REAL Self-Care: Burnout Is Not Your Fault & the Way Out with Dr. Pooja Lakshmin
April 9, 2024
Glennon Doyle:
Well, loves, welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Today we’re going to prove to you that everything you know and we’ve been sold about self-care is horse shit. Okay? We are going to figure out why we have the wrong ideas about self-care, what we can do to replace those wrong ideas, and get some things in place that will really make us feel like we are caring for ourselves. Okay?
The person who’s going to help us do that, because we sure as hell know I am not going to lead us in that discussion, is Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, who is a board-certified psychiatrist, author, keynote speaker contributor to The New York Times. Her debut book, Real Self-Care (Crystals, Cleanses and Bubble Baths Not Included).
Abby Wambach:
So good. So good.
Glennon Doyle:
Don’t turn this off. You get to keep your crystals. Okay? So just stay with us. Real Self-Care is an NPR best book of 2023 and a national bestseller. Pooja serves as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at George Washington University School of Medicine and maintains an active private practice where she treats women struggling with burnout, perfectionism, disillusionment, as well as clinical conditions like depression, anxiety, and ADHD. You are in the right place. Pooja, thank you for being here.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Thank you so much for having me, both of you. I’m so excited to be here.
Abby Wambach:
How would you like us to refer to you?
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
You know what? Please call me Pooja.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
I like to be Pooja.
Abby Wambach:
Okay.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Great. Okay, so Pooja, let me tell you how I found you. My therapist sent me an interview that you had done. Okay? Yes, so I was on a therapy session, and I had spent a lot of time complaining to my therapist. I hold her responsible for all self-care problems because I feel like… I was talking to her about how I feel like self-care is like recycling. There are these huge forces and companies that are destroying our planet. And they could change, and our planet would not be destroyed. But because they don’t want to change, they instead create little programs for us like a triangle about recycling.
And then, I lay in bed feeling guilty that I didn’t put my glass bottle in the right bucket, and that’s why the planet is burning. There are forces and industries that are profiting off the planet’s demise. And the way they abdicate themselves of responsibility is by making it feel like it’s an individual problem. And I feel like that’s what self-care is. They say most of the world has support systems, and America has women. The fact that we’re all exhausted maybe is not because we’re not drinking enough green juice, it’s maybe because there are larger forces that are exhausting us. Is self-care like recycling, Pooja?
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yes, 100%. And I love that you were starting off this whole conversation with that metaphor because it’s the perfect metaphor. It’s the way in which all of the structures that we live in have exonerated themselves from responsibility and put everything onto the individual.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
The perfect example is the patient that comes in to see me, and she says, “Dr. Lakshmin, I’m stressed out. I’m burnt out. I’m not eating well. I’m not sleeping well. And I feel like it’s my fault because I have the meditation app.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
“I have the meditation app that I know I’m supposed to be using, but the last thing I want to do at the end of the day is meditate. All I can do is just binge-watch Netflix. That’s all my brain is capable of.” And I kind of feel like I’m constantly screaming at my patients like, “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.” One of the other things that I like to say is that you can’t meditate your way out of a 40-hour work week with no childcare. That’s not how wellness is supposed to work. And we live in a country where 30 million Americans don’t have health insurance. Good luck finding a therapist, right?
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, my gosh.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, my God.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Nobody is taking new patients.
Abby Wambach:
It’s impossible right now.
Glennon Doyle:
We experienced that recently.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
It’s so hard. If you’re even lucky enough to have insurance that will reimburse you. And one out of four workers can’t even take a paid sick day, right? It’s just outrageous. We don’t have paid parental leave. And so, the fact that we’re kind of told, especially as women, “Oh, they’re there. Here’s some essential oils. Take a bath. You’re fine.” I mean, it’s condescending at best.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
And at worst, it’s manipulative and predatory.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Thank you for saying that. It is condescending at best. You’re a woman listening. You’re taking care of your parents. You’re taking care of your kids. You don’t have leave. You are carrying the mental load of your family. And you’re laying in bed. And you’re like, “Why am I so tired?” And then, you beat yourself up because, well, it’s probably because I didn’t make it to yoga today.
Abby Wambach:
Yep.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Right, right.
Glennon Doyle:
Because that’s what you’re being told. And by the way, all of these things that we’re being told will make us feel better also cost money.
Abby Wambach:
Yep.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yep.
Glennon Doyle:
So there’s an industry created. What really most people need is some financial help. Instead, they end up buying more things to get the peace. So tell us, what is faux self-care? Let’s just frame it. What are the things we have been told we have to do that will be called self-care, when in fact maybe we need to say not that.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yes. Before we go there-
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
I want to take a pit stop though.
Glennon Doyle:
Please.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
And just give a shout-out to sort of the lineage of self-care and the lineage of what I’m calling real self-care. When I was writing the book, I was doing research on this term, and trying to figure out what is the academic basis. And it’s actually really interesting because there’s two lineages. One is the social justice movement. So Black, queer thinkers like Audre Lorde, bell hooks, who in the 1950s and 1960s really put this on the map in particular for marginalized communities that were… Audre Lorde said, “Self-care is self-preservation.” And that takes on a very specific meaning, especially if you’re a Black person or a queer person living in a world that is actively trying to kill you. That means something different.
And this part was really fascinating to me. The other lineage or place that self-care was used was actually in psychiatry, shockingly. In the 1950s, psychiatrists started using the word unlocked inpatient units for the decisions that patients, involuntary patients, could make in their lives while they were on the units. So picking out your clothes. What are you going to eat? What exercise are you going to do? And I just thought that was so fascinating because on both sides, if we get back to what is real self-care, it’s about even in this world that is terrible, that is stacking so much against us where your choices are limited, what is the kernel of agency that you have?
