Our New World Inside & Out w/ Fareed Zakaria & Donna Fish

“These are unprecedented times.” We’ve heard this repeatedly over the last 20 months. This is also, perhaps, the single thing we can agree on these days. BUT, what also seems to be in agreement by most experts and scientists is that while we are not necessarily “done” with the virus, we do seem to be emerging from our caves and finding a sense of new normalcy. (That said, at the time of this writing Covid cases are surging in several parts of Europe again and a new variant, Omicron, has emerged. Ta-da!) So now what? Ali talks with experts about the macro social factors (CNN’s Fareed Zakaria) and micro personal factors (psychologist Donna Fish) at play. Fareed shares what he thinks the next five years could look like in the US and what our top takeaway from the pandemic is as a country. Donna joins Ali to take a deeper look at the emotional and psychological challenges as we begin to socialize and function in public again. She gives helpful advice on how to handle “worry thoughts” and what she knows as a clinician to be true among all parents, no matter what side of the mask war they’re on.

**UPDATE: President Biden signed the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure and Jobs Act bill in to law on 11/15/21. A second bill is still in process.

If you have questions or guest suggestions, Ali would love to hear from you. Call or text her at [phone]. Or email go-ask-ali-podcast-at-gmail.com. (No dashes)

Links of Interest:

Fareed Zakaria, Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World: https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Post-Pandemic-World-Fareed-Zakaria/dp/0393542130

Donna Fish: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/donna-fish-lcsw-r

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Go Ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land
Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. I don't think
that there's some one soul mate. It's not like there's one.
Although bon Jovi is my soul mate, there's always exceptions.
Are you saying that gossiping is the same as if
I'm picking lice out of your scalp and eating it. Well,
you've done both. So what do you think? I want

(00:24):
to give her too much? I don't like her to
come in with an inflated head, So we won't mentioned
the Golden Globe. After all we've been through. We deserve
an orgasm. Cis I deserved Welcome to Go Ask Allie.
I'm Ali Wentworth and this season I'm digging into everything
I can get my hands on, peeling back the layers

(00:46):
and getting dirty. Today is a big episode because we're
going to try to tackle a lot of things, because
we're talking about relationships, lives, and the country as the
pandemic continues for who knows how long. So if this
is a long term thing, how are we going to
manage the stress and how are we going to manage
the stress of the country at large? You know, I

(01:10):
look around at my family and friends, and I see
how many people have dealt in so many different ways
with the anxiety of the pandemic. You know, some people
don't watch the news anymore. Some people eat up the news.
I have friends that were alone during the pandemic who
have realized they like being alone. They're not lonely than

(01:32):
other people. I know. Couples got tighter, other couples broke
up all because of this global virus. And that is
why I have two very special guests today because I
think one for Read Zakaria needs to deal with the
macro the world at large, especially our country. And then
the micro Donna Fish, a mental health therapists, will offer

(01:55):
advice on how to deal with ourselves and others and
how we slowly start to re engage in the world
during this incredibly emotional time. So first up is for
Red Zakaria. For Zakaria hosts a weekly international and domestic
affairs program for Red Zakaria GPS for CNN Worldwide, and
is a columnist for The Washington Post, a contributing editor

(02:18):
for the Atlantic, and a best selling author. His latest
book is Ten Lessons for a Post Pandemic World. He
was named a top ten global thinker of the last
ten years by Foreign Policy Magazine in twenty nineteen, and
Esquire once called him the most influential foreign policy adviser
of his generation. Welcome for Red Zakaria, author of Ten

(02:41):
Lessons for a Post Pandemic World. I'm so happy to
have you here to answer a million questions. I have
great to be with you, Ali. I wanted you on
this podcast because I'm trying to figure out what the
next few years look like. I want to know if
it's gonna change us for the better for the worst.
Let me start out by asking you a toughie, which

(03:04):
is is this the worst of times? Um? It's the
biggest crisis we've ever faced, this pandemic because if you
think about it, it's truly global. It's it's incredibly broad,
and it's it's been it's been much longer than most
crisis so compared, for example, the nine eleven, So nine eleven,

(03:26):
if you were somebody living in Japan or Brazil, it
really had very little impact on you. Um, Or think
about even the financial crisis. The financial crisis goes on
for a few months and then everything starts getting kind
of back to normal. This case, everyone in the world
has been affected by this. It's it's almost true to say,

(03:47):
I think that every human being on the planet in
some way has been affected by this pandemic. And it
has been a long running thing, you know. I mean,
we between the health public health aspect, the shutting down
of the economy, the change in the nature of work,
the effects are still going on, right. So I can't

(04:07):
think of anything we have gone through in our lives
which has had that broad and that deep in an effect.
I mean, but it's different from the Spanish flu of
nine eighteen. I mean, we are, thank thank god, a
little more technologically advanced. But I have to say, I
think our health care is a mess in our country
and I don't see that getting better anytime soon, do you.

(04:31):
So you're right there two big differences between the Spanish
flu and now, and even actually the Asian flu of
nineteen fifty seven and now. The big differences which is
a positive one. We got a vaccine within nine moment.
This is what distinguishes this, uh, this pandemic from every
previous pandemic in history. In nine months, you had five vaccines,

(04:51):
all of which worked. It's really amazing. Uh. The second
pieces we shut down the economy. Um. Now, the reason
that that's unique is before that you couldn't In ninety seven,
half of Americans didn't even have a phone line. So
the idea that you could just continue economic activity in

(05:11):
the digital space was not an option. So in all
those all previous pandemics, while there was a case, you know,
there were some lockdown, some curfuse, basically people kind of
had to get back to work as soon as they could.
So those are two positives about this. We were able
to keep the economy going. We got the vaccines. Now
the big question you ask is, you know, has this

(05:33):
been a shock to our system in terms of reforming it. Look,
the fundamental problem we have in the American health care
system is it is basically a private health care system,
not a public health care system. If you're rich, if
you have money, you get the best health care in
the world. But it is not universal. It does not
extend out. And in a pandemic, that's a huge problem

