The Secret to Emotional Awareness, Maturity, & Resilience | Dr. Alison Cook

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Oh, I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Well, great. Well, I know, again, we've, you know, we talked not that long ago and, you know, it was great getting to know you. You know, I've really fell in love with learning what part of my favorite thing to do deeper study on right now is spending a lot of time in psychology. And I think, you know, it's interesting, just kind of a question for you. I think that the field of psychology has really grown in terms of being a, it's always been respected, But I think today it's kind of jumped to another level of people really respecting and looking out for psychologists today and saying, hey, we need your help, you know, hey, we need your expertise. Why do you think that is?

Yeah, it's a great, it's a great observation, and I agree. I think social psychology experts, clinical psychologists, are often looked at as the folks who are giving us insight into why we do the things we do, why our thoughts matter, what are we really supposed to do with emotions. I think the field has has just grown so much from where it started, really only, gosh, barely over a century, maybe a century and a half ago. It's a fairly new— but I always think about it, right? The study of the psyche, the study of the soul. Psyche was originally thought of by the Greeks as the soul. It came really to be thought of as the study of the mind. But as you and I both know, it's really all of us. It's, it's, it's— this field has grown to understand that we're a nervous system, we're We're thoughts, we're emotions, all of that comprises a soul. And we need to understand ourselves and why we do the things we do and why other people are doing the things they do in order to be holistically healthy in this world. We're just— we need this self-knowledge to understand. How can I be in a healthy relationship with you if I don't understand why I'm doing the things I'm doing?

Yeah, yeah, that question of why is so important. And I also think about this— I share this quite often— when I first opened my functional medicine practice, the conditions that were growing the fastest were cancer, heart disease, diabetes, childhood obesity. Today it's mental health disorders, it's depression, and it's, it's anxiety, it's identity issues. These are growing more than ever before. And I think that's another reason why, you know, obviously the field of psychology has become so important. And I also think today we're seeing more of this intersection between psychology and faith. Of course, someone like Jordan Peterson, I think, is a prime example of this and has been a big driver in that arena. But, but, and, and I'm— I have had the opportunity to, because of my medical practice, but also me, uh, being really blessed to be in a position to counsel people in certain areas of their lives, to refer people to counselors and therapists like yourself. And I am always incredibly cautious. I'm incredibly cautious anytime I refer anyone to any type of health practitioner, whether it be referring someone to a functional medicine doctor or an acupuncturist or a chiropractor or a psychologist or a therapist, because there are some really bad ones out there, and there are a few of, of just incredible practitioners. And I think today a lot of people in the field of psychology and medicine Uh, you know what they would recommend somebody do? They try and pull God out of it altogether. And so what you're left with— and I see this in the field of medicine— you're left simply treating the symptom, not the root cause of the issue. Can you give me an example of how that's true in therapy today, of how there's a lot of people treating the superficial stuff and then how you actually get to the deeper things going on in someone's life?

Yeah, I, I would— I agree with you. I exercise some other caution, and I think that's important for people to hear. In a world where we look to the psychologists often to be our experts in lots of different areas, it's— there's always a worldview at play. That's what I would say to people, whether it's, uh, like you said, someone in healthcare, someone in mental health. A person who is helping us always has a view of the world. They have a view of reality. They have a view of what is causing, as you said, a certain symptom. If we try to take that out and pretend like that doesn't exist, we're left with this sort of broad— if you look at the DSM, the diagnostic manual, right, that therapists and psychiatrists use, it's essentially— it can be helpful on one level. It's the, it's the manual therapists will use to diagnose the problem, but really it's just categorizing. It's creating lists of symptoms So if you have these 10 symptoms, we, we see a pattern of depression, or we see a pattern of anxiety, or we see a pattern of narcissism if you want to get to personality disorders. But that manual has broadened that literally any human experience, even normal ones, has a sort of a descriptive tenet, is clustered together. And so I find myself oftentimes distinguishing— listen, what's grief? Grief is a healthy human experience that is a, a response to painful events. And where are we calling kind of normal sadness or normal grief at what's happening that's genuinely hard, um, depression? If we're not getting at the root cause of something, we don't really— we can't name that root cause, get to the root, frame it accurately. Right, against what's really needed in this situation versus what's an extreme response to a situation, we're going to take somebody down the wrong path of treatment. And so that was just an example, grief versus depression. But when you— when you, to your point, when you just sort of lay everything out as sort of observe— observing behaviors, observing symptoms, it really just leaves us with a whole bunch of observations and not a lot of clarity about what is this person really dealing with. Is this a medical biochemical imbalance that needs a medical or a prescription to intervene, or is this rooted in trauma that this person has never really had a chance to process and grieve appropriately in a loving community with someone who cares and can witness that pain that releases all of that from the body and that person never feels anxiety or depression after that as a result of having gone through that. Those are very different root causes with very different interventions needed. And so to your point, I think that's part of the issue is if we don't have therapists that are really good diagnosticians, they're really willing to genuinely do the work to get at root causes, we can wind up going down a road, and I can give you lots of examples of solving a problem that isn't actually the problem we're facing.

