How to Overcome Insecurity: The New Science of Self-Worth

Dr. Lisa: We live in a culture where the gospel of healthy relationships, self-care, personal wellness are being preached at us from all kinds of different directions. But here’s an interesting idea if you don’t feel fundamentally good about yourself, healthy relationships, positive people will actually make you feel worse instead of better

Dr. Marisa: People that are insecure or have low self-worth. They have memories of bullying, harm, abuse, neglect, and those memories Tell them that this is going to happen again

Dr. Lisa: Healthy relationships, positive people. Even being nice to yourself can actually make you feel stressed, anxious, and worse

Dr. Marisa: Though, this all seems like a tragedy because we can’t change the past, that actually with some of this new neuroscience research, we can change the way the past continues to live inside of us

Dr. Lisa: There is a path forward on this episode of love, happiness and Success. We are talking about how to heal your sense of self-worth, not in a superficial way, but at the very deepest levels, so you can feel safer in the world, have a better relationship with other people, but even more importantly, have a genuinely positive relationship with yourself

Dr. Marisa: Everybody feels antagonistic and defensive sometimes, but if you ignore it, you can control it, right? It doesn’t hijack you in the same way

Dr. Lisa: And welcome to love, happiness and success. I’m your host, doctor Lisa Marie Bobby. I’m a psychologist, bears a family therapist, board certified coach and so happy to be here once again with you. You guys. We have so much good stuff in store today, so we’re going to get right into it But as you listen, I want you to be listening for yourself and absorbing it all. By the end of the show, you’re going to have some new ideas, but also actionable strategies to change things like rearrange the furniture on a super deep level. But I also want you to be thinking about who else in your life needs to be hearing this message in these ideas, because I bet you love somebody who does not love themselves And so think about who to share this with

Dr. Marisa: This process of returning to our past, visualizing a new outcome, and that actually being the outcome that continues to sit with us

Dr. Lisa: My guest today is none other than Doctor Marisa Franco. She is a psychologist, a professor at the University of Maryland and the New York Times bestselling author of platonic, which if you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you remember we we had a little visit with Marisa back when she was here for a conversation on friendships, toxic friendships Fascinating. Look forward in the feed. But she’s back today because she has a new book that I am so excited about is called Worth the New Science of Self-esteem and Secure Attachment. And Marisa, oh my gosh, I am so excited for you and the book and this conversation

Dr. Marisa: I’m so happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me back Well

Dr. Lisa: I am just such a huge fan of your work. Honestly, when we talked last time about all the work that went into the book platonic on friendships, I just had mind bombs going off the whole time. I mean, just so many, not just great ideas, but like, how do we apply these when it comes to having healthier friendships in our lives But then that was the last time I saw you. You’ve been busy and I’m so curious to hear, like what was what was your evolutionary process like? Like, how did you get here

Dr. Marisa: Yeah. So when I wrote Platonic on Making Friends, I had a one that got away of psychology theories, which this theory called self-reflection theory. And the idea is that we look for people that verify our sense of worth And so if we feel negatively about ourselves, we almost prefer to affiliate with people that see us more negatively. Because if people see us to positively, it’s like, I’m going to let them down. They’re going to figure out who I really am. There’s all of this anxiety, and there’s so much interesting research on this that when people with low self-esteem get complimented, their blood pressure rises because, again, they’re afraid that I’m going to have to live up to these compliments, that when good things happen to them, they get sicker And so I realized through reading all this research on self-reflection, that if we want to be in healthy relationship, community, friendship, it’s not just about knowing how to connect with others, but also how to connect with ourselves, to work on our own sense of worth so that healthy, positive relationships don’t feel threatening to us

Dr. Lisa: Okay, so this is really interesting So what you’re saying is that when you were really looking at healthy friendships, what you found is that people would essentially seek out relationships that felt comfortable to them, even if they were destructive, toxic, not really healthy or positive or pleasurable, but because it matched the way they felt about themselves. And so one of the things you walk out of was how do we improve this on the inside if that is one of the key pillars of of having healthy friendships So you’re attracted to

Dr. Marisa: Yeah, exactly. I’m

Dr. Lisa: so good

Dr. Marisa: Yeah. Yeah. You can think about your self-esteem as a theory of self. And if it’s low, it’s my theory is that people will reject me and bad things will come. And when good things happen, you don’t actually internalize it, but you instead feel like it’s only a matter of time till the other shoe drops And now it’s I’m going to fall more precipitously when that happens, if I receive this good thing. And so when we feel unworthy, all the beautiful things in life success, love, positive relationship, it sort of slips off of us. We can’t necessarily take it in

Dr. Lisa: so, you know, even in the title of your book, you do mention attachment theory Is this related to like where does this come from? Is this early childhood experiences? I know that attachment styles are multidimensional. It’s not not just about your mom. Right. But right Yeah

Dr. Marisa: Yeah, definitely. I think low self-worth and insecure attachment come from the same place. It took me a long time writing this book to understand what is happening here Why is it that for people who struggle with self-worth, the very things that you think would make them feel worthy or actually only making them feel worse? How does that make any sense? So I’m digging Lisa, I’m digging in and stinging, and I find this researcher who says memories are the database of self-esteem. And the thing about memories is they don’t just record the past, they predict the future

