Lisa Damour, UNDER PRESSURE
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[1:33]Nini's Treats.com, or go buy it on goldbellie.com. I'm here today with Lisa Demore,
[1:39]PhD, who is the New York Times best-selling author of Untangled and her latest book,
[1:44]Under Pressure, Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety and Girls. She is the monthly
[1:49]adolescence columnist for The New York Times, a graduate of Yale University with Honors,
[1:53]where she worked at the Yale Child Study Center, which by the way, so did I when I was at Yale,
[1:57]Dr. Demore earned her doctorate from the University of Michigan. She has written many academic
[2:01]papers related to child development and education. Dr. Demore currently directs Laurel School
[2:06]Center for Research on Girls. She maintains a private psychotherapy practice, consults, speaks
[2:11]internationally, and is a senior advisor to the Schubert Center for Child Studies at Case Western
[2:16]Reserve University. She currently lives in Shaker Heights, Ohio, with her husband and two daughters.
[2:21]Welcome, Dr. Demore. Thanks for coming on mom's and have time to read books.
[2:24]You're welcome and delighted to be here. We've had like a little session. I feel like you've
[2:28]already helped me out through my emotional issues. Psychologists are here to make people feel better.
[2:32]That's our job. You feel like I'm a little like freebie or something on our way upstairs.
[2:38]Okay, your most recent book Under Pressure, please tell listeners what it's about.
[2:43]So the subtitle is Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls. And what it's about
[2:49]is that I've been practicing for almost 25 years now. And in that time, I would say
[2:56]it wasn't until about 10 years ago, but I started hearing stress and anxiety come up a lot
[3:01]in conversations. And then I would say within the last five years, it is the conversation. And
[3:08]that told me that it was a piece I probably wanted to work on. And also what I have been hearing
[3:14]in the broad culture doesn't actually match what we know in psychology about stress and anxiety.
[3:19]That the culture as a whole talks about stress and anxiety as though they are always harmful,
[3:24]always pathological that we want to avoid them. This is not at all the view in psychology.
[3:29]We actually appreciate that both stress and anxiety have a very wide band of healthy
[3:35]and that there is such a thing as unhealthy stress and unhealthy anxiety, but that's
[3:39]you know, a percentage, a small percentage of it. And so I felt that I could write a book that I
[3:45]hoped would be reassuring in terms of articulating what we know as psychologists. And I really mean
[3:50]the word no, not things that we're thinking through, not fresh stuff in the field, not controversial
[3:54]information. And then to really try to give parents lots of ways to then respond helpfully when
[4:03]their daughter is stressed and anxious. And I would say 80% of everything I write also applies to
[4:08]boys, but usually it's tip towards girls. I know you did have something in here about it happening
[4:13]more to women, this feeling of stress. In the beginning of your book, you talked about how teens these
[4:19]days feel more stressed than their parents, which I found very interesting, although somebody's
[4:23]my parents seem to be very stressed. But they experience the emotional and physical symptoms of
[4:27]chronic tension like edginess and fatigue and adolescents who report being highly anxious and coping
[4:33]with emotional problems are on the rise. And you wrote that these trends do not affect our
[4:37]sons and daughters equally. It's the girls who suffer more. So why is that? So there's probably
[4:43]a couple reasons. One is that anxiety disorders have always been disproportionately diagnosed
[4:50]girls and women as opposed to boys and men, that it's usually sort of been a two to one ratio in
[4:55]terms of anxiety disorder diagnoses. And the reason for this is we think it's largely socialization
[5:01]that girls and women are taught that if they're distressed to sort of collapse in on themselves,
[5:06]depression, anxiety, things like that, and boys and men are taught by the culture when they are
[5:11]distressed to act out to mix it up to get themselves in trouble. So it's not that boys and men don't
[5:16]suffer. They don't suffer as often as girls and women suffer in terms of feeling highly anxious
[5:22]and having the technical term is internalizing disorders, holding it all in.
[5:27]So there's that reason. The other thing though, if we think about like, well, why is it getting worse?
[5:31]So you know, what's happening now? Why does this feel like it's taken this particular shape?
