Why love –and therapy– means going in a direction you don’t yet know (w/ Dr. Orna Guralnik) (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Chris Duffy:
You are listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. I am fascinated by other people's relationships, specifically their marriages and their dating lives. It's mind-blowing to me that one of the most common and day-to-day building blocks of our society is also so completely opaque from the outside.

Is that couple just like us, or are they doing things completely differently? Are we normal, or are we doing things completely wrong? I'm also fascinated by relationships because even in good ones, there's so much to think about and to work on. For example, I'm a big talker, and I come from a family where we're always yapping away, interrupting each other, constantly laughing and chatting at the dinner table.

And my wife and her family, they're much more reserved. So it took me a long time—I’m talking years—before I finally started to trust that if she was eating and not also talking, it wasn't because she was silently fuming at me. Even now, if we're in the car on a long drive and she's having a quiet moment, I sometimes have to check, “You're just being quiet right now. Right? You're not angry at me.” And when she says yes, I'm like, “Okay, cool. Fine. I will let you get back to that.” There are these constant adjustments and negotiations that we have to make in relationships because every pairing is ultimately also bridging a cultural divide, even if it seems like you're coming from exactly the same background. No one's family and friends all interacted in exactly the same way.

So how does understanding those dynamics make us better humans? How do we relate to one another, whether it is professionally, platonically, or romantically? Today's guest, the psychologist Orna Guralnik, has spent her career trying to understand and untangle these systems. Orna's work has been featured in multiple seasons of the acclaimed Showtime documentary series, Couples Therapy. Here's how she describes that show:

[00:01:43] Orna Guralnik:
What we're doing is we film a time-limited couples therapy. Every season, we film with a few different couples. We follow the treatment from beginning to end of this time-limited therapy.

The set is organized so that the cameras are not actually in the room. They're kind of hidden. So the couples, even though they know they're being filmed and agreed to it, they basically, we all kind of have the experience that we're sitting in a, in a therapy office and going through a treatment together.

[00:02:20] Chris Duffy:
We're gonna dive deep with Orna into treatment, love, and what it takes to make a relationship work. But first, we're gonna take a quick break. Don't go anywhere.

[BREAK]

[00:02:37] Chris Duffy:
And we are back. Today, we’re talking relationships, love, and couples counseling with Dr. Orna Guralnik.

[00:02:44] Orna Guralnik:
I'm Dr. Orna Guralnik. I'm a psychologist and a psychoanalyst, and I'm also the therapist on the docu-series Couples Therapy on Showtime.

[00:02:54] Chris Duffy:
Does it feel representative to you of your non-filmed treatments?

[00:02:59] Orna Guralnik:
In certain essential ways, it’s very representative. The work is the work. It, it's, I mean, that's one of the things that startled me the first season that we started filming it, which was, wow, the work is just the work. It doesn't matter. Like I’m—the cameras are there like it's gonna be edited. It, you’d think that it would, like, completely morph everything, but then we start talking and the things that matter to people are just there. Because of the fact that it's documented, the process is intensified and everything happens faster.

What would've taken me in my regular process, in my regular practice, probably somewhere between like six to eight to sometimes twelve months can happen, like, in three to four months. There, there's a certain kind of intensity that comes with the, the feeling that, okay, it's now, or never. We're on film. This is real. There's no, we don't have, like, forever to keep this going. So in that sense it's, it's quite intensified.

[00:04:02] Chris Duffy:
It's hard to avoid for me the feeling that obviously, the couple who are sitting on the couch in front of you are in treatment, but also we as the viewer, are in some way in treatment with you as well, that we are getting to learn about how we can communicate better with our partners, to learn about the ways in which we self-sabotage or are blind to the obstacles that we're putting up to our own happiness and our relationship wellbeing.

How much are you consciously thinking about, like, “This is the message that I want to get out to these millions of people”? Because obviously, you're treating more people than you could ever see in a, in a career.

[00:04:38] Orna Guralnik:
Like, I think over time, I have become more aware of that. I think there's a part of me that increasingly feels more and more the way I feel when I teach. The longer I've been doing this, the more I've become aware of the fact that what we're doing, and I think the couples are aware of that too, to some degree, maybe not consciously, that what we're doing is also in addition to the particular work that we're doing, couple and me, that we're also doing some active service for the public. It's, it's some kind of teaching or active service of sharing a certain kind of process or vulnerability or knowledge.

