This is Annie Lalla, Love Coach.
67. true love or bust: horizontal with a world-class relationship coach
I love sleepovers, spooning, sharing, sex, storytelling, and stargazing, among other things. So I metaphorically rolled them all up in audio form and called it a podcast. horizontal with lila is Slow Radio. It’s intimacies of all kinds. It’s us lying down, wearing robes, sharing secrets, in your ears.
Annie: And this is every couple, I notice: the conflicts come from the delta between the empathy-savvy of each partner. People like to think of polarity as feminine / masculine; I like to just take gender out. It’s actually a polarity between empathy. Most couples that are successful have one person that is good at me-ing and one person that is good at we-ing. And they constellate together, because on some deep level they know they only have half the picture, and they need to cross-train. The me-person tends to be masculine but doesn’t have to be. The we-person tends to be feminine, but doesn’t have to be. And so when they meet together, the we-person is Phd’s in empathy, all they do is run algorithms about how what they’re gonna say is gonna impact the other person. (Lila laughs) That’s why it’s so hard for them to be self-expressed, express their needs, say no—
Lila: Yeah, it’s a recipe for codependency.
Annie: Well honestly I’m gonna be straight up and say something really kind of edgy. I think every relationship starts codependent. And that it’s your job— if you’re in love, which is why I fight so much for this, for true love or bust, if you’re in love, you fight your way through the codependency to cross-train each other, so that the person who is over-empathic, and abdicating on their own needs and wants, learns to self, learns to generate a core identity and an autonomy, and a serenity— and they learn by watching that fucker over there that they love! (Lila laughs) Demonstrated in real time. Become their apprentice. You marry your favorite teacher in the domain that you most need to develop. […] And then the other person, the I-centric person, the one who’s good at me-ing, has to become an apprentice and learn how to develop, literally empathy algorithms. I teach my husband empathy algorithms, because it’s not native to him. And I teach him the structures of empathy, how to, to model another person’s experience in a way that wasn’t native to him, and you know what he teaches me? How to self— he teaches me algorithms of how, when there’s 5 people in a room, and they all wanna do something different, how to not go crazy! And to close my eyes, look into my third eye, and see scripture falling from the heavens, like at the beginning of Star Wars, to see: What do I want? […] And I started doing it and it fucking works! […] And now I know why he always knows what he wants! But I never knew how to do it before. And I asked him, “How do I not let another person’s anger or frustration, yelling at me or upset with me, impact me? How come when I’m frustrated with you, you’re unfazed, but when you’re frustrated with me, I fuckin’ lose my shit,” and he goes, “Oh! Just put up a plexiglass shield.” (Lila laughs heartily) I’m like, “What?” And he’s like, “Yeah, imagine a plexiglass shield between you and me— it’s invisible, made of the same material that Wonder Woman’s invisible plane is made of, […] and when I yell at you or say mean things, just imagine it hitting the shield and falling, and you can have sound effects, too. Ping!” (Lila laughs delightedly) And I literally, put the plexiglass shield up, whenever he loses his shit, and I stay over here safe and happy. I listen to what he says; I listen to the content, but the energetics and the truth of it does not get to me anymore. But he had to teach it to me! So I teach him how to do empathy; he teaches me how to be separate. Basically we’re co-teaching each other— the, the two requirements for a true love relationship is the ability to integrate and differentiate. Integrate and differentiate. Codependence is the inability to move between them. You need both. And if you’ve ever braided hair […] a ponytail, you have to take the hair and divide it into 3 strips. And the cleaner and more differentiated those 3 strips, the more exquisite the braid, when you integrate.
Lila: And the more it looks like one piece.
Annie: And that’s what coupledom is. Learning to be together, and then separate. I think of the organism of the us, as an entity. And it breathes. It inhales: that’s when you’re together gazing into each other’s eyes, having the best sex, can’t leave each other in bed, all day, inhale, exhale, fuck off, I need to go for a walk, I need to see my girls, I need to go away for a weekend, inhale, exhale, and you need to do that daily, weekly, and monthly. Couples need to know: whenever couples are fighting, it’s because they didn’t exhale in time. They were clinging to the us-y space.
Lila: Yes.
Annie: And so someone in the relationship has to become guardian of the us and one has to be guardian of the I.
Lila: Even when it’s good, and that’s something that I think people have a hard time conceptualizing, is that: even when it feels really good, the exhale is crucial—
Annie: Yes! You can’t hold your breath forever!
Lila: You hit— well, I hit, and many other people I know hit the upper limits problem.
Annie: Yes, exactly.
Lila: And then, feel ashy, and then—
Annie: And pick a fight!
Lila: Yes.
Annie: To get the exhale.
Lila: Or have an accident or—
Annie: An accident? What, whaddyou mean? Like literally, physically?
Lila: I mean, that’s what they say in Conscious Loving, that the ways that people bring themselves back down are having an accident, picking a fight, getting sick, yeah.