[5:35]I worry that we keep adding stuff to girls plates and nothing's coming off that girls are
[5:43]crushing it academically and they're incredible athletes and they're incredible musicians
[5:47]and they're starting businesses and they're still supposed to be cute and they're still supposed
[5:51]to be nice. And they're still supposed to make everyone feel comfortable and maintain a whole lot
[5:55]of social ties and be agreeable doing the things we ask them to do. And I think that piece,
[6:02]you're not that I want to go back to some retrograde moment when girls don't have all the
[6:07]opportunities they have available. But all of this opportunity without the permission to excuse oneself
[6:14]from cultural pressures to be adorable or thin or pleasant all the time isn't a great recipe,
[6:23]I think for girls. Yeah, probably not. That's much. I'll go with you.
[6:30]You said also in your book when we talk about now that we've acknowledged the stress of girls,
[6:34]how to deal with it. And you said one of the ways is that girls learn to cope with their
[6:39]stresses by watching their parents, everybody. But you know, and I read this and I was like,
[6:44]oh no, it's like how we manage this as parents is going to inform how our kids end up coping.
[6:51]What are you supposed to do if you're a parent who's stressed out about stuff which I'm
[6:54]obviously showing you that I am today about various things. But how do you mask it? Because I feel
[7:00]like kids, even when you pretend like everything's fine, they have like those extra sensory
[7:05]abilities to know that you actually are hiding how you feel us. Yeah. What do you do?
[7:09]Well, so I think you're right that we should work with the assumption that our kids know us
[7:12]better than we know ourselves. Well, they can detect, you know, a change in the weather that
[7:17]we don't even know has happened to us internally. So I think there's a few ways to tackle it. One
[7:22]is for us to be accepting of our own stress to say, oh man, I had such a day like I am really
[7:29]feeling the force of it. I am really pretty tapped out right now. You may notice I'm a little bit
[7:34]tense. I'll be better later. But right now I'm feeling it. So there's a way you don't have to hide
[7:39]it. But there's a way to talk about it that doesn't seem frightened of it or worried about
[7:45]the implications of feeling stressed at all. And that was part of why I wrote this book as I
[7:49]thought, man, you know, with the culture giving stress and anxiety such a bad name,
[7:53]kids now get stressed about being stressed, you know, and anxious about being anxious.
[7:58]So part of how we can actually help them is to be like, man, I'm pretty, pretty stressed,
[8:03]right? But while saying it in a sense of like, so be it and I'll be okay, you know, this,
[8:07]this will come. This will go. So I think there's that piece. And then the thing I'm really interested
[8:13]in is how we model coping because you're always going to need to cope. And then I think
[8:20]well, there's a smorgasbord of what coping looks like. So sometimes coping looks like reaching
[8:24]out to someone you think can be helpful and asking their thoughts and guidance, or it can be
[8:27]going for a walk or it can be, you know, watching what I call brain rinse, television, like really
[8:32]dumb stuff that just, you know, gives us tremendous relief. Or it can be being super crabby with everybody
[8:39]or it can be having too much wine or it can be, you know, so I think it's less about keeping
[8:45]stress at bay or cloaking it. And more about talking openly about stress and anxiety as a natural
[8:51]part of being human and then modeling excellent coping with it would be my way for us to sort of
[8:59]walk up to this as parents. So what are a couple hacks for good coping? So good coping would
[9:06]be something like, I'll say I have two daughters and I'll say, hey, will you take a lap around
[9:11]the block with me? Like, I would just, like, I just need some fresh air. Like, just getting outside
[9:15]I'll feel better. I bet you'll feel better. Like, would you do that with me? So something like that.
[9:19]Or I, for me, walking actually is a really a big relief. Or I think that around our house is
[9:26]actually to be like, to goof a lot, you know, and to sort of play in like a goofy space. And so
[9:31]I would say playing with some version, at least, and I think every family's got their own,
[9:36]you know, atmosphere and how they do it. But we'll have a kind of funny story actually.