Glennon Doyle:
That’s what it is agency. Because when I read that in your book, I was like, okay, so I was in a mental hospital for a while. And when people started talking about self-care in the zeitgeist, I’ve told Abby, “I know that. I did that.” I was in a place where each morning they taught us, “Okay, let’s decide what you want to eat. Let’s decide what you’re going to put on your body. Let’s think about your feelings. Point to this thing, how do you feel? What are we going to do about it?” It is how to human.
Abby Wambach:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yes, yes.
Glennon Doyle:
And in the real world, we’re not taught how to human. We’re taught how to adult.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
They don’t want us to human. They don’t want us to human.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
If we human, we would slow down. We would stop being so productive.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
We would stop buying stuff.
Glennon Doyle:
We would stop buying stuff. So it’s not like it’s just missing from the culture. It’s actually purposefully not taught. So okay, the origins of self-care were psychiatry. And then, Audre Lorde, bell hooks. The idea of caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. So these very important self-preservation human ideas are then capitalism comes in. So how would Audre Lorde feel now?
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yay, capitalism.
Glennon Doyle:
If Audre Lorde was like, “Oh, don’t worry. Here, we have all these crystals and bubble baths.” She’d be like, “What the… How did that happen?” Right?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, so then what happens?
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
So now we’re here, right? Where it’s like Instagram, and it’s like the juice cleanses, and the essential oils, and the bubble baths. And so, I wanted to break this down into two buckets.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
And I call it faux self-care, which is the juice cleanses, the bubble bath, also the yoga, and the meditation. And before anybody comes at me, we’re going to talk about it. It’s not that those things are bad.
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
We’re going to talk about it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Right? I call those faux. And I say faux because it’s coming from the outside. It’s something that you have to do. It’s another thing on your to-do list, right?
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
So it’s a product, it’s a service, it’s something that’s prescribed. You listen to a podcast, and they’re like, “Hey, why don’t you try this bullet journal?” And you kind of feel like, “Oh, okay, let me just do the bullet journal.” And then, everything will feel okay, right?
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
And the thing is, with the faux self-care, if you have the resources, right? This all takes money. It works for a little bit. It’s not like it’s nothing. It does work for a little bit. But then once life gets busy, it kind of fall off, and then it doesn’t help anymore. The other thing about faux self-care is that it doesn’t do anything, not only to change the systems like the larger structures, it also doesn’t do anything to change the dynamics in your relationships, like with your partner, or with your kids, or the people that you take care of. It keeps things static.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Whereas my thesis, what I’m saying real self-care is actually an internal decision-making process that’s threaded through all of these decisions in your life, the little decisions and the big decisions. And it comes from you. Only you know what it is. And we’ll go through the principles, boundaries, compassion, values, and power.
It’s not prescribed from the outside. It has to come from you. It’s different for everybody. It also changes in different seasons of your life. What worked for you in your 20s is not going to work for you in your 40s, in your 50s, and it always shifts the dynamics of power in your relationships.
And then, that has the potential, not always, but it does have the potential to be a seed that can shift larger systems, like in your workplace and bigger structures. There’s one other piece here that I want to mention. I know this is a little bit heady. That’s the other thing. This is harder. This is harder than doing a podcast.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
This is why everybody goes towards faux self-care because this one is harder.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
The one you’re talking about.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yes, yes.
Abby Wambach:
Yep.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
So I want to kind of break it down from a psychological place, as a psychiatrist. We can think of faux self-care as tools, right? A specific tool that helps you for a very specific problem. Running helps me feel more energy. Yoga helps me feel more flexible, right? It’s a very specific tool that you use for a circumscribed problem. It’s not bad, right? But it’s a tool.
Whereas, real self-care is principles, and principles are nonspecific. They’re timeless. They are a way of thinking and looking at the world. So boundaries, compassion, values, power. That’s what real self-care is. And that’s why we feel so bogged down, not only because of all of the capitalism selling us more and more stuff ad nauseam. But also, because we keep trying to Band-Aid ourselves with these tools.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
And we’re not doing that inner work to understand what we actually need. I’ll give one more example here. And I think hopefully this will really kind of make it crystal clear. So imagine the person that goes to a yoga class. And I use yoga because I feel like when we think about wellness and self-care, everyone’s like, “Well, just do some yoga.”
Somebody goes to yoga class, and they spend the whole time in yoga just worried that they’re not wearing the right Lululemon leggings. They don’t have the right mat. The person next to them can hold a headstand and they can’t do crow pose. And they’re just like, “Oh, my gosh.” They do yoga, but they feel worse at the end of the class than they did in the beginning.
Abby Wambach:
This is me. This is totally me.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
No. No, Abby, it’s not you.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
But imagine somebody else goes to yoga, and they have had a hard conversation with their partner, and they’ve said, “Hey, you know what? Hon, Wednesday nights, I want you to do bedtime because I know that I’m just such a better parent if I go to yoga on Wednesday nights.” And they’ve talked about the mental load and they’ve been really kind of having those hard conversations about the division of labor. And they’re compassionate with themselves in yoga. They’re not beating themselves up. They’re okay with where they are, where their body is. They’ve named values. They understand like, “Okay, what does yoga actually do for me?”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
It makes me feel connected to my body. Or maybe for them, it’s like, “When I go to yoga, I feel like I’m part of a community.” It’s different values for everybody. And then, they understand that this is you grabbing back power from these oppressive systems.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
That person actually takes in the medicine of yoga. That person is actually there receiving the self-care in that class. But on paper, both of those people went to yoga, right?
