Elise Loehnen & Courtney Smith

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky

Episode: Elise Loehnen & Courtney Smith
Date: January 6, 2026
Host: Monica Lewinsky
Guests: Elise Loehnen (author, podcaster), Courtney Smith (coach, Enneagram expert)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the cultural pressures on women to perform “goodness” at the expense of wholeness, examining how historical and societal narratives impact self-perception, behavior, and personal transformation. Monica is joined by Elise Loehnen and Courtney Smith to discuss their collaborative work—particularly their new "Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness" workbook—offering an incisive look at reclaiming one's authentic self. The conversation weaves in Enneagram insights, the concept of the shadow self, group healing work, and the often fraught process of challenging internalized stories.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Cultural Programming: Goodness vs. Power

• [00:19] Elise introduces the core thesis:

  “Women in our culture are programmed or conditioned to perform goodness, while men are conditioned to perform power.”
  She describes how “good” women are never tired, always put others first, and are “sexy but not sexual.”

• [11:30] Goodness is also about suppressing personal needs, appetite, anger, and even conversations about money.

2. Personal Connections and Enneagram Dynamics

• Monica describes her first meeting with Elise as having a "dharmic" and instant connection.
• Courtney is introduced as “the Enneagram Queen,” credited with bringing a nuanced synthesis of tools—including Enneagram—to help people reframe inherited gender stories.
• [06:31]–[07:50] Enneagram explained: It's a system of nine personality types; both Elise and Courtney are type 6 (the Loyalist), whereas Monica is between a type 2 (the Helper) and type 3 (the Achiever).

3. The Seven Deadly Sins & Performative Goodness

• [09:40] Elise contextualizes her book, On Our Best Behavior, linking the pressure to be "good" to the Seven Deadly Sins (sloth, envy, pride, lust, greed, gluttony, anger).
  • Memorable Quote:

    “A good woman is sexy but not sexual—an object and not a subject. You can be desirable, but not desiring.” (Elise, [12:13])

  • Women police themselves and each other, maintaining these restrictive scripts even as they suppress anger and desire.

4. Projection, Shame, and Group Dynamics

• [12:20]–[13:58] Courtney and Monica discuss how public women become screens for society's unresolved issues, with other women often participating in the policing of each other.
• [19:08]–[21:36] The workbook’s group format is described as a tool for unlocking shame; by expressing wants and potentially “bad” desires in a safe group, women see their fears of rejection are usually unfounded, fostering compassion and connection.

5. Envy as a Tool for Self-Discovery

• [22:03]–[27:09] Elise describes how envy, typically repressed by women, actually points us towards what we want.
  • Example: Recognizing unconscious envy in reactions to others' success:

    “This is my unconscious envy saying, I want what she has. I want to be doing what she's doing.” (Elise, [24:15])

• In groups, admitting desires creates emotional releases; everyone’s wants differ, defusing scarcity and competition.

6. Midlife and the Process of Rewriting Stories

• [51:26] Monica observes that midlife often brings a reckoning and desire for a “factory reset”—questioning old stories and embracing the slow process of transformation.
• [55:42] Micro changes and “accepting the slow process” are emphasized over the myth of the light switch transformation.

7. Fact vs. Story – Tools and Takeaways

• [51:59]–[56:09] Elise and Courtney explain how the workbook helps surface and examine core stories (e.g., “I’m the only one who can do things right” or “good moms put children first”), recognize their costs, and incrementally shift behavior using agency, compassion, and play.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Proving Goodness:

  "A good woman is never mad or angry... We have endless terms for angry women... The only real words we have for men who are angry are bastard and son of a bitch, which both lay the blame on the woman, on the mother."
  — Elise ([13:13])

• On Group Work and Shame:

  "If you do the work in a group setting, you get to learn: does that actually happen, that when I stand up for myself, all these women disapprove? ...More often than not...the whole group goes, 'Oh, I'm doing the same thing.'"
  — Courtney ([19:52])

• On Reclaiming After “Moral Fall”:

  “There was a part of me that also knew the fallen woman doesn’t get to get back up... What if I don’t give up on that idea of getting back up?”
  — Monica ([31:19])

• On Wholeness Over Goodness:

  “Wholeness...indicates an embrace of our full humanity, including the parts of ourselves that maybe are works in progress or that we don’t love so much or that bring us shame.”
  — Elise ([33:35])

  "Wholeness for me is about, can I be with whatever is naturally arising in me in this moment without judgment?... There is a wisdom to this part of me that’s showing up in this now moment."
  — Courtney ([36:32])

• On “The Drama Triangle”:

  “When I relate to the world from a place of fear...I really start seeing the world through a very filtered lens of good, bad, right, wrong...Anyone in my sphere is going to need to play three roles: victim, villain, or hero.”
  — Courtney ([68:58])

• On Embodying Wholeness:

  “The more we can embody wholeness, the more we can sit in the ‘I’m okay, no matter what happens,’ because basically, I’m in the driver’s seat about everything with myself. It’s less external.”
  — Monica ([77:05])

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• 00:19 — Cultural scripts: performing goodness vs. power (Elise)
• 06:31 — Introduction to Enneagram; Monica’s type discussion
• 09:40–15:35 — The Seven Deadly Sins and their application to women’s lives
• 19:52 — How group work addresses shame and fear of judgment (Courtney)
• 22:03–27:09 — Envy as a gateway to desire; transformative group exercises (Elise)
• 31:19 — Monica on surviving moral “fall” and public projection
• 33:35–37:52 — Difference between goodness and wholeness
• 51:59–56:09 — Fact vs. story: surfacing and transforming personal narratives
• 68:58 — The Drama Triangle: Victim, Villain, Hero explained
• 77:05 — Reclaiming the self from external validation

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Final Reflections: What the Guests Are Reclaiming (Closing Question)

[77:56]

• Courtney:

  “I am in the process of reclaiming my relationship to my own intuition—my own self knowing... What does it feel like to really trust myself?”

• Elise:

  “I’m reclaiming the belief that I deserve support and unhooking from feeling like this is a quid pro quo universe... Letting the story about my extreme competence and self-sufficiency go.”

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Episode Tone

The discussion is candid, deeply reflective, and supportive, blending humor and vulnerability. Monica brings her own lived experience into the conversation, generating moments that are both therapeutic and universally resonant. Elise and Courtney provide practical frameworks and nuanced commentary, empowering listeners to start their own reclamation journeys.

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Useful For:
Anyone who seeks to understand or challenge the “good woman” narrative, wants to integrate all aspects of themselves, or is looking for practical and compassionate tools for self-discovery and lasting change.

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Transcript

[A]

Wondery subscribers can listen to Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky early and ad free right now. Join Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[B]

Women in our culture are programmed or conditioned to perform goodness, while men are conditioned to perform power. But for women, in this idea of performative goodness, it looks like all the accolades that we ascribe to being a good mother, a good friend, a good co worker, a good woman is never tired. A good woman subjugates what she wants to other people's needs.

[A]

I am so excited to welcome you both, Elise and Courtney, to Reclaiming. And Elise, you and I met. I think it was like the Carissa schumacher.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Retreat 2022 maybe, something like that. Yeah, exactly. It was post Covid, but still a little Covid.

[B]

Yeah, like we were sort of vaguely not supposed to be together, but we weren't wearing masks, I think.

[A]

No, but we were also outside just so we don't get Covid shamed.

[B]

Yeah, no, no, no, we were very.