[9:40]Okay. About my kids being playful with me and me being playful with them. It involves saying
[9:46]the word ass. So I hope that's okay on your podcast. Okay. That's clear. Okay. So I had been speaking
[9:53]at a school in Columbus, Ohio. And there was a, the, the, had a school was a lovely guy and big talk guy,
[9:59]big talk guy.
[10:00]And somehow we got talking about our dream cars.
[10:03]And he told me the story that I thought was really funny,
[10:05]where he said that he'd always wanted a mini Fiat.
[10:08]And then the day of finally came where he could get a mini Fiat.
[10:10]And he picked it out of the dealer, and his wife came down.
[10:12]And his wife looked at this big tall guy standing next to this mini Fiat.
[10:15]And his wife said to him, you are a grown ass man.
[10:19]I can't just crack me up so much.
[10:20]So he's like, so I've got this SUV, I don't even want.
[10:23]So I thought this was so funny.
[10:24]And I came home and I told my two daughters who were nine and 16.
[10:27]And they thought it was so funny.
[10:29]And then a few weeks after that, I needed to give a talk.
[10:33]I live in Chicago, Ohio.
[10:34]I needed to give a talk.
[10:35]I got to give a talk at Metro Health in Cleveland, which
[10:38]is one of our hospitals that does some of the heaviest lifting
[10:41]on caring for the poorest members of our community.
[10:44]And it's in a very complex and tangly neighborhood to get to.
[10:48]And I get lost extremely easily.
[10:51]And my daughter's like, oh, you guys have to go down to Metro.
[10:54]I'm afraid I'm going to get lost.
[10:56]I just, this is a moment when maybe I'll take an Uber just
[10:58]so I don't have to deal with it.
[10:59]And my nine-year-old goes, you are a grown-ass woman.
[11:03]You need to just get yourself down to Metro.
[11:06]And then that kind of playful, like, you know,
[11:11]get over yourself, you know, kind of thing.
[11:12]And it just cracked me up so much.
[11:14]And it actually really helped.
[11:15]It was really funny.
[11:16]And so that's sort of now this running joke in the family.
[11:20]And it's not always going to be the right thing
[11:21]at the right time.
[11:22]But that's an example of where, you know, if a kid is really
[11:26]feeling, you know, everyone's like, wow, we'll bust out.
[11:28]Like, hey, you're a grown-ass woman.
[11:30]Why don't you just deal with that test, you know?
[11:32]And so every family is going to find their own formula.
[11:36]But it's OK to have things be hard.
[11:39]We can't be frightened of those things
[11:40]if we don't want our kids to be frightened of them.
[11:43]I love that.
[11:45]I'm going to try to use that in a appropriate way.
[11:48]We're not.
[11:48]We're not.
[11:49]Or maybe not.
[11:50]I loved in the book how you drew attention
[11:52]to the word stinks and handle.
[11:54]And how you say those more often than not,
[11:56]when talking to teen girls.
[11:58]And tell me how you use them and how they've been so helpful to you.
[12:01]So much of caring for teenagers, whether it's
[12:05]at home or in a practice, like I do,
[12:09]is they just complain about stuff.
[12:11]You know, they just think that a lot of complaints, you know?
[12:13]And they're unhappy about a lot of things.
[12:16]And I generally think they're almost 100% accurate
[12:20]about what they find to be, not the way they wish it were.
[12:23]And maybe not even as it should be.
[12:26]And one thing that I notice is a common misstep,
[12:30]and I make this constantly in my own life,
[12:32]is that when teenagers complained to us,
[12:34]we're pretty quick to rush in with suggestions and solutions.
[12:37]And then we're shocked, shocked,
[12:39]when they don't seem to want to take our advice.
[12:41]So I have found that the word stinks is my placeholder.
[12:46]Because what it reminds me of is that empathy
[12:49]is intensely therapeutic.
[12:52]And we blow right past it, forget its utility,
[12:57]and then jump in with ideas,
[12:58]which most teenagers don't want, or don't want right away.
[13:01]And so for me, when a teenager is unloading,
[13:05]whatever the miseries are of the day,
[13:07]I listen really intently.
[13:09]I mean, I'm not just wait until they stop talking.