[00:05:19] Chris Duffy:
I think it's interesting to me from watching the show and reading your writing, you're in a field where people often come to you when they're in crisis, where their relationship is having a lot of conflict, and they're trying to solve that. And yet, and correct me if I'm wrong, you seem to really believe in love and the power and importance of love.

[00:05:38] Orna Guralnik:
Love is kind of one of those things. It's like health, it's like curiosity. It's something that if things are not getting in our way, it's a natural thing that flows out of us. We, we want to connect, we wanna attach, we wanna love, we wanna transcend ourselves and care for others.

I think we're just wired that way, and I think it brings out the best in us. And life is just better when there's love, when we love, when we're loved, when we witness love. It's, it's, it's the good stuff of life. And I do generally, despite everything that we could say to the contrary, I do believe that love prevails.

[00:06:22] Chris Duffy:
When you're first meeting a couple and they're in a spot where maybe they don't believe that love is about to prevail, how do you start thinking about the questions that you're gonna ask that will get to the heart of the matter of, of what is really going on in there, in their story?

[00:06:37] Orna Guralnik:
It depends on many things. It depends on, first of all, what is the therapist's school of thought. Like generally, like each therapist comes with a certain assumptions, theoretical assumptions about couplehood dynamics, what works, therapy, and then it depends on the particularities of each couple: the, the individuals and the couple dynamic that presents. And some of the processes, trial and error. I might aim to, for example, work on a certain kind of dynamic, but if I don't get any traction, I realize, “Oh, wait a minute, we have to switch gears and work on childhood stuff or attachment issues or emotional regulation.” It depends on… some of it is trial and error and who the people are.

[00:07:24] Chris Duffy:
There’s a moment in the second season of Couples Therapy that I feel like is a really interesting one. I wanted to talk to you about one of the couples, Johnny and Matthew. He kind of says like, “It's now that you recognize the problem, it's so easy.”

I'm paraphrasing, but he says like, “Why don't you just change?” You step in and say, “Well, actually, I’m of the belief that until you understand the deeper story and where you've learned these roles, that you actually can't change. That's not just as simple as just doing it differently.”

[00:07:52] Orna Guralnik:
Yeah.

[00:07:52] Chris Duffy:
It seems to like that's kind of not the pop culture understanding of change. Right? We tend to think, like, “Just do it differently. Why don't you just do it?” And, and you seem to really believe in that moment that you have to get at the deeper root issues before you even have the power to change. Even if you're aware that what you're doing is not serving you.

[00:08:10] Orna Guralnik:
Yeah, that is, yeah, that's exactly right. That you're connecting it to the theoretical background, but you have to sometimes be really in the thick of it and have a new experience when you're in the thick of your stuff to change, and that takes trust and risk and time, and you gotta kind of allow yourself to get in there, whether it's with your partner or in the presence of a therapist, or when you're in analysis, you gotta, like, be in the meat and juice of things to feel your actual wiring change.

And the other thing is that we’re, we're motivated—again, I'm speaking as a psychoanalyst—we’re motivated by many things that we're not aware of. We have our conscious mind, which is y’know like the tip of the iceberg. And then we have so many things underlying our conscious minds that motivate us and, and all we can do is kind of glimpse at all these, like little derivatives of that vast unconscious and, and try to get clues as to what's going on underneath. And that, again, takes time and courage and trust. It's not something, it's not like a 10, a list of 10 things you can do to make things better.

[00:09:24] Chris Duffy:
Yeah, I, well, I love your pushback on that, first of all, especially because that, that is kind of the framework that we often use on a show like this, right?

[00:09:32] Orna Guralnik:
Yep.

[00:09:32] Chris Duffy:
It is kind of like… our episode titles are literally how to do something.

[00:09:36] Orna Guralnik:
Yeah.

[00:09:36] Chris Duffy:
And yet I, I'm a huge fan of people pushing back on that and complicating that, and I, myself am very skeptical of it most of the time. So I love the idea that it’s, it’s more complicated and that you can't reduce it to that. And yet also there, there are these actionable things that, that individuals can do.

