Bad At Keeping Secrets

I can't remember the first time somebody told me that I was bad at keeping secrets. When I met someone new, I'd have to tell them that unless they tell me something like: "Please, Carissa, don't share this with anyone" I would just assume that it's safe to say. There's something about saying everything you feel out loud that's freeing, and also connective. If I'm feeling this way, chances are other humans are, too. I want to talk about these things with you. Hi, I'm Carissa Potter, and this is Bad At Keeping Secrets, a podcast where we create closeness, understanding and acceptance by sifting through the beautiful emotional mess of life and trying to make sense of what it means to be human. Through intimate conversations between people who spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to be human right now in the scientific, creative, and therapeutic disciplines, we weigh into the gray areas, letting go of conclusions and judgments when we can, in hopes of feeling a little - just a little bit more whole, a little more okay with what is. Exploring things that are deeply meaningful, not because they have a capitalist value, but a human one.

10. Lissa Soep - Other People's Words 04/16/2024

9. Priya Parker - The Art of Gathering 04/09/2024

8. Fair Play - Eve Rodsky on the Control of Women's Time 03/18/2024

8. Fair Play - Eve Rodsky on the Control of Women's Time Do you ever wonder if you shoulder more of the work in your family? Humans seem to have the natural tendency to think that they're doing more work than others. But Eve Rodsky points out that women actually are doing more work. The emotional labor and invisible labor that keep households running. , will help you and your partner make things better. I found Eve's approach to problem solving and communicating your needs so helpful in discussing uncomfortable topics. This book will help you make things more fair in your relationships and with yourself. I hope you enjoy. Eve's Bio:- I grew up on the lower east side of New York City with my mother Terry and my brother Josh. I saw my mother struggle as a single mom trying to do it all. I vowed that when I grew up, I would have an equal partner in life . . . and I did! I marked up his operating agreements as he grew a new business and he help me secure my dream job in philanthropy. We took turns making dinner and doing laundry. It felt great and fair. Cut to two kids later and I found myself sobbing on the side of the road because of a text my husband sent me: “I’m surprised you didn’t get blueberries.” As I sat in my car, I thought to myself: I’m so overwhelmed I can’t even manage a grocery list (when I used to manage a team of employees)—and more importantly, when did I become the default for every single household and childcare task . . . including apparently being the fulfiller of my husband’s smoothie needs? This was not how I envisioned my life. I knew something had to change. So I embarked on a quest to find a solution for domestic rebalance not only for my marriage but for couples everywhere. I started my journey into the “gendered division of labor” (and other related phrases like “emotional labor” and the “second shift”) by reading every book and article I could get my hands on. I was aware that women shoulder about two-thirds of the work required to run a home and raise a family but I wasn’t sure why. Early on in my research, I came across an article titled “Invisible Work,” written in 1987 by sociologist Arlene Kaplan Daniels. In it she argues that women’s unpaid “invisible” work in the home is often not seen as “work” at all and is significantly devalued. The article had a real impact on me and informed my initial quest—which was to make the invisible domestic tasks I did visible to my husband. My thinking was that it is impossible to value what’s invisible and I believed visibility would equal value. So I created a “Sh*t I Do” spreadsheet. With the help of women across the country, I catalogued every single action I took in service of my family that had a quantifiable time component. But here’s the thing—while the “Shit I Do” list illuminated how much invisible work women were doing for their families, the list also seemed to provoke more rage (and scorekeeping!) than change. I soon realized that my expertise in family mediation, law, and organizational management could be applied to this problem—to create a system to promote sustainable change and get past the resentment and rage. Fair Play is a system tested by couples from all walks of life. At its core is a card game—where couples each hold domestic task cards representing all that it takes to run a home and raise a family. I advise highly complex family organizations. For more than a decade I have worked to bring solutions for family harmony and efficiency to high-net-worth family foundations by setting up systems customized for each family (sort of like the show Succession). My lightbulb moment was that the same systems I create for these highly complex organizations could also work for any home. In terms of my research, I wanted to make sure I was well versed in the subject area. I started by reading hundreds of articles, studies, and books. I did not want to rely on third-party sources like newspaper articles, so I worked with a research assistant to comb through actual studies and original research. Where possible, I interviewed experts firsthand in psychology, sociology, social work, neuroscience, clergy, behavioral economics, and law. I took a deeper dive with two experts in particular—Professor Darby Saxbe, a clinical psychology professor who is an expert in the gendered division of labor and read the manuscript through that lens, and Professor Alexis Jemal, a social work professor who is an expert in critical consciousness theory and who read the manuscript through that lens. Second, as the author of this book representing majority social identities, I wanted to ensure that I had a representative sample of the U.S. population to interview in order to make sure my findings were applicable to a wide range of couples with other social identities. I ended up interviewing more than five hundred men and women for this book. The sample was diverse in age, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, marital status, educational attainment, employment status, geographical location, and dyadic gender composition. While the majority of couples were heterosexual, same-sex couples were also included in my research. The research was done in a three-stage process. The first stage was the creation of the “Sh*t I Do” list, where domestic tasks were sourced from family, friends, colleagues, and strangers and subsequently organized into “suits.” The second stage involved more in-depth conversations and interviews using open-ended questions. Data and insights from each interview were used (a) to adjust questions for successive interviews, (b) to explore the causes and consequences of inequitable division of domestic labor, and (c) to inform the development of the Fair Play System. Finally, after the Fair Play System was created, couples were chosen for beta testing Fair Play concepts. I conducted follow-up interviews to troubleshoot, assess, and modify the Fair Play System accordingly. All this work culminates in my favorite chapter—“The Top 13 Mistakes Couples Make—and the Fair Play Fix.” /episode/index/show/5e7cc84e-412c-4c43-9fe9-e93d4985f10c/id/30422738

