This is the ten percent happier podcast, I'm iron dan Harris historically, on this show we have shied away from celebrity interviews largely because we want guest to either have some skills that they can teach us we're talking about people like meditation teachers or happiness researchers, or we want people who are willing to get super personal about their interior lives and with respect these qualifications that most famous people don't have today, though, you're gonna to meet a bold face, name who happens to have both qualifications and in spades, my Alec burst

onto the scene in the ninety, nine, as the star of the tv show blossom than she stepped away, gotta bachelors and a phd in neuroscience and also became a mom. She returned to tv in another calm the big bang theory, and now she has a very full play. She is the co host of jeopardy and she's the host of a pod cast of her own called my amby alex breakdown, oh and she has written for books, including curling, up how to be strong, spartan, spectacular and boiling up how to be brave, bold and brilliant. And this conversation we talk about the pressures of being a teen star, her fascination with the brain, how she squares her scientific expertise with her religious beliefs. Why she half jokingly, says she was born a mental health challenge, the difference between anxiety attacks and panic disorder? Why she chosen to be so public about her complicated psychiatric history, whether it's possible to be over diagnosed that

was she personally uses to stay afloat? What is behind her busyness and what happened when she decided to stop working all the time and why, at age, forty seven? She is now taking the time to learn how to express her anger in a healthy way. Just a few notes here before we dive heads up. There are some mentions of suicide and addiction in this episode. Also just to say this is the final instalment in a city of celebrity interviews were running this month. Every monday we ve been talking a big names who have the guts to spill their guts. If you mystic go check out Michael imperially, Neil digress, thyssen and mike D from the beastie boys were wrap it up here with my embryonic. Please hit me up on twitter or through the temperature and happier website to tell me and What you think I want to remind you of something before we get started with today's episode. If you want to learn how to apply the wisdom from this podcast, but you don't actually meditate yourself yet

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my and alec welcome to the show. Thank you so much. This is a good get for us very excited to have your well I'm hoping to get you for my I guess so. That would be a good bet for us alright. So if you're up for it, I would love to start with a your life story. Cause you've made some very interesting decisions. You were, as everybody knows, like a huge star in the nineties, and then you took break for nine years. Actually longer. Ok of my facts are wrong. How long was your break? Well, I think it's important to give you a tiny bit of backstory, because I was a teen actor in I didn't start. Acting till I was in junior high, cool, which means I had a whole life of not being raised in the industry, and I was cast in a movie called beaches when I was twelve. It came out the week of my butt midst I was thirteen and then I had my own tv show, which is as crazy as it sounds. It felt crazy like to get my own tv show from fourteen to teen. So while I did have that life by was up,

used in the industry. I wasn't raised expecting that everybody would love me and give me my own tv show. I was in a kind of late bloomer as children are considered in the industry, so I left for twelve years. I did my underground. To a degree, and then my graduate degree right up next to it and that took twelve years. I did a couple acting things in there, but most notably, I had my first son in grad school and I got pregnant with my second. The week I filed my thesis I, my doctoral hood pregnant it just to put a little meat on the bone there. Your phds in neuroscience, get my under that is well. I did neurosciences minor in hebron, jewish studies and then I studied second. Endocrinology was my specialty, a neuroscience at you see I lay as well it this twelve year period was filled with some amazing but non glamorous stuff you're getting a phd in neuroscience. Oh no, there was nothing glammorie about us yet having babies. I think you also tutored hebrew in piano and taught sex ed, high school students. So this was like, I don't wanna, say regular life, but it was pretty regular for a bold face.

Yeah I mean you know: people have a lot of a sum is about what my life must have been like after blossom, you know, after being on a network sitcom, but that contract was written in nineteen. Eighty nine, when I was almost fourteen years old and girls at that time, were not given the kind of clout that many people think. So I still budget at eighty aid in author grad school. It supplements at my school tuition mike I hadn't. a normal and obviously very privileged end. Very tower of. You know academia, kind of experience, but yeah

never had it and nanny or a the housekeeper or a chef. I took care of my kids. I actually left formal academia didn't do opposed dark because I wanted to be home with my kids. So I was that parent who was tutoring and my husband at the time were, were now divorced, but he was also in grad school. He got a masters in policy with a specialty in theory, so we were to grab students doing our will you were being teachers assistant D ever get students like freaked out that blossom was helping them with their new. You know it relate depended on the age of the student, because if you actually do the math, it had been a minute since blossom was on by the time I got two grad school, meaning a lot of my students didn't know. that wasn't part of their kind of cultural vernacular and, depending on how they grew up, they may not have watched. That comes like that. My professors, obviously,

What kind of new I was and had definitely more than one professor kind of freaked out that I was in their class. One professor brought his his children like he took them out of junior high, so they could come meet me on a day of a final, like a thousand, that's what ye I basically you know. I walked off of your television and onto this campus. You know most with my my my fellow students new actively who I was so you got special attention your fellow students, because they had been- why wasn't always positive? Really, but of course not no, I mean at that time there were other celebrities. who were like going to college, and I was also two years out of high school when ice. Where did you know? I was contracted at blossom and you can't break a contract and say I got into harvard I'd like to go. So I I actually was, you know I was nineteen when I started in college and I was not a natural math or science student, interested in it. When I was on blossom in my ten years, but I had to do you know back, then it was called affirmative.

