If It's Hysterical, It's Historical: The Liberating Power of Understanding Your Past | Dr. Orna Guralnik

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how are we doing? A lot of people come into therapy with all sorts of resistance. Isn't this just self indulgent?

Don't other people have it way worse than I do? Are you gonna ask me about my mom? What does she have to do with anything? Why are we dredging all that stuff up? I'm not a therapist, personally, but in my understanding, the reason therapists go deep on our past is that if we don't understand our stories, they own us.

For reasons that remain opaque to us, we can react disproportionately to seemingly innocuous triggers. There's an expression I love that really captures it. If it's hysterical, it's historical. Today I'm talking about all this with Dr. Orna Garalnik, who you may know from her Showtime docuseries Couples Therapy, where she works with real couples on camera.

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