7. Setting Yourself up for Failure. Kate Baer on the Richness of Working through Hard Things 02/19/2024

6. Anna Lembke, MD - Avoidance of Pain Leads to More Pain 01/28/2024

6. Anna Lembke, MD - Avoidance of Pain Leads to More Pain I grew up thinking that addiction was not something that ran in my family. So I didn’t have to worry about it. My parents were both not really into drinking. My grandparents had been raised in the Depression and had seen the damage that alcohol could do on families and were so scared of it that they didn’t drink. When I came of age, I was not interested in it. I tried it. I have been drunk. I think the first time was when I was traveling abroad at 16. I don’t remember the details of the event, but I do remember slamming my head on the floor over and over and asking to have sex (even though I had never before) with a guy I had just met. He said no. I was lucky. I didn’t feel that way at the time. I woke up feeling rejected and physically ill. This could have gone so many ways, but when I returned home to the States, and no longer had access to alcohol, I just didn’t drink. I thought I was free from that and hard drugs, due to the times I had had painkillers. I was not crazy about them because I enjoyed pooping. And on them, basic body functions shut down. But I am dealing with addiction. To my phone. And I wanted to understand why. And what I could do about it. is a psychiatrist who studies addiction at Stanford University. Her book, changed my life. I say that in the respect that it altered the framework in which I understand how pleasure and pain work. We need both for balance in our brains. We are all living in an age where we have immediate access to high reward and high dopamine stimuli. It might be drugs, it might be romance novels, gambling, it might be social media, or news feeds. Whatever it is, it is something that is accessible and lurking within your reach, providing little (or big) hits of dopamine. These drug-ified stimuli keep us ever in need of more to return to a balanced state. Dopamine was first discovered in the 1950s as an important neurotransmitter for motivation and reward processing. Mice that were not able to produce it stopped eating. No longer taking enjoyment in food. Depression is a state in which we are in chronic dopamine depletion. There are more neurotransmitters involved, but most people agree that dopamine is important in processing pleasure. Are you finding yourself checking your phone as the first thing and last thing that you do each day? Are you taking less pleasure in things that you thought you valued? I am. And I don’t like it. Anna takes the science of desire and the wisdom of recovery programs to find balance in the brain. She believes that to take pleasure again, we need to balance it with healthy pain. For example, exercise, intermittent fasting, or cold plunges. Or dopamine fasting for 30 days. She doesn’t think that more pleasure is the answer to our ever-pain-avoidant culture. “Mutual honesty precludes shame and presages an intimacy explosion, a rush of emotional warmth that comes from feeling deeply connected to others when we’re accepted despite our flaws. It is not our perfection but our willingness to work together to remedy our mistakes that create the intimacy we crave.” The first step, is being honest. Truth-telling and lying are both contagious. Having a place where you can go and be totally honest and still be accepted is important. Radical honesty is a path to your authentic self. Lies are a lot of work, and telling the truth helps free up your cognitive load. It also helps you feel closer to people. We are all in recovery. How can we see each other with more compassion and empathy within our increasingly black and white, right and wrong world? By seeking to understand each other, we naturally tend to care for each other. I don’t want to change your mind, I am just curious why you are the way you are. Run towards the hard stuff – find ways to immerse yourself in the life you have been given. There is something so profound in our experience of the spectrum of emotions. Something human, that we are longing for, can be re-discovered. Love, Carissa PS This podcast is self-funded by me. Because I love talking to people who I believe in, I am so lucky they say yes. With help from Stephanie Tsou (you rock!!!), (he helps make people’s podcast dreams a reality) and my lovely sister/soulmate, did the music. /episode/index/show/5e7cc84e-412c-4c43-9fe9-e93d4985f10c/id/29681973