[A]

But it was all outside and. And it's funny because I remembered I knew about your podcast and pulling the thread. Well, let's give it a plug. Thank you. And I had also was really interesting. I had read this interview of yours of you from your GOOP Chief Content officer role there, and there was something about that, both the image and. And the interview of you that had really imprinted in me. And I was like, oh, it's that girl. And so I think I maybe hadn't realized that you were one in the same of. With the podcast and the. And the GOOP stuff. And so I was just sort of, you know, drawn to you and I felt like it was this dharmic, you know, we sort of met and it was one of those things where I was like, oh, I've known you. Like, oh, this is a soul I've known a long time kind of a thing. And. And then we've been friends ever since and we have all the adult kind of convos. But then also, you may not know this Courtney, but I also like my catty, bitchy side comes out with Lisa lot.

[C]

I can't wait to name her.

[A]

I like constantly will send each other voice notes. I'll send her something and it'll just be the words are, I can't. I can't with this. I just can't with this person. I can't with what they've said. And somehow our. Our souls get annoyed by the same things.

[B]

Yeah, we've got the same trigger and then we get to process it and voice memos for weeks.

[A]

Right, exactly. So. But I've just, you know, and then I didn't, I didn't know. Sometimes it's been so interesting for me about having these chats, especially with people that I know is I learned something where you feel like you've known someone. I did not know that you were involved with Lucky magazine.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah. So my best friend from college, Catherine, she and I were obsessed with that magazine. And when it was like announced that it was closing, I was prepared to write a letter to say, just stop putting the stickers in there. That will save you a lot of money of the stickers from the actual magazine and you'll be able to continue this magazine because it was. Were you a Lucky reader at all?

[C]

Yeah, I loved Lucky.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And I thought it was innovative.

[B]

It was a revolutionary magazine. Well, it was inspired by the Japanese. That's where the idea originally came from.

[C]

Oh, that makes sense.

[B]

Yeah. But it was like of a time and before time and. And an incredible service oriented magazine that was largely derided and mocked.

[A]

What?

[B]

When it first came out sort of within the media world, it was a magalog, it was a piece of shit. It was all the things. And then it was the fastest growing magazine in Conde Nast's history.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah. Well, I love Conde Nast since I'm a contributing editor.

[B]

Vanity Fair. I tried very hard to get a job at Vanity Fair. When I landed at Lucky, no dice. I interviewed at a few places and they were like, you know what? Stay where you are. You'll do much more than just answering an editor's phone, so. Right.

[A]

But Courtney, you and I are just. I mean, I feel like we maybe have met briefly. I feel like something. I don't know, but I feel like I'm kind of just meeting you for the first time.

[C]

Yeah, I feel the same. We have a lot of mutual friends. Exactly.

[A]

And. And you've worked with a number of people who just speak so, so highly of you and some of whom have been on the pod already. But I think just in terms of. And you bring this background of both coaching and then I think of you as the Enneagram Queen. And that's how Elise talks about you too, of just this, you know, an amazing and brilliant way of synthesizing so many different kinds of cultural thoughts and experiences that you've had yourself, that you've brought to make your work unique, you know.

[C]

Thanks.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I mean, Elise and I have a large overlap in Our bookshelf and our interests. And it is true that I am very deep in the Enneagram, but the work that Elise and I did together is about some of the crossover in terms of the tools I combine with the Enneagram to help people achieve change. Put in, like, a new container around the stories that we inherit about gender. Yeah. And yeah, it was really fun to do with Elise. And I love my work. I love being here.

[B]

Are you an Enneagram, too?

[A]

Okay, so here's the thing. Yes. Okay. I'm an Enneagram too. The Internet says I'm an enneagram, enneagram3. Which is interesting to me. And I then. Because I figured that it would come up today in our conversation. And so then I was like, well, I'm going to do it again and see if I do a different online test, if it gives me a different result. And it sort of did give me a different result. And it said I was like, I had right between a two and a three.

[C]

Uh huh. That makes sense to me.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So.

[B]

All right.

[C]

Happy to talk about it if you want. Yeah, I can go.

[A]

Really good.

[B]

You know what?

[A]

Our reclaimers like, who listen to the podcast, they love the Enneagram, as do my producers. They're probably, like, leaning in right now.

[C]

Okay. Well, I mean, one thing I would say is the Enneagram, for people who don't know what it is, it's a personality system. And in this system, at the highest level, there are nine different types, and they go around a circle. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. And I like to think of it a little bit like the rainbow. When you look at the rainbow from really far away, you can see all 9 colors or 8 colors or however many there are. But when you get, like, really close, like where red becomes orange, orange becomes. It's, like, hard to know. And so for someone like you, who. Who is in the 2, 3 space within the system of the Enneagram, the question is, cause 2 and 3 are right next to each other. Are you a lot of two with some three, or are you a lot of three with some two?

[A]

Right.

[C]

And we would call that. We have a. The jargony word we use for that is which one is your wing and which one is your dominant type? Okay. And so if you and I were doing a session together, I'd get those results, I'd know about you as a person, and we'd spend a fair amount of time talking about whether you're driven more by recognition, appreciation, connection, and love. Versus feeling worthwhile, valuable, respected. And we'd go. We'd have. I'd ask you some questions. I'd be listening to you, knowing that both were there. But, like, which one really leads?

[A]

That's really. It's interesting. I mean, I found so many times in those, you know, those magazine quizzes. I'm always making my own scale. Cause I'm like, well, this is both A and C, you know, so then I give myself half a points for. For A and half a point for C. Yeah, that probably puts me in A. I'm like a 12 on the Enneagram or something. I'm like my own weird category.

[B]

Right?

[C]

We have to have a new category for you.

[A]

Exactly. That would not surprise me. What are both of you?

[B]

Six.

[C]

I'm also a six.

[A]

Okay. And is that. Do sixes work well together?

[C]

Is that so? What I would say is that sounds.

[A]

Like it's gonna be a no, but it's like gonna be a.

[B]

It's highly contextual. Cause sixes are conte.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And it also. I mean, I think this partnership worked really well. I think that, like, anytime you have two people who are the same type, you have a worldview that is the same, and you don't even realize that you have that worldview. So on the one hand, there's a lot that Elise and I, we don't even have to talk. They're kind of like just ingrained assumptions. Like, we're both very organized. We're both very responsible. We both highly conscientious. We want to, like, learn everything about the system or about what we're talking about before we feel comfortable coming forward in terms of being an authority figure. We don't have to. That's just who we are.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

And so there was no conflict there.

[A]

Right.

[C]

On the other hand, like, my blind spots are her blind spots, and we don't have anyone checking that. And so, you know, both of us will over prepare, for example. And we don't have someone who says, hey, time out. You guys got this.

[A]

When you find that person, when you send them by, even though I'm a.

[B]

Two, three.

[A]

Maybe I'm in over preparer for different reasons. I am an over preparer.

[C]

Right.

[A]

So this sort of starts all with Elise. You had your book on our best behavior. And then the subtitle is the Seven deadly Sins and.

[B]

And the Price Women pay to be Good. Right.

[A]

Thank you. Okay, so tell me about, like, give us the cultural context there for your.

[C]

Your book.

[B]

Okay, so I guess my book was in production when I Met you. Oh, right, yeah. And the. The general thesis of On Our best behavior is that women in our culture are programmed or conditioned to perform goodness, while men are conditioned to perform power. The book's not really about men. The last chapter is about men to some extent. But for women, in this idea of performative goodness, it looks like all the accolades that we ascribe to being a good mother, a good friend, a good coworker. A good woman is never tired. A good woman subjugates what she wants to other people's needs. A good woman needs no praise or attention or affirmation. In fact, she would recognize that getting attention for anything is inherently dangerous. Right. She'll be. Need to be put back in her place eventually. It's one of our culture's favorite pastimes. Also one of the favorite pastimes of women. We can talk about that. Yeah. A good woman has as small of a body as possible. It's incredibly disciplined. It's good. Not a bad body. She would never be a tax on the health care system. Right, right, right. She keeps her appetite really controlled, et cetera. A good woman doesn't talk about money. Money is base and unspiritual, and money is for other people. And she probably has a lot of anxiety about having either too much money or not enough. Right.