And it wasn't a dirty word: students who were not up to power and certain subjects were given the opportunity to make up those classes. You know we called it remedial calculus and remedial chemistry, so I had to do a bit of catch up and yet There is definitely that feeling of. Oh, we know what you came from like. Oh, you think Can I do this now mean people are, and always nice anna really for people aren't always nice now are so. Why neuroscience? Why did that? you so much so when I was a teenager, I think back to the early nineties, the discussion of nature versus nurture was kind of but hot in the news and this kind of a cultural conversation, the notions of disk homosexuality in meaningful ways. It we're just kind of learning

Or about aids, and what that meant in those discussions that really interested me and that I was gonna, my first basic interest was like nature, verses nurture, and it was because I was behind in chemistry and calculus that I wasn't able to declare a major in my first semester. So One of the only classes available to me until I did my remedial classes was a class called psycho biology, which was basically stopped by to professors. Professor grew hovering, professors, Adele, who passed away recently, who is my mentor, and basically have the class was psychology. You know pavlovian stuff and and the basics of freely in psychology things like that, but the second half was taught by doctors ideal and it was the. The physiology of the neuron- and I literally like this, is my romantic moment. I saw the action potential up on a slide in a back, then they used overhead slide still and I had feeling in me, like that's the level of understanding of the eu First, that I would like to have is the neuron, and so I studied the brain

a system I had a special interest in inhuman behaviour, but trained and molecular, and all those other kinds of neuroscience that were trained and am also of each person. So I knew I didn't want to do. Research on animals, so I ended up working in the field of men retardation in the neuro psychiatric instituting. I studied obsessive, compulsive disorder in individuals with proper willie syndrome, which is a genetic syndrome it was the source of your inch. It I'm sure the source of your interest was multi faceted, but where you driven by wanting to understand the universe it's at the level of the neuron or was it research is me search like you were trying to understand something about yourself. I think my initial interest was. I want to be immersed in a line of study. That is understanding. The world, the universe and the human experience at this level. But you know for me, and I think, for people who enjoy college enjoy grad school enjoy learning I personally thrived

that environment of you know constant being challenged academically constantly needing to perform and be on top of things, My father of blessed memory was an english teacher. He taught in public school system served. I mean Heaven. My mom have like a combined seventy years in the public school system, their new yorkers, born during world war two, so they were part of a generation of you know generation american teachers. So I grew up with a love of learning, but you know my parents were english people, so ina like they were into poetry and immature, and here I was having the opportunity to use kind of the skills and the discipline that I had been taught and the passion that I saw them have, but I could apply it to something that really thrilled me. You know, which was in this case the brain and nervous system, for somebody like me who It's basically nothing about the brain. I've done some interviews about it but like when you even say the word neuron I mean like I I I it's a word that I use them

as a realize. I gotta really know what I'm saying that. What what can you for the dumbest person you know, which in this moment is me. What can you say about the neuron or neuroscience? That would help me understand why it's so fascinating? Oh I mean I have to agree with me, but you know what a neuron is: a specialised cell, brain and the entire nervous system. So cells have all the functions that you learn about Second great on they have a nucleus and they have a power source and they, you know, have get rid of trash, and you know protect themselves from toxins from There are little environment, but neurons are special in that they communicate with each other and they communicate through the release of ions. You know things that you've heard about potassium sodium, all those kinds of ions they exist in the middle. You have the brain and nervous system and the way that neurons communicate is through a lecture

we'll impulses and what happens is there's this elaborate and constantly occurring electrical storm that has to go. On in your brain and nervous system and its a chain reaction, so one touches the next with such as the next, and you know it's kind of this like rolling experience of electrical impulses that leads to literally the experience we're having right now. It leads to our consciousness. It leads to our most regulation. It leads to the ability for me to know that I exist and that I'm separate from you and those impulses and that transfer of information is the basis for love, is the basis for how we taste touch here. Smell, feel Thank you. No, I believe in love as a romantic entity, but also, I believe, in the narrow chemistry of every emotion that we have, which doesn't mean it's not gorge.

But for me- and I am also up- I'm also spiritual person- I'm a person with a religious faith like to me that understanding is divine, I'm not saying god must have created it. That's not for me to say, but I know that the that that's how information gets transferred in your brain, the nervous system, I think that's absolutely divine so seeing the elementary particles of human experience, yeah and the basis for the fact that we can. You can have this conversation. It's quite beautiful We are together. It is really knows you want to go back to school, and maybe you want to become another site. It's no. I just want to create a new show called nerving out with blossom bet that that something on further so. If you are a practising jew, you're right, I'm a lapsed half jew who had a bar mitzvah, but as I often joke only for the money, so if, if your browsing do and you believe in god, and how could it be that god didn't create

the neurons that are the building blocks of the human experience, and it's not really for me to place my concept of divinity on other peoples, which is why I, I kind of caveat it that way. You know for me the exp, millions of our existence is credited and in my life to something greater than me, meaning I didn't created, and I have a tremendous amount of gratitude and I guess some sort of structure and ritual around that, but I believe that gods hand or something divine, is in all of the processes of evolution that we see and observe. So I don't spend a tremendous amount of time. You know I went to school with SAM Harris. In the same neuroscience class, so you know salmon. I have obviously had many conversations, this in his dinner? Had an incredible career discussing this. For me, I don't feel a lot of

anxiety around it. I know that I have a particular connection with a spiritual experience that allows for the processing of human thought, evolution and, and also all of the destruction and terror that humans to bring into the universe just for anybody who has an earnest sam harris. We are not related salmon. I, but we are good friends. He is awesome and quite a famous atheist writer and then he's also written about spirituality and meditation from a secular standpoint as a great meditation, app called waking up and also give our cascade making sense any back to you. Tell me if I'm hearing this correctly, I'm making a leap here and perhaps an appropriately, but I'm gonna, take it an attempt at summarizing how you simultaneously whole judaism and science, but probably ham fisted. But I guess what I'm kind of hearing is like yeah. Maybe

