Bad Boys, Workplace Sabotage & the Kardashians 💌 November Magic Mailbag
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Hi, I'm Jessica Porter and welcome back to Sleep Magic, a podcast where I help you find the magic of your own mind, helping you to sleep better and live better. Hi everyone, welcome. Thank you for being here. Welcome to this month's mailbag episode where I will do my best to answer questions you've sent in. But before we dive in, a few things.

First, I am not an expert on any of these topics. I will give you my experience and perspective, but I also may be stumped by some of them, and I won't pretend to know stuff that I don't. If you need professional help with these issues, I encourage you to seek it out. Before we get started, let's hear a quick word from our sponsors who make this free content possible.

Hey, Sleep Magic listeners. If you've been following Jessica from her days as the co-host of Sleepwave, you may remember me. I'm Carissa, and I'm here to invite you to join me for the brand new series of Sleepwave, a podcast designed for anyone who struggles with sleep, whether it's taking forever to drift off or waking up in the middle of the night.

Every Monday, I share sleep meditations and relaxing bedtime stories that not only help you fall asleep quickly, but also guide you through those thoughts that keep you up at night. Whether it's stress, anxiety, or just a restless mind, we tackle it together so you can get the rest you deserve.

I know what it's like to struggle with sleep. I have a mind that loves to keep me awake. And that's exactly why I'm so passionate about the meditations and stories we explore on Sleepwave. They've made a difference in my life, and I'm confident they'll do the same for you. So, if you're ready for better, sweeter sleep, join me on Sleepwave. You can find me wherever you get your podcasts. Just search Sleepwave.

Hey there, Sleep Magic listeners. I want to share a unique bedtime podcast with you that can be a perfect partner to what we do here. It's called I Can't Sleep, hosted by Benjamin Boster. In this podcast, Benjamin reads Wikipedia articles in his incredibly calming voice, designed to gently lull you into a peaceful slumber.

He covers a whole range of subjects you just might enjoy, like comets, cicadas, and my personal favorite, Canada. These topics are just engaging enough to distract your mind from the stresses of the day, but boring enough to send you to sleep, making it a great option for when you want to mix up your bedtime listening.

So if you enjoy what we do here at Sleep Magic and are looking for another soothing option to help you unwind, I highly recommend checking out I Can't Sleep. Follow the I Can't Sleep podcast now and get ready to wind down and relax with Benjamin. Find I Can't Sleep wherever you listen to podcasts.

Second, this episode may not be appropriate for children. And finally, if you fall asleep because that's what happens when you hear my voice, that's fine too. If you're interested in really getting the details, you can listen again while you're cleaning your house or taking a walk or whatever you do. But please do not listen to this while you are driving if you're used to falling asleep to my voice for obvious reasons. Okay, so let's get into it. Question number one from Becky.

Hi Jessica, I want help with my issues of looking for the perfect partner. I'm 32 and I've struggled with my type being toxic men who are really attractive and great in bed but end up being cheaters and generally horrible. I've been seeing a guy who isn't my usual type on and off for a few years but I've never truly let myself fall for him as I think there's hotter men out there and the sex was kind of meh. We just decided to call it quits

But I just found out he went on a date with someone I know and it floored me. I've realized I really miss him and all I do is cry wishing it had worked out. I'm worried that I couldn't see what was right in front of me, but I'm yearning for his companionship and I'm worried that he may have been the one. Oh, Becky, I feel for you. First, I want to say that I have been frustrated in this department too. I just need to show my hand here.

But I've also taken this part of my life, the romantic intimacy part of my life, to be the most potent grist for the mill of my own growth. So even though it can be painful, it's full of really deep opportunities. I too have been attracted to the more dangerous types, the best looking guys in the room, etc. And I too have been hurt by those choices. So

I'll just tell you what I've learned, what I think I know. But please, take what you like and leave the rest. Let's start at the end of your letter. You say, I'm worried he may have been the one. Well, I mean, I'm going to be frank here. If he moves on to someone else, he's not your one, at least for now. But let's go even deeper into this concept. I don't believe there is a one per se.

in the way our culture wants us to believe there is, that there's some special relationship, unlike any other, that will complete us, that if we miss it, we miss our lives. I don't buy it. You, Becky, are the one. And your relationship to life is the special relationship. And yes, you will find people along the way with whom you have fierce, creative, beautiful energy.

