Psychology Series 12: Dr Kelly Flanagan / Making Maintaining Friendships & Relationships

0:01 Welcome to another episode of Come Together. OK, Doctor Kelly, we're live. How are you doing? Good. Ephraim, thank you for having me, man. It's great to be here. Good, good. I am so excited. I'm so happy to talk to you. I I saw something funny I think was in your website while I was doing some homework for this and that your your wife is also Doctor Kelly. My wife is also doctor Kelly. Yes, my dad, my dad is Ashley. My dad's name is Ashley. So we get mail all the time to misses and misses Ashley and Leora Hirschman, and they're like, well, let's you know that they're they're spammers or bots. You know, pre that well, here's some here's some here's a deep cut from my life as a male named Kelly. I will never forget getting home from it's either middle school or high school one day.

0:59 And there's a big like welcome package sort of box in the mail for me at home, and it's from Teen magazine. And it says, Kelly, we know you, so we know it's time for you to. And it had basically female sanitary products for me. And I was like, I don't think you know me. As far as you think, you. Do so. Yeah. But I met a woman named Kelly in Graduate School. She wrote home to her mom, and she's like, I met this great guy, but his name's Kelly. So of course it could never work, but we've made it work now for almost 25 years. That's beautiful. That's, that's, that's inspirational. You know, if you could make that work, then you could go make your way through anything, I'm sure.

1:44 So, so tell me a little bit about so, so tell me about yourself, because obviously on one hand you've got the psychology hat on, but you're obviously doing a lot of writing, a lot of travelling and a lot of education I would call it as well. And so and I think that it's a great intersection to be at because on one hand you'll get, you're helping people on the on the individual level. And then on the other hand, you kind of spread out these ideas onto a mass audience hopefully and have that same kind of impact, but on a little bit more of a broader generalized level. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So in 2011, I had been an outpatient mental outpatient mental health therapist for probably at that point, about six years, you know, I was seeing about 30 clients a week.

2:39 And a couple of things converged like right at the same time I had this, I had this one client who was really making incredible strides in his own personal growth and how he was showing up to his life and relationships. And he was an entrepreneur, so pretty ambitious. And one day he's like, it is a shame that you only get to help 30 people every week, you know? And it sort of hit me and I thought, yeah, huh, I wonder how I could help more people. And right around the same time, Blue Cross Blue Shield in Illinois with about 90 days notice, cut reimbursement rates to their providers by some like 15 to 30%. And we're a young family barely making it. And I didn't have, our family didn't have the margin in our budget for that kind of hit.

3:20 And it just sort of hit me like, oh man, this insurance company who I depend upon completely from my family's well-being doesn't really care about me. And so how could I start to generate more demand for my services so I could rely less on Blue Cross? And at the time, blogging was big. And I'd always had an interest in writing, but never really tapped into it. So I thought, you know what, I'm going to start blogging. I'll reach more people that way. Increased demand for my services. My 9th blog post went viral. It was called Marriages for Losers. Nice. Yeah. And we were sort of off to the races from there. And can I ask real quick? I'm sorry, just because I want to just elaborate. If anybody doesn't understand, there are therapists that take and don't take insurance.

4:05 Can you explain what the rationale is typically from the from the therapist perspective? And I know because I know from the patient's perspective that everyone complaints that every good therapist either doesn't take insurance or is a fortune and like, and you know what to do. And so maybe that's something that you could, you know, describe or from your end at least, or from the other side. That's a great question. Was someone that no one's ever asked me. Yeah. So they're essentially, I mean, gosh, this is really pulling back the curtains. Let's just pull it back. When therapists start out, they, they start out with no clients, right? They have to build the clientele. Sure.

4:50 And so most therapists right out of Graduate School will immediately enroll in these, in these insurance networks because those insurance networks bring referrals. I'm, I'm in an insurance network. When I went to my own therapy, right, I used my insurance. So I found someone in my network and kept the cost affordable for me because just like any medical care, usually paying like a deductible and and then some sort of copay. So keeps it affordable for the clients. And it is a natural referral source for for therapists. Yeah, exactly. Everyone, everyone wins at some point that if a therapist is good at what they do, their caseload gets full. And, and, and this is like, this is one of the, like the, the little secrets behind the scenes of the mental health industry is I tell, I tell people, if you're looking for a therapist, ask for one who's got like a three to six month wait list, right? It means they're good.

5:49 And, and if they're, if they don't, it doesn't mean they're good. It probably means they're young. They're still filling a caseload and building a caseload. I was that guy once, right? And, and so, but at some point many therapists, they can't take on any more clients, right? And this is, this is one of the really like unfortunate things about the system is that reimbursement rates from third party payers to therapists haven't increased in the last 20 years since I started doing it, right. So our cost of living increases 3% and most therapists, believe it or not, most therapists are making way less than your local plumber makes per hour. I believe that.

6:30 And their rates aren't going up. And, and so a therapist gets full and then they have to ask the question like as the cost of living goes up, how am I going to scale my revenue a little bit if the insurance company has capped me? So they will gradually as demand for their services increases, they will start to meet with clients and they do, you know, sort of fee for service. It's called basically you pay me cash and I, I work with you. So that's, that's what you see as a, as a clinician progresses through their career, they'll start to transition to fewer insurance clients in order to keep up with the cost of living. The next step, which I took in 2015 is to open up your own practice and start to employ your own therapist and to, to obviously increase your capacity to provide for your family in that way.

7:22 And then what I did, I did that from 20/15/2022 and then ultimately accepted that managing a therapy practice is not my strong suit nor my passion. And, and I closed that down and I shifted into doing more writing, speaking online community online coaching, those sorts of things. So that's where I'm at today. Awesome, love it. OK, so that's a really, I think that's a really important description and just just a quick walkthrough because I think that again, people and I'm like this too, when we could talk about this for sure. There's they call this the what I call it when you when you have someone walking in the street, I'm sorry.

8:06 And the, the pedestrian, the pedestrian, you know, where every time that I'm in the car and I'm crossing and someone's trying to cross the street, I forget what it's like to be the pedestrian. I'm always yelling at them. And then, and then like 5 minutes later, I'll be the pedestrian crossing the street And there's a guy that's, you know, trying to get through and I'm yelling at him, hey, I'm trying to walk over here. And, and I forget completely what it's like to be in the other person's shoes, even though I was in that situation just a couple of minutes ago. And I think a lot of people don't think about the fact that that, you know, therapists and, and psychologists have to make a living too. And that, you know, that a certain point, like you said, especially if the insurance reimbursements are going to be cut or not be raised at any point, there's going to be someone's going to have to someone's going to have to pay more somewhere.

8:53 And everyone's got to live and everyone's got to eat. And so I think it's a good understanding and it's interesting. Like, I think, you know, PhD level clinical psychologist might like myself, Doctor Kelly, we, we sort of get lumped in with medical doctors and, and the assumption is that perhaps that we kind of sort of received the same reimbursement as medical doctors, but there's never really been medical and mental health parity anywhere in the world, let alone in the United States. And so, you know, I, I guess I always joke. I went to school for 20, two years to get my doctorate. That's, that's a lot of loans. I'm still paying them back or not. And and so you accrue all this debt, but you, you don't receive the reimbursement rate of a surgeon who's now doing surgery right out of medical school, right? You, you receive the reimbursement rate that is sort of set by the insurance company and far lower for mental health. So yeah, therapists and and psychologists are in a tricky sort of no man's land really when it comes to debt and and revenue.

10:03 So, So yeah, a long way to say by by 2011, I was looking for ways to provide for my family differently. And I stumbled upon writing and blogging and then my daughter and I wound up on the Today show as a result of one of the no way. Yeah. Yeah. It was wild. I'm I'm you walk. You walk me through that, that sequence of what happened? Sure, sure. Yeah. So I published Marriages for Losers. And what did what what was that about? Other than it probably wasn't for losers, right? No. It, it was, it was I, I often say it went viral by the because of the title alone. But the idea was that, like, you know, when you're in a relationship and you hit that moment right, that triggering moment and your, your protective defenses kick in, you're now both competing to win basically.

10:54 And, and that you, what we need to aspire to in marriage is 2 people who are mutually, actually competing to lose, to serve, to sacrifice, to surrender, to let go of that protection mode and return to connection mode. And and so I, I, yeah. So I that, that, that really got some traction. And then I, I wrote a letter to my daughter and published it on my blog. And my colleagues, by the way, at this point were really starting to wonder if I'd lost my mind because as a therapist, you're not supposed to share private information anywhere, right? Let alone on a blog. Well, I wrote her a letter about how she's inherently worthy of interest. And when she's looking for a partner, her, you know, hopefully her goal is to find someone who knows she's worthy of interest.

