Dr Jennifer Guttman - Happiness or satisfaction?

Hi and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled. And it's always a joy when a guest that's been part of the podcast series comes back and today is no exception. And I'm joined today by Dr Jennifer Guttman, who's sitting in front of me looking resplendent. So first of all, good afternoon, wherever you are in the world.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be back on the show.

Remind us of where you are.

I'm in New York.

Okay. Hence the 08:00 in the morning thing for you. That makes sense. 5 hours. Yeah, absolutely right. So, it's great to see you again and talk to you again so tell us what you've been up to since the last time we spoke, which is I think we think it's two or three years ago, maybe a little bit more. So, tell us what's been happening.

So since then I have published a book called Beyond Happiness the Six Secrets of Lifetime Satisfaction, which was quite an endeavour. Looking back on it, if somebody had told me what it would be like to publish a book, it was even more of a deal probably than having both of my children combined. But I did it. I'm not sure I would do it again, but I'm very excited now that it's done and it's out and people can hold it in their hands. But I'm happy that now people can learn my ideas about how to achieve satisfaction.

Brilliant. And so why don't you for those that don't remember you from the last time around, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what it is that you do and such? Like, give us a bit of a pen portrait and then we can dive right in.

I'm a clinical psychologist with a background in cognitive behavioural therapy. I have been practicing for 30 years. Can't believe it's already been 30 years, but it has been 30 years. And I started off working in a family homeless shelter for the first eight years of my career, working with women with children under the age of five. And then I moved from there to initially a private practice in Westport, Connecticut and then two private practices, one in Westport, Connecticut and another in Manhattan. And it was during that time that I started to develop Sustainable Life Satisfaction, which is a trademark brand of therapy that the book is based on.

Interesting. And in the States, obviously, psychology is slightly different. But a clinical psychologist, how would they be different in your world from any other type of psychologist or psychologist?

Yeah, so there's different kinds of psychologists. There's clinical psychologists and we're the kind that speak to people, talk therapy. For me, as the cognitive behaviourist, I focus on how people's thoughts and behaviours impact their mood and most effective functioning. But there's also developmental psychologists and social psychologists and forensic psychologists. But I am specifically a clinical psychologist, so I spend most of my day talking to people now since the pandemic over Zoom, but originally it was in my office, and still, after 30 years get up very excited to talk to sometimes 17 people in a day about what is going on with them and try as much as I can to guide them into living a more satisfied life.

And that's interesting, isn't it? Because in the UK, it's slightly different. So, I'm a psychologist as well, but the similar skill set, but we'd often call a behavioural psychologist, whether you're clinical, so there's slightly different, but we do the same sort of thing. So that's really brilliant. Now, I remember you from before and I remember we actually had quite an agreeable podcast because we sort of agreed on a lot of things. And I'm going to do my best to be a little bit more robust and challenging this time around. But fundamentally, I agree with a lot of what you're going to say today. So, I'm going to spend some time thinking about what the audience might be thinking about as questions. But you and I, I think, come from a similar place. So, you've made the distinction already between satisfaction and happiness. So, should we unpack those terms first of all, and knowing that I really agree with you, I'm going to ask you some challenging questions, if I may, if I can think of any.

Okay, my pleasure. So, happiness. The reason that I started to look at the difference between happiness and satisfaction is I had, over the past 30 years, I had thousands of clients coming into my office talking to me about how they felt like they were failing at being happy. But you can't fail at an emotion. Happiness, as an emotion comes and goes. It's not meant to be long lasting. Happiness is dependent on the outside world. It's instigated by something happening, like finally getting that sought after piece of clothing or getting a surprise text from somebody, or for me, seeing a bed of sunflowers. And in that way, satisfaction is different. Satisfaction is within your control. Satisfaction with the right techniques is something that is achievable. Satisfaction is a feeling of contentment. It's a feeling of peace. What I wanted to do was turn around the conversation, change the dialogue, so that we could move beyond happiness to the next frontier, which is satisfaction.

So I would contend that happiness is a choice. What would you think?

I think that happiness is a dopamine push. And because I feel that happiness is a dopamine push, I would not see it as a choice because I feel that a neurotransmitter push is not necessarily a choice. I would say satisfaction is a choice.