Dr. Marisa: And so people that are insecure or have low self-worth, they have memories of bullying, harm, abuse, neglect, and those memories. Tell them that this is going to happen again. And so thus, if you try to receive or internalize the love that you have and maybe elevate your sense of self, if that harm is only going to happen again, then that’s dangerous, because you’re going to fall more precipitously when that happens And so you can see in a way that our insecurities here are really just trying to protect us, keep us low so we can’t fall as much

Dr. Lisa: Yeah I love that Memories are a database So true. And that what you’re seeing is that all these memories are getting activated. What happens in the past informs the present and the future, and that there’s this defensive response But I do want to say, though, I mean, I would imagine this is what you found in your research, that this is not just like a this is not a conscious thing. Somebody isn’t saying, oh, I need to be careful because I will be rejected again, therefore I will. It’s like a visceral reaction. This is how it feels

Dr. Marisa: It’s so it’s so in your body. There’s even a part of your brain. Lisa, here’s the thing that even if the same thing isn’t happening again, likely your body’s feeling like it does because there’s a part of your brain that let’s say I go through a new experience, like I have a boss who gives me critical feedback. And I grew up in a childhood where a parent always yelled at me, you, me When I’m interpreting that boss’s feedback, there’s a part of my brain that goes back to that memory and says, this is just like it was then, and then it literally retrievers in my body. The same felt sensation of what it was like to be humiliated back then. And so we are superimposing the reality of the past onto the present And there’s this great psychoanalyst, Philip Bromberg, and he says, we don’t go to therapy to deal with what happened then, but to deal with what continues to happen now. Negative memory. It’s not just the moment. In a way. It becomes every moment after

Dr. Lisa: You’re describing what sounds almost like a trauma trigger, a visceral re-experiencing of a feeling associated with something awful happening in the past And it’s involuntary. You don’t have control over it, but it takes over in that moment

Dr. Marisa: Yeah. And I think when you say it’s involuntary there’s this concept called implicit memory, which are things that we don’t remember that still affect us. And there’s a fascinating study where people are showed a blue slide, loud voice plays blue slide and loud voice plays blue slide, loud noise Eventually they’re sweating when they see the blue slide before the loud noise because of that memory. But if their hippocampus is damaged, that’s the part of your brain that records the memory. They can’t tell you what color slide is associated with the noise. I don’t know if it’s green, yellow, blue, I don’t know. But if the blue slide is shown, their body starts sweating still and so it’s still captured even though they don’t remember that it happened

Dr. Marisa: And that’s because another part of our brain and amygdala really records the emotion of an event, and retrievers that emotion in the current moment. So it doesn’t have to be something that you remember. For many of us, we may struggle with self-worth and not know why. And that’s because it could be stored in our amygdala. If something happens when you’re really young, your hippocampus hasn’t even fully formed yet But your amygdala is still taking in this emotional information and still imposing it on the current moment

Dr. Lisa: Well, here we are again already too deep, too dark, too fast. And I’ll just say for you. I’m sure that you know this, but but for our friends listening, you know, just as, as a psychologist, I think some of the hardest work to do with people who have experienced preverbal trauma or preverbal attachment trauma So usually things that have happened before, people are, you know, 2 or 3 years old is when when our brains kind of come online and what we have memories that that are in many ways easier because if you have a memory like we can go in there, we can work with that. But if you don’t even have the memory, there’s like this just nebulous thing and you don’t even know what you’re reacting to or why or where it comes from And there are a lot of people in a world walking around with that. And, and I found it to be particularly hard when it is, just, as you’re saying, very early messages of people being scary, people being rejecting people, being upset with you when you’re an infant, right? It gets coded in and there’s this like expectation that something bad is going to tap in, in the presence of other humans Yeah, it’s so hard

Dr. Marisa: It’s really hard. And I think it makes people really hard on themselves because they’re like, here I am struggling. I don’t even have a good reason. Everything went right in my life. And in some ways it can. It can make yourself worth even worse because you have no clear signifier, you have no clear event that you can latch on to And ultimately, people’s assumption is often, Maybe I’m just broken. Maybe I’m just born and broken. Maybe I’m just efficient. And so I’m here to, you know, bring a compassionate lens to that which is like it is not something wrong with you That’s the reason why you’re getting triggered now or emotionally dysregulated now, in fact, is the nature of being a human being and part of the brain when we go through something really traumatic, you know, there’s a study of women that had underwent a sexual assault, and they went to the hospital to get treatment and care for it And one third of them didn’t remember that that happened. And so when we go through something traumatic, our hippocampus comes offline because it’s too much for us to remember. And so that’s just to say, like, if you’re listening to this and you struggle with self-worth and you don’t know why, that doesn’t mean it’s because you’re broken or deficient or because it’s your fault Like these memories, these amygdala memories, they’re real. And they continue to affect us in ways that feel really hard to change. So I hope that we can all begin this conversation with a lot of compassion for those of us who struggle with our sense of self and don’t have a clear reason why

Dr. Lisa: Absolutely. Thank you for saying that out loud As we’re talking to what I also am curious about So these these little memories experiences with humans, right. Bad experience being rejected. It made me feel bad about myself. Bad things happened Either also other factors that contribute to that or or is that like the big kahuna, like even as you’re talking and especially the the way that it sounds almost like the the mental dialog that goes along with that, as you were saying it out loud, I was like, that also sounds an awful lot like depression and anxiety Is this something that kind of correlates with a mental health thing, or is this this more? I mean, the attachment stuff is pervasive. That’s stable, but right, right, right. Kind of come and go

