Episode 255: Disavowed Anger and Positive Emotions with Paul Wachtel
Paul Wachtel, Ph.D and David Puder, MD
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Introduction
Puder:
Welcome back. I am joined by returning guest, Paul Wachtel. He has written a book on therapeutic communication and the disavowed emotions. Today, I thought I would ask you more about disavowed anger, and we'd go from there into other aspects of the disavowed. Maybe we'll get to disavowed disgusted. We'll talk about how to talk to patients in such a way that the disavowed becomes avowed.
Wachtel:
Yes. And this actually hadn't occurred to me, though. It's a kind of rhyming or clang association of sorts. The disavowed is also the disallowed. It’s the feelings and perceptions and desires that, in the course of growing up, we learned were not permissible even if they were organically part of us. And so we needed to push them away, but they don't completely disappear. That's why I kind of like the idea of thinking of them as disavowed rather than simply repressed. We're not able to completely make them either disappear or even be invisible to us, but we can push them aside to such a degree that we really lose touch with some of our own most vital experiences, desires, and emotions, both positive and negative.
Understanding Disavowed Anger (00:01:41)
Puder:
Kernberg was on my podcast a couple months ago [see also episode 239]. And he said that the thing that therapists most need to understand is their own anger. So, I think there's something about therapists in particular, myself maybe included, where disavowed anger is a normal part of our development. So I think this will be a good conversation today. Tell me more about disavowed anger. How has it been disavowed? What are some examples that come to your head?
Kernberg's View on Therapists' Anger and Wachtel's Response
Wachtel:
Well, since you mentioned that comment by Kernberg, I would not completely go along with what he's saying. I do think that because we try to be in a facilitating relationship with the person, we're often not comfortable when we have more negative feelings. So I would agree with him in that respect. But I think that some of what many therapists experience as disavowed anger is actually an artifact. And it's an artifact of not really sufficiently thinking in terms of disavowed emotions. And that's kind of cryptic. So let me try to spell out what I mean by that.
Disavowed vs. Repressed: Shifting from Adversarial to Collaborative Therapy
Wachtel:
Part of what made me increasingly interested in this concept of the disavowed is that I was thinking about the way psychoanalytic formulations in particular (but we'll probably get to talk later about how other points of view in our field have also adopted this) kind of began with the idea that we deceive ourselves, that we fool ourselves, that we create a pretty story about what we're really like. But deep down, the picture is really uglier, in a way. And I think that was a core implicit assumption, and that the therapist's role is to rip away the illusions and force the person to come to grips with the reality. And I don't approach therapy from that vantage point, even though I am looking at very much the same phenomena. I approach it from the vantage point that in the course of growing up, because we are so dependent on our attachment figures, every nuance of how they see us, or don't see us, love us, or don't love us, respond to us, or don't respond to us. We are especially sensitive early in life, and we build a picture of ourselves and of who we are and who we're allowed to be. That is almost inevitably restricting. And I'll probably come back to that later. But in one way or another, almost all of us, some part of us, some important parts of us get pushed away, don't get fully acknowledged, fully elaborated, and yet they don't disappear because they are important. And so, I see our job as therapists to help the person recover those feelings, reintegrate them into a fuller sense of who they are. And I think when you have that perspective—that you're not ripping away illusions, you're not trying to get through a facade of a false self or a false presentation—but instead are trying to help the person expand their sense of who they are, you are much less likely to be in an adversarial relationship with the person.
Avoiding Resistance by Being on the Patient's Side
Wachtel:
So that, for example, when I think of Kernberg's approach or the general approach of transference-focused psychotherapy [see also episodes 234, 239, 249, and 254] (which there's a lot in it that I value and I think is really important), there is a way in which it tends to retain that kind of adversarial stance that is embodied in the very term “resistance.” The idea that the patient and the therapist are almost in a kind of battle over who's going to define what's real. And I don't encounter that much resistance, though I think I see the phenomena that get called “resistance.” What I encounter is anxiety, discomfort, a kind of difficulty in the person feeling able to accept one aspect or another of their experience so that it feels to me like I get into less adversarial ways of interacting. And so have less, not totally none, but less need to disavow anger because I am more on the patient's side. I think that when you are thinking of the disavowed, rather than the repressed, so to speak, of the disavowed and the disallowed, rather than the hidden and secret, you are more able to be on the patient's side, and it becomes less adversarial in that sense.
Puder:
I can resonate with this idea that there are parts of us that we were not allowed to be, there are other parts of us that we're allowed to have. Rather than deconstruct the whole sense of personhood, it's like you're trying to pull in aspects that were disallowed or disavowed. Yeah, I think in my conversations with Yeomans and Kernberg, I thought it would be more caustic or more adversarial. I didn't know if I experienced that from Yeomans when I talked to him one-on-one about supervision. He'll see the interpersonal exchange and he'll focus on a small moment of emotion that's there, that's between the client and him. But I think that I could see how, I don't know, I think Kernberg definitely has a lot of energy.
Wachtel:
Yes, that's a nice word. A nice way to put it. And I don't wanna be in a position, because I'm not just disavowing, as it were, in a different sense of the term, everything in their approach. Because I think there's a lot that's enormously valuable. But when you say that Kernberg says “the central struggle for the therapist is dealing with their disavowed anger,” I think that's somewhat of an artifact of the kind of relationship that gets set up. And my guess is that if you compare, say, Kernberg and Yeomans, I could easily imagine that Yeomans has less trouble with struggling with that. You know, we each have our points of vulnerability, and certainly, I have. I must have my own, and I put it as “must have” rather than “have”, because the very nature of those vulnerabilities is we sweep them away from our line of vision. So we're less in touch with them, but I'm not presenting myself as I'm without them by any means.
The Dynamics and Irony of Disavowed Anger (00:10:31)
Puder:
Is anger, in a way, linked to drive and movement forward? You said it's not that it doesn't take place, but maybe there isn't the words around it, right? And I see this in my early life. I was an athlete. I think in my conscious interactions with people, I don't know if I felt anger a lot, but I felt anger in sport. And that's a place where I was allowed to feel it.
