Speaker 1: There's a better behavior available to you, And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of us are sitting on the knowledge that
Speaker 1: there's a better behavior available to us, and I would
Speaker 1: argue that that is a key to a lot of
Speaker 1: our suffering.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they.
Speaker 3: Feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest
Speaker 3: on this episode is Mark Groves, a human connection specialist,
Speaker 3: founder of Create the Love, and the host of the
Speaker 3: Mark Groves Podcast. He's a speaker, writer, motivator, creator and collaborator.
Speaker 3: Mark's work bridges the academic and the human inviting people
Speaker 3: to explore the good, the bad, the downright ugly, and
Speaker 3: the beautiful sides of connection.
Speaker 4: Hi, Mark, welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Hi, I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I am really happy to have you on. You've
Speaker 4: got a podcast called The Mark Groves Podcast, which I love.
Speaker 4: You also do a lot of work around relationships. You've
Speaker 4: got a new book coming out in the spring, so
Speaker 4: there's a lot of things for us to talk about.
Speaker 4: But before we do, let's start like we always do
Speaker 4: with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's
Speaker 4: talking with our grandchild say, in life, there are two
Speaker 4: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
Speaker 4: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 4: bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf, which
Speaker 4: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 4: grandchild stops and they think about it for a second.
Speaker 4: They look up at their grandparent. They say, well, which
Speaker 4: one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 4: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 4: that parable means to you in your life and in the.
Speaker 5: Work that you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, when I first heard that parable, I
Speaker 1: loved interviewing you because you told talked about how the
Speaker 1: parable just makes a simple human experience become very obvious.
Speaker 1: You know that idea you can't see the forest when
Speaker 1: you're in the trees. I think that parable really allows
Speaker 1: you to see the trees. And for me, that exemplifies
Speaker 1: what we focus on, what we choose to become. You know,
Speaker 1: I think all choices in life are either pro life
Speaker 1: or pro death. And I know that sounds very binary,
Speaker 1: but I do actually believe that in that you are
Speaker 1: either making choices that are moving you towards who you
Speaker 1: are to become and expanding you, or you're not. And
Speaker 1: I think when we get really real about that, then
Speaker 1: we can actually change our lives. We can actually say,
Speaker 1: is this choice in this moment one that is moving
Speaker 1: me towards what I want to create? And the parable
Speaker 1: also points to that we all have the capacity to
Speaker 1: be both. We are always taking different intersections in time.
Speaker 1: We think about the butterfly effect of doing something, you know,
Speaker 1: going into the past and doing something and messing up
Speaker 1: the present today, but we don't often think about the
Speaker 1: butterfly effect of this present moment and actually creating a
Speaker 1: beautiful transformation to the future.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's dive into that statement a little bit more.
Speaker 4: That every choice is either pro life or pro death.
Speaker 4: And again, for a lot of Americans will hear the
Speaker 4: term pro life and they're going to get a certain condotation.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, right, Yeah, we could say it's towards
Speaker 4: love or fear, or it's a life enhancing choice or
Speaker 4: a life denying choice. Right, there's all these things.
Speaker 5: Good point on the wording.
Speaker 4: But let me ask about that because there's a lot
Speaker 4: of choices in life that scene relatively mundane, and they also,
Speaker 4: taken alone, they might not feel life enhancing. We talked
Speaker 4: about this when you and I talked on your show.
Speaker 4: We talked about context. So let me give you an example. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, let's say I've got four children and I'm
Speaker 4: a single mom, and I'm going to work today. Like,
Speaker 4: going to work today doesn't feel life enhancing, right, but
Speaker 4: is part of a bigger picture, which is the ability
Speaker 4: to provide for my children. Is life enhancing? Is a
Speaker 4: value of mine?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 4: How do you think about that when the choices may
Speaker 4: not in the short term feel like they're life enhancing,
Speaker 4: but they are in the broader picture. How do you
Speaker 4: think through that?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, that's a beautiful context because when you
Speaker 1: broad in the way that you look at that, and
Speaker 1: for me, changing my child's diaper is not life enhancing,
Speaker 1: but it is for my child, you know, and it
Speaker 1: brings connection and love and all those types of things.
Speaker 1: But when you look at things like the example you're giving,
Speaker 1: and you can put it in the greater context, then
Speaker 1: you can at least make it mean something like it's
Speaker 1: contributing to something for sure, any form of transformation, giving
Speaker 1: up sugar, giving up any form of addiction, these things
Speaker 1: are not in the moment expansive. They don't feel expensive,
Speaker 1: especially the rock bottoms especially, you know, when you don't
Speaker 1: pick up that thing again. And when we look at
Speaker 1: the greater scheme of what we want to create, though,
Speaker 1: and that's really the context. You know, the idea that
Speaker 1: expansion is free of suffering, you know that's not true.
Speaker 1: I know that's not true. When we learn the value
Speaker 1: of different emotions, we won't try to save other people
Speaker 1: from them either.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: Like when I found deep grief and I actually was
Speaker 1: in it sober, it transformed me in the most beautiful way.
Speaker 5: And now when I.
Speaker 1: See people experiencing grief, going through breakups, going through endings,
Speaker 1: going through whatever it might be, losses. I don't try
Speaker 1: to save them from it because I know the alchemical
Speaker 1: elixir that is at hand, what's being invited from life,
Speaker 1: is to deepen us. So that's sort of how I
Speaker 1: think about it. But I think when we're in survival mode,
Speaker 1: then of course we need to have compassion for the
Speaker 1: choices we're making. When we're trying to make ends meet,
Speaker 1: we have to have compassion. You know, eating fast food
Speaker 1: might not be a life quote unquote enhancing choice, but
Speaker 1: it is if it's going to nourish you to get
Speaker 1: you to the next day. So I think your conversation
Speaker 1: about context, I think is so important pro life and
Speaker 1: pro death as a way of categorizing choices which let's
Speaker 1: say love and fear, that's better word choice in the future,
Speaker 1: those at least, they seem very harsh as the way
Speaker 1: we categorize them.
Speaker 5: But I think when we can sit with the truth.
Speaker 1: Of something like this is something temporary, we're negotiating with ourselves.
Speaker 1: I think often to the words of ram Das, he
Speaker 1: said that I hope I live with the integrity that
Speaker 1: the truths that live within me are the truths that
Speaker 1: live outside of me, and when those two things are
Speaker 1: not aligned, I'm sending a message of both love and fear.
Speaker 1: And I think about that a lot of like we
Speaker 1: are all, almost all of us sitting on untapped wisdom.
Speaker 1: We know that something's not good for us, and we
Speaker 1: continue to choose it. And it was when I finally
Speaker 1: made the choice of my life that I would live
Speaker 1: at the highest level of knowledge that was available to me,
Speaker 1: in that if I knew something needed to change, I
Speaker 1: wanted to create a line of integrity that it changed
Speaker 1: not in a month, not in six months, but actually
Speaker 1: the moment I recognize it. And to me, that really
Speaker 1: allowed me to honor the suffering I was experiencing, because
Speaker 1: no longer was I tried to avoid the shame of
Speaker 1: the awareness that it wasn't good for me. I was
Speaker 1: actually learning from the shame, a healthy level of shame,
Speaker 1: which really says there's a better behavior available to you.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of us are sitting on
Speaker 1: the knowledge that there's a better behavior available to us.
Speaker 1: And I would argue that that is a key to
Speaker 1: a lot of our suffering.
Speaker 4: Boy, there's a lot of things in there I would
Speaker 4: love to dive into. But I'm going to go with
Speaker 4: the healthy shame piece. Let's talk about that because shame
Speaker 4: is generally used as a phrase that is not good
Speaker 4: for us. You know, we all know there's an unhealthy shame.