11:40 I'm getting a little emotional because just this morning I told my wife, like, I am as fascinated by you today as the day I met you. It's beautiful. I know I get distracted. I know I get busy, but you are enthralling to me. And so that's what I told my daughter. That one went viral. And then I wrote a second letter to her from the makeup aisle of a Target story about how her, her, her true beauty isn't in on the inside. It's inherent, it's enduring, it's eternal. And and to hopefully relieve some of the pressure as she entered, you know, her teen years to make it all about her outer beauty. Well, that one went really, really viral.

12:21 And I was sitting in that metal, that outpatient mental health office. I remember on a Thursday afternoon and my office phone rang and I picked it up and it was the Today show, a producer at the Today show. And they said, hey, we are, we're basically planning a, a, a series on women's body image and we need a male voice. And we just read your letter to your daughter and we love for the two of you to come out to, to 30 Rock and be on the show. And so the whole family went out. This was in February of 2014. It was a really wild, fun, surreal sort of experience. And, and, and so we were on the show. We're actually on the show 2 days in a row and and then as a result of that, so the owner of the mental health practice where I was working happened to be vacationing with a prolific author.

13:15 And that author watched me on the Today show that day and said, you know what, I'm going to connect him to my agent. He's really got some good writing chops. And so I connected with my current agent who I work with to this day. And my first book, Lovable was published in in 2017. Nice. And, and lovable was, as I say, written to my kids to, to, to share with them the message of their inherent worthiness. But as I say in the book, also written to that little boy and me, you know, who needs we all got that little one in US who's still waiting to hear that, that good news. You know that you, you're lovable, you're worthy, you belong, you matter. So, so I think that book really resonated with a lot of people because we've all got a kid in US, you know, waiting on a love letter And and that book has become that love letter to a lot of people.

14:06 Yeah, that's beautiful. That's really, really awesome. Oh, man, there's so many great places to go from here. First of all, thank you for, for really for sharing the, the details of that, because I think that I, I went to a wedding, I went to avoiding a friend of mine and I'm Orthodox Jewish and I had, and he had this rabbi at his wedding. And this rabbi is Yemenite actually. And so there's a whole Middle Eastern culture. It's very, very different. And one of the things that they do, which is really beautiful is they give you a lot of blessings, but like they heap them on. So like, you know, you should be happy and, and you should look at each other in 30 years, like it's the first day of your life.

14:48 And this is the moment that your entire life is going to be building towards and like, and like you and your family and your kids and you guys should have kids. And the whole crowd is like cheering, like the whole time. And, and like, it's funny because a lot of times everyone knows that everyone wishes everyone all these things when they hear happy news like, but but there's something else that there's something else in our nature when we actually say those things out loud that just shakes and resonates and and internalizes itself, even if we know it already. To hear it again is really, really valuable. So, so like when you talk about these emotional experiences and the care that you have for if your wife or your kids or yourself even, you know, I think, I think that, you know, even though it's something that almost like quote UN quote doesn't need to be said, it absolutely needs to be fed because reinforceable, it needs to be reinforced, you know, couldn't agree more. I mean, my, my first, I originally named my blog Untangle and the idea was that just putting the words on yeah, stuff that's going on up here.

15:48 I was putting it on the page helped sort of Untangle what was going on up there. My wife jokes like, man, no wonder you were miserable to be around before you started writing. All that stuff was jumbled up there. I mean, I've been writing daily now for, you know, 14 years. So yes, words have power. They they clarify things that are confusing inside when they're said aloud. They other people, they're a gift that we give to our people. Essentially, they're a gift that we give to our people when we actually say the thing. That's why I said it this morning when we were just, we were just exercising and I had that thought of like, man, I could, I'm just as enthralled by you as the day I met you.

16:30 And I wish, I wish I didn't get so distracted and send you a different message sometimes, you know, but I said it to her and I think that means something to her. Even 2526 years later, after dedicating my whole life to her, it still feels good to hear, right. It's still, it's meaningful. It makes a difference. So I couldn't agree with you more, man. Words said. And and when you talk to people who are at the end of their lives, right, and you ask them what would you have done more of? One of the first things is they would have said all the things. Yeah. Just would have said all the things. So, yeah, it's, it's wonderful that in in some of our spiritual and religious traditions, we have rituals where we say the things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and again, I, I just showed my I, I, I imagine there's a bunch of ready, but I've just showed my high school students Dead Poets Society for the first time and so good. And what I, and one of the things I had to tell them was that there's such a thing, such a genre called dramas. And there's such a thing where I was like, and there's something I was like, and I want you to, to, to watch this and watch for this.

17:32 I was like, a lot of times actors and actors will say what they have to say without saying anything. And you have to look at their face and read it and you have to be able to see that they want to say something and they're holding themselves back. And I was like, in those moments are moments that like the audience can almost always relate to and connect to because we've all had those times where we wish we'd said, you know, what we needed to say or what we wanted to say so badly. And we all recognize the weight and the inks that, that, that, that, that we carry when we miss those opportunities. And there are times, there are even times where I'll, you know, I'll be going to, we're sleeping. It's like 1:00 in the morning.

18:15 I roll over and my wife says, oh, you're up. And like, and if I think to myself, yeah. And like, I think to myself, like, I should say, I love you. I'm just so tired. I'm like, you know, I just like, like, and like a moment and like, you freeze and it, it just lasts 1/2 a second. But it, you know, and it really, really sits with you. One of the one of the hacks that I recommend to couples is what what they discover when they really start to pay attention to that half of a second is that they have thoughts of gratitude all the time for their people. They have thoughts of affection. They have thoughts of thoughts of appreciation, but it passes in half of a second. And then you're back to, you know, I don't know, whatever your notification on your cell phone, just pay for, right?

18:58 And I say you don't have to come up with more gratitude or appreciation. Just notice it when it shows up and always say it, right? Yeah. Like to to the one of the classic examples for me is I remember one night getting home like, you know, garbage night, right? And it's like I'm exhausted after a long day. I don't want to do the get the garbage out of the curb. And I pull in and my wife's already got the garbage out to the curb. Yeah, chances are like I felt enormous gratitude in that moment. But chances are, by the time I pull in the driveway, parked the car, I'm not gonna remember to say thank you. Greets you as soon as you walk into the house. You know, it's O it's over. So in that moment where you feel the gratitude and the affection and the tenderness, say it. Yeah.

19:39 If you can't bring yourself to say it, pause even longer and ask yourself why. Yeah. Why do you think that would be for some people? Like, what is some common reservations that people have when it comes to? Is it a fear of vulnerability? Is it a fear of rejection a lot or even saying something that you feel you haven't said before? It's almost unfamiliar waters. Yeah, that's a great question. So a little bit of backs. I'm going to answer that question was just a little bit of back story, which is that five years ago, this past New Year's Eve, I was in bad shape.

20:19 I had, you know. About five years previous to that, four years previous to that, I'd published Lovable. It's a book about how embracing our sense of worthiness and belonging. But I was having the trouble living into the truth of that right? Like I would hit these triggering moments in my life with my wife, with my kids and everywhere, and I would not live as if I could trust my worthiness. And 2020 had been a really tough year. I, in the midst of some triggering moments, ended up blowing up my business partnership with my best friend and the best friendship. COVID hit. We were all, you know, schooling from home and kids were becoming, I call them zombies, call them becoming zombies.

21:04 And I was getting triggered left and right. And and there was a day Sunday afternoon in the middle of that where my wife had she'd convinced she'd finally like she'd had the leverage finally to convince me to put in an above ground pool. She's like all the pools are closing for the summer. We need that above ground pool finally. All right, So I get the pool installed and on a Sunday morning she goes out to fill up the pool and she hangs a hose over the side, a garden hose and puts a rock on top of it to anchor it there. But the rock, the rock wasn't heavy enough. And I go out like 4 hours later and the pool is bone dry. But our backyard is a lake, right? And I'm like, I got so triggered and so angry that I'm like, man, I'm going to say and do some things here that I need to not say and do. So what do I do?

21:50 Well, I was like, OK, I'm just going to blow off all this steam on a bike ride. So I hop on my bike, angry, frustrated. I even remember pulling out of our subdivision going, you're not in the right mind to be on a bike. But I just ignored it. Literally about a minute and a half later, not paying attention, I almost hit a car. I pumped my brakes. I go over the handlebars and I break my left collarbone in two places on the right. Well, this thing, it doesn't, it doesn't heal properly. You know, they're called fibrous tissue, non union fractures. 2 breaks in my left collarbone that are basically like hinges now. So it was this really long and painful recovery because it didn't heal very well. So I get to New Year's Eve going into 2021 and I'm out of shape physically and I'm looking for fitness resolutions. And I come across this incredible quote by a guy named Michael Singer.

22:44 And the quote is, don't let anything in life be important enough that you're willing to close your heart over it. And I thought, you know what? Most of the hardship that I've run into this year, most of the suffering isn't because of what's happening around me. It's because of what's happening within me. It's my heart closing to it, my resistance to it, my reaction to it. And I said, I'm going to make a New Year's resolution. And it's not going to be a fitness resolution. It's going to be this moment to moment. I will notice my heart closing and try to open it back up. That was my resolution going into 2021, and I quickly discovered how difficult that was. Now, five years later, I basically have developed a process for helping people to keep their hearts open in any moment, especially the key moments.