Annie: Escape. It’s always an escape, from the overwhelming us-hood. I literally think of it as an organism, and it needs to inhale and exhale. If you smother your child all day long, it’ll never develop. You need to give it space to run around on the playground and then it’ll always come back, you give it space. It’s not a frame that people use often, but there’s you, your partner, and the relationship— there’s 3 entities here, and they all get a vote. And I think if you always optimize for what nourishes the relationship, you will end up finding what nourishes each individual, but that wouldn’t be native. Because the relationship is what, you’re conspiring together to create. […] And, very often, we get caught up in What do I need, and What do you need? And they don’t track, what does the us need. Which is usually something that’s emergent and transcendent at the next level of being.
I love sleepovers, spooning, sharing, sex, storytelling, and stargazing, among other things. So I metaphorically rolled them all up in audio form and called it a podcast. horizontal with lila is Slow Radio. It’s intimacies of all kinds. It’s us lying down, wearing robes, sharing secrets, in your ears.
Each session with a guest is between 2 and 3 hours long, and divided into two episodes. Part ones are available anywhere you get your podcasts, and part twos are available only to patrons of the horizontal arts!
Become a patron of $5+ per month, because…
When I launch Season 3, I’ll be revealing a couple surprises, and revamping my Patreon tiers: If you’re already in as a patron, you’ll be grandfathered in with access to all the episodes. Fair warning, lovers!
Image by Valerie Zimmer Photography
This Thursday night in Brooklyn, come Valentine’s with us!
Valentine’s Day is in a few days, and I would usually be fretting about what to do.
This was especially true if I was single, but it was also very much true when I was part of a couple. What could I do that wouldn’t have me feeling lonely? How could I turn this day of forced romance and commerce and couples privilege… into a day that would actually be nourishing for Me?
I tried dating myself on Valentine’s. I tried friend-time. I tried tango festivals. I tried Galentine’s Day.But what I actually desired was an intimate, pleasure-focused experience for myself. I desired sensation play, delicious treats (that were safe for me to eat), titillating performance, immersive theatre, and one-on-one connection. I really wanted to make Valentine’s day about delighting all of my senses, not about the arbitrary fact of whether I was romantically linked to another person on that day.
So I’m curating it.
It’s called 14 Rooms, and it will be on Valentine’s night. It’s an event for everyone, whether you’re not in a relationship, in a relationship, in a polycule, in a situationship — no matter what our quote unquote status is, we can gather and explore intimate moments of different kinds.
Together. As a community celebrating pleasure, our senses, and our aliveness. Celebrating Big Love.
Come Valentine’s with us. It will be delicious.
It’s the Valentine’s I’ve always wanted.
This… is Annie Lalla. An unapologetic advocate for the Heart.
Apropos of everything, in this episode, I lie down with Annie Lalla, Goddess of Love and world-class relationship coach.
Annie stands for true love. She is a gladiator of empathy.
In this first part of our conversation, we talk about the correlation between self-esteem and soul mates, how couples cross-train each other, footnoting our parents for the superpowers born on the back of their crazy, optimizing for aliveness, empathy algorithms, integration and differentiation (the inhales and exhales of relationship), the phrase “I’m angry, but I love you more than I’m angry,” and using your creativity to adjust your emotional response to your reality.
I first met Annie when she gave a talk about true love in the Speaker Series I co-lead at Burning Man 2018. The theme was The Year of the Robot, and we had… technical difficulties. Our mic was down, so somebody found Annie a little toy bullhorn, and we all gathered round her like children at storytime, to press our burning questions into her hands like love letters. She is one of the most poignant extemporaneous speakers that I’ve ever witnessed on stage.
I took copious notes, because I’d literally never heard anybody speak about love the way that Annie does. These are some of the words I captured:
“cartographer of love”
“kilojewels of energy”
“There’s an I that has to be sacrificed on the altar of us. If you’re not feeling terror, you’re not actually playing the game.”
“the sacred mirror”
And…
“Nothing compares to the gymnasium, to the dojo of a true love relationship.”
Annie & Eben on the dusty stage at Camp Mystic, during that very talk, “Partner as Mirror & Muse.” Burning Man. August 2018
I imagine by now, you know how I feel about words. I savored Annie’s words, wrote them down in red ink, and fervently hoped that she would get horizontal with me someday. The time wasn’t right at Burning Man.
But when I booked my ticket to Miami, taking a loving risk to go meet a man I’d been communicating with for four months, but had never met in person (a risk I imagined that Annie would approve of mightily!) and I found out that Annie was in Miami!
Well!
Come lie down with us on a big white bed with a view of the ocean, in Miami, Florida…
horizontal with the luminous Annie Lalla in Miami, Florida. January 2019
If you are in need of the services of a Love Coach (and really, who isn’t?) you can commune with all things Annie through annielalla.com
Next week’s episode, 68, part two of my provocative conversation with Annie, will be available to patrons of $5 a month and up. The Patreon tiers will change in the next month or so, so lock in access to The Full Horizontal at the grandfathered rate by becoming a patron now!
Welcome to my newest patrons, Bob & Lee! And so much gratitude to Julene for raising her Patreon pledge.