Anger Linked to Drive, Boundaries, and Reaction Formation
Wachtel:
Yes. And anger, I wanna be very clear, I'm not trying to sort of whitewash anger, you know, from the human repertoire. Anger is both often valuable in various situations where if we're not angry, we're likely to be taken advantage of. And anger is one of the central kinds of experiences that people are conflicted about. And indeed, many of the cases that I've described, in the course of illustrating my ideas over various books and articles and so on, are people struggling with anger. So, I'm by no means saying disavowed anger is not of great importance. It is. But I was, and we may very well be spending a lot of time in today's discussion, talking about disavowed anger. That's not something I disavow, so to speak. I hear your initial comment that Kernberg had framed it as if that's sort of the core struggle of the psychotherapist. And I don't find that to be necessarily accurate.
Puder:
I think that the most amiable way of describing what he was talking about is that if you were naturally very empathic and you can feel other people's emotions quite a bit and you are in a place because of that, that you like to peace-keep and you like people to be happy, sometimes your own anger may get in the way of that. And so, to have a voice, to be able to keep a frame, be able to have boundaries, all of these may be things you have to learn in adulthood if you have disavowed anger in your childhood. Not that we can't learn those things, but I think we may need to get away from his statement of it and just get into what it means for you. But any thoughts on those things that I put forth?
Vicious Circles: Over-Niceness Leading to Frustration and Outbursts
Wachtel:
Well, my association to a number of the things we were just talking about, and maybe this is useful to clarify, as well, is that people who have disavowed anger are not necessarily people who aren't angry a lot. In a sense, that’s part of the irony. One of the other important framing ideas for me goes with understanding disavowed emotions and perceptions and motivations and so forth, is that we get caught in vicious circles in our lives. This is what I call, the cyclical psychodynamic point of view, where the nature of what our internal states are—the wishes, conscious and unconscious, the anxieties, the conflicts—lead us to act in the world in certain ways. And then other people respond to the way we act in the world.
And that feeds back to either maintain or change our internal state. And one of the things that often happens when people don't make room for their anger, because we can't thrive in the world unless we're permitted to be angry. Just like we can't thrive unless we're permitted to be loving. Unless we're permitted to be dependent. Unless we're permitted to be competent. All the things people can struggle with. Anger is important in that way. When we disavow anger and always have to be the opposite, we experience the longstanding term “reaction formation”, where the angrier you get, the nicer and sweeter and more helpful and cooperative you are to push the anger down. When that happens, that sets things up that we get taken advantage of in various ways. And the result is, it's likely then, ironically, to stir still more anger, which we then have to once again, disavow, push down, push away.
Wachtel:
And sometimes, the frustrations of those experiences can lead us to explode, so that somebody who has disavowed anger can also be problematically, explosively angry at times, and then humiliated, ashamed, guilty, and rededicated to pushing that back away. So it's not always so simple, as it's either there or it's not. It's that, in a way, the more comfortable you are with being angry rather than being an angry person. But, having access to anger when it's more or less appropriate actually enables you also to be more effective when you express anger and more appropriate, not being in a way excessively angry, but being effectively angry. When it's integrated.
Examples: Psychosomatic Symptoms, Cleaning as Displacement, and Explosive Anger
Puder:
Yes. I think what I'm hearing is that when you don't have conscious words for the anger it gets acted upon reaction formations. So maybe someone goes and cleans the house instead of being angry…
Wachtel:
And then resents being stuck cleaning the house. That's another important part of it. You know what I mean? Because then, the anger gets repressed and the house keeps getting very clean, but the person inside is feeling more and more frustrated.
Puder:
Right? Yes. So that's an example. Other people, patients I've had…. You know, I ran a psychosomatic intensive outpatient program for about 10 years. A lot of the patients had chronic or chronic psychosomatic issues from the anger. I, myself, when I suppressed anger in the past, could get migraines. So there are different things, for different people. They store it, or they act it out. Usually, when I think of disavowed anger, I don't think of someone yelling. Are you in the same boat? They're not fighting or yelling. That's not the type that we're talking about.
Wachtel:
Generally. That's true. I think the reason I was adding that example of sometimes there being outbursts is that I didn't want to sort of have a picture that it’s all just buried. It's continuous. “It” being any human experience, is continuously ongoing, evolving, interacting with how other people are responding to us. I wanted to just highlight an individual for whom it would really be diagnostically accurate to say that one of their central issues is that they are enormously uncomfortable with being angry and keep trying to push it away, that somebody can have that struggle. And yet, every once in a while be inappropriately angry. Be very angry. They don't always have to be a kind of milk toast quiet person. Though, often, I mean, that's sort of the most common presentation. And even for the kind of person I was just describing, they will often be overly nice and overly cooperative, but then every once in a while there's this explosion, “I've been so nice to you. I've done everything for you” and they're reeling off the list of all the things they did under internal duress that maybe even the other person didn't ask for, but that they were excessively providing. And then, every once in a while they get really pissed off about that. And it's not inconsistent with disavowed anger, for there also to be occasional expressed anger. But what usually is the case is that it's not effectively expressed anger.
Puder:
Yes. I'm associating this to the thought that women tend to not like to date nice guys. And what are we really saying? I think we're saying that women don't like to date guys who have disavowed anger issues, who appear nice externally. But maybe don't have that part of themself integrated. Any thoughts on that?
Positive Functions of Anger (00:21:14)
Anger in Relationships and Social Perceptions (e.g., "Nice Guys")
Wachtel:
Well, I think being a man, I'm in the position most men are. I have to confess not fully understanding how the world looks to women. Obviously, I try to, and I think I'm as good at it as most men are. You know, the average man. But I think there are mysteries we each have about each other. And I think some piece of it probably is whether it's biological or whether it's just the way our society has structured things. There are certain kinds of strength and assertiveness that have been associated with masculinity. It's something that's in the process of being reexamined and changing. I certainly don't want to be stating those kinds of stereotypes as just the reality. I've encountered women patients, for example, who are frustrated that they seem to always get involved with the wrong kind of man, so to speak. Who tends to be attracted to the tough guy, and they are not attracted to the nice guy. On that at least, one piece of that is that the tough guy is seen as more of a protector. More of someone who will kind of create a safe, expansive environment. There are all sorts of things that complicate these things. But I certainly don't want to be put in the position of explaining why women are attracted to certain kinds of men. I'll leave that to the women to say.
Puder:
Tolstoy said famously that, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” And so, I imagine there's a number of issues if a woman is attracted to dysfunctional men over and over again. I think it would be reductionistic to think that there's a singular thing. I think that my comment is just that, I think that sometimes nice guys are not having conscious awareness of anger and the positive uses of anger. What would you say are some of the positive uses of anger?
