← Self-Conscious with Chrissy Teigen
Self-Conscious with Chrissy Teigen
Elizabeth Gilbert: How to Stop Losing Yourself in Someone Else
00:45:21
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- [00:03]
A
You're listening to Self Conscious with Chrissy Teigen, an Audible original podcast. Join me as we explore the cutting edge of health, wellness and personal growth with the world's leading experts and thinkers. From inspiring stories to actionable insights, our conversations aim to help you lead a healthier, happier and more productive life.
- [00:27]
A lot of us are seekers convinced there has to be more to life than what we were shown. But hunger has a shadow. Sometimes the search turns into a chase. Sometimes love feels like rescue and becomes a drug. Today, Elizabeth Gilbert is here to talk about her new memoir, all the Way to the River. It's a map for anyone who's ever lost themselves inside somebody else and had to find their way back. You'll hear about Liz and her partner, the artist Raya Elias. Best friends, then lovers. What happens when devotion slides into danger, when the house fills with secrets and caregiving becomes enabling? We talk codependency, boundaries, and why feeling good isn't the same as being well. Elizabeth Gilbert, welcome to Self Conscious.
- [01:23]
Thank you. Hi. Welcome to Self Conscious. This is so cool. Can I call you Liz?
- [01:28]
B
Please call me Lizzy. If you want to, but you don't have to.
- [01:31]
A
Oh, cool.
- [01:32]
B
Yes, you can call me Liz. If you call me Elizabeth, I'll probably feel like I'm in trouble.
- [01:38]
A
So many of our listeners and so much of the world know you from Eat, Pray, Love, which was about joy, travel, self discovery, all the way to the river, which sounds so incredibly beautiful and raw. It's stripped down, almost painful in its honesty. What made you ready to write this version of yourself?
- [02:00]
B
I still don't know if I'm ready and the book's been out for two months. But yeah, Ron Stripped down are really good descriptors of that book. So the backstory of it is it's a memoir that tells the true story of my long friendship, an intense year and a half romantic relationship with my beloved friend and partner, Raya Elias, who I loved for many years as a friend and then very slowly fell in love with in a way that was much more than friendship and would have kept that hidden forever because I didn't want to blow up my life or her life or my marriage. But then she was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic and liver cancer in the spring of 2016 and given six months to live, at which point I could not allow her to go to her grave and never have said who she really was to me. I confess my love first to my husband, who, it turns out I wasn't as good at keeping secrets as I thought because he was like, you've been in love with Rhea for eight years, honey. And I've been watching it and I haven't wanted to say anything because I didn't want to lose you. And I'm so glad I didn't because these have been beautiful eight years, but you need to go be with your dying wife. Rayya, at the time that I knew her, was a drug addict in recovery. She was many years clean, sober, former heroin addict and cocaine addict. And when the pain and the drugs associated with the cancer and her own fear of death got really real, she returned to that addiction and went to the darkest version of herself and I went to the darkest version of myself, which is spineless, enabling, codependent. That's the lowest. We all have the lowest versions of ourselves. The book is about the highs and the lows of that love story, but also, how do you come out of something like that? And also me stepping back and seeing this pattern of codependency and enabling is not just something I did with her, it's something that I do and have been doing my whole life. And that led me to recovery for sex and love addiction and codependency to get emotionally and physically sober. So it's not Eat, Pray, Love.
- [04:03]
I think in a way, Eat, Pray Love literally ends with me as Julia Roberts sailing into a sunset with Javier Bardem. I believed that ending. I was like, yeah, that's the life that I've got. But there were some underlying traumas and dysfunctions within me that I had never dealt with. And it doesn't matter how nice the sunset is or who you're sailing off into it, those things will come up and need healing. And this book ends with me sailing off into the sunset with my.
- [04:33]
A
The title all the Way to the river began as Raya's metaphor for ultimate intimacy. Someone who walks with you through the very edge of life. But it's also about surrender and survival. When you say that now, what does that mean to you?
- [04:51]
B
I can't survive unless I surrender. And that's hard for my will and ego to grasp because my life strategy was to control the world, control other people. One of my survival strategies from a very early age was like, okay, people are volatile and frightening and unpredictable. And so my job is to become incredibly vigilant and to be aware of what every single person within a 10 mile radius is thinking and feeling. I also have to smooth the world in front of people to make sure that they don't have big reactions, actions that scare me. So manipulate and People, please. This is a full time job that I've had my whole life, which is like, I will be safe if I can make sure that all the people are under control and they never act out.
- [05:45]
A
Your poor brain is working overtime.