And you will create with them and grow with them, hopefully. And those relationships feel bigger than the sums of their parts. But they are simply your energy combining with another person's energy, creating something new. And you may experience more than one of them. In fact, you do that energy combining with everyone you interact with.

It's just that by being intimate with someone, you're sharing even more energy and more unconscious energy. And those connections tend to be more intense and transformational than, say, a friendship. But hey, friendships are very powerful too, just in different ways. So here's my point. You are complete and full of power on your own. An organic being living within yourself

nature's amazing matrix, to sound trippy, no matter who you're with. And you are attracted to people who will help you grow and discover or recover that sense of wholeness in you. You may have some issues or wounds that are obscuring your wholeness and causing you to make some detours in your choices, but make no mistake.

You are the one. And the people you attract, ultimately they are the one for themselves. This is your life and no one else can fix it or complete it. But you can create beautiful things with other people. Now, all that said, we all know people who just seem to wade into secure and stable relationships without even thinking about it. And they seem to do it unconsciously.

I presume it's because they come from steady homes with secure attachment to probably both parents, and they just end up sort of repeating that model. And frankly, they have always baffled me. Now, life is never perfect for anyone, however, and obviously they have to work through difficulties and grow and experience ups and downs.

But in general, they've attracted someone relatively healthy and they have the tools and the sense of self to work things through. Unlike me, or maybe you, who feel we've been thrown into some haunted house in many of our intimate relationships. But where the couple who gets along easily may have an easier ride, the haunted house is actually an opportunity to grow.

As is the steady relationship, by the way. But the haunted house is higher stakes, more intense, more urgent. That's good. We get attracted to people for all sorts of unconscious reasons. And if the models you had as a kid were somewhat dysfunctional, you run the risk of making more dysfunctional choices. Not being so attracted to the nice, steady guy. Not being attracted to just calm love.

In terms of being attracted to men who aren't great for you, you may want to do some therapy to work that stuff through or read some books on the topic. It might help you to get some clues about your own past or your own inner extremes that lead you to want those external extremes. It sounds like you attract guys who aren't necessarily honest or ultimately abandon you.

And by the way, they're abandoning other people too, so it's probably not personal. But that's a very painful pattern. Is that an echo from your childhood? I know for me that I always wanted the most fabulous guy in the room because I thought that if he wanted me, it meant that I was fabulous. But I eventually had to learn through a lot of painful experiences that my ego's sense of fabulousness, that hit of narcissistic dopamine,

was not what healthy relationships were made of. Healthy relationships are made of some pretty boring stuff. I mean, sure, there's attraction, but there's also communication, trust, patience, humility, shared goals, and even figuring out how to handle when your partner does that gross thing that drives you nuts. And Becky, you may not change this stuff overnight.

You may need to get into some other so-so relationships in order to see your issues even more clearly and root them out. But understanding yourself better in this department should help you communicate more clearly, make better choices, and connect with that innate wholeness inside of you. And all that will ultimately make you a better partner because you'll be putting out better, higher vibes.

Remember, at the end of the day, you and all of us, we're energy transmitters and receivers. And we are responsible to ourselves and the people we get involved with. We determine the vibration of our lives and even of our relationships if we really do the work. We're the tuning forks.

So finally, Becky, what I've learned for me is the more responsibility I take for me, the better choices I have made. I still haven't attracted that partner that feels like the fantastically healthy long-term match, but I'm also not sitting around waiting for that person because frankly, I'm busy enjoying my life. I have a ton of satisfying relationships of all kinds because I bring good energy to them.

And then I get good energy back. In terms of intimacy, the work I've done on my own stuff makes it so that I get out of weird situations way more quickly. In fact, I don't even attract them. I'm no longer stuck or sad or take things as personally, and I'm no longer attracted to the dangerous guy or the most fabulous guy in the room. In fact, they sort of repel me.

But most of all, I know that I'm giving the best quality energy I can to all my relationships. And like I said before, that brings back healthy, positive energy to me. Maybe one day I'll do this dancing more closely with an intimate partner. But for now, I just practice these habits in my life. Cleaning up my stuff when it arises, taking responsibility for it.

And the cleaner my energy transmitter is, the more love I can give and receive from all directions. Because I, like you, Becky, am the one here living life. I hope you can get something from that, Becky. Some of these questions I feel really out of my depth and I can only just offer my limited experience, but I think some of it is universal. So thank you and take care. All right.

