Permission to Heal

Permission to Heal Episode #46 - A Conversation with Dr. Therese Rosenblatt - Finding Comfort in Uncertainty

September 21, 2021 Marci Brockmann Season 1 Episode 46
Permission to Heal
Permission to Heal Episode #46 - A Conversation with Dr. Therese Rosenblatt - Finding Comfort in Uncertainty
Show Notes Transcript

“What I do know is that we are all in this together, therapists and patients alike, this pandemic and this period of recovery. Everyone. Looking out for others’ well-being is as important as caring for our own. We all need and deserve each other’s empathy.” – Dr. Therese Rosenblatt

Therese Rosenblatt, PhD, is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York, with more than 26 years of experience. She treats adults, adolescents, couples, and families.  Dr. Rosenblatt is an adjunct clinical supervisor at Yeshiva University and Pace University in New York. Since the pandemic, she has been running workshops and speaking on the topic of life challenges, and emotional health during the pandemic, plus the changing needs of virtual therapy practice.

In her new book, How Are You? Connection in a Virtual Age: A Therapist, a Pandemic, and Stories about Coping with Life , she provides vignettes chronicling how her patients have been handling the pandemic and all-virtual therapy and dealing with loss and loneliness, relationships with partners, parents and children, work/life balance, challenges with substance use, and re-entry anxiety.

Dr. Rosenblatt writes a regular blog Inside Real People's Heads for Psychology Today. Check it out.

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PTH Episode 46 Dr. Therese Rosenblatt 

[00:00:00] Hello there and welcome to permission to heal. I am Marci Brockman, and I am thrilled that you are here in today's episode. I had a conversation with Teresa Rosenblatt, PhD. Theresa is a psychologist and a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York. With more than 20 years experience. She treats adults, adolescents, couples, and families.  

[00:00:23] Dr. Rosenblatt is an adjunct clinical professor at Yeshiva University and pace university in New York. Since the pandemic, she's been running workshops and speaking on the topic of life challenges and emotional health during the pandemic. Plus the changing needs of virtual therapy practice,  

[00:00:40] Theresa lives in New York City and Westchester with her husband where she enjoys long visits from her three sons and their partners and her happy place is Martha's vineyard, which is gorgeous and fabulous. Her new book called, How are You? Connection in a Virtual age, a therapist, a pandemic and stories about coping with life 

[00:01:01] it's a very interesting and compelling read, as somebody who is a mental health and therapy advocate, having been in therapy for most of last. I want to say 30 years. I know the integral importance of the therapeutic relationship between a therapist and a patient and how it has utterly changed my life. 

[00:01:23] And so this book, how are you a connection in a virtual age therapist? Depend on DEMEC in stories about coping with life. Dr. Rosenblatt Chronicles, how her patients have been handling the pandemic and all virtual therapy and dealing with loss and loneliness, relationships with partners and parents and children, the work-life balance challenges with substance abuse and re-entry anxiety. 

[00:01:45] And we talked a lot about how the world has changed, how her practice has changed, how my classroom has changed. In face of all of the uncertainty and the changes in the pandemic. And she has given us some really [00:02:00] logical, sensible, easy-to-do actionable advice for, for dealing with our own anxiety and all of the uncertainty in our current reality. 

[00:02:11] So I hope you enjoy the episode and please like share, please leave us five star reviews. I. Stress enough how important this is in getting the audience to grow in getting permission to heal in the eyes, ears, and hearts of a growing listenership as we all, Struggle in our own way toward healing ourselves, physically, mentally, spiritually, psychically all it's all connected and giving ourselves permission to grow and permission to heal permission, to create healthy boundaries for ourselves without apology is really important to our own growth, happiness, survival, life, et cetera. 

[00:02:59] I'm very [00:03:00] glad that you're here and hope you continue to be. Inspired moved educated enlightened by this podcast and all of my amazing guests. Thank you so much for being here.

[00:00:00] Hello, Teresa, how are you today? I am good Marcy. Excellent. I'm good. 

[00:00:07] It's Friday. It's toward the end of the summer, although this is going to air on sometimes in September. Yeah, it's good. That's good. I like that. I think we've gotten used to that with the pandemic, you know, very, very, very much so. And so one of the things to result from my book is that I've been writing a blog for psychology today, and I'm writing about how particularly my next blog to come out, I'm writing about how the genie is out of the bottle. 

[00:00:39] It can't go back in many, many people have discovered that there's another way to live. And I compare it to, you know, that when. Left your parents' home for college or for something else, whatever it was. And suddenly your eyes are open to the way the rest of the world lives. And you [00:01:00] realize that your parents home wasn't the only normal. 

[00:01:03] I feel like that's, what's happened with the pandemic. People have realized, whoa, there's another way to live. That's really effective where I can be really productive and also happier and 10 more to myself. Exactly. And not as exhausted and running myself ragged and yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of things that I just thought I would miss about. 

[00:01:27] And I don't, you know, I mean, I miss in some respects seeing people, but at the same time, because I don't know their vaccination opinions or their exposure, et cetera, I read. Zoom with them safer. Well, I think, well, first of all, let me just say, I don't want to minimize the losses there. And I just want to say that because I want to be real and I want to acknowledge what everybody's going through. 

[00:01:57] There are real losses and there's [00:02:00] there's morning. I think we don't even realize a lot of us that were going through a mourning process that. There for people who haven't lost a loved one or an entire income. I think this has been a tremendous opportunity. And at first I thought it was just me and I felt a little guilty about it, but then I listened to my patients and my friends and family and people like you, who are really getting a lot out of it. 

[00:02:28] And you know, there's a lot of found time. A lot of people are talking about it as the last year, year and a half. I really experienced it as found time. Your book during, during the pandemic I wrote and published my books during the pandemic, this podcast was born during the pandemic. Oh, interesting. 

[00:02:48] You know, like I, I experienced because I guess of the extra downtime and I experienced like a resurgence in my own creativity. [00:03:00] Because of my anxiety and stress and my own mishegoss, I have always naturally self administered art therapy. That's been my creative, that's been my own thing. My meditative, how do we help Marcy be better? 

[00:03:15] So I've been painting more and I've been drawing more and writing more. And I wrote, you know, so I mean, I did this behind me just a few months ago, you know, I just for me, that's been my, one of my ways of coping because I'm terrified of going back to school last school year, I teach public high school, 11th and 12th grade English. 

