Vanessa Bennett - Host of Cheaper Than Therapy & It's Not Me, It's You

Welcome to the Puck Venture Capital and Beyond, a show that examines the changing landscape of our world. We'll have candid conversations with VCs, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders grappling with our current challenges and providing solutions to key problems we face as a nation. I'm Jim Beer, president of CMBG Advisors. This podcast brings change makers to the table to discover the inner workings behind their decision making strategies and ultimately to how they got to where they are today. A spirit informed life is always going to be the life that's the most fulfilling and the most connected to others and the most integrated and the most, you know, nobody's a winner, nobody's a loser.

And, again, I I don't wanna say that you can't be successful and not be spiritual, but it this idea of, like, one up. I gotta be on top, and in order for me to be on top, others have to be at the bottom. So do I believe that spirituality and psychology are joined? Yeah. A 100%.

I'm here with Vanessa Bennett, an author, holistic psychotherapist, clinical entrepreneur, and mental health content creator. She co hosts the Cheaper Than Therapy podcast with Denae Selkin and the It's Not Me, It's You podcast series with her partner, John Kim. She also leads soul based retreats and workshops. She and John have a new book out, It's Not Me, It's You, and I urge all of you to check it out. So Vanessa, welcome to the Puck.

Let's jump right in. Let's start with something I recently found interesting. You describe yourself as a clinical entrepreneur. What does that mean? Yeah.

I kinda stole that from somebody else recently. Not even that long ago, less than six months, I saw somebody who I kinda respect in in the field talking about themselves in that way. And I was like, oh, that's such a good way to describe what it is that I do, you know, my partner John does, my best friend and colleague today does. You know, we're this kind of, I guess I would say new, like this new version of therapist, right, the people who are putting it out there, social media, especially since the pandemic. Right?

Social media and online work for therapy has become huge. I mean, it's such a great way to find resources. And, I mean, listen, I have a love hate relationship with it. I could go there, but it's such a good way to get resources. It's such a good way to find people or have access to people that you otherwise would never have had access to or some of the information that you wouldn't have.

So this idea of being a clinical entrepreneur, one part is like utilizing the kind of online social media presence and platform that we have access to now but then turning that into an actual business. Right? So if it weren't for social media, I wouldn't really have the private practice that I have. I wouldn't really have, you know, the book deal that I have. I wouldn't have some of the retreats and the online courses and all of these things that I do mostly through my online work.

And so this idea of being an entrepreneur, I mean, I am. I'm a business owner. I you know, I'm my own boss and clinical, obviously, within therapy. So it just made sense to me to kinda combine that together. So can you tell our listeners, like, in terms of how you built up the business, was it primarily through social media or was it organic?

What was the step one for you to get there? It was definitely mostly through social media. Step one, I mean, to be honest, I'll give my partner, John, a lot of that credit. When I met him, I was still in grad school. So I came from corporate.

I was in advertising as a producer, creative producer for many years in New York, and I made the transition and made the career jump. It kinda upended and changed my entire life in my early thirties. And I was still in grad school when I met him, and he had already been doing the online coaching thing, you know, for ten plus years. I mean, he was doing it when dial up was still a thing way before the board would have thought it was okay. Right?

Like, he was kind of skirting the edges of, like, the ethical stuff, you know, back in the day. And so when I met him, he was very much like, no. You've got to take these risks. Utilize these skills. Like, you need to put yourself out there.

Do this. Do that. Not in like a pushy way, but in more of like a he believed in me and was really, like, already fed up with a lot of the restrictions that the boards, the state boards can kind of put on therapists and the access that people have to therapy and therapists. So, yeah, I give him a lot of credit because it was not just me. I mean, a lot of my friends too were looking to him being like, well, how do we do that?

How do I put myself out there? I think he should just do a course on that. Well, speaking of course on that, with all these different things going on and with you having kinda made it, how do you juggle and balance all of it? Yeah. I mean, not too much in the fact that I have a two and a half year old.

Right? I don't know. Do I? Do I balance it all? Do I juggle it all?

Some days I wonder. There is something to be said for coming from the corporate world first. Right. I will say as much as I knew towards the end that it's not what I wanted to do, it did give me a lot of skills. I mean, I grew up in the corporate world.

I started it right out of college. And so a lot of the structure and the business minded approaches that I have now in my own work really came from my corporate world. I went through the ladder. You know, I started out as a coordinator. I was kind of a director of a huge team of people by the time I left, and so a lot of that came through that upbringing.

So I'm actually more interested to see some of these, like, Gen Z people who are actually just not even starting that way. They're just going right out into the entrepreneurial world. I find them fascinating because I leaned so heavily on what I learned growing up, you know, in corporate that they just seem to have this, like, innate knowledge of, and it's kinda fascinating to me. It's a different world, and I think from an earlier age, they're exposed to these things. And Mhmm.

You know, when I was growing up, it was a really new thing. And speaking of that, when I grew up, when we thought of therapy, it really was kind of talk therapy and whether or not it was the notion that came originally with Freud where you would lay on a couch and just Right. Talk and they wouldn't say anything other than uh-huh, so forth. You've got these two podcasts cheaper than therapy and it's not me, it's you. Mhmm.

Presumably on those podcasts, right, you're doing the talking a lot of the time. It's not like patients are getting that talk therapy approach. How does that fit in from your perspective? Yeah. I mean, I think one of the beautiful things that social media well, again, there's always, like, kind of a shadow side to everything, but one of the beautiful things that social media has allowed therapists to do is kind of show themselves.

Not everybody, but a lot of us have really gone this way of humanizing ourselves. And I think that that is actually one of the things that I push the hardest for and I believe the most in that many old school therapists do not, which is I do not believe in Freud's approach, which is like, you know, the blank slate. You show nothing. You are kind of just there as a mirror. I really believe that we are on the precipice or really starting to shift our understanding of what healing means and what healing looks like.

Right. And I think this idea of the expert, the person who sits and is a blank slate and doesn't show any of their humanity, is a very patriarchal way of looking at healing. It's a very western hyper individualistic, I'm the expert, you know, you're the student way and that that's not how people heal. People heal in groups. They heal in relationship.

