PSA: You Are Worthy with Dr. Marisa Franco

Do you believe it when other people say, “You’re worthy just because you exist,” or do you simply grimace, pretend you agree, and move forward?

It can be difficult to have a real sense of self-worth. Not the kind that we advertise on social media with our highlight reels, but the genuine sense of self-worth: the way you treat yourself and, in turn, how you treat others. If you’re a member of our community, you probably understand this feeling – maybe you’ve suffered grief, loss, tragedy, anxiety, depression, etc… Digging past the performative self-esteem and accessing true understanding of your own self-worth can feel – let’s face it – impossible, especially when you’re trying to just keep your head above water.

Today, Nora is joined by Dr. Marisa Franco to help us all understand what self-worth and self-esteem truly are and how we can access them authentically to show up for ourselves and the people around us.

If you have any questions for Nora and Marisa, call/text us at 612.568.441.

 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

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Hi, how are you there?

Hi, hi, hey, Nora. I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Thanks For Asking, a call-in show about what matters to you. You are enough.

You are worthy. These are sentences that I want you to believe, and these are also sentences that would make me crawl out of my skin if you said them to me.

I would pop my skeleton out of my skin, but I would also smile and nod and say, yes, I totally am, I know. But like many people, I have struggled with self-worth for my entire conscious life.

The way that I speak to myself would get me arrested or punched in the face. Honestly, probably both, if I spoke to anyone else that way.

My inner monologue is often a chorus of haters singing about my worst qualities, and even saying that, admitting that, makes me feel bad because for the love of God, I’m in my 40s. I should be over this. I should know better than this, right?

And yet, I found out that my wise, beautiful New York Times best-selling friend, Dr. Marisa Franco, and yet I found out that my wise, beautiful, talented, brilliant, New York Times best-selling friend, Dr. Marisa Franco, has felt the same way.

So much so that she wrote a book about it, both to explore her own journey with self-worth, and to find out how we can bring meaning, self-worth, and secure attachment into our lives in a real way, not like a TikTok psychology buzzword kind of way.

Because the way we feel about ourselves affects everything, how we treat ourselves, how we treat other people, how they treat us, and the way that we feel about ourselves in this era is subject to far more inputs and opinions than ever before.

We can see likes and follows, we can also see into other people’s highlight reels in a way that we could not even imagine 20 years ago. And I know that I’m not the only one comparing my insides to someone else’s outsides.

So here is today’s conversation with Dr. Marisa Franco. I suggested to her that we have a live discussion around her book in a few weeks over on Substack for subscribers.

So if that sounds interesting to you, grab a copy of Marisa’s book from the link in the episode description, and enjoy.

Hi, Nora.

Hi. Oh my God, finally.

Yay, we did it.

I love your hair.

I know. Thank you.

What a journey this summer has been. And also, I have to tell you this. I don’t know how woo you are.

I mean, you’re a little, right? Okay.

Okay. I got a little wooing me.

I got a horoscope alert about, wait for it, I got a horoscope alert for this day specifically, which is something’s happening, maybe an eclipse.

Okay?

And it said that I have to let go of the stories that I’ve told myself about my worth. What? And we were not supposed to have this conversation today.

Oh my God.

We were supposed to have this conversation last week, two months ago.

Third time’s the charm.

I guess it was meant to happen today. That’s what the horoscope is telling us.

It was meant to happen today. The chaotic summer that I got through, whichever in the world is like, what do you mean like the end of summer? I’m like summer, it might be 115 today, but the kids are back in school and therefore summer is over.

Yeah.

I fear you, there’s like psychological summer. There’s actual summer, then there’s psychological summer. It’s psychological summer’s ending.

You are so right.

And also, I consider the beginning of the school year, whether or not you’re in school, to be the new year.

I agree with you. That’s what it feels like. And it feels that way when you’re in school, it feels that way when you have kids, like it’s just throughout life.

Yeah.

And just like my whole, it didn’t matter that I graduated college and whatever year I graduated college in, every fall, I’m like, this is it. This is when the new beginning actually happens.

It’s not going to be January when there’s no light and I’m tired. It’s going to be September 1st.

It’s like fall is all this transformation happening all around you, inspiring you.

Yeah. And it’s like there’s great sales at Staples. And to me, that’s what life is all about.

That’s what life is all about. So the first thing I like to ask is, what is something about this that you have not been able to or it has not come up on other podcasts that you really, really want to make sure comes across in this talk?

That’s a great question. I feel like I’ve done a lot of podcasts. At this point.

Well, maybe there’s stories that I share around my own journey of worth or what realizations I’ve had of worth and maybe some of those stories.

Okay. Then let’s make sure we get those.

But I wanted to start with what I think has to be the best first sentence of a book that I’ve read in maybe forever. The best and worst people both have high self-esteem. What do you mean?

When I explain it, I feel like it’ll be intuitive to everyone who’s listening.

As I looked into the research on high self-esteem, I realized there was two types. One type of person who says they have high self-esteem, they feel good about themselves, they feel worthy.

They act like they’re better than everyone, and they always brag, and they’re very defensive, and they’re very reactive, and they take their emotions out on other people.

The other type that says they feel good about themselves and they’re worthy, that is kind, and compassionate, and non-defensive, and accountable, and non-reactive.

Both of them say the same thing on a questionnaire that assesses high self-esteem, but I guess the true measure of their self-esteem is how you treat other people. That’s how you know whether it’s authentic and genuine.