[A]

Or a conversation about money.

[B]

Yes, exactly.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

A good woman is sexy but not sexual. Monica.

[A]

Yes, No, I know. I'm like, once we get into all the things I want your thoughts on 98.

[B]

A good woman is.

[A]

Which I think is such a. I mean, I just want to stop you there because I want to hear more about the cultural context, but that I think that one descriptor, not just because of my own experiences, but I think for women in general, that dichotomy of sexy but not sexual is just so. I think for the culture, and particularly I think for Gen X, like how we were raised. Yes.

[B]

100% an object and not a subject. Right. You can be desirable, but not desiring.

[C]

And I think because it's so exacting and such a difficult needle to thread, public figures like yourself, a lot get projected on you, because ordinary people have trouble trying to figure it out for themselves. And so because we have a difficult relationship internally to it, when we see a public figure also playing around in that area, we project our issues onto them.

[A]

Right, yeah.

[C]

That's what I would argue what happened.

[A]

Right, Yeah. I mean, it makes sense in some ways. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You just think about the. You think about kind of group norms and how do we define those group norms? Well, you have them in small ways, but when you have public people, that sort of allows us culturally. Right. To sort of define that.

[B]

Well, it gets into the self, the self policing and then the policing of other women, which women participate in as well. And then the final sort of good woman checklist item is that a good woman is never mad or angry. She might be mad on behalf of someone else, like a child, but never on behalf of herself. In fact, we have endless terms for angry women. Harriet Lerner has this amazing list. It's like castigating, bitch, shrew, shrill lunatic, which is attached to the moon, hysterical, which is attached to the over. And the only real. The real words we have for men who are angry are bastard and son of a bitch, which both lay the blame on the woman, on the mother. Wow. Yeah, I haven't thought about that before. That's interesting. Yeah.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

So that's this list of what it is to be a good woman. And those that list aligns with the seven deadly sins, which are sloth, envy, pride, lust, greed, gluttony, anger, or wrath. And so the argument of honor, best behavior, is that those as a set, regardless of what you and I were not, were not raised using the New Testament. We didn't go to Catholic day school. It doesn't matter. These are cultural stories about what it is to be a good woman, and they've been passed down to us wholesale. We whisper culture into each other's years. We inherit these stories. We model them in our own lives. We model our behavior after what we see we need to do to sort of belong in this patriarchy and seek approval and find safety and security. And so we think that we're sort of self authoring our lives, but in reality, we're just abiding by these scripts and we do this to keep ourselves safe. And then we sort of lash out at women who do not abide and are doing something else. Yeah, exactly. You are. I was saying, I mean, I was thinking about this in the context of also the moment when I met you. And in many ways, my book is about you. It's not explicitly about you at all. And I don't write about you in part because I don't believe in writing about women who haven't told their own stories fully first, which is a whole nother conversation about how many people have made a lot of money off of stories like yours.

[A]

Yeah, but I thought you were going to say how every time we see each other, you're like, are you ready to write a book.

[B]

Yes. Well, that too. I think you have. I think you have a. You've been living a transformation for, what, 30 years?

[A]

Yeah. Almost 30. Yeah. 27. It'll be 28 next year. And, I mean, I've always. Or I guess I came to think of myself as a social canvas, you know, as someone who became this recognizable thing onto which people could, as you were saying before about, project their darkest fears, their concerns about themselves. You know, in that way, you're an archetype. Yeah, yeah. And in trying to, I think, help uphold what we think of as moral behavior in our society, even though morality is such a wide spectrum and we all go shopping in different places, it's just so. It's. That's always been such an interesting thing to me about morality, is we never seem to differentiate amongst ourselves and say, well, actually, these are my values. This is how I define moral. I choose these things. And someone else is like, well, I choose these things. But we use the same word, you.

[B]

Know, and we use it as a cudgel. You know, it's like a baton. Even though so many of us betray our own values every single day.

[A]

Right.

[B]

We've never seen more hypocrisy in our culture.

[A]

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I like to say if I could sue for hypocrisy, I'd be a really wealthy woman.

[B]

So this is part of our text chain. Yeah. Hypocrite.

[A]

Faux authenticity. And so. And now tell me the story of how you two came together to make the Workbook. You know, in terms of choosing wholeness over goodness.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is just. Is so simple and yet so brilliant when you really sit. I mean, for me, my experience of thinking about the title and what you're.

[B]

Doing in the Workbook, it's essentially. It's a Carl Jung quote. And after On Our Best Behavior came out, a friend, a mutual friend of ours who's a Jungian therapist was like, you. You wrote a book about shadow. This is everything that women have been conditioned to believe as bad and to keep as far away from our sort of personality or ego structure as possible. Like, I'm not a sexual person. I'm not a. I don't. I don't just want to eat until my face falls off. All these things where we try and keep them away from our personality and who we want to be for good reason. Right. Because women are incredibly susceptible to reputational harm. And all you have to say about a woman is that she's bad or she's a toxic BO or whatever. And she's done. She's. She's disappeared. But on our best behavior as this sort of cultural shadow bag of what it is, all these very human, natural impulses, these are the things that make us who we are, that make us. Bring us in contact with the world. This is our appetite and our desire and what we want, we have mostly abandoned.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I sort of neglected to say the other half of your title, which is a little embarrassing, giving the name of my podcast, but, you know, it's going from. From choosing wholeness over goodness, a process for reclaiming your whole self.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And so that's because I'm not very prescriptive on this podcast. We use a very elastic definition. But it is, you know, there is that part of it about, you know, finding the places where you lost yourself. And it's really interesting to me that you. That you're talking, saying about in group, because I think there is something, like I notice in myself, I do not do group therapy. I will. I will amongst. In a group of friends, I will say anything. But I think that there is something about the shame, the feeling of shame. And so my guess is, correct me if I'm wrong, that part of doing work in groups of women is that you're sort of forced to crack open that shame.

[C]

Yeah, exactly. So what the workbook sort of talks about is many of the reasons, the big reason why these stories stick around that I, you know, continue to believe. You know, a good mom always puts the needs of her children first. Let's take that as one story. A big reason that I continue to buy into that, even though it's costing me in certain ways, is because there's usually a fear that if I abandon that story, something might happen. And one of the big fears that almost all of us face are a fear of loss of approval or shame or judgment. Exactly what you're describing. And so for me, one of the ways you go right at facing that fear is if you do the work in a group setting, you get to learn. Is that fear grounded? Does that actually happen? That when I stand up for myself, all these women hate me, all these women disapprove, all these women judge me. Because more often than not, what happens is the whole group goes, oh, I'm doing the same thing, and I don't like it either. And thank you for standing for what your needs are. You're opening up a whole space for me. So it's almost like it's a tool. Like in the moment, being in a group setting like that, it Unlocks some of the fear that's keeping us stuck real time. And so that shame that you're talking about, which everyone feels, and I've been in groups for over a decade, and I still get scared. I still go, oh, my God, what's gonna happen? Facing that is part of the work that helps us undo these cultural stories more broadly.

[A]

Right. Can you. When you guys are in workshop together and either taking people through the workbook or even in other stuff you've done, can you feel. Because I know you're sensitive energetically, and I can tell you are also. Without knowing you that well yet, Courtney. But do you feel something unlock in the room? Do you feel it get lighter when there are those moments when you just sort of see people shedding their shame?

