Speaker 1: People can be really stuck in fear and anger and
Speaker 1: wanting to get things for themselves because they think if
Speaker 1: they don't do that, somehow they'll end up empty. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking
Speaker 1: our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Dr Sue Johnson, an
Speaker 1: internationally recognized leader in the field of couple interventions. She's
Speaker 1: known for her breakthrough clinical research on using emotions and
Speaker 1: therapy and shaping secure, lasting bonds that create resilience. Her
Speaker 1: new book is Hold Me Tight. Seven Conversations for a
Speaker 1: Lifetime of Love. Hi, Sue, Welcome to the show. Hey,
Speaker 1: happy to be here. I'm really happy to have you on.
Speaker 1: Your book is called Hold Me Tight. Seven Conversations for
Speaker 1: a Lifetime of Love, and we'll get into it in
Speaker 1: a second here, but we're going to start like we
Speaker 1: always do. At the parable. There is a grandfather who's
Speaker 1: talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves side of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: looks up at her grandfather. She says, well, grandfather, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Yes, well, it's a really
Speaker 1: interesting parable. I liked it a lot, and I have
Speaker 1: worked over the last thirty years with mostly with distressed couples,
Speaker 1: and I got hung up on the word feed because
Speaker 1: what the parable suggests is that you decide whether you're
Speaker 1: going to feed love or whether you're going to feed,
Speaker 1: for example, fear, you decide. And what I see in
Speaker 1: the relationships that me and all my thousands of therapists
Speaker 1: all over the world treat all the time, is that
Speaker 1: it is true that we have ways of feeding our fear,
Speaker 1: feeding our anger. Perhaps I put anger in instead of hatred,
Speaker 1: it is it is true that we have ways of
Speaker 1: feeding that we we We're vigilant, we remind ourselves to
Speaker 1: be careful, we tell ourselves other people will hurt us,
Speaker 1: to the point where we only look at and see
Speaker 1: the negative things that people are doing, and we we
Speaker 1: wipe out the good things. So fear, for example, does
Speaker 1: have kind of its own self fulfilling momentum to it.
Speaker 1: But what I see is that also it has a
Speaker 1: lot to do with your relationships. And you know, I
Speaker 1: write about relationships, I write about bonding and attachment. I
Speaker 1: do studies on relationships, And what I see is that
Speaker 1: people can be really stuck in fear and anger and
Speaker 1: wanting to get things for themselves because they think if
Speaker 1: they don't do that, somehow they'll end up empty. They
Speaker 1: can be real stuck in that and when their relationship
Speaker 1: opens up and they start to feel connected with someone else.
Speaker 1: It kind of has them flower, and you know that
Speaker 1: they feel safe and connected. They can talk about their
Speaker 1: fears and get comfort. They can understand their vulnerability behind
Speaker 1: their anger. They don't feel the need to grab everything
Speaker 1: and grab everything for themselves. They actually believe that other
Speaker 1: people will take care of them. So I had a
Speaker 1: ton of thought they weren't currently simple. Um, But that's
Speaker 1: kind of what came up for me. I teach therapists
Speaker 1: to be a third wolf. I teach therapists to be
Speaker 1: the wolf in the middle. That's says, oh, yes, of
Speaker 1: course you are all caught up in your fear right now.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, of course you are all caught up in
Speaker 1: your anger right now, and it's consuming you, and it's
Speaker 1: taking you down this path where you don't feel connected
Speaker 1: with anyone and you're always trying to protect yourself. And
Speaker 1: the therapist job is really to be the third wolf
Speaker 1: in the middle and say I'm going to make it
Speaker 1: safe here, and you can learn to look at your
Speaker 1: fear and look at your anger, and you can learn
Speaker 1: to understand them, and you can reach underneath them and
Speaker 1: talk about those fears and connect with people in a
Speaker 1: way that brings up kindness and the ability to risk
Speaker 1: and love for you. So we're all about creating love relationships.