23:37 And I've written a book about it. But to answer your specific question, why is it so hard to express that gratitude and that appreciation, you know, in that moment? It's because to do that, you have to open your heart up, right? For for that kind of tenderness to come out, your heart has to be open. But a heart that is open is momentarily unprotected, right? So that's what vulnerability is. Vulnerability is opening my heart to express affection with no guarantee of safety about what comes back in, right. And so, yeah, it's very, very, very vulnerable. I have a spiritual director myself.

24:19 And I was telling him that as I'm, as I, as I progress on this open hearted journey, I'm starting to realize how vulnerable Joy is. And he's like, yeah, he said, yeah, Kelly, most people think anxiety is the most vulnerable emotion. A few people think, you know, realize sadness is more vulnerable than anxiety. Very few people realize joy is the most vulnerable emotion of all because when you are feeling joy, your heart is wide open and anything can come in and devastate you at that point, right. And so, so increasingly my practice of moment to moment, I'm you know, I will, I will try to add most of my heart closing and try to open it back up.

25:00 Is, is the, the capacity, the promise of getting to live life joyfully while learning how to handle the disappointments when they happen and staying open hearted through the disappointments and through the hurtful things. And it's just a really powerful practice and, and so, but all of that to say, yes, it is really hard to say, boy, I'm really thankful you took the the trash cans out because you've opened your heart. And now if she says, well, I wish you would have done me a favor, but, you know, picking, picking up the, the kitchen after you ate this morning, it's like, oh, I, I didn't have my protections up, you know, and now your heart wants to close really hard to keep you safe.

25:43 And now you got to figure out how to stay open to that as well. So it's a it's a vulnerable moment, Right, Right. Yeah. Makes sense. I, I try to teach my students about some of these ideas. And you know, we find literary themes that that that endorse them and kind of back them up. And one thing that I think I want to talk to you about a bunch of things, including your newest book, but there's a couple of things along the way. And I'm sure that you could actually, I'm sure connect them to the book. But number one is, and you and I talked about this on the phone while we were talking, people today are more isolated, I feel, than they've been in a very long time.

26:26 And yeah, you see these videos even for example, on social media of like what a high school gym looked like or high school hallways looked like in the 90s and then what a high school hallway looks like now. And we're isolated. We grew up. We're growing up without a lot of the face to face social interactions that I think are required in order to really learn and to really understand how to navigate the nuances and complexities of relationships. And we learned that starting a young age with, you know, and like I'm dealing with this with my three-year old son now, whom he's just learning how to speak back to me. So I'm like, like, don't hurt mommy.

27:06 And then he looks at me and goes don't hurt. True. Why? I'm like, I'm not going to hurt you, dude. But like, you know, like he like he's learning how to how to how to read, how to read how to, he's learning a whole new library of potential responses. That's really important. And I think that we're losing that. So a lot of times people, aside from learning how to maintain a healthy relationship, people don't even know how to how to begin them, how to start having them and how to how to meet people and stuff like that. So I'm wondering if you can kind of maybe dive in at least based on your experiences into what you know, what advice you kind of give people to get started with friendships, relationships, anything. Yeah, absolutely. A year ago, maybe this week, I was inducted into my high school athletic Hall of Fame for a couple pretty good years on the golf team back in the in the night, back in the 1900s, as my kids like to say.

28:03 And I was asked to to say a few words. And what I found myself saying is like, you know, when when parents send a kid to high school, they're, they're hoping for some basics, you know, get some decent grades, don't drink and drive, don't get pregnant, you know, find some good friends. That kind of the yardstick's pretty low. Yeah, it is. It really is. Like, just don't devastate things here, right? For what I said was, though, for a high schooler entering that first day of high school, there's literally just one thought beating like a drum beat in their head, which is where will I belong? Where will I belong? Where will I belong? Right. And, and, and why the reason I said that is that, you know, athletic teams, for instance, provide this sort of instant sense of belonging.

28:51 Theoretically the, the choir provides a sense of belonging. So those are some shortcuts. But every, every young person who's, you know, in those teenage years and entering high school, that is their core project. They don't care so much about like parents care about grades. I care about finding somebody that I belong to right as a kid. And, and the reality is that I think our capacity to find belonging is directly correlated to our ability to sit in the discomfort between belongings, right? Like that uncertain space where I don't know if I belong.

29:36 Am I willing to endure the fundamental discomfort of being in that space? And if I am, that will allow me to stay out there in a world, in the world in a way and show up to the world in a way that allows me to start to make those connections. And we can all sort of relate you, most of us can have at least one example of that. You know, it's that that first day of kindergarten where somebody comes over, you know, to you on the swing and says, hey, do you want to play catch? You're like, oh, I found just one person, right, to belong to. And, and, and the tricky thing is as a young person, like when we back in the 1900s, right, we knew, I mean, it is a fundamental human imperative baked into our DNA to go find belonging.

30:20 And if we wanted to go find belonging, we were, for the most part, going to have to endure the discomfort. We don't have to show up in the world, right, in the analog world, not in the digital world. And we were going to have to go through that. And in doing that, you develop the capacity to be in the yak so you can get to the good stuff, right? Young people these days have an alternative that feels in many ways a lot easier at first. It is. It's a lot easier at first. The the choices are endless online. The interactions are you can select for interactions that you want to have that make you feel good.

31:04 You don't have to stay in the ones that don't make you feel great right away. And so you don't really cultivate that muscle of, of learning how to stay in the uncertainty of of not belonging yet. The problem is, and there's that we now have now 10 years ago, we didn't have this, but we now have data that shows that none of that online stuff feels like real, real, real belonging, despite what Mark Zuckerberg says, despite, despite what they will try to sell you. And that's why, like, it's it's I have a friend who says you can never get enough of what? Of what? Almost works, Right. Yeah. That is such a great line. Right. Like, yeah. Wow. You think, well, if I get 100 hearts on this Instagram post, then I will feel like I belong.

31:50 And you probably do for about a minute. And then. And then you're wondering, why did Susie die? You know, like, it doesn't. Yeah, It doesn't. Yeah. Never gets there, never get there. I, I, I, I'm sorry, I, I, I grew up. This just resonates so strongly with me because I was, I grew up with one as one of the first generations of. So I was born in 95, right? So I got my, I got my Facebook account when I was going into, I think 10th grade or 11th grade. And I have such visceral memories and such vivid memories of days of emotional roller coasters because of a new profile picture that I posted. And I'm waiting to see the collection of likes and comments and who liked and and who didn't like and going through and checking compulsively, you know, and and and I and there and there were a couple of moments of real breakdowns, even though it's and it's crazy because I did have a very otherwise healthy connected, you know, like really in all, in all other ways in excellent life.

33:03 And it just shows how powerful this this, this experience is. Absolutely. I mean, imagine if you got a new haircut, right? I mean, I can't anymore. It's those days are passing. It actually had a really thick out of hair. Imagine you got a. New haircut and you walked into the high school hallway for the first time. And as you walked down the high the hallway, it was just you're Bing as people looked at you. Yeah, You're like, oh, my gosh, this. Yeah, this is amazing. People really like my haircut. But then you get like Sally, who you really were hoping likes your haircut, she just sort of looks at you and looks away and ignores you completely. You know, you're like, on this emotional roller coaster. And none of it's relational.

33:48 You go back, you go back to the 1900s archaic time and you walk into the hallway with a new haircut and you just have to exist in not really knowing how people are reacting or how they're thinking about it. You have to learn how to go deeper with a few people so you can actually get reactions that you trust rather than sort of instantaneous transient sort of right, right. You know, like impressions, I guess. And and so it's an entirely different emotional and relational skill set that you're learning with your new haircut than with a new profile picture, right? And yeah, we're just not getting many reps at it anymore. So in a practical sense, right, You got an average 2122 year old graduating college and she moves to this girl. This girl moves to a new city, NY, Idaho, Chicago, whatever it is to for for a new job and no idea how to find new people. Now in today's world, especially A, you have the option of potentially working remote and being in your apartment anyway and basically just being isolated unless you want to go for a walk, in which case you're still probably not communicating with people with your headphones and your and your phone. B, you're in a new place, right?

35:09 Presumably. And how you're going to meet people. And, and, and I can't imagine, you know, and one of the things, and I've talked about this before a little bit while, like in the while it was happening, but unfortunately with all, there were a couple of terrible shootings that happened this year, school shootings and mass shootings that were just absolute mental health catastrophes. And you read these letters that the shooters leave behind and you're like, I can't imagine what you must have been living like in that head for how many years until until it culminates in something like this. And you just can't help but wonder, what if these people learned how to sit in a coffee shop and say hello to someone that was sitting next to them and then talk to someone?