Yeah, yeah. And we see this in the medical field a lot too, where again, when you look at a lot of the conventional medicine, uh, it's very cookie cutter. Everyone comes in, it's like— we used to call it like herding cattle. It's like, you know, they come in, you give everyone the same thing, you move on. Oh hey, you're feeling a little sad? Here's an antidepressant, you know, don't worry about the side effects, and just kind of keep herding them through. Because this big pharmaceutical industry in bed with the medical industry is doing something that is— again, we're talking about trillions of dollars here. And so we see that a lot, you know. Another thing that I, I, I, I have seen more and more people talking about when it comes to therapy is, is that if you see the right therapist, it can radically improve your life. But oftentimes what therapists will do is you'll go in, you'll sit down with them, share your problems, and basically you'll just end up talking about yourself and your problems, and you just have someone listening to you and then asking you more about your problems. And it's making people worse because they're basically bathing in self-pity, you know, and I also think it's very unbiblical. You know, the Bible is not like, focus on your problems and you'll get better, talk about your problems constantly and you'll get better. Instead, it says, you know, fix your eyes on, on, on Jesus or, you know, serve others, you know. And I think actually the science proves actually one of those works more than the other. What are your thoughts on that in terms of technique? Because I don't know if you've seen this recently, there's a lot of videos coming out and people sharing how actually therapy has made them worse, and psychologists sharing this, if you're— if it's simply a, you know, a session where somebody is just talking about themselves and their problems the whole time.

Yeah, my— that's why my work— my degree is actually in both psychology and theology. I personally bring the two together. And what I would say is therapy is not— it's very individualistic. It's one-on-one. It's me telling my problems to somebody. I've had this happen as a clinician. I've also been on the other side of it where someone can tell me their story and they are skewing that story in such a way that isn't actually honoring the truth of what happened. I've had this happen where I'll find out other ways, oh my goodness, in this instance, you know, this person actually wasn't the victim in the narrative, right? So there's a, there's a bias that goes into that one-on-one relationship. It is And to your point, it can also be incredibly healing and incredibly restorative to be with a trained professional who can walk you through your pain in a way that honors it and in a way that honors the, the healing process. So that's a double-edged sword. I, I completely agree with you. In my work, how I see it is that hyper one-on-one individual is removing people from a herd or an ecosystem over here can have benefits, but the problem is we were made to live in community. We were made to be a part of a body. If you use Christian language, we were made to be a part of a body of Christ. We are made to be with other people. When therapy starts to replace belonging in community, right, that's where we start to— in my mind, that's where we start to see problems. Now, If there's a toxic system, whether it's a family or a church community or, you know, a friend group, that person may need to leave that toxic system to heal and find a healthier community, a healthier set of relationships. A therapist can help in that, but in my mind, a therapist is not the end game. Therapy is not the end game. It is to help us heal We have to then heal systems and to reconnect an individual to an ecosystem, to a body of people, a family, a church community, a friend group that collectively nurtures wholeness. Because I don't think we do our best healing in isolation or in kind of a, a one-on-one, to your point, where we're just navel-gazing. All the time at ourselves, where we're not being equipped to be in relationship with other humans. So those are— that's kind of how I look at it. We can't see therapy as the ultimate endgame. It's not a replacement for these structures, these systems where we're going to be in relationship with other humans.

Yeah, I think one of the things that, uh, as I mentioned before, of mental health crisis— yeah, loneliness has become an epidemic. I mean, you know, I think COVID has made it so much worse. And so obviously that is something, and, and, you know, and because of media, I mean, people are spending time on their phones and, I mean, rather than connecting with real people. And so, you know, there's, there's some really cool longevity— there's a longevity study that came out of Harvard. So the number one factor in longevity is your community, having a close inner circle of friends, supportive friends and family. And it's just, it's, it's so, so important. And I think oftentimes I don't know if people are going to their therapist and therapist is pointing them in that direction, saying, go out and build meaningful friendships, you know, do that. This is how you act, you know, lifestyle-wise, actually overcome what you're feeling. And I think one of the things you talk about— I know you talk about this in your book, Dr. Allison— is you talk about sort of these having mixed emotions and tangled emotions and just a lot of competing emotions today. And, you know, and so somebody can be feeling both wanting to feel like they need to get away, but also knowing I need to connect with people. And again, I think there's just a lot of emotions people have today. How do you help people sort through all of the different emotions that they're battling with sort of in their mind on a regular basis?

