The Trick G Uses to Make All Decisions  ## Metadata - Author: [[We Can Do Hard Things]] - Full Title: The Trick G Uses to Make All Decisions - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/88af3eda-2a1d-4371-aed0-2da89c6a31bc ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Fear Drives Visible Control Behaviors** - Glennon realizes anxiety drives her towards controlling her body through eating behaviors when scared. - She links hypervigilance to childhood patterns and public visibility worsening eating disorder triggers. Transcript: Glennon Doyle All right, pod squad, if you are in the stage of life where you have begun to identify your needs, and yet you find yourself all day pretending as if your life is a courtroom and you are a Witness and you have to explain to everyone why it's okay for you to meet your own needs. If you find yourself absolutely in the shower demonizing every person who may or may not be ignoring your own needs, if you are stuck in your head about all of this, listen to this episode Because it's possible that in our little lives we have cracked a tiny code that has revealed to us how to stop living in anxiety, how to stop living in the stories in our head, and how to Make decisions that allow us to participate in life without abandoning ourselves or our own needs. That is a tall order. I think we may have done it. Just listen and tell us if we did. Well, hello. Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Here we are again. It's a pleasure to be here. Amanda Doyle It's an honor just to be nominated. Abby Wambach She goes, how are you doing? Glennon Doyle How are you doing? Abby Wambach Me? Yeah. I am good. When is this going to air? Glennon Doyle Do we know? We don't know things like that. Abby Wambach These are questions for other people. You guys, I'm doing so well. Glennon Doyle Look at this I have one button button oh it looks cool it looks cool let me button this up all right you all here's what we're gonna do today okay my intention for this episode for this conversation With our beautiful pod squad is that I am going to offer a bit of an update about where I am in my circuitous mental health slash eating journey. I am going to do that in a way that I hope and intend to be helpful to all of us. Okay? The bad news is I have not fixed myself yet. Yet. But I think I've learned a few things that might help us all. Great. Amanda Doyle Okay? Glennon Doyle And I want to talk about this because there have been many inquiries about how I'm doing, which I appreciate. There have also been lots of things about like eat a cheeseburger and stuff. I'm not interested in those sorts of comments or responding to those people, but- You did last night, I'm just going to say. Right. But I do feel that most of the inquiries are from love and from this community in a way that is absolutely beautifully intentioned. And so in that spirit, I want to respond. And so I think it's a tricky time for many of us this past couple of years, year, having to do with the state of everything. And I think that a lot of us are struggling. And when we get scared as human beings, we tend to fall back on soothing patterns that may be developed as kids. That is a general truism, not always true, but tends to be true. My thing is very visible. So when I get scared or activated or I honestly think that scared is the right word. It sounds silly, but I think it might be the right word. When I get scared in my life of a relational thing or a family thing or a community thing or a world thing, I get hypervigilant. That's what fear causes. And I usually have like one road that I go down when I'm not being intentional and careful and using my agency. And that road that I go down is food, body. How can I control this thing? Now, I know a lot of people with lots of things that they do when they're scared, whether it's, you know, relational things, whether it's different sorts of addictions, whether and Those things are less visible in the day-to than the result of my maladaptive behaviors. So when I stop eating, I look very skinny and I look not so healthy and that is obvious to everyone, which means when people say, how are you doing? It is harder for me to say, fine, I'm fine because they can see the result of how I'm doing, which is not my favorite thing about having an eating disorder, but it is true. So, you know, I think what happened is that I got really activated and scared. I actually remember it being right before. I can remember the feeling in my body, actually. And it was right when ([Time 0:00:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9eddeb49-e42f-42e7-a1ca-bf5e99ca2db9)) - **Peace Comes From Collective Embodiment** - Glennon reframes “make peace with my body” as using her body in collective action rather than individual wellness. - She finds more peace when her body joins communal protest and mutual aid than in solitary self-improvement. Transcript: Glennon Doyle And I think there comes a point where you just stop asking, why? Why can I not handle this and everyone else can? Why can I not figure out a strategy to make this work and still be healthy? So many other people can. It's like when you quit drinking and you're annoyed that everyone else seems to be able to handle it and you can't. So you feel bad for yourself and you try all these different versions of not drinking. Maybe if I just drink two or maybe if I – so I did all that with social media for so long. And then there came a point where I was like, actually, I just have to admit that this doesn't work for me and forget the why of it. I decided to stop. I pulled back. There was a really beautiful moment where I was doing an interview for the We Can Do Hard Things book. And this woman looked at me on the, it was on