My guest is Lori Gottlieb, MFT, a psychotherapist and bestselling author who specializes in helping people build strong relationships by first understanding themselves and the stories they’ve internalized about themselves and others. We explore how our parents, wounds and unique strengths—both consciously and unconsciously—influence our partner choices and how we show up in relationships, as well as how to avoid and break free from destructive patterns. We also discuss the impact of texting, social media and dating apps on partnership. Lori shares which signals to follow to become the best romantic partner possible and how to make choices that lead to greater vitality, happiness and fulfillment in all areas of life. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. We want to hear from you. Take our quick survey to help improve Huberman Lab. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Helix Sleep: https://helixsleep.com/huberman BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/huberman David Protein: https://davidprotein.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Timestamps 00:00:00 Dr. Lori Gottlieb 00:02:01 Patient & First Question; Talked Out of Feelings 00:06:15 Self-Regulation vs Co-Regulation, Tool: Pause & Perspective 00:10:04 Sponsors: Helix Sleep & BetterHelp 00:12:36 Relationships, Childhood & Unfinished Business 00:17:13 Unconscious Mind, Hurtful Parent & Familiarity, Role of Therapy 00:26:35 Excitement & Chaos, Cherophobia; Storytelling, First Date & Sparks? 00:36:27 Tool: Awareness of Death & Living Fully; Vitality; Fear vs Acceptance 00:47:27 Sponsors: AG1 & David Protein 00:50:35 Activate vs Energize; Tool: Technology, Numbness & Overwhelm 00:54:50 Numb or Calm?, Gender Stereotypes, Tool: Mentalizing 01:00:51 Feelings, Projective Identification, Tool: Owning Your Feelings 01:03:25 React vs Respond; Space, Tool: Face-to-Face Conversation vs Text 01:10:16 Behavioral Change, 5 Steps of Change, Tool: Self-Compassion & Accountability 01:15:38 Sponsor: LMNT 01:16:54 Deadlines & Rules; Idiot vs Wise Compassion, No Drama & Assumptions 01:26:27 Silent Treatment, Crying & Manipulation, Shame vs Guilt, Self-Preservation 01:33:01 Self-Reflection, Individual & Couples Therapy, Transference; Agency 01:38:56 Texting, Conflicts, Breakups, Pain Hierarchy, Tool: Move Forward 01:46:42 Relationship Breakups, Daily World & Loss 01:53:30 Bank of Goodwill; Talking About Partner, Focus, Comparison 02:01:13 Infidelity, What If vs What Is, Attention & Appreciation 02:04:56 Gut Instinct, Change Behavior, Danger, Productive vs Unproductive Anxiety 02:15:27 Knowing Oneself, Relationships, Flexibility, Shared History 02:20:30 Romantic Relationships & Teens, Social Media, Privacy 02:27:09 Online Apps & Choices, Maximizers vs Satisficers, Tool: Identify Your Weakness 02:33:09 Fixing Issues Early, Tool: Self vs Partner Lists & Character Qualities 02:41:51 Feeling Toward Partner, Calm, Content; Tool: Operating Instructions 02:46:48 Help-Rejecting Complainers; Relationships, Love & Core Wounds 02:51:22 Stories & Unreliable Narrators, Editing, Tool: 5 Senses 02:59:04 Young Men, Masculinity, Confusion 03:07:03 Grief, Making Sense of Loss 03:09:54 Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Workbook; Ask The Therapist, Choosing a Bigger Life 03:20:26 Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow & Reviews, YouTube Feedback, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter Disclaimer & Disclosures
Chapter 1: Who is Lori Gottlieb and what is her expertise in relationships?
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Lori Gottlieb. Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and bestselling author and is considered one of the world's leading experts on relationships.
how to find relationships, how to be in relationships effectively, how to leave relationships if necessary, how to grieve them after they're gone, and how to renew them, all from the perspective of looking inward at ourselves and the stories about ourselves and others that we tell ourselves that can lead us to what we want and what's best for us or that lead us away from those things.
During today's episode, we discuss how the feelings we experience when we're with certain people are the absolute best guide of how poorly or how well those people are suited for us as partners and the ways in which we miss key signals, both good and bad in relationships by not paying attention to how we feel.
Laurie explains how to better our communication skills, how to determine if somebody's critique of us is valid or not. That certainly is important for everybody and how texting and technology has changed relationships and how to navigate all of that by leaning into our own sense of agency, the things that we can control.