Evolutionary Role: Subtle Signaling and Self-Protection
Wachtel:
Well, I think we would be almost helpless without anger. For example, there have been lots of studies from the vantage point of evolutionary psychology and certain perspectives and social psychology that talk about ways in which being angry, when it works best, doesn't actually have to lead to violent acts or even aggressive acts. So much of what goes on between people includes signaling that neither party is fully even aware of. If somebody is doing something that bothers me, I begin to just sort of start to have reactions that are the precursors, so to speak, of getting angry. In good circumstances, the other person picks that up and retreats a little bit. In other words, I think that probably 90% of the interactions that involve being angry, the other person backing off, when it's effective, occur without either party even noticing it, so to speak.
They're the sort of small, mini transactions. So anger is not just the big blow up. It's the subtle signaling to ourselves and to the other person. When more angry behavior is necessary, because the cues haven't been picked up or the other person doesn't want to back off (and, again, anger is a part of the human repertoire), and we can't survive without it. But it also is often a symptom. And, I think this is consistent with things you were sort of implicitly pointing to a little while ago. It's also a symptom of frustration. A symptom of not living well. Not feeling good about where my life is or what's going on in my life or how I feel about myself. The better we feel about ourselves, probably, in most instances, the less angry we tend to be, but we can still encounter something that appropriately looks angry.
Anger as Energy to Overcome Obstacles
Puder:
Okay, that last line, “If we're not where we want to be in life”, then anger may be the energy to get there or to overcome the obstacle. I see it as we're headed towards the goal. As long as we're headed towards the goal, we're not angry. It's when there's an obstacle towards the goal that we get angry. So, just like an infant has a goal of getting fed, when they're not fed, they can get angry and they can reach out for their mother. If a mother misattunes, and thinks, “Oh, they really want something else other than food,” they'll continue to be angry until they get the food, right?
Childhood Origins of Disavowed Anger (00:27:31)
Parental Perception and Preverbal Shaping of Anger
Wachtel:
And, that's an interesting example. I think it sort of also points to further interesting ways that the disavow of anger can develop. Because babies are going to cry a lot; and sometimes, very vigorously. And even whether that vigorous crying is seen by the parent as anger, itself is somewhat of a perceptual phenomenon. You know, is the child being vigorous and assertive or strong? Or is the child being angry and annoying? You know, the exact same behavior on the part of the infant who doesn't have that many subtle variations in behavior. The parent's perception of it kind of begins to be fed back both verbally and non-verbally and sort of shaping. One parent sees the child screaming and kind of embraces that and thinks, “My kid is gonna grow up to be a really strong person.”
Wachtel:
Another parent, seeing the exact same behavior, may think “this kid is really annoying and is gonna put people off and he's gotta tone it down.” And it's the same behavior, but one kid learns that this part of me is valued and heard, and another learns, this part of me is something I need to get rid of if I'm gonna make any connection with the people I need to make connections with. I'm putting it in words, but it happens much earlier than words. And not in words. And I think in some way, one of the things we get wrong as therapists is that we try to put into words more than words can do, so to speak. It is useful, obviously, and it's our stock and trade as therapists to articulate and put into words, but also, a lot of what we do occurs outside of the words, at the side of the words, non-verbally, procedurally, implicitly.
Wachtel:
And that makes sense because a lot of what we learn about what is who we are and what is acceptable in us, that learning begins long before we have words. And I think the only era when psychoanalytic therapists and other more developmentally-oriented therapists point to that, to those very early origins, I think they're onto something really important. But I think where it can go wrong is then thinking, “If I now tell you where it came from, that will somehow change it.” And the only thing I think that really can contribute to changing it is more experiential, which is equivalent to how it was learned in the first place.
Nonverbal Attunement, Microexpressions, and Early Trauma
Puder:
Okay. There's a couple things you picked up there. One was my labeling of the infant wanting the milk as anger could be in our culture seen with a moral attribution of this as a negative word. When I think of anger, I think of something very different. I don't think of it as positive or negative. Or you could say, the parent is upset at the anger, and then subtly is then informing the child to maybe disavow that anger. The microexpression is more what I'm zooming in on, when I look at the infant. So with my kids, I had already become an expert on reading microexpressions. So when they had anger, you know, quick down and together their eyebrows, like I was reading that on their face. And I wasn't necessarily putting a moral attribution on it in my own experience of having kids. But I can see why if a parent was doing that, it would subtly inform the child in a nonverbal way because the child doesn't have a verbal linguistic ability to put words to these things yet.
Puder:
And so I appreciate that sort of nonverbal preverbal neglect or trauma. It's like, how do you get to that as a therapist? And I agree with you that it's the experience of the patient in the room with you that will be taken away. Do they feel held by your words, so to speak? Do they feel like you've decreased their shame? Decreased their experience of what's going on as really rotten or bad, and the labeling of that as bad?
Therapeutic Engagement with Anger (00:33:06)
Seeing the Full Person: Avoiding Overly Positive Gloss
Wachtel:
I think another part of that is, do they feel that what they are experiencing, whether they can put it into words or not, is engaged by the therapist? In other words, I think that in a way, if the therapist isn't able to see if the patient is angry, whether the patient acknowledges it or not, if the therapist kind of puts too positive a gloss on it, so to speak, and helps the patient sort of erase that part of their experience altogether, that limits the therapy. Sometimes what the patient may experience as most affirming is not even necessarily approving of their anger, but if they're angry. But just seeing it, not pretending it isn't there, because that kind of contributes to their having a part of themselves become invisible and integratable. So we have to find a way to engage whatever the person is experiencing and to do that through our own filters because we're not just seeing reality raw and direct. We're seeing it through our own needs, as well.
Puder:
I like how you put that. It's like the therapist, are they seeing the fullness of the person in front of them, or are they restricting what they see and glossing over what they see as if this person's not capable of any negative emotion ever?
Puder:
It makes me think of the AI sycophantic chat box where they repeat back to you only the positive about you. And they're actually trained by humans, and humans like that response better than the first response. And the response they usually choose is a little bit narcissistically inflating. It's like a little bit negating of any negative aspects of the person.