you don't believe that every word in leviticus is literally true, but, broadly speaking, you have this powerful into wish in that there is a divine hand and everything we see at of data, level and at a molecular level- and you don't know exactly how that works, and it I'll be exactly as its described in the bronze age, literature of the old testament, but it all feels to you on some intuitive level like there's something true there. Well, I mean I was with: you until feelings, because I don't know if for me, I think about it in terms of feelings, what I know is that I believe nature is true. I believe that gravity is gonna, be aware, in principle of my universe today tomorrow and I'm gonna go ahead and say forever so that faith that I have that this

will come up tomorrow, is just about the same faith as that of people who have a divine experience of the sun coming up. So you know, my kids often tell me that I'm cheating by saying that I think that nature is god, and I said, there's no such thing as cheating. I either have faith that the sun's going to come up or I don't, and I can call it what I want and yeah I do have a particular set of ritual that I don't believe is correct. I believe it's correct for the ethnic line that I come from and, as for sort of you know the liturgy of the old testament and actually all of our our writings. You know in He is, and I dont know many people who do believe that every single word of the old testament is quote true. But what I do know is that for those who codified, the old testament and all of sort of our holy books, there's something in that you can call it divine if you'd like, but the old testament particulars is a book of all sorts of stories. There's legend

myth. I remember when I learned that the profits were all either dreaming or hallucinating when they had their visions. I thought well, someone should its me that earlier because for most of my life, I walked around thinking. Those things couldn't happen like amazon. Answers? I'm like a thinking person and I also kind of wondered like why do we have struck? religion where that's not what we lead with. You know we're instead, it's like there's prophecy and you know, and it's like they were either meditating so heavily and deeply that they were experiencing a transcendental state which we know can happen. You know they often fasted, like especially the jewish mystics. We know there is a tremendous amount of body movement, fasting chanting. You know right right, ok, so you can view the burning bushes. better as poetic language sure- and I also don't have to know- if it's true for me to understand what that story-

else. What it means and the ethical and mystical and historical implications of let's say the experience of motion of Moses but I wonder then, on some fundamental level, whether you and SAM may greed in that you're just using different words having he believes in nature- erects. That's my kid. Sam cheating fright right, but you're saying I know you'd only towards feeling you're saying what he feels right to you sure I mean what I do the feelings a lot. You know when I go to synagogue and I hear a particular set of cords and something is Third in me, that feels like, I don't know where it comes from. I don't know that you and I don't remember that tune, but something in me feel deeply moved to have a spiritual experience. That's a feeling and that's very special, and I am grateful that you know that. dish that I was born into and the ethnic lines that I am a part of has provided me that for everyone in oh and many jews.

Buddhists- and you know I dont believe that duty is a more any religion has the right way to do. It were all trying to figure out how, to manage being hurled around through space with the human experience that we're having witches the largely complicated and and often painful, but with enough moments of joy that we kind of keep at it. So back when I asked whether your interest in neuro science was me search. Has many researchers have come on the show off say I got into whatever I study because of some thing in my life I was asking that, because No, you have talked publicly about being neuro diverse. You mental health challenges, and so I was here I was born a mental health chancellor. I think open I guess you could argue that being born in and of itself as a mental.

yeah. I ended up studying obsessive compulsive disorder, not really having of full acknowledgement honestly of the fact that I absolutely qualify for that day Is this not on the severe level so not in the ways that many of us know, but yeah there's many things about me that I gained tremendous insight into, because I chose to study that so there could be something serendipitous about that. You know. As I said, I don't come from I anticipate my parents were first generation americans who were english teachers and documentary film makers. The choice was, we go to med school or law school if you had the money which my grandparents didn't or to become a public school teacher and fight for civil rights, which my parents did so I was kind of always learning as I went about what to study and how, but it would have been very natural for me not to study science. But honestly, I don't think I would have had the full experience. the human that I believe I was supposed to have. Had I not been a scientist, you say those cd that you've dealt with is mild. How does it show up for you, I

always had from the time. I was a very young child. A lot of rituals counting rituals mental rituals anxiety, binding rituals, and you know these are all spectrum, so there's gonna be a lot of overlap between children who are anxious and children who do things to bind that anxiety. But I for when I was first screened by a psychiatrist, and he started asking questions that no one had ever asked me before and I was on my twenties and he said: do you have a favorite number and I said who doesn't He said well, that's an interesting. I answer tell me about, and I had you know I had. I have several spent numbers- and I proceeded to tell him all about them so once we sort of started putting together all of these pieces, we learned more about me and I like to point out. You know: obsessive compulsive disorder involves obsessions and compulsion. A lot of people think, like I, like my shoes straight, I'm so oecd

and people like me get very annoyed when people say I'm so, oh or I've got ptsd from him telling me that he didn't like my hair, you know whatever it is, which you may have post traumatic stress, disorder and someone common about your hair, can do it, but, generally speaking, I'm careful with diagnoses and I like to point out that simply having thoughts about wanting things perfect doesn't mean you have o c d, there's a set of externalizing behaviors. Also that are required for diagnosis, so that was when you were a kid. Do you still struggling with these rituals? Now I would say I dont know that I'm struggling with them, I sort of with them. You know there are many ways to try and medicate out of obsessive of disorder. I mean I've likely met the diagnosis. Generalised, anxiety, disorder from the time I was very young. I had em many years of pretty significant and life changing depression. I liked to say name a dsm diagnosis and, at some point, I've fitted up pretty complicated psychiatric history