Speaker 1: So so I have these rather complicated thoughts on your
Speaker 1: very simple parable, Eric. That's great, So shifting gears a
Speaker 1: little bit into the book itself. Hold me tight. One
Speaker 1: of your main premises, really, the premise that underlies the
Speaker 1: whole book, is that romantic love is all about attachment
Speaker 1: and emotional bonding, and that all the other things that
Speaker 1: we see go wrong in relationships are really a consequence.
Speaker 1: They become fights over emotional disconnection. So share a little
Speaker 1: bit more about that with this. Well, I think what
Speaker 1: we've understood from all the studies we've done of couples,
Speaker 1: We've got about, oh, I don't know how many now
Speaker 1: thirty studies of couples help showing we can help distress couples,
Speaker 1: and follow up studies showing that our results lost, and
Speaker 1: studies about how people change, so many studies. Um, what
Speaker 1: we see all the time is that we focus on
Speaker 1: in relationships on things that like conflict and how painful
Speaker 1: conflict is. But if you really really look at what's
Speaker 1: happening in a distressed relationship, the conflict is the inflammation,
Speaker 1: the virus. The thing that gets everything going, the underlying
Speaker 1: music to the dance that starts to go wrong in
Speaker 1: a relationship is emotional disconnection. It's that somebody in the
Speaker 1: relationship starts to feel that the other person is unavailable, unresponsive,
Speaker 1: not engaged, and that triggers a whole reaction in ours
Speaker 1: as human beings were bonding mammals, and it triggers a
Speaker 1: whole reaction in us where if I rely on someone
Speaker 1: and I my whole world is kind of structured around
Speaker 1: them being there for me. That's a safety queue for
Speaker 1: my nervous system. And if suddenly I find that the
Speaker 1: other person seems indifferent or they won't really engage with me,
Speaker 1: or I can't reach them, or I feel abandoned by them,
Speaker 1: rejected by them, that is a real existential threat. It
Speaker 1: impacts our nervous system. It's basically a danger cue. It's
Speaker 1: a danger cue like stepping on a nail. I'll give
Speaker 1: you a good example. A lady called Nancy Eisenberger in
Speaker 1: California puts people in brain scan machines and watches how
Speaker 1: their brain responds to certain stresses. And what she found
Speaker 1: was that if you give people while they're lying in
Speaker 1: the brain scan rejection cues from others, not even into
Speaker 1: my partners, where the rejection cues are even more important.
Speaker 1: But if you give people rejection cues, those cues are
Speaker 1: processed in exactly the same way and in the same
Speaker 1: part of the brain as physical pain. Physical pain is
Speaker 1: a danger cue telling you that you're in danger, you
Speaker 1: have to do something, And the feeling of rejection and
Speaker 1: exclusion by someone that matters to you, or even just
Speaker 1: by other human beings is also a danger cue. This
Speaker 1: is kind of really looking at attachment science and understanding
Speaker 1: who we are as human beings and how much we
Speaker 1: need connection with other people. It's not icing on the cake.
Speaker 1: It's oxygen. It's like oxygen. We need connection with other people.
Speaker 1: It's our environment, just like water is the environment of
Speaker 1: a fish. Um close connection with others is the environment
Speaker 1: that human beings are designed for, and when we don't
Speaker 1: have it, everything starts to go wrong. And this is
Speaker 1: a pretty well known finding when we look at childhood, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of the original studies are about between a
Speaker 1: mother and a child. But you've gone on this, say no,
Speaker 1: this is this is what's happening at the heart of
Speaker 1: romantic love also, and originally when you started talking about this,
Speaker 1: a lot of people did not agree with you. They
Speaker 1: said that, you know, they said that emotion was something
Speaker 1: that adults should control, that too much emotion was the problem,
Speaker 1: that it should be overcome. And mostly they said, healthy
Speaker 1: adults are self sufficient. And so tell me, has that
Speaker 1: thinking changed since when you first started publishing your views. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has, and I'm I'm really glad it's changed, um
Speaker 1: because I used to get attacked all over the place
Speaker 1: at conferences, and um, it has. You know, the attachment
Speaker 1: science has changed how we see children and changed how
Speaker 1: we parent children. In the last fifty years. We now
Speaker 1: understand that you don't go and drop your kid off
Speaker 1: at the hospital for an operation and pick your kid
Speaker 1: up five days later. People forget that's what we used
Speaker 1: to do, even into the seventies. Um, that you understand
Speaker 1: that that would traumatize the kid all too hell, and
Speaker 1: it would impact how the kid would deal with being
Speaker 1: in the hospital, how the kid might even heal, you know,
Speaker 1: it would impact all kinds of things. So we've known
Speaker 1: that for years. It took years for people to accept that,
Speaker 1: you know, way back, people believe the best thing to
Speaker 1: do with the kid was when the kid was upset,
Speaker 1: you take the kid to their room, and you tell
Speaker 1: them to calm themselves down, and you leave them alone
Speaker 1: in their rooms so that they learned to be independent.