like the Morning Joe or something. I don't know. And she opened to the chapter, how do I make peace with my body? And she said, you know, you've been struggling with eating disorders your whole life. She said, I have body image issues. So many of us do. This chapter is so incredible. How do I make peace with my body? How do we make peace with our body, Glennon? And it was this incredible moment where I realized, oh my God, there are two different ways that you can hear that question. The first way is more aligned with individualism, Westernism, all our little perfectionist projects of ourselves, which is how do I make peace inside this body? How do I make peace with this? How do I feel comfortable in my own skin for once? It's a legit question. Okay. But there's another way of looking at it, which feels more important in this moment and sort of woke me up in that interview, which is, wait, oh no, no. How do I go out into this broken world and make peace with this body? So good. Where am I taking this body? You know, I'm like looking at her thinking of like, oh my God, all the people who are like lined up in their communities, blocking ice from getting to their neighbors, all the people whose Bodies are at these protests day after day, all the people who are like walking into high schools and saying, where's the queer alliance? I want to stand with these kids when they're under attack. Like where are people putting their bodies? Because we are a culture that has been mistaken that if we just think right, if we just have the right take, if we just believe right, if we just sit in our houses and think correctly, we're On the right side of history. But that doesn't matter. Nobody is ever going to ask us what we thought. They're going to ask us what we did. Were we the people who went out into the world and used our bodies to make peace? And so something about that process made me realize, okay, I want to just have my body. I want to use my body in these places out in the world to make peace. And so I kind of created this retreat from hologram life, which is social media, and decided I need to just have my body in these places. It was like the only places I felt safe all week or felt hopeful were at protests, were at when my body was among other people who were people of hope and action. And then this really inconvenient thing kept happening at these protests, which is that that what these people, these badass activists who are organizing and doing all of this work Needed is for everybody to use what they have and what they could for the highest good. So I'm sitting there at these protests thinking, holy shit, like my body's here. But if we're at a free Palestine protest, if we are demanding that representatives sign the block, the bombs, whatever the thing is of the day that we are there demanding, what they need Me to do is not just have my body here. They need me to use my platform. They need me to get my ass back on there. And by the way, I don't know if any of this is right. I'm just telling you this was my thought process at the time. And so it's like I had decided to retreat and then I realized, but I don't want, I want to be used the way that I can best be used. I want to use what I have. And I also don't want to look back on this time as a time where I retreated and abandoned everybody. Like I didn't want to say I have to protect my peace at a time when so many people don't have that option. ([Time 0:07:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/28b1a7da-b963-46e2-be33-47937f2036c0)) - **Saying Yes To Parts, No To Parts** - Glennon accepted GLAAD's invite but felt dread about the red carpet and media obligations. - She emailed they could have her for the speech but not red carpet or media, and they agreed. Transcript: Glennon Doyle So why – okay. So GLAAD reaches out to Abby and I lots of months ago and says, will you guys speak at the GLAAD Awards? No. An award show is not my comfort zone. Okay. It's like get all dressed up, stand on the thing, do the thing. Normally, that would be a hard no, right? That's 99% a hard no for us. Yeah. Abby Wambach Almost all of them, yeah. Almost always. Glennon Doyle I mean, to be fair, most award shows are bullshit, right? Also. But this one is not. Abby Wambach I like award shows. Glennon Doyle I know you do. So, and I love that for you. I just want to say. Yeah, I know. Yeah. So I felt something interesting though, when I read the invitation, which is usually ever just an easy, no, thank you. No, thank you. But what I felt in my body was like, actually, I want to speak to queer kids right now. I actually do want to be a person who's looking into a camera, speaking to a bunch of afraid, angry, queer kids all over the country and their parents. And I want to speak directly to them in the midst of all this bullshit. And I actually want to be a person who does that. That was weird. So I say to Abby, I think that I want to say yes to this. And we have a conversation about it. She's like, oh my God, are you serious? Are you sure? Blah, blah, blah. I say, yes, I do. I want to say yes. I want to go speak to the queer kiddos. I'm so proud of myself. I respond. I say, yes, we will be there. Tell us when, et cetera, et cetera. I walk around for a few days feeling very proud of myself. Then a few days later, I get an email from the organizers who are absolutely lovely. And they say, okay, great. Here's your information. You need to be at the red carpet at 6, your media is at 6.30, and then the awards start at 8. And that's when I think, oh, my entire body just goes, absolutely not. I will not do this. This is actually, I changed my mind. I do not want to go to this event. For me, a red carpet, it's a slice of hell. It's like for someone who's working on