[13:10]And then I say, hey, that stinks.
[13:13]Like that, that one stinks.
[13:15]And there's something so economic about the word,
[13:17]because it's really, it's just got enough of a point
[13:20]on it that they feel like you heard them.
[13:24]And it also has a little bit of like,
[13:26]but it's within the realm of stuff that happens, right?
[13:30]Not great, but in the realm of stuff
[13:31]that kind of happens if you leave the house.
[13:33]And then after we've sat with it,
[13:36]I'll say, I think it's something you can handle.
[13:38]And for me, handle is this critical word
[13:43]around managing stress and anxiety,
[13:45]because when teenagers are upset,
[13:47]the world for them can suddenly divide into two categories.
[13:51]Stuff they like, and stuff they consider a crisis.
[13:55]And the role of adults is to constantly reintroduce
[13:57]the enormous middle category that takes up most of life,
[14:00]which is like stuff we need, or like,
[14:02]nor is a crisis, it's just this stuff we handle.
[14:05]And so I feel like it's my way
[14:07]of trying to reintroduce this idea of,
[14:09]you don't have to like it,
[14:10]nor does anybody have to step in.
[14:12]This is in the handle category.
[14:14]And I don't like manage,
[14:18]because manage feels like you're still under it a little bit.
[14:21]And for me, handle is you're a grown ass woman,
[14:24]like you can, you can get in there and deal with this,
[14:28]while not liking it at all.
[14:31]And so when I was in my training,
[14:33]I had this really fabulous and also kind of mean supervisor.
[14:36]And she would say to me,
[14:38]when I was learning how to take care of patients,
[14:40]she would say, you get eight words, eight words per utterance,
[14:43]like no more.
[14:44]And that's really hard to do,
[14:46]but the discipline that one gains is you realize,
[14:49]if you're going on and on, like you've already lost the person.
[14:52]And so when psychologists are doing our best work,
[14:55]we're very surgical in our use of language.
[14:59]We just go right for it quickly and directly
[15:02]and right to the heart of it if we can.
[15:03]And so for me, Stinks and Handle
[15:06]are my really solid old stand-by's on that.
[15:09]Eight words.
[15:10]Yeah, yeah, that's really tough.
[15:13]It is.
[15:14]Wait, how many was that?
[15:15]Eight words, that's really tough.
[15:16]That was five.
[15:17]Yeah, but every time I've ever,
[15:20]I mean, in 25 years of practicing,
[15:22]every time I really felt like I helped someone really shift,
[15:25]it was a sentence that maybe we built up two over months.
[15:29]But I think about a young woman who was having a hard time
[15:33]leaving a job that had been given to her at a time
[15:35]when she didn't really deserve it and she knew it.
[15:37]And then she went in and just did a phenomenal job,
[15:41]actually turned a whole group around.
[15:43]And she was feeling incredibly bad about leaving.
[15:47]And I remember I said to her,
[15:49]they saved you before you saved them.
[15:51]Then I don't know how many words that is.
[15:53]But it was just enough to, I think it's seven.
[15:56]Oh, okay, that's pretty good.
[15:58]To let us pivot into something else.
[16:00]And if you think about that versus if I were like,
[16:02]well, you know what happened?
[16:03]Look, first you got there and you were feeling guilty.
[16:05]And so now you're not feeling guilty.
[16:07]So then, you know, you're already deep in the weeds.
[16:11]You're in the head, not in the heart.
[16:12]So it actually, it's not like everything now,
[16:15]I say it's eight words, you know, I'm lazier
[16:17]and it's a long right practice.
[16:20]But if I really want to get somewhere fewer words
[16:23]would better.
[16:24]It's true.
[16:25]Because when you say like, oh, you know what advice sounds
[16:26]like, you never regurgitate like lots and lots of things.
[16:30]You know what they say?
[16:30]This is the one thing, like the highlight quote
[16:32]or top line.
[16:34]Yeah.
[16:35]What are some other things you learned to be great to come with?