Oh, I loved the model that you used in this book of the good twin versus the bad twin.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So that was like my metaphor for these two kinds of high self-esteem, because they look the same if you ask them about their self-esteem. They’ll say the same things, I feel good about myself and worthy.

But they manifest so differently in terms of how they treat other people. As I was trying to understand this, like what’s the difference between these two kinds of people with high self-esteem?

I talked to my colleague Beth, who seems to have the kind of high self-esteem. She says to me, I’m trying to think about when I feel defensive, it’s usually because I feel ashamed.

I see something in real time happening that I later verified with the research, which is like these types of people that have this healthy social caring kind of high self-esteem, they are aware of their internal world, they are aware of their

emotions, and so those emotions don’t hijack them. So all of these emotions that they haven’t processed don’t come out in anger, superiority, boasting towards other people.

That is the critical difference between these two types of high self-esteem, one can acknowledge their feelings, one can acknowledge when they feel insecure, when they feel vulnerable, when they feel defensive, and that’s why I ended up defining

self-worth is actually treating your internal world as if it matters, treating your feelings as if they matter to you so that you can become the high self-esteem that doesn’t come at the expensive people that you love. You see this in a lot of

parenting structures, that there’s a father that might fit into this high self-esteem, that comes at everyone else. It’s not uncommon for people that are listening to have experienced this in their own family dynamics.

Yeah. Yeah. It was very, very illuminating in that sense.

I know you as an expert in friendship.

Yeah.

Tell me about the connection between the work you did around your first book, Platonic, which I love and we’ve talked about before, and what got you into the topic of Worth and into this new book.

Yeah. So there’s this really interesting theory. It’s like the theory that got away for me.

It’s called self-verification theory. And the idea is that we tend to look for people that verify our sense of self. What that means is that if you feel bad about yourself and someone loves you too much, in a way, it’s threatening.

Where your brain goes is, I’m going to let them down, they don’t get me, it’s only a matter of time till they figure out who I really am. And this creates all sort of hijinks for your relationships. You don’t take compliments.

And it seems so paradoxical. Why, if you have low self-esteem, do you reject the very things that should make you feel better about yourself?

And so reading that research, I was like, oh, unworthiness really is an inability to accept love from other people. And so I could really see how it plays out in our relationships.

And I think the other thing that happened with Platonic is, Platonic is all about what the securely attached people do in their friendships and how to do it.

And I just had people come up to me and say, like, it’s one thing for me to be able to say these things, but another thing for me to internalize security. So I feel it in my nervous system. So I don’t feel like I’m acting when I say a secure thing.

Like it actually is an extension of what I’m feeling internally.

And so I wanted to take on that task of, what does it mean for me to not just give people sort of instructions on how to act secure or show up in a secure way, but how do I get to the level of the nervous system?

How do I allow people to start feeling more centered, more calm, more affirmation, more care, more compassion, more anchoredness for themselves? And that’s what I took on in Worth.

How do we not let whatever happened to us in our childhoods, whatever helped us define that sense of worth, keep defining us? Because of course, there is a difference between knowing something in your mind and then living it out.

And that is the hard work that is worth doing, but also really difficult to do, too.

Absolutely. Yeah. So there’s this great quote from researchers that memories are the database of self-esteem.

And so like you said, why do you feel self-esteem? You can think of it as a theory that people will reject you, that harm will come, and that’s why you don’t accept any signs of love.

It’s like, they’re manipulating me to feel good about myself, so I’m further crushed. And so those memories are what determines that theory, that people will reject you. And memories don’t just record the past, but they predict the future.

And so part of you thinks, I’m going to be rejected, harmed, humiliated again. And you can see why then our insecurities, our low self-esteem are adaptive, right?

Because if you were going to get rejected again, it wouldn’t be adaptive to feel so good about yourself and just be further crushed when that rejection happens.

But the thing about memories is because they’re not made to record the past, but predict the future, that means that we can update them with new information.

And so this whole book is built on something called Memory Reconsolidation Theory, which just means that we can update our memories so they no longer predict harm.

And then we liberate ourselves to feel more secure because we no longer have to defend ourselves against harm by feeling insecure.

Yeah. I mean, I love, I thought of that as like, that’s a good way. I’m going to brainwash myself, I’m going to brainwash myself but in a healthy way.

That’s what I’m selling here.

Healthy brain, that’s how we can re-brand therapy really, you know?

I say that because when you’re revisiting memories, when you are, and I’m speaking just purely from my own experience, when I’m using unknowingly self-verification theory to look for evidence as to why I am a piece of worthless trash, and anyone who

likes me is wrong and has bad taste, I will find it. I will find it. I can go right now into my email, get plenty of feedback from people over the course of a 10-year podcasting career and be like, yeah, honestly, you’re right. You’re right, dude.

You’re right. I’m the worst. I’m the worst.

I can use that to keep hurting my feelings. But you’re telling me that there’s another path that I could take.

But you know what? I like what you’re saying, Nora, because it’s weird to say that in a way, it’s almost a relief when people don’t like us as much as we fear they do. Because if that doesn’t happen, we’re caught in this place of suspension, anxiety.

Oh my God, it’s going to happen. What is it going to happen? The shoe is going to drop.

Oh my gosh. That’s what we see what looks from the outside, like self-sabotage in relationships.

But if you understand it from the inside, it does make sense if you’re so convinced this person is going to leave you, then might as well leave them and get some control over the situation.