embodiment and trying to not worry about how others are perceiving and trying to stay in your moment, being screamed at and like – or – well, both Scenarios are bad. Being screamed at is terrible. Not being screamed at is terrible. Either you're too important or you're not important at all. All the attention on me or none of the attention on me, either one is terrifying. Yeah, totally. I mean, I've had experiences where people put a microphone in my face and ask me the most ridiculous questions that I can't answer in real time or look at me and they're like, Abby, who Is your perk? Like it's, it's, it's either resistant Abby. It's the grandiosity, the neuroticness and the narcissism of it is just too much for a human being to be able to gracefully from this human being. Abby Wambach Yeah. And to be fair for somebody who has done them a lot and somebody who feels just ambivalent about them, it's just like a part of the gig in a way to me. And it's not my favorite thing ever either. I'm just like, this is something I have to – this is part of the job. Glennon Doyle We were at – one time last year, a of years ago, we were at the Ted Lasso premiere. Oh my God. And we've had so many red carpet stories. So we get to the, and we love Ted Lasso. It's a journey, you guys. So we were like, we're going to do, this is good. This is the soccer. This is the believe. We're going to go. I can do this. We get to, it's frenzy. It's crazy. It's so many lights, so many things, so much screaming. We get super close to the time where you're supposed to walk out and they yell your name. And then you have to like pretend that you've taken all the posing classes that all the other people have. And you have to like smile or not smile, or I don't know what you do. And Abby goes into this mode. I don't know if you've ever seen her. She knows exactly what she's doing. She's posing. She's serving. She's giving. She's doing whatever the hell you're supposed to do on a red carpet. And I am standing there like the most awkward appendage. It's just, Abby looks at me before we go. We're about to step out. And she looks at me and she sees something on my face, which is terror. And she goes, we're not doing this. And she pulls me out of the line and pulls me behind the screen, which is like the woods in the middle of LA. We're standing in the middle of the woods. I've narrowly escaped the red carpet. The woods in the middle of LA? That was a credibility leap, Doyle. Amanda Doyle So we're standing in the woods in the middle of LA behind a curtain. Abby Wambach No. So the press situation for the premiere of Ted Lasso, they had built-in stadium seats. And so there was a lot of- Oh, it was underneath the stairs? Yes. We had to crawl underneath the stadium section. When the famous people walk by and they're doing the red carpet, they have, you can have like fans looking down upon the. Glennon Doyle Oh, we were under the bleachers. Abby Wambach Yeah, we were. It's like the scaffolding that was built. Glennon Doyle Okay. Well, in my mind, we were in the middle of the woods and we had narrowly escaped this thing. And then there's these two women standing behind in the woods bleachers. And they go, Clennon and Abby, these were Jason Sudeikis's two sisters who were also hiding in the woods. It was the best and they were the best. And we talked to them forever. Anyway, the point is we've had so many red carpet experiences. One time Abby tried to help me by giving me sunglasses that I could just close my eyes when all the cameras started. But then it turned out that the glasses were see-through. So I looked like I was just standing asleep. Abby Wambach Well, with the flashes, you could still kind of see. And there's a few pictures that are posted that she's just like this. Glennon Doyle I look so stoned on the carpet. Abby Wambach What's another strategy you could have? Glennon Doyle Yeah. So you decide I'm not doing the... That's it. The glad red carpet. So I'm out. I'm out. It was a bad idea. This was a bad idea. So I sit. I talk to Abby about it. I say, actually, you know, at dinner, actually, we're not going to do it. And she's like, okay. Like God, she doesn't care. She hasn't been obsessing about whether we were going or not. I'm just informing her what our life is that I'm constantly just informing her of what my brain has been obsessing about for the last 10 hours. And she's never been obsessing about it. She's fine either way. This always stuns me. I just want to come back if reincarnation is real as someone like Abby because I have done my time as someone like me. So I say, we're ([Time 0:27:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a8b1efc5-9216-47ee-8d39-a6410ef66650)) - **Use Your Body As A Decision Guide** - Pay attention to your body's specific sensations to decide what to accept or decline. - Communicate boundaries simply: yes to this, no to that, with no long justification. Transcript: Glennon Doyle So I decide what I'm going to do is write back to GLAAD. And I am going to tell them why I cannot do this part, but I can do this part. I write a seven paragraph essay to GLAAD about embodiment, about agency, about cultural expectations of women in outfits, of red carpets, of objectification whatever. It is so good. And then I read it and I think, these poor people don't deserve this. Why do these poor people who are just trying to organize an event for queer people deserve a dissertation from me about objectivity and subjectivity? So here's what I do. I delete the whole thing and I write two sentences that say, we will not be doing the red carpet or the media. We will be arriving right before the dinner and we will speak. Thank you so much. Then I send it and I sit and I wait for them to disrespect me. To disrespect