I Can’t Get No Satisfaction: Jamie Wilson, Avery Hoenig, & Lucy Smith Of ‘Inspiration from the Couch’ On Why So Many Of Us Are Feeling Unsatisfied & What We Can Do About It
An Interview With Drew Gerber
Keep a gratitude journal — Journaling helps you organize and integrate your thoughts, accept your experiences, and put them into context. You can get started wherever you are and if it’s difficult to identify what you’re grateful for it might just be, “Nothing bad happened today.” Gratitude is a powerful antidote to many negative emotions. When you begin to see your life through a lens of gratitude, you will notice feelings of stress and frustration diminish significantly.
From an objective standpoint, we are living in an unprecedented era of abundance. Yet so many of us are feeling unsatisfied. Why are we seemingly so insatiable? What is going on inside of us that is making us feel unsatisfied? What is the brain chemistry that makes us feel this way? Is our brain wired for endless insatiable consumption? What can we do about it? In this interview series, we are talking to credentialed experts such as psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, brain science experts, as well as spiritual and religious leaders, and mind-body-spirit coaches, to address why so many of us are feeling unsatisfied & what we can do about it.
As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Jamie Wilson, PhD, Avery Hoenig, PhD, & Lucy Smith, PhD.
Jamie, Lucy, and Avery are three women in their 40’s, all with PhDs in Clinical Psychology, and each with over a decade of experience working in private practice. They are hosts of a fun and informative podcast, Inspiration from the Couch, which covers a wide array of mental health topics. Most recently, they have created a new business designed to help women stop putting themselves dead last, start prioritizing themselves, and reconnect to what truly lights them up and gives them meaning and satisfaction in their lives.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to know how you got from “there to here.” Inspire us with your backstory!
We have been friends and colleagues for years. Sometime in 2014, we started meeting every Thursday to talk about everything from our clinical work to what was happening in our personal lives. In the fall of 2020, the three of us met for brunch (a real treat since it was the first time we’d ventured out to eat in public in over 6 months!). A common theme emerged: we’d all been feeling pretty lonely and isolated working from home and seeing clients virtually. We felt a strong desire to do something collaborative and creative. The word “podcast” was tossed into the air and landed for all of us. Shortly thereafter, Inspiration from the Couch was born. We’ve had a great time with the podcast. We love getting together and sharing stories about what has personally worked for us and our clients to create lives filled to the brim with fun, adventure, peace, ease, connection, and meaning. We’re also not afraid to share our struggles and failures in a humorous and compassionate way. We had so much fun with the podcast that we’ve now created a new business, The Badass Rebellion. We’re on a mission to help women stop dismissing their wants and needs, people-pleasing, and stretching themselves too thin and instead start setting boundaries without guilt, start showing up for themselves, and start creating life with more life in it!
What lessons would you share with yourself if you had the opportunity to meet your younger self?
All of us would agree on three key lessons that we’d want to share with our younger selves. First, we would tell her to make time and space to look inward, tuning into her feelings, wants, and needs, rather than getting trapped in people pleasing, comparison, or other forms of seeking external validation. Secondly, we would encourage her to have more fun, trying to be fully present in each moment, rather than replaying the past or worrying about the future. Third, and perhaps most importantly, we would encourage her to be kind to herself, trading self-criticism for self-compassion. We’d whisper to her that she is already enough, just as she is, and we’d tell her to tuck that knowing someplace close and easily accessible.
None of us are able to experience success without support along the way. Is there a particular person for whom you are grateful because of the support they gave you to grow you from “there to here?” Can you share that story and why you are grateful for them?
We totally agree that support is incredibly important. In fact, the longer we’ve been in our private practices, the more convinced we’ve become that community and connection…vulnerability and authenticity…are some of the most important variables for feeling satisfied in life. Most pertinently, the three of us are so grateful for each other. Our lives have shifted dramatically in the past 2 years, and our collaboration and support has enabled this transformation. We’ve learned to work together, give each other feedback (with the goal of leaving each other in her Greatness), navigate conflict, and make the process as fun and full of ease as possible. We’d love to model female friendships at their best: empowering, sustaining, empathic, supportive, accepting.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think it might help people?