Right? There is something to be said about knowing a little bit of your story and being able to connect with your humanness that actually leads to such deeper healing for people and so I think that myself and John and my girlfriend who I do the podcast with, we're just really on the forefront of it, and it's kind of a flag that we wave. So that ties in with something I wanted to discuss with you that, you know, this whole notion of putting people on a pedestal and seeing them as an expert Mhmm. And kind of this notion that you talk about, which is seeing your therapist as regular people and not having all of their quote stuff together. Do we live in a world right now where we're putting people on a pedestal and then we dethrone them because no one can live up to that expectation?

And how does that model fit into what you're doing when you're trying to bring down the fact that therapists are just people? Yeah. I think that's a a really good point, Jim. I mean, I think in general, and I think this is kind of a very specific moment in time. And, actually, as I say that maybe not because I think the idea of even, like, royals has been around for a long time.

We really love to put the ownership of self outside of self. So I think it's pretty I don't I don't wanna say human nature, but at least a western, more new ish as far as, like, our footprint here, you know, on this earth of really taking that parental approach and putting it on somebody else. Right? So kings or presidents or somebody who is the expert should tell me what to believe, how to act, what to think, the church, for example. Right?

Any of these external ways of telling me what it means to be a good person. Again, that actually tends to be a very patriarchal way of looking at it. There's an expert outside of self. And I think if we really do this work or understanding around what does it mean for me to be the expert on myself, Again, connecting with somebody who is very clear about their humanity, very clear about I'm not an expert in your life. I'm barely an expert in my own life.

Right? But I will be here with you. I will walk this path with you. I will help hold the flashlight, but I'm not gonna actually turn the light switch on. That is a scarier way of doing the work.

That is a scarier way of actually going kind of on this path of individuation that we all walk on, but it is a lot more fulfilling, and it actually leads to greater change and greater self understanding. So I take that ownership off of somebody outside, and I actually put it inside. And I think that the only way to really do that as a therapist is to humanize yourself, is to say, I'm not the expert. And that's hard. That's hard for a lot of egos out there to do.

There's a lot to unpack there. I mean, you reference kind of this focus on royalty, for instance. And it's funny because I watched the first episode of season five of The Crown last night. Yeah. As I was watching, I was thinking to myself, people get something out of this.

This notion of watching, again, whether or not it was Princess die or watching the Queen. Or the Kardashians. Exactly. That's our version of it. Right?

Right. So it begs the question because again, whether or not, and I I used to actually argue with my mother about this because she would talk about an attachment therapy that essentially, you know, you had your attachment figure. And I used to argue with her that, you know, whether or not it was AA or it was Christianity or Judaism otherwise, there was this notion of turning your life over to something bigger than yourself. Kind of this Yeah. Infinite Yeah.

Thing out there because we are existentially alone at the end of the day. They say everybody has a God of some kind, right? Whatever it is. Yes. Whether that's your therapist, whether or not it's your husband or your wife.

But how do we fulfill that human need for something holy or to look up to and candidly not have it necessarily be things that are not what I would call holy and elevating? How do we find that place in our lives? I I mean, listen, we could go real existential on this, and I could get a little bit on a soapbox, but I really think you'll start to see when that shift started happening was when we started taking spirit and soul and spirituality out of nature and self and started putting it out onto something or someone else. Right? When you look at more of, like, the indigenous people and how they viewed religion, right, some native populations, it really is a connection to everything around you.

There is no one individual person that holds all of the answers, right? And when you start to look at how Western religion and when Christianity and, you know, Judaism really started to spread and you have this vision when you close your eyes of this kind of Zeus like figure sitting on a cloud deciding you're bad, you're good, and this is where you go because of that. A lot of that transition is when we started to see people taking that and putting it outside of self. There is this being, this all knowing being, and I'm putting them in air quotes, that knows better than I do. And a lot of the more Eastern religions, traditions don't view spirituality like that.

Right? More pagan ways of looking at it don't view spirituality like that. Buddhism does not view it like that. Right? God is you.

You are God. You are a cup or a bucket of water in the entire ocean. One bucket, one cup. And when we start to connect to more of that side of spirituality, which by the way, early Christianity, I mean, really what Jesus of Nazareth was talking about was very similar. It's not really Jesus that talked about he didn't even like churches.

I mean I've read things that he has said that he didn't like people going into churches. He wanted people to be outside in nature. So it's not that Jesus of Nazareth of this stuff, it's the people that came after him that started saying this stuff. And when we get back to a place of connecting to something bigger than ourselves but not looking at it as something outside of me that is, like, punitive and is saying you're good, you're bad, which leads to shame, which leads to a lifetime of trying to kind of make up for that shame, right, That is the kind of spirituality that I'm interested in for kind of self development. Right?

That is the kind of spirituality that I've seen people lean into, and it has changed their entire world. The amount of self love and compassion for others that they then find in that approach, I don't even have words to explain. Yeah. I think we're living in this very interesting time where kind of what I would call the heavens have opened up and people's consciousness is raising. You go back to what you said about early Christianity.

It's fascinating to me, I'm reading a biography about Lincoln right now and his notion of the divine and the Jewish notion of the divine and the Christian notion of the divine. I really don't see them being different than the Buddhist notion of the divine. Meaning, hero is the Lord God, the Lord is one. God is out here, but you are connected to God. Well then, my God, the Trinity.

Man has wrestled with using finite terms to define the infinite. Yes. And it takes a certain level of consciousness, and getting out of the left brain, which is rational and tying into the intuitive part of the brain, the right brain, to understand that there is this kind of connectedness that is inconsistent with rationality because it's not a linear way of looking at the world. And I think what people like you are doing and what this generation coming up is doing is they're starting to live in paradox, which is a really higher, hard thing to do. Yeah.

And I think what you're speaking to is a larger societal thing. Right? I think this idea of spirit and spirituality is just one leg of a many leg table. You know, my background's in-depth psychology. So I went to a Jungian school, and Jung really truly believed that you could not have healing without a connection to spirit, without a connection something larger.

Right? And he integrated religion and spirituality into everything he did. He also was a huge proponent of astrology. He also was a huge proponent of Buddhism. Right?

