Insights on Mental Health, Trauma, and Personal Growth with Melody Murray

Parker Condit:
0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to Exploring Health Macro to Micro. I'm your host, parker Condit. In the show, I interview health and wellness experts around topics like sleep, exercise, nutrition, stress management, mental health and much more. So by the end of each episode, you'll have concrete, tangible advice that you can start implementing today to start living a healthier life, either for yourself or for your loved ones, and that's the microsite of the show. The microsite of the show is discussing larger systemic issues that contribute to health outcomes, and today's episode is a nice balance between the micro and macro.

Parker Condit:
0:32

Today's primary focus is on mental health, and here to discuss that with me is Melody Murray. Melody is a licensed marriage and family therapist and a child mental health specialist. She's also a former reality TV producer and director and was a standup comedian for five years. In this episode, we go over the five, four, three, two, one rule, what to do in the case of a panic attack, the relationship between discomfort, fear and personal growth, how our minds can trick us in, how we give more weight to negative experiences, how addiction runs in the family and why environment is such an important factor in that, and we discuss the foundations of vulnerability. Finally, melody is also an author.

Parker Condit:
1:11

Towards the end of the episode. We talk about her inaugural book Morning the Living when the loved one you've lost is still here. Her second book, my Bounce Back Plan Designing your Own Healing Formula, was released on March 15th. This is a workbook that is meant to grow with you as you go through loss and challenges in life. It's available on her website and Amazon, both of which will be linked in the show notes and description. So, without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Melody Murray. Melody, thanks so much for being here. We're just gonna dive right into the first question how do you define or what do you think is the foundation of vulnerability?

Melody Murray:
1:53

I think vulnerability is the ability to be authentic, and that's a luxury. I believe vulnerability is a luxury. You have to have a certain level of variables in play for you to feel comfortable being authentic. You've gotta feel safe, you gotta feel secure, you've gotta know that there's someone that is listening to you and they see you and they hear you and they respect you. Vulnerability is not an easy thing to do.

Parker Condit:
2:25

When you said there's a variety of variables, the first word that came to mind was safety, so I'm glad you listed that off. My follow up to that was gonna be along the lines of is this something that you can do like? Does this have to come from within yourself or can you like, if you don't have all of the requisite variables in place to be vulnerable, can you look externally to other people to sort of help facilitate that sort of environment, if you will?

Melody Murray:
2:57

This is such a great question and it's so important because I think that, in order to be vulnerable, trust has to be present as well.

Melody Murray:
3:06

And what makes vulnerability different?

Melody Murray:
3:09

What makes vulnerability difficult is when we grow up in environments where we can't trust the environment, we can't trust the people that are in control, we can't trust what's going on because there's chaos, and so we are taught early on that we can't trust people that are in control of our environments, and so we can carry that on.

Melody Murray:
3:35

Vulnerability does require trust, but I think that what can crack that is whenever you do encounter people that are just genuinely kind and they are repeatedly kind and you let that chip away at your fear of being trusting of other people. You use that evidence to chip away at all that was taught to you about what it means to open up to other people and to be vulnerable around other people, and you let that become your new evidence of hey, I can relax now I can actually share with this person. They've given me the space to be me. They've given me the space to be open. They've given me the space to be honest about how I think and how I feel, and, oh, maybe I can trust, maybe I can be vulnerable and that has come externally.

Parker Condit:
4:28

Okay, so until you have that externally, do you see as a therapist that? Do you see people turn inward? So trust has not been facilitated to outwardly through a home environment or through an upbringing? Do those people turn inwardly almost too much and they're like I'm the only one I can trust, I'm the only one that's reliable.

Melody Murray:
4:51

Yeah, and there's that hyperindependence comes from that where you've been because of your experiences.

Melody Murray:
4:58

You've been taught through your experiences that you can't rely on anybody else, and so you don't reach your hand out, you don't ask for help because you've been burned so many times before. So, yes, there is a tendency to then just only rely on yourself and think that you can't rely on other people. But a part of that needing to trust other people, a part of that is like we need to trust ourselves too. So I think that whenever you need to build up the ability to be vulnerable, it should start with yourself. And it should start with yourself and maybe backtracking your life choices and decisions thus far.

Melody Murray:
5:45

What decisions have you made that have gotten you to where you are, that you're happy about, where you live, who your friends are, what your jobs have been, your education, remembering that you were a big part of making the decisions to getting you to where you are right now? That can help you build your self-confidence and your self-trust. And then, once we build up that self-trust, then we can extend that to other people if we choose to do so, which I think is a good idea, or else you're gonna live a lonely life, and we're not supposed to be on our own. We're not supposed to be lonely.

Parker Condit:
6:18

Yeah. So I was curious when you start talking about trust and that it can come from sort of external sources or that's a way that you can facilitate it if you didn't necessarily grow up in the environment where there's sort of mutual trust both ways in a relationship or in an environment, if that can sort of be a bridge in the meantime until you can start to sort of build that trust within yourself. Does it go both ways, like ideally you're trusting in yourself and you can trust in others? But are there ways where people who only trust themselves they then start branching outwardly, and those who only sort of facilitate that safety through external environments, can they then sort of come back to themselves? Because that's what, without actually knowing any of this stuff? I'm like that sounds healthy if you can do it both ways.

Melody Murray:
7:04

You know, and that's the goal. You know that is the goal. But I think that we have to start small. We've got to take baby steps when it comes to doing this and be really patient with yourself as you're challenging yourself, because that's what you're doing you're challenging yourself, you're challenging what you were taught to think about yourself, you're challenging what you were taught to think about the world, and those challenges are really, really necessary. But you know you also have to be patient with yourself and know that it's okay to feel clueless, it's okay to feel comfortable, and you really need to accept being uncomfortable in your journey to heal yourself.

Melody Murray:
7:45

You have to be uncomfortable. If you want anything to change, you have to be uncomfortable. You know, I tell my clients all the time. You know the very beginning of us working together, I'll say to them like nobody goes to the gym until their pants are too tight, you have to be uncomfortable for change.

Melody Murray:
7:59

Sometimes it would be amazing if it was internal. You know you had this internal motivator and you're like yes, I'm gonna do this and I know all the things. Everybody knows what it takes to lose weight, but nobody's doing it. Everybody knows eat less, exercise more, and how many obese people do we have in this country? So we have to challenge ourselves, and part of that challenge is being uncomfortable, and that discomfort sometimes comes in us letting other people in and us allowing ourselves to think differently about things that we were, that were drilled into us. This is how you think and this is how you're supposed to be, this is what a man is supposed to be and this is what a woman is supposed to be. Open yourself up to challenge those things, and sometimes those challenges can come eternally, and sometimes it comes from conversations from other people. We just have to be open to realize that not everybody's trying to attack you.

Parker Condit:
8:52

Yes, I'm glad you made the reference to something fitness related or weight loss related, because I used to be a personal trainer, so that's sort of the world that that's one of my main worldviews that I can always reference.

Parker Condit:
9:03

And then, yeah, you mentioned the discomfort piece where a lot of people, if they say they wanna make a change, they are point A, they wanna get to point B, but the pain isn't necessarily high enough.

Parker Condit:
9:14

So it's always about exposing, like using graded exposure to get them like what's necessary to get them to point B, like they don't have the capacity, the work capacity, the desire to go to the gym, the amount, the time to dedicate to it. So I need to set like intermediate goals for them In the meantime. Be like this is what your capacity is, so I'm gonna get you to hear to sort of keep you on the treadmill, if you will, towards your goal. So I guess, from like a mental health or therapy standpoint, can you give a few examples of like what are these small things of people who aren't? And I don't even know if it's a good idea to dive into the deep end when you're trying to do these things? Like, what are some small things that people can do to start either rebuilding trust or becoming more vulnerable with themselves and with others.