Speaker 4: So maybe talk to me about to you what the
Speaker 4: difference between shame in the fear sense, right back to
Speaker 4: our positive and negative choices, you know, the negative form
Speaker 4: of shame and the positive form of shame. And is
Speaker 4: there another word that might be better for people than
Speaker 4: positive shame or why do you use that word?
Speaker 1: Well, I think we try to avoid feelings that are
Speaker 1: categorized as negative. You know, our society sends the message
Speaker 1: that sadness, grief, those types of things that means there's
Speaker 1: something wrong with you as opposed to your emotions are
Speaker 1: actually information.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: In Brene Brown, when she talks about shame versus guilt,
Speaker 1: she talks about guilt being I did something wrong, shame
Speaker 1: being I am something wrong. And I think that's important
Speaker 1: for context. But shame as an evolutionary emotion, one people
Speaker 1: experience shame in order to be part of a group,
Speaker 1: right to make sure that their behavior is simulated so
Speaker 1: they didn't get kicked out of the tribe, but also
Speaker 1: so the tried had behaviors and values that were aligned.
Speaker 1: But it can also be weaponized. And when belonging is
Speaker 1: weaponized against people, well then humans essentially have two needs
Speaker 1: and this is from the work of a Bormante. We
Speaker 1: have the need to self express and be authentic, and
Speaker 1: we also have the need to belong But when self
Speaker 1: expression threatens belonging, belonging usually wins. So for the most people,
Speaker 1: they have learned to self abandon in order to maintain
Speaker 1: group membership, whether that's a relationship, a family, a culture,
Speaker 1: a church. You know, what happens is is we forget
Speaker 1: about ourselves. We forget about ourselves, and we prioritize connection
Speaker 1: to other over connection to self, you know, essentially codependency. Now,
Speaker 1: when I think about healthy shame, I think about healthy
Speaker 1: shame in the context of the awareness that there is
Speaker 1: an authentic, self expressed, more aligned, integrist version of us
Speaker 1: that we are being called towards. And so it's not
Speaker 1: something to be numbed or avoided. It's actually something to
Speaker 1: be turned towards. But in our culture modeling that turning towards,
Speaker 1: you know, like most families, most relationships, most cultures pivot
Speaker 1: around the truth. They don't talk about the elephant in
Speaker 1: the room. Whole family systems and roles in families are
Speaker 1: designed in order to not talk about dad's alcoholism or
Speaker 1: or mom's addiction, or the narcissism or the abuse. Everyone
Speaker 1: takes on a role to make sure no one suffers
Speaker 1: too much and no one turns towards this thing, and
Speaker 1: so we learn to not turn towards our stuff. And
Speaker 1: so part of that sort of invitation by using the
Speaker 1: word healthy shame is really the reclamation of the word too.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that there isn't a such thing as
Speaker 1: toxic shame, which is to take a behavior and make
Speaker 1: it that we are something bad. And then what we
Speaker 1: do is we sit in the belief that there's something
Speaker 1: wrong with us as opposed to something wrong with our behavior.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense?
Speaker 4: Totally, totally makes sense. Earlier you mentioned a rock bottom,
Speaker 4: you mentioned giving up behavior. I know that you sort
Speaker 4: of found your way into sobriety, and I was wondering
Speaker 4: if we could just talk a little bit about what
Speaker 4: brought you there and how you got sober and what
Speaker 4: that means to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, sobriety was chasing me for a long time,
Speaker 1: as I'm sure it is true for many people. It's
Speaker 1: interesting because sobriety originally became a concept that I really
Speaker 1: looked at in my relationship to alcohol. You know, my
Speaker 1: relationship to alcohol was very much like a normalized how
Speaker 1: culture is. You know, in college, I binge strength, you know,
Speaker 1: once a week I would go out and get pretty hammered.
Speaker 1: And I was at this conference and I was listening
Speaker 1: to this former investment banker speak and he was saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, he was partying, living on four hours of
Speaker 1: sleep at night. I didn't get to the like extreme
Speaker 1: drugs or anything like that, but I was feeling like,
Speaker 1: maybe I should try not drinking. Like that was kind
Speaker 1: of that, you know, it came as this little huh,
Speaker 1: maybe you should just try that. And when I was
Speaker 1: listening to him speak, he said, what is something that
Speaker 1: you value more than anything in the world, And for me,
Speaker 1: it was connection. And I realized that through drinking, I
Speaker 1: had time traveled and not been present to connection. And
Speaker 1: I thought, oh my god, well, the very choice I'm
Speaker 1: making is actually harming the very thing I value most.
Speaker 1: And I really started to see, just like the immediacy
Speaker 1: of life the importance of every moment.
Speaker 5: Actually two moments.
Speaker 1: One with a friend of mine on a bachelor party
Speaker 1: and he wasn't drinking and there was about twelve of
Speaker 1: us there and I said to him, you don't drink
Speaker 1: and he was like, super fun, super cool guy. And
Speaker 1: I had not been to a bachelor party sober. You
Speaker 1: know how when you're thinking about getting sober, there's always
Speaker 1: another event that's keeping you from getting sober right, right, wedding, bachelor, right.
Speaker 1: And so he said to me, when my wife left
Speaker 1: me the next day, I got sober because I knew
Speaker 1: if I didn't it wouldn't be good. And he said,
Speaker 1: that was four years ago, and it's been the best
Speaker 1: choice I've ever made in my life. And I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: God's given me more messages here. And then I was
Speaker 1: listening to a book from Paul Sellig and in the
Speaker 1: book there was this line where he said, your body
Speaker 1: is only able to alchemize the lowest level of truth
Speaker 1: you're willing to hold. And I was like, wait, what.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means, but I knew there
Speaker 1: was something in it. And he said, what truth do
Speaker 1: you know that you are not living? And immediately it
Speaker 1: was like, I need alcohol to connect, I need alcohol
Speaker 1: to escape.
Speaker 5: You need to quit drinking.
Speaker 1: And then there was this line where he said it's
Speaker 1: like being a fish living in an aquarium who learns
Speaker 1: about the ocean and goes back to the aquarium and
Speaker 1: pretends they don't know. And I was like, I quit
Speaker 1: right after that because I recognized that I was sitting
Speaker 1: on an untapped awareness that it was gnawing ammy and
Speaker 1: I was afraid of all the things I was going
Speaker 1: to lose. I was afraid of what people would think.
Speaker 1: How would I hang out at a guy's trip? How
Speaker 1: would I do all these things? But I realized how
Speaker 1: codependent that was for me. It was like, how do
Speaker 1: I heal and step into my full power regardless of
Speaker 1: what people think? And I recognized that continuing to drink
Speaker 1: was a way to continue to maintain group membership. And
Speaker 1: I was like, well, then I'm still not sovereign. I'm
Speaker 1: still not a self because I'm dependent on this thing
Speaker 1: in order to be with people, because it's a ritual,
Speaker 1: because culture just says this is what you do. And
Speaker 1: when I made that rule, there was an annual guys
Speaker 1: trip that I'd been on for seventeen years coming up.
Speaker 1: There was a bachelor party and there was a wedding.
Speaker 1: I was mzing all within like three months of quitting.
Speaker 1: And I mean the first event I went to, I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm now the designated driver.
Speaker 5: People love that.
Speaker 4: Yep, I've been that way for a long time.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then the second part that was really interesting was
Speaker 1: that it started to make other people think about their
Speaker 1: relationship to sobriety. And you know, it transformed for me
Speaker 1: after that. You know, I listened to this spiritual teacher.
Speaker 1: I went to this retreat. Her name was Gonkaji, and
Speaker 1: she said, you need to get sober from everything that.
Speaker 5: Pulls you away from who you are.
