobody does that. It takes a lot of hard work where we're back and forth, and as I said, we're messy and we repeat the same behaviors, and then we do a little better, and then we repeat the same behaviors. That's how we move through trauma and how we grow. So I totally agree with what you just said. I'm just adding to it. I think you're right that it's pretty amazing to put yourself out there and have people be able to witness not just the growth, but the messy stuff, because we all attempt to do better and then witness ourselves not doing better and either discover that ourselves or have other people give us that feedback that's painful, that can bring about feelings of shame. Right. That's hard. And so you're holding that up for all of us to witness and to think about with regards to ourselves or people that we love.

The only way to grow is to have messy stuff in the in between. The only way. And I didn't want to miss what you said before. I'm kind of pivoting, but what you said before about your experience being so grounded and based in pleasing others and then going to the other side, where you are hyper focused on your own needs and sort of justifying the pursuit of those. And first of all, great insight, and I'm sure there are others that can relate, and that's useful to help put in context how you move through that situation. And also, I just wanted to provide this insight that, paradoxically, the very extreme sets of behaviors, very different, obviously, paradoxically, they're really coming from the same place, which is an absence of relationship with your own true, tricky feelings, the very thing that we're talking about, right is that the hyperpleasing behavior obviously guided you to not deeply consider what you were feeling and what you needed and how others around you were impacting you. It guided you to just be vigilant about your surroundings and try to adapt and adopt what you felt other people wanted or needed from you.

Right. And then the other side of it is not dissimilar because you're still not really considering your nuanced actual feelings. You are only focusing on sort of your drives, your hyper drives. Like, I want connection, I want love, I want sex, I want attention, I want validation, et cetera. But you're not really considering your nuanced feelings around, like, really feel inside about how I'm moving through the world, how I'm impacting other people. What do I really want right now? How do I want my life to be? How do I want my life to unfold? It's still an absence of connection with your actual feelings. The behaviors are quite different, but the root of it is not dissimilar. And so it all brings us back to the thing we've been talking about today with you in particular, and I think with many others, that this getting to know and lingering in your nuanced, complex, messy feelings is really the ingredient needed to show up in the world in a way that's more commiserate with how we're feeling inside.

Beautifully stated.

Yeah. So it must be strange to reflect on those two extremes of yourself.

In the meadows, we learned they have a really big codependency structure there. And so a piece of that is being needless, wantless and not knowing what your needs are. And then the other side of that is knowing what your needs are but not asking for them. Because if you ask for them, you feel like you're a burden.

Yes.

And so I've recognized those things in myself. And especially as I'm talking about my experience and reflecting all my actions through this past season, I noticed that I felt the most worthy when I was needed for someone else. And I wasn't able to really internalize my own needs and my own wants or prioritize those, because how I was saying before, like, okay, I went the other extreme, and I was just focusing on myself. I was still compromising my own wants and my own needs by hiding this relationship and letting somebody else take control of that and suppressing what I really wanted and needed.

Yes, you were hyper centering the need for validation, which was a pivot for you in terms of being at least in touch with the fact you had a need to be in connection, to be validated, to feel worthy, to feel loved. Right. So that was different for you in that sense, because the way you're describing it prior, you had really focused on external pleasing of others. So you were guided by this sort of, quote, new principle of, like, I want to be in connection. I want to be validated. But you're so right in now understanding that it ended up violating your personal edict anyway because you lost touch with what was right for you, what was moral for you, and how you as a person as a whole want to move through the world. Right?

Exactly. Yeah.

So it's such a painful lesson, obviously, but I assume a relatable one. There are lots of us that due to a need for validation, which often comes out in romantic relationships with the most intensity, that we abandon other responsibilities in our life. I mean, concrete and otherwise, right? Like focus on work, focus on family, focus on friends, but other, more moral responsibilities, like how to show up in the world and what values are we going to uphold? And it sounded like for you, those things all sort of became abandoned. Experience that feeling of validation and being needed by someone. Look, that's core, core stuff. As humans, we all deal with. We all want to feel wanted and needed and validated, and that's not going away, and we don't want it to. It's one of the things that sort of infuses color and meaning into our lives is to be loved and to love others. So we don't want to set that aside completely, but we do want to center sort of our own value that comes from within before we can really give ourselves, paradoxically, more fully to a love relationship, the more we are centered and sort of grounded in our own value, the more we can give ourselves more fully and with more abandon in a love relationship, it's, like, paradoxical, but if you don't have that, it sounded like you didn't at that time.

Your feet aren't on the ground, right? You really can be led into places that you don't even realize you're going. That sounds like that's part of what happened to you.

Hey, this is Dana Schwartz. You may know my voice from Noble Blood, Haley Wood, or stealing Superman. I'm hosting a new podcast, and we're calling it very special episodes.

One week, we'll be on the case with special agents from NASA as they crack down on black market moon rocks.

H. Ross Pro is on the other side, and he goes, hello, Joe. How can I help you? I said, Mr. Pro, what we need is $5 million to get back a moon rock.