Next, from Anonymous. I hate my boyfriend's dog. Hey, Jessica, thank you for your show. It really does make my life better. The Q&As have been giving me life. I love listening to them, and I've never written into a podcast, but here goes. I hate my boyfriend's dog.

I can't remember its breed. It's an English something with a super droopy face and pink eyes, and it drools everywhere. I like animals in general, but I can't even look at this thing when I'm eating. It's so gross. It always whines, and it's just an annoying dog. We're talking about moving in together when his lease is up in December, and I wouldn't ask him to give the dog away, but I think I can't live with it. The thought of it drooling on my carpets and my sofa gives me the ick. Is this a deal-breaker?

Or should I suck it up and move in with the hellhound? Thank you. Oh, hellhound. That's so funny. I love it. Okay, this is a great question. Okay, first I want to tell you a little story I heard long ago. I can't remember where I heard it, but it had a huge impact on me. I've never forgotten it. It's a story of a daughter-in-law who really doesn't like her mother-in-law.

And she goes to the local sort of acupuncturist medicine man healer and says, I really hate my mother-in-law and I want to kill her. Can you help me? Can you give me something to kill my mother-in-law? And this sort of magical healer type gives her this special balm that

you know, like a rub cream. And he says, yes, every night, rub this on your mother-in-law's shoulders and it will do the trick. Okay, so she leaves the appointment. She's kind of excited. Her mother-in-law drives her nuts. And she goes back home. She says, hey, mother-in-law, let me give you a massage. And she starts rubbing this balm into her mother-in-law's shoulders. Mother-in-law relaxes.

daughter-in-law's waiting for the impact. Nothing happens. Now, she seems to remember that the medicine man has said, you know, do it for several nights. So she does it the next night and the next night and the next night and nothing happens. So she goes back to the healer and she says,

I've been rubbing this stuff in my mother-in-law's shoulders for a week and nothing has happened. He says, that's okay. That's okay. This is slow working. Don't worry. Everything's perfect. This is normal. Go and do it again. Do it for another week. She goes back. She's rubbing the shoulders. The mother-in-law's relaxing, you know, talking. The daughter-in-law's like, oh boy, I wish this would work, but they're just spending more time together.

Goes back to the healer after a week. She's not dead yet. The healer says, don't worry. Everything's working. Go. Do it another week. She goes back and does another week. Finally, after three weeks, she comes back. She said, but wait, wait, wait, wait. I don't want her to die anymore. I don't want this to work. And he said, ah, there you go. The balm. It did the trick. So I'm sure you all understand what was happening there, which is when we have contact with people, even people

or creatures who our ego, like our defense systems, are what we call in hypnosis critical faculty, is sitting there going like, no, no, no, and having resistance to, reacting to. If we allow a whole other part of ourselves to interact and we amplify that other experience with the person, things can change and in positive ways.

So I've never forgotten that. And I want to sort of apply those principles here with you. So let's imagine you do decide to move in with your boyfriend and the dog comes as part of the deal. What can you do to begin to accept or even love this dog? I mean, this is just the life force moving through another creature, just like the life force is moving through you. And the dog himself is powerless.

over being a dog or the drooling or coming through in some precious breed that has all sorts of weird characteristics. So why don't you try petting the dog in a place on the dog that doesn't freak you out, where you don't have to look at his face and just allow your hand and the energy coming through your hand, which is connected to your whole body, just to make that connection. Life force to life force. Just try it. See what happens.

relax as you do it. This is really about allowing the responses in your mind to kind of slow down and soften. I also encourage you to write down every night or every morning three things you appreciate about this dog. And, you know, you may start with some really out there stuff, really general stuff that is not really connected to the dog's personality or any of the details. Say stuff like,

I appreciate that this dog is not a goat or a cow or some other larger animal that might need to move into my house. I appreciate that he is trained to not pee in the house. I appreciate that he gets my boyfriend to go walking regularly, which is good for his health.

Things that aren't personal to you or to him at all, just general things. And this can help you to associate good feelings with this dog. You're just sort of tipping your mind in that direction, gently, without resistance.

I have been really annoyed at certain human beings in my life at different times, and I've done versions of this trick, sort of daring myself to find positive qualities in the individual to see how quickly I can turn my own mind around.

Because that part of your mind that's resisting and rejecting this dog, that part of your mind goes everywhere in your life. And it's something that you're going to have to manage your entire life. We all have it. In hypnosis, we call it the critical faculty. And we have to find ways, relaxation is really helpful in this respect, to get under it and to establish more positive connections beneath that reactive mind.

