Why Feeling Insecure Doesn’t Mean You’re Back at the Beginning | Dr. Marisa G. Franco
episode
The One You Feed | Personal Growth, Emotional Resilience & Purpose
53 min
1 speaker
5 chapters
transcribed 17 hours ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Feelings they just exist and it's what we do with them that determines whether our negative feelings manifest in ways that cause other people harm. It's not the existence of those feelings that's the problem in itself.
Welcome to the One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold Hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Most of the time I'm a reasonably secure person and I know that because I remember what I used to be like.
But if something hits hard enough, it all goes away. I'm not talking about getting a little rattled. I feel like I'm back at the beginning, feeling things I haven't felt in years. And that used to discourage me. I mean, did I do all this work for nothing? And a therapist finally explained it to me. He said that my window of tolerance is much wider than it used to be, but it is not. Not infinite. Dr. Marissa G. Franco has a word for this, secure-ish. The people who feel the most secure, she says, are the ones who can admit when they don't. Her new book is called Worth. I'm Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi Marissa, welcome back.
Hi Eric, thank you so much for having me back.
I'm terrible with time, so I don't know when we last talked, but it's been several years. And in the interim, you've written a new book, which is called Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment, which we're going to get into in a minute, but we'll start in the way that we always do, which is with the parable. And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with her grandchild, and they say, In life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, they think about it for a second, they look up at their grandparent and they say, Well which one wins?
And the grandparent says, The one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
Yeah, it's such a deep, profound parable. And what I like about it is it really normalizes the wolves within all of us. And it allows us to acknowledge that all of us are greedy sometimes or antagonistic sometimes or maybe aggressive sometimes. And that doesn't mean that you're less of a person or something is wrong with you. And I think a lot of Worth is about acknowledging the feelings we'd rather not feel and normalizing that they're within us and learning what to do with that and not just trying to sh to shame ourselves or suppress them and yeah, just embracing everything that's happening in our inner world.
Yeah, you use a term in your book psychic multiplicity.
Mm-hmm.
And I use a similar term in my book. I call it motivational complexity. But it the the essence is yes, there are all these d competing things going on inside of us, which is just natural normal, which is why I've always been drawn to the parable because it oversimplifies it. But it does point to, you know, there's just this essential being pulled in multiple directions. And I was just saying to somebody yesterday, I mean, it would be so much easier if we just wanted one thing.
It wouldn't be so much easier. Right. It would
just be so much easier if all of the inside of me could just all agree like this is it. This is this is what we're doing. But working with all those different I mean, to use IFS language pieces, I don't know what to call it.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–4:56
2
What is the opening parable and how does it set the tone for the episode?
4:56–7:54
3
How does Dr. Marisa Franco define “secure‑ish” and why is it important?
7:54–24:01
4
What does the new book *Worth* say about the true meaning of self‑worth?
24:01–47:01
5
Why do old insecurities resurface even after years of growth?
47:01–53:24
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The One You Feed | Personal Growth, Emotional Resilience & Purpose
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