Welcome back to the Anxiety Slayer Podcast. I'm Shan Vanderleak and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Phil Stark, former screenwriter, therapist, and author of Dude, Where is My Catharsis? Phil started out writing film and television comedy nearly 20 years ago working on shows like South Park and that 70s show and then a midlife career change came around and he went back to graduate school to study psychology and that led to his

role as Associate Marriage and Family Therapist in LA.

Dude Where's My Catharsis is a guide to talk therapy, providing insight based on Phil's

work as a therapist, experience as a lifelong therapy client, and writing style and voice developed over the years as a screenwriter.

Welcome to Anxiety Slayer, Phil.

Thanks for having me.

We absolutely have to start with your with your journey. How you made

your way from screen writer to therapist I'd really like to start there.

It's a great story and it's funny you know know, when you read the title of the book,

Dude Where's My, which I now say, car Tharsis. I think I maybe invented a new word.

I can't even say Catharsis anymore. I can't pronounce it correctly. But the joke amongst my

friends is that it's almost as if my previous 20 years of screenwriting was just

a setup or the idea of a title for a book about my work as a therapist.

So it's a very, very long slow burn setup for a joke.

But I love my story.

I mean, I was so lucky and I dreamt of being a screenwriter and I got my foot in the door and I pushed it open and then I had a career but one of the things about the entertainment industry and maybe

other industries is they often don't tell you when you should think about doing something

else. And so while I'm very happy with what I achieved in my career as a screenwriter,

I never really considered the fact that I might not retire as a screenwriter and I didn't know what I would do with that time and so it was sort of a long struggle to figure out what I would like to do in my life sort of what people would describe as a midlife crisis and now that I found therapy it all really makes sense.

Hmm. That's awesome, isn't it?

You don't know where the path is leading and then all of a sudden you're on it you're in it and it's like oh yeah right on.

Yeah, I'm very big on the path metaphor. A lot of my book and a lot of my work is about finding metaphors and figures of speech to help illustrate for clients what are really hard to grasp very ethereal topics and one of them is is our path in life and I love the idea that I can work with a client

...