It is strange, but psychologically normal for us to feel like, the situations where you suspect someone doesn’t like you, you suspect cheating, there’s this weird sense of relief when it’s actually true, because how our brain works is we want our

sense of reality to be confirmed. The whole reason we have that sense of reality is to make life predictable and not chaotic, and is to make it so that when bad things happen, we’ll feel prepared for it. I have braced for this.

That’s a strange aspect of our psychology, that in a way, we don’t want it to happen, but in a way, it’s a relief. If it’s a relief, it does, because we don’t have to wonder and be anxious about it anymore.

Yeah, I feel like this is very familiar for people who have anxiety or for people who have been through something hard and are, like you said, waiting for the other shoe to drop and are like, oh, see, told ya, told ya, nothing works out for me.

I wanna go back to the good twin, bad twin, because like you said, as soon as you describe that first sentence, you know that, right?

You know that.

And I think that’s also why people have this tendency to conflate a sense of self-worth or like high self-esteem, let’s say, with narcissism. That’s gotta be one of the most overused psychological terms right now, right?

Even though the bad twin that you’re describing, like narcissistic people, don’t actually like themselves. Like don’t actually, yeah.

And like even further than that, Nora, they don’t know themselves. If you ask them how they feel about themselves, the idea of actually checking in and being like, how do I feel? Like what’s going on with me?

Like that’s completely foreign to them.

They are so used to running a tape from before that, you know, experiencing what something called contingent self-regard in the research, which is like the only way for me to feel worthy is if I’m invincible, powerful, never vulnerable, right?

And that defense mechanism kicks in so automatically that you are then alienated to who you actually are and what you actually feel. And I think worth, so much of worth is about, let’s start with telling the truth about how we feel.

Let’s start by saying we’re anxious. Let’s start by saying we’re insecure. Let’s start by admitting we’re threatened in relationship.

Let’s start by admitting that part of us is relieved when this bad thing happened to us. Let’s start with telling the truth, because the problem wasn’t as so much that you felt insecure. The problem was that you felt ashamed of that insecurity.

And the moment you can say, hey, you know, I don’t feel good about this thing I should feel good about.

That’s the moment that you start feeling more worthy, because you are treating your internal world as if it’s something legitimate, that’s worthy of your attention and that’s worthy of your care.

And by that, you mean like literally admitting it to yourself, right? Not that the first step is that you’re like, I’m gonna, I’m unzipping, I’m showing everybody everything.

Yes.

And if they reject me, then I guess I will never do that again.

No, oh my gosh, this is so funny, I have this conversation with you. I don’t know, your like examples are just so hilarious.

But that’s all to say that like, it’s such a normal human experience to feel emotions you don’t want to feel and don’t think you should feel, particularly as women. We are taught that we have to be endlessly gracious and kind and generous.

And if we feel resentful or angry or hurt or rejected or we want to withdraw or we’re fed up, right? Like it feels like push that down, suppress it, not even just to everyone else, but to myself.

I am now in an internal battle with my sense of resentment, with my sense of anger, right? And not realizing that that internal battle only makes it stronger, only makes the resentment and anger stronger. And what does it look like to say?

I feel angry, part of me feels like I shouldn’t, but I still feel angry and that is okay. That is okay.

Yeah.

I mean, I’ve been doing this podcast for almost 10 years in pursuit of what I hope would be emotional honesty. And what I have learned is that it is very hard to be honest with other people, if you cannot be honest with yourself.

And I’ve had plenty of conversations with people who can’t get there with themselves. And therefore, you can’t get there with the audience. You can’t get there with your friends and your family.

That’s such a big responsibility to put on somebody in a lot of ways, right? Like when we’re struggling, when we’re suffering, we’re like, oh, really? So no, I got to do it.

But like, you know what? Um, yeah, you are kind of, your interior world kind of is your responsibility, you know?

Yes. Yeah. And you know what?

Just like listening, because I interviewed people that were what I call secure-ish for the book. And one of them, Dr.

Skyler Jackson, he said he would wave his hand over his day to see where his emotional energy lied, and what small things are big to him. And I was like, that is so beautiful.

And that was revelatory for me, because I was like, I’m used to maybe acknowledging a feeling if it’s hitting me over the head. But I noticed that sometimes I would feel a feeling so quickly, I would try to push it away.

And it was particularly around people-pleasing. So for example, I had this friend who I really adore, but wasn’t able to hang out for a long time, canceled our hangouts. We finally are going to get to hang out.

They go through an injury, which is sad. And I just want to say, I have compassion for you. I’m sorry, take care of yourself.

And I noticed myself wanting to say that so urgently that I’m like, I think there’s something in me that I’m trying to push away in this action. And I was like, oh, I actually feel rejected. I actually feel a little rejected.

And I feel like I shouldn’t feel that way because they have a legitimate reason, you know, all the reasons.

But actually now my well wishes aren’t as genuine because they are hiding, a way for me to hide from my feelings rather than sort of a grounded expression of compassion. So I had to slow down. I had to pause.

I had to say I feel rejected and that is okay. Even if they have a good reason, right? These feelings we don’t want to feel, they are okay.

And then once that rejection moves through me, I can say, of course, take care of yourself. I hope everything’s okay. How can I help?

In ways that actually are authentic and keep me in connection with myself and the other person.

Yeah. So by that, you mean you literally said to yourself, like, I feel rejected.

Yeah.

I know it’s not. I know she really did break her toe, but I’ve wanted to hang out and I’ve been doing all of this work, and I’m bummed. I really did want to go and have dinner and get out of my house today.