and you know I had proper panic attacks like the kind where you think you're dying a need to go to the hospital in my late teens and early twenties and back. Then you were good medication, for you know becoming a woman, as opposed to being a girl All is often met with being given the pill which I in many many women are given because there's a set of emotions and complexity that many doctors honestly don't know how to deal with, and I think we ve come a bit of away in trying to understand a larger bit of the psychiatric and psychological impact of hormonal and how to give ten girls in particular, and young women proper support. And you know I am now side of it. I'm forty seven and entered menopause quite early, so also spent allow of my forty is what I didn't anticipate dealing with a whole new set of challenges. I'm kind of the whole kitten caboodle, you know when it comes to diagnoses, they ve tried

every medication on me in many many different combinations and permutations, and I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that the work that you do is very significant for many of us who leave, that there are other ways to get at the parts of us that hurt just to fill out the picture in germany. You said that if it's him yes m, you ve had it in reading about. You have also seen you you talk about eighty hd eating, dishonor hoarding hs, p or being a highly sensitive, so there's. No, I didn't, I didn't think needed a diagnosis. yeah? I mean I, I think one of the challenges of being in therapy since you're young means you gain a tremendous sense of self awareness. You have the ability to self diagnose, which I I really try not to do. I struggle with a lot of things that my father blessed memory struggled with. I never thought that I would qualify for an eighty. Eight

diagnosis, to be honest, because I'm very, very highly functional, I mean even as a depressed person, you know work as my my best drug, my best compensatory mechanism, but I have a tremendous amount of features that honestly, I I don't know that I would have even felt the need to say I have a d h d, but on the podcast that I have, we get a lot of questions from people about features of themselves and I've chosen to be honest, that you know. Filling out forms is really really hard for me in ways that I never realized with a lot of other features of me fit a particular criteria and I'm an interesting genetic company can an interesting environmental, patient of really complicated parents and post holocaust anxiety. Depression, which many of us experience and yeah I've come out of it with a smattering of really interesting features about me that

You know from the generation that I'm from and that I think you're from. Sometimes you were just quirky or weird, or things were hard for you and now there are a lot of labels. This generation, you know my kids are fourteen and seventeen. They really like labels. They want to know what is it and how do we fix it? Is it possible to be over diagnosed sure it's super useful. I remember once thirty forty years ago I had really bad back pain and I gotta X, ray and nick. see that one of my lower lumbar was out of trajectory, and I remember the doktor having nothing useful to say other than that. Well, it's nice to know. There's some pathology here, doktor Sarno

as agreed. He would say many people have that pathology and no pain, bright, wretches anywhere, but that's a different, but yet might might only sometimes nice to know. There's pathology. My point being, it can be helpful to have some order placed on the universe by having a diagnosis like something clicks into place. You understand this is why I am this, as I can get that. On the other hand, I just wonder like: can you also have so many diagnoses that you're just pathologies within an inch of your life? yeah and and honestly a lot of times. That is what it feels like and I think that's been part of the exploration of being open about. the environment. I was raised in some of the challenges there. What it's like to be a human I was particularly inspired by a friend of my will wheaten, who many people now is an actor and also an author and key started, doing advocacy work. You know around mental health, with an organisation that I had received. Services from when my father was hospitalized.

When I was in my twenties. I realise that I had such admiration for someone who's literally speaking openly and conjunction with an organisation that I literally have used it services for in that kind of inspired me to start in wanting to talk about it. I tension resonate around my diagnoses per se or what I could qualify for in terms of what they can check off a box. I am more interest and how I function and how I dont function or how I function less well. Enough arenas and better in others what I know- and I think you know as well- is that there are certain fundamental and basic things that most of us we're not taught to do or ways that we were not taught to think that make better all of the things that I have just mentioned as all possible features of me. So, yes, many people will turn to alcohol, some of us

to food. Some of us turned to sex, or you know, an addiction with relationships right or co dependency, but all of those things are essentially outlets of a human that is basically saying like I need help, I'm missing something. So I tend to cringe when I have to personally talk about each d or or even oecd. You know those things are, so you know they're so real, but I think one amazing things about understanding that there's a spectrum is that everyone gets to jump on it, Other thing about understanding a spectrum is that there are many ways that we can learn to cope better and function easier and being a public, percent means I'm choosing to have a microphone in front of me to talk about mental illness, because I believe it's a human right for people to know. I can't tell you how many people think

we're having panic attacks when it's an anxiety attack which is treated differently and that's what another one of the dangers of typing in your symptoms and coming up with a diagnosis online are actually didn't. Know there was a difference between a panic attack because I've I have panic attacks. I also have a lot of anxiety. What's the difference between an anxiety attack, panic attack, so an anxiety attack is usually you know a lot of the physiological things that we identify as anxiety become very heightened, and you have that awareness of palpitations and sweating and things like that. Panic, disorder and panic attack in particular takes on usually a dissociative component. are you kind of lose touch with the reality of your physiology and in many cases you end up in the hospital thinking you're here,

in a heart attack. The other distinction between panic attacks and anxiety attacks is that fear of a panic attack can often cause a panic attack. That is not the case with anxiety attacks. So again, this is just a really pedantic thing that neuroscientists often get itchy about, because we do tend to treat the if things differently, they do have different mechanisms and treating the often kind of paranoia and self stimulatory fear that comes with panic. Disorder is very different than what happens with anxiety attacks, but I would imagine there, at least for me the co morbid. You know like I, have a of anxiety in my life, but I also have legit panic, attacks and fear of having a panic attack cannot. Bring one on what it sounds like you, ve got both congratulations, but a lot of people

know again, there's a there's, a real hyperbole also, and I think it's become exacerbated by you- know a culture where you talk in six second snippets, and you know you need to get your point across very quickly, and so I think the notion of panic attack is a is that a lot of people also want to emphasize how bad they're feeling with their anxiety and with the symptoms of an anxiety attack which are upsetting disturbing in a very, very awful and bad? I'm not saying that one is better than the other, but why you identified as sort of panic disorder again is, is treated differently and also often approach differently when we think about what the root causes are coming up. My bialik talks about her belief that most people can benefit from some form of introspection and whether, as possible from us, like the therapeutic standpoint to be over diagnosed, amazon prime offers a range of services, including prime video,