(05:55):
because you leave ten percent behind or behind, and the
pandemic is going to spread. And and what we saw
was the reality or the or the consequences of the
way we have chosen to structure health care, which is
unlike other advanced industrial nations, we really do not care
about universality. We do not care and and so looking

(06:18):
at it from kind of the thirty feet view, it's
a very inefficient system because we overspend on people like
you and me, and we underspend on people who desperately
need the care. Like if if we were to take
five dollars away from each of us people like us
um and give it to the poorest stent of Americans,

(06:39):
it wouldn't change our health at all for the worst
and would massively benefit those people a the But we
don't have a mechanism to do now. It doesn't look
like it's going to pivot that way anytime soon. And
if anything, and I'd love you to talk about it,
I think that it's it's sort of shine a light
on how a mass or health care is. But also

(07:00):
it even widens the wealth disparity. It even makes the
haves and the have not even more glaring a problem.
So it feels like we're we're being more and more
polarized and not coming together, even though this is a
global crisis, which you think would bring people together. It's not. Yeah,
at so many levels, alleys so first, take the point

(07:20):
you made. Um, the thing that the pandemic has exposed
is the digital divide, which is in fact also an
income divide, a class divide, a cultural divided, geographic divide.
So if you look at the top of Americans and
most recessions, the rich and the poor lose jobs at
about the same pace. In this recession, the top actually

(07:45):
gained jobs by the end of and you can imagine why, right, Like,
so it's easy to do consulting and coding and stuff,
and that kind of stuff we're doing online. I'm not
I'm not coding for it. Yeah, in fact, I'm believe
it or not, you are very much a part of
the digital economy. Um. But the bottom, uh in lost

(08:12):
jobs at about the same pace as during the Great Depression.
And that disparity where the the rich actually gained employment
and the and the and the poor suffered a massive
hemorrhage never happened before, at least not in not in
modern times. Then you say, where are the people who
have who have the jobs, who have this ability to
keep generating income even though the physical economy shut down. Well,

(08:36):
they tend to live in cities or metro areas. They
tend to have some college education, they tend to you know,
vote Democratic more than Republican. And the people who are
who are in the opposite side tend to be a mix,
but a lot of them are rural, a lot of
them have less education and all that. So you you know,

(08:56):
all the divides we think about have just gone stacked
on each other and white well, and it also seemed
like here we were in lockdown in a global pandemic
and it was a perfect storm of everything else. So
we had well civil unrest, but all kinds of big
movements like Black Lives Matter. It did also shed a
light on how incredibly racist our country is. Do you

(09:19):
think we're going to learn from this? So, I mean,
you're absolutely right that the pandemic also produced social unrest.
And I think it produced social unterrest because whenever you
have one of these shocks to the system, a kind
of big disruption in a strange sense that allows people
to ask themselves questions of like am I living the

(09:39):
life I want to? Is this country organized the way
I wanted to? And I think we are very bad
at handling the issue you were talking about, which is
really the issue of identity, diversity, plurality, because America is
two things that are very different for most minorities. And
I say this as a minority. You know, an Indian American,

(10:01):
I'm Muslim by birth, my brown skin, I have a
funny name. And for most people in my category, America
has actually been remarkably welcoming and it has integrated and
assimilated people, and compared to most other countries in the world,
you're lucky to be a minority in America. I mean

(10:22):
I know this from my personal experience, but the data
also shows we assimilate people much better if you are
um African American black, or if you are a Native American,
or you know, there are certain categories. Principally black. America
has been horrendous to you. I mean, you know, the
Black experience in America is just stunning, lee cruel, right.

(10:46):
I mean, it's hundreds of years of slavery in which
families were forcibly pulled apart, husbands and wives sold separately,
children so separately, which then destroys the family structure. Then
you have another hundred years of aggregation, which perpetuates in
a de facto kind of slavery. Then you have the
you know, the the civil rights movement, but still the

(11:08):
massive disparities are never really addressed. So I mean the
the the obvious one would be wealth, right, I mean,
average black family's wealth's much much lower than a white family.
And so what I often find is there is this
weird you know, putting it all into one box and
saying we're going to do better with people of color.

(11:30):
It's like, you know, I'm doing fine. We were trying
to turn it into a larger conversation that involves everybody,
and really what we need is a much more specific
reckoning I think with slavery and with Native Americans, and
I mean I think yes, and I think, uh, you know,
obviously this was exacerbated by George Floyd, but something happened psychologically,

(11:54):
I think during this pandemic as well. I mean, people
were in lockdown, like you said, they had to think
about their lives. But people seem to be incredibly angry,
and in some ways it's come out, I think in
a positive way through activism. But you know, we are
seeing a lot of that in fighting, and I think
there's gonna be a civil war, which is probably an

(12:16):
extreme thing to say, but I do feel it sometimes.
I don't see us coming together. I don't see everybody
being on the same track as far as sort of
the future of our country goes. Am I being too extreme? No,
you're not being too extreme. This is the thing I
worry about more than anything else. I mean, otherwise, you know,
the America economically, we're doing really well. We're doing technologically,

(12:40):
we dominate the world. Were the only rich country that
is growing demographically, you know, because of immigration, we're strong.
But we have this crazy politics and it's become you
know of what I was saying before is it's not
political anymore. It's culture, it's class, it's uh, you know,
which which are much harder to bridge. I mean, if

(13:01):
politically we have a disagreement, you know. I mean when
Georgia and I first got into this this world, the
liberals wanted to spend a hundred billion dollars, the conservatives
wanted to spend twenty billion dollars. Well, you know what,
there's a number between those two. You can always split
the difference on those kinds of issues, But how do
you split the difference when when you know, when the

(13:22):
issue is sort of core identity. I believe my country
is being is being totally transformed culturally, I believe, you know,
or gay rights or or you know, abortion, These are
you know, it's very hard to compromise. So that's become
the nature of politics now. It's all these identity culture
class divisions. Are these issues where they exasperated by the pandemic. Um,

(13:47):
would we be talking about this today if there had
not been a global pandemic? Yeah, no, we would be.
I mean this has been the story of American politics.
Let's say the end of the Cold War as a
market but that it was really Liberals wanted to spend
money and in post taxes, Conservatives wanted to save money
and you know, cut taxes. Um. Now it's become completely different.