[00:09:56] Orna Guralnik:
Yeah.

[00:09:56] Chris Duffy:
Do you think that it's just that you can't make a universal, or that they can't kind of be so easily boiled down into a simple list?

[00:10:04] Orna Guralnik:
It’s not… You can make universals. There are certain things that are always true. You know, it's always true, for example, that all of us need to do better listening. That's a universal truth, and you will solve a lot of problems if you listen better, and you regulate your emotional response.

But we, we can know all of that, and then in real time, it all flies out the window. So it's not that there aren't universal truths that will make everything better, but in real time, people are in the grip of whether it's their trauma history or whether it's their inner world, that that colors the way they see reality and the grip of that inner movie that's going on all the time.

It's not amenable to just these statements like, “Oh, you should listen better.” A person can know they should listen better, but when they’re, like, burning inside with some feeling of injustice or some grudge that they're holding or whatever, they don't wanna listen better. They, they, it's out the window. They're just in the grip of things.

[00:11:12] Chris Duffy:
Obviously, many people know you from your work on, on Couples Therapy, but also you have a ton of academic research. And in your papers, you've, you've written up several very accessible papers to the layperson. One of the big themes of the ones that I read was the idea that not only are we beholden to these internal forces that we may not even be aware of, but we're also beholden to these huge external historical forces, right? You, you…

[00:11:39] Orna Guralnik:
Yes.

[00:11:40] Chris Duffy:
You write about being in treatment with a woman whose grandparents were in the Nazi party, and you write about the ways in which you—as a Jewish person with Israeli heritage—and she are, are acting out some of those historical patterns. And you've also talked about that with your patients of color, where there's the ideas of colonialism and the history of racism. Those are inherently in the room and, and can't be avoided. I think that's a different idea again, than many people have of therapy, right? That it's not just about me and my own problems, but it's also these societal forces.

[00:12:11] Orna Guralnik:
Psychoanalysts generally do tend to focus more on individual personal history, which, you know, anything that has to do with, like, a person's childhood, things that happen to them throughout their lives that affect the way they think now and then all of this that is supposedly resides in the unconscious and influences how people perceive things and respond. But traditionally, analysts were less clued into these gigantic influences, that big history, systemic issues, issues that have to do with like, you know, it could be even like, a person can be motivated by grudges between… I can imagine in the future, like a couple, like two generations down, like a Russian and Ukrainian being in a relationship and not even aware of the fact that what's happening nowadays is gonna affect two generations down and how they perceive, like, certain fights they're gonna have about like how to load the dishwasher might be traced all the way back to what's happening now between, like, the invasion of Ukraine.

You know, relationships are mini political systems, right? People constantly have to negotiate, negotiate different needs, different interests, different histories, and these kind of big historical systemic racial class backgrounds very much influence how they think of negotiating difference.

[00:13:38] Chris Duffy:
Hmm. It, it seems to me like there's been a real increased awareness of and openness to it in the past couple years. Systemic thinking when it comes to politics and when it comes to culture, right? The idea that like…

[00:13:51] Orna Guralnik:
Yeah.

[00:13:51] Chris Duffy:
What I do as an individual, it's not that it's not important, but that I can't stop climate change by recycling three more cardboard boxes. The idea that like—

[00:14:01] Orna Guralnik:
Yeah.

[00:14:01] Chris Duffy:
—me trying to be confronting of biases and racism and those kind of issues, that's important. But there's also this systemic racism piece. I think people are—

[00:14:12] Orna Guralnik:
Yes.

[00:14:13] Chris Duffy:
—so much more open to those ideas now, but something that at least I don't hear as much about that you seem to be a real proponent of is the idea that our emotional and our, our mental wellbeing is also systemic. That we're not individuals in that sense either, or not individuals alone.

[00:14:27] Orna Guralnik:
Absolutely. Yes. Just to free associate and piggyback on what you just said, I think I've noticed like during the pandemic and, and in response to like the immense impact that the BLM movement had, like the Black Lives Matter had. I've noticed a real difference in how people in relationships talk to each other, and it doesn't have to be… They don't need to be talking about race at all, but I mean, it can be like a white-on-white or Black-on-Black couple, it doesn't matter.