Yeah, I would love to. Untangling those knots of emotions is so important. I wanna say before I jump into that tour, one framing that I think is helpful is we are, selves, individual selves, there's God, and then we are relational selves, there's others, right? If we think about God, others, and self, and we can't lop off any one of those three relationships to be healthy, whole humans. And so when we completely just make self, my individual self and my emotions or my problems, the elevated focus at the exclusion of really trying to work back into healthy relationships spiritually and with other people, I think that's where we go sideways. Um, we have to honor all of those elements when it comes to emotions. We have such a young understanding of emotions in the field of psychology. Even the study of emotions really kind of started to come to the forefront with attachment theory when attachment research in the '60s and '70s was beginning to realize, oh my goodness, kids, babies, infants have very different responses when their parents leave the room. They have very big, different emotional reactions to different types of parenting. And so suddenly, it's— we started to become aware that, that, that the emotions that we have are rooted so deeply in that secure attachment, that sense that we are loved, that we are held, that we are seen, that we are soothed by another human, those first parent, those first caregivers, right? And so our emotions— the first thing we know about emotions is that they— the way that we respond or react to our environment as an adult is often a cue to some of those attachment wounds. And so emotions are inherently subjective. They're really important. They're really important to pay attention to. I think of them as cues. But how we frame them, how we interpret them, is also really, really important. So, the couple things I would just say is that research is really young. And so, a lot of folks were raised in families where emotions were just either not discussed or sidelined or thought of as bad or shamed. That's not healthy. On the other hand, there's sort of another end of that spectrum where emotions are sort of elevated. And, you know—

Well, it seems like, Allison, we're like, you have the baby boomers and it's like, ignore your emotions. And then today it's, you know, you've got— they tell, they tell you everything. They even tell you truth and morality. Of course they don't. But it just seems like the pendulum just swung so far over.

Exactly. And that's what we're seeing today, is if I have an emotion, I should essentially assume that that emotion is valid in the sense that I should base all my relational— if I'm angry and I'm hurt, and maybe I should just cut that person out of my life now. In the book, I lay out 3 steps. We got to name it. I am angry. So, we don't want to go back to where the boomer— it's not bad that I'm angry. We see anger— in your anger, do not sin is what it says in the Bible, right? So, I am angry. That's a cue. Then we have to frame it. We have to hold what actually happened. What are the facts of the situation? There might be a situation in which I feel angry and that other person didn't do anything wrong. They just trapped tripped over a wounded place inside of me. Okay, then that's going to be a different path forward. To your point about Roots, there might be a situation where I'm angry and that person has really hurt me and done something very wrong, in which case I need to establish some healthier boundaries in that relationship or call that person out, whatever the thing is. But we— the emotion itself is just a cue that something happened. We don't know the truth of what happened yet. And that's that second step I lay out in the book, which is the framing. We have frame it very carefully. And it takes some work, some discernment to frame what— why am I having this emotion? And that— this is where we get to— we start to see some emotional immaturities if we skip over that and we just let our emotions kind of be our dictators.

How does somebody become emotionally mature? You know, I mean, if somebody would spend just a few minutes today, which everybody does, on social media you'll see a lot of emotionally immature people. I mean, people just throwing stones and mud and sticks at one another. And it just is— I mean, if anybody goes into any comment section of almost any post, you've got people on there saying just absolutely ridiculous things, saying mean things, constantly gossiping. I mean, there's all— there's numerous negative things happening. How do you identify Um, how does someone go from— and what are some signs somebody is emotionally immature, and how do they become emotionally mature?

Yeah, so emotional immaturity is acting, reacting out of emotions. Emotional maturity is honoring— I feel an emotion, and now I will choose mindfully how to respond to that emotion. Um, emotional immaturity is just a lot of erratic, erratic, impulsive behavior. Emotional maturity is a grounded, integrated person that— who, again, you know, if we look to the life of Jesus, is a man who embodied a wide range of emotions— anger, sadness, grief, you know— and also did not sin. And so emotional immaturity is that embodiment of— sometimes I like to say to people, it's speaking on behalf of versus speaking from. So speaking from is yelling at somebody on social media. Speaking on behalf of is, man, I— that comment made me feel really angry. I'm not sure how to handle that yet, but I'm acknowledging that's what happened. And now I need to process whether or not I need to have a conversation with that person, whether or not I need to block that person, you know, depending on the context of the relationship. Yeah, you know, it's not just hip shooting out of every emotion that we have.

Yeah. And it's, you know, one of these key things, it really is this— it's emotional awareness in part, right? It's having awareness because so many of us are just acting out of, again, just pure emotion rather than saying, okay, I'm going to be self-aware and be able to recognize what I'm feeling. And I mean, I think that's fairly rare today. I mean, generally speaking, I mean, for people to actually have the presence and the awareness to say, okay, you know what, that person said that because of this. And this is how I'm going to deal with it. This is the best way to serve them and love them. And that, you know, for instance, that saying, hurt people hurt people, right? And someone recognizing that and then going and saying, in doing what we can do in order to love that person, help that person in that way. Um, you know, it's something that I see a lot of psychologists are able to do. I see a lot of spiritual gurus and leaders, whether it be a pastor or a priest or a rabbi or a monk have this kind of higher level of, I'll call it spiritual and mind awareness, just awareness of themselves and, and what's happening there. But, but what a, you know, what a powerful, um, what a powerful, uh, thing to develop for, for anybody. It's something anybody should be developed. You know, I thought about this the other day. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. When somebody is in school today, like, I think about what I learned in high school, you know. And the things I, I'm glad I learned— I'm really glad I learned history. In fact, that was incredibly important. I'm glad I learned science. I'm glad I learned basic math. I think calculus was an absolute waste, um, but well, I've never used it. And there's, there's several things I never, you know, I never used. And in fact, there's a study, I think H&R Block, that said like 77% of what we learned in high school we'll never use again. You know, that's pretty high. So my point there is, is that I wish people would learn about nutrition in school. I wish people would learn money management in school, and I wish people would learn emotional intelligence in school and how to have great relationships. If you were creating a curriculum for high schoolers, let's say, on how to have great relationships, what would be some of the foundational elements in that curriculum and things that you think that high schoolers or young people need to learn?