Speaker 1: This was the way we used to think about parenting,
Speaker 1: and now the same things happening with adult relationships. You know,
Speaker 1: round about the turn of the century, really about the latees,
Speaker 1: there was sort of an upswelling of research into adult bonding.
Speaker 1: And there's social psychologists and the developmental psychologists and a
Speaker 1: flew a few clinicians like me who were watching couples
Speaker 1: all the time interact in their offices basically realize that
Speaker 1: we're different than kids, but we're not a lot of
Speaker 1: the same patterns, the same emotions, the same responses, the
Speaker 1: same vulnerabilities, the same needs. M they're they're in adult relationships.
Speaker 1: And you know, it took a while for that to
Speaker 1: get going and for people to sort of move away
Speaker 1: from this idea that is, you know, well, if you're
Speaker 1: a functioning adult, you've got to be self sufficient. Well,
Speaker 1: I say, is the only self sufficient human beings a
Speaker 1: dead human being? There, We're not wired for self sufficiency.
Speaker 1: Your brain is a bonding brain, your nervous system. When
Speaker 1: your nervous system and your brain were getting formed, um,
Speaker 1: you know, you were young, You were a child, and
Speaker 1: our children in our species are more vulnerable and more
Speaker 1: vulnerable for longer than any others species on earth. And
Speaker 1: when your brain was being formed, you knew, like you
Speaker 1: knew to take your next breath, that if you called
Speaker 1: and no one came, you were in danger. If you
Speaker 1: called and no one came, in the end, you died.
Speaker 1: So connection has always been wired into us, and this
Speaker 1: has become clearer and clearer and clearer over the years.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is a lot of the beginning researchers in
Speaker 1: adult attachment didn't start off by studying bonding. They started
Speaker 1: off by studying pain. Why did loneliness hurt? Why we
Speaker 1: did loneliness seem to be associated with depression and people
Speaker 1: falling apart and suicide? And you know why did grief
Speaker 1: hurt so much? You know what happened to people when
Speaker 1: they felt rejected? I mean it started with this and
Speaker 1: it developed into and understanding that we grow up, Yes,
Speaker 1: we grow up, but our attachment needs and vulnerabilities go
Speaker 1: from the cradle to the grave. We don't, you know,
Speaker 1: our nervous system grows, but it's the same nervous system
Speaker 1: as we had when we knew that if we cried
Speaker 1: and no one came, we were going to die. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that happens in love relationships.
Speaker 1: People use images of life and death, you know, and
Speaker 1: people say you're killing me, or you know, if you
Speaker 1: leave me, I'll die. And I used to think, oh,
Speaker 1: this is just sentimental, you know, nonsense from romance novels.
Speaker 1: And now what I understand is no very well functioning,
Speaker 1: very resilient people use these images because that's how our
Speaker 1: brain codes love relationships. One of the things that you
Speaker 1: talk about is that these emotional needs are neglected. This
Speaker 1: starts to become a problem and out of its stem
Speaker 1: three thing you call them demon dialogues. There conversations that
Speaker 1: people get into and there's three of them that you
Speaker 1: talk about. One is the find the bad guy, the
Speaker 1: protest poker, and the freeze and flee. So let's maybe
Speaker 1: just spend a minute or so on each of them. Okay,
Speaker 1: So again this comes from watching thousands of couples interact,
Speaker 1: and also it comes from all the research on marital distress,
Speaker 1: which has also got going in the last few years.