Melody Murray:
10:02

Take it day by day. Baby steps are a great way to go, and one simple thing you can do is look at yesterday. Look at yesterday. What did you eat yesterday? Did you wake up with your alarm when you wanted to? Did you go to bed when you said you wanted to Pat yourself on the back? When you did the things that you wanted to do? Simple things. And sometimes, when people are really, really in tough spots, I say did you take a shower? Pat yourself on the back? Did you brush your teeth? Hell, yeah, you brushed your teeth.

Melody Murray:
10:35

Keep it simple. You know so many people think I, like you know, a move towards improvement is like I cured cancer today. I lifted the car off the baby Stop. It doesn't have to be some big grand gesture. Simple stuff and build on the really simple things and then you can realize that, hey, I can trust myself. And then, when something doesn't happen the way you want, know that you can start again five minutes from now. You don't even have to wait until tomorrow. You can start over again five minutes from now, right the day's not over.

Melody Murray:
11:10

You can still get small wins in before the end of the day and celebrate the wins you know it's a really important thing to celebrate the wins, because some people grew up in households where nothing was celebrated. They only got attention when something went wrong, and so that is work. That is work, but it's simple work, but it's necessary work to celebrate little wins and then celebrate the big stuff too. But take a pause to really be grateful for the improvements that you're making.

Parker Condit:
11:38

I think there's some idea in psychology that people mentally weight negative experiences heavier than positive experiences. Is that true?

Melody Murray:
11:48

Not all brains are built that way, but many are Okay.

Parker Condit:
11:53

Yeah, I read it was like I think three to seven, like you need three to seven positive experiences for every one negative experience or thought. So just keeping that in mind, it's very important to not undermine the small wins throughout the day, because if you've got a few of them but you're not really paying attention to them and then one negative thing happens, that day is probably going to be framed in a negative light in your mind, unless you're giving the appropriate weight to those positive small wins, even if they are small.

Melody Murray:
12:22

So true, so extremely true, and I think that you know we can have a tendency to. I mean, we're in a victim society right now where you know, obviously, you know people are litigious and people are pissy about a lot of different things, and you know, I get it, I get it, I'm a part of the world too. But I think that you have to be careful with yourself that if something doesn't go your way, that you don't then go. Well, I got a flat tire, then I was late to work and then my boyfriend pissed me off and then the dog peed on the carpet and then you know that piling on and a lot of times we do the pile on because we want to tell a story, we want to throw it on social media and go look at me, look at me, and it's like stop, you know what we put our energy into builds.

Melody Murray:
13:05

Whatever we put our energy into builds, which I think is a really tough thing that just to just to swing it out. You know out a little bit where people go. I'm going to hope for the best, but plan for the worst. Honey. Whatever you plan for is what you can get. Wherever you put your energy, that is what's going to grow. So you have to be really mindful of where you're putting your energy. So you have to make sure that if something bad happens, it's just that one thing, that that one bad thing that happened. It doesn't mean you're cursed. Chill out, dust yourself off and keep it moving.

Parker Condit:
13:43

So I think some people are more conscious of this than others and trying to come to one of these things. So I'm in my mid 30s, so a lot of my friends are right around this age as well. So for just speaking to maybe people who haven't been conscious of this type of programming or thought process growing up, anything that's outside of your, your norm or your routine is very uncomfortable. We already kind of spoke about discomfort. You've spoken about courage before. How do you sort of gain the courage? Because the fear comes from your body just craves, homeostasis, right, the, the norm is like your body feels comfortable with that.

Melody Murray:
14:19

So you will do bizarre things to sort of maintain that, even if it's negative, even if it's negativity, oh yeah, yeah, because you're at least used to that.

Parker Condit:
14:27

Be like this is it's. It's negative but it's comfortable Like you know how to regulate in that way, right. So how do you, how do you facilitate the courage to get people to like, try to break that homeostasis which, from an evolutionary standpoint, is like very uncomfortable. It's like you want what's comfortable and familiar.

Melody Murray:
14:47

It takes time. It really does take time, and it takes some some knowledge too, and understanding that our our mind plays tricks on us. You know one. One piece of evidence to that is panic attacks. Panic attack that panic attack is a mind trick. There's something that's happening right in front of you right now that is reminding you of something that happened a long time ago and you having that fear right now of something close to happening a long time ago. You're probably sitting in class, you're eating a pop tart and you're flipping your shit, and it's a trick. And so when you understand that the mind is so powerful that it will trick you, then you have to go wait a second.

Melody Murray:
15:32

Maybe those things I was taught wasn't actually true, and I think that what you have to do is you have to not be so personal about it. The things that were taught to us, the programming that we were given, were, was given to us by people that actually love us and care about us, but they could still be wrong. They could be unhealthy, they could be dysfunctional, they can be abusive. Don't take it personally. Give yourself the pause to go wait a second. I have a right and I actually have a responsibility to change my mind when I get evidence to the contrary of a thought that has been laid within me. Give yourself the space to take in new information. That is the beauty of being an adult. That is, I think, the responsibility of being a knowledgeable, confident, smart adult is that when you get evidence, when you get new evidence, you need to make new decisions. And when you decide to do something that goes against your programming, it doesn't mean you love the people that program you any less. You don't love them any less. They made decisions and they programmed you with the information they had at the time. Case in point go to college. You got to get a four-year degree.

Melody Murray:
16:48

We now know since 2008,. Having a four-year degree doesn't guarantee a damn thing. We now know. Having a job in corporate America doesn't guarantee you any kind of security. Owning a house at a certain age doesn't guarantee you any kind of wealth. We now know this. And so the younger generations are taking this all in and they're doing things differently. They're moving differently. They're taking PTO, the older generations, where you could raise a family of four on $30,000 and you have a gold watch after being in a job for 30 years. That's what they grew up in. We now know there's no guarantee of that. So you have to move differently. It's not an attack on you. It doesn't mean that you're stupid. It doesn't mean that you've done anything wrong. It's just you've taken the evidence of the times of today and you move differently because of that evidence and you owe it to yourself to do that.

Parker Condit:
17:47

Yeah, that's great advice. I don't want to get too far off of this line of thinking, but you mentioned panic attacks and it is such a common thing. So do you have any tools or tricks for people that they can use in the moment? How can they? I'm assuming I don't know. Feel free to correct me and feel free to give as much context on panic attacks as you want. You're either living too far in the past, the mind is bringing you back to something in the past, or it's projecting fears into the future, but not in the present moment. So any tools or tricks that people can utilize to get them back to a better state when they're having a panic attack, I think they'd be really valuable.

Melody Murray:
18:26

Absolutely. I like to lean on the five senses. That will bring you to the present moment. Lean on the five senses. Five, four, three, two, one. That's a great grounding technique, and so what you can do is and you can do this quietly, you can do this anywhere, you can do this behind the wheel of a car, you can do this in a classroom, you can do this at work or on a plane. Five, four, three, two, one. And consider the five senses.

Melody Murray:
18:53

Five look at five things within a room, wherever you are right now, and let's say you're behind the wheel of a car and you could see a traffic light stop. Sign your purse in the seat next to you, your drink that's in the console. Maybe you see a car beside you. Four touch four things. If you're back in the car, touch the steering wheel, touch your horn. Touch the seat. Touch your dog if it's beside you. If you're in a classroom, touch your desk. Touch a pencil. Touch your backpack. Touch paper on your desk.

