Gena Gorlin is in SF through mid-Aug
@Gena_I_Gorlin
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Psychologist & founder coach; @UTAustin faculty; study & promote morally ambitious self-creation; wife to @mbateman ; academic mom
Austin, TX
Joined September 2014
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To build an amazing life, you need these joint competencies:
1) doing hard, unpleasant things
2) refusing to do hard, unpleasant things that aren’t worth doing
1 without 2 is masochism; 2 without 1 is stasis.
Marry the two, and there’s no limit to your bliss.
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Today we witnessed 4yo’s discovery of abstraction.
4yo: I’m counting to a really high number.
@mbateman
(being a weirdo): That’s scary. What if you count to a number that’s bigger than our house and we get crushed?
4yo: But,
4yo:
4yo:
4yo: numbers… numbers aren’t things.
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To anyone who’s living through the insane ordeal of trying to immigrate to the US, or else has given up trying: I’m sorry. It's one of the most un-American things about America, and I'm frankly ashamed of it (and of everyone who's not nearly as ashamed of it as they ought to be).
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Everyone thinks that creativity and motivation come from tapping into your childhood issues and trauma.
In fact they come from tapping into your childhood wonder and enthusiasm.
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Hot take: our attachment styles actually say more about how we relate to *the world as a whole* than how we relate to other people, per se.
No really, hear me out... 🧵
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A fun thing that happens all the time in therapy/coaching: client doesn’t seem convinced by anything I’ve said, then has somehow mysteriously assimilated everything I’ve said into their own mental model like 2-3 months later
If you need recognition, don’t be a therapist/coach :D
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Some things I do as a therapist that LLMs can now do better than the average therapist:
1. clarifying, sharpening core values
2. unearthing, examining implicit beliefs
3. identifying macro psychological patterns
4. motivational interviewing
🧵
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My latest contrarian take: "Doing productive work—bringing something valuable into the world by one’s own focused efforts—forms the essential basis of a person’s mental health.
I’d even go so far as to say it forms the essential basis of a person."
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Been trying to parse the genuine reasons to "grow my following" from all the dumb status-based ones, and
@paulg
's comment to
@tylercowen
really helped clarify this for me: I want to be "famous enough" that I can talk to anyone I'm interested in talking to.
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Welcome to my new Substack newsletter: Building the Builders
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Yes—many, many truer words have been spoken. Like “greatness comes from the joyful exercise of agency,” for example.
Greatness comes from suffering — have truer words ever been spoken?
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There’s truly nothing like traveling with 4yo.
“Look at those lights!” “Look at that construction!” “Look at all those restaurants!” “Look at those airplanes!”
Seriously, LOOK AT THEM
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Instead of “fake it till you make it,” I teach clients to “act on what you know.” If you feel insecure but know you’re well-prepared, don’t hesitate. If you feel invincible but know there’s a hole in your plan, stop and take stock. This, I submit, is the essence of integrity.
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Omg, I’m such a proud mama…
3yo: “I’m thinking.”
Me: “What are you thinking about?”
3yo: “I’m thinking about thinking.”
🥹
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Israel is surrounded by people whose lives are about hatred.
Israelis may hate their enemies, but their lives are not about that hatred.
Israel is a country of builders. The moral high ground belongs to those who build.
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Ok, serious question: where do people with money go to buy furniture?
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3yo: I want to kill you, mommy.
Me: I don’t think you really want to kill me, because then you would no longer have a mother.
3yo: No.
3yo: Then I would no shorter have a mother.
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One of the biggest blockers I've seen in my most ambitious founder clients is not self-doubt, but other-doubt. They implicitly doubt the possibility of finding or inspiring greatness in other people, so they preemptively lower the bar, thus further reinforcing their pessimism.
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So much of self-regulation comes down to 2 interrelated powers: keeping yourself inspired & keeping yourself accountable. Recognizing “this is worth doing” & “I’m responsible for doing it.”