- [05:48]
B
I started that when I was like three, you know, like, I looked around and I was like, somebody's got to manage this. And I think it's going to be me. And it's really difficult to let go of that survival strategy and to surrender to one's own powerlessness in terms of recognizing, like, I have no control over anybody. When I try to assert control over people, it destroys the quality of my life and gets in the way of their own journey. Right. And so it's a daily effort, like learning how to surrender, learning how to recognize that there's a higher power governing the universe whose name isn't Liz.
- [06:30]
And also, I mean, getting older, like I'm in my 50s now, so it's easier to look back at my history and be like, how'd that all work for you? That constant vigilance, the people pleasing, the codependency, the manipulation. A friend sent me a meme that said, okay, cool, you're a people pleaser. Show me three people who are pleased with you.
- [06:48]
A
I saw that too.
- [06:50]
B
It's like it's not even working right.
- [06:52]
A
Yeah.
- [06:53]
B
And so my serenity is dependent upon my surrender, which is a real blow to my ego because my ego is like, no, surely I can figure this out and surely I can create some sort of safety mechanism. But the paradox of surrender, the spiritual paradox of surrender that I think is so just magical and so hard to explain if you haven't had a somatic experience of it is like how relaxing it is because we think of surrender as a defeat. And in a way it is. It's a defeat of the ego structure that, you know, Bill W. Who founded aa, said that in order to recover, an addict has to experience what he called ego collapse at depth. The whole ego structure or the entire life strategy of survival has to collapse. You have to. Another word for that is bottoming out. You've got to bottom. You've got to fail so spectacularly that even your giant inflated ego has no choice but to admit you can't manage your own life. A friend of mine has a tattoo on her arm that says, here, God, you do it. And it's just like every time she's like wanting to struggle or wanting to control, she just like kind of throws her hand up in the air with the arrow and just like Here, universe, you do it. And then watching as things happen that you could never have controlled, watching as people find their own way, watching as situations resolve themselves, giving life a chance to do life itself without me turning the crank that controls all of life. And it's funny because in the six years I've been sober, it's like I suddenly don't need all these things I used to need. I don't need the sleeping pills I used to need, or the antidepressants that I used to need, or the anti anxiety medication that I used to need, or the hormones, or the raft of doctors and therapists and professionals and shamans and all of these support people that I used to need. I can wake up and just have a day. I don't need to be supported by all these substances and people. And that's miraculous for somebody with a mind like mine. And that's what surrender has brought.
- [09:00]
A
You call yourself a love addict and a blackout codependent.
- [09:07]
What does that mean? For those not fluent in this language of recovery?
- [09:13]
B
I could make this whole process of this book easier on myself and just call myself a love addict and not say sex and love addict because there's so much shame for women in that term. But I say it because the program is called Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. And sex is a really big part of my addiction in terms of how I have used my body and used sexuality as a way to get my real drug. And the real drug is something that we call lava. That stands for love, attention, validation and approval. That's my drug, right? Raya's drug was opioids and cocaine at the end of her life, but for much of her life it was heroin and cocaine. My drug for my entire life has been lava. So my whole operation in the world is like, what do I have to do to pull lava from you? For women, I think this is incredibly common. I don't want to say that it's universal, but at a pretty early age I recognized, oh, I have a woman's body. That's a currency. That's a currency that I can exchange for some facsimile for some love adjacent thing. You know, maybe not the love, but maybe the attention just for a moment, or maybe not the approval, but maybe a little bit of validation, or maybe some approval, but not some love. Maybe some kind of combination of the lava words, right? So that's what I've used my entire life to medicate my unbearable psychic pain that I've been in for most of my life. It's like If I can get lava from somebody, then I'm going to be all right. Which means that I make those people into my drug. Like I consider a sober day. For me as a sex and love addict in recovery is any day where I'm not using another human being the way that I used to use people as drugs. That means no manipulation, no going to you to change my mind or mood. Full self accountability in my own mind and mood. And there were people I used to use as stimulants and there were people I used to use as sedatives because this person was safe and it made me feel safe. But it wasn't maybe that exciting. But at least I felt like secure. But then that wasn't enough. Cause I needed this. So I would often have multiple things going on. I learned all these terms in recovery where I was like, there's terms for all these things I've been doing my whole life that I didn't know there were terms for like intriguing. It's just another darker word for flirting or sort of communicating to somebody that there might be some sort of a possibility, even if they're unavailable or you're unavailable. Love bombing is another thing, you know, like just attacking somebody with love. Yeah, Taking them hostage. Love, Hostage taking is another thing, you know, Like I have a friend who's in my program who always says, like, I've always presented to the world as this really independent person, except for the one person I take hostage.