Oh, it's interesting. So, I wonder if we're using similar terms to describe a different because I agree with you, dopamine choice. I think you get the dopamine rush and happiness because you've chosen it. Because actually, happiness is more of a mood than anything else. And actually, how you set your mind up, how you choose to view the world gets you temporary bouts of happiness. But actually, happiness sustained over a period of time gets you satisfaction because you become content in a sense you become rewarded by your long-term approach in the world. So, I suppose that's where I'm coming from with this. Well, I think you are as well actually.

Well I think that for happiness because I think it's a dopamine push. I think there are people that are hardwired for sure to, let's say, get more joy when they see a beach for the first time or get more joy when they see a sunrise because they're hardwired for more euthymia and there are people that are hardwired for not getting as many dopamine pushes as other people. And I think based on how neural pathways work and we can change neural pathways that we may be able to train ourselves into being more mindful and focusing more on these moments so that maybe we can get a little bit more joy out of them. But the point that I try to make in the book is that they still are fleeting. We can't look at something like an ocean or a bed of sunflowers for me and then sustain that fleeting emotion for a particularly long period of time.

Whereas satisfaction the feeling that you get when you are at the end of a really productive day or clean out your email inbox or clean out your closets, or how I feel when I'm lying in bed at the end of the day reading a book. That feeling of contentment or peace, that feeling is achievable and sustainable in a way that how you feel when you are just having these consistent dopamine pushes is not that same lengthy sustainable feeling. And I think that resilience is found within satisfaction because satisfaction holds within itself confidence, self-reliance, self-respect, and happiness doesn't have that within it.

Yeah, I totally agree. Damn. I totally agree. So, where I come from, and I just want to unpack this a bit more for people I think people think that happiness is a sort of outcome. So, for example, you can have a day where you go travelling, the plane is late, your kids are late, it's troublesome you fly somewhere, you get there, you're tired but you can still be happy because there's a choice. You can still enjoy that process, you can still set your mind up to actually experience something. And I think what happens to a lot of people is they go to work and wait for happiness to strike them as if it's a lightning bolt. So, they don't find the happiness in situations or the enjoyment or the pleasure. What they do is they wait for it. So, for me that's why I see happiness as more of a mood.

I totally agree with everything you say about satisfaction for me, satisfaction is almost like the removal of all the neurotransmitters. So, you're calm, you're in control, you know what's happening, you're actually aware of the sort of mental state that you're in and you can make those sorts of conscious choices you need to get to where you want to. And sometimes life satisfaction, you have people who are resilient going through the most horrendous times, but they're still enjoying it. And you have some people who enjoy that process of adversity and the challenge of getting somewhere, whereas you have other people who only enjoy something once they've got there. And I think that's the difference. In my mind.

I agree with everything you're saying. I think that it's an issue of semantics because I agree with everything that you're saying. So, I really do think it's a semantic difference because I agree that you can enjoy the process. To me it is about semantics. And I would see what you're talking about as resilience people can enjoy. And I guess it comes down to like is that happiness? Is that satisfaction, the process despite adverse situations or things going awry or having to pivot depending on their mindset. And you would say that means that they're bringing happiness to the mindset, and I would say they're bringing resilience and satisfaction to the mindset. But I think that basically we're saying the same thing because I agree with what you're saying. I think it just has to do with what words we're using to describe different kinds of resilience.

And that's important, Jennifer, isn't it? Because actually, in our world, in the social sciences, things are very rarely well-defined, and we don't all have one definition of things. And when we talk about emotions, a lot of us depend on the Ekman stuff, a lot of us go back further, a lot of use some of the new neuroscience terms and ways of thinking about it. Some people think there are 150 emotions, some people think there are five, some seven. There is no definition. This is one of the challenges I find with people and with practitioners because the fundamental definitions aren't there and we can get stuck in the semantics, I know we don't intend to, but the thrust is to be able to explain it the way that people understand. And for me, I've always thought that what we're aiming for is a form of satisfaction.

I think you call it life satisfaction. Is that what you call it? Sustainable life satisfaction and sustainable being the key word. Because actually what we want is to be satisfied for a long period of time. Which is why, in a funny sort of way, we measure things like satisfaction. We don't measure happiness.