And so once you say that and you can move through it, you can acknowledge it. If you can feel it, if you can name it, then you really can right-size yourself. You can feel better and mean it.

Yeah, exactly.

I love that.

But we are conditioned as women, as people, we really do want to make sure everybody else is okay. And I do know that a large part of my self-worth comes from being able to do that, being able to make something better for somebody else and my work.

And I thought it quite on the nose that we had to reschedule this first interview. This is the third time, listeners. Third time is the charm.

We did it.

We did it. Third time is the charm.

If anybody follows me on Instagram, they know I had a chaotic summer. I ended up calling it the summer of surrender because it was so clear that I could not fight the current. I had to go with it.

That was so hard for me. Marisa, it was so hard for me to have to reschedule our first interview, our second interview because I wasted your time, I disappointed you, I’m bad at my job.

I’ve been doing it for 10 years and I still make mistakes, and therefore, I’m the biggest loser on the planet. I don’t deserve this job and I should be fired. That is like the internal, I go to therapy every week.

I say these things and she’s like, okay, actually, she’s very sharp, she’s very lovely. Shout out to my therapist who I will not name because would she teach me? Boundaries, baby, but that’s where I get my worth, right?

I get my worth from being able to do something, something for work and also something for the listener, something for you, and if I fail at that, I’m immediately, but who did I say that to? I said that to Marisa Franco.

And I’m glad you said it. You know, I’m glad you’re telling the truth. That’s real.

It brings up so much stuff to have to cancel this, this part of my identity that feels so important to me, and I don’t feel like I’m living up to that, and it’s really hard, and it brings up so much anxiety and so much self-criticism.

It’s so wild though, to be like, oh yeah, you have to, if I could do this thing, that I tell other people to do, that I tell my children to do, and that I know is good for me and for the world, I could feel better.

But what if I just kept pushing the bruise? Like, how do we break this cycle? And like, what kind of sounds like almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy, where we’re like, yep, I’m a loser.

Like, yeah.

Yeah. Well, I think you’re even by naming it, like you’re starting to break the cycle to like, really telling the truth and be honest.

And, you know, I guess I wonder, Nora, like, what would have been the impact if I was instead like, no, you’re great. Like, I don’t care. Like, you know, we’re here.

It’s totally fine. Like, don’t be so hard on yourself. Like, how did that help for you?

I would be like, well, you’re wrong.

Okay, that is so interesting.

Cause that’s honestly one of the things I’ve learned from writing the book, which is to just witness people, to not try to change your sense of reality, to just be like, yeah, that’s what you feel. Okay.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah. And also, this was in your book too, but I’m 99% sure, which is like, you know, it’s such a gift to be able to accept somebody’s like love or kindness too.

Like it’s a gift for that person too, to not turn down a compliment, to not be like, actually, I look like shit today, right? Like it’s so insulting to someone to be like, oh, you think I’m pretty? You think I’m pretty?

You’re an idiot. I’m actually the ugliest person alive.

Setting you up for an eye appointment immediately and giving you a gift certificate to Warby Parker.

Do you have a brain tumor? Okay. Are you okay?

Are you okay? Is your cognition intact? Should you be driving?

Is the question. First of all, I have to ask, or not first of all because now we’ve been talking for 100 years, but when you are setting out to study this, how do you have these conversations with your subjects?

Oh man.

You know what I mean? Like what are you looking for? And what is revealed to you conversation by conversation?

I just am so interested in the process of it.

You know what I am looking for? Moments where they make me feel something. Whether it’s like what Skyler Jackson was like, I wave my hand over a day.

It’s almost like when they, the way that they’re living is calling me out as a person. I’m like, oh, I don’t do that. Oh man, then that sounds really good.

Or like I do do that and I didn’t recognize it. So in one of the interviews that I did for the book, I’m interviewing this woman. She’s a mom, she’s from Brazil.

And I’m interviewing people who feel emotionally numb. And I say to her, what was the sign to you that you felt emotionally numb? And she says, I was perfectly agreeable.

And I was like, what? No. I felt personally attacked by that one, Nora.

Personally attacked by that one. And it was revelatory for me and it made so much sense to me that being perfectly agreeable all the time is a sign that you’re disconnected from yourself and you’re always oriented towards people around you.

So yeah, it is just hearing people’s stories and letting them, it’s the kindest, most indirect way to feel called out yourself. But that happened many times for me throughout this book.

Yeah. It’s also just the sign that being perfectly agreeable. Another word for that is nice.

You better be nice. You better be nice. You better be nice.

We love nice people, but there is such a difference between being nice and kind.

Yes. Honestly, even writing about the good and bad twin, because before I wrote this book, I would say, I feel good about myself. But the idea of do I feel good about myself or do I feel like I don’t want to admit when I don’t?

That’s what the bad twin is struggling with. I was like, yeah, it’s very hard for me to admit when I am not feeling like I measure up or when I’m not perfectly polished, or I don’t have it all figured out.

There’s something, I feel so driven to present positively all the time, and in my eyes, it’s like, I hope people are thinking, she’s so secure, she’s so grounded.

I realized that one of the things I do in the book is call out attachment theory in a way because I think I love attachment theory for the science, but the way it’s been used has been secure attachments at the top.

If you don’t feel secure, something’s wrong with you and you need to get it together, you need to be like these secure people over there, and here’s what you can do to do that, and you shouldn’t be feeling anxious in response to that text message and

blah, blah, blah. I was like, yeah, I feel this way too.

