Pod Insights Negotiate Anything Why We Suffer and How We Heal - With Dr. Suzan Song About this episode Psychiatrist Dr. Suzan Song reveals why "just keep going" isn't resilience — it's a trauma response. After hiding from child soldiers in Burundi, she uncovered the hidden cost of high achievement that no one talks about.
In this episode, you'll discover:
Why performing stability after trauma leads to a breakdown decades later
The real difference between pain (unavoidable) and suffering (optional)
The Three Friends of Winter — Narrative, Ritual & Purpose — and why they outperform every self-care tool
Why building your identity on competence is the most fragile thing a high achiever can do
Why more mental health resources are producing more depression, not less
Connect with Dr Suzan Song
www.suzansong.com
Buy the book: Why We Suffer and How We Heal
Using Narrative, Ritual, and Purpose to Flourish Through Life's Challenges
Connect with Kwame:
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Follow Kwame Christian on LinkedIn
negotiateanything.com
Click here to buy your copy of Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life!
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Transcript 10,448 words · 3 speakers
0:00 Speaker 00 We think that our experiences are encoded in our memories as kind of video recorders. Right? They're just like, this is the reality, this is the truth, the quote, "truth." And so our details are always correct, but that is rarely ever the case. So instead, our memories are constantly changing.
0:21 Speaker 01 What if everything you've built your life around, the work ethic, the achievement, the relentless drive, was actually a trauma response that you've never dealt with?
0:31 Speaker 00 Pain might be unavoidable. Job losses happen, loved ones pass away unexpectedly. So the pain is unavoidable, but the suffering is not.
0:43 Speaker 01 Meet Dr. Suzanne Song, psychiatrist, author, and someone who works with hostage survivors, Fortune 500 CEOs, and says they're dealing with the exact same thing.
0:54 Speaker 00 My father was assaulted and kidnapped in an attempted robbery. He later died, so I continued doing everything. I still did my piano lessons, you know, I did start working a couple of jobs. But it wasn't until two decades later that I now find myself in Burundi, where I had essentially recreated a similar scene of violence, hoping that this time around that I would be the one who could save a life, which would be my own, because I couldn't save my father. So when people kept saying I was resilient, what they actually were saying, or what I was actually doing, was performing stability.
1:34 Speaker 01 Dr. Suzanne Song is the author of Why We Suffer and How We Heal. And in this book, she shows you that the life you've been building might be the very thing standing between you and the life you actually want.
1:45 Speaker 00 I thought my father was assaulted. He stayed in hospice, he died six weeks later. But actually, from the news clippings, they just figured out now, middle age, he actually came home for a year and lived with me. And then he later died, actually, from metastatic cancer. Now, I don't remember any of that in between. So I asked my mother when I was writing this book, and I said, "Ma, did this actually happen? Like, I don't remember him coming home." And she said, "Yeah, you played violin for him at night." You still made him dinner. You brought him cereal.
2:20 Speaker 01 This episode will change how you think about resilience, purpose, and what stability actually means. If you've ever confused being busy with being okay, this episode's for you. Let's jump in. Today's episode is brought to you by Shopify, Granola AI, Quince, and the Anxious Achiever Podcast. Stay present in your meetings. Get three months of granola free at granola.ai/Quami. For your gift list, shopquince.com for free shipping and 365 day returns, and make sure to tell them that Quami with Big Swings Only sent you. Subscribe to the Anxious Achiever today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Do you have an idea that you want live for the holidays? Launch before Black Friday at Shopify.com/Quami.
3:07 Speaker 01 Playing it safe is easy. Playing it safe is comfortable. But here's the problem. Playing it safe and playing by rules that were never meant for you will never take you to the next level. If you've got what it takes to hit the ball out of the park, the only thing holding you back is whether you're brave enough to take a big swing. I'm Quami Christian, and this is Big Swings Only. Every week, we're telling you the stories of people who fought their fear, chased the life they actually wanted, and became who they had to become to get it. This show is built for people who are meant for more, because if you really want to get to the next level, you've got to do something big. So the question isn't whether or not you've got what it takes. The question is whether or not you're going to swing.
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3:56 Speaker 00 Long ago, I was doing my PhD on intergenerational stress with former child soldiers in Burundi.
4:04 Speaker 00 And during my third year, I found myself in hiding for my life from former child soldiers.
4:14 Speaker 00 And it was my first night in hiding that I stopped and I asked myself like, what is going on? How am I here? I'm a Korean-American woman now in the middle of a small country that no one's ever heard of and hiding for my life from child soldiers. Like, how did this happen?
4:32 Speaker 00 And it immediately dawned on me that it was my dad. So when I was 15 years old, my family owned a liquor store outside of Baltimore.
4:42 Speaker 00 And my father was assaulted and kidnapped in an attempted robbery. He later died.
4:53 Speaker 00 Now,
4:56 Speaker 00 I had, I was only 15, but I knew then that it was important to have a stable life. And so I continued doing everything. I still did my piano lessons. I still, you know, I did start working a couple of jobs. My GPA did not tank at all. It still saved 3.7. And I basically continued because I had really no narrative to explain what had happened. You know, this was a time and a culture where I didn't go see a therapist or talk to anybody about it. So I just kept going. I kept moving forward. People kept telling me how resilient I am because nothing really fell.
5:40 Speaker 00 I kept all things up in the air still. I went to college, went to medical school residency. You know, did policy degrees, PhD, all the things, fancy schools. But it wasn't until two decades later that I now find myself in Burundi, where I had essentially recreated a similar scene of violence, hoping that this time around that I would be the one who could save a life, which would be my own, because I couldn't save my father.
6:15 Speaker 00 And a lot of that, I think, came from me not actually engaging with what was going on with the loss of my father. Right? So when people kept saying I was resilient,
6:31 Speaker 00 what they actually were saying, or what I was actually doing was performing stability. I was, and I hear this all the time, just keep going, just one foot in front of the other. And that has consequences. I mean, it can work for a short period of time, but eventually it's gonna catch up to you. And that's what happened to me.
