Welcome to she persisted I'm your host Sadie Saxton a 19 year
old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of
Pennsylvania. She persisted is the Teen Mental
Health podcast made for teenagers by a team in each
episode. I'll bring you authentic
accessible and relatable conversations about every aspect
of mental Wellness. You can expect evidence-based,
Tina, proof resources, coping skills, including lots of DBT,
insights and education. In each piece of content, you
consume, she persisted Offers you a safe space to feel
validated and understood in your struggle.
While encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and
build your life worth living. So let's Dive In.
Hello. Hello, and welcome to.
She persisted. I am so excited for today's
episode. I mentioned on Instagram stories
that this episode is like kind of late.
I got on a terrible schedule where I was releasing episodes
like Thursday, Friday and Saturday and are up late day is
Tuesday. So I took a couple of days off
and held this episode until this week's that work back on
schedule and it's a good one. So, I think it's well worth the
wait. But before we get into this
conversation with Liz and Molly about all things emotions, I
wanted to give you a Midsummer check it catch up.
I'm starting to think about the fall semester and how I'm going
to organize and plan and stay balanced.
I definitely am. Going to make sure that my
morning of my night routine are staying super consistent.
Sleep is still a huge priority, really a lot more walking and
saying consistent with working out so that I am still motivated
and tired. When I go to bed, which is a
huge thing for me. I'm really excited to get back
to Philly. Get back into my routine.
See friends, get back into the schedule of school.
It's been so nice to have a break, so I didn't Feel burnt
out and overwhelmed through the whole summer but I'm also
excited to get back into the rhythm of school and podcasting.
And that structure, I've been doing a lot of reading of two
books that I want to recommend to you.
That I've read the summer that our mental health related in
addition, I've also been reading lots of romance novel novel.
So if you have recommendations, DM, me, I want to hear them, but
the mental health books are building a life worth living by
Marsha, Linehan. It is her Memoir.
So it's her entire life story. And Marsha Linehan is the woman
that started Electrical behavioral therapy.
And she actually started at because she herself struggled
with suicidal, ideation emotional distress.
All of that kind of stuff. And she spent some time in a
really terrible mental hospital a really long time ago.
And from that, she really wanted to create a compassionate
effective evidence-based treatment for patients, that
were really struggling to find treatment to be effective.
And so that's how DBT was born and it's such an amazing story.
It's so inspiring and it's just so good.
So if you are DBT fan, I highly recommend reading that because
she puts the skills in the book. But it's also about her journey
with spirituality and how she really wanted mindfulness to be
a part of DBT. And what her mental health,
looks like when she was 18, 19, 20 and at the lowest of lows in
the hospital and I'm leaving that starting to work in
research, all of that kind of stuff.
So really good. The second one I've mentioned it
before, but Atomic habits everyone uses.
It's in some way. And if you want to improve
habits, or you just want to stay consistent or understand how to
be more effective and creating habits.
I highly recommend. You read that, it's by James
Clear. It's literally applicable to
every aspect of life, whether you want to learn to play an
instrument or be more consistent with working out or be better at
studying. All of these things, come down
to habits and consistency and he breaks down the sides of habit
building in a really easy to understand why there's lots of
great Doats. And if yeah, if you are
struggling to build habits, you want to see a change somewhere
and let your life and your like, I don't really know how to do
this. Highly recommend, I'm sure
you've seen it on Tick Tock, but it is amazing.
And I wanted to bring those up because we have authors on the
podcast today. We have Liz and Molly.
The authors of big feelings how to be okay, when things are not.
Okay. They're also the authors of the
Wall Street Journal bestseller, no hard feelings.
The secret power of embracing emotions at work.
So for all of my book worms, myself included, these are three
books that are applicable to any aspect of a life of Life
emotions. I mean maybe not the DPT one but
emotions have it setting and then just learning about DBT
Marsha because who doesn't love that?
But yeah that's kind of how things have been going.
I am thinking about doing more solo episodes on the podcast.
So I would love to have your feedback on that.
You want to listen to more solo episodes.
What do you want to hear more of what?
Topics, do you want me to dive into?
Do you want more Q&A? Ask me, anything?
Advice tile episodes. Do you like these interviews?
Let me know. And to wrap up this intro, you
should follow on Instagram at at.
She persisted podcast because I've been working on some merch
for the podcast, and I'm very excited to share that with you
soon. So, with that, Our guests today
are Liz and Molly. They are the co-authors of no
hard feelings and their second book.
Big feelings, how to be okay when things are not okay, which
we really dive into in this interview, we discuss why the
seven big feelings which are burnt out.
Perfectionism comparison, uncertainty, anger, regret and
despair are so difficult to navigate and tips to work
through them. Why it's so important to
identify the emotions, you're feeling tips to lean into the
emotional experience to understand what your emotions
are trying to tell you. Recovering from suicidal
ideation and what to say to someone in this headspace and
lastly, any advice on supporting someone struggling with these
feelings. So I do want to give a trigger
warning. We do talk about suicidal
thoughts and suicidal ideations a bit after, I would say the 35
minute mark, That's not accurate. 100% because I am
going to add the ads in this intro and so if you listen to
after the 35 minute, Mark, if you that is a trigger point for
you, just be aware of that up until that totally fine.
We talked about all these other. ER topics but I would cut it off
around there after we talked about regret.
So that is your point to stop listening.
If that is something that hits home for you, listen, Molly, do
mention this in the episode, but their website is Liz and
Molly.com allies, eand mmol/l IE.com, and their Instagram is
the same. So at listen, Molly and Liz as a
phenomenal illustrator, she is so talented with creating
Graphics that accompany these really difficult to address
topics. Like Burnout and overwhelm and
relationships and anxiety. So if you were looking for some
amazing drawings, in your Instagram feed that are mental
health-related, I highly recommend following her, and
there's a ton of them in the book as well.
So loved that so much, I always love when books have charts and
graphs to explain things Atomic habits, does that, and it's
great. So that's the intro for this
week. We're just going to dive in
because this conversation is a great one and I'm so happy that
listen Molly reached out and came in the podcast.
So with that, make sure to subscribe.
Is that you don't miss next week's episode.
Thank you for listening and let's dive in.