I feel this pressure to be secure that in a way that forces me to reenact on my own insecurities, the same thing that made me insecure in the first place, to shame parts of myself, to suppress parts of myself.

That’s why in the book, it was originally called secure-ish, that we shouldn’t try to be secure because then we alienate the parts of ourselves that aren’t. I think to be human is to struggle with at least some degree of insecurity.

Yes. First of all, I love secure-ish as a title.

Thank you.

Just get that website locked down just in case you want to use that for something else. That is my advice for you. I appreciate it.

Love buying websites. You said too many things that my brain was trying to keep tabs on at once. Secure attachment, attachment theory.

It’s as if we believe we can just fake it till we make it. We can just cosplay. We can just LARP secure security and self-worth, and then we’ll present that way.

I don’t know a single person who has not had some dissonance between the way that they’re perceived by others and the way that they perceive themselves. Oh, you seem, you’re just like this.

But I do want to talk more about attachment theory too, which is like, how did we get to the place where everything is attachment theory, and it’s almost in a lot of ways, you touched on this, weaponized too.

It’s so weaponized, it’s so weaponized.

That’s my attachment style, sorry.

You know, I eat, okay. It’s like, I have this ambivalence here, because I’m like, I read Attached, the book by Miriam Levine that really popularized this. It was revelatory.

It’s like, oh, now I understand what’s happening.

All these things that have been going wrong in my relationships, why this person ghosted, they’re avoidant, you know, why this person always needs reassurance or gets mad at me when I don’t, you know, text them back super quickly, they’re anxious.

You know, it just, it helps you really understand people. And so the research can actually be really helpful. Like, I’m knocking the weaponization of it.

The weaponization of it is to, that there’s this inherent hierarchy of attachment styles, which as someone who’s like, we need to tell the truth. There can’t be a hierarchy. If you are anxious, acknowledge that you’re anxious.

Maybe that means you need things from yourself and other people rather than just, yeah, like trying to pretend to be secure. Avoid it, the same thing. Yes, we’ve just come to this place.

We’ve come to this place of really shaming ourselves for not being healed enough. I think in general, it’s like, that’s a narcissistic act, you’re gaslighting, you haven’t done the work.

I think that’s just another way that this has manifested has really been an attachment theory.

This is not actually making us healthier, because what is going to make us healthier is being able to tell the truth about where we’re actually at without being shamed and without being judged.

And we’re using so much of these therapy terms as vehicles of judgment and vehicles of shame.

Yeah, yeah. And you don’t get better at relationships alone. It’s self work, but it’s also work that you have to do in relationship with other people.

If you want to have those healthier relationships with other people.

It’s also, I wonder if the attachment styles, if I kind of perceive it as being used, not just as a cudgel, like this is just who I am, but also as a category from which you can never escape.

Yeah, totally.

And I just, that can’t be helpful.

No.

This is why I edit the podcast, by the way. Which is like, good twin, bad twin. That sort of like dynamic, how can a good twin become a better twin?

And how can we like see this in ourselves and not feel that kind of shame?

Because I, for sure, when I read something in a book like this, like you were describing in the interviews, there are parts of it where I think like, beautiful, God, I do this. This is wonderful. And then there are parts where I’m like, I do that.

Put me in jail. Put me in jail.

I can’t be around other people. It’s not safe. Throw away the key.

Yeah.

Lock her up.

Yeah. Yeah. How do we acknowledge our insecurities without shame, without shame?

It’s hard. I will just share a story from my own process in therapy, which was, my therapist is great. I actually dedicated the book to her right at the beginning.

I wonder. I was like, who’s Alyssa? Yeah.

I was like, okay.

I was bringing up in my own therapy, this part of me that felt so ashamed, and felt so needy, and felt so dependent on other people.

In my therapy, we use this idea of the divine. What’s a force? It’s like just if you had a force that was boundless love, and Alyssa said, just leave that part of you up to the divine, what does the divine say?

I did, and the divine said, that part of you is perfect too. That part of you is perfect too. That part of you is perfect too.

That was life-changing for me. I was just the idea of a part of myself that I want to change, or I struggle with, and instead seeing it as perfect as it is, loving it, embracing it. That is the work of becoming more secure.

That is the parts of ourselves that are critical, the parts that are needy, the parts that are dependent, actually pausing, spending time with them, feeling those feelings of dependency and shame, and maybe putting our hand over our chest and say,

it’s okay, you’re safe. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.

I don’t have to avoid this part of me, and I don’t have to feel bad about myself that this part exists. Oh, that’s perfect. So many synchronicities today.

Something is happening.

I’m telling you, you would see eclipse. Yeah, and that’s for all those little, I have that on my computer, I have chills.

But yeah, it’s so hard because when we believe or we are told, or we can just sense that there are parts of us that other people don’t like, those do become like the bad parts, the secret parts. And I have always felt like a need to hate them.

And yet there is research that’s like, oh, shame is not an effective mechanism for change. It’s like, well, I’m going to challenge that.

Maybe they didn’t try hard enough.

Yeah. Maybe they weren’t embarrassed enough.

Maybe they weren’t ashamed enough. Let’s compete over the shame. That’s how we heal.

Oh, God.

But yeah, one point I wanted to make related to that.

So there’s this great disability activist, Johanna Hudba. And she talks about how we perceive illness as temporary in our society, like that it’s something you’re going to heal from. And because of that, we perceive care as temporary too.