Another week we'll unravel a mystery.

It sounds like it should be the next season of True Detective or something. These canadian cops trying to solve this 25 year old mystery of who's bike the chowder on the Titanic set.

A very special episode is stranger than fiction. It's normal. People plop down in extraordinary circumstances. It's a story where you say, this should be a movie. Listen to very special episodes on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Susie Esman.

And I am Jeff Garland.

Yes, you are.

And we are the hosts of the history of Curb your enthusiasm podcast. We're going to watch every single episode. It's 122, including the pilot, and we're going to break them down.

And by the way, most of these episodes I have not seen for 20 years.

Yeah, me too. We're going to have guest stars and people that are very important to the show, like Larry David.

I did once try and stop a woman who was about to get hit by a car. I screamed out, watch out. And she said, don't you tell me what to do.

And Cheryl Hines, why can't you just.

Lighten up and have a good time?

And Richard Lewis, how am I going.

To tell him I'm going to leave now?

Can you do it on the phone? Do you have to do it in person? What's the canceling cable? You have to go in and he's a human being. He's helped you.

And then we're going to have behind the scenes information. Tidbit.

Yes, tidbit is a great word.

Anyway, we're both a wealth of knowledge about this show because we've been doing it for 23 years. So subscribe now and you could listen to the history of Kerber enthusiasm on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you happen to get your podcasts.

What up, guys? Ola ketal. It's your girl. Cheekies from the cheekies and chill. And dear cheekies podcasts. You've been with me for season one and two, and now I'm back with season three. I am so excited. You guys get ready for all new episodes where I'll be dishing out honest advice and discussing important topics like relationships, women's health, and spirituality. For a long time, I was afraid of falling in love, so I had to. And this is a mantra of mine, or an affirmation every morning where I tell myself it is safe for me.

To love and to be loved.

I've heard this a lot. That people think that I'm conceited, that I'm a Mamona, and a mamona means that you just think you're better than everyone else. I don't know if it's because of how I act in my video. Sometimes I'm like, I'm a baddie. I don't know what it is, but I'm chill. It's cheekies and chill.

Hello.

Listen to cheekies and chill and dear cheekies as part of the My Coultura podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I wanted to ask, because my relationship with my ex, the first relationship that I had on this show, was a very volatile situation to be in. And I noticed patterns of codependency coming up for me in that relationship where I almost kind of lost myself. So because that relationship was so unhealthy, do you think the unresolved feelings in that relationship carried over into the new relationship that I was in?

Yes, of course. When we have unprocessed trauma stuck in our body and in our minds and in our heart and in our soul, it's not a guess, it's not a hypothesis. It's going to impact significantly how we move through the world and certainly how we move through our next relationship if the trauma is relationship based, and most traumas are. But I mean, particularly if it was a romantic relationship. So to the extent that there was confusion and anxiety and shame and guilt and resentment and fear and embarrassment and all the potential dynamics associated with an unhealthy, toxic relationship stuck in your body, it's going to come out as symptoms, as we were talking about before. And so as it relates to being in a new relationship, it's going to impact how we show up, how we choose to move through it. And it probably takes one of two paths. Either we show up with a certain level of passivity for fear of repeating the trauma, or inviting that same anger or shame cycle, or we show up with a certain level of aggression or intense self advocacy, get me before they get me kind of thing, and we may visit both extremes during it.

So there's no question it's one of the reasons that taking the time, I can't overemphasize this. I almost feel like I'm saying it in a cliche way. Taking the time to process intense trauma is not just a good idea. It's critical, it's mandatory, or we will continue to sort of create collateral damage because it's unborn and it's leading us rather than us processing it and choosing how we are going to move forward with it after we've integrated it.

I think you listed all of those things, and one of them that came to mind for me was self sabotage.

Yes, that's right. Well, if we already feel damaged and confused and uncertain, right. We overidentify with that as who we are and all that we can create. And so we find ways to bring it back to that baseline over and over again, unless we explore the trauma. Otherwise, it's an almost certain path.

You said something very interesting with the validation coming up in our love relationships and going forward, realizing that through my therapy process, I'm not dating for a year. And in doing that, I'm just focusing on myself. And after this talk, focusing on my emotions that come up for me, like, what are my own needs that I need met, and not adding an additional person into the equation so that it is just focused on me and other people as well, like my friends and family and the people that are in my inner circle that are safe friends. But in doing a full year of not dating, I feel like that's the game plan going forward. It made me think, since you said we seek validation in our love relationships, I could see how we could also seek validation in our professional work career life as well. I think maybe the entertainment industry as a whole is a magnet for people who are seeking that external validation. And so could you speak on that?