After my trip to Miami, I’m feeling turned on by life. I wish you that! And as always, I wish us someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to.
Thank you for becoming horizontal.
Links to Things:
Become a patron of the horizontal arts for access to ALL the episodes!
Get your ticket for 14 Rooms: a Lila-curated intimate, sensual, immersive Valentine’s Night experience!
The website of a bonafide Love Coach, Annie Lalla
The website of Nathaniel Branden, who, as Annie says, literally wrote the book on self-esteem
Conscious Loving, one of Lila’s favorite books about intimacy, in which she first learned the concept of the upper limits problem
Co-Dependents Anonymous, a 12-step support group that Lila attended for a year
The National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI, where Lila briefly went to a support group for families of those with mental illness
Show Notes (feel free to share quotes/resources on social media, and please link to this website or my Patreon!):
website link: https://horizontalwithlila.com/
Patreon link: https://www.patreon.com/horizontalwithlila
[7:07] When Annie and Lila spoke on the phone about co-creating this episode, the night before they recorded, Annie referred to it as an unfurling conversation, and Lila loved that.
Lila: I love that word. I love that you used that word when we spoke last night about doing this. That is what I am attempting, the, the magic trick I attempt, is to unfurl ourselves, knowing that it will be shared.
Annie: Yeah, I think of a fern, or I think of a rosebud, and how the final bloom of the rosebud, or the fern is contained within the bud. It’s already there— the future’s latent in the present, and all that’s happening is that it’s unfurling, and I think unfurling has a pace, that’s organic, and it’s our job, as lovers, and as friends, and as teachers and coaches, to tune into the pace of another human’s unfurling, honor it, and not push it or pull it, but allow it to do its thing, in it’s own time.
Lila: I like this thought of the genetic promise of the relationship being inherent at the beginning.
[8:00] Annie on the correlation between self-esteem and soulmates.
Annie: Absolutely. And this is why a lot of the clients I work with, who are done with dating and ready to find their soulmate— the first thing I try to help them see is that: the caliber of partner they attract, is directly related to the level of their own self-esteem. And so, the higher their self-esteem, the higher quality mate they’ll attract. So that’s basically what I work on with my clients, is generating mechanisms, algorithms, technologies, and exercises to increase their self-esteem, and to have it be generative— not something they have to babysit all the time, something that runs on autopilot in the background. And again, self-esteem is not just how much strut you have as you walk down the street. Nathanial Brandon, who literally wrote the book on self-esteem, defined self-esteem in two parts: the first, is having deep trust in your future self’s ability, to handle what life throws at it. And the second, is feeling like you deserve to be happy. And if you have those two developed, then you can really enter reality with a, with a level of confidence, and trust in your ability to handle what comes, and in the right for you to enjoy your life. And that pleasure is a necessary part of your existence, and one you won’t compromise on.
Lila:
I think about that— the self-esteem being the barometer for what you’re able to attract and, there’s a piece of it, that when I hear that I feel sad. (Annie mmhm’s kindly) Because of how mightily I’ve strugged with my own self-esteem throughout my, my life, up until quite recently, and still occasionally on my worst days of course. And I know that a lot of people are laboring under this idea that is heavily sowed around, that, “Nobody can really love you until you love yourself,” and, I, imagine, people feeling depressed when they hear that—
Annie: Yeah.
Lila: Like, “Oh, nobody’s gonna love me, because this is so hard, to raise my self-esteem.”
Annie: Yeah!
Lila: And I don’t want people to be discouraged. When I was an actress, there is— inside-out mechanisms to delving into a character, a play, or a world, and there are outside-in mechanisms. And I’ve often had to rely, in my life, on outside-in mechanisms, which is why I wear fantastical things and bright colors and outlandish hats and, you know, I’m working on myself from the outside-in, so that I (underlapping) can generate.
Annie: Puff up.
[10:46] Annie on internal reference and external reference.
Annie: Well they call it internal reference and external reference, is the term for it. Most people tend to polarize into these two groups. […] And in couples, usually one of each comes together to cross-train. (underlapping) ‘Cause if you’re fully—
Lila: (overlapping) WHOA. Wait, lemme… (big chunky breath) Lemme take a second with that. I, I just saw it in a huge flash— the really confident men that I have been with (some of them) with the really happy childhoods, (lightly laughing) who, who just have it from the inside… and then: me. Who’s worked on it mostly— mostly? Is that true? No. That’s not, that’s not kind enough to myself, or true. I have done work both ways.
Annie: (gently) Yeah!
Lila: Towards the center.
Annie: But it’s easier for some people to go in one direction over another.
Lila: Yes.