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
So it’s not about the thing. It’s actually about all of this internal stuff that you do to get to the thing.
Abby Wambach:
That’s so good.
Glennon Doyle:
Because if that person, if her principle was, I need alone time. I need to pass off responsibility. I need an hour of the day to whatever. It wouldn’t matter what was happening in that hour as long as whatever she felt like doing in that hour honored that principle. So it’s not about the yoga, it’s about the principle that drives you to yoga.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
And is it also like we use these things, we use these tools as breaks from our life, from our shitty lives. What real self-care is making the actual life less shitty, so that you don’t need these constant escapes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yes. And the caveat that I would say or the reframe that I would have is that we all need breaks. We all need the escape, right? So it’s not that it’s bad or wrong, it’s that what I’m asking folks to do is take a step back, and reflect on the things, and reflect on what it’s bringing to your life.
Abby Wambach:
I don’t know if you know, but I used to play soccer. And-
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
No, I didn’t know.
Abby Wambach:
And so, I’ve kind of gone through this really interesting process over the last seven or eight years since I’ve retired where I went from… There was principles around why I was playing. But as an athlete ages, you start to lose a little bit like, “What am I doing? Why am I doing this?” Thousands and thousands of practice. So it became this external force kind of pushing me to do these things that felt out of alignment with my values, right?
And so, then I retired, and I had to completely rewrite and figure out how to have this come from inside of me. The first couple of years, I didn’t do any self-care, actually, because I just needed a full reset. And then the last couple of years, I’ve been learning this exact idea of figuring out what really I want. So I was the kind of person that just used all the methods. Give me every tool, and I will do it.
I’m very disciplined when it comes to stuff and I will do it to a fault. But I wasn’t reaping the kind of rewards that I thought I was supposed to. And so now, I think, okay. And there are things that I do on a daily basis that I don’t feel motivated to do, but it’s in line with my values. And doing that, it becomes self-care. So going to the gym five days a week. Really, it’s hard for me. But it really is about maintaining my health, all of the things that come from working out.
Glennon Doyle:
So you’re not doing it in a punishing way.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
When we say, and I believe you about the no bubble baths, no crystals included. What I would say about that is… Because my therapist was afraid to send me this interview because she was like, “Just keep going. I know you love your baths. I know you love your baths and your yoga.” Okay. Is it possible that the bath, the quiet time, the candles, all those things are some people’s only time where they give themselves the moment to excuse themselves from the chaos of their families, of the world, and just sit quietly?
Because in order to figure out what we need, what boundaries do we need? Where do we need to have self-compassion? We actually need the stopping moments. Most of us are morning to night going, going, going, especially women, that are those things maybe women know it’s not really about the freaking candle like, “I don’t need this $27 candle.” But maybe it’s the signal to myself, and to my family, or to whomever that this is my quiet time with myself, and that is a value.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yeah, absolutely. That’s why I don’t think that it’s either/or necessarily because… Especially when you’re a caregiver, the demands are so high and loud that even to set that boundary to take the bath, or to go on a walk, or whatever it is, that is you pushing back. I guess what I’m saying is that if you don’t do that inner work of the boundaries, the compassion, the values, the power, and understand what it means for you, then it’s just a Band-Aid.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Because we all know that person that kind of just stays in that loop.
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Right? And they do the bath, but then they’re still just rageful at their partner, and cranky with their kids, right? And that they’re stuck in that cycle. And the thing is that in order to see that, in order to do this real self-care work, you have to be able to remove yourself from the chaos and the fight or flight that you’re living in.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Currently.
Abby Wambach:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Because really it’s about decision making and how you spend your time. And when you’re in it, you can’t see because you can’t really feel, right? Because you’re just like that. And so, you need to use those moments of escape. They are escape. Yes. And what do you do with that escape? Are you just kind of like scrolling Instagram? And I say this with full disclosure of like, yeah, I have plenty of nights where I sit on the couch and I’m just scrolling Instagram. That’s all I can bring myself to do. And that’s okay, right? This isn’t meant to be punitive or-
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
… shaming. It’s more like to start a new type of conversation with yourself, so you can get to the next place.
Glennon Doyle:
Let’s go to the next place. And also, I just want to say to everyone listening that I think that we can all be forgiven for bowing to the God of wellness because it’s hard to buy all this shit and add all these things to our day, but it’s not as hard as actually looking at our lives. So as someone who is extremely cult susceptible, that’s one of my major traits, I am constantly looking outside of myself for somebody to tell me how the hell to make any of this… How to feel better, how to make any of this easier, how to do life right.
And so, it does not surprise me about myself that I would accidentally now find myself in a wellness cult. Okay? So if that is you, and you’re just realizing right now, “Maybe I’m not going to green juice my way to peace.” And so, maybe we have to do the impossible thing, which is be really still and look at how we’re living our lives, even in the midst of this shit show world, and where we can find some agency. So let’s start talking about the four principles of real self-care. What’s the first one?
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yes, so the first principle is boundaries.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, God. Is there an easier one to start with?
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
I know. I know.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
I’m so sorry.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Stay with me because my take on boundaries is a little bit different.
Abby Wambach:
I love it. Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
… than what folks might’ve heard before. So I had this aha moment. This was back in 2016. I just graduated my psychiatry residency, and got my dream job on the faculty at GW in George Washington University in DC. And my mentor, she took me out for lunch, and she was like, “Pooja, I have a piece of advice for you.” And I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and thought she was going to give me some magic secret about dosing SSRIs, or you know?