35:54 Or how, how to go to a brewery and to grab and like grab a beer, grab a Guinness with someone and just be like, and like you sit at the I've done this so many times where I go by myself to a brewery or a pub or a cigar shop and I'm feeling alone. I feel isolated. I'm feeling by myself and I'm in a new place. I've done this. I've started over in Seattle and college. I've started at different high schools and camps and I moved to Florida without knowing anyone. And I all I do is I pop down and I have a beer and I wait for someone that's sitting that's sit next to me and I just say, what's going on? What are you drinking? You know, how's it going? How are you today? And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But I've made great friends like that throughout the years. I've made awesome communities. And, and then like what you've said, a four to find that confidence in myself that hey, I can go anywhere now. And I could, and I could go to Louisiana and I could go to Mexico and I could go to Texas and I can, I could just pop down and I'll find and, you know, and if, if one spot isn't my crowd, I'll go to another spot until I find my crowd. You know, it's a yeah, you've you've developed the, the trust and the confidence that I can, I can sort of find home wherever I wherever I go.

37:00 Yeah, and, and and it it's so hard to believe that that's true, but it is true. Like there is, there is home waiting for you wherever, wherever you go, if you're willing to fully show up and find it, you know, in lovable in the belonging section. I say we don't build belonging. We find it. We we have the courage to fully show up authentically as who we are. And then we look around and see who's like, oh, I celebrate that. I'm with you, you know, but so often we show up so fortified, as, you know, a word you've used. We show up so hidden and protected that it's almost impossible for us to find our people because who, who could possibly know us, right? And so to have that courage to show up authentically and just trust that I'll find some home here somewhere, you know, is again, there's there's a space of uncertainty and self doubt that you have to navigate to to get to that point.

37:51 And it's it's going to be really hard, hard to get there. Yeah, I was talking, I, I have a friend of mine and I don't want to give a lot of detail in case anyone knows him. So, you know, but I had a friend that was having a lot of what years on and off with the girl and, and both of them, I knew both of them and I liked both of them a lot. I really, really did. And they were both obviously not very good for one another. And we've all had that friend. I know, I know. And this felt this feels real. This felt really like 1 like a real life, like what do you call it a sitcom? You know, it just it didn't, it felt too, too crazy to be true. But everyone has those and one and you know, and they were in one of their fight breakups, whatever you want to call it. And I was talking to both and both them said the same thing to me, which was because we just hung out like a day earlier and they told me that they'd broken up again. And they both said, I know that there's something better out there.

38:53 I just don't know how to be with by by myself long enough to be able to get there. That's what that's the when I said the phrase we have to learn how to exist between belongings. That means we people have to learn how to be comfortable. That's it with themselves. Yes, being alone and, and, and it's and we're this is daunting stuff like, you know, to acknowledge how challenging that is for a human being. Loneliness is one of the most painful experiences. There was a time in our lives when we were very young when loneliness was an existential threat. Like if we're alone where, you know, humans are odd mammals, we're we're dependent upon other creatures for 1820 years for our survival. And so there's years where being feeling lonely was an existential threat.

39:42 Yeah. But at any point in life, feeling lonely is really painful. And so to learn how to be in that lonely feeling between belongings and. And this is where I think you see, if I'm feeling lonely, I go to the the device and the online sort of interactions. You want a mummy? It's a Band-Aid. Yeah. It takes it away like for for for a moment. But you never get to learn how to endure the loneliness so that you can make an actual transition between belongings, to your point. So yeah, I think that's really hard. Now, one thing I would say is to your point, like 22 year old moves to a new city, a lot of our natural sort of habitats for connecting have been taken away.

40:31 You're probably going to find people through your online platforms and your device. But think of them, think of that as a doorway, not a destination, right? It's not a destination, it's the doorway. You met somebody. Now when you get together with them, put your phones in your pockets, be in the room with them, not in the doorway. There will be the temptation that when you get together with these people now and you start to feel a little bit of that, like, I'm not sure if this is right. I'm not sure if I'm belonging. You're going to want to get your device out and get back in a doorway and start to look for a different door. You know, you know, just stay here. Endure that. If it doesn't go well, chalk it up to a repetition at learning how to be present to your discomfort. And that will strengthen you for your next your next opportunity. But yeah, use the devices as doorways, just not destinations. Yeah, that's, that's a great advice. I, what do you, what would you tell someone or what advice would you give someone to learn how to tolerate or to or the most productive way to be alone or to be lonely? Meaning, for example, I'm just to clarify because you know, I, I, I definitely I, I, I think loneliness is the feeling of not being able to have someone relate to what you're sharing or what you're feeling or what you're experiencing. You know, it's not necessarily about being with someone. That's why being lonely in a full room. It's great, but it's so it's, it hits so hard because it is true. If you feel like you have no, like no one there relates to anything about you.

42:00 That's right, you're finished, you know, So what do you, how do you get comfortable with yourself and what would you recommend for people to try doing? Oh man, such a good question. I mean, I would start with saying that for me, having my work, my work increasingly is about helping people to be present to their sense of loneliness so they don't have to escape it into other things. And in talking to hundreds, maybe thousands of people about this, I would say that the loneliness has three pillars. Feeling unseen, misunderstood and unsupported. OK, so like if you feel like someone truly sees you, like they're actually paying attention, they're interested, and then you feel like they really get you, they understand you, and then they want to actively be a support to to who you are. You feel very much unlonely like if all three of those check boxes are checked, right?

43:00 But if any of them remains unchecked, you're going, you're going to feel a sense of loneliness. And the, the first thing we do, this is the irony of it when we feel lonely is we shift into protection mode instead of connection mode, right? Which in the moment feels a little safer, right? We start to, we feel lonely, so we start to hide who we really are, or we start to get aggressive, or we start to try to manipulate or control the situation to feel better. But you're in protection mode now and that feels momentarily better in the long run, it guarantees you'll end up more lonely, right?

43:43 So the challenge is to befriend one's loneliness so that you can stay in connect, connection mode even when you're feeling lonely as an exquisitely difficult thing to do. But as we develop the capacity to do that, it's actually the doorway out of our loneliness because we, we've, we've stayed in connection mode, we've kept our hearts open. We've left ourselves available to connection when it presents itself. Yeah. And you know, it's and this was probably a great transition into the whole relationship. Maintenance and and preventative maintenance, you call it. But but it's the medical equipment salesman and me coming out. But, but I, I've, you know, I have a lot of friends and OK, this also comes from the experience of being in the Orthodox Jewish world where there is a lot of pressure to get married at a relatively young age, which I actually think is probably a good thing for the most part, obviously, with exceptions. My, that's my take.

44:39 But one thing that I have noticed for a lot of people going as they grow up and we know that we're living in a society where adolescence is constantly being stretched a little further and a little further feels year by year. One thing that I've noticed is that I have friends that look for relationships as A, to try to resolve their loneliness. And they think that by getting married or they think by being, you know, by moving in with someone that now they're not going to be lonely anymore. And, and I, I too had, you know, I too used to have these thoughts, these thoughts until I was in a long term relationship in college and, and I, and I'd still experienced bouts of loneliness and I'll call my mom and be like, what the heck is going on?

45:22 I'm with my girlfriend all day and, and I, and I still feel like this and like, you know, I have no idea what's happening. So and, and then and she said, you know, and so we know that being in a relationship does not necessarily mean that you are doing the connecting and doing the opening up and the sharing. Like you said that we needed that we need to do. So what maybe you could elaborate a little bit on this? Man, that's a fantastic observation. I will tell the couples that I work with that the number one reason to get married is because and and you may not even have known what to call it at the point where you met your spouse, but you were already wrestling with that human experience of loneliness in your life and being with when you were with them, that loneliness seemed to evaporate.

46:09 Like it just seemed to be fixed, right. Whatever that thing on in there was that you didn't know what to call it, it was loneliness and it went away. So you're like, let's do life together. I never have to experience that thing again. You made me feel great. Let's do it. But the loneliness didn't disappear. It just sort of descended, you know, a little deeper. And so it eventually reemerges in the relationship. And there's factors that cause it to reemerge. Some, some people we marry are not as good at being connected children. How about this? Turns out when we had three kids and my wife started to give all of her wonderful attention to them, or a lot of it, I started to feel more lonely again, right, because it was still in there ready to be experienced. And so you're, you're just nailing it that what happens then is when our loneliness resurfaces in the relationship, we immediately begin to blame our partner for causing it. That's the wild thing for causing it. You're making me lonely.

47:06 When in fact, for maybe the last 3-4 or five, I don't know, 10 years, they were actually easing your loneliness and then they're just not easing it as well right now. So how can you take ownership for your experience of loneliness, that it predated your partner and that it is now your experience to learn how to be with, not theirs to absolve you of right. And, and so one of the ways that I, I often say this to couples is a lot of times what we do is we hold out our loneliness to our partner. Like, please take this away from me. And what we need to do is hold up our loneliness to our partner and just say, Hey, I just want you to know about my loneliness. As I'm getting to know it better and learning to be with it, I want you to know about it too. When two partners can say, yeah, we love each other, we know we're going to be together forever. We're creating an amazing family and yet we're still both a little lonely.

