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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm pressing record. Hi

everybody, I'm Lauren Howard. Welcome to Different

Not Broken, which is our podcast on exactly that—

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

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

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

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

who like to try to buy me things to help me

relax or unwind because they know my life

is in general very stressful and I do very complex,

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

kind things like buy me gifts. The one

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

before is coloring

books. Which I totally get, totally

get, because it's supposed to be really relaxing

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

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

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

people have purchased coloring books for me.

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

book. Please. Please

don't buy me coloring books. I

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

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

relax and unwind. But I need you to understand that

there is nothing in this world more stressful

than a coloring book.

It is, it is a, it is a

book full of spaces. Actually, I

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

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

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

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

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

coloring books often have very complex patterns. Or

even not so complex patterns. And I have to—

I have to pick colors to

color in the spaces. And what if I pick

the wrong color? What if it's not

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

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

And then I sit and stare at my box of markers

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

them and know that it's

the right color and that the color spacing will be correct

and that I won't totally ruin it and

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

And this is too stressful. It is too much

pressure. I can't handle it. Okay?

It's too much. This is not— this

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

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

There are no colored pencils near me. There is nothing

that needs to be filled in. Nothing.

There— the expectations are too high,

and I cannot deliver. Now,

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

okay, but it has to, it has to

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

or the package. Because my husband, being a lovely

man who knows what I like, got me

a Golden Girls color-by-number.

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

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

So I had to take their color suggestions and find

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

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

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

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

then. Sophia Petrillo looked like a peach.

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

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

Devereaux was tan. You know she was.

Sophia Petrillo was not. And so,

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

like, which gray? I have 7 grays.

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

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

number and I just have to— amazing.

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

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

look like a Van Gogh because

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

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

Walmart and all of a sudden have the

capacity to do impressionist art. That upset me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

on a pot of acrylic paint.

But the decision fatigue is high.

And I— there are too many choices

and I do not like choices. I want as few

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

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

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

given day I will know which one I want more.

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

badly, I will know which one I want more.

So that restaurant is my favorite restaurant because no

thinking or very little thinking, limited thinking. Anyway,

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

Like me, my children were coloring the other day

and our babysitter was sitting with them

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

buy me coloring books because there is too much pressure

involved in that.

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

talking. I was

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

it on fire like the burning bush

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

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

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

conversation with somebody that has like a definitive ending,

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

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

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

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

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

clowning and jackasses on the internet, but

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

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

And then hang up. And I do it literally every

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

completely involuntary at this point, but it started.

Very genuinely when I was running substance use clinics.

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

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

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

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

say to them, be good. And it started as

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

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

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

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

be good. So much so

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

just kind of became part of,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

whatever is being presented to you from that point forward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

was like, This has followed me around this

far. Really? So anyway, I mean

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

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

And four,

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

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

holy or pious or, or unfun.

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

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

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

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

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

is it started off as a way to encourage people

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

has just become fully ingrained in my psyche

in a way that will never go away. And also

other important things, other very important things.

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

call. And now we'll

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

have a question from Simone in Oakland, California.

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

because my body gives mixed messages. Tired

but wired. Calm but anxious.

Hungry but nauseous. How do you make decisions when the

signals are all crossed? Somebody needs to have

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

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

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

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

good. The intention is good, which is that

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

you should listen to that part of you. However,

there are absolutely times when the wires get crossed.

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

No question.

The reason I say that is if

you were— if,

like, there, there can be very serious conditions

very serious acute episodes of something

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

every single one of those things that you explained

has a more prevalent

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

tired but wired. Okay. Odds are there,

you're tired. And you're probably

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

that part of it so that you can go to

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

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

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

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

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

person whose favorite playground is the fridge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

it.

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

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

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

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

idiosyncratic way of ending phone calls.

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

And be good.