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I had like a visceral reaction to it. I was like, it just looks

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like failure to me. That is a blank sheet of failure.

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I say this as a person whose favorite playground is the fridge.

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If you're actually hungry and that makes you nauseous, you

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need to go talk to a doctor. And I was like, oh,

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I didn't realize you guys actually paid attention to that. All

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right, here we go. I'm gonna pretend I'm pushing record 'cause that feels right. Okay,

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I'm pressing record. Hi

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everybody, I'm Lauren Howard. Welcome to Different

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Not Broken, which is our podcast on exactly that—

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that there are a lot of people in this world walking around feeling broken, and

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the reality is you're just different, and that's fine. So

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I'm very fortunate to have lovely people in my lives—

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my lives? I have multiple lives apparently. My life. I have a singular life—

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who like to try to buy me things to help me

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relax or unwind because they know my life

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is in general very stressful and I do very complex,

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very complicated things all day. And so they do lovely, wonderful, sweet,

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kind things like buy me gifts. The one

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that I not get most often, but that I have gotten many, many times

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before is coloring

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books. Which I totally get, totally

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get, because it's supposed to be really relaxing

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and it's kind of a mindless activity. And you know, I'm a proponent for mindless

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activities and I love puzzles and I like paint-by-numbers.

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And so for Christmas and my birthday and stuff, a number of

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people have purchased coloring books for me.

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I think along that same vein, like, you like mindless things, so here's a coloring

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book. Please. Please

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don't buy me coloring books. I

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appreciate it so much that you would think about me and that you would

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want to buy me something, especially something that will allow me to

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relax and unwind. But I need you to understand that

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there is nothing in this world more stressful

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than a coloring book.

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It is, it is a, it is a

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book full of spaces. Actually, I

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take that back. The only thing maybe more stressful than a coloring book is if

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you were to give me a fully blank page and expect me to come up

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with something pretty. But actually, I think that might even be better

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because I can draw bubble letters and that's probably what I would draw because I

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was a child of the '90s. So, hmm. Like,

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coloring books often have very complex patterns. Or

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even not so complex patterns. And I have to—

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I have to pick colors to

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color in the spaces. And what if I pick

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the wrong color? What if it's not

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spaced out enough? You guys give me these books that have these beautiful

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mandalas in them that I want to color and I want to make beautiful.

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And then I sit and stare at my box of markers

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Like it is taunting me because I am supposed to pick one of

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them and know that it's

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the right color and that the color spacing will be correct

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and that I won't totally ruin it and

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that I won't put too many similar colors next to each other.

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And this is too stressful. It is too much

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pressure. I can't handle it. Okay?

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It's too much. This is not— this

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is not— this is not relaxing. I'm, I'm stressed just

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thinking about it, and I don't even have a coloring book in front of me.

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There are no colored pencils near me. There is nothing

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that needs to be filled in. Nothing.

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There— the expectations are too high,

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and I cannot deliver. Now,

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a paint-by-number or color-by-number, probably

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okay, but it has to, it has to

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have the actual colors you're supposed to use in the box

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or the package. Because my husband, being a lovely

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man who knows what I like, got me

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a Golden Girls color-by-number.

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And he, but it didn't come with, it didn't

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come with the markers. It didn't come with like any, nothing.

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So I had to take their color suggestions and find

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my own colors in my box of colors. I've got a

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lot of crayons and markers. Leave me alone. I'm a grownup. Anyway,

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I could, I spend my grownup money on markers. Bite me. But then

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the colors weren't like, then they didn't match exactly. And then, and

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then. Sophia Petrillo looked like a peach.

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It was just the wrong shade, and I didn't have enough—

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I didn't have enough different shades because, you know, you know that Blanche

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Devereaux was tan. You know she was.

Speaker: 00:05:11

Sophia Petrillo was not. And so,

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like, even having the color by number that said, like, color this gray, I was

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like, which gray? I have 7 grays.

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Bought a lot of markers. Okay. So anyway, that did not work either, but

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a paint-by-number that literally comes with the little paint pots and they're marked with a

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number and I just have to— amazing.

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I can do that. I can handle that. Now I will say that I

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used to stress a lot because I would do my paint-by-numbers and they would not

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look like a Van Gogh because

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I have no artistic talent whatsoever. And it would break my heart

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that I didn't just pick up a cheap paintbrush that I definitely bought from

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Walmart and all of a sudden have the

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capacity to do impressionist art. That upset me.

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But I had a friend at one point tell me that it's— you're allowed to

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do things that you're not good at just because you enjoy them. And so I've

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just decided that I'm making ugly art and that makes me feel better. Like I'm

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just— that's the goal. The goal is for it to be ugly and then I

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don't feel bad about making it ugly because I'm not a skilled painter. If I

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was, I would not be filling in a box based on the number

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on a pot of acrylic paint.

