This is the ten percent- have your protest. I'm Dyin Harris this week were posting. Some of our best pod casts from the archives on a dragon. Many of us face internally anxiety, anxiety to state. The obvious is a massive issue in our society, even for the pandemic. He was on the rise, and now the situation is sadly even worse chances are. It has afflicted you or somebody you love at some point and on some level maybe you received an actual

notice like generalised anxiety, disorder or maybe your prone to symptoms, closer to panic. As I've been known to experience or perhaps you're just susceptible to a bit too much garden. Variety worry. The bad news is that anxiety is unlikely to disappear overnight, but the Good NEWS is that you can change your relationship to it. That's what we're going to discuss on our episodes this week were taken things off with a personal story from cerebral US, a fearsome math she's a singer, songwriter composer, an actor. The list goes on, she's earned Tony and Grammy award nominations for the Broadway musical waitress. She stars in the very funny Tina Faye produced show girls, five ever, which will be back for a second season this year on Peacock. I highly recommend that shows very funny she's very funny in it. However, behind all of Sarah's artistic and professional successes,

There is a meditate or who is extremely, and I believe, very deliberately, open and public about her struggles with anxiety and depression. In this conversation, she's gonna talk about her history of anxiety and depression, the relationship between suffering an hour and whether meditation might defang somebody's creativity. That's a big question. A lot of people have she's going to also talk about how she works with anger and her relationship with social media and we're going to get a rather intimate glimpse into the back stories behind some of her hit songs. Just a quick note to say that we talked a bit about Sarah's anxiety during two thousand and twenty so well. You might hear some references specific two, twenty twenty, the conversation about anxieties, sadly evergreen and speaking of

anxiety. We are also relaunch and our companion ten day meditation challenge called the taming anxiety challenge over on the ten percent happier APP meditation teacher Leslie Booker is one of the core teachers in the challenge, which features short videos and guided meditations about how to live with our anxiety in a more successful manner. In the abbey will see Leslie sharing strategies with me and with you by extension, for putting into practice everything we talk about on the podcast today, including ways to normalize the experience anxiety in your community. In fact, by joining the taming anxiety challenge will be part of a community of thousands of meditated learning to cope with anxiety, videos and meditation specifically designed to help you take your anxiety as well as daily metal?

asian reminders to keep you on track to join the challenge, just download the ten percent happier apt to day wherever you get your apps or by visiting ten percent dot com. That's all one word spelled out if you already have the app just open it up and follow the instructions to join before we dive in here. Just a quick heads up as mentioned this conversation does feature and exploration of depression and anxiety is also one very brief mention of self harm. Having said that, will started with cerebral Bareilles right after this, as we head into this new year, can be challenging, as we all know, to try to keep things fresh. One way I plan on doing that is with my political, the Palatine Bike and bike plus are ringing in the new year with new classes, new, music and new ways to keep things fun and motivating I've been using the penalty for a couple years now it was especially helpful turned a pandemic. And I'm still going strong for a limited time, try the Palatine at free for two months than its

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I did that my weekday dinner is something I can now cross off might do, let's go to hell afresh dot com, slash happier, sixteen and use code happier sixteen for up to sixteen free meals and three free gifts. That's hollow fresh dot com, slash happier! Sixteen- and who'd happier sixteen to get started with America's number one meal kit right server or cipher come alone. Thank you for having me and such a fan of this show of of your part cast of the map of the whole thing. I'm a big believer. Thank you really brochures and right back at you hear believer believe I believe in you. Thank you. So you been phenomenally honest did, I mean phenomenally into

the word phenomenally in that you ve said a lot and anomaly in the sense that I think you're doing a great service to let people by saying a lot for honest about your own history with anxiety, depression, etc. Can you tell me when you first started again inkling, that your mind wasn't always your best friend. Yes, I have a good friend, my friend Jesse Nelson insight. There are wet people and there are dry people, and I am aware: person, meaning that, like I've, always been really close to sadness, melancholy. That's always been like an emotion that came quickly for me that really an easy lens for me to kind of adopt, and I have to really work to see the world not through a sort of melancholic lens and it's interesting, because I'm also when I love the world, then I wouldn't say that I'm like overall a depressed person, but when it happens it comes acutely

