For those of us who have ever asked “Who am I?” — this one’s for you. Dr. Sara Kuburic — aka The Millennial Therapist — has asked herself this question, and dedicated her career to helping others answer it. She delves into the distinction between our identity and our roles, how we often lose ourselves in the expectations placed upon us, and how taking responsibility can be sexy.
Hey fam, Hello Sunshine. Today on the bright Side, it's Wellness Wednesday, and we're joined by the millennial therapist, doctor Sarah Kubrick. She's an existential psychotherapist and the author of It's On Me. So if you've ever felt lost or struggled to answer the question who am I? Today is the show for you. It's Wednesday, October thirtieth. I'm Danielle Robe.
And I'm Simone Boyce and this is the bright Side from Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together to share women's stories, laugh, learn and brighten your day. Today's Wellness Wednesday is presented by Coligard Danielle.
We get to kick off.
Today's show with the brand new November Reese's Book Club Pick. This month's pick is We Will Be Jaguars, a Memoir of My People by Namante Nikimo and Mitch Anderson.
Namante n Kimo is an internationally acclaimed activist who's been named one of Times one hundred most Influential People, and she's also a winner of the magazine's twenty twenty four Earth Award. So what does that mean? Well, it's pretty outstanding. This award honors people who are quote influencing the future of the planet through their work on climate justice, awareness and activism.
So incredible, and she's also the force behind an indigenous campaign that led to a court ruling protecting half a million acres of Waurani land in the Amazon Rainforest from oil extraction.
We truly need more people like her in the world.
And this book is a memoir about her life, so it tells the incredible story of her growing up in the Waarani tribe deep in Ecuador's Amazon Rainforest, all the way to her journey as a climate activist fighting to protect it. Her story sounds really extraordinary, so I can't wait to dive in Simone. It's clear she has this really strong sense of identity and dedicated purpose, and in that vein of purpose, I'm really excited to talk to today's guest doctor. Sarah Krubrick is an existential psychotherapist, the author It's On Me, and more commonly known on social media as the Millennial Therapist. She shares her tips and musings to her over one point seven million followers. Her latest book is all about the concept of self loss accepting hard truths, and it's really a guide to helping people answer that major question.
Who am I.
Let's bring her in, doctor Sarah Kubrick. Welcome to the bright Side.
Oh my goodness, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.
We're really excited to your book. It's on Me is all about self loss, and this is very personal to you. There was a time that you describe being incredibly unhappy and experiencing that loss of self. What was going on at that time in your life.
Yeah, so I was about twenty four. I want to say I was kind of just going through life and doing what people expected me to do. And I'm hoping other people can relate to that where you're like, well, I'm twenty So that means that I'll try to find like a serious relationship, and I will figure my life out and go to grad school or start that job, and I'm going to look a certain way and I'm gonna have certain friends. And so that's what I did, and I got married. I was in grad school and I remember having like a little school break and I went to La to visit a really close friend of mine who knew me from undergrad, and I was telling him about all the cool things that I was doing that everyone was praising me for and he just kind of like looked at me and was like, yeah, no, no, that's great, but like, are you happy? I was like, how dare you?
Like?
I just haven't had anyone actually ask me that question. A lot of people just assumed I was happy or would say things like, wow, you must be so happy. And so it was that moment in my twenties. It wasn't even living with self loss. It was recognizing it that really hurt. Obviously living with it was painful, but I was in so much denial and I didn't even know it was happy. But that moment where he asked that question and I kind of took a look at my life and was like, I have no idea who I am. I have like no idea why I'm here. That was one of the most painful moments of my life.
I think self loss when people hear that phrase, it means different things to different people. How do you describe the experience of self loss?