Thank you guys so much for joining me today and she
persisted, I'm so excited to have you on the show and dive
into all things emotions. It's something I'm super
passionate about and really doing the emotion education and
understanding what happens when emotions arise, why they arise
the functions that they're surveying and really just doing
that education piece was a game-changer for me and
navigating those big heavy emotion.
So I'm so excited to bring this conversation to my audience.
Thank you for having Be here, of course.
So before we get started, I would love for you guys to share
with listeners just a little bit about their your book where they
can get it. The process that would into
writing that as a little bit of a foundation so that they know
where they can dive into. So much more depth on this
conversation, I can start and lose can jump in.
So, we wrote this book, it's called Big feelings.
How to be okay? When things are not okay, it
came out at the end of April and we had published our first book
called know, Hard feelings, which is all about emotions at
work and that came out in February 2019.
And after we wrote that book, we realized actually there are some
really hard feelings. We both went through really
difficult moments in our lives, which we can talk more about and
we wanted to understand how do you work through these big
feelings. You are really honest in the
book that there's not like a magical checklist or a shortcut
that you can indeed work through them.
And so we share our stories, we share some of our readers
stories and we talked, Experts, you can find it on Amazon, you
can find it on Bookshop. Dot-org and we are Liz, and
Molly mmol/l. IE.
We are on Instagram at Liz and Molly and our website is Liz and
Molly dot-coms. You can find the book there as
well, amazing. So you guys outline seven
different emotions that can be especially difficult to navigate
that you've learned both from your own experiences.
And in all this research, you did for this book, I would love
to kind of break those down and talk about why those Motion.
Specifically can be so difficult difficult to navigate how you
can be more effective and educated.
When navigating those, I'd also touching on your own experiences
there. So, we started out with many
more than 7, but we kind of came up.
I think it was a list of maybe 10 to 12 initially.
And again, this is based on Molly and my experiences just
things that we had grappled with.
And then we started turning to readers who would read our first
book, and our audience on Instagram, and people who read
our newsletters Just to really serve a them and start talking
to them about which of these also resonate with you because
we wanted the book to be broadly useful and also keeping in mind
Molly and I are two white women kind of both of them,
California. So we just we wanted to make
sure we were hearing from a range of people.
And what we found that was interesting was the, the seven
that we ended up with which include things like burnout
uncertainty, comparison, despair really seems to invoke the
biggest responses from people and we've gotten questions
around like comparison is not really an emotion.
That's necessarily a feeling but was interesting is when we asked
people about Envy which is the emotion, that comparison creates
they didn't have a strong of a response, but then when we said
things like, well, do you compare yourself people?
There was this overwhelming outpouring of like yes, this is
I struggle with this so much so think it speaks to how often we
In such an emotion phobic society that even if we can
identify the behavior that we are engaging and we still are a
little removed from the emotion that that behavior leads us to
feel. So we really wanted to meet
people where they were, which is also why we chose words like
perfectionism uncertainty, as opposed to, you know, fear of
failure or anxiety, which are truly the emotion.
So that's a little behind why we ended up with those seven that
are in the book. Yeah I think it's really
interesting and even just identifying In those at face
value, what you're experiencing can be really powerful.
I think what you're talking about with people having that
really emotional response, when you name, what they're
experiencing shows, how effective that can be and
becoming in touch with the emotion when you're trying to
suppress and avoid and not totally address what you're
navigating. And I remember at many points,
during my mental health Journey, what I was working on was just
acknowledging, like, what emotion was coming up and trying
to look internally being like, okay.
Is this like apprehension or is this anxiety?
And Really getting very specific.
Because once you know what you're actually experiencing,
it's a lot easy to address it and work through it.
Starting off. I think with burnout as a great
one that I think a lot of people are experiencing right now.
We are sort of like, still in this weird limbo period with
covid, burn out with something that many, many people have
experienced. Why is that so difficult to
emotionally navigate? And why is that one of the
things that you chose to highlight or not?
Is something we hear about all the time and yet it can be
really difficult. To recognize in ourselves.
The reason for that is that a dangerous aspect of burnout is
that at affects our own self-awareness so it can
actually feel really good to be on the verge of burnout.
Like I'm getting things done, I'm crossing things off my list,
you know, in the context of being at school you're like okay
I'm in finals but everyone else is in finals.
We're all in it together. And it's only, you know, after
we get sick or after we come up for air or something else gets
added on to our plate that we really hit that Wall and we lose
the adrenaline. And, you know, I remember this
after, you know, periods of burnout, especially in school
where I was, so glad to have something like a summer break,
but we need that. If we don't have that and we
don't say, okay, I'm going to give myself some time after
finals and go directly into a really intense job.
We end up not being able to actually like let the stress out
of our system. So there's there's research that
shows. It's really important to let
that stress. Cycle fully happen.
It's natural for us to go through periods of stress, but
we need to then return to that rest and digest part of the
cycle. And a lot of times, we force
ourselves to skip that. So, the number one thing you can
do is look out for the early warning signs and the one that
I'll share first because I think it really helps.
People think about this in a new way, is sometimes it can feel
like you would like to get sick, not like covid sick, but just
like have a cold. So you are forced to shut down
Because it's so hard to force yourself to take a break and
when you're in a place where you're like, wanting to be sick,
that's not super healthy. But some of the other things are
that you feel that everything is overwhelming, even things like
going to the grocery store, you find people really irritating.
You're saying yes, to things that you should be saying no to.
And so if we don't recognize these early warning signs, and
they're hard to recognize, right?
Because it's not, you know, they're not things that we have
to recognize. That's when we Get in trouble.
And we spoke with somebody who is an expert on helping people
recover from burnout. And one of the things that he
shared was he said sometimes, life Taps you on the shoulder
with a feather and sometimes it runs you over with the truck and
we need to learn to listen to it when Taps you on the shoulder
with a feather. So that's that's part of
something that that Liz and I have both worked on getting
better at. I think we still, it's still
really difficult and we both have gone through periods of
burnout. Yeah.
Elizabeth you mentioned another one of the difficult emotions of
sorts to work through his perfectionism and I think that
is something that really goes hand in hand with with burnout
and I've noticed from my own experience, my friends and peers
that do have those perfectionistic.
Tendencies are the ones that have voiced feeling burnout and
being more prone to that towards the end of the semester, the end
of the year during a stressful period.
What are what's your advice? They're like, is the the goal to
become on the other end of the spectrum?
Like a Buddha, not be a perfectionist.