First time. I remember my your friend anxiety, showing up in my life, was about to go college, and I started having some disassociation and I started. being unable to sort of stay in the room. With my conversations with my actions, I could, We hear a kind of the chatter that was going on in my own brain and then sort of went into a spiral about that. is it wasn't an easy thing to explain I remember, trying to explain it to people and for people who have an experience acute anxiety, or this disassociation or you're sort of having a little bit out of body experience. It was like only made me feel more lonely and misunderstood and scared and was the end of my college, and I think I was facing the precipices like becoming

don't you realize you get to the end of your schooling years? You know what's in front of you for such a long time and you get to the end and there like go back. Excuse me What's so, I think I was just terrified and I didn't really know how to even process whether I was feeling about the world. Is it your user is one of my big early depressive episodes was right when I graduated college I felt like I was looking down the barrel of the rest of my life and I had no plan and adjusts everything just turned gray yeah. I had a lot of then it would vacillate between certainly fear of no plan, and then The fear of a plan, like everything made me, feel claustrophobic the idea of a life and the routine or a house or like sitting the dinner or

getting married and not knowing that. I was considering that at that age, but everything fell, claustrophobic, to me, but I didn't have an answer for what else would I want it just felt like the idea of having to be alive, for the rest of my life was an impossible thing to hold, and I never was someone who contemplated self harm thing fully, but I can so easily understand how quickly those thoughts may crop up and how easily you might find yourself feeling overwhelmed, because I was really on there. I just couldn't imagine how do you possibly get through so many days in life? It just seemed unimaginable, would you described as anxiety and depression yeah? I think I've always talked about them like their sisters. I think they're, just firstly, kind of miserable relatives that show up and

in my meditation practice and over the years of having done some reading and research about it. I do understand that a friendly quality towards these parts of ourselves is truly the remedy, but when they first started cropping up, but they really felt like the monsters under the bed that would just show up and everything went, call old and dark, and you know that melancholy lens became so wildly vivid and I've for someone who I've been working and music. My whole life has been. My artistic career has been kind of the centrepiece, so I was miserable and a job I hated and Fino couldn't pay. My bells I was during the world and singing music for people and secretly kind of just really struggling with pink, ok on a day to day basis. What did you do about it? At that point, I think the first,

best friend of mine was talk therapy. I was living with a good friend of mine at the time, and I I had just moved out and I think every sort of realizing for myself that I had some kind of co dependency issues that were. I would get really really close to friends. I think I was kind of hiding from the world alongside whatever friend slide into that place at the time, and I was living alone for the first time and I went into I remember how I found this therapists. She was awful. She was here while she was bored and lake. I Felix she didn't even say two words, but the act of articulating my internal state was like the light bulb moment. It was having to explain to some. without apology. What was going on and even though she seemed kind of board. She wasn't shocked there,

nothing, unusual or even particularly special, about what I was going through, which I think in and of itself was the thing that was comfort. In that I mean I've been in there be now twelve years they talked him a tempest every week. I consider it a huge part of me self carotene that at the time, even with the bad thereupon is envisaged helpful to talk about it, it's interesting, even a bad thereupon, just it seems like there may be to pieces in their want, is being able to participate it. Then it comes out of your head and into the world in some way to you can hold it at a distance and look at it in the sex

thing is the fact that you wasn't shocked. In fact, she was bored, probably not paying attention to other, maybe that, but the fact that issues baggage edges- you wasn't Jacques by it major realisation. Maybe this is garden variety right. I think that was actually a huge part of just even beginning that road towards healing is the active articulation, I think, being able to express whether its in journals are in conversation or to a therapist, but do not be afraid of what's coming out. I really do believe that the truth will set you free, it's whatever's happening is happening, and I think I was making myself feel crazy. Because I just didn't want it to be true, so I fell on while on a really deep level, rather than knowing that there's this massive community of people who, of course we go through these struggles. Of course we do. How hard is it to be human and so hard agreed and also awesome,

There's the rub so that, with your early twenties, you went on to become simpler. Six for you have a life that I think most outsiders would say: what's not alike, and yet the evil twin sisters would come back. Now yeah they come back. I mean I got a little brief visit just the other day. We find ourselves in an extraordinarily tumultuous time in the world and there's so much to hold that doesn't really having answer- and I think sometimes you know- the fragility in me is something I've come to really have a lot of tenderness towards, but cried just like all day long, and sometimes that's not as useful, so you know being

very overwhelmed all the time. That's not a useful state either. There's no productivity in that there's, no helpfulness in just resting in how so are tragic or how much pain or how much said I mean this is all true but, like you said, there's also so much beauty and hope and possibility and connectivity to be had as well really just what are you looking at? So you talk about therapy, and you mentioned at the top there you're interested in that patient. How did that come about? How did you get interested in meditation as a way to deal with the aforementioned sisters? I introduced. I think it was actually one of those twenty one day challenges the departure opera or prevent free choice Just and it was about health, and I had just moved to New York City, and I just sat-

my brand new apartment. With my mattress on the floor and my two coffee cups, there is a real reset button that had been pressed email if I left a long life and relationship LOS Angeles. I left my band members. I left me manager I really pressed Teresa in a pretty deep way and there were some space sector created. I think in the simplicity of my lifestyle, where I just sat and started to listen to myself a little bit differently and I really liked the feeling of it, but it didn't stick I didn't continue with it. I did it more intermittently for the next year's and then it was going through a really bad break up and the depression came back with a vengeance, and