Melody Murray:
19:27

Three, three things that you can hear in your present moment Cars honking, dogs barking, someone chewing on their pencil, chalk on a chalkboard. Two smell what can you smell right now? And you can smell whatever you're drinking If you've got a pen or a marker in your hand, sniff that your hand. If you've got lotion or cologne on it, what is right in front of you? Taste? Take a drink of water, take a snack, chew on your pencil if you need to. But the point is like you made a good point, a panic attack, typically what it is. There's something from the past, there's something in the present that's reminding you of the past and you're projecting into the future Like, oh shit, I hope this doesn't happen again.

Parker Condit:
20:11

Okay, yep, I appreciate the explanation.

Melody Murray:
20:13

It's the combination of things that are happening simultaneously, like within a split second. All of these things are happening all at the same time. So what you're trying to do is bring yourself back to the present moment and you need to remind yourself I'm safe right now. Nothing is harming me right now. Slow, deep breaths. I'm sitting in my classroom. Right now I'm at work. I can hear the ticking of the clock on the wall. Lunchtime is soon. I'm going to take a bite of my sandwich. These are all things to bring you back to the present moment, to remind yourself that you're not in that scary moment that happened in the past and you're not in this future moment that hasn't even happened yet. You're right here right now. Stay present, stick with the five senses. Sometimes, if you let's say you're outside, go ground yourself, lean up against a tree, lean up against a wall, take your shoes off, put your feet in the dirt, literally ground yourself, to remind yourself of your current safety, not some past moment that is gone.

Parker Condit:
21:24

I appreciate you explaining all that. And I think, the 5-4-3-2-1 protocol. I think that would be really helpful and like a very easy thing to have in your toolkit in the case that you're having a panic attack. So I appreciate you explaining that. And then, on that line of thinking, do you teach mindfulness or any sort of breath work, because so much of what you just spoke about was just getting back to the present moment. So is that one of the tools that you ever implement with clients?

Melody Murray:
21:51

I do, I do. I'll have moments with clients where they are running, running, running throughout their day and then they, like our therapy session has been slid in between meetings and they'll come in hot. They will come in hot to this therapy session and I'll see it.

Parker Condit:
22:05

I mean, it's obvious, you can see it when someone's really stressed out, or just and you can like feel it too right.

Melody Murray:
22:11

You can feel it and I have to protect myself, to make sure that I don't take on other people's energy, and so I'll call out the moment and I'll just say hold on, and I'll literally put my hands up Hold on, let's just breathe right now, just and push it out and hear yourself pushing out the breath. Don't count it, it's not about intervals, it's just about breathing in. Get the cheeks fat. Get the cheeks fat Because, also, what you're trying to shift, you're trying to shift your way of thinking. And if, let's say, it's one of those moments, I was just with a client.

Melody Murray:
22:57

He works at Amazon and he is going hardcore all the time, and I'll have to say to him nope, you're here now. You're not in a meeting, you're here now. This is your healing moment. Take it. You don't have to rush yourself here and I'm not going to rush you and you need to function differently in this moment and we have to understand that as we're navigating meetings and picking your kids up from school and going out to dinner with friends, be in that moment. Take a few seconds to breathe. It doesn't have to be some full-on, transcendental meditation moment that you take on the. It doesn't have to be that at all. Just a few deep breaths and remind yourself I'm at the restaurant, I'm going to play with my kid, I'm riding a bike. Right now, bring in, bring yourself to that moment so you can fully enjoy it and you're not spread across a bunch of different responsibilities.

Parker Condit:
24:03

Yeah, I think anything using your senses is very, it's a very powerful tool to bring you back to the present moment, whether it's the breath, whether it's physically touching something. It's kind of going back to exactly what you talked about with panic attacks. I was laughing when you said I need to protect myself. Are you naturally really empathetic? Because I read a book about a year ago actually, I think it was called Whose Feelings Are these, or Are these Feelings Mine, something like that, and it was all about how to navigate the world as an empath which I'm not necessarily, but it was still a very interesting book where it's like empaths will take on the energy and the emotions of people around them, and this book is trying to help people identify, be like are these even my feelings, or are these just the energies and emotions of the people I've been surrounded with all day?

Melody Murray:
24:51

You know that empath and blood. You brought that up because there's so much that can be said about that but you know what being an empath is? Just I got a whole lot of fucking trauma. That's what it means. That means that early on, I had to pay attention to whoever was around me and look at their behavior and their tone of voice and how they were interacting, in order to protect myself. And instead of leaving that in the past because I haven't completely healed it, I've now taken that into my present.

Melody Murray:
25:22

I've reframed it as empath, but, yeah, it is taking on other people's emotions and it's meant to protect yourself from that, from their wins, from their emotional wins, and so, yeah, it's important for you to separate what belongs to them and what belongs to me, and it takes a beat to do that. But when you're an empath, you typically will take on other people's crap, and it bleeds into codependency too. Well, you will take other people's crap and you will feel that I have to be responsible for it. I've got to show you how much I love you. I've got people pleasing as involved in that too. It's so layered. It's so layered, but I do. I have to shield myself from other people's crap. But I have always been that person where people will spill their guts to me and I'm like, hey, let's make a career out of it. I went from being a reality TV show producer and now I'm a therapist, and it all comes together in the same way. Nurses, doctors, attorneys, journalists it's all connected.

Parker Condit:
26:28

Yes, I'm glad you brought that up and it's like a very nice segue to kind of discuss your sort of career path to this point. I'd love if you could share a little bit about what got you to this point. But my main question around that was like do you feel like you came to being a therapist at the right time in your life, or is it something you wish you'd gotten into it earlier?

Melody Murray:
26:47

100%. It wasn't something that I ever thought about and when I really needed a therapist in my childhood, I didn't even know that it was a thing. I had no clue. I started therapy in my early 30s and I grew up in Texas where no one talks about anything negative. You don't talk about what's happening in your home, you don't. Everything's smiley and great and wonderful and I was at a work meeting. It was the first day of a job.

Melody Murray:
27:18

I was at a work lunch with Brandon Coworkers and one of my coworkers who is now my best friend, but we were having lunch and she said something so casually and she was like oh, my therapist, john Elliott, and I was like what? She's clearly sane and she goes to therapy. And she's just saying it out loud because I was taught that you know, crazy people do therapy, you go to church or only really fucked up people go to therapy. And that's what I was taught. And here was this person that was clearly sane and calm and confident, and so I had to break down what I had been told, what I was programmed to think.

Melody Murray:
28:01

I broke it down in that moment with her and so I started going to therapy and still didn't think about the coming of therapists, but in I was on the road working on two different shows, where it was that both environments were really really Extremely toxic and the other one was really dysfunctional and I wanted to intervene. I wanted to have conversations. I wanted to say why are you having sex with that person? Why are you taking all these shots? Why are you blowing that horrible situation off and acting like it's no big deal? I wanted to intervene, but that wasn't my role and I just had this moment where it's like I need to change my role. Then I need to change my role. I want to be able to help people feel better instead of being the person that throws a camera on them when they're in the worst moment.

Parker Condit:
28:53

Yeah, can you just give a little context for anyone who isn't familiar with your background? Can you explain, like, what kind of shows you were working on, just so they have a little more backstory to those statements?

Melody Murray:
29:02

Sure, for several years I worked in television entertainment. I was a producer and director on reality TV shows and I worked on a variety of shows, you know, from Bad Girls Club to Last Comic Standing, to MTV's the Real World and a bunch of other shows, and the environments were typically very volatile, which is that's entertainment, you know, and typically the cast are very young, in their early 20s, and it's you know. People on reality TV shows are people who have been cast because they don't have filters. They snap, they speak their mind without thinking things through and that's why cameras are on them. That's entertainment, and it was fun for a really long time until it wasn't and I had to do something else.