Stories it just like coping through that emotion, giving
yourself more grace. What's your advice?
Yes, I think it's really important for us to clarify that
a lot of people who are perfectionist, don't identify as
perfectionist because they think they're so far from perfect.
That there's no way that this could describe them and
perfectionism. Sometimes people have a hard
time distinguishing between perfectionism and being a
healthy striver. So healthy striving is like I
want to get 100% on this final. All I got a 96 percent, I feel
really good about that perfectionism is I got a 96
percent and I'm going to beat myself up for that one question,
I got wrong and I'm going to, like, just obsessed over it and
feel terrible about myself. So, perfectionism is really
about a fear of failure. It's not, it's actually not
moving towards quote-unquote Perfection.
Because that's like, if I asked you what your perfect day is, it
would probably be different than what my perfect day is.
So it's very subjective. So I think I think the first
thing is really to understand that perfectionism is not
helping you move towards your goals.
It's actually holding you back because it makes you so anxious
and Afraid. And it's this like scarcity
mindset. Where you think this is the only
opportunity I'll ever have. I need to do this, I need to
keep pushing myself and that's just not the way life works.
So if you could, as you said, give yourself more grace, give
yourself the brakes that you need.
You'll actually be more successful.
Awful in the long run and it is some of it takes this belief
that there will be cool opportunities for you beyond the
one that's currently in front of you.
And then a very specific thing that I found really helpful is
starting to identify when you find yourself using the words
always and never. So I like so often will find
myself thinking, you know, a good manager.
Good employee is never late to a meeting or Always has the
answers and the world is just not.
That's those extremes are not helpful, like a good student
doesn't always get 100% adjust, you know?
Like sometimes I have a bad day, sometimes they just don't do
well on the exam. So moving away from seeing the
world and these like black-and-white extremes and
instead saying, I'm going to give myself Grace.
I did the best I can, there's still opportunities for me to
improve but this one moment doesn't Define my holes.
Self worth it doesn't Define who I am forever.
Yeah, comparison. I feel like that's one of the
biggest Buzz words right now. The number of times I've seen
comparison is the thief of Joy on my Instagram feed this week.
I couldn't even tell you, but it's me that so many of us
struggle with and I think that is partially our society.
It's partially like that perfectionist mindset that we
do. Many of us hold ourselves to and
it is so difficult to work through because it does bring
out all these other emotions whether it's like jealousy or
anger sadness, A skilled. All of these things can come
from jealousy. And we we did touch help touch
on how it brings up and me as well.
But why is comparison something that is so difficult to work
through and to move away from comparison is a little bit hard
wired into us. So I think we can start there.
It's we think that oh you know we'll get off social media and
we'll be free of comparison. But unless you're living, you
know, Off the Grid you will always be able to be in contact
with someone whether you're getting a text message.
Message from someone or running it into them at the store or
seeing them online and your class.
And so we we can't say to ourselves.
The goal is to just stop comparison and actually
comparison helps us figure out who we are so it can be helpful
to us. We're not the only species who
are Guided by comparison. There's really interesting
research with monkeys where if the monkeys are together and
they're getting fed and one monkey gets a better piece of
food than the other, the others are really unhappy.
So this is this is really hard hardwired, so a couple things
There is this idea that we should compare ourselves less to
other people and we want to challenge that and say actually
you should compare yourself more but thinking, but think more
broadly about who that group is, who you are comparing yourself
to. So a lot of times we were only
engaging in upwards comparison, which is comparing ourselves to
people who we believe are better or have something better than us
in some way and we're not comparing ourselves to people
who don't have what we have. There's also something about,
you know, Listening to what those those triggers are.
So if we say I'm, you know, I shouldn't be feeling jealous.
I shouldn't be feeling envious of this person.
When we shut that down. We're actually not learning from
whatever that is, which can help us.
Make decisions. So we have the example in the
book, Gretchen Rubin who is the author of a book called The
Happiness Project. She was a lawyer.
She went to law school. And then after she went to law
school, she had a really prestigious career she clerked
for the Supreme Court, and then she was looking through her law
schools. No magazine one day and she
realized that the people who she was most envious of were not
lawyers, they were writers. They were lawyers who became
writers. And so, she said that's really
interesting. I think I should become a writer
and if she had to shut that down and said, I shouldn't be
thinking that, you know, I need to move on to wouldn't have
gotten that. So, asking yourself, what do
they have? That makes me feel less than is
there a way that I can get that? And maybe it's not that exact
thing. Maybe it's telling yourself.
Oh, there's a piece of that, that I that I want and Liz Liz
has a great story up at this from her own career that I'll
let her share. Yeah, I had a friend who are
like, a friend of a friend who got a promotion and she start.
I think she started managing, like, 200 people this enormous
department, and I Molly, and I are both proud introverts, but I
just like hate being in back-to-back meetings.
It's very stressful to me. It's just not my ideal day.
The idea. Having 200 people and their
families depend on me is incredibly anxiety-inducing and
so it's just like I've never aspired to like lead 200 people
and yet, when I heard about this promotion, I was I was just so
jealous and I didn't understand where that was coming from
because I was like, this is I know this is not who I want to
be like, do I know myself at all?
Like should I change my whole career?
It's good. It's like my knot on each other,
right? And I went to bed that night,
this is my advice to everyone is like just sleep on it, just go
to bed, see how you feel in the morning?
And when I woke up the next morning, I realized that.
No, I didn't want that job. But I did feel kind of stagnant
in my own career and I just, I kind of wanted to have something
exciting to tell the world that was happening to me.
And so what that allowed me to do was figure out okay, like
what in my life, could I have a conversation with my manager
about a new exciting? Should I try to push myself to
learn something new? Just how can I put some more
excitement into my own life and feel like I'm making progress?
But I don't like my personality has not changed and I certainly
don't need to frantically start applying to these like jobs that
I will passionately hate if I actually got them.
Yeah. No I think that's interesting.
And I think I'm so I'm very indecisive but once I also like
to make decisions so I'm like I want to be in control but I
don't really always know what I want and so it makes me Gov like
the age-old question of like, okay, what are we doing for
dinner, like which restaurant you want to go to?
And one of my friends and I were talking about this like a week
ago and she was like, okay we're going to make the decision and
then if you have an emotion about it you know what you want.