47:56 It's like, oh, there you go now, now you're in your humanity right now you're not asking the other person to take this part of your humanity away. You're learning to actually. And this is the irony when you, when you can say I'm lonely and the person's like me too. Now you actually feel a little more connected because you've been open hearted and vulnerable about your loneliness, right? So the loneliness, the solution to the loneliness is not to have it taken away, but to be courageous enough to share it. Yes, they're sharing a drink. They call loneliness. But it's better than drinking alone. Yay, there you go. And the reason why I would even say such a cheesy line is because I know that most people that are below the age of 30 probably don't know that, don't know those lyrics.

48:39 But that's if you have not heard, if you do not know those lyrics, don't stop listening now. But when this episode is over, immediately go search Piano Man by Billy Joel. Yeah, he's got some. He's got some incredibly emotionally. I do, you know, Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you're a huge Billy Joel fan. I, I, I was growing up. I still am. I've been to probably over a dozen of his shows in the garden because I grew up in in Rockland and growing up I went and then when I was single, living in the city, it would be my date barometer as to like what the girl would be like. I'd take her to a Billie Joel concert to test out what you know, what kind of time she would have and see whether it's the best litmus test ever because it's a win for you either way.

49:25 Exactly. If it's a bad day, had a great concert and if it's a great day and it's a double grade day, summer Highland Falls was one of my it was one of my favorite high school songs and it was it capture. He does such a good job in capturing the human experience of loneliness and manic, you know, ups and downs and, and I think that, and I think it's the other thing that I man, we look for, we look for answers instead instead of realizing that life's a project, you know, like we're almost like looking for like a state, like we're looking to reach a state of like, OK, when's everything going to be done?

50:08 And then you're like, I don't think it's ever going to be done. So the question really isn't when am I done Right now? It's, you know, what am I doing to I, I, I like to think of things more like a sculpture where you kind of chip away a day at a time and then you start to see the picture that you're coming to. And I think that we need some of more, some more of that long term patience with ourselves and with our spouses and with our families to say, I'm pissed off at as all hell at you right now. And like at this moment, I can't stand you. But this is just this is just a sentence and a paragraph and a chapter in the book. That's our lives. And so you need to take a step back, you know, yes, you know, I so I'm launching this book and I somewhere late last summer.

50:55 Let's plug it. What's the name of the book? The book is the road. The road less triggered. Thank you. Yes, conflict into connection. With a single choice. And, you know, we were early and starting to launch it late summer and all my neurosis were showing up, you know, like, Oh my, Oh my gosh, I'm, I've messed this up. I'm going to mess this up, you know, And I got on a call with my spiritual director again, and I'll never forget what he said. He's got these lines every once in a while that just stick with me. This one was Paul Kelly. He said you might this book launch might be a smashing success or you might mess it up royally, but all you will have done is created the next conditions for your spiritual growth.

51:39 Beautiful, right? Like in my head to your. Point from I was like, well, if it's a success, I've reached some sort of finish line and now I'm now it's sort of Oh yeah, great. I just get to like, I don't know what drink Pina coladas by the pool the rest of my life. I don't know what I, I don't know what I think that's going to be, but I'm, I'm, I'm tantalized by it. And if I mess it up, then I've got work to do. And he's like, no, like even success presents its own challenges for spiritual growth. And then he said sometime later, because this is, this is something I need hammered home. Like you said, you are not here to be finished. You're here to be formed. Nice, excellent. Don't don't get caught thinking you're going to get to a finish line. You will be formed until the day you die. And that's what we're here for.

52:20 And so I'm trying to surrender to that one, one meeting at a time with him. Can I ask if you don't mind, just because you brought it up a couple of times, the value of having a spiritual leader as opposed to there's a therapist or a psychologist or something, unless he serves as both or what do you think? Like what would you recommend that for everyone? What do you what's your thoughts? That's another good question. I've never gotten. So I'd say like, you know, therapist, coach. Spiritual Director. They all share a lot in common, right? If they're doing their job well, they're sort of dipping their toes in sort of the strengths of each of those disciplines.

53:04 I think the difference with the spiritual director is the at least. In my spiritual director, there's a. Trust that he is. Holding. Space for divine wisdom to present itself in that space. Like he's not trying to get you to a certain place. He doesn't have cognitive restructuring he wants to do today. He doesn't have a goal that you is going to hold you accountable to. He's going to say, let's hold space and let's see how God shows up. And that's going to be a surprise to both of us today.

53:46 And good spiritual directors are really good at holding that space. And a lot of it just comes from their trust and their faith that, that God's always present and always trying to speak to us through our human experiences. So yeah, he just, he does a fabulous job. And then, but then every once in a while he'll sort of summarize what's being said or what's happening or what's being experienced. It doesn't sound as good. He'll, he'll summarize it. And it's like, like you said, he puts it into words and that makes it more powerful. And so he has a, he has a really a gift for summarizing complex experiences and meaningful words for me. So, but but yeah, I just, I mean, for what it's worth, I didn't go looking for a spiritual director. I knew I needed to see a therapist, didn't know where to look. And I was on the, I was on the phone with him one day as a friend, Ish.

54:34 And he was talking to me about, you know, the work he was doing in spiritual direction. And I just sort of and something happened on that call where he held space for me better than anyone else had. And I was like, I'll just try this experiment. Like I'll, I'll be your direct D for a while. And, you know, here we are a few years later and it's it's once a month and it's it's just what I need. That's awesome. That's really, really great. Yeah. I think you put that you put that really, really well. And I think another way to maybe unless and see if I understand this correctly, when you're kind of talking about a spiritual sense or the sense of God or sense of right and wrong, it almost reframes. Everything into a.

55:16 Much. More you, you, you like we get caught up in the subjectivity of our own perceptions and lives. And this moves us to a little bit more of an objective playing field where we kind of trace ourselves and reorient and map ourselves where we are and recalibrate according to this big objective. As opposed to just how I feel about where I am in my life in my head. You know, it's a great way to say it like, and I think at least in this, you know, spiritual direction that I'm doing like. Most of us human beings are caught in a. Situation where we've decided what things are acceptable to think and feel and do and we let ourselves be aware of those and everything else we push out into our unawareness right or what Carl Jung called our shadow and and increasingly like I'm aware that the the spiritual.

56:09 Journey. The, the emotional journey, the you know, the relational journey, the life journey is about learning to integrate more and more of what you've rejected about yourself and about life and pushed into your shadow to become aware of it and start to integrate it with who you are. And you can only do that in spaces where you feel really safe and loved, right? A space where someone you know, will not reject you for the things you've already rejected about yourself and therefore don't pay attention to. And so as that space is held and you feel that permission to call those things forward, you're actually healing, you're holding, you know, you're growing more, more beautifully human. I, I'll never one of those people in my life is honestly my literary agent.

56:55 Oh, yeah, I'll never. She's she's, she's, she's also an equine assisted therapist. So she has that capacity for holding space and she was challenging me on something. She's like, your answers aren't making sense. And she was just sort of poking me and I fell safe enough with her and I was like, I just burst out. I go, wait, you know what it is? It's just that I, I think I'm selfish and like this is the thing I had pushed into my shadows that I'm selfish. I'm a selfish person, right? And, and, and just to be able to bring that out of the shadow and say it out loud to somebody. I think I'm a selfish person, right? And I was in a, I was in a session at the conference where we were at the next day and I had this experience again of feeling like cared for by God's presence and, and just hearing that, Kelly, hey, you know, your selfishness, it didn't start out as selfishness.

57:54 It started out as having to raise yourself right and, and, and, and so some grace came in around that thing I had rejected about myself and the fuck the fabulous thing about this, I just the way this played out. So it was like a week later and I was in the bathroom back home from the conference and I got out of the shower and there the towels had all been taken to the laundry and there were no towels on the rack. So I went over to the linen closet. I got a towel for myself and dried off and I put it on and I was walking out of the bathroom and I went, I didn't put a towel on my wife's hook. That was selfish. And it dawned on me. This is what she's been talking about for years. But I've I've always resisted it, defended myself, protected myself.

58:35 I reject my own selfishness. So I have to reject her when she points it out, right? And I was just like, oh man, like I went and got her a towel. I put it on her hook. I texted her, I said, hey, guess what I just did. I got a towel and I didn't get you one. Sorry. That was selfish And and that's how that's how we heal that's how we grow is beginning to accept those things so we can own them and begin to show up differently and safe loving spaces help us to to do that self acceptance. Yeah, I think that I. I I don't. Think that I don't. I don't think that we give ourselves enough leeway.