[00:03:35] And it's a, it's a, it's a shit show. We're doing our best. We're doing our best KU kudos to the teachers and all the, all the people who make the schools function. But the, the communities are just fighting vehemently, like mobs, angry mobs over whether their kids are gonna wear masks or not. But I, but it, see, [00:04:00] I under, I mean, first of all, as a group, I mean, there are all kinds of people who are suffering in the pandemic, but as a group, I think people with kids at home and kids and teachers, you know, anybody connected with that are really suffering the most. 

[00:04:16] And some of these, these things that they're fighting over. Maybe petty, but some of them are really not. I mean, I've been thinking about is there oxygen deprivation wearing masks and what does that do to all of our brains? Cause I get headaches when I'm wearing a mask a lot and B what does it do to a developing brain of a kid? 

[00:04:36] And so even, I mean, I think even sometimes when people are fighting about petty things, they're really fighting about things that are a little deeper, but I also want to pick up on something else you said, which I've found to be a very interesting phenomenon, which is what I call the sort of introversion extroversion thing is that we, in order to sort of psychically survive through this [00:05:00] pandemic, we've been forced to be more introverted. 

[00:05:03] We've been thrown back in on ourselves, right? A lot of people, very much myself included have sort of discovered the joys in, in having a friendship with ourselves and in our own inner resources, you know, you mentioned your arts for me, it's writing. It's also you know, it's writing, it's extra more exercise. 

[00:05:30] It's nature, it's catching up. Believe it or not catching up on Netflix. I was never a big watcher. I'm getting a lot out of it, you know? So and I, and I think it's been really hard for extroverts, but I think there were only salvation is to learn to, you know, to become more acquainted with their own self. 

[00:05:50] Right. Yeah. I agree. I agree. And I, I sometimes I think felt guilty about which is my own [00:06:00] craziness. I think I felt a little guilty about. The amount of time that I require by myself or in my own home feeling like, you know, that puritanical work ethic thing, like you're not doing enough, you're not producing enough. 

[00:06:14] You're not. And I think that this whole time gave me permission. Not that I needed it, but I learned to give myself permission to take that time and realize that it was self care that it's making me a better person. It's making me more relaxed. It's, de-stressing, it's, you know, all of that stuff. and, and I've, I mean, this whole podcast is about giving ourselves permission to listen and to heal ourselves and to learn more about. 

[00:06:46] You know, different modalities of, of how to make what goes on in and around ourselves healthier, you know? But you know, I'm fascinated by the fact that so many people are [00:07:00] experiencing what you're describing, including the guilt. And so I asked myself, what is it about our culture that we feel guilty doing this kind of self cultivation, this being with ourself. 

[00:07:16] And I don't know the answer to that. I do know that our culture really values and emphasizes extroversion and action, as opposed to introversion and thought right. And thinking this is really important. And I think it's also very nerve wracking to have time to think exactly exactly my first job experiences. 

[00:07:43] We're working for people who in very different fields, but who were like, you're only as good as how much you put out during the. You know, and it was the era, it was the early nineties. It was, it was the [00:08:00] era before email and all of that stuff really took hold. So, you know, I was working in a PR firm and if the outbox wasn't filled with envelopes and things that were going out, they considered it a wasted day. 

[00:08:13] Like it could have been a writing day. It could have been a day that we were working on internal things that may have not been billable or that may have not, you know, created things that were going out. But, you know, a day that outbox isn't full is a day that's wasted. You know, that kind of, I think you know, it's interesting. 

[00:08:30] Cause I briefly worked in PR for a while. Very briefly. It's not a good match to me. And I think they're one of the industries that are most like that. Cause I've worked in a number of different fields and it, you know, as I've become a writer, I've come to realize that. A lot of the work of writing has to be inside your head sinking while you're maybe going about doing other things. 

[00:08:56] Sure. Yeah. I wrote whole [00:09:00] chapters of my book while I was driving. I'm like, oh my God, that's a great idea. And I would like voice, text it into my phone, you know? And then yeah, cause sometimes just sitting at the computer, it's not where the flow happens. You know, you say other things that you riff off, other things that you, that you see or hear or feel, and that reminds you of things that you want to say. 

[00:09:20] So interesting. Okay. So let's do the six quick questions before we get too in-depth down this rabbit hole because I feel like we could talk about this forever. What six words would you use to describe. Oh boy. 

[00:09:36] Oh my gosh. This is getting to know Theresa. Yes, small, but big. My husband said you're small in size, but a big concept. I like that. Excellent. I'm a thinker. Yeah. Physical. So like small, big thinker, physical, empathic, a [00:10:00] worker sounds great. Excellent. What is your favorite way to spend a day? And this varies seasonally. Sure. Yes. Okay. Well, so since right now, I'm in my happy place, which is Martha's vineyard. Let's say a fabulous day would be Martha's vineyard. Great. Night's sleep got up, had really good exercise session and then had several more hours of outdoor activity like biking, swimming, hiking, hiking's big, with people I love. 

[00:10:45] Oh, and all of this is, is a combination of alone. And with people I love with good meals and maybe two or three hours of satisfying writing. [00:11:00] Wow. That sounds like a great day and good weather. Good weather. Maybe some good food thrown in. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, food food is a flu. That's a must, but healthy, healthy, good food. 

[00:11:15] Like in, you know, sort of in control, not, you know, really unhealthy over the top, but delicious and satisfying people. I love what's better than that. I would like that whole day, except maybe the hiking. I'm a bit of a klutz. I tripped two weeks a week, two weeks ago in my own driveway, an injured myself. 

[00:11:40] Meticulous. The thing about hiking is that it doesn't require, nimbleness or coordination. Cause it's just a form of walking. I used to hike younger when I was younger. Yeah. Whatever. Anyway, that's a whole long story. What is your favorite childhood memory[00:12:00] so this maybe won't surprise you since I've mentioned all the physicality, but I was seriously into ballet growing up and took it very intensively and a lot did a lot of it. 

[00:12:14] And those moments in the ballet studio when things were going well, because when you're not getting it right, it's supremely frustrating. But, and, and when I was young, I had a few girls that were in my class that I hung out with. So those ballet classes and having my friends there and with teachers I loved were with a beautiful music, lots of Showpad being played by a live piano player in the classes. 

[00:12:44] Loved, really loved. Did you ever see the TV series? No. Oh, no. Wow. That's something I'm writing it down. It's Amy Sherman, Pella, Dino show. She did bun heads right after the Gilmore girls ended. And before she [00:13:00] started anything else that only ran, I think that it was supposed to run for two seasons and may have, but I can't find the second season, so I'm not a hundred percent sure they filmed the second season. 

