Name: Pete's Therapist Dr. Gary Penn | You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes
Uploaded: 2023-05-31T14:00:08.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Pete's Therapist Dr. Gary Penn | You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-31. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Pete's Therapist Dr. Gary Penn | You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-31. Transcript available.

Pete's Therapist Dr. Gary Penn | You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes

You made it weird, you made it weird, you made it weird, oh yeah.
You made it weird, you made it weird, yes you did, you made it weird, oh yeah.
You made it weird, you made it weird, you made it weird, yes you did, you made
it weird, oh yeah.
What's happening weirdos? This is a very, very special episode.
For those of you who have been listening to the show for a long time, are no
stranger to the name Dr. Gary Penn, I always say whose book is available now.
He's come up since the beginning, I mean if you listen to the show in the early
years, you saw in real time how his guidance and his wisdom shaped and changed
my life.
And you're about to listen to a real love fest that is filled with gems and
guidance and wisdom, like I said, from him and just stories about our time
together and how I don't see him professionally anymore.
First of all, let's get that out of the way, the idea that you go to therapy
and they're like, oh that's how they get you, you're going to be in therapy the
rest of your life.
I haven't seen Gary Penn, we realized in nine years.
So he like installed his software in my brain, helped me and now we got back
together to talk to one another and it was so wonderful, this beautiful
friendship, homecoming.
So get ready for a real love fest and a lot of just beautiful, deep wisdom from
this wonderful man who does have a book that is available now and it's called I
Can't Believe My Life Has Come to This and you're also going to enjoy, I hope,
I hope you're going to, I loved it, I hope you love it.
This is an incredible chat, I'm so happy that it finally happened.
Dr. Gary Penn is on the show today and I don't have anything to plug up top,
isn't that great?
Just my tour, thanks to everybody who came to Largo last night, go to PeteHolmes.com
for tickets to shows, lots of new cities coming up.
I'm really happy about this new hour, excited to be filming it in Minneapolis
this weekend, this coming weekend, but all the tour dates now and forever will
always be on PeteHolmes.com.
Hope you can see me on the road and in the meantime, enjoy this incredible chat
with my dear friend and one of my great teachers and mentors, Dr. Gary Penn.
I'm so excited, get into it.
It's so nice to see you.
Is this okay?
Is this professionally okay?
It's such a treat.
It's a treat.
I've been looking forward to this since we booked it.
Because people might not know, you're Dr. Gary Penn and you changed my life.
I mean, it's absolutely true.
I saw you, I came to you at such an important time.
I don't know what you, I'd love to hear what you, I don't want to talk the
whole time because I'm used to doing that when I see you.
Please.
But this is the intro.
Yes.
This is the context that people need.
I was in a very, I don't know if you remember this, I was in like a toxic
relationship.
Not that person's fault.
I'm not just saying that to be kind.
We just weren't a good match.
A lot of things were right, but a lot of things just weren't.
And I don't remember who told me about you, but it was such a stroke of grace.
Because I had seen a therapist before and they were sort of more of the, and I
love this as well, but they were more, they just listened.
And you're more of a, you're like my stutz, my stutz, like the Jonah Hill movie.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You would give me advice and you got me out of this mire.
And again, I really don't want to be unkind to that person, but it was just the
wrong situation for both of us.
And if I had stayed in it, I don't think, I was like 285.
I was drinking constantly, like day drinking.
She was a smoker, so I would smoke, I blame her, but I would smoke cigarettes
because I'm just with a smoker.
I swear to God, I felt embarrassed that she was smoking and I wasn't.
It was like deeply codependent.
Well, you've already like rescued the person.
It wasn't their fault.
Like you're a caregiver.
I'm trying.
Yeah.
Yeah, this guy hit my car, but God, his thing was bigger than mine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
In his defense, I was in the way.
Yes.
Yeah, well, you got the real, I have to be somewhat public, you got me just
being like, this person saw, or whatever it was.
And that was such a gift.
This is a long way to say, you installed a Dr. Gary Penn in my brain, in my
consciousness that I then went to.
And this is the thing I always tell about you too, is I saw you for years and
then I stopped seeing you.
Now we're really in a good intro.
And now I'm seeing you for the first time in years.
Years.
How many years, Pete?
I couldn't tell you.
Yeah.
I want you to know.
I think you should hold it closer like an ice cream cone.
I want you to know.
Yeah, there you go.
That I have a hall of fame in my office.
Oh, this is very good for me.
Of.
What if you're like, and you're not it?
You just mentioned it.
No, no, this isn't about you actually.
Oh, okay, good.
About the people that you've, from your, people love you.
I mean, people just adore you and they.
They come to see you now.
So many people at your recommendation.
Yes.
And it's like, how did you hear about me?
Pete Holmes.
How did you hear about me?
Pete Holmes, Pete Holmes.
And what's fascinating, because other people give me, you know, recommendations,
but they're
all like cool people.
Yeah.
They're smart.
They're interesting.
Oh, all the ones that come.
All the people, all the patients that come in.
Yeah.
And it's like, they love you.
Oh, well, that's wonderful.
I mean, they just think you're like, well, they are like, you know, you have
this sense
about you that first, anyone asked me about you, first thing out of my mouth,
he's wicked
smart.
Oh, that's.
You made me believe that actually.
I think when I started seeing you, I didn't know I was smart.
I know that's crazy.
It's kind of crazy.
But you need like therapy and you specifically, like an older male figure.
It's like mythic.
You need like an OB-1.
You do.
Yeah.
That goes like, hey, you're smart.
And like, and week after week, it's like starts to sink in.