Well, yes, that's true, we do that, or we say be happy all of the time. And my concern is that I feel like I have people saying I'm not happy all the time. But when I ask people but are you satisfied? And I don't know what your experience is in your practice, but for me, in my practice, people will come to me and say they're not happy all the time and they feel like they're failing. But when I say to them, but are you satisfied? They don't feel like they're failing at satisfaction. They do feel like they're failing at happiness. And that's why one of the reasons why for me personally, I would like to turn around the semantics, because I think that the brain feels like it can be more successful at being satisfied and content with moments of happiness than it feels like it can be happy in an ongoing way and I'd rather because I worry about people's existential despair, I'd rather have them be looking for something that they feel like they can succeed at, especially if I can give them the tools to do it.

You're right. And what you've talked a little bit, I alluded right to at the beginning is that you've broken down satisfaction into six sort of factors. So, could you run us through that sort of big picture and then we'll sort of explore them a little bit, if we may?

Sure. So, the six techniques that I talk about in my book that I believe are the building blocks for sustainable life satisfaction are avoiding assumptions, reducing people pleasing behaviours, making decisions, facing fears, closing out tasks, and active self-reinforcement.

It's fascinating when you get a group of six of anything, because I always say, well, which is the most important? And people say they're all equal, but some of those things are more equal than others, aren't they? To quote George Orwell what's your view?

So I would say none of them is more equal than another. I put them in an order for a reason, which is that they build on each other. They coalesce, actually, because the last chapter is called define Resilience, because they coalesce so that you become a resilient person at the end. I would say that I haven't met anyone that doesn't struggle with one, some or all of them. And I think that basically what I tell people is you can start at the beginning of the book and decide, do these all apply to me? And if some speak to you more than others, you don't have to go through the book in order. But if you think that you may have trouble with some piece of all of them, then you should go through the book in order because they do build on each other in order to get to people pleasing. If you at all make assumptions, you should start with assumption making.

Yes. And assumption making is that critical process where you spend your entire life second guessing what everybody else is thinking, which is one of the features of it as well. Is that fair?

Yeah. So, avoiding assumptions is guessing well what you feel like you should be feeling, which is what were just talking about. I feel like I should be happy all the time what you think people are thinking or what you think people are going to do, and then making decisions about what you're going to do based on what you think they are going to do or what you think they're going to say. And the problem with that is that it can create a whole host of social problems. And the suggestion that I make to people is that you pause and wait and ask yourself, if I had to convince a jury of my peers before I act on an assumption, could I convince them that I have enough actual concrete evidence to do anything in this particular situation? And until I have enough concrete evidence to convince a jury of my peers, I'm going to wait and not do anything.

Yeah, that's a good CBT thing, isn't it? I was working with someone yesterday who hadn't heard from their partner, who'd gone to New York, oddly enough, which is when you said New York, it made me think, and they'd sent them messages and were second guessing everything that was going on and then making themselves anxious by overthinking what could have been happening. Might have been happening. And of course, then the emphasis becomes not thinking, they're having a wonderful time, it's all great, and they're so busy and having fun, they catastrophize and that whole downward spiral you can see coming together, can't you? I like your technique about the jury of the peers. And actually, you can actually create a real jury in your mind, can't you? Because certainly you have people acting at different roles than that jury.

Absolutely. That's why I suggest it to be a jury of your peers because I want people to be able to do the visualisation part of the exercise, like pick people that you know that are your peers. And if you're in a courtroom, you need to convince all of them, because that's how the jury works. You have to convince all of these people that you have enough evidence to convince them that it's actually time to act. And if it's not, then you have to wait until you have more evidence. And I've had similar situations to you where I've had clients sent out a group text about a party and one person doesn't respond. And what does that mean? And do they pepper somebody with more texts about whether they're coming, or do they actually wait and see if there's a problem or not?

Yes. And you often see this disparity between the genders, as well, working. So, you often find, say, not always, but you'll often find one of the genders working in a particular way of thinking, in a particular style and such like, and the other gender just not doing that. And so, it's that do you hit people with your personal angst and drama, or do you actually hit them if you're going to communicate with the positivity about where they are. And that's another technique which I often think works because actually otherwise you get the result that you've dreaded because you created inadvertently, don't you?