[00:13:11] So it may just be one season of shows, but I loved it. And I was, only a dancer for like the three years or four years when I was in elementary school. And then I did other things I'm not the most coordinated or graceful. It was graceful in my head, but not in my body. So not my thing. But oh, such a good show. 

[00:13:33] You, you should try to find it. I think it's on, it may be Netflix or Hulu, but, but boneheads was awesome. Oh, I definitely. Excellent. Okay. What is your favorite meal? 

[00:13:46] My favorite meal is either lobster or, something with eggs, some kind of egg meal with some type of [00:14:00] delicious toast and fruit, something fruit like to go along with it. So you're a breakfast person. Yeah. But I'm a breakfast is served all day person. Ah, yes, yes. Yes. I used to do breakfast for dinner when my kids were little sometimes. 

[00:14:17] Yeah, exactly. They're so they're so easy. I don't love cooking and they're so easy to cook. Well, make them delicious. Yeah. Excellent. Okay. Number five. What one piece of advice would you like to give your younger self? Oh boy, a lot there isn't one. I've evolved a lot since I was young. Well, good. Yeah. 

[00:14:41] I think the, the leading, the one leading piece of advice would be, it doesn't matter what other people think. It doesn't matter if I'm different from other people and if they object to, or don't like my choices, [00:15:00] I should just go ahead and make the choices. I want to make that feel right to me regardless. 

[00:15:06] I think that's brilliant advice and feeds directly into the whole giving yourself permission thing. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I always like sublimated the things that I wanted because I was so busy trying to please my mom, my dad, you know, anybody who was close to me, who. Wanted to be happy. I felt like it was my job somehow to make them happy and to do everything that I could. So if I perceived, if the story I was telling myself was that what I wanted was opposite of what they wanted. I would do what they wanted without any thought. Like my mom always said love and relationships take sacrifice. And so I sort of deemed myself as the sacrificial. So I think our mothers may have been related and, you know, we related because I, I hear you.[00:16:00]  

[00:16:00] I can resonate with a lot of that. So can a lot of people, unfortunately it tends to be more women than men. I don't know what that's about, but, whether it's social or innate, but it's true. And if there's one thing that I've learned over the years, it's that old adage of follow your instincts is so, so true. 

[00:16:22] And a lot of people would say, well, my instincts aren't good. So I shouldn't follow them. I would disagree with that. I would say the probably what's happening is there's a lot of static and noise around your instincts and you're not really finding them. Yeah. But if you follow those instincts, you know, and my problem has always been You know, not, not my instincts. 

[00:16:45] They're good. It's when I don't follow them. And it's sometimes it's that little voice, the second guessing that exactly. But the little voice that says, you know, you should rethink this. That's hard to listen [00:17:00] to, you know, the fear that, that fear creeping in there. No, you shouldn't know there's too many risks. 

[00:17:07] What if you fail? What if, what if it doesn't? But what I'm trying to say is there's somewhere in the background is that little voice saying this isn't good for you, or, but what I really want to do is we don't trust that. Sure. And I think that we need to trust that and, and look, I am a psychologist and I am in full-time practice and see a lot of patients. 

[00:17:33] And so, you know, I could jump over to the other side right now and say that, yes, there are people who get drawn. To things that are not good for them, but when I really listened to them, when they're in my office and they're really talking freely without fear of judgment or punishment, almost always, they'll say, but I knew I shouldn't have, so that good [00:18:00] instinct is there. 

[00:18:01] You just have to let it come forward. Yeah. I entered a whole marriage that way. I was saying to my therapist at the time, I know I shouldn't do this. And he's like, so don't go home, pack up, move back in with your parents and regroup. You don't have to do this. But the wedding plants had already started. We were living together. 

[00:18:22] The families were getting along. My parents and his parents hung out on their own without us. Like we had made them friends and there was all this momentum and I thought, well, Maybe I, I picked all of the series of bad or unhealthy men to be involved with. And now my family loves this family. So maybe they know something I don't, and I should do this. 

[00:18:49] So I did. And it was a disaster. I mean, I got two wonderful kids out of it, but it was a disaster for me personally. And afterwards, my family was just like, [00:19:00] well, we didn't really like him so much. We were just putting on a face because we knew you liked him. And I'm like, well, I misread that situation. It's only we would have spoken to each other about how we actually felt circumvented the whole thing. 

[00:19:19] No boy, someone sorry to hear that. It's that? It's all a learning curve. It's all good. So nothing's wasted. Okay. Number six. What is the one thing you would most like to change about the. This is another one. There's no one easy answer for no, not at all. And, and I'm so tempted to give a cliche written answer, but here's my answer. 

[00:19:44] What world peace. I mean, obviously, right. We all want that. But if I, if I go to, you know, second choice, since everybody would say world peace, I would say, I wish people would be more [00:20:00] tolerant of differences and diversity, of course, diversity meant in the way that it's used every day now about race and religion. 

[00:20:10] But even beyond that you know, I am whore, cancel culture. I wish that there should be ruined. Yeah, cancel culture. Yeah. I don't know what that is. Oh, cancel culture is if somebody says something that is perceived as being wrong in some way, or goes against a certain political group or other groups, beliefs or interests, and people can step into it inadvertently even using the wrong word and they get fired rejected. 

[00:20:50] I know what you mean. That's rampant everywhere. Right? So, so I, I wish for more, Viva LA difference, more room for [00:21:00] different, you know, for debate, for dialogue, for different opinions, different ways of seeing sayings, different personalities, beliefs, you name it. I agree. I agree. And I, and I, I have this perception that. 

[00:21:13] Some set of years ago, it was more tolerant of that. I may be wrong because I was younger and in my own head most of the time, but, but yeah, I mean, people get up in arms and so upset and, and not like their, their listening ears shut off and they can't hear the other person and they might as well just, you know, hit end and delete and leave. 

[00:21:38] Cause that's, that's the way their attitude is. Well, you just cancel culture. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know that that was what it was called, but we experienced that so much. I fight against that in my English classrooms with my students, you know, cause they hear their parents. They're 16, 17, 18 years old, and they have their own [00:22:00] opinions about what they're hearing and experiencing and feeling and so on. 

[00:22:03] And we do debates in class and it's such a great exercise because they don't know how. To acknowledge the opposition, how to treat it intellectually and compassionately and make sense out of it. You know? So I, I like, I pick a topic and I assign a side pro or con to the students and like, well, I can't, I can't argue pro because I, I feel like I'm against it. 