I just realized. There was just wasn't another way. There wasn't a way to distract away from it. I just had dislikes it inside of it and get to know it, and that was where meditation really started to become helpful. I read a lot of Pema Chodron and got the insight meditation. ass a started there in did a lot of tat, meditation and then now- and I'm not even just be saying this- because I'm talking to you but ten percent happier- is such a wonderful companion really kudos to you for making such a great resource for people who want to deepen their practice from the teachers together. Just incredible. I appreciate that very much, and you know this is somebody who's, often the front person for large organisations that there are so many people who are doing their actual work of the EP so just to salute to those guys.

Making to hear from you and others that its useful. So what is your practice? Look like now. Do struggle with consistency, gala start there. The moment I'm not struggling with consistency, which is new for me every morning. It's the first thing. I do it's a little bit more challenging when I travel, but one of the things I did when my boyfriend Joe and I just moved into an apartment together in one of the things I did was a really carved out base for it. So I have a meditation. It's a tiny little room and the washing drier also happen to be in that room, but carving out a really intentional space is what I do every morning and it sets the day. I am listening to some beautiful set of teachings and then I find that I didn't. I do the other may I just got jagged somewhere during the day. I don't even know kind of what was the catalyst for that, but I did and meditation on the train

think I just come back to you now to whether I'm doing something I did or not is the space that I touch more often, and I find that I am better version of myself when I am really in touch with the simplicity of the breath and now there's so much out of our control and I'm somebody really is also kind of a control freak too. So it's been really helpful for me to let go with Canada Retreat of how you think, there's a control freakin, good company or bad company never understood that expression as a control for it. You would think getting in touch with your lack of control would be the worst possible thing, and yet it really helps well just like he said, but was the face cell

discovery before we start rolling out tell you a story about how we're we're talking about how both of us had the experience of anxiety during recent house moves in. You were saying a little bit about how they you. You had some moments that you were dead, proud of in house sympathizing. In saying that I once called my meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein, who you are familiar with and told him about the very negative feedback I had gotten on my own personal compartment and he paused and said self knowledge is always bad news, but I think we so great about that is the fact that you check all after that, the light heartedness with which we can hold the fact that

of course were flawed and ugly in certain ways like, of course we are so I really appreciated the practice of naming that part of yourself. So I call her tight, Tina and, and so tight Tina shows up sometimes, and it really helps me just like tell her to sit back and relax and just like pull up a seat, and you don't have to drive right now, but it happens at the drop of a hat, and I won't even notice that all sudden, I'm very rigid and then very angry when things are going. The way I wanted them to go- and I have always, I myself as being like really boy. Am I a cool check in my my like? I am just show

and then all the sudden, you let someone really get to know you, and I speak about my partner- do at this point in cycle really. No, no, I'm very much. Not that super chill woman that I would love to be. Well. Maybe you are sometimes you know over that start of you is now. You know that I d of a cake you pleasure in seeing your own. Maybe this to our civil war, but are you anyway, seeing your own ugliness, you know, as Joseph has explained to me at times, like the Buddha even talked about that in Buddhism. There's this idea of Mara will his the God of desire, or the God of the manifestation of all of our

just in her tendencies and occasionally in the Buddhist Scriptures, the Buddha will say something like Mara. I see you and Joseph has interpreted that as a kind of playful thing. Like gap more, I see you waiting and self knowledge can be. Bad news is often what you're seeing is something unplug The good news is that you are seeing it and most likely, then not gonna be owned, but yeah Mars. Sneaking in the lake hang out in the back of the room you like none. Can it going to hijack this one another moment, Scott fresh in my mind from that conversation with Joseph implanted talk about this, but now there were darted, whether Carcinogen Joseph, where I, after having got this feedback, said something like you know. My concern Joseph is that I am thoroughly rotten and I thought okay well, I've just reveals in a really big. This is the kind of my deep dark secret and

I thought this was gonna, be a grave moment in my conversation with Joseph, and he laughed at me, not a little laugh, a big laughed at first in a vacuum that I realise this is really a nice thing to do, and he said no you're, just half rotten like the rest of her, and so I mean it just gets back to my point of like you or your point rather like seeing tight Tina. Seeing all of this stuff come up to use a grandiose, termites liberated What did you do? Did you after having that conversation with him? Did you just sit with it longer? Do you find that you feel differently about that same idea of yourself today, because it's a minute just shifted overtime? It's been shifting overtime has been a long process.