6:55 Speaker 01 Wow, but thank you for sharing that story. And I know it's probably never easy to tell. A, one of the things that really stands out to me is the conscious awareness and lucidity you had in such a difficult situation. Because let's go back to Burundi in that moment. You asked yourself, how did you get here? And you actually got a meaningful answer. And I, I want to go back to that moment because I think a lot of our, just as humans, nobody enjoys suffering, but it's an inescapable reality of life. And one of the keys to success, to, to finding,
7:38 Speaker 01 well, not stability, that's not the word that we're going to use, finding a better life is finding meaning in our suffering, the classic Viktor Frankl type of mentality. And it's interesting because you found that meaning in that moment in suffering. But you, to that point, were unable to find that same meaning
8:04 Speaker 01 in the tragedy that happened in the past. So what changed for you in that moment that gave you that understanding?
8:13 Speaker 00 That's a great question. I mean, I think one is maybe a little bit of time and distance. I think when we are in the actual crisis, like when my father actually passed away.
8:26 Speaker 00 You know, our, our brains act in a very different way. And so I had shut down quite a bit in order to function. And this studies have shown this across the board in all humanitarian conflict. Right? When there is crisis, we do shut down emotionally so that we can function. There's nothing wrong with that. And distraction is very useful many, many times. But the problem is when that's the only thing we go to. And when that's too prolonged. So I think for me, at the time when I was a child,
8:58 Speaker 00 my brain wasn't sure what to do with the information.
9:03 Speaker 00 And so I just tucked it away so I could keep on going. I think the difference is when I was then in Burundi and I had this moment. One, I had been in therapy for many, many years. I'm a psychiatrist and that's part of what my training was, was to go into therapy and to be more introspective and to be more curious.
9:26 Speaker 00 But it was also, I think I was just more open to the world. I had been more open and wanting answers because I knew something was wrong. I had been pushing the limits for a very long time in my career. So, you know, I started off as a general psychiatrist and then a pediatric psychiatrist. But then I started working with systems and the systems were always around violence. Right? So like systems of care of and, and systems of
9:57 Speaker 00 violence with perpetrators of violence, whether that's child soldiers or people who were engage in sexual assault. And I was just, I kept pushing the boundaries and the limits. So I work with survivors of torture. I work with survivors of trafficking and not just of former trafficking, but kids who are currently exploited in trafficking, which is one of the hardest populations, I think, to work with.
10:23 Speaker 00 And I did have this nagging question in the back of my mind during my career of
10:30 Speaker 00 is this healthy? Like, is this normal for me to just keep pushing so much? Almost as if I was trying to die. Or like, why is it so important for me to get so close to the danger and the violence? In a way that other people were not. And to me, I said, well, this is, I need to be able to locate myself within whatever it is that I'm studying or working with. And to me, that was the people and the systems and the cultures around, around them. But I think because I had primed myself to wondering, and just this curiosity about is this okay? Is this healthy?
11:12 Speaker 00 Is this intentional? Or is this that I'm being driven by some other motor that I'm not aware of?
11:18 Speaker 01 This is, it's fascinating because you work with people who are, have experienced great degrees of suffering, or currently are experiencing great degrees of suffering. And you help them work through that. And then in your life, you've experienced it too, and you've had the, the ability to work with other professionals as well. But it's interesting through the, the entire story of your life, there's been this metacognitive awareness throughout where you're, you're trying to ask yourself these deeper questions and getting answers, getting closer. But again, it wasn't until you were so close to death in that situation
12:02 Speaker 01 that it finally broke through. And so, I'm, let's, I'm, I'm wondering, if you were to go back and talk to Suzanne 20 years ago, and you could be your own therapist, what kind of things would you tell yourself? To, to work through that?
12:24 Speaker 00 You know, I honestly wouldn't tell myself anything, except I would encourage myself to be more in relation with others. Because we heal and we find our grounding through others. It's in relationship. And that's one thing that I have learned, especially in my work with humanitarian settings, where there are no therapists, there are no psychiatrists really, maybe one for the country. But people heal through a sense of belonging and they heal relationally.
13:05 Speaker 00 And they find, yes, personal agency, but they also tap into this collective agency. So that suffering is not an individual experience, as it is here in the US, very much. Suffering is privatized here in the US. Like, we're told, oh, you have a loved one who passed away, oh, take off three days from work and then come back and be productive. Like, get over it, come back and be good, right? Like, and that is not the same in many other cultures that are relationally interdependent, where if one person suffers, they all experience the suffering together.
13:44 Speaker 00 And so it just, you know, like, life is hard, but it's so much harder if you do it alone. And so I would go back and tell myself that, that I don't even have to go inwards into my experience necessarily, but just spend more time with other people in community and be of use. Because we all feel better when we are needed and when we matter to someone. And I think we're missing a lot of that. You know, I work with a lot of these high flyers, I work with a lot of CEOs and, you know, um, high-profile politicians, but I have people who come into my office when
14:29 Speaker 00 they've reached the top of their game. Like, they have made it, they have done everything, and they come to me because they say, I don't feel it. Like, I feel dissatisfied and I'm not sure why.
14:45 Speaker 00 And oftentimes, it's because they've spent so much of their life, as I did, just this kind of one foot in front of the other, this achievements, goal habit. And they've lost that internal, not just the why, but who am I? And who matters to me? And what is my life for? Kind of that more existential part. And we learn that through our relationships.
15:13 Speaker 01 Hmm. First of all, little aside, um, we privatized suffering in America. So beautifully articulated and so true. And we often lose the, we forget the value of community. It's funny because whether it's a situation where I'm going through hard times myself, or it's just a normal day, sometimes I might have scheduled an outing with a friend or a group of friends, and I see it on my calendar and I'm dreading it. And I'm saying, oh, my gosh, I'm so tired. Why am I doing this? I'm so busy. I don't feel like it.