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Today I asked 4yo what song she wanted on the car ride to school, and instead of requesting a Frozen song or one of her other staples, she told *me* to pick one of *my* favorite songs and now I’m going to be unreasonably happy all day
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Alright, time to properly share this news with you all: I’m thrilled to announce I’ll be joining the UT Austin psych dept as an associate clinical professor this Fall (while wrapping up my YU teaching/mentorship responsibilities remotely). What this means & why it’s right for me:
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This is weirdly validating to read, given my own experience running a teen mindfulness group for a research study years ago.
Turns out that when you foist a bunch of goofy, hyper-structured exercises on teens who 1) already have a (well-justified) chip on their shoulder against
There is already evidence that teaching adolescents CBT or mindfulness at school (in universal interventions) can lead to symptom deterioration. Now, there is a study showing that teaching DBT in this way can have the same negative effect:
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On a surface level, self-honesty is just a negation - a vigilant refusal to stay self-deceived a moment longer than one can help it. But what it manifests and affirms is a deep, abiding love of life and existence: a commitment to living for real, not just for pretend.
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4yo: Do the numbers ever end?
Me: No, they keep going for as long as we want to keep counting.
4yo: Yeah, that’s what I thought.
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Not sure what’s more mind-bogglingly insane: the fact that the human body is rigged this way, or the fact that the human mind could invent an AI-bot capable of explaining it to me so cogently.
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Existential angst comes from the awareness that you have agency over your life, and that there's no force in the universe to prevent you from making a horrible mess of it.
The more agency you choose to exercise, the bigger the messes you can make; just ask any founder who's
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If I put words to the "internal working model" I was trying to build for her in that moment, & in all my better parenting moments, it would roughly amount to "the world is a place where I can thrive, and it's up to me to do it."
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What distinguishes the best responsive parents from overprotective or permissive ones is that they set up the child's world in a way that equips her to identify and fulfill her own needs, rather than always swooping in to do it for her:
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*while driving around*
3yo: Look, that’s a church steeple.
me: It sure is, sweetie.
3yo:
me:
3yo:
me:
3yo: I’m thinking about carrots.
me:
me: …Because they’re also long and pointy like steeples?
3yo: Yeah. But not too pointy.
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It’s striking just how often “active crime scene” and “artistic toddler” are equally plausible interpretations of a given piece of visual evidence around here
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But contra the explicit aims of attachment-based parenting, my goal is not to get her securely attached to *me*; it's to get her in direct, joyful and capable contact *with her world,* whilst making myself as peripheral & unintrusive a player in that relationship as possible.
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Balcony seats to Ballet Austin’s annual production of The Nutcracker: $57 a piece. Watching toddler practice her own moves during intermission after 50 minutes of bright-eyed wonder at her first-ever live theatre performance: priceless.
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In honor of
@mbateman
’s birthday, I present to you this concession to his questionable parenting practices (compliments of my latest quest to find attachment studies extending beyond the mother-child dyad)
Examples of said questionable practices are catalogued below
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An analogue of
@paulg
's "what doesn't seem like work" question is: "what problems don't seem boring to you?"
3 of the most impressive founders I met this week were working to fix 1) mortgage lending, 2) comms b/n insurance firms & injury lawyers, & 3) trucking logistics—
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A spot-on critique of the worst elements of social media, were it not written in 1943
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I just want everyone to know that my 3yo just spontaneously (and successfully) instructed Siri to “play the Louis Armstrong version of ‘What a Wonderful World’”, then proceeded to sing along with the whole song like 90% in tune.
What a wonderful world indeed. 🥹
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Though I’m sickened by today’s events, I see glimmers of hope that this was the “rock bottom” we needed to scare us back to sanity. If you share my vision of a U.S. where rational discourse and mutual good will are again the norm, please don’t miss this chance to work toward it.
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3yo: I don’t like the chicken
@mbateman
: Because it was too chewy?