- [11:59]
And that person I make responsible for my entire life. And what I mean by when I call myself a blackout codependent, just as somebody with a severe substance addiction. The difference between how I operate in sex and love and how a regular person operates is like the difference between somebody who can go out with a friend, meet them at a bar, have or two drinks, have a nice time and go home. And the person who meets their friend at the bar has one or two drinks, then 14 more, then everybody else goes home. Then they find an after hours place, then a liquor store that's open all night, then they go find a hotel and a bunch of alcohol, and then they wake up two weeks later in jail across state lines, right? So I do that, but I do it in relationships. I'm capable of meeting somebody and within two weeks moving them into my home, opening a bank account, getting a tattoo in their handwriting, making plans for a marriage, even if they're married, even if I and them are married, I'm fully capable of that. And then waking up often months into this thing once the lava has Started to diminish and being like, who am I and where am I? And what just happened to my entire life? Why is this person living here?
- [13:07]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [13:08]
B
Like, what happened to all the creative projects I was doing that I dropped when I met this person? What happened to all my friendships that I dropped when I met this person? What happened to my dignity? Where did my whole life go? That's what blackout codependency looks like for me. This is tricky in all addictions. In the AA tradition, they call it the invisible line. When, like, where's the line between when a drinker becomes a heavy drinker and a heavy drinker becomes a problem drinker and a problem drinker becomes an addict, and an addict becomes, like, a hopeless addict or a low bottom addict? These lines, sadly, are not very clear. This is why all addictions are so heartbreaking and in the words of the big book of aa, cunning, baffling and powerful. And it's also one of the reasons that you can kid yourself that you don't have a problem.
- [13:57]
Cause it's not like some taxi light goes on over your head that just says, I'm now in dangerous territory. So much of my recovery has been about learning how to somatically recognize the signs in myself of what's not healthy for me. If somebody's living rent free in my mind, if I'm obsessing about them a lot, if I'm fantasizing about them a lot. Again, typically for me, and this is something I have no power over, but I tend to be extremely attracted to people who are emotionally unavailable. Could be somebody who belongs to someone else or somebody who's unattainable, Recognizing that that's harmful. But I can chart it with Raya, because Raya and I went from being really beloved friends to best friends to deeply trusted figures, and then fell in love with each other, which was very romantic. But the line is need. My favorite teacher, Byron Katie, who's my favorite spiritual teacher, has often said, nobody is safe from me when I need them. Right? So if I have convinced myself that I am not going to be okay without this person, that I cannot live without this person, that I cannot cope or handle my own pain without this person, that this person is the ingredient to save my life or make my life have meaning, or if you take it away, I will never be all right. We're going into addiction territory here. Nobody is safe from me. When I need them at that level, then I will use them, and I will contort myself into whatever shape or form I need to be. There's a line in Eat, Pray, Love, which is like 20 years ago, people were pointing this out about me. A friend of mine said, you know how some people look like their dogs? Liz always looked like whoever she's with. I dress like whoever I was with. I talk like whoever I'm with. There's this absence of a core self that just will take on the identity of whoever is there. And the other reason that no one is safe from me when I need them that much is if I've decided that you are going to make me be okay. And then I experience the feeling of not okay, now someone must pay. Like, now it's your fault. And for years, what I saw in my relationships is that anytime I was having any feeling, if I was with. If I was in partnership with someone or in love with someone, I either gave them credit for that feeling or blamed them for it. So if I was feeling great and you were my partner, then I'm feeling great because you're great. And if I'm feeling terrible and you're my partner, God help you. I'm feeling terrible because you're not taking care of me. And one of the things that's been educational for me about these six years that I've spent learning how to live on my own is like, oh, I see. I have these waves of feeling great and not feeling great, and there's no one to put it on.
- [16:45]
It's like, who do I blame my life on today? Or who do I praise for saving my life today? And again, this goes back to just this core absence of a formulated self, which is, I think, something that a lot of women struggle with. In a culture that tells you that you are only what you are in relation to others, you realize how difficult.
- [17:07]
A
It is to heal from addiction because so much of it is really having the confidence to trust how you're feeling inside your own body when so much of it has been dependent on how other people see you. Cause so much of my self worth since I was little has just been on other people. I'm still that way. I'm still that way on, like, social media. If I do something that I love, I don't love it anymore. If other people didn't love it or it wasn't received the way that I wanted it to be received. Like, I'm totally. So my, I guess codependency is on the entire world. I don't really have it with any single person.
- [17:49]
B
Same. And my friend Glennon Doyle said she heard somebody say once in an Al Anon meeting. My higher power used to be the expression on your face. And that can be anybody who has an expression. Like, I'm reading the micro expression on your face. And if you're displeased with me now, my world has collapsed. Yes, you can work at the gas station. Yes.