Annie: And they both have a shadow, so, very internally-referenced people, who only believe what they believe, and, you know, 40 people could be telling them there’s a— (Lila laughs!) there’s some piece of reality that’s not true and they will argue against it. At it’s worse, they end up in an insane asylum— they’re crazy. Because they have a reality that noone else buys into, no consensus reality agrees with them. The shadow of external reference is that you’re always eternally contingent on external opinions and points of view, in terms of your value, your beauty, your intelligence. But […] what we want is a cross-train. You want to develop a character that has a sufficient internal reference that you can hold your autonomous point of view. Stand for something. Be a pioneer. Have a dharmic imperative and follow it. But you also want to be externally-referenced, so that you’re listening to what your community is saying; you’re tuned-in to the rest of humanity, and you’re not on some rogue (underlapping) trip—
Lila: You’re not a sociopath!
Annie: Basically, yes. Exactly. And sociopath is part of the anti-social disorder. […] Which means they don’t fit into the mainstream culture. And, you know, as much as they may get ahead in the world, the internal experience of a sociopath is deeply lonely. And never connected. And […] the quality of their internal life is not one that I would aspire towards.
internal reference = checking in primarily with oneself and one’s own thoughts and feelings to gauge the way one is relating to the world, to make decisions, and take action.
external reference = checking in primarily with external factors, which can include other humans or imaginary humans and their feedback, in order to gauge the way one is relating to the world, make decisions, and take action.
[13:00] Choosing your experience…
Lila: I can recognize it too, even when I see someone who has trappings that look like great plumage, and I feel into them and I think, Oooh, no. I don’t want that feeling. I don’t want what I imagine that feels like on the inside. I prefer this, this journey, thank you. (laughing) You know.
Annie: Yeah but— just that statement right there. “I prefer this journey.” I don’t know how you arrived at that place, but that is a triumph. To look across reality and see all the different ways people could feel inside their being, and to look at them all and go, You know what? I choose mine! I take this set of problems that I’m struggling with. And I think, that is an accomplishment of self-esteem. That means that… you wouldn’t trade your life in for someone else’s. And, not everybody feels that way and that’s part of the work I do is to help them to get there.
[13:56] Lila & her mother & Thanksgiving & I love yous.
Lila: I can see how… the suffering as a child, the deep loneliness and… resentment, at not having a family that I, wanted to be a part of… (Annie mm’s) and, feeling, there was nobody to play with me on, you know, holidays, when everybody was with their people. Their right true people. And, my mother’s, illness when I was 7, 8, and 9, of colon cancer and her being absent and in the hospital, and her subsequent manic depression which, has endured. And my, my grappling with her— grappling is a good word for it— […] because it was a fraught, […] fraught mother/daughter relationship that is, only now, beginning to improve. Actually, it im— started to improve after last year, when I—
[Note: This was actually 2017]
— went for Thanksgiving and found myself in a place where I told her I didn’t feel love for her.
Annie: That’s interesting, so, the relationship started to change when you realized— which is something I like to, help my clients learn— when you realize that the only way this relationship is gonna go further is if you take a leadership role. And you actually, take responsibility for moving in a new direction— because your mother’s maxed-out, in terms of her consciousness, but you are — if she’s done any good job — by the time you’ve hit 30, you know, mid-20s/30, you should have gone beyond your parents in terms of intelligence and consciousness.
Lila: (underlapping) Growth.
Annie: And so now you’re the leader. Of the intimacy, of the dynamic. (Lila mm’s) So I’m really proud that you took that step and it sounds like it’s proved, useful.
Lila: It’s better than it’s ever been, and, it really changed because I was feeling just, that any interaction I had with her was out of obligation. And I felt so… there was a guilt I was carrying, and she did— she co-created—
Annie: Oh yeah.
Lila: A lot of guilt with me. And I was carrying it and, nn— I was just placating her. I would talk to her on Facetime once a week at a certain time because I know that— I knew that it— as a good codependent person, I knew that that would put her at ease, and that she would feel less nervous […] and she would get this scrap of my attention, that I really didn’t wanna give… and after I told her that I didn’t feel love for her and then left her house— I was on a cross-country— the tail end of this cross-country road trip where I was recording, and I was like, “I have to go. I just need to go. And I left, and. And I finished the rest of the trip, which was another week or so. And I talked to her, afterwards, and she said, something that really, shocked me. She said, “It hurts of course. But… I, understand.” (voice breaking) “And I don’t blame you.” (crying-speaking) And I didn’t expect that, she would be able to, to offer that. To not blame me for not feeling love for her. I really expected blame. So to, to have her say that she, she didn’t, I think, released some of the pressure valve of the guilt, that I’d, I’d been carrying. And, I stopped saying “I love you,” as a, as a rote way to end a conversation, and, and I stopped talking to her at the appointed time, of, you know, Fridays at 4:30, and I, gave myself the space to— not— try to… (voice breaking) make her okay.
Annie: (kindly) Yeah.
Lila: (crying) ‘Cause she’s, she’s not okay, sh— hasn’t been okay. And she’s… the loneliest person I know. And I know a lot of lonely people. In, in a huge way I can see how, having her as a, a guide through my life has been a, an extreme PhD in empathy.
Annie: Yeah, that’s probably the hidden gift that you make use of in your life.