Dr. Marisa: Yeah. There’s this thing concept called the vulnerability model of self-esteem. And that’s the idea that if we have low self-esteem, we’re more vulnerable to poor mental health over time And you get from a memory lens, you can kind of understand why. Because if I’m going through a negative event and I have low self-worth, it’s not just that negative event that’s affecting me. It’s the entire cumulative history of negative events that’s getting triggered in my reaction to that particular moment. And so our reaction to things is often cumulative And so the more unprocessed negative memories that we have, the more vulnerable we continue to be at our lives. But I think in the book, I argue that even though this all seems like a tragedy because we can’t change the past, that actually with some of this new neuroscience research, we can change the way the past continues to live inside of us

Dr. Lisa: What makes this better? And I know we have so much to talk about here

Dr. Lisa: And I’ll just share, you know, as a therapist, as a coach, so many times this is what people are coming in the door, you know, to improve. I want to trust myself. It shows up in different ways. I want to trust myself. I want to feel more secure in relationships. I want to feel better about myself So, like, you know, there are a lot of different ways of walking around this But before we go into like, what is the path of transformation look like? I’m so curious to hear, how would you define this? Like when you think of worth or self-worth. Yeah what does that mean to you

Dr. Marisa: This is a great question, and it was a very hard question to answer for me. I will say I came to define self-worth as treating your internal world as if it matters treating your feelings, values, preferences as if they really matter And here’s how I came to that definition I. When I researched self-esteem, I found that there are two different types of high self esteem. One type of high self esteem brags defensive attacks, other people antagonistic, always trying to act superior to others. The other type of high self esteem, compassionate, caring, loving, great to other people has the best relationships of all And I try to understand the difference between these two types. And I talked to my colleague Beth, who seemed to have the sort of positive type of high self-esteem, and she says, I’m trying to think about what’s going on with me. When I feel defensive, I feel shame, and I’m trying to work through that shame. In that moment, I have this moment of insight, which is that everybody feels antagonistic and defensive sometimes, but if you acknowledge it, you can control it, right It doesn’t hijack you in the same way. And so the issue for these people with high self-esteem who treat everyone horribly is they don’t actually acknowledge their own pain, their own shame, their own fears of inadequacy. Right. And these people that have this more holistic kind of high self esteem, ironically, the paradox is that they can actually admit when they feel insecure, they can admit when they need something from someone, they can admit their own vulnerabilities

Dr. Marisa: They’re not so focused on being superior. They’re simply focused on expressing who they are, and they treat their feelings as precious to them, rather than something to be feared at or to push away And so once I’m on, I interviewed for the book who was secure. Ish said that they would sort of wave their hand over the day to see where their emotional energy lied And I thought that was fascinating, because here I am being open to facing my feelings, if they’re obvious. But it’s almost like these secure people were treating their feelings, even their negative ones, as a part of them that was too precious to let go. And they wanted to explore it, and they wanted to understand it, and they want to understand where it came from And they wanted to have compassion for the parts of themselves that they struggle with. And as psychologists, we call it more like integration, which is like welcoming the parts of yourself. You start looking at them, exploring them. And that was really the key to these people that felt worthy. They were not afraid of their insides. They were not even if they had feelings that were antisocial, quote unquote, irrational, critical of others Right? They didn’t feel like they needed to push it away. They felt like they needed to explore it. And that allowed them to feel whole, because there’s no part of themselves that they’re trying to run away from That’s amazing. You know, that’s like even

Dr. Lisa: it’s not even self-acceptance. It is self appreciation. I think he did use the word cherish Or is that just floating in my mind? Yeah. You’re like not just self-acceptance. It is that like a desire to understand themselves and to be like, yes, this is important. This is worth paying attention to

Dr. Marisa: I’m going to

Dr. Lisa: go into this

Dr. Marisa: right. It’s every part of me belongs to me, you know? And it’s been a transformative practice for me, you know, because I’ve realized that there’s these ways that I could push away a negative feeling so quickly I don’t even see it happening And so, like an example is like, I had a friend, I really like this friend. I had been reaching out a whole lot, and they had been sort of canceling our plans, canceling on our plans, and we have new plans. And this friend says, you know, I got an injury. I need to heal from it, I need to rest And I go so quickly to I need to feel compassion for this person because they’re going through it. They’re struggling. Right. And I notice when I have that sense of urgency that there’s usually a feeling I’m trying to run away from. And that was I did feel rejected. And the when I look at that rejection, when I allow that rejection, those feelings of rejection, they move through me And now I’m able to say to that friend, please take care of yourself from a place that feels genuine, rather than as if I’m coercing myself. And I actually see the ways that it makes me more hole in my connections. Because those negative feelings that I’m running, you know, previously running away from, they can make me want to withdraw They can build resentment. They can build, you know, just like underlying anger or resentment towards a particular friend. But when I look at them, when I allow them, when I let them play out, when they kind of move through me and then recede from me, then I have more space and room to actually have compassion for the people in my life And so it took me realizing that a feeling is not an indictment of self. It’s not an indictment of me or my identity. Feelings happen to us. I’m not choosing to feel this way, and I can only regulate feelings that I’m actually acknowledging. And so this has been a transformative process for me in the book. You know, I thought I felt worthy, but writing this, I’m like, I don’t know if I was completely open to my own internal world in that way I, I feel the pressure to be acceptable or to be impressive to other people. And this book, this process, my therapist, who I dedicated the book to have all shown me the importance of putting my authenticity over my need to be impressive or my need to be perfect