15:53 Speaker 01 100% of the time, after I have that experience, I say two things. Number one, that was delightful. It was utterly delightful. And number two, why don't I do this more? Because in the individualistic society that we live in, the majority of the listeners live in versus collectivist societies, we are hyper focused on ourself. And I know this is something that will come up more frequently throughout the rest of the episode, but I think it's something very important to highlight, that we forget the value of community. And one of the things that you mentioned that I thought was so powerful and so relatable
16:36 Speaker 01 was you said that you used achievement as a coping mechanism. And so many people can relate to that. And I remember I was, I journal a lot. And in my journal, I said, I've become addicted to not feeling like I'm enough. Where you put yourself on this constant hamster wheel of success, hoping that that is going to give you the release and the freedom that you're looking for. And then you just habituate to it and then you go on seeking. And so when I'm, when you think about the people that you've worked with. How do you help them to rediscover these fundamental truths of humanity?
17:19 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, it's such a good point that you bring up because
17:25 Speaker 00 probably like you and many high flyers and like high achieving people to get there, that doesn't happen overnight. Right? That people become very high achieving in their careers
17:38 Speaker 00 through a very curated, almost like habituated way of coping that has a cost and that opportunity cost is compartmentalizing, it's putting aside their needs, it's pushing aside any sort of difficult emotions or even like really happy emotions that sometimes too, it's like, and so all of that becomes habituated.
18:08 Speaker 00 And again, these coping skills can help. It gets people to accomplish the goal. But at some point, and this is when they come in to see me, they realize they've hit the bottom, whether that's me, I'm now hiding from my life or it's for, you know, the CEO is saying, I don't even know why I'm here. I just had someone who made senior partner. And the next day they're like, I've never seen them in such distress because she said, what am I doing? Why did I? I didn't, I don't even want this. So now what do I do? Because all of their energies are going towards this goal. And we know we want it. We kind of know why it'll give us this quote, stable life, but it's not fulfilling. And so
18:52 Speaker 00 to your question of how do we help people see, one is to understand that people have internalized an identity of being competent.
19:04 Speaker 00 And that's a very fragile platform, right? So that if I'm always the person who's like, I can over-function. I can get stuff done, right? Like, come to me, you know it'll get done. But now, as in my personal life, so I had a divorce and a house fire. And my kids were displaced all within a year.
19:28 Speaker 01 Oh.
19:29 Speaker 00 And I am normally the person who gets a lot of stuff done. Like, people have called me hyper-efficient. My identity is as being a competent person. But now, that's all out the window, right? Because instabilities, when they hit, almost by definition, they're going to upend us. We can't rationalize our way through it so much.
19:50 Speaker 00 And so, we have to understand that maybe our identities should not be built on this platform of being like a high achiever, a competent person. And we can turn it towards something else.
20:06 Speaker 00 And this is where what I call the three friends of ritual, sorry, three friends of winter, which are narrative, rituals, and purpose.
20:19 Speaker 00 And so, those can help us really engage with and not avoid all of these instabilities when they come into our lives.
20:29 Speaker 01 Yes. Oh, this is so good. And first of all, I have to address the fact that I think every high achiever in the audience, when they heard you say that we need to build on, build our identity on something other than our achievement and competency, collectively immediately became nauseous, like, oh, my God. What have I been doing for the last few decades? If I don't have my achievement, who am I? And what do I move toward? What am I supposed to do? Just feel enough and find joy and purpose in life? What's that about? So I think this, this is exactly what people need. And I think one of the most thought-provoking things that you said before we started the podcast was...
21:14 Speaker 01 The fact that so many people are chasing stability, but they have a fundamental misunderstanding of the concepts of stability and instability. So before we get into the three friends of winter, let's talk about that fundamental misunderstanding, because I think it'll give, it'll shed light on challenges that people have been facing, but couldn't give words to.
21:38 Speaker 00 Yeah, so our society, I think, has groomed us to stability, right? So we are told at an early age, this is the school you should go to, these are the grades you should get, this is even who you should marry or what kind of job you should get, so that you can have a stable, predictable, successful life. Right, so success means stability in many ways. And that's supposed to gird you against really, really difficult life challenges.
22:11 Speaker 00 But look at our society and our times right now. Right, we are living in chronic instability. Right, we have AI that is looming over everybody's heads around what jobs are... So even people just 10 years ago were telling us, well, this is the type of job you should, you should try to attain to have a stable career. But now, that's all upended, right? Thinking about climate right now, we have so many instabilities that are at our fingertips before we wake up in the morning, before we let our coffee, right? On our screens, we can just see these constant threats that are at our lives.
22:54 Speaker 00 And so whether we like it or not, stability is an illusion, right? That's just part of life. So the question is not, are we going to experience a major, you know, loss or upheaval? It's will we have the skills to engage with them and find grounding and mastery and not lose ourselves within them when they come? And to me, that is more of resilience, not just this keep on going and barreling through it.
23:31 Speaker 01 This is so good. And it's, and this is a perfect time to talk about the three friends of winter because now as we are slowly shattering the worldviews of the high achievers, they are slowly starting to recognize that a lot of their existence was predicated upon this quixotic endeavor to find a myth. So we are out here chasing, you might as well find a windmill and start a fight, you know?
24:02 Speaker 01 We're trying to find stability and it just doesn't exist. So let's talk about these three friends of winter because I believe that can help to give us meaning and purpose and a greater understanding of how we can put ourselves on a path of wellness while we're still on a path of achievement.
24:19 Speaker 00 Yeah, great. So the first is narrative. So narratives are the stories and explanations behind our reality. They shape everything that we do. They're basically the logic operating model that's underlying all of our actions, our thoughts and our feelings. And so the narratives are important because they frame our reality and how we engage with people.