[00:22:31] Well, it's a good exercise. Learn what the pro person thinks about, you know? And no, I mean, it sounds, it sounds like you must be a wonderful teacher and you're giving a gift to your students. Normally I hear the opposite. I work with people whose kids are it T I mean, it tends in my. In my experience, it tends to come more from the private schools, but you know, kids who I have patients who [00:23:00] have kids who hold a certain opinion and take a certain intellectual stance and they, they voice it in class and they've been sort of shamed and canceled because their view doesn't fit in with the prevalent, you know, sort of politically correct you and any kind of debate or dialogue is shut down. 

[00:23:24] Yeah. I think that's horrible. Education is supposed to teach us how to think. It's right. It's not supposed to think to have us think a certain way. We're just supposed to think and make our own decisions, you know, use all the information that we have available to us and make a choice or have a thought, an original thought. 

[00:23:41] I always tell them that I would rather. I would rather, whatever their voice is, be authentic, then for them to write what they think I want to hear, because who the hell wants to read that? I already know how I feel. I don't need 50 people telling me how they think. I feel, I want to know how they feel. You know, I I'm in [00:24:00] graduate school. 

[00:24:00] I wrote a paper once and I took a, a particular point of view and I started a particular writer, to back it up. And what I got back from my professor was. He was very offended by the position that I took and it had to do with something personal that was going on in his life, but he approached it intellectually, not, he, I knew about the personal thing. 

[00:24:27] He didn't know, I knew and, but he gave me an a in the paper and that made a huge impression on me. And I so respected him for that, that he had such a visceral reaction against my point of view, but could still acknowledge the merits of the work academics. You had a thesis, you had an argument, you made a case, you backed it up. 

[00:24:51] You had examples. There's nothing wrong with that. That's educational academic argument, you know, that was the goal, right. So [00:25:00] yeah, you'll have to look at it that way. Absolutely. And, and as a public school teacher, we are, we are admonished or, or reminded not to politicize any of our comments. You know, we can't, we're not supposed to tell them how we vote or what our own political bent is that so on, we're supposed to sort of keep it neutral, which I don't really think as humanly possible. 

[00:25:23] You know, there's always nuances of things in the way we, we approach topics. But, but I do my best to, to make it a safe place for everybody to express whatever. Their opinions are about the way I look at that, because in a way it reminds me of being a therapist because in order to be a good therapist, I'm not there to impose my values and tastes and proclivities on my patients. 

[00:25:48] It's to help them unfold theirs. And, but what I've learned, and, and we talk about in the field a lot is as a patient gets to know you, they often sense a lot of short [00:26:00] truisms about you, but I think it's really important to try to be, to not impose your views on your students or your patients, just to have that as a goal, then if they find out or they send something about you, okay, you don't have to lie and you can talk about it, but at least you're not imposing it on them, your course. 

[00:26:23] Yeah. Yeah, of course. Okay. So Theresa, let's talk about your book. How are you connection with in a virtual age, a therapist, a pandemic and stories about coping with life. I saw this title and I was, I was like, I have to read this book. I have to talk to this woman. Everything's changed. I am a person who's a huge advocate of therapy and have been in therapy with two, three different therapists over the last 20 years, but have spent the majority of those 20 years with weekly therapeutic meetings. 

[00:26:59] I [00:27:00] just, I've never had a strong maternal voice. My mom was bipolar and stuck in her own egoic childhood stuff and and an opiate drug addict. So, you know, her opinion, wasn't one that. That I needed in my life. So as I was learning to trust myself and to listen to my own inner voice and to navigate the tumultuous world, that was Marcy, I had these three amazing therapists in succession. 

[00:27:31] And it has changed significantly since the COVID pandemic. So I was really drawn to this by, by a lot. So would you give us a little glimpse of who you are and how this book came to be born? I think it's it's yeah, I'll start with how the book was born. So I'm was living my life and, I'm in full time. 

[00:27:56] Practice of psychotherapy. I have two [00:28:00] offices, two practices, one in New York city, and one in Westchester county in New York. And my life was frenetic and whatever. And then and I was very much of a sort of go out and do person. And suddenly overnight I was stuck at home and meeting with all of my patients virtually, they, they could choose and they still can choose between meeting on zoom, FaceTime, or phone. 

[00:28:37] And my practice is really divided between those three modes of meeting. And coming from psychoanalytic therapy, I'm trained as a psychoanalytic psychologist. So there's a tremendous value there in a lot of the really human aspects of the work of being [00:29:00] with another person, taking in all the various cues that you get from that person. 

[00:29:06] That they get from you. What the, all the comings and goings of the patient to the office, leaving the office, the separations from one another, the reunions with a therapist. And we use all of that for, for the meaning that it holds. So suddenly all of that was gone right. And also, well, here's me, the person, there are many, many reasons why I was drawn to this field and it really is a field that is just a, kind of a perfect fit for me. 

[00:29:39] But what, one of the many reasons is what a human field it is, and the fact that it's not technological, excuse me. I do not have to be sitting in front of a computer all day, which is something I never wanted to do. So here I was suddenly [00:30:00] faced with dealing with technology, not being with my patients and so on. 

[00:30:04] Now I had always done some virtual work, a patient couldn't come in for whatever reason we meet on the phone. We meet on FaceTime that is very different from meeting exclusively, virtually, and then, and I became kind of in thrawled and entranced with this whole transition and what it meant then very soon after that, an Institute where I teach, asked me to make a presentation and I could choose the topic. 

[00:30:36] And instantly I decided. The topic is making it up. As we go along for week, we have no training for how to work this way all the time. We have no theory about it and no technique about how you do this psychoanalytic therapy work virtually. Right. So I said, well, that's what I want to, [00:31:00] that's what I want to talk about. 

[00:31:01] That's what I want to present on because I was immediately fascinated by it. And everybody in your field was faced with the same thing at the same time. Exactly. Exactly. Whether you're the therapist or the patient client. Right, exactly. Yeah. So I made a few presentations on it and it got me to sort of focus more intently on what was going on. 

[00:31:25] What did this mean for all of us? And so after that I had collected, so I had done so much thinking, speaking of thinking and not just thinking, observing as I was having sessions with patients, I was noticing. What was this like for them? What was it like for me? How was it affecting the therapy? How is it affecting us as people? 