Lila: So mu— I mean, it is everything, to what, I am doing and, and I can look at it also, if I’m thinking of my why, and I can see: she’s so lonely and I don’t— I wanna fight loneliness as an adversary, I want to, to unlock secrets that allow people to step into nourishing connection, and interaction. And, I also told her, in that conversation, (crying) it was so, I could feel just how awful it was to be saying these things and I f— but I felt like I had to—
Annie: The— yeah, they were true.
Lila: I said I (under the breath) don’t wanna end up like you. I— I’m so sorry for you and she’s like, “That’s awful. That’s awful for you to have to, feel sorry for me. I don’t want that, you know. And, it’s gonna get better, and, you know, I’ll try, I’ll— ” As many manic-depressive people, she has a, also a great joy for life! Sometimes. And, loves to dance, loves to ballroom dance, and knows she needs to do these things. I talked to her on the phone the other day, and she said that her therapist said that she needs— she has to go back to dancing. ‘Cause she used to come into her therapists’ office and show her pictures and bring her gifts, and, and she had a … (very quietly) joie de vivre. And, her therapist said, “I haven’t seen you do that in months and months and months.” She has to dance, it’s a, it’s a prescription—
Annie: Yeah. Her life depends on it. Her aliveness depends on it.
Lila: […] And she knows. But she will— every time I spoke to her, she would be like, “I know I need to do this. I just can’t bring myself to do it.”
Annie: I mean, we all suffer with some version of that, the thing that we know would enliven us—
Lila: (laughs lightly) That we don’t do. Or that we don’t do enough of, or…
Annie with the elephant in her room. Unavoidably pink in a big white room, it is like a talisman paving the way for difficult conversation. Miami, FL. January 2019
Annie: But I really want to acknowledge your courage in— or maybe the desperation, in having to express what was real for you. And I want to point out, that even though that was super hard, and painful, and probably trespassed all kinds of contracts, secret contracts you had with your mom—
Lila: Oh my God.
Annie: — that audacious move, was the turning point, is the inflection point, in the relationship changing with your mother. And on the other side of it, something new is possible for both of you. And it took your courage and your leadership to do that. And what I’m really touched by with your mom is: underneath all her pain, and her obligation and her guilt is this piece of her, that loves you enough, to care that it’s hard for you. To get that this was painful. And you— in that little gap, you got to see th— her love, like sort of leak through.
Lila: Actually feel her love, not just her being like, “Oh, I love you so muuuch, you know, you’re my, you’re my only person,” basically.
Annie: Like feel benevolence. Feel her, literally, emotional willingness to go into your experience.
Lila: Her genuinely unconditional love, right, like th— this person who you— produced, and gave life, is telling you that they don’t feel love for you, and, you say (voice breaking) “It’s okay I still … I still love you.” And I thought, This is either gonna kill her, and she’s gonna die, and I’m gonna have that in me, I’m gonna live with that, or something’s gonna change.” That was a year ago— no, over a year ago. I didn’t go down to see her until her birthday, in November… but it was, better, and there were moments that I— that I loved her, and I— could f— could actually feel a genuine sense of like, This human… This human… I was at my favorite tea shop, I was talking to the, manager, and he just started listening to the podcast, and he listened to an episode in which I spoke about, that encounter, that Thanksgiving encounter, and he said, “I wonder— are you open to this, any feedback?” And I said, “Yes,” And he said, “I wonder, if— you know very well, the ways in which she was wrong for you, and I wonder if there’s a place for you now to, to consider, all the ways in which she was right for you. (pause) There’s no way that I would have access to the kind of empathy that I do without something like that. Some kind of trauma or, something like that.
[23:14] Annie on the practice of “footnoting” our parents.
Annie: It’s like: On the back of her particular brand of crazy, you got to build these muscles, these superpowers that not only serve you but make you a leader in the world, around this particular domain. And even though you can’t directly footnote it to my mother taught me this, it is still because of her that you have developed it, and so the way I look at it is: Can we footnote our parents for being a participant in our superpowers that were built on the back of their crazy?
Lila: (laughing) Yes, yes!
Annie: And and give them the props in our mind. Every time I’m empathic, I footnote my mom’s lack of empathy. And I kinda thank her, I go, Mom, thank you, and it sucked when I was four and it sucked not having you care, but I really love my life and my ability to care for people now, and I wouldn’t have had it without you, and so I’m still gonna give you props. […] I call it footnoting, and it’s one of the practices I give my clients, where I get them to list out and footnote things in their life that they wouldn’t have or be or think or do if it hadn’t have been for their parents. And to write them down, and the next time they see their parents, just tell them one. I love reading books. I mean, I worship books; they’re all over my house. When my father would find books on a street, in a different language, he would pick them up like sacred objects and bring them home. Because books, held knowledge. And I learned a respect, and a deep appreciation for reading and books, and so does my husband and I love that part of me and I wouldn’t have had it without my father. I talk to strangers in elevators, only because my mother does. There’s a lot of things she didn’t do, but she liked talking to strangers. And so every time I talk to strangers, I footnote my mom, in real time, in the corner of my mind, (whispers) Mom thanks; I’m really enjoying myself, talking to strangers. And so I think if we can build the practice, of in real time footnoting the parts of our reality and our being that came from our parents— what we build is a sense of history. Every single cell in our body is linked: two little pieces of mom and dad, intertwined, ad infinitum, in every cell, and if— if you can think of your parents as— I literally see my mom as sitting on my left shoulder and my dad as sitting on my right shoulder. And everywhere I go in reality, they’re informing and influencing how I show up and when it sh— when it’s in a way that I love, I just, wink at them, on each side, like Thanks. You are my history. And I’m the cutting-edge avatar of the family lineage. And, I’m standing on their shoulders. Good bad or indifferent; they’ve contributed to who I am—
footnoting (verb) = a thought-practice developed by Love Coach Annie Lalla, in which a person mentally give’s their parents credit in their mind, when they notice themselves doing or being something that they can relate back to (footnote) some quality, attribute, or lesson from their parents.