Speaker 1: You know, we we know that when a relationship goes
Speaker 1: into distress, people get stuck in certain predictable dances with
Speaker 1: each other, and there's a predictable muse emotional music playing.
Speaker 1: The emotional music organizes the dance. It's it's the structure
Speaker 1: of the dance, and people get stuck. And the most
Speaker 1: popular place people get stuck all over the world. And
Speaker 1: we teach therapists all over the world and do educational
Speaker 1: programs all over the world. So it's fascinating to me
Speaker 1: how this goes across cultures and religions and countries. But
Speaker 1: you know, the one that really seems to dominate is
Speaker 1: that one person feels disconnected and starts to feel alarmed
Speaker 1: and starts pushing for connection, doesn't get much of a response,
Speaker 1: and starts pushing aggressively and demanding and criticizing, why don't
Speaker 1: you talk to me, why don't you come home earlier?
Speaker 1: We never talk anymore. You know, you didn't do this
Speaker 1: chore for me, even though I said it mattered to me.
Speaker 1: You're not listening. And the other person feels attacked and rejected,
Speaker 1: and so they defend themselves, and they shut down more.
Speaker 1: And the more they shut down, the more unconnected the
Speaker 1: first person feels. The more that person bangs on the
Speaker 1: door to get attention, to get a response, and the
Speaker 1: more they bang on the door, the more the other
Speaker 1: person moves away and shuts down. And you can see
Speaker 1: how this just keeps going. It's sort of rolls. It's
Speaker 1: got its own momentum. Couples get stuck in it for
Speaker 1: years and not ever sort of step back and see
Speaker 1: the dance that the dance just does them after a while,
Speaker 1: and they don't ever step back and look at the
Speaker 1: dance and say, oh, we're caught in this dreadful circle,
Speaker 1: this dreadful spin, this dreadful people give it names, you know,
Speaker 1: this dreadful tornado. We're caught in this, you know, dreadful.
Speaker 1: They don't do that. They're just all caught up in
Speaker 1: the dance. So that's protests Parker, and we see it.
Speaker 1: It's demand withdraw. But we see it that one person
Speaker 1: is protesting the distance and trying to get the other
Speaker 1: person to respond. They're not trying to be mean, you know,
Speaker 1: or you know, they're desperately saying, where are you? Where
Speaker 1: are you, where are you right? And they're not getting
Speaker 1: a response. When that goes on for a long time, eventually,
Speaker 1: usually what happens is that the protesting partner starts to
Speaker 1: burn out and then they started to shut down, and
Speaker 1: you get what we call withdraw withdraw or yeah, you get.
Speaker 1: You get two people putting up walls and nobody's out
Speaker 1: on the dance floor. And that's that also destroys a
Speaker 1: relationship because everyone's giving up. And usually when people come
Speaker 1: to see me with that pattern, um, it's because somebody's
Speaker 1: basically said I'm going to leave, I'm done, and then
Speaker 1: the other person goes into alarm. And but they may
Speaker 1: have shut each other out for years. They literally don't
Speaker 1: know who the other person is anymore, you know, and
Speaker 1: they're trying to protect themselves to the point where they
Speaker 1: no energy going towards the other partner. It's all going
Speaker 1: into this protection and after a while the protection becomes
Speaker 1: a prison. And the third one is find the bad guy.
Speaker 1: All couples do these at various times, but the question
Speaker 1: is whether you get stuck in them and whether they
Speaker 1: define the whole relationship. But find the bad guy is
Speaker 1: usually when a couple are fighting and they can't get anywhere,
Speaker 1: they can't get the other person to respond. It feels
Speaker 1: really bad. The criticism starts to go through the roof,
Speaker 1: and it's almost like they choose the booby prize called
Speaker 1: we can't resolve this, we can't connect, we can't find
Speaker 1: safe connection, So I'll go for the booby prize, which
Speaker 1: is it's not me that's the problem here, it's you.