Yeah, it's like becoming a stranger to yourself. Fruly, it's looking in a mirror, not feeling like feeling connected with that person, not feeling like you possess that person, not feeling like you have intimacy with that person. It's looking at yourself and looking at your actions and your relationships and your decisions and going like, I don't why did I do that? Like what, I don't actually know why I'm doing the things I'm doing, or I'm surprising myself and not in a super positive way. So it's just a lack of alignment between how we perceive ourselves and what our beliefs are and our values and then how we're actually showing up in the world.
So it's like, when our insides don't match our outsides.
That's such a great way of saying that, yes, correct, I need to use that. I need to feel like, when your insides did not match your outsets.
It's yours. You want to know. A really embarrassing story when I learned that term. Yes, I was dating someone who, at the end of our relationship said he made a pro con list about me that I found, and when I spoke to him about the list, he was like, I just I'm looking for a Michelle Obama and yes in most space. So my first instinct was like, are you bor Rock? But I didn't say anything. I didn't say I held my tongue and I had a therapy appointment that week and I shared it and the therapist very wisely said, well, it's a really interesting thing to say because he's comparing Michelle Obama's outsides to your insides, like we don't have in an inside look into whom Michelle Obama is in those intimate moments, and the idea of outsides and insides became very clear to me.
I've thought about it a lot since then.
I love that and I'm sorry you went through that.
Thanks.
What a thing to say to someone. It's really really yours. I also want to be Michelle Obama. I would be so great if that was. I was that gracious and you know, articulate, and that's yes, we all want this totally.
Well, speaking of articulate, I love the way you lay out the distinction in terms of how we think of ourselves and identity. You write that identity is who we are, roles are what we do.
This applies to just.
So much in life, whether it's career or dating, even being in a relationship or becoming a parent.
How does this contribute to self loss?
Yeah, I think we get lost in the roles. It's it's almost like, you know, do you see the forest from the trees sort of metaphor. But it's we all get assigned roles. We all take roles on and we don't actually understand how much of shapes who we are, and we don't have this overview of who we are because most of us become over committed to a role. So it's like I am now a girlfriend, and you'll just see everything else become like dumpster fire because they're just like, you know, they're like, I'm a girlfriend and that's an important role. Like you want to you know, you want to connect you, I want to have intimacy, and that's that's wonderful. But we I see people who become parents sometimes not know how to navigate, you know, other aspects of themselves besides parenthood, and that makes sense. That's something I write about in the book. If your roles are something that you engage with all the time, eventually they will fully shape who you are. But you might not like who that person is because it's going to feel very one dimensional.
Yeah, I that definitely resonates with me.
I identified myself through my career for the first I don't know, maybe fifteen years or let's say twelve years of adulthood, and then as I became a mom, that process helped me disentangle my identity from my career. But then there's always the danger of slipping into Oh, I'm embodying the mom persona so much of the mom identity so much that I'm losing other parts of myself. And I think a lot of women struggle with finding the right language to define themselves, Like, Okay, how do I introduce myself now that I do feel like I'm living out all the facets of my humanity? So what are the alternative words or phrases that we can use to describe ourselves in a more comprehensive, holistic way.
Wow, that's a really hard question. Actually, I truly believe that isolation is an inherent human EXAs experience, which means that no one, no other person, no matter how close to you, is fully going to understand the complexity and the facets of who you are. And that experience is really isolating, really lonely, but really profound. And I think we need to accept the fact that no one will fully understand what it means to be a mother and a businesswoman and a friend because they just can't. They are not you that don't share the same lived experience, And so how I've come to terms with this is different. People sometimes get different introductions from me, and sometimes it's like, what facet do I feel most connected to right now? Which one do I think I want to express in this moment, because I can't express it all at once. And I think one of the best ways to truly show someone who you are is never by the way you verbally identify. I think the only way to truly answer like who am I is by the way you live your life. And so that's such a great question, but I think people should take liberties of like, hey, what represents me in this very moment, in this very second, in this very context, what am I connecting to? What do I want to present? You have the right to choose whatever that is.
