where he saw his own reflection not realizing it was merely an image he telling one in self again he was unable to leave the beauty of his own reflection finally unable to stand the agony of not being able to touch that the basis of all human suffering is a lack of self love but how much is too much self love is it really possible to see ourselves as others see us  and on this make art feel better we're tackling a theme that may have no resolution or conclusion like a hall of mirrors it's a tricky subject self love versus narcissism there's even a clinical diagnosis for narcissistic personality disorder that's when humans have a grandiose sense of themselves and require a lot of admiration but with all psychological descriptions there is a spectrum and all of us are narcissistic and co narcissistic by degrees when our self esteem varies in relation to how others think and feel about us we're experiencing narcissistic vulnerability and when we feel guilty or anxious because we fear that we're not meeting someone else's needs or expectations were being cone or specific the challenge is to realize that the other person's behavior is a result of her or his own experiences it's not a reflection on ourselves and our self esteem does not have to be affected by others easier said than done as i said we're not going to have answers on the show but annie and i are willing to discuss the subject and so glad you're here i know there is fighting just a little bit but i was thrilled when you said you would come because i knew this particular topic you know the little bit i know about you you are so grounded you know who you are you seem to have your place is just something you've always had well i'm glad that you see me like that i'm more grounded then i used to be but it's taken a lot of work and self affirmation through the years but it works if you keep on practicing it you have ok when my hair is younger you are more credit much more critical of myself and then i took some workshops and i got to say positive things to myself and if i was worried i would just decide if this was really worth worrying about is it a tragedy that's happening is it a trauma or is it just something that i can let go of and deal with you tell me something happened today i didn't even know if you got you know what happened well that actually was last night my kids took the car to harvard square and then they just it just wouldn't start when they hated that so i got it today i went to harvard square got it and it was just a car broke down so big deal right i could have gone into a frenzy but you know i wasn't going to help so now you are in a very gifted musician i have been able to hear you play  you write music as well as perform i've written up some songs and i've written a bunch of songs for musical theatre for children in my early years but mostly now i improvise and i play for dancers and when i'm playing i have a structure usually but i can play around it and improvise and that's my favorite thing and you you just let it go when it comes to you yeah well i know certain structures that i've always some chords that i like to use some c i'd like to use just like some people like to use certain colors maybe and well i can imagine making art improvising but somehow the thought of music is just because i did i don't know music that well but it's kind of like speaking when you're making up a sentence or just speaking your stream words together and you're improvising in a way and when little kids they go around humming a little song or they make up little songs and sell so we have it in us and forget ok yes we do and  have him on the set tonight we have kato here i was explaining those that watch the show some you know that kate has the internal critic and kato was the center for the roman senate and my brother nicknamed his internal critic his creative censor kato so it kind of stuck so there is kato and he's always over our shoulder and i i think as we talk about who we are knowing ourselves how much is too much and have a well developed ego yes event yeah yeah kato can make you very jealous of other people who are for writing and writing well and we say oh wow and sometimes try to think oh that's the way to be but then when i tried it  different ways i realized but you know that's not for me i just thought i wanted to be this or that but once i've done it is like oh that's ok i like playing and having people watch me play but mostly i like playing to serve people like dancer or just to be in this working with you in a working relationship with people it's one of you know i had a when we were talking about knowing ourselves a friend said they went to a restaurant with three or four couples and he said we had to wait for the table and they i guess we're going to amuse themselves with a party game and then everyone was going to write down a sentence about someone else that describes them then they put them in a hat when they read that sentence these were friends who had known each other a number of years and they all knew exactly who the person lies and who now you know that thought that we can think we're protecting with our friends that they don't really know if they do know it's you know also better than we know ourselves hide you had that experience sometimes when your friends will say something about you and you say oh you knew that enough because they can't really please when you're in others but it can get carried over in even in my homely we can be in such a way sions where when someone's being hard to please and we try to i have to work my way out of that was one of my parents was more critical and i find you know it took me many years but i worked on it and i finally saw that it was more of my parents fear about what i was beginning to come not something that they were used to and what  musician was ok but it was like if you weren't on broadway you really were not a success and not ok so i had to realize like this was great that i have i have my passion of music and i love playing for dancers whereas other pianists ling all playing for dance class they'd rather just be on the stage and doing it but this was is really fulfilling to me that you have for the art tonight a little out of that you create in all all levels and you can we can there are no rules but when i find i've got canvas and fabric and since we're we're kind of mirrors and reflection and i on television which was that this is a whole new thing because talking about it saying it is other people see as we look in mirrors and we're actually seeing a reverse and when you see yourself on t v you're seeing yourself the way other people think you know not only that when i lo part of her work is to get people of her creative blocks and to make them not me as critical of their work and it's hard to do we can judge ourselves you mentioned about little children singing songs and it's true that little children even up to the age of i'm thinking about five now are usually proud of what they create they haven't learned to be ashamed or think it's not quite good enough and i will share secret that my middle son william gave me he is a very good artist and when i was going for an interview that proud of the graduate school i had my little folio or whatever i had and he said go to any presentation or any interview and so you were five years old and it's a great trick because a five year old if they had their artwork for whatever their presenting it could be of presentation for business they would be very proud of it and they say here it is and they would make any excuses they would say we you know i can do better than this summer this is a work in progress we'll call him sixty six and he said if somebody if they had a picture of a horse they'd say well here's my want to come out and make some adult excuses yeah actually i know when i make stuff i'm really pleased with that even more and then and sometimes i even talk to other people and they're not as pleased as i thought they would be and i'm like but this that's because my mother my mother said everything you know just was just so admirable you know there's a balance though between admiring everything that your kids do mostly i do it because it's fun and use it to i do it because i enjoy the experience and makes me feel better