Transcript for Post Diagnosis: Glennon & Abby Reflect and Decide What Needs to Change

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Yeah. I don't. I feel fine. Am I positioning? Okay. Thank you. But we will in fact talk about control and co dependency during this episodes. I do think that was a good start.

Okay, but I am noting that recently we were in bed watching TV. And you looked at how I was laying. And you said, they, you are not comfortable. You weren't. And then you had me sit up and you rearrange all the pillows.

So I'm just saying, I think that was precious, but it's not just about tech because there was no tech in our business. And you're still arranging my bodily self.

I wonder what that's about. I hear what you're saying and it's true. It's like, my mom is like this too and it's like our adaptability is ridiculous. If I go into a room, And there's no lights on. It's just dark. And I look for one second for the lights and I don't see it. I just will sit in the room and try to let my eyes adjust. I'll find a way to read a book. I'll just sit in the dark. Yeah. And it drives you baddie.

Yeah, I know I'm always everything king things, but I do wonder if over time this will get better for me if this is part of a lack of embodiment and checking in with your own body and having agency over your own situation. Yeah. No matter what position my body is in, If I'm just in my head, I don't even notice. So I'm like contorted and you look at me and you're like, how could this be happening? And I'm not even noticing.

I agree with you. And I think it's interesting when you think about the way our bodies are out in the world or even in our own homes. The way we arrange ourselves says about how we actually feel we can be. safe in the world. Oh, interesting. Like you, I sometimes look at you when we are out or we are, and I am like, I am baffled. Okay, I am equally baffled by your way of being in the world where you just are spread out and you are just comfortable in any situation and your body is doing whatever the hell you feel like it should do and wants to do and your legs are not crossed and you're you're not tucked in on yourself and you're like your man spreading exactly and so I am always like and I think is this I don't know if it's changing a little bit but I tend to be curled up tight Legs cross, sometimes my arms crossed, like it makes me feel something.

Is that like, well, I don't know. I mean, I will say when I look at you and how you said I'm like a little bit alarmed. Are you embarrassed? No.

No, I'm more embarrassed when I see myself not doing that. Oh, I feel like that's what the alarm is. Well, I feel like look at you. You're not doing anything that you say you believe. Your body is not. You look like you're trying to take up the least amount of space. You look like you're protecting yourself. You look like you're shrinking. You look like it doesn't look how I want to feel.

So anyway, it's just interesting.

You know how in couples, basically I just say in couples I don't fucking know in our couple of them. I feel like there's things that each other does and we talk about this a lot that 90% of the time. It feels like precious and like love and cool. Yeah. And then 10% of the time, it makes me homicidal. Yeah. And it's hard to know which time it's going to be when it's coming. Yeah.

But then I feel scared to say stop doing that because actually. A lot of the time I like to know that I'm uncomfortable and how that be fixed.

No, I just think it's about being controlled controlled. I don't like my body to be monitored, got changed from the outside.

Yeah. I think you might need to start allowing me to accept the consequences of my own actions. So like, for example, I also think things about me, bother you more than they bother. Like for example, Lauren and Allison are our producers and their job is to tell me if I'm sitting in a way that is not good for audio, but they never do. So I think they think I'm good. I think you're more worried about it than anyone else. Do you know what I'm saying? Like I think it might be a good, because I'm working on this with other people, letting people just make their own decisions. And then if they're uncomfortable, that's their choice.

Are you secretly concerned a lot about my audio, but you don't want to say anything.

Okay, so is it about worthiness? Do you think you're earning your worthiness in our work and our relationship by arranging me?

Like I think of it as my job the way that you arrange the producers are saying they are not concerned about my spacing or my body or my audio because I am also arranging this thing before you get here I hear you and I will let you live. Okay Lauren says this I occasionally say something but often Abby does take care of things before I can so what Lauren is saying is that because you do your job. She doesn't have to say anything. So I think that's one for you. One tick for your.

Well, it is a very interesting jumping off point. Having to do with our efforts, thinking it's our job to make the people that we love more comfortable and the challenges that arise from that belief.

I know. And so I have always believed that about the people that I love. And so it has been an interesting journey over these last few weeks, really, because I think that I have come to terms with the idea that perhaps I need to do some work on my own I'm saying the word codependency, but it feels like just a buzzword that is over you. So let's just tell the story. Let's talk about podsquad. Today we want to talk about Abianize reaction to an experience with sisters recent diagnosis. And if you haven't listened to the last two episodes, please, please do. Really important. on those two episodes, Amanda discussed what her experience has been being recently diagnosed with breast cancer. And so as she is off taking care of business, you and I are here continuing this. And so we thought that it might be good for the pod squad to hear from us during this time about how we are handling all of it. It's so interesting how having this job makes us process things where we would choose to skip over it.