Speaker 1: And I recognized, there's a few more things I need
Speaker 1: to get sober from. And I start to realize that
Speaker 1: it was sugar, it was distractive techniques, it was reactive behavior,
Speaker 1: you know, all these things that robbed me from being
Speaker 1: in my essence. So yeah, people pleasing that was another one.
Speaker 4: What does that mean to you to be in your essence?
Speaker 1: For me, it means to be in alignment with what
Speaker 1: I'm feeling, called towards with what I need to express,
Speaker 1: like in my partnership, our dedication is to truth. It's
Speaker 1: to truth. First, we previously were together for five years
Speaker 1: and we broke up. And when we broke up, it
Speaker 1: was the ending of two patterns that we had along
Speaker 1: before each other. And you know, there's this moment where,
Speaker 1: throughout the first five years, Kylie that's her name, sometimes
Speaker 1: she would have these sort of like gnawing dreams like
Speaker 1: this isn't the relationship for me. I need to leave this.
Speaker 1: And she didn't know why. She couldn't make sense of it.
Speaker 1: She loved the relationship, she loved being in a relationship
Speaker 1: with me.
Speaker 5: We had fun.
Speaker 1: We were two people who were very desiring of growth
Speaker 1: and transformation, and so we tried to work through it.
Speaker 1: And she told me this. You know, I felt her
Speaker 1: feeling distant and I was like, hey, what's going on?
Speaker 1: And she told me about this dreams she had and
Speaker 1: it was, you know, living in her psyche. It kept
Speaker 1: being there and it kept holding her back from opening.
Speaker 1: And I mean we did all the things, you know,
Speaker 1: we went, we had a psychotherapist, we did retreats individually,
Speaker 1: we did them together, and you know, we got to
Speaker 1: this place where I was like, if in order for
Speaker 1: you to maintain and stay in this relationship, you have
Speaker 1: to believe there's something wrong with you, like something wrong
Speaker 1: with your intuition, that the truth you're getting is actually
Speaker 1: not the truth that we're going to live. And I said,
Speaker 1: I can't be in a relationship that requires you to
Speaker 1: abandon your inner truth. And I said, and although that's
Speaker 1: painful for me, like the life I want to create
Speaker 1: and I want to create a family, I want to
Speaker 1: do it with you. But if you're not feeling called
Speaker 1: towards this, I love you, and I love you whether
Speaker 1: this goes on or it doesn't. And that was like
Speaker 1: one of the first times I'd faced an ending. I'd
Speaker 1: been her before, i'd been her in a previous relationlationship,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know why I needed to leave. I
Speaker 1: just felt called towards it. And it was one of
Speaker 1: the hardest decisions I ever made. It was actually probably
Speaker 1: the first decision that I made for myself in my
Speaker 1: late twenties, but probably in my life. It was finally
Speaker 1: something where I was like, I needed to free myself
Speaker 1: from the narrative you get married by this age, you
Speaker 1: have kids by this age, and if you don't do it,
Speaker 1: you live the sort of story this type of job,
Speaker 1: this type of fucking degree. If you don't do those things,
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with you. And so I finally opted out.
Speaker 1: It took a while, but I finally opted out. And
Speaker 1: when I faced her in that moment, what I desperately
Speaker 1: wanted when I was on the other side was someone
Speaker 1: to say I love you like you've got to choose
Speaker 1: what you got to choose. But love is not committed
Speaker 1: to being together. It's committed to truth. And what's strangely
Speaker 1: paradoxical about that is that the conversations that could end
Speaker 1: our relationship, which we often avoid because society actually credes
Speaker 1: relationships based on on their status, but also based on
Speaker 1: their longevity. So because our value is often perceived in
Speaker 1: our relationship status but also the things we achieve, but
Speaker 1: because it's often based in our relationship status, we won't
Speaker 1: have the conversations that might end it, and we won't
Speaker 1: be ourselves if being ourselves might end it. But the
Speaker 1: irony is those are the exact conversations that actually deepen it.
Speaker 1: And for us, the ending came, and for me it
Speaker 1: was finally ending a pattern where I used to fight
Speaker 1: the underlying core belief I had in relationship was nobody
Speaker 1: chooses me. You don't choose me, you don't choose me fully,
Speaker 1: You're not fully in here. I am love and all
Speaker 1: out martyring it rida here, I am love and all
Speaker 1: out a doormat chasing what doesn't want to chase me?
Speaker 1: And I finally said, I'm not chasing anymore and I
Speaker 1: love you, and she said I'm no longer going to
Speaker 1: operate in relationship that doesn't honor my intuition. I love you,
Speaker 1: And so we had a closing ceremony, which was the
Speaker 1: first time I ever ended a relationship with such intention,
Speaker 1: which was terrifyingly, devastatingly beautiful and one of the hardest
Speaker 1: things I've ever had to do. But what happened was
Speaker 1: there was this like sort of strange change in both
Speaker 1: of us. We didn't talk for a while, we went
Speaker 1: on different directions. The relationship was over. It was over
Speaker 1: for me. I was not interested in reuniting. The only
Speaker 1: way I would be interested in reuniting is if I
Speaker 1: met her in the future, not going backwards, but like
Speaker 1: a different narrative, a different story, a different possibility. And
Speaker 1: I mean, what's so beautiful about it is it ended
Speaker 1: up being a place that now we honor truth. And
Speaker 1: the conversation that we have just to come back to
Speaker 1: where we started is that it was you know, I
Speaker 1: love you, and there's a security to that, there's a
Speaker 1: choice to that. I think of a line that I
Speaker 1: heard from Jordan Peterson, which everybody think what you want
Speaker 1: about him, but the line is good, which is commitment
Speaker 1: only works when you do it. And that to me,
Speaker 1: I was like, have I ever been all in with
Speaker 1: someone who's all in with me?
Speaker 5: No? I hadn't.
Speaker 1: I was terrified of her receiving love. I was terrified
Speaker 1: of being met by somebody. I chased people who weren't ready,
Speaker 1: who couldn't choose me, And when I finally was met
Speaker 1: by her, I was met by a different woman.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: We had to repair trust, you know, at the beginning,
Speaker 1: because she would say I want to choose this, and
Speaker 1: I'd be like, I don't believe you because she had
Speaker 1: said that before. And she would say to me, you're right,
Speaker 1: I'm not going anywhere. I choose this, and I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like everything you want to hear is
Speaker 1: pa you know, beautiful but also vulnerable. And I think
Speaker 1: about the vows people making relationship you know till death
Speaker 1: to us part is a common one that previously was
Speaker 1: made also honor and obey was too that one's gone
Speaker 1: out the window, which good. But what's interesting is I think, like,
Speaker 1: is it a mortal death or is it the death
Speaker 1: of the version of you that chose the relationship at
Speaker 1: the time? And do our relationships foster a space for
Speaker 1: us both to grow as individuals, pursue our passions and
Speaker 1: step fully into ourselves and that be actually what cultivates
Speaker 1: the space between us, which is not the completion of
Speaker 1: each other, but actually a separate entity that is created
Speaker 1: by two sovereign whole beings who are celebrated by one another,
Speaker 1: expanded by one another. And so when we came back together,
Speaker 1: there was very much a deep intention in that coming
Speaker 1: back together and a commitment that's beyond and also a
Speaker 1: recognition that, I mean, this is an uncomfortable truth that's
Speaker 1: true for everybody. Is in any moment, at any time,
Speaker 1: your partner can decide to leave, You can decide to leave.
Speaker 1: And I think when we can be with the truth
Speaker 1: of that, then we can be with the power of
Speaker 1: the choice to be with each other, and we recognize
Speaker 1: the power of choice and so for us that has
Speaker 1: I mean, it's completely transformed me because if you know,
Speaker 1: at seventy years old, Kylie says to me, I can't
Speaker 1: do this anymore. I mean that would devastate me. And
Speaker 1: I'm not here to get in the way of the
Speaker 1: alignment of versul of her path and that I think
Speaker 1: there's something liberating about that. I think for some people, though,
Speaker 1: acknowledging that truth is painful and it's something we don't
Speaker 1: want to look at because we haven't explored what it
Speaker 1: means to be alone.