Dr. Lisa: Yeah. Oh, thank you for sharing that. And I was kind of curious about your own relationship with worth, and I really appreciate you sharing that story I’d love to. And I want to hear more about this, but, like, you kind of identified people who exemplary examples exemplary example. Oh my God. But people who were operating in that way and then almost reverse engineering. Like what? What are they doing? How are they being that way? And then and then testing it on yourself And, and one of the things that is coming up for me as we’re talking, I mean, I have a lot to learn here, too, because there requires, I think, such intentionality to slow down. Like, how do I feel about that, especially, you know, for me, just, like kind of bouncing from one thing to another all day long and that those moments of reflection to really check in and go there intentionally, it can be easy to kind of just bounce along the surface

Dr. Marisa: Right. Totally. It’s yeah, it’s it takes time. But you know what also takes time is the disrepair that can happen when we are pushing ourselves away or not looking at ourselves. And then we feel this weird thing in the relationship. And it’s hard to even notice what it is because we were, we were actually suppressing those feelings And so it’s everything will take time. It’s just like choose choose which one that you want. But yeah, it’s hard work. It’s it’s almost like, you know, treating your mental health like your physical health time requiring time to take away and attend to. Oh

Dr. Lisa: okay. Well as promised, I really do want to crack into more of like, the how of we can begin to get there, but I cannot possibly let you go Maybe we can even talk about this prior to the end. You know, you’re also bringing into this conversation such a wealth of perspective and knowledge about the systemic parts of this, the relational parts. Because the other thing that’s coming up for me as you’re talking, you know, like about your experiences, feeling your own emotions and being not just accepting, but grateful for them and all of the things But then, you know, to be able to say to someone, I am feeling disappointed, or I’ve been having these feelings of resentment that are coming up because I’m realizing that x, y, z boundary of, you know, whatever. Because like what comes up for me personally, that’s the part that I’m less likely to do in relationships with people that I care about because I think I’m worried about how that might land or to be disruptive to the relationship, or it’ll change the way they feel about me And and so I think that in my relationships, I can tend to prioritize the way other people feel over my own. But. Right. And so I’m curious to hear your thoughts about how that experience of worth comes into the, the dynamics, because

Dr. Marisa: Yeah, and I relate to that. It is scary. I mean, it’s like admitting it within is hard enough

Dr. Marisa: Yeah. Right. Because there is often I don’t know, you know, if you if you came from a childhood where people shamed you for having certain emotions, or men are so often shamed for having certain emotions, admitting that can come with a certain amount of shame that punches you so automatically. And it’s such a practice to be like, no, let me sit with this, let me allow this The shame comes and I can tolerate that, so I understand. And then, then it’s like, well, if I say it to the other person, then as much as I try to create internal safety within, there’s no guarantee that the safety is outside of me too. And so it always feels risky. And it is a risk, right. And if it goes right, it can make you feel closer than ever Risk gone right is intimacy. But if it goes wrong, it can feel particularly bad because it was probably already a vulnerability. It was already feeling feelings of shame around, you know, my own feelings and and what they mean. And the other person can really compound that. And so, you know, I think it’s appropriate to be discerning and to, you know, try to communicate with people that have the capacity to listen to you and have the capacity to hear you But I will also say, as a friendship expert if you’re at the stage where you’re ready to withdraw from another person, it’s a lot kinder to just express the thing. Often we fear expressing the thing because we might be abandoned or the relationship might end, but by withdrawing, we guarantee that outcome. And so so yeah, like sometimes it’s a thing that’s passing and that, you know, we do when we explore the feeling, we kind of do move through it But other times it still lingers. And if that’s the case and you find yourself withdrawing, think about being on the other side of that. If a friend was upset with you, like, wouldn’t you prefer that they tell you rather than back away from you and you have no idea why? And so, so yeah, I think as scary as it is we want to try to give people the opportunity before we necessarily assume that it will go badly

Dr. Lisa: Yeah, that’s such a fantastic point. Give people the opportunity Yeah. And that it is scary, you know, but the threat of this ending on either side, if they’re like, oh, I can’t believe you said that I hate you. Or if you are like, I don’t want to do this anymore because you have it’s unsustainable, right? And the only way through is really the brave way So

Dr. Marisa: Yeah. So, so

Dr. Lisa: through your research in your work, I am so curious to hear some of the things you discovered that can help someone who’s, you know, in a place right now. One of our friends here listening begin to Start moving from a place where maybe they they don’t feel good about themselves. They do expect bad things from other people. They have all those old memories and start to move towards this more secure place, their relationships with themselves and others

Dr. Marisa: Yeah. So the thing about memories is that they are not necessarily made to record the past as they are to predict the future And so because of that, memories can actually be updated each time we revisit them, and particularly the emotions that are still part of that memory and that are still leading it to affect how you perceive yourself and the world today. And so there’s fascinating research that finds that when we revisit a memory and picture a more positive outcome I mean, this is repair work. This is inner child work. You go back to that memory and your adult self is there to give you what you need to say. You’re safe to say, you know, it’s not your fault to say that. You know I’m here, I’m here. I’m never going to leave you. When people do this, you see decreases in trauma symptoms You see increases in cell esteem, and you even see changes in the hippocampus, which is the part of your brain that records the memory. And so that is the exercises that I go into in the book are all memory reconsolidation exercises that are facilitating this process of returning to our past, visualizing a new outcome, and that actually being the outcome that continues to sit with us