And it's the best trick because you immediately Rod like okay
this is fine or you beg. No I actually don't want so like
looping someone and be like okay make this decision for me and
then I'm going to see how I feel about.
It can be really helpful in getting in touch with those
emotions that can come with comparison but they're kind of
hard to like feel out. Exactly what they are.
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So it's very similar to this restaurant on certain, see
unknown. Let's dive into that uncertainty
is a huge thing and I think it's one of what I could identify as
one of the most uncomfortable emotions that I feel and like
internally, like I like being in control being out of control is
something that is very anxiety-provoking.
Why is uncertainty? So difficult for people to deal
with and how have you guys recommended that people navigate
that? Yeah.
So, Humans are hard-wired to hate uncertainty, like there's
research that shows we would rather know that something bad
is going to happen tomorrow at 1 p.m. that have like a maybe that
they may be happen, even though that's sort of a better
scenario. Yeah.
So one of the things that you just touched on is we often in
the face of uncertainty, we feel like we want to control
everything. So we start doing what
psychologists call anxious fixing and this was like my life
for Once before I figured out what was going on and I would
wake up and feel just anxiety about the future and I would
just do stuff. I would vacuum the floor, I
would do the dishwasher I would, whatever like do my email, I
would respond to every message on every social media platform
and just like work myself into this frenzy because I could
control everything. And at the end of the day, what
I found was that I had done all this stuff but I didn't feel
better. I felt worse actually felt burnt
out and part of That was because I had worked myself into
exhaustion without ever addressing the source of my
anxiety. So, I think it's really
important to kind of suffer through the moment of realizing
that you cannot control the future.
And that it's like, okay, I'm going to sit with this anxiety
instead of running myself into the ground and I'm going to
really try to figure out like what am I actually afraid of
happening because often we just push that aside and aside but
when we really could confront our fears, we can start to
figure out a path forward. We can sometimes they don't even
seem like they're that scary but it allows us to at least start
to take actions that help us address those needs as opposed
to like, you know, organizing your bookshelf 15 times which is
not really good to put for you and it feels good in the moment.
And then one last thing that I'll share, I think it's such a
powerful phrase that has been really comforting to me over the
past couple of years is I'm a person learning to so let's say
that you are taking a new class or something.
Instead of saying like I need to know everything, I have to get
an A I have to have a good answer to every question.
Just like I'm a person learning to do well in this class or to
participate in conversations. I'm a person learning to make
new friends because it allows you to give yourself more grace
and see yourself as someone who can improve.
Who should just be open? A feedback as opposed to this
like very perfectionist mindset of I need to have everything
figured out right now which is just a completely unrealistic
expectation to set for yourself. Yeah I think that's so true and
I love what you mentioned about sitting with like the in
certainty because until you accept that the uncertainty is
happening and then kind of unpack like why that's so scary.
You're like, forcing yourself to be uncertain about the
uncertainty. And then you're, yeah, it's so
much Worse. There's this skill in DBT,
dialectical behavioral therapy called Copa had, and it's where
you like, imagine the worst case possible scenario.
And you like fully walkthrough and mentally cope through and
give yourself a plan for how you're going to navigate that.
And it's one of my favorite things to share in the podcast.
Because if you are uncertain about like college admissions,
for example, and you're like, okay worst-case scenario, I
don't get in anywhere. It's like okay, you go to
Community College, you can work really hard.
Transfer to an amazing school and how are you going to deal
with opening? Those rejection, letters?
What emotions are going to come up?
How are you going to cope with it the night of the day after?
What stops you going to take? And you're no longer uncertain
about how things are going to proceed.
And so it's really an amazing skill and it's something that
can be so helpful, navigating that uncertainty, because you
take the power away from the unknown.
And yeah, I'm probably not going to get into no colleges.
You're probably not going to have to go down that route but
Does happen, you know exactly how you're going to deal with
it? Hmm, I love that.
And I think, you know, say to you, you do such a great job,
talking about this and I know you have other episodes on your
podcast for you, you do share your story of, you know, having
anxiety and those tools are so, so helpful, another tool I want
to share is just having an understanding of your own
tolerance for uncertainty. So many people have actually
different tolerances for uncertainty.
And I think sometimes our society Arises people who are
like I can tolerate any amount of uncertainty.
My husband, who I met in college, you know, he loves
variety and he's dying. He's never wants to know what's
happening in the future, and I'm a little bit different on that
Spectrum, but we have an assessment on our website and in
our book and they can help you understand your own uncertainty
tolerance profile. But I think it's okay to say to
yourself. You know, I'm dealing with a lot
of uncertainty. Are there ways that I can add
more Certainty into my life because that is something that I
value. And even you know, if you're
waiting for colleges to get back to your you're applying to jobs,
you know, these moments where you can't add, you know,
necessarily you can't know what's going to happen.
Maybe there are other ways to add more certainty in your life
by saying. Okay, I'm gonna like eat the
same thing for breakfast every morning because that's going to
be a grounding moment in my day when everything else is up in
the air. And also just to know that like
how much uncertainty you want can change over the course of
your life. So so I remember in high school
it was like I just really wanted to know you know what my future
look like and I wanted that certainty.
Where was he going to college? What was I going to do with my
life be like what was I gonna end up with?
You know it's like you want answers to all these questions
and then I feel like in your 20s, there's a period where
you're like, I don't want to know what I'm going to do for
the rest of my life, because I want to do everything and I
don't want to shut down all these possibilities and then,
you know, now, Liz and I are in our 30s and it's like, well, it
is sort of nice to have some some certainty.
Because you're having to set up and pay for your retirement and
all these things. So it will shift and there's
going to be moments when you want more on less certainty.
Yeah. I think that's such a great
reminder and it's something that is really helpful to be mindful
of because again, you can go into these situations and know
like what your point is where you're like.
Okay, I got to cope with this emotion before it gets any
bigger, and that's different for everyone.
I think another emotion that's also very subjective and can be
so all over the place. Depending on who you are and the
situation you're in is anger and it's I a lot of the times.
Do you think that's like the biggest emotion?
Because it's a lot of the times an external motion.
It's one, you see in Conflict. It's when you see in
interactions with other people, where is like comparison.
It's very internal burn out a lot of the times you don't have
like a physical representation of that.
Whereas anger, we see a lot, especially and teens and younger
people and in adults as well, why is that?
