How I Fixed My Corrupted Love Software

Mark Hyman, MD

Dr. Mark Hyman is leading a health revolution—one focused on using food as medicine to support longevity, energy, mental clarity, happiness, and so much more. Mark Hyman, MD is a practicing family physician and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. He is the founder and director of The UltraWellness Center, Founder and Senior Advisor for the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, a fifteen-time New York Times best-selling author, and Board President for Clinical Affairs for The Institute for Functional Medicine. He is the founder and chairman of the Food Fix Campaign, dedicated to transforming our food and agriculture system through policy.

He is a co-founder and the Chief Medical Officer of Function Health. He is the host of one of the leading health podcasts, The Dr. Hyman Show with 150+ million downloads. Dr. Hyman is a regular medical contributor to several television shows and networks, including CBS This Morning, Today, Good Morning America, The View, Fox, and CNN.

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Full Transcript

Automatically generated. Please forgive any typos or errors in the following transcript. It was generated by a third party and has not been subsequently reviewed by our team.

Introduction:
Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Farmacy,

Lauren Handel Zander:
Your heart has a lot to talk about, and feel, and wants to be known, and wants to play.
Speaker 1:
A quick note before we get into today's episode, this conversation includes some mature language and topics. Listener discretion is advised.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Welcome to The Doctor's Farmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. That's Farmacy with an F, a place for conversations that matter, and if you've ever struggled with love, if you want to figure out how to find love, keep love, have love, and figure out your love software, well, this is the podcast for you, because it's very special with someone very special to me, who's helped me fix my broken picker and actually get the viruses out of my love software, my best friend, my life coach, Lauren Handel Zander, who's the co-founder and chairwoman of the Handel Group. It's an international corporate consulting and life coaching company. Her methodology, the Handel Method, is taught over 35 universities and institutes of learning around the world, including MIT, Stanford, Graduate School of Business, not too shabby, NYU, and the New York City Public School System.
She's also the author of, Maybe It's You: Cut the Crap. Face Your Fears. Love Your Life. It's a no nonsense practical manual that helps readers figure out not just what they want out of life, but actually how to get there. She spent over 20 years coaching thousands of private and corporate clients, including executives at Vogue, BASF, AOL, and she's been featured in the New York Times, BBC, Forbes, Women's Health, Dr. Oz, Marie Claire, and many other outlets. Welcome, Lauren. Hi.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Hi.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
So this is going to get deep and personal. You all may have heard a different podcast with Lauren, and I shared little bits of my story, but I'm just going to lay it all out there. I really had so much success in my life in so many areas. I figured out how to have a meaningful career. I have great friends. I have figured out how to be healthy. I just figured a lot out, but love was not something that I really had figured out, and Lauren quickly figured out that I hadn't figured it out when we first met, and I ran away from her, because I did not want to deal with it. And I basically have been married three times, divorced three times, and had other relationships that didn't work out. And after the last divorce, I was like, "Wait a minute, maybe it's me," and I decided to face my fears like the title of her book says, Maybe It's You. And I decided to go in deep and work with Lauren to fix my corrupted Love software.
And it was hard. It wasn't easy. It wasn't easy to look at myself. It wasn't easy to look at my patterns, and my traits, my habits, my beliefs, all the things that were in the way, and thank God I had someone like Lauren to help me, because without that I don't think I'd be in the incredibly happy, easeful relationship that I'm in now, which I don't think I would've got there. And the method that she used is one that's available to all of you too. It's not just something private that she had to do with me, but it's something that you can actually access, and we're going to talk today about this. We're going to talk today about the work that she's put out in the world, including an incredible online program called Inner.U Love, and we'll give you the link to that in the show notes. I'll tell you the link in a minute and how to get it.
And it also comes with an incredible masterclass, which if you get the Inner.U Love coaching program online, you also get a masterclass with Lauren, which is 10 different modules. Fantastic. We'll talk more about that, but I want to sort of first share a little bit, Lauren, if it's okay, about my journey, and how you helped. I kind of touched on it, but I want to kind of go a little deeper. Is that okay?

Lauren Handel Zander:
I love that.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Okay. I mean, I know this is a podcast. I'm going to interview you, but I think setting the stage with me first I think will be helpful to sort of talk about some of the method you use, and how it works. So for me, I did not realize that the trauma, which I didn't even identify as trauma as a child around my mother and my sister had so kind of distorting my view of what love is, and what love means, and obviously not just how my mother dealt with me, but her relationship with my father, her relationship with my stepfather. I had no examples of what healthy love looked like, or what it should be, and what was normal or good. And so I kind of struggled to figure it out.
And it was a very intense process of looking at myself, of examining my own inner dialogue, of looking at what my lower self was doing, and creating quite a mess in my head about love. And through a lot of work we did together and similar kinds of things, you would get through Inner.U Love, and through the masterclass, I got to understand this corrupted love software and got to kind of rewrite the software, which I didn't actually think was possible. But together we did it, and my mother was a child of deaf parents, and my grandparents were deaf, and because of that, she was the caretaker of them, and she learned that love was taking care of broken people, and that's what I learned.
And my mother depended on me and psychologically depended on me for her therapy in a second marriage that was terrible, and with my father. And it was just the worst. You just never do that to a kid. Kids should be kids. If you need a therapist, go to a therapist or go to a coach or something. And that led me to pick women who were damaged, like my first wife who was mentally ill, and alcoholic. And so it just took me decades to figure this (beep) out, honestly. I wish I'd met you when I was 25, Lauren.