Speaker 1: And that looks like attack attack. Most folks can't keep
Speaker 1: that up for long. It's too exhausting. So usually you
Speaker 1: see a distress couple going into attack attack for short periods,
Speaker 1: then going back to some sort of demand, withdraw, protest, polka,
Speaker 1: where the real question is somebody's yelling where are you?
Speaker 1: But they're yelling so loud that the other partner moves away.
Speaker 1: And then sometimes you get people in freeze and flee
Speaker 1: because they they're just done, they're overwhelmed, they numb out,
Speaker 1: they don't know what to do, but they still somehow
Speaker 1: know they want the relationship, but they're stuck right. And
Speaker 1: what we do is we help people see these dances
Speaker 1: they're caught in and blame the dance rather than each other,
Speaker 1: and we normalize it. We say, oh, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you're stuck here in this dance, and yeah, that's really hurts,
Speaker 1: and that's really confusing and difficult. And look at how
Speaker 1: you trigger each other into the dance, you know, and
Speaker 1: people don't understand the impact they having on each other.
Speaker 1: You know, with drawers, for example, really don't get that
Speaker 1: when they sat down to protect themselves, reach out the
Speaker 1: other personnel, and that chambers the other person into alarm
Speaker 1: and anger. And I've never met a withdrawer in a relationship,
Speaker 1: in a distressed relationship, who really gets that that you're
Speaker 1: so caught up in in shutting down, you don't get
Speaker 1: the way it's impacting the person you know, standing five
Speaker 1: feet away from you. Just don't get it. So once
Speaker 1: you start to get that, and you start to get
Speaker 1: that your partner's frantically trying to reach you and not
Speaker 1: trying to hurt you, actually things start to shift, you know,
Speaker 1: perceptions start to change, and people have room to talk
Speaker 1: about more than their numbing or their anger, and we
Speaker 1: help them talk about the softer feelings they have for
Speaker 1: each other, the fact that both of them are scared.
Speaker 1: For example, in a distressed relationship, both people are scared.
Speaker 1: They just don't know how to talk about it and
Speaker 1: help each other with it. I have unfortunately lived all
Speaker 1: three of these demon dialogues, and it was very painful
Speaker 1: to sort of read. You know, looking back on a
Speaker 1: on a previous marriage, I can see all of it.
Speaker 1: And you know, being on the withdrawal side of things,
Speaker 1: you know, I I understand exactly what you're saying, because
Speaker 1: it's really easy to point at the person who's attacking
Speaker 1: as the problem. Well you're attacking. I'm just sitting here.
Speaker 1: You You wrote somewhere in the book that the old axiom,
Speaker 1: when in doubt, say or do nothing is terrible advice
Speaker 1: and love relationships. That was certainly my strategy a lot
Speaker 1: of the time. I'll be the calm one, I'll be
Speaker 1: the I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna take de bait.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna. But I saw it. Didn't take me
Speaker 1: reading your book to see it, but your book showed
Speaker 1: it to me so much more clearly, the role that
Speaker 1: the withdrawer plays in that also, and you you talk
Speaker 1: about that one of the things that you help people
Speaker 1: do is see the dance itself. You actually say, look
Speaker 1: at the circle of criticism that spins both of you around.