Such an like overwhelming Experience.
I know there's so many evolutionary reasons for that.
But what are your guys thoughts there?
Yeah, so I mean, anger is again, this is a hardwired emotion and
it does help us advocate for things that we care about.
So I think we're taught that anger is just like, you know,
oh, I'm frustrated at someone else, but there's a reason that
you're frustrated about someone else in your having a biological
reaction. So where it's like something has
been violated. Either you have been violated or
something that you really care about has been violated and
there are, I believe secondary emotion.
Yes, exactly, exactly. So, there's probably even some
fear there, you know, underneath that anger, there's fear of
something being taken away or something bad happening when
you're in the moment with anger, is really important to give
yourself a little bit of space to identify what those deeper
May emotions are, which usually means not like immediately.
Acting. And so you can say something
like I'm having a strong reaction right now and I need to
take some time before I respond to you, but it is really
important to follow up with the person to come back to the maybe
that's ten minutes later, maybe it's the next day and say, you
know, let me talk to you about what was going on there, why?
I was feeling angry but but talking about it in a way that's
not getting emotional. So we need to learn how to talk
about our emotions without yelling or getting emotional
about them, which is like lengthening that time between
the the Sure. And the response but for for
many women and people identifying as women we have
been socialized to say, okay, I'm just going to suppress that
and I'm not going to come back to that because that's not an
emotion that I'm supposed to feel.
But we look again, we lose we lose out on all that data about
there was something that felt violated and that's something
that we need to pay attention to.
I think there's also, you know, sometimes we feel like we want
to vent about something and that's a good way to deal with
the anger. It's like, oh, I'm so angry At
this person because she did this and you don't tell the person
directly but then you go off to another friend and you like vent
about it and sometimes hunting can make us feel better.
But often it just leads to sort of what the chronic rehashing of
the situation without actually changing the situation because
you're not talking to the person directly about it.
And it can be difficult for the the other person to just listen
to you vent. I mean, that's an emotionally,
that's emotional laborers, listening to someone, I'll
spend. And so instead of venting We
like to say, you know, how can you go back to the person of the
situation that caused the anger and try to deal with the root
cause of that? And again, that anger is going
to be fuel for you to go do that.
It's like, it doesn't feel good, but it's telling you something
needs to change. Yeah, yeah.
I think it's also, it's, you know, there's I found myself in
situations to wear first. I think it's just to emphasize
Molly's Point. Like, it's so important to
recognize your anger. I think a lot like a lot of
people we I was like, oh, I just don't get angry and then we
would talk them that scenarios and they would be like, oh yeah,
that was a violation or you bring right.
They listen to them this for anchoring.
Yeah. Totally.
This every single day, but they just don't want to self-identify
as an angry person. Because again, it's such a
stigmatized emotion, especially for women or people identify as
women. And so, I think it's just like,
just letting yourself be okay with that feeling and sitting
with it and then also, you know, unfortunately there There are
going to be circumstances where it's actually not the best thing
for you to go talk to that person directly, or you have
talked to them, and they just don't care and that's sort of
like a terrible but realistic part of life.
And so, then the question is, like, what do I need for myself
in this moment? And maybe it's, I just need to
draw a boundary around this person, so I think it's also
important to be out kind of recognized If you try to make
things better and they don't get better and you find yourself,
still angry seeing like ways to indirectly meet the need that
you have. And again, that might be like,
putting yourself in a different situation cutting someone out
for a while. At least I think those are
really important steps to to have to like just set those
boundaries for yourself. Yeah.
The the Common Thread that I think we keep coming back to is
that like these emotions are all trying to tell you something
like with anger. It's that there there is that
Primary Emotion that is secondarily making you angry
like there's that need to change something whether there is fear
underneath whether it's insecurity or sadness.
Anger is trying to get you to change the situation comparison.
You feel again that you wish something was different
uncertainty. There's a fear that you're
really worried about potentially happening.
It's we I feel like we forget that that emotions are trying to
tell us things like we just It's part of Being Human, but they
really do serve a purpose and if we listen to them, it can be
really effective. And it can also be a lot less
uncomfortable to experience them.
Yeah under prison yeah the second-to-last emotion
experience that you guys. Outline is Regret.
I feel like it's one of those that really goes hand in hand
with rumination a lot of the times.
And I is that one of the reasons why it's such an uncomfortable
motion to experience. Or are there other things that
came into play? When you guys were researching
and exploring regret? Yeah, regret is extremely
painful especially in the scenarios where you can't change
the situation, right? So there's like I regret kind of
being rude to my husband or whatever, but then you know,
there's like a 99.9% chance. I can just apologize and make it
better but there's like I regret not telling my loved one that I
lost something and I'd there just no way to fix that.
And so I think it can be this like, extremely painful.
Ocean, which is also why we often try to run from it.
And it's interesting to watch those, you know, I think we were
all familiar with the like hashtag.
No. Regrets live a life of No
Regrets. And it's important to say you
will have regrets because you can only live one life.
So if you let's say you're choosing between two amazing
colleges, it's totally normal. You have to pick one and then
you might think from time to time.
Like, what if I gone to the other one, especially like on
days, when You're struggling or when things aren't so great.
So just the fact that we have to pick a path for ourselves means,
you're going to have regret, they're not inherently bad and
so even though they're painful they also really helped us make
meeting in the future. So for example, I share a story
in the book where my grandma died when I was in my 20s and my
parents are immigrants. And so I just went to my
grandma's house, a lot growing up and it was kind of this
connection to the Extended family that I didn't know that.
Well, I'm the only one in the US and when she died, my mom asked
me if I would go with her to clean out my grandma's house and
kind of like help sell it. And I don't know, I just like
didn't go. I was like I can't get on an
international flight right now. I have so much going on at work
and that is like thinking about my mom alone and that house is
like horrendous for me. Like I just feel so much shame
for having made that decision. Yeah, but sitting with that and
realizing how much I regretted it a year ago.
My dad was having heart problems.
I just dropped everything and immediately went home because I
was like, I never, ever want to regret putting work over family
again. And so, I wish that I had made a
different decision, right? Like I wish that I hadn't
learned this painful lesson and yet it really does.
There's also anger in there at myself, like it does give me the
strength. Now, when the people I love need
me, I'm just This is the priority.