Yeah, you brought up so many good points. Oftentimes, clinically speaking, the intensity of the need for validation shows up the most in love relationships. But you are absolutely right. It shows up in all relationships, familial and friendships and professionally. Totally right. And I think it seems by definition to be likely true that when someone chooses the entertainment industry, they at minimum are not shying away from the validation that comes from being in that kind of position, and likely in many situations, feel a level of sort of groundedness and satisfaction and value by getting that feedback right. That's a good hypothesis, and I'm sure there's exceptions, but it's a good hypothesis that those who are in the entertainment industry benefit from that from some standpoint. And perhaps there's a continuum, I'm sure, and I think that's a really important thing for you to think about and those that are in the entertainment industry to sort of curate as much groundedness around that, because it's seductive, right. It's compelling to have feedback coming from the public. Certainly that's supportive and loving and full of admiration, and even the so called negative feedback or hate can also be seductive because it brings along a certain level of drama and self focus.

So the whole thing can be just a huge feedback loop that has positive and negative aspects but is addictive.

Very interesting. And one of my hesitations doing this podcast, too, was, am I just repeating another cycle? Am I just inserting myself back into this validation circle? And so that is a concern of mine, because I do feel like I feel a sense of value and purpose when I do get feedback from other people who have dealt with toxic, narcissistic relationships and know the trauma bond that I've experienced through my relationships and through this show. And so I think it's that sense of community and connectedness that is the underlying motivator with that. So I'm not sure. Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Could it be a bit of both?

I'm so glad you brought that up because you're doing what I was talking about at the beginning, which is making, like, a process comment that I'm sitting here thinking about, is this a good thing or a bad thing? Am I just inserting myself back into that seductive feedback loop that we were just talking about? And here's my answer. I think I say this all the time. Two things can be true at the same time. You should be brutally introspective about that. Is there a part that is related to the seductiveness of the public feedback and admiration? Probably. And the closer you stay to that truth, the more you can manage its impact on you. Right. It sounds very human to me to be in a public position and to feel the energy. That sounds very human to me. I don't know how you turn that off completely, so I would make better friends with that. But, yeah, there's a part of me that likes the energy, likes the feedback, likes the feedback loop of engagement, and to be a version of at the center of it, there's a part of me that likes that, and I think that's okay.

The point is being able to recognize where that begins and we begin and that ends and we end. Right? That you aren't so merged with it that your value is derived from it and that you lose yourself in it. So being able to keep it separate in your mind that, like, yes, that's a fun arena I sometimes engage in and enjoy. I don't overdefine myself by it. And when I say fun, I just mean the part of it that is around the admiration and the suction that we're talking about. Obviously, the part where you are adding value by having conversations like this is more purposeful and has more meaning, and there's a truth to it. I'm certain people will listen to this and other podcasts talking about mental health and feel impacted by it, and you and others engaging in that kind of dialog should feel good about it. I think it's a wonderful thing to promote real, raw, honest conversations about hard stuff. Internally, we don't talk about it enough. Right. But I think you just really getting honest with yourself about how much am I engaging in this. Where's my validation coming from?

Yes, part of this does feel really good and cool. Great. I'm going to set that aside. I'm going to compartmentalize. I'm going to get back to who I am, who I want to be, what my insecurities are, what my fears are, how I want to grow, et cetera. That you don't overly merge with it, you don't over identify with it. It's like a full time job to keep creating that separation so I wouldn't lose sight of it, and I also would embrace it, if that makes sense, because it's part of your world and you want to make choices about your relationship with it, not have it happen to you.

Yes. Thank you so much for joining me today and giving your insight on all of this and being so open to what I have to say. And I really appreciate the encouragement going forward. And obviously, I appreciate your validation in me expressing how I've reflected on my actions and how I'm going forward to make better choices for myself. And I think my listeners will benefit from this conversation, too. So thank you so much, Dr. Goldsher.

You're welcome. It was my pleasure to be with you. Hello.

This is Susie Esman and Jeff Garland. I'm here, and we are the hosts of the history of Curb your enthusiasm podcast. Now, we're going to be rewatching and talking about every single episode, and we're going to break it down and give behind the scenes knowledge that a lot of people don't know. And we're going to be joined by special guests, including Larry David and Cheryl Hines, Richard Lewis, Bob Odenkirk, and so many more. And we're going to have clips and it's just going to be a lot of fun. So listen to the history of curb your enthusiasm on iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you happen to get your podcasts.

Hey, this is Danish Schwartz. You may know my voice from Noble Blood, Haley Wood, or stealing Superman. I'm hosting a new podcast, and we're calling it very special episodes. A very special episode is stranger than fiction.

It sounds like it should be the next season of True Detective. These canadian cops trying to solve this mystery of who spiked the chowder on the Titanic set.

Listen to very special episodes on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What up, guys?

Ola Catal. It's your girl cheekies from the cheekies and chill and dear Cheekies podcasts. And guess what? We're back for another season. Get ready for all new episodes where I'll be dishing out honest advice, discussing important topics like relationships, women's health, and spirituality. I'm sharing my experiences with you guys, and I feel that everything that I've gone through has made me a wiser person. And if I can help anyone else through my experiences, I feel like I'm living my godly purpose. Listen to cheekies and chill and your cheekies on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.