And instead she was like, “Pooja, you don’t need to answer your phone. You can let it go to voicemail. Listen to what they want, decide, and then call them back.” And that was mind-boggling to me at the time because I had just gone through medical school and residency, when in those days you had pagers where the pager would go off, and you would have this like PTSD response, and call back right away. And I was like, “Oh, the boundary is the pause.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
And then, you can say yes, you can say no, or you can negotiate.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
The pause is the boundary. Yes, no, or negotiate. Because the truth is that no always has a cost. It always has a cost, whether it’s emotional, financial, interpersonal. It always has a cost. And so, no is not always accessible. But the pause, you can do the pause. And so, for me it was like, “Oh, maybe it’s the front desk. And they have some paperwork for me to sign.”
And I can say, “Oh, I’ll come around at the end of the day.” But maybe it’s a patient, and I know that her ADHD is so bad that if she misses her Adderall for one day, she literally might get fired or she might get into a car accident. Okay, I’m going to call that in for her, right? You get to decide and respond.
And let’s say in the situation that you’re in, you can’t say no, for whatever reason. Maybe it’s financial, or maybe you do the calculus, you can’t say no. Then, you bookmark for yourself. You say, “Okay, one year from now, I want to be able to be closer to saying no.” And I really like this because, one, we don’t pretend that no is free.
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
It’s not free. But you know, you’re actually looking at the cost. You’re taking back your agency.
Abby Wambach:
Mm-hmm.
Glennon Doyle:
The pause is the agency.
Abby Wambach:
I love this. I’m so bad at setting strong, serious boundaries with relationships and people, that when you just said, you might not be able to say no because it has a cost. And then, you can bookmark it for a year later to be like, “I want to be closer to being able to say no next time.” That is fucking incredible. That just alleviated so much in my body. Whoa. Okay, because you don’t have to be the best boundary setter right this second. You can be working towards it, Abby.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, that’s great.
Abby Wambach:
Great. Okay.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, so when we respond quickly, when we respond immediately… First of all, there’s a power dynamic. The other person has just made a request. We are in a powerless position. We are just trying to… Then, all of our conditioning kicks in. Our people pleasing, our fear. We have no agency. We are knee-jerk responding. That’s why later, we get off the phone, and we’re like, “Why did I say that?” Because there’s a pause. There’s always a pause. It’s just often after we’ve responded the way we don’t want to.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
We’re just moving the pause into the middle. And then, you can gather. You can remember your values in that pause. Creativity enters into that pause because you can think of different ways to respond that honor both of you.
Abby Wambach:
So good. Can you talk to us a little bit about the cognitive diffusion?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Abby Wambach:
That’s just happened to me. I just want you to explain that a little bit before I tell you my story around it.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yes, yes. So usually for most of my patients, once you pause, you immediately, afterwards, after you hang up the phone, you start to feel guilty. So cognitive diffusion is a technique from acceptance and commitment therapy act for short that is a tool to work with your mind, right? To help you deal with hard feelings. Feelings that feel bad. So whether it’s like guilt, sadness, anger. And the whole concept is that we are not our thoughts. That your thoughts exist in your mind, but that your mind is actually separate from your thoughts.
So there’s two kind of ways that I explain this to patients, and I talk about this. One metaphor is the sushi train metaphor. This isn’t mine. This comes from acceptance and commitment therapy. So it’s sort of like imagine you’re at one of those sushi restaurants, the type where the sushi comes off the conveyor belt, and it’s kind of going around in a circle. So there’s the chef in the middle. So in this metaphor, the chef is your brain, and the plates of sushi are your thoughts, your feelings, your memories, your desires, your ideas.
And they’re just rolling around. They’re rolling through your mind. And we all know with sushi, there are some things that are really appetizing. For me, it’s like spicy tuna roll. I love spicy tuna rolls. Every time I see, I’m like, “Yes, please.” And then, other things that are kind of gross or scary. I really don’t like shrimp that have the head on. And so naturally as humans, we want to push away from the hard aversive things. And the things that look appetizing, we want to gobble them up.
And so, cognitive diffusion says, “No, don’t push it away. Don’t gobble it up. Just let it move. Just let it move. Just let it go.” And again, it creates distance. You are not your thoughts, it’s just your thoughts are moving through. The place that I see this come up so often is with feelings like guilt and anger. And the other way that I like to talk about it is, especially with guilt, because my kind of conceptualization about guilt is that it’s not actually ours. It’s coming from the toxic systems.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Like all the things we talked about. Capitalism, white supremacy.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Colonialism. So the guilt lives outside of us. Or it’s coming from outside because we’re all sold to these completely contradictory expectations, but we internalize it and make ourselves the bad guy. So whenever you feel guilt, imagine it as a faulty check engine light on your car dashboard. So you know how you take your car to get service, and the oil change, everything’s good. And then, all of a sudden there’s the light that’s flashing.
Abby Wambach:
I hate that light so much.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
It doesn’t really give you any meaningful information.
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
It doesn’t tell you anything. It’s just there. It’s going off. So you can just let it be in the background. Guilt doesn’t need to be your moral compass.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Okay. So we talked about this recently about there’s two kinds of guilt. And one of them is you did something wrong and something against your values. That’s a good kind of guilt. You’re like, “Oh, this feels bad because it went against my values.” There’s another kind of guilt where you went with your values, but you went against the cultural value. So I said no to that PTA meeting.