Who are stipulated. It really well a short while ago were you said that you are now looking at the members of your inner cast the casting characters with sensing. Humor and some warrants your own fragility. Your own trolling aspects of your nature. For me, I'm a tough case. It took me a little longer, but I've started slowly come around too. I guess the term of art here be self compassion of just viewing meal, your own stuff, with a sense of humor yeah it so hard because especially I think a culturally were set up in a way of your on social

media are even paying attention to what is happening in the public eye. There's so much comparison happening in, and there is also this very false sense of what's being put forward, and so I feel like it's like the great trick thickets played unless that, worse, supposed to be happy all the time it gets talked about ad nauseam, but there's a pill or there is a distraction where there's a thing to buy. That's actually taking us away from the truth, which is that sometimes we will just be sad or Sometimes we will just be angry or hurt or vulnerable or exposed, or are they just that? Actually, we have to learn how to cope with those uncomfortable things in a way that doesn't derail the whole production and that's what I work hard on, trying to build a relationship

cause. I don't think it gets any more fun site like a gets. Awesome didn't realize like I'm it. I'm not a thrill do that, but I find that I spend less time punishing myself forward. It's just I hear on the apple lotta gets spoken about. I wasn't skilful and not moment was the moving through a moment of tightness or just comfort, or someone says something that upsets me and not reacting in a way that was skilful and then you capture solving like well and are trying to do better next time. But I know my heart: I try to be a kind person, but it doesn't mean I'm not EL, the jet there's, a concept that I heard of from a woman has been on the show before an heiress, Dolly Chug and she's, a professor them. Why you

he looks a lot at bias, prejudice things like that, and her concept is good English, most ethnic ourselves as good people, but then work once its pointed out to us that we ve done something bad or unskilful. That threatens our idea. de as a good person, and it can go haywire and a number of ways. If you re label yourself as good issue, will then you ve got the elastic city, the flexibility in their did? Oh, yes, you can be a legit, expletive, sometimes and like, of course, yeah. I think I like that. I mean I think they have to have it sank. I always thought about. It is learning to become Your own friend, the way were so forgiving of the people that we really love me like. We can see them trying and failing or trying and just not ending up where they had anticipated, they would and

forgiveness and generosity is available. When you love someone like, of course, you tried. Of course you did your best. It did work out the way you thought it would work, but if there's just even a tiny opportunity to practise spending some of that generosity on ourselves, how much farther we'll get much more! My conversation with Sarah Barroso run after this. Viruses. Mission is simple, make the most comfortable goes ever and match every item sold with an equal item donated. So when you buy bombast your also giving to someone in me everything they make. A soft seamless, tat as an has a luxurious, cosy field. That's because their made from supersonic cereals, like Marina Wool and Kashmir, which makes them the perfect cosy winter layers. I ordered a pair of performance running into socks, and I can't wait to make every mile that much more comfortable and did you know,

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people have used better help online therapy. This podcast Cassa sponsored by better help and temperance and happier listeners get ten percent off their first month. Tat, better help, dot com, slash happier, that's b, BT are eighty lp dot com. Slash happier you gonna have brought me to Sunday. I did want to talk about witches. You said that you written about in your music, which is how anxiety or any other in her hobgoblin can be, a alleviated are going well through having close intimate relationships and I believe the sun was got someone who loves me, and am I right about that- that was kind of the theme of that song yeah. I wrote that about my partner

and really the idea that getting to a place, I think about this with myself as well, but it's really powerful when you receive this kind of love from another person is just someone who stays. Judges can exist next to you in the pain, it's really so powerful and it's something. I'm not, I have to work harder at with my friends with my loved ones ever really hard time when someone else's in pain and my tendency is to want to fix it or you know. Do the grand gesture, that's gonna, take away all of the problems and something that my therapist says that I think about a lot is that we have to allow everyone to

dignity of their own discomfort and that sometimes fixing someone else's problem is not really the fix it's actually about allowing some one to just be in pain and that that is a dignified us as well but yeah, letting someone see you and all your mass is alive are there to do in practice than emanate. It's something I talked about in song and sort of like the kind of love I always wished for and then, but ultimately, it is about which version of me shows up to its, not just about the person on the other side whose willing to states like what are you willing to show, knowing that they might walk away, they might be too much, they may be me, let it got a piece out for me.