Speaker 4: I've started sending a couple of text messages after each
Speaker 4: podcast listener, with positive reminders about what's discussed and invitations
Speaker 4: to apply the wisdom to your life. It's free, and
Speaker 4: listeners have told me that these texts really helped to
Speaker 4: pull them out of autopilot and reconnect them with what's important.
Speaker 4: When you get a text for me during your day
Speaker 4: to day life, it's one more thing that helps you
Speaker 4: further bridge that gap between what you know and what
Speaker 4: you do. Positive messages when you need them for me
Speaker 4: to you. So if you'd like to hear from me
Speaker 4: a few times a week via text, go to oneufeed
Speaker 4: dot net. Slash text and sign up for free. So
Speaker 4: you described a way thereo taking an enormous amount of
Speaker 4: personal power and responsibility for saying to her, go if
Speaker 4: you want to go, right, And I'm just curious how
Speaker 4: you summoned the ability to do that. I mean, I
Speaker 4: know you've probably done a lot of work on yourself
Speaker 4: by that point, but boy, that's a core thing. Right
Speaker 4: When the person who supposedly loves you says I don't
Speaker 4: know that I do, it's really painful to hear that, right,
Speaker 4: It's enormously painful, and it's terrifying to lose a relationship
Speaker 4: of five years, particularly given it sounds like to you
Speaker 4: you knew in some ways this is a person for me,
Speaker 4: Like this is really valuable. Right, So I can't imagine
Speaker 4: it was as easy as you just made it sound
Speaker 4: with that, right, right, Like, I can't imagine you just went, Well,
Speaker 4: you know, what the right thing to do is to say,
Speaker 4: if you want to go, go, and I'm going to
Speaker 4: live out of my personal power and like talk to
Speaker 4: me a little bit about the moment to moment wrestling
Speaker 4: with that, because I think we all want to be
Speaker 4: that person. Yeah, I agree, right, we all want to
Speaker 4: be the person who would say I love you and
Speaker 4: I want your growth and I want truth and if
Speaker 4: that means it doesn't include me, fine, that's the person
Speaker 4: we want to be. And I know for me in relationships,
Speaker 4: there are plenty of times that the person I want
Speaker 4: to be is hijacked by in my case, a lot
Speaker 4: of early childhood bonding trauma things, right, and so the
Speaker 4: person I want to be just get swept away. Sometimes
Speaker 4: that wound gets triggered, and it's a big one for
Speaker 4: many of us. Right, And so what was that process
Speaker 4: actually like for you? How did you say that? How
Speaker 4: did you mean it? How much did you mean it?
Speaker 4: What did you do when you desperately wanted to cling?
Speaker 4: What I mean, like, just walk me through that. What
Speaker 4: you did was amazing. And again, as I said, and
Speaker 4: you just said, it's not easy.
Speaker 1: No, no, because it's going against the attachment pattern, right,
Speaker 1: it's going against the attachment trauma.
Speaker 5: Because yeah, when we have.
Speaker 1: Abandonment, rejection wounds, betrayal wounds, yep, we usually pick up
Speaker 1: a few adaptive strategies. You know, one is to chase
Speaker 1: people and the other is to avoid people. So really,
Speaker 1: our relationship to space is what we're relating to I
Speaker 1: know we think about it it's in relation to other,
Speaker 1: but it's really the relationship between space and other. And
Speaker 1: so how we behave in response to space is what's different.
Speaker 1: If there's space, I don't want any, space is not safe.
Speaker 1: If there's not enough space, I need more. That's really interesting.
Speaker 1: So that speaks to why you could be both avoidantly
Speaker 1: attached and anxiously attached. Which has been my back and
Speaker 1: forth throughout my life and earlier relationships, was Oh, you're
Speaker 1: really into me.
Speaker 4: I got to back up right and I'm not really
Speaker 4: that into you, And oh yeah, you're suddenly not into me.
Speaker 4: Holy shit, I must have you at all costs.
Speaker 5: You know, I know that feeling.
Speaker 4: I think what you're saying makes sense about that space.
Speaker 4: It's the relation to that space. When that space is
Speaker 4: either too small or too big, we move in a
Speaker 4: particular direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, our strategy is just different. But they're both insecure
Speaker 1: forms of attachment. And that's why it's so easy to
Speaker 1: pivot between the two, as you're saying, because you don't
Speaker 1: actually become secure, you just pivot between insecurity strategies that
Speaker 1: are insecure. The other side, when you think about it
Speaker 1: from a nervous system perspective is anxiously attached people. People
Speaker 1: who are afraid of space have a hard time self regulating,
Speaker 1: so being with emotions on their own, sitting in them
Speaker 1: a little longer. People who are more distant, who push away,
Speaker 1: they have a hard time coregulating being with another person's
Speaker 1: nervous system. So when we start to think about the
Speaker 1: like biological that needs to heal, right, which behaviors can
Speaker 1: heal the biological right, Like I can make a different
Speaker 1: choice and my nervous system will get disregulated, which usually
Speaker 1: to soothe I'll go into a behavior. So if I'm
Speaker 1: afraid you're going to take space, and I'm anxiously attached,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, you know what, I'm just going to
Speaker 1: sit a little back, and I get this dysregulation, my
Speaker 1: nervous system kicks up. The way I would soothe that
Speaker 1: is to maybe text you or chase you, call you.
Speaker 1: But then I end up again in an insecure relationship
Speaker 1: because it requires this abandonment of myself and my self
Speaker 1: regulation in order to maintain connection.
Speaker 4: Say more about that, What do you mean in an
Speaker 4: abandonment of myself or my self regulation? In what way
Speaker 4: is that an abandonment because when you're in it, it
Speaker 4: feels like you're doing the one thing that actually could
Speaker 4: make you feel better, which I get as I say that,
Speaker 4: I can see how that's a parallel to drugs. Right,
Speaker 4: So there's a clear parallel there, very similar. In what
Speaker 4: way to you would that be an abandonment of yourself.
Speaker 1: So let's say, in context, for me, in my relationship
Speaker 1: to Kylie, there's distance. She's not sure about the relationship
Speaker 1: at the core of a five year relationship, about a
Speaker 1: year in this dream. So that means, unconsciously, although consciously discussed, hey,
Speaker 1: let's fix that. Let's work on that. Unconsciously, my nervous
Speaker 1: system is going she's not actually sure she's going to
Speaker 1: be here. At any moment, she might leave. So the
Speaker 1: core of all relationships, whether they're work or home or
Speaker 1: love or family, is the essence the need for psychological
Speaker 1: safety the moment someone might leave, which often people threaten
Speaker 1: in relationship. As soon as someone threatens leaving in a relationship,
Speaker 1: it destabilizes this safety. There's no psychological safety. So what
Speaker 1: happens is we might cling, we might do behaviors that
Speaker 1: try to get more connection, but we're not dealing with
Speaker 1: the underlying thing, which is the lack of psychological safety.
Speaker 1: So our attachment systems, which are basically a radar, and
Speaker 1: all they're saying is am I safe and secure? Is
Speaker 1: this relationship safe and secure? So in the research for
Speaker 1: you listening, just so you can understand, it's developmental, it's
Speaker 1: usually determined before the age of two. You can change it.