Like, I shouldn’t have to be caring for you for an extended period of time or receive care for an extended period of time. And I think about that in terms of self-worth too, right?

Like, we could chronically be struggling with it, which means we chronically need care.

But instead, it feels like that is like almost beyond, like, I guess, the capitalist able, you know, ableist mindset to be like, oh, I consistently need to be caring for myself.

I consistently need to be attuning to parts of myself that are struggling, telling myself what I need to hear, offering myself care and compassion, and to culminate in a sense of worth and well-being.

But ultimately, this stuff is a practice because there’s so many memories and experiences that are shaping your worth now. There needs to be a lot of counter-experiences that are building up your worth.

Counter-experiences that are building up your worth, 100 percent. I am reminded, I want to give a little shout-out to Kathleen, who is a part of our community and has been forever. Kathleen is cerebral palsy.

Kathleen is in a wheelchair. Kathleen is a social worker. Kathleen is a genius.

Kathleen also has been on this podcast and has talked about how she will need care for the rest of her life.

What can you do to build up a sense of worth and value outside of what you can do physically, outside of what you can do professionally, like that is an inside job. And I think in my case, right, I can right now, knock on wood, right?

Everything works physically. Most things work mentally. I can almost convince myself, right, that I don’t need anyone or I don’t need anything because I brushed my own teeth today and I got myself dressed today and I drove my car today.

And it’s that myth of independence versus interdependence that makes it so scary to need people or to have a weakness or to make a mistake.

I think a lot of us were conditioned, maybe as children, maybe even as adults, and I just shouted to all the toxic bosses out there who had me like, who had interns throwing up in the bathroom. This is not funny.

What?

With anxiety over…

It’s kind of funny because it’s so absurd. Like, this is, how has this gone that far that you’re throwing up with anxiety?

It’s like all the interns who I saw throwing up, sobbing over the allure best of beauty awards.

Wow.

When I worked in Beauty PR.

Irony.

Just don’t… I didn’t get the samples over it. Like, okay, okay.

Like, just the way that my self-worth would hinge on, was there a typo in a press release? Nobody would ever read.

Oh my gosh.

All that, right? Like, you, I don’t know, that inability to accept those things in yourself, you tell me if this is, I think this is what your research said to you. It makes you intolerant of it in other people.

That’s so true.

That is so true.

You say that in a smarter way.

Okay.

No, but truly, I really, one of the things that, again, I’ve learned from writing this book is like, one of the best things I can do for other people and their own sense of worth is to love them when they’re failing, is to love them when they’re not,

you know, reaching the goal, getting the A, the top, you know. So for example, my niece, she’s a star.

She wants to be in all the leads of all the plays and she does really well and, but she said, you know, if I get the lead in the play, will you come and see it? Because my family’s, we don’t live in the same state.

And I said, Natasha, I’m going to see it anyway. Like it’s not dependent on you being the lead for me to show up for you and for me to care for you.

And that’s really what we need to give, I think, children, other people, and ourselves, which is I can feel low, I can feel vulnerable, I can feel like I need care, I can feel ill, and I’m still worthy. The worth isn’t dependent on that.

I am showing up for myself and other people, even when we don’t measure up to these things that we hoped for. That really feels like the work of building worth in self and in other.

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, I don’t know.

Yeah, it is really hard to do, but I love what you said to your niece, because I strive to be that for the kids in my life, and to not make them feel as though what they can do is who they are.

Well, also like being excited for their wins, but not like over emphasizing them.

I don’t know.

It’s so hard. Meanwhile, like, you know, we got some boomer listeners. Boomers were like, I don’t know, I got a kid.

She’s around here somewhere. She’s a little annoying. We just weren’t people yet.

And now I think like we’re very hyper aware. Like we’re like a child is a small person. That’s a whole person.

It’s like dogs.

I mean, I remember dogs in the 90s. Also, like, you’re going to be outside on the porch in the winter all day if you’re a dog. Now the dog is at daycare.

Now we cook the dog’s food. The dog’s at daycare. Yeah.

Yeah.

Dogs were not going to daycare in the 90s, okay?

They were not going to daycare in the 90s. No, no, no, no, no, no. Children didn’t have feelings in the 90s.

We didn’t have feelings in the 90s. That wasn’t a thing.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Now we’re like, are their feelings okay? Are we doing okay?

Are we doing okay? You know what? I would rather over-correct that way and have my kids, as I drop them off at school, be like, I know, I know, I know.

When I’m like, I love you and you’re doing great and it doesn’t matter, just do your best and forget, I know. Okay, this is how they react. My morning monologues, I’m like, can I read you something from this book?

They’re like, sure, it’s 6 AM, but yeah, read to me about self-worth.

Would you, mother?

Would you? Would you mind?

Okay, I would love if you could, if you’re okay doing one of these, the implicit memory reconsolidation exercises or what to do with your triggered.

I don’t know how you want to tee that up, but I was like, this is another moment where I was like, I do play Tetris.

Look at you doing it right. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Going back to the conversation on memories and how memories shape our sense of self, but good thing about them is that we can update them. The thing about it is some of our memories we don’t remember. These are experiences that affect us.

Maybe we’re too young to remember. Maybe when something’s particularly traumatic, it knocks out our hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that records the story of a memory.

How implicit memories, these things that we don’t remember that affect us, how they manifest now is we’re getting really triggered. We’re having strong emotions, stronger emotions than everyone else.