Definitely! We’ve created The Badass Rebellion community so women can lose the Superwoman Syndrome, stop feeling overwhelmed and burned out, and start prioritizing what really matters most. We’ve known so many women who are incredibly capable and generous, who give and give until there’s nothing left for themselves (us included in that bunch)! We hope that our personal and professional wisdom can steer women towards having a lighter load, a more fulfilling life, and relationships with one another which are authentic, uplifting, and badass!
Ok, thank you for sharing your inspired life. Let’s now talk about feeling “unsatisfied”. In the Western world, humans typically have their shelter, food, and survival needs met. What has led to us feeling we aren’t enough and don’t have enough? What is the wiring? Or in other words, how has nature and nurture played into how humans (in an otherwise “safe and secure” environment) experience feeling less than, or a need to have more than what is needed for basic survival?
In many ways, consumerism affects us before we are even born. Think about all of the items that are available for new parents now. Compare that to the items that were available when their parents were new parents, and when their grandparents were preparing for their parents’ arrival. All of the items that are marketed to new parents capitalize on their desire to be good parents and to raise a healthy, happy, and safe child. Certainly, there are many items available now that drastically improve safety and health outcomes in childhood, but there are so many items that simply do not. There is so much pressure to buy more and more items, but very little research to support their necessity.
For the most part, we humans learn by watching others. Generally, our parents or caretakers have the greatest influence on us, especially when we are young. They become our models for understanding our wants and needs, how to be grateful, how to set boundaries, how to have empathy and demonstrate support, and how to ask for what we need.
Families with really rigid boundaries generally don’t teach children to set limits with others or figure out what they need. These families emphasize doing what you’re told and meeting external expectations. On the other hand, growing up in a family with loose or no boundaries may lead to unclear expectations and confusion, which in turn can cause you to feel overly responsible for others’ feelings and needs. Falling on either side — -too rigid or too loose — — can cause great difficulty in knowing who you are, what you need, and what your limits are. That, in turn, can lead to relying on external factors such as striving for material gain or seeking others’ approval in order to enhance your sense of well-being, security, and “enough-ness.”
As we grow up, we look to peers, teachers, television programs, and other media to teach us about the world and our place in it. Belonging is necessary for our survival and we are constantly trying to belong. When we get the message that we need “more” to belong, we have no choice but to strive for “more.”
How are societies different? For example, capitalistic societies trade differently than communists. Developed nations trade differently than developing nations. In your opinion, how does society shape a human’s experience and feelings of satisfaction?
We believe what society emphasizes is a big determinant of our experience and feelings of satisfaction. For example, if society emphasizes competition and striving vs. cooperation and gratitude, you will be sent very different messages about what is meaningful and how to get there. An emphasis on consumerism can fuel ingratitude and comparison-making by leading us to believe that we are incomplete unless we buy what’s being sold.
With a specific focus on brain function, how has the brain and its dominion over the body and beliefs been impacted by the societal construct?
Our brains are meaning-making machines. We are constantly taking in information, especially in this digital age, so the number of influences on our decision-making and meaning making has increased tremendously, and not necessarily for the better. Between social media and the countless streaming services that are available, there is a constant competition for our attention. Especially during times of stress, we have the desire to take in as much information as possible, but we can only emotionally process so much. We can feel flooded with information and continue to seek out more in the hopes that we will feel better, but so often we feel worse.
Additionally, we are surrounded by so many options, which can make it hard to sift through and identify what is truly important in our lives. We are wired to weigh all of the available options before making a decision, and having infinite choices can make us feel incredibly stressed and overwhelmed. Having lots of options sounds attractive, but decision making is cognitively taxing. When there are too many choices to consider or too many decisions to make, we can experience “decision fatigue.” In short, we are exhausted by relatively insignificant decisions (e.g., Is this the best salad bar nearby? Should I add avocado? Regular ranch or spicy?) and the constant wondering whether we made the “best” choice or if there was a better option out there.
Society exerts a lot of pressure on us to do more and have more. Since one of our most basic needs is belonging it can be hard to push against the tide of overconsumption for fear of standing out from the crowd. Instead of pushing us to do more and buy more, what if society encouraged the notion of less, but better?
