Welcome to Dear Prudence. I am your guest Prudence, Kristen Mineser. I host a couple of other podcasts,

including Buy the Book and How to Be Fine. Be sure to check those out if you love self-help books,

hate self-help books, spoiler, I kind of do, or want advice on how to be okay-ish rather than perfect.

Today, we'll be answering questions about being honest with a friend, about their mental

health, how to politely turn down an offer of friendship, and getting family to understand

and respect boundaries during a divorce. I am so excited about today's guest. Here to join us

is psychotherapist, bestselling author, Ask the Therapist for The New York Times and Dear

Prudy Fave. Lori Gottlieb, Lori, oh my gosh, welcome back to the show. We're so thrilled to have you

here today. Well, thank you so much for having me.

Well, you may know, Lori. We always start off by asking our guests to offer a bit of unsolicited

advice not to do with any letter coming in, just a little something that you think would

help people's wives be a little bit better if they tried it right now.

I would say the best piece of unsolicited advice is to be kind to oneself. And that means ask

yourself when you hear that voice in your head that's going 24-7, is it kind? Is it true?

Is it useful? And if it doesn't meet those criteria, try being a little bit kinder to

yourself. That is something we can all do. Is it kind? Is it true? Is it useful? I feel like these are things

that little kids might know in kindergarten even. You know, like that's not very nice or that's just not

true.

But as adults, we might forget that we're worthy of those questions too.

And we can treat ourselves with that kindness.

Yes, absolutely.

Oh, that's fantastic.

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