I feel like I got into relationships in my teen years and my twenties that were so not for me. And part of the reason, in reflection, why that happened was I was figuring out who I was. When we think about that sense of self loss, how does knowing yourself well come into play?
Yeah, oh my gosh, And who hasn't been in that experience, like in that situation. I think when we're in our twenties, we are still figuring it out, and I think that's normal, that's actually developmental. And then we'll enter relationships without often a very so understanding, which is also okay because what you're doing is you're learning about yourself through a relationship. I think a relationship can teach her so much forever where I'm like, I thought I was this kind of person, and then I'm like engaging with my partner, I'm like, just kidding, surprise, and there's something wonderful about that. But that's wonderful now in my thirties because I'm looking at my life and I have this sense of self and now I'm kind of evaluating, tweaking, adjusting, editing. In my twenties, it wasn't so cute and it wasn't so nice because someone would reflect something to me and I'd be like, oh, maybe that's who I should be, or maybe that is who like I like I was meant to be. And without having like a very clear sense of self going into relationship, I myself was prone to losing myself further in those relationships, so I would become who the person wanted me to be and that was because I wanted them to love me and I wanted the relationship to work out. And so there is this weird thing where I believe that relationships, healthy relationships can help you become more yourself than you could do alone, and then unhealthy relationships can take you further away from yourself than you could possibly ever do alone. And so that's I think that's like the beauty and sort of the curse of relationships, Sarah.
In my experience, I've had to forgive myself and love myself first before I can know myself. Do you think there's any truth to that or like, have you seen that pattern in your patience that you've worked with?
Yeah, that's such a fact. It's almost like inverse of what I would have thought. I think the forgiveness piece absolutely in terms of you need to forgive your past self almost to even be willing to look at your current self. Like it it takes up our past our, remorse or regret. It takes up so much space that it's like I can't even engage with what is in front of me because because I'm so stuck. So absolutely, I think forgiveness plays a massive role and forgiveness comes from also understanding. I think there's so much blame and grace. My God, we need to give ourselves grace. It's our first time probably on earth doing this journey. We're going to make mistakes, and I think part of it is also why are we assuming life is not about mistakes? How do people think we're going to develop? Also, what is the point of life if there's no trials and mistakes and tentions experiments. I just like, I think that's actually the definition of life. So when people are trying to avoid it, I think we're setting ourselves up for failure in the real sense of the word. And so I think forgiveness plays a huge role. The love piece, for me, is the final step. I don't think you can love someone you don't know, and so for me, when I think about actual love, actual intimacy, for me, it's first like you're acknowledging yourself that maybe you accept whatever you just acknowledged. Then hopefully you'll get to a place where you can respect that person and then you can like them and then love them. But to me, you can't love a stranger in the true sense of the word the same way you would love someone that you had an intimate relationship with.
I'd love to also establish the inverse. What does self fulfillment look like?
Oof hmm. I think that looks like a relationship that is aligned. So the reason why I say it's a relationship is because I don't think self fulfillment is a destination. It's an ongoing journey. I don't think the self is static. I don't think we get there and we're like, hey, self, and now you sit with it till you're eighty. I think self fulfillment to me is a constant desire to understand, to connect, and to align with yourself. It's not a checklist. It is not like a I'm doing in therapy and then I'm like, I'm done. Like if a client came up to me and said my goal in therapy is to be self fulfilled, I'm like, sweet, so are we doing this forever?
Like?
Is this a monthly, a yearly subscription, a decades Like? It's just it's an ongoing process. And so for me, self discovering is just openness, curiosity, and then acting out of that place of alignment of your insights match your outsides. If I'm going to quote you.
I'm so honored. Yeah, doctor Kubrick, this is something I think about a lot, because I actually attribute a lot of my joy and happiness to meaning. Hmmm, I'm wondering, how, like, if you are searching for purpose, how do you how do you even begin to think about that? Because You're right, it's so individual.