59:18 Generally. We're much harder on ourselves than anyone else's. And a lot of times when we don't communicate, it ends up snowballing and spiraling into something far worse than if you had had the I don't want to call it guts because it's not guts. It's it's, there's another word for it, but the will. I don't want to use that word either, you know, but like the perhaps the tenacity to express yourself and to make yourself vulnerable and say, hey, I'm having a hard time with this. You know, I find that I drinking a little bit more than I would have liked. I find that I'm not exercising as much I would have liked. I'm spending too much time in social media and I feel myself, I feel myself slipping into something and it's OK and like.

1:00:01 And I, I suffer from this a lot too. I, I do this all the time. And because I think that there's a certain yardstick that I'm supposed to be holding myself to in a certain level of accountability. I'm not supposed to be the husband and the father that spends so much time scrolling. I'm not supposed to be the dad that smokes too much. I'm not supposed to do whatever it is. And yet here I am. And if and then if I keep that, I keep that locked up, like what you say rejected about myself or but if I kind of catch it and communicate it, it ends up that ends up a curing loneliness, like what you or at least starting the road down curing it and B it becomes almost like a group project or a group effort that that you know that you have that support for that makes all the difference in the world. Well, I always say like the three like if you want to look for semantic red flags that your shame is operating, it's I'm not something enough should is usually a a sign of shame and supposed to or not supposed to.

1:00:59 These are these are all ways that it's gotten baked into our our mental sort of ruts. We're we're basically saying I am acceptable only if only if I do that thing I should or I'm supposed to. I think stipulation on your, on yourself, conditional, conditional love and shame is fueled by hiding. My novel is The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell. It's about a man overcoming shame because shame is just sort of exacerbated by the hiding attempt to to solve it by hiding it. And as soon as you open up share, express, shine some light on that thing you're ashamed of, you'll notice that it actually dissipates almost immediately. Now, the next day, you might have a vulnerability hangover as yourself protections kick back in going, Oh my gosh, I can't believe you said that or did that or shared that. But in the moment, you'll feel your shame go away completely. And assuming you, you know, share it with somebody who doesn't shame you for it, which can happen. But I was going to say it, yes.

1:02:02 Why is vulnerability not, you know, thoughtless vulnerability wise vulnerability, share it with somebody who can be trusted with it. Your shame drops. You'll get a little bit of a hangover the next day. But repetitions of this are how we sort of bring ourselves out of the shadow. And can I ask now, I think this is equally, if not more important, how to be a good supporter of someone that is coming to you like that, right? Meaning that we're all focused on solving our own problems. On the other hand, if my, if my wife is talking to me and then she says something she's insecure about, oh, you're, it'll be OK. And then I just never bring it up again or I never, you know, I never, I never ask. How do you feel about that? Or are we working on this? What, what do you, what do you recommend for that?

1:02:44 It's a great question because you're picking up on something very subtle there that a lot of people won't pick up on that are quick encouragement is often our own way of saying, I don't know that I want to sit with this. And that subtly sends the other person the opposite message, which is even though my word said, oh, it's fine. My body language and my, my pace and everything, my energy communicated, I don't that that's not something I want to be with, right. And so, yeah, I mean, one of the one of the things my first therapist did, which was so good, he was just whenever I'd say something like that, he'd go, yeah, of course, of course you do. Like, of course is the best phrase. Like I remember he asked me one day, he goes, Kelly, do you think you're arrogant?

1:03:36 And I was like I said, I do, I think I'm arrogant. And he said, I think you are too, about as much as the rest of us, Right. Which is just like, Oh yeah, we're all arrogant a little bit. You know, this isn't about sort of like a removing that part of our humanity. So like, yeah, of course. Yeah, you are. Me too. Yep, me too is a good one. Curiosity is there. You know anything more you want to tell me? I'm here for you. What can I do for you? Just anything that communicates. I don't need to rush through this and I'm not afraid of it. And I and I don't love you less because of it. I mean, those three things. I'm here, I'm not afraid and I love you. And that can be a really powerful space that you create for the other person to show up a little bit more bravely. And what about for like a friendship? Because again, you know, going back to people that have a hard time just in general with relationships, some people don't know how to be good friends.

1:04:33 And I, I've noticed myself a big flaw in my being ability to be a friend is I'm up, I've been working on this for years, but I'm a bad listener. I'm a really bad listener. And I get so excited about what other people are saying that I want to just jump in and, you know, just talk on it, you know, and I, it's a problem. It's it, it makes it hard to, to, it makes it hard to be a good friend and to let people finish their thoughts. And I often end up trying to finish their thoughts for them. And then when I'm wrong, it makes they feel, Hey, this guy doesn't get me, you know? And so a lot of times, the listening is actually one of the hardest things in a friendship. Yes. First of all, like, you just demonstrated what we're talking about in a really beautiful way, right?

1:05:19 Like the fact that I'm not a very good listener at times. I get eager and I sort of override somebody and then they don't feel seen or heard. Like, that's something that you could push into your shadow and be ashamed of and therefore ignore and never attend to. But here you are. You brought it out of the shadow. You're, you're aware of it. And so as soon as you're aware of it, it's something you can work with and, and you can continue to work on and improve upon. So I commend you for your willingness to be aware of it and to, to not be ashamed of it, to share it here. A couple of things that to to go back to that idea of loneliness.

1:06:00 Friendship is also about loneliness, so right? So am I helping my friend feel seen, understood and supported? Those 3 pillars again, number one. And then #2 easier said than done. And so sometimes having practical tools can really help with that. And one of the, one of the main tools I, I ask every couple to use that I work with, It's the only actual intervention in all of the decades of marital therapy research that's really been shown consistently to effectively improve communication. It's called the speaker listener technique. And that sounds a little dry, but basically what it does is it clarifies that there's one speaker and 1 listener at all times. And the listener's job is to put aside all of their reactions and thoughts and ideas and to make sure that they don't take the speaker rollback until they fully understood what the other person is saying.

1:06:57 They don't have to agree with it, right? It's not seen, agreed with and, and supported. It's seen, understood and supported. And so you, the listener engages in an active process of paraphrasing back what they've heard to make sure that they really get it before they, they move forward. And that little just sort of pause button on the conversation for, for a listener just OK, what I hear you saying. So what I'm hearing you saying is this goes a long way. Toward. Establishing really connected friendship because the other person really feels understood and it sets a pause on you so that you can you'll get your chance and now you can jump in with your reactions and thoughts to it, but it helps you to sort of hold that space in a more intentional way. Awesome.

1:07:47 Yeah. And that's a really, really important. I think that like, on one hand, it's a great tool to use in a, in a, you know, therapeutic setting. On the other hand, it's a great tool to use in general. You talk about anything. And especially in such a polarized world, this is such a, this is such great advice because if you're talking to someone about politics, you're talking to someone about business, you're talking to someone about current events or what's going on in the news. And you and you talk to them about. And I've had this fun experience where I've been talking to people, but there's so many hot topic issues going on. And I tend to be left-leaning of my right leaning friends and right leaning of my left-leaning friends. So I, I, and one of the things I feel, yeah, yeah. And you know, and it's, it's, and I tend to judge be pretty pretty much almost exclusively anti authoritarian, But that's, that's just because of my personal experience. I already know that that's just my my stick. But one thing that I've been doing is I've been asking my friends, well, what do you think of this event? Or what do you think happened or what, what's your take on what happened?

1:08:54 And then I'll hear their understanding of the event. And then I'll decide how to continue the conversation from there because I'll say we would have gone into a straight fight if I'd just gone with the presumption that you understood the story the same way that I had. So what do you think of that? I think that that's what happened. It was good because of this, and it was bad because of that. Or I think it was only good because this or only bad because of that. Like, OK. And sometimes I'll, sometimes I'll hear it. I'm like, I am at such a different page that I'm not even going to, I'm not even going to, you know, argue about this. Like I'll just, OK, that's where they are. And then there's sometimes they'll like, oh, so you mean to say that and they'll say, yeah. And I'm like, oh, OK, yeah, I hear that too. You know, And that really, really helps so much because.

1:09:35 And that's why I have friends on both sides of the spectrum because it's so easy to do that. And once everyone's heard, they feel like they're heard and they feel like they can now share with you and relate to you. So good, man. I I had, I was working with a couple once and they came to the hour fighting about where they were going to put ATV in their home. And so I was holding space listening to them go back and forth and like, I heard, thought I heard something. I go. Can you paraphrase what he just said? And what it turned out was that he was saying, I want to put the TV in the living room and I and he I had her actually like paraphrase what he meant, it turned out he meant the family room. She was thought he they were referring to the room by different names, basically.

1:10:28 And she was like. Oh, you want to? Put it in the family room. Sure, that's fine. Yeah, To your point, like as soon as there is an assumption that we understand each other when we're talking about very different things, the conversation will ultimately go off the rails. I remember my wife once I was consulting with her about a clinical situation where someone had told me that they were sad. And I just, I'll never forget this moment. She was, What did they mean by sad? I was like. I mean sad, you know? She's like, she's like, no, I don't. She's a child psychologist and sadness shows up very differently for kids in different ways. So I went back into my next session and thinking for me, sad meant, you know, sort of going through life and feeling a little bit more retreated into oneself and, and maybe feeling a little more tender.