[00:31:47] What did it mean for the greater population at large, who are now doing what I call living on living life online, not just therapy, but we were basically, that's how we were meeting with [00:32:00] people. And I thought I've got to write about this. And I decided, you know, I think I really have something to offer here by writing to the general public, as opposed to just a journal article that only my certain people in my field are gonna read, because I think this really applies to the whole public. 

[00:32:18] And what I also had in mind is I decided to make it a book for the general public is so often when I socialize, when I go to parties and meet new people, people, when they find out what I do, they'll say to me, sort of, you know, sort of, kind of secretly. Oh, you know, no one knows, but I don't tell this to people, but I've been seeing a therapist for X amount of time, or I did see a therapist for X amount of time. 

[00:32:47] And again, why that has to be a side conversation. Why, w that's one of the things that we have to keep talking about all of this stuff, that mental illness, mental health, taking care of oneself, being in therapy, isn't anything that there should be a [00:33:00] stigma about. I agree with you, but many people do feel very shamed. 

[00:33:05] Many people feel that it, that it means that they're crazy or there's something wrong with them. And I would always think when people would say. Yeah, you and everybody else. And so I thought, you know what?, this people are gonna be, you know, be able to relate to this book because first of all therapy, but secondly, even if you've never been, or aren't in therapy is not some mysterious thing for crazy people. 

[00:33:31] It's two human beings sitting in a room. Only one, one is on a journey. And the other one is on a journey with. But train how to listen to you and how to serve as a guide. Exactly. And, and help you identify and clear away the obstacles that are in your path. Right? So see patterns in your behavior, help call you out on things that you don't normally see yourself, you know, cause you're so [00:34:00] focused over here. 

[00:34:00] You're not seeing what's right in front of you kind of thing. And also the way I'm trying trained in, in psycho analytic therapy is I am trained to listen for the unconscious and, you know practitioners who are trained like me, not only believe in the unconscious, but believe that the unconscious exerts a tremendous influence over our conscious behavior. 

[00:34:22] So one of the ways that I serve as a guide is I'm listening to a whole host of things that, you know, the, you, the patient is telling me that you may not even hear, or you sort of send me here, but you're not really paying attention to. So, and there are tons of stories in the book. I wanted it to be engaging. 

[00:34:43] I wanted it to be human. I wanted to talk about what we as therapists do in plain English and make it less mysterious. And so there are lots of stories about patients, very well, disguised nobody's identity is identifiable and also [00:35:00] stories about myself, which is unusual, this blend of patient experience and your experience. 

[00:35:06] It was very easy and very engaging and lovely re yeah. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. But you know, most therapists are not writing about themselves. Therapists have strong feelings about that. And I only wrote about things that I don't mind people knowing, but I thought., this whole shift to, to remote work in the, in the pandemic had, so, could be such a distance or not being in the room with the therapist, with the patient, that there was something about revealing a little bit more of myself that felt important in order to sort of bridge these divides created by the technology. 

[00:35:48] I think that makes sense. I think that makes sense. It normally my guess is that your own personal things might get in the way of the therapeutic journey of your patient, but in [00:36:00] this case, it. Added to the connection or solidified the connection that was being weakened by the distance with the technology. 

[00:36:09] I felt that, and I did it very discerningly. I mean, if you spoke to any of my patients, they'd probably tell you, oh, she hardly ever talks about herself. So I, you know, I'm very judicious about what I do reveal and what I don't, but I thought for the book, it was certainly important. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of, of people in your profession feel that way. 

[00:36:30] I earlier on in the podcast, I think episode 18, it may have been, I interviewed two Manhattan, mental health professionals. One was a psychiatrist and one was a PhD clinical psychologist like yourself. And and they chose not to reveal their identity. They didn't even, I know them personally. But they didn't even want to reveal their real names. 

[00:36:54] Like. Their first names out of them only because they didn't [00:37:00] want anything that they might have said in the podcast to reveal more to their patients than they were comfortable revealing. And we were talking about anxiety and and, and how to compensate or how to heal, help ourselves deal with the intense worry and anxiety. 

[00:37:20] People were feeling in the middle of the winter last year early spring of the pandemic when we really, before the vaccines came out and, and so on. And I was at first, slightly annoyed by the amount of anonymity they were, they were requiring, but I felt that what they were saying, the content that they were delivering to my listeners. 

[00:37:41] It's more important than what we needed to know, which we ultimately didn't need to know about them in order to get the benefit of their wisdom. So, well, I very much respect that because that is my, my theoretical underpinning. You know, when I'm in a session with a patient I'm, [00:38:00] I am rarely talking about myself, but I also think that it's very important that we acknowledge that therapists are real people and profoundly human. 

[00:38:10] And so maybe this is a false distinction, but I sort of, it's sort of like if you were to run into your therapist in the grocery store, you know, there's a certain fact of reality that you see that they're human, you see in their office, how they set up their office. And so I sort of decided that what is in my book, Is it sort of in that category of look, I'm afraid, this is who I am. 

[00:38:35] I'm not going to introduce that into our therapy sessions, but if you see that about me then, so be it. And that's. Right, right. The fact that you might go to the grocery store and buy whatever you buy isn't relevant to your client's therapy session, but it is relevant to your humanity. So, you know, it's incidental, but it's there. 

[00:38:57] I remember my first year [00:39:00] teaching, I went grocery shopping at a grocery store, right near the school I taught just this one particular time I was going someplace else needed to pick up a few things. And I bumped into a current student at the time who was probably 35 now. 

[00:39:13] And his mom in the produce aisle. And I happened to just turn to her as another human being and ask how much broccoli do you think I should buy for this many people? And it turned out to be a student's mother and he was hiding, Ooh, she's at the grocery store. Like, well, what do you think I live in the classroom, like a Jack in the box. 

[00:39:33] Like it wasn't so funny. He just leaked. But I think that's one of the funniest cutest phenomenons, and almost every kid experiences it. When they see their teacher out there, they, I think they really do sort of imagine that you live in the classroom. And, and so I realized, I thought there was also a dynamic when we switched all the therapy to remote [00:40:00] that when I was meeting with my patients in the office, if they were trying to conjure me up in their mind and remember me, they could always place me in, in my office right now on remote. 

[00:40:15] I'm sort of floating in cyberspace and they don't know where to place me. And that is one of the reasons why I do. Engage in a little bit more self-disclosure in sessions, even when I judged that it would be helpful to the patient, gives them more of a grounded real, totally, totally. Exactly. Yeah. I had a hard time my therapist is not computer savvy at all. 