5. Ashley Neese Gives us Permission to Rest 01/08/2024

5. Ashley Neese Gives us Permission to Rest I have known Ashley Neese for years. We met when we gave a talk together in the winter of 2019. I have been obsessed with her ever since. Her new book, insists that we need rest for ourselves, for healing, for repair, and yes, for our communities. And then, Permission to Rest shows you how to do the work of resting. “There are a million reasons not to rest,” says our culture. Prioritizing rest is hard, but necessary. I don’t know about you, but I was raised with the notion that to have worth, I had to be doing something productive for society. I had to clean, practice something, and help others. If I took time to rest, I was lazy, hopeless, and worthless. For years, I ignored what was going on by working on something else. Rest is hard because it makes space for us to confront what is going on in our bodies. Instead of running from our feelings, we are forced to tend to them. Ashley will teach you to find strength in your body. Transformation, a word that I have been hearing and using a lot as of late, we assume happens in one major moment. It can, but also, it can also happen with the accumulation of lots of small moments, mundane moments, the micro moments. That we can start small - by starting small, not taking on the capital “T” trauma we can make transformation sustainable. PS This podcast is self-funded by me. Because I love talking to people who I believe in, I am so lucky they say yes. With help from Stephanie Tsou (you rock!!!), (he helps make people’s podcast dreams a reality) and my lovely sister/soulmate, did the music. PPS More about Ashley: Ashley Neese is a renowned breathwork teacher, somatic practitioner, author, parent, and land steward. She has spent over a decade working at the intersections of embodiment, transformation, and renewal. Ashley is host of The Deeper Call podcast, where she shares restorative conversations with people who move and inspire her – intended to contextualize our experiences and re-establish our interconnectedness. She lives with her family in a valley of wise old oak trees in California. /episode/index/show/5e7cc84e-412c-4c43-9fe9-e93d4985f10c/id/29388478