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But the decision fatigue is high.

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And I— there are too many choices

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and I do not like choices. I want as few

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choices as possible. If there was a restaurant that had like

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chicken fingers or a burger, that would be my favorite restaurant. Not even because

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I want chicken fingers or a burger, but because on any

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given day I will know which one I want more.

Speaker: 00:06:54

And there, and that it will be fine. Even if I don't want either that

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badly, I will know which one I want more.

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So that restaurant is my favorite restaurant because no

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thinking or very little thinking, limited thinking. Anyway,

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if you also struggle with coloring books, and I know there are others like this.

Speaker: 00:07:15

Like me, my children were coloring the other day

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and our babysitter was sitting with them

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and she had her own coloring sheet, which she does not usually do. And

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as I walked past, she held it up with— it had no colors on

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it. She held it up and she was like, this is my nightmare. And I

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had like a visceral reaction to it. I was like, it just looks like

Speaker: 00:07:38

failure to me. That is. That is a blank sheet of failure.

Speaker: 00:07:42

Everything I do from here on out is gonna be wrong. Get that thing away

Speaker: 00:07:46

from me. And she was like, exactly. She said, so if it's okay with you,

Speaker: 00:07:49

I'm just gonna throw this out when I'm done with it, cuz I wanna, I

Speaker: 00:07:51

wanna enjoy this time with the kids, but I don't wanna, I don't want any

Speaker: 00:07:55

remnants of it. And then they were like, okay. So yeah, don't

Speaker: 00:07:58

buy me coloring books because there is too much pressure

Speaker: 00:08:02

involved in that.

Speaker: 00:08:15

There's a coloring book right there. I was like staring at it as I was

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talking. I was

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like, I was trying to burn it with my eyes. I was trying to light

Speaker: 00:08:25

it on fire like the burning bush

Speaker: 00:08:29

coloring book. You know, it's kind of funny. I can't believe

Speaker: 00:08:33

I don't sign off the podcast this way because like I have a very

Speaker: 00:08:36

distinctive sign-off for the podcast, but literally I end every single

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conversation with somebody that has like a definitive ending,

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like a phone call or a Zoom, or even just like talking to somebody

Speaker: 00:08:48

in person and walking away. Somebody I know, I don't know, not like my husband

Speaker: 00:08:51

or my children, but like if I'm ending a conversation and walking away, I end

Speaker: 00:08:55

it the same way, literally every single time, I don't even realize

Speaker: 00:08:58

I do it anymore. Apparently I don't do it when I'm

Speaker: 00:09:02

clowning and jackasses on the internet, but

Speaker: 00:09:06

if you talk to me one-to-one, I do this every time.

Speaker: 00:09:10

I'll say, hey, have a great day. Nice to talk to you. Be good.

Speaker: 00:09:14

And then hang up. And I do it literally every

Speaker: 00:09:18

single time. And I have for— I think I forgot that I do it. It's

Speaker: 00:09:21

completely involuntary at this point, but it started.

Speaker: 00:09:26

Very genuinely when I was running substance use clinics.

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So I run a mental health clinic now that is fully virtual, but for a

Speaker: 00:09:33

long time I ran an in-person mental health and substance use clinic, and we dealt

Speaker: 00:09:37

with a lot of patients who had recently gotten into a whole lot of trouble.

Speaker: 00:09:41

And literally as they would leave every single time, I would

Speaker: 00:09:45

say to them, be good. And it started as

Speaker: 00:09:48

like kind of a joke, but also kind of a, like, I don't

Speaker: 00:09:52

wanna see a mugshot of you between now and the next time I see you.

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Which was a thing that happened, not all the time, but it

Speaker: 00:09:59

did happen. And so anytime they left, I would always say, have a good day,

Speaker: 00:10:03

be good. So much so

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that one time I forgot to say it, not realizing that I said it that

Speaker: 00:10:10

often. And one of my patients was like, I'm leaving. What are you supposed

Speaker: 00:10:14

to say to me? And I was like, bye. And he

Speaker: 00:10:18

was like, no. He was like, you're supposed to tell me to be good.

Speaker: 00:10:22

And I was like, oh, I didn't realize that you guys actually paid attention to

Speaker: 00:10:24

that. And he goes, I do pay attention to that and it matters to me,

Speaker: 00:10:28

but I say it all the time. So it started out as an

Speaker: 00:10:31

actual thing, like, please make good choices when you leave this place.

Speaker: 00:10:35

Please pick up the phone and call me before you do a stupid thing.

Speaker: 00:10:39

Please, you know, we have all the tools in the world for you. Be good.