(14:09):
And that's not the pandemic. The pandemic is with all
these things kind of heightens and accelerates it. But this
rise of kind of identity politics is is the big
trend in American politics. Okay, So it seems it seems
to me right now that the the unions are getting
very heated. Do you think that there's any positive outcome

(14:30):
from that? Yeah? Actually, I think this is one of
those cases where the bad news actually is good news. So, yeah,
unions are getting more more demanding, you're seeing more strikes
even but more importantly, you're seeing this crazy situation whether
ten million people unemployed in eight million unfilled jobs in
the United States, which has never happened before, and other wads,

(14:51):
why are these jobs not getting filled? And the reason
is people are saying, you're not paying us enough, you're
not treating us well enough. And it's not just about
the money, because the hospitality industry has raised wages on
average eight percent and still they can't fill tens of
thousands of jobs. I think this is somebody described this

(15:11):
as like the great Reassessment. We're going through a period
where people are asking themselves what, you know, what is
the work life balance they want? What is the kind
of job they want? And you know, the people who
have not been treated well over the last thirty or
forty years in America are these sort of lower middle class,
working class just workers. So the fact that they are

(15:33):
revolting the fact that employers are going to have to
hustle and ask themselves, what do I do to make
these people's lives a little bit less miserable? In these
way you know, those dishwashers at restaurants. I think it's
great that they will that they will be paid more,
they will be treated better. It's by the way, great
for the economy because it means those are the people

(15:53):
when you give them more money, they spend it. You know,
you give money to rich people, they save it. You
give money to poor people, they ended. So I think
this will end up being one of the big positive
changes that will come out of the crisis. You know,
my concern is, uh is our country's ability to deal
with the crisis, because uh, yes, we have the vaccine,

(16:15):
but you know we're not out of the woods yet.
And I know that you've cited Taiwan and Korea as
places that were able to deal with the pandemic a
lot more efficiently than we have. We don't seem to
be dealing with this particular crisis as well as we
could be, which makes me nervous about future epidemics, which

(16:38):
makes me worry about future any kind of issues, chemical warfare,
biological contagions, or whatever it is I worry about it.
Should should I Should I be taking xanix or is
it going to be okay? No, I think you should
be worried. I think you've be This is the in
a way the central problem we face is the American

(17:00):
government has just gotten very bad. You know. I say,
one of my lessons is, it's not the quantity of government,
it's the quality of government. Because Taiwan spends five percent
of its GDP on healthcare, we spend and they did
stunning lee well, and we did abysmally um and here
and here's the fascinating thing, Ali, it's not that they
did lockdowns. Taiwan did no lockdowns. Korea did no lockdowns

(17:23):
because they got to it early and they understood that
the key in a pandemic is you isolate, You isolate
that small number of people. And I talked to the
guy who ran the program in Taiwan and I said, well,
you know, Americans would say you could, we could never
do that. And he said, well, think about what you're saying.
Because we quarantined in total, one percent of the population

(17:44):
for fourteen days, So we deprived them of liberty for
fourteen days one percent of the In return, the other
could go about business as usual. No lockdowns. We never
shut the economy down. We never. You guys say you
can't do that, But in response to your pandemic, then
what you had to do was you did a lockdown

(18:04):
that put tens of millions of people out of work,
shut out hundreds of thousands of businesses, and that the
government had to spend four trillion dollars to make up
for it. And that's not an infringement on liberty when
people lose their jobs their livelihood. So I thought it
was a really good example of you know what we
have lost the capacity to do, which is kind of
intelligent risk reward behavior. Okay, I'm willing to take this

(18:29):
much pain for a small short period of time to
get much larger. Again. No, we just stumbled through it.
And just because we're so rich, we can kind of
throw enormous amounts of money at the problem. That was
the vaccine, that was the COVID relief, and we'll be
all right because of that. But you know, imagine if
we didn't have this kind of money, would be really screwed. Yes,

(18:52):
we were, So I want you to do two things
I bet you haven't had to do on any of
these uh zoom interviews, which is, paint me the worst
case scenario of the next five years, and then we're
gonna do a pivot into pure optimism. But right now,
the next five years. If it went off the rails,

(19:16):
what would what would America look like to you? Yea?
So the worst scenario is nothing gets done, Biden ends
up being a failed president, the Republicans take to take
the House and the Senate, which means this total gridlock.
Trump doesn't win, but manages to manipulate the results so
that hu wins. So you have, for the third time,

(19:37):
now you would have this sense of deep illegitimacy. You
know that that the group that didn't get basically thought
the other group stole it um. And then you I
think you would do end up with some kind of
you know, violence, constant demonstrations. You'll end up in a
situation where the United States becomes a kind of banana republic,

(19:58):
where it can't be governed, nothing gets done. You know,
I don't think it will collapse. I mean, the private
sector will keep going, I I suppose, but I think
it becomes very difficult for any large problem to be solved.
And I think that what worries me most about it is,
and I'm not describing something that extreme, many of these

(20:20):
steps could easily happen. Frump could decide to run, he
could get the nomination. The last election that Biden one
in the electoral College was close about a hundred thousand
votes in three states, and it would have gone the
other way. And if if the Secretary of State of
Georgia and the Pennsylvania Legislature and Wisconsin had said, we

(20:40):
think that this is all wrong the electors, we're going
to nominate our own slate, boom, you have a constitutional crisis.
And and my fear about all this is, I don't
see what stops it. We could get lucky, he loses
very badly, but at least if he would have win decisively,
that would be another thing. But I doubt that. I
think you're going to end up with a very close election.