Lauren Handel Zander:
I do too.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
I was 55. I mean 52, but I think it's never too late, and as I found out, it's really never too late. And so I think I just really want everybody to realize that we all have to deal with this. Yeah, I can look at Dr. Hyman and think he's happy, successful, great, and he's got it made. Well, no, not necessarily, and I think we all have our (beep), and you've had your (beep) too. So can you kind of share with me a little bit and share with everybody what are your view of how we create a pathway to healing our corrupted love software, and how we start to go down the path of self-discovery, and what your method is for doing that, and how you kind of were inspired to create Inner.U Love?

Lauren Handel Zander:
Yeah. Well, first of all, there's layers to understanding yourself. And so the first thing you'd have to start with is to love yourself is to understand yourself. So if you're not going deeper and deeper into your relationship to what happened to you, and where are you now, and what do you want, and are you getting it, and do you even talk about it, and do you think you can change anything? Right? So if I just sit with any person, and I ask them five good questions about their current love life, they go into a dissertation of how it's been, and how it's going to continue to be with them, with the others, and with life itself. So the first thing-

Dr. Mark Hyman:
You mean they don't believe it can change?

Lauren Handel Zander:
No, they don't even know there's another... What they've done is all there is, right? It doesn't deny everybody else is different. It just means I have no access. I am this way. This is how I've been. What do you mean? This is how I've been. And then so first layer is admitting whether you go in or out of dealing with yourself at all, and that you think that there's self discovery, like deep self discovery. If you haven't discovered something about your self in love, or what you're doing about it, or what you're causing, or how's it going, it's because you're not (beep) doing anything about it actually. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
And complaining, or talking to your girlfriends, or talking to your guy friends, or being in a men's group, or being in a woman's, there is no amount of talking about it without focusing it into very specific concepts. So the concept that saved your life, which you don't know you've just shared about abundantly, is you had many hauntings of your experience of love. So if I sat someone down in a class, and I said, "Write down a list of lovers that you can remember their names and had some significance to you, what happened in that relationship? Why did it start? Why did it end, and what did you learn," most people have never answered that question, like basic 101 of love. So when I talk about love language, I'm not talking about like I have a dictionary for you, though I do have words for you.
I'm talking about discovering that you have to write your own and learn your own love language, so you had so much trauma around your family of origin and growing up being such a giver with your sister was pretty broken, your mom. She wasn't broken as an individual, but the way she survived shit in her life, and how many things made her unhappy, and that she created many hauntings in you about what it was to be a family member, like what you should do for your family, what you should do for everyone, if you're the guy that can.
Take a look at those eyes. [inaudible 00:10:36]. Right?Mom. Okay, your mom did the best she could. We all know people did the best they could, unless they really didn't, but we can give them that credit, right? Forgiveness is an entirely different section in love. So for you, we went through all of your hauntings, and your hauntings created very deep patterns with your picker, and you couldn't tell that story before. Now you're excited to tell everyone something that you didn't even have language for. You can sum it up, right? Eat your broccoli, stop with the sugar, don't touch this, eat that, sleep. Right? So you now [inaudible 00:11:17].

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. Well, was it interesting. You made me write down the history of all my relationships, and where I was out of integrity with myself or with my partner, where I lied to myself or my partner, and it was a very disturbing exercise to do honestly, because I got to see the patterns over and over again, and so that was a huge part of the work that helped me kind of go, "Oh, crap. I got to fix this."

Lauren Handel Zander:
Yeah. So you heavily broke through. So each individual is different, and except what we do to ourselves. So we're in a relationship. We either are lying in the relationship, we're getting what we want, we're not getting what we want, we have the reasons we're living with why we'll take it and not. So we're storytellers. And then we think the story... You think the story you wrote down and told me was something you were stuck with for the rest of your life. If Mark said it, Mark thought it's a bone, right? It's like that's an elbow.
And when we could process what you wrote down and start to look at it from a much more macro, what we really did to you is we took you out of being such an individual with the way you talked about everything, and we made you a man, and we made you a being, and we made you oversee what it is to be human. And at this point, I really do reincarnation, not whether I know if it's true or not, but I like it a lot, because the concept that we're here to learn, and we're back and back, like you're going to be back, Mark. Let's learn it this time. Come on, baby, let's it face it, right? What are you saving yourself for?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Well, you have a chance to get free every lifetime, right?