Melody Murray:
30:08

I did, I did, and I'd done that work for a very long time. I even hosted a few shows. I did stand-up comedy myself. I was on stage for several years telling jokes, and then I just matured. I think that's what it was. I evolved, I matured. A big part of it was being a part of my own therapy and then realizing that I really do want my time. You know, call it an existential crisis. You know I want my time on this earth to mean something that helps people feel better about themselves, and so I had to just switch things up.

Parker Condit:
30:44

I imagine this feels much more online with those desires then with what you're doing now.

Melody Murray:
30:50

I'm seriously cleansing some karma now.

Parker Condit:
30:54

You feel like you owe from a few years.

Parker Condit:
30:58

I feel like. So you mentioned before that kind of where you grew up and at the time that you grew up, mental health was not something that was discussed, or if it was, it was in this very negative frame. And I grew up not too different from that and I'm sure a lot of people still have sort of had that perspective where it's like if you're going to therapy it's like it's because you're crazy, you're cool, that's right. I do feel like nationally, the stigma around mental health is improving.

Melody Murray:
31:28

It's getting better.

Parker Condit:
31:30

And it's being discussed more on TV and stuff like that. But you have so much experience with TV and you discuss this in another podcast to some extent. Can you talk about how mental health is portrayed on TV in particular contexts, because it feels like there can almost be this, almost like this fetishization of trauma to a certain extent.

Parker Condit:
31:50

And this like it can be almost performative. It seems like yeah, so I think you have a bit more expertise in that area. But anything you can discuss on the concept of how mental health is portrayed on TV I think would be interesting to explore.

Melody Murray:
32:07

It's funny. The very first show that I ever produced was a show that had two therapists on it, and it was a show about couples who were having relationship issues and the two therapists were giving them interventions in order to improve their relationship. Fast forward to the second, to the last show Well, actually fast forward to the show that I was on where I thought this sucks, this is horrible, and the talent on that show was actually doing her therapy on camera. Now again, I had never thought about being a therapist, but I'm there and I'm directing these scenes and she'd been doing. I was on the fourth season of the show. She'd been doing therapy on the show since, maybe for a couple of years up to that point, and my whole thought was this is so unethical and that is not a word that you use in reality TV. People want you to be unethical, but I'm like this feels so exploitive because she's dancing. She and her therapist are both dancing around things that are really obvious, really obvious, and it's like, oh, she's exploiting herself, oh, because she wants another season, and so you know, I don't know that that exploitive word, I don't know. I mean you could say blanket wise yes, tv is exploitive to reality TV show cast.

Melody Murray:
33:30

But I don't believe that TV, the industry, needs to be responsible for adults that have decided this is what I want to do and they're getting paid do it. Personal responsibility comes into play here. It just does because no one's saying you are, no one's forcing anybody to do this. They're all getting paid. They have to apply to do it and it takes months to get cast on a show before the cameras ever show up. So you need to be responsible for yourself when you're deciding to do this. And we are not in the beginning of this, where you didn't know exactly how the editing was going to go down.

Parker Condit:
34:04

You know she's a few years into this.

Melody Murray:
34:07

Yeah, we're in. We're decades into this shit. Now you know what can come from this, so own it. But I think that this is also where this is a societal issue, where we're now, you know, we're this social media world where everybody is seeking external validation. Everybody is looking for, for ways that that people can applaud them, love them, see them, hear them. So even if you're not on a reality TV show and you snub your nose at it, you're still probably on Instagram or Facebook and you're looking to see how many likes you've got. It's the same thing. You are the, you know, you're the, the top dog on your own reality show when it's your social media pages.

Melody Murray:
34:49

So exploiting, yes, but that is the fabric of our society, which is we're always looking for people that you know we can make money on. That's just the way capitalism is what is in charge these days, and it sucks, but it's the truth and I think the sooner you realize what is manipulating you, the better off you're going to be and take personal accountability for what you allow yourself to get sucked into or not. You know, I saw this great video and it was Denzel Washington and he was talking. I mean Denzel, what is he in his 60s at this point and he was talking about social media and he was talking about the addiction to phones and he says you don't think you're addicted, don't touch it for a week. He's like just the thought of it scares you. You're addicted.

Parker Condit:
35:40

So, given all that, how do you, how do you suggest people navigate, with the prevalence of social media? In that, I think? I think social media is just a way to describe the current state of the internet. It's not like the separate side of the internet, it's like it's the most prevalent state of the internet. So how do you suggest people, while trying to improve or maintain their mental health, navigate social media, which is not necessarily the most conducive thing for that?

Melody Murray:
36:07

You know, I think that it goes back to being uncomfortable. When we're uncomfortable, we got to look into that and lean into it. For several years people were doing, though what's the what's your new years resolution? And then now it's recently changed into what is your word of the year? My word of the year this year was uncomfortable. I want to be uncomfortable. I want to know what's on the other side of discomfort. I want to be curious about it. I want to be curious about what drives me crazy, what makes me happy, what calms me down. And if something drives me crazy, why? And I think these challenges we've got to challenge ourselves.

Melody Murray:
36:50

We're in this space now where nobody wants to be uncomfortable. Everybody wants everything to be absolutely as easy as possible, and there's a sacrifice that's made in that. There's a huge sacrifice and to really pull it all the way out. Let's look at education. You've got kids that aren't being educated anymore. They're doing scantrons. You're not learning a damn thing, You're just learning how to take a test. You're not learning the material, and so, being having everything so easy to you, you've got to peel back the curtain and go. Why? Why? And I say, challenge yourself If there's anything that makes you scared just by hearing about it. You got to look into it. You've been triggered in some way. Lean into it. I'm doing this thing. I don't know if you've ever heard of vipassana. It's a type of meditation retreat and it's the 10 day silent meditation retreat. I'm doing it for the second time this spring and anytime I've brought it up to people, they immediately recoil.

Parker Condit:
37:54

Oh no, I'm like. I've told you that I can't imagine not talking to anybody.

Melody Murray:
37:57

I can't imagine. Not looking at my phone, I can't imagine. Maybe you should. Maybe you should See why. What's in charge of you, what's in control of you? Get curious about it. Don't be judgmental. Get curious about it. Lean into all those uncomfortable things and see what's on the other side.

Parker Condit:
38:19

What were your takeaways from the first one that you had done?

Melody Murray:
38:26

My takeaways were really understanding what are the things that trigger certain behaviors in myself, Realizing when my distractions, the typical things that I use to distract myself, when those are taken away, where does my mind go? And I realized I'm a strong person. I've been through a lot of shit. I help a lot of people, but I realized I'm not as strong as I thought. Crap.

Parker Condit:
38:58

Is it like an uncomfortable thought and you're immediately going to one of those distractions?

Melody Murray:
39:03

But that's the thing, in that you have access to nothing. You're not even supposed to make eye contact with people. There's no talking, there's no phone, there's no TV, it's just you. And when I first heard about it it scared me shitless. But then I went into ooh, I like challenging and being scared because I realized that I'm always better on the other end of uncovering what has scared the crap out of me. I'm always better for it, and I've learned that. One of my friends did it before I did and she called me as soon as it was over. She called me and I said what was it like? Tell me everything she's like.

Melody Murray:
39:41

I cried for four days straight and I said count me in, sign me up, because I've realized and this is a hard thing to realize, but this is the beauty of the therapy that I do with my clients is gaining confidence from the hard crap that you've survived, not running from it, not shying away from it, not bearing it and suppressing it, looking at it and go look what I got through, not being embarrassed, not being self-conscious. Look what I got through. There's something really beautiful about that. And it becomes this thing that becomes really addictive.

Melody Murray:
40:18

I'm going to do these really uncomfortable things. That's why I did stand up. I didn't do stand up because I wanted to be a comedian, I wanted to be on a TV show. I did it because I was always typically very shy and didn't share my opinions, and shit, people are going to look at me, they're going to have to listen to me, I've got a microphone and I was so scared, so very scared, and I did it anyway, and so that's kind of what I do. I lean into the things that scare me, so they stop scaring me.