And last but not least, Laurie explains how we can all access more vitality and enjoyment of life and how so many people don't allow themselves to do that because the familiarity of their present circumstances overrides their willingness to move forward.
This was a really eye opening episode and one that I'm certain will help you better understand yourself and what your needs really are and how you can be happier in or out of a relationship. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Lori Gottlieb. Lori Gottlieb, welcome.
Thank you. Great to be here.
What's the first thing you ask a patient when you're meeting them for the first time?
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Chapter 2: How do childhood experiences shape our romantic relationships?
And so you want to make somebody comfortable. You want to make sure that you feel like they are not being rushed to share something that they're not ready to share. So it's just the process. I think it's a very human interaction. Therapy to me is not like expert and this other person And then it feels very asymmetrical. Of course, we're using our training and that's why they're coming to us.
But I feel like it's very much a human to human interchange.
Do you think, because I've heard, but I don't know if it's true, do you think that some people... tend to create a lot of internal and perhaps external narrative about what happened, who they are, how people are in the world, how they're not in the world. A lot of words to their experience, either spoken or internally versus people who maybe experienced life a little bit differently.
Once somebody said in a comment on Instagram, and I still think about this, they said, I don't think in words, I think in feels. And my first reaction was like, yeah, I'm from Northern California and people talk that way sometimes. So I thought that's interesting. Maybe there are a lot of people who, for whom language isn't the primary mode of understanding what's going on around them.
I think that as humans, we try to make sense of our feelings through stories, that we tell ourself a story about why we're feeling a certain way. And sometimes we aren't that skilled, because nobody taught us this, to access our feelings. And that happens because kids are often talked out of their feelings.
So when you're young, for example, and say you say to your parent, I'm really worried about this. And your parent will say, oh, don't worry about that. That's nothing to worry about. Or I'm really mad about this. You're so sensitive, right?
Or because parents are really uncomfortable when their kids are feeling sad because they feel like it's my responsibility to make sure they're not sad, which is not your responsibility as a parent. You're there to sit with your child and and be present for them.
So if your child says, I'm really sad that so-and-so sat with so-and-so at lunch today, and the parent will say, well, here's what you can do, or that's terrible, or, right? Instead of like, oh, tell me more. And I think that
As a parent or even as a partner, when your partner comes to you or your friend comes to you or a family member comes to you and tells you something, often what we do is we try to talk them out of the feeling that they're having or help them get rid of the feeling because we think it's a negative feeling.
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Chapter 3: What role does familiarity play in partner selection?
I didn't see that at first. Or that person yells a lot. I didn't notice that at first. And you're like, how did I get into this exact situation that hurt me as a child? And that's because your unconscious is saying – You look familiar. Come closer. Because what we're trying to do is we're trying to win. We're trying to master a situation where we felt helpless as a child.
We couldn't control the situation with our parents when we were growing up. And now we think, again, this is completely outside of our awareness. I'm going to win this time. I'm going to master this. I'm going to get love from that kind of person. And it doesn't work out.
So I think that you really want to make sure that you are choosing someone for healthy reasons and not because there's some unfinished business that you're trying to work out with this person who is not going to meet your needs.
To go a little bit further into this idea, which, by the way, I fully subscribe to based on your explanation of this and my belief that our unconscious mind is driving a lot of our choices, my understanding is that what you just described – doesn't adhere to mom, dad, male, female compartmentalization.
And what I mean by that is that I think a lot of people will hear what you just said and assume, okay, if my dad hurt me in the following ways, then let's say it's a woman. And she said, you know, my dad hurt me in the following ways. Maybe he was a drinker, withdrawn, or he was violent or whatever. Then that woman will seek out men that mimic that. here I'm assuming heterosexual relationship.
But if her mother was the one that was the drinker, violent, and or withdrawn, and she's heterosexual, my understanding is based on the dynamics that you describe, if she will find those traits in a man, because she's heterosexual, she's seeking men for romantic partners. And I think that's very important. I think that sometimes we put the mom-dad relationship
labels on top of the attraction to, again, staying in the heterosexual framework here, the opposite sex framework. And then people say, well, why is it that this woman always seeks out these, like what ended up being really terrible guys? Like she had such a great dad, but she had a dreadful mom.
That is absolutely correct. And I think it's so interesting because I think that people think that having one parent that gave you what you needed is protective. And in some ways it is, but the thing that hurts is the thing that gets the most attention inside of our bodies. So we don't necessarily think it, but we felt it. We internalized it. It lives inside of us.