But there's a very different kind of discourse that is possible now between people where they check their privilege, right? They check the subject position from which they're speaking. They don't just take things for granted, but they pause for a second and think, “Wait, where am I located in the bigger system?”

And who am I talking to? And what are the power implications? Or what am I taking for granted, and what are ways that I’m not able to listen because of my particular background? How am I blind or deaf to certain things that the other person is experiencing? All of that has made, in a way, my work as a therapist a lot easier.

[00:15:41] Chris Duffy:
That alone is fascinating to me, that idea that those changes have made your work easier.

[00:15:45] Orna Guralnik:
Yeah.

[00:15:45] Chris Duffy:
And that people are more willing to acknowledge like, “Oh, I come from a place where what I am doing affects the people around.” What, what would you say it was like before?

[00:15:54] Orna Guralnik:
I think people just spoke from within their position without, without feeling like they need to check it. They need to double-look at where they're speaking from. And in terms of your question about, like, how these things affect our entire system, not only our, I don't know, negotiation skills, but like our emotional lives. Of course, just to give you an example, just from, from daily practice, you know, one of the things that couples talk about a lot is money, right?

It's sort of a, one of the arenas that people find their differences, and it's also just so concrete that it's, it's a great place to negotiate, and people's entire emotional world about money, of course, is deeply shaped by their class situation, race, situation, the intersection of it, gender politics.

All of these like giant systemic issues affect their experience of money. The, the experience of: “Do I have the capacity to support myself? Is there a safety net or not for me?” All of these questions will affect the immediate emotional response they have when they see their partner's credit card bill and, and when they try to negotiate what should we spend on.

[00:17:09] Chris Duffy:
It’s, it’s interesting ‘cause we've had a few experts in the past on, on money issues who were talking kind of about the nuts and bolts of, of budgeting and that sort of stuff, but, but every one of them across the board has said some version of “Money is not really just about money.” It's about values, it's about priorities, it's about what you care about and what you're afraid of.

We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more from Dr. Orna Guralnik.

[BREAK]

[00:17:42] Chris Duffy:
Today, we're talking with Dr. Orna Guralnik. Orna is the therapist in Showtime's docu-series Couples Therapy, which follows real couples going through treatment with her. The show is revealing, it's vulnerable, it's often quite astonishingly intimate, but it's never played for a shock or for drama. It's very much real psychoanalytic treatment.

It seems like a lot of what you're teaching people who watch the show is, is also to destigmatize the, the world of therapy or, or maybe to bring people in so that it's not just wealthy white people on the show. It's not just heterosexual couples. This is certainly a, a stereotype that I had in my head about couples counseling is that it's not people who are kind of elongating the end and that they come in and it's already too late.

And certainly, you have people on where you come to the conclusion that like, “Let's wind this down in a way that is healthy and productive.” But many of the people make transformative breakthroughs. So, it seems like that is one of the big messages that people take away, or you're hoping people will take away.

[00:18:41] Orna Guralnik:
Absolutely. Both that this way of working and thinking is for everyone. It's, it should not be only for the well and rich and not only for white and upper class, to wanting to make it more accessible and available beyond that to, in a way, underscore the fact that we're all similar. Class, skin color, history, I mean, all of these things, of course, they shape everything, but at the bottom of it, in the heart of it, we're similar.

We can completely relate to… I, I assume people can completely relate to every couple on the show. People often say to us that, oh, in the beginning, they couldn't stand this person, or they thought that person was totally wrong, and then they spent enough time with the couple and then they're like, “Oh, actually that's me.”

[00:19:31] Chris Duffy:
I also think… One of the radical parts to me of the show is how much you are yourself vulnerable and are willing to show the ways in which you don't know the answers, in which you struggle. I mean, many episodes feature you going to your peer group or to your mentor and saying, “I don't know. I'm stuck. I, I, how do I fix this?” Which… that feels very radical ‘cause you're in a position of power, and you're giving up the power and that's not something we see very often.

[00:19:58] Orna Guralnik:
First of all, I'm glad you're saying that and, and seeing that, first of all, that is the psychoanalytic… In its heart, that is the psychoanalytic method, which is that we're always leaning into the part of the psyche that we don’t know.