So thank you for saying that.
Yeah.
It's kind of like me saying you're tall and you go, well, wait a minute.
Really?
Well, this is great because it's stuck.
The me that didn't know he was smart isn't there anymore.
That's right.
He lovingly, he didn't leave.
He merged.
He grew up.
He grew up into something better.
In one of my analysis, in my last analysis, I had a reunion in my high school
reunion.
And one of the things I said to him is, and I'm not a tall man.
I'm about, I was 5'11".
And now, you know, I'm getting close to 70.
So I'm getting on the other side of that.
Wow.
But I, but I did, but I did say to my analysts, it was interesting.
I was tall.
I'm a taller than a lot of my friends.
Yeah.
In high school.
Yeah.
I just felt small.
Yes.
Yeah.
And it was so, so interesting.
Like, I thought that I was shorter than them.
Well, oh, speaking of mythic, there is a myth.
It's the, it's the myth of the, the wolf that's raised by sheep.
Do you know that one?
Tell me.
It's real, it's real brief.
It's right up your alley, but there, so a wolf separated by it from his wolves
and finds
a bunch of sheep and he starts hanging out with the sheep and they give him
wool and
they cover him up and he eats the grass and he, he's raised by them.
Until he's, you know, a young man, wolf, like, you know, middle-aged wolf.
Then a wolf sees this ridiculous sight.
He sees a wolf covered in balls of wool, hanging out with sheep.
And he's like, what are you, what are you doing?
And he takes this, it'll make me cry.
He takes the wolf and he finds a puddle and he, and he puts his face over and
goes,
you're a wolf.
Like, look at yourself.
You're a wolf.
And I like this part.
Then he gives him meat.
I guess you could say he kills him on the sheep, but the way I heard it, he
just gives
him meat.
And the, and the young wolf chokes on the meat, which I think is essential
because there's
always that resistance.
Every, every movie, once you know this formula, every movie has the call to
adventure and then
you resist the call.
You don't want to go.
Luke doesn't want to go.
Yes.
Then his aunt and uncle are killed.
Yeah.
And then he has to go.
There you go.
By the way, watch any movie.
And this is, it's, it's, it's classic Joseph Campbell.
So he chokes on the meat.
That's the small version of the resisting, like you're a wolf.
But then he realizes I'm a wolf and somebody like brings him home, but you need
that, that
archetype.
It's powerful.
It's, it's one of the reasons why in my work, I can't tell you how often I
quote Star Wars.
Yeah.
Because it's so, it's this low hanging fruit.
Yeah.
I mean, what you just talked about is really quite beautiful.
Right.
And, and in Star Wars, it's the same thing.
It's this, it's this archetypal idea of being a man.
I think a lot of the problems we're having in our world right now is because
men are just
completely lost.
Yeah.
And they, and they, they've lost their masculinity.
They don't know how to be.
Yeah.
And when you were talking about the wolf, I was thinking like, how would this
go in Florida?
The wolf.
This is like conversion therapy or something.
Yeah.
Right.
I'm thinking, oh my God, you're telling me to be something that I'm not.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It could be scary.
It could be kind of scary.
But it is, you know, you're reminding me of something else I heard.
It's another, it's not a myth.
It was a mythic storyteller.
I heard him talk about how so many young men are suicidal and he framed it
really beautifully.
He was like, what they realize is don't, don't jump off the bridge.
He's not trying to be funny.
He, he realized, he goes, there is a part of you that needs to die.
Yes.
And that gets confused into, I need to die.
Exactly.
It's very, very.
Doesn't that just give you the chills?
It does.
It's so smart.
A lot of times when I'm working with couples.
Go over the bridge.
Sorry.
That was the end of it.
He goes, go over the bridge.
Don't, you don't jump over the bridge.
But when you get to the other side, you left something behind.
Yes.
Sorry.
When you work with couples.
When I work with couples, um, often the marriage is so shitty and I tell them
this marriage
has to die.
Like this marriage is over.
Yeah.
Like whether we can reconstruct another marriage, we can, another relationship
that's healthy.
But the one that you're living right now is rotted to the core.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's the same kind of thing.
Like you don't have to die.
You just have to sit there and say, look at exactly what's in front of you.
Yeah.
Take off the Vaseline and say, this isn't pretty.
And answer the call.
Yeah.
So when I saw you and I was in that relationship that I keep trying to, you
know, white glove
it, but like I was really miserable.
Nobody who, for me, I was 50 pounds heavier, like 40, 45 pounds heavier than I
am now.
So I'm already, I'm pretty big now.
I was, so I was pretty big drinking constantly, smoking constantly because, uh,
somebody called it a cocktail relationship.
They were like, it makes sense.
Three cocktails in like, you're like, this is fun.
If you're a little, so true, isn't that good?
So true.
It's like, this works.
This works.
So that was my coping.
You know, that was like a stress in my life.
If I, if I sobered up and I was like, I don't know about this.
Oh, have a, have a cocktail, have a cocktail.
It's like another kind of meat.
Have, have, have a meat.
You're this, you're this, you're this.
And one of the things that you said to me was, and it, it, again, it's just
making me
so grateful for you, how far I've come is I told you I was making a list of
reasons to
break up with this person, because I thought breaking up with a person,
everybody that listens
to the show or has listened to the show knows I feel this way.
I thought it was like a mean thing to do.
Yes.
It's like an unkind thing to do.
So I was making a list.
The list, by the way, was very long.
And you said, this is, this is, come on, not, not you're a wolf, like you're
mean, but
like, come on, you can say yes to a different situation.
Like, like you'