1:11:23 And this person had an entire when she said sad, she meant something totally different. So can we slow down enough that part of us that thinks I'm here to prove my point, win an argument or even just debate something? Can we slow down long enough to, to to confirm that we actually understand where the other person's coming from, what their reality is, what they're, you know, how they define their words even. So I think that's, I think that's a huge point you've made there in terms of connection. Yeah, thank you. Well, I, I, I would just, you know, try my best over here, you know, and that that's what all of us are trying to do. And I'm just trying to see what works. And I've spent, you've brought up pop culture references. So now it now it's fair game.

1:12:05 Have you seen the movie Arrival? You know what Jimmy Adams I think is your name? I have. It's the it's the alien movie, right? The alien movie. I am so afraid to watch alien movies because I'm so convinced that the aliens are real. No, I don't want to do anything to my they're permanently damaging to my mental state. I got good news. I got good news for you. So that that movie, when you see like the way it's reviewed, like it's got like a 3 1/2 star average, it's because either either review it as a 5 or like A1 and A2, right? Gotcha. And, and the reason for that is if you go to it expecting it to be an alien movie, you're totally disappointed because what it is, is that Amy Adams plays a linguist who she's sort of brought in by the, you know, the US military to just to try to learn how to communicate with these these foreigners basically, and. So the.

1:12:55 Movie is a study of the nuance of communication and how I love that how many assumptions we make. She's like when we need to know what they what they mean when they say we do they even think of themselves collectively? Are they just referring to the two people I'm talking to or the entire race? Or do you know like and? It you. Would from a communication connection perspective, it is a masterpiece. You would love it. I'm going to check it out. I'm definitely going to check it out. Did you, did you watch Pluribus or did you start it? Yes, on Apple. What What what do you think of that? My wife and daughter and I got hooked on that. Yeah. You got hooked. You're into it. Yeah, we're into it. So the criticisms are some of them are valid. It's a slow moving show in in our in our fast. I like that genre, though.

1:13:43 There's a lot of good slow moving shows out recently, you know. Well, there's so much happening in the slowness. That's right. And to be able to see that. Oh yeah. I, I absolutely. We thought that was brilliant. We're we can't wait for season 2 to come out. Yeah, yeah. OK. I want to, I want to, I want to go more into your book with the last, with the last 20 minutes that we have The Road last Triggered, which is a very relatable title. You got, it seems like you have a knack for titles because, and, and that's a really good thing because everything in life, I've realized is just sales and all about how you're going to sell yourself. And so with these great titles like Marriages for Losers or The Road Last Triggered, you know that you're you're you're really speaking to something that is really in the zeitgeist. So.

1:14:27 So can you tell me about the process of writing this, researching? How'd you, how'd you, how'd you, how'd you go about dealing with this book? Yeah, good question. So first of all, I'll say that I wrote the entire book, almost all the way to the final draft under a different title. The title was open hearted, but in the process of writing it. So there was a very iterative process. I was working with my literary agent, who's also great editorial resource, my wife, my own experience. I was presenting it chapter by chapter to my online tribe, the less triggered tribe on Sub Stack. We were meeting once a month and digging into the ideas. I was going on the road and and speaking. It's just hard to do when you know something's not totally locked in, but to just see what's hitting and what's not. And what I discovered in that process is for me, five years into practicing open heartedness, I understand what it is and the strength of it and the benefits and the payouts of it, the the level of connection that's possible when you're showing up open heartedly.

1:15:39 Most people when they hear open hearted, they hear I'm going to have to be a doormat. You can't have any boundaries. I'm going to have to say whatever is on my mind. And so one of the first things I say to people now is an open heart doesn't make your boundaries weaker. It makes your boundaries wiser, OK, It doesn't make you a weaker person. It makes you a wiser person. But it was clear to me in in that process that putting open hearted on the cover was a non starter because it's, it's, it's so misconceived by people, right? It would have been the opposite of marriages for losers. It would have been too, it would have been too good. You know, it would have just been too on the nose and, and, and the reality is what I've discovered over the last five years is that open heartedness is the solution for our triggered moments. And that's what we really need help with. I don't think anyone's walking around going. I've got to figure out how to be more open hearted. We got it.

1:16:32 We're walking around going. It happened again, like we were having a good day. And then they said that thing and I could feel myself tighten up in my chest or I couldn't, which is probably the problem. I didn't even notice it. And then they were like, whoa, what? Why are you getting all hurt about that? And then we're off to the races, right? Or you're in your car with your kid and you're like, I got 30 minutes in the car with my teenager, right? And then they just say something that just sets you off and all of a sudden you're lecturing about how they need to appreciate things more, right? And like that moment that repeats itself over and over again where you get triggered in your relationship and you, you sort of revert into the same old problematic pattern that's going to keep you stuck in the same old level of, of disconnect and conflict.

1:17:18 That's that's what I'm passionate about helping people with now cultivating the capacity to stay open hearted in that moment is the most powerful solution you will ever encounter in your life. But it's not it's not necessarily what we're thinking about every day. So we went with the road less triggered. I love the title. The Road Less Travelled was one of my favorite books as I was being formed as a psychologist, written by a Christian therapist. And so to, to, to name a book in, in the, in that vein is in a way, sort of an honor to, to, to follow on Scott Peck's heels.

1:17:58 From 2021 till about. 2023 I realized that I couldn't. I looked into the spiritual every spiritual tradition I could find, all the scientific traditions, I couldn't find any. My, my New Year's resolution was moment to moment and notice my heart closing and try to open it back up. But I couldn't find any tradition, faith, scientific, poetic that that laid out how to do that, how to actually catch your heart closing. When you're catching your heart closing is something just happened and now you're flipping from connection mode into protection mode. And what you want most is connection in this moment, but you're about to show up protectively and make that impossible, right? And so I realized I was going to have to develop the curriculum for open heartedness.

1:18:44 I was going to have to develop the method for staying together rather than the trigger. That's what I, so that's what I did for, for several years and, and feel tested it with clients and, and in our community. And I'm really proud of of we call it the peaceful pivot process in the book. It's a three-part process. First getting calm, then getting. Free of the. Emotional patterns in you that are underpinning your triggered moments. And then getting connected, we usually reverse that. We're like, oh, this doesn't feel good. So I'm going to try to connect with you so that you'll do something different to make me feel better in here. And this process turns that on its head and it's you take responsibility for your own self regulation, disrupting your defensive patterns, getting your body calm, your nervous system regulated, and now you can start to take more ownership for how you're showing up and actually get connected open heartedly. So I'm really excited about the process. I'm, I've experienced the changes in my own life over the last five years and, and to watch the my online community start to practice this.

1:19:47 And we just had our monthly meeting in January. They came back after the holidays and we celebrated the wins. Like I was able to stay open hearted in this moment where I usually get triggered and I close and guess what happened. And it is always better. It is always better. Early on in the book, I talk about the difference between pain and suffering. What happens in the triggered moment is you're starting to feel a little bit of pain about something, right? But pain is inevitable. That's gonna happen in human relationships. Suffering is everything we create. After that, when we shut down, get triggered, close our hearts and go into protection mode. And so we want to alleviate the suffering that comes from that. Learn how to stay, stay present in that, in that, in that pain point, and show up to it with your wisest, most connective self. So that's what this book is trying to help people do. Yeah, that sounds awesome.

1:20:35 It sounds. Really, really great. And I imagine there's a there's an amazing book in Jewish literature and it's called The Path of the Righteous. We had hundreds of years ago by an Italian rabbi. And he's actually still has a synagogue that's still active in Venice, which is really cool years later. It's really fascinating. And one of the things that he talks that he says in this introduction to this awesome book, it goes through different personality traits to work on in order to, you know, kind of emulate or imitate God that are similar to what God says that people should strive for as far as enhance consciousness. And because everything I'm going to tell you, there's nothing you haven't already heard.

1:21:16 But think if you do not constantly reinforce are going to slip into the back of your head. And and he goes, I am not here to teach you anything new. I'm not here to tell you, you know, there's nothing new under the sun, you know, and you you know this and I know this, but it has to be looked at again. It has to be reviewed. It has to be repeated. And so I think that, and I've known for myself, for example, that there's a great book by a guy, by a researcher or Professor Ethan Cross, I believe, called Chatter. Oh yeah, I read Chatter, Yeah. And one of the things I talk about is voices in your head and how they can be manipulated. And one of the ways that you reinforce it is by on a regular basis saying, you know, say you can even say it verbally. And I'll do this when I'm jogging and I'm not in the mood. I'll say this is a breeze.