[16:38]Oh, man, mostly good psychologists in my book
[16:41]are intensely humble, that it's a funny thing in training
[16:46]where we get these grad students and we pour into their head
[16:50]all this theory and we encourage them to make all this
[16:53]inference about what's going on with people.
[16:55]And then the work of actually practicing over years
[16:58]is to become more and more agnostic and more and more clear
[17:04]in one's mind that you have no idea what anyone else's
[17:07]experiences unless they tell you their experience
[17:10]and even what they're telling you may not be.
[17:12]Maybe their belief about what happened may not even
[17:14]be an accurate accounting.
[17:16]But I would say any good clinician who's
[17:19]been practicing over time just becomes a listener
[17:23]and then really waits for data to line up and line up
[17:29]and line up and then makes conjectures with total humility
[17:35]about the likelihood that it may not be accurate.
[17:37]Like you just feel your way step by step.
[17:39]But there's no formula.
[17:40]There's here's my next best guess about what
[17:43]might be helpful.
[17:44]Let's try it out and see if it lands.
[17:45]And if it doesn't land, I'm on the wrong path.
[17:47]We'll find another.
[17:48]So I think in some ways, the longer you've
[17:50]practiced, the more reserved and neutral you get.
[17:54]And at the same time, much better is a clinician
[17:57]than when I was active and felt I knew what I was talking
[17:59]about.
[18:03]Isn't that one of the things when you get older,
[18:05]all you do is realize that little you actually know?
[18:07]It's the same thing, right?
[18:08]And there's just a much better clinician where you're like,
[18:10]I don't know, you tell me your story, right?
[18:12]But then you think, like, gosh, isn't that a rare gift, right?
[18:15]I mean, that's like, that would be psychotherapy at its best.
[18:17]Like, hey, I want to hear your story.
[18:19]And I come to it without any skin in the game.
[18:21]And now, you know, I've got no angle here.
[18:24]Like, let's figure out your story and let's
[18:25]figure out where you're stuck.
[18:26]And then I'll watch while you figure out how to get on stock.
[18:29]I mean, that it doesn't look like much,
[18:31]but it's actually a very rare way to be with people.
[18:34]I want that job.
[18:35]I love my job.
[18:37]And the reason I love my job is I will do it.
[18:41]I cannot imagine retiring.
[18:42]I will learn something every day.
[18:45]I will never achieve mastery.
[18:47]And that for me, I think I'm kind of a learning addict.
[18:50]And so this idea, like, people, like, trying to learn people.
[18:55]Like, it's got no bottom, right?
[18:57]Which is just perfect for me.
[18:59]Huh, it's so cool.
[19:01]I love that.
[19:01]I was interested, though, in the book,
[19:02]you do point out that at times you
[19:04]can be a very not-nice person.
[19:06]I am shocked.
[19:07]I was shocked even reading it, because I was like,
[19:08]she seems pretty nice.
[19:09]I don't know her yet, but I know that I see you.
[19:11]You seem even more nice than I am.
[19:13]So what do you mean by that?
[19:15]Like, what is your bad day?
[19:17]Oh, look like.
[19:18]Like, how bad do you get?
[19:20]Oh, I think mostly, I feel like, in all honesty,
[19:23]we should like ask my family, right?
[19:25]Because I can give you my experience.
[19:26]I'll call them next.
[19:26]You call them next.
[19:27]I think mostly I have a very, very strong sense of,
[19:32]like, there's ways to people treat each other.
[19:34]You know, in our house, we're very, you know, no one
[19:37]mistreats anyone that is out of the bounds.
[19:39]And I would like to think I don't ever do that anywhere else
[19:42]in my life.
[19:44]I think when I said that in the book,
[19:45]it's that, I mean, I also have strong opinions.
[19:48]You know, I know what fits for me and what doesn't.
[19:50]And my instincts are my best friends.
[19:53]And if they don't like something,
[19:55]they don't like something, there's nothing I can do about it.
[19:57]So I think it's more that I can be, that's how bad.
[20:00]Well, it might come off as cynical, but not accepting of everything that comes my way,
[20:04]and not even accepting of some things that I feel people around me might be accepting of.
[20:08]I'm trying to think of a good example.