And so, yes, having a good parent, one of the two, if you have two parents, one of the two is important. But it's interesting that it's not like we seek out the person that's like the good parent always. Sometimes, again, because we're trying to work something out, we seek out someone like the parent who really hurt us.
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Chapter 4: How can self-regulation improve relationship dynamics?
And owning your feeling state and making sure that you aren't using other people in your environment to release your feeling state to something else. That you need to learn how you can shift your own feeling state to one that feels better for you.
I love that. I realized recently that thinking is something that we can practice. For all the tools and protocols that we talked about on this podcast and elsewhere, like physiological size and morning sunlight and working out and zone two cardio and cold and all the things I realized recently, like spending five minutes just thinking about something and really trying to work through it linearly.
like a challenge, like a life challenge, is so valuable. And I didn't come up with this on my own. I now have a practice of, like, when something feels irritating or activating, I'll just, like, stop, put everything away, and I'll just sit and think, like, what's going on here? And inevitably there's some, like, some growth in understanding at the end of that.
But it's hard work to think like, what's going on here? Am I activated because it's true? Am I activated because it's false? Having to sort all that, you might think, well, who has the time for this? But actually, I would argue you don't have the time to not do it.
I think that's the difference between reacting and responding. So often what we do is we react to something. And that's not processed, not thought through. And again, it doesn't have to take, like you're saying, it doesn't have to take a long time to just even count to five and breathe. And see, you know, because reacting, reacting means acting again.
So you are normally when you're reacting and it's like that zero to 60, you're acting on something that happened in the past and you're layering it on to whatever's happening in the present. So you're having a big reaction to something. We like to say if it's historical, it's if it's hysterical, it's historical.
Meaning if you're – and by hysterical, I mean if you're having a big reaction, there's probably something from your past, some reaction that is visceral to you that you're having that is getting layered on to this current situation, experience, problem. And you don't realize it. So that's reacting. You're acting again. You're acting on something that happened in the past.
If it's hysterical, it's historical. Responding is I'm going to take a breath. I'm having a big reaction. I'm going to sit for a minute. Again, regulating your nervous system. And now I can kind of think about this differently. So we need space between, you know, there's that famous Viktor Frankl quote of, you know, between stimulus and response, there is a space.
And in that space lies our choice and our freedom. That's a paraphrase of it. But you need that space between the stimulus, whatever the thing is that activated you, and your response. So that's the difference between reacting and responding.
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Chapter 5: Why are face-to-face interactions crucial in relationships?
And this is when people cheat. What often happens is there's a specific quality about their behavior partner may be. Sometimes it has nothing to do with your partner, by the way.
And I think this is so important to talk about when we talk about infidelity, that often it really has nothing to do with the partner, that somebody is expecting their partner, again, going back to vitality and aliveness, to provide that for them. And if the partner doesn't provide that for them but your partner shouldn't be providing that for you, they're additive.
They're not providing a lack or a deficit in you. Sometimes that's why people cheat. But other times they say, like, there's this quality about my partner that is really, you know, like I don't like it. Like let's take, for example, I wish that my partner – were more, let's say, ambitious.
So they go and they like cheat with someone who's more ambitious, but then the person isn't loving or isn't communicative or isn't, you know, whatever the other good qualities that the partner they have has. So they think that by replacing this one trait that the other person's going to have all the other great traits that the existing partner already has.
And generally you're treating like one set of problems for another set of problems. So it's interesting that people think, like, I can fix this problem because this person has that thing that I really want. If your partner doesn't have any of that, like it's a degree, it's on a spectrum. So is your partner not ambitious at all? Or is your partner ambitious about different kinds of things?
Like they want to be a really good parent and they're really, you know, invested in that. Or they want to do something like philanthropic and they're really invested in that, but it doesn't pay a lot. You know, so what are they, like what energizes them? Where's their purpose? Where's their meaning? You know, there's different kinds of ambition.
I feel like placing one's attention on the good things as much as possible and really letting those fill us up as much as possible is really key. I didn't say this, I borrowed this, but that two of the most dangerous words in the English language are if only. This idea like if only this, because for two reasons. One is it's very unlikely that if only comes true.
But the other one is it takes our attention away from seeing what's there.
Right. So I like to say it's the difference between the what if and the what is. And people who focus too much on the what if, what if this, they lose sight of what is. And usually there's so much good that they really don't want to give up. in the what is. So if you're going to keep focusing on the what if, you blind yourself to the what is. And I think the what if is a big trap.
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