Somewhere in the rows and rows of office cubicles that make up the emotional business of our brains, there’s one employee hellbent on burning the whole place down. Her name…is childhood. Is it possible to pry ourselves from her firey grasp?
Somewhere in the rows and rows of office cubicles that make up the emotional business of our brains, there’s one employee hellbent on burning the whole place down. Her name…is childhood. Is it possible to pry ourselves from her fiery grasp? Or are we destined to live with one hand on the fire extinguisher? Psychotherapist and bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, Lori Gottlieb, offers a way to set our childhoods free: changing the stories we tell ourselves.
A few of the curiosities you’ll uncover in this episode:
To learn more about Lori’s book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone (in both written and audio form), and to check out the podcast she co-hosts called “Dear Therapists,” visit www.lorigottlieb.com.
Curious State is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast hosted and produced by Doug Fraser.
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Doug
Ah, adulthood, we've come so damn far. We've gotten taller, we've gotten wider in some places. We've had scrapes that have healed and a few of them have made some pretty cool scar stories. Our minds have also grown. And we've come to understand the beauty of things like a quiet night in or for being kind to strangers. And yet, somewhere in the rows and rows of office cubicles that make up the emotional business of our brains. There's one employee hell bent on burning the whole place down. Her name is childhood. I'm Doug Fraser, and this is Curious State. Can we overcome our childhoods? Lori Gottlieb is here to help us answer that very question.
Lori
I'm Lori Gottlieb. I am a psychotherapist and I am the author of “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.”
Doug
Lori's memoir mixes tales of her time as a therapist, and as a patient of therapy. If you haven't read it. Take from me, you should. So about that childhood question. Our friend Laurie has an answer. Sort of Yes, or No. I'd like to call my mom.
Lori
What we don't realize is that we're all unreliable narrators. We tell a story through a particular lens. And that lens, of course, is determined by our past experiences.
Doug
And so begins our journey into the stories of childhood, or at least our versions of them. What is it about that first handful of years that can have such an impact on the rest of our lives.
Lori
So our childhoods inform the present, they inform the ways that we relate in the world. And if you have some kind of old story from your childhood that you're carrying around, like, I'm unlovable, or I can't trust anyone or everyone's life is better than mine, or I'm trapped, or I'm a victim or whatever, whatever may have been had some truth in it when you were younger, but is no longer true. Sometimes people don't realize that they're free, as adults. And that they get to make choices and they have agency that they didn't have as a child, until they walk around with these stories that keep them stuck in the same place.
Doug
As patients we come in with a first draft of a story. It's told through our particular lens which is shaped by our past experiences. It's a version we've rewritten so many times that we don't see the glaring grammatical mishaps or the shallow representation of our lice leading characters, like parental figures, ex lovers, all the usual suspects, because in the same way the great writers of history have brought stories to life. So do we, except we don't need to visit some seaside cottage or throw back a pint of Jack for inspiration. We sit at the writing desk in our minds all day, every day. Writer's Block be damned. Even when we're sleeping, we're weaving our life story anew. We just keep writing and rewriting spinning new tales from old retrofitting today's information to yesterday's memories. It's exhausting work. Enter our personal Editor in Chief, the therapist,
Lori
we're helping people to look at what are the parts of the story that they're not seeing? What are the other points of view that they're not including? You know, how are they characterizing the heroes and the victims in the story? Who are the supporting characters? And are they relevant. And what they come to realize as they start to make revisions to that initial story is that there's much more to the story than they ever imagined.
Doug
We've altered our stories so much. We've been left with just a few paragraphs here and there of the original writings. The rest is crossed through notes scribbled in the margins, reworking the text, refining the plot into a version that feels right to us, or at least feels better, a version ready to slide into the rows of other spines lining the libraries of our minds, a waiting for the day to be referenced to be pulled back into the larger story again, and again, with that same sweet comfort of familiarity, even when the stories themselves are quite bitter. This isn't just us. It's a universal phenomenon that we can see play out in television, or more specifically, our habits of consumption. Take for example, the TV show “The Office”. I don't care. It was disgusting. Cartoon characters having sex. May I point out that the sex appeared to be consensual, both animals were smiling, okay.
Doug
It's one of the most popular series today, despite having not filmed a new episode since 2012, that's nine years without any new storylines or romantic twists. It's still just Pam and Jim on their rocky road to snuggle town. Still Dwight failing to become regional manager. Still, millions of Americans hitting replay again, and again with the same sweet comfort of familiarity. In 2020, alone, the show was viewed for 57.3 billion minutes. That's over 1000 total years of friggin millennia of the office playing non stop. Similarly, the stories we create are about our lives play on repeat in the theater of our minds. It's as though stories rise from that metaphorical paper and turn into their own TV channels.
Welcome to awkward family relationships. Today we'll be revisiting a topic that's a slimy frog in your oatmeal. Your mother? Yeah, really rub that salty jazz. Welcome to the regrets channel. Here, you're reminded of your not so proud moments, because they'll always be undead. On self doubt TV, we're counting down the top 10 reasons you should give up trying right now. You'll never guess number one. Why are we so critical with ourselves?