I know sometimes it makes me so upset that we have to do it truly and sometimes it feels like I mean, after those two episodes we do with Sister, all three of us were like, thank God we did this. We couldn't do that conversation just amongst the three of us. It's so interesting. It was like two intents or something. And then when we had, when we were on the recording and we had Allison and Laura in there, it just felt like we could do it or something. And afterwards, Sister texted me and said, thank God, we did that. I needed that so much. It helped me so much. But you're right. It does force us to process emotionally.

Let's go into, there was a moment in the first podcast where I asked Sister whether she was emotionally processing or how she was emotionally processing her recent diagnosis. She said to me, I'm not. I looked at her with great surprise and said, what do you mean? How are you not? We'll brought this up in the last episode. I'm bringing it up again. The reason I'm bringing it up is because this moment in which sister became so upset with me for that question has illuminated something for me that I need to work on, which is that I believe in my mind that I know what's best for the people that I love. I think about what's best for them and what they should do for their greatest highest enlightenment all day. Okay, and and parts of what just know that I've done some work here and so I'm telling you what I've come to terms with over the last couple weeks. It has come to my attention that not everyone spends all day from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed thinking about exactly what the people they love need to do to reach their trueest and most beautiful life. And then in conversations with them, slightly asking questions, dropping hints, sending links, sending podcasts, sending books, doing all of these things that I think are love. But what I have learned from a couple of people in my life recently, Sister and Craig, is that that does not feel like love, that that feels like control. I had a conversation with Tish about this right after it happened because my understanding was that Sister felt like I was judging her in my what do you mean you're not processing like that I was suggesting to her you're doing this wrong and you should be doing it a different way which would be better and more healthy which at first for the first week I told myself that is not what I was doing I was just surprised because I didn't know what we were going to talk about on the podcast actually that's exactly what I was doing I was doing that I was like a holy shit she's not doing this right she's not processing it's going to make it worse we need it okay Well, that's honest.

Yeah. So then I was talking to Tisha about it because Tisha's kind of my, I don't know. She tells me this simple truth about things. And so I said this thing about, wait, is it possible that thinking about your people and what they should do all day is not correct. And she said, well, mom, you know, I have thought a lot about somebody who's as smart as you who has an eating disorder for 30 years. Must be so busy thinking about other people's problems that they don't think about their own problems. That's right in front of their face for 30 years. God. That's what my 18 year old says to me in the kitchen.

And I was like, what? Okay. So, pod squad, what I'm saying is, perhaps one of the reasons that we obsess about our people and what they should do is so we don't have to think about what we should do. Interesting. I'm not even sure that's true. I'm just saying it sounds right.

Yeah, I did. I really did. And now it's like this crisis time. Like it's making me not do this because this year, since the first day of this year when your brother died and then all of these things keep happening and our kids are going through these big challenges and sister and everything is so out of control that none of my plans are working anymore or can protect anyone or everyone is completely out of my control and I think maybe always has been. Oh, there it is. But there it is.

All right. So first, I have to tell you this because as I was coming to this understanding about myself, which by the way, I have no solutions for when I figure something out like this, I know I will eventually figure out. I will work on this in therapy. I will because I want to be free. I do want to be free. I want to be freer in my mind in my life. And so whenever I find a place that I'm like stuck in, I really do want to figure it out because I want to be free, but also because one of my greatest longings in my whole life is that my people feel actually loved by me. And then I'm loving in a way that is not making people feel like I'm doing it out of fear or control. So I do want to figure this out. But I'm in the part right now where I'm just like, I see the problem. I don't have any, I do with the solutions. I don't understand what people think about all day. I mean, you and I sat and I was like, can you tell me what you think about? I said to you, you don't think all day about what sisters should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should do, what they should

Oh, you're doing it in the moment. You're not plotting and scheming and strategizing.

I'm going to have to keep a folder of all of them just so I'm ready in that moment.

Of course it does. Of course it does.

Well, you said it a lot of times. So I think it's true. I think it is a bit of manipulation.