[B]

Yeah, I think. I think about one workshop that I did before this workbook, but. And maybe before even Honor Best Behavior came out, and we were talking about. It's this basic wanting exercise which is included in the workbook, and it goes to this idea of envy. And envy is the gateway to all the other sins. And it's this idea of. I sort of came to it when I. Before I even knew what I was gonna write, because I had interviewed Lori Gottlieb, and she has a line, and maybe you should talk to someone where she tells her clients, her therapy clients, to pay attention to their envy because it shows them what they want. And I had a really visceral reaction to this. It wasn't a big moment in the book, but I couldn't move on. I couldn't let it go for two reasons. One, I had this, like, ew, envy. Gross. I would never. I would never be envious of another woman. Right. Like, which we. You and I, we've all been in a lot of therapy. So I was like, okay, that's really good information for me. I need to sort of hold that and understand what that's about. And then the second revelation was, I don't know what I want. And I. That was very sad for me. I was like, I couldn't figure it out. And then going back to this idea of Carl Jung and Shadow, I was like, okay, but I bet I can figure it out if I start to understand who I'm criticizing, what other women. I'm sort of triggered by who is. Who is irritating me in the culture and what am I saying about this person? And is that a clue to what I want? Because, again, envy for most of us is not conscious as it comes up. We're not like, oh, I'm Feeling really envious. Men have a lot. Are a lot better at this, actually, because it's not conditioned if you're sad. Yeah. But for women, it comes up and it's this irritating discomfort. I don't like this. And so the instinct is to deprecate the person who's inspiring our envy. Right. So for me, as I started playing with this, not really knowing what I was doing, I would find myself saying things like, ugh, like, how is her book on the New York Times bestseller list? That book is so bad. Why do people like her podcast? Her voice is so annoying, et cetera. And I was like, oh, I understand what's happening. This is my unconscious envy saying, I want what she has. I want to be doing what she's doing. And so I need to use this as a way to understand what I want. And so that was a big unlock. And then to your next question about doing it in group. I was with a group of women, and envy, I think, is the gateway because it collides with so many of the other sins. Pride, being recognized, receiving attention for getting potentially what you want or not what you want, as well as scarcity, which is this idea in the greed chapter of, like, there's not enough for us. Right. So there's not enough to go around. So if this woman has this opportunity, if she's getting this level of attention or acclaim, I can't have it too. So I need to destroy her. Right. Men are not. Do not subscribe to the same ideas.

[A]

They're a lot more team oriented.

[B]

Yeah, well, there's plenty of room. They're never sports. Yeah.

[A]

Is that kind of.

[B]

They look at a conference table and they're like, oh, there's a lot of dudes in there. Whereas for most of women, it's like, oh, there's only one. So I need to be her. I need to replace her. We don't see abundance. It's just not. And some. So some of it's real. But then we're also enforcing it because our instinct is to destroy and replace rather than say, okay, if Monica's doing this, I can do it too. We can both win. That's how men tend to think compared to women. So back in this room with these women, the. It's a simple exercise, but it's okay. Say something like that you want that you've never maybe said aloud or admitted even to yourself. And you could just feel in the room the extreme anxiety, scarcity. What if I want the same thing as someone else? Who am I to think that I could have this thing just, like, extreme anxiety and.

[A]

And I'm like, already feeling anxious.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Are you thinking about it?

[B]

Yeah. And this particular group of women has, like, worked together for a while, so they know each other. And as they go around the room and they start saying it, and at first, like, they're very tepid. And our friend Jen Freed was with us, and she was like, I know that's not what, like, go deeper, try harder. And it was extremely emotional to a 1 for every woman to say it. The other thing that was very beautiful is that everyone wanted something different. So even if they were slightly aligned, like, I want to have a podcast about regenerative farming. I want to have a podcast about neuro, linguistic, psych. Whatever it was. Everyone had, like, a different gift that they wanted to bring to the world. And you could just feel in the room sort of like the release of a tremendous amount of fear and anxiety.

[C]

What part of this is making you anxious?

[A]

I think the, like, the idea of really connecting to saying certain things that I want. And I've been working on this a lot. And like, I joked. I mean, everybody on the podcast team knows that. Even when we signed the deal and had our first meeting, I was like, I want to help people. I want to move the conversation forward, and I want to make a fuck ton of money. Like, that last thing was. Is a really. I have been working really hard to step into this idea that it is okay, you know, for me to even to the idea of saying, make a lot. I can hear my mom, who's gonna listen to this, just feel like, why'd you say that?

[B]

I have the same story. Right.

[C]

Well, what's interesting to me about that too, is. And if you are a type 2 on the enneagram, like, wanting is difficult for many women, for most women. But type two is kind of the archetype of the woman triangulating and running her own wants through helping others. And so it makes sense to me that this conversation that we're having, like, it makes me anxious. But I can imagine it makes you really anxious because for a type 2, the idea is, if I'm wanting over here for myself, for nobody else, I'm a selfish person. I'm not taking care of other people. And then what does that say about me? And who do I have to confront in the mirror? And that does not feel good. I don't like it.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, I remember I had a therapist when I was in my 20s, my early 20s. This is before everything happened. And she had said to me, she was like, you need to start behaving in a way where you think you're being selfish because your definition of selfish is so normal. That, like, that's moving the needle for you. Yeah. And that was still hard for me to do and uncomfortable. And then I think, too, on a very personal level, my relationship to all that got so complicated because the sexual narrative about what happened in 98 and everything in that relationship became framed through this lens of a quote, unquote, servicing act, which is, like, not what this was. I mean, who. Like, it just was not what this was, and yet that's how it was framed. And so this tug of war, I think, within me of both, I'm having a hard time articulating it. So I'm like, sorry, girls, but what.

[C]

I hear you saying is this complicated tension between. Over here, I have strong identity around being a selfless person and being someone who's generous and takes care of other people. And at the same time, I'm getting this narrative put upon me that that's what this was all about. And that's not actually true. That's denying another part of me that also doesn't feel very good. And so the tension of some parts of you wanting to be seen as a warm, generous, giving person, and then other parts of you doing things for other reasons like that. What do I do about the messy swamp that I feel internally when I'm having to navigate both of those things and in the public eye?

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[C]

When I was 24 as a young person. So I can really. I sympathize with what you're describing. And this is what Elise's book is all about. You have an extreme version of it, but I bet there's some part of your narrative that every single woman in this country, at some level, could identify a piece with. Like, it is your story, but there is a piece of it that is grounded in this broader culture. And so there is a universality at some level also to what you were experiencing.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I think part of. Not that this was ever my intention in sort of like, nor did I, like, set out to reclaim my narrative on this, you know, journey, but I think on some level, there was a part of me that also knew the fallen woman doesn't get to get back up. And so, you know, what if I don't give up on that idea of getting back up? And how do I, you know, micro step that. Which makes it sound like I had a plan, which I did and I didn't. Like, I kept Having a plan, and then my plan would get fucked up. So, yeah, it ended up being a plan. Through, like, reverse engineering.

[C]

Well, what I think is so beautiful about the name of this podcast, Reclaiming, is it is exactly what you're describing. Like, reclaiming is the recovery of something.

[A]

Lost or taken from.

[C]

Or taken. And so the idea there is I have to work for this. Like, that's what reclaiming is about, is like, a level of intentionality and commitment and doing what's difficult. And so. And the upside to that is whatever you reclaim, you now have a stronger relationship to because it's been so hard won. And so what I hear in the Fallen Woman story is I'm not giving up on myself. I refuse to give up on my relationship to myself and who I am. And it's gonna take a fuck ton of work, but I'm not. I'm not abandoning myself. And that's what this workbook is also about in small, incremental ways, which is why the word reclaiming appears in the title. It is about I'm not giving up on who I really am and my relationship to who I really am.

[A]

Yeah. I feel like we're talking about the workbook and the title, and I want to hear from both of you the sort of the difference between goodness and. And wholeness. You know, I have my own thoughts, which I think are impacted by what I've read, but I want to hear it from. From both of you.