Speaker 1: There's no true start to a circle, right, And that's
Speaker 1: a really useful way, and it is it becomes its
Speaker 1: own thing, that's right. And you know, when you think
Speaker 1: about it, I mean, you can think about your relationships,
Speaker 1: you know, any relationship that's got stuck, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's fascinating to me. I would be working with couples
Speaker 1: and be writing about this and studying it and doing
Speaker 1: research on it. And then my mother would would visit
Speaker 1: from England, you know, and within seconds of her arriving,
Speaker 1: you know, it would it would start with about five
Speaker 1: minutes of pleasant conversation and then she would turn and
Speaker 1: say something, you know, no big deal really if it
Speaker 1: didn't have a history behind it, like good lord, why
Speaker 1: do you wear that color? And my god, that hairstyle
Speaker 1: doesn't suit you? And you we'd be off. We'd be off,
Speaker 1: and we'd be stuck. And I basically flipped between smacking
Speaker 1: her you attacking back, and then we do find the
Speaker 1: bad guy for a while. You know, you're impossible, No,
Speaker 1: you're impossible. You know you're dominating. Now you're you're a
Speaker 1: bad child, and you know, we flip, We do that
Speaker 1: for a bit and then we'd flip into withdraw, we
Speaker 1: draw for a bit um. But you know, it was
Speaker 1: so difficult to see the the dance and to be
Speaker 1: able to say to my mom, Hey mom, have you
Speaker 1: ever noticed that we get stuck in this this silly
Speaker 1: thing where you turn and say something and I get upset,
Speaker 1: and so I turn and basically tell you I don't
Speaker 1: to hear any of your opinions, and then you don't
Speaker 1: talk to me for an hour and then we start
Speaker 1: all over again. Have you ever noticed that? And you know,
Speaker 1: she said, do we dear? I said, yep, And we've
Speaker 1: been doing it for you know, since I was about twelve.
Speaker 1: It helped, It helped me not to demonize her, to
Speaker 1: see that we were stuck in that. You know that
Speaker 1: that dialogue it's a difficult one. I mean, it's you
Speaker 1: can see them, but it's even when you see them,
Speaker 1: stepping out of them and keeping your emotional balance enough
Speaker 1: to step out of them. You know, it's tricky, which
Speaker 1: is why people I want people to read my book
Speaker 1: and do our educational programs, because there's now educational programs
Speaker 1: based on Holby tight as well. Um, you know, because
Speaker 1: it's it's a tricky. Most of the times we don't
Speaker 1: see the darts, and even when we see it, we're
Speaker 1: not sure how to change it. The book is based on,
Speaker 1: like the title says, seven conversations for a lifetime of Love,
Speaker 1: And the first few of them are these demon dialogue, right,
Speaker 1: and then you go into uh, sort of the tipping
Speaker 1: point conversation, which is called hold me tight conversation. So
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about what that is. What
Speaker 1: we noticed when we worked with distressed couples was that
Speaker 1: we would help them see the cycle. We would give
Speaker 1: them safety and help them talk about some of the
Speaker 1: underlying music in that dance where you know, people who
Speaker 1: were withdrawers would usually talk about feeling rejected, like they
Speaker 1: could never do the right thing, they were always going
Speaker 1: to fail, so they stopped trying, and um more blaming
Speaker 1: folks would start talking about how lonely and abandoned they felt,
Speaker 1: and how they were never sure they were loved. And
Speaker 1: when they start to talk about that, they can kind
Speaker 1: of create a safety a platform in the relationship. But
Speaker 1: that's kind of just taking control of the negative cycle
Speaker 1: that's bringing up onliness and disconnection and distress in the
Speaker 1: relationship all the time. Then we we learned that that's
Speaker 1: not enough to change a relationship. You have to also
Speaker 1: create a positive dance. And so what does that positive
Speaker 1: dance look like? Well, you've got to have a an
Speaker 1: image of what are the key things that need to
Speaker 1: happen in a relationship, what are the key moments that
Speaker 1: need to happen to create a really positive dance a
Speaker 1: secure bond. And so it helped a lot to have
Speaker 1: all the science of attachment and bonding you know, behind
Speaker 1: us and to understand what we were trying to create. Basically,
Speaker 1: the research says in a secure bond, the main variables
Speaker 1: that create the bond as secure and stable our emotional accessibility, responsiveness,
Speaker 1: and engagement. And that spells a r E accessibility response,
Speaker 1: ifness an engagement. And it's interesting because from my point
Speaker 1: of view, the main question in love relationships is are
Speaker 1: you there for me? Can I reach you when you
Speaker 1: come when I call? Can I rely on you? Do
Speaker 1: I matter to you? Do you care about my pain?