Lauren Handel Zander:
And you didn't need... Who did I make you call? Because I usually make people have to speak to people and really check in. I don't' even think-

Dr. Mark Hyman:
They were all dead. They were all dead.

Lauren Handel Zander:
I think it was...

Dr. Mark Hyman:
My mother was dead. My sister was dead.

Lauren Handel Zander:
I think you and I were able to let you take over the narrative after you saw what you had thought your whole life or had accumulated your whole life. You then could realize why it was broken yourself, and for me, the big moment with you was when you got you had never really been in love before, because love was always, always over giving, always over giving, always trying to be good enough, always being the greatest doctor in the world, and not having an experience of being loved fully as is. And so if I asked you now... And then the other thing we had to do is you personally needed a timeout from all women, because it's not like you couldn't date or find beautiful women or wonderful people who loved you. You just couldn't feel it or pick the right one, and so I also asserted you didn't really love yourself or think you deserved the kind of love you wanted.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Well, that's really important, because I had to tell you when you first said, "You don't love yourself. You don't have self worth," I'm like, "What are you talking about? I'm Dr. Hyman. I like myself. I'm good with myself. I like being alone." And I just kind of in my head, I was like, "Oh, that's (beep)." And the truth was you were right. You were right, and you were really right, and it took me a long time to see the ways that I wasn't loving myself, that I didn't have self-worth, that I felt some emptiness or need that was there, because I kind of, as we sort of talked about, had my light taken from me by my mother, just as she had her light taken from her as a child by her parents. She called it a parentified child where she became the parent, and I was the parent to my mother in a way that was so inappropriate, and so I always felt empty.
There was something empty, and lacking, and needy in me, which I didn't know how to erase or get rid of. And I didn't even know where it came from, and so I'm a little bit thick, and it took a lot of time and a lot of hammering over my head, but I finally kind of got at, and once I did, it was just this huge liberation and everything changed. It was like all of a sudden I put on new glasses, and I could see.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You used to... Let everybody understand that Mark admits you admit that you had never used me for love really. He used to show up for me, so I could fix things. Right? It was like I was not doing the root cause. You never let me do the root cause, and we agreed that one day you would let me do the root cause.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
No.

Lauren Handel Zander:
And that you would go through the work with me.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
I avoided you for 10 years.

Lauren Handel Zander:
You really did. You guys...

Dr. Mark Hyman:
I was like, "I just want to be your friend. You can give me advice, but I don't really want to do the actual coaching, because it's I'm a little scared," and I didn't want to deal.

Lauren Handel Zander:
You were. You were.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
I want to do it my way.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
But you have a saying. You have a saying, "Never on schedule, always on time." So that's like a [inaudible 00:16:45].

Lauren Handel Zander:
Yes. Oh, wait, wait, wait. It's not mine. I'm quoting. I think I'm quoting Nas.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh.

Lauren Handel Zander:
It's a rap song from the nineties. Nineties rap.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Okay, great. Yeah. So tell me more in your mind how you sort of deconstructed my love software and helped me reconstruct it? Because I think it'd be helpful, because that's what you do in the Inner.U Love. That's what you do in your master class. So I don't want people thinking, "Oh, you need to have Lauren as your personal fiend, as your best friend, as your personal coach." You don't.

Lauren Handel Zander:
No, no, no.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
This is not rocket science.

Lauren Handel Zander:
No.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
It's just a method that can actually be taught, and it's now it's so great that you've really put the time and energy to create this remarkable course for next to nothing, and probably the cost of what you pay for one or two therapy sessions, right?