Dr. Lisa: Wow. You’re going that in into that in the. So this is a real deal Marisa you’re talking about honestly what what is known as the active ingredient of a lot of trauma therapies. Exactly. Is that re-experiencing. And as you do, creating a sense of safety and a corrective emotional experience, it starts to actually mend the memory itself

Dr. Marisa: This is how therapy works This is why it’s effective. That’s what you’re doing. Your memory reconsolidation

Dr. Lisa: Yeah. Wow. It’s very experiential and very powerful stuff And so I’d love to to talk more about this is such a big pain point for so many people that are just walking around in the world feeling not good about themselves, not good about others. And I think that it can feel so big, right? Like so pervasive. Just like this is who I am It’s hard to even know where to start. And so you started talking about the strategies that you support, which is creating opportunities for people to reconnect with those old memories that are still getting activated, and be able to heal them once and for all, which is such powerful stuff

Dr. Marisa: So we did talk about implicit memory and how the heck do you reconsolidation memory you don’t even remember is the question to answer this question? Well, I have a few different strategies, but one is I pull from the work of Peter Levine, who’s created Somatic Experiencing if people are familiar with it. And yeah, he studied animals And why a it’s not a Gizelle, but it’s a similar. And they get caught by a tiger and then they the gazelle kind of runs away and you don’t see any symptoms of PTSD. And you know, the gazelle isn’t freezing randomly out of nowhere. The Gizelle isn’t randomly getting aggressive out of nowhere. And he was sort of like, why don’t these wild animals get PTSD And when he studied, he noticed that the animal after it got caught by the tiger would shake, shake, shake, shake, shake. And that was a sort of body based process of releasing. And he considered trauma an excess well of energy in our body. And if we fight or if we flee, those are ways of releasing that energy. And even when you look at the studies of rats, that when you shock them and they’re able to fight or flee versus they’re just trapped, they actually do a lot better Their health is a lot better. And so Peter Levine is thinking about ways that humans can fight or flight, because for summons, when you look at meta analyzes on PTSD and what gives people the most severe symptoms of PTSD, the number one factor is whether they dissociate it at the time of the trauma. And from Peter Levine perspective, that means all of that energy that the rush of adrenaline that came with going through the trauma, you just had to shut it down So it’s sort of stuck in your body. And so to him, we still have to find ways of this energy stuck in our body and releasing it. And so we do that by going back to our bodies because these bodily sensations are really just memories, amygdala based memories. Right. The sort of sensation, feeling aspect of the memory, the tightness in your chest, the lump in your throat, right, that you’re feeling now because your brain is telling you that this is similar to an event in your past that has been unprocessed

Dr. Marisa: And so he has exercise that I detail in the book, which are like tracking exercises where you notice that lump in your throat and you focus on it, and then you feel it start to move, start to move, start to move through you. And you can literally feel the shift in the energy throughout your body. And that’s how you can begin to release some of this implicit memories, to start being much more aware of what’s happening in your body and attuning to it And so and you and I both know

Dr. Lisa: I mean, like somatic psychology is, is the whole thing I love the one thing you share, just like noticing, you know, if you have something like a lump in your throat. And I am curious to know if, you know, for any of our friends who are here with us who want to do this work, who on some level, like, yeah, I need to do this work I have like unmet need, physical trauma, maybe nothing physical happen to you, but there’s that trapped energy I there other things that you feel like, are things that, you know, anybody listening to this could do at home on their own versus, you know, what might they need the support of a somatic therapist for? And if you could speak a little bit about what that looks like, what you might do to find an appropriate provider, because I think that that can also be a real barrier to doing this work You know, all therapists are the same

Dr. Marisa: Yeah, totally. That’s a great question. I think sometimes this feels might feel very foreign to people, hard to access. It can also feel dysregulated like too scary. And I say like listen to yourself. If you’re like, I just like, I don’t I don’t want to do that. That feels scary, that feels unsafe, or I feel myself shutting down When I think about this. That’s maybe a sign that you can take some of these exercises and bring them to your therapists, and use them with your therapist to try to get help. Yeah. Peter Levine has a great website of somatic experiencing therapists that can help you do this work of reconsolidation, implicit memories, and related to what your question about other strategies So there’s another theory that I came across. So writing the book called Working Memory Theory. This is basically the idea that we can only hold so many things in our minds at once before our mind gets overwhelmed

Dr. Lisa: I don’t know, I keep trying to like, cram more stuff on the top of the other stuff, so I’m testing that

Dr. Marisa: one No, but Lisa, that’s exactly what the strategy warrants. Because basically, if you try to multitask and focus on a trigger while focusing on something else simultaneously, your brain cannot make that trigger as vivid. And in some ways, that trigger actually begins to degrade when you’re simultaneously focusing on that felt sensation of, you know, this tightness in my chest and something else And this is if people are familiar with eMDR, right? You’re focusing on the trigger and a ball moving back and forth, and all of a sudden it feels less intense. Or there’s even research on people playing Tetris while while, you know, feeling a sort of trauma trigger. And then afterward it feels less intense. And so it’s almost like holding too many groceries in one bag So some of the groceries start to fall off. And sometimes what falls out is the trigger, the triggered sensation, the intensity of that trigger. Because you can’t access it as viscerally, you’re sort of accessing it, but not as fully. And then you remember this sort of reconsolidation memory of this trigger being less intense. And so you can use this working memory theory It sort of explains why things like eMDR work, which again, involves you thinking about a memory or feeling a trigger while watching a ball or a finger move back and forth It also explains why things like tapping work, where you focus on a trigger and you tap all these different parts of your body. That sort of split attention is actually using the science of memory to try to work through some of these implicit memories and some of these triggers We’re so