You know, what you know is useless. It's, it's already over. It's done. What you know, I mean, what you want is to go into the direction that you don't yet know. And if I had to, if there's one message, if I had to like boil down like a, a central message that both psychoanalytic work and couples work teaches it is, you know, open up a kind of negative space within yourself where you don't know, so that you can actually learn something new about the other person. And if you don't go to the places that you don't know, you're not gonna actually hear anyone other than yourself.

[00:20:51] Chris Duffy:
You know, in addition to this podcast, I, I'm a comedian, and one of the most common things that people say when they find out that you're a comedian, right, is, is “Tell me a joke” or some version of, “Oh, I could never do that. That's so scary to be up on stage.”

I'm guessing that the couples counselor version of that is some version of like, “You must hear the wildest stories”, but then also, “Well, I'm glad that my partner and I don't need that.” So, what do you say to couples who may avoid therapy because they feel like going would be an admission that their relationship is somehow failing or that it's not for them, it's for other people. What do you tell people who are, have that resistance to it?

[00:21:31] Orna Guralnik:
I don't say anything. They're not, they're not there. They're not ready. They're scared. I'm okay. And I don't think anything. I, I, I'm just like, “You're not curious to go to your edge. You wanna stay where you are. Okay? That's where you live.”

Sorry. I'm just curious, when you, when you're just about what you said about comedians, like what do you think about as a comedian, what do you think about what I said about the going towards the not knowing?

[00:21:58] Chris Duffy:
Yeah. I mean…

[00:21:58] Orna Guralnik:
Because I assume you have to do that all the time. Right?

[00:22:02] Chris Duffy:
I, I think that one of the biggest things that people have as a misconception is people will often try to, as a, almost as a compliment to say like, “Well, I'm sure that you never bomb on stage.”

And I, I always say to them, “Well, if you're not bombing, you're a terrible comedian.” Like, the whole point is you have to try things that are new and different and what work, and you have to be conscious of where you do that. I don't try and do that when I'm auditioning for something.

[00:22:23] Orna Guralnik:
Yeah.

[00:22:23] Chris Duffy:
But if you're not failing, if you're not going past the bounds of what you can do and what you know will work, then your jokes just get worse and worse and worse. ‘Cause they're the same jokes, but they're more and more tired and old.

[00:22:35] Orna Guralnik:
Exactly. So it's the same, you're, you're, you're looking for the same space.

[00:22:38] Chris Duffy:
Yeah. Fundamentally, it's true of most humans that if you want to create something new and different, you push past the comfortable, and you have to go into the zone where you are making mistakes and failing and it's not always working.

So it is interesting though, because like you said, I mean you said, like, if people don't wanna do that, they're comfortable. That's fine. They don't have to do that. I mean, certainly I would never encourage someone who doesn't want to be a comedian to be a comedian. Even if you do wanna be a comedian, we already have too many. We don't need more, but, but if you don't want to, definitely don't do it.

[00:23:06] Orna Guralnik:
Yeah.

[00:23:06] Chris Duffy:
And yet, maybe this is just me, uh, responding to the piece of, like, dominant society right now that says like, “Everyone should be in therapy, therapy is almost like a checkbox that people should do”, but I do feel like there's something different about examining yourself and your relationships than creating art. Like if you don't create art, okay, maybe that's not right for you, but if you don't examine your relationships, sometimes I feel like real harm can come from that, from you not being ready to do so.

[00:23:32] Orna Guralnik:
True. True. Because you live among other people and you might have a family and yeah. We affect each other.Yes. Agree. Although a world without art would also be a pretty miserable world.

[00:23:44] Chris Duffy:
Of course. Maybe if it's okay. I, I'm curious to hear from, from you personally. Y-you were born in the United States and then you spent your early life here, and then you moved to Israel and you lived in a, a society that was, it was had a very big shift from kind of an individualistic society to a much more collectivist society.

And now you're back. And I wonder how having to make sense of these different ways of organizing the world and different ways of organizing human relationships have played into your work and your interest in this kind of work.

[00:24:16] Orna Guralnik:
I think I've, over the years I've come to think of that as probably one of the defining historical elements of my life that kind of shape, the way I experience the world. This, the, the, these kind of shifts between cultures. I think one way that it informs my couple's work is that I, it's not that difficult for me to understand different perspectives and to understand why some of these differences don't necessarily work and to try think, how to kind of figure that out? Like what, what would it take?