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A little bit of that on my end as well, and yet in preparing for this interview with, you I happened to read an article. It just came over the transom separate from my research into you that really started to get me to think a little bit differently about this. Until I just thought, it'd be interesting to read you a bit of this article and see what your responses are you open to that? I guess so. You have no choice right. Okay, that's what she's saying, ladies and gentleman, so I can remember where I saw this. I think it was in some afar, but here's a quote and I'm gonna read you a couple of quotes. One is from a guy named Simon Wesley, who is the first psychiatrist to become president of the ukase. We'll society of medicine in he writes were says every time we have a mental health awareness week. My spirit sink. We don't need people to be more aware. We can't deal would the ones who are already aware and

lucy folks, I think that's the right way to pronounce it she's an academic psychologist at oxford, and she says that one possibility is that for the big seeming spikes in teenage mental health issues, she says one possibility is, and here I am quoting- we repeatedly tell tee yours that therein anxious generation and that is making them more likely to think that mild symptoms are a genuine mental health problem. Her overall take as the decline in teen mental health is real, but not that straightforward. So anyway, all this just got me thinking a little bit about how value. Are we providing or is it in unalloyed good for me, and you to be doing the type of shit we're doing where were being open about our mental health issues?

yeah, I mean I tend to appreciate both of those quotes that you just read. I think that, for me, the main thrust of what I believe is that access to mental health support should not be for the rich and right now it pretty much is so for most people. It is cost prohibitive to even get the most basic counselling support, and I am one of those people who believes that most people can benefit from some form of introspection and some form of betterment. I also think that many of us were raised in generations where the kind of things we sperience that often in many cases revolve around alcoholism where the family, disease of alcoholism or people's addictions. You know we didn't know to flag those things and act is those do have an impact on people even who are not drinking right. They say that alcoholism as a family disease.

Kills those who don't even drink right. So but my partner in, and I wanted to do was when we realise that I mean that we started our podcast the beginning of the pandemic, and I realise that the things about me that I still struggle with we're getting harder to deal with, and I said gosh I have a lot at the time of therapy all of the resources I need. If I want to go on medication, if I want to change medication, if I want to meditate, if I want to do yoga, I said what about the people out there, who don't have any of those reason It is our support and their walking around like what is going on in the world, and why am I feeling this way and I would hear from people who set I'm having trouble sleeping in kit either. I feel nauseous all the time what's going on, and I said, oh, my friend, you ve never experienced the things I get so you know what Jonathan and I wanted to do was trail level. The playing field really of a set of voting,

be larry around what we know about how we react, scary things or difficult things. So, as I said as the parent of fourteen and seven your old, I'm very, very aware- and I try stay aware of what especially social media looks like and especially what the mental health world looks like, and I would agree that we do have a really specific culture of self diagnosis in many cases over diagnosis and over attachment to diagnoses as an excuse for free king feeling and behaving and united, Enter a variety of women, most of whom are younger than me, and often times they will say well. My own he d is making me do this and I make sure, just in our personal human to say, hang on a second and really try and deconstruct that, and so I think, what's missing is nuance. I think nuances missing

from our culture in general. We see that in how we talk about politics. Have you thought about everything, and I think this is not an exception. also do know that someone who has experience, more than one family. Member close to me commit suicide. I also do pay special attention to trying to encourage people to get support and to have access to that I think that in a while I have a doctorate in neuroscience. I make sure to remind people like I'm, not that kind of doktor and I'm not your doctor, and so I think, that's also a danger, but to your credit I think What you are doing- and this isn't just me- I mean You'Re- welcome to cut this out. If you don't like people saying nice things about you, but what you are doing is you're, placing a very, very simple but complicated task. To people that really reminds us that the resources that we

need are actually within us with the proper education and resources, and that's really significant. Specifically, your work has changed the lives of so many people. Many very close to me, and I do think that that is more where we need to be rather than what I know, people think when they hear of a celebrity whose, like I've got this I've got that which you know. I would hope that if people do listen to me podcast they get a little more of the nuance but There's a rawness to my expiring And I made a movie called as they made us about the kind of family that I grew when been that many people grow up in and it's not surprising that when you grow up with tension, violence, chaos, confusion, fighting and fear that you are conditions as a child and as teenager to not feel like you can trust your own reality and that's problematic, and you know I heard someone say yesterday:

all of the horrible things about us, keep us alive long enough to get help so that we can you better for our kids. You know- and I do credit the work that I have done with allowing me to be apparent to my children. That is doing it differently and hope We raising children who are self aware and respectful and know when they need help and know how to articulate it, and for me, that's what I hope for people. who listened to you, or to listen to me that they can do than was done to them. If that's what they need to heal from an. I do think that that, especially for young people, that is

important to remember that we are all having a human experience and there's no freud was right, there's something to getting it out, there's something to having someone hold space like that. That is important and in our culture people now can witness that in our yes, I think it's largely to the good, and I also thank you- no use the word new once there are some nuances here. There are some downsides and Your articulated that all in ways that I very easily can co sign on. I just want to say one more thing like teenagers in particular dont, like nuance they really dull and many adults dull, and it has led me away from a lot of conversations in my life because we have lost the ability to tolerate people who think differently feel differently. You know, and especially I see it with my kids- everything feels like an affront to them. Either

I agree with it and we need a generation that can exercise more patience and it's really missing yeah. I just wonder if that's than ever, thus, you know like one of the things we hate the most is uncertainty, and so cocoons nestling in to borrowing into certainties is very comfortable for us. I would argue that, having am in some sort of connection of something larger than yours health is an opening to understanding than I know. Many intolerant religious people don't get me wrong, but the tradition I would raised in was a gale kind of dialectic of this sort of understanding to things can exist. You know the talmud teaches when you think you're right, you're wrong. Yes, you know being able to live.