Lauren Handel Zander:
Right, definitely.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
But what literally can change your life.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Yeah. So first of all, you and I, the most important... So there's so many pieces to this. It's not that it's hard or many hours, if you're listening to this, but there really is the assessment of who you've been dating, or who you ever loved, even if you've been in a marriage for 30 years, right? So Mark had been in marriages and relationships. So there's still the 10 significant relationships, right? Which are one of the things I figured out, which actually is profound and may sound simple, but really rocks, is I say you have a head, you have a heart, and you have a hoo-ha, and they all have different voices. They all have different points of view. And if you haven't figured it out yet, they are always fighting with each other. They actually don't agree with each other, right? Or you could get two out of three, right?
Your heart really thinks she's sweet, and your hoo-ha thinks she's hot, right? Your head is like, "How is her English? How's her... How old is she? What does she know?" Right? Like you're, "Shut up with you, right? You're so perfect, right?. You can't know her til you know her," [inaudible 00:18:52] our heart says. But that's really the hoo-ha talking. So everyone has voices aiming at agendas, and the heart's agenda is different than the head's agenda, is different than the hoo-has agenda, right? And then Mark's head, heart, and hoo-ha are not... If he wrote what his heart most wanted, his head most wanted, and his hoo-ha most wanted, it's not the same thing as mine or yours.
So what I do is when I talk about making up language, I made Mark have to deal with his own rating scale of head, heart, and hoo-ha. Right? Simple like that, one out of 10 with your first wife, why did you marry her? What did you think? Where did it start? Head, heart and hoo-ha, right? And then when it ended, where was it? Okay, now do the rest of the relationships head, heart, and hoo-ha, and start to explain. And so what happens when we all humans are hunting for our partner, this is the big mistake everybody makes in my assessment, is that we think that they're fighting over dominance, the head, the heart, and the hoo-ha out of 100%, so that if you have two out of three, you should be happy. Right?
So your head gives her an eight. Your heart is a nine, but your hoo-ha is a six, but because your heart is so happy, and it never felt so nurtured, it's going to sell out on everything else, right? So that is very much a pattern that you got from your parents, but you don't see that yet. So what happens in inner you is over the 30 years I've been doing this, it's been 25 [inaudible 00:20:35]. I'm getting old. I'm 52. Over the years I've been doing this, I've been developing watching people make predictable patterns, right? So you have predictable patterns that come from your parents, and we have to give you language, so that you could start to figure yourself out, so you can have insights into choices. Right?
You didn't know you had a choice. You didn't know you thought the same way. You didn't know why you were attracted to that girl in the room. Right? You really didn't get it, and so I remember as you started dating again, and we had a rule about your head, your heart, and your hoo-ha, and you having to really pick, and you can't get attached, and they can't want babies, and they can't want this, and they... Come on, Mark, let's see if we can put it all together now and not come home with the wrong fish. Okay? Right? Right?
So as you hear what he's saying it's comprehensive. It really is. It was comprehensive to get Mark to sit down for an hour and write down the answers. That was comprehensive, right? It wasn't the answers that were so shocking. It was that he finally sat down and cared about himself enough to look at the ugly part. This doesn't take a long time, right? It takes a very short amount of time, but a very... You have to be willing to go into what do I... everything into the marriage you're in now, into your relationship with your kids, into your sex life. Don't come near my masterclass if you don't want to turn your love light on.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, I mean, I kind of realized that the only way it was going to work was if I was unfiltered in what I wrote down, because one thing is to think stuff in your head. It's another thing to actually say it out loud, or write it, or share it with somebody else. So just in that act of... And you gave me permission to write all the worst crap in my head that I wouldn't ever say out loud, and not make me wrong about it, but actually hear that it was a narrative that was my lower self, that wasn't my highest wisdom in the room. And that helped me to kind of actually see it. I'm like, "Ooh, ick," and that's not right." And then it was just like peeling layers.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Wait, wait, wait. Let's wait. It's too good. Wait, it's too good. So the reason when we identify something, when we give it a name, it then can become a placeholder that we can put a compartment somewhere, right? So when we started to develop that, Mark, there's a higher you and a lower you, and we're going to give everything you ever did in the past or anything you don't like about yourself to your lower self, and then we're even going to have the guy that's been running your life, this was very important for you, that you had your highest, lowest self, right? The good guy who always tried hard, but still was in the old lower self narrative.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Well, it's the conman in your head.