(21:01):
We've had very close elections for the last twenty years now.
And with the erosion of trust in the US government,
as soon as that starts to crumble, then America does
not have an ability to respond to a crisis. I mean,
you know, I even think about global warming right now,
even that is a political debate as to whether it

(21:23):
even exists or not. And yet we have wildfires and floods.
I mean, there's we're witness to it um And so
for me and for the sake of this podcast, for it.
I'm thirty two years old. For me, a thirty two
year old woman, you know, I I there's no category
of life in America that doesn't concern me right now,

(21:45):
you know where, whether it's the forest or the courts,
or you know, people of color, or the wealth disparity.
I mean, it's it's very hard right now to be optimistic.
And I know that you've written that. Lennon once said
our decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen.
And I feel like we're in that right now. Yeah. Look,

(22:07):
first of all, let me say, since people are going
to hear the podcast, Ali looks like she's twenty eight,
not thirty two. Time already a little startled for another. Um, Look,
the challenge we face is that all these crises seem

(22:28):
to be happening at the same time, and we somehow
have politicized things at a level that no other country has. So,
you know, the issue of global warming, as you said,
there's no other country in which there's a big debate
going on. I mean there's a little bit in Australia,
but it's really I mean in every other country. If
you look at the Conservative Party in Germany, in Britain,

(22:52):
they're all completely on board with dealing with it the pandemic.
Look at the vaccination. We are the only major country
in the world that has this bizarre situation with of
the country will not take a life saving drug called
a vaccine because they want to make a political point
and it's more important to own the Libs than to

(23:13):
vaccinate yourself against a pandemic. Alright, so let's let's conclude
with some optimism, and let me ask you this, What
is the biggest, clearest, most important thing that we have
learned because of the pandemic? If we can bring anything
with us out of this horrible period, you know, besides
the fact that we can zoom, what are what are
some of the things that we can benefit from learning?

(23:36):
If anything, we've learned that we have a lot of problems,
and they kind of expose that reality. You know. It's
like Warren Buffett's great line, it's only when the tide
goes out that you know who's been swimming naked? So
I think the tide went out in America. There's a
lot of nudity, and there's a lot of naked people.
I think, you know, if at some fundamental level. I

(23:59):
hope we've realized that wealth does not buy health, that
being being rich and having a healthy society is not
the same thing. We need to we need to restructure
in a way that allows, you know, that allows some
of those dollars to get to people who really desperately needed.
I think we've realized that people do honorable jobs, work

(24:19):
really hard, and should have a lot of dignity even
though they don't make a lot of money, you know,
I mean, I think we we all saw that the
people who went to work every day in offices, in factories,
in water treatment plans and sewage facilities so that we
could sit at home are often the worst paid people. Um.
So you know, if you shine a light on this stuff,

(24:42):
it's it's actually all fixable. It's not so hard to fix.
And you asked an optimistic scenario. Look, we've already with
the first COVID relief bill, which had the childcare credit, right,
you know, you have, we have reduced childhood poverty in
America by by half in one year. I mean, what
that should make us realize is, you know, we don't

(25:03):
have to live with these things. They are actually very
simple ways that we can solve them. And you know,
and and I think even the most uh the purest
libertarian would agree that, you know, to invest the money
for in a child who has you know, it's it's
not like the child is being lazy or not working
or anything like that. This is a no brainer. You

(25:25):
will you give them better nutrition, you give them better education,
and then they end up, you know, being better citizens
and more productive members of the economy. So there's so
many things we can do. So if Biden gets two
of these bills done, you know, the the infrastructure Bill
and the soft infrastructure Bill, if he's able to have
a reasonably successful presidency. If Trump is defeated decisively, I

(25:49):
think the best thing that could happen is that he
does get nominated and it's a wipeout and he loses.
I think then you have the beginnings of restoring a
kind of normal politics in America. I'm hoping that people
looked at Trump and enough people looked at it and said,
you know, this is a dangerous path um And yes,
there are people who believe in him. But but but

(26:11):
just one piece of my optimism comes from this alley,
which is you're never going to get a percent of
the country still supported Nixon after he resigned. Percent of
the country supported McCarthy after the Senate centure. So you know,
your best case scenario is six but I think you know,

(26:32):
maybe not that. But could we get to a sixty
forty Saint Politics. Yeah, it's possible. It's I wouldn't bed
money on it today, but that's what I hope. Okay,
I'll take it. You know they say, um, in life,
we only use ten percent of our brain. I think
you only had to use three percent of your brain
on my podcast, and I used all of my brain.

(26:54):
I tend to be an optimist, So I'm going to
hope that lessons are learned from this. And now it
is your time for reads a car to ask me
a question. I could ask you so many questions. You know,
I'll be honest, Like I still remember the first time
I said next year at the dinner party, which is
probably twenty odd years ago. Um, and I just came

(27:16):
away thinking that was so much fun. So my question
is you are one of the funniest people I know,
one of the most naturally comedic people I know. Do
you do you think that you know this? And I'm
thinking of the Dave Chappelle type stuff. Do you think
it's possible to be to be really funny if you
have to be sure never to offend anyone any any

(27:39):
member of any group. Well, it's funny that you asked
that question because I just did a podcast about that,
because it is something that I think about every day
because what with the Dave Chappelle controversy. But also I
find that a lot of times when I joke around,
even in the confines of my own home, I have
two children that are saying, you can't say that. Mom.

(28:02):
You can't do that, Mom, you can't post that. You know,
So it's a mine field. I can't say anything. But
then again, I'm not doing stand up. I'm not on
any kind of global stage. But you know, my feeling
is this. A lot of times I think comedians are
the truthsayers, and whether they're saying something provocative or not,
it does make us think and it also gives a

(28:24):
sense of sort of the temperature of the culture at
that time. And so my feeling with comedy is nothing
should be off limits, and if if things are off limits,
then it should be universal. You can't have Ricky's your vase,
make age jokes, but then somebody else isn't allowed to
do this, you know. So my feeling is let comedians
who are craftsmen, who are who are generally funny, and

(28:48):
let them go be kind of the narrators of our
time and let them push buttons. Well, I just wanted to,
for the benefit of our listeners, remind bit make once
mall correction when you grew up in the Clinton administration,
not the Oh I'm sorry, I messed that up. It's
I lie so much about my age, I forget who

(29:10):
was in power. But I did have a huge crush
on g Gordon Liddy's son in my youth. So there
I said it, Fury, thank you, thank you so much.
Such a pleasure, such a pleasure. When we come back,
we'll talk with therapist Donna Fish about how to handle
the uncertainty of a long term pandemic. Now for some

(29:42):
insight from a top mental health expert as we re
entered this unpredictable world. So I recorded this interview back
in September, and that was a day after my daughter
was diagnosed with COVID, right as she was supposed to
go to college for the first time, and the Delta
variant had emergency rooms filled all over the city and
she had a breakthrough. Um, she was already vaccinated and

(30:04):
it just spun us all out. Now she's thriving in
school and Delta has subsided a bit. But these are
two of the conditions that could happen to us at
any time, and that is a point. We can't make
any predictions which way this virus will take us for
the foreseeable future. So how do we deal? Enter Donna Fish.