Parker Condit:
40:47

Dr DJ, can you take the power away from that fear? Did you have a meditation practice before doing that retreat? No, just over right in.

Melody Murray:
41:00

Dr DJ, I was raised in being productive. You've got to be productive, you need to be doing something, always be doing something. It's very much a woman thing and it's very much a black woman thing. You've got to be doing something. And just sitting somewhere and not doing something, that's what it looked like on the outside. But it's repair work, it's healing, it's taking time for yourself, and those are really rare moments. They're necessary, but they're really really rare.

Melody Murray:
41:38

And I never did any kind of consistent meditation. I still don't, to be perfectly honest with you. I know that I should. I know that it's good for me. I try here and there. I'll do 30 seconds here, five minutes there. I know it's healthy and I know it's necessary. So that's why I dive into it in these ways. But I didn't, I didn't have any kind of meditation practice before, and they actually prefer that you don't. They prefer that. You aren't this, you know. But a lot of people in those rooms are super, super. I call them super meditators and I remember in a moment where, like I'm a wiggly person, I've got ADHD it is what it is and as everybody's sitting really quietly and they're meditating, I'm like this you know everybody's got their eyes closed.

Parker Condit:
42:22

I'm doing this, I'm checking everybody out and everybody's just statues, statues, and I'm like I bet if you'd caught the other person in the room at the right time you could have caught that because, like I'm sure, other people are doing- that we could have fallen in love. Who knows Exactly?

Melody Murray:
42:39

Yeah, they give you moments to talk to the instructors and during your time there, and they're the only people you can talk to, and only for about five minutes. And so I was talking to one of the teachers and I said I can't stop wiggling, I'm doing this whole thing wrong, and she's like so what? You're a meditator that wiggles and I go and I keep open my eyes and I keep looking around. She goes. So what, you look around, who cares? And it was so simple. But she gave me the permission to be me and it was so simple, but I never thought about that. I was just so programmed, like everything you do needs to look a certain way, and when I realized it doesn't have to look anyway, it needs to look the way that works best for me.

Parker Condit:
43:22

Yeah, such a powerful way to shift your mindset or the frame that you're looking at it through. And I guess enough that, so why are you going back to do it a second time?

Melody Murray:
43:34

I love torture. I have lived on the West Coast for years. Years. Years moved to Houston, which is where I grew up. I've been here for a year. It has been a shit show being back home for a variety of reasons and it's like I feel like I need to ground myself and I feel like I need to check out of my routine. I need to research on my own. I need to find a way to get to the bottom of it, out of my routine. I need to reset myself. I need to reset myself. So I'm doing it as a reset, as a way of detoxifying from like a digital detoxification process. And they're always in gorgeous places. They're always in really beautiful scenic natural settings. So, yeah, and I like challenging myself, I like healing and I like discovering different parts of myself, I like having aha moments about me. So I'm looking forward to that.

Parker Condit:
44:39

Yeah, it's really remarkable how challenging it is to just sit and, like you said, do nothing for extended periods of time. Like people will be shocked if you've never done it, how long 20 minutes can be, no less 10 days.

Melody Murray:
44:54

Yep.

Parker Condit:
44:56

That's pretty incredible. So I wanted to kind of move on to talking about your book Morning, the Living. Can you give a little bit of backstory to the title and for anyone who I mean, we're gonna link to it in the show notes. But it's morning, as in the passing of someone, not like a what comes after the nighttime, so can you just share a little bit about that book and then we're gonna dive into some of the subjects in there as well.

Melody Murray:
45:22

Sure. The full title is Morning, the Living when the loved one you've lost is still here, and it is about grieving people that were really important parts of our lives and they're next door, down the street, across town, across the country, and they're still alive. But we're distant for whatever reason, and the distance may not even fully be. We don't speak. It could be we see each other every week. You could be my husband or wife in the bed next to me, but there are certain things that we don't talk. We're not intimate anymore, we don't know each other anymore.

Melody Murray:
46:01

I am grieving what I thought our dynamics should be. I'm grieving what it used to be, and so each chapter is a different relationship dynamic. So mothers, fathers, children, siblings, partners, friends, ourselves, and the book starts with why is it so hard for us to create boundaries? Why is it so hard for us to have functional relationships with people? So it talks about trauma, trauma bonding. It talks about the lack of self-care, talks about dysfunctional family systems as a whole, and what gets poured into us by people and are they healthy people or are they dysfunctional people? And what gets poured into us, who programs us, is how we see ourselves and see the world. Sometimes it's great and healthy and positive, and sometimes it's crap that needs to be unlearned, and that crap permeates all of our relationships, whether we want to own it or not. And so it is about how do you either create boundaries and maintain them with toxic, dysfunctional people, or do you decide to cut off the relationship altogether, and then how do you deal with the emotions that are involved in that?

Parker Condit:
47:19

Yeah, so we're going to get into the idea of cutting off relationships entirely, which I'm sure is going to be a little bit dependent on each person and the relationship. But I think if you could share a little bit more about what trauma bonding is, I think that would be a nice backstory to frame the rest of these sort of relationship conversations.

Melody Murray:
47:38

Trauma bonding is. There's a fine line. Trauma bonding is sometimes when you meet someone and there's that immediate spark if it's a romantic relationship, that immediate, oh my gosh. Sometimes it's amazing and it's love and it's fantastic, but a lot of times it's the pain in me, sees the pain in you, and we're familiar. We've got this familiar unhealed energy that we're going to lock into each other. Trauma bonding and a lot of people are trauma bonded and I think this is one of the reasons why a lot of relationships don't work because somebody grows out of their trauma, somebody heals their trauma and who they now are as a healed person isn't compatible with this person that hasn't done a damn thing to heal them.

Parker Condit:
48:27

It feels like they're no longer connected in the same way that they originally were.

Melody Murray:
48:32

And this is something that happens a lot with people who go into therapy that a lot of people it doesn't get talked about very often. A lot of times when people go into therapy, they end up ending whatever relationship they were in when they started it, Because their self-esteem gets raised, they get healed and whatever they were attracted to is no longer attractive. Whatever they thought was totally OK and fine treatment, they realized I'm worth more than that, Because there was typically a trauma bond. That's what brought you guys together, whether you realize it or not.

Parker Condit:
49:07

Got you. Yeah, that's a good explanation and yeah, I don't think that does get talked about a ton. This is kind of the first explicitly I've heard of it. I'm sure you hear of it in more subtle ways, but yeah.

Melody Murray:
49:20

Here's a subtle way.

Melody Murray:
49:21

This is the trial. No one has used the phrase trauma bond to describe it. This is what it is. We have forever heard girls marry their daddies. That's trauma bond. A girl who marries a man, a woman who marries a man that's just like her father. It's trauma bond Because whatever is unfinished business between her and her father, she seeks out a partner that's similar and she will work out or not work out, but still be in relationship with that similar dysfunctional energy. Boys and men do it with women as well. Whatever you did not heal with your mother in that mother-child dynamic, you will find a partner that's just like your mom.

Parker Condit:
50:08

The mind is wild, isn't it? Isn't it crazy? It's familiar, the mind is just fascinating.

Melody Murray:
50:14

It's fascinating, but you will keep and just think about the people that you know, that the same people over and over.

Melody Murray:
50:20

I would say this about my sister the reason I wrote Morning the Living is because of my older sister, who I love dearly, but she's an addict and whenever we were growing up she's an addict.