Speaker 1: That's the beautiful things. And nothing I'm saying is like
Speaker 1: a destiny. And so you know, the research is from
Speaker 1: looking at young child with her mother. Mother leaves the room,
Speaker 1: mother comes back, and they look at how the baby
Speaker 1: responds to mother leaving and coming back. First one mom leaves,
Speaker 1: mom comes back. Baby's like, clings to mom, doesn't leave
Speaker 1: mom's side. I don't trust that when you leave you're
Speaker 1: going to come back, anxiously attached. Second one mom leaves,
Speaker 1: mon comes back. Baby reunites with mom, then goes back
Speaker 1: to playing I trust you, thanks for coming back. I
Speaker 1: got this. I go back to autonomy, right, sovereignty. Third
Speaker 1: one mom leaves, mom comes back. Babies like, didn't even
Speaker 1: notice you were gone, Not really a big deal. Looks ambivalent,
Speaker 1: but physiologically is actually responding the same way as the
Speaker 1: first baby. So when we actually look at how we
Speaker 1: relate to things like someone taking distance, a behavior that
Speaker 1: would be normal if I was advocating for my need
Speaker 1: would be hey, I noticed that you're a little di
Speaker 1: I noticed that maybe you're not texting as much. Here's
Speaker 1: what I need. Are you capable of giving that to me?
Speaker 1: And when the other person says no, if I don't listen,
Speaker 1: and now I go into more people pleasing more attempts
Speaker 1: to connect, I'm abandoning myself. If I say to someone, Hey,
Speaker 1: here's what I want to create in a relationship and
Speaker 1: the other person says, I don't really want that. If
Speaker 1: I chase that, I'm self abandoning. If someone says to me, hey,
Speaker 1: I actually want to create that, and I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: here's what that looks like for me. What does that
Speaker 1: look like for you? Okay, here's what it looks like
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 5: And you know.
Speaker 1: In stan Tekin's work, he's a famous researcher on relationships
Speaker 1: and marriage, he said that the failure of almost all
Speaker 1: relationships is the failure to create agreements at the beginning.
Speaker 5: So when we look at that, Okay, I'm willing to
Speaker 5: do that.
Speaker 1: Here's what that looks like and the other person doesn't
Speaker 1: actually do it, and I continue to try to convince them,
Speaker 1: change them, move them, shift them, read this book, here's
Speaker 1: a here's the thing, I'm self abandoning because I'm going
Speaker 1: into this convincing mode. As soon as you leave your center,
Speaker 1: your self abandoning. And for a lot of us, leaving
Speaker 1: our center is actually what's familiar. For others, staying in
Speaker 1: their center without any leaning is actually how they move
Speaker 1: out of relationship. What I mean is some people prioritize
Speaker 1: connection to other over their connection to self. That's usually
Speaker 1: anxiously attached. Other people prioritize themselves over their relationship to other,
Speaker 1: that's avoidantly attached. Secure is your needs matter as much
Speaker 1: as my own? And I'm always drawn by a quote
Speaker 1: from the Gotments, again super famous marriage and family researchers,
Speaker 1: and they said, if there's one thing that is clear
Speaker 1: about masters of relationship is that they do not leave
Speaker 1: their partner in suffering.
Speaker 5: They repair, They repair, they repair.
Speaker 1: So when I think about this process, you know, getting
Speaker 1: back to your original question, A long way around the barn,
Speaker 1: as a friend of mine would say, I think about
Speaker 1: that conversation that hey like, I love you. This is
Speaker 1: what I want to create. If you want to create that, great,
Speaker 1: If you don't, I love you. I mean that was
Speaker 1: how many years ago, Probably three years, so that was
Speaker 1: forty one years in the making. So you know, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of conversations I didn't have that were
Speaker 1: present in that moment. There were a lot of times
Speaker 1: that I'd stayed with someone who wasn't choosing me, or
Speaker 1: stayed with someone who betrayed me. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of moments that led to that moment. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: something that took the momentum of just a pep talk.
Speaker 1: It was sitting with truth that I had not been
Speaker 1: fully present and had my own back in so many connections.
Speaker 1: And I worked with a sematic therapist, and at this
Speaker 1: point I had a course on boundaries, So let's be
Speaker 1: very honest here, and I remember saying to the sematic
Speaker 1: therapist like, I've got great boundaries, like blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: And we went into how I felt, how my nervous
Speaker 1: system felt when I said, here's what I want, here's
Speaker 1: the and I realized that I had so many expressed boundaries,
Speaker 1: but I kept leaving myself in the circumstances, so I'd
Speaker 1: say the thing, Hey, you know, this is what I
Speaker 1: want to create. But it wasn't until that moment, which
Speaker 1: was in a kitchen, which is where so many conversations happen.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until that moment I was finally at the
Speaker 1: place of no more. I was finally at the place
Speaker 1: of no more, and I was finally at the place
Speaker 1: where I couldn't keep going the way I was going.
Speaker 5: And you know, when I was working.
Speaker 1: With a psychotherapist, I just had this deep moment of
Speaker 1: awareness where I was like, where did I learn that
Speaker 1: that was okay? Like, where did I learn that a
Speaker 1: relationship that doesn't fully choose me which was my norm,
Speaker 1: or if it wasn't it was because I didn't fully
Speaker 1: choose another because I was terrified of being mad.
Speaker 5: But I was like, where did I learn that?
Speaker 1: I didn't really have an answer yet in that moment,
Speaker 1: but I just remember grieving because I grieved every moment
Speaker 1: that I stayed with someone who didn't choose me, which
Speaker 1: means I wasn't choosing myself, which at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, if I was really taking responsibility for myself.
Speaker 5: They were a perfect reflection that what I thought I was.
Speaker 1: Getting from them, which was finally completing this wound was
Speaker 1: never going to be found through them, it was only
Speaker 1: ever going to be found through me.
Speaker 5: And that's when I started.
Speaker 1: I mean, it really brought full circle so much of
Speaker 1: my work, because I really we all have this thing
Speaker 1: that we desperately chase in relationship, and sometimes it's space,
Speaker 1: that's what generally looks a little different, but it's usually understanding, safety, love, connection, choice.
Speaker 1: There's always an underlying thing. And the question that really
Speaker 1: gets to that is you just ask yourself, what is
Speaker 1: the thing you wanted most as a child and you
Speaker 1: didn't get That's usually the thing you chase in partnership,
Speaker 1: and it's usually what your partner has a hard time
Speaker 1: giving you, and vice versa. And I realized that it
Speaker 1: was through giving those things to yourself that sometimes the
Speaker 1: relationship could deepen because both people have to move beyond
Speaker 1: their wounds, which is what brought them together. But other
Speaker 1: times it's actually what fractures the relationship. But either way
Speaker 1: you're both liberated from the wound. And so that conversation
Speaker 1: was one of the hardest conversations I've ever had. But
Speaker 1: I got to tell you, there was sort of like
Speaker 1: a weird swagger after because I could feel this like
Speaker 1: return of myself full south, and I could feel that
Speaker 1: I actually had my own back now. That like, if
Speaker 1: I had to choose between connection to another person and
Speaker 1: being my greatest fan, my greatest arbiter, my greatest everything,
Speaker 1: I was going to choose that. And in doing that,
Speaker 1: I mean, it liberated her because no longer was her
Speaker 1: desire to would I be okay without her? Would she
Speaker 1: still be loved? She was like, oh, I'm free to choose,
Speaker 1: he still will love me. And that was true, that
Speaker 1: was proven in how we ended. I hope that answers
Speaker 1: your question.
Speaker 4: It does. Would you consider yourself an anxiously attached person
Speaker 4: before that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm definitely more prone to that.
Speaker 1: You know, I got a little creative in my twenties
Speaker 1: and started to mix it up with some avoidance just
Speaker 1: to keep people.
Speaker 5: On their toes.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm definitely much more prone to anxiety. That's
Speaker 1: sort of my default. If there's instability, you know, anxiously
Speaker 1: attached people have incredibly unconscious. Their ability to be attuned
Speaker 1: to facial expression and micromotor movements is really heightened. So
Speaker 1: that's what makes anxiously attach to people generally really good
Speaker 1: at things like sales or empathic work.