[25:55] Annie on optimizing for aliveness.
Annie: — and if you can find a way to love this moment. Even in its pain and its despair, by attending to its aliveness. I don’t optimize for happiness anymore. The opposite of dead is not happy; it’s alive. So when I’m crying, when I’m sobbing, when I’m angry, I am alive.
Lila: Alive, very much.
Annie: And I’m alive because of them— literally, metaphorically, and, you know—
Lila: Spiritually, perhaps.
Annie: Spiritually. So, you know, learning to honor your parents for your own aliveness, is a, it’s a skill, and it adds to your self-esteem. It’s one of the first ways to develop your self-esteem.
Lila: I love the idea of sending up that thanks. And that’s how I visualize it as you’re talking about it— you’re talking about it on your shoulders, but I see it up. […]
Annie: It’s like a royalty.
Lila: Thanks for that love of the theatre.
Annie: (whispering) Yeah!
Lila: Without that I never would have trained. I never would’ve—
Annie: Who’d you get that from?
Lila: My mother.
Annie: Excellent.
Lila: I also got my love of color— although I had a wearing-black phase, to rebel against it, I had a little, almost goth phase in high school, you know. But like, my love of color, my love of vibrance, my, my ability to talk to anybody that I want to, or choose to talk to.
Photographic evidence of the love of color that I got from my mother. Love Wall in Wynwood. Miami, Florida. February 2019. Photo by Captain Yes.
Annie: And these are all experiences that your mother, created reference experiences for you?
Lila: Mmhm.
Annie: Does she know that?
Lila: (long pause) I should tell her. She probably knows. But not—
Annie: From you.
Lila: — necessarily because I said it.
Annie: Yeah. And what I’ve noticed with parents, after— at this point in their life, you think of them as someone that, who are your elders, and your authorities, and the ones you look up to, but on some level they’ve actually reduced to like, teenagers.
Lila: Yes.
Annie: That are looking for us for approval.
Lila: Yes. So much.
Annie: (overlapping) And so what I’ve noticed—
Lila: She always asks me if she looks pretty. […]
Annie: Well they’re like needy teenagers that need approval, because you’re the high status person now— you’re not older, but you’re higher status— in every way status can be discerned. And so what I do is, I try not to lie; I try to make authentic transparencies about what I actually do appreciate—
Lila: Right.
Annie: — so like, love of the theatre, love of color. Those you can say triumphantly without even a reservation. […] Letting her know, something amazing that happened in your life that you love, or even if you’re wearing a beautiful shirt in the middle of the phone call: “I’m wearing this amazing colorful shirt, Mom, and I just want you to know: I only picked it because I love color, and the I love color because you showed me how— Thank you. And it’s such a big part of my life.” When you can footnote things you’re proud about in yourself, to your mother, so that she can get the props, without it stealing from your own. I literally think of our parents as hands, and we’re the gloves that they’re wearing, and they’re shaping reality through us, and so I like to give them the credit, because I don’t need it! Let them have it! So I’ll tell them about my triumphs: Mom, I got this podcast; I got this interview. I got to be on this show and talk to this person, and you know what? The reason I was able to do this is because of a b c, and a and b I learned from you. So I leak back the credit to her, so that she can feel it, and it doesn’t cost me anything.
Lila: I have never listed all the ways in which my mother was the right mother for me. So it’s time for that. And those are pieces of it. The color, the the fabulosity, the the ability to— the charisma.
Annie: (delightedly) Mmhmm!
Lila: The charisma, the ability to go in and say “Helloo!’ (laughs)
Annie: And it’s such a big part of you. It’s such a signature.
[29:57] Annie on her woowoo frame about how we chose the parents we have before we were born (because we needed that particular shape of wound in order to develop the superpower we wanted to develop).
Annie: I’m gonna just warn you— it’s woo-woo. It’s not true; it’s a metaphor. But I have this like, fantasy, that right before you’re born, the Universe sits with you and says, Okay, new entity. You’re gonna be born in the human form. What superpowers do you want, as you reign on Planet Earth? And then you say, This is the superpower I want: empathy, fabulosity, charisma, whatever. And then they say, (slightly witchy voice) Hmm. In order to achieve that, we’re going to have to have you born to these two parents, who are gonna produce a particular shape of wound in you, on the back of which will produce this set of, of superpowers that you want. And we’ll do it with the minimum amount of pain but we can’t avoid the pain, because you can only develop these superpowers on the back of conflict and drama.