4. Is Depression a Character Flaw or Illness? Or maybe both? - Rachel Aviv 12/11/2023

4. Is Depression a Character Flaw or Illness? Or maybe both? - Rachel Aviv Have you ever wondered why your life worked out the way it did? Yes. You have. We all have. Why are some people a success? Other’s not so much? Why do some people with similar diagnoses, DNA, and environments have such different life outcomes? I have wondered this throughout my life. It comes in waves. I asked a mentor once in art grad school if she could tell me who would become a famous artist. After 30 years of teaching, she still said she had no idea who would be able to make it in the art world. That she was always surprised. I think this is honest. I am dubious of people who think that they know things like this. Often, when we can account for our own bias, lack of knowledge, and mood, there are too many open variables to guess with any accuracy. (I know thatwould disagree with this. She argues that we have more information then we think we do.) I grew up in a house where it was okay to be sad. At least those words were said out loud. I think that our house promoted other feelings in actions: for example, positively rewarding happy moods something very common in my generation, perhaps it still is. People in the family who were more beautiful, outgoing, and smart were met with interest. In some ways, you could argue this is a normal thing, that the feelings we put out attract like feelings, happy people attract happy people. But what about the people who are sad? Don’t they need love too? What can pull a person out of a sad spiral? At the age of 10 I started seeing a therapist, at 15 I started on an SSRI. I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. To this day, I am kinda unsure where they each end and begin. As I now understand it, I think I have anxiety that turns into guilt, which turns into depression. And it could pop up, or manifest like a chronic illness at any time. Being turned on almost by stimuli that I can never really fully understand. And I am lucky. I somehow was able to keep living. Through processing all these uncomfortable emotions, and make it through the hard parts of my “illness.” That with a flip of a coin, things could have been so different. I know this. And if I think too hard about it, I falter. That dark area gets closer. There is always some amount of active avoidance of the pointlessness of it all that I need to function. In Rachel Aviv’s book, , Rachel meets a woman who is seemingly on a parallel path to her. They are both young, from similar backgrounds, and are being treated in an inpatient program for anorexia. Rachel's institutional moment becomes an anomaly and for some unknown reason, Hava’s becomes chronic. After years go by, Rachel seeks out Hava only to find out she is no longer living. Hava has spent most of her life battling her anorexia. The mystery of their tangled lives and possibilities is poetic. Context is everything. Each situation is different. There is not a catch-all. There is not one solid definition of mental health that everyone agrees on. At a time when most people I know have some experience with anti-depressants, without creating a false nostalgia, is life that much harder now? That we have to drug ourselves to get through each day? (I do.) I pathologize stories of mental illness that are deeply personal and situational. I am human and I like simple explanations. I contort my mind into shapes that it can fit in within an “evidence-based” medical system. One answer or explanation feels so good when opposed to the truth that we don’t have any answers. And all systems of understanding have some truth to them. But what if mental illness is also a reflection of our community? The good, the bad and the ugly? We are afraid to talk about these things because they might become contagious, and we should be afraid to an extent. I feel it when I am with someone who is deeply in pain. But what if we need to talk about it as a community to feel better? To repair the pain that we have caused. I don’t have any answers. But I am searching for some real feeling even while being aware that realness can never really exist. Sending softness and care your way, love always, Carissa BAD AT KEEPING SECRETS is a reader-supported publication. We love having you here. PS This podcast is self-funded by me. Because I love talking to people who I believe in, I am so lucky they say yes. With help from Stephanie Tsou (you rock!!!), (he helps make people’s podcast dreams a reality) and my lovely sister/soulmate, did the music. “The philosopher Ian Hacking uses the term “looping effect” to describe the way that people get caught in self-fulfilling stories about illness. A new diagnosis can change “the space of possibilities for personhood,” he writes. “We make ourselves in our own scientific image of the kinds of people it is possible to be.” — Rachel Aviv /episode/index/show/5e7cc84e-412c-4c43-9fe9-e93d4985f10c/id/29026498

3. How to slow down and... locate the magic in life, with Katherine May 12/03/2023

3. How to slow down and... locate the magic in life, with Katherine May In celebration of darkness, this week I want to revisit my chat with Katherine May, a best-selling author and podcast host, of whom I adore in so many ways. I first heard about her with her book, during the height of the lockdown in 2020. In so many ways, this book helped me let go of control and step back. That there is comfort in resting. I don’t know about you, but I needed permission to use rest as a way to keep going. When I saw she had a new book coming out, I had to talk to her. I do these interviews because I love meeting people and I love sharing ideas that I feel are helpful in defining what it means to be alive in these times. And wow, Katherine does that. First, let me explain the title. For those of you who thought of rainbows and unicorns with this title, sadly, there are not any featured in this book. However, the elements here, are no less filled with wonder and magic. The book is organized around connecting with the Earth, Water, Fire, and Air - giving into the cyclical nature of being. Western culture so often has us working against the seasons, nature, and each other. This leaves us feeling disconnected and often like we are swimming upstream (maybe this is just me? IDK) working against forces that naturally offer soothing moments. I also pretend Katherine is a dictionary, and ask her how she would define terms that I feel like I don’t really have a grasp on even though I have spent my life using them freely. For what seems like forever, I have been trying to make a structure for meaning that reflects the world I have experienced. Perhaps you are doing this too? It feels like a longing for understanding and connection, a search for some truth (all the while knowing there probably is none…). We re-define Enchantment, Rituals, Resilience, and how Katherine sees God in this moment. She, however, pushes back on the idea of fixed definitions altogether. And why it might feel good to feel small sometimes. Sending softness and care your way, love always, Carissa PS This podcast is self-funded by me. Because I love talking to people who I believe in, I am so lucky they say yes. With help from Stephanie Tsou (you rock!!!), (he helps make people’s podcast dreams a reality) and my lovely sister/soulmate, did the music. /episode/index/show/5e7cc84e-412c-4c43-9fe9-e93d4985f10c/id/28905693