Speaker 1: Will you be there? Will you accept my vulnerability? These
Speaker 1: are the things that that come up and people can't
Speaker 1: even put words to that lots of times. So what
Speaker 1: we started to realize was that when we help couples
Speaker 1: create these bonding conversations where they where they could talk
Speaker 1: about their fears. You know, people could start to say
Speaker 1: things like I do shut you out. I shut you
Speaker 1: out because I'm so scared that all I'm going to
Speaker 1: hear from you is that I'm a big disappointment and
Speaker 1: I was a big disappointment in my family. And I
Speaker 1: can't bear it if when I see that look on
Speaker 1: your face and I'm getting the message that I'm a
Speaker 1: big disappointment from you, so I turn away and shut
Speaker 1: you out. I do because I'm scared. So there's somebody
Speaker 1: talking about their fear instead of acting on it and
Speaker 1: shutting their partner out. There letting their partner in and
Speaker 1: they're taking a risk. But of course what that does
Speaker 1: is it evokes compassion and caring from the partner. The
Speaker 1: partner sees their vulnerability, and then we help that person
Speaker 1: talk about their needs and what I need. What I
Speaker 1: need from you is to feel accepted and to know
Speaker 1: that I can make mistakes and that I don't have
Speaker 1: to be perfect, and even if I don't know what
Speaker 1: to do sometimes or I do things wrong, that I'm
Speaker 1: your special one. I need that reassurance because I do
Speaker 1: want to be close to you. I do want to
Speaker 1: dance with you. I just get scared that you're standing
Speaker 1: back and keeping score and then I freeze up. But
Speaker 1: I want to be close, but I need your reassurance.
Speaker 1: So when somebody does that, they pull their part towards them.
Speaker 1: That pulls. And I'm talking about an organic process here.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the way our emotions are structured as
Speaker 1: social bonding animals. I'm not talking about you know, um,
Speaker 1: something you learned from a book. I'm talking about an
Speaker 1: organic human response. When people show their vulnerability like that
Speaker 1: and ask for their needs to be met, it really
Speaker 1: really pulls for the other person to respond. And if
Speaker 1: the other person can't respond, we help them with that.
Speaker 1: We we help them with what's blocking them and what's
Speaker 1: getting in the way. But what we saw was when
Speaker 1: people would be able to talk about their fears and
Speaker 1: needs like that, incredible bonding situations happened where people would
Speaker 1: just come together, they would share their fears and needs,
Speaker 1: they would trust would open up, connection would open up. Um,
Speaker 1: we just respond to those moments with joy. You know
Speaker 1: there what Hallmark cards is all about? There? What all
Speaker 1: the love stories are all about? Right? This moments of
Speaker 1: connection with other people, their emotional connection where we can
Speaker 1: read their intentions, where we tune into their emotions, where
Speaker 1: you know, people even mimic the way each other moves.
Speaker 1: You know, birds do it in mating rituals. Actually, you know,
Speaker 1: you watch a couple in a hold me tight conversation,
Speaker 1: helding forward, she leans forward, he reaches out his hand,
Speaker 1: she reaches out her hand. That the tune their nervous
Speaker 1: system to tune into each other. And this naturally, and
Speaker 1: this it's joy in people, just like a beautiful sunset
Speaker 1: or a beautiful piece of music. Our nervous systems are
Speaker 1: just wired for it. What we found was that when
Speaker 1: people had these conversations we call them hold me tight
Speaker 1: conversations um, at the end of therapy they were out
Speaker 1: of distress. And three years later when we checked on them,
Speaker 1: all the results were stable and they told us they
Speaker 1: had felt more secure in their bonds. They weren't just
Speaker 1: out of distress, they were more intimate, Their sex life
Speaker 1: was better, They felt more secure in their bond um,
Speaker 1: you know, and it was like, oh wow, what my god,
Speaker 1: of what wait in a minute, what's happening here? You
Speaker 1: know that the first study I ever did. On the
Speaker 1: f T. I got these enormous results, and I thought,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, what hell could what? I didn't believe them.