Like, he really respected it. And so Right. For him it wasn't and even though he was raised by a pastor or father or by minister or father, it wasn't necessarily just the Christian way of being. It was like just spirit in general and what that meant to you. And so, again, I hate to say this word for probably the tenth time already, but I think what we're seeing in this age of Aquarius, you know, not to get too woo woo, but I mean, we really are starting to respect more of these.

It's not even necessarily just the feminine principles, it's more of the integration of the feminine and the masculine. And we in Western times have gotten so into this wounded masculine, patriarchal way of looking at everything. Spirituality, money, sex and relationships, child rearing, all the things, the way we look at the earth, right, and we're feeling the effects, the negative effects, right, and so there is a generation of people coming up that are saying no I'm done with this this isn't the way that we heal Whether it's me healing myself, right, through therapy or whether it's me healing the world or whether it's me healing my relationship with my family or my like this is just not how healing works and this is why we're all sick and lonely. Right? This is such a big conversation, and I love that you're bringing to your listeners because it's empowering, I think.

In regards to let me ask you a question that I think about a lot. You use the word paternalism a lot, and I couldn't agree with you more that since the women only got the vote in, what, 1920, the world has really, really taken a while to realize the quote power of women, so to speak. But now we're also going through a movement where people are kind of saying that on one level, we're not men and women. Right? There's this whole thing.

To me, and I like this notion that we're different and that the feminine and the masculine, we both have those energies. They're energies. Yep. But there are differences. How do you make sense of all that in a world right now that's obviously struggling to understand these things?

Yeah. I think also you kinda nailed it. It's important to understand that when we say masculine and feminine, we're talking energetics and that every being has these energetics, and they are not related to sex and gender. So they're, like, kind of two different conversations. Recently, John and I were on a podcast and the guy that was leading the podcast, it was kind of more of like a business podcast, more finance related.

And so he started asking this question of like, well, you know, I just feel bad for the younger generation because, you know, this idea of like being fluid and like, am I bisexual? Am I not? And he just started going off and he said, it just feels so confusing. Like, I feel kind of bad for them. And I could feel myself kind of getting a little, like, activated by, like, where he was going with this conversation.

And before I could even say anything, John actually so calmly just said, well, is it confusing or is it actually the first time in history that people are being able to be who they are? Like, being able to just say, like, this is me and I don't have to fit into this very binary limited way of being as a human. It, like, turned me on that he said it. I was like, oh, it's so hot when you talk about it because it's so true. Like, we have just as humans, we want things to make sense.

We want them to be in a box. We want there to be black and white answers. Right? We wanna know the unpredictable, and that is just not life. Right.

And so when we step back and we're able to say across the board, right, doesn't matter what we're talking about, again gender, spirituality, whatever. If we say you said the word paradox, what else could be true? Why am I clinging so hard to something needing to be right or someone needing to be right and something or someone needing to be wrong? What is that? Where is the fear in that?

And we start to do some more of that self examination. Oh, does that open a whole lot of doors for healing? But paradox, being able to hold the tension of the opposites, being able to hold even internally on an emotional level, like, two opposing seemingly opposing emotions can both exist at once. Right? When we get to a place where we're better equipped or comfortable in that, there's a lot of growth in that.

Before we shift, which I wanna do and I wanna ask you about your new book, when you're talking to people and you're out there seeing things, do you think with all these changes that are afoot, and even as you said it, people are able to actually be themselves for the first time. Do you think for people that are more conservative and that don't like change as much, that it feels anxious for people and that it's going too fast? And if so, then my next question is, how do we help people integrate and understand all these things that are changing in a way that appear pretty rapid? I think that's fair. I think it can seem maybe like it's happening really fast.

I would argue that the onset of all of these shenanigans probably happened pretty fast as well. Because, again, I mean, you can really trace it back to the Catholic church and exactly when things started to shift. I was just listening to a book right before I got on with you that was talking about the change in parenting approaches, and one of the things they were talking about is the Catholic church and how they started to, outlaw or ban marriages within clans for the sake of property, like gaining property from these clans who broke the rules. So I would argue that on the flip side, even though we weren't there when it happened, the onset of some of this stuff probably happened pretty quickly too. And so that's fair, and humans are really good at being durable.

Listen, we're not good with change, but we're pretty okay. You know, we come out on the other side usually pretty good. I continue to challenge people that are struggling to turn it inward. Right. Again, going back to that fear.

What is the fear in allowing somebody to show up in their fullest self, right, in their fullest expression of self? What is the fear there? Are you maybe in some way, is it turning a mirror around on you where you're, you know, let's say in your fifties or sixties or later and you realize you never got to live a life of your fullest expression? Maybe there's some anger there. Maybe there's some rage.

Maybe there's some resentment. Right? But, ultimately, anything that you're putting outward, if you could turn that around and examine the self with, ultimately, that's the only way we're gonna get to a more compassionate, open expression of humanity. Right now, we're so finger pointy. We're so quick to say it's their fault.

Right? Oh, it's the gay's fault that traditional marriage values are breaking or it's the you know? And it's like, no. No. Again, turn the finger around.

Look in the mirror. What can we own? Right? I mean, this is very 12 step stuff. It's like, what's your 100%?

Right. Anytime you're projecting it outward, there's an opportunity to look inward. I think right now it's all fear. I mean, it's all fear. I'm terrified that these changes are going to uproot or upend what makes me comfortable.

You know I mean listen we could talk privilege as well, right? What is gonna take potentially take away the privilege that I've enjoyed And that's scary. I don't wanna share my pie, you know, because if I share the pie, is there less for me? Again, me, me, what's going on for you internally? What is that fear?

And so I would say whether conservative or not, because I would say even on the more, I guess, we could say progressive or liberal side, I tend to say if you're falling on either side of the extreme, you're really just a mirror of each other. You know, I live in California. I've had conversations with many people out here that are pretty hardcore progressives. And I've said, you you know, it's funny. The harder you lean into that, the more you actually sound like the side that you are talking shit about.