[00:40:42] And so to have her do a FaceTime or a zoom, forget it. She can barely text she's hysterical. I adore her, but so we were doing phone sessions and it was just miserable. I missed her face. I, you know, from my end, I just missed the energy exchange. I missed [00:41:00] seeing her expressions, you know, I just missed her big red couch, you know, like I didn't want to sit I'm in my house or I'm in my car. 

[00:41:08] I'm like, I'm safe and I'm in my own surroundings, but it wasn't, it's not the same. So how did you resolve that? We didn't meet as often. Our conversations were short. Which wasn't so great. Once I was vaccinated and the spring came and she was vaccinated, she had moved her office in the interim of all of this, like coincidental to the pandemic. 

[00:41:29] She was getting rid of the office. She had an office building, she'd bought a new house with an office on the side of her house. And so I started going to that home office and sitting there with her. So even that face-to-face was different, cause it was a whole new, physical thing to get used to. And it, I don't know, whatever, it's not that big of a deal, but yeah. 

[00:41:52] And then she has a, an illness that she's dealing with now. So I haven't seen her in over a month, so she's circling her own wagons for a [00:42:00] physical thing for herself. So I'm giving her space. And she said, Patients space. So, but anyway, you're saying the visual was very important to you, and it is not equally important to all people. 

[00:42:13] Some people it's very important. Others, not some minority, but still a certain subset of people seem to like the phone better. They like not to, they like to be able to look the way they want to look and not be seen. And that anonymity gives them the freedom to open up more. So that's been another fascinating journey that I write about in the book is yeah. 

[00:42:39] And that's why I give people the choice. I feel equally able to work in all mediums, but the face I would prefer, even if it's just zoom or something, we're FaceTime. I prefer to see the person's face no matter who it is. I'm talking to. I like facial expressions and looking at their eyes. And I think a lot of my own listening comes from lip reading. 

[00:42:59] [00:43:00] Yeah. Even though there's no hearing deficit and that's why I find teaching with masks on so difficult. Cause I can't see anything. It drives me crazy. Anyway, this is not about that. This is about, this is about your book.  

[00:43:14] So what do you think, I mean, if you, if you were looking back at all of your, your clients, your patients, what, what do you think that the most common threads of stress, anxiety, fear come from from people as they're going through this whole COVID experience? 

[00:43:35] I it's probably what we're all feeling, but I would like you to give voice to it. Yeah. I, I think that the biggest source of anxiety is the uncertainty. And what, what I found really fascinating is although people are certainly scared of getting ill and they don't want that. That is not what they're spending their time talking [00:44:00] about. 

[00:44:00] And they talk about their anxiety. They are talking about uncertainty, the open-endedness of the pandemic. When is it gonna end? I can do anything for certain amount of time, but the open-endedness is, are the gray areas you know, in a weird way, When we were all in lockdown, pre vaccination, and we had no decisions to make. 

[00:44:25] There were certainly losses and pressures and stresses and strains. Some people were isolated and alone. Others were suffering from cabin fever and too much being on top of their, their, you know, family, but more than anything, it was once the vaccines rolled in, rolled out and we now had choices and decisions and options, and they weren't clear. 

[00:44:53] And now I think we're, we're experiencing a resurface of that because we, you know, [00:45:00] we also, in addition to the fact that when, when people were vaccinated was included, What we could or couldn't do and so on. Right. But then people kind of got acclimated to it kind of went through this giddy period where they felt freed up and they could go out and do more. 

[00:45:18] And now with the Delta variant, that uncertainty is coming back in, we don't know how protected we are. We aren't, we don't know when we should or shouldn't wear a mask that is creating a lot of anxiety. And then connected to that. Anxiety is a lot of social anxiety for a lot of people. Once they withdrew and they became more isolated at home, they got used to it. 

[00:45:45] Some people liked it. Some people didn't like it, but. They got used to it. A lot of people found a certain comfort in just focusing more on a smaller group of people, not having to[00:46:00] network professionally be on for colleagues and the boss going to a cocktail party. All these things are so sources of anxiety that people could eliminate now they're going out again. 

[00:46:12] And so I think there was also a resurgence of social anxiety. Sure, sure. And you don't know who's been vaccinated and who hasn't. So now you're socializing with people. Well, you may have known for years, but you don't know if they're safe to exactly. And a lot of people feel more comfortable, just not even trying and staying at home or they outside with outside, or they'd like to wear a mask, but it's not cool in that setting to wear a mask. 

[00:46:42] And this is all, you know what? I'm calling this gray area. This indecision is causing really huge amount of anxiety and what it's also doing. It's anxiety in and of itself for its own reason. But it's also, and this is what happens with anxiety. It starts [00:47:00] to become contagious so that it, it, it stores. All of our old anxieties and a lot of people who have difficulty with substances 10, who are battling substance dependency, or having a harder time with that, again, they're old and usual supports to keep them sober or not around. 

[00:47:22] Right. So it's digging up a lot. The masking does help in the moment to alleviate the anxiety. I mean, it does snowball and make it worse and so on. But yeah, I can see, I could see how that happens. So what do you tell. What is your advice? What do you tell us who are feeling this way, who are feeling anxious of the uncertainty and don't know what we should do or shouldn't do and social protocols and so on. 

[00:47:47] What, what do you tell your patients? Do you know? Okay, so the first thing, I mean, I really have actually said a lot about even setting out steps for, to follow because people feel so at sea [00:48:00] about what do I do and where do I start? The first thing to do is find a source of medical and scientific facts that is, is a source that you trust. 

[00:48:12] So whether, you know, we, you know, what, what, what does the CDC say? Do you, you know, do you like to read the New York times do, is there a website, a health website? You know, I posted something on health thoroughfare. Where I laid out the steps. What, what is the source where you get your information that you trust? 

[00:48:32] I actually set up phone consultations with my GP because he's, I think he's a fantastic doctor. I, I very much trust his advice. And when I get to a certain junction where I'm just like, you know what, I just don't know what to do. Can I have my family over for Thanksgiving for Passover inside, outside? You know, when do I put the mask on, off whatever he really, [00:49:00] he gives me guidelines. 

[00:49:01] Once you find that source, then try not to obsess over it, follow that. Okay. So get the facts. The next thing you need to do is identify what you are anxious to that. And, and how much anxiety you can live with. If you're constantly going to events where, you know, you're engaging in behavior, that makes you feel that feels risky to you. 