Yeah, emotional awareness is way up there, and communication skills. So here's the thing, emotional intelligence isn't just the awareness of the emotion, because that's what we're seeing. And it's the ability to express effectively on behalf of an emotion, which gets at communication skills. And so many people are just lacking basic— how do you say to somebody, man, I, I, that, that just really— I, I feel that landed on me sideways, that, that got me. That you think about being living with someone in a marriage or in a family where emotions get heated. And again, there's that first step of just naming it But that second step of framing it, so often it takes us a minute to understand why did it land on me funny. Did it land on me because you meant to hurt me, or did it land on me because I'm really tired and stressed out and projected meaning into what you said that you didn't actually have, right? And so we have to learn those basic Communication 101 to say, hey, I need to take a minute because That landed sideways on me. I'm going to circle back to this conversation tonight when I'm cooled down, because right now if I talk about it, I'm not going to be constructive. That's a basic script of emotional intelligence that can really save some friendships and relationships to just say, "Ooh, I need you to know, ah, timeout, red light. I need to circle back to this because I'm not thinking clearly and I'm getting into my emotions and I'm not sure how to tease that out." Right? So basics of that, basics of boundary setting. That's a big— boundaries is another area today where they're oversimplified. When boundaries are really less about punishing— they're not at all about punishing somebody else. They're not about trying to get somebody else to do what I want them to do. Boundaries are far more about— and again, I think our kids need to be learning this— what are my own convictions? What are my own values? What matters to me? What am I saying yes to in my life? Laser focus. This is what I— where I'm moving forward in my friendships, in my dreams, in my purpose, in my convictions. And then I kind of have permission to set some other things by the wayside that aren't part of that. Boundaries are really about protecting the treasure that we have that is our mind, our heart, our soul, our body, our convictions, our values, our purpose, and far less about trying to get other people to do what is not ours to try to get them to do. So boundaries, I think, would be fantastic. And boundaries go hand in hand often with emotional intelligence, right? It's that ability to say, this situation, this relationship is constantly bringing out the very worst of me. First, I have to have that conversation with myself, with my trusted people, the people who I, you know, then I need to figure out how to align the decisions I'm making in my life with that naming that I've recognized, right? That maybe this is a friend group that is bringing out the absolute worst in me. I'm just anxious all the time when I'm with them because all they do is compare you know, their brand name clothes on social media. And that just brings out the worst of me. So once I can honor that, then I can make healthier decisions about the kind of people I want to pull into my life. All of that, that emotional awareness, that ability to express ourselves effectively and boundaries would be amazing for our kids to learn at such a young age.

Yeah, that's so good. You know, you brought up communication, and one of the things in communication that basic, you know, people, you want people to not sit like, for instance, when I started speaking, I said a lot of so, but, and I still do some, it's a lot less. Okay. But why? Let me kind of jump over here. There are a lot of things I think that people do that have low self-awareness and they don't know that it's toxic. They don't know that it's harming others. And so sometimes I think, I don't want to say it's harmless, but I think there's just a lack of awareness. Like, I, I'm thinking about someone that Chelsea and I know, and they're just so grossly unaware that they don't realize that they just say things, uh, constantly that are just toxic in a way, and they're just unaware of it. What are some of the most common things you've seen in your practice, things that people do that are really big no-nos that they're just unaware of?

Yeah, one, one I would say is this thing I call triangulation. I see this happen a lot. And it's a strategy, again, where someone maybe just lacks the basic skills. I've got a conflict with another person. I am struggling with a friend. And instead of figuring out how to work through that conflict directly with that person, which is hard to do, so there's no shame in this, that's a skill most of us aren't taught, is how to walk through conflict. It happens all the time. Instead of doing that, what I do is I go dump on our other friend. Oh, I hate that person. I hate it when that person, you know, and you know it if you're with another couple or you're with a friend and all they're doing is talking bad about other people, it always gets my— because I'm like, what do I— what am I supposed to do with this information? I can't solve their problem. This is information I don't really want. I don't have a problem with this other person. And this is what I see. It's, it's a lot, and it's reflective of the fact that we don't have these skills. Um, but the first thing we can do is name it and go, okay, I don't want to be somebody that's on the receipt dumping the dumping bag for somebody else's inability to work through their conflicts effectively. It's not good for anybody. And so if I'm that person in that situation, the first thing I got to do is name it. Oh, what's happening is I'm being triangulated here. And I go through a lot of these in the book. I can't fix them. It's not my job. But what I can do in that situation is communicate effectively, hey, you know what? I'm not comfortable talking about that other person in this way. You know, I, I'm not— you know, I hope you'll get the help that you need working through that with them directly, but I can't be the one that you share about it with, right? That's really hard to do, but that's what I can do. I could remove myself from it. So that's one example where we kind of find ourselves in the middle. There's a million others. Um, blame shifting would be another one. When you're in a relationship with some— relationship with someone who hasn't learned how to take accountability for their own actions. And they're always blaming somebody else, always an excuse, always, "Oh, if so-and-so would've just done this, I would've, my life would've been so much better if someone." And again, you're just sitting there going, "Well, we can't really have a meaningful conversation about growth because there's always someone else to blame." So that's another one I see that again, could come from a very just lack of skills. I don't know how to really look honestly at myself and take accountability for what's mine to own without shame, right? I don't have to shame myself to name honestly, "Oh, I'm not so good at this." And maybe they're even good. Maybe I had some really hard things in my past and nobody ever taught me. I get to name that, but then I need to take responsibility for building those skills. And so that's another one. There's numerous ways that we just fall into these traps. I call them thinking traps. Um, and sometimes they're minor, sometimes they get really, really toxic.