Yeah. You talk about the positive of social media where you've been able to get your message out there and really bring people in. Mhmm. But it's also become this kind of little bit of a free for all where people can lie and exaggerate and tweet. Say anything.

Right. Yeah. I've recently heard some statistics on different things that were put out there. And people will say, you know, the world's coming in because of x, y, and z. And the reality is, you know, we got 300,000,000 people in this country and they're talking about 10 people or something.

And so I think part of this fear that's going on may be being exaggerated by the fact that 20 fourseven now, we're on our phones and we're being fed things that are purposely trying to get us angry and afraid to make money for these Yes. Social media companies. And, you know, I'm hoping that we get to a point where we actually push back and realize that they're like public utilities and that they do need to play by the rules because they are really having an impact on our mental health. But why would they play by the rules if there are a lot of people that are super powerful that are all benefiting from them not playing by the rules? Right?

Because it's not just people that are leading the social media apps that are benefiting. Right? The politicians are benefiting. The lobbyists are benefiting. And so the people who have the power are the ones that are benefiting.

They're gonna keep us stuck in a place of fear and a place of othering as much as they possibly can because if they can keep us distracted, then they can continue to take advantage and reap the benefits of all of us running around pointing at each other thinking, oh, it's my gay neighbor that's the issue, when it's like, no, actually, that's not the issue. The issue is the people that are making you believe that it's your gay neighbor, and they're doing that on purpose, by the way. They are controlling what you think on purpose. I couldn't agree more. By the way, it's really refreshing.

I just wanna say it's really refreshing to have this conversation. I have a lot of spiritual conversations, and I just wanna put that out there. It's really refreshing to have a conversation like this. When I started the puck, it was where's the world going from the eyes of technology? But then about a year ago, year and a half ago, we shifted to start bringing thought leaders on like yourself because where's the world going from the perspective of the puck?

A lot of it was not going in a great direction. So the issue is, well, how do we get it back on track? Yeah. And one of my earlier interviews was with a woman that co wrote the Upswing and how we went from essentially being I oriented back to we oriented and how can we do it again. Part of my passion is trying to help people realize that, yes, the pendulum does swing and we get to the point where whether or not it's monopolies or elites or otherwise, where power gets concentrated, and then ultimately, you then have to get back to a more balanced approach, which is, candidly, the backbone of America, which was this large middle class.

And how do we, whether or not it's from the left or the right, how do we appeal to that mass middle Mhmm. And really start taking back our power so that we are not having these things purposely done to us Yes. But we're not victims anymore, but we're actually in the arena taking back our own lives and country. Listen, you would think that the let them eat cake, I mean, you would think we would have learned our lesson by now or the elites would learn their lesson. It doesn't work forever.

At some point, the people rise up and say, oh, we'll show you let them eat cake. Right? And we've seen it time and time and time again. I mean, at some point, people get really sick of being pushed down, pushed down, not enough money to even put food on the table, all those things, but eventually there's uprisings. And so I'm hoping for the swing.

I'm ready for it. I'm ready for the pendulum to start to shift back. I'm hoping it doesn't swing too far, which is usually a pretty human MO. I'm hoping that it does kind of find its way more middle. We're in a real time of upheaval right now, but I also look at it as a very exciting time to be alive because I think a lot of this shit is crumbling and it's so overdue.

And I'm here for it. I'm here for these hard conversations. Right? I mean, I'm trained to have these hard conversations. Like, let's go there.

And, God, what could be on the other side of the dismantling, of the crumbling? That's exciting. Yeah. I don't look at it with fear. I look at it with like, this is awesome.

I'm here for it. Yeah. I agree. And, you know, the boomers are starting to age out. These generations that are coming up are extremely bright.

They have been taught to think in a different way, in a more critical way, therapy, feelings, all this other stuff. And to me, what I find exciting and hopeful is actually partnering with that generation Yeah. And essentially saying, look, we're happy to turn over the mantle of control to the next generation, but let's do it in a balanced kind of way. People are holding on to power too long. Agreed.

We really need to bring the younger generation along and share the spoils that we've all benefited from. And I am hopeful that we will get there, but it's because of people like you that are out there helping teach people how to talk and to shake things up and to recognize that, you know, we aren't victims. We really do have the ability to have these difficult conversations. Mhmm. Let's shift speaking about that.

Let's talk about the book, It's Not Me, It's You. And what was the impetus for writing it and how's that going? It's great. I mean, my partner had written a few books prior to this one. And so when he wanted to write a relationship book specifically, he came to me and thought you know, said, like, what would you think about doing this together?

We've always been pretty out there and pretty vulnerable and candid about our own relationship. And, again, like, as therapists in this new age of social media, we see it as a strength, you know, to talk about the things that we struggle with. And we've gotten a lot of people to really connect with us and and get on board with some of these changes just based on us being candid. And so I'm not gonna lie and say it wasn't a bit of a struggle. It wasn't the process of writing that was a struggle.

It was more of a continued, it's still happening, needing to prove myself as not just like the little woman behind the man as an equal, both licensed therapists, both coauthors. Right? It's been a battle up until, again, literally just happened a couple days ago on a media outlet where only his name was on the screen. Wow. And they asked us both to be on it.

Right? And the producer was a woman. I'm just sitting here going, hon, people, are we still having these conversations? You know? But I think that maybe that's part of the work.

I'm here to kind of be like, okay. What is this continually teaching me? And also, like, maybe this is a platform that I need to constantly be talking about. Otherwise, it wouldn't be presented to me continually in this way. But the book, really, the impetus was us saying, we're not perfect.

We don't have it all together. Here's what we know, our knowledge and our training and our expertise and how we overlay it onto our very normal struggles as a couple, you know, attempting to be having this small family dynamic. You know, it's just the two of us with a kiddo. And we're also not married, so there's a little bit of, like, we're a little unique in that. What does that look like?

People are curious. And I always say it's like the top 10 problems that we hear with our clients. I mean, these are the same problems that people are bringing to us. Like, we're not that special. We're not that unique in the struggles we face as people in intimate relationships.

And And I think that's an important takeaway too. You know, you're in not in this alone. We're in this too. And here's how we worked through it and here's some of the tools that we use. What's been helpful for us?