(30:25):
Donna Fish is a psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker
in Manhattan. Her current specialties include trauma, anxiety, depression, eating disorders,
and family and couples therapy. She's lectured and held agent
positions at the Harvard Medical School Department of Continuing Education
in Columbia University, and she often writes for Psychology Today
and as many many articles published by the Huffington's Posts.

(30:48):
Donna Fish, thank you so much for being with me
today and go ask Alley. There's a lot to cover.
Thank you, Ellie, thank you so much for having me
so here. We are, Donna Fish, We're not getting out
of this pandemic anytime soon. UM. I want to talk
to you about how we kind of readjust our lives
to fit into this global scenario. And I gotta tell

(31:09):
you something. Yesterday my daughter, who's eighteen years old, who's
about to go to Brown University, tested positive for COVID.
So it just it's a ship show over here because
we now have to prolong her moving in. We're all
quarantining for ten days. And the worst part about it is,
I I feel like, wait, we already got through this.

(31:32):
What's happening? Why are we back eating noodles again? So
I want to talk about anxiety first, because there is
an anxiety for a virus that seems to never end. Yeah. Absolutely.
First off, most importantly, oh my god, as a parent
and your poor daughter, I mean, it's so awful. It's

(31:55):
the worst. And also she has anxiety in general about
starting college for the first time. Of course, I mean
what I've been thinking about lately. And I love that
you brought up anxiety to talk about first, because I'm
obviously hearing about it from all of my patients every day,
and you know, my own kids, myself, and I'm realizing,

(32:16):
I think, okay, so we're really having to move into
a really different way of thinking and kind of framing things.
It's like living with a chronic illness, you have to
adjust your expectations. So everything, we've got to reframe everything,
Like my family is in Canada and from Canada. Originally
I can't just pop off to Toronto and go see

(32:37):
my daughter who's just moving into in a new apartment
that I want to help remove, Like what if I
get stuck in Canada and can I afford. So there's
a rethinking of everything, And I realized we could we
have sort of a choice here. We could get super
anxious about it and go into disaster mode thinking, or
we can kind of accept that, like this is really

(32:58):
the name of the game now. It's endemic, right, I mean,
meaning we're living with this, and to also understand that
everybody's going through this, so your daughter is not alone.
Number one. Well that's one of the things that I
said to her, was because I've heard more and more
friends who have kids that we're supposed to go to
college and the same thing. Exactly, either they got it,

(33:18):
somebody else got you know. So I feel like it's
a little bit of groundhogs day. But also this is
the new norm. You know, there's gonna be people quarantining
all the time exactly. So she's not the only one
missing out, you know fomo. Yeah, the whole world is
in fomo. Well, at least when we were like locked down,
it reduced the fomo. Yea, now we as we as

(33:42):
we're re emerging, there can be that also anxiety of like,
but you know, my best friend is moving into the
dorm and I'm not right right, you know, my daughter's
upset because it's not like nobody's going to college. Everybody
who's supposed to be going to move in or moving
in it except for her because of the circumstances. So

(34:03):
you know, I worry about anxiety with that. I also
worry are we in this endless whirlwind of pandemic crisis
and that is a whole other, you know, huge thing
to have to deal with. I think that this idea
like the stop start kind of thing. Right you're just thinking, oh,
I'm gonna be able to get back to work because
my kids are going to school now, and the fact

(34:25):
that well, no, your kids just tested positive or there's
another kid who tested positive, so your kid is being
quarantined in their back home and you're back doing zoom
school and then you have to tell your boss like oop, sorry,
can attend that meaning or you know, and I think
that everybody is just going to have to have a
tremendous acceptance of that. At any moment, your life is

(34:48):
going to have to kind of stop, and you're gonna
have to readjust and recalibrate. And so that's kind of
the new normal. I mean, one of the ways we
cope best, right, that helps anxiety is to be able
to predict things right. And so the more we can
predict and readjust our expectations of like, Okay, well we
really can't expect to go back to whatever life we

(35:09):
used to have because that's not happening, then we can
at least go, okay, what can we expect, what's reasonable,
what's realistic? Exactly? So if we can all get on
the same page and we are at least all in
this together, whether you're vaccinated not vaccinated, we're all sort
of vulnerable. Yes, I do wonder because I think we

(35:30):
all sort of went through COVID for a year and
a half. We all, as you said, we're taking off
our masks. This summer was you know, fun fund socializing.
Everyone was out. We sort of felt like, oh that's over,
Well now it's now, it's not over, and I wonder
our kids finding ways to control the few things they

(35:52):
can just because the whole world looks out of control
right now. Well, what you're hitting on is in fact
exactly what's important for trauma, right I do a ton
of work with trauma, and one of the most important
things when you're dealing with a lot of you know,
overwhelming powerlessness and helplessness, which is like we are powerless
over the course of this pandemic to a degree. Obviously,

(36:14):
what's the most important thing is to find at least
a few things that you have control over. And so
that's a single thing that you can always help as
a parent with your children, help them find things that
they can control. The other thing, I don't know if
this is a moment I can launch into a little
technique or tool that I offer people. Please, um, we'll

(36:36):
take tools. So one of the things that happens when
you are struggling with anxiety is our brains will worry,
and worry is actually our brains attempt to decrease anxiety.
Believe it or not, it's our way to kind of
help ourselves feel a sense of control and feel less
anxious and less panicked. So we our brains are sort

(36:56):
of scrambling. It sometimes gets circular and just kind of
drive you crazy. And it doesn't it doesn't actually work
to really decrease anxiety. However, I have the best thing
that I love to use, which is called the worry sheet.
And what I do is I have people really right
down and you. People could do this with their children too,
really young children. You could just do the writing yourself.