Dr. Lisa: so good. Like knew this was going to be a great conversation, and I’m still like, wow. Because and you know what? Like and I think this is why somebody needs to sit down and actually read your whole book, like, don’t listen to this and be like, you know, a couple little takeaways. Because what I think I’m hearing through the lines is that what you’re trying to teach people is how to I mean, like we’re talking about neurology, like how to reprocess some of this stuff at a very not not just deep, but even biologically based level, like how our brains work, how we can use our our understanding of the brain, the science of memory, as you call it, to actually Change, change the system, change the way that these thoughts and feelings feel inside of yourself in a very durable way. So we’re not here talking about affirmations I love. Although you know what? Nothing wrong with the good operation as well, but like, this is really, like, powerful stuff

Dr. Marisa: Thank you. You know, when I was first writing the book, I had someone reach out to me who read platonic, and they were like, you’re telling me all these strategies to act secure, but it feels like something different to actually feel that in a nervous system, right To feel like this isn’t an act that I’m putting on to be regulated, but I’m actually feeling regulated. And I wanted to take on that challenge and to see, is there a way that we can’t we don’t just, like, learn these tools when we’re so activated to try to express ourselves in a peaceful manner, but we actually start feeling less activated at the level of the nervous system And so I spent these last few years trying to figure out the best science to actually do that

Dr. Lisa: Okay. Can I ask you another question? And so this is something that has come up more, more than once. We and not not naming names that I don’t want any like, clients and be like, oh, she’s talking about me because I have had this experience numerous times I’m not talking about any one person, but what I have encountered not infrequently, particularly when people have had very challenging early life experiences with unsafe, you know, primary care givers have some of that preverbal stuff going on When I have, in my role as a therapist, attempted to guide people back into memories like inner child work, repair work, you know, we can like, I could get them to access their adult self We can go find that baby. But the visceral reaction it’s like f that baby. I hate that baby. I don’t want to have anything to do with that baby. Let me tell you what a bad baby that is. Like. Even in this like adult self, they like, cannot even find the ability to go soothe this, this hurting child Yeah. Have you come across that at all

Dr. Marisa: Absolutely. So here’s the struggle with it. Right. Reconsolidation that you’re referring to is that when we go back to that memory, we’re still ourselves going back to that memory, our feeling, you know, our selves who might struggle with worth and have a hard time finding, grounding and offering care. And there’s this great psychologist, Robert Hart Harris He talks about how when things are chaotic in our lives, one of the ways we handle that is by making our very selves predictable. And that may sound like a good thing, right? But to be insecure, to feel low self-worth, that is a problem of making yourself too predictable. You already know people are going to reject you. You always, you know people are going to harm you already know people are going to abandon you, so much so that you’re not actually taking in information in the present anymore

Dr. Marisa: And so finding a sense of worth is almost about not knowing who you are. It’s about giving yourself more flexibility that I don’t know which outcome is going to come, that I don’t always have to have this sort of rigid relationship with myself where I’m always so mean or always so critical or always so negative, but it’s so threatening to change that rigid sense of self, because that gave you the sense of predictability Even if it was negative predictability, it made you feel like something is constant. Something I can predict, something is regular in my life, even if it’s my own criticism and my own negativity. And so that’s why it can be really threatening to change some of these things. And that’s, you know, I have another chapter on internal family systems for this reason, which is like sometimes we can’t go straight to the memory because there’s these parts of ourselves that are like, I don’t want to change that because it’s because we have other memories that indicate that when we are weak, we should be shamed And there’s other parts of ourselves that are holding those memories, and we might need to go to those parts first and go to that part of you that’s saying, screw that baby, f that baby and be like, what role are you playing here? How old do you feel? What makes you feel like you need to play this role What do you need for me? What do you need to hear? What would what would feel reassuring to you and spend time with our resistance before we can go deeper into that memory from a place of groundedness

Dr. Lisa: Yeah, absolutely Such powerful stuff. And, you know, just just for anybody listening. And this comes from parts theory as well, you know, it’s not uncommon for people to also believe like, no, this, this is how I could be better or this is how I could There’s, there’s like a very protective quality. May I if it’s okay. Also do a super quick plug for a workbook that came out within the last year or two. By by Dick Schwartz, the founder of Internal Family Systems, where he actually walks people through some I thought, great exercises in order just to to mobilize or even get visibility into different parts of the self He has a children’s book out fairly recently if you want to scroll back through my feet. I had a great privilege of interviewing on this show. It’s probably probably about a year ago, but you’ll you’ll find that episode and talking about some of the steps to get into like the different parts, because it seems like that can be a very salient part of this work Marisa, depending on what you know. Totally. But yeah, Lisa