So we actually just did a couple's retreat this last weekend and came out of it and it was so amazing. It was kind of on the content of the book and 10 couples just really invested in doing the work and growing and owning their shit and doing their part. And it was really enlivening and kinda gives me hope, to say the least. You mentioned that you're not married, and there's this whole, you know, movement in terms of is we're talking about the traditional family movement and values and all this other stuff. Do you get asked that question often which is, you know, why don't you get married and what your view is about marriage and if you feel comfortable sharing that?

Yeah. A lot of them just assume. So we don't get asked actually because most people, I would say most, assume that we are married. So they usually just introduce us as husband and wife. And we don't correct them.

I mean, I'm not on a soapbox about it. I whatever. People can believe whatever they want. Right. It's funny how often we get asked the question only because there's just an assumption.

The only person I would say that asked us in a way that felt challenging, maybe even a little confronting, we did an interview recently with Maria Shriver. Note to self, by the way, when you go into a conversation with somebody who's actually like a hardcore journalist, be a little bit more prepared because I was like, oh, shit. She really knows how to ask the hard questions because it's what she does, you know. And she asked us in the term the way that she asked us. She said, so what are you gonna tell your daughter when she's about seven and she comes to you and says, why aren't you married?

And I was like, no one's ever asked us that question before. And I mean, my response was kind of like, I don't know that she will. I actually think well, first of all, again, we're in kind of an LA bubble here. Most people aren't having kids until they're in their forties. A lot of people aren't doing the traditional, you know, air quotes again path.

But she was pretty insistent that she would. Like, she'll ask you at some point, you know, what is that and why? My answer really is just like, I think we're just really open. We're even open with our kid, I mean, in, you know, an age appropriate way. What does that mean?

What is our dynamic? What does our family look like? You know? And why? Why did we choose this?

And just answering those questions in more dialogue versus waiting until she asks the question. I don't foresee her asking it. So we didn't really make a hardcore no. I mean, we might get married. I don't know.

We just didn't feel like it was kind of the end all be all to creating a life that we wanted. He has been married before and divorced. I was engaged prior and broke that off. So we both even, like, had our own experiences with it, and we just kinda were like, maybe not right now. That might not be for us, you know.

Totally get it. In terms of all these different things you're doing, tell us a little bit about kind of your growing up and your background and how that has led to your corporate life in New York. You know, what did you learn from that and how does that influence how you look at the world today? It's a big question. So I'm from the Northeast.

I'm from New York. I grew up single mom, you know, really struggling financially for a long time. She was young when she had me. I I say New York only because I do believe, and I've realized it more and more now that I'm with somebody who's from California, that there is a true cultural difference Right. Depending on where you're at in this country.

You know? And the Northeast definitely has a bit of this, like, it's cold, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, survival mentality, you know, no whining kind of approach to life. And I was raised in a family like that, and I think I have a really strong work ethic because of it. I think I went into the corporate grind. It didn't break me down, I think, in a lot of ways because I was already kind of living that life.

But I didn't question, I think, until I hit about 25 and I started doing my own therapy and started questioning, like, why am I so miserable? Why am I so stressed out? Why am I so angry all the time? These bigger questions. I just kinda thought this is just what it was.

This is just what you did. You worked hard. You grinded. You struggled. You know, life was hard.

All of these passed down beliefs, I think, from family and from where I grew up. And when I started questioning it, I just started being like, oh, I don't actually subscribe to that. Subscribe to that. I don't actually believe any of that and I don't think I have to live with that hanging over my head anymore. And so I started making a lot of changes that really went against a lot of those beliefs.

You know, it's I think it's affected maybe in some ways my mom and my relationship because there have been comments that have been made about, like, oh, yeah, ever since she got all zen ed out, you know, and things like this that she'll say where I really just wish I could say to her, like, you can choose to not be so stressed. You can choose to not be so angry. You can choose to not, you know, but you gotta do the work around it. And so I think it impacted me because it really gave me this drive. I think it pushed me ultimately into the career that I was originally.

But in saying that, I think that almost pushing against that has been why and where I am now. So I'm grateful for it because without that tension, I don't know that I would be where I'm at now. But it's also just in me. I mean, I'm a New Yorker. I'm blunt.

I'm a little harsh. You know. And that doesn't go away just because I'm a therapist or I live in Los Angeles now. So Well, it does. And again, you know, we have an exterior and then we also have an interior.

And you talk about how you present. But to me, I had an interesting discussion yesterday with a young person. They were talking about their anxiety, and they were talking about looking at the world today and the uncertainty and so forth, and looking around for role models and so forth. And I I had this very simple way of explaining this where I said, look, you know, at 30, I kinda felt like I knew everything. I was on top of the world.

I kinda blew a lot of it up at 40, and I realized I developed some humility, and I kinda looked to my left and I looked from my right to see who are the adults in the corporate world that really are happy. Because, you know, you can work sixty hours a week and you can be a workaholic and you can end up at 65 and go, oh my god, my life's gone, my kids don't talk to me, you know, I'm on my third marriage, whatever it is. Mhmm. And, you know, on some level it worked because you just kept going. Right?

You you never got off the freeway. I feel blessed that at 40, I kinda woke up and got off the freeway and I looked around and I started reading and asking that question which is, how do you become happy? Yeah. What is the secret? And to me, that's the discussion, which is we're in an aquarium.

We're in this box. Right? And how many of us wake up and realize, oh, my God. There are paradigms that can be challenged, and there are ways of developing our brains and becoming more balanced. And that again, you seem like somebody that is a seeker, and do you think that was always part of you or why are you the way you are?

Do you have any idea? I do think. I I think it's always been part of me. I mean, I'll credit my mom with instilling a lot of that curiosity and a lot of that drive to understand and to know people that are different than me and to ask questions. You know, I think she had me young and I think her life ultimately had to change because then she had to be responsible for a kid, you know, making sure there was food on the table.

And I think in a lot of ways that I see a lot of anger, not outward anger. It's not like she's angry, but a lot of anger, I think, in that. And I think from a very young age, I look to her as this is what I don't want. And again, I respect her so much and she's done so much and and there's a lot about her that I'm actually very grateful that I completely embody. And also I knew from a very young age that I did not want this life.