3yo: No
3yo: Because it didn’t taste the right amount of good
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We’ve all heard about “respecting someone enough to give them honest feedback.” But the flip-side of this is that every time you “spare” someone from honest feedback, *your respect for them goes down.* (A thread)
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4yo: Sometimes after I’m done crying I don’t wipe off my tears right away
Me: Interesting, why not?
4yo: Because I like to have tears on my face
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In his “defense,” I could’ve probably seen something like this coming when I married him…
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In case anyone remains unconvinced
Okay, I admit it. The classic baby-brother-wholeheartedly-worships-big-sister-and-big-sister-utterly-adores-baby-brother dynamic is cute.
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Today I braved my public speaking anxiety to tell a room full of founders how to brave their public speaking anxiety. I love how “meta” my life is!
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Devastating insight by
@mbateman
re: the value of actually knowing stuff (vs just getting good at thinking & learning): “What you don’t know can’t occur to you.” Wish I knew this when I scrappily avoided real content mastery throughout my schooling. Playing catch-up to this day!
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@mbateman
@JuliaJuliagulia
There’s a missing link in this narrative, namely the part where I met her on the stairs and she sheepishly explained that she’d been very gentle with her brother and he was in a great mood and no she wouldn’t illicitly let herself into his room 1st thing in the morning again
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Two speeches from 4yo:
1. Spontaneous monologue:
“Moms: the most loving girls of all. They create love, and sometimes they go, but they come back fast. But not dads. They create fear, and sometimes love too. They help with part of bedtimes. Sisters: they may be a little bit
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Sometimes when I’m playing with my baby, my 15-year-old sitter self looks in on us and is overwhelmed with sheer awe at the unbelievable fact that I get to take this cutie home with me
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And thus emerges the most profound and irreconcilable difference in our marriage.
Fireworks should not be accompanied by music. Explosions are their own art form.
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I’ve seen a lot of therapy-skeptical sentiment on Twitter recently (looking at you, Elon). I’m actually sympathetic, believe it or not.
Coincidentally, I just got my contributor’s copy of this book. I wrote the first chapter: an overview of the kind of therapy that goes right.
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Well, I’ve officially been inaugurated into the “bitten by a scorpion” club. A rite of passage for Austin dwellers, apparently.
This also occasioned 4yo’s inauguration into the “problem-solve when you should empathize” club. “It’s too bad you weren’t wearing shoes, mommy.”
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You could try to wrap your head around all the mixed empirical findings on the nuanced associations between parenting and life satisfaction when controlling for x y z confounds, or you could watch this 13-second video….
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Alright, here goes my most impulsive & wildly fanciful tweet to date 🤯😵💫😵🫣🤪🤩…. Any stellar would-be technical CEOs out there who’d jump at the chance to cofound a “Building the Builders”-themed mental health tech startup with me as their CPO (Chief Psychology Officer)??
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Me: What do you think you’ll dream about tonight, sweetie?
3yo: [thoughtful pause] I’m going to dream about dolphins & humans being friends. [another thoughtful pause, then in tone of quiet wonder] Mommy… did you know there was a special kind of water human called a specialope?
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My latest Substack post is a pitch for the pursuit of psychological perfection (yes, you read that right).
I talk about what makes this such a dangerous-sounding idea; what it has to do with building; & why I think more people can & should go for it.
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And then that equally inexplicable moment when he breaks into his 1st hysterical giggle attack the next morning, thereby alchemizing our sleep-deprived hysteria into pure, unbearable bliss
(Watch with sound, duh)
That inexplicable moment at 4:46am when after 2+ hours of crying inconsolably in the face of every possible comfort the baby just falls asleep
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A cool thing I’ve noticed in 4yo is how she scaffolds her questions based on what she’s ready to understand.
E.g., in the year or so since I first read her this page, her questions have evolved from “what’s soot?” to (I kid you not) “what does ‘long’ mean in this case?”
