Elizabeth Gilbert
Appearances
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I'm like, am I supposed to be looking for somebody to be with? And my favorite thing that God has ever said to me is the response to that, which is, LOL, no.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And all the amends that I've ever had to make to anybody in my life for the grave harm that I brought to them were because I didn't know how to take care of myself. And so I had harmed them.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Hard no, absolutely not. Like, absolutely not. And I love that answer. And I trust that answer. And then God says, if I want you with somebody, I will let you know. The idea won't be yours. It'll be mine. I will let you know. I will let you know who it is. You don't have to go hunting. You don't have to go searching. I don't want you chasing anything.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Again, to me so much of what all sobriety is, is the end of chasing. Like you're not chasing a feeling anymore. You're not chasing a high. You're not chasing an escape. You're not chasing a person. You're not trying to replicate a way you felt once. Like that's a big thing for sex and love addicts. Like stop chasing a feeling.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
it's a feeling you want to have and all that feeling if i can get it i can get it met but it just leads to craving because then i want more of it and sadness and then i'm like okay now what do i have to do to get that right so so god has been really clear with me like i don't want you chasing anybody i don't want you chasing anything You're so good right now, what's the big hurry?
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Why are you out there looking for ways to make your life unmanageable again? I can sleep through the night without medication. I don't need to be on antidepressants anymore. I'm not on anti-anxiety pills anymore. My body is healthier. I've written three books in the last six years. My friendships have bloomed. All of my family relationships have changed due to these new radical boundaries.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Like, I'm prospering. And God's like, what's the hurry to tip the apple cart over again?
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
blamed them, used them, manipulated them, you know, tried to force them to be something that they couldn't be, become infuriated and enraged when they couldn't do it, when they couldn't deliver, cheated on them because if they couldn't do it, I'm going to go find somebody else who can, you know, like all of it.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Right, because once the internal pharmacy gets activated, it's like in Midsummer Night's Dream when they put like magic powder on the person who then falls in love with a donkey. It's like those hormones will make me fall in love with like a kitchen cabinet. Anything.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And as somebody with a really dysregulated nervous system, you know, with a process addiction, like, I mean, I experienced those hormones. It's estimated that people like us who have that experience those hormones at like 10 times the rate of other people. So like someone else might feel pleasant experiences with romance and love and connection and sex. I get wasted sometimes.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I get wasted and I shouldn't be operating heavy machinery, I shouldn't be making decisions about my bank account, I shouldn't be moving... I go insane. So it's really important, like what you've done is a really gracious thing for both of you actually.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
To slow that entire process down and try not to go chemical before you find intimacy.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I'm so happy for you.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And so where self-care becomes not so much a sort of new age catch word, but a deeply humanitarian public service is Byron Katie said it so well, nobody is safe from me when I need them that much. Nobody is safe from me, right? So I actually want as somebody who genuinely loves humanity, I want to be somebody who people are safe around.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
That's the thing. And also for me as somebody who's now become God-centered instead of self-centered, You know, and my wants have driven me over cliffs many times. My wants, my needs, my desires, my ideas, my big ideas. Like I get some big ideas and then it's like cut to six months later and it's like, oh my God, what did you just do to your life? You just drove into another brick wall.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
So for me, I think you mentioned the word manifesting very early in this conversation. And I'm a good manifestor, you're a good manifestor too. Like we're disciplined, we're resolved, we vision board our way into like, we're like, I'm going to get this, I'm going to make this, I'm going to get this many, you know. I'm less in the realm of romantic and intimate connection.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I've manifested, like I've gotten what I wanted. I've gotten who I wanted at times. And it's almost killed me.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Right? So I'm not that interested anymore in the question of what do I want. But I'm really interested in the question of like, what's God's will for my life?