You know, I I knew I had to get out of my hometown. Like, I'm from a smaller town upstate in New York and I had to get out. I never looked back. I mean, it was like I hit the ground running at 18. The second I could leave, I did.

I always wanted to be in bigger cities, more diverse cities. I wanted to be surrounded by people who were different than me and thought different than me and made me ask questions. And there has to be something innate in that because not everybody does that. And also I think it's like a feeding. The more you understand and the more curious you are, the more curious you become.

You know, that idea of being a seeker, I mean, it's not I don't think it's even possible to satiate that in me. I'm constantly wanting to understand and learn and grow in that way. And so I do believe there's something to be said about this, like, equation of if you feed it, it will keep growing. And I think for a lot of us, we don't ever feed it. You know, our society actually tells us that we shouldn't.

Our society really wants us to kind of stay in a box of, like, buying the latest clothes and telling us that that's what will make us happy, the things, the shiny stuff. And they do that, you know, again, the people that kind of pull the strings up on top, they do that because they don't want us to seek. They don't want us to question. They don't want us to kind of question the matrix, if you will. I think from a very early age, I always did.

So for people in the corporate world that are working really hard and, you know, when you say to them, well, you should try therapy or you should try meditation or you should try this or try that, and they're, oh, but I'm too busy or that's not for me. And how do you think you encourage people to take that step? Yeah. I think for the younger generation, there's no issue with this because I think they've just this vernacular has been part of their, you know, lexicon their whole lives, and so they're very open and embracing for the most part. But I think the older people, you know, the Gen x I'm what they call an aging millennial, which is a really fun term, by the way, an elder millennial, I've been called.

But I think for the elder millennials up until, you know, into the boomer generation, I think sometimes it's a little bit of, like, a remarketing. It's like a marketing campaign thing. Like, we gotta think about the messaging. We gotta think about the strategy here, the long term strategy. And some of the messaging, I think, turns people off.

And I'm much more in the mindset of rather than kind of cram it down their throat, maybe we look at the messaging and we see where we can change it. So I've had conversations with some older people where I take the word meditation out of it, and we talk about it in terms of praying. It's the same thing. It's just the messaging. It's just the word that we use.

Right. And so if we can think about maybe ways to bring these ideas to people in the language that they're used to hearing it in, it tends to be almost like a Trojan horse. Right? You get in, you start to actually felt sense, start to experience the changes and the shifts and the ability to tap into joy and the ability to prioritize yourself. Right?

Oh, I'm too busy. Okay. Well, that's your choice. You're making that choice. I'm offering that we maybe explore what your day to day looks like and see if we can carve out some time.

Why? If you start to talk about the why, well, it's not just for your happiness. It's for your children's happiness. It's for your relationship happiness. Right?

And we start to expand this bubble, I suppose, that people look at self help in, this idea of it being selfish. Once we start to kinda push against that, we give them some new language. People are a lot more open to it. That's what I have found. And I agree.

That makes total sense. People are open to it. But when you talk about unlocking that joy, for instance, I remember years ago when I was in one of my early yoga classes, you'd see these big weight lifters all of a sudden burst out into tears because they were tapping into other emotions that were there. Yeah. And I think that's scary for people.

How do you prepare people for the fact that they're going into this unknown and you wanna sell them on the idea that this is gonna be really transformative and you're gonna experience this joy. And then all of a sudden, all these other feelings start coming up as well, and I think that scares people. And how do you deal with that? Yeah. That's fair.

Usually, in my intake sessions, I flat out say, this is gonna get worse before it gets better. Right. It's gonna get harder before it gets easier. Like, that is just the nature of this stuff. I also think it's about baby steps.

Like, another thing that I usually say in my intakes with my individual clients is I look at our lives as, like, these very overpacked suitcases. And if I reach into the bottom of that suitcase and I pull out the sock that's on the bottom, that whole suitcase is going to explode. I'm not interested in that because my strategy is not to then pick up all the pieces and try to contain the suitcase. Like, that's not beneficial for anybody. I think we also need to look at it as, like, we're gonna slowly unpack the suitcase from the top down.

But a lot of people going into it feel very overwhelmed by what you're saying. Like, there's a danger in that. And I do think there's a danger in that. And I do think people like me, you know, those who have been kind of trained to be these guides, if you will, need to be a little bit more responsible with how deep into the suitcase we reach and give people kind of the tools, the container necessary to process things as they come up. You know, it's this idea of like meeting people where they're at, which is a little bit of a danger of social media.

You know, now everybody's talking trauma. Everybody's talking narcissism. You know, and a little bit of that is like we're giving people access to tools and vernacular that if they were in their own individual therapy, they might not have access to yet, and maybe they're not quote unquote ready for it. So there's balance there. And also I think it is about, oh, god.

I wanna say what's coming up for me is really like I look at how I'm parenting my child and how my friends are parenting their children and attempting to build into them from day one the strength and resiliency to know they'll be okay with big emotions happy. They're scary, and they end. You know, and they move through us. And when you're raised with that understanding, you're a lot less likely to get so scared of those big feelings that you cut them off entirely or you just don't go there. Right?

And I think, you know, I mean, I feel like I'm preaching to the choir here. We've got a generation or two of people that are so terrified of going there because they were not given the tools to ever sit in it. Right? And so a little bit of it, again, it's baby steps. It's like we gotta start there.

Otherwise, we'll get overwhelmed and they shut down and they stop. Yeah. You raise a really, really good point because it is like peeling the layers of an onion, but a lot of the boomers were told, you know, again, big boys don't cry. Suck it up. I don't wanna share my toy with little Johnny.

The answer is, yes, you do. And the answer is, you first have to meet that person where they are and say, I know you don't wanna share your toy with little Johnny, and that's okay that that's how you feel. However, we're gonna do it anyway, you know? Yeah. But you have to let them experience that feeling Yes.

And not tell them it's not a real feeling. Yeah. And also, by the way, forced sharing doesn't work. Right. I'm just gonna talk about it.