Corrective Emotional Experience and Handling Patient Devaluation
Wachtel:
What you're saying is interesting and it makes me think of ways in which the idea of the corrective emotional experience, for example, is often misunderstood and constrained in exactly the way that you were just pointing to and illuminating that very often when people think of the corrective emotional experience, they are mainly thinking the patient's parents were critical and abusive and restrictive. And so the therapist will be kind and encouraging and open and so on. And sometimes that is very helpful for people. But if, for example, somebody grew up in a family where part of what went on is that the parents couldn't bear to even see their child being angry at all. And so just never related to that, the therapist engaging the anger and not glossing over it, and maybe even clashing a little bit, can actually be a corrective emotional experience because it sort of relates to more of the whole of the person. And that was what was missing in the course of their growing up.
Puder:
I like it. Franz Alexander, corrective emotional experience, he was a mentor of one of my mentors.
Puder:
And my analytic therapist's therapist was his, he was the analyst of that person. So there's some linkages to myself there, as well. I appreciate the idea of corrective emotional experience. I think that it also links back to this sort of pre-verbal stuff that you're talking about. Where, experientially, something needs to take place. Which is another reason why AI therapy will never work. So, if the therapist is too positive and is not seeing the fullness of the person that this person could have anger, could have upsetness, and that this is part of their experience, they may be in a way having an enactment, right?
Wachtel:
Exactly.
Puder:
The parents could not see that their child was ever angry or maybe could not tolerate their child's anger.
Setting Boundaries Without Moral Masochism
Wachtel:
Right. And neither of us are advocating therapists be angry in the room and nasty and so on. But we are, I think, both saying a grounded response to as much of the reality of the other person in the room as we can, and responding in our fullness to their fullness, even as we are also sort of stepping a little outside of it and thinking about what is good for the patient in a way that we don't require them to think in terms of what's good for us. Though, again, if you have a patient who is constantly canceling sessions, constantly not paying their bills, or whatever it is, then it's appropriate for us to think about. They're not thinking enough about how we are not saints, and if we were saintly, we would be ineffective.
Wachtel:
That's another part of it. That if the patient is acting in ways that really are hostile and inappropriate, just criticizing them is not gonna be terribly helpful. But engaging it and countering it and taking ourselves seriously, often that's a way that we can model a healthier way of dealing with displeasure with somebody else's behavior. If we always have to be just sort of blandly warm and accepting, no matter what's coming at us, that's a pretty poor lesson for the patient because that's not what we want for the patient. We want for the patient to be able to be self-protective and considerate of other people, not just one or the other.
Puder:
Right. There's a bit of what Nancy McWilliams has talked about, moral masochism, where we can suffer and see the suffering as endlessly helpful [see also episodes 171 and 227], . For example, if the patient was not showing and not paying for no shows. Something like that. So there are ways that the patient can act out devaluation towards us. And I'm curious, what do you do? How do you verbalize that to a patient? Let's say I'm someone who is behind on paying you. What would you say to me?
Wachtel:
Well, I would first just point it out sort of factually in the sense of, “I sent you a bill last month and it had already a past due amount, and it hasn't come yet.” And I would see what the patient says about that. If that is sufficient, then it's sufficient, so to speak. If it still continues, and we've talked about this now a number of times, and the payment hasn't come, “What's going on?” I would first, still phrase it in relatively positive terms, not abusive terms, but kind of upping the ante a little bit. And then, if it still doesn't happen, then I think I'd say, “I don't know if we can continue,” or ask, “Is this your way of saying we need to stop?” because we can't just keep going this way.
Wachtel:
This has sometimes been helpful with a couple of patients to sort of step back for myself and think about, “How does this person interact with other people in the world? What have been the consequences for his life of treating other people this way?” I might say, “I'm beginning to have the feeling that you're treating me the way you were treating your wife when she left you, or that you're treating me in the kind of flippant way that you've interacted with your boss, where your job has been in jeopardy. There's something in the way you get into these patterns with people. And now it's happening right here, with me, that not only gets the other person really annoyed and I am feeling annoyed now, I have to acknowledge that, but ultimately makes your own life really difficult. So let's take a look at if you are not paying me, because there's something about what's going on between us that you are off about. Let's talk about that and let's see what I am doing that you are off about.” What I would say would depend on what was actually going on between us because each person is different.
Role Play: Addressing Non-Payment and Underlying Emotions (00:44:08)
Puder:
I feel like if we broke into a role play at this point, I think it might actually serve the audience.
Wachtel:
We could try that. We have to tip the audience off, so to speak, that I am coming in the middle of the movie. So, ordinarily, if this would've been going on, we would've had a history together, which would inform how I would respond. But let's try.
Puder:
And if you're one of the small percentage of my listeners who don't like role plays, I encourage you to voice your frustration towards me in the comment section. No more role plays. And if you love the role plays, then you can voice yourself as well. Okay.
Role Play Demonstration: Exploring Disavowed Feelings
Puder:
Well Paul, I will say that I don't think there's anything going on. I'm just busy and I've forgotten to pay you now for a month and a half.
Wachtel:
And how much confidence do you actually have when you say that? Take a second and look inside you and say is this just something you're saying to get me off your back? Or does it feel truly grounded in you? Take a second to look at it.
Puder:
Well, there's a part of myself that thinks I could get busy again and could forget. But I'm hearing from you today that this is very important that I may not be able to see you anymore if I don't pay you. And so I will. I feel very confident that I'll be able to pay you.
Wachtel:
Well, let's just think about something that may be possible because when I reached a point of frustration that was probably greater than I intended, but it was genuine, and you saw it and you felt it. And I talked about our possibly having to stop, you looked almost like there was some part of you that felt some almost relief at that. And I'm wondering, is there something that might otherwise, if we were really digging into things, that might otherwise be coming up that if we stopped, won't come up?
Puder:
Yeah. It's interesting you caught that. I felt some relief. I think there's a part of me that doesn't think you would care if this ended.
Wachtel:
That's a big thing. That's a really big thing.
Puder:
Yeah. I'm not sure what else is there. So I think when I saw that you were potentially going to end things, it kind of showed me that maybe you are okay if this ends.
Wachtel:
So you were concerned. Maybe I would feel some relief, also if we stopped?
Puder:
Yeah its hard. It's like there's a part of me that says, “This is not something you really want to do.”
Wachtel:
And as I'm thinking about that and I'm paying attention to my own experience, I would actually feel very disappointed if we had to stop. I'm thinking that in some way, you have a sense that there are sides of you, like being the guy who's just not paying his bills that you want to know if I can accept that and relate to that and we have this kind of paradox here of sorts where I've gotta pay the rent. So concretely, I do need to be paid, but that doesn't mean that I can't bear being with the guy who's got a lot of feelings, that maybe you think don't belong in some way. That there's stuff you are feeling and you are not sure I'm the guy who can bear what you are feeling.
