Chelsea Handler, in her podcast Life Will Be The Death Of Me, talks frequently about how her work in therapy has helped her understand her anger and impatience, taught her to have more compassion and empathy, helped her realize where her true problems lie, and how to address them effectively. In this episode, she sits down with her personal trainer, Ben Bruno, to talk about another area in life she’s had to learn patience with: working out. She and Ben discuss mental and physical health, their mutual admiration of Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, and the rest of the U.S. Women's soccer team, and why Chelsea is Ben's worst client "by far."
Chelsea started working with Ben over four years ago, in March of 2015. She wanted to have him on her podcast because “my tour has been a lot of therapy talk, I think the two go hand in hand,” Chelsea says. “I look at it as a mental necessity. Because to stay physically fit is linked with staying fit emotionally and staying fit mentally...When I don’t feel strong physically, it affects me mentally. I want to feel strong in both areas.” Ben thinks she's got the physical part down: "You do s**t that...a lot of men can't even do." But he admits that she's his worst client because she can get mean when she's impatient, and she's not great at going easy on herself when she needs to. Fortunately, Chelsea's already been working on that in therapy. She asks Ben what made him start seeing a therapist a couple of years ago.
“I first went to therapy against my will,” he says, after his father's death by suicide when he was nine years old. “I didn’t like the medicine and I didn’t like talking about stuff….I never bought in.” So he stopped going shortly after. The second time he went was during a bad period of depression at 20 years old. “I just felt really in pain all the time, and I didn’t think I was going to get better...and I just felt very lonely.” But he had always vowed never to kill himself because he knew how it felt for loved ones to go through that. Still, the treatment didn’t stick. “I wasn’t open to therapy...I have a really hard time and I still do with my current therapy, I have a hard time talking about feelings.”
Chelsea understands that, saying being open-minded is the key to everything. “At first I was shut down...I think being open-minded helps in every way with regard to fitness, with regard to therapy. It's like ‘okay, I have something to learn here.’ To assume that you don't know everything and to say okay, I want to absorb everything I don't know about this topic is a great healthy way to be.” Ben also talks about being embarrassed to admit that he was seeing someone and needed that kind of help, but to his surprise, more of his friends and family were also seeing therapists than he had expected. “When you talk to your friends about those type of things, it makes your friendships a lot more real and meaningful...it doesn’t matter what your life is like on the outside, like everyone has got s**t they’re dealing with, you know?” he says.
Join Chelsea, her assistant Brandon, and Ben to learn about the merits of stretching, women lifting weights, how to get the most out of your workout (“I'm stoned a lot...it helps me really focus on the workout, and then I get really strong," Chelsea says), and more on this episode of Life Will Be The Death Of Me.
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