Lauren Handel Zander:
But because you started to just tell the truth and start to realize what you were saying, whether it was about Mia, or about yourself, or about dating or about aging, you have done a number on yourself about as if everyone... Does everyone think Mark Hyman is a hot man and is getting better as he ages? Oh, I heard everybody say, "Yes." We don't believe we can get hotter and more profound as we get older. I don't agree. See me? I think I'm getting sexier, better like you. I'm following your plan and (beep) get sexier when you get older, because you're liberated. Right? You know what you like, and you usually can afford it. So you were perfectly on time to get to love the most important part of your life, which is when it was all about, when it can really be all about you and your life, not all about making money, having children, building a... Everything that's the first half of one's life.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
So Lauren, in your work you talk about having developed this sort of new framework for our heart language.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Yes.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And what that is. Can you talk a little bit about that, and what you've learned about the heart? Because you've also been through a lot recently too, and a lot of changes, so you've had to sort of also go on your journey in this.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Yes. Just in case anybody wondered, if you become a life coach, does that guarantee (beep) doesn't happen to you?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
No.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Even if you're the best life (beep) coach, right? I'm really good, and I even follow my own coaching, but that doesn't mean (beep) doesn't happen to me. I can't control others. So basically as my life started to wind down from how much work I was doing, and traveling, and everything I was doing, I showed up in bed with my husband at the time, and was like, "Baby, I'm back. I have all the hours of the day. Should we get into each other?" Right? So for the first time in David's life, I wanted a play date with him all the time, and he wasn't that into it. I could tell pretty much instantly that he wasn't in love with me. Now, you could go, "Were you really in love with him," and I'm like, "Eh, eh, eh." I knew how to be someone who loved, right? I knew how to over give easily and love whatever I had.
So Mark would be like, "How is this working for you for years?" And I'm like, "Because it's what I chose, and I love what I chose, and so this is good enough. This is what... It's not good enough like it sucks, but I love what I chose, and I'm really good at that," but that doesn't mean I'm getting hot sex. Mm-mm. Right? It means I'm getting regular consistent sex. Okay? Because I keep my promises. All right.
So David Zander looked like he wasn't in love with me anymore. I had a rule, and I kept the rule, which is if we're not in love with each other, we're not staying together. We don't owe staying together if it isn't hot, and what we both want, and so we admitted that to each other after I discovered it in his eyes, and unwound our marriage till today, right? So we broke up starting basically like every... COVID 2020, we started unwinding. We are legally everything done, right? Waiting for the states. And I would proudly say that because of that experience, and setting David free, and making sure my kids were happy with the transition, and that we all are good together, like could hang out together forever, right? And then David started dating early, and I didn't, right?
I wasn't even jealous. That's not a good sign. Anyway, but I personally waited til my heart healed, until I wanted... My joke is until I wanted to actually see a naked man again. Right? I had to wait. And that happened, and so the whole experience of changing my life or figuring it all out is all the new love language, and starting to be able to talk for my heart, because it's not a plan that my head came up with. And it's not integrity, and it's not keeping promises. Those are all great things, but the truth is the heart doesn't give a (beep) about any of that. I don't need a promise to paint. I get up and paint every day. I don't need a promise to show up to my coaching calls. I love coaching. Right?
It's when you need a... I don't need a promise to go on a walk for two hours. So the heart is an entirely different... But if we don't live in it, ask it questions, talk to it, journal with it, paint with it, if we don't do anything with our own heart, how does it develop language? Which is why I'm focusing on Inner.U Love. If you're married, bring your marriage. If you haven't gotten laid in 16 years, you're like, "How many people since you started this, Lauren, have you turned sex back on, like on?" Right? And I'm like, "Oh, I turn the sex light, love light back on, right?" And we're all getting better as we get older. That's the rule. So love language came out of my disaster, which was really, David turned not into the soulmate, turned into my baby daddy, and he's the best father, and he's a good man, and he's a great ex-husband, so we're good. So I can teach all of that now.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And so what is the sort of heart language? I'm not quite clear on what you mean by that.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Okay. First of all, it's a really good question, and I don't have a flat answer to it yet. It is you go, "Why are you teaching the master class," because I-

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, tell us about that.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Okay, so the master class is going to be me developing language for love. So I'm actually using the class to practice what I have been developing. So you know how I have head, heart, and hoo-ha, right? If you want to know about life coaching, I would tell you to do Inner.U Life. That's all my structures. That's all my integrity. That's how you develop a dream, and make plans, and keep integrity. It's brilliant head material. I have never developed heart material where it's about the painting. It's about doing things that make you feel connected to spirit, and energy, and love, right? Now, that language is in each of us alone. right? And so I want to develop practices that have us all fall more in love with our partners, with ourselves, with our vaginas, with you name it, we're falling in love with it.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
So you've basically created this course, Inner.U Love, and then this companion masterclass, which is sort of really a newer sort of rendition of your view and learnings over the last year or two, right?

Lauren Handel Zander:
Exactly.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And so in the masterclass, what are some of the sort of nuggets and things that you actually lay out that are going to help people in a different way?

Lauren Handel Zander:
Everything that Mark did, everything that Mark did to get to this place that he is right now, are all the modules in Inner.U Love. So y'all are going to listen to your module and do your homework. It's not very long and hard, but you're literally going to start to write out your history of love, figure out your ratings, and start to talk about the lessons, the things that haunted you. This is where hell breaks loose, right? Because there's sexual traumas. There's things you've never forgiven. Mark had (beep) with his sister. I had (beep) with my brother. We have weird things that we have been through, and you've never looked to see how that has been impacting you, even if it happened 35 years ago. It's having you get undressed not in front of your husband, but in the bathroom. Why? You think he doesn't know? Right?
So we have so many ways we're dressed. We get dressed from our past. We pick out colors from our past. So the heart, love language, everything you're going to see in this course is about how you are predictable, and what do you want from love? And if you haven't asked yourself that question, say, "What do I want from love today? What do I want from myself today in the area of love," if you're not asking yourself heart questions, how could you be answering them? How could you be feeling it? It's like you can't see a punch buggy on the road unless you're looking for them. So what's happening is I'm going to help people focus.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And there's exercises and things that people have to do in order to... Homework. You call it homework. It gave me homework.