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26:45 Speaker 00 So narratives give us insight, but insight isn't enough, right? Insight alone doesn't create change.
26:51 Speaker 00 So we need to embody our insights into rituals. So rituals are the bridge between where we are and where we want to be. And they bind us across time and space. So if you think about, if anyone's ever lost a loved one
27:12 Speaker 00 in any part of the world, any culture, they have a ritual on what to do.
27:18 Speaker 00 Because when we lose someone, we, our brains can't think. Like we just, time stops. And we aren't sure how to engage in life. And so we need a ritual to tell us and kind of guide us with some scaffolding to say, "Okay, this is the map of what you do. You have this funeral here. You have people to come. Whatever, you wear this clothes," like very specific. So rituals can really help. And what they do is they're typically, they can be individual, but typically rituals are in community. So they remind you that you're part of a culture or a group or, um, yeah, some other, something that's bigger than yourself.
28:04 Speaker 00 Right? So that's a ritual.
28:07 Speaker 00 And then purpose is what gives us direction. So it tells us where we should invest our energies, our time, our resources. It gives us direction to where to go. Now, purpose is not the same as passion. It's not achievement. Purpose is. And it's not something to be found outside of yourself. We're already living out our purpose. We just have to tap into it. So if we think about either where we're resonant in our lives, that tells us our purpose or who we matter to. Right. That can kind of give us an insight on where our purpose is right now.
28:49 Speaker 00 And if we're a little directionless and maybe in transition with jobs or personally, we can think about who we want to matter to. And that helps just give us some guidance towards where we want to spend our, our energy.
29:06 Speaker 01 There is so much to explore. I, you know, this is just a good reminder for folks who say, I need more of this. There is a book for that and there will be a link in the description below. This is great. Let's explore narrative because especially when we think about this from a psychological perspective.
29:29 Speaker 01 We think about cognitive reappraisal, essentially telling ourselves better stories. I feel like people fail to recognize not just the power of stories, but how malleable the stories that we tell ourselves are. So can you tell us a story about a time where somebody changed their stories for the better?
29:55 Speaker 00 Yeah, well, you know, I'm so glad that you acknowledge the malleability of stories because stories, our narratives are predicated on our memories. And our memories, and let me just go into this neurobiology a little bit because I think it's important for people to understand. We think that our experiences are encoded in our memories as kind of video recorders, right? They're just like, this is the reality. This is the truth, the quote, truth.
30:27 Speaker 00 And so our details are always correct, but that is rarely ever the case. So instead, our memories are constantly changing. So
30:40 Speaker 00 a memory is laid down when you have two neurons. Basically, it's like you have two people playing tennis. And those are the neurons and they're bopping. The ball is this electrical signal going back and forth. So the more that these tennis players play, the better they get at playing the, you know, the ball going back and forth, that's faster. Now, if you and I are playing tennis and I was out drinking the night before, or I didn't have my coffee this morning, or I just got into an argument with someone.
31:15 Speaker 00 I'm not going to play as well. It's going to affect how I play the game. In the same way, those external factors also affect how we remember and how we talk about our memories. So if we think about, everyone's had a breakup, right? Think about your first heartbreak. The day after you've had a certain story about that person, right? How could they do this to me? They're a horrible person, blah, blah, blah. No, 10 years later, it's the same event, but you probably have a different story about it. Right? So the actual event itself is the same, but your story about it is very different.
31:59 Speaker 00 And that's important for us to all know because everyone's walking around thinking that our initial thoughts are fact and that everything we remember is, you know, is fact. But actually, our memory and our stories, they're all processes of reconstruction based on who we're talking to, who the audience is and who we're talking with. Right? It's so common that people can tell us something about the past and we're filling in the gaps. Like, so my father,
32:32 Speaker 00 I didn't realize, so I was, I didn't realize until I was writing this book. And now I'm almost pushing into my 50s right now. So I just recently wrote this book.
32:43 Speaker 00 This is the first time in writing the book that my agent had said, "You need to tell me more about your dad." And I said, "That was when I was 15 years old. I have no new memories to lay down. I don't, I don't know much about what happened with my dad, or even what he was like before then. He was working a lot, you know, immigrant father.
33:06 Speaker 00 But I looked up and I found just two news clips of the assault that had happened to him.
33:13 Speaker 00 And the timelines were wrong, or were different than I thought. So I thought my father was assaulted, he stayed in hospice, he died six weeks later. But actually, from the news clippings, they just figured out now, middle age, he actually came home for a year and lived with me.
33:35 Speaker 00 And, and then he later died, actually from metastatic cancer, is when he was in hospice. Now, I don't remember any of that in between. I don't remember him coming home.
33:49 Speaker 00 So I asked my mother, when I was writing this book, and I said, "Do you, did this actually happen? Like, I don't remember him coming home." And she said, "Yeah, you played violin for him at night. You still made him dinner. You brought him cereal." Right? So I don't remember that. But now that she has told me, my memory is very suggestible. So now I can say, "Oh, maybe I do remember doing that." Right? But this shows the impact of stress and trauma on our memory. Right? We, we shut down in order to function, but also how suggestible our memories can be.
34:30 Speaker 01 Wow. Thank you again for telling this story. It's, that's so fascinating, because this is something, I was doing a negotiation training the other day, just yesterday. I was talking about how malleable memories can be, citing the studies of Elizabeth Loftus. And it becomes very creepy to Understand how just how suggestible memories are. And that's why I tell people not to argue about the past. Don't relitigate the past because both of you could be telling your truths as accurately as you remember and calling each other liars from a genuine place. And just a little aside to show you how nerdy I am with psychology.