- [18:10]
A
Yes. And it's exhausting because it's a constant performance. I actually am performing for people that I will never see again, that I will never interact with. Like, if I'm at the gas station buying gum, I need that gas station guy to be like. Like, in my mind, I'm like, I wonder if he's gonna go home tonight and tell people about how cool and nice I was. Like, I'm like, am I crazy? Yeah.
- [18:33]
B
It's a big job, you know, and you wouldn't do that job. Nobody would do that job unless you believed that if you didn't do that job, you couldn't survive.
- [18:42]
A
Yeah.
- [18:42]
B
It's interesting when you said that sobriety is like having a feeling, identifying feeling, and then fixing the feeling. I don't even know if it's about fixing it because I think so much of the exhaustion of my life has been trying to fix my feelings versus accepting that I'm having this feeling. And that's, to me, what emotional sobriety is. Is like, oh, I'm experiencing anger. And that's what's happening. Nothing needs to be done about that. To surrender and to. That's what's happening. Here I am, human being experiencing anger rather than running around chasing my tail literally all over the world, trying to be like, somebody, take this away. Make it stop.
- [19:20]
A
Yeah, I'm used to that. I want that feeling. And that's why substances were so easy, because that was that person taking away that feeling. Ugh.
- [19:28]
B
There's a story I feel like I want to share. When I was new in recovery, like, new, new, new. And people who are newly sober in anything or changing their life in anything, it's like we're like Bambi on ice, you know, we're like, I don't know how to. I don't know how to be without these tools. And I don't know how to be without tools, tricks and strategies. And I had a. Like a work interview with somebody, and, you know, it was like a zoom conversation like this. And, like, the two of us sparked off of each other in this way that was incredibly. Whatever we were attracted. I'm a sex and love addict. I can tell, you know, like, you can tell when somebody was attracted to me. I can tell when they're attracted. You know what I mean? And we were firing off each other with that somebody watching, might not even see, but I knew very much to be true. And this is a person who had, like, a whole wife and a whole life and children, so is not available. And I'm also not available because I'm new in sex and love addiction, and I'm not doing that right now. So it's two unavailable people intriguing with each other. And then I got high on it, and I got to track. It was the first time in my life where I had just enough recovery that I got to track. Oh, I'm high. This feeling of cortisol dump, this adrenaline dump, the dopamine.
- [20:41]
A
Is it that feeling of a crush? Like, would it be compared to that? Like, that excitement?
- [20:45]
B
Yeah, it might as well be whippets. I mean, I've done tons of substances, but nothing will get me higher than that. It's like I'm floating, butterflies in my stomach, blushing. All these physiological things are happening. Like, my. I'm talking faster, I'm laughing more, and I feel giddy and like the world is brighter colors, like. And I'm like, oh, I'm fucking hungry. This is what this is, this energy field that's happening between us. This is what it creates in me. And then barely slept that night, thinking about him, fantasizing, imagining. And then morning, he called me and left me a message that was really flirty and intriguing, and I got high again. I felt I was like, oh, my God, he's into me. You know? But for the first time in my life, instead of acting on it, I actually just sat. I was actually right on that couch behind me. I'll never forget it. I sat there and I, like, meditated on what I was physically feeling. And I watched it as an observer. I'm like, I really want to learn what this addiction does to me. And, you know, I was almost hyperventilating. I was shaking, my mind was ping ponging, and I wanted to send a flirty text back to him. In the past, I would never have been able to resist that. And I could have also bullshitted myself left, right and center and said that what was happening wasn't happening and that it's just two people having a fun conversation and there's no threat to his wife, his children, my life, his life, you know, like, but I. And I wouldn't have never been able to restrain myself. But in that moment, I was able to just sit with myself. And I remember putting my hand on my heart and Some older, like, wiser part of me. I could feel like the teenager in me who for the first time in her life felt like she had power because she had sexual power. And I felt that she was driving the moment. And I just put my hand on my heart and I said out loud to her, sweetheart, I know why you want this. And I know what you think that you're gonna get out of this. And I am not mad at you. I know everything. I know your whole history. I know why this seems like such a good idea. I promise you, I can take better care of you than that married man can. And I know you don't trust me yet because I haven't taken good care of you at times. But what you think you're gonna get there, you're not gonna get there. And I could feel her pulling out of me. And I just kept saying, come back and give me a chance to see the kind of life that I can give you. The kind of love that you've always wanted, the kind of attention that you deserve, the kind of care that you've been so hungry for. Give me a try. Let a middle aged, affluent woman take care of you rather than some dude who belongs to someone else, who doesn't have any time for you and is probably a sex and love addict himself. You know, it was the first time in her life she, like, came back into me. Like she was. And then she cried that I just cried because she was like, she wanted that so much. And I was like, I get it. But we're doing life differently now. I think so much of sobriety is just saying, like, we don't do what we used to do, we're going to do this now. We're going to actually feel the heartbreak, we're going to actually feel the desire. We're going to actually feel the longing and the confusion. But we don't do what we used to do. Because I can't handle wrecking my life or anybody else's life. It goes against my core values. I'm not somebody at my true heart who wants to take somebody's husband, you know? No, I don't want. I'm not a person who would ever want to cause harm to anybody.