Intention is the way that I was raised and you know it's it's you know one of the sort of philosophies of modern orthodoxy was you can hold both things, and so that's something that of course, I try and impart to my children, but I also I am one of those people who believes that the pace of the internet, the pace of social media, the attention shifting that We really are condition to have, does not lend itself to an opening for new ones. In particular, that's just me being an old person. Yeah, I'm out I'm older than you and I tend to agree. I do want to get back, to the movie you mentioned as they made us, which came out last year, and you ve been very clear that it's not strictly and autobiography, but it was inspired by some of your own childhood trauma up wondering a: u reference, some difficulties in your childhood obliquely. During the course of this interview, would you be willing to say a little bit more about these formative years? For you

I mean I can even do it without dsl diagnoses. You know my father face iD memory was a wonderful charismatic, creative artistic man, but I grew up before there were names for what it was like. He would get really really pressed to the point that I often didn't know what I would come home to. He also would have periods of staying up really late in thinking that he had powers and light knowledge and information and a way to see the world that other p couldn't understand and it made him very hot of anger. You know he had a lot of frustration that is now called bipolar too. meaning we didn't have a name for it. That's just like what my dad was like. You know my dad sought to self medicate, as many people do to try and control the swings that he had whose very loving he was awesome

We were very close. I was in his old dappled anger and we did father daughter, road trips, where we would, you know basically talk for you, know ten twelve hours a day and just drive the whole country, but my entire life was punk weighted by a sense of unpredictability and uncertainty in my home, and my mom is still alive. So I'm also very careful about how speak about her because I have you know a certain amount of dream surrounding mad, but my mother did the best that she could balancing a lot of uncertainty. And unpredictability, and you know my dad struggle but work. He struggled a lot of places. and my mom did as well really really complicated parents who also loved each other deeply, and you know some might say they were both suggests I dont know. But what I know is that its very unusual for two people with their personalities to get together, they both really felt a strong attachment to how they were present

thieves and how the world sort of revolved around their relationship and their love, and that also is complicated for children- have a brother four years older and as the movie talks about people react different Two homes like that and my brother took a very different path. He chose really not to engage, and I was the one brokering a lot of fights and making everybody get back together, and that essentially was my childhood and that was before even started acting. So if you want to add complexity of what happens when a family like that who you know, like my parents, never owned a house in a week, dead and it was you sometimes didn't like it while making the ran like we then have a differ lifestyle. Where there was money there, The ability to buy more things and have in many cases that fill some of the emotional means, I think, of the family? So yeah many people talk about the rooms they said. And I will say that there are programmes that follow the twelve steps based on the programme.

hawks anonymous that many of us who grew up in those homes find very helpful, and I do choose to live my life. According to those principles, you know seeking to clean up my side of the street and behave as a woman of grace and dignity as much as I can but yeah. I grew up in a lot of complexity that most kids don't know to tell anyone about just how it was like. Sometimes the cops come like that's just what happens you know because your parents are fighting you're, saying that some twelve step firms have been good for you and gas like there are programmes for people who grew up in homes like this. Maybe we'll use alan on. We like to save you, only sitting in one room, your in denial, which means chances are yours. Desire to manage control, someone else and feel that you're, so powerful will often turn to other things, and for me, yeah food was one of those places that I felt a really strong sense of control that didn't start till I was forty. I never thought I would grow. Eating disorders at forty, but apparently you can

It moves around. You know the god shape toll, as we say it. Just kind of like moves around so yeah coming up. My am talks about the tools that she personally uses to say afloat. What happened when she stopped working all the time and why, at age, forty seven, she is now taking the time to learn how to express her anger in a healthy way. there's. Nothing like getting lost in a great story, but sometimes we just don't have the time or energy to read with the audible appy can take stories from as every genre with you, wherever you go, they even offer guided wellness programmes, theatrical performances and a plethora of exciting original content on my tail is analysed as the sandman, based on the riveting dc comic series of the same name about an immortal king, whose imprisoned on earth it features, will your voices like resolve ed cat, jennings and Andy circuits, plus a score by award winning composer James hand again, I'm so excited to get started on this one as a man,

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six hundred ninety dollars by new customer survey, to say with progressive between June twenty twenty one and may twenty twenty two potential savings will very discounts not available nauseated situations so you're, forty seven now you ve got to teenage boys. You are another set of divorce and in a new relationship that the least from the outside seems pretty high functional you're. You ve got this amazing project that you run together at this point, cast yeah. I mean we're both nuts, but we complement each other pretty nicely and I think there's a lot of healing that has come from our intellectual connection and our artistic and creative connection as well, and so that gets to a question was going to ask which is like how are you and what are the true you use to stay afloat, given all the challenges you ve had in your life.