2. What is a lie? The unraveling of our shared reality, with Sarah Viren 11/13/2023

2. What is a lie? The unraveling of our shared reality, with Sarah Viren “...sometimes, when something is such an integral part of your life, it's hard to see where the raw material ends, and the inspiration begins.” , author of , tackles big questions such as the location of truth, the value/curse of doubt, the pliability of personal narratives, and the allure of conspiracy theories. I first read about her story “The Accusations Were Lies, But Could We Prove it?” in the It was a thriller. I have been longing for a collective truth. Something that I feel like in the past 15 years or so has been slowly disappearing. Perhaps it never existed? To work together, to understand each other, to love, we need to agree on something called a fact and truth, right? I want to have things like, we both saw the same news, or read the same books, or listened to the same random country song on the radio because there was nothing else but commercials on. I miss feeling grounded in facts. For Sarah, there are events in her life that make her question, I mean really question reality. In high school, her idol, a teacher named Dr. Whiles turns out to be a holocaust denier. What happens when you love and trust someone, someone who has helped you shape your personhood, but then no longer shares your reality? The second story that the book focuses on is that of a series of lies that a fellow academic says about her partner sexually harassing their students. Sarah has been trained in the classics, with the idea of doubt playing out in her own life in ways that start to dismantle her reality. Is her partner not the person she knows? Is there life to a lie? Lies, active lies, and big lies create distance between people. We can use truth to come together, to understand and to relate, to heal and repair together. Lies also create a space to be creative, to test out different realities, and to solve problems. Is lying inherently wrong? I don’t think so. I think delusions can be useful and informative. I am not saying that we should lie. On the contrary, I think the ability to tell the truth, is a luxury of comfort and acceptance that I have the privilege of. I don’t need to lie to be loved. I don’t need to be something other than what I am to have worth. These are the facts: life is messy. There are no easy narratives. We are all complex creatures in a dark moment. How can we hold each other with love, understanding, and tenderness as we are stuck in this waiting room? I hope you enjoy this conversation. Something else beautiful and complex for you – Ocean Voung’s Bad At Keeping Secrets, the podcast is Stephanie Tsou and Carissa Potter. Audio by Officially Quigley. Sound editing by Mark McDonald. Mark is helping people start their podcasts, if you have been thinking about starting one, I would highly recommend him. Sign up for a free meeting with him /episode/index/show/5e7cc84e-412c-4c43-9fe9-e93d4985f10c/id/28617558

1. How to feel alive again, with Catherine Price 10/20/2023

1. How to feel alive again, with Catherine Price "We can control whether we merely endure our days or experience and enjoy them. We can control whether we arrive on our deathbeds feeling like we've wasted our time or end up satisfied with how we've spent our brief moment in the sun." -Catherine Price During my darkest moments in the pandemic, my therapist told me that I had to find joy to keep going. These days, I feel deeply hollow inside. I am not sure when it started exactly, but I feel trapped in trying to figure out how to dig myself back to feeling alive again. I first found out about ’s work with her book, “.” It all started for me with the idea that I don’t have control over my happiness and my addiction to my phone for well-being has just gotten really bad. My phone is the first thing I check in the morning and the last thing in the evening. I think that the thing that really got to me was the idea that I keep wanting to go to this phone over doing anything else. I am working to fill some void and then when I get it (time on the phone) I actually feel worse. I don’t want to live my life only looking forward to spending time digitally. Something feels deeply wrong about this. “I reached for my phone to soothe myself, but I often crossed the line from feeling soothed to going numb.” — Catherine Price Catherine is not anti-tech - she is just about exposing the ways that tech hi-jacks our brains into spending time on them to sell our data. She calls this “fake fun.” Fake fun is the kind of mind-numbing state that we somehow long to be in while doom-scrolling. In her most recent book, “,” she breaks down what fun is and why it is important in feeling alive. Having fun is actually one of the most important priorities that humans have in composing well-being. Her book is life-affirming on so many levels and is an actionable guide on finding fun and making fun. The kind of fun that gives you energy, not drains you. Having fun helps us feel awake and present for our super brief time on this planet. Listen here to our very first really real podcast. I am so very proud of it. It would mean the world to me if you shared it with someone right now who needs to hear it, to have a little more fun in their lives. She also is teaching a Find Your Fun Course - and she is offering people 15% off with the code BADATSECRETS. If you want a copy of her book, we have one for a US-based subscriber! Bad At Keeping Secrets, the podcast is Stephanie Tsou and Carissa Potter. Audio by Officially Quigley. Sound editing by Mark McDonald. Mark is helping people start their podcasts, if you have been thinking about starting one, I would highly recommend him. Sign up for a free meeting with him . -- Newsletter: Instagram: Twitter: Facebook: /episode/index/show/5e7cc84e-412c-4c43-9fe9-e93d4985f10c/id/28380686

Bad At Keeping Secrets

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