And you are in control of your mind, not the dog. Don't let this dog send you on these freakouts. Finally, if resentments continue to come up against the dog or against your boyfriend, really take a look at them. Write them out. Get the judgment and negative energy out. I resent the dog for drooling, looking weird, you know, whatever.

it's really okay. We all have judgments and negativity. I mean, hey, in the story I told, that woman wanted to kill her mother-in-law. That's heavy duty. But if we carry that energy around in our minds and bodies, it festers and sort of starts to run the show of our life. It can leak out in all sorts of weird ways. So unload that stuff.

And then take a look at it. Is this true? Is the statement I just made true? Is it that important? I mean, is a dog looking ugly actually something that's hurting you? Is it something that should drive you into a bad mood? Are you going to let it do that? Get some perspective on it. And then just do your best to let it go. And if and when those resentments come up again,

write them out again, and let them go again. There's no avoiding having negative reactions and feelings in life for anybody. But our job is to release the negative, and if possible, learn from it, even grow from it, and then to amplify the positive. I think that's the most responsible use of the human mind.

You're about to move in with your boyfriend. There may be all sorts of ways in which you feel itchy and scratchy with one another as you make that transition. Best to have this tool of releasing the negative in order to smooth it out. It doesn't mean you'll never have fights or that you're not allowed to state your needs, but I think every person should have a way of releasing the pressure valve on their negativity so that it doesn't explode in their life.

And once you've written something down, it tends to carry less charge. And if you need to express it, you can do it without doing damage. I look forward to getting a photo in the next six months of you and the hellhound enjoying each other. Good luck with this. Let us know how it goes. Thank you for writing. Okay, next from Loretta.

I've been married to my husband for 31 years now, and we have two grown-up sons and now have four beautiful grandchildren. Yay! We've been living in our bungalow now for 30 years, and when we bought it, we both knew that there was a lot of work to do on it. We did spend a lot of time on it before the boys came along, and also when they were young, in between us both working full-time and doing opposite shifts.

My problem is getting my husband motivated to get things done or finished in our home now. It's quite big things, like part of the roof on our living room window got blown off in the spring. He can't even put it down to not having time as he does manage to go to golf on his early shift and can sit scrolling for ages on his phone. I keep quiet about that as I don't want to be a nagging wife. I'd like to invite my friends around for a drink or get together, but I'm too embarrassed to do this.

When I suggest to him about getting someone in to fix these things, he says, no, they might do a bad job or it will cost too much. We do have a bit of savings, which will pay for what needs doing, but I bite my tongue and don't mention this as I don't like bad feelings or conflicts. Don't get me wrong, he's not a bad husband. He's pretty good apart from this and not doing any housework, but that doesn't bother me as I like to do that myself. My problem is how do I tackle this without rocking the boat? It's very frustrating.

Well, I will be honest with you, Loretta, I have no idea what it is to be with someone for 31 years. None. I cannot even imagine. So, starting with that, let's take a look. I watch relationships from the sidelines, long-term marital relationships, and I see that they accumulate many, many sets of patterns and habits between two people. That just happens. That's life.

And those patterns and habits can get pretty entrenched. And it sounds like one of the patterns you have within this relationship, and maybe within all of them, is avoiding conflict. And I relate to that. I hate conflict. I mean, I'm Canadian. But conflict is a part of life.

And not only does getting through it allow the energy of a relationship to evolve and move forward, it also tends to bring me closer to the person I'm dealing with. My whole nervous system can feel like conflict will do damage, but actually it's the opposite, provided I handle it responsibly. So before I enter any situation that could produce conflict or in which I'm expecting conflict,

The first thing I do is dig deep into what I am afraid of exactly. Generally, I'm afraid of being yelled at or having someone be angry at me. That's like a big, deep vein of fear in me, and I've had to work on it a lot. So are you afraid of being yelled at? Are you afraid of being ignored, having your needs be dismissed? Are you afraid of him simply

getting entrenched and saying no and nothing ever happening. Write down those fears. You seem also to be afraid of being considered the nagging wife. The nagging wife. I want to put that in quotes. Is this something you've been called before? Because there's a difference between nagging and expressing that you have a need or a strong desire. That's not nagging. That's just

wanting and asking. And life includes wanting and asking. In fact, they're a big, big part of enjoying our lives and growing and expanding into our potential. So are you really someone who has excessive expectations and makes excessive demands? I don't know, maybe you are, but I don't get that impression from your letter.