Dr. Marisa: I wanted to make a larger point about that. It’s and it’s that these strategies need to be attuned to you and where your unique nervous system is at, because even when you said like affirmations, affirmations help a lot of people. But for people with low self-worth to say I am loved, it actually makes them feel worse because it reveals how entrenched their low sense of self is It’s it’s you know, I don’t actually feel this way. I feel like I’m alienating myself and gaslighting myself. Right? And so it has to be if you’re not internalizing it, if you’re not feeling a shift, if you’re not feeling a change as you go through these activities, then you might have to start with a different you might have to start with just finding a sense of safety, finding a sense of groundedness before you go back into the memory And so permission just want to give people permission. It’s not just about, you know, following the book word to word. It’s about continuing to check in with yourself. Do I feel a change? Do I feel a shift or do I feel my resistance? And how do I adjust which exercises I do based off of what actually what I can Actually, my my own nervous system is ready to internalize. And I’ve made that mistake in therapy from feeling like I just want to get better, I just want to get better. I’m going to drag myself along instead of I need to be patient with these parts of myself that aren’t ready and stop and make them feel safe to

Dr. Lisa: Yeah, thank you so much for saying that. And also just, you know, for raising the the big part that there’s there’s also like a continuum, there’s a spectrum. Not everybody has the same experiences. Not everybody needs the same thing. And for some people listening, there might be a lot of old memories that are getting reactivated. And for others, it might be, you know, having the opportunity to just correct the way they’re talking to themselves or to have an affirmation or even to watch themselves doing something amazing Right? Like we can also change our experience of the self in that way. But what you’re talking about, I think our I mean, in my experience, like the deepest and most powerful ways to change this at a very enduring foundational level, which is amazing and that you’ve been able to put it into a book. I mean, these are complex ideas Yeah. So go ahead. What were you about to say

Dr. Marisa: Well, I just want to say, like, ultimately, this book is about becoming real to yourself. It’s about admitting where you’re at and admitting how you feel and not feeling like you need to run away from. If you feel insecure, like it’s admit it. You know, I there was some my friend that I told about the themes from the book, and she was saying that I told myself I was secure and when my girlfriend would leave and I would feel so abandoned, I would just numb out and smoke weed And you made me realize that it’s not about being secure, it’s about being wherever I am. And now I admit that I feel abandoned, that I feel anxious, and I actually try to care for myself and tell myself what I need to hear. And so we need to start with the truth. We need to start with the truth of our own pain There’s so many forces trying to push us to come off as perfect, to deny, to suppress how we actually feel or the actual pain we’re in. But, you know, really worth is about being exactly where you are, is where you need to start, because you need something that speaks to exactly what you need. And you only know that when you admit where you are And there is no shame in coming in and feeling bad about yourself and feeling unworthy and feeling triggered and feeling like things get to you that you wish didn’t get to you, that is actually that’s actually part of being a human being and doesn’t mean that something’s wrong

Dr. Lisa: Oh, I love that. And I’m so glad you said that out loud because like, you know, there’s so many parts of our culture, it’s like the goal is to eradicate all of these experiences, like just just make it all go away But what you’re saying is that really the path through is to lean in very intentionally and welcome more of those feelings in your life in a thoughtful, deliberate way. Because that is that is how you develop a different relationship with them and yourself

Dr. Marisa: Yeah, we need to stop shaming ourselves for not being healed enough and start acknowledging exactly where we’re

Dr. Lisa: So before I let you go, doctor Marisa Franco, can you tell us a story of transformation

Dr. Marisa: Okay, I will absolutely So I was in my own therapy, by the way. I did this book to my therapist Alyssa, and I was dealing with a part of myself that felt ashamed, that felt needy, that I was really uncomfortable with, that felt like it needed to really depend on people, but it didn’t have its own sense of security And in my own therapy, we use this idea of the divine or God. And my therapist told me to like, give that part up to God. And what? What do you hear? What do you see? What do you feel? And I did. And what I heard in that moment is that part of you is perfect to that part of you is perfect to just the way that it is And it was so transformative for me. I was so not used to thinking about this part of me that struggles as absolutely perfect just the way that it is, but that is what I want to give to us all. To not feel ashamed, to not run away from, to not suppress the parts of ourselves that are struggling because they’re there for a reason and they’re trying to help us, and we need to turn towards them and accept them and find a way to love those parts of us as well

Dr. Lisa: Yeah. No, no bad parts. Yeah. I just wrote it. You know what? A thought bubbled up in my mind a few minutes ago as we were chatting. And I didn’t ask you them, but I’ll ask you now, just this experience that you had, there’s sounds like a spiritual dimension. And I’m curious just to hear if that came up in your work at all, you know, because sometimes when people have trouble finding any redeemable, at least in the beginning of the work, like redeemable feeling parts of the self and like they’re struggling so much to have lover compassion for themselves that they can kind of align with this divine energy and feel like that could be the the parent kind of voice or, or even, you know, in speaking with researchers and psychedelic therapies, that a lot of times that’s what’s really happening there, unlocking the spiritual dimension where they feel Accepted rain then that it’s all connected and all beautiful to kind of come up as a theme at all in research. Oh, I

Dr. Marisa: have a chapter on Saturday because what psychedelics do, related to your point about people going back to the memory and still being who they are now so they can’t possibly consolidate it? Psychedelics deactivate the default mode network, which is known as the seat of your sense of self And so you can go back to a memory as a third party. You can go back to a memory having a perception that of what God would have had or how God would have related to the memory. These are the kind of things that really happened on psychedelics. And all of a sudden this regular record of I’m unworthy, I’m and worthy You look back at that memory and you’re like, nothing was ever wrong with me. My parent was not in a place to give me what I needed, but it doesn’t mean anything was ever wrong with me. And so psychedelics are actually very powerful tools for memory reconsolidation, because they allow us to go back to the memory almost as a different person, and they deactivate the amygdala, which is the part of our brains associated with threat, so that we can go back to our memories and scariest memories and feel calm and feel centered as we do it