Speaker: 00:10:43

And if you feel like you can't be good, call me instead, uh, or call

Speaker: 00:10:46

our office instead or whatever. And I mean, we're talking about thousands

Speaker: 00:10:50

of patients over a 10-year period that I said it to. And so it, it

Speaker: 00:10:54

just kind of became part of,

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part of what actually, I think it started as be good and don't do anything

Speaker: 00:11:01

I wouldn't do. I, I used to say that to them all the time

Speaker: 00:11:05

and that actually worked in that environment cuz I'm a tremendously boring person and I

Speaker: 00:11:09

always have been. So like, it's not like I was ever leaving my office and

Speaker: 00:11:12

getting into any kind of trouble that was interesting. Aside from like maybe

Speaker: 00:11:15

mouthing off to somebody for being a jackal. Like other than that, there

Speaker: 00:11:19

was nothing interesting happening, but then it was eventually just be good.

Speaker: 00:11:24

And I have not run a substance use clinic in like 10

Speaker: 00:11:27

years, but it's still stuck there and it still works. It still

Speaker: 00:11:31

matters. It's still something that's really important to me because

Speaker: 00:11:35

it doesn't matter what you're going through. I think when you, you know, when you

Speaker: 00:11:38

are proceeding away from whatever conversation we're having, I

Speaker: 00:11:42

want you to one, have a good day. I want you to two, make good

Speaker: 00:11:44

choices. And 3, I want you to make the best of

Speaker: 00:11:48

whatever is being presented to you from that point forward.

Speaker: 00:11:51

And so it's, again, like I don't even realize I do

Speaker: 00:11:55

it. It's fully pathological now, but if I don't

Speaker: 00:11:59

say it, people catch me. And I actually had somebody comment on one of my

Speaker: 00:12:03

LinkedIn posts the other day that I had, I guess we had talked and

Speaker: 00:12:06

they, I didn't say it before we signed off and they were like, that was

Speaker: 00:12:09

the first time you had ever not said it. And it was weird. And I

Speaker: 00:12:11

was like, This has followed me around this

Speaker: 00:12:15

far. Really? So anyway, I mean

Speaker: 00:12:19

it. When you leave this place, be good. One, make good choices. Two,

Speaker: 00:12:23

be good to other people. Three, be good to yourself.

Speaker: 00:12:27

And four,

Speaker: 00:12:31

you know, do something to give yourself the life that you wanna have that day.

Speaker: 00:12:35

Be good. It is not, it does not mean be

Speaker: 00:12:39

holy or pious or, or unfun.

Speaker: 00:12:43

In fact, I support you in most of the debauchery that you will get into.

Speaker: 00:12:46

I live vicariously through the debauchery that the people I care about get into.

Speaker: 00:12:51

But if you ever, if you ever talk to me one-to-one, I guarantee

Speaker: 00:12:55

you as a sign-off, it will come out. And I promise you, I don't realize

Speaker: 00:12:58

it. And it is just part of my personality at this point

Speaker: 00:13:02

is it started off as a way to encourage people

Speaker: 00:13:06

who needed to make better choices to continue to make better choices. And it

Speaker: 00:13:10

has just become fully ingrained in my psyche

Speaker: 00:13:13

in a way that will never go away. And also

Speaker: 00:13:19

other important things, other very important things.

Speaker: 00:13:22

That is the way, that is the way that I sign off every single phone

Speaker: 00:13:26

call. And now we'll

Speaker: 00:13:30

go to Alison who has this week's Small Talk. We

Speaker: 00:13:34

have a question from Simone in Oakland, California.

Speaker: 00:13:38

I get frustrated when people say, listen to your body,

Speaker: 00:13:41

because my body gives mixed messages. Tired

Speaker: 00:13:45

but wired. Calm but anxious.

Speaker: 00:13:49

Hungry but nauseous. How do you make decisions when the

Speaker: 00:13:53

signals are all crossed? Somebody needs to have

Speaker: 00:13:56

a talk with your body. That's not fun. That's,

Speaker: 00:14:00

that's rude. Listen to your body isn't great

Speaker: 00:14:04

advice at baseline. Like, it's, it's not

Speaker: 00:14:08

bad. It's not bad advice. I, the, the intention is

Speaker: 00:14:12

good. The intention is good, which is that

Speaker: 00:14:15

there's a part of you that will tell you what you need and

Speaker: 00:14:21

you should listen to that part of you. However,

Speaker: 00:14:26

there are absolutely times when the wires get crossed.

Speaker: 00:14:30

100%. There are times when the wires get crossed.

Speaker: 00:14:34

No question.