(37:17):
You could ask them, so, what's going on in your head?
Let's write down all of your worry thoughts. So I'll
make a list of all the worry thoughts. I like
to group worry thoughts into productive worry thoughts and non
productive worry thoughts. The productive worry thoughts are things that
you're worrying about that you can do something about them.
So let's say, for example, if you're worried that you

(37:40):
have a deadline coming up. Let's say it's a college
student and you know you've got this big paper that
you have to write. You know you don't have to
do it yet, but it's hovering over your head. Make
a schedule of some actionable items I call them. I'll say, okay,
let's put it in your calendar. Oh, this is when
I'm gonna are x y Z, I'll go to the

(38:01):
library or I'll start researching. And so you really make
a list and you take each worry thought and you
see is there something you can do about it? And
you make it actionable. The non productive worry are the
things you have absolutely no control over. Yeah, is the
pandemic exactly? I would think that, Yeah, when is the
pandemic going to be over? I have another little tool

(38:23):
for that one. If you want to hear it, I
need a tool kit. You. So, one of the things
that I like to I like to reframe all emotions. Okay,
because emotions are not good or bad. Okay, all emotions
are beautiful because we're human beings and were we have
this capacity for a full palette, right, and they're all
varying degree is almost like a paint strip. Right. It's

(38:46):
the intensity of the emotions that usually create the suffering.
It's not an emotion in and of itself. So let's
say anxiety. For example, anxiety, if it's a ten out
of ten, it really makes it analonging to think straight.
That being said, in certain circumstances might be really useful
at panic, right, gets your adrenaline goings, the fight or

(39:08):
flight response to you a better panic, right. So it's
not that panic is good or bad. It has its advantages.
It's just that if you're panicking when you're in the
situation where you're not in danger, it's going to get
in the way of your judgment and your ability to
think straight. So let's look at the advantages of your
anxiety about the pandemic, and not only the advantages, but

(39:30):
the great things it says about you and your core
values that you're anxious about the pandemic. Well, number one,
anxiety helps you mobilize, right, It gives you adrenal, It
helps you kind of be on the alert make good decisions. Well,
it can help you make good decisions because you're using
the emotion of anxiety to use your thought, your rational

(39:51):
mind to go, oh, I'm anxious, therefore, oh it might
make sense. I just got exposed. Let me go get tested.
So that's good anxiety. And then you know, you want
to validate the emotion, and that validation of the feelings
also helps coping and helps soothing, So that validation is important. Right.
So it's important to particularly with our children, to validate

(40:14):
their anxiety about this new world. Absolutely. So the next
piece of this, which obviously anxiety has a strong hold on,
is how to socialize now, because I can tell you
from speaking to adults, I have seen a huge shift
with how adults now view socializing. I think people in

(40:40):
a lot of ways had positive responses to being in
their pod right. And on the one hand, you know,
that's kind of great. People are sort of cutting out
the fat, They're finding out what's important to them. But
I have also noticed that there is a lot of
anxiety out going and socializing. Yeah, you know, just re emerging, right,

(41:05):
And it it is so true. It's like we were habituated.
We were trained really to be socially distant and to
be anxious enough to get near each other and to
reduce the people we socialize with. Um. And it's a
little like what I was referring to about how much
anxiety is useful versus how much gets crippling. And so
I've noticed in my practice I'm having to help people
re emerge because right now their anxiety could be pitched

(41:29):
so high that they're like I have to stay in
my apartment and I can't get together with my friends,
and like that's not really going to help you with
living a you know, a happy life and helping you
it's your depression. So and to some degree that's not
necessarily true that you can't socialize. So it's like their
anxiety is still pitched at the level of like where

(41:49):
it was. So we have to sort of figure out, Okay,
well what's realistic, what's doable, and also what's what's doable
for you? So what kind of baby steps can you
take to you know, starting to see maybe three people
at a time, and what are the things you need
to do to feel somewhat comfortable but still push yourself.
One of the things that's actually really important to treat

(42:10):
anxiety is exposing yourself to anxiety because the more you
avoid feelings of anxiety, the more crippled you become. You know,
people get a hoorophobic or they stop, you know, they
can't do things, they can't socialize, or they can't go
out and they're too frightened. And the more we avoid,
the more we sort of create these monsters in our head.

(42:31):
And so it does take you know, a little bit
of kind of pushing. I've been trying to help people
actually feel more uncomfortable and more anxious ironically and paradoxically,
because the roots through anxiety is more anxiety believed or
not to get to the other side. Yeah, no, I
believe it. Yeah, there's anxiety runs through our family, so

(42:53):
I understand that. I'm also thinking about again, when we
were all in lockdown own, we all knew the rules,
we all knew what we were supposed to do, and
I have seen a lot of anxiety now with well,
yes there's the delta variant and other variants. It's COVID
is still going. And yet I'll get a paperless post

(43:14):
to go to a big party, and then I have
friends who will not come out of their house. So
now we're in this kind of free fall of everyone
being very confused. We'll should I go to this birthday party?
It's one of my best friends, but she's having forty people.
That's crazy. You know. It is a lot of head scratching.
It is a lot of head scratching, and I think
it's one of those great times where everybody has to
figure it out for themselves and what works for them too. Yeah,

(43:37):
there is no one rule, one size fits all here. Yeah,
we kind of have to have respect, right, you know,
one friend need not want to come to your birthday
party because she's too uncomfortable and to some degree and
other things, I think we have to be a little
bit cautious of this. Right, There's something called secondary gain,
which means that you can maintain your anxiety because it