Do you think the way our society markets and advertises goods and services, has affected people’s feelings of satisfaction? Can you explain what you mean?
Yes! There are so many messages about “having it all” and “doing it all” that it can be difficult to pinpoint what is truly satisfying and meaningful. It is a myth that having more and doing more will lead to increased well-being. Rather, people are stretched so thin, overworking and overspending, because they have been bombarded with the notion that success comes from “more” not “less.” There is this belief that you must have the latest, greatest, and most to be successful and happy. Advertising often capitalizes on our desire to provide the best for our families and friends and convinces us that the way to show our love and care for others is to spend more and buy more. So, we work hard to be able to provide the best for our loved ones. When work takes us away from our families and the meaningful relationships in our lives, we often feel guilty which makes us want to spend even more and buy even more, so we work harder, and the vicious cycle continues. It’s not surprising that research shows that the link between life satisfaction and having a higher income is not direct.
How is the wiring of the brain, body, and beliefs shaped by marketing, language, and how humans trade?
When we don’t have a clear, internal compass about what truly matters we can become bogged down in our decision-making and ultimately give away our power to choose. It’s very difficult for humans to “subtract” because our tendency is to “add” more to our lives — whether that’s more things, more activities, more social media followers, etc. As humans, we definitely have the mindset that “more is better.” So, when marketing and trading uses “scarcity” language, we tend to do things to prevent scarcity such as accumulate, strive, obtain, and compare. Think about the rush on toilet paper during the pandemic. There was plenty to go around, but people were stressed and many adopted a scarcity mindset. People panicked that there wouldn’t be enough so they hoarded toilet paper. When “scarcity” language is used in advertising, it activates the same process. Fear and lack are powerful drivers of behavior.
I work in marketing so I’m very cognizant of this question. In your opinion, how do you think marketing professionals can be more responsible for how their advertising shapes humans’ health and experience of happiness overall?
This seems to be a question about ethics. As psychologists, being ethical is the foundation for how we behave and what we do. If we were to give marketers some pointers, we would advise that they first do no harm. Marketing professionals are likely very attuned to the many factors that affect the ways that humans make decisions. In order to “do no harm”, it is extremely important that advertising is transparent regarding products and services. Every effort should be made to avoid deception and creating false impressions. Most of all, marketing professionals should treat their consumers as human beings. It can be as simple as thinking about how we would want our parents, our children, or our friends to be treated and just offering that same kind of care to our clients. This line of thinking could be helpful to marketing professionals as well. Just because you can use certain techniques to sell, doesn’t mean you should. Thinking about the way that your behavior would affect a person that you love and care about is a great gauge for ethical behavior.
For you personally, if you have all your basic needs met, do you feel you have enough in life?
This is a great question because it points out the subjectivity of feeling like we have enough. We can have all of our basic needs met (and many, many more) and still not feel like we have enough. We have each felt the need to strive for more in our lives. To work harder, do more, have more, be more and we have noticed that all of this striving has left us feeling, well, unsatisfied. That feeling of “not enoughness” is a powerful driver of behavior, but the constant desire for self-improvement is exhausting. We have noticed that when we acknowledge and feel grateful for what we have, connect with others in authentic relationships and treat ourselves with compassion, we not only feel like we have enough, but we feel like we are enough.
Okay, fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview: Can you share with our readers your “5 things we can each do to address the feeling of not having enough.” Please share a story or example for each.
Sure! Here are our top 5:
- Keep a gratitude journal — Journaling helps you organize and integrate your thoughts, accept your experiences, and put them into context. You can get started wherever you are and if it’s difficult to identify what you’re grateful for it might just be, “Nothing bad happened today.” Gratitude is a powerful antidote to many negative emotions. When you begin to see your life through a lens of gratitude, you will notice feelings of stress and frustration diminish significantly.
- Become more aware of your positive feelings. First, find words to describe your pleasant emotions. Once you have put your positive feelings into words, tell yourself explicitly at that moment that you are feeling this way right now. When you feel good, show it, tell it, or share it with others right away. Keep in mind that the positive thing that happens doesn’t have to be big. You could simply have woken up on the right side of the bed and thought, “Hey, I’m feeling great today.” Remind yourself that you are grateful for whatever or whoever caused these positive emotions.