35:12 Speaker 01 After I heard the studies of Elizabeth Loftus and how you can create memories in people, I said, oh my gosh, I need to do this. And so I worked with my mom to create a memory for my brother. It it's there. She gave us the formula. And so now, listen, people, I don't. This is not a podcast on how to be manipulative gaslighters. Okay, that's not what I'm trying to say. But if we can positively gaslight ourselves with the truth, I think we should try to endeavor to do so. Because a lot of times what ends up happening, we have to recognize that our limbic system, the amygdala, the emotions that come will always come faster. And as a result, our emotions will always have the first shot at interpretation.
35:58 Speaker 01 And usually because of negativity bias, it's going to be a more negative story. But now what we're recognizing is that we have the capacity to use the truth as story fragments that we use to create a better, more empowering story. And it sounds like that's something that you have started to do with this this tragic situation with the the murder of your father in the past. And so how has the the story editing reshaped your life as it relates to finding meaning and and purpose and possibly happiness?
36:40 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, it has definitely.
36:44 Speaker 00 Allowed me, I still engage in the same work, but the qualitative process of it feels very different. So before, when I was doing my work, I always felt like I just had to do it. You know, it was, I think, one of my mentors long ago said, "You know Suzanne, you always have five pots on the burner." Right? I always just have these projects just in case one of them doesn't work or something. Right? And I still do that, actually. But it's more through love and excitement than through fear. And that qualitative change for me has been really meaningful
37:29 Speaker 00 and just allowing me to experience life more fully, actually. Because when we are in this chronic threat, our brains narrow and it narrows towards fear. And where is the threat coming from? And what could possibly be threatened? What am I doing wrong? And they say this correctly, all of that stuff. And when we step away from that, it becomes much more expansive to, "Oh, this is great. Let me try this." You know, you allow yourself to fail more. And so it's been actually just much more fun, more fun way of living.
38:04 Speaker 01 Yes. Oh, audience that are, if you are listening, I hope you heard the smile on Suzanne's face as she said that, because it's really empowering. And now, here's one of the things that I've recognized as we kind of revisit the idea of metacognition. So thinking about thinking. In other words, you can say the voice is in your head sometimes. And sometimes I recognize, all right, I have become emotionally attached to a story where even though I recognize for myself that I would be much better served by telling a better story about this fact pattern, that the story fragments that I have, there's another voice in my head that says,
38:47 Speaker 01 "But this was such a core part of your identity. This belief isn't just a thing that you believe or a story you're telling. It's a part of who you are." And then I say, well, I want to be better. I want to feel better. Can't that be part of who I am? And then there's another version, another voice that comes in and says, but you can't let them win. So what does that mean? So a lot of times, especially when we have these, these stories that we've been telling ourselves about ourselves and also about others. We have been kind of holding on to that as a source of resentment and blaming other people for the way that we have been feeling. And it can be scary to say to yourself, you know what?
39:29 Speaker 01 I could have felt better all this time if I told myself a better story. And I was also blaming somebody else for how I was feeling. And that is disempowering, but also absolves you of the responsibility of doing better for yourself. And so there's a little bit of ego and pride and fear that can hold us back from telling better stories because sometimes we don't want to let somebody else off the hook because they were part of that story too. So, so for the person who is hearing the, the chatter boxes in their head and going back and forth where they're saying, hey, listen, I know I can tell a better story now, but I don't want to. How can they find a way to give themselves permission to experiment with this?
40:15 Speaker 00 Well, I mean, this is absolutely right because stories are so self-protective. And I think what you're talking about is when people need to, when there is a story that might counter their internal model of who they know themselves to be. Like I am a, a kind, caring person. And yet someone's telling you about work that you disregard. You left them out of a meeting or you minimize them. Right? That's in conflict with who I know myself to be. So I can't hear that. I need to still blame you. No, you were wrong, actually. It wasn't me that was doing that. So that's just self-protective.
40:57 Speaker 00 We can't, you know, there's this, this famous saying by a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, actually, named Selma Freyberg, who said, let me get it right, a mother can't hear her child's cries unless the mother's cries are heard first.
41:17 Speaker 01 Hmm.
41:19 Speaker 00 And it's essentially that we can't hear another person unless our own hurts and potential wounds are, have been acknowledged.
41:33 Speaker 00 Now, what that means in these situations are, we can't just assume or want people to be more open and self-reflective and to take more accountability, right? That want is great, but the reality is, like, in practice, that's very, very hard if someone has grown up, especially in a very structured, you know, you have to achieve, your love and worth are predicated on achievement.
42:11 Speaker 00 It's very hard then for that person to then say, oh, maybe I did make a mistake, or maybe I did hurt another person, because that's just opening this huge wound of who they really think that they are, which is, I'm not worthy, I'm not a lovable person unless I'm totally competent and perfect.
42:34 Speaker 01 Hmm.
42:35 Speaker 00 And so, we first have to go there to say, okay, who are, let's strip away all the accomplishments, achievements, all those fancy things. Who are you at the core? Like, what's left in this container? And we build that up, so we see and we are witness to, we all have things, we've all been wronged in the past, everybody has, in different levels.
43:01 Speaker 00 But everyone who comes through my office, all my friends, everyone that I know has been wronged in some way. If we can bear witness to that and validate, I see you, I understand that happened to you and it was wrong, then that now allows a person to say, okay, maybe I can change my story. Now I feel safer, right? Now it's not as threatening. I don't have to protect myself as much. I think about this as like, in the book, I call it a porcupine. So we have these like quills that go out, but there's a soft underbelly that we're all scared of. It's, we're scared it's going to be seen. But once we can like pull the
43:43 Speaker 00 quills down and we see, oh, it's a cute porcupine.