- [24:02]
A
It honestly sounds like one of the most complicated addictions we know. Meth, heroin, cocaine, alcohol. Cigarettes are bad, but sex and love are good. And joy and that feeling of a crush and those butterflies in your stomach, those are natural endorphin inducing, beautiful things. So you've had to, like, tell yourself that your version of that Isn't safe or isn't right. And that seems so, so much harder than anything that I've ever been addicted to.
- [24:35]
B
The way I've heard it described, it's more like a process addiction, like food addiction, you know, people who have really serious food issues. It's like I've heard it said about alcoholism or drug addiction. You take the tiger, you capture the tiger, which is the addiction. You put it in a cage, you lock the cage. You put the cage in the basement, you lock the door, and you never go near that door, you know, so it's, in a way, it's really straightforward. The tiger's in the cage, in the basement. As long as the tiger stays in the cage in the basement, everybody is safe. With food addiction, which I think is the hardest, because you cannot live without food. They have to go down in the basement three times a day, take the tiger out of the cage, walk it around the block, get it back into the cage, lock the cage again, come back out of the basement, lock the door, and then do it again a few hours later and not be destroyed by the tiger. I don't think any of the addictions are easy. That is true. And the world is filled with temptation for whatever your issue is. But the difference between love addiction, sex and love addiction and the food addictions is you actually don't have to have sex to survive. You do have to have love. And a lot of times I was using sex as a way to try to get love.
- [25:45]
A
What made you pick up the phone and ask for help?
- [25:50]
B
So my lowest moment was I was at the end of my power. And I think that's where people have choices to make.
- [25:59]
A
How did you feel?
- [26:00]
B
I felt like I was trapped in hell. So Rayya was a hospice patient, which meant she had limitless access to opioids. Because when you're in hospice, they give you basically all the painkillers that you could want because you're dying of pancreatic and liver cancer and you're in excruciating pain. So she had that going on, and it's like she had a free pass in a way, because nobody's gonna say that she shouldn't be taking handfuls of morphine. Nobody's gonna say that she shouldn't have all those fentanyl patches. I mean, the doctors for months were like, she could die at any moment, her disease is so advanced. So in a way there was like this consequence free situation that she was in. Also, I was enabling it by supporting her habit, making it possible for her to Buy other drugs, taking care of her life so that she never had any consequences. Like, one of the good definitions of codependency is you're living in such a way that the person can't feel their own consequences. You're smoothing away all their consequences so they have no motive to change. And we found out that we were getting evicted, not evicted for bad behavior, but the landlord was selling the apartment that we were living in, and we had to move. That same week, my bank account got hacked by Russian hackers and all my money was gone. And so suddenly she became really abusive to me. I had no power over her because I couldn't say, if you keep doing this amount of drugs, you're going to die. She was dying. Her anger about dying kind of gave her a free pe past to be as much of a dick as she wanted to be. And who's gonna challenge that? How am I gonna move my drug addicted cancer patient to a new home who's paranoid and abusive? And I wasn't sleeping. Cause she wasn't sleeping. And I was in caregiver fatigue. And like, I just reached the end of myself and thought I should kill her. We have all these drugs in the house. We have all these fentanyl patches in the house. Like, we have all these sleeping pills in the house. If I made some sort of concoction, I was like, I'm gonna kill her. That I had the courage to write about that in the book because so many people have since said to me, you have no idea how close I have come to killing the person who I'm taking care of. Because I can't do it anymore. Because I've had 10 sleepless nights with this severely autistic child. I've had a husband with dementia who I can't sleep because if I do, he'll burn the house down. I've got disabilities and so does my partner. And people get in these situations where they're just pushed to these limits where you have these desperate thoughts. And then I also thought, or I could just kill myself. I see no escape from this hell. So I'm either gonna kill her or I'm gonna kill me. And it was on that day that I had this spiritual experience where I was walking down the streets of the East Village, wailing and sobbing, having these thoughts like, I have to kill her. I have to kill me. And I heard my higher power, this higher voice came to me and said, if you're ever in a situation in your life where you're seriously giving consideration to killing another person or yourself, there's a pretty good chance that you've reached the end of your power. Maybe you should call somebody and ask for help. Maybe you've gone as far as you can go on your own.