1:22:07 This is a breeze. I got this. I've run this before and, and, and, and, and then it gets reinforced. And so a lot of times the trains of thought or the, or the behavior modifications or the thought modifications that we're trying to establish are enormously strengthened by just by just reviewing it. And we know that. Yeah. How effective that is. Yeah. He, he mentioned somewhere in that book the data that shows that when you speak to yourself in the third person, it immediately creates emotional regulation. That's interesting. Isn't that interesting? Like, yeah. And it's, it's a little bit that idea that as soon as you start to speak to yourself in the third person, you're now no longer in the nervous system response. You're up in your awareness speaking to your nervous system, Right.

1:22:50 And so as soon as you can get out of that response, all of a sudden you're holding some safety for yourself in a way. And I actually, I, there were a couple of paragraphs where I cited that book in, in the 6th chapter of the road Less Trigger. They, they didn't make the final cut. But, but that specifically, yeah, but specifically that idea of, of you are going to be OK, right. OK. As soon as I say you are going to be OK, it's like I'm speaking to the nervous part of me, the triggered part of me, but I'm speaking from the untriggered part of me. So all of a sudden I have a little bit more objectivity. So I think that's really powerful. Yeah, to your point. Old things rearranged.

1:23:36 Into more effective sequences can become a powerful new thing and and that is that is what I'm trying to do with this book. We just got our first, like, official Goodread review from an early reader. Congratulations. Thank you. It was so gratifying because she said it's very exciting. It's very exciting. It's the first one, you know, out in the wild. And it was so gratifying because she said he takes an incredibly complicated moment that feels so overwhelming to most of us, and he simplifies it down in a way that is so easy to see your way through. I'll give you an example. The first step of the process is, I call it sensing your conflict coming. It's using an underutilized 6th power that we all have, sixth sense that we all have.

1:24:19 It's a superpower. It's utilizing that sixth sense to give yourself 80% more warning that you're about to be triggered. And, and the idea is learning to tune into your particular bodily signals when you're about to be triggered and your heart's about to close. There's data that shows that if you wait to see what's happening out here or how you're thinking or how you're behaving, the cat's already out of the bag. You're already off to the. Races, conflicts already going, your body will give you an 80% earlier warning that that's about to happen. And in that 80% more space, you realize that you actually have a choice. I can let my heart close, I can choose conflict and I can let this thing go off the rails, or I can choose to keep my heart open and I can choose connection and stay present in this moment. And so right out of the gate, this is not a wait, can you give me, can you give me AI?

1:25:14 Just I want to, I want to highlight that as strong as I can. Give me an actual example for a case in point, just for anyone listening to able to convert it into like a real life scenario. Yeah, happened to me last night. One of my early earliest bodily warning signs that my heart is closing is just a sense of urgency in my chest. That's the best way I can describe it. It's not anxiety yet, it's maybe not even stress. It's just this quickening, like, right, Something big is at stake here and I need to go faster to get it done. That feeling is the feeling of me. Being triggered with. My wife 6 hours from now because if I don't attend to that feeling regulated.

1:25:56 By the time. I show up to dinner and I'm moving it, you know? So yesterday I caught myself around this time in the morning yesterday and I went, whoa, everything's moving really fast in here. Like if you continue to accelerate sort of mentally and neurologically at this pace, the rest of the day, it's going to take almost nothing at dinner. Someone's going to say something. You're going to feel yourself, feel yourself triggered. And so I know that for me, urgency is, is part of my fingerprint of, of a heart about to close. What I will tell people is that you will almost always sense it in your body, somewhere between your waist and your temples. Like basically no one has ever said my heart closed and my toes cramped. Like, that's just not where you feel that thing happening in the body, you know, So it's like the churning in the stomach, thick feeling in your sternum, like right under your rib cage.

1:26:45 It's that it's, I often say like emergency doors slamming shut in my chest, lump in the throat, tightness in the shoulders, clenching jaw, thriving temples. You know, waste of temples is where you will get your earliest warning sign that you're starting to feel unsafe. And something could could sort of flip that switch from connection mode to connection protection mode any moment. Yeah, I know for myself. And maybe please tell me if I'm giving a correct example or understanding this correctly. I know that with my son, I try very, very hard to be patient and very hard to not get angry. I, I don't mind speaking in an angry voice to emphasize a point, but the feeling of getting angry and losing control over my control is, is something I really try to work very hard not to. And so if my kid is, and one thing that really gets me very, very upset very quickly is unreasonable screaming, which is a terrible trigger to have for having two kids under the age of three.

1:27:47 We can all relate to it. So my kid is happy and he's watching and he's watching TV and he has a snack in his hand. And then he just starts screaming, you know, he just starts crying uncontrollably. And I feel a huge and I feel this a rush. I feel a rush going straight up, like up my chest. I feel like going up my gut into my chest and, and I just want to rush over and, and just make him stop and just to shut him up, right. And, and I and I recognize that rush now. And, and, and I and I say to myself, the second I feel that rush, I say I, I, I, I, I force a breath. I force a breath and and I say and I and I, I force a pause and say whatever you're about to do, you can act angry, don't be angry, whatever you and I think that to myself.

1:28:32 It's a thought that goes through my head. You could speak angry. Don't be angry. And so good. I just want to and I want to. Make sure is that. Is that the kind of moment that you're trying to explain that you're trying to capture? Yes, it is. And and that it's such a great example for a few reasons. Number one, it's with your kids. The principles in this book are applicable to spouses, kids, siblings, stranger on the road, you know, clerk at the store, anywhere, anywhere that you can be triggered. So #1 #2 I loved your distinction between anger in control and anger out of control, Right? I often said it with my kids when they were younger. Do you want me to wake you up? That was like me saying like, I'll raise my voice. I would prefer not to.

1:29:14 I was in control. Triggered is I'm, I'm acting angry and it's it doesn't feel like it was my choice. I feel like it feels to me, yeah, it's a reaction. So I often say a reaction is a failure of self regulation. A response is the fruit of self regulation, Right. And So what you just illustrated is literally the first three steps in that first part of the process, sensing your conflict coming, using your body. You feel the whooshing upward of that so fast too. It's so fast, so crazy. You, you disrupted what I'd call your defensive response, which in the book we talk about the nine core defensive reactions when your nervous system triggers and you just one that is tempting to use with kids is dominating going to control the situation. To make this.

1:30:01 Feeling in here? Go away. Yeah. And that again, that's the that's the temptation is I'm going to try to control what's happening out here to make it feel better in here. I often say to people like we had our our furnace went out this summer during a heat wave in Northern Illinois. And and if if I approach that furnace the way that we approach most of our relationships, what I would have done the rest of the week is figure out how I could make it cooler outside so the house would stay cooler. Yeah. Like your people are the weather, their behavior, their thoughts, their feelings, it's the weather. But we spend so much time trying to control them. So it's such a great example. Awesome. Just go to the Control Board and and get it cooled down in here.

1:30:43 Fix the fix the Control Board and then you won't have to worry about the weather outside. So you did it. You sensed your conflict coming. You disrupted your defensiveness. That's step #2 you didn't try to dominate him to make it feel better in here. And they took responsibility for your own self regulation, cultivating calmness before connectedness. As we say, you took that breath to get your nervous system neutral again. You just went right. You just took yourself right through the process. All you got to do is you do that the rest of my life around me. Well, what you have to do is you have to do it every time you're triggered. Like that has to be the starting point because what's happening is that, and this makes sense with a crying kid, right? Your nervous system is wired for alarm when a kid cries, right? It's it's wired to.

1:31:31 Assume that. If they cry like that, they're in mortal danger and you need to react. Now you're sitting in your living room so you know it's not true, which is why you called it unreasonably crying. And and that's fine, but your reaction to them is now to treat them like the danger and that's not going to work. So every time it happens, we have to take ourselves through that sequence, make sure we're calm before we start trying to connect, regulate before you relate. I love it. It's awesome. Doctor Kennedy, where can people find you or your post or your information? Yeah, yeah. Well, right now, road less triggered.com. Awesome. I put the I put the captions in the I put that in the show, not caption.

1:32:12 Awesome. That's where you can go to find out more about the book. You can order the book there and then you can enter your order number on that page and and that'll get you access to $348 in pre-order bonuses. That'll be good through the release. Those bonuses include you get to download the 1st chapter right away and I'm telling you like it'll be like putting on a new lens, you'll see the world differently. By the end of the first chapter you get a 90 minute master class. I recorded with the guy who said you can never get enough of what almost works. Nice. The guy recorded the 90 minute master class with him, so you can go through the whole process right away instead of having to wait for the book. And then if you want, you can certainly join our launch team.

1:32:53 And it also grants you 6 months free membership to the less triggered tribe on Substack where we get together once a month to talk about these ideas and grow together. So lots of good bonuses there. I would love to have you join us. Awesome. All right, Doctor Kelly, thanks so much for the time. It's so nice speaking. It's so nice getting to know you a little bit. Great conversation. Hope to be in touch. Take care, man. I'll be back. Bye.