[20:10]I mean, right now it's the wellness industry, like I'm really not loving the wellness
[20:14]industry right now.
[20:16]And I'm all for well-being, and I like the idea of wellness.
[20:19]I am really not loving the kind of monetization of well-being, the idea that it's acquired
[20:26]through the use of particular products, particular oils, particular weighted blankets,
[20:30]particular apps, particular, I don't think people in the well-being industry are ill-intentioned,
[20:36]but I worry that if we can first sell the idea that everybody's supposed to be calm
[20:42]and relaxed all the time, which is not true, it's grossly untrue, then the moment people
[20:50]don't feel common relaxed, which usually takes within like five minutes of waking,
[20:53]right?
[20:54]You can show up with a sale, like, oh, you don't feel common relaxed.
[20:57]Like, you know, here's this item, this product, like, to try to reestablish your somehow
[21:02]it went missing well-being, and this to me, I feel is really harmful.
[21:07]I actually feel like it's a pretty dangerous path, because there's no way to feel good
[21:12]all the time, and that's not no generation before this was ever seeking that.
[21:16]And so I think that's probably an example where I can have like a kind of hairy eyeball
[21:22]of that stuff that could come off as cynical or jaundiced, but I'd like to think it's
[21:27]all rooted in, I'm watching this not working for kids, I'm watching this back kids
[21:32]into corners, they do not belong in.
[21:35]And the way that I kind of test this and think I might be on the right path is, you know,
[21:40]I often speak to groups of students, and when I say, look, you're supposed to be stressed,
[21:43]schools really hard, and you're supposed to be anxious from time to time because it
[21:47]alerts you and something's wrong, they're overwhelming responses, they instantly feel
[21:52]so much better to hear that they're supposed to be stressed at times, and like, goodness,
[21:57]they're in seventh grade, like, of course it's exciting central, like, what else would
[22:00]it be?
[22:02]Then I think, okay, we cannot be selling you anything suggesting that you're not supposed
[22:07]to feel this way from time to time, if not awesome.
[22:10]Well, someone who has purchased more than one weighted blanket, I am a sucker for ourselves
[22:17]it.
[22:18]And so far, no effect other than perhaps filling up my biceps going into bed.
[22:22]And I'm sure it feels good, that's great, but is it going to cure your problems?
[22:25]No.
[22:26]And the way this is like a lighter, more lighthearted look at it, you know how teenage girls
[22:29]love those face masks, they're all into the face masks, oh yeah.
[22:32]So next time you encounter one, flip it over to the back and see what it says on the
[22:36]back.
[22:37]I mean, they promise like a life of bliss.
[22:38]I mean, it's really quite remarkable.
[22:40]And so then, you know, this is like the not-nice part of me.
[22:43]So then I'm in my grocery store and I see on the shelf a jar of naxima.
[22:47]So I pull it off and like, there, look, see, naxima promises nothing because these
[22:53]things do nothing.
[22:54]Right?
[22:55]Like, this is my kind of face cream.
[22:56]Like, it is telling the truth, you know, these face masks, they lie, they lie.
[22:59]So that's the darker cynical side of me.
[23:02]I love that.
[23:03]Can always trust naxima.
[23:06]You can.
[23:08]You mentioned in the book that girls with learning disorders have elevated levels of
[23:13]anxiety, which of course makes sense.
[23:14]Yeah.
[23:15]Is there anything you can do there, do you treat anxiety first, do you treat the learning
[23:19]disorder first?
[23:20]Or I would probably go after the learning disorder first.
[23:24]And I think if we zoom out for a minute, you know, the issue here is kids are in school
[23:27]all day.
[23:28]School is their world, school is their social life, it is their job, it is their universe.
[23:36]And if you happen to have a brain that was not designed to be taught the way most schools
[23:41]teach, that means you spend all day feeling like you're kind of knocking on the door
[23:48]of a room that everybody else is in.
[23:50]And I mean, just the psychological wear and tear of that is just hard to even think about
[23:56]really.
[23:57]And I'm always like blown away by kids with learning disorders who keep trying.
[24:01]I'm like, why would you even keep trying?