Speaker 4: You know. Yeah, so you had that conversation, and then
Speaker 4: how soon after that did you guys make the decision
Speaker 4: to separate. Probably about a week, okay, So it happened
Speaker 4: pretty quickly. We had had those conversations a few times, like,
Speaker 4: let's say, over four months, we'd had conversations about the possibility.
Speaker 4: We did sort of one last hail Mary. We did
Speaker 4: a weekend with the therapist, and when we left that,
Speaker 4: we came back and you know, we just got to
Speaker 4: that place that the only thing left to do was
Speaker 4: not be together anymore. So that conversation had led to
Speaker 4: the therapist weekend. So by the time, yeah, we actually
Speaker 4: officially we actually went to go on a break first,
Speaker 4: which I have a lot of thoughts on breaks.
Speaker 1: I don't actually think they're generally functional. I think they're
Speaker 1: generally tearing down of the relationship to make it less painful,
Speaker 1: especially for the person ending it. But within about three
Speaker 1: days of the break initiating, I was like, this break
Speaker 1: isn't going to work for me, Like I just feel
Speaker 1: like we're in more ambivalence and I'm still in a
Speaker 1: place where you're deciding the depth of intimacy and connection
Speaker 1: and I'm not into that anymore. And so you wanted,
Speaker 1: in a sense to take the power back and say
Speaker 1: I'm not doing this.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Instead of being in a position of waiting, waiting, wondering, wondering, hoping, hoping,
Speaker 4: you just said enough, I'm not getting what I need here,
Speaker 4: I don't want.
Speaker 5: This, yeah.
Speaker 1: And it was like I had spent so long, so
Speaker 1: much of my adult life and relationships where people were
Speaker 1: deciding what they were ready for, what they could give,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I'm not into that anymore. It's
Speaker 1: not hot, yep, it's not attractive. There was just that
Speaker 1: switch that went in me that was like, doesn't feel good.
Speaker 1: And it was a familiar feeling I wanted to get
Speaker 1: rid of because it was a constant longing, just a longing.
Speaker 1: And when I could be with that and be like,
Speaker 1: what am I going to do with this longing? Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm longing for myself. I know that sounds so cheesy,
Speaker 1: but it was like the absolute truth. I was longing
Speaker 1: for myself, the fullness of myself, to have my boundaries,
Speaker 1: have my voice, to get up the people pleasing bullshit
Speaker 1: and That's why sobriety is so connected to all of that,
Speaker 1: because so much of it is avoidance of deep feelings.
Speaker 1: Feelings we don't know how to navigate feelings. We're afraid
Speaker 1: we're going to be swallowed by and that's why community
Speaker 1: so important. But also because we're so used to doing
Speaker 1: what the group does. Think about how many people relapse
Speaker 1: or how many people continue a behavior because the group
Speaker 1: around them does. And I was just done with any
Speaker 1: of that, any symptom of that behavior. I was like,
Speaker 1: I gotta, I gotta be done.
Speaker 4: That's a really powerful story, and I feel like I
Speaker 4: could go into it a whole lot more, but I'm
Speaker 4: going to put a pause on that for now and
Speaker 4: change directions just a little bit. And I want to
Speaker 4: talk about You have a newsletter. It's on substack, and
Speaker 4: I don't know if you end all of them this way,
Speaker 4: but I noticed one post you ended your sign off
Speaker 4: was trust, Trust, trust, and love. What do you trust in?
Speaker 4: This is a big one for me, right But you know,
Speaker 4: I feel like with my working with spiritual directors and
Speaker 4: different people, over time, inevitably we get back to trust
Speaker 4: what do you trust? And I think it's a really
Speaker 4: interesting question, and so when I saw that in you,
Speaker 4: I was kind of just curious, to you, what are
Speaker 4: you saying trust in?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, that's the only one I've signed off on.
Speaker 1: I think like that catcha I think. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: written hundreds, so maybe I've done it before. But you know,
Speaker 1: I keep being reminded, through my own journey and through
Speaker 1: my own work that nothing is by accident, you know,
Speaker 1: and what we're drawn towards, what breaks our heart. All
Speaker 1: these things are just so I don't want to minimize
Speaker 1: someone's experience, so when I say this, I'm not doing that.
Speaker 1: But they're so perfectly designed, you know. I have a
Speaker 1: friend named John Morrow, and he says, if you want
Speaker 1: to find what you love, find what breaks your heart.
Speaker 5: And that's been true of my own journey.
Speaker 1: My own mission has been like the things that have
Speaker 1: shattered me, or the things that have deepened me, or
Speaker 1: the things that have grown me, that when I learned
Speaker 1: finally to turn towards them with a curious eye. Which
Speaker 1: doesn't mean I'm not in the depths of total suffering
Speaker 1: and need a friend to hold me while I'm doing that,
Speaker 1: But I really found that so much of my transformation
Speaker 1: and the things I'm brought alive by, they're not by accident.
Speaker 1: And I think the reason I wrote that specific one
Speaker 1: is because I needed to remind myself that that's true.
Speaker 1: I used to be a pharmaceutical rep actually for like
Speaker 1: fourteen years, and I was in that industry and I
Speaker 1: was living the life I was taught to want. And
Speaker 1: when I finally started writing about relationship and you know,
Speaker 1: I went back to school and studied positive psychology.
Speaker 5: And I was ready to leap.
Speaker 1: I remember talking to people and they'd say, just leap
Speaker 1: and the universe will catch you. And I was like,
Speaker 1: that's so romantic and terrifying and are you high?
Speaker 5: Like how you know?
Speaker 1: But you know, when I finally gave my notice, and
Speaker 1: you know, I left like a really secure job, very
Speaker 1: golden handcuffy. You know, I was making great money. I
Speaker 1: had a freaking car, you know, a company car. Everything
Speaker 1: was great, but it wasn't. And you know, I remember
Speaker 1: saying to people, I want to do this. I want
Speaker 1: to tour the world. I want to speak about relationships.
Speaker 1: I want to teach people through what I've been through.
Speaker 1: And they would say, ah, why are you not grateful
Speaker 1: for what you have? As if longing for something different.
Speaker 1: It means you're not grateful, means you can't have more.
Speaker 1: And I think it's because so many people are stuck
Speaker 1: in mediocrity and afraid of their own potential that you
Speaker 1: stepping into yours threatens their untapped potential, makes them feel
Speaker 1: shame about the choices they're might not making, which is
Speaker 1: much like when people get sober, the people around them
Speaker 1: who know that they want to get sober get triggered
Speaker 1: by your own choice, which is not different than stepping
Speaker 1: into your full potential. So for me, really moving into
Speaker 1: that space of trusting was the first time I gave
Speaker 1: my notice. And I remember my boss at the time,
Speaker 1: she was incredible. She was like, can you just stay
Speaker 1: till June? And I'd give it my notice for April
Speaker 1: and I like checked in.
Speaker 5: My body and I was like no. There was like
Speaker 5: you can't.
Speaker 1: And my dad said to me when I was leaving
Speaker 1: that job, why don't you just take a leave of absence.
Speaker 1: I was like, Dad, that's like saying I don't believe.
Speaker 1: And I knew that I needed to go to the
Speaker 1: island and burn the boat. I knew that I needed
Speaker 1: to jump, and the universe caught me, you know, it
Speaker 1: really did, and not only that, it gave me more
Speaker 1: than I ever imagined, and it brought me here, you
Speaker 1: know today, to have a conversation. I had a conversation
Speaker 1: with you yesterday that was beautiful, like to have a conversation,
Speaker 1: to be able to share with people listening.