Or another way to say it is I never quite completely trust one particular perspective. Even if someone is like deeply embedded in the way they see things and, and can give all the rationale for why the way they see the world and, and their ideology and their feelings and all of that is like totally true and makes so much sense, I’m always a little like, “Eh, but you can see it another way too.”

[00:25:18] Chris Duffy:
Uh-huh.

[00:25:18] Orna Guralnik:
Because I've had to go through that. So, and, and, you know, some of my patients actually find that maddening. It's not always, it's not al—it’s not always pleasant. So, that, it's shaped my interest in the less clear boundary between individual and collective forces.

This is kind of a completely different thing, but I'm also because of the, the very important Israeli influence, I’m very much kind of a communal, collective team kind of person. I like doing things with other people. I, I mean, one of the great things about working on this show is that I'm working with this, like, unbelievably wonderful team just every day brings me so much joy and, and interest.

[00:26:09] Chris Duffy:
When you watch back episodes of the show, what are you most struck by?

[00:26:13] Orna Guralnik:
Ah, okay. There's one thing that always happens when I watch, which it, it just, there's, it feels to me like they cook up some kind of magic. I don't understand how they do what they do, where, you know, there's the world out there, and then there's the way we in inside our mind, we think about the world and we have our little storylines that we follow, and each of us is always narrating something about what's going on.

And when I see what they've done, it never feels to me like it's coming from outside. It always feels to me like, oh my God, they somehow clicked into my unconscious and they saw things the way I saw them. How did they do that? It's like they visited my dream.

[00:26:57] Chris Duffy:
Oh, that's a great feeling.

[00:26:58] Orna Guralnik:
It's, it's, it's amazing. It's, it's, it's completely shocking. And it has to do with, I mean, we talk a lot, I talk a lot with the, with the team all the time about the material, like with the directors, the editors. All the time, endless conversations about what's going on. And they just listen incredibly well. And, and, and somehow we've developed this kind of hive-mind. So that's the most striking to me.

And then the other thing that I love in, in watching the material is how much the camera and the way they edit, how much they love the couples. I, I don't know if you feel that way, but there's so much love—

[00:27:36] Chris Duffy:
Absolutely.

[00:27:37] Orna Guralnik:
—towards the subjects and respect and so much interest in their humanity. There, there’s no, it's never kind of a sneering or cynical take on the subjects. It's always like trying to go inside them and hold them with dignity.

[00:27:53] Chris Duffy:
There's a real generosity to the show. It occurs to me that there are many people on the show, and I imagine in your practice outside of the show as well, who are coming with very different racial or cultural backgrounds into the relationship. Can you talk about some of the complications that arise in relationships where both partners don't have the shared sociopolitical, cultural, historical factors in their lives?

[00:28:22] Orna Guralnik:
Yeah, sure. First of all, I have to say that to some degree, I think it's always there. If you drill, there's always some kind of difference, even if the couples seem like, you know, they're like made of the same cloth. At some point, you'll discover that on some level there's some kind of difference that makes for interesting dynamics. But to the more obvious differences, you know, the, the, the most obvious is when there's an interracial couple that come to the, to certain aspects of relationship with different expectations or different predictions about outcome.

Or class. I mean, it's hard to separate, you know, race and class. But again, to go back to for example, the issue of, like, finances or just a sense of security in the future, people with different class/race-heritage have a very different sense of projection into the future. Whether it’s “Oh, if the money runs out, are we gonna be on the street? Are we gonna be homeless?” versus “It's gonna be okay. There’s gonna be a safety network.” So, the level of anxiety about the futures could be very different, and that can influence how people negotiate. Like, one person might feel like, “Oh my God, we're in a, we're in the red, we're in, like, a crisis.” And the other person might feel like, “It’s okay. Why are you freaking out?”And not meet their anger.

What's an okay way to express anger? You know, I've repeatedly heard, for example, I mean this is kind of a classic, but gender stereotypes. Men who have trouble finding ways to even think about their own dependency needs or their own certain kinds of vulnerability, and having to like twist themselves into all sorts of pretzels because society and the way they've been indoctrinated into masculinity doesn't allow them to just say, “Hey, I'm feeling lonely. Can you gimme a hug?” You know?