Yeah, something I'll like to do as an activity to make it a bit more tangible is I'll get someone to tell me their entire schedule for a week or maybe even a day. But like when I'm talking excruciating details, I mean like excruciating details, and I put it all on a page and I'm like, amazing, And then I'll ask them to reflect what do they spend most of their time on and why? Because the reality is, as humans, we will always seek meaning. I think that's something that's very.
Inherent.
I think it's an inherent need and so I genuinely believe that. And so when we go throughout our day, we might not realize that what we're looking for is seeking for meaning or living out pieces of that meaning. What we're actually doing when I'm actually putting someone's day on the page, I'm looking for values. Okay, what are your values, because your values and your beliefs are going to lead me to your meaning. And I think just being really curious of like the things you spend time on will tell you what you value. Sit there, explore what you value and why, and are there ways that you can kind of lean into those values that would be maybe create greater impact or make it a little more tangible for you. And so I think most of us actually do live out some values. Now we will face values that will be like, I can't believe that is a value of mine, because we always speak of values as like a really positive thing. But I think once in a while we have this moment of our truth of like, oh this has become a value that's a little disappointing. Maybe I just need to deprioritize that particular value for now. And so it's just about like that reflection. But I think oftentimes we're telling ourselves all the things we actually need to know.
We need to take a quick break, but we'll be right back to our conversation with doctor Sarah Kubrick, and we're back with doctor Sarah Kubrick. Sarah, I love that you've carved out this area of expertise for yourself that you call existential therapy. And the reason why I identify with this so much is because I feel like I'm the existential friend in my friend group. Like we'll go to we'll go to dinner, and I'll like warm them up a little bit with like some softball questions, but eventually we're going to get to what is the meaning of life?
What do you think it is? How did you arrive at that?
I just always love taking existential So I love this idea of existential therapy. But break down that term for us. What does that term mean? And how can it help with self loss?
Oh my god, I love that you do this with your friends. I'm like that unpopular, I'm cool kid at the table that's like, so like death, what do we think?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, Now I do the same thing for it or I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's just it's authentic to me.
I think it's a great thing because I think most of us have these questions. We're just not addressing it. So every therapist sort of has a way of understanding their clients. So if you're an attachment in formed therapist, you're going to look for the individual attachment in their stories. If you're a CPT therapist, you're going to look for cognitive patterns and behaviors. And if you're an existential therapist, I'm going to look for how are you taking responsibility in your life? What is your relationship to freedom, to isolation, to meaning to death? So it's really just informed by existential philosophy.
We've set up some of the causes of self loss in this conversation, and on our show, we do love to talk about solutions. So can we get into some of these solutions that you explore through existential therapy?
What does that look like in practice?
Yeah, I think the solution for me for self loss is responsibility. It's not sexy, it's really not, but I think it's the most liberating, life changing concept once you lean into it. I think self loss happens either because you have like a big life event and you can't reconcile who you were before who you are after. And that can be a move, a breakup, divorce, a kid, something traumatic, a car accident, a death, and you're just feeling really fragmented and you cannot reconcile, you cannot understand who you are a past that hurt or past that trauma, and then sometimes it's really really gradual. So you're betraying yourself, abandoning yourself in relationships, at work, no boundaries, not communicating, not setting up for yourself, doing things that are not aligned with your values. So there's so many ways to get there, but all of it kind of stops when you understand that no one can protect you the way that you can protect yourself, and no one can shape you the way that you can shape yourself. And so we have this wonderful gift of being whoever we want to be, but we have to take responsibility for it. It does not accidentally happen. I don't think it's like this inherent thing where're like and now I'm just going to be a phenomenal individual and I don't have to work on myself. And so for me, it's taking responsibility for every single action, which sounds really tedious. So I think people are like, seriously every action. I say, yes, here's my rationale. Let's say that you're sensitive to caffeine, such as myself, and you're like, I have a really big day and I have a serious conversation. I have to have with my partner and then I decide to have coffee. Now me having coffee or macha, there's such a significant difference on my nervous system. And yeah, someone can be like, Wow, you had a cup of coffee. Who cares. I'm like, no, no, that I need to make an intentional decision of Like I have a big day, I'm already a bit nervous. I'm a bit anxious. I do not need to be having caffeine right now. And so it's like, how do I want to address if I'm uncomfortable? Most people act a certain way. If they feel more confident, more attractive, toy'll act a certain way. And so I literally think that every decision that we make, from what we ingest, to how we dress, to a conversations we're choosing to have all end up shaping our sense of self and some respon. You know, some decisions we can make and some we can So whenever we have that freedom, taking that responsibility for our actions is really important, no matter how small the action you think might be.