[B]

Yeah. So wholeness. In fact, it's funny, I was just thinking the other day, I was like, I used to ask people, like, oh, do you think that they're a good person? And I've sort of stopped asking that as a question. And instead it's more like, are they kind? You could say whole, but nobody would really necessarily understand what you're talking about. But there's a level of wholeness that indicates an embrace of our full humanity, including the parts of ourselves that maybe are works in progress or that we don't love so much or that bring us shame, whether that shame is justified or not. And I think people get scary when they. It's sort of. They're shuddering away or closeting or putting it in sort of a hefty trash bag. Those parts of themselves that they refuse to own. Richard Schwartz from IFS would call it, you know, their exiles or those manager. Firefighters. Managers. And. But those stories, those parts are still driving a huge part of your actions, right?

[A]

Internal family systems.

[B]

Yeah, internal family systems. And the beauty of sort of choosing wholeness is it's an entirely personal, highly individuated version of, like, what is it to. To actually recognize all of these parts of myself? Sort of when. Yes. The other day when we were texting, and I'm like, I love the bitchy parts of you, and I love the bitchy parts of myself, too. Rather than being like, I'm so bad. I'm such a bad person for having this, like, very human reaction to something on Instagram. Starting to, like, let that part of myself come up just so I can even see it, because I think so many of us are like, I don't have that. I don't have that. I'm not that. That's not part of me. Go away. We spend a whole lot of energy keeping that sort of trash bag of those unsavory parts of ourselves closed. And I think it consumes not only energy to sort of keep those things away, but also energy that would be a lot better spent integrating those parts and saying, okay, what are you here to teach me? Or what can you show me? Or what does this show me about what I want? Rather than making it that author's fault for making me feel bad about ghost writing at that point in my career, 13 books and not writing my own book, I could actually claim that part of me that's shaming other people for getting close to that unexpressed desire.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So I really. I just think whole is a much more usable, complete concept. And it's not to say, oh, you can just be shitty. Like, that's okay. But it's like, let's be honest. Honest, and let's look at ourselves as fully as possible in wholeness and what is.

[A]

I think there's that idea of what is.

[B]

Yeah. Rather than white knuckling.

[A]

Yeah. How about for you, Courtney?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I think. I mean, I think the title, which is, as Elise said, is. Comes from Carl Jung, but she came up with, I think is brilliant. And I think that for me, what goodness is shorthand for is, you know, I need to color within lines. Yeah. I have a sense of who I am, and it's got these. I've got a rigid notion that is often informed by the culture, my family, my community, et cetera. And rather than having a rigid definition of who I am, wholeness for me is about, can I be with whatever is naturally arising in me in this moment without judgment? Which doesn't mean I go all the way with it and I let it run amok, but I let it arise and trust there is a wisdom to this part of Me that's showing up in this now moment. And if I trust and follow her with intentionality and with tools and support and all that kind of stuff, something is going to come forward that is going to be more beautiful and more authentic to who I really am rather than these predetermined notions of who I should be.

[A]

Right. Right. Yeah. I mean it's, it's, it is interesting. I mean that's, it's. I think for me, I was thinking about that sense of that good is so relation, it's so externally based. It's so dependent on how your seen. Even if you think about within yourself of good, it's always of what would someone else think? Would this kick me out of the tribe? You know, and so that sense of wholeness, I really, I just am so drawn to the concept and I think it's like I've spent a lot of time and with intention around sort of. I say it a lot of like being seen as my true self, you know, but, but even like wholeness is even bigger than that. And I really, I like the idea of sitting in that and really connected I think too to something. I think it's something you might have said, Courtney, but just about in, in working with people of like, yeah, sometimes when this happens, this is what I do. And that's my therapist. That's how she like, she made me have this mantra of like, yeah, sometimes when I'm anxious, I send yet again another fucking email. She doesn't say the yet again fucking part, but you know, like that idea of like, yeah, this is what I do, this is what I do sometimes. And just that the process of actually not beating yourself up is sometimes a neutralizer in some ways.

[C]

Right. And what you're talking about there, which I think is, I'm glad you're articulating this because it's really important. Wholeness is not about going into reactivity of the parts that are arising. Right. So I can have, you know, my kids are running late and whatever in the morning and there can be a part of me that wants to scream really loudly because I'm fucking pissed now I can name and be with that part, but she doesn't overtake me and let me do that screaming and yelling. And so what you're talking about that you're doing with your therapist and some of the tools in the workbook, they're about, I'm with the part of me that's arising and there's another part of me that's even bigger than that that can hold all of me with compassion, with clear vision, with, like, the wise self is what Terry Real would call it. And so it's this dance between being with but not being consumed by.

[A]

Yeah, I think that around this idea of I'll feel like it's a higher, more knowing self or a version of a future self that I can see glimpses of. And I think about even something I was going through over the weekend. And I'm, like, drawing all the options and the different reactions I'm having. And I'm like, this is this.

[C]

This.

[A]

I feel like if I could just get to this resonance that. And I'm holding this resonance, then I don't have to. I don't have to focus on what am I doing with this person in this. Choosing this behavior. Because it either stays or it goes. I'm in my resonance, you know, but that it felt farther away. And yet at the same time, I'm not sure if anything I'm saying is making sense. But at the same time, it felt like it's here. It just might be a future version does that.

[C]

Well, what I hear you saying in that is, all right, I got angry. I'm gonna use an example. I got angry with my kids. That's the chapter around wrath and anger. Are women allowed to be angry? So I feel this anger arising in me. What am I gonna do about that? Now, an old version of myself would control that by saying, well, that's not what a good mom does. I wanna be seen as a good mom. So I'm gonna suppress that anger, and I'm not gonna let it come out the other way of doing it. That would be kind of like a low vibration, would be to, like, go all the way with the anger and, like, yell at them and, like, bang on the counter. And that would be a version of being with an ugly part of myself. But now I'm not grounded in. But who do I want to be? What are my values? What am I trying to accomplish? Who do I. Internally, without anyone else's eyes, without anyone else's, you know, lines about what a good woman is, what do I want to do? And so that's what the book is about. And I. What I think I hear you talking about, that internal resonance is finding the space inside yourself where I'm making decisions about how I show up in this world. They're not bouncing off of external criteria, but they are going through a filter. That's an internal compass. That is its own guidance system. And part of the way that I find that is by being with whatever's arising and letting it just be here so that I'm really talking and listening to myself rather than always bouncing off something outside me.

[A]

Interesting. Yeah.

[B]

You said something important, I think, which was this idea of goodness as an internal quality versus something that's mediated by all of these external factors like judges and juries and priests and parents and peers. Right. And I think one of the things that's important is, and I think where women just. We get so stuck in a completely unfair eddy, is that we're constantly, constantly litigating our goodness and proving it, performing it for those that external group rather than recognizing. I mean, I. I believe. I know it can be hard to believe in this cultural moment, but the people are inherently good.

[A]

I do, too.

[B]

It's not really something that we can dispute. I think a lot of people who are very evident in our culture have a ton of shadow and are highly wounded, unhealed, unclear exactly what's going on, but act out of that pain in ways that hurt other people. Hurt people, Hurt people. I don't know if you've ever heard that, Monica, but.

[A]

Yes, I have.

[B]

But. But I think if we could let relax around this idea of goodness and say, I am good. Like, Monica is a good person. I. Elise is a good person, Courtney's a good person. Like there's some anchoring base that is untouchable. We're not going to argue for it, and instead we're going to set our sights on this idea of, again, wholeness like I am. Let me try and accept my full humanity here.

[A]

There's this quote of yours, at least, that I really connected to for I think it'll be obvious reasons, but you said reputational harm for women is dangerous, if not deadly. All you have to say is that a woman is bad and unreliable friend, a cold mother, a toxic co worker or boss, and she's done. Women will disappear themselves when these assaults on their goodness come. Cue every celebrity take down, the removal of female founders, and so on. Our culture is a graveyard of women's reputations and we are our own gravediggers.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Now, I know some of that you referenced earlier on, but that just felt really resonant for me in my own experiences. And I think you know what we see.