Puder:
I don’t know if anyone. It's not like I'm sitting here Paul, thinking there's another person out there that could bear this better. Maybe no one can bear it.
Wachtel:
Yeah. I think that sometimes is how it feels to you. No one can bear it.
Puder:
Yeah. I am not sure. It feels weighty, telling you all this stuff I've told you. It feels, well, I almost feel bad that I haven't paid. Now thinking about how it must feel to both receive it and then not be paid would feel even worse.
Wachtel:
Well, I don't think either of us have as our goal for you to feel bad. And I would like you to pay the bill. I'm not wanting you to feel bad about not paying the bill. I'm wanting you to, first of all, start paying it. But secondly, and more important, even in some way, to get a sense of what was keeping you from doing it. You know, I think in some way, this moment, which we're still trying to figure out our way through right now, this kind of hard moment between us, that's maybe what not paying the bill was trying to figure out. That was real. So what's it like to be with me when I'm a little pissed off at you and I'm actually still here and still talking to you? Look at me right now. Do I look like I'm withdrawing from you? I'm just letting you know what I'm feeling.
Puder:
You're not withdrawing. You are letting me know what you're feeling and it makes sense. I don't know if I was aware. I think I wasn't even thinking about not paying. It was not something that I was going about my day thinking about. But I think that the thing that comes to me is I don't wanna be too weighty to anyone. Yeah. There's something about that.
Wachtel:
Say more about that. What would be too weighty?
Puder:
Well, I guess I'm just confused on why that would keep me from paying the bill.
Wachtel:
Well, let's not so much try to figure something out here as just let's try to make room for what you are having a hard time really believing I can stay engaged with.
Puder:
I can tell you have stayed engaged, which is a little bit surprising, but then something in my experience says that may change.
Wachtel:
Yeah.
Puder:
I get the sense that that may change at some point.
Wachtel:
Yeah. All right. That's really important. Now we gotta do one more thing to see if we can feel together, like we're not bullshitting each other. And that is not in your head, but from inside, what could make that change? What could make me withdraw and don't think it, but feel it and half do it.
Puder:
I mean, if I didn't pay, you would withdraw.
Wachtel:
That would be right. That's the simple one.
Puder:
The simple one.
Wachtel:
And we can both sort of attribute it to what our accountants are telling us, but that's not what's important. This moment you had almost dared you to trust me a little bit, and that made you think, I better not. You had some inkling of, okay, I'm with you so far, but I sure wouldn't be if you took the next step.
Puder:
Okay. I see. Yes. I think that there's a thought if I continue, eventually, and you really see me, that you'll withdraw.
Wachtel:
I'll see what in particular.
Puder:
Maybe parts that I don't even wanna see. Parts that I know, but don't want to say out loud.
Wachtel:
Well see if you can say it out loud.
Puder:
I feel like we need to pause it.
Wachtel:
Because after all, you're still David, and I'm talking to the hypothetical patient, and so you don't know him any better than I know him, so to speak.
Puder:
Yes. First of all, I use your first name on purpose and I imagine that that was like being a little bit too casual. I don't know, patients probably call you Dr. Wachtel, right?
Wachtel:
Actually, most of my patients do call me Paul. And in fact, I'm often struck when a patient doesn't. They do it even without my telling them to. They sort of pick it up somehow. Almost all of them do.
Reflections: Experiential Therapy, Engagement, and Positive Exhaustion
Puder:
Okay. A lot of what we talk about before this role play is kind of theoretical, but I really do enjoy this mock role play. It feels to me like I can understand how you do therapy. And I think you're modeling that you can have emotion, right. And that may allow the patient to feel like they can have their experience.
Wachtel:
I think you're right. And I think that's important that I don't. It's not often in my practice that I say to a patient, “I'm pissed off at you.” I mean, that's certainly not what I teach my students as the first “here's how you do therapy”—tell the patient you're pissed off at them. That's unusual. And I think I was doing it in a way to model a certain kind of getting real with each other because I think the way I had constructed this scenario, again, without really knowing the patient, was that the act of not paying was a way of avoiding something else. It was a way of expressing something, certainly, but it was also a way of avoiding something. Especially because he was describing why he didn't feel—I just get distracted,
I'm busy, etcetera. He wasn't owning it as anything intentional. And so I was sort of roleplaying it as somebody who is struggling with feelings that could be intense and generally unacceptable, so to speak. That would just be sort of written off blandly as I just was busy. I didn't get around to it. And so I was trying to make sure I was engaged with the person and trying to create a little bit of a hot house at that moment where he felt both called upon to come out with a little bit more, but also to notice if I was engaged or withdrawing from him. In a real case, so to speak, the specifics might be different. At this point, we were both creating a fictional character.
So we don't know for sure what was relevant, but what I think maybe a different way of putting it is that it came up at one point when you, as the patient, were saying something like, “Maybe I just don't accept me,” or something like that. Which is a kind of an abstraction. It's kind of a terminology that we learn verbally. And that what I was trying to do was to get him to come out with it. I wasn't thinking “out with it,” in terms of “let's reveal the secret.” But out with it in the sense of let's experientially interact with whatever it is he was avoiding. In that sense, I was trying to invite him out into the interaction more. And so, I'm curious how it felt experientially at the other end.
Puder:
Experientially, I think it's interesting with you, in particular, with these role plays. I find myself being able to act very poorly, and instead, I pull from my own experiences more. Which I think you start picking up on little threads of my own experience. I think last time we were talking about chess and the disavow of aggression that the father may have had. By flipping the board and allowing the kid to not lose, right? Which I had never thought about before, but that's possible, right? And so I think the trouble with continuing to go is that it gets uncomfortable. In the way that it would be comfortable one-on-one with you, I think it's uncomfortable doing it in front of 20,000 or 50,000 people.
Wachtel:
And especially where on top of all that there's this ambiguity of what's you and what's this hypothetical, made up patient?
Puder:
Yes. And there's a mixture sometimes, right? And that makes it even more real. I did a very long role play with Shedler and it was a role play of one of my best friends and all of the stories I've heard from him. But I mixed in some of my own experiential aspects as probably all actors do. But yes, it's fun, but it's also getting a little bit too hot for me.