(43:58):
really helps with something else, so that you don't actually
want to get over your anxiety because if you did,
you have to actually go, you know, go to a
birthday party you don't want to go to. So, you know,
like for kids, like sometimes they might be like, I'm
scared to go out because of delta Um, but Cher Sully,
it's really a social anxiety issue that they're dealing with,
or a bowling issue. So we have to be a

(44:19):
little bit cautious that it's not used to be able
to avoid really avoid. But is that so hard to
figure out exactly? Which is where as a parent, you're
the expert on your own kid, you knew your kid
better than anyone, and as a mom or instincts are
so homeed, like we could feel it right when it's
like that, maybe there's some other reasons that you're wanting

(44:41):
to not go to this party or you know, not
wanting to live in the dorm this year or whatever,
and they could be super valid reasons too. I'd like
to really open up, like it's okay to have all
these things that you're worrying about and that you're scared up,
you know, right exactly. Another thing is there's a lot
of anxiety an animosity with the mask war. I call it,

(45:04):
Oh my god, So with the anti vactors and the
factors in the mask and not wearing the mask, and
I find that that's triggering people. I know, I know, No,
it's so unbelievably emotional, and I think it's because it's
addressing like our survival, you know, and feeling threatened. And
both camps are feeling the same way. Right, you're threatening

(45:26):
my kid. My kid can't breathe with a mask. But
I do really believe and know this. Every parent is absolutely, always,
always doing what they feel is best for their child.
It's not because they're wanting to hurt other people. It's
so primitive our instinct to protect our kids, even if
it seems malevolent, you always can find the threat of

(45:46):
the parent was feeling instinctively and absolutely believing this is
what I need to do to help my child and
to protect my child. Yeah. The other thing that happens
where we're really frightened is that we like to blame
other people for the problem, because there's something about blaming

(46:08):
and focusing that and blaming the other person for the problem.
I think that gives you a weird sense of control.
But but it does. It does, I mean it does.
I think about you know, if you and I were
lost in the woods, you would probably blame me because
I didn't read the map well, and I would blame
you because you didn't wear the right shoes and you're
slowing us down and it's getting dark. I mean exactly exactly.

(46:32):
If I'm frightened and feel powerless, I go to anger
because anger is power. I mean, that's one of the
benefits of anger in fact. Yeah, but it's also it's
a very primal feeling. I mean, think about every wild
animal exactly, if you, you know, approach their cubs or
their babies, they'll kill you bingo. So I think a

(46:53):
part of what happens is in the space that we're
in right now of this absolutely not knowing what the
fuck is going to come next, right, And that really
messes with our coping because part of helping people's anxiety
go down, and coping is predicting things. We can't predict
things anymore, and that messages with our ability to feel

(47:16):
calm and in control. So it's just completely missing with
our basic kind of hard drive that kind of goes,
this is how I function, And so it's so easy.
We we are feeling so helpless and powerless, but instead
of recognizing that, validating it, saying Okay, this is what
we are helpless and powerless over, we want to just blame.

(47:38):
There's something satisfying about just being able to blame the
other person right and wanting to be right and wanting
to be thinking we're doing the right thing. And it's
time for a short break. Ye, and we're back. So

(48:05):
let's let's bring it up now to adults, because I
think too. I mean, it's been rough on marriages this
whole period um, and I think it's taken more of
a toll on relationships than we even realize. The stress
it comes out in relationships in different ways. How do
we maintain our relationships without completely losing our minds, a

(48:29):
good sense of humor and our ability to laugh at
our own selves. Well, I've been trying that. You're very
good at that. Um. You know, I think that the
most useful thing to maintain any close relationships is to
be willing to look at your own role in the
problem and to stop blaming the other person. That being said,
when we're really angry and really upset it's not realistic,

(48:51):
which is fine, but finding some truth in what the
other person is saying about how angry they are with
you or whatever you did wrong, even if it feels unfair,
and then finding some way to imagine what what does
that feel like? Yeah, of course, oh I get it.
You know. Of course you were really frustrated with New York.
Of course that made you feel really ashamed. If you

(49:11):
can just create and continue that skill of like, okay,
well what's that like from the other person's point of view?
And you know that person, Like when you're in a
relationship with somebody, you know, being able to fight also
is a great skill, like being able to fight and
then reconnect, because some people avoid fighting and avoid conflict,
which is unhealthy, or they let it build up, or

(49:31):
one person is the fighter and the other person shuts down.
So being able to figure out how to how to
fight productively, I call it is really useful and learning
good skills to be able to not just because we
always want to be listened to write who doesn't want that,
But our capacity to actually listen to the other person
is usually pretty limited, and it requires empathy, and it

(49:54):
requires really asking and saying, Okay, you said this, and
I'm imagining you might might have been x Y z
am I getting that right, and to make sure that
you're actually getting it from their point of view. A
lot of people think empathy means thinking, oh, I would
feel like this in that situation. That's actually not empathy.
That's subjectivity. That's that's kind of more thinking of it

(50:17):
from your point of view. And so like if you
just took a moment and said, okay, well how my
day I felt, as you know them, not how you
would feel. And that's the hard part. And then there's
one last piece that's really really important to maintain. You
find at least one to two things that you could
say to the other person that you really do genuinely

(50:38):
respect about them, because respect is in fact what breads
ongoing love and closeness and you know the ebb and
flow of long term marriage and so too to have
enduring love, respect is what fuels that and literally finding
those things at least one a day, every single day,

(50:58):
like brushing teeth, some habits so that you can maintain
and even get closer. And then we could talk about
the situations where you know, you want to maintain the
status quot or you make a decision like this is
a person where no, it doesn't make sense to stay
with because in fact, I think the pandemic that's how
people realize, like life short. Yeah, I don't want to

(51:18):
stand in this marriage, right, Yeah, but I wanted to
say that that's something that I have found that's been
helpful for me in my marriage is that there are
times where you know, we're fighting about something and a
lot of people like like dig in even more, you know,
they kind of like, no, I'm right. And there are
times when I've realized, you know what, I'm wrong, I'm

(51:40):
just wrong about this, or I'm stressed out, like I'm
stressed out about COVID. You know, when everything blew up
when my daughter tested positive, I was angry and upset
and lashing out and arguing with my husband and the
right in the middle the argument, I went, you know what,
I'm sorry this, this has nothing to do with you.