This is what I will always pick because I don't want to
experience that regret again. One, one thing I want to share
about regret is that I think sometimes we blame ourselves
because we think why didn't I make a different decision than?
And for the most part we made the best decision that we could
there are times when we talk in the book about different types
of regret and sometimes we do something called self-sabotage
regret which is where we know in the moment that we shouldn't be
making this decision, but we do anyways.
But for the most part, it's sort of a like you didn't know in
some way. And now you do, you know, I
Think about this, we've talked about choosing colleges a couple
times on this and I think, you know, I am very happy with the
decision that I made. I met my husband in college.
I've met many wonderful friends. I think in many ways though,
choosing to go to college on a on the different coasts from
where I grew up, made my life, more complicated, it meant that
I was further away from my family.
I stayed further away from my family and I, you know, my life
is more complicated than it would be.
If I had just never left my home City and I was talking to my
sister about that. One day and she said but you
like you know you wouldn't be you if you hadn't made that
decision and like you know, you made that decision because you
wanted adventure and you wanted something different and so like,
you know, that was a decision that you made it 17, that was
the best decision for you, then and of course, you could have a
different life. But it's like reminding yourself
that, you know, you weren't trying to, to cause yourself
pain, or make things more complicated, you are.
Weighing the costs and the benefits and you are making the
best decision in the moment. And No, 10 years later you're
going to see things that you didn't see then that can be
helpful to to then decide. You know what do you want to do
about it now? So you know tool is this point I
can see I can look at that regret and say well maybe I want
to live closer to my family now and I did two years ago.
I moved to be closer to my family.
Maybe I want to simplify my life in ways that I can now rather
than saying you know, I never should have gone to school and
on the opposite Coast for my family because there's no way
that I can change that. Yeah, it's interesting.
Resting and I really like that. You highlighted how you can get
a motion. Allows you to understand really
where your values and priorities lie and make decisions going
forward. But it's also I think a really
painful emotion because while anger is urging you to make a
decision to decrease the emotional intensity that you're
currently feeling with regret, you're having an emotion that
something about something that's already happened.
Like you can't change that experience.
You can't change the decision that you've made and with that
comes a lot of helplessness and That's something that's really
difficult and I think that makes regret and guilt.
So, so painful and really overwhelming because you do have
that helplessness that uncertainty which I think a lot
of the times going right into the next emotion, you guys
outlined can lead to despair because you're like, what do I
do? How can I move forward?
I just you you again are really in that like helpless victim had
space with a lot of the times, is kind of where you you need to
sit for a bit before moving forward to Molly, I know you.
Mentioned in the book and also when we were talking before this
recording about your experiences with Despair and I think a lot
of the times it goes hand-in-hand with experiencing
depression and so I'd love to hear your experience there and
the Insight that you gained from.
Navigating that yes, I'm happy to share and I will give a
little warning. I'm going to talk about Suicidal
Thoughts. So despair is actually the most
recently defined emotion that we talk about in the book.
It was not clinically defined until 2020 out.
Really and the there seven indicators, it's feeling
hopeless, having low self-esteem feeling, unloved, whirring
frequently, loneliness helplessness, and feeling sorry
for oneself. And some of those indicators do
overlap with the diagnostic criteria for major depression or
generalized, anxiety disorder. But the last three so
loneliness, helplessness feeling, sorry for oneself.
Those are not symptoms of any other specific psychiatric
Disorder. So in other words just bear it.
Volvo's feeling depressed and anxious but piling on feeling
hopeless and unloved and helpless, and sorry for yourself
and that really pushes it over into the intensity of Despair
and fall of 2019. If I had looked at that list, if
that list had existed, which it didn't, I would have checked off
all seven of those indicators and you know what got me there.
I had, you know, I had no history of depression.
I was 32 at the time and I was a pretty upbeat person and I lot
of things happen. I had been dealing.
With chronic pain for months, I had an experimental procedure
done that made the pain worse. Doctors didn't believe that I
was in pain. I just moved from New York to
LA. I was feeling really lonely and
no friends, my husband and I were ready to start trying to
have a kid but my period of gone away because of stress.
So it was possible to get pregnant and I wasn't sleeping
at all. And I just I said I can't go on
my life is too painful. I don't want to keep living.
I didn't particularly want to kill myself but I just really
didn't want to be alive anymore. And those thoughts were
extremely scary because I had no idea what to do with them.
I knew that sharing them with other people.
I thought would be really dangerous because I, you know, I
never discuss these things with other people.
And and what I what I wanted was more stories of people who had
had suicidal thoughts and had worked through them because I
think there's a lot of stories that we hear about in the media
of people having suicidal thoughts and acting on them and
I'm glad that those stories exist.
Because it's really important to share those as well as painful
as they are. But I think, you know, there's
there needs to be more stories of people having these thoughts
and being able eventually to go through periods where they don't
have those thoughts anymore or they don't have those thoughts
as frequently. So they're not disrupting their
lives as much as they were. And it's difficult for me to
share this, you know, especially thinking about, you know, like
my cousins hearing, you know this story but for me working
through It was really about finding, the right medication,
which was helpful meeting with a therapist I've met with a
therapist, like twice a week. I mean, I really needed to talk
to someone that that much and then slowly opening up to my
husband and my friends about what I was feeling and having
them be able to say like, okay, you know, we hear that, those
are scary emotions but we're here for you and, you know,
that's okay. It's okay.
That you're having those thoughts, it's not okay that you
act on those thoughts, but it's okay.
They were having those thoughts and it was a very slow.
Process. And I talked about this in the
book it started with with really like chunking time and this is
true for a lot of the emotions in the book like all you have to
do is get through the now so it wasn't even about getting
through the day. It was like okay it's 4 p.m.
I can go to bed at eight pm. Can I get through the next four
hours? Yes, I can be awake for another
four hours and then slowly starting to do things again.
So there were days and weeks where I like you know I couldn't
do anything. I just didn't want to get out of
bed and then it was like, Okay. You know, I went to the
drugstore and previous version of Molly, would be like, okay,
that's all you did today. You went to the drugstore like
compared to what you used to be able to do.
It was like no. Like that's a very small thing
that I did and I did go to the drugstore and collecting those
things over time and it's falling into despair.
Feels like falling into a bottomless pit.
And it's like, well, how deep am I going to go?
I have no idea how deep I'm going to go and that's really
scary coming out of it is like throwing.
