- I'm trying to be the best lover ever. I'm trying to be the best partner. So I'm thinking about every moment and I'm replaying it a lot. That's what you do as an athlete. They have a press conference every day. "You only got three steals today, bro. "What happened?" So every night I got my own
little press conference. Like, "What did you do today?" Whatever do better is, what does that look like tomorrow? (light upbeat music) - Hey everyone, I'm Lily. - And I'm Elisa. - We launched the first ep
isode of our new "What's Underneath:
Masculinity" series, and we're thrilled to be
here today with Haesue Jo, who is a licensed marriage
and family therapist. We spend a lot of time unpacking
these episodes personally. - Well, they've changed our lives, and we've always wanted to bring that back and share that with you. It's been a dream of ours, and now thanks to BetterHelp, we're able to do it. - Like we all get undressed
at the end of the day. It's another universal experience, but for whatev
er reason it's
something that's hidden away and most of us don't see from others. It's humanizing to see people lay bare and put it all out there for us, so thank you. - So my mom and I were incredibly moved by so many things that Jidenna talked about in his episode. Being so candid and accountable for some of the patterns of harm that he believes he kind of perpetrated in some of his earlier
relationships with women. - I remember different quotes I said like, just like really manipulative
thing
s to say like, "No one's gonna love you the way I do." Oh my God. - From your perspective, Haesue, like what is accountability? And like, yeah, I just would
love to like unpack the idea of accountability with you a bit. - Accountability really is
about accepting responsibility, not just for your actions, but
your thoughts, your feelings, taking ownership of what
you're putting out there, how you're showing up, how you're not showing up. - Accountability is
vulnerable and difficult. With Jidenna,
he is so inspirational in how free he is to just say what he did. - I did that. I robbed some women of
their baby-making years, dragging 'em along. They built me up. Look at me now and look at them. It's horrific, man. - What is the relationship between, yeah, defensiveness and accountability and then also like shame? Because I know for myself, some of the moments that
it's like the hardest for me to like maybe admit I've
done something wrong is when I'm having shame that I did the thing in the
first place or something. - Often defensiveness is coming because we feel insecure about something. So then the tendency is needing to like prove
to this other person that I actually do feel
really strong about it, even though that's not the case. So vulnerability, we talk about that as being able to open ourselves in the face of potentially
being hurt by something. If something about your past or something about your character you're not feeling very secure about, that feels very vulnerable to
open that space to somebody else. - Because I constantly think about how I'm not good enough or I'm not deserving of what I have. - When it comes to your
personal healing journey, accountability becomes an
important aspect of this because if you can't recognize
your own part in something, you're bound to just
repeat the same things. You're bound to repeat the same dynamics. So accountability becomes
difficult for people to access because sometimes it means
confronting painful truths. Acknowledg
ing something
very uncomfortable, which is that you did something
that's harmful to someone. - And I saw myself for the first time, all the things I'm saying now. Ooh, horror! That look in the mirror like
you on a hero dose of shrooms. It could be beautiful or it could be, you could see all of you. - So with Jidenna, him being so open about something that he did in the past that's so harmful, to me, that's an indicator that he's done the work of acknowledging that this is something that
was part
of who he was, acknowledging that it's something that's still presently inside of him and he has to intentionally work on so that he doesn't continue
perpetuating this behavior towards other people. So for somebody that's so willing to be open about a past harm that they've caused to somebody else, to me, I just take that as, they've acknowledged it and they have forgiven
themselves for what they did. And without that forgiveness of self, you cannot move forward. So I think it is one of
the fun
damental things that you need to do to move on from realizing that you did
something that was maybe harmful to somebody else or to yourself. - With accountability, like how important is like
apologizing versus action? - I think that'll depend on who you ask. For some people on the receiving end, the apology is just as important. While I do think apologies have an importance and a place, if they're not followed up by somebody showing through their behavior that they really wanna change, I cannot
say that the apology is just as important than
the actions that follow. If I'm recalling correctly, some part of how you wrapped up the conversation with Jidenna was asking him, "What does
it mean to be man enough?" - Dang, why are you man enough? I'm man enough 'cause I'm enough. I'm man enough because I'm human enough. - I thought that was such
an interesting question 'cause I was sitting there thinking like, "I don't really know either." But then the more I thought about it, because his respo
nse too was about being human enough. So that's relatable for all of us. To be enough, it means that you love enough, that you love yourself enough. So in order to do any of this stuff, you really gotta take
care of yourself enough. - I think that's really big. I think it's very
connected to forgiveness. You can speak on it, but I think really a
lot of this comes down to something so essential, which is you can make mistakes, and, in fact, the more that you feel that you're enough inherently, th
e more free you are. And then you can be accountable, and then you can be vulnerable. - That concept of being enough. I think a lot of people
prematurely stop the sentence. "I'm not enough." For who? A lot of times we're constantly
seeking this like approval that we are enough for this other person. But ultimately I think what's
more important to focus on and bring attention to your life with is being enough for yourself. - I think that's like harder to do now maybe than ever with social media.
It makes it harder to kind
of trust your own voice and like tune into what's right for you because you're constantly inundated with what everyone else is doing. - We definitely live in a world that feels increasingly
more difficult to just be. - I'm on the phone all the time. How do I manage my emotions
from moment to moment? The envy I feel on social media looking at an artist
who's doing more than me. - The nature of social media and the nature of having just fast-paced global news cycles acce
ssible at our fingertips. Our cell phones are constantly going off with notifications from
this and this and that. So I think it is very, very difficult to figure out what is
actually speaking to you, what is actually leading to something that's more
nurturing, compassionate, feeding your soul versus
just a bunch of stuff. - I think it also breeds like a fearful... It makes it sometimes
scarier to be accountable because of how vicious people
can be on social media, cutting each other down,
cance
ling each other, like ripped to shreds by strangers in the comments section and feeling even more alone. - At the end of the day, you can only make the world
a better place to love others if you love yourself first. - And I think the gentleness is the key because to be human is to be inherently like
fallible and not perfect. And so to be like human enough is to actually like expect
yourself to make mistakes. And I think that if we all had that gentleness with ourselves, we would be able to model
all the things that we admire in others, like what we were just talking about, accountability, vulnerability. - Truly self-care. It's real self-care. - Beyond bath bombs. - Exactly. - We can't thank you enough for imparting all of
your incredible wisdom. - Like what you're doing is
very unique and powerful. - We'll be back next week
to unpack the second episode of our masculinity series in
partnership with Man Enough. And if any of you are thinking
about giving therapy a try, you can visit
bett
erhelp.com/whatsunderneath to get 10% off of your first month. That's betterhelp.com/whatsunderneath to get 10% off your first month. (light upbeat music) (light upbeat music) (light upbeat music)
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