I yeah. How am I you know one day at a time? I'm okay- and there are definitely things about me that are stubborn, meaning parts of me that I would like to see shift that are stubborn and it was introduced to proper meditation, which you know, I'm a pretty slow learner. But have progressed in that over the past I'd say. The last kind of five years of my life have been a new set of learning for me. You'd I've done yoga since college, but didn't really stand yoga until the last five years or so as a meditative practice as a way to actively really quiet, ways in the noise you know my best drug is work. I am absolutely addicted to constantly moving thinking working, it's gone

better, but emotions cannot hit a moving target, was sort of you know my motto for most of my life and when you stop working that much what happens? Is you start feeling your feelings, and that sort of what I'm in the middle of now. You know I've called a lot of parts of life and I used to speaking engagements and I've written for books like I'm a person whose, like always doing but life's getting a lot quieter, and I could Jonathan with helping me with that? You know he. Basically an intervention and said to me you ve done so much work on yourself and the one thing that you will not release is europe. ocean to work and your part of its financial insecurity, in europe with money and some of us just never get used to getting out of that mindset. I do believe in psychotherapy, continue, go to psychotherapy but have also started doing you know mind body work I have pain throughout. A body that I now move around. I always was looking for the pathological reason

and lo and behold meditation and proper sleep hygiene like not watching tv right. So I go to sleep not eating right till I go to We are not working out. Eight thirty at night has something to do those things. That literally in the last year or so Jonathan, and I have been trying to keep me really honest with so I wake up with a tremendous amount of work attitude for what I have, I know I'm in a position of privilege. You know always to have the resources. I have but I would be lying if I told you that everything's grade and I feel like I'm back is functioning human ever I'm not- and I also don't want people to pity me like the worst thing is when I realized the people are like your wretch. No one cares, which is also not fair, because the same thing to say to someone like your beautiful, no one cares, and we know that's not true as well. So my seventeen year old has told me that I've, given him a blessing and a curse in that he's,

a deep thinker he's very self aware, and he said he feels burdened by it a lot and I think that's how I feel is a forty seven year old. I have a tremendous amount of angst and I I care very deeply about a lot of things that many people may not care about. But I cry when I see homeless people. That's my story like I'm not telling you that that, I sounds like a good person. I am a person who is deeply moved emotionally when I see people with special needs, like that's just how I function- and I have most of my life been medicated for and right now, I'm in a very interesting experiment to see what it's like to feel my feelings and be like this closely monitored by all the people who take care of me. But I know at forty seven. I realized. I have no idea how to express anger in a healthy way, and I feel like that's something that I should explore. So that's you know some of the work that I'm doing

is learning what it feels like in my body when I get angry and why I don't know how to express that. So I'm a constantly growing of evolving person, I'd like to say that I am ten percent happier, but I also feel I've stopped thinking there's a destination. When I was a kid, I thought that there comes point. We're like you, meet the man of your dreams and you get married and everything's amazing and you raise kit and like I always knew that life will be heard and there are challenges, but I did not know how much growth we have. I really didn't. I didn't know how much growing there was still to be done through my twenties through my thirties into my where it isn't, I'm assuming it's going to keep going that way from what I can tell it does keep going. This to me, like yours, flooring a lot of edges at the same time, just based on what you just said, like you, stop taking the methods for a just peace being a highly says. person and so you're really allow another metaphor for the measure for a lot of things. But you know again it it takes care of me

neither I nor gay, but your, allow yourself to feel these intense feeling that many of us feel, but on a little less intense in a less intense way. You're. Working on sleep hygiene trying to get a little bit more deliberate about not working as much which, of course, opens up space to yo morphia more just that lot of inner projects at once, yeah, and when people ask what do you do in your free time? Like the god's, honest truth is not much cause. I spend most of my downtime in some form of honestly like self care or therapy. I don't have a very active social life If I spend my time with my kids and yeah, I go to therapy and I I have had periods of time I'm like what happens if I dont go, not not much good. You know it feels like a little bit of a relief for a time, but I need to have active participation in in meetings and contact with

a sponsor to maintain emotional sobriety thing that I cannot give up. That's the easiest way for me to a kind of lose my emotional sanity, but These meetings and therapy appointments is just another form of business. Well, the beautiful thing in being able to work less is that now there's room for more of it, meaning there is room for more rest. Theirs for more downtime. What my life often feels like is like working all day. going into therapy working out the going to sleep and wondering why I don't sleep well, so there are certain a balance and say that I haven't gotten better. You know in so many ways. My life is more manageable. My relationships are healthier it. Oh I when my father passed, I felt really clean and I've never had regret about the complexity of our relationship and what that was like. So I'm not perfect. I know that and we're all kind of works in progress, which is the most trade

what to say, but for me it is really finding that balance between not busying myself with self care and getting to be a human being and not a human doing. You know, which is really how I was was program to be totally. I mean I relate to that a lot. The financial fears I said several times on the show know. I had a great grandfather on the jewish side, who put his head in the oven because he lost the family fortune and also was indicted, was a crook and so You know, I feel, has ghost coursing through my and locked and taking on more than I should- and I know you said that you are calling your professional life, but like even just on paper now mean you're one of the hosts of jeopardy. You have a sick on call com. You can, you put out a movie last year. There is talk of a blossom reboot you out there Can you got two kids a lot going on, even after whatever calling aven't

yeah there is a lot going on and the fact is I don't know if we have a season. Four of call me kat. The sitcom schedule is actually kind of the most time intensive portion of my life in jeopardy, especially cause. I split duties with KEN jennings jeopardy is actually not many work days. We film a week in a day we found five episodes a day, so that's actually a pretty interests schedule- and you know- podcasting- is a much lighter lift like I don't need to be in hair and makeup, and I get to be myself and Jonathan and I are literally right here so yeah there's definitely still things I'm doing and I'm a creative person so A part of that creative energy is there are their lots of ideas and great things that I get to think of doing it and also not everything, happens at the same time. Just because you see it all at the same time, in a lot of my life is more spread out