It's a climbing a wall and it's like throwing a pick against the
All and it's like, maybe not that pot high above you, but
it's one pic and then, like, slowly and slowly working your
way up. And for me, the thoughts, then,
you know, went from being like, multiple times a day to, you
know, once a day then to, once a week and, you know, they just,
it's very, very slowly got better over time.
Yeah. This week's episode is sponsored
by teen counseling. Counseling is an online Therapy
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therapist from Teen counseling please.
Learn more here, give consent. None of your information in the
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You are able to again text talk and video all from your home.
It's a great solution. If you're looking to try therapy
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overwhelmingness and waiting list that happen when you try to
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a huge proponent of therapy was what changed my life.
So highly recommend trying, Therapy out if you haven't
before. So, to check out teen
counseling, you can go to teen counseling.com.
You persist it. Again, that is teen
counseling.com. She persisted to find a
therapist today. I remember a lot of the same
experiences and in the same process of working out of, or
working to get out of that pit of despair and suicidality.
And it's something that's very difficult to do because you've
almost labeled that as your go-to kill or alternative.
Like I remember being in the headspace where it was like,
everything sucks. But there's always this option.
This is always either Behavior. I could engage in, or a mental
spot that I can sit in and get some kind of relief emotionally.
And so, it was my go-to way to relieve the distress that I was
experiencing. Whether that was depression
anxiety, these other large emotions, and I had to get to a
point after slowly starting to like decrease the Intensity and
frequency of those Suicidal Thoughts of being like, okay.
But this is no longer an option like yes for a while I survived
by having this as the plan B. This was on the black back
burner. This is the only way I was
making it through these intense feelings.
But now I'm at a point where that can't be an option because
I have to get to the point where I my life worth living was not
having suicide be on the back burner that's not wasn't the end
goal, that's not where I wanted to be and so at some point I
just had to kind of make that decision.
And allow myself to explore other routes of coping, whether
it was a distraction or asking for help or venting or talking
through things and taking away that safety blanket that for so
long had allowed me to to work through the distress that had
Arisen. Mmm Sadie.
That's such a good way of describing it that that so true
that safety blanket. Because it's like, yeah, it's
like, it's a learned habit. And it's like a safe space, not
a safe space but it's a comforting space for your mind
to go to When things are going bad and you're just like, well,
you know, I could always not be here and it does it takes a
while and it, you know, the interesting thing is like
there's not a clear Line in the Sand where it's like suddenly
you don't feel like that anymore and I think when you're in that
you want that because you're just like these thoughts are so
bad. I either don't want to you know,
I just don't want to be here anymore.
So I'm not thinking them or just want to be out of this
completely because this is just so hard.
It's those hats are so distracting.
Because you have them, you're like, okay.
Well, you know, at least I could do this and then you're like,
but then I'm having these thoughts again and what is that
telling me about it? And it really is, it's a slow
process and it it doesn't happen overnight, but you are right
that eventually, you realize, oh, I haven't had those thoughts
in a while and then sometimes they do come back.
I think, once you my therapist, put it as, like, looking over
the edge and deciding that actually, you don't want to go
there, but it's okay. Like sometimes we do have to
look over the edge and even today, you know, it's not that I
never have. Thoughts?
But I have those thoughts and I say, huh?
Like that's interesting because that no longer feels as
appealing. I know that that's there because
I've gone there and, you know, I've made my made myself think
about that as an option, which I hadn't done for the first 32
years of my life. But you're slowly slowly slowly,
you do make your life better to the point where that doesn't
feel like the automatic comforting.
Place your dough and you're like no I do want to be here.
It's like your life. If is no longer a place that you
want to leave, it's at the place where you want to stay.
And so it's like first navigating those thoughts
because the thoughts are making your life worse and then it's
creating a life that discourages the thoughts because you really
do enjoy it. And it allows you to feel better
and creating that life may not be going back to the life that
you have previously. Yeah, so I think that's another
thing. We were sort of like, well I
just want to get back to like before I had these thoughts will
most likely your life is going to Look pretty different than it
was before for a good reason because whatever was happening
there wasn't working and it just led to the despair.
Yeah, so it does require re-crafting your life and for
some of that it's acceptance. So I had to go through a journey
of just accepting some of the pain or how long it was going to
take in physical therapy to work through the pain even though
that. But but I did get there and so
rebuilding an acceptance means that that that life after that
is is going to look different. So when someone comes to you,
with these really big overwhelming things, whether
it's struggling with suicidality, whether it's
struggling with despair burnout comparison.
How do you guys recommend that people respond?
Is it validating? Is it just creating space?
I think a lot of us just want to problem solve and throw advice
at it. What is your guys's advice
there? How through the research that
you did for your book? How would you recommend that
people support others who are navigating these really tough
emotions? Yeah, I think I want to call out
something when it comes to despair.
That I actually learned from Molly of all we were writing
this book together which was she shared a story where someone
said their therapist and Molly correct me.
If I'm getting this wrong just said to them.
Like if you were gone I would miss you and I think that's just
like such a knife to your point. I think we often try to jump to
problem solving or there's often this tendency to be like I'm
going to fix this, you know, like your life, isn't that bad?
Like look at this. Like look at the bright side.
Your you have all. These Privileges and what we
don't realize that that does is like really just minimizes
someone's emotions. And so I think the biggest thing
is just like creating space for them and saying like I hear you
I acknowledge you like I love you, I'm here for you.
If you did something really drastic I would miss you.
I think just like that has stuck with me for a long time and then
this. So when I was, when my
father-in-law was dying, I also found that a lot of people that
I knew loved me and cared about me, didn't know how to show up
for me and I just didn't have, like, I had no energy to help
them show up for me, and so they would kind of like, send me a
text and be like, let me know if you need anything and I just
like I do I do not have the time to figure out like what I need
from you right now and then one of my friends who had gone
through something really similar sent me this text, it was like,
Hey I'm thinking of you here are Oh three things.
You just text me 1 2 or 3 and I will do them for you one.
I will get you food at your apartment too.
You can call me and I'll pick up the phone right away and I will
just listen and three. I will like send you something
to distract you like a funny joke and like whenever you need
me to, as soon as I can, I will try to respond with these things
and I thought that like she just got it.
Like she just totally understood that.