Yeah, and it's what you told me a long time ago with you. I was trying to make a suggestion to you about a way that you could have a better life experience. And I thought I was being tricky and you said, when you try to control me like that, it makes me sad because it makes me know you don't trust me because we only control the things we don't trust. And so I think the goal is in our relationships to continue to remind the people we love that they know what to do as opposed to manipulate them into doing what we know they should do. Yeah. I was texting with my friend Margaret about this and she said my favorite thing about it so far, which is that I wrote her along several paragraphs about how I've discovered that maybe not everyone spends all day. thinking, making plans for their people and obsessing about them. And I'm going to have to figure out what this problem of mine is and she didn't respond for about an hour and then she responded with this sentence, which was, have you ever considered that maybe you're just Italian? I just thought that was so wonderful. Oh, you guys, it's so interesting, right? Loving people without controlling them is the final frontier for me. And maybe, oh, my God, maybe it's because a person like me has never, I'm learning and recovery from anorexia, self-love without control. Like I've always only controlled myself. I've never trusted myself to live and breathe and make decisions and eat and sleep and whatever. I've always just controlled the shit out of myself. And so maybe it makes sense that this is now what I would be learning with other people.

Yeah. It's going to really be interesting because it's all neuro pathways, too. When I pay attention now, now over the last couple of weeks, when I'm watching my thinking, holy shit, every minute I'm thinking about, I say to myself, sister, Because all I'm doing is thinking about other people. And what they should do, babe, I'm rereading a book about trauma right now. And I found myself yesterday, I read books as the people that I love who I'm going to give the book to. Now, I don't know if this is some level of codependency that makes me need to be hospitalized, but I thought about it last night. I was like, oh my god, because now I'm watching all this behavior, I was reading the book. thinking, I'm going to give this book to two people that I love. And then I was reading paragraphs, imagining myself to be the person that I love. And what epiphanys, they would be having if they were reading that paragraph about their particular childhood trauma.

Because I thought, oh, this book is going to help them so much and they're going to read this and they're going to know that what they're doing in their life is really just a result of childhood trauma and then they're going to get free from it and then they're going to be happy.

I don't know that I was doing it deliberately. I think I was doing it. I think I do it. I'm confident. I just do it. I do it all the time. I read things as other people.

Okay. Okay. That's a really good question. And I think that. Okay, let's just say in the case between me and my sister. I think I have an old story that started in our childhood that I am the fuck up. Like if you're looking at like family roles, I was an addict very early. I was a mass. I was confusing to the family. I was hurting everyone. I was the scapegoat in terms of what experts call it the one in the family that all the problems live inside of her.

Yes, in the long run, the scapegoat is like a container that all the family's problems can go into. And so then everybody can point to that one and say she's the problem, but really any child who's acting out something in the family is brought or acting out things that are in the family. So that was my role. My sister's role was hero. And we'll get into this more when sister's here. But she was perfect. Like she had to be perfect. She had to be strong. She had to be protective. She had to not cause any more stress for my parents. Like I'm sure a lot of people relate to that role. So then we grow up. And this is what happens in adulthood. You think that you're living your life by free will. And then if you're lucky enough, something happens and you realize that you have worked to do because you're not living by free. Well, you're just living in old stories, right? I mean, Sister and I created this world in which our childhood roles are concretized, like in business life. In business life. I'm the creative one who can't handle details. She's the protector. She does all the, I will stand on this wall for my sister. I will, she has like a kill list of people who have done me wrong, right? I think that I feel in my bones, not in my brain. I think I feel responsibility guilt and shame for forcing my sister into that role as a child and forever. And so since the role of hero requires so much stress, I feel responsible for lessening her stress, because I feel like I am the reason that she has to live in high stress, because of my role as a kid, because of my addictions and how wild I made life for so long and how much pain I caused my family, et cetera. And then also because now we have these jobs where her literal job, which we are rearranging, By the way, but I think I have to find a way to fix this because she's doing all of this in my name. Does that?

Yeah, I'm always trying to prove that I'm not the fucked up one forever more.

I think I do feel a little bit responsible for my sister diagnosis.

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It's weird when you are recovering addict because I never know and this is for sure true for me. Although I might be undoing the story now, but I feel like I never know if I was, if I'm a fuck up who's pretending to be an upstanding citizen now, Or if I was always an abstaining citizen, who was just pretending to be a fuck up the first half of my life.

The best indicator of how someone's going to act in the future is how they've acted in the past, not what you think they're about to do. I always think you know this. I always feel certain that everyone is just on the brink. Just so close to like enlightenment, to like the thing that is gonna make them freer and happier. And I always think everyone's about to change. And that is a form of like relational terrorism.

It's like not thinking anyone is okay how they are, but there's a lot of It's confusing to me. It's confusing to me. How we're supposed to show up for our people with all of ourselves. Like with everything we are. Like I am very bad at a lot of things. You know that, that other people are good at. I'm really good at a lot of things. Like seeing possibilities for people and really knowing my people and seeing options that other people might not see and making creative wild decisions that really make a difference in people's lives and more. So I feel confused about how to bring my full self to people, well, not making it manipulative or controlling or, I mean, I know that I wouldn't want anyone in my life just constantly bringing me ideas for how to better myself, that would suck.