[B]

Oh, everywhere. Right. You are one. I mean, your story is both universal, as Courtney mentioned, and it's also archetypal. You have a singular story that we all grew up on as sort of like, look at what can happen to you. Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And many, I'm sure many people including myself. There's some like schadenfreude are like, oh, look what, look what she did. Right. That happens all the time, sort of in the culture where we celebrate people until we decide they've had enough, women in particular, and then we need to put them in their place. Right. Tall Poppy syndrome is another name for it, but you see it all over. It's just invariably, I think Taylor Swift is one. I know people have tried to take her down, but her army protects her. So we, as a woman, to be really public, you need an army, literally of fans who will cut you and dox you if you go for her. But when I think about your story, which echoes so many other people's stories in smaller ways, it's. That's it. Right. There's no real infraction. Not no infraction. Well, that's.

[A]

Well, I wouldn't say there's no infraction. You know, I think in terms of, you know, like being involved with someone that, you know, is married now, it happens all the time. Yeah. But I think it's engaging in a behavior that can cause other people pain.

[B]

Sure. So, yeah, we can, we can drama. We could drama triangle. And you can play the victim and you can play the villain. Sure. Yes. And I'd say what happened to you is unparalleled.

[A]

And I would agree.

[B]

Yeah. And maybe not appropriate or fair considering the circumstances.

[A]

I would agree.

[B]

And yet there's like a culture, it was part of an unconscious mob action, like a cultural story that I think taught all of us a lot about who we are. Even though you have had to carry it. Right.

[C]

I mean, I think the thing that's interesting about you bringing out that quote also is, you know, I have an 11 year old daughter who's in sixth grade. And so there's all kinds of mean girl dynamics. Right. That she's navigating. And you know, we really often get to. I'm worried they're not gonna like me. And I remember feeling that way as an 11 year old girl and being told, don't care what other people think. And what I really wanna stand for. As you read that quote, and which I'm curious if this has been your experience, It's a human thing to look for approval and a human, as you said, like, I don't wanna be kicked out from tribe. And so I'm reading all of these cues everywhere to make sure that I'm still okay with others. And when something happens where you're having to really face and confront, actually they're Talking about me, actually, they're judging me. To come out on the other side of that is not to just not give a fuck any longer. No, because it's a human thing to still want approval. It's actually what comes out on the other side is to renegotiate how you relate to that very real human fear, which is I still care what others think. I still. There's risk here and I can feel it in my body, but there's something else inside me that wants to do it anyway. And I'm willing to tolerate this fear and I'm even willing to tolerate there may be. The fear might be well founded, but I'm not going to limit. I mean, you could have just disappeared and there's something inside you that said, I'm not doing that. And you had to face the loss of approval and judgment again and again. And with experience inside you that, like, this is scary. And there was something inside you that said, I'm doing it anyway. And so that's almost what I think you reclaimed is I'm reclaiming my relationship to approval and fear.

[A]

That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I still struggle with it.

[C]

Yeah, it's still here. It's. You're relating to it differently or even.

[A]

Just the sense of being able to take in when people say positive things. Now that I'm, I'm. I think there's still just that conditioning. I don't mean to make this like a therapy session for myself. Sorry.

[B]

It's a therapy session for all of us every day.

[A]

Right. Those of us who are. Who are always questioning. But it is, it's interesting to me to just observe how uncomfortable I am with people seeing me in a different way too, that I got very accustomed to bracing for the negative but need to try to take in because I think we all, you know, we all have those experiences. I'm sure, Elise, for you, you're saying you had co written ghostwritten 13 books and now you're writing your own book. Like the. Stepping into that, you, Courtney, taking your, you know, your own knowledge and your work and being able to say, I'm a coach, like, is a certain stamp of I accept I have an expertise. Yeah. You know, and so it just, it's so, it's just all. It's fascinating to me, like in the observing of it all, you know, it's.

[C]

All a willingness to be seen, basically.

[A]

Well, and also. And you guys, I think, talk about this in the workbook too, about, you know, I think the midlife part of it and the Stories and that, you know, it's. It almost feels as if, do we need a factory reset? You know, like in our 40s and 50s of just okay, these stories, Right. Because a lot of what you're talking about in the workbook, right, Is. Is question, identifying and questioning the stories, right? So that. I think we talked about this much earlier, the fact and the story, right?

[B]

Yeah. And the reason that the process that Courtney outlines in the book is so powerful and it starts with a very simple provocation where you can start to understand the stories that you're telling yourself about who you are, is that there's a reckoning. And I think it does come somewhat with midlife. Although it's great if people do it earlier where you realize, okay, I have structured my entire personality around some very basic stories about who I am in the world. I'll give you an example. And fact versus story, which kicks off the workbook, is really helpful tool because a fact is something that can be recorded on a video camera, right. I'm wearing a blue sweater and a story is pretty much everything else, right? I'm wearing the story cause I think. Or the sweater because I think it's a really flattering color. Whatever it may be, it's that story. But some of these stories have real heft and they can be quite simple. So an example for me, this is in the chapter on sloth, which is about the tendency of a lot of women to overwork and do everything for everyone and not need any rest. One of my stories that I've come to understand, and I literally got there by by identifying a fact. Like my 9 year old didn't do his homework last week. Didn't turn in his homework last week. The story I tell myself is I'm the only one who can do it right. I'm the only parent who's really paying attention. And if I'm not there, nothing gets done right? And a simplified version of that story is I'm the only one who can do things right, so I should do them all right? And I bet everyone listening has some variation of that story. But that is a core story for me that I have structured my entire personality around proving right? And I. It's how I show up in my marriage, by just proving to my husband every single day I'm getting better. I'm working really hard to let go of the story, but that I'm the only one who can do things right. So I better take care of everything right? I need to make all the appointments, I need to set up all the extracurriculars. I need to be the only parent who picks up their phone so that the school always calls me first as soon as something needs attending to, et cetera. Right. I'm the one who's going to get our taxes done. I'm the one who's going to manage our finances. It's really a bid for me of control. And the core fear around it is who would love me if I didn't make everything so nice. Right. Why would my husband stay married to me if I weren't so helpful? This is.

[A]

I feel that so deeply.

[B]

Yeah. Right.

[A]

I just.

[B]

It's a common story. Yeah. And when you do the process and you could start to see what you're up to and the way that you're confirming the story and that the story is really attached to fear. Fear of loss of approval, fear of loss of control, fear of loss of safety and security, you start to realize, like, okay, I've gotten a lot of bang out of my buck for this story. It's gotten me really far in my career and in my life. I'm so competent, Monica. I just really know how to take care of everything for everyone. 1. But the payoffs, particularly now that I'm 46, are just too high. Like, I'm tired. I don't like this. I don't want to do this anymore. And guess what? Nobody is actually requiring me to do this except for me. I'm the one who is exerting a cattle prod on my own butt. Like, I'm the one who's performing the story every day and every week and every year. And I could do something else. And I have. I am starting to do. It's a slow process, but, you know.

[A]

But the accepting of the slow process is sometimes. I mean, I think so much of transformation work. The part we seem to lose is it sells better. The idea of. There's a light switch.

[B]

Yeah. Or a single phrase.

[A]

Right, exactly. And it's so. It could be so challenging to. To sort of accept that it's micro change. Right. Do you have a version? I mean, if you want to.