Melody Murray:
50:31

She became an addict in her 40s, like who becomes an addict in their 40s. But this was just years of trauma that was never healed and because, as I was healing, I had to distance myself from her in order to protect myself, and that was a very hard thing to do. I felt a lot of anger, I felt a lot of guilt, but I needed to do what I needed to do in order to survive that dynamic, and the biggest, hardest part of that was just saying no, we can't be around each other, we just can't. So that whole, what we don't heal, we repeat. It's true, if you don't heal what's going on with you, you're going to repeat it over and over again and a lot of people don't realize it. They don't want to realize it, but I talk to parents all the time that are parenting their children in such a way and they hated what they're doing to their own children was done to them and they hated it, and they do it anyway.

Parker Condit:
51:29

Yeah, I think life is this funny way of trying to keep teaching you lessons until you finally learn them.

Melody Murray:
51:36

And that's what I say about my sister. It's like I don't even want to know, like we don't communicate now, but when we did, I would never ask her about who she was dating. I would always just say same asshole, different name, because it was always the same dynamic. It was always some ridiculous situation. It was just it was a different person, but it was the same ridiculous situation because she hadn't healed. And that's a great way to realize. Do you have something that needs to be healed? Do you have the same thing that keeps happening? You date the same type of person. You end up in the same situations at jobs. It's different jobs, but it's the same situation, those cycles. You've got to lean into those cycles and you've got to heal something. And typically it's based in who raised us, what was happening at home when we were little kids.

Parker Condit:
52:24

Yeah, it's pretty remarkable how so much of it just gets traced back to your childhood and your upbringing in that environment, when everyone's like, oh, I have all these very unique situations and all these things happen to me growing up and it's probably a lot of just what happened when you were a kid. It's just really bizarre. One of the things I wanted to ask you regarding your sister is can you look back on your life, because you two took different trajectories in your life but similar upbringing. Were there inflection points that you can identify where it was like? This is where I started going down this route and was able to heal myself.

Parker Condit:
53:03

And she unfortunately could not.

Melody Murray:
53:05

Yes, I realized, as I've pinpointed my healing journey, I realized there are several things that we did differently and many of those things I didn't realize in the moment I just can look back and go, oh, oh, oh. One of the things was I realized what my strengths were as I was growing up. I was gregarious and I never wanted to be at home. So I joined every club, every club, so I wouldn't be at home, shit sorry. So I joined every club you could imagine so I wouldn't be at home, which is where the toxic stuff was going down. I also would spend time hanging out in other friends' homes. Friends' homes where they had both parents in the home. Parents both had jobs. The lights were always on. I spent time in those environments. My sister did not do that. My sister wasn't involved in clubs. She didn't do that she. Anytime somebody say, hey, melanie, do you want to come spend the weekend over here, aunt, uncle, friend, whatever, my answer was always yes, always yes. My sister didn't do that. I was.

Melody Murray:
54:35

I got lucky in a lot of ways too. A lot of this wasn't intentional decision making on my part. I got really lucky. My first boyfriend was like the best first boyfriend. A girl could ask for. My sister didn't have that. In a lot of ways, he set the tone for every relationship I've ever had to this point. Even he was so good, he was so amazing, he was kind, he was loving, he was honest and he was fantastic. That made a big impression on me that this is what I started with. The bar is high. I went into therapy and that was a huge thing too, but me going to the therapy. That was decades later. I went, started therapy in my 30s, but I was open. I was open to being challenged and to doing things that were unfamiliar to me or doing things that didn't make sense to me, or even things that were told to me don't do that, fuck it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to try it.

Parker Condit:
55:41

Yeah, it sounds like those. Those experiences like you were, you were exposed to different worldviews and different environments that showed you that like this is not what life is.

Melody Murray:
55:53

This is. I'm so glad you said that, parker. That's exactly what it was. I had counter experiences that I thought, ok, the way I live in this house looks one way, and then I would go into other environments and go, ok, that's a different way, and that's another way, and that's a totally different way. So what I'm doing, how I'm living, is not the only way. And she didn't get that. She didn't, you know, she didn't take that, that, that rope of of you know, give it a, give it a shot, let me rescue you. She didn't take that and I grabbed, I clamored for that thing and and having different experience helped me know that you can live in different ways. And she's still living in the exact same way that we grew up in, which is dysfunctional, which is chaotic, and I and we're like night and day, but grew up in the exact same house with the same parents.

Parker Condit:
56:51

Yeah, it's so unfortunate because, like at that age whatever age is a kid, you're a kid, you're not thinking like what. What are the consequences of this going to be 40 years from now? It kind of reminds me of somebody was talking about sending a sending a rocket to the moon and the amount of micro adjustments that have to be made along every step, and it's like one of those micro adjustments early on. That is not correct. You're missing the moon by so far, Right?

Parker Condit:
57:18

So it's and it's just unfortunate because so much of it happens at an age where it's like it's kind of a luck of the draw, like did you, did you have a friend that exposed you to this good alternative environment or not, and it's like that can totally bifurcate the trajectory of your life.

Melody Murray:
57:37

Mm. Hmm, that can't be underestimated. When it comes to how I grew up, and I was very much intimidated by the people that I grew up with, because I grew up in poverty. We grew up on public assistance and yet, you know, one of my childhood best friends, her uncle, was the governor of our state. Another childhood best friend, her grandfather was the mayor of our town. You know where we had? Our lights were getting cut off all the time. Like these are kids that had BMWs and Rolex watches at 16.

Melody Murray:
58:09

And I pushed past, being uncomfortable because I wanted the exposure, I wanted the experience, and and that's where luck came in. You know, I didn't plan any of that, but I just took chances. I took chances, and part of what I did, too, was even though there I feel very different about myself, of course, at this age, that I did whenever I was a teenager and a little kid. But and this goes back to our earlier conversation, which is how do you get to that place where you feel comfortable being vulnerable? I leaned into other people's thoughts of me before I even created, you know, my vision of myself, and I respect this person. I think this person's amazing. If they think I'm amazing, I must be amazing. I did that. I got lucky because it turns out those people were amazing.

Melody Murray:
59:10

Thank God, that goes wrong in a lot of ways.

Melody Murray:
59:14

You know, that can go wrong in so many ways and that's where luck came in when I moved, when I left Houston and I moved to Los Angeles, the very first show I worked on, one of the senior producers of that show created a show that was hugely popular when I was a little kid and this man took me under his wing and he took me to all these amazing events. I met Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio and I remember there was something he used to say. We worked at Warner Brothers and he used to say and this is a man who's one of the kindest people in Hollywood, he's just a sweetheart, and he used to say I'm gonna be working for you someday. He's like we're all gonna be working for you someday. I never forgot that this person that I have so much respect for and everybody loves and adores and has so much respect for, he's saying that about me. Huh, that must mean something. And then I eventually developed that within myself. But it was those little moments that I hung onto along the way.

Parker Condit:
1:00:20

So, before we kind of get off that thread, can you speak to? I think people really undervalue the power of words and the power that words can have on people. So can you speak to any advice of like always, maybe not always, but trying to very consciously put out positive energy and positive messaging to the world and the people that you're interacting with? Because, like the example that you just gave, is this person lifting you up right and we never know the influence that our words are gonna have on somebody. Is that something you tried to focus on with clients? Because it can end up being like when you start focusing outward, you're a little bit less like self-obsessed and sort of the stuff that you could be like ruminating over. So is kind of focusing positive energy and words outward on other people. Is that a tool that you ever use with any of your clients?