Speaker 5: And I think you don't know where this stuff's going
Speaker 5: to bring you.
Speaker 1: All you think about is the things you're going to lose,
Speaker 1: But you don't think about the things you're going to
Speaker 1: gain because they're not measurable yet, They're just a feeling.
Speaker 1: And if we're not used to trusting feelings, especially if
Speaker 1: we're not connected to our intuition, this is sometimes the
Speaker 1: step back into that that space of like trusting, Like
Speaker 1: if we could trust someone else's truth, that's their truth,
Speaker 1: when we can embrace theirs, it's because we're able to
Speaker 1: embrace ours, you know. And I think when we can
Speaker 1: be with that, like if we have un listened to voices,
Speaker 1: if we have things that are calling to us, which
Speaker 1: I have had, and I'm like, no, no, I got
Speaker 1: to keep doing the same thing. I gotta still talk
Speaker 1: about the same things. I got to do what works.
Speaker 1: And I just kept realizing like here I am not
Speaker 1: trusting again. What happens when cells start not doing what
Speaker 1: they're supposed to do, not following their intuition, not following
Speaker 1: their program, you know, in a positive way, they become.
Speaker 5: Cancer, you know.
Speaker 1: And I thought, I'm trying to fight the universe. And
Speaker 1: I remember when Kay and I broke up. I was
Speaker 1: out at this area in Washington called Mount Baker and
Speaker 1: I was meditating. I was in the forest, rainforest, it
Speaker 1: was like perfect, and this white butterfly flew up the
Speaker 1: river in front of me. And I remember thinking to myself, like,
Speaker 1: what do butterflies even do?
Speaker 5: You know? I didn't know. I don't even know what
Speaker 5: they do.
Speaker 1: They become tattoos, I know that, but they don't do
Speaker 1: a whole lot. But I thought, like, he's not or
Speaker 1: she or whatever is not thinking about what their job is,
Speaker 1: like they're just doing it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I remember getting hit by this from you know,
Speaker 1: whatever is And it was at what moment did you
Speaker 1: think you were God? That you thought you knew better
Speaker 1: than what was being called towards you. I tried to
Speaker 1: force that relationship for so long because I thought I
Speaker 1: knew better, But inevitably you end up where you're being
Speaker 1: called towards whether you're go screaming or not, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think about the nudges we get from the
Speaker 1: universe are usually subtle, but then they get not so subtle.
Speaker 1: They become cosmic too, by fours, you know, and they
Speaker 1: become cosmic dump trucks.
Speaker 5: And I think.
Speaker 1: What I forget is that we might not like the
Speaker 1: uncomfortable truth we have, but trying to avoid knowing it
Speaker 1: is what leads to again to more addictions. You know.
Speaker 1: I just grieve so many times in my life that
Speaker 1: I've done that that I didn't trust, the feeling that
Speaker 1: I didn't listen, and you know, I've done it recently
Speaker 1: again in my life in not a bad way, but
Speaker 1: in the way that you continue to learn that you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is how it works, and it's how nails grow,
Speaker 1: it's how hair grows, well most hair, not all my hair,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's it's how it works. And I
Speaker 1: think we forget that. And so trust Trust Trust was like, hey, like,
Speaker 1: I know this is a big ask, but I know,
Speaker 1: you know, and I know for me, when I didn't
Speaker 1: like something being true, I tried to do all the
Speaker 1: research in the world to figure out that.
Speaker 5: It was anything but what I knew.
Speaker 4: Yep, thanks for all that. That's really powerful. I guess
Speaker 4: I will say I'm not a person that tends to
Speaker 4: believe that everything happens for a reason.
Speaker 5: I wish I believed that.
Speaker 4: I tend to more believe that, you know, not everything
Speaker 4: happens for the best, but we can make the best
Speaker 4: out of everything that happens. And I think that's partially
Speaker 4: where my trust issues are. Is like, I don't feel
Speaker 4: like there's any actual f and plan out there. It
Speaker 4: feels like chaos. But something you said did resonate with me,
Speaker 4: which is that I can trust in some of my
Speaker 4: inner truth Now I think as an addict and as
Speaker 4: somebody who used to be very anxiously attached, and then
Speaker 4: as I said, I'm sort of avoidant or anxiously although
Speaker 4: in my most recent relationship I actually have been able
Speaker 4: to step out of both of those roles by and large.
Speaker 5: That's great.
Speaker 4: And so what I was saying is, you know that
Speaker 4: idea of trusting your intuition is hard for me because
Speaker 4: my intuition and again it's hard to tell intuition from
Speaker 4: dysfunction sometimes, right, you know, my dysfunction screamed a lot
Speaker 4: of things to me that seemed really true and really loud,
Speaker 4: that feel very similar to what intuition can feel like,
Speaker 4: like it's this inner knowing, agreed, you know? And I
Speaker 4: have always wrestled with is this you know? Okay, this
Speaker 4: inner knowing you know?
Speaker 5: What is it?
Speaker 4: But but when you said, like, you know, there are
Speaker 4: times that we just know the truth. That's been my experience.
Speaker 4: Like it took me a long time to get sober,
Speaker 4: but my inner truth knew for a long time that
Speaker 4: what I was doing was deeply problematic, right, I wasn't ready.
Speaker 4: I didn't know how to change it. I wasn't ready
Speaker 4: to change it. I didn't have the tools to change it.
Speaker 4: Lots of different things, but I would say probably nine
Speaker 4: months into my drinking career, I knew like, oh shit,
Speaker 4: something is a miss here, like something's wrong here. And again,
Speaker 4: it still took me like nine years to find my
Speaker 4: way out. I recognize that, like, there are some deeper
Speaker 4: truths that we do know, and they can be really
Speaker 4: hard to face, but facing them is the way back
Speaker 4: to ourselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it absolutely is. You know that question of how
Speaker 1: do I distinguish truth from dysfunction. There's a question that
Speaker 1: doctor Alexander Salmon asked, which is is this my trauma
Speaker 1: or my truth?
Speaker 5: That can be hard to swim through.
Speaker 1: But I think if you ask the question, which I
Speaker 1: know you suggest, asking the question is this thought real?
Speaker 5: Is this thought true?
Speaker 1: That's where we begin to build discernment about the information
Speaker 1: that's coming in and out of us. And that question
Speaker 1: isn't my trauma or my truth? We're going to get
Speaker 1: an answer that we're gonna probably not like the answer generally,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's going to call us to sit
Speaker 1: a little longer in something that normally, if it's trauma especially,
Speaker 1: is something that regulates us, attempts to regulate us, something
Speaker 1: that attempts to soothe a feeling that we haven't sat in. So,
Speaker 1: you know, when I think about being able to differentiate
Speaker 1: something that's intuition versus something that's let's say avoidance, I
Speaker 1: think about things like work, and what I mean by
Speaker 1: that is it's easy for us to contextualize what feels
Speaker 1: right for us and work and what doesn't. And so
Speaker 1: if I said to someone, hey, you're going to get
Speaker 1: this job, it's basically the same job as the one
Speaker 1: you have it pays about the same. You're going to
Speaker 1: have to do some other things. They're going to be
Speaker 1: a bit unfamiliar. Or here's this job. It's going to
Speaker 1: demand so much more of you, more than you even
Speaker 1: know as possible right now. It's going to require that
Speaker 1: you grow, it's going to require that you learn, and
Speaker 1: it's going to pay a bit more, maybe maybe even
Speaker 1: the same. But the possibility of what's created from what
Speaker 1: is going to be asked of you, and we can
Speaker 1: both sit with that and be like, Okay, am I
Speaker 1: afraid to choose this because I just genuinely don't want to?
Speaker 1: Or am I afraid to choose it because it's going
Speaker 1: to ask a version of me that doesn't exist yet?