you? I wait. What does it look like for them to disrespect you? Well, what it looks like is that they are going to write back to me and tell me that I can't do that and that is not right and that I have to do the whole thing and that here are all the reasons Amanda Doyle I should. The entitlement. The entitlement of thinking that you could just do part and not the other. Glennon Doyle And you just, you are a selfish bitch. Yes. And I sit there and I am so mad. Two hours later, I am furious at GLAAD. I am certain they have never represented anyone's interest and that they don't respect me, a queer person's needs. Amanda Doyle And you have 10 paragraphs prepared for the eventuality that they send the email that you're absolutely certain they will. Tizzy. Glennon Doyle I'm in a tizzy. When I tell you- You're preparing for the worst. Two hours. I'm creating the worst. I'm becoming the worst. Okay? Two hours later, I get an email back that says, great. We'll see you then. What? Great. We'll see you then. Okay. This is a small miracle to me. I have, through paying attention to my body, which tells me what I want and don't want, through communicating those needs non-dramatically and saying what I will do and will not do, Have created a new way of being in the world that is like, okay, I will do your thing, but I will do it my way. This is what I think embodiment is. It's like when you're letting your old little girl self run everything, you have to be like, no to everything or yes, full obedience. None of it has to do with your desire, right? You're either afraid and you're rebelling or you're obedient and a yes person. There's no freedom in that, right? Because rejection is just as much of a cage as obedience. It's still living in absolute reaction to whatever power is suggesting you should do. If you say yes to it all, that's not freedom. If you say no to it all, that's not freedom. But there is a space of agency that is checking in with the culture's request of you and then checking in with what your desire is and your limits are and your boundaries and saying, if You want this part of me, you can have it. Amanda Doyle You can't have any of the rest of it. Deal or no deal. And that feels to me like that is that third kind of making peace with your body. Like that is the ability to find peace in your body at every stage of that. You were like, okay, I am seeing this email. I have peace in the first line. I don't have peace here. Huh. Okay. So I don't have to spin all of my energy and all, I mean, if you were to do that again, I don't have to live in a perpetual state of self-protection because that's really what it is, is self-protection. It's not a I'm pissed at them. It is a I need to stay vigilant because I'm the only one that's going to protect myself. I'm the only one who ever has protected myself. And so I will be ready and I will already have my arguments and I will already have everything I need to step in and protect myself. As opposed to this place of like, I'm going to pay attention to myself, find my peace. Oh, my peace is this way. I can do this and not this. And then I'm going to maintain my peace out of honor of myself and not go down the rabbit hole of preemptive arguments and preemptive protections because that is disturbing my peace. And then I can trust myself that whatever they come back with, I don't have to preemptively prepare. ([Time 0:35:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2bf87d5c-8915-4553-9fb6-eec3a7d23152)) - **Practice In-The-Moment Responses** - Practice responding in the moment instead of pre-arming every imagined scenario. - Build embodiment skills so you can act from agency, not historical fear. Transcript: Glennon Doyle And isn't there a place for like – I think that there is a place for knowing yourself well enough to know if I put myself in that situation again, I am going to have an icky feeling that I don't Want. Some hard feelings are important and some are utter horseshit. Like there is nothing that my ass being on that red carpet matters for. I'm sorry. Like I don't, there are some feelings. Abby Wambach The price that you pay is not worth the pay. Absolutely. The payoff. Glennon Doyle Right. And you know that. So you're going to that's your line. Amanda Doyle But I just mean when we go down the flow chart in our minds in the shower when we're sleeping and we're like having the fake arguments of if they say this, then they say this, then I say this, Then I. So I don't know what they're going to say, whatever they're going to say, I can either do the misery now and play it out 10 different ways and have and guarantee that anxiety and that shitty Feeling. Or I can let people say whatever the fuck they're going to say. And maybe they won't say any of those things. And I can have that experience when it's actually happening instead of 1,400 times before it maybe does or doesn't. Glennon Doyle But that requires, that is, okay, yes. But having confidence that you're going to be able to handle like something that in the moment is what this sort of exercise builds. The reason why we don't think, I can go non-vigilant because when this person says whatever they're going to say, I'm going to have my agency and my wits about me and my power, and I'm going To be able to respond in a grown-up way that is in the moment and not historical, not from my past, is a skill. It is like how an athlete knows, okay, I can go into the game and I'm going to be able to perform because I have been practicing and I know what that feels like. And I don't think that you or I have done enough practice of having our power and peace in the moment to trust that we get will. ([Time 0:51:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cd4b9dcb-3127-4ff4-9262-fd6c9a8c3714))