Actually, with my values I know I need quiet time tonight. I know I don’t want to be involved in all of the things. I know blah, blah. But I feel that check that light anyway, because I have gone against the cultural expectation that I will be everything, be everywhere, do everything. It’s a good guilt, but it comes from the discomfort of rejecting a cultural idea that’s been placed on me. So it’s like a growing pain kind of guilt.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yes. Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Right? It’s a good, good, good guilt.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
I love that. It’s a growing pain kind of guilt. Yes. And if you’ve never done it before, it will be really loud. It’ll make you feel nauseous. You’ll want to throw up. You’ll hate it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Yes. So you talk about this kind though because… Correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like there was a place in the book where you were talking about boundaries in a brand new way that I hadn’t heard of before where you said, “If you say no…” Okay, I’m making this example up. Your mother-in-law calls. Come over. You did not answer the phone. You’re listening to this voicemail. Okay? Yes is a tool. No is a tool. But a value is, I actually take a pause in between.
So it’s not, I always say yes or I always say no. My value is, I take a minute. I take a pause. So you have taken a pause, you call back, and you say, “I can’t come.” Great. You did your boundary. What if you think about it all night, and you feel so guilty, but also you’re mad at your mother-in-law and your brain for even putting you in this situation, and you don’t actually pay attention to your life for the whole night because you’re gone in this guilt spiral? Is that a good holding of a boundary, Pooja?
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
So couple thoughts, couple thoughts there. The first thing that I will say is when you set boundaries, there’s two processes going on. There’s the very tactical, operational, communicating the boundary, and figuring out for you, is it better with this person over text message? Maybe it shouldn’t be a phone call. Maybe it needs to be in person, or email, right? All of that. But then, the other process that’s going on is the feelings part. And that’s what you’re describing, the feelings of guilt, of frustration, of anger. And the thing is, the person that you’re setting the boundary with cannot take care of your feelings about setting the boundary.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
You need a third-party, whether it’s a friend, a coach, a therapist. You need to take those feelings somewhere else.
Glennon Doyle:
Cool.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
A journal, right?
Glennon Doyle:
A journal.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
You can’t expect the person that you’ve told no to, to then come back, and make you feel better. And when you find yourself in that place where you’re kind of obsessing, and ruminating, and if it’s really impacting your quality of life or your ability to function, that’s one of the places where in the book I say it. When to seek professional help.
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
When to talk to a professional, right? Those are the types of things that therapy can be really helpful for, to untangle all those pieces.
Glennon Doyle:
Cool.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
But I would say that for most folks, if you haven’t set these boundaries before, we can’t sugarcoat it. It’s hard. But I like what you said, Glennon, about growing pain because it’s the type of work, it’s the type of hard that is worth doing.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
I just was speaking to a group of students in grad school, and I was like, “Learning to set boundaries actually is just as important as the next board exam or the grades that you get in the next class.” It’s a life skill that should be taught. And again, going back to what we were talking about in the beginning of the conversation. Capitalism, it’s not taught.
Glennon Doyle:
Why would they want to teach that?
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
For a reason.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, why the hell would they want to teach boundaries to a bunch of women? That’s a last thing. Also, if you are someone who’s just starting this, it might be an interesting thing. You said working out after the boundary because the feelings come. The hard part about boundaries is not setting them. It’s the withstanding the discomfort after the boundary is set. That’s what I have found.
You could deal with those feelings by writing down those feelings and trying to figure out whether they are a result of having abandoned yourself and your own value or having abandoned a cultural mandate that you are trying to abandon. I mean, you could figure that out for yourself in a journal. And then, try to grow that muscle, that is the one that is withstanding the discomfort of abandoning a cultural idea. You really could figure out what the guilt is coming from A or B, right?
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Correct. And I think with that, I love making little notes on my phone using the Notes App and kind of keeping a log of these types of situations, so that you remember. Because our brains always forget, right? We’re just moving from the next thing to the next.
Glennon Doyle:
A hundred percent.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
So if you write down in your Notes App, “Oh, that time when I said no to making cupcakes for my kids’ school, I felt like this. And then two days later, I felt like that.” Right? That’s a nice reminder for yourself for the next time something else comes up and you’re wanting to push back against the social expectations. You can remember, “Hey, I’ve done this before, and it felt bad that last time. But then after a couple of days, it felt a little bit better.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
And that’s how you train yourself, right? Because it really is. It’s a type of training. It’s a type of working out.
Glennon Doyle:
Do we make our boundaries before we decide what our values are though? Because don’t you have to figure out what your values are before you-
Abby Wambach:
To be able to establish a boundary.
Glennon Doyle:
… know what boundaries go with your values.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yeah, let’s dive into values.
Glennon Doyle:
Perfect.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Because I think values actually is the hardest one, and that’s why it’s in the middle. Because first, you have to do the boundaries to kind of pull back space. Then, you have to work on compassion, so that you talk to yourself a little bit better. And then, it’s the values.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
So one of the things that I’ve found is the way that people talk about values actually isn’t totally accurate. Because when I ask people or patients, “What are your values?” Well, sometimes people just get really mad at me, because they’re just like, “Pooja, I don’t have time. I have to figure out what’s for dinner.” Who has time to sit around and think about their values, right?
Glennon Doyle:
Good point. That’s why you have to have boundaries first.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Right, right.
Glennon Doyle:
You need space to think about your values.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Exactly. The other thing that happens if you ask someone, “What are your values?” And they say, “Well, I value my family. Well, I value my kids. I value my parents.” And it’s like, that’s actually not helpful. We all value our kids. We all value our families. We’re actually trying to go somewhere sort of different and deeper. And so, I’ve found that actually you have to come to values indirectly, otherwise your brain automatically goes to the shoulds and the social kind of answers that you’re supposed to do.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Family first.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Family first. I have a toddler and I love him. If Casey ever listens to this. A value is, it’s something to embody. It’s a verb or an adverb. It’s not a noun. So it’s like a value is courage, boldness, risk-taking, curiosity, learning. Those are values. I go through this exercise in Real Self-Care. It’s called the dinner party exercise. Can we do it quickly?