[24:02]Like, I would have given up years ago if I were you, right?
[24:05]And these earnest kiddos were just, you know, knocking and knocking on this door that just
[24:09]was not built, you know, to accommodate them.
[24:14]So I would say first, get them into the right setting or get them the supports that make
[24:20]their all day, every day, not feel so.
[24:23]I mean, frankly humiliating, I mean, that's the experience of kids.
[24:27]And then see what's left to address.
[24:29]We have an extraordinary school in our community, Lawrence School in the suburbs of Cleveland
[24:36]for kids with learning needs.
[24:37]And I mean, they save kids lives.
[24:39]They save kids lives.
[24:40]And I just feel like every community should have some schools like this and every kid
[24:45]should have asked us to schools that don't make them feel like a square peg always trying
[24:50]to get into a round hole.
[24:51]Okay, great.
[24:52]That would be amazing.
[24:53]Yeah.
[24:54]I'm powering.
[24:55]Amazing.
[24:56]So how do you deal with your own anxiety?
[24:57]Oh, you seem very calm to me, but no, I would say today, I get anxious.
[25:04]I think unless anxious over time, I think one of the strange benefits of my professional
[25:08]life is sometimes I take care of some pretty awful outcomes, you know, unexpected deaths,
[25:14]you know, kids get in kelding car accidents and then taking care of the people around
[25:17]that situation.
[25:20]That I think it's funny, one of my very close friends is a oncologist who deals with
[25:25]pretty crummy lukemias.
[25:26]And I think we like each other because our sense of what constitutes a crisis is pretty
[25:30]similar, like no one's mortally wounded or dying or dead.
[25:34]Okay, we can handle this, you know, and so I think there is something and I talk about
[25:37]this in under pressure that dealing with stressful circumstances really does build up your
[25:42]capacity or adjust your yardstick for what's worth getting, you know, kind of amplified
[25:48]about.
[25:49]But that does not mean that I walk through the world in his end state at all.
[25:52]I was given a big talk a couple weeks ago and it was different from the kind of talks
[25:56]I usually give and I found myself suddenly becoming incredibly panicked that my flight
[26:01]was not going to get there, you know, as it's supposed to and then trying to figure out
[26:05]if I could like arrange a backup flight that I could cancel and then I left my talk in
[26:08]the hotel room and had to like zip back to get it, you know, and I had time and I got
[26:11]there all very unlike me and I thought, I think I was a lot more anxious about that talk
[26:17]than I realized, but I did all of this without any awareness that it was probably about
[26:21]the talk.
[26:22]So, you know, I'm still learning myself all the time.
[26:25]What do you credit?
[26:26]You've been so successful with your practice in these books and all of it.
[26:30]Like, what do you think made you able to do this?
[26:33]Was it just your, I mean, I know obviously you're super bright, but is there anything
[26:37]like when you think about, I don't know, our own daughter is going off into the world
[26:41]and being able to internalize all of these coping skills and whatever, but then also being
[26:46]able to like pursue what they love and like achieve and help others.
[26:49]I don't know.
[26:50]But that's a really kind question.
[26:51]I mean, born on third base, you know, let's start there, right?
[26:57]You know, it was given a great education and had easy access to it and, you know, I was
[27:02]sort of raised in a setting that was loving and supportive and supportive of me.
[27:09]And then I would say, I had the benefit of very good training very early in my career.
[27:13]And I would say that as largely because I knew early on that I wanted to be a psychologist
[27:17]and so I was able to align things up to move myself towards the kind of training I had
[27:21]in mind.
[27:22]And so one of the nicest things that was said when untangled, my first commercial book
[27:27]sort of took off a friend of ours in our neighborhood, a British friend, or a friend Peter.
[27:32]He said, oh, Lisa, look at that, 25 years into your career.
[27:35]You're an overnight success and I really appreciated it because it's all I know.
[27:42]This is all I've ever done.
[27:43]And I mean, I signed up for interest like the second I got to college and we were talking
[27:49]about we both, you know, working at the Yale Child Study Center.
[27:52]I mean, I took myself down there as a sophomore and started researching for them.