I think responsibility is so sexy.
It's so sexy.
Even though society doesn't agree right now, like millennial culture probably doesn't agree, I don't care.
I think it's so sexy.
Well that's because we think it's blame, right, Like we're like, there's so much shame with it because it's like it's your phone and then only one person we dump everything on like one person instead of just being like, responsibility means autonomy, It means making amends, it means taking ownership, it means possession. That's hot, you know, blame not so hot. So I get it, but I think we need to like we need to bring back responsibility in like a sexy way and be like, this is what it actually means. It's accountability, it's possession, it's ownership. It's like empowered rather than like it's you are you know, you screwed up and you don't deserve other chances and you should be ashamed and we hate you.
Well, what's the correlation between responsibility and freedom?
Yeah, so my take, my hot take maybe is you're not really responsible for things. You're not free to choose to do or not do. So if you had the freedom to make a choice and then you chose it, that is on you. And if you didn't obviously have that choice, then that's not on you. Now it gets real twisty and dark when I don't actually think our freedom is ever fully taken away, which is just my way of saying, I think we're pretty much always responsible to a different degree because we all have different freedoms and different limitations and constraints. But that was just like a fun run around way of saying, like, huh, we're always responsible. And as you said, no one wants to hear that.
It's kind of empowering to hear it, though.
I think so Imagine if I couldn't change my life. Imagine if my mistakes were in my fault, Like I'm just kind of like i'd be even more pissed. You know, there is slight situations you find yourself in and you're like, this really wasn't on me, and I'm taking the heed for it, and I don't like it, and that's a really frustrating position to be in. But I kind of like the fact that a lot of it does boil down to me, and as much as I hate it, I go like, well, at least I did it to me. At least, like if I don't like the person I'm seeing, that's probably my curation, which means I have the freedom and the capacity to make something in someone I am proud of.
It's time for another short break. We'll be right back with doctor Sarah Kubrick, and we're back to wellness Wednesday with doctor Sarah Kubrick. There's this big movement on TikTok where women are talking about how to get to the vision board version of yourself and they write down these lists of what does this version of myself eat, what does the day look like for her? Who is she friends with, what job does she have? And similar to what you were saying earlier, which is like with the exercise you did about your values and purpose, is like, is there a discrepancy between who this person is and what you are doing and living and eating right now? And then you have the power to change it. I think it's very cool.
I think it's so tangible, it's very practical. It's very cool. My only hesitation is I never want to over commit to one version of myself wow say more good right, because that limits my growth. I don't want to be like I just want to be this woman because when I reach that, what then? And what if along the way I realized that's no longer who I want to be. That you're no longer aligned. And this happens all the time. And so for me, the number one piece of advice give people these don't over commit to one version of yourself.
Oh that's interesting.
I love that so much.
Yeah.
I think it's just really really important. And activities like this are absolutely great as long as you still reassess that person you're trying to become, Like every week where you're like, do I still want her to eat this way? Do I still want her to dress that way? Do I still want her to have kids? Not have kids?
Right? Yeah, Because it's a fluid, noisy discussion with ourselves that we're always engaged in.
Right Yeah.