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And how can I live in alignment with that? I love this. And so I don't even worry about like, will I ever be with someone again? It's not up to me. I don't really care. Like, I trust when God says, you'll be notified if that's supposed to happen. Like, great. I don't have to think about it.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Really, I mean, really seriously when I came into 12-step recovery. Which was five years ago, five and a half years ago.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I mean, higher power is. It's a spiritual program because addiction is a spiritual sickness. And it's a deep spiritual emptiness. And addicts like me are people who have such a profound emptiness that we will use anything or anybody to fill it.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I've heard addiction referred to as false worship. It's like I'm going to worship this thing, I'm going to worship this substance, I'm going to worship this person, I'm going to worship money, I'm going to worship success, I'm going to worship food, I'm going to worship cigarettes. You know, like it's... There's this line in the Bible about false idols, about not worshipping false idols.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And it says that people who worship false idols and they describe them as like wooden creatures with lifeless eyes. It's like what an idol is. You worship that and then you become that. You become sort of wooden and lifeless. And I mean, I'm not a fundamentalist Bible reader, but I think that's a really accurate description of what addicts become. You become sort of wooden and lifeless.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And the God-sized hole is what it's referred to is can only be filled with God.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Yeah, I mean, it is my life. And I had this great experience in step three, which is made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the God of our own understanding. The beautiful generous thing about that language is the God of your own understanding. It doesn't necessarily mean the God that you were raised with or threatened with. And I had a sponsor who said to me,
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Write down what you're looking for in a god. Nobody will ever surrender their life over to a god who is forced upon them. So write down the qualities that a deity would have to have for you to surrender your life completely happily over to them. And I was like, you get to do that? And she's like, of course you get to do that because why would a loving God not appear in whatever form you need?
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And if I'm not taking care of myself, I am an unsafe human being for anybody to be in any relationship with whether it's a momentary relationship or a romantic relationship.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Right? Like, of course. And it was such a fun assignment because the very first thing was like, my God has to have a sense of humor. My God has to have a sense of humor and think that I'm adorable and funny and that my failures are adorable and funny. I can't have a judgmental God. I can't have a punishing God. I have to have an incredibly patient God.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I have to have a God who doesn't have anywhere better to be than sitting with me in the middle of the night, present and comforting. I need a God who doesn't have office hours. I need a God who doesn't stand on ceremony and need me to prostate in a certain particular way. I can't have an insecure God.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I can't have a God who's like, if you don't pray to me in this certain way, I'm not going to feel right. I need to have an abundant God, a generous God, a loving God who knows me. And who likes me. I wish I could remember who said this, but somebody said that the true feeling of being one with God is relaxing completely in the presence of somebody who you know is deeply fond of you.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And if people had been taught that in childhood, that that's what God presence feels like, relaxing completely in the presence of somebody who you know is very fond of you.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Instead of what James Joyce called the hangman God, you know, the judge, the executioner. You know, this is like, like, of course, I created you. I love you. You know, like I made you the way you are.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I was trying to remember because I had to inventory it when I was... It's part of like the sex and love addict recovery.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
45 deeply intimate relationships, Lewis.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
If God's not in the relationship, it's not a relationship. Wow. You know, and I heard a prayer recently in one of the 12-step rooms, and this is about every relationship, you know, not just sexual and intimate, but somebody said, Dear God, please only bring me relationships where you can be first and I can be me.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Dear God, please only bring me relationships where you can be first and I can be me.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And their back. Right? I mean, to know that they also have their own higher power. I mean, I got super high off of becoming other people's higher power as much as I got super high off making somebody my higher power. It's like, oh, let me be the thing you worship. Right? Like that's a rush. big rush until you crash.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Until you get depedestalized and then you don't even want to be in the room when that happens. I mean like that's such a terrible crash for everybody, the terrible disappointment of that. Like I say this to my sponsees, Like if they idealize me at all, you know, I'm like, okay, I just want to point out that like that language sounds a little bit idealizing. Please don't do that to me or you.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Because when you inevitably discover that I am not this ideal, I don't even want to be in the room when that statue comes crashing down. Right? Like that's going to be really bad for both of us. So like just don't do that. Like let's not do that.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