Lauren Handel Zander:
I do.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
It was homework, and I had to do my homework every day, and it wasn't pointless homework. It was actually not for you. It was for me.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Yes.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
It was like you do homework for your teacher, but, no, it's actually homework is for you.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Yeah. Yes.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And when I got that, I was like, "I thought I was just doing it to please you." And then I was like, "No, this is stupid. I don't know why I'm not actually being honest, or why I'm not telling the full truth, or why I'm not divulging all of my stupid inner thoughts or dialogue." And I remember I had this moment. I was like, "Oh, (beep) this is not Lauren just telling me to do this so she can have it or it's her thing. It's actually a gift for me to actually figure out my crap." And that was a turning point for me where I actually was like, "Oh okay." I can't filter anything.
There's no filtering or making it seem like it's not as bad as it is, or having some sort of diversionary kind of conversation that isn't actually the nugget of the core of what was interrupting my ability to actually love myself, to heal my love software, to understand the origins of it, and to end up in a place where actually I could meet somebody and feel whole before... It was such a big thing, and I got to a point where I remember feeling like if I never am in another relationship again, if I never make love again, if I never have any of that, I'm great. Life is great. I'm great. I don't need anything to be happy. All I need is [inaudible 00:35:55] food to eat, a place to sleep, and a...

Lauren Handel Zander:
Wait, wait, wait, wait. I have to say this, because many people think they're there, but gave up on love, on having love and sex. Right?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, yeah.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Many people think they're like... See, Mark?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Right, right. It wasn't that. It wasn't that.

Lauren Handel Zander:
For those of you who are not having love and sex, and go, "I am satisfied because I figured out..." That's the same person who goes, "How's your spirituality? I don't believe in religion." And I'm like, "Does that mean did the whole chapter died?"

Dr. Mark Hyman:
No, it's not that. It wasn't that. No, it's actually the opposite. It actually liberated me to be able to actually have it. It's kind of a weird paradox. It's like once I felt whole, then I was like, "Oh," and then it was just such a... And actually I didn't believe that I could, and I don't think I've erased it all, obviously. I think there's echoes, but I didn't really think I could... It was like a chiropractic adjustment. Something was out in my neck, and I couldn't move my neck, and all of a sudden I can move my neck, and maybe there's still a little not 100% range of motion, but I mostly can move my neck, and it was such a radical thing, and it was surprising to me, because I was like, "Well, I normally would react like this, but I don't do that anymore. I don't have those same thoughts or patterns," or occasionally I'll get triggered, and it'll be like a faint wind that blows by, not a hurricane that knocks me over.
So it's really, it's interesting, and I think the method of this process to go through is so unusual. It's not what you go through in therapy. It's just not relationship counseling. It's not the normal kind of self-help stuff, which doesn't always get to the root of it, and then that was sort of what was so powerful. I was like, "How do we get to the origin and the root?" And it's like functional medicine. How do you get to the root cause? Cognitive behavioral therapy is great. It helps a lot of people, but it's really about managing the outside, not the inside. And so what I got to experience with you was to manage the inside and heal the inside out instead of just taking on the form of whatever it was. And so it's such a gift to be able to actually...

Lauren Handel Zander:
I think one of the things I really do make people do once they understand it like you, in the class, they will have to do this, which is trailing your inner dialogue where someone else will read it, like your buddy, or a coach, or you will need to share your inner dialogue and deal with that we want to sound good, or we want to look good to ourselves, versus what are you really listening to in your head when you look in the mirror, or what do you really say about how you think that man on the date saw you? Right? So we don't think that the voice in our head is destroying or making our life great, so we don't take over. So when people talk about manifesting, people talk about manifesting all the time, right?
So I talk about manifesting, but manifesting is understanding that whatever you're saying to yourself is manifesting. And so we are like, "Well, why do you need to know what you're saying to yourself?" Did you hear the other line I just said? Whatever you're saying to yourself, you're manifesting. And you know my other favorite word.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Lauren Handel Zander:
(beep) yourself.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
(Beep).

Lauren Handel Zander:
Don't (beep) yourself. Right? Because if you (beep) yourself, it's fear. It's I don't deserve. I don't get So the way you used to... So I remember what you're talking about, which was you would call me. You'd be out on one of your world adventures doing your thing, and you'd be like, "Lauren, I didn't care. I didn't care. I felt so good. I walked away. I didn't care. I didn't notice. I didn't have to stay. I didn't have to..." You not pleasing people or not having to be... Your ability to like someone, walk away, not have to make sure they have plans with you for the next-