Wachtel:
It's interesting, because right at this moment, I feel in my body a certain exhaustion. It's odd because I was being myself, but I was also roleplaying myself right. It wasn't necessarily what would actually have happened in my office because it obviously would depend on exactly who the person was and what our history was and so on, but I was getting into a certain interactive role that was also designed to illustrate something. And I think what I was trying to illustrate is the difference between asking a question, trying to get an answer, versus trying to promote an experience. I was not trying to get the patient to reflect so much and be able to verbalize, though at other points that might have been also something that I would be trying to do, but trying to create circumstances where he could come out a little bit of wherever he had retreated to. Because people can be very forthcoming as a way of retreating. That was the part of him that he sensed. Just maybe even just peripherally. He was keeping it under wraps and it was the aim for him to know what it was.
Obviously, that also has value. But to experience actually feeling it. Expressing it in relation to another person. And then, I was also at that moment calling his attention to watch me and see whether I'm withdrawing or whether I'm still engaged because he was feeling that if he was really himself, I would disengage.
Puder:
So I hear that there was something about it that was exhausting for you.. Fatiguing.
Wachtel:
Yes.
Puder:
Like in a countertransferential way?
Wachtel:
In a countertransferential way. But also, in a way, that there's a kind of exhaustion like after an athletic event, and it's a positive exhaustion. There's another kind of exhaustion, when I can't reach the patient. When there's a kind of blandness, and the person is two or three steps behind who they are. I can get exhausted. I can get tired because it's sort of like nothing's coming.
Puder:
There's a dissociation away from all of their experience.
Wachtel:
Yes. Yeah.
Puder:
I feel that too, sometimes.
Wachtel: That's a negative exhaustion. This was a positive exhaustion. It was like the exhaustion after an athletic event.
Puder:
I appreciate that. And I think good therapy is exhausting, in a unique way. And I appreciate the differential there; and it can be in a good way. I can feel very exhausted by Friday night. It's funny. I play a lot of chess nowadays. My son is really into chess. So I've gotten back into it. And I play in the morning and I'll have these winning streaks of like five games in a row on chess.com and I have a certain score, so they're putting me against, people of my score. And then, I play at night, and I'll lose five games in a row. These are short games. And the work that we do is exhausting, in its own way. It can be good at the same time. Yes, like you would feel good at the end of a sports match. I like how you put that.
Disavowed Positive Emotions and Attachment Needs (01:06:09)
Wachtel:
Yes. And I think one of the things that both came up in the role play and that we're talking about as well and reflecting on the role play, is that engagement is a very central part of what we try to do. And that itself creates these complexities and paradoxes where there are certain patients where I have to learn, in a way, to be less engaged. That I have to be more subtle in my engagement. That too much engagement can feel threatening. I can think of a patient, for example, who every once in a while, when we were talking about something relatively important, he would turn away, he would turn to the side. Like this. And I was very aware of that. Some schools of therapy would interpret that and would point that out.
Bit was a defensive effort. And I, instead, made a very definite decision that I would not comment on it. I eventually did much later in the work when it felt like he was ready. But it felt like to comment on it would be like I was being the smart therapist who was showing what I had noticed. And that would've been counter therapeutic. He needed those breaks. He needed not quite as much engagement. It was a different kind of engagement. Because I was attuned to him enough to not comment on it, but I had to let him sort of take his breaks, so to speak, and then he could get back into it. And I think if I had commented on it, it would have made him retreat and it would have been less productive. So the engagement is a complicated thing also because sometimes we engage best by not being so manifestly engaged.
Puder:
Yes. I think what you're noticing is there's an intuition that develops on what you should comment or not comment on. Some things that you comment on may be shame inducing, and him needing that space from looking at you right in the eyes, I think gave you that signal that maybe if I comment on it, it will heighten his experience of shame that he might already be having.
Wachtel:
Right, exactly.
Puder:
Which might cause him to disavow more because I think there's an assumption that we should reduce shame to allow for the disavowed or the disallowed to come forth.
Wachtel:
Yes shame, and also, potentially, intrusion. Sometimes I think a patient can feel almost too well understood. Even if we are understanding it, we have to keep it unstated because shame would have been part of it. Especially, if I called attention to it because it's behavior that's nominally avoidant. I remember him talking about feeling really understood by me and as he was talking about that, that was one of the times he turned away. And so, in a certain sense, another one of these paradoxes is I was now understanding even his need to turn away. But if I had expressed that, that would have felt like still more of an intrusion.
Puder:
I have a perceptive son and when we were playing chess the other day, he beat me.
Wachtel:
How old?
Puder:
He's nine.
Wachtel:
He's pretty good.
Puder:
Yes, he's getting really good. And he's got a brain for this. And he could tell that I was upset. And he pointed that out. And there was part of me that was like, “Yes, he's seeing this accurately.” But there's another part of me that's, “I don't want to be upset. I wanna be happy. I wanna be purely happy for him,” which I am. We got him a chess coach. And the thing that I put in the intro thing, as the goal, is for him to beat me. What is my son's goal? To beat his dad. And so, I think I said something to him like, “Well, I think there's a mixture of things going on in me. I'm both very proud of you for beating me, and I also don't like losing. You know, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna stop playing you.”
Wachtel:
One of the other nice things about that, is that he knew, in contrast to the father and son that we had talked about the last time, that you were bringing up just before, about knocking over the chess board, he knew that he had beaten you when you were really trying to win. Which makes the victory even sweeter.
Puder:
Yes. I've thought about this, with this chess coach. What would it feel like for the chess coach to lose? It would be very difficult.
Wachtel:
Yes.
Puder:
But at the same time, isn't that the goal of the coach? To see their students surpass them?
Puder:
I think it relates to our idea of disavowed anger with this allowing our own kids to have a place of positive aggression. It's okay to want to beat someone; and that's good, and that's a part of life, right? It's to compete and to do your best. And when he lost the other day at a tournament, I said to him something like, “Well, I'm in it for the process. We're learning from our mistakes and we're trying to grow.” And it's a process, right? And so, I think inevitably it's, how do we help our patients in that process of not being overcome by their defeats to a place that they stop trying, but also not being afraid of being in the arena.