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3yo: I kissed my own booboo.
@mbateman
: Oh, you gave yourself a placebo kiss.
me: You say that like she understands it in a way that would be clarifying.
Matt: She understands, I explained it to her.
me: How?
Matt: “A ‘placebo kiss’ is a kiss with no medicinal properties.”
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Substack post on why I don't think there's such a thing as "intrinsic motivation".
TLDR: All motivation implies some idea of what we're effecting. Joyful effort comes from integrated causal knowledge, not arbitrary sticks-&-carrots OR contextless "flow."
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me: Are you sure you want to help with parenting? You are pretty sick
@mbateman
: Totally. I can at least be present
me: Ok, see you after I put the baby down.
Matt: No prob
Half an hour later, Matt “being present”:
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@gallandguile
As a psychologist, teacher, mother of 2, & ADHD poster child who’s been scrambling not to accidentally drown my kids, crash my car, or miss crucial appointments w/ patients or students due to this unnecessary & entirely human-caused Adderall shortage, I’d like to say: please shut
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1st rule of parenting: never wake a sleeping daddy
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4yo: “Thinking is when you don’t talk.”
Good luck with that, my little external processor!
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*correctly decided
12mo has decided that peak comedy is slamming his face into soft surfaces
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Don’t just “listen to your gut”; also talk to it.
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How I found 3yo and
@mbateman
this afternoon.
One week of serial family illnesses and we’re basically just comatose.
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a world filled with chosen delights she can pursue by her own thoughtful efforts, but not through tantrums or coercion; where her actions have real, discernible consequences; where knowledge gives her power; where there are no artificial limits on what she can envision & build.
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Among the hardest & most vital facts of reality to reckon with are: the tremendous heights that others of your current age, ability, & means have gone on to achieve; the tremendous struggle by which they did it; & the fact that you could, but need not, choose to do the same.
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Wow... first time I've literally been singled out for my "physiognomy" since leaving the good ol' USSR.
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The anxiously preoccupied kids cling to mom upon her return, whereas the avoidant kids pay her little heed; but, crucially, neither type of kid shows as much independent interest & initiative in exploring the rest of the room as the securely attached kid.
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Catering to someone’s presumed irrationality—e.g., by censoring your feedback to avoid triggering their defensiveness—is almost always a losing proposition. Better to bet on their ability to rise to the occasion, in which case either they do, or you find someone else who will.
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Conversely, the failure modes I'm trying to steer clear of are ones where her path to impacting the world is through *my* arbitrary whims and preferences—making me, not the logic of reality, the final arbiter of whether and how she gets her needs met.
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Beware any code of ethics that gives BS a moral high-ground over honesty. Like, if you ever find yourself conflicted between following certain lines of thought and being “a good person,” you should probably run for the hills from that conception of “a good person.”
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4yo kept asking me to “count to billions” and wouldn’t take no for an answer… I got as far as 1000, then gave up and put on
@MrBeast
’s legendary “counting to 100k” YouTube video.
1267 in, and no sign of flagging interest yet…
Gotta say, this is educational programming gold.
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Conventional ambition is unambitious
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The intense happiness of seeing her intense happiness at their intense happiness… I don’t even know what to do with this much happiness 🤯❤️🔥🥹😵😍🤗🎶💗🤯
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Just the latest in an elaborate campaign to get me to break down and fly home early
4yo literally chases butterflies through wildflowers
She has no concept of cynicism or clichés, and for a moment, neither do I
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We're free to love & connect with others, partly because we aren't paralyzed by the fear of losing them; we know our ability to function in the world does not fundamentally depend on them.
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The knowing smile of a man about to transgress the “toy ponies don’t go in your mouth” rule
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Dropped off 4yo backstage for her first-ever “proper” dance recital, and cycled through the accumulated nostalgia/euphoria/terror/wonder of every performance I ever gave, but double the intensity b/c now it’s her
Is this just how it’s going to be for the next 14 years?