[00:30:21] Chris Duffy:
I'm curious how you think about changing your own narratives and what do you do when you recognize that you have a story that you're telling yourself about your relationship.

[00:30:30] Orna Guralnik:
This I've been through over the years. I mean, look, I'm, I'm old, and I've been through several analyses, and each analyst that I've worked with has changed my way of thinking about narrative.

So, I've been through many… The way I've moved cultures, I've moved analysts and I've moved schools of thought and also, you know, have become parent to two different children. So I, it, I've changed many, many narratives. So in that sense, it makes it a little easier nowadays when I notice myself getting caught in a particular story.

Especially if it's a story that's like bugging me, like, “Oh, my partner isn't doing this, that, or the other.” Or, or one of my kids, blah, blah, blah. Just the narratives, you know, they, they, when they, when you get stuck in a narrative, it tends to have a certain kind of flavor. It, it starts to, like, bug you. So something about the repetitive nature of it.

And at this point, I already know, “Oh, okay, I’m in one of those.” And I have a few different methods of kind of trying to deconstruct it. You know, often I will go into like, okay, how is this like some kind of revisit or repetition of some kind of childhood narrative or is this narrative often, nowadays it's, it's less about that and it's more like, “Okay, how is this narrative serving to help me avoid the thing that's really hard for me to do?” That's, that's one of the main ones I go to. Oh, how is this narrative actually convenient for me to avoid something that's actually difficult for me?

[00:32:05] Chris Duffy:
Can we discuss the idea of goals in therapy and, and how you measure progress? What… Is there a point when you feel a couple is done or a person is done? How, how do you judge that?

[00:32:18] Orna Guralnik:
Yeah, sure. It's different between couples and, and individuals. Very different. But with couples, first of all, usually the work with couples is so much shorter than with individuals, but with couples, when they, when the kind of intensity and toxicity of their conflict goes down and it feels like, you know, a working relationship in the sense. I mean, my goal is not to free, liberate people from conflict.

I mean, conflict is part of life. But if a couple figures out a way to work through difference without going into, like, unnecessarily triggering toxic feelings, then my work is done. I mean, they don't need me. Or if I feel like whatever I'm saying is if I'm just running out of new things to say, if I'm saying the same thing over and over, and either it's, they already know it, or I'm not making a dent, which also sometimes sadly happens, then it's time to move on. If I, if I'm running out of things to say, it sort of means the therapy's over.

[00:33:34] Chris Duffy:
I have several friends who are, are therapists, and one of my favorite questions for them, because it just seems like this has to happen a lot, is that how often does like someone walk in the room and you know the thing they have to realize, and you're like, “Please, just say this one sentence and it'll get there and it'll be done”? And it's like months, and then they say it and you're like, “Finally we're there.” And I know that's obviously, that's a huge reductive vision of it, but it does feel like—

[00:33:56] Orna Guralnik:
It happens. It does happen. Like, people can walk in and you know, you know, I, I know if I said it right now, it's gonna mean nothing to them, but eventually, they're gonna get it and they're gonna be fine.

[00:34:10] Chris Duffy:
Well, thank you so much. It's been, it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. I really appreciate you making the time.

[00:34:15] Orna Guralnik:
Same here, Chris. Really. Absolute pleasure. It's just like, I love the questions. I love the way you're thinking about things. You went to the things that matter to me personally, so thank you.

[00:34:29] Chris Duffy:
That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you to today's guest, Dr. Orna Guralnik. Her show Couples Therapy is on Showtime. I am your host Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and information about my live comedy shows at chrisduffycomedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is brought to you on the TED side by Anna Phelan, Whitney Pennington-Rodgers, and Jimmy Gutierrez, who are all being filmed for an acclaimed verite documentary series called Team Podcasting.

Every episode of this show is professionally fact-checked, and this episode was fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Erica Yuen, who are both experts in healthy and direct communication.

On the PRX side, diving deep into the far recesses of both my psyche and their own, are Morgan Flannery, Rosalyn Tordesillas, and Jocelyn Gonzales.

And of course, thanks to you for listening to our show and making this all possible. We'll be back next week with even more How to Be a Better Human.