I can hear our besties, you know, as we're talking about all this, and I can kind of hear their wheels turning, because I imagine that some people have questions about what happens when we want to feel that freedom and embody freedom, but life throws stuff our way that's just out of our control. Talking about things like profound loss, violence, illness, climate change, war and conflict, which I know you have personal experience with your childhood. How can we protect against self loss in circumstances that might just be unjust and unfair and out of our control.
Oh my god, there's way too much of that right now. And I think it's important to remember that this concept I draw upon comes from Victor Frankel, who survived the concentration camps. So it was written by someone who's probably seen some of the worst of humanity. It wasn't written by someone who didn't, who had a really nice life, and for him, the last of human freedoms was his attitude. So freedom is not always freedom of action or freedom of feeling. Necessarily, it is like, I choose to have this attitude despite of what is happening. And I think at the end of the day, that's all he had. He couldn't choose when he slept, aid, if he lived or he died, what he did that day, And yet he still argued that he was free. He had some degree of freedom, and I think that that's a really beautiful thing of No one can actually break that spirit from you, know what can take away freedom fully from you until you die In a sense of shit, things are happening, painful things are happening, and you can still kind of choose how you want to position yourself, how you want to think about it, while your attitude is going to be how are you going to speak to yourself? And I think that's there's something really cool about that. It's a very sensitive topic and there's going to be moments where we don't feel free, and that's okay too. I'm not saying everyone has to believe that they always have freedom, but I do lean on the sort of on that side of we probably have more freedom than we think, even if it's just like I'm choosing my attitude today.
I actually think that really is applicable. Whenever people say they're feeling stuck in their careers or even just stuck in life, you know, like stuck in a situation that they feel like they need to move out of. We always have agent and see, even if it's in the smallest way.
Yeah, I mean, I love that you just brought this up. A lot of people that come and say they're stuck. What they mean is they can't experience change while doing nothing different. That's what people mean by stuck. And I'm like, yes, you will never experience something different if you keep doing the same thing. But I always go, let's put down the consequences. Tell me all the things you could hypothetically do. If people are like I hate my job and I'm stuck or I hate this relationship, I'm like, what are all the things that you could hypothetically do. They're like, well, I can leave, I can quit, I can go up to my boss, I can start this or that, and so the I'm like, oh, so you do have choices, They're like, well, and I'm like, no, what you're saying is you don't want the consequences of those choices. But don't confuse that with not having a choice, because often we're just choosing consequences, which is okay, and you need to think about the consequences. But I love to tell people like, no, you do actually have the choice to leave your partner. This is not an abuse context. We're just talking about like someone who's like I'm stuck and I'm like, who am I going to date now? And you know, like those people are like I'm not really sure, but like I don't want to leave, And I'll say, you actually do have the choice to leave. You're just choosing not to do it because of the consequence, which means you're choosing to stay. And the fact that people can understand that they're choosing to stay liberates them. Sometimes you don't actually have to change your actions, you just have to change your attitude towards your actions. So being like this is a choice, this is not an obligation, is incredibly liberating. Or then they'll realize, like, Okay, maybe I should be a little less worried about the consequences and recognize that I do have these choices and I need to honor myself by trying something different.
You are such an essential voice in this conversation today. Thank you so much for joining us on the bright side.
Thank you Cues so much for having me. It's truly an honor.
Doctor Sarah Kubrick is an existential psychotherapist and the author of It's On Me. You can find her on Instagram as the Millennial Therapist.
That's it. For today's show, Tomorrow it is Halloween. Comedian and podcaster Lauren Lapkis joins us to talk all things spooky. Thank you to our partners at Coligard, the one of a kind way to screen for colon cancer in the privacy and comfort of your own home. Talk to your doctor or healthcare provider, or go to coliguard dot com. Slash podcast to see if you are eligible to order online. If you're forty five or older and at average risk, ask your healthcare provider about screening for colon cancer with Coligard. You can also request a collar guard prescription today at coligard dot com. Slash podcast.
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