43:49 Speaker 01 I love that. Just a little aside, my brother had a hedgehog creatively named Sonic and they operated in the same type of way. It's like, as long as he likes you, the cute little underbelly is very soft, nice to pet. Otherwise, you're going to get stabbed. And let's wrap up before we bring Simone in, because I know he's been listening patiently and has a great question for you. I want to revisit purpose, going back to the, kind of rounding out the three friends of winter here, because you mentioned that purpose gives us direction, but then you said something that was shocking to me, because, but I think could be really
44:32 Speaker 01 powerful. You said, purpose is different from passion and achievement. And for so many people, those are the same thing. So before we disaggregate these concepts, can you help us to understand why it's so important to understand the distinction? Try this: Pull up your notes from a meeting last week. Do they still make sense? Or do they just seem like random notes that only the old version of you could decode? That used to be me. And as a negotiator, that's a real problem. Because my job is to listen, not type or write notes. That's why Granola has been one of my favorite tools, period. It's an AI-powered notepad.
45:14 Speaker 01 I jot my usual rough notes, and then Granola securely transcribes the meeting in the background. And when it ends, I get clean, structured notes that still make sense a week later. Decisions, owners, next steps, everything that I would need to feel good about going forward. And it works through your device's audio too. So there's no additional setup or any annoying AI joining your call. Just your normal meeting, but with superpowers. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just go to granola.ai/Quami. That's granola.ai/Quami to get your time back. Get three months free at granola.ai/Quami. If you were going to take a big swing this holiday season and start a business, what would you build?
45:59 Speaker 01 Maybe it's that one idea that you can't stop thinking about. I've built a business from the ground up, and I can tell you that the hard part isn't the idea, it's getting it live. That's where Shopify comes in. You can sell everywhere people shop: online, in person, across social media, even in AI chats. And Shopify Checkout with Shop Pay converts up to 36% higher than the competition. So more of the people who show up actually buy. Plus, Black Friday is when more people are already shopping and ready to buy. So the sooner you're live, the better. If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com/Quami to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/Quami. Go to Shopify.com/Quami to hear your first
46:47 Speaker 00 Yes, I mean,
46:50 Speaker 00 passion and achievements are very individual focused. So they tend to be very goal oriented like I, you know, maybe my passion is running. I love running marathons and so I'm gonna, I have my goals of I want to do four marathons per year and so you break it down. So these are how I, I achieve those goals. That's all fine.
47:13 Speaker 00 That though, is not the same as purpose, which is the guiding force of well, why is it so important to do so many marathons? Like, what is that goal about? Why do you need to achieve this? And is that really going to be fulfilling to you? Because what I actually see in practice is that people actually find fulfillment when they are engaged in something meaningful that's beyond themselves. Right? When we take, and that can actually help us through some of the most difficult times. So as an example, I work, I think I mentioned I work with hostage survivors.
47:57 Speaker 00 And I was working with this one who had been held hostage for about seven years. And I asked him, you know, he lived in total sensory deprivation, right? Like no access to food, water, you know, even the time, sunlight. And you wonder like, how in the world, seven years is a very long time to live in deprivation like that?
48:21 Speaker 00 And I wanted to, I was listening for how did he get through it? And he said, people can take everything away from me, but they cannot take away what matters to me, which were at the time his kids. So his kids and also he was thinking, I'm going to get out of here. If I ever get out of here, I'm going to make sure that nobody who's currently in hostage will ever feel abandoned. So I will make sure that I try to get everyone out of hostage situation that I can. That purpose, that
49:05 Speaker 00 direction gave him a sense of life every day when everything else was taken from him.
49:12 Speaker 00 And so we extrapolate that because I do think if you want to learn something you learn from like the most extreme. So to me, he was an extreme like survivor, like he's an extreme example of resilience. We extrapolate that for all of us when we're going through a hard time.
49:29 Speaker 00 We think about, well, who outside of us matters? And what like when I was going through my house fire, man, I was working full time, single mom of two young kids. Now this house fire displaced me. And I had to rebuild a new house. I am like the most, I'm horrible at aesthetics. I cannot design anything. And now I had to design a house and furnish a whole new house. And so I was having a hard time managing it all and working full time. But I told myself, it's pretty clear. My purpose is to make sure my kids are feel like they have someone who's attuned to them during this time.
50:13 Speaker 00 And just that one purpose, everything else fell into place. Because my kids resilience as my own purpose to help them through it, it guides every single action that I do. So if we just focus on who do we want to matter to and how? Well, that right there gives us a sense of meaning to our lives.
50:42 Speaker 01 Hmm, this, a couple of things because what I've recognized, just by the way that you described this, is that most people
50:54 Speaker 01 Don't understand what it really means to have a purpose. And perhaps that is why they constantly feel the unnecessary suffering of instability. Because we understand the suffering is a natural part of life. But some of it is necessary in terms of bad things will happen. And as a result, we will experience human suffering. But then what I'm recognizing is that some of the suffering that we have is not necessary because we are not doing what it takes to not suffer under those circumstances. So we're not telling ourselves better stories. And as a result of those decisions that we've made consciously or unconsciously,
51:40 Speaker 01 we are suffering unnecessarily. And tell me if this is an overstep because you're the person who's bringing these ideas to me. Because it sounds like, like you said, at the beginning,
51:52 Speaker 01 we suffer a lot of times because we are seeking an impossibility. We want stability when stability is not realistic. And potentially, the stability that we seek could be found in an attachment and understanding of our purpose. Because the love that you have for your children and the life that you want to provide to them, that probably will never change. You probably will always love them and want the best for them. And so as the world is falling apart, that purpose stays stable.
52:30 Speaker 00 Yes.
52:31 Speaker 01 Is that a fair way to think about it?
52:33 Speaker 00 That's right. That's right. Yeah, and to one of your earlier points is that, you know, the
52:40 Speaker 00 pain might be unavoidable. Right? Job losses happen. Loved ones pass away unexpectedly. So the pain is unavoidable, but the suffering is not. Right? So the suffering is something that it's based off of our stories, also our cultures and how we are defining suffering, what's allowed to be suffering. But
53:06 Speaker 00 but the pain is avoidable. It might be unavoidable, but the suffering we have a lot more control over.