Speaker 1: I ran the data three times and then I thought,
Speaker 1: I don't really understand why we got these results. But
Speaker 1: a few years later, looking at more and more tapes,
Speaker 1: you know, and and reading about adult attachment, which had
Speaker 1: just started to really get going, then I got it.
Speaker 1: I got wait a minute, is a bonding moments? These
Speaker 1: are the mo moments that we are just wired to
Speaker 1: take as life giving and crucial and important, and these
Speaker 1: are survival moments. Our nervous system just sings in these moments.
Speaker 1: This is what falling in loves about. This is what
Speaker 1: staying in love is about. These amazingly emotional moments when
Speaker 1: you feel connected with somebody, and you can't have them
Speaker 1: all the time. It's just not possible. But when people
Speaker 1: had these, um basically everything improved, and I mean everything.
Speaker 1: It was quite mind boggling to us. Not just the relationships,
Speaker 1: but if one partner was distressed, they became less depressed.
Speaker 1: They become less depressed. If one partner was anxious, they
Speaker 1: became less anxious. If one partner had post traumatic stress, disorder.
Speaker 1: They were able to turn to their partner when they
Speaker 1: got flashbacks and seek comfort and acceptance. PTSD symptoms went down.
Speaker 1: It still fascinates me after thirty years, how powerful these
Speaker 1: hold me tight conversations can be. And you know, we
Speaker 1: we help people do them now in our hold me
Speaker 1: Tight educational programs, and you see the same thing. You know.
Speaker 1: I was in San Francisco. I did a hold me
Speaker 1: Tight weekend for a hundred couples, which means there's two
Speaker 1: hundred people in the room. And some of the people said, oh,
Speaker 1: we don't really need this, we're happy, but you know,
Speaker 1: we just thought we'd come along and see. And then
Speaker 1: they come up at the end of me and they
Speaker 1: say things like I never knew I could feel this
Speaker 1: close to him, and I've never felt this close to him,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know you could feel this, and thank
Speaker 1: you so much. And even distress couples, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just an education relationship education weekend. Distress couples will come
Speaker 1: up and say, we get it now and we want
Speaker 1: to be closed and we're going to go work on
Speaker 1: our relationship. So there's a power here. We plug into
Speaker 1: it with our therapy and our teaching. But the power
Speaker 1: is there. It's about who we are and how much
Speaker 1: we are. As I say in the book, we are
Speaker 1: homo vincolum. We are not just social animals. We are
Speaker 1: the one who bonds. And that's our ecological niche if
Speaker 1: you like, that's that's water and where the fish. That's
Speaker 1: what we need to thrive. And when we get it,
Speaker 1: When we get that kind of connection, it's a source
Speaker 1: of joy, it's a source of strength, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: it changes everything. I mean, we've even done a brain
Speaker 1: scan study where when you have that connection with your partner, um,
Speaker 1: you don't respond. Your brain doesn't respond the same way
Speaker 1: if I tell you I'm going to shock you on
Speaker 1: your feet, as if you're when you're alone in the
Speaker 1: machine or when you don't feel connected with your part
Speaker 1: or in your potent holds your hand, Um, we cannot.
Speaker 1: We've actually shown that this sense of emotional, sense of
Speaker 1: connection changes how your brain deals with threat. You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty fascinating stuff. Right, Well, that is a
Speaker 1: beautiful place for us to wrap up, Sue on a
Speaker 1: really positive note about about how strong relationships can be
Speaker 1: when we get this bonding piece. Right, So thank you
Speaker 1: so much. You and I are going to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more in the post show conversation. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about conversations that heal injury that happened in
Speaker 1: the relationship, begin forgiveness conversations. You and I will do that. Listeners,
Speaker 1: you can get access to the post show conversations exclusive
Speaker 1: many episodes, add free episodes, all that stuff at one
Speaker 1: you Feed dot net slash Support. So thank you so much, Sue.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate your time coming on the show, and
Speaker 1: I found the book a real revelation. You're most welcome.
Speaker 1: Bye bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you,
Speaker 1: please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast.
Speaker 1: Head over to one you Feed dot net slash Support.
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