It's really know it's. It's an act of faith. The sounds like Joseph good Dance partner here in that you are willing to show some of this stuff. That's not comfortable, showing an he. Instead of going to fix it mode, has the capacity to just Kalis stay there be in the dark with you tat. He really does. He has a really generous heart and there's a lot of space for I mean honestly, I think, for anyone who would be partnered with me, there would have to be a lot of capacity to hold. stuff, because I'm a real emotional, we're, really emotional person. My eyes are really high. My loans are really low and I have noticed meditation- has helped balance. Some of that. I think not that I don't feel a great amount of joy anymore or anything, but I think that I bounced back a little bit better from the loaves than I used to be a anyone

he was gonna love me was gonna have to like love the ride a little bit too. Have you ever worried, because I've heard this from creative folks that if the right is the so bumpy, the art won't be so good yeah, I d way at I know I haven't written a lot of songs lately and we were just talking about this. The other day actually is being Pain is fertile craves being expressed, and it's so relate a ball and personally, I find us as a writer there's delighted people out there that depend on you to translate the emotion because they haven't been given that part of the gift, and so I feel like as songwriters and those writers and artists out there. That's part of our duty is to try to translate so someone else has something to hold while they walk through that part of their life. So it is a little bit more of us

I think, when you're feeling sort of satiated inside your heart, there's just another code to crack. I think, plenty to write about with plenty of pain to access, but I also think might be a nice challenge to try to write something joyful to my. It is less traditionally creative than yours, although I do not deny write books and I found just for me- there is still plenty of pain and that the most creative I ever feel is when I'm on meditation retreats wow You may remember this was your piece of advice to me and we were connected by our friend, Meredith scarred. You know months ago before I moved into my new apartment- and I was talking to you about wanting to deepen, may practised in that was you're. The main piece of advice you like it sounds like you need a retreat and I don't even think about it being attached to creativity

It's not like. I sit around writing for long periods of time. It's that I'm flooded with ideas, and so I take a notebook and write a bunch of stuff down now as I've. joke before there are times I am Richmond Retreat, taking I've written some beautiful stuff and it looks like the Unabomber is scrolling. So you don't know what you're going to get when the music visits, but none. I found that the turning down of the volume of habitual, rumination allowed for other stuff to come up in its unpredictable, but, generally speaking, there's a flood of other stuff. What kinds of things come through for you? Is it like book? Ideas are liquid. What kinds of things it's not ideas for new books, its ideas for the but whatever book, I'm right at the moment, new ways to say things, new insights into the way the mind works new inside, usually in new insights into what am I I am you know it's your just seeing how your own version of lunacy,

and in how it shows up and the kind of crazy things you're saying to yourself. I often make myself laugh a lot so coming up with dumb jokes that I'm gonna put in a book. we're gonna tell my son and watch his face turned sour nobody's more annoying to him that his death I'm off and telling them damn jokes and is giving me the stick. I, but I reconfirm him with him the other day that, when he's dead, he's going to do the same thing highest compliment nice one. anyway. My point is that you know you don't know what you're gonna get, and this is just my experience. I want guarantees for any of you or anybody else, but I found that meditation does not kill creativity angry at me. I can't speak to their retreat experience, but I oh my gosh. I think it's the opposite.

because you're getting to see your inner workings. So much more clear. I know your feelings about things they get to spiritual, but I actually really believe that the universe responds really positively to the gesture of making space for creativity that someday, You do just have to kind of worship at the altar without knowing what will come through, and I really think that it does respond in songwriting for me was always like a huge active. I think now in looking back meditation or prayer, or that was my relationship to sort of like my spiritual practice. Was writing songs, And then, as my business grew around it, that sort of pure seed of it starts after hold a lot

more complexities? Now, I'm in my early fortys and I think back on this first years of songwriting, and it was just like taking a sketchbook into the woods like that's what it was. It wasn't for anything and now wanting to kind of reclaimed. Some of that, I think for myself just made to support some my skeptical listeners, but I actually have no problem with what you just said about the universe, have been mysterious the way creativity works the reason why the languages, the Muse visits it does feel like you're receive, in a letter from somebody else. Instead of inventing it on your own, I can see from your face that that lamps for you, And I have a little bit of an allergy too. When people started, take a lot of ownership over even their work, as if it wasn't kind of, I always have felt you know, as well as writers were channeling, something we're connecting into

some greater network that has been around long before we were here and will continue to be around and especially with music. I think when people get very proprietary about music it, it feels a little bit pathetic because it's just did so much bigger than any person, and so I think, remaining really open. Now. I love that quote by Martha Gram about the blessed unrest in that our job as artists to keep the channel open, not to judge what comes through but keep marching on the blessed unrest. The next idea. This is the type of sentiment that I would have historically been allergic to, but I remember years ago before I wrote any book or anything that as having lunch with, friend of mine, whose also meditate and a well known sceptic. His name is SAM Harris, we're not related, but he's a very short of well known, skeptical,.