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Marry them, marry them, marry them.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Marry them. Write them checks. Right?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lauren Handel Zander:
You didn't have to invite them on a trip because... right? The way you people please, you were a people pleaser, right? And there's nothing wrong with pleasing people, but when you're a people pleaser in order to get love, that becomes very sick. So all these nicknames that we're giving Mark, he discovered by having doing the assignment, like which trait? So you guys, I can never explain it. It's 10 hours, right? It's 10 sessions, right? So I'm not going to explain it. He's not going to explain it. We're talking about it. It's like talking about Italy. Once you're there, you really do experience it.
So you guys, come to Inner.U Love with me is what we're talking about, but Mark is an incredible example of someone who really you do not have what you used to have at all. We're not talking about any of your old (beep). I haven't heard about it in almost feels like two years.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. No, it's a while. I mean, I might call you occasionally, but I haven't felt the need to.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Mark, you have not. Mark, you have not called.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
I'm not taking it off the table. I might. I might. I don't know, but I haven't, no.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Wait, wait, wait, it makes me even happier, because you used to call and be shocked you were happy, and you used to like as if you really were waiting for something to come, right? And now when you call, it's not a big deal. You're like, "Yeah, it's perfect. We had the most perfect day yesterday. How's your day?" Where you used to have to oversell it, because you were so relieved you had a good day. Yeah, all that's different.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. I think part of what you do is terrifying to be honest, because telling the truth is something we don't do very well in this culture, and you basically say we're all liars, and I kind of really resisted that for a long time, and I'm like, "I'm not a liar. What do you mean?" And I think the worst kinds of lies are the ones you tell to yourself, and I did not actually want to look at myself.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Yeah, I know.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And I thought I did. That was the trick. It was like I thought I did. I've been studying Buddhism for 40 years, and I meditate, and I do yoga, and I do all these things, but it was just like I go to workshops, I've done this stuff. It was just some layer of the sort of blindfolds of not being able to tell the truth even to myself. And once I figured that out and could do that, then I could tell the truth to everybody else. And so actually this is the first relationship I've been in where I'm actually honest.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Yeah, you are.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And it's not like I was lying like I said I didn't go buy chocolate ice cream, and I went and bought chocolate... It's not that kind of lying. It's like lying of omission, or not telling what I'm really feeling, or not saying things, because I'm worrying somebody is going to be upset, or not actually sharing everything that is happening in a honest, transparent way, because I feel I'll be left, or judged, or someone won't love me, or whatever it is, a stupid thought I had in my head. And now it's like, "Oh, I get to tell the truth. How fun." And it's like a magic trick that I actually know you've been telling me for 10 years, and like I said, everybody, I'm kind of slow, but I finally kind of figured out that it's such a better way to go, and there's nothing to manage. And then you get to be in a relationship with what is, right? So if you tell the truth, and whoever you're with doesn't like it, and they leave you, well, then that's probably what should happen, right?

Lauren Handel Zander:
Yes.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
If you are lying to keep love, or manage love, or hide this or that about yourself, I mean it's not like you're having an affair, and you're lying about an affair. I'm not talking about that. It's all the little stuff that we aren't honest about. And I had an experience like this recently where I got in trouble kind of. Not in trouble, but I got called out for not being honest where I was sick for two weeks, and I think I had COVID. I was coughing all the time, and I was exhausted, and I had to record my audio book, and I had to take steroids to kind of clear my voice, and it made me really exhausted even more, and I was just fried. And then I wasn't able to show up and be present.
Instead of going, "Oh, I feel like crap. I need to go home and lay in bed," I tried to show up. I didn't think I was lying. I was trying to be a good boy and do the right thing, but the right thing was saying, "Hey, I really can't be here right now," or, "I need to go to bed, and I'm sorry. I came all this way to see you, but I'm just not feeling well, and please forgive me." I tried to fake it, and faking it is lying. And it left the people I was with a really bad impression, which wasn't an accurate representation of how I felt about them, but it was just ta result of me lying. And so I still have it, but then I can go, "Oh." I can still look at it and see, "Yeah, that's not being honest."
And the truth is if I would've said that, I would've been fine, but I thought I would get in trouble, or they wouldn't like me, or whatever the (beep) in my head was. So I think it's you constantly have to be vigilant for how you don't tell the truth, because it's very subtle. It's is very invisible. And the beautiful thing about your work, Lauren, and the Handel Method, and Inner.U Love... And by the way, we're going to put the link to the course in here. It's inner with a U, just a letter U.Coach, but it's quite amazing. There's 12 really profound audio sessions, all these assignments that help you kind of get to the heart of things, free coaching calls. There's a buddy system. You're going to get a whole community of people to help you.
You can actually track your integrity in the process, like I just said I was out of integrity with myself, and I was out of integrity with my partner, because I didn't tell the truth, right? So that's like how do you track that? How do you sort of track all these things? So it's really a very robust program that is available for, like I said, probably the cost of a good therapist for one session. And it's profound, and I think it's really a gift that you've created for the world, because love is hard. I mean, love is really hard, and I think people can get a lot of areas of their life right, but love is the hardest one to get right, for me for sure it was, and I think now it's I think I... Knock wood. We'll see how it goes, but...