Have you been a little controlled by this fear of being perceived as nagging, as anything less than perfect? I know I am very invested in being the good friend, the good person. You know, it's kind of a mask of always positive, always loved, you know? And I get so invested in that sometimes that I ignore my own needs or don't tell the truth.

And that does damage to my relationships. So it's good when a situation nudges me out of that zone. So are you attached to some image of yourself that this roof issue might be testing? When I'm afraid of something, I can be controlled by that fear. And weirdly, other people can feel it and sometimes take advantage of my being stuck in that fear, even if it's unconscious.

And by keeping that fear tucked inside of me, having it be a strong energy inside of me, it's like I'm handing power over to other people that maybe should be mine. And if I just look at the fear and face it and allow that energy to move, I can then make proactive moves in my life instead of being reactive and kind of shut down. So doing a written inventory of your fears might be very helpful here.

And I love to look at my fears. They get out of my body, onto paper. They sort of release their charge and they look small, sometimes silly. And they lose their grip on me. So I encourage you to do that. If you have to repeat that exercise, go for it.

I also encourage you to write down your resentments against your husband. I'm sure there's some energy building up around that. You may feel very frustrated. You may want to write all your resentments around your husband. After 31 years, I'm sure some stuff is built up because no one's perfect. And that's okay. You know, there's love under that, I presume, and a lot of gratitude. But it's difficult to be in a relationship with

you know, competing energy in it. Like love and affection, that moves in one direction, and then resentment and fear, that's moving in the opposite direction. And we need to take responsibility for the negative in order to tap the positive. You may need support around this, Loretta. I'm not expecting you to open this can of worms after 31 years if you've never done it before.

So talk to people, maybe speak to a therapist or, you know, reach out to friends who've been married a long time too. Just having a container that allows you to open up some of your energy if you want to do that. You also mentioned that you're embarrassed about what your friends will think. I think you should write down this fear too. We can be governed by some very primal fears about being rejected or shamed by our social group.

But then those fears too, even when we write them out, seem sort of silly and can soften and dissolve. I mean, are your social bonds really contingent on the state of your roof? Don't let that fear rule your relationships. You and your husband have been together a long time and have raised kids and are now enjoying the fruits of that in your grandchildren. I can only assume that you've been through a lot together.

So maybe doing some of this work can be seen as the next act of your marriage. You coming to the fore with more of your needs and desires and looking to get them be met, maybe not just by your husband. And I don't mean that in a weird sense, but you know, one person can't meet all of our needs in our lives. That's okay. Finally, Loretta, when I'm afraid to raise a subject, I do the following.

I work out my stuff on paper, looking at my resentments and fears. And when I'm ready to talk, I front load the conversation with the positive. Like, hey, I love you. And I recognize all that you do for me and this family. And I'd like to make some moves around fixing the roof. And here's what I propose. And then I ask the person to kind of join me in my vision of

Instead of making the roof something that he needs to handle, how about presenting it as something that you need to get done? Maybe you can call some companies, get some quotes, you know, figure out how much money is needed, show you really want it, and express the ways in which it will benefit everybody. And then ask him to support you in this endeavor. Make it about you, not him.

I think if you keep working out your fear of appearing naggy and simply working from the basic need to keep a decent roof over your head and that you're allowed to have wants and needs, you can make some progress here. Okay, so that is my like insanely imperfect quote advice from a single woman to a wife, mother, and grandmother. Thank you, Loretta, for writing and I hope you got something from that.

Keep us posted. Okay, next from Steph. Hey Jess, I was watching Disney Plus earlier and wanted your opinion on something. The Kardashians. You've said before you watch TV and I wondered what you thought of them. I'm torn.

I'm currently binging Keeping Up with the Kardashians and loving it, but I do have a big problem with how rich and powerful this family is and the impression they give my daughter, slash, the way pop culture is getting super commercialized and cheap, yada yada. So, a hypocrite here, wondering what you think about them. Let me know. Oh, Steph, I love this question. I love this question. You know, what we put into our minds...

And it goes into more than our minds. It goes into our nervous system, which is our heart and our gut too. It's a type of food, you know? It's energy that gets in and it fills us and it can nourish us well or it can be more like junk food. And believe me, I have eaten a lot of physical junk food in my life and I've watched a lot of junk food in my life.