- [29:10]
A
Who do you call in a moment like that?
- [29:12]
B
I called every single person I knew. I remember sitting in the park in Tompkins Square park and calling all day, and I just left Rayya. And partially, it's like, I hadn't left her because I was genuinely afraid she was gonna burn the apartment building down because she refused to stop smoking indoors. And she was smoking and, like, dope sick, nodding off, and her cigarettes were setting, like, the bedding on fire. And, like. Or she was gonna wander into the street and get hit by a car, or she was gonna get arrested or she was gonna have a fall. I was just monitoring her constantly. So that was the day where I just left. And I remember just sitting in the park and calling every single person I knew who had any experience with addiction, either their own or others. And that was also the day where I stopped being, like, a PR person for her and I stopped being a PR person for me. Where I had been kind of sending out these, like, text blasts to people, like, putting on a good face and being like, we're doing all right over here.
- [30:09]
Like, Ray is so brave, and I'm such a good caregiver. And it's like, no, we're fucking wrecks over here. And this whole thing has become unmanageable. So I called people who were sober themselves or people who had children who'd had addiction issues or anybody who had any experience with unmanageability. One by one, they just started saying things that I now recognize as program slogans that were really helpful. But, like, one by one, they just started pouring wisdom into me and perspective. And most of what they were saying was, you can't do anything about what she's doing, but you are about to break, and you need to take care of yourself, which is always the last idea that a codependent has.
- [30:51]
A
Can we talk about that last day with her then? Is that too sad?
- [30:57]
B
No. I actually really like talking about Raya, and I like talking about addiction, and I like talking about the spiritual technology of recovery because it feels so miraculous. The last day of her life, she got clean. So what ended up happening after that lowest bottom part of my life was that I started going to Al Anon meeting, and I don't know where I got the courage, but I set a boundary with her and said, I can't be in this anymore. I've come too far in my life to be living in such depravity. And I don't know what you're gonna do, but I've gotta get out. She ended up going back to Detroit, relying on her family and friends to help her to get clean. She made a decision that she didn't wanna die a drug addict and she came back into herself again under their care. And that was a really humbling experience for me too. To be like, there are people who are better at taking care of her than I am and they're doing a better job at it. I failed to take good care of her and they're doing it better. But it was true. She died sober.
- [31:55]
A
The strength that goes into stopping when you know the end is coming. I couldn't. My God, I can't imagine.
- [32:03]
B
I mean, that was an incredible thing to behold. She had a friend who really gave it to her really straight who said, like, how do you want to be remembered, Ray? Do you want to be remembered as a junkie? Or do you want to be remembered as Rhea? Wow. And that did it. Those were the magical words.
- [32:18]
A
Did she pass in Detroit?
- [32:20]
B
Yeah, she died in Detroit with her sister, me, her ex wife and her ex girlfriend all in the room around her. So, yeah, she died ferociously. She didn't have a peaceful death. And that was another thing that I couldn't control. You know, I was like, I'm going to create this beautiful environment for this, like, conscientious conscious dying.
- [32:40]
A
Was she completely sober in the way that she wasn't even taking the medicine at the end?
- [32:44]
B
No, she was on a lot of morphine because at that point the cancer had spread through her entire body. The whole experience was so humbling, Chrissy, because like, I'm the nice lady who wrote Eat, Pray, Love. I know, Oprah, you know, like they made a movie about me.
- [32:58]
A
Yeah.
- [32:58]
B
And I couldn't control myself or her. That was devastating. Like, I had a vision for what I thought our time together was going to be, and it wasn't that. So many times in my life I've had a vision for what I thought something was going to be, and it wasn't that. And I'm at this point in my life where I'm not that interested in my desires because I'm on record for making poor decisions. And so my whole thing now is if I can get quiet enough in prayer and meditation to connect to that same voice that many people who read Eat, Pray, Love remember was the voice on the bathroom floor that Said to me, go back to bed, Liz. You know, when I was in crisis, and the same voice that took me to India and the same voice that helped me get sober, and the same voice that was like, put it all on the divine fire and walk away. If I can connect to that voice, then I can just ask, where do you want me? What is the highest service that I could offer to you? Where would you like my attention? Who do you want me to be in any kind of relationship with? How do you want me to respond to this crisis? And that voice will tell me. And if I just have the courage to carry that out, my life becomes drama free.