Yeah, it makes me think of when we were telling the kids about sister's diagnosis. And you and I had just sat down for hours and tried to figure out our calendar because we wanted to go there immediately and then we wanted to come back here and then we wanted to come back for the surge we had a bunch of and then we had some stuff going on with our son at school we wanted to go get to him and and so I came upstairs with the calendar sat the girls down told them the diagnosis, and then went immediately into how we were going to arrange the calendar logistics, the logistics of how we were going to make it work, how it was going to be fine, how we were going to get there, get back, do their things, get the things it was all going to work out, it's here we are, and that's the deal. And the girls, I'll never forget that they just looked at me, and it was really quiet. And Tish goes, okay, When are we going to talk about our feelings about this? And I was like, oh my god, that's wild. I just came up here and just like logistics them through this as if I could skip through the fearful part of it. And I think that, you know, we all have parts of ourselves that take over when we're really scared. And when I'm really scared, I think I can intellectually figure this out. I can fix this, I can sort this, I can make a lesson out of this, I can whatever. And so I think maybe the constant effort to control and manipulate love guide whatever it is with people I love is probably just a part of myself that doesn't want to sit with the fact that I can't ever help anyone or control anyone and everyone's out of control. And that's just life. And there's a part of it that feels so utterly unacceptable to me that we can love people as much as we love them. And then not be able to protect them and not be able to keep bad things from happening to them. It feels so It feels like a glitch in the system that should not have been this way to me.

I mean, I think I feel like I'm doing a lot of processing.

I would not speak. I would not speak our week.

I wasn't even making any big movements. I was walking around like a robot. Like I felt as if there was a vase full of poison inside of me. And that my job was all day to not let the vase spill any poison. And the poison was the reminder that life is so precarious and that anything can happen to anyone at any time. And it also is separation. Like I feel like my sister and I are one person, which is what this is all about. I understand that we are two people. My brain knows that. Okay. Or I don't know actually. Some part of me knows that. And this sort of diagnosis. It's like what sister was talking about in the last one. It's just a separation. There's nothing I can do. There's no, it's not happening to me. It's happening to her body, which is not my body.

I mean, I have felt I have had days as you know in the last two weeks where I can't speak, where I feel so sad that I can't even, I mean, we went to a one of our kids soccer games and we pulled into the parking lot and you had to actually just drive me all the way home because I couldn't get out of the car and sit at the soccer game. I just was too sad to walk.

Anger, I felt sadness, I felt panic, I felt... I think those are the three main ones.

I feel like Anger for me is just more intellectualizing in this situation.

Oh, 100%.

Yeah, which is why the days where I've had where I've just been so sad that I couldn't talk about it, I think it's good. I think I have had time and access and all of my recovery has helped me to allow myself just to be sad and not try to fix it with my brain or with any strategies or anything just like doing that.

Well, yeah, I just, first of all, I wonder if other people do what my brain does, which is scheme and plan and strategize, call it love for other people.

Yeah, but I think what I'm realizing is that it's not, it's not, but especially as the kids grow, like I feel like I need to learn this love without control more than ever. Like I have to do it now because with adult children out in the world, if I don't figure this out, I'm going to drive myself in them nuts.

I don't think that there's anything wrong with me. I think that there are more levels of freedom and peace and love to reach. I do not think there's anything wrong with me. I think that a lot of the quote problems that identify in myself are in everyone and that one of my gifts is to see things that are keeping me stuck dig into them and unlock another level of freedom.

Yeah, and I just think it's a beautiful thing. I think it's a beautiful thing to take a moment. Like what happened on the podcast two episodes ago, it's just a little moment. And we can just brush past that stuff. We can just be like, oh, it's just a misunderstanding, whatever, but actually. I like to slow things down and be like, wait, what actually happened there? Something really important happened them inside of that moment where I said the thing and did the facial expression and looked surprised. And then sister's reaction inside of that singular moment was decades, decades of like stuff that went back to when we were seven and ten and what I like about it. What I like about that moment and I think that I feel proud of is that I didn't take that moment and think, what does this mean about her? No one she needs to do. I really took that moment and thought, wait, what does this mean about me and what I do? and how my approach things and how it does or does not make the people that I love feel loved.

Thank you. I love you. And I trust you. And I will keep all of my ideas for you in a folder until and unless you ask for advice.

All right. Hot squad. I love you. I've met a whole folder for you, too. Hot squad. Because I do love you. And I have good ideas for you.

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