Melody Murray:
1:01:16

Absolutely. I was with a client the other day. That male in his 40s, married with children, works at a huge company and struggling to make his relationships work, and we were talking about Christmas and how did his Christmas go down? And he was telling me about different interactions. And I stopped him along the way as he was telling the story and I'm like that was amazing. That's not something you felt comfortable doing before. And look at you, you did it and you didn't even think about it and you just did it and you totally dodged that. That could have been a huge fight and you just moved right on past that. Good for you. And at the end of this exchange he said thank you for that and I go what he goes. You made me realize things that I was doing and I didn't even realize I was doing and I wasn't giving myself credit for that. And so much of what I do is I do for people what I want them to do for themselves. And when I start therapy with people, one of the things that I always say is I'm gonna be your biggest cheerleader until you knock me off the pyramid. I want you to be your biggest cheerleader, but I'm gonna hold that. I'm gonna hold that role until you get there and it's necessary and positive.

Melody Murray:
1:02:36

Self-talk is a big thing that you have to rewire your brain. You have to rewire how you're speaking to yourself, you have to rewire how you think of yourself and you do it in small steps when, let's say, you don't do something that you told somebody you were gonna do. You told your kid you were gonna bring cupcakes to the party and you forgot to bring cupcakes Instead of being yourself a cup and go. You know what that really sucks, that I didn't bring cupcakes, but I brought cupcakes like a million times before and I'm gonna set an alarm. I'll bring them again next time. They're fine, there were enough cupcakes, it's fine. They all survived that having cupcakes.

Melody Murray:
1:03:11

So just those little moments that you can take with yourself where you're just bolstering yourself up and you're letting yourself, cutting yourself slack whenever you can, you need to do those things for yourself and you need to pat yourself on the back too, for obviously, the good big stuff, but the little stuff too. Like my mom texted me and she you know she talked trash about how I was parenting my kid and I didn't reply. I didn't take the bait. Look at me. That's self care. You know you're exercising a personal boundary where you're not gonna take the bait of somebody that wants to treat you like crap.

Parker Condit:
1:03:50

All right, you've been down on that one enough times already.

Melody Murray:
1:03:54

You know what this is going to look like. So now you need to challenge yourself by doing something different, and you may get really nervous about it, you're gonna be anxious about it, you may feel a little guilty about it, that's fine, it's gonna be easier the next time you do it. It's gonna be easier the next time you do it. But we have so much power to lift people up we really do and our words are so powerful, and I don't think people really give enough respect for the power of our words to ourselves and to other people.

Melody Murray:
1:04:20

And there's this one phrase that I really, really, really, really hate, that a lot of people do because it sounds funny and it's cute and it's funny FML, fuck my life. I hate it when people say that fuck my life. Okay, fine, like you don't realize what you're putting out there into the universe with that, you're perpetuating something so that you can point the finger and go see, told you, see, see. Well, if you, whatever you put your energy into, that's what's gonna grow, and if you always put your energy into bad, things are gonna happen to you. Guess what they're gonna happen to you, because that's what your brain is expecting.

Melody Murray:
1:04:59

You may be saying it just to tell a story and be cheeky on social media, but it's powerful. So be careful what you say and what you speak to yourself and be very careful what you speak to other people, because you really can lift them up or tear them down. And I know that when it comes to my sister, I had a lot of people say some amazing things to me and I know some horrible things were said to her and you were saying very early on it's like we tend to. We can lean into the negatives, but we don't have to. But we have to be really, really intentional about overriding those messages that don't serve us. You have to be intentional about it. That's why affirmations are so fantastic and it feels awkward at first. Whenever you do anything, at first it feels really awkward, but just know it's not always gonna feel awkward.

Parker Condit:
1:05:49

Yeah, I think everyone is much more powerful than they give themselves credit for in the words they speak and the thoughts that they hold in their mind, as you were kind of alluding to. But yeah, so I'm glad you could elaborate so eloquently on kind of the power of lifting people up and how that can influence yourself as well. I wanna go back to kind of talking about courage and the courage to kind of make a really tough decision of to no longer speak to your sister. Can you kind of explain the thought process and like what got you to that point where you're like this is where I need this hard-line boundary for that particular relationship.

Melody Murray:
1:06:35

I don't have children. My sister has three and my sister started treating her children the way that we were treated the same environments, the same wording, the same chaotic behavior and decision-making and that's where I had to draw the line, because you're doing to them what you know damaged us and I can't stand for it. And so I did what I could to intervene. I did a lot of financial help for the kids and then in her youngest, I took and raised for you, and I did a lot of financial help. I took and raised for years.

Melody Murray:
1:07:20

And there was something that a professor said to me when I was in graduate school that stuck with me. She said just because you know why somebody is fucking up, doesn't give them the excuse to fuck up. I know her trauma, I know her pain. I know all the horrible things that were done to her. Hey, they were done to me too, but I'm not perpetuating that. I know how hard it is to heal. I know how hard it is, to be honest. I know how hard it is to look in the face of some horrible shit. I know. But I also know it can be done, because I've done it and so it was hard, but I knew that as I started writing the book, I'd realized that, yeah, I did the same thing with our mother, our mother. I did it with our father. I can cut people off and. But I give you a chance. I have a conversation first, and I think that's a really key part of this.

Melody Murray:
1:08:23

It doesn't do any good if you cut someone off and they don't know why, and when you're dealing with a narcissist person that can easily go from bully to victim, they will create their own narrative. And so, for your own conscience, speak your truth, say what's on your mind, say what you expect from them, say what you won't take from them. Say it, and the beautiful part of that is it gives people the line that they cannot cross, and if they cross it, that's all you need to go Done. But you have to have self-worth, you have to, and you have to trust yourself too, and I think a part of trusting yourself is just really being honest and present and going. How do I feel right now when I interact with this person? Do I feel depleted? Do I feel excited? Do I feel happy? Do I feel abused? Do I feel exhausted?

Melody Murray:
1:09:17

But you've got to really pay attention to how you feel, as you're in certain environments, interacting with certain people, and let your feelings be your guide. Do you feel that you're rehearsing comebacks before you hang out with a certain person? Do you feel that you're shortening the amount of time You're lying about where you need to be, to cut off that lunch meeting or that holiday? Stop, listen to yourself, trust yourself. If you feel that you're not 100% able to be authentic and honest in an interaction with somebody, you're afraid of how they're going to respond, you're afraid of what they're going to say and what they're going to think. The dynamic is off, power is off. You're not good and you don't have to function in that, and you know in a lot of ways we've been taught that old people, they deserve all the respect.

Parker Condit:
1:10:25

I love that. I think that'll be very helpful advice for a lot of people listening. I appreciate you sharing that about your relationship with your sister too. On the idea of addiction, I know there's this it's commonly said that it runs in the family and one of the questions I had about that is whether or not it's like is this purely a genetically driven thing or is this more environmental? Because those can both lead to the statement of it runs in the family. But I think there's a big difference between this being like a biological genetic thing versus this is an environmental factor just because we grew up there.

Melody Murray:
1:11:11

It's funny. I had this conversation just yesterday with two of my girlfriends that are therapists. I believe that addiction is a symptom of generational trauma. I believe addiction is a symptom of generational trauma. I believe that however you're taught to tie your shoes and make a sandwich is how you're also taught how to cope, and if you see the people around you coping with alcohol or drugs, then that's what you're going to do. So I don't, you know, I don't believe necessarily.

Melody Murray:
1:11:48

I don't believe necessarily that addiction is a disease. I think that that disease wording came from people who wanted to have their rehab covered by insurance. So let's slap disease on it, because you know what you don't have to drink. It's something that you're choosing to do, but there are a lot of people that get lung cancer out of nowhere. So it's controversial, but it's just the way that I think. I think that there are things that come through our DNA hair color, athleticism, how you sing but how we cope does as well, and if you see people coping with certain things in certain ways whether it's picking up vodka or punching a hole through a wall or punching a person that's what you're going to do.

Parker Condit:
1:12:41

Have you read anything by Gabor Mati?

Melody Murray:
1:12:44

He is my guru. I love that man I love him. I'm at the end of the myth of normal right now.