Dr. Lisa: Nice. Amazing. Thank you so much just for putting that out there as well. And I will tell our friends, so powerful stuff and very important to make informed decisions about who you want to do that work with, because that is a largely unregulated industry at this point. And so do your homework. If you go back into my feed, there is another interview with Doctor Scott Shannon based in Fort Collins, Colorado I’m such a fan of his. He’s a psychiatrist. He’s been doing this for 40 years, and he has I believe it is, I want to say, wholeness With a lot of resources about just how to make informed choices about finding a provider and what that should look like so that you can protect yourself in that space to. So the good stuff. So, Doctor Marisa, this has been such a joy. And I mean, man, your book is just so important. And you guys, once again, it is worth the new science of self-esteem and secure attachment And, Marisa, for anybody listening to this, be like I don’t want to talk to Doctor Shannon. I want I want more Doctor Marisa in my life. Like, where do people connect with you, find you, follow you

Dr. Marisa: Yeah yeah. So you can get the copy of the book worth the New science of Self Esteem and secure Attachment. Wherever books are sold, if you buy it from Lost City Books in DC, you’ll get a signed copy I’m on Instagram at Doctor Marisa G Franco drm a r I s80 Franco or on my website. You can download practices to improve yourself for the list of them, or reach out for speaking events on finding self-worth at work and finding deeper belonging

Dr. Lisa: Self-worth at work a deeper belonging. That sounds super interesting So. Well, doctor Marisa, it’s always a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time today

Dr. Marisa: Thank you so much for having me It was a pleasure So

Dr. Lisa: you guys are such a good conversation. I’m such a huge fan of Doctor Marisa personally and professionally. Here is her book. It is called worth. It’s a real deal, y’all. This is really good stuff and I just love it so much. It’s it’s research based and it goes deep, but it’s also full of all kinds of things you can do on your own to move this forward Now before we end, though, I do want to provide you with some resources because, you know, as we were talking about with Doctor Marisa, this is deep, deep work. And absolutely you can move lots of needles by doing self-help, doing exercises, working with your own memories, doing some of the somatic exercises that she discussed. And again on her website She has some resources. So all kinds of stuff there for you. And I will just tell you from personal experience as a psychologist, in working with people who have a lot of especially early interpersonal trauma, relational trauma, it is hard when it has damaged their sense of self. This stuff feels so scary. And I mean, honestly have worked with people for years just helping them feel safe with me before we can even start to do this work Like that’s how intense it can get. And I don’t want to scare anybody off from it. But like, do not underestimate the value of having a very strong relationship with somebody who can can help you, somebody that you trust, like like a good therapist where there’s a solid relationship and especially when that person is also well versed in the types of interventions that Doctor Marisa was talking about And please know that there are so many. She talked about a number of them. We talked about eMDR. We talked about cognitive reprocessing. We talked about intern child work. Certainly somatic therapies can be incredibly important. There’s tapping et cetera, etc.. But what I do want to advise you is when you consider psychedelic therapies, when you consider who to work with, slow down Do not just like go with the first person you meet. You’ll want to interview people. Read the bio on their web page if they have one, and take some time to understand really the nature of their specialty certifications. What is their experience and helping people with the kind of stuff you’ve been hearing about? Because, you know, especially on some of like the platform websites, it’s so easy

Dr. Lisa: Like say this as a therapist, you’re presented with 200 boxes, like check the boxes of all the different things that you do. Right. And it is working with kids, working with lessons, working with autism, working with sensory stuff, working with somatic trauma. And like every therapist to a degree as a general practitioner, like, yeah, okay, I’ve had a client that did that So check out the boxes is not the same thing as having like really robust training in some of these modalities. And you deserve that. And it can also make a really big difference in outcomes. So try to interview at least three providers before making a choice. And so you’re thinking about not just who do I feel comfortable with Who do I feel like I could have a strong relationship with, you know, what’s the vibe? But also, you know, do they actually have specialized skills and competencies to help me do what I need to do in order to work through some of this stuff? Because, you know, not not all of it is the same So anyway. Those are some things to look for with regards to doing that through through my practice growing self I do have a few people on my team who have extensive background and training, and this type of relational trauma repairing work is part of it. Attachment wounds, inner child work like deeper somatic stuff, but only a few. So you’re always welcome to come to growing self to, you know, schedule a free consultation, but be sure to let us know what it is that you’re looking for so that we can make a more strategic recommendation because you shouldn’t work with with just anyone This is deep stuff and now you have a pathway to guide you. So, you know, this book is also worth the book worth is really good because I think it’ll give you an overview of like, what this should look like when the work is doing well. And I think knowledge is power so that you can, even if you start going down the path with a provider Like, is this what it’s supposed to be? And, and use your your resources, use your own agency. Right. And practice what we’re talking about here around putting yourself in a situation where it’s a positive relationship. You deserve good things. You deserve healing. And Doctor Marisa has created a pathway to help you get there thank you so much for spending this time with us today, and I’ll be back in touch with you soon Another episode of love, happiness and success