One thing goes wrong and we’re like, I’m a screw up, I don’t deserve anything, or they hate me if a friend fails last moment. We’re having these very strong reactions. That’s a sign that implicit memory is at play.

How that works, there was a really fascinating study where people were shown blue slide, noise, blue slide noise, blue slide noise. Eventually, when the blue slide is shown, they start having a body-based reaction, they start sweating.

But if they had damage to their hippocampus, the part of their brain that records the memory, they don’t remember what color slide is associated with the noise. They don’t know if it’s green, yellow, blue.

But when the blue slide shows, they still start sweating, which suggests that there’s another part of our brain that’s capturing the body-based part of the memory, the way that the memory affects how we feel and will continue to affect how we feel.

That’s the amygdala. The amygdala captures that threatening information and uses it to trigger a bodily state in us that’s stronger than you might assume based on a given situation. And so what do we do with this?

Well, because implicit memory, our working memory, which is like the amount of memory we can hold at any given time, like the amount of things that you’re thinking about at any given time, our working memory is quite limited.

So what that means is if you focus on a trigger, maybe it’s a lump in your throat, and how that feels in your body, tightness in your chest, tightness in your jaw, whatever that is, while simultaneously doing something else, you actually can’t as

vividly pull up the triggered sensation, and so it starts to degrade. Because again, this is beyond your brain’s capacity and its bandwidth. So that’s why there’s so many forms of therapy that do this, Nora.

If you focus on a trigger, okay, I feel like a lump in my throat, and EMDR, I focus on a ball moving back and forth or a finger moving back and forth. Tapping, I tap different parts of my body while focusing on that trigger.

Even drawing a complicated shape or doing Tetris is what we’ve seen in the research, while focusing on that trigger, actually leads to decreased physiological symptoms afterward.

I knew that it was good for me.

The Tetris. The Tetris.

The Tetris, I knew that was good for me. That’s so interesting too, because the body and the mind are so connected, even if your insurance doesn’t cover anything that’s located in your head, including eyes, teeth, or mind.

They’re so connected, and you know that when you feel it, right?

When you feel that fight or flight sensation, when you are just ready to go at the red light that turned green and the person in front of you didn’t go and you’re like, you spend one more second with it, you know, this is not about the green light,

okay? This is about something else. Where was I trying to take this? I did not take an Adderall today.

You are seeing the train of thought is going a little bit off the tracks.

I love it. I love it.

I’m also trying to avoid just reading the book. I got an iPad because I watched a bunch of TikTok videos of girls in their 20s.

We’re like, let me tell you how an iPad changed my life, and I think we might be leading different lives, and also, this is me trying to pull up the notes on your book on an iPad, not practiced enough. I don’t know how this works, okay?

Just so you know. This is so funny.

I’m like, how do you pull up all the highlights? How do you get to do this? How do you get to do this?

48:58

Okay, what did I, what did writing this book and working on all these interviews do for your own self-worth and your own relationships?

Oh my gosh. It’s not that I never feel insecure. I still feel insecure sometimes, but I’m not freaking out about it.

I’m not like, oh my gosh, I’ve relapsed. I’m not making it worse. I’m not piling it on thick.

I know what to do when I feel insecure, which is to start feeling. When I felt like anxiously attached in a friendship, close my eyes, notice that anxiety, feel it, repeat to myself, I’m safe. I’m safe.

I’m safe. I did this for a long time. It might have been an hour, but by the next day, I didn’t feel insecure in the friendship anymore.

It was kind of wild. I was like, oh my gosh. And the other thing that it’s done for me is, I think I’m way less likely to avoid parts of myself.

And I think before, like I said, my positive sense of self was built on, like I say in the book, sieving my personality through a strainer of acceptability.

And now it’s much more about acknowledging and truth telling around how I feel, rather than wanting to present a certain way, having to present a certain way. So I feel more authentic. I feel like I have a greater like life force energy.

And I also have a regular practice in the mornings when I wake up of looking back over the day and wondering what triggered me in the day.

And then doing some of the practices in the book of offering myself compassion and care, of maybe counting off while feeling the trigger simultaneously. Sometimes it’s journaling.

I have like journaling prompts, like a bunch of exercise in the book that I do them regularly.

And what I find is that the times that I’m triggered, the times that I’m ruminating on something small, they’re fewer and fewer as I begin to face the underlying pain that really stayed my whole life before I face it, right?

Like I think we assume that we grow out of some of this stuff, that we just grow out of insecurity, but when you understand that the insecurity is there to protect you, why would you grow out of it, right? It’s assuming that it’s there to help you.

So I would say my life has changed so much in general in terms of feeling mentally healthier, feeling more genuine and feeling more grounded.

Yeah. Tell me about more of these self-compassion exercises. I think you’re a psychologist, so you’ve also probably assigned these to people, but a lot of people feel really weird and so I’m giving stuff like this.

Not me. Not me. But my therapist has often, often, often said like, okay, can you give that part of yourself some passion like, yeah.

Yeah, you’re fine. Okay. Like get up.

I am a boomer father telling all the parts of myself to rub some dirt on it and she’ll be fine.

It’s really hard. It’s hard. It’s hard.

Yeah.

It’s really hard.

I mean, it’s hard to even have compassion for the part of you that doesn’t want to have compassion. It’s very meta. It’s like, oh, so many levels to these things.

And yes, I understand why for some people it’s like, this compassion stuff is cringe. First of all, it requires you to acknowledge your own vulnerability to acknowledge that you need compassion.