Glennon Doyle:
Please.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Okay. Awesome. So imagine that you have $200, and you’re going to throw a dinner party. What is that dinner party going to look like? Who are you going to invite? What’s the food going to be like? Where is it going to be? Is it going to be in your house? Is it going to be outside? Pretty immediately, you understand with that example that every single person on the planet is going to have a different dinner party, and there’s no best dinner party either.
Is it going to be a potluck, where you have your friends bring over food from the last country they visited? Or do you have a friend that’s in a band, and you’re going to have him come play? Or does your mind immediately go to, I want it to be outside, and I want everybody to be dancing, or playing a game? Or are you thinking about the place settings and the aesthetics? So you kind of just let your mind percolate on that. And I know that this sounds silly.
Glennon Doyle:
No, it doesn’t.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
But it’s silly for a reason because, again, we have to get away from the social conditioning. So you let that percolate, and then you just pull out the verbs and the adverbs. What comes out? Some of the other things that are helpful here is like, thinking about, do you care more about the people or the food? Do you care more about what people are doing, or what they’re eating, or where they are? Right? There’s just so many different ways that you can take this.
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
And nothing is right or wrong. So you pull out the verbs. And then, maybe a verb that comes out is silliness, humor. You want to look around and see everybody laughing. That’s one of your values. And then, the real self-care work is to take that value and to thread it into your life, so you could apply that to your wellness tool. Maybe you’re somebody who’s really into running, but your running has turned to be kind of competitive and too achievement oriented because you have your spreadsheet. So maybe you want to inject more silliness and fun. Or maybe you want to inject more community into your running. Maybe you want to find a running partner.
But then, you can do the same thing also with really big life decisions, like decisions around what do you want to do for work? Where do you want to live? Who do you want your life partner to be? One of the things with real self-care is that so much of this is kind of open-ended because as we’ll talk about, there isn’t just one answer. It can’t come from your therapist. It can’t come from an exercise program. It needs to actually come from you. And so, pulling those values out is the way to kind of make the map. The last thing I’ll say on this is, I almost wish that there was another word that we could use besides values, because I think values is too serious.
You’d say values, and you think of the Bible. You think of religion. And I couldn’t figure out another word, but maybe it’s like we say values with a little V because there’s no best. And the blueprint for Glennon’s top three values and then Abby’s top three values are going to be totally different. And they’re also going to always be in movement. They’re going to be changing every week too, and certainly every season of your life. So there’s going to be some that stay the same, but then there’s going to be some that are always moving around. And that’s okay, that’s great. I kind of think we don’t need to be so serious about it.
Glennon Doyle:
I think people get this because when you’re talking, I’m thinking about the 7 million things that went around that was like, “Look at this word search. And the first four words you see are your vibe for 2024.” So I probably did eight of those.
Abby Wambach:
I love this.
Glennon Doyle:
But it’s interesting, right? Because we understand, what is my word of 2024? It’s like, that is what we’re getting at. We’re getting at this, what do I want to embody that is a vibe? That is like, instead of saying, what do I want to do each day? How do I want to feel each day? It’s an embodied way of being. And it’s easier to say, “Well, I value my children. I value my family.” But those are things outside of ourselves.
You can value your children the most and suck them dry. If your vibe is love, freedom, understanding, compassion, and I bring that to any person I’m with, then that would be great for my kids. But what you keep coming back to is that real self-care is something that comes from inside of us as opposed to something outside that we are clinging to, whether it’s a person or an ideology or a system. I want to think about those. I want to think about what are our-
Abby Wambach:
Verbs and adverbs.
Glennon Doyle:
… verbs and values.
Abby Wambach:
So good.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. What are yours, Pooja? And do they change?
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yeah, they change. They change. So one that’s really stayed consistent has been creativity.
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Creativity. I love to create, put things together, and understand what they mean. I mean, I became a psychiatrist. So I love to kind of like see what’s going on, self-expression. And since becoming a mom, I think that it’s interesting because a lot of those things, normally you think of those as solitary values. And I’ve been learning how to incorporate them into parenting, which I’ll say parenting a toddler, not easy.
Glennon Doyle:
I remember.
Abby Wambach:
Do you have any values that come off on the top of your head?
Glennon Doyle:
I mean, creativity, self-expression. I also think the whole crystal world that that is what people are kind of getting at too. It’s like a reminder of magic. Adulting world is so just… The real life and real world is so unmagic sometimes. And so, these little reminders of magic, that’s what creativity feels to be. It’s like this place that I can go to that feels just like this other realm.
And I think allowing is a very important one for me right now. The word allowing, I would say, as I try to undo all the control that has kind of gotten me in trouble in my personal life. And raising older kids, I think just allowing, and seeing them for who they are, and not projecting, and not controlling, and allowing people to be who they are is super hard for me.
Abby Wambach:
That’s so interesting. I’m just having kind of an epiphany right now that one of my values is… I don’t know if this is the correct way that you would categorize it. But one of the things that I value is creating and helping our children grow up. Parenting as a verb. You know?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Abby Wambach:
It’s a value of mine. And so, as they’ve gotten older and they need us less or in different ways, I do actually think that my feelings get hurt because I feel like my values aren’t being utilized. I know that that sounds a little bit wonky, but-
Glennon Doyle:
No, I hear you.