Yeah, I see that one. And that, that's one, that's one I've seen constantly. You know, I think that there's so much power in taking on responsibility, and I think that's something that people have. In fact, I would say the best employees I've ever had on my teams, one of the— there's several, but one of the common characteristics is they take ownership and responsibility. Hey, this is on me. Hey, this my fault. Hey, I'm going to get better. Versus the worst team members I've ever had are like, well, it's her fault. Well, it's his fault. Oh well, that wasn't my responsibility, that's someone else's. And so, and you'll see this in sports too. It's like the best quarterbacks, the best coaches, the best players, they're like, hey, that's on me. I mean, full responsibility for everything. And then the people that are the underachievers, it's exactly what you're sharing. You know, I've got a question. So again, thinking about this and things that are really, I think, a low-level emotional intelligence. One of them is, and again, I mentioned somebody earlier that I know that they constantly do this, and it's when they're telling you something, a story perhaps of something that happened to them, most of it's a lie. So for instance, you know, and so, you know, their perception of reality, and this happens with a lot of people, and we've all met people like this, when they retell the story, they're always the hero or always the victim or always the— again, and you're like, well, even if you were there, you're like, that's not at all how it happened. But they in their head literally think that's the way it played out. One, is there a diagnosis for that outside of just calling it lying? Uh, is it, you know, and then how do you deal with those sort of people?

Yeah, so I mean, it could— there could be narcissistic features there. I don't know, we'd need to run the gamut of other features. But I call these— in my book, I go run through a whole bunch of thinking traps. And again, these range from bad habits to really patterns in toxic, you know, some toxic pattern of behaviors. It all depends on how toxic the impact is. But in— when you think about cognitive distortions, right, you think about thinking traps. There's negative filters. Negative filters are when we're always, oh, I'm just not good at anything, I'm bad at this, I'm bad at that. That's really unhealthy and really— but there's the opposite, and it's an overly positive filter where we take on a hero role and we're kind of seeing ourselves in a puffed-up way. We're constantly aggrandizing our achievements, our accomplishments. Both of those things are rooted in low self-esteem. They're both rooted in it, right? They're different ways of adapting, and, and they're neither of them aligned with reality, with that very honest self-inventory. Here's what I'm really good at. Here's what lights me up and other people respond when I do this. Here's what is hard for me. Here's what's still a work in progress. And I think when you talk about athletes, it's a great example where to be an excellent athlete, you have to be really honest, self-inventor. Man, this is— I'm fast. I'm fast and I jump high, but I am not so good. I'm not big, or I can't tackle people, whatever. You have to have that sort of real honesty, again, without shame. And that's where there's so much of that, "Well, I just need to be sort of falsely humble," or that sort of grandiose, neither of which aligns with reality and both of which lead to core— some emotional immaturity and core wounds to the soul where we're not thriving, we're not becoming the best version of who we are. The best version of who we are balances that both, that honesty.

What is your advice to people who have a false sense of perception? Like, when you have somebody come into your practice and you're counseling them, what is your advice? Do you call those people out? What's your advice to them on, on that?

Well, it's— so this is one of the— so again, as a therapist, I can name honestly what's good about it and what it— what are some of the deficits, right? Without— and again, that's a That's a skill that we don't see a lot, that nuance. One of the deficits of therapy is I am sort of reliant on my client's self-report. So it takes a minute for me to recognize, I think this client is constantly lying or constantly aggrandizing a story or not giving me the truth. That's one of the limitations of that one-on-one relationship when we're not in community, right? When there's not a body of people or when I'm not seeing that person in their setting, I'm reliant on self-report. So right there we run into— so it takes a minute, it takes time and skill to learn. I remember early on as a therapist, um, I had a client come in and was kind of aggrandizing all this stuff and telling me all this amazing stuff. And at some point, one of her family members literally left me a voicemail and said, I need to tell you, I know you can't talk to me, I know the limits of confidentiality, but I need you to know the reality of what's actually happening. And it was like totally night and day. And had that not come in, and it was just such a moment of realizing, oh my goodness, I always have to be super careful and be very discerning when I'm listening to people. Those skills grow over time, but gosh, when you're working with someone who has some, and again, I, I say narcissistic features, I think we're too quick to label people that, you know, someone who is genuinely narcissistic has a whole pattern of behaviors, but someone who's self-presenting in a grandiose way You're really underneath that, I believe, and what a lot of the research shows is that there's actually a very small self underneath that. It's not that that person is actually in love with themselves, is that there's so much shame and so much core woundedness that that person needs. If you think about that mirror, that person needs everybody else to just only hold up a mirror of, "You are amazing." And that person can't actually look at the mirror of truth, which is there are some really good things about me, and man, there are some things that are still in progress. And so you are gently trying to introduce that reality testing, that reality checking, without stirring up all of the shame that's underneath there, because shame is almost always underneath that.

Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of shame and a lot of guilt, right? I mean, a lot that people have. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what is your advice for somebody who knows they have low confidence, self-worth, low value? What is your advice on them? How does somebody start building up a stronger sense of identity and worth?

Yeah, I mean, to this whole conversation, this is the model that I lay out in the book is we have to name that. The fact that you can name that, and say, "You know, I'm someone who really doesn't believe in myself," or, "I doubt myself," or, "I second-guess myself." The very ability to name that is a step toward confidence. Sure. It's ownership. It's to what you're saying. It's taking accountability. And then, it's saying, getting to the root, "I wonder why that is. Is that because I didn't have parents who loved me? No one really came alongside of me as a kid and said, 'I've got your back. You're awesome.'" And so, there's some trauma there. And so, if that's the case, then I need to work on healing that. Who can I pull in around me? A pastor, a therapist, a mentor, a friend, and say, "I'm working on this," right? And really work on building up that kind of— maybe take some assessments, look at StrengthFinders, look at some of these strength-based assessments where I get some data that says, "No, no, you're actually really skilled at this," right? Is that low self-worth a negative thought pattern? And I've just gotten into a bad habit. Right? And I really need to do some— a lot of the stuff you teach us, Josh, that's so helpful, interrupting those thought patterns, you know, um, to your book, you know, this is not helpful to me. I need to be very diligent about replacing these thoughts with other thoughts. So we have to get to the root, and I go through that. There's a chapter in the book on I shouldn't feel less than. What is the root of that? What is the root of that? And because depending on the root of that, we're going to have different strategies to intervene in it.

That's so good. I do want to reference— I've got several more questions for Allison, but before I do, if you're interested in the book, the book's called I Shouldn't Feel That Way. Uh, it's in bookstores nationwide, it's on amazon.com. Again, I Shouldn't Feel That Way. Tell us a little bit, Allison, like what is the book about exactly and who's it for?

Yeah, it's for anyone who's wrestled with these emotions that get so confusing and get knotted up inside of us And I called it, I shouldn't feel this way, because they're often the emotions we beat ourselves up for. I shouldn't feel less than. I should feel confident. And so what I'm trying to do is say, okay, but let's start with what's true. What's true is we're not going to gaslight ourselves, right? We're not going to, well, what's true is I'm someone who sometimes struggles with confidence. And again, we're taking the shame out of it. We're just naming a fact. This is what's true. That is the first step toward change. And so I lay out 3 practices, and there's others, these feelings where Or we shame ourselves. I shouldn't— one of the things I talk about in the book is when we're in toxic relationships or when we've been around a lot of toxicity, we feel a lot of inner chaos. We doubt ourselves. Sometimes that's a root. Sometimes someone else is kind of contaminating our well. And the reason that we feel yucky when we're around them is because they're actually engaging in some toxic behaviors. That would be a different framing, right? And so I'm trying to help people get out from underneath, "I shouldn't feel," and instead pay attention. This is what I'm feeling here. Name it, frame it. That's the second step. What's happening? What needs to happen here? Get to the root, to your point. And then we have to brave, we have to take brave steps forward because then once we've named and framed, we have information and then we're responsible for changing what we can. And so it's for anyone. Who has really battled against kind of feeling certain things that you don't know what to do with them, so you beat yourself up for it instead of just getting honest about it and then embarking on a path toward clarity.

Yeah, that's so good. You know, one of the things I think that's come up recently too in terms of parenting style, it's so interesting. I had a dad who was in the military, served in Vietnam. Both my grandfathers were in the Navy, and I think, I mean, they were all of, all of them, including, and also my mom and grandparents, they were very loving. They were great. I had great parents and grandparents. Um, but there definitely was a lot of discipline. I mean, a lot of solid lines, a lot of, you know, uh, you know, boundaries. And I am so grateful for it today, like so, so grateful. But today I think we've gone from the society of having lots of boundaries with kids and trying to make them strong by having them do hard things. I mean, I remember we used to always compete for, uh, these fitness tests. And so if you could do so many pull-ups and run so fast and do certain things, you know, push-ups, sit-ups, it was— you had like a Presidential Fitness Award. And like, there were these blue badges and red badges. I don't know if you remember this, but this was in gym class. And so, and, and I even think that at one point Arnold Schwarzenegger was a part of this and other people really making this a really, like, how do we make people physically and also mentally strong in schools? Well, today it seems like the opposite is true. I feel like when you go to a school system, I would be concerned that my child would get more mentally weak actually going to schools than actually mentally strong. Do you think that could be the case today? And, and, and why, why is that?