Parker Condit:
1:12:50

Ok, based on what you're talking about, I'm, like you seem familiar with his work. I'm in the middle of reading that book right now and it's Everybody on the planet needs to read that book.

Parker Condit:
1:12:59

Highly enjoyable right now. We'll definitely link to that in the show notes. I want to. I do have a few more questions for you. I want to ask if writing the book and you say you've written Morning the Living you have another book coming out and I think it's going to be out by the time this comes out. This is going to be out the end of March 2024. Is writing a form of therapy for you? It's like super long form journaling, almost.

Melody Murray:
1:13:26

It's torture, so yes.

Parker Condit:
1:13:29

But you like that though, right, yes.

Melody Murray:
1:13:33

That's why I threw out that reluctant. Yes, it's fucking torture.

Parker Condit:
1:13:39

That's what anyone who's written a book says, by the way.

Melody Murray:
1:13:43

But I like challenging myself. I think that I like challenging myself. But, just like I said, my friend went to the the meditation retreat. When she was done she called me. She's like. I cried four days straight. I'm like Writing this book was so incredibly hard.

Melody Murray:
1:14:02

It took me a little over three years to do it and it is journaling, it is, it is and it's. It reminds me of graduate school, like had I known what graduate school was going to be? I got my master's in clinical psychology. Had I known how hard that was going to be, I probably wouldn't have done it. But I'm glad that I did it. And writing this book, I knew it was going to be hard and that's why I did it. I had a girlfriend say to me at the beginning of me writing she said to me only 3% of the people who start books actually finish them. And I'm like I will be that 3% and I'm so glad I did it and so incredibly proud of myself for doing it. But it was so hard and a part of it that was harder than I expected was the book.

Melody Murray:
1:14:54

Each chapter is a different relationship, dynamic, and the chapters are broken up into parts. The first half is stories that I've solicited from people in my circle. How did you handle your mother when she was? She was when you were growing up. She was a narcissist. When you were growing up, your father was an alcoholic or he wasn't around. How did you handle that? And people gave me their stories. Second half of the chapter are stories of me working with my clients and how I help them get through similar things.

Melody Murray:
1:15:27

I recorded the audio version of the book myself. That was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my entire life and there's the technical part of it, but the other part of it was reading out loud these stories. It's very different reading in your head than it is reading out loud. It's very different, very different. And an intervention that I have with a lot of my clients whenever they're trying to work something out with someone either is dead or is just gone is let's write a letter to them. Write the letter, because that's a huge level of processing Just getting something out of your head and whether it's pinned to paper or typing it out, you're making sense of it and then you're trying to articulate it so that someone else can understand it.

Melody Murray:
1:16:15

That's so important and so incredibly hard and very, very cathartic. Then reading it out loud takes it to a whole new level. It makes it real. It makes it even more real, and so I was recording this book and I was just gutted and emotional. I couldn't sleep and it's like I've been working on this crap for years. I've been writing on this for years. Why is this level so hard? Because it's coming out, it's out loud, and I'm thinking of all the people that I know, my clients and my friends that submitted stories and what they went through and how hard it was for them to write this and share it with the world, and I was humbled by it and it's so incredibly validating. It's so validating to go yeah, that happened to me and I'm still standing. Writing is so powerful.

Parker Condit:
1:17:16

I appreciate you sharing what part of it was so challenging, because you always hear anyone who's written a book be like it was such a hard project, so hard to do. So I appreciate diving into the various aspects and the nuances of this, specifically what was so hard, and I loved what you said about how speaking it out loud is the most challenging thing and I think it's one of the reasons why talk therapy is so effective. And this is some other podcast I was listening to recently. I think it was a neuroscientist was talking about people who think about stuff all day. They're like, well, I'm already thinking about it. How much more I'm not going to be able to process it if I write it down. Writing it down different part of the brain, speaking it totally different part of the brain and just working through those aspects of thinking, writing, speaking can be vastly different in the outcomes you're going to get and the catharsis you might feel with the processing you're going to get behind something. So it seems like, well, everything I've wrote, I've already been thinking and then saying it out loud, it's like it's already been written down in my journal or I've been thinking about it for years. How much difference is going to be. It can be massively different. Yeah, which it seems like such a tiny thing, but one of the reasons why talk therapy is so effective.

Parker Condit:
1:18:31

You said your word for the year was uncomfortable. Was that 2023? Can you share your word of the year for 2024, if you have it already?

Melody Murray:
1:18:41

Ah, I haven't figured it out yet. I heard someone say a word that I thought was really great it was unavailable. It was either available or unavailable. I thought that's really interesting. It's like what are you going to be available for? What are you going to be unavailable for? It may be available. I'm available for abundance, I'm available for love, I'm available for adventure. I'm not available for lack and for confusion, and I don't know. I'm still formulating it, but it's going to be yet something else that challenges me being uncomfortable. Anytime I wanted to say no, I'm not going to do something, my brain would go wait a minute. You said you were going to be uncomfortable this year. Wait a minute, and it's like oh shit, all right, here we go. So I haven't figured out what the word is going to be yet. Have you thought about what your word could be?

Melody Murray:
1:19:48

I have never thought of a word.

Parker Condit:
1:19:51

Last year or 2023, I decided to run 1,000 miles and I just crossed that yesterday. So this is December 29th that we're recording this, so I didn't have a word or anything, but maybe consistency.

Melody Murray:
1:20:05

Wow, that's amazing.

Parker Condit:
1:20:08

Congratulations. Thank you. Some concept of the small steps actually do add up, because I ran three miles on January 1st last year. I'm like I'm literally no closer to my goal, but you just have to do that almost every single day. So, no, I don't have a word for 2024 yet, but maybe before I release this, I'll reach back out and I'll have a word by then and I'll find out what your word is as well, and then we can update the show notes for this episode. I think that'd be a cool thing to do.

Melody Murray:
1:20:35

I can dig it.

Parker Condit:
1:20:36

The last thing I want to close out with is your motto is each one teach one. Share what you learn in order to lighten the load of those around you. So what is one final point you'd like to share and teach the audience today before I let you go?

Melody Murray:
1:20:52

Put me on the spot. Share your healing journey. Share the highs and the lows of it, and that will help other people know that they can heal too. And when healing is not linear, it doesn't look pretty and that's OK, but share your journey.

Parker Condit:
1:21:12

I think that's a great message and, in the spirit of that, I'll share that kind of doing. This podcast has been such a like. I love talking about health and getting to connect with people, but this is purely just like a therapeutic thing. At this point I'm realizing I think you're going to be episode 16 or 17. And I'm just realizing I love doing this for so many reasons, but I'm like just being present and just connecting with even strangers over the internet is just it's been a very cathartic and powerful thing for me and it's definitely something I'd be sharing more about kind of over the next year as well.

Parker Condit:
1:21:48

So in the spirit of that, I will share that at least with the audience.

Melody Murray:
1:21:53

I appreciate that, Melody. This has been a pleasure. You're a better witness.

Parker Condit:
1:21:58

Yeah, you've been a great guest. I think you had so many great insights to share and it's really been a pleasure having you on. So all I can say is Thank you so much.

Melody Murray:
1:22:07

Happy New Year.

Parker Condit:
1:22:08

Yeah, happy New Year. Hey, everyone. That's all for today's show. I want to thank you so much for stopping by and watching, especially if you've made it all the way to this point. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are going to be released, feel free to subscribe and make sure you hit the bell button as well. To learn more about today's guest, feel free to look in the description. You can also visit the podcast website, which is exploringhealthpodcastcom. That website will also be linked in the description. As always, likes, shares, comments, are a huge help to me and to this channel and to the show. So any of that you can do I would really appreciate. And again, thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time.