[C]

Yeah, of course. Yeah. So I'll stick with the one I did earlier, which is, you know, good moms put the needs of their children first. And that was a story that I was really stuck in for a very long time and caused me to, you know, drop out of the workforce. There's other contributing factors and. And the way the workbook is sort of set up, there are seven tools we won't go through all of them here. But broadly speaking, the first half of the tools are exactly what Elise was just describing, like a facing of. Because often what's happening is these stories. It's not like if you, like, you know, Courtney, 15 years ago, if you'd said, Courtney, like, why are you not working anymore? It's not like I would have said, well, Monica, I'm glad you asked. It's because I have a story that good women put the needs of the their children first. I wouldn't have been able to consciously articulate it in that crisp of a distillation. So the beginning part of the workbook is surfacing. These kind of subterranean stories that are really serving as the foundation of our choices, but we're so subject to them that we can't see them. And so this first four parts of the workbook are about this facing and really getting clear on. This is my story. This is what it costs me. This is what I feel like in my body when I believe this story. These are the emotions that come up when I believe this story. Here are the thoughts that get generated, and here's how I conduct myself, right? Then I go, okay, what's the fear that this story is riding on? And there are three fear, core fears. Loss of security, loss of approval, loss of control. Over here, a good mom puts the needs of her kids first. Would have been loss of approval, people judging me, my partner judging me, and then I get to really explore. Once I double down on this story, it's like a worldview. As Elise was saying, it doesn't just show up in how I operate with my children. It shows up in terms of how I operate with my husband, how I talk to my friends, how I spend my time and energy. It actually is driving so much. And so that's the front half of the workbook is really facing. This story has got me, and it's in charge. It's running the show. And then the back half of the workbook, tools 5, 6, and 7, are all about, in different ways, injecting agency, compassion, or play into the equation. Because it's my experience that those three ingredients actually allow us to shift and unstick ourselves. And so there are different tools that are applied versions of compassion for why you made these choices, agency or belief that you can change them, and a sense of playfulness that, like, this is. I'm taking myself really seriously here.

[A]

But like, it.

[C]

This is just a. Like, we can do this. Let's have some levity and some fun with, like, being a human being and those little ingredients. Once they get injected into what starts out feeling like a very rigid, codified, blocky. How am I going to move this thing? As you say, 1% by 1%, one conversation at a time. Incremental change. It begins to loosen the hold the story has on you so that you can write a new one.

[A]

Is your belief that everybody has sort of one core story or is there a set number of.

[B]

Oh, my God, I have so many stories.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And not one. Yeah. And I think you get going and when you start doing this or just even thinking about some of the stories you're telling yourself, then those give rise to new stories, some which are even older. Like you shared a story earlier about saying what you want, which is to make a fuck ton of money while also theoretically being of service and doing good in the world. I have that story. You can't do good and do well financially. Right. That's a big story for me. I have so many money stories, some of which I'm sure we share. If someone pays me for something, then they own me. That's another story I have. That's a good story. Really fun story. But to, you know, then you get going with all the behaviors that make that true. Right, Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you start to recognize, like, once you even go through the process of, like, what am I doing to substantiate the story? Or you start to see what you're doing and you're like, oh, and I.

[A]

Know you guys have acknowledged sort of other. Other thinkers. I don't know what the right word. Healers. Thinkers.

[C]

Teachers.

[B]

Guys.

[A]

Teachers. Thank you. Perfect. But, like, the, you know, Byron, Katie and I, it's so My relationship. I don't know her. I know people who know her, but my relationship to her process is so like, I hate you. And I run away from it. It just that. That whole confrontation. And so what I really liked about what you guys have done is that it's there, but it. It feels a little softer to me, a little. A little less hardcore. Like, you will never find me at Barry'. Like I might be in a Pilates class. But, you know, so this, this feels for me. And that's. That's. No, you know, I admire Byron so much and what she's brought, and it's too hard for me. So I appreciate the ability to have something that feels a little more doable for me wherever I am in my life right now.

[B]

Well, yeah.

[C]

I mean, I mean, Byron, Katie's amazing and she's. She is a foundational contributor to what we put in the workbook. But I agree with you that I really want to trust that people unwrap one story at a time. And you know what story you're willing to confront at any given moment.

[A]

Yeah, that's interesting.

[C]

And there's a wisdom to that unwrapping. Because part of what is in the workbook is these stories have. It's like a metabolic effect. Like, they're a lived experience in my body. So in order for me to actually release a story, I need to be with what has the story done to me physically? Like, what does it feel like? And am I willing to have a somatic experience of it? Because that's where I. Then I can let go of it. And there is an intelligence to get. My body's not yet ready to really fully go into how uncomfortable the story is really making me.

[A]

Yeah, there's. I have a. Let me find it. I have a quote of yours too, Courtney, that's. We're used to relating to our body as an activity machine, and we have developed numerous strategies to ignore, numb, or dissociate from its sensations. Many of us have stories about body sensations. They're uncomfortable or painful, and we fear that if we acknowledge these sensations, they may prove inconvenient or slow us down. And that's like, I know, Elise, you and I have talked a lot because I got into somatic therapy in the last couple years and just this whole idea of like, oh, this is something other, you know, this is an intelligent storyteller, an intelligent information provider that I had not been aware of, listening to, acknowledging.

[C]

Yeah. And this is one of the ways that the seven sins kind of intertwine, because the chapters on lust and gluttony are all about resensitizing ourselves to different kinds of pleasure and desire in the body. And so if we have all these stories around, you know, I can't trust my body's appetites. I can't trust my body's pleasure orientation. So then I have to shut it down. Then what happens is then when we get to the chapter around wanting and envy, because I'm disassociated from my bodily sensations, I actually, this is one of the reasons we struggle with knowing what we want is because we've shut down our bodily intelligence and wanting lives in the body. Yeah, the head does not know what to want. It's the heart and appetites, pleasure. And so part of the lust and the gluttony chapters are about, like, rehooking up what my body genuinely desires so that it actually helps me in the domains of lust and gluttony. But it. It also backfills and helps me reclaim my relationship to my desires and my wanting overall.

[A]

But even. Even sort of. Of tacking all the way back to kind of the sexy and sexual. Right. Desire of like, I. I don't know about younger generations now, but I feel sort of our generation and certainly older generations, desire is only. I feel like for women, desire is only attached to sex and sexual desire in that way of like, it's like the word desire needs to reclaim all its. All its facets, you know, and in the ways that we do that. I've like, been working on kind of my relationship to money and issue, like, those kinds of things, the psychological and energetic stuff. And from a session, Elise, you know, Ken, that is my love Ken. Yeah, my healer. My main healer. My main dude. My main healer dude. But who's.

[C]

It'd be funny to have that on his Instagram. Main healer dude.

[A]

He doesn't have Instagram. There's nothing that he's referring to girl only. He's like the least wanting attention person who's doing good in the world. Very, very grateful for him and the work I get to do with him. But in one of the sessions working on these things, I sort of came out of it thinking about some of my friends who have a lot of resources and like, you know, being with them, and they just buy two Bottega bags. Like, that's something they can do easily. That's not something I can do easily financially. And. But I gave myself this little assignment where I was like, I sold a little of my crypto right then and there because I'm like, well, I'm up and whatever. And my assignment was to sort of go out and sort of. I could buy anything I wanted as long as I really wanted it. And it was a really interesting thing because I went into Bottega Veneta, and that day there didn't happen to be something that I really, really, really wanted. But there was $125 specific color yellow Erewhon bag. There was again, $125 for a cotton fucking bag. But I really wanted it and I bought it, you know, and so it was just. But it was really interesting to me to see the difference between when I'm trying to anchor myself from being connected to that desire, you know, and the want of, like, what does that feel like? Where does it come from?

[C]

Yeah, the lust chapter really is. We're really trying to expand the definition of desire beyond the sexual realm in some of those exercises, because when we associate desire with, like, I want a man or I want a woman, then I. I really limit that channel of bodily intelligence to only being about sex, when the truth is that. That all kinds of things can turn us on and make us feel alive and creative and, like, lit up. And we. When we label that as a sexual feeling, that's about wanting to have sex with someone rather than. No, this is just what it feels like to be fully alive and engaged and, like, just turned on by life.

[A]

Right.