Abby Wambach:
I feel like my feelings get hurt more than they probably should. I might need to have that conversation with myself. Maybe my values need to shift a little around what the parenting means.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, allowing means and parenting is a whole thing, right? It’s a tool. All we can do is do what Pooja’s saying, and embody the values that we hope eventually they’ll take on.
Abby Wambach:
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
But that’s even a better argument for just doing that, right?
Abby Wambach:
Uh-huh.
Glennon Doyle:
Because they’re just watching what we do.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, God.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Well, you know what? I was just thinking. Can I just ref here for a second?
Glennon Doyle:
Please, please.
Abby Wambach:
Please do.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
I was just thinking, what I heard from both of you actually was some version of being with.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Being with either yourself or being with your kids, and sort of witnessing. Right?
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Not trying to put the control on, not trying to put your agenda, but just being with. That to me, sounds like a value. Abby, I would also say that I don’t know that your value is wrong. It might just be that you’re in a transition where it’s uncomfortable. You don’t have the homeostasis yet, right?
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
You’re just trying to get your feet. And so of course, when we’re wobbly, we feel crappy because we don’t have mastery.
Abby Wambach:
I value homeostasis I think. I swear to you when you were talking, I was thinking, “What do you value?” And I value normal.
Glennon Doyle:
Sameness. Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Peace.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Balance. Yeah, yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Balance.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Just like really…
Glennon Doyle:
I love that. I’m going to think so much about that. Okay, so we’re going to figure out our values, then we’re going to create our boundaries around those values. And boundaries are really, we think about boundaries as things I’m not going to let other people do. But boundaries are what we’re going to do and not do. So it’s not like, a boundary would be I’m always going to wait to respond to someone who asks something for me. It’s rules for yourself, right?
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Correct.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, great. Correct.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Because you actually can’t control the other person’s reaction.
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
In reality.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m slowly trying to believe that. Okay, so self-compassion. How does this fit in?
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yeah. So self-compassion is, it’s the way that you talk to yourself, right? It’s that voice that’s with you all the time, the narrative. And for some people it’s a voice, some people it’s like images or associations, right? And I include a statistic in the book. It was from Weight Watchers, ironically, where they looked at 2000 women and found that nearly half started criticizing themselves even before 9:30 in the morning. So as women, we’re just so crappy to ourselves. So self-compassion is essentially talking to yourself right.
And the cognitive diffusion helps there, right? where we’re recognizing that we are not our thoughts, we are not our bad feelings, and we can let them pass. I like to really call attention to martyr mode because I think especially for caretakers, you are so busy kind of pouring into everybody else that you really neglect yourself. And I think that martyr kind of imagery is so interesting because it’s often the woman who is taking care of everybody else, but just seething with anger, and waiting for somebody else to come save her, and to come tell her that she can rest. So for me, martyr mode is when you feel like you need to earn your compassion.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
When you believe that only somebody else can bestow compassion onto you, that you have to get it from the outside. And it’s just so toxic. And I also say that with like, I totally find myself in martyr mode all the time. I found myself in martyr mode quite frankly with my book tour of just going, going, going, and then feeling sort of like, “Oh, my gosh. There’s nothing left.” And you’re waiting for somebody else to tell you, “Okay, Pooja, you can stop.” But the reality is we have to give that to ourselves. We have to give it to ourselves.
Glennon Doyle:
I think of martyr mode as literal. It’s like a martyr is someone who dies for an ideology. So whenever I think about or see people in martyr mode, I always think, what ideology are they dying for right now? Womanhood being just serve, and smile, and smile through the gaslighting, and just don’t require partnership to partnership, just suck it up, just do all the things. It is a true ideology that has been passed down to us. And there are a lot of people that are actively dying from it.
So it makes me think of when you’re talking about self-compassion, it makes me think of bell hooks, actually, because I think I remember reading that bell hooks said that, “Self-love or self-care, if you don’t know where to start, you think about what you’re dying for somebody to give you.” You think about what you are daydreaming or imagining that someone will show up and love you that way. What would they do? Would they feed you? Would they take all your work away and let you rest? Would they hold you? And then, you find a way come hell or high water to give some of that to yourself.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
And that is what I hear you saying. Do you have any IRL examples of how somebody would do that? If you were sitting with someone who was like, “Okay, all right, I trust Pooja and bell hooks.”
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
No pressure, Glennon, thanks.
Glennon Doyle:
Two trustworthy people, okay? We’re going to trust anybody. Do you have any stories of people who actually made that work in their life?
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yes. Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
In little or big ways.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
So I have one story of somebody who didn’t, and it’s kind of outrageous, so I want to share that first.
Glennon Doyle:
Great. Love it.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
And then, I’ll also share the ways to make it work. So a couple of years ago, I had a conversation with a woman who, she had a couple kids, very busy life, but had a lot of privilege, upper middle class, fortunate. One day, her neighbor, who was a chef, offered to drop off a steak dinner for the whole family. He was like, “Oh, I have this new recipe. I really want to try it out. I would love to bring it over for you guys.” And literally her mouth was watering as she said no.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
As she was like, “No, we couldn’t. No, no, no.” And to me, that was just such a powerful example of how, because we are so conditioned to view asking for help as a weakness, this woman, she actually turned away a bid for connection-
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
… from her neighbor. That was a bid from her neighbor to create community.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
He would’ve gained so much from doing that, and being generous, and kind of knowing that he got to help. And in turning that away, she was rejecting that community.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
And I kind of share this as my answer to how do we do it is you actually do it when you don’t really need it. You start doing it before you’re crumpled up-
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
… in a ball-
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
… of mess on the floor. You start doing it when the stakes are low. This is kind of an example for my practice of a patient who had a young child. Her partner was going to be going on a business trip. It was only going to be a night. Her sister lives in town. Her sister was like, “Let me come over. I’ll come over and help with bedtime and bath.” And she was like, “No, no, no. It’s fine. It’s just one night.”