[00:49:26] And then you go home, you can't sleep at night, then, you know, identify that as, you know, I can do this, but not that, that causes me too much anxiety. And either don't do it or decide on the precautions that make you feel safe, trying not to be apologetic about it. Just stick with that, and then be compassionate to yourself about your anxiety, recognize that this is an inherently anxiety producing situation and it's okay that you [00:50:00] feel it it's normal. 

[00:50:02] Everyone else is feeling it, even if they're not talking about it. Yeah. And do what you need to do to. To, to quell your anxiety or just to live with it. I mean, I'm a little on the more cautious, conservative side about mask wearing and distancing. I just come out with it. I tell my friends when I'm comfortable with myself, I don't, I never point the finger. 

[00:50:30] I respect, you know, everybody else doing what they need to do. I take responsibility on myself and then finally, and this is more relevant when we're not dealing with the Delta barrier when we're vaccinated and we're in a little bit of a safer period, then kind of set up some steps for yourself, goals that you want to reach, like maybe. 

[00:50:55] Your doctor told you that it's safe to go to a small indoor dinner [00:51:00] party without masks. And so everybody's been vaccinated and, but yet you just can't quite bring yourself to it and set that up as your next goal to sort of push yourself a little out of your comfort zone. But only if it's safe right now, we're in a less safe period. 

[00:51:16] And so maybe you're not going to push yourself as much, but identify it, own it. And don't be hard on yourself about it. Allow yourself to have it. Yeah, that's good advice. It's good advice. I found myself in a situation a couple of days ago where I was eating indoors at a restaurant with a group of women. 

[00:51:41] Who I off I thought were all vaccinated. And then I found out that two of them weren't and that they were against it. And, you know, I wasn't gonna get my own shoved my own opinion down their throat, or even my own. What I think is medical fact that I've learned from the CDC down their throat. I, it just wasn't what I wanted [00:52:00] to do right then and there, but I felt very uncomfortable. 

[00:52:03] So I kind of cut it short and didn't stay and allow you allow yourself to do that. You know, fear gets us to do a lot of things that we might not want to do or be like, for instance, a lot of people wouldn't have liked. 'cause, they were just too afraid of the social consequences. I think you need to give yourself permission, permission to heal. 

[00:52:24] I think you need to give yourself permission to cut it short if you want. And after going to a couple of indoor restaurant events, I was so uncomfortable afterwards that I'm now very clear with myself and with the people I get together with. I'm not doing indoor restaurants right now. There'll be another day when I'll be able to, but I'm, I'm not gonna do that right now. 

[00:52:48] Especially not in restaurants that are allowing full seating. You know, we've done a little bit of traveling. We had to drive to Vermont last weekend for my son's [00:53:00] delayed may 20, 20 commencement from college. They did it in August of 21, whatever. But they weren't, the restaurants weren't crowded. 

[00:53:08] There weren't a lot of people there. They were leaving spaces between tables and they had dividers up still. And I was okay. You know, we were in our own little group, we were all vaccinated and it was fine. But I know what you mean. Like, I wouldn't go into if restaurants were as populated or as crowded as they were prior to COVID I would not be going in my husband. 

[00:53:29] And I went to the movies a couple of Tuesdays ago and we were literally the only people in the theater. I was okay with that. So I'm I go into movie theaters that are not crowded and I wear a mask, which is probably not even necessary, but then I walk out and I'm not worried. I'm not just because I did something that was self-protective. 

[00:53:52] One is allowed to do what you need to do to feel safe and protected. [00:54:00] Absolutely. Okay. It's what's going to help us through all of this. It's gonna not add to the anxiety, but you don't need to be anxious about being anxious, you know, feeling safe and creating healthy boundaries for ourselves and not apologizing for them, I think are very important to takeaways. 

[00:54:20] I think they're very important. And I think here's where that, that thinking process comes in, you know, do yourself the favor of thinking through situations and ones that you feel comfortable with, ones that you don't and how you're going to approach them. Will you wear a mask won't you, if it moves inside, where you go in, you know, from the outdoors where you go in, will you not so that you're prepared and you're, you're set up for a situation rather than being taken by surprise. 

[00:54:51] Yeah. Right. And then you don't have that, that anxious. Oh my God. What am I going to do moment? Because you've already thought about all the contingent. [00:55:00] About how you're going to react happens. Right. And then finally once you make a decision, try not to obsess over it. And this I think is the hardest part for people is, you know, the serenity prayer, the bait that basically I can't paraphrase it, but it says, you know let go of the thing, control the things that you can control. 

[00:55:22] That's where you put your energy, let go of the things you can't control. And that's hard for people because they say, but what if, what if, what if I get sick? Well, you know what, there was a Mount of lack of control in our lives that we must accept. Right. So do as much as you can and let the rest go. 

[00:55:43] Brilliant advice about anything really about, about, about anything you could apply that to everything. Do what you can and let the rest go. Before the pandemic, we had an illusion of control but we didn't, we actually didn't have control over certain things. Right. We actually didn't. We, [00:56:00] we could cross the street, get hit by a car or get cancer, you know? So the, what the pandemic has done is it's, it's driven home to us where we don't have control, and that is very uncomfortable for people. 

[00:56:16] So again, put direct your energies to what you can control and try to let go of the rest. Try to not obsess over what you simply, anxiety is not going to help you control something. No. No, and I'm trying to figure out, like we went through a whole school year, last year of mask wearing and social distancing and keeping classroom and windows, Oak classroom, doors, and windows open. 

[00:56:43] And we tried the virtual things. So we were combining virtual within person. We had cohorts going different days of the week. It was chaotic, crazy mass of moving, moving blocks. And by the end of the year, [00:57:00] we had everybody in person with the exception of the few that remained virtual, still mask wearing still social distancing, still with the doors and the windows open. 

[00:57:09] And I think when we left in June, we were anticipating a more normal autumn. But now because of the slowdown in vaccination, And the Delta variant and the S the increase increased number of young people being infected, et cetera, et cetera. I think I haven't heard officially 10 days out from the beginning of the year, and I have no idea what it's gonna look like. 

[00:57:37] But I think we're going to be still doing social distancing and mask wearing again. And 

[00:57:45] I don't know if the school district is going to allow virtual, or if it's all going to be in person. I don't know, you know, 12 and up can get vaccine vaccinated, but although New York is a very blue state, long island is very red and has [00:58:00] a very, anti-vax kind of opinion about things. So I'm nervous, you know, I've been vaccinated, but I'm asthmatic. 