[C]

We learn the. We lose the ability to use that as a reliable GPS system in other parts of our lives. So I think that's a cool exercise.

[A]

Can you say the phrase again that you just used? Channel of body information Intelligence. Body channel of body intelligence. That's really interesting. I want to just touch briefly on the. If you guys. Can one of you walk me through the drama triangle? So sure.

[C]

Yeah. Okay. So the drama triangle is a concept that was originates from a psychologist in the 1960s named Stephen Cartman. And he's got slightly different language for it. But it is about what happens to the way I show up and see the world when I relate to the world from a place of fear. So when I relate to the world from a place of fear or threat, My cognitive functioning really kind of gets limited. I shut it down because my body is just trying to feel safe. And so I don't have a lot of room for nuance. I don't have a lot of room for complexity. So I really start seeing the world through a very filtered lens of good, bad, right, Wrong. And when I do that, anyone that's in my sphere is going to need to play three roles. One of three roles. The first role is the victim, and the victim is the person who is feeling threatened or at the effect of external circumstances. Like, they're not okay Unless external circumstances change.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

And they feel powerless to do anything about changing those external circumstances. The second part of the drama triangle is the villain. The villain also feels threatened and at the effect of external circumstances. But the way they deal with that is they develop a should or a point of view of who's bad or who should be blamed or who has to change in order to make everything go okay. So they develop a very simplified worldview that is about what needs to be different, who should be held accountable, who's the villain here that's causing the situation that's hurting others or causing other people to feel threatened. And then the last role in the drama triangle is the role of the hero. The Hero also is at the effect or feels that, like, external circumstances are causing pain or suffering. And what the hero does is say, I know a solution. I know a solution where everyone can feel safe. But because the hero is trying to make everyone not feel threatened, the solutions they're coming up with are short term. They're not actually changing the whole system. All three roles are relating to the situation from a place of fear. One is feeling powerless to change it. One is trying to make the sensations of fear go away. That's the hero. And the villain is coming up with the plan for what needs to change. But all three of them are relating to this from a place of I'm not okay unless the world changes. And it's that orientation that sets the whole drama triangle off.

[A]

Okay. Interesting.

[B]

I think the drama triangle in sort of a simplified form. And Courtney coaches a version from conscious leadership group that has, like, the empowerment that gets more complicated, I think, for. And more active. But the drama triangle is sort of at the root of all of our marketing. Right, okay. Of so much in our culture of. I know, I know what's happening here. There's the victim, there's the villain. This is the hero. And it allows us to sort of assign blame, be certain, know who the contaminating influence is, who needs to go away for this whole thing to be resolved. The reality is that it's sort of a fallacy. Like, there's endless victims, endless villains, and you can really stay in it ad infinitum. Right. And people are switching roles and adjudicating, like, who's the real victim and who's the real villain? Right. It gets into sort of like the moral typecasting world, too, where we're like, oh, a villain can't possibly be a victim and a villain can't possibly. Or a victim can't possibly be a villain.

[A]

Right. Yeah. I mean, Amanda Knox actually taught me about the. What's it called? It's the single victim fallacy of this idea that there can only be one victim in a story, which I think is interesting.

[B]

And moral psychologists. I mean, it's like one of the most fascinating fields of study in moral psychology. And the way that we just cannot. And this is. Some of us are more flexible, but most of us are not. Where we look at a villain and we are, like, bad. Yeah. We cannot see any nuance. There's no complexity. We can't understand backstory or what might have happened to them which made them do this to someone else.

[A]

I mean, I also think with the. With the Victim role. What's interesting, having, you know, been this public person who had embodied in some ways all three at different times, but also around how society decides whether or not someone is a victim is so fascinating to me.

[B]

Fascinating it is.

[A]

So I mean I, I wrote a piece once called who gets to live in Victimville? And it's like this idea around, you know, like somebody else is going to tell me whether my experiences I was the victim or not the victim or I'm the villain. And it's like, it's fascinating because I also, and I have a very, you know, my relationship to the word victim is really interesting too. Like I feel like oh, I was victimized, but I don't want to think of myself as a victim or call myself a victim because then it's there's a, for me a perceived inherent weakness in that or maybe an aspect of it that then somehow means I didn't have some responsibility or culpability and so no self agency.

[B]

Right, right.

[A]

Yeah, it's just, it's really, it's fascinating to me.

[C]

Well, and it does kind of connect because the reason it's called the drama triangle is because when we're oriented to fear and threat, all of our energy is going to feeling safe. Either safe in terms of security or approval or control. That's our number one concern. And so when we do that, we lose access to other values that might motivate us. Growth, learning, connectivity, love, possibility, freedom, aliveness, desire. All of those go out the window because we're narrowing our lens on what matters to feeling safe. And so we go round and round creating like energetically costing and wasting ourselves because we can only be in, we're in the safety trap. Rather than saying actually I feel scared and I have a definition of wholeness over here or I have a way of relating to myself where I don't need you to do something different in order for me to feel okay. And if I have that relationship to myself, I'm going to be okay no matter what is going on out here. Now all of a sudden I don't have to relate to it from a place of fear. I can relate to actually this is what I'm trying to do. And so your sort of who gets to live in Victimville is like a great example of I'm trying to figure out how to orient beyond an external read of the situation because I can feel that if I allow myself to be co opted by that my own maneuverability range, what I can do over here gets limited. And I don't Want that?

[A]

Right. Well, it's interesting, I think, kind of wrapping up so much of what the workbook is saying and what you are both saying here today is around this. This idea that the more we can embody wholeness, the more we can sit in the. I'm okay no matter what happens because basically I'm in the driver's seat about everything with myself. It's less external.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

And it's. Yeah, it's amazing. This has been so great. The last question I ask everybody, and you guys can flip a coin as to who goes first, is what are you currently working on reclaiming? And that can we use a very elastic definition here? So it can be a place, a trait, an activity. So anything.

[B]

Go for it. You go.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

So I am in the process of reclaiming my relationship to my own intuition.

[A]

Oh yeah, that's good.

[C]

Yeah. My own self knowing. Uh huh.

[A]

Yep, that's it. That I find. I find that to be such an important one in that I think the question I'm always asking around that is how do I determine the difference between intuition and wishful thinking? You know, for me, But I don't know.

[C]

Well, another way of saying this would be I'm reclaiming my relationship to like, what does it feel like to really trust myself?

[A]

Yeah. How about you, Elise?

[B]

I. Oh, I'm reclaiming so many things. I'm reclaiming the belief that I deserve support and unhooking from feeling like this is a quid pro quo universe, asking for what I need and want and sometimes demanding it from people on whom I can make those demands. But that's part of letting the story about my extreme competence and self sufficiency go and recognizing that's on me. And in the same way, like, I can ask people to do things for me and I can ask my husband to take care of things rather than like, you know that great scene in the breakup with Jen Aniston and Vince Vaughn where she's like, I want you to want to do the dishes.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. I've moved past that, that phase of my relationship to I need you to do these things. Guess what? They get done. It happens. It's wild.

[A]

Yep. Yeah, it's. It's interesting. Oh, this. Thank you both so much. This was so lovely and just I appreciate your generosity of intelligence and healing and care and all the things so. And time.

[C]

I loved being here and like you really did your work.

[B]

Thank you.

[C]

Thank you so much for like really diving in.

[A]

Oh, thanks. Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky is hosted and executive produced by me, Monica Lewinsky. Production services by WTF Media Studios. Our theme song is by Ben Benjamin and our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez. Our story producer is Elna Baker and our senior producer is Megan Donis for Wondery. Eliza Mills is the development producer. Our managing producer is Taylor Sniffin. Nick Ryan is our senior managing producer. Senior producers are Candace Manriquez, Wren and Emily Feldbrake. And executive producers are Dave Easton, Erin o' Flaherty, and Marshall Louie.