Okay. When you got into the gender part, I'm not exactly sure I know what you mean.

Male and female, for example. To make it simple, there's often communication styles and communication preferences that can differ from time to time. Not always, but sometimes.

I haven't seen that as much. I mean, I have an equal number of men and women in my practice, and I have seen an equal number of assumptions being made by men and women in my particular practice. So, I hear you that you're seeing a difference in gender. And that could just be my particular practice where I have as many assumptions being made by men and women. And I think that every practice is different. But in my practice, I would say that I have so many men making assumptions at work in particular and also in their relationships, actually, particularly men who are after first marriage and they're dating. They're making a lot of assumptions in dating situations and at work. And then I have women making a lot of assumptions in both dating situations and relationships and then also at work. So, I kind of see it everywhere.

Yeah, I'm just trying to be interesting for the sake of it. So, when we get to the people pleasing thing, this is the root of a lot of challenges, isn't it? This putting somebody else above all beyond yourself. So, I'm interested if you could give us a bit of insight on this area.

I think that we all struggle with people pleasing to some degree or another. And a lot of people accuse me that I don't want people to be a good friend. Obviously, I want people to be a good friend, but I'm trying to advise people not to rush in and rescue other people or subserve their needs to somebody else. One of my clients, she goes into her daughter's apartment in Manhattan, and she cleans it for her, and she does her laundry and then she feels undervalued and unappreciated for doing that. And it has created a lot of tension in their relationship. And I suggested to my client that she talked to her mother about it, which she did, and said, if I need you for things, I have no problems asking, but I'd rather not have you come into the city to do acts of service for me.

And it has helped their relationship a lot. Instead, now they go to museums together and they go out to eat together and go to movies. Now that's an example of a daughter that has great communication skills. But in a lot of situations, I think it has to do with can you say yes to fewer things? Can you edit a request? Can you delegate a request or sometimes just say no. There's something that I call a resentment check in that I developed where you say to yourself, if this request was never going to be reciprocated or was never going to be appreciated, do I get a twinge anywhere in my body about the idea of that? And if you get a twinge in your body at the idea of it never being appreciated or reciprocated, then maybe you want to think about editing it or delegating it or even maybe just saying no. But if you don't get a twinge in your body anywhere thinking about it not being appreciated or reciprocated, then go ahead and do it.

That's good. It's right, isn't it? And using decision making appropriately there, which is to do the cognitive stuff first and use the physiology to check it out. I think we've sort of lost that idea, haven't we? We sort of do it the other way around, which is we talk about intuition in the body and then we try, and post rationalise and then wonder why we're getting peculiar results. So, I think that's absolutely fascinating way of thinking about it. Okay, so take us on to the third one, which I think is it about facing your fears, is that right?

Yes, facing fear. So, when I say facing fears, I don't mean running into traffic.

Good.

What I mean is making yourself uncomfortable, getting out of your comfort zone. Because fear is limiting. And when you face down the things that you're afraid of, it can be very powerful, and it can make you move forward in your life in a large way. It can make you do things like ask for a promotion or go to graduate school. But facing fears can also be small things. It can make you want to make a phone call that you're avoiding or fill out a form that you're avoiding. If you think of it on a large scale. I have a client that was investment banking, and she really wants her to go into social work, but she was terrified of making a career change. And so, she decided that she was going to face her fear, and she did pivot and make this great career change.

And now she's so much more content with her life. But again, that's a very large fear that she faced. It made her feel much more competent in her life, and now she faces a lot of fears. But on a small scale, you can start with very small fears. Look and see what forms you're not filling out because you're avoiding them, because you don't like to sit and focus on things for long periods of time or what people are you not calling because you're avoiding phone calls. And each time you face any small fear, that builds a sense of confidence, and then that sets you up to face the next fear. And each time you do that, it builds self confidence in the end it also does build satisfaction and resilience.