Shift in Focus: From Disavowed Anger to Yearning for Connection
Wachtel:
You were coming back again to disavowed anger and it made me think about something that I hadn't fully thought about until this conversation. Which is that looking back many, many years now, I think the examples that I mostly would offer in workshops or in things I wrote were some version of, I didn't call it then “disavowed”, I didn't use that terminology until relatively recently. But basically, some version of disavowed anger. That was what I mostly was initially focusing on. Obviously, not exclusively, but a lot. And I don't know how much that had to do with issues I was struggling with, or how much it was “that’s a bad feeling.”
Wachtel:
It's one of these affects or motives that are generally not so socially encouraged. And what I'm aware of, is that in recent years, more of my illustrations of disavowed feelings or motives or experiences have been disavowed positive feelings. People who have trouble in wanting to be admired or wanting to be loved, or wanting to be helped, or even wanting to be understood, in some ways those are actually often more subtle forms of disavowal. I can think of a number of people where this was the case where they kind of learned early that wanting too much love or contact or understanding or affection, that was what was most dangerous. And so they learned to be more or less self-sufficient, very independent people, go-getters, and so on.
The wish that we all also have for love, and even protection, and help, and support, and all of those things. Those never go away. They can be disavowed, but they never go away. And what often happens in those instances is that the person starts to express it because it doesn't just disappear. So the person thinks they are asking for affection: “Let me know how you feel. I feel very warm toward you.” Or, whatever it might be. They think they're expressing it, but because it's been such a source of discomfort and anxiety, they express it in a kind of hesitant way that the other person misses. So, an example that I was just writing about the other day, and I still haven't got the passage completely worked out, but was describing an interaction with a patient telling me about his interactions with his girlfriend.
Dismissing Attachment: Hedged Expressions and Vicious Circles
Wachtel:
And there was something, that he was both wanting more contact from her, more sense of feeling her caring about him, and also was worried about something in particular, and wanted to run it by her and have her help him with it. And he said to her, like the hypothetical patient, we role played that she was busy. And, in fact, part of what his early growing up was that his parents had been very busy. They were nice people, but they weren't really that connected with him. They were always just busy with things. So that's part of how he learned to be self-sufficient. So he said to her something like, “It's really beautiful out today. I think I'm gonna go for a walk. I know you're busy, but if you want to come with me, it's nice out.”
Wachtel:
Emotionally, he thought he was saying to her, “I really want you to come with me. I really need you to come with me.” She was hearing, “I know you're busy, but if you feel like it, you can come with me.” So she said, “No,” picking up on that side of his message. He then later felt crushed that she had rejected him. And then, in these vicious circles that happen with people having been crushed that way, he would be more likely the next time to again express it in a very hedged, hesitant “I know you're busy” kind of way. That would make it likely he would be met with the same response. So for him, the wish for connection, understanding, help, affection, that was the disavowed feeling. Even though those are, quote, “socially acceptable feelings.” For him and his life experience, those were the feelings that were dangerous ones (to him). And I've been aware that in recent years, I've been more thinking about and writing about these kinds of disavowals.
Puder:
I really like that. I think that the wanting the connectedness, but not knowing how to express it in a way to get it, and then it kind of gets reinforced by the way he asks it in a kind of hedged, nonassertive way. That's really good. I think more of the dismissing attachment style personas have a lot of this [see also episodes 069, 215, and 250]. They're dismissing of the need for attachment. Superficially, a lot of the time.time But it's very important for them. And they may not even be able to verbalize how important it is for them.
Wachtel:
Right. I think putting it in those attachment terms is very apt. I think you're absolutely right. And then I think what I would add to the way attachment is often discussed is that the dismissing attachment style or especially, insecure attachment style, is not only an internal working model, but it's a working model that leads to behavior in the world that has consequences that then feed back again. To very often maintain that model [see also episodes 194, 222, 234, and 247].
Cultural Tropes and Vulnerability in Relationships
Puder:
It's almost like a trope at this point. There's a bunch of funny videos of this trope that the male partner should never express any vulnerability to the female partner. And there's these comedic sketches where the female partner is getting opened up for the first time and is then thinking inside of their head, really negative things. Like, “Oh, I'm gonna bring this out when I break up with this guy.” And the comment section though is like, “Absolutely, never express yourself. Never say anything vulnerable to your partner.” Just hundreds of these comments, you know? It's like a conscious belief of wanting too much affection, expressing it, this kind of thing. It's not only believed, but it's been reinforced to the point that people are seeing this as kind of a trope.
Wachtel:
Yes. And I think as is also implicit in what you were saying, and it went back to something we talked about a little bit earlier as well, that these things then become crystallized in the culture, and then that becomes a sort of another independent source of pressures that we have cultural images of what men and women are like and so forth that kind of become themselves self-fulfilling prophecies.
Broader Insights and Closing Thoughts (01:24:42)
Puder:
Yes. I think that when I brought this up with Sue Johnson on an earlier podcast episode [see episode 194] before she passed, sadly, it was a naughty belief.
Puder:
And I could see through EFT [emotionally focused therapy; see also episode 194], putting to deeper words and vulnerable situations. It often starts with frustration, usually from the pursuer partner. And then, underneath that, is deeper emotions of fear and sadness. But sometimes you don't get to that deeper fear and sadness without first experiencing consciously the anger and expressing the frustration.
Wachtel:
I think there are very few instances where it really is like just one emotion. There's this single latent content to the dream, that idea, right. I think dreams almost never have a single latent content. That was Freud's artistry and storytelling. But dreams are a whole entangled set of all of the threads in our thinking and our emotions that sort of are loosened up when we're asleep. But it's not really like you get to the singular motivation. And you're sort of highlighting that's true.
Entangled Emotions, Contextual Personality, and Reflective Function
Puder:
Here's coming full circle to what you're talking about. Earlier in your career, you talked about disavowed anger, and then you found underneath it, or maybe deeper, once you get through the disavowed anger, there's disavowed yearning for attachment, yearning for connection. And I'm seeing that in patients, as well. And this couple, in particular, it's like they wouldn't have the anger if this wasn't the most important person in the world to them, but in the midst of the anger, they're usually not going to be able to hold that at the same time as the anger.
Wachtel:
Well, I think the way I would think about it, it would be slightly different. I basically am resonating with what you're saying, but I think rather than thinking of one as beneath the other, I'm thinking of them all entangled with each other so that the anger can generate feelings of neediness. The anger can be a defense against wanting affection and wanting affection can be a defense against anger. You know that all of the discomforts are like a kaleidoscope, and they vary at different moments. I completely agree that at any given moment, one feeling can be beneath another. One can be defending against another, but at a different moment it can be the actual reverse. What's constantThat's, our comfort or discomfort at any given moment with a particular feeling.