[27:56]I was collecting data on teenagers as a teenager.
[27:59]I was, you know, I was interviewing adolescents in the community.
[28:03]And so I think what has happened in terms of the shift to a more public domain is that
[28:08]up to that point, I had probably spent just under 20 years teaching college classes, writing
[28:14]books on the academic side, practicing a lot, working with lots of families, consulting
[28:20]at a school in our community, Laurel School, and conducting research and reading research.
[28:25]And I think what happened is all of those experiences that I sort of maintained privately
[28:29]and quietly as lots of working psychologists do, they all just happened to intersect at
[28:34]a point that seemed to be of use to a broader audience.
[28:40]And that's I think what happened.
[28:42]You have, having gone through the writing process now, I know you've done a lot of academic
[28:46]work and also your other books.
[28:48]What advice would you have?
[28:49]Oh, it is a skill like any other.
[28:52]It is a skill like any other.
[28:53]I'm coming up on seven years of writing for The New York Times and I look back at my early
[28:57]columns and I'm like, oh gosh, like, I would not write it that way at all now.
[29:02]And I would just say I was a terrible writer coming out of high school and I was pretty
[29:06]coming all through college and got incrementally better in grad school.
[29:11]But it really didn't start to hit my stride on it until out of grad school, I co-authored
[29:17]a teaching book with a very dear colleague who also happens to be an English professor.
[29:22]And then I co-authored a textbook in abnormal psychology and my half of that textbook was
[29:26]800 pages long.
[29:28]And then we wrote twice.
[29:30]And I have a funny story about that actually.
[29:32]And that you get better.
[29:33]I mean, like, there's no way you don't, but the funniest thing so when we're writing the
[29:38]a textbook, you end up with all this manuscript all around the house.
[29:42]And so my older daughter is 16 and she was probably five or six when I was working on that
[29:47]book.
[29:48]And so I would carry with us everywhere we went stacks of paper and markers and she would
[29:53]just draw and draw and draw.
[29:54]Because I could just throw away recycled paper all day long because I had so much paper.
[29:57]And then occasionally she would do a really fabulous drawing.
[30:00]that I wanted to send to a grandparent.
[30:01]But I'd always had to flip it over
[30:03]because the book was an abnormal psych.
[30:04]So I'm like, God, I hope there's not like,
[30:05]parafilias, you know, perversions on the other side.
[30:08]Like we can't send a grandma to like, you know that like,
[30:11]you know, sexual disorders have to do.
[30:13]So I was like flipping the other side to see
[30:16]what my kid was doing her kid hard on.
[30:18]So I think that huge, the volume maybe,
[30:22]I mean, I still have it.
[30:23]I haven't gone through all the paper.
[30:25]That textbook required.
[30:27]So you have to go back just to see
[30:29]if you missed any art.
[30:30]Exactly, right?
[30:31]Especially now what you said isn't on the back
[30:33]of something x-rated.
[30:36]Well, thanks so much for coming on the show
[30:38]and sharing all your expertise.
[30:40]Thank you for what you do.
[30:41]What a valuable service.
[30:42]Oh, thank you.
[30:43]Thanks.
[30:44]You've been listening to moms and have time to read books
[30:46]with Zibi Owens.
[30:47]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter
[30:49]at zibiowans.com to get more updates about episodes
[30:53]like these and also lots of live events.
[30:55]Thanks so much for listening today.
[30:57]Again, please go check out WeFoundTime.com.
[31:00]WeFoundTime.com for this week's new five essays
[31:04]from authors who have been in the podcast
[31:07]and also go to goldbelly.com
[31:09]and order some Nini's treats, crumb kicks.
[31:12]They are so good and you will not regret it
[31:14]although your clothes might be a little tight next week.
[31:17]I hope you all have a great week.
[31:19]But bye, thanks.
[31:20]You can follow me on Instagram at moms don't have time
[31:23]to read books.
[31:24]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan,
[31:26]Textures Sound for the Sound Editing
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[31:30]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.
[31:32]Thanks for listening.
[31:33]You could always email me at zibiatzibiowans.com.