- [34:05]
A
Yeah.
- [34:05]
B
And that's kind of a miracle for somebody like me who's been dramaful her whole life.
- [34:09]
A
Well, what does the next phase look like for love for you? Because if you can't get excited about somebody, how do you know you're not missing out on somebody that could potentially be your next partner? How do you differentiate that excitement, between that excitement or like, it's too much?
- [34:28]
B
Currently, I don't long for a partner, so problem solved.
- [34:36]
Currently I look at most partnerships and think that looks like a lot of work because real partnership is a lot of work. And that's not labor that I feel like doing right now. And then I witness a lot of my fellows in program who have a lot of the same problems that I have attempting it. They're so courageous. It's like they're going out there and letting the tiger out. But I have a sobriety program. And what that means is I have this thing called a dating plan. It's something that I wrote with my sponsor and with the help of my fellows, my sisters in fellowship. And it's a modified plan. It's sort of best practices for Liz when it comes to love, sex and intimacy. And essentially it's like a three page document that's like, if you're going to do this, Liz, here are some things that other people can do but I can't. You know what I mean? That's the humility of knowing you're an addict. So. So some examples would be like, I have on my document, no week long first dates.
- [35:38]
A
You keep waking up next to each other every time.
- [35:41]
B
That's disappointing for me because I love that that is the most romantic and exciting thing in the entire world. But what it means is that I've already committed to you and I don't even know you and you don't know me. And that turns out to not go so well for me. So there's all these things like, okay, if I'm going to go on a date with you, then we're going to go someplace for 90 minutes. I'm going to check in with my sponsor before and after. I'm going to say I've got to go at 6:30. We're going to be in a public place. If we like each other, we'll make a plan then to see each other again in a week. And in the meantime, I will have to say to the person, and I'm gonna ask that we don't text this week, I'll see you on the next date. Because what's gonna happen is we're gonna start love bombing each other by text and I can fall in love with somebody over text and never know who they are. I'm gonna totally neglect my whole life. I'm gonna be staring at my phone all day waiting for that text. I'm gonna be reading it like scripture to be like, what does that mean? All the shit that I do that I just disappear into. And so the reason I can't see you for a week is that I need to come home and remember that I love my life and remember that I love my home and my dog and my friends and my work and my body and my meditation and my practices and my food and my family. And I don't want to throw that away because the greatest romantic thing for me is let's throw our lives away for each other. Let's blow everything up for each other. I actually don't want to blow up the life I've built, but I will, given the chance. Given the chance, I will. There's limits on physical intimacy. Like how many dates in public before we're alone together. Like we're not gonna go play house in each other's homes when I don't even know you. I need to see how you treat the waitress. I need to see how you talk on the phone to your friends. I can fall in love with somebody so fast and then I end up with them and I'm like, I don't even like you. I don't respect you. I don't like the way you are in the world. So no. Moving somebody into my house, a big one for me is like, like no fantasy falling in love on vacation with somebody you're never going to see again thing. Because that can disrupt my life, Chrissy. I've got to stay in reality. And that's so boring to me that it actually takes away my interest in being in a relationship.
- [38:00]
Because if I can't, like, get the high then. Actually, this is a really great question. And this is the question I was like, this is fascinating. If I can't get the high, I don't want to. Boring things you have to do to keep a relationship going. Which means I don't want a relationship. I just want to get high.
- [38:17]
A
For some people it would be like, okay, that's like a withholding. And I'm going to want you more now and I'm going to think about you more because I don't know what you're thinking. And for some people, that would be like an extra turn on. But you've learned so much about yourself that it's not like that anymore.
- [38:30]
B
I watched when cocaine was reintroduced into Rhea's system after more than 25 years. Within a day, that became the most important thing in her life. And I remember saying to her after the first week, I said, the God of this house used to be love, and now the God of this house is cocaine. And I watched her not give a shit.
- [38:48]
And I just watched her looking at me like, how can I get more money from you to get more? You know what I mean? Like, addiction doesn't die. It just waits for an opportunity to come back. I don't have delusions about what I'm capable of becoming rather unbecoming, and I don't want to that. I also am enjoying, like, I mean, really loving, having total autonomy over my own life. I love that I don't have to run anything by anybody.
- [39:32]
A
And now for the toolkit. Each episode, our guests distill their expertise into practical and actionable insights. Today, Liz shares her Letters from love practice to quiet self criticism and reconnect with unconditional love.