Yeah, it's absolutely key, isn't it? Fantastic. So, there are six, but we only want to do unpack three because we need to tease people with the thought of what's to come. So, you can already hear that Jennifer knows his stuff and she's an absolute expert in this area. My total respect. I've read Jennifer's stuff all over the past few years and such like. So, tell me about the birth and genesis of this book because it sounds like it was quite hard and needed some resilience to get through it. Jennifer so tell me about all.

The catalyst for the book was that I had been through three watershed events in my life. My son had a life-threatening illness that required surgery, I had a life-threatening illness and my father passed away all in a very short period of time. And it was during that time that I took a little time off from work and was reflecting on my life, what I wanted to do, what I wanted to happen and where I wanted to go with it. And I felt like I noticed during that time while I was thinking about my family and also my clients, that this idea of happiness kept coming up and that my clients were struggling with this idea of happiness, and I wanted to be able to help them with that in some way. And it was during that period of time while I was meditating on how I wanted to move forward with my life because I realised that everything all of a sudden seemed very short to me during this seminal moment in my life that the kernels of sustainable life satisfaction were born.

Because I realised that with all of these things happening something was keeping me going, some sense of resilience. And I wanted to back into what that was. And there was no resilience. I didn't believe that resilience was found in happiness. Resilience was found in something else that was doing that was keeping me going. And that's what got me starting to think about what were the techniques that were building up my self-confidence enough to continue to go. And that's where I started to build the brand.

Interesting. And so, who's the book written for? Is it a self-help guide or tell me more about what's behind that.

So it is a self-help book. The book is for I could say everybody but it's not really for everybody. I mean I would say it's for most effective probably for like 20-year-olds and up. I always get very happy when I have parents tell me that they gave it to their children and that they're sharing it among family members. Because I think that it is a book that's very good for interfamily use and I think it's a good book to talk about around the table. That was one of the reasons that I wrote it. I also wrote it because it had been very important to me in graduate school to be able to give access to people that didn't have access to mental health. Some tools because they either for financial reasons or because they lived in a rural area, might not have access to mental health services.

And I wanted them to be able to access some kind of mental health tool in an easier way. And so, it had been my dream to write a book that would be accessible to them. And so, this is my answer to that. So, it's both a combination of being able to provide a source of something that's not a substitute for therapy but can be used either in addition to therapy or for people who don't necessarily need typical therapy but could use some personal development that they don't have access to, a therapist that they can find some tools in here that they can use. But it is for anybody, I would say, 20 years old and up, could benefit from if they want some personal development, a journey for personal development, they could benefit.

So one of the key things to notice, though, when you go onto Amazon to find this book, which I'm sure most people will do, is to make sure to get the right one because there's many books called Beyond Happiness. So, remember Dr Jennifer Guttman. So that's really important. And you'll just discover all the brilliant reviews and congratulations for those. And I'm guessing it's something we should rush out and buy. So, I've already clicked on the link. So, I'll be having a read of this over the summer holidays because I like to have a nice big reading pile of people I've met and people I respect. So, I'll be certainly buying one copy and I encourage you all to do the rest. So, Amazon obviously has it. Where else, Jennifer, can we find it? I mean, for example, do you have a website that you want people to look at, for example?

Yes, I have a website. It's guttmannpsychology.com you can find the book there. You can find all sorts of other information about me. There are tips and blogs and all of my social media channels, how to reach my newsletter. So, there's lots of information on my website. Again, it's Guttman with two t's psychology.com.

Indeed it does. So that's brilliant. And we'll obviously link in the show notes to all of that. So, it's been great and please don't leave us alone next time. If it really was five years, then I can wag my finger and say next time it should be less time. So, I wish you continued success. Please reach out, get the hold of this book. And for those people who are it's written, I think, in such an accessible style, your site, such like that, actually, it's really easy to just use it as an entry point. And it doesn't matter. Whether you're an expert or a beginner. I think the ideas are really clear, aren't they? I think I love the exercises you wrap around. I think it makes a lot of sense.

Thank you so much.

It's going to be challenging, confrontational. I'll just spend my entire time agreeing with you. Again, I'm a terrible podcast host, so never mind. So, thank you for spending time with us today, Jennifer. It's been an absolute joy. And you take care.

Jennifer 28:59 J

Thank you so much for having me.