And I was like, “No, let’s stop. Let’s stop. Let’s say yes.” And that exercising, that receiving, in Real Self-Care I call it micro-dosing your capacity to receive. Because you have to practice. It’s the same as boundaries. You have to practice being able to receive. And it also really fits in with the conversation you all had with Amanda, about the dinner with her law firm friends.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, that’s what I’m thinking of.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
You know where it’s like, to create community. Because really, what every single piece of data shows is that, having authentic relationships is what makes a good life, right? That is the thing. And so to do that, you need to make time for it, and you need to be willing to receive help and ask for help.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. But that, what you’re saying right now, it’s like creating boundaries. Great. A lot of us are okay with that actually, but the loosening of boundaries is also part of this. And okay, here’s what I think. Is it whiteness? Is it white? bell hooks and Audre Lorde… Self-care was like a ferocious determination of your own dignity in relation to others. All of these examples you’re giving is allowing community, a togetherness, a we, but wellness is all individual.
I can go through every single wellness strategy that I have been sold, Pooja, and do it all the time, and never leave my house, and never speak to another human being. Oh, yes. I can do my cold plunge. I can do my green juice. I can do my whatever. They’re so crazy individual. I never have to ask for help. I never have to meet another human being. I never have to enter into the struggle for social justice outside this four walls. Is it like, did whiteness get in, and just teach us how to be so individual and disconnected from each other?
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Yeah, we’re going to go there. I guess we’re going to go there. My thesis is, and I’m not a sociologist. I’m a psychiatrist for a reason. I’m not an economist. I’m not a historian. I think it is white supremacy and capitalism, which are intertwined. Right? And in the United States, everything is built on slavery. And the commodification of a group of people who were deemed to be less than and this caste system. Right? So it’s absolutely structural. It’s absolutely economic. I think that’s why we need to go back and look at ways of being that center humanity and also do it in a way that is respectful.
Glennon Doyle:
It certainly is an effective way of keeping classes separate.
Abby Wambach:
Yep.
Glennon Doyle:
Of keeping white women away from everyone else. However its happened, it’s an effective way of making us feel like we can better ourselves and perfect ourselves as individual perfection projects, as opposed to entering into the struggle for all to make the world more equal.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Correct.
Glennon Doyle:
Right?
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
And it allows the person who is higher up to stay sort of pristine.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
To not get messy.
Glennon Doyle:
Pure. Purity.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Right?
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Pure. Yes. When the reality is that the things that again and again make a life worth living are the human things, the human bits. But in order to be able to do that, you actually have to trust yourself to make room for it. It takes time.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Right? It takes time. It’s not, you can’t just check it off the list like the juice cleanse.
Glennon Doyle:
Pooja, it’s so good. You know what I want to do? My poor sister, who was so excited to talk to you.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Is so-
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
I was so excited to talk to her too.
Abby Wambach:
She has the flu.
Glennon Doyle:
We might have to beg you to come back again and dig in this more. But also, she is so sick right now, and she wanted to come. And I was like, “If you show up for Dr. Pooja sick, and she’s teaching us about self-care, it’ll be humiliating to me.” She’s just wanted me to tell you that your book meant so much to her. And I think either we will do a follow-up with this or we will figure out our values and do one with just the three of us.
Abby Wambach:
I think that that would be great.
Glennon Doyle:
But I think that it’s so important what you’re doing. You all listening, if it’s just a little place to start, just find some quiet time. Think about your values. Just think about a couple words maybe, or a couple ways of being that we could embody, and maybe send them to us. I don’t know.
Abby Wambach:
And you can bookmark a year from now and work on being a little bit closer to saying no easier.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Or yes easier. Whatever it is.
Glennon Doyle:
So much self-compassion.
Abby Wambach:
So good. I love this conversation. Thank you so much.
Glennon Doyle:
And by the way, Pod Squad, I just want to tell you this. If you’re wondering if you can trust this lady here with us. I asked her to come on this podcast in December, I think. And I got a message back from Pooja’s people saying, “She’s actually in self-care mode right now or she’s taking her break. And so she can’t do it.” And I thought, “Wow.” I mean, Pooja, I’m going to tell you, I don’t think anyone has said no to the podcast yet. And I was like-
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, but you were so-
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, I believe her. I was amazed.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. And also, it gave you a new way of saying no.
Glennon Doyle:
I know. I was actually really deeply moved by it.
Abby Wambach:
I know. We talked about it. She’s like, “This was so important. And what a beautiful exercise and modeling for Glennon for me, on a beautiful way of saying no. But it was like, not now.
Glennon Doyle:
The pause.
Abby Wambach:
It was so great.
Glennon Doyle:
But like, no, Pod Squadders, that when you do say no, there is a ripple effect. People watch and think, “Oh, my God. You can do that.”
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Wait, what? No’s can be freaking inspiring.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Is all I’m saying.
Abby Wambach:
And that’s what it was for sure.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you, Pooja.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
Well, thank you for that. And just know that my heart was beating out of my chest when I said that. That was an edge for me, certainly. And I’m proud of myself for it.
Glennon Doyle:
You should be. You should be.
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin:
I’m proud of myself for it, so thank you.
Abby Wambach:
Well, the vibration taught us a very valuable lesson.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, it did.
Abby Wambach:
So it was really great.
Glennon Doyle:
All right, Pod Squad, go forth and say no.
Abby Wambach:
Go forth and say no.
Glennon Doyle:
See you next time. Bye.