For anyone who knows me, British Big Brother was an addiction. I was so addicted to it, I had my mother burn it onto CDs at the time, that was a thing, or DVDs, and send it to me from England. And I stand by that addiction. I think it was a very powerful, interesting show. It was like an anthropology class in a show. So sue me.

I also think that Morgan Spurlock, who recently passed away, did a show called 30 Days, which was possibly some of the most important and interesting and valuable use of television I've ever seen, where for 30 days he would do something like live on minimum wage or have a vegan move in with a gun-toting hunting family or just did things, lived in prison for 30 days. And it was an extraordinary show.

I mean, when you think about it, TV is a really incredible thing. Now, of course, TV now is on our phones and computers too, but these like portals that we have to entirely different modes of consciousness. In fact, his book, Steven Pinker, his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, he talks about how the advent of the novel, people starting to read stories about other people's lives,

was one of the things that fueled the abolitionist movement. It was one of the sort of turns of the spiral that really increased empathy in the world. So TV is a big deal. All right, let's go straight to your letter though. You say something interesting in your letter and I want to examine it. You have a problem with how rich and powerful they are. I always find this stuff so compelling.

Why exactly does that bother you? I mean, I can imagine why, and I know you can't answer, but I'd like to tell you what I think about that. For me, I've come to understand that there will always be rich and powerful people in the world. Even if we were to level the playing field so that it was much more equally distributed, there will always be people at the relative economic top and those closer to the bottom. That's just how it shakes out.

And we will always have a fascination with those who have more than we do, whether it's money or beauty or strength or talent, because they are experiencing a different version of life than we are. That's why we watch the Olympics. So living in a capitalist country in this day and age, there will be people who generate extreme amounts of wealth. They just come with the territory. You and I may never do that or want to do it, but they have.

And if we accept their wealth as not inherently good or bad, but just extreme, it can be interesting to observe their lives. How does that money change them? Or how are they just normal people within an extreme situation?

Audiences have always been fascinated by people experiencing these different lives, like I said before. And what we get out of it may be living vicariously through them or even a sense of schadenfreude, like pleasure when they fail. From Greek tragedies to Shakespeare to watching the royal family, humans love to watch humans in extreme circumstances. It's called drama.

So there's that about the Kardashians. I don't begrudge them that. I don't think you should judge yourself or them for having lots of money. They just do. Second, that show is mostly about women, or at least has women as its central figures. That's pretty radical. For me, as a woman, it's sort of interesting to see women be that free, that empowered, and that wealthy, frankly.

Now, by the way, I don't watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians. I've seen like three episodes of it. It's just not my cup of tea. But in principle, I think it's an interesting show. Lest we forget that when my mother was young, women weren't even allowed to have credit cards. And very, very few of them ran their own businesses. In the United States, women have only been allowed to vote for just over 100 years.

And now we have Kylie Jenner, who at the age of 21 became a billionaire running her own business. Now I know she had help, but every business owner has help. And I'm not saying I want their lives or that making money is what life's all about, but having them in the zeitgeist may offer other women permission to follow their own dreams and instincts and start their businesses, expand into their potential.

So if nothing else, the Kardashians are simply an example of how far we've come in certain ways. Now, on the other hand, could getting too into this kind of show make viewers want to become insufferable Instagram influencers? Yes. You're a mom and influencing your own daughter. And I definitely don't think that the Kardashians should be central to anyone's media consumption or value system.

But do I think the Kardashians are inherently bad? No, they're just not my thing. But a few questions for you. What is this show bringing to your life? Have you thought about why you're watching? What your motives are? What you get from it? Is it just to space out, which is fine, or to look at pretty things? Those are reasonable answers, as long as you know, and it's in balance with other ways of nourishing yourself.

We all get to have a little junk food some of the time, which begs the question, how much time are you spending on it? And is it actually nourishing you? And I think you can ask yourself the question while you're watching, but also after. How does it make you feel? How does it make you feel? And if it's a net positive, great. If watching one episode helps you be relaxed and calm and

you know, like you feel like you've gotten a decent break from your own life. We all need altered states of consciousness. Then great. But if binging on it for hours and hours makes you feel, you know, gross and superficial and like empty, then just be aware of that. And, you know, most people are out there binging something at this point. We live in a world of

digital addiction, mild and not so mild. So be gentle with yourself. But just ask yourself, yeah, is this feeding me? Is this a little bonbon? Or am I binging on junk food? It's up to you. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for that question, Steph. It's a great question. All right, our last question today from Anonymous. I moved to Canada a couple years back. Yay, that's great.