As somebody who's in it with a toddler right now Right. Forced sharing makes somebody not want to share, actually. Right. So really, the parenting technique that we're talking now is, like, don't force your kids to share. It's not a human trait to want to give something away when you're in the middle of having fun with it.

Right. What you might say is how long do you think you'll be playing with that toy? Two or three minutes? Okay. Cool.

Maybe in two or three minutes we can give little Sally a turn. And guess what Sally has to learn? Sally has to learn to wait. Yeah. Sally has to learn that just because she wants something, it doesn't get given to her.

I think we're saying the same thing which is again Yeah. If you empty the drawer too fast or, you know, you'll break a lot of eggs. Yes. If you make the child wait too long to, like, to get the sharing thing, they're experiencing discomfort too. Right?

The child that doesn't wanna share is experiencing discomfort. The child that wants it to experience discomfort, and I always use the term like it was from driving a car where you red line an engine. It's like, it's okay to red line somebody, but you don't want them to shatter. Mhmm. You know, you can push them a little, but you don't want them to quit therapy.

And as you're saying, you don't force the kid to share when they're not ready to do it, but there is gonna be that level of discomfort. I mean, it's not really sharing if you're done with it. Right? Mhmm. It's tolerating the discomfort for growth, but in an environment that's safe and where somebody is witnessing you and aware of how your feelings are and helping you through that journey.

And not shaming you for having them. Right? Exactly. Yep. Totally.

And, you know, there also is something to be said about we as parents don't need to teach our children everything. I think we get a little bit too arrogant in how important teaching and parenting is and we don't give, I think, as much credit to children and, like, not only what's innate in them but also what socializing teaches us. Right? Like, here's the thing. If your kid is perpetually the kid that refuses to give up the toy no matter what you do, a couple minutes, okay, let's take turns, whatever, eventually, the kids on the playground are gonna ostracize them and they're gonna kinda think that they're an asshole and, like, that's gonna, in some way, work itself out how it's gonna work itself out.

Now I'm not saying that's always the approach, but what I'm saying is I think as parents, we are very quick to step in and attempt to fix a course or teach or instruct or whatever, and we don't really give kids time to sit with, like you said, what is that discomfort? Okay. Well, let's sit with that. Let's feel that. It's gonna pass, and it's okay.

You're gonna survive it. We wanna shut it down, and we wanna avoid the meltdowns. We're constantly trying to avoid the meltdowns, and I'll tell you what. In the meltdown sometimes is where the greatest learning and the greatest shifting happens. Right?

So even when my clients do get to that place where it feels really overwhelming and really scary, if I can at least help them understand that they're safe in that scary, you know, again, like, they're not gonna disappear. Their ego is not gonna shatter. On the other side of that, that meltdown, that tantrum, if you will, there's a lot of growth. And so we gotta also stop kinda white gloving everything to, like, oh, we can't have tantrums. We can't have meltdowns.

We can't be too uncomfortable. You know? Like, we're the culture that if it's too hot, we turn on the AC. If it's too cold, we turn on the heat. Like, nobody wants to be uncomfortable, and yet that is really where most of the change and the growth actually occurs.

Yeah. I think that's a really really important point. It's not necessarily a point that people wanna hear. In exercise, there was that term no pain no gain. Yeah.

But when you say that in the realm of psychology or spirituality, I think we are kind of obsessed with taking pills right now and avoiding discomfort, and I think that's a problem. I mean, we have to realize that Yeah. We did a podcast, you know, anxiety is your friend. I mean, I think it's not black and white. Right?

You don't leave your hand on a hot stove. Right? You don't stay in an abusive relationship. But when you take two people and you realize we all have different subjective realities, and whether or not it's the parent and the child or a couple Mhmm. You know, you're not always gonna get your way.

You're gonna have to compromise. And compromise is painful because each decision you're making, you're giving up a little something. Because if you choose left, you're not going right. And getting people to understand that that's part of the human condition, I think, is important. Yeah.

Right. Like, what's that line? Right? And also, okay. So I'm going left.

I don't get to go right. Rather than looking at myself as the victim and that I got something taken away from me, how about if I turn my dial to curiosity and I say, well, guess what? There's a lot of learning in taking a left. You know? And and who knows where this is gonna go?

This left could ultimately actually be exactly what I need in my life right now, but I was so hell bent and focused on right Absolutely. That I might have missed the left if this person or this teaching or whatever hadn't kind of made me quote unquote forced me to take this left. So again, it's like that paradoxical way of looking at life. Right? Rather than saying this is all good and this is all bad, can we look at everything in our life that feels like it has to be categorized and say, well, what else could be true?

Both might be good. Both might be bad. And looking at it that way, I think, can be really helpful. So you're in the mental health space, but you're also in media. I often try to ask my guests where they think the puck is going.

So in both mental health and the intersection with business, where do you see the puck going? Integration. I mean, maybe I'm being lofty, but, again, it's like when I say I'm excited to be here at this moment in history and time, I see integration. I see a crumbling of what's not working and what hasn't been working for a very long time, and I see there being some discomfort. And there might be some pendulum where, like, it shifts a little bit too far to the other, but that's normal.

It's to be expected until we kind of find what middle ground is, you know, what that gray area between the black and white is. But, ultimately, I don't think business and spirituality should be separated. I'll just leave it at that. I don't think it should be separated. I think it's all moving towards a place of integration.

You know? How can I feel spiritual in what I'm doing day to day? How can I feel as though what I'm contributing in some way to society ultimately has meaning? Right? It's like the Buddhist principle of like if you're sweeping the floor, just sweep the floor.

If you're washing the teacup just wash the teacup. Right? There's value in essentially being completely present with what it is that you're doing in that moment and knowing that that actually that's value. Right? Like I said there's value in that.

Right. So I don't know. Maybe it's a utopian dream, but my ultimate vision is that it does just become more and more integrated. And it's not so, like, I can't be successful and be joyful. Yeah.

I don't know. I just I feel like it's such a binary way of looking, and it's gotten us into a lot of trouble. I wanna follow-up on something you just said. We were talking about mental health and business, and you shifted into using the term spirituality, which I love by the way. Mhmm.