53:14 Speaker 01 If you were going to take a big swing this holiday season and start a business, what would you build? Maybe it's that one idea that you can't stop thinking about. I've built a business from the ground up and I can tell you that the hard part isn't the idea, it's getting it live. That's where Shopify comes in. You can sell everywhere people shop, online, in person, across social media, even in AI chats. And Shopify checkout with Shop Pay converts up to 36% higher than the competition. So more of the people who show up actually buy. Plus, Black Friday is when more people are already shopping and ready to buy. So the sooner you're live, the better. If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com/Quami to start your free trial.
53:59 Speaker 01 That's Shopify.com/Quami. Go to Shopify.com/Quami to hear your first. Try this. Pull up your notes from a meeting last week. Do they still make sense? Or do they just seem like random notes that only the old version of you could decode? That used to be me. And as a negotiator, that's a real problem because my job is to listen, not type or write notes. That's why Granola has been one of my favorite tools, period. It's an AI-powered notepad. I jot my usual rough notes and then Granola securely transcribes the meeting in the background. And when it ends, I get clean, structured notes that still make sense a week later. Decisions, owners, next steps, everything that I would need to feel good about going forward. And it works through your device's audio too.
54:44 Speaker 01 So there's no additional setup or any annoying AI joining your call. Just your normal meeting, but with superpowers. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just go to granola.ai/Quami. That's granola.ai/Quami to get your time back. Get three months free at granola.ai/Quami.
55:09 Speaker 00 And that's where we can call on, you know, the narrative ritual and purpose to really help us.
55:17 Speaker 00 Manage, it helps our relationship with suffering.
55:20 Speaker 01 Yes, this, see, listeners, think about it the way that Suzanne said it. It's much better because, and this also shows not just the power of narrative, because we've already discussed that, but the power of word choice within those narratives. Because the, the, it might just seem like a semantic distinction, but it's not. The distinction between pain and suffering. If we look at those as two terms that are interchangeable, we miss out on the psychological nuances that could be the key to minimizing our suffering. Because you're absolutely right, we cannot avoid pain, but we can avoid suffering. And so I want to, I want us to draw that distinction.
56:05 Speaker 01 Let's talk about what those terms really mean. Because if we can, if the person who's listening can get a better understanding of that, I think it could be life changing for them.
56:16 Speaker 00 So pain is the event itself. Pain is the, the event that actually happens, the experience of what happens. Suffering is often because our reality is not matching our wishes of what we want it to be. So our suffering is when we're telling ourselves, so for example, if someone, you know, right now I'm working with a lot of people who've had some job loss.
56:51 Speaker 00 So that job loss, that's the pain. The suffering is all of the things around that. Oh, I'm never going to find work again, or, or, oh, I was useless there. Or, oh, people are going to see me as horrible, or, oh, I'm never going to find a job. And so I'm going to, you know, run my family into financial ruins. All of that then creates the emotional suffering.
57:17 Speaker 00 You can still have the same pain of the job loss. What I could say, oh, that was horrible.
57:25 Speaker 00 Even it, or maybe it was unfair, but
57:29 Speaker 00 I'm going to use this time to really think through what my skill sets are. I'm going to do a revamping of, of where I am and where I want to be. And maybe this will open up opportunities for other types of, you know, career paths I wasn't thinking of before.
57:48 Speaker 00 So the pain event is still the same, but the suffering has been optional.
57:55 Speaker 00 Right? And
57:57 Speaker 00 there's a lot more power in that. When we have more control over, we get to decide what the suffering is and, and if, how we want to suffer.
58:08 Speaker 01 Hmm. And then this is the last question before we bring in Simone. I love talking to you. This is, this is great.
58:18 Speaker 01 Now, for a lot of high achievers, that also can be kind of scary too. Because they might say, well, Suzanne, how am I supposed to achieve from a place of wellness? That seems preposterous because it is the pain and suffering that propels me to do better. And there's an idea that if you are, if you find happiness, contentment, those aren't words that we've used in this episode very much, but just the concepts in general. If I'm okay, doesn't that diminish my hunger? The fact that I'm in pain, that's really what motivates me the most. That's what's always motivated me.
59:00 Speaker 01 So would I not lose my edge if I get on this path of mental wellness?
59:08 Speaker 00 That's so interesting because I think, and I hear this a lot, I actually hear this a lot with lawyers.
59:14 Speaker 01 I, I am one.
59:17 Speaker 00 It's so funny because I work with a lot of these very high-flying DC lawyers. And they say, well, it's almost like the criticism, their self-criticism that makes them achieve and accomplish. And it's what, it's almost like the fire under their butt that gets them going. And so when I come in, I'm telling them, we need to actually be more compassionate to yourself. The biggest fear is I'm never going to achieve anything. And so I guess what I would say is it's less about that and more about the negotiation around one's self-worth.
59:59 Speaker 00 Because people are often saying, you know, under this fear and the fire under their, flame under their butt is, I am worthless as a human being unless I'm achieving. Right? That's kind of underneath, those are the, the logs under that flame. And there are more of those, right? Do I deserve to have a life where I enjoy, I don't know, my time?
1:00:35 Speaker 00 You know, am I, is it possible for me to actually have my wish, which is to be in a healthy, loving
1:00:46 Speaker 00 relationship where I'm growing with another human, like another person, like all of these
1:00:54 Speaker 00 kind of underlying narratives that we have, these hidden negotiations of what is my worth? What is it going to cost me? All of that, I think that's what I would push and encourage people because you can still have self-worth and achieve. And those two go very hand in hand. And actually you achieve more.
1:01:19 Speaker 01 Oh, this is perfect. I I'm still an adjunct professor at the law school, so I'll send this to my students. This is great, because there I remember in law school, um, there was this sadistic status game of suffering. Where you hear a law student say, oh, my gosh, I studied for eight hours last night, and somebody said, eight hours? Oh, you're so lucky. I didn't sleep at all. And somebody comes in and said, you sleep? You know?