Lori
It depends on what you heard growing up, you know, so that's part of it. And part of it is a cultural piece. But I think that the personal peace, the interpersonal peace is what happened between you and the people in your household when you're growing up. And a lot of times the messages were very critical for a lot of people. So you know, and partly that had to do with not because parents were trying to be cruel, but because parents maybe had that critical voice themselves. And sometimes that got externalized. So when parents would get frustrated, maybe they would criticize their children. And and sometimes they didn't realize that they were coming off so critically, just like people don't realize that they're being critical to themselves, they have no idea how they sound. I think if you gave people a test and said every time you speak, ask yourself, is it kind? Is it true? And is it useful, but all the time we say things to ourselves and to other people that don't pass that test. So many times people think that they're coming to therapy to get to know themselves, they say I want to get to know myself better. So I'm going to go to therapy. But part of what you do in therapy is you get to unknow yourself. You let go of those limiting stories, those cruel stories, those unkind stories that you've been telling yourself over and over, that keep you stuck. So a lot of what therapy is it's an unknowing, as much as it's a knowing?
Doug
Are there ways that parents can do that to help their children to give them the tools they need to be better at coping with their childhood than they were?
Lori
You know, people are not very skilled with accessing their feelings. And part of it has to do too with the way that we maybe talk our kids out of feeling what they're feeling. So your kid comes to you and they say, I feel angry about this. And people will say, you know, don't be so sensitive, right? Or you're angry about that really, or, you know, the kid might say, Oh, I'm sad that this happened. And the parent will be like, hey, look, a balloon, or hey, look, let's go get ice cream. Right? As opposed to saying like, Oh, yeah, I can see why you're sad about that. Tell me more. That is so much more helpful than let's go get ice cream, or go go get ice cream, and then ask them to tell me more about the sadness. So what happens is you grow up as if you were a kid like that you grow up, and you start to question anytime you feel something you were already talked out of it. So now what you do is you take on that role for yourself, and you start to talk yourself out of it. Oh, yeah, I'm anxious, but I really shouldn't be anxious because I have a roof over my head and food on the table. So there's really no reason for me to be anxious. I mean, other people have it so much worse. And so what happens is you stuff the anger, the anxiety down, or the anger down or the sadness down, when people then don't show up in my office until they're having a real crisis. But also, they suffered unnecessarily for all of those months or maybe even years when they talked themselves out of how they were feeling. Our feelings are really useful because they're like a compass. They help us. They guide us, they help us to see what is not working. And if you ignore that compass, it's like you're walking around with a glitchy GPS, you have no idea what's not working or why.
Doug
That is a great image. I love that. So the answer to whether we can overcome our childhoods is a calming, yes. It's about the stories we tell ourselves. And in doing so, tuning our emotional compass and gaining new perspectives.
Lori
There's a difference between saying this was my childhood. And this is how elements of my childhood inform how I navigate through the world. And maybe some of these things don't really serve me now. That's really healthy. And that's really helpful in terms of changing the present, and then therefore changing the future. But I think sometimes what happens is, people refuse to change, because they want a redo on their childhood, unconsciously, what they're doing is they're saying, I won't change until you treat me the way I wanted to be treated when I was eight, but you do it now. That's not going to happen. So, so many people are waiting for their parents to change as adults, they're still waiting, like when you change mom or dad, then I will feel better. And then I will be able to be the adult that I was meant to be. And it doesn't work that way, your partner will not redo your childhood for you. Your job will not redo your childhood for you. Nothing can redo what happened. But you get to choose how you live your life now. Do you want to live it as the child who may be felt trapped in some ways? Or do you want to live it as the adult who is in fact free?
Doug
That's big. That is a very big thing.
Lori
It is. And it's a loss for a lot of people. But I think that a lot of people walk around with that hope or that desire. And so you have to let go of that. And I think there's a grieving process that happens along with discovering the freedom that you have as an adult.
Doug
The stories we tell ourselves have the power to change us, for better or for worse. They can drag us into the people we will become and they can also, with the help of an editor, guide us to a better version of ourselves. And when that happens, something inside of us shifts its weight and drops a single sheet of paper on our brains writing desk. This one is void of any scribbled rewrites or footnotes. It's simply joyfully blank. To learn more about Lori's book, “Maybe You Should Talk To Someone” in both written and audio form and to check out the podcast she co-hosts called “Dear Therapists,” visit lorigottlieb.com. If you have any questions, comments or ideas for future episodes, email me at curious@quickanddirtytips.com. If you prefer talking over typing, leave me a voicemail at 757-541-8471. For more information about the show and where you can find us across the internet. Check out our show notes or visit quickanddirtytips.com. Special thanks to the Quick and Dirty Tips team. Adam Cecil, our Audience Development and Podcast Manager, Morgan Christiansen, Podcast and Advertising Operations Specialist, Emily Miller, Assistant Manager, Davina Tomlin, Marketing and Publicity Assistant and our trusty intern Brendan Picha. Curious state is hosted and produced by me Doug Fraser for the Quick and Dirty Tips network, which is a division of Macmillan Publishers. Until next time, stay curious.