aye, but also a woman meditate Her- and I was praising some book he had written years before it. He said honestly, I don't even feel like I wrote it and that explains to thank music. I don't do that like it was mine american remember going through it, for turning experience was happening at the time. But it was a spy as we age and we get me no further and further away from the person that actually wrote whatever it was changed so much How has your anxiety and depression been during the pandemic chests horrific just awful through the roof had a really intense kind of melt down meltdown in the middle, one of my like the close companions for anxiety for me, is this claustrophobic feeling and starting to feel.

especially if I mean relationship at the time- that's the first stop. I'm like well we're gonna break up I can never be with you. You have to go. We have to move out its This is really bad, I'm being told by the universe you gotta go and most often its act. really, my anxiety is usually attached to some unexpressed desire. Some wish some resentment that's building. something I'm not communicating, and I'm feeling anxious about not wanting to hurt the other person's feelings or not wanting to take up space or not wanting to meet a fill in the blank. But within the context of the pandemic, there were so many elements of it that were out of our control and

such an exercise in surrender to an unknown like entity in every way, shape and form. It was We didn't know how long was was gonna last we didn't know how bad it was gonna get. We didn't know who it was gonna hush in our lives here and then the conversations around raised that began in the middle of the summer and all the discomfort that comes with really reexamined, the systems that we no one in our lives and it's all so deeply important and so uncomfortable and then the politically charged Conversations that were happening and then realizing people that I love don't think the same way. That I do and having to come to terms with that and still struggling with that and where to put those feelings of disappointment and judgment before you talked about yourself care regiment,

in, and we talk about a number of things that you do to help with anxiety and depression. Whatever is going on for you, we talked with their be meditation. Echo rise art. We haven't talked about exercise that that's on your list. Clearly, another thing that I've read that is important to you is activism. Would it be fair to say that using your plan

to speak out on issues you care about is a mitigating factor on anxiety? I get is to a certain degree and I'm actually having a really interesting kind of experience of it in the moment, because I sense that were in a new phase of it, where it almost feels like. Let's take Instagram as an example, it starts to feel that are at least in my bubble. I should say in the community of people that I follow and see the experience them online if you're not talking about activism or you're, not dealing with social justice issues, or there has become this pressure till you're, not saying something at all times about. Whatever issue is in the foreground, then that's an act of violence in a way

I just have felt thoughtful about that recently because it can start to feel like one gets a little bit bullied into engaging, and I just always want to make sure that I'm really I'm trying to is authentic, with my expression, as an activist and as an artist. The person on the earth, as I can be- and I absolutely care about lots of issues, but it is interesting, is just to feel like pressure. Some and I'm not even sure that making sure you post about something is actually the most effective thing to do at its wanting to make sure that the engagement is actually meaningful. So it's just something. I've been thinking about a lot because its space I spend time on fair called a double edged sword. On the one hand, its empowering to have a platform to be able to speak out on issues you care about. On the other hand, you wanted-

sure you're doing it, because you want to do it, not because you feel peer pressured into it by other people whose images slide by you and scroll yeah. I think you know that this sort of them nauseating to talk about cancel culture, but I do think it something to be examined that without any capacity for forgiveness or the space for someone to learn how our you gonna move forward because there's I mean where I have a lot to learn and I find that sometimes I get really crippled with this feeling of being afraid to make a mistake, and so I don't. I end up not saying anything because, I'm so afraid of offending, someone are seeing their own thing or not having the right speech with which to discuss a complicated thing and so like I wanna, be opened. Available to learning and at the same time, no

like we learn by making some mistakes, unfortunately in which is not to say that there should be exhaustion with people being like catch up already. You know, I feel that in myself, with slot of learning let of unlearning all of the other I share all of those anxieties about social me, which is why basically don't go in Instagram yeah. I've thought about it a few times round like. Maybe this actually isn't a healthy. It feels like a place to be social, but I'm not so sure it is. I think I'm I'm just like slowly trying to link Do my own add campaign like out think that's like what I wasn't do, yeah between what you described before the sort of comparing yourself to other people's carefully curated images, and also

feeling like you need to participate in a dialogue, but also fearing that, if you do participate is gonna blow up in your face. A lot of that is really tricky. There is one instagram account, I'm kind of obsessed with so actually log into it via the web. The open of Tony Blair, there is a comedian who does these incredible? Do you know how you do everything animal waste over it ass? It is completely irrelevant, but if anyone is looking for a small way to mitigate whatever sadness, worry. Anything else is going on for you toymakers incredible comedian. Who does these little videos where he voices over animals in a fairy funny voices and my wife, and I will watch it- fur extended periods of time, ancient railings. I asked the good news. Movement is just one of my favorite follows: there's always something light hearted or something it's about good news, and it's so nice