(52:01):
This is COVID and I'm sorry, but that self awareness
that you have is what saves and what creates and
endur's relationships. We can't always be, you know, in in
this con state of mind and listening perfectly, like believe me.
But I also think we're all everything that it's been
dialed up emotionally for all of us right now, like

(52:23):
all of us, So I think it's a heightened emotional
time and so you know, we all have to be
aware of that. And one of the things that I
want to go back to, which I think is so helpful.
This is my big AHA moment with you, is that um,
that we're all in it in one way or another.
We're not all in lockdown anymore, but we're all dealing

(52:44):
with repercussions of this pandemic. And if we can look
at everybody else and thank however they're acting, whatever they're doing,
whether they're secluding themselves, they're being overly social, their screening
at parents, they're this there that we can all agree
that it comes from an emotional place and it comes

(53:07):
from a place of being safe, whether for them or
their kids, And that for me is a really interesting
lens to look at all of this through because that's
the only way I'm able to have empathy and understanding
with somebody who's, you know, maybe dealing with this in
a way that I'm not exactly and respecting that, and

(53:29):
that everybody has a right to do what they're comfortable
with and we all have to figure that out differently,
and it could keep and it's going to keep changing too,
and to be open to that change. I mean, evolution
happens because we adapt it, and so if we're going
to survive this, we have to figure out how to adapt.
And that means that we've got to adapt to the

(53:49):
fact that the reality that things keep changing and that
there's no one way to be That being said, everyone
has a right to create their own boundaries, so so
it's the healthy wasp, but also everybody can make their
own choices. Donna Fish, this has been really really helpful. Okay,

(54:09):
Donna Fish, we've come to the point in the podcast
where you get to ask me a question. Okay, so
my question for you was about social media and you
you have two daughters, right, yes, and they're eighteen and
how old is the other one? Six? Oh my god,
perfect ages for this. So when my kids were at
that age. Oh my god, there was no Instagram. I mean, honestly,

(54:31):
I feel for the adolescents I treat, and the young
women and the young people I treat who are always
like looking at images, not with social media, but like
literally how everyone is being looked at and how everybody's
saying selfiesn't like, how do you help them navigate that?
It has been well? Of course I didn't grow up
with social media, and so I there's no handbook for it. Um,

(54:56):
you know, I read books like The Big Disconnect, and
I worried first of all about my daughters with this
whole sexualization of social media. It was a huge red
flag for me. And so what I did was I
started to look at images with them and say, you
see this girl, you know, she's doing this in a bikini,

(55:19):
but what is what is she really saying? What is
she selling? Let's look at the big picture, what's going
on here? What hole is she trying to fill? And
so I would start with things that they could understand
like that, and I used a lot of humor with it,
you know, I I you know they were dressed provocatively.
I'd say, you know, oh, I'm sorry, are you Kardashian, well,

(55:40):
why don't you have Chris Jenner make you dinner? So
there's a lot of that. But also it was really
important for me to talk about the interior and I
would say, you know, it's really sexy, not being an
Instagram influencer, but being like a really cool scientist, and

(56:00):
I think it helped. I also had to be a
parent and go, you're just not allowed to post bikini shots.
You're just you're not allowed to so, and then when
they had friends that would do it, I would again
sit with them and say, God, why why do you
think your friend is sticking her ass out in the beginning,
Like what's going on with her that she feels the
need to do that. So those the combination of those

(56:23):
two things helped a lot. But you know, it doesn't
mean that they're still like not in their beds right
now looking at images going like oh I want to
have that. I'm feeling so moved, really heartened, and just
really respect you so much because you're offering your kids
exactly what they need to build the resilience to cope

(56:44):
with all of this, which is a close relationship with you,
that you're engaged, that you sit there with them and
that you're helping them think, you're you're you're asking them,
you're asking them to think about things, but you're in
there with them, and you have obviously such a great
close relationship. And guess what that is the key to

(57:04):
helping our kids and to helping them deal with all
the anxiety. As a mental health professional, my heads off.
Thank you, I'm serious. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thanks
for asking so thank you so so much. I really
appreciate you taking the time. Thank you, Ali. I really

(57:24):
think that the key takeaway from this episode, and there
was a lot, is that we kind of have to
in our relationships, in our relationships with other people. Well,
we may not believe the same thing, we may not
act the same way in this COVID world, but we
have to be able to think that, you know, this
person over here is doing the right thing for themselves,
or this person over here is doing the right thing

(57:47):
for their families. Because we are very polarized right now,
and so much of this has been heated up by
this pandemic, and as I sit here, I just want
to close my eyes and think to myself, in one
way or another, we are all in this together. We
are all charting new territory in various degrees, and for

(58:07):
some it has been horrific. People have lost jobs, people
have lost lives, We have lost our sense of community.
But the one thing we can't lose is our sense
of humanity and empathy, because that's all we have, and
many people believe that's the only way we're going to
get through this. And I want to thank for the

(58:27):
Zakaria because I was feeling very dark about the state
of our country and he actually made me feel very
optimistic about the economy. About activism, it's a way of
sort of righting the wrongs. I mean, maybe our country
needed to take a very close look at the things
that are just not working. So maybe it's time for
us as Americans to reflect on the things that need

(58:49):
to be fixed. And since my conversation with for Reed,
one of Biden's two infrastructure bills has become law and
the other is still in the Senate. And in the
ever evolve being in changing world, the omicron variant is
now with us, and so fasten your seatbelts see where
this goes. So thank you for Reid, and thank you Donna.

(59:17):
Thank you so much for listening to go ask Alli.
Be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast, and
follow me on social media on Twitter at Ali e
Wentworth and on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth and look.
If you have any questions or guest suggestions, I would
love to hear from you, call or text me at
three to three four six three five six or email

(59:38):
Go ask Alli podcast at gmail dot com. Go ask
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