- [39:48]
B
So here is an exercise I've been doing for many years, and it's called Letters from Love. Many years ago, when I was in a period of a lot of despair and depression and feeling really lonely, I got this inspiration in the middle of the night to get up and take a notebook and write myself a letter saying everything I had always wished to hear somebody else say. Just to imagine if perfect, unconditional love existed. What would love tell me? And the letter was essentially like, hi, sweetheart. I just want you to know that I'm right here with you and I'm never, ever going to leave you. You're perfect and I love you. And it worked. It actually, like, soothed my nervous system because I think it's true. I think that we are loved that way. And so I started this practice of just Writing myself these daily letters from the spirit of unconditional love. If anybody wants to try this at home, the prompt is, dear Love, what would you have me know today? And then you just imagine what love would want you to know. And if you're having trouble accessing it, start with a term of endearment.
- [40:52]
A
How hyper specific does love want you to be? Like, would love ever say something very specific for that day?
- [40:58]
B
100%. And love will say a lot of times. Like, one of the things I find the most soothing is when I had a moment a couple weeks ago where I was really triggered and felt really little, small, overwhelmed. I felt like I was being criticized and that I was really in a lot of pain. And I couldn't find my center and I couldn't find my peace. And I opened up the notebook and I said, dear Love, what would you have me know right now? And love said, I don't need you to feel better. I know you want to feel better, but I don't need you to improve for me to love you. What more loving thing could love say than I know that you can't feel better right now. And that's okay. I'm just going to sit with you while you don't feel well so that you're not alone in it. Writing those letters to myself has taught me a lot, how to be with people who are in pain because I just say to them what love says to me, which is. Which is, I'm not going anywhere. I don't need you to not be upset right now, and it's okay. And I think you're adorable, and I'm right here. That's all we need is somebody to just be like, I'm right here and I'm not going.
- [42:06]
A
How often do you do it?
- [42:08]
B
Every day.
- [42:09]
A
Wow.
- [42:09]
B
It's the core of my life.
- [42:11]
A
This is so needed right now for people. It just feels so timely and so welcoming and so perfect.
- [42:18]
B
Oh, my God.
- [42:19]
A
They're so.
- [42:20]
B
And I wanted to just give you an example. Is that all right?
- [42:22]
A
Of course. That would be great.
- [42:24]
B
Dear Love, what would you have me know today? My darling honey head? Nothing is hard once you surrender into me the most difficult. Difficulties and challenges become difficult only when you won't let go and trust that I'm with you. Don't try to surrender, my love. Just surrender. Soften into my voice. Give your whole entire life to me, me Where I will keep it really simple by inviting you time and again to just take the easiest path, which is one step at a time in any direction. Take my hand. Whatever happens, you can be sure I will be there with you. I'm not going to tell you what happens because I don't even know. But I know that you won't be in it alone. Let the story unfurl, unfold, expand and play out.
- [43:11]
Yeah, it's just. That's the voice. This just. I know, but I love it because.
- [43:17]
A
It'S like love is God. It's like you're speaking to God, but without that, like, pretense of having to be religious and having to be somebody that feels like they do good enough to go to church or that knows enough about the Bible and God. But it just. I love framing it in this way of love. I really do.
- [43:37]
B
And no religion is needed to do this.
- [43:40]
A
No.
- [43:40]
B
And also it works with whatever religion you are. Love really does transcend all of that and include all of that.
- [43:48]
A
That is a beautiful way to end.
- [43:50]
B
Liz.
- [43:51]
A
Lizzie, I love you.
- [43:53]
B
Love you too.
- [43:54]
A
Chrissy, thank you so much. Thank you for being on today. This is gonna be so impactful for so many people. I love you. Thank you for being here.
- [44:02]
B
Thanks for giving me this chance to talk about all these things.
- [44:10]
A
Elizabeth, I want to thank you for joining me today on Self Conscious. Elizabeth Gilbert's all the Way to the river is available on Audible. Until then, tune in, turn on and feel better. This is Chrissy Teigen and you've been listening to Self Conscious, an Audible original podcast.
- [44:29]
This has been an Audible original produced by Audible, Q Code and Huntley Productions, hosted by Chrissy Teigen, Written and executive produced by Jimmy Jelinek Executive producers for Q Code Shen Yan, Hugh and Alexa Gabrielle Ramirez, Executive producer for Huntley Productions Chrissy Teigen Executive producer for Audible, Stacy Creamer. Recorded and engineered by Ben Milchev. Filmed by Bridger Clements Production coordinator Brian Coulter. Edited, mixed and mastered by Ben Milchev Head of Creative development at Audible Kate Navin Chief Content Officer Rachel Giazza. Copyright 2024 by Audible Originals, LLC. Sound recording Copyright 2025 by Audible Originals, LLC See.