And like, you know, I identify with being the bad twin in certain moments that I don’t always want to admit that I need compassion, right?

That feels uncomfortable for me to be like, yeah, I’m part of me suffering, part of me feels bad, I need compassion, and that’s really hard.

But the other thing that I’ll say about offering ourselves this kind of compassion, when I read the research on self-esteem, right? Affirmations, telling yourself like, I am loved.

That worked for people that had sort of medium self-esteem and higher, but it backfired for people with low self-esteem because that was so far from their sense of reality that it only made them feel worse. I can’t actually internalize this.

Now, it just reveals how firmly rooted my low sense of self is. It feels like, to use a therapy speak term, gaslighting myself. The other thing about compassion is it’s very important that it’s calibrated to your own nervous system.

I can’t tell you what’s the right affirmation for you. I am loved may feel like I’m packing it on too thick, and it’s not believable, and it’s threatening.

Maybe it’s someone in my life likes me, or I could be liked by someone, and so we also need to give ourselves permission to shape the ways that we have compassion for what we feel like we really need, and what we feel like we can really internalize.

God, I really love that. I know that from anecdotal expertise, which is, yeah, for some people, that is too much. You’re absolutely right.

For some people, it’s like that’s so far away that it’s, I think the reason that it’s embarrassing is because there’s not a part of them that believes it at all, and so it just feels, that’s probably why it does feel silly.

What has this book done for the way that you move through the world?

Not just as a public figure, not just as a professor, but a person in the world where I just sometimes, on my very best days, I look around and I’m like, oh, we’re all a bunch of hurt little kids dressing up like adults, and toddling around the world

You’re so-

I think that’s inaccurate. I think that’s accurate.

On my worst days, I’m like, put your cart back, put your cart back. You’re selfish. Do I have to do everything at this Costco?

My good twin and bad twin are conjoined.

I think it’s made me love people more. That’s honest. I think I love people more after doing this.

And the reason is, I think sometimes the reason I don’t like people is because they trigger me. And that could happen often. People are sort of triggering me and I don’t like them and I don’t know it’s because they’re triggering me all the time.

And as I’ve done this work of worth, I feel again, far less triggered. And I don’t feel as much need. I mean, still there.

I’m not perfect, right? This is a practice. I’m not saying I’m perfectly secure.

I’m just saying that the sort of growth or progress has been, I feel better able to see the best in people and want the best in them, and want them to be who they are, whether or not that matches what I think is right.

Like, I feel a lot more able to love people who are being their truest form and their truest version and not impose some sort of rule for what is good and valuable, to trust people, to validate their trust in their own being and who they are.

Yeah, I really do feel more loving, authentically loving, because again, I think before, I wasn’t someone who I hate you and I’m going to be enraged at you and tell you off. I say, I’m really friendly and warm and that’s why I’m in therapy.

Because honestly, if I didn’t like you, probably a people-pleasing part would be like, oh my gosh, don’t show this, be really nice to them.

But now, it just feels like so much more genuine and able to savor the beautiful things and I talk about in the book, Abraham Maslow, he created that whole hierarchy of needs thing and you need belonging and then at the top, you need to be actualized

and actually, there’s a stage past self-actualization in his later journals and that’s self-transcendence that when you become this actualized version of yourself where you’re authentic and you’re present and you’re maybe living out your mission that

Yeah, yeah.

I feel that and it’s like when you are at that, and by the way, to me, these moments too, it’s almost like you’re looking through a keyhole and then it expands to the whole universe and you’re like, I figured it out and sometimes that keyhole shuts

completely, or the aperture of a camera, right? You’re just like, it’s panoramic, I can see it, I can see it, and then back down. But that’s what I got.

That’s literally what I got from reading this book is like, this work that you do touches other people. It’s almost like lighting up person by person until everybody feels better, everybody acts better, the world is better.

It’s very, very hopeful work. I think we need hopeful work right now.

You are the best. I appreciate you so much. So nice to chat with you, Nora.

Bye.

Bye. Thank you so much to Dr. Marisa Franco for her work, for her time on this episode.

Again, I would love to have her back to talk about these concepts. Maybe have her on an office hours live stream on Substack.

So again, if that sounds interesting to you, text us, call us 612-568-4441 to let us know what you’d like to ask her for a future episode. There is a link to buy her book in the episode description. This is Thanks For Asking.

I’m Nora McInerny. I’m a podcaster. I’m a remarried widow.

I am tall. I’m left-handed. I’m a speaker.

I’m an author of several funny books about sad things, including It’s Okay To Laugh, Crying Is Cool 2, No Happy Endings and the essay collection Bad Vibes Only. This is an independent podcast and we couldn’t do it without your support.

So thank you for rating and reviewing. Sharing it on social media. Texting a friend about it.

And thank you for calling and texting us about what you want to talk about. That’s 612-568-4441. Comments, questions, complaints, concerns.

You can also email us. That’s thanks at feelingsand.co. Save us as a contact.

That’s how often you should be reaching out to us that you have us saved in your phone. We have a YouTube channel. You can also get bonus episodes on Apple Podcasts, or Substack.

Our Substack also has free weekly essays, monthly reading roundups, ad-free episodes, the entire back catalog. You can join monthly, annually, or as a supporting producer, and get your name in the credits.

And speaking of credits, this episode was produced by Marcel Malekibu. Our opening theme music is by Geoffrey Lamar Wilson, and our closing theme music is by my youngest son, Q. Thank you so much to our supporting producers.

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