Yes, and again, it's that pendulum swing. It's that pendulum swing. And it's exactly what I'm trying to chart a course, a middle ground through in I Shouldn't Feel This Way, which is, again, it's not that every emotion should just, oh, this hurt my feelings, therefore I should quit the team. Or like those things you described, those presidential achievements, I was terrible at those as a kid. I wasn't fast. I could never get it. My friends all did. But that also was create a mental toughness and honesty. Okay. I'm not fast. I'm not going to be the star. Of the basketball team. Yes, that's a bummer. So what can I do well? What am I good at? That mental toughness versus now where it's kind of like everybody needs to be— we need to over-coddle, over-correct. And so it's a balance because we don't want to shame our kids. Shame is real. We don't want to shame our kids. That's to me, we don't want to shame things. We do want to name without shame. We want to learn to be honest, which does require some core strength. I like I like to think of it sometimes as core strength versus big biceps. It's that internal core strength of, right? And you feel that in a marriage or in a relationship where it's like, oh, this person is seeing stuff about me that is hard. I can sit with that without getting defensive, without justifying myself, just like, yeah, that's hard, right? There's that core strength. And our kids need that because adult relationships require it. I agree with you. I think we have to be able to chart a course where we're helping our kids name things, honor things that are hard without shame, but also without— while also helping them build resilience and building grit, right? That ability to stick with things or make hard decisions or have courage or stand up for things. It requires that both/and, and it's really crucial to emotional maturity and health in adulthood.

Yeah, that's so good. You know, I, I believe the middle of the pendulum was like in the '90s. I think it was swinging, and I'm just saying that because I grew up then. I mean, I love the '90s. I felt like even the movies, things like that, I felt like it was a really good balance. And then just after, it just kept, you know, it's really kept going. So if we have anybody who's Gen X here or anybody who agrees that, you know, the '90s was kind of when we were in the middle and it was a good balance, then, uh, but it swung fast. I mean, if you think about it, it swung so hard and so fast because my dad, who's, you know, just in his 70s— I mean, it's like versus now, kids in there— I mean, it was 50 years. I mean, where it went from one side all the way to the other, just in a dramatic way.

And I think in the last 5 years, really dramatically, even more so. It's just really swung.

Yeah. Yes, yes. Um, you know, you have a show and you interview a lot of people on it. What is the best piece of advice you've ever heard anybody give on a show you've done? Or, or it could, it could be in your life as well, best piece of advice you've ever received personally.

That's a great question. You know, honestly, one of the best piece— I'm, I'm approaching, uh, empty nest as a parent, um, and I would say, and so there's a lot of reflection. We've got a graduation, we've got a wedding coming up, so lots of reflection. And one of the best pieces of advice I got early on is more is caught than taught. It really guided me as a parent that we want so badly to instill concepts, whether it's our kids or other people. But what that means is the more I become the person and embody the person, my kids are going to pick up on who I am more than my words.

Yes.

And both matter, but more is caught than taught. And so, whenever I feel, you know, helpless. It's like I just have to keep trying to become the best person I can become, and that's the best gift I have to give.

I love it. That's so good. We just talked a little about mental strength. How does someone become mentally strong? And then how do you help— well, and I think you answered that— how do you help your kids become mentally strong? But then how does somebody who knows, you know what, I need to be more mentally strong, how does somebody go about doing that practically?

Yeah, I think we have to first— the naming without shame. You know, Dan Siegel, Dr. Dan Siegel talks about to name it is to tame it. And so when we begin to— if we want to become mentally strong, I can say in my own life, when I started to bump up against things that hurt or brought up shame, I had to learn to sit. And that's such a therapeutic word, but I had to learn to say, okay, there's shame. And it's almost like I had to imagine it out in front of me. There's shame. This person has said something that, oh, it rings a little bit true and it hurts, and then there's shame. But I really want to grow. I want to become better. And so I had to learn to let the shame be there. The shame goes away. It goes away when you name it. When you name it and say, wait a minute, shame is telling me you're a pathetic moron who will never get over this, who will— it's such— it's so self-defeating. It's not— it's not constructive. If I can let it be there and maybe tell, "I'm feeling shame about this, but I want to get through the shame because I actually want to work on this thing." The shame doesn't help. The thing that's true is, "Okay, yeah, I've got some growing up to do here. I've got to work on this. I'm not so good at communicating," or, "I'm not so good at whatever the thing is." The shame doesn't help. So you've got to learn those shame resilience skills that when we face something in ourselves or someone brings up something that's hard to hear, To kind of let that shame flow through, name it, tell somebody, tame it, and then just look at the thing. What did they say? Be willing to look at ourselves. What is the thing here that's really hard that I don't want to face, but I really want to grow? And so can I look at this out in front of me? I always try to tell people, imagine it, the shame over here, and then imagine the thing where you want to grow, where you want to learn, where you want to become tougher, kind of imagine it out in front of you to get a little distance from it and almost make friends in a way. And again, if you use that metaphor of the athlete, it's like, here's the thing that's really hard for me. And it's almost like the more I can make friends with that, I can transform it into a superpower, to be honest, you know, over time, that those perceived deficits, the more I make friends with them.