but for sure I am used to a different pace that I no longer keep. I need time and time to make decisions. I need time to not work and am happy to produce other people's things and really do want to continue to show complicated characters, especially wrong, interesting women characters who struggle in ways that are funny entertaining an interesting, but I can't be the centre of a lot of aspects of that. If I want and having been in my own house insanity go what I hear- and you know we're just mean each other for the first time and were not even in person. What I hear is somebody's like goo came into the with a lot of challenges, probably hereditary stuff that allow jews deal with difficult parents, so there's nature. and nurture adding to a kind of neuro diversity. That sounds not easy to live with, whose work

it's hard on all that, and also simultaneously aware of just how much luck and advantage has been conferred on you by the universe and and also don't forget that I also lived my life as a public person. You constantly being judged ridicule, mark your praise and, like there exists a public forum where people can talk about my boss. I, like any body part in what's wrong with it, meaning, like that's, also the lens that actors, but in particular actresses. You know, live under so like. Yes, all of that and there's this kind of other layer of key certainly not knowing who I trust or how, which is not helpful on there. It is just what it is so, but I hear, two things in there. There's one is just random people. Commenting on how you look, which you know, I've had a tiny taste of that. As a news anchor, but it's so much harsher for women, so much harder for women well and also for non traditional leading lady. Looking woman. You know they used to call us ethnic

You know I am a eastern european conglomerate and I'm proud of that. You know I I was raised with two dialects of yiddish. That's how diverse my my eastern european judges, but yeah. You know our our culture favours. Traditional looks for the most part and especially started acting. No one looked like me on television people, but I was not so be on television, but I heard a couple things in their there's. The nit picking about looks witches, I can only imagine how hard that is, and then you said something about like not knowing who you can trust and you as a person is curious is as high as yours. I mean I can imagine, that's a real tricky thing. People lie to me all the time, like us literally part of their job description. You know, like don't tell her, was really going on or don't tell her this and I dislike that strongly, and I it's a constant struggle for me and with my new production executive, you know we're just getting to know each other and she said

I know I'm just taught you can't tell the talent what's really going on, and I said I really want to know if there's something wrong with the way. I said something or did something like I just want to know. Is there something I should have asked you but failed to ask? Is there a place you wanted to go here that I didn't if you go no, not particularly, I mean, I think anything that you ask is what your listeners will probably want to hear, and I'm just you know, really honored to get to talk to you at all. I am honoured to have you on the show, and I really appreciate when somebody who has your kind of platform just is as open as you are. Notwithstanding the sum of the new us we discussed earlier. I think it's really powerful and helpful, and just absolutely interesting and so yeah glad to get to know you a little bit so thanks for coming to. Thank you, sir, that's really such an honor before I really let you go. Can you just please? I'm gonna push you to plug your pa cast and anything else. You want listeners to know about yeah. My pie cast his called my ambiorix breakdown. We like to say we break things down so that you'd

I have a breakdown and it's available on spotify or wherever you get podcasts and or on instagram at bialik breakdown. I do a lot of answering questions from people about all sorts of science, Y and mental health things and that's kind of it. You know yeah. I have other things that I do. I think, as they made us as a movie that you may want to see it stars, Dustin Hoffman, this burden and simon halbert, who I worked with a big bang theory and diana a groan, and it was my first green plan. I directed it and you can get it. I think on show time and places that you get movies and you know gravitas you, but I think, especially with our conversation we just had people might enjoy. You know also that was a film and all the actors specifically chose that they wanted to do it for personal reasons and not for me to tell what those are, but it was a real labour of mental health support love. I guess that movie.

My hubby alec such a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. So much thanks again to my m b. Alec before you hit me up on twitter about this, I will note there has been some minor controversy around some comments that maya made many years ago about vaccines. I did ask her about this and she made clear that she and her kids, are fully vaccinated. She also made a whole video where she explained her point of view. So, instead of dwelling on that in the pot cas we're just gonna put a link to her video in the show notes: temperature, happier is produced by Gabriel's ackerman justine davy, Lauren smith and terror. Anderson DJ cashmeres, our senior produce, mercer schneider men as our senior editor and can be regular. Is our executive producer scoring in mixing by Peter bonaventure of ultraviolet audio and nick thorburn of the band islands? Road, I think,

What you are on Wednesday for the second instalment of meditation party, a little experiment we ve been doing with a chatty or format here on the show of meditation party. Part too, is coming up with my pals anti ph fan. Favorites. Seventy waze and Jeff warned on Wednesday. One of the things we'll be talking about is what it's like to be a meditation teacher with a phd, but we talked about a lot of other stuff too. So we'll see well on wednesday. For that heh heh, prime members, you can listen to and happier early and ad free on amazon, music, downloading amazon music cap today or you can listen early, an ad free with wondering, plus in apple pie, cas before you go to a solid and

it's all about yourself by completing a short survey at wondering: dot com, slash servant, mock the dogs, school drop off meetings from ten to three take kids to soccer. Then no time left for a job when everyone else's relying on yeah. It's easy to put your needs last, better help. Can it you with a licence therapist online. So you can go up for yourself. The way you do, for others find more balance with better help visit better help, dotcom today to get ten percent off your first month

That's better eighty lp dot com, hey I'm Brooke and I'm a russia and were the hosts of wonder his podcast, even the rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and the biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about the teen movie icon, Gabrielle union. After spending her childhood, trying to assimilate and breaking into a racist industry, Gabrielle thought her success meant some one else had to fail, but when she's faced with hard choices beyond her control, she realizes that the only way to find real success is to come together and build community in our series. Gabrielle union, bigger, badder, better, we'll tell you how she shook off her need for perfection, found her true self and created the life she always wanted, follow even the rich. Wherever you get your podcasts, you can listen ad free on amazon, music or the wondering app