- “Comparison is the thief of Joy” — Theodore Roosevelt. Imagine you want to know your temperature. So, you take out your thermometer, ready for your reading. But first you put it in your significant other’s mouth…then your mom’s mouth…then your friend’s mouth…then your boss’ mouth. What??? You’re taking everyone else’s temperatures to find out your own? That sounds nutty, right? But so often, we forget to check in with ourselves to determine how we’re really doing and instead, engage in comparison-making, people-pleasing, advice-asking, and achievement-getting behaviors, leaving us feeling unsettled, unsure, and unsatisfied. Instead of comparing, try to savor. Savoring means to slow down, do one thing at a time, and focus intently on the essentials of the positive experience you’re having. Imagine the last time you savored a really great meal. Did you rush through it and gulp it down as you scrolled through your phone and compared your meal with what everyone else was having? Not at all! Savoring allows you to appreciate your experience in the moment, being truly present while dropping expectations and comparisons.
- We are big fans of setting mantras. We especially like these: “I am enough just as I am”, “I am exactly who I am supposed to be”, “I am grateful for what I already have.” When you notice scarcity and dissatisfaction creeping in, a mantra can be really helpful. You may want to set it as the background of your phone or even as a password you type in frequently to remind yourself.
- Notice the feeling of scarcity and what seems to trigger it for you. For example, many people find that social media and technology leave them feeling restless and irritable. On the other hand, creative activities and physical movement often leave people feeling more at peace. Take note of the activities that leave you feeling satisfied and be intentional about including those activities in your daily life. Be mindful of the situations or activities that leave you feeling unsatisfied and try to limit those when you can. For example, if you find yourself feeling unsatisfied at work when new email messages pop up, you may want to limit the distraction of email. You could silence the notifications so you can more deeply engage in the task at hand, specifying a time in the future to circle back to email.
Bonus tip: Acknowledge that the feeling of “not enough” is part of being human, which means we will never get rid of it, no matter how much we achieve or accumulate. We think of it like a black hole in our belly. We can keep trying to fill it, staying super busy and productive to pour more and more into the black hole. It will never fill up. So instead, we can notice and name it: “Oh, there’s that part of me that feels like I’m not enough.” We can tend to it with compassion and care. We can just let it be, without having to fix or change it. Then we’re freed up to focus on what brings us meaning and purpose (which is often connection with self and others), and this can greatly increase our satisfaction.
Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or resources that have inspired you to live with more joy in life?
Yes! We’re a big fan of the Maintenance Phase podcast because we are advocates for anti-diet culture. We also LOVE The F*ck It Diet by Caroline Dooner for the same reason. (We believe that diet culture is a big driver of people feeling unsatisfied with themselves and not enough.) We have found the ideas in Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown to be extremely relevant as we attempt to focus our attention on the most important goals in our business and in our lives. In addition, The Trance of Scarcity by Victoria Castle relates directly to this topic of having/being “enough,” and we have found it to be incredibly meaningful in our lives and work!
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
We’ve already begun a movement — the Badass Rebellion! We believe that women step into their greatness when they take care of themselves in the same way that they take care of others. We have found enormous power in female friendship and self-compassion in our own lives, and we are on a mission to build a community that supports and empowers women to nurture and tend to themselves. .
What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?
We’d love for interested readers to join our email list and follow us on social media to stay up-to-date on our latest offerings. You can find us at www.inspirationfromthecouch.com or www.badassmethod.com.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
About The Interviewer: For 30 years, Drew Gerber has been inspiring those who want to change the world. Drew is the CEO of Wasabi Publicity, Inc., a full-service PR agency lauded by PR Week and Good Morning America. Wasabi Publicity, Inc. is a global marketing company that supports industry leaders, change agents, unconventional thinkers, companies and organizations that strive to make a difference. Whether it’s branding, traditional PR or social media marketing, every campaign is instilled with passion, creativity and brilliance to powerfully tell their clients’ story and amplify their intentions in the world. Schedule a free consultation at WasabiPublicity.com/Choosing-Publicity.
I Can’t Get No Satisfaction: Jamie Wilson, Avery Hoenig, & Lucy Smith Of ‘Inspiration from the… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.