Do you kind of see therapy and spirituality as something that come together? Yeah. So when we talk about the binary way of looking at religion and the black and white way of looking at that and so forth, and then you look at science as the other extreme, how do you see the integration of spirituality and mental health? And is it learning to live in that paradox where the left and the right brain all of a sudden start to integrate and we deal with that complexity? I mean, you're talking about words, right?

Spirituality is a word that people are more comfortable with in certain circles than religion. Yep. And I remember back in the seventies or eighties, Stephen Covey wrote a book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and he was a devout Mormon, and he was very into the principles of Judo Christianity, but he did not use the g word, and he got his book in all the business schools Yeah. And he was teaching values. Smart man.

He's one of my heroes. Yeah. So in the area of spirituality and mental health coming together, is there a secret there that would help? You said it's utopian. I don't think so.

I think it is important. How do you think we can encourage people to get even more comfortable with where that's going to encourage it? A spirit informed life. So it doesn't matter if I'm talking about my business life, my personal life, my romantic life. Right?

A spirit informed life is always going to be the life that's the most fulfilling and the most connected to others and the most integrated and the most, you know, nobody's a winner, nobody's a loser. And, again, I I don't wanna say that you can't be successful and not be spiritual, but this idea of like one up. I gotta be on top and in order for me to be on top others have to be at the bottom. So do I believe that spirituality and psychology are joined? Yeah.

A 100%. I mean I come from a union background and depth psychology is known as the psychology of the soul. I don't think you can do inner work without taking the soul into account. How do you separate it? Right?

Now there are approaches within our kind of very we want things to make sense left brain masculine kind of way that we've been living within psychology. So I'm looking at more of like the CBT structures that have played very nicely in the sandbox with insurance companies, and their quote unquote, and I'm gonna say that very articulately, their quote unquote research has played very nicely into insurance will cover six sessions at this amount and at the end of six sessions anxiety should be cured. Now listen I'm not shit talking CBT. There's a lot of value in some of this work. I like to look at CBT or more behavioral ways of approaching psychology as kind of the Band Aids on the bullet holes.

Sometimes you can't heal the bullet hole if you're bleeding out. So sometimes you actually need the Band Aids. Right? Let's get the bleeding under control. And then if and when that happens, then maybe we shift into some more of the soul based psychology.

Right? Right. But depth psychology really looks at things like anxiety as purely just a symptom of a struggle in the soul. It's here for a reason. It's here to teach us something.

It's not something that actually should just be squashed and made to go away. It's kinda like what you were saying about this idea of anxiety as your friend. So I don't think you can separate them. I don't know how you can separate them unless you're a robot. Right?

And that we're just not. We're not robots. Vanessa, I agree with you completely, but I I actually think to some people it begs the question because I don't know that everybody thinks that there is such a thing as a soul. I happen to believe or experience that, but I don't know that everybody does. And, you know, what I encourage people to do is to learn to sit quietly in a room and experience your soul, so to speak.

You can't see a match, so to speak, light in a bright room. You gotta turn off the lights to do it. And I think Mhmm. In a world where we're on our phone all the time, whether or not you keep formal Sabbath or otherwise, having a little downtime and quiet so that you can get in touch with your soul, I think, especially in this crazy world ever more important. I would say if you don't believe in soul or if you don't believe in something larger than yourself, and again, that could be whatever word you wanna call it, energy, spirit, God, sky daddy.

I don't care what term you use. I heard this in AA once. I want you to go out and stand in the ocean and try to stop the waves, and then you tell me that there's nothing bigger than you. Right. Okay?

I want you to go outside during one of these, like, unbelievably magical, magnetic, whatever word you wanna use for these crazy sunsets that I've been experiencing out here recently. Right. And I want you to stand in the awe of that color and that vibrancy and the smell of that clean air, and I want you to tell me that you don't feel anything beyond logic. Yeah. There's a guy named Suresh Ravi Shankar, and he once said that awe and wonder are a higher state of meaning than curiosity.

That's your soul. Yeah. Curiosity is your left brain and it's rational. Awe and wonder are at that higher level. You know, when people say I don't believe in this, I push back and say no.

No. It's not about belief. It's about experience. Yes. A 100% agree.

When you talk about that sunset, you talk about that wave, that's not something you believe in. You experience the awe and wonder in the face of something that's so powerful and so perfect. And again, with your two and a half year old, I mean, part of the amazing thing about bringing a child in the world and holding that little baby and you see the incredible perfection in the miracle of life, it does, if you are present, it does lead to that awe and wonder that helps you get in touch with that soul, so to speak. I was gonna say, I think what you just said is I wanna point that out. And you said if you're present, and I think that actually is part of the larger problem.

Right? And, again, not to keep bringing it back to the matrix, but, like, if we continue to stay distracted and on our phones and we don't ever feel the felt sense of the soul of that awe and wonder, then we won't believe that it's there. Right? It becomes almost like the language with which the soul speaks, the intuitive kind of language. Right?

It gets turned down when you continue to not listen to it, and you zone it out, and you drown it out, right, with all these other external noises. And a lot of therapy is actually building up the strength of turning up the volume of that voice. It's that internal voice that's always been there, but that we've learned over time and bad parenting and, you know, the the world we live in to kind of turn it down and squash it. And guess what we're doing? We're teaching you to listen to your soul.

We're teaching you to listen to your intuition. So, again, to go back to people who wanna separate the kind of spirit from psychology, I don't know how you do that because what is it that I'm doing? I'm literally helping people tune into their soul, to their intuition. That's beautiful. So Vanessa, this has been wonderful.

This was a great conversation, Jim. Like I said earlier, I appreciate you going there and pushing it there. It gives me a lot of hope to know that people are having these kind of conversations out of what, like, my kind of nerdy silos are, where we'll, like, nerd out on all the spiritual talk talk and the psychology talk. So I just I appreciate you having me on. Yeah.

I think it's important. Totally. And I really, really enjoyed this. So thank you so much. Thank you, Jim.

The Puck The Puck Venture Capital Beyond is produced by CMEG Advisors. If you enjoyed the conversation and haven't subscribed yet to the show, you can find us on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Check us out on Instagram and Facebook, and let us know what you think about the podcast.