Speaker: 00:14:38

The reason I say that is if

Speaker: 00:14:42

you were— if,

Speaker: 00:14:45

like, there, there can be very serious conditions

Speaker: 00:14:49

very serious acute episodes of something

Speaker: 00:14:53

where you feel funny and your instinct is to go to sleep,

Speaker: 00:14:57

right? Because you feel like rest is the way to handle it. Well, in

Speaker: 00:15:00

those situations, rest could actually kill you, right? Because something

Speaker: 00:15:04

horrific could happen in your sleep. Now, that's an extreme example of it,

Speaker: 00:15:08

but there are times when our body tells us to do something that is

Speaker: 00:15:12

decidedly not what the body needs to do. I'll give you an example.

Speaker: 00:15:16

In the afternoon, when you are exhausted, when you're hitting your afternoon

Speaker: 00:15:19

crash, taking a nap is not actually the way to handle

Speaker: 00:15:23

the crash. The way to handle the crash, and this is me talking to myself

Speaker: 00:15:27

more than anybody else, the way to handle the crash is to get up and

Speaker: 00:15:30

walk around and move around and like get your heart rate up because that actually

Speaker: 00:15:33

will wake you up. If you go take a nap, odds are you're gonna wanna

Speaker: 00:15:37

take a much longer nap than what you needed, and then you're gonna be foggy

Speaker: 00:15:41

after that nap, and it's not like it's not gonna be a restorative nap, right?

Speaker: 00:15:44

But you're having a crash because you're in the middle of the, it's the middle

Speaker: 00:15:48

of afternoon, your blood sugar's low, things are boring. The office you're in is probably

Speaker: 00:15:51

cold. You're wearing a sweater that makes you warm. Like there's 10,000 reasons why you

Speaker: 00:15:55

could be having a crash at that point. And your body is saying,

Speaker: 00:15:59

or what you hear it saying is, I am gonna go lay down and rest.

Speaker: 00:16:02

And in reality, it's you need to get up and walk around, talk to

Speaker: 00:16:06

somebody, get, get the blood flowing, get a change of scenery, and then that's actually

Speaker: 00:16:10

better for you. That's actually the better outcome for you. So definitely like

Speaker: 00:16:14

that is you hearing one thing when your body's actually telling you something else. However,

Speaker: 00:16:20

every single one of those things that you explained

Speaker: 00:16:24

has a more prevalent

Speaker: 00:16:28

need out of the two of them that you described, right? So you said

Speaker: 00:16:31

tired but wired. Okay. Odds are there,

Speaker: 00:16:35

you're tired. And you're probably

Speaker: 00:16:38

tired because you're wired. So how do we overcome

Speaker: 00:16:42

that part of it so that you can go to

Speaker: 00:16:46

sleep? Like, there's a problem to fix there that's making you tired but wired.

Speaker: 00:16:50

Same thing, hungry but nauseous. Like, you shouldn't be nauseous when you're hungry. There's a

Speaker: 00:16:53

problem to fix there. Now, is it because you waited too long to eat?

Speaker: 00:16:57

Do you need to eat more often? Because hungry is the emotion there.

Speaker: 00:17:01

Now, if you're actually hungry and not bored, I say this as a

Speaker: 00:17:05

person whose favorite playground is the fridge

Speaker: 00:17:08

because I get bored and I go play there. If you're actually hungry

Speaker: 00:17:13

and that makes you nauseous, you need to go talk to a doctor.

Speaker: 00:17:17

But if you're hungry— if you're nauseous because you're hungry because you

Speaker: 00:17:21

waited too long to eat, then you need to keep snacks with you and

Speaker: 00:17:24

you need to eat them regularly because that shouldn't be happening either.

Speaker: 00:17:28

So like the the two sides of those, there's a prevailing thing.

Speaker: 00:17:32

There's a more important thing in each of the, the, the pairs that you

Speaker: 00:17:35

mentioned. And you have to do, be able to do

Speaker: 00:17:39

that first one. So you gotta figure out the second one

Speaker: 00:17:43

and your body's definitely telling you something and it is probably telling you the first

Speaker: 00:17:47

one. So we need to figure out why the second one is interfering.

Speaker: 00:17:51

Thanks for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love you. Mean

Speaker: 00:17:54

it.

Speaker: 00:18:00

I am now remembering that my dad had a way that he

Speaker: 00:18:04

signed off every single phone call that was the same regardless who he was

Speaker: 00:18:08

talking to, and it was always, "Okay, thanks a lot, bye-bye."

Speaker: 00:18:13

And it is making me laugh that I have now developed my own

Speaker: 00:18:16

idiosyncratic way of ending phone calls.

Speaker: 00:18:20

So as an end to this segment, Okay, thanks a lot. Bye-bye.

Speaker: 00:18:24

And be good.