So I came across a study that I think why, why this is so important. And the study found this in the, in an average 5-minute conversation between people. 60% of people will lie at least once. And in your average day, almost everybody across the board lies over 10 times. Yeah, I mean, have you experienced that?

Yeah, I believe it. And to your point, I think it starts with ourselves. We have to start telling the truth to ourselves. If we're not telling the truth to ourselves, how in the world can we be honest with other people? Right? And it's the best route to freedom because the more I'm honest with myself and the more I really have that incredible foundation of honesty, what can any— how can— it's just so freeing. It is truly the path to freedom. Another study that's interesting, it's a little bit different, but I was reading recently, there's a study that over two-thirds of all conversations include gossip. And I thought that was fascinating that we're kind of in this cauldron of lying to ourselves. And talking about other people, both of which keep us from that work of what's really going on inside of me, naming what's hard, naming what's true, aligning ourselves with reality, and then creating relationships that reflect and are built on those habits, right? Yeah.

I mean, what are the keys to, as you're sharing, to have one, have a great relationship with yourself. Yeah. And with others. Or for you to grow personally, you have to be honest with yourself. If you're, if you're telling yourself lies, obviously you can't grow. You put a cap on yourself. Same thing with relationships. If you and the other person are constantly lying to each other, it's not going to flourish, it's not going to grow, it's not— it's— and so telling the truth, I mean, this is why, again, just bring him up again, Jordan Peterson, his number one rule for life, he says when he's been interviewed and said, hey, you've got 12 12 Rules for Life. Well, now your second book, you got 24. What is the single most important rule? He says, tell the truth. I mean, he's like, that, that's where it all starts. And I can see it now. I mean, I can see it for myself. I can see it in other people. It is so critical.

And people mistake— listen, I think all the time, man, I have that and I name it. I'm like, oh, I'm so tempted. I want to get out of that thing. And I'd be so tempted to just tell a little white lie. There are different types of telling the truth. It's not like we always have to say, I'm sick of you, I don't want to see you this weekend. And we can say, telling the truth, what is the actual truth? Again, it forces us to look at ourselves. What is the actual truth? I always say, what is it that I'm saying yes to? What I'm saying yes to is I need time to myself this weekend. So the truth is I can't show up because I've got an appointment with myself. The truth doesn't always have to be about other people. And I think that's what people miss in that. So often the truth is getting to the truth of what's going on inside of me, again, what am I saying yes to? What do I need to bring into my life that where I might end up having really healthy boundaries? And it's not like I'm constantly going around offending other people because I'm more focused on the path ahead. I always tell people, I'm, I'm a big hiker. I'm from out west and we grew up as kids. When you talk about building strength, my parents took us on backpacks in the wilderness, in the Rocky Mountains, you know, for days as like a 10-year-old, you know, I have these pictures. We got this big backpack and My mom would always say from behind us, and the hill just seems so big, and my mom would just say, "Just put one foot in front of the other." And it was just instilled in me this, I'm on a path and I got to just keep walking on the path. And you get really laser-focused in those moments. And it's so much less about other people, right? And it's so much more about that kind of that, this is where I'm headed. This is where I'm headed. And if I know where I'm headed, then I loved what you shared with me, Josh, that visualization exercise you and your wife did, that kind of that idea of this is where we're headed. This is where we want to go, right? When you've got that clear in front of you, it gets a lot easier because the truth is less about get out of my way or you're not doing it right, or I don't like that. It's the, I just got a place to go. I got another place I got to be. Right? And it's powerful.

That's so good. Well, last question for you. What is your best piece of advice for people who— to grow, uh, mentally in their relationships? As you talk about— I want to bring up your book again one more time here. Uh, it's I Shouldn't Feel This Way. If people are struggling with a battle in the mind and a battle of the emotions, what are the first few things they can do to get under control? What's your single best advice for those people?

It's really in line of what we're saying. I say name what's hard, Start with yourself. Name what's hard. Start with yourself. This is what's hard. This is what I'm not— this is what I don't like. This is what's bothering me. And then start with yourself, you know. Where— what— where does— don't start with everybody else. Start with yourself in a non-shaming way, but name what's hard and start with yourself.

That's so good. Well, I want to say thanks, Dr. Allison, for coming on. I want to encourage people, check out the book I Shouldn't Feel This Way by Dr. Allison Cook. Where can people find more, more about you and your awesome work?

Yeah, drallisoncook.com is my website. My podcast, The Best of You Podcast, is anywhere you get podcasts. Um, and then I'm online at Dr. Allison Cook.

Thank you so much. I want to say thanks everybody for tuning in to the Dr. Josh Axe Show, where each and every week we uncover the science and principles and how to grow in body, mind, spirit, and take your and your life to the next level. Make sure to subscribe, like, and share, and we'll see you on the next episode.