[00:58:11] And I had COVID. Confirmed. Cause it was before testing. It was very early March of 2020 when there weren't COVID tests around. But I had every single symptom. Could it have been the flu shore, but to me it seems too coincidental that every single symptom I had. So anyway, I don't know, you know, how to, how do people cope with ten-year-old kids who they have to send to public school who can't get vaccinated, who are with it? 

[00:58:41] There's so much uncertainty and abject fear. I just have to say again, my heart's so goes out to you all teachers and all students, young students, because I think you will. In the hardest position there [00:59:00] really. I mean right now, I mean, hopefully there are armies of people studying these situations who may be, at some point we'll come up with better approaches, but right now there doesn't seem to be one right answer. 

[00:59:16] No, no. And I think it's, it's getting to all of us. I think it's hard to it's I'm meditating and I'm writing and I'm really in touch with how I feel about things and doing your suggestion. I'm trying to figure out what my own plan is going to be going forward. You know, I'm obviously going to wear my masks and keep my myself separate from people. 

[00:59:40] But like, where am I going to congregate with other. What's my situation, you know, trying to get a handle on the things that I can control in a sea of things that I can't control. And, and yeah, maybe another way also to think about it is don't let the [01:00:00] best be the enemy of the good, I mean, I think that it must be tremendously difficult to teach kids with a mask on, but if for certain amount of time, before we get a handle on the Delta variant, that's what you need to do in order to stay safe, then that's what you need to do. 

[01:00:20] And is it the best? And I will say, even for therapy, you know, as much as I write about how to adapt remote therapy to make it work and to adapt to our situation. Now, I don't deny that the gold standard is still in person and the gold standard is still in person without them. But if you can't, you can't and you just have to make the best out of, I always say reality is your friend. 

[01:00:52] Figure out what the reality is. If it's not safe to be in a classroom unmasked, then you can't be unmasked. Right? [01:01:00] Exactly. Exactly. And, and as you said, the gold standard is face-to-face no masks. We can see each other. We can read each other's expressions. We can read each other's body language. That's the gold standard, but we can't do that and maintain our own physical safety. 

[01:01:16] So give that up for now and let's try to make the best lemonade with these lemons that we can. Exactly, exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. Just as an aside at the end of each school year, as I'm signing yearbooks. Cause I teach most of my students are seniors. When I T when I signed their. The, the fee for me signing new your books is that they take a selfie with me. 

[01:01:39] And then I have on my wall, pictures of myself with all of my students, which I love looking at. And so we did that this year, we did the yearbook signing outside, and so people were taking their masks off to do the selfies and then putting their masks back on if that's what they chose. And I just had the pictures developed and I don't recognize my [01:02:00] students. 

[01:02:00] I have to look at them and cover their faces under there are eyes to know, oh, that's, so-and-so like, I can't, I don't, I didn't know what they looked like. So I that's, that's something I, that I didn't write about that I've been thinking about more since the book, you know, I finished the book, which is, you know, a lot of people find the eyes to be the most important compelling part of the face. 

[01:02:24] I am somebody who first, who is more compelled by what's beneath the nose by the mouth. Right. And so I've been funny expressions of someone's mouth. That if somebody has their mask on it, you know, it can be difficult to recognize them by the eyes alone. I really need the mouth more than anything. Right. 

[01:02:46] So, yeah, that's a whole other, you know, that's interesting. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's not just the hearing. It's not just the auditory, but the visual, you know, seeing what their facial expressions are and what their mouth [01:03:00] looks like when they're speaking to me as part of understanding the content of what they're saying. 

[01:03:05] So it's been very interesting to learn how to rely more on the auditorium. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Very peculiar. Yes. Okay. So let's, let's, let's tie this up with a little bit of Theresa Rosenblatt with. More hungry for it, baby. I haven't given you enough enough. Do you have any like last bit of advice for the, for the listeners before we depart as to, you know, self care or self therapy, you know, maybe, maybe it has to do with what I just said about reality is your friend, you know, we're all suffering through this to varying degrees, some people more than others. 

[01:03:53] And I think, you know, as I just said that you, as a teacher maybe are suffering more [01:04:00] than, you know, me as a therapist. But we're all suffering. There's there's losses and fears for all of us. And I, I think that, you know, in this reality is your friend saying there's. No, there's no truth that says that we shouldn't have a pandemic. 

[01:04:20] A pandemic has been part of human history for the millennia, and this is part of life. This is part of life, bad things happen. They do their awards. There are pandemics, there are droughts, there are all kinds of terrible climate change and physical biological reality. That's right. And I think that the, the best way to find peace is to acknowledge our reality. 

[01:04:49] To accept it, to not tell ourselves this shouldn't be, we don't deserve this. We do. This is part of the human [01:05:00] experience. And once you accept what the reality is, then you can adapt to it. Then you can adjust to it, do what you need to do to name the reality, except it adapt to it. What are you going to do to adapt? 

[01:05:16] What are you going to do to adjust? And how are you going to make. Work as well as possible. That is one of the reasons why I wrote the book. Would I rather see my patients in person and then may absolutely. I wish I were sitting in my office with them, but that can't be for right now. So I'm constantly thinking about how can I make this therapy. 

[01:05:40] Remotely, because that is the reality. And then I'm also thinking about what is the silver lining? What am I, and what are they getting out of? Not having to transport ourselves to the office, having more time to ourselves, having more time at home. It has opened up [01:06:00] worlds for many people. And you, you, you know, you can say I'm an extrovert. 

[01:06:06] This is too hard. Okay. But every extrovert has an introverted side. Every extrovert has an internal life. How can I tap into that internal life, make friends with it. And may, you know, as you said, make lemonade out of lemons. Beautiful. Well, how do we find your book? Is it a for sale online and bookstores and so on? 

[01:06:31] It's it's on Amazon. And so if you just plug in, how are you connection in a virtual age, a therapist, depending on making stories about coping with life, it will come up. It will probably come up. If you, if you plug in my name, Teressa Rosenblatt PhD, I'm on LinkedIn. I write a psychology today, blog, which always mentions the book. 

[01:06:56] Nice. Okay. So all of the links to all of these things [01:07:00] will be in the show notes. So if you're listening or, and, or watching, just scroll down under where you're seeing, we're watching and we'll all be there. Thank you so much for Teresa for being here. This was really wonderful. I enjoyed this conversation. 

[01:07:15] Thank you very much for having me, Marcy. I enjoyed it too. And I appreciate your having me. Thank you so much. Take care.