I didn't have the capacity to come up with those things, but
it was just like I don't even think I ended up texting her
that much, but it just like knowing sometimes at night, when
I couldn't sleep that like I had someone to text 22 that she
would like immediately respond made me feel so much better and
I think it was just the, like, really trying to see it from my
perspective and not, it wasn't the fixing.
It was just like, I'm just going to be here for you.
Here are three ways for me to do that.
That you don't have to call, you don't have to like creatively
come up with a full way for me to show up for you.
I found was like, so, so helpful.
And then, yeah, I'll hand it to Molly because I think she also
has great advice here. I think checking in constantly.
So I had a friend who, when I opened up to her, you know, I
said, I'm feeling like, I don't want to live anymore and she
then, you know, she was still on the phone with me, but then she
texted me every day should just end.
It wasn't didn't require response, but it's just like,
you know, checking in, she would tell me something about what was
going on with her. Or, you know, it was really
thoughtful and its people who don't always expect who call and
check in, and it doesn't need to be a big thing.
But it really His help in these moments.
Yeah, I really like what both you guys highlighted where it's
like, not necessarily expecting the response or the
reciprocation from the person. I remember my grandmother had
pancreatic cancer and she got into remission and really did.
The did the full circle thing recovered?
But when she was initially going through chemo and have the
Whipple all of her neighbors and friends, and family members were
like dropping off meals and writing letters and texting and
calling. And I remember her saying years
after the fact that that was so exhausting and almost the
opposite of what was helpful because they would drop off a
meal and the person was like, oh this will be so helpful.
I am giving her one last thing to do, but the way she saw that
was like, no, but I have to clean the Tupperware and return
it to this person and say, thank you, or they would call and she
big. Now, I have 45 people to call
back or they would write a letter and she's like, now, I
have to go to the Post Office and add a stamp and mail this to
the person and it's like Maybe going into it you're like no, I
don't expect a response but when you don't say that and make it
very clear like especially when that person is so prone to
feeling overwhelmed. And again in despair it can seem
really overwhelming to them. Same thing with like when people
a drop by and she'd be like I have to get off of the couch, I
have to go and offer them a Pepperidge and make them feel at
home. And all I want to do is just sit
here and recover and relax. And so I think making it
abundantly clear that you're just There and that they don't
need to do anything in return or as a response.
And I really do love what you said.
Elizabeth that Molly said when she was struggling which is to
say I would miss you that was all I wanted to hear from
everyone. It was like I remember wishing
someone would say that when I was going through that low point
in having those thoughts and so I think any of those things that
you guys mentioned would be hugely appreciated and just very
beneficial to the relationship. If someone does come to you with
one of these big overwhelming things A point.
Well, I know this conversation is going to help so many people
and I these are things that all of us.
I feel like navigate at some point.
We all experienced these spectrum of emotions and I feel
like this gives a lot of ways to cope through these things.
And your book just has so many helpful resources to continue
this conversation and it breaks it down so well.
Like even the charts and the graphs in the picture is just
amazingly verbalized and just explain these Motions and an
amazing way. So I highly recommend everyone
check that out to wrap things up, once again, working people
get the book and follow along with you too.
Well, again, thank you for having us and people can find
the book. It's called Big feelings, how to
be okay, when things are not okay.
And you can find it on Amazon book, shop out org, your local
bookstore. We are Liz and Molly with
mmol/l. Ie with me, if you find us on
Instagram and our website is Liz and Molly.com.
And again, we really love your podcast.
We really like what you're doing is but especially for this
audience and thank you for sharing your story with world.
Yeah. Thank you both and everything
will be LinkedIn Today, Show notes.
So you guys can get their new book and their first book and
continue to follow along and Clem.
Lot, of course, thank you guys. This week's DVT scale is the
Copa head scale. The Copa had scale is part of
the emotion regulation module and the goal of this scale is to
reduce stress by preparing, in advance, for a emotionally
overwhelming stressful, new situation.
So there are five steps to this. The first is that you described
the situation that is likely to prompt uncomfortable emotions.
So maybe it is the first day of school.
So, you are anxious about meeting new people or making new
friends or introducing yourself. You are going to check the facts
about what is accurate, what is likely to happen?
And be very specific and describing the situation.
Make sure you know the who, what, when, where why and put
names the emotions and actions that are likely to interfere
with you using skills. Are you anxious?
Are you overwhelmed? Are you feeling alone?
Own and isolated. What is going to get in the way
of you being effective? Second, you are going to decide
what coping or problem-solving skills.
You were going to use if those emotions arise.
So be specific and write down in detail.
How you're going to cope with the situation, your emotions and
then your action urges. So if you feel anxious or you're
going to do deep breathing, are you going to go to the bathroom
and drink some water? You can use an affirmation.
Are you going to count things around the room?
What skills you going to use to Target each emotion?
Third. You are going to imagine the
situation that you've outlined in your mind is vividly as
possible. Imagine yourself in the
situation, imagine watching the situation and then the fourth
step is to in that imagined situation, rehearse coping
effectively. So imagine exactly what you
would do actions thoughts what you would say, how you would say
it how you would cope with a new problem if that comes up and
really make sure to use these coping skills and your imagined
worst case scenario. So First day of school.
And you're like, I'm worried, I'm gonna fall down the stairs
in front of everyone. Okay.
What would you do? You would get up.
Would you leave the situation? Would you laugh it off?
Exactly what you would do to handle that?
And the last thing is to do a little bit of relaxation and
calm down after going through the anxiety of rehearsing the
situation to get back to your Baseline.
So self-care distraction accumulating positives.
Just bring yourself back to a good headspace.
So that is the Copa had scale as mentioned in this week's episode
and then a little bit more in-depth here at the end.
If you use the code but head to go out, make sure to send me a
DM telling me how you used it. I'd love to hear about you guys
using your DBT scales. So with that.
Thank you for listening. Thank you so much for listening
to this week's episode of she persisted.
If you enjoyed make sure to share with a friend or family
member. It really helps out the podcast
and if you haven't already leave a review on Apple podcasts or
Spotify, you can also make sure to follow along at at she
persisted podcast on both Instagram and Tick-Tock and
check out all the bonus. His content and information on
my website, she persisted podcast.com, thanks for
supporting, keep persisting and I'll see you next week.
His content and information on my website, she persisted
podcast.com, thanks for supporting, keep persisting and
I'll see you next week.