1:01:48 Speaker 01 I'm it gets so messed up sometimes. And so thi- this is great. Uh, this is, this is the episode that so many people needed, but didn't realize it. And so Simone, with that, let's bring you in. What, what do you have for us?
1:02:05 Speaker 02 I just want to share with you a story about the power of revisiting the stories we tell ourselves. I remember when I was twelve years old, I was living with my mom back then. And I, I remember one day she was trying to look, she was looking for a ring. She, she said, where's my ring? Where's my ring? Where's my ring? So she couldn't find it. And the next day, I remember we went to the park. And we saw my mom's friend and neighbor with their ring, with, with my mom's ring. So my mom, uh, she was with her family. So my mom said, hey, uh, I think that you took my, my ring by mistake. Can you give my ring back, please? Can you give me my ring back, please?
1:02:49 Speaker 02 So she said, yes, of course, I'm sorry. And I was, I was so young, so I said, oh, my God, it's so obvious that she stole the ring. I don't understand why my mom is so naive. Then my mom passed away, and I have this story about my mom being naive. And I was like, oh, my God, maybe she was not ready for these times. That's why she died. And like, one year ago, I was taking a shower, and I went back to that memory.
1:03:19 Speaker 02 And I realized that my mom was just giving her the opportunity to save face. So she was not naive, she was just giving her the possibility to save face in front of her family. So that changed the whole idea I had about my mom. Because before I said, no, of course, my mom is so naive to live in this moment, in this era. And now I think that she was actually very wise. So revisiting the story with fresh eyes can change the perspective we have about our life and the meaning we create for ourselves, right?
1:04:02 Speaker 00 Absolutely, and that's such a beautiful story because it does show, you're right, in that revisiting the story after some time. And typically, it is after a loved one has passed away. I hear this a lot. Either the story changes for them more positive, or oftentimes, I work with people who've had difficult childhoods. Meaning, maybe not like physical abuse, but they've had a parent who has alcohol addiction and was never there, or a work addiction, or was very harsh towards the kids emotionally.
1:04:47 Speaker 00 And the adult child feels like they can never really engage with a person until they die. Once they pass away, then it's safe for them. Right? Now it's like, okay, now I can have some more positive feelings towards this person because they're not going to hurt me in some way. Right? There's no... So sometimes our narratives and our approaches, they change after a person has passed away because we feel safer or we feel more connected, or we decide this is how I want to remember this person. And so your story about your mother, it's beautiful because it really changes, not just how you felt about the situation,
1:05:32 Speaker 00 but it reshapes who your mother is in your mind. And so that's beautiful.
1:05:43 Speaker 01 That's brilliant. That is brilliant. This is so good. I'm so glad we made this change to to big swings only. This is a love negotiation, American Negotiation Institute. Check it out. But anyways, this is, this is so much better. I feel like this is, it's so powerful. And as you were going through this, and I was thinking about purpose, this is a great realignment of my purpose. Because you became that which I wanted to be initially, which was a psychiatrist. It was either clinical psychology or psychiatry. I always wanted to be that bridge between where somebody was and where they wanted to be.
1:06:21 Speaker 00 Yes.
1:06:21 Speaker 01 And that's what I did with negotiation, too. Yes, tactics and strategies. And that's, that's how you make your money with the trainings and everything. But people could hear the passion in the, like, especially the TED Talk. And when I'm on other shows, they're surprised at how empathetic the approach is. And it's saying, hey, listen, I was a people pleaser. You can overcome that, too. And so helping people find that purpose. And this is my purpose. So it's funny, because you, there was a pull to make this shift. And it's a big risk career wise, too. But I felt the need to do it. And this conversation with you has given me the clarity to truly understand the why and the power behind the why. Because
1:07:06 Speaker 01 the achievement comes from being a lawyer, being the negotiation expert, winning all these awards and everything. And I've recognized it yesterday. This was the first professional endeavor that I'm going through, where I have no real metric of success, other than helping people.
1:07:21 Speaker 00 Oh, yes. Yes. Oh, I love that. I mean, you would also be a very good clinician, too. I could
1:07:28 Speaker 01 Thank you.
1:07:29 Speaker 00 If you ever wanted to put it there.
1:07:32 Speaker 01 Thank you. This is great. Suzanne, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. And before you go, remind us about the book and how people can work with you, too.
1:07:42 Speaker 00 Hmm. Great. Yeah. So. The book is Why We Suffer and How We Heal. It just came out with Penguin Random House a couple of months ago. And if you go to my website at suzansong.com, spelled Susan with a Z, S U Z A N dot com, there you'll find free newsletter, speaking engagements, and the book is available for sale, too.
1:08:05 Speaker 01 Amazing. Suzanne, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.
1:08:08 Speaker 00 Yeah, thanks for having me.
1:08:14 Speaker 01 Hey, everyone. I want to tell you about a podcast I'm really excited about. It's called The Anxious Achiever, and it's hosted by my good friend, Maura Aron's Mele, and it's part of the Yap Media Network. Here on Big Swings Only, we're all about going after the big stuff. But anyone who's taken a real swing knows anxiety usually comes along for the ride. And honestly, nobody handles that better than Maura. Since 2019, her show has helped millions of listeners navigate stress, mental health, and the search for meaning through work. With personal stories, expert insights, and evidence-based tools, she tackles anxiety, perfectionism, ADHD, and psychological safety at work with guests ranging from the US Surgeon General to NFL and NBA stars. It's a top 10 management podcast
1:08:58 Speaker 01 and a Signal Award winner for Best Commute Podcast. And she's been a guest on our show, too. If you're ready to take control of your anxiety and your life, you definitely want to check out The Anxious Achiever. Subscribe to The Anxious Achiever today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
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