Shankar Vedantam

So as part of the process of unpacking this undifferentiated ball of emotions, you suggest that people get out three pieces of paper and make three lists.

What goes on these lists, Antonio?

So it's almost like a form of accounting in some ways.

You're totaling up the minuses, but also potentially totaling up the pluses.

Antonia, you conducted a study that looked at the effects of the various kinds of stories we tell about our experiences.

Two kinds of narratives had particularly detrimental effects, the superficial shallow narrative and the type of narrative that you call the same old story.

What are these different stories, Antonia?

Narratives...

So in other words, you're looking as a therapist to not just what the stories are, but sort of the form of the stories, the form the stories are taking.

So you've mentioned that you are married now, Antonio, but before you met your wife, you were in another romantic relationship that came to an end.

You were able to use that ending as a kind of forge for making yourself into a different and better person.

Tell me the story of what happened and what you did.

There are times when relationships don't just come undone.

They explode.

They blow up.

Couples don't just drift apart.

They betray each other and then disappear from each other's lives.

Parents don't just pass away.

They leave behind complicated histories and long buried secrets.

Their children are left with endless questions.