to go on there, and I find that I, when I'm feeling low, I gravitate towards the animal videos and then the Good NEWS movement, where it's just it stuff. That's gonna make you feel that its the best of humanity, much more. My conversation with Sir Barroso run after this, One of my goals this year is to rethink my daily vitamin intake. That's why I'm looking for getting started with ritual Those clean, vague and friendly multivitamin is formulated with high quality nutrients. Your body can actually use plus the mentality. Denzil Laid release, capsule make taking your vitamins a breeze and keeping help It's never been easier. Your So vitamins are delivered to your door every month with free shipping. Always you can start snooze or cancel your subscription anytime and if you don't love ritual within your first month, the refund your first order, the key nutrients without the bs.

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of the season save up to one thousand dollars on fleet number. Three sixty smart beds, plus special financing for a limited time. Only at sleet number stores or sleep number dot, com, flash happier, subjects, credit approval, minimum monthly payments required Cecily number dotcom, slash happier for details, and ass. You about this on armor, which isn't necessarily about anxiety and depression, but it is about an emotion. Many of us experience also speak for myself I experienced and on the regular we talk about anger gap. I wrote armor after coming back from the women's pirates in twenty. Sixteen

I must say, I think that was my first real personal interest in activism and getting my actual physical body involved in some movement or some mode of expression that some motive resistance array arisen. your directory experience for me and it was tremendously powerful, and so oh my best friends and my actual sister and I went to DC and we marched on Washington, and it was you know, a sea of pink cats and it was just otherworldly. There was so beautiful and so powerful and so safe and so calm and so strong and I felt like com Within that songs, you know just sort of deconstructing the idea of what it means to be a woman and

Really. Looking at some of these stories we get told as women from and men I mean everything in between things. We get told such a young age about who we are and what it means to be a fill in the blank, and just recognizing that it's time for a revision and it's time to open up the discussion and actually reclaim what feels good about it. And what doesn't and anger comfortable for me. At all, deeply afraid of confrontation, I'm not good at it. I find that it's usually I have learned to appreciate anger as being an indicator of something's wrong, but I find That is not the most efficient emotion. it's really easy, and this is actually a lot of what I feel like I'm experiencing from the conversation an online, especially, is that people are still stuck in the war.

a pool of anger and there's something beyond that that I think, is actually a more powerful place to work from, but touches me speaking for myself, and I don't mean to discount the value of anger cassettes here for a reason. I think I've heard this in your comments earlier that you have the sense that the culture Even parents are telling girls grown up to women. That anger is not ok for them. I think so. I think it's almost inextricably linked to other parts of it where the people pleasing the nurturer, the one who's sort of oriented out, I think, as as young girls we are oriented towards the group, think we're oriented towards making sure everybody's ok, where the ones given the chores seen up- and it is- I know this- is it over generalization, of course, but there are real differences into how young

boys and young girls are socialized, and I think, there's wild reckoning about that now, which I feel really lucky to be able to see in real life. I worked with the group in LOS Angeles, the Rock and roll camp girls. Us Angeles is run by some of my best friends and they're. All mission statement is to help girls turn up the volume of their voice. Where we get to take up space, we get to have needs and wishes and desires like anybody else, and we don't have to attach them to an appalling Young women have always been a demographic. I'm really passionate about to speak to young women and encourage them to not apologise for being who they are and not apologise for any of the things that we are as people. We know angry frustrated, sad, demanding,

we're having high expectations having lower, fortunately, whatever it is that its we don't have to apologise for being who we are. I was recently told by somebody very smart and anger is a secondary emotion generally covering up for something beneath and I just exploring that my own life there is, I found it to be largely Usually it's fear, yeah. I think that's right. I relate to that too. since me that anger is a mask it so easy to hide behind it too. because it so vulnerable to be afraid. It so dangerous to be afraid, because it feels not that it is, but it feels weak or it feels exposed, and it makes you susceptible the pain and it's just easier to be angry than it is to be hurt. yup easier and a mask. I like those descriptions and

and I think it really rhymes quite nicely with your comments about what we're seeing on social media People just stuck in the anger. Almost four formatively, almost sort of kind of enjoying the anger and often not moving to the more constructive result, reflective stuff. I had an experience that was very clarifying to me. I wrote the musical lyrics for a Broadway musical called waitress, and I was doing a run of the show and there's a particular moment in the shower. I'm thinking that the main song from the show the lead character Jenna his kind of doing her big emotional number called she used to be mine and inside the show you're on a couch, you're sort of towards the front end edge of the stage and there no phones allowed in the theatre, of course, but I could see