Lauren Handel Zander:
I think it's also the one that can delight and surprise us the most. Right? If you think about love, and fun, and surprises, and caring, the amount of more love that people could give if they figured out that they wanted to, right? It's not like people are over giving love, okay? It's not love is the commodity that it needs to be in your personal life at all, right? We don't experience or have... Everyone would say, "Do you have enough love in your life? Do you feel it all the time? Do you see it all the time?" If the answer isn't like, "Could you use more? Would you give more? Would you like more?" Right? You have to understand what it is from you for you in order to grow, expand, or else we're always shrinking and getting more comfortable in our smallness, or this is how I've always been. This is the way it is. And so anyone, anyone could shake up everything in a day.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. I mean, I think the old adage that you can't teach an old dog new tricks is not true, because I'm an old dog, and I got a whole bunch of new tricks, and I feel like I finally got free, and it kind of is silly to say this, but I feel like I'm literally... I'm going to be 63, and I feel like I'm just beginning my life. I feel like I'm 20 years old, and I have my whole life in front of me now. It's like I finally graduated from I don't know what, from just the life in a way that I hadn't had the freedom to be who I fully am, which I now am.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Well, I think for you and I both, I think we adhered to societies, like there's a right way to do family. There's a right way to do love. There's a right way to do money. There's a right way to be in this world. There's like you must... You need to own a house. You need to have a car. That I don't have a house, I don't have a car. I don't have an address, everybody. I'm called a digital nomad, right?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
There you go.

Lauren Handel Zander:
And the only app I really need are I have, right? So it's life, Lavett. Anyway, so love is something that you'll never know enough about it. You'll never be able to conquer it, and you will never be done with it, and it's literally why we came to be on the planet. And if you are not talking about it, thinking about it, if you don't have anything to journal about today, that's because you're not in it. You're in your life, right? So your heart has a lot to talk about, and feel, and wants to be known, and wants to play. If you don't go, "My heart is like a 10 in life," let's do Inner.U Love together, right?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. So Lauren, I think that the Inner.U Love course is basically a framework that we used together to help me get free and figure out how to get love, which I really want for everybody. And I feel that this is such a valuable framework for people to navigate this landscape that we have no map for. And essentially what you've created with Inner.U Love is a map and a set of processes, and tools, and experiences, and teachings that allow people to do this without having to spend a fortune, which is amazing, and able to actually get the benefit of a lot of the things that you've developed over the last 25 years about how to get free. And I really encourage everybody to check it out.
So Inner.U Love is basically an elixir to love, dating, playing, relationships, and marriage. It's an online coaching course that helps give you the tools to find, fix, and figure out whatever, whomever, and how many ever it is that you truly and wholeheartedly want. So I think we really are so messed up in this culture about love, and we don't have any good maps, and I just thank you for creating this. For listeners of The Doctor's Farmacy podcast, the course is normally $425. You get $100 off, so it's $325. It's a bargain. I think it's really a priceless bit of teaching, and you get this 10 part master class, which adds all kinds of new value that you wouldn't otherwise get.
So I encourage people to check it out. Lauren has helped me measurably. I don't think I'd be where I was in any part of my life without her. She's got a lot of good things to teach, and I think you'll value all the things that she has to say, and what she'll teach you about how to navigate your own sort of love software. So I fixed mine. You can fix yours. It's not too late, and Lauren, thank you so much for the work you do. I just want to mention also that you're a co-founder of a company called Lavett, which is L-A-V-E-T-T.love, which is the URL. It's an online dating platform, which is very different from all the apps.
It actually helps you go through and actually learn how to be the right partner and find the right partner, and it's fun, engaging, and very different than anything out there. So people should check it out. That's Lavette.love. We're going to put all that in the show notes. Lauren, thanks for what you do. Thanks for being in my life. Thanks for the hard work that it's taken you to figure out all this crap, which gives us a shortcut to getting to where we need to be. So thank you so much, Lauren.

Lauren Handel Zander:
Yes. My pleasure, and I hope to see, like I hope people find me. I'm working, I'm coaching, and I would love the biggest gang in January ready to alter what's possible in love for yourself individually, and then, obviously, your partners, and then let that ripple out. Mm, let's do it.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Sounds like a good anecdote for what's wrong with the world. I thank you, Lauren, for that, and if everybody listening to this podcast loved this podcast, which I hope you did, because it's pretty personal and intense, share it with everybody. Share it with your friends and family. I think everybody needs to hear this message. Leave a comment about how you've navigated love, and where you've discovered the answers, or where you have the questions, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next week on The Doctor's Farmacy.

Outro:
Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.