Lila: Absolutely!
Annie: And so there you go, you’re going to be born to these parents— you choose basically, your parents, based on the superpowers you want to develop. And they’re the best way you could have got them. And so when you own that you chose your parents in order to develop these skills, it shifts the grumble from What the fuck? and Why did they do this? to—
Lila: How could they?
Annie: All right. This is the Mount Everest I needed, to get the feeling you need on the top. You can’t get there without Everest. And I chose this Everest.
[31:17] Lila tells a story about “the man who got her pregnant.” Annie laughingly adjusts her language.
[31:48] Lila cops to residual resentment.
Lila: Clearly I am still resentful of the way that he didn’t show up for me—
Annie: Ahh, so there’s pain.
Lila: Yes.
Annie: That’s what I was sensing.
Lila: Oh there’s, there’s a lot, there’s a lot of resentment still, that is not cleared. […] A lot of it has to do with the way that we did that together, but I went through it alone.
Annie: (softly) Oh yeah, yeah.
Lila: And he didn— he was out of town for the abortion… and, he called me the next day and then we didn’t speak until I reached out to him six weeks later. And, knowing that he has an ex-wife, who had an abortion, knowing that he has been in that position before, I can’t imagine, how, he would… choose, not to show up for me, even as a friend. After that experience. So I am still just, very resentful. And he sent me a message the other day inviting me to his screenplay reading. I was like, “FUCK YOU!!!”
Annie: Wow.
Lila: “Fuck you, are you fucking kidding!”
Annie: Just, that’s an indicator. […] He probably is literally so misattuned to what you were going through, what was needed from him— not that it forgives him at all, but there is some, like, lack of c— basically a lack of consciousness. Was there indications of this kind of lack of consciousness, this kind of—
Lila: I know that he is not where I am, and he knows that. He— in our most recent conversation, in which I offered him… to be my lover, and the only, thing I asked, was— that’s not true, the only thing I asked. I wanted to see him once a week. I wanted to—
Annie: This is after the abortion?
Lila: Yes.
Annie: You were actually open to being reconnected with him romantically?
Lila: Yes.
Annie What was driving that?
Lila: I love him. But. He is not my man. And I— when you said the wounds, earlier, you said that [Note: sometimes] when it’s really, when the fuck is really hot, it’s, it’s the wounds fucking—
Annie: Yes.
Lila: I think that’s the case with this man. And also, it’s a, it’s a long story in which, I had wanted him to be my sexual debut, in college, and he wouldn’t, because he was technically my boss at this work-study thing and, and so this is 17 years later, y’know, that— it’s also the loss of this epic love story that I thought we were, we were playing it.
Annie: So it’s the loss of a narrative […] but the reality didn’t match the narrative.
Lila: No he didn’t match me.
[…]
Lila: He had never been touched softly before. So I was touching his back, he’s like “What, what, I don’t, what is that?” And I said, “What do you mean, what is that?” And he said, “There’s […] crazy chills going up and down my spine, I’ve never, I’ve never felt this before. Nobody’s ever touched me this way,” and I said, “Nobody’s ever touched you softly before?” And he said, “No.” And I said, “What about your wife, of, seven, years?” And he said, “No, it’s was always ‘Touch me.’ From her. ‘Touch me.’” So I know that I’m in a very different place of thinking about — and feeling into — romance than he is. And in the midst of that he went to see his therapist, and he, came back and told me this, in bed one day, he said, “I was talking to my therapist, and I asked him” — because part of this story is that his wife turned out to be a lesbian and he was devastated and he writes heartbreak music about it — “Do you think that you can develop empathy without pain?” And his therapist just laughed. (Lila laughs) So, that leads me to believe that he is only just now learning empathy. So he is in a very— in a, light-years-different—
Annie: Yeah, yeah, he’s in kindergarten, and you’re doing your PhD […] in empathy.
[36:19] Annie on the way couples come together to cross-train in empathy and separateness.
[42:00] Lila wonders how you do this optimizing-for-the-relationship as opposed to the individuals, in real-time.
Lila: How do you do it in real-time, like how can you do it now, knowing that you had this phone call from Eben earlier, that you were like, Uwahh, why now? What are you? Tzahhh! Why you bring this up?!”
Annie: Yeah, so my husband called this morning with some grumble, and I was frustrated, and it left me kind of off for the rest of the day, but I breathed and regulated my nervous system, and, I know we’re gonna get through it, and […] that was a forced exhale. But he’s actually away right now, which is a kind of exhale for our relationship, he’s actually away, but when you’re away, sometimes it’s even scarier to have an exhale— like a fight while they’re away.