Puder:
I resonate with that. And I would resonate also with the thought that one who did not love would not also have anger. Because it's like you have to protect what you love. And so there is this kind of yin and yang mutuality, idealization, devaluation, this merging of these different aspects of oneself, and the cohesiveness that follows. I think that's what you're talking about as the goal of good psychotherapy and the goal of us as therapists to bring forth in our clients. We have to embody that ourselves, in our own journey. And I would add in, I think that this all kind of speaks to another thing I've been playing around with for a couple years, is reflective function [see also episodes 185, 205, 206, 213, 219, 225, 227, 239, 244, 247, 249, and 250] and this idea that our ability to speak to the attachment and to speak to these attachment dynamics can increase with good therapy and can increase when we get in touch with the disavowed.
Wachtel:
Yes. I think that's another good way of describing the aim of what we're doing. You referred a couple of times to tropes, and I think that's a useful way to refer to it because we're dealing with tropes. We're dealing with a reality that is so multifaceted that we're mostly getting angles on what's happening (not the full picture). We dig deep down and we get the nugget out; and this is what it really is. It keeps changing, especially because not only do our feelings keep changing, but the circumstances our feelings are creating keep changing. And the people we interact with change. So that with two different people, for example, with one person I may have greater access to one feeling and much less to another.
Wachtel:
And with another person, it could be just the reverse. With one person I can be easily aggressive in a sense, but it's harder to be sincere and soft. And with another person, it's very easy to be a kind, warm, good person. But it's really hard to find, how do I fit in the aggressive side of myself. And I think we all have that experience. That the very configuration of our personality is not a constant. It's contextually related. Which doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it doesn't mean we're all just a product of the other. I think that's been a serious misunderstanding sometimes offered by relational psychoanalysis because it highlights a two-person point of view and that the experience in the room is co-constructed. Some people have read that as meaning the patient doesn't have an independent personality that they had before they even walked into the room. And that's clearly not what relational psychoanalysis means. And that's not what I'm saying, but this contextualization of it, I think is really important.
Therapist-Patient Fit, Referrals, and Accepting All Emotions
Puder:
Are there any personality types? I think you talked about this a little bit before. This kind of idea that not all therapists will treat the same personalities, and there's some personalities they may not be a good fit. Are there certain personality types for you that you have realized are not a good fit and you refer them elsewhere?
Wachtel:
Well, it's interesting. Here I am declaring to thousands of people who I don't work well with.
Puder:
It'll help future referrals.
Wachtel:
I would say, the one thing that comes to mind most readily, is I'm not very good with addiction kinds of problems. And you know, addictions of all sorts. Not just somebody who's addicted to heroin, or whatever. I tend not to be that addictive of a personality. I've got my other problems—that one isn't one of them. And I don't mean just substances. I mean, for example, I'm aware that I can do better without my phone around than most people I know. People talk about being addicted to their phones and I'm not. Again, I'm not presenting myself as a superior person. I've got my own problems. It's harder for me to empathize with a kind of an addictive dimension.
Wachtel:
And I find, even like my taste in movies. I love movies, but when I read a review and it sort of is a movie about addiction of one sort or another, I think it's probably not one that will really draw me in. So if that's a prominent part of the presenting problem, that would be an example of someone where it is probably much better for me to refer the person. I also think, and this is much harder I think for our profession as a whole, almost like the next great advance if we do make any further advances is likely to lie in the realm of referral. That if the standard way of beginning a therapy relationship started with you seeing someone just for two or three sessions just for an evaluation, not of your problems, but of who you might work best with.
Wachtel:
And if we all became better at referring people, rather than just taking people into our practices because apropos what you were saying before about AI can't do the job, you know that there's something in the chemistry between people. So we don't just have technical skills that AI can sort of learn, but we are human beings with an emotional response to another person. And just the way we can't successfully marry or have a love affair with just anybody, and we can't even really become a good friend with just anybody, there are ways that pairing makes a difference. I think we need to learn more about that process because I think that's probably at the heart of when psychotherapy goes best is when the pair is right. It probably doesn't matter that much what kind of therapy the person practices as whether the pairing is right. As long as they're not practicing something rigidly, you know?
Puder:
I think that there's value there. I think I've gotten better at having a gut feeling after one session if this is gonna be a good fit for me or not. I think that will continue to improve, hopefully. But I think as well as a psychiatrist, I don't always have to see someone for therapy. They're often coming to me for medication. And so I've had the joy of trying to think who they would be a really good fit for. And as I get to know a dozen therapists in the community, you kind of have an idea, “Oh, I think this person would be a really good fit.” And I get excited when I hear like six months later from the therapist, great referral. And some psychiatrists refer to me. Not because I'm gonna be a great fit, but because they have no desire to treat this person anymore.
Puder:
I think good referrals are something we should talk about more, and thinking about how to think through that. That'd be good. Maybe in a future episode. I think we should wrap up our time. Is there anything else that's on your mind still that you wanted to get out before we wrap it up?
Wachtel:
I think we've done a pretty nice job of going around the very different dimensions. And I think the role play was interesting as a kind of a core event in the middle of it that probably gives further meaning to what we talked about both before and after it. So I'm feeling relatively content that we did a nice job together.
Puder:
Good. I think hopefully people that are listening to this can get some more acceptance for their own disavowed emotions, experiences, both positive and negative. I think that positive focus was great at the end. I think that'll resonate with a lot of people as well. And yes, if this was helpful, let me know and I'll be happy to pass on a word to Paul, or you could reach out to Paul directly. Good. What did you want to say?
Wachtel:
You actually touched on what I was gonna say, which is that I would be very interested in people who want to contact me directly, but also—because you were referring to it earlier, that you get lots of comments on these—if you get comments on our discussion, I would be very interested in just passing them along to me. I'd love to see them.
Puder:
Likewise. Yes. I know last time you said some colleagues who you didn't even know were listening reached out to you and said they heard you. And previous students. That's fun. Yes. And so, if you're one of those people, reach out, send Paul an email. We don't like to only get negative emails. We like positive emails, as well.
Wachtel:
Right? But if somebody's got a complaint or a correction, let me put it more positively as a correction. I am interested in hearing that too, because I could probably learn from it.
Puder:
Yes. Okay. We'll leave it there for today.