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Just finally watched The Social Network (yes, I tend to be 2 decades late to these things). What’s striking is that they went out of their way to doctor Zuck’s biography to make him look worse than he is, and yet he still comes across as a totally badass builder.
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When we say therapy is a “judgment-free zone”, I think what we actually mean is it’s a “duty-free zone.” Therapists make all kinds of judgments (like “you’re undercutting yourself with this behavior”, “this job/relationship isn’t serving you well,” etc). What we don’t do is make
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So far so good (though I clearly still have much to learn about how memes work) 🥰
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Not sure how I lucked into a spouse who manages to be my most formidable source of inspiration even (especially?) when he’s “wife-guying”, but there you have it.
Thanks, dear, and yes I am!
Marriage
—
@Gena_I_Gorlin
has been unfathomably supportive of me leaving my job to write a book. And she’s been a superstar mother. And her own career growth trajectory is still exponential.
I went into the year wanting to be sure I was connecting with her as much or more as
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3) All the functions of "responsive parenting"—the best studied approach for fostering secure attachment—are functions we should ideally be able to perform for ourselves as adults: accurately identifying our own needs, responding to them consistently & appropriately, etc.
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My personal idea of heaven: an Enlightenment-style salon where I get to talk to one of the Enlightenment’s great living champions—and one of my biggest heroes—on how to inspire Enlightenment-style thinking in ourselves and others. 🤩 Yes, this is really happening! Come join us!!
We couldn’t be more excited to welcome
@sapinker
for his first
@interintellect_
salon - hosted by the brilliant
@Gena_I_Gorlin
- on May 10! ✨
Together we will explore what motivates—or demotivates—human reason, virtue, and progress.
Come join us!
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Everyone should watch this talk by
@mbateman
as they head into the new year. And I’m not just saying that ‘cause he’s my husband (if anything he’s my husband ‘cause he had this talk in him 💍).
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Features of Disneyland that have most impressed 4yo so far:
a storm drain
The roaming geese (being pointed to in both character photos below)
It’s a Small World (now on 2nd go-round; winning features: catchy song + “no bad guys”)
Never appreciated this place so much as today
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Thought of a pithy new way to sum up what I need to remember in any anxiety-provoking social interaction:
Be purposeful, not performative.
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@visakanv
Yes to all this, but also: the biggest reason it's so hard to "know what we want" is bc we don't come with pre-packaged desires just waiting to be discovered; a lot of the work is in forming conceptions of desire-worthy ends to begin with. And this is highly creative and
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Indeed, part of being a "securely attached" adult is *not* wanting or needing to be mothered by your friends/partners/colleagues; if you do, this generally reflects an unmet developmental need. The best caregivers are those who make themselves obsolete (qua caregivers, at least).
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3yo becoming semantically self-sufficient, even at the meta-level:
“I’m being so cooperative. …That’s such a tricky thing to say, but I said it!”
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The 2020 & 2021 installments of what I hope will be a decades-long series.
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To anyone out there who needs to hear this: the people in your life are neither as powerless as you like to claim, not as powerful as you actually fear.
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"Like" if you want me to write a Substack post with the title
“Death is the default: Reframing how we think about risk”
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Sometimes I remember, in a wave of incredulous shock and awe, that there was once a time when human beings got by without the ability to Google things.
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2mo learning to destroy his makeshift mobiles piece by piece
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2. Dictated to me to send to
@mbateman
:
“My dear daddy, everything is fine with you. It’s ok when you go sometimes. When did you go one day? How was your life when you went? Did you know that there are some bones inside you? How about the rest of the people? How did you do your
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Since my mom died in 2017, every Mother’s Day is a grief exposure opportunity. Yesterday I noticed an interesting new unlock: when I hear a certain song that used to make me weep uncontrollably, I can now freely toggle between “tearing up” mode & “hey, isn’t this a fun song” mode
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