Lila: Yeah. I guess— what I’m curious about, is: you have a naturally built-in exhale in this situation, but, you were talking about optimizing for the third entity that is the relationship. Is that optimizing for it?
Annie: So what I did is, I got off the phone and I was fucking pissed. So I wrote him this text, saying, This is what I thought was sub-obtimal: you didn’t check in for my emotional state when you started talking about whatever you had to talk about an’ get off your chest. And I think that it would’ve been better if you would’ve checked in to see what I had to do today— I had to do this live interview, I have a whole bunch of things I’m running, and the thing he was calling to tell me, didn’t need to happen in that moment. And so I gave him feedback about the sub-optimality of his timing; I gave him feedback about my emotional state. I said I’m fucking angry. I actually said I’m 9 out of 10 angry. I said, I love you way more than I’m angry. But I’m angry! And here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to take this anger that I have in my body, that I think, like I wanna blame you for it; I wanna say, you ruined my day and you caused it to be shitty, but I’m not gonna do that. You may have triggered my anger, but you’re not the cause. I call the shots in my emotional states. So what I’m gonna do, is go away, take some space, go for a walk, breathe myself down, regulate my nervous system, take charge of my emotional state, and do the adult thing, which is, create the emotional state that I want to be in for the rest of the day. And bookmark my frustration with my husband as it will get resolved when the time is right. We are committed to this relationship; we love each other, we’re gonna work it out—
Lila: (softly) Unfurling.
Annie: But right now, I just need to get back to center. And I did it.
[44:13] Lila on blame.
Lila: Annie, I do so much blaming— I’m ashamed of how much I blame. And I think it is a legacy of blaming, that is— I think it is learned.
Annie: Yeah, totally.
Lila: I do not think it is native to me. I think that I have adopted it as a stance, as a, a wounded stance, from somebody who, is just deeply depressed and lonely. And I don’t want it, I don’t wanna do it, I don’t wanna let it—
Annie: Plague your life. (underlapping) Steal your aliveness.
Lila: Also, I was thinking about, like, scratch away at my relationships. […] I did go to Co-Dependents Anonymous for a year, and a lot of these things that you talk about are reminiscent of ways in which codependent people work to recover: How do I feel? What do I want? […] If I put up a boundary, I might get flack. I can deal with that flack.
Annie: Yes.
Lila: I own my emotional state. How I’m feeling is not a reflection on my character. If I’m jealous, if I’m feeling insecure, that does not mean that I, have no self-esteem. […]
[45:27] Annie on maintaining an empowering stance for yourself.
Annie: One of the definitions I learned for integrity is two-part: first, keeping your word, and if you break your word, clean it up. […] But the second piece noone talks about, which is always maintaining an empowering stance for yourself. And what that means is — and I literally think this is the purpose of the human imagination — is to always use your intelligence and your imagination, to conjure and create a narrative, in which what you did, how you are, how you be in this moment, is the absolute best that could be mustered, in this moment, given the resource that you have.
Lila: (laughingly) It’s the inverse of “Worry is a bad use of creativity”?
Annie: Yes!
[…]
Annie: Creating an empowering stance for yourself, requires you to look at this very haunting and difficult phrase: What would have to be true for this to be the right thing that’s in existence right now? […]
Lila: What would have to be true for this to be the right thing to be happening in this moment?
Annie: Or another way to think of it is: The universe is always unfurling perfectly. Just hold that as a fixed point. How do I need to shift my brain, my mindset, and my creativity— if that’s the fixed point, the universe is unfurling perfectly, what do I have to believe, in order to make that, true?
Lila: Do you think that’s possible in the midst of trauma?
Annie: I don’t think in the midst of trauma.
Lila: (underlapping) It’s later, isn’t it?
Annie: (overlapping) I think it’s how you transcend trauma later. […]
Lila: It’s like a rewriting of the circumstances surrounding the traumatic experience.
Annie: It can be, but it’s really a rewriting of how you look back— the trauma’s done. It’s happened in the past. It’s how you relate to the memory, that continues to rob you of your aliveness. So it’s about changing the way you look back at the trauma, so that this current version of you has more power, not less power, and creativity, imagination, and intelligence, would be of great service in helping you do that, and this is what therapists do, is they offer resource, and narrative, and opportunity to reframe what has already happened and cannot be changed, so that you relate to it in a way that gives you energy and aliveness, rather than robs you of power.
[48:58] Lila reminisces about seeing a therapist during her last year at NYU: Rachel Terte, whose specialty was working with the families of the mentally ill. And the NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) support group Lila attended while living in Portland.
[54:17]
Annie: It takes courage to be transparent. It takes courage, to be honest. It takes courage to cry. And I feel like someone who’s actually connected to their aliveness, lives one thought away from tears at all times.
67. true love or bust: horizontal with a world-class relationship coach
I love sleepovers, spooning, sharing, sex, storytelling, and stargazing, among other things. So I metaphorically rolled them all up in audio form and called it a podcast. horizontal with lila is Slow Radio. It’s intimacies of all kinds. It’s us lying down, wearing robes, sharing secrets, in your ears.