Speaker 1: And for me, that's how I sort of lean into
Speaker 1: like do I not want to do this? Or do
Speaker 1: I whatever the behavior is, But I'm giving the example
Speaker 1: of not do I not want to do this because
Speaker 1: of it's just genuine or do I not want to
Speaker 1: do it because I don't even know the mark that
Speaker 1: can do that yet? And that's stepping ourselves into unfamiliar
Speaker 1: territory that could be like do I want to step
Speaker 1: towards this relationship like a lot of people will ask
Speaker 1: questions like how do I know if I should stay
Speaker 1: or leave in a relationship? That's a very common question,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of complexity to that question. One
Speaker 1: of them is what is your pattern, Like would be
Speaker 1: growing for you staying because you leave things when they
Speaker 1: get hard, or would growing for you be leaving because
Speaker 1: you stay in things too long? And you know, there's
Speaker 1: so many great questions that need to be asked of that.
Speaker 1: But that's one way of just beginning to look and
Speaker 1: differentiating what you're inviting, which is being able to see
Speaker 1: what is intuition. And the other way to really do
Speaker 1: that is to do small habits. There's a saying that
Speaker 1: the opposite of trauma's choice, and so let's say you
Speaker 1: make the commitment that you're going to make your bed
Speaker 1: every day. The reason that's such a powerful choice to
Speaker 1: make and to actually do is not because it's nice
Speaker 1: having a made bed, although it is, is because you're
Speaker 1: doing something you say you're going to do, so you
Speaker 1: can trust your own choices. That way, when you get
Speaker 1: into giant decisions, you actually have a relationship with your
Speaker 1: own word and a relationship with yourself. That's why it
Speaker 1: seems like an arbitrary thing, but it's not arbitrary at all,
Speaker 1: because you know, if you say I'm going to go
Speaker 1: for a walk every day or let's say five days
Speaker 1: a week, which is probably more achievable, as you've shared,
Speaker 1: it's a more achievable thing, and you don't go, and
Speaker 1: you say to yourself, well, I'm the only one who
Speaker 1: knows I didn't go, So it's no harm to anybody,
Speaker 1: but it's actually a harm to your own hide key too.
Speaker 1: So you choose goals that are achievable, choose things that
Speaker 1: you know you can keep your word towards. And also,
Speaker 1: you know, as you shared on my podcast, if your
Speaker 1: pattern is to be really hard on yourself, then the
Speaker 1: other pattern is to learn how to soften but also
Speaker 1: keep your word, because you know, as they say in
Speaker 1: the Four Agreements, you are your word, you got nothing else.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I often think that a meta skill
Speaker 4: for life is the ability to make and keep promises
Speaker 4: to yourself, right, Like, that is what so much of
Speaker 4: this is about, and it's why our inability to change
Speaker 4: behavior sometimes can be so I think psychologically devastating is
Speaker 4: because we make promises to ourselves but we don't have
Speaker 4: the capacity.
Speaker 5: To keep them.
Speaker 4: I was on your show and we talked a lot
Speaker 4: about how I don't think that's a moral failing. It's
Speaker 4: that you don't have the skills and the tools and
Speaker 4: the know how. I think of it as a puzzle.
Speaker 4: There's a reason that you're unable to keep these promises
Speaker 4: to yourself. Maybe you're making promises that are too big
Speaker 4: for yourself. Maybe you don't have the proper support. Maybe.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's a thousand different reasons.
Speaker 5: But to me, the.
Speaker 4: Game is always bigger than are you meditating every day?
Speaker 4: Are you exercising every day?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: Those things are hugely important, like you know, I mean
Speaker 4: I think they're really important, you know, to our overall
Speaker 4: health and well being. But there's another cost there, and
Speaker 4: that cost is I don't believe in trust myself because
Speaker 4: I say I'm going to do X, Y and Z,
Speaker 4: and then I don't do it. And what most people do,
Speaker 4: again is take that as some personal failure versus a huh,
Speaker 4: this is a puzzle that I haven't figured out yet.
Speaker 5: Why is this?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 4: And all sorts of things affect it. But I agree
Speaker 4: with you that that's why those little decisions like making
Speaker 4: your better, actually bigger decisions than they seem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, the other part that I find
Speaker 1: is really interesting about the human experience is that we
Speaker 1: might actually have never had modeled promises being kept. So
Speaker 1: what's familiar to our nervous system is actually feeling let down,
Speaker 1: and so we don't know what it's like to rely
Speaker 1: on someone. And so when we start to be able
Speaker 1: to rely on ourselves, which is when we stop chasing
Speaker 1: that from other people's security, safety, all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: when we start to be able to rely on ourselves
Speaker 1: is unfamiliar. And I think what happens too, when let's
Speaker 1: say we start to choose ourselves, we start to set boundaries,
Speaker 1: we start to keep our word to ourselves. There is
Speaker 1: a grief that will come with the change in behavior,
Speaker 1: because you will grieve all the times you didn't, and
Speaker 1: so there's an awareness that comes with transformation that grief
Speaker 1: is just the beautiful price of emission. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a saying that grief is love that has nowhere to go.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily agree with that, yeah, because I actually
Speaker 1: think grief is love. I think grief is the experience
Speaker 1: of loss, but that's only because of the you have
Speaker 1: for love. And so when you live a new moment
Speaker 1: as a new you, and you grieve the moments you
Speaker 1: didn't do that you're actually there needs to be an
Speaker 1: awareness of gratitude for who you've been, because we normally
Speaker 1: take the parts of ourselves that we're ashamed of the
Speaker 1: choice if we've made the bad things we've done quote unquote,
Speaker 1: and we put them in a box and we are
Speaker 1: ashamed of them and we don't want to look at them.
Speaker 5: But actually, part of really true.
Speaker 1: Healing and letting go is being able to say thank
Speaker 1: you by integrating the wisdom that comes from the mistake.
Speaker 1: If you don't integrate the wisdom because you're hiding it
Speaker 1: away in a box and you don't want to look
Speaker 1: at it, you're robbing yourself of total transformation. You're robbing
Speaker 1: yourself of the untapped potential of the mistakes you've made.
Speaker 1: And when you can finally use the loss, the thing
Speaker 1: that whatever, to actually become something, then it actually gives
Speaker 1: your pain purpose and it allows it to move through
Speaker 1: you into possibility. And so if you're familiar with being
Speaker 1: let down, familiar with not being enough, familiar with rumination,
Speaker 1: imagine if you start to step into possibility, reliability, potential.
Speaker 1: You talked about on my podcast the need.
Speaker 5: To have hope.
Speaker 1: Well, hope is something that you also create. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not just something that we might experience through someone
Speaker 1: else's story or someone else's experience. I know many people
Speaker 1: have been brought alive by what you do and the
Speaker 1: stories you share and all the things, and it.
Speaker 5: Awakens in someone what's already in them. Yes, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, I think that is a beautiful place for
Speaker 4: us to wrap up. Mark, I've really enjoyed this. I
Speaker 4: loved getting to dive deep on this idea of not
Speaker 4: abandon in a variety of different contexts. Well of links
Speaker 4: in the show notes to where all your stuff is.
Speaker 4: If you want to just tell people real quick, that'd
Speaker 4: be great.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So any courses that I have one called Rediscovery your
Speaker 1: wholeness that's all about stepping into your full self. And
Speaker 1: another one on dating, which is about turning dating into
Speaker 1: transformative healing process. It's called dating one to one and
Speaker 1: one for breakups again using breakups as the vehicle for evolutions.
Speaker 1: So you can get all that, as you were saying
Speaker 1: Eric at Create Thelove dot Com.
Speaker 5: So links will be in the show notes. Awesome, thanks Eric,
Speaker 5: I really appreciate you.
Speaker 4: Thank you Mark.
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