So I've spoken very openly about identifying as a sex and love addict. And I go to a room for that. I go to a 12-step program for that. It took me until I was 50 to find out that there was a room for that. And I spent decades and I mean untold thousands of dollars sitting in therapeutic situations. It wasn't like I wasn't trying to be different.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I was paying a lot of people to try to help me not be like the way I am. And no one ever said, You're a sex and love addict. Really? And there's a room for that. There's a 12-step room for that. And here's a phone number. Go get yourself some help. Because there's so much secrecy around it. Because I think especially for women there's a tremendous amount of shame.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
But my acting out was nuts, Lewis. I mean, you mentioned that I was divorced twice, but I actually recently had lunch with my old couples therapist, who's a wonderful, brilliant couples therapist. And I said to him, Mark, did you ever have anyone else who was a patient of yours who brought three different people to see you over the years? And he was like, nope.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And I was like, and none of them were my husband. Like none of them were the people I was married to. That was like between my marriages that I was bringing, you know, and he was like, yeah, I don't think I have ever had anybody bring in three different relationships and say, please make this work for me. And he said, I have to hand it to you though, Liz. They were all so different, the people.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
you were the same yeah he's like i i really admired the fact that like and i was like yeah because i was trying to find what is the formula who do i have to connect with that this is going to work that this great echoing god-sized hole within me this deep
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
unsolvable problem of never feeling like there's enough love is it you is it you is it you do i need someone older do i need someone younger do i need a man do i need a woman do i need someone who loves me more than i love them do i need someone who i love more than i do i need two people do i need an open marriage do any like i want to and i say this with all love
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
i'm so proud of myself that i spent 35 uninterrupted years trying to solve that like trying to solve that and being like why can't i make this work very similar to an alcoholic who's like well maybe if i just don't drink hard liquor maybe if i just have wine maybe if you just have beer maybe if i just drink on the weekends maybe if i you know it's like i'm trying to figure out how to have this thing not do what it always does which is blow up in my face and leave me like flat on the bathroom floor
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Suicidal, if not homicidal, right? And so it wasn't until I... So you're looking for people to be the solution, but it wasn't.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
The solution is... befriending myself and finding a source, finding what I have always needed which is a source of infinite inexhaustible love and that cannot come from another person because sometimes people have to get up and get a sandwich and go to work and go to the DMV and do other things besides pour love into me. You know what I mean?
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
They have other things they need to be doing, they can't. Even if they love me, a person can't do that or they might die. You know, which happened or they or like they might change or they might have another crisis in their life that they have to attend to. Right. And then I'm howling on the outside like a seven year old, like who's got me? Who's got me? Where did mommy go? Where did daddy go?
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Am I safe? Why am I on this tundra of loneliness again? Right. So for me, it's about finding finding a source that can keep up with my need and pour infinitely into me.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
It is impossible on another person. And listen, I'll save you all the trouble, I did the research. I went out there and found a lot of people to try to get that from. It didn't work. And it works for a while like all drugs.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Yeah, it works till it doesn't like every other substance, every other drug, it works till it doesn't and then you wake up on Tuesday morning and you're still you. And you're still you and you're still lonely and you're still overwhelmed and you're still confused and you're still hungry. You know, because this thing can't be filled.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And I also needed to find a community of people who understood me. And the first time, well, actually the second time, because I went to a sex and love addicts room once because a friend 13th stepped me there, like sent me there, 12th stepped me there and was like, I think you need this. And I went in and I was like...
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Yeah, these people are really sick and it's depressing and I feel bad for them and I'm going to be a spectator and then I'm going to leave. And then I went out and found another person to blow my life up with and then I was like, maybe I should go back.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
But just from the general population. And then I went back humbled. And the first time I really showed up in that room and said, Hi, my name is Lizzie. I'm a sex and love addict was the beginning of the end of a 50 year attempt to find somebody, anybody who would take that pain away. Oh my gosh.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
The greatest harm that I've ever done to other people was through me not knowing how to take care of myself. Because if I don't take care of myself a few things are going to happen. I'm going to lose my mind. I'm going to become super needy, super clingy and super manipulative. because I'm going to try to get my needs met through you.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And to have a whole bunch of people in the room who don't look like me, who aren't my age, who aren't from my background be like, yeah, we super get it. And to hear my story being told again and again and again through other people's mouths. I remember hearing this woman say, I took one look at that guy from across the bar and I was like, I would follow that man to hell and then I did.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And I was like, okay, I know that story. Like I've been in that story, I've been in that story, I've been on all the sides of these stories. And so to find a community of people who are like, we understand why you're like this. you know, and will be your family as you move through this.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
There's different programs for sex addiction, there's different programs for love addiction, I identify as a sex and love addict. A lot of women don't want to use the word sex addict because it sounds gnarly and shameful and it is gnarly, super gnarly. Because you're sort of pimping yourself out to get to trade whatever you have to trade physically to try to get that love connection.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