phone on the lap of a person in the front row and its dark enough, where you can't really see who it is. Or will you like people kind of feel shrouded by the darkness there, but the metallic nests of your phone is like it's a reflective surface so that the lights on the stage catch is really easy to see. Phones in the space, even if you can't see who's holding it. So I saw this person holding up a phone and it was clear that she was taken it video of the performance- and I was so out of body enraged. Almost up on my lines- almost couldn't remember the words to the song cause. I was so focused on the audacity of this person, and I came stage at the end of the show. I made this really angry. video and I posted in online, and I gave this person what for- and I was just Reno

telling everyone how enraged I was and don't thing, use your cell phones and the theatre, so much positive reinforcement for being angry. I got so many comments so many yeah we're with you. You know all this, but something about what I was receiving didn't not feel good. like. I was getting a pat on the back for something I actually. If I had let myself calm down a little bit, I would not have been proud of. Then I got a message from what ended up being a young girl sister, who is like that was my little sister who took the video and she so embarrassed she's tribunal. Is she sighed for so sorry, please forgive us. What can we do, and I felt about here now- yea high say why even possess

Me to act out like that. I mean I don't love a cell phone in the theater. I do feel that way, but what a base reaction, what a gross outpouring ugliness and then to know that it landed on a little twelve year old girl who I am marching about, is just a deep embarrassment. I wrote them back several times and like tried to check on her and stuff, and I deepest regret about, sharing that, but I also got so much positive feedback for being angry and I was like this is poison. This is not

something I would do again. So that's why I dont get past and social media. I just don't find that it feeds the right wolf, our giving positive feedback for seeing that its huge and it probably in the end, a good thing that happened, because you saw something really important isles want to give you positive feedback for saying it publicly. folder here well, it wasn't killed, not not charming yeah, but I think that the stuff that is most useful is rarely q yeah, that's true, which leads me to the final serious question. I will ask you, which is: why do this? You don't have to be honest about your interior life. Outside of your songs. You don't have to talk about anxiety and depression. I'm glad you do, but why? Why do you do it? I think mostly because I just don't want

We want to feel alone because this true, it's not true. That you're, the only one in pain or vulnerability or embarrassment, and I think that ultimately, I just for people to be ok couple years ago interviewed a band called culture abuse. There are the interpretation, but I would just I really liked there. Their mood, I really love their music and I really liked at their front man she's disabled, and I love that he, you don't get so open of its hard to get up on stage in front a punk band with a disability, and I just loved the combination of his skill in his courage and after the interviewee posted a picture of me on Twitter. He said

this guy just want everybody to be ok with themselves or something to that, and I never really thought about myself that way, and I have tried to live up to that caption for years. That's the coolest thing after link with a deep kindness to offer. Well, I say it because you are offering their kindness and I have a lot of respect for, and I am very grateful to you for doing it. I think it's really important package. Thank you. is there anything. I should have asked that I didn't ask any areas that we could have explored that I kind of failed to guide us too. I don't think so. I found this to be thoroughly enjoyable and they say genuinely. I've been looking forward to this so much. I really admire the conversations you're having so thank you for letting me be one of them. Thank you for being one of them. I was looking forward to a to end. Thank you again, really the preciate it again. You too,

Sarah really enjoy that conversation and thanks, of course, everybody who makes the show Samuel Jobs, Gabriel's Ackerman, DJ, cashmere, Justine, Davy came by Comma Maria were tell and Jan plant, and we get our audio engineering from the. folks over it. Ultraviolet audio we'll see, while on Wednesday, for a re run of one of our most popular episodes ever how to break your anxiety habit with Jetson Brewer Doktor Jed Brewer, that's coming up on one hi. My name is rough farmer therapies and I am at ten percent happier user and I was a guess on the twenty percent happier protest. I'm excited to listen to twenty percent happier beakers listening to our people work through things with, coach will help me normalize my own struggles on my own difficulties with my meditation journey. So when I first met Matthew was exciting. He did it

Ray job making space I felt like I could be I kept to him and he actually coming moved a little intimidation journey Acting with immigration issue was exciting and it was empowering. I ask all my clients to download the ten percent happier. I would definitely recommend the twenty percent happier broadcast to all my clients and you can find it on the temperate and happier stand Harris as we all know. Sadly, there are a lot of reasons to be anxious if you look out at the world right now before starting to, urge a little bit from our covered imposed. Cocoon good news, though, is that we have a whole meditation course designed to address these feelings over on the ten percent happier app called team,

Anxiety when you take the court should get videos everyday, featuring renowned, meditation teacher, Leslie, Booker and Harvard psychologist Doktor Luanda Marquez and after each video you'll get a powerful guided meditation that allows you to practise what you ve just learned. If you take charge anxiety with a ten percent. Have Europe available in your appstore.