So I knew no one, and one of my first friends was a colleague who I got on fairly well with. She's older than me and has a daughter, and I enjoyed hanging out with them both for the first months I was here. The more I hung out with this woman, though, the more her boundaries dropped, and I began to become her emotional crutch, to the point that it was bothering me. She shared all her darkest thoughts, and even at one point was suicidal. I was her only friend and stuck around as I worried for her kid.

Anyway, I distanced myself from that situation, and I began to realize she was using her mental health issues to manipulate my behavior. She's doing fine now, but we're still colleagues, and now she's constantly bad-mouthing me in meetings and trying to make me look incompetent. It's driving me crazy, but I don't want to bring it up to my superiors as they'd see it as petty squabbles. What do I do? Oh, wow. Okay, Anonymous, this is an interesting situation.

First of all, I'm sorry that this person was having such a hard time and I'm sorry that you felt pulled into it. Deep depression and suicidality are very serious things and scary things, both for the person experiencing them and those around them. And yes, when someone's suffering like that, we can feel responsible or destabilized or afraid that if we don't do the right thing, that person will hurt themselves.

And although I do think we have a responsibility to be kind to other human beings and compassionate, that does not mean that we are responsible for them or their behavior. In fact, we are quite powerless over it. So I'm glad that she's well enough to be at work, even though she's bad-mouthing you, and that you have created some distance. And it makes sense that you, moving somewhere new, sort of hung on to one of the first connections you established.

and then discovered that maybe it wasn't such a great match, and that she was needing different things from the relationship, which I don't think she can actually get from a friendship. Those kind of deep issues, if they persist, usually need direct intervention, often from trained professionals. But I have a saying in my life, you have to wade deep into the pond to find out if you want to be in the pond, or if it's even safe in the pond.

You can't really assess a relationship of any kind from the margins. You got to be in it. And wading into the pond means time spent together and gathering information on one another. So you've gathered some information about her and hopefully about yourself and your needs and maybe the rate at which you want to make yourself available in the future and dropping your own boundaries with people. And with every relationship we have, we learn something.

I know I just mentioned this, but I want to repeat it. One of the big lessons for me in life is that we are powerless over other people, over their deeper motives and wiring. The best I can do is handle my own deep stuff, take care of myself, and be as kind as understanding to others along the way. This is true with respect to you detaching from your friend and her psychological needs, but it's also true in terms of her current behavior at work.

I know you don't want to make this into a workplace drama or appear to have petty squabbles, and I get that. And in my experience, when there is drama between me and someone else, and it's being caused for the most part by the other person, and that's really sometimes the case, that reveals itself over time. If I remain steady and respectful and do my work, and the other person produces chaos,

and their chaos is rarely confined to simply me, those patterns get exposed over time. And you have the luxury of time here in the workplace, provided it isn't getting interfering with your actual work. You have the opportunity to step into your own integrity and dignity in the workplace as people get to know you while she does whatever she needs to do.

So she can say anything she wants. Your actions speak louder than her words over time. So I think this cookie may crumble on its own without your interference. Just be sure you don't gossip about her in the workplace. In fact, one of the things my father told me when I got my first job was, just keep this in mind for work, for your whole life. Don't gossip in the workplace. It will never get you anything good.

And for the most part, I've tried to adhere to that. And he's right. All that said, I hope she reaches out for some outside help so she can feel better and take care of her kid. Thank you for writing Anonymous. I hope it all works out. Okay, everybody, that is it for now.

We do this monthly with extended episodes for subscribers, so please submit your questions in the next few weeks, and I will try and answer them in the next episode. And remember, you can ask me anything about an issue you're having, a question about me, or just a question about life. I'll try and answer as many as I can, even about the Kardashians.

If you subscribe through Apple or the Sleepiest app, you can submit your questions by sending them to hello at sleepmagic.fm. That's hello at sleepmagic.fm. If you listen on Spotify or any other podcast player, you can go to a link in the show notes. It's the Supercast link. Click on that and go to the Ask Me Anything feature.

and you can throw a question in there. I really look forward to hearing your questions. Thanks to everyone who submitted them this week. I'm sorry if we didn't get to your question. We'll try and push it to a future week. Take care, everyone. Sleep well, and good night.