It's not pretty, but it's what I've done. It also means constantly objectifying yourself, objectifying other people. But if you just Google 12 characteristics of sex and love addicts, You know, when I heard those, I was like, oh, that's a 12 for 12. That's a hard identification with each and every one of these. Like I've done every single one of these things on the regular.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
But it essentially comes down to this idea that somebody else is going to be able to fix this on the inside of me. And returning to unhealthy relationships again and again, abandoning your care by attaching to people who are unavailable, There's a whole list.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
For me it's been about in the same way that those inner children and inner teenagers that we spoke about needed to gradually learn to trust me and needed to gradually learn to see that I do have them and I am prioritizing them and I'm not going to abandon them and I am here and I am going to say no and I am going to risk not pleasing people in order to make sure that they're okay.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
It's almost like I've had to develop, I'll just speak for myself because I think it's probably different for other people, And I now am going to introduce the word God. I've had to have that same relationship build very slowly with the God of my own understanding of believing that I am being loved and not judged, believing that I'm not in trouble,
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I've spent my entire life terrified of being in trouble. Like, what did I do wrong? I'm in trouble. I'm dead now. Believing that I haven't done anything that has caused God to not love me and believing that I can turn to that source and be fed and be held and be guided. And I always say this like, I always loved God. And I didn't even grow up in a religious family. Maybe that's why.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And that means I'm going to be objectifying you and using you as a parental replacement, a sex toy, a sleeping pill, an unpaid therapist, whatever the need, this huge yawning need in me, parts of me will go out there and try to get that need met. So either I can figure out how to get that need met or like that teenager is going to figure out how to get that need met.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Because I had my own independent feeling of a God presence when I was a kid that was very organic and natural. I loved the word God. I loved the whole idea. I loved everything about it. I didn't really know what it meant, but I loved it. I've always believed in God. I've always loved God. I have never trusted God. Really? Because that's a whole nother layer. It's like, wait, I have to trust you?
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Because I mean, like many of us, because of things that happened to us when we were kids, we don't trust anybody.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Right. Exactly. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why did all these terrible things happen to me? Why is there injustice? I mean, we can get trapped forever in that. But I have found when I communicate with God, I've said this many times and I find it to be true. Why is not a spiritual question and it does not bring a spiritual answer ever.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Like I can shout why into the cosmos and I'm never going to get an answer. No one is. But I can ask other questions like, what do you want me to do? And I will get an answer. Who do you want me to become? I will get an answer. Who do you want me to be around? Like who are the people who you want me to be around? What do you want me to do next? How do you want me to comport myself through this?
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I'll get answers to that if I ask God, but I won't get answers to why. I mean, I think that's just the general humility of knowing that my mind can't know. We're not allowed to know why. Sometimes you kind of get a glimpse later where you're like, oh, I see why. I see why that might have happened. I see why we couldn't have gotten here without that. But I even try to stay away from that.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I try to stay out of the why. I have surrendered the why.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Yeah. Come back with a better question. Sometimes God will say that to me. Come back with a better question. Interesting.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
There's a couple things. One thing is I love this. I hear this from God a lot. When I'm sort of unsure about what I'm supposed to do, because that's a thing that I can get really panicky about, like, what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? I will often hear God say, when I've got something for you to do, you'll be notified.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Like for instance, I had a couple of years there where I didn't have any ideas for a book or creativity or anything to write and every day in my journal I would say, am I supposed to be writing something right now? Am I supposed to be working on something? And that universal cosmic voice would say, when we've got something for you to do, you'll be notified.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And then I would say, well, what am I supposed to do in the meantime? And the answer would come, hang out.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Hang out. And I'm like, well, that's extremely uncomfortable. I would rather that you gave me an assignment. I'm a border collie. I do better with an assignment. But we'll let you know. That's one of my favorites. The other thing I've heard is actually very similar when I've said to God, am I supposed to be dating anybody? anybody?
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Am I supposed to be now that I've gotten well, now that I've gotten emotional sobriety, now that I've been in 12 step recovery for sex and love addiction, now that I've learned how to take care of myself and been celibate for five years, which is the greatest gift I've ever given myself. Um, and the first time since like
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
way too young an age that somebody hasn't been like on me you know like it's been so important for me to like reclaim this body and just be like mine right my body this isn't like a tool for anyone else this isn't a tool for manipulation this is like hours like to find that and to and to learn how to self-comfort to learn how to regulate my own nervous system like so now that i've done all that